The CIA told the Gang of Eight in *late August* that Russia was trying to help Trump, per NYT. https://t.co/vLoeeH1Hiz pic.twitter.com/AAzrwBpD6X
— Eric Geller (@ericgeller) April 6, 2017
GOP congressional leaders were keeping Russia evidence under wraps during the campaign https://t.co/wqPBkbsFas
— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) April 6, 2017
2: for months of Russian efforts to help elect Trump. The FBI seems to have been conspicuously slow to address these concerns. And there …
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) April 6, 2017
4: send his highly damaging letter about Secy Clinton, which proved to be based on nothing, only days before the election.
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) April 6, 2017
7: We should not assume malign motives on the FBI's part. Nor should we ignore the inherent and profound challenges of investigating and …
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) April 6, 2017
9: and inaction deserve scrutiny and require explanation, as Reid made clear in late October.
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) April 6, 2017
Gorsuch was the spoils of a determined effort to let Russian sabotage of the Clinton campaign continue unabated. https://t.co/VD5UKepi8X pic.twitter.com/mSDm82CGgg
— Brian Beutler (@brianbeutler) April 8, 2017
The entire GOP leadership was willing to sell out the country to a foreign power, in return for their own petty perks and prerogatives. We’re past kleptocracy and into kakistocracy, and Donald Trump is the perfect figurehead for the band of hypocritical traitors that put him into the Oval Office.
Baud
Yet we’re supposed to help them pass horrible legislation. It’s truly amazing what people believe.
frosty
What a fine and uplifting thing to read as I head upstairs to finish my taxes and pay these fuckers salaries.
lollipopguild
@Baud: People have become extremly good at seeing/believing only what they what to see/hear, anything outside of what they like/want is simply ignored. We have people in the GOP who want Putin running our country for us but feel they are the REAL Americans.
Mnemosyne
The FBI is really at the center of this story. WTF is/was up there? There is something very rotten at the heart of that organization. And now it makes me put my tinfoil hat on and start wondering about, say, the friend of the Tsarnaevs who was “accidentally” killed by an FBI agent during interrogation. Were there FSB (formerly KGB) ties there that the FBI didn’t want exposed?
@frosty:
We got really good news this year — not only are we getting a refund, but our accountant messed up our 2015 taxes, so we’re now owed a refund for that. I’m going to do my best for 2017 to cut my tax bill to the bone since I don’t want my hard-earned money going to pay for Trump to live in goddamned Florida.
schrodingers_cat
We are living under the regime of the Rich People’s Party, put in power by a foreign country.
1. The person who got the second highest # of votes is the President
2. Rs stole Merrick Garland’s seat
3. Did more people vote D but did Rs win more seats because of their gerrymandering, voter ID and other shenanigans?*
4. The R party treated the Democratic President with contempt in words and in action
I call it an occupation because democracy needs the consent of the governed.
* I know that happened in 2012, but haven’t seen the numbers for 2016.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat: The Republicans got more votes than Dems in House races. But not clear how much gerrymandering depressed D turnout.
Yarrow
They knew. The entire Republican senior leadership knew. They are traitors.
Oldgold
Is McConnell shrewder than his Democratic counterparts, more cynical, or both?
Does McConnell ever worry in the chilled darkness of his thoughts how history will treat him?
I find his measured demeanor in the service of darkness very unnerving. I prefer bombastic bad men. They are easier to identify and deal with.
mai naem mobile
I genreally don’t like to wish for bad stuff to happen to people because I just think it’s not right and ,also, bad karma but I just wish really bad stuff to happen to hear people. Mitch McConnell for examole deserves an old fashioned slow lynching involving a hot summer day and big army ants.
Mary
This is what bugs me about the whole Russia thing. It’s not so much that Russia did it – as so many people like to point out, the U.S. has done the same thing and worse in other countries. The outrage is that so many Americans – particularly policy makers – happily went along with it because it served their preferred outcome. Assholes.
schrodingers_cat
@Yarrow: Didn’t some dead British person say that Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel?
debbie
All eight, plus Trump and Pence, should be put on trial. They, by intent or neglect, allowed for the subversion of democracy.
NotMax
@Oldgold
Obligatory?
