Hillary Doubles Down on Blame Putin! Fat Lot of Good It Will Do Her.
Hillary is officially going with the Putin Did It! strategy to distract attention from the DNC leak. This follows official DNC response of the initial reports of a leak which says the leak may be part of a “Russian disinformation campaign.”
No one from the Clinton camp or the DNC has disputed the veracity of the material released. So we have a novel theory: the leaking of actual information is disinformation. I’ll have to remember that one. It might come in handy someday. Again, though, two! two! two! logical fallacies in one: ad hominem and appeal to motive.
Clinton better get the spin machine in prime condition, because the really good stuff might be on its way: the Clinton Foundation emails were also hacked.
Let the games begin!
Pause a moment, though, and consider this. On the one hand, Hillary blames the Russians for hacking the DNC. On the other hand, Hillary claims that her private server was immune to hacking and had never been hacked.
Yeah. That’s believable.
I mentioned Hillary’s flying monkeys yesterday, and indeed, they are swarming out of the castle as we speak, screeching that Trump is Putin’s bitch. Prominent examples include Josh Marshall and Jeffrey Goldberg. (With Obama leaving, Goldberg is busy finding another throne to sniff.)
Politically I think this is a non-starter. Most Americans don’t really give a damn about Russia. They are not enamored with it, but they don’t dread it either. It doesn’t haunt their thoughts the way that it did in the Cold War. This in fact is something that drives the Russians generally, and Putin in particular, crazy. They would much rather be hated and feared than ignored: the irrelevant are ignored, but if you are feared, you matter. The Russians want to matter. They don’t to most Americans, which will mean that Hillary’s invocation of the Russian bogeyman will likely have little effect.
In the meantime, though, I am sure Putin is basking in the attention.
But what else does she have? Zip. So she’s gotta go with what she’s got.
It is also quite rich for Hillary to bemoan foreign influence on elections. For one thing, she is the woman who brought us Johnny Chung, Maria Hsia, James Riady, and John Huang. For those of you not of a certain age, these were sources of big (and illegal) foreign donations to the Clinton campaign in the mid-1990s.
For another thing, Bill Clinton was intensely involved in influencing the Russian presidential election in 1996. He took the “just win, baby” mindset to Russia, and frankly stated that the end (re-electing Yeltsin) justified any means:
The irony in all that is just too much, especially the turning a blind eye to Putin’s elevation part.
As for the conventional wisdom that Putin favors Trump, I am a contrarian. Trump is mercurial, unpredictable, and protean. He has been on every side of every issue. Anyone who believes that he can predict what Trump would do in office is deceiving himself. His current statements are probably the least reliable guide to his future actions. No one, least of all Putin, can have any confidence in predicting what a Trump presidency would be like. Even if he makes equivocal comments about Estonia today, he could turn around and send a division there when in office.
Hillary, on the other hand, is predictable, stupid, predictably stupid, and stupidly predictable. Putin has run rings around her before, and should be licking his chops at the prospects of doing it again.
The only reasons for Putin to favor a Trump election are that he wants more of a challenge, and he’s long gamma and hence relishes volatility.
Regardless of what Putin’s views are, facts are facts. Whoever leaked the DNC emails leaked facts. Moreover, it cannot be argue that the leak was selective, and thereby misleading: everything dropped. More leaked facts are almost certain to come, from the Clinton Foundation and perhaps even Hillary’s private server. And regardless of their provenance, the facts are damning.
Yes – Trump is unpredictable (although some of his views have been unchanged since the 1980s) and seems capable of playing by his own rules. Moscow’s strategy is premised on the West’s predictability. Every time it breaks the rules of the global game, the Kremlin has a pretty good idea of what to expect in return.
It could be that the Kremlin favors Trump because it underestimates him. Russians in general – not Putinists specifically – prefer straight talkers to moralists, but if they think Trump is a straightforward kind of operator, they are probably in for a disappointment if he gets elected. Also, as you say, Moscow could be seeking volatility. But it’s also possible that Moscow’s ostensible pro-Trump stance is a cover-up for its true preference.
Comment by Alex K. — July 24, 2016 @ 4:09 pm
Name-calling critics of Trump as “flying monkeys” doesn’t change the substance: Trump has a huge percentage of his personal business interests, which he has shown are paramount to him during this campaign by word and deed, tied up in Putin’s good graces. This is a guy who has said that he will not sell his businesses if elected (and who would not be capable of having a blind trust as they are all operating companies), who cares more than anything about appearing wealthy, who has shown obvious cash-flow problems by his skinflint ways in his own presidential campaign, etc. Hilary is a power-mad self-righteous and delusional hack who sees nothing wrong with profiting in a “good cause” and who is always justified in breaking the rules because she is on the side of the angels. Her portfolio of corrupt contributions is diversified, though. And even with the Uranium One deal that gave Putin the right to control 20% of the U.S. supply, it looked a lot more like she was shaking the Russians and the foreign investors down than a quid pro quo–at that time, Obama was dead-set on cozying up to Putin. So the subversion risk from Putin seems much greater with Trump.
Comment by srp — July 24, 2016 @ 6:08 pm
Killery and the Klinton Krime Family – along with all of their criminal co-conspirators – had led to Killery being above the law, and everyone else being subject to the law. As the Romans used to say:
“for my friends – everything; for my enemies – the law”
@srp – Kriminal Killery took the Rooskies for a ride??? You’re kidding. As with her emails, she sold out the US for the sole benefit of the Klinton Krime Family. She and Slick have done it over and over and over again.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/24/us/cash-flowed-to-clinton-foundation-as-russians-pressed-for-control-of-uranium-company.html
The headline on the website Pravda trumpeted President Vladimir V. Putin’s latest coup, its nationalistic fervor recalling an era when its precursor served as the official mouthpiece of the Kremlin: “Russian Nuclear Energy Conquers the World.”
The article, in January 2013, detailed how the Russian atomic energy agency, Rosatom, had taken over a Canadian company with uranium-mining stakes stretching from Central Asia to the American West. The deal made Rosatom one of the world’s largest uranium producers and brought Mr. Putin closer to his goal of controlling much of the global uranium supply chain.
But the untold story behind that story is one that involves not just the Russian president, but also a former American president and a woman who would like to be the next one.
At the heart of the tale are several men, leaders of the Canadian mining industry, who have been major donors to the charitable endeavors of former President Bill Clinton and his family. Members of that group built, financed and eventually sold off to the Russians a company that would become known as Uranium One.
Beyond mines in Kazakhstan that are among the most lucrative in the world, the sale gave the Russians control of one-fifth of all uranium production capacity in the United States. Since uranium is considered a strategic asset, with implications for national security, the deal had to be approved by a committee composed of representatives from a number of United States government agencies. Among the agencies that eventually signed off was the State Department, then headed by Mr. Clinton’s wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton.
As the Russians gradually assumed control of Uranium One in three separate transactions from 2009 to 2013, Canadian records show, a flow of cash made its way to the Clinton Foundation. Uranium One’s chairman used his family foundation to make four donations totaling $2.35 million. Those contributions were not publicly disclosed by the Clintons, despite an agreement Mrs. Clinton had struck with the Obama White House to publicly identify all donors. Other people with ties to the company made donations as well.
And shortly after the Russians announced their intention to acquire a majority stake in Uranium One, Mr. Clinton received $500,000 for a Moscow speech from a Russian investment bank with links to the Kremlin that was promoting Uranium One stock.
Comment by elmer — July 26, 2016 @ 4:26 pm