The inevitable end result of our last 56 years

[Benjamin Cole]

7 minutes ago, Sandy Larsen said:

 

Russiagate is not a man or woman. It cannot be tried in a court of law.

Russiagate is an incident, which can be discovered or verified with an investigation. Mueller investigated Russiagate and concluded that it indeed did happen.

Of course, you don't need to believe what Mueller reported. But if you want to have any credibility you should at least show flaws in Mueller's report. Otherwise it is all just speculation on your part.

And you shouldn't make false claims, like saying that a Columbia Journalism Review  article is more or less saying Russiagate was a hoax.

 

Well..

The lead sentence from the CJR four-part series:

"The end of the long inquiry into whether Donald Trump was colluding with Russia came in July 2019, when Robert Mueller III, the special counsel, took seven, sometimes painful, hours to essentially say no."

---30---

No collusion. With all the powers of the panopticon...the intel state found no collusion. 

OK, so Trump did not collude with Russians.

The Moscow hoods could still have been trying to influence the US election, and Trump was their stooge.

Except that story, Twittergate, has also fallen apart. Russian bots and influencers were...not there. 

Then, Carter Page?

The Alfa Bank?

The Steele Dossier? 

All three ersatz, bogus, fake news stories. 

As Peter Strzok said, "There is no big there, there."

We just have to agree to disagree on this one. 

In fact, I suspect Russiagate was worse than a hoax. It may have been a regime-change op, or soft coup. 

That's my story and I am sticking with it (IMHO). 

 

[Matthew Koch]

2 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

 

What do you mean, Defund the Police killed a lot of people?

I know about Treyvon Martin and George Floyd being killed by the police. I watched the whole George Floyd killing on video and must say that that was definitely a case of murder.

There were a couple of other unjustified killings of black kids back then, and now the recent killing of a young black man by five black officers. I believe I heard that they were being indicted for murder.... at least some of them.

I do care about those people. But I don't recall anything about the Defund the Police movement killing people.

 

 

You're right, I don't know what the 1619 Project is. And what does that tell you Matthew? I watch three primetime MSNBC shows daily and I've never heard of the 1619 Project. Nor had I ever seen before that Pundit on the Joy Reid show with his brief tirade against the slave-owning, misogynistic founding fathers. I don't know about them because they are on the fringe and not given much time on MSNBC. They are given zero time on primetime MSNBC  AFAIK.

Matthew, these crazy things that you come up with and claim that liberals believe in are really what just a few extremists believe.

 

 

Wait a second... earlier you said that MSNBC propagates these crazy things and that's the reason I believe them, because I watch MSNBC. But now you're your saying that MSNBC doesn't tell me what to believe? Please make up your mind.

Are you saying that MSNBC is propagating those things, but that I choose not to believe them?

 

Heres an article about how the crime rate spiked after Defund the Police went into action by Democrat Governors. Well do a keyword search with 1619 project and MSNPC and you will see.. https://clayhiggins.house.gov/media/in-the-news/higgins-democrats-push-defund-police-caused-crime-spike

[Matthew Koch]

4 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

 

I most certainly do know what a liberal is, given that I've been politically liberal for more than 35 years.

 

 

That is one of the definitions of the word "liberal".... technically speaking not the definition of liberal when used in the context of politics. A political liberal is one who believes the principles of political liberalism, which include the following:

lib·er·al·ism

/ˈlib(ə)rəˌliz(ə)m/

noun: liberalism

2. a political and social philosophy that promotes individual rights, civil liberties, democracy, and free enterprise.

 

Another major principle of American liberalism that sets it apart from American conservatism is government support for the needy.

 

 

 

"Partisan leftist Democrats" ARE liberals, as you can see in the chart below. (See "Left" on the first line of text, "Democrats" on the third line, and "Liberal" on the fifth line.)

 

 

 

You shared a different word, do I really need to explain to you why different words have different definitions? 

[Matthew Koch]

2 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

 

What do you mean, Defund the Police killed a lot of people?

I know about Treyvon Martin and George Floyd being killed by the police. I watched the whole George Floyd killing on video and must say that that was definitely a case of murder.

There were a couple of other unjustified killings of black kids back then, and now the recent killing of a young black man by five black officers. I believe I heard that they were being indicted for murder.... at least some of them.

I do care about those people. But I don't recall anything about the Defund the Police movement killing people.

 

Trayvon Martin wasn't killed by the police.. 

