Monday, December 10, 2018

Monday Reading


As always, please go to the links for the full articles/ op eds.

Max Bergmann and Sam Berger lay out the signs that the Special Counsel has the Russian collusion goods on Putin puppet Donald "Rump" Trump and his crime family, and conclude:
In the face of what Mueller has revealed, there is little question where this is going. Mueller may still be only showing us part of his hand, but it’s a damn good hand. He has signalled to us he’s found collusion. He has shown us that the president is compromised. He has told us that he has gathered information important to his investigation about contacts with people in the Trump Organization, the campaign, the transition, and even the White House. That’s everyone Trump has been connected with since he started running. And given all the redacted information in his filings and all that he’s been told by cooperating witnesses, we can be confident that Mueller will show us even more. 
Mueller is coming. And he is clearly coming for Trump. Not simply for obstructing justice but for conspiring with a hostile foreign power to win an election. This is a scandal unlike any America has ever seen.
Center- right WaPo columnist Jackson Diehl on the smug, smirking Secretary of State Mike "Pompous" Pompeo, another of Rump's "best people":
Mike Pompeo was supposed to rescue the State Department from its disastrous start in the Trump presidency. When he first turned up at Foggy Bottom on May 1, he promised to staff up a badly depleted bureaucracy, listen to its views and reinvigorate U.S. diplomacy after a year of dysfunction. State, he said, would get “back our swagger.” 
Now, after a month that has seen the secretary offer smiles and excuses to Saudi Arabia’s murderous Mohammed bin Salman, trash Congress for “caterwauling” and inspire a rare revolt by Senate Republicans, it’s time to offer a verdict: Pompeo has managed to worsen the State Department’s already abysmal standing with every significant constituency. Legislators, major allies, the media, career staff, even North Korea are alienated. The only satisfied customer may be President Trump — and even he has grounds for grievance.
Winning!

This "conspiracy theorist" is going down hard, but meanwhile the lunatic's not going to stop digging that hole deeper in the process:
The conservative writer and conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi filed a lawsuit on Sunday accusing special counsel Robert Mueller of blackmailing him to lie about President Donald Trump in the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election. 
The suit, which seeks $350 million in actual and punitive damages in U.S. District Court in Washington, was filed six days after Corsi entered a formal complaint with the Justice Department alleging prosecutorial misconduct by Mueller. 
Corsi, 72, the former Washington bureau chief of the conspiracy website InfoWars, accuses Mueller's office of having illegally leaked secret information from the grand jury investigating Russian election interference. [snip] 
And it accuses the FBI, the CIA and the National Security Agency — all of whom are named as co-respondents — of having placed Corsi under illegal surveillance "at the direction of Mueller and his partisan Democrat, leftist, and ethically and legally conflicted prosecutorial staff."
The goal, the suit alleges, was to bring about a "'legal coup d'etat,' negating the will of the American voters who elected Donald J. Trump on November 6, 2016." 
What reputable attorney would file such a specious suit... oh, it's Larry Klayman.  Never mind.

At the United Nations climate summit in Poland, the United States stood shoulder- to- shoulder with the Western democrac... just kidding:
The United Nations climate summit in Poland stalled over the weekend as the U.S. joined Russia, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait in declining to "welcome" a landmark study on worldwide climate change. 
All four oil-producing nations are calling for the report to be "noted" rather than "welcomed," a semantic difference that the State Department said draws a line between a U.S. acknowledgement and a full-out endorsement, The Associated Press reported. 
"The United States was willing to note the report and express appreciation to the scientists who developed it, but not to welcome it, as that would denote endorsement of the report,” the State Department said in a statement, according to the AP.
Even warnings by mega- investors failed to penetrate the self- interest and ignorance:
Global investors managing $32tn issued a stark warning to governments at the UN climate summit on Monday, demanding urgent cuts in carbon emissions and the phasing out of all coal burning. Without these, the world faces a financial crash several times worse than the 2008 crisis, they said. 
The investors include some of the world’s biggest pension funds, insurers and asset managers and marks the largest such intervention to date. They say fossil fuel subsidies must end and substantial taxes on carbon be introduced.
We conclude as always with the recommendation that you go over to Infidel 753's link round- up for a fuller spectrum of topics of interest.  Make it your next stop.