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Imagine this: There's "escalating distrust" inside Trump's Florida bunker

After reminding ... and reminding ... his followers on Truth that he "got more votes, by far, than any sitting President in the history of our Country!," Trump again ... and again ... wrote that the "unjustified," "unannounced RAID" on his warm, inviting Mar-a-Lago home was executed "by a very large number of gun toting [sic] FBI Agents, and the Department of 'Justice.'"

Hence he wants "TRANSPARENCY." Indeed he "call[ed] for the immediate release of the completely Unredacted Affidavit pertaining to this horrible and shocking BREAK-IN." Another exclamation point followed his demand that "the Judge" — disappointingly, only one cap — must recuse himself.  

But TRANSPARENCY is not what's really BUGGING Trump & Friends, some of whom may not be all that friendly. The Guardian reports that "escalating distrust and rampant speculation about an informant has started to reach dizzying levels, even by the standards of the Trump presidency." 

First, writes The Guardian, suspicions fell on Nicholas Luna, a former Trump "body-man" who quit around March, and Molly Michael, a former chief of Trump's White House Oval Office operations. She's due to resign but is still on the payroll. One source said "her departure – like Luna’s – is not acrimonious," which is smart in view of Trump's inexhaustible vindictiveness.

Then came suspicions of Mar-a-Lago employees and "other staff," said the source, "seemingly in part because the FBI knew exactly which rooms and where in the rooms they needed to search."

By last weekend, "following the revelation that the FBI removed a leather-bound box from the property and already knew the location of Trump’s safe, scrutiny shifted once more to anyone else who had not yet been suspected – including members of Trump’s family."

Who knows? Could be. In a rat's nest on board a ship being swallowed by mile-high waftures, familial loyalty ranks pretty low. But the resort staff — the butler did it — seem more likely to be the usual suspects. Don't you think?   

I need some help to eliminate the potential time spent away from writing on politics and international affairs. Because of recently acquired costs, I have reluctantly decided to work part-time as a substitute teacher to relieve the financial stress of this site's continuing operation. For now that seems the only way I can otherwise pay expenses. I hope to keep time spent away from writing to a minimum, but that, of course, depends on your help. So I'm extending this plea. Whether it's $5 or $500 or any amount between, please chip something into the kitty. Just visit the "Make A Donation" button in the sidebar. Making a much-needed contribution takes only a minute, and you will have my everlasting thanks. For now, thank you, very much. —PM   

Ukrainian guerrillas are humiliating Russia with mammoth explosives, car bombs, booby traps and targeted killings

Andrew Kramer, who covers former Soviet satellite states for The NY Times, writes about Ukraine's partisans, who slip "back and forth across the front lines ... and in recent weeks have taken an ever more prominent role in the war, rattling Russian forces by helping deliver humiliating blows in occupied areas they thought were safe."

Last week, in a welcome shock to the world, underground fighters carried out a destructive attack on an airbase in Crimea. Said a Ukrainian guerrilla to Kramer, "The goal is to show the occupiers that they are not at home, that they should not settle in, that they should not sleep comfortably." Then, as I wrote on Tuesday, there were massive explosions at a Russian ammunition depot on the occupied peninsula, "delivering another embarrassing blow to Moscow’s forces." That attack destroyed power lines, railroad tracks and homes, while almost certainly killing some unknown number of Russians. 

"They sneak down darkened alleys to set explosives," reports Kramer. In some cases, the partisans "identify Russian targets for Ukrainian artillery and long-range rockets provided by the United States." In others cases— those too distant for artillery and rockets — "they blow up rail lines and assassinate officials they consider collaborators with the Russians."

Kramer notes that even before Putin's invasion, the Ukrainian military began training resistance fighters. President Zelensky's investment in clandestine manpower is now an exceptionally valuable one as his forces prepare for a counteroffensive in the southern region of Kherson. "With little movement of the front lines, insurgent activity is now intensifying, as the fighters strike stealthily in environs they know intimately, using car bombs, booby traps and targeted killings with pistols — and then blending into the local population," reports the Times correspondent.

He also notes that Melitopol, a city 140 miles east of Kherson, is for now the epicenter of resistance fighting, where partisans recently struck with explosives for seven days in a row. They "sneaked through the town at night to booby-trap a car in the parking lot of a Russian-controlled police station" and, "carrying wire cutters, tape and fishing line, the fighters moved through courtyards and back alleys to avoid Russian checkpoints."

These are real John le Carré operations in espionage. "They first cut an electrical wire, blacking out a streetlight, then dashed quickly into the darkness where they planted a bomb, wrapped in tape with the sticky side facing outward, into a wheel well," writes Kramer with a novelistic flourish. "The fishing line was taped both to the inside of the wheel and to a detonator, rigging the bomb to explode when the wheel turned."

