A bit of foreign influence in our elections which the Democrats, MSMers and Never Trumpers won’t talk about – because it was Iran and it harmed the GOP.
Alabama tells a donor to take his money and shove it over the donor’s opposition to Alabama’s pro-life legislation.
AOC flashes the White Power sign – for you and me its and “ok” sign, of course…but, hey, the Left says it means White Power…so, why is AOC flashing it?
Former Florida Democrat gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum has been subpoenaed by the Feds. Seems like it has to do with some charity groups he worked for. My bet: he was running a con via non-profits…something I bet a very large number of non-profits so. My view is that a very large portion – perhaps of majority – of non-profits are actually just grifts designed to enrich the bosses of the non-profits.
Our Democrat governor in Nevada vetoed the Popular Vote bill passed by the State legislature. My view: Nevada is rapidly being Californicated, but there are still enough sane people here that the governor can’t go full screwball…and this was an easy way to appear moderate.
Never care what people say, always watch what they do. Rachel Maddow has been a premier Russia collusion booster…and her ratings are in the tank. People aren’t tuning in to listen to it any longer. Democrats would be making a huge mistake to impeach. OTOH, they might just want to keep it percolating deep into 2020.
Rumor is that Trump may punish Mexico with tariffs unless they get serious about securing the border. Thing is, I’m not sure Mexico can do that – the cartels profit heavily from the illegal crossings, and as they tend to horribly murder anyone who tries to stop them, who in Mexico would actually try to control the border?
Blogs For Victory 
The President tweeted a while ago, “On June 10th, the United States will impose a 5% Tariff on all goods coming into our Country from Mexico, until such time as illegal migrants coming through Mexico, and into our Country, STOP. The Tariff will gradually increase until the Illegal Immigration problem is remedied,..”
A really good article someone tweeted yesterday… https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2019/06/03/socialism-destroys-the-human-character/
It’s a good enough article, but it still focuses more on the economic aspect of socialism than on the political aspect, which is oppressive tyranny, the enforcement of absolute obedience to the State. It will be hard to convince people who either have very little or who have a lot because of generous parents but don’t want to face having to provide for themselves in the future that the economic aspects of socialism will be ugly, negative and toxic. To them it’s all about “stuff”. Some people have “too much stuff” and others don’t have “enough stuff” and socialism just evens it all out. All the examples in the world of how it has affected other people won’t affect their small-world view, which can be boiled down to “I want stuff and socialism will give it to me”.
Even the canary in the coal mine warning of the government spying on its own citizens to try to find ways to destroy them, then using the power of the State to do just that, and of starting with a target and then looking for a crime to accuse him of committing instead of starting with a crime and then looking for who did it is all pretty abstract to them. I think it will sink in for some of them, if we can only find a way to make all of this public and coherent, but the fact is, the weakest of us will gravitate toward the perceived safety of the State.
I thought it was funny, and informative, when a teacher recently said to his socialism-supporting students that he thought he should distribute the GPAs so everyone had the same. All of a sudden this was simply not acceptable. “But I worked really hard for that grade average—why should I give part of it to someone who didn’t do the work?” THAT hit home. But it still focuses on stuff, on redistribution, and not on the grinding hopelessness of living under tyranny.
I can’t get the movie The Lives Of Others out of my mind. It’s about happy, intelligent, attractive, successful people living pretty good lives. They have nice apartments, nice clothes, good jobs they love, and it all looks pretty good—till you slowly start to see the ominous shadow of The State hovering over them, till you see the abuses of power and the fear of being targeted by the State.
Yes, the economic aspects of collectivism do erode the soul, but the reality of day to day life under totalitarian rule is even worse.
That’s right.
People are given an option to join the collective, or reject it under a socialist regime, if they reject it then their goods are ransacked , their homes burned to the ground, and they are left like wild animals to fend for themselves. All one has to do is watch a good documentary about past dictators to understand the situation that the people of those times found themselves in. The pictures say a lot, and the harrowing stories of people digging up the dead in order to have something to eat, or mothers starving themselves to death so their children would have enough to eat.
I think it’s much worse if a majority of a nation’s people want to vote for socialism, it’s much worse for that nation’s inhabitants than it would be for those of the half who don’t want socialism to take drastic measures to stop them.
