Former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson unleashed on President Donald Trump at an event for a medical center. Tillerson said that he stopped Trump from violating the law and that Trump is both unread and undisciplined. Trump responded by calling Tillerson “dumb as a rock” and “lazy as hell.”
Tillerson told CBS’ Bob Schieffer: “So often, the president would say here’s what I want to do and here’s how I want to do it and I would have to say to him, Mr. President I understand what you want to do but you can’t do it that way. It violates the law.” He added “It was challenging for me, coming from the disciplined, highly process-oriented Exxon Mobil corporation, to go work for a man who is pretty undisciplined, doesn’t like to read, doesn’t read briefing reports, doesn’t like to get into the details of a lot of things, but rather just kinda says ‘this is what I believe.’”
Clearly this is not a relationship that has improved with time.
About “Individual-1”
Michael Avenatti [tweeted]:
Verified account
@MichaelAvenatti
@realDonaldTrump – I have to give you credit where credit is due. You always have said you were No.1.
6:06 PM – 7 Dec 2018
3,793 Retweets 27,768 Likes
https://twitter.com/MichaelAvenatti/status/1071224426899791873
Things are clearly hitting home in the Trump universe when narrative-damaged robot-minions arrive here in the comments section to write love letters to Trump and pathetic hit pieces about Mueller. One verbose writer even claims to have gone to law school (wow!)…..
Acrimonious,…
If you read the comments section more carefully, you’ll also find “love letters” to Mueller, and “hit pieces”about Trump.
There is a sharp division/ difference of opinion in the public, and in these comments, about both Trump and Mueller.
Rex Tillerson was a CEO, not a king. As CEO he still had to answer to the board of directors and the stockholders. Donald Trump did not have to answer to anyone at Trump Inc. This is one thing that I liked about Carly Fiorina. I think Ross Perot was something like Trump.
From the Politico article it sounds like there was a mismatch between Trump and Tillerson where Tillerson was used to his word being the final word. Perhaps if Tillerson realized the fact that his job was not as Indian Chief but as Indian things would have gone better.
Tillerson said, “, ‘Well, Mr. President, I understand what you want to do but you can’t do it that way. It violates the law, it violates the treaty, you know,’” I don’t think the President was asking Tillerson legal advice. Instead it sounds like Trump was talking about a direction to take and instead of saying thinking narrowly he expected Tillerson to look more broadly for a solution to the problem at hand without breaking the law. It sounds like Tillerson wasn’t used to that type of direction.
No, Allan, I’m sure Tillerson wasn’t used to “that type of direction”.
Blue chip corporations are run quite differently than private ‘family businesses’. Trump was used to dealing with people like Michael Cohen and Felix Satter. They didn’t talk back when given directions.
Peter, for once you are right. Tillerson wasn’t used to that type of direction. I’m not sure that he was so good for Exxon either. He was the head of a giant bureaucracy that made money selling a natural resource that had tremendous innate value. I don’t know of anything he did that was visionary.
We have had visionaries that have led both family businesses and blue chip corporations. so I don’t see your point. We have had blue chip companies sued and fined because of actions that included people breaking the law. I think your final point is nothing more than nonsense.
Well you got me there, Allan. Blue chip corporations often play fast and loose with rules. For that reason we need strong regulatory agencies.
Therefore when Republicans talk their tired crap about ‘cutting government’ and ‘cutting regulations’, one has to remember that companies of every stripe will do whatever they can to boost profits. And breaking rules is no big deal if they can get away with it.
“strong regulatory agencies.”
Perhaps, but it needs to be smart regulation that utilizes the free marketplace and promotes the free marketplace (an Adam Smith type of free marketplace). Socialism which you promote even while not recognizing it is NOT an effective method of management of an economy.
Companies will do what they can to boost income. That is why competition is a necessity. But corporations also have to work within the scope of contract law. Apple has developed tremendous products not because of government regulation rather because of the government not over regulating its industry. Our recent upturn in GDP and reduced unemployment have a lot to do with a decrease in overly restrictive regulations. Pollution of our rivers and ocean can be regulated but one has to use common sense and regulate using the least interference in the free marketplace.
Allan, he hasn’t a clue about substantive content of regulations. He just wants someone making business executives lives difficult and he’s wanted that ever since he found that issue Mother Jones on a news stand back in 1978 and got that solicitation from Public Citizen the same week. It hasn’t occurred to them that Ralph Nader is a lapsed lawyer and Barbara Ehrenreich is a failed academic and that both of them were and are economic illiterates.
On the CPL (creepy porn lawyer) front: Avenatti representing Statue of Liberty desecrators. Hey porn stars can only “pay” so much and after that divorce settlement, what’s a sleaze to do? He needs the work, right? Smacking 20-year-olds around doesn’t pay well. Allegedly, of course.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/420142-avenatti-to-represent-activist-arrested-for-climbing-the-statue%3famp
I was wondering why Trump chose to attack Tillerson this weekend in a Twitterstorm! I thought at the time that it was bizarre and gratuitous. Now I see that Tillerson is the one who gratuitously attacked the president. I thought Tillerson was supposed to be the mature one, and Trump the erratic one? Apparently they are both 15 year old boys.
Stephen
Tillerson didn’t attack Trump. He just spoke truthfully. The orange muffin takes offense to the truth.
Tillerson would have been better off riding off into sunset enjoying his wealth. Sometimes he who speaks first loses.
If we accept your premise that Tillerson spoke truthfully then unless you have evidence otherwise we have to accept that Trump spoke truthfully.
Bill McWilliams is a promoter of 9/11 truther fantasy. His understanding of what counts as ‘evidence’ is spotty.
The son of a tiller is usually not dumb as the rock he tills up and casts to the side. Lazy is not correct either. If you go to work for Trump you made a mistake. Tiller boy needs to respond to the Trumpster and perhaps run the tiller over Trumps feet until Trump stops the Tweet.
SecState supposed to arrange for no fighting. Not doing well this past 15 years.
No, the Secretary of State is supposed to supervise the Foreign Service, who provide consular services for Americans abroad, monitor conditions abroad to produce briefing papers for other officials, transmit formal communications to foreign governments, and receive formal communications from foreign governments. A select few negotiate agreements with foreign governments which specifically delineate the distribution of benefits and obligations which flow from power relations in a given circumstance. They’re not there to promote ‘peace’ or war. Armed force or its absence is a function of reasons of state, and is one manifestation of international relations.
Here’s the story in the Times about the investigation of the Africa debacle for our Special Forces. “Mad Dog” Mattis is pissed. The initial investigation triggered sanctions for junior officers but didn’t touch higher-level officers. He’s looking at that; the immediate local commanding officer wanted the team to return to base because they were under-supported, but he was overruled by a Light Colonel located in another country; the firefight that killed the entire team lasted five hours…. Note the battle descriptions derived from the soldiers’ recovered helmet cams….It seems the war-waging ability and character of the American citizen-soldier has not changed over the two-centuries plus of our Great Experiment.
Mattis Erupts Over Niger Inquiry and Army Revisits Who Is to Blame
Defense Secretary Jim Mattis was livid over decisions taken following an investigation into a 2017 ambush in Niger that killed four Americans on a Green Beret team.
Defense Secretary Jim Mattis was livid over decisions taken following an investigation into a 2017 ambush in Niger that killed four Americans on a Green Beret team.CreditCreditMark Wilson/Getty Images
By Thomas Gibbons-Neff, Helene Cooper and Eric Schmitt
Dec. 7, 2018
WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Jim Mattis was livid last month when he summoned top military officials to a video conference at the Pentagon to press them about an investigation into a 2017 ambush in Niger that killed four Americans on a Green Beret team. His anger, Pentagon officials said, came from seeing news reports that junior officers were being reprimanded for the botched Niger mission while the officers directly above them were not.
Days later, a senior officer who had largely escaped punishment was told he would be reprimanded. Another senior officer’s actions before and around the time of the mission were also under new scrutiny.
And this week, Capt. Michael Perozeni, a more junior officer who had received much of the public blame for the mission received word from the Army: His reprimand was rescinded.
The turnaround is evidence of the troubled search for accountability in an incident that left a small team of underequipped and poorly supported American soldiers in the African scrub to be overrun by fighters loyal to the Islamic State. More than a year after the ambush — the American military’s largest loss of life in Africa since the 1993 “Black Hawk Down” debacle in Somalia — top military leaders continue to battle over how to apportion blame and who should be held accountable.
