Surely, the way Trump struts his stuff in this recording was constant in the Oval Office, as were the stupid suck up accolades by his brown-nosing, barely out of high school aides. Then, as icing on the cake, there were many bright cabinet members and Congressional leaders who knew the most powerful person in the world was an unpredictable, uninformed moron with no impulse control and no regard for national security or the lives of American citizens. Yet, no one of any stature came forward. They grumbled, maybe leaked a little, and slinked away, sometimes after getting fired. And then, the cabinet members did not demand to speak at the impeachment trials or the Jan. 6 hearings. Nor did they pull together some subset to make an address to Congress, or to the nation, about the peril we were in with this sociopath in the presidency.
We were lucky to get out of this with our country and our lives (though hundreds of thousands did not due to COVID mismanagement).
The biggest failure of political leaders in our country’s history--a party that has no business governing at any level until they come to grips with what they have done and continue to do.
Contrast these self-serving, opportunistic, spineless Cabinet members to Lt. Col. Vindman, Marie Yovanovitch, Fiona Hill and others who stood up and spoke truth to power.
Cathy, this is very well said. Thank you for offering such clarity in regard to the failure of past leaders to speak up for the republic. Let’s hope we might yet hear such testimony.
As a father whose son died of drugs I want to thank you for highlighting Kristoff's article on President Biden's deep compassion for Hunter. It underscores, I think, not only the fundamental decency of the man but also the cruelty of the world in which we live and in which he practices a politics of decency and discernment that should be a model to us all. The opposite of "Woke" is cruelty and that has now become he defining characteristic of the Republican party. There has always been a strain of cruelty in American character and history, think slavery, lynchings, Indian genocide, Chinese exclusion etc. but it has now become public policy of one the two major parties. It is front and center in our failure as a society to come to grips with our addictions at an annual cost of 250,000 lives, millions of personal tragedies, and billions spent on incarceration. It is time for each of us to stand up for decency and compassion and to speak out publicly against its absence, especially in the realm of politics and power. If enough of us do it just might just nudge our society in a more humane direction. Thank you Robert for leading the way.
Mike, thank you for sharing your personal experience. I want to echo this sentiment in your comment: "It is time for each of us to stand up for decency and compassion and to speak out publicly against its absence, especially in the realm of politics and power." If we could just get that part right, we would be a long way to healing ourselves as a society and democracy.
Part of that cruelty is the hardened resistance to having a solid social safety net. Countries where people don't have to worry about losing everything to high cost illness, or high cost anything else, loss of job and inability to find new job, countries that make education free, through university, don't have much addiction.
And it is the fcuken GOP that thinks we need a sink or swim society. Fcuk them!
And, I'm so sorry, Mike, that you lost your son in this manner. Your comment is eloquent, and I hope that despite your terrible loss, you have peace and love in your life.
"There has always been a strain of cruelty in American character and history, think slavery, lynchings, Indian genocide, Chinese exclusion etc. but it has now become public policy of one the two major parties." ✅ Cruelty is the point...and endgame. I, too, very much appreciated Kristoff's article and acknowledgment of the pain of (too often surviving) parents.
Apologies, Robert, if you linked Anne Applebaum's article yesterday. I can't remember if her words addressed the questions you have asked here. But, for me, the following really helped me to understand why what happened in Russia happened. "This was the most remarkable aspect of the whole day: Nobody seemed to mind, particularly, that a brutal new warlord had arrived to replace the existing regime—not the security services, not the army, and not the general public. On the contrary, many seemed sorry to see him [Prigozhin] go.
"The response is hard to understand without reckoning with the power of apathy, a much undervalued political tool. Democratic politicians spend a lot of time thinking about how to engage people and persuade them to vote. But a certain kind of autocrat, of whom Putin is the outstanding example, seeks to convince people of the opposite: not to participate, not to care, and not to follow politics at all. The propaganda used in Putin’s Russia has been designed in part for this purpose. The constant provision of absurd, conflicting explanations and ridiculous lies—the famous 'firehose of falsehoods'— encourages many people to believe that there is no truth at all. The result is widespread cynicism. If you don’t know what’s true, after all, then there isn’t anything you can do about it. Protest is pointless. Engagement is useless.
