Saturday, October 28, 2017

Who will do the perp walk?

Early this morning (before sunrise) I predicted that today would be a huge news day. To be specific, I felt in my gut that Mueller would be fired, and that all hell would break loose.

Hasn't happened. Yet something seems to be on the verge of happening. Everyone seems persuaded that it -- whatever it may be -- will occur on Monday. Outside the insulated world of right-wing media, there is wide agreement that the current attacks on Hillary (or "the Clinton administration" as Corey Lewandowsky put it) are meant to distract us from an upcoming arrest.

Both Trump and Sarah Huckabee Sanders have explicitly embraced the "Hillary and Vladimir sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G" theory -- a theory which makes no sense, a theory which turns all the evidence upside down, a theory which has sent me to thesaurus.com in search of synonyms for "insane."

While eating lunch earlier, a thought struck me: Trump's insane theory mirrors one we recently heard from Vladimir Putin. Not long ago, the Russian government instituted a propaganda campaign designed to convince the world that martyred Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky -- after whom the Magnitsky Act was named --  was murdered by his client Bill Browder (an American businessman turned Putin critic), working with an unnamed MI6 agent.

In real life, Magnitsky -- who had documented Putin's thievery from the Russian state -- was held in one of Putin's most squalid prisons without charges for nearly a year. He was beaten, tortured, and left untreated for a variety of serious medical issues. The Moscow Helsinki Group said that Magnitsky was tortured to death.

Yet Putin wants you to believe that Browder and MI6 killed Magnitsky. The same crackpot theory is promulgated by American anti-Semites and Alt Rightists. (Example.)

As with Putin, so with Trump. "Browder killed Magnitsky" and "Hillary works with Putin": It's the same damned thing. Conspiracism has become the spatula that turns reality upside-down.

Many of you will argue that the right has always trafficked in paranoid accusations. True enough -- but I would argue that we're now seeing something new. Two reasons:

1. These reality-inverting "Big Lies" are particularly bold. A year ago, even Fox News would not have dared go this far.

2. Even though these Big Lies are easily exposed as such, they have the imprimatur of the government -- the Russian government in one case, the American government in the other. There was a time when governments cared more about preserving credibility when making official pronouncements. Even Stalin's government had limits.

I know what some of you are thinking: "Hasn't our own government told plenty of lies in the past? What about the time they lied about the Gulf of Tonkin incident? What about the lie that Oswald shot JFK all by himself?"

If that's the way you're thinking, you've missed my point. I said that these current Big Lies are easily exposed as such. They're obvious, absurd and shameless.

It was bad enough when the government said "Oswald shot Kennedy." Now we have a government willing to say "Batman shot Kennedy" or "Jackie shot her husband." We have a government that will say anything without apology or evidence, a government that no longer feels a need to come up with a superficially-credible cover story, a government wedded to the ludicrous, a government which doubles down on Crazy every time someone has the cheek to bring up reality.

Who will be arrested?  Certain cable news talking heads have seemed reasonably confident that Paul Manafort will be the first to take the Robert Mueller perp walk. But Manafort lives in Virginia, and my understanding is that the indictment came from a DC grand jury. (Mueller has two grand juries going.) The VA grand jury recently heard testimony from Manafort's realtor, which may indicate that Mueller suspects that the property was purchased with Russian money.

Manafort could still be the target -- but for now, I'm pondering other possibilities. Scott Dworkin has tweeted the following:
Was just told by attorney who used to work at FBI that Jared Kushner is most likely the one being arrested Monday. My bet’s still Manafort.
If Jared's the one, I'm going to need more vodka in the house. Serious celebrations will be in order. Unnervingly, the Tiki Torchers -- who hate Kushner because he's Jewish -- will celebrate alongside the liberals.

Added note: There are more hints that Jared is the one. Manafort doesn't think he is in immediate trouble. And consider this, from Keith Olbermann.

A more distant possibility is Roger Stone, whose tweeted rampages suddenly became so unhinged, profane and bizarre that Twitter suspended his account -- permanently. He's clearly sweating bullets. I hope he gives one of those jittery, gritted-teeth interviews in which he pretends to be blase and unconcerned. Don't you love it when they do that? If he remains a free man, I expect him to switch to an Alt Right/neo-Nazi social media platform.

You know who else was permanently suspended from Twitter? Michael Flynn's Alt Righty kid. It's tempting to suggest that Flynn could be indicted, but my understanding is that he was the target of the VA grand jury, not the one in DC.

Another possibility would be Trump himself. Unlikely, to be sure -- but we don't know what Mueller knows. He has access to intercepts and other evidence unknown to we mere mortals. Another Scott Dworkin tweet:
Multiple sources say Trump “completely lost his mind” after he found out Mueller’s filed charges & now he’s “having an epic meltdown”
More:
“If u thought you’ve seen crazy out of Trump, u haven’t seen anything yet, everyone should be terrified.” Fmr GOP Senate staffer said
“We expect Donald Trump to be indicted after Manafort, Flynn, Don Jr & Kushner. It’s inevitable” Current GOP Lobbyist
Almost finally: I find it hilarious that Republicans seem so outraged that news of the indictment leaked. The Ken Starr inquest was leakier than a wine barrel made of pegboard, yet Republicans didn't seem to mind.