The Pentagon still has not issued a final summation laying out who bears responsibility for the events leading up to the ambush. An initial Defense Department investigation, begun 14 months ago and partially released in May, found widespread problems across all levels of the military counterterrorism operation, but focused in particular on the actions of junior officers leading up to the ambush.
Punishments are in legal limbo, as are, apparently, commendations for bravery. An unredacted version of the investigation, promised in May, has yet to be delivered.
And unlike two naval collisions last year in the Pacific that led within weeks to the removal of the commander of the Navy’s largest operational battle force, no top generals have been ushered out the door in the Niger case — an example officials say that Mr. Mattis has been quick to point out.
Cmdr. Candice Tresch, a Pentagon spokeswoman, said in a statement on Thursday that the Defense Department has “made improvements at all levels” after the ambush. But she offered no further details, citing the continuing investigation.
The slow pace of accountability has infuriated Mr. Mattis, who officials say is dissatisfied with the punishments given largely to junior officers. The reprimands were first reported by The Times after a longer Times investigation into the ambush. The only senior officer to receive a letter of reprimand so far is Maj. Gen. Marcus Hicks, the head of Special Operations forces in Africa, who was already planning to retire.
The delays have led to recriminations within the military’s individual fiefs. Army Gen. Tony Thomas, the leader of Special Operations Command — which includes Green Berets, Navy SEALs and other American commandos around the world — has complained that his troops have been singled out for fault. He has also leveled criticism that Pentagon leaders are protecting United States Africa Command, which oversees missions across the continent.
In a memo to Mr. Mattis on Oct. 1, General Thomas blamed bad relations between Africa Command and the last commander of American commandos in Africa, Brig. Gen. Donald C. Bolduc, as one reason for the failed mission. The memo, obtained by The Times, said the internal tensions had “hindered the ability of commanders, at both levels, to understand, communicate, assess and mitigate risk as events transpired” in October 2017.
Animosity erupted during the video conference at the Pentagon last month between Mr. Mattis; Gen. Mark A. Milley, the Army chief of staff; Mark Esper, the Army secretary; Owen West, the military’s top civilian Special Operations policy official; and Paul C. Ney Jr., the Pentagon general counsel. General Thomas called in from his headquarters at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa.
Mr. Mattis wasn’t the only one angry, Defense Department officials said. Army officials complained to aides that Mr. Mattis and Marine Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had contributed to the morass by allowing Africa Command, whose leader, Gen. Thomas D. Waldhauser, is also a Marine, to essentially investigate itself by appointing General Waldhauser’s own chief of staff, Maj. Gen. Roger L. Cloutier Jr., to conduct the inquiry.
The blowback from the video conference was almost immediate. Maj. Gen. Edwin J. Deedrick Jr., the officer in charge of administering internal punishments, was quickly told by Army leaders to re-examine some of the reprimands from the investigation.
Included in the initial batch of reprimands was one for Captain Perozeni, the leader of the team in Niger that came under attack. Africa Command leaders singled out Captain Perozeni and another junior officer in the early public accounting of the ambush for having “mischaracterized” the mission in a preliminary planning document sent to superiors as a trip to meet with tribal leaders, not a counterterrorism effort.
But in a classified version of the report, investigators found that Captain Perozeni had pushed back on orders to continue the mission as a capture-or-kill raid on a local militant. Captain Perozeni said he did not have the necessary equipment or intelligence and asked that the Green Beret team be allowed to return to base.
Instead, a battalion commander based in Chad, Lt. Col. David Painter, ordered the team to continue. They did, and were attacked by dozens of Islamic State militants.
During the ambush, which lasted more than five hours, there were multiple acts of heroism, according to the May report and video from cameras mounted on the men’s helmets.
Captain Perozeni tried to hold together a unit that had communications problems, lightly armored vehicles and unreliable Nigerien forces as allies. At one point, Captain Perozeni was shot and thrown from the bed of his truck. Its driver, Sgt. First Class Brent Bartels, was shot in the arm but kept going. Wounded, he turned around and went back to get Captain Perozeni.
The initial reprimands, which also singled out other junior officers and enlisted men, skipped Colonel Painter and Col. Brad Moses, who was the commander of the Green Beret group in Western Africa at the time.
After the video conference at the Pentagon, General Deedrick informed Colonel Painter that he would be receiving a letter of reprimand. Colonel Moses, a rising star in the Special Operations community, has not been reprimanded, although officials said the Army is now taking a harder look at his actions.
Maj. Alan Van Saun, Captain Perozeni’s company commander, who was home on paternity leave during the ambush but had been reprimanded for what the investigation cited as insufficient training of his unit, this week received a permanent letter of reprimand — a document that essentially ended his career.
Although the investigation continues, General Thomas has decided to oversee the awards for Captain Perozeni’s team in what officials called an effort to set the record straight on the battle. In recent weeks General Thomas flew to Fort Bragg, N.C., the home of the Green Beret team, to ensure that the award citations were being prepared.
At Fort Bragg, General Thomas watched a video of the ambush made from images on the helmet camera of one of the dead soldiers. He read through the surviving soldiers’ statements about the battle.
And he asked whether Staff Sgt. Dustin Wright, who was killed trying to rescue a wounded comrade who eventually died, was eligible for the Medal of Honor, the military’s highest award.
Marky Mark Mark – your use of the term “Light Colonel” shows your utter lack of knowledge of all things military. You lost all credibility after using that term.
Paul, since you’re so knowledgable, tell us why this incident in Niger was no less troubling than the Benghazi tragedy.
I realize that s**t happens on secret, foreign missions. So it’s not like I would dwell on this too terribly long.
But if one wanted to be a self-righteous conspiracy monger and make a great big stink, this incident in Niger was arguably more disturbing than Benghazi.
Peter Hill – I do not know enough about either to give you a breakdown. And I do not think the reports are in on the latter.
PC Schulte,…
We should probably re-examine every mission that went wrong, and took casualties in WWII as well.
If we start now, the work may be completed by the end of this century.
PC Schulte,…
It looks like Sec. Matthis views the Pentagon report as a coverup, or at least as being unsatisfactory.
There’ll probably be modifications to that report, or a replacement .
One constant that nearly always seems to surface in the aftermath of a screw-up is the finger point.
I don’t think the military is immune to that phenomenon; the finger 👉 pointing might even happen😦 in an organization like the military😧, which is a real shocker.
In that CYA area, Gen. Mattis has been Defense Sec. since Jan. 2017.
The 4 KIAs in Niger happened in October 2017, some time after Mattis was appointed .
Now, 14 months later, he’s outraged.
I don’t know the level of his interest, or involvement in, examining the circunstances of the combat deaths in Niger 14 months ago.
But is there is to be an actual examinition of a coverup or other improprieties, I think Matthis himself should explain if or how he looked into the circumstances resulting in this firefight and the 4 American soldiers KIA.
I was in the Army, and used the terms “light colonel” and “full bird” all the time, just not to the officers’ faces! What’s the big deal here?
I agree Jay, it’s no big deal. In the Navy, we called an LTJG, Lieutenant and an LCDR, Commander. That being said, officers and enlisted never made the mistake of calling a SCPO or MCPO, Chief. If they did, it was only once. 😉
Oops. I’m sorry, Olly. As I’m sure you know, I’ve always been a civilian. I honestly thought that Chief was the proper form of address.
Jay S – notice you did not capitalize and you put them in quotes. Marky Mark Mark did neither.
The colonel is light in the loafers perhaps?
You should be embarrassed. “Light” is slang for “Lieutenant.” Look it up. So sorry for your lack of knowledge–or probably not.
to “oh, I never thought of that” paulie – georgie
+1 for all you klan wanabbees and ball-baggers; these people are defending your ignorant, bigoted asses.
https://static01.nyt.com/images/2018/12/06/us/politics/00dc-military3/merlin_129083360_af111d38-498a-4c1c-b80d-21edf521a87c-jumbo.jpg?quality=90&auto=webp
Troops in Hollywood, Fla., saluting the coffin of Sgt. La David Johnson, who was killed in the attack in Niger last year. The incident was the American military’s largest loss of life in Africa since 1993’s Black Hawk Down battle in Somalia.
