Special Opinion to the Mirror by Paul Plante.
In one of those cosmic
From this new and wonderful system of Government (the Articles of Confederation), it has come to pass, that almost every national object of every kind, is at this day unprovided for; and other nations taking the advantage of its imbecility, are daily multiplying commercial restraints upon us.
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That, people, was 230 years ago, now, that those words of wisdom were spoken to the People of the State of New York by John Jay, an author of some of the Federalist Papers, and this nation’s first chief justice, about the imbecility of our national government, and those words were barely dry on the pages of the Cape Charles Mirror when to prove to us American people 230 years later that other nations are still taking advantage of the imbecility of our national government, which is of, by, and for the American people, the Washington Post was out with an article entitled “New report on Russian disinformation, prepared for the Senate, shows the operation’s scale and sweep” by Craig Timberg and Tony Romm on 17 December 2018, as follows:
A report prepared for the Senate that provides the most sweeping analysis yet of Russia’s disinformation campaign around the 2016 election found the operation used every major social media platform to deliver words, images and videos tailored to voters’ interests to help elect President Trump — and worked even harder to support him while in office.
The report, a draft of which was obtained by The Washington Post, is the first to study the millions of posts provided by major technology firms to the Senate Intelligence Committee, led by Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), its chairman, and Sen. Mark Warner (Va.), its ranking Democrat.
The bipartisan panel hasn’t said whether it endorses the findings.
It plans to release it publicly this week.
The research — by Oxford University’s Computational Propaganda Project and Graphika, a network analysis firm — offers new details of how Russians working at the Internet Research Agency, which U.S. officials have charged with criminal offenses for interfering in the 2016 campaign, sliced Americans into key interest groups for targeted messaging.
These efforts shifted over time, peaking at key political moments, such as presidential debates or party conventions, the report found.
The data sets used by the researchers were provided by Facebook, Twitter and Google and covered several years up to mid-2017, when the social media companies cracked down on the known Russian accounts.
The report, which also analyzed data separately provided to House Intelligence Committee members, contains no information on more recent political moments, such as November’s midterm elections.
“What is clear is that all of the messaging clearly sought to benefit the Republican Party — and specifically Donald Trump,” the report says.
“Trump is mentioned most in campaigns targeting conservatives and right-wing voters, where the messaging encouraged these groups to support his campaign.”
“The main groups that could challenge Trump were then provided messaging that sought to confuse, distract and ultimately discourage members from voting.”
Representatives for Burr and Warner declined to comment.
The report offers the latest evidence that Russian agents sought to help Trump win the White House.
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Now, people, ponder on that last sentence for a moment, and then think back to your high school civics class, and ask yourself this essential existential question, to wit: “Could that possibly be true?”
Does that report done by the Brits of all people, offer any evidence at all that Russian agents sought to help Trump win the White House?
Or is it just some more political hog**** being thrown at us by our imbecilic national government?
And before I answer that question, because I believe you should never ask a question you don’t already know the answer to (that is a no-brainer, by the way, for an American), the word “imbecilic” shows up several times in the Federalist Papers, and with good reason as we first see in FEDERALIST No. 9, “The Union as a Safeguard Against Domestic Faction and Insurrection,” for the Independent Journal to the People of the State of New York by Alexander Hamilton circa 1787, to wit:
A distinction, more subtle than accurate, has been raised between a CONFEDERACY and a CONSOLIDATION of the States.
The essential characteristic of the first is said to be, the restriction of its authority to the members in their collective capacities, without reaching to the individuals of whom they are composed.
It is contended that the national council ought to have no concern with any object of internal administration.
An exact equality of suffrage between the members has also been insisted upon as a leading feature of a confederate government.
These positions are, in the main, arbitrary; they are supported neither by principle nor precedent.
It has indeed happened, that governments of this kind have generally operated in the manner which the distinction taken notice of, supposes to be inherent in their nature; but there have been in most of them extensive exceptions to the practice, which serve to prove, as far as example will go, that there is no absolute rule on the subject.
And it will be clearly shown in the course of this investigation that as far as the principle contended for has prevailed, it has been the cause of incurable disorder and imbecility in the government.
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Incurable disorder and imbecility in the government!
That is us today, he is talking about, people, as we can clearly see from that stunning report the Brits just did for the United States Senate, where the Brits who did the study proved pretty conclusively that the Russians aimed particular energy at left-leaning African American voters by undermining their faith in elections and spreading misleading information about how to vote.
Which raises the question all these years later of how can somebody be an American citizen and not know how to vote?
Imbecility then shows up again in FEDERALIST No. 15, “The Insufficiency of the Present Confederation to Preserve the Union,” for the Independent Journal to the People of the State of New York by Alexander Hamilton, as follows:
Is respectability in the eyes of foreign powers a safeguard against foreign encroachments?
The imbecility of our government even forbids them to treat with us.
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Today, as that report to the Senate by the Brits makes incandescently clear the imbecility of our national government has the American people being led around by the nose by the Russians in seemingly huge flocks, according to that report.
So what is up with that does anyone think?
And then we come back to imbecility in FEDERALIST No. 18, “The Insufficiency of the Present Confederation to Preserve the Union, continued,” for the Independent Journal to the People of the State of New York by Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, as follows:
The Achaeans (Greeks), though weakened by internal dissensions and by the revolt of Messene, one of its members, being joined by the AEtolians and Athenians, erected the standard of opposition.
Finding themselves, though thus supported, unequal to the undertaking, they once more had recourse to the dangerous expedient of introducing the succor of foreign arms.
The Romans, to whom the invitation was made, eagerly embraced it.
Philip was conquered; Macedon subdued.
A new crisis ensued to the league.
Dissensions broke out among it members.
These the Romans fostered.
Callicrates and other popular leaders became mercenary instruments for inveigling their countrymen.
The more effectually to nourish discord and disorder the Romans had, to the astonishment of those who confided in their sincerity, already proclaimed universal liberty throughout Greece.
With the same insidious views, they now seduced the members from the league, by representing to their pride the violation it committed on their sovereignty.
By these arts this union, the last hope of Greece, the last hope of ancient liberty, was torn into pieces; and such imbecility and distraction introduced, that the arms of Rome found little difficulty in completing the ruin which their arts had commenced.
The Achaeans were cut to pieces, and Achaia loaded with chains, under which it is groaning at this hour.
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And now the Russians are doing it to us, people, so how about that?
Those who don’t know history, and that is most modern Americans today, are grist for the mill of those who do, plain and simple.
And note that the form of government those Greeks had was called Democracy!
And that in turn takes us to FEDERALIST No. 68, “The Mode of Electing the President,” from the New York Packet to the People of the State of New York by Alexander Hamilton on Friday, March 14, 1788, where we learn about our form of government, as follows:
THE mode of appointment of the Chief Magistrate of the United States is almost the only part of the system, of any consequence, which has escaped without severe censure, or which has received the slightest mark of approbation from its opponents.
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Now, here people, is where I become curious as to why our United States Senate is seeking input on how our government is supposed to function from the Brits, who would be the last to know, given that they are ruled by a queen, whose subjects they are, while some of us remember being a free people not owned or in thrall to a foreign power like Great Britain, or Russia, for that matter.
Why doesn’t our United States Senate know how the Chief Magistrate of the United States is appointed?
How can they be so ignorant?
Is it because they are put in office by people in this country who either don’t know how to vote, or have been misled by the Russians?
Getting back to Federalist No. 68, we have, to wit:
It was desirable that the sense of the people should operate in the choice of the person to whom so important a trust was to be confided.
This end will be answered by committing the right of making it, not to any preestablished body, but to men chosen by the people for the special purpose, and at the particular conjuncture.
It was equally desirable, that the immediate election should be made by men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station, and acting under circumstances favorable to deliberation, and to a judicious combination of all the reasons and inducements which were proper to govern their choice.
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Now think about that, people, as we hear all this hype and hysteria the Brits are feeding to our imbecilic Senate which makes it sound as if the Russians are actually the ones who elected Donald Trump to office, as opposed to a body of men and women in this country most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station, and acting under circumstances favorable to deliberation, and to a judicious combination of all the reasons and inducements which were proper to govern their choice.
Are the Brits, and by extension, the members of our Senate who are getting their facts from the Brits, who seem to know more about what is going on over here than do the members of our Senate, telling us that minds of these men and women in this country most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station, and acting under circumstances favorable to deliberation, and to a judicious combination of all the reasons and inducements which were proper to govern their choice have been contaminated by the Russians to such extent that they were nothing more than Russian stooges?
Is that what the Brits and the U.S. Senate are telling us when they say this report offers the latest evidence that Russian agents sought to help Trump win the White House?
Because in America, pursuant to our mode of electing our president, the only way the Russians could have succeeded was by literally taking over the electors of the president, and where is there any proof that that happened, people?
Getting back to Federalist No. 68, we have:
A small number of persons, selected by their fellow-citizens from the general mass, will be most likely to possess the information and discernment requisite to such complicated investigations.
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Discernment requisite to such complicated investigations, people, where discernment can be taken to mean the ability to judge well.
So are we to believe that these electors were actually then stupid enough to be taken in by Russian disinformation on FACEBOOK and TWITTER?
If these electors are chosen because they possess discernment requisite to such complicated investigations as are required to elect an American president, people, do we really think they are going to be conducting their investigations on either FACEBOOK or mindless TWITTER?
And that thought about Russian interference in our affairs over here, which has been going on since at least WWII, takes us back to Federalist No. 68 as follows:
It was also peculiarly desirable to afford as little opportunity as possible to tumult and disorder.
This evil was not least to be dreaded in the election of a magistrate, who was to have so important an agency in the administration of the government as the President of the United States.
But the precautions which have been so happily concerted in the system under consideration, promise an effectual security against this mischief.
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WHOA, stop the presses here, people – the precautions which have been so happily concerted in the system under consideration for electing the president of the United States of America promise an effectual security against mischief!
So how did the Russians manage to thwart that security to affect our presidential election by tainting the electors through a campaign of disinformation?
Has our electoral system broken down so that it now no longer provides us any security from Russian control of the minds of the American people?
Getting back to Federalist No. 68:
The choice of SEVERAL, to form an intermediate body of electors, will be much less apt to convulse the community with any extraordinary or violent movements, than the choice of ONE who was himself to be the final object of the public wishes.
And as the electors, chosen in each State, are to assemble and vote in the State in which they are chosen, this detached and divided situation will expose them much less to heats and ferments, which might be communicated from them to the people, than if they were all to be convened at one time, in one place.
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So, okay, people, who are we to believe here?
What these Brits at Oxford University are telling us is that today, with FACEBOOK and mindless TWITTER in the virtual control of the Russians, there no longer is any possible way to keep our presidential electors from being exposed to heats and ferments concocted by the Russians in order to put Donald Trump in the White House.
Can that be true?
