Sunday, January 14, 2018

Andrew C. McCarthy — Anatomy of a Farce


In-depth analysis of the Trump dossier. Much ado about nothing, but it's the ado that's interesting and relevant, as Andrew McCarthy shows.

Maybe on a conspiracy against a presidential candidate and then president in the legal sense, but close and likely some would call it a conspiracy in the colloquial sense. 

It certainly was collusion among people determined to undercut Trump owing to their own biases and affiliations.

This appears to be the real threat to American democracy rather than Trump-Russian collusion.

The National Review
Anatomy of a Farce
Andrew C. McCarthy is a senior fellow at the National Review Institute and a contributing editor of National Review

See also

It's the US playbook.
US National Security Advisor McMaster claimed that Russia is meddling in the upcoming Mexican elections.
This explosive news was shared by Reuters, which in turn was reporting on a mid-December video of a speech that McMasters gave to the Jamestown Foundation and which was just posted on a Mexican journalist’s Twitter account over the weekend. In it, one of the US’ most influential security figures says in relation to the unsubstantiated claims of Russian interference in foreign elections that “you’ve seen, actually, initial signs of it in the Mexican presidential campaign already”, but to Reuters’ credit they added that he didn’t elaborate on this afterwards and even cited an expert who remarked that “so far, it’s just speculation”.
That said, Reuters attempted to propel the paranoia forward by remarking that the leftist populist-nationalist candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, commonly known by his abbreviated initials as AMLO, is “seen by some analysts as the Kremlin’s favorite, given the positive coverage he has received from government-funded media outlets like Sputnik and Russia Today”, thus relying on the conspiracy theory that everything on Russia’s publicly funded international media outlets is apparently aired on direct orders of the Kremlin, which isn’t true at all. Nor, for that matter, is the inference in the report that Russia is backing AMLO because of its desire to sow problems between the US and Mexico.
There’s credence to the forecast that AMLO’s potential victory would complicate US-Mexican relations because of the contradictory visions of their two leaders in that case, but this, as well as Russian international media’s detailed coverage of the leftist populist-nationalist candidate, don’t in and of themselves “prove” anything about Moscow’s alleged meddling in the upcoming elections. Rather, McMaster’s hysterical claim seems to be part of a preemptive infowar designed to discredit AMLO’s potential victory just like the Clintons tried to do with Trump’s over the same issue of alleged “Russian interference”, thereby suggesting that the US’ permanent military, intelligence, and diplomatic bureaucracies (or “deep state”) assess his odds of winning to be much higher than is publicly being reported.
That would explain why one of the top decision makers in the Trump Administration is already rolling out the weaponized narrative that Russia is supposedly backing AMLO, since they also want to add ammunition to the right-wing’s arsenal of personalized attacks in order to scare the electorate away from voting for him. Thus, it’s actually the US that’s openly interfering in the Mexican elections, just as it always has to one extent or another, and not Russia, with McMaster’s clumsily blatant hypocrisy emphasizing just how high Washington believes the geostrategic stakes to its security to be if “the wrong guy” gets into power and how desperate the US is to stop that from happening....
Oriental Review
The US Is Meddling In Mexico’s Election By Accusing Russia Of Doing So
Andrew Korybko
But I have a warning for Democrats, and indeed for all Americans. For God’s sake, don’t elevate the likes of former CIA directors Michael Hayden and John Brennan and the former director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, to the position of “senior statesmen.” They are not the voices of reason, either for the Democrats or for anybody else. They are monsters who have ignored the Constitution, the US code, and international law. They have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity. We should shun them, not celebrate them....
RSN
A Warning for Democrats, and Indeed for All Americans
John Kiriakou, former CIA counterterrorism officer and a former senior investigator with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. John became the sixth whistleblower indicted by the Obama administration under the Espionage Act – a law designed to punish spies. He served 23 months in prison as a result of his attempts to oppose the Bush administration's torture program.

4 comments:

Footsoldier said...


Regarding Trumps tax cuts.


Minsky says that he would have done away with some taxes because he believed that most taxes are inflationary because they add to costs.

a) Social security tax paid by employers

b) Corporate income tax

He says these are just passed along in prices anyways.


So now that Trump has cut corporate income tax does this mean that more companies will now cut their prices ? Using the money they will save from the tax cut.

If they do will this offset the price increases of raising interest rates ? If that happens will the $ continue to fall and inflation continue to rise ?

As things are no longer " all else equal"

Andrew Anderson said...

Minsky says that he would have done away with some taxes because he believed that most taxes are inflationary because they add to costs.

SOME price inflation is good since it penalizes what would otherwise be lazy, risk-free purchasing power hoarding. But progress requires sound investment and sound investment is NOT lazy, nor risk-free.

That said, due to the injustice of our fiat and credit creation systems, it is largely the rich who get the new purchasing power while the poor largely get only the price inflation. This is a reason why the rich get richer and the poor get poorer in relative terms and ultimately in absolute terms too.

Kaivey said...

Awesome article.

Matt Franko said...

“So now that Trump has cut corporate income tax does this mean that more companies will now cut their prices ? ”

Buffett rather said this week that govt cutting the corporate rate will increase the value of the non-govts ownership share of the firms:

"The tax act is a huge factor in valuation," he said on CNBC's "Squawk Box" on Wednesday. "You had this major change in the silent stock holder in American business who has been content with 35 percent ... and now instead of getting 35 percent interest in the earnings they get a 21 percent and that makes the remaining stock more valuable."

The billionaire chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway also explained the magnitude of the tax cut is not reflected in the stock market yet.

"I think 21 percent was not baked in. That's a huge reduction," he added.


He’s not looking for product price cutting he is looking for perhaps a 20% increase in price of private ownership shares of the firms... maybe SP 500 3250 imo...