I think whether the Obama administration should have revealed the extent and intent of Russian meddling prior to the election is a legit question. But not from this fucking guy:
Good Christ. What we have here, fellow citizens, is a creature utterly devoid of any beliefs, strategy or principles — just a dim, gelatinous hairball lashing out at anything that threatens his extra-dainty, super-fragile ego.
And the biggest threat to Trump’s self-regard is the very existence of Barack Obama, a man who is effortlessly and obviously Trump’s superior in every conceivable way. That drives Trump batshit crazy.
Trump will do anything to ameliorate the threat to his self-esteem — anything to obliterate his better’s accomplishments. Wreck the healthcare system. Throw the immigration process into turmoil. Screw his own base. Sow chaos in congress. Toss his subordinates under the bus. Undercut his own messaging strategies.
Nothing is too nonsensical, self-destructive or reckless. Buckle up.
Hunter Gathers
LOLNothingMatters
BBA
It’s kayfabe. Everything is kayfabe.
David Anderson
Most interesting is that he admits there is Russian election meddling….
Ruckus
If drumpf didn’t have those traits, he’d have nothing at all.
El Caganer
So much winning!
Ruckus
@David Anderson:
I’d say (and have many times) he’s none to bright.
El Caganer
I really prefer his ramblings; they sound kind of like computer-generated poetry if you gave the computer the vocabulary of a five-year-old. The self-pitying shit is just annoying, though.
bystander
Your list left out: Betray his country.
Keith P.
Plus, Obama now has the time to work on his golf game. How funny would it be for Obama to take Trump up on his challenge…and kick his ass (or DQ him for catching him cheating)
Hal
This must drive him crazy. Russia’s meddling in the election is undeniable, and now he’s fully admitting to it. One more challenge to the legitimacy of his shitty presidency.
And really. Who would have changed their minds vote wise if Obama has said anything? People who think Obama wasn’t going to give up the Presidency in November would not have been swayed. Scratch the Berners who still insist HRC stole the primaries. Obama would have been portrayed as trying to steal an election for Hillary and anyone who says they would have changed their vote is full of shit.
tpherald
Perhaps Trump should ask Mr. McConnell and Mr. Ryan why Obama didn’t act sooner since they threatened him that they would claim it was a partisan attack that they didn’t believe the Russians were involved.
tpherald
Is there a hashtag for #NoLongerFakeNews when Trump changes his mind like this, whereas once-upon-a-time Russian election interference was treated as #FakeNews by POTUS*
BBA
@Keith P.:
Kay
Oh, maybe it’s good Betty. If it’s Obama’s fault media will cover it. After the election they all directed us to move on and never ask about it again so this is good, that they’re finally interested in it. I heard Andrea Mitchell insisting it was covered as a national security issue – she pointed to a single piece from October of 2017. Yeah, that’s blanket coverage there, Andrea.
We already know Trump benefited from it and Russia intended for him to benefit from it. Now we just have to find out Trump’s role in it. Eventually we’ll find out. Investigations end at some point and the Trump people can’t stonewall forever.
I thought this was interesting:
Texans don’t much like Trump. Good for them. I wonder why not, though? I don’t know anything about the state but I wouldn’t have guessed that.
Spanky
@BBA: Wasn’t that Goldfinger vs Bond? An apt analogy, as a matter of fact.
Applejinx
What the actual fuck.
JPL
You missed some tweets.. Obama didn’t fix it, because he didn’t want to hurt Hillary. I won’t go on his feed, so found it here..
https://twitter.com/RealPressSecBot
Spanky
@Kay:
All hat, no covfefe.
Kay
@Applejinx:
They’re covering the Russia story from the angle of “why didn’t Obama prevent Trump from colluding with Russia to intercede in a US election?”
Tell me you’re surprised. I’m not. Oh, well, there are no bad questions! At least they finally asked a question! We’re making huge progress. Next we’ll find out what Russia DID in the election. A year after they did it. No rush!
JPL
@JPL: If someone wants, they can go on the one who won’t be mentioned feed,and copy and paste it.
BBA
@Kay:
My guess: blustering and blathering, but no actual substance. (Like the rest of his career.) He’ll get off scot-free.
Kay
@Spanky:
I have only been to Austin so I feel I can’t even hazard a guess.
pat
I’m trying to imagine the uproar if the Obama administration had actually brought this out in the open with what they knew then, and with McConnell already threatening to make it a political issue. And don’t forget that trump was already bloviating about a rigged election. I honestly thing they, as well as I, expected Hillary to win and did not want to throw this stink-bomb into the election.
schrodingers_cat
@Kay: Probably not huge fans of the “wall”.
Mnemosyne
@Kay:
And this is going to be Trump’s next self-defense: It’s not my fault Obama let me steal the election!
Unfortunately, there are still plenty of Obama-haters across the whole political spectrum who will be happy to let Trump change the subject that way.
MattF
Exhibit 33 in the Museum of Psychopathology is a diorama showing Trump peeking into the Obamas’ bedroom window. Sad.
smintheus
We used to joke that Obama should do the country a favor by publicly advocating that Republicans breathe air. Now we realize that what Obama really needed to do was get legislation passed requiring Republicans to breathe. Repeal and replace would be just around the corner.
