The challenges ahead (Biden's America)

[yovargas]

I will add that I say that very much as one of those people that was (and still largely is) shocked and confused by the existence of all those Trump supporters.

[River]

I will add that I say that very much as one of those people that was (and still largely is) shocked and confused by the existence of all those Trump supporters.

For me it was more understandable in 2016 than it is in 2021. Now that we've all seen him in action and inaction...WTF.

[Túrin Turambar]

I will add that I say that very much as one of those people that was (and still largely is) shocked and confused by the existence of all those Trump supporters.

For me it was more understandable in 2016 than it is in 2021. Now that we've all seen him in action and inaction...WTF.

I felt the same way, but more because it makes more sense to me to vote for an anti-establishment candidate when the candidate isn't, you know, the President of the United States and the most powerful person in the world. But even from the White House, Trump was able to make the case that he was fighting the establishment.

What was odd to me, though, is the huge number of people who didn't vote for Trump in 2016 but did vote for him in 2020. Like a third of the electorate in Starr County, TX.

[Inanna]

The Hispanic community voted for him in droves in TX, fwir.

[N.E. Brigand]

On Thursday, President Biden said this about proposed gun control legislation:

"These bills [...] require background checks for anyone purchasing a gun at a gun show or an online sale. Most people don't know it, you walk into a store and you buy a gun, you have a background check. But you go to a gun show, you can buy whatever you want, and no background check."

This is absolutely true. If you go to a gun show, you *can* buy a gun without a background check from an unlicensed vendor.

But if you buy a gun from a licensed vendor at a gun show, they have to require a background check.

PolitiFact says the latter fact means that what Joe Biden said is "mostly false." They made this determination even though they acknowledged that "while the data is incomplete, federally licensed sellers have been found to make up a substantial share, and perhaps a majority, of gun show vendors." Perhaps! So not only is what Biden said true, but he could reasonably have changed "can buy" to "quite likely will buy".

Here's an apt anaology offered by one commentator in response:

"McDonalds sells both nuggets and burgers. So if you buy nuggets, you won't get a burger. So Biden's blanket statement that if you go to McDonalds you can buy a burger is wrong. It depends on what you buy."

Again: the mainstream media is biased against Democrats.

[N.E. Brigand]

From a Politico article about strong fundraising by Republican senator Josh Hawley of Missouri:

"The freshman senator drew widespread attention for leading the Jan. 6 effort to block the acceptance of the Electoral College results, a controversial stand that liberals and some Republicans claim undermined faith in the political system. But he won plaudits from loyalists of former President Donald Trump, who opened their wallets. "

Uh, it's only a "claim" that trying to overturn the legitimate election results was wrong?

More evidence that the mainstream media is biased in favor of Republicans. If Democrats had supported a coup, you wouldn't see Politico doing a "both sides" article about it.

(I'll stop pointing this out when it stops happening.)

[N.E. Brigand]

The U.S. government today announced new sanctions on Russian companies (and one Pakistani company who supplied the Russians with fake IDs) and expulsions of purported Russian intelligence agents. This is in response to a variety of activities that the U.S. says the Russian government has engaged in over the past several years, including interference in the 2016 and 2020 U.S. elections, interference in elections in Africa, the Solar Winds hack, the continued occupation of Crimea, the escalation along Ukraine's eastern border, and Russian bounties apparently offered for the harm of U.S. troops in Afghanistan. Here's the first paragraph of the statement issued by the White House:

Today, President Biden signed a new sanctions executive order that provides strengthened authorities to demonstrate the Administration’s resolve in responding to and deterring the full scope of Russia’s harmful foreign activities. This E.O. sends a signal that the United States will impose costs in a strategic and economically impactful manner on Russia if it continues or escalates its destabilizing international actions. This includes, in particular, efforts to undermine the conduct of free and fair democratic elections and democratic institutions in the United States and its allies and partners; engage in and facilitate malicious cyber activities against the United States and its allies and partners; foster and use transnational corruption to influence foreign governments; pursue extraterritorial activities targeting dissidents or journalists; undermine security in countries and regions important to United States national security; and violate well-established principles of international law, including respect for the territorial integrity of states.

More here:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-roo ... overnment/

https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy0126

https://home.treasury.gov/policy-issues ... s/20210415

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A clarification regarding the alleged Russian bounties on U.S. troops: the sanctions and expulsions are not in response to that happening. The U.S. only has moderate confidence in the intelligence on that story, and thus the U.S. response is, via diplomatic channels, to give Russia a chance to explain itself.

