@Big Al

It makes me doubtful the human race is going to be able to survive much longer.

It only looks that way from inside the United States.

It proves that our government is run by absolute imbeciles. It proves the same about the corporate media.
It makes me doubtful the human race is going to be able to survive much longer.

is that M$M Talking Heads know that R-gate is horse$h!t yet continue to pump the story, doubling down, in fact, to keep the story front and center.
@Big Al
What they don't know, apparently, or maybe just don't care, the paychecks still rolling in, is that this R-gate story eventually bites them in the ass, viewers no longer buying what they're selling.

It proves that our government is run by absolute imbeciles. It proves the same about the corporate media.
It makes me doubtful the human race is going to be able to survive much longer.

@mimi
as will any other site that is somewhat favorable or even neutral to Russia/Putin.

[video:www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=36&v=anNEJJYLU8M]

a German "brother". How nice.

I want to meet him. I haven't read his site for years, but did read it a lot when I was new to TOP.

Where is that bar? I don't drink Whiskey, but guess I am ready to try one and get drunk and be ready to be a co-conspirator.

Under the theory on which the indictment is based I could also be indicted for a similar "Conspiracy to Defraud the United States"....those of you who kindly donate for this blog co-conspiractors?

Come to think of it: in all my last jobs I was indirectly (a non writing) registered foreign agent, I guess. I worked for the dpa, ARD German TV and a German conservative Think Tank inside the belly of the beast in Washington DC. Basically as a clean-up lady and filing assistant. Ha. Very dangerous person here. Beware of mimi littles, who can get access to files.

I need a Whiskey now and you know why.
[video:https://youtu.be/x-5ata4jDyk]
Cheers, Mr. b

PS if you think I am tired of life and risk too much, I have been killed already and my loved one too. So, no need to trample on me again to kill me twice. Don't waste your bullets on me.

[video:https://youtu.be/WENkquBHchM]

Oh makes me smile.

actions since, the DNC slit its own throat.
@jorogo

though I'd like very much to see this almost universal falsehood, conflation, a.k.a. lie, which you have parphrased for us from MOA, exposed and opposed in all discussion:

comment on US politics during an election

This all occurred during a campaign, not during an election. There's a critical difference.

Elections are a government function, protected by law. A campaign is an enterprise by private organizations for the purpose of submitting their candidate of choice on a ballot, which is then handed over to government agencies holding the election. If you don't believe me, I refer you to the Democratic Party's defense in the fraud case now under appeal.

At the heart of the DNC’s defense, articulated by attorney Bruce Spiva, is the idea that, being a private organization, the Democratic Party is allowed to make whatever rules it wants. The impartiality clause, said Spiva, is “a discretionary rule that [the DNC] didn’t need to adopt to begin with.” Its rules and alleged rule-breaking are a private matter and for a court to interfere would not only draw it into “political squabbles,” but violate the DNC’s First Amendment rights.

Legally, the DNC is probably on sound footing. As Robert Wigton, professor of political science at Eckerd College has written, the courts “have never provided a coherent framework to distinguish when parties are to be treated as ‘public’ entities and when they are to be deemed ‘private’ ones.”

@jorogo

- there's so much outright lunacy in Russiagate that it's hard to comprehend it all en masse. I suspect that they're counting on our brains to crumple beneath the weight of all that sheer nonsense so as to become vulnerable enough and reduced to merely recycling whatever talking points they pump out.

But that essential point at the base of it is, of course, why the hell are private parties allowed to pick the only candidates that they then effectively allow people in a democracy to vote for, so that they can capture government and media in order to spread such fatally destructive insanity as they do?

though I'd like very much to see this almost universal falsehood, conflation, a.k.a. lie, which you have parphrased for us from MOA, exposed and opposed in all discussion:

comment on US politics during an election

This all occurred during a campaign, not during an election. There's a critical difference.

