Jul 28, 2017

July 24, 2017: Whole World Laughing, Serving the Kremlin, Very Useful Idiot


“The whole world is laughing, not at who we are but what we have become. It isn’t the robust laughter of amusement but a timid laughter betraying a deep fear and loathing. The world so laughs at the America of our very own Caesar Disgustus.”
                        ----from “The Quotations of Chairman Joe”


The “Quid Pro Quo”, what was the “Quid Pro Quo”?  That is the question. 

There is no question of Disgustus’ slavish behavior when it comes to Putin and the Kremlin. 
While criticizing nearly every one of our allies, and questioning U.S. foreign policy, he has gone out of his way to avoid criticizing Putin, indeed heaps praise on the man even comparing him favorably to our former president.  What explains this disgusting behavior has to date not been fully revealed, but it is becoming increasingly clear that Disgustus has crossed the line.

The Kremlin’s policy goals are generally well understood in the west.  Rachel Maddow, reporting for MSNBC listed major Russian policy objectives on her program this week Among them were:

Weaken Western Alliances
Hollow out the U.S. State Department
Discredit the democratic process in representative governments
Weaken NATO
Weaken the European Union
Diminish U.S. influence in Syria and the Middle East
Create chaos within the political system of the United States
Diminish the role of the United States
Elevate the international profile of Russia
Lift U.S. sanctions on Russia.

The Kremlin has been amply rewarded by backing Disgustus, for he has helped them achieve nearly every one of these goals. 

He has helped weaken western alliances by calling NATO obsolete, questioning if the U.S. would come to the aid of any member of the alliance that came under attack, a provision in the treaty invoked only once—when the U.S. was under attack during 9/11, and it is a question of significance to Eastern European members struggling to get out of the shadow of their Russian neighbor.  He has questioned the very concept of a ‘nuclear umbrella’ under which our allies have for decades found security, a concept, it is doubtful, that he even understands.

He has weakened our State Department, a source of great irritation to the Kremlin as it had continually questioned Russian human rights violations, its annexation of Crimea, its actions in Ukraine. But the greatest affront was questioning the legitimacy of Putin’s re-election, an action that put the U.S. State Department and Hillary Clinton in the crosshairs of Vladimir Putin.  Now we find Disgustus doing the Kremlin’s bidding by cutting its budget by 30% and failing to staff senior positions or to get diplomats nominated and confirmed.  Consequently, Disgustus has now attended two European conferences without having in place ambassadors in, among other places, France, Germany, Poland or Russia.  He attends these meeting ill-prepared and with no senior diplomatic staff, further isolating the United States in the international arena and making a complete fool of himself in the bargain.  Indeed, one of Disgustus’ first acts as president-elect was to appoint Rex Tillerson, a man given the highest medal the Russian Federation can bestow upon a foreign national, and Putin favorite, as Secretary of State, and bestowing unto his wholly ignorant son-in-law major foreign policy initiatives, including the Middle East portfolio. 

Putin has for years been working to discredit the democratic process in republics around the world.  This serves two objectives.  Where there is open collusion, as with Marie Pen in France, he seeks an open ally. A bit of hubris perhaps, overplaying his hand in the glow of his American successes.    If an adversary, like the United States, Putin seeks to demonstrate to his people and the world that representative governments are corrupt with their electoral processes no more legitimate than his own.  Within the United States, he seeks to delegitimize the political process supporting tRUMP knowing that should he have lost, tRUMP would claim the result could only have been the consequence of a rigged system, or outright fraud; or, conversely, if tRUMP wins but loses the popular vote the outcome could only have been the result of massive voter fraud. Has Disgustus lost both the popular and Electoral College votes, he would be immediately and continually about the business of delegitimizing the outcome. Putin knows his ‘man’.  Had he won the election outright he would be about executing his only known talents, demonstrating his overwhelming ignorance, his breathtaking hubris and his staggering incompetence would insuring the destabilization of the world’s foremost ‘superpower’.  Further imagine the reaction of this swine should the Democrats take the House or the Senate or both in the upcoming mid-term election.  Where Obama in the aftermath of stunning losses in midterm elections simply announced with some humility that “we got shellacked” and Clinton quietly reminded the press that the President was “still relevant”, Disgustus can be relied upon to whine and cry out in ‘tweet-storm’ after ‘tweet-storm’ that “we were robbed”.    Whatever the outcome Disgustus, given what Putin knows from tRUMP’s personality profile, would be all that he promised to be: a very useful idiot.

