Thom Hartmann remembers when Republican operatives undermined John Kerry’s presidential campaign by “swift boating” him. Having no positive policies to advance to voters, they instead attack the character and ethics of the Democratic candidate.
He writes:
House Republicans have revived the infamous Swiftboat lie strategy that helped defeat John Kerry in 2004. In essence, it involves relentlessly lying about a candidate and smearing his or her name and reputation in the hopes it’ll shave a few points off their popularity with independent voters.
While virtually 100 percent of the men who served with Kerry in Vietnam spoke glowingly of his service, a group who did not serve with him made up lies and exaggerations.
Kerry and those who served with him tried to get the truth out, but, as Mark Twain is often credited as saying, “A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes.”
While Democrats prefer to win elections based on facts and policy positions, Republicans — not having anything to offer average Americans — instead default to slander and lies. Like with Obama’s birth certificate. Or Hillary’s email and Benghazi.
Wouldn’t most people, after all, resort to lies if all they had to offer was:
— Forcing 10-year-olds to carry their rapist’s babies to term,
— More guns to slaughter more American children,
— Tax cuts for billionaires,
— More fossil fuels to create out-of-control weather,
— A government shutdown to cause a recession,
— And a Russian victory in Ukraine?
In this case, the essence of the impeachment inquiry Kevin McCarthy announced yesterday is straightforward: he believes that Joe and Hunter Biden profited from Joe’s being in the White House during the Obama administration and he thinks that’s an impeachable offense.
After all, there is:
— That $2 billion that Hunter got in a sweetheart deal from the Saudis with an annual paycheck of $25 million to manage it.
—Or the billion he got from Qatar after his buddies in Saudi Arabia blockaded the country and threatened to starve them until they coughed up to bailout his fancy overpriced building in New York City.
— And the more-than $600 million Hunter made while working in his dad’s White House.
— Don’t forget the tens of millions in trademarks his wife got from the Chinese when she visited them with Dad.
— Or his multiple meetings with Russians working for Vladimir Putin who was then trying to get his dad elected.
— Or the $30 million given him to invest and manage by one of Israel’s largest insurance companies.
— And the top-secret info he gave a Saudi prince that helped him overthrow his own government.
Oh, wait. That was Jared and Ivanka Kushner, not Hunter Biden.
Hunter appears to have committed three crimes, two of which he’s being prosecuted for by a Trump-appointed special prosecutor with help from a Trump-appointed judge.
First, he failed to report or pay his income taxes for two years while he was in the throes of alcohol and drug intoxication.
He’s since paid them in full, plus fines, as do tens of thousands of delinquent filers in the US every year. Republicans want him to go to prison anyway.
Second, he checked a box on an application to purchase a gun — which he only kept for two weeks and never used — which said that he wasn’t then a drug addict.
Checking that box when you are a drug addict is technically a crime, but there’s no instance I can find with a pretty thorough web search of anybody, anywhere, any time ever having been prosecuted for it.
Until now. It looks like Hunter might actually go to prison for checking the box, which raises the question: where are the Second Amendment Republicans protesting this violation of his sacred right to own a gun no matter what? Crickets.
Third, Hunter took a position on the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian fossil fuel giant, for which he was paid millions. This was a transparent effort to trade off his father’s name and nobody is denying that: it was “poor judgement” (to quote Hunter himself).
To show his employers how tight he was with the Vice President, he’d call his dad and conduct the phone conversation on a speaker phone for the room to hear; his business partner in the Burisma deal, Devon Archer, testified about that before James Comer’s House Oversight Committee.
Sadly for Comer, though, Archer testified under oath that the two never discussed business or Burisma: Joe Biden kept the conversations to family, rehab, and the weather.
Nonetheless, the Republicans are sure if they dig deep enough they’ll find something at least as scandalous as Jared’s cutting the deals with Saudi Arabia that led to the Crown Prince funneling millions of dollars into Donald Trump’s pockets via the LIV Golf scheme.
Good luck with that: unlike Donald Trump, Joe Biden actually has a moral compass. He used those phone calls to try to talk his son into rehab.
But Marjorie Taylor Greene had dinner with Donald Trump this past Sunday night, and he told her he wanted Joe Biden impeached according to people who were there, and then turned up the pressure on McCarthy. Trump, of course, doesn’t want to be the only guy running for the presidency who’s been impeached and whose family is known to be corrupt through-and-through.