Greenergood
@bystander: Trump doesn’t have loyalty to ANY country – he has loyalty only to his businesses that can make him money and the people who facilitate his money-making. He’s interested in Russia just now because Russian banks have boosted him when other banks wouldn’t, but if Russia excused themselves from the contract and another country, sensing an opportunity, stepped in, say, Uzbekistan, Saudi, etc., then the Donald will be their BFF. And he will bedazzle/bewilder the Rethuglicans while he does it – Mr Thick-as-a-brick in terms of the ways that people function normally in an ethically-directed universe, but clever like a rabid, immoral, sociopathic creature.
schrodingers_cat
Speaking of immigration, I just found out from the immigration blog I read that 38 Pakistani doctors who were seeking to do their residencies in the United States have had their exchange scholar visas rejected, this is after the stay on the travel ban.
sharl
@tpherald:
This is where my mind went as well. Given this and the monstrosity of McConnell’s AHCA, it would be appropriate to raise questions about the existence and/or nature of McConnell’s patriotism, and wrap around his neck both the AHCA and his (and Ryan’s) nixing of going public with the Russian interference. He’s earned that kind of response. How one would best go about making that a public campaign is something I don’t have any bright ideas on though.
rikyrah
Nicholas Bagley @nicholas_bagley
“Only 38% of Americans know that the GOP plan makes ‘major reductions’ in Medicaid spending,” writes @ThePlumLineGS.
efgoldman
@Hal:
You and i know that, but he has no fucking idea what he’s doing.
He’s
likea four year old telling an obvious lie, who really believes it! Consequences aren’t foreseeable, or are nonexistent.rikyrah
Once again, I implore the frontpagers to post this video from LarryO, of the mother with the son on Medicaid. Put a human face to the 76 million get Medicaid story.
https://twitter.com/ASlavitt/status/878671479449280513?
schrodingers_cat
@rikyrah: Once again proving the uselessness of media, including the so-called liberal media. I am looking at you, Vichy Times and Pure BullShit Newshour.
efgoldman
@Mnemosyne:
But they don’t work in Mueller’s shop.
D58826
(SIGH) In the last week or so 3 police officers (usually white) have been aquited of killing unarmed black men. THeir defense has been they were in fear of their lives.
Last night in suburban St. Louis
Mnemosyne
@schrodingers_cat:
And Republicans are going to use their manufactured “doctor shortage” as yet another reason why they have to pass AHCA. Win/win! ?
Kay
@BBA:
I never thought he did it. He hires terrible people. I assume they did it.
At this point I don’t care if they successfully prosecute. I’d settle for “what happened”. Some sketchy outline of what happened, even. Apparently something very big and very serious but no one will say more than that. So far we know three things- 1. They wanted Trump to benefit 2. Trump had the opportunity to take advantage of that 3. Trump did benefit. That’s more than enough for an investigation. They’re really only missing one piece. A crucial piece to be sure but still only 1 of 4 necessary elements.
ArchTeryx
You know, I should really, REALLY have known better then to start a contentious thread in LGM. My first post (admittedly out of nowhere) was a suicidal post. The response was snark and sarcasm. That told me most of what I needed to know about the academics (and trolls) there. Seems a great many of them are secure in their tenure, and nothing that happens to the rabble like myself really affects them. IGMFY isn’t just for right wingers.
I worked enough years in academia as the lowest caste to know.
Aleta
He’s pivoting to ‘the Russians interfered to help Hilary, and my historic EC vote was a great great victory for democracy.’ This will be his shriek against calls to remove him.
efgoldman
@Greenergood:
He has no loyalty to anyone or anything – not family, not institutions, not his businesses.
Wait until you see how quickly he dumps Kushkie over the side if the investigators come for him.
Mnemosyne
@D58826:
I was discussing that on Facebook. I agree that the most disturbing part was the cop who came on the scene late and shot the off-duty cop without even checking in with the other officers. WTF?
schrodingers_cat
@Mnemosyne: Actually doctor shortage in rural areas is very real and getting worse due to the immigration policies pursued by T. No doctors, no healthcare, no insurance == MAGA.
efgoldman
@schrodingers_cat:
Actually it’s OK. If the pile of pigshit passes, there won’t be any rural hospitals for those doctors to work in. Another win/win.
rikyrah
which is THE POINT
Opinions
The State Department just broke a promise to minority and female recruits
By Josh Rogin
Global Opinions June 18
Dozens of young minority and female State Department recruits received startling and unwelcome news last week: They would not be able to soon join the Foreign Service despite having been promised that opportunity.
Their saga is just the latest sign that Secretary of State Rex
Tillerson’s rush to slash the size of the State Department without a
plan is harming diplomacy and having negative unintended effects.
The recruits, who are part of the State Department’s Rangel and Pickering fellowship programs, have already completed two years of graduate-level education at U.S. taxpayers’ expense plus an internship, often in a foreign country. The deal they struck with the federal government was that after completing their educations they would be given an inside track to become full-fledged U.S. diplomats abroad if they also satisfied medical and security requirements. In turn, they promised to commit at least five years to the Foreign Service.
These minority and female candidates already went through a competitive application process, meaning they are some of the best and brightest young graduates around.
It also means they have other options. Young stars don’t join the State
Department for the money or the glory; they want to serve and represent their country and are willing to make sacrifices to do it.
Many were shocked when they received a letter telling them they had
one week to decide if they wanted to take a much less appealing job — stamping passports in a foreign embassy for two years — with the
prospect but no guarantee of becoming a Foreign Service officer even
after that.
“This is no way to treat our next generation,” one Foreign Service officer serving overseas told me.
