The five faulty premises are lies that have been repeated ad nauseum to get the American people to swallow the utterly fictitious Russiagate story. From Doug “Uncola” Lynn at theburningplatform.com:
Having watched some of the questions to former Special Counsel Robert Mueller by congress on Wednesday July 24, 2019, as well as Mueller’s dithering deflections – it was obvious the entire affair was another distraction; more of the same ongoing circus show.
Of course, no minds were changed. Those on the Left still consider Trump to be a comprised capitalist pig guarding his tax returns with all the fervor of any good Manchurian Candidate and those on the Right still viewing Mueller as a tyrannical tool of the Deep State.
After Mueller’s live testimony, this blogger listened to roughly thirty Americans calling into CNBC with their comments. Of those callers, only three were in support of Trump and with the rest of them effusively expressing gratitude to Mueller for his service in revealing Trump’s threat to American Democracy.
Many conservatives, including talk-radio host Rush Limbaugh and some his callers, agreed that Mueller didn’t seem familiar with the contents of his report, let alone the Steele Dossier, Fusion GPS, and other points-of-fact brought up by the Republicans as they were grilling the former special counsel. To be sure, Limbaugh commented on Mueller’s less-than-stellar demeanor and lack of preparedness – even going so far as to say Mueller deserved absolutely zero sympathies for his contributory efforts in the never-ending farce that the former special counsel has perpetrated on the American people.
Many news reports note that Mueller is a Republican, far few note that his entire investigative team are Democrats. From Ann Coulter at anncoulter.com:
It is apparently part of Robert Mueller’s contract with the media that he must always be described as “honorable” and a “lifelong Republican.” (After this week, we can add “dazed and confused” to his appellation.)
If it matters that Mueller is a “lifelong Republican,” then I guess it matters that he hired a team of left-wing zealots. Of the 17 lawyers in Mueller’s office, 14 are registered Democrats. Not one is a registered Republican. In total, they have donated more than $60,000 to Democratic candidates.
Congressman Steve Chabot listed the Democratic political activism of nine of Mueller’s staff attorneys at a December 2017 House hearing.
Here are a few from Chabot’s list:
— Kyle Freeny contributed to both Obama campaigns and to Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
— Andrew Goldstein donated $3,300 to both Obama campaigns.
— Elizabeth Prelogar contributed to both the Obama and Clinton campaigns.
— Jeannie Rhee donated $16,000 to Democrats, contributed $5,400 to the Clinton campaign — and represented Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation in several lawsuits.
— Andrew Weissmann contributed $2,000 to the Democratic National Committee, $2,300 to the Obama campaign and $2,300 to the Clinton Campaign.
None had donated to the Trump campaign.
The media brushed off the conspicuous anti-Trump bias in Mueller’s office with platitudes about how prosecutors are, “allowed to have political opinions,” as Jeffrey Toobin said on CNN. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein assured the public that their “views are not in any way a factor in how they conduct themselves in office.”
After Mueller’s fiasco, will Trump’s enemies finally give up trying to depose him? From Robert Bridge at rt.com:
Any hope that the interrogation of prosecutor, Robert Mueller, would provide some closure to the endless spectacle of Russiagate was dashed. As long as Donald Trump is in power, the show must go on.
When Mueller, 74, was led into the lion’s den of the congressional coliseum on Wednesday to defend his 22-month, multi-million-dollar investigation from the slings and arrows of partisan power-brokers, the temptation to feel some pity for the man was surprisingly strong.
The former special counsel appeared frail, disheveled and, as many others have acknowledged, well past his prime. His demeanor resembled that of a powerful official who had just been yanked from bed at gunpoint to appear before a midnight military tribunal. The flimsy shield he hid behind when confronted with any serious question regarding his 448-page report was deference to “the ongoing investigation.”
Given his poor memory, sluggishness, and lack of familiarity with his own Report, we now have more insight into why Mueller allowed his 2-year investigation to spiral out of control and devolve into absurdity
The Republicans drew blood early. Jim Jordan, veteran House member and former wrestling champ, maneuvered Mueller into an inescapable lock-hold. Jordan pressed Mueller as to why the ‘witch hunt’ hauled away half a dozen Trump-connected cohorts to prison – including Roger Stone, a former adviser to the president, who was arrested in a crack-of-dawn FBI raid that was all-too conveniently filmed by a CNN camera crew – yet nobody affiliated with the Democratic Party suffered equally harsh measures.
