The TOFF Keeps Losing in Court

A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit Donald Trump filed against CNN in which the former U.S. president claimed that references in news articles or by the network’s hosts to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election as “the Big Lie” were tantamount to comparing him to Adolf Hitler.
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U.S. District Judge Raag Singhal, who was appointed by Trump, said Friday in his ruling that the former president’s defamation claims failed because the references were opinions and not factual statements. Moreover, it was a stretch to believe that, in viewers’ minds, that phrase would connect Trump’s efforts challenging the 2020 election results to Nazi propaganda or Hitler’s genocidal and authoritarian regime, the judge said.

“CNN’s use of the phrase ‘the Big Lie’ in connection with Trump’s election challenges does not give rise to a plausible inference that Trump advocates the persecution and genocide of Jews or any other group of people,” the judge wrote in his decision.

Trump keeps losing in court and his Trumpanzee Corps keeps paying for him to lose.

Meanwhile, the Asset keeps hinting that he'll do his master's bidding and cripple Ukraine's fight to stay free if he manages to steal the next election.

More Bad News for Trump and the GOP?

A woman accused of being a secret agent for the Russian government has likely taken a plea deal, prosecutors indicated Monday in a court filing that said her case has been “resolved.”
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Butina, who was arrested in July, was charged with conspiracy and acting as an unregistered foreign agent for Russia. Her lawyer has argued that Butina is a student interested in American politics and better U.S.-Russian relations.

It would appear that her argument was about as airtight as a screen door.

The details might be interesting when they are made public.

Shorter FBI: "Swinging Elections Is Our Job!"

FBI Director James B. Comey and Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. are in agreement with a CIA assessment that Russia intervened in the 2016 election in part to help Donald Trump win the presidency, according to U.S. officials.

Comey’s support for the CIA’s conclusion — and officials say that he never changed his position — suggests that the leaders of the three agencies are in agreement on Russian intentions, contrary to suggestions by some lawmakers that the FBI disagreed with the CIA.

No doubt that Putin's Man in NYC Donald Trump will be soon along with some denial that implies that nobody reads the Post.

Are Republican Ass-Clowns Suffering From Amnesia?

Rep. Chris Collins (R-N.Y.) on Wednesday questioned the point of investigating Russia’s interference in the presidential election.

Asked by CNN “New Day" host Alisyn Camerota whether the Kremlin "meddled" in the 2016 race, Collins replied: “I suppose we’ll never know. If we want to stipulate they did as far as hacking and releasing emails, if you want to stipulate that, that’s fine.

“I don’t think we should continue investigations, because at the end, what do we really accomplish? There’s nothing we can do to change it. We need to unite the country. People who are calling Mr. [President-elect Donald] Trump the ‘Electoral College president,’ you know, that’s insulting to our democracy.”

Even now, a few GOP jackassess haven't given up on the idea that President Obama wasn't eligible to be president. Donald Fucking Trump was a leader of that effort to delegitimize President Obama.

The Republican birthers ginned up a fact-free controversy, based largely on racism. There was no uniting behind President Obama for the good of the country. In point of fact, the GOP pretty much declared war on him on the evening of January 20th, 2009.

What we have is that the Russians, under the personal direction of Vladimir Putin and with the de facto connivance of the FBI, interfered in our election. That interference was egged on by Donald Trump.

Unite behind Trump? No fucking way.

Here Comes "Pravda on the Potomac"

Don't think for a nanosecond that Steve Bannon isn't already aware of this:

President-elect Donald Trump is about to inherit a newly empowered Voice of America that some officials fear could serve as an unfettered propaganda arm for the former reality TV star who has flirted for years with launching his own network.

Buried on page 1,404 of the National Defense Authorization Act that passed last week is a provision that would disband the bipartisan board of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, the independent U.S. agency that includes Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, Radio Free Asia, and the Middle East Broadcast Networks.

The move – pushed by House Foreign Affairs Chairman Ed Royce as a way to streamline the agency – concentrates control into a powerful CEO that is appointed by the president.

That change, combined with a 2013 legislative revision that allows the network to legally reach a U.S. audience, which was once banned, could pave the way for Trump-approved content created by the U.S. diplomacy arm, if he chooses to exploit the opportunity.

Yeah, "if he chooses to exploit the opportunity". Of course he will. I'd be somewhat surprised if either Bannon or Roger Stone aren't appointed to be the CEO of the VOA.

And the "Voice of Trump" will show up in your basic cable menu with a very low channel number.

(Satire and reality are becoming too hard to distinguish.)

Also, Sen. McConnell promises a "bipartisan review" of the hacking claims. Right. He threatened the CIA if they disclosed it before the election, but he was OK with Comey's election-rigging. Having McConnell involved in any such review is akin to putting Bernie Madoff in charge of the SEC.