In America we are fortunate enough to be blessed with a 2nd amendment that guarantees our our right to be free.
It wouldn’t be far-fetched to assume that we may be putting our arms to use in the near future, if the Democrats don’t break and surrender their treacherous ideology.
It’s good when people can agree, but there is no agreement in America…we are split down the middle, Good vs. Evil. Good cannot compromise with evil, because if it does, it adds more weight to evil.
So, we have the perfect storm. One goes down, and the other will rise.
I’m not sure you can separate the economic and political aspects of socialism. It’s all part and parcel of that same entity. Everything is a servant of the state. You, your livelihood, your relationships, your inability to make meaningful choices for yourself. All of it. The economic aspects are PART of the political aspects.
Ryan, you know this and I know this but I am talking about the perceptions of the masses, who are only fed the narrative that socialism is just about “stuff”, is just a tweaking of the system to establish “equality” and BTW make it unnecessary to work to get that stuff. They are never told that the “stuff” is not free at all, but comes at the price of liberty.
If he wants to hurt Mexico he should focus on the billions of American dollars sent to Mexico every year by Mexicans working here. Perhaps require proof of legal residence in the US to be able to send money. Perhaps put a sizable fee on money sent. That is money that props up the Mexican economy while being removed from our own.
I agree. No money should leave the United States to Mexico. I did some business with a man, and his wife has horses, and she hires and houses someone to take care of he horses. The first one was Mexican, and we got to talking, and was telling me how he had to get to some kind of a place to send money back to his family. But, anyway, he eventually wound up leaving, because it was too cold here for him.
I said to myself it’s hard to tell how many people from Latin America are taking the money they make and sending it back to Mexico. And that runs into a lot of money.
Jermiah, a brother was standing in a line at the customer service desk of a small supermarket one Friday afternoon and he said that within half an hour he saw more than $30,000 go out of the country to Mexico as the laborers in front of him sent money back home through money orders. Estimates of the amount of money sent to Mexico every single year are of several billion dollars—-so much that this accounts for a sizable percentage of the Mexican economy. I once read that one-sixth of the economy of Mexico is the money sent into the country from the US.
Threaten THAT and Mexico will pay attention.
I’ve gotten to the point where I seldom read magazine or newspaper (print or on-line) articles about climate change because they’ve crossed over into the absurd. This op-ed appeared in our local paper today, but was originally printed in the Washington Post a couple days ago. I had to read it a couple times to make sure it wasn’t satire. My first thought was that The Onion put one over on the WAPO. One portion in particular had me laughing out loud.
Now correct me if I’m wrong, but haven’t we been told that, not only does climate change exist, it’s an existential threat to the very existence of the planet. We were told the debate was over back in the 90’s or maybe even in the late 80’s.
Climate change is no different than racism, white nationalism, gender pay gap, Russia collusion, etc. – they are all manufactured political issues designed to scare and divide people, and a frightened populace is more easily controlled.
In 2000, Al Gore said we have no more than 10 years left. 19 years later, AOC is saying that we have only 12 years. Shouldn’t they be held to account? Why is no one on the left ever held to account for their false proclamations?
I think conservatives would serve themselves well simply by holding Democrats accountable for the municipalities they govern, ie: San Francisco, Chicago, etc. There are numerous cities across the country in deep disrepair and all of them are dominated by Democrats. How can the American people expect them to govern the country well when they can’t even take care of a City?
It’s fine to blame the Dems for their mistakes, shortcomings, incompetence and the inevitable results of Leftist governance.
But don’t forget to blame the Right for its inability to put these things together into a coherent narrative and then deliver it, powerfully and repeatedly.
How do you “undermine science”?
And BTW my perception is that climate change policy rests on no science at all, but on hysterical appeal to hysterical masses to expand the power of the State and enrich a few elites.
We’re going to have to put the dogs down. You know how when an older dog is at the end of his life and starts losing control of his senses and is barking at everything that moves? That’s the current state of Democrats. Rob Reiner was just on MSNBC declaring that “there are piles of evidence of collusion and crimes in the Mueller report that 1000’s of prosecutors have said should be sufficient to indict”. Odd that the most venerated prosecutor in the country, Bob Mueller, didn’t reach the same conclusion but I guess that doesn’t matter.
