My Experiment With “Russian Doll” Tweets (Tweets Starting From Bernie Sanders Suspending His Campaign To Michael Bloomberg Being Declared U.S. Treasury Secretary In The Event of Marshal Law– And Back Again!)

I’ve just experimented with creating a chain of “Russian Doll” Tweets.

Maybe it’s cabin fever from spending too much time alone indoors sequestered away from friends and community . . .

. . . or maybe, it’s that this Russian Doll Tweet exercise I’ve engaged in is solace, providing the illusion of an organized structure for information as we experience overload.  The inflow of news and information about coronavirus that spins around us seems so disorganized and unhelpful, at least to me, the 24/7 news cycle pelting us with statistics that inadequately describe multiple unknowns.

My Russian Doll Tweets (from @WhiteMDD, my personal Twitter account, not the @NatNotice National Notice Twitter account) started with noting that I still have the option of voting for Bernie Sanders in the primaries (I am a New Yorker), and those tweets went eventually to the observation that Michael Bloomberg’s buying up of Democrats’ voter data (follow the links) might have the outcome of Bloomberg’s being appointed U.S. Treasury Secretary if marshal law is declared in the wake of a “failed” national election.  (I apologize for my spelling, which on Twitter I can't go back to correct.). .

. . Twitter allowed me to create the chain because, with Twitter, you can retweet another tweet "with comment" to make a new combined Tweet.

But the only way, through Twitter, to open the Tweets and enjoy them Russian Doll style is to start with the last tweet about how Bloomberg becomes U.S. Treasury Secretary and follow it back to how I will still able to vote for Bernie Sanders even if he is not running a campaign I can financially contribute to.

However, via the posting here, I can give you the choice of enjoying the Russian Doll tweets in either direction:

To read them backward you can go to Twitter. . .

(Also, please note that some of the individual tweets, as you will see, themselves have links embedded in them that can take you to some interesting, informative places.)

Tweet: My experiment with “Russian Doll” tweets: Keep clicking on the retweeted tweet and see what I mean. 

. .  or go to the Part II end of this article.  To read them forward, as they were written, from the first, start below with Part I:

PART I

Here are the Russian Doll tweets in the order they were tweeted.

Tweet: Bernie’s suspension of it means I can no longer contribute $ for him to use in a campaign almost impossible to really run in a virus environment, but b/c he remains on all ballots collecting delegates I can still vote for him as reality continues to endorse him and Biden dements.

Tweet: And I still regret that Bernie is not more of a fighter, willing to challenge whether Biden really, truly, and honestly gained and holds the delegate lead purportedly given him by the media despite evidence to the contrary such as the highly discrepant exit polls.

Tweet: While I fume that Bernie suspended his campaign, I find his “suspension” speech seductively good. Am I just a sucker? Or is my cynical suspicion resulting in a crippling rejection of “hope.” (“Hope”? That was the Obama promise.) https://www.democracynow.org/2020/4/9/bernie_sanders_drops_out_of_race

Tweet: On @democracynow @noamchomskyT offers “hope” that a “Biden” administration would be better than a Trump, even an Obama administration, b/c it would be more susceptible to the influence of a newly assertive left awakened by Sanders campaign; & address . . https://www.democracynow.org/2020/4/10/noam_chomsky_trump_us_coronavirus_response

Tweet: Would a “Biden” admin be susceptible (more than Trump’s) to the influence of newly assertive left and finally address climate chaos, income inequality, militarism, etc.- The Sanders list? Biden “conceding” to lower Medicare age to 60 puts him far to the right of other Dems.

Tweet: It is time to start referring to a possible “Biden” administration in quotes because with Biden dementing it is far from clear who sent from the DNC would be running things.

Tweet: But there are those that think rather than wonder about the possibilities of how Continuity of Government (“COG”) concerns would be handled in a demented “Biden” administration we should worry if there will be any national elections at all. https://off-guardian.org/2020/04/09/standing-on-the-precipice-of-martial-law/

Tweet: Those worrying that Marshall Law would bring in unconstitutional Continuity of Government changes in the wake of a “failed” election include @_whitneywebb who has been writing of these worries since before the virus arrived. https://twitter.com/blacklistednews/status/1242240104644505600?s=21

Tweet: If Marshall Law is declared in the wake of a “failed” election we might, to give it cover, get something like the absolutely inane “National Unity Cabinet” proposed by bombastic NY Times columnist Tom Friedman! https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/04/10/bide-a10.html

Tweet: In the Tom Friedman “National Unity Cabinet” the country might get if Marshall Law is ushered in in wake of a “failed” election, Michael Bloomberg would be U.S. Treasury Secretary in exchange for spending billions to scoop up the Democrats’ voter data. https://twitter.com/whitemdd/status/1249017082987118593?s=21

Tweet: My experiment with “Russian Doll” tweets: Keep clicking on the retweeted tweet and see what I mean. 

PART II

Here are the Russian Doll tweets in the order they can be followed backward through Twitter.

Tweet: My experiment with “Russian Doll” tweets: Keep clicking on the retweeted tweet and see what I mean. 

Tweet: In the Tom Friedman “National Unity Cabinet” the country might get if Marshall Law is ushered in in wake of a “failed” election, Michael Bloomberg would be U.S. Treasury Secretary in exchange for spending billions to scoop up the Democrats’ voter data. https://twitter.com/whitemdd/status/1249017082987118593?s=21

Tweet: If Marshall Law is declared in the wake of a “failed” election we might, to give it cover, get something like the absolutely inane “National Unity Cabinet” proposed by bombastic NY Times columnist Tom Friedman! https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/04/10/bide-a10.html

Tweet: Those worrying that Marshall Law would bring in unconstitutional Continuity of Government changes in the wake of a “failed” election include @_whitneywebb who has been writing of these worries since before the virus arrived. https://twitter.com/blacklistednews/status/1242240104644505600?s=21

Tweet: But there are those that think rather than wonder about the possibilities of how Continuity of Government (“COG”) concerns would be handled in a demented “Biden” administration we should worry if there will be any national elections at all. https://off-guardian.org/2020/04/09/standing-on-the-precipice-of-martial-law/

Tweet: It is time to start referring to a possible “Biden” administration in quotes because with Biden dementing it is far from clear who sent from the DNC would be running things.

Tweet: It is time to start referring to a possible “Biden” administration in quotes because with Biden dementing it is far from clear who sent from the DNC would be running things.

Tweet: Would a “Biden” admin be susceptible (more than Trump’s) to the influence of newly assertive left and finally address climate chaos, income inequality, militarism, etc.- The Sanders list? Biden “conceding” to lower Medicare age to 60 puts him far to the right of other Dems.

Tweet: On @democracynow @noamchomskyT offers “hope” that a “Biden” administration would be better than a Trump, even an Obama administration, b/c it would be more susceptible to the influence of a newly assertive left awakened by Sanders campaign; & address . . https://www.democracynow.org/2020/4/10/noam_chomsky_trump_us_coronavirus_response

Tweet: While I fume that Bernie suspended his campaign, I find his “suspension” speech seductively good. Am I just a sucker? Or is my cynical suspicion resulting in a crippling rejection of “hope.” (“Hope”? That was the Obama promise.) https://www.democracynow.org/2020/4/9/bernie_sanders_drops_out_of_race

Tweet: And I still regret that Bernie is not more of a fighter, willing to challenge whether Biden really, truly, and honestly gained and holds the delegate lead purportedly given him by the media despite evidence to the contrary such as the highly discrepant exit polls.

