"But we have to learn to separate real stories about foreign intelligence operations with posturing used to target domestic actors while suppressing criticism of domestic politicians."
It's way more than posturing Matt. Our gov't is lying to our faces to purposely crush anyone they cannot control, and the MSM gladly rolls with it. Trump did more to expose them than anyone in my lifetime and millions of us have our eyes open now. We just want the gov't owed us by the Constitution, not the Deep State.
He threatened to expose them the day he came down the escalator. They've been trying to destroy him ever since.
And Flynn? A lot of people think he was just collateral damage in the campaign to neutralize Trump. Nope. The moment he deviated from the narrative about Benghazi (a shitty internet movie made the Muslims just that angry?), he was a marked man.
Then he joins the Trump team and promises that as National Security Advisor he's going to "audit" all 17 intel agencies? Oh, HELL no.
I'm actually surprised he's not dead. If he ever regains credibility and a position in government, expect him to suffer a fatal auto-erotic asphyxiation mishap, or self-inflicted gunshot wound to the back of the head.
«Flynn is still alive because he has some loyal people backing him up.»
It is a miracle that DJ Trump is still alive, and has not been taken out by a "deranged isolated extremist". The "usurper" clearly realized how big that risk was (and notably retained his own team of bodyguards for least a while along the Secret Service), and first tried to put himself under armed forces protection, and then under that of Likud/Mossad.
Trump was actually useful - because he was a buffoon and not a serious man. A serious man, someone who would actually follow through on some of the things Trump saw, now THAT would be dangerous.
right. he was the GOP's useful idiot; they got their massive tax break, three? SCOTUS appointments. and farmers getting 40% of their 2020 income from federal subsidy was one of the cherries on top
Let us not forget that Michael Flynn publicly urged Trump to declare martial law until a new election could be held. This, of course, came after Trump had pardoned Flynn of the crime of misremembering what the FBI already knew from a tapped telephone conversation. So Flynn was entrapped, but at the same time, he's a fascist asshole. He get's no sympathy from me.
Flynn's cardinal sin, before he was National Security Advisor and still Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, was trying to build up the Defense Clandestine Service, which would have been an alternative/competitor to CIA's NCS.
Somebody didn't like it and it didn't work out for him or DIA.
I think Richard Nixon was scarred of his intelligence establishment so he hired many former operatives in an effort to protect himself. He was rightfully paranoid. After all, if it weren't for the FBI dribbling out clues to the almighty Woodward and Bernstein, Nixon would never have resigned and those journalistas wouldn't have sold so many books. US security agencies have controlled US government for such a long, long time.
I was there. Emerson pulled off a miracle. He got every fact wrong, but the story is correct. Too many secret warriors confused "My job is important" with "I am important."
I loathe Trump, but I think history will treat him with far more kindness and respect when compared to his predecessors and successors. He at least tried to expose the Rot at the core of Mordor on the Potomac.
Gonna reply to myself. Our gov't has a long record of interfering in foreign elections to advance what they perceived as American national interest. What has changed is the Deep State is now Globalist, not Nationalist. The ruling class has far more in common with other rulers around the globe than with Ohio or Colorado. They no longer answer to US citizens and feel at ease to use deception and election fraud previously only used on foreign soil to pursue their globalist goals here. Ohio might as well be Burma.
TBH when I was a kid I hoped for a global gov't that supported all corners of Earth to counter The Aliens. Big sci fi fan ya know. Now that I am living the dream it kinda sucks.
by accident in terms of not winning the popular vote. which is why he went nuts immediately-- re: 3 million illegals in CA voted!! whaaaa. because that's the number of votes he lost by. Smirky won in 2000 via electoral shenanigans. that's a different can of worms. if not for EC, donald lost
I think it was; I don't think he expected to win. That's why he seeded the story about the election being rigged if you recall. That ego does not accept losing (as was amply demonstrated more recently).
Trump seeded the story about the election being rigged? Ok .
Or was he rightfully worried the use of mass mail in voting could be an unmitigated disaster disaster? Several bipartisan election commissions, one with pres Carter in the 2000s, warned that mass mail in voting was an invitation to disaster
the DNC used the Covid crisis to justify what was widely known to be an invitation for voter fraud. Why? Kinda obvious isn't it? Check out Dems making speeches about how mail in voting was a threat to democracy . that's before identity ideology sent the Dems into leftist radical extremist looney land. Transfixed by ideology they've lost touch with objective reality
It was Dems that spun the false narrative about mail in voting being so normal and safe! That's the lie.
Now there's Joe and his avuncular manner who's selling the lie, the man rarely speaks truth and if he does it's coincidental
Joe's selling America to the globalists. Cheap! The man's a traitor IMHO
Matt do you ever get the feeling that your thorough debunking of this Russia nonsense is a quixotic mission? Aaron Mate must feel the same way. The propaganda machine that you are up against is really an implacable enemy to us all.
i gotta say that I'm not a journalist and I feel that way everytime I try to show the evidence provided by Matt and Aaron and others to my Lib family and friends who buy this hook, line, and sinker. It's exhausting.
He shouldn't! It's people like Matt & Mate that helped me change my mind on this. There was a lot of smoke in the early reporting and I'll admit my personal disdain for Trump certainly primed me for believing a lot of it. Smart people I trust calmly asking for definitive proof was essentially all I needed. I'm sure I'm not alone.
Agree. The propaganda machine is huge and all encompassing (both "liberal" and "conservative") and Americans are literally marinating in the propaganda it produces. It touches on everything. Kaepernick kneeling for the anthem included, as it was an insult to the military (or so we were told by the rightwing media and NFL owners).
Walter Russell Mead has been one of my favorites for years. It would be great for him to end up on substack as I get to read so little of him behind the paywalls where his stuff usually is.
People who actually do this sort of journalism know better than to expect instant vindication.
And speaking personally, I've never found the sentiments expressed in that comment to be particularly helpful or empowering. They're basically despairing- they advise the investigator to give up. Despair doesn't get any less despairing when voiced as cynicism.
I can play cynic, too. But only for laughs. When cynicism is deployed as a cognitive filter, the kindest thing I can say about it is that it's overrated.
LOL. The New York Times. What a joke. That "lack of sufficient time for research" has got to be my favorite because it translates to: "Normally our readers don't have access to alternative sources of information to refute the lies fed to us by the "Intelligence" Community that we publish immediately without any fact-checking whatsoever."
The amazing thing about our Intelligence Community is that no matter how wrong they ever are, they never lose an ounce of credibility. All that really happens is allegiance to the bozos flips from one party to the other. Frank Church must be spinning in his grave.
Well, I doubt they lose a lot of sleep worrying about what you and I think of them. Church thought he could reform their nature; he was mistaken, but it is hard to fault him for his attempt to thread the needle. Just as he was wrong about how his own party would come to love the national-security/surveillance state. That breed of Democrat is as extinct as the Taft kind of Republican.
