rolling trump-russian collusion

maybe it's time to de-poll

a quick poll about Russia and Donald Trump

On Dec. 29, a transition adviser to Mr. Trump, K. T. McFarland, wrote in an email to a colleague that sanctions announced hours before by the Obama administration in retaliation for Russian election meddling were aimed at discrediting Mr. Trump's victory. The sanctions could also make it much harder for Mr. Trump to ease tensions with Russia, "which has just thrown the U.S.A. election to him," she wrote in the emails obtained by The Times.

It is not clear whether Ms. McFarland was saying she believed that the election had in fact been thrown. A White House lawyer said on Friday that she meant only that the Democrats were portraying it that way.

But it is evident from the emails - which were obtained from someone who had access to transition team communications - that after learning that President Barack Obama would expel 35 Russian diplomats, the Trump team quickly strategized about how to reassure Russia. The Trump advisers feared that a cycle of retaliation between the United States and Russia would keep the spotlight on Moscow's election meddling, tarnishing Mr. Trump's victory and potentially hobbling his presidency from the start.

As part of the outreach, Ms. McFarland wrote, Mr. Flynn would be speaking with the Russian ambassador, Mr. Kislyak, hours after Mr. Obama's sanctions were announced.

"Key will be Russia's response over the next few days," Ms. McFarland wrote in an email to another transition official, Thomas P. Bossert, now the president's homeland security adviser.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/02/us/russia-mcfarland-flynn-trump-emails.html?_r=0

Cost of Mueller investigation to date: $5 million
Number charged or pled guilty as a result: Four

Cost of investigation of Hillary Clinton's role in Benghazi: $100+ million
Number charged or pled guilty as a result: None

Cost of GOP Tax Scam: $1,500,000,000,000
Number damaged: 323,000,000 give or take a few dozen.

U.S. House Republicans are drafting a contempt of Congress resolution against Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and FBI Director Christopher Wray, claiming stonewalling in producing material related to the Russia-Trump probes and other matters.

Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes and other committee Republicans, after considering such action for several weeks, decided to move after media, including the New York Times, reported Saturday on why a top FBI official assigned to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe of Russia-Trump election collusion had been removed from the investigation.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-03/u-s-house-republicans-prepare-contempt-action-against-fbi-doj-jaqegooo

we need to stand by our russian allies

https://www.thedailybeast.com/haley-open-question-if-us-athletes-will-compete-at-the-winter-olympics

ten cups of coffee says Haley was just shooting from the hip with that random shit

"The obstructionist Democrats are going to shut down the olympics, because weak on crime, and Alabama, and the Supreme Court!"

I read it again - that’s pretty classic completely-unprepared-for-the-question ad-libbing, except as an unelected official with a limited remit she could’ve said “nothing’s changed about our commitment to the Olympic Games but we are of course keeping a close eye on the situation” - but no, full derp; then again it accidentally throws the State Department under the bus, so that’s a bonus for this administration

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/12/every-shady-thing-michael-flynn-has-been-accused-of.html

and then there were five . . . bannon, kushner, pence, don jr, don sr

maybe six if you count sessions

Don Jr.'s b.s. attorney-client privilege defense - that he doesn't have to reveal a conversation with his dad because there was an attorney in the room or whatever - seems like such shit that I assume he's begging for a subpoena or otherwise risks contempt.

It’s as if his counsel did a completely terrible job preparing him for the interview

& I’m guessing most of these fucking yokels are stupid enough to lie to their own lawyers, so it might not even be his attorneys’ fault

We're dealing with matryoshka dolls of lawyers with their own lawyers.

former KGB agents pulled off the most epic maskirovka troll of all time -- hijack the GOP/koch/fox nation put an un-dentured (pun intended!) servant in the white house whose debt they own. go capitalism

even charter school chait is starting to catch on

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/12/the-steele-dossier-on-trump-is-looking-more-and-more-real.html

a greek, stephanopolous is providing cover for another greek here, a covfefe boy merely ~

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/george-papadopoulos-fiancee-patriot-trump-campaign-coffee-boy/story?id=51654250

uh oh sure looks like ol' 2spurs instructed general flynndictment to lie to the FBI. who ever would have guessed?

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/18-crucial-days-what-did-president-know-when-did-he-n828261

Excited to see the progresssion of these nicknames.

i started callin him "ol cloggy veins" but it's not caught on.

just don't call him 2terms

#fakenewsfakenewsmagmarulesmagamrga#

https://www.thedailybeast.com/exclusive-rex-tillerson-in-meeting-with-us-diplomats-says-russia-interfered-in-election

Ol Rexxon accidentally spilled the beans?? Pretty sure little yam hands isn’t gonna like that.

"a pussy-grabbing casino bankrupt who’s coherent for about 20 minutes in the morning" doesn't quite roll off the tongue nerdstrom poindexter

settle down

Literally no part of this is "exclusive." This meeting was televised live to entire @StateDept press corps. And Tillerson says this all the time. See: Wilson Center speech two weeks ago, OSCE speech last week in Vienna https://t.co/DEG5GTaFmR

— Josh Lederman (@joshledermanAP) December 12, 2017

phrasing

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2017/dec/12/2017-lie-year-russian-election-interference-made-s/

what does sir richard dearlove know about anything anyways?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/12/13/dirty-dossier-donald-trump-probably-credible-says-former-mi6/

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/ap-poll-most-americans-think-trump-obstruct-russia-probe

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2017/12/the_possibility_that_trump_is_in_putin_s_pocket_is_scarier_than_any_crimes.html

Ugh

https://www.scribd.com/document/360428007/The-Russian-White-Paper

Yeah, but other than all those facts, what do they have? Nothing! Fake white paper!

deep lurching dread, all this stuff gives me

fake news, witch hunt, drivel

http://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2017/12/18/james-clapper-trump-putin-russia-asset-intv.cnn

the 'law & order' republican congress is investigating the FBI (who refused to disclose to the american public that they were investigating russia for influence on the trump campaign) . . . for bias against donald trump. you go, jim jordan and devin nunes. this is where america is in the age of putin :)

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/gop-group-meeting-in-secret-to-undermine-trump-investigation-1121281091699

The GOP have taught me that I can do basically whatever I want as long as I couch it in terms that sound reasonable to those affected by my actions.

Me: 'I'm a patriot, and law and order are my paramount concerns.' (simultaneously and impressively burns down someone's house while shitting on an American flag)
My victims: 'He's such a patriot, and his respect for law and order is truly admirable.'
Me: 'PS, I can't believe the Democrats just burned down your house. Sad!'

a GOParable: FBI agent preter strzok reacting to the trump campaign lying about russian contacts they were warned to avoid is the real villainy here

I know modern conservatives have no politics outside of resentment but it’s still been pretty wild watching the “blue lives matter” crowd call for the disbanding and prosecution of the entire FBI

— KT NELSON (@KrangTNelson) December 14, 2017

counterpoint

https://www.lrb.co.uk/v40/n01/jackson-lears/what-we-dont-talk-about-when-we-talk-about-russian-hacking

“this secular religion” *closes lrb*

not interested in male opinions on this particular theory tbh

Intriguing question asked: what does it mean that Rod Rosenstein has not yet recused himself?

https://www.lawfareblog.com/why-hasnt-rod-rosenstein-recused-himself-mueller-investigation

2/2 Imagine a case involving a major drug ring. Investigators bypass the leaders, their lieutenants, regional dealers, money people & so forth and go straight to prosecuting a neighbor who disclosed the gang to the press. This makes just about that much sense.

— Joyce Alene (@JoyceWhiteVance) January 5, 2018

to go with the bad analogy: the major drug ring is being investigated and no drugs have been found

but they're swimming in contraband vodka

Hard to process the idea of anyone currently thinking there’s nothing to the Russia investigation.

If the Russians were out to defeat Hillary Clinton (which every intelligence agency says they were), why would try to damage her opponent?

If the Trump team is innocent, why have they consistently lied about almost every aspect of the Russia investigation?

Also there have been indictments, guilty pleas, publicly admitting to obstructing the investigation, almost everything Trump does and says etc

feel like there's enough out there in public to make a strong case for a half dozen cases of obstruction of justice, if nothing else

also think that if Trump & his gang were ever straight up offered a quid pro quo like this they'd gleefully accept w/o knowing that such a thing would even be illegal

all that said most likely outcome seems to be a zillion crimes getting uncovered and the House and Senate doing fuck all about it besides trying to throw Mueller in jail

Even Steve Bannon think Don Jr committed treason.

fake news. bannon and trump are still friends, chuckling at the gullibility of the libtards, and this is all going according to andrew breitbart's master plan from beyond his coke-lined grave

Thanks for the LRB link, actually.

In their personal interactions, Trump had found Comey to be a stiff -- he had no banter, no game. But Trump, who invariably thought people found him irresistible, believed that Comey admired his banter and game. When pressed, by Bannon and others, to fire Comey as one of his early acts -- an idea opposed by Kushner, and thus another bullet on Bannon's list of bad recommendations by Kushner -- the president said, "Don't worry, I've got him." That is, he had no doubt that he could woo and flatter the FBI director into positive feeling for him, if not outright submission.

Some seducers are preternaturally sensitive to the signals of those they try to seduce; others indiscriminately attempt to seduce, and, by the law of averages, often succeed (this latter group of men might now be regarded as harassers). That was Trump's approach to women -- pleased when he scored, unconcerned when he didn't (and, often, despite the evidence, believing that he had). And so it was with Director Comey.

In their several meetings since he took office -- when Comey received a presidential hug on January 22nd; at their dinner on January 27th, during which Comey was asked to stay on as FBI director; at their Valentine's Day chat after emptying the office of everybody else, including Sessions, Comey's titular boss - Trump was confident that he had laid on the moves. The president was all but certain that Comey, understanding that he, Trump, had his back (i.e. had let him keep his job), would have Trump's back, too.

But now this testimony. It made no sense. What did make sense to Trump was that Comey wanted it to be about him. He was a media whore -- this Trump understood. All right, then, he, too, could play it this way.

https://www.lrb.co.uk/v40/n01/jackson-lears/what-we-dont-talk-about-when-we-talk-about-russian-hacking

― reggie (qualmsley), Sunday, December 31, 2017 4:43 PM (six days ago)

yeesh @ this essay, but i've lost track of the number of left-wing (or whatever they are) writers i've basically had to quit reading because they take the "russiagate was just made up by the democrats and also what's so bad about peace with russia anyway?" line. at this point i assume the ppl who take this attitude are being willfully ignorant. david bromwich, whose criticisms of obama i'm embarrassed to say i used to agree w/ back in like 2012, wrote basically this same piece for the LRB a few months ago.

I had to double check the date on that piece. It’s insanity for anyone to still be maintaining that take in Jan 2018.

“It’s McCarthyism to go after this one very powerful politician.”

The LRB author frames his essay in terms of what issues aren't being addressed, because the Russia investigation is all that democrats seem to want to talk about. He is less than convincing.

Among other things, he blandly states that democrats just aren't talking about the disenfranchisement of (mostly) minority voters by Republicans, as if the Democrats' unpardonable silence on this subject were somehow an indisputable fact. Except I've heard plenty of talk about it, both during and after the 2016 election, from many, many liberal sources who mainly align themselves with the Democratic party.

For myself, my two Democratic senators, Wyden and Merkley, have been talking about a very wide range of progressive issues, including disenfranchisement. The problem isn't their politics being too bland or timid, but their statements cutting through the deafening media noise around Trump without their turning into Trump-alike clowns in order to do it.

it is bizarre to see ppl condemn the russia business as a "conspiracy theory" because at this point insisting that all of the evidence was deliberately concocted by the FBI or the CIA and that there's *nothing* to the allegations, period, amounts to endorsing a really, really unlikely conspiracy theory.

were there progressives/leftists in the early 70s who took a similar line on watergate -- that it was no big deal or a distraction from 'the real issues,' etc?

