Wednesday, December 5, 2018

951 Mueller plans October Surprise. Giuliani: midterm elections will be a Referendum on Impeaching Trump

Mueller plans October Surprise. Giuliani: midterm elections will be a Referendum on Impeaching Trump

Newsletter published on August 6, 2018

(1) Mueller plans October Surprise, just before Midterm elections
(2) Mueller to present report & file indictments before Midterm elections
(3) Giuliani: midterm elections will be a Referendum on Impeaching Trump
(4) Neocons are behind Russiagate
(4) CIA/FBI/DOJ Plot to Overthrow the President of the United States
(5) Trump should nationalize Apple & other Globalist companies that offshore their workers

(1) Mueller plans October Surprise, just before Midterm elections


Robert Mueller Could Have An October Surprise For The G.O.P.

The special counsel is expected to reach a conclusion—and produce possible indictments—right around the midterm elections this fall.

BY ABIGAIL TRACY

JUNE 26, 2018 11:40 AM

Robert Mueller

[...] A source familiar with the investigation tells Bloomberg that Mueller is “preparing to accelerate” his inquiry into whether members of the Trump campaign colluded with Russian nationals to tilt the outcome of the election, with conclusions—and possible indictments—expected this fall. The implication is that Mueller will soon resolve the obstruction portion of his investigation, which could involve making a determination as to Trump’s future legal exposure.

That timeline could prove troublesome for both Mueller and the Republican Party. Trump has already accused Mueller of interference in the electoral process, writing on Twitter last month that the “13 Angry Democrats”—his favored and misplaced sobriquet for Mueller’s team—“will be MEDDLING with the midterm elections.” With the midterm elections set for November 6, Mueller will be under extraordinary pressure to deliver a timely report—Republicans have already suggested they are losing patience with the 13-month-long investigation—while not appearing to be timing the delivery of the report, itself. As former F.B.I. director James Comey learned when the F.B.I. discovered a new trove of e-mails connected to Hillary Clinton just days before the 2016 election, it is effectively impossible to make an apolitical judgment in a deeply politicized environment. Comey ultimately chose to publicize the bureau’s case on Clinton, but kept secret its investigation into Trump—a decision that has been endlessly picked over for signs of bias, including by Comey. [...]

If Mueller does, in fact, reach some kind of conclusion this fall, the result could be highly damaging for Republicans in Congress. Midterm elections are historically bad for the party in power, and Democrats have already flipped more than 40 legislative seats throughout the country since Trump’s inauguration, fueling concerns that a blue wave could rob the G.O.P. of the U.S. House of Representatives. A debate over whether the president conspired with a foreign power to rig the election is the last thing Republicans want on the eve of an election in which they are hoping to keep the focus on the strong economy and tax cuts. “It’s mood music that doesn’t help,” a senior Republican strategist said of the Russia investigation in an interview with Politico earlier this year. “Every day the party is talking about this investigation is a day they’re not talking about the economy and the tax cuts they provided and jobs and things that are successfully happening.”

Of course, with Mueller’s approval eroding, Democrats worry that a never-ending Russia investigation could hurt them at the polls, too. After Trump claimed that Mueller and the Democrats are “meddling,” Senator Chris Coons said it was “important” that the special counsel “avoid any major announcements” close to the midterms. Democrats also have real concerns that Trump could weaponize the Mueller investigation, detracting from their own focus on health care and turning the election into a referendum on his legitimacy. “He’s trying to frame the Mueller investigation as part of a political war,” William Kristol, a vocal Never Trumper, told Politico last month. “It creates an excuse for Trump, something for Trump to run against. The practical effect of it will be, ‘You need to defend me against impeachment now.’”

(2) Mueller to present report & file indictments before Midterm elections


Mueller Poised to Zero In on Trump-Russia Collusion Allegations

By Chris Strohm  and Shannon Pettypiece

June 26, 2018, 6:00 PM GMT+10

Special Counsel Robert Mueller is preparing to accelerate his probe into possible collusion between Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and Russians who sought to interfere in the 2016 election, according to a person familiar with the investigation.

