The fact that former vice president Mike Pence’s lawyer disclosed on January 18, 2023, that Pence also had documents with classified markings at his Indiana home should tell us a couple of things.
I am absolutely speechless at the “Revenge Politics” game being played out by Speaker McCarthy as the price paid for POWER. I admire your ability to simply report the facts without bias, or speculate in any way. You are an invaluable resource in a time becoming more difficult to navigate with each day that passes. Thank you for being the stoic person you are.
It should be obvious by now that essentially the entire Republican organization has jettisoned ethics, professionalism, critical responsibilities, even an approximation of honesty, and the democratic process in a despotic quest for absolute power.
Democracy requires a diverse array of viewpoints and responsible choices, and we actually need good faith disagreements and competition of focus within the limits of behavior that is responsible to the welfare of every individual and society as a whole. That can be messy and that makes democracy easy to criticize and ridicule, but we can muddle through well enough, maybe shine, if enough of us are bargaining in good faith; and Republicans are not. Democrats have been too eager to "move" on while Republicans have normalized and hardened their dishonest, hypocritical and provably irresponsible behavior. Corruption is a big deal.
It is evident that Republicans have jettisoned all ethics, indeed! When McCarthy claims that “Integrity matters more,” every rational person should reply: ACTIONS SPEAK LOUDER THAN WORDS!
I read once that the origin of that word in the common vernacular which you are fastidiously avoiding was originally an acronym of "for unlawful carnal knowledge".
Good one. Most four letter words are really ancient and some may have been part of the original Indo-European language that tie together many languages today. However, I really like your explanation. Today's word for the House is hypocrisy. I would also like to note that Low German did not arise spontaneously in northern Germany, but is part of the Indo-European language family, so I am not sure what saying some four letter words are not Indo-European really means.
The acronym story is fun, but improbable. The likeliest source may be Low German, though not Indo-European, and I'll hazard a guess - words for sex being as subject to taboo as they are - that it started out as a euphemism. The discussion on the Online Etymology Dictionary, www.etymonline.com, is enlightening.
Yes, fun. I have found at least one four letter word in both English and one of the languages of India, only the first letter is different. Low German is part of the Indo-European language family.
Dave, I love your term for a secondary allusion: INTER, as in placing a corpse in a grave or tomb. Not that I’m wishing McCarthy a sooner fate than what mortality has in store for all of us, but…
McCarthy adds insult to injury with this BLATANT HYPOCRITICAL LIE, which is a projection of his own actions:
“But I cannot put partisan loyalty ahead of national security, and I cannot simply recognize years of service as the sole criteria for membership on this essential committee. Integrity matters more.”
He, like the entire Repugnant Party has no concept of "service to the nation" or "integrity" but is expert at putting partisan loyalty ahead of national security.
Yes, those words stood out as if they were in neon. Since when has Keystone Kev had a shred of integrity and that goes for the entire party of death. As I like to say, talk don't wash.
Today, a veteran British politician wrote of current UK governments as "a bacchanalia at public expense".
Up to a point, this fits Washington. Except that "bacchanalia" sounds too dignified.
The attitude to the public -- to fellow human beings in general -- resembles more that of Putin. Compatriots are accorded treatment you wouldn't want to see done to an enemy.
All this in a republic -- or what used to be a republic.
And done by people who call themselves "Republicans". In the same way as many among their number like to call themselves "Christians".
There's a yawning chasm where civic education ought to be. Where the most basic human values ought to be.
Time for all true women, time for all true men to rise up and sweep away the scavengers in human guise before they tear the world apart.
“Resembles more that of Putin”. Yes. I might suggest to our forum of commenters the new 2022 Oscar nominated documentary “Navalny” by Daniel Roher. Excellent and sobering. Between he and Zelensky, they foreshadow where we are heading if we don’t effectively act now, where we can, in our own spheres of influence.
Yes. That is a terrific documentary. Sober and sobering.
Our “leaders” use poison pens and lenses to destroy the sanctity of democracy. Democracy, like the sometimes frail body of Navalny, under attack, buckled. Resilient, Navalny came back from what seemed to be certain death (comparable to our time with DJT in “power”). Under sustained attack our democracy, like Navalny in prison, may not make it. We need bold rescues on both counts.
"Sanctification or in its verb form, sanctify, literally means "to set apart for special use or purpose", that is, to make holy or sacred. Therefore, sanctification refers to the state or process of being set apart, i.e. "made holy", as a vessel, full of the Holy Spirit of God." Wikipedia
"No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…"
Peter Astrophysicists claim to be finding bile in the universe’s Black Holes. This can be scaled down to Republican Black Holes. Is this an asinine comment?
I wonder if the RNC, or individuals within, can be named as a co- conspirator if any charges are brought on that level? Snyder has it that they were stoking the social media fire throughout that time period, most especially the day of Jan.6. TY for the article!
The RNC owns J6th. Their official "a Democrat-led persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in in legitimate political discourse" is an exceptionally BIG big lie that must be made to live in infamy.
Thank you. “The Trump campaign and the RNC were following Hitler's advice: tell a lie so big that your public would not believe that you would deceive them on such a scale.” Too much to quote. An important read.
And repeat, and repeat and repeat in the face of whatever counter evidence may appear. Demonize those who say otherwise. Make it thoughtcrime to so much as question the authority of the cult. Eliminate opposition by whatever means you like.
Snyder is great and he has written some excellent books. He does know fascism when he sees it. One of the local ignorant on a thread started by the Marion County clerk decided he knew all about it. He was challenged by every other poster who called out his BS. One of the posters added the word shirt to his last name Brown which was perfect. I expected him to try to get in the last word, but for some reason he folded his tent and removed all his comments, much to my surprise.
What I think of as "corruption" is one form of abuse of power, and arguable the most widely devastating, but there are others, such as mugging, rape, murder, domestic violence, and extortionate business practices, to name a few. There are tings one can do (any idiot can find a way to kill) that you simply should not do because it makes a society hell. We can never stop all of it, but we have the potential to reduce it greatly. Even the minor abuses we can impose thoughtlessly and hopefully come to acknowledge and attempt repair. From bullies in the schoolyard, to the sociopathic invasion of Ukraine, the urge to bully is humanity's most tragic and human species threatening flaw.
" As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy." - Lincoln
From my perspective, "corruption" in the political sense is negligent or deliberate misuse of entrusted powers. Republicans, who seek and accept the duties assigned to entrusted public powers are among the worst of criminals, like a enemy spy in government, or a cop in the pay of the Mafia. It's particularly repugnant and dangerous.
JL Graham, wisely stated. Diversity of opinion is necessary for a country to be ruled well. The problem is, really great leaders who have spent years serving our country are being pushed aside and replaced by mad men and women who are are drunk on power and have no idea how to lead this country and how to partner with the free world..... but do know how to use guns.
Putin and other enemies of Democracy are loving all of this chaos and apparent weakness of leadership in the Republican party . Our allies are observing and saying to themselves, "Well, here we go again....".
I have seen criminology stats that indicate that those who are bullies tend to have been bullied. I also sense that the "reptile", "Mr. Hyde" impulses that make serial killers, war crimes, and so many varieties of human suffering are present in the human genome, albeit to varying degrees, and what a nation celebrates, and discourages, has a lot to do with how and how much those proclivities are expressed. They won't just evaporate, and take some sort of wisdom and compassion to manage beneficially.
We know from history that there is always a ready audience for power-promising "come to the dark side" rhetoric, especially when cloaked in grandiosity.
J L Graham, sadly Media frenzies around mass shootings, the war crimes in Ukraine, the fates of immigrants drowning off our shores or being turned away at the borders soak up the publish or report “if it bleeds, it leads.” In my small town SC the inevitable lead story in local nightly news is the domestic abuse shooter, the toddler murdered by its mother or father, auto accidents dozens of bloody victims every night. Eventually national news items get some coverage, especially if negative. These policies in newsrooms and paper publications are adding fuel to the fires of repressed impulses you speak of since 15 minutes of fame is what these malcontents seek.
The overall bias of the "news" does serious harm to our society by masking what is typical (be it good or bad), making people paranoid or misplacing their anxieties (I could give examples), and too often, ignores or normalizes "elephants" in the room. I have seen with my own eyes, events totally and surely deliberately mischaracterized by news organizations pumping a profitable meme. This story on the following site is a vivid window into what is worst, yet accepted, about modern news coverage, to say nothing of dishonest full time propaganda outlets. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/leslie-moonves-donald-trump-may-871464/
That said we know that J6th was surely not "ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse" thanks to media. We know what Barr and Durham were up to (at least part of the story) though media. I believe it is *imperative* to dial down the primacy of maximized profit as the sole criteria for privately owned services on which we have come to depend to consider. If we believe in self-governance (and even if we don't) we ALL, individually and collectively bear responsibilities to the outcomes of our society, and the fate of our neighbors (I think core Christianity says that, along with many others.) If We the People, ALL the people, are not responsible for our own fates, who is?
It has astonished me that this degree (nearing total) of dishonesty is being tolerated in our society. Seeing it elsewhere and in history I suppose I should not have been so surprised.
"Nip the shoots of arbitrary power in the bud, is the only maxim which can ever preserve the liberties of any people."
-John Adams
We earned a remission, but we had better make full use of it.
I know lots of people who are honest and have integrity. It is appalling to me and to them. I would say that we have a general lack of civility and a whole bunch of selfish unrestrained individuals who think they can do what they please whenever they please. They were given a carte blanche to be truly awful by death star. A story in today's Oregonian is about a lady who won a million dollar jury settlement because when she stopped for gas, the attendant (young) said he didn't serve black people. She may not get all that money, but point made.
JL Graham, it appears that any Republicans with this country's well-being in mind left town, and we are burdened with the dregs. I believe that we need a two-party system, but not this one.
We need a two-party system. perhaps a multiple party system (they both seem to have pros and cons) but with a preponderant commitment to integrity and good faith. Nixon was a liar and abuser of his powers, but he also had Republican detractors, such as his AGs who resigned on orders to pervert the law. A lot has changed since then, especially the deep seated dishonesty, authoritarianism, and ethics-less, anti-democratic (small "d") behavior of the modern "GOP".
Sadly, we're living in a much different world, and in view of the current world trend of authoritarianism, I cannot be convinced that it is solely a product of this country's politics. We must take care to fight the vestiges of all misinformation and disinformation in order to maintain our democracy.
In a republic, one needs to be able to choose an alternative or alternatives. Currently, none is available. It's like being asked if you want life or death, heaven or hell...
OK, no political party is my idea of heaven, least of all the Democrats, but... that's life, isn't it...
If you opt for the mutant monkeys, you will find yourselves shackled to that famous Procrustean Bed and given the choice of being racked or shortened. The perfect end for masochists.
Peter, I agree. I'll continue to vote for Democrats, since most of them are attempting to dig us out of the mire created by the minority, power-crazed Republicans and the corrupt dark money criminals.
Yawn, and repeats: The RNC is a crime syndicate funded by fascist billionaires who want to see this democracy fail. . . They are all traitors who have sold their voting power in return for holding office. Citizen’s United is a euphemism that EXPONENTIALLY increases the representation of corporate CEOs and the fascist billionaires of the Charles KKKoch Club of Puppet Masters.
Like McCarthy's statement about not being partisan, "Citizens United" is straight out of Orwell. Some people have trouble getting enough food and paying rent, and others order $70.000 deserts (or at least that what it cost several years ago). I money really is free speech, some get a whole lot more of it than others; and within the election process, how could that not be screamingly anti-democratic?
Like McCarthy's statement about not being partisan, "Citizens United" is straight out of Orwell. Some people have trouble getting enough food and paying rent, and others order $70.000 deserts (or at least that what it cost several years ago). I money really is free speech, some get a whole lot more of it than others; and within the election process, how could that not be screamingly anti-democratic?
HCR alleges "the difference between officials like Biden and Pence who inadvertently find such documents among their other papers and alert the National Archives and Research Administration (NARA), and those who stonewall NARA and the FBI, as Trump did."
There are slippery assumptions here, highlighting the difference between a historian and a propagandist.
First of all, why does HCR take the assertions of both Pence and Biden at face value? Second, why does HCR ignore Trump's explanation that he declassified the documents that he took? There, perhaps, is the real difference, because Pence and Biden did not have the power to do that. Does HCR assume that Trump either did not declassify the relevant documents and/or that he did so incorrectly? Failure to mention Trump's explanation, while brazenly assuming Trump's guilt, appears to be the mark of a propagandistic opinion groomer.
The Biden case is further marked by the assertion coming from the House Oversight Committee that the Penn Biden Center, where classified documents were found, was the recipient of millions of dollars of anonymous Chinese donations. This raises the question of some form of treason, supposing that Biden or those around him (perhaps Blinken, who was involved with the Buden Center) were being paid to leave classified documents in an area that could be surreptitiously accessed by Chinese spies.
HCR has to have known this, but her silence once again would seem to be the mark of a partisan propagandistic opinion groomer.
I read the article carefully and, while, yes, Republicans are making an association of two events:
1) Biden's presence at UPenn
2) Chinese donations
The article has no evidence linking those increased Chinese donations at UPenn and Biden.
In fact, during the time frame noted, as we all know John, the Chinese student population and Chinese presence at ALL private Universities increased very dramatically. I know this because my kids were in school at the time, one at Ivy.
All across America, elite private schools discovered another source of money other than rich white people. Rich Chinese people.
And, ALL of the Ivy League and private schools in America actively courted Chinese students who can pay the FULL $64,000 per year required to go to Harvard PLUS the usual donation required as well.
So, during the time frame noted in the article, all across America, at all private schools especially, administrators actively sought Chinese students and Chinese donations successfully.
So, yes, at UPenn, Chinese donations shot up during the same time frame that Biden was building a presence.
BUT, it has NOTHING to do with Biden and everything to do with the fact that American Private Universities from Ivy to Union College need MONEY and the Chinese have LOTS of money having taken on all of the manufacturing the USA used to do.
An association between two random events are not often causal John. When they are, the data linking them is clear.
In this case? Republicans are just counting on guys like you, clueless about association between random variables without correlation, to "believe" what you are fed.
Kinda sad, but, hey, its not your fault. You never took statistics and also, you probably did not, like I did, have kids at Ivy to tell you what was going on.
Mike, thank you for that perspective. By the way HCR did discuss trump's declassifying by way of just thinking it and that he did not go thru and declassifying protocol.
It is not just US Universities that receive gifts and donations from Chinese nationalinals. Our son is a computer science professor at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada. He has had to deal with gifts from the "uncle" of a Chinese grad student. He gave these gifts to the University. These gifts are on top of the much higher fees for non Canadians.
Yes, China and the Chinese understand that the "best" universities are in the United States (still). They desperately want their kids in elite private schools EVEN if the language barrier makes it nearly impossible for them to succeed.
And? For the same reason unqualified white people, like George W. Bush and Brett Kavanaugh, Jared Kushner, aye, the list is long, want to get in and DO based on giving money.
Once you get out of Harvard, for example, everyone who does not know better by simply observing, thinks you must be a genius or something because Harvard marketing cleverly makes opaque their REAL admissions criterion: MONEY to pay full tuition.
My daughter was an unbelievably brilliant student in math, and everything else. BUT, I guarantee she would NOT have been admitted if my FAFSA did not make it perfectly clear that I could pay full tuition.
She DID get all kinds of scholarships to non-Ivy schools including two full rides. But, she, and I, knew that coming out of Ivy makes all the difference and? It has.
BUT, although she is smart, that has nothing to do with her admission to Ivy.
It’s not just colleges & universities either. Maine has a number of high schools that accept Chinese students & make good money from the tuition fees. In fact, George Stevens Academy in Blue Hill, ME converted a large house in the town into a dormitory just to house these Chinese students.
My daughter goes to a private high school in LA that has a small group of boarding students. Most of the boarders are Chinese and they pay double the tuition to go to the school.
John may have been “opinion groomed” as he accuses HCR of doing. Projection, perhaps? I love your patient explanation, Mike S!
Btw, at the time of the handover by the British of Hong Kong back to China, rich people there were buying up vacant lots in my local excellent school district for $500,000.
Carol, those were my thoughts too! Mike managed to restrain himself elegantly yet deliver his message to John directly and objectively. Were politicians able to communicate across the aisle in this manner, our nation would be in a much better place!
Also, there was a known Chinese agent frequenting Mar-a-lago for the entire time the classified documents were there. Does that figure into your thinking? Or, if the documents were truly declassified, why didn't Trump's team simply copy them and send the originals back to NARA? Why resist NARA's request for "unclassified" documents? Why not respond to a subpoena if no wrong-doing could be proven?
Trump is mostly paying for the profoundly stupid way he and his team handled their response to NARA's request to return the documents they knew he had. Working with NARA (as Biden and Pence are doing) = no FBI involvement = no subpoena = no raid = no future indictment.
No, "whitewash" has a specific meaning of a cover-up, related to HCR's groundless and baseless (and laughable?) presumption that Biden's stashes of classified documents were "inadvertent."
p.s. Regarding the President's authority to declassify, and the Vice President's much lesser authority, see:
Actually I didn't, but I did raise the question. Maybe in your muzzled world of censorship, "beyond the pale" is different from true or not. The question to ask is whether her letters are marked by a significant pattern of misrepresentations and omissions, and whether her groundless use of the word "inadvertently" to describe Biden's behavior regarding classified documents fits such a pattern.
John. Repeat the phrase "association is not causation" until you get it otherwise you will never be able to submit evidence to any court should the need ever arise. That is why they have these umpires in Court that calls ball & strikes called Judges. Cool uniforms.
Good Grief John. Why am I wasting my time responding to your nonsense? Well, somebody besides Mike needs to pop your bubble of nonsense.
1. There has been NO evidence that Trump declassified the documents he removed from the White House. None. NADA. You really think that Trump saying that he declassified documents with no support from ANYONE has an ounce of credibility? Seriously?
2. I assume guilt when the person in question ADMITS his guilt over and over by explaining it on social media.
3. If it simply came down to Trump taking a few classified documents in error, this wouldn't be such a big deal. But he lied about their existence. Then he lied when he said there were no more, then more were found, then he lied again - exposed by the fact that a search found even more classified documents.
4. All of which is more than just taking a few boxes of documents. It is an obstruction of justice. And as we will learn in more detail, the nature of the documents may have compromised National Security relationships with our allies and may have jeopardized intelligence employees in the field.
As to the Biden Chinese connection, Mike has obliterated that stretch of your imagination. Let's face it there are errors and there are deliberate crimes. You know the difference. Stop clouding the waters of justice with conspiracies with no basis of established fact.
Please understand that I'm not trying to defend Trump. I hope you'll agree that HCR's attempt to give Biden a free pass is premature, given that we don't know what type of documents were in the mix, and we don't know if the Penn Biden Center was a funnel for passing along classified documents to God knows who.
Regarding "clouding the waters of justice," you might consider my response to Steve Wagener:
Hypocritical neo-fascist minions resolutely ignore the evidence of complicity by the U.S. government and by senior politicians such as Joe Biden and Mitch McConnell in the most far-reaching genocide in history. Quoting from Davison Budhoo's resignation letter from the International Monetary Fund (with U.S. voting domination since its inception):
"Today I resigned from the staff of the International Monetary Fund after over twelve years, and after 1000 days of official Fund work in the field, hawking your medicine and your bag of tricks to governments and to peoples in Latin America and the Caribbean and Africa. To me resignation is a priceless liberation, for with it I have taken the first big step to that place where I may hope to wash my hands of what in my mind’s eye is the blood of millions of poor and starving peoples. Mr. Camdessus, the blood is so much, you know, it runs in rivers. It dries up too; it cakes all over me; sometimes I feel that there is not enough soap in the whole world to cleanse me from the things that I did do in your name and in the names of your predecessors, and under your official seal.
"But I can hope, can’t I? Certainly I can hope. I can hope that there is compassion and indignation in the heart of my world, and that people can stand up and take notice of what I have to say, and listen to your reply. For you will have to reply, because the charges that I make are not light charges - they are charges that touch at the very heart of western society and western morality and post-war inter-governmental institutionalism that have degenerated into fake and sham under the pretext of establishing and maintaining international economic order and global efficiency.
"You think that’s all there are to my charges? No, there is more; much more. The charges that I make strike at the very soil of man and at his conscience. You know, when all the evidence is in, there are two types of questions that you and me and others like us will have to answer. The first is this: will the world be content merely to brand our institution as among the most insidious enemies of humankind? Will our fellowmen condemn us thus and let the matter rest? Or will the heirs of those whom we have dismembered in our own peculiar Holocaust clamor for another Nuremberg?"
"Schmeckle" is indeed a misspelling of Schmeeckle. I learned that when I was a small child. The spelling of my surname breaks phonetic rules. And there is at least one person around here who would mock me because of my name -- the stuff of bigotry.
The GQP troll is back again. John Schmeeckle - Go somewhere else where people are much more likely to listen to your false claims to a larger extent. Your presence here is not welcomed by most. -saw-
Hypocritical neo-fascist minions resolutely ignore the evidence of complicity by the U.S. government and by senior politicians such as Joe Biden and Mitch McConnell in the most far-reaching genocide in history. Quoting from Davison Budhoo's resignation letter from the International Monetary Fund (with U.S. voting domination since its inception):
"Today I resigned from the staff of the International Monetary Fund after over twelve years, and after 1000 days of official Fund work in the field, hawking your medicine and your bag of tricks to governments and to peoples in Latin America and the Caribbean and Africa. To me resignation is a priceless liberation, for with it I have taken the first big step to that place where I may hope to wash my hands of what in my mind’s eye is the blood of millions of poor and starving peoples. Mr. Camdessus, the blood is so much, you know, it runs in rivers. It dries up too; it cakes all over me; sometimes I feel that there is not enough soap in the whole world to cleanse me from the things that I did do in your name and in the names of your predecessors, and under your official seal.
"But I can hope, can’t I? Certainly I can hope. I can hope that there is compassion and indignation in the heart of my world, and that people can stand up and take notice of what I have to say, and listen to your reply. For you will have to reply, because the charges that I make are not light charges - they are charges that touch at the very heart of western society and western morality and post-war inter-governmental institutionalism that have degenerated into fake and sham under the pretext of establishing and maintaining international economic order and global efficiency.
"You think that’s all there are to my charges? No, there is more; much more. The charges that I make strike at the very soil of man and at his conscience. You know, when all the evidence is in, there are two types of questions that you and me and others like us will have to answer. The first is this: will the world be content merely to brand our institution as among the most insidious enemies of humankind? Will our fellowmen condemn us thus and let the matter rest? Or will the heirs of those whom we have dismembered in our own peculiar Holocaust clamor for another Nuremberg?"
Hypocritical neo-fascist minions resolutely ignore the evidence of complicity by the U.S. government and by senior politicians such as Joe Biden and Mitch McConnell in the most far-reaching genocide in history. Quoting from Davison Budhoo's resignation letter from the International Monetary Fund (with U.S. voting domination since its inception):
"Today I resigned from the staff of the International Monetary Fund after over twelve years, and after 1000 days of official Fund work in the field, hawking your medicine and your bag of tricks to governments and to peoples in Latin America and the Caribbean and Africa. To me resignation is a priceless liberation, for with it I have taken the first big step to that place where I may hope to wash my hands of what in my mind’s eye is the blood of millions of poor and starving peoples. Mr. Camdessus, the blood is so much, you know, it runs in rivers. It dries up too; it cakes all over me; sometimes I feel that there is not enough soap in the whole world to cleanse me from the things that I did do in your name and in the names of your predecessors, and under your official seal.
"But I can hope, can’t I? Certainly I can hope. I can hope that there is compassion and indignation in the heart of my world, and that people can stand up and take notice of what I have to say, and listen to your reply. For you will have to reply, because the charges that I make are not light charges - they are charges that touch at the very heart of western society and western morality and post-war inter-governmental institutionalism that have degenerated into fake and sham under the pretext of establishing and maintaining international economic order and global efficiency.
"You think that’s all there are to my charges? No, there is more; much more. The charges that I make strike at the very soil of man and at his conscience. You know, when all the evidence is in, there are two types of questions that you and me and others like us will have to answer. The first is this: will the world be content merely to brand our institution as among the most insidious enemies of humankind? Will our fellowmen condemn us thus and let the matter rest? Or will the heirs of those whom we have dismembered in our own peculiar Holocaust clamor for another Nuremberg?"
