Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Everybody saw this coming.

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

Let there be snark.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

Militantly superior in their own minds…

Not all heroes wear capes.

This blog will pay for itself.

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

People are complicated. Love is not.

Just a few bad apples.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

Americans barely caring about Afghanistan is so last month.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

Presidents are not kings, and Plaintiff is not President.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

Battle won, war still ongoing.

Every MSM headline appears to be written by DougJ. i hope he’s getting paid.

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

Reality always wins in the end.

No one could have predicted…

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

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A Quick PSA About Amazon

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So that everyone doesn’t go through what I just did, also because most of you are NOT laboring under my standard operating procedure of “the question is not whether I’m paranoid, the question is whether I’m paranoid enough”, Amazon is having internal system issues effecting the ability to log in. This includes resetting one’s password.

I just spoke with a customer service rep to confirm this because I tried to log into my Amazon account, it wouldn’t take my password, it wouldn’t take the temp passwords that Amazon was sending me, and because I’m professionally paranoid, I immediately called AmEx and cancelled the card I had on file with Amazon when I couldn’t get in or reset my password. I hadn’t gotten any charge notification popups on my iPhone or iPad, but better safe than sorry. Especially as getting an AmEx rep on the phone is easier than getting an Amazon one!

So if you can’t access your Amazon account, you’re not locked out because someone managed to steal your log in and password, you’re locked out because Amazon is having issues with its systems. You know, the same systems the DOD is using…

But at least your Amazon account hasn’t been hacked and your personally identifying information hasn’t been stolen.

Open thread!

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My Take On The D.C. National Guard Colonel’s 6 January Memo To Congress

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Earlier John noted the reporting about COL Matthews’ memo to Congress alleging that the Department of the Army is attempting to cover its six (for the non veterans reading this, read six as tuchas) regarding decision making made by LTG Piatt, the Army’s then Director of the Army Staff, and (now) GEN Charles Flynn, then the Army’s Director of Operation and currently the Commanding General of US Army Pacific (USARPAC), in regard to deploying the DC National Guard to relieve the Capitol.

I’ve read the reporting of COL Matthews’ allegations, much of which was previously reported about LTG Piatt’s, GEN Flynn’s, then Army Secretary McCarthy’s, and then Acting Secretary of Defense Miller’s actions and decision making on 6 JAN, and here’s my take. COL Matthews would not have written and submitted this memo without at least the tacit blessing of his former 2 star boss from that day in order to get this information out to rebut the Army IG’s report. The 2 star, MG William Walker, who on 6 JAN was the Commanding General of the DC National Guard, cannot come out and make these allegations himself because of general officer politics and because of his current position as the House Sergeant at Arms. As a result, COL Matthews, who was his Staff Judge Advocate (SJA), has made the allegations to defend both the DC National Guard’s and MG Walker’s reputations. To prevent both from becoming the Army’s official scapegoats.

I can’t prove this. But I’ve served as the senior advisor to a several 2 and 3 star generals and that’s my professional read on the situation. Given that the Staff Judge Advocate is, of course, an attorney and attorney’s memorialize everything of importance, I would expect that COL Matthews has contemporaneous notes. I can’t prove that either, but it would not surprise me.

Beyond that I do not know MG Walker, COL Matthews, LTG Piatt, GEN Flynn, or, as far as I know, anyone at the Headquarters Department of the Army (HQDA) Inspector General’s office. I know nothing of them other than what has been reported. But this has all the hallmarks of a general officer to general officer dispute over responsibility for actions or lack thereof taken on 6 JAN.

It will now be up to the House Special Select Committee for 6 JAN to determine who is telling the truth and who is not.

Open thread!

