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

hey it happened during the New Deal

oh shit iago is nude spock? that makes so much sense

haha wow I hadn't put this together either

:O

@DougHenwood
This is just too damn funny

Ex-CIA operative Robert Baer made headlines on CNN insisting that the breach was grounds for a new election in the United States. "But I'll tell you, having worked in the CIA, if we had been caught in interfering in European elections or Asian elections or anywhere in the world, those countries would call for new elections,"

https://twitter.com/DougHenwood/status/807952268918226944

oh ffs

what you mean like Chile

oh I guess that's not Asia or Europe lol

"... if we had been caught in interfering in European elections or Asian elections or anywhere in the world..."

that said i'm not with all of the leftist chortling about this. our own domestic nationalism is nuts enough without the russian version getting into the act.

steve bannon talked glowingly about alexander dugin in an interview -- why would russian intelligence even need to warp american opinion? that had already happened willingly

Yeah, these people engaging in 'but what about all of the governments/elections the US has meddled with, hmmmmmm?' smugness needs to fuck off. You can have qualms about how our government has historically operated AND call out Russian interference as unacceptable. I mean, were you sagely nodding your head on 9/11 and smarmily declaring that we totally asked for it? You get that the actions of governments are separate from the populations who are adversely affected by those actions, yes?

twitter rumor: carly fiorina for DNI

lol

were you sagely nodding your head on 9/11 and smarmily declaring that we totally asked for it?

actually i was kinda screaming it as i was choking on the cloud of WTC dust that might've given me cancer.

anyway, this seems like the salient point

@tinyrevolution
A good lesson for Americans to take away from this is that it feels like shit to wonder if another country's influencing who governs you

Too true. I'm already rethinking the coup some of my buddies and I had planned.

pretty sure the fiorina thing is just trump trolling his adversaries but ughhhhhh. sadly if you fail as DNI your prize isnt a golden parachute and a job on fox. its a bunch of dead americans.

pretty sure the Fiorina thing everything he says or does is just trump trolling his adversaries

Yeah, these people engaging in 'but what about all of the governments/elections the US has meddled with, hmmmmmm?' smugness needs to fuck off.

Maybe it's not smugness but the hope that Democrats in the future will take a more skeptical view of the US's actions around the world... but nah, nobody actually believes they will.

these people engaging in 'but what about all of the governments/elections the US has meddled with, hmmmmmm?' smugness needs to fuck off. You can have qualms about how our government has historically operated AND call out Russian interference as unacceptable.

i agree with the second part. so how can you voice qualms about how our government has historically operated WITHOUT saying "but what about all of the governments/elections the US has meddled with?" the knowledge that the US/CIA has repeatedly fucked with internal affairs of other countries has out there for a long time, and i'm preeeeeetty much no one here cares outside of the usual leftist circles. either the information doesn't get through somehow, or it does and we don't care. now we get a taste of election-fuckery in the U.S. - and just a taste, because it's hard to pinpoint the actual loss of the election on the wikileaks stuff, and as others have mentioned, Clinton, you know, won the election by 2.5+ million votes - and it draws comparisons to hiroshima and nagasaki. that's great! it's great that people are really, really pissed off about it. they should be. since it has opened up a brief, rarely-seen-IRL "national conversation" about it, a term that usually makes me puke in my mouth a little, maybe it might be a good time to mention the united states' historical acts. as far as i can see, that whole historical angle has taken up maybe 0.1% of the conversation about the russian hacking, so i don't think it's a zero sum game situation.

when would be the more appropriate and effective time to mention such things, other than now? is it better to wait 3 years for errol morris or someone to make a really kickass documentary about it, after the election-hacking prime has been pumped, but enough time has passed to let things settle down a little? hey, maybe it would be, i don't know, but from just a regular old non-famous filmmaker standpoint, now seems like a good time

i liked when hillary put bernie on blast for having been anti-contra in his wild youth

anyway, i completely agree with this - You can have qualms about how our government has historically operated AND call out Russian interference as unacceptable .

xpost or the henry kissinger moment during the debate. i was so glad he mentioned that and stood his fucking ground

last thing from me on this because i know it's annoying - now is a great time to talk about the voter ID bullshit, too

at least we might be able to actually DO something about that

The Republican sponsors of a so-called "religious freedom" bill plan on re-introducing the legislation next year in the hopes that Donald Trump's election will boost chances for the bill to be signed into law, Buzzfeed News reported.

The bill, the First Amendment Defense Act, would ban the federal government from revoking tax exemptions from or denying grants to individuals or corporations with religious or "moral" beliefs opposing same-sex marriage.

Couldn't you argue neglecting to prosecute someone for their religious beliefs could result in de facto SHARIA LAW???????????????????

Nah, 'cuz the Mohammedan religion is not a real religion.

How many posts are we at here? At this rate this should get a weekly reboot.

