Trump and Russia; Spasiba, Harasho!

[Tero]

But but....the guns!

[Rum]

How will our democracy survive this onslaught from the red menace....?

technically, democracy is already dead, it's now obviously a most corrupt plutocracy

America never was a democracy by any stretch of the imagination. The whole system is sick.

I think you are wrong. At one time it was probably the greatest democracy there has ever been. That maybe started to falter in the 1940s and 50s when corporate capitalism got its hands on the system. Monopoly rather than competition started to come into play, corporations started to buy politicians to protect and enhance their interests - 'legally' of course and the true will of the people began to be shaped by those corporations. Now you have a fat lazy and uneducated electorate lulled into a stupor by high fat food and sugar and a system that tells them that you are a communists and unpatriotic if they resist the 'freedom' to participate in the rigged system.

I think democracy is in a much healthier state in Europe, despite the power of the EU bureaucracy these days. I think the elites here are better motivated and I think the sense of common purpose is at a far higher level.

I'm quoting this because I realised it was at the bottom of a page and as we all know those posts get ignored - and I'm impressed by my own flash of insight with this.

[Tero]

Not entirely sure of the democracy claim. It’s bread and circuses of different styles all over the place. Including China.

[Rum]

Well China doesn't pretend to be a democracy of course. All governments have to please their populations to a level that they will accept as tolerable. Drop below that level and people will rebel. Democracy gives the population, in principle a peaceful and non - disruptive means of doing that. If that doesn't do the trick people will rebel and revolt. Marx knew that 'revolution' was about how much shit people would be willing to put up with before they said fuck it - we are going to fuck the bastards up whatever the consequences. The journey, this last 120 years in my world view has been about the balance between pleasing the populations of countries like ours enough to keep them happy enough not to go ballistic.

[Tero]

Leaders have decided on future issues such as energy for the people. Voters and the USA could for example never ban coal for energy.

For personal freedoms, very slow loosening is happening.

Within China, most protest activity now is expressed in single-issue demonstrations, which are tolerated to a degree by the government. Some of the ideas of the movement have been incorporated in the Chinese liberal faction who tend to agree with neoconservatives that stability is important, but argue that political liberalization is essential to maintain stability. In contrast to democracy movement activists, most members of the liberal faction do not overtly call for the overthrow of the Communist Party nor do they deny the possibility of reform from within the Party. As a result, members of the liberal faction are generally enjoying more official tolerance than persons who identify themselves as members of the democracy movement.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_d ... y_movement

[Tero]

President Trump is either totally compromised by the Russians or is a towering fool, or both, but either way he has shown himself unwilling or unable to defend America against a Russian campaign to divide and undermine our democracy.

That is, either Trump’s real estate empire has taken large amounts of money from shady oligarchs linked to the Kremlin — so much that they literally own him; or rumors are true that he engaged in sexual misbehavior while he was in Moscow running the Miss Universe contest, which Russian intelligence has on tape and he doesn’t want released; or Trump actually believes Russian President Vladimir Putin when he says he is innocent of intervening in our elections — over the explicit findings of Trump’s own C.I.A., N.S.A. and F.B.I. chiefs.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/18/opin ... putin.html

If it were not for Russia and Deutsche bank, Trump would be broke. The underlined part will turn out to be true.

[Tero]

Trump house elf Nunes gets conservative award and will go swearing FBI obstruction/collusion to his grave:
https://www.npr.org/2018/02/24/58856307 ... esses-cpac

[Tero]

Nunes: lists bs on Steele memo
Schiff memo: "Christopher Steele's reporting, which he began to share with an FBI agent through the end of October 2016, played no role in launching the FBI's counterintelligence investigation into Russian interference and links to the Trump campaign. In fact, Steele's reporting did not reach the counterintelligence team investigating Russia at FBI headquarters until mid-September 2016, more than seven Weeks after the FBI opened its investigation, because the probe's existence was so closely held within the FBI."

[Seabass]

Vox: The Democratic rebuttal to the Nunes memo tears it apart

Late on Saturday afternoon, House Democrats surprised the country by releasing their rebuttal to the so-called Nunes memo — the document, prepared by Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), that has become a key part of the conservative argument that the FBI is biased against President Donald Trump. The Democrats’ rebuttal memo, written by Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), argues that the Nunes memo is full of “distortions and misrepresentations” that don’t stand up to scrutiny based on the underlying classified evidence.

Having now read both memos, I can say with confidence: Schiff makes his case. Schiff quotes key FBI documents that explicitly contradict the Nunes memo’s core arguments. Any fair-minded observer who reads these two documents side-by-side can only conclude one thing: Nunes is either deeply misinformed or straight-up lying.