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We Are Already Right of Boom! Russian Irredentism Towards Ukraine, the US’s & NATO’s Response, & Ukraine’s Sovereignty and Territorial Integrity

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Probe with bayonets. If you encounter mush, proceed; if you encounter steel, withdraw. — attributed to VI Lenin

As I type this, the Russian military is continuing a mobilization, movement of forces, and military building along its border with Ukraine. Analysts are all over the map on whether this means an invasion is imminent or whether it is all a ploy by Putin to rattle everyone. According to the reporting US intelligence seems to be convinced that Putin is planning to invade sometime in January 2022.

As tensions mount between Washington and Moscow over a potential Russian invasion of Ukraine, U.S. intelligence has found the Kremlin is planning a multi-front offensive as soon as early next year involving up to 175,000 troops, according to U.S. officials and an intelligence document obtained by The Washington Post.

The Kremlin has been moving troops toward the border with Ukraine while demanding Washington guarantee that Ukraine will not join NATO and that the alliance will refrain from certain military activities in and around Ukrainian territory. The crisis has provoked fears of a renewed war on European soil and comes ahead of a planned virtual meeting next week between President Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“The Russian plans call for a military offensive against Ukraine as soon as early 2022 with a scale of forces twice what we saw this past spring during Russia’s snap exercise near Ukraine’s borders,” said an administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information. “The plans involve extensive movement of 100 battalion tactical groups with an estimated 175,000 personnel, along with armor, artillery and equipment.”

The unclassified U.S. intelligence document obtained by The Post, which includes satellite photos, shows Russian forces massing in four locations. Currently, 50 battlefield tactical groups are deployed, along with “newly arrived” tanks and artillery, according to the document.

Go back and reread the first sentence in that last paragraph again: “The unclassified U.S. intelligence document obtained by The Post, which includes satellite photos, shows Russian forces massing in four locations.”

Really, WaPo, you obtained an unclassified US intelligence document with all that and you didn’t think: “why was this unclassified?” I have questions here about what The Washington Post is basing their reporting on, however, we do know that Russia is massing forces because it is both visible and because everyone is reporting on it. Also, just as a quick aside, I have found that open source intelligence is often as good and sometimes better than the stuff that is highly compartmented and classified, so please don’t take this as me crapping on unclassified material. Rather, I just find it hard to believe that this wouldn’t be classified if it was coming from the US Intel Community.

Ukrainian officials, including President Zelensky, have insinuated that Putin is both planning military action against Ukraine and that he has also been trying to orchestrate a coup to bring down Ukraine’s government and replace it with one more to Putin’s liking. Specifically, one that Putin can control and that brings Ukraine back within Russia’s orbit.

Ukraine has uncovered a plot for an attempted coup with the involvement of Russians, due to have taken place next week, President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Friday at a press conference.

Zelensky did not give full details of the coup plot and did not accuse the Russian state of involvement, though he also spoke at length at the press conference of a threat of Russian military escalation, and said Ukraine would be ready for it.

The Kremlin swiftly denied any role in any coup plot, saying it had no plans to take part in such acts.

Russia has been building up forces near its border with Ukraine. Kyiv, the United States and NATO have voiced concerns in recent days about a possible Russian attack — a suggestion the Kremlin has dismissed as false and alarmist.

“We have challenges not only from the Russian Federation and possible escalation – we have big internal challenges. I received information that a coup d’etat will take place in our country on Dec. 1-2,” Zelensky said.

Here’s what we know. First, the Russian military is involved in a significant mobilization of their forces and is moving them into position along their border with Ukraine. Most, but not all, analysts are interpreting this as a prelude to an invasion into eastern Ukraine. And the Ukrainians are obviously concerned about not only that possibility, but also a coup attempt similar to what Putin tried to orchestrate in Montenegro.

This Twitter thread by a Marine who is now doing a PhD in the War Studies Department at King’s College London lays out the interesting argument why this buildup is all for demonstration purposes. I highly suggest you give it a read. This analysis by a senior fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations largely takes the other option and grapples with what happens should Russia indeed invade Ukraine and why it would do choose to do so.

