Mourning in America - Trump Year One: November '16 to

WaPo not fucking around with drawing inferences:

In a secure room in the Capitol used for briefings involving classified information, administration officials broadly laid out the evidence U.S. spy agencies had collected, showing Russia’s role in cyber-intrusions in at least two states and in hacking the emails of the Democratic organizations and individuals.

And they made a case for a united, bipartisan front in response to what one official described as “the threat posed by unprecedented meddling by a foreign power in our election process.”

The Democratic leaders in the room unanimously agreed on the need to take the threat seriously. Republicans, however, were divided, with at least two GOP lawmakers reluctant to accede to the White House requests.

According to several officials, McConnell raised doubts about the underlying intelligence and made clear to the administration that he would consider any effort by the White House to challenge the Russians publicly an act of partisan politics.

McConnell’s office did not respond to a request for comment. After the election, Trump chose McConnell’s wife, Elaine Chao, as his nominee for transportation secretary.

Mitch McConnell is the diarrhea on the seat.

(xposts) I can't figure her out

she's a terrible person who wanted a white supremacist to win

GOP has no sense of actual patriotism

mcconnell's actions would be astonishing if they weren't so in character.

Curious this comes out on Friday night.

CIA is good to have around so they can corroborate the stuff Josh Marshall figures out during his coffee time

― El Tomboto, Friday, December 9, 2016 9:11 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol

wapo article article was thrilling to read

and mcconnell....... ugh what else is there to say

mcconnell's actions would be astonishing if they weren't so in character.

― geometry-stabilized craft (art), Friday, December 9, 2016 10:16 PM (four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

mitch mconnell everyone

motherfucker

I can't think of anything productive that can be done w this info from the CIA tbh. GOP's not gonna prosecute the guy that brought them to power.

And I'm not sure there's anything he could be prosecuted on to begin with

#neverpudzer trending among MAGAs now. interesting/sad/funny/? to see how many people took his pro-worker claims at face value.

The words i'd use are fucked up and ridiculousz

This was the most obviously telegraphed con in the history of cons.

Words that come to my mind are "dumb" and "hicks"

Kate McKinnon is an American treasure but she makes all her caricature subjects endearing, which is a problem when it comes to Kellyanne, who is a gaslighting propagandist

― Treeship, Saturday, December 10, 2016 2:41 AM (one hour ago)

SNL has a long tradition of making politicians look more lovable and human than they really are

everything about the fuckin' guy is an obviously telegraphed con! Anyone who watches the asshole talk and doesn't realize he's a sloppy hustler who just makes shit up and only ever says things that are true by accident is a goddamned moron. It's always been clear as day to anybody with a lick of fucking sense.

If he's such a con and so sloppy and an asshole, then why is he super rich and you are not? Huh? Didn't think so. And now he will make us all rich, except you, loser. Enjoy your off brand steaks, I'll be sitting sweet in the NBC/WWF/FBI suite.

And of course, right on schedule, this CIA report is what Trump supporters are dismissing as fake news, the rhetorical equivalent of "no, you're the puppet!"

yeah, there's nothing "treasurable" about Lorne Michaels' minions making people think the shit they do is satire.

"Among the political figures Conway has worked for are Congressman Jack Kemp; Senator Fred Thompson; former Vice President Dan Quayle; Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich; and Congressman (now Indiana Governor and Vice President-elect) Mike Pence."

In light of this, suggesting she's bad because she married bad is off in a number of ways.

Idk man if I was married to someone who led organizations that spread vile fake news -- as george conway does -- i would fucking divorce them

Just like if i had a spouse who turned out to be a serial killer on the side

Luckily with KC you don't need to look to her husband to criticize her. She helped elect a fascist to the white house

Between Russian hacking and the nearly 3 million popular vote deficit, isnt this like exactly the situation the EC was designed to prevent?

i'm thinking the EC is there in part to preserve "states' rights"

I can't think of anything productive that can be done w this info from the CIA tbh. GOP's not gonna prosecute the guy that brought them to power.