With the fall of the Berlin Wall and the imminent collapse of the old Soviet Union, George H.W. Bush assured his Russian counterpart, then Mikhail Gorbachev, that the United States and its allies would not support the expansion of NATO into Eastern Europe, a promise that was almost immediately broken.  Since then, not only has the alliance spread into Eastern Europe, including several former Soviet Republics but has placed missiles and held military exercises right on the Russian doorstep.  In fact, the crisis in Ukraine was sparked by pressure from the West for Ukraine to join the alliance despite the country relying on Russian gas and oil for its energy and nearly half its population former Russians—as is the case in the Balkan States.  The weakening of NATO as well as the European Union, consequently, has become an urgent Russian foreign policy objective; one that the Kremlin would be pursuing regardless of who is in charge.    What the Russians are seeking here is the return of some semblance of the order following the Second World War: the re-establishment of the “Corridor Sanitare” or sanitary corridor—a buffer zone between Western Europe and Russia first imposed by the West in the aftermath of the First World War with the re-creation of Poland and creation of several other states from the old German and Austrian Empires, states that were pro-west in their foreign policies, aligned with France and England to insure that the Soviets would be “contained”.  In the aftermath of World War II, Stalin imposed Soviet Rule in Eastern Europe—something that Churchill reluctantly agreed to, despite his talk of an ‘iron curtain’—so that Russia, invaded three times from the West in the previous hundred and fifty years and having lost between 25 and 30 million people in the last invasion, would control the ‘buffer zone’ giving the Kremlin some measure of national security.  Now that corridor has been overrun with predictable foreign policy consequences.  But tRUMP has done more than weaken these alliances; he has called into question their very legitimacy. 

Disgustus and his entourage have also served Russian foreign policy interests in the Middle East.  From isolating our ally Qatar (see previous post), to his open support of Israeli expansion into the occupied territories—among other things appointing an ambassador to Israel who has donated money in support of the ethnic cleansing—to his suggesting that the United States withdraw from the agreement reached by the U.S. and our European allies with Iran over nuclear weapons (although he has, at least temporarily, approved the agreement).   Now we find that he has given the Russians a free hand in Syria, even cutting off at the knees U.S. supported rebel factions.  Given his “Muslim Ban”—especially as it pertains to Syria (Note the Ban does not include countries with tRUMP investments) where are these insurgents to turn when the inevitable happens and Assad regains his grip on the country?  Disgustus is once again demonstrating that America can be a most unreliable ally.

Disgustus has served the Kremlin’s interests by creating chaos within the political system of the United States, calling into question its very legitimacy by claiming it is “rigged” and that the election, should he have lost, would have been stolen from him.  Now having been elected by the archaic Electoral College (a device intended to protect the country from people like tRUMP), he falsely claims that millions of undocumented and illegal aliens voted and that massive voter fraud alone could only have been responsible for his loss of the popular vote by some 3 million votes or two whole percentage points.  It is not hard to imagine that, having lost the election outright, he would now be certainly barnstorming the country claiming fraud.  Indeed, having won the election he is still whining and complaining and claiming fraud, instituting a commission to search every precinct to find a problem that simply does not exist so as to shore up his little ego and wreak havoc and sow suspicion and paranoia about the land, further eroding public confidence.  In this Disgustus has been a most predictable and useful idiot.

Disgustus has assiduously worked to diminish the role of the United States on the world stage.  He has called into question the world order established at Breton Woods, New Hampshire in the wake of the Second World War.  He has questioned our alliances, and the role of the U.S. within the international framework, suggesting a ‘go it alone’ posture.  Now, citing bogus claims of burdensome demands placed upon the United States by the Paris Climate accord he has withdrawn the U.S. from the treaty making the United States one of three such countries in the world to do so; the other two being Syria because of internal strife and Guatemala because, in their view the agreement does not go far enough to deal with the looming crisis.  Indeed, the rest of the world wanted to make the agreement mandatory but Obama knowing that he would not be able get the Senate to ratify such an agreement required that the Paris accord be voluntary.  So, the world determined what needed to be done and agreed to voluntarily do about half of it.  Nevertheless, our orange buffoon stood in the rose garden and, complaining bitterly that the treaty requirements were a terrible burden on our country, saying that we had been somehow hoodwinked into a terrible deal and that the whole world is laughing at us, declairing that they will laugh at us no more. 

So isolated has the U.S. become under this fool that tRUMP was described at the NATO conference as “lonely and isolated” and that our allies were working assiduously to find ways to work around him.  Indeed, so are many others.  Governor Jerry Brown of California—itself with the world’s 11th largest economy—openly declared that he would invite China, Mexico, Canada and others to work with him on climate change. 

Indeed, the whole world is laughing at us because somehow this fool has been elevated to the highest office in the land. It is because of tRUMP that they laugh. Nevertheless, it is a nervous laughter born of fear and loathing.

