I’m reasonably certain we didn’t try to hack Russian registrar of voter databases (and done a lot of the other things the Russians are accused of doing). Additionally, much of this was known far before the actual election (you may recall how pissed off Dems were about the Comey letter in October about Clinton, when the Dem Senators were almost screaming at Comey to release the Russian interference evidence). IMHO, the primary reason it wasn’t released was because the Obama administration thought Clinton would still win and was trying to avoid the perception of interfering in the election.
As you know perfectly well, he tried to get a bipartisan condemnation of Russian meddling in October, but Mitch McConnell and the GOP said no.
… His mistake was in assuming the GOP might actually act in the nation’s interest.
At least some ex-Obama staffers now feel they totally dropped the ball on that. But in Obama’s defense, it was a motherfucking bear of a problem. Can you imagine the response on the right if he had come out strong or attempted to use his authority before the election? And how it would have affected Hillary had she won?
I still think he probably fucked up, because his job is to execute the law, not to worry about the next election. But our current climate is so poisonous that I understand why he pussyfooted.
The left failed to recognize the danger the Russians posed on a global level.
Romney, when he said they were the greatest threat to the US, back in 2012, was right. And folks laughed at him.
But their error could be attributed to naivete.
The fact that the right is now wrong to look the other way regarding the Russians, because they think it is going to give them some advantage politically? That is morally reprehensible.
Guys, guys, as “everyone knows,” it’s all Fake News.*
*what’s galling is that the Trumpistas had the chtutzpah to appropriate the term that was originally applied to Putin-sockpuppet-authored Facebook memes. #smh
Reuters being on the list raises my confidence level significantly
*what’s galling is that the Trumpistas had the chtutzpah to appropriate the term that was originally applied to Putin-sockpuppet-authored Facebook memes. #smh
Yeah, I prefer “lugenpresse,” personally.
I only mention it because at one time I worked on the papers of James K. Polk, which are housed in a threesome with the papers of Jackson and Johnson, the trio making up the trifecta of Tennessee presidents. There was always some friendly competition, but the thing that got folks the most bent out of shape I think was when folks confused one Andrew with the other.
Though in truth, they are both pretty wretched.
It was first reported by a German newspaper, FWIW.
Well, to his credit, Andrew Johnson didn’t turn traitor when all of the Confederates did.
I was wondering why there would be a leak from Mueller’s team all of the sudden after they’ve been so quiet. But if it’s coming from the German side, that would explain it.
True.
The saddest thing about Trump is he ruins the elegant symmetry of Lincoln having been bracketed by the two worst presidents in U.S. history…
Actually, I rephrased my post to reflect that Johnson never broke his oath to the Constitution, and thus was never a Confederate, traitors all.
Huh, this seems to contradict Junior’s previous statements about the “adoptions” meeting.
Donald Trump Jr. asked a Russian lawyer at the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting whether she had evidence of illegal donations to the Clinton Foundation, the lawyer told the Senate Judiciary Committee in answers to written questions obtained exclusively by NBC News.
The lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, told the committee that she didn’t have any such evidence, and that she believes Trump misunderstood the nature of the meeting after receiving emails from a music promoter promising incriminating information on Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump’s Democratic opponent.
Once it became apparent that she did not have meaningful information about Clinton, Trump seemed to lose interest, Veselnitskaya said, and the meeting petered out.
As I like to say, they’re no longer conservatives but simply tribal partisans. Ideologically diseased minds who hate the opposition party more than they care about the country or traditional conservative principles. It takes no effort to imagine their reaction if the IC stated that Russia had intervened in Hillary’s favor. Trump and his followers would be calling for a special do-over to the election, and right-wing media would hammer that point so hard, so consistently, for months on end, that it would begin to leech over into the mainstream media. . .just as Benghazi and other fake scandals did.
I mean… look at the Uranium thing.
It’s terrible… because the Russians are our friends and it’s fine?
There’s no coherent stream of thought going through them anymore.
The Uranium One thing is literally just “we didn’t collude with Russia, YOU colluded with Russia!”
That’s literally all it is. It’s the “I’m rubber you’re glue” defense.
It only works on imbeciles, but… well…
“You’re the puppet!”
That is true, but not the whole story. Johnson had no more love for the North (or frankly, for the USA as a constitutional entity) than most of the other southerners, but he hated the plantation owners in western Tennessee and the political upper class in Nashville even more. He certainly had no interest in ending slavery except as a way to stick it to the rich folks, and when it came time for pardons after the war, his only goal was to make the wealthy grovel for them; he didn’t really object to former Confederates resuming their places of privilege as long as they sucked up to him for once.
While his impeachment proceedings were, to be fair, pretty much trumped up charges, he was by most accounts pretty much a drunken wreck in the last year or so of his presidency, and while probably no one could have co-existed with that Republican Congress after Lincoln’s death, Johnson was singularly ill-equipped to do so.
Whether his botching of Reconstruction is worse than Jackson’s near-genocide of Native Americans is perhaps a worthy argument, though I tend to find Johnson overall much less horrible than Jackson, all things considered, even though Jackson was quite smart, had very coherent if often (to me) rather objectionable constitutional views, and at the very least was virulently opposed to disunion as well.