Grammy-winning rapper Prakazrel “Pras” Michel of the Fugees was sentenced on Thursday to 14 years in prison for a case in which he was convicted of illegally funneling millions of dollars in foreign contributions to former President Barack Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign.

Michel, 52, declined to address the court before U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly sentenced him.

In April 2023, a federal jury convicted Michel of 10 counts, including conspiracy and acting as an unregistered agent of a foreign government. The trial in Washington, D.C., included testimony from actor Leonardo DiCaprio and former Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

Justice Department prosecutors said federal sentencing guidelines recommended a life sentence for Michel, whom they said “betrayed his country for money” and “lied unapologetically and unrelentingly to carry out his schemes.”

Note he was charged prior to Trump becoming president.

If there were indeed foreign contributions to Obama – and back then I assumed it was probably true that there were such donations – I wouldn’t have imagined that a rapper would be the conduit. I didn’t see many details in the article about how all of this was engineered, but this piece has a bit more information:

US prosecutors said Michel received more than $100m (£80m) from Malaysian billionaire Jho Low that was used in two efforts to influence US politics. He was also convicted of lobbying on behalf of China’s government.

Prosecutors said Michel “betrayed his country for money” and for nearly a decade he “sought to exploit and deceive” various entities in the US government, including the White House and FBI, as well as his own co-conspirators, according to court documents. …

Businessman Mr Low, who funnelled money to Michel, was accused of stealing about $4bn from Malaysia’s sovereign wealth fund during the infamous 1MDB scandal.

The justice department reached an agreement with the fugitive financier in June 2024 to return more than $100m (£79m) allegedly embezzled from Malaysia’s state-owned wealth fund.

Michel was accused of helping to lobby officials in the first Trump administration to abandon their investigation into Mr Low’s part in it.

His co-defendants got very light sentences or were pardoned, and his lawyer argues that Michel only got such a lengthy sentence because he wanted a trial. I’m inclined to believe that; FARA violations aren’t being prosecuted so harshly anymore unless the behavior of the perps amounts to espionage.

The post Remember way back when it was alleged that Obama was receiving illegal foreign donations? appeared first on The New Neo.

There’s this possible method:

Watchdog group Americans for Public Trust (APT) has filed a campaign finance complaint against outdoor clothing company Patagonia’s tax-exempt arm for allegedly misrepresenting donations.

According to the complaint filed Thursday with the Federal Election Commission (FEC), a collective of climate-focused tax-exempt groups — which altogether hold 98% of Patagonia’s nonvoting shares worth nearly $1.8 billion — misidentified political contributions made to Democrat political action committees in 2022.

Such a misidentification, the complaint alleges, violates the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA), which prohibits individuals from making contributions in the name of another and prohibits the use of one’s name to be used to make contributions in the name of another. As a result, APT requested the FEC conduct an investigation to determine, and impose appropriate sanctions for, any and all violations.

“With these tremendous resources, and the subsequent desire to pour this money into American politics, there should come great responsibility and transparency,” the complaint states, pointing to the Patagonia collective’s vast assets.

I doubt Patagonia is alone.

And then there’s a potentially bigger violation:

Steil [House Administration Chairman, a Republican from Wisconsin] disclosed earlier this fall that his committee is investigating whether four foreign powers — China, Russia, Venezuela and Iran — used ActBlue to route illicit foreign money into Democrat coffers.

His committee referred thousands of suspicious donations to state attorneys general in five state, prompting an investigation that has now expanded to 19 states.

In addition, a Wisconsin Republican strategist filed a lawsuit in October alleging his email identity was misused to make Democrat and liberal donations he did not authorize or pay for. The judge in the case recently approved a subpoena compelling ActBlue to disclose certain evidence in the case.

I seem to recall that there were accusations that Obama’s campaign had accepted foreign donations online. Looking it up just now, I see this:

The Government Accountability Institute, which is headed by Stanford University Professor Peter Schweizer, used sophisticated Internet investigative tools — including something called “spidering” software — to determine how the web is being used to raise political funds.