Hypocritical neo-fascist minions resolutely ignore the evidence of complicity by the U.S. government and by senior politicians such as Joe Biden and Mitch McConnell in the most far-reaching genocide in history. Quoting from Davison Budhoo's resignation letter from the International Monetary Fund (with U.S. voting domination since its inception):
"Today I resigned from the staff of the International Monetary Fund after over twelve years, and after 1000 days of official Fund work in the field, hawking your medicine and your bag of tricks to governments and to peoples in Latin America and the Caribbean and Africa. To me resignation is a priceless liberation, for with it I have taken the first big step to that place where I may hope to wash my hands of what in my mind’s eye is the blood of millions of poor and starving peoples. Mr. Camdessus, the blood is so much, you know, it runs in rivers. It dries up too; it cakes all over me; sometimes I feel that there is not enough soap in the whole world to cleanse me from the things that I did do in your name and in the names of your predecessors, and under your official seal.
"But I can hope, can’t I? Certainly I can hope. I can hope that there is compassion and indignation in the heart of my world, and that people can stand up and take notice of what I have to say, and listen to your reply. For you will have to reply, because the charges that I make are not light charges - they are charges that touch at the very heart of western society and western morality and post-war inter-governmental institutionalism that have degenerated into fake and sham under the pretext of establishing and maintaining international economic order and global efficiency.
"You think that’s all there are to my charges? No, there is more; much more. The charges that I make strike at the very soil of man and at his conscience. You know, when all the evidence is in, there are two types of questions that you and me and others like us will have to answer. The first is this: will the world be content merely to brand our institution as among the most insidious enemies of humankind? Will our fellowmen condemn us thus and let the matter rest? Or will the heirs of those whom we have dismembered in our own peculiar Holocaust clamor for another Nuremberg?"
Sorry but you need to be blocked. I'm relatively new to this commentary network, and I'm by far not the smartest or most articulate offering comments here, but even I can see you are not interested in civil discourse. Find another audience, please.
Where is the evidence that Trump declassified any documents (remember, he said he could do that just by "thinking about it")? He also claimed documents were planted by the FBI and that all documents had been returned; for a year, he resisted the efforts of the Archives to obtain documents, including not responding to a subpoena. If you are referring to the current House Oversight Committee, we should be extremely wary of "assertions" from it that the Center was the recipient of vast sums of money from China.
And please, the “classification” status is not at issue. Trump refused to return Presidential records that did not belong to him. NARA had to go to extreme measures to poke the bully for their return
Plrase understand that I'm not defending Trump. I'm saying that HCR seems to be giving Biden a free pass.
Quoting from that congressional press release:
"“The Penn Biden Center appears to have acted as a foreign-sponsored source of income for much of a Biden Administration in-waiting,” continued Chairman Comer. “Between 2017 and 2019, UPenn paid President Biden more than $900,000, and the university employed at least 10 people at the Penn Biden Center who later became senior Biden administration officials. This level of access and opportunity raises questions about who had access to the classified documents found at the Penn Biden Center."
Hypocritical neo-fascist minions resolutely ignore the evidence of complicity by the U.S. government and by senior politicians such as Joe Biden and Mitch McConnell in the most far-reaching genocide in history. Quoting from Davison Budhoo's resignation letter from the International Monetary Fund (with U.S. voting domination since its inception):
"Today I resigned from the staff of the International Monetary Fund after over twelve years, and after 1000 days of official Fund work in the field, hawking your medicine and your bag of tricks to governments and to peoples in Latin America and the Caribbean and Africa. To me resignation is a priceless liberation, for with it I have taken the first big step to that place where I may hope to wash my hands of what in my mind’s eye is the blood of millions of poor and starving peoples. Mr. Camdessus, the blood is so much, you know, it runs in rivers. It dries up too; it cakes all over me; sometimes I feel that there is not enough soap in the whole world to cleanse me from the things that I did do in your name and in the names of your predecessors, and under your official seal.
"But I can hope, can’t I? Certainly I can hope. I can hope that there is compassion and indignation in the heart of my world, and that people can stand up and take notice of what I have to say, and listen to your reply. For you will have to reply, because the charges that I make are not light charges - they are charges that touch at the very heart of western society and western morality and post-war inter-governmental institutionalism that have degenerated into fake and sham under the pretext of establishing and maintaining international economic order and global efficiency.
"You think that’s all there are to my charges? No, there is more; much more. The charges that I make strike at the very soil of man and at his conscience. You know, when all the evidence is in, there are two types of questions that you and me and others like us will have to answer. The first is this: will the world be content merely to brand our institution as among the most insidious enemies of humankind? Will our fellowmen condemn us thus and let the matter rest? Or will the heirs of those whom we have dismembered in our own peculiar Holocaust clamor for another Nuremberg?"
John, the letter of resignation by Davison Budhoo, which you keep referring to, was in fact written May 18, 1988. It has nothing to do with your criticism of HCR's reporting.
Quite possibly HCR and many of us "ignored Trump's explanation" was because (1) he had so many "explanations" and (2) it was impossible to believe anything he said because he lied thousands of times.
Thank you for your response. Do you deny that Trump had the authority to declassify documents? Furthermore, is it possible that Trump is saving a detailed explanation for his day in court? Once again, I am not trying to defend Trump here.
Hmm. I don't know what you would say if you were NOT defending the former president. He did not have the authority to declassify documents once he was no longer president, did he? And while he was president, "just thinking about" declassifying probably was not sufficient proof that he did. You are trying to defend the indefensible. Move on.
Ann Weller, you arrogantly tell me what to do. You have no reason to presume that Trump did not declassify those documents while President, but theh still had a "classified" stamp on them.
Regarding not defending Trump, I've taken my stand on this Twitter thread:
I imagine that Trump's "assignment" from the Establishment, should he return to the Oval Office, is to preside ovwr the "bankruptcy" dismantling of Social Security and Medicare, etc., as the Almighty Dollar loses its status as the international reserve currency. (I imagine that Biden's assignment was to find a way to weaken Russia, with Blinken as the pre-arranged point man.)
Um, Trumps stories on the documents have constantly shifted and they can't all be true. I have as yet seen no proof that a president can declassify documents at will and without notification , and have read assurances that there are established protocols. Methinks that Trump frequently conceived of himself as well above his role as a servant of the public.
The authority for any "established protocols" comes from executive orders of the President. Here's a discussion, fact-checking Darth Vader, that has some helpful points:
John Schmeeckle - "why does HCR ignore Trump's explanation that he declassified the documents that he took? There, perhaps, is the real difference, because Pence and Biden did not have the power to do that."
Vice presidents have the authority to declassify documents.
I have been speechless for so long (while screaming to any who would listen) that I give up on railing against the Fox diatribes. Been waiting for the MSM to do it, but they love the “news as entertainment” crap, and they have forgotten their central role in our democracy. And I thought Tom Delay and Denis Hastert were as low as repubs could go.
I too have a growing sense of something bad coming. However, I do want to say that having that sense does not mean something bad is coming!!
Reading Dr. Richardson's work to root to the very bottom of the septic tank that is the Republican Party is not easy to do while staying balanced. I wonder how she, the septic tank diver herself, handles all this nasty stuff she learns? Must be tough on her yes?
Anyway, I encourage you, with your life, to know the truth, but, don't let the truth drag you into the septic tank with the Republicans by making you feel depressed or sad.
Find some dude at that place you are at and do a little flirting and get some fun going!!
I suspect investigators like HCR who examine the charade playing out in the Republican House are like infectious disease researchers and don Psychological protection as they dissect the corpse.
When isolated from current events the McCarthy charade of structuring his playpen is very discernible as splash of meaningless entertainment for Fox-ite’s.
Any of the frantic actions by the various committees vying for mention by Tucker Carlson is probably DOA in the senate.
We are about to watch a perpetual loop of meaningless chatter by the slim Republican dominated half of one branch of our Government. Expect poor results.
Unless you are poor and disenfranchised. Struggling to find a job and feed your children. We should be doing what we do to lift people up. We have been given much.
We need another relief package for the ex-middle class, those “earning” (instead of “being paid”) $15 an hour, which will pay rent, but not buy food, which will continue to get more expensive. In this rich country, the millionaires, billionaires, corporations, and the Republican Party should not be allowed to destroy US.
Equally speechless, I'm silent with rage. That gollum, who had to grovel his way through 15 (fifteen) ballots, dares to insult those two men of vast experience and integrity!
Well, in a way. Gollum was telling the truth. The presence of Schaffer and Salwell on the committee does make the country less safe....for PUTIN and his buddies
The GOP told us what they intended to do, who they intended to persecute, and what legislation they intended to ram through the House. None of the above represents democracy.
Why are you speechless when they tell us repeatedly who they are and what they stand for?
Because a punch in the solar plexus deprives you of speech. Yes, we know who they are, and to see them wielding a vulgar simulacrum of power in the once-hallowed halls is as sickening as was the sight of the rabble swarming up the face of the Capitol.
Considering the mileage Republicans receive incessantly repeating big lies, perhaps more repetition of evidence-based truths (so far as we know them) might impede their progress. I think that more of the truth leaking out into the public conversation has been having a measurable effect.
I agree with you, but would just take a moment to note that after Schiff and Swallwell were rejected for the Intelligence Committee, it was officially renamed the House Committee on Stupidity.
Today Joyce Vance states what’s going on pretty clearly her Substack “Civil Discourse”
Here’s a small piece of her writing:
“(For that matter, there’s been virtually no discussion of that leak of the Biden matter, which, if made by someone at DOJ, violated ethics rules at a minimum. The Trump investigation was conducted for six months, completely under the radar, and only disclosed by Trump himself after DOJ executed the search warrant at Mar-a-Lago. Biden’s find of documents occurred in early November, with the DOJ investigation following closely on its heels. Two months later, someone disclosed the Biden investigation to the media and it became public. It seems highly unlikely that anyone on Biden’s team made the disclosure, and the only other people who would have known about the matter would have been federal investigators and prosecutors. So, hardly a system that protected Biden and persecuted Trump. (Where’s the Marshal of the Supreme Court when you need her to investigate a leak?)
Is there a lesson from all of this? Yes. It’s time to stop pandering to Trump’s incessant complaints. Do the right thing and let the chips fall where they may. There is nothing that will make Trump happy or soothe his base. No amount of retaining Trump-appointed U.S. Attorneys to investigate Hunter Biden—while giving Ivanka a pass for trademarks obtained from foreign governments, including China, while working as a senior advisor to the president—will convince the single-minded that Democrats aren’t rigging the government against Trump.“
I can't decide whether to crawl back under the covers in denial of hypocrite McCarthy's dumb-sly antics openly executed in broad daylight, or start my morning with Champagne with Fani Willis' words lyrically ringing in my ears: "Decisions are imminent."
McCarthy is doing no less than what was expected of him, resulting from his Faustian deal with the Republican extremists. He may be able to dictate House rules and committee membership, but legislation still must go on to the Senate and the President's desk. There are more important issues facing Democrats, one of which is making it very clear to the public that there is a vast difference between returning documents discovered to have been inadvertantly taken 'home from the office,' and fighting the government's efforts to reclaim such documents.
I am not naive, and as cynical as I can be, I did not think McCarthy would be so boldly stupid as to exact Schiff and Swalwell from their committees and then actually say that this would make America "safer." This defies incredulity....
It is the job of historians to report the facts as objectively as possible. It does not mean that their private feelings do not exist. Universities, the good ones in the western tradition, teach objectivity above all. Emotional reporting is for fiction. That’s why and how we got novels (eventually).
Judith, I admire Heather's professionalism, too, but we know what she's thinking. 🤢 I'm horrified that I believed that getting rid of tFg would end our misery, but dark money is determined to ruin us.
HCR alleges "the difference between officials like Biden and Pence who inadvertently find such documents among their other papers and alert the National Archives and Research Administration (NARA), and those who stonewall NARA and the FBI, as Trump did."
There are slippery assumptions here, highlighting the difference between a historian and a propagandist.
First of all, why does HCR take the assertions of both Pence and Biden at face value? Second, why does HCR ignore Trump's explanation that he declassified the documents that he took? There, perhaps, is the real difference, because Pence and Biden did not have the power to do that. Does HCR assume that Trump either did not declassify the relevant documents and/or that he did so incorrectly? Failure to mention Trump's explanation, while brazenly assuming Trump's guilt, appears to be the mark of a propagandistic opinion groomer.
The Biden case is further marked by the assertion coming from the House Oversight Committee that the Penn Biden Center, where classified documents were found, was the recipient of millions of dollars of anonymous Chinese donations. This raises the question of some form of treason, supposing that Biden or those around him (perhaps Blinken, who was involved with the Buden Center) were being paid to leave classified documents in an area that could be surreptitiously accessed by Chinese spies.
HCR has to have known this, but her silence once again would seem to be the mark of a partisan propagandistic opinion groomer.
Thanks for the link. I read it carefully and, yes, there is an accusation of association of Biden with Chinese donations to UPenn.
However, and I carefully read your link twice, there is NO EVIDENCE that the Chinese donations are associated with Biden in any way. ZERO. There is just an association noted of increased Chinese donations to the University during the time frame noted.
However, John, I would like to note the following facts: In the time frame noted in the link, Chinese student populations at ALL American universities shot up, but, ESPECIALLY at private schools. As did donations. But why??
OK, my son and daughter were in college from 2016 - 2020 during a time when those Chinese students were coming on board. Both of my kids went to private schools and drained my own bank account to do that. One went to an Ivy League School. Actually did not get in on white affirmative action called Legacy, she got in because she is brilliant and they could not find anything to keep her out.
At BOTH private schools where my kids were, Chinese students, from China, ramped up during the time frame 2016-2020 and EVERYONE knew WHY. Indeed, the Chinese student population was growing rapidly at all esteemed Universities, like UPenn:
But WHY? Ah, that would be MONEY.
The Chinese students were able and willing to pay FULL TUITION, at those private schools, like rich, white folks, without getting any breaks. Some of them were OK students, but, some really struggled due to language barriers.....my kids said it was sad to see sometimes. But, some of the students were top performers as well.
However, at Harvard, Yale, Cornell, UPenn and ALL US PRIVATE SCHOOLS, the Chinese student population and monetary DONATIONS from Chinese sources skyrocketed during the time frame.
So, I offer you the following: Republicans have made a common mistake that oft occurs among the ignorant and uneducated. They have observed two events that were unrelated,
1) the ramp up of the Chinese donations and student population at UPenn along with big donations and
2) Biden building a presence at UPenn.
And, they have further assumed, with no evidence, that the Chinese donations are related to Biden's presence at UPenn during that time.
Sadly, it may not be a mistake on the part of the Republicans. They are probably counting on guys like you, John, to spread their lie, which, they know is a lie.
Mike, great points. My husband just retired from Rice U....not an Ivy but a fine, private and expensive university. The Chinese student population was huge and for the very reasons you mention...they can pay FULL TUITION. No requests for student aid from this group!
Nice attempt at spin, where you obfuscate the fact that the BIDEN CENTER, and not the University of Pennsylvania, was the recipient of Chinese money. Where is the lie in that, Mr. Apprentice Spin Doctor?
"“The Penn Biden Center appears to have acted as a foreign-sponsored source of income for much of a Biden Administration in-waiting,” continued Chairman Comer. “Between 2017 and 2019, UPenn paid President Biden more than $900,000, and the university employed at least 10 people at the Penn Biden Center who later became senior Biden administration officials. This level of access and opportunity raises questions about who had access to the classified documents found at the Penn Biden Center."
Contrary for fun? Anyone is entitled to their opinion(s) but, I have recently learned much more about the contractual responsibilities of Substack, Inc. Authors & the defined term "Readers" who like all 3rd party beneficiaries have good faith & fair dealing obligations to all of us on this Platform. Content mediation is a legal issue bublling up in the Federal Appellate Courts. Think about your good faith obligations. Did you know if you even had any?
"“The Penn Biden Center appears to have acted as a foreign-sponsored source of income for much of a Biden Administration in-waiting,” continued Chairman Comer. “Between 2017 and 2019, UPenn paid President Biden more than $900,000, and the university employed at least 10 people at the Penn Biden Center who later became senior Biden administration officials. This level of access and opportunity raises questions about who had access to the classified documents found at the Penn Biden Center."
"“The Penn Biden Center appears to have acted as a foreign-sponsored source of income for much of a Biden Administration in-waiting,” continued Chairman Comer. “Between 2017 and 2019, UPenn paid President Biden more than $900,000, and the university employed at least 10 people at the Penn Biden Center who later became senior Biden administration officials. This level of access and opportunity raises questions about who had access to the classified documents found at the Penn Biden Center."
McCarthy's approach did work well, in the past, as the Nazi Party grew its power. So, I am not sure that assuming the bumpy ride will lead to any Republican "undoing" is appropriate?
I personally hope McCarthy's "approach" does not lead to a boom in train and incinerator building inside of fenced compounds since the same approach was sort of taken by the Nazi party and did lead to, well, trains running on time. So to speak.
It only takes a few to temporarily ally with Democrats and shift the balance of power. Or to create a new party and challenge them crazies for leadership of the Right.
Cheney and Kinzinger did it, and now they're both gone. Where is the next wave?
The crazy train is pulling out of the station, leaving an empty platform behind.
I thank Mike Pence for taking some of the hot air out of the GOP talking heads who have been equating Trump's handling of classified documents with that of the Biden case. And they're going to struggle mightily to find diversions to what Fani Willis is about to unleash on Trump.
Is it not truly tragic that a black woman living in Georgia must be the point person to uphold the law against a powerful, rich, white man in the United States of America?
Think about how dangerous, to Fani and her family, charging Trump will be. Off down in Georgia where they just did away with Jim Crow yesterday and where Fani would have been required to step off the sidewalk for Trump or be killed legally.
Think about Fani filing charges against Trump for a few minutes. Imagine the thousands of white nuts, with all manner of guns, out there who will be literally ENRAGED by that act of hers. Fani, nor her family, will EVER be safe again here in America if she does file charges.
The truly sad, sad, sad, aspect of all of this is: Trump SHOULD have been arrested a month or so after he openly led an armed rebellion against the Constitution and the United States.
However, the arrest should have been sponsored by Merrick Garland. A white man going after a white man on equal ground in this country. That would make sense.
But Garland? He was and is just too much of a coward to arrest Trump. Garland knows he and his family will be open for target shooting if he arrests Trump and he is avoiding the danger leaving the poor, but very brave, and perhaps unwise, Fani Willis out there to step up.
Just think about all that you know about Trump supporters and then think about Garland stepping aside to let a black woman in Georgia step up and step into hell.
One of the very, very most cowardly and sad things I have seen in my life.
Fani is doing this because Trump went after her own in Georgia, Ruby Freeman, and Fani is angry. She is also right legally.
BUT, Garland stepping aside with a smile to let Fani walk into American hell? THE most cowardly act I have seen, ever, in my lifetime.
I am so tired of the apologists for Garland. He is clearly not up to the job of Attorney General. What’s the over/under for the number of Special Counsels he’ll appoint in order to avoid responsibility for any difficult decision?
Disagree with your narrative that Garland is a coward and willfully setting up Willis to "walk into American hell."
Do I wish DOJ had moved more quickly? Absolutely. But get to back to me after Trump is charged with federal serious conspiracy — a very difficult case to build, much less to prove in court. As slow and as frustrating as the federal investigation into the coup attempt has been, it's also extraordinarily broad and complex.
Trump has confessed, in essence, in a recorded phone call to his crime in the Georgia election. Slam dunk. As for the potential for violent retaliation against Willis, are you suggesting the risk would vanish if charges in Georgia followed federal charges in DC? The risk existed yesterday, today, and in the future for everyone trying to bring domestic terrorists, including Trump, to justice across America.
1) No charges, or weak charges. Yep, he's a soggy biscuit.
2) Strong charges that fail. Hard to figure out what happened. Maybe he overdid the charges, or he flubbed the case-building, or maybe it was just an impossible dream. There will be plenty of Monday Morning Quarterbacks to dissect his legacy and feed it to the dogs.
3) Strong charges that stick. He's a mensch, and goes down in history.
I can't see what's in it for him in scenario 1, other than flat out bribery and a beachfront estate paid for with someone else's money. So I think that's the least likely scenario.
HCR alleges "the difference between officials like Biden and Pence who inadvertently find such documents among their other papers and alert the National Archives and Research Administration (NARA), and those who stonewall NARA and the FBI, as Trump did."
There are slippery assumptions here, highlighting the difference between a historian and a propagandist.
First of all, why does HCR take the assertions of both Pence and Biden at face value? Second, why does HCR ignore Trump's explanation that he declassified the documents that he took? There, perhaps, is the real difference, because Pence and Biden did not have the power to do that. Does HCR assume that Trump either did not declassify the relevant documents and/or that he did so incorrectly? Failure to mention Trump's explanation, while brazenly assuming Trump's guilt, appears to be the mark of a propagandistic opinion groomer.
The Biden case is further marked by the assertion coming from the House Oversight Committee that the Penn Biden Center, where classified documents were found, was the recipient of millions of dollars of anonymous Chinese donations. This raises the question of some form of treason, supposing that Biden or those around him (perhaps Blinken, who was involved with the Buden Center) were being paid to leave classified documents in an area that could be surreptitiously accessed by Chinese spies.
HCR has to have known this, but her silence once again would seem to be the mark of a partisan propagandistic opinion groomer.
If Trump had declassified documents, and not by “thinking about it” as he publicly claims is his right, republicans would have been blasting it 24/7. And if you were being fair, you’d acknowledge that his 2 years of lies to keep documents from the archives and then the FBI is the difference between Biden and Pence immediately and voluntarily returning documents and allowing searches without hindrance. The sheer number of confirmed lies trump has told makes it impossible for anyone to rationally believe he is innocent.
Throwing the allegations about Chinese donations into the mix is a red herring. We all know that if conservatives cared about illegal donations they’d have joined in a bipartisan push for increased oversight and donation limits rather than fighting for the opposite.
"“The Penn Biden Center appears to have acted as a foreign-sponsored source of income for much of a Biden Administration in-waiting,” continued Chairman Comer. “Between 2017 and 2019, UPenn paid President Biden more than $900,000, and the university employed at least 10 people at the Penn Biden Center who later became senior Biden administration officials. This level of access and opportunity raises questions about who had access to the classified documents found at the Penn Biden Center."
Me thinks you protest too much. A partisan groomer would choose to leave out the FACT that trump refused to cooperate, that he was asked numerous times to return documents and refused, that his attorneys swore on paper that everything was returned and it was a lie, that the FBI issued a subpoena which was ignored, that a search was conducted and found classified documents in unsecured locations. False equivalency here, John, but nice try.
Please report him to the forum administrator. Putting the same comment up twice might be a senior moment, but repeatedly falls into the troll territory.
I shared my response to HCR's latest with a number of different individuals, thinking that (1) some of them will consider the thought in my response and perhaps reply; and (2) Many or most of them will not see my response if I just post it as a reply to one single person.
"“The Penn Biden Center appears to have acted as a foreign-sponsored source of income for much of a Biden Administration in-waiting,” continued Chairman Comer. “Between 2017 and 2019, UPenn paid President Biden more than $900,000, and the university employed at least 10 people at the Penn Biden Center who later became senior Biden administration officials. This level of access and opportunity raises questions about who had access to the classified documents found at the Penn Biden Center."
Repeating this drivel does not make it true. Go somewhere else to spread John Schmeeckle. How lazy can you get to just simply copy paste. This is a discussion not a forum for you to get more hits on your substack. -saw-
"“The Penn Biden Center appears to have acted as a foreign-sponsored source of income for much of a Biden Administration in-waiting,” continued Chairman Comer. “Between 2017 and 2019, UPenn paid President Biden more than $900,000, and the university employed at least 10 people at the Penn Biden Center who later became senior Biden administration officials. This level of access and opportunity raises questions about who had access to the classified documents found at the Penn Biden Center."
Mr. Schmeeckle, you post here a fair amount, recently, and you get pretty frequently disrespected. I'd like to address that.
Your tone is often belligerent, and you name-call a lot. "Propagandistic opinion groomer" is not a compliment. You are effectively picking fights. It's like walking into a biker bar and saying something unpleasant about the way it smells. Unless you are actually looking for some free dental work, that would be ... well, just plain stupid.
There's a lot of "both-sides-ism" floating about, and I have to hold on to my temper when I talk with my son. He's a big fan of Glen Greenwald and Matt Taibbi -- I used to be, too, and ain't nobody who can hold a candle to Mr. Taibbi in crafting metaphors that will make your eyeballs bleed -- and I'm not about to argue that politicians of any persuasion are the best of us.
But the devil is NOT in the details. The devil is on full display. We have one arguably corrupt political party that is, nonetheless, pushing against some of the most painful atrocities our post-Reagan government has inflicted on the public, and another obviously corrupt political party that is pushing to make those atrocities worse. We have one party that is not supporting Social Security as aggressively they should be, and another political party that is trying to destroy it. We have one political party that at least counts crowd size correctly, and another that indulges in Orwellian lies about crowd size AND EVERYTHING ELSE.