X xpost Yeah this whole “democrats are ONLY talking about Russia” line you see sometimes is not said by anyone who pays any attention to what democrats have actually saying

kinda hate the whole "why are we talking about X when we should be talking about Y and Z?" genre of progressive writing. as if this administration hasn't given us dozens of awful things to talk about.

https://www.feinstein.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/3/9/3974a291-ddbe-4525-9ed1-22bab43c05ae/934A3562824CACA7BB4D915E97709D2F.simpson-transcript-redacted.pdf

copied from elsewhere ~

- 7 references to "mafia" links
- 20 references to Putin links
- Trump repeatedly said he and his buildings were worth less than people and agencies imagined

- the intelligence community seems to think Trump's being blackmailed
- the specific reason for the blackmail has to do with "Russians having cameras in all the luxury hotel rooms" **PEE TAPE
- Steele believed a "human source from inside the Trump organization" had already gone to FBI: "a voluntary source, someone who was concerned with the same concerns we had" (pp.175-6) - that being, that the now president was/is being blackmailed by the Kremlin. The FBI viewed Steele's info as credible because they already had the same info from a Trump insider. possible conflicting info about the source (the Australian diplomat may have been the source that opened the FBI investigation)

- on page 154, on Trump: "However, he and his inner circle have accepted a regular flow of intelligence from the Kremlin"
- on page 242, Fusion believed because of their research Carter Page was compromised, and he was being offered business deals for his cooperation
- on page 279, Simpson said someone was already killed because of the information contained in the dossier (because they were revealed to be a source..I wonder if that would happen if the information contained was all false /s)

- on page 73, "So in the course of reading that litigation we would follow up on things that were interesting, such as a libel case against a journalist that he settled, which, in other words, he didn't prevail in his attempts to prove that he was a billionaire."
- on pages 71-72, "One of the things we found out was that, you know, when it comes to paying taxes, Donald Trump claims to not have much stuff. At least the Trump organization. So they would make filings with various state and local authorities saying that their buildings weren't worth much."
- on page 179, "Sometime thereafter the FBI -- I understand Chris severed his relationship with the FBI out of concern that he didn't know what was happening inside the FBI and there was a concern that the FBI was being manipulated for political ends by the Trump people and that we didn't really understand what was going on. So he stopped dealing with them." - this after a few pages of concern that the FBI was too pro-Trump
- on page 296, "We learned that Felix Sater had some connections with these people, and it's been more recently in the media that he's helping the government of Kazakhstan to recover this money. There's been media reports that the money went into the Trump Soho or it went into the company that built the Trump Soho. I can't remember the name"

- page 77, "We were interested in the fact that the Trump family was selling merchandise under the Trump brand in the United States that was made in sweat shops in Asia and South America -- or Latin America."
- page 79, "Trump had made a number of trips to Russia and talked about doing a number of business deals but never did one, and that struck me as a little bit odd and calling for an explanation."
- page 287-288, Simpson calls Sarah Huckabee Sanders a liar for the fourth time about Fusion GPS being a solely democratic tool, confirms they also investigated Obama during his campaign for senator.

- the specific reason for the blackmail has to do with "Russians having cameras in all the luxury hotel rooms" **PEE TAPE

god bless america

I’m having trouble with the idea that Russia would have hidden cameras in all their luxury rooms but I’m no expert.

I think it's just all hotel rooms period

a taped montage of a groggy 1/2 term pre- and post-spiral combover wouldn't be that hard to put together imho

I only see CNN when it's on in the background at the gym, but I'm there almost every day, and so far Russia's been on the menu every single day for the last few weeks.

- Trump repeatedly said he and his buildings were worth less than people and agencies imagined

I am the greatest smartest kazillionaire on this or any other planet, but my buildings? Oh, my buildings are very humble edifices of very little monetary value, sir, I wouldn't want to bore you with the details of such an insignificance.

"the end is nigh, and only putin can save us"

https://www.thedailybeast.com/white-house-official-floated-withdrawing-us-forces-to-please-putin

argh

Harrington is the NSC’s senior official for strategic planning. He had neither military experience nor significant government experience before joining the White House. But he had an influential credential: As a managing director for the Thiel Macro hedge fund, he was close to Trump patron and ally Peter Thiel.

putin is our savior: kevin harrington, current deputy director of the national security agency

before 1/2 term took office, mike flynn told vladimir putin who ratted out their american election infiltration, resulting in oleg ovechkin's death, it's looking more and more like :(

https://www.foreign.senate.gov/press/ranking/release/cardin-releases-report-detailing-two-decades-of-putins-attacks-on-democracy

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/01/putins-trolls-keep-targeting-john-mccain-and-other-gop-trump-critics/

http://dailycaller.com/2018/01/13/trey-gowdy-resigns-from-house-ethics-committee-amid-tumultuous-tenure/

Tre cool.

gowdy = outie 9000. 8999 to go

this "chelsea manning was a russian agent all along" stuff we're seeing from some ppl is really embarrassing

luv2spend seven years in jail in appalling conditions to own the libs for mother russia

I’m very glad I’m not following whatever it is y’all are talking about

don’t worry, u will

it rains again on brighton beach

this couldn't possibly be obstruction of justice

Steve Bannon’s attorney relayed questions, in real time, to the White House during a House Intelligence Committee interview of the former Trump chief strategist, people familiar with the closed-door session told The Associated Press.

As lawmakers probed Bannon’s time working for President Donald Trump, Bannon’s attorney Bill Burck was asking the White House counsel’s office by phone during the Tuesday session whether his client could answer the questions. He was told by that office not to discuss his work on the transition or in the White House.

It’s unclear who Burck was communicating with in the White House. He is also representing top White House lawyer Don McGahn in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into contacts between the Trump campaign and Russia.

https://apnews.com/b8bcb053fda9444a9c0f1dc0ea7b87e4/House-panel-subpoenas-Bannon-in-Russia-probe-showdown

starting to think these dudes might be guilty

cyrano de bannonac

Wasn’t Cyrano the one who whispered info and not the one who asked for and received direction about what to say?

stevebannon de cognac

I’m gonna go take a walk

be careful out there. it's not obstruction of justice when a republican does it. loretta lynch and eric holder on the other hand. whitewater, benghazi, harvard law review : )

He is also representing top White House lawyer Don McGahn in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into contacts between the Trump campaign and Russia.

this is dirty as fuck

the whole thing stinks

https://www.buzzfeed.com/jasonleopold/newly-uncovered-russian-payments-are-a-focus-of-election?utm_term=.iq9EMr3RK5&bftwnews#.vdEEMN62RA

11/14/17 -- fusion GPS testimony with the house intelligence committee

https://lawfareblog.com/document-fusion-gps-ceo-glenn-simpson-house-intelligence-committee-interview

https://thinkprogress.org/blue-detectives-collapse-trump-russia-a42a94537bdf/

Despite his scant relevant expertise, as well as his public history of outright, fantastical fabrication, Seth Abramson (434,000 followers on Twitter currently) has managed to separate himself from the rest of his conspiratorial claque and carve a niche on both social media and cable news as a Trump-Russia analyst. Where Mensch, Taylor, Khan, and Garland generate as much mockery as they do retweets, Abramson has thus far managed to see his credibility somehow remain afloat

http://thehill.com/policy/technology/369797-russian-twitter-accounts-are-pushing-house-intelligence-to-release-shocking

Hamilton 68 is a joke but there are at least two or three articles per week taking it at face value, most of them include the caveat “Russia-linked” rather than “Russian”, as per the headline.

The dashboard supposedly follows around 500 accounts determined by the organisers to be “Russia-linked” but only about seven - including RT, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Relations, etc are ever named. The accounts are secret, as is the methodology for determining they are a) bots / trolls and b) Russian. They’ve indicated it is determined subjectively based on the idea that accounts putting out little but pro-Trump or “Kremlin-aligned” points are probably Russian bots.

The #ReleaseTheMemo hashtag has increased by 286,700 percent over the past two days and is being used 100 times more than any other hashtag by accounts Hamilton 68 is tracking.

The percentage increase is ludicrous at face value and the stats don’t match up with Hamilton 68’s own dashboard - which had “America” as the number one hashtag yesterday with 1200 or so mentions in the previous 48 hours. “Memo” didn’t crack the top ten, but even if it had, it would have needed 120,000 mentions from those accounts to be used 100 times more.

National Russian/Republican Association

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/19/opinion/nra-russia-investigation-trump.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fopinion-columnists

nothing to see here, glenn greenwald : )

https://qz.com/1185452/government-shutdown-russian-bots-are-helping-republicans-blame-democrats-with-schumershutdown/

glenn greenwald sucks but "hamilton 68" is bullshit, we've been over this before

Well it looks like the Russian bots are trying to motivate Americans to get their work week started in a positive way! pic.twitter.com/WDMuyqF4rW

— Sam Sacks (bot) 🤖 (@SamSacks) January 22, 2018

Any journalists who sites this Hamilton 68 tracker as evidence of Russian influence campaigns is a total dumbass

— Sam Sacks (bot) 🤖 (@SamSacks) January 22, 2018

But what are these 600 accounts they track? Should I, as a journalist, bother to check it out before I report that the algorithm is sound? Nah, fuck it. I'm sure these folks are trustworthy as hell. pic.twitter.com/vY3pnsLxVz

— Sam Sacks (bot) 🤖 (@SamSacks) January 22, 2018

quartz > sacks

totally great that so many people lost their minds in the last 18 months

you tell 'em

Speaking of Glenn

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/01/glenn-greenwald-russia-investigation.html

Greenwald has been excommunicated from the liberal salons that celebrated him in the Snowden era; anybody who questions the Russia consensus, he says, “becomes a blasphemer. Becomes a heretic. I think that’s what they see me as.” Greenwald is no longer invited on MSNBC, and he’s portrayed in the Twitter fever swamp as a leading villain of the self-styled Resistance. “I used to be really good friends with Rachel Maddow,” he says. “And I’ve seen her devolution from this really interesting, really smart, independent thinker into this utterly scripted, intellectually dishonest, partisan hack.” His view of the liberal online media is equally charitable. “Think about one interesting, creative, like, intellectually novel thing that [Vox’s] Matt Yglesias or Ezra Klein have said in like ten years,” he says. “In general, they’re just churning out Democratic Party agitprop every single day of the most superficial type.” (Reached for comment, none of these people would respond to Greenwald.)

were there progressives/leftists in the early 70s who took a similar line on watergate -- that it was no big deal or a distraction from 'the real issues,' etc?

― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Friday, 5 January 2018 21:49 (two weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

https://chomsky.info/priorities02/

(which mostly seems like an edited version of this, from 1973: https://chomsky.info/19730920/ )

I like how Greenwald one of those people who uses “elites” as perjorative shorthand all the time but in that piece dismisses people because they went to the “shittiest schools”

tbf all those people he named suck pretty much all of the time, he just sucks most of the time

How many sources has vox media sent to prison though

yglesias ain't bad. klein is kind of boring-ass turd tho

How horrible that any journalist would just churn out party agitprop, good on Greenwald for saying no to that and going on FOX instead.

Seems to me that Greenwald has chosen to position himself well outside the mainstream, but then cannot accept the idea that through this conscious choice he has forfeited the influence that comes with nearness to power. He ran way out into the wilderness, then shouts in his loudest voice, and wonders why so few seem to hear him.

Greenwald has been excommunicated from the liberal salons that celebrated him in the Snowden era; anybody who questions the Russia consensus, he says, “becomes a blasphemer. Becomes a heretic. I think that’s what they see me as.” Greenwald is no longer invited on MSNBC, and he’s portrayed in the Twitter fever swamp as a leading villain of the self-styled Resistance. “I used to be really good friends with Rachel Maddow,” he says. “And I’ve seen her devolution from this really interesting, really smart, independent thinker into this utterly scripted, intellectually dishonest, partisan hack.” His view of the liberal online media is equally charitable. “Think about one interesting, creative, like, intellectually novel thing that [Vox’s] Matt Yglesias or Ezra Klein have said in like ten years,” he says. “In general, they’re just churning out Democratic Party agitprop every single day of the most superficial type.” (Reached for comment, none of these people would respond to Greenwald.)

