Spooks gone wild, the unprecedented US/UK conspiracy to destroy a presidency

“I never would have agreed to the formulation of the Central Intelligence Agency back in forty-seven, if I had known it would become the American Gestapo.”― President Harry Truman

“Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you,” – Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer

As mostly but not exclusively Democrats clutch their pearls and head for the fainting couches over the revoking of ex-CIA Director John Brennan’s security clearance, it becomes more evident every day that all the ex-spooks should have their security clearance revoked and reinstated on a need-to-know basis.  This courtesy perk was never meant to enhance the monetary benefits of ex-CIA directors as they become politically motivated cable news commentators hell-bent on destroying an elected president. 

There are inherent dangers posed by allowing the availability of America’s most guarded secrets to political hacks that have a proven record of lying under oath, colluding with foreign intelligence to overthrow an elected president and tawdry history of dirty tricks, illegal espionage against the United States Senate as well as illegal spying on American citizens.  One must turn a wary eye toward any retired or active spook who would defend the spooks gone wild who conspired with British Intelligence to throw the American election and enthrone their preordained presidential candidate.  What insanity has overtaken America? 

There is incontrovertible evidence that those in the highest echelons of the FBI, CIA, State Department and Executive Branch of the American government under the Obama Administration presented unproven, unsubstantiated “evidence” of Russian collusion before the FISA court in order to obtain search warrants to entrap members of Donald Trump’s campaign and destroy Trump’s run for the Presidency.   In the event that their plot to destroy the presidency of Trump failed they devised a secret “insurance policy” as their back-up.  From Sharyl Attkisson:

Excerpt:

What would the intelligence community's 'insurance policy' against Trump look like?

  

Let’s begin in the realm of the fanciful.  Assume, for the sake of argument, that powerful, connected people in the intelligence community and in politics worried that a wildcard Trump presidency, unlike another Clinton or Bush, might expose a decade-plus of questionable practices. Disrupt long-established money channels. Reveal secret machinations that could arguably land some people in prison.

What exactly might an “insurance policy” against Donald Trump look like?

He would have to be marginalized at every turn. Strategies would encompass politics, the courts, opposition research and the media. He’d have to become mired in lawsuits, distracted by allegations, riddled with calls for impeachment, hounded by investigations. His election must be portrayed as the illegitimate result of a criminal or un-American conspiracy.

To accomplish this, bad actors in the intel community could step up use of surveillance tools as a weapon to look for dirt on Trump before his inauguration. They could rely on dubious political opposition research to secretly argue for wiretaps, plant one or more spies in the Trump campaign, then leak to the press a mix of true and false stories to create a sense of chaos.

Once Trump is in office, a good insurance policy would call for neutralizing the advisers seen as most threatening, including his attorney general. The reigning FBI director could privately send the implicit message that as long as Trump minds his own business, he won’t be named as a target…

All would be well unless the president removes the FBI director. Then, a rider on the insurance policy would kick in. After months of assuring Trump he’s not under investigation, he must now become a focus to keep him away from the Justice Department and the FBI; once an investigation opens, all of Trump’s attempts to affect policy or to dig into allegations against the intelligence community could be portrayed as obstruction of justice.

How to open an investigation after all these months? Appoint a special counsel. (Easy to get the right one, with Trump’s attorney general out of the way.)…  The chosen special counsel should be an insider with his own legacy to protect. Anti-Trump FBI officials who secretly vowed to “stop” Trump could be assigned to the investigation.

As crazy as it all sounds, it becomes slightly more plausible when we examine the record and find self-described conspiracies to develop “insurance policies.”  On Aug. 15, 2016, after FBI counterespionage chief Peter Strzok and his FBI girlfriend Lisa Page met with Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe, Strzok texted Page that they couldn’t take the risk of Trump getting elected without having “an insurance policy” in place.

Another figure, Benjamin Wittes, chose the same phrase. In October 2016, in his Lawfare blog, Wittes wrote: “What if Trump wins? We need an insurance policy against the unthinkable: Donald Trump’s actually winning the Presidency.”

As it happens, Wittes has acknowledged being a good friend of fired FBI Director James Comey... Wittes spoke to a New York Times reporter about Comey's interactions with President Trump, right after Robert Mueller's appointment as special counsel…  In his 2016 blog post, Wittes wrote that his vision of an “insurance policy” against Trump would rely on a “Coalition of All Democratic Forces” to challenge and obstruct Trump, using the courts as a “tool” and Congress as “a partner or tool…”

If there really were an insurance policy against Trump, it might include having ex-intel officials getting hired at national news outlets where they’d monitor and influence news organizations, and be invited to give daily spin on controversies surrounding their own actions.

Figures such as former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former Comey aide Josh Campbell and others could get hired by CNN; former CIA Director John Brennan and ex-Mueller/Comey aide Chuck Rosenberg could get hired by NBC and MSNBC.

President Trump vowed to drain the swamp when he was elected president.  I guess when you drain the swamp, the swamp creatures end up flopping and snapping on the shore lashing out for one last gasp of the putrid, rancid waters they rely on to survive.  These despicable swamp creatures have been navigating the polluted waters of Washington and London for a long time.  From LaRouche pub:

Excerpt:

Fish Stinks from the Head Down: An Update on the Mueller Inquisition

Aug. 9—The question to be answered here is, to which “head” do we refer, when citing this ancient cross-cultural metaphor in our headline? We have insisted, since we began covering the continuing regime change operation in the United States, that the “head” is the Anglo-Dutch imperial system, whose capital is the City of London and whose leading colonial administrators here in the United States, were led most recently by Barack Obama and those he chose to run his intelligence agencies: John Brennan, James Comey, and James Clapper.

The torso associated with this “head” here in the United States includes the establishment wing of the Republican Party and the neo-conservatives, who, through such institutions as the American Enterprise Institute and the Koch Brothers, are fonts of British geopolitical schemes. The Anglo-Dutch Empire is the entity which has dedicated its intelligence agencies, its controlled media, its think tanks and foundations, Hollywood and all of its other institutions engaged in manipulating mass popular opinion, and its bought-and-paid-for Senators and Congressmen, to removing Donald Trump from the Presidency, by whatever means necessary.

Trump has completely and repeatedly enraged them by laughing off their power and taking his case directly to the people, ridiculing these “elites” publicly in front of mass audiences, and by threatening to produce a world in which China, Russia, the United States, and similar rational populations fully develop the economies of the world.

According to reliable reporting, the President is also engaged in serious discussions with Vladimir Putin about eliminating nuclear weapons, while maintaining the technological capacities of both Russia and the United States. This is a policy… which the British view as a mortal threat to the financial containment, regime change, and information warfare operations by which they maintain their power.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller is simply the designated amoral legal assassin for this imperial entity, the blunt instrument by which Donald Trump is to be delivered for impeachment, if all goes as planned, at the conclusion of the 2018 U.S. midterm elections.

Trump has been so mercilessly targeted because he threatens to end the decades-long reign of terror, poverty, and endless war emanating from the deliberate destruction of Franklin Roosevelt’s Bretton Woods system in August 1971, and the founding of the new speculative Anglo-Dutch Empire on its ruins…

The physical hollowing out of the United States economy, the outsourcing of our productive economy to China, Mexico, and other countries whose economies we attempted to freeze in cheap labor manufacturing, raw materials extraction, or worse—all of these horrors flow from the system which Donald Trump now threatens to overthrow…

To put a fine point on how public relations bilge conceals and confuses, hiding the actual essence of people and institutions from those without the time to study them—in July 2018, the supposedly “right wing” and “pro-business” American Enterprise Institute and John Podesta’s “left wing” “cradle of the Resistance,” Center for American Progress, merged programs to unite against a common target—the “authoritarian populism” they ascribe to President Donald Trump…

Happily, new and explosive revelations in the last few weeks about the British and American actors in this coup, have brought us ever closer to exposing the “head” here, and beginning wholesale dismantlement.

