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I guess some congratulations are in order for one Vladimir Putin, the Russian kleptocrat who used strategic leaks of hacked information to win the election (or at least the electoral college) for Donald Trump, a thin-skinned narcissist and easily manipulable geopolitical naif.
I mean, we knew that before. But now it’s pretty much official.
The Washington Post reports:
The CIA has concluded in a secret assessment that Russia intervened in the 2016 election to help Donald Trump win the presidency, rather than just to undermine confidence in the U.S. electoral system, according to officials briefed on the matter.
Intelligence agencies have identified individuals with connections to the Russian government who provided WikiLeaks with thousands of hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee and others, including Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, according to U.S. officials. Those officials described the individuals as actors known to the intelligence community and part of a wider Russian operation to boost Trump and hurt Clinton’s chances.
“It is the assessment of the intelligence community that Russia’s goal here was to favor one candidate over the other, to help Trump get elected,” said a senior U.S. official briefed on an intelligence presentation made to U.S. senators. “That’s the consensus view.”
Yep, that’s right. The outcome of our election was essentially determined by a hostile foreign power — with the active encouragement of Donald Trump, the candidate who benefited from Russia’s interference.
It’s also now clear just how selective Russia’s use of hacked information was. The New York Times reports that the Russians also successfully hacked the Republican National Committee’s email servers, but chose not to release any of these emails.
No wonder Trump is skipping most of his intelligence briefings.
Some people are comparing these revelations to Watergate. I don’t think that’s fair. This is ten times more significant than Watergate. It calls the whole election into question.
Trump is not our President. And he should not be sworn into office unless and until we have a full public reckoning of how exactly he “won” this election.
1. I’m not saying every second of your life has to be efficient. Almost anything would be a better use of ones time than trolling. Petting a dog or cat, reading, going for a walk, watching movies, anything.
2. I don’t believe for a second you aren’t Mark. You both have the same writing styles and have both admitted to obsessive sockpuppeting. You don’t get the benefit of any doubt.
3. How exactly does spouting incoherent conspiracy theories help conservative women?
Also, Mark (under Mick Dash) admitted to being Chaucer Conspiracy Dumbass, and David confirmed it through an IP check of one of his other Mark!socks. So there’s that.
Hey, Beckett?
Fuck off.
On which threads can I find some of Mark’s posts? It is incumbent on me to get in touch with him. It is perhaps the case that his hatred of the Catholic Church has motivated him to pursue calumnious allegations against me. Few wish to believe that Donal Trump is a Catholic; I thought he was anti-Catholic myself when he said that Rome, New York is the real Rome; a clear anti-Catholic dogwhistle, but I later learned the truth.
http://i2.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/172/110/tumblr_lnv4lu27iK1qjun2ao1_250.gif
http://24.media.tumblr.com/9c5abd028ae1f20de10c124e18400f46/tumblr_mwryabQKMd1rhd1xfo1_500.gif
http://i.imgur.com/ErWSrqh.gif
Putin likes Trump because he’s a patsy. And (channeling Forest Gump) “That’s what I go to say about that.”
Assuming Putin did try to manipulate the election, how, and what did he do? The popular vote? Hillary won that. Getting the Red States to go Trump? That’s as hard as selling vodka in Siberia in the middle of the winter. Get the swing states to go for Trump? Well, maybe he could swing some votes by broadcasting fake news, but really, all the Hillary haters had all the justification they needed. What else do you need to convince people who already believe she’s part of a secret child sex trafficking ring operating out of the basement of a pizzeria? I could post a video claiming she was stomping kittens and it would get a million views.
Beckett,
You mean imperative, you dipshit hack. Look in the mirror, you’ll find Mark there.
And fuck off.
I’d say this is the very definition of coincidence as these numbers are so fucking arbitrary they mean nothing at all to anyone.
Trump could make fun of a disabled person, act like women are no more than their vaginas and say that the party he is representing is so dumb they would vote for anyone, go back on every promise he made to his supporters, divide the country with antiquated ideas about race, religion, and sexism, and still get by with it with the pithy response of what a great con artist he is and how he can cheat the system..oh, wait. Nothing will happen because the Democrats and the good Republicans won’t go low.
Nothing will happen because the Democrats refuse to remove the cancer of Planned Parenthood and radical environmentalists from their party.
Lo, I mock the enemies and deceivers who shout consciencious charisms against the Holy One of Israel! And his prophet Isaiah and his holy servants
Bach, Handel and Mozart.
Get thee hence, Thomas! Thine idiocy is much unwelcome! And thine “Holy One of Iſrael” can pound ſand!
I need to vent for a minute. I’m having unwelcome thoughts.
Tonight, Otter and I went out for dinner and drinks (we just got home). The bar we went to after dinner was pretty crowded, close to the train station. At thw table next to us were a man in his 50s, speaking English with a British accent, and his girlfriend, a Swedish woman. They were talking what seemed like random nonsense, from what we could overhear.
Suddenly, the man got up and said he had to catch a train. He came back 15 minutes later, saying he missed the train and had to wait for the next one. The couple asked if they could sit with us at our table, and I thought that was a great idea. I kinda like listening to weird drunk people who say incomprehensible things.
BIG MISTAKE. The guy turned out to be a racist, misogynist, Trumpist, UKIP, Sweden Democrat shitbag who wouldn’t shut up about the ebil mushlims.
