Political Roundtable Part XI

[tontoz]

Funny how people are forgetting how little coverage the Wiki emails got before the election. Before the election the mass media was all over the women making accusations against Trump. The Wiki emails got only a fraction of the coverage in the press that Trumps accusers did.

Now after the election all of a sudden people are acting like the Wiki emails were the deciding factor and are blaming Russia. Of course we have no evidence other than second hand hearsay that any of the Wiki emails are from Russia but that doesn't stop people from buying into the blame Russia narrative.

All of Trumps accusers before the election seem to have gone conspicuously silent. Makes you wonder if they were legit in the first place.

[closg00]

Read on Twitter

Speaking to Kremlin-funded news agency Russia Today - which itself was the subject of seven pages of the intelligence report - Mr Johnson said: “It’s designed to smear Trump.

So a Trump supporter with no access to classified material, is spouting Russian/Trump propaganda, no-mention of the FACT that Wikileaks roll-out the hacked material in a way to inflict maximum damage to Clinton and help Trump.

[AFM]

https://pjmedia.com/homeland-security/2017/01/08/isis-shows-preschooler-killing-victim-tied-to-carnival-ball-pit/

Jesus Christ.

Donald, if you're reading the political thread of the Wizards RealGM board, hit that big shiny red button that says "PRIME NUKE". Okay?

[verbal8]

Mexico will pay for Wall later!

What? Ya'll never heard of lay away?

The plan all along, as outlined in Trump's campaign website, is to build the wall and then tax remittances to Mexico and employ trade sanctions as necessary to recoup the cost. There is no news here.

And ultimately, even if Mexico doesn't pay for the wall, the wall will still save us money by restricting the amount of illegal immigrants and the social costs they incur.

You can't be this gullible. You honesty believe a wall will stop the flow of illegal immigrants?

The biggest irony about the Stupid A@# Wall is that it either will have to be built with illegal immigrant labor or will be more expensive because it is not. IMO the only effective way of lowering illegal immigration is cracking down on the companies that benefit from it.

[FAH1223]

Chris Hedges:

Some thoughts on “Russia’s Influence Campaign Targeting the 2016 US Presidential Election,” the newly released declassified report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

1. The primary purpose of the declassified report, which offers no evidence to support its assertions that Russia hacked the U.S. presidential election campaign, is to discredit Donald Trump. I am not saying there was no Russian hack of John Podesta’s emails. I am saying we have yet to see any tangible proof to back up the accusation. This charge—Sen. John McCain has likened the alleged effort by Russia to an act of war—is the first salvo in what will be a relentless campaign by the Republican and Democratic establishment, along with its corporatist allies and the mass media, to destroy the credibility of the president-elect and prepare the way for impeachment.

The allegations in the report, amplified in breathtaking pronouncements by a compliant corporate media that operates in a non-fact-based universe every bit as pernicious as that inhabited by Trump, are designed to make Trump look like Vladimir Putin’s useful idiot. An orchestrated and sustained campaign of innuendo and character assassination will be directed against Trump. When impeachment is finally proposed, Trump will have little public support and few allies and will have become a figure of open ridicule in the corporate media.

2. The second task of the report is to bolster the McCarthyist smear campaign against independent media, including Truthdig, as witting or unwitting agents of the Russian government. The demise of the English programming of Al-Jazeera and TeleSur, along with the collapse of the nation’s public broadcasting, designed to give a voice to those not beholden to corporate or party interests, leaves RT America and Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now! as the only two electronic outlets with a national reach that are willing to give a platform to critics of corporate power and imperialism such as Julian Assange, Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning, Ralph Nader, Medea Benjamin, Cornel West, Kshama Sawant, myself and others.

Seven pages of the report were dedicated to RT America, on which I have a show called “On Contact.” The report vastly inflated the cable network’s reach and influence. It also included a few glaring errors, including the statement that “RT introduced two new shows—‘Breaking the Set’ on 4 September and ‘Truthseeker’ on 2 November—both overwhelmingly focused on criticism of the US and Western governments as well as the promotion of radical discontent.” “Breaking the Set,” with Abby Martin, was taken off the air two years ago. It could hardly be tarred with costing Hillary Clinton the election.