These include the revelation that Christopher Steele, the MI6 author of the anti-Trump dirty information warfare dossier financed by Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee, and a major long-term asset of the Empire, was working as a human source for the FBI as of February 2016, if not earlier, well before the launch of the “official” FBI counterintelligence investigation of the Trump Campaign in late July 2016, and that Steele was in a back channel relationship with the number four official at the U.S. Department of Justice, Bruce Ohr, long after Steele was fired by the FBI in late October 2016, for his leaks to the news media.

The Steele/Ohr relationship lasted through May 2017 or later, according to documents recently obtained by Congress. After Donald Trump’s election, Steele’s work was funded, to the tune of $50 million, by George Soros, and by Tom Steyer and other Silicon Valley billionaires. These funders were seeking the President’s impeachment. Christopher Steele and his British masters wanted Trump’s impeachment also, but they had two motives.

Their other motive was to mobilize U.S. public opinion to support the ongoing British destabilization and regime change operation against Vladimir Putin, in which Steele had been a major and continuous player since at least 2006.  These new revelations, and others, show that, by no later than late 2015, British intelligence was operating against the Trump campaign, feeding information to a task force convened by John Brennan at the CIA, and to Victoria Nuland and Jonathan Winer at the Department of State.

Peter Strzok, the now notorious and biased lead FBI case agent on Russiagate, was the FBI’s liaison to John Brennan, generally, and to John Brennan’s anti-Trump task force specifically. John Brennan, of course, didn’t blow his nose without reporting it to President Barack Obama…

 To put what I just told you in boldface: A foreign government (the British), conducted entrapment operations on U.S. persons associated with an American presidential candidate (Donald Trump), on foreign soil (Great Britain), in coordination with the sitting President of the United States (Barack Obama) and his intelligence agencies, in order to fabricate a pretext for an FBI investigation, in which the target (Donald Trump) could be effectively defamed in the U.S. media as a Russian puppet, to wit, as implicitly engaged in treason against the United States…

Given what we now know about Steele, and the dodgy, completely fake British intelligence dossier used to conduct a new British insurrection against the United States, why should the President tolerate the sanctions imposed by his State Department and manufactured by the same group of people who have tried to destroy him?

It is really now time to take up LaRouche PAC’s call, Mr. President: End the Special Relationship and Declassify All British-Spawned Documents Concerning Your 2016 Campaign. Fish really does stink from the head down.

Ahh, the best laid plans of mice and men.  President Trump has really kicked up a shit storm in revoking CIA spook John Brennan’s security clearance.  How is Brennan supposed to further the attacks on President Trump over at Trump-hating CNN if he doesn’t have access to the latest information on how close Trump is to exposing the treasonous cabal that seeks to destroy him? 

CNN and MSNBC as well as the other CIA trumpets are bleating out the meme that Brennan’s free speech rights are being violated because his ability to sell his wares is severely affected by his loss of security clearance.  As if his security clearance is an inalienable right.  Well Brennan has more to worry about than loss of his security clearance.  From Ray McGovern at Lew Rockwell:

Excerpt:

Trump Strikes Back at ‘Ringleader’ Brennan

There’s more than meets the eye to President Donald Trump’s decision to revoke the security clearances that ex-CIA Director John Brennan enjoyed as a courtesy customarily afforded former directors. The President’s move is the second major sign that Brennan is about to be hoisted on his own petard. It is one embroidered with rhetoric charging Trump with treason and, far more important, with documents now in the hands of congressional investigators showing Brennan’s ringleader role in the so-far unsuccessful attempts to derail Trump both before and after the 2016 election.

Brennan will fight hard to avoid being put on trial but will need united support from his Deep State co-conspirators–a dubious proposition. One of Brennan’s major concerns at this point has to be whether the “honor-among-thieves” ethos will prevail, or whether some or all of his former partners in crime will latch onto the opportunity to “confess” to investigators: “Brennan made me do it.”

Well before Monday night, when Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani let a small bomb drop on Brennan, there was strong evidence that Brennan had been quarterbacking illegal operations against Trump.  Giuliani added fuel to the fire when he told Sean Hannity of Fox news:

“I’m going to tell you who orchestrated, who was the quarterback for all this. … The guy running it is Brennan, and he should be in front of a grand jury.  Brennan took … a dossier that, unless he’s the biggest idiot intelligence agent that ever lived … it’s false; you can look at it and laugh at it. And he peddled it to [then Senate Majority Leader] Harry Reid, and that led to the request for the investigation. So you take a false dossier, get senators involved, and you get a couple of Republican senators, and they demand an investigation—a totally phony investigation.”

The Fix Brennan Finds Himself In

After eight years of enjoying President Barack Obama’s solid support and defense to do pretty much anything he chose—including hacking into the computers of the Senate Intelligence Committee—Brennan now lacks what, here in Washington, we refer to as a “Rabbi” with strong incentive to advance and protect you… 

So, unlike his predecessors, most of whom also left under a dark cloud, Brennan is bereft of anyone to protect him. He lacks even a PR person to help him avoid holding himself up to ridicule—and now retaliation—for unprecedentedly hostile tweets and other gaffes. Brennan’s mentor, ex-CIA Director George Tenet, for example, had powerful Rabbis in President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, as well as a bizarrely empathetic establishment media, when Tenet quit in disgrace 2004.

The main question now is whether the chairs of the House oversight committees will chose to face down the Deep State. They almost never do, and the smart money says that, if they do, they will lose—largely because of the virtually total support of the establishment media for the Deep State. This often takes bizarre forms. The title of a recent column by Washington Post “liberal” commentator Eugene Robinson speaks volumes: “God Bless the Deep State…”

Unfortunately Ray McGovern is probably right, if the House Oversight Committee does take on the Deep State they will probably lose because the media and our bought and paid for congress completely supports the Deep State Swamp.  They have become wealthy beyond imagination by doing so.  If Brennan goes down it would be the undoing of all of them and they know it.  From The American Conservative:

Excerpt:

John Brennan, Melting Down and Covering Up

He accuses Trump of treason. But what's his bluster really about?

It isn’t a pretty face, but one scarred from a dark past, repackaged now by the frenzy of “resistance.” Accusing Donald Trump recklessly, implying he knows more than he lets on, promising redemption: John Brennan is the face of American politics in 2018.

But before all that, Brennan lived in a hole about as far down into the deep state as one can dwell while still having eyes that work in the sunlight. He was director of the Central Intelligence Agency. He was Obama’s counterterrorism advisor, helping the president decide who to kill every week, including American citizens.

He spent 25 years at the CIA, and helped shape the violent policies of the post-9/11 Bush era. He was a fan of torture and extrajudicial killing to the point that a 2012 profile of him was entitled, “The Seven Deadly Sins of John Brennan...”

On Twitter this week, Brennan cartoonishly declaimed, “Donald Trump’s press conference performance in Helsinki rises to and exceeds the threshold of high crimes and misdemeanors. It was nothing short of treasonous. Not only were Trump’s comments imbecilic, he is wholly in the pocket of Putin.”

Because it is 2018, Brennan was never asked to explain exactly how a press conference exceeds the threshold of high crimes and misdemeanors the Constitution sets for impeachment, nor was he asked to lay a few cards on the table showing what Putin has on Trump. No, Brennan is a man of his times, all bluster and noise, knowing that so long as he says what a significant part of the country apparently believes—that the president of the United States is under the control of the Kremlin—he will never be challenged…

Brennan’s bleating has the interesting side effect of directing attention away from who was watching the front door as the Russians walked in to cause what one MSNBC analyst described as a mix of Pearl Harbor and Kristallnacht. During the 2016 election, Brennan was head of the CIA.

