Republicans hope reinvestigating Hillary will help Americans ignore investigations of Trump

Rep. Trey Gowdy* is preparing to begin year eight of the Benghazi Investigation into what happened in the city of that name where American diplomats were killed by terrorists. Most of Mr. Gowdy’s and his predecessor Darrel Issa’s prior inquisition has focused on the slowness with which the tragic sequence of events were described to the public by the White House team of then President Obama and then Sec of State Hillary Clinton. In the fog of war, the facts about what happened can be slow to emerge and confirm. (The first reports are often filled with rumor.) Try as they might, they cannot stop investigating Hillary. She is that fascinating…

Mostly, though, it appears to be an effort to distract from how the Russians punked our election to put Trump in the White House.

From the Guardian

What’s ironic is it has taken a considerable amount of time for the Trump administration to tell Americans what happened recently in Niger and nobody is promising an investigation of that. Would it be hypocritical of Democrats to mount the same kind of partisan witch hunt over the Niger incident? Maybe.

The difference between the two tragedies, though, is the Obama information sequence followed protocols for reporting this kind of event: seeking the best available facts before reporting to the public. The delay of several days by the Trump White House appears to be related to casual indifference and detachment and perhaps slow efforts to locate Niger on the map. (Niger is right next door to Nigeria after all. I am guessing the Trump team often confuses the various Dakotas and Carolinas and Virginias.) The problem is the Trump administration dislikes best practices and is very short on professional staff. The unprofessional staff seems secretive and dishonest. Also––and not surprisingly–– the chain of command in this very-generallish White House doesn’t seem to go all the way to the top.

From The Hill newspaper

President Trump on Wednesday said he did not personally authorize the mission in Niger in which four U.S. soldiers were killed, saying “my generals and my military” have decision-making authority.
Asked if he authorized the mission, Trump responded, “No, I didn’t, not specifically.”

“I have generals that are great generals,” he continued. “These are great fighters; these are warriors. I gave them authority to do what’s right so that we win. That’s the authority they have. I want to win. And we’re going to win.”

Trump made the comments to reporters on the White House south lawn as he left for Texas.

“My generals and my military, they have decision-making ability,” he added later. “As far as the incident that we’re talking about, I’ve been seeing it just like you’ve been seeing it. I’ve been getting reports. They have to meet the enemy and they meet them tough and that’s what happens.”

Which prompts me to ask the question I have been asking for months now: “How many generals does it take to screw in a junta?”

(*I have learned from reliable sources that Rep. Gowdy plans to go as Draco Malfoy again for Halloween this year.)

"R" Is For Russian. "R" is for Republican

Important reporting from Reuters shows a strategy of coverup by the Republicans

According to the latest reporting by Reuters, Devin Nunes (the recused chair of the House Intel Committee) is still very unrecusedly busy trying to derail any and all investigations into the ways Russia hacked our election. His approach is very Republican: if he can make sure Americans don’t learn about what happened that will mean nothing happened. Nunes’ strategy is to project blame onto officials in the Obama administration who correctly and in line with standing protocols and procedures, asked a special panel for the names of the Americans who were discovered talking with Russian agents during the campaign. They sought to know because it was their job to protect American democracy and they followed the rules in doing so.

Nunes’ theory is simple and simpleminded: Until it becomes known that Americans were colluding with a foreign enemy Nunes believes he can insist no Americans were colluding. Until the colluding Americans are known by name, Nunes can say they don’t exist and the conversations never took place. And how dare these professionals in the Obama administration seek to learn who those people were! In Nunes’ mind it isn’t criminal to collude with a foreign enemy, but it is criminal to investigate that collusion.

The Republican idea is that wrongdoing isn’t the problem, Americans knowing about the wrongdoing is the problem.

What we don’t know can’t hurt them.

Republicans look back at all previous Republican White House scandals in a different way than most of us do: the faked criteria for the Iraq War; the outing of CIA agent because her husband disclosed the truth; Iran Contra, where the Reagan White House illegally traded weapons with Islamic terrorists to arm our own terrorists in Central America; all the way back to Watergate. They all have one main idea: keeping Americans in the dark.

They see Watergate not as a broad criminal conspiracy and a stain on American democracy; Republicans see Watergate as a failed coverup. If it had been properly covered up there would have been no problem. Undiscovered crimes are not crimes just as covering up industrial causes of climate change means that those causes do not exist. Serious problems are not serious or even problems as long as Americans do not know about them. This is called whitewashing. This is coverup pure and simple.