The barely contained rage of Director of National Intelligence James Clapper at the recent Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on foreign cyber threats was visible when he spat out that RT was “promoting a particular point of view, disparaging our system, our alleged hypocrisy about human rights, et cetera.” His anger was a glimpse into how the establishment seethes with hatred for dissidents. Clapper has lied in the past. He perjured himself in March 2013 when, three months before the revelations of wholesale state surveillance leaked by Snowden, he assured Congress that the National Security Agency was not collecting “any type of data” on the American public. After the corporate state shuts down RT, it will go after Democracy Now! and the handful of progressive sites, including this one, that give these dissidents space. The goal is censorship.

3. The third task of the report is to justify the expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization beyond Germany, a violation of the promise Ronald Reagan made to the Soviet Union’s Mikhail Gorbachev after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Expanding NATO in Eastern Europe opened up an arms market for the war industry. It made those businesses billions of dollars. New NATO members must buy Western arms that can be integrated into the NATO arsenal. These sales, which are bleeding the strained budgets of countries such as Poland, are predicated on potential hostilities with Russia. If Russia is not a threat, the arms sales plummet. War is a racket.

4. The final task of the report is to give the Democratic Party plausible cover for the catastrophic election defeat it suffered. Clinton initially blamed FBI Director James Comey for her loss before switching to the more easily demonized Putin. The charge of Russian interference essentially boils down to the absurd premise that perhaps hundreds of thousands of Clinton supporters suddenly decided to switch their votes to Trump when they read the leaked emails of Podesta. Either that or they tuned in to RT America and decided to vote for the Green Party.

The Democratic Party leadership cannot face, and certainly cannot publicly admit, that its callous betrayal of the working and middle class triggered a nationwide revolt that resulted in the election of Trump. It has been pounded since President Barack Obama took office, losing 68 seats in the House, 12 seats in the Senate and 10 governorships. It lost more than 1,000 elected positions between 2008 and 2012 nationwide. Since 2010, Republicans have replaced 900 Democratic state legislators. If this was a real party, the entire leadership would be sacked. But it is not a real party. It is the shell of a party propped up by corporate money and hyperventilating media.

The Democratic Party must maintain the fiction of liberalism just as the Republican Party must maintain the fiction of conservatism. These two parties, however, belong to one party—the corporate party. They will work in concert, as seen by the alliance between Republican leaders such as McCain and Democratic leaders such as Sen. Chuck Schumer, to get rid of Trump, silence all dissent, enrich the war industry and promote the farce they call democracy.

Welcome to our annus horribilis.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_real_purpose_of_the_us_governments_report_on_alleged_hacking_by_russi

[tontoz]

1. The primary purpose of the declassified report, which offers no evidence to support its assertions that Russia hacked the U.S. presidential election campaign, is to discredit Donald Trump.

exactly

[FAH1223]

1. The primary purpose of the declassified report, which offers no evidence to support its assertions that Russia hacked the U.S. presidential election campaign, is to discredit Donald Trump.

exactly

And Hedges is no Trump supporter. He is disgusted by him and has called him a fascist.

[nate33]

IMO the only effective way of lowering illegal immigration is cracking down on the companies that benefit from it.

I'm wholeheartedly in favor of that as well.

[Wizardspride]

Read on Twitter

[popper]

The plan all along, as outlined in Trump's campaign website, is to build the wall and then tax remittances to Mexico and employ trade sanctions as necessary to recoup the cost. There is no news here.

And ultimately, even if Mexico doesn't pay for the wall, the wall will still save us money by restricting the amount of illegal immigrants and the social costs they incur.

You can't be this gullible. You honesty believe a wall will stop the flow of illegal immigrants?

The biggest irony about the Stupid A@# Wall is that it either will have to be built with illegal immigrant labor or will be more expensive because it is not. IMO the only effective way of lowering illegal immigration is cracking down on the companies that benefit from it.

E-verify coupled with a robust guest worker program is the way to move forward IMO.

[Ruzious]

Guys, no matter what side of the aisle you are in politics, how do you get past the fact that we have a petulant child for a president-elect?

https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-blasts-meryl-streep-after-golden-globes-speech-124418222.htmllobes-speech-124418222.html

[closg00]

Op-Ed Do you suffer from Trump Derangement Syndrome?

The country is in the throes of a major epidemic, with no known cure and some pretty scary symptoms. It's called Trump Derangement Syndrome, or TDS, and it’s rapidly spreading from the point of origin – the political class – to the population at large.

In the first stage of the disease, victims lose all sense of proportion. The president-elect’s every tweet provokes a firestorm, as if 140 characters were all it took to change the world.