His evil twin, James Clapper, who also coughs up Trump attacks for nickels these days, was director of national intelligence. James Comey headed the FBI, following Robert Mueller into the job. Yet the noise from that crowd has become so loud as to drown out any questions about where they were when they had the duty to stop the Russians in the first place…

Only after Clinton lost did it become necessary to create a crisis that might yet be inflated (it wasn’t just the Russians, as originally thought, it was Trump working with them) to justify impeachment. Absent that need, Brennan would have disappeared alongside other former CIA directors into academia or the lucrative consulting industry. Instead he’s a public figure with a big mouth because he has to be. That mouth has to cover his ass.

Brennan is part of the whole-of-government effort to overturn the election… On cue, leaks poured out implying the Trump campaign worked with the Russian government. It is now a rare day when the top stories are not apocalyptic, rocketed from Raw Story to the Huffington Post to the New York Times. Brennan, meanwhile, fans the media’s flames with a knowing wink that says “You wait and see. Soon it’s Mueller time.”

Yet despite all the hard evidence of treason that only Brennan and his supine journalists seem to see, everyone appears resigned to have a colluding Russian agent running the United States. You’d think it would be urgent to close this case. Instead, Brennan admonishes us to wait out an investigative process that’s been underway now through two administrations…

If Trump is under Russian influence, he is the most dangerous man in American history. So why isn’t Washington on fire? Why hasn’t Mueller indicted someone for treason? If this is Pearl Harbor, why is the investigation moving at the pace of a mortgage application? Why is everyone allowing a Russian asset placed in charge of the American nuclear arsenal to stay in power even one more minute?

Treason, traitor, coup, the empire striking back—those are just words, Third World stuff, clickbait, right? So the more pedestrian answer must then be correct. The lessons of Whitewater and Benghazi learned, maybe the point is not to build an atmosphere of crisis leading to something undemocratic, but just to have a perpetual investigation, tickled to life as needed politically.

Because, maybe, deep down, Brennan (Clapper, Hayden, Comey, and Mueller) really do know that this is all like flying saucers and cell phone cameras. At some point, the whole alien conspiracy meme fell apart because somehow when everyone had a camera with them 24/7/365, there were no more sightings and we had to admit that our fears had gotten the best of us. The threat was inside us all along. It is now, too.

So as the politicians and media go shrilly screaming clutching their pearls and heading for the fainting couches, desperately trying to drag the public along with them, deep inside they know the gig is up.  The Blue Wave the Democrats are desperately trying to convince America is coming will turn out to be a “wave goodbye”, adios, sayonara, Auf Wiedersehen.  The party of FDR and JFK is no more, what is left is a party of self-serving, egomaniacal war mongers.  Good Riddance.  And all it took was a brunch of half-rate spooks gone wild, in an unprecedented US/UK conspiracy to destroy a presidency.

By Patricia Baeten

Who do they serve? Congress rife with insider trading, lavish trips, lavish pensions, cushy jobs

As Republicans and Democrats try to woo the American voters to vote for their team, the American people are suffering from the devastating results of their past legislation.  Special interest written legislation enacted by their lackeys in congress has left ordinary Americans bankrupt, unemployed, ignorant and hopeless. 

It’s hard to fathom why they even woo the people when they don’t count their votes anyway.  As American taxpayers fund their lavish lifestyles, trips, health insurance, pension, vacations, retirement as well as that of their extended families, American citizens get austerity.   We’re called takers, lazy slackers looking for a handout by our congressional overlords.  

Through legislation they have cut Social Security payments to people with government pensions, such as teachers who work part-time in the private sector when they cannot afford to live on their salary.  Even though they pay into Social Security for years, lawmakers called them “double dippers”.    Union pensions have been cannibalized and they have been taxed for having “Cadillac” healthcare plans.  Food Stamps have been slashed, Medicare premiums have risen and cuts have been made to the Medicaid program.  There are work requirements for food stamps even though most people on food stamps already work but can’t afford to eat.  But what of congress, are they governed by the same standards?  From Fiscal Times:

Excerpt:

Here’s the true story of what we provide our elected representatives and how that compares to the real world.

Pay:  Members of Congress set their own, not unlike some state assemblies… the rank and file members now receive a tidy $174,000 salary, which is automatically adjusted each year based on changes in the employment cost index. The automatic pay increase was nixed in 2010, partly as a response to the uproar when Social Security payments were held stagnant.

If you’re a House or Senate leader, you get more.  The Speaker of the House gets $223,500, while both minority and majority leaders in the House and Senate take home $193,400.

To put that in perspective, the U.S. Census Bureau reports that just 5.1 million Americans earn more than $150,000 annually out of the nation’s 240.1 million workers. That means members of Congress earn more than 97 percent of the country.

Pensions: Back in 1984—the end of another great recession—furor over legislative pensions ushered in reform. Legislative exemptions from contributing to the Social Security system were eliminated and over-the-top pensions that would pay 50 percent of your highest salary after 20 years of service were replaced with a less-generous pension, plus Social Security.

Now, if you retire at age 55 with 30 years in Congress, you’ll get just 44 percent of your pay—roughly $76,560—versus 71.3 percent ($124,062) of pay under the old formula. Of course, now legislators also get Social Security payments, which can add another $20,000 or $30,000 annually to their retirement income, so they still come out ahead of the game.|

Congressional pensions also are adjusted for inflation. In private industry, where just one in every five workers has access to a traditional pension, payments are about half as generous as legislator’s pensions and retirees rarely get annual boosts to account for the rising cost of living…

More pensions: In addition to the traditional pension, members of Congress participate in the government’s Thrift Savings Plan. If legislators don’t want to save any of their own money, the government will still set aside 1 percent of their pay—that’s $1,740 annually—into the Thrift plan. If members do decide to contribute, Uncle Sam will match another 5 percent of pay for a total contribution from taxpayers amounting to 6 percent of total income, or $10,440. The closest thing that private industry has to the Thrift Savings Plan is your 401(k).

Health care: While about 15 percent of the population is without health insurance, members of Congress are all covered. Their plan is similar to the subsidized plans offered by big companies. In this case, the government pays about 70 percent of the cost of coverage, while legislators pick up the remaining 30 percent. In addition, they have access to dental insurance, vision care, health savings accounts, life and long-term care insurance—that’s similar to the cacophony of lucrative benefits offered by the best American companies.

Perks: There’s free parking, both at the office and at Washington, D.C.-area airports. You get a cheap membership to the house gym, subsidized daycare and access to legislative dining rooms that were once subsidized to the tune of $2 million annually, but are now supposed to be operating at cost, says Sepp…   And like most other executive fringe benefits, the bulk of the perks provided to members of Congress are tax free.

Travel: But the legislative perk to trump all others is travel, says Singer. Not only do you get to fly between D.C. and your home district on taxpayers through the “members representational allowance,” there are lots of ways you can globe-trot on somebody else’s dime. Join a committee, for example, and you can participate in fact-finding trips all over the globe.

Last year’s Congressional junket to talk about climate change in Copenhagen cost taxpayers $550,000, which included so-called “per diem” allowances for hotels and meals that worked out to $2,200 per person, per day.

Technically, legislators are supposed to return any per diem payments that they don’t need to spend, but a recent Wall Street Journal investigation found that rarely happens. One legislator quoted by the WSJ said he’d hesitate to travel so much if he thought he couldn’t just pocket the taxpayer money.

Members say their trips are all about business and fact finding, but they usually take their spouses, Singer says. And it’s tough to figure out just how much members are spending and whether American taxpayers are getting their money’s worth. That’s because international travel comes out of what Singer calls a “bottomless mystery account” operated by the Treasury…

The above is just a fraction of what congress get.  Now a Republican representative has been indicted for insider trading, I’m shocked.  I’m shocked that he was so overt about the insider trading, members of congress are involved in insider trading all the time with no ramifications.  Insider trading was enabled by a quietly passed law that exempted members of congress, their staff and family from laws against insider trading.  From NPR:

Excerpt:

How Congress Quietly Overhauled Its Insider-Trading Law

The legislative process on Capitol Hill is often slow and grinding. There are committee hearings, filibuster threats and hours of floor debate. But sometimes, when Congress really wants to get something done, it can move blindingly fast.  That's what happened when Congress moved to undo large parts of a popular law known as the STOCK Act last week.