Yarrow
@schrodingers_cat: Yes. Samuel Johnson. Supposedly referring to false patriotism.
Yarrow
@Oldgold: Both. McConnell will stop at nothing to get what he wants. He uses the Senate rules to further his own ends and the ends justify the means.
He’s hiding things, though. Something made him go from “no investigations into Russia” to “Okay, we’ll have investigations” and his face, body language and tone of voice were that of someone being forced to do so. I don’t know what they’ve got on him, but it’s big enough to scare him. Whatever that is needs to come to light.
Villago Delenda Est
McConnell is a traitor. No two ways about it.
Villago Delenda Est
@mai naem mobile: We’ll have to find an apple tree sour enough. No easy task.
eemom
Here is an interesting angle…..may have been linked here already.
Note the point about Jared’s and Ivanka’s security clearances….as though that weren’t enough of an outrage already.
Stan
So this needs to be leveraged in the nrext Senate election cycle.
MisterForkbeard
@lollipopguild: There’s a big push on /r/The_Donald right now to “Ignore all this made up stuff about russians and focus on getting justice for the DNC staffer Seth Rich that Hillary murdered.”
And they mean it, too. They’re convinced that a conspiracy theory with literally no evidence is true and they’re heroes for talking about it, and simultaneously that all of these well-documented russian connections are just made up by Democrats and the media. I don’t think you CAN reach these people.
James E Powell
Sadly, this has become no more than a story, no more than another thing Democrats or, as the press/media prefer, “some on the left” talk about. Not one of the Beltway courtiers cares to know any more about this.
Quinerly
I’m with frosty re his comment about “uplifting.” My anger was a bit better today…getting my little courtyard and second floor porch in order. Still feel like crap from this lingering sinus crap. Put up my new Tibetan prayer flags that make me smile when I’m down and out. Need to go back out and commune with them and stay off these threads and away from the cable news ?. My rage starts. I have convinced myself we will be in a war (or 3) by the summer. BTW, Amazon has a great selection of prayer flags. I put strings and strings of them up every two years. New neighbors a couple of years ago asked me why I had so many tea towels and why I hung them out. Southern Illinois couple who quickly moved in and out of our Bohemian little Soulard.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@MisterForkbeard: is this some inevitable result of to much Ancient Aliens and other BS TV shows?
ThresherK
Hold on! Late reports from NPR say that Dems have already lost this issue because of optics and messaging, and Politico confirms.
Yarrow
@James E Powell: When the investigations start leading to charges then the media will care. It’s coming.
Mike in NC
@Mnemosyne: Something tells me that Mar-A-Lago will soon be getting a yoooouuuge taxpayer funded makeover, while Camp David will be declared surplus property and sold to some Chinese golf course developer.
Quinerly
@Yarrow:
#25. That’s what I keep telling myself. But so much damage is being done and will be done in the interim.
SFAW
As an enemy of the USA, McConnell should undergo rendition to somewhere appropriate, and enhanced interrogation techniques utilized to determine what other crimes against America he is plotting or contemplating. The interrogation should be done ASAP, as “time is of the essence.” Perhaps his interrogators can apply techniques learned from Jack Bauer.
patrick II
Speak for yourself.
Quinerly
@Mike in NC:
The new helipad at Mar-a-Lago for Marine One has been completed. Trump’s private helicopter landed there this weekend.
Baud
@Quinerly: We can’t do much about interim damage, except to try to minimize it as much as possible.
Adam L Silverman
@debbie: Four of the Gang of Eight are Democrats. The Gang of Eight are each party’s leaders in each chamber and the chair and vice chair/ranking member of each chamber’s intelligence committee.
hovercraft
@Baud:
Who’s to say what we’re supposed to do, the GOP is supposed to do stuff as a responsible party and yet they never do. Fuck supposed to, and the people telling us that we have to do this or that. The Overton Window has shifted so far off the map that Twitler is being normalized by a large segment of the population and the media. If we keep doing what they say we’re supposed to do, they will complete their destruction of the country. They’ve succeeded in destroying our infrastructure by refusing to raise the gas tax to pay for basic maintenance let alone repairs. They’ve destroyed our education system by demonizing teachers, and publishing bullshit textbooks full of crap, questioning science and history. They’ve dismantled the unions driving down wages. The country stood silent as wages were stagnant and Wall Street created ever more innovative ways for us to fill the gap between wages and inflation by eating away at what little savings we had. Junk mortgages, home equity loans, reverse mortgages, soon we won’t have anything left at all. They’re just itching to get their hands on the last thing we have left, Social Security, they’ve already all but eliminated our pensions, soon we truly will have absolutely nothing.