Elections are a government function, protected by law. A campaign is an enterprise by private organizations for the purpose of submitting their candidate of choice on a ballot, which is then handed over to government agencies holding the election. If you don't believe me, I refer you to the Democratic Party's defense in the fraud case now under appeal.

At the heart of the DNC’s defense, articulated by attorney Bruce Spiva, is the idea that, being a private organization, the Democratic Party is allowed to make whatever rules it wants. The impartiality clause, said Spiva, is “a discretionary rule that [the DNC] didn’t need to adopt to begin with.” Its rules and alleged rule-breaking are a private matter and for a court to interfere would not only draw it into “political squabbles,” but violate the DNC’s First Amendment rights.

Legally, the DNC is probably on sound footing. As Robert Wigton, professor of political science at Eckerd College has written, the courts “have never provided a coherent framework to distinguish when parties are to be treated as ‘public’ entities and when they are to be deemed ‘private’ ones.”

@The Wizard

Exactly! Except that it's not just pissing off any ally - the Russian people have been undergoing nuclear drills involving refurbished Cold War bomb shelters the past couple of years, because The Psychopaths That Be think in terms of killing as many innocent humans as horrifically as possible as 'war'.

Imagine how stressful it is for a population to have verifiable fears of being being nuked at any moment, over a period of years, by bloodthirsty lunatics slavering, threatening and planning how to do it...

Lunatic psychopaths who merely tell their fellow-citizens among the 99% of relative Poors to 'stay in their homes and kiss their asses good-by' once TPTB succeed in starting Mutual Assured Destruction, because Those Who Matter figure on planning when that starts, so that they can reach their luxury bunkers in time, believing that they will survive comfortably and apparently utterly unaware that they will have trapped themselves in those prison cells on a murdered Earth, with nowhere else to go and all wealth beyond remaining basic supplies in those cells worthless?

You've heard recent talk increasing about how exploding nuclear weapons above ground will throw less debris high enough to cause universally fatal-to-life-all-on-its-own global dimming? They're still trying to convince themselves that they can have a livable, functioning Earth all to themselves, to rule over whatever survives after playing with nukes all over the for-profit-and-power poisoned and irradiated planet already dying of what they've done and are doing so far...

Hillary must have been salivating when she heard Trump say that. "He's going to pay big-time for that statement", she probably thought to herself. On the other hand she and her partner had received large sums of money from Russians to sell out US Uranium and for her partner to speak in Moscow. Not a problem for her, she had wiggled out of much worse problems.

Consider what a great sentiment is in that quote from Trump. One of the few issues that he was on the right side.

The really bad part of all of this Rusophobia is that we are pissing off a potentially really good ally, for crass political tactics. We make the world a much more dangerous place and miss the opportunity to cooperate on every important issue. Consider this from the perspective of the typical Russian. The USSR bled 27 million lives to defeat Hitler, otherwise the Allies would have lost. Then Russia demolished the USSR and bloodlessly frees all of the republics. Russia suffered enormously from the transition from communism to capitalism, with the West sitting by and rooting-on the corrupt oligarchy as Russia plunged into a severe depression. President Putin pulls Russia up by her bootstraps and the US is now officially pissed and doing everything that it can to put Russia back in the toilet. But this is today and Russia is rock solid and the US is not.

These ridiculous charges against "Russia" are purely political. So far there are no crimes and no evidence. What, folks outside of the US posting opinions on global social media? Opinions now described as acts of war? Large amount of non-evidence and opinion is now described as the overwhelming body of evidence for Russian malfeasance. Progressives are now bashed for not being on-board the train -- hellbent to war? Just when I thought that politics could not get more absurd ... it does so by an order of magnitude.

@ggersh
if one had run against Trump instead of Her Heinousness, we would now have President Ham Sandwich sitting in the White House.

http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/thirteen-russians-ands-ham-sandwich/

The beauty in Robert Mueller’s indictment of thirteen Russian Facebook trolls is that they’ll never face trial, so Mr. Mueller will never have to prove his case. In the new misrule of law made popular by the #Me Too movement, accusations suffice to convict the target of an investigation. Kind of sounds like going medieval to me, but that’s how roll now in the Land of the Free.

