If you want to come to the most dangerous city and state in the United States, well it turns out I live there.

Courtesy of KTVA: 

Based on 2016 stats, Alaska has been named the most dangerous state in the country. 

24/7 Wall Street released its annual report on the "Most Dangerous States in America" on Friday. 

By examining the FBI's 2016 Uniform Crime Report, which was released this week, the report found that Alaska is the most dangerous state in America, and concluded that Anchorage is the state's most dangerous city. 

The report states that in 2016, there were 804 violent crimes per 100,000 Alaskan citizens, 52 murders and 409 adults per 100,000 residents were imprisoned. 

Louisiana, Tennessee, Nevada and New Mexico rounded out the top five. 

Nationwide, of the 10 most violent states, nine are either in the South or the West, while New England states made up half of the country's 10 safest states. 

Overall, the violent crime rate rose in 38 states from 2015 to 2016. In 2016, the national rate was 397 violent crimes per 100,000 citizens, shy of the national violent crime rate at its peak in 1991, which was 758 violent crimes for every 100,000.

This report is actually a few months old, but I only saw it last night when my daughter sent it to me. 

For the record Alaska has been in the top ten most dangerous states for about as long as I can remember.

However being number one is still a little unsettling.

When you grow up here, you just know to follow certain rules.

In the wilderness you make lots of noise and hang your food from a tree when you camp.

In the city you avoid certain areas, keep your neck on a swivel, and keep a dog in your home.

I have had more than my fair share of violent interactions, but virtually all of those occurred when I was a kid and sought out dangerous situations.

As an adult most of my scrapes with the criminal element come from working with people suffering with mental illness or behavioral problems. 

I still think this is a beautiful place to live and visit, but I would caution that if you do keep your eyes open. Wide open.

Data analysis group associated with Trump campaign harvested information from millions of Facebook accounts in order to target them more effectively.

Courtesy of The Guardian:  

The data analytics firm that worked with Donald Trump’s election team and the winning Brexit campaign harvested millions of Facebook profiles of US voters, in the tech giant’s biggest ever data breach, and used them to build a powerful software program to predict and influence choices at the ballot box. 

A whistleblower has revealed to the Observer how Cambridge Analytica – a company owned by the hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer, and headed at the time by Trump’s key adviser Steve Bannon – used personal information taken without authorisation in early 2014 to build a system that could profile individual US voters, in order to target them with personalised political advertisements. 

Christopher Wylie, who worked with an academic at Cambridge University to obtain the data, told the Observer: “We exploited Facebook to harvest millions of people’s profiles. And built models to exploit what we knew about them and target their inner demons. That was the basis that the entire company was built on.” 

Documents seen by the Observer, and confirmed by a Facebook statement, show that by late 2015 the company had found out that information had been harvested on an unprecedented scale. However, at the time it failed to alert users and took only limited steps to recover and secure the private information of more than 50 million individuals. 

The New York Times is reporting that copies of the data harvested for Cambridge Analytica could still be found online; its reporting team had viewed some of the raw data.

Couple of things to note here.

First off Jared Kushner took credit for bringing Cambridge Analytica into the Trump campaign:  

“I called somebody who works for one of the technology companies that I work with, and I had them give me a tutorial on how to use Facebook micro-targeting,” Kushner told Steven Bertoni of Forbes. “We brought in Cambridge Analytica. I called some of my friends from Silicon Valley who were some of the best digital marketers in the world. And I asked them how to scale this stuff . . . We basically had to build a $400 million operation with 1,500 people operating in 50 states, in five months to then be taken apart. We started really from scratch.”

Secondly if this breach happened way back in 2014, it might indicate that Trump was already getting his ducks in a row to run way back then, despite his claims that he did not decide until 2015. 

Thirdly using Facebook data was also how the Russians targeted users for their propaganda campaign, which could link their efforts directly to Kushner and the Trump campaign, something I am certain Robert Mueller is already looking into.

Have you noticed that the more we learn, the more it seems to indicate that the Russians and the Trump campaign worked hand in hand to win that 2016 election?

P.S. The Massachusetts Attorney General is now launching in investigation into Cambridge Analytica. 

The FBI has been trying to contact the two prisoners in Thailand who claim to have evidence of Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Courtesy of CNN: 

FBI agents have tried to meet a pair of self-styled "sex coaches" detained in a Bangkok jail who claim to have evidence of Russian meddling in the 2016 US election, a senior Thai official told CNN. 

Belarussian citizens Anastasia Vashukevich and Alexander Kirillov sent a handwritten letter last month to the US Embassy in Bangkok asking for help in getting them released in exchange for information on alleged meddling in the US presidential election. 

The FBI agents contacted Thailand's Immigration bureau last week to try to organize the meeting, the highly placed source in the department said. 