What it found should be of concern, since it suggests that many in Congress and, more importantly, the Obama campaign have systematically exploited loopholes in the law to raise millions of dollars overseas — a big chunk of it in the People’s Republic of China.

How is this done? Through the mundane use of what’s called in the credit-card world the Card Verification Value, or CVV. It’s the three-digit number on the back of a card that helps positively identify that the person using the card has it in his or her possession. It’s a key anti-fraud weapon, used by nearly all legitimate e-commerce businesses and charities.

Obama’s campaign doesn’t use it. Mitt Romney’s does. So why the particular concern over Obama?

As the report notes, letting a flood of money into the political system with no verification of its source is an invitation to fraud — especially from overseas.

Much much more at the link.

The post How did Kamala and the Democrats raise so much money? appeared first on The New Neo.

Debates are often important campaign tools, but for Harris this may really feel like a make-or-break evening. Her strategy has been to appear as little as possible in unscripted settings and to remain as much of a blank slate as a person who’s been VP for almost four years can manage to do. I believe that she would dearly love to be able to portray Trump as an overbearing lout – a perception that may not be that difficult to engineer, depending on how he behaves at the debate – and to portray herself as simultaneously a victim of the nasty man but able to strongly stand up to him.

So why am I talking about open mics? Wasn’t it already agreed each candidate’s mic would be muted when the other is speaking? There’s the little matter of “assurances” from ABC:

CNN reported Wednesday that Harris accepted the rules after receiving separate “assurances” that mics could be turned on during the debate and the moderators would explain unheard exchanges.

“ABC News has offered assurances to the Harris campaign that if there is significant cross talk between Harris and Trump, the network may choose to turn on the mics so that the public can understand what is happening, the moderator would discourage either candidate from interrupting constantly and the moderator would also work to explain to viewers what is being said, according to the source familiar,” CNN reported.

Well, now. Kamala Harris may not be able to bring her emotional support VP Walz onstage with her, but there are always the good folk at ABC who might intervene with some newsplainin’ on her behalf.

[NOTE: Speaking of “newsplainin'”; remember Candy Crowley and Romney in the second Romney/Obama debate of 2012? See this as well as this.]

The post The Trump/Harris debate: the battle of the mics appeared first on The New Neo.

President Joe Biden called the ‘MAGA crowd’ the ‘most extreme political organization in American history’ in a full-throated attack on Republicans and their ‘ultra-MAGA’ agenda in a speech from the White House on Wednesday.

He also warned that the GOP could ban LGBT children from classrooms if Roe v. Wade is overturned and signaled they could even reverse the 1965 Griswold v. Connecticut case that struck down a state law banning the use of contraceptives by married couples.

What else do you expect from a low-down corrupted guy who has been lying his entire political life? And if he’s not the one deciding on this message, there are plenty of people around him who support him and feed him lines. I happen to think he’s still quite involved in the whole thing, however.

Recall that this is the man who said that Republicans – and Romney, of all people – would “put you’all back in chains.”

The post Republicans are going to put you all back in chains – again appeared first on The New Neo.

Why was our intelligence community caught flat-footed about Putin’s moves? That’s a question being asked on Capitol Hill, and in Politico…

The tone was set by our president and his entire administration, followed slavishly by most liberal journalists, who have spent a great deal of time and effort saying what a pussycat Putin is, and ridiculing as outdated (Obama to Romney: “the 1980s are calling to ask for their foreign policy back”) anyone who might say otherwise. This began in 2008 with mockery of Sarah Palin, and reached a crescendo with Romney during the 2012 campaign.

To take any other scenario seriously would mean giving credence to those troglodytes Palin and Romney, agreeing with them instead of mocking them, and admitting that the world hadn’t turned into the fantasyland that suited Obama’s, Democrats’, and the MSM’s own rhetorical and political purposes.

A day prior to that, I had written a post that quoted this Slate article as follows (written by David Weigel, not on the right):

Romney was right. Why was Obama wrong?…

Romney really did maintain a more cynical long-run view of Russia than Obama did. Obama saw Russia as a declining power that he could do business with, as he did with the New START treaty. Romney, as he laid out in his pre-campaign book No Apology, saw Russia as a recovering power. Its “rediscovered ambition for superpower status,” he wrote, “is fueled by its massive energy reserves.” This wasn’t as sustainable as China’s free-enterprise empire strategy, but it was an empire strategy, and that was enough to get spooked about.

