Betcha never expected to see the Washington Post run a Trump-friendly headline...!

Here's the headline in question:

How Trump got to ‘yes’ on the biggest purge of Russian spies in U.S. history

Here's a snip or two from the story:

The Monday announcement grew out of a push by U.S. allies and the intelligence community for a strong retaliatory response to the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Britain. Shortly after the attack, Fiona Hill , a National Security Council senior director, began leading policy coordination meetings that culminated in a pivotal Friday meeting that included Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, national security adviser H.R. McMaster, FBI Director Christopher A. Wray and Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats, among other top officials.

The three options presented to the president were described as “light, medium and heavy” by one administration official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive deliberations.

Naturally, Trump went for the "medium" option -- the expulsion of 60 diplomats, a choice which tops the 50 expelled by Dubya after the Hanssen case came to light. The officials who made the case to Trump represent the relatively few "adults" left in this administration. They made it clear that Donnie had no choice (politically) but to do something.

But the WP story doesn't tell you the most important part. A woman named Julia Davis translates newsworthy items on Russian TV.

#Russia's state TV is having fun at our expense about senior Trump admin official "whispering into their ear" that Russia can replace 60 expelled Russian spies with 60 others. Female host sarcastically says: "We'll send some new, harmless ones - decent people and not even spies."

The insufficiency of Trump's response should be apparent to all. Consider: The Russians did not simply poison two people in the UK; they also hacked into our infrastructure -- our electricity grid, our nuclear facilities, our air traffic systems, our voting systems. (Why won't we admit that they can control our vote tabulators? Because wishful thinking places boundaries on permissible thought.) In the past, a Russian attack would have transformed a cold war into a very hot one. Yet Trump refused to enact the relatively light punitive measures overwhelmingly demanded by Congress.

Do we need any further evidence of collusion? Do we need any further evidence of treason?

Boris! A couple of days ago, who should pop up on my teevee screen -- on a local news broadcast -- but Boris Epshteyn. He's the political analyst for Sinclair. Since these are pretty much the only news broadcasts covering local events these days, we are all forced to sit still for guys like Epshteyn if we want to learn the latest about our various home towns. In other words, our teevee news situation isn't much better than Russia's.

Boris defended the Trump administration's destruction of the State Department by insisting that things were worse under Obama. Out came the usual nonsensical claims about Hillary: "BenGHAAAAAAZEEEEE!" Then he slammed the signature accomplishment of the Kerry State Department, the Iran deal -- which still commands wide approval, despite the heavy propaganda against it.

Epshteyn insisted that the deal allowed the nuclear program to continue, and that Obama agreed to pay the Iran government billions of dollars. Neither assertion if true. (The money was Iran's to begin with; we froze their assets during the hostage crisis of 1980.)

As you will recall, this blog received a tip that Boris Epshteyn was Source E in the Steele Dossier -- one of the three persons responsible for the pee-pee claim. The Corn/Isikoff book Russian Roulette suggests that Sergei Millian bears primary responsibility for this claim. I have posited that Epshteyn is Source E and Millian is Source D.

Komisar. I used to think highly of Lucy Komisar, a pioneering feminist journalist who later specialized in writing about money laundering and offshore banking accounts. But her song has changed. A friend to this blog directed my attention to Komisar's latest, which attacks both the Corn/Isikoff book -- "an evidence-challenged Russiaphobic book of the sort that is clogging the media these days" -- and what she calls the "Browder Magnitsky hoax." Her attacks on Browder look to me like a cut/paste job repeating familiar Russian propaganda points.

That's far from her only column on Browder; in fact, she has become downright obsessive. Throughout the past year, Komisar has targeted the man as the number one enemy of humanity. (If you type "Lucy Komisar" into Google right now, the first auto-completion will be "Browder.") She also assails the New York Review of Books as "fake news" because they published something pro-Browder.

These days, she even writes for Russian Insider, which carries the logo "Fake News Fighters." The comments engendered by that article deserve some mention:

The more that comes out about this the better. It proves that the USA (the State) is no more than an enforcement and money-laundering arm of the US (often Jew) Oligarchs.

Browder threw his accountant and minor accomplice in crime out of the escape car to slow down the pursuit vehicle. It is an old Odessa Fake Jew Mafia trick. Browder never even met Magnitsky by the way.

The Khazar fake jews are a tribe of shape-shifters.

Clearly, the St. Petersburg troll factory provided these remarks. The other stories on that site are devoted to extreme hatred of America, lies about Hillary Clinton, and slavish devotion the the Cult of Putin. Yet Komisar has no problem writing for this forum. One wonders why she is so devoted to insuring that Russian oligarchs can't spread their corruption to other countries. (Most oligarchs consider their homeland to be an unbearable shithole.)

Komisar used to write for periodicals like In These Times and The Nation. Now she does Sputnik.

Lowering the Barr. I had hoped not to mention the Roseanne Barr controversy, since I never cared for the original iteration of her show and have no intention of watching the Grand Return. But someone named Gus Ironic Conquistador has been collecting her more outlandish tweets, and I must admit: This woman has gone nuts in a most impressive fashion.

Speaking of Soros... As you may have noticed, I didn't show up at the DC anti-gun rally. If George continues to be so damned cheap, I refuse to work for him. When I lived in California, anyone doing a "crisis actor" gig could expect a catered lunch. But out here on the east coast, we're practically forced to brown-bag it. I am a professional, goddammit! If I'm going to bus down to DC for a day-long protest gig, the least Georgie can do is spring for some Five Guys.

Maybe it's time to turn in my SCAG card. (SCAG: Screen Crisis Actors Guild.)

Roger that! Last night on MSNBC, Roger Stone's acolyte Sam Nunberg pledged his continuing fealty to His Rogerness, even though the Trickster King rewards fealty with a pipe wrench to the teeth:

The Daily Beast reports that Stone unloaded on Nunberg on his personal Instagram account this week, and wrote a post in which he called out Nunberg for being a “lying assh*le” and a “psycho.”

In a separate video posted on Instagram, Stone said that Nunberg’s claims that he made about Stone’s connection with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange were the result of rampant drug abuse.

“Sam Nunberg is a cocaine addict,” Stone said. “And any news organization that takes anything he said seriously is courting a serious lawsuit. Coke head.”

My take? Nunberg blurted out more than he intended during his notorious "meltdown" tour of the cable news shows.  On that occasion, as you may recall, he admitted that he despised Trump, who (said Nunberg) had treated both Nunberg and Stone abominably. Alas, we got no further details about what Stone has said in private about Trump. In public, Stone -- for whatever reason -- continues to play the game Trump's way, even if doing so requires him to say nasty things about everyone else.

Perhaps the Mikhail Lesin story has caused certain individuals to feel a certain degree of fear and termbling.