― reggie (qualmsley), Monday, January 22, 2018 10:34 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

he's really otm about maddow

the Snowden era

gah

Since it’s Jan 2018 it’s not even a matter of debate anymore that Maddow has been way more right on the Russia story than Greenwald has although I get not wanting to see a segment on it every night. His line on her is kind of coming from an ignorant place since the show has extensively covered legislation, citizen protests and gerrymandering etc.

A big story they seem to have gotten really wrong was the ambush in Niger a few months back where Maddow tried to connect it to the inclusion of Chad on the travel ban but he’s probably not aware of that.

he's really otm about maddow

notm. he bitches about her and she doesn't ever mention him. meanwhile there are people in this very thread denying the import of the russian government interfering in american elections. interception indeed ; )

https://chomsky.info/priorities02/

(which mostly seems like an edited version of this, from 1973: https://chomsky.info/19730920/ )

― No purposes. Sounds. (Sund4r), Monday, January 22, 2018 6:51 PM (one hour ago)

that's right -- i remember reading a version of this years ago. it's nowhere near as loopy as the current "russia skeptic" stuff, chomsky actually makes a decent point and writes well. though he was writing well before watergate ended and it could be argued that the situation got way worse after this piece appeared -- the eventual case against nixon went well beyond the break-in itself and the eventual impeachment articles drawn up against him did include the constitutional violations chomsky discussses. at one point they included the illegal bombing of cambodia. the fact that chomsky just reprinted an edited version of this early commentary in 1981, without acknowledging any of this, is symptomatic of an ongoing weakness in his work: he never seems to change his mind, or adapt his critique to changing conditions. he never even seems to acknowledge that situations can change. this is probably why i've liked his early work (this included) better than anything he's written over the last few decades -- at the very least, it's much fresher.

he bitches about her and she doesn't ever mention him

it's almost as though she has 50 times the name recognition and her own tv show

(or at the very least, 10 times the name recognition, if Twitter is an acceptable metric)

Maddow has always seemed like a partisan hack to me

he's really otm about maddow

notm. he bitches about her and she doesn't ever mention him. meanwhile there are people in this very thread denying the import of the russian government interfering in american elections. interception indeed ; )

― reggie (qualmsley), Monday, January 22, 2018 12:50 PM (thirty minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i have sadly seen the maddow show recently on a few occasions so i would tend to disagree

GG doesn't think maddow has become a "partisan hack" because she falls short of some imaginary standard of journalistic objectivity, he thinks that because she doesn't buy his stupid line that the russia stuff was made up by the democrats (working closely w/ that bastion of mainstream progressive sentiment, the fbi) as an excuse for losing the election. he's become an inexcusably lazy and obnoxious writer and he should've retired at least two years ago.

not stanning for rachel, jim in vancouver, but curious what you tend to disagree with her about vis-a-vis illegal russian government interference in the american presidential election in favor of the current (illegitimate) POTUS

No doubt Maddow has a partisan bias (though I think it's overstated) but calling her a hack is absurd. She's has by and large refrained from taking the tweet bait or getting bogged down in the more sordid stuff. It seems she does more far more original reporting than her peers across the big news networks.

not stanning for rachel, jim in vancouver, but curious what you tend to disagree with her about vis-a-vis illegal russian government interference in the american presidential election in favor of the current (illegitimate) POTUS

― reggie (qualmsley), Monday, January 22, 2018 1:35 PM (thirty-two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the heavily fanfare'd bit about trump's tax return was just awful. the general breathless reporting of any development in the trump-russia investigation as if this new thing is finally going to be the piece that puts everything in place (this has been going on for a year now?). the pee tape dossier being taken as completely credible.

the pee tape dossier being taken as completely credible.

weirdly enough I've never seen any MSM outlet, including Maddow's show, taking the dossier this way

i saw some segment on maddow about the bits of the dossier that have been found to be true which seemed to be suggesting that the dossier was roundly trustworthy though it was a while back now so maybe I'm remembering incorrectly

Greenwald hasn't said "the russia stuff [which?] was made up by the democrats"; he's said he wants to see what investigation reveals. You just don't believe him.

xp that's different though - I always saw that as a counterpoint to the other mainstream coverage of this which basically paints the whole thing as unconfirmed and potentially 100% bogus

No one necessarily believes the pee tape is real, as a fact, but several other aspects of the dossier have been verified, and were taken seriously enough at the start to get this whole thing rolling. To deny the dossier outright is akin to denying the findings of the entire intelligence community.

the pee tape dossier being taken as completely credible

this is curiously overblown for someone complaining of rachel maddow's "breathless reporting". christopher steele has speculated that about 70% of the dossier he compiled is "completely credible" and i've never heard rachel maddow (on the occasions i've watched clips of her show) exaggerate that. but ymmv

Greenwald hasn't said "the russia stuff [which?] was made up by the democrats"; he's said he wants to see what investigation reveals. You just don't believe him.

― ice cream social justice (Dr Morbius), Monday, January 22, 2018 10:19 PM (eight minutes ago)

i follow GG on twitter and know his work p well, and this pretense that he "just wants to see the evidence" is bullshit. he's completely dismissive of any evidence that anyone puts forward, and he ridicules anyone who takes it seriously. it'd be better if he just admitted he wasn't interested in the subject and stopped writing about it.

the problem is that some stuff is made up, lots of reputable news sources have been caught not thoroughly vetting sources, etc. some stuff is made up by Democrats, some of it by Republicans, some of it is real, this is the nature of national intelligence work. it is like looking for propaganda in a propaganda haystack.

also people will tend to generalize, obv there is a spectrum between Yes/No, and different people have different thresholds for what constitutes a victory. party evangelicals celebrate victories and battles daily. i voted no but the minute evidence is found that removes Donald Trump from office and proves that he ordered them to do this i will concede it was true all along. until then i have accepted a reality where every country is spying on every other country, where independent actors all over the world can have conflicting or aligning goals while still acting alone, etc. Wikileaks probably would have done what they always do without Donald Trump telling them to go ahead, whether "puppets" of Russia or not they have leaked sensitive US intel in the past and have their own agenda.

it seems weird to me to be so upset about working with foreign influences, after more than a decade of working with Saudi interests and various groups in countries funding the terrorism we are supposedly at war with. if you bring up that Clinton did a lot of business with these interests, you were ignored, it was just us doing international business. funding militant extremist groups has been a matter of national policy for decades. people have accepted this reality. people know this type of back dealing goes on. contrast half a century of investment in foreign arms markets and mercenary groups to leaking e-mails and buying too much Facebook ad space. we have Mueller on the case, and the Dems go on about how awesome and brilliant the dude is, how many leads and interviews he is pilling up, i have faith that they will get to the bottom of it. if he doesn't find Trump directly guilty it won't really matter and the cultists will continue on.

J.D., i'm not talking about "evidence" in the press.

Adam B otm. oh, the Purity of American Democracy.

The “deep state is trying to take out Trump” spin that the right wing is really into basically originated with Glenn.

under W we went to war in iraq (how many people (american and non-american) died?) over less evidence than we have pinning putin and trump. i'm not remotely advocating that we go to war with russia over cozy/fancy bear but i remain mystified by lack of concern over the most epic ratfucking in american history, by our historic geo-political adversary, no less

No one necessarily believes the pee tape is real, as a fact, but several other aspects of the dossier have been verified, and were taken seriously enough at the start to get this whole thing rolling. To deny the dossier outright is akin to denying the findings of the entire intelligence community.

― Josh in Chicago, Monday, January 22, 2018 5:26 PM (twenty-six minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

xp because it directly benefitted one of our two political parties, the one most concerned with holding power above the security and well-being of the nation. to acknowledge it would be to appear illegitimate. there's literally no consequence to just denying everything.

It's concerning! We don't know the scope of what happened yet. Was it bigger in effect than 'ordinary' GOP disenfranchisement? I don't know. xxp

disenfranchisement tactics, that is.

The amount of verifiable items in the dossier has risen to the level that a "pee tape" or something like it is more credible than not.

That it's also a stupid punchline has nothing to with the question of its factual basis

as much as I want to hope the pee tape is some sort of dues ex machina that could free us from all this let's not forget the President of the United States had an extramarital affair with a porn star who spanked him with a Forbes magazine and it was barely a story

Like, Trump's idiot lawyer set up a one-day LLC to pay a porn star hush money to keep an affair quiet. Anything is possible.

xpost Ha. Everything is possible with this piece of shit. There is literally nothing about him that would surprise me save proof that he has done none of the things people have said he's done. He is the human embodiment of the seven deadly sins.

Yeah who knows what the revelation would mean politically, but it's hardly some kind of outlandish notion.

Nobody believes the president wasn't surveilled. What exactly do people think he gets up to at night on these junkets, other than stuffing his fat face and screwing young women he pays for, either directly or with the promise of a TV appearance or a slot in his fucking beauty pageant? I mean, are we all talking about the same person??

"Oh no, pee tape! That's just beyond the pale!"

as if the KGB (and former KGB agents) wouldn't have taped floor to ceiling the hotel bathroom of such an archetypal vain and massively indebted (to them!) ugly american pig capitalist; if he's not on some sexxx tape i'd bet a good five rubles that at the very least there are image-demolishing pix of our elderly manchild POTUS with his '"hair" down' he's way too immature to begin to know how to effectively deal with

Anyway reading that Glenn Simpson testimony and getting a window into his relationship with Steele and Steele's track record, his reputation for scrutiny and thoroughness, etc. gives me no reason to doubt anything they compiled (which obv. is not the same thing as saying it's all true.)

“Was it the sole cause of Trump winning?” doesn’t seem like a relevant question. I think most people get that when something’s that close there’s a lot you could realistically point to as tipping the scales. Much of the denialism seems like this really indirect way of expressing concern that the investigation will somehow be a threat to progressive causes which I can understand to a point but people like Glenn haven’t been great for the discourse on that though.

why would the investigation be a threat to progressive causes?

If the Dems can impeach Trump on this then the party will see the 2016 election as the result of the GOP having “cheated” and no lessons will be learned along the lines of “hey maybe they should have run on fight for 15/stronger appeals to the base” etc.

r u serious

It's not about progressive causes, Greenwald doesn't give a shit about that. He is defensive because he himself spent the final part of the election pushing bullshit stories on Russian leaks.

And in case people have forgotten, there were a lot of people back then going 'what are you doing? those emails were obviously hacked by Russians' but Greenwald refused to consider it. It was absolutely obvious, and he's banking on his denials at least creating confusion.

It’s more of a line of thought you see pushed very frequently by let’s say people associated with “The Young Turks” or those who see themselves as on the left but who still stand by Greenwald. Greenwald’s own motives probably different.

are we really trying to do this to ourselves again

"a win is really a loss" by BernieBros kinda how we got here

Nommed that one for the trackpoll, hope it makes it in.

lol

"a win is really a loss" by BernieBros kinda how we got here

― fuck you, your hat is horrible (Neanderthal), Monday, January 22, 2018 4:24 PM (five minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

no we got here because john podesta clicked on a fishing link and anthony weiner's sex crimes gave comey an excuse to write a letter telling people not to vote for hilary like 6 days before the election

and also hilary was a bad candidate, ok logging off now bye!

I’m not sure how big that line of thinking is, my sense is the overwhelming majority of Bernie supporters would be thrilled to see the Trump admin go down. Bernie himself has always taken the investigation seriously.

xxpost

"a win is really a loss" by BernieBros kinda how we got here

I think that is all irrelevant at this point. Trump could have beat Clinton by a legit 20%, but the stuff he or his campaign is being accused of doing remains illegal.

similarly, maybe Trump did nothing wrong, but interfering in an investigation or trying to cover stuff up is still illegal.

sure is funny how men love to complain about women

the turn this thread took at least explains to me why my self-proclaimed "liberal" lyft driver last week went from complaining about clinton and maddow to referring to the russian investigation a "soft coup" to calling the jfk assassination a "soft coup" to asking me if i knew about pizzagate

slippery fuckin slopes out there, be careful everyone

i gave him two stars btw

maria butina . . . reality has become a two star thomas pynchon novel

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/campaign-finance-russia-funneling-dark-money-trump-nra

Didn't basically the same number or more of Bernie voters go for Hillary in the general than Hillary voters for Obama?