As decribed in Wired magazine, this is what we True American Patriots are fighting against, as the addle-brain ball-baggers of the day glo bozo barter our beloved country away in return for some locked-up minority kids:
THE MUELLER INVESTIGATION NEARS THE WORST CASE SCENARIO
WE ARE DEEP into the worst case scenarios. But as new sentencing memos for Trump associates Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen make all too clear, the only remaining question is how bad does the actual worst case scenario get?
The potential innocent explanations for Donald Trump’s behavior over the last two years have been steadily stripped away, piece by piece. Special counsel Robert Mueller and investigative reporters have uncovered and assembled a picture of a presidential campaign and transition seemingly infected by unprecedented deceit and criminality, and in regular—almost obsequious—contact with America’s leading foreign adversary.
A year ago, Lawfare’s Benjamin Wittes and Quinta Jurecic outlined seven possible scenarios about Trump and Russia, arranged from most innocent to most guilty. Fifth on that list was “Russian Intelligence Actively Penetrated the Trump Campaign—And Trump Knew or Should Have Known,” escalating from there to #6 “Kompromat,” and topping out at the once unimaginable #7, “The President of the United States is a Russian Agent.”
After the latest disclosures, we’re steadily into Scenario #5, and can easily imagine #6.
The Cohen and Manafort court documents all provide new details, revelations, and hints of more to come. They’re a reminder, also, that Mueller’s investigation continues alongside an investigation by federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York that clearly alleges that Donald Trump participated in a felony, directing Cohen to violate campaign finance laws to cover up extramarital affairs.
Through his previous indictments against Russian military intelligence and the Russian Internet Research Agency, Mueller has laid out a criminal conspiracy and espionage campaign approved, according to US intelligence, by Vladimir Putin himself. More recently, Mueller has begun to hint at the long arm of that intelligence operation, and how it connects to the core of the Trump campaign itself.
Points of Contact
In fact, what’s remarkable about the once-unthinkable conclusions emerging from the special counsel’s investigation thus far is how, well, normal Russia’s intelligence operation appears to have been as it targeted Trump’s campaign and the 2016 presidential election. What intelligence professionals would call the assessment and recruitment phases seems to have unfolded with almost textbook precision, with few stumbling blocks and plenty of encouragement from the Trump side.
Mueller’s court filings, when coupled with other investigative reporting, paint a picture of how the Russian government, through various trusted-but-deniable intermediaries, conducted a series of “approaches” over the course of the spring of 2016 to determine, as Wittes says, whether “this is a guy you can do business with.”
The answer, from everyone in Trumpland—from Michael Cohen in January 2016, from George Papadopoulos in spring 2016, from Donald Trump, Jr. in June 2016, from Michael Flynn in December 2016—appears to have been an unequivocal “yes.”
Mueller and various reporting have shown that the lieutenants in Trump’s orbit rebuffed precisely zero of the known Russian overtures. In fact, quite the opposite. Each approach was met with enthusiasm, and a request for more.
Given every opportunity, most Trump associates—from Paul Manafort to Donald Trump, Jr. to George Papadopoulos—not only allegedly took every offered meeting, and returned every email or phone call, but appeared to take overt action to encourage further contact. Not once did any of them inform the FBI of the contacts.
For years, Russia has known compromising material on the president’s business empire and his primary lawyer.
And it seems possible there’s even more than has become public, beginning earlier than we might have known. As Mueller’s report says in Cohen’s case, “The defendant also provided information about attempts by other Russian nationals to reach the campaign. For example, in or around November 2015, Cohen received the contact information for, and spoke with, a Russian national who claimed to be a ‘trusted person’ in the Russian Federation who could offer the campaign ‘political synergy’ and ‘synergy on a government level.’ The defendant recalled that this person repeatedly proposed a meeting between Individual 1 [aka Donald Trump] and the President of Russia. The person told Cohen that such a meeting could have a ‘phenomenal’ impact ‘not only in political but in a business dimension as well,’ referring to the Moscow Project, because there is no bigger warranty in any project than consent of [the President of Russia].’”
A footnote then clarifies that the reason Cohen didn’t follow up on the invitation was “because he was working on the Moscow Project with a different individual who Cohen understood to have his own connections to the Russian government.” In other words, the only reason Cohen didn’t pursue a Kremlin hook-up was because he didn’t need a Kremlin hook-up—he already had one.
Much of Friday’s filing by the special counsel about Paul Manafort, meanwhile, outlines at great length how he allegedly lied to Mueller’s office about both his contact and the content of those contacts with Konstantin Kilimnik, a Russian political consultant whom US intelligence believes has ties to Russian intelligence.
Further sentences throughout Cohen’s document hint at much more to come—and that the Trump campaign, the Trump Organization, and even the White House likely face serious jeopardy in the continuing investigation. As Mueller writes, “Cohen provided the SCO with useful information concerning certain discrete Russia-related matters core to its investigation that he obtained by virtue of his regular contact with Company executives during the campaign.”
What precisely those “discrete Russia-related matters” are, we don’t know—yet—but the known behavior of the Trump campaign associates and family members appears damning.
Not least of all is Don Jr.’s now infamous email, responding to a suggestion of Russian assistance: “If it’s what you say I love it especially later in the summer,” which happens to be precisely when Russia dropped the stolen Clinton campaign emails, funneling them through WikiLeaks, another organization where there appears to have been no shortage of Trump-linked contact and encouragement by a team that allegedly included Roger Stone, Randy Credico, and Jerome Corsi’s conversations with their “friend in embassy,” WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
It was a pattern that continued right through the transition, as Flynn’s sentencing memo this week also reminds us: Trump’s team was all too happy to set up backchannels and mislead or even outright lie about their contacts with Russian officials. There’s still the largely unexplained request by Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner to establish secure backchannel communications with the Russian government, during the transition, that would be free of US eavesdropping.
Nearly everyone in the Trump orbit experienced massive amnesia about all of these contacts during the campaign, including Kushner and former attorney general Jeff Sessions himself, both of whom “revised” their recollections later to include meetings they held with Russian officials during the campaign and transition.
Leverage
The lies by Trump’s team would have provided Russia immense possible leverage. Michael Cohen’s calls and efforts through the spring of 2016, as he sought help for the Trump Tower Moscow project, were publicly denied until last week.
But the Russians knew Trump was lying.
For years, Russia has known compromising material on the president’s business empire and his primary lawyer.
Similarly, during the transition, Michael Flynn called to talk sanctions with Russia’s ambassadors—saying, in effect, don’t worry about Obama, be patient, we’ll undo it—and then covered up that conversation to federal investigators and the public.
But the Russians knew Flynn was lying.
For the first weeks of the Trump administration in January 2017, then acting attorney general Sally Yates ran around the West Wing warning that Russia had compromising material on the president’s top national security advisor.
While Trump has tried to slough off the Trump Tower Moscow project since Cohen’s plea agreement as “very legal & very cool,” the easiest way to know that they don’t believe that themselves is that they lied about it. For years.
“The fact that [Trump] was lying to the American people about doing business in Russia and that the Kremlin knew he was lying gave the Kremlin a hold over him,” the incoming chair of the House Judiciary Committee, Jerry Nadler, told NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday. “One question we have now is, does the Kremlin still have a hold over him because of other lies that they know about?”
The most obvious scenario is the most likely scenario.
As Mueller put it in Friday’s Cohen court documents: “The defendant’s false statements obscured the fact that the Moscow Project was a lucrative business opportunity that sought, and likely required, the assistance of the Russian government. If the project was completed, the Company could have received hundreds of millions of dollars from Russian sources in licensing fees and other revenues. The fact that Cohen continued to work on the project and discuss it with Individual 1 [aka Donald Trump] well into the campaign was material to the ongoing congressional and SCO investigations, particularly because it occurred at a time of sustained efforts by the Russian government to interfere with the U.S. presidential election. Similarly, it was material that Cohen, during the campaign, had a substantive telephone call about the project with an assistant to the press secretary for the President of Russia.”
Legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin phrased it slightly differently in the wake of Cohen’s plea agreement: “It would have been highly relevant to the public to learn that Trump was negotiating a business deal with Russia at the same time that he was proposing to change American policy toward that country.”
