The 2 Percent Problem

Vincent J. Curtis

6 Apr 2017

When NATO foreign ministers gather around the conference table to grouse about their problem with 2 percent, they aren’t talking about American beer.  They are talking about the sober promises their countries made to each other several years ago.  At the NATO meeting in Brussels on March 31, the new U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told members that he wanted to see each country’s plan to raise their defence expenditures to 2 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) at the next meeting, scheduled for the end of April.

Presently, only five NATO countries are fulfilling that commitment: the US, UK, Greece, Poland, and Latvia.  Canadian defense expenditure presently hovers around 1 percent of GDP.

All this is taking place in an atmosphere of confusion and consternation at the new Trump administration.  During the election campaign, Donald Trump criticized the usefulness of a NATO that paid no attention to the problem of international terrorism and terrorist states, while at the same time he appeared to cozy up to Russian President Vladimir Putin.  Trump’s appearing to cozy up to Putin gave legs to the story that Trump was in Putin’s pocket somehow.  Even now, the Democrats in Washington are pushing the line that the Trump campaign colluded with the Russian regime to steal the presidency from Hillary Clinton.

Because most of the media are suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome, they are missing the fact that is Donald Trump is working the Russian problem from both ends.

Trump is giving Vladimir Putin every reason to relax tensions between Russia and the NATO countries that became acute after Russia annexed the Crimea, and then sent proxies into eastern Ukraine to end the sovereignty Kiev de facto and de jure exercised over that region.  Russian control over eastern Ukraine gives Russia a land bridge to Crimea, with its famous port and the home of the Russian Black Sea fleet, Sevastopol.

Czarist Russia seized the Crimea from the Ottoman Empire in the 1783 and held it after the Crimean War of 1854-56.  In 1954, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev transferred ownership of Crimea to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.  Ukraine kept it after it declared independence from the Soviet Union.

Near the end of Obama administration, Russia began to exert pressure on NATO members Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania, the so-called Baltic states.  These are geographically small countries with small populations; they lie on the extremity of the NATO region but are adjacent to Russia.  These countries were once part of the Czarist Russian Empire, and were incorporated into the Soviet Union after 1945.  These countries gained their independence from Russia after the communist revolution of 1917, and again after the collapse of the Soviet Empire in 1989.

At the same time that Trump is giving Putin the chance to relax tensions without embarrassment to either side, he is demanding of NATO countries to step up their defense expenditures to the levels that they promised when east-west tensions were not as great.  Thus if Putin finally concludes that he is wasting his time with Trump, he will be confronted by a stronger NATO.  Not just a NATO strong in virtue of the military power of the United States, but of every other NATO member as well.

Not only will the Baltic States themselves be harder nuts to crack, but Germany, an old Russian antagonist, will be better positioned to step in and hold the line without requiring the full commitment of the United States military, which may take a few weeks before it gets fully deployed in Europe.  If Germany stands as a guarantor of NATO security in the short run, a Russian intervention into the Baltic States may be solvable by diplomacy before the situation escalates out of control.

If the United States pulls out of NATO, these European countries are going to have to dramatically increase the defense expenditures anyhow, in order to deal with the Russian threat on their own.  So, spending more on defense in in the cards.

Luckily for Canadian diplomacy, it has the resources of Esprit de Corps magazine behind it.  In the February issue, the Canadian plan for meeting the 2 percent threshold was laid out.  The plan calls for capital expenditures over four years that will require ten years to fully implement, but meets the criterion of 2 percent for the duration of the first Trump term.  Essentially, the plan calls for the recapitalization of the Canadian Armed Forces with the equipment it is going to need anyhow for the next twenty to forty years.  Not one thin dime needs to be spent from the operating budget of DND to pay for one new soldier, sailor, or airman over four years.

If the Canadian government follows the Esprit de Corps defense plan, it will not only find itself in the good graces of the Trump administration, but leave a legacy of military preparedness.

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A version of this piece appeared in the Vol 24, Issue 4 edition of Esprit de Corps magazine.

I Can’t Believe You Asked That, Chris

Vincent J. Curtis

22 May 2017

Washington is so weird.  They just don’t get Trump at all; and by implication, they just don’t get middle America at all, either.