Now Greene, Lauren Boebert, and Matt Gaetz are in a pissing match over who was first with the very, very cool plan to impeach Biden.
Boebert’s proposal, Greene wants the world to know, is simply a rip-off of her own efforts. After calling Boebert a “little b*tch,” Green said:
“I had already introduced articles of impeachment on Joe Biden for the border, asked her to co-sponsor mine—she didn’t. She basically copied my articles and then introduced them and then changed them to a privileged resolution.”
Yesterday morning, after McCarthy’s coming announcement was public knowledge, Gaetz tweeted:
“When @SpeakerMcCarthy makes his announcement in moments, remember that as I pushed him for weeks, @kilmeade said I was: ‘Speaking into the wind’ on impeachment. Turns out, the wind may be listening!”
In response, Greene tweeted back at him:
“Correction my friend. I introduced articles of impeachment against Joe Biden for his corrupt business dealings in Ukraine & China while he was Vice President on his very first day in office. You wouldn’t cosponsor those and I had to drag you kicking and screaming to get you to cosponsor my articles on the border. Who’s really been making the push?”
The sad reality for this MAGA crowd is that there is no evidence, either direct or implicit, that Joe Biden ever had anything to do with his son’s business dealings or ever took any money from them. None. Even the two “IRS whistleblowers” who said Hunter had committed tax crimes that they claimed were overlooked during the Trump administration brought no evidence. The Department of Justice also denied their claims.
Another much-heralded “whistleblower” that Comer and House Republicans had talked about for weeks turned out to be a professional con man, spy for China, and criminal who’s on the lam fleeing international arms trafficking charges. Understandably, he didn’t show up for the hearings.
But don’t let facts get in the way of a good swiftboating.
I remember when, during the 2004 election year, Jerome Corsi came on my programseveral times to hype his book Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry. Corsi, it turned out, had never served in the US military, and his co-author, John O’Neill, served in Vietnam long after Kerry had returned to the US.
Literally none of their claims held up, but, like with the Obama birth certificate and Benghazi, they blew enough smoke that millions of swing voters concluded there must be a fire somewhere.
So now McCarthy is having to twist himself into pretzels to try to justify this bizarre fishing expedition.
Instead of seating a select committee to look into impeaching Biden, McCarthy is essentially doing a marketing move rather than a legal one. There is no “impeachment committee” with subpoena power because having one would require a majority of the House to vote for it and he knows he doesn’t have enough Republican votes to make it happen.
As McCarthy himself said just two weeks ago:
“To open an impeachment inquiry is a serious matter and House Republicans would not take it lightly or use it for political purposes. The American people deserve to be heard on this matter through their elected representatives. That’s why, if we move forward with an impeachment inquiry, it would occur through a vote on the floor of the People’s House and not through a declaration by one person.”
Back in 2019 — when Nancy Pelosi was debating having a vote to put together an impeachment committee when it came out that Trump had tried to extort Zelenskyy to say that Biden was corrupt — McCarthy said:
“Speaker Pelosi can’t decide on impeachment unilaterally. It requires a full vote of the House of Representatives.”
But instead of having that vote yesterday, McCarthy’s just attaching that “impeachment” label to the existing hustles being run by Comer at House Oversight and Jordan at Judiciary and Weaponization. It’s legally meaningless, but just the use of the word “impeachment” guarantees multiple news cycles, driving the “smoke” into the faces of American voters.
This is the same McCarthy who said the entire Benghazi two-year circus was done purely to tarnish Hillary Clinton in the upcoming 2016 election. He told Sean Hannity it was his “strategy to fight and win” the election, adding:
“Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right? But we put together a Benghazi special committee, a select committee. What are her numbers today? Her numbers are dropping. Why? Because she’s untrustable. But no one would have known any of that had happened, had we not fought.”
The fact is that presidential elections, which are often decided by just a few points or less, can be won if a candidate can simply shave those few points off their opponents’ tally. And that can be done by discouraging base voters about a candidate and thus suppressing turnout, or simply souring swing voters on that candidate.
This strategy worked for Republicans in 2004 against John Kerry and again in 2016 against Hillary Clinton; we can fully expect them to play it out now. Particularly if Democrats once again respond by trying to ignore it and wrongly assume people will realize how absurd it is.
Slander campaigns like this must instead be hit head-on with outrage and ferocity: Democrats need to take this seriously.
