SuprstitionAintthWay
SuprstitionAintthWay's JournalLittle recognized footnote to that fucking invasion: the Space Shuttle Columbia crew's
...chances of survival were reduced from "not good" to "zero" by it.
By the combination of the invasion and a self-interested jackass of a mission director who was determined that her mission would NOT disturb the war effort.
Immediately after launch NASA techs were working hard the problem of an unknown amount of launch damage sustained to the underside of a wing. There was no EVA capability brought on that flight, so satellite photography was the only option for looking. The mission techs quickly and correctly made the request to DoD.
But before a spy satellite could look the mission director came down on her techs like a ton of bricks. And yanked the request from DoD.
Due to that action Columbia would re-enter with NASA just assuming the undercarriage damage wasn't catastrophic.
That assumption was wrong.
Had the reconn request stood NASA would have known early in the mission that Columbia could not survive re-entry. NASA would have postponed re-entry as long as possible while it TRIED to prep and launch the next scheduled shuttle, faster than had ever been done before. Was it likely we'd have been able to launch a rescue shuttle in time? No. Most likely that effort would have failed. But that's something no one can be certain of without our having at least tried.
As it happened in early 2003 the one shot, however slim, the Columbia crew had of surviving, NASA didn't even attempt. Apollo 13 it wasn't.
NASA didn't even try because it didn't know Columbia's condition, and it didn't know that because the mission director had angrily, seemingly even irrationally, cancelled the photography that would have shown Columbia was no longer safe.
The reports dance all around discussion of why she did that. But it's extremely easy to suss it out oneself. Our spy satellites and their operators were very heavily engaged right then by, guess what? The run-up to invading Iraq.
It was the NASA mission director's first tiime in that job, her big career opportunity. If you remember the political atmosphere at the time, the protests against the coming invasion were of a scale unprecedented globally. Against this, the neocons and rightwing hate industry were lashing out viciously at any and everyone steppng an inch in the way of Dubya's Big Roll To War.
Damned if that mission director was going to attract attention and criticism by tying up a spy satellite and its operators at a time like that!
The criticism she might get aside, what if the re-tasking caused something to be missed in Iraq, that in turn led to an American casualty? No, she adamantly was NOT about to allow her techs to re-task a spy satellite on her shuttle mission... not right THEN.
With that unilateral decision, that surprised and disturbed her techs, she sealed the fates of 7 American astronauts. They had zero chance of surviving from that moment on.
Again, rescue would have been a long shot anyway. But Bush's childish, dishonest war and this one person's total deference to it, took even that long shot hope away. NASA mission management, in self-imposed ignorance, negligently just hoped for the best and allowed Columbia's astronauts to burn up on re-entry... without either the astronauts or their families even knowing what was coming.
Good capturing there of both tone and "substance" (ha... little joke).
One small note, when the begging delusion periodically bubbles forth out of his bilious little mind and into view unfortunately he tends to reflexively share the detail he has in his head, that said defeated, abject people willing to do anything for his approval are down on their knees in front of him. Especially the women.
One of the skin-crawling-est things he says... out so, so many.
and he WASN'T ELECTED, he was ELECTORALCOLLEGED... a better verb we need so I coined
to accurately convey how Soviet Agent Orange reached office. I'm as sick of the "Trump was elected" by American voters bullshit as I am the "Mueller proved Trump didn't conspire with Russia" bullshit. Neither of those things happened.
The American voters elected Hillary Rodham Clinton and correctly rejected Donald J. Trump.
538 individuals hand-picked for their extreme and reliable partisanship by state-level political parties, the outrageously undemocratic Electoral College, chose to put him in office.
WE THE AMERICAN PEOPLE sure as fuck didn't elect him. We very unambiguously REJECTED him.
He was ELECTORALCOLLEGED into office by a group of just 538 very partisan people assigned a temporary, specialized, frankly bizarre task.
Please describe that particular shit that happened thusly.
Of course a 100% airtight case is hardest to defend against. But sky-high standards
are self-defeating if applying them means you never charge the criminal at all.
Spring 2016 Trump Campaign Manager Paul Manafort began sending the campaign's polling data to oligarch Konstantin Kilimnik, who was Manafort's conduit to Deripaska, the higher-pecking-order corrupt oligarch Manafort is millions in debt to. And whenever Deripaska has something useful to use against somebody, U.S. intelligence's conclusion is that Vlad Putin has it too.
August 2, 2016 Manafort -- still campaign manager -- met with Kilimnik in NYC. Mueller reports that they discussed the campaign's efforts at focusing on voters in midwestern states. You know, like Wisconsin and Michigan. How is that not tantamount to the Trump campaign telling the Russians, "If you want to help, this is where we most need it and think it could be most effective." ? (Almost like yelling out, "Hey Russia, find Hillary's personal emails for us!", isnt it?)
