Wednesday, July 12, 2017

Femme fatale

From time to time, RtO has to state things itself, since nobody else is saying it first. This is one of those times.

What did Natalia Veselnitskaya want? All the reporting and commentary has focused on what Whiny Baby Donald's idiot son wanted -- dirt on Clinton. But why did Veselitskatya want to meet him? Not because of his pretty eyes.

And not because of adoptions. That is certain.

Around the world, the American middle-class hobby of scooping up poor infants is deplored, or worse. Bolivia forbids it. Russian patriots, who want to be regarded as equal to the biggest players, have no reason to like having to give up babies their country cannot manage to take care of. The idea, enunciated by Trump the Less, that some free-lance wanted to talk to him about renewing this humiliation is one reason we can confidently call him an idiot.

So, commenters leap to the conclusion that her purpose was to talk about removing the Magnitsky Act that sanctions some Russians bigwigs.  That makes no sense.

Putin had reason to believe that WBD would be amenable to removing Magnitsky if he could be elected. Possibly, he wanted Veselnitskaya to confirm that this would be a WBD priority.

But there was no need to contact the idiot son. Putin already had campaign manager Paul Manafort on speed dial. He could just have called him.

Even if, for some reason, an approach to Idiot Son was preferred, tempting him with dirt on Clinton and then being unable to deliver was a worse than clumsy way to go about it. WBD is notoriously touchy, and promising dirt and then not delivering would, most likely, be the item that remained in the front of his tiny mind, not Putin's anxieties about Magnitsky. (I saw a commenter refer to WBD's "goldfish-like attention span. That was funny.)

Veselnitskaya  and Putin must have had something else in mind.

My guess is that she came to remind (or perhaps reveal to) WBD that Putin has tapes of golden showers (or something similar) and that, if he should be elected, he had better follow the Kremlin line.

That's a message that would not have taken long to deliver, so Idiot Son may not be lying when he says it was over in 20 minutes.












20 comments:

  1. Around the world, the American middle-class hobby of scooping up poor infants is deplored, or worse.

    Wrong.

    All the reporting and commentary has focused on what Whiny Baby Donald's idiot son wanted -- dirt on Clinton.

    Perhaps you can remind us who approached whom.

    My guess is that she came to remind (or perhaps reveal to) WBD that Putin has tapes of golden showers (or something similar) and that, if he should be elected, he had better follow the Kremlin line.

    My guess is that you are completely unhinged.

    And that in your unhinged state, you are either ignorant of, or completely ignoring, the steps Trump has taken that are completely antithetical to Russian interests.

    Keystone pipeline approval and resuming exporting US fossil fuels, for starters.

    Hardly the Kremlin line.

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  2. Did you read your link? Evidently not.

    Crimea anyone?

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  3. Hmmm. http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/article160803619.html

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  4. Did you read your link? Evidently not.

    Yes, I did. You said Around the world, the American middle-class hobby of scooping up poor infants is deplored, or worse.

    Aside from your nasty characterization (doesn't it get tiring being so filled with hate?), all of six countries have restrictions on adoption, and many of them are due to internal problems. That is scarcely "around the world", nor does it justify the passively voiced "deplored".



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  5. I know many parents who have adopted foreign children. The places giving up these children are humiliated and resentful. Certainly the case in Russia.

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  6. The places giving up these children are humiliated and resentful.

    This is a philosophical question for the ages: how can a place be humiliated and resentful?

    Followed on its heels by this: How can the Chinese, for example, be humiliated and resentful when Americans come to adopt little girls that escaped infanticide?

    Followed by this: compared to a child's life, how important is a place's humiliation and resentment?

    And now the capstone: you made a glaringly ignorant claim. Any chance of you owning it?

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  7. 'How can the Chinese, for example, be humiliated and resentful when Americans come to adopt little girls that escaped infanticide?
    '

    I dunno. How can American Christians think of themselves as persecuted?

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  8. Harry, I've been to China, and I've frequently stayed in hotels where most of the guests were Americans adopting children; almost universally girls. There was absolutely no sign of humiliation or resentment among the Chinese.

    I dunno. How can American Christians think of themselves as persecuted?

    (Gosh, and I thought changing the subject was frowned upon here. I can provide the quote if need be.)

    By all means, give a concrete example.

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  9. http://www.nowtheendbegins.com/christians-must-brace-themselves-for-the-coming-persecution-in-obamas-lgbt-america/

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  10. You have never heard of Christian pizza parlors, florists, or bakers being forced out of existence by the government because they prefer not to partake in LGBT marriages? (Funny how that never comes up with halal establishments ...)

