A $1.3 trillion omnibus spending bill. More military spending than any time in history. How did things get to this point?Even some of the most loyal supporters of President Trump have expressed both frustration and dismay that he signed an omnibus spending bill larger than all but one signed by former President Obama.Angry opposition has come from the likes of Laura Ingraham, Amy Kremer, and Ann Coulter. But not everyone is upset.Matt House, communications director for Sen. Chuck Schumer, said...

To my knowledge, none of the questions I wrote in my previous piece – 30 questions That Journalists Should be Asking About the Skripal Case – has been answered satisfactorily, at least not in the public domain. Yet despite the fact that these legitimate questions have not yet been answered, and many important facts surrounding the case are still unknown, the case has given rise to a serious international crisis, with the extraordinary expulsion of Russian diplomats across many EU countries and...

Last week the Donald's incipient trade war got Wall Street's nerves jangling, but that wasn't the half of what's coming. To wit, Trump has now essentially formed a War Cabinet and signed a Horribus spending bill that is a warrant for fiscal meltdown. Indeed, the two essentially comprise a self-fueling doom loop which means Washington’s descent into fiscal catastrophe is well-nigh unstoppable; it’s all over except for the screaming in the bond pits. That is, Trump's new War Cabinet of John...

Nearly two dozen countries have joined the UK in expelling Russian diplomats over the poisoning of ex--spy Sergei Skripal in southern England. Speaking to Sputnik, Daniel McAdams, executive director of the Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity, shared his thoughts on the broader implications of the case, and what Russia's approach should be.Sputnik: What are your thoughts on what’s going on with this expulsion of the Russian diplomats?Daniel McAdams: I think it's something that's very...

The British government has never been more unpopular amongst the British people. It’s being crushed by problems entirely of its own making and undone by its own neglect and incompetence over a disastrously handled Brexit, crippling austerity measures, a general public still reeling from the horror of the Grenfell fire, and an ever-failing National Health Service, which, given that it is the fourth largest employer in Europe, is a deeply worrying and resonant issue.In light of this, the...

Former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director John Brennan, a Barack Obama friend and protégé as well as a current paid contributor for NBC and MSNBC, has blasted President Donald Trump for congratulating President Vladimir Putin over his victory in recent Russian national elections. He said that the U.S. President is “afraid of the president of Russia” and that the Kremlin “may have something on him personally. The fact that he has had this fawning attitude toward Mr. Putin …continues to...

Unlike corporations that sell to consumers, Lockheed Martin and the other top contractors to the US Government are highly if not totally dependent upon sales to governments, for their profits, especially sales to their own government, which they control — they control their home market, which is the US Government, and they use it to sell to its allied governments, all of which foreign governments constitute the export markets for their products and services. These corporations control the US...

Two dozen former U.S. intelligence officers urge President Trump to rescind Gina Haspel’s nomination to lead the CIA, citing torture that she oversaw while supervising a black site prison, as well as her role in destroying evidence. MEMORANDUM FOR: The PresidentFROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for SanitySUBJECT: Request to Withdraw Nomination of Gina HaspelEXECUTIVE SUMMARYWith respect, we veteran intelligence officers from CIA and other agencies urge you to withdraw the nomination of...

On Friday, President Trump signed the omnibus spending bill for 2018. The $1.3 trillion bill was so monstrous that it would have made the biggest spender in the Obama Administration blush. The image of leading Congressional Democrats Pelosi and Schumer grinning and gloating over getting everything they wanted -- and then some -- will likely come back to haunt Republicans at the midterm elections. If so, they will deserve it.Even President Trump admitted the bill was horrible. As he said in the...

On Friday, French President Emmanuel Macron and German leader Angela Merkel said that following a meeting of the European Council, that UK PM Theresa May had shared "proof" of Russia's involvement in the assassination attempt against former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, "convincing" the two leaders that Russia was behind the attack. And yet, despite the "convincing" evidence, no "proof" has yet been publicly disclosed. Furthermore, even as all leaders said they are in agreement...

One of the most discouraging aspects of the musical chairs being played among the members of the White House inner circle is that every change reflects an inexorable move to the right in foreign policy, which means that the interventionists are back without anyone at the White House level remaining to say “no.” President Donald Trump, for all his international experience as a businessman, is a novice at the step-by-step process required in diplomacy and in the development of a coherent foreign...

There are a lot of issues around the case of Sergei and Yulia Skripal which, at the time of writing, are very unclear and rather odd. There may well be good and innocent explanations for some or even all of them. Then again there may not. This is why it is crucial for questions to be asked where, as yet, there are either no answers or deeply unsatisfactory ones.Some people will assume that this is conspiracy theory territory. It is not that, for the simple reason that I have no credible theory...

Cries for gun control have reached deafening levels since the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida on February 14th, 2018.Exploiting the tragedy that left 17 people dead, gun control advocates are using every means possible to ram gun control measures across legislatures nationwide.One avenue that gun control proponents have pursued is the advancement of legislation containing mental health restrictions. Consequently, legislators at both the federal and state level have...

I don’t know what happened in Salisbury England on March 4th, but it appears that the British government doesn’t know either. Prime Minister Theresa May’s speech before Parliament last Monday was essentially political, reflecting demands that she should “do something” in response to the mounting hysteria over the poisoning of former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia. After May’s presentation there were demands from Parliamentarians for harsh measures against Russia,...

On MSNBC’s “All In” on March 13, I discussed how the removal of Rex Tillerson from the position of secretary of state was the final triumph of largely Republican efforts—but with complicit Democrats as well—to consolidate the making of foreign and security policy exclusively in the White House. Since the 1947 National Security Act, there has been institutional momentum for this shift. It is important to be aware of this institutional momentum because to reverse the shift will require much more...