The thrust of behind-the-lines Ukrainian strikes, however, is less to kill than to send the message — "You are never safe." But Kramer observes that "not all their activities are violent." Ukraine maintains an underground branch called Yellow Ribbon, "which posts leaflets and spray paints graffiti." To protect vital information in potential interrogations of their activities, partisan cells are kept unaware of each other's identity.

Only physicians, firefighters and utility workers are seen as non-collaborators; Ukrainian police, government employees and especially teachers who freely cooperate with the Russians are another story, said the guerrilla to the Times reporter.

"The Russians want to teach by their program, not the truth," said the underground fighter. "A child is vulnerable to propaganda and if raised in this program, will become an idiot like the Russians. A teacher who agrees to teach by the Russian program is a collaborator." The partisans will not attack teachers, he said, but have sought to humiliate them through leaflets they often post on utility poles with dark warnings ... as part of their psychological operations."

The situation in southern Ukraine is akin to that of France during its Nazi occupation. Recently a poster went up with school principals' names and photographs, publicizing this threat: "For collaborating with the Russians, there will be payback."

From the "Intellectual Conservative," a hilariously anti-intellectual assessment

Peter Lemiska's bio on RenewAmerica.com reads that he served in the U.S. Secret Service, and "like most of his contemporaries, he's always loved his country, and is deeply dismayed by this new and insidious anti-American sentiment threatening to destroy it."

Thus, writing for the ironically named Intellectual Conservative, Peter Lemiska is baffled by a July Monmouth University poll which "indicates" — indicates? — "that the vast majority of Americans - 88 percent, in fact - believe the country is on the wrong track. [They findings] suggest that Americans are fed up with Joe Biden’s radical agenda and that the red wave in November, predicted by many, would bring the country back on course.

"Yet incredibly – paradoxically - the same Monmouth University poll shows that by a narrow margin, most people prefer to see Democrats in control of Congress.... Perhaps the polling data is flawed, or maybe we’re misinterpreting it."

Peter, you're not misinterpreting it. You just don't know how to read a poll or comprehend its glaring presupposition — that most Americans are even more "dismayed" by your party's hellish journey into an authoritarian abyss.   

But get a load of this further insight from Mr. Limeska: "Blind party loyalty probably also has something to do with the polling contradiction. For some, party loyalty overrides everything – even common sense."

From that stunningly blinkered view of what troubles everyday Americans — not the authoritarian Republican Party but socially thoughtful Democrats; not Trumpian despotism but Medicare's negotiation of drug prices; not the Big Lie but unambiguous facts — I skipped straight to Peter's conclusion: "In a democracy, the voters get the government they deserve. If we don’t change direction soon, we will get a government that no longer resembles a democracy." 

That much, at least, this foolish anti-intellectual understands.

A nuclear weapons historian looks at Trump's reputed declassification of the nation's top secrets

On the titled question of, "Can Trump Just Declare Nuclear Secrets Unclassified?" Lawfare's Alex Wellerstein, a historian of nuclear weapons, answers at prior length: 

One of the difficulties with all of these issues is that there is essentially no precedent in applying them to the president. Some precedent exists for presidents trying to make certain things secret at will, or for the government trying to censor the publication of secrets, but really none when it comes to presidents asserting that they have declassified something secret and thus cannot be charged for mishandling it. It just hasn’t ever been an issue before that I can see. That means that it’s difficult to predict how the courts would rule on it, because on top of the First Amendment issues, you are also getting into deep questions about the power of the president—a nebulous area when talking about national security issues. Though, again, usually the issue has gone in the other direction—presidents expanding secrecy, not reducing it....

One interesting consequence, though, of Trump’s current defense is that if he did truly declassify these documents, then they ought to be obtainable, at least in part, under the Freedom of Information Act. Are Trump, his lawyers, and his defenders suggesting that these documents should be publishable?...

It does lead to the complicated question of "graymail" though: if Trump were to be prosecuted for these documents, and did claim that he had declassified them, and was successful in this claim, would this not mean the documents were truly declassified and thus could be compelled to release? Depending on the sensitivity of the documents, would that be enough to convince the government to avoid prosecution by itself? Without knowing more about the contents of the documents, this is all very idle speculation, but they do raise a lot of genuinely thorny and genuinely novel legal problems.

Only Trump could have created such bizarre entanglements — the most interesting of which is the possibility of nuclear weapons' top secrets being subject to the Freedom of Information Act.

The first person to submit a request? Kim Jong-un. 

