The Watering Hole, Monday, February 6th, 2017: Don’t Forget RUSSIA

Two recent articles to remind us that at least Senator Ron Wyden has our back when it comes to investigating Vlad the Imputin’s Russians having hacked our election for trump.

First, an excerpt from David Corn’s article at Mother Jones:

Since Trump has moved into the White House, there has been less public chatter in political and media quarters about the Russian hacking that, according to the US intelligence community, was mounted by Putin’s spies as part of an extensive clandestine operation to undermine the US presidential campaign in order to benefit Trump. The same goes for allegations that Trump or his associates interacted with Russian officials or intermediaries during the campaign. After the election, Russia’s deputy foreign minister said “there were contacts” between Trump’s team and Russian officials, and various news reports have noted that the FBI has examined connections between Trump associates and Putin-allied Russians—without offering much detail about these FBI inquiries. Yet in the first, chaos-filled weeks of the Trump presidency, the story of Russian meddling in the election—after blowing up with the disclosure that President Barack Obama and Trump were briefed about private intelligence memos alleging Russia had run a yearslong secret program to cultivate Trump and gather compromising intelligence on him—has seemed to move off the center stage.

Second, a diary by Mark Sumner at Daily Kos adds commentary to the above Mother Jones story:

“Now that the intelligence committees are supposedly on the case—and with the FBI not discussing whatever inquiries it may be holding on this front—the controversy (or scandal!) has been nudged to the back burner. This often happens in Washington: a secret investigation is launched, the story goes dark.”

“Helping cast those shadows is a press that seems to have instant amnesia about anything Russia related, to the extent that Russian forces attacking towns in Ukraine just one day after Trump and Putin had their contents unknown chat, wasn’t enough to push aside Trump’s latest tweets on television ratings. The connections between Putin and Trump, Manafort, Flynn, Page, and others in the regime seldom merits a mention.”

We HAVE to keep this investigation front and center, and demand that our Congresscritters and Senators not only support the search for the truth, but inform we, the people, of that truth, no matter the cost. This is OUR country, OUR democracy, and OUR freedom at stake. We cannot let this issue fade into the background, despite all of the distracting crap continuously popping up in the foreground. There are many fights to fight in this travesty of a presidency, but said presidency’s legitimacy is the biggest fight that we all face.

This is our Open Thread–say whatever you want.

16 thoughts on “The Watering Hole, Monday, February 6th, 2017: Don’t Forget RUSSIA”

So called President Trump is already skating on thin ice. His denial/dismissal of the interference in our electoral process, coupled with his ‘treat Russia as a moral equal’ stance is tantamount to ‘high crimes and misdemeanors. If you get my drift. If his immigration order gets overturned, expect him to try to circumvent the judicial edict. That should be enough to get impeachment started.

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Wayne A. Schneider on February 6, 2017 at 9:40 am said:

He already fired the Acting Attorney General because she refused to enforce the EO after a judge said it was unconstitutional.

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- RUCerious on February 6, 2017 at 10:00 am said:
  
  The real issue I see is that he needs to go so far over the line that the Republican Congress, both houses, feel like their chances of re-election are zilch unless they oppose him. As they oppose him the so-called President will escalate unceasingly until their only avenue to continuing to be elected is to remove him via impeachment.
  
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This is what a very bad man looks like.

http://chaffetz.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=788
http://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2017/2/2/14479462/chaffetz-public-lands-backlash

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vinylspear on February 8, 2017 at 8:20 am said:

1% thinks everything is going just swell.

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Last night CNN held a healthcare debate between Bernie Sanders and Ted Cruz. I remembered hearing about it some time ago, but would have forgotten it had someone on the FYI chat not asked about it right before it started.

Sanders, Cruz debate Obamacare: CNN’s Reality Check Team vets the claims

Sens. Bernie Sanders and Ted Cruz debated the future of health care in the US Tuesday night, and CNN’s Reality Check Team vetted the claims.

The team of reporters, researchers and editors across CNN listened throughout the event and analyzed key statements, rating them true, misleading or false.

According to CNN, Bernie’s only significant deviation was about the number of people who defer buying prescriptions due to expense. Sanders said one in five, and CNN said it was lower.
Cruz, on the other hand, used mostly Republican talking points that had already been debunked, or cited irrelevant or misleading data, which mostly only works on people who never had to sweat about insurance and probably never used it for anything more than minor illness or sports injuries. They never knew what they had before the ACA, so to them all that happened was the premiums went up.

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