On Fox News Sunday yesterday, host Chris Wallace demonstrated in an interview with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson just how certain the Washington swamp is in its own judgement.  In the questions below (edited somewhat to highlight the point being made) Wallace asserts his judgement and the judgement of the Washington swamp in the manner in which he puts his questions to Tillerson.  The questions and the manner in which they were formulated show just how incredulous Wallace is at what the Trump administration does.  They don’t understand Trump at all.

In the course of asking Tillerson about the just concluded summit with Arab leaders in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Wallace played clips of Trump during the election campaign calling out Islam for its violence and radicalism.

WALLACE:…….Mr. Secretary, President Trump is urging Muslim leaders to join the, quote, "battle between good and evil". He’s opening a center against extremism today. Muslim leaders are pledging to cut off funding to radicals.

But the question I have is, is this just talk?

Regrettably, Tillerson did not begin his answer with, “Yes, Chris.  This is all just talk.”  However, Tillerson is a diplomat and gave a serious, diplomatic answer to Wallace’s challenging question.

Wallace was not satisfied:

WALLACE: Given that past rhetoric, why should Muslim leaders trust Mr. Trump now? And on the other hand, if the president is so concerned about human rights, why isn’t he talking about it publicly this weekend?

Wallace is substituting his judgement on diplomacy for those who are responsible for the administration of American foreign policy.  Never mind the plain evidence that Arab leaders are placing a great deal of hope in Trump.

When Tillerson turned aside Wallace’s challenge again and answered a question about the purpose of this particular meeting, Wallace was not satisfied:

WALLACE: But -- but, sir, I’ve seen a draft of the president’s speech, the big speech this afternoon. Not a mention of human rights, not a mention of women’s rights. You say he wants to speak concretely and frankly about these things -- he’s not doing that today.

Tillerson’s answer below ought to have been understood by even the dullest interviewer:

TILLERSON: But, you know, the primary reason we’re here today is to confront this threat of terrorism. If we do not defeat Daesh, if we do not defeat these forces of evil, there will be no conditions under which we can even hope to improve the human rights for all of the people in the region.

Wallace did not understand it, and turned to another topic in the formulaic manner of a television interview:

WALLACE: Mr. Secretary, you were in the Oval Office when the president met with Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov on May 10th, and according to the official summary, the president told Lavrov: I just fired the head of the FBI. He was crazy, a real nut job. I face great pressure because of Russia, that’s taken off.

My question to you, sir, as someone who was in that meeting -- was he telling the Russians that firing Comey was taking off legal and political pressure?

TILLERSON: Chris, that’s not my -- my interpretation, certainly, of the conversation. [This ought to have tipped off Wallace that maybe the unnamed source who read something to the New York Times maybe didn’t have it quite right.]   And I think what the president was trying to convey to the Russians is, look, I’m not going to be distracted by this -- all these issues that are here at home, they -- that, you know, affect us domestically. I’m not going to let that distract from our efforts to see if we can engage with you, engage with Russia, and identify areas where we might be able to work together. The president I think reemphasized the message to the Russians that the relationship is at a low point and we need to change that, we need to both work towards trying to improve that.

So I think the point he was making is I’m not going to be distracted by those things that are happening here at home, nor let them get in the way of the important work of engaging Russia to see what can be done to improve this relationship.

Tillerson gave an excellent explanation of what transpired between Trump and Lavrov, and its diplomatic purpose.  Nevertheless, Wallace bulls ahead with the received Washington swamp interpretation:

WALLACE: But, sir, he seemed to be saying that firing Comey would help remove one of the distractions.

TILLERSON: I -- Chris, I just didn’t -- my takeaway from that conversation was not that point at all. I think, again, the president was simply saying to the Russians these issues at home are not going to get in the way of my effort and the effort of my government to see if we can find a way to move this relationship forward.

WALLACE: You said this week in Washington that you don’t think that foreign leaders around the world care about what’s going on in Washington with regard to the president. Here you are.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TILLERSON: I think the people in the rest of the world take -- do not have the time to pay attention to what’s happening domestically here.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALLACE: I have to ask you, Mr. Secretary, do you really believe that? Because I got to tell you that ambassadors that I talk to here in Washington are deeply concerned with the investigation into the president and question, wonder, whether it’s going to somehow prevent the U.S. from meeting its challenges around the world.