Kay
I bet we’re watching internal finger-pointing and groundwork-laying for shifting blame among the various players so I take it with a grain of salt. Sadly the FBI seem to be very good at working the refs. I wish I didn’t believe that but I do. It will get worse as this goes on but it won’t matter as far as the investigation into Donald Trump and his associates. That’s a different, narrow question.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: I’d like to see a plan for avoiding a re-run in future elections. Doesn’t seem like too much to ask for, a plan for preventing a hostile foreign power from undermining our democracy. Again.
rikyrah
@Kay:
I disagree with you, Kay. He’s up to his neck in personal Russian connections. There are NO SIX DEGREES OF SEPARATION between Russian Mobsters and Putin. Doesn’t exist. They all lead directly to Vladimir. Of course, he’s in on it.
geg6
@MattF:
No, of the Russian hooker peeing incident with a sign “President Obama and Michelle Obama slept here” plaque prominently displayed. A gold plaque, of course. The very best plaque.
schrodingers_cat
@efgoldman: Canadian provinces actively recruit foreign grads of US universities. As for the doctors, their skills I am sure have many takers. They are not going starve because T’s state dept wants to keep them out.
schrodingers_cat
@rikyrah: Isn’t the real estate business in NYC run by Russian mafia, mostly? That’s the connection.
D58826
@rikyrah: The R’s have very successfully hung Nancy P around the next of every D candidate. They have convinced a major portion of the electorate (and that includes way to many D’s) that it was Nancy who single handedly pushed the iceberg in Titanic’s path.
Well now Yurtle has very graciously given the D’s a way to reciprocate. The D’s should spend the next 18 months plastering every flat surface and every TV channel with the images of people in wheel chairs being hauled out of the capital. One of the ironies of those images is of the people in wheel chairs being put in police vans equipped with wheelchair lifts. Lifts that are the result of that terrible federal ADA mandate. The message should be – here are American citizens exercising their 1st amendment rights to be in the building they own and demanding to have a meeting with one of their employees – Mitch McConnell.
We the people OWN that building and every one of the 535 Critters in it work for US. We elect them and we pay their salary. They answer to us. And if Yurtle wants to keep having his bosses hauled out of the capital like common criminals maybe its time he be forced to find a new job. I understand that they need an actor to play the part of the commander at Auschwitz. Seems like a perfect fit.
But not to worry the D’s will spend the next 18 months obsessing over Nancy, bickering over who has the answer – the Bernie Bros or the Hillbots, and why didn’t Obama walk on water.
debbie
@tpherald:
I’d rather Obama make a statement about that. Then see how McConnell and Ryan try and twist their slimy selves out of that.
SiubhanDuinne
You know how black people can call other black people the N-word but white people can’t — or how women can call each other hos, bitches, and broads, but men can’t? At this point, that’s pretty much how I feel about criticizing PBO. If you voted for him, worked for him, then you’ve earned the right to criticize him if you feel he didn’t quite live up to your expectations in one particular instance. But if you’ve always been noisily anti-Obama, then STFU. You never earned that right.
lamh36
this tweet thread:
ArchTeryx
@D58826: But comparing this atrocity of a bill to the Nazi death camps is UNCIVIL! UNCIVIL I tell you!
Betty Cracker
@Hal:
There’s no way of knowing that now. But we have hard data that indicates Comey’s ham-handed interference might have very well cost Clinton the presidency. Not too hard to imagine that a popular out-going president’s warning would have made a difference, not among the Trump freaks, but among people who stayed home because both sides, yada, yada.
I am not at all a fan of Will Saletan, but he’s got a column up at Slate on this question. His take is that PBO is a patriot and handled it as a chief executive with faith in the system would have and that Trump is the one who subsequently betrayed us. Sounds about right to me.
geg6
@rikyrah:
Completely agree. Completely. His panic is the tell.
eclare
@ArchTeryx: Wha…suicidal? What is going on?
Kay
Obama should watch it though. This is a lot like what happened after Bush v Gore. We went from “the Supreme Court just stole an election” to “why didn’t Bill Clinton prevent the Supreme Court from stealing an election?’
Hillary Clinton was actually tasked with the election law that went in after that debacle. I kid you not. George W Bush was the beneficiary and Hillary Clinton cleaned up the mess.
D58826
@Mnemosyne: I’m sure he will be fired for his poor aim. The African-American cop did after all survive. There was a somewhat similar case in WVA. White marine veteran cop and an agitated black man with a weapon. The cop talked him down and was about to wrap the situation up when two other cops showed up. W/O a word they hoped out of the patrol car and shot the black man dead. The white cop was fired for endangering the lives of the two johnny-come-lately cops.
D58826
@ArchTeryx: GOOD! The more uncivil the better. Being the civil adult in the room certainly didn’t get Obama anywhere.
geg6
@lamh36:
Perfect. Every word.
MattF
@Betty Cracker: I’d been a Saletan non-fan for quite a while. But lately Saletan’s been so plainly horrified by Trump’s antics that… well… bygones.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
But that’s the thing. A good faith actor and a bad faith actor and you won’t get a clean result. It reminds me of Gore’s “I accept the SCOTUS ruling”. We were all supposed to be proud of that but the fact is Bush is the only person who benefited.
It didn’t prop up faith in the system at all. It (further) eroded faith in the system. I think it did real lasting damage to the Supreme Court. We got the result he was trying to avoid anyway and we also got Bush.
Avoiding disorder and working so hard to prop up faith seems to be pretty consistently back-firing. By the time we’re finished protecting whatever we think we’re protecting there isn’t going to be anything real left.
kindness
Does Trump’s line of argument work with the Fox crowd? I mean, when they see that do they go ‘Yea Donald tell it!’ or do they scratch their head and wonder what kind of a crazy mofo is that guy anyhow?
D58826
@lamh36:
According to the article one of the reasons he did not go public is he didn’t know what other tools Putin had at his disposal and whither he would use them. Putin may not have had the ability to change individual votes but maybe he could have just crash the entire election.
And why would this information have any impact on people who spent 18 months watching the insane antics of Trump and still voted for him. Heck Russian hack or no Russian hack if Trumps public performance did not convince you that he was temperamentally unfit for the job nothing would. Heck he could have murder a doz. men on time square and then groped as many women who could not outrun him. It would not have changed a single vote.