The SDNY sentencing document for Cohen, while combative and calling for a substantial prison sentence, does lay out some significant cooperation across what it says were seven sessions between Cohen and the special counsel’s office, saying, “His statements have been credible, and he has taken care not to overstate his knowledge or the role of others in the conduct under investigation.”
That means something specific in the way that federal prosecutors speak, and given how ethics constrain them to verify statements before allowing them to be made in court. It’s clear that Mueller’s team and the prosecutors in the Southern District aren’t just taking at face value the words of someone who has been pleading guilty to lying to investigators, banks, and tax authorities.
In fact, they likely have significant documentary evidence that Cohen’s claims are true and that, as prosecutors say, “Cohen coordinated his actions with one or more members of the campaign, including through meetings and phone calls, about the fact, nature, and timing of the payments. In particular, and as Cohen himself has now admitted, with respect to both payments, he acted in coordination with and at the direction of Individual-1 [Donald Trump].”
Surreptitious recordings made by the Cohen and quoted in the document remind us that it’s possible that prosecutors even have recordings of Trump ordering his fixer to commit a felony.
Mueller doesn’t say precisely what he has, but the new documents are littered with breadcrumbs—mentions of travel records, testimonial evidence, emails, draft documents, recordings, and more. And he has both a very helpful Cohen and, to at least some extent, Manafort. While the former campaign chair wasn’t cooperative, he did, according to the new filing, testify twice to a grand jury in recent weeks, meaning that his testimony is being used as part of a criminal case targeting someone else.
Meanwhile, one of the most intriguing aspects of the Manafort document came in its final paragraphs, where Mueller’s team outlines that the former campaign chairman had been in contact with various administration officials well into 2018. “A review of documents recovered from a search of Manafort’s electronic documents demonstrates additional contacts with Administration officials,” the report says. What—and who—Mueller doesn’t hint at, but it’s surely part of the massive iceberg of evidence resting just below the surface of this case.
Put together all the clues, and Occam’s Razor comes to mind: The most obvious scenario is the most likely scenario. And the most likely scenario now is that there was no division between the apparent Trump-Russian collusion on business matters and in the election. The coincidences are piling up. The conversations are piling up.
And Mueller’s evidence is clearly piling up as well.
Garrett M. Graff (@vermontgmg) is a contributing editor for WIRED and the co-author of Dawn of the Code War: America’s Battle Against Russia, China, and the Rising Global Cyber Threat. He can be reached at garrett.graff@gmail.com.
I will end this post with a reprise of that most salient of questions: “what is that ticking sound?”
We can always use more of these stand up, anonymous, self-proclaimed “true American patriots”, like this dumbass troll.
Forgot to capitalize the “True American Patriot” label the All-Star gave himself.
Gentlemen. This is The War Room. There’s no fighting here.
Calico cat.
Gigham dog.
Red gingham? Or blue?
Shredded.
Can’t tell.
Remind me never to mess with that calico cat.
Saw a nice pix of a penguin using its feet to surf a small wave, maybe in the Falkland Islands.
This is more important.
Tillerson dissing Trump and vice-versa? Or the penguin surfing on its feet? It’s too difficult for me to decide. You pick which one is more important than the other. Please?
Penguin surfing.
Ah ha. Me savvy. The penguin is properly attired.
Dr. Benson refuses to say whether it’s Cohen or Manafort who is like unto the penguin using its feet to surf a small wave.
https://www.latimes.com/la-na-pol-manafort-doc-20181207-htmlstory.html
Maybe it’s Trump.
Maybe it’s both Cohen and Manafort who are like unto penguins surfing a small wave with their feet. And Trump makes three.
http://www.courthousenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/sdny-cohen.pdf
15 hours ago … THE GOVERNMENT’S SENTENCING MEMORANDUM ….. Michael D. Cohen.
https://goo.gl/images/Wg8ypf
I give credit to L4D for being able to draw certain conclusions about penguins, as shown in the link.
And, she can walk us through the same kind of reasoning to reach numerous other conclusions.
None of those characters could possibly surf on their feet.
Lack of surface area? Or lack of buoyancy?
Firstly, lack of intellect.
I hadn’t thought of that.
Maybe I could surf on my feet.
Wear
Big
Shoes.
Are you still sure President Bozo Boots can’t do it?
Or maybe Dr. Benson is alluding to the cartoon parody of a surfing movie linked below:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surf%27s_Up_(film)
Surf’s Up is a 2007 American computer-animated mockumentary comedy film.
Honestly, without Dr. Benson’s cryptic allusions, I never would’ve imagined the Trump campaign, the Trump Organization, nor the Trump administration as a bunch of cartoon penguins surfing the waves in the manner of juvenile delinquents skeeching on their heels behind a bicycle–if that is how it’s done. How do juvenile delinquents skeech, anyhow?
Skeeching explained below.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/tom-cramer/winter-activities_b_2563753.html
Excerpted from the article linked above:
Skeeching? Skeeching was grabbing on to the rear bumper of a moving car and letting it pull you, your shoes or boots sliding on top of the snow-covered streets. Guys would be on the corner, wait for a car to turn onto the street, then run up behind and grab on the back. If they were good, they would hold on the entire block. Skeeching was for the big kids, those in eighth grade or high school.
They don’t make car bumpers you can grab ahold of anymore. Skeeching is a dead art. Unless they still skeech in Russia.
Only in Siberia.
Then skeeching will never be an Olympic sport???
“Maybe, maybe, maybe” Baby. Late4Yoga is like EverReady Bunny, she gonna keep on truckin’ even after SCO & SDNY jumped the shark yesterday with their weak sentencing memos. You go girl!
Maybe Cohen, Manafort, Flynn and Papadopoulos et al were lying for the “sport of it” rather than to cover-up any criminal behavior. Surely Trump lies for the “sport of it.” Why should Trump’s associates lie to cover-up criminal behavior? There’s no sport in that. Lying about perfectly legal things is where the true sportsmanship shines through. Ha-Ha!
Late-Breaking Story!
NEW COURT PAPERS:
TRUMP MOSCOW TOWER WAS PRIORITY DEAL
The Mueller memo says that Cohen “repeated many of his prior false statements” when he met with the special counsel’s office in August, and it was only in a second meeting on Sept. 12 — after he pleaded guilty to the campaign finance charges — that he admitted “his prior statements about the Moscow Project had been deliberately false and misleading.”
The special counsel’s office wrote that Cohen’s lies to Congress “obscured the fact that the Moscow Project was a lucrative business opportunity that sought, and likely required, the assistance of the Russian government,” and that, if completed, the Trump Organization could have received “hundreds of millions of dollars from Russian sources in licensing fees and other revenues.” They noted, as Cohen had already admitted, that he and Trump discussed the project “well into the campaign.”
The special counsel’s office added, though, that Cohen “has gone to significant lengths to assist the Special Counsel’s investigation.”
The office wrote that Cohen had “explained financial aspects of the deal that would have made it highly lucrative,” and, without prompting, he had corrected other statements he made about his contacts with Russian officials during the campaign.
For example, Cohen said in a radio interview in September 2015 that Trump should meet with the president of Russia during the United Nations General Assembly, and he claimed for a time afterward that the comment had been “spontaneous” and not discussed with members of the campaign. In fact, the special counsel’s office said, Cohen later admitted that he had conferred with Trump about contacting the Russian government for the meeting — which ultimately did not take place.
Edited from: “Court Filings Directly Implicate Trump In Efforts To Buy Women’s Silence, Revel New Contact Between Inner Circle And Russian”.
This evening’s WASHINGTON POST
It’s possible that Trump thought that he was going to lose the election and that that’s why he pursued the Trump Tower Moscow Project even while running for President. There’s speculation that Cohen and Sater handed off the Trump Tower Moscow Project to Sergei Millian and George Papadopoulos after Wikileaks released the hacked DNC emails and the deal became too hot to handle. Cohen was carrying $20 million worth of debt at the time that he took out the home equity loan to pay off Trump’s women. Manafort owed $19 million to Oleg Deripaska. It may be time to wonder out loud, again, exactly how much, and to whom, Trump owed money. But Trump had to have known that the Trump Tower Moscow would not be built while he was President. And, when Wikileaks released the DNC emails, Trump ought to have realized that his chances of winning the 2016 election were better than they had been before. It’s almost like the old Jack Benny joke: The money or The Presidency? . . . I’m thinking. I’m thinking.