Tweet: Bernie’s suspension of it means I can no longer contribute $ for him to use in a campaign almost impossible to really run in a virus environment, but b/c he remains on all ballots collecting delegates I can still vote for him as reality continues to endorse him and Biden dements.

Boeing Blames Its Two 737 MAX Jet Crashes On U.S. FAA Regulations- Demands Federal Compensation

Boeing management today released the result of an internally conducted study that found that its two Boeing 737 MAX Jet Crashes were caused by United States Federal Aviation Administration regulations.  Boeing demanded immediate action from Congress to compensate their company for all crash losses.  Their demand includes asking for Boeing to be compensated for the economic loses and reduced profits Boeing suffered due to worldwide grounding of 737 MAX jets that ensued following the cashes.

Boeing’s spokesperson for the occasion of the release of the report, Skip Ayres Ohsonize, explained that while everybody knows that regulation of American companies makes them less competitive and thereby weakens them, what the report revealed was something less obvious; that excess federal government regulation can foment unforeseen dangers as well. Mr. Ohsonize explained that federal regulation had essentially forced Boeing into designing a dangerous plane.

“Boeing, our company, was in an untenable position,” said Mr. Ohsonize.  Airbus SE the European multinational aerospace corporation, had moved into a position where it was taking the most airliner orders internationally and was poised to be take over the airliner market with increasing sales of its new A320 airliner.  “We weren’t going to stand by and let Airbus steal market share,” said Mr. Ohsonize, “that’s something that an American company has a duty to prevent, and we needed to move quickly.” The main selling point of the new A320 was its fuel-efficient engines. “We appropriately rushed to provide a Boeing alternative,” said Mr. Ohsonize, “that’s when the way in which F.A.A. regulations were unfortunately structured to slow us down if we took certain actions forced us into dangerous airplane design.”

Larger and powerful new engines were the key that was absolutely necessary to provide an airliner that would be able advertise competitive fuel efficiency.   Bigger engines to provide this fuel efficiency involve different airplane aerodynamics.  Mr. Ohsonize, said, “it is easy to understand that, without F.A.A. regulations factoring in, the obvious best way for us at Boeing to proceed would have been to design a new airliner from scratch.”

“But under F.A.A. regulations, it would have taken a decade to produce a new plane from scratch,” said Mr. Sogh Ahlphaul, an engineer contributing to the report for Boeing.  That’s because F.A.A. regulations would have required an extensive review certification process for any new airframe and fuselage, plus a brand new airline design would have required the purchasing airlines to spend millions of dollars on additional pilot training. “Facing competitive pressure from Airbus, we needed to avoid that,” said Mr. Ahlphaul.  He further explained:

Under the circumstances and needing to maintain profits, we were forced to go in the direction that F.A.A. regulations were clearly steering us: It was far quicker, easier and cheaper, and would provide almost as much fuel savings to mount larger engines on an existing airframe, and so we used the airframe of the earlier 737 models.

In other words, base the MAX would be one more member in Boeing’s “737 family,” a well-known design, rooted in the original 1967 certification of the B737-100.

Mr. Ahlphaul explained that “the F.A.A., for regulation purposes, would then allow us to say that this airplane was essentially the same as earlier 737 models, making it easy to certify it quickly.”  Moreover, this approach would limit any training that regulations might otherwise dictate that pilots could need, thus, he said, “cutting down costs for the purchasing airlines.”

Mr. Ohsonize, said:

Our report makes clear how the course the regulations drove us to take at Boeing was not optimal.  The old vintage airframe on which the new larger engines were mounted was designed with its wings very low to the ground, requiring more clearance for the larger engines.  That clearance could only be achieved by moving the engines forward.  Additionally, the landing gears also needed to be moved forward. This altered the aerodynamics of the plane, making it more likely to pitch up in some circumstances.  It made it harder to fly and it handled in an unstable fashion, with a tendency for the airplane to buck upward, very different in ways from what pilots, used to the classic 737 workhorse model from the days of yore, were familiar with.  These differences were mostly opposite to what pilots might intuitively understand from their previous experience.

“That’s why,” said Mr. Ahlphaul, “we interfaced the Artificial Intelligence automated MCAS system to let that robot system fly the plane while allowing pilots to feel like they were flying another plan entirely.”  The system would take care of adjustments to the aircraft and its behavior tendencies automatically, like automatic signals to the horizontal stabilizer to push the nose back down when it pitched up. Doing this avoided any need to retrain pilots.

The pilots could operate the plane the same way they operated prior iterations. “We could not let any designs we created be something where F.A.A. regulations would irksomely drive any new training that required a simulator; That was a first imperative,” said Mr. Ahlphaul.

Another bad decision the F.A.A. requirements forced, according to Mr. Ahlphaul, was the design of the cockpit instrument panel.  He explained:

When we updated the cockpit, actually ungraded to a digital display, we would have liked to have redesigned the layout of information to give pilots added data so they could have had information to track all the newly layered on idiosyncratic behaviors of the 737 MAX Jet design.  We could even have made the panel easier to read. That’s what we would have done absent F.A.A. Regulation, but, once again, when the constraints of F.A.A. regulations had to be considered, such a redesigned panel that did not accord with the notional conceit that, for regulatory purposes, pilots were flying 737 models, not something else, would have triggered an expensive regulatory requirement for new pilot training.

“It’s too bad regulations precluded this option,” supplied Mr. Ohsonize with emphasis, “because it could have helped the human pilots fill in some necessary blanks about their situation when the robot MCAS system failed to read sensors, as happened, contributing to the crashes.”

At the press conference where the report was released, Rahz Zellmann, a Boeing Senior Vice President, was on hand to state Boeing’s demands for the compensation it was demanding from the federal government for the damage. First off Mr. Zellmann wanted to be clear that the F.A.A. regulations were not Boeing’s fault.  He said that Boeing had been fighting for years to eliminate such regulations, and that Boeing had even succeeded in pushing through legal changes that reduced F.A.A. regulatory oversight, replacing it with Boeing having the power of self-certification in its factories, with more and more certification responsibilities being handed over to the manufacturers over the years. But Mr. Zellmann said that half-way measures of this kind were not enough.

Mr. Zellmann said that when self-certifications were coupled with old criteria and standards that remained applicable, Boeing engineers still wound up self-consciously distracted and looking over their shoulders thinking that if F.A.A. technical staff became had been fully aware of designs details and changes (including for instance with the MCAS robot guidance) the agency could likely require additional scrutiny.  “Engendering this kind of nervousness,” said Mr. Zellmann, “is not the same thing, as having the totally unencumbered ability you need to design freely and sidestep a meddlesome government.”  Mr. Zellmann said that self-certification had, however, allowed Boeing to achieve some benefits, such as determining that certain modern safety tools incorporated into newer editions of other airliners in 737 family, did not need to be included in the MAX because they were “impractical.”