[Matthew Koch]

2 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

Wait a second... earlier you said that MSNBC propagates these crazy things and that's the reason I believe them, because I watch MSNBC. But now you're your saying that MSNBC doesn't tell me what to believe? Please make up your mind.

Are you saying that MSNBC is propagating those things, but that I choose not to believe them?

 

This kind of lame arguments are a waist of my time. Since you are so inaccurate in what you believe from your various statements, I'm going to put you in the same place Niederhut is and that's on Ignore. So I won't be responding, have a nice life Sandy.. 

 

Btw George Floyd died from fentanyl.. which many others Americans are dying of because Democrats are allowing illegals to bring it across the border... 

[Steve Thomas]

- Matt Gaetz to Ari Melber -

"I didn't vote for Kevin McCarthy, but I allowed him to become Speaker."

I "allowed" him become Speaker?

So whose got the real power here? The guy who's 3rd in line to become the President, or the guy who "allowed" him to be there and "allows" him to stay?

Welcome to America, where Matt Gaetz is in charge.

Steve Thomas

[Matthew Koch]

10 hours ago, Matt Allison said:

I'm not looking for a list of people bellowing "hoax" or "witch hunt" or whatever; anyone in need of that only has to subject themselves to Donald Trump's rantings.

I want to know specifically what you're talking about.

With regard to Trump's Russia connections, which part is a hoax?

The hoax is that the election was rigged by the Russians, and sharing polling data or sharing memes on FB isn't what a reasonable person calls "interference" 

We are at the point where you are asking Ben to prove a negative, which means Ben has basically won the debate. Because you can't prove that they did, much like flat earthers you are now asking him to prove it without using NASA as a source. 

[Steve Thomas]

- Lauren Boebert -

"“The Second Amendment is absolute, and it’s here to stay,” Boebert said Wednesday during a House floor speech. “A recent report states that Americans own 46% of the world’s guns. I think we need to get our numbers up, boys and girls.”

Isn't she cute? It's nice to see Lauren get all giggly and everything.

Steve Thomas

[W. Niederhut]

5 hours ago, Benjamin Cole said:

Well..

The lead sentence from the CJR four-part series:

"The end of the long inquiry into whether Donald Trump was colluding with Russia came in July 2019, when Robert Mueller III, the special counsel, took seven, sometimes painful, hours to essentially say no."

 

 

Ben,

    This quote is a good example of what is wrong with your ballyhooed CJR reference articles.

    Instead of focusing on the actual evidence in the Mueller Report, the authors focus on the media circus surrounding Mueller's bumbling comments to Congress, after Barr had shut down Mueller's investigation and lied about the Report.

    Also, notice that the author is joking with Dean Baquet about Mueller's bumbling Congressional testimony, while neglecting to cover the infamous story about Dean Baquet putting the kibosh on any 2016 pre-election NYT articles about Trump's involvement with Russia-- including decades of Trump Organization business deals with the Russian mafia and Putin's oligarchs.

     Baquet was a key player in sabotaging Hillary Clinton's 2016 candidacy.

    You, obviously, still need to learn the facts about Russiagate.

     Here are some questions for you to contemplate.

     Why did Flynn plead guilty to lying to the FBI about his December 2016 phone calls with Kisylak?

     Why did Trump fire James Comey and Andrew McCabe?

     Why did Trump repeatedly try to obstruct Mueller's investigation, and float pardons to Manafort, Gates, Flynn, Stone, and other 2016 campaign associates, during the Mueller investigation? 

     Why did Trump's associates repeatedly lie about their 2016 Russian contacts? 

     Why did Trump refuse to answer Mueller's questions-- repeatedly claiming that he "couldn't recall" any details?

     Why did Trump lie about his 2016 Moscow Trump Tower negotiations and plans?

     Why did Trump announce in Helsinki that Putin had not interfered in the 2016 U.S. election (before Reality Winner leaked an NSA document proving that Trump and Putin were lying?)

     Why did Bill Barr refuse to release the unredacted Mueller Report, and misrepresent Mueller's findings?

     Why did Brett Kavanaugh block the release of grand jury testimony from the Mueller investigation?

Edited February 2, 2023 by W. Niederhut

[Matthew Koch]

@Benjamin Cole Check out this thread from Aaron Maté, it goes into how the reality winner leak is a nothing burger that the Corporate MockingBird media ran with for clicks.. 