However, the issue here is how Ukraine should respond. As well as how the US is how it and its allies and partners in NATO should respond. There have been a couple of high profile analysts arguing that Ukraine should just give Putin what he wants, which is to accede to his interpretation of the Minsk Accords. This is the argument of a senior political scientist at RAND who specializes in Russia and eastern Europe. He’s both written an op-ed for Politico and a long Twitter thread under the theory that when digging a deep hole for oneself, one should keep going rather than stop, arguing that since no one wants a war with Russia, Ukraine should just give Putin at least some of what he wants as that is the only thing that might avert a major war in Europe. A professor of international security at Northwestern has made a similar argument, also on Twitter.

The problem with these suggestions is, as John Sipher, the former CIA chief at Moscow Station, reminds us, is that Ukraine already made a deal with Russia. Ukraine gives up the nuclear weapons that the Soviet Union had placed in Ukraine and Russia would respect Ukraine’s sovereignty forever. Something that Putin has already violated, repeatedly. Believing that if you give Putin what he wants, again, that he’ll then live up to his promises and Russia’s obligations is just naive. Actually doing it would also be strategic malpractice.

Where does that leave us? It leaves us already right of boom. We simply do not have the forces, specifically the ground forces, on the continent to deter Putin’s from invading Ukraine provided this is not simply a diversion of sorts. And we certainly don’t have enough to dig him out and liberate Ukraine if he chooses to actually do so. V Corps has been reestablished. It is headquartered at Ft. Knox.  While the Army has recently reestablished the 56th Artillery Command – full disclosure: I’ve served with its commanding general – US Army Europe does not have the capabilities to respond. It’s subordinate elements in Europe are focused on training and sustainment. This means that forces would have to be brought from the US. And in order to be in place to deter an invasion, the sea lift of troops and equipment would have needed to start about three to four weeks ago. So if we have to mount a military response, we’re way behind the curve.

And this brings us to the strategic problem of what to do and when to do it. In order to deter Putin, the time to begin doing something militarily – the movement of personnel and material – is a month behind us. So if we’re going to do something, now would be a good time to start! Like right now. Because the strategic problem is that Putin looks for weakness, he probes for mush. When he detects it he continues to advance his interests. I was at US Army Europe headquarters in January 2014 when Putin was clearly building up to do something to Ukraine. The timelines then were different because he had to wait for the winter olympics in Sochi to finish and then for everyone to stop paying attention to him and Russia as the host. And also because his plans were to take action in case the Maidan movement toppled his puppet Yanukovych. Once the Maidan movement pushed Yanukovych out, Putin executed his strategy. He scarfed up Crimea, destabilized and then effectively seized the Donbas in eastern Ukraine using his little green men –  a combination of Russian special forces and Wagner mercenaries.

In 2014 President Obama decided that it was not worth risking a war with another state with a major stockpile of nuclear weapons. Especially as Russia’s military doctrine asserts that it will use nuclear weapons tactically in a conventional war if its conventional forces are overmatched and losing to its adversaries. This Russian doctrinal assertion has long frozen American and NATO decision making about how to respond to Putin’s aggression. This is exactly what Russia, Putin, and his senior military advisors want. It leaves them free to maneuver and everyone else constrained because of a doctrinal assertion. Obama’s considered and measured decision, which to mark one’s beliefs to market, I agreed with in 2014, were then followed by four years of Trump’s sucking up to and siding with Putin whenever he thought he could get away with it. Which was both the objective of Putin’s low intensity war targeting the US during and since the 2016 election – to insure that America would not have a president (Hilary Clinton) who would push back against him – and only further encouraged Putin.

