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One Goal: 2020 Edition
Author: Raine    Date: 12/30/2019 14:03:22

This is the last blog I will write this decade. That's pretty hard to comprehend, to be honest. 2019 was a trying one for this nation for sure but there is a bright side.

We have less than a year before we can vote the occupant of the White House out of the office. We're less than 48 hours before we can say hello to the year 2020.

We're less than a year before we can stop seeing stories like this.
According to the readout, Putin thanked Trump for information — “transmitted through the channels of U.S. special services” — that “helped thwart terrorist acts in Russia.”

The readout noted that the two presidents also discussed issues of mutual interest, agreeing to “continue bilateral cooperation in combating terrorism.” The Russian government news agency TASS, citing a spokesman from the FSB intelligence agency, reported that two Russian nationals were plotting terrorist attacks in St. Petersburg over the New Year holiday but were detained thanks to the information shared by the U.S.
Note: "also discussed issues of mutual interest"

I'm with Journalist Brian Kerim on this.


There are many questions I have, Top among them, who else was on the call? Specifically what Americans? Where is the US readout? is it on the same server the call to Ukraine was placed? Most importantly, what are the matters of 'mutual interest'?

Was Guiliani on this call? Was Pompeo? I ask becuase this morning we are learning that aside from Ukraine, Rudy and Pete were conducting shadow diplomacy with Venezuela.
On one end of the line was Venezuela’s socialist president, the pariah leader of a disintegrating economy whom President Trump’s administration was seeking to isolate.

On the other end: the U.S. president’s personal attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani and then-Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Tex.).

Both were part of a shadow diplomatic effort, backed in part by private interests, aimed at engineering a negotiated exit to ease President Nicolás Maduro from power and reopen resource-rich Venezuela to business, according to people familiar with the endeavor.

Sessions had served as emissary in the back-channel effort, visiting Maduro in Caracas that spring. The phone call, which Giuliani joined, was a follow-up to that visit, Sessions’s spokesman Matt Mackowiak told The Washington Post.

Was this part of the mutual interest?
New conflicts in the rest of the world may be looming large, but one in the United States’ own backyard is about to get more dangerous. Despite U.S.-led sanctions on Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), oil from the country is still flowing onto world markets. A central facilitator of the exports is Rosneft, Russia’s state-owned oil company, which has been accepting Venezuelan crude as a form of loan repayment. In this way, Russian President Vladimir Putin is playing a leading role in keeping Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro afloat. As long as he does, current U.S. sanctions policy will do little to force a change in Venezuela, which is why Washington needs to rethink its strategy for dislodging the Venezuelan leader—and soon.


Eh, maybe I'm overthinking this. It could very well be that Russia has offered to meddle in our elections-- again. This madness must end.

Let's make a resolution together for the year 2020. Let's do everything we can to get the occupant out of the White house. GOTV.

and

Raine








 
 

4 comments (Latest Comment: 12/30/2019 19:11:51 by livingonli)
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Comment by wickedpam on 12/30/2019 14:55:19
Morning

I'm down for that resolution.

Comment by Will in Chicago on 12/30/2019 16:47:48
Hello, bloggers!!!

We need to remove Trump from office either through the unlikely event of a Senate trial or the likelier electoral route. I expect massive voter suppression and foreign interference on behalf of Trump.

Comment by TriSec on 12/30/2019 16:57:16
2020 - the year the American Experiment ends, or the year we save it.

I see no other outcome.



Comment by livingonli on 12/30/2019 19:11:51
I really need the 2020's to be better than the last few years have been for me for many reasons. Since 2016, I feel like I have been on a slow road to hell and not just because of the asshat-in-chief even if he is a big part of it.