Jared Kushner's "Breaking Bad ... Really Bad" book

​​​​​Amazon is hawking Jared Kushner's "Breaking History" — due out 23 August — as a "must-read," "a fast-paced and surprisingly candid account," and "a true historical thriller." The memoir "provides the most honest, nuanced, and definitive understanding of a presidency that will be studied for generations," says Jeff Bezos' website.

This is doubtful. What is certain to be studied instead are the innumerable trashings of Kushner's musings, beginning with that of The NY Times' long-serving book critic, Dwight Garner. There are bad reviews and there are harsh reviews, but Garner's is a splendidly unique work of bilious force and merited hostility. It will also save readers $35 and hours of 500-page agony.     

Garner opens his "Breaking History" review with a reflection on the volume's title, which "in its thoroughgoing lack of self-awareness, matches this book’s contents. Kushner writes as if he believes foreign dignitaries (and less-than dignitaries) prized him in the White House because he was the fresh ideas guy, the starting point guard, the dimpled go-getter. He betrays little cognizance that he was in demand because, as a landslide of other reporting has demonstrated, he was in over his head, unable to curb his avarice."

We were of course aware of America's most famous son-in-law's overabundance of self-regard, but somewhat unaware of his outright self-deification. Observes Garner: "Kushner, poignantly, repeatedly beats his own drum. He recalls every drop of praise he’s ever received....

"You turn the pages and find, almost at random, colleagues, some of them famous, trying to be kind, uttering things like [in part]: 'I don’t know how you do this every day on so many topics. That was really hard! You deserve an award for all you’ve done' ... 'I’ve said before, and I’ll say again. This agreement would not have happened if it wasn’t for Jared' ... 'Jared’s a genius. People complain about nepotism — I’m the one who got the steal here.'"

But Garner's the one with the final word: "A therapist might call these cries for help."

Suffering through more of the memoir's idiosyncratic cluelessness, the critic notes that "Breaking History" is "soulless" — a fitting description of the criminal Trump family's members and, in legal terminology, any who knowingly and willfully married into the family. "Kushner looks like a mannequin, and he writes like one — [providing a] peculiarly selective appraisal of Donald J. Trump’s term in office," writes Garner. "Kushner almost entirely ignores the chaos, the alienation of allies, the breaking of laws and norms, the flirtations with dictators, the comprehensive loss of America’s moral leadership, and so on, ad infinitum.... 

"Kushner’s fealty to Trump remains absolute. Reading this book reminded me of watching a cat lick a dog’s eye goo.... Once in the White House, Kushner became Little Jack Horner, placing a thumb in everyone else’s pie, and he wonders why he was disliked. He read Sun Tzu and imagined he was becoming a warrior. It was because he had Trump’s ear, however, that he won nearly every time he locked antlers with a rival."

Continues Garner: "Kushner was pleased that the other adults in the room, including the White House chie of staff Reince Priebus, the White House counsel Don McGahn and the later chief of staff John Kelly, left or were ejected because they tried, patriotically, to exclude him from meetings he shouldn’t have been in." 

Of his subject's eternal immaturity, Garner writes: "The tone is college admissions essay. Typical sentence: 'In an environment of maximum pressure, I learned to ignore the noise and distractions and instead to push for results that would improve lives.' Every political cliché gets a fresh shampooing.... There’s a page or two about Kushner’s time at Harvard. He omits the fact that he was admitted after his father pledged $2.5 million to the college. If Kushner can recall a professor or a book that influenced him while in Cambridge, he doesn’t say. Instead, he recalls doing his first real estate deals while there."

Garner also notes that the book appears to lack marketability. "[Kushner is] a pair of dimples without a demographic.... You finish 'Breaking History' wondering: Who is this book for? There’s not enough red meat for the MAGA crowd, and Kushner has never appealed to them anyway."

Perhaps Son-in-Law's memoir will at least be cherished by students of abnormal psychology. "What a queasy-making book to have in your hands. Once someone has happily worked alongside one of the most flagrant and systematic and powerful liars in this country’s history, how can anyone be expected to believe a word they say?"

Kushner's literary effort required a ghostwriter — Trump and Ted Cruz speechwriter Brittany Baldwin — a foreseeable employment, given his Father-in-Law-like obsession with self-aggrandizement over the practice of organized thought. He mentions this only in the acknowledgments. The indispensable Literary Hub reminds us that "Breaking History"'s publisher, Broadside Books, is "a lamentable neocon imprint of Harper Collins which boasts a stable full of prize grievance ponies like Charlie Kirk, Tomi Lahren, Ben Shapiro, and Dinesh D’Souza." Citing Mr. D.D. alone would have alerted us to Broadside's subliteracy bottom-feeding.  