A year ago, President Obama signed the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act into law at a celebratory ceremony attended by a bipartisan cast of lawmakers.  "I want to thank all the members of Congress who came together and worked to get this done," he said.

The law wouldn't just outlaw trading on nonpublic information by members of Congress, the executive branch and their staffs. It would greatly expand financial disclosures and make all of the data searchable so insider trading and conflicts of interest would be easier to detect.

But on Monday, when the president signed a bill reversing big pieces of the law, the emailed announcement was one sentence long. There was no fanfare last week either, when the Senate and then the House passed the bill in largely empty chambers using a fast-track procedure known as unanimous consent.

In the House, Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., shepherded the bill through. It was Friday afternoon at 12:52. Many members had already left for the weekend or were on their way out. The whole process took only 30 seconds. There was no debate.

Isn’t that the way it is, pass a bill reigning in unlawful behavior by politicians with lots of hoopla, backslapping, and self-congratulating only to revoke it in the dark like cockroaches.  So when we saw the recent indictment of GOP congressman Chris Collins for insider trading it merits looking at what he actually did that was so over-the-top, to get him in trouble. From Business Insider:

Excerpt:

Indicted Rep. Chris Collins shows why members of Congress should not trade stocks

Rep. Chris Collins, a prominent backer of President Donald Trump in Congress, has been indicted on allegations of insider trading, along with his son and his son's fiancée's father.

Collins is on the board of an Australian pharmaceutical company. The US Securities and Exchange Commission alleges that he tipped his son about a failed clinical trial and that the son and associates saved $750,000 by trading on the tip.   This is a really stupid thing to allegedly have done…

Anyway: Rep. Chris Collins, a New York Republican who gave President Donald Trump his first congressional endorsement, has been indicted on allegations of insider trading in a case with an extremely obvious, how-were-you-dumb-enough-to-try-this fact pattern.

Get a load of this

Here's what's laid out in complaints from the US Securities and Exchange Commission and the US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York (Collins has pleaded not guilty):

Collins sits on the board of Innate Immunotherapeutics, an Australian biopharmaceutical company in which he is also the largest shareholder.

On June 22, 2017, Collins learned that Innate's main drug had failed clinical trials, a grave outcome for Innate's financial condition.  Literally seconds after learning this news, Collins contacted his son, Cameron, who at the time owned 2% of Innate.

Over the following four days, Cameron Collins and several other associates of the Collinses proceeded to liquidate their positions in Innate before the public announcement of the drug failure on June 26, after which the stock fell 92%...

Innate is not an especially large company. As a result, per the SEC: "The sales by Cameron Collins, his girlfriend, and her parents, including Stephen Zarsky, made up more than 53% of the stock's trading volume [on June 23] and exceeded Innate's 15-day average trading volume by more than 1,454%..."

This leads me to a question.  Is Chris Collins an idiot?...  Was it because the trading wasn't on his own account and he thought the SEC wouldn't be able to draw a link between him and [checks notes] his son — even though Collins was already the focus of a congressional ethics investigation related to Innate?

Was it because he thought he and his son could just talk the FBI into the idea that the sales were unrelated to the clinical-trial news? Oops, now Collins and his associates have also been indicted on allegations they lied to the FBI…  

Collins' public defense against these charges has focused on a fact prosecutors do not dispute: Even as his associates were selling, he did not liquidate his own, much larger stake in Innate. That might seem like a tiny bit of prudence in a sea of recklessness — among other matters, Collins would have had to publicly disclose the dates and amounts of his sales under rules pertaining specifically to members of Congress.

But as the SEC complaint says, it's possible Collins didn't sell because he literally couldn't. Unlike his son, he had not completed paperwork to transfer his stock to the US, where one could trade it on the over-the-counter market. His stock was stuck in Australia, where trading of Innate on the Australian Securities Exchange had been halted — because of the impending announcement of the clinical-trial failure.

Open Secrets estimated, based on disclosure forms, that Collins' net worth was nearly $70 million as of 2015.

Is Chris Collins an anomaly?  Are other members of congress humble public servants there to ensure the overall well-being of the “people” they serve?  That question brings me to an article written by one of my fav’s Matt Taibbi at Rolling Stone about the dubious, lucrative trading of Senator Bob Corker, who ahem, is retiring this year.

Excerpt:

So Tennessee Senator Bob Corker is in trouble now, because he flip-flopped to vote for Donald Trump’s tax bill after a provision was included that reportedly helps him personally.  Color me not shocked. I spent most of this past summer investigating Corker, whose personal finances have been the subject of inquiry for years…

How do you increase your net worth so significantly while you’re working full-time as a Senator? That is not an easy story to explain.  According to his own disclosure forms, Corker in 2006 carried a series of huge loans.

Corker took office in January, 2007, during the last gasp of the Bush/Rove political juggernaut. The Iraq war had gone south and the Republicans had just been routed in midterms. The financial crisis was just around the corner. And nobody paid attention to the smooth-talking freshman Senator from Tennessee, who turned out to have some financial issues…

It wasn’t until Corker took office and filled out disclosure forms that his finances became public – sort of. Few in the media seem ever to have read the “liabilities” section of Corker’s first disclosure, where the former mayor and construction magnate listed a series of massive outstanding loans. At the low end, Corker appeared to owe a hair-raising $24.2 million. At the high end, $120.5 million.

He had been in debt to some of the nation’s biggest lenders – including somewhere between $12 million and $60 million in debt to GE Capital alone.   Corker had been a construction magnate in Tennessee before taking office, a sort of mini-Trump. Before he ran for office, he sold off his business to a local developer named Henry Luken…

Ten years before reporters would swarm over Trump for (among other things) raising fees at his Mar-a-Lago resorts before making a series of taxpayer-funded visits, Corker tested the limits of the moonlighting possibilities in the legislative branch, essentially becoming a full-time day-trader who did a little Senator-ing in his spare time.

In the first nine months of 2007, Corker made an incredible 1,200 trades, over four per day, including 332 over a two-day period… 

By 2014, when Corker sat on the Senate Banking Committee, a position that gave him regular access to prime information about the future direction of the markets, the Tennessee Senator still had his foot on the gas. He made 930 stock trades that year.

Of his colleagues on the committee, Rhode Island’s Jack Reed made 39 trades, Pennsylvania’s Patrick Toomey 26, and nobody else made any – meaning Corker made 93.5% of all trades made by the legislators most plugged-in to the country’s finances…

Corker’s activities didn’t go completely unnoticed. A few ethics groups and reporters cried foul over the years. He had to amend his Senate disclosures after the Wall Street Journal in 2015 found unreported income from “quick” trades in a Chattanooga company called CBL enterprises. As Fortune noted at the time, Corker went back and made “dozens” of amendments to earlier disclosures, to reveal about $3.8 million in previously unreported income.

Meanwhile, Bethany McLean of Yahoo! News later reported that Corker had invested in a Tennessee hedge fund that made profitable short bets against the housing market with Goldman Sachs… 

Until this week, Corker’s history has been scrutinized only occasionally, and most often because of the role he’s played in an unrelated controversy known colloquially as #Fanniegate.  

This monstrous dispute over the future of the “government sponsored entities” Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, in which Corker played a loud and conspicuous part, made him enemies among investors who are embittered over the unilateral seizure of the two companies’ profits six years ago, on August 17th, 2012. Corker supported that controversial and unprecedented move, known as the “revenue sweep…”

 When Corker took on Trump this fall – saying the White House was “an adult day care center” and that Trump’s behavior threatened “World War III” – he suddenly became a darling of sorts in the liberal media.  Now, to his critics, he’s a bad guy again, for reportedly doing what he’s always done, acting in his own financial interest while earning a paycheck as a U.S. Senator.

