Here Is StandinStupid's Homework Assignment for Tomorrow

Read, analyze and critique the following column from yesterday's WSJ.

Since you are a self-proclaimed Professor of Political Science on an anonymous hooker board (cough, cough), we expect your evaluation/rebuttal to be lucid, thoughtful, detailed and compelling.


What’s Behind the Putin Fantasies

Donald Trump never found much of a seat on the U.S.-Russia business express.

By HOLMAN W. JENKINS, JR.
Feb. 28, 2017 7:22 p.m. ET

Several Trump campaign advisers had business ties to Russia, so that must be nefarious, right?

Except that until the Crimea sanctions in 2014, it was U.S. policy to encourage American business in Russia—and had been since 1991. That a handful of advisers did business in Russia is amazing only because it’s so few. In July 2009, President Obama himself visited Moscow with a passel of U.S. execs in tow. Joe Biden was in Moscow a few months later partly for business-promotion purposes.

Go back and read the press. In 1995, Al Gore, presiding over the Gore-Chernomyrdin Commission, helped enable Exxon’s Sakhalin Island venture. Sixteen years later, the Obama White House helped enable its Russian Arctic venture. These two deals define almost the entirety of Rex Tillerson’s CV in Russia.

But wasn’t Paul Manafort, Mr. Trump’s sometime campaign adviser, an adviser to Viktor Yanukovych, Vladimir Putin’s favorite in Ukraine’s 2010 presidential election? At the time, Mr. Yanukovych was promoting an economic tie-up with the European Union, a near-and-dear U.S. interest. Mr. Manafort may not have been working for the Obama administration’s preferred Ukrainian pol, but he was following in the footsteps of previous U.S. political aides, including some dispatched by Bill Clinton to save Boris Yeltsin’s re-election in 1996 (enabling Mr. Yeltsin eventually to hand power to Mr. Putin to protect his entourage’s stolen wealth).

Only later, when Mr. Putin yanked Mr. Yanukovych’s chain, did the events unfold that now have Democrats eager to discern nefarious patterns.

What about Mr. Trump’s ties to “shadowy” Russia banker Carter Page? A hilarious and lengthy article at Politico.com finds Mr. Page an elusive wannabe who held a minor job in Merrill Lynch’s Moscow office.

What about Roger Stone, the make-believe secret shaman of American politics? Mr. Stone wants you to believe he’s connected to the KGB.

In the Trump-as-mole screeds, the biggest wonder is the non-mention of Goldman Sachs. After all, Gary Cohn and Steve Mnuchin both worked there when Goldman, on the eve of Russia’s 1998 default, arranged a convenient bond sale to tide the Yeltsin government over. Then again, another Goldman alum, Robert Rubin, was running the Clinton Treasury at the time, and pitched in with an IMF bailout for Russia.

We come to the sorry truth: So much hopeful money that poured into Russia only helped fund the emergence of the Putin kleptocracy. Over the course of three administrations, when the U.S. goal was to promote business ties with Russia, Mr. Trump was notable mainly for failing to find a seat on the train. His Russian-backed property and branding deals all came a cropper. He did manage to hold his Miss Universe contest in Moscow in 2013. Unlike Formula One, however, he hasn’t been back since. At least, like all high-end New York real-estate developers, he couldn’t fail to profit from selling overpriced condos to Russian emigres.

“Mr. Trump’s rhetoric and actions as president bear more than a passing resemblance to those of Mr. Putin during his first years consolidating power,” writes veteran foreign correspondent Susan B. Glasser in a New York Times op-ed last week. “The similarities are striking enough that they should not be easily dismissed.”

The similarities are indeed striking. Mr. Putin and Mr. Trump both have arms and legs. When it comes to distinguishing noise from signal, however, two men could not be less alike.

Russia was a country in chaos. Its president was a drunk seeking a successor to protect his daughter and friends from corruption investigations. Mr. Putin, a former KGB agent and head of the secret police, ran one of the few, after a fashion, functioning institutions in Russia, albeit arm in arm with organized crime.