In closing, I'll venture there's one good thing that can be said about Jared Kushner's "Breaking History." This memoir of a bumbling ninny inspired the Times' Dwight Garner to pen an altogether enjoyable, brutally bad review.    

The face of the Republican Party: Liz Cheney out, Sarah Palin in

What can one say about the anticlimactic drama of it all? Rep. Liz Cheney had been losing her race to reelection for so many months, its finish — with the Trump-darling competitor more than 37 strides ahead — elicits little emotion.  

Said Cheney in her concession speech: "Our nation is barreling once again toward crisis, lawlessness and violence." It's a good thing she now recognizes these dangers, which unhappily she overlooked when her father, Dick Cheney, was fomenting crisis, lawlessness and violence in Iraq during the Bush II administration. Still, good for her — today.

The Wall Street Journal notes that Liz is "the last House Republican to face a primary among the 10 who voted to impeach Mr. Trump for his actions related to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot." Only two have survived. Thus "the other losses and retirements mean that if Republicans regain control of the House in November, as expected, the caucus will be dominated by members loyal to the former president."

With his customary grace, Trump extended what he thinks is a joyous farewell to Ms. Cheney: "This is a wonderful result for America, and a complete rebuke of the Unselect Committee of political Hacks and Thugs. Now [Cheney] can finally disappear into the depths of political oblivion." Hardly. I imagine Liz is already interviewing for her presidential campaign staffing.

And then there is Palin, as in, Sarah, positively the dumbest, goofiest, most inept politician to ever emerge from the hyperborean wilds. She made the cut for the state's only House seat in the general election. The WSJ reports that "a separate special election" — to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Rep. Don Young — "has yet to be called."

If elected and she chooses to serve, Ms. Palin will look forward to quitting this job, as she did her governor's job in 2009. See: goofy.  

Said the dumbest, most inept pol at a recent tele-rally with America's meanest, most corrupt pol: "Let the RINOs and their corrupt establishment buddies come after me. I’m going to keep fighting for you." Dear Sarah, my dear, dear Sarah, ain't nobody gonna be payin' no attention to you's in the GOP Hovel.  

A Republican senator previews two years of a Republican House

Liz Wheeler is a political commentator who for five years hosted OAN's "Tipping Point with Liz Wheeler." She left OAN in 2020 to host the podcast "The Liz Wheeler Show." Liz is best known for loving to use her name in broadcast titles. Anyway, the execrable Ted Cruz appeared yesterday on ... The Liz Wheeler Show!  

Sen. Cruz (R-TX) predicts “significant chance” Biden & AG Garland get impeached after the FBI’s lawful search of Mar-a-Lago:

“The consequence of the Democrats politicizing impeachment … when there’s a Republican Congress, the pressure to impeach Biden is going to be enormous.” pic.twitter.com/s93Yz6JAkq

— The Recount (@therecount) August 16, 2022

After Ted nonchalantly reveals the "significant chance" of our seeing impeachments of Attorney General Garland and President Biden, he adds as the first target of Republican vindictiveness the secretary of homeland security, Alejandro Mayorkas, for the "absolute lawlessness on our southern border." 

Ted then notes that "the Democrats are not going to vote to convict anyone." There's a bit of difference between Dems and GOPers' indifference toward convictions in the Senate, however. The former have no good reason to oust a trio of America's top leaders, while the latter reveled in exonerating America's top mobster — atop heaps of damning evidence.

As for Garland, the "case" for his impeachment "is growing by leaps and bounds every day." His lawlessness (yes, Garland too) and politicization of the Department of Justice is "compelling." The A.G.'s impeachment is slated to follow Mayorkas', intones Ted.

And "there's a very real possibility that Biden is impeached," he says. I'd put the possibility somewhere north of 100 percent myself. Tit for tat, you know — House Republicans never let a sour, despicable opportunity to make jackasses of themselves pass them by.  

And just why must President Biden be impeached? You guessed it. Lawlessness! 

Also for Afghanistan and of course his politicization of DOJ. "But more fundamentally," philosophizes Ted, Biden's pointless indictment will be for "the consequence of Democrats politicizing impeachment and impeaching Trump twice" — only for the hell of it, one gathers — which means a steamrolling effect in a Republican House. 

So there we have it, according to Sen. Ted Cruz: endless hearings, stupid investigations and mind-bending impeachments for two solid years, courtesy the U.S. House of Representatives — and all of it merely to please the base.

The world's happiest - and saddest - countries

I'm a trifle late in reading the World Happiness Report of 2022, but congratulations to the people and government of Finland, which received the 'happiest country in the world' award. 

Following Finland in rankings were Denmark, Iceland, Switzerland, and the Netherlands — the world's five happiest nations. Following those were Luxembourg, Sweden, and Norway. New Zealand and Australia ranked 10th and 12th.