They are not going to let this go. Case in point, Malcolm Nance with MSNBC:
“it’s a combination narcissism and disinformation” because “Donald Trump is a master of manipulating news and causing distractions” to “create a meta narrative that he wants, which is no collusion, no obstruction.”
“All of it is a lie and the worst part is, this is all straight from the KGB playbook. This is old school stuff, but he’s good at it,”
They are incapable of admitting that they may have been wrong. Let’s put them down. It’s the humane thing to do. In other words that they will understand – ABORT
“there are piles of evidence of collusion and crimes in the Mueller report that 1000’s of prosecutors have said should be sufficient to indict”.
And this brings us back to the questions no one has asked. At least I have not heard of any of these squealing hysterics being asked any of them.
1. Define “collusion”
2. Cite the statute and statute number of the crime of collusion
3. Name the crime that had to exist before there could be obstruction to its investigation
4. Cite the actual acts taken to interfere with this investigation
Are these people asked these questions when they appear on TV shows or run off at the mouth for a handful of “journalists”?
What is REALLY “straight from the KGB playbook” is Beria’s show me the man and I will find you the crime. What is REALLY “straight from the KGB playbook” is using the power of the State to spy on citizens, in search of something—anything—with which to attack them.
Rob’s subconscious is right, in linking this whole mess to the inspiration by the KGB—-it’s just that his dim mind and constantly running mouth have gotten it all backwards. It was our federal government acting like the KGB, and Trump and his administration trying to turn the nation away from that kind of tyranny and expanses of power of the State.
I really hope the majority of Americans are starting to take notice of the intolerant authoritarian streak that has become mainstreamed within the Democrat party.
I read an article from a former progressive the other day. He is a gay man who has grown weary of the chaos so he did an experiment. He went on a conservative social media site and mentioned that he was a gay progressive but wanted to reach out and hear other opinions. He said he was shocked that out of over 1000 comments from conservatives, there was not one disparaging remark, and most of the comments were welcoming, positive and wanting to help inform. Needless to say, he says he is now more conservative than progressive.
One of the main differences between Liberals and Conservatives aside from basic ideology, is that Conservative are, for the most part, nice, accommodating, tolerant people. Liberals are, for the most part, the opposite.
Quote of the Day: (seems especially appropriate given the the current state of the Democrat Party)
”Life’s tough…..it’s even tougher if you’re stupid.” — John Wayne
Love that quote
Did everyone hear the interview with Barr the other day? The “progressive” interviewer asked Barr if he was “worried about his reputation” – this question is quite revealing. The interviewer wanted to know if Barr was “worried about what people like her would think of him”, or “what the DC establishment” would think of him. His reply was priceless ….. “not particularly”
We need more people in politics who don’t care what others “think of them”. And this is the very reason why people like Bush, Romney, and McCain were so ineffective. All of them were very concerned what liberals thought of them.
Some of the most important parts of the Barr interview, IMO: (I’ve bolded some parts that I think are exceptionally noteworthy)
Spook, thanks for the transcript.
Aside from your emphasis on certain aspects of the interview, the first thing that jumped out at me was this: …he said he couldn’t exonerate the president. That he had looked at the evil there …
We know there is bias. But this bone-deep quasi-religious transformation of what would have been, even if it had occurred and been proven to be just another misdeed in a long list of far worse misdeeds into something so profoundly disturbing on such a deep and existential level that it must be called “evil”, that it tears at the very soul of the Liberal, is disturbing. There doesn’t seem to be a functioning filter on the Left. She is so deeply disturbed by the possibility that someone associated with Donald Trump might have communicated with someone from Russia about dirt on Hillary that the only word that comes to her mind is EVIL.
She makes only a token effort to hide this, once it slipped out and she tried to get past it. But she challenged Barr, almost argued with him. There isn’t even much of a pretense of objectivity or true journalism these days.
Going through this again, I am struck by (1) the fact that Mueller just mixed in grand jury testimony with the rest of the report, though he had to know it had to be kept confidential, and then (2) that he took so long to highlight the sensitive areas so they could be redacted.
Mueller may be crooked and corrupt, but he is not stupid, Even I know grand jury testimony is protected. So why did he mix in grand jury testimony with the rest of the report? And then why couldn’t he quickly go through and identify the protected testimony for Barr, so it could be redacted? Was the report so amateurishly put together that there were no footnotes, no cross referencing of testimony with witnesses, etc?
