W. Niederhut

Oy... If true, may the fetid excrement of a thousand pigeons rain down upon Hillary's head en route to her next CFR meeting... 😩

It's more "kill the messenger" Trumpaganda, IMO. There are now multiple whistleblowers in Trump's Ukraine-gate extortion scam. And, if Trump is innocent, why has he repeatedly lied about his Ukrainian extortion scam and aggressively blocked his associates from testifying?

Jim, It's true that Hillary, unfortunately, voted in the Senate to approve Bush & Cheney's invasion of Iraq in 2003 but, like almost everyone in the Senate (other than Obama and Bernie Sanders) she did so largely in response to a carefully orchestrated disinformation campaign from Bush, Cheney, and Karl Rove's 2002-03 Iraq War PR committee to sell the public on that invasion. As for the misguided Neocon NATO/CIA op to overthrow Ghaddafi in Libya, what role did Hillary actually play in it? She was nominally in charge of Christopher Stevens' under-the-radar Foreign Service mission to Benghazi, but I find it hard to believe that she was actively involved in the CIA and Pentagon ops there, or in the CIA's Operation Timber Sycamore in Syria. Perhaps I am mistaken. At worst, Hillary Clinton has been a Senatorial and State Department accomplice in Bush & Cheney's Neocon/PNAC "War on Terror"-- hardly justifying the Neocon Trumpagandist, Rupert Murdoch's recent use of Tulsi Gabbard (WSJ) to re-brand the Wolfowitz/Bush Doctrine as the "Clinton Doctrine." BTW, I never said that Bill Clinton and Obama were better presidents than JFK. What I wrote was that, IMO, Clinton and Obama have been the two best U.S.Presidents of the past 56 years-- since 1963. Both made some mistakes by compromising with Republicans in Congress. As I mentioned, in Clinton's case, agreeing to sign Gramm-Leach-Bliley was the worst. Who controlled Congress at the time? Similarly, Obama settled for the Senate Finance Committee's compromise (with Baucus, Grassley, and Lieberman) to kill a public option for the ACA. What was the alternative? To accomplish nothing significant in U.S. healthcare reform-- similar to what happened to Bill, Hillary, and Ira Magaziner after 1992? As for Obama's remarkably successful management of the Great Bush-Cheney Crash & Recession of 2008-10, I'm continually amazed by the public ignorance and amnesia on this subject. Obama inherited widespread bank failures and a collapsing U.S. economy from Bush & Cheney in 2009, and he had a very brief stint with a cooperative Congress from 2009-10 to keep the U.S. Ship of State from sinking. Princeton Professor Alan Blinder's analysis of the success of Obama's 2009 Stimulus Recovery Act is the best thing I've read on the subject. Most people have been bamboozled by the bogus Koch Tea Party/Fox News/ GOP counter-narrative to smear Obama. Meanwhile, Obama also inherited the Bush/Cheney Neocon wars in Afghanistan & Iraq. I, certainly, fault him for keeping Robert Gates on board, and colluding with the Wolfowitz/Bush agenda in Yemen, Syria, Libya, etc. But, at least, Obama pulled the plug on the Neocon push to start a war with Iran. How has Trump done, in comparison? In addition to withdrawing from the Iranian nuclear disarmament treaty, (for Netanyahu and the Neocons) Trump also killed more civilians in the Middle East in his first eight months in office than Obama killed in eight years! (P.S. I'm a Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren supporter. I donated to Bernie in 2016.)

Don't worry. Kenneth. Trump has most likely already sub-contracted these crucial anti-Deep State tasks out to his Kremlin handlers. As for the election, 350 votes would be somewhat suspicious, but Putin has most likely finalized plans for another pre-emptive GRU strike on our voting systems for 2020. Best of all, Bill Barr is working overtime to protect the Fuhrer from prosecution, even if he shoots people on 5th Avenue.