If the stories are just there to befuddle the stupid, and evidence suggests they are, then they have no reason to stop until said stupids realize they've been lied to. No evidence of that yet, either.
Thanks for deciding to update this list on an ongoing basis. I used to work in politics and in real time almost had an aneurism when Robbie Mook first namedropped Russia as having influenced our elections. For the life of me I do not know how any foreign power could use American social media to influence our elections. We don't even know how to do that other than with straightforward political ads. Jesus could arm wrestle Satan nonstop from now until 2022 and it wouldn't move the political dial one bit.
LOL. Wasn't that just the cherry on top? Somehow, the fact that Hillary outspent Trump by a huge margin didn't mean a thing. People believed her publicity team was either of such high moral character that they wouldn't stoop to the same tactics as those dirty Russians, or that Hillary's neophyte crew was simply clueless compared to the Kremlin's psychological-games masters.
What can you say about our media that hasn't already been said? If they want to go 'full Pravda' on a daily basis, there's nothing to stop them from doing so except their own level of embarrassment. Which quite obviously is zero--they can't be shamed because they have no shame.
I feel your rhetorical question, David. I am personally fatigued by the journalistic counterpunching - i.e. charges of Russian collusion (or whatever) followed by legit accusations of negligent deception at best and intentional lying at worst. Not much more to say that hasn't already been said, time to start talking about how we can fix the problem.
Ya gotta wonder what they're continuing to get out of trying to keep these kinds of bogus stories alive. Is the Democrats preparing to "clamp down" on supposed Russian information services (read: anybody we don't like) in advance of the mid-terms because they're seeing the writing on the wall that they're not doing so well with the public? Or is it just the tabloid/clickbait mainstream media trying to keep their deluded readership from changing the channel? Either way it seems like it's desperation on somebodies part.
People use the image to amplify what they already felt about the person. I liked Dukakis but he was clearly a wuss and they amplified the contrast. Putin doesn't look like a complete fool in his photo ops because even you and I already think of him as generally badass (evil aside).
Every day it's a new bs story or ten. Today it was Elizabeth Warren calling the filibuster racist. The logic of that has to be astonishing. The only reason I see this garbage is that my corporate computer has a homepage set to MSNBC because ownership.
I believe there was another one there last week about John Dean - mind you, the same dude that managed to get 1 to 4 in the federal pen by giving away all his Nixon admin coworkers - talking about how the walls are closing in on Trump. I mean, who would trust that idiot with any useful information after his piss-poor performance both as a white house counsel and as a witness against his buddies, most of whom skated. Then the WaPo promptly blows a huge hole in the hull of their Trump felony story the next day with their retraction.
I believe they are trying to let their crowd down easy with this stuff. Eventually, sometime in the future, they'll realize they were hoodwinked, but not yet.
The filibuster is a bulwark against hyper-partisanship. If you can't get at least a few people in the opposing party to put it to a vote, it's probably a bad idea.
Same with the electoral college system. Who wants an absolute tyranny of the majority?
I trust Republicans over Democrats to safeguard these safeguards, and not because they're (frequently) in the minority, but because they're sticklers for tradition.
It's like my dad told me when I wanted to buy a new car. "Don't ever buy a 'completely redesigned' model. It'll take them at least 5 years to work out the bugs from a total factory redo. Yes, it's flashy and shiny and exciting, but you'll get burned every time. Always wait at least 5 years, because that's when the problems will start showing up, and the company will have tweaked the design to correct them."
Republicans (even the crooked ones) generally want incremental change. Progressives (especially the crooked ones) generally want immediate, radical change.
Ironically, Trump was probably the one president over the last few decades who took a little from column A and a little from column B. Both Republicans and Democrats wasted the opportunities he presented.
I agree with most of what you've posted in this thread, so please don't take this as *too* much of a rebuke . . .
Republicans aren't strict stickers for tradition; the Merrick Garland maneuver took balls and was, frankly, the kind of move that Dixiecrats would've pulled to kill civil rights. And even they might not have done it.
And there's some strip-mining of regulations, particularly of the financial industry, that could've done with a bit of incrementalism in the late 20th century. Both parties have approved of radical changes, just for different reasons.
If the platform is decent, it's more like 2-3 years. Because the engineers already know, in advance, what is problematic and are already working on the fixes as they launch. THEY KNOW...they just typically run out of time. For example, Explorer rollover problems with under inflated Firestones. The ride/handling guys knew what happened when they did a high speed J turn. They talked about it during the design/test phase. "Just make sure tires are properly inflated" - yep, like the average American checks their tire inflation weekly ;-)
«The filibuster is a bulwark against hyper-partisanship. If you can't get at least a few people in the opposing party to put it to a vote, it's probably a bad idea.»
To me that is not a serious argument, in the USA case it is more in practice supercharging the enormously larger weight given to states with smaller populations.
Also the "bad idea" and "bipartisan" concept seems to me to related to the eternal illusion that politics is about choosing the best ideas during a debate among philosopher-kings rather than a fight among competing interests.
«Same with the electoral college system. Who wants an absolute tyranny of the majority?»
Same: the Senate already has an anti-majority device in the 2-per-state rule.
«I trust Republicans over Democrats [...} because they're sticklers for tradition. Republicans (even the crooked ones) generally want incremental change. Progressives (especially the crooked ones) generally want immediate, radical change.»
That to me seems the usual burkean propaganda, which was bullshit even as he wrote it. The conservatives are always and everywhere not for incremental change, but for advancing the vested interests of incumbents. That often is done defensively, by delaying change adverse to incumbent with the "incremental change" argument, but when advancing the interests of incumbents they can switch and do radical change. This has been even codified in a saying "change everything so that nothing changes" ("tout changer pour rien changer").
PS Burke was defending the vested interests of incumbent feudal "tory" landowners against the potential "radical change" of the french and american "whig" revolutions, or at least slow down the takeover of the english state by the new class of "whig" ironmasters. A battle that in some ways is echoed today in that between the tradcon right and the neoliberal right.
The more expansive and intrusive government policy and regulation become, the more important that said policies represent those of most people. Since both parties pander to fringe partisans, we need super-majorities in Congress to keep more extreme ideas from being imposed by 50% plus one.
As for conservatives promoting incumbents and GOP party interests, of course they do--just like Democrats.
«The more expansive and intrusive government policy and regulation become, the more important that said policies represent those of most people. Since both parties pander to fringe partisans, we need super-majorities»
I think that you may be forgetting that the most "expansive and intrusive government policy and regulation" like PATRIOT Act, Afghanistan+Iraq TARP+bailout have been approved by 90%+ congressional majorities, because those are the policies where the entire ruling class likes. The "controversial" ones that appear prominently on the media are usually just posturing for the benefit of gullible voters.