What all of your posts (that I've seen) suffer from is a very serious lack of perspective.
This especially shows up when you call Dr. Richardson a propagandistic opinion groomer. I have no idea what your age is. I'm 66, and was raised in a red state in the middle of the Cold War propaganda blitz. What passed for American History in my early years was real propaganda. What Dr. Richardson has been doing for the "common masses" who read this letter -- like myself -- is tying some REAL history back into contemporary events in a jazz riff on the "history never repeats, but it rhymes" theme. She has been doing what great teachers have always done: she opens minds.
No one thinks this makes her a god. But we are certainly appreciative.
So when you come here and start spouting both-sideism and calling names....
You are, of course, entitled to express your opinion at length while ignoring my basic point that HCR's characterization of Biden's mishandling of classified documents as "inadvertent" was groundless and baseless, while Trump did indeed have the power to declassify documents by simply scrawling "declassified" on them and signing and dating, if he wanted it to be observed by others. (Trump's hyperbolic comment about declassifying with his mind can be compared to the question of whether a falling tree in the forest makes a noise if no one is there to hear it. I suspect that Trump's underlying point was that the process of declassifying is dictated by the President through executive orders, and the President has the power to declassify things however he wants.)
You are, of course, entitled to express your opinion at length while ignoring my basic point that HCR's characterization of Biden's mishandling of classified documents as "inadvertent" was groundless and baseless, while Trump did indeed have the power to declassify documents by simply scrawling "declassified" on them and signing and dating, if he wanted it to be observed by others. (Trump's hyperbolic comment about declassifying with his mind can be compared to the question of whether a falling tree in the forest makes a noise if no one is there to hear it. I suspect that Trump's underlying point was that the process of declassifying is dictated by the President through executive orders, and the President has the power to declassify things however he wants.)
You are, of course, entitled to express your opinion at length while ignoring my basic point that HCR's characterization of Biden's mishandling of classified documents as "inadvertent" was groundless and baseless, while Trump did indeed have the power to declassify documents by simply scrawling "declassified" on them and signing and dating, if he wanted it to be observed by others. (Trump's hyperbolic comment about declassifying with his mind can be compared to the question of whether a falling tree in the forest makes a noise if no one is there to hear it. I suspect that Trump's underlying point was that the process of declassifying is dictated by the President through executive orders, and the President has the power to declassify things however he wants.)
There are two people, each stopped by a cop, who asks for their ID.
Person one takes out his driver's license and hands it over. When accused of speeding, he says (honestly), "I am sorry, officer, I wasn't watching my speed at the moment your lights came on."
Person two refuses to identify himself, starts shouting at the officer, calling him a pig and worse, and shows every sign of working himself up to a physical attack.
Both of these scenarios represent a response to lawful power. I would fully expect very different outcomes.
In all of the above cases, the National Archives and the classification system represented lawful power.
In the case of Biden and Pence, the response was immediate acquiescence to that power.
Trump became a belligerent asshole, and it went on for months.
The simple fact is that ALL "classified" information has a real-world expiration date, and it's usually pretty quick. Some of it might last as long as a saeculum (the span of a single long human memory, particularly when the classification covers up egregious wrongdoing), but most of it is worthless within weeks, months, or a few years.
I recall when I was an undergraduate (1970's) a professor was talking about the atomic mass of a particular isotope of uranium, which was well-known and published in numerous textbooks and reference pages -- except for the last two fractional digits. Those two digits were "classified," and you could go to jail for revealing them. It was a leftover classification from the 1940's, when they were working on the Manhattan Project. I would not doubt that those two digits are still classified.
Which brings up the faulty process for declassifying things, because, frankly, no one is very interested in sweeping the archives. I've been hearing a lot lately about a lot of the military classification of UFO sightings in the 1950's and 1960's, which remain classified simply because -- at the time -- they were "Eyes Only" documents, and then the steam went out of the UFO projects of next couple of decades, and now, there is no one left alive with the authority to declassify them.
It's similar to corporate "privacy" notions. I've been working for several years on a corporate "secret" project that was so tight that it was hard to get the hardware documentation I needed to write software for the hardware. Which was my job. So I can well-sympathize with government officials who take classified documents on the road. And it isn't (normally) an issue: Pence, Biden, etc. were all simply doing their jobs.
Trump was doing something else. It might have just been his narcissism gloating like a magpie over the shiny things he had run off with. The concern -- a valid concern -- was that Mr. Transactional Sociopath was looking to sell them.
But the real issue -- of course -- was that he challenged established power with power he no longer possessed. The crime of stupidity.
I think that you might be unaware that the system for classifying and declassifying documents, such as it is, is governed by executive orders, which raises the question of whether Trump violated the terms of a previous executive order and failed to issue a new one (while he was President), which as yet I haven't seen discussed by HCR or anyone else
As I recall, there has been no evidence that Trump ever declassified anything, or that he was even aware of a process for declassification. He made a statement to the effect that even "thinking" about declassifying them, declassified them. This was, of course, after Mar a Lago had been raided and the classified documents had been recovered.
That "thinking about it" was all over this site, and the news, and the humor sites.
Trump's declassification of the documents at Mar-el-Lago has been misrepresented repeatedly. Your silly comment about "a process for declassification" is a good example. Trump, by declassifying the documents that later made their way to his Florida residence, violated what part of what executive order?
Trump's authority, as President, to declassify whatever he wanted, is the fundamental difference between his situation and that of Biden.
As far as I'm aware, no executive order has ever spelled out a procedure for the President to declassify documents. Hence Trump's hyperbolic remark about declassifying documents with his mind. I imagine that Trump marked "declassified," with a date, on each document.
This whole "classified" brohuha appears to have been manufactured out of thin air as a propaganda stunt to smear Trump's already-tarnished reputation.
I don't think anyone would pay for what he's doing. We're currently in a troll recession economy, as there is little point in wasting money on trolls right now. He's also far too wordy.
I shared my response to HCR's latest with a number of different individuals, thinking that (1) some of them will consider the thought in my response and perhaps reply; and (2) Many or most of them will not see my response if I just post it as a reply to one single person.
John Schmeeckle: Your linked article from oversight.house.gov. Was published in January 18, 2023, by the new oversight committee.
Right on schedule, the newest BIG LIE is emerging from the McCarthy House. These are questions, not proven facts. But as everyone knows, much misinformation can be spread by carefully worded inquisitions.
* I heard you tried to nail Dimsdale’s head to the kitchen table!
Please understand that I'm not trying to defend Trump. I'm concerned about what appears to be the partisan effort to give Biden a free pass, without knowing or wanting to know the whole story.
HCR used the groundless and baseless word "inadvertently" to whitewash what Biden did.
Regarding who has authority to classify and declassify, Darth Vader weighed in, which led to a useful discussion here:
There's a formal, well-publicized process for declassifying documents, which you no doubt know. It doesn't 't include declassifying by "just thinking about it," as Trump absurdly claims.
Please understand that I'm not defending Trump. I am challenging what appears to be HCR's attempt at spin control, trying to whitewash Biden, with her groundless and baseless (and laughable?) presumption that Biden's stashes of classified documents were "inadvertent."
Regarding the President's authority to declassify, and the Vice President's much lesser authority, see:
You have no evidence that Biden's possessions of classified documents was not inadvertent. And unlike Trump, Biden has fully cooperated with the FBI and National Archives.
You have no evidence that Biden has fully cooperated. And HCR has no evidence that Biden's mishandling of classified documents was inadvertent -- she just made that up.
Biden voluntarily consented to a 13-hour search of his Delaware house — no warrant required. He has voluntarily returned documents to the National Archives. He hasn't gone on unhinged tirades against the FBI and DOJ, which Trump has done repeatedly. Nor has Biden filed lawsuits against DOJ. The Republican special counsel will eventually determine all the facts.
Given your penchant for spreading misinformation on Twitter regarding the efficacy of the Covid vaccines, it's difficult to take your comments seriously.
Glad it is 10:01 PST and my dinner has digested or I may have gotten sick reading Kevin’s letter especially the last part where bringing back trust to the American people. So much B.S.
HCR alleges "the difference between officials like Biden and Pence who inadvertently find such documents among their other papers and alert the National Archives and Research Administration (NARA), and those who stonewall NARA and the FBI, as Trump did."
There are slippery assumptions here, highlighting the difference between a historian and a propagandist.
First of all, why does HCR take the assertions of both Pence and Biden at face value? Second, why does HCR ignore Trump's explanation that he declassified the documents that he took? There, perhaps, is the real difference, because Pence and Biden did not have the power to do that. Does HCR assume that Trump either did not declassify the relevant documents and/or that he did so incorrectly? Failure to mention Trump's explanation, while brazenly assuming Trump's guilt, appears to be the mark of a propagandistic opinion groomer.
The Biden case is further marked by the assertion coming from the House Oversight Committee that the Penn Biden Center, where classified documents were found, was the recipient of millions of dollars of anonymous Chinese donations. This raises the question of some form of treason, supposing that Biden or those around him (perhaps Blinken, who was involved with the Buden Center) were being paid to leave classified documents in an area that could be surreptitiously accessed by Chinese spies.
HCR has to have known this, but her silence once again would seem to be the mark of a partisan propagandistic opinion groomer.
I think you need to read up on how documents get classified, and how they get declassified. Classifications last 25 years and they’re not automatically declassified just because somebody says so.
"“The Penn Biden Center appears to have acted as a foreign-sponsored source of income for much of a Biden Administration in-waiting,” continued Chairman Comer. “Between 2017 and 2019, UPenn paid President Biden more than $900,000, and the university employed at least 10 people at the Penn Biden Center who later became senior Biden administration officials. This level of access and opportunity raises questions about who had access to the classified documents found at the Penn Biden Center."
Trump took -what are we up to- 34 boxes of classified documents to his personal residence when he left office, bragged sbout shiwing them off to his “friends”, fought against returning them, returned under duress when the FBI implemented multiple search warrants to gain access to these boxes of documents. In what way is this similar to what Pence and Biden have done?
You might want to go back and double-check what I wrote. My reference to "millions of dollars" may have been inaccurate. Here is the relevant quote from the congressional oversight committee:
"“Between 2017 and 2019, UPenn paid President Biden more than $900,000, and the university employed at least 10 people at the Penn Biden Center who later became senior Biden administration officials. This level of access and opportunity raises questions about who had access to the classified documents found at the Penn Biden Center."
I shared my response to HCR's latest with a number of different individuals, thinking that (1) some of them will consider the thought in my response and perhaps reply; and (2) Many or most of them will not see my response if I just post it as a reply to one single person.
"“The Penn Biden Center appears to have acted as a foreign-sponsored source of income for much of a Biden Administration in-waiting,” continued Chairman Comer. “Between 2017 and 2019, UPenn paid President Biden more than $900,000, and the university employed at least 10 people at the Penn Biden Center who later became senior Biden administration officials. This level of access and opportunity raises questions about who had access to the classified documents found at the Penn Biden Center."
Prosecutor, Fani Wilson's decisions control the publication of the Georgia Special Grand Jury's Report. For a quality legal analysis of the legal context of Willis' work, see Anna Bowers' analysis at Lawfare. Professor Joyce Vance provides full context & briefly summarized Bower's work in "Civil Discourse" today. FANI retains the only copy of the Report
Willis gave notice of "imminent" action & the need to protect the rights of named indiduals in the Report. I can think of many more reasons NOT to publish now: prevent witness intimidation, preserve the jury pool, protect venue, justice, due process just to name a few.
"Integrity matters more." Gives whole new meaning to the words "irony," "specious," "self delusional," "craven," and a longer list best not to get into in polite company.
HCR alleges "the difference between officials like Biden and Pence who inadvertently find such documents among their other papers and alert the National Archives and Research Administration (NARA), and those who stonewall NARA and the FBI, as Trump did."
There are slippery assumptions here, highlighting the difference between a historian and a propagandist.
First of all, why does HCR take the assertions of both Pence and Biden at face value? Second, why does HCR ignore Trump's explanation that he declassified the documents that he took? There, perhaps, is the real difference, because Pence and Biden did not have the power to do that. Does HCR assume that Trump either did not declassify the relevant documents and/or that he did so incorrectly? Failure to mention Trump's explanation, while brazenly assuming Trump's guilt, appears to be the mark of a propagandistic opinion groomer.
The Biden case is further marked by the assertion coming from the House Oversight Committee that the Penn Biden Center, where classified documents were found, was the recipient of millions of dollars of anonymous Chinese donations. This raises the question of some form of treason, supposing that Biden or those around him (perhaps Blinken, who was involved with the Buden Center) were being paid to leave classified documents in an area that could be surreptitiously accessed by Chinese spies.
HCR has to have known this, but her silence once again would seem to be the mark of a partisan propagandistic opinion groomer.
For your first statement, you are either being willfully ignorant or naïve. It is well known that Trump fought with NARA and the FBI. It is not an assumption. In the case of Trump, the National Archives realized in the spring of 2021 that historically prominent files were missing and asked Mr. Trump to return them. The agency eventually retrieved 15 boxes and found that they included documents with classification markings. The Justice Department retrieved additional records after issuing a subpoena, but it developed evidence that Mr. Trump still had more. Additionally, Trump and his aides for delayed for months responding to the National Archives’ repeated requests for months, then failed to fully comply with the subpoena while falsely saying they had. A court filing also suggested that security camera footage showed that “government records were likely concealed and removed” from the storage room at Mar-a-Lago after the subpoena. Further Trump has repeatedly attacked the National Archives for telling the Justice Department about the matter and portrayed the investigation as illegitimate. A federal judge is considering holding his team in contempt for defying the subpoena.
In comparison to Biden and Pence as soon as the files were discovered they immediately reported the files and returned them. Regarding your declassification comment, again I am going to assume you aren't arguing in bad faith, but you know that a President can't declassify documents by just thinking about it right? There is still declassification process. Also by your strawman argument, can't Biden just declassify the documents he previously took now?
HCR is many things but a propagandistic opinion groomer seems more of a projection of yourself than the Professor. I also think that it is super bad faith to accuse Biden of potential Treason because of the document handling when you ignore the access that Trump had given Russians, and Saudis' at Mara Lago. In Trump case he also destroyed some public records.
I'm sure none of this will change your mind about anything you are saying, but I couldn't watch you continue to post this disinformation on the site without saying anything.
Good grief! “ I am committed to returning the @HouseIntel Committee to one of genuine honesty and credibility that regains the trust of the American people. ” Kevin McCarthy wouldn’t know genuine honesty & credibility it it bit him in the ass!
“But I cannot put partisan loyalty ahead of national security, and I cannot simply recognize years of service as the sole criteria for membership on this essential committee. Integrity matters more.”
Does he run to the bathroom after spewing such unmitigated bullshit, to purge himself of the revolting taste that must remain? And, after wiping his face and looking up to the mirror, think for one moment: What have I become?
HCR alleges "the difference between officials like Biden and Pence who inadvertently find such documents among their other papers and alert the National Archives and Research Administration (NARA), and those who stonewall NARA and the FBI, as Trump did."
There are slippery assumptions here, highlighting the difference between a historian and a propagandist.
First of all, why does HCR take the assertions of both Pence and Biden at face value? Second, why does HCR ignore Trump's explanation that he declassified the documents that he took? There, perhaps, is the real difference, because Pence and Biden did not have the power to do that. Does HCR assume that Trump either did not declassify the relevant documents and/or that he did so incorrectly? Failure to mention Trump's explanation, while brazenly assuming Trump's guilt, appears to be the mark of a propagandistic opinion groomer.
The Biden case is further marked by the assertion coming from the House Oversight Committee that the Penn Biden Center, where classified documents were found, was the recipient of millions of dollars of anonymous Chinese donations. This raises the question of some form of treason, supposing that Biden or those around him (perhaps Blinken, who was involved with the Buden Center) were being paid to leave classified documents in an area that could be surreptitiously accessed by Chinese spies.
HCR has to have known this, but her silence once again would seem to be the mark of a partisan propagandistic opinion groomer.
I shared my response to HCR's latest with a number of different individuals, thinking that (1) some of them will consider the thought in my response and perhaps reply; and (2) Many or most of them will not see my response if I just post it as a reply to one single person.
Especially Qevin. There is no self-reflection as he is a vampire. He thinks of himself as royalty now that he’s got the golden gavel. We will have to wait to see the unraveling as it will take place and apply all of our shiny crosses to these monsters. Drive them back to their coffins from whence they came.
As a forensic psychologist, I agree! In fact, when he gazes at his imagine in the mirror, he sees a golden calf. They tend to group up together and tear each other a new anus. They face fierce women and they know this???
Thanks for posting the link, Mary. This Explainer clarifies an important point on behalf of the good folk of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA): "... in practice the government agency that created or received the information, such as the CIA or the Department of Energy, oversees its classification and protection." That is, NARA's responsibility for a classified document it didn't originate doesn't begin until the agency that created it relinquishes it - or other documents that establish that that document exists - into NARA's keeping. And the discovery that Trump presidency documents were missing was the fruit not of NARA finding flaws in its own tracking but of archivists working through logs and documents from the Oval Office and other agencies, and realizing that the documentary jigsaw puzzle was missing a lot of crucial pieces.
Thanks, Quizt, for this information about how the individual departments are responsible for the creation and protection of classified documents, not NARA. It sounds as though they classify documents from an abundance of caution, but then fail to adequately police them once classified.
Quiverin' Qevin McQarthy is without a doubt the most useless, worthless Speaker of the House in US history. He's so full of shit it's no wonder his eyes are brown.
HCR alleges "the difference between officials like Biden and Pence who inadvertently find such documents among their other papers and alert the National Archives and Research Administration (NARA), and those who stonewall NARA and the FBI, as Trump did."
There are slippery assumptions here, highlighting the difference between a historian and a propagandist.
First of all, why does HCR take the assertions of both Pence and Biden at face value? Second, why does HCR ignore Trump's explanation that he declassified the documents that he took? There, perhaps, is the real difference, because Pence and Biden did not have the power to do that. Does HCR assume that Trump either did not declassify the relevant documents and/or that he did so incorrectly? Failure to mention Trump's explanation, while brazenly assuming Trump's guilt, appears to be the mark of a propagandistic opinion groomer.
The Biden case is further marked by the assertion coming from the House Oversight Committee that the Penn Biden Center, where classified documents were found, was the recipient of millions of dollars of anonymous Chinese donations. This raises the question of some form of treason, supposing that Biden or those around him (perhaps Blinken, who was involved with the Buden Center) were being paid to leave classified documents in an area that could be surreptitiously accessed by Chinese spies.
HCR has to have known this, but her silence once again would seem to be the mark of a partisan propagandistic opinion groomer.
I shared my response to HCR's latest with a number of different individuals, thinking that (1) some of them will consider the thought in my response and perhaps reply; and (2) Many or most of them will not see my response if I just post it as a reply to one single person.
I hope that your boorish comment isn't a reflection of your entrenched bigotry. I presented my ethnic origin and my political orientation on a lengthy Twitter thread, starting here:
Today I was discussing politics with a friend of mine who left Iran after the last revolution. The revolution that toppled the Shah of Iran is considered one of the successful revolutions, but look at what has become of Iran since then. She told me that people need to realize more clearly what has been happening in Iran and Afghanistan. Those countries were both taken over by criminals and thugs who planned for years and have become deeply entrenched. They will kill anyone to stay in power. Unfortunately similar circumstances are occurring in quite a few countries. The party of the white supremacists have the same goal and are probably using the same playbook.
HCR alleges "the difference between officials like Biden and Pence who inadvertently find such documents among their other papers and alert the National Archives and Research Administration (NARA), and those who stonewall NARA and the FBI, as Trump did."
There are slippery assumptions here, highlighting the difference between a historian and a propagandist.
First of all, why does HCR take the assertions of both Pence and Biden at face value? Second, why does HCR ignore Trump's explanation that he declassified the documents that he took? There, perhaps, is the real difference, because Pence and Biden did not have the power to do that. Does HCR assume that Trump either did not declassify the relevant documents and/or that he did so incorrectly? Failure to mention Trump's explanation, while brazenly assuming Trump's guilt, appears to be the mark of a propagandistic opinion groomer.
The Biden case is further marked by the assertion coming from the House Oversight Committee that the Penn Biden Center, where classified documents were found, was the recipient of millions of dollars of anonymous Chinese donations. This raises the question of some form of treason, supposing that Biden or those around him (perhaps Blinken, who was involved with the Buden Center) were being paid to leave classified documents in an area that could be surreptitiously accessed by Chinese spies.
HCR has to have known this, but her silence once again would seem to be the mark of a partisan propagandistic opinion groomer.
I shared my response to HCR's latest with a number of different individuals, thinking that (1) some of them will consider the thought in my response and perhaps reply; and (2) Many or most of them will not see my response if I just post it as a reply to one single person.
The fact that some things get over-classified is not an excuse for mishandling the documents. That said, it's clear that the executive branch has not had proper procedures for handling classified materials in place for a very long time. It wouldn't surprise me at all if this problem has been there since the Johnson administration. It needs to be fixed. Perhaps the one good thing that hopefully will come out of this, is an implementation of proper controls and perhaps ensuring that it doesn't happen again.
There is a bigger issue though. It's not ok to let this sort of things slide for presidents and vice presidents, while others have been severely punished for it. If someone in the service or at a defense contractor were to be caught so carelessly handling such materials, not only would they have their clearance revoked, they would be arrested on the spot. At the very least, they would lose their jobs and not be able to work on a classified program ever again. There's no tolerance for this sort of thing down in the ranks at all - not even a tiny little bit. In the meantime, I think some conviction reviews are in order, and anyone who has a record for having mishandling materials, and for whom their case record clearly shows that they did so unintentionally, is owed a pardon. The law needs to be applied equally to all.
Craig, I wrote the following comment "in quotes" before I spotted your astute post, which I totally agree with. While I believe that classification is sometimes used frivolously, a document detailing what we know about an ally's nuclear capabilities is clearly sensitive, so my question remains valid, I think. And the subtext is "has there always been a double standard, or have we grown lax"?
"A long time ago …. (in a galaxy that now seems far away) …. I had a high security clearance which was required to perform my duties at a large aerospace company. I have the clear recollection of standing at a window at the on-site security lockup, signing chits identifying the exact document being checked out, its level of classification, date, my identifying info, signature, etc. These documents were completed in triplicate and I received only one of the copies which bore strict instructions to retain that copy for a decade, as I recall, even after the document was returned and signed off as such under penalty of fine and inprisonment. I have no delusions that politicians at the level of Vice President and above stand at such virtual windows today, or ever did for that matter; surely they’ll send a staffer with the appropriate clearance to fetch these documents. And who knows how many hands that document will see on its way to the politician. But still, there was an audit trail. So when I read about all these classified documents showing up in unlikely places, I’m confused. Have the rules changed? Is there perhaps another standard applied to those in high elected office? How can these documents just go missing, and for years? And what of the lowly staffer whose name (and derriere) is on the line?"
Thanks LeMoine. I've been through similar things on the ICBM and ASW programs at Boeing. I was a communications architect and analyst, and reasonably good at it, so I would see things in the system architecture that I wasn't supposed to know about. One time I made the mistake in a secure briefing meeting of asking a question about what I thought I was seeing (one mission having been created to disguise the existence of another one). That led to a very unpleasant afternoon of being read the riot act about not lending voice to such things, since only about one or two folks in the meeting had been briefed into that reality. Needless to say, I did not make that mistake again. This stuff is extremely serious. Very good people can and do lose their lives over even small mistakes. I think it's pretty clear that the executive branch simply does not have a system of classified information custody and auditing. That's appalling.
I guess we're soul brothers Craig. I worked on the AWACS program at Boeing, circa 1973. I think we are in agreement that the civilian political establishment doesn't play by the same rules the as the rest of us. It's a shame. Too much at stake to play that fast and loose.
Wow, good to meet you LeMoine. I knew a couple engineers on AWACS in the 80s when we were doing the Saudi and Japan programs. One was a climbing buddy.
Craig, I think you're forgetting who's at the levers of Congress right now. I share your wishful thinking, but realist in me knows that r's don't know how, don't care to know how to govern.
This one is not on Congress, but rather a failure to follow procedure in the executive branch, and it clearly has nothing to do with which party was in power. Obviously, it was more of a problem when there was an undisciplined slob in the oval office, but that really doesn't excuse the lack of basic discipline on the part of everyone else. Someplace along the line, the basic training in the procedures for handling classified materials was lost. My suspicion is that it could have begun as far back as Johnson, although, Carter, having been a submarine commander, would have known better, and run a tighter ship. And obviously the same would have been true of Eisenhower and Kennedy, both of whom were military officers with wartime command experience.
It also goes to what we need to demand of leadership, which is to set the proper example. I was disappointed that Biden was slow to properly react, but I think that Zients' appointment will lead to the necessary changes.