But Mueller "can't establish" that that was Trump Campaign - Russian govt coordination? Why, because Kilimnik SAYS he's not a Russian intell asset? What else is he gonna say? Why ELSE would he give a shit about the Trump campaign's work? A special counsel can't make a call like that for himself? WTF?
If quid pro quo is needed to tie a nice bow on such dealings, part of what Kilimnik delivered to Manafort at that same meeting was that Russians-in-Ukrainian-sheep's-clothing would be requesting prospective future President Trump to support Russia controlling eastern Ukraine. A "peace plan," they called it. One that sounds similar to one that Jared's Russian contacts later had him back-door to Sec of State Tillerson.
But this conspiring fails Mueller's strict -- read, unrealistic -- requirements because Kilimnik isn't directly on the Kremlin, FSB, GRU, IRA, etc, government payroll... or, they can't prove he is, at least. A requirement for prosecution that just flies in the face of the realities that exist in Russia. It's a kleptocracy, with the Kremlin in the center running the sprawling, finger-in-every-pie organized crime system that is the 21st century Russian business sector. Billionaire oligarchs have their industries and their wealth because Putin allows them to, in return for which they all cooperate with Putin, support him, kick-back to him (he may be the real wealthiest man in the world), and do his bidding. Else they get charged with corruption, lose their wealth to the Kremlin, and have to either flee the country or go to the ex-oligarch gulag.
Oligarchs like Kilimnik and Deripaska already ARE assets and agents of the Russian government in every way that matters, and incredibly well-compensated ones, too. They just lack Kremlin Employee ID cards in their wallets. But apparently that alone is enough for Mueller to be "unable to establish" campaign-&-Russian-govt conspiracy or coordination, and to thereby grant the malicious Putin stooge in the White House the bona fides he needs to stay out of jail and in office.
Putin has all kinds of leverage over Trump, and that hasn't magically just gone away. Examples:
-- The details of many years, decades, of laundering dirty Russian money through Trump real estate.
-- The details of Trump pursuing a Moscow development deal during the campaign.
-- The Russians trying to get Trump property to develop in, of all places, Crimea. (! What a coup for Putin that wouldve been.)
-- Proof of what was really said in all of the many Russia-Trump Campaign communications.
-- Revelation of the true and full extent of Russia's 2015-2016 pro-Trump interference in our election. Putin could publicly de-legitimatize the Nov 2016 outcome any time he chooses.
-- What this oft-pursued private meeting with Putin during the campaign was going to be about, the one so many people were always trying to set up. It didn't happen, but both Trump and Putin HAD to know the prospective agenda. What was that?
-- Even Trump himself believes Putin has sexual shenanigans kompromat on him.
That's a partial list, and a partial list of just what we know or have seen the indications of. The full range of exortion fodder the Kremlin is holding over Trump may include things nobody here even has a clue of yet.
And the Mueller Report officially informs us the FBI is gonna sit still for all this.
(Icing on the absurdity, idiots in the media instantly pronounced, "Our bad! We were wrong! Trump's campaign never colluded with Russia and Trump has never been beholden to Putin at all! Mueller proved it!" Mueller proved no such thing.)
Our federal government's ability to prosecute criminals like Trump and protect us from foreign malefactors like Putin has broken down. It's ineffective; from appearances, now next to impotent. This has been a staggeringly harmful outcome for our nation.
The standards Mueller applied for deciding a conspiracy was prosecuteable were astronomically high
The minimum standards for conspiracy or coordination Mueller chose and applied in his investigation strike me as almost impossibly stringent. Perhaps some lawyer out there can show me where this impression is wrong.
Mueller seems to have chosen conspiracy between a Trump Campaign paid employee ONLY, directly with an employee of the Kremlin ONLY, and in which he could prove that an exchange of something of value was discussed, agreed upon, and delivered, as the mimimun and only standard he would accept for reporting a conspiracy out as proveably criminal.
In any Trump-Russia conspiracy or coordination, if there was any intermediary party at all, any step through anyone not a campaign employee or a Putin government official, then it failed Mueller's stringent requirements... and he let it go.
Meaning very much malevolent conspiracy and coordination that definitely did occur didn't meet the high standards being applied.
Among many such examples:
-- GRU to Julian Assange to Roger Stone directly to Trump himself. Assange was not a direct Kremlin employee, and Stone was not on Trump's payroll, so their conspiring was... what? okay? (It should have been prosecutable as racketeering under RICO, it would seem to me.)