Mr. Trump’s rise couldn’t be more different. He’s a reality TV star and brand manager. To an unusual degree, he’s a president who lacks even a party. Meanwhile, the courts, the bureaucracy, the media, the political parties all continue to function as they always have.

By all means, investigate Russia’s propaganda efforts directed toward influencing the U.S. election, as long as we don’t kid ourselves unduly that something novel and unprecedented took place. As for Mr. Trump, even to a broken-down Russian intelligence he simply would not have been that interesting a person until very recently. Now, somehow, he’s got the power of the U.S. president if he can figure out how to use it (a big if).

His increased military spending plus his support for U.S. energy, ironically, would amount to harsher sanctions on Russia than any Mr. Obama imposed. In a second irony, his rise has half the U.S. political firmament, Democrats plus a smattering of Never Trump Republicans, willing to see the Putin regime for what it is. Thinking clearly about Russia might finally become a fashion in Washington. It won’t happen, though, if the only goal is to turn Mr. Putin into a partisan club against the Trump administration.

Dr Stupid can't handle the truth and neither can the Democrats. They are carrying Putins water. Trying to make this ruse a reality. Putin is smiling while the Democrats and the MSM are stumbling over themselves trying to deligitimize our election. Putin couldn't have done a better job. Suckers

Well, I see that StandinStupid didn't complete today's homework assignment.

Oh wait, I did stumble across this "rebuttal" that he posted in another thread:

(It's) a story from a Trump political hack trying to trivialize All of the Trump Russian connections, everything in that article is hogwash. Originally Posted by StandinStraight

For the record, Holman Jenkins is far from a "Trump political hack". His column seeks to put this tempest into proper historical perspective, something StandinShit refuses to do. Easier to just say "hogwash" when you know everything in the column is factually correct.

If you know you can't win a real debate, you duck any arguments that run counter to your own shallow, distorted spoon-fed narrative.

We have now reached a point in our political history where libtards are incapable of thinking clearly about what is in the US NATIONAL INTEREST.

Even if they could recognize what our national interest entails, they don't give a rat's ass anymore. Everything that happens, whether at home or abroad, is viewed through the prism of their hyper-partisan politics of destruction.

Politics doesn't stop at the water's edge anymore - thanks to the libtards, petty partisanship now circles the globe. This is very dangerous. As bambino said "Putin is smiling."

The FLIP-FLOPPING LIBTARDS can go from loving Putin to hating him on a dime! And they act totally indifferent to the inconsistencies in their loony sputterings!

Trump is a Russian spy!

Trump is a hawkish fascist!

Oh wait, he's both!


Is Trump a Hawk or a Traitor?

‘Already there are some days when they mount both attacks at the same time.’

From “Trump Isn’t Sounding Like a Russian Mole” by Walter Russell Mead at The-American-Interest.com, Feb.24:

Suppose Donald Trump does not in fact turn out to be the second coming of Benedict Arnold. Suppose instead, as is much more likely, that he turns out to be a very hawkish president, one who quite possibly will make George W. Bush look like Jimmy Carter. The media and Democratic Party leaders will have staked huge amounts of credibility on a position that turns out to be laughably untrue. Six months or a year from now, they will have to flip from calling Trump an anti-American traitor and Russian plant to calling him a dangerous, fascistic ultra-nationalist whose relentless hawkishness is bringing us closer to World War Three. Already there are some days when they mount both attacks at the same time: the hawkish traitor whose Nazi-style America First ideology leads him to lick Putin’s boots. The media wants to cast Trump as both Neville Chamberlain and Adolf Hitler; but you can’t give the Sudetenland to yourself.
.

Hey, you prancing Pissburg pissants get a room goddammit!

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHS!

Hey, you prancing Pissburg pissants get a room goddammit!

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHS! Originally Posted by Yssup Rider

Any room at your gloryholes? Or are they "Standing" room only!

BAHAHAHA OINK SNICK OINK

The FLIP-FLOPPING LIBTARDS can go from loving Putin to hating him on a dime! And they act totally indifferent to the inconsistencies in their loony sputterings!

Trump is a Russian spy!