I’m guessing Mueller was trying to stall as long as he could to drag this out as long as he could, knowing the Left would be furious at him for not finding a crime and the Right would make fun of him for taking so long to come up with nothing, and then Barr called his bluff by putting out his summary. Mueller evidently wanted to postpone the revelation of the report for as long as he possibly could, and was playing games to do so after Barr told him to quit messing around and get the report done.
And Barr is just smarter than Mueller and saw through it.
Forty-eight percent of voters surveyed said they approve of the job Trump is doing as president, which is the highest approval rating captured by the Harvard poll since June 2017……..Fifty-nine percent of respondents said they approve of Trump’s handling of the economy, while a record 62 percent said they approve of his approach to employment.
A stunning 71 percent of voters viewed the economy as “strong” or “very strong.”
62% approve of the economy – good luck to the socialist Democrats trying to convince these Americans that they are wrong. And a 48% job approval ??? If the press were just slightly less hostile to Trump, his approvals would be in the 60% or 70% range.
Trump 2020
Quote of the day:
A man who ceases to believe in God does not believe in nothing; he believes in anything.
– G.K. Chesterton
Yep, that’s because they have a weak conscience.
I’m kinda concerned about California. The state’s major cities are overrun with rats, diseases are popping up all.over, Typhoid, Bubonic plague, Tuberculosis. And there’s poop all over the streets, people are pooping and peeing in the streets.
I just wonder if somehow California can be blocked off from the rest of the country, to keep the diseases from moving to other parts of the country?
Welcome to California:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7095533/Pictures-downtown-LA-capture-problem-faces-trash-tries-rodents.html
And after you browse through the article, you’ll notice the laughable statement from the Mayor:
‘Whether the issue is bad plumbing or something else, the mayor is working with the department to get to the bottom of this situation and will take every possible step to protect the health and safety of all our employees,’ Alex Comisar, a spokesman for Mayor Eric Garcetti, said in a statement.
It’s definitely the bad plumbing. Good call Mayor
You really need to add that to the YCMTSU file. The bad news is that trends usually start in California……..
All too often, California seems to be on the front end of the pendulum swing. This is what the people who vote consistently for leftist politicians, will get.
Yeah, something’s gotta be done about, California (Sodom & Gomorrah). That place is entirely unsafe for the rest of the country. It needs to be quarantined, and added to the list of national emergency. We can’t have another black plague. Hopefully the President see it as a priority.
Believe me, if a state could block the influx of Californians Colorado would have been all over it. They have swarmed here to get away from high taxes and oppressive regulations, but brought their same toxic politics with them, and are destroying the state.
Quote of the day:
Right on Mark! 😊👍👍
“Elizabeth Warren set to introduce the Wrecking American Prosperity Under Marxism, or WAMPUM Act, wherein she gives everything away for free,” well-known conservative Erick Erickson wrote Thursday in a since-deleted tweet.
I thought that was kind of funny.
Twitter, not so much.
Morning Joe is the prototypical progressive show in terms of work ethic. Mika and Joe show up maybe half the time and are again “off” today. They rarely put in a full week. Funny as hell.
And this morning is a beauty. George Will is apologizing for “this brand” of conservatism. And George Will talking with David Ignatius is a great example of clueless elites thinking they are still relevant. It was hilarious too when the panel admitted that Trump has 87% support of Republicans and they just couldn’t figure that out.
It’s a head scratcher.
Uh-oh!
Amidst Global Warming Hysteria, NASA Expects Global Cooling. Who’d have thought?!?
Yes, of course. Who would have ever thought that sun activity has more impact on our climate than SUV’s and cow farts? It’s another head scratcher.
The biggest problem we confront is that Democrats are bone deep stupid and they don’t know it. In fact they think they are smart, have very high opinions of themselves and love to flatter each other. Conservatives really need to start their self awareness awakening by pointing out at every opportunity how ridiculous they have become. Case in point – Democrats like to claim they are the “party of women” right? Well:
Transgender woman who previously competed in the men’s division wins women’s national title in the 400-meter hurdles at NCAA championship
And they have convinced themselves that this is ok.