Study some American history, Berube. Obama is spot on. And he and Bill Clinton were, far and away, the two best American Presidents of the past 56 years, regardless of the billions spent during the past 20 years by GOP Robber Barons like the Kochs, Scaifes, Murdoch, et.al., to impugn and tarnish their reputations. Are Bill Clinton and Obama saints? Of course not. Neither was JFK. No saint could ever be elected POTUS. But they were all generally focused on optimizing the public good, unlike the Republican scoundrels in the Oval Office who created our Reaganomic national debt and launched ops like Iran-Contra, Desert Storm, and the $6 trillion dollar Bush-Cheney/PNAC "War on Terror." And Hillary had no operational role in any of these CIA/Joint Chiefs' Wolfowitz/Bush Doctrine military ops-- in Syria or Libya. Hillary was not even directly involved in implementing CIA Operation Timber Sycamore. To re-brand these CIA/MIC Wolfowitz/Bush Doctrine ops "the Clinton Doctrine" is beyond absurd-- analogous to blaming Clinton and Obama for the "supply side" tax cuts that created our Reagan-Bush-Trump national debt. Most major policy achievements throughout American history, since the drafting of the Constitution, were a result of unsavory compromises-- a process that Bismark likened to making sausages. Obama compromised with Gates and the MIC in the "War on Terror," and he compromised with Charles Grassley, Max Baucus, and Lieberman on limiting the scope of the ACA. Bill Clinton compromised on the GOP's Gramm-Leach-Bliley bill that deregulated Wall Street and, ultimately, caused the Great Crash of 2008.

Still waiting to hear what forum members have to say about Trump's Neocon Minister of Trumpaganda, Sir Rupert Murdoch, using Tulsi Gabbard this week to rebrand the Wolfowitz/Bush Doctrine the "Clinton Doctrine." * Any thoughts about Murdoch's latest equine excrement? Recall that Rupert Murdoch was one of the Neocon/GOP kingpins who pushed the U.S. into the 2003 Iraq invasion. * https://www.wsj.com/articles/i-can-defeat-trump-and-the-clinton-doctrine-11572389508

Speaking of our country perishing, I saw this story at Mediaite this morning. I think Johnston is correct about how the Gaslighter-in-Chief will respond to his long overdue impeachment. All of Trump's policy decisions are based on self-aggrandizement. The guy has no moral compass. None. Trump Biographer Says Trump Will ‘Travel the Country Fomenting Violence’ if He’s Not ‘Put in Jail’ https://www.mediaite.com/radio/trump-biographer-says-trump-will-travel-the-country-fomenting-violence-if-hes-not-put-in-jail/

Newsflash... More shocking revelations today about Trump's secret bromance with Vlad Putin. Buzzfeed has just posted their first batch of Mueller investigation 302s-- obtained from Barr's Department of Justice Obstruction (DOJO) through FOIAs. It's looking very grim for Trump's Deep State conspiracy theory alibis.

Hillary Clinton had no significant role in the PNAC/CIA/Saudi/Mossad false flag op to blow up the World Trade Center on 9/11-- PNAC's new "Pearl Harbor" that was designed to mobilize popular support for the implementation of the Wolfowitz Doctrine in the Middle East-- unilateral pre-emptive U.S. invasions to Balkanize Iraq and Syria and establish U.S. control of Central Asia. The Democrats in Congress after 9/11 went along with the Bush-Cheney administration's phony post-9/11 "War on Terror," but they were not involved in any meaningful way in formulating or implementing the military plans-- other than voting for the funds. Recall that General Wesley Clark was briefed about this Grand PNAC Plan in the Rumsfeld/Wolfowitz/Feith Pentagon shortly after 9/11. Clark was told at that time that the Pentagon plan involved the invasion and destabilization of several Islamic nations threatening Israel's long-term survival-- Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Sudan, and Iran. Both Wolfowitz and Feith had consulted with Netanyahu and Likud Party hardliners in the 1990s about this grand plan to destabilize Israel's Muslim neighbor states-- a variation on the original Oded Yinon Plan. Rupert Murdoch's media empire in the U.S. aggressively promoted the phony PNAC "War on Terror" propaganda after 9/11. Murdoch even bragged later about his role in promoting the Iraq War. Now Rupert Murdoch is using Tulsi Gabbard to re-brand the Wolfowitz/Bush Doctrine the "Clinton Doctrine." It's true that Obama (and, peripherally, Hillary Clinton from 2009-13) basically cooperated with the CIA and Joint Chief's PNAC "War on Terror," but Obama did so reluctantly. Nor was Hillary in the loop with Pentagon ops from 2009-13. In contrast, Trump's DOD killed more (collateral) civilians in Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria during Trump's first eight months in office (in 2017) than the Obama administration's DOD had killed in eight years! What is worse, Trump was bribed to foolishly withdraw from the Iranian nuclear disarmament treaty and to completely abandon the longstanding U.S. commitment to serve as a neutral mediator of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.