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Regarding the 2016 election, the U.S. specifically names "known Russian agent Konstantin Kilimnik," who worked closely with Paul Manafort, for having "provided the Russian Intelligence Services with sensitive information on polling and campaign strategy." I think this is the first time the U.S. has explicitly said that Kilimnik provided this information to Russian intelligence. As I recall, the Mueller report and other official statements only noted the specific people to whom Kilimnik had given this material (Ukrainian oligarchs with close Russian ties). Kilimnik got the information from Manafort, who was, remember, working *for free* as Donald Trump's campaign chair.

The announcement notes there's a $250,000 reward for information that will lead to Kilimnik's arrest. (He'll never be arrested; he just can't leave Russia.)

[Sunsilver]

N.E. Brigand: LONG overdue IMO!

A clarification regarding the alleged Russian bounties on U.S. troops: the sanctions and expulsions are not in response to that happening. The U.S. only has moderate confidence in the intelligence on that story, and thus the U.S. response is, via diplomatic channels, to give Russia a chance to explain itself.

I also saw an announcement yesterday that Biden is planning to invite Putin to the White House. Would LOVE to be a fly on the wall during THAT meeting!

[N.E. Brigand]

N.E. Brigand: LONG overdue IMO!

A clarification regarding the alleged Russian bounties on U.S. troops: the sanctions and expulsions are not in response to that happening. The U.S. only has moderate confidence in the intelligence on that story, and thus the U.S. response is, via diplomatic channels, to give Russia a chance to explain itself.

I also saw an announcement yesterday that Biden is planning to invite Putin to the White House. Would LOVE to be a fly on the wall during THAT meeting!

One article today said that the story last year about Russian bounties on U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan might have been leaked, despite U.S. intelligence agencies' uncertainty about it, in order to pressure the U.S. not to leave Afghanistan.

So it could be that the sanctions on Russia announced today, which included a comment about that uncertainty, were timed to follow Biden's announcement yesterday that U.S. troops (and NATO troops) will be leaving Afghanistan by September.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

The significance of this news really can't be overstated. As the great Heather Cox Richardson says:

In announcing the sanctions, the Treasury Department called out Konstantin Kilimnik, the former partner of Trump’s 2016 campaign chair, Paul Manafort: the two worked together during Manafort’s days in Ukraine politics. The Treasury Department said Kilimnik “is a Russian and Ukrainian political consultant and known Russian Intelligence Services agent implementing influence operations on their behalf.” That much we knew from the report of the Senate Intelligence Committee on Russian interference in the 2016 election. (Remember, the Senate Intelligence Committee that produced that report was dominated by Republicans.)
We also knew from the Senate Intelligence Report that Manafort had provided Kilimnik with secret polling data from the Trump campaign in 2016—his business partner and campaign deputy Rick Gates testified to that—but the committee did not have evidence about what Kilimnik had done with that data.
Today’s Treasury document provides that information. It says: “During the 2016 U.S. presidential election campaign, Kilimnik provided the Russian Intelligence Services with sensitive information on polling and campaign strategy.”
It is hard to overestimate the significance of this statement. It says that Trump’s 2016 campaign manager, Paul Manafort, provided secret polling data and information about campaign strategy to a Russian intelligence officer, who shared it with Russian intelligence. Russian intelligence, as we also know from both the Mueller Report and the Senate Intelligence Committee report, both hacked emails of the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign, and targeted U.S. social media to swing the 2016 election against Democrat Hillary Clinton and to Donald Trump.
By itself, the statement that the Trump campaign worked with Russian intelligence is earthshaking. But aside from the information about the exchange of this particular kind of intelligence in 2016, this statement also indicates that the Trump campaign itself was not simply operating in happy if unintentional tandem with Russian intelligence-- which was as far as the Muller Report was willing to go-- but in fact had an open channel with Russian operatives. That’s a game-changer in terms of how we understand 2016 and, perhaps, the years that have followed it.

[N.E. Brigand]

The significance of this news really can't be overstated. As the great Heather Cox Richardson says:

In announcing the sanctions, the Treasury Department called out Konstantin Kilimnik, the former partner of Trump’s 2016 campaign chair, Paul Manafort: the two worked together during Manafort’s days in Ukraine politics. The Treasury Department said Kilimnik “is a Russian and Ukrainian political consultant and known Russian Intelligence Services agent implementing influence operations on their behalf.” That much we knew from the report of the Senate Intelligence Committee on Russian interference in the 2016 election. (Remember, the Senate Intelligence Committee that produced that report was dominated by Republicans.)

We also knew from the Senate Intelligence Report that Manafort had provided Kilimnik with secret polling data from the Trump campaign in 2016—his business partner and campaign deputy Rick Gates testified to that—but the committee did not have evidence about what Kilimnik had done with that data.