On the day after 9/11 we need to understand that America is again under attack. Not by terrorists in airliners but by Russians and their American proxies trying to destroy our democracy.

Politico describes what's known as the Gerasimov Doctrine, the Russian attack plan which put Trump into the White House.

"In 2013 General Valery Gerasimov—Russia’s chief of the General Staff, comparable to the U.S. chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff… took tactics developed by the Soviets, blended them with strategic military thinking about total war, and laid out a new theory of modern warfare—one that looks more like hacking an enemy’s society than attacking it head-on. He wrote: “The very ‘rules of war’ have changed. The role of nonmilitary means of achieving political and strategic goals has grown, and, in many cases, they have exceeded the power of force of weapons in their effectiveness. … All this is supplemented by military means of a concealed character.””

The Daily Beast explains how Trump's and Russia' Facebook strategy had such a powerful cascading effect on the election.

"On Wednesday, Facebook’s chief security officer, Alex Stamos, revealed that Russia had “likely” used 470 fake accounts to buy about $100,000 worth of advertising promoting “divisive social and political messages” to Americans. It was Facebook’s first public acknowledgment of the role it unwittingly played in the Kremlin’s “active measures” campaign. Stamos’ statement was also conspicuous by what it omitted: Facebook has refused to release the ads. More significant, it hasn’t said what kind of reach Russia attained with its ad buy.
"There may be a reason for that. On the surface, $100,000 is small change in contemporary national politics, and 3,000 ads sounds like a drop in the pond when Facebook boasts 2 billion monthly users. But it turns out $100,000 on Facebook can go a surprisingly long way, if it’s used right. On average, Facebook ads run about $6 for 1,000 impressions. By that number, the Kremlin’s $100,000 buy would get its ads seen nearly 17 million times.

"But that average hides a lot of complexity, and the actual rate can range from $1 to $100 for 1,000 impressions on an ad with pinpoint targeting. Virality matters, too. Ads that get more shares, likes, and comments are far cheaper than boring ads that nobody likes, and ads that send users to Facebook posts instead of third-party websites enjoy an additional price break. Finally, there are network effects, which can vastly multiply the number of users who see a promoted Facebook post."


What makes this especially interesting is the striking similarity between Russia’s strategy of relying on Facebook and Trump’s own strategy. Trump’s campaign used ONLY ads on Facebook. Russia and Trump shared that strategic focus.

The question now is: Were Russia’s Facebook attacks guided by Trump’s own intel. Or were they both directed by intel and analysis from another player in the Trump fold? (Was it, perhaps Cambridge Analytica?)

Further analysis from Medium on how the Facebook strategy weaponized social media for the Russians and the Republicans

"There may be some fake news on Facebook, but the power of the Facebook advertising platform to influence voters is very real. This is the story of how the Trump campaign used data to target African Americans and young women with $150 million dollars of Facebook and Instagram advertisements in the final weeks of the election, quietly launching the most successful digital voter suppression operation in American history.

"Throughout the campaign, President-Elect Donald J. Trump shrewdly invested in Facebook advertisements to reach his supporters and raise campaign donations. Facing a short-fall of momentum and voter support in the polls, the Trump campaign deployed its custom database, named Project Alamo, containing detailed identity profiles on 220 million people in America.

“With Project Alamo as ammunition, the Trump digital operations team covertly executed a massive digital last-stand strategy using targeted Facebook ads to ‘discourage’ Hillary Clinton supporters from voting. The Trump campaign poured money and resources into political advertisements on Facebook, Instagram, the Facebook Audience Network, and Facebook data-broker partners."

More analysis from WIRED. Both of these articles came right on the heels of the election when it became clear how the gambit had succeeded but details remained unclear or were undisclosed because they were part of ongoing intelligence investigations.

Trump Ushers America Into A Late Medieval Period

Charlie Pierce manages to make the grisly affair of this presidency seem almost funny. (A proper heir to Hunter S. Thompson.)

“When we last left Camp Runamuck, and it was only this morning, there was some question as to whether the walls of the East Room ought to be discreetly padded. Since then, and it's only been about six hours, every single element of the most recent account of why the president* iced James Comey had been refuted, much of it by the president* himself, who sat down for a whopper of an interview with Lester Holt of NBC and proceeded to make clowns out of Sean Spicer, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Rod Rosenstein, and most conspicuously of all, Vice President Mike Pence, who must wish he were back being the incredibly unpopular governor of Indiana. It is getting very crowded under the bus."