Based on this and this, the number who defected to the GOP was less: 6-12% of Sanders voters vs about 24% of Clinton voters in 2008.

Not sure how many just stayed home, though.

Can I just say again how nuts it is that really not a week, let alone a day, has gone by without a barrage of Trump/Russia investigation revelations? Not not a single closed door, just more and more open doors, more and more acts, more and more individuals. It's really crazy.

yup it is

https://newrepublic.com/article/146725/glenn-greenwalds-women

this is a good piece

Like Reed, I don’t think Greenwald is entirely wrong on the Russian story. I’m grateful he rails against the demonization of those with views outside the mainstream consensus, especially on Syria and Ukraine. Greenwald is right that the focus on Russia has led to some embarrassing false stories, not to mention an alarmist treatment of initial cyberprobes (the likes of which the United States itself does all the time) as full-blown attacks on the United States. Like Greenwald, I think MSNBC’s lefty-focused programs have become an information bubble (though it is nowhere near as bad as Fox News). Like Greenwald, I believe the focus on Russia’s nefariousness has distracted from America’s own sins, such as the centuries of racism that allowed a figure like Donald Trump to thrive and a well-funded, right-wing propaganda machine that did far more to elect Trump than a Russian troll factory in Saint Petersburg. And I worry that the focus on Russia will distract Trump’s opponents from more tangible actions to combat him.

But unlike Greenwald I have no doubt that Russia launched a successful attack on the United States in 2016. Indeed, I’m of the opinion that if special counsel Robert Mueller is permitted to pursue all angles of this operation, we’ll learn the damage was worse than most people imagine. I say that, in part, because I believe the Shadow Brokers persona was a part of the operation, working in tandem with Russian-backed hackers who stole emails from the Democratic National Committee. Shadow Brokers had previously released a slew of NSA hacking tools that were then integrated into global malware like WannaCry and NotPetya, which together did hundreds of millions of dollars of damage to Western companies and hurt the NSA’s ability to respond to the Russian operation.

"a win is really a loss" by BernieBros kinda how we got here

I think extrapolating bullshit like this is how we got here.

Voters believe crazy shit like Pizzagate? GET SMARTER VOTERS

That Wheeler piece is good.

It’s excellent, as is the Hennessey quote:

Hennessey said, “I find the stuff that’s text- and evidence-based interesting (both for and against the notion there’s something to it).” She contrasted that with what she described as “surface commentary,” which she called ”a waste of time.” She judged, “I haven’t seen Greenwald produce anything in the former category.”

It’s a jab at Greenwald but also applies to 98% of the reporting on the issue. I don’t agree with Wheeler all the time but she is putting in more good work than most other people combined.

"a win is really a loss" by BernieBros kinda how we got here

I think extrapolating bullshit like this is how we got here.

― ice cream social justice (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, January 23, 2018 2:50 PM (thirty minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

"surface commentary" is a great way of describing like 98% of the internet

(he said)

i was actually replying to the defeatism of saying the Dems taking back Congress in midterms would be a bad thing but ok guys

regardless of what one thinks of underlying substance, net effect of West's Russia scare is playing out as
- Massive military increases
- Total end to any domestic spying reforms
- Rebranding of Bush & ex-Bush officials
- Tighter control of information flows (to stop "fake news")

— Adam H. Johnson (@adamjohnsonNYC) January 23, 2018

it's sad how russia inquiry smashed trump's plan to overturn the gop/usa governing model, cause it was gonna be a total shocka

"regardless of what one thinks of underlying substance," what a fucking weasel

Johnson regularly parrots the Greenwald take of “The President did bad things because of MSNBC hosts”

you'd think ppl like him would get whiplash the way they go back and forth between "there is no evidence show me the evidence where is the evidence" and "would it really be that bad if russia did this i mean we do it all the time"

i was thinking about this in the shower last night, that grim as it is this feels like comeuppance for a few decades worth of america's covert misadventures

we're due for the short end of the stick in the superpower order

you'd think ppl like him would get whiplash the way they go back and forth between "there is no evidence show me the evidence where is the evidence" and "would it really be that bad if russia did this i mean we do it all the time"

― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Tuesday, January 23, 2018 3:00 PM (eleven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the investigation is still ongoing and america does do this all the time tho is the thing

lol i'm watching mcmafia (it is bad not good) and the main character, alex godman, maps pretty seamlessly onto "the west" these days - rudderless, amoral, passive, prissy, paranoid, enormously self-regarding, wildly defensive, still thinks he's one of the good guys

Marcy Wheeler is always worth reading on nat'l security stuff.

J.D., plz show us your final report.

Lol Adam Johnson. So sad that it backfired for pro-transparency activists to align themself with a rapist secretly pushing leaks from Russian leaks. Who could have guessed?

OF COURSE the constant discrediting of people like Greenwald, Assange and Manning is leading to more power for the other side. That's why they're so bad for the left.

'leaks from Russian leaks' is a pun, I guess. Um...

so sad that it backfired for anti-transparency DNC to align themselves with a rapsist Harvey Weinstein. Who could have guessed?

OF COURSE the constant bickering about US politics from foreigners like Frederik B has shitted up the discourse. that's why they're so bad for the left.

Yes, clearly what the left needs is to be shittier to 'foreigners'. Great logic there, Adam.

lol i didn't say that

i do think you are probably personally responsible for a number of ILX leftists ditching out of 2016 entirely so congrats on that

Lol. You also think Chelsea Manning will get veteran support, though, so...

https://www.veteransforpeace.org/

they did direct link to her website.

i thought this whole thing was about foreigners sowing dissent in our otherwise pristine electoral process. wouldn't that put you in that group?

um, no?

just how dumb are you, lol

get a room you two

But leave the curtains open.

lol

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51mQkhtm1AL.jpg

One of the creepiest things about this whole thing is the right doing stuff like this. Also Fox News commentators demanding multiple people (including low level FBI people) be jailed every night seems bad imo.

Sen Ron Johnson claims "informant" who has news about the FBI "Secret Society" working to overthrow President Trump. pic.twitter.com/QzGhXBEUYD

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) January 24, 2018

secret society sounds so cool though

lol even Jonah's like, whoa now.

The whole movement to purge the FBI of non-Trump loyalists thing might be indicatative of guilt possibly. Also it seems really potentially bad in a large scale sense. But maybe it’s nothing to worry or raise alarm about because the FBI has been known to do bad things in history?

I'm P sure we can trust the GOP, Trump and Putin, they've never done anything bad.

jfc pic.twitter.com/9E1waQU9cj

— Kate Aronoff (@KateAronoff) January 24, 2018

Dinesh, you’re gay and had a one night stand with a man on a Navy ship, my sources said. And that was how Russia kompromated you as you were too cowardly to come out of the closet. There is a recording apparently. True or false?

— Louise Mensch (@LouiseMensch) January 25, 2018

lmao

That Aronoff tweet is really bad. In context of story it’s a list of oligarchs whose companies have come up in the investigation. I agree though that it would be bad if it were the thing it’s being misrepresented as/random Russians.

i don't get the sense that anyone rly pays attention to louise mensch for anything except lols these days

I seldom even seen her brought up for the lols anymore. Something slightly dated and out of context about it. Like seeing someone dunk on Hamilton.

trying to pick a side in a mensch / d’souza beef is a real ‘daddy or chips’-level conundrum innit

people rag on Louise Mensch a lot but if she were pro-Trump you know FOX would give her a nightly show

I think Mensch is pretty much a double agent to discredit the #resistance at this point.

trying to pick a side in a mensch / d’souza beef

i feel like Mensch's 15 minutes are about up (in America, anyway), and certainly will be once Trump is gone. D'Souza will be trolling us til he dies with movies like "Snacking on Aborted Babies and Raping Lady Liberty: George Soros' America"

kinda wish d’souza had that level of imagination instead of the endless tedium of ‘ahhh but the dems are the real racists do u see’

d'souza must be so frustrated that he got busted for actual crimes instead of hillary getting busted for pretend crimes

I heard that one of the parts of “Hillary’s America” warns that if she’s elected Vladimir Putin would be emboldened and there’s nefarious footage of Putin exiting a plane, so it sort of became dated and out of step with the right wing narrative that took shape during the election.

lol remember when GOP lawmakers (in FL maybe?) were going to require elementary school kids to watch one of his dumbass movies?

Dutch intelligence saw Cozy Bear Russians hack into White House, State Dept, and had camera access to their HQ in Moscow

whoops

brb just going to ask Claude Rains what he thinks about shady as hell oligarchs turning up in Davos

mr. trump and mr. putin will hold hands in the red square and swear before the world there was no collusion between the trump campaign and the russian government; it's all just an honest misunderstanding between two frenemy superpowers : )

http://www.newsweek.com/trump-tells-russia-wants-make-things-better-between-them-putin-fully-agrees-792323

what's good for the goose

http://www.tampabay.com/news/politics/Hallandale-Beach-mayor-accepted-illegal-checks-from-Russians-prosecutors-say_164910657

just under an hour drive from mar-a-lago

how and why did russia succeed in intervening in an american presidential election on behalf of one of the candidates?

With the 2018 midterm elections set to begin little more than a month from now, Senator Warner says that’s still the big story, even if it’s in danger of being lost in a drumbeat of partisan name-calling.

“If you add up all of the money Russia spent interfering in our election; if you add on what they spent in the French elections, where Facebook took down 50,000 sites that were connected to Russia because they’d seen the Russian intervention, if you add up what they spent on the Dutch elections, where the Dutch hand-counted all of their ballots because they were so afraid of Russian intervention,” he tells me. “You add all that up and you’re still talking about less money than the cost of one new F-35 airplane.”

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/01/29/mark-warner-global-politico-216545

tax cuts

“You add all that up and you’re still talking about less money than the cost of one new F-35 airplane.”

vladimir putin: the real president deals

just a coincidence. nothingburger. fake news!

https://nltimes.nl/2018/01/29/russian-servers-linked-ddos-attack-netherlands-financial-network-report

Don’t let trump’s language limit your sense of what is possible, qualmsley. It’s possible that’s real news!

i don't believe it is real news. the president is a good man, a self-made billionaire. the russians are our friends. the dutch are our enemies. #MRGA

qualmsley...

qualmsleeeeeeeeeeeeeey!!!!

we have always been at peace with eastasia. liberal red scare!

Pasting TRUMP in all caps on the front of buildings is tasteful and not at all tacky

it's not that american banks won't lend to the trumps; american banks aren't good enough for the trumps

coinkydink!

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-tower-russian-lawyer-natalia-veselnitskaya-exposed-in-swiss-corruption-case?ref=home

no sanctions on russia AND the majority report from the house intelligence committee is coming out AND the majority refused to let the minority report come out AND andrew mccabe is out. we finally have these liberal / democrat traitors right we want them! lock her up!!

you're the conspiracy

https://www.cnn.com/2018/01/31/politics/donald-trump-rod-rosenstein-december-meeting/index.html

http://time.com/5132126/carter-page-russia-2013-letter/

oh carterpaws

Someone should keep an eye on that guy several years ago.

I don’t know anything about Russian or Cyrillic transliteration, but if some contact’s name ends in two consecutive “y”s, I would put the name in the FBI FISA warrant app because two “y”s sound spy-y.

The U.S. official in charge of protecting American elections from hacking says the Russians successfully penetrated the voter registration rolls of several U.S. states prior to the 2016 presidential election.

In an exclusive interview with NBC News, Jeanette Manfra, the head of cybersecurity at the Department of Homeland Security, said she couldn't talk about classified information publicly, but in 2016, "We saw a targeting of 21 states and an exceptionally small number of them were actually successfully penetrated."

