W. Niederhut

Are there no limits on Michael Griffith's incessant disinformation posts around here? He continues to "flood the zone" with McAdams-esque propaganda tropes, while mislabeling forum members as, "rabid ideologues," "nutcases," and "ultra liberals" who "lack critical thinking skills," etc. It's garbage. Disinformazia. It's all about repeating defamatory sales jingles, ("Swift Boat Vetting") and decreasing the signal-to-noise ratio for important revelations about the CIA, Vietnam, and the JFK assassination.

Question. Why is this latest Biden-bashing Ben Cole thread on the JFK Assassination board? It belongs on one of the Political Discussion or Water Cooler boards.

Yes, the Thought Police have, certainly, been busy in Florida-- even banning Amanda Gorman's Inauguration poem. Depressing. Meanwhile, my political question for today. Why does Kevin McCarthy always have that sh*t-eating grin on his face lately -- while holding the country hostage with his GOP debt ceiling scam? He's, obviously, tickled about being a sleazeball. And let's recall that this is the same guy who gloated about the bogus GOP Benghazi investigations lowering Hillary's approval ratings. He also joked with Paul Ryan about the fact that the 2016 Trump campaign received funding from Russia. Hilarious stuff... 🙄

Geez... talk about beating a dead horse... 🤥 Ben "No Collusion" Cole has absolute brain lock when it comes to misinterpreting the Mueller Report. These issues have been repeatedly explained to him-- on the 56 Years thread and elsewhere. Ben persistently refused to read the Mueller Report, so I posted a summary of the Mueller Report findings for him (and Mathew Koch) on page 1103 of the 56 Years thread. He still doesn't get it. Ben's Russia-gate delusions are symptomatic of a more general problem in the U.S.-- alternate MAGA reality narratives about anything relating to Donald Trump.

Ron, If I recall correctly, Prouty was shown the photos of Dealey Plaza and concealed his initial shock when he saw Ed Lansdale in the photos. He then discussed the photos with Krulak, who confirmed that it was Lansdale in the photos. I posted a copy of Prouty's lengthy letter to Krulak on the subject of Lansdale in Dealey Plaza. It's at the top of the recent thread here entitled, "Why Fletcher Prouty's Critics Are Wrong."

Says the right-fielder who repeatedly refers to center-fielders as "far left." 🤥 (Not to mention his inability to distinguish between historical facts and partisan disinformazia.)

Fake AI image of Pentagon exploding goes viral on Twitter and causes US markets to plummet | The Independent

Utter nonsense, Mark. Your oft-repeated trope about Prouty's "routine" trip to Antarctica was debunked long ago on this forum. What had he been working on in the fall of 1963-- a treatise on penguins? I understand your methodology. If you, Griffith, McAdams, et.al., repeat the bunk enough times, some people will mistake it for the truth, eh?

It's not about ideology, Michael, as you mistakenly imagine. It's about historical facts vs. fiction-- reality vs. alternate reality. Obama made some mistakes, (especially by acquiescing to the Gates/Neocon military ops) but the fact-based historical consensus is that he "did a good job" as POTUS-- ranking as one of the better Presidents in our history. Conversely, Trump was a corrupt, inept disaster-- ranking among America's worst Presidents. Ergo, if someone claims that Obama "did a bad job," or that "Trump did a good job," we have good reasons for doubting their judgment about matters of historical fact. Ideology isn't the issue, per se. Historical accuracy is the issue. If David Mamet thinks that "Trump did a good job," we have good reason to doubt his judgment about history and politics.

Here's today's meme for Benjamin "No Collusion" Cole. Ben claimed this past week that he had finally read the Mueller Report, but he, obviously, didn't read it very carefully. Let's recall that Trump unexpectedly won Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania by razor thin margins in 2016-- by a combined margin of only 80,000 votes-- despite trailing bigly in pre-election and exit polls. And recall that Julian Assange Emailed Don Trump, Jr. on election advising Trump not to concede, even if it appeared that he was losing the election in those swing states.

It's unfortunate that RFK, Jr. went out on that MAGA disinformation limb. And how does RFK, Jr. imagine that the CIA "fixed" that election? On the contrary, any reports about Trump's 2016 campaign contacts with Russians were blacked out of the U.S. media prior to that election-- while the NYT and the M$M ran non-stop headline stories about Hillary's Emails. Then Comey and Rudy Giuliani's FBI cronies in NY threw the election to Trump in late October with their Anthony Weiner laptop nothing burger.

Posted without intentional irony... 🙄

Well said, Bob. All of this has been explained to Benjamin Cole, repeatedly, in response to his persistent inaccurate posts about the Mueller and Durham investigations. Ben's response? He simply posted another inaccurate trope from the mainstream media-- as if any headline published in the mainstream media is, obviously, true... 🙄 Debating with Ben is a bit like trying to reason with a television.