Again Tillerson passed up the opportunity to say to Wallace, “No Chris, I really don’t believe that.  I just said it to throw you guys a screwball.”  But here again, Wallace is throwing the Washington swamp interpretation at Tillerson and not listening to what Tillerson is saying to him.  Tillerson gave another diplomatic and correct answer, and then Wallace formulaically moved to more pleasant discussion.

The Washington swamp believe they know better, and aren’t prepared to listen and learn.  They are way too comfortable in their opinions and worldview, and much of what Trump does is outside their realm of understanding and experience.

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Sally Yates: In over her Head

Vincent J. Curtis

16 May 2017

Sally Yates is a do-gooding busy-body who never wonders whether what she is doing might be wrong.  Yates was in over her head in the position of (Acting) Attorney General while Senator Jeff Sessions was being delayed in his confirmation by Senate Democrats.

Yates is famous for three things: that she brought up the issue of Lt-Gen Michael Flynn, Trump’s incoming National Security Advisor, having allegedly lied about the contents of a conversation he had with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak; for refusing to defend in court Trump’s first Executive Order concerning refugees, as was her responsibility to do; and then she failed to honorably resign in protest over an Executive Order, but instead engaged in insubordination towards the new president.

Now a couple of weeks ago, Senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) under the aegis of the sub-committee on Crime and Terrorism of the Senate Judiciary Committee, held hearings that featured retired Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and Sally Yates.  It was in the course of her testimony that the inadequacies of Yates became manifest.

Both Clapper and Yates declared under oath before the committee that they were not the source of the leak that revealed an apparent discrepancy between what Lt-Gen Flynn told Vice-President Mike Pence about his December 29^th, 2016 discussion with Ambassador Kislyak and what Pence was saying to the public about it.  Yates, apparently, had been circulated the transcript of that conversation which had been intercepted by the National Security Agency and in which Flynn’s name was “unmasked.” 

Normally, conversations of this type would have identified Flynn as “American No. 1”; but through the diligence of Obama National Security Advisor Susan Rice, Trump official’s names were being routinely unmasked in Rice’s vain search for evidence that would embarrass the incoming administration.  To ensure that embarrassing information leaked to the media, President Obama authorized wide circulation throughout the intelligence community of information of this type.

Having read the transcript, and in her breathy style of outrage, Yates testified that Mike Flynn had lied to Mike Pence, and that made Flynn a security risk.  So, she decided to report her thinking to White House Council Don McGahn.  Playing devil’s advocate, McGahn inquired as to the Department of Justice’s interest in the matter: what does it matter to Justice that one White House official lies to another White House official?  Yates replied in her characteristic breathy manner that it was the Vice-President that was being lied to.  Since the Russians undoubtedly have a transcript of their own, they could hold that as blackmail over Mike Flynn.  With the Vice-President saying one thing, and an alleged Russian transcript saying another, somebody could get mighty embarrassed, she feared.  Flynn was therefore subject to blackmail, she argued.

McGahn appeared unmoved, but pressure was building in the media concerning Flynn’s conversation and Flynn eventually resigned.

In this matter, Yates was raising matters of concern that were outside her domain of responsibility and expertise.  That Flynn would be subject to blackmail on account of some theoretical conditions that were not yet prevalent is not her judgement to make.  Nevertheless, being the good girl-scout she is, Yates got herself all exercised over Mike Flynn, with who knows what consequences among those around her.

The second realm of inquiry of Sally Yates concerned her refusal to defend in court Trump’s Executive Order concerning refugees from six countries.  As a result, the EO went undefended and was stayed.  The EO had been vetted for form and legality by the Office of Legal Council, a department of subject matter experts within the Department of Justice.  Thus, Sally Yates’s own experts held that the EO was at least legal and constitutional, and certainly arguable in court.

