Puppet Masters
The only government that we know with certainty colluded with a campaign in 2016 was Obama's - figures across his administration, both high and low, were using their power to help Hillary and hurt Trump. She had plants at the Justice Department, one of whom was giving her campaign chairman updates on the email probe (Peter Kadzik); she had two CIA directors, one past, one present, campaigning for her (Mike Morell, who wrote an Op-Ed endorsing her while calling Trump an "agent" of the Russians, and John Brennan, who helped launch an unfounded counterintelligence probe against Trump and then leaked about it); she had a raft of John Kerry aides at the State Department circulating her paid opposition research from the former British spy Christopher Steele, with one of them, Jonathan Winer, serving as a conduit between Steele and another one of her opposition researchers, Cody Shearer (it has come out through a Senate hearing that Steele even visited the State Department in person before election day); she had Loretta Lynch and Sally Yates trying to tamp down the email probe; she had Bruce Ohr, whose wife worked with her opposition researcher, stoking the sham Russian investigation; she had cronies at the White House blasting Trump on a daily basis, not to mention Obama himself hitting the campaign trail with her.

President Donald Trump discusses current military operations with Gen. Joseph Votel, commander of U.S. Central Command, at MacDill, AFB, FL, Feb. 6, 2017.
The thinking is that if you get the new president on board in his first few days he will be yours forever, signing off on budget increases year after year while also providing political cover when things go wrong. While the Defense Department and intelligence community benefit from the process and are frequently able to get the president's ear because they are able to unveil some sensational "secrets," other government agencies also competing for dollars do not have that appeal and do not do so well. State Department, for example, rarely makes much of an impression because its work is basically prosaic.
Once every 12 minutes.
The United States military drops an explosive with a strength you can hardly comprehend once every 12 minutes. And that's odd, because we're technically at war with - let me think - zero countries. So that should mean zero bombs are being dropped, right?
Hell no! You've made the common mistake of confusing our world with some sort of rational, cogent world in which our military-industrial complex is under control, the music industry is based on merit and talent, Legos have gently rounded edges (so when you step on them barefoot, it doesn't feel like an armor-piercing bullet just shot straight up your sphincter), and humans are dealing with climate change like adults rather than burying our heads in the sand while trying to convince ourselves that the sand around our heads isn't getting really, really hot.
You're thinking of a rational world. We do not live there.
The Pew Research Center, Gallup, and NPR have all run polls that show that faith in government is near all-time lows in the United States. A lot of us have been let down so many times, and most of us simply do not "believe in America" like we once did. Yes, we may still believe in "the people" or "the values" that the nation was founded upon, but at our core we just do not have faith in our governmental institutions.
But simply being disillusioned is not going to be enough to make us ungovernable. Generations of Americans have complained about government, but they have always gone along with the system. Unfortunately, things are changing in a fundamental way. Instead of just complaining about government, Americans are being trained to think of government as the enemy. We certainly witnessed a great deal of this under Barack Obama, and without a doubt Obama was absolutely terrible, but now under Donald Trump things have gone to an entirely new level.
I had coffee with a foreign friend a week ago. The subject of Donald Trump inevitably came up and my friend said that he was torn between describing Trump as a genius or as an idiot, but was inclined to lean towards genius. He explained that Trump was willy-nilly establishing a new world order that will succeed the institutionally exhausted post-World War 2 financial and political arrangements that more-or-less established U.S. hegemony over the "free world." The Bretton Woods agreement and the founding of the United Nations institutionalized the spread of liberal democracy and free trade, creating a new, post war international order under the firm control of the United States with the American dollar as the benchmark currency. Trump is now rejecting what has become an increasingly dominant global world order in favor of returning to a nineteenth century style nationalism that has become popular as countries struggle to retain their cultural and political identifies. Trump's vision would seem to include protection of core industries, existing demographics and cultural institutions combined with an end of "democratization," which will result in an acceptance of foreign autocratic or non-conforming regimes as long as they do not pose military or economic threats.
Sounds good, I countered but there is a space between genius and idiocy and that would be called insanity, best illustrated by impulsive, irrational behavior coupled with acute hypersensitivity over perceived personal insults and a demonstrated inability to comprehend either generally accepted facts or basic norms of personal and group behavior.
Comment: Trump: The Presidential Enigma. We can only hope Trump is the best of what we imagine he might be, and not the worst of our fears by how he appears. Likely he is a mixed bag like every other president - although a bag that seems to shake up differently with every decision. Operating under the deep state thumb, is it method or madness?

