CNN Op-Ed Admits "Mueller's Report Looks Bad For Obama"

With Congressional Democrats tantruming over redactions, presidential candidates out-virtue-signalling one another in denigration of Trump (for what it is unclear) calling for impeachment (again, for what is unclear) and the liberal media desperate for a distraction from the embarrassment of their two-year harassment in lieu of the main headline - "no collusion, no obstruction;" few if any among the mainstream have noticed (or mentioned) one tiny little detail in the Mueller Report… the 'confirmed' interference by Russia in the 2016 US Election took place - knowingly - under President Obama's watch. But amid all this sound and fury, something odd happened. The 'powers-that-be' at CNN - ground zero for the Trump's-a-traitorous-Putin-Puppet propaganda - have allowed the publication of an op-ed amid their hallowed pages that casts blame at the anointed one. CNN contributor Scott Jennings - soon to be exiled from every social media platform we suspect - dared to point out that the Mueller report looks bad for Obama.

The partisan warfare over the Mueller report will rage, but one thing cannot be denied: Former President Barack Obama looks just plain bad. On his watch, the Russians meddled in our democracy while his administration did nothing about it. The Mueller report flatly states that Russia began interfering in American democracy in 2014. Over the next couple of years, the effort blossomed into a robust attempt to interfere in our 2016 presidential election. The Obama administration knew this was going on and yet did nothing. In 2016, Obama's National Security Adviser Susan Rice told her staff to "stand down" and "knock it off" as they drew up plans to "strike back" against the Russians, according to an account from Michael Isikoff and David Corn in their book "Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin's War on America and the Election of Donald Trump". Is this some kind of penance on this holy weekend for CNN's past sins of omission? Perhaps. But Jennings then asked the hard question: Why did Obama go soft on Russia?

My opinion is that it was because he was singularly focused on the nuclear deal with Iran. Obama wanted Putin in the deal, and to stand up to him on election interference would have, in Obama's estimation, upset that negotiation. This turned out to be a disastrous policy decision. Obama's supporters claim he did stand up to Russia by deploying sanctions after the election to punish them for their actions. But, Obama, according to the Washington Post, "approved a modest package… with economic sanctions so narrowly targeted that even those who helped design them describe their impact as largely symbolic." In other words, a toothless response to a serious incursion.

But don't just take my word for it that Obama failed. Congressman Adam Schiff, who disgraced himself in this process by claiming collusion when Mueller found that none exists, once said that "the Obama administration should have done a lot more." The Washington Post reported that a senior Obama administration official said they "sort of choked" in failing to stop the Russian government's brazen activities. And Obama's ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul, said, "The punishment did not fit the crime" about the weak sanctions rolled out after the 2016 election.

A legitimate question Republicans are asking is whether the potential "collusion" narrative was invented to cover up the Obama administration's failures. Two years have been spent fomenting the idea that Russia only interfered because it had a willing, colluding partner: Trump. Now that Mueller has popped that balloon, we must ask why this collusion narrative was invented in the first place. Given Obama's record on Russia, one operating theory is that his people needed a smokescreen to obscure just how wrong they were. They've blamed Trump. They've even blamed Mitch McConnell, in some twisted attempt to deflect blame to another branch of government. Joe Biden once claimed McConnellrefused to sign a letter condemning the Russians during the 2016 election. But McConnell's office counters that the White House asked him to sign a letter urging state electors to accept federal help in securing local elections – and he did. You can read it here.

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-04-19/cnn-admits-muellers-report-looks-bad-obama-op-ed

An Unexpected Scandal Threatens To Cripple Amazon

Amazon.com, Inc.’s Web Services (AWS) unit has been the engine behind the company’s spectacular recent performance, with operating income of $7.2 billion last year, up 68% year-over-year and accounting for 59% of Amazon’s total operating income. The near-consensus cadre of bullish analysts (48 out of 50 tracked by Bloomberg have a “buy” rating on Amazon) call for more of the same. But will an ongoing government kerfuffle derail the AWS miracle? Last Wednesday, the Department of Defense (DoD) cleared itself of wrongdoing following an internal investigation into the forthcoming award of the $10 billion cloud computing Joint Enterprise Defense Initiative (JEDI) program. Yet the Pentagon’s self-exoneration was not comprehensive, as Bloomberg noted that: “The investigation uncovered evidence of unethical conduct that will be referred to the DoD inspector general for a separate review.”

The JEDI contract has been hotly contested among some of the largest cloud-computing companies in the U.S., and for good reason. The winner-take-all award has been narrowed to two contenders, AWS and Microsoft Corp. According to an updated timeline issued by a Federal judge Tuesday, the JEDI mandate will be awarded sometime after mid-July. With the stakes high, Uncle Sam’s corporate suitors are pulling no punches. In December, recently-eliminated Oracle Corp. filed suit with U.S. Court of Federal Claims asserting that the JEDI process has been marred by conflicts of interest. The suit alleges that a pair of Amazon-connected former DoD staffers unduly influenced the proceedings in favor of AWS. One of whom, Deap Ubhi, worked in business development at AWS from 2014 to 2016 before joining the DoD, during which period he continued to praise Amazon from his Twitter account (including tweeting “once an Amazonian, always an Amazonian” in January 2017) while criticizing Oracle, Alphabet, Inc.’s Google and other Silicon Valley firms.

According to an April 5 report by The Capitol Forum, in January 2017 Ubhi lamented missing a conference call between Defense Department officials and AWS personnel, writing via email: “I am ex-AWS, and would have liked to have been on the call.” Eight months later, when acting as the DoD’s lead JEDI project manager, Ubhi asked DoD higher-ups to name him “the point of contact for all industry conversations.” After reportedly recusing himself from the JEDI procurement process in late October, Ubhi left the DoD, returning to AWS in November 2017. In March, the Federal News Network reported that the FBI is involved in the DoD inspector general investigation, potentially signaling “some sort of wrongdoing involving DoD civilian personnel and/or DoD procurement procedures.” In addition to Ubhi, other former DoD officials have seen their actions around JEDI come under scrutiny. In August, Vanity Fair reported that Sally Donnelly, a former senior advisor to Secretary of Defense James Mattis from January 2017 to March 2018, “sold her stake in [consulting firm] SBD Advisors, LLC for $1.17 million two days before she went to work for Mattis.” But Donnelly continued to receive payments from the company, which counted Amazon as an active client. Two weeks after Donnelly left the Pentagon, SBD was purchased by C5 Capital, “a private equity firm with direct ties to Amazon.”

Anthony DeMartino, Donnelly’s colleague at SBD, who was also named in the Oracle lawsuit, likewise consulted for Amazon before moving to the DoD to serve as Mattis’ deputy chief of staff. The close proximity of Donnelly and DeMartino to the Secretary of Defense was a favorable development for AWS, as The Capitol Forum reported on March 15 that Mattis “expressed interest in meeting with Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos at a dinner” with Donnelly in early 2017, according to emails received via a Freedom of Information Act request. Mattis and Bezos met in Seattle in August 2017.

As controversy over JEDI continues to swirl, another government agency pivots away from the winner-take-all format. On March 22, the CIA unveiled a new Commercial Cloud Enterprise (C2E) initiative, in which the agency disclosed plans to use “multiple commercial cloud vendors that can provide” necessary services. An anonymity-seeking, D.C.-based source believes that the CIA’s move might suggest wider government dissatisfaction with AWS, which commanded 46% of worldwide public cloud infrastructure market share as of year-end 2017 according to the International Data Corporation.

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-04-19/unexpected-scandal-threatens-cripple-amazon