Guest Post by Jim Kunstler
Various readers, fans, blog commenters, Facebook trolls, and auditors twanged on me all last week about my continuing interest in the RussiaRussiaRussia hysteria, though there is no particular consensus of complaint among them — except for a general “shut up, already” motif. For the record, I’m far more interested in the hysteria itself than the Russia-meddled-in the-election case, which I consider to be hardly any case at all beyond 13 Russian Facebook trolls.
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The hysteria, on the other hand, ought to be a matter of grave concern, because it appears more and more to have been engineered by America’s own intel community, its handmaidens in the Dept of Justice, and the twilight’s last gleamings of the Obama White House, and now it has shoved this country in the direction of war at a time when civilian authority over the US military looks sketchy at best. This country faces manifold other problems that are certain to reduce the national standard of living and disrupt the operations of an excessively complex and dishonest economy, and the last thing America needs is a national war-dance over trumped-up grievances with Russia.
The RussiaRussiaRussia narrative has unspooled since Christmas and is blowing back badly through the FBI, now with the firing (for cause) of Deputy Director Andrew McCabe hours short of his official retirement (and inches from the golden ring of his pension). He was axed on the recommendation of his own colleagues in the FBI’s Office of Professional Responsibility, and they may have been influenced by the as-yet-unreleased report of the FBI Inspector General, Michael Horowitz, due out shortly.
The record of misbehavior and “collusion” between the highest ranks of the FBI, the Democratic Party, the Clinton campaign, several top political law firms, and a shady cast of international blackmail peddlars is a six-lane Beltway-scale evidence trail compared to the muddy mule track of Trump “collusion” with Russia. It will be amazing if a big wad of criminal cases are not dealt out of it, even as The New York Times sticks its fingers in its ears and goes, “La-la-la-la-la….”
It now appears that Mr. McCabe’s statements post-firing tend to incriminate his former boss, FBI Director James Comey — who is about to embark, embarrassingly perhaps, on a tour for his self-exculpating book, A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership.
A great aura of sanctimony surrounds the FBI these days. Even the news pundits seem to have forgotten the long, twisted reign of J. Edgar Hoover (1924 – 1972), a dangerous rogue who excelled at political blackmail. And why, these days, would any sane American take pronouncements from the CIA and NSA at face value? What seems to have gone on in the RussiaRussiaRussia matter is that various parts of the executive branch in the last months under Mr. Obama gave each other tacit permission, wink-wink, to do anything necessary to stuff HRC into the White House and, failing that, to derail her opponent, the Golden Golem of Greatness.
The obvious lesson in all this huggermugger is that the ends don’t justify the means. I suspect there are basically two routes through this mess. One is that the misdeeds of FBI officers, Department of Justice lawyers, and Intel executives get adjudicated by normal means, namely, grand juries and courts. That would have the salutary effect of cleansing government agencies and shoring up what’s left of their credibility at a time when faith in institutions hangs in the balance.
The second route would be for the authorities to ignore any formal response to an evermore self-evident trail of crimes, and to allow all that political energy to be funneled into manufactured hysteria and eventually a phony provocation of war with Russia. Personally, I’d rather see the US government clean house than blow up the world over an engineered hallucination.
The best I’ve ever read by Kunstler.
If high ranking people and players were to be convicted and the cases laid out so convincingly that semi intelligent people could not deny the truth,it would go a long way toward reestablishing trust & faith in our government.
Yep, a lot of what he has said I’ve disagreed with, but I always read anyway because I like his style. Not this time, he was spot on. So few people remember just a couple short years ago, this Russian meddling nonsense was created out of the blue as a way to distract from the damning contents of the emails upon their release. They didn’t really show anything that surprising, either, just revealed that killery and her people were exactly the types of nefarious scum they were long thought to be. But, looking for a way to distract from them, they pushed this russian interference nonsense, and of course the media ran with it.
I, too, worry far more about the hysteria than anything else. As JHK says, we have far too many problems, both domestically with our house of cards economy, and around the world with our increasingly fragile empire, to be inviting disaster in the form of another war with an actual major world power such as Russia, or even a regional power like Iran. Whats even more insane, if thats even possible, is that the same people assuring us victory against Russia, Iran, or NK are the very ones that are still getting made fools of in places like Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria. Why they think we are ready to take on what appears to be a first rate military, especially a nuclear armed one, is beyond comprehension.
” Whats even more insane, if thats even possible, is that the same people assuring us victory against Russia, Iran, or NK are the very ones that are still getting made fools of in places like Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria. Why they think we are ready to take on what appears to be a first rate military, especially a nuclear armed one, is beyond comprehension.”
you flaming ignoramus-haven’t you read the little engine that could?i think i can,i think i can,i …–
Hear, hear !!! Agree or disagree (agree today for sure) the verbose and intricately articulated K is a total and welcome delight…..huggermugger !!! Love it.
The Gov’t employees that conspired to elect HildeBeast and thwart Trump are the same ones that are pushing the narrative against Russia.
I don’t get it. He’s a smart guy, he has an Internet connection and presumably knows how to do research. How can he be this far behind the 8 ball in March of 2018?
Yeah, maybe we can clean up the problem in our Justice Department by using the Justice Department to fix itself. Sounds like a plan.
For me, it all boils down to ‘Washington is a cesspool’. Everybody getting a deal from everyone else. Hubris * 10**10 (ten to the tenth’s power).
We should get rid of everyone in the first several layers of the FBI and DOJ.
Better yet – ask they all to resign – with full pension – with a promise to retire and never work in any capacity for the US government, a political campaign, or as a foreign agent. Additionally, anyone else can also take this deal. Just to get rid of them.