Today’s Treasury document provides that information. It says: “During the 2016 U.S. presidential election campaign, Kilimnik provided the Russian Intelligence Services with sensitive information on polling and campaign strategy.”

It is hard to overestimate the significance of this statement. It says that Trump’s 2016 campaign manager, Paul Manafort, provided secret polling data and information about campaign strategy to a Russian intelligence officer, who shared it with Russian intelligence. Russian intelligence, as we also know from both the Mueller Report and the Senate Intelligence Committee report, both hacked emails of the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign, and targeted U.S. social media to swing the 2016 election against Democrat Hillary Clinton and to Donald Trump.

By itself, the statement that the Trump campaign worked with Russian intelligence is earthshaking. But aside from the information about the exchange of this particular kind of intelligence in 2016, this statement also indicates that the Trump campaign itself was not simply operating in happy if unintentional tandem with Russian intelligence-- which was as far as the Muller Report was willing to go-- but in fact had an open channel with Russian operatives. That’s a game-changer in terms of how we understand 2016 and, perhaps, the years that have followed it.

Here's my problem with how this news is being handled: all we have here is the U.S. government confirming what rational observers already knew.

We already knew that Paul Manafort directed Rick Gates to give Konstantin Kilimnik this sensitive information. We already knew that Kilimnik was associated with Russian intelligence services (per Robert Mueller's report in 2019) or actually a Russian intelligence agent (per the Senate report in 2020). We already knew that Manafort felt that providing this data to Kilimnik was worth at least $2 million. We already knew that, by analogy, if the Trump campaign were to share this sort of data with a political action committee, that would be a crime, because PACs aren't allowed to coordinate with individual campaigns, and this data is exactly what you would need to coordinate campaigns (this was emphasized in Congressional questioning of Bill Barr in 2019).

In short, we knew that there was no reason for Donald Trump's campaign chair to give this valuable data to a Russian unless it was going to be used to illegally help the Trump campaign. And most of this emerged in various news reports even before Mueller's report was issued in 2019.

Yes, because the criminals largely managed to cover up their communications, both Mueller and the Senate felt obliged to say, "We don't actually know what Kilimnik did with this sensitive campaign data," but come on. Nobody with a working brain thought that a Russian operative was provided millions of dollars' worth of information just so he could throw it away. Anybody who pretended it might be a coincidence was playing a silly game. If Cox thinks this "is a game-changer in terms of how we understand 2016," then she just hasn't been paying attention. This is how I've understood 2016 for years!

I hope the U.S. government confirming what any sensible person should already have known does change some minds. But I've already seen the Trump-Russia skeptics on the far left (e.g., Glenn Greenwald, Aaron Mate) argue that we can't just believe this on the Treasury Department's say so: they're saying Where is the proof? and Look at how the Russian bounty story proved to be propaganda! And on the right, the news is mostly going to be ignored. Too little, too late.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I agree.

Sent from my VS988 using Tapatalk

[N.E. Brigand]

Here's my problem with how this news is being handled: all we have here is the U.S. government confirming what rational observers already knew.

We already knew that Paul Manafort directed Rick Gates to give Konstantin Kilimnik this sensitive information. We already knew that Kilimnik was associated with Russian intelligence services (per Robert Mueller's report in 2019) or actually a Russian intelligence agent (per the Senate report in 2020). We already knew that Manafort felt that providing this data to Kilimnik was worth at least $2 million. We already knew that, by analogy, if the Trump campaign were to share this sort of data with a political action committee, that would be a crime, because PACs aren't allowed to coordinate with individual campaigns, and this data is exactly what you would need to coordinate campaigns (this was emphasized in Congressional questioning of Bill Barr in 2019).

In short, we knew that there was no reason for Donald Trump's campaign chair to give this valuable data to a Russian unless it was going to be used to illegally help the Trump campaign. And most of this emerged in various news reports even before Mueller's report was issued in 2019.

Yes, because the criminals largely managed to cover up their communications, both Mueller and the Senate felt obliged to say, "We don't actually know what Kilimnik did with this sensitive campaign data," but come on. Nobody with a working brain thought that a Russian operative was provided millions of dollars' worth of information just so he could throw it away. Anybody who pretended it might be a coincidence was playing a silly game. If Cox thinks this "is a game-changer in terms of how we understand 2016," then she just hasn't been paying attention. This is how I've understood 2016 for years!