With Mueller’s disastrous testimony, the coup against President Trump may be over. From Jacob G. Hornberger at fff.org:
With what most everyone is calling a stunningly disjointed and extremely disappointing presentation before Congress by Special Counsel and former FBI Director Robert Mueller, it is becoming increasingly clear that the effort to achieve regime change through impeachment is going to fail. Democrats are going to have to rely on the traditional electoral means to remove President Trump from office in 2020.
This is the way it should be. Achieving regime change through impeachment would have converted the United States into a standard banana republic.
Ever since Trump became the GOP nominee for president, Democrats, the national-security establishment, and the liberal elements of the mainstream press did everything they could to ensure that his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, was elected president.
Once Trump became president, however, his opponents refused to accept the electoral outcome and began trying to remove him from office through impeachment.That’s where the anti-Russia brouhaha came into play.
During the campaign, it was increasingly clear that Trump and Clinton were on opposite sides of the Russia controversy. Trump desired to establish friendly relations with Russia, which was exactly what Russia wanted.
But that’s not what the national-security establishment wanted. Ever since the sudden and unexpected end of the Cold War, the Pentagon, CIA, and NSA — the three principal components of the national-security state — did everything they could to make Russia, once again, an official enemy of the United States. Clinton was squarely on the side of the national-security establishment.
The real reason we don’t get out of Afghanistan, from Pepe Escobar at sputniknews.com:
The Persian Gulf harbors an array of extremely compromising secrets. Near the top is the Afghan heroin ratline – with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) positioned as the golden node of a transnational, trillion dollar heroin money laundering operation.
In this 21st century Opium War, crops harvested in Afghanistan are essentially feeding the heroin market not only in Russia and Iran but especially in the US. Up to 93% of the world’s opium comes from Afghanistan.
Contrary to predominant Western perception, this is not an Afghan Taliban operation. The key questions — never asked by Atlanticist circles — are who buys the opium harvests; refines them into heroin; controls the export routes; and then sell them for humongous profit compared to what the Taliban have locally imposed in taxes.
The hegemonic narrative rules that Washington bombed Afghanistanin 2001 in “self-defense” after 9/11; installed a “democratic” government; and after 16 years never de facto left because this is a key node in the Global War on Terror (GWOT), against al-Qaeda and the Taliban alike.Washington spent over $100 billion in Afghan reconstruction. And, allegedly, $8.4 billion in “counternarcotics programs”. Operation Enduring Freedom — along with the “liberation” of Iraq — have cost an astonishing several trillion dollars. And still the heroin ratline, out of occupied Afghanistan, thrives. Cui bono?
There’s never been anything to the Mueller investigation, and David Stockman lays out why the investigation and Mueller’s congressional testimony this week fell flat on their faces. From Stockman at antiwar.com:
At his wrap-up press conference in May, Robert Mueller sternly underscored what he called “the central allegation” of the two-year Russia probe. Namely, that the Russian government engaged in
“multiple, systematic efforts to interfere in our election, and that allegation deserves the attention of every American.”
Today’s gong show on Capitol Hill presented him with innumerable opportunities to defend that heavy duty proposition.
Indeed, he had a massive TV audience before which to fortify the entire foundation on which the Russia meddling/collusion story is based and on which a concerted effort have been made by a goodly part of the Washington establishment to invalidate the 2016 election on the grounds that the Kremlin threw it to Trump.
But nothing doing. Instead, Mueller ducked, dodged and demurred – hiding behind the words of his 448-page report. Yet the latter doesn’t even attempt to “prove” this “central allegation” at all; it just asserts it based on purportedly classified information that the unwashed voters and most of their elected representatives are not allowed to see.
More crucially, both before and since the Report’s release, even its squishy nods and heavily qualified inferences implicating Russian state agents have been essentially refuted by evidence now on the public record.
The two tent poles of the whole RussiaGate affair are the social media campaigns of the St. Petersburg troll farm and the alleged hack of the DNC computers by Russian state operatives. That’s not our view but the claim of the Mueller report itself which said the alleged Russian interference occurred “principally through two operations.”
Yet both poles are so flimsy that they can’t be taken seriously by anybody who examines the facts with even a half-open, adult mind.