No more, as we just saw, they are incapable of compromise, so we should let them do what they will, do not go along to get along, fight everything tooth and nail and let them own the failure, for they will fail, because they are incapable of running anything other a campaign.
Fuck “supposed”, and anybody spouting that bullshit. They were supposed to be loyal to this country, but their not, they’re only loyal to their money men and their own power. Oh and this hard on the media has for war is also bullshit, for 8 years we had to shut up and sing, or we were traitors, then for 8 years they got to shit on Obama and everything he did, now were suddenly “supposed ” to shut up or we’re traitors again? Fuck that shit. No more, we fight, we must fight them at every turn.
Yarrow
@Quinerly: When the depth of it comes out I wonder if there will be calls to roll back some of the damage. Like removing Gorsuch. Nominated by a president who won due to collusion with our enemies, confirmed by a Congress aided by similar election fraud.
Has Adam done his “penetration at all levels” post yet? If so I missed it, but the Russian involvement at all levels in our government, media and so forth is going to be eye-popping for the average American. It is the biggest scandal our country has experienced.
Baud
@hovercraft: Sing it, sister!
SFAW
@hovercraft:
Righteous rant.
Adam L Silverman
@eemom: Neither surprising, nor a complete secret. As Putin was coming to national power under Yeltsin, the emerging Russian policy was that the Jewish refuseniks could leave to go to Israel or the US, but… But whoever the Russian government said was Jewish was Jewish. As a result they emptied out the prisons and, at the same time, sent tendrils of Russian organized crime out to do mischief. The North-South transit way for women sex workers runs from Russia to Israel. It is a long rumored belief that Avigdor Lieberman is the Bratva’s Israeli krysha (roof) and part of his job has been to suborn Israeli policy and actions in line with Putin’s goals. Chekists gonna chekist.
Yarrow
@Adam L Silverman: Adam, thanks for your long response to my comment in the late night thread last night. I fell asleep and didn’t see it until this morning. This conclusion of your was sobering:
Our media loves those bombs, but without strategy and a plan it’s nothing but expensive fireworks.
Adam L Silverman
@Yarrow: I haven’t, been a bit busy. The only way to remove Associate Justice Gorsuch will be via impeachment. Starts in the House, trial in the Senate, overseen by the Supreme Court.
Tilda Swintons Bald Cap
@Yarrow: He’s tainted. if the Dems gain power the deal is; Gorsuch resigns because he was appointed by a traitor, or they add two justices.
Adam L Silverman
@Yarrow: You’re welcome. I’m somewhere between professionally furious and disgusted.
Baud
@Adam L Silverman:
Not true.
trollhattan
@Oldgold:
Watching Turtle in 2014, sitting blankly as Alison Lundergan Grimes absolutely shredded him at that barn thing they do in Kentucky, no emotion, seemingly unmoved, but probably comfortable in the knowledge his state of morons would be sending him back, told a lot about his psychology. He simply doesn’t care about anything but winning and like a psychotic poker player, you require a really lucky draw to beat him. Fucker keeps winning and winning is its own reward. Getting the spouse out of the house with a Trump job is a bonus.
trollhattan
[whoops, forbidden word]
Watching Turtle in 2014, sitting blankly as Alison Lundergan Grimes absolutely shredded him at that barn thing they do in Kentucky, no emotion, seemingly unmoved, but probably comfortable in the knowledge his state of morons would be sending him back, told a lot about his psychology. He simply doesn’t care about anything but winning and like a psychotic [card] player, you require a really lucky draw to beat him. Fucker keeps winning and winning is its own reward. Getting the spouse out of the house with a Trump job is a bonus.