MattF
OT. World’s Ugliest Dog (NYT)
efgoldman
@rikyrah:
Can’t have smart, dedicated, educated people working in this maladministration. It will skew the curve.
D58826
@Kay: Yep. Being the civil adult in the room seems to normalize the bad behavior of every one else. And you get blamed for not stopping the bad behavior of all the others in the room. Remember it was Obama’s fault that we almost defaulted on our debt because he did have Yurtle and Boner over to the WH often enough.
Mnemosyne
@Betty Cracker:
I agree with the Tweets that lamh36 put in #55. If people couldn’t be arsed to vote even when Obama told them multiple times that it was vitally important, I doubt that saying the Russians were interfering would have made a difference. It would have been dismissed as “playing politics” and “trying to scare people into voting” just like all of his other efforts were.
D58826
@MattF: She isn’t ugly . She just has lots to worry about and it shows up as worry lines. Precious puppy.
efgoldman
@rikyrah:
At the very least, somewhere there’s a loan document he signed that amounts to money laundering.
Gretchen
Chuck Grassley and Lindsey Graham teamed up with two Democrats, writing a letter to the White House and the FBI demanding answers about Jared Kushner’s security clearance. I’m really hoping for the day that Kushner gets questioned by Congress. I don’t think he’s bright enough to keep from tripping himself up, and I think he’s so privileged he doesn’t have experience with anyone questioning anything he’s done, so he’ll get mad. Mad and dumb is a poor combo for being interrogated, when you really have done something wrong.
ArchTeryx
@eclare: This was some time ago, around the time Trump was elected. That’s what made me break my lurking here.. and at LGM. The folks here responded with sympathy and support and a minimum of snarliness. The folks at LGM responded with sarcasm and snark and accused me of being a troll. That left a pretty foul taste in my mouth I won’t soon forget, and probably is why I’m slowly moving into troll territory there.
Now I have a state job (permanent!) as a $29K/year paper pusher. It’s an enormous step upward for me, even as a PhD. It sure as hell beats unemployment and death once the AHCA becomes law.
D58826
@efgoldman: Maybe if they owned some Exxon stock or spent some time in one of Der Fuhrer’s hotels things would have been different.
We are creating our own 4th rate banana republic. At least the third rate banana republics actually produced bananas;
Betty Cracker
@Kay: True. The bottom line for me is we now have a Kremlin stooge in the WH who isn’t going to do shit to protect the integrity of our elections. Any other outcome would have been preferable. But I’m mindful of the fact that no one thought that would happen. Hindsight, etc.
@MattF: Saw that in Cole’s Twitter feed and agree with him: she’s beautiful!
Gretchen
@schrodingers_cat: And if doctors who were already approved and accepted into resisdencies aren’t allowed in, none of those foreign doctors will take a chance on wasting a year by applying to come here next year.
eclare
@ArchTeryx: OK, that wasn’t clear. I’ve followed your story here, and I am so happy that you have medical care. A friend of mine from middle school has Crohn’s. Just wanted to make sure you were ok today, I read your post wrong.
ArchTeryx
@D58826: It didn’t make me any friends at LGM but I ain’t gonna have many of them there anyway. I don’t like tenured professors at all, thanks to dealing with them half my adult life. The hardest core asshole employers I ever had did not come from the famously sociopathic business world – they came from academia.
It damn near turned me into an anti-tenure evangelist, just to expose all those shitheels to the REAL job market rather then their guaranteed ivory tower sinecures.
D58826
@Gretchen: I was a bit surprised by that letter. I guess there area few GOOPERS who under stand that you have to make it LOOK like you are conducting an investigation. The letter on the security clearance won’t have any impact at the WH but Grassly can go on TV, pat himself on the back, and claim that he tried. It’s a low bar to meet but not every one is as stupid as Nunes/Gowdey/Pompeo.
MisterForkbeard
@MattF: The comparison to our current president is kind of fantastic.
Gelfling 545
@efgoldman: My doctor came here from the Phillipines to join her sister who was living here. In her country she was an optomological surgeon. She was admitted when she agreed to take up a residency in primary care medicine, which she did to the benefit of a field that has far too few practitioners. These medical people coming from abroad are keeping our health care system functioning.
D58826
@ArchTeryx: Best to aim one’s UNCIVILTY at a deserving target. And in the case of the GOPERS in Congress it is, as the military says, a target rich environment.
Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)
@ArchTeryx: I feel for you.
Regarding the trolls: My impression is that anti-troll moderation over there is atypically poor – at least compared to BJ. Until about two months ago there was no set policy besides “overt racism/sexism/etc. gets instabanning,” and those who didn’t fall under that category got banned at least a month after it became obvious – it was only last month that they banned two repeat trolls who’d wrecked threads for months (although they are now banning them as soon as they pop up). Their tendency to hijack threaded made them exponentially more awful.
Whereas here on BJ, we have maybe three regular trolls/quasi-trolls: He Who Must Not Be Named, Dwight 72 (who’s less of a dick on LGM) and self-proclaimed “liberal” (who conversely acts even more like a petulant 12-year-old over there than he does here).
Irony Abounds
@David Anderson: Yet Trump will still deny it. Logic escapes the Asshat-in-Chief and the fact that his tweet is a tacit admission of meddling will be lost on him. The fact is America got fucked in November 2016, and while everyone is trying to pin the blame on someone for the fucking, the bottom line is that idiots who voted for Trump are the responsible parties.