The request was refused by Thai officials because only legal representatives and family members of the detainees are permitted access to the detainees, added the source, who is not authorized to speak to media.

As I reported before this Anastasia Vashukevich claims to have taped evidence that Russian oligarch Oleg V. Deripaska participated in the meddling. Deripaska also has close ties to Paul Manafort.

A number of people have tried to dismiss these women out of hand as simply saying anything to get out of that Thai prison, but it appears that the FBI might be taking their claims seriously.

We shall see.

Did you see former Green Party candidate Jill Stein essentially lose her shit on MSNBC yesterday?

Courtesy of Raw Story:  

Speaking with MSNBC’s Alex Witt, the two-time nominee at times shouted over the host, after deflecting questions about Russian involvement in her campaign, saying she knew of only one post on her Facebook page out of “trillions” posted on the social media site. 

As Witt attempted to ask the candidate if she was aware of Russian’s helping her campaign, Stein talked over the host, complaining that they should be discussing the “$6 billion dollars” in free advertising the networks gave to then-candidate Donald Trump. 

“No, we were not aware,” Stein exclaimed. “Let me say we were aware of other kinds of interference. For example, we know that $6 billion in free air time was given to Donald Trump by the big networks. Six billion, this was twice as much as Hillary Clinton’s campaign and four times as much as Bernie Sanders’ campaign and way more than the independent candidates.” 

“But it is not Russian interference, and I am proud to say that we had you on our broadcast several times and I had you on in person,” Witt reminded the former candidate. 

“Donald Trump, he was damn good, that was the word — he was damn good for the networks even though he was not good for America.,” Stein pressed on, ignoring Witt. “The point I am making here, Alex, is we don’t want to miss the forest here through the trees. Yes, there was Russia interference but there was compelling interference going on by way of media and the DNC. Did the DNC did not rig the primaries?”

No they didn't.

And that conspiracy theory has already been debunked multiple times. 

You know I could almost understand people supporting Bernie Sanders, I mean he seemed reasonable and intelligent.

But Jill Stein is a fucking lunatic.

Third party candidates, and protest votes, are a waste of time, and I hope after what we saw in 2016 that simple fact is now universally understood.

We are in war here, and standing on the sidelines, or backing a loser candidate to "make a point," is a luxury that we simply do not have.

The White House is pushing the idea that the Russian interference had no impact on the outcome of the 2016 election. But that is false.

Deputy A.G. Rod Rosenstein stated at the News Conference: “There is no allegation in the indictment that any American was a knowing participant in this illegal activity. There is no allegation in the indictment that the charged conduct altered the outcome of the 2016 election.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 17, 2018

That tweet is actually part of a longer campaign by the Trump White House to dismiss the impact of the Russian interference by claiming that even if it happened it did not have any effect.

But that is NOT what the intelligence agencies determined.

Courtesy of Politico:  

Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper on Thursday rebuffed a claim by Vice President Mike Pence that intelligence officials concluded that Russian meddling didn't have "any impact on the outcome of the 2016 election," saying it "stretches credulity" to say Moscow's interference didn't affect any voters' decisions.

"The intelligence community has neither the authority nor the capability to make such a judgment as to whether there was or was not impact on the election," Clapper said. "And we did not say that." 

Clapper added that it was "absolutely" possible that foreign influence campaigns had swayed voters, even though authorities had not made a definitive ruling on the matter. 

“I will say now that I’m not in an official position that it stretches credulity, given the magnitude, scope and depth of the Russian efforts, that they didn’t have impact on individual voter decisions," Clapper said. "But again, the intelligence community did not and could not gauge the impact on individual voter decisions.”

And keep in mind that just because these most recent indictments make no allegations that the meddling changed the outcome of the election, does not mean that is the conclusion of the intelligence agencies, or that it will be Mueller's ultimate conclusion.

Wired Magazine certainly disagrees that the Russians did not alter the outcome of the election in an article entitled DID RUSSIA AFFECT THE 2016 ELECTION? IT’S NOW UNDENIABLE: 

The groups and narratives identified in the indictment were integral parts of the frenzied election circus that built momentum, shaped perceptions, and activated a core base of support for now-President Trump—just as they helped disgust and dismay other groups, making them less likely to vote (or to vote for marginal candidates in protest). 

In the indictment, Trump campaign officials are referred to as “unwitting” participants in Russian information warfare. This gives the White House an out—and a chance to finally act against what the Kremlin did. But the evidence presented in the indictment makes it increasingly hard to say Russian efforts to influence the American mind were a failure.

In my mind there has never really been a question of whether the Russians altered the outcome of the election.

Of course they did.

But they also had help from James Comey, the House Republicans with their constant investigations, and the American media.

I am not sure that the Russians could have pulled this off without that extra help, but I do know that with this victory they are only going to amplify their efforts in the elections to come.

Putting in place strong sanctions, and protections, might head that off.

