W. Niederhut

So, the Trump/Barr/GOP Russiagate cover up continues... 🤨 The GOP-controlled SCOTUS has just blocked the one year-old Congressional subpoena of the Mueller Report! In overturning the lower court ruling, the Trump/GOP SCROTUS has broken with all legal precedents* regarding Congressional subpoenas of grand jury evidence relevant to potential impeachment investigations. (The House attorney had clearly indicated to the SCOTUS that their investigation of Trump's misconduct in the Russiagate scandal has not been concluded.) Outrageous. Congress can, apparently, subpoena grand jury evidence about Bill Clinton's private sex life, but not grand jury evidence about Donald Trump's treason and obstruction of justice. Supreme Court Blocks Release of Full Mueller Report for Now https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/20/us/supreme-court-blocks-mueller-report-release.html?action=click&auth=login-email&login=email&module=Top Stories&pgtype=Homepage * “Federal courts have authorized the disclosure of grand jury materials to the House for use in impeachment investigations involving two presidents and three federal judges,” Judge Rogers wrote. “It is only the president’s categorical resistance and the (DOJ) department’s objection that is unprecedented.” In particular, Judge Rogers noted, Judge John J. Sirica in 1974 “ordered the disclosure of the grand jury report and accompanying materials to be delivered to the House Judiciary Committee, which was then engaged in an impeachment investigation of President Richard M. Nixon.” Lawyers for the House said that order was part of an unbroken series of precedents. “To our knowledge,” they said, “no court has ever turned down a request for grand jury materials by Congress in connection with an impeachment.”

Berkeley Professor Robert Reich wrote a good op-ed on this subject recently. Suppressing the data appears to be an important part of the general Trump/GOP strategy for re-opening the country. And, from what I've seen, most of the alleged "flattening" of the COVID mortality curve in the U.S. is a result of the COVID data from New York and New Jersey. The Real Reason Trump Wants to Reopen the Economy www.commondreams.org/views/2020/05/13/real-reason-trump-wants-reopen-economy

Otto von Bisquick? 🤥 Wasn't he the guy who once said that people should never see how laws, sausages, and biscuits are made?

Speaking of Free Wheelin'-- I noticed that none of the JFKA sleuths around here have mentioned the late night phone call that Bob Dylan received from JFK in 1963. Dylan mentioned the JFK phone call in the last song on his "Free Wheelin' Bob Dylan" album-- "I Shall Be Free." On the same album, he also mentioned being threatened by a New Yorker who, "Thought (Dylan) was a communist," in his song, "Talking World War III Blues."

Is it possible to wait 24 hours before deleting salient memes and cartoons around here? 🤥 They use up a lot of digital storage space, but some pictures are worth a thousand words.

Shocker. A new study shows that the lockdowns worked to mitigate the COVID pandemic in the U.S. Someone needs to tell Donald Trump and the four Republican judges on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Lockdowns worked. Now what? Stay-at-home orders and closing restaurants slowed Covid-19’s spread in the US, new study shows https://www.vox.com/2020/5/18/21262528/coronavirus-us-state-lockdown-stay-at-home-orders-study

This just in-- apropos of our recent discussion here about the House Intelligence Committee, the suppressed Mueller Report, and Russiagate. They keep mentioning Trump's obvious obstruction of justice in the Russiagate scandal, but the Manafort/Kilimnik/GRU grand jury material must be at least as important. Why was Paul Manafort willing to lie repeatedly to Mueller about his contacts with Kilimnik, even after agreeing to cooperate with Mueller (and then being sent to prison?) What are Manafort and Trump hiding? House tells Supreme Court its investigation into possible impeachable offenses isn't over https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2020/05/18/house-supreme-court-mueller-grand-jury-key-impeachment-inquiry/5215950002/