Say what you will about Romney. He’s been a bitter disappointment in many ways, but when he’s right, he’s right.

It wasn’t that hard to see at the time that he was right, either. But Democrats and the MSM praised Obama highly for his sophomoric snark. And that’s even more common today, isn’t it? Sophomoric snark passing for wisdom among our “elite.”

And that’s on their better days.

The post Looking back: remember that debate between Romney and Obama about Russia? appeared first on The New Neo.

There is no doubt in my mind that Trump has a ton of voters and that many of them are wildly enthusiastic rally-goers and voted for him with extreme intensity of purpose. If that was enough, he would have won in a landslide, and fraud couldn’t have kept up with it.

There’s also no question in my mind that Biden has almost no supporters at all, and that a great many of those who voted for him did so with ether relative distaste or indifference. His “rallies” were marked by nearly zero attendance. That was not just a reflection of the lack of enthusiasm that undoubtedly existed, it was also a PR move that was meant to convey the message that Biden was the COVID-respectful candidate in contrast to the reckless COVID-defiant Trump and his crew. By using COVID as an excuse for not even trying to gather any sort of crowd, the Biden campaign also was able to avoid any meaningful “mine is bigger than yours” crowd comparisons from Trump.

Biden’s campaign was counting on something entirely different from enthusiasm for candidate Biden himself to bring his voters to the polls: the strength of their hatred for Trump. The media and the Democrats had spent four long years drumming up hatred of the president, and I can attest to the fact that every Democrat I know (and I know a lot of them) has been fully on board with that hatred ever since Trump announced his candidacy long ago.

I’ve never seen anything like it. And in all the political discussions among Democrat friends that I was privy to during the last year or so, I never heard a single one of those people say a single good thing about Joe Biden. Or really, say anything at all about him. They simply did not care about Biden. He was a means to an end, and the end was getting rid of Trump. Beyond that, he didn’t matter, because the Democrats would be in charge and that was just fine, because Democrats are good and Republicans are bad.

So there was plenty of enthusiasm on the Biden side, as well as the Trump side. But it was the enthusiastic drive produced by hatred.

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

I’ve ignored voter fraud for the purposes of this post. I think it happened and I think it was a factor and perhaps even a determinative factor. But I also think that, without Trump-hatred, Joe Biden would have garnered a far smaller percentage of the votes. In order for fraud to be successful this year, the actual vote for each candidate had to be within striking distance of each other, particularly in swing states. That was only possible because of the driving force of hatred of Trump.

There’s also the question of whether a different, less abrasive candidate could have fostered less hatred and therefore won. Theoretically, I suppose, and yet that same candidate could not have fostered the same enthusiasm on the right and almost certainly would not have accomplished as much as Trump did as president. His bold moves – including some of his foreign policy initiatives – were made possible by some of the same bold character traits that caused so many people to hate him (with a huge assist from the Trump-hatred of media and social media, of course).

During the 2012 campaign, media showed its creative flair by making Democrats hate the mild-mannered Romney, who kept dogs in cages and women in binders, the brute! When I saw friends of mine curl their lips at Romney’s misogynistic cruelty, I saw the power of the MSM to lead people to believe just what they wanted them to believe, about nearly anyone. Trump may have given them a lot to work with in that regard, but the propagandists don’t need very much to drum up the Two Minutes Hate. They’ll work with whatever they have, and if it doesn’t obviously present itself then they’ll make it up.

The post Fire and ice: on the enthusiasm gap appeared first on The New Neo.

Note also Obama’s affect when Romney questions him as to whether he really means to assert that he called it an act of terror the day after the attack. The camera zooms in on Obama as the president says to Romney “Please proceed, Governor,” and then cuts away just after the fleeting ghost of a faint smile crosses Obama’s face (mostly in his eyes; it occurs at about 1:22). It is at that point that Obama summarily orders Crowley to “check the transcript” (no “please” for Obama), and she immediately answers that Obama did say it that way. Not only do we know that assertion is false, but she didn’t even seem to have time to check any transcript between Obama’s request and her answer.