Heard most of the daily briefing from Josh Earnest (who eerily mimics Obama's halting speech cadences). A reporter asked him if he was directly claiming on behalf of the White House that the hacks/leaks/cyber-meddling were explicitly done to help Trump, at the expense of Clinton, or if this latest news undermines his incoming presidency. and while he wouldn't exactly say yes, he did go on at length with a litany of all of Trump's (familiar to us) connections to Russia, emphasizing, repeatedly (and I paraphrase), that all this stuff was out there and reported on for months, how none of it was secret or stemmed from the intelligence community, that none of it had yet to be disputed, and that all of Trump's supporters in the GOP who backed him knowing full well his ample connections to Russia now have to justify that support in the face of belatedly acknowledging this suspicious at the least and damning at worst stuff.

as alarming as this all is---and deserving of investigation---nothing even suggested would actually make trump's electoral win illegitimate in a legal sense, right? the russians didn't hack the voting machines, and they didn't invent the electoral college. short of demonstrated and provable-in-court collusion with moscow, i don't see how a trump presidency is avoidable. and somehow i doubt that the FSB would be dumb enough to actually work with trump directly---he's just a useful idiot

I'm wondering if McConnell approving the investigation is just a tactic to blame Obama for Russia's meddling

i wouldn't doubt it! if he had taken a firmer stance w russia this never would have happened, etc

I'd assume gamesmanship to work on keeping Trump in line with Congress's designs.

Don't want him acting like a populist again if his poll numbers dive when they start trying to privatize Medicare.

what's the point of blaming obama more at this point

KM, I would love if we (the people) could both talk about how fucked US foreign policy has been AND acknowledge the bullshit game Russia is playing, but attention is in short supply as always and I would hate to see the latter get subsumed by a thoughtful exegesis of the former. I've seen just a few too many responses that were quick to dismiss the situation which is happening right now and which seems the most important in terms of immediate scrutiny.

what's the point of blaming obama more at this point

obviously because it shifts blame away from Trump

acknowledging that our foreign policy was bad and wrong does, you know, shore up the morality of the point yr trying to make w/r/t russia

The nonsensical Fox News headline: 'Sore loser Obama turns to Russian hacking to delegitimize Trump's triumph'

I actually have no idea what the accusations even fully comprise, or at least if there is anything more to them than just the Podesta/DNC stuff. Like, clearly there is classified info that the public is not privy to. But hearing a summation of all the Russian connections laid out as they were by Earnest was pretty surreal, just so many individually bad sounding things in a row, all related to Russia, none contradicted, all having preceded the election by months, topped by more recent news (however redundant) that Russia had a direct role, to some extent, in influencing the election, consensus revelations which came within days of Trump floating a guy for SoS who has full-on Russian ties and considers Putin a friend. It's just all too much.

or at least if there is anything more to them than just the Podesta/DNC stuff

the info that they hacked GOP servers too is new, afaict

what could be more embarrassing in GOP emails than the shit the candidate said openly, is the question

the info that they hacked GOP servers too is new, afaict

― Οὖτις, Monday, December 12, 2016 7:37 PM (two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I haven't seen this confirmed yet.. I dont think the RNC would cop to it either, if it actually happened.

Given the relatively unprecedented CIA announcement, I wonder if there's anything more serious than the Podesta/DNC stuff going on to justify the agency coming forward and putting that much pressure on pols.

And RNC stuff, if accurate.

as alarming as this all is---and deserving of investigation---nothing even suggested would actually make trump's electoral win illegitimate in a legal sense, right? the russians didn't hack the voting machines, and they didn't invent the electoral college. short of demonstrated and provable-in-court collusion with moscow, i don't see how a trump presidency is avoidable. and somehow i doubt that the FSB would be dumb enough to actually work with trump directly---he's just a useful idiot

― jason waterfalls (gbx), Monday, December 12, 2016 1:23 PM (thirteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

there's a really dumb tendency among liberals at work here: this attraction to silly, sorkin-esque long shots. jill stein and her recounts aren't going to prevent what's coming. leaning on the appointed state electors isn't either.

again, russian hacking of american state entities, and publishing that material to move public opinion, is bad! but i don't think it was *determinant* of our election more than a dozen other things. it's not even the top thing that brands the election as crooked or rigged or suspect. i don't think revealing that putin did what he could to help trump and damage HRC is enough to void the election, not hardly

also, let's be real, if the EC pulled any last minute games and didn't ratify trump, there would be blood in the streets instantly and it really would be some kind of crumbling republic pre-caesar moment for us

THAT SAID: legitimacy isn't just a legal technicality. it's not totally quantifiable. DJT is going to be the president, constitutionally. he won the states to give him the electoral votes. but is he legitimate? we're stuck with him, but anything that makes his time appear tenuous and unearned is GOOD imo

yeah would def agree w that

For sure. Even if the recount, for instance, didn't have much immediate material impact, it drew the president-elect into declaring the election that he won rigged. Hell, when in doubt, set him up to undermine his own legitimacy.

goole otm, all of that

Distraction works both ways. Anything that gets under his skin is probably a good thing, too.

yup goole otm

xpost I've thought for a while that people should only be responding to his tweets with unflattering caricatures.

The bill, the First Amendment Defense Act, would ban the federal government from revoking tax exemptions from or denying grants to individuals or corporations with religious or "moral" beliefs opposing same-sex marriage.

Oh fucking great, we're back to the Carter years. The whole starting point for the Moral Majority was thrashing back for the Carter-era IRS for pulling tax-exemption from white evangelical schools like Liberty Univ or Bob Jones that maaaaaaybe didn't like black students all that much.