The filibuster was supposed to only be used sparingly, rarely. Yet it is used daily, repeatedly to block just to prevent a "win" from the other Team. We elected these people - we don't need bulwarks on top of bulwarks. We already have a bulwark - representative democracy versus mob rule.
I have held for a while for the need for the filibuster to "hurt", especially politically, to be used. It aligns with Manchin's idea of going back to the speaking filbuster.
Both of your statements cannot be true. The Constitution specifies the very few instances where a super-majority is required and passing a bill in the Senate is not among them.
The filibuster was the result of an oversight, albeit only discovered decades later. Both houses of Congress ended debate on a bill by “moving the question”. That motion became obsolete as there was always an understanding among the members on when to close debate. It was VP Aaron Burr who suggested ridding the Senate of rarely if ever used rules, so out went that particular motion.
The issue arose of how to close off debate, since there was no longer a procedure and the custom of consensus was falling apart, mostly if not exclusively in the context of the slavery debate (hence the “racist” tag placed on it by some today).
So, the filibuster is, at a minimum, anti-democratic and likely unconstitutional. It is certainly at odds with Originalism and should therefore be dispensed with. Its creation was the result of a procedural oversight and the rise of a partisanship that ignored custom and practice.
the Senate gets to set its own rules, so a Constitutional argument is bunk.
The only real reason to retain it is fear of what will happen when the shoe is on the other foot, as McConnell (and it pains me to say this) correctly points out. That shoe on the other foot thing probably happens even faster without the filibuster than with it. Changes piss people off, the status quo is a winner.
The filibuster’s constitutionality has in fact never been tested in Court, so to dismiss the issue as “bunk” proves nothing. The underlying principle should be uncontroversial: even Senate rules are subject to the Constitution. On top of it all, the Founders strictly limited the need for super-majorities to a few discrete cases - and passing general legislation was not among them. So if you are an Originalist, that alone should be enough evidence to get rid of the filibuster. Your argument is, at its essence, anti-majoritarian and really a policy matter, not a constitutional one. I am making a legal argument only.
"The filibuster’s constitutionality has in fact never been tested in Court"
And it never will be because in general political questions are not justiciable, and second, no one has standing to bring it to court in the first place. The Constitution says both House and Senate shall establish their own rules of operation - so not certain where you think some other provision trumps that.
Litigating Senate rules won't work. The Senate itself would just state that it wasn't bound by another branch of government in how it organized itself. Silence on this matter in the Constitution won't give a court an ability to invent stuff. A judge who doesn't like being ignored would dismiss the whole thing. That's why I said bunk. Senate rules are their own. The filibuster itself once was 66 votes, now it is 60. It could be adjusted to 57 or 53 or 75(!) or whatever the Senate saw fit. Or dispensed with altogether. But that would be foolish from everyone's perspective except those looking for short-term gain.
Because the consumers of the NYT, WaPo, NPR, CNN, etc., don't care if it's true or not. Reading what they WANT to be true is enough to make them happy, and thus willing to pay for that brief high each morning.
Sure, the media has always been liberal, but a true echo chamber for Democrats? Relatively recent development. I know Republicans, and you probably do too, who still in their heart-of-hearts believe that the Clintons murdered Vince Foster. I don't know of a Democratic equivalent from the 1990s, willing to bet that those began developing in the last few years. In 2040, there will still be Democrats who believe half of this Russia nonsense.
I'm saying this without personal animosity toward you, but I have a degree of schadenfreude about those who find Trump offensive and unacceptable. My thoughts are "now you know how I felt about Clinton" and I voted for him in 1992.
In the 90's Fox News pioneered the model and everyone listening hated Clinton(s). The MSM has the same model now and made everyone hate Trump. see Hate Inc. for more
Folks, we shouldn't fail to consider the slightly sinister possibility that one reason to keep the focus on anti-Russia is that they are making a lot of money being pals with China. Pelosi's husband makes way more than Hunter Biden. Even McConnell's family is in on it, check out his wife's business transactions. The last thing they want is for us to turn more attention to China.
It's not pure treason, just immoral profiteering or sometimes staying in office on the back of the money. It's like why Prescott Bush (41's dad) kept working with a Nazi steel magnate after it was outlawed. Despite being caught he still got elected to the Senate after that.
Given the fact that the CCP (and PLA) have their fingers in so many Chinese corporate pies, it's one degree of separation from a violation of the emoluments clause.
Part of me thinks Putin loves the "muh Russia" narratives. He's happy to speak softly and let the American media exaggerate the size of his stick.
Interesting allegations. I don't disbelieve in any of them, but do you have some evidence for them? Specifically, evidence that whatever Pelosi's hubby and McConnell are engaging in with respect to China is illegal?
Seems the issue is the old one; if something is legal is it right? In the alternative, if something is illegal, is it wrong? Interactions with China may not be illegal but most often are wrong for the nation.
The standard should not be whether the behavior is illegal. Hunter Biden being on the Burisma board was 100% legal. And in that case I think Joe's hands could have been clean (at least through 2016 when it mattered; Bobulinski's claims all described events in 2017 when it is important to note he was out of office).
But if Dr. Jill Biden had been on Burisma's board, bringing money into Joe's household, that would be both legal and completely ridiculously a conflict of interest.
P.S. it's not like the commercial mainstream media ISN'T constantly bashing China, so the more details you can provide to support this theory, the better.
It's everybody making money in China who has a stake in this... Apple, Nike, all corporates, my buddy who is a blue blooded American tech CEO making money using Chinese labor says some astonishing things ("I think they really may have come up with a better system than the US")
Back in the 1870s the tactic of the GOP constantly bringing up the traitorous nature of Southern Ds during the civil war in political campaigns was known as “Waving the Bloody Shirt”. Maybe we can call this new msm initiative “Waving the Orange Rug”......
"Waving the Bloody Shirt" originated with Caesar's toga being waved around by Antony in the follow-up to his assassination. Made Rome unhealthy for Brutus, Cassius and company. They did the usual Roman failed rebel move and ran off to Greece. It wasn't a perfect metaphor for what the Radicals were doing post-Civil War.
"And when he saw that the people were mightily swayed and charmed by his words, he mingled with his praises sorrow and indignation over the dreadful deed, and at the close of his speech shook on high the garments of the dead, all bloody and tattered by the swords as they were, called those who had wrought such work villains and murderers..."
The actual Greek word used by Plutarch is "χιτωνίσκους" which is tunics. The term "shirt" had no closer analogue in 44 BC.
I always look at guys who try to change things and I am like, "Why are you even trying?" But I'm a weak man. I don't like rolling rocks uphill all day.
The whole DNC "hack" was an utter cluster, from how it was handled to how the media reported on it.
As noted in the news clip Matt included, it wasn't law enforcement that examined the DNC computers for evidence of hacking, but a private IT "forensics" company, Crowdstrike.