So, while Don Jr. and Eric Trump are facing prosecution in a $250 million fraud suit by New York State for corrupt acts that handed their family billions of dollars scammed from banks, insurance companies, and unpaid taxes, Republicans are going to try to impeach Joe Biden for his son’s poor but entirely legal decision to sit on the Burisma board.
Meanwhile, within hours of McCarthy’s announcement, Russian President Vladimir Putin came out and gushed about the “outstanding person” Elon Musk while taking Donald Trump’s side in his dispute with Jack Smith.
Irony is dead and hypocrisy has never been more alive.
And then there was the deathbed confession by Repugnican trickster Lee Atwater that the campaign that sank Gary Hart was fabricated.
This is probably mainly about trying to get the news cycle fixed on impeachment hearings during the remainder of the 2024 campaign. It’s frivolous but it’s dangerous to Biden, whose favorability numbers are very low and whose unfavorability numbers are very high. It’s interesting to note that even with the swiftboating, Kerry’s favorability/unfavorability numbers were actually pretty good. (https://news.gallup.com/poll/12625/change-kerry-bush-favorable-ratings-postconvention.aspx.)
If Biden insists on running again, I really wish he would dump Harris.
I have been so pleasantly surprised by Biden’s presidency, but it is quite clear that he is too old for the job. People age at different rates, but there comes a time for almost all of us when we routinely find ourselves standing in the kitchen or garage and trying to remember why we came there, when our short-term memory has become extremely faulty. It has become painful to watch Biden speak or walk. He moves extremely slowly and awkwardly. He acts like a man in his late 90s. Not good.
He needs to step down. And serve as an advisor to the next generation Democratic president.
Agree entirely. And if he won’t step down, he should replace Harris with someone who people have more confidence in, given the substantial chance that Biden won’t make it through this term. Whitmer would be a good choice.
Through a next term, I meant to type.
In this poll, nearly 70% of Democrats say that Biden is too old to be effective for another four year term. 70%!
https://apnews.com/article/biden-age-poll-trump-2024-620e0a5cfa0039a6448f607c17c7f23e
According to a parade of Democratic lawyers that have examined the so-called evidence, there is absolutely zero evidence that links Joe Biden to his son’s business dealings. Reality won’t stop the radical GOP from exploiting the perception. The GOP has successfully used this charade before against others like Kerry. The radical wing of the GOP knows how to fight dirty. They can take a molehill and turn into a perceived mountain by simply repeating the lie over and over to their brain addled base. While the kumbaya Democrats can hold a smoking gun like Kushner’s corrupt dealings with Saudi Arabia and do nothing. If the Democrats want to save democracy, they need to roll up their sleeves and enter the fray and stop believing they are above politics and can make a ‘gentleman’s agreement’ with the GOP barbarians that intend to dismantle democracy.
Our intelligence services need human resources embedded in places like Saudi Arabia capable of uncovering the real scoop on stuff like whatever quid pro quo was involved in the 2-billion-dollar investment by the Saudis is Slender Man’s sleaze.
BTW, Putin gave his ‘endorsement’ to Trump in the 2024 election yesterday, and the GOP trolls continue to goose step over democracy.
Exactly. And our news media treat that as though it were normal.
Putin hasn’t endorsed any candidate. He flat out said it makes no difference who the president is because American policy toward Russia remains the same no matter who’s in office.
Putin lies with frequency. He despises Hillary Clinton. He was eager for Trump to win and Trump was obsequious and deferential to Putin. Putin also said he would not invade Ukraine. He said the Russians were massed in the Ukrainian border for military exercises. He said he had nothing to do with the deaths of all his chief rivals (except Navalny, who is locked away in solitary confinement for many years or as long as Putin chooses.) Putin was of course “surprised” when Prighozin’s plane crashed. Of course. Payback is a bitch.
Putin was NOT obsequious or deferential to Putin. He was the first to arm ukraine when even warmonger Obama recognized that was a bridge too far. And there were many other times Trump was far from obsequious or deferential: https://caityjohnstone.medium.com/25-times-trump-has-been-dangerously-hawkish-on-russia-ada915b07f97
BTW, yes, Putin lies. But you know who else does? The U.S. government and their media mouthpieces.
Trump looked upon Putin with puppy-dog eyes. Trump adores Putin and Kim.
Shaking my head, Diane. I just presented 25 pieces of evidence that that’s not true. You just can’t let go of the idea that Trump and Putin are monsters rather than human beings who have done bad things and things you disagree with, just like every politician. Sad.
