June 11, 2021

"Please give Putin my best regards!"

Trump asks Biden to give Putin his 'warmest regards'

BY LEXI LONAS - The Hill, 06/10/21

Former President Trump told President Joe Biden to give his “warmest regards” to Russian President Vladimir Putin ahead of the two world leaders meeting.

“Good luck to Biden in dealing with President Putin—don’t fall asleep during the meeting, and please give him my warmest regards!” Trump wrote in a statement Thursday.

Biden and Putin will have their first meeting Wednesday in Geneva, Switzerland.

Snip...

The former president still claims Russia did not meddle in the 2016 election.

“Despite the belated Fake News portrayal of the meeting, the United States won much, including the respect of President Putin and Russia,” Trump said. “Because of the phony Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax, made-up and paid for by the Democrats and Crooked Hillary Clinton, the United States was put at a disadvantage—a disadvantage that was nevertheless overcome by me.”

Continues...

https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/557903-trump-asks-biden-to-give-putin-his-warmest-regards

Trump didn’t just write about the stupidest thing ever written by a former president.

He wrote just about the stupidest thing ever written.

June 11, 2021

You should see how well his daughter is doing.

Manchin Family Values
Fred Gardner
Counterpunch.org, June 10, 2021

Excerpt...

After some superficial improvements (a stronger spring, clearer instructions) that supposedly justified raising prices, Mylan began its big marketing push in 2009. With almost 90% of the market, their key goal was to get every school in the US to keep EpiPens on hand. Children face the highest risk of a fatal response because many never been exposed to the substance they’re allergic to. Adults generally know what they’re allergic to and try to avoid exposure or carry the antidote.

As Governor of West Virginia, Joe Manchin had appointed his wife to the state Board of Education in 2007. By 2012 Gayle Conelly Manchin would be president of the National Association of State Boards of Education, an official-sounding-but-private outfit that lobbies state boards to adopt policies favored by Association members. In 2016 USA Today (a paper that doesn’t get enough credit for serious muckraking) reported that Mrs. Manchin had “spearheaded an unprecedented effort that encouraged states to require schools to purchase medical devices that fight life-threatening allergic reactions.

“The association’s move helped pave the way for Mylan Specialty, maker of EpiPens, to develop a near monopoly in school nurses’ offices. Eleven states drafted laws requiring epinephrine auto-injectors. Nearly every other state recommended schools stock them after what the White House called the ‘EpiPen Law’ in 2013 gave funding preference to those that did.”

Snip...

Heather’s brilliant career was launched after Joe Manchin introduced her to the CEO of Mylan. Although her claim to have a Master’s Degree in Business Administration was exposed as a lie, her fast rise to the top was unimpeded. Heather had something better than a degree, she had real audacity. And so she quadrupled the price of a drug that several million US Americans must have on hand and buy every year. (Somebody ought to confirm that epinephrine degrades significantly in a year. It might be a pseudo-scientific marketing device like Dial Soap’s famous “Rinse and repeat.”)

Heather’s salary rose from $2.5 million in 2007 to $18.9 million in 2015. She was then 45 years old and would have become the poster child of Pharmaceutical Industry Greed had it not been for Martin Shkreli, who raised the price of the anti-parasitic drug Diapram from $13.50 to $750. Then the publicity-welcoming “pharma bro” won the auction for the world’s only copy of a hip-hop album by Wu-Tang Clan. Shkreli was sentenced to seven years and may still be doing time for securities fraud, but presumably, he got to enjoy “Once Upon a Time in Shaolin” before the 2-CD rarity was seized by the feds.

Heather is married to a corporate lawyer named Jeffrey Bresch whose firm represents, in addition to numerous Fortune 500 companies, the Pennsylvania Republican Party in its challenge to the validity of votes mailed in on Election Day in 2020. (But that’s another story). Heather retired at age 50 in 2020 after arranging Mylan’s merger with Upjohn. The first woman to head a Fortune 500 Pharmaceutical company, her accomplishments included Mylan’s acquisition of Abbott Laboratories and a transfer of corporate headquarters to the Netherlands, bringing the merged companies’ tax rate down from 24% to 21%. The moral of the story is: you don’t really need an MBA to be a successful corporate executive.

Continues...

https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/06/10/manchin-family-values/

June 8, 2021

Putin pulls QAnon's strings.

Through Rudy and the Deranged Orange Puppet.



How Russia Used An Overt Agent To Attack Joe Biden In The 2020 Election

Time correspondent Simon Shuster says that Andriy Derkach, a seven-term member of the Ukrainian parliament, gave misleading information to Rudy Giuliani to discredit Biden during the 2020 campaign.

June 3, 20211:56 PM ET
Heard on Fresh Air with Terry Gross

Excerpt...

GROSS: Do you think the conspiracy theories that Derkach has been spreading, including, you know, the false information that Biden worked to further his son Hunter's financial interests in Ukraine, do you think all this still has legs? I mean, so much of this information was brought out during the impeachment hearings in the House, and Trump was impeached in the House.

SHUSTER: Yeah, I think it does very much still have legs. I think it's still a very influential narrative. And the reason I say that is, you know, there's a large - former President Trump still has a very large base of supporters. And, you know, among the news media and the online forums that his really devoted supporters use, this narrative that Derkach promoted and fueled is basically part of reality. It has been thoroughly incorporated into the perceptions of Joe Biden within Trump's base.

And I think one of the most interesting things I learned while reporting the story is how much QAnon, the online conspiracy theory kind of cult-like movement of Trump devotees, how much they promoted the Derkach material. It was a remarkable thing. You can go back and read all of the statements from Q, the kind of anonymous (prophet) of this movement. And, you know, at a very crucial moment in this movement - this movement is quite obsessed with numerology and, you know, the meaning of numbers and all that - dates, numbers. And there's - a lot of the people in that movement were expecting, what is Q going to post - post No. 4,500 because in kind of numerological thinking, 4,500, the 45th president, right? This should be an important post from Q.

And what did Q post in No. 4,500? A link to a YouTube video, 1 1/2 hours long, of Andrii Derkach. And he says, worth reading, listening. So the promotion on the QAnon forums. To me, is very clear indication that, yes, the things that Derkach is pushing and promoting has made it very deep into the bloodstream of a large portion of former President Trump's base. And it's going to continue to be part of the lore of that group of American voters, which is very large.

Continues (link to radio interview, too)...

https://www.npr.org/2021/06/03/1002858655/how-russia-used-an-overt-agent-to-attack-joe-biden-in-the-2020-election