The DNC then gave FBI the Crowdstrike report - THAT is what the FBI, CIA, etc., were using for their supposed "Investigation."
It's as if your home or business were burglarized and your most prized possessions taken - but instead of calling the police, you called a local private investigator. Only after Rockford or Simon & Simon or Jessica or maybe even Banacek have rummaged through your house looking for clubs do you think to call the police - but when the detectives - who are, after all, highly trained in both investigating and in working with prosecutors to build a case - show up, you bar them from entering and instead give them the report you got from your PI.
That the media accepted this whole chain of events as somehow "normal" only shows how far the national media had gone off the rails in its attempts to defend its favored candidate, Clinton, from having the answer for the contents of those emails - i.e., that she (likely illegally) conspired with the DNC to gain a (likely illegal) advantage over Bernie Sanders in the primary.
And it's worth repeating - yet again - that Assange has always held that it was NOT Russians who gave Wikileaks the email dump.
Now why in the world would you trust them at all let alone MORE? Just because one group isn’t trustworthy doesn’t mean you have to trust another group in relation or proportion!
“Does this mean the Russians don’t meddle? Of course not.”
What a disappointing place for this post to land.
Who are “the Russians?” “Meddle” with what? How? Do they “meddle” more or less often than other people “meddle?” Do “the Americans” “meddle” more or less often than “the Russians” “meddle?” What specific proof do we have of “the meddling” that’s currently being done by “the Russians?”
You don’t need to placate xenophobes and con artists to be Serious. It’s too late for you to be accepted as some sort of establishment mouthpiece anyway. Just be honest with your readers.
(This isn’t a personal attack, so please don’t defensively lump me with your Twitter trolls. I love the work you do, and this post is, on the whole, a useful reminder of how untrustworthy our government and establishment media are.)
Other than moving to dismiss the case against Flynn, appointing Durham special counsel is the one thing Barr did that he didn't later completely fuck up.
That said, I'm still waiting for indictments or a report that I suspect may never materialize.
"Biden's nominee for attorney general, Judge Merrick Garland, declined to directly promise the Senate Judiciary Committee during a confirmation hearing that he would protect Durham's investigation nor make his report public, though he said he didn't currently have any reason to think it wasn't the right move to keep the prosecutor from continuing his work."
So, if the DNC reported to the FBI that Russia had hacked its server, would it not be standard protocol for the FBI to seize the server, do its own forensic analysis and maintain chain of custody over it?
If the mode of transmission of the "hacked" data occurred as claimed, then the NSA would know about it according to Bill Binney, and he's a guy who would know. The fact that the NSA didn't confirm it seems telling to me.
But the most glaring hole in the narrative is the FBI's failure to follow standard law enforcement protocol. I mean, we had politicians out there blathering about the "Russian hack" thing being equivalent to an act of war so it was kinda, sorta important.
Another very recent one was the Solar Winds hack, which was breathlessly hyped as having penetrated more deeply into the bowels of US infrastructure (yes, I did have to go there) than any other previous hack; one which bore "all the hallmarks of" a state operation, which, everyone knows, means probably Russia, right?
It is *possible* that the hack was a Russian state operation. But at the time the hack was announced, there was literally no evidence for that claim whatsoever: no IP addresses, no person or outfit claiming responsibility, nothing. There wasn't even any evidence that the hacker(s) themselves were Russian PEOPLE at all, much less having any connection with the state (or "Putin," "the Kremlin," or "SVR," or whatever other lazy shorthand is typically employed).
And yet every single MSM news outlet ran it as a "Russian hack," based on the hunch of some anonymous "intelligence experts."
p.s. Have you noticed how every commentary on MSM reporting these days needs to feature a nearly-unlimited supply of "scare quotes"? Is it because they're all so "full of shit"?
"But we have to learn to separate real stories about foreign intelligence operations with posturing used to target domestic actors while suppressing criticism of domestic politicians."
It's way more than posturing Matt. Our gov't is lying to our faces to purposely crush anyone they cannot control, and the MSM gladly rolls with it. Trump did more to expose them than anyone in my lifetime and millions of us have our eyes open now. We just want the gov't owed us by the Constitution, not the Deep State.
Trump exposed them. They hate him for it
He threatened to expose them the day he came down the escalator. They've been trying to destroy him ever since.
And Flynn? A lot of people think he was just collateral damage in the campaign to neutralize Trump. Nope. The moment he deviated from the narrative about Benghazi (a shitty internet movie made the Muslims just that angry?), he was a marked man.
Then he joins the Trump team and promises that as National Security Advisor he's going to "audit" all 17 intel agencies? Oh, HELL no.
I'm actually surprised he's not dead. If he ever regains credibility and a position in government, expect him to suffer a fatal auto-erotic asphyxiation mishap, or self-inflicted gunshot wound to the back of the head.
More like two self-inflicted gunshot wounds, Gary Webb-style.
I surmise Flynn is still alive because he has some loyal people backing him up.
«Flynn is still alive because he has some loyal people backing him up.»
It is a miracle that DJ Trump is still alive, and has not been taken out by a "deranged isolated extremist". The "usurper" clearly realized how big that risk was (and notably retained his own team of bodyguards for least a while along the Secret Service), and first tried to put himself under armed forces protection, and then under that of Likud/Mossad.
Trump was actually useful - because he was a buffoon and not a serious man. A serious man, someone who would actually follow through on some of the things Trump saw, now THAT would be dangerous.
JFK was the last serious president. His example is the guiding light by which non-serious presidents seek to keep their grey matter intact.
right. he was the GOP's useful idiot; they got their massive tax break, three? SCOTUS appointments. and farmers getting 40% of their 2020 income from federal subsidy was one of the cherries on top
<<It is a miracle that DJ Trump is still alive, and has not been taken out by a "deranged isolated extremist">>
"Deranged isolated extremist" is a career path of a sort, but it's not one I would recommend if I were a high school guidance counselor
Let us not forget that Michael Flynn publicly urged Trump to declare martial law until a new election could be held. This, of course, came after Trump had pardoned Flynn of the crime of misremembering what the FBI already knew from a tapped telephone conversation. So Flynn was entrapped, but at the same time, he's a fascist asshole. He get's no sympathy from me.
Yawn.
Obama was after Flynn long before that.
Flynn's cardinal sin, before he was National Security Advisor and still Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, was trying to build up the Defense Clandestine Service, which would have been an alternative/competitor to CIA's NCS.
Somebody didn't like it and it didn't work out for him or DIA.
