NOTE: SOMETHING ELSE DREDGED-UP FROM THE "DRAFTS" FOLDER ...
So I thought I should post something today. And I remembered I'd wanted to post something a week back but never got around to it. What was it? I remembered.
So I went to the gym after work and in the change room the TV was playing CNN. A bunch of talking heads were discussing Trump's reaction to Robert Mueller's recent press conference wherein "Saint Robert Mueller of WMD Lies" told everybody that he never exonerated Donald Trump. There was Russian meddling, and Trump did try to obstruct Mueller's investigation of it. (Mueller explained that he's not allowed to charge a sitting president with anything, so he couldn't just accuse him of obstruction because that would be unfair. It would be unfair because the accusation would just sit there and, not being a legal "charge" Trump would be unable to challenge it in court and thereby clear his name. It would be unfair to do that to Trump. And Mueller is a fair, principled, straight-shooter. So he didn't accuse Trump of obstruction in the report. He just did it at the press conference.)
Now, Trump being Trump, when he'd first heard about the Mueller investigation it's reported that he said that he was "fucked" and that it would be the end of his presidency. This sounds plausible because Trump knows he's a con-man with a lot of criminal deals in his past. But Mueller was only investigating Trump's collusion with Russia. He wasn't looking into Trump's business dealings. And since (as MUELLER CONCLUDED) Trump hadn't colluded with Russia, the main focus of the subsequent report was that there was "no collusion," and that this, combined with Mueller's lack of investigation into Trump's corrupt business dealings, it looked to Trump as if he'd escaped unscathed.
Relieved, and desiring to look magnanimous, Trump pronounced Mueller an honourable man and said that the process had been fair and he was quite happy.
But, in the early days of the investigation, Trump made noises about trying to stop it. He asked people around him if there was some way that he could fire people or what-not. Repeatedly, he was told "no." What I'm trying to get at here is that there's smoke that looks like it came from a fire called "obstruction." But it's not as clear as that.
Anyhow, to bring to an end this ancient piece of writing that I started a long time ago, suffice to say that Mueller identified moments during his investigation when Trump appeared to be trying to obstruct it. Some Russiagate partisans have twisted things to make it seem like Trump's alleged obstruction is the reason for Mueller's being unable to indict any US citizens for collusion. But this is just not so. Here's an article about where Trump's actions could be construed as obstruction. None of them show Trump successfully blocking Mueller from investigating anything to do with collusion. (Other than an attempt to lie about the meeting with Russian nationals at Trump Tower, which Mueller independently concluded was a nothing-burger.) As I said at the top of this post, Trump knows that he's crooked and so he's justifiably scared of investigations. He's also a moron in many ways who doesn't know how to keep his mouth shut (or his dick in his pants or his hands to himself).
But as Mueller concluded: NOTHING points to any conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Putin's Kremlin to steal the election from Hillary Clinton. Therefore, in that regard, Trump is NOT a "traitor." He is NOT a "Kremlin puppet." He is NOT a "Russian asset." This whole thing has been an exercise in the Democratic National Council to use anti-Russian xenophobia to distract US-Americans from the reality that the neo-liberal "Washington Consensus" is massively unpopular with the people of the United States and that is the reason why Trump squeaked out an Electoral College victory against the "Washington Consensus" candidate Hillary "Bat-Shit-Crazy" Clinton.
The thing is, all of this stupid nonsense from the dearly departed Russiagate bullshit scandal which occupied over two years of breathless coverage, pushing more important topics ["more important" in many ways but not the least being that they were REAL as opposed to imaginary] out of the news-cycle, never stopped being stupid nonsense. The reporting on this particular spat between Trump and Mueller as I saw it on the tv-screens at the gym (almost the WHOLE TIME that I was there) was a microcosm of the whole abomination.
Trump's idiocy itself was being characterized as calculated lying. Mueller's dodgy behaviour was portrayed as the height of probity. The dispute over obstruction of justice was being used to insert credibility into the bullshit charges of collusion and "Russian meddling." And the end result of the entire farce was to drive Russiagate partisans deeper into their asylum of hysteria and delusion; to further convince Trump's blinkered supporters that he was, indeed, the victim of a "witch-hunt" conducted by the FAKE NEWS media and the corrupt Democrats; and to further shred the credibility of the mainstream news media.
And I wish I didn't have to write about that crapola. But so many otherwise intelligent people bought into that total drivel and I think it's symptomatic of the reasons why our species is doomed. If intelligent people can be made (through partisan derangement, gullibility, self-delusion) to believe in complete bullshit like this, ... what hope is there for civilization?