“It’s possible that Trump thought that he was going to lose the election and that that’s why he pursued the Trump Tower Moscow Project even while running for President.”
Here we go again with Diane’s ‘if type… it’s possible’ scenario that later becomes proof.
I believed the deal died before Trump was running for the Presidency. Things of this nature do not completely end and can be revived even decades later so I am not sure where you are headed with all this guessing. Haven’t you ever had a transaction where the one you didn’t make a deal with kept lines of communication open for years?
When his grandfather came to the U.S. through Ellis Island the officials there gave him a new last name. His occupation had been listed as “a tiller’s son”. His real last name was Corleone.
Jer-ry!….Jer-ry!……Jer-ry!
Exxon-Mobil is currently defending multi-state litigation for defrauding investors. This follows more than three years’ investigation, for conduct occurring PRIOR to that three-year investigation. When was it that Tillerson left Exxon????
OUTGOING CALIFORNIA GOP CHAIRMAN:
“PARTY DOOMED WITH ONLY WHITE CONSTITUENTS”
DISMISSES RUMORS THAT VOTE FRAUD FLIPPED ORANGE COUNTY
The outgoing chair of the California GOP — the nation’s largest state Republican Party — has issued a dire warning that his state represents “the canary in the coal mine” for the party‘s national fortunes unless it confronts demographic shifts that have already turned California into a majority-minority state.
“We have not yet been able to figure out how to effectively communicate and get significant numbers of votes from non-whites,’’ said former state Sen. Jim Brulte, who’s held the job of state GOP chair since 2013 and will retire in February.
Despite trend lines that show the “the entire country will be majority minority by 2044,’’ he said, the GOP has failed to confront the reality of those changes — or recognize the possibility that the recent “blue tsunami” midterm election in California was a harbinger of what lies ahead for the national party.
Brulte said he‘s repeatedly warned that the party’s overwhelmingly white and male candidates must “figure out how we get votes from people who don’t look like you.’’
But he said those warnings about the changing political and ethnic landscape have gone unheeded.
Brulte told POLITICO he categorically rejects the notion that voting irregularities may be the source of the party’s historic beating in the 2018 midterms in California, where Democrats flipped seven House seats and left the party with just seven members in the congressional delegation, the lowest number since the 1940s. He said Republicans were repeatedly informed of ways that Democrats were marshaling new and effective ways to get out the vote — but campaigns failed to take action.
Edited from: “State GOP Chairman Warns California Is Canary In Coal Mine For National Party”
Today’s POLTICO
Historically Orange County, the nation’s 6th most populous, was a Republican stronghold just south of Los Angeles. But in last month’s midterm election, Republicans suffered huge losses in Orange County. Only ‘one’ Republican congressman will represent Orange County in the next congress. And further south, Darrell Issa’s congressional seat in San Diego County has flipped to a Democrat.
Though the article above makes no mention of abortion, it’s well-known in California that no candidate for major office can win with an anti-abortion agenda. So-called ‘pro-life’ positions are simply a non-starter with California voters.
So-called ‘pro-life’ positions are simply a non-starter with California voters.
FAKE NEWS!
I’m a California voter and I’m not alone in saying my pro-life position is precisely where I start.
Try again.
Hopefully you value living breathing human and animal life and not just a few fetal cells that you label as “life”.
I value a humans natural right to exist, from the first cell to the last breath. I value all other forms of life that contribute to that human existence.
Olly, when was the last time a ‘pro-life’ governor or senator was elected by California??
it’s well-known in California that no candidate for major office can win with an anti-abortion agenda.
I didn’t challenge the accuracy or merits of that statement. There are a lot of things that are well-known in and about this state, Civics literacy is not one of them. Infrastructure failures, forest mismanagement, high taxation, water resource mismanagement, and on and on. Those are also characteristic outcomes of a majority electorate that wouldn’t know good governance in their home let alone at the state or national level.
So-called ‘pro-life’ positions are simply a non-starter with California voters.
That I did challenge and you are flat out wrong.
Again, Olly, when was the last time an anti-abortion candidate was elected to statewide office in California?
You’re like the Republicans mentioned in the story I posted. You can’t admit the party is out-of-step with the state. So instead you just deny reality.
And by the way, the vast number forest acres in California are under Federal control. So if ‘forest management’ is an actual issue, Trump’s Department Of Interior is to blame.
You can’t admit the party is out-of-step with the state. So instead you just deny reality.
LOL! I am registered Independent. And I have no difficulty admitting the Republicans in general and conservatives like myself specifically have nearly zero influence in our state government. So when Feinstein’s husband is awarded the contract to build the high speed rail to nowhere; when companies are leaving the state in droves; when our drought conditions are magnified because we haven’t built new reservoirs in decades; when de-salination plants are denied; when education results are among the lowest in the nation; when taxation is among the highest in the nation; when our port-of-entry with Mexico becomes the porous-of-entry; when people in our state (and nation) illegally are afforded more protection than the citizens; then that is reality and yes, I am completely out of step with the majority in this state. And yes, it is easy to identify the morons who enabled all of the blessings that have befallen our state.
Olly, Peter doesn’t have the capacity to debate you on any of the points you raised. I find California’s management of a naturally rich state to be atrocious. A desert nation Israel exports water while California rich in rivers and natural resources can’t manage its water supply.
Allan, Israel is smaller than L.A. County. There’s no comparison. And California is ‘not’ rich in fresh water. I can’t imagine where you get that idea. That’s like saying Minnesota is rich in warm sunshine.
Smaller or larger isn’t the point. Israel is mostly desert and exports water. California is not mostly desert and is rich in resouces. It has had an ongoing water crisis for decades.
Rich in water is a comparison between Israel and California. Additionally California does have a lot of water but doesn’t utilize its resources effectively. California’s investments in its water supply for a few decades have not met the needs of the state.
Allan, most western states, including California, rely largely on the Colorado River. Even Northern Mexico relies on the Colorado River. It’s an unsustainable situation!
If California was rich in water, as you claim, we wouldn’t need to draw from the Colorado River. But aside from mountain snowpacks (which are dwindling from Climate Change), California has few other sources.
Sure, desalinization is a nice idea, but I don’t think the money exists to realize that dream. For years Republicans have focused on tax cuts at the expense of our future.
A report this week noted that our Interstate Highway System is crumbling. That’s from years of tax cutting policies. So at this point, our whole country will crumble to third world status before Republicans give up on tax cuts.
“Sure, desalinization is a nice idea, but I don’t think the money exists to realize that dream.”
Desalinization is only one part of the solution. I wonder how Israel, a country that is mostly desert, has no snow and is constantly at war is able to do it when California is not? Are you telling us that Californians are stupid or just the leadership is stupid?
To you every problem has one solution. Tax the people more and more. How is that working out for the high tax states? Not very well.
Allan, you live in New York City? Why doesn’t New York build a seawall in the harbor to safeguard against hurricanes like Sandy? It seems like the expense would be worth it to prevent a totally wipeout of the subways and electrical grids. London has a seawall. And we know the Dutch are geniuses at water defenses.
The reason New York hasn’t built such a wall is that it would cost more than the state or city could afford. The Federal government needs to partner to make projects like that happen. But again, the Republican obsession with tax cuts conflicts with infrastructure.
That’s why California can’t build big destinations plants. That’s why America can’t build much of anything anymore. All our emphasis is on cutting taxes.
“Why doesn’t New York build a seawall in the harbor to safeguard against hurricanes like Sandy? ”
Did you ever think a sea wall wouldn’t protect the areas destroyed by Sandy? Did you ever think that NYC might also already have sea walls?
The reason New York hasn’t built such a wall is that it would cost more than the state or city could afford. The Federal government needs to partner to make projects like that happen. But again, the Republican obsession with tax cuts conflicts with infrastructure.
Peter Shill fancies there’s a set of magic taxpayers form which the federal government can extract levies which the state governments cannot.
New York is one of the more affluent states, so it actually does have the wherewithal to finance its own public works. “Can’t afford’ might apply re Puerto Rico or Mississippi, not New York or Connecticut or New Jersey (or the District of Columbia, while we’re at it). The issue in regard to coastal public works is jurisdictional, not economic or financial.