So, to recap: Obama made a false claim (that he had called Benghazi an act of terror the day after the attack), Romney challenged him, Obama told the moderator to “check the transcript,” and she asserted that Obama was correct (without her actually checking a transcript, but just by waving some papers around).

Last night, here’s how the fracking exchange went:

“We’re going to have the greatest economy in the world,” Trump said. “But if you want to kill the economy, get rid of your oil industry. And what about fracking? Now we have to ask him about fracking.”

“I have never said I oppose fracking,” Biden claimed.

“You said it on tape,” Trump fired back.

“I—show the tape, put it on your website,” Biden yelled. “The fact of the matter is he’s flat lying.”

Within a matter of moments, Trump’s team tweeted out a video of Biden making the remarks.

Last night, the moderator didn’t jump in to correct Biden, and of course we wouldn’t expect her to do so, since Biden is the Democrat. But Biden responded to Trump by saying the equivalent of “get the transcript,” and here’s Trump’s tweet with the video:

Here you go @JoeBiden! pic.twitter.com/UBqPJT85Pt

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 23, 2020

It’s also instructive to see the way this is now being spun by the left – that what Joe really had meant each time he said he would ban fracking was to ban it just on federal lands, or over a very long period of time, or whatever they think might soften what he said and how he lied about it.

In this case, the debate moderator Welker didn’t ask the question and didn’t participate in the exchange, unlike Crowley in 2012. In 2020, it was Trump who brought up the issue and Trump who provided the evidence in real time.

The post The fracking fracas during last night’s debate was a bizarro reversed version of 2012’s Candy Crowley incident appeared first on The New Neo.

Hanson compares that to media bias today as exhibited – just to take two examples – by Chris Wallace and John Roberts. The entire article is well worth reading.

Those of you who’ve read this blog for many years may remember that I did some exhaustive analysis of what happened during that Crowley exchange. You may want to stroll down memory lane and revisit a few of those posts, this one and especially this one and this one (the latter has a video embedment that no longer works, but it’s a reference to the moments I highlighted in that second link, which contains a video of the debate cued up to start with the exchange in question).

Looking back on all of it – on the full Crowley treatment that was given Romney – I feel even more strongly now that the episode was at least somewhat pre-arranged between Obama and Crowley. When you study the details, it’s almost impossible to escape that conclusion.

The post The full Crowley appeared first on The New Neo.

Political junkies are into it, and that’s about it, IMHO. But of course the blogosphere consists of a high percentage of political junkies (present company included), so here we are discussing it.

First thing I want to say is that ever since I’ve been immersed in the blogosphere and the internet in general, which would be roughly the last decade and a half, I’ve been more and more struck by how numerous are the false memes that circulate around and become commonly-accepted truth. I’ve spent a lot of time fighting them on this blog, mostly to a relatively small audience of people who are willing to spend some time listening. But I don’t kid myself that I am able to correct the record on much of anything in a way that matters, although I don’t give up trying to do so.

Sometimes I’m mostly motivated to correct the record for myself. After all, that’s what happened with my original political change experience—I did a lot more research, armed with the tools of an internet that did not exist when I was a young adult forming most of my political beliefs, and sometimes that research led me to some surprising revelations that ended up changing my point of view on certain facts and position I had thought I understood correctly. And so to this day I like to test out, not just the theories and beliefs of other people with whom I disagree, but my own theories and beliefs.

But enough about me. Perhaps too much about me.

Here’s the text of Romney’s speech today. In it, he explains why he thinks a Trump nomination would be a bad thing, and he summarizes pretty much the sorts of points I’ve been making on this blog, and which others who do not support Trump have often made. Romney also is not naive about the fact that he will be criticized for this, including of course by Trump himself in his usual signature fashion.

