Ronnie's Last Stand

Here is the trailer from The Killers, the 1964 film that marked the last movie appearance of Ronald Reagan's career.  Directed by Don Siegel (Dirty Harry, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and The Shootist (John Wayne's last film)) and also starring Lee Marvin, Angie Dickinson, John Cassavetes and the legendary Norman Fell!

The trailer includes the shocking scene in which Reagan slaps Angie Dickinson.  Reagan later said he regretted doing the film and should have retired before making it.

A fantastic original Trailer for Ernest Hemingway’s

THE KILLERS (1964) #LeeMarvin #AngieDickinson #JohnCassavetes #RonaldReagan

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— Michael Warburton (@MichaelWarbur17) October 6, 2023

Many Rivers To Cross

A soulful ballad written by Jimmy Cliff in 1969 and covered by many artists since.  Featured in the movie The Harder They Come, about a struggling musician in Jamaica, and which helped to popularize reggae music.  I made four visits to Jamaica from 1966 through 1969 and have many fond memories.  The country was much different and was not yet the tourist mecca it became.  My father spent a lot of time there from the mid-60s into the early 70s, both for business and pleasure and knew many people on the island, many of whom I met on my visits.  With my dad we took drives all over the island back in a time when we never worried about our safety.  We mostly stayed in Montego Bay but on one trip stayed with a family in Kingston.  I remember attending a house party with the kids from the family somewhere in Kingston, where I heard music I'd never heard before - the precursor to reggae.

The Durham Report: Part 1 -The Kremlin Connections Of The Clinton Campaign

 "Notably, not one of the damning allegations contained in the Steele reporting was ever corroborated: not the salacious allegations of events at the Ritz Carlton in Moscow, not the allegation of there being a 'well-developed conspiracy of co-operation' between Trump and the Russians, not the allegations of a secret meeting involving Page and certain sanctioned Russians (namely, Igor Sechin and Igor Divyekin), and not the allegation of Page serving as Manafort's conduit for information between the Russians and the Trump campaign.  This is true even after the FBI offered Steele $1 million or more for such corroboration and after Danchenko was signed up as an FBI CHS [Confidential Human Source] and paid more than $220,000 for information on other matters."

"When [the FBI] checked with another U.S. intelligence agency on matters relating to the Steele reporting, they received no corroborating information back.  As one long-time counterintelligence expert at that agency told [the Durham investigation], the Dossier contained unverified allegations from sub-sources who allegedly provided the information, information that the government could not obtain despite its vast intelligence resources and paying millions of dollars for intelligence.  Indeed, after the Steele Dossier was leaked and became public, that expert's reaction was to ask the FBI, 'You didn't use that, right?'".

From Report on Matters Related to Intelligence Activities and Investigations Arising Out of the 2016 Presidential Campaign (the Durham Report), submitted to Merrick B Garland on May 12, 2023 (pages 236-37)

It was all a fantasy, a cleverly designed fantasy, paid for and promoted by the Clinton campaign, masterminded by Fusion GPS and Christopher Steele, seized upon by the Intelligence Community, media, and others and converted over time for different uses by Donald Trump's opponents.  In an astonishing twist, it turns out that the narrative of Trump connections with the Kremlin was created by those who themselves had multiple connections with Russian intelligence services and oligarchs!  

FusionGPS, retained by the Clinton campaign to investigate Trump and Russia was, at the same time, working for a Russian oligarch on repealing Congressionally imposed sanctions.  Christopher Steele, the former British intelligence operative, hired by Fusion to compile the dossier was, at the same time, working for yet another Kremlin connected oligarch (currently under U.S. indictment).   Steele's main sub-source for the dossier was a Russian national, Igor Danchenko, of whom the FBI had earlier conducted a counterintelligence investigation because of his connections with Russian intelligence (only to incompetently lose track of him), allegations of which he was never cleared.  The source for the notorious alleged incident when, in 2014, Trump supposedly demanded President Obama's suite at the Moscow Ritz Carlton and had a group of prostitutes come to the room and urinate on the bed, was a DC lobbyist doing PR for the Kremlin, meeting regularly with Putin's spokesperson, who was also a long-time Clinton associate; a senior advisor to Hillary in 2008 and Virginia Chairman of the Clinton-Gore Campaigns in 1992 and 1996, along with being former Executive Director of the Democratic Governors Association!  Raising the question, who was playing whom in 2016?