-- GRU to somebody at Wikileaks to Donald Trump Jr. The person at Wikileaks wasn't a Kremlin employee, so their conspiring was okay, per Mueller.
-- Putin to Deripaska to Kilminik to Manafort. Deripaska and Kilminik fail Mueller's direct-employee-of-Kremlin requirement, so no conspiracy prosecution there either. Even though Putin got something very tangible out of that: a change to the 2016 Republican Party platform to insert a plank for relaxing the sanctions in place against Russia.
-- Russian government to the British professor to Papadopoulos regarding Democratic Party emails hacked by Russia. The professor is the problem, the non-employee insulation from prosecution for that conspiracy channel.
-- Michael Flynn to Peter Smith to Russian hackers pursuing more emails. Peter Smith (who killed himself afterwards rather than face investigation) was an employee of neither the Trump Campaign nor the Kremlin, so same result for that conspiracy channel.
-- Three top Trump campaign officials meet with a Russian lawyer about trading Hillary oppo research results specifically for a promise of sanctions relief. Here, the lawyer's direct employment by the Kremlin at the moment is gray-area, plus no actual value-for-value transaction occurred... says Trump Jr. (But does Mueller actually know that to be a fact, or is it just one more thing he has too little evidence of?) So, even this doesn't meet Mueller's sky-high standards for conspiracy.
(-- And just as an aside, how is a post-election, late 2016 Putin "peace plan" for the U.S. to lift sanctions and Russia to be given America's blessing to absorb Crimea and control eastern Ukraine, being backdoored from a Russian contact to Jared Kushner to Sec of State Tillerson, in any way okay? How is that yet another freebie in this whole Trump-Russia tarpit?)
-- Trump through the U.S. media to the GRU: "Now find Hillary's personal emails!" Which conspiratorial instruction the GRU started working on within hours. The U.S. media isn't in the employ of the Kremlin, so... nope again, decides Mueller.
And this list could go on.
Given the standards for proveable Trump-employee-direct-to-Putin-employee conspiracy that Mueller chose to apply, was there really ever any reasonable chance he would succeed? I suggest the answer is most likely, No. Our hopes were always misplaced. American law enforcement is just not well suited for taking on this kind of thing, especially when recommending criminal charges for a chief executive is at issue.
(Yes, the contrasting example is Watergate. BUT we were able to (sort of) hold Nixon accountable ONLY because he tape-recorded all of his own conversations, including, amazingly, his criminal ones. AND he (mostly) obeyed the court order to turn the tapes over. Well, Trump is no Nixon. He doesn't tape himself (he even eats his paper notes), and, a lifelong criminal, he surely would destroy such tapes anyway rather than obey a federal court.)
I'm thinking yes... like esp. in the finale of The Leftovers, maybe.
If you haven't seen The Leftovers tv series, I liked and recommend it -- enigmatic sci-fi mystery, smarter than most, with an actually rather satisfying explanation at the end for what had been a very confounding, disturbing rupture in humankind's reality.
Yes there were vacancies... homes, cars, jobs, in marriages... after one October day when 2% of all people simultaneously just blipped out of existence globally. Not based on virtue, but randomly... it was no Rapture.
We find out in the finale of its 3 seasons that it could have been worse than being leftovers where they were.
I'm saying no more so as to not spoil ths show for those who still might watch it.
Interesting recent Atlantic article on this.
"We may be further down a path towards widespread violence than we realize."
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/01/charles-duhigg-american-anger/576424/
And yes, talk radio, Rush and his ilk, soon followed and manifested by Gingrich's and Delay's poisonous leadership in the House, and the advent of Fox "News" in 1996, were the drivers and sorry milestones in this national tragedy, as I see it.
They've never stopped yet, why would they suddenly stop in 2020?
This has been the most unexpectedly, mindbogglingly successful operation the Soviets or Russians have ever conducted against the U.S. It only got them a little of the sanctions relief they were after, granted. But it was instrumental in installing a Putin toady in the American presidency... a level of success previously undreamed of. And the operation also achieved in spades its other goals of greatly worsening political discord in our country, and weakening our democratic institutions and elections.
Nothing is going to keep the Kremlin from continuing to use social media as a powerful, effective tool against us.
My question pertains to the only area they attacked that Dems can really do anything about: Use of email. Russia for certain will hack/is hacking Democratic Party communications again.
When a political opponent has your internal communications and makes the embarrassing and otherwise harmful parts public (timed for maximim impact), and you don't have theirs, you're competing at such a deep disadvantage it will be extremely difficult to win.
How much of 2020-related Dem comms are already in pcs and phones in the form of relatively easily-hacked emails and their attachments? That should be our focus as far as I'm concerned: defending against a repeat of that by the GRU and FSB.
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