It is now 2021. In the past seven years Putin has been waging a low intensity war against the US, the EU, NATO, and several other countries. He continually probes and finds mush. As a result he keeps advancing his strategy to achieve his objectives. In the case of Ukraine, as well as the Baltics, it is to bring them back within Russia’s orbit and influence, which is where he believes they belong and need to be in order for Russia to be whole. I suggest that this time, the US and NATO need to meet his probing with steel. We know what happens when we fail to do so. I was wrong in 2014. Putin needed to be given a bloody nose and knocked on his ass to deter future aggression. Our failure to risk going to war over Crimea only emboldened him. It would be strategic malpractice to make the same mistake again. Especially as Putin isn’t the only one probing for mush!

Open thread!

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A Bit of Personal Thanksgiving Tradition To Pass the Time: The Story Behind the Cornbread Stuffing

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Now that my workout is done and while I drip dry a bit before showering the grime off and then getting the turkey I spatchcocked and wet rubbed last night in the oven, and since we could use a new open thread, I figured I’d regale you all with the story behind the cornbread stuffing I’ve previously mentioned my family makes for Thanksgiving. So here goes:

When my parents got engaged they were living in Columbus, OH. Mom had just finished her SLP masters and was starting to practice and dad was finishing his doctorate. Both at THE Ohio State University. That year – 1966 I think –  they decided they were going to invite a bunch of people over for Thanksgiving dinner. Mom figured that roasting a turkey was basically roasting a really big chicken, so all that was needed was to scale the cooking time up for the larger weight and size. But stuffing, well that was a huge mystery. So she decided to ask the nurses at the hospital where she was working. One of the social workers, Bessie King Jackson, came through without blinking an eye. Up until I decided to do this post, I never really knew much of Mrs Jackson’s history. All mom has ever related, largely because I’m sure it is all mom ever knew, is that Bessie was Black, a social worked, and from West Virginia. To help out my mom, Bessie Jackson wrote out a cornbread stuffing recipe on a 3X5 index card and gave it to a 26 year old Jewish woman from Queens and Silverman family Thanksgiving dinners have fortunately never been the same!

We still have that faded, slightly tattered and stained note card in a plastic sleeve stuck to the fridge at my mom’s house with a magnet. It travelled with her from Columbus to Tampa. From an apartment to now five different houses over her life in Tampa and one in Denver when my dad took sabbatical and went home for a year. Copies of the recipe, typed out, then emailed, and now saved as word, pages, and pdf documents, have travelled to Scotland with me when I was in grad school, then Philadelphia, Little Rock, NY, and Carlisle. My brother has it too, but he’s basically never left Florida, so his copy doesn’t travel far.

When I lived in Scotland, I used the recipe when my flat mates asked me if I’d roast them a turkey one year for Christmas as goose was too expensive. So off I went to the Saint Andrews Safeway and had a chat with the butcher who had to special order me a fresh turkey as it would have to be brought in from Edinburgh or Glasgow. We got to chatting and he asked how I was going to do it, trying to steer me to something more traditional like a roast so he wouldn’t have to do the paperwork for the special order. I explained what I was going to do with it, what I was going to serve with it, and then his eyes lit up. His wife was assembling a cook book of recipes that people had collected in their families over the years and the minute I finished telling the cornbread stuffing story he said: “I’ll get you that turkey, how many pounds do you want it, if you’ll give me the cornbread stuffing recipe and the story for my wife’s cookbook.” I made that deal! The butcher was thrilled, his wife was thrilled, and my flat mates and their guests were thrilled.

When I was deployed in Iraq, one of the last things I did before redeploying at the end of my tour was help the 2nd Brigade Combat Team/1st Armored Division plan a Thanksgiving dinner that would invite and include a variety of local Iraqis we’d been dealing with. I made sure the officer overseeing the kitchen prep got a copy of Beasie Jackson’s cornbread stuffing recipe. Since I redeployed home the week before Thanksgiving – I’d promised my mom when I left for pre-deployment training in August 2007 I’d be home for Thanksgiving 2008 – I’m not sure if they were able to make it scale for an entire BCT plus invited guests as I was back home eating my mom’s cornbread stuffing.