Corker is the norm in congress, they’re like pigs at the trough.  Corker is retiring after engorging himself on America’s largess.  And, he’s not alone.  So when congress critters announce their exit do they lay low and pull their snouts from the taxpayer trough?  No hardly.  From USA Today:

Excerpt:

These lame ducks still fly – on the taxpayer’s dime – often to faraway countries

WASHINGTON – Last September, Rep. Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania became the latest in a large cohort of members of Congress to announce his retirement.  About a month later, Dent, a seven-term Republican and former chairman of the House ethics committee, arrived in Italy on the first leg of a six-day, three-nation trip at taxpayer expense that included stops in Belgium and Luxembourg.

The cost to taxpayers for Dent’s trip: nearly $7,000.

His post-retirement announcement travel habits are hardly unique. At least 17 retiring members of Congress have gone on overseas trips after announcing they were not going to seek re-election, according to travel information included in the Congressional Record. All were on the taxpayer’s dime with a total cost of nearly $190,000.

There is nothing illegal about these trips, and all were signed off on by the chairman of the committee under whose authority the trip was taken. But they do raise the issue of how much benefit the constituents in these cases get when their representatives travel shortly before they leave office.

"The problem is many of these trips are really much more like paid vacations than fact-finding trips,” said Craig Holman, government affairs lobbyist for the good-government group Public Citizen.  “Then when you take a look at retiring members of Congress suddenly jetting around the globe, it really does have every appearance that they’re just in the last minute getting the most of what they can out of the perks of being a member of Congress,” Holman said….

Dent ended up resigning on May 8 of this year and in June began as a senior policy adviser at the international law firm DLA Piper. He also serves as a political commentator for CNN... Dent declined to comment for this story because, he said, he has an exclusivity agreement with CNN that prevents him from talking to other media.

Five retiring members traveled as members of congressional foreign affairs committees, including House committee chairman Rep. Ed Royce, R-Calif. and Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, as well as Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., and Reps. Darrell Issa, R-Calif. and Ted Poe, R-Texas…

In many cases, details of these taxpayer-financed trips by members of Congress are not generally available. And what is available in the Congressional Record can be hard to find.

So congressman Charlie Dent resigned on May 8^th as he segued into his new job as a policy adviser at the international law firm of DLA Piper as well as a political commentator for CNN.  How prevalent is this practice?  From The Atlantic:

Excerpt:

An Exodus From Congress Tests the Lure of Lobbying

There’s a wave of lawmakers fleeing Capitol Hill this year, but if recent history is a guide, many of them will put down roots in the D.C. swamp.  There’s a particular moment Representative Tom Rooney can see in his mind, when his fifth and final term in the House comes to an end and he leaves Washington, D.C., for the last time as a member of Congress.

He’ll drive south toward Georgia, crossing over into Florida north of Jacksonville.  He’ll pass that familiar sign, the blue one that says “Welcome to the Sunshine State,” when he reaches the border.  “I made it,” he’ll think to himself.

Every two years, retiring lawmakers like Rooney face a choice: Do they return home to their states and districts, or stay where the political action—and the money—is in Washington? The last several months have seen a rush to the Capitol exits like none other in more than a quarter century: Rooney, a Republican, is one of three dozen members of the House and Senate who aren’t running for reelection or another office this fall...

Some in this year’s class of retirees are more junior members who’ve grown disenchanted with national politics. Rooney, 47, is one of them: “The D.C. rat race has run its course for me,” he told me in a recent interview.

But if recent history is a guide, many of Rooney’s fellow congressional retirees won’t be leaving the Beltway at all…. But once their terms are up, a surprising number of these same politicians don’t return home. They stick around town, joining law firms, think tanks, and lobbying shops. On any given day, ex-lawmakers stalk the corridors of the Capitol complex, kibitzing with their old colleagues as they prod them for votes…

Ex-lawmakers can cash in on their policy expertise and friendships in the Capitol, earning two or three times their $174,000 base salary as a member of Congress…

Members point out that lobbying allows them to use the experience and issue expertise they’ve built over many years in Congress to continue to advocate for causes they believe in. But while that might attract ex-lawmakers to lobbying, it’s not what draws high-paying companies to them: They want the relationships.

The American people are not lazy slackers.  As a matter of fact Baby Boomers largely did everything that was expected of them.  They worked hard, saved, earned pensions, invested in 401K’s, raised their children and took care of their elderly parents.  Now that their well-earned twilight years have arrived, what do they have?  FromZero Hedge:

Excerpt:

"Their Wealth Has Vanished": Baby Boomers File For Bankruptcy In Droves

An alarming number of older Americans are being forced into bankruptcy, as the rate of people 65 and older who have filed has never been higher - at three times what it was in 1991, while the rate of bankruptcies among Americans age 65 and older has more than doubled, according to a new study by the The Bankruptcy Project…

The magnitude of growth in older Americans in bankruptcy is so large that the broader trend of an aging U.S. population can explain only a small portion of the effect. The median senior filing bankruptcy enters the system $17,390 in debt, vs. an average net worth of $250,000 for their non-bankrupt peers.

According to the study, a three-decade shift of financial risk from government and employers to individuals is at fault, as aging Americans are dealing with longer waits for full Social Security benefits, 401(k) plans replacing employer-provided pensions and more out-of-pocket spending on items such as health care.

“When the costs of aging are off-loaded onto a population that simply does not have access to adequate resources, something has to give,” the study says, “and older Americans turn to what little is left of the social safety net — bankruptcy court.”

“You can manage O.K. until there is a little stumble,” said Deborah Thorne, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Idaho and an author of the study. “It doesn’t even take a big thing…”  

The questionnaire asked filers what led them to seek bankruptcy protection. Much like the broader population, people 65 and older usually cited multiple factors. About three in five said unmanageable medical expenses played a role. A little more than two-thirds cited a drop in income. Nearly three-quarters put some blame on hounding by debt collectors…

Meanwhile, by 2013 the average Medicare beneficiary's out-of-pocket health care expenses ate up around 41% of the average Social Security payment, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Moreover, more people are entering their senior years in debt. For many, that means a mortgage - roughly 41% of senior debt in 2016, which is nearly double the 21% rate from 1989, according to the Urban Institute…

What isn't helping is that many older parents report that helping their children contributed to their bankruptcies. Seattle bankruptcy attorney Marc Stern says he's seen parents co-sign loans for $10,000 or $20,000 for their kids, only to find themselves on the hook when their offspring couldn't service the debt.

“When you are living on $2,000 a month and that includes Social Security — and you have rent and savings are minuscule — it is extremely difficult to recover from something like that,” he said.   Others parents had had co-signed their children’s student loans. “I never saw parents with student loans 20 or 30 years ago,” Mr. Stern said.

“It is not uncommon to see student loans of $100,000,” he added. “Then, you see parents who have guaranteed some of these loans. They are no longer working, and they have these student loans that are difficult if not impossible to pay or discharge in bankruptcy, and these are the kids’ loans.”

“They worked all of their lives, and did what they were supposed to do,” he said, “and through circumstances like a late-life divorce or a death of a spouse or having to raise grandkids, have put them in a situation where they are not able to make the bills.”

Every bit of the reasons Baby Boomers wealth has disappeared is the result of legislation written by special interests and enacted by their lackeys in congress.  The Joe Biden Bankruptcy protection for banks legislation made it impossible for student loans to be forgiven in bankruptcy.  Biden’s bankruptcy bill was an onerous thing that protected predatory banks from any losses regardless of their risky actions. 

Just who do they serve?  Baby Boomers wealth hasn’t disappeared, it has been transferred to the very top which includes members of congress.  Almost every member of congress is a millionaire.  They have pensions and savings plans regular people can’t even dream about.  Just who do they serve?  Answer, they serve themselves.