To be clear, Dienne, I didn’t say that Trump and Putin were both monsters. Putin is far smarter than Trump. Trump had only a four-year term. Putin will be in office until 2036, longer if he wants.
Putin is a monster who kills without remorse. He launched a completely unprovoked war against Ukraine and has killed tens of thousands of Russians and Ukrainians because he didn’t like Ukraine’s wish to break free of his orbit.
Trump is a buffoon, con man and a grifter. He is not a monster. Those are your words, not mine.
Dubya Bush’s kill list is ordes of magnitude larger than Putin’s. Is he a remorseless monster? I’ve never seen you say so.
Putin is a dictator for life. He murders critics and opponents. Prizghozin was the latest. He kidnaps innocent Americans who have the misfortune to be in Russia, then uses them as pawns to get a mass murderer freed from American custody. Evan Gershkovitz, a reporter from the Wall Street Journal, is his current pawn; before that it was Brittany Griner, held captive for almost a year and exchanged for a killer.
Bush got us into the terrible wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Is Bush a monster like Putin?
No. Stupidity is not as monstrous as evil. Putin is evil.
There is actually no evidence that Putin killed Prigozhin (or any others for that matter). Not saying he didn’t and wouldn’t put it past him, but the burden of proof is on showing that he did. He’s certainly not the only one with motive, means and opportunity. U.S. presidents have also been known to have people assassinated, such as Anwar al-Awlaki and his 16 year old son. Is that equally monstrous?
As for Evan Gershkovitz, he was found poking around Russian munitions and weapons plants. What do you think the U.S. would do to a Russian caught poking around U.S. plants?
I agree it was wrong for Brittany Griner to be held in Russia for minor drug charges. Do you agree that it’s wrong for millions of Americans being held in America for minor drug charges?
And it’s sad that you see Iraq as “just a mistake” (not to mention the worldwide torture network – was that a “mistake”?). I was just a schmuck with an internet connection back then and I knew it was all lies. You’re telling me Bush didn’t know? C’mon, I was born on a Tuesday, but it wasn’t last Tuesday.
The problem is that you are bent on seeing Putin as singularly evil. He’s not. Has he done evil things? Yes. But no more so than any other similarly placed world leader, possibly less so. Further, I don’t live in Russia nor am I a Russian citizen, so I bear no responsibility for him. I am a U.S. citizen living in the U.S., so I have a lot more responsibility for my own government.
Putin relies on innocents like you to excuse his evil.
You bring to mind the term “useful idiots.”
“In political jargon, a useful idiot is a term currently used to reference a person perceived as propagandizing for a cause—particularly a bad cause originating from a devious, ruthless source—without fully comprehending the cause’s goals, and who is cynically being used by the cause’s leaders.”
Wikipedia
So, there was for a long time great rejoicing by Tsar Vladimir, I suspect, at the resounding success of Russia’s cultivation of and Vladimir’s significant investment in Donald the Rapist Seditionist. Here, just a few things that he got out of this:
Trump unilaterally pulled U.S. troops out of northern Syria, abandoning it to the Russians and Assad and leading to wholesale slaughter of our allies, the Kurds who had helped us defeat Isis. And he did this against the will of his own Joint Chiefs and his Secretary of Defense, James Mattis, who was so appalled at Trump’s so serving Russia’s interests that he resigned his position.
Trump was caught sharing classified information with the Russian Ambassador to the United States in the Oval Office.
Trump repeatedly told aides that he wanted to pull the U.S. out of NATO, and they repeatedly had to explain to him that that could not be done. Unable to do that for his buddy Vladimir, he spent his entire administration bad-mouthing and alienating NATO and our NATO allies.
Trump held up military aid to Ukraine and offered to let it go through IF Ukraine agreed to a quid pro quo–that it announce an investigation in Trump’s political opponent and his son. And for this collusion with Russia, Trump was impeached.
Trump repeatedly denied that Russia helped him to get elected in 2016, even though the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee issued a 1,000-page report detailing the involvement of the Russian intelligence services, under Putin’s direction, in running a social media disinformation campaign and using Paul Manafort and Wikileaks to assist the Trump campaign. This was a campaign of a monumental scale, involving vast intelligence and hacking resources. Trump denied that anything happened, again and again and again.