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/elections/russians-penetrated-u-s-voter-systems-says-top-u-s-n845721

nah just a conspiracy theory!

"The U.S. official in charge of protecting American elections from hacking" is a stretch but I guess we'll take it

i hope the scorpions record a sequel to "winds of change" celebrating relations between former soviet bloc countries and the west thawing to such an extent that team america is more concerned about mexican immigration than russian election interference

i'll see your ground zero mosque, and raise you

http://www.newsweek.com/trump-and-large-russian-delegation-attend-national-prayer-breakfast-801195

lol of course the putin opponent who was invited is 'russia's paris hilton.' this fuckin clown car

i'm told this is big

https://theintercept.com/2018/02/09/donald-trump-russia-election-nsa

whoa if true

seems too good to be true, i've been told on this board that Putin runs the Intercept

The stolen docs had the only copy of mrs fields delish chocolate chip cookies, and the original copy of recipe here was lost. Nsa had to get those back. At any cost.

i confess that i'm a little confused by why the nsa would want to buy the stolen documents back from russia. sorry if i'm being naive but wouldn't the russians just make a copy of the documents? or it's some sort of special document that cannot be copied? or...the americans never made a copy in the first place so lost the original, only copy they had? "it was a goof"

i won't be surprise if once the dust settles the russians are all like, 'look, we were just as appalled by trump as you yanks'

xp i imagine that nsa doesn't know exactly what's been stolen from them and therefore doesn't know what all it needs to scrap/rework

I can’t follow that story at all. Unnamed sources have said that unnamed sources were interested in anonymous pronouns nationality Shadow Brokers Trump money Dan Coats Mueller. Berlin.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/09/us/politics/us-cyberweapons-russia-trump.html

OK lol @ gross incompetence of sigint people trying to do a humint job - but also sad

Unnamed sources have said that unnamed sources were interested in anonymous pronouns nationality Shadow Brokers Trump money Dan Coats Mueller. Berlin.

I think you misspelled "Benghazi" there bro

damning review

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-russia-isnt-about-the-cover-up-its-about-the-crime

One tip-off was in Michael Flynn’s December 1 “allocution”—his signed submission to the court as part of his guilty plea to making false statements to the FBI on January 24, 2017. It received almost no media attention but suggested the nature of the criminal conspiracy that would likely be at the heart of Mueller’s prosecution.

Flynn didn’t just vaguely admit he lied. The law doesn’t allow that. He admitted in writing that his lie “had a material impact” on the FBI’s probe “into the existence of any links or coordination between individuals associated with the Trump Campaign and Russia’s efforts to intervene in the 2016 election.”

hurry up, mr. mueller!

What the hell is up with this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQZr2NgKPiU

boy I really hope that guy doesn't mysteriously wind up dead

we need to get this guy on the case. american IC is more and more "compromised" by trump m.mulvaney-ing the FBI / CIA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U28FY1H8sbY

It would be nice to think that Navalny has been allowed to persist because his profile in the West has risen too much....seems more like Putin has calculated that the public is now so inured to these crimes that he poses no real threat. New normals everywhere.

A couple months before that boat trip (June 2016) Victoria Nuland was asking congress for billion$ "to deploy an additional rotational Armored Brigade Combat Team (ABCT) to Central and Eastern Europe; the prepositioning of combat equipment; as well as additional trainings and exercises in Europe."

https://www.foreign.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/060716_Nuland_Testimony.pdf

the escort's instagram is wild. she's claiming that oleg is suing her to remove the photos and that it's an end-run around blocking youtube and instagram in russia?

https://www.instagram.com/nastya_rybka.ru/?hl=en

Some knucklehead at the IC testimony today asked smugly if the Steele Dossier is still considered "salacious and unverified." IC guy paused then said he would have to address that in closed session (!).

Same dude asked first if Steele had been employed by Oleg.

The escort is also threatening to sue Deripaska for rape if he doesn’t agree to marry her and led a partially-clothed street protest / publicity stunt in favour of Harvey Weinstein a few months ago. She’s a colourful character.

Yeah, that Weinstein protest was in the video. Looks like she stuck sparklers in her butt.

chait v. greenwald -- fight!

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/02/how-glenn-greenwald-made-the-russia-scandal-disappear.html

The column he quotes... How can anyone write shit like this with a straight face?

There has long been a fringe on the far right that believes the Clintons are responsible for murdering dozens of people in order to silence them. Sometimes, people who thought that way were in the mainstream, as evidenced by the leading role played by the Wall Street Journal editorial page in pushing the theory that Hillary Clinton had former White House attorney Vince Foster murdered.

But those people have been largely scorned and relegated to obscurity. The new conspiracy theorists — the ones who casually suggest that when a plane crashes, it is really a secret attempt by Putin and Trump to silence one of the passengers (who wasn’t even a passenger) — are found not on far right websites, but on MSNBC and at Harvard Law School, with constantly growing social media followings and increasingly viral tweets.

Seth Rich anyone?

Is the Seth Rich theory "in the mainstream"?

As in has anyone published anything regarding it in publications comparable to the WSJ?

The more outré Russia conspiracy theories are definitely more mainstream/visible than the Seth Rich thing imo

https://www.wsj.com/articles/fox-news-contributor-sues-over-discredited-article-on-dnc-staffer-1501606036

xp. Well given that Louise Mensch had an op-ed in the NYT I would say so.

oh, ok, fox covered it. i guess it's mainstream in terms of visibility and viewership.

Sean Hannity devoted several nights to Seth Rich, wtf?

Fox News is obviously a bit of an outlier in terms of the fact that it is a huge network but is batshit insane

And you should really read the column, the whole thing is about a weirdo dude on twitter. Not exactly a great example if the point is mainstream acceptance.

Also, try and google 'Breitbart Seth Rich' and 'Infowars Seth Rich'. Conspiracy hustling IS the right wing media mainstream.

yeah but fox news is also very much in the public sphere in a lot of parts of the country.

The politicization of the DoJ at the hands of a far-right AG, amid an attempted purge of employees deemed insufficiently loyal, is never described as McCarthyism, but the idea that the "deep state" is full of secret leftists, here protecting their traitorous queen....

— Charles Davis (@charliearchy) December 21, 2017

Does Greenwald still talk about Louise Mensch? That may indicate some degree of desperation on his part if he’s done that say in the past year.

What the hell is up with this?

"allegedly" oleg deripaska, sergei pridhodko, and paul manafort were the go-betweens between mr. putin and mr. trump?

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/12/world/europe/russia-youtube-instagram-navalny.html

*prikhodko

not sure re Mensch but bear in mind the NYT gave her a byline less than a year ago, only a couple months before it was broadly agreed she was certifiable

Yes, that is in the Chait piece.

have yet to read, was responding to NP regarding the acceptable Mensch burn window

yes there is certainly no lunatic fringe today on RussiaRussiaRussia

I am so confused-- now it's RUSSIA that is spreading the real/fake stories about Russian influence over Trump?! pic.twitter.com/6oHyoleI9x

— Peter Hart (@peterfhart) February 13, 2018

Yeah sure but that’s not a good example probably.

I find that plausible: that it's as much about sowing chaos as it is about guaranteeing a specific result.

Why would Russia not be spreading misinformation about Russia’s activities?

What is this kindergarten playbook people think that foreign intelligence services are reading from

a better example would have been the lib accounts claiming that something awful in the Trump budget was "straight out of the Putin playbook" or whatever

The online version of the article doesn't appear to make that claim any more, if it's from the NY Times.

never gets old

"There's two people I think Putin pays: Rohrabacher and Trump," McCarthy (R-Calif.) said, according to a recording of the June 15, 2016, exchange, which was listened to and verified by The Washington Post. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher is a Californian Republican known in Congress as a fervent defender of Putin and Russia.

House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) immediately interjected, stopping the conversation from further exploring McCarthy's assertion, and swore the Republicans present to secrecy.

Before the conversation, McCarthy and Ryan had emerged from separate talks at the Capitol with Ukrainian Prime Minister Vladimir Groysman, who had described a Kremlin tactic of financing populist politicians to undercut Eastern European democratic institutions.

News had just broken the day before in The Washington Post that Russian government hackers had penetrated the computer network of the Democratic National Committee, prompting McCarthy to shift the conversation from Russian meddling in Europe to events closer to home.

Some of the lawmakers laughed at McCarthy's comment. Then McCarthy quickly added: "Swear to God."

Ryan instructed his Republican lieutenants to keep the conversation private, saying: "No leaks. ... This is how we know we're a real family here."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/house-majority-leader-to-colleagues-in-2016-i-think-putin-pays-trump/2017/05/17/515f6f8a-3aff-11e7-8854-21f359183e8c_story.html?utm_term=.1ebb39551c67

where's jason chaffetz when you need him? and jim "the USA FISA courts are corrupt tools of hellary benghazobama killton" jordan (r-oh) and devin "grapefruit fucker" nunes? #MRGA

http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-rick-gates-plea-deal-20180218-story.html

A former top aide to Donald Trump's presidential campaign will plead guilty to fraud-related charges within days — and has made clear to prosecutors that he would testify against Paul Manafort, the lawyer-lobbyist who once managed the campaign.

The change of heart by Trump's former deputy campaign manager Richard Gates, who had pleaded not guilty after being indicted in October on charges similar to Manafort's, was described in interviews by people familiar with the case.

"Rick Gates is going to change his plea to guilty," said a person with direct knowledge of the new developments, adding that the revised plea will be presented in federal court in Washington "within the next few days."

case closed. no collusion

Manafort getting squeeeeeeeezed. Gates, that additional mortgage fraud charge ... Mueller must want something from him, I just can't put my finger on what. Maybe cheap rugs?

the thing that trump knows that no one else knows about the latest mueller indictments is that, if you look at them, none of the people indicted were in the trump administration or campaign. and that proves that there was no collusion. and since mueller's work is done, that's the end of the story.

Makes sense to me.

June 9, 2016 ~ Half Scoop's, Jar Jar's, Manafort's, and Bannon's Trump Tower Russia meeting
June 9, 2016 ~ Trump tweets about missing Clinton emails
June 12, 2016 ~ Wikileaks promises to release more Clinton emails

July 18, 2016 ~ Trump campaign surrogates make RNC Platform Committee soften stance against Russia, reduce support for Ukraine
- Other Platform Committee members note that 2scoops's people took almost no interest in any other platform planks
- Carter Page congratulates Trump surrogates via email: "As for the Ukraine amendment, excellent work."
http://www.businessinsider.com/carter-page-congressional-testimony-transcript-steele-dossier-2017-11
July 22, 2016 ~ Wikileaks releases DNC emails

but tax cuts! tax cuts!!

maybe we should place upper age limits on voting too

A Florida woman who ran a Trump supporters page that unwittingly promoted a Russian-coordinated event on Facebook says she doesn’t believe that she was influenced by Kremlin-linked trolls https://t.co/DmgDRFRwyn pic.twitter.com/OAz5julCyA

— CNN (@CNN) February 21, 2018

maybe we should place upper age limits on voting too

A Florida woman who ran a Trump supporters page that unwittingly promoted a Russian-coordinated event on Facebook says she doesn’t believe that she was influenced by Kremlin-linked trolls https://t.co/DmgDRFRwyn pic.twitter.com/OAz5julCyA

— CNN (@CNN) February 21, 2018

What if outrage over Russian interference could lead to a broader discussion about the dangers of online psyops, soft power, and meddling in other countries affairs instead of a one-note outrage orgy by partisan hacks who defend these same practices when done by the US

— Adam H. Johnson (@adamjohnsonNYC) February 21, 2018

Russian bot activity goes back decades. #knowyourmasters pic.twitter.com/dQrYhaGd16

— Dennis Perrin (@DennisThePerrin) February 23, 2018

point
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/taibbi-russiagate-skeptics-take-a-beating-mueller-probe-w517006

counterpoint
https://washingtonmonthly.com/2018/02/26/the-mounds-of-evidence-russiagate-skeptics-have-to-ignore/

That Taibbi piece's entire opening premise was completely undercut by this piece from someone who worked at Facebook

https://www.wired.com/story/how-trump-conquered-facebookwithout-russian-ads/

"During the run-up to the election, the Trump and Clinton campaigns bid ruthlessly for the same online real estate in front of the same swing-state voters. But because Trump used provocative content to stoke social media buzz, and he was better able to drive likes, comments, and shares than Clinton, his bids received a boost from Facebook’s click model, effectively winning him more media for less money. In essence, Clinton was paying Manhattan prices for the square footage on your smartphone’s screen, while Trump was paying Detroit prices. Facebook users in swing states who felt Trump had taken over their news feeds may not have been hallucinating."