But with Putin's puppet in the White House, we know that will likely not happen.

Rod Rosenstein announces indictments against 13 Russians and 3 Russian companies for interfering in 2016 election.

Courtesy of NBC News:  

Thirteen Russian nationals have been indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of interfering in the 2016 presidential election — including supporting Donald Trump's campaign and "disparaging" Hillary Clinton, special counsel Robert Mueller announced Friday. 

The indictments — part of Mueller's ongoing investigation — are the first tied directly to Russian meddling in the race for the White House. 

"Some defendants, posing as U.S. persons and without revealing their Russian association, communicated with unwitting individuals associated with the Trump Campaign and with other political activists to seek to coordinate political activities," the indictment says.

Some of those charged also "posted derogatory information" about candidates in the Republican primaries, including Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, and supporting Bernie Sanders and Trump. By the time of the general election, the Russians' efforts included "supporting the presidential campaign of then-candidate Donald J. Trump and disparaging Hillary Clinton," the indictment says. 

At a press conference, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said the defendants allegedly "conducted what they called 'Information Warfare' against the United States, with the stated goal of spreading distrust towards the candidates and the political system in general."

Damn!

Rosenstein also stated that there is no allegation in this indictment that these activities changed the outcome of the election.

The key phrase here is "in THIS indictment."

However some on the Right are taking this to mean that Trump is free and clear, while I know nothing could be further from the truth.

Trump himself jumped on the fact that the Russians launched their campaign in 2014.

Russia started their anti-US campaign in 2014, long before I announced that I would run for President. The results of the election were not impacted. The Trump campaign did nothing wrong - no collusion!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 16, 2018

Of course the problem with that is that Trump started talking about his presidential run way back in 2013.

Mr. Trump, you told the Russians you'd be running for president in Moscow in November 2013—and indeed it was that declaration that led to the anti-U.S. campaign in early 2014. Cohen had made clear by mid-2013 you were running; you confirmed it to the Agalarovs and Yulya Alferova. https://t.co/UyjT9QMqbE

— Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) February 16, 2018

I think through this indictment is the first time that we are learning that the Russians actually had boots on the ground here in American during this time period, and were not simply conducting an online election interference campaign.

The time period in which they really ramped things up by the way, the summer of 2016, also coincides with Trump asking Russia to release Hillary's emails, and with his son meeting with Russian operatives in Trump Tower.

And while the Russian operation focused mainly on the easily manipulated deplorables in order to help Trump win, they also used other methods of damaging Hillary Clinton's chances.

Courtesy of Vox:

Friday afternoon, the Justice Department released an indictment that’s part of the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election led by special counsel Robert Mueller. 

The indictment outlines the lengths Russia went to influence the election in favor of Donald Trump and against Hillary Clinton — including by supporting Bernie Sanders (and, later, Jill Stein). 

The Russian operations on social media were meant to communicate derogatory information about Hillary Clinton and other candidates, including Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio. And they were supposed to support Sanders and Trump. 

“Use any opportunity to criticize Hillary and the rest (except Sanders and Trump—we support them),” they were directed, according to the indictment.

So once again I have to remind people that the ONLY way you know the Russians did not manipulate you in some way is if you voted for Hillary Clinton, because that was the ONE person they were desperate to see defeated.

And look, they were successful.

The Russians wanted to see America destroyed, just like ISIS and just like Al Qaeda, the only difference is that they came up with the ultimate weapon of mass destruction.

This man. 

Jesus, even George W. Bush is capable of understanding that the Russians hacked our election.

Courtesy of the AP: 

Former President George W. Bush said on Thursday that “there’s pretty clear evidence that the Russians meddled” in the 2016 American presidential election, forcefully rebutting fellow Republican Donald Trump’s denials of Moscow trying to affect the vote. 

While never mentioning President Trump by name, Bush appeared to be pushing back on Trump’s attempts to have warmer relations with Russia, as well as his comments on immigration. 

The White House did not immediately comment on Bush’s remarks. 

“There’s pretty clear evidence that the Russians meddled,” Bush said at a talk in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates. “Whether they affected the outcome is another question.” 

Bush also said that “it’s problematic that a foreign nation is involved in our election system. Our democracy is only as good as people trust the results.”

Remember this guy?

I must have said every single day that he was in office that he was the dumbest son-of-a-bitch we had ever elected to lead this nation.

I truly believed that once he was out we would NEVER make a mistake of that magnitude again.

And here he is recognizing the evidence that our current commander-in-chief refuses to even acknowledge.

I would really like to say that after Trump is dragged from office that we will never be stupid enough to elect such an incompetent, unqualified, traitorous leader ever again.

But now that I understand just how critically stupid many people are in this country, that would just be a waste of my breath. 

DHS head of cyber security says that the Russians DID penetrate voter registration rolls in several states.

