U.S. Politics: From Russia, With Love

[TerraPrime]

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[all swedes are racist]

part три?  

[ThinkerX]

Ok, why are we recycling political thread titles? 

That said, for whatever reason, it falls to me to post this gem;

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/sean-hannity-accused-of-sexually-harassing-fox-news-contributor/ar-BBAdSSI?ocid=ob-fb-enus-580

To me, neither of these people looks especially upstanding.  Hannity might be able to make a legit case against her - emphasis on the 'might.'

Sean Hannity is the latest Fox News personality facing allegations of sexual harassment.

During a Friday interview with Tulsa, Oklahoma-based radio host Pat Campbell, former Fox News contributor Debbie Schlussel accused Hannity of inviting her to his hotel room before and after a debate with a pro-Palestinian guest in Detroit. Schlussel said she rejected Hannity’s alleged advances and that she was never invited on his show again.

 

Hannity and Schlussel have a history of clashing, after she wrote a 2010 blog post accusing him of running a scam charity for military families. Schlussel alleged that less than 4 percent of the revenue from Hannity’s “Freedom Concerts” went to U.S. troops and their families, and that most of the concerts’ earnings went to lavish expenses. Hannity and his colleagues denied the allegations.

In 2007, Schlussel wrote a blog post accusing Hannity of “deliberately ripping off” an anti-Muslim column she wrote in the New York Post.

“That’s Sean Hannity for you,” she wrote in the 2007 post. “This is not the first time he’s done this to me, just the latest.”

 

[Fragile Bird]

Bah, humbug! Trump and his fellow Republicans are boasting about the appointment of Gorsuch as a historical accomplishment - "no president has ever appointed a SCOTUS judge in his first hundred days!". Shouldn't that be a record with an asterisk, like some baseball records? Like, add a year to that, since Obama announced Garland in March last year? Yes, that would be unfair to asterisk it for that. but what about changing the rules with regard to the number of votes it took to get him there? That was historic as well!

And the other thing Republicans are bragging about, "most executive orders issued in the first 100 days!" Did I not spend 8 years listening to Republicans bitch non-stop about executive orders undermining democracy?

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

9 hours ago, ThinkerX said:

Ok, why are we recycling political thread titles? 

Not only has the title been used, but it seems to be a moot point. I haven't heard a peep regarding this "investigation" since the Syrian missle incident. Seems to me that Trump has managed to sweep this scandal under the rug for the time being.  

[Commodore]

1 hour ago, Fragile Bird said:

And the other thing Republicans are bragging about, "most executive orders issued in the first 100 days!" Did I not spend 8 years listening to Republicans bitch non-stop about executive orders undermining democracy?

that criticism has always been qualitative 

[The Wedge]

1 hour ago, Fragile Bird said:

Bah, humbug! Trump and his fellow Republicans are boasting about the appointment of Gorsuch as a historical accomplishment - "no president has ever appointed a SCOTUS judge in his first hundred days!"

This boast is stupid, as well, since most presidents don't have an opportunity to nominate an appointee to the SCOTUS in the first 100 days.

Trump's delusions are infuriating. Almost as infuriating as the supporters who enable him. 

His four years has to be up by now, right?  It feels like he has done enough damage for two disastrous terms.

[Durckad]

35 minutes ago, Commodore said:

that criticism has always been qualitative on whether a Republican was in the White House at the time

FIFY

[Mexal]

14 minutes ago, The Wedge said:

This boast is stupid, as well, since most presidents don't have an opportunity to nominate an appointee to the SCOTUS in the first 100 days.

Trump's delusions are infuriating. Almost as infuriating as the supporters who enable him. 

His four years has to be up by now, right?  It feels like he has done enough damage for two disastrous terms.

And it's not like he did anything. He nominated a judge and the Senate Republicans removed the filibuster to get him appointed. Well done Trump.

[Relic]

Trump got positive press from the SC nom,  so he's clinging to that like it's the only thing that matters.  Because in his head any criticism is "negative coverage"  which he ahs recently admitted to the AP is something he's tuned out. 