(also distrustful of any pal of greenwald's saying 'it's not that big of a deal,' tbh)

not to mention so much is classified that we are getting incomplete pieces of a puzzle. in the other thread, we agree that it's hard to tell where Mueller's going, but note that things are definitely happening. Taibbi seems to think this means it might be a nothingburger, even though as I previously said, we've only seen pieces of a much larger puzzle.

I mean it's like saying "NO CONCLUSIVE EVIDENCE THAT OJ KILLED WIFE, CALL ME A SKEPTIC" 48 hours after he was arrested

tbf, it's been many years and they still haven't found the killer, so ...

yeah but OJ's looking for the killer, remember

How is he supposed to do that if people keep taking away his money and resources?

So re: Mueller: the guy was FBI director for 12 (!) years. Why are there seemingly so few pictures, let alone gifs/memes, in circulation? These are the important questions!

at last, someone has linked two Stories of the Century I have never found personally compelling. xp

So re: Mueller: the guy was FBI director for 12 (!) years. Why are there seemingly so few pictures, let alone gifs/memes, in circulation? These are the important questions!

I'm fascinated by this because there is such a cinematic quality to all of it - not just the fact that we never see or really hear from him, but also his legendary sense of thoroughness and his reputation as the ultimate bureaucrat...apparently absolutely nothing gets past him. Compared to Trump, who wants nothing more than to be on TV all the time, doesn't really care about anything in depth, whose sense of right and wrong only depends on how things pertain to him. There's actually a good WaPo article about this very thing, though I feel I've mentioned it in the USPol thread several times

two Stories of the Century I have never found personally compelling

If you view the story as "the Russians stole the election for Trump by tweeting thousands of nasty remarks about HRC", then I could see being unimpressed by it. But for many months the Watergate story appeared to be "a third rate burglary by some misguided Cuban exiles and some other guy with somewhat puzzling connections to the administration", until it expanded. The Russian influence story has not yet expanded to its full size.

Eventually, I think it is likely to reveal Trump was actively involved in international racketeering in partnership with the Russian mafia, shady Russian banks, shadier Russian billionaires, and ultimately with Putin's security and intelligence agencies. Pee tape or no pee tape, I find that outcome would be kind of compelling when you're talking about the President of the United States.

at last, someone has linked two Stories of the Century I have never found personally compelling. xp

― ice cream social justice (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, February 27, 2018 5:48 PM (one hour ago)

oh is that why you post one snarky "russiagate isn't real" tweet after another, because you don't find the story "personally compelling"

you and your fellow Russkie hunters could nail Yam's ass to the wall on a dozen other things we DO have sufficient evidence on, if you had the power.

one snarky "russiagate isn't real" tweet after another

As Bob Dole said, "Stop lying about my ILX record."

i mean once again i would like to point out that all of this is very very probably about the money, and that’s why trump is so caged animal about it

trump is broke and in hock to the shady russians who launder cash through all his tacky ass buildings

but the path to that is long and winding thanks to trump being a liar with a cult of personality

absolutely, anything that is mysterious about him is the nonmystery of money.

So much weirdness in here:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2018/02/27/in-thai-jail-after-sex-training-a-model-who-rattled-russian-elite-asks-u-s-for-help

MOSCOW — A self-described sex expert whose videos highlighted the ties between one of Russia’s richest men and the Kremlin has been jailed in Thailand and is calling for U.S. help, claiming she has information about links between Russia and President Trump.

Anastasia Vashukevich, an escort-service worker from Belarus who catapulted to a certain measure of fame after filming a yacht trip with Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska and Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Prikhodko, was detained in Thailand over the weekend in a police raid on her “sex training” seminar. While still in custody on Tuesday, she published Instagram videos asking U.S. journalists and intelligence agencies to help her.

She should probably make herself comfortable in Thai jail.

whoa when did Bob Dole post to ILX

oh shit

that's the woman in the video upthread right?

xpost

Yeah, she's that hooker/escort/gal pal of that Russian oligarch/star of that weird epic Russian take-down video.

Want to hear some wanton Nastya gossip that I’m going to irresponsibly pass on? (With one solid source, however.) Nastya is said to know the sexworkers who were at the Ritz that...night. https://t.co/WaQ8gh7Z57

— Virginia Heffernan (@page88) February 27, 2018

there’s also stuff about a government plane that had a lot of cocaine on it when it flew from argentina and now it’s in thailand because some mucky muck wants to talk to their govt about prisoner conditions?

remember that tweet about the last season of america from 2016? i keep thinking of it lately

The U.S. intelligence community developed substantial evidence that state websites or voter registration systems in seven states [Alaska, Arizona, California, Florida, Illinois, Texas and Wisconsin] were compromised by Russian-backed covert operatives prior to the 2016 election — but never told the states involved, according to multiple U.S. officials.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/elections/u-s-intel-russia-compromised-seven-states-prior-2016-election-n850296

so apparently a WAtchdog is looking at the alleged "improper FISA applications".

is this really a good move for the Trump admin? I mean, watchdogs tend to be bipartisan and impartial, and if he comes back with a "no wrongdoing", what does it help? I see the "people will have forgotten by then" angle but then why have the Watchdog look into it at all?

Even the "we can say the Inspector General is crooked and corrupt" isn't really going to have legs enough to make it worthwhile.

I think they are fully in throw-everything-at-the-wall mode (as w Nunes memo) doesn't really matter so long they can create some noise

Even the "we can say the Inspector General is crooked and corrupt" isn't really going to have legs enough to make it worthwhile.

I get that he can and will do it, but it won't move the needle much. not that this has stopped him before.

I really don't care about public trust in the motherfucking FBI

yeah if there was some way Trump and the FBI could resolve this in some sort of conjoined death pact that would rule

why don't we just redraw the state lines, make 50 new states

except for the 5 mile radius around my house, that's another country

I doubt the fbi is going away, and once he gets the lackies in it he wants, overseen by Prince or whoever, he will ride like a motherfucker for the fbi.

So im willing to go with a counter-trump fbi til he’s gone. Time is not our friend.

man I hope Prince leads the FBI from Heaven, it'll be mad sexy

https://www.mprnews.org/story/2018/02/27/russia-hacking

uh I have a question are you guys "down w/ the FBI" meaning this FBI/J Edgar heritage/post-Patriot act FBI or do you actually wish there was no law enforcement at the federal level

I mean nobody likes cops but

everybody's got a big but, as Special Agent Pee-wee Herman often said

i know you are but what am i

Deep in the heart of Texas!

deep in the heart of moscow

http://theweek.com/speedreads/758012/mueller-reportedly-interested-trumps-hotel-room-moscow

Hmm, I wonder why he's so interested in that hotel room?

Seriously, though, at this point even the pee tape would hardly qualify as kompromat. Trump is a walking embarrassment. But maybe the hookers are a savvy smokescreen, and in fact he was meeting with *Putin* in that hotel room!

And then Putin peed on the bed.

If everyone’s expectations are low enough and loyalty is purely tribal, they let you do it.

That would seem to answer the question I posed about Abramson vs. Marshall's reading of the case theory - Mueller's people are at least running down the road Abramson has lain out.

Yeah i think the point made earlier that mueller is the anti trump in terms of systematic thoroughness was correct. which given mueller’s resources and background is kinda “well, duh, hunt3r,” but plodding, thorough care seems so out of style.

also in his 70s, mueller has way better hair

On the other hand, "'You ask everything even if you don't think it's credible,' one of the sources said, adding, 'the allegations are out there, and it was checking the box.'" Abramson of course is perhaps preemptively patting himself on the back.

That would seem to answer the question I posed about Abramson vs. Marshall's reading of the case theory - Mueller's people are at least running down the road Abramson has lain out.

― Moo Vaughn, Wednesday, February 28, 2018 8:08 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

sb for abramson

What does that mean?

it's a reference to a long obsolete ILX system for Suggesting the Banning of certain posters

DUH!

(and almost always referenced tongue-in-cheek)

sb giving away company secrets

it's the collusion thread, i can't help it

too insidery

lmao

Retract every single news article that cited Hamilton68 to claim Russian bots are doing x. Here are its creators admitting it's all bullshit.https://t.co/sTkHQXsLmq pic.twitter.com/VYkzErIP7E

— Sam Sacks (bot) 🤖 (@SamSacks) February 28, 2018

I found the interview with Masha Gessen and NYTimes' Adrian Chen on NPR this morning really annoying. The premise was that Russian interference, while real, was overblown. Gessen took the stance that it's ridiculous that "sub-literate" Russia trolls would have such a decisive effect on the American public (which ignores the fact that much of America is equally sub-literate, which the internet makes clear, and also voluntarily propagates the same sort of shit the Russians pushed) and that we should focus on bigger things (which is probably true but doesn't negate the effect of Russian interference). Chen, likewise, was skeptical, for similar if more neutral reasons, and yet, in describing his reluctance to wade into this debate, essentially conceded the effectiveness of information warfare. And both sort of elide over the prima facia evidence that *Russia was trying to influence Americans*, so clearly they believed, even if it wasn't absolutely effective, it was certainly worth a shot. Otherwise they wouldn't have bothered, though as a couple of those interviews with indicted players shows, the Russians didn't try very hard and were as amused by their possible success.

Just so annoying. There is a lot going on right now, on numerous fronts, big and small, and they are not mutually exclusive. Trump Inc., Wikileaks, Russia - these can all be independent actors whose Venn diagrams occasionally overlapped and potentiated their somewhat aligned goals: Trump Inc. was desperate for a leg up in the election, Wikileaks was vindictive, Russia wanted to make trouble. Everything together likely magnified the effect of all of these things independently.

The banality of effective disruptive social media

it's not necessarily that it's *russia* that bothers me (though oh my god it's *russia*!) but that candidate trump and his team cooperated with them in exchange for sanctions relief, and while president trump hasn't been able to deliver yet, he refuses to impose further bipartisan sanctions, and he's obstructed the investigation into election interference from the jump. the GOP going along with this farce is every bit as horrible as watergate, reagan's various pre- and post-election iranian shenanigans, the brooks brothers riot (in the state candidate bush's brother was governor!), the bullshit bush v. gore supreme court decision, the deceit campaign that led us into iraq part ii, the birth certificate, and BENGHAZI. "conservative" politics is a giant zit on the face of lady liberty; if this russia probe can lance it, bravo. i'm not holding my breath of course because all this propaganda is in smoke screen service to cover up for the neo-feudalist voodoo economics revolution that's been in full effect since at least the powell memo was circulated, and the dark money lords (via ALEC, Fox, the NRA and their ilk) have brainwashed legions of bigots into their voting base, who'd eat glass before admitting they've ever been wrong about anything political

I'm not sure Gessen is wrong, but while it's probably giving into prejudice, my propaganda detector is always on low hum with any prominent Russian-American public intellectual/commenter like Gessen

That Sam Sacks idiot is on his timeline desperately spamming every reporter about “Hamilton68”, as though those innocuous quotes vindicates him for being wrong for months about the entire Russia story being a “hoax”. He’s another one of those guys that if you only got his version of the story you wouldn’t be aware that there have been indictments etc.

my propaganda detector is always on low hum with any prominent Russian-American public intellectual/commenter like Gessen

yes, this is giving into prejudice.

