Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[Dr. Strangelove]

Trump: The transcript speaks for itself. Perfect call! No need for anyone to testify about it! They'll just lie!

Also Trump: The whistleblower must be exposed and forced to testify! Written answers unacceptable! Too easy to lie in those (I would know!)

[Dr. Strangelove]

Trump loses in court yet again. I guess he'll be wasting more time and appeal this to the Supreme Court.

Part of the unanimous decision addresses a contention that Team Trump has been making: not only is the President immune from criminal prosecution, he and all of his agents (in this case an accounting firm) are completely immune from investigation and they can legally ignore criminal subpoenas. The Court did not agree.

https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/6538526/11-4-19-Trump-v-Vance-Opinion.pdf

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump/new-york-prosecutors-can-get-trump-tax-returns-court-rules-idUSKBN1XE1O8

[Dr. Strangelove]

House released Yovanovitch and McKinley's transcripts today. Volker and Sondland coming tomorrow

https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/impeachment-inquiry-11-04-2019/index.html

[Dr. Strangelove]

Oh my. If this is on the level, this little birdie wants to sing. Apparently he's fired John Dowd and hired new lawyers who say he wants to cooperate with the impeachment inquiry.

*********************

Mr. Parnas, whose client has maintained that he has had extensive dealings with the president.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-impeachment-parnas-exclusiv/exclusive-giuliani-associate-now-willing-to-comply-with-trump-impeachment-inquiry-lawyer-idUSKBN1XE297

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/04/nyregion/lev-parnas-giuliani-associate.html

[Ghengis Jon]

Sounds like a battle of delicate, overblown egos.

"He says he DOESN'T know me?!? Me?!? ME??!!?? Well, I'll squeal on that bastard!!!"

[Ghengis Jon]

Donald Trump reaffirms his passion for killing babies in coal country.

https://apnews.com/f056ed110482436eb87ebe83f59998ac

[Dr. Strangelove]

I know it's a wiki article but there's a lot of interesting details here on Guy Fawkes Day

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_Fawkes_Night

[Dr. Strangelove]

Iran just about kills what was left of the nuclear deal by gearing up centrifuges that it had shut down 4 years ago.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-50300952

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/...es/4162929002/

[Dr. Strangelove]

Couple of rando unrelated notes...there's talk that the Republicans might make Jim Jordan a "temporary" member of the Intel Committee so that he can participate in the open impeachment hearings (he's regarded as a good defender of Trump). There's nothing wrong with that I suppose and the Dems have no power to stop it, but it's also a slap in the face to shitbird Devin Nunes and a clear sign they think he and his crew aren't up to the task. The other side of it is that McCarthy will have to pick somebody to kick off the Intel Committee, and I imagine whoever that is won't be happy.

Switching gears to Trump's appeal in the Mazars case...I had forgotten that every Supreme Court justice in in 'charge' of a particular Circuit Court and is essentially the gatekeeper for appeals to the SC from that circuit. The 2nd Circuit "gatekeeper" is RBG. And she's close with the Chief Judge of the 2nd Circuit who just wrote the denial of Trump's attempted injunction. Add to that the thoroughness of the opinion, the law and precedence bring pretty clear, etc. and there's a lot of speculation already that the SC might decline to hear Trump's appeal.

[Jeff Buchanan]

I'm not a fan of Victor David Hansen a regular contributor to the NRO. He's overtly hawkish and too often a Trump boot licker. Having said that, he frequently offers good insight on strategic matters. The article linked below offers such insight about Trump's strategic view, but, IMO, gives him way too much credit for him being the author of it. He's not. I'll get to that:



https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/...-intervention/

So, there are a bunch of heavy hitters in the strategic thinking department that came up with this Principled Realism thing, and, yes, H.R McMaster, as noted in Hansen's quote above, is one of them. My thinking is that strategic principles contained in this concept of Principled Realism went way over the head of DJT and it might have died saving that the think tanks in Washington were persistent publishing various works about it.

It appears that Trump actually has embraced some of the concepts in dealing with the use of American Power in response to provocations, i.e., he's opted for restraint. Below is another link to a 2017 article - the first one in this issue of Startegika - that provides an excellent history of American strategy by president and compares Trump to the most recent presidents. There are others that follow. I thought that history part was interesting as well as the article does a good job of explaining what Principled Realism, as it applies to US involvement in global conflict under PDJT, is. A good quote from it:



https://www.hoover.org/sites/default...ika_45_web.pdf

[Dr. Strangelove]

Oof, it sounds like when Sondland came back to "revise" his testimony, he changed a lot. In the "bad for Trump" direction. Particularly he admitted that he straight up told the Ukrainians in early Sept that Trump wouldn't unfreeze the military aid until they publicly produced the "anti-corruption statement" that Giuliani/Trump wanted.

EDIT: So why did Trump unfreeze the aid before getting anything? Well, we know that on August 28 the "halt for review" became public knowledge. People in the press and Congress were beginning to ask questions. And we know that even before that, the whistleblower complaint had been filed on August 12. On Sept 9, the IC IG sent Schiff notification about the whistleblower complaint. Trump fired Bolton on Sept. 10, before the aid was unfrozen. And Bolton probably knew or had an inkling all about it.

[Dr. Strangelove]

[Dr. Strangelove]

Volker also sent a Ukrainian official the literal script they wanted Zelensky to read when going on tv to announce a new Burisma/Biden investigation

[Dr. Strangelove]

With all that's come out in this it's becoming more clear that Trump's views on Ukraine were already being hardened as far back as during the 2016 campaign. Manafort was feeding him conspiracy theories about Ukraine framing Russia to hurt him (Manafort having previously worked for the overthrown, Russia-backed Ukrainian government) way back before Election night. And once Manafort was in jail, Giuliani took the reins.

Literally the entire US intelligence and foreign policy establishment has been telling him that this is bogus. That's why he decided to use outside operators.

[Ghengis Jon]

Unfit. For. Office.