Dutch.
That would be a very efficient and cost effective way, which makes it unlikely .
Dutchman,
You would need to have their signatures …. deprived of their own blood, human or otherwise !
….. just to be DNA sure, as proof .. should they layer renege on their ‘bond’ .
Get rid of them while allowing them to profit from treason? What happened, did we run out of rope AND bullets?
Hopium, HSF, hopium. That’s all us-uns in this peanut gallery got….hopium.
When you lose an election for your Church Board or your Country Club Board, you shake hands and smile meekly at the next social event. When these crooks lose a Presidential election, they fight with every dirty trick in the book. Why? Because government is so big, vast, lucrative and powerful that TPTB are not going down without a fight – there’s too much money at stake!
My modest upper-middle class neighborhood as a teenager in Northern Virginia was home to several Congress-critters and quite a few well-known journalists too. They were prospering but not getting ridiculously rich through government. I know; I delivered their newspapers!
There were a lot of transient professionals in my neighborhood; folks rotated in/out as political fortunes waxed and waned. There were quite a few conservative senior bureaucrats, believe it or not. The big consulting firms which rose to prominence in the Reagan years were fledglings in those days -few people were getting huge, no-bid contracts for the government. When Congress was out of session, I could drive downtown to the Smithsonian or the National Gallery in 15 minutes and park on the street!!
Fast-forward 40 years: these same folks are becoming multi-millionaires through government. And it’s a family affair: Congressman/women have spouses who are big lobbyists (including Paul Ryan); cabinet Secretaries have spouses/kids with side businesses as Government contractors or influence peddlers/lobbyists. And many of them even represent foreign governments for million-dollar fees! Jerkoffs like Comey have literally made millions since coming to DC and nobody can figure out exactly how! People don’t leave town now – they stay entrenched as lobbyists or consultants even when out of nominal “power”.
A visit home to N. Virginia on family business last summer is instructive. The scene: a mediocre Italian restaurant that would struggle in Philly or New York, but jam-packed on a Tuesday night in Virginia! The customers are lobbyists, consultants and bureaucrats. Chuck Todd was flagrantly parked on the barstool so everyone could see him next to some sketchy, leggy blonde sipping a Cosmo. Nearby, a bachelorette party drank French Champagne.
It occurred to my brother and I that everyone in the restaurant was partying at taxpayer expense!!
At TBP, we focus a lot on politics and policy, but IMHO we don’t focus enough on the aspect of Government as a Big Business. This phenomenon explains a lot of what Kunstler and others write about. Trump’s election is tantamount to a surprise hostile takeover of a poorly-managed big business. Now the shadowy Board of Directors has to find some clause in the “corporate bylaws” to overturn the obvious will of the “shareholders”.
capt.,
i saw an article a few days ago talking about the graft that is being run thru these family connections–
i didn’t read the entire article but it started out talking about kerry & biden–their sons have businesses that rain $ from foreign contracts–they have accompanied their dads on official overseas trips & left particular countries with multi million $ contracts–
but it’s all legal-or is it the case that nobody has ever investigated them?
Today, sentiments that were only whispered in secret are now shouted from the roof tops. Truly, the government cannot be trusted to when it comes to people’s rights. How can anyone seriously defend the use of a fabricated, thoroughly discredited dossier to obtain search warrants on a political candidate, when the dossier was paid for by his opponent? If there was no other evidence, that alone should would suffice to send a chill through our collective spines. Of course, there are a few which will twist themselves in knots trying to defend or excuse it, but I put them into the same category as people who drink the cool aid and then wait for the mother ship to arrive.
I do think with the firing of McCabe, we have reached a turning point. People’s livelihoods, perhaps their lives, are now at stake. But, there is too much information out there, too many emails and questionable statements made under oath, to go back now. I don’t think it can be swept under the rug, and woe to him who tries. How it will play out, I don’t know, but I would be amazed if McCabe is the last of that mob to get fired or face jail time. You can bet when Comey heard that statement from McCabe, he felt someone walk over his grave.
yet little marco criticized mccabe’s firing because he should have been allowed to stay thru the weekend,which would have qualified him for a pension–
question–if a retired federal employee is later convicted of a crime related to his job,do they lose their pension?
And then there’s the matter of the missing 21 trillion dollars. I guess it might take something REALLY BIG to distract the public from fraud on a scale simple folks like me can’t even comprehend. Maybe the threat of annihilation would be a big enough distraction. Besides, if we start attacking Russian troops in Syria, Netanyahoo will be happy and we all know how important that is. OK, please friends on TBP, most of you know shit tons more about economics than I do. This Michigan State economics Prof and his team of grad researchers have uncovered an inconceivable amount of unaccounted for money. They downloaded the documents before the links were disabled. It seems to me that we have an illegal invisible government that is better funded than the visible one; hence, much of the “national security state” is essentially a vehicle for creating money out of thin air then using various unspecified programs to launder the funds. How does the army get to spend 800 billion dollars that are NOT in its budget on unspecified “expenses”? Are they developing interplanetary travel for the stockholders of Lockheed Martin?I can’t even figure out where the fuck this 800 billion comes from. I’m just glad I can pay my phone bill because I had a gig this weekend. And my “liberal” friends all have their panties in a twist because a few Russians posting silly ads supposedly “stole” the vote from Hillary. How the “old left” turned into boosters for a new cold war is still a marvel to me. Anyhow, contemplating the idiotic propaganda spewing from the mouths of fools like Rachel Maddow is only going to reduce me to sputtering incoherence. Here is the interview with the Michigan Prof. Check this out. Comments? Thoughts?
The Nikita “We Will Bury You” bang your shoe trope just does not fit anymore.