I’ve made Bessie Jackson’s cornbread stuffing in multiple countries. Every year at USAWC, I’d invite my international students, any others – American officers or internationals – that didn’t have invites or plans from their sponsors/advisors, and anyone else in the resident course who was stuck in town with nowhere to go to my house for Thanksgiving. Mom would fly up for the holiday – I made her walk the entirety of Pickett’s charge one year when we went to Gettysburg the day after Thanksgiving, she was prepared to surrender to the Union before we even got to the halfway mark! – and of course make Bessie Jackson’s cornbread stuffing. Lieutenant colonels to major generals from Nepal, Kenya, Algeria, Turkey, Kuwait, and all over the US have had it.

I have no idea how old Bessie Jackson was when she passed the recipe on to my mom. Since I had no idea if she’s still alive, I decided I’d put my keyword-fu to the test and I found her obituary, which I’ll copy and paste below. I have no idea if she had kids or anyone in their families used her cornbread stuffing recipe. But I do know there would be no Thanksgiving in a Silverman home without it. Whether we’re all in the same place or we’re in different states or countries, my mom, my brother and his family, and I all make this every Thanksgiving. My nephews know how to make it, so when we all go, there will still be Silverman’s making and eating Bessie Jackson’s cornbread stuffing on Thanksgiving.

And here’s the woman who without knowing it has made 50 plus years of Thanksgiving dinners special for my family. I’ll help mom try to track down any of her kids or grandkids and let them know. She had an amazing life and did a lot of good in addition to helping my mom make a successful Thanksgiving dinner.

Bessie King Jackson, child welfare advocate for more than 47 years, departed this life Sunday, February 6, 2005, after a brief hospitalization. Born July 11, 1930 in Hot Coal, WV to Simon Peter and Mary Bell Pannell King, she was the youngest of nine children. Received a BA from West Virginia State College and a Masters in Social Work from The Ohio State University. Her compassion for bringing about change was evident in every aspect of her life. Founder and director of the Bethune Center for Teenage Families, president of the Evening Star Missionary Society at Hosack Street Baptist Church, a past president and Executive Committee member of Ohio’s AARP, member of the Central Ohio Area Agency on Aging Advisory Council, a committed member of Zeta Phi Beta Sorority for more than 50 years, appointed by Governor Taft to the Grandparents Raising Grandchildren Task Force, a former Court Appointed Special Advocate for the Court of Domestic Relations, Juvenile Division, and in 2004 was inducted into Ohio’s Senior Citizen Hall of Fame. Preceded in death by husband, Garland. Survived by daughters, Garlena Jackson, Jerri (Lawrence) Jackson-Fowlkes, and Patty Jackson; grandchildren, Leighton, Candice, Cedric, Jhamerra, John, Kayelin, Vivica, Jasmine, and one great-granddaughter, Laniyah; sister-in-law, Juanita King; cousins, Richard and Sara Johnson; a host of other relatives and friends. Service of Memory 9:30 a.m. Saturday, February 12, 2005 at Hosack Street Baptist Church, 1160 Watkins Road. Pastor Daryl Hairston, officiating. Mrs. Jackson will lie in state Friday 12 – 4 p.m. at DIEHL-WHITTAKER FUNERAL & CREMATION SERVICE, 720 E. Long Street and after 6 p.m. at the church, where the family will receive friends from 7-9 p.m. Interment Glen Rest Memorial Estate. In lieu of flowers, friends may contribute to the Bessie King Jackson Memorial Fund, c/o Huntington National Bank, 17 South High Street, Columbus, Ohio 43215.
Published by The Columbus Dispatch on Feb. 10, 2005.

A happy and healthy Thanksgiving to all of you! And if any of our readers in the Columbus, OH area know any of Mrs Jackson’s children or grandchildren, feel free to share this with them. And let them know that every year at Thanksgiving we honor their mother’s/grandmother’s memory and give thanks that she helped my mother out with her generosity.