It helped that they were dealing with a gullible and conspiratorial minded Donald Trump, around whom they created an actual conspiracy, and aided by candidate and President Trump's reckless rhetoric which played right into that narrative.

There has not been, and now appears there never will be, any personal or institutional accountability for the combination of deliberate and negligent actions taken to undermine the campaign of a Presidential candidate and then to obstruct and impede the normal proceedings of the Executive Branch after January 20, 2017, using a continued series of false claims in a conspiracy designed to defraud the American people and manipulate our election processes.  Hey, maybe someone could file some indictments based on that theory! (1)

I've written a lot about the Russian collusion story and my initial take that there might be something to it based on Trump's own statements and demonstrable ignorance of history and the basics of foreign policy.  By the fall of 2017, and with the revelation that the Clinton campaign was behind the Steele Dossier, I decided to spend more time examining the evidence and reading source documents, including the Intelligence Community Assessment, court filings and rulings, the Page-Strzok texts, the Mueller report, the DOJ Inspector General reports, the more than 5,000 pages of House Intelligence Committee witness transcripts suppressed by Adam Schiff for almost a year and a half, and finally the Durham Report.

The Russia Collusion Hoax is the greatest political scandal of my lifetime; a scandal much worse than Watergate with the added bonus that it was as if Watergate happened but the New York Times and Washington Post were taking the side of the Nixon Administration.

In a subsequent post I'll plunge into the details of the Durham Report and the story behind the conspiracy.

Since 2016 there has been a deliberate attempt to confuse two questions.  Did the Russians attempt to influence the 2016 elections?  Did the Trump campaign collude with the Kremlin on a plan to win the election?  As to the former, I have no doubt.  It's what they did as the Soviet Union and now do as Russia.  As to the latter, it's a definite no.  I'm addressing the latter.  My take on the former can be found in What Was Putin Up To In 2016?  The bottom line is that Putin was about sowing the maximum discord within America and weakening its institutions.  With the revelations since 2017 we now know that Clinton, Schiff, the Intelligence Community, the Democrats, the New York Times and Washington Post, were Putin's collaborators in sowing that discord, acting effectively as agents of the Kremlin.

One further point before plunging into the details.  Those who still believe in the Russia Collusion fantasy like to say that there was more to it than the Steele Dossier.  Actually, with only one exception that's not true.  The Dossier covers all the "greatest hits" - Moscow Ritz Carlton, Trump Tower Moscow, Deutsche Bank, Alfa Bank, the Republican Platform on Ukraine, meetings of Trump campaign officials with Russians and more.  The only significant event not in the dossier is the Trump Tower meeting in June 2016, about which I wrote here.  That fiasco was due to the stupidity of Fredo Trump Jr, who lacks the feral instincts and weird charisma of his father.  The Clinton Campaign knew how to do it right - when you deal with the Russians you do it through cut-outs.

. . . more to come

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(1) This is a reference to Robert Mueller's disastrous failed prosecution of Russian entities, and Special Counsel ongoing criminal case against Donald Trump, both of which use this theory, a theory that could have been applied to the principals in the Clinton Campaign as well as against the 51 former Intelligence Community officials who signed the letter, coordinated by the Biden Campaign, stating the Hunter Biden laptop incident had "all the hallmarks" of a Russian disinformation operation.