I question the wisdom of using a failed candidate like Romney to get out this message, and I would have preferred him to have also alluded to his own failings as a 2012 candidate, and his own responsibility for the situation we have faced in a second-term Obama presidency. In fact, there are plenty of things about Romney that were problematic in 2012. One of these problems was his Romneycare history, which I tried to explain on this blog many times (I think it looked worse than it actually was, but looks are important, too). Another was his failure to rebound from the Candy Crowley debate incident. But I’m not going to rehash that history in detail here, except to say that I thought and still think he would have actually made a pretty good president, and that—for a politician, anyway—he’s a decent man.

Trump supporters and even some others are mocking Romney today. Failure, coward, establishment shill, etc.. But I certainly don’t think Romney was attempting to convince any Trump supporters when he made that speech. He was speaking to others in the party who do not support Trump—some of whom are critical of the GOP establishment as well.

Many people who are against the GOP establishment act as though there is something exceedingly evil about it, whereas I see that establishment as typical of leaders of a party that’s been somewhat protected and grown ossified. It’s a process that often occurs. They are not a nimble group, as the fight against Obama and now against Trump has demonstrated very clearly, although we hardly needed more demonstration of it.

I’m not supporting nor have I ever supported during this election cycle one of their candidates. I was first for Scott Walker, next for Carly Fiorina, and after both were gone I settled on Cruz, where I remain today. But that doesn’t mean I think the GOP establishment is composed of demons. It is composed of people who think they are acting both in the interests of the country, a majority of GOP voters, and of course in their own self-interest. Why would they not act in their own self-interest as they see it? Self-sacrificing statesmen full of wisdom are few and far between and always have been, alas, although in certain historical times they were more plentiful than they are today. And if they are too self-sacrificing, they tend not to rise very high in the world of politics or business, or anything other than the world of sainthood.

But I digress; back to the text of Romney’s speech. The following passage, I believe, was the point of the speech in terms of Romney’s message towards the GOP voters and establishment leaders to whom it was actually addressed:

I am not going to endorse a candidate today. Instead, I would like to offer my perspective on the nominating process of my party. In 1964, days before the presidential election which, incidentally, we lost, Ronald Reagan went on national television and challenged America saying that it was a “Time for Choosing.” He saw two paths for America, one that embraced conservative principles dedicated to lifting people out of poverty and helping create opportunity for all, and the other, an oppressive government that would lead America down a darker, less free path. I’m no Ronald Reagan and this is a different moment but I believe with all my heart and soul that we face another time for choosing, one that will have profound consequences for the Republican Party and more importantly, for the country…

If the other candidates can find common ground, I believe we can nominate a person who can win the general election and who will represent the values and policies of conservatism. Given the current delegate selection process, this means that I would vote for Marco Rubio in Florida, for John Kasich in Ohio, and for Ted Cruz or whichever one of the other two contenders has the best chance of beating Mr. Trump in a given state.

Now for some of the more specific criticisms of Romney. One I’m seeing—other than the usual heat directed at the establishment himself—goes more or less like this: “Romney is giving Hillary Clinton talking points against Trump.” But the most common one seems to be: “Can anyone remember Mitt Romney being this forceful against Barack Obama?” (That latter sentence is a quote from DaTechGuy, a fellow New England blogger whom I’ve met and respect).

But to me the answers are easy. To the first: does anyone on earth think Hillary doesn’t have her own attack on Trump already planned, and that Romney’s will pale compared with hers? Let me assure you, of one thing I am certain, and that is that Hillary doesn’t need Romney to do her opposition research. The rest of that objection is merely the same objection that is always mounted towards intra-party criticism during any primary season, which of course gives the other side ammunition to use in the general but unavoidably occurs during all contested primary battles, which can and often are very vicious (sometimes more vicious than the general, because they are civil wars).

The second objection is easy to answer; all it takes is a little Googling and you find, for example, this from Romney in August of 2012:

Romney repeatedly and harshly criticized Team Obama for the remarks.

“[Obama’s] campaign and his surrogates have made wild and reckless accusations that disgrace the office of the presidency. Another outrageous charge came a few hours ago in Virginia. And the White House sinks a little bit lower,” Romney said.