His girlfriend seemed somewhat nice, but to put it mildly and diplomatically she came across as a goldfish brain stuck in a human body. Neither I nor Otter could understand a word of what she was trying to say.
After rambling about his job and background for a while (originally South African, lived in the UK for 20 years, now living in Sweden since 2015), he figured out that Otter is American. Then he went off on a Trump ramble. We basically just told him “This is not funny or helpful for us. We are actually affected by this stuff, to some extent.”
But would he stop it? Of course not. He’s a middle aged white dude, so he genuinely can’t shut the fuck up ever. He got a bit more serious, and said: “Let me just say, here in Sweden we’ve had a lot of immigration, right?”. (I interjected: “Including you. And my wife.”) He continued: “So we’ve let in a bunch of muslims, right? And now the number of rapea is through the roof!”
This is a myth that I happen to debunk very very often. Rape stats have been about the same since the current legal text was written in 2005. Before then, there were fewer rapes in the statistics simply because the definition of rape was more narrow. We had one year with a weird spike in reported rapes, but that was before the most recent wave of asylum seekers. In 2015, while we took in more immigrants and refugees than ever before, the number of reported rapes was way way down.
I explained this, and told him he was mistaken. What was his reaction to this, you might ask? Yup, he went straight to “have you studied the Quran?!?!?!?!” I said I’ve read it once. Then this conversation happened:
Him: You know that muslims chop people’s heads off? Have you seen the videos?
Me: Right. And christians blow up abortion clinics. Should we blame all christians for that?
Him: So you’re okay with chopping people’s heads off?
Me: Did I say that? Be honest now.
Him: You think it’s okay for muslims to set people on fire?
Me: Did I say that?
Him: I asked if you were okay with muslims chopping people’s heads off, and you said YES!
Me: Oookay. It’s time for you to leave now.
Him: Well, look, I don’t have anything against you guys.
Me: Right. Get the fuck out now.
Him: I’m not a racist though.
Me: Yeah, you are. Get the fuck out.
Him: You’re totally misunderst…
Me: Get the fuck out right now.
And then they left the bar.
—
So, my unwelcome thoughts are: why do these people even exist? Their sole purpose in life is obviously making up excuses to hate other people for existing. I ask myself why we need to keep these people around, and I can’t find any answer.
When this guy said violent crime is up, all I could think was, no, but xenophobia is dramatically up. Because of people like you. Get the fuck out of the country. We don’t need people like you here. Actually, we don’t need people like you on the planet at all. You could all just disappear tomorrow, and I would be celebrating.
And then I’m the baddie. I get that
But how are we supposed to deal with people who love to hate? Tonight I can’t figure this out. I don’t want to exist in the same universe as these pieces of garbage.
I know that the answer is to fight until love wins. But I don’t always believe that love will actually win in the end. I don’t know what to do. Fuck this world.
@Tod Kelly
You are technically correct in that there is little legal recourse against Trump’s victory, especially since the Republican Party in general are putting party before country. However, you are wrong in saying that this is not a battle worth fighting
Not all battles worth fighting are the ones you win. They are also the ones that help you win the war.
Undermining the legitimacy of a Trump administration is the thing to do now, especially since he and they will themselves be fighting dirty, smearing opponents and trying to discredit all opposition. Now is not the time to play nice. And there are certainly grounds for questioning the democratic legitimacy of the result, if not its legal legitimacy. Trump lost the popular vote by over 2.8 million votes (over 2% of the vote) at last count. While we cannot know for certain that the hacked and leaked e-mails were decisive in tipping certain battleground states to Trump, it seems likely that it was a decisive factor even if it only swayed a small slice of the electorate since the margins of victory in these states were so thin.
Again, attacking the legitimacy of President Trump is not a distraction from other struggles, it is going to be an important part of waging those other struggles.
@Thomas Beckett
Lo, you declaim many words most emphatically, but what they are meant to mean together I know not.
I created a Petition for this!….
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/750/397/695/prosecute-donald-trump-for-treason-against-the-u.s.-government/?taf_id=31771889&cid=fb_na#bbfb=398173681
Please sign and spread the word! Thank you.
@Imaginary Petal
I’m glad you told him to get lost. There’s really nothing more you can do, I’m afraid. But you didn’t let him get going with the “but I’m not racist” stuff. People need to know that this kind of talk is not OK- if someone says stuff like that to me, and especially argue in bad faith like that, they don’t get to be my friend. They don’t even get to say “but I’m a nice guy, really”. Really? Then act like it.
Well, fuck.
Imaginary Petal,
Some find Reinhold Niebuhr comforting in these situations.
(It continues, “No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our standpoint. Therefore we must be saved by the final form of love which is forgiveness,” but honestly I’m not sure that’s important right now)
Well, shit, we finally got bipartisan cooperation.
@Thomas Beckett
Can’t you just fucking go anywhere else you fuckwit? I’m in no mood for your overdone, conspiracy trolling which would make Dale Gribble question your reasoning.
@Troubelle
Was…was that a Bob’s Burgers reference?
?
@Everyone
Really interesting discussion happening here peeps – so good to know we can still have nuanced and thoughtful conversations in this topsy turvy world
@Lucrece
It wasn’t intended to be, it’s just what I felt like doing at the time. But hey.
I am currently conducting research into hidden pro-papistry messages in Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker.
Hey, @Thomas Beckett, go choke on your own shit!