Reality

The Republicans are defending the Russian intelligence services and attacking the CIA. And the FBI worked towards the same ends as the KGB FSB.

What weird alternative reality is this?

Yeh, Well, the Same Thing Happened to the Old Bolsheviks

Trump is shanking the people who got him to where he is now:

They’ve been with him from the beginning — when no one believed he could win, and when the Republican Party establishment wanted absolutely nothing to do with him.

But now, as President-elect Donald Trump builds out his administration, the loyalists who helped launch his campaign and powered its stunning early victories are growing worried they won’t be getting plum jobs.

Many of them say they’ve heard nothing about their career prospects and, during furtive huddles, have been commiserating with one another about how they can’t seem to get their calls to top Trump transition brass returned. Some are convinced that party establishment figures who’ve taken the reins of the transition are giving them short shrift.

The writing was on the wall once Trump picked Reince Priebus as his chief of staff.

Anyone who had paid close attention to Trump's business career would have realized that he has no loyalty to anyone, other than possibly his children. But no, they all drank the bug juice and now they're learning about Trump the hard way.

Fuck them all.

Is This Where I Get to Say "Toljaso"?

US intelligence agencies believe Russia acted covertly to boost Donald Trump in the election race, US officials have told leading newspapers.

A report in the New York Times says the agencies had "high confidence" about Russian involvement in hacking.

A CIA assessment reported by the Washington Post made similar findings.

Trumps brain-dead riposte of "they wuz wrong about Saddam Hussein" is about as kindergartenish as it gets.

A Lithuanian artist knows the truth of the matter:

Expect the stalwart investigative committees in the House of Representatives to take zero interest in looking into this. (They would have spent millions to investigate Clinton for improperly removing a hangnail.) After all, Darrell Issa and Jason Chaffetz are first-rate political tools, and not the kind that one can buy at Harbor Freight.

The "Why" is Really Fairly Obvious

The writer of this piece is wondering why Americans are closing their eyes to Russian interference in the presidential election.

The reason, or at least part of the reason, is clear to me: The Right hates the Clintons, especially Hillary Clinton, with a hatred that is so visceral that they'd rather turn over the government to a Putin-puppet and burn it to the ground than see Hillary elected. In short, they hate Hillary far more than they love the country. In that, the only historic American that they resemble is Benedict Arnold.

As for the Democrats, most of them are stuck in some time-warp from the 1950s. They still believe that the other side is acting out of a reasonable ideology and is open to persuasion and working together for the good of the land. Which is complete and utter horseshit. The Right has been playing scorched-earth warfare for two decades, at least, and the Democrats act as though they're in a mixture of a college debate club and a high tea.

So yes, we let the Russians cook the election. The media is too craven to cover it and the ones that aren't have the attention span of gnats. The Fourth Estate failed in their duty-- rather than pull the lid off Russian interference, they got twisted around what The Donald's latest Twitter outrage happened to be.

Now, of course, there is fuck-all that can be done about it.

Not Just "Bad Language", Now

There are Trump supporters[1] who have been saying "oh, it's just bad language from Trump. No big deal."

It's more than that. The Bad-Haired Pervert is allegedly a sexual predator.

Trump is saying "why didn't they say so at the time"? Anyone who thinks that doesn't understand what happens when one woman accuses a powerful man of sexual misconduct: She gets fucking buried.[2] Whether powerful men[3] or powerful institutions,[4] nobody believes a single accuser, not until there are multiple accusers and evidence of the accusations.

Trump's campaign seems to now be placing its hopes on emails that it got from an (alleged) fellow sexual predator[5], who got the emails from the Russians. Who never ever would dare to forge or alter them, ya sure, you betcha.

So what we have, now, is an American political candidate who is trying to prop up his campaign with documents that have been furnished by the spooks of a hostile power. His lackeys on the Right see nothing wrong with any of that. But you can bet your paycheck that they'd be calling for Clinton's immediate execution if the situation was reversed.

Still, it is very enjoyable to see the same people, who have spent two decades blasting Bill Clinton for being a sexual predator, now twisting themselves into knots to defend Trump for actions that were worse. (Leering at a 10-year old? Really?)[6]

UPDATE: The hits keep coming.
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[1] #DipShits
[2] Ask Anita Hill about that.
[3] Ask Joe Paterno, Dennis Hastert, Bill Clinton and Bill Cosby about that.
[4] Ask the Catholic church about that.
[5] Julian Assange.
[6] On second thought, it's not out of his character.

Wikileaks and the Russians

The U.S. government for the first time on Friday formally accused Russia of a campaign of cyber attacks against Democratic Party organizations ahead of the Nov. 8 presidential election.