From CBS News we learn how much the White House has been interfering with the Kremlingate investigation. A lot. As in Coverup. As in Obstruction of Justice.

"Within the FBI, the Russia investigation is considered to be "a crisis," the source said, and "there is a whole lot of interfering." The succession of events surrounding Comey's firing is not considered to be a coincidence by the agency. In the week before he was terminated, Comey asked Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein for additional resources to pursue the Russia investigation.”

Here's a good Washington Post summary and analysis of Trump’s motives and the lies he’s told to cover up those motives. This is the sort of capricious behavior you see in tinpot dictators but seldom see in elected leaders of advanced western nations. With it’s intrigues and contradictions and whispered betrayals and brazen threats it’s reminiscent of a medieval court. Until now America has not experienced a medieval period.

Juan Cole describes the significant steps Trump is taking in his march to dictatorship. (He has not burned the Reichstag yet. But wait.)

"One of the classic techniques of dictatorship is humiliation, a manifestation of the sadism of the regime. Most people want to avoid being made the butt of ridicule, and authoritarian personalities calculate that they will even surrender some rights and liberties to avoid it… Comey was personally humiliated. He was giving a talk in Los Angeles when the news came across the television screen. Here you have the Director of the FBI appearing in public and having his dignity abruptly stripped away… What is the message here? If you work for the Federal government, you work for Trump. And if you work for Trump, and you cross him or he just decides he doesn’t like the look of you, he will degrade you and make you abject in front of the whole world. Therefore, be afraid, be very afraid.”

And then we have Trump’s Russian friends (or masters) casually humiliating him, making it clear he is their poodle.

CNN reports that the Russians are laughing at Trump and us.

"Russian officials are having a grand old time laughing at the United States -- and at President Donald Trump. The events of the past few days would seem to indicate that their efforts to aid Trump's election may have paid off after all -- and paid off handsomely -- with a United States weakened by division, its government consumed with a crisis rooted in Moscow's 2016 election interference.”

Trump isn’t the only one caught in this. Jefferson Davis Beauregard Sessions is also caught in a trap he built and walked into. He could be disbarred and removed from office.

From the Washington Post: (Remember them? They brought down Nixon.)

"Refusing to recuse oneself from a conflict or breaking the promise to recuse from a conflict is a serious breach of legal ethics. “Someone could file a bar complaint, and/or one with DOJ’s office of professional responsibility, if Sessions had a conflict of interest when it came to the firing decision, and if he did not follow the ethics rules, including those of DOJ by acting when he had a conflict of interest,” legal ethics expert Norman Eisen tells me. “The fact that he broke his recusal commitment, if he did, would be relevant context, and violating an agreement can sometimes in itself be an ethics violation.” In sum, Sessions has risked his law license.”

Commentary from Elizabeth Drew who covered Watergate.

Vox explains what Trump is afraid of and why he’s barricaded himself in the White House with loyal henchmen and henchwomen… if he can be sure of them. (There are a lot of leaked stories coming out.)

Let’s review the score here.

Acting Attorney General Sally Yates warned the White House about Michael Flynn’s compromised position and Russia links… so Trump fires her.

Preet Bharara, US Attorney in New York, is putting together cases touching on Trump’s and Trump’s allies’ relationships with Russian oligarchs and money-launderers… so Trump fires him. (This reprise of Bharara's investigations comes from The Week.)

From The Hill newspaper: FBI Director Comey asks for more funding to increase the size of his investigation into Kremlingate and begins subpoenaing Trump associates… so Trump fires him. He pretends to be following AG Sessions’ advice but he demanded grounds to fire and got it from Sessions (who violated his recusal to do so; see above)

Top legal experts are calling this a dangerous move. Dangerous for Trump to have done it, but mostly dangerous for our democracy and rule of law––because Trump has the Republican Congress trained like poodles. (From Lawfare Blog.)

One or two Republicans in Congress are showing some ability to grow spines and walk upright. Lindsey Graham goes back and forth between admiring Trump’s muscles and asking difficult questions. We learn from Reuters that just before Comey was fired Graham expressed interest in Trump’s business dealings, which no doubt increased Trump’s paranoia.

Like the mobster he is, Trump is now threatening people. He’s always threatened people who threatened him, but usually those were people with little power, people he’d abused or refused to pay. Notice he doesn’t threaten his Russian masters. He does like to threaten people he’s fired in case they disliked being fired. In case they know things and might talk. (From the Guardian)

Tuesday Night Massacre

This afternoon the president had his personal bodyguard, not a government employee but his longtime henchman, deliver a firing letter to the FBI director who was leading the investigation into Trump's possible collusion with Russia.

