Now that Trump controls the FBI, the CIA, and the Attorney General, there is one story he wants you to forget about. Before the election we learned that the intelligence agencies agreed that the Russian government interfered in our election to benefit Trump.
“That this story is constantly forgotten behind a barrage of daily nonsense is both maddening and astounding. At the very least, we know that …
• Trump’s campaign manager worked directly for Russia to subvert the government of the Ukraine, and was paid millions of dollars to generate “spontaneous demonstrations” in which US Marines were attacked in order to give Putin an excuse to seize Crimea.
• The Russian assistant ambassador is on record saying that, despite numerous denials, Russia was in contact with the Trump campaign on a regular basis.
• The only item where the Trump campaign forced a change in the Republican platform—the only item—was in modifying a plank to weaken the party’s stance on opposing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. And Trump representatives said that concern came from Trump personally.”
“And yes, out there is a supposed folio of kompromat containing items that Russia feels it can use to put pressure on Trump and his team. But even if every disgusting item in that secret file is just a fantasy, how is it possible that this story has completely disappeared?
“We honestly don’t know if there’s even any investigation into the Trump-Russia connection.”
Will the Trump-Putin link be investigated? What will Jeff Sessions do? Isnt this the time for a special prosecutor?
What happened to Christopher Steele, the British spy who compiled the dossier?
What is the reason for Trump’s deference to Putin?
What is Putin’s hold over Trump?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Don’t worry, Diane. Miller and Bannon are on it, like they are so worried about voter fraud, they also must be worried about voter suppression. OOOOPPPs! There’s clear evidence for voter suppression. I guess that leaves THAT investigation out.
“We use a dataset of Catholic-parish finances from Milwaukee that includes information on both Catholic schools and the parishes that run them. We show that vouchers are now a dominant source of funding for many churches; parishes in our sample running voucher-accepting schools get more revenue from vouchers than from worshipers. We also find that voucher expansion prevents church closures and mergers”
It was always nonsense that vouchers don’t subsidize the churches. Of course they do. If the religious org doesn’t have to support the school they can divert money to the church.
Money is fungible. Which ed reformers know.
Vouchers in the midwest are a poorly-concealed public subsidy to the Catholic Church and Republicans like Kasich and Walker know it. Pure politics.
Vouchers are to Republican politics as teacher unions are to Democratic politics but you will never hear that admitted in ed reform. This is a political transaction.
http://www.nber.org/papers/w23159?utm_campaign=ntw&utm_medium=email&utm_source=ntw
Wow, even if off topic…or seemly so.
“We show that vouchers are now a dominant source of funding for many churches; parishes in our sample running voucher-accepting schools get more revenue from vouchers than from worshipers.”
I am thinking of the store-front churches populating depressed neighborhoos, struggling for cash, and operating classes for kids, usually with volunteers. This is a golden opportunity for entrepreneurs and con games.
Trump warned of his end of campaign surprises throughout his bombastic and mendacious campaigning. He spoke directly to Putin on TV for the whole world to see, and asked that Hillary’s emails be hacked…and so it went. The surprising exposing of actually non existent info on Weiner’s laptop by Toomey only 6 days before the election was the Trump’s trump card, a pre planned and pre arranged orchestration between the FBI and Putin and Trump . Assange, as I have often said all year, works for Putin and this deadly trio of Toomey, Putin, and Assange arranged for the Trump/Republican coup.
(Now Flynn, another supporter of Putin is possibly in line for prosecution under the Hatch Act, but why not the same for Tillerson, Trump, Bannon, and even Toomey??? All of them appear to have had secret dealings with Putin as private citizens. That is called TREASON.)
Now Russia is sending Snowden to Trump for punishment…good luck to Snowden who will probably be housed in Guantanamo forever. And Russia is gearing up for major war into the Baltics and onward…with the blessing of Bannon’Trump who want to see “end of days”…words out of the mouth of Bannon.
It is amazing that this public knowledge was not the main shout out of the Dems, from the initial playbook to today…and yes, all the media should be doing deep investigating and reporting, especially in light of the 39 page British spy document which has been reported by US and Brit officials to be accurate. And the poor Brit spy/author has disappeared.