Courtesy of NBC News:  

The U.S. official in charge of protecting American elections from hacking says the Russians successfully penetrated the voter registration rolls of several U.S. states prior to the 2016 presidential election. 

In an exclusive interview with NBC News, Jeanette Manfra, the head of cybersecurity at the Department of Homeland Security, said she couldn't talk about classified information publicly, but in 2016, "We saw a targeting of 21 states and an exceptionally small number of them were actually successfully penetrated." 

Jeh Johnson, who was DHS secretary during the Russian intrusions, said, "2016 was a wake-up call and now it's incumbent upon states and the Feds to do something about it before our democracy is attacked again.

"We were able to determine that the scanning and probing of voter registration databases was coming from the Russian government." 

NBC News reported in Sept. 2016 that more than 20 states had been targeted by the Russians.

Of course this reporting is followed up by the disclaimer that there is no evidence that the Russians altered the voting rolls in any way, but I am having a harder and harder time buying that.

First off why would the Russians work so hard to penetrate these voter rolls and then simply leave them untouched?

Secondly how do we know they were not altered since these are the main data bases? Is there a hard copy of these voter's names, compiled before the hacks, that these lists can be compared against?

Clearly the Russians were desperate to defeat Hillary Clinton and to put Donald Trump into the White House, and since he entered that building he has done nothing but undermine our democracy, sabotage our government, and attack the free press.

In other words he is doing precisely as Putin has commanded.

And here we sit doing nothing to prevent it. 

The Republican's conspiracy theory about FBI agent Peter Strzok seems to have run aground.

Courtesy of Think Progress:  

For weeks, Republicans have been obsessed with FBI agent Peter Strzok, suggesting that he was part of a cabal inside the agency who sought to rig the 2016 presidential election for Hillary Clinton. To support this theory, the GOP has seized upon texts between Strzok and FBI lawyer Lisa Page that were sometimes critical of Trump. (Strzok and Page were having an affair.) 

Last week, Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) suggested that Strzok and Page formed a “secret society” to undermine the Trump campaign. “What this is all about is further evidence of corruption — more than bias — but corruption of the highest levels of the FBI… There is so much smoke here,” Johnson said. 

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Trump accused Strzok of “treason.” If you watch Fox News, the supposed anti-Trump bias of Strzok is discussed daily, if not hourly. 

But on Wednesday, CNN reported that Strzok supported reopening the Hillary Clinton email investigation days before the election — and wrote the first draft of the letter from former FBI Director James Comey that made the decision public. 

"Strzok, who co-wrote what appears to be the first draft that formed the basis of the letter Comey sent to Congress, also supported reopening the Clinton investigation once the emails were discovered on disgraced former Rep. Anthony Weiner’s laptop, according to a source familiar with Strzok’s thinking. The day after Strzok sent his draft to his colleagues, Comey released the letter to Congress, reigniting the email controversy in the final days of the campaign."

The letter drafted by Strzok played a key role in swinging momentum back to Trump in the closing days of the campaign. 

That letter is credited with essentially handing the 2016 election to Donald Trump.

So if Strzok was actually playing for "Team Hillary" why the fuck would he sabotage her chances at victory? 

We Democrats should be the ones calling for this guy's head on a platter, but due to a few private emails with his girlfriend, it's the Republicans who are stabbing their savior in the back.

CNN reporter expresses regret at helping to create a false equivalency between Hillary Clinton and Doanld Trump during the 2016 campaign.

Courtesy of WaPo: 

So long as President Trump continues disgracing the Oval Office, thoughtful people will probe their own role in helping him get there. 

Such appeared to be the motivation behind a mea culpa issued by CNN senior legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin on comedian Larry Wilmore’s “Black on the Air” podcast. In a discussion of presidential politics, Wilmore argued that Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential nominee in 2016, was the victim of a “coordinated attack” coming from Republicans. “Benghazi was … the expression of that attack. In fact, what’s his name, was it [former Rep. Jason] Chaffetz who actually kind of agreed that that’s what they were doing, was weakening her as a candidate.” (Wilmore may have been referring to Rep. Kevin McCarthy, who said in 2015, “Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right? But we put together a Benghazi special committee, a select committee. What are her numbers today? Her numbers are dropping.”) 

No question about the attack on Clinton, responded Toobin, citing “all that bogus stuff about the Clinton Foundation” — perhaps a reference to the Uranium One story or even to the pre-election reporting of Bret Baier — later withdrawn — that there would be an indictment relating to the foundation.

“And I hold myself somewhat responsible for that,” continued Toobin, a steady presence on CNN since 2002. “I think there was a lot of false equivalence in the 2016 campaign. That every time we said something, pointed out something about Donald Trump — whether it was his business interests, or grab ’em by the p–––y, we felt like, ‘Oh, we gotta, like, talk about — we gotta say something bad about Hillary.’ And I think it led to a sense of false equivalence that was misleading, and I regret my role in doing that.”

