Shot in the Dark

Cognitive Assonance

When Donald Trump was elected, Big Thinkers with Bylines predicted that he – and the BREXIT movement often associated with him and his rise – would gut US markets.

Apparently not.

They also said that his intransigence would make American foreign policy even more fraught than it had been.

I’n not exactly “tired of winning” yet, but it’s interesting how turning foreign policy and defense over to grownups – people who’ve read enough non-intersectional history to know that coddling bullies just gives you more bullies – is slowly moving some of the world’s needles in the right direction.

 

 

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Mitch Berg

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66 responses to “Cognitive Assonance”

  1. bosshoss429 Avatar
    bosshoss429

    Proving once again that appeasement doesn’t work.

  2. bosshoss429 Avatar
    bosshoss429

    Re: Iran’s fast boats; any nation that emboldens their navy to play chicken with U.S. warships, are already beyond stupid. I guess the ayatollah realized that he’s no longer dealing with a chicken shit mouse. Those days are over for at least the next three years. We now have a President that lets his military leaders use their expertise and experience to deal with tin pot dictators like him.

  3. Emery Incognito Avatar
    Emery Incognito

    Remove Trump from the equation and any other American president might be praised for tackling a systemic review of the Global System. But then again, remove Trump from the equation and no one would. Irony.

  4. justplainangry Avatar
    justplainangry

    Shvonder-eTASS, I do not think irony means what you think it does. But then again, when have any of you ever used language to elucidate a point instead of tl;dr and not to propagate lies and misinformation.

  5. Emery Incognito Avatar
    Emery Incognito

    Yes, we don’t want to tax your attention span.

    I suspect Trump will be satisfied with essentially cosmetic changes, and the system continues much as it is now.

  6. justplainangry Avatar
    justplainangry

    Yea, tax plan was a cosmetic change. Or rollback of a myriad of regulations. Or the gift of Gorsuch. Dream on cupcake. Sky is really a very different color in your world where reality does not intrude and you flit about in many guises, none of which exude intelligence.

  7. Mammuthus Primigenius Avatar
    Mammuthus Primigenius

    Trump is not an abrasive version of Jeb Bush or John Kasich.
    Trump believes the wrong people, as a social class, are making the wrong decisions about public policy. The GOP #nevertrumpers & all of the dems believe the correct people, as a social class, are making decisions that are mostly correct. They are really arguing about the edges of things — the precise implication of a carbon tax, for example.

  8. Mammuthus Primigenius Avatar
    Mammuthus Primigenius

    Looks like they are going to release the “FISA Memo.” Indications, from both sides, are that it may tend to make Americans more shocked at the machinations of “non-partisan” actors in the FBI & intelligence services than they are shocked at Trump’s behavior.
    I do not want to live in a country where the JD and the FBI get veto power over who the voters elect president. I can’t go anywhere else, so looks like I gotta change this one.

  9. Emery Incognito Avatar
    Emery Incognito

    This appears to be an extraordinarily clumsy attempt to discredit the FBI so as to neuter Mueller’s findings on Trump. I have little doubt there will be plenty of out-of-context findings that cater to conspiracy theorists and the deranged, in short, Trump’s hard core base (and quite a few Republican lawmakers).

  10. Mammuthus Primigenius Avatar
    Mammuthus Primigenius

    Let’s see what it says.
    Given the history of the FBI and the JD, no one should make the mistake of believing that they represent the “best of America.”
    “Let all the poison that lurks in the mud, hatch out.”
    Mueller still can’t say what criminal act he is investigating. On the other hand, we know that dozens, if not hundreds, of illegal acts were committed by the people, presumably in the JD and the FBI, who leaked. Comey has named the person he leaked to as his attorney, meaning all of their discussions are off limits to investigators. Not the action of an innocent man.

  11. jdm Avatar
    jdm

    I have little doubt there will be plenty of out-of-context findings that cater to conspiracy theorists and the deranged, in short, Trump’s hard core base (and quite a few Republican lawmakers).

    Well, geez, man, why shouldn’t we have some fun too? You deranged leftist conspiracy theorists have been at it for the last 15 months.