And Mississippi has no need of a ‘partner’ either. General revenue sharing wherein you have an unrestricted distribution to each state government per a formula which has population and per capita income as arguments should be sufficient to correct for any deficiencies in a state’s productive base. The states can do the same for their counties and school districts, and the counties can do the same for their municipalities. No need for dedicated funds which incorporate compliance costs, muddy public understanding of responsibility for given expenditures, and distort local preferences.
You only benefit from dedicated funds when you have exigent circumstances (disaster relief) or for transitional periods. You might also when the locals are incompetent in systematic ways, like they are in Puerto Rico.
Allan, I suspect if you unpacked it, the problems California have derive from bad allocation schemes, underlying which are legal principles delineating water rights which are ill adapted to arid or semi-arid environments.
One way to correct the problem would be a constitutional amendment annulling extant water rights in the Western United States. Such an Amendment would authorize a large bond issue which would be used to indemnify property holders. You could appoint temporary tribunals to hear claims from property owners and make notional awards according to principles delineated in the federal statute enabling the tribunals. At that point, the proceeds of the bond issue would be divvied up proportionately.
At this juncture, you’d assign the water rights to the federal government. Each season, a federal commission would determine the permissible global draw in each Western watershed. It would then hold a multiple price auction of tranches of water, for which the bidders would be agricultural producers, local water authorities, and licensed brokers. The brokers would trade with each other and with other parties on secondary exchanges incorporated according to law. Of course, you’d need beefy infrastructure and police forces to monitor water draws and catch poachers.
You might also amend the mercantile regulation of local water authorities. Not sure what the literature on public utility economics says, but one thing you might do is limit compensation per worker among the employees of local water authorities to a certain % of private sector compensation per worker (currently, compensation among public utility employees is quite high, about double that of the national mean), as well as requiring that any employee receiving compensation in excess of 4x the national mean have a published one-year contract which has been approved by a roll-call vote of the utility board. You could also limit the retained income of a given utility to a particular % of personal income within its area of operation. Any excess would be remitted to the utility’s customers at the end of the fiscal year, and evenly divided among those customers. With these regulations in place, you might remove regulation of pricing by these entities, merely requiring 30 days notice for price changes and requiring a 4-fold price structure of household and commercial / institutional rates and base v. peak rates.
In such a regime, droughts would result in price spikes to which housholds could adjust in various ways, and very seldom shortages per se. With regard to agribusiness, they’d take land out of production and substitute crops. They could hedge against price spikes through purchasing insurance and through futures and options trading. You wouldn’t see desalination plants unless it were actually cost effective for the utility to issue the bonds to build them.
Did you ever think that NYC might also already have sea walls?
Whatever they have or they don’t, if you’re not a civil engineer, question like that ought to be actual questions and not rhetorical ones.
“Did you ever think that NYC might also already have sea walls?
Whatever they have or they don’t, if you’re not a civil engineer, question like that ought to be actual questions and not rhetorical ones.”
Peter, think of the following statement: Water seeks its own level.
Olly, if all of what you say is true, housing costs in California should be plummeting by now. California’s population should be plummeting as well. But it’s not! Housing here is still among the nation’s most expensive. Which means a lot of residents love California.
And it sounds like you’re one of those people who sides with Republicans on every single issue but claims they’re ‘not’ a Republican. You’re a common breed. A lot of Republicans know how uncool the party is. So they say, “I’m an Independent”, or “I’m a Libertarian” while citing right-wing media.
if all of what you say is true, housing costs in California should be plummeting by now.
You don’t seem to understand basic economics. The residents of this state that own homes would be foolish to abandon that investment. My home value has increased $250k since 2012. The market is slowing down and we are currently considering the pros and cons of selling. This is a beautiful state with fantastic weather. It’s a draw for many people, especially those homeless, those needing sanctuary, and those wanting to take advantage of the social programs paid for (or not) by other people’s high taxation.
And it sounds like you’re one of those people who sides with Republicans on every single issue but claims they’re ‘not’ a Republican.
Then your hearing needs to be checked, or you’ve not paid much attention to my posts. I’ve been conservative my whole life. I also used to ignorantly vote based solely on political party. That ended when I took the time to learn US civics and came to understand that progressivism is an evil ideology not unique to one political party. I’m also a realist. And if the current state of politics has the Republican party more aligned with the constitution and the security of natural rights, then I will support that party. And no, the evidence available does not reflect my philosophy as being common.
Yeah, Olly, you’re a Republican. But as a Californian you know how uncool Republicans are. So you play this charade by pretending you’re not Republican.
I totally get it, Olly. Guys like you are common. I think Tabby, Wretched, Nutchacha shares your political personality disorder.
Yeah, Olly, you’re a Republican.
I didn’t expect your ignorance to come to any other conclusion. Whatever you do, stay in your political party safe space. Because you are not prepared to step outside your pen and think independently. Oh, you have the illusion of independent thought, but the fact you still consider me to be a party hack is all anyone needs to know about your civics illiteracy and necessary tutelage by your progressive masters.
Yeah, Olly, you’re a Republican. But as a Californian you know how uncool Republicans are. So you play this charade by pretending you’re not Republican.
Your head is stuck in high school and you assume everyone else’s head is there too.
Housing here is still among the nation’s most expensive. Which means a lot of residents love California.
Actually, it means you have rotten land use regulations.
Wretched, if anything California is TOO PERMISSIVE when it comes to land use. Here in Hollywood there are numerous houses built on stilts in the canyons . And the fact that wildfires keep wiping out California communities suggests that many subdivisions are built too close to fire sources.
Have you ever seen chaparral? They’re amazing plants. Chaparral is like natural barbed-wire that holds hillsides together. But chaparral can literally blow up amid lengthy droughts (and triple digit temps).
So this idea that California is burdened by ‘too many land use regulations’ is a libertarian pipe dream. It’s libertarians who never hiked a canyon trail.
Underwriting costs would limit developments in hazardous zones, if you weren’t forever interfering with your insurance markets via inane referenda.
See Thomas Sowell on land use regulation near where he lives in Palo Alto. Per Sowell, about 1/2 the resale value of his home is attributable to artificial restrictions on building.
“See Thomas Sowell on land use regulation near where he lives in Palo Alto. Per Sowell, about 1/2 the resale value of his home is attributable to artificial restrictions on building.”
Why housing is so expensive in NYC is due to a multiplicity of factors. The first one that comes to mind is rent control that caused building housing in NYC to come to a standstill. A second is what Thomas Sowell describes above.
Well theoretically California should focus on earthquake proof hi-rise communities. And that will probably be the future here. But L.A. is only getting started when it comes to building ‘up’.
How’d that work out for ya, playa? It looks like the tired, hackneyed, fraudulent practice of hiding behind the make-believe bodies of imaginary children has been seen for what it is. Unfortunately for you and your ilk, the bygone “good ole days” when women were the chattel property of their nearest male relative are over. Now, woman are in control of their own lives and bodies, which includes their reproductive system. So sorry for your loss, and your social awkwardness–lose the belly fat and you might get some action–Handmaid’s Tale is fiction, after all. Pro tip: merely because your dear leader the day glo bozo can get a few thousand rubes in B.F.E. nowheresville to purchase ridiculous hats and cheer for a victory from two years ago doesn’t mean he’s likewise popular in a country of 315 MILLION. Corollary of the story: you’re merely one guy in Cali; look around.
this is to “but hannity explains it differently” olly
Dick Morris: How Dems Stole Seven House Seats in California
https://www.westernjournal.com/dick-morris-dems-stole-seven-house-seats-california/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=deepsix&utm_content=2018-12-04&utm_campaign=can
How long before the conservatives and liberals that reject progressivism finally see that this is a war that won’t be won by following the rules?
The progressives are notorious for breaking laws. Saul Alinsky was so proud of how he could steal food from the cafeteria without getting caught.
The progressives are notorious for breaking laws.” So says “I live here” Allaninny.
Just more Allanonsense.
About one of your own, Allan:
“James Fields Guilty of First-Degree Murder in Death of Heather Heyer”
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/07/us/james-fields-trial-charlottesville-verdict.html
“Prosecutors also showed the jury a cartoon that Mr. Fields had shared months earlier on Instagram of a car ramming into a crowd, with the words, “You have the right to protest but I’m late for work.” Other evidence included recordings of conversations that Mr. Fields had with his mother after his arrest, in which he described the counterprotesters at the rally as a “violent gang of terrorists,” and derided Ms. Heyer’s mother, Susan Bro, as an “anti-white liberal” who should be viewed as an enemy.”