I hope the U.S. government confirming what any sensible person should already have known does change some minds. But I've already seen the Trump-Russia skeptics on the far left (e.g., Glenn Greenwald, Aaron Mate) argue that we can't just believe this on the Treasury Department's say so: they're saying Where is the proof? and Look at how the Russian bounty story proved to be propaganda! And on the right, the news is mostly going to be ignored. Too little, too late.

Here's something important we don't know: did Manafort do this on his own or at Trump's direction? There was a report early in 2018 that cited Trump as telling someone that as long as Manafort didn't flip, Trump would be fine. And then after Manafort was convicted in the first of his two scheduled trials later that year, he appeared to flip, but a few months later prosecutors said Manafort was lying to them (and he seemed to be using his interviews with prosecutors to learn what they knew and share it with Trump), to they terminated the deal, and then he was sentenced, and he never came clean, and eventually Trump pardoned him.

Was the pardon granted in exchange for Manafort not ratting Trump out? I think the evidence generally points towards Trump's guilt here, but I don't know. Manafort has a long history of corruption, and he could have been hoping, on his own, that *he* would be Russia's man in the Trump administration, if Putin was able to use the information Manafort provided to get Trump elected.

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On another note, I'd like to note something amusing here (all quotations are my paraphrasing):

I hope the U.S. government confirming what any sensible person should already have known does change some minds. But I've already seen the Trump-Russia skeptics on the far left (e.g., Glenn Greenwald, Aaron Mate) argue that we can't just believe this on the Treasury Department's say so: they're saying Where is the proof? and Look at how the Russian bounty story proved to be propaganda! And on the right, the news is mostly going to be ignored. Too little, too late.

Greenwald, et al. are simultaneously saying, "Don't trust the U.S. government's story about what Kilimnik did in 2016" and "Do trust the U.S. government's story that undercuts the 2020 reports about Russian bounties on U.S. troops." I am reminded of an article on Tolkien I once reviewed in which the author said, "You can't trust Tolkien in his letters when he says that The Lord of the Rings is fundamentally religious" but also, "We know Tolkien sometimes strayed from his religion because he said so in his letters."

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Was the pardon granted in exchange for Manafort not ratting Trump out? I think the evidence generally points towards Trump's guilt here, but I don't know. Manafort has a long history of corruption, and he could have been hoping, on his own, that *he* would be Russia's man in the Trump administration, if Putin was able to use the information Manafort provided to get Trump elected.

If so, Manafort paid a pretty steep price to get to that point.

Manafort before.jpg (36.69 KiB) Viewed 4771 times

manafort after.jpg (51.54 KiB) Viewed 4771 times

[N.E. Brigand]

Yeah, given Manafort's age, I wouldn't have objected to him receiving a compassionate release due to the Covid pandemic. U.S. prisons are awful.

(I really did object to the judge in Manafort's first trial saying that prior to committing the crimes for which he was convicted, Manafort had lived a blameless life.)

Meawhile... the Russian government has announced sanctions on Merrick Garland.

(And others, but I thought that one was pretty funny.)

[Frelga]

I don't think having to abandon hair color and facials is that steep of a price.

[N.E. Brigand]

This ABC segment from earlier today briefly profiles five Americans with ties to Afghanistan, either through military service or humanitarian work.

Four of the five disagree with President Biden's decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistant this year. (But none of those four say when it would be a good time to withdraw.)

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Meanwhile, former President Trump supports Biden's decision to withdraw (but says that it should happen faster than Biden's imeline).

As the saying goes, even a broken clock is right twice a day.

[River]

I don't think having to abandon hair color and facials is that steep of a price.

Honestly, I think people of a certain age look better if they abandon the dye jobs and cosmetic treatments and just let the process happen.

[Inanna]

I don't think having to abandon hair color and facials is that steep of a price.

Honestly, I think people of a certain age look better if they abandon the dye jobs and cosmetic treatments and just let the process happen.

Yeah. Starting at my current age...

[N.E. Brigand]

Washington Post reporter Dave Weigel is in Texas's 6th Congressional District (southeast of Dallas), where a special election is scheduled for May 1. The district has been represented by a Republican since 1983, and likely will be again (Ron Wright, who won election from the district in 2018, was reelected in November but then died in February from Covid-19), and it has voted for the Republican candidate in presidential races since at least 2000, but whereas George W. Bush won the district that that year with 66% of the vote, Donald Trump only managed 51% six months ago. Weigel offered a little taste of the district's slowly changing politics:

There is no substitute for talking to voters in real life. Yesterday in Texas, met a warm, friendly retiree who politely corrected me every time I mentioned "Democrats" to say "commies."

(For example, one of my questions to everyone is why they think this area has gotten more Democratic -- nobody wants to blame the Trump effect on the party -- and she explained that "commies" had moved in.)