You know, I started doing these "TrumpWorld Grab-Bag" things because there would just be too many Trump stories, and they sort of held together, and they sort of didn't but there were just too many to do single blog-posts about. I couldn't just pick one and move on with my life. Not at all! I had to gather up the half dozen or dozen links or whatever I was presented with because it all seemed relevant in some way. And then I would do a couple a week or whatever.
But this last 24 hours? It feels vaguely accelerated. So, let's say you know that Natalia Veselnitskaya, the lawyer who met with Trump, Jr. last year, was in the US as counsel on a money-laundering case that was settled after the US Attorney on that case, Preet Bharara, was fired. (This itself might not even be all that dodgy--I am no judge of how solid the case was.) What is new though, is that she also represented the FSB in a property dispute. I guess this sticks out as relevant to me because it shows she's done work on the Russian government's behalf and I can see where doing something to relieve sanctions against Russia would be in the same vein. But going back to that thing where US Attorney's offices might be politically compromised, I do note there is a story about Trump breaking with custom (not that he necessarily knows from custom) and meeting with a US Attorney candidate for the District of Columbia before her selection.
I don't know what to make of that, or even if I have anything to make of it--it just strikes me as interesting.
In other news, I guess it's no surprise that some people in the White House have made statements about ending Russian sanctions, like, for example, giving back the two compounds that seem to have been used for spying. Seb Gorka is one. It looks like newly-minted White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci is probably in the same boat--and probably for reasons.
That's pretty interesting, too. It keeps coming back to that sanctions issue.
Which brings me to the big breaking story--AG Jeff Sessions apparently had a meeting with Ambassador Kislyak at the Mayflower Hotel, and they discussed policy relating to the Trump Campaign. My guess, since Sessions ruled out discussion of campaign interference--sanctions! Where did the Trump campaign stand on sanctions, anyway? Would they help Russia out? After all, it was costing folks money, right?
It's a weird revelation coming so fast on the heels of an interview where President Trump seemed unhappy with Sessions' recusal from matters related to the Russian investigation, and potentially wanted him out. It's sort of a dumb revelation if it came from the White House, because it only goes to show that there was substantive dialogue between the Trump campaign and Russia--which doesn't alleviate the appearance of collusion. It also is kind of dumb if it reveals anything about IC sources that lets other countries know how we're listening. But let's leave open the other possibility--Russia can leak. Hell, just a minute ago, Foreign Minister Lavrov joked about how often Trump and Putin met at G20. They can pull that kind of shit, now, because this White House is compromised.
But it's possible that this info was already in reporters' hands for awhile, while they tried to vet it. Again, since Sessions lied about the existence of any meetings at all, anything he says about the existence of meetings or what was said at them becomes suspect.
And just as an aside, since this doesn't fit in (or maybe just--yet) with the rest of this Grab-Bag--Jared Kushner has updated his financial disclosure forms again, having missed 77 assets totaling somewhere between $10 and $100 million. You know. Couch change. Just like his security clearance docs that had to be amended for dozens of foreign contacts--I'm just saying. I wonder if these things are more "advertant" than "inadvertent" when he "forgets" them. Not that I know why.
UPDATE: Aw hell, this last 24 hours was so busy I forgot the thing where Senator Burr confirmed what I was saying about Rep. Devin Nunes' unmasking stuff being an apparent waste.
3 comments:
Hi Vixen, I hope things are going swimmingly in your quadrant of the federation.
I don't have much to say about politics these days, as I pay very little attention to any of it. I keep up with the broad strokes, and that's about it. Like most Trump voters, I'm still very pleased with his initiatives, especially when one realizes how little cooperation he's receiving from the legislature.
Anyway, I came across a political comment in a book by Herman Wouk, Inside, Outside. Frankly, I'm not enjoying the book, but I found a small bit amusing. The thing is, another of his books, Marjorie Morningstar, is one of my top 30 or 40 favorite fictional works. So I thought I'd like Inside, Outside, but I don't. It's about politics in a way, and I regard politics as primarily a mental health problem. We have a lot of high-functioning psychopathology in the United States, and this is mainly what is activated by politics.