Paul, Bill Barr's specious Durham psy op can't be debunked more accurately and precisely than Litman has debunked it (above) in this week's L.A. Times. But notice that our two MAGA-verse denizens, Ben Cole and Mathew Koch, completely dodged the precise content of Litman's critique, while resorting to deflective ad hominem criticisms of me and Litman. It's not a case of mere partisanship, in which "both sides do it." It's about reality vs. "alternate reality." The Durham investigation was another GOP nothing burger-- like Benghazi and White Water.

Geez... so much for bona fide historical scholarship... 🙄 Most knowledgeable scholars would rank Obama among the better Presidents in American history. But in Michael Griffith's Rambo/MAGA-verse of alternate historical reality, those scholars all, apparently, have a "rabid, extreme partisan mindset." https://www.valleycentral.com/news/local-news/historians-rank-presidents-in-c-span-survey-trump-scores-41st-obama-10th/

Ben, Harry Litman published a good summary of Durham's nothing burger this week (below.) What's truly "instructive" about the Durham investigation is observing the alternate reality coverage/spin about this Bill Barr/Durham nothing burger in much of our corporate M$M. There's no there there. Why Special Counsel John Durham’s report takes so long to say so little Special Counsel John Durham’s investigation has ended in an avalanche of verbiage. (Manuel Balce Ceneta / Associated Press) BY HARRY LITMAN MAY 16, 2023 3:40 PM PT Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Rarely has a government report taken so long — in years and pages — to tell the public so little as Special Counsel John Durham’s report to the Department of Justice this week. When then-Atty. Gen. Bill Barr appointed Durham to investigate the department’s probe of connections between Russia and Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, Trump and his true believers looked forward to revealing a criminal conspiracy within the FBI. Trump tweeted at the time that Durham would uncover the “crime of the century.” Instead, four years after Barr first ordered Durham to investigate the investigators, he produced a ponderous, 316-page tome that interminably chews over information that has long been in the public record. ADVERTISEMENT The bottom line awaiting the minuscule percentage of the country that has the time and patience to wade through the report is a handful of small and already familiar cavils about the procedural details of the FBI’s work. Durham’s mission was always questionable. After the FBI received a tip from an Australian diplomat that the Trump campaign had advance knowledge of the Russia-linked hacking of Democratic Party emails, the bureau had no responsible choice but to investigate the matter. Moreover, Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation proved itself by securing an impressive series of guilty pleas from high-profile Trump associates. Barr nevertheless gave Durham a long leash on a dubious investigation by elevating him to special counsel status. And while the relevant regulations instruct the special counsel to “provide the Attorney General with a confidential report explaining the prosecution or declination decisions reached,” Barr also directed that the report be suitable for public dissemination “to the maximum extent possible.” The result is one more illustration of why prosecutors are not supposed to accompany their decisions with editorial broadsides about the people they aren’t charging. Rather than explain his limited prosecutorial decisions, Durham issues vague critiques of officials’ conduct, including that they lacked “analytical rigor.” Elsewhere he takes the FBI to task for its handling of the investigation of Trump campaign official Carter Page, which had nothing to do with the inception of Crossfire Hurricane, the Russia investigation. Most of this is workaday stuff that does nothing to advance the suggestion that the FBI had it in for Trump. As to that central point, Durham acknowledges that “there is no question that the FBI had an affirmative obligation to closely examine” the tip that sparked the probe. So what is Durham’s actual difference with the bureau’s decision to launch an investigation? He reveals his hand at page 295 of the report, where the exhausted reader learns he believes the FBI could have instead taken the “sensible step” of opening a preliminary investigation that could have later escalated into a full one. This is a mighty thin reed on which to support Durham’s insinuations of FBI misconduct. It’s also highly debatable. Information from an ally suggesting our greatest foreign adversary might be collaborating with a presidential campaign required an immediate and thorough response. Durham’s conclusion is exactly contrary to that of the Justice Department’s inspector general, Michael Horowitz, whose 2019 report on substantially overlapping matters found that the Australian tip was sufficient to open a full counterintelligence inquiry. Horowitz found no evidence that the FBI had any improper political motive. It’s tempting to dismiss Durham’s report as a long-winded attempt to justify his abysmal record as special counsel. Durham took twice as long as Mueller to bring three small cases that had next to nothing to do with his central task, yielding two acquittals and one guilty plea that resulted in no prison time. Moreover, his office was roiled by controversy: His respected deputy, Nora Dannehy, resigned in 2020, reportedly out of concern that Durham was politicizing the investigation. Unfortunately, Durham’s handiwork might not be as benign as it is insubstantial. The report will serve — indeed, it looks designed to serve — the toxic, false, far-right narrative that deep-state law enforcement agencies were out to get Trump. It’s a sort of time bomb, set in 2019 to go off now, as the 2024 campaign gets started. Immediately after the report was released Monday, Trump proclaimed that it showed “the American Public was scammed.” Even his chief rival for the Republican nomination, Ron DeSantis, fell in line, claiming the report “confirmed what we already knew: weaponized federal agencies manufactured a false conspiracy theory about Trump-Russia collusion.” And Trump henchman Jim Jordan announced plans to hold a hearing featuring Durham as the star witness. All of which ensures new momentum for wild-eyed theories that misinform the public, aggravate our partisan divide and provide fodder for Trump’s effort to reprise our most dangerous presidency.