Mr. Zellmann said that Boeing’s demand both for elimination of regulation and for compensation from the federal government ought now additionally to looked at, in an edifying way, through the lens of the Covid-19 coronavius crisis.  Zellmann noted that, taking into account the virus crisis, the Environment Protection Agency was indefinitely suspending enforcement of environmental laws.  According to Mr. Zellmann, that just goes to show how unimportant these laws actually are for protecting the public.  “They are half window dressing,” said Mr. Zellmann said, “and half an excuse for members of Congress to demand campaign contributions from the regulated firms as the expensive price to procure regulatory capture.”

“More important,” Mr. Zellmann said, “the corona virus crisis, comes at a time when it is crucial for the United States to remain strong.”  “This means,” said Mr. Zellmann, “that even if Boeing were not identifying the harms and losses Boeing suffered by virtue of the F.A.A. regulation, that at the present moment the federal government should be stepping up to give trillions to Boeing, because Boeing is one of the key military contractors requiring the most money from the United States to stay on a constant worldwide war footing.”  Zellmann made the point that the federal government could not afford to let grounded Boeing MAX jets financially weaken Boeing’s ability to keep the country strong and stand up to other countries during the coronavirus crisis.  Mr. Zellmann said that to protect the United States during the Covid-19 crisis it was essential for there to be as many military airplanes manufactured by Boeing to be able to make sure that countries like Iran were cut off from the medical supplies they needed so that the virus could multiple there and not here.           

“We benefit,” said Mr. Zellmann, “if we can assure that virus multiplication means that they have a far worse escalation of infectious cases within their borders than we do within ours.”  “It’s the kind of warfare you have to wage when to comes to germs,” said Mr. Zellmann. Said Mr. Zellman, “Boeing’s strong backup is a crucial ingredient to the U.S.’s intensification of sanctions against Iran to further weaken its healthcare system and economy during the during COVID-19 crisis.”

Mr. Zellmann said that with the Covid-19 crisis timing is everything: February wasn’t March and everything will certainly be different this coming month from the way it was in March.  He noted that Congress was acting quickly, as of a few days ago, to send trillions of dollars in Covid-19 bailout money to big corporations, of which Boeing naturally expected its share.  Mr. Zellmann said Boeing was releasing it’s report and demands for compensation at the beginning of this month to ensure that Congress didn’t move to unfairly prevent Boeing from getting everything is deserved with some sort of anti-double dipping provision, or anti-triple dipping provision.  That’s why, Mr. Zellman emphasized the official release date for the report is today, April 1st.

Reflections On What It Means To Be Retreating More Into Virtual Existence In Fear Of A Virus

This is not intended to provide any sort of conclusion as to where to draw the line about appropriate cautions to take as we make our individual and collective decisions about dealing with Covid-19.  Still, I feel it’s essential to reflect on certain things as we adopt unfamiliar, new and unnatural ways of living and societally interacting.

As we are increasingly prompted to convert all our social and interpersonal dealings into a virtual, through-the-internet verisimilitude replication of the lives that we used to lead, some kind of existence that is ethereally Matrix-like, it is important to remember how the internet was built for data-scraping and surveillance.  Amazon, with its strange history and ties to the U.S. Military and intelligence communities, already knows far too much about everyone already, and our encouraged wholesale retreat into manifesting our interactions in exclusively digitally ways will only be making the big internet monopolies more formidably ginormous and powerful.  A lot of us now find ourselves on Zoom conferencing discovering its merits as one of the prime candidates for virtual meeting options– Zoom sends your data to Facebook even if you don't have a Facebook account–  And Facebook has a record of coordinating, Big Brother style, with groups like the Atlantic Council and Cambridge Analytica that affected the 2016 election.  Let’s also remember that internet technology, knowing what it knows about us as it collects information about us for that purpose, can manipulate us as well.  It is routinely hired out to do so.

Heretofore, some of the antidote for the control of control and ubiquity of the internet was to take a break and go where the internet’s reach and influence might peter out: Have face-to-face, peer-to-peer personal interactions, read physical vs. digital books, assemble together in real meetings, assemblies and forums, listen to and support the kind of live radio that the internet cannot squelch, censor or take away.  It is part of the reason that I, as a co-founder of Citizens Defending Libraries have been fighting for the continuation of traditional libraries with physical books and trained human being librarians. . .  It is part of the reason I support WBAI radio, 99.5 FM, the Pacifica station in New York that is New York City's only truly listener supported public radio station.

. . . You may have noticed that a spin-off of the coronaviris effects has been the closure of most libraries.  We would hope that this is not subsequently cited as additional evidence that this public commons is a public asset society can now dispense with.  Meanwhile, the public’s habits of hanging out in the shallower digital internet world will, perforce, be reinforced as we live protecting ourselves from the virus.

. . . With the emphasis on digital substitution you may not have noticed that lock downs and new rules against groups of more than a certain number of people gathering, for instance restricting groups to no more than ten, leaves by the wayside the First Amendment right of assembly guaranteed by the Constitution.  Why was the right of public assembly one of the first enumerated rights?  Seasoned activists are well acquainted with the fact that when opposing war, or agitating for rights including, for instance, healthcare, the clicking of Facebook posts to like them or even generating acerbically astute and insightful Tweets, just doesn’t cut it and hardly equals the impact of crowds getting out into the streets.

We are also in the middle of a national election.  I recently joked (before some of the new really strict new controls) that those in power were coming up with a prohibition on future Bernie Sanders’s rallies, but that they weren’t bothering with an equivalent rule for Joe Biden rallies because Biden doesn’t draw any crowds.  Is there a virtual substitute for the formidably energetic Bernie troops knocking on doors; something they will not now be able to do?  Telephone calls are not the same as face-to-face knocking on doors.

Nothing is the same as face-to-face and knocking on doors because human beings were not built for virtual existences.  We are social animals designed for the social bonds that come from real interactions.  When we are infants, the mother holding the child generates the hormone oxytocin, which promotes the bond between the mother and child.  Same thing when a father holds the baby.  It is a physical thing.  The same hormones are generated when owners pet their pets, in both the pet owner and the pet.

Oxytocin from human closeness not only generates, builds and strengthens the bonds between human beings, it actually confers benefits like building up the immune system, calming us, and making us more capable.  It is ironic that, as we go into isolation to avoid getting sick with the coronavirus, we may actually, through our isolation and physical separation, be weakening our immune system’s ability to respond to and for us to survive the virus if we get infected. . .  Thinking about how important human physical touch is, holding a hand, giving and receiving a hug, I feel, in depth and achingly for the afflicted patients who must recover separated and physically apart from their loved ones.