I would suggest that not only did reporters often suggest that the phony Clinton "scandals" were similar to the raging dumpster fire that represented the Trump campaign, but that they actually suggested that Hillary's "crimes" were potentially more egregious.  

The coverage of Hillary's emails was insane.

So was the coverage of Benghazi, her fainting spell, and virtually everything she did which somebody could find reason to criticize.

In the meantime Trump was being accused of sexual assault, working with the Mafia, and colluding with the Russians to steal the election, and somehow those were seen as equivalent.

I hope that Jeffrey Toobin sets a precedent, and that soon we will hear apologies from a number of CNN, MSNBC, as well as network and print journalists for their part in attempting to even the playing field between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.

There was nothing even about these two candidates, and the American people should have been informed of that fact.

Today is the deadline for Donald Trump to sign off on the Russia sanctions. Think he'll do it? Update!

Courtesy of Politico:

President Donald Trump’s willingness to crack down on Russia will be seriously tested come Monday. 

Trump faces a major deadline to use the Russia sanctions power that Congress overwhelmingly voted to give him — and it’s anybody’s guess as to whether he’ll comply on time after missing the last deadline. 

Scrutiny is high, amid lingering suspicion of Trump’s eagerness to mend fences with Russia and with special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation still digging into election meddling by Moscow. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle remain keen to get tough on Vladimir Putin’s government. 

And they have reason to worry about whether the popular sanctions package Trump reluctantly signed in August will be implemented just as hesitantly. The Russia provisions of the bill were designed as a response to Moscow’s meddling in the 2016 election, which the president himself has downplayed. 

Furthermore, the last time Trump’s administration confronted a deadline to set in motion penalties against Putin’s government, it took more than three weeks — and a nudge from Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) — for Trump’s team to comply.

I have heard some pundits suggesting that there is no way that Trump will let this deadline pass without his signature, but I am not so sure.

So far there does not seem to have been a really serious consequence for his past hesitation, and clearly Trump is more focused on pleasing his Russian pullet master than he is the American people, so I could definitely see him refusing to put his John Hancock on this bill.

Besides the fact that he waited this long is a clear sign that he is far more concerned with angering Vladimir Putin than he is with protecting American democracy.

Update: Nope, he didn't do it.

The Trump admin has notified Congress that last year’s bipartisan Russia sanctions bill is serving as a “deterrent” and as such, specific sanctions aren’t needed at this time. From a State Dept spox: pic.twitter.com/rwkd6Vzh66

— Elana Schor (@eschor) January 29, 2018

Okay does anybody still believe this guy is not working for the Kremlin?

Russian bots retweeted Donald Trump nearly half a million times during the final days of the 2016 election, while also setting up political events on Facebook to sow the seeds of divisiveness.

Courtesy of Newsweek:

Russian bots retweeted Donald Trump nearly half a million times in the final weeks of the 2016 campaign, and more than 60,000 Americans RSVP’d for Facebook events created by Kremlin-linked trolls, the social media giants revealed in congressional documents this month. 

In written statements to two congressional panels investigating Russia’s election interference, the companies revealed new details about the extent of the Kremlin disinformation that reached more than 120 million Americans during the presidential race. The U.S. intelligence community has concluded that Russia launched an unprecedented series of cyber attacks and fake news floods to sow division and sway voters ahead of Trump’s surprise victory. 

Twitter revealed that Russian-linked bot accounts recirculated Trump’s tweets more than two million times between September 1 and November 15, 2016, with nearly 500,000 of those coming in the campaign’s final stretch. The automated accounts retweeted Republican candidate Trump 10 times more often Democratic contender Hillary Clinton, and accounted for 4.25% of all of Trump’s retweets in the race’s final days, according to Twitter’s statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

They also fired off nearly 200,000 retweets in the same time for WikiLeaks, which exposed stolen information from Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee that U.S. intelligence agencies have traced to Russian hackers.

Facebook, meanwhile, told the Senate Intelligence Committee last week that Russian trolls posing as American activists created 129 political events between 2015 and 2017, which were seen by more than 300,000 Facebook users and in some cases drew demonstrators to the streets en masse. About 62,500 users said they would attend one of the events and another 25,800 users expressed interest in going. 

The events often preyed on divisive political or cultural issues, and sometimes set up demonstrations that would directly oppose each other or conflict with plans from actual activists. In one instance, according to Facebook, a fake page called “Heart of Texas” that called for the state to secede from the country promoted a “Stop Islamization of Texas” protest in May 2016 for the opening of an Islamic Center’s library. Another Kremlin Facebook group, “United Muslims of America,” promoted a “Save Islamic Knowledge” event for the same time.

This is what results from simply wanting to be spoon fed the news, and not utilizing our critical thinking skills. 