Mnemosyne
@Kay:
I got yelled at here for hypothesizing that that’s why Obama allowed the transition to Trump and walked away. He knew that Trump would implode sooner rather than later, and that Trump would take the whole Republican Party down with him, and Obama decided that letting the Republican Party destroy itself was more important than propping up the rot at the heart of our current government.
I got yelled at, but I still think it sometimes.
rikyrah
uh huh
uh huh
Sarah KendziorVerified account @sarahkendzior
Sovereignty is on the table, autocracy is being consolidated, and time is running out. My latest:
https://twitter.com/sarahkendzior/status/878329681082068992?
ArchTeryx
@D58826: Oh, absolutely. Calling them a bunch of Nazis isn’t a violation of Godwin’s law, it’s just about the God-granted truth. This is (and thanks to Mnemosyne for the correction) Aktion T4 brought to life right on these shores.
MomSense
@lamh36:
The media refuse to admit they fucked up so blaming Obama works for them.
Betty Cracker
@Mnemosyne: I agree it’s ridiculous that anyone would vote for an obviously unbalanced, racist, sexist, xenophobic demagogue. But for me, the question comes down to this: Did we voters have a right to that info or not, regardless of whether or not it would have affected the outcome. I lean toward yes.
It’s a complicated question, I realize. Release of that info would have caused a shitstorm. Would it be worse than having a Kremlin stooge in the White House? I suspect PBO mulls that even now.
D58826
Speaking of keeping our UNCIVILTY up
Now I think the R’s will complain that Reid did something along those lines to get Obamacare passed. But the difference is every one knew he was going to do it and everyone know what was in the amendment since it was the result of months of hearings and debate.
sharl
@Gretchen: Folks are having whatever fun they can have with Kushner and our current shit-storm.
Sub-hed of that Jerusalem Post article: A Palestinian official claims Abbas is furious at American demands, accuses the US of taking sides.
Yup, that sounds about par for the course for our current leadership. (Of course we’ve taken sides in that dispute for decades, but naturally Team Trump comes in to that situation like a cocky drunken asshole without any awareness/knowledge of that history.)
schrodingers_cat
@Gretchen: Well, not all doctors, doctors from one specific country that is majority Muslim. Is Pakistan one of the six countries in the travel ban?
lamh36
@CBSNews 27m27 minutes ago
More
“Late Show” host Stephen Colbert is out of town on a very important assignment — in Russia: http://cbsn.ws/2sO09uE
lamh36
ArchTeryx
@lamh36: He should have just hauled off and decked him. I would have.
Jeffro
@Kay:
Ab. So. Lutely. Dems have to quit being worried about being the only defenders of the ‘system’ here. It’s a weakness that the GOP constantly plays to its advantage. We must stand up to these outrages and be willing to call them out, be willing to take the fight to the next level.
Mnemosyne
@Betty Cracker:
We did know. Fourteen (14) US intelligence agencies stepped forward and released a joint statement with President Obama that the Russians were meddling in the election.
And what happened? The Access Hollywood tape was released later that same day, and the media all chased that like a shiny soccer ball. The timing is quite interesting in retrospect, no? ?
One other thing: my hypothesis is that Karl Rove deliberately set this Electoral College result up as soon as the courts decided to allow voter ID laws. Even if Hillary had squeaked out a victory, voter suppression would be continuing apace at the state level, and it would be ignored because, after all, Hillary won, so what are Democrats complaining about?
Mnemosyne
@lamh36:
I hope he knows not to accept any cups of tea while he’s there ?
Kay
@Mnemosyne:
I don’t know about that. I do know that you can’t have a system where the incentives and rewards run in the wrong direction, year after year after year. I listened to the last Senate hearing. One of the security people said they had a situation where “one of the candidates” was saying elections were rigged, and that went into their decision not to further call the system into question by outlining the threat. Trump won that round. He called the system into question and he wasn’t punished for it- he was rewarded.
That can’t just keep happening. There has to be some upside to behaving decently, or no one will do it.
Trump really relies on this- he relies on “everyone” not doing what he does. The whole family lives this way. They’re confident the order and predictability they require will always be there, because they are confident enough people will play by the rules. They see that as opportunity to gain an advantage. It can’t work out well for them. If it DOES work there will be fewer and fewer people who play by the rules – indeed “the rules” will be a sucker move- something “smart” people get past.
Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)
@Mnemosyne: I’ve heard it (very plausibly!) hypothesized that a similar thought process was why he retained Comey, as events have broken in the way maximally discrediting to Trump, etc.
Also, if I remember the thread correctly, your statement posited Obama was explicitly heightening the contradictions, and Chet and my objections were that type of thinking was well out of character for Obama (though I don’t recall either being dyspeptic).
lamh36
The checks have been cashed…why would she have regrets?
D58826
@Betty Cracker: While I tend toward ‘yes’ also, the s** storm would have so overwhelmed the news that even ‘but her e-mails’ would have disappeared from sight. By the time the media was able to present some perspective the election would have been over. I think a better case can be made for disclosure if they had had the information in early 2016. Either way that is why we were paying Obama the big bucks and those big bucks did not stop his hair from turning grey.
There was also the issue of possibly burning an asset that was very close to Putin and what other steps Putin would take in hacking the election. By not saying anything Obama kept open a channel of information that might have revealed other even more destructive actions by Putin. Top US officials committed perjury before Congressional committees investigating Pearl Harbor because they could not reveal that we were breaking the Japanese codes. Once the war ended the truth came out but at the time perjury was the lesser of two evils.
Kay
@Jeffro:
It honestly reminds me of fucked up families. SMOOOTH it over. Limit damage to the idea that we’re all clinging to that this thing is somehow functioning.
No more limiting damage! It’s not working anyway!