Yates disagreed.  She believed that looking beyond “the face of the order” there was a violation of the constitution concerning religious discrimination.  She held that because Trump had said certain things on the campaign trail, they must be read into the EO.  This sort of reasoning, called “legislative history,” is a school of legal thinking that the late Justice Antonin Scalia warned against.  This is how Sally Yates’s reasoning is refuted easily:

The law only has a “face.”  What is written on the page is what the law is.  If on the campaign trail Donald Trump promised to do ‘A’ and in issuing the Executive Order, he orders that ‘B’ be done, then ‘B’ is what is actually ordered, not ‘A’  Trump may have an issue with his supporters, but not with the lawyers, who have been ordered to do ‘B’.  Yates argues that, no, that ‘B’ on the page ought to be read as ‘A’ because that is what Trump allegedly promised on the campaign.  ‘B’ is ‘A’ according to Yates because Trump said he would do ‘A’, not ‘B’.

Clearly this form of reasoning cannot long stand scrutiny, but Yates clearly believed it in this case.  If a court reads ‘B’ on the page, it cannot rightfully rule on anything other than that ‘B’ on the page.  If a court rules against ‘B’ on the basis that the page really contains ‘A’ then you have to wonder at the sanity of the judge.

The second fallacy Yates labored under concerned the constitutionality of discriminating on the basis of religion.  Yates believed that the EO was intended to exclude Muslims from immigrating to America, despite the fact that the EO referred to countries and not religions, nor that about fifty other Muslim majority countries were not on the list.  Anyhow, Yates feels that these refugees had rights under the Constitution not to be discriminated against on the basis of their religion.

Here is how Yates is easily refuted again:  Only American citizens living in America enjoy the full panoply of rights in America.  Aliens resident in America enjoy some, but not all legal rights.  Aliens have a right of due process, not to be subject to cruel and unusual punishment, and so forth.  They do not have a right to vote, or to keep and bear arms, for example.  Aliens not resident in the United States have no legal rights at all under the Constitution because they are not Americans and, not being present in US territory, they are not subject to US law or to the jurisdiction of US courts.  This reasoning is not hard to follow, but Yates didn’t follow it.

Yates decided that her reasoning was superior to those of her subject matter experts, and on the basis of her fallacious reasoning refuted above she then declined to defend the EO in court, though there was a case to be made and decided - by judges.

Now we come to her third, and for her legal career, fatal mistake.  She ought to have informed President Trump of her feelings and resigned.  That was the proper, honorable, and righteous thing to do.  But she did not. Instead she preened the entire weekend about her defiance of Trump, basking in the glow of favorable media attention; and he fired her for insubordination, as he ought.

Clearly, Yates was in way over her head as (acting) Attorney-General.  She was incompetent, misguided, and entirely at sea as to her responsibilities.  Now, she is a Democrat heroine.

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Democrat Collusion and Russian Collusion

Vincent J. Curtis

15 May 2017

Less than two weeks ago, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Democrat Senator Charles Whithouse (D-RI) ran a hearing of the Senate Judiciary sub-Committee on Crime and Terrorism that featured testimony from former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and the fired Acting Attorney-General Sally Yates.

In the course of his questioning, Senator Whitehouse listed six kinds of things that Russia could do to influence the American election.  I believe it was item four that was murder and political violence, which Whitehouse dismissed as having been done by Russia in the last election cycle.

At that point all the Republican Senators missed an opportunity to interject that political violence was the domain of the Democrat party in the 2016 cycle.  In late October, 2016, Project Veritas released videotape of Democrat operatives discussing how to bring about violence at Trump’s rally in Chicago.

Of course, the Democrats would react indignantly to such an accusation, and point to walls of deniability between the rioting and Hillary Clinton.  But the reasons Democrats could logically give to establish that they engaged in no political violence would undercut their assertions that Donald Trump colluded with the Russians to steal the election from Hillary Clinton.

In my posting of 25 Oct 2016, headed “Hillary’s IMF Team” I reported on the activities of Project Veritas, which taped senior Democrat operatives openly discussing violence at Donald Trump rallies.  Project Veritas released tapes showing prohibited coordination between Hillary herself and an organization called “Americans United for Change” and with Democracy Partner’s Robert Creamer, who was also a member of the Democratic National Committee.