― Οὖτις, Friday, 9 December 2016 22:36 (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

And I'm not sure there's anything he could be prosecuted on to begin with

― Οὖτις, Friday, 9 December 2016 22:37 (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Also, if this is mostly about the Podesta/Wikileaks dump, which is what I gather from the Post story, is there much evidence that this hurt Clinton? I don't see a significant shift, looking at her poll numbers. Or is there more to it, e.g. sharing Dem oppo research with the GOP?

yeah, you sorta have to read between the lines of federalist nos. 5 and 68 but russian hacking is defnitely in there. madison, though, assumed that ad hoc committees of counter-hackers assembled by the congress would suffice in times of emergency. a fatal flaw, perhaps- or another reminder that our constitution is a living document.

(Not defending Russian interference obv)

xp

NYT reporting that GOP servers were also hacked - but info not released

Maybe the US can hack the next Russian election and make Clinton president there.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/09/us/politics/climate-change-energy-department-donald-trump-transition.html?_r=0

purge is coming

LOL @ American treasure. and i liked the new Ghostbusters movie

Between Russian hacking and the nearly 3 million popular vote deficit, isnt this like exactly the situation the EC was designed to prevent?

iirc, the EC was designed for two basic reasons. The unbalanced distribution of electoral votes was designed to favor the small states against large states and the interpolation of electors between the voters and the presidency was designed so that 'the best men' (i.e. people like the delegates to the constitutional convention) would be able to thwart the passions of the voters, who might choose a demagogue with unsuitable ideas.

Undue foreign influence on an election would certainly been seen as a good reason, too, but I don't think it got much air during the constitutional debates compared to the reasons I cited.

spooks gettin' pissed:

John Schindler with a look at Donald Trump's war with the intelligence community

Dag. That's probably mostly bluster, but still pretty intense.

It's a small point, but in addition to the demagoguery thing, the "elector" method had some kind of common sense logic to it in an era before mass media: most voters, the Framers thought, would have no idea who to pick for President! Not because they were under the sway of demagogues but because they lived on farms or in small towns and villages, hadn't necessarily traveled farther than the next hill, etc. Maybe they wouldn't have heard of any of the people offering themselves as candidates - but they would know and trust, perhaps, a roving circuit court judge or somebody like that, and trust them to be informed and make a good choice. District-level contests for electors would be a matter (they ostensibly believed) of good character and judgement, not particular matters of politics. This is elitist too, in a different kind of way, and doesn't mean that the system isn't democratic - but it's another part of the picture.

The main thing though is the power of slave-holding planter elites (such as Madison, Jefferson, and Washington) to maintain a disproportionate hold on the government, since the "three-fifths compromise" that topped up Congressional numbers for slave states did the same for electors. The Fourteenth Amendment did away with that but in a sense a great deal of the history of American politics since 1788 has been about elites in some states trying to disenfranchise black voters while still hanging onto the representative numbers they yield. Today's assholes are the descendants of the Southern bloc who used these numbers to stave off federal interference in Jim Crow for decades, who in turn were the descendants of those who used these numbers to make the nation's pre-Civil-War politics revolve around their slave-owning order.

Tillerman new SoS - wow.

Tillerson oops

so a SoS that was the CEO of ExxonMobil, and a president that says we should have seized Iraq's oil fields (“You’re not stealing anything,” Trump said. “We’re reimbursing ourselves … at a minimum, and I say more. We’re taking back $1.5tn to reimburse ourselves.”)

this will be really fun when we inevitably find ourselves invading a country that coincidentally has a bunch of oil

"Between Russian hacking and the nearly 3 million popular vote deficit, isnt this like exactly the situation the EC was designed to prevent?"

not getting my hopes up but I wouldn't be surprised if the EC wound up not electing him. (I don't think this is going to happen, but if it did, I don't know that I'd be that surprised at this point)

I would be surprised.

I both feel it is absolutely the electors responsibility not to allow him to take office and that they will fail to live up to that responsibility. That said, I will not be fully accepting that this nightmare is happening until after they meet.

i'm not getting my hopes up

This exxon sos "top choice" is too ridiculous. Why did he even flirt with the idea of semi-normal choices then?

I don't know how I'd convinced myself that the actual election of Donald Trump was the most fucked up thing I would ever experience when said election was really nothing more than the catalyst for an entire cluster of fucked up things that were sure to follow.