How is James Fields one of my own? I see no similarity in him or his actions. I mentioned Saul Alinsky’s criminal type actions that are documented in his own words. Hillary Clinton was one of his followers and to some extent so was Obama and a lot of the progressive movement we see today.
Even your words demonstrate you to be a dishonorable person. I accept you for what you are, but you certainly aren’t a person one should rely on or listen to. You have a very deficient intellect.
Just giving you a taste of your own medicine, Allan, and what a surprise that you didn’t like it.
“About one of your own, Allan:”
Retracted.
You’re an a$$, though. And I certainly won’t retract that.
Anonymous, the comparison didn’t bother me because it wasn’t an intelligent comparison and reflected poorly on you. My statements above were about Alinsky who IMO was a bad person and taught a bad way of getting ahead in life.
I don’t know that you are that type of person or not but you don’t seem to demonstrate the type of knowledge seen in a person who believes in individual freedom. What you think of me is inconsequential. I know who I am. Do you know who you are?
It’s Diane. And it’s a reasonable wager she’s a retired schoolteacher or social worker.
Allan said, “Even your words demonstrate you to be a dishonorable person.”
Anonymous said, “Just giving you a taste of your own medicine, Allan, and what a surprise that you didn’t like it.”
DTs said, “It’s Diane. And it’s a reasonable wager . . . ”
There’s no way L4D let’s FUBARAllan off the hook quite so gently as Anonymous did. Once again, DTs loses the wager.
(Maybe that’s why Mr. Smith won’t solve your tiresome spam filter problem for you.)
“Who is Saul Alinsky, and why does the right hate him so much?”
https://www.vox.com/2014/10/6/6829675/saul-alinsky-explain-obama-hillary-clinton-rodham-organizing
“Who is Saul Alinsky”? A man that used people to get what he wanted even if it wasn’t good for people. He took his idea of stealing food to higher levels where he could legally steal from the people. Some believe in freedom and some don’t. You seem to belong to the latter group.
Get off your high horse, Allan. (And while you’re at it, get a life.)
“Taking College One Meal at a Time”
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/08/neediest-cases/taking-college-one-meal-at-a-time.html
Mr. Williams says that he does not often talk about his financial struggles with his classmates. But hunger is a pervasive problem across college campuses, affecting millions of students, according to a survey released this year by Temple University and the Wisconsin HOPE Lab. Of the 43,000 students at 66 colleges surveyed, 36 percent had trouble getting enough to eat on a daily basis.
The notion that ‘hunger’ is a ‘pervasive problem’ on ‘college campuses’ (or anywhere else this side of skid row is the sort of rubbish swallowed by reporters and editors promoting social hypochondria.
I see that “Wretched…” has the DTs now. (And he’s using Darren’s name to highlight his or her little non-problem.)
DTs and his (or her) other little keyboard-warriors are pathetic.
The thing about you guys is that you almost always “bite.”
Maybe DTs should go back to one of his or her old monikers — the one that had him running around in circles. There have been so many. What was it? “Around and around we” go or something like that.
Anonymous, your citation demonstrates that you miss the point of who Alinsky was and what he did. Instead you discussed hunger on college campus’s where 36% had difficulty getting enough to eat. You don’t critically evaluate that number either because you didn’t want to or because you can’t. The problem probably has more to do with how one allocates their resources than lack of funding for food. Questionaire studies of this nature are very innaccurate and generally created to advance a theory already held rather than to prove it.
There’s a reason there’s been a 7-fold increase in the prevalence of Type II diabetes in the last 60 years, and it isn’t because people aren’t getting enough to eat.
“There’s a reason there’s been a 7-fold increase in the prevalence of Type II diabetes in the last 60 years, and it isn’t because people aren’t getting enough to eat.”
Absolutely, but anonymous put her brain out to pasture.
No, Allan. You just have trouble reading between the lines.
Have fun on the playground, today, Allaninny, with your other pals.
“No, Allan. You just have trouble reading between the lines.”
Trouble? Anonymous, you can barely formulate an intelligent idea.
Anonymous has FUBARAllan’s number: Automaton; defined as a self-propelled ventriloquist’s dummy.
He should read the VOX article on Alinski. But he won’t. He’d have to face the provenance of the ventriloquist’s arm all the way up his tuccus to the stops on his vocal apparatus.
“He should read the VOX article on Alinski. ”
Diane, why read a VOX article about something when one has already read the real thing? That is your problem, reliance on those that are terribly unsophisticated and unknowledgeable. Just because a person has good writing skills doesn’t mean they know what they are talking about.
Nonsense
Acromion, Morris specifically outlined what occurred and how the vote count changed along with details. What is it that he said that was nonsense or is that simply a response to something you don’t want to hear and know nothing about?
Here is some more on process-oriented vs results-oriented:
——
Other wars since 1945
In the other wars since 1945, we have had unsatisfactory results including Korea, Vietnam, Somalia, Lebanon, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Some would say Iraq and Afghanistan are not over yet. Yeah. That’s the problem. Not only does our military have to win our wars, but they have to do it in three years or less. Look at all our wars and you will find that we either did that or the public started getting antsy about the war. For example, the Vietnam war started in August of 1964. The anti-war movement did not get strong until the end of 1967. Before that, the public supported the war wholeheartedly. World War II in Europe ended 3 1/2 half years after it was declared, and as the movie Flags of Our Fathers showed, the public was getting antsy about even that war.
Given that we have reportedly the most powerful, best military in the world, how come we keep failing to win?
One reason is that our military is a government bureaucracy. Bureaucrats are process oriented. That’s as opposed to other groups like entrepreneurs, commissioned salesmen, trial lawyers, and coaches who are results oriented.
Big difference.
http://www.johntreed.net/process.html
—–
There is a very good article at the link. Remember that Tillerson worked for a huge company, with all the bureaucracy that entails. Trump, OTOH, was a true entrepreneur.
More from the article:
—–
Jack Welch is the highly respected former CEO of GE. In his weekly column on the last page of BusinessWeek, he and his latest wife often skewer bureaucracy. In the 12/24/07 column, for example, they said this:
Question from a reader: “How do you take on the bureaucracy that damages so many organizations?”
Damages? How about deadens?
That’s a better word to describe what bureaucracy does; it sucks the life out of a business…Kafkaesque…kick bureaucracy: At every chance, poke fun at anyone who tries to install process for process’s sake; rib people who get all puffy about their positions or titles. What you want is…A business where an idea’s value has nothing to do with the stripes on the shoulder of the person behind it…
——
and:
——
A process-oriented person focuses on the literal instructions they have been given. For example, if you chew out a motor sergeant because 85% of his unit’s vehicles are dead lined, and he is process-oriented, he will likely point out that he filled out and turned in his replacement parts requisitions. He will further point out that it is not his job to fill those requisitions, just to submit them, and that anyone who is not happy about the state of the motor vehicles should complain elsewhere.
Will such a person be punished for taking such a narrow view of his responsibilities? Generally, no, if the organization in question is governmental. Indeed, he is likely to be unaffected or even promoted in spite of his behavior.
Here’s a quote from Michael J. Maubussin’s book More Than You Know about business bureaucrats that applies as well to military officers in the last 50 years:
While well-intentioned and hard-working, corporate executives and money managers too frequently prioritize growing the business over delivering superior results for shareholders. Increasingly, managers get paid to play, not to win.
I disagree with the “well-intentioned” phrase. Military and civilian bureaucrats may have been well-intentioned when they began their careers, but they became cynical sell-outs when they realized how the bureaucracy really worked. These people are not stupid. In fact, in the Army, I was constantly admonished for refusing to “play the game,” that is, refusing to go along to get along.
Here’s a quote from page 49 of Tom Rick’s book The Gamble about the U.S. military in Iraq before the Surge.
[The U.S. military brass] also continued to judge their actions all too often by input, such as the number of patrols conducted, rather than by output, such as the reduction in violence.