  12. Mammuthus Primigenius Avatar
    Mammuthus Primigenius

    Virtually all of the evidence offered of Trump-Russian collusion is accepted by Trump opponents without context. Manafort was indicted for actions taken long before Trump declared his candidacy. Papadopolous had a very minor, very short lived role in the Trump campaign. Kelly was charged with lying to the FBI, not “colluding with Russia.” or acting as a foreign agent.
    So, without context, Trump opponents say that Mueller has indicted three people connected to Trump’s campaign.
    Context makes Mueller’s investigation look like a partisan fishing expedition.

  13. Emery Incognito Avatar
    Emery Incognito

    While the possibility exists that this will further muddy the waters surrounding what should be a no-brainer — that is, foreign interference in our election process. I no longer panic when political hacks like Nunes pull their pranks on Democracy. Either our system will eventually shake itself free from such stooges and their snake oils, or it won’t. So far, every single attempt by the enablers of Trump has evaporated. I suspect that Nunes will eventually be exposed for the fraud that he is. If not, then so be it.

  14. MacArthur Wheeler Avatar
    MacArthur Wheeler

    “Let all the poison that lurks in the mud, hatch out.”
    I remember that from I Claudius – or is there another reference?

  15. MacArthur Wheeler Avatar
    MacArthur Wheeler

    Speaking of I Claudius, electing Hillary would have been akin to electing Livia Drusilla/Julia Agusta to the presidency – the death count would have rivaled that of the Empress herself. BTW tomorrow is Livia’s birthday.

  16. Emery Incognito Avatar
    Emery Incognito

    When all is said and done, this release of this memo is going to demonstrate that Nunes is a partisan hack who has no understanding of how FISA orders are actually issued.

  17. Mammuthus Primigenius Avatar
    Mammuthus Primigenius

    I think we will see why Schiff did not want the memo released. He is already pushing the talking point that the unseen data justifies what appears to be prejudicial actions on the part of the JD and the FBI. That’s the way it is with witch hunts, the gullible are convinced the evidence is there, but hidden. Tenuous connections are made to appear more solid by stringing dependent clauses together. If you’ve ever read any of the Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories, you know the drill.
    “Popodopolous believed he had a Russian source for Hillary’s hacked emails. So if he really did have a source connected to the Russian government, and the source was honest with him about the emails, and if Popodopolous actually got them, and they were genuine, and he passed them up the chain to Trump, and Trump acted on them, and he had a quid pro quo with the Russian government . . .”
    These people believe that Trump had secret contacts with the Russian government, and also believe this was proved by his asking the Russians for Hillary’s email on national television. You can’t get any more stupid than that.

  18. Mammuthus Primigenius Avatar
    Mammuthus Primigenius

    And we have this from The Hill
    “FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe stepped down from his post after facing pressure from FBI Director Christopher Wray to leave the position, The New York Times reported Monday.
    Wray reportedly said he was concerned about an inspector general report about McCabe and other top Department of Justice officials’ actions during the 2016 presidential race.
    The FBI was investigating both Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while secretary of State and the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia at the time.”
    http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/371276-mccabe-stepped-down-after-pressure-from-fbi-director-report

    FBI Deputy Director Mark Felt was “Deepthroat.” He leaked because Nixon refused to make him FBI director.

  19. Emery Incognito Avatar
    Emery Incognito

    The last I checked, FBI agents are citizens, and as such are allowed to have political opinions. Often, their spouses are also citizens and are allowed to run for elected office. Unless an authority can point to specific evidence that an agent’s political beliefs were the basis for their own actions or action that involved directing the behavior of others, the mere fact that they have political beliefs is not disqualifying. Further, no one has sufficiently shown that to be the case with McCabe. By nearly all accounts, the rank and file agents are professional, persistent, and often put their own lives on hold in order to serve our country. That would include those agents who have worked their way up the system to positions of high authority. They should be considered different from a campaign worker or donor who is rewarded with a political assignment where their candidate wins election. McCabe was one of those life-long agents. The attacks on him are shameful and appear to be attempts to distract from meaningful investigations. I would file this under the same heading as the agent outed by Vice-President Cheney’s office during the Bush administration. That heading would be agents whose careers are damaged by partisan hacks.

  20. Mammuthus Primigenius Avatar
    Mammuthus Primigenius

    Read this sentence again, Emery:
    “Wray reportedly said he was concerned about an inspector general report about McCabe and other top Department of Justice officials’ actions during the 2016 presidential race.”
    Not beliefs, actions.

