No, it had not. My grandfather (an old socialist) took me* on a three week trip through the USSR in 1990: Moscow, Leningrad, Kiev, Dnepropetrovsk, and Odessa, plus smaller towns in between. There was a strike/protest in Kiev while we were there, but they had not yet declared independence. There was no sign of private enterprise anywhere, and we were proudly taken by Communist Party officials to tour a collective farm.
I’m also well aware that after calling it a honeymoon in his book, Bernie later saw the political wisdom of trying to walk that back. Whatever the case, he can’t walk back his support for the communist Sandinistas in Nicaragua (another place he visited although not for a honeymoon in that case), and he was obviously sympathetic to Soviet communism as well. (Psst: insisting that he was there for meetings rather than pleasure doesn’t help your cause.)
I just think Mueller should look into all of that in light of these revelations.
*At the time, I was a precocious teenage socialist myself, whereas in my dotage, I would now call myself a “radical centrist”: never tempted by the GOP, but trying to save the Democratic Party from being taken over by the Bernie brigade, which BTW includes my mother and my son.
Your other errors were in assuming that I follow Fox News, read Brietbart, etc. I do none of those things. Alex Jones is a con man, and infowars is a garbage website. I haven’t read Brietbart since Andrew Brietbart died and it was taken over by the alt-right.
So in other words, your reply to me was 100% incorrect partisan knee-jerking.
Yeah, 1988 was still scary shit fear of nuclear annihilation time for me as a 13-year-old. I had a keen interest in the military, so I wrote the DoD in 1988, and they sent me this menacing looking report (more like a book) on the Soviets entitled “Soviet Military Power: An Assessment of the Threat 1988.” The DoD certainly thought the Soviet Union was our overt enemy. (Complete aside: one of the things I found out as a 13-year-old is that if you wrote every aircraft defense contractor asking about their aircraft, they would send you beautiful 8"x10" glossies of their fleet. I don’t have the collection anymore, but pretty much everyone, Lockheed, Grumman, Northrop, General Dynamics, etc., had photos, pamphlets, etc., for the taking if you just asked. As a 13-year-old, this was like hitting the goldmine!)
It wasn’t really until the wall fell at the end of the next year that I remember feeling some hope in US-Soviet relations.
My point was that the Russia of 1988-1991 as and after the Berlin Wall came down isn’t the same as Putin’s Russia of today. I’m pretty sure that was clear in spite of the chronological nitpicking. And I was 40 in 1988, so I remember first hand.
But perestroika and resulting reforms had meant massive changes to the USSR in 1988. By then, joint ventures between state ventures and foreign investors were in full swing.
Oh, I don’t think anyone else has yet mentioned what happened with the Flynn investigation this week.
For background, it’s kind of old news that Flynn was…welll…”in like Flynn” with Russian Ambassador and spymaster Sergei Kislyak. Members of Trumps own staff were alarmed by this and tried their best to warn Flynn away, explictly warning him the Kislyak was, in all likelihood, being wiretapped.
But remember that this is Stupid Watergate and Flynn didn’t listen. So, right after Christmas Obama announced sanctions against Russia. Kislyak then initiated a series of calls with Flynn while Flynn was vacationing. These calls were wiretapped because KISLYAK was under surveillance. And Flynn should’ve known it. And although the content of those calls has not yet been released, apparently these calls really alarmed all the security agencies. And they felt Flynn was compromised. I believe what they overheard was quite serious.
And they had a meeting with Obama and Susan Rice. Obama was very clear that the investigation of any crimes should be handled in a non-partisan manner by the security agencies and that the executive branch needed to remain uninvolved. They did express some concern about Flynn having access to certain information, such as the identities of undercover agents working at the Russian embassy.
And Susan Rice made a contemporaneous account of this very professional meeting and e-mailed it to herself, leaving an electronic “paper trail”.
This is an outrage, according to Devin Nunes and his buddies. It’s very suspicious that Rice would leave such a clear and unassailable record of this meeting. It’s almost like they thought Trump and Friends might try to distort or misrepresent this meeting. And the fact that they would think that means they’re biased against Trump. So therefore Trump is innocent. And they were wiretapping Flynn !! They’re out to get him. They’re overreaching.!!
Have you actually read the indictment? It specifically says , very early in the document, that “the defendants’ operations included supporting the presidental campaign of then candidate Donald J Trump (Trump Campaign) and disparaging Hillary Clinton). Nothing to the reverse. This is the only item in a list of one.
I do think that one of their objectives was to cause discord. And I do think that Putin wanted anyone but Hillary. And he saw Trump as this orange fool that had been kissing up to him for a decade or so. And what better way to sow discord? Anyone, the email chain where they didn’t collude said that the Russian government supported Trump and wanted to give the Trump campaign disparing information on Hillary.