By Patricia Baeten

American Deep State’s impending imperial implosion, she’s come undone

A boss I once had told me a story.   He went to high school in the 1950’s when tough guys with duck tail haircuts wore engineer boots, jeans and had a pack of Lucky Strikes wrapped into their T-shirt sleeve.  My boss was a short guy but he was scrappy and he told me about when he picked a fight with this big guy, who didn’t want to fight.  Ed wanted to show how tough he was and wouldn’t take no for an answer and kept instigating attacks until the big guy finally decided to fight him.

Back in the 50’s the guy who won the fight was the guy that refused to “give.” So Ed started fist fighting with the big guy and the big guy beat the crap out of Ed, but Ed refused to “give.” The big guy finally got tired of using Ed’s face for a punching bag and “gave.”  Ed said he’d won, but his face told a different story.  Two black eyes, a broken nose, split lip and chipped tooth while the other guy was unscathed. 

Ed thought he had bragging rights because he didn’t “give”, but as an adult he now realized just how stupid that was.  That has been America’s foreign policy since the overthrow of the U.S. Government on December 12, 2000 when five of the most corrupt Supreme Court Justices ever to serve in America overturned the Presidential election and installed George W. Bush as President.  One of those Supreme Court Justices was Anthony Kennedy who is now retiring.  If ever there were a reason to revoke life-time appointments to the high court it was then.  We can lay the blame for the state of America’s impending Deep State imperial implosion at the door of those five corrupt Justices.

The foreign policy ushered in by George W. Bush and continued by Barack Obama of instigating undeclared wars across the globe to show how tough we are and then refuse to accept the obvious conclusion that we can’t win has left America trillions in debt, our infrastructure in shambles, a corrupt casino based Wall Street economy, a media owned and operated by billionaire tycoons and corrupt billionaire think tanks, while the American people suffer the effects.  According to the Economist:

 “From 1999 to 2010, the suicide rate among Americans aged 35 to 64 increased nearly 30 percent. The largest increases were among men in their fifties, with rates rising nearly 50 percent, and for women aged 60 to 64, with rates rising 60 percent.”

The “big guys” that don’t want to fight today are Russia and China, but they are now finding themselves having to fight an adversary already bloodied and beaten from previous lost fights that refuses to “give.”  From Russia Insider:

Excerpt:

US Military Superiority Is a Propaganda Myth. Russia's Forces Are Actually Far More Capable

When was the last time the US won a war?  Unlike their US counterparts, Russian weapons are designed to kill, not to make money and, second, Russians understand warfare because they understand what war really is.

The fact that the US is facing a profound crisis, possibly the worst one in its history, is accepted by most observers, except maybe the most delusional ones. Most Americans definitely know that…  

When speaking of this crisis, most people will mention the de-industrialization, the drop in real income, the lack of well-paid jobs, healthcare, crime, immigration, pollution, education, and a myriad of other contributing factors. But of all the aspects of the “American dream”, the single most resilient one has been the myth of the US military as “the finest fighting force in history”…

In this new book, Andrei Martyanov not only comprehensively debunks this myth, he explains step by step how this myth was created and why it is collapsing now…  First, he defines military power, then he explains where the myth of US military superiority came from and how the US rewriting of the history of WWII resulted in a complete misunderstanding, especially at the top political levels, of the nature of modern warfare. He then discusses the role ideology and the Cold War played in further exacerbating the detachment of US leaders from reality.

Finally, he demonstrates how a combination of delusional narcissism and outright corruption resulted in a US military capable of wasting truly phenomenal sums of money on “defense” while at the same time resulting in an actual force unable to win a war against anything but a weak and defenseless enemy… in the words of Martyanov:

Surely when America fought against a third-rate adversary it was possible to rain death from the skies, and then roll over its forces, if any remained by that time, with very little difficulty and casualties. That will work in the future too against that type of adversary—similar in size and flimsiness of Iraqi Forces circa 2003. But Ledeen’s Doctrine had one major flaw—one adult cannot continue to go around the sandbox constantly fighting children and pretend to be good at fighting adults.

The main problem for the US today is that there are very few of those third-rate adversaries left out there and that those who the US is trying to bring to submission now are either near-peer or even peer adversaries…  Still, one can live in an imaginary world only as long as reality does not come crashing in, be it in the form of criminally overpriced and useless weapon systems or in the form of painful military defeats…

In this book, Martyanov explains why, in spite of the absolutely catastrophic 1990s, the Russians succeeded in developing a modern and highly capable combat force in a record time…  There are two main reasons for this: first, unlike their US counterparts, Russian weapons are designed to kill, not to make money and, second, Russians understand warfare because they understand what war really is…

In contrast, Americans have no experience of real warfare (that is warfare in defense of their own land, family and friends) at all. For Americans warfare is killing the other guy in his own country, preferably from afar or above, while making a ton of money in the process. For Russians, warfare is simply about surviving at any and all cost. The difference couldn’t be greater.

Yes, indeed “the main problem for the US today is that there are very few of those third-rate adversaries left out there and that those who the US is trying to bring to submission now are either near-peer or even peer adversaries” but it was inevitable that after 20 years of war.  However, the bloodied, battered America refuses to “give” and continues bullying and demanding a confrontation.  Sadly, they will get one.  From Strategic Culture:

Excerpt:

Two Knockout Blows to US Imperialism: De-Dollarization and Hypersonic Weapons

In the current multipolar world in which we live, economic and military factors are decisive in guaranteeing countries their sovereignty. Russia and China seem to be taking this very seriously, committed to the de-dollarization of their economies and the accelerated development of hypersonic weapons.

The transition phase we are going through, passing from a unipolar global order to a multipolar one, calls for careful observation. It is important to analyze the actions taken by two world powers, China and Russia, in defending and consolidating their sovereignty over the long term. Observing decisions taken by these two countries in recent years, we can discern a twofold strategy. One is economic, the other purely military. In both cases we observe strong cooperation between Moscow and Beijing. The merit of this alliance is paradoxically attributed to the attitude of various US administrations, from George Bush Senior through to Obama.

The special relationship between Moscow and Beijing has been forged by a shared experience of Washington’s pressure over the last 25 years. Their shared mission now seems to be to contain the US’s declining imperial power and to shepherd the world from a unipolar world order, with Washington at the center of international relations, to a multipolar world order, with at least three global powers playing a major role in international relations…

Both de-dollarization and the development of hypersonic weapons serve the purpose of defending both countries’ sovereignty. Economic sovereignty entails, among other things, elimination of dependence on the US dollar, the abandonment of an international banking system based on the SWIFT payment system, the inclusion and increase in the share of the yuan in the basket of international currencies, the reduction of dollar-denominated public debt, the constant accumulation of gold, and, of course, the elimination of any residual debt with international institutions that are part of the world governance model controlled and manipulated by Washington for its own interests…

From an economic point of view, the international order is very similar to a duopoly rather than anything multipolar, without forgetting that the European Union has an important role to play should it regain some form of sovereignty by freeing itself from dependence on Washington. For Moscow and Beijing, reducing public debt is one of the best ways of achieving strong economic sovereignty.

The Russian Federation has reduced its public debt in relation to GDP from 92% at the beginning of 2000 to 12.9% today. The People's Republic of China, over 20 years, has increased its public debt from 20% of GDP to around 48%. Compared to the public debt of European countries (Italy and Greece are over 120%, France 100%, the EU average is 85%), Japan (240%) and the United States (110%), Beijing and Moscow have paid particular attention to keeping their accounts in order. Another important strategy involves the steady accumulation of gold in the reserves of these two countries…

China and Russia are once again trending in an opposite direction to that of the West. Since 2005, Russia and China have accumulated huge amounts of gold, with the clear intention of diversifying their reserves. Both Moscow and Beijing are among the top 10 countries in terms of gold reserves, with an exponential increase over recent years.