Trump set up a single phone call with Taiwan’s president, and suddenly TDS patients were insisting that our “One China” policy was no more. But the reality is that telephonic communication isn’t the same thing as official diplomatic recognition. Besides, in their eagerness to highlight Trump’s alleged recklessness, the president-elect’s critics misunderstand our policy. “One China” means that we don’t recognize Taiwan as a sovereign country or China’s sovereignty over Taiwan. We’ve never considered Taiwan a mere province, and the Taiwan Relations Act obligates us to defend the island against attack.

In the advanced stages of the disease, the afflicted lose touch with reality. Opinion is unmoored from fact.
The mid-level stages of TDS have a profound effect on the victim’s vocabulary: Sufferers speak a distinctive language consisting solely of hyperbole. Politico recently ran a piece that noted Trump’s supposedly unprecedented decision to continue using his private security force, which provoked former independent presidential candidate Evan McMullin to tweet: “A predictable move for a kleptocratic authoritarian who wants to operate outside the bounds of law and basic ethical standards. Even more troubling, he may use the force's lack of government oversight & presidential veneer to carry-out extralegal acts of force.”

It’s quite a stretch to suggest that a desire to keep trusted lieutenants is actually a sinister plot to create a version of the brownshirts, but such illogical leaps are the pathway to the next stage of TDS: a state of constant hysteria.

Especially when discussing Trump’s views on immigration, hysterical TDS victims assume there’s no difference between the president-elect’s rhetoric (get out!) and his proposed policy (deporting known criminals who are in this country illegally). As Reince Priebus, Trump’s chief of staff, put it: “He’s not calling for mass deportation. He said, ‘No, only people who have committed crimes.’ And then only until all of that is taken care of will we look at what we are going to do next.”

As TDS progresses, the afflicted lose the ability to distinguish fantasy from reality. Despite Trump’s expressed desire to “work something out” for the so-called Dreamers – those brought here as very young children – Trump’s critics continue to harp on this issue. Immigration advocate Frank Sharry, executive director of America’s Voice, who has a very bad case of TDS, inadvertently revealed this mind set when he said: “Before anyone falls into the trap of believing that Trump is ‘softening’ on immigration, they should remember that we’ve seen this movie before.”

A movie, eh?

In the advanced stages of the disease, the afflicted lose touch with reality. Opinion is unmoored from fact. Life resembles a dark fairy tale in which the villain – Trump – is an amalgam of all the worst tyrants in history, past and present, while the heroes –Trump’s critics – are akin to the resistance fighters of World War II.

TDS victims routinely compare Trump to Hitler: Time magazine ran an opinion piece that asked “Just how similar is Donald Trump to Hitler?” The answer: “The comparison between Hitler and Trump is so poignant” because “both men represent their personal character as the antidote to all social and political problems.”

Since Hitler has been dead for more than 70 years, though, victims may feel the need for a more potent bogeyman, a tyrant with more currency. And they’ve found one in Russian President Vladimir Putin, whom they insist ordered a hacking campaign to help Trump win the election.

The other day, Tucker Carlson of Fox News interviewed TDS-riddled Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Burbank). Carlson asked for evidence that Putin’s alleged machinations had any effect on the election. Unable to come up with a coherent answer, Schiff morphed into J. Edgar Hoover: “You're carrying water for the Kremlin,” he said, “you're going to have to move your show to ‘Russia Today.’”

If you ask a TDS victim what might help them feel better, they’ll use the word “normalize.” As in, we mustn’t “normalize” Trump. What they’re really saying is that normal means of dealing with him aren’t enough. Which raises the question: If he’s another Hitler, if he’s in league with Putin, then why is assassination out of the question? Poke a TDS victim and you’ll find they don’t think that “solution” is out of the question at all.

This is the final stage of the TDS epidemic: violence against a democratically elected leader. Unless a cure for TDS is found, this is where we are headed.

Sent from my iPhone using RealGM mobile app

[nate33]

Guys, no matter what side of the aisle you are in politics, how do you get past the fact that we have a petulant child for a president-elect?

https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-blasts-meryl-streep-after-golden-globes-speech-124418222.htmllobes-speech-124418222.html

I've gotten used to it. Trump is gonna Trump.