Jim, Your above version of Manafort's (and Kilimnik's) history with Yanukovych-- and his suspected role in Trump's Russiagate scandal-- are the diametric opposite of what others, including Robert Mueller, have alleged.* Obviously, both versions of Manafort's history cannot be correct. Someone is making stuff up. My question. Which version of Manafort's history with Russia is abjectly false? *Ukraine Continued: How a Crucial Witness Escaped https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2019/10/08/ukraine-continued-the-key-witness-who-was-allowed-escape/ "... For more than a decade, Kilimnik had been Manafort’s right hand man in Kiev. During that time, the two men collected tens of millions in fees as political consultants for Viktor Yanukovych, who served as the president of Ukraine from 2010 to 2014. Yanukovych advocated that his country sever ties with the United States and other Western nations, and align itself more closely with Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Manafort and Kilimnik also consulted with Yanukovych’s political party, the Party of Regions, and with Ukrainian and Russian oligarchs with close ties to Yanukovych and Putin. According to evidence contained in the Mueller report, throughout 2016 Manafort shared confidential polling data from inside the Trump campaign with Kilimnik regarding four states Manafort presciently believed might go for Trump: Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Minnesota. Manafort, in turn, instructed Kilimnik to turn over the polling data to a former client, Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch who is close to Putin. During the course of his investigation, the special counsel also disclosed that Kilimnik himself was “a former Russian intelligence officer” who still “has ties to a Russian intelligence service and had such ties in 2016.” A covert social media campaign by operatives working for Russia’s military intelligence service, the GRU, was then already working to defeat Hillary Clinton and elect Trump. Russian agents intensified their targeting of voters in those four states in the final days of the campaign. Trump went on to win the presidency by winning Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania by a margin of fewer than 80,000 votes cast in all three of those states, out of a total of 136 million ballots cast in total across the country. (In Michigan, the vote was so close that if more than 5,400 had voted for Clinton, she would have won the state.) Besides Manafort and Kilimnik, the special counsel had no other potential witness who could say whether the polling information was shared with Russia." *

Pamela, IMO, Wilentz was reaching a bit to try to draw parallels between Aaron Copland and Bob Dylan-- partly because both artists were descended from Lithuanian Jewish emigres. Secondarily, both men created art from American folk traditions (e.g., Rodeo and Appalachian Spring.) Copland had been interested in the ideals of the Popular Front in his younger years, but no more so than Vice President Henry Wallace or Pete Seeger. And Dylan was no more a "communist" than Woody Guthrie or early critics of our Cold War era military-industrial complex-- the "Masters of War" who almost nuked the planet in October of 1962. My take on the text is that Wilentz is placing Bob Dylan's life work into the broad context of American cultural and intellectual history-- folk, spiritual, and blues traditions, the labor movement, Jim Crow, Civil Rights, the Beat poets, and protests against the military-industrial complex, (as in the case of Murder Most Foul.)

Oh, I see, Rob. Your reason for hijacking this thread was simply to keep the forum well-focused on relevant topics, and to prevent forum "hijacking." Thanks for clarifying. 🙄

I've observed a lot of "projection" in my psychiatric career, but this comment takes the proverbial cake... To be clear, I had just posted a precise response to Jim's post about the history of the House Intelligence Committee's "investigation" of Russiagate "collusion," with two references-- from Congressman Conaway and the Mueller Report. Far from comprising common "talking points," these important historical references have largely been lost in the deluge of Fox Trumpaganda claiming that Russiagate was a "hoax," and the Mueller Report, a "dud." Then, all too predictably, Wheeler disrupts another rational debate to throw excrement on the forum wall-- not relevant data or topical rebuttals, but excrement. This kind of deflective and ad hominem thread hijacking makes it very difficult to carry on rational debates about history and current events. Meanwhile, we were discussing the facts about the House Intel Committee's non-investigation of Russiagate, and Paul Manafort's favorite GRU asset, Konstantin Kilimnik.