"But the side effect of apathy was on display yesterday as well. For if no one cares about anything, that means they don’t care about their supreme leader, his ideology, or his war. Russians haven’t flocked to sign up to fight in Ukraine. They haven’t rallied around the troops in Ukraine or held emotive ceremonies marking either their successes or their deaths. Of course they haven’t organized to oppose the war, but they haven’t organized to support it either."
Yes; I linked to Anne Applebaum's article in Monday's newsletter and summarized her thesis. But thanks for including the above excerpts. I think her observation is important and relevant to the US.
When a country strips all power and any illusions of hope for obtaining power from the people, it should be unsurprising that the result is universal apathy.
Thanks for flagging this. A lot to concern us here. Fringe groups are one thing; this piece notes a 3-month-old poll by The Economist/YouGov that shows 58% of self-described conservatives say Jan. 6 was an act of “legitimate political discourse” vs. a “violent insurrection.”
I had signed for and completed YouGov surveys until it just go too much to answer their self-fulfilling questions. It never seemed that they wanted to have answers that required too much thiught60”'
I appreciate that you recommend articles for us to get more insight. With the same spirit of spreading good stuff, I recommend Randy Rainbow videos. Humor is a great weapon against lies, stupidity, hypocrisy, etc. it’s one thing to say the emperor has no clothes, but it’s even more powerful to laugh at him for pretending he’s well dressed.
The analysis of Diana Francis is disturbing in light of having the current GOP pro Russian in both their support of Putin and by proxy Donald Trump.
The tape of Joe Biden leaving a voicemail for his son in contrast to Trumps tape regarding classified documents tell you everything you need to know about these two people, ( I would of said men but Joe Biden is the only man between the two). It would be one of the great ironies as well as the greatest tragedy to see that a Kennedy helped destroy Democracy.
The last thing I will say is that your prediction of an Angels victory was correct in their victory over the Chicago White Sox, 2-1 ( what an exciting game...), I am left here to weep....
It was a horrible way for the White Sox to lose a game with brilliant pitching except for the bottom of the ninth. It was painful for us to watch Trout strike out three times. He does not seem to be himself. But the excitement around Ohtani is fun.
This just seems ludicrous. Any other citizen would be incarcerated. The fact that he’s an ex president makes this situation MORE dangerous and egregious... our justice system is broken. And seemingly not very serious about protecting state secrets.
I think Sean Hannity was totally wrong about Joe Biden. (Shock!) His chasing after his son to hug him and cry over him shows what a decent person he is. As opposed to tRump who bullied and abused his children.
I think it's ironic/pathetic that his lackey Mauta is pictured closer to tfg, in a rather intimate moment fixing his collar, than any pictures with his own children.
I think the photo is *revealing* (as though we didn’t know, already) — Trump as the insecure narcissist.
By the way, have other people noticed the physical resemblance between Trump, when on the stump, and Mussolini? I don’t mean this gratuitously: look at Trump, especially in near-profile, and as he struts on stage.
That Sean Hannity or anyone at Fox thought this diminished Joe Biden in anyway is jaw-dropping. And, given the demographic of Fox's audience, I wonder how many hearing what Biden said to his son thought it inappropriate or weak.
Jun 27, 2023·edited Jun 27, 2023Liked by Robert B. Hubbell
An analysis by Paul Sonne and Anatoly Kurmanaev in the New York Times helped me better understand Prighozin's leading his Wagner troops in armed insurrection. They describe Putin's MO of pitting factions against each other to serve his ends and keep them off balance, in this case his generals and Wagner mercenaries. When Proghozin was becoming too powerful, Putin and the Russian military started taking away his power. They advanced competitors to his corrupt contracts feeding the military. They put the Russian military first in ammunition supplies. They forbade the Wagner group from recruiting prisoners and adopted that tactic themselves. The last straw was when they required Wagner troops to sign contracts with the Russian military, something the troops and their brutal leader considered to be a last straw.
Meanwhile, as his links to power and wealth were progressively eliminated, Prighozin became increasingly vocal in a way that only someone with a private army could do without being eliminated or thrown in prison. That's puzzling to me, since he was one of the masterminds of Russia's social media election interference efforts. I suspect that he must have thought he had backing to overthrow Putin by speaking the unspeakable in public. Who were his backers?