Mueller and his team of prosecutors and investigators have an eye toward producing conclusions -- and possible indictments -- related to collusion by fall, said the person, who asked not to be identified. He’ll be able to turn his full attention to the issue as he resolves other questions, including deciding soon whether to find that Trump sought to obstruct justice. [...]

Trump accuses Mueller team of 'meddling' in midterm elections


Donald Trump accuses Mueller team of 'meddling' in midterm elections

President offers no proof for allegation about special counsel investigators and says Democrats are guilty of ‘collusion’

Martin Pengelly and agencies

Donald Trump reached for a loaded term on Monday when without offering proof he accused special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigators of “meddling” in the forthcoming midterm elections. The president also said only Democrats were guilty of “collusion”. [...]

The US intelligence community agrees that Russia sought to influence the 2016 election in Trump’s favour and against Hillary Clinton. The Senate judiciary committee has supported that view; the House intelligence committee, led by Trump allies, has said there was no collusion by the Trump campaign.

On Tuesday, Trump tweeted: “The 13 Angry Democrats (plus people who worked 8 years for Obama) working on the rigged Russia Witch Hunt, will be MEDDLING with the mid-term elections, especially now that Republicans (stay tough!) are taking the lead in Polls. There was no Collusion, except by the Democrats. [...] chueyburns@realclearpolitics.com. Follow her on Twitter @CHueyBurns.

(3) Giuliani: midterm elections will be a Referendum on Impeaching Trump


Trump lawyer Giuliani says midterms will answer impeachment question

Donald Trump's lawyer Rudy Giuliani said Wednesday the upcoming midterm elections will be a referendum on impeaching the president.

Giuliani said if Democrats hold the majority in the House, there won't be enough votes to prevent impeachment proceedings.

Published 6:57 PM ET Wed, 1 Aug 2018

Donald Trump's lawyer Rudy Giuliani said Wednesday the upcoming midterm elections will be a referendum on impeaching the president.

"I say this not in my role as a lawyer but as a concerned citizen and Republican," he said. "This election is going to be about impeachment or no impeachment."

Giuliani made the comment while endorsing Eddie Edwards, who is seeking the Republican nomination in New Hampshire's 1st Congressional District. The seat is currently held by Democrat Carol Shea-Porter, who isn't seeking re-election in November.

"If Democrats get control of the House, do you think they're going to treat President Trump fairly?" Giuliani asked the crowd, some of whom shouted "No!" in response.

"I don't think they will either," he said.

The House overwhelmingly blocked two impeachment efforts last winter brought by Rep. Al Green, D-Texas. In December, he based his resolution on claims that Trump had associated his presidency with causes rooted in bigotry and racism, including Trump's blaming both sides for deadly violence at a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. He tried again in January, saying Trump had incited "hate and hostility" by reportedly using a vulgarity to describe African countries.

Democrats opposing the effort said then it was premature to act before special counsel Robert Mueller completes an investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

But Giuliani said if Democrats hold the majority in the House, there won't be enough votes to prevent impeachment proceedings.

"When you look at some of them on television — 'Traitor. He's a traitor, he's this, he's that.' — You get the sense that there isn't a fair-minded, large enough group of people there that we can trust not to take this country down this terrible road."

(4) Neocons are behind Russiagate


The Rise and Continued Influence of the Neocons. The Project for the New American Century (PNAC)

By Michael Welch, Robbie Martin, Scott Price, and Mark Robinowitz

Global Research, August 04, 2018

Robert Kagan. William Kristol. Paul Wolfowitz. Richard Perle. John Bolton. Elliott Abrams. Gary Schmitt. These are a few of the names generally associated with a strain of far-right political thought called neoconservatism. [1][2]