Jim, The House Intelligence Committee never conducted hearings on the Mueller Report, even after Schiff became Chairman in 2019-- partly because Congress has, to date, never been allowed to see the full Mueller Report! Bill Barr has been fighting tooth-and-claw to block Congress from getting the Report, and the Trump/Barr DOJ has just appealed to the SCOTUS this month to block the release of the Mueller Report to Congress. Prior to 2019, the Committee was controlled by Devin Nunes (R-California) and Mike Conaway (R-Texas) who explicitly announced in March of 2018 that the GOP controlled Committee did not investigate, or find, evidence of "collusion." They looked for none, and found none. Shocker. https://thehill.com/homenews/sunday-talk-shows/379005-house-intel-republican-panel-did-not-investigate-collusion "Rep. Mike Conaway (R-Texas) said Sunday the House Intelligence Committee was not tasked with investigating collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign, despite the committee issuing a report last week stating it found no evidence of collusion in the 2016 election. “Our committee was not charged with answering the collusion idea,” Conaway said on NBC's “Meet The Press.” As for the Mueller investigation, it found evidence of systematic, sweeping interference in our 2016 U.S. elections by Russia. * Although Mueller did not use the word "collusion" in his Report, he found evidence of extensive contacts between Trump campaign officials and Russians affiliated with the Kremlin and/or Putin's oligarchs. * The most notable case of apparent "collusion" involved 2016 contacts between Trump's Campaign Manager Paul Manafort and his close associate Konstantin Kilimnik, a known Russian military intelligence (GRU) asset. Kilimnik dodged the Mueller investigation with the able assistance of Lutsenko, and Manafort repeatedly lied during the investigation -- even after agreeing to cooperate with Mueller in a plea bargain! Under the circumstances, Mueller explicitly declined to exonerate Trump. * His investigation was repeatedly obstructed by Trump -- including Trump's refusal to answer key questions about his contacts with Russia, and the floating of pardons to Manafort and others under investigation.* * Key Findings from the Mueller Report www.acslaw.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/ACS-CREW-Final-Mueller-Report-Highlights.7.19.pdf

Jim, The reason that Trump's impeachment "did not work," as you put it, is simple. To wit, the Republican Senators, with the notable exception of Mitt Romney, simply refused to do their duty under the Constitution -- based on the ironclad evidence of Trump's guilt in his Ukraine-gate extortion scam. In contrast, the Republicans in Congress during the Watergate scandal-- which was 100 times less serious than Trump and Putin's Russia-gate subversion of our democratic elections -- chose duty to the national interest and the Constitution over loyalty to partisan political interests. But, please, oblige me. Neither Jeff, Rob, nor you have answered my basic questions about Russia-gate, which I posted yesterday. Do you believe that Russia interfered in our 2016 elections on behalf of Trump? Do you acknowledge that Trump and his campaign associates repeatedly lied (or flatly refused to answer questions) about their multiple, undisclosed 2016 contacts with Russian Federation officials, oligarchs, and/or cut outs (e.g., Igor Sechin, Veselnitskaya, Kilimnik, Kisylak, et.al.?) For the sake of simplifying the argument, let's assume, temporarily, that Mifsud and Assange were not working directly or indirectly for the Kremlin. As one example among many, we all know by now that Trump and Michael Cohen lied about Trump's 2016 Moscow Trump Tower negotiations and architectural plans. IMO, it's pointless to debate about Russia-gate without a basic consensus regarding the key historical facts in the case.

And it gets worse. Yesterday Trump actually told a crowd in Allentown, Pennsylvania that we would have fewer COVID cases if we did less testing! The bizarre comment is a good illustration of how Trump thinks about science in relation to public policy-- "No data, no problem!" Trump has repeatedly muzzled and marginalized scientists in the EPA and various health agencies in order to promote his policy nonsense about climate change, pollution, and even the COVID pandemic being "hoaxes."

