R.I.P GOP The End Of A Republican Party

[dada]

It is really not my experience working with, collaborating with, teaching, or organizing with millennials that they want more authority. I think they want the people to be the authority.

So DIY nannies at best.

I'll take your word for it. I can't presume to know what's in the mind of the young person, the middle-aged person, the old person. I'm a space alien, and have trouble relating to these earth-society time categories.

If the people were the authority, I'd probably be against them. Power corrupts. It really does. That's why I like suggesting, influencing, gently guiding. Taking advantage of opportunities as they present themselves. There's no ultimate answer to the political riddle. My opinion, of course.

You're right, though. I'm the one that wants the robot nannies. I think they're necessary. Humanity needs robot nannies, they clearly aren't responsible enough to handle liberty.

I'm half-joking. Guess that's my inner authoritarian talking. Yes, I do have an inner authoritarian. I keep it around for playing authority games.

Well, that's all for now, from your friendly neighborhood absolutely corrupt inner space authoritalien.



edited to add: Hey by the way, the 'nother ufo' gif seems to be busted. Or maybe it just flew away.

[stillrobertpaulsen]

RIP GOP? Experts say Trump will be a force of party chaos and division long after the election
Erin Corbett
11 Oct 2016 at 16:07 ET



The Republicans were having trouble unifying and rallying behind GOP nominee Donald Trump during the primaries, and many are jumping ship just weeks before the Election. At this point, it’s unclear what the future of the party will look like after November 8.

Can the Republican party as we know it survive after the Election? Experts suggest the GOP is seeing an “unprecedented level of disunity and chaos,” according to ABC News.

No, conservatism and conservative values will never die. The party will never give up its free-market, anti-abortion, evangelical, American exceptionalist ideals. But with Trump, some supporters are moving beyond the party.

There has been a growing divide between the traditional Republican establishment and those who align with the aforementioned principles, and those who openly identify with Trump’s violent anti-establishment, white nationalist, misogynistic alt-right movement.

The followers of Trump extremism — which perpetuates and legitimizes a narrative of white genocide and white supremacy through its anti-immigrant, anti-black, anti-Muslim, and pro-policing rhetoric — extend beyond the Republican party’s Reagan era.

While those who still align with traditional conservatism will carry on, Trump’s movement has cast a divide within the party. His followers have carved a different kind of radical conservative movement that will thrive even after the election — a party maintained by fascist and racist ideas.

William Johnson, the chairman of the white nationalist American Freedom Party in Los Angeles told the Guardian, “If Trump wins, all the establishment Republicans, they’re gone.”

Many top Republicans have denounced and distanced themselves from the Trump campaign since he announced his candidacy. Those include Ohio Gov. John Kasich, Jeb Bush, South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, to name a few. Some have even said they would vote for Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

During Trump’s Republican National Convention in July, a Never Trump protest erupted on the convention floor as some delegates tried to unbind themselves from the nominee so they could “vote their conscience.” With such a divide within the party prior to the election, is it possible for American conservatives to reunify under a single party?

Republican strategist and former Romney aide Ryan Williams spoke with ABC News about the future of the GOP. He noted that while it is hard to predict what might happen after November 8, Trump will “still have sway over a certain amount of people who will believe anything he says.”

Williams added, “The fissures in the party will extend long beyond Election Day and it’s going to be extremely difficult to unite the Republican coalition going forward.” He suggests that there is an “unprecedented level of disunity and chaos that’s been brought on by Donald Trump’s behavior.”

Following the recent release of a 2005 tape where Trump is heard bragging about groping and kissing women without consent, some have jumped off the sinking Trump ship for good, as RNC lawyers were reportedly looking into how to replace their nominee last Friday.

However, even as many top Republicans — who may have supported the real estate mogul until now only for the sake of their party — may be jumping off the Trump train, his supporters are sticking around.

And they’re sticking around because he has gone after black Americans, Muslims, and undocumented immigrants, not despite that.

[stillrobertpaulsen]

Good discussion of this at 538.com:

Is This What It Looks Like When A Party Falls Apart?

[Nordic]

And the Dem party hasn't fallen apart? The now ironically named "Democratic" party?

As far as I can tell it's been taken over by those who used to be Repubs. It happened quietly and with a cool black Prez who was the Trojan Horse.

[seemslikeadream]

Inside the scramble to save the GOP from Trump

A portrait of a party in meltdown.