[Kalbear]

2 hours ago, Manhole Eunuchsbane said:

Not only has the title been used, but it seems to be a moot point. I haven't heard a peep regarding this "investigation" since the Syrian missle incident. Seems to me that Trump has managed to sweep this scandal under the rug for the time being.  

There's been better stuff recently, like the House intel committee bringing in Yates and more corroboration with the Steele report. Page being announced as at least being approached by Russian intel to sway Trump is another one. 

I agree it's not gotten the big press, and the bombings have improved Trump's polling numbers - but it hasn't gone away yet.

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

4 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

There's been better stuff recently, like the House intel committee bringing in Yates and more corroboration with the Steele report. Page being announced as at least being approached by Russian intel to sway Trump is another one. 

I agree it's not gotten the big press, and the bombings have improved Trump's polling numbers - but it hasn't gone away yet.

I hope not. It seems kind of dead in the water, at least from a coverage standpoint. 

[Jaxom 1974]

4 minutes ago, Manhole Eunuchsbane said:

I hope not. It seems kind of dead in the water, at least from a coverage standpoint. 

Sorta depends on who is covering it.  It's the apparent severity of the issue and the world of the 24 hour news cycle and the internet that makes this seem to be slowing...I mean, Watergate didn't come out in a day.  The difference being, I don't get the impression people were concerned about damage Nixon was doing on a global scale while the investigation was ongoing...

Though I admit to getting a wee bit antsy waiting for a shoe to drop.  

[Kalbear]

Though to be fair, this isn't particularly heartening.

 

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

 Probably more concerning to me is the lack of any sort of information coming from the House Intelligence Committee "investigation". Like the cancelling of the open hearing featuring Sally Yates. Was that ever rescheduled? As ham-fisted and comical as Nunes' attempts to interfere with investigation were, they appear to have been effective.  

[Fez]

Trump wants a plan by Wednesday to cut the corporate tax rate to 15%. He says he doesn't care if it increases the deficit; which is good for whoever tries to draft this, because its not possible to find enough corporate tax breaks for a cut that low; the only way to be revenue neutral would be to increase other taxes. However, if it increases the deficit its not going to pass through reconciliation. 

So its another meaningless attempt by a President who is desperate for any kind of legislative accomplishment but is too incompetent to do the work necessary to achieve one.

[S John]

Personally, I'm not getting my hopes up for a definitive link between Trump himself and Russian interference in the US election.  I'd be shocked if there's a caught red-handed moment in this.  First, I think there's likely going to be plausible deniability, no matter how flimsy.  No direct link to Trump himself and we all know that he will not take responsibility for something an underling does.   Second, I think there is a decent chance that Trump himself may have legitimately had nothing to do with it - aside from publicly cheering on the efforts to air Clinton's dirty laundry.  And finally, I'm not sure the extent to which Russian interference and disinformation actually affected the results.  It didn't help, to be sure, but lets not forget about the previous 24 years of American conservatives working over the Clintons.  I am confident that the R's did not even need Russia's help to get conservative voters, and some moderate ones, to believe that Hillary Clinton is the anti-Christ, they were already right there.  Consider that the possibility of Russians helping Trump was out there in the media and widely discussed before the election happened and the USA still, somehow elected Trump over Clinton.  

Russia's game is to divide the West so that they can freely embark on little expansionist schemes in their sphere of influence.  They want anti-NATO, anti-EU, anti-globalist / Nationalist candidates in Europe and America in as many positions of power as they can get them.  This is so incredibly obvious that I cannot believe that multiple Western electorates have looked at the writing on the wall and determined that immigrants are scarier than an expansionist country with 7,300 nuclear warheads.  

In any case, during the elections Trump refused to condemn Russia and repeatedly condemned NATO.  Russia likely took him at his word and backed the non-interventionist, US-centric, isolationist candidate who also probably has major business interests in Russia to boot.  (lol joke's on you, Russia, for taking Trump at his word. but welcome to the club).  Trump's 'policies' such as they were, were music to Putin's ears.   NATO is a shell of its former self if the US backs off of our commitments in Europe.  It would huge for Russia if that happens, so why not go all in trying to get the guy saying that NATO is 'obsolete' to be president of the US?  If I'm Putin, there's no direct collaboration needed - gimme the guy that wants to diminish the role of the military organization that's been hemming us in for 68 years.