Jeff, This is total bunk, and that's putting it charitably, especially in the context of your repeated dodging and denial of the facts we have posted for you (here and on the "Mark Zaid" thread) about Trump and Putin's Russiagate scandal, and cover up. Before re-posting the same old bunk, please answer some basic Russiagate questions, without changing the subject. 1) Did Russia actively interfere in our 2016 U.S. elections on behalf of Trump? 2) Did multiple Trump campaign staffers, and Trump, repeatedly lie about their secret, undisclosed 2016 contacts with Russians? Why did they all lie? 3) Did the Obama administration impose sanctions against Russia on December 29, 2016 in retaliation for interfering in our 2016 election? 4) Did Flynn lie to the FBI about his December 29, 2016 phone call to Kisylak, in which he sought to reassure the Kremlin about mitigation of the retaliatory U.S. sanctions by the incoming Trump administration after January 20, 2017? 5) Did Trump repeatedly attempt to obstruct the investigation of his 2016 campaign and transition team contacts with Russia-- and also refuse to answer key questions asked by Robert Mueller? Did Paul Manafort and Roger Stone? Why?

Breaking: And now former FBI official, Bill Priestap, has debunked Bill Barr's false narrative about the FBI's January 2017 Flynn interviews. Ex-F.B.I. Official Is Said to Undercut Justice Dept. Effort to Drop Flynn Case https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/13/us/politics/bill-priestap-michael-flynn.html?action=click&module=Top Stories&pgtype=Homepage

Bob, I'm beginning to understand your point (above) on this thread. It's impossible to have an intellectually honest debate with Jeff and Rob about Trump and Putin's Russiagate scandal and its sequelae (including the Flynn case.) They repeatedly ignore the facts, while re-posting the same old, debunked Trump/Fox disinformation-- or, worse, post non-sequiturs that hijack and deflect from the damning facts. There's a good summary of the Trump/Fox/Jeff/Rob revisionist history of the Flynn case in this morning's NYT. Trump White House Rewrites History, This Time About Flynn Three years ago, President Trump swiftly fired his first national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, for lying to the F.B.I. Ahead of the November election, Mr. Trump and his allies are now telling a very different story. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/14/us/politics/trump-michael-flynn.html

Weird historical footnote: Kris Kristofferson was working as a night janitor in that Nashville studio when Bob Dylan, Al Kooper, Robbie Robertson, et.al. were recording Blonde on Blonde. Some of those recording sessions were all-nighters, where Dylan stayed up through the wee hours writing and re-writing the songs. According to some accounts, the musicians smoked some herb before recording their hit single, Rainy Day Woman, ("But I would not feel so all alone-- everybody must get stoned!") after calling in a local trombone player to create the "Salvation Army band" sound of that song.