Trump unilaterally, against the recommendations of all his senior military officers and joint chiefs, massively drew down our NATO troop strength in Europe. This and his general trashing of NATO, combined with his withholding of military aid from Ukraine, emboldened his buddy Vladimir to violate international law by invading Ukraine AGAIN.
Trump PUBLICLY INVITED Russia to hack into his opponent’s email. They complied by hacking into the DNC servers and to email account of Trump’s opponent’s campaign chairperson. It is shocking that Trump has never been arrested and brought to trial for this.
In one of the most frightening of his Russian water-carrying during his maladministration, Trump unilaterally (again), against the will of his military and national security staff, withdrew the United States from the INF Treaty, which governs acceptable nuclear missile deployment, and the Open Skies Treaty, which allows for mutual flyovers to verify nuclear treaty compliance AT THE VERY TIME WHEN PUTIN AND RUSSIA WERE DEPLOYING A NEW GENERATION OF EXTREMELY DANGEROUS HYPERSONIC NUCLEAR WEAPONS. This was of great advantage to Putin and PUT AT RISK DECADES OF NUCLEAR DETERRENCE. I would argue that what Trump did here was treason.
I’ll stop there, but you get the picture. Whatever Putin wanted, his dog, Trump, delivered. Putin’s investment in this criminal, treasonous, seditious, rapist and con man was richly rewarded.
My response to your latest water-carrying for Putin is in moderation, Dienne.
How is it “water carrying” to point out that Putin is simply a politician like any other? Again, his kill list is shorter than most American presidents’. You disagree with his decisions. Fine. I disagreed with most of Bush’s and Obama’s. I don’t think either of those two are remorseless monsters, even though they did worse than Putin.
Dienne, admit it. You are an apologist for Putin. That evil man can do no wrong in your eyes.
Diane, admit it, I have criticized Putin. You’re just so blinded that you can’t see any nuance to the man. Again, I’ll say it. Talking to you on this subject is like talking to my friend’s teenage niece who was in a literal cult. Both of you are impervious to evidence that refutes your beliefs. And it’s sad because in so many other ways you are a brilliant, deep and critical thinker. You know that mainstream media routinely lie about education and they’re not above smearing people to do it (as they did to Karen Lewis, as I pointed out). So why do you implicitly trust them on other issues?
Dienne, I get my information about Putin from many sources. I know, for example, that he said he had no intention to invade Ukraine. He said so right up to the minute he launched the invasion. As I recall, you wrote on this site that Putin would not invade Ukraine. Do you believe your own eyes? If I am in an anti-Putin cult, so are the leaders of Europe, especially the nations that once were Soviet satellites. They are terrified of Putin. The sole exception is Hungary, which is close to being a fascist country, whose leader Viktor Orban, is a huge favorite of the MAGA cult.
Even Sweden and Finland were so outraged by Putin’s brutal invasion of Ukraine that they asked to join NATO. That vastly expanded Russia’s border with NATO.
What do you know that the leaders of Sweden and Finland don’t know? What do you know that the leaders of Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Germany, and other neighbors of Russia don’t know?
If antipathy towards Putin is a “cult,” I’m in very good company.
Putin didn’t want to invade. He tried right up to the last minute to negotiate, but his legitimate concerns were ignored. He decided to invade when he realized that kiev troops (supported by NATO weapons, training and intelligence) were massing on Eastern Ukraine in an obvious plot to escalate the civil war that had been slaughtering Romani people and ethnic Russians. He knew that if he didn’t do something, tens of thousands more would be slaughtered.
Furthermore, NATO has never made a secret of the fact that their intent is to “Balkanize” Russia and turn it into many separate republics. Perhaps you support that goal, but if you look at it from Putin’s perspective, you’d realize that Putin couldn’t allow that to happen. What would you think of a hostile power trying to Balkanize the U.S. (and believe me, there are many in the world who would like to see that happen)?
The fact remains that Putin has the support of about 70% of the Russian population (based on U.S. studies), and the majority of those who don’t support him say he’s too soft on NATO/the U.S. and not hardline enough. If Putin were to be replaced, any future Russian president would be far more brutal and the entirety of ukraine would be a smoking ruin within weeks.
I know you don’t believe any of this because the mainstream media won’t tell you. But all of it is widely acknowledged at the upper echelons of the Pentagon. I’ve posted sources before with leaked documents and quotes, but according to you everything I post is Russian propaganda…..