Jeffro
@Adam L Silverman: I know those 4 Dems are career politicians like the rest of ’em, and it’s a stretch to think that they would jump on a grenade (by going public and sounding the alarm, even if it mean violating their security/secrecy obligations).
It’s also tough because I’m sure they thought that both a) the FBI would do its job, b) that at some point, the Republicans would put country ahead of party, and c) that it just seemed inconceivable that Trump would win. I still think Comey dropped his infamous letter to try and keep Hillz’ margins down (and possibly keep her from having a Dem Congress to work with), not to put Trump in office.
Well, now we know what that all got us…
debbie
@Adam L Silverman:
Adam, I know that of course. The four Democrats, as much as the four Republicans, had a duty not to let the election be suborned. They all took oaths, which they violated by their inaction.
SFAW
@Adam L Silverman:
I’m guessing that the Dems had faith in “the system,” and that Comey wouldn’t pull his letter bullshit, and that the Party of Treasonous Motherfuckers would not actually act like treasonous motherfuckers. Harry Reid should have known better, of course, given Treasonous McTurtle’s antics since a blackity-black black man became President, and should have dropped a dime on the whole deal. On the other hand, blaming the victim is not something I cotton to.
Quasi-Disclaimer: Yes, I realize that “treason” and “traitor” have specific legal definitions which may not be applicable in the case(s) of McConnell and the other leaders from the Party of Treasonous Motherfuckers. But I think they should be made to prove that they haven’t been, and prove that they aren’t continuing to do so.
ETA: And Jeffro types (and probably thinks) faster than I do.
Yarrow
@Adam L Silverman: As Tilda Swintons Bald Cap points out, Gorsuch can also resign. It depends how this goes. If the Russian stuff picks up steam and everything about Trump is called into question and the election manipulation is shown for what it is, we don’t really know what will happen next. As you have said, we’re in a constitutional crisis and where we go from here, who knows.
@Adam L Silverman:
I can only imagine.
Top to bottom, this administration is dangerous and awful. Plus, just so embarrassing. Like Jared Kushner’s “oops” in omitting that Russian contact from his security clearance forms. Anyone else would have his clearance pulled immediately and probably lose his position. Maybe be investigated. But Kushner….just “it was an oversight” and nothing happens. Dangerous, awful and such an embarrassment. We’re a banana republic.
mainmata
Once this all comes out – if it comes out – Democrats should call for McConnell to be tried for treason. Won’t happen but the bastard should be made to pay for anti-American behavior including sabotaging the nation’s post 2008-crash recovery in order to screw Obama.
BlueDWarrior
@SFAW: the under-griding too all of this is that 40% of the voting public have twisted themselves so much, they reason us to be the traitors, and will break themselves to enable these assholes.
Until our side is properly galvanized to fight them down to the state legislative level, we will be having this issue. Hopefully that is now starting to change.
Baud
@BlueDWarrior: Agreed.
mainmata
@Mnemosyne: Right around the election there were a number of stories about the NY FBI Office, particularly it being a hotbed of hatred for HRC. Apparently, they were putting a lot of pressure on Comey to make these investigation announcements and he, being a weak GOP partisan, rose to the bait. Basically, there’s something rotten in the NY office but I don’t know much more.
Chris
@Mnemosyne:
The FBI was founded, and for its first forty years of existence, run as J. Edgar Hoover’s personal task force. So nothing Comey did last summer is exactly out of sync with the Bureau’s history. The main takeaway from 2016, for me, is simply that the FBI has never stopped being what Hoover founded it as, and in some ways has gotten worse.
JPL
@Chris: I agree.
Ruckus
@hovercraft:
I think you’ve covered it completely.
Your comment should be a front page post. It needs nothing to be added, just your comment by itself. The only thing I wish is that I’d typed it myself. But that’s OK with me that I didn’t, you did it far better.
Jeffro
@SFAW:
It’s just faster typing, is all. =)
Quite a few of us are on the same page here – it’s heartening.
lollipopguild
@Jeffro: Hovercraft nails it.
Ruckus
@Chris:
Exactly.
And probably like all police departments there are good people there. But also as it has always been, there are probably more there for their own careers than any other reason.