Duster

I drove a Plymouth Duster (manufactured from 1969 to 76), passed on down from my dad.   Great car.  Slant-6 engine lasted forever; too bad the body rusted out so fast!  And, yes, it did not explode.

6. Won’t explode upon impact … pic.twitter.com/7go9xCL5pm

— Super 70s Sports (@Super70sSports) October 17, 2023

Royalty

Henry Aaron, Johnny Bench, Sandy Koufax, Willie Mays.

Don't know the date but from the years before Henry Aaron's passing in January 2021.  Willie is now 92, Sandy turns 88 in December, while Johnny, only 75, is the kid in the group.  The Real Home Run King, arguably the greatest catcher in major league history, the most dominant pitcher in baseball until arm problems forced his retirement at age 30, and arguably the greatest all-round player in baseball history.

Inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1972, Sandy has been a living member longer than any other player since its founding in 1936.  Willie was inducted in 1979 and is the oldest living Hall of Fame member.  Johnny was elected in 1989 in his first year of eligibility.

Thank you for the memories.

Into Gaza

Theoretically, Israel has a choice.  It can choose to take the course of action it has done in the past in response to rocket attacks and murders by Hamas; target Hamas leadership and supply depots in Gaza in a mostly aerial and artillery campaign limited in time.  However, the scale and ferocity of the recent attack make such a strategy no longer viable.  Since October 7, Hamas has repeatedly and publicly stated that it will continue to launch attacks and its goal remains to eliminate the Jewish state.  It has also bragged that its moderating behavior over the past couple of years was a deliberate deception in order to allow it to carry out its massacre. The other choice is to do what the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) is preparing to do.  Enter Gaza with ground forces to, the extent possible, eliminate Hamas and its infrastructure. (1)

Doing so will take weeks, if not months.  The best analogy to what is about to happen was the retaking of Mosul, Iraq from ISIS in 2016-7, a process that took months, destroyed most of the city, and inflicted thousands of civilian casualties.  The assault was undertaken by Iraqi ground forces, supported by American air power and logistics.  It was brutal but also remote from active media coverage and received limited attention in the Western press.  Secretary of Defense Austin, who participated in the attack on ISIS, visited Israel a few days ago, examined the aftermath of the Hamas attack, and commented that the atrocities committed by Hamas were even worse than those of ISIS.  UPDATE:  This is a link to an article on the siege of Mosul and a preview of what the IDF is likely to face in Gaza.

In the case of Gaza, a bigger and more difficult urban area than Mosul, the IDF will incur many casualties and, despite efforts to avoid collateral damage, civilians will be killed and injured and there will be occasions when individual IDF soldiers act improperly.  The Israeli hostages, mostly women and children, will, with few exceptions, die.  The civilian situation will be exacerbated by Hamas interference with those trying to flee and by its use of human shields.  And, unlike Mosul, everything will be available via the media, real and fake.  It will be long, costly, and horrible but it must be completed. 

And there are even bigger questions.  Most conflicts move beyond the original control and intentions of the combatants. War is unpredictable; it is uncontrollable.  Forecasting the specific course is a fool's errand.  In this case, there is a significant chance of a wider war in the Mideast and a small, but real, chance of a global conflict being ignited.

How will Hezbollah, Syria, and the Iranian Guards present in Syria react?  All are under the control of Iran, a country that is the main arms supplier to Hamas.  If they attack Israel, the IDF will respond in a massive way.  How do Iran's allies, Russia and China, respond?  How will the U.S. respond? (2)

Will another actor try to take advantage of the chaos.  Could North Korea attack South Korea?  Could China attempt to retake Taiwan by force?  How would the U.S. react?  Can it react effectively, given how hollowed out and overstretched our military and our supply systems are?

From Israel I read a number of sources and recommend Times of Israel, a politically centrist publication unlike the Jerusalem Post (right) and H'aaretz (fringe left). 