Oh, my, Putin didn’t want to invade Ukraine!! He just had to! Ukraine was run by that notorious Jewish Nazi Zelensky.
Please. Enough. Soviet propaganda.
“Soviet”. ‘Nuff said.
In a sense, that is correct because the anti-LGBT, anti-women’s rights, serial murderer and indicted international war criminal whom you so praise is on a self-proclaimed mission to rebuild the Soviet Union as a Greater Russian Empire. Greater Russia. His imperialist term.
Putin said that the dissolution of the Soviet Union was “the greatest geopolitical tragedy of the 20th century.”
cx Johnstone
Propagandist, not journalist
Poor Vladimir. People MADE him do it.
HOWLING WITH LAUGHTER HERE.
I should leave it alone, I suppose, but another thought occurs. When it comes to education, you are very open to a wide variety of independent sources from all over the place, from mainstream media, independent media, education advocacy groups, independent bloggers, etc. From the perspective of education “reformers”, all of those sources are “propaganda” or “tools of the teachers unions” or such like things” because they go against the mainstream narrative most often found in mainstream media. Education rephormers would probably call you a “useful idiot” of the teachers unions or some like thing. They’d say you support “failing schools” that you want children to “fail”, etc.
In that case, you are smart enough to see through those smears and listen to what the writers are saying. You may not agree with everything the writer is saying or everything about their views in general, but you’re willing to sift through their arguments and support what you support and reject what you reject without rejecting everything out of hand.
But when it comes to foreign policy, you do exactly the opposite. You accept the mainstream narrative view unquesioningly. I have presented you sources from people in ukraine, current and former U.S., NATO and European leaders, leaked documents, public proclamations (such as Jens Stoltenberg recently admitting that Putin invaded as a response to NATO provocation), etc. But in those cases you reject any non-conforming sources as “propaganda” or “useful idiots”, just as the rephormers reject your educational sources. I really think you need to examine that kind of reaction. Why is it so hard for you to consider opposing sources with an open mind and decide which parts you may or may not agree with upon further evidence? After all, further evidence is how you changed your mind on education!
Anyway, I promise I’ll go away for the rest of the day after this and leave you the last word, but it just really seems like you have a block here – an irrational reaction to opposing views which you don’t have in other areas (and you’re certainly not an irrational person in general). It’s evidenced in the way this is so black and white for you – Putin is a monster, Zelensky is a hero, no in between. That’s children’s comic book level thinking and you are so far above that.
I’d suggest that you have fallen for carefully orchestrated mainstream narratives and become personally identified with them, so anything that contradicts them is threatening. For instance, I’d suggest you ask yourself why you so fiercely support Navalny? When was the first time you heard about him? From whom and in what context? Might that narrative have been created with an agenda? Why are you so opposed to hearing about his documented history of white nationalism?
I don’t mean to anger you, although I know I do. I just think you should question mainstream narratives on foreign policy like you do on education, and you should ask yourself why you don’t. Anyway, as I said, I’m done here, so say whatever you need to say. Just know that I really do respect you – if I didn’t, I’d have been gone long ago.
Dienne,
I admit that I am biased against dictators, against people who rule without any checks on their power. I also am biased against fascists like Orban in Hungary. And I am predisposed to dislike regimes that oppress people because of their race, sex, and sexual identity. In addition to having his presidential term extended to 2036, Putin is anti-LGBT. He has extinguished the freedom to write and speak. People are jailed for calling his war on Ukraine a war.
Everything I despise about Putin is factual, not a matter of opinion.
Here is another fact: Russia invaded Ukraine.
Another fact: Ukraine did not invade Russia.
A guess, on my part: the Ukrainian people do not want to be conquered by a dictator-for-life who does not permit real elections and who has crushed dissent in his country. My wild guess is that they want more freedom, not none at all.
End of discussion.
I do not consider this Caitlin Johnson “a source.” She is a propagandist. She writes dangerous, false, breathtakingly twisted bullshit.
Sure, Dienne. Every politician comes to power by arranging a series of apartment bombings against innocent civilians of his own country, blaming these on terrorists, and then becoming famous by starting a war against the terrorists’ country. Every one of them then turns his country into a kleptocratic state by making under-the-table deals to siphon off state and private resources for his own use and imprisoning or killing oligarchs who don’t go along with this. Every one then spends decades murdering and imprisoning opposition journalists–scores and scores of them. Every politician closes down all opposition media. Every politician declares that it is the destiny of his country to establish an imperialist empire by annexing other countries and writes tracts that rewrite history to justify this. Every politician illegally invades another sovereign state and starts randomly bombing civilians and cultural monuments and critical infrastructure, condoning systematic campaigns of looting and rape in the invaded country, and threatening the rest of the world with nuclear war. Oh, and every one is indicted for war crimes and crimes against humanity by the International Court of Criminal Justice.