Geez, Ben, please can your redundant BS already. Where did Mueller (or Durham) ever claim, or prove, that there was no "collusion" between Trump and Moscow? You, obviously, never understood the Mueller Report, or the four-year Durham nothing burger. You're a good example of how mainstream media Trumpaganda fosters mass delusions.

Here's my anecdote for today about life in 2023. First of all, smoke from the forest fires in western Canada has settled over the front range of the Colorado Rockies this weekend-- from the Wyoming border down to the Texas Panhandle. The air is so bad (small particulates in the 170s) that my wife and I have skipped our daily walks around the park. BUT, in other news, Governor Polis and the state recently set up a program for people in Colorado to trade in their gas lawn mowers for $150 vouchers to purchase electric mowers. I took my 30 year-old Sears Craftsman lawn mower to a local scrap yard last week, got a voucher, and bought an electric Ryobi lawn mower at Home Depot yesterday. (I've always been a real Bohunk about doing my own gardening and yard work-- much to my daughter's chagrin. But that's another story.) Anyway, I just charged up the 40V Ryobi battery and tried out the electric mower. Incredible! Light as a feather-- like using a light vacuum cleaner-- and you push a button to start it, rather than pulling a cord repeatedly. That said, I have nothing bad to say about my old Sears lawn mower. That thing ran for 30 years without a problem-- requiring only an annual oil change, and periodic spark plug and air filter replacements. It was, however, getting so old that I had to leave it out in the sun (to heat up) before trying to start it in recent years. The End

Exactly. Ben has often used terms like "sewer," "uncivil," "disrespectful," "ad hominem," etc., to criticize posts that fact-check and debunk his erroneous, redundant MAGA narratives-- "Russia-gate hoax," "patriot purge," etc. And he continues to insist that "rude," "abusive" people on the forum should be "respectful" of all opinions-- including those that are debunked by the facts-- lest we alienate potential forum members from the MAGA-verse. This is not a formula for informed, scholarly debates.

R.I.P. Jim Brown. Interesting man. I'm old enough to remember watching Jim Brown (on television) carrying the rock for the Cleveland Browns back in the day. The image that comes to mind is Jim Brown hopping down the field, dragging some guy who was desperately clinging to his leg. Jim Brown, all-time NFL great and social activist, dead at 87 | AP News

Noah Shachtman was a former editor for Foreign Policy and the Daily Beast. He has been the editor-in-chief of Rolling Stone since 2021. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noah_Shachtman Penske Media Corporation is owned and managed by Jay Penske. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay_Penske I only referenced these two guys in the context of thinking about the fact that Rolling Stone has been publishing Tim Weiner's disinformazia about the JFK assassination.

Good read. Yes, it's truly depressing to see that Rolling Stone, which once published Carl Bernstein's famous article about CIA Operation Mockingbird, has recently become another Mockingbird propaganda outlet. It's like watching Donald Sutherland in the film, Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Rolling Stone was purchased by Penske in 2017, and has been edited by Schactman since 2021.

The Durham Report was damning?! 😂 🤣 LOL. Thanks, Michael. I needed a good laugh this morning. You really know how to sling the bovine excrement around here-- about Prouty, JFK and Vietnam, 9/11, etc. But your excrement never manages to stick to the wall here on the Education Forum. You need to find a less scholarly forum for your redundant disinformation.

The Gospel of Trumpism May 19, 2023 at 9:54 am EDT By Taegan Goddard 55 Comments “Roger Stone has been in and out of Donald Trump’s orbit for more than four decades. But since Trump commuted his three-year prison sentence for lying to federal investigators, the self-proclaimed specialist in political ‘dirty tricks’ had been preaching the gospel of Trumpism to the former president’s most fervent religious supporters,” Yahoo News reports. Said Stone: “I am a soldier in the army of the Lord.” “Stone has been using more explicitly religious language over the past few years, especially when attending the Reawaken America tour events that mix evangelical church services with speeches promoting Qanon conspiracy theories and Trumpism.” “The events combine a devotion to Trump with an apocalyptic religious view of politics.” Roger Stone-- A Trump Soldier in the Army of the Lord