Thanks to a limited public debt, huge quantities of gold, and a progressive reduction in the amount of US government bonds held, Moscow and Beijing have embarked on the path of full economic sovereignty, independent of the US dollar system and strongly protecting themselves against any future financial crises…

A decided acceleration in this general direction was made following the exclusion of the Islamic Republic of Iran from the SWIFT system, a ringing alarm bell for the Eurasian duo. Despite their reduction of public debt and significant de-dollarization, both countries remain dependent on, and therefore vulnerable to, an economic and financial system that orbits around Washington and London…

The workaround has therefore been to create two alternative bank-payment systems to SWIFT…   Never mind the petrodollar system that is one of the main problems that China and Russia face when dealing with the international financial system. Efforts to progressively switch from USD to Yuan in paying oil commodities have been in place for years especially by Beijing.

This is an example of how countries like Russia and China have found ways of circumventing the means used to limit their sovereignty. The inclusion of the yuan in the IMF basket of world reserve currencies is associated with the Chinese strategy of supporting the renminbi for export, reducing the share of the US dollar. The strategy adopted by Moscow and Beijing seems to leave Washington unable to stop the protective measures of these two Eurasian powers.

In practice, we are already beginning to see the effects of this alternative economic world order. The sanctions imposed by Washington and her satraps on Moscow and Tehran are easily circumvented by Russia and Iran, with exchanges denominated in currencies other than the dollar (often gold), or simply through bartering.

China and Russia, with strongly diversified economies, with treasuries chock full of gold, and with minimal public debt, leave very little room for international speculators to have an effect on their domestic economies with actions that amount to financial terrorism.

Being able to minimize the impacts and risks of a new financial crisis, or resist the threats and blackmail of the international bodies steered largely by Washington and London, are the key means of being able to chart an economically independent course and ensure national sovereignty…

If this strategy proves successful, it will only be natural to start offering other countries the opportunity to hop onto the Eurasian train, enabling those willing to shift their military, economic and diplomatic leaning from the Atlantic to the Eurasian world.

Given the momentous significance of India and Pakistan’s accession to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization as permanent members, it would seem that Moscow and Beijing are on track to eliminating the central role of the United States in international relations in favor of a multilateralism that will benefit everyone.

There are two main reasons for this: first, unlike their US counterparts, Russian weapons are designed to kill, not to make money and, second, Russians understand warfare because they understand what war really is…

After Ed won his fight by not “giving” he learned his lesson of how foolish the bullying route was.  Unlike Ed, America continues to bully its counterparts demanding that they buy America’s “criminally overpriced and useless weapon systems” instead of Russia’s less expensive, superior military equipment.  America’s congress is throwing a tantrum levying sanctions against Turkey, Iran and threatening India.   From Zero Hedge:

Excerpt:

India Defies Washington, Will Acquire Russian S-400 Missile Shield

Washington’s so-called allies continue to gravitate towards the Russian sphere of influence, and specifically the Russian S-400 Triumph advanced anti-aircraft weapon system.

First it was Turkey, which openly defied Trump's threats that the US would sanction Ankara if it completes the purchase of the anti-aircraft missiles, saying the acquisition of the missile defense system is "a done deal and Turkey will not turn back from its decision."

Now India is also moving towards acquiring five or more S-400 from Russia despite the threat of US retaliation. The Defense Acquisitions Council (DAC), chaired by Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, last week approved the “minor deviations” in the $5.7 billion deal to purchase S-400s for final government approval, to the finance ministry and the Prime Minister’s office sources told the Times of India.

The DAC discussed the S-400 deal just one day after Washington on Wednesday canceled a “two-plus-two” discussion involving foreign minister Sushma Swaraj and defense minister Sitharaman and Washington officials Mike Pompeo and Jim Mattis, which was scheduled for July 6.

The Times of India noted that in October 2015, India had planned to procure the S-400s - which can detect, track and destroy supersonic bombers, drones, fifth-generation fighters, spy planes, and supersonic missiles at a range of up to 400km and altitude of 30km - in what many Indian officials have praised as a game-changing military acquisition…

And while Washington officials briefed India on the use of Patriot system, it seems that the country is more interesting in purchasing Russian made BMDs instead.  The New York Times reported in April that the Indian/Russian deal serves as a blow to the United States’ ”struggling Patriot missile defense system.”

“India wasn’t very impressed with the Patriot compared with the S-400, which wins hands-down in capability, in its availability, service availability. It’s a more efficient system,” it cited Rahul Bedi of Jane’s Information Group as saying.

India and Russia have worked on a plan to beat the financial sanctions called CAATSA (Countering America’s Adversaries through Sanctions Act) that attempts to prevent countries from purchasing Russian weapons.

“The acquisition of this technology will limit, I am afraid, the degree with which the United States will feel comfortable in bringing additional technology into whatever country we are talking about,” US armed services committee chairman Mac Thornberry said back in May, noting that there is also concern that “any country that acquires the system [S-400] will complicate the ability of interoperability” with US forces.

In an act of growing desperation that in spite of passing an almost trillion dollar defense bill surely to enrich the military industrial complex, congress has now levied sanctions against NATO member Turkey, something unheard of before.  From Strategic Culture:

Excerpt:

US Imposes Sanctions on Senior Turkish Officials

This is something unheard of. A NATO country has imposed personal sanctions on senior officials of another member of the bloc! The White House has announced that the US Treasury Department is imposing sanctions on two Turkish officials, Minister of Justice Abdulhamit Gul and Minister of Interior Suleyman Soylu, because of what has happened to Andrew Craig Brunson, a detained American pastor who was tried on espionage and terror-related charges.

He faces up to 35 years in jail if convicted. Brunson is one of 20 Americans who were charged after the coup two years ago. The US has refused to extradite Pennsylvania-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, who is wanted in Turkey for allegedly organizing the 2016 coup d’état attempt…

Turkey’s private citizens and companies have been sanctioned before, but imposing punitive measures on top government officials is a game-changing move. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has refused to bow. He warned that the US may lose a “strong and sincere ally” in Turkey. No doubt the bitter diplomatic spat is at risk of escalating further…

The US Congress has just finalized the fiscal 2019 defense bill, which contains restrictions on weapons sales to Ankara. The idea to hit Turkey with punitive measures over alleged “human rights violations” and its purchase of the Russian S-400 Triumf missile-defense system has substantial support in Congress…

The deterioration of US-Turkish relations may lead to a standoff in northern Syria, due to American support for the Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). It may affect the status of America’s military aircraft stationed at the Incirlik air base. Ankara may not allow the US to use Incirlik against Iran if a conflict ignites, which would significantly restrict US air power in the region. The United States Air Force may have to leave the base completely, like the German aircraft did some time ago.

Turkey’s disappointment with the US and NATO is deepening. The talks on joining the EU are in limbo. During the recent BRICS summit, Ankara said it wanted to join that organization, which is positioning itself as a global pole of power that is independent from the West. Turkey doesn't look ready to ditch NATO for good just yet, but it won’t be a US partner if push comes to shove and a US-Iran conflict is triggered.

At the moment Iran is readying a large-scale military exercise in the Persian Gulf, which is generally perceived as a step to block oil exports. Iran has threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz. “We will make the enemy understand that either everyone can use the Strait of Hormuz or no one,” declared the IRGC’s commander, Major General Mohammad Ali Jafari, on July 5, 2018…

It all has gone too far. Even if President Trump turned a blind eye to Turkey’s S-400 deal and its fruitful energy cooperation with Russia, the US Congress would not. A Senate committee has approved the Turkey International Financial Institutions (TIFA) bill, restricting loans to that country. The House is to follow suit. The process is unstoppable. The lawmakers will go on introducing new measures against Turkey as well as Russia, making the two nations natural allies in opposition to the US global domination…

Actually, there is little the West can offer Turkey that would be in its best interests. The differences are irreconcilable, which will shift Ankara’s foreign-policy priorities from the West toward the East. Eurasian integration is much more promising for Turkey than the continuation of futile attempts to find its place in the West as an equal partner.