FINALLY:
If Mueller is fired, we need a strategy. And our strategy is this:

UNLEASH HELL.

If Mueller goes, the social contract goes with it. Democracy itself will be in mortal peril. I've always counseled non-violent resistance, but if Trump fires Mueller, I won't be able to give that advice. No justice, no peace.

14 comments:

Prowlerzee said...

I have already seen the organizing calls for taking to the street within hours in the event Mueller is fired.

Regarding the difficult task of staying sufficiently lubricated with librations, they deliver booze in Bmore. They also sell it on Sunday so long as a bar is attached to the outlet...I am so wound up I'm pushing furniture around and climbing ladders to clean ceiling fans. Let's hope Mueller has multiple indictments and the ensuing chaos prevents war as a distraction. Thank you for covering this. Those who get huge stress release from humorous vulgarities on a level Roger Stone falls woefully short of, read Wonkette's accounts of the goings on.

Anonymous said...

It wasn't Jared who ditched Secret Service for a remote location, it was Don Jr. For a few weeks.

Jared just tried to use the RU diplomatic/mil/spy comms channel to avoid US detection :)

Joseph Cannon said...

Damn, anon -- you're right. My memory misfiled that particular piece of Trumpian mischief. I've cut out the offending brief paragraph, since it was a parenthetical observation irrelevant to the main story. This very exchange serves to acknowedge that the error once existed.

Unknown said...

There could be multiple indictments and charges range from collusion to obstruction to money-laundering. Kushner could easily be indicted IMO.

You make an excellent point about the escalation of the lies being told. They are following the Authoritarian Playbook and we have been warned by people like Masha Gessen and Sarah Kendzior that this is how it happens - and they're right on time, too, at one year in. Threatening to jail political opponents and gaslighting just the beginning if we let it continue.

Anonymous said...

What has surprised me is the silence of WaPo and the NYT. They're totally dark on this story. Curious.

As for the story itself? I knew these bogus stories coming out of Fox News had some rhyme and reason. Took me a day or two but now, of course, it seems obvious--a Trumpty-Dump smokescreen. And you're right, Joe. The stories are so-o-o over the top they're laughable. What's not funny is how viewers and listeners to the far-right network and radio blasts eat this stuff up, swear it's true no matter how ridiculous. The power of propaganda has a vice grip on a good 30% of the population. Judge Jean Perillo came out yesterday with "Lock Her Up." Sebastian Gorka compared the Hillary/Uranium One story with the Rosenbergs during the 1950's and the damn email nonsense has been resurrected.

These people have no shame. I watched frigging Paul Ryan mock a meditation pose, saying his way of staying calm was a repeating mantra: tax reform, tax reform, tax reform. Ohmmmmm.

Paul Ryan. He's such a funny guy.

Even more terrifying is I read this morning that the Trump Administration is changing policy standards regarding what would justify the use of nuclear weapons. Sound familiar? Bush and Cheney changed our stance on what constituted and justified torture.

Mueller and his crew can't work fast enough to bring down this clown and his sycophants. Otherwise, they're going to get us all killed and throw the entire world into a pointless war.

Peggysue

Joseph Cannon said...

"Sebastian Gorka compared the Hillary/Uranium One story with the Rosenbergs during the 1950's"

Did you see my earlier post? I pointed out that Hillary never had the power to force Uranium One to divest its American subsidiaries. Trump has had that power since January. Yet Trump has allowed the Russians to own that mining operation all this time.

I looked it up. He really does have the power to force a divestment.

So Gorka actually called for TRUMP to face the electric chair.

Why isn't anyone else talking about this should-be-obvious point?

Paul W said...

One big reason why Mueller hadn't been fired yet is because the person with direct authority to do it - Sessions - recused himself too early, before it became clear trump and his own family were at risk of indictments (at the time, Flynn was under investigation for dodgy lobbying). For Sessions to un-recuse himself would be a step few in the Intel and Security agencies would accept: there would have been a revolt among the CIA, NSA and FBI foot soldiers who've seen too much intel to know how f-cked up trump's Russians ties are.

This was why months ago, when the real serious stuff about the June meeting at Trump Tower came out, trump was bullying Sessions into resigning: in order to give himself the excuse to hire a replacement AG who *would* shut down Mueller even in spite of the agencies' threats to fight back.

If the DC Grand Jury is what's issuing the arrests, it may well be Kushner, but it's likely Flynn whose lobbying for Turkey (which would be DC's jurisdiction) and other foreign powers - and whose ties to Russia put Kushner and donny trump jr in danger of arrests - may be getting indicted.

Either way, it's beginning to look a lot like Fitzmas.

Anonymous said...

Oh pleeze, Paul. Don't invoke Fitzmas. What a disappointment that turned out to be. Some of us who wanted to believe in Patrick Fitzgerald's integrity actually hoped that we might see the restoration of the Rule of Law. Of course what happened instead was Nothing, and Obama bot only did not prosecute the Bushcists, he by his silence validated the Imperial Bushcist powers and even augmented them in some regard before passing them on to Trump.