Anyway, it's all part of the devolution that occurs during the Kali Yuga, and one would be surprised at how predictable the downward momentum continues to be if one understood the Yuga concepts.
The quote: “Churchill calls the Versailles Treaty, the product of the combined wisdom and long labor of all top politicians of Europe, 'a sad and complicated idiocy'. From what I see here, this description can be extended to almost all politics. No wonder the world is in such a god-awful mess, and has been, it appears, since Hammurabi ordered his cuneiform scribes to start scratching his great deeds on clay tablets. “
Given that the legislature is GOP-dominated, this must be especially galling, and the lack of support even GOP congresscritters are getting from their home districts regarding health care might be incomprehensible if one forgets that people based their votes on fantasies about what deviousness libtards were formulating--not their realty. In the real world they have bodies requiring medical care--in the dream, they can chalk up such programs to a welfare state they can repudiate at will.
The problem with the Kali Yuga, not articulated clearly as yet by wet-penned scribes, was that the ammunition would not be merely live but digital. Characters are in danger of virtual assassination, and it looms as large as the wetwork physical kind. Take the call out of "Fake News" or the rumors stemming from WikiLeaks of, say, Podesta emails, that somehow became urban legends like Pizzagate. We live in an age where reality is a moving target. We navigate by dead reckoning amongst the events of various, occasionally dead wrong, lights--not always stars. Some just moths set afire. I gather information, but hold it at arms' length. One never knows when anything might backfire. But I treat fantasies opposing equality of care and welfare for all as especially suspect.
Hi Vixen, it can be helpful to remember that Trump supporters are not necessarily members of the GOP. Many of us hold political parties at arm's length, and as a consequence Trump supporters are often not especially concerned about opinions relative to the GOP one way or another. (I could not care less, as long as the job gets done.)
I think your reference to digital assassination is an interesting and insightful remark in respect to our current temporal milieu.
One of the interesting things about the yugas is that in 20 or 30 million years, if you and I have yet to become enlightened we will be having the exact same online conversation with the exact same concepts about the exact same subjects.
“The cycle of time during which the worlds are manifested is, as we saw, the kalpa, lasting 4,320,000 years.
The kalpa is divided into four yugas, named after the throws in an Indian game of dice: krita (the perfect throw of 4), treta (the throw of 3), the dvapara (the throw of 2), and the kali (the worst throw, of 1). The first epoch is thus the krita, lasting 1,728,000 years, during which the maya-dream is a paradise of shadowless glory. The second epoch is the treta yuga, lasing 1,296,000 years, when, although the paradise remains, there emerged certain uncontrolled factors, surprises that are thus far pleasant, but contain the apprehension of something unwanted. The third epoch is the dvapara yuga, lasting 864,000 years, during which the negative principle of disorder attains equality with the principle of order. And the the fourth epoch, kali yuga, lasting 432,000 years, the principle of disorder is triumphant. At the end of this epoch the forces of destruction grow and grow in fury, until at the very end, the universes are dissolved in fire. Whereupon the Brahman awakens from the maya-dream and remains in luminous peace through another 4,320,000 years before beginning the cycle again.” – from Beyond Theology by Alan Watts
(Watts was very good at brief summations with a popular appeal.)
This is one of the reasons that you never find the concept of free will as it is viewed from Western society in the esoteric tradition. One only sees the dance, but the music is invisible. In the Qaballah they say that life is like playing chess against a grand master. He could checkmate you in a second, but sometimes he gives you a few moves.
The sand is blown by the wind, but one only views the sand and never sees the wind.
In the QBL as soon as you move from Assiah to Yetzirah you have moved into the world of forces. The wind that blows the sand.
In each sephirah there is a contest between angelic forces and demonic forces. (Sometimes today we call these demonic forces schizophrenia, psychosis, neurosis, etc.) When the demonic forces overpower the angelic forces of order and harmony chaos runs amok and you're in the kali yuga.
In the world of epistemological relativity one of the most important things to have is a deep grounding and connection with ontological and metaphysical certitude. It can be meditation, church, prayer, or some other legitimate means of keeping your own life anchored in the transcendent. We don't get off the wheel until we have become enlightened.
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