@dfarrah

The New York Times devoted an entire "fact checking" article toward proving how the VP of Facebook is full of crap. Of course, the only thing the "fact check" proved was that the NYT is full of crap, but Facebook will still probably be forced to dump the guy.

VP of facebook is stepping up to challenge the government narrative. FB almost has no choice - otherwise, they will be next in line to be accused of treason.

gotten to the bottom of RussiaGate, the Very bottom as it turns out, and no further investigation is necessary.
@DonMidwest

he released just enough to keep the game going

Mueller has proven himself quite the politician.

I was hoping that the indictments would bring some sort of resolution to the investigation and force all the evidence to become public. But no, this investigation is not meant to be conclusive, it is — like Orwell’s description of war — meant to be continuous.

By issuing indictments to individuals that are unlikely to ever come to trial Mueller has dodged the responsibility of presenting any additional evidence — a perfect sleight of hand.

Mueller the Politician

@DonMidwest

I really don't think this is complex at all.

As for the point about Russians pushing gun rights:

The entire world is pushing the idea that Americans should be armed to the teeth and continue to kill each other as fast as they can.

You don't have to be a Russian to see the advantage in that.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Free Reality Winner, whistleblower betrayed by the intercept.

There has been some controversy here about Glenn Greenwald and The Intercept.

I think that The Intercept is one of the best sources around but they are not perfect.

Today he shows that the very group that is complaining about Russians responsible for guns in the US is a neocon group that is giving these people new life. Be in favor of invading Iraq and now say Trump is bad and one can continue their career!! Such a deal.

The group is Hamilton68

Russian bots promote pro-gun messages after Florida school shooting
By Gianluca Mezzofiore, CNN

Updated 8:14 PM ET, Fri February 16, 2018
Russian bots fueled Florida shooting debate

Russian bots fueled Florida shooting debate 01:02
(CNN)Russia-linked bots are promoting pro-gun messages on Twitter in an attempt to sow discord in the aftermath of the Florida school shooting, monitoring groups say.

Hashtags, topics and URLs related to the shooting overwhelmingly feature in the tweets pushed by these automated Twitter accounts in the past 48 hours, according to Hamilton 68, a tool launched by the Alliance for Securing Democracy to track what it describes as "Russian propaganda and disinformation efforts online."
The alliance is a group housed at The German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF) think tank to "defend against, deter, and raise the costs on Russian and other actors' efforts to undermine democracy and democratic institutions," according to its mission statement.

Russian bots promote pro-gun messages after Florida school shooting

Here is Glenn's article from July 2017

ONE OF THE most under-discussed yet consequential changes in the American political landscape is the reunion between the Democratic Party and the country’s most extreme and discredited neocons. While the rise of Donald Trump, whom neocons loathe, has accelerated this realignment, it began long before the ascension of Trump and is driven by far more common beliefs than contempt for the current president.

A newly formed and, by all appearances, well-funded national security advocacy group, devoted to more hawkish U.S. policies toward Russia and other adversaries, provides the most vivid evidence yet of this alliance. Calling itself the Alliance for Securing Democracy, the group describes itself as “a bipartisan, transatlantic initiative” that “will develop comprehensive strategies to defend against, deter, and raise the costs on Russian and other state actors’ efforts to undermine democracy and democratic institutions,” and also “will work to publicly document and expose Vladimir Putin’s ongoing efforts to subvert democracy in the United States and Europe.”