“This is an election in which we should be talking about the path ahead, but you don’t hear any answers coming from President Obama’s reelection campaign. That’s because he’s intellectually exhausted, out of ideas and out of energy. And so his campaign has resorted to diversions and distractions, to demagoguing and defaming others. This is an old game in politics; what’s different this year is that the president is taking things to a new low.”…

Romney campaign spokeswoman Andrea Saul then released a second statement criticizing the Obama campaign.

“In case anyone was wondering just how low President Obama could go in his campaign for reelection, we now know he’s willing to say that Gov. Romney wants to put people back in chains,” Saul said. “Whether it’s accusing Mitt Romney of being a felon, having been responsible for a woman’s tragic death or now wanting to put people in chains, there’s no question that because of the president’s failed record he’s been reduced to a desperate campaign based on division and demonization.”

Romney denounced Obama right after the Benghazi attacks:

As soon as Mr. Romney landed [he’d been on a plane], he was updated on breaking developments. He personally read and approved his campaign’s statement before it was sent out at 10:10 p.m. Tuesday. “It’s disgraceful that the Obama administration’s first response was not to condemn attacks on our diplomatic missions, but to sympathize with those who waged the attacks,” it said.

More on Romney’s near-immediate response to Benghazi:

…Romney reiterated the charge at a hastily staged news conference here Wednesday morning.

“I think it’s a terrible course for America to stand in apology for our values, that instead when our grounds are being attacked and being breached, that the first response of the United States must be outrage at the breach of the sovereignty of our nation,” Romney told reporters. “An apology for America’s values is never the right course.”

…Romney took a calculated gamble in admonishing the president before the full gravity of the situation was known.

But he was left hanging from a weak limb as many in his party ”” including his running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan (Wis.) ”” appeared to undercut him with noticeably more conciliatory and somber responses. “This is a time for healing. It’s a time for resolve,” Ryan said Wednesday during a campaign stop in De Pere, Wis.

“It almost feels like Sarah Palin is his foreign policy adviser,” Matthew Dowd, who was a top strategist for president George W. Bush, said in an interview. “It’s just a huge mistake on the Romney campaign’s part ”” huge mistake.”

Now, those critics were the real GOP establishment, the ones who didn’t attack Obama right away, and it was the wrong approach. But that wasn’t Romney, who kept going until Crowley kneecapped him in the debate (at which point I though he should have challenged her more forcibly).

Romney is not an angel; he made mistakes. That makes him human, and I don’t think he was critical enough of Obama in 2012. But it’s not at all hard to find some very forceful anti-Obama statements by Romney (I did it in less than 30 seconds), and people have let them drop down the memory hole because in the end they were not effective enough. But you know what? I don’t think that more statements of that kind by Romney (or anyone else) in 2012 would have done a particle of good, because the American people weren’t willing to accept them at the time.

[ADDENDUM: By the way, here’s a good example of my efforts to try to correct the record. It was a response of mine which describes Romney’s actual positions on illegal immigration when he ran for president in 2012. Compare it, if you like, to your recollection of those positions. My comment also includes Trump’s position at the time on Romney’s position. The entire comment of mine was a response to this comment by “JurassiCon Rex.”]

The post On Romney’s anti-Trump speech and the establishment appeared first on The New Neo.

Russia’s launch of air strikes against rebel targets in Syria will not alter the strategy of the US-led coalition fighting the Islamic State, American officials have said.

“The US-led coalition will continue to fly missions over Iraq and Syria as planned and in support of our international mission to degrade and destroy ISIL,” State Department spokesman John Kirby told reporters.

Explaining the dramatic sequence of events, Kirby said: “A Russian official in Baghdad this morning informed US Embassy personnel that Russian military aircraft would begin flying anti-ISIL missions today over Syria.

“He further requested that US aircraft avoid Syrian airspace during these missions,” he said.

In Syria, between ISIS and Assad there are no good actors. Instead, there are actors of greater or lesser badness, in different ways. Russia and Assad have long been allied, so it’s no surprise that Russia would support him and see the crisis there—and the vacuum left by the US, as I wrote yesterday—as a golden opportunity.

There’s certainly no reason Putin would or should pay much attention to the bluster of President Obama or Secretary of State John Kerry. I don’t think anyone else does, either:

Secretary of State John Kerry on Tuesday called Russian President Vladimir Putin’s involvement in Syria a possible “opportunity” for the United States.

