The Muscovite Candidate

[Bicycle Bill]

-"BB"-

[RayThom]

That's funny... but quite obviously photoshopped. Unfortunately, there are too many ignorant dopes out there who will fall for it.

I'm waiting until after Inauguration Day before I start wearing my "Ivanka / Kanye... 2020" sticker. Putin already has his.

[Lord Jim]

U.S. intercepts capture senior Russian officials celebrating Trump win

Senior officials in the Russian government celebrated Donald Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton as a geopolitical win for Moscow, according to U.S. officials who said that American intelligence agencies intercepted communications in the aftermath of the election in which Russian officials congratulated themselves on the outcome.

The ebullient reaction among high-ranking Russian officials — including some who U.S. officials believe had knowledge of the country’s cyber campaign to interfere in the U.S. election — contributed to the U.S. intelligence community’s assessment that Moscow’s efforts were aimed at least in part at helping Trump win the White House.

Other key pieces of information gathered by U.S. spy agencies include the identification of “actors” involved in delivering stolen Democratic emails to the WikiLeaks website, and disparities in the levels of effort Russian intelligence entities devoted to penetrating and exploiting sensitive information stored on Democratic and Republican campaign networks.

Those and other data points are at the heart of an unprecedented intelligence report being circulated in Washington this week that details the evidence of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign and catalogues other cyber operations by Moscow against U.S. election systems over the past nine years.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/na ... fb4383a1b3

[rubato]

Republican voters are so easily gulled.



yrs,
rubato

[Lord Jim]

Republican voters are so easily gulled.



yrs,
rubato

~sigh~

It's deja stupid all over again...

That is not going to get you anywhere; we just spent the last 16 months watching more than 40% of the American electorate Republican voters shrugging these things off with a "So what?" Fer chirssakes, look at wesw: impervious to facts, an avid consumer of propaganda, a cheerleader for authoritarianism and virulent nativism. No amount of empirical evidence or logic will dissuade him from what he wants to believe. And he's far from alone; people love to have their biases confirmed and hate to have their opinions challenged. Contrary facts and rigorous evaluation of policy positions are hard to manage and make people uncomfortable, often requiring learning something new. It's much easier to rely on aphorisms, slogans and magical thinking to addressing social ills.

This is certainly not the first hyper-partisan period in American history, and these conflicts have produced both good and bad results in the past. It's hard to imagine getting past the current set of tensions, but my bet is that American democracy will again survive the idiocy of its citizenry.

fixed



yrs,
rubato

fixed



yrs,
rubato

Look, a substantial number of Republican voters did not vote for Trump, and more than a few (including Jim right on this BBS) actually voted for Hillary. But even if every Republican voter had voted for Trump, that would not have been enough for him to win. He needed to attract a sizeable number of unaffiliated voters as well, at least in key swing states. Personally, I blame white women, 53% of whom voted for Trump.

In any event, Republicans and unaffiliated voters have every bit as much right to make stupid leadership choices as do Democrats and liberal/left voters. This time around, under the rules that we currently have, the country opted for a president who at best maintains a fraught relationship with actual facts. But in a political world where perception is reality, "facts" have become malleable rather than stubborn things.

Did he win the electoral vote? YES Republican voters are reliably stupid.

This is fascinating...

Sue completely demolished this in a thread earlier today, showing how many Republicans did not vote for Trump, and how Trump could not possibly have won the election with only Republican votes anyway, and yet here it is again...

Just another of the countless examples of how when a notion manages to attach itself to rube's wee small brain no amount of factual information has any chance of dislodging it...

Facts may be stubborn things, but they got nothin' compared to our rube...

Rube has proven repeatedly that in the right hands, stupidity and ignorance can make facts look like a bunch of pussies in the stubbornness department...

[Lord Jim]

Well, this would certainly explain a lot:

Intel chiefs presented Trump with claims of Russian efforts to compromise him

(CNN)Classified documents presented last week to President Obama and President-elect Trump included allegations that Russian operatives claim to have compromising personal and financial information about Mr. Trump, multiple US officials with direct knowledge of the briefings tell CNN.