Trump is a hawkish fascist!

Oh wait, he's both!


Is Trump a Hawk or a Traitor?

‘Already there are some days when they mount both attacks at the same time.’

From “Trump Isn’t Sounding Like a Russian Mole” by Walter Russell Mead at The-American-Interest.com, Feb.24:

Suppose Donald Trump does not in fact turn out to be the second coming of Benedict Arnold. Suppose instead, as is much more likely, that he turns out to be a very hawkish president, one who quite possibly will make George W. Bush look like Jimmy Carter. The media and Democratic Party leaders will have staked huge amounts of credibility on a position that turns out to be laughably untrue. Six months or a year from now, they will have to flip from calling Trump an anti-American traitor and Russian plant to calling him a dangerous, fascistic ultra-nationalist whose relentless hawkishness is bringing us closer to World War Three. Already there are some days when they mount both attacks at the same time: the hawkish traitor whose Nazi-style America First ideology leads him to lick Putin’s boots. The media wants to cast Trump as both Neville Chamberlain and Adolf Hitler; but you can’t give the Sudetenland to yourself.
. Originally Posted by lustylad

that's one confused position. no wonder they are clutching for thier glory holes. their rotten egg popprd out.

Hey, you prancing Pissburg pissants... Originally Posted by Yssup Rider

Hey oinkboy, you were supposed to take that lib-retarded pissant StandinStupid under your wing after he jumped into the Political Forum... what happened?

How do you expect to attract more recruits to join the Austin Reacharound Crew when you can't even supervise the ones you have?

Now go find that little pipsqueak and tell him if he doesn't hurry up and complete his homework assignment (a day late) he'll be sent to Austin for circle-jerk training.

Hey oinkboy, you were supposed to take that lib-retarded pissant StandinStupid under your wing after he jumped into the Political Forum... what happened?

How do you expect to attract more recruits to join the Austin Reacharound Crew when you can't even supervise the ones you have?

Now go find that little pipsqueak and tell him if he doesn't hurry up and complete his homework assignment (a day late) he'll be sent to Austin for circle-jerk training. Originally Posted by lustylad

He prolly can't deal with your homework assignment since assup has him training to "manage " his northern gloryholes up in " Yinz-land ". assup has a " boot camp " he sends all of HIS " manager candidates. Stan-the-Stupid is in his " how to be made air tight " phase of training, or so the liberal leaker at assups " headquarters " behind Talleywackers says.

Hey, you prancing Pissburg pissants get a room goddammit!

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHS! Originally Posted by Yssup Rider

You say you wet you're pants. Damn bring this thing a diaper.

You say you wet you're pants. Damn bring this thing a diaper. Originally Posted by R.M.

He drags StandingInShit over this forum and then gets an attitude.

No loyalty!

When Trump's Team starts fumigating the administration Obaminable will start distancing himself from the rat's running from the barn just like YouRong does!

Here is a follow-up story by the same WSJ columnist, Holman Jenkins.

Since the self-proclaimed "Professor" StandinShit has unceremoniously flunked out after proving he knows nothing about history (even recent history), I am posting this for the rest of yinz to read:


We Need a ‘Pentagon Papers’ on Russia

Trump and his associates are caught up in the backlash over the West’s long tolerance of Putin.

By HOLMAN W. JENKINS, JR.
March 24, 2017 6:21 p.m. ET

The American media needs to get a grip. News in essence is about how today differs from yesterday, a corollary of which is that yesterday was different from today.

Reporters commit the fallacy of anachronism out the wazoo with their treatment of a report that Paul Manafort, who briefly served as Trump campaign manager, indirectly offered in 2005 to help the Putin regime with its PR efforts in the West. I don’t know Mr. Manafort or have any need to defend him, but an implication that he was working against U.S. interests is plausible only if you confuse 2005 with 2014, when the U.S. imposed sanctions on Russia over its aggressive actions in Ukraine.

Back in 2005, improving Mr. Putin’s PR, in fact, was a major U.S. goal due to the need for Russia’s support of U.S. military operations in Afghanistan.