Bloomberg is reporting that Trump has promised Senator Lindsay Graham a certified letter avowing Trump's innocence on the Russia allegations. Does this president believe that paying a bit more to send a certified letter somehow certifies the truth of the contents?

Instead it tends to indicate the president's slender grasp on reality.

Live coverage on MSNBC

DailyBeast

From Slate

The Atlantic’s analysis

Toobin, from a few months ago

Trump and the GOP have a record of killing messengers. Note the firing of EPA personnel who were disloyally reporting on climate change.

A Bridge of Lies Leads Back to the White House

Josh Marshall at TalkingPointsMemo:

"People who don't even appear to be that close to the action keep getting pulled under for what seem like needless deceptions. When we see this kind of pattern, the answer is usually that the stuff at the center of the scandal is so big that it requires concealment, even about things distant from the main action, things that it would seem much better and less damaging simply to admit."

From WhoWhatWhy.org:

"a two-month WhoWhatWhy investigation has revealed an important reason the Bureau may be facing undisclosed obstacles to revealing what it knows to the public or to lawmakers.

"Our investigation also may explain why the FBI, which was very public about its probe of Hillary Clinton’s emails, never disclosed its investigation of the Trump campaign prior to the election, even though we now know that it commenced last July.

"Such publicity could have exposed a high-value, long-running FBI operation against an organized crime network headquartered in the former Soviet Union. That operation depended on a convicted criminal who for years was closely connected with Trump, working with him in Trump Tower — while constantly informing for the FBI and the Department of Justice (DOJ), and being legally protected by them."

From The New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza:

“The evidence is now clear that the White House and Devin Nunes, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, have worked together to halt what was previously billed as a sweeping investigation of Russian interference in last year’s election.”

They believe what we don’t know can’t hurt them. Their aggressive cover-up indicates there must be a lot to cover up.


Pulitzer Prize winning financial reporter David Cay Johnston asks you this question: Why do you think Trump appointed Putin’s and Russian mobsters’ favorite money launderer as our new Secretary of Commerce?

The Guardian reports here on Wilbur Ross’s partnership with the Russian mobster in the Cypriot bank where Russian mobsters launder their money.

Bloomberg reports here on the network of Russian oligarchs who Trump has ties with.

USAToday, the very middle American newspaper that caters to the great silent majority, is beginning to describe Trump’s behaviors and connections as criminal. They’ve also noticed that he is a pathological liar. You can read their story here.

"Trump told reporters in February: "I have no dealings with Russia. I have no deals that could happen in Russia, because we’ve stayed away. And I have no loans with Russia. I have no loans with Russia at all.”

Yet in 2013, after Trump addressed potential investors in Moscow, he bragged to Real Estate Weekly about his access to Russia's rich and powerful. “I have a great relationship with many Russians, and almost all of the oligarchs were in the room,” Trump said, referring to Russians who made fortunes when former Soviet state enterprises were sold to private investors.

Five years earlier, Trump's son Donald Trump Jr. told Russian media while in Moscow that “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross section of a lot of our assets" in places like Dubai and Trump SoHo and elsewhere in New York.

Not only is Trump lying about his collusions and entanglements with Russia and Putin and Putin's criminal underworld, he is very aggressively preventing others from telling the truth about these things. Read more complete reporting on this at New York Magazine.

When Devin Nunes (who chairs the House Intelligence Committee and is responsible for driving it into the ditch) discovered that former acting AG Sally Yates was going to speak about things that might tend to implicate President Trump he acted like a perfect henchman and immediately put the kibosh on her testifying. Congress's newspaper, The Hill, goes into that duplicity and mischief here.

Politico is also reporting that Sally Yates planned to discuss what she had learned in her investigation of the Russia-Putin-Trump-White House conspiracy, (read Politico's article here) but the Republicans have muzzled her and derailed the committee. It’s bizarre for an oversight committee chair to think it’s his job to help the people being investigated get off the hook. Judging by the way Republicans hounded Secretary Clinton over recent years, it seemed like they felt it was their job to get innocent people on the hook by simple persistence. In both instances their method involves ignoring facts, facts that tend to incriminate Trump and his co-conspirators are ignored or buried, and facts that exculpate any Democrat they want to jail are ignored and dismissed.