Gessen has been pretty reasonable compared to other skeptics on this. If you followed her reactions over the months she’s acknowledged the reporting, increasing evidence and adjusts accordingly. Like she use to question that Russia was behind the hacks and now sees it differently. Understandable concern about it being overblown maybe serves some faulty conclusions.

Chen’s recent piece about it was really interesting because he makes the point about not wanting to be used in either side of the debate. He seemed just as annoyed by how he was retweeted by Aaron Mate as what MSNBC expected him to say about the troll farms.

gessen is a v prominent putin critic, i don't think we should assume that every single russian person is somehow secretly plotting to spread pro-russian "propaganda"

I'm not sure Gessen is wrong, but while it's probably giving into prejudice, my propaganda detector is always on low hum with any prominent Russian-American public intellectual/commenter like Gessen

― Moo Vaughn, Thursday, March 1, 2018 7:33 AM (four hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

you're a clown

he's gonna get caught, just you wait and see

my propaganda detector squeals like a pig when moogabbneb posts

you know who else squeals like a pig

(with the usual provisos that you should run down shit you see on twitter yourself) it sure does look like the set of dem mercenary fake-woke lunkheads i've grown to detest over the past 24 months have benefited greatly from message-amplifying bots

Dear confused journalists: I found the bots you have been looking for. They amplify trolls. They impersonate. They spam. They are funded by oligarchs. What more could you want in a story?

And unlike @SecureDemocracy, I have actually shown my work. Gather round.

— liking online (@likingonline) March 1, 2018

who could have guessed

stoopid libs are like
https://i.imgflip.com/25kdf6.jpg

Masha Gessen is good and trustworthy and reasonable.

gessen is a v prominent putin critic

― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Thursday, March 1, 2018 7:33 PM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I'm aware. Not a superfan like my partner, but have read her, seen her speak, etc.

so her open Putin criticism, her being the most prominent international voice regarding LGBT issues in Russia - not to mention one of the few openly queer people in Russian public life - isn't enough to make you think she might not be in the bag for Putin anyway?

Perhaps foregoing a slightly fuller explanation in withdrawal from the earlier ad hominem, I'll say for ow that while my impression of her is largely that of a thoughtful, highly reasoned, highly authentic, and brave intellectual who happens to engage in some of the same questioning of her own 'side' that I do (recently drawing fire from progressives over some of her comments on #metoo), and probably more careful questioning of her own positions than I do, I nevertheless don't regard her (or most people) completely unquestioningly, nor do I regard discussion of LGBT issues in Russia as always inconsistent with the interests of a Putin/FSB regime that like some domestic actors props up anti-LGBT Islamists as bogeymen justifying repressive internal measures and foreign adventurism. Open criticism of Putin, as you say, is perhaps-much harder to square with the notion that the critic is actually acting in his/their interest, but it's hardly impossible to do so, as should be understood by anyone familiar with the concept of concern trolling or who may have charged someone nominally left of center with actually acting on behalf of what are not truly progressive interests; expressing such sentiment could provoke buy-in from Putin critics who would not otherwise listen to a message intended to shape understanding of and response to his/their regime. This low-level lack of trust is admittedly expressive of a certain paranoia regarding another nation-state that may be anti-intellectual in nature and a byproduct of larger personality typology/history, but one directed towards what is itself a paranoid state whose government is expressly in conflict with our national interest as per its leader's statement this morning. Gessen herself acknowledges that this sort of suspicion is in fact shared by some Russians - https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/may/30/why-did-boston-marathon-bombers-do-it-interview-masha-gessen.

Line breaks man wtf, have u heard of them?

*shriek*

who cares if a sanctioned historic adversary interfered in the 2016 american election for quid pro quo with one of the candidates? tax cuts! there's goalposts to move :)

(i generally like her and her book about russia was very good, but her "sex panic" piece last november was more than a bit misguided, as later events proved)

A slightly edited version of her (?) recent talk at NYPL - http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2018/02/08/to-be-or-not-to-be/

this is no big deal, right? potato potahto, marijuana mar-a-lago?

https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/01/europe/putin-nuclear-missile-video-florida/index.html

How/why does that relate to the Russia investigation?

https://www.rawstory.com/2018/03/devin-nunes-just-sent-jeff-sessions-letter-accusing-fbi-breaking-law/

what a shitbeak

god he’s the worst

"i'm, heh heh, ...DOUBLING DOWN"
"dude you got no chips"
"THEN I'M TRIPLING, NO I'M FOURPLE-ING DOWN, THEN!"

what does Ryan even have to lose by defrocking him now.

wait so moo vaughn is gabbneb?

How/why does that relate to the Russia investigation?

russia (!!!) releasing a video showing off fancy new nukes (!!!) raining down on -- of all 50 states -- florida (mar-a-lago!!!) seems rather pointed, but who knows, could be totally unrelated / coincidental, or maybe like a joke in poor taste about the stoneman douglas high school shooting. meanwhile comrade kompromat says boo

another ethics complaint filed against Nunes

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/03/12/christopher-steele-the-man-behind-the-trump-dossier

wow that steele piece. at least there’s a lol bit

"His free time is devoted largely to his family, which includes three cats, one of whom not long ago replicated the most infamous allegation in the Steele dossier by peeing on a family member’s bed."

jane mayer is a hero

indeed

moo vaughn is gabbneb?

Moo's political positions are somewhat reminiscent of gabbneb, but their writing styles differ markedly. I say no; Moo is Moo.

http://foreignpolicy.com/2018/03/05/im-sorry-for-creating-the-gerasimov-doctrine

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2018/03/07/what-we-believe-mueller-is-investigating/

The scale, the scope ...

that "gerasimov doctrine" piece is great, thanks Simon

"His free time is devoted largely to his family, which includes three cats, one of whom not long ago replicated the most infamous allegation in the Steele dossier by peeing on a family member’s bed."

― maura, Monday, March 5, 2018 3:32 PM (two days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this stood out to me too, great article otherwise

https://medium.com/@ScottMStedman/deripaskas-private-jet-newark-moscow-molde-for-secret-yacht-meeting-280494a6cb48

Holy shit at the way that is all coming into focus. I wonder if Mueller, privy to all this shit and more, ever sits back and smiles as civilians slowly piece together what he's known for months.

Alternative: I wonder how often Mueller is surprised by these scoops then suddenly swoops into action to catch up.

moo vaughn is gabbneb?

Moo's political positions are somewhat reminiscent of gabbneb, but their writing styles differ markedly. I say no; Moo is Moo.

― A is for (Aimless), Monday, March 5, 2018

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzNsOGt3bHk

xpost — he is surprised by none of it.

a series of completely random events

May 7, 2000 (Vladimir Putin takes office)

December, 2004 (Paul Manafort begins working for Viktor Yanukovych)

2005 (Paul Manafort signs a $10 million per year contract with Oleg Deripaska)

August 7, 2008 (Russia invades Georgia)

February 25, 2010 (Viktor Yanukovych wins the Ukrainian presidency)

October 11, 2011 (Yulia Tymoshenko, Yanukovych's opponent, is locked up)

November 9, 2013 ((Trump) Miss Universe (Moscow))

February 20, 2014 (Russia begins 'annexing' Crimea)

March, 2014 (first round of sanctions against Russia)

August 26, 2014 (Russia invades Ukraine)

June 16, 2015 (2scoops announces candidacy)

March 28, 2016 (Manafort volunteers for Trump campaign, to deal with GOP convention delegates)

April 11, 2016 (Manafort emails Konstantin Kilimnik: "How do we use to get whole? Has Deripaska's operation seen?)

May 19, 2016 (Manafort promoted to Trump campaign chairman (still not taking any pay))

June 9, 2016 (Manafort, 1/2 scoop, Jar Jar, and Bannon meet with Russians in Trump about "adoptions")

July 18, 2016 (the only change the Trump campaign requests at the RNC convention is for weakening support of Ukrainian opposition to Putin)

August 19, 2016 (Manafort resigns his (unpaid) position with the campaign)

August 20, 2016 (Frank Ocean releases Blonde)

1985 - Falco records...

you skipped Kid A

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/in-a-personal-letter-trump-invited-putin-to-the-2013-miss-universe-pageant/2018/03/09/a3404358-23d2-11e8-a589-763893265565_story.html?utm_term=.d8d5301467e0

Donald Trump was so eager to have Vladi­mir Putin attend the 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow that he wrote a personal letter to the Russian president inviting him to the event, according to multiple people familiar with the document.

At the bottom of the typed letter, Trump scrawled a postscript adding that he looked forward to seeing “beautiful” women during his trip.

Trump’s letter to Putin, which was described by people with knowledge of its contents, shows how interested he was in attracting the personal attention of the Russian president. The real estate magnate, who owned the Miss Universe pageant, wrote the note at a time when he was looking to expand his brand to Russia.

The letter, the first known attempt at direct outreach by Trump to Putin, has been turned over to investigators probing Russia’s interference in the 2016 campaign. It is unclear whether Trump’s missive was ever delivered to the Russian president — and if so, whether Putin responded.

The nation may survive, but the wound to hope and order will never fully heal - US elections 2016: the october surprises

"I will keep you in suspense" - US Elections 2016: the Final Thread

Wow. Whoa. That is some group of people. Thousands. - US Election Day 2016

not sure what you're getting at with those links!

but i will say that skimming through the election day thread is like watching the kind of horror movie where the friends are all cheerful and happy as they pick up supplies on the way to the cabin in the woods, and everyone keeps making fun of the person in the backseat who expresses fear about the forest

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cwwei-KUoAAhyuT.jpg

i can reread just about any ilx thread but yeah those ones running up to the 2016 election genuinely give me little anxiety pangs and chest tightness even looking at the thread titles

ugh

oh man, just came across the part where i drunkenly yelled at ILX at 1 in the morning for being so confident that clinton would win. god, that was a terrible night. i like mookie's comment earlier that evening, after it became clear that something was deeply wrong:

gonna start a game of civ 2; see you on the other side

― mookieproof, Tuesday, November 8, 2016 10:17 PM

xpost same

i took a cold shower at 11 pm election night

I had serious trauma after 2004, so when i started seeing bad signs i catastrophized a surely dire outcome right away and fled most media and internet.

Reading through the thread the morning after, watching everyone realise the shit was hitting the fan was fucking heartbreaking.

I just remember ending up on the mta bus toward my work building the next morning, sitting near a coworker, a product manager about twenty years younger than me. Nodded to each other grimly. Got off at the stop and started walking together. I tried to say something and just started crying instead. Her: ‘yeah’.

San Francisco felt very silent, walking to work that morning.

I wound up at a bar on election night as things started to look bad. Red state but a young, non-homogenous crowd so everyone just looked sad and dumbfounded (and increasingly drunk). One redneck asshole started to troll people but his friends shut him up.

Probably the most sudden and jarring swing from extreme optimism to deep depression I've ever experienced.

yeah, i was only moderately optimistic (about the outcome, at least) to start with, but the +/- between how i felt the mornings of november 8 and 9 were in different universes

the days after were incredibly surreal, second perhaps only to the days after 9/11. people seemed so sleep deprived and miserable. it didn't seem like *anyone* was celebrating - even the fuckers I knew who voted for Trump had this perpetual "oh shit" look on their faces.

I still think it's the worst thing to happen to America since 9/11, and maybe ultimately as impactful, and I agree the feeling was very similar, which really underscores what a disaster Trump is.

Like, there's going to be a Trump recovery effort.

"I should go," I mumbled to the friend around 10:30 p.m. to whose house I'd brought my laptop for live blogging.

San Francisco felt very silent, walking to work that morning.

this was also the case in *toronto* btw

The only salve I found was, following the disappointment of telling my girls before they went to bed that they were probably waking up to the first female president, them reacting with disappointment but nothing significant the next morning. For them, most of their life, Obama was president, and therefore the norm. To them, Trump - the stupid racist white male - is the anomaly. Fortunately they will be older and more mature before they realize Obama was the odd one out, but thanks to Trump, they will be politically engaged and involved and know the importance of both, so maybe he will ultimately be the anomaly after all.