Open thread!

And the recipe is in the comments.

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The Durham Investigation, the Steele Dossier, & Misusing the Department of Justice For Partisan Political Purposes

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Cole asked me to do a post on the Durham investigation and how the usual suspects – Greenwald, Taibbi, the Fox News/OAN/NewsMax/Breitbart/Shapiro/other conservative news and digital news sites, and other Trump world axis of shitbirds – and now CNN with their coverage of it yesterday, are using Durham’s indictments. Specifically, that they are using it to scream and yell that 1) Putin was meddling in US politics in the 2016 election, 2) that the initial meddling eventually became focused on harming HRC and helping Trump, and 3) that Trump, his family members, his senior employees (I know family members and employees are the same category), and his campaign people – senior and junior – were all trying to figure out how to leverage Russia’s ops for Trump’s gain was all completely made up oppo. That this then demonstrates a real conspiracy between the law firm HRC’s campaign and the DNC used. And which is now being used to further try to discredit Marc Elias, the FBI, the Obama administration, especially his DCI and DNI, John McCain, and the mainstream news media to try to prevent a Trump presidency and then destroy it once Trump was elected. NONE OF THAT IS TRUE OR FACTUALLY ACCURATE!!!

The reality is really much simpler. What Durham is doing is exactly what Barr intended him to do when he appointed Durham as a special counsel in addition to his regular duties as a US Attorney. Barr intended Durham and his investigation to discredit every connection that has been made between Trump, his family, his business, his campaign, his administration, and his impeachment defenses with Putin, Russian intelligence, and the Russian and post-Soviet oligarchs working for Putin to achieve his objectives regarding the US. Barr, for all intents and purposes, established Durham as a special counsel so that Durham could run his own active measures campaign of disinformation, misinformation, and agitprop against the US from within the DOJ. Specifically:

  1. Use the investigation to continue to launder the disinformation, misinformation, and agitprop that the entire investigation into and that all the allegations of Trump’s business and financial connections to Russia, Russian oligarchs, and other post-Soviet oligarchs aligned with Russia
  2. Putin’s operation to interfere in the 2016 elections and American politics beyond 2016 first to hurt the chances of anyone who might take a hard line against him as president, then to damage Clinton’s chances, and finally to boost Trump’s
  3. Trump’s, his family member’s, his campaigns, and a number of outside supporters attempts to actually get help from Putin’s assets – both inside and outside of the Russian government
  4. To promote the idea that the real conspiracy against American in the 2016 election – to falsely allege and implicate the Trump-Putin connection – was that of the Democratic Party, the large white shoe law firms that work for them, MI6 via Steele, the Clinton campaign, the Obama administration, and senior appointed and career officials at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the CIA, the DOJ, the FBI, select Republican senators like John McCain, and the Ukrainian government

Again; NONE OF THIS IS TRUE OR FACTUALLY ACCURATE!!!!

To do this, Durham has produced three indictments. The first is sort of a throw away. He caught a junior attorney at the FBI who prepared one of the FISA warrants for one of the lower level Trump campaign stooges. The FBI attorney had embellished some of the information included to get the warrant. He ultimately attorney pled out. Everyone reasonably thought that this was a face saver for Durham because he didn’t have anything because there was no way to actually accomplish what he was tasked with doing because what he was tasked with doing was in direct opposition to well documented facts and events. Durham, however, has other ideas.

He has now indicted a very senior attorney – Michael Sussman – who brought the Steele dossier to the attention of senior FBI and DOJ officials. The indictment is for lying to the FBI for not explicitly telling them that the large white shoe law firm he works for was also, through other attorneys, representing the Clinton campaign with the implication that he concealed who else his firm represented – Clinton – in an attempt to induce the FBI to investigate Trump. The indictment is considered to be weak. It is clear from the interview notes that the senior FBI official, James Baker, did not ask him where he worked because he knew where he worked. Here’s Ken White’s, better known as Popehat, take:

/8 However, there are distinctly odd things about this indictment that take it outside the norm. First: it’s based on a face-to-face oral statement with one government witness, Baker. I don’t recall seeing another 1001 case like that.