Results-oriented
The movie Ghost Busters starts with Professors Venkman, Stantz, and Spengler get fired from their university jobs. In horror, Stantz (Dan Akroyd) says to Venkman (Bill Murray),
I’ve worked in the private sector. They expect results.
How would a results-oriented person deal with the inability to get parts for a truck situation? Let’s say he’s Joe, owner of Joe’s Plumbing, which has six trucks. If one of his trucks breaks down and needs a part, he will take it to his usual mechanic. His usual mechanic will fix it within a couple of hours. If he ever fails to do so, Joe will raise hell and if that doesn’t get it taken care of pronto, Joe will find another mechanic who will fix such things promptly. “Time is money,” Joe might explain.
Paradoxically, the motor sergeant described above as process-oriented is no doubt quite results-oriented when it comes to getting his own POV (privately-owned vehicle) repaired. Why does he go back and forth from results- to process-oriented? The late CBS newscaster Eric Sevareid once said, “When it’s everybody’s property, people treat it as if it were nobody’s property.” The military trucks are everybody’s property. Joe’s truck, on the other hand, is Joe’s property so Joe will be results-oriented with regard to it. As will the motor sergeant with regard to the vehicle he personally owns.
In other words, the sergeant and everyone else in the military know better. They behave better in their other life as a civilian. But when they put on that uniform and enter the base, they change from the competent civilian Mr. Jekyll to the incompetent, uncaring Sergeant or Lieutenant Colonel Hyde.
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Like I said, it i s a good article.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Squeeky,
Based on a quick reading of the John Treed link, it looks like his analysis is incomplete and very sloppy.
It’s important to realize that there was total mobilization for an all-out war against the Axis nations in WWII.
Tweed and some others seem oblivious to the distinction between that war, and subsequent wars.
The allies also demanded the unconditional surrender of the Axis nations.
The massive civilian casualties inflicted in WWII on Germany and Japan were accepted as a means to achieve total victory.
There were also bureaucratic complications and snafus in WWII; it’s not as if a “management problem” suddenly appeared after WWII.
The nuclear age and the possibilty of a nuclear exchange definitely impacted the course of both the Korean and Vietnam Wars.
The problem in the early 1950s was not militarily defeating North Korea, or even China after they entered the war.
And during the Vietnam War, North Vietnam was backed by two countries with nukes.
The problem was the risks involved, given that both countries were backed by a nuclear-armed Soviet Union ( Korean War), and one country was backed by two countries with nukes.
There’s a pretty long list of issues/ problems with the Treed analysis, but these are some of them.
I agree that his analysis wasn’t perfect. There are even such things as results-oriented people who use processes to make their results better.
The question though, is given only two choices, process vs. results, which one works better. I think results in that case.
I also think that explains much of the problem Tillerson had with Trump. Tillerson came up in a group environment in business, and Trump came up as an entrepreneur, where he had to make the decisions on his own.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Squeeky,..
-I’m not sure if Tillerson’s managememt style, or his feuds with Trump, had anything to do with bureaucratic issues in the military.
Leaving that aside, John Tween’s concerns about the lack of clear-cut military victories since WWII can be addressed, with or without bureaucratic/ management style issues/ problems.
“All”that needs to be done to A. re-institute the draft B. draft millions of young men C.conduct military operations without regard to collateral civilian casualties D. Declare and seek unconditional surrender of enemy forces.
There are a few things that could be added, but Tween seems to completely lack awareness of the difference in factors involved WWII, amd those involved in most wars since then.
If Tweed’s essay were a college term paper, he’d deserve an “F”.
I have kin folks who were in Vietnam, and one who was in Korea. They say both could have been won if the military had been allowed to do their job, and win. And if the military leaders had been more like MacArthur, and stood up to the civilians.
In 1965, there were still a lot of WWII vets alive, and even more so in Korea. We had people who knew how to fight a war.
As far nukes, we had them, too. If the Chinese communists had started using them, they would know the favor would be returned 10 times over.
No, I think Treed is onto something. There is a book of which I have only read a few pages which pretty much says the same thing. Here is a link to it. Like I said, it is in my mile high unfinished book stack, but it might interest you.
https://www.amazon.com/Psychology-Military-Incompetence-Pimlico-ebook/dp/B005JDTTCS
I think the problems are more related to the problems running large entities than to military, per se.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
The Chinese didn’t get nukes until 1964, over 10 years after the end of the Korean War.
But Stalin had them, and there was a close alliance between N.Korea, China, and the USSR in the early 1950s.
MacArthur did stand up to Truman
…”grandstand” up to Truman might be a better word…and when a military commander is repeatedly that insubordinate to a Commander-in-Chief, he’s not likely to be around for very long.
MacArthur may have been willing to risk igniting WWIII over Korea…Truman was not.
LBJ had a series of “bombing halts” over North Vietnam, and bragged about micro-managing “acceptable” targets to bomb.
This policy greatly helped the generous flow of weapons and advisors from both the Soviets and the Chinese.
I think South Vietnam had a chance of survival with relatively modest, continued U.S. support well into the 1970s.
By pulling air support, military equipment and advisors, and economic aid after the 1973 “Peace” Accords, their fate was sealed.
In addition to the tangible effects these actions had on the ARVN, the psychological effect of the U.S. pulling the plug helped to doom South Vietnam.
Some of the same members of Congress who went along with the LBJ buildup of American troops from 16,000 when he took office, to over 500,000 when he left, decided that any level of support was too much a few years later.
One of the US Air Force commanders in Vietnam explained the need for a 2 man crew…one was needed to fly the airplane, the other crew member had a briefcase full of the Rules of Engagement to consult, and to tell the pilot what, where, and when he could open fire or bomb.☺
““It was challenging for me, coming from the disciplined, highly process-oriented Exxon Mobil corporation,”
Yep. And what is the opposite of “process-oriented”???
Answer: RESULTS Oriented.
Sooo, back when the Zulus attacked the British in South Africa, the process-oriented quartermasters were more concerned with documenting the ammunition distribution, as opposed to getting as many bullets into the hands of soldiers as possible. Or at least, that is the story. We know how that ended.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
As an aside, Squeeky, if you’ve never seen the 1964? film ZULU, with Michael Caine and Stanley Baker, it’s an excellent film you may want to watch.
Oh, I have seen it and I love it! I think I even bought the DVD, and it is laying around here somewhere.
Plus, I like the music, and the heroic Welsh! Which, here is an old Welsh Poem about some brave soldiers. One of my uncles is really into the whole Arthurian thing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKvWPcaORns
Here is a translation into English:
http://vrici.lojban.org/~cowan/spoils.html
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Tom Nash – Zulu is a Brilliant film. Michael Caine became an international star, Stanley Baker was at the top of his game and the guy who play the Sgt. Maj. was incredible. 😉
PC Schulte,…
I think Stanley Baker died at about age 50….he had a solid career, unfortunately cut short.
I think he was the “knife specialist” in “The Guns of Navarone”, who started hesitating to kill close up during the mission.
He’d killed so many of the enemy by stabbing/ slashing them that it was affecting his split-second decisions.
…Sought to violate the law? Really? Wouldn’t it be more accurate to say he sought policies or actions that would have violated the law? I expect every President to violate their oath…and I expected President Trump to be the authoritarian that his predecessor was. I expected he would seek actions that were outside his constitutional powers to do and EO his way to getting them done, just like his predecessor. That however has not been the case.
“He acts on his instincts and some respects that looks like impulsiveness. But it’s not intent to act on impulse. I think he’s trying to act on his instincts,”
“I didn’t know how to conduct my affairs with him any other way than in a very straightforward fashion. And I think he grew tired of me being the guy every day that told him, ‘You can’t do that, and let’s talk about what we can do.’”
When Trump would suggest policies that were barred by law, Tillerson said he would tell the president that he was willing to advocate for the president on Capitol Hill if he wanted Congress to change something, saying he told Trump “there’s nothing wrong with that.”
Isn’t what Tillerson describes here one of the responsibilities of his position? And isn’t the President’s frustration a normal reaction for someone that won’t allow his passion to violate the rule of law? Any successful leader will have a vision of what they want to achieve and they will rely on their subordinates to figure out a way to do it.
Keep on whistlin’, but don’t neglect the most salient question: “What is that ticking sound?”
this is to “but I’m sure Barack HUSSEIN Obama had felons in his administration, I just can’t think of their names right now” olly