By KATIE GLUECK and KYLE CHENEY 10/12/16 05:12 AM EDT

Matt Borges had had enough.
The Ohio Republican Party chairman had spent a crazed Saturday on the phone, inundated by demands to respond to newly leaked audio of Donald Trump bragging about sexual assault, and by questions about whether Trump was even staying in the race. So early Sunday morning, Borges called the Republican nominee himself.
Story Continued Below
“Are you considering withdrawing from the race?” Borges asked Trump, fearful that there might be more devastating revelations about his party’s nominee still to come.
“Absolutely not,” Trump replied, a rebuke to the slew of spooked Republican lawmakers who were calling on him to quit. According to Borges, he warned Trump that he needed to “knock it out of the park” at the presidential debate that night to survive—and they hung up agreeing to talk after the contest.
But by Monday, Trump surrogates—and increasingly the candidate himself—seemed just as focused on tearing into the Republicans defecting from Trump as they did on talking up Trump’s debate performance. That prompted Borges to send an email to the other 167 members of the Republican National Committee.
“Those candidates and officeholders deserve the leeway to follow their conscience without fear of retribution from the party,” wrote the swing state party chair and former Kasich supporter. “And the criticism of these folks from our nominee, his campaign, and others within the party needs to stop immediately.”
Absolutely and Totally Rigged
2016
Republicans tell Trump to quit claiming rigged election
By DARREN SAMUELSOHN
A half-hour after sending the letter, he took a call from Trump, who wanted to discuss the debate—and Borges gave the candidate the same message.
“You are the person who put these people in this position,” Borges said he told Trump, describing himself as “pissed off.” “You did that. Not them. These are your words. You need to own that.”
“OK, OK,” Trump replied in a noncommittal way, according to Borges.
Yet on Tuesday, in the culmination of a four-day horror show, Trump was back at it, going nuclear on those who abandoned him over the tape. He tweeted that “the shackles have been taken off me” and warned that “Disloyal R’s are far more difficult than Crooked Hillary.”
With just weeks to go until Election Day, it’s as close as it gets to a nightmare scenario for battleground state Republicans. Pro-Trump loyalists have declared war on those who have renounced their presidential nominee, candidates can’t get their message out because of the din, and Democrats are milking it for all it’s worth, with some even rethinking shifting resources to down-ballot contests that previously looked out of reach. And it's all due to Trump's meltdown.
New Hampshire GOP operative Tom Rath, traveling in Bermuda, said his phone blew up with calls and messages just moments after the news broke Friday night—he spent the weekend fielding frantic messages from allies worried about the fate of Sen. Kelly Ayotte and GOP gubernatorial candidate Chris Sununu. Val DiGiorgio, GOP chairman of Pennsylvania’s pivotal Chester County, said he immediately called the 28 local GOP leaders in his area to gauge the depth of the damage from the remarks, which were already beginning to play on a non-stop loop on cable television.
Democrats, meanwhile, were glued to the carnage. David Pepper, the Ohio Democratic chairman, was on a train with his wife and toddler Saturday, and to their dismay, he couldn’t put down his phone. He plumbed Sen. Rob Portman’s Twitter feed — it took until 8:30 P.M. on Saturday, he accurately noted, for Portman to fully disavow Trump — and Pepper closely monitored the Republican statements that poured in all afternoon.
161011-hillary-clinton-getty-1160
2016
Clinton, Trump settle into parallel paths
By ANNIE KARNI
New Hampshire Democratic Party Chairman Ray Buckley said he was traveling around the state with interim DNC Chairwoman Donna Brazile when the news broke. “We really weren’t near any computers. So we were just kind of hearing it over the phone and seeing what was going on on Twitter,” he said. But by the end of the weekend, he was already contemplating whether to move resources away from the state’s most high-profile races and toward state legislative races that are often decided by a few dozen votes.
“If the apparent trends continue, [New Hampshire] Democrats are cautiously making contingency plans for last-minute shifting of additional resources to some of our normally marginal down ballot races,” he said. “Dozens of races are routinely decided by less than a hundred votes, any little bit of help can increase our win column by a good number.”
The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
The timing of the Trump’s debacle could hardly have been worse, coinciding with the most vulnerable point in the election cycle: the heart of debate season in many contests and the start of early voting, which in Ohio begins Wednesday.
“To have that hit at the time it did, to have Trump fighting with Paul Ryan and Portman…at the very time you need energetic, unified volunteers, we have them in huge amounts, I think the Republicans are literally going to see a real waning in energy,” Pepper said. “An event that can really sap one side of energy, give another a lot of energy, to have it come the Friday before early voting starts, couldn’t be better timing for us or worse for them.”
To that end, Ted Strickland, the former governor of Ohio whose Senate challenge to Portman has been given up for dead by some -- national Democrats have largely withdrawn funding for his race – sprang into action. The Strickland campaign blasted out statement after statement, and by Monday announced a new TV ad, titled “Coward,” linking Trump to Portman, who until the tape had quietly backed the GOP nominee.
“The spot highlights how Senator Portman continued to endorse Donald Trump for President, even after learning about Trump’s derogatory comments bragging about sexual assault — a failure of leadership of historic magnitude,” a statement from the campaign said (Portman condemned the tape when it was released, then withdrew support from Trump a day later). “Portman then panicked in a transparent attempt to try and save his own political ambitions.”
161110-nancy-pelosi-getty-1160
Pelosi says Dems would win back House if election were today
By HEATHER CAYGLE
In Florida, where Rep. Patrick Murphy has likewise struggled to gain traction in his race against GOP Sen. Marco Rubio, Murphy’s campaign is following a similar tack. Though Rubio condemned Trump’s crude remarks Friday evening, Murphy has ripped his Republican opponent as a “coward” for his silence since then and has busily pumped out statements tying Rubio to Trump.
Adding to the challenge for down-ballot Republicans, especially in more competitive races, is the increasingly bellicose tone Trump and his allies are taking toward defectors – from House Speaker Paul Ryan to the vulnerable candidates he’s trying to protect, like Nevada Senate contender Joe Heck and Rep. Cresent Hardy.
At a rally Saturday morning in Summerlin, Nev., Heck, a congressman, read his denouncement of Trump off a piece of paper, to a mixture of light applause, boos and cat-calls.
Heck, along with Hardy, kept his comments short amid audible jeers, but both said they could no longer vote for Trump. Heck called for Trump to withdraw from the race, which ended up sparking sharp condemnations on conservative talk radio. Callers reamed out the Republican congressman on Monday, with one saying on air: “As soon as it got hot in the kitchen, Joe Heck jumped out. That’s not leadership.”
Kevin Wall, a Republican talk show host, said Heck’s “incredibly bad decision” has “irreparably harmed his own campaign.”
Their decisions to abandon Trump has hastened a split within Nevada’s GOP leadership.
“Joe Heck and Cresent Hardy are weak Republicans here in the state,” said Diana Orrock, a Nevada RNC member. “And I think they shot themselves in the foot badly over this weekend in the statements that they made.”
Orrock, who said she intended to resign from the RNC if Trump loses the election, said Republicans are forgetting the lessons they’ve been beaten over the heads with their entire careers.
“All of our lives as Republicans, we’ve been admonished going into a general election in particular to get on board with voting for all the Republicans up and down the ticket to get as many Republicans into office,” she said.
161010-donald-trump-ap-1160
Mark Burnett: We can't release 'Apprentice' tapes
By HADAS GOLD
To the south in Arizona, Sen. John McCain is also catching it from both sides. A Trump tweet lambasting McCain for abandoning him on Saturday became an anti-McCain press release issued by his Democratic opponent, Ann Kirkpatrick, within a half hour.
But few candidates have it worse than Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey who’s caught in a vise. Toomey, who has long refused to endorse either presidential candidate, blasted Trump’s remarks over the weekend. But Democrats have nevertheless aggressively pursued Toomey, labeling him “Fraidy Pat” for ducking chances to clarify his stance on Trump’s candidacy. Since 2 p.m. on Sunday, the McGinty campaign, the Pennsylvania Democratic Party and the DSCC have sent out at least 24 press releases using the phrase.
Toomey’s not the only one facing blowback from the leaked audio. Pennsylvania Republican sources say they expect several congressional races to feel the impact of the Trump tape, especially in moderate Philadelphia suburbs where independent-minded voters found it particularly distasteful.
GOP Rep. Pat Meehan, who represents the Philadelphia suburbs, has called for Trump to exit the race, a sign of how toxic he is in that part of the state. Brian Fitzpatrick, a congressional candidate in nearby Bucks County, said in a statement Saturday that he would not vote for either presidential candidate.
“Being a nominee for president is such an awesome responsibility, not only to your own campaign, but to the party,” said Kevin Madden, a veteran national Republican operative. “That depressive effect is being felt down-ballot…when you’re knocking on doors for swing votes, you’re not just getting Republicans. When [an incident] turns off so many suburban voters, suburban women voters, you’re knocking on doors and getting it slammed in your face, people don’t want to go out and get doors slammed in the face.”
Still, DiGiorgio, the Chester County GOP chair, said he surveyed local party committee members and found the remarks haven’t shaken Trump’s core support.
“People that are sticking with Trump even if they didn’t like his comments and view it as being blown way out of proportion,” he said.
As the shock of the news fades somewhat, Borges says he’s now more focused on the newest threat -- the stream of comments coming from Trump’s Twitter feed and from his surrogates, attacking other Republicans.
“Whether he listens to me or not, as a leader in the party I feel I need to say this,” said Borges, who insisted that he was speaking out for the good of Trump’s campaign, not just for down-ticket candidates. “I don’t want to wake up on Nov. 9 and say, ‘I wish I had called him.’”
He and Trump have another call scheduled for Wednesday morning.
“I think I have some reinforcing to do,” he said.
Elena Schneider and Kevin Robillard contributed to this report.


Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2016/10/d ... z4Ms92ZfFx

[NeonLX]

As far as I'm concerned (and that ain't very far in the grand scheme of things), both of the mainstream parties should be burned to the fucking ground. They are both corporatist, militarist bodies that exist merely to promote oligarchy. The "division" between the two is mainly for show.

I'm sure I'm being superficial and like that. But fuck it. When the government no longer represents citizens...well, what?

[seemslikeadream]

ask Assange ...he could help with that

oh but wait he only cares about his interests.....not what is best for the U.S.

[Harvey]

ask Assange ...he could help with that

oh but wait he only cares about his interests.....not what is best for the U.S.

Are we interested in caricatures or portraits?

[seemslikeadream]

Republican party headquarters is firebombed and a local business is daubed with Nazi graffiti in North Carolina
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... olina.html


Channeling Goebbels: Neo-Nazis Cheer Trump’s ‘Globalist’ Speech
http://www.nationalmemo.com/channeling- ... st-speech/


Trump son-in-law holds talks over post-election TV network
http://www.cnbc.com/2016/10/17/trump-so ... twork.html

[Wombaticus Rex]

"Leave Town or Else" is generally a KKK phrase in North Carolina, and many other states besides.

I would not be surprised to learn that the GOP have picked up a trick from campus activists and attacked themselves.

[seemslikeadream]

ask Assange ...he could help with that

oh but wait he only cares about his interests.....not what is best for the U.S.

Are we interested in caricatures or portraits?

Julian Assange is no hero of the left – after years evading justice, now he’s now buddying up with Donald Trump
As he faces questioning in London, the liberal left must accept the significant role the WikiLeaks founder is playing in Trump’s presidential campaign

Mike Harris @mjrharris 1 hour ago

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange holds up a kitten, a gift from his children, at the Ecuadorian Embassy in central London Reuters
Donald Trump is the greatest threat to Western civilisation we have faced since the fall of the Berlin Wall. If elected, he threatens to jail his opponent, Hillary Clinton. He is emboldening the cranks and racists of the alt-right and destabilising the American people’s faith in their democratic institutions with his loose talk that the system is “rigged”. And, even though Trump represents a virulent strain of hard-right populism, he is being helped along by a hero of the libertarian left – Julian Assange.