Here’s a great article on something we have discussed in the past and which needs to be brought up again. If we were to stop handing out US citizenship like Halloween candy, I think a lot of illegal immigration would stop.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2019/05/24/does-the-constitution-mandate-universal-birthright-citizenship-heres-the-answer
Earlier I posted some questions I thought important to the arguments about Trump and his guilt of whatever sin or crime currently makes him “evil” in the perception of Liberals. I recently had a chance to try them out on my Lib brother, while my conservative brother watched and laughed.
Me: If Donald Trump had called someone he had gotten to know when he was working on building a Trump Tower in Moscow and asked if the guy had any interesting information on Hillary, would that have been a crime?
Him: Yes
Me. What crime? For almost three years we have been told it would have been a crime, if it happened, but so far no one has actually identified the crime. Maybe you know. What is the crime?
Him: Well, it’s against the law to do that
Me: Against what law? To be a crime, an act has to be identified as a crime by a legislature, then given a name and a definition and a statute number. So far none of these have been linked to what Trump supposedly did. So what is the crime?
Him: Well, he obstructed justice
Me: How?
Him: He interfered in the investigation.
Me: Investigation into what?
Him: Into the crime
Me: What crime? No real crime has ever been identified.
Him: That’s what the investigation was about, and he tried to interfere with it.
Me: How?
Him: By interfering with the evidence
Me: Evidence of what?
Him: Of the crime
Me: But there has never been a crime identified. And Comey told Trump he was not under investigation by anything. So what was there to obstruct?
Him: That’s just it. He tried to stop them from finding the evidence.
Me: Evidence of what?
Him: Of a crime.
Me: Our rule of law says that first something is declared to be a crime, identified and defined and given a statute number for reference. Then when it is determined that that specific crime has taken place, an investigation begins to try to find out who did it. Under a tyrannical government, a person is identified and then the government starts an investigation to try to find evidence that he did something they can punish him for. You seem to be arguing in favor of the tyranny, and I am on the side of a free society governed by our rule of law.
Him: Blinking
Then I described the Stasi Prison and how it was built to house people not for what they did but for what they thought, and the surveillance of citizens by the secret police to try to find excuses to investigate and prosecute them, and how the actions of the United States government in the time leading up to the election sounded very much like that.
Blinking
That’s when the other brother brought up the efforts to set up Papadopoulos as an example of a government agency going after someone just because he was associated with Trump. And I brought up the history of Mueller and his role in keeping innocent men in prison for three decades to help the FBI cover up what they had been doing.
He muttered something about the dossier, and I think he was surprised when I was able to tell him about sitting in a group where someone brought it up and listening to three espionage experts, from Canada, England and the United States, dissect the dossier point by point and explain how absolutely NO one with any intelligence background could have taken any of it seriously, while two former KGB officers listened and smiled at the comments. And BTW, they all know Christopher Steele, the first three had worked with him, and they said they were amazed at the stupidity and clumsiness and dishonesty of the dossier and were disappointed in him that he had sunk so low. I don’t think he had ever heard anything from that perspective. I have to admit, it was kind of surreal to me, sitting there listening to these people who had so much real life experience, working with spies, knowing all these players, being personally involved in covert operations, openly discuss things like this. No one asked the Russians what they thought. No one had to. Their expressions said it all.
I prefer to ask questions rather than argue my point, and it seems to upset Libs, who are used to just parroting what they have been told without thinking about it. I also think it effective to shift from anything that can be interpreted as a defense of Trump to an indictment of the Secret Police tactics of our own government and how they fit in so well with those of oppressive governments which used the same tactics to control their people.
Well played. Your observation could be one of the keys to talking to left leaning people who still possess some sense of a brain.
Thanks. As I have said, we tend to get sucked into the bickering that passes for political discourse on the Left, and that is not productive. So instead of responding to attacks on Trump with defenses of him, I prefer to toss questions back to the Trump haters—simple questions.
My brother simply never asked himself the question “what crime”? He never bothered to look into the nature of said alleged crime. He was told there was a crime and from there easily accepted that anything Trump did was an effort to hide evidence of his complicity in the crime.
But the Left’s concoction is like Jenga—find the right key to pull out and the whole thing topples. And I am more and more convinced that the right key is the simple question “what crime?” “Before we can go on, we need to establish what we are talking about. So let’s find the statute that was violated so we can talk about it.”