I think Richard Nixon was scarred of his intelligence establishment so he hired many former operatives in an effort to protect himself. He was rightfully paranoid. After all, if it weren't for the FBI dribbling out clues to the almighty Woodward and Bernstein, Nixon would never have resigned and those journalistas wouldn't have sold so many books. US security agencies have controlled US government for such a long, long time.
https://www.amazon.com/Secret-Warriors-Inside-Military-Operations/dp/0399133607/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=Reagan%27s+secret+warriors&qid=1616472402&sr=8-1
I was there. Emerson pulled off a miracle. He got every fact wrong, but the story is correct. Too many secret warriors confused "My job is important" with "I am important."
I loathe Trump, but I think history will treat him with far more kindness and respect when compared to his predecessors and successors. He at least tried to expose the Rot at the core of Mordor on the Potomac.
Like they say, people either love the Bad Bad Orange Man for what he did, or they hate him for the way he did it.
Surprised you didn't self-like this comment like you've done for every other that you've written. LOL
Gonna reply to myself. Our gov't has a long record of interfering in foreign elections to advance what they perceived as American national interest. What has changed is the Deep State is now Globalist, not Nationalist. The ruling class has far more in common with other rulers around the globe than with Ohio or Colorado. They no longer answer to US citizens and feel at ease to use deception and election fraud previously only used on foreign soil to pursue their globalist goals here. Ohio might as well be Burma.
TBH when I was a kid I hoped for a global gov't that supported all corners of Earth to counter The Aliens. Big sci fi fan ya know. Now that I am living the dream it kinda sucks.
Hari Seldon lives. It's time to haul his corpus delecti out of the deep freeze so he can 'splain it to us.
Seldon didn't anticipate The Mule, and would not have foreseen The Donald winning the Presidency. There are tendencies but nothing is fore-ordained.
I wish I could take credit, but it was another commentator in another forum who said:
Of all the things in the science fiction I read in my youth, all I ended up with as an adult is the dysfunctional government.
Nahh; us boomers knew mainstream media was a problem wayyy before Donald get elected by accident
by accident in terms of not winning the popular vote. which is why he went nuts immediately-- re: 3 million illegals in CA voted!! whaaaa. because that's the number of votes he lost by. Smirky won in 2000 via electoral shenanigans. that's a different can of worms. if not for EC, donald lost
I think it was; I don't think he expected to win. That's why he seeded the story about the election being rigged if you recall. That ego does not accept losing (as was amply demonstrated more recently).
Trump seeded the story about the election being rigged? Ok .
Or was he rightfully worried the use of mass mail in voting could be an unmitigated disaster disaster? Several bipartisan election commissions, one with pres Carter in the 2000s, warned that mass mail in voting was an invitation to disaster
the DNC used the Covid crisis to justify what was widely known to be an invitation for voter fraud. Why? Kinda obvious isn't it? Check out Dems making speeches about how mail in voting was a threat to democracy . that's before identity ideology sent the Dems into leftist radical extremist looney land. Transfixed by ideology they've lost touch with objective reality
It was Dems that spun the false narrative about mail in voting being so normal and safe! That's the lie.
Now there's Joe and his avuncular manner who's selling the lie, the man rarely speaks truth and if he does it's coincidental
Joe's selling America to the globalists. Cheap! The man's a traitor IMHO
I think Curmudgeonly was referring to 2016 in the first part of his comment.
Matt do you ever get the feeling that your thorough debunking of this Russia nonsense is a quixotic mission? Aaron Mate must feel the same way. The propaganda machine that you are up against is really an implacable enemy to us all.
i gotta say that I'm not a journalist and I feel that way everytime I try to show the evidence provided by Matt and Aaron and others to my Lib family and friends who buy this hook, line, and sinker. It's exhausting.
They probably don't buy it so much as realize it is easier and more profitable to conform.
Those outside the religion aren’t treated as harshly as apostates and heretics. If they step outside the box they will be un-personed.
He shouldn't! It's people like Matt & Mate that helped me change my mind on this. There was a lot of smoke in the early reporting and I'll admit my personal disdain for Trump certainly primed me for believing a lot of it. Smart people I trust calmly asking for definitive proof was essentially all I needed. I'm sure I'm not alone.
Agree. The propaganda machine is huge and all encompassing (both "liberal" and "conservative") and Americans are literally marinating in the propaganda it produces. It touches on everything. Kaepernick kneeling for the anthem included, as it was an insult to the military (or so we were told by the rightwing media and NFL owners).
I hope not. We need real liberal voices that aren’t beholden to The State.
Too many liberals aren’t.
Walter Russell Mead has been one of my favorites for years. It would be great for him to end up on substack as I get to read so little of him behind the paywalls where his stuff usually is.
People who actually do this sort of journalism know better than to expect instant vindication.
And speaking personally, I've never found the sentiments expressed in that comment to be particularly helpful or empowering. They're basically despairing- they advise the investigator to give up. Despair doesn't get any less despairing when voiced as cynicism.
I can play cynic, too. But only for laughs. When cynicism is deployed as a cognitive filter, the kindest thing I can say about it is that it's overrated.
Only if you measure it by the hordes of angry blue checkers demanding he leave the "left" or come to his senses.
LOL. The New York Times. What a joke. That "lack of sufficient time for research" has got to be my favorite because it translates to: "Normally our readers don't have access to alternative sources of information to refute the lies fed to us by the "Intelligence" Community that we publish immediately without any fact-checking whatsoever."
https://newspunch.com/new-york-times-cia-approve/
In this case approve == provide.
The amazing thing about our Intelligence Community is that no matter how wrong they ever are, they never lose an ounce of credibility. All that really happens is allegiance to the bozos flips from one party to the other. Frank Church must be spinning in his grave.
"no matter how wrong they ever are, they never lose an ounce of credibility"
I surmise they've lost a lot of credibility with much of the American citizenry; just not the MSM.
Church and Stansfield Turner got close to upending the whole show, but they didn't quite make it. A pity.
Well, I doubt they lose a lot of sleep worrying about what you and I think of them. Church thought he could reform their nature; he was mistaken, but it is hard to fault him for his attempt to thread the needle. Just as he was wrong about how his own party would come to love the national-security/surveillance state. That breed of Democrat is as extinct as the Taft kind of Republican.
If the stories are just there to befuddle the stupid, and evidence suggests they are, then they have no reason to stop until said stupids realize they've been lied to. No evidence of that yet, either.
Confirmation bias is alive and well.
Except...there are a ton of very, very bright (book wise) people who read the NY Times and WaPo. Will there be a "great awakening" at some point?
Thanks for deciding to update this list on an ongoing basis. I used to work in politics and in real time almost had an aneurism when Robbie Mook first namedropped Russia as having influenced our elections. For the life of me I do not know how any foreign power could use American social media to influence our elections. We don't even know how to do that other than with straightforward political ads. Jesus could arm wrestle Satan nonstop from now until 2022 and it wouldn't move the political dial one bit.