Is this unholy alliance doing so much arm twisting, maybe death threatening, that the FREE press/media is too intimidated to be honest?
What hold has Putin over Trump? Profit. The only thing that really matters to Trump. I continue to believe Trump withholds tax info is because it will show way more debt than assets.
Dmitri, my Russian control agent, has insisted that I make the following comments:
Manafort, Trump’s short-lived campaign manager, was a paid adviser to the pro-Putin kleptocrat who ran Ukraine before he was deposed in an amply-documented US-supported coup that replaced him with the pro-Nato (and Neo Nazi-supported) kleptocrat, Poroshenko. In other words, Dmitri wants me to say that the situation is Ukraine is complicated, and not reducible to the cartoonish good guy-bad guy schematics the Democrats are trying (and clearly failing) to use against Trump.
Regarding Crimea, it only became part of Ukraine in 1954 under Kruschev (himself a Ukrainian). Before that, it had been part of Russia for hundreds of years, and to this day over 90% of the population speaks Russian, not Ukrainian. Therefore, did Russia really “invade” a region that is historically, culturally and linguistically part of it, or did it act in a geo-politically reasonable way to defend it’s sole Black Sea naval base from NATO encroachment? Dmitri wishes that Americans would try to imagine themselves in a similar situation, and ask themselves what they might have done. For example, imagine if a foreign power underwrote a coup in Mexico, partially led by people with a direct connection to the murder of millions of Americans in the not-so-distant past; how pacific would the US’ response be in that situation?
Additionally, virtually the first proclamation made by the the Kleptocrat/Technocrat/Neo-Nazi coalition in Ukraine after seizing power was to prohibit the teaching of Russian and all other bi-lingual efforts in the country. Unlike Americans, Russians have long memories, and well-remember the Nazi collaboration by the Banderists who comprise a significant part of the current Ukrainian government, and they were happy to accept Russian help in keeping them at bay.They were especially happy to have Russian support after witnessing the mass murder conducted by the Neo-Nazis against their opponents at the Trade Union Hall in Odessa in the immediate aftermath of the coup.
Dmitri also wants me to say that, whatever Russia’s (still-unproven, despite NSA vacuuming of virtually all telecommunications, which is perhaps why the story has “disappeared”) involvement in the US election, for the Democrats to try to bring down Trump this way, instead of honestly looking at their own failures over decades, remedying them and doing actual political organizing among working people, is truly pathetic, and yet another depressing example of why Trump (or more likely Pence) will likely be re-elected in 2020.
Finally, Dmitri insists that I put things in perspective and ask: if Putin put Trump in power, did he also cause the Democrats to lose the House, Senate, two-thirds of all governorships and state houses? Will forcing Trump out of the White House for imputed Russian interference in the election regain those political seats? If so, how?
The Democratic Party is suffering from Stage IV metastatic cancer, yet it insists that the problem is “naturally” background radiation.
Thank you Michael and Dimitri for this important history lesson.
Michael Fiorillo
A few corrections there Mike
Dmitri, is quite right when it comes to Russian history and my source
is Stephan Cohen a well respected Soviet/Russian policy expert . As a back up and I hate typing the name, is Henry Kissinger. Now I have
had several back and forth knock out drag down fights with Diane about this . Her best point was the people of the Baltic States don’t feel that way, to which my response has always been who cares about what the people of the Baltic states want . Or Foreign Policy is never made that way . These decisions are made on the basis of National interests not the feelings of foreign people. Trump does have a point when he says do you think we are angels.. Perhaps we have not yet!! assassinated American press or politicians . But our record overseas is abysmal.
But seriously Mike the guy who gets his information from Info Wars and the National Enquirer. The guy who did not know what the nuclear triad was in the debate . The guy who doesn’t know that Frederick Douglass has been dead for over 120 years . Has not got a damn clue as to the complexities of the relationship between the Russian state and the former satellite nations. Nor did he have a clue as to the dangers of NATO expansion and their history. So his motive must be found elsewhere.. And whether those opinions were formulated directly from those around him or he had other personal nefarious reasons like knowing about those nude pictures and his debt to Russian oligarchs, is quite irrelevant. He had ample time to come out against loosening sanctions against Russia when the Watergate was broken into . (that was not a slip Diane ). Yes I want to know about the collusion between his campaign and Putin. !!!!