I also think they know that there is currently no chance of meaningfully influencing Trump. His Russia dealings are being too closely watched just like the adulterous husband whose wife watches him like a hawk because of the rumors about him.
Plus, Trump really can’t be bought. You can give him money, you can give him the Presidency and he’ll take it— but he’ll never give you anything in return. You can threaten him with all the hooker pee videos in the world and he just won’t care - and neither will his supporters. You can’t bribe someone that’s incapable of gratitude and you can’t blackmail someone that has no shame.
So, I think the Kislyak Flynn conversations may be a smoking gun. Because I think Kislyak knew he was under surveillance. And I think he set up some deliberately incriminating information. And they might have more. And what better way to sow discord than fueling the Russia Investigation?
I know I’ve got the rep of being a bit of a debbie downer, but the Mueller indictments were the best pieces of news I’ve seen in a while – brilliant move by “The Bob”.
It’s brilliant because he didn’t initiate the criminal case as a matter of the US DoJ against Trump; rather, he played it well and legitimized his investigation by starting with the US DoJ against “Russians”. It’s “Us” against “Them”. The American public might actually buy into that (and of course, this is 100% what the investigation is about anyway, but perhaps this can at least allay some fears in Trump country that this is a politically-motivated investigation).
It’s brilliant because now whenever a GOP talking head comes and speaks out about the perceived unfairness of the investigation, they look like an anti-American cunt. It’s one thing to say “The head of my party’s the victim of a witch hunt.” Mueller’s not going that route - not yet. He’s saying, “Look, Russians are trying to influence our election.” Who can’t argue against defending our country against attempts to influence our system?
Mueller’s a million times smarter than I. And you. Go, Bob, go!
asahi, I felt a weight off my chest for the first time in a year and a half when I learned of the indictments and admit I even quietly sobbed a bit. I trust in Mueller because I’ve followed his career since he and Comey stood their ground in the John Ashcroft Incident. He is worthy of our trust and admiration – and yes, he is brilliant.
We’re about to watch a master at work as he reveals his strategy. I have no problem agreeing he is a million times smarter than me and most everyone else.
But like I said, I was there two years later, and in 1990 the only sign of private ventures was the McDonald’s in Moscow and the hard currency stores they already had well before Gorbachev.
Some talking head on MSNBC ( Ken Dilanian, actually an NBC correspondent) just made an interesting point. It’s a legal point and I’m not sure if it’s true.
He said that in order to prove or charge conspiracy there needs to be an underlying crime. He also said that once there is a crime involved people can be charged with conspiracy if you acted to aid and abet that crime, even if your actions are not directly criminal. So these indictments may be a first step, even if they can’t ever bring the defendants to trial. Now they can charge other people with conspiracy.
And also the fact that there is now an underlying crime legitimizes the investigation and makes Mueller’s job safety. Or not. He could push to fire Mueller on the grounds that the investigation should be over.
Umm… The people you are talking about, are trumps base. They actually voted for him. I’m going to have to double your Debbie downer, these people are pretty much unreachable. We still see that here on the SDMB.
Well, who would you have voted for? Surely not the Witch of Benghazi.
Oooh, you’re so very very special. Exactly which issue of Foreign Policy was it where you provided your erudite guidance for world leaders? IIRC, American right-wing idiots of decades ago were more concerned with hating the United Nations and the SCOTUS than they were about communism. So what were you? The right-wing imbecile, smarter than the idiots?
Oh, “people like [you]” are so mistreated when you have the vapors. And of course now you have no choice but to turn about and condone Russian meddling, since we all ignored your vapors when you wrote the decades-ago articles in Foreign Policy.
Special snowflake is so mistreated. Our thoughts and prayers go out to you.
This morning’s tweets by President Asterisk have him 1) smearing the FBI by stating they cannot carry on two investigations simultaneously; and 2) claiming the the Russian indictments vindicate him completely NO COLLUSION NO COLLUSION.
Ignore number one. Number two confuses me, though, because there is no reason or logic to it. The indictments do anything BUT vindicate the administration. (The claim is also being parroted by commenters at the Fox and Breitbart websites without any sane backup HE HAS NOTHING MUELLER HAS NOTHING.)
Is it Trump’s plan to claim that ANY action or statement or evidence occurring in the real world proves his innocence? Photos of Putin handing him big cartoon sacks of cash with dollar signs on the sides?
You’re doing that thing again, trying to apply logic. Here’s the logic: black is white, up is down, truth is whatever I say right now (but maybe not later).
Well, except for the part where there is no plan, yes. .