When email took over as the new default method of communication, the phenomenon of “flaming” was widely recognized as an unfortunate byproduct. Email communications, and some internet communications can be launched instantaneously with the press of a button.  It’s not like a letter that sits around to be mailed the next day when more sober instincts might prevail.  With the disinhibition of not dealing with another person face to face, communications can be extra harsh, especially if exchanges back and forth escalate into a “flame war.”  Even face-to-face communication can be hard; you have to realize and know what you want to say; you have to say what you actually mean; other people have to hear what you actually say and they have to understand, without misinterpretation or incorrect filled-in suppositions, what you actually mean.  All of these things are harder over the internet without all the moment-to-moment micro-adjustments you can make speaking to somebody face to face as you intuitively sense from another’s physical body in the room responding, the ongoing success as opposed to misdirection of your communication.

Added to this is the way that our ongoing fear-based enforced physical separation from others can enhance our suspicions of others.  We walk through the streets now socially distancing each other and maintaining six-feet gaps like wary gunslingers in a Hollywood western.  Fear turns on our lizard brains, and these distances can enhance the instincts toward unhealthy “othering.” This comes just at a time when the obvious solution to get through our current crisis is more community cross-support for resilience.  Covid-19 could not be a more perfect and obvious “my health is your health/your health is my health” argument for Medicare for all.  With massive, nationwide layoffs because of the Covid-19 health crisis, millions of Americans are now losing their “if you like your private employer health plan, you can keep it,” health insurance right at the time when they need it most.  This is notwithstanding Joe Biden’s very recent statement that if the Democrats pass Medicare for all he will veto it if he is elected president. . .

In many ways, Americans are now in a particularly vulnerable time if anyone wants to deploy the typical kind of divide and conquer tactics that neutralize the public’s ability to organize for common goals and make our democracy work.  One of the most valuable big picture overviews available right now about the way things stand is Naomi Klein's Intercept video about the fork in the road decisions ahead of us as we face the Coronavirus crisis (Coronavirus Capitalism — and How to Beat It): Either we could go the route of improving and making our society more resilient the way FDR did in dealing with the Depression of the 1930s, or, instead, another round of disaster capitalism maneuvers could be effected.  We know that the 2008 financial crisis was mishandled by pumping money into wealthy investment funds, banks, and corporations at exactly the time that asset prices were low and temporarily suppressed, prices for things like the homes of people in the Main Street economy, and those assets and homes were then bought up by those hedge funds, banks and corporations. . .  It was one of the greatest wealth transfers ever, increasing wealth inequality in America.  Plus it was paid for with taxpayer money.  The people who lost their homes paid the taxes that financed those tilted economy buy ups that deprived them of ownership.

It's exceedingly hard to maintain a big picture consciousness when news about the virus is frenetically reported with rotating reports of the very latest statistics in different countries, different cities, different regions of different countries, the world, and then starting over again at the beginning for updates because by the time the end of the list is reached, the numbers have already up-ticked.  Alternatively, a fairly good big picture overview doesn't require drowning in the latest moment to moment statistical data: our health care system is at the point of being overwhelmed, the United States is in many ways inexcusably ill prepared for such a pandemic; and, additionally, we are not doing many of the sensible things we could be doing, and yes. . .  people should be cautious  One day, a time may come when we look back at 2020 and say, "that was a very peculiar election–how do that ever happen?"; and if, as we might  hope, the virus finally exits center stage and exact memories of it recede just the way we now have to work to remind ourselves of the 1918 flu (which occurred during the Midterm elections of President Woodrow Wilson's wartime presidential tenure), we may answer: "Oh, that's right, that was during the coronavirus crisis when we were so all distracted and worried about other things."

The coronavirus crisis feels a lot like the 2008 financial crisis and 9/11 wrapped up into one.  It is worth remembering how with the distractions of 9/11 (and the tag-team Anthrax attacks that closely followed), we, as a nation, just as with the 2008 financial crisis, also made a series of really bad decisions as we were distracted from big picture truths.

There are silver linings to our new world.  Families where parents are now working at home are spending more time together, building stronger bonds.  They are experiencing the opposite effect of the separation and isolation that is making our larger world feel so relentlessly dystopian these days.  Some may even experience the new quieting down as meditative, and it may feel as if there is also some shift away from things materialistic.  We may feel closer to some essential truths about what is truly valuable.  That is not to say that all family groups have equal tools to deal with what could feel like a pressure cooker of forced togetherness.

Not everybody has a family that they live with, and that can be unfortunate.  For many their sense ongoing family and human togetherness was achieved by getting out in the world and physically spending time communing with other people.  The virtual is an inferior substitute: Before the virus ever arrived, it has been noted how often people who spend a great deal of their time on platforms like Facebook for their companionship and for their “friends” can wind up depressed.

One last good thing to note is that it does seem that we are, for the most part, presently being good to each other despite the human separations being forced on us and the digital substitutions being offered for our existence.  Hopefully, still being good to each other, we will all be communally together again, in a real physical sense, soon.

The Clinton And The Trump Investigations And Impeachments: Both Following The Same Formula For Division And Subtraction By Distraction?

I don’t know about you, but I had a striking revelation: The Clinton and the Trump presidential impeachments and the theatrically dramatic investigations accompanying them were remarkably the same.  In each case, the news media and our congress obsessed and transfixed for months on an investigation that seemed giant, sensational, and exhaustive, yet in each case was focused on something largely irrelevant to what was actually there to be investigated.  Also, in each case, the relatively trivial offenses selected to be focused on were perfect to foment and stoke distracting Red Team/Blue Team division.

I first realized the strange kinship of the two impeachments/investigations when I was reading a Whitney Webb article.  It was the fourth article in Ms. Webb's MintPress News series on pedophile sex ring operator and apparent blackmailer Jeffrey Epstein.  This is the in depth, connect-the-dots series that has attracted Ms. Webb so much attention.  The series was extra-remarkable when it got started getting real attention because Ms. Webb started it before Epstein’s provocatively mysterious death.–   The fourth article in the series, the first written after Jeffrey Epstein’s death, had me thinking, “reeling” is a better word, about how there was so much about the Clintons, Bill and Hillary, that Whitney Webb was writing about that was never investigated, never surfaced as part of any formal investigation, stuff that obviously should have been investigated. . .  But I remembered the Ken Starr’s Whitewater investigation that turned into the Monica Lewinsky scandal based impeachment and trial of Clinton.  Hmm.
                                           
That’s when I first thought about the commonality of the Clinton and Trump impeachments/investigations.  I don’t know if it vexed you, but for me it was excruciating that there is so much to investigate about Trump, so much that he could be impeached for (violations of the emoluments clause in the running of his hotels and resorts, diverting money appropriated for other things into his “wall,” willful violations of international treaties, assassination of Soleimani, putting a fox in charge of the hen house of every government regulatory agency chartered to protect the public), and yet the Democrats ignored all the potentially strong bipartisan issues challenging Trump and they impeached him for something totally different. 

Ignoring strong potentially bipartisan grounds for impeaching Trump while going after Trump on weak ones, the Democrats weaken anyone’s future ability to impeach and convict Trump on the much stronger, valid grounds available; “What doesn’t kill him, makes him stronger.”  They probably weaken the ability of anyone to impeach and convict any president in the future.  Beforehand, the Democrats notably put their energy into a rather bogus “Russiagate” investigation.  That’s now morphed, somewhat seamlessly, into a Ukraingate investigation. Of all possible things, the Democrats decided to impeach Trump for steps Trump took to surface corrupt activities of Joe Biden and his son in the Ukraine.