By whoring after Putin at the recent Hamburg conference, like some love-struck teen-age girl in pursuit of the high school quarterback, tRUMP has not only insulted our allies—especially host Germany—he has elevated Putin’s stature on the world stage giving the Russian leader far more profile than one would normally accord a country whose economy, for instance, has a Gross Domestic Product of roughly that of Italy.  Shunning interaction with nearly every other principal Disgustus was seen continually seeking out the Russian leader for confabs that didn’t include diplomats or American interpreters; confabs that the Russian Ambassador said may have included meetings in the men’s room.  One is left imagine what possible acts of unspeakable degradation may have transpired therein.

In the first known meeting, scheduled to last about half an hour, tRUMP, accompanied only by Putin friend and U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, and without U.S. interpreters, met for two hours.  The second meeting, lasting about an hour, in full view of the assembled and involving only tRUMP, Putin and a Russian interpreter, was said to be about “Russian Adoptions”, which has become code for “Sanctions”.  The White House told the nation that tRUMP, at the first meeting, closely questioned Putin on two occasions but former tRUMP campaign chairman Lewandowsky told reporters that Putin denied any such interference and, declared Lewandowsky, the Russian investigation is, therefore, at an end.  Basically, if Disgustus questioned Putin at all it was clearly a simple formality, for to admit to any foreign involvement involves, at base, questioning the legitimacy of the tRUMP presidency.  So both principals at the meeting once again had concurrent interests. 

Foremost there is this question of lifting sanctions.  Rachel Maddow reported several weeks ago that oil giant Exxon-Mobile has mineral rights to roughly 64 million acres in the Russian federation, mostly in oil fields near and above the arctic circle.  Putin needs this oil to boost his struggling economy, and he needs Exxon-Mobil’s expertise and technology to extract and deliver the oil and gas.   When the U.S. placed sanctions upon Russia for its ‘aggressions’ in the Crimea and Ukraine, Exxon-Mobile had put down less than two dozen wells.  To put this in perspective, Exxon-Mobil has drilling rights to roughly 15 million acres in the U.S. and has thousands of wells.  It was to signal to the Kremlin that Disgustus was ready to lift these sanctions that tRUMP appointed Rex Tillerson to direct the State Department.  Indeed, the Treasury Department announced a fine of two million dollars levied against Exxon-Mobil for violating the sanctions while Tillerson was at the helm.  Here, clearly, is a man who can be relied upon to be a friend of Russia, one who would end U.S. pressure on human rights, one who would work to lift the sanctions.  And, indeed, word has leaked from this very porous White House that the lifting of sanctions was at the top of the priority list until the Michael Flynn fiasco engulfed this White House in the Russian scandal.  As we speak a bill has been reported out of a conference committee of the Senate and House and to be voted on next week insuring that Disgustus cannot lift Russian sanctions without congressional authorization, a bill that passed the Senate 98-2 before it was sent to conference to work out any conflicts with the House version.  So distrustful has the political leadership in Congress become with the handling of foreign affairs by this “useful Idiot”.

The broad outlines are now clear.  Disgustus has been witnessed fawning over the Russian leadership and has had no compunction in serving the national interests of the Kremlin.  The question remains, for with tRUMP everything is transactional: what did the Kremlin provide to command such slavish obeisance?  There is no doubt that the Russians interfered on his behalf during the election, there is also no doubt that he has done the Kremlin’s bidding. What was the extent of Russian meddling and did their actions include purging voters from the registration lists?  What financial transactions are lurking beneath the interface of international money laundering, organized crime and racketeering with international banks and political leadership.  To what extent was Russian money—perhaps laundered money—funneled into tRUMP’s business interests or personal accounts?  To what extent was such money funneled into his campaign and, perhaps just as importantly, into the coffers of the Rescumlican National Committee?  Perhaps this explains the reluctance of Rescumlican leadership to discipline this man.  In any case it is worth noting that when several foreign intelligence services set the FBI unto his trail, they told our agents that Russian money was flowing into the election, an allegation broad enough to include both the tRUMP campaign and, perhaps the Rescumlican

It is also worth noting that a conversation was leaked in which the House Majority Leader, commenting to a group of Rescumlican Congressmen, said that there were two people known to be on the Russian payroll: Dana Raurbacher and Donald tRUMP.  House Speaker Ryan, amid nervous laughter, admonished the assembled to keep this bit of information to themselves.  

They know this man, they know who he is.  They have always known who he is.  They also know who they are. 

Follow the money. Special Counsel Robert Mueller must follow the money.  Is it for these reasons that Disgustus told the New York Times last week that to do so would “cross a red line”? I am thinking that perhaps it is.

What else could explain this bizarre and ludicrous behavior? 

The whole world is laughing.  Not the laughter of joy, but a nervous laughter born of fear and loathing.

Cause and effect, connect the dots, follow the money.

Impeach and Imprison.



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