Aside from that, I find the Left at a loss to counter a mild observation that I am increasingly nervous about seeing my nation change into a country where people can be indicted and prosecuted for what they think and not for what they do. That’s a tough one to argue against.
Unfortunately, most every “discussion” or Q&A with leftist almost always requires definition of terms prior to any gainful movement in the discussion. That effort alone rarely gets out of first gear. In your approach, you setup simple questions to which most people will struggle to answer or they’ll want to veer into a different direction or topic. To retain control of the conversation you bring them back to the question, simple direct questions where you use their answers for follow-up questions. You retain control of the conversation and let them paint themselves into a corner. I like it. As you’ve already suggested, alternate methods of talking with a leftist often ends up being nothing more than an opportunity for them to start bloviating – useless (not that talking to most leftist has value). But at least with this method, some of them might start questioning their own position. Who knows.
I was wondering why no one on the Left was ever specific, at least in Congressional rants and TV punditry, about the exact nature of the laws Trump was allegedly violating in his alleged contacts with alleged Russian agents or representatives. So I asked Mr. Computer if it is illegal to get information from a foreigner about an election campaign.
The most detailed response was from a site called moresoftmoneyhardlaw, and while it was well written and superficially persuasive it was also heavily dependent on a couple of assertions stated as fact and on a rather convoluted analysis of both the law and the events that have the Left so upset.
How strongly does the First Amendment protect a presidential nominee’s mobilization of foreign government support for his candidacy–support achieved through illegal activities?
A test of this constitutional defense is whether it relies somehow on the fact that Mr. Trump and his campaign were open and notorious in courting Russian assistance.
The law prohibits foreign nationals from providing “anything of value… in connection with” an election. The hacking of the Podesta emails, which were then transmitted to Wikileaks for posting, clearly had value, and its connection to the election is not disputed. None other than the Republican nominee said so publicly, egging on the Russians to locate and publish Clinton emails to aid his campaign. He famously declared: “I will tell you this, Russia: If you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing.”
http://www.moresoftmoneyhardlaw.com/2017/06/collusion-foreign-government-becomes-crime/
Note how heavily this all depends on the crystal ball approach to the event in question. First, there is the blithe assertion that “a presidential nominee” actually DID “mobilize” anything, as well as the unsupported claim that what was “mobilized” was really a “foreign government support for his candidacy”. That was “achieved through illegal activities”. Nothing like setting the stage for the drama to come.
This sets up the claim that it is a FACT that “.. Mr. Trump and his campaign were open and notorious in courting Russian assistance…” This speculation is based on the interpretation that Trump was “…egging on the Russians to locate and publish Clinton emails to aid his campaign..”
Yes, it all seems to hinge on the joke Trump made when he was pointing out how porous and poorly secured Clinton’s server had been. And it depends on two essential interpretations of the comment: That he was “open and notorious in courting Russian assistance” which is in turn based on the claim that his comment included a challenge to the Russians to locate and publish Clinton emails to aid his campaign..”
We all heard him make the joke. Did anyone hear him instruct “the Russians” to PUBLISH the emails if they were able to find them, much less to do so to AID HIS CAMPAIGN? Of course not. It never happened. But this is the core of the argument. It is an invention. It is a lie. But it feeds the beast.
That and the crime of using publicly known information from an outside,unrelated, source in his campaign rhetoric. Evidently, according to the highly biased pundits, even though it had become public knowledge that Clinton had said or done certain things, Trump was prohibited from commenting on them because they MIGHT have been made public through the actions of a foreign nation or someone from a foreign nation.
A link in the article takes us to another steaming pile of mental excrement, cloaked in a lot of verbiage leading up to the dramatic conclusion:
Paul Wood, a reporter at the BBC who’s been ahead of the pack on the Russia-Trump investigation, had some eye-catching information in a story back in March. He wrote:
“This is a three-headed operation,” said one former official, setting out the case, based on the intelligence: Firstly, hackers steal damaging emails from senior Democrats. Secondly, the stories based on this hacked information appear on Twitter and Facebook, posted by thousands of automated “bots”, then on Russia’s English-language outlets, RT and Sputnik, then right-wing US “news” sites such as Infowars and Breitbart, then Fox and the mainstream media. Thirdly, Russia downloads the online voter rolls.