The Russians recognized that Americans had become sheep and they helped to herd us right over a cliff.

Joe Biden says that the Obama Administration wanted a bipartisan response to the Russian interference in the last election but were blocked by Mitch McConnell.

Courtesy of Politico:  

Joe Biden said Tuesday that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell stopped the Obama administration from speaking out about Russian interference in the 2016 campaign by refusing to sign on to a bipartisan statement of condemnation. 

That moment, the former Democratic vice president said, made him think “the die had been cast ... this was all about the political play.” 

He expressed regret, in hindsight, given the intelligence he says came in after Election Day. "Had we known what we knew three weeks later, we may have done something more,” Biden, a potential 2020 presidential candidate, said. 

Biden was speaking at an event hosted by the Council on Foreign Relations, a block from his old office at the Old Executive Office Building, to discuss his new article in the latest issue of Foreign Affairs, “How to Stand Up to the Kremlin.”

As you might expect McConnell disagrees strongly with this characterization of eventts.

However I reported this exact same event back in December of 2016: 

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is rejecting bipartisan calls for a special committee to investigate Russian interference in the U.S. election, which American intelligence says was aimed in part at helping Republican Donald Trump defeat Democrat Hillary Clinton. 

What's more a former Obama White House staff echoed Biden's version of events:  

“Our administration's interest in making sure the response was bipartisan wasn't for the sake of being bipartisan. It was necessary because we needed the buy-in from state and local election administrators (many of whom were Republican partisans and/or skeptical of federal government),” the official argued in an email. “Unfortunately, as is well documented, Senator McConnell was unwilling to help — only making matters worse.”

Let's face it Mitch McConnell does not care about protecting American election integrity just so long as the meddling benefits his party's candidate.

Donald Trump's now defunct Commission on Election Integrity seemed to really focus on Texas Hispanic voters.

Courtesy of WaPo: 

President Trump’s voting commission asked every state and the District for detailed voter registration data, but in Texas’s case it took an additional step: It asked to see Texas records that identify all voters with Hispanic surnames, newly released documents show. 

In buying nearly 50 million records from the state with the nation’s second largest Hispanic population, a researcher for the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity checked a box on two Texas public voter data request forms explicitly asking for the “Hispanic surname flag notation,” to be included in information sent to the voting commission, according to copies of the signed and notarized state forms. 

White House and Texas officials said the Texas voter data was never delivered because a lawsuit brought by Texas voting rights advocates after the request last year temporarily stopped any data handoff.

Gee, it's almost as if this whole commission was created simply to prove that Donald Trump lost the popular vote because of illegal immigrants who voted against him.

But that can't be right, can it?

You bet your ass it can. 

The world's respect for American leadership hits record low.

Courtesy of NPR:

The global approval rating for U.S. leadership now stands at 30 percent — lower in President Trump's first year in office than it was under former President George W. Bush, according to the Gallup World Poll. The image of America's leadership now trails both Germany and China, Gallup says. 

International regard for U.S. leadership fell sharply from the 48 percent approval rating for 2016, former President Barack Obama's last year in office. The previous low of 34 percent was reached at the end of the Bush administration. 

The new survey was conducted between March and November of 2017. Gallup found that approval of U.S. leadership had fallen by double digits in nearly half of the 134 countries and areas it surveyed. 

The Gallup report also cites another record: for disapproval. Worldwide, a median 43 percent disapprove of U.S. leadership — more than the median disapproval for Germany (25 percent), China (30 percent) or Russia (36 percent). According to Gallup, that's a record for any major world power, not just the U.S., in the past decade.

Some of the more dramatic losses came from American allies like Germany and Mexico, while America only gained approval of ten points or more in four countries, Israeli, Liberia, Macedonia, and Belarus.

Yeah they really dig ole Trump in Macedonia.

A loss of respect also means losing the ability to lead, and that leaves a vacuum for other nations to take our place.

I guess I better start preparing my taste-buds for a lot more Chinese food. 

Twitter to suspend 1,062 accounts linked to Russian troll farm.

Courtesy of The Hill: 

Twitter said Friday that it has suspended 1,062 new accounts it has found to be linked to the Internet Research Agency, a Russian "troll farm" which disseminated content intended to interfere in the U.S. political process. 

In total, the company has found 3,814 Internet Research Agency-linked accounts, which posted 175,993 tweets during the 2016 presidential campaign. 

Twitter said it also found 13,512 new Kremlin-linked bot accounts, bringing the total number of bots it has found in connection to Russia's election influence efforts to 50,258. 

The company also said in a post on Friday that it will notify 677,775 people to let them know that they either liked, retweeted or followed Russian-linked accounts, following a request from Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) to do so. 

Twitter noted, however, that it won’t show users the content they saw, saying that because it has “already suspended these accounts, the relevant content on Twitter is no longer publicly available.”