Chris
@MisterForkbeard:
They’ve lived for twenty years now in a Newcorp created bubble whose main shtick is telling them “the lamestream media is lying to you and hiding the truth to you, they only report on things that make conservatives look bad, and they conceal the truth about their politicians!” At this point, it’s freaking Pavlovian for conservatives, when someone points out a crime committed by one of theirs, to immediately default to the “but what about [insert liberal supposed crime that most of the time either didn’t happen or isn’t in fact comparable].”
And the lamestream media, of course, is happy to play along.
NotMax
@Chris
Hoover did not found the bureau. It was originally created in 1908 by the liberal progressive grandnephew of Napoleon. Brief history of the agency.
Jeffro
@lollipopguild: See #55 above.
SgrAstar
Hovercraft FTW. Bravo.
Lurking Canadian
This whole thing is so messed up. On the one hand, I’m just livid. The US is a representative democracy. There is only one chance in four years for The People to have a say in who the president is. It seems absolutely vital that they have all available information about the candidates so they can choose properly. It further seems that “The Russians are trying to elect this guy” might be information the public could have found useful before the election.
On the other hand, unless they can prove Trump (or Trump’s people) were in on it…it is kind of a prejudicial rumor to start before the election. I think Obama might have done the right thing not to go public, but I am not sure.
I am sure Comey did the wrong thing, and McConnell is the devil, but beyond that…what a mess
Chris
@NotMax:
As the BOI, yes. Changed into the FBI later on, when J. Edgar had been in charge for a few years already, which is what I was referring to. But yeah, I’m willing to concede that that wasn’t an especially substantive change.
The point remains that for nearly fifty years, J. Edgar Hoover was the man controlling the Bureau, and he was as close to unaccountable as it’s possible to be in our system (several presidents seriously considered firing him, all of them concluded that the political cost would be too high). That means that for about half a century, his word was effectively law. Think about how much that goes towards shaping institutional culture. Even after he was fired, you still had an organization where every agent, analyst, bureaucrat, administrator, hired within the last fifty years was someone who’d been socialized to view the way he wielded the bureau as “normal” – and to the best of my knowledge. How do you clean that up? To the best of my knowledge, not much was even tried in that department – we limited directors’ terms to ten years, but that was it.
Chris
@Lurking Canadian:
I’d actually understand that, if Comey hadn’t broken protocol and rules for the other candidate in the running, whose suspected “crimes” were… not on the order of “colluding with America’s most powerful foreign adversary.”
Lurking Canadian
@Chris: Agreed. I’m not sure what Obama should have done. But I am damned sure that once the decision was made not to go public on the Russian stuff, Comey should absolutely have kept his mouth shut about Weiner’s fucking email cache.
A policy of “we don’t comment about ongoing investigations of candidates” is defensible, if not obviously correct. A policy of “we don’t comment about ongoing investigations of candidates unless we really hate her is utterly inexcusable.
Ruckus
@Lurking Canadian:
It is supposed to be. Right now, no it isn’t.
Now if the understanding about a representative democracy was that it represented land then yes, it still is. Someone pointed out the other day that if a representative had approximately the same number of constituents throughout the states, we’d have over 700 members of the house. And we’d have an electoral college that actually represented the people. Or we’d do away with the electoral college completely.
We are trying to run a representative democracy based upon thinking from the late 18th century, when the population was less than 4 million, and it isn’t working all that well anymore with a population of over 310 million that is not anywhere near evenly dispersed, which our land/state based system requires to operate reasonably.
The Lorax
@ThresherK:
We would be so much better as a nation if Politico and NPR News vanished and any trace of their prior existence was erased.
Debbie1
@schrodingers_cat: Since we’re handing out trophies, let’s not forget the American media for their willingness to resurrect all the 1990s Anti-Clinton rancor, and our dear citizens for their own willingness to run, not walk, to slaughter. Interference by Russia or not, the outcome of the election should never have been that close. The voters knew they were voting for their healthcare to be stripped, for their neighbors to be deported, for regulations to be unreasonably loosened and for even more power to be placed at the hands of corporations. Yet, some of these voters spent weeks, if not months, sleeping outdoors to fight the banks and the 1% couldn’t be bothered to vote against the candidate who represented the 1% and boasted about paying no taxes.