Rupert Murdoch has always been an essential part of the "Neocon cabal." IMO, the Neocon media mogul, Rupert Murdoch, is simply paying Tulsi Gabbard now to undermine opposition to Donald Trump, the man who was bribed by Sheldon Adelson, et.al., to become a Neocon mule.

Jim, Wouldn't you agree that Rupert Murdoch's U.S. media empire (Fox News, WSJ, NY Post, Washington Times, et.al.) has always been a major propaganda mouthpiece for the Neocon/Wolfowitz agenda-- since 9/11? I'll never forget watching Bill O'Reilly ridicule Gary Hart on Fox News during Operation Shock & Awe in March of 2003. The jingoistic Bush-Cheney war drums were beating loudly that night, and Gary Hart was being ridiculed by O'Reilly for arguing that our invasion of Iraq could destabilize the Persian Gulf and lead to a costly, protracted U.S. occupation of Iraq. Meanwhile, Rumsfeld and his chief deputy Paul Wolfowitz were insisting that we could overthrow Saddam Hussein and liberate Iraq quickly and cheaply. But something very odd is happening right before our eyes this week-- a remarkable sleight of hand by Trump's Minister of Propaganda. The wily old Neocon war monger, Sir Rupert Murdoch, is suddenly promoting Tulsi Gabbard to re-label the Wolfowitz/Bush Doctrine the "Clinton Doctrine," and to blame the Democrats for Bush & Cheney's disastrous Neocon wars in the Middle East! How did Murdoch suddenly become such a champion of ending our Neocon wars-- including Operation Timber Sycamore? And how has Murdoch succeeded in using Tulsi Gabbard to undermine opposition to Donald Trump, Sheldon Adelson's "Neocon mule?" Let's not forget that Donald Trump withdrew from the Iranian nuclear disarmament deal and also bombed Syrian government positions TWICE in response to false flag chemical attacks that were blamed on the Assad regime.

Turns out Hillary Clinton said Republicans — not Russians — were grooming Tulsi Gabbard https://www.marketwatch.com/story/turns-out-hillary-clinton-said-republicans-not-russians-were-grooming-tulsi-gabbard-2019-10-24 Published: Oct 24, 2019 By MikeMurphy Editor In a curious turn of events, a number of major news organizations ran corrections Wednesday night over week-old reports that sparked a testy war of words between Hillary Clinton and Democratic presidential candidate Rep. Tulsi Gabbard. Last week, a number of media organizations, including the New York Times, CNN and Politico, ran reports saying Clinton told the podcast “Campaign HQ with David Plouffe” that Russians were “grooming” a female Democratic candidate — widely assumed to be Gabbard — for a third-party run to play a potential spoiler in the 2020 election. But apparently Clinton meant Republicans — not Russians — were doing the grooming. The New York Times ran this correction Wednesday night: “An earlier version of this article described incorrectly an element of Hillary Clinton’s recent comments about Representative Tulsi Gabbard. While Mrs. Clinton said that a Democratic presidential candidate was ‘the favorite of the Russians,’ and an aide later confirmed the reference was to Ms. Gabbard, Mrs. Clinton’s remark about the ‘grooming’ of a third-party candidate in the 2020 race was in response to a question about the Republicans’ strategy, not about Russian intervention.” The Associated Press said: “In a story Oct. 18 about Tulsi Gabbard and Hillary Clinton, The Associated Press reported erroneously that Hillary Clinton said she believes the Russians have ‘got their eye on somebody who’s currently in the Democratic primary and grooming her to be the third-party candidate.’ She was referring to Republicans, not Russians, according to an aide.” It was unclear Wednesday night how so many news reports misunderstood Clinton’s quote, or why it took so long to clarify the remarks.