Assange’s alliance with Donald Trump looks, on the face of it, like one of the most unusual political alliances in recent history. The players in this dangerous alliance may share a fondness for the conservative patriarchy of Vladimir Putin’s Russia but, for Assange, Trump is part of his calculations to escape his room in the Ecuadorian Embassy in Knightsbridge. A presidential pardon may stop him facing jail in the US (though no charges have been brought against him there so far), but it won’t stop his extradition to Sweden to face sexual assault allegations.

Assange’s political influence only remains because too many on the left have made half a decade’s worth of excuses for him.

For a brief moment, Julian Assange looked like the future. The hacker-turned-activist had the vision to co-found WikiLeaks and turn it into the world’s number one whistleblowing platform. He was hailed as the spirit incarnate of the internet; a man willing to face prison to let people know the truth about corruption in their governments and corporations. It is easy to forget how influential WikiLeaks once was.

Trump vs Clinton Like 'Cholera vs Gonorrhoea' - Assange at Green Party Convention
The organisation had an inner circle of highly skilled data analysts and journalists working across the globe on leaked documents. When WikiLeaks published US embassy cables on President Ben Ali’s pilfering of state assets for shopping trips in Paris, it helped trigger the uprising in Tunisia.

Assange inspired an era of whistleblowing, from Edward Snowden exposing illegal US and UK surveillance, to the Panama Papers that showed the extent of global tax avoidance. Assange was powerful, seemingly above the law, and attracting international attention. A minority of journalists dared ask the question: who can hold the whistleblowers to account?

On 20 August 2010, two women entered a Stockholm police station and asked police to ensure Assange took an HIV test. The women allege that Assange had committed rape and sexual assault, charges Assange denies. He was due to be interviewed by police on 14 October 2010, but instead fled Sweden for London in late September.

People around Assange began to trash the reputations of the two women involved saying they were motivated by “malice and money”. Others said the allegations were part of a sinister CIA plot to destroy WikiLeaks. Few of Assange’s celebrity friends were willing to ask the question, what if Assange had committed sexual assault.

The law in Sweden means the charge of sexual assault has already expired and the rape charge will expire in 2020. He is now due to be questioned again by Swedish prosecutors inside the Ecudorian Embassy.

By now, you may have expected a chorus of voices from the liberal-left calling for Assange to return to Sweden to face questioning. If he was innocent, why could he not be questioned on these serious charges? Instead, people made excuses.

The excuses continued when months later, Padraig Reidy and I exposed damning evidence that suggested a close associate of Assange had given top secret US embassy cables to the dictator of Belarus, which may have landed brave democracy activists in prison. At first, we heard nothing. It took a former WikiLeaks staffer, James Ball, to blow the whistle for us to be taken seriously: ironically, now leaks were exposing an apparent cover-up culture at WikiLeaks.



It is because prominent people have made personal and professional excuses for Assange that he feels beyond reproach – even as he alienates those closest to him. Emboldened, Assange is going for his greatest ever prize: the US presidency.

WikiLeaks is leading the attack on Trump’s rival, Hillary Clinton, with leaks that have so far cost the job of Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, the former Democrat party chair. Just last Thursday, another 2,000 internal emails from the Clinton campaign were released. And moments after the infamous video of Trump allegedly boasting about groping women was put online, Wikileaks responded with leaked emails of Hillary Clinton’s speeches to Wall Street banks.

Robert Mackey of The Intercept, a site that has done much to give whistleblowers a global voice, says WikiLeaks has “started to look more like the stream of an opposition research firm working mainly to undermine Hillary Clinton than the updates of a non-partisan platform for whistleblowers.”

It seems odd that the world’s most prominent whistleblowing website has leaked nothing on Donald Trump and his mysterious tax records, yet is leaking the personal details of Democrat party donors. It seems highly likely that Wikileaks received these leaked emails from hackers working for the Russian Government.

With ammunition from Wikileaks, Trump is hammering home his case that the first female nominee from a major party for the presidency is unfit for office. Trump has lavished WikiLeaks with praise, telling a rally in Pennsylvania, “I love Wikileaks”.

It is claimed that support for Wikileaks is rising among US right-wingers. FoxNews TV shock jock Sean Hannity went as far telling Assange in a live interview, “I do hope you get free one day.” This is perhaps Assange’s strategy - damage Clinton (who ran the State Department when Assange leaked the embassy cables) to secure a Trump win and a presidential pardon.

I’ve written at length about Obama’s war on whistleblowers and the appalling record of the Democrat party in prosecuting brave Americans who speak out about their government’s human rights abuses. I would support any campaign to prevent Julian Assange’s extradition to the US, where the law would prevent him from running a public interest defence for his disclosures and would likely see him placed in jail alongside Chelsea Manning, who has suffered disgracefully at the hands of the US government.

If Donald Trump becomes US President, it will be in no small way thanks to the efforts of Julian Assange. After they’ve defended Assange against allegations of rape and helping the dictator of Belarus, will the liberal left continue to defend him if he gets Trump elected?
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/jul ... 65911.html

[stillrobertpaulsen]

"Leave Town or Else" is generally a KKK phrase in North Carolina, and many other states besides.

I would not be surprised to learn that the GOP have picked up a trick from campus activists and attacked themselves.