U.S. Air Force A-10 aircraft takes part in the urban fighting drill during the NATO Saber Strike exercise in the Soviet-time former military town near Skrunda, Latvia June 13, 2018.
The rotational aspect theoretically complies with Norway's pledge to Moscow in 1949 when it joined NATO that Oslo would not allow U.S. bases on its territory. Indeed, Foreign Minister Ine Marie Eriksen Soriede reiterated that assurance in connection with the new troop request, contending that there would be "no American bases on Norwegian soil." Making their official status rotational supposedly means that the troops are there only on a temporary basis. It is a cynical dodge that fools no one-least of all Vladimir Putin and his colleagues in the Kremlin.
Comment: Global military industrial complex - not viable nor lucrative without a foe or a war.
Unable to shake her pathetic election defeat to Donald Trump, and having blamed everyone and everything under the sun for her failure to win the 2016 US election, Hillary has come full circle... starting from the top of her What Happened list, to return to blaming Russian President Vladimir Putin for the woes of the world, that would most certainly would not be happening if only she had been sitting in the Oval office.
Speaking to former Irish President Mary Robinson at Trinity College in Dublin, where Clinton was conferred with an honorary doctorate, the former first lady and US Secretary of State said that Russian President Vladimir Putin has positioned himself as the leader of a xenophobic movement that wants to weaken the United States' traditional alliances and undermine democracy.
Comment: Why hasn't anyone sued her for slander and about 650 other things?
Michael Daniel, whose official title was "cybersecurity coordinator," confirmed the stand-down order during a Senate Select Committee on Intelligence hearing held to review the Obama and President Donald Trump's administrations' policy response to Russian election interference.
Rice's order to Daniel was first reported in Russian Roulette, a book published in March that details Russia's meddling in the election.
In the book, authors Michael Isikoff and David Corn reported that Daniel was developing strategies to respond to Russian cyber attacks on U.S. companies and political campaigns. He proposed using what's known as denial of service attacks to take down Russian propaganda news sites and to attack Russian intelligence agencies.
Another idea was to announce a bogus "cyber exercise" against a Eurasian country. The goal was to put the Kremlin on notice that its infrastructure could easily be targeted by the U.S.
A YouGov poll, which was conducted ahead of Sunday's emergency EU meeting called by Merkel in an attempt to persuade other European leaders to stop migrants from moving freely within the EU borders, has shown that the German public is increasingly skeptical about Merkel's ability to pull the plan through.
The meeting, which will take place in the run-up to the EU summit on June 28-29, was hastily scheduled by Merkel after the head of her Christian Democratic Union (CDU) sister party, Christian Social Union (CSU), publicly confronted her over her failure to tackle the migrant influx with a policy many believe is too lenient toward unwanted arrivals.
Comment: Every politician is responsible for his or her decisions in the eyes of the constituency, even altruistic ones, especially if they turn sour and negatively impact existing society.
See also:
- IM Seehofer puts Merkel under deadline; Germany to kick out migrants if there is no deal with EU
- German Interior Minister: "Islam doesn't belong to Germany - Muslims need to live with us, not against us"
- German MP speculates Merkel could be ousted by the end of next week over migration policy argument
- Merkel's conditional response: Migrants from non-conflict countries must leave Germany
I knew none of this when my longtime colleague Michael Caputo asked me to meet with this gentleman because he claimed he had information that would be "beneficial" to the Trump campaign. Thus the claim by Shelby Holliday of The Wall Street Journal that the meeting was based on a promise of "dirt" on Hillary Clinton is a typical fake news lie.
Since my 20 minute meeting with the FBI informant resulted in no inappropriate or illegal act, I have no reason to dissemble or hide the meeting since nothing improper or significant resulted from it. Even the FBI informant himself confirmed for The Washington Post that I rejected his demand for $2 million.
I now realize the FBI informant's demand for "Trump's money" in a $2 million payment for undisclosed damaging information on Hillary Clinton which he only claimed to have at the meeting, was seeking to compromise Trump himself. Knowing I have an almost 40 year relationship with the President, Comey's FBI thought I could get Trump to pony up thus compromising him. That is why they sent the informant.
Comment: Was Vostretsov an FBI informant or a particularly sleazy con artist - or both? The rap sheet link, a booklet compilation, may be worth a peek.













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