Struggling with antidemocratic forces and a minority political party that insists on blocking the path to a more liveable society was the United States, ranking 16th.

The report surveys more than 150 countries, with rankings based on three-year averages. The report's lesson "is that social support, generosity to one another, and honesty in government are crucial for well-being," said Columbia University's Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Center for Sustainable Development. "World leaders should take heed. Politics should be directed as the great sages long ago insisted: to the well-being of the people, not the power of the rulers."

Not taking heed are, most notably, Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, Kim Jong-un, Nicolás Maduro, and the Taliban. Each rules as though his power is uppermost in considerations of state mechanisms. Putin is casually wrecking millions of Russian lives and destroying thousands more of soldiers' in his mad dash throughout Ukraine and Xi has anointed himself president for life from his imperial, authoritarian roost.

With two iron fists. Kim tragically yet luxuriously leads a nation suffering from global isolation and severe domestic impoverishment; by exiling or jailing opposition leaders, Maduro reigns via judicial corruption and the military; and the theocratic Taliban has created hell on earth for half its population, while all of its population groans under a devastated economy and increasing poverty.  

Would that all leaders of the world focused on healthy lives, social support, and guaranteeing individuals' liberty. Perhaps all nations could then be as happy as Finland. 

Donald Trump and the cookies

Because this is paywalled, I give you hubby-of-Kellyanne George Conway's complete and accurate portrayal of Toddler Trump.

***

You’re looking for cookies? There are no cookies here.

I don’t have any cookies. I don’t even like cookies. Won’t eat them. Never had one in my life.

Never even seen one. Not once. Ever.

I like steak and hamberders — I mean, hamburgers. For dessert, I have ice cream. Vanilla. Two scoops. Sometimes on pie. Definitely NOT cookies.

And if I had cookies, they would only be the Best Cookies. Big, beautiful, gorgeous, magnificent cookies. Cookies like no one has ever seen.

And totally, totally hot. Not cold, ugly cookies like yours.

The cookies you’re looking for, they look and taste like sh--. … I mean, I didn’t try them; someone else did. The cookies were terrible, people are saying. MANY people.

These cookies weren’t my type.

What? You’re saying you have photos of me with cookies? That’s a Complete Lie.

Your pictures are FAKE — just like you are. This is a Another Complete and Total Hoax.

First, you made up the Russia Hoax. Then the Ukraine Hoax, and then the Election Hoax. It was Russia, Russia, Russia. Now it’s Cookies, Cookies, Cookies.

ALL FAKE NEWS.

I am NOT Cookie Monster! YOU are Cookie Monster!!

Maybe I had a picture taken with a cookie once. I don’t remember it. But it was with a Super Cookie.

People were saying — big, strong men with tears in their eyes — "Sir, where do you find these amazing Super Cookies?"

Way better than your lousy cookies. You can’t even afford a real cookie.

Cookie jar? What cookie jar? I don’t have a cookie jar because I don’t have any cookies.

If there’s a cookie jar, you put it there to frame me.

There were no cookies in the jar anyway.

You put the cookies in the jar. People saw you. It was on Fox News.

In fact, you ate the cookies.

But they weren’t really cookies; they were crackers or something.

Some of the cookies you put in the jar, planted in my house and then took back from me are in fact my special, "privileged" cookies, and I herewith demand their IMMEDIATE return.

I gave the cookies back to you when you first asked for them.

If only you had nicely asked for the cookies back, I would have given them to you. Instead, you broke into my cookie jar, and you rummaged through my wife’s clothes.

It’s my cookie jar, so any cookies in the jar are mine. In fact, I had a Standing Order that any cookies in the jar automatically became mine when they went into the jar.

The jar, and the cookies in them, are PERFECT.

ALL cookies are mine, no matter where they are, because I had an Article II that put me in charge of EVERY cookie.

And there was this Black guy who was here before me. He had a funny, foreign-sounding name. He took THIRTY MILLION cookies home!! Why aren’t you going after him??

And that woman who worked for him EMAILED cookies to HERSELF all the time!! LOCK! HER! UP!

People throughout the Country are very angry with you for going after My Cookies. Very, very angry! Be careful what you wish for!

Now I know why people plead the Fifth Amendment. WITCH HUNT!!!

On the advice of counsel, I invoke my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America.

Same answer.

Same answer ….

(Repeat 400 times.)

All the insanity has inspired the New Yorker's Andy Borowitz to new heights

Another magnificent explosion at Putin's "sacred place” and Russia's "holy land," Crimea

"Huge explosions" were seen and heard this morning at a Russian ammunition depot on  the occupied Crimean Peninsula, reports The NY Times, "delivering another embarrassing blow to Moscow’s forces a week after blasts at a Russian air base in the same region." 