Trump White House Rewrites History, This Time About Flynn Three years ago, President Trump swiftly fired his first national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, for lying to the F.B.I. Trump and his allies are now telling a very different story. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/14/us/politics/trump-michael-flynn.html May 14, 2020 WASHINGTON — After announcing that the Justice Department was dropping the criminal case against Michael T. Flynn, the former national security adviser, Attorney General William P. Barr was presented with a crucial question: Was Mr. Flynn guilty of lying to the F.B.I. about the nature of phone calls he had with the Russian ambassador to the United States? After all, Mr. Flynn had twice pleaded guilty to lying about them. “Well, you know, people sometimes plead to things that turn out not to be crimes,” Mr. Barr said in an interview with CBS News. Then he went even further and described the infamous calls during the Trump presidential transition as “laudable.” Mr. Trump and his allies now accuse the F.B.I. of framing Mr. Flynn, which is part of the president’s broader campaign to tarnish the Russia investigation and settle scores against perceived enemies ahead of the November election. Their revisionist narrative is in stark contrast to the view held three years ago not only by top F.B.I. management but also by senior White House officials. Mr. Flynn, the officials said then, had lied to Vice President Mike Pence and other aides about the nature of his calls to the ambassador, had lied repeatedly to F.B.I. agents about the calls, and might have made himself vulnerable to Russian blackmail. Revisiting the chaotic weeks surrounding Mr. Flynn’s ouster — based on recently disclosed government documents, public statements, court records and interviews — show how much the original Trump administration concerns about him have been buried under the president’s cause of portraying the Russia investigation as a “witch hunt.” Mr. Barr, for example, has recently argued that the F.B.I. interview of Mr. Flynn was not justified because agents who had been investigating him had not found any wrongdoing and were on the verge of closing the case. When agents found out about the call with the Russian ambassador, Sergey I. Kislyak, they concocted a reason to keep the case open for “the express purpose of trying to catch, lay a perjury trap for General Flynn,” Mr. Barr said in the CBS interview. A broad array of legal experts disagree. “This case reeks of political influence,” said Marshall L. Miller, a former top prosecutor in Brooklyn and the principal deputy of the Justice Department’s criminal division. “Mr. Flynn admitted twice under oath that he lied to the F.B.I. Political appointees at D.O.J. are now trying to rewrite the law to erase the crime.” Mr. Flynn’s troubles began with a phone call. It was Dec. 29, 2016, the day the outgoing Obama administration announced sanctions against Russia for the country’s widespread effort to disrupt the 2016 presidential election. Mr. Flynn, who was Mr. Trump’s incoming national security adviser, urged Mr. Kislyak in a phone call not to escalate tensions with a retaliatory move against the United States — perhaps by kicking American diplomats and spies out of Russia. Given the circumstances, the call was remarkable. The United States government had just determined that its longtime adversary had launched a concerted effort to sabotage a presidential election, and the incoming national security adviser was having a back-channel discussion with a top Russian official that might lead to the new Trump administration gutting the sanctions its predecessor put in place to punish the Russians. Mr. Flynn chose not to document the calls with the ambassador, a decision that records from the investigation of the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, show was based on his concern that he might be interfering with the Obama administration’s foreign policy weeks before Mr. Trump took office. His concerns were well founded. When President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia did not retaliate after the Obama administration’s sanctions, President Barack Obama was perplexed and asked spy agencies to figure out why. The F.B.I. unearthed the discussions between Mr. Flynn and Mr. Kislyak when reviewing transcripts of the ambassador’s intercepted calls. F.B.I. officials discussed interviewing Mr. Flynn, whom agents had been investigating as part of the bureau’s inquiry into whether any Trump campaign associates had conspired with Russia during the presidential election. The matter took on greater urgency when Mr. Flynn’s discussions with Mr. Kislyak were revealed publicly by David Ignatius, a Washington Post columnist. Top Trump transition officials — including Mr. Pence as well as Reince Priebus, who was to be White House chief of staff, and Sean Spicer, the incoming White House press secretary — questioned Mr. Flynn about the Washington Post column. Mr. Flynn denied that he spoke about sanctions with Mr. Kislyak, and Mr. Spicer repeated those claims to members of the news media. Days later, on Jan. 15, 2017, Mr. Pence was asked about the column during an interview on the CBS News program “Face the Nation.” The incoming vice president said that he had talked with Mr. Flynn about his calls with Mr. Kislyak, and he said that Mr. Flynn was unequivocal. “They did not discuss anything having to do with the United States’ decision to expel diplomats or impose censure against Russia,” the vice president said. Mr. Pence’s interview set off alarms at the F.B.I. and the Justice Department. If Mr. Flynn had lied to the vice president, the Russians knew that and could use it as leverage over Mr. Flynn. Newly disclosed documents made public in Mr. Flynn’s criminal case show officials were also concerned that Mr. Pence might have been lying, as well. “The implications of that were that the Russians believed one of two things — either that the vice president was in on it with Flynn, or that Flynn was clearly willing to lie to the vice president,” Mary B. McCord, a former top national security at the time, said in an interview with the special counsel’s office. The F.B.I. decided to try to find out who was lying to whom. James B. Comey, the bureau’s director at the time, sent a pair of agents to the White House to speak with Mr. Flynn, who by then was only a few days into his job as national security adviser. But Mr. Comey made the unusual decision to not notify senior Justice Department officials about the interview until the agents were already on their way to the White House — blindsiding and infuriating the officials who oversee the F.B.I. about a highly sensitive session. During the interview, Mr. Flynn was asked about sanctions and other topics. He denied talking about Russian sanctions, according to documents, even as agents used his own words from the highly classified transcripts to refresh his memory. Mr. Flynn seemed relaxed, agents would note, and did not betray any signs of deception. Days later, on Jan. 15, 2017, Mr. Pence was asked about the column during an interview on the CBS News program “Face the Nation.” The incoming vice president said that he had talked with Mr. Flynn about his calls with Mr. Kislyak, and he said that Mr. Flynn was unequivocal. “They did not discuss anything having to do with the United States’ decision to expel diplomats or impose censure against Russia,” the vice preside But the F.B.I. reports from the interview did not square with the transcripts of the phone calls, and soon Trump administration lawyers were discussing whether Mr. Flynn might have committed a felony by making false statements during the interrogation. Mr. Priebus later recounted to Mr. Mueller’s investigators a meeting with Mr. Trump in which he told the president about the concerns that Mr. Flynn had lied during his F.B.I. interview. Mr. Trump was angry, Mr. Priebus recalled, and said, “Not again, this guy, this stuff.” Within days, White House lawyers — including the White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II — had concluded, after reviewing the transcripts of the calls, that Mr. Flynn had repeatedly lied about his discussions with Mr. Kislyak. According to the findings by the special counsel, “McGahn and Priebus concluded that Flynn could not have forgotten the details of the discussions of sanctions and had instead been lying about what he discussed with Kislyak.” Mr. McGahn and Mr. Priebus decided that Mr. Flynn needed to go and made that recommendation to Mr. Trump. On Feb. 13, after Mr. Priebus told Mr. Flynn that he must resign, he brought him into the Oval Office. There, Mr. Flynn and the president hugged, and Mr. Trump said he would give Mr. Flynn a good recommendation. “You’re a good guy,” the president said, according to the account Mr. Priebus gave to the Mueller team. “We’ll take care of you.” Ten months later, after Mr. Flynn had pleaded guilty for lying to the F.B.I. agents and agreed to cooperate with the Mueller investigation, Mr. Pence said that removing him from the White House was the right move. “What I can tell you is that I knew that he lied to me,” the vice president told CBS News, “and I know the president made the right decision with regard to him.” Mr. Pence no longer holds that view, and his change over time reflects the far more combative position among Trump administration officials toward the various investigations into Mr. Trump and his advisers. As this shift was occurring, Mr. Flynn jettisoned the legal team that had advised him to cut a deal with the Mueller prosecutors and hired a new lawyer, Sidney Powell, who launched a frontal attack on the forces that she believed led her client into wrongfully admitting to a felony offense. In a letter to Mr. Barr last June, days before officially becoming Mr. Flynn’s lawyer, Ms. Powell wrote that “it is increasingly apparent that General Flynn was targeted and taken out of the Trump administration for concocted and political purposes.” The letter was disclosed last year by federal prosecutors in the Flynn case. After Mr. Barr announced his decision last week to drop criminal charges in the Flynn case, top Trump administration officials — including those who three years ago believed most vehemently that he should be fired — said that he would be welcomed back at the White House. “I think General Michael Flynn is an American patriot; he served this country with great distinction,” Mr. Pence said last week in an interview with Axios. “And for my part, I’d be happy to see Michael Flynn again.”