I see Putin's allowing Prighozin to become so empowered flowing from his desperation for some wins in Ukraine, where the Wagner troops were the most capable of his forces. When they had spent enough of their strength in the bloodbath of Bakhmut, Putin cut the cord to Wagner's supply of cannon fodder from prisons, which was the beginning of the end.
Now, Lukashenko, the corrupt tyrant of Belarus, has been accruing power as the interlocutor to halt the insurrection, and before that he agreed to host some of Russia's short range nuclear arsenal. It's the same game. Although Prighozin was allowed to flee to Belarus, I don't think anyone believes that he has a long life ahead of him, given Putin's habit of reaching beyond Russia's borders to liquidate anyone he considers disloyal or a threat. He will have to make an example of Prighozin to keep his sycophants in fear. But first, Prighozin's private army needs to be decamped.
You and the authors could be 100% correct. Or not. It is hard to conceive that Putin pitted Prigozhin against the MoD with the intent of losing 6 helicopters, one sophisticated surveillance aircraft, and Putin's standing as a tough guy. (He fled to St. Petersburg when Prigozhin was advancing on Moscow!) So maybe it all started out as an exercise of putting rats in a box and shaking it to see what would happen (an oversimplification, I know) but Putin was the one who got bit in the end. I still don't get it, but am willing to accept the above framework for trying to understand what happened. Thanks.
Putin started this hellish and stupid war and is surrounded by yes men. So, I'm not surprised that he blundered into another catastrophe and underestimated Prighozin's rage and Wagner's armaments. Imagine being in the same room as these war criminals. The fear, rage and greed would feel like an electrical field of bear fog.
"Only “100 beneficiaries and several thousand accomplices” own everything, said Mikhail Kodorovsky"
and “Putin’s Russia is a criminal organization that must be overthrown. And finally, one of its own has told the world, and Russian people, why it must disappear.”
Diane Francis seems to have significant insight into the inner workings of Russia's structure and political machinations. I also highly recommend her previous piece. https://dianefrancis.substack.com/p/chinas-russia
Diane Francis is one of my "classes". It would seem that Russia is very fragile. Too big and diverse to be managed by a brutal army spread very thin. It is crippled by sanctions and international isolation. If India begins to curtail purchasing Russian oil by finding it elsewhere...watch the dominos fall. Biden's recent hosting of Modi?
Putin must be very nervous. Someday, maybe, we will learn what those 100 gangsters were saying right now. Could it be "Time for Vlad to retire?" or "I don't like the fact that my yacht is unwelcome in most ports!" or "Ukraine was to be a source of more Russian wealth - all that wheat and sunflower oil. But it's just an expensive killing field!" or "Is it Novichok noodle soup time yet?"
And then I think what the world could have been like if Russia had embraced the European Union and built up trade. Russia's prosperity and influence would have grown. There would have been increasing cultural exchanges. It coulda been nice. But "100 thugs" who stole the national treasure as the USSR collapsed also stole the future of the Russian people. Browder's book details how communism morphed into a mafia almost overnight.
And we owe it all to Boris Yeltsin - a drunk who threw democracy in a dumpster when he anointed Putin in a deal to protect himself and his family in a dacha.
Thank you for including the text of that voice mail message President Biden left his son, Hunter. That shows the depth of President Biden's humanity, which I think translates to what he wants for the country.
I like you probably heard the tapes and how much more evidence do we need to see to convince everyone Trump is not qualified to be the President. ? As the Biden administration stood quietly by and watched the Russian” whatever” play out I was thinking how Trump would have made into into a PR stunt. Finally today the Biden Administration launched its “, Investing in America “ campaign with an investment of 40 Billion dollars to make sure everyone in America is connected an has access to affordable high speed internet by the end of the decade. North Carolina was selected to be one of the states to be a part of the initial program and what is interesting is those areas lacking internet service in North Carolina are rural areas in “ red” counties. Maybe those voters will come to realize that Democrats help improve their lives and the community they live in.
Robert, thank you as always for your great newsletter.
You and HCR are my first reads of the day, and I feel both informed and provided with more to read and do. I'm so grateful - and hope to see you Friday - in Boston where will you be?