Let the chips fall. God almighty it couldn’t be worse than pretending it’s FINE.
HinTN
@David Anderson: YES, he took the bait.
Mnemosyne
@Kay:
It really is the classic narcissist’s way of acting. They do things that most people are not willing to do because they’re too horrible, and then the narcissist pats themselves on the back for being smarter and bolder than everyone else.
And the only way to stop them is to set up a boundary that they cannot cross. Giving in or letting them get away with it even once means they assume they can continue doing whatever they want, whenever they want.
@Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD):
It wasn’t that I was saying that Obama was deliberately heightening the contradictions, though it seemed like a couple of people (mis)read it that way. But I do think it was at least a somewhat calculated decision to let the chips fall where they may because trying to prop up the system was only going to make things worse. Lancing the boil, in other words, rather than putting a band-aid on it.
polyorchnid octopunch
@Betty Cracker: It’s very easy. Paper ballots marked by the voter with a pencil, put into a ballot box, and counted at the end of the day, with the box sealed and stored after the count in case future reference is ever needed. You know, the way every other western democracy runs elections.
That’s a completely unhackable election system.
D58826
@ArchTeryx: I’ll contribute to the fund to get Uncle Joe a big 4X8 to lay upside that worms head. Maybe under any other circumstance a joke about Joe’s tendency to run on a bit would be ok. But is there anyone in the country that does not know how Beau’s’ death has affected Joe? Heck any parent on losing a child. I guess there was at least one.
MomSense
@Mnemosyne:
The administration did release that it was happening. Hey Johmson held a news conference and was surprised it wasn’t the story. But hey theboussy Tale dropped the same day and that was a shinier object. Makes you wonder who dropped that tape.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@Jeffro:
At the risk of sounding a bit fanboyish, your comments are always articulate and relevant, edifying and engaging. You are among so many other contributors whose comments I eagerly read.
That is all.
Betty Cracker
@Mnemosyne: That statement wasn’t as specific as the info we now know they had. And it was IC agency heads releasing it, not the POTUS.
I can totally understand the rationale for NOT releasing it. But in hindsight… This isn’t about PBO. It’s about government secrecy and our right to make informed decisions.
Mnemosyne
@polyorchnid octopunch:
Here in So Cal, we still use Inkavote (aka Scantron) ballots. They’re easy to tally using a scanner, but you can also hand-tally them if you suspect something is wonky with the software or the machine breaks down. Hell, our county clerk even installed webcams at their offices so you can watch the ballots being counted on election night!
MomSense
@Mnemosyne:
Beat me to it!
Mnemosyne
@Betty Cracker:
Hindsight is always 20/20, because we can only see the action we would have wanted and not the retaliatory action that would have occurred. Do you really think that PBO could have made that statement without McConnell and Ryan making a peep? What if Obama made that statement and Hillary was ordered to appear in front of Congress for questioning about it?
I understand the frustration, because I’m feeling it, too, and the two of us may well switch places on this by next week. But right now, I honestly don’t think it would have made a lick of difference, and it might have made things even worse.
D58826
Rachel is talking to one of the WAPO reporters and she is ying that she knows more than she can reveal. She also said that just because Obama wasn’t saying a lot in public doesn’t mean that he didn’t order secret actions that will inflict pain on Putin.
polyorchnid octopunch
@Mnemosyne: Here in Canada ballots are always hand counted, and each ballot is seen by the Deputy Returning Officer of the poll in question, as well as all scrutineers that the candidates have provided (generally one per candidate, though sometimes fringe parties like the
Religious NutjobsChristian Heritage Party are unable to get enough volunteers to cover all the polls). Spoiled ballots are kept separately, as are disputed ballots (as in, disputed in terms of who was voted for or whether or not it was spoiled). My personal favourite spoiled ballot when I did that work was the one that some wag had written “I think you all suck” on.Yes, it’s not as efficient as having computers to vote with, nor with having machines counting the ballots instead of human beings. On the gripping hand it’s basically impossible to hack in any way. Not quite sure why Americans seem to think that saving money is more important than the integrity of elections.
Jeffro
@West of the Rockies (been a while): There are a lot of smart & insightful folks here, that’s for sure – thanks for the compliment.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@MomSense:
Pu$$y tape dropped, and the DNC hacked emails were released same day. All coordinated by Russia.
Betty Cracker
@Mnemosyne: I’m not naive enough to believe the Republicans wouldn’t have rained shit down — of course they would have! But do you believe the data from 538 that indicates Comey’s October surprise upended the election? Maybe a statement from the president would have had an equally significant effect.
We’ll never know. Anyhoo, a Kremlin stooge now occupies the WH and will do nothing to protect us from the next round of Russian meddling. It’s difficult to see that as an acceptable outcome.
Mnemosyne
@polyorchnid octopunch:
With all due respect — and I really do love Canada and Canadians — your entire country has a smaller population than that of the US state I live in. You guys have 36 million people, California has 39 million. We have a LOT more votes that need to be counted than you do, even on the local level.
Another Scott
@schrodingers_cat: Nope. Florida is the big one (that we know about).
WaPo from November:
(Emphasis added.)
Lots more in the story.
There’s undoubtedly lots and lots of dirty money in properties with Donnie’s name attached. And that money undoubtedly came with lots of implicit (at least) strings. Like the strings that control a puppet…
Cheers,
Scott.
Mnemosyne
@Betty Cracker:
Once the Republican Party as a whole decided to turn traitor and allow a hostile foreign power to meddle in our election, there was no acceptable outcome available, IMO. And I’m not exaggerating — we know that Republicans in Florida were accepting Russian data to use against their Democratic opponents, which means it happened in other states where those assholes just haven’t been caught yet.