He is trying to establish a condition where there is a wide gap between being on his "good side" and on his "bad side". When you're on his good side, he will praise you and help you out. When you're on his bad side, he will attack you mercilessly. His ultimate goal is to make people fear being on his bad side so that he can get things done by simple cajoling rather than legislation. It could be a useful advantage in international negotiations and in negotiating with CEO's. It appears to be working so far with the automobile companies:

Fiat to invest $1 billion in US auto plants, create 2K new jobs
4 Hours Ago | 02:41

FCA, the U.S. arm of automaker Fiat-Chrysler, announced on Sunday that it would invest a total $1 billion in plants in Michigan and Ohio, which will add 2000 new jobs in the United States.

http://www.cnbc.com/2017/01/08/fiat-to-invest-1-billion-in-new-michigan-ohio-plants-create-2000-jobs.html

[closg00]

Once again, this company move has NOTHING to do with Trump and his childish threats, it's in the article folks, read it.


Sent from my iPhone using RealGM mobile app

[DCZards]

Once again, this company move has NOTHING to do with Trump and his childish threats, it's in the article folks, read it.


Sent from my iPhone using RealGM mobile app

On top of that, there would be no American auto industry and the industry jobs that are coming back to the US if it were not for the fact that Obama bailed the auto industry out...against the protests of most Repubs.

[DCZards]

Guys, no matter what side of the aisle you are in politics, how do you get past the fact that we have a petulant child for a president-elect?

https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-blasts-meryl-streep-after-golden-globes-speech-124418222.htmllobes-speech-124418222.html

I've gotten used to it. Trump is gonna Trump.

He is trying to establish a condition where there is a wide gap between being on his "good side" and on his "bad side". When you're on his good side, he will praise you and help you out. When you're on his bad side, he will attack you mercilessly. His ultimate goal is to make people fear being on his bad side so that he can get things done by simple cajoling rather than legislation. It could be a useful advantage in international negotiations and in negotiating with CEO's. It appears to be working so far with the automobile companies:

Petulance like that displayed by Trump may at times seem to be a winning approach but at the end of the day it's destined to be a failed strategy. The kind of divide and conquer you seem to applaud and accept is never a good thing for a country and its people.

[tontoz]

Guys, no matter what side of the aisle you are in politics, how do you get past the fact that we have a petulant child for a president-elect?

https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-blasts-meryl-streep-after-golden-globes-speech-124418222.htmllobes-speech-124418222.html

I've gotten used to it. Trump is gonna Trump.

He is trying to establish a condition where there is a wide gap between being on his "good side" and on his "bad side". When you're on his good side, he will praise you and help you out. When you're on his bad side, he will attack you mercilessly. His ultimate goal is to make people fear being on his bad side so that he can get things done by simple cajoling rather than legislation. It could be a useful advantage in international negotiations and in negotiating with CEO's. It appears to be working so far with the automobile companies:

Petulance like that displayed by Trump may at times seem to be a winning approach but at the end of the day it's destined to be a failed strategy. The kind of divide and conquer you seem to applaud and accept is never a good thing for a country and its people.

Yeah that type of thing is really "deplorable".

Trump is what he is. Everyone knows he has a laundry list of character flaws. I don't think anyone on here sees him as a good POTUS candidate.

[gtn130]

Read on Twitter

Where is Induveca to tell us the cyber security community is laughing at this?

[gtn130]

I was going to post this last night, that the intelligence report would blame Guccifer or Guccifer 2.0. And.......I was right.

Anyone who followed the Guccifer leaks would laugh at the assumption that Guccifer 2.0 was an intel agency.

Read his twitter feed:

https://mobile.twitter.com/guccifer_2?lang=en

The guy/guys hacked out of protest of the jailing of Guccifer by Romania/Russia. They were around far before the election.

Guccifer 2.0 publicly took responsibility for the DNC hack 7 months ago, detailing how he did it over months.

https://guccifer2.wordpress.com/2016/06/15/dnc/

LOL

[gtn130]

Fah you just saved me some time....thanks. Was posting essentially the same.

The report had absolutely *ZERO* evidence. Just referencing old RT stories? And for Guccifer 2.0, this dude was around for months and people ignored him, as did Wikileaks. He gave interviews all over, begging for attention and was largely ignored as he came in AFTER the Wikileaks phishing publications began.

Wikileaks has already claimed the report ludicrous. That their source was not Russian, and the DNC files were handed off in person in DC on a USB stick to a former British ambassador who is an Assange confidante.

This is all political theater, 25 page report with a story.....no evidence. That's the problem with cyber forensics, claims can go both ways as VPNs essentially allow a "victim" to craft their own conclusion.

Political theater at its finest.