Just like any other guy. Heck, too bad he is so far away and can’t be your local scout leader. Oh, wait. HE HAS EMBEDDED AGENTS AND ASSETS IN THE US TO DO THAT.
Gosh, wait ’til you read about the Bush regime….
Agreed about the Shrub regime. All those war criminals should be in prison.
“Do you agree that it’s wrong for millions of Americans being held in America for minor drug charges?”
This point is very well made, Dienne. I emphatically agree with you. This is systemic evil and stupidity.
I saw that endorsement of Trump by Putin, RT. Hilarious. And so out of touch. There isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that Trump will win the next election. The pile of dogshit on my lawn has a better chance.
It’s sad to see someone on this site – or anywhere – claiming that Trump did NOT cower and subordinate himself to Putin when he did that at Helsinki. The picures told it all. So did the media:
“After face-to-face talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Mr Trump contradicted US intelligence agencies and said there had been no reason for Russia to meddle in the vote.”
“Trump was asked if he believed his own intelligence agencies or the Russian president when it came to the allegations of meddling in the elections…’President Putin says it’s not Russia. I don’t see any reason why it would be,’ he replied.”
“US intelligence agencies concluded in 2016 that Russia was behind an effort to tip the scale of the US election against Hillary Clinton, with a state-authorised campaign of cyber attacks and fake news stories planted on social media.”
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-44852812
Understanding that there are Republicans whose philosophy is opposed to Trumps, I wonder that the only two who seem willing to oppose the Trumpization of the Republicans live in the Great Basin states of Utah and Wyoming. Where are the rest?
It’s a sick party. Tea Party started it and Trump smashed it, possibly for good.
FLERP,
Trump smashed the GOP, not for good but for worse. A generation ago, the nuts in the “Freedom Caucus” would not be part of the leadership.
I meant forever, not for “the good.”
Let’s keep in mind that those Republicans who oppose Trump are the neocons who got us into an illegal unprovoked war in Iraq based on lies as well as the more general “War on Terror” which has resulted in millions of deaths and untold suffering. The whole party is odious, not just the Trump wing.
agreed about that
Still trying to figure out how there is so much evidence its staggering and none of you can accept how corrupt and traitorous the Biden’s are which also means the Clintons and the worst of them all the Obama’s.
Not sure why Trump having good relations with Russia and North Korea is so bad, old Biden has zero respect and they could attack us being very weak and we would lose the war.
List the evidence in your own words, in coherent language.
First, a few matters of grammar and punctuation:
You are trying to figure out there is so much evidence? LOL
Biden’s, with the apostrophe, is possessive, as in “President Biden’s pro-worker economic policies.”
Biden’s also means the Clintons? I wasn’t aware that they were the same people.
Obama’s, with the apostrophe, is, again, possessive, as in “Obama’s bailout of the big banks.”
Now, to the substantive stuff:
If you are not sure what Trump having good relations with Russia and North Korea is so bad, then you know nothing of Russia and North Korea. Trump’s boyfriend Vladimir, btw, has been indicted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court.
“We would lose the war.” OMG. NOW THAT IS HILARIOUS. 60 percent of the ordinance that Russia uses is defective. It doesn’t explode. The tires on their military vehicles simply blow up, leaving them stranded. Their tanks are designed in such a way that they turrets are blown off them by explosions, rendering them useless tombs for their operators. Their field communications systems don’t work. They are so bad that Russian commanders are resorting to using cell phones that give away their positions. Why? Because Putin has run a Mafia state for many decades now, and the imagined Russian military upgrade was entirely a figment of their cooked books. The money for decent equipment was all siphoned off by the corrupt people whom Putin put in place, who followed Putin’s corrupt example.
Kowtowing to brutal dictators is not “a good thing.” Remember Otto Warmbier? This poor kid was arrested for swiping a poster off a hotel wall. Trump pleaded for his return. When they finally released him, he was an incoherent shell of a man who had been tortured. He died soon after he was sent home. A boy.