That was the exact reaction I had. Because the last thing anyone associated with Clinton wants is to generate sympathy for Trump. Considering she has been ahead of every poll in NC for the last month, albeit by a slim margin, this attack makes no sense whatsoever unless it's a false flag.

Not that it's impossible that someone with an extreme hatred of Trump just lashed out. It's just that it's extremely unusual for a Hillary Clinton supporter to show such passion.

[seemslikeadream]

The GOP Bloodbath: Roger Stone Threatens Donald Trump

By Eternal Hope
Sunday Oct 16, 2016 · 9:43 PM CDT


Roger Stone is the latest rat to jump the sinking ship. In the following tweet, he says that he is not bound by a certain non-disclosure agreement that he signed:


Daily Newsbin speculates:

“It turns out the entity with which I signed a non-disclosure agreement for the Trump campaign was never legally constituted,” Roger Stone tweeted on Sunday, adding the hashtag “#invalid.” The message couldn’t have been more clear: he’s threatening to spill the beans on Trump, despite the fact that the two men have been friends for decades. Stone had been a political advisor to the Donald Trump campaign last year before quitting in a dispute over the direction in which Trump was taking his candidacy. But according to numerous accounts, Trump has continued to rely on Stone’s advice from time to time in an informal capacity. However today’s tweet was a clear throwing down of the gauntlet, and in public no less.
And Politico reports that Mr. Stone is happy to cooperate with the FBI:

Stone, a longtime GOP operative and one of the youngest members of Richard Nixon’s infamous 1972 reelection bid, has taken on an outsized role in the murky world of the WikiLeaks documents thanks to his personal boasts of having regular contact with the group’s founder, Julian Assange, through “mutual friends.”

Several months ago, Stone predicted an October surprise that would disrupt Clinton’s campaign and his recent Twitter posts suggested Podesta would soon be facing scandal, including an August update stating, “Trust me, it will soon the Podesta’s time in the barrel. #CrookedHillary”

Speaking to reporters earlier this week on Clinton’s airplane, Podesta confirmed he’d spoken to the FBI on Sunday as it probed the criminal hack into his email and he leveled a charge that Stone had “advance knowledge” of the document leaks.
This is typical Republican behavior. When the heat gets too hot, it’s time to look out for number one.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/10/1 ... -democrats

Stone ‘happy to cooperate’ with FBI on WikiLeaks, Russian hacking probes
Officially, the FBI has refrained from giving any public signals that it’s investigating Trump associates.
A longtime Donald Trump confidant said Friday he is unfazed by calls for a federal investigation into allegations he’s colluding with WikiLeaks and Russian intelligence to sabotage Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
In an interview with POLITICO, Roger Stone said the FBI hasn’t contacted him to discuss his relationship with WikiLeaks and a series of anti-Clinton public statements that Democrats interpret as evidence he was well aware of the hacking into campaign chairman John Podesta’s Gmail account.
Story Continued Below
“I have not” heard from the FBI, Stone said. “But I’d be happy to cooperate if they decided to call me.”
Stone, a longtime GOP operative and one of the youngest members of Richard Nixon’s infamous 1972 reelection bid, has taken on an outsized role in the murky world of the WikiLeaks documents thanks to his personal boasts of having regular contact with the group’s founder, Julian Assange, through “mutual friends.”
Several months ago, Stone predicted an October surprise that would disrupt Clinton’s campaign and his recent Twitter posts suggested Podesta would soon be facing scandal, including an August update stating, “Trust me, it will soon the Podesta’s time in the barrel. #CrookedHillary”
Speaking to reporters earlier this week on Clinton’s airplane, Podesta confirmed he’d spoken to the FBI on Sunday as it probed the criminal hack into his email and he leveled a charge that Stone had “advance knowledge” of the document leaks.
John_Podesta_gty_629.jpg
The Podesta emails
Stone’s comments, combined with a swirl of additional controversies surrounding the role of other former Trump advisers with ties to Russia have prompted several Democrats, including Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, to request a wider federal investigation into some of the people who have been in the GOP nominee’s orbit.
On Friday, the top Democrats on four House committees repeated a request for the FBI to investigate the connections between Trump's presidential campaign and the alleged Russian hacks of Democratic organizations and figures, citing new comments from Stone.
"Troubling new evidence appears to show that the Trump campaign not only was aware of cyberattacks against Secretary Clinton’s campaign chairman, but was openly bragging about it as far back as August," wrote the congressmen, Reps. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, John Conyers of Michigan, Eliot Engel of New York and Bennie Thompson of Mississippi.
Also Friday, former Acting CIA Director Mike Morell said during a conference call organized by the Clinton campaign that several of the GOP nominee’s former staffers “may be in this more deeply and may have relationships with Russia, perhaps financial relationships or other relationships and they’re working on behalf of the Russians to get this material out and spread this around.”
“I don’t want to go overboard and say we know for sure, but I’m deeply concerned about it. It requires a full investigation and it requires the American people to know the truth here before Election Day,” Morell said.
On the call, Morell specifically named Stone, former campaign manager Paul Manafort and Carter Page, an investment banker who Trump in an interview with the Washington Post editorial board once described as a foreign policy adviser. CNN reported in August that the FBI and Justice Department had already opened a broad investigation that covers alleged corruption of the pro-Russian former president of Ukraine and his ties to Manafort.
Yahoo News, meanwhile, reported last month U.S. intelligence officials were looking into Page’s meetings with Russian officials where the adviser allegedly discussed lifting sanctions on the country if Trump won the White House. Page, who the Trump campaign says is not connected to the Republican nominee, wrote FBI Director James Comey last month asking him to put a “prompt end” to any inquiry looking into his ties to Russia, according to a letter first published by the Washington Post.
161410-john-podesta-getty-1160
Podesta tweaks WikiLeaks chief on Twitter
By BRENT GRIFFITHS
Officially, the FBI has refrained from giving any public signals that it’s investigating any of the Trump associates. During a House Judiciary Committee hearing last month, for example, Rep. Jerry Nadler singled out Stone for his acknowledged ties to Assange and the operative’s comments acknowledging the prospective leaks of the hacked documents. The New York Democrat then asked if Comey if his investigators had conducted any interviews with Stone.
“I don’t want to confirm whether there is or is not an investigation,” the FBI director replied, declining any additional comment.
But several current and former officials who have worked in the Justice Department, FBI and intelligence community said they have little doubt federal law enforcement is looking into the different questions surrounding the different current and one-time Trump campaign operatives. After all, Podesta confirmed he’s spoken with the FBI as part of its examination into his email hack. And last Friday, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson and director of national intelligence James Clapper issued an unprecedented statement signaling with high confidence that the Russian government was trying to meddle in the U.S. presidential election via cyber espionage.
“The way that DOJ works, once they start looking at something they don’t look at very narrow discrete questions when there are other related questions swirling around. They try to get the rest of the picture,” said Matthew Miller, a former Obama administration Justice Department spokesman. “It stands to reason,” he added, “they’d already be investigating the Trump campaign.”
A current Justice Department official agreed with the outlines of that assessment.
"You follow the evidence and the evidence leads you to wherever it takes you," the DOJ staffer told POLITICO. "That is how the investigation into the recent breaches will be done. You gather the pieces of the puzzle and put them together."
"Sometimes it leads to a guy in his basement. Sometimes it leads you to the People's Liberation Army [in China]. And sometimes it leads you to Iran's Revolutionary Guards,” the DOJ source added.
Multiple sources with a law enforcement background explained that the FBI — if it was investigating Stone or others — would likely still be in an evidence collection stage and nowhere near the point where they were ready to publicly question him, especially on a politically sensitive topic so close to Election Day.
“There’s no way they’d do that before the election,” said Jim Garland, a former senior Obama DOJ official who served as then-Attorney General Eric Holder’s deputy chief of staff. But given the series of Stone’s public remarks and familiarity with the WikiLeaks troves, Garland predicted the operative should expect a call. “Without a doubt he’s earned himself a subpoena.”
161014_elijah_cummings_getty_1160.jpg
Dems request FBI investigation of Trump campaign links to hacks
By TIM STARKS
Stone, meantime, pushed back in the interview on the Democrats’ demands for an investigation into his ties to the WikiLeaks saga, calling his accusers “partisan hacks with not a leg to stand on.”
“No, I don’t work for the Russians. I don’t work for the Russian intelligence. I have no Russian clients. I’ve not received any money from Russia directly or indirectly. It’s a dead end,” he said. “I’ve spent my entire political career as an anti-communist.”
Stone explained that he’s neither met nor spoken with Assange and he insisted that he’s played no role in the release of the hacked documents.
“I’m not orchestrating the activities or disclosures of WikiLeaks,” Stone said.
As for the hacked emails to date that have been released — a mish-mash of thousands of messages that included the first glimpses into Clinton’s private Wall Street speeches and tense personal battles inside the Clinton Foundation – Stone said what’s out so far is just “small potatoes compared to what I’m told is coming.”
Asked if he was concerned that the document dumps would lose their punch with the public if they continued surfacing in small batches each day through the end of the campaign, Stone replied, “I have a greater concern that certain media outlets have lost their journalistic objectivity. They’ll bury stories they won’t like or not report them at all.”
The WikiLeaks trove to date has only covered Clinton operatives, and the Democratic nominee’s campaign has declined to comment on the veracity of the emails. While Stone said he’d encourage the publication of documents pertaining to Trump or his campaign, he said he doubted they’d find anything incriminating because the real estate mogul doesn’t use e-mail. “All they’d learn,” Stone said, “is the inner workings of a real estate company.”

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/10/r ... sia-229821

[MacCruiskeen]

ask Assange ...he could help with that

oh but wait he only cares about his interests.....not what is best for the U.S.

Are we interested in caricatures or portraits?

Julian Assange is no hero of the left – after years evading justice, now he’s now buddying up with Donald Trump
As he faces questioning in London, the liberal left must accept the significant role the WikiLeaks founder is playing in Trump’s presidential campaign

Mike Harris @mjrharris 1 hour ago

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange holds up a kitten, a gift from his children, at the Ecuadorian Embassy in central London Reuters

Donald Trump is the greatest threat to Western civilisation we have faced since the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Hot damn! So exactly what makes Trump "the greatest threat to Western Civilization since the fall of the Berlin Wall."?? (he's worse than Osama bin Laden! Will he attack NYC and the Pentagon? Or what will he do? The answer's in the very next line:

If elected, he threatens to jail his opponent, Hillary Clinton.
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/jul ... 65911.html

Right. Western civilization = Hillary Clinton.

So who is this guy Mike Harris?

Mike Harris is the founder and director of 89up and the publisher of Little Atoms magazine

"89up"? The Formerly Independent is kind enough to provide a link:

89up Labs

89up Labs uses industry-leading social media tools which allow us to gain deep insights into target audiences, tailor tweets, Facebook posts, YouTube videos and website engagements, to amplify and enhance clients’ strategy and message.

I'm sorry, could you repeat that`?

to amplify and enhance clients’ strategy and message

Aha. Fees are negotiable, presumably. So what can you do for us, Mike?

89up Editorial

89up can put you in the media spotlight across a range of traditional and newer media outlets. This capacity stretches from the BBC to Buzzfeed, depending on the type of people you want to engage. Our affiliate Little Atoms, has for a decade been one of the UK’s most highly regarded podcasts, and is now also an online magazine - hosting some of the biggest names in art, science, literature and comedy.

Comedy, yes.

89up Advocacy

89up develops/creates campaigns to effectively influence political stakeholders and create a meaningful [sic!] debate on the issue at hand. Our social media analytic tools allow clients to target their campaign to the right people at the right time and in the right way

http://www.89up.org/#labs

Mike "Marketing" Harris: Man of Conscience, Gun for Hire, Defender of Western Civilization, and self-appointed voice of "the liberal left"!



(It would be very dry comedy indeed if WikiLeaks were to respond immediately by hacking & publishing the emails of "89up" to and from its *cough* clients.)

[seemslikeadream]

The Republican Party after Donald Trump
Donald Trump, 2016
Donald Trump speaks during the final day of the Republican National Convention in Cleveland on July 21, 2016. (Carolyn Kaster / AP)
Editorial Board
When the history of the 2016 presidential campaign is written, one remarkable question will loom above all others: How did Republicans come to nominate Donald Trump, the most repugnant and reviled candidate in modern times?

We have a good inkling of the answer, although Election Day is still three weeks away and we won't predict the outcome: Trump's dark side — the angry, petulant, irrational id to his huge, huge ego — overwhelmed his surprising political savvy. He had a potent message to voters that he would "make America great again," but he couldn't close the deal with them. He was reckless, uncaring, unthinking. He gave in to all his ugliest impulses — the sexism, xenophobia, dictator envy — and made the situation worse by denying his failings rather than atoning. Underneath was something more reprehensible: allegations of sexual misconduct akin to the assaults in Trump's boasts.

Trump might have won this election if it had been held two months ago. Thankfully, he has since imploded.

Maybe the definitive examination of this campaign we envision reading one day would be even better told as a staged drama. In theater the protagonist often has a fall from grace and Trump's plummet has been a doozy. What gives the storyline added tension is that the Republicans entered this presidential cycle on quite a roll. It's easy to forget, given the disastrous turn the primaries took when Trump elbowed his way in as an interloper, but the GOP isn't the shambles it appears now.

Over the past eight years, while sitting in opposition to President Barack Obama, Republicans have gained control of the U.S. Senate and House, and dominated gubernatorial and state legislative races. Going into Election Day, according to Ballotpedia, Republicans control 23 states (where they hold the governorship and majorities in both the state House and state Senate) compared with the Democrats' control of seven states.

There's a reason for this. The Republican Party at its best is the standard-bearer for the American dream. It's the party of opportunity that believes government's chief responsibility is the economic empowerment of all citizens. The recipe for liberty and best path to achievement for the most people is to encourage individual initiative and put limits on the scope and power of government.

Smear-fest interrupted by Michelle Obama's voice of reason
Smear-fest interrupted by Michelle Obama's voice of reason
But today's divided Republicans lack a coherent agenda. They can't agree on a message; arch-conservatives have overtaken moderates in many states. There's a similar schism on the Democratic side between the burgeoning left wing of the party and the moderate side. Hillary Clinton is trying to split the difference, but she's got one great advantage: She isn't Donald Trump. That's probably enough to defeat him.

As a believer in traditional Republican principles, this page rejected Trump in March. It was clear to us that he was unfit for the presidency and unrecognizable as a GOP leader. We've empathized with the many Americans who feel both major parties have walked away from them.

Historically the Party of Lincoln had a message that still can resonate with a changing America. It was neither the immigration-bashing party nor the party of intolerance, misogyny, exclusion. Those are Trump traits. Republican values embrace equal opportunity for all — including, yes, the women, ethnic minorities and many others whom Trump has slandered and would ostracize.


These are among the multitudes of Americans who could be receptive to a message of opportunity. That is, receptive to a message that Republican leaders such as Paul Ryan and the late Jack Kemp have long advocated — but which now are suppressed by the ignominy Trump has brought to the party. "Morning in America"? This guy peddles bleakness, ruin.

With a final debate scheduled for Wednesday and the election hurriedly to follow, Republicans soon will survey their rubble. We hope that, come the morning of Nov. 9, their party begins its journey home.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opin ... story.html

Even after Trump loses, the GOP is still toast

Donald Trump, 2016 Republican presidential nominee, waves to attendees during a campaign event in Cincinnati, Ohio, U.S., on Thursday, Oct. 13, 2016. (Luke Sharrett/Bloomberg)

By Bruce Bartlett October 14
Bruce Bartlett has worked for many Republican officeholders, including Jack Kemp and President Ronald Reagan, for whom he was a domestic policy adviser. He is the author of “Wrong on Race: The Democratic Party's Buried Past."

Last year, I wrote an article calling Donald Trump a godsend for moderate Republicans. Trump, I predicted, would lose so spectacularly that the GOP would be forced to transform itself, surrendering its mindless obstructionism, science denial, xenophobia and plutocracy. After a purge like that, the party would finally be able to compete in future national elections.

I was wrong. I now see that Trump’s candidacy has exacerbated the Republican Party’s weaknesses, alienating minorities, fracturing the base and stunting smart policy development. The party’s structural problems are so severe that reform is impossible. Even if Trump loses and the GOP races to forget him, the party is doomed. And very few of our leaders seem to care.

In the short run, it will be easy for Republicans to convince themselves that nothing needs to change. The establishment believes that Trump is an anomaly, an aberration. GOP leaders think the party’s next nominee will be a more typical politician who knows the issues, has well-developed debating skills and who will appeal to the elite and the Trumpkins. Someone like John Kasich or Marco Rubio.

How the GOP and Donald Trump are handling their messy breakup Play Video2:11
Many leaders also assume that Hillary Clinton is an automatic one-termer. They think she’s incompetent, scandal-ridden and hell-bent on destroying the economy. They know, too, that neither party has held the White House for more than three terms in the post-World War II era.

But Clinton’s chances of being reelected in 2020 are better than Republicans think. Already, Democrats have a virtual lock on 18 states, giving them an almost automatic 242 electoral votes. States such as Virginia, Colorado and Florida routinely vote Democratic, too.

Additionally, the Republican Party will have to contend with the Trump constituency, which will remain a powerful force in the presidential primaries (fueled, perhaps, by a Trump cable channel). White nationalists will continue to back racist candidates, alienating minority voters. It’s not hard to imagine another cycle with 17 candidates vying for the nomination. If that comes to pass, someone could win the primary race with less than half the vote, as Trump did. It could well be a candidate unpopular with mainstream conservatives. Even if not, it’s hard to imagine Republicans unifying around a consensus candidate.

If Clinton wins a second term, major progressive change becomes possible. Sixteen years of Democratic presidents will give the Supreme Court a solid liberal majority, making electoral reform doable. Restrictions on campaign contributions and gerrymandering could emerge, making it harder to draw districts that reliably swing one way or the other. If Democrats put resources into state legislative races, they may be able to undercut GOP gerrymandering after the 2020 census. The practice gives Republicans more seats than their share of the aggregate House vote — in 2014 they earned 51 percent of the vote but 57 percent of the seats.

By 2022, it’s possible that Democrats will control Congress and gridlock will be broken. Once that happens, the federal government will be able to tackle major issues. The constant Republican demands for budget cuts, tax cuts and deregulation won’t be the starting points for all policy discussion. We could see fundamental tax reform that raises rates for the rich and multinational corporations, meaningful measures to address climate change, fresh funding for crumbling infrastructure, and a public option for the Affordable Care Act. These measures, which I support, are popular with Americans. Their passage will bring more voters into the Democratic fold.

These policies will, of course, be opposed by Republicans (even those who know better) because the GOP’s Trump/tea party wing will control the nominating and primary process for years to come, dooming any leader or lawmaker who compromises with Democrats.

At this point, corporations and lobbyists will have to work almost exclusively with the Democratic Party to have a seat at the policy table. Even the billionaires who now provide the oil that keeps the GOP machine lubricated may decide that if they can’t have tax cuts, they should try to carve out special breaks for themselves. To do so, they may start funding friendly Democratic candidates and campaigns. As former U.S. deputy Treasury secretary Roger Altman showed recently in the Financial Times, busi­ness­peo­ple are already flocking to Clinton, and to Democrats more broadly.

View Photos Following a Friday report by The Washington Post on a 2005 video of the GOP presidential nominee, various Republicans have said they no longer plan to vote for him and some call for him to drop out.
Deprived of funding and business support, the national GOP will shrivel to what the party has become in California — irrelevant politically and unable to win outside its wealthy, right-wing enclaves. Republicans hold just 35 percent of the California Senate and Assembly, and have no hope of regaining the governor’s mansion or U.S. Senate seats. Virtually all debate about policy takes place among the Democratic Party’s strong factions. Everyone who matters is a Democrat.

Eventually, of course, Democrats will become corrupt, will overreach or will bear the blame for things beyond their control, like a recession. They may foolishly nominate someone too far left for the country, giving a Republican another shot at the White House. A strong leader could change the GOP’s trajectory, like Dwight Eisenhower did after five straight Republican presidential losses from 1932 to 1948. He put the party, as conservative then as it is today (just read the 1952 platform) on a more moderate, technocratic path that continued for a quarter-century through Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. A leader like Eisenhower might help right the GOP, attracting moderate voters and enhancing the party’s crossover appeal.

When I began criticizing the GOP for pandering to populists and extremists, I was largely alone. But now, longtime Republican luminaries, including John McCain’s 2008 campaign manager, Steve Schmidt, and Washington Post columnist George Will, share my perspective. Many, such as Josh Barro, a columnist for Business Insider, have virtually washed their hands of the party, viewing the intellectual rot as terminal.

Of course, the conservative era that lasted from 1994 to 2016 will leave behind legacies — some court decisions and legislative policies, such as aggressive tax cuts and a focus on deficit reduction, will be hard to reverse. But by and large, the right will cease being the obstacle to progress that it has been. Democrats will have to follow through with policy actions and political organizing at the state and local levels if they hope to see a long-term period in power. Still, the ground is being plowed and a brighter future — one without gridlock, when one major party can enact sweeping change — is visible on the horizon.

Because of the way our government is set up, the United States will probably always have two parties. But it is not foreordained that the GOP will be the center-right party. It could go the way of the Whigs or Canada’s Conservative Party in 1993 and literally disappear, or it could reconstitute itself so radically that it bears little resemblance to the Republican Party of today. One thing, however, is certain: A party that cannot capture the White House cannot survive.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... 9c2767a1e3