[DMC]

2 hours ago, Commodore said:

that criticism has always been qualitative 

But that goes both ways.  If the criticism has always been Obama was (qualitatively) using EOs to advance policy priorities with flagrant disregard for Madison's separation of powers, then that is the crux of the Trump boast as well, right?  Otherwise he's just bragging about issuing the most ineffectual orders - like expanding eligibility for the defense meritorious service medal - in his first 100 days. 

[Mexal]

2 hours ago, S John said:

Personally, I'm not getting my hopes up for a definitive link between Trump himself and Russian interference in the US election.  I'd be shocked if there's a caught red-handed moment in this.  First, I think there's likely going to be plausible deniability, no matter how flimsy.  No direct link to Trump himself and we all know that he will not take responsibility for something an underling does.   Second, I think there is a decent chance that Trump himself may have legitimately had nothing to do with it - aside from publicly cheering on the efforts to air Clinton's dirty laundry.  And finally, I'm not sure the extent to which Russian interference and disinformation actually affected the results.  It didn't help, to be sure, but lets not forget about the previous 24 years of American conservatives working over the Clintons.  I am confident that the R's did not even need Russia's help to get conservative voters, and some moderate ones, to believe that Hillary Clinton is the anti-Christ, they were already right there.  Consider that the possibility of Russians helping Trump was out there in the media and widely discussed before the election happened and the USA still, somehow elected Trump over Clinton.  

We'll see. I tend to believe there is a clear link between Trump and Russia (way too many coincidences otherwise). Last I read in the Guardian, there was 7 different countries that turned SIGINT over to the FBI/CIA, they had enough probable cause to get at least one FISA warrant and the NSA has asked for immunity to tell his story. Not sure Trump ultimately goes down for this because of the inadmissible nature of SIGINT, but I do think they're sitting on enough evidence to prove collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. As with all CI/criminal investigations, it'll take awhile to build a case to convict so I think we'll be waiting a long time before something comes to the public forefront but I definitely think people are going to go to jail over this or money laundering. I could see AG Schneiderman try to build a RICO case based on the connections between Russia, Cyprus, Deutsche Bank and Trump. 

As for whether it helped or not, who knows. At the end of the day, the election was won by 80,000 votes in 3 states and these 3 states were heavily targeted by Russian disinformation (1000s of online accounts were set up to look like Midwestern people with similar interests to other people in that state and continued to pump a pro-Trump narrative). They also had their voter records hacked by the Russians and based on a recent FOIA request, had election machine issues. Hard for me to believe that there wasn't some influence from the Russians there to help sway some of those votes. Not to mention the daily leak of Podesta emails which would constantly keep Hillary's email and campaign issues in the forefront of the voters minds.

Did Clinton run a bad campaign? Yea. Did she have a poor message? Yea. Are those factors in her defeat? Sure. But with 80,000 votes separating a win and loss, I can't discount Russian disinformation/hacking played a part. Maybe it would have been less had Clinton done a better job but I firmly believe it played a part in the election. 

And to your final point, it was barely out there that Russia hacked the election and it wasn't clear to the level of disinformation that they spread. In addition, it wasn't clear that Trump was connected to Russia (even though the CIA chief went to the Gang of 8 to show them evidence in August) and it was massively overshadowed 1000 fold by Clinton's emails. If the Russian hacking got even a 10th of the coverage that the emails got, the end result might have been different.

 

[Kalbear]

On the Russia thing - this article points out something I wasn't entirely aware of before, which is that the Russian groups routinely are going after Microsoft and Google to get security data and leverage.

The idea that  these hacking groups are some random organizations is so obviously wrong it's laughable. Microsoft et al tracks them like the government tracks them - as a singular group, with specific motivations (such as security, government orgs, foreign governments) and specific tools and practices. These are teams that work for months to get access, patiently and slowly attacking weak points because they have the time and organization to do so.

And if this is in the news, there are 10 times worse things that haven't been reported on.