Project Veritas reported that Hillary Clinton wanted “Donald Duck” to appear at Trump rallies to showcase her demands that Trump release his tax returns.  “In the end, it was the candidate, Hillary Clinton, the future president of the United States who wanted ducks on the ground,” says Bob Creamer, of Democracy Partners, “and so, by God, we would get ducks on the ground.”

Also involved in the coordination between Hillary Clinton and actions taken at Trump rallies were Brad Woodhouse, president of Americans United for Change (AUFC), Scott Foval, and DNC Rapid Response Coordinator, Aaron Black.  Project Vertias has Brad Woodhouse on tape saying, “let me tell you something.  I think she [i.e. Hillary Clinton] has the right instinct on this.  This thing is resonating, but that story is not exactly what you want to hear about how presidential decision-making happened,” indicating that Woodhouse believed that Hillary was the source of the request.

Project Veritas has Bob Creamer on tape saying how the word was passed to him.  “I was actually on a plane to go to London last week – Christina Reynolds [Deputy Communications Director of Hillary for America] calls saying, ‘I have good news and bad news.  The good news is that candidate would like to have a mascot following around the duck – I mean, Trump.”  And then Creamer says, “If the future president wants ducks, we will put ducks on the ground.”

Hillary’s campaign team and the DNC coordinated campaign activities with Americans United for Change and Democracy Partners.

The Hillary campaign argued, and the media accepted at the time, that Hillary was not responsible for these things done in her name.  Bob Creamer resigned from the DNC and “stepped down” from campaign activities.  Scott Foval was fired from AUFC.  Project Veritas was condemned for recording people without their knowledge or consent.

Project Veritas provided documented proof of illegal collusion between the Hillary campaign and 501(c)(4) organizations, with evidence that that collusion received direction from Hillary herself, and no criminal investigation or charges were ever contemplated against Hillary or anyone else involved.

What evidence do the Democrats have of collusion between the Trump campaign and “Russia?”  First of all, if anyone with any connection to Russia at all existed in the Trump campaign, the Democrats would be howling in outrage.  At best, they can find Paul Manafort, who once worked for the Russia-favoring deposed president of the Ukraine. Carter Page, who has had business dealings with Russia for many years, was never connected in a substantive way with the Trump campaign. Democrats think the hacked emails put up by WikiLeaks were provided by the Russian Intelligence services, as if thicker lines of deniability would not exist between them and WikiLeaks as between Hillary Clinton and the appearances of Donald Duck.

Every excuse the Democrats would seize upon to separate Hillary from Donald Duck would have to be denied in the case of connecting Donald Trump to Vladimir Putin.

The desperate attempt by Democrats and the Fake News Media to connect Donald Trump’s presidency to Vladimir Putin deserves to fail.  Hillary Clinton would be in jail long before Paul Manafort could be fingered as a genuine bad guy (if he even was!), given the disparity in evidence.  The NSA with all its powers of SIGINT have come up with zilch on Turmp, while little Project Veritas produced conclusive documentation sufficient to put people in jail.

There was no collusion between the sinister “Russia” and Donald Trump.  Even if there was, given the thick barriers of deniability a serious Intelligence power could put up, every attempt to breach those walls by Democrats would destroy a wall separating Hillary Clinton from criminal collusion with progressive, Democrat-run organizations that stirred up violence at Donald Trump rallies.

It is high time the Republicans went on offense concerning Russian collusion.  Stop talking about what Democrats might find, and tell us what you actually have.  And bring up Project Veritas and the need to investigate the demonstrated illegal collusion that actually occurred in the campaign.

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Chris Wallace: Swamp Creature

Vincent J. Curtis

14 May 2017

Perhaps I am picking on Fox News Anchor Chris Wallace more than I should.  But Fox News Sunday is the only Sunday news talk show that I can tolerate watching, and even then only in limited doses.  Today’s show was one of those small dose shows that had to be turned off quickly lest I throw something at the television.

On Sunday’s show, Wallace took up the theme of Trump’s firing of James Comey, and he tried to tie it to potentially nefarious motives that Trump harbored to stifle the finding of the truth.  What that truth might amount to is not known, nor the political consequences of finding out.

