Since the President’s acquittal in the Senate back in January, several key senators have been working to turn their committee’s oversight functions into both an information laundry as part of the Black PSYOP against Vice President Biden and an oppo research and distribution arm of the President’s reelection campaign. These efforts are being led by Senator Ron Johnson, who chairs the Homeland Security Committee; Senator Charles Grassley, who chairs the Finance Committee; and Senator Lindsey Graham, who chairs the Judiciary Committee and are intended to do one thing and one thing only: dirty up Vice President Biden ahead of his election, as well as a number of his senior advisors who would be expect to have senior appointments in a Biden administration should he win in November. Should he indeed win, expect the Senate Republicans to use these hearings to either deny, should they hold their majority, or try to derail and deny, should they be in the minority, the Senate confirmation for these senior Biden aides and advisors. In this way the Black PSYOP campaign against VP Biden has metastasized in a new ugly way: to not just try to make him unelectable, but to damage many of his most senior and trusted aides and advisors so that they would be unconfirmable should he be elected and appoint them to the most senior positions in his administration.
Senator Graham kicked off the next phase of the Black PSYOP today with hearings into how the counterintelligence investigation into the connections between the President’s 2016 campaign and a variety of Russian nationals who all link back to Vladimir Putin, which is being referred to by Republicans and conservatives as Obamagate, was started and conducted. The focus of today’s hearing was on former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates. You can see this whole hearing at the video below:
As you can imagine, Senator Graham, as well as the other Republican senators on the Judiciary Committee were functioning in the closed epistemological bubble of conspiracies about the 2016 election.
Lindsey Graham has begun the Sally Yates hearing by raising a bunch of conspiracy theories about Biden and Susan Rice, in case you wondered what the point of this hearing about four years old events 90 days before another election was.
— Matthew Miller (@matthewamiller) August 5, 2020
The key logical flaw in all of this, not that there aren’t several of them, is that Secretary Clinton did in fact lose the election in the only way that mattered: the Electoral College. And that the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence has definitively concluded that not only did Russia through a variety of actors, at the orders of Russian President Vladimir Putin, interfere in the 2016 US election, but that these Russian or Russian backed actors tried to conspire with the President’s campaign, campaign officials, family members, and surrogates. And that the President’s campaign, campaign officials, family members, and surrogates failed to make it work because the President’s campaign, campaign officials, family members, and surrogates were, with the exception of Roger Stone’s conspiring with Wikileakes, too inept to actually conspire with Russia. The logical flaw also ignores that Vladimir Putin had a clear preference for the President and did everything he could to see him elected in 2016, including acting to harm the candidacies of the other Republican primary candidates like Senators Graham and Cruz.
The origin of the conspiracy theory that the Senate Republicans, the President, other Republicans, and conservatives are pushing was actually created by Konstantin Kilimnik and pushed to Paul Manafort who then laundered it through his criminal defense. It was also laundered through Politico by a discredited Ukrainian junior foreign service officer. And before you ask, yes the Politico reporter was Ken Vogel who has continued to try to peddle this made up garbage at The New York Times.
Former Acting Attorney General Yates did a very effective job of pushing back and knocking down the conspiracies that the Republican senators on the committee kept asking her about or suggesting happened.
NEW: Sally YATES used a Republican-led hearing to, under oath, counter claims that have become Trumpian gospel:
That Obama/Biden influenced the Flynn investigation, that there was no basis for the FBI to interview Flynn, and that Flynn was spied on.https://t.co/eMW0HAhipS
— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) August 5, 2020
YATES: "During the meeting, the president, the VP, the natsec adviser did not attempt to in any way to direct or influence any investigation."
"No such thing happened."
— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) August 5, 2020
Senator Graham’s efforts in the Senate Judiciary Committee are not, however, the only Republican efforts to turn the US Senate and its oversight functions into an information laundry against Vice President Biden. Senators Johnson and Grassley are running the other part of the Black PSYOP, which is receiving information from some of Putin’s assets in Ukraine, who are working with the President’s private attorney Rudy Giuliani, to dirty up Vice President Biden ahead of the election.
Telizhenko, a former Ukrainian diplomat and associate of fellow cigar aficionado Rudy Giuliani, never drifted far from his obsession: Joe Biden and his son Hunter.
For three years, he has worked to help President Donald Trump get reelected by exposing what he perceives to be the corrupt actions of the Bidens in Ukraine. And he said he’s not done.
Telizhenko first emerged on the political scene in 2017, when he was interviewed for a now infamous Politico article in which he alleged that Ukraine had interfered in the 2016 election, a charge that has been debunked.
He has since become a darling of the pro-Trump right-wing media and is part of a ragtag group of Ukrainian operatives working with Giuliani and hoping to help Congressional Republicans in the coming weeks surface damaging details about the Biden family.
Telizhenko and Onyshchenko said they have been asked to be interviewed as part of the Senate inquiry and have shared materials with Republican members of the committee. The two have plans to visit the US soon, and Telizhenko was setting up to attend the Republican National Convention in Florida before it was canceled.
The four Ukrainians working to launder this information through Senators Johnson and Grassley are not in very good standing back in Ukraine and their information has been widely debunked and discredited.