And back once again to Federalist No. 68 we go, to see the following:
Nothing was more to be desired than that every practicable obstacle should be opposed to cabal, intrigue, and corruption.
These most deadly adversaries of republican government might naturally have been expected to make their approaches from more than one quarter, but chiefly from the desire in foreign powers to gain an improper ascendant in our councils.
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AHHHHH!
Do you see that, people?
Two hundred thirty years ago, the founders of this nation already anticipated that the Russians would try to interfere in our national elections today, as the Brits are telling the United States Senate happened, and in their wisdom, they put in place every practicable obstacle they could to oppose cabal, intrigue, and corruption in our presidential elections.
So how were these obstacles surmounted by the Russians in 2016?
And the answer to that question is that they weren’t!
It is almost 2019 now, and to date, not one shred of evidence has been put forth by anyone, including our so-called “intelligence” agencies, and the Mueller investigation, that any presidential electors in this country were turned by the Russians, or influenced in any way.
Getting back to the safeguards built into our mode of electing a president in this country so as to keep foreign powers like Russia or Great Britain, for that matter, from gaining an improper ascendant in our councils, Federalist No. 68 continues as follows:
How could they better gratify this, than by raising a creature of their own to the chief magistracy of the Union?
But the convention have guarded against all danger of this sort, with the most provident and judicious attention.
They have not made the appointment of the President to depend on any preexisting bodies of men, who might be tampered with beforehand to prostitute their votes; but they have referred it in the first instance to an immediate act of the people of America, to be exerted in the choice of persons for the temporary and sole purpose of making the appointment.
And they have excluded from eligibility to this trust, all those who from situation might be suspected of too great devotion to the President in office.
No senator, representative, or other person holding a place of trust or profit under the United States, can be of the numbers of the electors.
Thus without corrupting the body of the people, the immediate agents in the election will at least enter upon the task free from any sinister bias.
Their transient existence, and their detached situation, already taken notice of, afford a satisfactory prospect of their continuing so, to the conclusion of it.
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But, people, if we are to believe these Brits about the Russians using social media to put Trump in the White House, then we are being asked to believe that these electors were not free of sinister bias when they voted to put Trump in the White House over Hillary Clinton, a pathological liar deemed too untrustworthy to be an American president and the leader of a free people.
Getting back to Federalist No. 68, and the Russians corrupting our presidential electors, we have:
The business of corruption, when it is to embrace so considerable a number of men, requires time as well as means.
Nor would it be found easy suddenly to embark them, dispersed as they would be over thirteen States, in any combinations founded upon motives, which though they could not properly be denominated corrupt, might yet be of a nature to mislead them from their duty.
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Today, of course, we have fifty states, so are we really to believe that the Rusians are so powerful in this country that they can literally reach into each sate to corrupt the electors?
Isn’t that thought verging on hysteria?
Back to Federalist No. 68, to wit:
All these advantages will happily combine in the plan devised by the convention; which is, that the people of each State shall choose a number of persons as electors, equal to the number of senators and representatives of such State in the national government, who shall assemble within the State, and vote for some fit person as President.
Their votes, thus given, are to be transmitted to the seat of the national government, and the person who may happen to have a majority of the whole number of votes will be the President.
The process of election affords a moral certainty, that the office of President will never fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications.
Talents for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity, may alone suffice to elevate a man to the first honors in a single State; but it will require other talents, and a different kind of merit, to establish him in the esteem and confidence of the whole Union, or of so considerable a portion of it as would be necessary to make him a successful candidate for the distinguished office of President of the United States.
It will not be too strong to say, that there will be a constant probability of seeing the station filled by characters pre-eminent for ability and virtue.
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HMMMMMMMMM!
I wonder how these Brits at Oxford University are going to get around that – it will not be too strong to say that there will be a constant probability of seeing the station filled by characters pre-eminent for ability and virtue.
If that is no longer true, then it would seem that these Brits at Oxford University owe us a duty to explain to us how it was that the Russians were able to breach all these protections and safeguards to corrupt our presidential electors in this country so that they would put Trump in office instead of Hillary.
When can we expect that critical answer to be forthcoming?
Stay tuned for further developments, and don’t touch that dial!
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the imbecilic moron-o-cracy for which it stands!
What a sad day for America this has become!
And seriously, people in the wake of that tremendously damning report by the Brits at Oxford University which was the subject of the Washington Post article above entitled “New report on Russian disinformation, prepared for the Senate, shows the operation’s scale and sweep” by Craig Timberg and Tony Romm on 17 December 2018, are we living in an open-air lunatic asylum in this country today, or what, because how else could we have ended up with such imbecility in our national government that we are plagued with now?
And much more to the point, given the very long history of Russian interference in our internal affairs, largely through the Democrat party, which has been accused of being soft on Communism, going back to the 1940’s, when the Democrat party in this country was lousy with Commies, why are we reading all those years later in the Washington Post, a political rag that should know better, but doesn’t, as follows:
A report prepared for the Senate that provides the most sweeping analysis yet of Russia’s disinformation campaign around the 2016 election found the operation used every major social media platform to deliver words, images and videos tailored to voters’ interests to help elect President Trump — and worked even harder to support him while in office.
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Can our United States Senate be that collectively ignorant, people, given this history of the Russians trying to subvert our government in this country for many, many years now, as is made incandescently clear in the light of Supreme Court cases like Gitlow v. New York in 1925, which case brought by the American Civil Liberties Union posed a challenge to New York’s 1902 Criminal Anarchy Act.
According to that act, criminal anarchy is advocating, through either speech or writing, the overthrow of organized government by force, violence, or assassination, and the term sedition is synonymous with criminal anarchy.
Sporadically in U.S. history, states became concerned about radical activities within their borders, a specialty of the Russians since their own Communist Revolution, so that they often felt the need to minimize threats by limiting free speech, free press, and free assembly through passage of criminal anarchy or sedition laws.
As to New York’s Criminal Anarchy Act, it appeared in 1902 after assassination of President William McKinley by a professed anarchist.
By 1919, following the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, the end of World War I, and the emergence of labor unrest in the United States, Americans became fearful that revolution might erupt at home, just as they are again fearful today.
Thus, back then, thirty-three states enacted sedition or criminal syndicalist (organized group) laws with these felony laws expanding criminal anarchy to include any individual or organization seeking political or industrial reform through crime, sabotage, or violence.
Any person allowing the assembly of anarchists in a building could also be charged.
Back then, Socialists, Communists, and members of labor unions were frequently singled out for prosecution, and today, they are taking over our national government as we see in this GOTHAMIST article entitled “New Yorkers Put Schumer On Blast: Stand Up Or Get Out Of The Way” by Raphael Pope-Sussman on February 1, 2017, as follows:
Hundreds of New Yorkers braved freezing temperatures Tuesday night on Brooklyn’s Grand Army Plaza at a rally calling upon U.S. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to take a firm stand against the Trump administration.
Hae-Lin Choi, of the Democratic Socialists of America and Resist Trump NY, took the stage first, announcing herself as an immigrant and telling the crowd why organizers had called for the protest.
“Senator Schumer must be bold and stand with the working class,” she cried over the loudspeaker.
“He has to champion the resistance or get out of the way and we’ll find someone that will.”
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Now, is that naked foreign interference in our national affairs staring us in the face right there, and silly me, of course it is, people – there is United States Senator from New York City and notorious Democrat Charley “Chuck” Schumer being ordered about by someone be who self-identifies as an “immigrant” to be a disruptive element in our national government to benefit the goals of the Democratic Socialists in America, who want to do away with our national borders to make us a part of the one-world government they plan on being in charge of.
And who are these Democratic Socialists of America who have Charley “Chuck” Schumer as their captive pet politician in the United States Senate?
Let’s take a look and see what Wikipedia has to tell us, which is as follows, to wit:
The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) is a left-wing organization of democratic socialist, social democratic and labor-oriented members in the United States.
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So truly, people, with the “leader” of the Democrats in the U.S. Senate firmly and quite openly in the grasp of the immigrants of the Democratic Socialists of America, why is the U.S. Senate today surprised about foreign influence taking over our national government to subvert it and pervert it and make it subservient to them?
Getting back to WIKIPEDIA:
The DSA has its roots in the Socialist Party of America (SPA), whose most prominent leaders included Eugene V. Debs, Norman Thomas and Michael Harrington.
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As to the Socialist Party of America (SPA), it was a multi-tendency democratic socialist and social democratic political party in the United States formed in 1901 by a merger between the three-year-old Social Democratic Party of America and disaffected elements of the Socialist Labor Party of America which had split from the main organization in 1899.
In its turn, the Social Democratic Party of America (SDP) was a short-lived political party in the United States established in 1898, and it was formed out of elements of the Social Democracy of America (SDA) and was a predecessor to the Socialist Party of America which was established in 1901.
As to the Social Democracy of America (SDA), later known as the Cooperative Brotherhood, that was a short lived political party in the United States that sought to combine the planting of an intentional community with political action in order to create a socialist society.
It was an organizational forerunner of both the Socialist Party of America (SPA) and the Burley, Washington cooperative socialist colony.
The party split into political and colonization wings at its convention in 1898, with the political actionists establishing themselves as the Social Democratic Party of America (SDP).
The more interesting and relevant history linking us back to foreign interference in our internal political affairs is that of the Socialist Labor Party in this country founded on July 15, 1876, to wit:
The Socialist Labor Party (SLP), is the oldest socialist political party in the United States, being established in 1876; and the second oldest socialist party in the world still in existence.
Originally known as the Workingmen’s Party of the United States, the party changed its name in 1877 to Socialistic Labor Party and again sometime in the late 1880s to Socialist Labor Party.
In 1890, the SLP came under the influence of Daniel De Leon, who used his role as editor of The Weekly People, the SLP’s English-language official organ, to expand the party’s popularity beyond its then largely German-speaking membership.
Despite his accomplishments, De Leon was a polarizing figure among the SLP’s membership.
In 1899, his opponents left the SLP and merged with the Social Democratic Party of America to form the Socialist Party of America.
After his death in 1914, De Leon was followed as national secretary by Arnold Petersen.
Critical of both the Soviet Union and the reformism of the Socialist Party of America, the SLP became increasingly isolated from the majority of the American Left.
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Now, there is a key sentence to comprehend if we truly want to understand exactly how long it is that the Russians have been trying to subvert government here in the United States of America to make it a jewel in the crown of world communism – the SLP became increasingly isolated from the majority of the American Left, i.e., the Democrats, because it critical of the Soviet Union, which is the Russians of today.
See how many years we are talking about here, people?
More than a couple, and that is a fact.
So what is up with these reports to the Senate today then?
Getting back to the Socialist Labor Party (SLP), which you would think the members of the United States Senate today would be aware of, given that Senators in this country are supposed to know our history better than we do, in the first decades of the 20th century, it drew significant support from many different groups, including not surprisingly, immigrants.