Sheesh, talk about cutting off ones nose to spite ones face.  One thing that’s becoming painfully apparent is that members of our government who have become millionaires in service to the military industrial complex are completely incompetent.  It looks like Eurasia is going to have a “lion laying with the lamb” come to Jesus moment.  From Lew Rockwell:

Excerpt:

Pakistan’s ‘Jack Kennedy’

The Kashmir border is the world’s most dangerous flash point.

Imran Khan may be able to calm tensions over Kashmir and open meaningful talks with India where he is very popular.  In the 1980’s, Gen. Zia ul Haq headed off an invasion by India by flying to Delhi on the spur of the moment to attend a cricket match.  This writer expects Imran Khan to similarly appear in India for his ultimate diplomatic test match.

The words ‘hope’ and ‘Pakistan’ do not often appear together.  Pakistan, a sprawling nation of 205 million, is hard to govern, even harder to finance, and seething with tribal or religious violence and discord.

But Pakistan, which for me is one of the most interesting and important nations on earth, is by far the leading nation of the Muslim world and a redoubtable military power.  Created in 1947 from former British India as a haven for oppressed Muslims, Pakistan has been ruled ever since by military juntas or by slippery and often corrupt civilian politicians.

After decades of dynastic politics under the Bhutto and Sharif families, there is suddenly hope that newly elected cricket star Imran Khan and his Tehreek-e-Insaf Party (PTI) may – just may – tackle Pakistan’s four biggest problems: endemic corruption, military interference, political tribalism, and a half-dead economy…

Imran Khan is sometimes called ‘Pakistan’s Jack Kennedy’ for his movie-star good looks, charisma and zesty love life.  He no longer plays professional cricket though he is still idolized in Pakistan and, interestingly, bitter foe India.

Khan (who is of Pashtun tribal blood) is also a philanthropist and respected thinker.  He says he is determined to begin rooting corruption out of Pakistan and to revivify its ailing economy.  Pakistan’s GDP is only $1,641 per person compared to India’s $2,134.  The illiteracy rate is about 40%, notably among women who are the primary teachers of the young.

As Imran Khan is about to take office, Pakistan’s coffers are almost empty.  Islamabad has had to take 12 loans from the International Monetary Fund in the last 40 years, in part to pay for its oil imports.  Now, Islamabad is negotiating yet another loan of $57 billion from its most important ally, China, whose vast belt and road project covering transportation, ports and infrastructure seeks to modernize Pakistan and turn it into a primary conduit to the Arabian Sea.

But Donald Trump’s Washington is angry over China’s dollar diplomacy, formerly a preserve of US foreign policy.  US State Secretary Mike Pompeo, who plays bad cop to Trump’s bad cop, lambastes Pakistan for the Chinese loan.

The White House is obviously dismayed by China’s growing influence over Pakistan caused, in large part, by the US decision to cut aid to Pakistan and favor its old enemy, India.  President George Bush aided India’s military nuclear program, alarming China and Pakistan.  Now, Trump is working to mobilize India against China.  So far, India has been too smart to act as an American strategic proxy.

Imran Khan will now have a chance to resolve the Indo-Pakistani dispute over contested Kashmir that has flared since 1947…  The new Khan government must also try to find a way to get the US out of the giant hole it has dug in Afghanistan.  Imran has been a vocal critic of the stalemated US war in Afghanistan. Soon, he will control the major supply lines to US forces there.  India and Pakistan are important nuclear-armed powers…

We need to get all members of congress out of office and get a new, unencumbered group that is not in service to special interests.  As explained in the video below, Trump must repair America’s relationship with Russia’s Putin.  The Russian hysteria that has overtaken America is deadly.

Putin's meeting with Trump in Helsinki has caused American politicians to go berserk.  The media in America is useless and a danger to America.  They report lies and propaganda 24/7 but then they are owned and operated for the benefit of the CIA.  The media demanding that Trump unquestioningly believe America’s intelligence agencies fact-free allegations of Russian meddling in our elections is laughable.  From The Burning Platform:

Excerpt:

Trump was recently questioned as to whether he trusted US intelligence. He waffled. A light-hearted answer would have been:

“What sort of idiot are you to ask me such a stupid question? Of course they are lying! They were caught lying more than once, and therefore they can never be trusted again. In order to claim that they are not currently lying, you have to determine when it was that they stopped lying, and that they haven’t lied since. And that, based on the information that is available, is an impossible task.”

A more serious, matter-of-fact answer would have been:

“The US intelligence agencies made an outrageous claim: that I colluded with Russia to rig the outcome of the 2016 presidential election. The burden of proof is on them. They are yet to prove their case in a court of law, which is the only place where the matter can legitimately be settled, if it can be settled at all. Until that happens, we must treat their claim as conspiracy theory, not as fact.”

And a hardcore, deadpan answer would have been:

“The US intelligence services swore an oath to uphold the US Constitution, according to which I am their Commander in Chief. They report to me, not I to them. They must be loyal to me, not I to them. If they are disloyal to me, then that is sufficient reason for their dismissal.”

But no such reality-based, down-to-earth dialogue seems possible. All that we hear are fake answers to fake questions, and the outcome is a series of faulty decisions. Based on fake intelligence, the US has spent almost all of this century embroiled in very expensive and ultimately futile conflicts.

Thanks to their efforts, Iran, Iraq and Syria have now formed a continuous crescent of religiously and geopolitically aligned states friendly toward Russia while in Afghanistan the Taliban is resurgent and battling ISIS—an organization that came together thanks to American efforts in Iraq and Syria.

The total cost of wars so far this century for the US is reported to be $4,575,610,429,593. Divided by the 138,313,155 Americans who file tax returns (whether they actually pay any tax is too subtle a question), it works out to just over $33,000 per taxpayer. If you pay taxes in the US, that’s your bill so far for the various US intelligence “oopsies.”

The 16 US intelligence agencies have a combined budget of $66.8 billion, and that seems like a lot until you realize how supremely efficient they are: their “mistakes” have cost the country close to 70 times their budget. At a staffing level of over 200,000 employees, each of them has cost the US taxpayer close to $23 million, on average. That number is totally out of the ballpark!

There are two possible hypotheses for why this is so.

First, we might venture to guess that these 200,000 people are grossly incompetent and that the fiascos they precipitate are accidental. But it is hard to imagine a situation where grossly incompetent people nevertheless manage to funnel $23 million apiece, on average, toward an assortment of futile undertakings of their choosing. It is even harder to imagine that such incompetents would be allowed to blunder along decade after decade without being called out for their mistakes.

Another hypothesis, and a far more plausible one, is that the US intelligence community has been doing a wonderful job of bankrupting the country and driving it toward financial, economic and political collapse by forcing it to engage in an endless series of expensive and futile conflicts—the largest single continuous act of grand larceny the world has ever known.

How that can possibly be an intelligent thing to do to your own country, for any conceivable definition of “intelligence,” I will leave for you to work out for yourself. While you are at it, you might also want to come up with an improved definition of “treason”: something better than “a skeptical attitude toward preposterous, unproven claims made by those known to be perpetual liars.”

The purpose of my Boss Ed telling me his story of what a punk he was in high school, was to point out where he was back then and how he came to become a successful, self-taught businessman.  He realized that his bully attitude was counterproductive and would lead to his ruin.  Instead he channeled his energy into high school wrestling or “rassaling” as he called it.   Unfortunately America refuses to ever say “I give” admit they were wrong and correct their course.   

Instead, the American Deep State is on a high speed train toward impending imperial implosion, she’s come undone.

By Patricia Baeten