You Will Anyway: Stalin is alive and sitting in the Oval Office

Tuesday, January 14, 2020

Stalin is alive and sitting in the Oval Office

Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson is the latest Trump-appointed government official to come under fire from the president. And the reasons President Trump is upset with him are simultaneously extremely weak and highly revealing.

On Sunday, Trump posted a tweet hyping a new effort led by Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, to call into question Atkinson’s handling of the whistleblower complaint that first sounded the alarm about Trump’s dealings with Ukraine and that eventually led to him being impeached.

“ICIG Michael Atkinson facing serious questions,” Trump wrote, along with a quote from Nunes suggesting that Atkinson is somehow part of an anti-Trump conspiracy with Democrats. “The ICIG never wanted proof!”

[...]

As I’ve previously explained, [the Trump-Zelensky] call summary corroborated the whistleblower complaint both in its broad outlines and with regard to specific details. It illustrated why Atkinson likely felt he had little choice but to determine the complaint was credible.

Throughout the ensuing impeachment process, however, Trump has tried to turn reality on its head by insisting that his move to release the call summary somehow refuted the whistleblower complaint and exonerated him.

Vox

Read the transcript! Black is white.

Trump promised on the campaign trail to only “hire the best people,” but Atkinson is now the latest official he’s appointed to be on the receiving end of one of his salty tweets (or worse).

Just last month, Trump tweeted a hint that he was considering moving on from FBI Director Christopher Wray because Wray did a TV interview about the FBI’s handling of the Russia investigation that didn’t indulge Trump’s absurd conspiracy theories about the bureau.

[...]

The common thread in all these cases is that Trump thinks the officials he appoints should do his bidding, and under no circumstances do or say anything that undermines his position.

Along those lines, the New York Times reported in November that Trump was considering firing Atkinson because Atkinson had “been disloyal” by not doing more to suppress the whistleblower complaint.

Government as protection racket.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

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"It takes only a bit of knowledge of history to realize how dangerous it is to think that the people who run the country know what they are doing." -- Howard Zinn

"It’s not about not having something to hide; it’s about having something to lose. What we lose when we’re under observation is our humanity...Rights are inherent to our nature, they’re not granted by governments, they’re guaranteed by governments. They’re protected by governments." -- Edward Snowden

"Terrorism is the willingness to kill large numbers of people for some presumably good cause.” -- Howard Zinn

"What we have is a foreign policy which is essentially a marketing strategy for selling weapons." -- Jill Stein

"We should always remember that the danger to societies from security services is not that they will spontaneously decide to embrace [Stasi style] mustache twirling and jackboots to bear us bodily into dark places, but that the slowly shifting foundation of policy will make it such that mustaches and jackboots are discovered to prove an operational advantage toward a necessary purpose.” ~ Edward Snowden

"America: just a nation of two hundred million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable." ~ Hunter S. Thompson

"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws." ~ Mayer Rothschild

"News is what somebody does not want you to print. All the rest is advertising." ~ LACUNA

"What matters in journalism isn't politics, which are as universal and inescapable as breathing. What matters -- along with a fundamentally adversarial attitude toward government, without which "journalism" is simply public relations -- is integrity, transparency, evidence, coherence, and principle. These are the principles on which we should evaluate the quality of journalism, and their absence is why some journalists are so desperate to get you to focus on something else." ~ Barry Eisler

"There is no inverse relationship between freedom and security. Less of one does not lead to more of the other. People with no rights are not safe from terrorist attack." ~ Molly Ivins

"The brain of our species is, as we know, made up largely of potassium, phosphorus, propaganda, and politics, with the result that how not to understand what should be clearer is becoming easier and easier for all of us." ~ James Thurber

"The highest patriotism is not a blind acceptance of official policy, but a love of one's country deep enough to call her to a higher plane....When you hold up your arm and swear to uphold the Constitution, you don’t say, 'Except in wartime.'" -- George McGovern

"I’ll believe that corporations are people when Texas executes one." ~ Bill Moyers

"When did hope become a political dynamic? Hope is right below wishful thinking and right above performing a rain dance on the scale of activity." ~ Rich Hall

Life, as Explained in "Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead"

GUILDENSTERN: What a fine persecution---to be kept intrigued without ever quite being enlightened.

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ROSENCRANTZ : The only thing that makes it bearable is the irrational belief that somebody interesting will come on in a minute.

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GUILDENSTERN: But for God's sake what are we supposed to do?!

PLAYER: Relax. Respond. That's what people do. You can't go through life questioning your situation at every turn.

GUILDENSTERN: But we don't know what's going on, or what to do with ourselves. We don't know how to act.

PLAYER: Act natural. You know why you're here at least.

GUILDENSTERN: We only know what we're told, and that's little enough. And for all we know it isn't even true.

PLAYER: For all anyone knows, nothing is. Everything has to be taken on trust; truth is only that which is taken to be true. It's the currency of living. There may be nothing behind it, but it doesn't make any difference so long as it is honoured. One acts on assumptions.

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GUILDENSTERN : We act on scraps of information... sifting half-remembered directions that we can hardly separate from instinct.

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PLAYER: Life is a gamble, at terrible odds-if it was a bet you wouldn't take it.