The allegations were presented in a two-page synopsis that was appended to a report on Russian interference in the 2016 election. The allegations came, in part, from memos compiled by a former British intelligence operative, whose past work US intelligence officials consider credible. The FBI is investigating the credibility and accuracy of these allegations, which are based primarily on information from Russian sources, but has not confirmed many essential details in the memos about Mr. Trump.

The classified briefings last week were presented by four of the senior-most US intelligence chiefs -- Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, FBI Director James Comey, CIA Director John Brennan, and NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers.

One reason the nation's intelligence chiefs took the extraordinary step of including the synopsis in the briefing documents was to make the President-elect aware that such allegations involving him are circulating among intelligence agencies, senior members of Congress and other government officials in Washington, multiple sources tell CNN.

These senior intelligence officials also included the synopsis to demonstrate that Russia had compiled information potentially harmful to both political parties, but only released information damaging to Hillary Clinton and Democrats. This synopsis was not an official part of the report from the intelligence community case about Russian hacks, but some officials said it augmented the evidence that Moscow intended to harm Clinton's candidacy and help Trump's, several officials with knowledge of the briefings tell CNN.

The two-page synopsis also included allegations that there was a continuing exchange of information during the campaign between Trump surrogates and intermediaries for the Russian government, according to two national security officials.

Sources tell CNN that these same allegations about communications between the Trump campaign and the Russians, mentioned in classified briefings for congressional leaders last year, prompted then-Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid to send a letter to FBI Director Comey in October, in which he wrote, "It has become clear that you possess explosive information about close ties and coordination between Donald Trump, his top advisors, and the Russian government -- a foreign interest openly hostile to the United States."

CNN has confirmed that the synopsis was included in the documents that were presented to Mr. Trump but cannot confirm if it was discussed in his meeting with the intelligence chiefs.

The Trump transition team declined repeated requests for comment.

CNN has reviewed a 35-page compilation of the memos, from which the two-page synopsis was drawn. The memos originated as opposition research, first commissioned by anti-Trump Republicans, and later by Democrats. At this point, CNN is not reporting on details of the memos, as it has not independently corroborated the specific allegations. But, in preparing this story, CNN has spoken to multiple high ranking intelligence, administration, congressional and law enforcement officials, as well as foreign officials and others in the private sector with direct knowledge of the memos.

Some of the memos were circulating as far back as last summer. What has changed since then is that US intelligence agencies have now checked out the former British intelligence operative and his vast network throughout Europe and find him and his sources to be credible enough to include some of the information in the presentations to the President and President-elect a few days ago.

On the same day that the President-elect was briefed by the intelligence community, the top four Congressional leaders, and chairmen and ranking members of the House and Senate intelligence committees -- the so-called "Gang of Eight" -- were also provided a summary of the memos regarding Mr. Trump, according to law enforcement, intelligence and administration sources.

The two-page summary was written without the detailed specifics and information about sources and methods included in the memos by the former British intelligence official. That said, the synopsis was considered so sensitive it was not included in the classified report about Russian hacking that was more widely distributed, but rather in an annex only shared at the most senior levels of the government: President Obama, the President-elect, and the eight Congressional leaders.

CNN has also learned that on December 9, Senator John McCain gave a full copy of the memos -- dated from June through December, 2016 -- to FBI Director James Comey. McCain became aware of the memos from a former British diplomat who had been posted in Moscow. But the FBI had already been given a set of the memos compiled up to August 2016, when the former MI6 agent presented them to an FBI official in Rome, according to national security officials.

The raw memos on which the synopsis is based were prepared by the former MI6 agent, who was posted in Russia in the 1990s and now runs a private intelligence gathering firm. His investigations related to Mr. Trump were initially funded by groups and donors supporting Republican opponents of Mr. Trump during the GOP primaries, multiple sources confirmed to CNN. Those sources also said that once Mr. Trump became the nominee, further investigation was funded by groups and donors supporting Hillary Clinton.