Are you wondering about the probable depths of the Bidens’ Ukranian corruption?  If you're doubting that it’s a significant issue, I suspect that, unserved by corporate mass media, or at least the Blue media, there’s much you haven't yet paid attention to.  To catch up, I recommend to you some documentary segments “UkraineGate – Inconvenient Facts” (the first is “A Not So ‘Solid’ Prosecutor”) produced out of France.  It’s available through partnering work done with Consortium News, for anyone who wants to get extra educated as they indulge their wondering about whether the Bidens, father and son, behaved in a manner worthy of a corruption investigation that would look into how, when Joe Bidden was in charge of Ukrainian affairs for the Obama administration following the United States’ participation in the overthrow of the Ukrainian government, Hunter Bidden, his son, got a very hard-to-explain, almost insanely lucrative five-year appointment to Burisma Holdings, a huge Ukrainian natural gas company.  Joe Biden was thereafter, still theoretically working of the U.S. taxpayers, when he was involved in removing and replacing the Ukrainian prosecutor in charge of investigations of that gas company’s business.

It’s possible you’re a Blue-team loyal Democrat who is in line with the feeling that Trump should absolutely not have tried to surface matters for investigation about the Bidens– If so, I suggest you try turning these things around and imagine how a Red-team loyal Republican might scoff hearing about the refusal of Democrats to allow the Bidens to be called as witnesses concerning the corruption Trump says he wanted to surface.  If impeachment witnesses are, indeed, important, why not welcome these witnesses? . .   Or just imagine that it was a yet-to-take-office Democratic president trying to surface, for better investigation, matters involving corruption during a prior Republican administration, perhaps Trump’s family reaping spoils in a country where we helped depose the government.  That country could be Bolivia, which is another country with natural gas resources likely to now be privatized.  Or possibly it could be Venezuela, an oil rich country the Trump administration is making concerted attempts to overthrow.

The point is this: Was Trump’s interest in seeing the Biden’s Ukranian activities investigated strong grounds for impeachment, or just an issue guaranteed to cause people to divisively side more strongly with contradictory outrage being expressed, respectively, in turn by either the Blue Team or the Red Team?

Now let’s go back in time to the Clintons.

Reading the Whitney Webb article with so many unsavory facts and allegations about the Clintons in one place, made me think about how I felt when Ken Starr, having supposedly started with Whitewater, was relentless pursuing President Bill Clinton for not telling the frank truth about his philandering sex life.  I remember, at that time, honing in on the principle that you should investigate the crime, not investigate the man.  That’s because in this complicated world if you selectively devote enormous resources to investigate just about any single individual there is probably something you can find that that individual did wrong if that is your intent.  And it seemed that was exactly what Ken Starr was doing.

I remember how back at the time in the 1990s, I felt increasingly aligned with, and defensive of Bill Clinton, because I felt he was being persecuted not prosecuted.  At that time, it forced me to ask whether we needed to know about and judge peoples’ personal sex lives as a predicate for determining their suitability to hold a governing office.  My answer on this subject was basically, no, with some exceptions.  In particular, I felt those exceptions pertained to those individuals in politics who were hypocritically trying to dictate and moralize about the sex lives of others by holding up rules they didn’t follow themselves: I was keenly aware that top Republicans prosecuting the Clinton impeachment, including three Republican House Speakers at the time, Dennis Hastert, Newt Gingrich, Bob Livingston, were all involved in their own sex scandals.

I wasn’t the only one reacting to the Clinton impeachment this way.  Democrats picked up seats in Congress as the probable result of the impeachment.  The impeachment of Clinton launched MoveOn as an organization to raise money for candidates opposing Republicans.  Bill Clinton’s sex life and the potentially hypocrisy of some Democrats seeming to defend even its predatory aspects, helped build up both sides.  MSNBC, only a few year old at the time was able, as pointed out by Matt Taibbi, to build up a Blue-Team type audience reporting on the Clinton impeachment hearings– It was an alternative to Fox, which was relishing a semen-stained dress.  Matt Taibbi points out that, “Fox struck gold with the Lewinsky story and the Clinton impeachment.”  Both “sides” were inflamed to more Red Team/Blue Team rooting by the issue.

Similarly, today, even as Blue Team-rooting Democrats were cheering the Trump impeachment or coaxed to do so, indications are that the Democrat’s flailing impeachment of Trump is driving Trump’s ratings up.
    
Flash back to the Clintons: After the Ken Starr investigation of Bill and Hillary Clinton culminating in the targeting of Clinton for impeachment for quibbling about what “is” meant when he was uncomfortably being questioned about his sex life, I felt as if the Clintons had been thoroughly investigated.  They must have thoroughly investigated, or so it seemed.  Ken Starr spent massively on his investigation of the Clintons.  Starr is estimated to have spent between $70 million and $80 million on his investigation (with all Clinton investigations combined, it may have been $92 million), and didn’t it seem that Starr was obviously stretching to hit the Clintons with whatever he could dig up, even it was something flimsy about Clinton not honestly answering questions concerning his sex life?  To appreciate whether that was a lot of resources devoted to an investigation, consider that the entire 9/11 investigation, the investigation of the event that launched multiple wars and trillions in spending, was initially budgeted just $3 million. $11 to $15 million was what was finally spent on that investigation; it was obvious it was to keep it on a short leash.
                               
Fast forward to find we have Trump in office.  We have another investigation that involves headlines awesomely plastered everywhere, Mueller’s “Russiagate” investigation.  Again we sense that enormous resources are being devoted to the delving.  This time though the investigation actually costs the taxpayers a little less.  Although Trump tweets and Giuliani as his lawyer asserts that the Mueller’s “Russiagate” investigation is costing $40 or more, the actual cost of it, coming out gradually, over time is probably in the mid-30s.  But then, of course, the “Russiagate” investigation is followed up with Ukraingate from which its is financially distinct, although they get thematically linked ('election help for Trump from foreign governments that use Cyrillic alphabets').  While we had the spectacle of what was referred to as the Trump-accusing “whistleblower” in Ukraingate (probably not an individual, but a CIA team effort), which must have involved some inevitable investigative followup, there are no figures yet offered for the cost of the impeachment investigation to add to the perhaps $35 million Mueller spent on Russiagate.

Certainly, from all the headlines and the leaks reported by Rachel Maddow, the New York Times, et al, there again had to be a feeling engendered that the investigation of Trump was thorough. Furthermore, the mainstream press assured us ahead of time that Robert Mueller could be relied upon for a credible investigation. As just a sample, the New York Times said Mueller was “a former federal prosecutor with an unblemished reputation” whose appointment would “alleviate uncertainty about the government’s ability to investigate the questions surrounding the Trump campaign and the Russians,” that he was “hailed by Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill, who view him as one of the most credible law enforcement officials in the country.”  We were told Mr. Mueller’s “record, character, and trustworthiness have been lauded for decades by Republicans and Democrats alike.”