Look, I'm a big fan of Biden, but he is human and he clearly hasn't understood what the procedures are, and it looks like this goes back a couple of decades. I would have thought that having been on the Senate Foreign Relations committee, he would have known better, but clearly that was not the case. So one has to wonder if the same sloppiness exists over on the Hill. Then there is the decision leaks over at SCOTUS. It would seem like the whole of the civilian parts of the government simply don't take these things seriously enough, nor abide by the rules they put in place for regular government employees and contractors to follow. If it wasn't so serious, this whole bloody mess could be mistaken for a John Cleese comedy routine.
Craig, your last sentence is spot-on & gave me a chuckle. The whole thing makes my head spin….and you are right, it’s dead serious. There is a good reason for protocols, procedures and rules & regs….seems like folks have been damn sloppy about following them. I hope this is an executive branch wake-up call.
HCR alleges "the difference between officials like Biden and Pence who inadvertently find such documents among their other papers and alert the National Archives and Research Administration (NARA), and those who stonewall NARA and the FBI, as Trump did."
There are slippery assumptions here, highlighting the difference between a historian and a propagandist.
First of all, why does HCR take the assertions of both Pence and Biden at face value? Second, why does HCR ignore Trump's explanation that he declassified the documents that he took? There, perhaps, is the real difference, because Pence and Biden did not have the power to do that. Does HCR assume that Trump either did not declassify the relevant documents and/or that he did so incorrectly? Failure to mention Trump's explanation, while brazenly assuming Trump's guilt, appears to be the mark of a propagandistic opinion groomer.
The Biden case is further marked by the assertion coming from the House Oversight Committee that the Penn Biden Center, where classified documents were found, was the recipient of millions of dollars of anonymous Chinese donations. This raises the question of some form of treason, supposing that Biden or those around him (perhaps Blinken, who was involved with the Buden Center) were being paid to leave classified documents in an area that could be surreptitiously accessed by Chinese spies.
HCR has to have known this, but her silence once again would seem to be the mark of a partisan propagandistic opinion groomer.
I shared my response to HCR's latest with a number of different individuals, thinking that (1) some of them will consider the thought in my response and perhaps reply; and (2) Many or most of them will not see my response if I just post it as a reply to one single person.
I’ll believe it when I see Trump standing out in the middle of a Georgia onion patch hoeing weeds in an ill-fitting polyester jumpsuit on a nice, Georgia 115° afternoon. And not one minute before. 
It already seemed to me with the Biden papers, but is more clear that the systems for viewing and storing sensitive government papers need updating, just as the systems at the IRS do. This might be in part a problem of the underfunding of government that has been ongoing in the extreme since Ronald Reagan took office and pretty much told us that the best government was no government. I have always wondered why Republicans or Libertarians even run for office if this is what they believe. It seems pretty hypocritical to me, but I have grown to understand the nature of Republicans is that they really do want government but only if it can be used as a tool to serve their purposes. It is obvious that Biden and Pence are in a different class from Trump and also obvious that one should be looking at the papers of other former high ranking politicians to see what papers they possess. I am going to be very concerned if MTG gets her hands on any confidential papers because she is a treasonous person in word and deed. That goes for many of her fellow Republicans whom McCarthy has assigned to sensitive committees yet one cannot trust them farther than one can throw the Burj Khalifa. I find it interesting that McCarthy is able to create all Republican committees. Is this allowed? Doesn't he have to let Jeffries appoint the Democrats? If not, he is setting a new precident. Is that one that Republicans want to have stand, or do they assume they will be in power into perpetuity. Perhaps they imagine they will destroy our nation in these next two years so any future will be a mute point.--I think I mentioned that my 17-year-old daughter just gave a presentation on Monday in German comparing the freedom of Austrian and American youth. She claimed that Austrian youth have more independence. Because they have a very low crime rate their parents and other adults allow them a lot of autonomy early on. This is something she observed in her exchange there in her junior year, but also was backed up in her research too. She was taking public transportation by herself at night to get home without being concerned. Austria has a safety index of 5 on the Global Peace Index Scale while the USA has one of 129, so this feeling of safety that she had in Austria was not just imagined it was real. Here in Chicago every weekend we read of people being shot. Then, this morning I saw a headline which read, "Three Weeks and 39 Mass Shootings. This is America in 2023." The sentence the struck me most was, "Firearm injuries are now the leading cause of death among people younger than 24 in the United States, according to a study published in the December 2022 edition of Pediatrics, the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics." Wow! My daughter was onto something with her thesis. She ended her talk by saying that all teens want to feel safe and be able to go out and explore their world independently, but that is going to be difficult for American youth to do until we make our country safer.
Don't know how to do paragraphing in Substack. I have seen others doing it, but it does not work for me. How do you get your posts to format in paragraphs?
If you need to press "Post" in order to submit a comment, you can probably use your device's Return key to create a paragraph break. The key (so to speak) is to do it twice.
My European friends say that Austria is one of the best countries to live in. If your daughter can move there, she will be happy and safe. Maybe you can move there, too!
She was asked by her test examiners during her presentation comparing Austrian and the USA if she misses being in Austria, and she told them yes. I believe that is true. She misses the freedom she has when there, although she also likes so many things about here because this is her home. She feels that it is important to development that particularly teens get more independence.
In our community one has to get parents to drive one places or pick one up at night because it is too unsafe. In Vienna she was able to just get around on her own with her relatively inexpensive transportation pass. She loved that sense of being able to plan what she wanted to do and just do it. She wishes that for everyone here. There were other aspects to this as well, which is that Austrian students do not get as much homework and have more free time. This is true in Germany too. A study shows that the Austrian and German youth are spending time with friends just hanging out. This is good for de-stressing. So, it might explain why she has such a sense of well being there.
We have a house in Germany, and my daughter is going to go to University there next year. One of her classmates from Chicago is going to school in Germany as well, which is nice for her. So, from Germany, which is also safer, she will be able to visit her friends in Vienna regularly by train.
I agree that teens’ development here suffers from their having to be driven everywhere. As a tourist in Europe and Japan, I have seen elementary-age kids getting themselves to school, soccer practice, etc., on public transportation. Oh, for trains! So convenient! No parking problems, no traffic jams. I wish we had not gone the whole hog for automobiles, but the oil industry had to have its needs met, I guess.
It also makes parents too busy. I know families with multiple children who have several sitters so that they can drive the different children to their various activities. The German language study showing that 67% of youth prefer to spend time hanging out as their first choice, are having a lifestyle that few American youth are afforded. I feel that if we felt the USA were safer, we would allow our children to just be instead of signing them up for so many activities. These activities become the constant child care. This is known as helicoptering. There is a German series on this kind of parenting. It takes away from children developing autonomy. My daughter also pointed out that in Austria when a teacher was absent they just dismissed the class. No way would that happen here. They have to have coverage because they don't trust the children to be on their own. Again, there the children have already had a lot of practice being responsible for themselves. When this first happened, my daughter was super surprised and somewhat shocked. But later on she came to appreciate it, because she felt differently about herself. More trusted. She liked that.
“Perhaps they imagine they will destroy our nation in these next two years…”. Exactly, or at least “have their way” with all of us. Back to the clown show
In my opinion, the press is subjecting its audiences to far too much baseless chatter about the now three cases of high-ranking elected officials found to have classified information in their possession outside legally-prescribed control regimes. The press does not know with certainty how any of these security failures came to be and are using their limited imaginations to flood readers and listeners with unsubstantiated possible explanations of what happened. The talking heads brought in by the major networks to be quizzed by clueless anchors should know better than to participate. I fear they all could be missing the mark badly.
I'm content to trust the two -- and soon possibly three -- Special Counsels to do their jobs and wait patiently for their reports.
HCR alleges "the difference between officials like Biden and Pence who inadvertently find such documents among their other papers and alert the National Archives and Research Administration (NARA), and those who stonewall NARA and the FBI, as Trump did."
There are slippery assumptions here, highlighting the difference between a historian and a propagandist.
First of all, why does HCR take the assertions of both Pence and Biden at face value? Second, why does HCR ignore Trump's explanation that he declassified the documents that he took? There, perhaps, is the real difference, because Pence and Biden did not have the power to do that. Does HCR assume that Trump either did not declassify the relevant documents and/or that he did so incorrectly? Failure to mention Trump's explanation, while brazenly assuming Trump's guilt, appears to be the mark of a propagandistic opinion groomer.
The Biden case is further marked by the assertion coming from the House Oversight Committee that the Penn Biden Center, where classified documents were found, was the recipient of millions of dollars of anonymous Chinese donations. This raises the question of some form of treason, supposing that Biden or those around him (perhaps Blinken, who was involved with the Buden Center) were being paid to leave classified documents in an area that could be surreptitiously accessed by Chinese spies.
HCR has to have known this, but her silence once again would seem to be the mark of a partisan propagandistic opinion groomer.
I am refraining from calling out any particular individual person who is publishing or broadcasting on the topic of classified material found to be in private or non-governmental premises by any current or previous office holder. It does seem to me that no one writing or speaking on this topic has all the facts...nor enough of them. Name calling is unwarranted. I do concede before you point it out that my use of "clueless anchors" and "talking heads" was not polite and over-stepped the standard I just declared.
For Mr. Schmeeckle and all others who read my initial response: I've pointed out that the chatter I've read and heard so far does not fully envelop the range of possibilities -- from zero damage to exceptionally grave damage to U.S. national security. The extent of possible damage to the United States by possible compromise of such information held until recently by present and former officer holders is not publicly known and cannot be quantified publicly at this time.
As I pointed out as the bottom line of my comment, U.S. government professionals are being formally designated to investigate these matters, and I will be patient to await their findings and counsel others to do the same. Neither the public nor the press should interfere with nor compromise their work. I do believe in free speech and the right to ask any and all questions. However, I do not recognize a right by members of the public nor the press to know any information the compromise of which might cause "damage" to the United States -- the classification standard for CONFIDENTIAL information -- nor any information more sensitive than that.
This is a 2009 document, and I wouldn't be surprised if it had been updated since then but missed by me in my google search. If it hasn't been updated, it probably should be. The extent to which this document is implemented seems to me questionable.
Here are the officials who should be exercising Original Classification Authority, at least as designated by President Barack Obama. If President Trump and President Biden updated this listing, I missed theirs in my google search.
Both documents are in the public domain and can be read and understood by juniors and seniors in high school. (C-SPAN might do well to conduct a tutorial.)
“But I cannot put partisan loyalty ahead of national security, and I cannot simply recognize years of service as the sole criteria for membership on this essential committee. Integrity matters more.” I can't stop laughing. When and if McCarthy loses his seat in Congress (and it can't come soon enough) he should try stand up comedy. Thank you Dr. Richardson for the report comparing Biden and Pence, 2 real American politicians with that orange clown the trumpster. Dr. Reich is spot on demonstrating the pretend mainstream media trying their best to hold a false equivalency. While I'm not a fan of Mike Pence religious political stance, he is a gentleman,
Surely you don't expect integrity to be part of part of Kevin McCarthy's character? I apologize to the rest of the country that this particular nincompoop is a Californian, I can assure you he does NOT represent my District.
HCR alleges "the difference between officials like Biden and Pence who inadvertently find such documents among their other papers and alert the National Archives and Research Administration (NARA), and those who stonewall NARA and the FBI, as Trump did."
There are slippery assumptions here, highlighting the difference between a historian and a propagandist.
First of all, why does HCR take the assertions of both Pence and Biden at face value? Second, why does HCR ignore Trump's explanation that he declassified the documents that he took? There, perhaps, is the real difference, because Pence and Biden did not have the power to do that. Does HCR assume that Trump either did not declassify the relevant documents and/or that he did so incorrectly? Failure to mention Trump's explanation, while brazenly assuming Trump's guilt, appears to be the mark of a propagandistic opinion groomer.
The Biden case is further marked by the assertion coming from the House Oversight Committee that the Penn Biden Center, where classified documents were found, was the recipient of millions of dollars of anonymous Chinese donations. This raises the question of some form of treason, supposing that Biden or those around him (perhaps Blinken, who was involved with the Buden Center) were being paid to leave classified documents in an area that could be surreptitiously accessed by Chinese spies.
HCR has to have known this, but her silence once again would seem to be the mark of a partisan propagandistic opinion groomer.
Thank you HCR, I really appreciate your ability to synthesize the daily info and to hold on to so many disparate pieces of information. You are the OG as my son would say. My best to all of you!!
HCR alleges "the difference between officials like Biden and Pence who inadvertently find such documents among their other papers and alert the National Archives and Research Administration (NARA), and those who stonewall NARA and the FBI, as Trump did."
There are slippery assumptions here, highlighting the difference between a historian and a propagandist.
First of all, why does HCR take the assertions of both Pence and Biden at face value? Second, why does HCR ignore Trump's explanation that he declassified the documents that he took? There, perhaps, is the real difference, because Pence and Biden did not have the power to do that. Does HCR assume that Trump either did not declassify the relevant documents and/or that he did so incorrectly? Failure to mention Trump's explanation, while brazenly assuming Trump's guilt, appears to be the mark of a propagandistic opinion groomer.
The Biden case is further marked by the assertion coming from the House Oversight Committee that the Penn Biden Center, where classified documents were found, was the recipient of millions of dollars of anonymous Chinese donations. This raises the question of some form of treason, supposing that Biden or those around him (perhaps Blinken, who was involved with the Buden Center) were being paid to leave classified documents in an area that could be surreptitiously accessed by Chinese spies.
HCR has to have known this, but her silence once again would seem to be the mark of a partisan propagandistic opinion groomer.
I am absolutely speechless at the “Revenge Politics” game being played out by Speaker McCarthy as the price paid for POWER. I admire your ability to simply report the facts without bias, or speculate in any way. You are an invaluable resource in a time becoming more difficult to navigate with each day that passes. Thank you for being the stoic person you are.
It should be obvious by now that essentially the entire Republican organization has jettisoned ethics, professionalism, critical responsibilities, even an approximation of honesty, and the democratic process in a despotic quest for absolute power.
Democracy requires a diverse array of viewpoints and responsible choices, and we actually need good faith disagreements and competition of focus within the limits of behavior that is responsible to the welfare of every individual and society as a whole. That can be messy and that makes democracy easy to criticize and ridicule, but we can muddle through well enough, maybe shine, if enough of us are bargaining in good faith; and Republicans are not. Democrats have been too eager to "move" on while Republicans have normalized and hardened their dishonest, hypocritical and provably irresponsible behavior. Corruption is a big deal.
It is evident that Republicans have jettisoned all ethics, indeed! When McCarthy claims that “Integrity matters more,” every rational person should reply: ACTIONS SPEAK LOUDER THAN WORDS!
Me, being totally rational, “ Intercourse you, Kev”
I read once that the origin of that word in the common vernacular which you are fastidiously avoiding was originally an acronym of "for unlawful carnal knowledge".
Good one. Most four letter words are really ancient and some may have been part of the original Indo-European language that tie together many languages today. However, I really like your explanation. Today's word for the House is hypocrisy. I would also like to note that Low German did not arise spontaneously in northern Germany, but is part of the Indo-European language family, so I am not sure what saying some four letter words are not Indo-European really means.
The acronym story is fun, but improbable. The likeliest source may be Low German, though not Indo-European, and I'll hazard a guess - words for sex being as subject to taboo as they are - that it started out as a euphemism. The discussion on the Online Etymology Dictionary, www.etymonline.com, is enlightening.
How enlightening! Thanks for sharing this source, Quizt.
Yes, fun. I have found at least one four letter word in both English and one of the languages of India, only the first letter is different. Low German is part of the Indo-European language family.
Ah well, decorum and all that TC in LA stuff😁
welllllll, I'm glad it's not been unlawful in my lifetime....
Ally, don't we have some multilingual English majors in the Community? Possibly old German "fricken" with some street alchemy gives you "fricken A".
:)
Dave, I love your term for a secondary allusion: INTER, as in placing a corpse in a grave or tomb. Not that I’m wishing McCarthy a sooner fate than what mortality has in store for all of us, but…
🤣🤣🤣
You are so fucking polite. :-D
I can't quite get to that level, I'm afraid.
I think what he meant was, "Integrity matters more. We must root it out and get rid of it wherever possible."
McCarthy adds insult to injury with this BLATANT HYPOCRITICAL LIE, which is a projection of his own actions:
“But I cannot put partisan loyalty ahead of national security, and I cannot simply recognize years of service as the sole criteria for membership on this essential committee. Integrity matters more.”
He, like the entire Repugnant Party has no concept of "service to the nation" or "integrity" but is expert at putting partisan loyalty ahead of national security.
This quote is truly rich in hypocrisy. It is the essence of it. I wish these people could actually hear themselves as the rest of us do.
It all "what can we get away with?" and it needs to stop.
Yes, those words stood out as if they were in neon. Since when has Keystone Kev had a shred of integrity and that goes for the entire party of death. As I like to say, talk don't wash.
McCarthy has no idea what integrity means. Pictures can tell a whole lot about people!
Studying McCarthy’s face is discouraging. Bland.
I keep seeing pics of him with his hand over his mouth. Maybe he should keep it there and shut up.
Today, a veteran British politician wrote of current UK governments as "a bacchanalia at public expense".
Up to a point, this fits Washington. Except that "bacchanalia" sounds too dignified.
The attitude to the public -- to fellow human beings in general -- resembles more that of Putin. Compatriots are accorded treatment you wouldn't want to see done to an enemy.
All this in a republic -- or what used to be a republic.
And done by people who call themselves "Republicans". In the same way as many among their number like to call themselves "Christians".
There's a yawning chasm where civic education ought to be. Where the most basic human values ought to be.
Time for all true women, time for all true men to rise up and sweep away the scavengers in human guise before they tear the world apart.
“Resembles more that of Putin”. Yes. I might suggest to our forum of commenters the new 2022 Oscar nominated documentary “Navalny” by Daniel Roher. Excellent and sobering. Between he and Zelensky, they foreshadow where we are heading if we don’t effectively act now, where we can, in our own spheres of influence.
Yes. That is a terrific documentary. Sober and sobering.
Our “leaders” use poison pens and lenses to destroy the sanctity of democracy. Democracy, like the sometimes frail body of Navalny, under attack, buckled. Resilient, Navalny came back from what seemed to be certain death (comparable to our time with DJT in “power”). Under sustained attack our democracy, like Navalny in prison, may not make it. We need bold rescues on both counts.
IMO it is inappropriate to sanctify democracy:
"Sanctification or in its verb form, sanctify, literally means "to set apart for special use or purpose", that is, to make holy or sacred. Therefore, sanctification refers to the state or process of being set apart, i.e. "made holy", as a vessel, full of the Holy Spirit of God." Wikipedia
It is to be practiced not worshipped.
L&B&L
"No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…"
-Churchill
"And done by people who call themselves "Republicans". In the same way as many among their number like to call themselves "Christians"."
Apt comparison of two groups, with overlapping members for sure, that personify hypocrisy....
Lincoln supported the republic. The word "Republican" with a big "R" has since drifted into Orwellian territory, along with the word "Conservative".
So apt, Sir, always so apt.
What was that parting shot of HCR's the other day about the power of language?
Peter I suggest Voiding Republican ‘Christians’ [VRC] who void themselves during their bacchanalia.’ In the vernacular “They are #1 in #2.”
Voiding?
But Keith, nothing can come of nothing...
[Only, I think I've got my physics wrong, we're referring here to small Black Holes...]
Peter Astrophysicists claim to be finding bile in the universe’s Black Holes. This can be scaled down to Republican Black Holes. Is this an asinine comment?
Asinine?
We're Lost in the Funhouse -- better laugh than cry, better laugh the foe in the face than choke on outrage.
J L, It may be, with a few exceptions, that corruption is the whole deal
Timothy Snyder wrote a piece on Jan 4 talking about “The Big Rip-Off”. When you wrote “...corruption is the whole deal”, Snyder’s article flashed in my mind. https://snyder.substack.com/p/the-big-rip-off-and-the-failed-coup
I wonder if the RNC, or individuals within, can be named as a co- conspirator if any charges are brought on that level? Snyder has it that they were stoking the social media fire throughout that time period, most especially the day of Jan.6. TY for the article!
The RNC owns J6th. Their official "a Democrat-led persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in in legitimate political discourse" is an exceptionally BIG big lie that must be made to live in infamy.
Thank you. “The Trump campaign and the RNC were following Hitler's advice: tell a lie so big that your public would not believe that you would deceive them on such a scale.” Too much to quote. An important read.
And repeat, and repeat and repeat in the face of whatever counter evidence may appear. Demonize those who say otherwise. Make it thoughtcrime to so much as question the authority of the cult. Eliminate opposition by whatever means you like.
Thank you for sharing that link - great piece, and now I'm following Snyder as well.
Snyder is great and he has written some excellent books. He does know fascism when he sees it. One of the local ignorant on a thread started by the Marion County clerk decided he knew all about it. He was challenged by every other poster who called out his BS. One of the posters added the word shirt to his last name Brown which was perfect. I expected him to try to get in the last word, but for some reason he folded his tent and removed all his comments, much to my surprise.
Me too. Ever since he published his "Tyranny " booklet. His contributions are astonishing and compelling Mitchell.
He is one of our favorites....we have several of his books.
What I think of as "corruption" is one form of abuse of power, and arguable the most widely devastating, but there are others, such as mugging, rape, murder, domestic violence, and extortionate business practices, to name a few. There are tings one can do (any idiot can find a way to kill) that you simply should not do because it makes a society hell. We can never stop all of it, but we have the potential to reduce it greatly. Even the minor abuses we can impose thoughtlessly and hopefully come to acknowledge and attempt repair. From bullies in the schoolyard, to the sociopathic invasion of Ukraine, the urge to bully is humanity's most tragic and human species threatening flaw.
" As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy." - Lincoln
Great quote from Lincoln! Thanks J L.
From my perspective, "corruption" in the political sense is negligent or deliberate misuse of entrusted powers. Republicans, who seek and accept the duties assigned to entrusted public powers are among the worst of criminals, like a enemy spy in government, or a cop in the pay of the Mafia. It's particularly repugnant and dangerous.
Yes, way above and beyond accepting favors from lobbyists.
JL Graham, wisely stated. Diversity of opinion is necessary for a country to be ruled well. The problem is, really great leaders who have spent years serving our country are being pushed aside and replaced by mad men and women who are are drunk on power and have no idea how to lead this country and how to partner with the free world..... but do know how to use guns.
Putin and other enemies of Democracy are loving all of this chaos and apparent weakness of leadership in the Republican party . Our allies are observing and saying to themselves, "Well, here we go again....".
The Nazis have taken over.
I have seen criminology stats that indicate that those who are bullies tend to have been bullied. I also sense that the "reptile", "Mr. Hyde" impulses that make serial killers, war crimes, and so many varieties of human suffering are present in the human genome, albeit to varying degrees, and what a nation celebrates, and discourages, has a lot to do with how and how much those proclivities are expressed. They won't just evaporate, and take some sort of wisdom and compassion to manage beneficially.
We know from history that there is always a ready audience for power-promising "come to the dark side" rhetoric, especially when cloaked in grandiosity.
J L Graham, sadly Media frenzies around mass shootings, the war crimes in Ukraine, the fates of immigrants drowning off our shores or being turned away at the borders soak up the publish or report “if it bleeds, it leads.” In my small town SC the inevitable lead story in local nightly news is the domestic abuse shooter, the toddler murdered by its mother or father, auto accidents dozens of bloody victims every night. Eventually national news items get some coverage, especially if negative. These policies in newsrooms and paper publications are adding fuel to the fires of repressed impulses you speak of since 15 minutes of fame is what these malcontents seek.
The overall bias of the "news" does serious harm to our society by masking what is typical (be it good or bad), making people paranoid or misplacing their anxieties (I could give examples), and too often, ignores or normalizes "elephants" in the room. I have seen with my own eyes, events totally and surely deliberately mischaracterized by news organizations pumping a profitable meme. This story on the following site is a vivid window into what is worst, yet accepted, about modern news coverage, to say nothing of dishonest full time propaganda outlets. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/leslie-moonves-donald-trump-may-871464/
That said we know that J6th was surely not "ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse" thanks to media. We know what Barr and Durham were up to (at least part of the story) though media. I believe it is *imperative* to dial down the primacy of maximized profit as the sole criteria for privately owned services on which we have come to depend to consider. If we believe in self-governance (and even if we don't) we ALL, individually and collectively bear responsibilities to the outcomes of our society, and the fate of our neighbors (I think core Christianity says that, along with many others.) If We the People, ALL the people, are not responsible for our own fates, who is?
Well put
“Corruption is a big deal.”
What kind of people can openly display such hypocrisy? Can you say zero integrity = completely corrupt.