"The relevant content on Twitter is no longer publicly available."

What they don't mention is that it is being replaced by new data, from new Russian troll accounts, that are yet to be identified. 

The misinformation campaign continues to this day, and still people are ignorantly retweeting  or liking tweets that originate in Russia and are designed to manipulate public opinion or sow the seeds of divisiveness.

Both Twitter and Facebook played a huge part in helping to hijack our Democracy. And they need to be held accountable.

Kris Kobach, head of Trump's bullshit election integrity commission, is upset because he cannot get to any meetings due to all of the pending lawsuits.

Courtesy of The Topeka Capital-Journal: 

President Donald Trump’s controversial commission on election integrity should meet again in January after being delayed for months because of eight lawsuits demanding its staff’s time, the group’s de facto leader, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, said this week. 

Trump set up his Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity earlier this year after claiming he lost the popular vote to his opponent, Hillary Clinton, because of 3 million to 5 million illegal votes. The group has drawn criticism from organizations that believe it to be a tool for voter suppression. 

Eight lawsuits sit in federal court opposing the commission from plaintiffs including one of the commission’s own members and groups like the American Civil Liberties Union and the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. 

“I’m not aware of any presidential commission that has encountered so much litigation from special interest groups,” Kobach said.

Kobach said his commission hasn’t met since September, largely because of that litigation. 

“Much of the past few months has been spent by commission staff answering discovery requests for information and drafting affidavits and things that like — going through the legwork of litigation, and that takes time,” Kobach said. “We have a very small staff in Washington, D.C., and that staff has been bogged down in litigation.”

Aww, poor baby!

 I would like to feel sorry for this doucheknozzle, but I don't.

This is a bullshit commission, based a fake problem, that Trump insists be investigated because he is determined to prove he won the popular vote in 2016.

He didn't.

And nothing this Kris Kobach fellow manufactures is going to prove otherwise.

However if he is successful in getting it up and running, it will of course be used by Trump in 2018 and 2020 to discard Democratic votes and try and steal those elections.

Steve Bannon and Breitbart pull support from Paul Ryan challenger after his antisemitic and racist opinions come to light.

Paul Nehlen

Courtesy of the SCMP:  

Paul Nehlen, the far-right activist who is challenging House speaker Paul Ryan for his congressional seat, has lost the support of Breitbart News and Steve Bannon.

A source close to Bannon, the former White House chief strategist who is orchestrating a slate of challengers to Republican establishment figures, said Nehlen became persona non grata after he appeared on a white supremacist podcast, Fash the Nation, earlier this month. 

Bannon had never been particularly enthusiastic about Nehlen despite the wealth of coverage on Breitbart, the source said. 

Nehlen is a businessman and so-called “mini-Trump” who was backed by leading right-wing figures including Sarah Palin and Ann Coulter in the 2016 primary for Ryan’s Wisconsin congressional seat. The speaker’s eventual margin of victory was huge – 84 per cent to 16 per cent – despite aggressive pro-Nehlen coverage from Breitbart.

In recent weeks Nehlen has attracted criticism for controversial tweets on immigration and other subjects. On Tuesday, for example, he tweeted that he was reading The Culture of Critique, a book by Kevin MacDonald, which is seen as anti-Semitic. 

On Twitter on Tuesday night, Breitbart senior editor Joel Pollak said: “We don’t support him. Haven’t covered him in months ... He’s gone off the deep end.” 

Arthur Schwartz, a Bannon adviser, told CNN: “Nehlen is dead to us.”

For his part Nehlen is now saying the "globalists" from both sides are working together to undermine his campaign,  because you know in his circle hating on the Jews and being a probable white supremacist is not seen as a deal breaker.

And to be fair it is unlikely that Breitbart would have abandoned him either if they were not currently trying to reinvent themselves and move away from their racist roots.

Just for fun here is Sarah Palin on CNN in 2016 saying she will do "all she can" for Paul Nehlen.

Boy that sure worked out well, didn't it?

The Senate Intelligence Committee turns its attention to Jill Stein.

Courtesy of Buzzfeed:  

The top congressional committee investigating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election has set its sights on the Green Party and its nominee, Jill Stein. 

Dennis Trainor Jr., who worked for the Stein campaign from January to August of 2015, says Stein contacted him on Friday saying the Senate Intelligence Committee had requested that the campaign comply with a document search. 

Trainor, who served as the campaign’s communications director and acting manager during that time, told BuzzFeed News that he was informed of the committee’s request because during his time on the campaign, his personal cell phone was “a primary point of contact” for those looking to reach Stein or the campaign. That included producers from RT News, the Russian state-funded media company that booked Stein for several appearances, Trainor said. 