Now on to your second point . My very first post on this blog read like Luther’s 95 Theses Diane told me to go vote for Trump and Lloyd started screaming at me for asking Obama’s daughters to go drink the water in Flint .
So I am well aware of the flaws of the neo-liberal Democrats with only one group I despise more the REAL THING , neo-liberal, racist, homophobic, rotten scum Republicans .So yes Hillary should have been able to wipe the floor with “Little Hands ” orange hair implants.
How ever as I have previously stated. One would have to be born without a brain stem to think that in an election separated by only 79,000 votes across three swing states and similarly close margins in several other states , that between the emails and Comey, narratives that reinforced each other, this results of this election weren’t altered.
One can also say the coat tails that normally carry over with presidential victories, cost control of the senate and many seats in the house. None of that excuses the 25 years of Democratic failure since Bill Clinton . I am a big fan of Thomas Frank and have been for many years, he pegs it back to Carter.. Michelle Alexander nailed it with her Hillary non endorsement.
And no, I do not believe that many people actually read those emails ,the headlines did all the damage that was necessary . Now on to “the poor Brit spy/author(who) has disappeared. Christopher Steele Is probably in a British witness protection program with his family as he was a well respected high level MI6 agent .What should clue us in to the veracity of files he delivered to McCain is that” Oleg Erovinkin described as a key source behind the widely discredited document, was found dead in the back of his car in Moscow on Boxing Day.” The sun
“From 1976 to 1994, he worked in the state’s security bodies. Between 1994 and 1996, he served as the Deputy Head of Control over the protection of state secrets of the Personnel Administration of the President of the Russian Federation.
In 1997-1998, he served as the head of the private office of the Presidential Administration of the Russian Federation.
Between the years of 2004 and 2008, he worked as the Deputy Head of the Information and Document Support of the Russian president.
On May 22, 2008 Erovinkin was appointed as the Head of the Secretariat of Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin, serving until May 2012.”
2012 till his death head of one of Russian oil giant Rosneft’s offices,
Amazing how these people are dropping like flies . I hope those Russian Hookers are ok .
I’ll be happy to administer the needle to the whole crew . Unless they would prefer a firing squad . I don’t own guns yet !!!!
this results wrong the results
and whatever stupid errors I wont bother to correct spoiled by the edit button .
Tell Dimitri that Putin did a superb job and The a KGB covered their tracks admirably, as usual.
Actually hot off the press “Trump Administration was warned that Flynn may have been compromised subject to Russian extortion ”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/justice-department-warned-white-house-that-flynn-could-be-vulnerable-to-russian-blackmail-officials-say/2017/02/13/fc5dab88-f228-11e6-8d72-263470bf0401_story.html?utm_term=.f9448b424ecd
Flynn Gone, not enough what did the Trump know and when did Russian contacts start
Reblogged this on Lloyd Lofthouse and commented:
What is Putin’s hold over Trump, the malignant narcissist in the White House?
Go Trump
Gregdreads,
Are you a Russian agent?
Are you Putin in disguise?
No i am the M O B
Trump’s goal is to have a bunch of hotels in Russia! lol! Thus the romance with Putin! And this came out recently: US intelligence has collected information that Russia is considering turning over Edward Snowden as a “gift” to President Donald Trump.
According to a senior U.S. official, Snowden’s handover is one of various ploys to “curry favor” with Trump.
He’s so disgusting.
I get all your posts in one feed… and I think (or HOPE) that Flynn’s resignation is a sign that things might unravel… my concern is that if both Trump and Pence are somehow taken down (e.g. if they both knew about Flynn’s contacts and did nothing) the GOP will have a “statesman” in the White House in the form of Paul Ryan… egads….
Obama made some enemies with his sanctions against Russia. I’m sure Mr Tillerson wasn’t very happy.
Considering all that’s been said regarding the control that the multi-nationals and the mega rich have over our Congress, I’d be very surprised (and elated) if this house of cards collapses. So much money at stake.
At what point does a senator or rep finally take a stand for the security of our sovereign nation?