“This is a pretty thorough demolition,” Julian Sanchez, an expert on surveillance at the libertarian Cato Institute, wrote on Twitter after reading Schiff’s memo.

continued...

[pErvinalia]

But fair-minded 42 hasn't read it yet. He'll set you straight on this.

[Forty Two]

Nunes: lists bs on Steele memo
Schiff memo: "Christopher Steele's reporting, which he began to share with an FBI agent through the end of October 2016, played no role in launching the FBI's counterintelligence investigation into Russian interference and links to the Trump campaign. In fact, Steele's reporting did not reach the counterintelligence team investigating Russia at FBI headquarters until mid-September 2016, more than seven Weeks after the FBI opened its investigation, because the probe's existence was so closely held within the FBI."

The issue wasn't whether the steele memo played a role in launching the "counterintelligence investigation." The issue was the role it played in getting FISA warrants issued for surveillance.

[Tero]

Warrants or not, Trump quid pro quo will come out. Russia!

[pErvinalia]

Hillary!

[L'Emmerdeur]

It's fine, no reason to do anything ... what's important, and should never be doubted is NO COLLUSION, NO COLLUSION!!

"NSA chief: Trump 'has not ordered disruption of Russia election meddling'"

A top national security official told lawmakers on Tuesday he had not been directed by Donald Trump to disrupt Russian efforts to meddle in US elections, and that Vladimir Putin had come to the conclusion there was “little price to pay” for such actions.

Adm Mike Rogers, director of the National Security Agency and chief of US Cyber Command, told the Senate armed services committee: “Clearly, what we’ve done hasn’t been enough.”

Asked if he had been granted the authority by Trump to counter Russian cyber-attacks at source, Rogers said: “No, I have not.”

...

[Trump] insisted last week that “the facts” proved he had been tougher on Russia than his predecessor, Barack Obama.

Rogers had a different view, suggesting to lawmakers that the Russians “haven’t paid a price, at least, that has significantly changed their behavior”.

Rogers cited Trump’s decision in January to delay the implementation of new sanctions against Russia that Congress passed on an overwhelmingly bipartisan basis last year.

“I believe that President Putin has clearly come to the conclusion there’s little price to pay here, and that therefore I can continue this activity,” Rogers said.

“Everything, both as the director of NSA and what I see on the cyber command side, leads me to believe that if we don’t change the dynamic here, this is going to continue and 2016 won’t be viewed as something isolated.

“This is something that will be sustained over time.”

Witch hunt GIF

[L'Emmerdeur]

Really, no reason for concern. Everything is just dandy. This is just more of that fake news from the really, really dishonest, bad people in the mainstream media, quoting anonymous 'sources.'

'U.S. intel: Russia compromised seven states prior to 2016 election'

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

Top-secret intelligence requested by President Barack Obama in his last weeks in office identified seven states where analysts — synthesizing months of work — had reason to believe Russian operatives had compromised state websites or databases.

Three senior intelligence officials told NBC News that the intelligence community believed the states as of January 2017 were Alaska, Arizona, California, Florida, Illinois, Texas and Wisconsin.

The officials say systems in the seven states were compromised in a variety of ways, with some breaches more serious than others, from entry into state websites to penetration of actual voter registration databases.

While officials in Washington informed several of those states in the run-up to the election that foreign entities were probing their systems, none were told the Russian government was behind it, state officials told NBC News.

All state and federal officials who spoke to NBC News agree that no votes were changed and no voters were taken off the rolls.

...

To this day, six of the seven states deny they were breached, based on their own cyber investigations. It's a discrepancy that underscores how unprepared some experts think America is for the next wave of Russian interference that intelligence officials say is coming.

States are working to protect their voting systems, but the Trump toadies in the Senate have apparently decided they can do that without financial help from the federal government.

'States move to protect voting systems from Russia with little help from Congress'

With the first congressional primary less than three weeks away, state election officials are ramping up efforts to protect their voting systems from cyber attacks as the nation's intelligence officials warn that Russia will once again try to meddle in U.S. elections.

Some states are moving to protect election data by encrypting their systems to thwart hackers, while others are asking the Department of Homeland Security to check their systems for vulnerabilities.

...

"The threat is real and the response needs to be robust and coordinated," said Matthew Masterson, chairman of the Election Assistance Commission, an independent agency of the U.S. government that provides information about how to administer elections. "Folks in the election community are taking the threats very seriously and taking whatever steps they can to address it."

So far, Congress has done little to help.

A bipartisan Senate bill to provide $386 million in federal grants to states to help them improve their election systems hasn't received a hearing or vote in the Senate Rules and Administration Committee. And there are no immediate plans by Senate leaders to bring the Secure Elections Act to the floor for a vote.