  21. Emery Incognito Avatar
    Emery Incognito

    Two points: Nixon attempted to thwart his prosecutor and Bill Clinton tried the similar tactics with Kenneth Starr. Why should anyone be surprised that Team Trump would be any different than his predecessors?

    The timing and the optics politically through Trump’s incessant goading and bald-faced lying and criticisms, makes it really hard to make a benign interpretation of this. It looks really bad from an outside perspective to have America buckle under Trump’s authoritarian tendencies.

  22. Mammuthus Primigenius Avatar
    Mammuthus Primigenius

    You seem to be comparing Trump to a perfect president. I compare Trump’s goading and lying and criticism to Obama and Bill & Hillary Clinton goading and lying and criticism. I have no personal animosity towards Trump. I had no personal animosity towards Obama or the Clintons. What I despise is the double standard used by our “objective” media. An informed electorate doesn’t need an objective media, it needs a fair and honest media. We don’t have one, the MSM is the information wing of the Democrat party.

  23. Emery Incognito Avatar
    Emery Incognito

    Makes you wonder why they are doing everything possible to hinder this investigation….

  24. justplainangry Avatar
    justplainangry

    Shvonder-eTASS sure does not believe their lying eyes. Nor ears. It is like they are immersed in the cool-aid and it is so effectively blocks all senses of reality that they beclown themselves with every trolling post.

  25. Emery Incognito Avatar
    Emery Incognito

    Are you literally drooling on the keyboard? Forget about your demonstrable illiteracy for a moment: Check your blood pressure.

  26. justplainangry Avatar
    justplainangry

    McCabe was removed. I guess Wray does not know about FISA either. Keep trolling cupcake. Your every post demonstrates lack of your cognitive abilities and lack of even rudimentary intelligence to discern fact from fiction. And please, demonstrate where I am illiterate, Shvonder-eTASS.

  27. Mammuthus Primigenius Avatar
    Mammuthus Primigenius

    Yeah, three high up FBI guys (one a woman, actually) demoted or transferred, and Deputy AG Bruce Ohr. And Mueller only fessed up about Strzok & Page months afterwards, when it was about to be leaked.
    I, personally, would hinder any investigation of me that was open ended, i.e., that could not identify a criminal act that I was being investigated for. Any sensible person would. But Trump is not sensible, or he never would have agreed to an open-ended investigation based on shoddy ‘evidence.’

  28. bikebubba Avatar
    bikebubba

    A big difference between the Clinton attempts to thwart Ken Starr and Trump’s (known) approach to Bob Mueller is that Clinton tried to coach the testimony of his subordinates, while Trump is merely questioning Mueller’s staff and approach. Clinton knew full well that over a dozen of his former colleagues had gone to jail over Whitewater violations as well–there was some “there” there that does not show up with Mueller’s investigation.

  29. justplainangry Avatar
    justplainangry

    MP, that never happened in Shvonder-eTASS world. Or is not material. You see, everybody in his world wears libturd-colored glasses so reality does not intrude. Shvonder-eTASs must have got a hold of one of those “deaf-dumb-and-blind” devices from Tommy. His writing sure proves it.

  30. Mammuthus Primigenius Avatar
    Mammuthus Primigenius

    JPA, the way it works is the MSM, and Lefty websites, do not report on The really creepy stuff that goes on with the FBI, the JD, and the IRS — unless a Republican is in power. Probably not one in a hundred Democrats knows who Dohr is and why his demotion was a big !@#$% deal, as a man once said. McCabe, Strzok, and Ohr are big fish. On the other side, we have Manafort, indicted for things supposedly done years before Trump declared his candidacy, Papadopoulos, an unpaid, low-level Trump campaign volunteer, and Flynn, extremely short lived NSA who plead guilty to lying to the FBI, not colluding with the Russkis.
    It is possible that Steele’s contacts in Russia were controlled by Putin’s FSB. It would be nice if Mueller looked into that.

  31. justplainangry Avatar
    justplainangry

    MSM, and Lefty websites, do not report on The really creepy stuff that goes on with the FBI, the JD, and the IRS

    And if they do not, it did not happen. Like recently unearthed 0bumbler/Farrakhan connection. Not a word (other than Fox) from MSM. Not even one word. From most trusted name in news. From the truth is more important now than ever. From democracy dies in darkness. From see the whole picture. From real news. All oxymorons.