It has astonished me that this degree (nearing total) of dishonesty is being tolerated in our society. Seeing it elsewhere and in history I suppose I should not have been so surprised.
"Nip the shoots of arbitrary power in the bud, is the only maxim which can ever preserve the liberties of any people."
-John Adams
We earned a remission, but we had better make full use of it.
I know lots of people who are honest and have integrity. It is appalling to me and to them. I would say that we have a general lack of civility and a whole bunch of selfish unrestrained individuals who think they can do what they please whenever they please. They were given a carte blanche to be truly awful by death star. A story in today's Oregonian is about a lady who won a million dollar jury settlement because when she stopped for gas, the attendant (young) said he didn't serve black people. She may not get all that money, but point made.
Describes Keystone to a tee.
JL Graham, it appears that any Republicans with this country's well-being in mind left town, and we are burdened with the dregs. I believe that we need a two-party system, but not this one.
We need a two-party system. perhaps a multiple party system (they both seem to have pros and cons) but with a preponderant commitment to integrity and good faith. Nixon was a liar and abuser of his powers, but he also had Republican detractors, such as his AGs who resigned on orders to pervert the law. A lot has changed since then, especially the deep seated dishonesty, authoritarianism, and ethics-less, anti-democratic (small "d") behavior of the modern "GOP".
Sadly, we're living in a much different world, and in view of the current world trend of authoritarianism, I cannot be convinced that it is solely a product of this country's politics. We must take care to fight the vestiges of all misinformation and disinformation in order to maintain our democracy.
In a republic, one needs to be able to choose an alternative or alternatives. Currently, none is available. It's like being asked if you want life or death, heaven or hell...
OK, no political party is my idea of heaven, least of all the Democrats, but... that's life, isn't it...
If you opt for the mutant monkeys, you will find yourselves shackled to that famous Procrustean Bed and given the choice of being racked or shortened. The perfect end for masochists.
Peter, I agree. I'll continue to vote for Democrats, since most of them are attempting to dig us out of the mire created by the minority, power-crazed Republicans and the corrupt dark money criminals.
If I'm all at sea and treading water I'll take a log over an anvil any day, even though sipping mai tais on a speed boat may be more appealing.
We're kindred spirits!
Yawn, and repeats: The RNC is a crime syndicate funded by fascist billionaires who want to see this democracy fail. . . They are all traitors who have sold their voting power in return for holding office. Citizen’s United is a euphemism that EXPONENTIALLY increases the representation of corporate CEOs and the fascist billionaires of the Charles KKKoch Club of Puppet Masters.
Like McCarthy's statement about not being partisan, "Citizens United" is straight out of Orwell. Some people have trouble getting enough food and paying rent, and others order $70.000 deserts (or at least that what it cost several years ago). I money really is free speech, some get a whole lot more of it than others; and within the election process, how could that not be screamingly anti-democratic?
Like McCarthy's statement about not being partisan, "Citizens United" is straight out of Orwell. Some people have trouble getting enough food and paying rent, and others order $70.000 deserts (or at least that what it cost several years ago). I money really is free speech, some get a whole lot more of it than others; and within the election process, how could that not be screamingly anti-democratic?
Sorry abut repeat. I got a message of "Something went wrong" that in the past has always meant the message was not sent, but not this time.
Bravo! Thank you for laying it out so precisely. As far as I know, the only good news today is tanks to Ukraine. There is still hope.
HCR alleges "the difference between officials like Biden and Pence who inadvertently find such documents among their other papers and alert the National Archives and Research Administration (NARA), and those who stonewall NARA and the FBI, as Trump did."
There are slippery assumptions here, highlighting the difference between a historian and a propagandist.
First of all, why does HCR take the assertions of both Pence and Biden at face value? Second, why does HCR ignore Trump's explanation that he declassified the documents that he took? There, perhaps, is the real difference, because Pence and Biden did not have the power to do that. Does HCR assume that Trump either did not declassify the relevant documents and/or that he did so incorrectly? Failure to mention Trump's explanation, while brazenly assuming Trump's guilt, appears to be the mark of a propagandistic opinion groomer.
The Biden case is further marked by the assertion coming from the House Oversight Committee that the Penn Biden Center, where classified documents were found, was the recipient of millions of dollars of anonymous Chinese donations. This raises the question of some form of treason, supposing that Biden or those around him (perhaps Blinken, who was involved with the Buden Center) were being paid to leave classified documents in an area that could be surreptitiously accessed by Chinese spies.
HCR has to have known this, but her silence once again would seem to be the mark of a partisan propagandistic opinion groomer.
https://oversight.house.gov/release/comer-anonymous-chinese-donations-to-upenn-potentially-influenced-biden-administration-policies%EF%BF%BC/
p.s. I publicly called out Trump for brazen murder, as well as the Democrats who condoned this high crime by their silence, here:
https://twitter.com/john_schmeeckle/status/1612773582911815682?s=20&t=5jg_PmIS9CYGL-Ey_yEA9g
John,
I read the article carefully and, while, yes, Republicans are making an association of two events:
1) Biden's presence at UPenn
2) Chinese donations
The article has no evidence linking those increased Chinese donations at UPenn and Biden.
In fact, during the time frame noted, as we all know John, the Chinese student population and Chinese presence at ALL private Universities increased very dramatically. I know this because my kids were in school at the time, one at Ivy.
All across America, elite private schools discovered another source of money other than rich white people. Rich Chinese people.
And, ALL of the Ivy League and private schools in America actively courted Chinese students who can pay the FULL $64,000 per year required to go to Harvard PLUS the usual donation required as well.
So, during the time frame noted in the article, all across America, at all private schools especially, administrators actively sought Chinese students and Chinese donations successfully.
So, yes, at UPenn, Chinese donations shot up during the same time frame that Biden was building a presence.
BUT, it has NOTHING to do with Biden and everything to do with the fact that American Private Universities from Ivy to Union College need MONEY and the Chinese have LOTS of money having taken on all of the manufacturing the USA used to do.
An association between two random events are not often causal John. When they are, the data linking them is clear.
In this case? Republicans are just counting on guys like you, clueless about association between random variables without correlation, to "believe" what you are fed.
Kinda sad, but, hey, its not your fault. You never took statistics and also, you probably did not, like I did, have kids at Ivy to tell you what was going on.
Mike, thank you for that perspective. By the way HCR did discuss trump's declassifying by way of just thinking it and that he did not go thru and declassifying protocol.
Harvey,
Honestly, it is sad that even one American can believe that simply "thinking" about something is the same as doing that same something.
I mean, is that really how dumb everyone is now?
If so, I am "thinking" you are going to send me a million dollars Harvey. Make it happen.
:-)
The Emperor is naked.
It is not just US Universities that receive gifts and donations from Chinese nationalinals. Our son is a computer science professor at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada. He has had to deal with gifts from the "uncle" of a Chinese grad student. He gave these gifts to the University. These gifts are on top of the much higher fees for non Canadians.
Dave,
Yes, China and the Chinese understand that the "best" universities are in the United States (still). They desperately want their kids in elite private schools EVEN if the language barrier makes it nearly impossible for them to succeed.
And? For the same reason unqualified white people, like George W. Bush and Brett Kavanaugh, Jared Kushner, aye, the list is long, want to get in and DO based on giving money.
Once you get out of Harvard, for example, everyone who does not know better by simply observing, thinks you must be a genius or something because Harvard marketing cleverly makes opaque their REAL admissions criterion: MONEY to pay full tuition.
My daughter was an unbelievably brilliant student in math, and everything else. BUT, I guarantee she would NOT have been admitted if my FAFSA did not make it perfectly clear that I could pay full tuition.
She DID get all kinds of scholarships to non-Ivy schools including two full rides. But, she, and I, knew that coming out of Ivy makes all the difference and? It has.
BUT, although she is smart, that has nothing to do with her admission to Ivy.
It’s not just colleges & universities either. Maine has a number of high schools that accept Chinese students & make good money from the tuition fees. In fact, George Stevens Academy in Blue Hill, ME converted a large house in the town into a dormitory just to house these Chinese students.
My daughter goes to a private high school in LA that has a small group of boarding students. Most of the boarders are Chinese and they pay double the tuition to go to the school.
John may have been “opinion groomed” as he accuses HCR of doing. Projection, perhaps? I love your patient explanation, Mike S!
Btw, at the time of the handover by the British of Hong Kong back to China, rich people there were buying up vacant lots in my local excellent school district for $500,000.
Yes, Mike has been very patient with John, who while reading managed to take up a lot of the thread.
Carol, those were my thoughts too! Mike managed to restrain himself elegantly yet deliver his message to John directly and objectively. Were politicians able to communicate across the aisle in this manner, our nation would be in a much better place!
Perfect. Thank you, Mike.
Stupidity is always sad
Also, there was a known Chinese agent frequenting Mar-a-lago for the entire time the classified documents were there. Does that figure into your thinking? Or, if the documents were truly declassified, why didn't Trump's team simply copy them and send the originals back to NARA? Why resist NARA's request for "unclassified" documents? Why not respond to a subpoena if no wrong-doing could be proven?
Trump is mostly paying for the profoundly stupid way he and his team handled their response to NARA's request to return the documents they knew he had. Working with NARA (as Biden and Pence are doing) = no FBI involvement = no subpoena = no raid = no future indictment.
Please understand that I'm not defending Trump. I am challenging what appears to be HCR's attempt at spin control, trying to whitewash Biden.
The word “whitewash” is loaded language pointing to your bias. The neutral word would be “explanation.”
No, "whitewash" has a specific meaning of a cover-up, related to HCR's groundless and baseless (and laughable?) presumption that Biden's stashes of classified documents were "inadvertent."
p.s. Regarding the President's authority to declassify, and the Vice President's much lesser authority, see:
-
https://fas.org/blogs/secrecy/2006/02/the_vice_presidents_declassifi/
Calling her a propagandist is so far beyond the pale, as you well know…
Actually I didn't, but I did raise the question. Maybe in your muzzled world of censorship, "beyond the pale" is different from true or not. The question to ask is whether her letters are marked by a significant pattern of misrepresentations and omissions, and whether her groundless use of the word "inadvertently" to describe Biden's behavior regarding classified documents fits such a pattern.
John. Repeat the phrase "association is not causation" until you get it otherwise you will never be able to submit evidence to any court should the need ever arise. That is why they have these umpires in Court that calls ball & strikes called Judges. Cool uniforms.
I’m thinking Tucker banks on John’s inability to grasp the concept, as John mistakenly believes that concept doesn’t really exist
Good Grief John. Why am I wasting my time responding to your nonsense? Well, somebody besides Mike needs to pop your bubble of nonsense.
1. There has been NO evidence that Trump declassified the documents he removed from the White House. None. NADA. You really think that Trump saying that he declassified documents with no support from ANYONE has an ounce of credibility? Seriously?
2. I assume guilt when the person in question ADMITS his guilt over and over by explaining it on social media.
3. If it simply came down to Trump taking a few classified documents in error, this wouldn't be such a big deal. But he lied about their existence. Then he lied when he said there were no more, then more were found, then he lied again - exposed by the fact that a search found even more classified documents.
4. All of which is more than just taking a few boxes of documents. It is an obstruction of justice. And as we will learn in more detail, the nature of the documents may have compromised National Security relationships with our allies and may have jeopardized intelligence employees in the field.
As to the Biden Chinese connection, Mike has obliterated that stretch of your imagination. Let's face it there are errors and there are deliberate crimes. You know the difference. Stop clouding the waters of justice with conspiracies with no basis of established fact.
Please understand that I'm not trying to defend Trump. I hope you'll agree that HCR's attempt to give Biden a free pass is premature, given that we don't know what type of documents were in the mix, and we don't know if the Penn Biden Center was a funnel for passing along classified documents to God knows who.
Regarding "clouding the waters of justice," you might consider my response to Steve Wagener:
Hypocritical neo-fascist minions resolutely ignore the evidence of complicity by the U.S. government and by senior politicians such as Joe Biden and Mitch McConnell in the most far-reaching genocide in history. Quoting from Davison Budhoo's resignation letter from the International Monetary Fund (with U.S. voting domination since its inception):
"Today I resigned from the staff of the International Monetary Fund after over twelve years, and after 1000 days of official Fund work in the field, hawking your medicine and your bag of tricks to governments and to peoples in Latin America and the Caribbean and Africa. To me resignation is a priceless liberation, for with it I have taken the first big step to that place where I may hope to wash my hands of what in my mind’s eye is the blood of millions of poor and starving peoples. Mr. Camdessus, the blood is so much, you know, it runs in rivers. It dries up too; it cakes all over me; sometimes I feel that there is not enough soap in the whole world to cleanse me from the things that I did do in your name and in the names of your predecessors, and under your official seal.
"But I can hope, can’t I? Certainly I can hope. I can hope that there is compassion and indignation in the heart of my world, and that people can stand up and take notice of what I have to say, and listen to your reply. For you will have to reply, because the charges that I make are not light charges - they are charges that touch at the very heart of western society and western morality and post-war inter-governmental institutionalism that have degenerated into fake and sham under the pretext of establishing and maintaining international economic order and global efficiency.
"You think that’s all there are to my charges? No, there is more; much more. The charges that I make strike at the very soil of man and at his conscience. You know, when all the evidence is in, there are two types of questions that you and me and others like us will have to answer. The first is this: will the world be content merely to brand our institution as among the most insidious enemies of humankind? Will our fellowmen condemn us thus and let the matter rest? Or will the heirs of those whom we have dismembered in our own peculiar Holocaust clamor for another Nuremberg?"
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1oJzvpfFzIKu76oE1CkzZlarRiVpYIggFMFzSt6OgHx0/mobilebasic
He even misspelled "schmeckle"
"Schmeckle" is indeed a misspelling of Schmeeckle. I learned that when I was a small child. The spelling of my surname breaks phonetic rules. And there is at least one person around here who would mock me because of my name -- the stuff of bigotry.
The GQP troll is back again. John Schmeeckle - Go somewhere else where people are much more likely to listen to your false claims to a larger extent. Your presence here is not welcomed by most. -saw-
Thanks Steve, the Troll has been reported to Substack Inc.
Reported also.
🗽
Hypocritical neo-fascist minions resolutely ignore the evidence of complicity by the U.S. government and by senior politicians such as Joe Biden and Mitch McConnell in the most far-reaching genocide in history. Quoting from Davison Budhoo's resignation letter from the International Monetary Fund (with U.S. voting domination since its inception):
"Today I resigned from the staff of the International Monetary Fund after over twelve years, and after 1000 days of official Fund work in the field, hawking your medicine and your bag of tricks to governments and to peoples in Latin America and the Caribbean and Africa. To me resignation is a priceless liberation, for with it I have taken the first big step to that place where I may hope to wash my hands of what in my mind’s eye is the blood of millions of poor and starving peoples. Mr. Camdessus, the blood is so much, you know, it runs in rivers. It dries up too; it cakes all over me; sometimes I feel that there is not enough soap in the whole world to cleanse me from the things that I did do in your name and in the names of your predecessors, and under your official seal.
"But I can hope, can’t I? Certainly I can hope. I can hope that there is compassion and indignation in the heart of my world, and that people can stand up and take notice of what I have to say, and listen to your reply. For you will have to reply, because the charges that I make are not light charges - they are charges that touch at the very heart of western society and western morality and post-war inter-governmental institutionalism that have degenerated into fake and sham under the pretext of establishing and maintaining international economic order and global efficiency.
"You think that’s all there are to my charges? No, there is more; much more. The charges that I make strike at the very soil of man and at his conscience. You know, when all the evidence is in, there are two types of questions that you and me and others like us will have to answer. The first is this: will the world be content merely to brand our institution as among the most insidious enemies of humankind? Will our fellowmen condemn us thus and let the matter rest? Or will the heirs of those whom we have dismembered in our own peculiar Holocaust clamor for another Nuremberg?"
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1oJzvpfFzIKu76oE1CkzZlarRiVpYIggFMFzSt6OgHx0/mobilebasic
Their rocks are always close to this forum.
Salud, Steve.
🗽
Hypocritical neo-fascist minions resolutely ignore the evidence of complicity by the U.S. government and by senior politicians such as Joe Biden and Mitch McConnell in the most far-reaching genocide in history. Quoting from Davison Budhoo's resignation letter from the International Monetary Fund (with U.S. voting domination since its inception):
"Today I resigned from the staff of the International Monetary Fund after over twelve years, and after 1000 days of official Fund work in the field, hawking your medicine and your bag of tricks to governments and to peoples in Latin America and the Caribbean and Africa. To me resignation is a priceless liberation, for with it I have taken the first big step to that place where I may hope to wash my hands of what in my mind’s eye is the blood of millions of poor and starving peoples. Mr. Camdessus, the blood is so much, you know, it runs in rivers. It dries up too; it cakes all over me; sometimes I feel that there is not enough soap in the whole world to cleanse me from the things that I did do in your name and in the names of your predecessors, and under your official seal.
"But I can hope, can’t I? Certainly I can hope. I can hope that there is compassion and indignation in the heart of my world, and that people can stand up and take notice of what I have to say, and listen to your reply. For you will have to reply, because the charges that I make are not light charges - they are charges that touch at the very heart of western society and western morality and post-war inter-governmental institutionalism that have degenerated into fake and sham under the pretext of establishing and maintaining international economic order and global efficiency.
"You think that’s all there are to my charges? No, there is more; much more. The charges that I make strike at the very soil of man and at his conscience. You know, when all the evidence is in, there are two types of questions that you and me and others like us will have to answer. The first is this: will the world be content merely to brand our institution as among the most insidious enemies of humankind? Will our fellowmen condemn us thus and let the matter rest? Or will the heirs of those whom we have dismembered in our own peculiar Holocaust clamor for another Nuremberg?"
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1oJzvpfFzIKu76oE1CkzZlarRiVpYIggFMFzSt6OgHx0/mobilebasic
I read Budhoo. Get over it and read something about morality. Need suggestions?
Hypocritical neo-fascist minions resolutely ignore the evidence of complicity by the U.S. government and by senior politicians such as Joe Biden and Mitch McConnell in the most far-reaching genocide in history. Quoting from Davison Budhoo's resignation letter from the International Monetary Fund (with U.S. voting domination since its inception):
"Today I resigned from the staff of the International Monetary Fund after over twelve years, and after 1000 days of official Fund work in the field, hawking your medicine and your bag of tricks to governments and to peoples in Latin America and the Caribbean and Africa. To me resignation is a priceless liberation, for with it I have taken the first big step to that place where I may hope to wash my hands of what in my mind’s eye is the blood of millions of poor and starving peoples. Mr. Camdessus, the blood is so much, you know, it runs in rivers. It dries up too; it cakes all over me; sometimes I feel that there is not enough soap in the whole world to cleanse me from the things that I did do in your name and in the names of your predecessors, and under your official seal.
"But I can hope, can’t I? Certainly I can hope. I can hope that there is compassion and indignation in the heart of my world, and that people can stand up and take notice of what I have to say, and listen to your reply. For you will have to reply, because the charges that I make are not light charges - they are charges that touch at the very heart of western society and western morality and post-war inter-governmental institutionalism that have degenerated into fake and sham under the pretext of establishing and maintaining international economic order and global efficiency.
"You think that’s all there are to my charges? No, there is more; much more. The charges that I make strike at the very soil of man and at his conscience. You know, when all the evidence is in, there are two types of questions that you and me and others like us will have to answer. The first is this: will the world be content merely to brand our institution as among the most insidious enemies of humankind? Will our fellowmen condemn us thus and let the matter rest? Or will the heirs of those whom we have dismembered in our own peculiar Holocaust clamor for another Nuremberg?"
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1oJzvpfFzIKu76oE1CkzZlarRiVpYIggFMFzSt6OgHx0/mobilebasic
Sorry but you need to be blocked. I'm relatively new to this commentary network, and I'm by far not the smartest or most articulate offering comments here, but even I can see you are not interested in civil discourse. Find another audience, please.
Joan, use the ellipses below one or more of his posted comments to report to Substack, should you want!
Is that your way of covering up for racist genocide? Why else would you respond in that way?
May you, Sir, gain a clear mind.
I hope that your unclear post wasn't the result of a senior moment.
Where is the evidence that Trump declassified any documents (remember, he said he could do that just by "thinking about it")? He also claimed documents were planted by the FBI and that all documents had been returned; for a year, he resisted the efforts of the Archives to obtain documents, including not responding to a subpoena. If you are referring to the current House Oversight Committee, we should be extremely wary of "assertions" from it that the Center was the recipient of vast sums of money from China.
And please, the “classification” status is not at issue. Trump refused to return Presidential records that did not belong to him. NARA had to go to extreme measures to poke the bully for their return
Thats the issue
Federal Records Act (1950), "classified" or not; the documents belong to us.
Plrase understand that I'm not defending Trump. I'm saying that HCR seems to be giving Biden a free pass.
Quoting from that congressional press release:
"“The Penn Biden Center appears to have acted as a foreign-sponsored source of income for much of a Biden Administration in-waiting,” continued Chairman Comer. “Between 2017 and 2019, UPenn paid President Biden more than $900,000, and the university employed at least 10 people at the Penn Biden Center who later became senior Biden administration officials. This level of access and opportunity raises questions about who had access to the classified documents found at the Penn Biden Center."
Ah, QAnon has arrived. Read, learn, then “back to your space lasers”
Hypocritical neo-fascist minions resolutely ignore the evidence of complicity by the U.S. government and by senior politicians such as Joe Biden and Mitch McConnell in the most far-reaching genocide in history. Quoting from Davison Budhoo's resignation letter from the International Monetary Fund (with U.S. voting domination since its inception):
"Today I resigned from the staff of the International Monetary Fund after over twelve years, and after 1000 days of official Fund work in the field, hawking your medicine and your bag of tricks to governments and to peoples in Latin America and the Caribbean and Africa. To me resignation is a priceless liberation, for with it I have taken the first big step to that place where I may hope to wash my hands of what in my mind’s eye is the blood of millions of poor and starving peoples. Mr. Camdessus, the blood is so much, you know, it runs in rivers. It dries up too; it cakes all over me; sometimes I feel that there is not enough soap in the whole world to cleanse me from the things that I did do in your name and in the names of your predecessors, and under your official seal.
"But I can hope, can’t I? Certainly I can hope. I can hope that there is compassion and indignation in the heart of my world, and that people can stand up and take notice of what I have to say, and listen to your reply. For you will have to reply, because the charges that I make are not light charges - they are charges that touch at the very heart of western society and western morality and post-war inter-governmental institutionalism that have degenerated into fake and sham under the pretext of establishing and maintaining international economic order and global efficiency.
"You think that’s all there are to my charges? No, there is more; much more. The charges that I make strike at the very soil of man and at his conscience. You know, when all the evidence is in, there are two types of questions that you and me and others like us will have to answer. The first is this: will the world be content merely to brand our institution as among the most insidious enemies of humankind? Will our fellowmen condemn us thus and let the matter rest? Or will the heirs of those whom we have dismembered in our own peculiar Holocaust clamor for another Nuremberg?"
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1oJzvpfFzIKu76oE1CkzZlarRiVpYIggFMFzSt6OgHx0/mobilebasic
why do you keep coy pasting the same thing over and over?
Methinks you are trying to get subscribers, and just fyi, in this forum that is a fail for your antics.
Reporting this.
John, the letter of resignation by Davison Budhoo, which you keep referring to, was in fact written May 18, 1988. It has nothing to do with your criticism of HCR's reporting.
Um, I was replying to Dave Dalton, not HCR.
Quite possibly HCR and many of us "ignored Trump's explanation" was because (1) he had so many "explanations" and (2) it was impossible to believe anything he said because he lied thousands of times.
Thank you for your response. Do you deny that Trump had the authority to declassify documents? Furthermore, is it possible that Trump is saving a detailed explanation for his day in court? Once again, I am not trying to defend Trump here.
Hmm. I don't know what you would say if you were NOT defending the former president. He did not have the authority to declassify documents once he was no longer president, did he? And while he was president, "just thinking about" declassifying probably was not sufficient proof that he did. You are trying to defend the indefensible. Move on.
Ann Weller, you arrogantly tell me what to do. You have no reason to presume that Trump did not declassify those documents while President, but theh still had a "classified" stamp on them.
Regarding not defending Trump, I've taken my stand on this Twitter thread:
https://twitter.com/john_schmeeckle/status/1612773582911815682
Always a skeptic, a doubting Thomas in the crowd!
Trump was the Manchurian candidate. Period. His very existence is to avariciously accumulate personal wealth…well documented.
He surrounded himself with agents for Russia and Russian oligarchs!
Hmmm! Your posturing in this piece would make a fine scenario for a ‘Clancy’ style novel!