"We believe, based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, that only Russia's senior-most officials could have authorized these activities," a U.S. government statement said on Friday about hacking of political groups.

"These thefts and disclosures are intended to interfere with the U.S. election process."

As far as the "cui bono" question, I'll set that aside, because the answer is rather plain.

No doubt that Wikileaks will soon start releasing stuff that they got from the Russians. A wise person will put no stock in any of it.

The Russians have a decades-long record of document forgery. They've forged emails. There was a story, a long time ago, that an American reporter in Europe found an envelope in his car; the envelope contained documents that were damning to Zbigniew Brzezinski, then the National Security Advisor. The newspaper vetted the documents carefully and concluded that they were forged.

Whatever Wikileaks releases to try and sway the election should be regarded as Russian forgeries until proven otherwise.

The Inevitable Editorial Cartoon, plus More

I haven't seen this yet: The cartoon would of one of those Russian nesting dolls ( a matryoshka doll). The outer doll would be Donald Trump; the cartoon would show a hand lifting the top of the outer doll to show that the inner doll is Vladimir Putin.

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Sumdood is going to skydive from 25,000' into a net, without a parachute.

Right. A skydiver reaches terminal velocity in less than 2,000'. But there wouldn't b much drama in that, I suppose. Or much margin for error, in case he jumped a second or two out of time.

Still, while it may be the first time that somebody willingly jumped out of an airplane without a parachute, it won't be the first time that someone fell from an airplane without a parachute and survived.

Trump-Putin Alliance

Donald Trump has openly called for the Russians to interfere in our electoral process.

Donald Trump appeared to call on Russian hackers Wednesday to find 30,000 of Hillary Clinton's deleted emails, adding a stunning twist to the uproar over Moscow's alleged intervention in the presidential election.

"They probably have her 33,000 emails. I hope they do. They probably have her 33,000 emails that she lost and deleted because you'd see some beauties there. So let's see," Trump said at a news conference, referring to emails that Clinton judged as personal and did not hand over to the State Department from her private server, which she used to conduct official business.

The billionaire businessman then went even further, in remarks that left open the possibility that he would be open to Moscow staging a new hack against the United States to find the emails.

Then Trump donned his idiot hat and proclaimed that he has no idea who Vladimir Putin is.

Trump once said that he could kill somebody and be elected. He's pretty much betting, now, that he can also be elected after conducting himself as though he is a Russian tool.

On this issue, at least, the Republicans in the Congress who would look into such things are content to sit back and keep their yaps shut. Which absolutely would not have happened in the candidates' roles were reversed.

The Muscovian Candidate?

The evidence is beginning to seem pretty good that the DNC hack came from Russian intelligence services, and that "Guccifer 2.0" is a Russian sock-puppet.

Given that, then can anyone trust that the Russian spooks didn't alter any of the emails?

Having said that, imagine, if you will, that the Chinese hacked into the RNC and published things to embarrass the GOP and Trump. You can bet your next paycheck that the same media outlets who are studiously downplaying the Russian angle would be waving their bloody flags of outrage.

The Russians have interfered in our electoral process. There needs to be an official response beyond strong words.

Wasserman Got Smart, Finally

Outgoing Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz won't open her party's convention, following a chaotic scene earlier in the day at a meeting of Florida Democratic delegates where critics and Bernie Sanders supporters loudly jeered at the congresswoman.

"I have decided that in the interest of making sure that we can start the Democratic convention on a high note that I am not going to gavel in the convention," Wasserman Schultz told the Sun Sentinel newspaper in an interview.

Good move, for the last thing the Dems want is to be compared unfavorably to the Trump Shitstorm of a convention.

I'm not opposed to the idea that it was the KGB FSB or the GRU that hacked into the DNC's servers and stole their emails in order to help Trump. But it is a hell of a claim and the proof for that needs to be made public. Maybe the Feebies will find something.

The Muscovian Candidate?

I'm not sure if this just bullshit or if there is some strength to the argument that Trump is the candidate of Vladimir Putin.

The premise is that Trump's business empire would have collapsed without Russian money. After his string of commercial bankruptcies and dealings boring from shady to deceptive, American banks probably wouldn't make an auto loan to The Donald. So he turned to Russian money.

When you add in that bit of information, Trump's stated willingness to abrogate the North Atlantic Treaty makes sense. So does the fact that several of his advisors have ties to the Putin regime (or its lackeys).

Beyond that, Trump's deep ties to Russia and his admiration of Putin's authoritarian style of rule (among other thugs) should give thinking conservatives some stomach pains.

For if there is one thing that authoritarians don't like, it's the proles owning weapons.

Update: Not just liberals wonder about the Putin-Trump entanglements.