  32. Mammuthus Primigenius Avatar
    Mammuthus Primigenius

    Just pure speculation on my part, but I would not be surprised if the Nunes’ memo contains some pretty bad stuff. Stuff that ties the Steele dossier and the FISA warrant taken out against Trump associates to political appointees in the Obama JD (maybe higher). One way that the Dems can counter this is to deny it all, which is hazardous, if it is later shown to be true. Another thing the Dems can do is claim that evidence exists which shows that the Trump-Kremlin ties were so dangerous and so clear that the Obama admin had no choice but to reluctantly conduct an investigation.
    As I said, just speculating. In a few weeks we should have a better idea what is going in Capital City.

  33. Emery Incognito Avatar
    Emery Incognito

    jpa says: “please, demonstrate where I am illiterate”
    Considering you’re such a target rich environment, I will accommodate your request.

    Let’s start with your 1:10 comment which was a reply to my earlier post regarding “Brexit” (MBerg’s topic) and Trump’s “systemic review of the Global System”.

    jpa wrote: “Yea, tax plan was a cosmetic change. Or rollback of a myriad of regulations. Or the gift of Gorsuch.” ~ how does your >off topic< comment remotely address my comment regarding "Brexit" and Trump's "review of the Global System"?

    Demonstrable illiteracy my friend…..

  34. Emery Incognito Avatar
    Emery Incognito

    Woolly: In the end, something approaching the truth will come out, every individual involved will be held accountable in some way, and no major breach of law in connection with the Russia investigation — by the Trump, his aides, or the relevant officials in DOJ and FBI — will go unredressed.

  35. justplainangry Avatar
    justplainangry

    Well, this is a summary memo of evidence presented. So by definition, each and every assertion can be definitively proven or disproven since there is a direct paper trail. Simple, no? But trolls will troll and libturds will obstruct and tell lies because that is what they do.

    Another thing the Dems can do is claim that evidence exists which shows that the Trump-Kremlin ties were so dangerous and so clear that the Obama admin had no choice but to reluctantly conduct an investigation.

    what do you mean “can”? They are well into it. Isn’t it what Mueller is supposed to do? And so far, bupkes after millions of taxpayer dollars wasted and a swarm of partisan hacks pouring over every byte, and syllable of information for well over half a year.

  36. bikebubba Avatar
    bikebubba

    Yeah, Emery, after the previous 8 years, I am so certain that wrongdoing by government officials will be punished. Just ask Lois Lerner and the Fast & Furious crew from their prison bunks.

    Oh, you mean they’ve all retired on a fat pension or been promoted? How can that be?

  37. justplainangry Avatar
    justplainangry

    My my. That was response to your “cosmetic changes” post of 12:21. Did not my use of “cosmetic change” clue you in? I was pointing out that to YOU everything sTrumpet does is cosmetic, no matter how profound. I could not have been more clear. And yet here we are, it obviously completely flew over your heads. Which is not hard since your heads are firmly planted in your asses. Go wipe that egg off your faces, trolls. You gonna have to dig deep to reach them. Demonstrable idiocy is what Shvonder-eTASS continually illustrate and never cease to disappoint.

  38. Mammuthus Primigenius Avatar
    Mammuthus Primigenius

    Emery Incognito on January 30, 2018 at 4:08 pm said:
    Woolly: In the end, something approaching the truth will come out, every individual involved will be held accountable in some way, and no major breach of law in connection with the Russia investigation — by the Trump, his aides, or the relevant officials in DOJ and FBI — will go unredressed.
    Nixon surely got what he deserved. But Mark Felt, aka “Deep Throat,” was no heroic figure exposing the lies of of a corrupt president. He was a peeved bureaucrat angry that he did not get a promotion. Felt was never held to account. His identity as Deep Throat only became known after his death. It wouldn’t have been difficult to name Deep Throat in the 70s, 80s, or 90s, but the MSM lost interest after they used him to take down Nixon.

  39. justplainangry Avatar
    justplainangry

    bike, you forgot sHrillary. You know, the sex predator enabler, perp, traitor and an abject idiot and moron (Did I Wipe The Server ‘Like With A Cloth Or Something’) that Shvonder-eTASS voted for and holds in such high esteem?

  40. justplainangry Avatar
    justplainangry

    But Mark Felt

    Latest reports say McCabe threw a fit and promised to take down FBI if he was removed and not allowed to retire with pension, etc. What’s the FBI motto? Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity?