Accepting any assurance of the expected validity of any of Mueller’s investigations is ill advised . . .  While the Times was writing about about Mueller’s “unblemished reputation” and sterling qualifications to be the Russiagate Special Prosecutor on May 17, 2017, just four years prior, May 9, 2013, you would have been reading in the Times the prediction that Mueller’s legacy would be unforgettably besmirched by Mueller’s botched investigation of tips the FBI was given ahead of time concerning the Boston Marathon Bombing.

If you review the entirety of Mueller’s career, you will find that Mueller’s forte is, in fact, craftily botching investigations to reach incorrect and misleading results.  The investigations he is involved in regularly focus on, pursue, and indict the wrong people for the wrong things.  Researching and writing about his record, I discovered over a dozen extraordinarily high profile cases and investigations (BCCI, Iragate, Iran-Contra, Anthrax, Enron, Pan Am Flight 103 Lockerbie, Whitey Bulger, Khobar Towers Bombing, Timothy J. McVeigh, 9/11, etc.) running from the 1990s consistently to the present where his results were conspicuously suspect.  At one time or another the inadequacy of various investigations were all covered by the mainstream corporate media, but the media usually has a conveniently short memory when they want to report about Mueller’s record.  The actual facts are that Mueller doesn’t seem to have very much in his record to boast of where the results of his investigations, when examined, did not seem to involve misdirection.

There was, of course, at the end, the publicly conducted jousting of Mueller William Barr that grabbed extra attention.  That jousting made Mueller’s Russiagate investigation efforts to `nail’ Trump seem sincere, but it helps to set aside that distraction if you know that Mueller and Barr are actually good friends who have worked together, often closely, on many of Mueller’s misdirecting investigations in the past.

As for Ken Starr, the Clinton Special Prosecutor, Starr just showed up as part of Trump’s legal impeachment defense team to make news by not-so-adroitly reversing himself on the subject of whether the country should pursue “divisive” impeachments. Should we consider Starr’s investigation of Clinton any more credible in terms of it's being on target in terms of what really needed to be investigated?   Starr is also very good at ignoring things and not investigating what needs to be investigated.  In 2016 Starr was fired from his job as president of Baylor University, accused of ignoring a fairly massive scandal about sexual assaults on his campus.  How ironic, after going after Clinton for sexual conduct issues.  Ironic too that the president Starr would choose to defend is the pussy-grabbing Trump . . .

 . . Starr was also part of the legal defense team for pedophile sex ring operator and apparent blackmailer Jeffrey Epstein, which brings up back around to uninvestigated cover-ups.  It also bring us back around to that fourth article in Whitney Webb’s Jeffrey Epstein series that laid out so much damaging information about the Clintons in relation thereto.
   
That then is what I believe deserves noticing: The Trump and the Clinton presidential impeachments and related investigations resemble each other so closely, that it is almost as if the Clinton impeachment and investigation was used as the playbook for what we just witnessed with Trump.  It’s the same subtraction, division, distraction formula with the same results:

    •    Start with important serious complex matters worth investigating, that would need to be investigated in order to hold the powerful to account.
    •    Subtract out for investigation only some things that are trivial and not worthy grounds for impeaching a president.
    •    Have those things that you investigate be sensational and controversial to ensure escalating division of the populace from differing Red Team/Blue Team perspectives.
    •    Have a big showy investigation where it looks like all the stops have being pulled out and the investigators are really anxious to “get” the president any way they can.

And what you get is:

    •    A more divided populace, pushed more into the deepest corners of the Red Team/Blue Team factionalism that helps ensure, fuel, finance and perpetuate the duopoly that traps and controls the electorate.  In this regard it is important to note that factionalism pushing people into rooting emotionally for the Red Team or the Blue Team, respectively, turns off critical thinking and analysis.  Additionally, it causes people not to think in terms of the many common interests they share would otherwise naturally prevail.
    •    A public misguided by its strong impression that everything that needed to be investigated has been delved into deeply and relentlessly, that no stone has been left unturned.  The public thinks that, like in a court of law, there has been a contest that ensures this, not that it amounts to a certain form of collusion.
    •    A government that is even less subject to being held to account than it was before.

List of Craftily Botched Mueller Investigations

In September I finished a three-part series of National Notice articles (including also a significant postscript follow-up)-- The articles were all about whether Robert Mueller and his Russiagate investigation could be trusted.  The short definitive answer is absolutely not.  That series of articles has been largely ignored, although I think all the articles were revelatory in important, often startling ways, particularly for those absorbing and surfing what today's Trump era news mostly has to offer.  The articles were all written in long form.  That meant they provided extensive links and documentation pulling from what has been available about Mueller over the decades of his career.--   The articles took the time and lingered to provide some analysis.

As the articles have been ignored (should I blame Google?- They are hard to find when searching), I figured it would be worthwhile to at least provide, a short form reference, an index to much of what can be found in those articles concerning the major takeaway they provide.  The major takeaway of those articles, which was easy to infer from the pattern of facts that kept repeating, is that Mueller’s forte is craftily botching investigations to reach incorrect and misleading results.  The investigations in which he has been involved regularly focus on, pursue, and indict the wrong people for the wrong things.

Researching and writing about Mueller's record, I discovered more than a dozen extraordinarily high profile cases and investigations running from the 1990s consistently to the present where his results were conspicuously suspect.  At one time or another the inadequacy of all these various investigations were all covered by the mainstream corporate media, but the media usually has a conveniently short memory when they want to report about Mueller’s record.  When you come right down to it, Mueller sadly doesn’t seem to have very much in his record to boast of where the results of his investigations, when examined, do not seem to involve misdirection.

Also worth noting: Mueller has often worked with William Barr in his a career.  Notwithstanding what looked like public jousting between those two men over Russiagate, they are reportedly well known to be good friends.

Before listing the many investigations with odd results that Mueller has been involved in, it is worth noting that Mueller has significant family connections that go back and link him to the intelligence community.  He is related to two of the three top men that President Kennedy fired from the CIA when Kennedy cleaned house in the fall of 1961.

Here then is a list of botched Mueller Investigations, and since there are repeating patterns to the botching and the botches often look like they align with certain purposes we might attribute a certain amount of craft and intentionality to the botches:

•    Anthrax Investigation.  Mueller micromanaged and conspicuously bungled the anthrax letter investigations that left hanging the question so vital to answer of who within in our government sent the letters (originally blamed on Iraq) that, one week after 9/11, threatened the press and particular leaders in Congress as the Bush administration was pressing to pass the PATRIOT Act.

•    Iran-Contra investigation.  Mueller worked with William Barr and advised him about handling the Iran-Contra investigation being conducted by Independent Counsel Lawrence E. Walsh concerning misconduct by the CIA and intelligence community.  Barr, who previously worked for the CIA, is notorious for the way he is considered to have helped "cover up," an investigation leading perhaps as high up as former CIA head and Vice President George H. W. Bush, when he advised Bush on Bush's 1992 pardons of the key players in the scandal.  Afterwards, George H. W. Bush, was able to become the first U.S. president known to come with a CIA background.