LOL. Wasn't that just the cherry on top? Somehow, the fact that Hillary outspent Trump by a huge margin didn't mean a thing. People believed her publicity team was either of such high moral character that they wouldn't stoop to the same tactics as those dirty Russians, or that Hillary's neophyte crew was simply clueless compared to the Kremlin's psychological-games masters.
What can you say about our media that hasn't already been said? If they want to go 'full Pravda' on a daily basis, there's nothing to stop them from doing so except their own level of embarrassment. Which quite obviously is zero--they can't be shamed because they have no shame.
I feel your rhetorical question, David. I am personally fatigued by the journalistic counterpunching - i.e. charges of Russian collusion (or whatever) followed by legit accusations of negligent deception at best and intentional lying at worst. Not much more to say that hasn't already been said, time to start talking about how we can fix the problem.
Ya gotta wonder what they're continuing to get out of trying to keep these kinds of bogus stories alive. Is the Democrats preparing to "clamp down" on supposed Russian information services (read: anybody we don't like) in advance of the mid-terms because they're seeing the writing on the wall that they're not doing so well with the public? Or is it just the tabloid/clickbait mainstream media trying to keep their deluded readership from changing the channel? Either way it seems like it's desperation on somebodies part.
"Razor wire around the Capitol Building" seems like desperation to me.
Screams "legitimacy" like nothing else. Makes Tiananmen Square look classy, almost.
I'm at the point in life where I'm willing to stand in front of a tank.
I'd rather be driving the tank.
I was thinking of that incident when Yeltsin got up on a tank in front of Red Square, i'm not just having hallucinatory memories, am I?
How come when Mike Dukakis gets in/on a tank he's lame but when Boris Yeltsin does it he's cool?
I am reminded of Hafez Assad's aphorism: "The next time I come back to Damascus, it will be in a tank."
Bc Boris was smart enough to not put the helmet on. Made all the difference.
Possible because even a drunk Boris could never be as lame as Dukakis?
People use the image to amplify what they already felt about the person. I liked Dukakis but he was clearly a wuss and they amplified the contrast. Putin doesn't look like a complete fool in his photo ops because even you and I already think of him as generally badass (evil aside).
Read as: They orchestrated a violent coup and nobody showed up. Like a Biden or Klinton speech.
Every day it's a new bs story or ten. Today it was Elizabeth Warren calling the filibuster racist. The logic of that has to be astonishing. The only reason I see this garbage is that my corporate computer has a homepage set to MSNBC because ownership.
I believe there was another one there last week about John Dean - mind you, the same dude that managed to get 1 to 4 in the federal pen by giving away all his Nixon admin coworkers - talking about how the walls are closing in on Trump. I mean, who would trust that idiot with any useful information after his piss-poor performance both as a white house counsel and as a witness against his buddies, most of whom skated. Then the WaPo promptly blows a huge hole in the hull of their Trump felony story the next day with their retraction.
I believe they are trying to let their crowd down easy with this stuff. Eventually, sometime in the future, they'll realize they were hoodwinked, but not yet.
I like the filibuster, actually, just like I like the Constitution, actually.
The filibuster is a bulwark against hyper-partisanship. If you can't get at least a few people in the opposing party to put it to a vote, it's probably a bad idea.
Same with the electoral college system. Who wants an absolute tyranny of the majority?
I trust Republicans over Democrats to safeguard these safeguards, and not because they're (frequently) in the minority, but because they're sticklers for tradition.
It's like my dad told me when I wanted to buy a new car. "Don't ever buy a 'completely redesigned' model. It'll take them at least 5 years to work out the bugs from a total factory redo. Yes, it's flashy and shiny and exciting, but you'll get burned every time. Always wait at least 5 years, because that's when the problems will start showing up, and the company will have tweaked the design to correct them."
Republicans (even the crooked ones) generally want incremental change. Progressives (especially the crooked ones) generally want immediate, radical change.
Ironically, Trump was probably the one president over the last few decades who took a little from column A and a little from column B. Both Republicans and Democrats wasted the opportunities he presented.
I agree with most of what you've posted in this thread, so please don't take this as *too* much of a rebuke . . .
Republicans aren't strict stickers for tradition; the Merrick Garland maneuver took balls and was, frankly, the kind of move that Dixiecrats would've pulled to kill civil rights. And even they might not have done it.
And there's some strip-mining of regulations, particularly of the financial industry, that could've done with a bit of incrementalism in the late 20th century. Both parties have approved of radical changes, just for different reasons.
If the platform is decent, it's more like 2-3 years. Because the engineers already know, in advance, what is problematic and are already working on the fixes as they launch. THEY KNOW...they just typically run out of time. For example, Explorer rollover problems with under inflated Firestones. The ride/handling guys knew what happened when they did a high speed J turn. They talked about it during the design/test phase. "Just make sure tires are properly inflated" - yep, like the average American checks their tire inflation weekly ;-)
«The filibuster is a bulwark against hyper-partisanship. If you can't get at least a few people in the opposing party to put it to a vote, it's probably a bad idea.»
To me that is not a serious argument, in the USA case it is more in practice supercharging the enormously larger weight given to states with smaller populations.
Also the "bad idea" and "bipartisan" concept seems to me to related to the eternal illusion that politics is about choosing the best ideas during a debate among philosopher-kings rather than a fight among competing interests.
«Same with the electoral college system. Who wants an absolute tyranny of the majority?»
Same: the Senate already has an anti-majority device in the 2-per-state rule.
«I trust Republicans over Democrats [...} because they're sticklers for tradition. Republicans (even the crooked ones) generally want incremental change. Progressives (especially the crooked ones) generally want immediate, radical change.»
That to me seems the usual burkean propaganda, which was bullshit even as he wrote it. The conservatives are always and everywhere not for incremental change, but for advancing the vested interests of incumbents. That often is done defensively, by delaying change adverse to incumbent with the "incremental change" argument, but when advancing the interests of incumbents they can switch and do radical change. This has been even codified in a saying "change everything so that nothing changes" ("tout changer pour rien changer").
PS Burke was defending the vested interests of incumbent feudal "tory" landowners against the potential "radical change" of the french and american "whig" revolutions, or at least slow down the takeover of the english state by the new class of "whig" ironmasters. A battle that in some ways is echoed today in that between the tradcon right and the neoliberal right.
The more expansive and intrusive government policy and regulation become, the more important that said policies represent those of most people. Since both parties pander to fringe partisans, we need super-majorities in Congress to keep more extreme ideas from being imposed by 50% plus one.
As for conservatives promoting incumbents and GOP party interests, of course they do--just like Democrats.
«The more expansive and intrusive government policy and regulation become, the more important that said policies represent those of most people. Since both parties pander to fringe partisans, we need super-majorities»
I think that you may be forgetting that the most "expansive and intrusive government policy and regulation" like PATRIOT Act, Afghanistan+Iraq TARP+bailout have been approved by 90%+ congressional majorities, because those are the policies where the entire ruling class likes. The "controversial" ones that appear prominently on the media are usually just posturing for the benefit of gullible voters.