The voter rolls are said to fit into this because of “microtargeting”. Using email, Facebook and Twitter, political advertising can be tailored very precisely: individual messaging for individual voters.
“You are stealing the stuff and pushing it back into the US body politic,” said the former official, “you know where to target that stuff when you’re pushing it back.”
This would take co-operation with the Trump campaign, it is claimed.
https://www.justsecurity.org/41199/connecting-dots-political-microtargeting-russia-investigation-cambridge-analytica/
Lots and lots of “eye-catching” words and even more conclusions and assumptions. There seems to be a gap between the hacking and the social media bot campaign. My memory is that the information was leaked to several sources before being picked up on social media, and also that the information appeared on left-wing Complicit Agenda Media sites as well as RT and Sputnik and then Fox and THEN those dreaded “right-wing” (sneering) “NEWS SITES” like Infowars and Brietbart. This seems to be a basic manipulation of facts and timelines.
Then voter rolls ARE SAID to fit into this sinister scenario of Boris and Natasha plotting against Hillary. ARE SAID——a pretty good clue that usually means it never happened. Gossip. Or simple the spur of the moment invention to carry a narrative.
Using email, Facebook and Twitter, political advertising can be tailored very precisely: individual messaging for individual voters. Yes, they can. But it is only considered threatening and ominous when linked to the possibility raised by some anonymous voice that this is linked to voter rolls and to (key ominous music…) RUSSIA !!!
But this is all to lead us up to the melodramatic conclusion:
This would take co-operation with the Trump campaign, IT IS CLAIMED. Probably by the same voices that “said” other things in the head of the author.
And here we have the argument that “collusion” with someone from Russia resulted in the acquisition of information harmful to Clinton and could not have been done, it is claimed, without the co-operation of the Trump campaign. And because this information had value, it is a crime to use it. (Never mind the fact that even if it happened, the “value” would constitute an illegal campaign contribution, the kind of thing Obama’s campaign was mildly chided for.)
Not only done, but done so skillfully that two years, hundreds of witnesses and nearly $40 million could not find not only proof but even evidence that any of it happened. And the mobs are still howling.
When you read the overheated rhetoric quoted in my last post, it is clear that these authors are pretty bright and probably tuned in to international politics, at least as much as I, a retired rancher in the West, am. Yet I, the retired rancher out in flyover country, have learned enough about Vladimir Putin and his tendency to hold grudges against people he thinks have wronged him, and about his long conflicts with the Clintons, to understand that if Russia DID engage in some mischief related to our election it was far more likely to be spite against Hillary than support for Trump.
From one article about this, from Time, hardly a supporter or apologist for Trump: ’…when Russia’s flawed parliamentary elections set off a season of street protests, Clinton spoke up in support of the demonstrations. “The Russian people, like people everywhere, deserve the right to have their voices heard and their votes counted,” Clinton said. “And that means they deserve free, fair, transparent elections and leaders who are accountable to them.”
It was a fairly tame statement of support for the Russian opposition movement. But Putin took it as a personal affront against his leadership, as well as a sign that Clinton was intent on manipulating the Russian presidential elections that were then just a few months away.
With a campaign based on Cold War rhetoric against the conniving West, Putin won that vote handily, and it is easy to see how he would relish the chance to manipulate the U.S. presidential elections in return.
http://time.com/4422723/putin-russia-hillary-clinton/
Add to this the fact that the Left desires and foments discord, internal conflicts and chaos and societal instability as a matter of course. The Left never succeeds in any county where the people are secure and confident. We can see the antics of the International Left hard at work in the United States as they create divisiveness, paranoia, even overt hatred among the splintered groups they have created. There is no way Russia was going to pass up the chance to add to the discord and fragmentation of American society by ignoring the opportunity to feed hysteria, rage, hatred and suspicion that could be related, in their minds, to the election.
The American Left is, pretty much by definition, mentally and emotionally unbalanced. There is no other way to explain why people in a free and prosperous society strive so hard to make it less free and less prosperous. We see proofs of the instability of their emotions and thought processes every day. So it has been easy for the Left to get them even more stirred up and feed the flames of their fury and confusion and hatred by giving them the illusion of a target deserving of all this.
So we have two clear, independent reasons for Russia to have become involved in the election and its aftermath, and not a single reason for believing that either of them has anything to do with Donald Trump.