•    BCCI (Bank of Credit and Commerce International) investigation.  Mueller and Barr were accused of coverup activity in the investigation of two other scandals that tied in with Iran-Contra.  One was the BCCI (Bank of Credit and Commerce International) investigation.

•    Iraqgate.  The other banking scandal was "Iraqgate." Among other things, both of those scandals also involved covert U.S. government funding of weapons acquisitions by Saddam Hussein's Iraq.  (And Saddam Hussein's weapons in Iraq were why Mueller later testified we should invade Iraq!)

•    Timothy J. McVeigh Oklahoma City Bombing Case.  Mueller was involved in how documents were withheld in the Timothy J. McVeigh Oklahoma City Bombing Case.  Thousands of pages of investigative report documents concerning the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing were turned over to Timothy J. McVeigh’s defense lawyers as they should have been.  It was shortly before Mueller was nominated to be appointed FBI Director.  It was considered that it could have affected that appointment. There were questions about Mueller's failure to inform Ashcroft, President George W. Bush and top White House aides about the documents that were withheld.

•     Pan Am Flight 103 Lockerbie, Scotland Crash.  The investigation and prosecution of the Pan Am Flight 103 Lockerbie, Scotland crash for which Mueller was responsible produced very unsatisfactory results.- The case concluded in February 2001, not that very long before Mueller was being discussed for appointment to the FBI.  Lockerbie may have helped set Mueller up for getting that promotion.  The Lockerbie case raises questions about whether people were framed and facts manipulated by those eager to go to war with Libya.  In connection therewith, a very strange article about Mueller's Lockerbie case appeared in the New York Times that presaged 9/11 as an excuse to change models and handle such investigations "extra-judicially" in order to move away from the justice system's "reliance on forensic evidence and the standards of criminal law."  Read what I wrote then to hear how William Barr chimed in with his opinion in the article.

•    Whitey Bulger.  In Boston, when Mueller was in charge at the Justice Department there (and had specific responsibility regarding "public corruption," he was involved in the FBI scandal and embarrassment respecting Whitey Bulger, "America's Most Wanted Gangster."  Mr. Bulger was charged with complicity in 19 murders, racketeering, extortion, money laundering and other crimes.  A former federal prosecutor who investigated said,  "This was the worst case of corruption in the history of the F.B.I., . .  It was a multigenerational, systematic alliance with organized crime, where the F.B.I. was actively participating in the murders of government witnesses, or at least allowing them to occur."  With FBI participation, four men were framed and kept in prison for a murder they did not commit to keep Bugler and his partner out on the streets.  Mueller, first as an assistant US attorney, then as the acting US attorney in Boston wrote multiple letters to the parole and pardons board to keep the framed men in prison.  Richard Stearns, the judge hearing the Bulger case, a close friend of Mueller's, was forced to step aside by an appeals court because of his conflicts of interest.  Whitey Bulger was killed in prison, shortly after the federal government moved him to a new penitentiary, in what the New York Times says may have been "a hit."

•    Investigation and Prosecutions In Enron Case.  It does not appear anywhere on Mueller's Wikipedia page, but the New York Times  credits and highly praises Mueller for "overseeing the task force that investigated one of the biggest fraud cases in American history: the collapse of the energy giant Enron."  What about involvement of top federal government officials?  The involvement of people like Donald Rumsfeld and his wife or Karl Rove?   Fourteen of the top 100 officials in the Bush administration owned stock in Enron.  What about President George W. Bush's close relationship with Enron's chairman, Kenneth L. Lay?  Dick Cheney's Halliburton built Enron's baseball stadium.  Did any government officials go to jail?  Enron was treated as a  business scandal, not a political one; it was investigated and prosecuted accordingly, with only non-government officials pursued. Did the convictions hold up?  Things worked out rather oddly with the timing of Ken Lay's death (at 64 about six weeks after his conviction) and how Lay's wife benefitted.  Hale and Dorr, Mueller's law firm when Mueller's revolving door revolves, was special counsel to Enron during the bankruptcy and it is credited with being the "driving force in the investigation of crimes" influentially guiding everyone.  Documents were destroyed as the SEC was investigating accounting fraud at Enron when Enron's accountants at Arthur Anderson shredded them.  Coincidentally, there were complaints of SEC legal investigation documents being lost, just weeks before the Anderson shredding, on 9/11 when Building 7 collapsed.  (An investigation-driving report similar to the one by Hale and Dorr for Enron was done for the Worldcom scandal by the firm that merged with Hale and Dorr in 2004.)

•    The Boston Marathon Bombing.   Mueller's role in the Boston Marathon bombing, and specifically his failure to follow up on tips the FBI was given ahead of time (it occurred at the end of his terms as head of the FBI) was said to have been so badly botched that the New York Times predicted with apparent confidence that Mueller’s legacy would be unforgettably besmirched.  That was May 9, 2013.  Just four years later, May 17, 2017, the Times was writing about Mueller’s “unblemished reputation” and sterling qualifications to be the Russiagate Special Prosecutor.

•    Khobar Towers Apartment Complex Bombing.   Mueller, as deputy attorney general, was the one who directed 1996 Khobar Towers Apartment Complex Bombing investigation to James Comey, for prosecution in Virginia.  The apartment complex in the city of Khobar, Saudi Arabia provided housing used living quarters for coalition forces who working on a U.S. Defense Department operation in Iraq. The investigation of the bombing and ensuing prosecution continued well into the era that Mueller was head of the FBI (a judge ruled in the case in 2006). There was top-level FBI coordination (FBI Director Louis Freeh) with top Saudis in shaping the investigation and the official story.  That official story, seeming to go out of its way to ignore facts, was apparently shaped to blame Iran in order to stymie  possibilities of U.S. rapprochement and more peaceful relations with Iran.  Worse, there was reportedly, in the background, a contingency plan for the U.S. to attack Iran.  Those who were more likely responsible for the bombing were native Saudis, all Sunni Muslims, with no outside connections to either Iran or Iraq.  And those individuals who the FBI, veering far afield in its investigation, did not pursue may have had connections with . . . ?

•    Investigation of Poisoned Ricin Letters.   Under Mueller two theatrically back-to-back incidents of poisoned ricin letters were investigated.   It's another investigation where, attracting a lot of press attention, the wrong man was arrested.  This was all happening in a time period that overlapped with the Snowden revelations about secret illegal government surveillance that the Obama then had to acknowledge and which Mueller, before leaving office, recommended be continued without cutting back.

•    The After-The-Fact Investigation of 9/11.  Mueller covered up FBI mishandling of 9/11. Not only that, he promoted those responsible for such failures.– According to papers filed by the 9/11 families in their court proceedings, Mueller threw up roadblocks in the path of his own investigators working the 9/11 case, while making it easier for Saudi suspects to escape questioning.  The legal filings say that Mueller was not appropriately interested in investigating “multiple, systemic efforts by the Saudi government to assist the hijackers in the lead-up to the 9/11 attacks,” that Mueller covered up evidence pointing to Saudi government involvement, deep-sixed evidence his agents managed to uncover, and that Mueller may have lied to Congress. 