And, so far, the recordings have done nothing to substantiate, let alone advance, the accusations from Trump, Giuliani, and Republicans of Biden corruption in Ukraine.
The four Ukrainian operatives certainly are not held in high repute in their home country.
“They can’t be trusted, as they are pursuing their own agenda and using all sorts of lies and manipulations for that,” Daria Kaleniuk, executive director of Ukraine’s Anti-Corruption Action Center, told BuzzFeed News about the Ukrainians.
Volodymyr Yermolenko, chief editor of the news site Ukraine World and director for analysis at Internews Ukraine, a media-focused nongovernmental organization, described the four men as “dubious personalities” and “certainly not idealists trying to unmask corruption.”
Senators Johnson and Grassley are, of course, undaunted and are both pushing ahead with their efforts and pushing back on the criticism they are receiving.
The letter also confirms our reporting on the packets of information about Biden that were sent to the senators by Andrii Derkach (though Johnson/Grassley continue to deny receiving it).
This was also mentioned in the classified addendum.
Original story:https://t.co/x0AGdWHTzx
— Andrew Desiderio (@AndrewDesiderio) August 5, 2020
Two top Republican senators on Wednesday denied they are pushing Russian disinformation, responding directly to charges from Democratic congressional leaders who have demanded additional public disclosures about the Kremlin’s interference in the 2020 presidential election.
Sens. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Chuck Grassley of Iowa, who are spearheading investigations targeting presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and his son Hunter, maintained they have “neither sought out, relied upon, nor publicly released anything that could even remotely be considered disinformation.”
“It is certainly our goal to eradicate foreign influence from our elections,” Johnson and Grassley wrote in a letter responding to the Democrats. “But your use of this issue to knowingly and recklessly promote false narratives for political purposes is completely contrary to that goal.”
Their letter was addressed to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Senate Intelligence Vice Chair Mark Warner (D-Va.), and House Intelligence Chair Adam Schiff (D-Calif.).
Last month, the group demanded a briefing for all members of Congress focused on foreign interference in the 2020 election, based on their assertions that lawmakers are being targeted by those meddling efforts. They also have urged the Trump administration to publicly reveal additional information about the nature of the foreign-influence campaign. Intelligence officials told House lawmakers last week that the Russians are seeking to boost President Donald Trump in the 2020 campaign.
The public version of the letter was vague about those threats, but POLITICO reported that the classified addendum to the letter specifically names Johnson’s investigation as vehicle for “laundering” a foreign influence campaign aimed at denigrating Biden.
POLITICO also reported that the addendum states that a Ukrainian lawmaker linked to the Kremlin, Andrii Derkach, sent information about Biden to Johnson, Grassley and other Trump allies who have pushed similar corruption claims against the Bidens. The senators have denied receiving such informational packets from Derkach, who has long attempted to tar Biden.
Johnson and Grassley confirmed in the letter that the addendum does, in fact, mention the Biden investigation and the Derkach packets. They also said they did not receive access to the classified addendum until “late last week.”
“Your misplaced motives aside, the substance of your letter and addendum also grossly mischaracterizes our investigation in an effort to shoehorn it into the false ‘Russian disinformation’ narrative you have promoted for years,” Johnson and Grassley wrote, accusing Democrats of weaponizing Russian interference to advance their political goals.
Note what Senators Johnson and Grassley have done in their letter. Despite the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence’s extensively documented multi-part report on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election on behalf of the President, Senators Johnson and Grassley call this a “the false ‘Russian disinformation’ narrative”. They also deny that they are using Russian disinformation, despite having previously stated that they were in receipt of that information:
Spokespersons for Johnson and Senate Finance Committee Chair Chuck Grassley, who is aiding Johnson in the Biden probe, defended their inquiry and use of information from Telizhenko and other Ukrainians.
In a written response to questions, the senators told BuzzFeed News: “As with any inquiry, you get answers by asking questions. Those who restrict themselves from reviewing matters associated with ‘people of ill repute’ won’t have much luck uncovering wrongdoing or improving accountability.”
We know that these accusations against Vice President Biden and his son Hunter Biden are part of a Russian disinformation campaign that began in April 2014 and was intended to dirty up three potential candidates for president in 2016, VP Biden, Secretary Kerry, and VP Cheney, by insinuating that they were facilitating and benefiting from unethical behavior engaged in by their children.
Senators Graham, Grassley, and Johnson are all twisting the Senate’s oversight function in order to launder this six year old Russian disinformation through the Senate and through the news media to damage Vice President Biden and harm his electoral chances in November and to dirty up a number of his most senior aides and advisors to harm their chances for Senate confirmation should Biden win and nominate them for senior positions in his administration. They are aided and abetted in this by conservative news, digital news, and social media. Nathan J. Robinson, who I do not agree with on almost anything, has made a very good point about the asymmetric reality of America’s information, especially its news, dissemination system (emphasis mine):
It costs money to produce good writing, to run a website, to license photographs. A lot of money, if you want quality. Asking people for a fee to access content is therefore very reasonable. You don’t expect to get a print subscription to the newspaper gratis, why would a website be different? I try not to grumble about having to pay for online content, because I run a magazine and I know how difficult it is to pay writers what they deserve.
But let us also notice something: the New York Times, the New Yorker, the Washington Post, the New Republic, New York, Harper’s, the New York Review of Books, the Financial Times, and the London Times all have paywalls. Breitbart, Fox News, the Daily Wire, the Federalist, the Washington Examiner, InfoWars: free! You want “Portland Protesters Burn Bibles, American Flags In The Streets,” “The Moral Case Against Mask Mandates And Other COVID Restrictions,” or an article suggesting the National Institutes of Health has admitted 5G phones cause coronavirus—they’re yours. You want the detailed Times reports on neo-Nazis infiltrating German institutions, the reasons contact tracing is failing in U.S. states, or the Trump administration’s undercutting of the USPS’s effectiveness—well, if you’ve clicked around the website a bit you’ll run straight into the paywall. This doesn’t mean the paywall shouldn’t be there. But it does mean that it costs time and money to access a lot of true and important information, while a lot of bullshit is completely free.
What Senators Graham, Johnson, and Grassley are doing is not intended to produce new legislation to prevent foreign interference in US elections, to require campaigns to immediately notify the FBI if members of the campaign are approached by foreign actors or agents of foreign powers, or protect the integrity of the 2020 elections – presidential, congressional, state, and local. Rather what they are doing is intended to produce disinformation and agitprop that will be laundered through conservative news media, conservative digital news media, and conservative social media to damage Vice President Biden, his campaign, and his senior aides and advisors. The laundering of this information through these sources is intended to force the mainstream news media to cover it as news that has to be reported and then fact checked, which will then push it into mainstream digital news and social media, furthering the reach of the disinformation and agitprop. Especially as most, if not all of these mainstream news sites are paywalled, which restricts the ability to access the fact checking and the debunking. Thanks to the efforts of Senators Graham, Johnson, and Grassley, the Senate is the laundry used to wash this disinformation and agitprop, disinformation and agitprop that is documented as originating in Russian state backed news media in 2014 and that has been thoroughly debunked.
If we stipulate that Senators Graham, Grassley, and Johnson are not Russian assets or under Russian influence, the question is what would they be doing differently if they were? And the answer is nothing!
Open thread!
A Ghost to Most
“Y’all better buckle up. This sh…stuff is real.”
– Michael Steele
Hildebrand
Outside of the right-wing bubble, who believes any of this bs? I mean that – I really don’t think this stuff is going to swing votes. They are playing a hand that worked back in 2016 because Hillary Clinton was perceived by a great many (not just Republicans) as unlikable because of who she was (i.e., a woman, and a Clinton). I just don’t think that Biden has the same problem in 2020, which means the same old show isn’t going to work as effectively (no matter who the VP winds up being).
Patricia Kayden
Gin & Tonic
Really good post, Adam.
Adam L Silverman
@Patricia Kayden: Did you see the list of people the President is demanding moderate the debates?
Patricia Kayden
@Adam L Silverman: 😂 Yeah right. Not gonna happen, Donny!!
Adam L Silverman
@Gin & Tonic: Thank you.
I’d really like to not have to write any more of them in this series. I do not believe I am going to get that wish fulfilled.
Patricia Kayden
Adam L Silverman
@Patricia Kayden: My feeling is that Biden’s stipulations should be:
Adam L Silverman
@Hildebrand: The majority of Americans don’t pay a lot of attention to politics. This is intended to influence them, because it’ll be laundered through Facebook and Twitter and a variety of other formats. The intention is to create a negative association in their minds with Biden. That’s it.
TS (the original)
Interesting that members of previous administrations turn up for question time – while those related to the current administration do not. Says everything about trump and his minions.
Just another issue that Biden has to sort out.
Frank Wilhoit
@Adam L Silverman: 30 years.
debbie
@Adam L Silverman:
Those stipulations all work for me, but add a fifth that requires access to the stage solely via steep, slippery ramps.
JMG
@Adam L Silverman: INO there’s just too much going on in people’s actual lives that is inherently political due to the coronavirus and its economic effect for this stuff to matter. People who’re out of work or working from home and trying to supervise their children’s remote learning at the same time or who have a sick family member aren’t going to care about this stuff at all. They have too much on their plate to think about it.
NickM
The NY Attorney General announced a “major national announcement” tomorrow. Wonder what that means…
WaterGirl
@NickM: oooh. do you have a link?
Adam L Silverman
@NickM: Knowing how Vance operates, it means that Marc Kassowitz, one of the President’s private attorneys, has given Vance another campaign donation, so nothing to see here.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Adam L Silverman:
I sincerely doubt it will. Trump is a known quantity now; the incumbent. He has completely fucked up everything from the pandemic response to the economy, to his DHS goons kidnapping people off the street. The vast majority of Americans see through his bullshit. If Burisma didn’t hurt Biden last year, I don’t see why it would now.
If anything, the news is going to be overwhelmed with COVID-19 stories. Schools are going to reopen this fall and more outbreaks will occur. Not to mention so many still out of work
I understand what you’re saying, Adam, and I appreciate your work. Like others have said, I have my doubts that this is going to be effective. The dynamics are different from 2016
Suzy
Mr. Silverman, can we hope that the “deep state”, that is, the intelligence community, people within get FBI, the DNI, etc., are going to do SOMETHING ? We need people of high stature within the intelligence community to be heroes, risk their careers and denounce what’s happening.
I mean, this is NUTS !! The Senate republicans collaborating with the Russia disinformation campaign.
At the very minimum, we need leakers. TONS of them !
And, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, WHEN IS ROBERT MUELLER GOING TO UNDERSTAND THAT STAYING ABOVE THE FRAY DOESN’T DO IT THIS TIME ? THAT HE NEEDS TO CALL OUT A PRESS CONFERENCE AND USE HIS REPUTATION TO DENOUNCE WHAT’S HAPPENING IN THE SENATE ?
Yes, I’m screaming. Because your post has scared the hell out of me.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Hildebrand:
@JMG:
This. Nobody is going to care about this crazy shit. There’s too much going on daily and I doubt that’s going to change in 3 months. Biden doesn’t have nearly enough baggage, right or wrong, that Hillary Clinton did
Hildebrand
@Adam L Silverman: I understand – I just don’t see the same return on investment that they got with Hillary’s emails (or anything else that they threw at her – but the emails business was their bread and butter). That was a vague story with ‘nefarious’ intent because it was tied to long trail of hatred for Hillary Clinton – people believed it, or allowed it to spin out, because they assumed the Clintons to be dirty, thus it reinforced a long-held suspicion. Of course, in all of that, misogyny played a massive role.
Trying to do the same with Biden (and Obama) just doesn’t work outside of those who already are safely in the Trump camp, because they don’t have the same levels of baked-in suspicion.
I understand why they are doing it, I just don’t think it will work. A. It’s a gambit they have already used. B. Biden is generally likable. C. Graham and the others are now known Trumpists – no one believes their concern trolling anymore. McCain is dead and Graham pissed on their relationship (and it was always McCain who the press slavered over – nobody actually liked or respected Graham). Graham and the others don’t have plausible deniability any more (whereas he certainly did in 2016 when he was crapping on Trump). Which means a good many reporters, who would have been duped back in 2016, simply won’t give them the benefit of the doubt. By the time this nonsense gets run through the wash, only Fox News, Redstate, and their ilk will even run it.
(edit) D. As others have noted – we have far greater concerns than three-rail bank-shot knavery.
NickM
@Adam L Silverman: It’s Leticia James the NY State AG that made the announcement.
JMG
@Adam L Silverman: Letitia James is NY state AG. Vance is Manhattan DA.
The Thin Black Duke
@JMG: Yep. In this game, the virus is the wild card in the deck and it’s not going away, no matter what Trump and the GOP chooses to believe.
Adam L Silverman
@Suzy: There is no such thing as the deep state. There is a bureaucracy. It is incredibly risk averse. Frankly, our system and institutions are not set up to handle, including respond to, being subverted from within by the President, his senior appointees, and almost the entirety of the members of his party in Congress.
oatler.
We might get Chuck Todd or Andrea Mitchell to moderate it. “But hasn’t the other side…?”
Adam L Silverman
@Hildebrand: I have one word for you: Benghazi.
Adam L Silverman
@NickM: That’s a completely different story then.
Adam L Silverman
@JMG: Fine, fine, we’ll do it your way.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Adam L Silverman:
Hillary also had 30 years of right wing bullshit to smear her, was a woman, and had the last name Clinton
Adam L Silverman
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): All they need to do is diminish turnout in half a dozen key states by a couple of percent. That’s it. That’s the point of the Kanye candidacy as well. To either depress turnout by turning off a couple of percent of Biden’s voters so they stay home or to shift them to a third party option.
jl
Corvette Joe will plow right through the assholes.
Patricia Kayden
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Adam L Silverman:
I thought it was too late for Kanye to register as a candidate in several states?
You say that like it’s an easy lift. 2016 was a perfect storm, unlikely to happen again.
Hildebrand
@Adam L Silverman: It got traction because people (again, not just Republicans) were predisposed to be suspicious of Hillary Clinton.
Even if Susan Rice were to be the VP pick, four dead Americans balanced against 150,000 dead Americans just isn’t going to mean much outside of the right-wing echo chamber.
These people are not master strategists or tacticians, the were one-trick ponies who played on the fears of the Clinton’s ‘nefariousness’. Yes, they did it well, but it wasn’t that hard. They were also abetted by some pretty deep-seated misogyny in the press and public. Finally, because we were at peace and the economy was generally ‘fine’, there was time and space to play ‘whack-the-Clintons’. You can get away with that when the stakes are low.
Now, that is not the case. Covid-19 is still running rampant, the economy is in the toilet, the Senate does nothing but play games – people want competence, and the foolishness of their game-playing won’t net them anything but another appearance on Fox and Friends.
sdhays
@Patricia Kayden: Why does anyone talk about Kanye West? He’s a nasty, mentally fool.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@sdhays:
Well, a reply to that tweet explains why:
Damien
Adam, as usual your level headed delivery only serves to make your statements more terrifying.
thank you for sharing your insightful and thought-provoking writing with us here on this nearly top-10,000 blog, you’re a resource I consider blessed to be able to access.
Jeffro
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): thank you.
sdhays
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Yeah, it’s like this jackass rolled out of bed one morning and decided to run for Preznit while sitting on the crapper. Filing deadlines are past or almost passed. I mean, yes, it’s theoretically serious, but is the threat actually real? Or is it more grist for the media to talk about something other than Dump?
Repatriated
@debbie:And a reverse-angle (over-the-sholder) camera to make sure nobody’s getting fed their lines via teleprompter.
Yutsano
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): You’re really missing Adam’s point. He’s trying to keep us vigilant. We need to be aware of these things especially after Labour Day because this will affect certain voters who really aren’t paying attention right now. And we need good counters to the bullshit. And it is all bullshit and Johnson and Grassley should be dragged hard for this.
And the Yates hearing today was a fucking sham. Yates conducted herself well, but oh man break out the boots and the shovels cause it’s gonna get deeper from here.
Jeffro
@sdhays: there seem to be coordinated efforts by lower-level GOP lowlifes to get Kanye onto the ballot in several states (oddly enough, those states coincide with the designation ‘swing states’)
having said that, a) ol’ Ye isn’t going to get more than a handful of votes, b) Biden’s margins even in the swing states are pretty hefty – well above where Clinton was at this point in time, and c) this just ain’t 2016.
Adam L Silverman
@Patricia Kayden: That is not accurate. There will be a concerted effort to move young African Americans, especially those that were supporting Senator Sanders, off of voting for Biden and on to voting for Kanye. The influence campaign will be that Biden is responsible for two and a half generations of incarcerated African American men because he shepherded the crime bill through the Senate and that his VP, if it is Kamala Harris or Val Demmings, is a cop and equally responsible. Michael Moore, Nina Turner, David Sirota, Brianna Joy Gray, Susan Sarandon, Maria VandenHeuvel, etc will all be pushing this. It will be amplified by the President’s campaign and by Russia on social media and will be microtargeted at young African Americans via social media. All they have to do is shift a couple of percent of voters in a half dozen states critical to winning the Electoral College. That’s the play.
Adam L Silverman
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Continue to delude yourself.
The Moar You Know
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): it was an easy lift before and that has not changed. The last election was won by less than a rounding error. This one will be as well. And the GOP is not only far more motivated to win (prison tends to focus the mind) but now has a staggering institutional advantage they did not have in 2016.
I will be disgusted but in no way surprised if it’s Trump getting sworn in January.
Adam L Silverman
@Damien: Thanks for the kind words.
🐾BillinGlendaleCA
@Adam L Silverman: Kanya will be at UCLA’s NPI for a another long stay by the time November comes around.
Adam L Silverman
@Jeffro: Those margins will tighten. Last week’s Mason-Dixon poll of Florida had Biden up only by 4, which means he’s losing Florida by at least 2.
🐾BillinGlendaleCA
@Hildebrand: That’s what I said last night, folk ain’t playing no more.
Adam L Silverman
@🐾BillinGlendaleCA:
via GIPHY
The Moar You Know
@Adam L Silverman: I swore I was only going to say this once here as this place is Harris Fan Club Central. So here’s my shot; if Biden picks Harris he will lose. Precisely for the reason you state. So I’m really hoping he picks someone else.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Adam L Silverman:
I don’t think I’m deluding myself
@Yutsano:
I appreciate Adam’s efforts, but I really don’t know what to do with this information? I mean, what are we supposed to do? This is really up to the Biden campaign, the DNC, top Dem leaders, media, and in a functional admin the US intel community, etc to counter
Whenever I read these posts, all they tend to do is scare and depress me. The impression I always get is that we’re completely fucked.
gwangung
@Adam L Silverman: It’d work with someone other than Kanye.
🐾BillinGlendaleCA
@Adam L Silverman: Running for President is hard to do from a Psych ward.
Adam L Silverman
I’m going to walk my dogs. Back in 45 minutes or so.
Adam L Silverman
@🐾BillinGlendaleCA: He won’t be in a psyche ward.
Martin
Unrelated, but boy I got the scale of the Beirut accident wrong. It initially looked catastrophically bad but the early photos didn’t look that bad and I was expecting a low fatality count, but the information has gotten progressively worse. 2700 tons of ammonium nitrate – that’s well on the scale for what DOD and DOE use to simulate the blast effect of a nuclear bomb on structures and equipment.
🐾BillinGlendaleCA
@Adam L Silverman: He’s been there once.
Gin & Tonic
@Adam L Silverman: You mean Katrina VdH.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@The Moar You Know:
There will be widespread protests in the streets if that happens. Nobody will see the election as legitimate and I don’t think a lot of people are going to be in the mood for a “rounding error” leading to Trump “winning” again. 30 million people are out of work right now, likely over 200,000 Americans will be dead, kids won’t be in school. The economy is cratering. All on Trump’s watch
🐾BillinGlendaleCA
@The Moar You Know: Trump wasn’t an incumbent in 2016. Now if the economy was the same as it was in 2016 incumbency might work in his favor, it isn’t. He’s in the same position as Jimmy Carter was in 1980.
AliceBlue
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): The impression I always get is that we’re completely fucked.
That’s the impression I get too. That we shouldn’t even bother. I try to remain confident but not complacent.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@🐾BillinGlendaleCA:
Thank you
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@AliceBlue:
Yeah. I get we shouldn’t be complacent. We should try to do everything in our power to make it harder for the election to be stolen
The Thin Black Duke
Maybe it’s me, but I’d rather delude myself into thinking we have a chance to win than to give up because we’re fucked anyway so what’s the point?
Subsole
@Adam L Silverman:
First, thank you very much for pulling all of this together and presenting it so concisely. It is painful reading – I cannot imagine what it feels like to write.
Second, and aimed more at the room, how effective is this bullshit? Given most Americans are apathetic and criminally ill-informed I fear a repeat of 2016.
It kind of staggers me how this shit turns up everywhere. I have conservative family who loathe Trump saying they won’t vote Biden because Tara Reade (thanks again, you fashion-accesory Socialist fucks).
What are y’all seeing?
🐾BillinGlendaleCA
@Subsole:
Then I guess they don’t loathe Trump too much.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Subsole: the only trump-susceptible voters I know are my dad’s hyper-Catholic side of my family. Most of the ones I’m in touch with talked smack about trump in ’16, and I suspect they wrote in somebody, but at least a few of them will probably vote trump this time because of Kavanaugh, and the hope of future Kavanaughs. None of them live in swing states
Jeffro
@Adam L Silverman: I hear you, but I’ll balance things “tightening” vs them “worsening like hell” for Mr. It Is What It Is across the next 90 days and call it a wash. Biden is well ahead, the map is expanding, etc etc.
I understand there’s a big-deal news conference at 11:30 tomorrow, for example. And probably another 100k dead Americans by Election Day. They can try to “Kanye” their way out of that but I think not…
Jeffro
@The Moar You Know: Warren or Rice ;)
gwangung
I have more fear of traditional vote suppression techniques than this marginal stuff.
sanjeevs
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
Adam, I do want to reiterate I appreciate your writing here. You do a good job and state your case concisely
artem1s
@Hildebrand:
also, there was an upside to giving Dump free airtime and a soft interview in 2016. Even Fox is reluctant to have that asshole grandstanding in front of their logo with 150K dead and counting. He has jumped the shark so many times he has no entertainment value left anymore. And now that there is blood in the water, reporters like Swan are going to grab onto an opportunity to get in clicks by humiliating him. I can’t help but think of Romney in the last couple of months of his 2012 campaign. He was so pathetic, it was hard not to point and laugh. With Dump, he’s so pathetic you can’t bear to watch plus the ick factor is so high, there is hardly any enjoyment in watching him flounder. So I have a feeling the MSM’s influence on this election will be less than 2016 mostly because it’s reach Game of Thrones level of rooting for everyone to just die so the series would finally come to an end already.
🐾BillinGlendaleCA
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Suck up! //
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@🐾BillinGlendaleCA:
Heh. I just don’t want there to be any hard feelings
Adam L Silverman
Started to thunderstorm so we’re back because neither the dogs nor I wish to be electrocuted. And when I say “SHAZAM!” nothing happens. Not even when I say “chocolate egg cream!”
Adam L Silverman
@Gin & Tonic: There was a transporter accident and it merged her with the WooWoo Lady from the primaries.//
eddie blake
@Adam L Silverman:
maybe the wizard is mad at you?
Adam L Silverman
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
You notice that no one is out in the streets now aside form what is left of the George Floyd/Breonna Taylor protestors.
Brachiator
This continues to be bad for democracy. Graham and the others know that there is nothing here.
They think that they are just playing to their base, confirming their suspicions that Biden is corrupt. But the larger message is that the entire American government, root and branch, is illegitimate.
The key difference is that Trump is president. His floundering also means that people will continue to die and to suffer needlessly.
Adam L Silverman
@AliceBlue: You should always bother. But you should also be prepared for the worst while you hope for and work towards the best.
Adam L Silverman
@The Thin Black Duke: I’m not telling you to give up, I’m telling you, everyone, anyone who will listen to not get cocky, not take anything for granted, and to stay vigilant. That’s my point.
Adam L Silverman
@Subsole: The influence op is to move very small margins, a couple of percent, in key states: Florida, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Arizona, North Carolina, Arizona. Combine that with other voter suppression efforts and one or more individuals running on third party lines as spoilers and if you’re successful you can lose the popular vote by a massive amount while eking out a narrow Electoral College victory.
eddie blake
@Brachiator:
i’m just waiting for a witness to point out that even if obama HAD spied upon his campaign, tang the conqueror’s own people have made the argument (in court, no less) that a president can do whatever the fuck they wanna do.
obama was the president. he can do whatever the fuck he wants to do.
WaterGirl
@The Thin Black Duke:
The bottom line? They think black people are stupid.
I share your sentiments, I think. Being relentlessly positive, or relentlessly negative, is not a recipe for success. Do we need to be clear-eyed? Absolutely. But focusing on the negative is not helpful.
Brachiator
@sanjeevs:
So, general vulnerability to COVID-19 is perfectly acceptable.
What a bunch of morons.
I wonder whether the judges gave their verdict in open court or via Zoom.
Lapassionara
@Adam L Silverman: Thank you again for another well done essay on the perils we face.
dopey-o
Sen. Richard Blumenthal tweeted Tuesdat Aug 4 about intel in need of declassification regarding election interference.
https://mobile.twitter.com/SenBlumenthal/status/1290801643777392640
Adam, is this related to your Black Ops post?
Adam L Silverman
@Subsole: Shoot me an email. I got asked to do a deep dive for someone on the Tara Reade stuff and I put together a point paper for them. I’m happy to send it to you and you can send it to your family.
sanjeevs
@Adam L Silverman: Another reason for a late October surprise would be if you want to explain away a large discrepancy between pre-election polls and the outcome.
I read Dave Bossie’s account of the election night and it reads like they hacked the result. He admits they broke the rules to get the exit polls by state from ABC at 5.01pm, Trump was 5-8 points down in the swing states, then something happened suddenly and Trump won.
Brachiator
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Just means that you have to work hard to get unfucked.
Hell, we’ve got a freaking virus on top of us for which there is currently no cure. And yet people are working every goddam day to fight and to defeat this thing.
Perhaps the greatest threat to democracy in America has not come from an external enemy, but from an elected madman.
Hell, you should be happy that you have a chance to fix this.
The only way that you guarantee failure is to stop trying.
Adam L Silverman
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I’m not angry at anyone here. I would just like everyone to elevate their level of paranoia to a more sufficient and appropriate level.
Adam L Silverman
@eddie blake: Apparently.
🐾BillinGlendaleCA
@Adam L Silverman: “You said
rapeArizona twice.”🐾BillinGlendaleCA
@Adam L Silverman: You know what you did.
Adam L Silverman
@Brachiator: @eddie blake: They don’t consider Obama to have been president. If you watched the hearing today they kept referring to Trump as the President for anything that happened in 2016 in regard to the counterintelligence investigation into his campaign. Both before the election and after when he was just the president-elect. Graham did this. Cruz did this. Kennedy did this. Someone else may have as well and I missed it.
Adam L Silverman
@WaterGirl: We are going to get your level of paranoia up to sufficient levels if it kills someone!!!!//
Adam L Silverman
@Lapassionara: You’re welcome.
ruemara
@Martin: Soonergrunt shared a portside picture and the destruction is horrific.
Brachiator
@The Moar You Know:
Who should he pick? Who.
People will find a reason to reject any woman he picks.
Racists will find a reason to reject any black woman.
What choice will make people feel warm and fuzzy?
Adam L Silverman
@dopey-o: Yes, but… We don’t actually know what he’s referring to other than it was part of the briefing that members of the House and Senate received from William Evanina, who is the Director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center about foreign interference or efforts by foreign powers to interfere in the 2020 elections.
Sab
I just finished reading Stuart Stevens’ new book “It was All a Lie.” Scary.
🐾BillinGlendaleCA
@Adam L Silverman:
Adam L Silverman
@sanjeevs: There is significant circumstantial evidence reported by significantly legitimate people to assume that the vote tallies were tampered with in at least one state. And that this was a cyber op/hack of the state’s election system. Specifically Florida.
🐾BillinGlendaleCA
@Brachiator: Joe Lieberman
Adam L Silverman
@🐾BillinGlendaleCA: There is no pleasing you people. Provide seconds for everyone and someone complains. Don’t provide seconds and someone complains.
Adam L Silverman
@Brachiator: Beebo, the Blue God of War!
Brachiator
@Adam L Silverman:
I did not watch the hearings. I know that Trump wants to erase Obama’s existence as president. I didn’t realize the degree to which the other Congressional Republicans were plugged into this noxious sentiment.
🐾BillinGlendaleCA
@Adam L Silverman: Try two scoops of ice cream.
Adam L Silverman
@Brachiator: Part of doing this is to claim that Obama, Biden, Susan Rice, Comey, Clapper, Brennan, Lynch, Yates, etc, etc, etc spied on the President of the United States and then used that to try to remove him from office as a non-violent coup run by the security and intelligence services. Of course that makes no sense because Trump didn’t become president until 20 January 2017, but that’s the argument they’re making. That everything that happened in 2016 was done against Trump who was the president.
ruemara
@The Moar You Know: Thanks for your input, but I think since us black women & an awful lot of other minorities understand better than the few tokens running around saying that exactly what KH has done, we’re good.
🐾BillinGlendaleCA
@Adam L Silverman:
January 20th at noon, January 21 was my b-day and my car died first thing in the morning. I BLAME TRUMP PERSONALLY!
WaterGirl
@Adam L Silverman: Sometimes I have to stop reading your posts because they make me anxious, and I don’t need to have my anxiety level ramped up any more than it is from paying attention to what’s going on around me.
There’s being clear-eyed and there’s going down a road where I feel helpless. That’s when I bail.
Adam L Silverman
@🐾BillinGlendaleCA: Look, this is now your fourth complaint in this thread. Which is at least three more than you get without purchasing the upgrade.
Yutsano
@Adam L Silverman:
Methinks yer a little old to be an 8 year old orphan who still remains pure of heart. It also just occurred to me now that Shazam is a mash of Old Testament and old Greek/Roman gods stuff.
Adam L Silverman
@WaterGirl: I was teasing. Hence the sarc tags “//” and the goofy image from Clockwork Orange.
🐾BillinGlendaleCA
@Adam L Silverman: Look, I paid my 5 quid and expect an argruement.
Brachiator
@Adam L Silverman:
Trump was the once and future president, while Obama at best presided over an inherently illegitimate deep state. Again, the argument ultimately is that the only legitimate government of the United States is that provided by a white Christian, preferably male heterosexual Republican.
The rhetorical games argue for the death of American democracy.
The UK and India are undergoing somewhat similar eruptions. Interesting times.
Adam L Silverman
@Brachiator: And Israel, Poland, Hungary, Turkey, Brazil, the Philippines are all having their own equivalents.
eddie blake
@Adam L Silverman:
i’m sorry…that’s just the stupidest fucking thing i’ve heard in a while, and i watched the axios interview.
what IS it with the fucking fascists and linear time?
eddie blake
@Yutsano:
yup. a bunch of gods and one really smart red-sea pedestrian.
Adam L Silverman
@eddie blake:
via GIPHY
Adam L Silverman
@eddie blake:
via GIPHY
Adam L Silverman
@eddie blake: Achilles wasn’t a god. And Solomon wasn’t involved with the Exodus, he wasn’t born until several hundred years later.
eddie blake
@Adam L Silverman:
well, yes. achilles was a demigod. half human, but his mother was thetis. close enough.
and in the life of brian, ‘red-sea pedestrian’ was used an euphemism for ALL jews, not just the ones who fled egypt.
sorry if it was too obscure of a reference
eta: ” i’m not a roman, mum, and I NEVER will be! i’m a kike! a yid! a hebe! a hook-nose! I’m KOSHER, mum! i’m a red-sea pedestrian, and PROUD of IT”
Adam L Silverman
@eddie blake: It has been a very long time since I watched or rewatched the Life of Brian.
Suzy
For me “deep state” simply means the “institutional state” or the “bureaucracy” like you say. But it’s a bit discouraging that the institutions are so easy to subvert. “Risk averse” is an elegant way to say that almost nobody is willing to sacrifice for the country.
At least we need LEAKERS. They can at least denounce without going public ? Where is the Deep Throat of this generation ?
I hadn’t foreseen that things could get so, so bad. That democracy in the USA was so fragile.
This is much worse than Watergate. This time it’s the whole Republican Party that is completely out of control. A few of them completely nuts and vulnerable to manipulation and propaganda by Russians. The others, a vast majority, cynically willing to smear and destroy a man they KNOW is honest, a colleague they’ve known and appreciated for years. This is moral corruption on the highest level. In a sense they’re worst than Trump. At least Trump is psychologically damaged. Those Senate republicans are not sick or crazy; they are depraved, and have completely lost their soul if they ever had one. End of rant. Sorry. @Adam L Silverman: @Adam L Silverman:
Bill Arnold
@Adam L Silverman:
Links? (The behavior of both Scott and DeSantis in FL 2018 was extremely suspicious, including overconfidence by Scott before the election, I know of the Russian hacking of voting databases.)
Dan B
@Adam L Silverman: Excellent and succinct response to Hildebrand. (And amazing post!) It boggles my mind that most progressives, liberals, and Democrats are certain that facts will persuade people. This reflects an academic and rational disposition. You must have facts and back them up with verifiable data from good sources. The GOP coming from business knows that marketing works as well at persuading a mass audience as facts, if not better. People respond to associations that are emotional or produce images and/or engaging storylines. If multiple sources repeat the same story and message it seems more credible. The vast majority of people have little time to investigate the details. A steady drumbeat of similar media storylines has been shown by modern cognitive science to alter our brain structure. This was considered impossible, and met with cries of balderdash!, only a couple decades ago.
I’m waiting for a muckracking story about the reactionary threat to democracy that the Powell Memorandum and right wing think tanks have brought to America in 2020.
WaterGirl
@Adam L Silverman: Oh, I knew you were teasing. I was just explaining where I was coming from, in case you were interested.
Uncle Cosmo
@Adam L Silverman: Every time I see that name I read it as Ben Ghazi & remember a TV MD played by Vince Edwards when I was growing up. Whose boss was Sam Jaffee as Dr. Zorba the Geek.
Hey, if Uncle Joe ever gets asked to take a cognitive test, he could do worse than to
(See previous link if you’re scratching your head)
Uncle Cosmo
It kindasorta depends on what you’re asked to sacrifice & for whom.
If you’re providing the Thuglicans dirt (or just sowing doubt) about a Democrat, there’s a whole passle of RWNJ bazillionaires with their pet “think”-tanks who run the “wingnut welfare” concession & are happy to provide useful rodent-fornicators & their loved ones with a cushy living (out of the odd coins found in their sofa cushions) should they get bounced from their government post.
If you’re whistleblowing about Republicans…no such support system exists. If you have some professional qualifications (MD, lawyer, scientist, engineer) you might find work, someplace where GOP donors or bureaucrats can’t block your appointment, but you might have to relinquish everything you’ve supposedly earned in government service, and take a severe pay cut to boot. If your expertise lies in navigating the government bureaucracy for the office you work in – umm, be prepared to sell the house, send the kids to community college, live off your spouse’s earnings, or find a cardboard box and a spot beneath a bridge.
It’s sooooo easy to complain that no one’s willing to “sacrifice for the country” so long as it’s not your retirement or paycheck or ability to support your family that’s going to be sacrificed.