The party’s staunch opposition to American involvement in World War I, although welcomed by many, also led to prominent defections, official repression and vigilante persecution.
The organization was further shattered by a factional war over how to respond to the October Revolution in Imperial Russia in 1917 and the establishment of the Communist International in 1919—many members left the party in favor of the Communist Party USA.
After endorsing Robert M. La Follette’s presidential campaign in 1924, the party returned to independent action at the presidential level.
It had modest growth in the early 1930s behind presidential candidate Norman Thomas.
The party’s appeal was weakened by the popularity of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, the organization and flexibility of the Communist Party under Earl Browder and the resurgent labor movement’s desire to support sympathetic Democratic Party politicians.
A divisive and ultimately unsuccessful attempt to broaden the party by admitting followers of Leon Trotsky and Jay Lovestone caused the traditional “Old Guard” to leave and form the Social Democratic Federation.
Leon Trotsky, born Lev Davidovich Bronstein (7 November 1879 – 21 August 1940) was a Russian revolutionary, Marxist theorist, and Soviet politician whose particular strain of Marxist thought is known as Trotskyism.
Initially supporting the Menshevik Internationalists faction within the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, he joined the Bolsheviks (“majority”) just before the 1917 October Revolution, immediately becoming a leader within the Communist Party.
He would go on to become one of the seven members of the first Politburo, founded in 1917 to manage the Bolshevik Revolution.
During the early days of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR) and the Soviet Union, he served first as People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs and later as the founder and commander of the Red Army, with the title of People’s Commissar of Military and Naval Affairs.
He became a major figure in the Bolshevik victory in the Russian Civil War (1918–1922).
And getting back to the Socialist Labor Party (SLP), it stopped running presidential candidates in this country after 1956, and in the party’s last decades, its members, many of them prominent in the labor, peace, civil rights and civil liberties movements, fundamentally disagreed about the socialist movement’s relationship to the labor movement and the Democratic Party and about how best to advance democracy abroad.
In 1970–1973, these strategic differences had become so acute that the Socialist Party of America changed its name to Social Democrats, USA.
Leaders of two of its caucuses formed separate socialist organizations: the Socialist Party USA, and the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee, the latter of which became a precursor to the largest socialist organization in the United States, the Democratic Socialists of America.
And there, people, is some relevant American history that demonstrates just how long we have had foreign influence in our internal political affairs.
So what is up with the Senate Report today, then, besides politics and the spreading of hype and hysteria, as we clearly see from a VOX.com article entitled “4 main takeaways from new reports on Russia’s 2016 election interference – One includes Russia’s deliberate targeting of African Americans online.” by Alex Ward on Dec 17, 2018, to wit:
Russia’s efforts to influence the 2016 political landscape — and presidential election — was a much wider effort than previously understood.
Two new reports released on Monday, prepared for the Senate Intelligence Committee by independent researchers, reveal that Moscow’s intelligence officials reached millions of social media users between 2013 and 2017, in part by exploiting existing political and racial divisions in American society.
Taken together, the reports are bad news for President Donald Trump.
They clearly show that Russia aimed to help him win the election and hurt Hillary Clinton, although none of the reports say Russia’s efforts definitively won the White House for Trump or changed any votes.
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Which kind of takes us back to the beginning, does it not?
Stay tuned, however, because this is a breaking story that still has plenty of room to run, taking us along with it as it goes.
I don’t give a damn if he snorted a line of cocaine from the crack of a Russians whore’s rear end every day since birth. We The People do not care.
Let us see where the Senate and House of Reps ‘slush’ fund that we have provided them to pay for sexual ‘problems and accusations’. Let We The People see how and where that money went. It is also duplicated in most states.
Based on a poll that I just conducted, Ken Parks, I think you are dead on the money when you say We The People do not give a damn if Trump snorted a line of cocaine from the crack of a Russian whore’s rear end every day since birth.
It’s not something I am really interested in knowing more about, and that was the universal opinion I got back from my poll, with the most common response being, “Who the hell wants to know about that ****?”
So thanks for settling that pressing existential question for us, Ken Parks, so we can finally get past it, and move on to what is really important in here, which is the fact that this so-called report is contrived, and is an excellent example of what the political lawyers to the north of Cape Charles call the “Dame Snow Jeopardy,” where you start with the conclusions you want drawn, and then you arrange selected facts in such an order as appears to the ignorant, and in this country, they are legion, and therefore easily led by the nose by the Democrat demagogues operating in this country today, to support the conclusions, as we can clearly see from an excellent expose of the absurdity of the conclusions of this trumped-up Senate Report in a VOX.com article entitled “4 main takeaways from new reports on Russia’s 2016 election interference – One includes Russia’s deliberate targeting of African Americans online.” by Alex Ward on Dec 17, 2018, to wit:
Russia’s efforts to influence the 2016 political landscape — and presidential election — was a much wider effort than previously understood.
Two new reports released on Monday, prepared for the Senate Intelligence Committee by independent researchers, reveal that Moscow’s intelligence officials reached millions of social media users between 2013 and 2017, in part by exploiting existing political and racial divisions in American society.
Taken together, the reports are bad news for President Donald Trump.
They clearly show that Russia aimed to help him win the election and hurt Hillary Clinton, although none of the reports say Russia’s efforts definitively won the White House for Trump or changed any votes.
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Now, with respect to the skillful employment of the Dame Snow Jeopardy here by these report writers, including Columbia University in this country and Oxford University in England, here is the conclusion they are supporting, to wit:
“Taken together, the reports are bad news for President Donald Trump.”
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Except that is horse****, and taken together, as the excellent VOX.com expose entitled “4 main takeaways from new reports on Russia’s 2016 election interference – One includes Russia’s deliberate targeting of African Americans online.” by Alex Ward on Dec 17, 2018, makes incandescently clear, the reports are a blatant attempt to manipulate public opinion here in the United States of America by Oxford University in England, which smacks of gross foreign interference in our election process.
That the members of the Senate who commissioned this report with our tax dollars are as sure as I am that these reports are horse**** can be discerned from the following from the Washington Post article “New report on Russian disinformation, prepared for the Senate, shows the operation’s scale and sweep” by Craig Timberg, Tony Romm on 17 December 2018, to wit:
A report prepared for the Senate that provides the most sweeping analysis yet of Russia’s disinformation campaign around the 2016 election found the operation used every major social media platform to deliver words, images and videos tailored to voters’ interests to help elect President Trump — and worked even harder to support him while in office.
The report, a draft of which was obtained by The Washington Post, is the first to study the millions of posts provided by major technology firms to the Senate Intelligence Committee, led by Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), its chairman, and Sen. Mark Warner (Va.), its ranking Democrat.
The bipartisan panel hasn’t said whether it endorses the findings.
end quotes
Focus on that last line there, Ken Parks – The bipartisan panel hasn’t said whether it endorses the findings.
They would embarrass themselves publicly if they did, Ken Parks, which is what I am getting from your post above!
And well said, and thank you from a grateful nation for making that point quite clear in here that if Trump is snorting lines of cocaine from the crack of a Russian whore’s rear end every day, the American people really are not interested in having the Senate Democrats telling us all the salacious details.
If Trump snorting lines of cocaine from the crack of a Russian whore’s rear end every day since his birth is an impeachable offense, Charley “Chuck” Schumer, then let’s get the show on the road and get Trump impeached and put in jail, if necessary.
Otherwise, Charley “Chuck,” leave off, because we are sick of hearing about it.
‘then let’s get the show on the road and get Trump impeached and put in jail, if necessary.’
The repercussions, I am afraid, would be severe.
Good morning, Hoss, and best of the season to you!
And you raise a good point with your statement that the repercussions from impeaching Trump would be severe, which raises the serious question of would they really be in the America today where those who screech the loudest get their way.
Just yesterday, The Hill had an article entitled “Majority in poll want Trump impeached or censured” by Max Greenwood on 29 December 2018, wherein we were informed about the feelings of those said to be our “fellow countrymen,” as follows:
Nearly 60 percent of U.S. voters surveyed say President Trump should be either impeached and removed from office or formally censured, according to a new Harvard CAPS/Harris poll released exclusively to The Hill.
end quotes
And there you have it, Hoss – that is what the Democrats about to take control of the House of Representatives are looking at – who is screeching the loudest, and right now, those who want Trump impeached are raising the SCREECH-O-METERS to a higher number than those who don’t want Trump impeached.
Like me, Hoss, you are an older dude, so you must remember those SCREECH-O-METERS from TV that were used to determine who won a dance contest, or what band was the best in a battle of the bands, and I think they had them on some type of quiz shows as well.
Now, they have made their way over into U.S. national politics.
Makes you proud to be an American, doesn’t it, knowing that you now live in a country where important decisions which affect us all are being made based on what side could screech louder than the other?
And getting back on topic here, which is the subject of the imbecility of our present national government in general, and in this case, specifically in the United States Senate, which is the last place one would expect to find imbecility in our national government, in theory, anyway, in FEDERALIST. No. 1, General Introduction, for the Independent Journal to the People of the State of New York in 1787, Alexander Hamilton, one of this nation’s actual founders, stated thusly concerning what our REPUBLIC was to be in the minds of the actual founders, as follows:
AFTER an unequivocal experience of the inefficacy of the subsisting federal government, you are called upon to deliberate on a new Constitution for the United States of America.
The subject speaks its own importance; comprehending in its consequences nothing less than the existence of the UNION, the safety and welfare of the parts of which it is composed, the fate of an empire in many respects the most interesting in the world.
end quotes
If I had not of included the date 1787 with respect to the phrase “AFTER an unequivocal experience of the inefficacy of the subsisting federal government,” one would actually think that Hamilton was alive and commenting today on our present subsisting federal government, and especially the United States Senate, with respect to this alleged and supposed Russian “interference” in our 2016 presidential election, despite the fact that going into 2019, there is still no evidence whatsoever, despite all the probing by Mueller, at a cost to the U.S. taxpayers as of Sept. 30, 2018 of $25.2 million according to Politifact, that any members of the 2016 electoral college were interfered with in any way by the Russians.
In that same Federalist Paper, Hamilton also stated as follows, to wit:
Among the most formidable of the obstacles which the new Constitution will have to encounter may readily be distinguished the obvious interest of a certain class of men in every State to resist all changes which may hazard a diminution of the power, emolument, and consequence of the offices they hold under the State establishments; and the perverted ambition of another class of men, who will either hope to aggrandize themselves by the confusions of their country, or will flatter themselves with fairer prospects of elevation from the subdivision of the empire into several partial confederacies than from its union under one government.
end quotes
For the purposes of this thread, and with respect to this “Russian Interference Report” prepared for the United States Senate by Oxford University in England, I would ask the reader to focus on the phrase, “the perverted ambition of another class of men, who will either hope to aggrandize themselves by the confusions of their country,” because people, when we read the excellent expose of the imbecility in our U.S. Senate in the VOX.com article entitled “4 main takeaways from new reports on Russia’s 2016 election interference – One includes Russia’s deliberate targeting of African Americans online.” by Alex Ward on Dec 17, 2018, we can see that those very people, the class of men of perverted ambition who hope to aggrandize themselves by the confusions of our country, not surprisingly, are alive and well and with us today, looking to sow that confusion with this “Russian Interference Report,” to wit:
Russia’s efforts to influence the 2016 political landscape — and presidential election — was a much wider effort than previously understood.