•    Russiagate investigation.  Mueller's Russiagate investigation is replete with a number of conspicuous problems that undermine the credibility of many of its key points.  That includes how the investigation was apparently calibrated to distract the public and how, even though it did not find any of Trump's people involved, Mueller's investigation found that the Russians had interfered to influence the 2016 election when that was essentially bogus.

•    Non-Investigation of White Collar Crime.  Should we count "non-investigations" when we are compiling a list of Mueller's "investigations"?  Given that Mueller's great skill is avoiding investigation of what he ought to investigate when given assignments, this is probably highly appropriate.  Nor is it completely oxymoronic.  Mueller officially started as head of the FBI one week to the day before 9/11.  As the head of the FBI, with 9/11 as an excuse, Mueller's shifted more than half of the FBI's resources away from white collar crime.  This certainly meant that white collar crimes that had not yet been investigated or not yet uncovered when investigated went uninvestigated.  It also meant that the FBI must have had to pull back from white collar crime investigations that were already underway and that selections would need to have been made when doing so.  We have already mentioned, as a specific investigation, the Enron investigation involving events that happened before 9/11 then came to light contemporaneously, and which were investigated after 9/11.  That's why it's not completely oxymoronic to include such "non-investigations"  in the list of investigation handled by Mueller.  Anyone tracking Mueller's career activities should rightly wonder about how Mueller exercised his discretion at this time when white collar and Wall Street criminals seem to have benefitted because of 9/11.  Mostly, coverage of Mueller's cutback on white collar crime investigation has been viewed as a general boon to Wall Street and misbehaving mortgage lending banks that could have been prosecuted as a result of the 2008 financial crisis.  There seems to have been no analysis offered about how Mueller may have exercised discretion in specific cases.  

•    Panama Invasion- Noriega Drug Trafficking Investigation.  I mentioned above Mueller's involvement with the investigation of Whitey Bulger, "America's Most Wanted Gangster."  That investigation involved investigating Bulger and his associates for ongoing crimes they were committing, and as noted, in some cases, a misdirection to charge others with the crimes of Bulger and his associates.   Normally, an investigation of someone is for the purpose of charging them with their crimes.  With Bulger it was trickier. Because Bulger was being treated as an "asset" by law enforcement officials, it was incumbent upon law enforcement officials to be investigatively aware of Bulger's activities to keep him on a short enough leash to justify the tolerance extended to him.  Bulger's case involved another investigative side: That was all the investigation necessary and appropriate to discover how the FBI's own conduct had, itself, crossed the line into inexcusable corruption.  In the longer form article I wrote I noted that Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega, the president of Panama, was analogous to Bulger.  The U.S. had a long-standing and close alliance with Noriega who was on the CIA Payroll, including when George H. W. Bush was CIA director.  Bush had to have known that.  Further, Noriega was a key asset in Iran-Contra.  Noriega had connections with drug running, murders, and deep involvement in narcotrafficking.   Noriega apparently went from being a CIA asset to being a liability just as the whole Iran-Contra scandal began to come to light.  George H. W. Bush sent American troops in to remove Noriega in his first year in office.  Robert Mueller and William Barr were both involved in paving the way for the invasion of Panama by furnishing opinions and advice that the actions being taken were legal.  Mueller, privy to whatever facts concerning the investigation he apparently thought were necessary, provided assurances for President G. H. W. Bush that the drug trafficking case against Noriega was solid and would stand up.  It's another instance where Mueller's involvement assessing an investigation paved the way for the U.S. to go to war.

•    2003 Iraq Invasion- Weapons of Mass Destruction.  Iraq's supposed weapons of mass destruction?: Is that something that should have been "investigated"; can we properly consider that this should be another on the list of "investigations" in which Mueller participated?  In the run up to the Iraq War evidence was supposedly presented, matters were supposedly being looked into and evaluated.  Mueller helped sell the Iraq War with lies to Congress about weapons of mass destruction and links to Al-Qaed.  Maybe, instead of putting this formally on the list of "investigations" which Mueller was involved with, we should simply treat it as another example of how willing Mueller is to engage in baseless shilling for war.  As noted above, Mueller's warnings about Iraq weapons can be viewed as ironic given his questionable Iraqgate investigation about how the intelligence agencies under the George H. W. Bush administration illegally funneled funds (through agricultural credits) for a military buildup in Iraq.

 •   A Basis For Hundreds of Imprisonments (and Worse).   Is it naive to believe that when the government imprisons people and/or subjects them to abusive punitive actions (physical abuse and solitary confinement) or worse, it should be predicated upon some sort of investigation that justifies the actions taken?  Mueller was sued (but let off the hook) for rounding up hundreds of Muslims and South Asian Immigrants (762 of them) after 9/11 and putting them in detention facilities (or they may have been sent to foreign countries for torture).  Another example of Mueller distressingly going after and locking up innocent people?

•    The Before-The-Fact Investigation of 9/11- The PATRIOT Act.   Mueller helped push through passage of the PATRIOT Act by furnishing misinformation to Congress about what the FBI knew and could have done about stopping 9/11.  Mueller told Congress that the PATRIOT Act needed to be passed because there were no warning signs about 9/11 and that, had the PATRIOT Act been in effect, it would have allowed for discovery of warning signs about the Florida flight school training of those who were identified as the terrorists.  In fact, FBI agents had this information ahead of time, but the Bureau simply sat on it and did nothing. Based on this, The Wall Street Journal called for Mueller's resignation and the New York Times said there were concerns about his leadership of the FBI.

That's my list.  I'm happy to add to it if I have overlooked anything.  There is much more in the articles worth knowing about Mueller's background and the long form articles provide more details, a zillion links, as well as more analysis.  Aside from Mueller's repetitive involvement in highly suspect investigations, Mueller oversaw and relentlessly defended mass surveillance including illegal warrantless surveillance.  Mueller's last stop before his Russiagate Probe was working with the ginormous private government surveillance Company, Booz Allen Hamilton, to protect its secrets.

Probably the best reason to be familiar with Mueller's list of botched investigations is to also learn something about the media and power structure in this country.  While Mueller was conducting his "Russiagate: investigation we were subjected to all sorts of descriptions of Mueller as a "straight arrow," someone who was almost boring, universally respected in Washington D.C., and someone who trusted to be fair and reliable by both Republicans and Democrats in a bipartisan consensus.  More likely the "respect" Mueller gets is fear based, because the one thing Mueller can be trusted to do at this point is to keep getting away with things without consequence.
 
Every time there has been an important juncture in Mueller's career, a moment when he is about to be promoted into some new significant office, all his prior scandals have been mysteriously forgotten by the media and Mueller has been praised instead.  This is what happened when Mueller was under consideration to first head the FBI, the office he took one week to the day before 9/11.  It is what happened when there was lobbying to change the law, enacted following J. Edgar Hoover's departure, to give Mueller an extra two-year extension of his term as head of the FBI.  It is what happened when Mueller was proposed to be put in charge of the Russiagate investigation.  That is what has allowed Mueller to continue and persist in his patterns allowing this list of highly questionable investigation to keep getting longer.  Yes, all this is despite how the scandalous facts of these botched investigations are out there available to be discovered.