Dennis, Just to clarify, Hillary never said that Russia was grooming Tulsi Gabbard as a third party candidate. She speculated that Republicans might be grooming Gabbard as a third party candidate in 2020, and that Russian xxxxx factories would probably support that effort to sabotage Democrats running against Putin's orange puppet, just as they promoted Jill Stein in 2016 to sabotage Hillary. Hillary's comments about Gabbard in that podcast have been widely misquoted in the corporate MSM. Meanwhile voila! Trump's Minister of Trumpaganda, Sir Rupert Murdoch, is now actively promoting Tulsi Gabbard's 2020 candidacy!! In the past 24 hours, Sir Rupert-the-Trumpagandist has featured glowing Tulsi Gabbard interviews on Fox News (with Tucker Carlson) and an op-ed in his Wall Street Journal. But let's not kid ourselves. Sir Rupert Murdoch has played a HUGE role in promoting our post-9/11 Neocon wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria -- the Wolfowitz Doctrine-- and covering up PNAC's role in 9/11. If Rupert Murdoch is a champion of ending our Forever Wars in the Middle East, I'm a monkey's uncle, (an allegation which my nephews would resent.) Not surprisingly, the new Tulsi Gabbard op-ed in the Rupert Murdoch's WSJ focuses on Rupert Murdoch's new Trumpaganda moniker for his favorite, old Wolfowitz/Bush Doctrine-- "the Clinton Doctrine." Yeah, right... There it is. Tulsi Gabbard is starting to distinctly resemble yet another well paid Rupert Murdoch Trumpagandist. As for Donald the Neocon Mule, he always follows the money in the same way that an ass follows a carrot and flees the stick. Trump's actions in Syria, IMO, are not about thwarting the Neocon/Wolfowitz Doctrine per se. They are a response to Putin's stick.

If Tulsi wants the American people to know the truth about PNAC, 9/11, and the Wolfowitz/Bush Doctrine, why isn't she calling for Donald Trump to tell Americans "who really destroyed the World Trade Center on 9/11," as Trump said he would do during the GOP primary debates? Explain. Why is she focusing her vitriol on Hillary Clinton -- even re-naming the Wolfowitz Doctrine the "Bush-Clinton Doctrine" this week? It's true that the Obama administration perpetuated the PNAC/Wolfowitz plan in Syria and elsewhere, (Libya, Egypt, Yemen, etc.) but you Trumpsters don't seem to realize that Trump has been a veritable Neocon mule since 2016-- withdrawing from the Iranian nuclear disarmament treaty, moving our embassy to Jerusalem, bombing Syria, (twice) signing off on the annexation of the Golan Heights, and abandoning our commitment to a Two State solution to the Israeli Palestinian crisis. Michael Wolff has documented how Sheldon Adelson, Paul Singer, and other Bibi backers bribed Trump to become a Neocon mule. Where's Tulsi's criticism of Donald the Neocon Mule?

It's obviously a Deep State conspiracy to make it look like Trump and his lawyers were trying to conceal evidence of an alleged presidential crime that never happened. (Check with Sean Hannity, Cesar Sayoc, Berube, and Wheeler for the details.)

How many times do people have to observe Trump's pattern -- obstruction of justice, altering, selectively leaking, and withholding evidence, attacking the messenger(s), broadcasting false counter narratives, and creating distractions, etc. -- before they admit that he's a "racist, a con man, and a cheat?" Wheeler is a smart guy, but he's wasting his intellectual gifts trying to defend a self-serving con man and his crooked colleagues, most of whom are paid foreign agents like Trump, himself-- Kushner, Giuliani, Manafort, Flynn, McConnell, Graham, et. al.

How did this thread about Mark Zaid, NSC whistle blowers, and Trump's 2019 Ukraine-gate extortion scam turn into a series of deflective diatribes about the fact that the paid foreign agent/entrepreneur Michael Flynn lied about his December 2016 contacts with Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak?

Bernie is the only prominent American politician since Jimmy Carter who has had the cajones to publicly criticize Israel's Likud Party hardliners. Obama (and Hillary) both acquiesced in the CIA/NATO/Neocon wars-- the one major policy area where I strongly disagreed with them. (Leon Panetta allegedly told Obama early on his presidency, "Look, you can't just say, 'no' to these (MIC) guys.") But, at least a Hillary presidency wouldn't have paralleled the basic plot line of Breaking Bad, like the current Trump/Fox Gaslight Theater series. Trump keeps lurching from one crime, cover up, and policy fiasco to another. We could call Sunday's episode, "Throw Baghdadi From a Plane."