What Obama should have done was appoint a Blue-Ribbon to investigate Bush's crimes and report on them and draw a line in the sand -- never again. Of course that didn't happen. It wasn't going to happen. The neofascistic agenda is a bi-partisan one.

Anonymous said...

Hey Joe! Yes I read your earlier post. Wasn't trying to refute your theory, merely listed Gorka's screech as an example of the nonsense we've been listening to this past week. As to why more people haven't made a big deal out of the illogical ploy? I'd contend that with all the shrapnel flying, nobody is zooming in on the details of the bloated accusation/comparison. All people really hear is Chair, Hillary=Rosenbergs, Hillary = traitor. And that is by design. Don't think smokescreens and propadanda need to make sense to the people who really, really want to believe the worst of everyone, particularly of Hillary Clinton.

Peggysue

b said...

"Madness reigns throughout our land".

Yes, and it's different. I agree this is a significant change. We shouldn't forget that Trump's image for many people was in large part built on "You're fired" and on his (related) persona in wrestling. Wrestling in particular was key to his campaign. That was what the demonisation of his opponent was about and also, to take a single example, the stalking in the background giving off a wave of hatred while she was talking to the camera in a TV debate. We simply cannot get a handle on his campaign without reference to wrestling.

This is the basis of the whipped-up crowd shouting of "Lock her up" against Hillary Clinton which continues now, nearly a year after the election, whenever Trump is in trouble. Clinton stands in for Vince McMahon. We are talking about an audience of morons: an army of morons tens of millions strong, ready to shout down "librulz" with lines that do not for one moment stand up to logical intellectual scrutiny. These fuckers feel liberated by Trump.

This angle is likely to intensify, perhaps all the way to civil war.

I do not know who will be indicted later today, and will simply comment that whatever has happened with Roger Stone needs explanation and I do not imagine it was decided by the board of Twitter in isolation from external influence. But I won't be surprised if part of Trump's response to the indictment is to carry out his campaign promise to appoint an investigator to inquire into supposed wrongdoing by Mrs Clinton. And his base will love that.

Such crazy, evil shit is Trump to the core.

b said...

Did Mueller travel to Malta in the end, by the way? Does anyone know?

And for the record, major destabilisation in the "Westminster beltway" is underway in London, focusing on sexual harassment by parliamentarians. Perhaps the scale will soon be comparable to that of the expenses scandal which was unfolded in 2009 around the time of one of the Gaza massacres. The May administration is likely to fall within weeks at most.

Journalists haven't merely "discovered" that politicians can't keep their hands to themselves sexually, as if they didn't know before.

David Davis and Boris Johnson look as though they will be scandalled out of the race for the Tory leadership. Philip Hammond has I suspect already been knocked out in practice. The extraordinary, practically Tridentine upstairs-downstairs persona of hedge-fund guy Jacob Rees-Mogg may emerge into the role of the "man of the moment". His dad was editor of the Times and vice-chairman of the BBC. Don't tell me Jacob isn't serious. He's very serious indeed.

The other main candidate in the peloton to watch is Bahamaian tax-haven connected Amber Rudd. Sex sells more newspapers than financial shenanigans, so my feeling is that she isn't out of the race yet.

A general election is also possible. We haven't heard the last of the highly skilled Seumas Milne.

The position is this: the United States, Britain and Spain, and probably soon other countries, are being subjected to a major and snowballing destabilisation.

I wouldn't recommend that anyone takes a holiday in Kaliningrad, Teheran, or Seoul. Or for that matter in Britain, where the largest interest in the owner of the main airport Heathrow is Spanish company Ferrovial.

b said...

What might be the roots of Trump's term "anger and unity"? It appeared in one of his tweets yesterday, and it doesn't sound off the cuff. It seems more like an encapsulation of strategy. At first I thought perhaps the source could be Julius Evola, coming through Steve Bannon, but research reveals that Evola found anger too plebeian.

Could the phrase possibly be from Hitler?

(Anyone sceptical of that possibility, please click here: Donald Trump 'kept book of Adolf Hitler's speeches in his bedside cabinet'.)

b said...

The knives are slashing in London. Word is that both the Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson and the Brexit Secretary David Davis will be flotsam within days, perhaps within hours, and that Theresa May will fall before Christmas, probably before December. If she's out this week, expect lots of cheap "Guy Fawkes Day" references by journalists.

The odds on the betting markets are likely to go mental. I am seriously suggesting that if a person of the moment emerges - and the "moment" has been signally bereft of such in Britain for a year and a half - it may be the far-right traditionalist Roman Catholic, Jacob Rees-Mogg.

Today may well be a huge news day. The names of the 36 sex pest MPs will probably be out soon. The government could fall. Theresa May has already been to see the evil John Bercow, who came into office on the back of a similar scandal.

Prowlerzee said...

One of the things I hate about my new smartphone, my only connection right now, is so many ads. But I wonder if I click on the ad does Cannonfire get any revenue? If not, they should stop tempting me with Pipette Robots, which I would surely buy if I had 3k to spare!!