Kerry predicted, in an interview with CNN’s Elise Labott, that Russia’s presence in Syria means Moscow could find itself in a “complicated” situation that could affect its policy toward the war-torn country and its leader, President Bashar al-Assad.

“If he’s going to side with Assad and with Iran and Hezbollah, he’s going to have a very serious problem with the Sunni countries in the region,” Kerry said of Putin. “That means he … could very well become a target for those Sunni jihadists.”

Kerry explained: “It’s an opportunity for us to force this question of how you actually resolve the question of Syria. And the bottom line is, you cannot resolve it without including the Sunni(s) in a political solution, a political agreement ultimately, and that will mean that you’re going to have to have some kind of transition, some kind of timing. Because as long as Assad is there, you simply can’t make peace. Period.”

Kerry also said that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad must leave as part of an “orderly transition,” rather than calling for his immediate ouster, marking a change in the U.S. position.

“Assad must this” and “Assad must that.”

I don’t doubt that Putin is in a “complicated” position. I assume he will negotiate it more or less successfully, taking heed of his own best interests. If we entered the fray in Syria more than we already have, we would be in a “complicated” position, too. But we already are in a complicated situation. As I said, there are no good actors there—or, if there are any, they are remarkably weak.

However, I’ve come to assume that our administration will not act in our own best interests.

As time goes by, I keep thinking of that famous moment in the second presidential debate of 2012. You know, the one where Obama snarked back at Romney’s assertion that Russia was our number one geopolitical foe on the world stage with the cute little quip “the 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back.”

So, speaking of the 80’s [and in the following excerpt, “Assad” refers to the present-day Assad’s father]:

In the 1980s, Assad’s government established a military cooperation with the Soviet Union. Sophisticated Soviet arms and military advisers helped the development of the Syrian Army, which raised the tension between Israel and Syria. In November 1983, a Soviet delegation arrived in Damascus to discuss the opening of a Soviet naval base in the Syrian city of Tartus. The countries’ relationship encountered problems: Syria had supported Iran during the Iran-Iraq War, while the Soviet Union supported Iraq, and when the rebellion against Yasser Arafat broke out in al-Fatah in 1983, Syria supported the rebels while the Soviet Union supported Arafat. In 1983 the Syrian Foreign Minister Abdul Halim Khaddam visited Moscow. Soviet Foreign Minister Andrey Gromyko argued that Syria and the Soviet Union must resolve their differences concerning the Palestinian movement as stopping the internal conflict would allow the “anti-Imperialist struggle.”

During the diplomatic crisis between the United States and Syria, which escalated into minor clashes, Syrian counted on Soviet help if war should break out. Vladimir Yukhin, the Soviet ambassador in Damascus, expressed his country’s appreciation “for the firm Syrian position in the face of Imperialism and Zionism.” The Soviet attitude did not satisfied Syria completely. Assad’s government considered entering the Warsaw Pact to gain Soviet support and to match the United States and Israel. Syria and the Soviet Union signed the Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation in October 1980, which was focused on cultural, technical, military, economic, and transport relations.

It was “complicated” back then, too, and in the late 80s, as the USSR faltered within and then fell, the alliance between the two countries was weakened:

The collapse of the Soviet Union on 31 December 1991 marked the end of the main source of Syria’s political and military support for more than two decades.

Then in 2011, with the advent of the Obama administration and the Syrian civil war, the ties between Russia and Assad Junior were strengthened considerably. This move of Putin’s is the latest in a series in which we’ve been caught without influence and without credibility.

[ADDENDUM: And—in news that should be no surprise whatsoever—Putin appears to be bombing anti-Assad forces and not ISIS forces at all:

Hours after the airstrikes took place, Secretary of Defense Ash Carter compared the move to “pouring gasoline on the fire” because it’s contradictory to say that fighting ISIS and supporting Syrian President Bashar Assad can work together.

“It does appear that they were in areas where there probably … were not ISIL forces and that is precisely one of the problems with this whole approach,” said Carter.

Okay, Ash. Let us know what you plan to do about it.]

]

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