Spokespeople for the FBI and the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment. Officials who spoke to CNN declined to do so on the record given the classified nature of the material.

Some of the allegations were first reported publicly in Mother Jones one week before the election.
One high level administration official told CNN, "I have a sense the outgoing administration and intelligence community is setting down the pieces so this must be investigated seriously and run down. I think [the] concern was to be sure that whatever information was out there is put into the system so it is evaluated as it should be and acted upon as necessary."

http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/10/politics/ ... rt-russia/

[Guinevere]

Was just reading that article. So not surprised.

Now what are we going to do about it?

[Guinevere]

And then there is this: http://m.dailykos.com/story/2017/1/9/16 ... ime-bosses

[Lord Jim]

These two stories may very well be related...

[Guinevere]

Agreed.

The House of Cards is going to come crashing down, it's just a matter of when.

[Burning Petard]

Long before Watergate, the guideline for understanding actions of powerful people or organizations was 'follow the money'.

I am sure the USofA intelligence community has been following the finances of the Donald for a significant period. If the Donald, or his many front organizations have obtained money from Russian sources, I think the FBI and the CIA and others know it. Such knowledge gives them leverage as well. The FBI used this kind of leverage for most of its existence while under the direction of Mr Hoover.

snailgate

[Econoline]

Just in case you missed it... Morgan Lewis, the law firm Trump had front and center during this morning's circus, explaining how he'll handle his business interests?

Named 2016 RUSSIA Law Firm of the Year.

I'm not kidding. It's on their webpage. https://www.morganlewis.com/news/chambe ... f-the-year

[Lord Jim]

[Guinevere]

Econo, I just tweeted that a couple of hours ago. Stunning. What a world we are living in.

[Scooter]

It created a lot of buzz this week when Justin Trudeau announced Chrystia Freeland as his new pick for foreign minister. In contract to Rex Tillerson, Putin's butt boy, Freeland has been an outspoken critic of Russian policy dating back to the 1990s. In 2014 she was one of 13 Canadian officials that Putin banned from entering Russia. In contrast to Trump's appeasement approach, it would appear that Trudeau is prepared to poke a stick into the eye of the Russian bear. And good on him, I say.

[ex-khobar Andy]

In 2004 I said on another board (LCH of fond memory) that I did not need to believe that Sarah Palin thought that Africa was a country in order to judge her incapable of being VP. In the same way, I don't need to believe these lurid DJT stories to know that the man is utterly unsuited and unqualified to be POTUS. In many ways they are a distraction: if the man manages to prove them wrong in some way he becomes an innocent victim. And of course if BFF Vlad in fact has these pix, we will never see them - their value to him lies in the threat to use them, and once they see the light their value is zero.

[Scooter]

And now Tillerson has perjured himself at his own confirmation hearing, denying that Exxon lobbied against sanctions imposed on
Russia after the invasion of Crimea.

[RayThom]

Morgan Lewis & Bockius: Sorta' true.
http://www.snopes.com/russian-law-firm-of-the-year/

[Joe Guy]

Darnit! I wanted the story to be more significant. Oh well... it should be enough to irritate Trump, so that's fine with me.

[liberty]

Was just reading that article. So not surprised.

Now what are we going to do about it?

Well what would you do? What do you think can be done? Why wasn’t this stuff presented to the electoral college; well, it is too late now he is president and will remain president unless he commits an impeachable act and since Clinton that is harder to do. President Trump is too smart to do anything impeachable, so your are struck with him.

And if all you want to do to the Russian is to make them mad, I am against that; if we made them mad enough to challenge us militarily some place this country would be screwed. It would reveal just how militarily weak we are and then we would be in for it.

Before someone accuses me of denigrating the US military I will say this: The US has an outstanding military which goes back to Ronald Reagan, but it is jut a hard a shell over a rotten national core.

And another thing off the subject, did you know that the combat arms units in the military are disproportionately manned by white southerners? Does that mean that white southerners are disproportionately stupid?