Maverick's World

The Daily Donald 4/13/2017

Big cracks are now visible in the House of Trump. Russia has broken away,  Nazis are peeling away from Trump, and the fig leaf protecting Trump's children from direct attack is withering away.

Pres. Putin told Secy Tillerson in Moscow yesterday that Russia has no intention of distancing itself from Assad at this time. This should come as no surprise to anyone as Moscow has repeatedly indicated that it will divest from Assad at a time of its own choosing not at a time imposed by others. By simultaneously obstructing the UNSC demand for an investigation of the CW usage claims, RU has placed itself between Assad and the world. Having to shield Assad in this fashion and running into opposition from the Trump Admin has caused RU to re-evaluate Donald Trump as a whole. As seen on RIS controlled outlets like Sputnik and Breitbart, the love of all thing Donald Trump in Russia is fading fast.  Donald Trump for his part has suddenly discovered that ties with Russia are in a very poor state and that NATO is not useless at all. This is a complete reversal from his earlier posture on both issues.

In the meanwhile pressure from the Trump Russia investigation grows. Jared Kushner finds himself in the line of fire. He stands accused of having lied to the FBI on his clearance application. If that charge sticks - he will be looking at prison. I am guessing he will also be willing to turn witness for the state and rat out others. This comes amidst other allegations that Jared is acting as defactor Secy of State, Secy of Defense and all manner of other things which he has not sought congressional approval. My guess is that GOP faction has successfully taken on Bannon by sparking a feud between him and the bloodline and now plans to take Kushner out of play so that the Trump bloodline is directly exposed. I wouldn't be surprised if Bannon helps the GOPers in the fond hope that they help him regain power somehow. Nepotism has such a way of biting you in the rear.

For his part Donald Trump seems to be keen to avoid any talk of impeachment or even the utterance of that more dreaded term "conviction". He is rolling out the "crooked Hillary" and "gone to jail" stuff again and now he's actually threatening to fire the Director of the FBI. Perhaps he does not understand that if he fires the FBI director, the word "Impeachment" will give way to "Conviction". Perhaps he is misinterpreting the polls where people that voted for him are too embarrassed to publicly admit they were wrong about him but privately are less inclined to support him if asked to do so again. The lesson of KS04 is being lost on Trump right now - he is simply not the vote getter he used to be a few months ago. Is it a surprise then he has abandoned his revisionism and taken on a more GOP centric line? Is it a surprise then that he has suddenly seen it fit to hand over the NSC to the professionals? Not to me anyway.

It seems from news reports that Bannon and Nunes are discovering what it means to be the Chris Christie in the room. Manafort has belatedly applied for foreign agent registration. Carter Page and Boris Ephstein it seems were the target of a FISC warrant. People are openly acting in violation of the presidential records act and the Attorney General seems to more invested in spouting Nazi rubbish on the border.

This brings us to last night. I stayed up last night watching the IMS, twitter and news channels for the first reports of the 6th DPRK nuke test. I watched for the first hints of a magnitude 6 quake and a simultaneous report of a rise in suspected Neutrino tracks at various detectors around the world. I watched as Kim Jong Un gathered up foreign journalists (human shields) for a "big event" (test of a large/full TN device). I watched as Donald Trump obviously on the john all alone let off a tweetstorm of nonsense around 8 PM last night (I knew that Kim tests his nukes between 8AM-12 Noon local time - which wud correspond to 8 PM EST). I felt DJT was losing his shit as he was tussling with the decision to have to launch a CM strike on a place where he knew human shields were in place. I watched the reports of a blackout drill in Pyongyang and the rumors of a citywide evacuation.

But nothing happened. The  reporters were driven around  the city and then taken to a block where Kim Jong Un has a pet property development. It was anticlimactic and as the crucial window passed, I began to get this sense of deja vu. I had seen this stunt pulled before in India by Prime Minister P V Narasimha Rao in 1995. At that time PVNR had set into motion a grand deception that asymmetrically increased the surveillance costs to the US on India's nuclear sites and simultaneously increased India's readiness for an actual test. As the Indian Army repeatedly dug out, drained and filled up tunnels (which is what it would do if it was looking for a suitable test area but finding excessive water ingress) - the US found itself strapped for resources to keep an eye on the Pokharan test facility.  In 1998 thanks to this form of maskirovka, India was able to achieve strategic surprise and test its boosted fission designs.

I think Kim Jong Un has taken a page from India's books. He is deliberately running a maskirovka operation and in his case he is trying to reduce the likelihood of a successful cruise missile strike.
I have grave doubts about Donald Trump's ability to handle the stresses associated with such complex decision making and his ability to coordinate matters of such intricacy and detail.

posted by maverick @ 6:23 AM