    Or people with different priors being forced to accept gender non-conforming people in locker rooms?

    Which part of the first para in your link is wrong?

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  11. I have also heard of businesses that prefer not to serve black people. If that's your argument -- Christians have a right to bigotry -- you're welcome to it.

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  12. If that's your argument ...

    Harry, if you think that is my argument, you are dumber than a mud fence post.


    BTW, I have heard of universities, as in all of them, that refuse to hire anyone who isn't a progressive. Progs have awarded themselves a right to bigotry.

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  13. I guess the implication is that halal establishments are refusing to sell lamb to -- I don't know -- caterers at Jewish marriages?

    What in the world are you raving about?

    Also, I'd like to hear your source for this universal policy at universities. Where do they meet to manage this plot?

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  14. You have never heard of Christian pizza parlors, florists, or bakers being forced out of existence by the government because they prefer not to partake in LGBT marriages? (Funny how that never comes up with halal establishments ...)


    Harry, there is no implication, merely a statement of fact. No one has ever gone into a halal establishment asking it to cater a gay wedding.

    Also, I'd like to hear your source for this universal policy at universities. Where do they meet to manage this plot?

    Before my mother retired as a rhetoric and writing professor she was on the hiring committee at Florida Atlantic University.

    It was rampant.

    How else do you explain this?

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  15. Via my nephew, I found a university that doesn't hire only progressives:

    http://kutv.com/news/local/byu-idaho-fires-an-adjunct-professor-after-lgbt-pride-month-post-on-facebook

    And in the New Yorker, Stephen Greenblatt, a near contemporary of mine, recalls how universities operated in pre-prog days:

    'I attended university in a very different world from the one in which I now teach and live. For a start, Yale College, which I entered in 1961, was all male. Women were not matriculated until five years after I had received my B.A. degree. Among the undergraduates, there were only a handful of students from Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, and very few African-Americans, Asian-Americans, or Hispanics, unless one counted a couple of prep-school-educated heirs to grand South American fortunes.

    'The Yale that I attended was overwhelmingly North American and white, as well as largely Protestant. It was difficult for the admissions office to identify Catholics, but applicants with conspicuously Irish, Italian, or Polish names were at a disadvantage. For Jews, there was a numerus clausus, not even disguised by the convenient excuse of “geographical distribution.” . . .

    'Midway through the year, the professor asked me if I would be interested in being his research assistant, helping him prepare the index for a book he had just completed. Ecstatic, I immediately agreed. In those days, research assistants were required to apply for their jobs through the financial-aid office, where I dutifully made an appointment. I was in for a surprise.

    “ 'Greenblatt is a Jewish name, isn’t it?” the financial-aid officer said. I agreed that it was. 'Frankly,' he went on, 'we are sick and tired of the number of Jews who come into this office after they’re admitted and try to wheedle money out of Yale University.' I stammered, 'How can you make such a generalization?'

    “ 'Well, Mr. Greenblatt,' he replied, 'what do you think of Sicilians?' I answered that I didn’t think I knew any Sicilians. 'J. Edgar Hoover,' he continued, citing the director of the F.B.I., 'has statistics that prove that Sicilians have criminal tendencies.' So, too, he explained, Yale had statistics that proved that a disproportionate number of Jewish students were trying to get money from the university by becoming research assistants. Then he added, 'We could people this whole school with graduates of the Bronx High School of Science, but we choose not to do so.' Pointing out lamely that I had gone to high school in Newton, Massachusetts, I slunk away without a job."

    http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/07/10/shakespeares-cure-for-xenophobia

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  16. Via my nephew, I found a university that doesn't hire only progressives:

    Since you had to go that far to find an exception, you have abundantly proven the rule.

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  17. Oh, I can name plenty more. I didn't go looking for it, by the way. There are some Mormons who are not far right, and they get upset by these shenanigans.

    I can provide a lot worse example.

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  18. No doubt you could find a few more, but in doing so you would have to be ignoring the intellectual rot infesting the liberal arts, the very thing staring you in the face.

    It is precisely the same with warmenism, btw.

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  19. I can name plenty more. Wheaton, for example.

    As it happens, my linguistics professor was the first head of the English Department at Florida Atlantic. No one would have called Jack Surber a progressive

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  20. No one would have called Jack Surber a progressive...

    When was that, btw?

    I can name plenty more. Wheaton, for example.

    All of them -- not that there are many -- private universities.

    You are looking at mites, and ignoring the elephants.

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