Damn that Autocomplete!
This is an odd little story:
David Keene, a former president of the National Rifle Association, and his wife Donna, a well-connected Washington lobbyist, attempted to enlist everyone’s favorite honey-pot Russian spy, Maria Butina, and her not-very-well-loved boyfriend, Paul Erickson, to somehow locate and broker a deal for the purchase of “huge amounts of jet fuel — nearly double what all of Russia’s refineries export in a month”, from Gazprom, for some guy in Virginia who had a sudden need for 5 million barrels of Rusian jet fuel.
When did all these folks get into the jet fuel business?
Welp, Ms Butina asked for a $25,000 deposit toward the 1 million dollar brokerage fee to make this deal happen but the Keene’s didn’t want to pay, so the deal folded.
But then two months later, it was revived again.
“The driving force behind the jet fuel negotiations appears to have been Mr. Erickson, 56, a former board member of the American Conservative Union who was accused of defrauding investors in California, South Dakota and Virginia. The other major players were the Keenes, who first raised the idea of brokering a sale of Russian jet fuel and then put Ms. Butina and Mr. Erickson in touch with prospective buyers.” (The guy in Virginia?) Later, Mrs. Keene refused to give the guy’s name to Butina saying she needed to protect her contact.
So Butina went right to work attempting to flirt her way in with some potential Russian jet fuel supply contacts, but not from Gazprom. She was hitting up some other, smaller potential fuel suppliers.
“In a July 2017 email, she told one man that his passport photo was “a handsome one.” The following month, she told another Russian contact that she had labeled him in her phone as “the lovely Shakhov.” Every time he called, she was notified that “‘the lovely Shakov is calling you,’” Ms. Butina wrote. “Good feelings.””
There’s also a cool cast of shady side characters: “The dealings also involved a pair of Pakistani-American businessmen, an Israeli-American salesman for a Virginia-based lawn care and sprinkler equipment company and a purported international fuel broker with no record of successful deals. Mr. Erickson described this person in an email as a “tough, crotchety, sixty-ish divorcee who has spent his life in various energy transactions but now seems intent on using his small wealth to pursue age-appropriate women of a certain flair.””
and
" But Ms. Butina did not connect with the likes of Gazprom or other major Russian oil companies. Instead, she relied on a Russian coffee bean trader and a public relations consultant with loose ties to the political party of President Vladimir V. Putin."
But after a bunch of coaching from Erickson that involved copy-and-pasting stuff he wrote out for her so that she would sound at least somewhat knowledgeable about the jet fuel business (that Erickson also had no experience in), and a couple of meetings with people who realized that none of these people interested in this very large and unusual purchase of jet fuel had the slightest idea of what they were talking about, no transaction was made.
The folks that Butina and Erickson met with thought the whole thing sounded shady and like some kind of rip-off was being attempted. One person was so suspicious about the deal that they reported it to the FBI.
None of my friends have ever offered me a million dollar payday to arrange something like this, but if any of you want to make me a nice offer of something similar on any particular Russian product, I’ll be all ears. I’ll just start cold-calling and flirting with random Russians until I get lucky, I guess. TIA!
And the real funny thing is that if you look at a monkey, what do you see? Pink skin, straight hair, thin lips. In fact it was four brave white boys who, in the sixties, loudly proclaimed: “Hey, hey, WE’RE the monkeys.”
That was the zenith of racial identity politics. It’s been downhill ever since.
From the seminal journalistic piece MLK, It Does A Body Politic Good:
Ok, it’s not a stupid republican idea yet. But wait until Trump finds out about this. He’s going to want one, too! It will become the stupid idea when Fox gives it to him.
Nikki Haley Is Either Good at Irony or Oblivious to Her Surroundings.
For the month of September, the United States will assume the presidency of the United Nations Security Council, and on Tuesday, U.S. Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley announced the brilliant theme for America’s month at the helm: corruption!
“Yep, that’s right. The same federal government helmed by Donald Trump—a man whose former campaign manager was found guilty of eight felonies a few weeks ago, whose longtime lawyer pleaded guilty to eight felonies the same day, whose first and second endorsers in Congress have both been indicted on corruption-related charges, and whose Cabinet has been rife with corruption—is now fully prepared to teach other countries about why corruption is actually bad.”:dubious:
“Haley also announced Trump himself will chair a Security Council meeting on Iran later this month, when the UN holds its General Assembly.”
He is Nikki’s show and tell program, boys and girls.
The administration has used the Big Lie approach before, hasn’t it?
But do we know whether the theme will be anti-corruption or pro-corruption? Maybe they’re trying to expand their “Make America Grift Again” campaign to “Make the World Grift Again”.
Oh, watching him try to justify completely screwing up Iran to the others is going to be glorious!
I have been enjoying a relaxing six weeks of no David Brooks on the New York Times Op-Ed page, as he is away on “book leave.”
Hoping for a long stint of writer’s block, so as to extend his “book leave” indefinitely.
I never miss him and Mark Shields on PBS, the living Avatar of Frumpy. That look on Mark’s face as Brooks tries to build a pyramid of greased weasel balls…
And if you had said to me ten years ago that I would have any approval for anything David Frum said, I would have advised that you stay away from the brown acid.
- David Frum
Sic 'em!
He’s probably in a home somewhere recovering from witnessing the plunge of conservatism into madness.
When I subscribed to the N.Y. Times they had a generous vacation policy: suspend the paper for X days and get X days tacked on to the end of your subscription period.
I told them I wanted to take vacation every day David Brooks’ column appeared. The didn’t get back to me on that. 
Somebody at a Beto O’Rourke rally last week asked him about the NFL anthem protests, and he gave a long, reasoned answer about the history of protest in America and how American protest is. Ted Cruz’s campaign has taken that answer, chopped it up and put it all together again, and is running an ad about how much Beto O’Rourke likes flag burning.
Turns out “Write what you know” isn’t always good advice.
Was it ever revealed what that little white thing was on Cruz’s lip during the 2016 debate? The little white thing that moved around in such a disturbing manner? I like to think it was a maggot.
whups. Wrong thread. damn tabbed browsing
Trump’s penis?
You can watch it here. I think it might have been a piece of popcorn or perhaps a breath mint.
Or a maggot.