A senior Ukrainian official said "an elite Ukrainian military unit operating behind enemy lines was responsible for the explosions." The Times notes that "covert forces behind enemy lines underscored the inventiveness of Ukraine’s forces." France 24 has the best close-up video of the explosions — seen here in the first 20 seconds — and they are magnificent.

And here's a tweet sent by President Zelensky adviser Mykhailo Podolyak:

Morning near Dzhankoi began with explosions. A reminder: Crimea of normal country is about the Black Sea, mountains, recreation and tourism, but Crimea occupied by Russians is about warehouses explosions and high risk of death for invaders and thieves. Demilitarization in action.

— Михайло Подоляк (@Podolyak_M) August 16, 2022

As you can see in the above video, the ammunition kept exploding after the first blast. The Kremlin's top lackey in Crimea, Sergei Aksyonov, wrote on Telegram that up to 3,000 residents were evacuated from the area. "At the moment detonations are continuing,” said Aksyonov, while the Russian defense ministry reported the lie that only power lines, railroad tracks and homes had been damaged, adding that there were no serious casualties. Ukraine's behind-the-lines covert operation was essential since even its most advanced weapons lack the range to strike military targets in Crimea, and its aircraft is unable to penetrate Russia’s air defenses.

Last Tuesday, other massive explosions tore through the Saki air base in western Crimea, destroying much of the Black Sea fleet's naval aviation regiment. That attack was also carried out by Ukraine's covert forces, in partnership with local partisan fighters. Despite Russia’s defense ministry's claim of that no military equipment was damaged in today's attack, satellite imagery showed "craters, burn marks and at least eight destroyed fighter jets."

Andriy Yermak, the head of Zelensky's presidential office, said on a messaging app that Ukraine's armed forces would continue the "demilitarization" of Crimea and all other occupied territories until the nation achieved "the complete deoccupation of Ukrainian territories."

Vladimir Putin addressed a security conference in Moscow shortly after this morning's explosions in Crimea, saying nothing about the attack and concentrating instead on his paranoid chestnut about the West's Ukrainian activities posing an existential threat to Russia — which, he said, is prepared for a long war.

The Russian tyrant has to be prepared for an insanely long and profoundly irrational war, because President Zelensky is certainly prepared to kill as many of Putin's soldiers as are necessary to end it. 

Could this be a federal court's final insult to America's criminal justice system?

This is what terrorizes my mind and disheartens me the most.

After years of amassing evidence of Trump's crimes — now, specifically, his egregious, criminal violations of national-security laws and repeated obstructions of justice ...

the department of Justice will investigate him further, dive deeply into numerous, related crimes ...

ultimately indict him and convict him ...

only for us to witness ...

a federal judge ruling that because of his "eminent" status as a former U.S. president — not as just another U.S. citizen, which he is, who also stupidly endeavored in outrageous criminal activities ...

Trump is to be sentenced to probation only. 

With that, heaven forfend, will go my last, lingering drams of trust in the United States system of criminal justice.

A brilliant analysis of the months leading up to the Russia-Ukraine war: the precise - and horribly flawed - thinking involved

The Washington Post has a fascinating, extensive analysis of the months leading up to the Russia-Ukraine war, beginning with an October 2021 morning in which the U.S.'s top intelligence leaders convened in the Oval Office for "an urgent meeting with President Biden." With information from satellite images, intercepted communications and human sources in hand, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan detailed how his thinking about the prospect of war had changed from uncertainty to "concern he was being too skeptical." The evidence showed that "all the pieces were now in place for a massive assault."

Biden was confronted by a complex situation. He knew the U.S. could not act alone, yet NATO relations were still fractured from the Trump era and there were European doubts about U.S. credibility after its calamitous invasion of Iraq and the Afghanistan debacle. The Post article — one in a series — tracks "the uphill climb to restore U.S. credibility, the attempt to balance secrecy around intelligence with the need to persuade others of its truth, and the challenge of determining how the world’s most powerful military alliance would help a less-than-perfect democracy on Russia’s border defy an attack without NATO firing a shot."

President Putin's own words helped to confirm intelligence findings. In July he published a 7,000-word screed, "On the Historical Unity Between Russians and Ukrainians," arguing that Russians and Ukrainians were "one people";  Russia, he wrote, had been "robbed" of Ukraine by the West. "I am confident that true sovereignty of Ukraine is possible only in partnership with Russia," further wrote Putin. The Biden administration had believed that the Ukrainian issue was concerning but manageable. That was still true after a June summit in Geneva. "We didn’t get on the plane and come home and think the world was on the cusp of a major war in Europe," said a Biden aide. Putin's essay, however, "caught our attention in a big way," Sullivan said later.