Geez...when is this nauseating Trump/Fox Gaslight Theater series, now in its Third Season, finally going to end? Today's T/F Gaslight Theater episode featured a decorated Iraq War veteran being smeared by the Trump/Fox Goon Squad for testifying that Trump did, in fact, attempt to extort political favors from Ukrainian President Zelensky, in exchange for designated military aid. Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman also testified that Tricky Trump and his cabal of tricky attorneys edited the July 25th transcript to cover up references to Joe Biden and Burisma.

IMO, McFarland's "sarcasm" defense never passed the sniff test in the case of that cached December 2016 transition team Email. It's simply not plausible in the context of what she wrote. As for Mueller's investigation, Trump stonewalled it from day one, after failing to obstruct it entirely. Recall that Trump talked to both Dan Coates and James Comey about halting the Flynn investigation, prior to firing Comey-- the man who put him in the White House with his "October Surprise." And when Trump was told that Rosenstein had appointed a Special "Russiagate" Prosecutor, he exclaimed, "I'm F*CKED!!" Manafort lied about his "collusion" with Konstantin Kilimnik even AFTER his plea bargain agreement to cooperate with Mueller. And Trump (and Don, Jr.) adamantly refused to talk to Mueller. Under the circumstances, Mueller's investigation, though highly productive, was still unfinished when Barr shut it down (and issued a bogus "summary" of the findings.) Furthermore, Mueller made it clear that he was not permitted by DOJ guidelines to indict a sitting POTUS-- even on the ten counts of obstruction of justice-- but went out of his way to say that his investigation DID NOT EXONERATE Trump.

Oh, come on now, J.C. Give the pretzel logic a break. First you denied the detailed evidence about Russian hacking of our 2016 election for Trump, (including the cache of 35,000 Facebook ads I referenced) and now this! But Flynn's own transition team colleague (McFarland) said in a December 2016 Email that the team needed to reassure the Kremlin about Obama's 12/16 sanctions! Why else would Flynn have lied to the FBI about his concurrent phone calls with Kislyak? And why was Trump so hell-bent on shutting down the FBI's nascent investigation of Flynn's Russian contacts?

Jim, I agree with your take on the two apparent false flag chemical attacks in Syria that were blamed on the Syrian Army, and used by Trump (and NATO) as a pretext to bomb Syrian government positions. The detailed analyses of these two false flag attacks by MIT Emeritus Professor Theodore Postol were, unfortunately, blacklisted by the U.S. mainstream media. Two related questions for you and the forum. 1) Do you believe that ISIS, itself, is a Sunni proxy militia funded and supported by the CIA/NATO/Saudi/Mossad coalition in Anbar Province and Syria? 2) What accurate, reliable sources of information do we have about CIA ops in Syria during the past decade? There is so much disinformazia out there that it's difficult to parse reality from the ubiquitous propaganda.

Jeff, Flynn lied about his December 2016 phone calls with Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak-- following the imposition of Obama's sanctions against Russia in response to the 2016 Russian election hacking. How is that not related to Trump's extensive 2016 campaign collusion with Russia? Flynn's own Trump transition team colleague, McFarland, even wrote an Email in December of 2016 asserting that the Trump transition team needed to reassure the Kremlin about Obama's punitive sanctions, since "Russia has just thrown the election to Trump." Explain your "logic."

I wonder what Tulsi Gabbard will have to say about Trump announcing the second (or is it the third?) death of the mysterious Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in the Turkish-controlled Idlib region of northeastern Syria yesterday. We all know by now that the CIA/NATO/Saudi/Israeli coalition has trained, armed, and funded the Sunni proxy militias -- Al Qaeda, Al Nusra, Daesh, ISIS, et.al.-- who have been trying to overthrow the Syrian (Assad) government in recent years. Who was al-Baghdadi fighting for and against? Gabbard has been one of the few politicians to challenge that false Deep State narrative about our Syrian proxy war. This apparent Trump PR stunt-- announcing the death of al-Baghdadi-- is an opportunity for Gabbard to question the false Deep State narrative about Operation Timber Sycamore and "ISIS." Will Gabbard question the Trump/al-Baghdadi farce, and prove that she is not just angling for a job at Fox News, or planning to undermine the Democratic nominee as a third party candidate in 2020? Or will she say nothing, and remove all doubts about Clinton's recent allegations about her 2020 third party candidacy?