* Seriously – when did Vlad Putin become “the worst man in the world?”
Didn’t Barack Obama once boast that he would meet with any foreign leader, anywhere, with no preset conditions?
Didn’t the Democrats chastise President Reagan for calling the Soviet Union an evil empire? (And deny that the Soviets were any “worse” than the US from a realpolitik perspective)?
* The war between the Deep State and Trump is untenable now. Something has to give.
* I haven’t been following. But on the teevee this morning, CBS News’ reporterettes were casting their lot squarely in the “we’e overdue for a coup against Trump” bin.
* It was fine.
Despite all the fainting couches, it was something that needed to happen and it was about as successful as one would imagine- lots of vague promises of future cooperation where interests overlap and nothing where they don’t.
President Trump is right to call Russia a competitor. That’s where we are, and we should be okay with that; instead we are being pushed into re-declaring her the enemy and hoping for what? A cold war redux? A hot war, to switch things up this time?
Putin is not a good guy. He’s not even a very good autocrat. By those standards he’s pretty lousy, in charge of a lousy mess of a country. But its a lousy mess with natural resources and a stockpile of weapons with the capability of bloodying our noses and put a spanner in the works. Those are the facts on the ground. It’s a lot more sensible to start over with that in mind than to continue to antagonize the situation in silly ways.
* People shouldn’t comment unless they actually watch the whole press conference. I did and it was pretty damn bland. Putin said some stuff, Trump said some stuff, but it was basically all generalities. If Trump and Putin had been in a screaming match that devolved into a fist fight I’d still expect the press conference to have looked like it did. People are reading WAY too much into it.
* The left’s criticism, if I’m understanding it correctly, is that Trump didn’t publicly call Putin/Russia, in so many words, liars and cheats. Why do they think that’s the best or most productive way to handle this? Because to the American left insults, bullying and inflammatory language as negotiating tactics are not only appropriate, they’re practically required! The left has all the power in this country: they control the media, the academy, the courts and to a large extent the corporations, so they know that they don’t have to concede anything to their enemies, whom they can and do destroy with ease. In fact, “negotiating tactic” isn’t the right term: the left doesn’t negotiate; they declare.
But Putin isn’t some hapless college kid or police officer accused of “racism” or “sexual harassment.” He’s the president of a large sovereign nation with a vast nuclear arsenal. We use “diplomatic” as a synonym for “polite” for a reason: in this world, you have to treat powerful people with respect.
* Russians hacked Felonia Van Pantsuit’s* server, which exposed the Dems for the vile clods they are. And posted some silly Faceberg** ads. There’s your Russian “collusion”.
Impact on election results: Zero.
Hacking, and spying, is what governments do, and as much as they can get away with.
REALLY SCARY? A large percentage, approaching a majority, of Dems actually think the Russkis used their superhuman 4D hacking skills to diddle with the Diebold machines to tip the election. Good grief.
BTW – Where is that confounded server?
* TREASON is the new battle cry of the “resistance.” The “deep state” liberals, leftists, and Democrats have taken to Twitter (“Trending Twitter” the new determinate for what should happen in the world) to brand the Trump-Putin Summit as “The Treason Summit” and hundreds, if not thousands, of useful idiots are calling the meeting TREASON.
* You may not like Putin. He may not be very likable. He is, however, a serious and formidable man and he is the best ruler Russia has had in over a century. I have more respect for him than I have had for any President since at least Kennedy we have had, at least until Trump.
* The high proportion of Jews who, operating out of Harvard, designed and oversaw the looting of the Russian economy; the high proportion of the resulting oligarchs who were Russian Jews; the number of American Jews who got rich off this scam and later tried to cover it up is enough to turn anyone into an anti-Semite. That Putin failed to succumb to the temptation of exploiting these facts, which almost every Russian knew, but in fact reversed some of the anti-Semitism that had flourished under Gorbachev, is a further testimony to the man’s fundamental moral integrity. I’d trust him a lot more than any of the Clintons, Brennans, Crappers, Muellers, neocons, MSM bimbettes and fancy boys etc., who are so busily slurring him and Trump.
* Trump showed strength by fighting back against his biggest enemy, the deep state. Trump demonstrated that he does not fear the FBI, DIA and DOJ. It took a lot of courage to dismiss the “meddling” narrative generated by powerful US intelligence operatives who have targeted Trump. Most politicians would have avoided meeting with Putin until Mueller finished his “investigation” and they certainly would not have the strength to reject the conclusions of the FBI, CIA and DOJ while the investigations continue.