"In a grim actuarial assessment," U.S. intelligence concluded that Putin, at 68, was "running out of time" to legitimately portray himself as another Peter the Great, while Putin figured that the West's reaction to his Ukraine invasion "would be big on outrage but limited in actual punishment." He was at least partially correct. U.S> intelligence informed President Zelensky of its findings. The Ukrainian president later complained that the Americans adequately warned but inadequately supported his nation with the proper weapons to defend itself. "You can say a million times, 'Listen, there may be an invasion.' Okay, there may be an invasion — will you give us planes?" Zelensky said. "Will you give us air defenses? 'Well, you’re not a member of NATO.' Oh, okay, then what are we talking about?"

At a G-20 conference in late October, Biden shared parts of the new intelligence and the U.S.'s conclusions with British, French and German leaders. In mid-November, America's Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines met with NATO's North Atlantic Council. She revealed the evidence but offered no recommendations on policy. Only the British and Baltic states believed in her brief presentation; others, she recalled, "were skeptical of the idea that President Putin was seriously preparing for the possibility of a large-scale invasion." Writes the Post: "Paris and Berlin remembered emphatic U.S. claims about intelligence on Iraq. The shadow of that deeply flawed analysis hung over all the discussions before the invasion." Said François Heisbourg, an adviser to French officials, "American intelligence is not considered to be a naturally reliable source. It was considered to be prone to political manipulation."

The early schism remained the case for months. Said a senior Biden administration official: "I think there were basically three flavors." Some in Western Europe believed that Putin was merely practicing "coercive diplomacy"; or "he was just building up to see what he could get"; or "he’s not going to invade … it’s crazy." Related a senior European official, "The intelligence was narrated repeatedly, consistently, clearly, credibly, in a lot of detail with a very good script and supporting evidence. I don’t remember one key moment where the lightbulb went off. It was the volume of the lights in the room."

Biden was also having trouble convincing Ukrainian officials of the impending danger — although some of the problems were of the Americans' own making. Once, when Minister of Foreign Affairs Dmytro Kuleba and Zelensky's chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, visited Washington, a U.S. official handed them a cup of coffee with a smile and said "Guys, dig the trenches!" Kuleba said "When we smiled back," the official said "'I’m serious. Start digging trenches.... You will be attacked. A large-scale attack, and you have to prepare for it.' We asked for details; there were none." Zelensky, too, was skeptical. Recalled his aides: "We took all of the information that our Western partners were giving us seriously. But let’s be honest: Imagine if all of this panic that so many people were pushing had taken place. Creating panic is a method of the Russians.... Imagine if this panic had started three or four months beforehand. What would’ve happened to the economy? Would we have been able to hold on for five months like we have?"

The Biden administration had another, unilateral worry: the U.S. was determined to avoid a direct conflict with Russia, which led to each decision being overburdened, in the estimation of many, about how much and what types of weapons should be given Ukraine to defend itself. "I make no apologies for the fact that one of our objectives here is to avoid direct conflict with Russia," says National Security Adviser Sullivan.  

But he should make apologies. He misread the degree of Putin's determination to confront the West. As I and others have often observed, the Russian dictator is not suicidal and he's not stupid. He would not unleash tactical nukes on Ukraine knowing of a Western response that would set the Russian economy back to its Leninist days. Nevertheless, the Post reports that  "the administration found 'incredible' the notion, as some later argued in hindsight, that 'if only we would have given' the Ukrainians more arms, 'none of this would have happened.'" That's a deliberate misdirection; it is not what the administration's detractors have argued. We have acknowledged that Putin's invasion was inevitable, but also that in the prewar and early periods of the conflict, Ukraine should have been supplied with hundreds of HIMARS and other heavy armaments.

The Ukrainian foreign minister's assessment is straightforward and clear-eyed. While expressing gratitude for U.S. military aid shipped to date — "No other country in the world did more for Ukraine to get the necessary weapons than the United States since 24 February" — he has also noted that its "non-provocation" strategy has been terribly flawed. "Where did it take us to? I think this war — with thousands killed and wounded, territories lost, part of the economy destroyed ... is the best answer to those who still advocate the non-provocation of Russia.“

On the eve of Putin's 24 February invasion, Zelensky was "alarmed," reports the Post. His chief of staff had Sullivan on the phone, telling him that the Ukrainian president wanted to speak with President Biden. Sullivan agreed. Zelensky asked Biden to "get us all the intelligence you possibly can now. We will fight, we will defend, we can hold, but we need your help."

And so remains Ukraine's crisis. 