Politically, the neocons favour a world in which the United States adopts a much more aggressive military posture, and utilizes its military might to not only contain terrorist and related threats to its security, but force regime change in regions like the Middle East. They further take on the task of ‘nation-building’ all in the name of creating a safer world for ‘democracy.’ It was the neocons who promoted the stratagem of pre-emptive military action. [3]

The neocons enjoyed a robust period of influence under the Bush-Cheney administration. The 9/11 attacks and the triggering of a ‘war on terrorism’ enabled a series of foreign policy choices, most notably the War on Afghanistan and the War on Iraq, which aligned with the aims and aspirations of the group once referred to by President George Bush Sr. as the ‘crazies in the basement.'[4]

The neocons did not vanish with the departure of the Bush Republicans from office, and the rise of Obama. Indeed, the clout of this group and their grip on power is arguably as strong as ever. Not only did they continue to shape the U.S. foreign policy establishment, but they have managed to alter what constitutes acceptable public and media discourse within the world’s remaining superpower. The trajectory of neocon influence in Washington is explored in depth in the documentary series, A Very Heavy Agenda, by independent journalist and film-maker Robbie Martin. [...]

Robbie Martin: ... [...] So I was watching videos from this think tank, they were called the Foreign Policy Initiative, and I quickly learned maybe over 48 hour period, oh, the Foreign Policy Initiative is actually a re-branded, reopened version of the Project for The New American Century think tank, which was the most infamous neocon think tank that was behind the Iraq War. Once I realized that, then I just…then I was obsessed with watching these videos. I watched probably every single video on their YouTube channel, and the majority of them were incredibly boring, very dry. And I was already in a depressed place, so, you know, it was kind of just putting me into this weird state where I was watching nothing but these dry foreign policy think tank videos for weeks on end.

Finally I got to Robert Kagan. And I was listening to him, and it struck me differently from the way that most other neoconservatives would talk, because I perceived him as being more candid about the way American foreign policy has actually conducted itself, and also more clever with the way that I perceived him as, re-branding, repackaging neocon rhetoric for the Obama era. Once I saw this, I became fascinated with his psychology. And I was already sort of fascinated with Bill Kristol’s psychology, you know, going back to when I was a young man when I would watch Fox News you know during the Iraq War, I would watch Bill Kristol, and I found him fascinating back then because he seemed on a different level than most other, you know, war hawks that would go on Fox News.

But it was really Robert Kagan though that made me think, you know, his own words are so fascinating and so candid and so revealing without adding any editorial content that I wonder if this will work, if I present it just simply in his own words. [...]

But I think one way to describe why they’re so important and they’re still so influential is because they managed to, a very small handful of them, maybe less than a dozen figures, managed to convince the rest of, what people describe as the DC blob, the sort of foreign policy consensus in DC overall, the neocons managed to rebrand themselves, massage their rhetoric, and make themselves seem less crazy in order to influence the larger DC foreign policy community into basically accepting and going along with almost all their foreign policy platforms, with the exception of overtly wanting to invade Iran which… arguably that is the neocon prize but see, a lot of these smarter neocons like Robert Kagan and Bill Kristol, and a lot of these neocons who managed to convince the blob, they have hidden, and not been open about the fact that they want to overthrow the regime of Iran.

That’s one of their foreign policy platforms they’ve sort of brushed under the rug, because that’s one of… The reason I’m giving that example is because that’s how they have managed to cross the aisle, so to speak, in DC and put a hand out to the neoliberal think tanks and say, hey we’re kind of on the same side in this, and we all think Putin’s bad, and let’s really go after him. Let’s overthrow Assad. So these are things that the neocons managed to essentially convince and influence the rest of the DC foreign policy community to believe. [...]

(4) CIA/FBI/DOJ Plot to Overthrow the President of the United States


By Paul Craig Roberts | Jul 31, 2018

There is no evidence Trump's a Russian agent, but there's plenty that the CIA, FBI, DOJ, and national security officials have conspired to overthrow him.