UPDATE: Oct 21 - I came across this article which provides a good explanation of the Israeli strategic, political, and intelligence failures leading up to the Oct 7 attacks.  Much of this has been reported in various US and Israeli outlets before, but this piece provides a succinct summary.

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(1) For those saying Israel has another choice - end the occupation of Gaza and make peace with the Palestinians, those are not real choices.  The Israeli occupation of Gaza ended in 2005, when, in the midst of much Israeli opposition, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon ordered several thousand Jewish settlers to evacuate the area, an order carried out using force in some instances.  Economic development plans were drawn up for Gaza.  In 2006, Hamas won local elections, murdered Palestinian Authority personnel, seized control and there have been no further elections.

The Hamas charter opposes any presence of Jews in Palestine and calls for their deaths.  Hamas does not want a two-state solution.  There had been hopes by some in Israel that Hamas might as, a practical matter and despite its charter, moderate its demands.  It turns out they mean what they say.  Hamas is not interested in Peace.  Its interest is Death.

To the extent Israel and Egypt have limited access to Gaza, it is in response to terrorist attacks by Hamas.  This is a choice made by Hamas, not Israel and Egypt.  Since 2005, Gaza has been the largest per capita recipient of foreign aid, including from the U.S, in the world.  The hope had been that infrastructure could be improved and significant economic development take place.  Hamas has diverted aid to purchase and make arms and build its underground infrastructure.  It has chosen to make destruction of Israel its priority to the detriment of the population of Gaza.  It's strategy to gain foreign support has to provoke Israel and when Israel responds claim it is "occupied" or an "open air prison", a rhetorical trick.  Hamas gains strength by pretending to be oppressed.

During times of peace, Israel provides free electricity and water to Gaza.  Over the past four years, the Israeli government has provided economic assistance to Gaza and issued 17,000 work permits for Gazans to enter Israel, all in the hope that economic improvements would deter Hamas.  After the recent massacre it has been discovered that some of those issued work permits were Hamas operatives casing Israeli towns and kibbutz in preparation for the slaughter.  Israel also provides humanitarian medical assistance, bringing Gaza residents with serious conditions to Israel for treatment.

Among those murdered by Hamas last week were Israeli volunteers for the ambulance service bringing Gazans to Israeli hospitals.  The music festival at which 260 were killed and others kidnapped was a peace festival organized by those opposed to current Israeli government policy regarding the Palestinians.  At the same time, a kite flying event at the border, organized by a family each year to symbolize their support for Gaza was also attacked.  The family (husband, wife, two children) were killed by Hamas.

In 2008, Yahya Sinwar, a member of Hamas, was in an Israeli prison because of his terrorist activities.  After becoming ill, Sinwar was diagnosed with a brain tumor.  Israeli doctors removed the tumor, saving Sinwar's life.  In 2017, Sinwar became the head of Hamas operations in Gaza and oversaw this month's massacre.  If Israel is really genocidal, it's really bad at it.  By the way, in 1948 there were 800,000 Palestinians.  Today, in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza there are 7 million.  In 2022, life expectancy in the West Bank and Gaza was 75.4 years.  In the U.S. it was 77.3 years.  Like I said, Israel seems to be very inept in this genocide business.

Words and phrases like "genocide", "carpet-bombing" and "war crimes" have lost any meaning by overuse and deliberate misuse, much as "racist", "transphobe", "hate speech", and "misinformation" have lost any meaning in America.  Israel does have the ability to obliterate Gaza and kill a sizeable percentage of its population, without incurring losses itself.  It has chosen not to follow that course of action.  Every Israeli soldier dying in Gaza is doing because of Israel's choice to minimize harming Palestinian civilians.

(2) Speaking of which, why do we still have military bases in Iraq and Syria?  The U.S. is leaving its forces at the mercy of Iran which can decide if, when, and where it wants to attack them or obtain hostages.  I simply do not understand our strategic thinking.  Why would we leave the initiative with our enemies?