So true. Trump was not an idealogue but a utilitarian. Wanted to get things done. Lost opportunities.
The filibuster was supposed to only be used sparingly, rarely. Yet it is used daily, repeatedly to block just to prevent a "win" from the other Team. We elected these people - we don't need bulwarks on top of bulwarks. We already have a bulwark - representative democracy versus mob rule.
We should go back to the Senate as intended - to represent the interests of each State. Mandating popular election was a mistake.
Probably the second biggest mistake in Constitutional Amendments.
Any time people bitch about Wyoming having two senators, my answer is "Move to Wyoming and vote, or run for the Senate yourself."
I have held for a while for the need for the filibuster to "hurt", especially politically, to be used. It aligns with Manchin's idea of going back to the speaking filbuster.
You're probably happy there was a filibuster in 2017.
Both of your statements cannot be true. The Constitution specifies the very few instances where a super-majority is required and passing a bill in the Senate is not among them.
The filibuster was the result of an oversight, albeit only discovered decades later. Both houses of Congress ended debate on a bill by “moving the question”. That motion became obsolete as there was always an understanding among the members on when to close debate. It was VP Aaron Burr who suggested ridding the Senate of rarely if ever used rules, so out went that particular motion.
The issue arose of how to close off debate, since there was no longer a procedure and the custom of consensus was falling apart, mostly if not exclusively in the context of the slavery debate (hence the “racist” tag placed on it by some today).
So, the filibuster is, at a minimum, anti-democratic and likely unconstitutional. It is certainly at odds with Originalism and should therefore be dispensed with. Its creation was the result of a procedural oversight and the rise of a partisanship that ignored custom and practice.
the Senate gets to set its own rules, so a Constitutional argument is bunk.
The only real reason to retain it is fear of what will happen when the shoe is on the other foot, as McConnell (and it pains me to say this) correctly points out. That shoe on the other foot thing probably happens even faster without the filibuster than with it. Changes piss people off, the status quo is a winner.
The filibuster’s constitutionality has in fact never been tested in Court, so to dismiss the issue as “bunk” proves nothing. The underlying principle should be uncontroversial: even Senate rules are subject to the Constitution. On top of it all, the Founders strictly limited the need for super-majorities to a few discrete cases - and passing general legislation was not among them. So if you are an Originalist, that alone should be enough evidence to get rid of the filibuster. Your argument is, at its essence, anti-majoritarian and really a policy matter, not a constitutional one. I am making a legal argument only.
"The filibuster’s constitutionality has in fact never been tested in Court"
And it never will be because in general political questions are not justiciable, and second, no one has standing to bring it to court in the first place. The Constitution says both House and Senate shall establish their own rules of operation - so not certain where you think some other provision trumps that.
Litigating Senate rules won't work. The Senate itself would just state that it wasn't bound by another branch of government in how it organized itself. Silence on this matter in the Constitution won't give a court an ability to invent stuff. A judge who doesn't like being ignored would dismiss the whole thing. That's why I said bunk. Senate rules are their own. The filibuster itself once was 66 votes, now it is 60. It could be adjusted to 57 or 53 or 75(!) or whatever the Senate saw fit. Or dispensed with altogether. But that would be foolish from everyone's perspective except those looking for short-term gain.
"...they'll realize they were hoodwinked, but not yet."
Oh please. They will never realize they were hoodwinked because they were never hoodwinked.
Then why does none of this bullshit pan out?
Because the consumers of the NYT, WaPo, NPR, CNN, etc., don't care if it's true or not. Reading what they WANT to be true is enough to make them happy, and thus willing to pay for that brief high each morning.
So the MSM is a woke phone sex service, in essence.
Comment of the day.
Correct...you could also call it a "False Hope Hotline"
LMFAO
Sure, the media has always been liberal, but a true echo chamber for Democrats? Relatively recent development. I know Republicans, and you probably do too, who still in their heart-of-hearts believe that the Clintons murdered Vince Foster. I don't know of a Democratic equivalent from the 1990s, willing to bet that those began developing in the last few years. In 2040, there will still be Democrats who believe half of this Russia nonsense.
I'm saying this without personal animosity toward you, but I have a degree of schadenfreude about those who find Trump offensive and unacceptable. My thoughts are "now you know how I felt about Clinton" and I voted for him in 1992.
In the 90's Fox News pioneered the model and everyone listening hated Clinton(s). The MSM has the same model now and made everyone hate Trump. see Hate Inc. for more
Folks, we shouldn't fail to consider the slightly sinister possibility that one reason to keep the focus on anti-Russia is that they are making a lot of money being pals with China. Pelosi's husband makes way more than Hunter Biden. Even McConnell's family is in on it, check out his wife's business transactions. The last thing they want is for us to turn more attention to China.
It's not pure treason, just immoral profiteering or sometimes staying in office on the back of the money. It's like why Prescott Bush (41's dad) kept working with a Nazi steel magnate after it was outlawed. Despite being caught he still got elected to the Senate after that.
Given the fact that the CCP (and PLA) have their fingers in so many Chinese corporate pies, it's one degree of separation from a violation of the emoluments clause.
Part of me thinks Putin loves the "muh Russia" narratives. He's happy to speak softly and let the American media exaggerate the size of his stick.
I can't see into Putin's soul like George W. Bush could, but I do think he's a man with a dry sense of humor.
Interesting allegations. I don't disbelieve in any of them, but do you have some evidence for them? Specifically, evidence that whatever Pelosi's hubby and McConnell are engaging in with respect to China is illegal?
Seems the issue is the old one; if something is legal is it right? In the alternative, if something is illegal, is it wrong? Interactions with China may not be illegal but most often are wrong for the nation.
The standard should not be whether the behavior is illegal. Hunter Biden being on the Burisma board was 100% legal. And in that case I think Joe's hands could have been clean (at least through 2016 when it mattered; Bobulinski's claims all described events in 2017 when it is important to note he was out of office).
But if Dr. Jill Biden had been on Burisma's board, bringing money into Joe's household, that would be both legal and completely ridiculously a conflict of interest.
https://www.newsweek.com/mitch-mcconnells-wife-elaine-chao-abused-office-help-family-firm-china-business-watchdog-found-1573653
P.S. it's not like the commercial mainstream media ISN'T constantly bashing China, so the more details you can provide to support this theory, the better.