I have no reason to doubt the allegations that a dozen Russian intelligence officers meddled in the U.S. elections of 2016, but this was equivalent of a fraternity prank compared to America’s longstanding efforts to intervene in Russian politics.
The United States supported the 2014 Maidan uprising in Ukraine and the overthrow of the Yanukovych government in the hope of repeating the exercise in Moscow sometime later. Then-Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland pulled whatever strings America had to replace the feckless and corrupt Victor Yanukovych with a government hostile to the Kremlin. She didn’t say it in so many words, but she hoped the Ukraine coup would lead to the overthrow of Vladimir Putin. Evidently Nuland and her boss, Hillary Clinton, thought that the Ukraine coup would deprive Russia of its Black Sea naval base in Crimea, and did not anticipate that Russia simply would annex an old Russian province that belonged to Ukraine by historical accident.
…American efforts to promote a democratic opposition to Putin have failed miserably, and as John Lloyd wrote recently at Reuters, the Russian president remains genuinely popular. This remains a source of perpetual frustration for the neoconservatives, who cannot fathom why dictatorships still exist. Russia is a brutal country that always has been governed by brutal men.
* Washington is going to unite to vomit Trump out of their system. He’s indigestible to them. That means the United States may very well experience the kind of craziness France underwent in the late ’50s and early ’60s. Units of the US military and law enforcement may not accept Trump’s removal from office. That may be what’s going on this time next year.
* BAP: By meeting to talk to Putin and lay ground for peace Trump BETRAYED the Real America (i.e., the 80% of the USA govt beholden to China, Saudi Arabia, various petty ethnic resentments, oligarchs, spooks and NGO’s who stand to lose status, power, influence, deals).
* The left has become psychopathic. I can no longer reveal my political beliefs in my community because I fear violence towards me/my dogs/my property. And, most of the violent people (or people who spew violent ideas or are turned-on by violence) are baby-boomer suburban women and men…privileged white people! I can’t wait to get out of this state ( a few more years) and live in a Red State where I can finally speak to people who are open-minded. It is mind-blowing that Progressives are now the unpredictable, violent, haters….but, they have shown their true colors these last 2 months.
* I have a theory about the West’s demonization of Putin. It wasn’t for any of the stated reasons: Crimea, his treatment of journos, Ukraine. It was for one reason and one reason only. Russia’s anti-LGBTQ propaganda law passed in 2013. And, just as crucially, the connection made there between the LGBTQ and pedophilia. That was a deal breaker for the West and the Deep State. If you know the people who tend to work in government, a hugely disproportionate number of them are gay. They simply can’t let this go. Imagine WW3 starting because of a gay Deep State conspiracy to fabricate a completely insane conflict with a nuclear power.
* Trump knows what he’s up against, knows that Putin is on his side more than his own Deep State is, and knows he’ll need all the allies he can get.
Is that why he took this Summit, and met for 2 hours alone with Putin, with no aides present, allegedly ‘without precedent’?
I wonder if he used an interpreter from his own side, or from the Russian side (or how good is Putin’s English)?
Is the volume of screeching in part because they’re really worried what Trump learned in those 2 hours?
Will they feel they’ve got to move before Trump does?
* I was interviewed by Susan Stamberg of NPR’s “All Things Considered” decades ago as a result of a letter I wrote them about their political bias. When a portion of the interview was aired, Stamberg had rerecorded her questions so that many of my responses were not to the questions she had asked, but to different ones that cast me in a different light. She had become quite heated during our exchange and I sounded heated in response, but she rerecorded herself so that she sounded calm and only I was heated. Finally, at one point she acknowledged that while everyone who worked at NPR was liberal, it was the liberalism of open-mindedness and willingness to give alternative views a respectful hearing. She evidently thought better of this concession and removed it from the aired version.
A firsthand lesson in the duplicity of the media.
* Steve Sailer: “I was interviewed once for about an hour by NBC News as a conservative film critic. They spliced about 30 seconds from me in with about 90 seconds from George Clooney, which made it look like I was arguing with Clooney, who is one of the all-time great talk show guests. Not surprisingly, I lost that debate with Clooney I didn’t know I was having.”
* It is obvious that Trump cut a deal with the military either during or even before he started campaigning. He allied with the Pentagon to tackle the CIA, FBI and others. His enemies aren’t getting a coup from the military. They won’t be getting help from the Mossad either, notice Trump is also very friendly with Israel.