This reliance began almost immediately, with Mr. Putin in December 2001 blessing the use of an ex-Soviet air base in Kyrgyzstan to mount attacks on the Taliban. By 2009, ambushes and pilfering of U.S. supplies moving through the southern route in Pakistan had become so intolerable, President Obama and Gen. David Petraeus made a deliberate choice to increase reliance on the northern route. Not without irony, most of the U.S. freight for the war ended up flowing over Soviet rail lines built to support its own Afghanistan war in the 1980s. Hundreds of U.S. troops a week passed through Russian airspace on their way to the battle.

When President Bush traveled to Moscow in 2002 and sang Mr. Putin’s praises, he was engaged in PR for the war effort. When President Obama was caught on a hot mike patting Dmitry Medvedev on the arm and asking him to pass along a message of future flexibility to Boss Putin, it wasn’t because Mr. Obama mistook Mr. Putin for a champion of Obama values. The Russians even then were prepping for America’s use a former Soviet air hub in Ulyanovsk, birthplace of Lenin.

If you wonder why the U.S. and other countries were and have remained relatively mute on the sins of the Putin regime, Afghanistan is a decent place to start. Watergate analogies have been bandied about lately, but what really is needed is a Pentagon Papers scandal. We need an emptying of the files to lay out in its full glory the history of awkward, contradictory and humiliating straddles that Western governments have engaged in concerning the rise of the Putin regime.

It probably is too much to expect any awareness of this history from glib millennial reporters feasting on the Trump-Russia story. It may be too much to expect from Jeff Bezos, saturated in Silicon Valley’s ethos that history is bunk and only tomorrow matters.

But don’t news outlets like the Washington Post and the Associated Press have editors who have some sense of what happened the day before yesterday?

Mr. Trump suffers the opposite problem. Just as his understanding of “wiretapping” seems to date from the 1971 movie “The French Connection,” he appears blithely, confidently at sea amid the evolving quandaries of the U.S. relationship with Russia. A tad perverse is the hunt now for organized “collusion,” with Russia or anyone, on the part of so disorganized a campaign. Didn’t Mr. Trump, during a televised news conference, openly invite Russia and other hackers to release Hillary Clinton emails? Didn’t he laud WikiLeaks? How much collusion do you want?

He later claimed he was joking, but he clearly reveled in the Clinton campaign’s email mugging. The problem is, so did the media — all of the media. If your taste didn’t run to revelations that Donna Brazile leaked CNN debate questions to Mrs. Clinton, then it surely ran to the discovery that John Podesta sneered at conservative Catholics. Those “colluding” in the Russian goal of making U.S. democracy seem a feckless circus would fill the Tidal Basin.

Every third time he opens his mouth, Mr. Trump says something about Russia or Mr. Putin that he probably shouldn’t. He was destined to have a steep learning curve given his lack of experience in government. A year from now, if he lasts that long, don’t put it past him to have a better handle on Putin than Obama or Bush did. Mr. Putin himself is the major factor in changing the alignments to allow and require Western governments increasingly to treat him unambiguously as leader of a hostile power.

As for Trump “collusion,” where there’s smoke, there’s fire, goes a typical bit of journalistic deep thinking. But sometimes there’s just a smoke machine furiously being cranked by Rep. Adam Schiff, ranking Democrat of the House Intelligence Committee.

In the end, Mr. Schiff will likely prove right about one thing only: his oft-stated complaint that the Obama administration did little to deter Mr. Putin’s adventurism. Indeed, the mind slightly boggles that Russian jets still fly unmolested over Ukraine and Syria without facing covertly supplied U.S. man-portable missiles.

Appeared in the Mar. 25, 2017, print edition.

He drags StandingInShit over this forum and then gets an attitude.

No loyalty!

When Trump's Team starts fumigating the administration Obaminable will start distancing himself from the rat's running from the barn just like YouRong does! Originally Posted by LexusLover

The same " loyalty " he showed HIS protégé Lube in the thread to return Lube to this forum !

Yep... it's all about other posters.

More finger pointing than Twitler in front of a mirror.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHW!