All Purpose News and Politics Thread Part IV: The Center Cannot Hold

[Tami]

[SquirrelMan]

We need to have a conversation about alcoholism in the Republican party.

Giuliani most likely has a serious problem.

Now even FoxNews hosts start interrupting GOP talking heads like Lewandowski, asking him if he is drunk.

[aja_christopher]

He’s definitely lost his mind but I also think he knows that he can do anything he wants and there will be very little repercussions.

He's doing what many Republicans want regardless.



They cheer when he talks about shooting immigrants.

[Dalak]

The idea that Trump believes crazy conspiracy theories might make it tougher to impeach him, since it allows for an argument that he's doing what he believes to be in the country's best interests.

Do you think that 'belief that they are doing the right thing' excuses many criminal activities? Specifically extortion of Ukraine, encouraging & requesting foreign interference in our elections, and obstruction of justice in Trump's case.

[aja_christopher]

Correction -- Republicans themselves are suggesting shooting immigrants and then laughing about it.



Or following through on it.

[PaulBullion]

Do you think that 'belief that they are doing the right thing' excuses many criminal activities? Specifically extortion of Ukraine, encouraging & requesting foreign interference in our elections, and obstruction of justice in Trump's case.

Nixon was probably convinced he was doing the right thing (preventing commmie loving Democrats from taking power or something), too. Nobody is the villain in their own story.

[Dalak]

Nixon was probably convinced he was doing the right thing (preventing commmie loving Democrats from taking power or something), too. Nobody is the villain in their own story.

I get that it can be used to justify to yourself, but Mets is saying that it can help Trump's impeachment case like "I believe I was doing right by America" excuses opening America's elections up to foreign interference.

[PaulBullion]

I get that it can be used to justify to yourself, but Mets is saying that it can help Trump's impeachment case like "I believe I was doing right by America" excuses opening America's elections up to foreign interference.

Yes, I was agreeing with you. Mets' claim is lunacy.

[Dalak]

Yes, I was agreeing with you. Mets' claim is lunacy.

Yeah, but it doesn't preclude it being used seriously by more than one elected official.

[Kirby101]

Trump is a racist fascist, who cares what he thinks the right thing is. The Nazis thought they were doing the right thing.

[Gray Lensman]

Dessert today at the Library of Congress cafeteria is apparently Peach Mint Crumb Cake.

I wonder what side of this issue they are on?

[Tami]

Note the last paragraph, a verbal sideways hand-clap.

[Tami]

Trump seized on a conspiracy theory called the 'insurance policy.' Now, it's at the center of an impeachment investigation.

An anonymous post from March 2017 on the far-right 4chan message board teased a conspiracy theory that would eventually make its way to the White House.

“Russia could not have been the source of leaked Democrat emails released by Wikileaks,” the post teased, not citing any evidence for the assertion.

The post baselessly insinuated that CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity firm that worked with the Democratic National Committee and had been contracted to investigate a hack of its servers, fabricated a forensics report to frame Russia for election interference. The 4chan post was published three days before then-FBI Director James Comey testified before Congress about Russian interference in the 2016 election.

And that was how it started. That post is the first known written evidence of this unfounded conspiracy theory to exonerate Russia from meddling in the 2016 election, which more than two years later would make its way into the telephone call that may get President Donald Trump impeached. (Federal law enforcement officials have repeatedly made it clear that Russia unquestionably did meddle in the election.)

In the years that followed the original 4chan post, at least three different but related conspiracy theories would warp and combine on the fringes of the internet, eventually coalescing around Ukraine’s supposed role in helping Trump’s 2016 opponent, Hillary Clinton.

Ukraine wasn’t originally part of the theory, but in July, Trump floated CrowdStrike’s name during a call with the president of Ukraine as just one piece of a convoluted conspiracy accusation. That phone call is now at the center of a congressional investigation and impeachment inquiry into whether the president abused his power for political gain.

[kidfresh512]

When will they learn not to come for Nancy?

[Tami]

Political Operatives Are Faking Voter Outrage With Millions Of Made-Up Comments To Benefit The Rich And Powerful

Sarah Reeves sat on her couch in Eugene, Oregon, staring at her laptop screen in furious disbelief. She was reading the website of a government agency, where her mother appeared to have posted a comment weighing in on a bitter policy battle for control of the internet. Something was very wrong.

For a start, Annie Reeves, who loved to lead children’s sing-alongs at the Alaska Zoo, had never followed wonky policy debates. She barely knew her way around the web, let alone held strident views on how it should be regulated — and, according to her daughter, she definitely didn’t post angry comments on government websites.

But Sarah Reeves had a more conclusive reason to feel sure her mother’s name had been taken in vain: Annie Reeves was dead. She died more than a year before the comment was posted.

The New York attorney general opened an investigation and has since issued subpoenas to more than a dozen entities — estimating that “as many as 9.6 million comments may have used stolen identities.” But the FCC went ahead and scrapped the net neutrality rule in a massive victory for the broadband industry and a huge blow, consumer advocates said, for users. Some suspicious comments have been tracked back to particular political operatives. But the question of how millions of identities were marshaled without consent has largely remained a mystery. Until now.

A BuzzFeed News investigation — based on an analysis of millions of comments, along with court records, business filings, and interviews with dozens of people — offers a window into how a crucial democratic process was skewed by one of the most prolific uses of political impersonation in US history. In a key part of the puzzle, two little-known firms, Media Bridge and LCX Digital, working on behalf of industry group Broadband for America, misappropriated names and personal information as part of a bid to submit more than 1.5 million statements favorable to their cause.