On July 21, I posted on my website a report on the discovery by John Solomon of The Hill magazine that Lisa Page testified to a congressional committee to the effect that the Russiagate probe conducted by Robert Mueller is a cover-up operation to obscure the criminal use of counterintelligence capabilities to spy on Trump’s presidential campaign and then to sabotage Trump’s presidency.

The evidence is overwhelming that CIA director John Brennan, FBI director James Comey, Robert Mueller, James Clapper, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, and the Democratic National Committee are engaged in high treason against the American people and the President of the United States and are actively engaged in a plot to overthrow the President of the United States. Yet, the traitorous intelligence officials retain their high security clearances and have not been indicted, arrested, and put on trial for high treason. Rosenstein and Mueller haven’t even been fired from their high positions where they continue to operate in behalf of the overthrow plot.

It shows the untouchable power of the military/security complex when its operatives are so far beyond the reach of law and accountability that they can commit high treason with no consequences to themselves.

The US presstitute media works full time to protect these traitors, because the presstitutes hate Donald Trump and the Americans who elected him much more than they love the US Constitution and the rule of law. This makes the presstitutes accomplices to high treason and subject to arrest and prosecution.

Even those who understand what is going on and are willing to speak against it, such as former CIA official Ray McGovern and Senator Rand Paul speak in muted terms. Senator Paul wants their security clearances withdrawn because they are monetizing them in their roles of well-paid talking heads in the presstitute media and may reveal classified information on the programs.

There is no evidence that Trump is a Russian agent. There is enormous evidence that the above CIA, FBI, DOJ, and national security officials are engaged in treason against the United States.

Yet, we hear only about the fake case that Trump is a Russian agent. We hear nothing about the CIA/FBI/DOJ plot against the president of the United States that is unfolding before our eyes in plain sight of even insouciant Americans.

We also don’t hear anything about this.

This article was originally published at PaulCraigRoberts.org on July 26, 2018.

(5) Trump should nationalize Apple & other Globalist companies that offshore their workers


Who Does America Belong to? Not to Americans.

By Paul Craig Roberts | Aug 2, 2018

Thomas Jefferson's prediction that central banking would "deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless" is coming true.

The housing market is now apparently turning down. Consumer incomes are limited by jobs offshoring and the ability of employers to hold down wages and salaries. The Federal Reserve seems committed to higher interest rates—in my view to protect the exchange value of the US dollar on which Washington’s power is based. The arrogant fools in Washington, with whom I spent a quarter century, have, with their bellicosity and sanctions, encouraged nations with independent foreign and economic policies to drop the use of the dollar. This takes some time to accomplish, but Russia, China, Iran, and India are apparently committed to dropping or reducing the use of the US dollar.

A drop in the world demand for dollars can be destabilizing of the dollar’s value unless the central banks of Japan, UK, and EU continue to support the dollar’s exchange value, either by purchasing dollars with their currencies or by printing offsetting amounts of their currencies to keep the dollar’s value stable. So far they have been willing to do both. However, Trump’s criticisms of Europe has soured Europe against Trump, with a corresponding weakening of the willingness to cover for the US. Japan’s colonial status viv-a-vis the US since the Second World War is being stressed by the hostility that Washington is introducing into Japan’s part of the world. The orchestrated Washington tensions with North Korea and China do not serve Japan, and those Japanese politicians who are not heavily on the US payroll are aware that Japan is being put on the line for American, not Japanese interests.

If all this leads, as is likely, to the rise of more independence among Washington’s vassals, the vassals are likely to protect themselves from the cost of their independence by removing themselves from the dollar and payments mechanisms associated with the dollar as world currency. This means a drop in the value of the dollar that the Federal Reserve would have to prevent by raising interest rates on dollar investments in order to keep the demand for dollars up sufficiently to protect its value.

As every realtor knows, housing prices boom when interest rates are low, because the lower the rate the higher the price of the house that the person with the mortgage can afford. But when interest rates rise, the lower the price of the house that a buyer can afford.

If we are going into an era of higher interest rates, home prices and sales are going to decline.