  41. Mammuthus Primigenius Avatar
    Mammuthus Primigenius

    justplainangry on January 30, 2018 at 4:11 pm said:
    . . .
    what do you mean “can”? They are well into it.
    This seems to be what Schiff is doing with his talk of understanding the context of the info in the Nunes’ memo. But I don’t trust any of the media any more, and I don’t trust Schiff to know what truth he is trying to hide. It wouldn’t be terribly surprised if the Master Puppeteer turned out to be McCain, working through a cooperative Obama JD. It was McCain’s aide (can’t remember the name) who handed the Steele Dossier to David Corn & that started the ball rolling. Still, It will be kind of fun to watch the story take shape — until the dems retake congress and the DJIA drops 5,000 points.

  42. Emery Incognito Avatar
    Emery Incognito

    It’s possible that the internal investigation suggests that there were some lapses in FBI conduct and leadership — though proving anything outright illegal is highly unlikely.
    McCabe might have felt that as his continued presence was a thorn in the side of the White house, this forcing Wray to expend to much effort defending him instead of the agency as a whole.

    With McCabe gone, Wray should be on stronger ground when trying to resist Trump’s vendettas. It is infuriating, but in these confusing times, perhaps necessary.

  43. justplainangry Avatar
    justplainangry

    In the meantime. Drip… drip…

    Two senior FBI officials have now reviewed a controversial Republican staff memo alleging abuses of government surveillance programs during the 2016 presidential campaign, a source familiar with the matter told Fox News – adding that the officials “could not point to any factual inaccuracies.” The two officials – one from the bureau’s counterintelligence division and the other from the legal division – followed up after an initial review of the memo during a rare Sunday trip to Capitol Hill by FBI Director Christopher Wray.

    I agree with you on almost everything. What I do not agree with you, and it may come as a surprise to you given my cynicism, is that I still believe that an average US citizen is smarter then Shvonder-eTASS and can discern fact from fiction. As an old russian saying goes, and I am sure there is an English analog, Hope dies last.

  44. bikebubba Avatar
    bikebubba

    JPA: I skipped a LOT of people that ought to be in jail. If it wouldn’t be so expensive, I’d suggest re-opening Alcatraz and putting the entire Obama administration there.

  45. Mammuthus Primigenius Avatar
    Mammuthus Primigenius

    Surely there have been crimes committed by FBI agents involved in the Hillary & Trump investigations. The average American, I’ve heard, commits three felonies a day. That is a lawless state, you stay out of prison only because the state declines to prosecute.
    The leakers from the JD & the FBI — including Comey — are law breakers.

  46. Mammuthus Primigenius Avatar
    Mammuthus Primigenius

    The McCain-Trump feud is almost operatic. McCain came back from Vietnam a heroic figure, but aimless. He divorced his first wife, remarried, and got involved in his new wife’s family business (IIRC). In the early 80s he decided that unheroic role wasn’t for him, so he went into politics, as a war hero, a man who had sacrificed, visibly, for his country. I can only imagine the physical and mental torments he had endured as a prisoner of the Vietnamese. Read a short bio of McCain on the web. He is a remarkably heroic human being, though with human failings (like all of us).
    That is McCain. Trump is, well, Trump. The person McCain holds in contempt is the leader of the nation McCain believes was worth all of his sacrifices, in his military career and in his personal life. To complicate matters further, McCain lost his presidential race against Obama in 2008, while Trump triumphed over Hillary in 2016. The United States gave Trump the job it denied McCain.

  47. Alt-Good Swiftee Avatar
    Alt-Good Swiftee

    Emery appears to have spent his day packing CNN up his ass with the assistance of copious amounts of grease, rendered from hand picked 1/4 wits.

    I congratulate him on his leisure., but scorn his choices in how he spends it.

  48. Emery Incognito Avatar
    Emery Incognito

    Doesn’t the DOJ have a long-standing legal opinion that sitting presidents may not be indicted?

  49. Mammuthus Primigenius Avatar
    Mammuthus Primigenius

    I believe so, Emery. That was the case during the time we had an independent counsel law, but we don’t have one anymore. Mueller will likely turn over his findings to the congress & let them decide what to do.

  50. Mammuthus Primigenius Avatar
    Mammuthus Primigenius

    So Stras got confirmed to the 8th circuit? How did I miss that?
    So much winning!
    Franken voters should consider all that Franken accomplished for MN and nation since 2009.

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