It appears that White House officials are feverishly wiping incriminating material off their phones and computers (reported by The Independent of London) which means they would prefer to go to prison for obstruction of justice than be hung for treason. Covering up and lying and obstruction is what sent various Watergate conspirators to jail while their boss retired to his expensive home with its view of the ocean. This might happen again.

This isn’t just a foreign conspiracy, it has its domestic skulduggery too. American conspirators also worked to divert Americans’ attention away from the fealty Trump owed to the Russians and strong-arm the FBI into derailing the Hillary Clinton campaign, which was Putin's ultimate goal. Trump’s little helpers in this were the ubiquitous Rudy Giuliani and private global security tycoon and private army contractor Erik Prince, who used their deep leverage within the FBI to corrupt the investigatory process. (Reported at Huffington Post)

Rachel Maddow has been all over this story, synthesizing and explaining the many complex threads of the conspiracy as they come to light. Last night she turned her attention to Trump son-in-law and male model Jared Kushner:

A good daily routine to follow if you want to track this story is to watch Rachel Maddow's nightly reporting on it.

ThePalmerReport tends to stick its neck out on big stories, sometimes goes out on a limb. Right now Palmer is speculating that Michael Flynn has already cut a deal to testify. (Read the PalmerReport on Flynn's alleged deal here)

ThePalmerReport is also saying that the FISA warrants list Trump as a Russian agent. Since FISA warrants are so highly classified, we have to be skeptical.

Regarding another Palmer story, that Devin Nunes is heavily invested in a winery with Russian connections, SNOPES lists it as unproven. But it is curious when a winery which a congressman has invested much of his wealth in has its only overseas markets in Russia and Switzerland. Russia being a major source of money to be laundered and Switzerland being a major money launderer. It makes people wonder. Maybe, probably, Devin Nunes wasn’t and isn’t on the hook because of this investment, but this kind of company looks a lot like a hook for the kind of criminal transactions Russia engages in. And we are left wondering how many baited hooks have snagged prominent Republicans and White House officials and appointees.

MotherJones explains how Devin Nunes’ is compromising his constitutional role to serve as a check and balance on the president’s power, and how this endangers a crucial constitutional balance. (Especially if the White House itself is in the grip of Russian agents.) Instead of checking and balancing Nunes is carrying water for the president, running interference, blowing smoke, setting up diversions and distractions, discrediting his committee, deceiving the public and behaving like the president is his boss.

The Daily Beast has this: “The White House has found its stooge in Nunes.” Senator Lindsey Graham (R/NC) calls Nunes a bungling Inspector Clouseau, a clown.

The brazenness of the White House’s cover up is hard to believe, but it is consistent with Trump’s sense of impunity. Remember during the campaign when he said he could shoot someone in broad daylight on Fifth Avenue and get away with it. This is who he is.

The Week, on Trump's brazen impunity, his belief that presidents are above the law.

Meanwhile, POLITICO is reporting that the House Republicans are all in with Devin Nunes and his bizarre mishandling of his chairmanship duties. Which, in the words of Kurt Cobain, "smells like team spirit." It smells, certainly.

Something is rotten when a major political party chooses partisanship over national security and national sovereignty concerns. It sounds as if the GOP decided if the only way to regain the power that appeared to be slipping away was to collude with a foreign enemy and its spy network, well, they'd collude with a foreign enemy. Which is what Quisling did in Norway by collaborating with the Nazis. It's what Petain did in France. It's surprising that the ultrapatriotic Republican Party would embrace treason this way. Some of them appear to have done just that and others are busily covering it up.

The Trump White House In Cover Up Mode Over Russia Collusion

Today’s Republicans remember Watergate differently.

They don't remember it as a major corruption scandal. They remember Watergate as a failure to cover up a major corruption scandal. (Hunter Thompson knew better.)

Republicans in Congress share this mindset: if something bad is going on and nobody is told, that means nothing bad is going on.

The scandal is that people are finding out.

The criminals are the ones alerting the public to the crime. Sounding the alarm is a crime, according to Republican leaders. Republican leaders are obeyed by all Republican followers. Republicans are very obedient.

The senator who's supposed to be leading the probe into the White House's Russia ties is Richard Burr, head of the Senate Intelligence Committee. The guy who agreed to deter the press from reporting White House ties to Russia. (This kind of story by Politico might be why Politico is banned from the White House.)

There are labels for this kind of behavior, this kind of ritual.

Omertà.

Keep your mouth shut or you're dead.

Shoot the messenger.

Don’t tell anybody what is going on because if you do blow the whistle you pay consequences. The consequences are brutal. The people doing the crime pay no consequences.

Put it another way: the Republicans would have hung Paul Revere.

Today’s Republicans would have erected statues to commemorate the heroism of Benedict Arnold. To the leaders of the GOP, the people selling our country to the Russians are patriots.

One of the memorable phrases from Watergate was “Follow The Money.” Mark Felt (Deep Throat) said it to Bob Woodward when Woodward felt like the trail had gone cold. Follow the money and you will find the answers. You will learn who the criminals are.

Rachel Maddow detailed how deeply it appears our new Commerce Secretary is involved with Russia. Wilbur Mills doesn't just consort with Russian spies he owns the bank in Cyprus where they launder their money. And who are his partners in this bank? Putin's favorite Russian mobsters.

The Daily Beast has the same story.

The Hill, Congress's newspaper, has the story about how hard Republicans are working to keep the public from knowing about Trump's finances. Because the Republican book of rules says there is no crime as long as the public is unaware of it.

The Guardian reports on Reince Priebus's efforts to shut up reporters. Which is why the Guardian is barred from the White House.

That doesn't matter so much when White House staffers will meet you in a bar somewhere and tell you all about what's going on.

Two stories broke last night.

The Attorney General, Jefferson Davis Beauregard Secessions (sic), the man in charge of enforcing the law and overseeing all investigations of possible treasonous collusion with Russians in the recent campaign, appears to have lied under oath about his own collusions with Russians. The Washington Post broke the story. Which is why the Washington Post is barred from the White House.

And in the final days of Obama’s presidency, as new evidence was emerging about Trump campaign complicity with Russia, the departing president ordered all departments in the White House and the executive branch to preserve that evidence, concerned that the new administration would lose or destroy it.

That story from SLATE

Republicans Block Investigation of Russia Connection, Focus on Whistleblowers

The Republicans are following our founding traditions. We all remember when the Founding Fathers hung Paul Revere for waking everybody up at night. We honor their decision to rat out the revolutionaries to the occupying British. Do we even ask why we celebrate Benedict Arnold's birthday every year? We take a day off to worship his memory without questioning it.

In that tradition the Republicans in Congress, led by Rep. Jason Chaffetz of Utah, have decided to hunt down the people who told us that the president's campaign was collaborating with Russian spy agencies instead of investigating the president's ties to Russian spy agencies.

Reported by VOX

And The Hill

CNN reports

The Salt Lake Tribune

At Politico

Is this diversion or is it a cover up? Howard Baker famously said "It's almost always the cover-up rather than the event that causes trouble." In this case it's both. Collusion with a foreign enemy is not a second rate burglary.

Howard Baker was a Republican who helped uncover Watergate. There are no more Republicans like him. Modern Republicans have learned that their failure during Watergate wasn't the crime, it was failing to cover it up better. Covering up is something they have gotten expert at since the '70s.

Shoot the messenger.

What we don't know can't hurt them.

Ignorance is bliss. Consuming fake news instead of factual news is even blissier.

Ignorance is bliss might be the survival mantra of Vice President Pence, who the party is desperately insulating from the Russia treason story. When Trump goes, if he does go, we will be gifted with a man who kept his eyes wide shut for most of the past year.

Deliberate, obedient ignorance is the only way Americans will learn to call their new president Dear Leader the way North Koreans refer to Kim Jong Un. This is how we will become more like North Korea and authoritarian Russia.

Is it treason to deliver our sovereignty into the hands of a foreign power? Or is it treason to warn people that is what is happening?

The Intercept has this take on that.

An opinion piece in the Observer (Trump's son-in-law's publication, ironically) had this surprising view.

Trump The Russian Puppet and other highlights from the week

The story of how Russian mobsters and spies helped Trump get elected continues to unfold and yet, with Republicans covering his flanks and the rumored cabal inside the FBI covering his rear, Trump is still marching toward his inevitable inauguration in one week’s time.

Why did Jim Comey's FBI hide the Russia allegations? He met with Democrats and it was a shit show.

From DailyBeast

Much of the in depth coverage is coming from the UK. This analysis from the Independent.

It was MotherJones' David Corn who first broke this Russian memo story last summer. His latest here

And from Rolling Stone

This is scarifying stuff and the Republicans seem unusually blasé about it. As if they were in on it. It smells like the Watergate coverup minus those responsible Republicans (an extinct species) who helped uncover it.

We have a president-elect who attacks the professional journalists while being feted and worshipped in the lurid tabloids. Politico explains how the readers of supermarket crap newspapers are now running America. We have a truth problem. America has decided truth and facts are the enemy and Russian spies are our friends.

This Quartz story argues that Putin is schooling Trump on how to discredit the American press

The Week asks what hath Trump wrought. Phraseology usually reserved for catastrophes, which this feels like.

The good news is Trump is historically unpopular for a president-elect. Politico reports on this

Lawrence O'Donnell runs us through the numbers on that. We are not alone feeling conned, cheated, scared, pretty much like our democracy has been stolen.

And this on the poll numbers and the Trump fiasco parade from The New Republic

But the Times’ David Brooks in his weekly NewsHour analysis says it was a good week for DonaldTrump has had a good week for the country. Does anyone else think David Brooks lives in a bubble? Or maybe he’s been institutionalized. “I hate to praise Trump so much…” said Brooks as he went on to praise Trump. Then he said John Lewis had dealt Trump a low blow by questioning his legitimacy.

Brooks said we need to give Trump the benefit of the doubt. Wait and see. Trust but don’t verify, to turn inside out what Reagan said about the Russians.

I guess Brooks wants to withhold judgment until the Russians are given our nuclear codes and various other things. As if these serious charges of Russian collusion with Trump and a coverup at the FBI to protect Trump and Russia––as if that is all nothing to worry about.

The Hill is reporting that there's one Republican senator who condemned Trump’s attack on John Lewis.

The Boston Globe has this column on how dangerous Trump is turning out to be.

Newt Gingrich via DailyBeast continues to give Trump political cover, suggesting Trumpism is a philosophy...

The Republican leaders in Congress are working very hard to reconfigure America’s idea of ethics to enable Trump to limbo into office and seat a corrupt cabinet without objections. This story from VOX

Bloomberg takes the quaint view that ethics actually matter, even if Trump is making corruption and treason seem more normal.

Instead of demanding completed ethics questionnaires from Trump’s cabinet nominees, Jason Chaffetz has decided to mount an investigation of the ethics office which is demanding Trump’s nominees fill out their ethics questionnaires… It’s very confusing. And some mainstream news sources are trying very very hard to persuade us that nothing weird is happening...

When Do We Call It Treason?

The Atlantic describes how carefully Donald Trump has followed the Russian line all through this election.

He continues to deny he had any connection to the Russians. But he did. Many of his close aides were in close touch with the Russian government. This was reported in November by the New York Times.

Trump knew the Russian government was behind the attacks on Hillary Clinton. This is reported here by The Hill, the respected conservative paper of Capitol Hill. He knew it before election day. He actually encouraged the Russians to do more to help him. He applauded their crime and accepted the benefit, as did the entire Republican Party.

Once the Republicans have consolidated their ill-gotten power they will control any investigation that takes place. Which means shaping findings to match their own propaganda. Another trick from the dictator’s toolkit. VOX runs through the Republican strategy for covering up this Russian coup.

Trump’s hold on power is not as strong as Russia’s hold over him. A report on how they will blackmail Trump is here at the Daily Beast. The Russians are in the driver’s seat. The Republicans are in one of those little child’s seats with its toy steering wheel, strapped securely next to Mommy.

Every cabinet post Trump announces and every bizarre diplomatic misstep he’s made since his election (sic) proclaims the fact that he is taking dictation from the Russian dictator.

There is a lot of good reporting about this now, but during the campaign there was a rigorous effort to make sure that the massively corrupt and incompetent and dangerous Trump was not reported as being any more corrupt or dangerous or incompetent than Hillary Clinton. This hoisted his plausibility and minimized his flaws. It invented and inflated flaws in Hillary Clinton. The reporting gave credence to the months long campaign of character assassination aimed at her by the Republicans. The press behaved as if they were recording secretaries for the Republican Party, and for the Russian government helping the Republican Party. Trump was normalized and Clinton was rubbished.

This has happened before. During the 1930s reporters from American and British newspapers carefully expunged the ugliest promises of Adolf Hitler. They normalized him. Mussolini “made the trains run on time.” And Hitler loved dogs and small children. Hitler had made it very explicit that he planned to conquer Germany’s neighbors and create a living hell for the Jews–––all those portions were edited out of the English language editions. Once you have normalized a monster it becomes very hard to change the public’s mind about them.

The normalization of Hitler and Mussolini, from Smithsonian magazine.