The “on the other hand” to this analysis is that if the Federal Reserve loses control of the situation and the debts associated with the current value of the US dollar become a problem that can collapse the system, the Federal Reserve is likely to pump out enough new money to preserve the debt by driving interest rates back to zero or negative.

Would this save or revive the housing market? Not if the debt-burdened American people have no substantial increases in their real income. Where are these increases likely to come from? Robotics are about to take away the jobs not already lost to jobs offshoring. Indeed, despite President Trump’s emphasis on ”bringing the jobs back,” Ford Motor Corp. has just announced that it is moving the production of the Ford Focus from Michigan to China.

Apparently it never occurs to the executives running America’s offshored corporations that potential customers in America working in part time jobs stocking shelves in Walmart, Home Depot, Lowe’s, etc., will not have enough money to purchase a Ford. Unlike Henry Ford, who had the intelligence to pay workers good wages so they could buy Fords, the executives of American companies today sacrifice their domestic market and the American economy to their short-term ”performance bonuses” based on low foreign labor costs.

What is about to happen in America today is that the middle class, or rather those who were part of it as children and expected to join it, are going to be driven into manufactured ”double-wide homes” or single trailers. The MacMansions will be cut up into tenements. Even the high-priced rentals along the Florida coast will find a drop in demand as real incomes continue to fall. The $5,000-$20,000 weekly summer rental rate along Florida’s panhandle 30A will not be sustainable. The speculators who are in over their heads in this arena are due for a future shock.

For years I have reported on the monthly payroll jobs statistics. The vast majority of new jobs are in lowly paid nontradable domestic services, such as waitresses and bartenders, retail clerks, and ambulatory health care services. In the payroll jobs report for June, for example, the new jobs, if they actually exist, are concentrated in these sectors: administrative and waste services, health care and social assistance, accommodation and food services, and local government.

High productivity, high value-added manufactured jobs shrink in the US as they are offshored to Asia. High productivity, high value-added professional service jobs, such as research, design, software engineering, accounting, legal research, are being filled by offshoring or by foreigners brought into the US on work visas with the fabricated and false excuse that there are no Americans qualified for the jobs. See my book The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism.

America is a country hollowed out by the short-term greed of the ruling class and its shills in the economics profession and in Congress. Capitalism only works for the few. It no longer works for the many.

On national security grounds Trump should respond to Ford’s announcement of offshoring the production of Ford Focus to China by nationalizing Ford. Michigan’s payrolls and tax base will decline and employment in China will rise. We are witnessing a major US corporation enabling China’s rise over the United States. Among the external costs of Ford’s contribution to China’s GDP is Trump’s increased US military budget to counter the rise in China’s power.

Trump should also nationalize Apple, Nike, Levi, and all the rest of the offshored US global corporations who have put the interest of a few people above the interests of the American work force and the US economy. There is no other way to get the jobs back. Of course, if Trump did this, he would be assassinated.

America is ruled by a tiny percentage of people who constitute a treasonous class. These people have the money to purchase the government, the media, and the economics profession that shills for them. This greedy traitorous interest group must be dealt with or the United States of America and the entirety of its peoples are lost.

In her latest blockbuster book, Collusion: How Central Bankers Rigged the World, Nomi Prins documents how central banks and international monetary institutions have used the 2008 financial crisis to manipulate markets and the fiscal policies of governments to benefit the super-rich.

These manipulations are used to enable the looting of countries such as Greece and Portugal by the large German and Dutch banks and the enrichment via inflated financial asset prices of shareholders at the expense of the general population.

One would think that repeated financial crises would undermine the power of financial interests, but the facts are otherwise. As long ago as November 21, 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt wrote to Col. House that:

“The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the larger centers has owned the Government ever since the days of Andrew Jackson.”

Thomas Jefferson said that “banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies” and that “if the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks…will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.”

The shrinkage of the US middle class is evidence that Jefferson’s prediction is coming true.

This article was originally published at PaulCraigRoberts.org on July 31, 2018.




No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.