I imagine that Trump's "assignment" from the Establishment, should he return to the Oval Office, is to preside ovwr the "bankruptcy" dismantling of Social Security and Medicare, etc., as the Almighty Dollar loses its status as the international reserve currency. (I imagine that Biden's assignment was to find a way to weaken Russia, with Blinken as the pre-arranged point man.)
Um, Trumps stories on the documents have constantly shifted and they can't all be true. I have as yet seen no proof that a president can declassify documents at will and without notification , and have read assurances that there are established protocols. Methinks that Trump frequently conceived of himself as well above his role as a servant of the public.
The authority for any "established protocols" comes from executive orders of the President. Here's a discussion, fact-checking Darth Vader, that has some helpful points:
-
https://fas.org/blogs/secrecy/2006/02/the_vice_presidents_declassifi/
John Schmeeckle - "why does HCR ignore Trump's explanation that he declassified the documents that he took? There, perhaps, is the real difference, because Pence and Biden did not have the power to do that."
Vice presidents have the authority to declassify documents.
[Many sources]
https://search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?p=vice+president+declassify+documents&hspart=iba&hsimp=yhs-syn_sn¶m2=9dUI1n2R0BLDxNuWfiP4aSFOTltNdSPoIx38%2BUf%2FiXrvPdoGmStdlfwLFZYDvqkAJrWWk4yNReCLnBD%2FqPsDZd7olTZcV8HMx1G%2Fk786sE2Tis1g8dJd8zxVWs%2BbKztBnq1TfqUiqPYK9pXifXmJFyorDuCsYXJE71Y6G5tfejC6ZiJFvbOkkuNg81MboqK8dwAZ4ITZTNkwJS6wGNgpihup1m0Dr%2FFFcJ731tvdDzelcguqeONY6B56JlVY1oI0D9i4B6UpeCV6yIoIcU8WB4ByAOFbxvs3ZGJG1LN7QLOflBQYcdM0U1jRduNQsZDW¶m3=HpCyCT2cXaKG4CVDR00rqmMgn2LSthaxmnFtfuqzARbHlAJRPGf8vbxJHOtwKEhsplQW%2BY8iyh4J7Xmes%2FU1q3peTZXcnLVWe%2FfmJB6mTvW9zEEF2xI6F8ziO8JM99Xlg%2FfBB8Z7Cp%2F3nVp%2F6P9axcHnG2S84ma%2FMXIE1frE6VUzXdEYNhj%2Bi4HySMtNJM2ipEis%2B2t8smPrzt%2F47a1ijRzSFlRqalIYYSxUilIgNPzHR%2FuHhxqv0NseiFbTn8mJKGDkTnQPEBbdRsD4CKGYP1qhZUKeBKnTx5ileSaOoK22hqcR%2FxjXoVbDKd0I7lMVIO%2FIhKnhLz0bB03%2BrcEAfQ%3D%3D&type=f2%3A%3B.6850610d4680680b2811f3dcdca6be379af%3B5.ac48556fb007f46475dbf8a8e3b01611ec4ceacc0ec9b045cb6540e238ceb2df8111e71e5bfd184b31544c5aaf2ed391302b3451d
Your sources aren't quite authoritative.
John Schmeeckle - "Your sources aren't quite authoritative."
And your evidence to the contrary is... ?
My evidence to the contrary is here:
-
https://fas.org/blogs/secrecy/2006/02/the_vice_presidents_declassifi/
I have been speechless for so long (while screaming to any who would listen) that I give up on railing against the Fox diatribes. Been waiting for the MSM to do it, but they love the “news as entertainment” crap, and they have forgotten their central role in our democracy. And I thought Tom Delay and Denis Hastert were as low as repubs could go.
Jeri,
I too have a growing sense of something bad coming. However, I do want to say that having that sense does not mean something bad is coming!!
Reading Dr. Richardson's work to root to the very bottom of the septic tank that is the Republican Party is not easy to do while staying balanced. I wonder how she, the septic tank diver herself, handles all this nasty stuff she learns? Must be tough on her yes?
Anyway, I encourage you, with your life, to know the truth, but, don't let the truth drag you into the septic tank with the Republicans by making you feel depressed or sad.
Find some dude at that place you are at and do a little flirting and get some fun going!!
your friend. Mike
I suspect investigators like HCR who examine the charade playing out in the Republican House are like infectious disease researchers and don Psychological protection as they dissect the corpse.
When isolated from current events the McCarthy charade of structuring his playpen is very discernible as splash of meaningless entertainment for Fox-ite’s.
Any of the frantic actions by the various committees vying for mention by Tucker Carlson is probably DOA in the senate.
We are about to watch a perpetual loop of meaningless chatter by the slim Republican dominated half of one branch of our Government. Expect poor results.
Unless you are poor and disenfranchised. Struggling to find a job and feed your children. We should be doing what we do to lift people up. We have been given much.
We need another relief package for the ex-middle class, those “earning” (instead of “being paid”) $15 an hour, which will pay rent, but not buy food, which will continue to get more expensive. In this rich country, the millionaires, billionaires, corporations, and the Republican Party should not be allowed to destroy US.
Reaganomics is waaaay overdue for a report card.
Great advice Mike. We all need to have fun in our lives to contend with the sh!t show we’re going to be seeing unfold in Congress the next few years.
Hahaha, haven’t been a widow long enough
Oh. I’m sorry to hear of your loss. My husband was a widow. He didn’t go looking for fun but…here we are!
Why speechless? This is how authoritarian regimes crawl into power.
Crawl? Looks like they took a bullet train!
Exactly, exactly correct.
It’s a temporary impediment; I will rise to find my voice and whatever else I can offer to right this ship that is our United States of America.
Equally speechless, I'm silent with rage. That gollum, who had to grovel his way through 15 (fifteen) ballots, dares to insult those two men of vast experience and integrity!
Well, in a way. Gollum was telling the truth. The presence of Schaffer and Salwell on the committee does make the country less safe....for PUTIN and his buddies
For clarity Juanita- the spelling for those names are Schiff and Swalwell.
Arrgh! I thought I was paying attention, but I did not see what auto-correct was doing... :-(
The GOP told us what they intended to do, who they intended to persecute, and what legislation they intended to ram through the House. None of the above represents democracy.
Why are you speechless when they tell us repeatedly who they are and what they stand for?
Because a punch in the solar plexus deprives you of speech. Yes, we know who they are, and to see them wielding a vulgar simulacrum of power in the once-hallowed halls is as sickening as was the sight of the rabble swarming up the face of the Capitol.
"sickening as was the sight of the rabble swarming up the face of the Capitol."
The RNC officially declared them comrades in arms.
The eunuch McCarthy can keep them off the committee but he can’t stop them from speaking to the media outlets!
Additionally, he cannot keep ‘em from voting against the whackado proposals he’ll make!
What good is speaking to the choir on these 'entertainment' shows posing as news outlets? Too bad there are so few local news media outlets anymore.
Considering the mileage Republicans receive incessantly repeating big lies, perhaps more repetition of evidence-based truths (so far as we know them) might impede their progress. I think that more of the truth leaking out into the public conversation has been having a measurable effect.
I agree with you, but would just take a moment to note that after Schiff and Swallwell were rejected for the Intelligence Committee, it was officially renamed the House Committee on Stupidity.
And the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government should be renamed the Revenge Subcommittee.
Under the auspices of the "Ministry of Truth".
Regarding Revenge Politics,
Today Joyce Vance states what’s going on pretty clearly her Substack “Civil Discourse”
Here’s a small piece of her writing:
“(For that matter, there’s been virtually no discussion of that leak of the Biden matter, which, if made by someone at DOJ, violated ethics rules at a minimum. The Trump investigation was conducted for six months, completely under the radar, and only disclosed by Trump himself after DOJ executed the search warrant at Mar-a-Lago. Biden’s find of documents occurred in early November, with the DOJ investigation following closely on its heels. Two months later, someone disclosed the Biden investigation to the media and it became public. It seems highly unlikely that anyone on Biden’s team made the disclosure, and the only other people who would have known about the matter would have been federal investigators and prosecutors. So, hardly a system that protected Biden and persecuted Trump. (Where’s the Marshal of the Supreme Court when you need her to investigate a leak?)
Is there a lesson from all of this? Yes. It’s time to stop pandering to Trump’s incessant complaints. Do the right thing and let the chips fall where they may. There is nothing that will make Trump happy or soothe his base. No amount of retaining Trump-appointed U.S. Attorneys to investigate Hunter Biden—while giving Ivanka a pass for trademarks obtained from foreign governments, including China, while working as a senior advisor to the president—will convince the single-minded that Democrats aren’t rigging the government against Trump.“
Pleased to report that the Marshall of the Supreme Court is vacationing in a Putin owned Dacha in the Crimea!!!!
I can't decide whether to crawl back under the covers in denial of hypocrite McCarthy's dumb-sly antics openly executed in broad daylight, or start my morning with Champagne with Fani Willis' words lyrically ringing in my ears: "Decisions are imminent."
I’m toasting Fani Willis.
Salud, Sophia.
🗽
Cheers, Christine!
🥂!!
Gestapo Kev
Or Kuisling.
McCarthy is doing no less than what was expected of him, resulting from his Faustian deal with the Republican extremists. He may be able to dictate House rules and committee membership, but legislation still must go on to the Senate and the President's desk. There are more important issues facing Democrats, one of which is making it very clear to the public that there is a vast difference between returning documents discovered to have been inadvertantly taken 'home from the office,' and fighting the government's efforts to reclaim such documents.
I am not naive, and as cynical as I can be, I did not think McCarthy would be so boldly stupid as to exact Schiff and Swalwell from their committees and then actually say that this would make America "safer." This defies incredulity....
Revenge Politics until extinction, their motto? Global warming is just a more cozy planet, why collaborate to prevent more of it?
Plutocracy VS Democracy. It's an old story.
It is the job of historians to report the facts as objectively as possible. It does not mean that their private feelings do not exist. Universities, the good ones in the western tradition, teach objectivity above all. Emotional reporting is for fiction. That’s why and how we got novels (eventually).
Except in Florida
Judith, I admire Heather's professionalism, too, but we know what she's thinking. 🤢 I'm horrified that I believed that getting rid of tFg would end our misery, but dark money is determined to ruin us.
HCR alleges "the difference between officials like Biden and Pence who inadvertently find such documents among their other papers and alert the National Archives and Research Administration (NARA), and those who stonewall NARA and the FBI, as Trump did."
There are slippery assumptions here, highlighting the difference between a historian and a propagandist.
First of all, why does HCR take the assertions of both Pence and Biden at face value? Second, why does HCR ignore Trump's explanation that he declassified the documents that he took? There, perhaps, is the real difference, because Pence and Biden did not have the power to do that. Does HCR assume that Trump either did not declassify the relevant documents and/or that he did so incorrectly? Failure to mention Trump's explanation, while brazenly assuming Trump's guilt, appears to be the mark of a propagandistic opinion groomer.
The Biden case is further marked by the assertion coming from the House Oversight Committee that the Penn Biden Center, where classified documents were found, was the recipient of millions of dollars of anonymous Chinese donations. This raises the question of some form of treason, supposing that Biden or those around him (perhaps Blinken, who was involved with the Buden Center) were being paid to leave classified documents in an area that could be surreptitiously accessed by Chinese spies.
HCR has to have known this, but her silence once again would seem to be the mark of a partisan propagandistic opinion groomer.
https://oversight.house.gov/release/comer-anonymous-chinese-donations-to-upenn-potentially-influenced-biden-administration-policies%EF%BF%BC/
p.s. I publicly called out Trump for brazen murder, as well as the Democrats who condoned this high crime by their silence, here:
https://twitter.com/john_schmeeckle/status/1612773582911815682?s=20&t=5jg_PmIS9CYGL-Ey_yEA9g
John,
Thanks for the link. I read it carefully and, yes, there is an accusation of association of Biden with Chinese donations to UPenn.
However, and I carefully read your link twice, there is NO EVIDENCE that the Chinese donations are associated with Biden in any way. ZERO. There is just an association noted of increased Chinese donations to the University during the time frame noted.
However, John, I would like to note the following facts: In the time frame noted in the link, Chinese student populations at ALL American universities shot up, but, ESPECIALLY at private schools. As did donations. But why??
OK, my son and daughter were in college from 2016 - 2020 during a time when those Chinese students were coming on board. Both of my kids went to private schools and drained my own bank account to do that. One went to an Ivy League School. Actually did not get in on white affirmative action called Legacy, she got in because she is brilliant and they could not find anything to keep her out.
At BOTH private schools where my kids were, Chinese students, from China, ramped up during the time frame 2016-2020 and EVERYONE knew WHY. Indeed, the Chinese student population was growing rapidly at all esteemed Universities, like UPenn:
But WHY? Ah, that would be MONEY.
The Chinese students were able and willing to pay FULL TUITION, at those private schools, like rich, white folks, without getting any breaks. Some of them were OK students, but, some really struggled due to language barriers.....my kids said it was sad to see sometimes. But, some of the students were top performers as well.
However, at Harvard, Yale, Cornell, UPenn and ALL US PRIVATE SCHOOLS, the Chinese student population and monetary DONATIONS from Chinese sources skyrocketed during the time frame.
So, I offer you the following: Republicans have made a common mistake that oft occurs among the ignorant and uneducated. They have observed two events that were unrelated,
1) the ramp up of the Chinese donations and student population at UPenn along with big donations and
2) Biden building a presence at UPenn.
And, they have further assumed, with no evidence, that the Chinese donations are related to Biden's presence at UPenn during that time.
Sadly, it may not be a mistake on the part of the Republicans. They are probably counting on guys like you, John, to spread their lie, which, they know is a lie.
Mike, great points. My husband just retired from Rice U....not an Ivy but a fine, private and expensive university. The Chinese student population was huge and for the very reasons you mention...they can pay FULL TUITION. No requests for student aid from this group!
Thank you.
Nice attempt at spin, where you obfuscate the fact that the BIDEN CENTER, and not the University of Pennsylvania, was the recipient of Chinese money. Where is the lie in that, Mr. Apprentice Spin Doctor?
Quoting from that congressional press release:
"“The Penn Biden Center appears to have acted as a foreign-sponsored source of income for much of a Biden Administration in-waiting,” continued Chairman Comer. “Between 2017 and 2019, UPenn paid President Biden more than $900,000, and the university employed at least 10 people at the Penn Biden Center who later became senior Biden administration officials. This level of access and opportunity raises questions about who had access to the classified documents found at the Penn Biden Center."
Contrary for fun? Anyone is entitled to their opinion(s) but, I have recently learned much more about the contractual responsibilities of Substack, Inc. Authors & the defined term "Readers" who like all 3rd party beneficiaries have good faith & fair dealing obligations to all of us on this Platform. Content mediation is a legal issue bublling up in the Federal Appellate Courts. Think about your good faith obligations. Did you know if you even had any?
Quoting from that congressional press release:
"“The Penn Biden Center appears to have acted as a foreign-sponsored source of income for much of a Biden Administration in-waiting,” continued Chairman Comer. “Between 2017 and 2019, UPenn paid President Biden more than $900,000, and the university employed at least 10 people at the Penn Biden Center who later became senior Biden administration officials. This level of access and opportunity raises questions about who had access to the classified documents found at the Penn Biden Center."
John, take a logic course
Quoting from that congressional press release:
"“The Penn Biden Center appears to have acted as a foreign-sponsored source of income for much of a Biden Administration in-waiting,” continued Chairman Comer. “Between 2017 and 2019, UPenn paid President Biden more than $900,000, and the university employed at least 10 people at the Penn Biden Center who later became senior Biden administration officials. This level of access and opportunity raises questions about who had access to the classified documents found at the Penn Biden Center."
Generous of you to credit McCarthy with leading
Zella,
McCarthy's approach did work well, in the past, as the Nazi Party grew its power. So, I am not sure that assuming the bumpy ride will lead to any Republican "undoing" is appropriate?
I personally hope McCarthy's "approach" does not lead to a boom in train and incinerator building inside of fenced compounds since the same approach was sort of taken by the Nazi party and did lead to, well, trains running on time. So to speak.
He'll never live down the ignominious manner of his election. No matter how nobly he poses for the camera, back straight, head high, chin jutting.
Syndly Whiplash?
We need to start using the word grooming to describe the actions of Jordan’s fancy-name committee.
As the Crazies get crazier, some of the less crazy in their party are going, “ Whoa, the Crazy Train is leaving the station and I’m not gettin’ on it”
Not enough of them.
It only takes a few to temporarily ally with Democrats and shift the balance of power. Or to create a new party and challenge them crazies for leadership of the Right.
Cheney and Kinzinger did it, and now they're both gone. Where is the next wave?
The crazy train is pulling out of the station, leaving an empty platform behind.
Hope springs eternal! How I hope you are correct that tfg is going to be indicted. I am waiting with baited breath. (I need better bait.)
So agree, Sharon!
No matter, Death Santis seems to have some diabolical staying power.
The diabolical always does, making the anti-diabolical the tougher row to hoe.
But the latter make life worth celebrating.
Here’s to the celebrating, J L!
After indictment, Trump will be cast aside by the party in favor of the despot of the month. Transactional relationships cut both ways.
His MAGA deplorables will hold on for a bit, then move on when they are convinced that De Santis or some other media creation is the new Messiah.
The next rough beast.
I thank Mike Pence for taking some of the hot air out of the GOP talking heads who have been equating Trump's handling of classified documents with that of the Biden case. And they're going to struggle mightily to find diversions to what Fani Willis is about to unleash on Trump.
Michael,
"what Fani Willis is about to unleash on Trump".
Is it not truly tragic that a black woman living in Georgia must be the point person to uphold the law against a powerful, rich, white man in the United States of America?
Think about how dangerous, to Fani and her family, charging Trump will be. Off down in Georgia where they just did away with Jim Crow yesterday and where Fani would have been required to step off the sidewalk for Trump or be killed legally.
Think about Fani filing charges against Trump for a few minutes. Imagine the thousands of white nuts, with all manner of guns, out there who will be literally ENRAGED by that act of hers. Fani, nor her family, will EVER be safe again here in America if she does file charges.
The truly sad, sad, sad, aspect of all of this is: Trump SHOULD have been arrested a month or so after he openly led an armed rebellion against the Constitution and the United States.
However, the arrest should have been sponsored by Merrick Garland. A white man going after a white man on equal ground in this country. That would make sense.
But Garland? He was and is just too much of a coward to arrest Trump. Garland knows he and his family will be open for target shooting if he arrests Trump and he is avoiding the danger leaving the poor, but very brave, and perhaps unwise, Fani Willis out there to step up.
Just think about all that you know about Trump supporters and then think about Garland stepping aside to let a black woman in Georgia step up and step into hell.
One of the very, very most cowardly and sad things I have seen in my life.
Fani is doing this because Trump went after her own in Georgia, Ruby Freeman, and Fani is angry. She is also right legally.
BUT, Garland stepping aside with a smile to let Fani walk into American hell? THE most cowardly act I have seen, ever, in my lifetime.
“Black women will save the world”  written by April Ryan. And I agree, Fani Willis is the bravest person on the planet at this point.
And where, oh where is Garland?
I am so tired of the apologists for Garland. He is clearly not up to the job of Attorney General. What’s the over/under for the number of Special Counsels he’ll appoint in order to avoid responsibility for any difficult decision?
Disagree with your narrative that Garland is a coward and willfully setting up Willis to "walk into American hell."
Do I wish DOJ had moved more quickly? Absolutely. But get to back to me after Trump is charged with federal serious conspiracy — a very difficult case to build, much less to prove in court. As slow and as frustrating as the federal investigation into the coup attempt has been, it's also extraordinarily broad and complex.
Trump has confessed, in essence, in a recorded phone call to his crime in the Georgia election. Slam dunk. As for the potential for violent retaliation against Willis, are you suggesting the risk would vanish if charges in Georgia followed federal charges in DC? The risk existed yesterday, today, and in the future for everyone trying to bring domestic terrorists, including Trump, to justice across America.
No.
We don't know any of that.
Logical partitioning of Garland actions:
1) No charges, or weak charges. Yep, he's a soggy biscuit.
2) Strong charges that fail. Hard to figure out what happened. Maybe he overdid the charges, or he flubbed the case-building, or maybe it was just an impossible dream. There will be plenty of Monday Morning Quarterbacks to dissect his legacy and feed it to the dogs.
3) Strong charges that stick. He's a mensch, and goes down in history.
I can't see what's in it for him in scenario 1, other than flat out bribery and a beachfront estate paid for with someone else's money. So I think that's the least likely scenario.
❗️ ❗️ ❗️
Hope her unleashing puts a very big leash on Dump, like in the pen....
HCR alleges "the difference between officials like Biden and Pence who inadvertently find such documents among their other papers and alert the National Archives and Research Administration (NARA), and those who stonewall NARA and the FBI, as Trump did."
There are slippery assumptions here, highlighting the difference between a historian and a propagandist.
First of all, why does HCR take the assertions of both Pence and Biden at face value? Second, why does HCR ignore Trump's explanation that he declassified the documents that he took? There, perhaps, is the real difference, because Pence and Biden did not have the power to do that. Does HCR assume that Trump either did not declassify the relevant documents and/or that he did so incorrectly? Failure to mention Trump's explanation, while brazenly assuming Trump's guilt, appears to be the mark of a propagandistic opinion groomer.
The Biden case is further marked by the assertion coming from the House Oversight Committee that the Penn Biden Center, where classified documents were found, was the recipient of millions of dollars of anonymous Chinese donations. This raises the question of some form of treason, supposing that Biden or those around him (perhaps Blinken, who was involved with the Buden Center) were being paid to leave classified documents in an area that could be surreptitiously accessed by Chinese spies.
HCR has to have known this, but her silence once again would seem to be the mark of a partisan propagandistic opinion groomer.
https://oversight.house.gov/release/comer-anonymous-chinese-donations-to-upenn-potentially-influenced-biden-administration-policies%EF%BF%BC/
p.s. I publicly called out Trump for brazen murder, as well as the Democrats who condoned this high crime by their silence, here:
https://twitter.com/john_schmeeckle/status/1612773582911815682?s=20&t=5jg_PmIS9CYGL-Ey_yEA9g
If Trump had declassified documents, and not by “thinking about it” as he publicly claims is his right, republicans would have been blasting it 24/7. And if you were being fair, you’d acknowledge that his 2 years of lies to keep documents from the archives and then the FBI is the difference between Biden and Pence immediately and voluntarily returning documents and allowing searches without hindrance. The sheer number of confirmed lies trump has told makes it impossible for anyone to rationally believe he is innocent.
Throwing the allegations about Chinese donations into the mix is a red herring. We all know that if conservatives cared about illegal donations they’d have joined in a bipartisan push for increased oversight and donation limits rather than fighting for the opposite.
I’m thinking John is not really here for discussion, he’s posting the same propaganda over and over. Performance Jibberish
Exactly
Well put, Dave. Elegant and succinct. Jay
Quoting from that congressional press release:
"“The Penn Biden Center appears to have acted as a foreign-sponsored source of income for much of a Biden Administration in-waiting,” continued Chairman Comer. “Between 2017 and 2019, UPenn paid President Biden more than $900,000, and the university employed at least 10 people at the Penn Biden Center who later became senior Biden administration officials. This level of access and opportunity raises questions about who had access to the classified documents found at the Penn Biden Center."
Comer. Enough said.
https://thehill.com/homenews/sunday-talk-shows/3824559-comer-investigating-biden-family-like-tracking-a-bleeding-bear-through-a-snowstorm/
Me thinks you protest too much. A partisan groomer would choose to leave out the FACT that trump refused to cooperate, that he was asked numerous times to return documents and refused, that his attorneys swore on paper that everything was returned and it was a lie, that the FBI issued a subpoena which was ignored, that a search was conducted and found classified documents in unsecured locations. False equivalency here, John, but nice try.
Please report him to the forum administrator. Putting the same comment up twice might be a senior moment, but repeatedly falls into the troll territory.
I shared my response to HCR's latest with a number of different individuals, thinking that (1) some of them will consider the thought in my response and perhaps reply; and (2) Many or most of them will not see my response if I just post it as a reply to one single person.
Oh, shushie.
🗽
Troll
Karen.
Quoting from that congressional press release:
"“The Penn Biden Center appears to have acted as a foreign-sponsored source of income for much of a Biden Administration in-waiting,” continued Chairman Comer. “Between 2017 and 2019, UPenn paid President Biden more than $900,000, and the university employed at least 10 people at the Penn Biden Center who later became senior Biden administration officials. This level of access and opportunity raises questions about who had access to the classified documents found at the Penn Biden Center."
Repeating this drivel does not make it true. Go somewhere else to spread John Schmeeckle. How lazy can you get to just simply copy paste. This is a discussion not a forum for you to get more hits on your substack. -saw-
Report him, as I am doing.