/9 FBI agents travel in pairs, like Jedi or geese. Baker wasn’t an agent, but it’s super-unusual in my experience for an executive-level law enforcement like this to have a meeting like this with no witnesses for their support and protection. Weirder to hang a charge on it.

/10 On the one hand, Baker has expressed uncertainty about the details of the conversation, on the other hand, there is some corroboration about the conversation. But just the fact of a 1001 based on that scenario isn’t anything I recall seeing before.

/11 Next: the 27-page indictment is, to my reading, performative and seemingly focused on delivering a narrative of Trump-as-victim rather than a necessary exposition about Sussman’s alleged crime. It’s a one-count 1001; that usually doesn’t require so much verbiage.

/12 In evaluating whether my take is reasonable or partisan or a mixture, you could compare it to the indictment of Trump ally and indie cartoon character Roger Stone, 24 pages for obstruction and 5 1001 counts. justice.gov/file/1124706/d

/13 To my read Stone’s is more focused on providing context for his statements and Sussman’s seems more political narrative driven, but that’s why you should read primary documents — to decide for yourself.

/14 If Sussman did what he’s accused of, I think it’s a clear 1001 violation. Whether it would “normally” be charged, whether it’s charged in a way designed to promote a political narrative, and whether it’s politically motived are vastly more complicated questions.

His third indictment is of the researcher – Igor Danchenko – that Steele hired to act as his investigator with a variety of Russian, post Soviet, and Russian aligned actors to get the opposition research for him. Here, again, is Ken White’s take:

A few comments on the Danchenko indictment. /1 storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco

/2 First, it’s on firmer footing than Durham’s Sussman indictment, which relies on a single person-to-person conversation. It lacks the questionable evidentiary issues of that charge.

/3 second, to an even greater extent than the Sussman indictment, it reads like a justification for Durham’s investigation. 39 pages of exposition for five simple 1001 counts is not normal. It reads like a vehicle for a narrative.

4 Third, like the Sussman indictment, this indictment is about distorting or withholding information that might have helped the FBI assess the credibility of the claims being made. But that’s enough to meet the materiality standard, which is extremely lax.

The key take aways are point 11 in the first set of tweets and point 3 in the second. Durham is using these indictments to launder the Black PSYOP that we covered from October 2019 through the spring of 2020. It is entirely possible that Durham will be able to make his cases against Sussman, Danchenko, or both. Marcy Wheeler has a full breakdown and deep textual dives of exactly what Durham is doing and how it is being laundered in both the conservative news, digital, and social media and what is called the mainstream media like CNN did yesterday.

The question is whether reality will intrude on what Durham is doing regardless of whether he can get convictions or plea agreements from Sussman and/or Danchenko. We know from both the Mueller investigative report sent to Congress, as well as the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence’s (SSCI) report on the 2016 campaign, election, and allegations of Putin interfering on behalf of Trump that the reason Mueller never brought charges of a direct conspiracy between Trump, his family members, his employees, his campaign officials, select outside campaign advisors and actors like Roger Stone and the Russian governmental and non-governmental actors carrying out Putin’s operation is because Trump, his family members, his employees, his campaign officials, select outside campaign advisors and actors were obstructing the Mueller investigation. The section on obstruction in the Mueller Report starts on p. 191 of the linked pdf and on p. 14 of the fifth volume of the linked SSCI report. In some cases these folks were obstructing the investigation in more than one way. For instance, Rudy Giuliani who was an outside advisor and surrogate for Trump during the campaign worked hard to ensure he’d be Trump’s pro-bono outside legal advisor and counsel during the Mueller investigation.