My hours spent with the American right

Shortly after returning from SW Missouri I checked my inbox, there to find an evening wrapup from The Atlantic's Tom Nichols, who opened by comparing the bloody, intensely meaningful American Civil War to "the bizarre ideas and half-baked wackiness that now infest American political life" in our current civil war.

I can attest to its bizarre, fully baked wackiness, having just listened to hours of the Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show, the Brian Kilmeade and Charlie Kirk programs and local talk radio out of Springfield, Mo. Nichols writes that "The United States now faces a different kind of violence, from people who believe in nothing—or at least, in nothing real."

Affirmative. On the Trump=document scandal, all the radio shows "informed" their listeners that the Department of Justice could have simply asked Trump to return the to-secret papers, rather than "raiding" his his home. Of course, DOJ did ask Trump to return the documents — repeatedly.

Trump refused, at one point having one of his lawyers sign a statement attesting to the absence of any further records at Mar-a-Lago. None of this was conveyed to listeners, so naturally they were up in arms, believing the DOJ and FBI willfully abused a former U.S. president, their president.

The Trump controversy, however, was not at the top of the shows' outrage list. First was the Inflation Reduction Act, whose title the hosts relentlessly referred to as "Orwellian" because they had heard ABC's Jonathan Karl use the term in a news broadcast. Billions and billions of wasted money, they said, all of it merely to please the left's radical agenda.

Then came the scare story of more than a hundred thousand armed IRS agents coming to homes all across America. People earning as little as $20,000, said the hosts, would be paying more in taxes under the dreaded Inflation Reduction Act. So beware. Finally, the anniversary of the Afghanistan debacle, which the hosts used as a kind of pole vault jump into the destruction of the United States' reputation worldwide.

Concluded Nichols, "What makes this situation worse is that there is no remedy for it." That also I can attest to. While on the road, I called in to the local Springfield station to correct a series of falsehoods just spread on the air by the host. He cut my mic and explained to the listening audience that I was one of those radical leftists who lies about everything.

Nichols also notes that he recently spoke with an "original Never Trumper" over the weekend who related that his family and friends "now say that they believe that Trump broke the law—but that they don’t care." That was not my experience Friday and today. The program hosts instead related that Trump had broken no laws. I assume their listeners believed it.

The hours I spent with these radio shows were deeply depressing. There was no pretense of even a loose familiarity with reality. It was, in a word, otherworldly.

Trump says the FBI search was a "political" hit job to prevent him from running

Being on a short holiday and mostly removed from daily news, I have not followed all of Trump's political countercharges against the Department of Justice and the FBI. I did, however, just hear in a CNN report that Trump and his followers are now absurdly claiming that Democrats are collaborating with a politized Justice Department so as to bar him from running again for the White House.

What the ex-president's millions of disciples cannot know — because of their cloistered Fox News, Newsmax, OAN, Breitbart and talk-radio environment — is that Democrats at large and top party leaders are hoping desperately that Trump indeed is the Republican Party's presidential nominee in 2024.

His unfavorability numbers had already tanked prior to the latest news of the FBI search and subsequent to the Jan. 6 committee hearings. Now his unfavorability numbers are lower than ever due to the ubiquitous news coverage of his obstruction of justice and possible violations of the Espionage Act.

For Democrats, what better GOP nominee to run against? Not only would Trump reap the lowest popular and Electoral College votes imaginable, he would do unprecedented injury to virtually every down-ballot Republican running for federal office, resulting, perhaps, in a massive realignment of the American electorate.

Last night on my phone I tuned in to Fox News at a top-of-the-hour slot to hear what the cloistered ones were hearing about Trump's concealment of top-secret records in his Florida home. The network's legal panel had settled on the curious argument that the former president had declassified the records while still in the Oval Office, hence no crimes were committed, or could have been committed.

Through either ignorance or deceit, Fox News' panel was overlooking two salient facts: A president cannot unilaterally declassify the nation's most highly ranked sensitive documents, and, at any rate, no ex-president can legally transport such documents to his private home. Neither actuality was raised as an issue by Fox's legal "experts," and sooner than later, even much of Trump's base will come to know the still-denied truth.

We do not yet know what criminal defense the ex-president's lawyers might pose at trial. But he would likely encounter a federal judge who would, as in Steve Bannon's trial, bar his attorneys' advancement of the more preposterous arguments, leaving him with ... no real defense at all, again, just as in Bannon's case.

Trump would appeal his conviction for years, and his appeals would probably outlive him. But the almost certain prospect of a federal conviction on even one of the possible charges he'd be facing sometime down the road would haunt his 2024 presidential campaign. Only the truest-believing Trumpers would have his or even his party's at the voting booth.

Run, Donald, run.