Me too. It is annoying drivel to say the least.
how do we report people?
See the three dots below the comment? CLick on them, a box pops us. I reported that he keeps posting the same two comments over and over.
Quoting from that congressional press release:
"“The Penn Biden Center appears to have acted as a foreign-sponsored source of income for much of a Biden Administration in-waiting,” continued Chairman Comer. “Between 2017 and 2019, UPenn paid President Biden more than $900,000, and the university employed at least 10 people at the Penn Biden Center who later became senior Biden administration officials. This level of access and opportunity raises questions about who had access to the classified documents found at the Penn Biden Center."
Calling the partisan comments of an election denier a Congressional Statement is an absurd distortion. Substack is not twitter.
Speaking of election deniers:
https://twitter.com/john_schmeeckle/status/1612782814491217920?s=20&t=wvAqL4W1YGqRyl5e2sLYYg
Mr. Schmeeckle, you post here a fair amount, recently, and you get pretty frequently disrespected. I'd like to address that.
Your tone is often belligerent, and you name-call a lot. "Propagandistic opinion groomer" is not a compliment. You are effectively picking fights. It's like walking into a biker bar and saying something unpleasant about the way it smells. Unless you are actually looking for some free dental work, that would be ... well, just plain stupid.
There's a lot of "both-sides-ism" floating about, and I have to hold on to my temper when I talk with my son. He's a big fan of Glen Greenwald and Matt Taibbi -- I used to be, too, and ain't nobody who can hold a candle to Mr. Taibbi in crafting metaphors that will make your eyeballs bleed -- and I'm not about to argue that politicians of any persuasion are the best of us.
But the devil is NOT in the details. The devil is on full display. We have one arguably corrupt political party that is, nonetheless, pushing against some of the most painful atrocities our post-Reagan government has inflicted on the public, and another obviously corrupt political party that is pushing to make those atrocities worse. We have one party that is not supporting Social Security as aggressively they should be, and another political party that is trying to destroy it. We have one political party that at least counts crowd size correctly, and another that indulges in Orwellian lies about crowd size AND EVERYTHING ELSE.
What all of your posts (that I've seen) suffer from is a very serious lack of perspective.
This especially shows up when you call Dr. Richardson a propagandistic opinion groomer. I have no idea what your age is. I'm 66, and was raised in a red state in the middle of the Cold War propaganda blitz. What passed for American History in my early years was real propaganda. What Dr. Richardson has been doing for the "common masses" who read this letter -- like myself -- is tying some REAL history back into contemporary events in a jazz riff on the "history never repeats, but it rhymes" theme. She has been doing what great teachers have always done: she opens minds.
No one thinks this makes her a god. But we are certainly appreciative.
So when you come here and start spouting both-sideism and calling names....
Mr. Schmeeckle, it's simply in bad taste.
You are, of course, entitled to express your opinion at length while ignoring my basic point that HCR's characterization of Biden's mishandling of classified documents as "inadvertent" was groundless and baseless, while Trump did indeed have the power to declassify documents by simply scrawling "declassified" on them and signing and dating, if he wanted it to be observed by others. (Trump's hyperbolic comment about declassifying with his mind can be compared to the question of whether a falling tree in the forest makes a noise if no one is there to hear it. I suspect that Trump's underlying point was that the process of declassifying is dictated by the President through executive orders, and the President has the power to declassify things however he wants.)
You are, of course, entitled to express your opinion at length while ignoring my basic point that HCR's characterization of Biden's mishandling of classified documents as "inadvertent" was groundless and baseless, while Trump did indeed have the power to declassify documents by simply scrawling "declassified" on them and signing and dating, if he wanted it to be observed by others. (Trump's hyperbolic comment about declassifying with his mind can be compared to the question of whether a falling tree in the forest makes a noise if no one is there to hear it. I suspect that Trump's underlying point was that the process of declassifying is dictated by the President through executive orders, and the President has the power to declassify things however he wants.)
You are, of course, entitled to express your opinion at length while ignoring my basic point that HCR's characterization of Biden's mishandling of classified documents as "inadvertent" was groundless and baseless, while Trump did indeed have the power to declassify documents by simply scrawling "declassified" on them and signing and dating, if he wanted it to be observed by others. (Trump's hyperbolic comment about declassifying with his mind can be compared to the question of whether a falling tree in the forest makes a noise if no one is there to hear it. I suspect that Trump's underlying point was that the process of declassifying is dictated by the President through executive orders, and the President has the power to declassify things however he wants.)
I think you misunderstand what is going on here.
There are two people, each stopped by a cop, who asks for their ID.
Person one takes out his driver's license and hands it over. When accused of speeding, he says (honestly), "I am sorry, officer, I wasn't watching my speed at the moment your lights came on."
Person two refuses to identify himself, starts shouting at the officer, calling him a pig and worse, and shows every sign of working himself up to a physical attack.
Both of these scenarios represent a response to lawful power. I would fully expect very different outcomes.
In all of the above cases, the National Archives and the classification system represented lawful power.
In the case of Biden and Pence, the response was immediate acquiescence to that power.
Trump became a belligerent asshole, and it went on for months.
I would expect very different outcomes.
I think that your characterization of "what is going on here" is misleading.
The classification system itself is addled.
The simple fact is that ALL "classified" information has a real-world expiration date, and it's usually pretty quick. Some of it might last as long as a saeculum (the span of a single long human memory, particularly when the classification covers up egregious wrongdoing), but most of it is worthless within weeks, months, or a few years.
I recall when I was an undergraduate (1970's) a professor was talking about the atomic mass of a particular isotope of uranium, which was well-known and published in numerous textbooks and reference pages -- except for the last two fractional digits. Those two digits were "classified," and you could go to jail for revealing them. It was a leftover classification from the 1940's, when they were working on the Manhattan Project. I would not doubt that those two digits are still classified.
Which brings up the faulty process for declassifying things, because, frankly, no one is very interested in sweeping the archives. I've been hearing a lot lately about a lot of the military classification of UFO sightings in the 1950's and 1960's, which remain classified simply because -- at the time -- they were "Eyes Only" documents, and then the steam went out of the UFO projects of next couple of decades, and now, there is no one left alive with the authority to declassify them.
It's similar to corporate "privacy" notions. I've been working for several years on a corporate "secret" project that was so tight that it was hard to get the hardware documentation I needed to write software for the hardware. Which was my job. So I can well-sympathize with government officials who take classified documents on the road. And it isn't (normally) an issue: Pence, Biden, etc. were all simply doing their jobs.
Trump was doing something else. It might have just been his narcissism gloating like a magpie over the shiny things he had run off with. The concern -- a valid concern -- was that Mr. Transactional Sociopath was looking to sell them.
But the real issue -- of course -- was that he challenged established power with power he no longer possessed. The crime of stupidity.
I think that you might be unaware that the system for classifying and declassifying documents, such as it is, is governed by executive orders, which raises the question of whether Trump violated the terms of a previous executive order and failed to issue a new one (while he was President), which as yet I haven't seen discussed by HCR or anyone else
It's been discussed repeatedly.
As I recall, there has been no evidence that Trump ever declassified anything, or that he was even aware of a process for declassification. He made a statement to the effect that even "thinking" about declassifying them, declassified them. This was, of course, after Mar a Lago had been raided and the classified documents had been recovered.
That "thinking about it" was all over this site, and the news, and the humor sites.
Trump's declassification of the documents at Mar-el-Lago has been misrepresented repeatedly. Your silly comment about "a process for declassification" is a good example. Trump, by declassifying the documents that later made their way to his Florida residence, violated what part of what executive order?
Trump's authority, as President, to declassify whatever he wanted, is the fundamental difference between his situation and that of Biden.
As far as I'm aware, no executive order has ever spelled out a procedure for the President to declassify documents. Hence Trump's hyperbolic remark about declassifying documents with his mind. I imagine that Trump marked "declassified," with a date, on each document.
This whole "classified" brohuha appears to have been manufactured out of thin air as a propaganda stunt to smear Trump's already-tarnished reputation.
Stop posting the same bit over and over-makes you look like a paid troll.
I don't think anyone would pay for what he's doing. We're currently in a troll recession economy, as there is little point in wasting money on trolls right now. He's also far too wordy.
Bingo
Gee. Do you think?
I shared my response to HCR's latest with a number of different individuals, thinking that (1) some of them will consider the thought in my response and perhaps reply; and (2) Many or most of them will not see my response if I just post it as a reply to one single person.
John Schmeeckle: Your linked article from oversight.house.gov. Was published in January 18, 2023, by the new oversight committee.
Right on schedule, the newest BIG LIE is emerging from the McCarthy House. These are questions, not proven facts. But as everyone knows, much misinformation can be spread by carefully worded inquisitions.
* I heard you tried to nail Dimsdale’s head to the kitchen table!
* Oh wow, I heard the same thing!
* Really? Where’d you hear it?!
* From you.
And so the next big lie begins.
Please understand that I'm not trying to defend Trump. I'm concerned about what appears to be the partisan effort to give Biden a free pass, without knowing or wanting to know the whole story.
HCR used the groundless and baseless word "inadvertently" to whitewash what Biden did.
Regarding who has authority to classify and declassify, Darth Vader weighed in, which led to a useful discussion here:
-
https://fas.org/blogs/secrecy/2006/02/the_vice_presidents_declassifi/
There's a formal, well-publicized process for declassifying documents, which you no doubt know. It doesn't 't include declassifying by "just thinking about it," as Trump absurdly claims.
Please understand that I'm not defending Trump. I am challenging what appears to be HCR's attempt at spin control, trying to whitewash Biden, with her groundless and baseless (and laughable?) presumption that Biden's stashes of classified documents were "inadvertent."
Regarding the President's authority to declassify, and the Vice President's much lesser authority, see:
-
https://fas.org/blogs/secrecy/2006/02/the_vice_presidents_declassifi/
You have no evidence that Biden's possessions of classified documents was not inadvertent. And unlike Trump, Biden has fully cooperated with the FBI and National Archives.
You have no evidence that Biden has fully cooperated. And HCR has no evidence that Biden's mishandling of classified documents was inadvertent -- she just made that up.
Biden voluntarily consented to a 13-hour search of his Delaware house — no warrant required. He has voluntarily returned documents to the National Archives. He hasn't gone on unhinged tirades against the FBI and DOJ, which Trump has done repeatedly. Nor has Biden filed lawsuits against DOJ. The Republican special counsel will eventually determine all the facts.
Given your penchant for spreading misinformation on Twitter regarding the efficacy of the Covid vaccines, it's difficult to take your comments seriously.
Glad it is 10:01 PST and my dinner has digested or I may have gotten sick reading Kevin’s letter especially the last part where bringing back trust to the American people. So much B.S.
Best example of Repub bull Schitt.
HCR alleges "the difference between officials like Biden and Pence who inadvertently find such documents among their other papers and alert the National Archives and Research Administration (NARA), and those who stonewall NARA and the FBI, as Trump did."
There are slippery assumptions here, highlighting the difference between a historian and a propagandist.
First of all, why does HCR take the assertions of both Pence and Biden at face value? Second, why does HCR ignore Trump's explanation that he declassified the documents that he took? There, perhaps, is the real difference, because Pence and Biden did not have the power to do that. Does HCR assume that Trump either did not declassify the relevant documents and/or that he did so incorrectly? Failure to mention Trump's explanation, while brazenly assuming Trump's guilt, appears to be the mark of a propagandistic opinion groomer.
The Biden case is further marked by the assertion coming from the House Oversight Committee that the Penn Biden Center, where classified documents were found, was the recipient of millions of dollars of anonymous Chinese donations. This raises the question of some form of treason, supposing that Biden or those around him (perhaps Blinken, who was involved with the Buden Center) were being paid to leave classified documents in an area that could be surreptitiously accessed by Chinese spies.
HCR has to have known this, but her silence once again would seem to be the mark of a partisan propagandistic opinion groomer.
https://oversight.house.gov/release/comer-anonymous-chinese-donations-to-upenn-potentially-influenced-biden-administration-policies%EF%BF%BC/
I think you need to read up on how documents get classified, and how they get declassified. Classifications last 25 years and they’re not automatically declassified just because somebody says so.
Quoting from that congressional press release:
"“The Penn Biden Center appears to have acted as a foreign-sponsored source of income for much of a Biden Administration in-waiting,” continued Chairman Comer. “Between 2017 and 2019, UPenn paid President Biden more than $900,000, and the university employed at least 10 people at the Penn Biden Center who later became senior Biden administration officials. This level of access and opportunity raises questions about who had access to the classified documents found at the Penn Biden Center."
Trump took -what are we up to- 34 boxes of classified documents to his personal residence when he left office, bragged sbout shiwing them off to his “friends”, fought against returning them, returned under duress when the FBI implemented multiple search warrants to gain access to these boxes of documents. In what way is this similar to what Pence and Biden have done?
You might want to go back and double-check what I wrote. My reference to "millions of dollars" may have been inaccurate. Here is the relevant quote from the congressional oversight committee:
"“Between 2017 and 2019, UPenn paid President Biden more than $900,000, and the university employed at least 10 people at the Penn Biden Center who later became senior Biden administration officials. This level of access and opportunity raises questions about who had access to the classified documents found at the Penn Biden Center."
It’s actually now commonly referred to as the House obstruction committee.
I had to stop reading your comment because it is so laughable.
Might as well put a tin foil hat on TFG if you think he "declassified" documents.
Better to check his bank account for what he fully intended to sell - to the nation's great peril and detriment.
For him, it is ALWAYS about HIM and the grift.
It might be helpful if you check up on the President's (and Vice President's lesser) authority to classify and declassify:
-
https://fas.org/blogs/secrecy/2006/02/the_vice_presidents_declassifi/
Again really! -saw-
I'm reporting them all, I suggest everyone else do so as well.
I reported him
I shared my response to HCR's latest with a number of different individuals, thinking that (1) some of them will consider the thought in my response and perhaps reply; and (2) Many or most of them will not see my response if I just post it as a reply to one single person.
Quoting from that congressional press release:
"“The Penn Biden Center appears to have acted as a foreign-sponsored source of income for much of a Biden Administration in-waiting,” continued Chairman Comer. “Between 2017 and 2019, UPenn paid President Biden more than $900,000, and the university employed at least 10 people at the Penn Biden Center who later became senior Biden administration officials. This level of access and opportunity raises questions about who had access to the classified documents found at the Penn Biden Center."
Prosecutor, Fani Wilson's decisions control the publication of the Georgia Special Grand Jury's Report. For a quality legal analysis of the legal context of Willis' work, see Anna Bowers' analysis at Lawfare. Professor Joyce Vance provides full context & briefly summarized Bower's work in "Civil Discourse" today. FANI retains the only copy of the Report
Willis gave notice of "imminent" action & the need to protect the rights of named indiduals in the Report. I can think of many more reasons NOT to publish now: prevent witness intimidation, preserve the jury pool, protect venue, justice, due process just to name a few.
"Integrity matters more." Gives whole new meaning to the words "irony," "specious," "self delusional," "craven," and a longer list best not to get into in polite company.
Paul Barnes, I love your thesaurus mind.
HCR alleges "the difference between officials like Biden and Pence who inadvertently find such documents among their other papers and alert the National Archives and Research Administration (NARA), and those who stonewall NARA and the FBI, as Trump did."
There are slippery assumptions here, highlighting the difference between a historian and a propagandist.
First of all, why does HCR take the assertions of both Pence and Biden at face value? Second, why does HCR ignore Trump's explanation that he declassified the documents that he took? There, perhaps, is the real difference, because Pence and Biden did not have the power to do that. Does HCR assume that Trump either did not declassify the relevant documents and/or that he did so incorrectly? Failure to mention Trump's explanation, while brazenly assuming Trump's guilt, appears to be the mark of a propagandistic opinion groomer.
The Biden case is further marked by the assertion coming from the House Oversight Committee that the Penn Biden Center, where classified documents were found, was the recipient of millions of dollars of anonymous Chinese donations. This raises the question of some form of treason, supposing that Biden or those around him (perhaps Blinken, who was involved with the Buden Center) were being paid to leave classified documents in an area that could be surreptitiously accessed by Chinese spies.
HCR has to have known this, but her silence once again would seem to be the mark of a partisan propagandistic opinion groomer.
https://oversight.house.gov/release/comer-anonymous-chinese-donations-to-upenn-potentially-influenced-biden-administration-policies%EF%BF%BC/
p.s. I publicly called out Trump for brazen murder, as well as the Democrats who condoned this high crime by their silence, here:
https://twitter.com/john_schmeeckle/status/1612773582911815682?s=20&t=5jg_PmIS9CYGL-Ey_yEA9g
For your first statement, you are either being willfully ignorant or naïve. It is well known that Trump fought with NARA and the FBI. It is not an assumption. In the case of Trump, the National Archives realized in the spring of 2021 that historically prominent files were missing and asked Mr. Trump to return them. The agency eventually retrieved 15 boxes and found that they included documents with classification markings. The Justice Department retrieved additional records after issuing a subpoena, but it developed evidence that Mr. Trump still had more. Additionally, Trump and his aides for delayed for months responding to the National Archives’ repeated requests for months, then failed to fully comply with the subpoena while falsely saying they had. A court filing also suggested that security camera footage showed that “government records were likely concealed and removed” from the storage room at Mar-a-Lago after the subpoena. Further Trump has repeatedly attacked the National Archives for telling the Justice Department about the matter and portrayed the investigation as illegitimate. A federal judge is considering holding his team in contempt for defying the subpoena.
In comparison to Biden and Pence as soon as the files were discovered they immediately reported the files and returned them. Regarding your declassification comment, again I am going to assume you aren't arguing in bad faith, but you know that a President can't declassify documents by just thinking about it right? There is still declassification process. Also by your strawman argument, can't Biden just declassify the documents he previously took now?
On your last point about the House Oversight Committee letter that they sent to the University. I think it is important to know that it is a GOP led investigation that is throwing out unfounded accusations. The University already responded here: https://www.thedp.com/article/2023/01/penn-house-oversight-letter-magill-biden-center-foreign-influence
HCR is many things but a propagandistic opinion groomer seems more of a projection of yourself than the Professor. I also think that it is super bad faith to accuse Biden of potential Treason because of the document handling when you ignore the access that Trump had given Russians, and Saudis' at Mara Lago. In Trump case he also destroyed some public records.
I'm sure none of this will change your mind about anything you are saying, but I couldn't watch you continue to post this disinformation on the site without saying anything.
I vote for ignorant although many trolls are bought, I assume
For my first statement, HCR's critical "word of spin" is "inadvertently." HCR gives no reason to assume that this is the case.
And once again, I'm not trying to defend Trump, but I did imagine how he would defend himself here:
-
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/january-24-2023/comment/12205779
Stop posting the same bit over and over. Makes you look like a paid troll, you know?
Report him as I am doing. I think he is trying too hard to get subscribers.
Indisputably, he's trying.
Subscribers to what??
Good grief! “ I am committed to returning the @HouseIntel Committee to one of genuine honesty and credibility that regains the trust of the American people. ” Kevin McCarthy wouldn’t know genuine honesty & credibility it it bit him in the ass!
“But I cannot put partisan loyalty ahead of national security, and I cannot simply recognize years of service as the sole criteria for membership on this essential committee. Integrity matters more.”
Does he run to the bathroom after spewing such unmitigated bullshit, to purge himself of the revolting taste that must remain? And, after wiping his face and looking up to the mirror, think for one moment: What have I become?
Nah!
So the Weaponization commit isn't planning to subpoena Bill Barr? It's all so confusing.
He should be first
No way in hell. He sees “Mr. speaker.”
Maybe in a dream.
HCR alleges "the difference between officials like Biden and Pence who inadvertently find such documents among their other papers and alert the National Archives and Research Administration (NARA), and those who stonewall NARA and the FBI, as Trump did."
There are slippery assumptions here, highlighting the difference between a historian and a propagandist.
First of all, why does HCR take the assertions of both Pence and Biden at face value? Second, why does HCR ignore Trump's explanation that he declassified the documents that he took? There, perhaps, is the real difference, because Pence and Biden did not have the power to do that. Does HCR assume that Trump either did not declassify the relevant documents and/or that he did so incorrectly? Failure to mention Trump's explanation, while brazenly assuming Trump's guilt, appears to be the mark of a propagandistic opinion groomer.
The Biden case is further marked by the assertion coming from the House Oversight Committee that the Penn Biden Center, where classified documents were found, was the recipient of millions of dollars of anonymous Chinese donations. This raises the question of some form of treason, supposing that Biden or those around him (perhaps Blinken, who was involved with the Buden Center) were being paid to leave classified documents in an area that could be surreptitiously accessed by Chinese spies.
HCR has to have known this, but her silence once again would seem to be the mark of a partisan propagandistic opinion groomer.
https://oversight.house.gov/release/comer-anonymous-chinese-donations-to-upenn-potentially-influenced-biden-administration-policies%EF%BF%BC/
p.s. I publicly called out Trump for brazen murder, as well as the Democrats who condoned this high crime by their silence, here:
https://twitter.com/john_schmeeckle/status/1612773582911815682?s=20&t=5jg_PmIS9CYGL-Ey_yEA9g
Stop posting the same bit over and over-makes you look like a paid troll.
I shared my response to HCR's latest with a number of different individuals, thinking that (1) some of them will consider the thought in my response and perhaps reply; and (2) Many or most of them will not see my response if I just post it as a reply to one single person.
You appear to be a raving lunatic with your bizarre hallucination that I post "elsewhere on other Substack letters." This song goes out to you:
-
https://youtu.be/1Z39KZAryzk
Janet R posts the transparently absurd lie that "he does this all over Substack."
Janet R's inability to have a sane argument does not mean that I can't have useful and well-reasoned exchanges with others.
Beyond that, HCR used the groundless and baseless word "inadvertently" to whitewash what Biden did.
Regarding who has authority to classify and declassify, Darth Vader weighed in, which led to a useful discussion here:
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https://fas.org/blogs/secrecy/2006/02/the_vice_presidents_declassifi/
Especially Qevin. There is no self-reflection as he is a vampire. He thinks of himself as royalty now that he’s got the golden gavel. We will have to wait to see the unraveling as it will take place and apply all of our shiny crosses to these monsters. Drive them back to their coffins from whence they came.
I add Jim Jordan and Cruz to that list.
As a forensic psychologist, I agree! In fact, when he gazes at his imagine in the mirror, he sees a golden calf. They tend to group up together and tear each other a new anus. They face fierce women and they know this???
Nope...mirrors are only for checking hairdos and pancake makeup.
Here’s a good explanation about how documents get classified and why so many end up classified. https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2023-01-24/explainer-the-what-why-how-much-and-how-often-behind-classified-information-in-the-u-s
Thanks for posting the link, Mary. This Explainer clarifies an important point on behalf of the good folk of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA): "... in practice the government agency that created or received the information, such as the CIA or the Department of Energy, oversees its classification and protection." That is, NARA's responsibility for a classified document it didn't originate doesn't begin until the agency that created it relinquishes it - or other documents that establish that that document exists - into NARA's keeping. And the discovery that Trump presidency documents were missing was the fruit not of NARA finding flaws in its own tracking but of archivists working through logs and documents from the Oval Office and other agencies, and realizing that the documentary jigsaw puzzle was missing a lot of crucial pieces.
Thanks, Quizt, for this information about how the individual departments are responsible for the creation and protection of classified documents, not NARA. It sounds as though they classify documents from an abundance of caution, but then fail to adequately police them once classified.
Very enlightening, thank you
You’re very welcome!
You’re very welcome!
Quiverin' Qevin McQarthy is without a doubt the most useless, worthless Speaker of the House in US history. He's so full of shit it's no wonder his eyes are brown.
Lord, hope I live long enough to see him eat dirt. Not retire with a slight stain, as did Delay.
HCR alleges "the difference between officials like Biden and Pence who inadvertently find such documents among their other papers and alert the National Archives and Research Administration (NARA), and those who stonewall NARA and the FBI, as Trump did."
There are slippery assumptions here, highlighting the difference between a historian and a propagandist.
First of all, why does HCR take the assertions of both Pence and Biden at face value? Second, why does HCR ignore Trump's explanation that he declassified the documents that he took? There, perhaps, is the real difference, because Pence and Biden did not have the power to do that. Does HCR assume that Trump either did not declassify the relevant documents and/or that he did so incorrectly? Failure to mention Trump's explanation, while brazenly assuming Trump's guilt, appears to be the mark of a propagandistic opinion groomer.