When asked Monday what the committee was looking for from the Stein campaign, North Carolina Sen. Richard Burr, the committee’s chairman, responded, "collusion with the Russians." Burr said that the committee is "just starting" its work investigating two campaigns, but did not elaborate. 

Stein did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

I have long believed that Stein was a Russian asset and now I am very interested in what an investigation of her connections to the Kremlin will reveal. 

I'm going to need a whole new batch of popcorn for this one.

The Washington Post dives deep to explore Donald Trump's overwhelming desire to be Vladimir Putin's buddy and his skepticism concerning American intelligence.

The following is courtesy of WaPo.

Trump angrily resisted having to admit that the Russians hacked the DNC:

But as aides persisted, Trump became agitated. He railed that the intelligence couldn’t be trusted and scoffed at the suggestion that his candidacy had been propelled by forces other than his own strategy, message and charisma.

Told that members of his incoming Cabinet had already publicly backed the intelligence report on Russia, Trump shot back, “So what?” Admitting that the Kremlin had hacked Democratic Party emails, he said, was a “trap.” 

As Trump addressed journalists on Jan. 11 in the lobby of Trump Tower, he came as close as he ever would to grudging acceptance. “As far as hacking, I think it was Russia,” he said, adding that “we also get hacked by other countries and other people.” 

As hedged as those words were, Trump regretted them almost immediately. “It’s not me,” he said to aides afterward. “It wasn’t right.”

This has left America essentially defenseless against further Russian cyber attacks:  

Nearly a year into his presidency, Trump continues to reject the evidence that Russia waged an assault on a pillar of American democracy and supported his run for the White House. 

The result is without obvious parallel in U.S. history, a situation in which the personal insecurities of the president — and his refusal to accept what even many in his administration regard as objective reality — have impaired the government’s response to a national security threat. The repercussions radiate across the government. 

Rather than search for ways to deter Kremlin attacks or safeguard U.S. elections, Trump has waged his own campaign to discredit the case that Russia poses any threat and he has resisted or attempted to roll back efforts to hold Moscow to account.

In fact rather than look for ways to protect America and punish Russia for their interference, the Trump Administration has worked to  roll back some of the sanctions put in place by the Obama Administration and to resist the implementation of newer ones.

Trump also seems almost desperate to form an alliance with Putin and the Kremlin:  

Trump’s stance on the election is part of a broader entanglement with Moscow that has defined the first year of his presidency. He continues to pursue an elusive bond with Putin, which he sees as critical to dealing with North Korea, Iran and other issues. “Having Russia in a friendly posture,” he said last month, “is an asset to the world and an asset to our country.” 

His position has alienated close American allies and often undercut members of his Cabinet — all against the backdrop of a criminal probe into possible ties between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin.

Overall the Kremlin is pleased with the results of their interference:   

Moscow has not achieved some its most narrow and immediate goals. The annexation of Crimea from Ukraine has not been recognized. Sanctions imposed for Russian intervention in Ukraine remain in place. Additional penalties have been mandated by Congress. And a wave of diplomatic retaliation has cost Russia access to additional diplomatic facilities, including its San Francisco consulate. 

But overall, U.S. officials said, the Kremlin believes it got a staggering return on an operation that by some estimates cost less than $500,000 to execute and was organized around two main objectives — destabilizing U.S. democracy and preventing Hillary Clinton, who is despised by Putin, from reaching the White House. 

The bottom line for Putin, said one U.S. official briefed on the stream of post-election intelligence, is that the operation was “more than worth the effort.”

“Putin has to believe this was the most successful intelligence operation in the history of Russian or Soviet intelligence,” said Andrew Weiss, a former adviser on Russia in the George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton administrations who is now at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “It has driven the American political system into a crisis that will last years.”

Well gee, isn't that great?

When it came time to sign the new Russian sanctions bill that the Congress overwhelmingly approved, Trump almost could not bring himself to do it:

In the final days before passage, Trump watched MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” program and stewed as hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski declared that the bill would be a slap in the face to the president. “He was raging,” one adviser said. 

“He was raging mad.” 

After final passage, Trump was “apoplectic,” the adviser recalled. It took four days for aides to persuade him to sign the bill, arguing that if he vetoed it and Congress overturned that veto, his standing would be permanently weakened. 

“Hey, here are the votes,” aides told the president, according to a second Trump adviser. “If you veto it, they’ll override you and then you’re f---ed and you look like you’re weak.” 

Trump signed but made his displeasure known. His signing statement asserted that the measure included “clearly unconstitutional provisions.” Trump had routinely made a show of bill signings, but in this case no media was allowed to attend.

After the sanctions bill passed into law the Russian Prime Minister taunted Trump on Facebook, and called him "impotent," which of course only further angered Trump.

There is a lot more to the article, and I urge you to read it.

Once you finish I am sure you will agree with me that we desperately need to find a way to remove this asshole from office as soon as possible.