Two new reports released on Monday, prepared for the Senate Intelligence Committee by independent researchers, reveal that Moscow’s intelligence officials reached millions of social media users between 2013 and 2017, in part by exploiting existing political and racial divisions in American society.
end quotes
Now, people, how long now have we had political and racial divisions in this country?
And the answer is since before there was a United States of America, as we can clearing see from Federalist No. 1 by Alexander Hamilton in 1787, as follows:
Ambition, avarice, personal animosity, party opposition, and many other motives not more laudable than these, are apt to operate as well upon those who support as those who oppose the right side of a question.
Were there not even these inducements to moderation, nothing could be more ill-judged than that intolerant spirit which has, at all times, characterized political parties.
For in politics, as in religion, it is equally absurd to aim at making proselytes by fire and sword.
Heresies in either can rarely be cured by persecution.
And yet, however just these sentiments will be allowed to be, we have already sufficient indications that it will happen in this as in all former cases of great national discussion.
A torrent of angry and malignant passions will be let loose.
To judge from the conduct of the opposite parties, we shall be led to conclude that they will mutually hope to evince the justness of their opinions, and to increase the number of their converts by the loudness of their declamations and the bitterness of their invectives.
end quotes
That is so us today, is it not, people – from the conduct today of the Republican and Democrat parties with respect to this alleged “Russian Interference” as outlined in the Oxford University Report leads us to conclude that they will mutually hope to evince the justness of their opinions, and to increase the number of their converts by the loudness of their declamations and the bitterness of their invectives, which brings us right back to this Oxford University Report, as follows:
Using data provided by social media companies to the Senate panel, researchers from New Knowledge, Columbia University, and Canfield Research along with others from the University of Oxford and Graphika have for the first time revealed a broad extent of the years-long efforts by the Internet Research Agency (IRA), a group of Russian agents that use social media to influence politics.
end quotes
Now, putting hype and hysteria aside, people, how long have the Russians been trying to influence politics in this country?
Since at least WWII, isn’t it?
But wait, silly me, what am I saying there.
How about back to before the time of the U.S. Civil War, when the purchase of Alaska in 1867 marked the end of Russian efforts to expand trade and settlements to the Pacific coast of North America, and became an important step in the United States rise as a great power in the Asia-Pacific region.
As the Office of the Historian, Bureau of Public Affairs, United States Department of State tells us, and that office should now, as should each and every United States Senator today, beginning in 1725, when Russian Czar Peter the Great dispatched Vitus Bering to explore the Alaskan coast, Russia had a keen interest in this region, which was rich in natural resources and lightly inhabited.
As the United States expanded westward in the early 1800s, Americans soon found themselves in competition with Russian explorers and traders.
St. Petersburg, however, lacked the financial resources to support major settlements or a military presence along the Pacific coast of North America and permanent Russian settlers in Alaska never numbered more than four hundred.
Defeat in the Crimean War further reduced Russian interest in this region.
Russia offered to sell Alaska to the United States in 1859, believing the United States would off-set the designs of Russia’s greatest rival in the Pacific, Great Britain.
The looming U.S. Civil War delayed the sale, but after the war, Secretary of State William Seward quickly took up a renewed Russian offer and on March 30, 1867, agreed to a proposal from Russian Minister in Washington, Edouard de Stoeckl, to purchase Alaska for $7.2 million.
The Senate approved the treaty of purchase on April 9; President Andrew Johnson signed the treaty on May 28, and Alaska was formally transferred to the United States on October 18, 1867.
end quotes
So what is up with that, people?
What’s up with any of this “Russian Interference” crap we keep getting barraged with since Hillary Clinton and the Democrats lost the 2016 presidential election to Trump and needed a scapegoat to pin it on, which for them is the Russians, who we have been dealing with as a nation for over 200 years now?
And while we are on that subject of Russian interference in our political affairs, more particularly, the Democrat party, have we forgotten Kim Philby, by name of Harold Adrian Russell Philby, the British intelligence officer until 1951 and the most successful Soviet double agent of the Cold War period?
Now, if you really want to focus on Russian, or Communist, actually, interference with western “democracy,” which is as fertile ground for the spread of Communism as ground can be, then as every schoolchild in America knows, you have to start with good old Kim Philby, a darling of the Democrats in this country back when people in this country were enamoured of Communism as a better form of government in this country than our Republic.
According to Encyclopedia Britannica, while a student at the University of Cambridge in England, Philby became a communist and in 1933 a Soviet agent.
He worked as a journalist until 1940, when Guy Burgess, a British secret agent who was himself a Soviet double agent, recruited Philby into the MI-6 section of the British intelligence service.
By the end of World War II, Philby had become head of counterespionage operations for MI-6, in which post he was responsible for combating Soviet subversion in western Europe.
In 1949 he was sent to Washington to serve as chief MI-6 officer there and as the top liaison officer between the British and U.S. intelligence services.
end quotes
Focus on that last line there, people, about Democrat Party darling Kim Philby, a Soviet double agent employed by the Brits, the same Brits who today are telling us, or the members of the Senate, anyway, about Russian interference in our elections, being the top liaison officer between the British and U.S. intelligence services in 1949, almost 70 years ago, for an indication of exactly how long the Russians have been able to infiltrate to the highest levels of our national government, at least when the left-leaning Democrats are in charge as they were back then.
Getting back to Kim Philby, while holding that highly sensitive post, he revealed to the U.S.S.R. an Allied plan to send armed anticommunist bands into Albania in 1950, thereby assuring their defeat and he warned two Soviet double agents in the British diplomatic service, Burgess and Donald MacLean, that they were under suspicion (the two men consequently escaped to the Soviet Union in 1951); and further transmitted detailed information about MI-6 and the Central Intelligence Agency to the Soviets.
Now, doesn’t that infiltration of our intelligence services by Russian double-agent Kim Philby make you want to rush out and embrace any findings at all from our so-called “intelligence” agencies, which were not intelligent enough to keep themselves from being infiltrated by a Russian agent?
As Encyclopedia Britannica tells us, Philby seems to have been a lifelong and committed communist whose primary devotion lay toward the Soviet Union rather than his native country, as was the case with many people in this country back in the 1940s and 1950s.
So why is our United States Senate surprised today that the Russians are still at it, hoping they can gain enough converts in this country to change our Republican form of government bequeathed to us in the Federalist papers to the Communist frame?
What is wrong with that picture?
Stay tuned, for more is yet to come on that subject.
Before I continue on with the four main takeaways the United States Senate wishes us to believe in from this Oxford University report, as outlined in the excellent VOX.com expose entitled “4 main takeaways from new reports on Russia’s 2016 election interference – One includes Russia’s deliberate targeting of African Americans online” by Alex Ward on Dec. 17, 2018, where we were told that Russia’s alleged efforts to influence the 2016 political landscape — and presidential election — was a much wider effort than previously understood by the United States Senate which is quite a statement about that body today compared to what the nation’s founders intended it to be at the time of this nation’s beginning in 1788, which thought takes us to FEDERALIST No. 70, The Executive Department Further Considered, from the New York Packet to the People of the State of New York by Alexander Hamilton on Tuesday, March 18, 1788, where it was stated as the intent of the founders with respect to the executive magistrate as follows:
Energy in the Executive is a leading character in the definition of good government.
It is essential to the protection of the community against foreign attacks; it is not less essential to the steady administration of the laws; to the protection of property against those irregular and high-handed combinations which sometimes interrupt the ordinary course of justice; to the security of liberty against the enterprises and assaults of ambition, of faction, and of anarchy.
end quotes
Now, as we ask ourselves the essential existential question as American citizens of exactly what is it that is going on here with this Oxford report, which quite frankly is amateurish and stupid, betraying a lack of knowledge of government in the country as well as our history as it related to partisan politics and an affinity for and fascination with the Communists and Russia by a large segment of the U.S. population that identified as Democrats, we need to give some serious consideration to these words from Hamilton, to wit: to the security of liberty against the enterprises and assaults of ambition, of faction, and of anarchy.
And never were words from our beginnings as a nation so relevant to us as a people today as those words about securing OUR liberty against the enterprises and assaults of ambition and of faction.
Getting back to Federalist No. 70, Hamilton continued on as follows:
A feeble Executive implies a feeble execution of the government.
A feeble execution is but another phrase for a bad execution; and a government ill executed, whatever it may be in theory, must be, in practice, a bad government.
end quotes
And that describes exactly where we are today in this country, with ambition in the form of Democrat Senator from New York City Charley “Chuck” Schumer and faction in the form of the Democrat party doing their utmost to enfeeble Trump, and by doing so, to intentionally undermine the functioning of our executive department which is outlined FEDERALIST No. 72 from the New York Packet to the People of the State of New York by Alexander Hamilton on Friday, March 21, 1788, as follows:
THE administration of government, in its largest sense, comprehends all the operations of the body politic, whether legislative, executive, or judiciary; but in its most usual, and perhaps its most precise signification, it is limited to executive details, and falls peculiarly within the province of the executive department.
The actual conduct of foreign negotiations, the preparatory plans of finance, the application and disbursement of the public moneys in conformity to the general appropriations of the legislature, the arrangement of the army and navy, the directions of the operations of war, these, and other matters of a like nature, constitute what seems to be most properly understood by the administration of government.
end quotes
So what is really up here, people?
This report by Oxford University did not come from thin air for no purpose, because that is not how the game of partisan politics is played in this country, which takes us back to an article in the GOTHAMIST entitled “New Yorkers Put Schumer On Blast: Stand Up Or Get Out Of The Way” by Raphael Pope-Sussman on February 1, 2017, as follows:
Hundreds of New Yorkers braved freezing temperatures Tuesday night on Brooklyn’s Grand Army Plaza at a rally calling upon U.S. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to take a firm stand against the Trump administration.
Hae-Lin Choi, of the Democratic Socialists of America and Resist Trump NY, took the stage first, announcing herself as an immigrant and telling the crowd why organizers had called for the protest.
“Senator Schumer must be bold and stand with the working class,” she cried over the loudspeaker.
“He has to champion the resistance or get out of the way and we’ll find someone that will.”
end quotes
Is this Oxford University report part of that resistance to Trump that Charley “Chuck” Schumer owes the Democratic Socialists of America whose tool he is?