The Biden case is further marked by the assertion coming from the House Oversight Committee that the Penn Biden Center, where classified documents were found, was the recipient of millions of dollars of anonymous Chinese donations. This raises the question of some form of treason, supposing that Biden or those around him (perhaps Blinken, who was involved with the Buden Center) were being paid to leave classified documents in an area that could be surreptitiously accessed by Chinese spies.
HCR has to have known this, but her silence once again would seem to be the mark of a partisan propagandistic opinion groomer.
https://oversight.house.gov/release/comer-anonymous-chinese-donations-to-upenn-potentially-influenced-biden-administration-policies%EF%BF%BC/
p.s. I publicly called out Trump for brazen murder, as well as the Democrats who condoned this high crime by their silence, here:
https://twitter.com/john_schmeeckle/status/1612773582911815682?s=20&t=5jg_PmIS9CYGL-Ey_yEA9g
Troll Alert noted to Substack.
Stop posting the same bit over and over-makes you look like a paid troll.
I shared my response to HCR's latest with a number of different individuals, thinking that (1) some of them will consider the thought in my response and perhaps reply; and (2) Many or most of them will not see my response if I just post it as a reply to one single person.
"John Schmeekle" what a dumb fucking name for a troll.
I hope that your boorish comment isn't a reflection of your entrenched bigotry. I presented my ethnic origin and my political orientation on a lengthy Twitter thread, starting here:
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https://twitter.com/john_schmeeckle/status/1597903286954524674?s=20&t=KUFEe590OuP1f5e-ewJtFg
Dumb fucking troll reported again
...
A persistent troll indeed, little Schmeekle.
You're not Quiverin' Qevin. :-)
😁
https://youtu.be/kqXSBe-qMGo
✌️
Thanks for this! Here, tucked in bed at 4:30 a.m. PST, I’m singing and dancing…well as much as you can buried under the covers on a cold winter night.
Nights in Winter?
Like this?
https://youtu.be/VX2_HahKoe4
We have that album. Have seen him twice perform.
Today I was discussing politics with a friend of mine who left Iran after the last revolution. The revolution that toppled the Shah of Iran is considered one of the successful revolutions, but look at what has become of Iran since then. She told me that people need to realize more clearly what has been happening in Iran and Afghanistan. Those countries were both taken over by criminals and thugs who planned for years and have become deeply entrenched. They will kill anyone to stay in power. Unfortunately similar circumstances are occurring in quite a few countries. The party of the white supremacists have the same goal and are probably using the same playbook.
No doubt whatsoever, with America leading the way. Bannon’s stated goal…
HCR alleges "the difference between officials like Biden and Pence who inadvertently find such documents among their other papers and alert the National Archives and Research Administration (NARA), and those who stonewall NARA and the FBI, as Trump did."
There are slippery assumptions here, highlighting the difference between a historian and a propagandist.
First of all, why does HCR take the assertions of both Pence and Biden at face value? Second, why does HCR ignore Trump's explanation that he declassified the documents that he took? There, perhaps, is the real difference, because Pence and Biden did not have the power to do that. Does HCR assume that Trump either did not declassify the relevant documents and/or that he did so incorrectly? Failure to mention Trump's explanation, while brazenly assuming Trump's guilt, appears to be the mark of a propagandistic opinion groomer.
The Biden case is further marked by the assertion coming from the House Oversight Committee that the Penn Biden Center, where classified documents were found, was the recipient of millions of dollars of anonymous Chinese donations. This raises the question of some form of treason, supposing that Biden or those around him (perhaps Blinken, who was involved with the Buden Center) were being paid to leave classified documents in an area that could be surreptitiously accessed by Chinese spies.
HCR has to have known this, but her silence once again would seem to be the mark of a partisan propagandistic opinion groomer.
https://oversight.house.gov/release/comer-anonymous-chinese-donations-to-upenn-potentially-influenced-biden-administration-policies%EF%BF%BC/
p.s. I publicly called out Trump for brazen murder, as well as the Democrats who condoned this high crime by their silence, here:
https://twitter.com/john_schmeeckle/status/1612773582911815682?s=20&t=5jg_PmIS9CYGL-Ey_yEA9g
Stop posting the same bit over and over-makes you look like a paid troll.
I shared my response to HCR's latest with a number of different individuals, thinking that (1) some of them will consider the thought in my response and perhaps reply; and (2) Many or most of them will not see my response if I just post it as a reply to one single person.
The fact that some things get over-classified is not an excuse for mishandling the documents. That said, it's clear that the executive branch has not had proper procedures for handling classified materials in place for a very long time. It wouldn't surprise me at all if this problem has been there since the Johnson administration. It needs to be fixed. Perhaps the one good thing that hopefully will come out of this, is an implementation of proper controls and perhaps ensuring that it doesn't happen again.
There is a bigger issue though. It's not ok to let this sort of things slide for presidents and vice presidents, while others have been severely punished for it. If someone in the service or at a defense contractor were to be caught so carelessly handling such materials, not only would they have their clearance revoked, they would be arrested on the spot. At the very least, they would lose their jobs and not be able to work on a classified program ever again. There's no tolerance for this sort of thing down in the ranks at all - not even a tiny little bit. In the meantime, I think some conviction reviews are in order, and anyone who has a record for having mishandling materials, and for whom their case record clearly shows that they did so unintentionally, is owed a pardon. The law needs to be applied equally to all.
Craig, I wrote the following comment "in quotes" before I spotted your astute post, which I totally agree with. While I believe that classification is sometimes used frivolously, a document detailing what we know about an ally's nuclear capabilities is clearly sensitive, so my question remains valid, I think. And the subtext is "has there always been a double standard, or have we grown lax"?
"A long time ago …. (in a galaxy that now seems far away) …. I had a high security clearance which was required to perform my duties at a large aerospace company. I have the clear recollection of standing at a window at the on-site security lockup, signing chits identifying the exact document being checked out, its level of classification, date, my identifying info, signature, etc. These documents were completed in triplicate and I received only one of the copies which bore strict instructions to retain that copy for a decade, as I recall, even after the document was returned and signed off as such under penalty of fine and inprisonment. I have no delusions that politicians at the level of Vice President and above stand at such virtual windows today, or ever did for that matter; surely they’ll send a staffer with the appropriate clearance to fetch these documents. And who knows how many hands that document will see on its way to the politician. But still, there was an audit trail. So when I read about all these classified documents showing up in unlikely places, I’m confused. Have the rules changed? Is there perhaps another standard applied to those in high elected office? How can these documents just go missing, and for years? And what of the lowly staffer whose name (and derriere) is on the line?"
Thanks LeMoine. I've been through similar things on the ICBM and ASW programs at Boeing. I was a communications architect and analyst, and reasonably good at it, so I would see things in the system architecture that I wasn't supposed to know about. One time I made the mistake in a secure briefing meeting of asking a question about what I thought I was seeing (one mission having been created to disguise the existence of another one). That led to a very unpleasant afternoon of being read the riot act about not lending voice to such things, since only about one or two folks in the meeting had been briefed into that reality. Needless to say, I did not make that mistake again. This stuff is extremely serious. Very good people can and do lose their lives over even small mistakes. I think it's pretty clear that the executive branch simply does not have a system of classified information custody and auditing. That's appalling.
I guess we're soul brothers Craig. I worked on the AWACS program at Boeing, circa 1973. I think we are in agreement that the civilian political establishment doesn't play by the same rules the as the rest of us. It's a shame. Too much at stake to play that fast and loose.
Wow, good to meet you LeMoine. I knew a couple engineers on AWACS in the 80s when we were doing the Saudi and Japan programs. One was a climbing buddy.
Craig, I think you're forgetting who's at the levers of Congress right now. I share your wishful thinking, but realist in me knows that r's don't know how, don't care to know how to govern.
This one is not on Congress, but rather a failure to follow procedure in the executive branch, and it clearly has nothing to do with which party was in power. Obviously, it was more of a problem when there was an undisciplined slob in the oval office, but that really doesn't excuse the lack of basic discipline on the part of everyone else. Someplace along the line, the basic training in the procedures for handling classified materials was lost. My suspicion is that it could have begun as far back as Johnson, although, Carter, having been a submarine commander, would have known better, and run a tighter ship. And obviously the same would have been true of Eisenhower and Kennedy, both of whom were military officers with wartime command experience.
It also goes to what we need to demand of leadership, which is to set the proper example. I was disappointed that Biden was slow to properly react, but I think that Zients' appointment will lead to the necessary changes.
Look, I'm a big fan of Biden, but he is human and he clearly hasn't understood what the procedures are, and it looks like this goes back a couple of decades. I would have thought that having been on the Senate Foreign Relations committee, he would have known better, but clearly that was not the case. So one has to wonder if the same sloppiness exists over on the Hill. Then there is the decision leaks over at SCOTUS. It would seem like the whole of the civilian parts of the government simply don't take these things seriously enough, nor abide by the rules they put in place for regular government employees and contractors to follow. If it wasn't so serious, this whole bloody mess could be mistaken for a John Cleese comedy routine.
Craig, your last sentence is spot-on & gave me a chuckle. The whole thing makes my head spin….and you are right, it’s dead serious. There is a good reason for protocols, procedures and rules & regs….seems like folks have been damn sloppy about following them. I hope this is an executive branch wake-up call.
And what of senators and House members? Are they some times given classified material
? Are those documents tracked until they’re returned?
HCR alleges "the difference between officials like Biden and Pence who inadvertently find such documents among their other papers and alert the National Archives and Research Administration (NARA), and those who stonewall NARA and the FBI, as Trump did."
There are slippery assumptions here, highlighting the difference between a historian and a propagandist.
First of all, why does HCR take the assertions of both Pence and Biden at face value? Second, why does HCR ignore Trump's explanation that he declassified the documents that he took? There, perhaps, is the real difference, because Pence and Biden did not have the power to do that. Does HCR assume that Trump either did not declassify the relevant documents and/or that he did so incorrectly? Failure to mention Trump's explanation, while brazenly assuming Trump's guilt, appears to be the mark of a propagandistic opinion groomer.
The Biden case is further marked by the assertion coming from the House Oversight Committee that the Penn Biden Center, where classified documents were found, was the recipient of millions of dollars of anonymous Chinese donations. This raises the question of some form of treason, supposing that Biden or those around him (perhaps Blinken, who was involved with the Buden Center) were being paid to leave classified documents in an area that could be surreptitiously accessed by Chinese spies.
HCR has to have known this, but her silence once again would seem to be the mark of a partisan propagandistic opinion groomer.
https://oversight.house.gov/release/comer-anonymous-chinese-donations-to-upenn-potentially-influenced-biden-administration-policies%EF%BF%BC/
p.s. I publicly called out Trump for brazen murder, as well as the Democrats who condoned this high crime by their silence, here:
https://twitter.com/john_schmeeckle/status/1612773582911815682?s=20&t=5jg_PmIS9CYGL-Ey_yEA9g
Stop posting the same bit over and over-makes you look like a paid troll.
I shared my response to HCR's latest with a number of different individuals, thinking that (1) some of them will consider the thought in my response and perhaps reply; and (2) Many or most of them will not see my response if I just post it as a reply to one single person.
I’ll believe it when I see Trump standing out in the middle of a Georgia onion patch hoeing weeds in an ill-fitting polyester jumpsuit on a nice, Georgia 115° afternoon. And not one minute before. 
I like that visual.
It's beautiful. He'd melt right down to nothing. Think I'm gonna cry.
Think of his hair all soggy and stuck to his scalp--what ever will he do without $60,000 worth of hair care a year!
What hair? 😁
He won’t know duchess end of the hoe to use, or hold onto. He probably doesn’t know what a hoe even is, other than one of his wives!
Laugh out loud time. Thank you.
Ouch! (For the wives)
It already seemed to me with the Biden papers, but is more clear that the systems for viewing and storing sensitive government papers need updating, just as the systems at the IRS do. This might be in part a problem of the underfunding of government that has been ongoing in the extreme since Ronald Reagan took office and pretty much told us that the best government was no government. I have always wondered why Republicans or Libertarians even run for office if this is what they believe. It seems pretty hypocritical to me, but I have grown to understand the nature of Republicans is that they really do want government but only if it can be used as a tool to serve their purposes. It is obvious that Biden and Pence are in a different class from Trump and also obvious that one should be looking at the papers of other former high ranking politicians to see what papers they possess. I am going to be very concerned if MTG gets her hands on any confidential papers because she is a treasonous person in word and deed. That goes for many of her fellow Republicans whom McCarthy has assigned to sensitive committees yet one cannot trust them farther than one can throw the Burj Khalifa. I find it interesting that McCarthy is able to create all Republican committees. Is this allowed? Doesn't he have to let Jeffries appoint the Democrats? If not, he is setting a new precident. Is that one that Republicans want to have stand, or do they assume they will be in power into perpetuity. Perhaps they imagine they will destroy our nation in these next two years so any future will be a mute point.--I think I mentioned that my 17-year-old daughter just gave a presentation on Monday in German comparing the freedom of Austrian and American youth. She claimed that Austrian youth have more independence. Because they have a very low crime rate their parents and other adults allow them a lot of autonomy early on. This is something she observed in her exchange there in her junior year, but also was backed up in her research too. She was taking public transportation by herself at night to get home without being concerned. Austria has a safety index of 5 on the Global Peace Index Scale while the USA has one of 129, so this feeling of safety that she had in Austria was not just imagined it was real. Here in Chicago every weekend we read of people being shot. Then, this morning I saw a headline which read, "Three Weeks and 39 Mass Shootings. This is America in 2023." The sentence the struck me most was, "Firearm injuries are now the leading cause of death among people younger than 24 in the United States, according to a study published in the December 2022 edition of Pediatrics, the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics." Wow! My daughter was onto something with her thesis. She ended her talk by saying that all teens want to feel safe and be able to go out and explore their world independently, but that is going to be difficult for American youth to do until we make our country safer.
I appreciate the comparison with Austria. Would also appreciate paragraph breaks for easier reading.
Yes, it is absurd that the leading cause of death of under 24s is firearm injuries. Maybe people with guns kill people?
I learn so much from posters here I am happy to ignore the grammer and format of writings.
I am grateful for the intelligent convo and would never criticize.
I hope it was not taken as criticism. I meant it as a request. I often skip the longer posts if there are no paragraphs, but not Linda Weide’s.
Don't know how to do paragraphing in Substack. I have seen others doing it, but it does not work for me. How do you get your posts to format in paragraphs?
Shift-return creates a blank line to separate paragraphs.
another on an iPad.
If you need to press "Post" in order to submit a comment, you can probably use your device's Return key to create a paragraph break. The key (so to speak) is to do it twice.
My European friends say that Austria is one of the best countries to live in. If your daughter can move there, she will be happy and safe. Maybe you can move there, too!
She was asked by her test examiners during her presentation comparing Austrian and the USA if she misses being in Austria, and she told them yes. I believe that is true. She misses the freedom she has when there, although she also likes so many things about here because this is her home. She feels that it is important to development that particularly teens get more independence.
In our community one has to get parents to drive one places or pick one up at night because it is too unsafe. In Vienna she was able to just get around on her own with her relatively inexpensive transportation pass. She loved that sense of being able to plan what she wanted to do and just do it. She wishes that for everyone here. There were other aspects to this as well, which is that Austrian students do not get as much homework and have more free time. This is true in Germany too. A study shows that the Austrian and German youth are spending time with friends just hanging out. This is good for de-stressing. So, it might explain why she has such a sense of well being there.
We have a house in Germany, and my daughter is going to go to University there next year. One of her classmates from Chicago is going to school in Germany as well, which is nice for her. So, from Germany, which is also safer, she will be able to visit her friends in Vienna regularly by train.
I agree that teens’ development here suffers from their having to be driven everywhere. As a tourist in Europe and Japan, I have seen elementary-age kids getting themselves to school, soccer practice, etc., on public transportation. Oh, for trains! So convenient! No parking problems, no traffic jams. I wish we had not gone the whole hog for automobiles, but the oil industry had to have its needs met, I guess.
It also makes parents too busy. I know families with multiple children who have several sitters so that they can drive the different children to their various activities. The German language study showing that 67% of youth prefer to spend time hanging out as their first choice, are having a lifestyle that few American youth are afforded. I feel that if we felt the USA were safer, we would allow our children to just be instead of signing them up for so many activities. These activities become the constant child care. This is known as helicoptering. There is a German series on this kind of parenting. It takes away from children developing autonomy. My daughter also pointed out that in Austria when a teacher was absent they just dismissed the class. No way would that happen here. They have to have coverage because they don't trust the children to be on their own. Again, there the children have already had a lot of practice being responsible for themselves. When this first happened, my daughter was super surprised and somewhat shocked. But later on she came to appreciate it, because she felt differently about herself. More trusted. She liked that.
“Perhaps they imagine they will destroy our nation in these next two years…”. Exactly, or at least “have their way” with all of us. Back to the clown show
Brava to your daughter!
In my opinion, the press is subjecting its audiences to far too much baseless chatter about the now three cases of high-ranking elected officials found to have classified information in their possession outside legally-prescribed control regimes. The press does not know with certainty how any of these security failures came to be and are using their limited imaginations to flood readers and listeners with unsubstantiated possible explanations of what happened. The talking heads brought in by the major networks to be quizzed by clueless anchors should know better than to participate. I fear they all could be missing the mark badly.
I'm content to trust the two -- and soon possibly three -- Special Counsels to do their jobs and wait patiently for their reports.
The media is now Infotainment. News Journalism is dying
all but the nail in the coffin.
HCR alleges "the difference between officials like Biden and Pence who inadvertently find such documents among their other papers and alert the National Archives and Research Administration (NARA), and those who stonewall NARA and the FBI, as Trump did."
There are slippery assumptions here, highlighting the difference between a historian and a propagandist.
First of all, why does HCR take the assertions of both Pence and Biden at face value? Second, why does HCR ignore Trump's explanation that he declassified the documents that he took? There, perhaps, is the real difference, because Pence and Biden did not have the power to do that. Does HCR assume that Trump either did not declassify the relevant documents and/or that he did so incorrectly? Failure to mention Trump's explanation, while brazenly assuming Trump's guilt, appears to be the mark of a propagandistic opinion groomer.
The Biden case is further marked by the assertion coming from the House Oversight Committee that the Penn Biden Center, where classified documents were found, was the recipient of millions of dollars of anonymous Chinese donations. This raises the question of some form of treason, supposing that Biden or those around him (perhaps Blinken, who was involved with the Buden Center) were being paid to leave classified documents in an area that could be surreptitiously accessed by Chinese spies.
HCR has to have known this, but her silence once again would seem to be the mark of a partisan propagandistic opinion groomer.
https://oversight.house.gov/release/comer-anonymous-chinese-donations-to-upenn-potentially-influenced-biden-administration-policies%EF%BF%BC/
p.s. I publicly called out Trump for brazen murder, as well as the Democrats who condoned this high crime by their silence, here:
https://twitter.com/john_schmeeckle/status/1612773582911815682?s=20&t=5jg_PmIS9CYGL-Ey_yEA9g
Mr. Schmeeckle:
I am refraining from calling out any particular individual person who is publishing or broadcasting on the topic of classified material found to be in private or non-governmental premises by any current or previous office holder. It does seem to me that no one writing or speaking on this topic has all the facts...nor enough of them. Name calling is unwarranted. I do concede before you point it out that my use of "clueless anchors" and "talking heads" was not polite and over-stepped the standard I just declared.
For Mr. Schmeeckle and all others who read my initial response: I've pointed out that the chatter I've read and heard so far does not fully envelop the range of possibilities -- from zero damage to exceptionally grave damage to U.S. national security. The extent of possible damage to the United States by possible compromise of such information held until recently by present and former officer holders is not publicly known and cannot be quantified publicly at this time.
As I pointed out as the bottom line of my comment, U.S. government professionals are being formally designated to investigate these matters, and I will be patient to await their findings and counsel others to do the same. Neither the public nor the press should interfere with nor compromise their work. I do believe in free speech and the right to ask any and all questions. However, I do not recognize a right by members of the public nor the press to know any information the compromise of which might cause "damage" to the United States -- the classification standard for CONFIDENTIAL information -- nor any information more sensitive than that.
Here is what should be happening in the area of classifying and protecting U.S. Government information: https://www.archives.gov/isoo/policy-documents/cnsi-eo.html#three
This is a 2009 document, and I wouldn't be surprised if it had been updated since then but missed by me in my google search. If it hasn't been updated, it probably should be. The extent to which this document is implemented seems to me questionable.
Here are the officials who should be exercising Original Classification Authority, at least as designated by President Barack Obama. If President Trump and President Biden updated this listing, I missed theirs in my google search.
Both documents are in the public domain and can be read and understood by juniors and seniors in high school. (C-SPAN might do well to conduct a tutorial.)
“But I cannot put partisan loyalty ahead of national security, and I cannot simply recognize years of service as the sole criteria for membership on this essential committee. Integrity matters more.” I can't stop laughing. When and if McCarthy loses his seat in Congress (and it can't come soon enough) he should try stand up comedy. Thank you Dr. Richardson for the report comparing Biden and Pence, 2 real American politicians with that orange clown the trumpster. Dr. Reich is spot on demonstrating the pretend mainstream media trying their best to hold a false equivalency. While I'm not a fan of Mike Pence religious political stance, he is a gentleman,
Wasn’t his “years of service,” his campaign slogan for House Speaker?
Surely you don't expect integrity to be part of part of Kevin McCarthy's character? I apologize to the rest of the country that this particular nincompoop is a Californian, I can assure you he does NOT represent my District.
Perhaps he knows how to act like a gentleman when it is to his advantage. I guess I'm glad he didn't actually get hanged.
HCR alleges "the difference between officials like Biden and Pence who inadvertently find such documents among their other papers and alert the National Archives and Research Administration (NARA), and those who stonewall NARA and the FBI, as Trump did."
There are slippery assumptions here, highlighting the difference between a historian and a propagandist.
First of all, why does HCR take the assertions of both Pence and Biden at face value? Second, why does HCR ignore Trump's explanation that he declassified the documents that he took? There, perhaps, is the real difference, because Pence and Biden did not have the power to do that. Does HCR assume that Trump either did not declassify the relevant documents and/or that he did so incorrectly? Failure to mention Trump's explanation, while brazenly assuming Trump's guilt, appears to be the mark of a propagandistic opinion groomer.
The Biden case is further marked by the assertion coming from the House Oversight Committee that the Penn Biden Center, where classified documents were found, was the recipient of millions of dollars of anonymous Chinese donations. This raises the question of some form of treason, supposing that Biden or those around him (perhaps Blinken, who was involved with the Buden Center) were being paid to leave classified documents in an area that could be surreptitiously accessed by Chinese spies.
HCR has to have known this, but her silence once again would seem to be the mark of a partisan propagandistic opinion groomer.
https://oversight.house.gov/release/comer-anonymous-chinese-donations-to-upenn-potentially-influenced-biden-administration-policies%EF%BF%BC/
p.s. I publicly called out Trump for brazen murder, as well as the Democrats who condoned this high crime by their silence, here:
https://twitter.com/john_schmeeckle/status/1612773582911815682?s=20&t=5jg_PmIS9CYGL-Ey_yEA9g
Thank you HCR, I really appreciate your ability to synthesize the daily info and to hold on to so many disparate pieces of information. You are the OG as my son would say. My best to all of you!!
HCR alleges "the difference between officials like Biden and Pence who inadvertently find such documents among their other papers and alert the National Archives and Research Administration (NARA), and those who stonewall NARA and the FBI, as Trump did."
There are slippery assumptions here, highlighting the difference between a historian and a propagandist.
First of all, why does HCR take the assertions of both Pence and Biden at face value? Second, why does HCR ignore Trump's explanation that he declassified the documents that he took? There, perhaps, is the real difference, because Pence and Biden did not have the power to do that. Does HCR assume that Trump either did not declassify the relevant documents and/or that he did so incorrectly? Failure to mention Trump's explanation, while brazenly assuming Trump's guilt, appears to be the mark of a propagandistic opinion groomer.
The Biden case is further marked by the assertion coming from the House Oversight Committee that the Penn Biden Center, where classified documents were found, was the recipient of millions of dollars of anonymous Chinese donations. This raises the question of some form of treason, supposing that Biden or those around him (perhaps Blinken, who was involved with the Buden Center) were being paid to leave classified documents in an area that could be surreptitiously accessed by Chinese spies.
HCR has to have known this, but her silence once again would seem to be the mark of a partisan propagandistic opinion groomer.
https://oversight.house.gov/release/comer-anonymous-chinese-donations-to-upenn-potentially-influenced-biden-administration-policies%EF%BF%BC/
p.s. I publicly called out Trump for brazen murder, as well as the Democrats who condoned this high crime by their silence, here:
https://twitter.com/john_schmeeckle/status/1612773582911815682?s=20&t=5jg_PmIS9CYGL-Ey_yEA9g