The Russians helped create much of the fake news propaganda against Clinton. The stuff about her underground torture chambers and the pedophaelia operation inside a DC pizza shop. All laughably untrue, and all swallowed whole by the obedient FoxNews and Breitbart trained Republican voter. Meanwhile the true and truly horrifying stories being reported by reputable news organizations about Trump were dismissed and disbelieved. The Republican voter has been trained to believe the latest fevered conspiracy theory but not to believe America’s intelligence agencies.

The guy who helped make America gullible and open the door for the Russian takeover is now the top advisor to the new president. An analysis of the poisonous rise of Breitbart by the Columbia Journalism Review.

Let’s get back to the Russian takeover.

How did the fiercely patriotic Live Free Or Die Republican Party decide to climb into Putin’s pocket? They were in dangerous decline. They were losing the election. It was all slipping from their hands, the power, the respect, the feeling of importance. Then suddenly help came in the form of leaked Democratic emails and information. They decided they hated the Democrats more than they hated the Russians. They hated the idea of Democrats running the country a lot more than the idea of the country being run by the Russians. Like Quisling in Norway, who handed his country to the Nazis, there were promises of shared power. The Russians would lift them up where they belonged.

Imagine if Watergate had not been run out of the Nixon White House but out of the Kremlin. And imagine if the Republican Party had known this and all the material gained by the illegal spying had fueled Republican wins all across the country. As Charles Pierce reports, that is what happened this year.

The Republicans have seized power, with Russian help. Their win was narrow and deeply corrupted. They don’t care, they plan to come down hard. They plan to rule as hard right as they are able. They plan to nail down their control, purge the government of less than true believers. They plan to discredit honest news organizations and promote their own propaganda outlets. They plan to punish opponents. (They are already promising to prosecute and jail Electoral College electors who don’t fall into line next Monday.) This is what dictators do. Putin is their role model, their hero. Americans did not vote for this.

I keep reading that there is nothing we can do. The Electoral College must ratify Trump’s election, they say. They point out that even if we can remove Trump from the presidency the Republicans who also gained power with Russian assistance will be the ones choosing his replacement. They went along with this coup and will benefit from the crime. Them’s the rules, folks. We must honor the rules. We must accept what has happened because to refuse is a violation of our principles. When do we call it treason? Once they are in power that will be impossible because treason will be anything that disputes their power over us.

I feel like we are in a car accelerating toward a cliff and we’re being told using the brake now would violate our warranty.

Our Allies See Trump's Election As A Russian Coup

Kurt Eichenwald writes how Trump’s many business involvements around the world are an invitation to extortion by global enemies.

Read Eichenwald's story in Newsweek

Because of Trump’s aggressively insulting and threatening attitude towards foreigners it seems likely that his properties will become prime targets. America’s military will become Trump’s own personal security service, protecting him rather than us, spilling American blood to protect Trump’s investments and execute vendettas against groups and individuals and nations abroad who Trump dislikes. He has a famously thin skin and a vengeful nature.

The premier news weekly in Canada isn’t mincing words. They report that Trump’s [victory] (sic) amounts to a Russian overthrow of the American democracy. The United States has been converted into a Russian satellite with the eager cooperation of the Republican Party.

Read the story in McClean's Weekly

Has the Trump/Putin win changed America into Russia’s Mini-Me?

Analysis and background on the Putin Method in the New York Review of Books

The way leading Republicans have joined the Democrats in demanding a full investigation of Russia’s deep involvement in the Trump election reminds me of an earlier Republican crime. Mitch McConnell will play the role of Nixon’s AG Kleindeinst, carefully removing Republican fingerprints from smoking guns and burning incriminating papers and recordings and emails.

The Republicans pretend to investigate the Russian overthrow of America, reported by Politico

The larger irony here is how these same Republicans spent years trying to incriminate Hillary Clinton over the Benghazi tragedy. During the Bush years, 60 diplomats were killed overseas, and prior to the Benghazi attacks Republicans cut funding for President Obama’s requests for better embassy security.

Some of the Electoral College electors are demanding a full intelligence briefing on the dangerous implications of Russia’s interference and the grip Russia’s intelligence services have on the President-elect. But the number making this demand is too small. Most of the electors who might be able to swing this election back toward sanity and securing United States sovereignty are indicating they’d prefer not to know. Which is Trump’s position. “I’m, like, smart. I don’t need intelligence briefings,” Trump said. And this appears to be the Republican Party line: Ignorance is Bliss. They don’t mind being Russian puppets as long as they don’t realize that is Putin’s hand that is creeping up their pant-leg.