Ddong chim.
I believe that is a Franken.
That helps to explain why ALL the Repugs are trying to sabotage Meuller now… because the whole damn party is dirty.
Despite bordering on tin foil hat territory, is there an explanation other than this that better explains all of the publicly available data?
Wagon circling. If someone is coming after one of ours, even if we hate him, we’re going to try to protect him.
This is why I haven’t always been so calm.
I think people don’t understand - or at least they haven’t until now - that the investigation isn’t just going to end up embarrassing Trump but the entire Republican party. And that’s because there are most likely members of the Republican party sold out the country’s democratic tradition (and may have committed crimes in doing so). Why are certain members of the House seem intent on quashing the investigation with as much zeal as Trump - if not more so? Why are certain right wing mouth pieces now advocating the removal of Mueller and a purge of our law enforcement agencies? If people are saying calm down, then I don’t think they really understand how serious this is becoming.
There’s an alignment of interests that involve Trump, members of his administration, members of his transition team, and members of the donor class that fund their politics. They are hijacking America, and they’re now to the point of actually using a powerful foreign adversary’s state security (military) apparatus to do so. This isn’t fiction. It’s very, very real. And it portends something very, very ominous.
Here’s a question that then arises. Why are the Russians, specifically, putting money into American politics?
If it’s just Putin bankrolling Trump and friends … well, that’s easy to understand in personal power terms. Buying one shady businessman probably isn’t that expensive, especially when you can mostly pay in ego-strokes, and the amount of benefit the current Russian regime can get from even minor tweaks in US policy must be huge.
But a Russian oligarch wants to make money. The only reason why they’d fund any politician, Russian or American, is to make personal bank for themselves. In other words, exactly the same reason that an American oligarch would.
If it’s worth it for American oligarchs, and also for Russian oligarchs, then it must surely be worth it for Indian oligarchs and Chinese oligarchs. Maybe Brazilian oligarchs too? And on down the list of mildly corrupt regimes until you start getting to places that just can’t afford to buy a US politician. But Russians, on a world scale, aren’t actually all that rich, so it may cost lest to buy a Senator than you would think.
I’m assuming here that more stable democratic non-corrupt countries like Japan and Germany wouldn’t be in the politician-buying business. Hopefully that is and remains the case. I know that China is in the politician-buying business, and if they’re not targeting US politicians right now, it’s probably only because Australian politicians are cheaper.
And, on this note, team Trump is preparing for their attacks on Michael Flynnwho was previously a “wonderful man” who was getting wrongfully railroaded. Apparently, now he is a liar. Not sure how they know that Flynn is lying being that we haven’t heard anything he has to say recently. I can’t possibly believe that they might be calling him a liar because they know the things that he is going to say already, and attacking his credibility is their only option.
With any luck they’ll flip flop back and forth between the “trash his reputation” strategy and the “offer pardons all round” strategy for long enough to fuck 'em both up.
Putin - like several other authoritarians - has learned to fear the United States political power as a force that can potentially remove heads of state that it (we) disagree with. The US has a long history of intervening in the internal affairs of other countries - from the Allende in Chile in 1973 to Saddam Hussein in 2003, the US has a history of destabilizing and topping regimes it doesn’t agree with. Putin experienced America’s ability to reshape the world in its own image personally in the late 1980s when he was in East Germany and suddenly found himself surrounded by mobs in the wake of the Iron Curtain’s collapse. It was a moment seared into his consciousness. From the early 2000s, the US has gradually pushed its military and political influence further and further into what was traditionally the Russian sphere. Look on a map, think of where the American military has a presence, and you will begin to understand Russian (well, Putin’s) paranoia.