Jun 27, 2023·edited Jun 27, 2023Liked by Robert B. Hubbell
I don't want to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but could the release of the tape be an attempt by TFG to prejudice a jury and thus have the tape thrown out as evidence? Seems farfetched, but TFG's ongoing episode scripts usually are, and he often drops incriminating evidence himself before it's made public otherwise, so he can get ahead in the narrative.
I wondered about that as well. But the fact that evidence of guilt is in the public domain does not make it inadmissible. Of course, Trump's lawyers will seek to exclude it as being irrelevant, but it goes to the heart of an element of the statute. It is really hard to see how it could be excluded.
"But I am left with the nagging sense that the entire affair does not make sense." It doesn't make sense because it's not over yet. Until one or the other of the principles are removed, we won't know the outcome. While we wait for Dec. 11, a possible indictment in DC, and Fani Willis to maybe act in GA, the Russian affair will continue to play out of the public eye and your hope that our intelligence services will be more aware of developments than we are is all we have to work with. Film, possibly, at 10, but what day remains unclear.
Also, we only know what we know through the release of information. We don’t know what hasn’t been released nor the order of all the events which may not coincide with the order of released information.
Surely, the way Trump struts his stuff in this recording was constant in the Oval Office, as were the stupid suck up accolades by his brown-nosing, barely out of high school aides. Then, as icing on the cake, there were many bright cabinet members and Congressional leaders who knew the most powerful person in the world was an unpredictable, uninformed moron with no impulse control and no regard for national security or the lives of American citizens. Yet, no one of any stature came forward. They grumbled, maybe leaked a little, and slinked away, sometimes after getting fired. And then, the cabinet members did not demand to speak at the impeachment trials or the Jan. 6 hearings. Nor did they pull together some subset to make an address to Congress, or to the nation, about the peril we were in with this sociopath in the presidency.
We were lucky to get out of this with our country and our lives (though hundreds of thousands did not due to COVID mismanagement).
The biggest failure of political leaders in our country’s history--a party that has no business governing at any level until they come to grips with what they have done and continue to do.
Contrast these self-serving, opportunistic, spineless Cabinet members to Lt. Col. Vindman, Marie Yovanovitch, Fiona Hill and others who stood up and spoke truth to power.
Cathy, this is very well said. Thank you for offering such clarity in regard to the failure of past leaders to speak up for the republic. Let’s hope we might yet hear such testimony.
As a father whose son died of drugs I want to thank you for highlighting Kristoff's article on President Biden's deep compassion for Hunter. It underscores, I think, not only the fundamental decency of the man but also the cruelty of the world in which we live and in which he practices a politics of decency and discernment that should be a model to us all. The opposite of "Woke" is cruelty and that has now become he defining characteristic of the Republican party. There has always been a strain of cruelty in American character and history, think slavery, lynchings, Indian genocide, Chinese exclusion etc. but it has now become public policy of one the two major parties. It is front and center in our failure as a society to come to grips with our addictions at an annual cost of 250,000 lives, millions of personal tragedies, and billions spent on incarceration. It is time for each of us to stand up for decency and compassion and to speak out publicly against its absence, especially in the realm of politics and power. If enough of us do it just might just nudge our society in a more humane direction. Thank you Robert for leading the way.
Mike, thank you for sharing your personal experience. I want to echo this sentiment in your comment: "It is time for each of us to stand up for decency and compassion and to speak out publicly against its absence, especially in the realm of politics and power." If we could just get that part right, we would be a long way to healing ourselves as a society and democracy.
On a practical level, part of the problem with a politics of compassion is that too many Americans equate compassionate behavior with ‘weakness’.
Most Americans seem to simplistically value ‘strength’, not weakness. Were it not so.
It is up to each of us to reestablish the norms of decent society including backing down the hypermasculinity which you describe.
Thank you for standing up and speaking out. It takes courage.
Part of that cruelty is the hardened resistance to having a solid social safety net. Countries where people don't have to worry about losing everything to high cost illness, or high cost anything else, loss of job and inability to find new job, countries that make education free, through university, don't have much addiction.
And it is the fcuken GOP that thinks we need a sink or swim society. Fcuk them!
And, I'm so sorry, Mike, that you lost your son in this manner. Your comment is eloquent, and I hope that despite your terrible loss, you have peace and love in your life.