With New D.C. Policy Group, Dems Continue to Rehabilitate and Unify With Bush-Era Neocons

@DonMidwest

Strap in! I haven't sorted out this website yet (disobedientmedia) but they do a DEEEEEEP Dive into Hamilton 68 & German Marshall Fund: fucking NeoCons [Kristol, Chertoff, Schake) and Team Hillz NeoLib War Hawks (Morrell, Wong, Rosenberger, Watts) top to bottom -

"Can we trust the judgement of think-tanks who have labeled Twitter users as part of a ‘Russian influence campaign’ as sound when those same entities provide little evidence, and their high-level members include former Clinton supporters?

At the beginning of 2017, an initiative was launched by a non-partisan think-tank called the German Marshall Fund US (GMFUS) under the name “The Alliance For Securing Democracy” (ASD).

During the Summer, ASD started working on a project they called the “Hamilton 68 Dashboard“, an effort that was presented to the public as a means of monitoring Russian disinformation efforts on Twitter, apparently boosted by research covering a three year period."

That's one fucked up "non-partisan" think tank, folks!

https://disobedientmedia.com/2018/01/meet-the-cabal-that-are-framing-dom...

There has been some controversy here about Glenn Greenwald and The Intercept.

I think that The Intercept is one of the best sources around but they are not perfect.

Today he shows that the very group that is complaining about Russians responsible for guns in the US is a neocon group that is giving these people new life. Be in favor of invading Iraq and now say Trump is bad and one can continue their career!! Such a deal.

The group is Hamilton68

Russian bots promote pro-gun messages after Florida school shooting
By Gianluca Mezzofiore, CNN

Updated 8:14 PM ET, Fri February 16, 2018
Russian bots fueled Florida shooting debate

Russian bots fueled Florida shooting debate 01:02
(CNN)Russia-linked bots are promoting pro-gun messages on Twitter in an attempt to sow discord in the aftermath of the Florida school shooting, monitoring groups say.

Hashtags, topics and URLs related to the shooting overwhelmingly feature in the tweets pushed by these automated Twitter accounts in the past 48 hours, according to Hamilton 68, a tool launched by the Alliance for Securing Democracy to track what it describes as "Russian propaganda and disinformation efforts online."
The alliance is a group housed at The German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF) think tank to "defend against, deter, and raise the costs on Russian and other actors' efforts to undermine democracy and democratic institutions," according to its mission statement.

Russian bots promote pro-gun messages after Florida school shooting

Here is Glenn's article from July 2017

ONE OF THE most under-discussed yet consequential changes in the American political landscape is the reunion between the Democratic Party and the country’s most extreme and discredited neocons. While the rise of Donald Trump, whom neocons loathe, has accelerated this realignment, it began long before the ascension of Trump and is driven by far more common beliefs than contempt for the current president.

A newly formed and, by all appearances, well-funded national security advocacy group, devoted to more hawkish U.S. policies toward Russia and other adversaries, provides the most vivid evidence yet of this alliance. Calling itself the Alliance for Securing Democracy, the group describes itself as “a bipartisan, transatlantic initiative” that “will develop comprehensive strategies to defend against, deter, and raise the costs on Russian and other state actors’ efforts to undermine democracy and democratic institutions,” and also “will work to publicly document and expose Vladimir Putin’s ongoing efforts to subvert democracy in the United States and Europe.”

With New D.C. Policy Group, Dems Continue to Rehabilitate and Unify With Bush-Era Neocons

@DonMidwest

There are no leaders at the Intercept. They offer no movement. No solutions. They are a group of over-funded weak sisters looking out for themselves and their own amusements.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Free Reality Winner, whistleblower betrayed by the intercept.

Above I made a satirical reply to a comment that the MSM reporters know that the Russian hack of the election is a ruse.

Well, not to be undone, Democratic politicians and others make the comparison to Pearl Harbor

Well, when you are a military empire, and one on the way down, keeping the MIC rolling in money takes a full court press to maintain the danger!!

A Consensus Emerges: Russia Committed an “Act of War” on Par With Pearl Harbor and 9/11. Should the U.S. Response be Similar?

Article by Glenn in today's The Intercept