Putin doesn’t necessarily like Trump but he sees someone who’s a tool. Trump probably has financial ties that leave him personally indebted to Putin for one thing, but for another, Trump probably has no appreciation for the institutions that support American power. Trump doesn’t understand the value of the UN, the value of NATO, and the value of the EU to America. Hillary Clinton did see the value in these institutions. Clinton believed it was necessary to control Putin, to punish and sanction his regime. Trump really doesn’t see the value in that at all. If you’re Putin, Trump and the GOP are perfect bedfellow. They’re more concerned with just winning domestic elections and really don’t care what dictators like Putin, Duterte, Erdogan, and others do.
Putin was probably initially satisfied with simply sending a message to the US: We could infiltrate the US power grid, voting booths, and NYSE if we really, really wanted to inflict damage, but we’re nice guys so we’re just flexing muscle here. However, I think Putin has been successful beyond his wildest dreams. He now has a chance to deliver a devastating blow to American power globally in next year’s elections, so my though is, what would keep him from doing that? Nothing. I fully expect election chaos next year. Putin has America on the ropes. There’s no way he lets this chance go by.
…in both senses of the word.
A country with a history of nefarious deeds and a potus that is bat shit crazy unpredictable must have Putin in great fear. Ya happy now Putin?
For Putin, there’s an opportunity to sow chaos next November. Connect the dots. It’s not just the Trump administration that’s lawless; there are clearly people in the Republican party who are either trying to hide their own conduct or are simply concerned that more Mueller bombshells are going to destroy the party’s reputation irreparably - a very possible, if not inevitable, outcome at this point. So if you’re Trump and the bat shit, traitorous wing of the Republican party, what would you do? Just let the chips fall where they may and call it a teachable moment going forward? We’re talking about a presidential administration and one of the country’s two major parties - which just so happens to have gerrymandered its way to political dominance - committing potentially some of the most egregious criminal deeds and political sins imaginable. If unmistakable proof of these acts are produced in a court of law or even just distributed to the free press, it could drive them into political extinction and even land them in jail for decades perhaps in some cases. For them, there’s no turning back now. They’re like bank robbers who came for a sack of gold but now realized they’ve just shot a hostage - they’re in deep and desperate to get out. And they will do anything to get out. Anything. They’ve already made it clear through their actions that they don’t care about the law or the political process - they feel entitled to power and legitimacy that the usual channels won’t provide them. So they’re going to try to crush the system. Putin sees this. Putin can hand them the weapon to do it, too. Yesterday’s warning about State Department “meddling” in the Navalny case wasn’t just a protest - it was also quite possibly a pretext.
Now why would Putin seek to actually intervene in an election?
Well imagine it’s November and Democrats are leading in the polls - which seems a very likely scenario at the moment. Putin knows that email hacks and Internet trolls probably aren’t going to work as well as they did in 2016. We’ve already seen that on the game film. Most voters, internet companies, and law enforcement officials will be ready for it. What we probably won’t be ready for, though, is a massive attack on voting stations in key states. We will say we’re ready, but we won’t be. Putin’s Russia already knows the weaknesses in the system and there are too many holes to fill. They don’t necessarily have to attack key states or districts. If they just attack the infrastructure with great enough force, it would wreak havoc in the days leading up to and on election night. The Russians don’t even have to go too far with it either. If there’s evidence of voting stations disabled and other irregularities, the election results will either be legitimately invalidated – or just as bad, perceived to be so even if in fact they are not.