Your insight about addiction and social services may be correct, overall David – but consider the Netherlands as a possible counterexample.
Could you please elaborate.I was unaware of its being a counterexample.
"There has always been a strain of cruelty in American character and history, think slavery, lynchings, Indian genocide, Chinese exclusion etc. but it has now become public policy of one the two major parties." ✅ Cruelty is the point...and endgame. I, too, very much appreciated Kristoff's article and acknowledgment of the pain of (too often surviving) parents.
Apologies, Robert, if you linked Anne Applebaum's article yesterday. I can't remember if her words addressed the questions you have asked here. But, for me, the following really helped me to understand why what happened in Russia happened. "This was the most remarkable aspect of the whole day: Nobody seemed to mind, particularly, that a brutal new warlord had arrived to replace the existing regime—not the security services, not the army, and not the general public. On the contrary, many seemed sorry to see him [Prigozhin] go.
"The response is hard to understand without reckoning with the power of apathy, a much undervalued political tool. Democratic politicians spend a lot of time thinking about how to engage people and persuade them to vote. But a certain kind of autocrat, of whom Putin is the outstanding example, seeks to convince people of the opposite: not to participate, not to care, and not to follow politics at all. The propaganda used in Putin’s Russia has been designed in part for this purpose. The constant provision of absurd, conflicting explanations and ridiculous lies—the famous 'firehose of falsehoods'— encourages many people to believe that there is no truth at all. The result is widespread cynicism. If you don’t know what’s true, after all, then there isn’t anything you can do about it. Protest is pointless. Engagement is useless.
"But the side effect of apathy was on display yesterday as well. For if no one cares about anything, that means they don’t care about their supreme leader, his ideology, or his war. Russians haven’t flocked to sign up to fight in Ukraine. They haven’t rallied around the troops in Ukraine or held emotive ceremonies marking either their successes or their deaths. Of course they haven’t organized to oppose the war, but they haven’t organized to support it either."
I could not find a way to gift the article.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/06/putin-caught-in-his-own-trap/674524/?utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share
Yes; I linked to Anne Applebaum's article in Monday's newsletter and summarized her thesis. But thanks for including the above excerpts. I think her observation is important and relevant to the US.
When a country strips all power and any illusions of hope for obtaining power from the people, it should be unsurprising that the result is universal apathy.
I’ve used up my monthly allocation but this NY Times reports offers what Lynell writes of: “Far Right Pushes a Through-the-Looking-Glass Narrative on January 6” - https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/23/us/politics/jan-6-trump.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
Here's the gifted article, John (I hope!)
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/23/us/politics/jan-6-trump.html?
Thanks for this link. Should be widely read.
Thanks, RW!
Thanks. Hope lots will read it and pass it along.
It's a good article; thanks, John.
Thanks for flagging this. A lot to concern us here. Fringe groups are one thing; this piece notes a 3-month-old poll by The Economist/YouGov that shows 58% of self-described conservatives say Jan. 6 was an act of “legitimate political discourse” vs. a “violent insurrection.”
I had signed for and completed YouGov surveys until it just go too much to answer their self-fulfilling questions. It never seemed that they wanted to have answers that required too much thiught60”'
I take the medication Jardiance. It used to cost me >$500/90 day supply. My latest 90 day refill cost $33. Thanks, Joe Biden.
👏🎉🤸♀️ ¡Salúd!
I appreciate that you recommend articles for us to get more insight. With the same spirit of spreading good stuff, I recommend Randy Rainbow videos. Humor is a great weapon against lies, stupidity, hypocrisy, etc. it’s one thing to say the emperor has no clothes, but it’s even more powerful to laugh at him for pretending he’s well dressed.
Here’s the link. Enjoy. https://youtu.be/_zDXVw0aatQ
"Well, Sweetie, I don't mean to grab you by the per se, but..." Priceless, DK!
Thanks so much for sharing this!! Once again, brilliant!!
Thanks Robert
The analysis of Diana Francis is disturbing in light of having the current GOP pro Russian in both their support of Putin and by proxy Donald Trump.
The tape of Joe Biden leaving a voicemail for his son in contrast to Trumps tape regarding classified documents tell you everything you need to know about these two people, ( I would of said men but Joe Biden is the only man between the two). It would be one of the great ironies as well as the greatest tragedy to see that a Kennedy helped destroy Democracy.