 

[W. Niederhut]

From Jim Risen at The Intercept: Senate Report Strongly Implies Russian Hacking Story Was a Public Service - But Whistleblower Reality Winner Remains in Jail

Press Freedom Defense Fund

May 11, 2018

Press coverage of Russian intelligence attempts to hack into U.S. voting systems during the 2016 election played an important role in alerting state elections officials to the threat because government warnings were inadequate, according to a bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report released this week.

The most detailed such news story, based on a classified National Security Agency document, appeared in The Intercept last June. A former NSA contractor, Reality Winner, has been charged under the Espionage Act for allegedly leaking a top-secret document describing the Russian attempt to penetrate voting software. The Intercept received the document featured in its June 5, 2017 Russian hacking story anonymously. (This reporter is the director of the Press Freedom Defense Fund, a division of The Intercept’s nonprofit parent company, First Look Media Works, which has contributed funds to Winner’s defense.)

In implicitly conceding the impact of The Intercept’s story, as well as other coverage, the new Senate report detailing the committee’s investigation of Russian election meddling makes the case that the leak helped state officials around the nation begin to address the threat of Russian hacking into American voting systems. It is a remarkable and paradoxical assertion from a government that has used the full force of the law to pursue Winner for allegedly sharing the document with a news organization. The committee’s conclusions offer strong support for the argument that disclosing the document was in the public interest.

The Senate report states that Russian attempts to target U.S. voting infrastructure began “at least as early as 2014” and continued through the 2016 election. The Intercept story and others published earlier may have provided a wake-up call to state and federal officials about their vulnerability to the Russian cyber campaign. The Senate report says that “many state election officials reported hearing for the first time about the Russian attempts to scan and penetrate state systems from the press or from the public Committee hearing on June 21, 2017.” The Intercept story ran less than three weeks before that hearing.

The report notes that the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI issued alerts that were “limited in substance and distribution” in the summer and fall of 2016. “States understood there was a cyber threat but did not appreciate the scope, seriousness or implication of the particular threat they were facing,” according to the report. “The Committee found that DHS’s initial response was inadequate to counter the threat,” the report says. The DHS’s notifications in the summer of 2016, coupled with a public statement by the DHS and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in October 2016, “were not sufficient warning.”

Although the DHS provided warning to IT staff in the fall of 2016, notifications to state election officials were delayed by nearly a year. It wasn’t until September 2017 – “and only under significant pressure from this Committee and others”— that the DHS told chief election officials in targeted states about “the scanning activity and other attacks and the actor behind them,” according to the report.

Prodded by the Senate committee and greater public awareness of the threat, the DHS is now working more effectively with state election officials, the report says.

A so-called Election Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center has been established to share information with state and local election officials. The DHS has also hosted a classified briefing for state chief election officials and is working to provide security clearances for those officials.

Among the recommendations of the Senate committee’s report is a call for the intelligence community to improve information-sharing on threats and to “put a high priority on attributing cyberattacks both quickly and accurately.” It adds that the DHS “must create clear channels of communication between the federal government and appropriate officials at the state and local levels.”

It also sees a role for the media in disseminating information about such threats. “Election experts, security officials, cybersecurity experts, and the media should develop a common set of precise and well-defined election security terms to improve communication,” the report notes.

Although other news outlets reported on threats of Russian intrusion into the U.S. elections system, The Intercept’s June 2017 story was distinctive in that it relied on government information not authorized for public release. The New York Times referred to The Intercept’s reporting in its own coverage of the Senate report, noting that a “National Security Agency analysis leaked last June concluded that Russian military intelligence launched a cyberattack on at least one maker of electronic voting equipment during the 2016 campaign, and sent so-called spear-phishing emails days before the general election to 122 local government officials, apparently customers of the manufacturer. The emails concealed a computer script that, when clicked on, ‘very likely’ downloaded a program from an external server that gave the intruders prolonged access to election computers or allowed them to search for valuable data.”

The government appears to recognize that The Intercept’s story played a critical role in warning American elections officials about the threat, yet the Senate report comes at a time when the Trump administration has continued to take a draconian approach in its prosecution of Reality Winner. Prosecutors have successfully pushed to have her denied bail and have sought to argue that she caused significant damage to national security. While senior government officials like former CIA Director David Petraeus have been given what amount to slaps on the wrist in leak cases, Winner remains incarcerated even as the Senate is effectively lauding the leak for which she is charged.