What the Durham investigation and indictments are doing is what former AG Barr intended them to do: use the DOJ to launder misinformation, disinformation, and agitprop about how Christopher Steele collected his opposition information, the actual information he collected, and how that information was used once it got brought to the attention of elected officials like the late Senator McCain and counterintelligence and law enforcement officials at the DOJ and FBI. Barr started trying to discredit Mueller and his investigation before he was ever appointed attorney general. In fact the lengthy memo he sent Trump delineating why Mueller’s investigation wasn’t properly predicated served as his application for becoming attorney general. Durham is the last part, that we know of, of Barr’s attempts to cover up what happened in 2016.

The usual suspects, such as Greenwald, who are now using what Durham is producing to push their own agendas are largely covering their own asses. Wikileaks has now been fully exposed as what we always knew it to be. Not a truth telling, stalwart, information must be free group seeking to hold governments and the powerful accountable, but an asset of the Russian intelligence services run by a paranoid, megalomaniacal authoritarian with delusions of grandeur. What Greenwald, and Greenwald’s partners in these endeavors – Taibbi, Tracey, Mate, and others – are hoping t0o obscure is just how tightly connected to Assange and Wikileaks Greenwald is. Promoting what Durham is alleging as the real, actual truth is necessary for Greenwald to cover his own ass. Not for being involved in Wikileaks 2016 operations against the US, but in regard to his work with Wikileaks prior to that.

This is different than what the Breitbrats, Ben Shapiro, dim Jim Hoft, OANN, NewsMax, the evening talking heads at Fox, and others on the pro-Trump/MAGA right are promoting. They are promoting it because it is part of their grift.

Bannon and Stone are sort of in the middle. They have connections to Wikileaks from the 2016 campaign, but they also want to promote their grifts.

CNN just wants people to tune in so they have better ratings and can sell more advertising.

Durham’s investigation is using the Department of Justice to provide them with the disinformation, misinformation, and agitprop to provide all of them with what they need.

Open thread!

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9 PM CST Waukesha PD & Emergency Services Update Press Conference

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In just a couple of minutes, the Waukesha PD will be holding a 9 PM CST update regarding the vehicular incident this afternoon at the Waukesha Christmas Parade. Here’s KARE 11 live feed:

Update at 10:10 PM EST

Well that was largely uninformative and anticlimactic.

Open thread!

9 PM CST Waukesha PD & Emergency Services Update Press ConferencePost + Comments (45)

On the Now Far Too Many Days That the Ideals That Are the Real America Are Tested, It Is Important To Remember When They Are, or Have Been, Actually Lived

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Last night in the comments to my post on the Rittenhouse case and trial, Cacti posted this comment:

There are two types of people who become lawyers.  Those who do it because they believe in the system, and those who do it because they don’t.

I’ve seen plenty of legal pros move from group 1 to group 2 the longer they practiced.  I’ve never seen anyone move from group 2 to group 1.

And I posted this reply:

I’ve moved from group 1 to group 2 over the past 6 years as a national security professional!

As a result of my disillusionment, it is nice to be reminded of when we actually live up to and live the ideals that are the real America, rather than the degraded dregs of white supremacy unfortunately deeply interwoven into our structures and institutions and those who see nothing wrong with this unfortunate reality that we saw so clearly on display yesterday.

Here’s a great example provided to us by the folks at Canadian Forces in the US. I’m going to put most of this below the read more widget as it is a LONG thread and I know on older machines that how Twitter’s code interacts with our code can cause people problems:

Captain Symington’s report to his squadron commander, Rear Admiral Johnson, from 6 DEC 1917 is below the jump followed by the rest of the thread:

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On the Now Far Too Many Days That the Ideals That Are the Real America Are Tested, It Is Important To Remember When They Are, or Have Been, Actually LivedPost + Comments (122)