The last thing I will say is that your prediction of an Angels victory was correct in their victory over the Chicago White Sox, 2-1 ( what an exciting game...), I am left here to weep....
It was a horrible way for the White Sox to lose a game with brilliant pitching except for the bottom of the ninth. It was painful for us to watch Trout strike out three times. He does not seem to be himself. But the excitement around Ohtani is fun.
This just seems ludicrous. Any other citizen would be incarcerated. The fact that he’s an ex president makes this situation MORE dangerous and egregious... our justice system is broken. And seemingly not very serious about protecting state secrets.
I think Sean Hannity was totally wrong about Joe Biden. (Shock!) His chasing after his son to hug him and cry over him shows what a decent person he is. As opposed to tRump who bullied and abused his children.
I think it's ironic/pathetic that his lackey Mauta is pictured closer to tfg, in a rather intimate moment fixing his collar, than any pictures with his own children.
I think the photo is *revealing* (as though we didn’t know, already) — Trump as the insecure narcissist.
By the way, have other people noticed the physical resemblance between Trump, when on the stump, and Mussolini? I don’t mean this gratuitously: look at Trump, especially in near-profile, and as he struts on stage.
I read a comment earlier this morning - "Mango Mussolini". Apologies to the unremembered author; my brain 🥴
That Sean Hannity or anyone at Fox thought this diminished Joe Biden in anyway is jaw-dropping. And, given the demographic of Fox's audience, I wonder how many hearing what Biden said to his son thought it inappropriate or weak.
An analysis by Paul Sonne and Anatoly Kurmanaev in the New York Times helped me better understand Prighozin's leading his Wagner troops in armed insurrection. They describe Putin's MO of pitting factions against each other to serve his ends and keep them off balance, in this case his generals and Wagner mercenaries. When Proghozin was becoming too powerful, Putin and the Russian military started taking away his power. They advanced competitors to his corrupt contracts feeding the military. They put the Russian military first in ammunition supplies. They forbade the Wagner group from recruiting prisoners and adopted that tactic themselves. The last straw was when they required Wagner troops to sign contracts with the Russian military, something the troops and their brutal leader considered to be a last straw.
Meanwhile, as his links to power and wealth were progressively eliminated, Prighozin became increasingly vocal in a way that only someone with a private army could do without being eliminated or thrown in prison. That's puzzling to me, since he was one of the masterminds of Russia's social media election interference efforts. I suspect that he must have thought he had backing to overthrow Putin by speaking the unspeakable in public. Who were his backers?
Here's their analysis. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/27/world/europe/prigozhin-wagner-russia-putin.html
I see Putin's allowing Prighozin to become so empowered flowing from his desperation for some wins in Ukraine, where the Wagner troops were the most capable of his forces. When they had spent enough of their strength in the bloodbath of Bakhmut, Putin cut the cord to Wagner's supply of cannon fodder from prisons, which was the beginning of the end.
Now, Lukashenko, the corrupt tyrant of Belarus, has been accruing power as the interlocutor to halt the insurrection, and before that he agreed to host some of Russia's short range nuclear arsenal. It's the same game. Although Prighozin was allowed to flee to Belarus, I don't think anyone believes that he has a long life ahead of him, given Putin's habit of reaching beyond Russia's borders to liquidate anyone he considers disloyal or a threat. He will have to make an example of Prighozin to keep his sycophants in fear. But first, Prighozin's private army needs to be decamped.
You and the authors could be 100% correct. Or not. It is hard to conceive that Putin pitted Prigozhin against the MoD with the intent of losing 6 helicopters, one sophisticated surveillance aircraft, and Putin's standing as a tough guy. (He fled to St. Petersburg when Prigozhin was advancing on Moscow!) So maybe it all started out as an exercise of putting rats in a box and shaking it to see what would happen (an oversimplification, I know) but Putin was the one who got bit in the end. I still don't get it, but am willing to accept the above framework for trying to understand what happened. Thanks.
Putin started this hellish and stupid war and is surrounded by yes men. So, I'm not surprised that he blundered into another catastrophe and underestimated Prighozin's rage and Wagner's armaments. Imagine being in the same room as these war criminals. The fear, rage and greed would feel like an electrical field of bear fog.