I really think that the presidential election is just the tip of the iceberg, and we’re going to find out that Russia has been sticking their fingers into state and local elections for the past several years, at least. This was their crowning achievement, not their opening volley.
GregB
@West of the Rockies (been a while):
Seconded.
MomSense
@Mnemosyne:
I think they have kompromat on lots of elected officials, military, and media figures. This is going to be a very bumpy ride.
Another Scott
@Mnemosyne: 17. “The USIC is made up of 16 agencies, in addition to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.”
DHS:
HTH.
Cheers,
Scott.
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne:
What else could Obama have done?
I’m not seeing any other options here.
Mnemosyne
@MomSense:
Yep. It’s going to be very interesting to see who was directly compromised, who went along for ideological reasons, and who’s a mix of both.
The Republicans wanted a permanent majority and didn’t care what they had to do in order to get it. This is the result.
Another Scott
@polyorchnid octopunch:
Not so.
If there is a system that says that some people can vote and others can’t, then that system can be “hacked”. And that’s what has seemed to have happened here. The voting machines weren’t messed with (as far as we know). Instead people were declared ineligible to get a normal ballot, or kicked off the voting rolls entirely, or polling places had too few voting/counting machines, or riled up by directed Facebook and e-mail propaganda, etc., etc., etc.
Cheers,
Scott.
Mnemosyne
@Brachiator:
As I’m interpreting it, Betty thinks Obama should have made an outright and direct statement that Putin was interfering in our election specifically to give Trump the victory. We’re debating how much good it would have done (she’s a little more optimistic than I am) but there’s also an argument that it would have been the right thing to do even if it didn’t change the outcome.
amk
Obama cudda. shudda. Of course, it’s the black dude’s fault that all the white dudes turned traitors. ODS is not just conservatives’ disease.
joel hanes
@Kay:
I wonder why not, though?
Ever see the Pace’s Picante Sauce commercial ?
“New York City !?”
schrodingers_cat
@Mnemosyne: India has many more people than all of United States but the Election Commission does an excellent job. Its not a patchwork of different rules for different states.
Morzer
Donald Trump: gelatinous cube or gibbering mouth?
joel hanes
@ArchTeryx:
But comparing this atrocity of a bill to the Nazi death camps is UNCIVIL!
It’s an analogy with several easily-identified flaws.
AHCA is horribly evil, and I understand that it threatens your life, so you get a pass for hyperbole from me.
But IMHO it’s hyperbole.
chris
@polyorchnid octopunch: Don’t forget that the Con-servatives brought in voter ID. They tried but mostly failed to hack the system. It still pisses me off that I have to show ID to someone I’ve known for years so that I can vote. (Yes, I live in the country and we all know each other.)
ETA: another Scott beat me to it
Mnemosyne
@schrodingers_cat:
We have a patchwork of different rules because of slavery and the fallout from that. There is no other reason.
Brachiator
I don’t know. Without revelation of a pile of irrefutable evidence, this would have been taken as massive sour grapes and Obama desperately trying to tip the scales in Hillary’s favor.
Also, maybe I’m still missing something. Had Obama said this after the election, it would not have made the slightest bit of difference. I’ve been away from the Internets and am on my way out to dinner. There’s obviously a lot of discussion here that I missed.
joel hanes
@polyorchnid octopunch:
Speaking as a computer engineer with 35 years of industry experience, I completely endorse this statement.
joel hanes
@polyorchnid octopunch:
Not quite sure why Americans seem to think that saving money is more important than the integrity of elections.
They don’t, really. That’s just the cover story for the rubes.
The strong supporters of computer-mediated voting are almost all members of the Party that has arguably benefitted from electoral hacking, and the states that still use Diebold machines with no paper “audit trail” are almost all deep red. Many of those same states were named in the VRA as places with long histories of vote suppression.
Dave
@Mnemosyne: It really is an artifact of their training and norms. Hyper-vigilance at all times regardless of the actual cost of this training. I’ve lived it on the battlefield where we actually were being attacked every day. It’s toxic and the fact that we train and encourage this attitude/belief in LEO’s does no favors to anyone including the officers.
Brachiator
@schrodingers_cat:
Oddly enough, the Constitution does not specify much about the details of the administration of presidential elections, nor does it give the federal government specific powers related to this.
But this is not related to slavery, but more to the idea that states are sovereign. And maybe the Founders didn’t foresee 50 states making up the union.
Betty Cracker
@amk: Bullshit comment.
Betty Cracker
@Mnemosyne: I think it’s a legit question, anyway. I can see both sides, TBH. Many decisions were made on the assumption Clinton would win. Hindsight, etc., but I lean toward giving voters all the pertinent info as the fundamentally right thing to do.
jmw
@schrodingers_cat:
This is mainly fueled by funding cuts though. The number of residencies is decreasing because of cuts to Medicare.
http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/healthcare/266610-shortage-of-residency-slots-may-have-chilling-effect-on-next
Ruckus
@Kay:
We can protect the system when the system actually works. But the system is broken. Some say it’s been broken for a long time and I think there may be some truth to that. For the system to be worth protecting and for that to work there has to be a sense of fair play, a sense of honor among both sides of the political aisle. And there for sure isn’t in this country now.
The collusion, the lying, the secrecy and the undemocratic nature of the current congress in bill writing, the media fluffing a massively unqualified person for the presidency, the people given jobs in the cabinet with massive conflicts of interest and no regard for their actual job, the nepotism of presidential advisors, the willingness to disregard a large portion of citizens for a few bucks………. The current administration is far more like a mob than a shitty political party.