This just in... 😮 I hope Jeff and Rob have insurance coverage for gonadal crush injuries, and don't mind singing soprano... Why the Flynn Interview Was Predicated https://www.lawfareblog.com/why-flynn-interview-was-predicated May 13, 2020 "...According to the Justice Department inspector general, the Flynn investigation was properly predicated as a full investigation. In his report on the FBI’s conduct in the Russia investigation, the inspector general stated, “[T]he quantum of information articulated by the FBI to open these individual investigations [that is, the investigations into Flynn as well as Carter Page, George Papadopoulos and Paul Manafort] was sufficient to satisfy the low threshold established by Department and FBI predication policy, particularly in the context of the FBI’s separate and ongoing investigative efforts to address Russian interference in 2016 U.S. elections.” Key to the Justice Department’s argument in its motion to dismiss is the fact that, after four months of investigation without finding any derogatory information, the FBI was prepared to close its case on Flynn. A draft internal FBI document dated Jan. 4, 2017, shows that the bureau had sketched out a memo closing the probe, though the document includes the usual caveat that if new information were identified, the FBI would consider reopening the investigation. But before the case was actually closed, the FBI learned that Flynn had spoken to Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak in late December 2016. According to the Justice Department’s motion, the FBI had transcripts of the relevant calls, likely obtained through surveillance of Kislyak authorized by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. By this time, Flynn had been named as Trump’s national security adviser."