Wallace questioned Utah Senator Mike Lee concerning the Comey firing and Russian collusion.  The following bit opened the questioning:

WALLACE: Let's start with the president's attitude toward the Russia investigation about possible interference in the 2016 election and possible links to the Trump world, as I will put it. Here's what the president said this week.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I will tell you this, if Russia or anybody else is trying to interfere with our elections, I think it's a horrible thing and I want to get to the bottom of it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALLACE: But the president has sent several tweets this week: The Russia-Trump collusion story is a hoax, he said in one, when will this taxpayer-funded charade end?

Senator, as a former federal prosecutor, does not raise questions in your mind about this president's interest in getting to the truth?

Needless to say, Senator Lee whiffed the answer.  The correct answer runs like this:

Mr. Wallace, if there was any collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign Susan Rice would have found out.   But she found nothing except for the now infamous exchange between incoming National Security Advisor Michael Flynn and the Russian Ambassador, and that was about sanctions imposed by the Obama Administration after the election.  In addition, at the instigation of the Barack Obama himself, the heads of the four major intelligence agencies investigated it and found at the time no evidence.  Mr. Wallace, there is nothing to this Russian collusion story, and its time we moved on to more pressing matters.  Like, who has been leaking national security secrets since the election – something former Director Comey failed to move on.

And then repeating as necessary:  Where's the evidence, where's the evidence, where's the evidence?

This Russia collusion story is simply a means for Democrats to avoid coming to grips with the reality of losing the presidential election, and to try to undermine the presidency of Donald Trump.  Everybody agrees that Comey should have been fired, so what’s the deal about Trump doing it?  Everybody admits that Hillary Clinton would have fired Comey on Day 1, so what is the point, again?

Let’s consider briefly another bit of collusion.  In the 2012 election cycle, President Barack Obama was overheard in a hot mic moment asking Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to pass on to then Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin that the 2012 election was Obama’s last election, and that after it he can be “more flexible.”  This was a downright solicitation of collusion, by the US president of Russia, in order to enhance his chances in the election against Republican candidate Mitt Romney.  Nobody has said boo about this, particularly not Democrats.  Unless a Democrat condemned Obama at the time, they have no business accusing Trump of it when there is no evidence of it at all.

Today’s news media are in the same boat as the Democrats (not surprisingly): unless they accused Obama of attempting collusion at the time, they have no business accusing Trump of collusion now.  What both media and Democrats are doing is projecting what they would do or already have done into their political opponents.

Now let’s turn to the belt-way buzz over the various reasons Trump has given for firing Comey.  They include: that Comey was not doing a good job; that the Deputy Attorney-General recommended it; that Comey was going to be fired anyway, despite previous assurances of confidence, and so forth.  You would think no one in the news media had ever made a decision before!  Decisions are complicated things, but none of the reasons given by Trump for firing Comey contradict each other.  They are all components of the decision that all point in the same direction.  Particularly, if Comey was withholding information from the president regarding investigations, you have to wonder what bit of treason Comey was playing – even if those investigations were concerning the president himself.  There can be no secrets from the President.

If Wallace were asked why he bought a BMW instead of an Audi, he might begin by saying that he liked the Beemer more than the Audi.  If pressed, he could give perhaps half a dozen reasons why the Beemer is better than the Audi, none of which contradict each other, and all of which point in the same direction: Beemer over Audi.  Exactly in the manner of Trump giving half a dozen reasons why Comey should be fired.  But the media are too dense (or political) to look at their own decision making processes.

With Comey out of the way, perhaps now something will be done to help the House and Senate Committees do their work getting to the bottom of the Russian collusion story (which Comey helped to keep alive by his selective admissions and refusals to admit), start to do something about the White House leaks, and perhaps get justice done about Hillary and her gang, and about the Obama gang: Susan Rice, Ben Rhodes, and Eric Holder.

All the criticism of Trump over the Comey firing has been about the tastes, preferences, and style favored by the beltway crowd.  Nobody is questioning the decision itself.  Nobody is putting to the Democrats their blatant hypocrisy and hyperbolic talk of a constitutional crisis, Watergate, and impeachment.

Trump promised to drain the swamp, and Comey was a part of that swamp.  The croaking you hear are the noises of discontent of the other swamp creatures.

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