So I thought I should post something today. And I remembered I'd wanted to post something a week back but never got around to it. What was it? I remembered.
So I went to the gym after work and in the change room the TV was playing CNN. A bunch of talking heads were discussing Trump's reaction to Robert Mueller's recent press conference wherein "Saint Robert Mueller of WMD Lies" told everybody that he never exonerated Donald Trump. There was Russian meddling, and Trump did try to obstruct Mueller's investigation of it. (Mueller explained that he's not allowed to charge a sitting president with anything, so he couldn't just accuse him of obstruction because that would be unfair. It would be unfair because the accusation would just sit there and, not being a legal "charge" Trump would be unable to challenge it in court and thereby clear his name. It would be unfair to do that to Trump. And Mueller is a fair, principled, straight-shooter. So he didn't accuse Trump of obstruction in the report. He just did it at the press conference.)
Now, Trump being Trump, when he'd first heard about the Mueller investigation it's reported that he said that he was "fucked" and that it would be the end of his presidency. This sounds plausible because Trump knows he's a con-man with a lot of criminal deals in his past. But Mueller was only investigating Trump's collusion with Russia. He wasn't looking into Trump's business dealings. And since (as MUELLER CONCLUDED) Trump hadn't colluded with Russia, the main focus of the subsequent report was that there was "no collusion," and that this, combined with Mueller's lack of investigation into Trump's corrupt business dealings, it looked to Trump as if he'd escaped unscathed.
Relieved, and desiring to look magnanimous, Trump pronounced Mueller an honourable man and said that the process had been fair and he was quite happy.
But, in the early days of the investigation, Trump made noises about trying to stop it. He asked people around him if there was some way that he could fire people or what-not. Repeatedly, he was told "no." What I'm trying to get at here is that there's smoke that looks like it came from a fire called "obstruction." But it's not as clear as that.
Anyhow, to bring to an end this ancient piece of writing that I started a long time ago, suffice to say that Mueller identified moments during his investigation when Trump appeared to be trying to obstruct it. Some Russiagate partisans have twisted things to make it seem like Trump's alleged obstruction is the reason for Mueller's being unable to indict any US citizens for collusion. But this is just not so. Here's an article about where Trump's actions could be construed as obstruction. None of them show Trump successfully blocking Mueller from investigating anything to do with collusion. (Other than an attempt to lie about the meeting with Russian nationals at Trump Tower, which Mueller independently concluded was a nothing-burger.) As I said at the top of this post, Trump knows that he's crooked and so he's justifiably scared of investigations. He's also a moron in many ways who doesn't know how to keep his mouth shut (or his dick in his pants or his hands to himself).
But as Mueller concluded: NOTHING points to any conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Putin's Kremlin to steal the election from Hillary Clinton. Therefore, in that regard, Trump is NOT a "traitor." He is NOT a "Kremlin puppet." He is NOT a "Russian asset." This whole thing has been an exercise in the Democratic National Council to use anti-Russian xenophobia to distract US-Americans from the reality that the neo-liberal "Washington Consensus" is massively unpopular with the people of the United States and that is the reason why Trump squeaked out an Electoral College victory against the "Washington Consensus" candidate Hillary "Bat-Shit-Crazy" Clinton.
The thing is, all of this stupid nonsense from the dearly departed Russiagate bullshit scandal which occupied over two years of breathless coverage, pushing more important topics ["more important" in many ways but not the least being that they were REAL as opposed to imaginary] out of the news-cycle, never stopped being stupid nonsense. The reporting on this particular spat between Trump and Mueller as I saw it on the tv-screens at the gym (almost the WHOLE TIME that I was there) was a microcosm of the whole abomination.
Trump's idiocy itself was being characterized as calculated lying. Mueller's dodgy behaviour was portrayed as the height of probity. The dispute over obstruction of justice was being used to insert credibility into the bullshit charges of collusion and "Russian meddling." And the end result of the entire farce was to drive Russiagate partisans deeper into their asylum of hysteria and delusion; to further convince Trump's blinkered supporters that he was, indeed, the victim of a "witch-hunt" conducted by the FAKE NEWS media and the corrupt Democrats; and to further shred the credibility of the mainstream news media.
And I wish I didn't have to write about that crapola. But so many otherwise intelligent people bought into that total drivel and I think it's symptomatic of the reasons why our species is doomed. If intelligent people can be made (through partisan derangement, gullibility, self-delusion) to believe in complete bullshit like this, ... what hope is there for civilization?
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