Thanks for this analysis. It seems to clarify, if only partially, much of what had seemed inexplicable.
“Any fair-minded person”
But the Cult is not that. If there was a video of him shooting someone on camera, they’d claim the victim willed the bullet out of Trump’s gun.
Hence my qualification, "any fair minded person"!
"Only “100 beneficiaries and several thousand accomplices” own everything, said Mikhail Kodorovsky"
and “Putin’s Russia is a criminal organization that must be overthrown. And finally, one of its own has told the world, and Russian people, why it must disappear.”
from https://dianefrancis.substack.com/p/russias-sopranos
Diane Francis seems to have significant insight into the inner workings of Russia's structure and political machinations. I also highly recommend her previous piece. https://dianefrancis.substack.com/p/chinas-russia
I am in a beginners level study of Russia. My interest was stimulated by Bill Browder's Red Notice https://www.billbrowder.com/red-notice/
Diane Francis is one of my "classes". It would seem that Russia is very fragile. Too big and diverse to be managed by a brutal army spread very thin. It is crippled by sanctions and international isolation. If India begins to curtail purchasing Russian oil by finding it elsewhere...watch the dominos fall. Biden's recent hosting of Modi?
Putin must be very nervous. Someday, maybe, we will learn what those 100 gangsters were saying right now. Could it be "Time for Vlad to retire?" or "I don't like the fact that my yacht is unwelcome in most ports!" or "Ukraine was to be a source of more Russian wealth - all that wheat and sunflower oil. But it's just an expensive killing field!" or "Is it Novichok noodle soup time yet?"
And then I think what the world could have been like if Russia had embraced the European Union and built up trade. Russia's prosperity and influence would have grown. There would have been increasing cultural exchanges. It coulda been nice. But "100 thugs" who stole the national treasure as the USSR collapsed also stole the future of the Russian people. Browder's book details how communism morphed into a mafia almost overnight.
And we owe it all to Boris Yeltsin - a drunk who threw democracy in a dumpster when he anointed Putin in a deal to protect himself and his family in a dacha.
Thank you for including the text of that voice mail message President Biden left his son, Hunter. That shows the depth of President Biden's humanity, which I think translates to what he wants for the country.
That’s a good point.
I like you probably heard the tapes and how much more evidence do we need to see to convince everyone Trump is not qualified to be the President. ? As the Biden administration stood quietly by and watched the Russian” whatever” play out I was thinking how Trump would have made into into a PR stunt. Finally today the Biden Administration launched its “, Investing in America “ campaign with an investment of 40 Billion dollars to make sure everyone in America is connected an has access to affordable high speed internet by the end of the decade. North Carolina was selected to be one of the states to be a part of the initial program and what is interesting is those areas lacking internet service in North Carolina are rural areas in “ red” counties. Maybe those voters will come to realize that Democrats help improve their lives and the community they live in.
Robert, thank you as always for your great newsletter.
You and HCR are my first reads of the day, and I feel both informed and provided with more to read and do. I'm so grateful - and hope to see you Friday - in Boston where will you be?
I don't want to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but could the release of the tape be an attempt by TFG to prejudice a jury and thus have the tape thrown out as evidence? Seems farfetched, but TFG's ongoing episode scripts usually are, and he often drops incriminating evidence himself before it's made public otherwise, so he can get ahead in the narrative.
I wondered about that as well. But the fact that evidence of guilt is in the public domain does not make it inadmissible. Of course, Trump's lawyers will seek to exclude it as being irrelevant, but it goes to the heart of an element of the statute. It is really hard to see how it could be excluded.
At the very least, I think it's concerning that somebody's leaking. That can't be helpful to the prosecution.
"But I am left with the nagging sense that the entire affair does not make sense." It doesn't make sense because it's not over yet. Until one or the other of the principles are removed, we won't know the outcome. While we wait for Dec. 11, a possible indictment in DC, and Fani Willis to maybe act in GA, the Russian affair will continue to play out of the public eye and your hope that our intelligence services will be more aware of developments than we are is all we have to work with. Film, possibly, at 10, but what day remains unclear.
Also, we only know what we know through the release of information. We don’t know what hasn’t been released nor the order of all the events which may not coincide with the order of released information.