Fewer and fewer respect either governments or the law. Michael Snyder avoids asking why, but he provides some documentation for the problem. From Snyder at endoftheamericandream.com:
We have raised an entire generation of Americans that have no respect for the law, and now we are reaping what we have sown. I cannot even begin to tell you how alarmed I am by some of the videos that I have been watching lately. As you will see below, all over the nation young people are brazenly flouting the law, obstructing and assaulting law enforcement officers, and committing criminal acts in large groups. I think that “lawlessness” is perhaps the best word to describe what is happening, and many believe that what we have witnessed so far is just the beginning. I have so much respect for the good law enforcement officers across the country that put their lives on the line day after day to protect all of us, but I wouldn’t want to be in their shoes at this point. If you wonder why I would say such a thing, just consider what just happened in New York City…
In a series of shocking videos, NYPD officers can be seen being doused with buckets of water and pelted with projectiles as they tried to do their jobs (in one video, the officers were in the middle of making an arrest).
The stunning footage, which was first spotted online on Monday, shows the brazen young men in Harlem and Brooklyn dousing cops with water and, in one frame, an officer gets beaned in the back of the head with an empty red plastic bucket. The attacks on the officers started as they were arresting another young man, and in the video, they can be seen handcuffing the man while he was splayed out on the hood of a car.
How would you respond if you were attacked like this?
If I was a police officer in that situation, I would not have been able to let that kind of abuse go, and those young attackers would have learned the hard way that there are very serious consequences for assaulting a police officer.
But this is what happens when we raise an entire generation without any values whatsoever.
These young people are just doing whatever seems right in their own eyes, and similar things are happening all over the nation.
For example, a “flash mob” recently stormed into a North Face store in Wisconsin and stole $30,000 worth of merchandise…
A band of shoplifters who formed a ‘flash mob’ and rushed into a North Face store are accused of stealing $30,000 worth of merchandise, according to a report in the Kenosha News.
Dramatic video obtained from the Pleasant Prairie Police Department shows the group of ten shoplifters walk into the store, before quickly grabbing as many items as they can carry and rushing out.
How cold-hearted do you have to be to do something like this?
An even larger flash mob stormed a Walgreens in Philadelphia on the 4th of July…
As you can see from video footage of the incident, the young people seemed to take great joy in the crimes that they were committing.
If things are this crazy now, what will things look like when economic conditions get really bad and those young people get really desperate?
Elsewhere in Philadelphia, a pack of teen girls was viciously attacking random female victims that they came across in the street, and video of the attacks caused quite a bit of outrage…
A gang of teenage girls filmed themselves targeting female strangers in random attacks on the streets of Philadelphia.
The disturbing video shows the girls approaching their unsuspecting victims on the street before proceeding to slap them and wrestle them to the ground.
The violent video sparked outrage when it was shared online.
Of course many of these young criminals will end up in prison, but in many cases that will just mean that they will learn how to be even better criminals from those they are incarcerated with.
And the truth is that in many instances our prisons are completely and utterly out of control. For example, it is being reported that one prison down in Mississippi allegedly put the gangs in charge at one point.
Everywhere you look there is lawlessness. This week when ICE officials showed up to arrest an illegal immigrant in Nashville, the man’s neighbors formed a human chain around him in order to keep that from happening…
When U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrived at a Nashville home Monday in an attempt to detain a man there, neighbors and activists gathered to support the man, who remained shuttered in a van with a child for hours before the agents left.
And once the agents and police officers they had called to the scene finally drove away, neighbors who had kept the man and the boy fed, hydrated and cool, formed a human chain from the van to the house as the man and the boy shuffled inside.
In the end, the ICE officials left and the illegal immigrant got away.
When there is a complete and utter lack of respect for law enforcement on a widespread basis, that is a recipe for chaos.
And without a doubt, our nation is on the brink of great chaos. Just consider these numbers…
After a week that saw President Trump and his foes toss toxic words at each other, there is now a warning that the next phase could be “violence.”
Nearly 8 of 10 Americans told the Pew Research Center that supporters for both sides could “act” on the politically charged rhetoric with violence. It was higher for Democrats, 91%, than Republicans, 61%.
Day after day, the mainstream media is stirring up more anger, frustration, strife, discord and division. I have never seen more hatred in America than I see right now, and it is exceedingly difficult to imagine how all of this could possibly end well.
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