I still think it's the worst thing to happen to America since 9/11, and maybe ultimately as impactful, and I agree the feeling was very similar, which really underscores what a disaster Trump is.
― Josh in Chicago, Saturday, March 10, 2018 3:13 PM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalin

I think the further we away we get from these two events the more evidently 9/11 will appear as an obvious catalyst for what happened in November 2016l. I remember being up on our roof all day looking on in disbelief at what had happened and having an exchange with a neighbor who had walked over from the adjacent roof, and we shared—maybe out of desperation—the hope that maybe this horror would prompt a new, reflective national mode, reevaluation of soft empire etc.

But the seeds for everything that made Trump possible were p much sprouting after the candlelight vigils ended and well before the (literal) stench from downtown vanished. Obv. fear has been the political capital of both parties for generations but 9/11 was a demagogic boon. There's no national anthem controversy to gin up w/o the sudden ubiquity of flag pins and "God Bless America" at ballgames etc in the wake of 9/11. Almost overnight disregard for international consensus became a point of pride for "moderates" in both parties, the CIA (!) was being openly villainized by Republicans, and Nixon's old, shamed lieutenants were moving to concentrate executive power for good.

Ugh 9-11 happened literally the second week of me becoming a fully functioning adult - just graduated college, started a new job. I knew we were truly fucked when it happened, especially since the dumb as shit ceo president who didn’t need to be competent because lol it’s the “end of history” was in charge of the response.

Sorry to go off-topic but...

After testifying before a grand jury for 5.5 hours, Sam Nunberg says he believes the Russia probe is “warranted.”

“No, I don't think it's a witch hunt,” Sam Nunberg told ABC News. “It's warranted because there's a lot there and that's the sad truth.” https://t.co/FBmctIc59D

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) March 10, 2018

On election night my wife and I freaked out and chain smoked for an hour on our deck (neither of us are regular smokers) while talking about buying guns, getting a passport for our toddler and figuring out exactly how far we were from the Canadian border. Then I slept for an hour and laid awake the rest of the night with my heart beating in my head.

It felt worse than 9/11 to me because I was 15 years older with more at stake; it was less surreal and detached and unknown. For a while at least after 9/11 everything felt fucked up but I at least felt some connection to other Americans while Trump winning felt like a gross violation of trust and faith in my neighbors.

chin up everybody

Being a Catholic attending a Catholic School, I was age 14 and sitting in my Algebra class when an announcement came through our PA system that our President was Trump. We prayed the rosary for him when shortly there after another announcement came to us that our treasured President was gonna be Trump. We were sent home shortly and remember crying feeling, so shocked and thinking of his wife, and children that will grow up with out a Father. Being young minded I remember how thrilled I was that a Irish Catholic became President of the USA. I felt as though our President was my hero, as I too, was an Irish Catholic.

So the dream created by this family was dead and that hurt when thinking about how something like this could possibly happen? Times were different, people were not killing each other, how could this happen?

Arriving at home, I began to openly cry and my Mother hugged me. We watched in shock with the rest of the country the news regarding the Trump being president of US. My Father and younger siblings were home now and my Father spoke about this tragedy repeating over and over that the person that committed this dreadful act will be reprehended soon. I believed him.

I think it was a Sunday, not sure but I was watching the television when I actually viewed the live unveiling of the pee tape. I called for my Father who was in the other room and told him what happened. He could not believe it. Our entire family cried because we felt our lives had changed forever. We now were a witness to pee. We turned the television off and spoke about this new crime against the suspect. We prayed too, for God to help put our country back together again. We felt that our country was sinking fast. At this time, we did not know if it was a foreign attack on our President or if it was just some random pee. I remember feeling afraid. My parents assured us all that our country is safe and that this crime will be solved soon.

The inaguration was like no other that I had ever seen, it was truly yuge. It was a large Trump inaguration with people from all over the world attending. I remember watching Mrs. Trump and told my Mother that I do not know how she could remain so strong? Mrs. Trumpset an example of dignity, respect, and love of family for her president trump husbands funeral. Although heavily veiled during the inaguration you could still see her pain. Her children were at her side and suddenly her little son probably chester or something, stepped up as the casket passed and he saluted his Father. Everyone in our home cried. It was so terribly sad yet everyone was so proud of this family’s composer and grace.

These are the memories that I have of our good President and his Family. The President’s Trumping and ensuing Non stop win rate changed our Country for good in that we no longer seemed to have trust that our President would always be protected. We must be on guard as bad people exist that cause grievous harm and pain to others.

I will always remember the Presidential Family called TRUMP , that once lived a life that was admired by all in our Country, and then they were awesome winners in a matter of seconds. Life can be sad!

which chapter from Mary McCarthy's memoir is that from?

I had forgotten the switch from 'Nate Silver is a disgrace why can't he get with the program, fucking lol at 25% for Trump to win' to 'Nate Silver was as bad as the rest of them'.

jeez sam nunberg sure is... moist-looking in that abc news interview from yesterday

Back on topic

http://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/377883-juan-williams-gop-has-sold-its-soul-on-russia

A Suffolk University/USA Today poll last month found that 69 percent of Americans believe the Russians made “a serious effort to meddle in the 2016 election.” Seventy-six percent believe the Russians will continue to meddle in our elections. Sixty percent think Trump is not doing enough to respond to the Russian meddling.

A majority — 57 percent of Americans — say they have “little or no trust” in Trump’s denial that there was any collusion between his campaign and the Russians.

69 percent

nice

indeed, somebody needs to use "69 percent of Americans" to write one of those songs where every line starts the same

Neil Young maybe

69 percent of Americans are Canadians

therefore 69 percent of americans are....nice

we're all in the doghouse

https://www.buzzfeed.com/anthonycormier/felix-sater-trump-russia-undercover-us-spy

somebody needs to use "69 percent of Americans" to write one of those songs where every line starts the same

69% of Americans
...reported having less than $1,000 in savings
...plan to shop or are considering shopping over Thanksgiving weekend
...wish they could skip holiday gift giving
...are not interested to buy Apple Watch
...uses some type of social media
...have never heard of Buzzfeed
...say they oppose trophy hunting
...think it's cool if athletes smoke weed
...support the First Amendment
...say a belief in God is an important part of being American
...say that Roe v. Wade should not be completely overturned
...don't think Trump should have to sell his businesses
...want President Trump to stop tweeting
...believing that our country has a major civility problem
...age 35 to 44 have at least one missing tooth
...feel it is the “responsibility” of the federal government to provide health care coverage to all its citizens
...say doctors should be allowed to end a patient's life by painless means

(all on the first page of a Google search)

31% of Americans don't support the First Amendment?

Sounds about right.

considering how many of them reference the Amendment incorrectly when getting shouted down for their stupid beliefs, I woulda thought it to have been higher

So the House GOP is going to release a report saying no collusion, russians didn't want trump to win. Assume president piss baby will use this as a shield to deflect all things russia going forward, "I was cleared by congress!"

NEW: Draft of GOP House Intelligence Committee report finds “no evidence of collusion, coordination or conspiracy between the Trump campaign and the Russians.” Per Fox’s Catherine Herridge & @ChadPergram #BREAKING

— Pat Ward (@WardDPatrick) March 12, 2018

that's ok there's a real investigator

I mean this was predicted weeks ago by the press, it'll stay in the news cycle for a day or two, but is there any evidence that stuff like this and Nunes' shit actually sticks with anybody that isn't already a Breitbart/Hannity consumer?

once Mueller got appointed I kinda stopped following the House investigation cos it was fairly obvious it was a sham

http://buffalonews.com/2018/03/10/russian-trolls-pushed-rally-in-buffalo-and-urged-blacks-not-to-vote/

president piss baby comes through

THE HOUSE INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE HAS, AFTER A 14 MONTH LONG IN-DEPTH INVESTIGATION, FOUND NO EVIDENCE OF COLLUSION OR COORDINATION BETWEEN THE TRUMP CAMPAIGN AND RUSSIA TO INFLUENCE THE 2016 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 13, 2018

"in-depth" fucking lol

Please let the president's assassin be 18-20 years old

well that's a relief. lock thread?

Donald clearly itches to start his own wire service

let us know about all the other subcommittee business too, donald, don't be shy

(that "69% of Americans" list needs to be integrated into an updated video for Van Halen's "Right Now")

i don't want to necrothread an off-topic tangent, but i will say that it was good reading everybody's election 2016 stories up above. it's good to be reminded that it's not just me.

Congressional investigators have learned that a longtime attorney for the National Rifle Association expressed concerns about the group’s ties to Russia and possible involvement in channeling Russian money into the 2016 elections to help Donald Trump, two sources familiar with the matter say.

https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/congress/article205412394.html

hoo boy

I wish this shit could happen behind closed doors more so it doesn't prompt another Nunes "I have a magic memo" bullshit

funny how globalized this wave of nationalist reaction is

yeah funny that

well i never

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-russia-sessions-exclusive/exclusive-sources-contradict-sessions-testimony-he-opposed-russia-outreach-idUSKBN1GU0NC

Not certain what game he's saying, but gotta admit to some modicum of grudging respect for Prosecutor Gowdy on this stuff, if only by comparison.

Yeah, what's up with that dude?

Officer of the court and all

He's been acting like a guy that's seen a ghost.

Most of GOP: (takes a shot of whiskey) "There are no such things as ghosts! Gowdy, you go in that abandoned house and prove there's no ghost!"
Gowdy: (takes a shot and slams down the glass) "Yeah, fuck a ghost! Watch this, you pussies."

Gowdy opens the creaky front door and goes inside. He emerges 5 minutes later, quiet and ashen faced.

GOP: "So what do you say, Gowd!? Tell 'em!!"
Gowdy: "Guys, I just don't want to talk about."
GOP: "What do you mean, Gowd?! I mean, tell them ... tell them you didn't see anything. You didn't see anything, right?! I mean, come on, there are no such things as ghosts."
Gowdy: "I just want to go home."
GOP: "But, Gowd, I mean ... there are no ghosts, right?"
Gowdy: "You believe what you want to believe."
GOP: "But you didn't see anything, right? Tell us you didn't see anything!"
Gowdy: (picks up the bottle of whiskey and takes a big swig) "I don't know what I saw."
GOP: "But, I mean, Gowd ... there was no ghost, right?"

Gowdy stares out at something in the distance.

Gowdy: "I don't even know what to believe anymore."

Gowdy takes the bottle and walks off, silent, lost in his own thoughts, his hands - perceptible to only to most observant - still shaking.

this has all got to be some kind of reverse fakeout to retroactively establish the credibility of his B E N G H A Z I conclusions

fakest news ever

http://thehill.com/policy/technology/379090-whistleblower-cambridge-analytica-met-with-lewandowski-before-trump

It isn't in question that Trump was running in 2015. The question is how far the decision and various linkages go back. To support his long-running theory that the game was afoot in 2013, Abramson is pointing to evidence of what he implicitly deems 2014 CA-Trump linkages -

I've said that Michael Cohen implied to The New York Post in mid-2013 that Trump would run, and that Trump was letting Russians know he'd run by late 2013. Since I said that, the confirmed latest date for Trump deciding to run has been pushed back from June 2015 again and again. https://t.co/USJx4q03YW

— Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) March 20, 2018

but hey at least the *job creators* have been unshackled tax-wise!

https://www.thedailybeast.com/cambridge-analytica-looked-to-pounce-on-russian-hacks-email-shows?via=twitter_page

xp. Abramson is a fantasist

He's doing what prosecutors and investigators do and stretching the evidence far less than his ideological enemies. Your opinion will be noted after you've graduated from Harvard Law School and represented 100s or 1000s of clients in American criminal proceedings.

your opinion is only as trustworthy as the blend in your haircut

xp. if you give credence to his shit you're basically as disinterested in the truth as any maga chud

it's a good thing no seasoned, harvard-educated lawyers ever disagree with each other, we wouldn't know what to think

I read him as critically as I do anything else, as I've said more than once.