[Kirk Gallaway]

2 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

From Jim Risen at The Intercept: Senate Report Strongly Implies Russian Hacking Story Was a Public Service - But Whistleblower Reality Winner Remains in Jail

Press Freedom Defense Fund

May 11, 2018

Press coverage of Russian intelligence attempts to hack into U.S. voting systems during the 2016 election played an important role in alerting state elections officials to the threat because government warnings were inadequate, according to a bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report released this week.

The most detailed such news story, based on a classified National Security Agency document, appeared in The Intercept last June. A former NSA contractor, Reality Winner, has been charged under the Espionage Act for allegedly leaking a top-secret document describing the Russian attempt to penetrate voting software. The Intercept received the document featured in its June 5, 2017 Russian hacking story anonymously. (This reporter is the director of the Press Freedom Defense Fund, a division of The Intercept’s nonprofit parent company, First Look Media Works, which has contributed funds to Winner’s defense.)

In implicitly conceding the impact of The Intercept’s story, as well as other coverage, the new Senate report detailing the committee’s investigation of Russian election meddling makes the case that the leak helped state officials around the nation begin to address the threat of Russian hacking into American voting systems. It is a remarkable and paradoxical assertion from a government that has used the full force of the law to pursue Winner for allegedly sharing the document with a news organization. The committee’s conclusions offer strong support for the argument that disclosing the document was in the public interest.

The Senate report states that Russian attempts to target U.S. voting infrastructure began “at least as early as 2014” and continued through the 2016 election. The Intercept story and others published earlier may have provided a wake-up call to state and federal officials about their vulnerability to the Russian cyber campaign. The Senate report says that “many state election officials reported hearing for the first time about the Russian attempts to scan and penetrate state systems from the press or from the public Committee hearing on June 21, 2017.” The Intercept story ran less than three weeks before that hearing.

The report notes that the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI issued alerts that were “limited in substance and distribution” in the summer and fall of 2016. “States understood there was a cyber threat but did not appreciate the scope, seriousness or implication of the particular threat they were facing,” according to the report. “The Committee found that DHS’s initial response was inadequate to counter the threat,” the report says. The DHS’s notifications in the summer of 2016, coupled with a public statement by the DHS and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in October 2016, “were not sufficient warning.”

Although the DHS provided warning to IT staff in the fall of 2016, notifications to state election officials were delayed by nearly a year. It wasn’t until September 2017 – “and only under significant pressure from this Committee and others”— that the DHS told chief election officials in targeted states about “the scanning activity and other attacks and the actor behind them,” according to the report.

Prodded by the Senate committee and greater public awareness of the threat, the DHS is now working more effectively with state election officials, the report says.

A so-called Election Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center has been established to share information with state and local election officials. The DHS has also hosted a classified briefing for state chief election officials and is working to provide security clearances for those officials.

Among the recommendations of the Senate committee’s report is a call for the intelligence community to improve information-sharing on threats and to “put a high priority on attributing cyberattacks both quickly and accurately.” It adds that the DHS “must create clear channels of communication between the federal government and appropriate officials at the state and local levels.”

It also sees a role for the media in disseminating information about such threats. “Election experts, security officials, cybersecurity experts, and the media should develop a common set of precise and well-defined election security terms to improve communication,” the report notes.

Although other news outlets reported on threats of Russian intrusion into the U.S. elections system, The Intercept’s June 2017 story was distinctive in that it relied on government information not authorized for public release. The New York Times referred to The Intercept’s reporting in its own coverage of the Senate report, noting that a “National Security Agency analysis leaked last June concluded that Russian military intelligence launched a cyberattack on at least one maker of electronic voting equipment during the 2016 campaign, and sent so-called spear-phishing emails days before the general election to 122 local government officials, apparently customers of the manufacturer. The emails concealed a computer script that, when clicked on, ‘very likely’ downloaded a program from an external server that gave the intruders prolonged access to election computers or allowed them to search for valuable data.”

The government appears to recognize that The Intercept’s story played a critical role in warning American elections officials about the threat, yet the Senate report comes at a time when the Trump administration has continued to take a draconian approach in its prosecution of Reality Winner. Prosecutors have successfully pushed to have her denied bail and have sought to argue that she caused significant damage to national security. While senior government officials like former CIA Director David Petraeus have been given what amount to slaps on the wrist in leak cases, Winner remains incarcerated even as the Senate is effectively lauding the leak for which she is charged.

Yes W.

Of course the Intercept was  a 250 million dollar gift to Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras by the Ebay founder Pierre Omydiyar. It was in part, Glenn  Greenwald who hung Reality Winner out to dry probably because her article didn't fit in with Glenn's U.S. deep state narrative, but was actually making a case for Russian interference.