There is no credible evidence about any crimes committed by President Biden, or the Clintons or the Obama’s.
Your head has been immersed too long in rightwing fascist media.
Please note that if any of us publicly called upon hackers to break into a server and steal material, we and the hackers would be summarily arrested and brought to trial. Why is there a different set of laws for career criminal, pathological liar, and psychopathic malignant narcissist and VILLAGE IDIOT TO THE WORLD Don the Con, aka Putin’s Dog, aka Moscow’s Asset Governed America (MAGA)?
cx: if any of us publicly called upon hackers to break into a server and steal material and they complied
I can hardly stop chortling over that utterly insane article that Dienne posted supposedly showing Trump to have been hard on Russia. OMG. Every item in it is distorted or backward. Oh, and BTW, Trump hardly ever knew what was going on during his Maladministration. He had a few pet notions that would suddenly occur to him while he was watching Fox News and eating cheeseburgers, and he had, of course, his long-term cozy relationship with his mentor and handler, Tsar Vladimir. But a LOT of stuff that took place in his maladministration he barely had any notions about. John Bolton could get stuff done that Trump was too ignorant and stupid even to understand. Remember that this is a guy who thought that we should send astronauts to the sun and inject disinfectants, who thought that stealth airplanes were actually invisible. Who LITERALLY told reporters that he got his ideas about “military stuff” from “watching the shows.”
Diane says ” there is so much evidence its staggering” about Bidens alleged “corruption” but it’s telling that she provides not a scintilla of the “evidence.”
Gaslight much?
It’s confusing to have a Trumper with my name posting nutty comments about The Former Guy. I may have to start calling myself by my last name.
Flerp, laundering money through 20 shell companies, not paying taxes 2014-2019, 460 documented crimes that is just hunter and Joe not including his brother and sister.
Bidens got 7 million from a chinese enegy conglomerate, I mean I can go on but dont worry you will find out,.
5 different email aliases that show his crimes taking bribes, 3 million from moscow mayor, hunter biden getting millions, and his father from foreign countries, Joe quid pro quo. Remember that when he got the lawyer fired.
We need to go over the ground rules again.
Diane,
There is literally no evidence for any of the “crimes” you allege that President Biden committed. None.
If you have a link to a reputable source, please present it.
Many of these business dealings seem quite sleazy. Unfortunately, they are also legal. There is no evidence that Biden did anything in exchange for payments to Hunter. None. But does all this smell to high heaven? Yes, it does. However, it was probably all perfectly legal. That needs to change.
It’s been going on for a long time — remember Billy Carter taking money from Libya (not to mention Billy Beer and other profiting from his relationship to Jimmy Carter). Another way the right wing successfully undermined Jimmy Carter by implying Carter was a corrupt politician because of Billy. But when Republican relatives of Trumps and Bushes and right wing Supreme Court Justices profit 10000x more than any Democrat relative, they cry that an investigation is “politicized” and the massive payments are almost never questioned more than a minute.
It’s worth reading emptywheel.net (which is not an apologist for Biden site) because Marcy Wheeler gives an outstanding weighing of the actual evidence in the Hunter Biden investigation instead of the right wing exaggerated version of it.
There are a lot of misleading exaggerations like “20 shell companies”. I don’t object to closely examining Hunter Biden, but when it’s about exaggeration, then it seems clear that the Republicans can’t find any real crimes.
That’s why, after Hunter was investigated in a way that family of Republican politicians never are, prosecutors were left with charging a crime – lying about drug use when filling out the forms to obtain a gun license – that is virtually never prosecuted in non-violent offenders – it’s charged if the person actually commits a crime with that gun. In Hunter Biden’s case, he didn’t even fire that gun and possessed it a couple weeks or months at most. No one goes through the records of every person who has ever used drugs or suffered from addiction and is a right wing Republican politician or one of their relatives to make sure they never lied about their addiction or drug use on a gun application form in the past. And if Democrats tried to play that dirty game, I am sure the Republicans would yell bloody murder. But they would certainly uncover Republican gun owners who have used illegal drugs and did not reveal that.
Agree, NYC Parent. It’s always been thus. But I think it does progressives no good to minimize this stuff in the center and on the left. I agree that the Repugnican versions of this tend to be a lot worse.
What did the Saudis get for the 2 billion to Kuschner? It is extraordinarily difficult to imagine that they just thought that this would be a super investment financially speaking.