And as you ponder that, consider that by 1950 anticommunism, which means the Russians, people, trying to infiltrate and take over control of our national government, had become perhaps the most important theme in American politics.
That is how long we have been dealing with Russian interference with our internal affairs, people, quite a long time, actually, which is a measure of exactly how persistent the Communists and Russians are in fulfilling their goal of world communism.
Back then the Republicans were deeply frustrated by their inability to win a presidential election, and to them, Truman’s upset victory over Thomas E. Dewey in 1948 was particularly galling.
The New Deal and the permanence of the emerging welfare state in America had left the Republicans without a compelling domestic issue. so in the aftermath of Truman’s victory, the party leadership decided that it could no longer afford a me-too position on American foreign policy.
With Wisconsin Senator Joseph R. McCarthy charging that the administration had permitted infiltration of the federal government by Soviet espionage agents, and Senators Robert Taft and Everett Dirksen indicting Roosevelt and Truman for selling out Eastern Europe to the Kremlin, the Republicans launched a relentless campaign to portray the Democrats as soft on communism.
The effect of this campaign was to create an anticommunist consensus in the United States of monumental proportions.
In late January 1950, President Truman directed the State and Defense departments “to make an overall review and reassessment of American foreign and defense policy” in light of the fall of China to the communists and the detonation of an atomic bomb by the Soviet Union (both in 1949).
The result was National Security Council Document 68 (NSC68), a policy paper committing the United States to combating the forces of international communism “on every front,” to use the historian Thomas G. Paterson’s phrase.
This paper led to a fourfold increase in defense budgets and committed the United States to defending democracy against communism on the global stage.
It paved the way for the transformation of the United States into a national security state and institutionalized a Cold War between the United States and its allies on the one hand and the Soviet Union and its allies on the other that would last until 1989.
It led to U.S. intervention into the Korean War and provoked a series of brushfire conflicts throughout the developing world with the Soviets or Communist Chinese backing one side and the United States the other.
Meanwhile, the Republicans continued to hammer the Democrats with the soft-on-communism issue.
So what is going on today, people?
Same old same old, is it not?
But stay tuned, because there is more on this story yet to come.
So what, besides cheap politics, is going on here, people?
And for that answer, we only need go back to the VOX.com article “4 main takeaways from new reports on Russia’s 2016 election interference – One includes Russia’s deliberate targeting of African Americans online” by Alex Ward on Dec. 17, 2018, as follows:
Russia’s efforts to influence the 2016 political landscape — and presidential election — was a much wider effort than previously understood.
Two new reports released on Monday, prepared for the Senate Intelligence Committee by independent researchers, reveal that Moscow’s intelligence officials reached millions of social media users between 2013 and 2017, in part by exploiting existing political and racial divisions in American society.
Vox obtained the two reports before their planned release.
Using data provided by social media companies to the Senate panel, researchers from New Knowledge, Columbia University, and Canfield Research along with others from the University of Oxford and Graphika have for the first time revealed a broad extent of the years-long efforts by the Internet Research Agency (IRA), a group of Russian agents that use social media to influence politics.
Special counsel Robert Mueller indicted 13 IRA members in February for interfering in the 2016 presidential election.
end quotes
There it is right there, people – despite having no evidence whatsoever, besides the wild accusations of the loser Hillary Clinton and the Democrats, that the 2016 presidential election was interferred with in any way, as we see from the VOX.com article’s statement that none of the reports say Russia’s efforts definitively won the White House for Trump or changed any votes, because that would be outright lying if they did, Special counsel Robert Mueller did in fact indict 13 members of Internet Research Agency (IRA) in February for interfering in the 2016 presidential election.
So, as we can clearly see here, Mueller has gotten himself into a bind with that indictment, given he can’t back it up with proof that would stand up before a jury, which is what we are, people, in a court of law, or the court of public opinion, so the cavalry are riding in now trying to save Mueller with evidence gathered after Mueller’s indictment which purportedly now substantiates the indictments, but since the reports are ridiculous horse**** that you would have to be a moron or ignoramus to accept as proof of anything other than that like everybody else in the world, including the Brits who prepared the Steele dossier in an attempt to put Hillary Clinton in the White House by turning public opinion in this country against Trump, the Russians are as concerned today with who leads this country as they have been for the last 200 years or so, which is something we Americans learn as children.
I grew up with all the fear-mongering back in the 50s about how we were going to get invaded by Russian paratroopers who were going to take over this country to turn it into a Communist Worker’s Paradise like the Soviet Union, to which a lot of people in America paid homage to back then, and it is ridiculous to think that any of these Senators responsible for these reports could be ignorant of any of that, given that the Oxford University Press, in the American History section of its Oxford Research Encyclopedia tells as as follows concerning Russian influence in our internal political affairs, as follows:
The largest and most important revolutionary socialist organization in US history, the Communist Party USA was always a minority influence.
It reached considerable size and influence, however, during the Great Depression and World War II years when it followed the more open line associated with the term “Popular Front.”
end quotes
The Great Depression, people, was in the 1930s, which is an indication of how long the Russians or Communists have been vying for control of our national government.
As the Oxford University Press Research Encyclopedia tells us, in these years communists were much more flexible in their strategies and relations with other groups, though the party remained a hierarchical vanguard organization.
It grew from a largely isolated sect dominated by unskilled and unemployed immigrant men in the 1920s to a socially diverse movement of nearly 100,000 based heavily on American born men and women from the working and professional classes by the late 1930s and during World War II, exerting considerable influence in the labor movement and American cultural life.
end quotes
And HUH?
Hey Mueller, dude, help us out here if you have a clue as to how to do so – how come we are reading about the COMMUNISTS (Russians) exerting considerable influence on American cultural life back in the 1930’s at the same time we are reading about you blowing through millions of dollars of our tax money to get some indictments of Russians in Russia for using the internet instead of the print media to exert influence on American cultural life in 2016?
How come you stopped at 13, Mueller?
Is that all of them you could find?
Getting back to Communist or Russian involvement in our internal political affairs, the Oxford University Press article on Communism in this country continues as follows:
In these years, the Communist Party helped to build the industrial union movement, advanced the cause of African American civil rights, and laid the foundation for the postwar feminist movement.
end quotes
HOLY ****, people, the Communist Party advanced the cause of African American civil rights in this country, which is something the Democrats also try to take credit for, so no wonder we are reading today in the VOX.com expose that Russia especially targeted African Americans.
WOW, people, just think of it, after advancing the cause of African American civil rights in this country back in the 1930s, the Russians are still reaching out to their black brothers and sisters in this country they have a rapport with, as we see from the VOX.com expose as follows:
“The most prolific IRA efforts on Facebook and Instagram specifically targeted Black American communities and appear to have been focused on developing Black audiences and recruiting Black Americans as assets.”
That’s one of the stunning conclusions from the report by researchers from New Knowledge, Columbia University, and Canfield Research LLC.
In other words, Russia deliberately aimed to sow and exploit racial divisions in the United States.
end quotes
HUH?
Seriously, people, given the actual history here, can you believe this bull**** we are being pitched here by the United States Senate with these absurd reports?
If in the 1930s, the Russians or Communists were advancing the cause of African American civil rights in this country, wouldn’t that be a textbook example of the Russians deliberately exploiting racial divisions in the United States for political gain, which by the way, according to the United States Supreme Court is not unlawful or illegal conduct?
And what am I saying, of course it is.
So what kind of horse**** is Mueller trying to feed us then, along with the United States Senate, about what the Russians today are doing with respect to the black folks in this country, when it is exactly what they have been doing now since the 1930s?
Which takes us back to the VOX.com expose of these bull**** reports as follows:
The report doesn’t explain why the IRA targeted African Americans most of all.
One possibility, though, is that black voters skew more Democratic, and the election occurred during the height of the Black Lives Matter movement, which sharply divided liberals and conservatives.
Targeting Black Americans — and trying to keep them from either voting for Clinton or voting altogether — would serve to help Trump.
end quotes
Talk about clutching at straws (try any route to get out of a desperate situation, no matter how unlikely it is to succeed), people, there it is, right before our eyes above here.
How about the Russians are targeting the black folks in America today, because that is what they have been doing since the 1930’s?
So, people, ask yourself this important existential question: am I actually stupid enough to believe a word these absurd U.S. Senate Reports are saying about Russian interference in our 2016 presidential election in an effort to pull Mueller’s fat from the fire for him?
As for me, I am not, and I resent being treated as if I were addle-pated by our United States Senate.
And as we talk about this alleged “Russian interference” into our 2016 presidential election, it is interesting to read in a Washington Post Op-Ed by failed Republican presidential candidate Willard Romney, who is now a U.S. Senator, entitled “Mitt Romney: The president shapes the public character of the nation. Trump’s character falls short” on January 1, 2019, as follows:
In a 2016 Pew Research Center poll, 84 percent of people in Germany, Britain, France, Canada and Sweden believed the American president would “do the right thing in world affairs.”
One year later, that number had fallen to 16 percent.
end quotes
So, obviously, some people in the world who are not Americans get to have and express a public opinion about the performance of an American president, which raises the question of why not the Russians, then?
But enough of that for now.
Since Willard is now a member of the Senate, let’s go back in time to circa 1788 and FEDERALIST No. 62, The Senate, for the Independent Journal to the People of the State of New York by either Alexander Hamilton or James Madison, to see what the nation’s founders intended for that body to determine if the imbecility that resides in that body today was designed in, or came after.
First off, we come to the qualifications proposed for senators, as distinguished from those of representatives, which consist of a more advanced age and a longer period of citizenship.
As Federalist No. 62 tells us, by design, a senator must be thirty years of age at least; as a representative must be twenty-five, and a Senator must have been a citizen nine years; as seven years are required for members of the House of Representatives.
The reasons for this were made quite clear by the founders, as follows:
The propriety of these distinctions is explained by the nature of the senatorial trust, which, requiring greater extent of information and stability of character, requires at the same time that the senator should have reached a period of life most likely to supply these advantages; and which, participating immediately in transactions with foreign nations, ought to be exercised by none who are not thoroughly weaned from the prepossessions and habits incident to foreign birth and education.
end quotes
So, as we consider the endemic imbecility extant in the U.S. Senate today, labeled by many in this country as a BUFFOON-O-CRACY, where Democrat Senator from New York City Charley “Chuck” Schumer is a wholly-owned lackey of the Democratic Socialists of America, we truly need to focus on these following requirements for that position in our national government as follows:
* greater extent of information;
* stability of character.
end quotes
Now, if the members of the U.S. Senate today are supposed to have a greater extent of information, then how come they do not know our nation’s history?
Why do they have to be told by the Brits at Oxford University that the Russians are having an influence on our culture in this country, when they have been having such an influence since the 1920s?
Since we in America are taught as children that the “Red Scares” during the roaring twenties refer to the fear of Communism in the U.S. just before and during the 1920s, why are these Senators ignorant of that fact?
Why do they think Russian interference in our internal affairs is anything new?
And that takes us back to this statement from Federalist No. 62 that a senator participation in transactions with foreign nations ought to be exercised by none who are not thoroughly weaned from the prepossessions and habits incident to foreign birth and education.
end quotes
Thoroughly weaned from the prepossessions and habits incident to foreign birth and education, people!
Now, is that anti-immigrant?
Or is it simply common sense?
And more to the point, as we read in the RealClearPolitics article “Pelosi: Trump Immigration Plan A Campaign To ‘Make America White Again’” posted By Ian Schwartz on January 27, 2018 about California’s Nancy Pelosi telling us that immigrants from other countries “make America more American,” is it time to jettison that policy and open up the Senate to anybody who just got here yesterday?
Have we truly reached a point in our nation’s history where people in other countries know more about America and being an American than do people born here?
And that question takes us back to Federalist No. 62 as follows:
The term of nine years appears to be a prudent mediocrity between a total exclusion of adopted citizens, whose merits and talents may claim a share in the public confidence, and an indiscriminate and hasty admission of them, which might create a channel for foreign influence on the national councils.
end quotes
A channel for foreign influence on national councils!
Is that desirable today, people?
Afterall, as we see from the POLITICO article “California Democrats ready new assault on Donald Trump” by Jeremy B. White on 5 December 2018, in California, the home of Nancy Pelosi, they intend to let undocumented and illegal aliens serve on appointed public boards regardless of their immigration status, looking to a standard of inclusiveness that would contrast sharply with the Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration.
So if illegal aliens can serve on public boards in progressive California, why shouldn’t we have them in the House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate today?
Getting back to Federalist No. 62, we are told that in order to form an accurate judgment as to the number of senators, and the duration of their appointments, it will be proper to inquire into the purposes which are to be answered by a senate; and in order to ascertain these, it will be necessary to review the inconveniences which a republic must suffer from the want of such an institution.
It is a misfortune incident to republican government, though in a less degree than to other governments, that those who administer it may forget their obligations to their constituents, and prove unfaithful to their important trust.
end quotes
And that is so today, is it not, people, people in our national government forgetting their obligations to their constituents, and proving unfaithful to their important trust, which is why Federalist No. 62 then provided as follows:
In this point of view, a senate, as a second branch of the legislative assembly, distinct from, and dividing the power with, a first, must be in all cases a salutary check on the government.
It doubles the security to the people, by requiring the concurrence of two distinct bodies in schemes of usurpation or perfidy, where the ambition or corruption of one would otherwise be sufficient.
This is a precaution founded on such clear principles, and now so well understood in the United States, that it would be more than superfluous to enlarge on it.
Secondly.
The necessity of a senate is not less indicated by the propensity of all single and numerous assemblies to yield to the impulse of sudden and violent passions, and to be seduced by factious leaders into intemperate and pernicious resolutions.
Examples on this subject might be cited without number; and from proceedings within the United States, as well as from the history of other nations.
end quotes
And there for the moment I am going to call a halt to let those words from our nation’s founder sink in – the necessity of a senate is not less indicated by the propensity of all single and numerous assemblies to yield to the impulse of sudden and violent passions, and to be seduced by factious leaders into intemperate and pernicious resolutions.
But what happens, then, people, when the Senate itself in our times today, as we can clearly see from the case of New York City’s Charley “Chuck” Schumer being made a lackey of the shrieking, screaming and hollering members of the Democratic Socialists of America, yields to the impulse of sudden and violent passions, and is seduced by factious leaders into intemperate and pernicious resolutions?
Any thoughts on that, anyone?
And how about you, Willard Romney?
What are your thoughts on that score?
By way of review, this thread started with me saying that in one of those cosmic confluences of events associated with the Cape Charles Mirror, perhaps because of its location over that huge meteorite from somewhere out in outer space buried down deep in the earth in the sea-floor mud beneath Cape Charles itself, more or less, anyway, that draws people from not only America itself, but from the wider world as well, back to the Cape Charles Mirror from week to week, just to see what is going to happen next, especially now that it has turned cold here in the frozen wastelands to the north of Cape Charles, and people are hunkered in for the winter, in sore need of some intellectual stimulation, just the other day, I posted this following from “An Address to the People of the State of New-York On the Subject of the Constitution, Agreed upon at Philadelphia, The 17th of September, 1787” by John Jay, member of the New York State Convention, printed by Samuel Loudon, Printer to the State, 1788, to wit:
From this new and wonderful system of Government (the Articles of Confederation), it has come to pass, that almost every national object of every kind, is at this day unprovided for; and other nations taking the advantage of its imbecility, are daily multiplying commercial restraints upon us.
end quotes
As I stated in the original post, that writing was 230 years ago, when those words of wisdom from an eye-witness to the living history of those times were spoken to the People of the State of New York by John Jay, an author of some of the Federalist Papers, and this nation’s first chief justice, about the imbecility of our national government, and those words were barely dry on the pages of the Cape Charles Mirror when to prove to us American people 230 years later that other nations are still taking advantage of the imbecility of our national government, which is of, by, and for the American people, the Washington Post was out with an article entitled “New report on Russian disinformation, prepared for the Senate, shows the operation’s scale and sweep” by Craig Timberg and Tony Romm on 17 December 2018.
Now, just about two months later, the Washington Examiner is out with yet another episode in what is an on-going political farce in Washington, D.C., starring Democrat congresswoman from San Francisco Nancy Pelosi, and United States senator from New York City Charley “Chuck” Schumer, and a cast of thousands, or millions, if you consider the Twittering Tweeter mob of “Evita from the Bronx” Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, entitled “Pelosi, Schumer slam Trump for national emergency declaration: ‘Congress cannot let the president shred the Constitution'” by Naomi Lim on 15 February 2019, where the narrative developed by Pelosi and Schumer (“Nan-Chuck”) in the on-going drama continues as follows, with some really good lines of dialogue, actually, if you are into political thrillers, to wit:
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., on Friday ripped President Trump over his declaration of a national emergency to finish building his proposed southern border wall.
“The President’s unlawful declaration over a crisis that does not exist does great violence to our Constitution and makes America less safe, stealing from urgently needed defense funds for the security of our military and our nation,” the top congressional Democrats wrote in a statement.
end quotes
Now, somebody tell me that those lines are not positively Hemingway-esque.
We are talking some real punch there, people!
Think about it, people – “a crisis that does not exist does great violence to our Constitution and makes America less safe!”
Like something you would see in a movie!
Which then takes us to these dramatic words of Nan-Chuck from that same article, as follows:
“This is plainly a power grab by a disappointed President, who has gone outside the bounds of the law to try to get what he failed to achieve in the constitutional legislative process.”
end quotes
WOW, you know what I am saying, people – talk Nan-Chuck sticking a sharp stick in Trump’s eye, but it does not end there, it keeps going, as follows:
“The President is not above the law.”
end quotes
Nor are Nancy Pelosi and Charley “Chuck” Schumer, I might add, which takes us back to the Washington Examiner article as follows:
“The Congress cannot let the President shred the Constitution,” they said.
end quotes
You see how serious this is getting, people?
Nan-Chuck sound like they are ready to put a real old-fashioned ***-whupping on Trump that will leave him with his head spinning!
Getting back to the Washi8ngton Examiner:
Pelosi and Schumer vowed to use “every remedy available,” whether through Congress or the courts, to defend the legislative body’s power to control government spending.
“This issue transcends partisan politics and goes to the core of the Founders’ conception for America, which commands Congress to limit an overreaching executive,” they said.
“The President’s emergency declaration, if unchecked, would fundamentally alter the balance of powers, inconsistent with our Founders’ vision.”
end quotes
And with those words uttered by Nan-Chuck about the “Founders’ conception for America, which commands Congress to limit an overreaching executive,” my thought was, “do tell, Nan-Chuck,” because quite frankly, that is something they invented out of whole cloth to gull the ignorant in America, of which I am not one, which takes us to FEDERALIST No. 70, The Executive Department Further Considered, from the New York Packet to the People of the State of New York by Alexander Hamilton on Tuesday, March 18, 1788, go wit:
THERE is an idea, which is not without its advocates, that a vigorous Executive is inconsistent with the genius of republican government.
The enlightened well-wishers to this species of government must at least hope that the supposition is destitute of foundation; since they can never admit its truth, without at the same time admitting the condemnation of their own principles.
Energy in the Executive is a leading character in the definition of good government.
It is essential to the protection of the community against foreign attacks; it is not less essential to the steady administration of the laws; to the protection of property against those irregular and high-handed combinations which sometimes interrupt the ordinary course of justice; to the security of liberty against the enterprises and assaults of ambition, of faction, and of anarchy.
A feeble Executive implies a feeble execution of the government.
A feeble execution is but another phrase for a bad execution; and a government ill executed, whatever it may be in theory, must be, in practice, a bad government.
end quotes
So, contrary to the crap that Nan-Chuck is trying to peddle us here, drivel that would literally put them in charge of the executive branch of the government if we were stupid enough to believe them, what goes to the core of the Founders’ conception for America, and the balance of powers between the legislative branch and executive branch consistent with our Founders’ vision is that energy in the Executive is a leading character in the definition of good government essential to the protection of the community against foreign attacks, the steady administration of the laws, and the security of liberty against the enterprises and assaults of ambition, of faction, and of anarchy.
And when we talk about the “enterprises and assaults of ambition, of faction, and of anarchy,” we are talking about Nancy Pelosi and Charley “Chuck” Schumer, which takes us to the political essay “A Citizen of Philadelphia” by Peletiah Webster in January 1787:
’Tis not in the power of human wisdom to do more; ’tis the fate of human nature to be imperfect and to err; and no doubt but Congress, with all their dignity of station and character, with all their opportunities to gain wisdom and information, with all their inducements to virtue and integrity, will err, and abuse or misapply their powers in more or less instances.
I have no expectation that they will make a court of angels, or be any thing more than men; ’tis probable many of them will be insufficient men, and some of them may be bad men.
end quotes
That last sentence to me is a direct reference to Nan-Chuck in our times today, which in turn takes us to FEDERALIST No. 72, The Duration in Office of the Executive, and Re-Eligibility of the Executive Considered, from the New York Packet to the People of the State of New York by Alexander Hamilton on Friday, March 21, 1788, where the duties of the executive branch as distinct from those of the legislative branch are defined as follows, to wit:
THE administration of government, in its largest sense, comprehends all the operations of the body politic, whether legislative, executive, or judiciary; but in its most usual, and perhaps its most precise signification, it is limited to executive details, and falls peculiarly within the province of the executive department.
The actual conduct of foreign negotiations, the preparatory plans of finance, the application and disbursement of the public moneys in conformity to the general appropriations of the legislature, the arrangement of the army and navy, the directions of the operations of war, these, and other matters of a like nature, constitute what seems to be most properly understood by the administration of government.
end quotes
There, people, is the “balance of powers” in our national government clearly defined, and based on that definition, as I read it, Trump as president is clearly within his rights calling this an emergency, and in support of that assertion, I am going to drop back in time to the administration of Democrat president Woodrow Wilson and the punitive expedition into Mexico Wilson undertook in 1916 against Mexican Revolutionary leader Pancho Villa.
For those who only know of him from the Willy Nelson song “Pancho and Lefty,” where we are told Pancho was a bandit, boys, and his horse was fast as polished steel, and he wore his gun outside his pants for all the honest world to feel, and Pancho met his match, you know, on the deserts down in Mexico and nobody heard his dying words but that’s the way it goes, and all the federales saythey could have had him any day, they only let him hang around, out of kindness, I suppose, in reality, Pancho Villa was a Mexican revolutionary leader who controlled much of northeastern Mexico during 1914 and 1915, at a time when the Wilson Administration supported Venustiano Carranza as the legitimate Mexican head of state and hoped that U.S. support could end Mexican political instability during the revolutionary period.
Of direct relevance to this discussion on the imbecility in our federal government epitomized by Nancy Pelosi and Charley “Chuck” Schumer, prior to the Mexican Revolution, the U.S.-Mexico border had been only lightly policed, but like today, the instability in Mexico led to an increased U.S. military presence, while U.S. citizens along the border often sympathized or aided the various factions in Mexico.
As part of a campaign against U.S. interests in Northern Mexico, Villa’s forces attacked U.S. mining executives in Mexico on January 9, 1916, provoking public anger in the United States, especially in Texas, and then Pancho Villa’s forces raided the town of Columbus, New Mexico, on March 9, 1916, resulting in the death of sixteen Americans and much larger casualties for Villa’s forces.
In response, the Wilson Administration decided to order a punitive raid into Mexico with the goal of capturing Pancho Villa.
Because of earlier, more minor raids, Wilson had already considered ordering an expedition across the border, and so directed Newton Baker, the Secretary of War, to organize an expedition specifically to pursue Villa, which is exactly what the founders of this nation intended American presidents to do, which is to protect our borders, and that is just what Woodrow Wilson did.
Now, think about it, people – can you imagine the screeching and shrieking and ululating and howling and hollering that would have been going on if “NEGATIVE NANCY NO” Pelosi and Charley “CHUCK” Schumer and the ACLU were around back then when Wilson launched his punitive expedition into Mexico?
Oh, the weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth that would be going on if Pelosi and Schumer were in Congress back then – “NO, YOU CAN’T TREAT THE MEXICANS THAT WAY!” they would be howling!
If we bad Woodrow Wilson in the White House today instead of Trump, he wouldn’t be whining about needing a wall – he would have the full weight of the United States military down there restoring order, and fast, regardless of “NEGATIVE NANCY NO” Pelosi and the Democratic Socialist “running dog” Charley “CHUCK” Schumer might think about it.
So, should Trump give up his demand for the wall, and instead, do what Democrat Woodrow Wilson did, which was to launch a punitive expedition into Mexico to teach those Mexicans that you don’t mess with the USA and get away with it?
Is that the course of action that Nancy Pelosi and Charley “Chuck” Schumer would prefer Trump to resort to?
Or do they really want Trump to leave our borders undefended?
The candid world which watches and waits would like to know.
By way of context, and with respect to our prior experience with the Mexican border under a Democrat president, from March 16, 1916, to February 14, 1917, an expeditionary force of more than fourteen thousand regular army troops under the command of Brig. Gen. John J. “Black Jack” Pershing operated in northern Mexico “in pursuit of Pancho Villa with the single objective of capturing him and putting a stop to his forays, while another 140,000 regular army and National Guard troops patrolled the vast border between Mexico and the United States to discourage further raids.
I wonder if Nancy Pelosi and Charley “Chuck” Schumer are aware of any of that.
According to our history, the origins of the punitive expedition were rooted in the 1910 Mexican Revolution, when a rebel faction led by Francisco I. Madero, Jr., attempted to overthrow Mexico’s dictator of more than thirty years, President Porfirio Diaz.
The United States was concerned that the conflict would harm American business interests in Mexico and its citizens living along the border.
As a result, President William H. Taft sent about sixteen thousand troops to Texas for “war games” in April 1911.
Now, there is an American president doing what the nation’s founders intended an American president to do, which is to protect our borders.
The troops, consisting of elements of several regiments, were designated as the Maneuver Division.
Although officially sent to the border for training exercises, unofficially the division prepared for a possible incursion into Mexico.
By June the revolution had succeeded, and Madero was elected president.
The Maneuver Division was disbanded on August 7, 1911.
Madero’s victory was short-lived, however.
On February 19, 1913, Gen. Victorio Huerta arrested Madero and forced him to resign.
On February 22, Madero was presumed assassinated on orders from Huerta.
A civil war erupted a few days later between Huerta’s forces and supporters of Madero, who were led by Governor Venustiano Carranza and Pancho Villa.
With a contingent of several thousand men, Villa formed a military band known as the Division of the North and operated in the mountains of northern Mexico.
Meanwhile, in the United States a new American President, Woodrow Wilson, took office, and like his predecessor, Wilson now faced the task of choosing a side in the ongoing Mexican Revolution.
According to our official archives, which certainly would be as available and accessible to Nancy Pelosi and Charley “Chuck” Schumer as they are to me, Democrat Wilson’s administration refused to recognize Huerta because of the corrupt manner in which he had seized power, and it instituted an arms embargo on both sides of the civil war, but when Huerta’s forces appeared to be winning the civil war in early 1914, Wilson lifted the arms embargo by offering to help Carranza, which action was to have volatile consequences for the United States.
Thereafter, the U.S. consul’s office in Vera Cruz had been warned that a German ship delivering arms for Huerta was expected in the port on April 21,1914, so Democrat President Wilson ordered U.S. forces in the area to seize the town’s customhouse and capture the guns.
Accordingly, on the afternoon of April 21, a contingent of 787 marines and sailors quickly went ashore and seized the customhouse, and by noon of April 22, the U.S. troops had occupied the town.
Although they had hoped to avoid bloodshed, U.S. forces were nevertheless fired upon by Mexican soldiers, and a violent street battle ensued, with American losses being four killed and twenty wounded on April 21 and thirteen killed and forty-one wounded on April 22.
On April 30, 1914, the U.S. Army’s Fifth Infantry Brigade, under the command of Brig. Gen. Frederick Funston, arrived at Vera Cruz and the brigade assumed occupation duty from the marines and also organized a military government to restore order to the city.
Then, on July 15, 1914, Huerta resigned from the office of president and moved to Spain, with the result that the Fifth Infantry Brigade left Vera Cruz on November 23, and the U.S. government agreed that Carranza and his de facto government could use the city as their capital.
The United States and six Latin American nations officially recognized the Carranza government on October 19, 1915, a direct insult to Pancho Villa and his followers, who had earlier parted ways with Carranza.
Feeling betrayed, the Villistas set forth on a course of retaliation directed mainly at Americans.
In one instance, Villa’s irregulars assassinated seventeen U.S. citizens aboard a train traveling from Chihuahua City to the Cusi Mine at Santa Isabel, Chihuahua.
Although this act infuriated the American public, it was the Villistas’ next attack, the raid on Columbus, New Mexico, that caused the U.S. government to seek retribution.
Columbus was the home of Camp Furlong and the Thirteenth U.S. Cavalry Regiment under the command of Col. Herbert J. Slocum and had been garrisoned at Columbus since September 1912.
The secretary of war reported that “Villa’s command crossed the border in small parties about 3 miles west of the border gate, concentrated for and made the attack during hours of extreme darkness after the moon had set and before daylight.”
After a bloody confrontation in which eighteen Americans died, two troops of the Thirteenth Cavalry under the direction of Maj. Frank Tompkins pursued the bandits.
The troops chased the Mexicans south of the border for twelve miles before their ammunition and supplies were exhausted.
Both public outcry and pressure from the army moved President Wilson to order the military to pursue Villa and punish him.
General Funston, now commanding the Southern Department, telegraphed the War Department the day after the raid, “I urgently recommend that American troops be given authority to pursue into Mexican Territory hostile Mexican bandits who raid American territory.”
“So long as the border is a shelter for them they will continue to harass our ranches and towns to our chagrin.”
Wilson responded by directing Secretary of War Newton Baker to organize a punitive expedition.
end quotes
But of course, that was then, and this is now, and how the times have changed, and what a change it has been!
If Pancho Villa was invading the United States today, he would find Nancy Pelosi and Charley “Chuck” Schumer waiting at the border for him to come, on their knees, frantically waving a surrender flag.
To an older American like myself who grew up with books, not television, to mention the name of Robert the Bruce is to open up a literal treasure trove of history that reads like the world’s best epic adventure story, and it is all true, and not made up.
The story Robert the Bruce was a part of started before him, and continued past him to his son, David the Bruce, who lost the Battle of Neville’s Cross, and whose fate is recalled in Shakespeare’s play Henry V, where in Act 1 Scene 3, Henry discusses the Scottish invasion with the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the last lines refer to an earlier play that would have been known to Shakespeare’s audience, The Reign of Edward III, at the end of which John de Coupland brings the captured David II to Edward III in Calais; where he meets the Black Prince, who has captured the French King.
The Battle of Neville’s Cross took place during the Second War of Scottish Independence on 17 October 1346, half a mile (800 m) to the west of Durham, England, within sight of Durham Cathedral, when an invading Scottish army of 12,000 led by the callow David the Bruce, inexperienced in war and indecisive, was defeated with heavy loss by an English army of approximately 6,000–7,000 men led by Lord Ralph Neville.
When I was young, there were morals to these stories, and we learned these stories to learn about people and the life on earth that preceded our being here, because if you don’t know how you got to where you are, how can you know where you are going?
Getting back to that history, which is going to continue forward in an unbroken line to the Declaration of Independence from an English King’s tyranny, and the American War of Independence, the battle of Neville’s Cross was the result of the invasion of France by England during the Hundred Years’ War.
Imagine that, people, those fools over there in Europe were able to keep a war between themselves going for 100 years, which is something the colonists in this country in 1776 were well aware of when they informed the candid world that it had become necessary for them to dissolve the political bands which had connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them.
As a result of England invading France, King Philip VI of France (r. 1293–1350) in turn called on the Scots to fulfil their obligation under the terms of the Auld Alliance and invade England from the north, which the French king mistakenly thought would force the English to have to retreat in essence to defend the homeland.
Sadly for the Scots, young David the Bruce was totally deficient of the knowledge to be found in De re militari (Latin “Concerning Military Matters”), also Epitoma rei militaris, a treatise by the late Latin writer Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus about Roman warfare and military principles as a presentation of methods and practices in use during the height of Rome’s power, and responsible for that power.
As callow David the Bruce was to find out, one, he was not his father, and two, projecting power is more than just running your mouth, because the fact that you are a king doesn’t impress your opponent, who is also a king.
Vegetius emphasized things such as training of soldiers as a disciplined force, orderly strategy, maintenance of supply lines and logistics, quality leadership and use of tactics and even deceit to ensure advantage over the opposition.
He was concerned about selection of good soldiers and recommended hard training of at least four months before the soldier was accepted into the ranks.
The leader of the army (dux) had to take care of the men under his command and keep himself informed about the movements of the enemy to gain advantage in the battle, and there is where David the Bruce failed big time at Neville’s Cross, because he did not know he was going to be confronted there..
Getting back to the summons, young callow David the Bruce, with no experience of war, and an uncertain kingship, obliged, because he really had no other choice, and after ravaging much of northern England, he was taken by surprise by the English defenders at Neville’s Cross, a real place, who he believed would not be there.
The ensuing battle ended with the rout of the Scots, the capture of David the Bruce, whose ransom would beggar Scotland, as ransoms were intended to do, and the death or capture of most of their leadership, which strategically freed significant English resources for the war against France, and the English border counties were able to guard against the remaining Scottish threat from their own resources.
And such is history made.
Synchronicity, people, is a fascinating a concept, first introduced by analytical psychologist Carl Jung, that I became aware of in the 1970s, after being dumped off in wherever it actually was I was dumped off in by the U.S. Army in January of 1970 when my tour of duty in Viet Nam was over, and it is a concept which holds that events are “meaningful coincidences” if they occur with no causal relationship yet seem to be meaningfully related, and such is the case with the above post on the imbecility of the young David the Bruce ending up in this thread on the imbecility in our national government today, especially with respect to border control, for if there is any lesson at all for us in the United States of America today in the Battle of Neville’s Cross, it is that at one time at least, BORDERS WERE TAKEN DAMN SERIOUSLY, at least by the English, while today, if it were Nancy Pelosi and Charley “Chuck” Schumer in charge, they would be there at the border when the Scots came down, abasing themselves face down in the mud with the keys to the kingdom in their outstretched hands.
As to synchronicity, during his career, Jung furnished several different definitions of it, which is understandable, given that it is a concept, not a commodity, and he defined synchronicity variously as an “acausal connecting (togetherness) principle,” “meaningful coincidence”, and “acausal parallelism.”
“Meaningful coincidence” works quite well in here, actually, so we can go with that if anyone finds synchronicity to be too complex to grasp
Jung introduced the concept as early as the 1920s but gave a full statement of it only in 1951 in an Eranos lecture, and Jung’s belief, which has never been disproven, was that, just as events may be connected by causality, they may also be connected by meaning, again such as in here, where a post I intended to go to the History thread instead found its way to here, where we are talking border security, something the English took quite seriously at Neville’s Cross, anyway, even if Nancy Pelosi and Charley “Chuck” Schumer scoff at the need for it today, which takes us back to the beginning of this thread, as follows:
In one of those cosmic confluences of events associated with the Cape Charles Mirror, perhaps because of its location over that huge meteorite from somewhere out in outer space buried down deep in the earth in the sea-floor mud beneath Cape Charles itself, more or less, anyway, that draws people from not only America itself, but from the wider world as well, back to the Cape Charles Mirror from week to week, just to see what is going to happen next, especially now that it has turned cold here in the frozen wastelands to the north of Cape Charles, and people are hunkered in for the winter, in sore need of some intellectual stimulation, just the other day, I posted this following from “An Address to the People of the State of New-York On the Subject of the Constitution, Agreed upon at Philadelphia, The 17th of September, 1787” by John Jay, member of the New York State Convention, printed by Samuel Loudon, Printer to the State, 1788, to wit:
From this new and wonderful system of Government (the Articles of Confederation), it has come to pass, that almost every national object of every kind, is at this day unprovided for; and other nations taking the advantage of its imbecility, are daily multiplying commercial restraints upon us.
end quotes
In the original post, I stated that that was said 230 years ago, now, and here we are today., seemingly swimming in imbecility in Washington, D.C. to keep from being totally engulfed and drowning in it.
We might as well have young David the Bruce in charge.
As I write these words, sitting some 2100 miles to the north of the southern border of the United States of America with Mexico, a border Democrat president Woodrow Wilson ordered U.S. Army General John J. “Black Jack” Pershing to cross during the Punitive Expedition from March 16, 1916, to February 14, 1917, with an expeditionary force of more than fourteen thousand regular army troops while another 140,000 regular army and National Guard troops patrolled the vast border between Mexico and the United States, actions I find no record of him asking Congress to approve, it sounds very much from the news anyway, and who knows if any of what they say or report has a shred of truth or fact to it, especially after all this bogus “Russian Collusion” business that never was, although the media treated it as if true, as if there is an invasion going on at the southern border, which takes me to the HISTORY.com article on reasons why Rome fell, and lo and behold, here is their NUMBER ONE, to wit:
The most straightforward theory for Western Rome’s collapse pins the fall on a string of military losses sustained against outside forces.
Rome had tangled with Germanic tribes for centuries, but by the 300s “barbarian” groups like the Goths had encroached beyond the Empire’s borders.
The Romans weathered a Germanic uprising in the late fourth century, but in 410 the Visigoth King Alaric successfully sacked the city of Rome.
The Empire spent the next several decades under constant threat before “the Eternal City” was raided again in 455, this time by the Vandals.
Finally, in 476, the Germanic leader Odoacer staged a revolt and deposed the Emperor Romulus Augustulus.
From then on, no Roman emperor would ever again rule from a post in Italy, leading many to cite 476 as the year the Western Empire suffered its deathblow.
end quotes
Were that to be today, there would be Nancy Pelosi and Charley “Chuck” Schumer at the border when the Goths came down, abasing themselves face down in the mud with the keys to the kingdom in their outstretched hands.
With respect to the imbecility in our federal government today and its similarity to Rome, the HISTORY.com site continues as follows:
Even as Rome was under attack from outside forces, it was also crumbling from within thanks to a severe financial crisis.
Constant wars and overspending had significantly lightened imperial coffers, and oppressive taxation and inflation had widened the gap between rich and poor.
In the hope of avoiding the taxman, many members of the wealthy classes had even fled to the countryside and set up independent fiefdoms.
At the same time, the empire was rocked by a labor deficit.
Rome’s economy depended on slaves to till its fields and work as craftsmen, and its military might had traditionally provided a fresh influx of conquered peoples to put to work.
But when expansion ground to a halt in the second century, Rome’s supply of slaves and other war treasures began to dry up.
A further blow came in the fifth century, when the Vandals claimed North Africa and began disrupting the empire’s trade by prowling the Mediterranean as pirates.
With its economy faltering and its commercial and agricultural production in decline, the Empire began to lose its grip on Europe.
end quotes
As I said above, there used to be morals to those stories and there were lessons that were supposed to be learned from them and heeded by wise statesmen, but right now, those days are long gone, which takes us back to the HISTORY site as follows:
At its height, the Roman Empire stretched from the Atlantic Ocean all the way to the Euphrates River in the Middle East, but its grandeur may have also been its downfall.
With such a vast territory to govern, the empire faced an administrative and logistical nightmare.
Even with their excellent road systems, the Romans were unable to communicate quickly or effectively enough to manage their holdings.
Rome struggled to marshal enough troops and resources to defend its frontiers from local rebellions and outside attacks, and by the second century the Emperor Hadrian was forced to build his famous wall in Britain just to keep the enemy at bay.
As more and more funds were funneled into the military upkeep of the empire, technological advancement slowed and Rome’s civil infrastructure fell into disrepair.
end quotes
And look at that, people – there we are, right back at borders, which Nancy Pelosi, Charley “Chuck” Schumer and the Democrats want to do away with for this country in their quest for dominance at the polls by opening up suffrage in this country to everybody in the mworld, like the Romans did back when, which takes us back to why Rome fell, as follows:
If Rome’s sheer size made it difficult to govern, ineffective and inconsistent leadership only served to magnify the problem.
Being the Roman emperor had always been a particularly dangerous job, but during the tumultuous second and third centuries it nearly became a death sentence.
Civil war thrust the empire into chaos, and more than 20 men took the throne in the span of only 75 years, usually after the murder of their predecessor.
The Praetorian Guard — the emperor’s personal bodyguards — assassinated and installed new sovereigns at will, and once even auctioned the spot off to the highest bidder.
The political rot also extended to the Roman Senate, which failed to temper the excesses of the emperors due to its own widespread corruption and incompetence.
As the situation worsened, civic pride waned and many Roman citizens lost trust in their leadership.
end quotes
WOW!
Hey, that last sentence is us, n’est-ce pas?
Getting back to Roman history which seems very much like our history today on our southern border, we have:
The Barbarian attacks on Rome partially stemmed from a mass migration caused by the Huns’ invasion of Europe in the late fourth century.
When these Eurasian warriors rampaged through northern Europe, they drove many Germanic tribes to the borders of the Roman Empire.
The Romans grudgingly allowed members of the Visigoth tribe to cross south of the Danube and into the safety of Roman territory, but they treated them with extreme cruelty.
According to the historian Ammianus Marcellinus, Roman officials even forced the starving Goths to trade their children into slavery in exchange for dog meat.
In brutalizing the Goths, the Romans created a dangerous enemy within their own borders.
When the oppression became too much to bear, the Goths rose up in revolt and eventually routed a Roman army and killed the Eastern Emperor Valens during the Battle of Adrianople in A.D. 378.
The shocked Romans negotiated a flimsy peace with the barbarians, but the truce unraveled in 410, when the Goth King Alaric moved west and sacked Rome.
With the Western Empire weakened, Germanic tribes like the Vandals and the Saxons were able to surge across its borders and occupy Britain, Spain and North Africa.
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Uh, HELLO, Nancy, Charley “Chuck,” do borders matter?
Or don’t they?
Which takes us back to HISTORY, as follows:
For most of its history, Rome’s military was the envy of the ancient world.
But during the decline, the makeup of the once mighty legions began to change.
Unable to recruit enough soldiers from the Roman citizenry, emperors like Diocletian and Constantine began hiring foreign mercenaries to prop up their armies.
The ranks of the legions eventually swelled with Germanic Goths and other barbarians, so much so that Romans began using the Latin word “barbarus” in place of “soldier.”
While these Germanic soldiers of fortune proved to be fierce warriors, they also had little or no loyalty to the empire, and their power-hungry officers often turned against their Roman employers.
In fact, many of the barbarians who sacked the city of Rome and brought down the Western Empire had earned their military stripes while serving in the Roman legions.
And now a word from our sponsors as we sit here, scratching our heads, wondering why the imbecility in government is back in our times, when the so-called founding fathers took pains that it be otherwise.