Hmm... I don't agree with you there. An Aussie think tank did some pretty damaging work on how bad the labor situation is over there. Along the lines of major brands buying forced labor with a kicker of 40% over the usual forced labor cost to payoff the labor inspectors to bless it. And, well, one US news service covered it: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-rights-xinjiang/think-tank-report-on-uighur-labor-in-china-lists-global-brands-idUSKBN20P122
It's everybody making money in China who has a stake in this... Apple, Nike, all corporates, my buddy who is a blue blooded American tech CEO making money using Chinese labor says some astonishing things ("I think they really may have come up with a better system than the US")
A better system when they can't even feed their people right now
Back in the 1870s the tactic of the GOP constantly bringing up the traitorous nature of Southern Ds during the civil war in political campaigns was known as “Waving the Bloody Shirt”. Maybe we can call this new msm initiative “Waving the Orange Rug”......
"Waving the Bloody Shirt" originated with Caesar's toga being waved around by Antony in the follow-up to his assassination. Made Rome unhealthy for Brutus, Cassius and company. They did the usual Roman failed rebel move and ran off to Greece. It wasn't a perfect metaphor for what the Radicals were doing post-Civil War.
Wouldn't that have been the bloody tunic rather than the bloody shirt?
The original Plutarch:
"And when he saw that the people were mightily swayed and charmed by his words, he mingled with his praises sorrow and indignation over the dreadful deed, and at the close of his speech shook on high the garments of the dead, all bloody and tattered by the swords as they were, called those who had wrought such work villains and murderers..."
The actual Greek word used by Plutarch is "χιτωνίσκους" which is tunics. The term "shirt" had no closer analogue in 44 BC.
I hear Greece is nice this time of year.
My goal is to be on the team of Americans petitioning Greece and Venezuela for foreign aid. I give it less than thirty years.
I've also heard it's great for tax avoidance
Poor Yanis Varoufakis. He's like Sisyphus.
I always look at guys who try to change things and I am like, "Why are you even trying?" But I'm a weak man. I don't like rolling rocks uphill all day.
The whole DNC "hack" was an utter cluster, from how it was handled to how the media reported on it.
As noted in the news clip Matt included, it wasn't law enforcement that examined the DNC computers for evidence of hacking, but a private IT "forensics" company, Crowdstrike.
The DNC then gave FBI the Crowdstrike report - THAT is what the FBI, CIA, etc., were using for their supposed "Investigation."
It's as if your home or business were burglarized and your most prized possessions taken - but instead of calling the police, you called a local private investigator. Only after Rockford or Simon & Simon or Jessica or maybe even Banacek have rummaged through your house looking for clubs do you think to call the police - but when the detectives - who are, after all, highly trained in both investigating and in working with prosecutors to build a case - show up, you bar them from entering and instead give them the report you got from your PI.
That the media accepted this whole chain of events as somehow "normal" only shows how far the national media had gone off the rails in its attempts to defend its favored candidate, Clinton, from having the answer for the contents of those emails - i.e., that she (likely illegally) conspired with the DNC to gain a (likely illegal) advantage over Bernie Sanders in the primary.
And it's worth repeating - yet again - that Assange has always held that it was NOT Russians who gave Wikileaks the email dump.
I trust the Russians more than I trust the US intelligence agencies and their media errand boys (and girls.)
Now why in the world would you trust them at all let alone MORE? Just because one group isn’t trustworthy doesn’t mean you have to trust another group in relation or proportion!
“Does this mean the Russians don’t meddle? Of course not.”
What a disappointing place for this post to land.
Who are “the Russians?” “Meddle” with what? How? Do they “meddle” more or less often than other people “meddle?” Do “the Americans” “meddle” more or less often than “the Russians” “meddle?” What specific proof do we have of “the meddling” that’s currently being done by “the Russians?”
You don’t need to placate xenophobes and con artists to be Serious. It’s too late for you to be accepted as some sort of establishment mouthpiece anyway. Just be honest with your readers.
(This isn’t a personal attack, so please don’t defensively lump me with your Twitter trolls. I love the work you do, and this post is, on the whole, a useful reminder of how untrustworthy our government and establishment media are.)
The American media has been taken over by partisans an axe to grind and virtually no life experience.
It might have something to do with the demonstrated fact that very few give them much heed.
Is there ANY update on John Durham investigation on the scam of the century -- Obama/Biden-initiated Russia-gate hoax?
Yes, the update is "John Durham will not be confirming any of your conservative fantasies."
Oh, thank goodness. I thought you were going to say Durham had been mugged twice in the back.
Here's the latest on Durham
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/john-durham-resigns-as-us-attorney-but-remains-special-counsel/ar-BB1e3tkV
Other than moving to dismiss the case against Flynn, appointing Durham special counsel is the one thing Barr did that he didn't later completely fuck up.
That said, I'm still waiting for indictments or a report that I suspect may never materialize.
"Biden's nominee for attorney general, Judge Merrick Garland, declined to directly promise the Senate Judiciary Committee during a confirmation hearing that he would protect Durham's investigation nor make his report public, though he said he didn't currently have any reason to think it wasn't the right move to keep the prosecutor from continuing his work."
Nobody will ever know what happened.
"Nobody will ever know what happened."
Somebody knows what happened, but it's not going to be you or me.
Innocent of charges -- voted for Bernie and Tulsi...
Then why are you hoping for John Durham to confirm something that Robert Mueller already confirmed?
this made me lol, thnx
Suspect they will bury that investigation. Would love Glenn or Matt to dig into that story.
So, if the DNC reported to the FBI that Russia had hacked its server, would it not be standard protocol for the FBI to seize the server, do its own forensic analysis and maintain chain of custody over it?
If the mode of transmission of the "hacked" data occurred as claimed, then the NSA would know about it according to Bill Binney, and he's a guy who would know. The fact that the NSA didn't confirm it seems telling to me.
But the most glaring hole in the narrative is the FBI's failure to follow standard law enforcement protocol. I mean, we had politicians out there blathering about the "Russian hack" thing being equivalent to an act of war so it was kinda, sorta important.
Honestly, Comey inappropriately shut down two investigations into the Clintons.
The video of Gowdy and Chavez and their committee hearings were very enlightening.
Top post features a flashing head vomiting racism?
Grampa-simpson-pivoting-out.gif
Another very recent one was the Solar Winds hack, which was breathlessly hyped as having penetrated more deeply into the bowels of US infrastructure (yes, I did have to go there) than any other previous hack; one which bore "all the hallmarks of" a state operation, which, everyone knows, means probably Russia, right?
It is *possible* that the hack was a Russian state operation. But at the time the hack was announced, there was literally no evidence for that claim whatsoever: no IP addresses, no person or outfit claiming responsibility, nothing. There wasn't even any evidence that the hacker(s) themselves were Russian PEOPLE at all, much less having any connection with the state (or "Putin," "the Kremlin," or "SVR," or whatever other lazy shorthand is typically employed).
And yet every single MSM news outlet ran it as a "Russian hack," based on the hunch of some anonymous "intelligence experts."
p.s. Have you noticed how every commentary on MSM reporting these days needs to feature a nearly-unlimited supply of "scare quotes"? Is it because they're all so "full of shit"?