Davis X. Machina
You don’t understand the pressure the GOP was under. Or how high the stakes were.
The. Bitch. Was. Going. To. Win
Desperate times, desperate measures.
Salus populi, suprema lex.
By any means necessary, etc, etc.
efgoldman
@Ruckus:
I don’t think we want a congress like the NH legislature (400 reps for 1.3 million people), but keeping congress at 435 does dilute the power of the more populous states in a way the founders never intended. It won’t change as long as the Republiklowns, who represent all those empty acres, are no longer in the majority.
Mnemosyne
@Debbie1:
Yep. As I’ve said before, I’ve started telling those people, “You said you wanted anyone but Hillary, and you got exactly what you wanted. Congratulations.”
Ohio Mom
Back to gerrymandering: I can’t speak to any district but my own but yes, we are gerrymandered but good.
First, a number of years ago, the City of Cincinnati, a Democratic stronghold, was split into two Congressional Districts, OH 1 and 2. Each half is now attached to large rural areas and as a result, instead of sending a Democrat to Congress, we now send two of the worse kind of Republicans (remember Mean Jean Schmidt?)
Then, more recently, we had a Democratic state rep, a woman and a veteran, who was aiming to run for the Second District. She’s on the conservative side and a very, very hard worker. The fact that she managed to get elected and then reelected to Columbus really says a lot.
It was so clear that she had a shot that the Republicans in Columbus redrew the Second District to exclude her home! That was the end of that. It would be very hard to unseat the current OH 1 Congressman.
Finally, since then we now have a mysterious fellow a couple of counties over in the rural part of the First District who claims he is a Democrat and always runs in the primaries.
His name is William Smith, he is a retired truck driver and he never leaves his front porch.
I’m serious. Every two years, the Cincinnati paper sends a reporter to that porch for an interview, where Mr. Smith goes on about how he thinks Washington needs someone who isn’t a professional politician.
I don’t know what it is — surely with a name like “William Smith” he has great name recognition — maybe Republicans are registering as Democrats for the primary? — but he wins the primary and doesn’t do anything else, ensuring that Ohio’s Second District continues to send a Republican to Congress.
It is hard for me to imagine what it will take to flip that seat.
lollipopguild
@Davis X. Machina: You win the Thread. In their minds Hildebeast winning meant the END for them and everything they hold dear-lying- stealing- screwing over everyone that they hate. She HAD to lose. They sold themselves for 30 pieces of silver. Karma can be a bitch. SAD!
Gvg
The problem for the 4 democrats on the gang of 8 going public without any republican’s backing them, I calculate it would be seen as partisan and backfire to gain some trump support and make it harder to be believed when their was harder evidence. I think the reason for the conventions that investigations and allegations aren’t announced too close to elections is hard won experience that people don’t believe unless it’s to their benefit to believe. At that time everything gets emotional. I imagine that was a sick feeling to deciding to stay quite. With republican support it could have happened. Without I think it was hopeless.
In fact this may be why there was no republican support. Their emotions were involved in not believing.
However I have been stunned at HOW MANY Russian connections there are all over the country especially republicans. I hope there aren’t many among the democrats. We have historically been more vulnerable to accusations of being communists etc so I have some hope we ran away from snares but being shown how pervasive it is is scaring me.
rikyrah
@hovercraft:
Amen
Ruckus
@efgoldman:
Well of course NH is somewhat broken but having that many reps does limit the power of any one of them. And that is what having 700 reps would do, limit the power of those from states that have little in the way of population or have gerrymandered their populations.
I believe the entire mess starts off, “We the People…….” and it really isn’t that at all.
dopey-o
@Quinerly:Your estwhile neighbors moved to “Bohemian Soulard?” Do you mean the Soulard that is full of gays and lesbians and dog parades and blues singers and all-night parties? Apparently they only visited there in a blackout drunk. As I have done many times.
catclub
@schrodingers_cat:
And Ambrose Bierce said/wrote: something about gainsaying a superior lexicographer, then “I daresay it is the first”.
hedgehog mobile
@hovercraft: Preach.
Daddio7
Funny how in a city that has more leaks than the Titanic not a single word of evidence has been leaked. You say there were phone conversations recorded, how about a transcript.