 

Greenwald makes up an excuse that Winner brought it on herself, because she initially contacted the Intercept with an email, and of course implies  that was enough for the Deep State to catch her. But in reality.The Intercept was widely criticized for its handling of the document Winner leaked—in particular, the decision to show the leaked document to the U.S. government! While attempting to verify its authenticity with the NSA, an Intercept reporter inadvertently revealed its provenance!

 

Isn't this no resident Deep State, but the DOJ is used a tool of the Trump Presidency, who clearly wants to suppress evidence of Russian meddling?

 

 

Today, Winner is wary of what she sees as The Intercept’s contribution to an increasingly polarized media landscape. She has been especially stung by what she sees as Greenwald’s assertions that her own mistakes — including failing to follow guidelines for leakers outlined on The Intercept’s website, like specific advice not to contact the outlet either from work or by email — contributed to her arrest. (Greenwald, who was not involved in reporting the story, resigned from The Intercept in 2020, accusing the outlet of censoring an article critical of Joe Biden’s son, Hunter.)

 

Like Chelsea Manning, Winner says she’s been surprised by what she views as a cynical change in Greenwald’s public persona. Greenwald, she says, is “addicted to negative press…He’s willing to have whatever message is going to generate the most attention… Glenn isn’t the problem, he’s a symptom, and they’re all going to wind up like him.” (She adds: “If Glenn Greenwald has anything to say to me, he’s more than welcome to get his ass on a plane and come back to the United States and tell me face to my face how stupid he thinks I am, but he knows better than that. He wants to hide out in Brazil on his private beach or whatever.”)

 

Winner:He’s (Greenwald) willing to have whatever message is going to generate the most attention…

 

Just like Ben, in his recent clip with Greenwald and Taibbi. Ben queues the clip to the most sensational, intellectually dishonest statement in the entire clip  where Greenwald  makes all sorts of wild allegations that all the news coverage at the beginning of the Trump Presidency was solely the result of being fed talking points from this group.

 

But I noticed, in cases I've seen, for example,  in the early Trump Presidency, MSNBC would have as guests a lot of authors and investigative journalists who wrote articles and books about Trump. It's always easy to trash on good journalists because his audience never understands the craft involved, because they don't read. I'm sure these journalists would  scoff at the idea that they were give cheat sheets with Hamilton 68! 

 

This is what I mean when I say it's useless to dialog.  I called Ben on it, and his answer was to run over to another  article by Ron Paul.

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/reality-winner-interview-prison-nsa-1261844/

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited February 2, 2023 by Kirk Gallaway

[Steve Thomas]

Idaho State Rep. Ron Mendive has put a bill on the floor of the Idaho State House that would require elementary school children to work for the free school lunches that they get.

I think he wants them making license plates, but I'm not sure.

Steve Thomas

[Steve Thomas]

House Oversight chair reveals the GOP's next target

Rodric Hurdle-Bradford

February 02, 2023

https://www.rawstory.com/big-tech-and-the-swamp-colluded-comer-to-host-twitter-oversight-committee-hearing-next-week-on-biden-election-connection/

"Making good on a midterm election promise, Representative James Comer (R-Kentucky), the chair of the House Oversight Committee, has announced that next week the Committee will host a special hearing titled, "Protecting Speech from Government Interference and Social Media Bias, Part One: Twitter's Role in Suppressing the Biden Laptop Story.""

"“In the runup to the 2020 presidential election, Big Tech and the Swamp colluded to censor reporting about the Biden family’s shady business schemes," Comer said in the Committee's press release."

Mass shootings in America? - Nope

Child hunger? - Nope

The high price of gasoline? - Nope

350,000 people in Texas with no power or heat in the middle of winter? - Nope

We get to hear about Colluding Swamps.

Can a Swamp collude?

Steve Thomas

[Steve Thomas]

Last week, a member of Congress mailed out grenades to his fellow members. In his accompanying note, he made sure to ,mention that the grenades were inert.

This week, one Committee of the House passed a resolution allowing Committee members to bring guns into the Committee meetings.

At least three members have been spotted wearing lapel pins fashioned in the shape of an AR-15.

It's a race to see who can be the most outrageous. Outrageousness gets you attention.

Outrage gets attnention.

Attention gets you money.

Money gets you power.

They're not going to stop until somebody gets killed.

Then, they'll offer their thoughts and prayers.

Steve Thomas