Mnemosyne
@Brachiator:
Except that the only reason our states have any sovereignty is slavery. It was the only way to get slave states and free states to join up together, and at the time even the “free” states had a whole lot of legacy slaves.
American slaveholders did not want to risk having a national legislative body outlaw slavery the way Parliament outlawed slavery in the British Isles, so safeguards were built into our constitution to prevent that from happening.
When you look at any weird-ass way that our government is organized that makes absolutely no sense, the answer is always, “Slavery.”
Mnemosyne
@Brachiator:
FYWP was messing up my intended edit, but … the landmark abolition case in England was decided in 1772.
The American colonists started rebelling 3 years later.
It could be a total coincidence, but I doubt it.
Another Scott
@Mnemosyne: Interesting, but one can always point to other things. Like the Stamp Act was in 1765, and the Boston Massacre was in 1770.
Cheers,
Scott.
CarolDuhart2
@schrodingers_cat: Also, we didn’t have computers a while back. How were votes counted then? And yes, we are a big country with more votes to count. That doesn’t mean that we couldn’t count them by hand. If we give up the need for instant results, and let us wait a couple of days for hand counting if necessary, we can do it. And maybe not even two days. As a temp, I’ve seen people count and collate very quickly items in a matter of minutes. Once people have practice and guidelines, counts can go very quickly.
The advantages of hand counted or hand-scanned ballots go deeper: regardless of whether or not the machines are being tampered with, there are no worries about mechanical breakdowns, software glitches, rogue hackers posing as technicians and obsolete hardware/software issues.
Doesn’t mean that those couldn’t be tampered with in some way (“stuffing the ballot box” is a term). But that would be have to be local corruption which is more manageable.
rikyrah
@MattF:
I hold Martha’s size against her, not her looks. I can’t stand large animals that live in houses, neither dogs or cats (which is why the late Tunch and Steve terrify me).
125 pound dog? NOPE
JR in WV
I agree that Russians have been deeply involved with election corruption.
I agree that we should be marking paper ballots with ink and counting those marks after the polls close. And no vote tallies should be announced until all ballots are accounted for and totaled up, nationwide. And anyone found guilty of tampering with an election, a single ballot, should be penalized way more severely than they currently are.
Loss of the rights of citizenship, social security, health insurance, right to vote, right to work on a campaign, right to participate in the election process second hand, right to benefit from government aid in any way. At a minimum.
It’s treason to fuck with voting, and that’s what Republicans are doing, destroying the foundation of the nation by interfering with people’s right to vote, ability to vote.
The whole TrumpCare bill is intended to diminish the ability of people to vote – hard to vote when you can’t afford your own medication, food, gas, ID badge. When you are dead of diabetes, cancer, starvation because you spent all your money on you grandson’s insulin.
Make no mistake, the Republicans fully intend for their repeal of Obamacare to kill people, Democratic people mostly. They know that slightly more people eligible for Obamacare vote Democratic than vote Republican, and just as their Voter ID laws do, they intend for the statistics to work to their eternal advantage. Dead people can’t vote.
Neither can people in jail, which is Jeffery Beauregard Sessions III (R-KKK) job, put Democratic voters in jail. His part in the
TrumpianRepublicanConfederate Slaver conspiracy to end democracy in America. A few voters here, a few voters there, pretty soon they have their precious “permanent Majority”!JR in WV
@CarolDuhart2:
Many places have transparent ballot boxes, still more have the whole precinct election team look in the ballot boxes before locking them shut until they go to the counting rooms.
Hard to stuff a ballot box everyone can see inside before voting begins.
JR in WV
@joel hanes:
As a software developer and project manager with over 30 years experience before I retired, I fully endorse this statement. No computerized system can be fool proof.
schrodingers_cat
@jmw: These are people who have already been admitted. You don’t get papers for visa approval without that.
Another Scott
@JR in WV: Not really. :-(
As Rand reminds us in his Diebold Variations, if you’re worried about the integrity of the vote, what matters is who does the counting.
FTFNYTimes, from April:
Erdogan didn’t care if people saw stuffed ballot boxes and all the rest. Suspicions and questions and concerns and investigations didn’t change anything. He has control, so he knew he was going to win.
There’s no magic election system that cannot be corrupted if the election officials want to corrupt it. In our present system, elections are run locally and we’re a huge country, so a vast conspiracy to swing the actual votes is very difficult. Plus, most of the local officials take their responsibilities deadly seriously. But it’s too easy for partisan Secretaries of State and other officials to mess with the rolls, mess with the number of voting machines, mess with moving around people between voting locations with little notice, and all the rest, to make it difficult for everyone to exercise their franchise. But that can (and does) happen whether people are using paper ballots or Diebold machines or anything in between.
That’s why what really matter is not the law, or even the party, but the character and integrity of the people we elect. We are a nation of laws (and not of men), but only to the extent that people in power follow the law and the intent of the law. The Law is not self-fulfilling and self-actualizing…
“Eternal vigilance…” and all that.
/soapbox
Cheers,
Scott.
jmw
@schrodingers_cat:
Right I wasn’t addressing your point of these people that were wronged by our horrible immigration policies. But the reduction in residency spots will impact all docs, domestic and FMGs.
TenguPhule
@Kay:
The big fucking border wall with Mexico.
Because it involves taking land from Texas Landowners to build it.
To which I can only say, Fuck them. They bought the shit cake, time for them to eat it.
TenguPhule
@D58826: So we may be in luck with future black police officers shooting white police officers because they’re afraid for their lives.
Matt
C’mon, those creatures prefer the term “conservative”.
Matt McIrvin
“Mayor Quimby even released Sideshow Bob, a man twice convicted of attempted murder. Can you trust a man like Mayor Quimby? Vote Sideshow Bob for mayor!”