The 9/11 insider trading facts are fairly straightforward, IMO. Some of it has been traced to; 1) then- CIA comptroller Buzz Krongard's banking associates, and 2) Wirt Walker. Phillip Zelikow's 9/11 Commission Report dodged the damning evidence by claiming that "no apparent insider trading was linked to the 9/11suspects." It's kind of like arguing that no bullets were fired from the Grassy Knoll, because they came from the Book Depository.

Interesting anecdotes, Ron. Among other things, your experiences accurately describe the way many of us were influenced by the mainstream media (Mockingbird) propaganda to dismiss accurate criticisms of the Warren Commission Report. Until fairly recently in my life, I believed that Oliver Stone was a "quack historian" -- something that I had read over the years in mainstream media sources that I used to trust. In fact, when I have tried to talk about Oliver Stone's work (including JFK) in recent years with highly-educated, "intellectual" friends, they often say something like, "I don't trust Oliver Stone's stuff. He's a quack historian." As for Bob Dylan's shape-shifting from his "Free Wheeling" acoustic origins to Rolling Stone electricity, it's the kind of thing that he has done throughout his storied career. I think it may have been one of the Clancy brothers who first referred to Dylan as a "shape shifter."

And, yet, all of this emerging information in early January of 2017 certainly justified the Obama administration's concerns about the necessity of a counter-intelligence investigation of Russian contacts by the unregistered foreign agent, Michael Flynn, and Trump's 2016 campaign and transition teams-- as former Assistant AG Mary McCord has pointed out in her recent NYT op-ed. 1) Russia had systematically interfered in our 2016 elections to put Trump in the White House (recently corroborated by the Senate Intelligence Committee-- after a three year delay.) 2) Flynn called Kisylak on December 29, 2016 to reassure the Kremlin about the new Obama administration sanctions, which were imposed in direct response to intel about Russian election interference. 3) Flynn lied about the phone call-- knowing that it was a potential violation of the Logan Act. (He later acknowledged, in court, that it was not a case of "not recalling" the phone call.) 4) Trump repeatedly tried to obstruct the nascent investigations of Flynn and the Trump campaign's multiple 2016 contacts with Kremlin officials and cut outs-- serial felonies. 5) As Cliff points out, (above) multiple members of Trump's 2016 campaign and transition teams systematically lied about their secret, undisclosed contacts with Russians. 6) Trump adamantly refused to answer Mueller's questions about his 2016 contacts with Russia-- finally submitting written responses that consisted chiefly of, "I don't recall," statements. 7) Trump has repeatedly lied about the fact that Russia interfered in our 2016 elections-- even on an international stage in Helsinki.

Great posts about Carmel, Joe. Can't picture Alice Cooper playing golf, but it's fun to read about life among the celebrities on the California coast. I have fond memories of rare vacation time in Santa Barbara, and watching seals at Point Lobos years ago. Isn't Point Lobos located in a California State Park?

The Castle Rock story has been big news around here today, Ron. That community is located in fairly affluent, conservative Douglas County, which voted 70% for Trump, Romney, McCain, Bush, etc. The country certainly seems divided on the issue of COVID-19 lock downs along partisan, political lines. What bothers me the most about the current Trump anti-lock down mentality is its ideological rejection of scientific expertise. It reminds me of the climate change denialism in right wing political circles.