There are different possible outcomes. Maybe some precincts simply can’t hold valid elections at all. Maybe others can but outages and irregularities cause delays, long lines, confusion, and tensions at voting stations. Perhaps a Republican incumbent thought to be “safe” inexplicably loses to a Democrat in Oklahoma, or a Democrat loses a safe district to a Republican in New York City. They wouldn’t necessarily have to lose either for the concerns and shock to set in - reports of missing votes would probably do the trick. What results is that neither side can be sure of the result. People lose faith and confidence in the election system, which is probably the most important institution in a democracy like ours. In that event, Democrats would insist that they won the election; the Republicans would insist that either they’re wrong or that we can’t know for sure. There would be no easy way out of that crisis because it would be a crisis without precedent. That’s what Putin sees: an opportunity to create a crisis in America so that America spends more time fighting itself, and less fighting what we consider to be our foreign adversaries. How did Putin take Crimea? By exploiting divisions in a country and using that to create a crisis. He’s already doing this across Europe as well. Putin has been at war with the US for a few years now. Bush didn’t realize it. Obama realized it but too late, and when he did, he had no answers. Clinton realized it and wanted to fight back, which of course made Putin only more determined to hit us with greater force. Trump may or may not realize that Putin’s at war with us, but he (and the GOP) apparently don’t care because he’s giving them what they want, which is power they’re not really entitled to. He used our elections against us in 2016 but was careful to do so as more of a warning of what could happen, assuming all along that he would have to deal with Hillary Clinton. When Trump won, though, it changed the dynamic considerably. “Going too far” has a different meaning in the Trump era. There’s more room for Putin to sprawl his legs out in his chair, more tolerance by the United States. Expect more bad behavior, and expect Putin now to see what he can get away with. But more than that, understand that there are mutual interests between the plutocatic criminal enterprise of the GOP and Putin’s Russia. Neither of them wants a truly democratic outcome next year.
I think you all are reading too much into this. The fact is, Trump is very popular among Republicans. They are protecting their power by pandering to their base and by protecting Trump.
http://amp.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/article191857354.html
hacked DNC on Kremlin’s orders and can prove it
Not too sure how “I put my passport # in a .dat file” = “this proves the KGB ordered me to do this”, to be honest.
I don’t know about how to prove that the Kremlin was behind it but I’d guess a good first step is proving that he’s personally responsible for some hacking (and not aChina or a 400 lb guy in his mom’s basement).
Just admitting that Russia was behind the hacks is something that the Trumpers have been loathe to do, so him proving his involvement is at least a piece of the puzzle.
Right, but that wasn’t quite my point, which might be better stated as “why would ONLY Russians be putting money into American politics?” Or alternatively “are we sure it IS only Russians putting money into American politics?”
If it works for the Russians, it could work for anybody. At the moment the investigation is finding Russians only because it started with Trump, who has Russian ties. What would it find if the investigation started somewhere else?
Interesting interview with the Times tonight. Reads like the ramblings of a lunatic. But, rest assured, in Trump’s world, “there is absolutely no collusion, that’s been proven by every Democrat is saying it” and "There is no collusion, and even if there was, it’s not a crime. But there’s no collusion. "
Also, “I have absolute right to do what I want to do with the Justice Department.” is a troubling quote.
There has always been meddling in other people’s elections. America’s meddled in the elections of other countries (more than 50 times since the 1940s if memory serves me correctly), and we’ve had it done to us a few notable times as well - once during the campaign of 1968 and it probably happened again during the election of 1980 (though there’s less proof). Interesting read on Politico if you’ve got the time:
What we’re talking about in the case of Russia is not necessarily a foreign government buying US officials, although it’s certainly within the realm of possibility. To clarify, it does seems likely that Putin has some degree of financial leverage over Donald Trump, but that has a lot to do with the nature of this particular candidate, having been an aggressive businessman who generates cash flow but who also has mountains of unpaid debt.
Putin might be able to buy officials, but as you say, probably anyone could at least attempt to do that, and some might succeed, if they haven’t already. There have been suspicions of China having done this over the years though I’m not aware of any proof.
What Russia is doing right now is going well beyond that. Putin is essentially waging another “cold” war on the United States. He really doesn’t care about buying people - because that would be participating in our political system. He doesn’t want to participate in our political system; he wants to disrupt it. He doesn’t necessarily like the Republican party and in fact George W Bush’s actions were a major source of tension late in Bush’s term. But in 2016 - and arguably even now - he sees a different kind of Republican party. A few years ago he saw the Republican party as the regime change party, the neo-con party. Now he sees a Republican party that is authoritarian, anti-truth, and easily corrupted. More than that, he sees potentially violent divisions in this country that could be exploited. Putin’s end game is to have an America that ends up fighting itself.