The Mueller Indictment

MoA thinks its more smoke and mirrors, long on allegation and short on proof. And that the allegations, even if substantially correct, don’t really constitute interference, so much as scrutiny.

http://www.moonofalabama.org/2018/07/no-evidence-in-muellers-indictment-of-12-russians-release-now-may-sabotage-upcoming-summit.html

One of the commenters even notes that one of the first group of indicted Russians has indicated a willingness to show up in court and has called for discovery. That should be interesting to say the least, if it actually comes to pass.

U.S. elections are set up to facilitate fraud, propaganda, dirty tricks, and interference by interested parties. I can’t get too upset about who interferes in elections until we pass decent laws protecting the elections and facilitating voting. As long as elected offices are blatantly for sale and successful dirty tricks are regarded as clever rather than criminal, people searching for power will buy whatever is necessary for the outcome they want.

Having said that, I also think any nation should seek to influence populations where their own interests are at stake. It’s what the U.S. used to do with Radio Free Europe broadcast to the Soviet Bloc. The U.S. has ringed Russia with military bases. It has fomented a coup in neighboring Ukraine, and is fighting wars in countries near Russia in the Middle East. It has called for regime change in neighboring Iran. Any leader of Russia that doesn’t seek to change the foreign policy of the U.S. should be impeached by his country for criminal negligence. The only issue is whether our electoral laws permit free, open speech in elections or whether they privilege dark money.

Bush v Gore was a dreadful decision, a Supreme Court coup. Still it tends to obscure what an awful campaign Gore ran. Much the same can be said of Russian interference in the US election and Hillary Clinton. Clinton was an arrogant elitist grifter, hated by tens of millions, and with the biggest tin ear in US politics. Still she won the popular vote by 3 million and nearly won the electoral college. Democrats now are talking a lot about the importance of Supreme Court nominations and the need to vote Democratic, but they don’t talk much or at all about the importance of choosing someone/anyone better at the head of their ticket. That nomination should have been important too. Why do Democrats run the worst candidate they think can win? In any case, 120,000 votes going the other way and Clinton well might have. And the Russians might just have provided that difference –on top of all the other factors.

None of this really changes that Putin is a dictator, that the Trump campaign had an unbelievable number of contacts with Russians, often fairly dubious Russians, and that Trump’s whole demeanor toward Putin and Russia is not fair and measured (face it Trump does not do fair or measured, they’re not in his lexicon) but beyond bizarre.

And none of this touches on all the anti-democratic aspects of American politics: the electoral college, gerrymandering, an unrepresentative Senate, the two party duopoly, campaign finance, and voter suppression or the lack of paper ballots and public counts.

Maybe Trump’s private little meeting with Putin will be to show him just what really makes America great, mano a mano?

Hugh: Why do Democrats run the worst candidate they think can win?

A desire to satisfy big-ticket donors on policy: the business model of the national Democratic Party is raising lots of money to be spent on mass-media advertising (for the benefit of Big Media and an apparatus of cynical campaign consultants who buy the advertising/propaganda on commission) and delivering policy for the donors in order to ensure that the funding is available.

Obama’s 2012 campaign was a masterpiece of closely calculated campaign engineering, going for the smallest possible safe margin in order to concede as little as possible to the electoral base on policy. The Democratic Party’s infrastructure and viability nationally was deliberately neglected to make it easier for Obama to deliver to his donor base.

Clinton’s campaign embraced and extended the Obama model. The Party apparatus was drained of funds in an elaborate scheme to circumvent what little was left of campaign finance restrictions, maximizing Clinton’s spending, while guaranteeing that the Party could not gain control of Congress or significant numbers of seats in State Legislatures or Governor’s mansions.

Clinton would like to have won the election by taking suburban Republican women of a certain age and certain means away from Trump’s electoral base and adding them to her own, because her own policy preferences are those of a suburban Republican matron. She was horrified by the possibility of a much higher minimum wage, completely disinterested in reforming bankruptcy in a more populist direction, indelibly identified with NAFTA and free trade, not to mention her incessant war-mongering.

So, naturally, a Democratic establishment deeply invested in servicing big donors and lacking a moral compass needs a narrative that does not touch upon their failure to either organize electoral campaigns effectively or deliver to their electoral base on policy.

Putin, it may be noted, has delivered for most Russians. Incomes rose steadily during his first Presidency. In his latest inaugural address, he outlined a policy of restricting military spending to pour money into much needed public infrastructure. Meanwhile, in the U.S.A. the economic system grows daily more predatory, a trend that was in no way even slowed by Obama.

Over and over during the 2016 campaign, I listened to partisans for the Democrats argue that alleged differences between Clinton and Trump made it obvious that Clinton ought to be favored by right-thinking members of their tribe. Many of these alleged differences were illusory; Trump’s penchant for bellicose blustering rhetoric was contrasted with the allegedly sober Clinton, who, of course, has never seen a war she did not want to expand.

To say, as Ian does, that in a close election, “everything made the difference” is using probability to make what ought to be clear, unnecessarily fuzzy. A close election was a calculated, strategic choice by people who really did not want to have to do much of anything to benefit the 90% of the population who are being preyed upon by the 0.1% with professional and technical assistance from the 9.9%.

The U.S.A. has become a sheep farm where the wolves hire the shepherds. As a result, the legitimacy of governance is being called into question. And, it should be called into question, because the people who make up the political classes — including media — are without a moral compass — they work for the wolves.

The nonsense about Russian interference is nonsense. There is nothing supporting that narrative that supplies anything of sufficient magnitude to even qualify as part of “everything made the difference”. A relative handful of silly ads on Facebook did not sway the election. No Russian ever hacked a single vote — we cannot similarly exonerate Hillary Clinton’s supporters in New York State or California primaries nor in the conduct of the Democratic Party’s administration. If the Russians did something to disclose Podesta’s emails or the DNC internal email, the only sensible response from the United States — if we had any integrity regarding democratic process — would be a note of gratitude, a thank you to Putin with X’s and O’s. Those emails revealed that Hillary Clinton was a mortal enemy of democratic governance in the public interest.

@Tom:

Poor Trumpers can’t accept the fact that their guy was running against the worst candidate the Democrats could have picked, an insanely unpopular candidate loathed by huge swaths of the country, and he still couldn’t beat her without illegal assistance from a foreign government. Sad.

Bill Hicks:

I agree with most of what you say, except for the 100% part. As Ian noted, in an election this close, no one factor is 100% responsible for the result.

But yes, if she’d been a better candidate, she would have won easily, that much is true.

to actually think the Russians would leave tracks/proof that they hacked the elections beggars belief. so, the Russians are incredibly stupid, can’t do computer hacking without getting caught or the Americans can’t stop others from interfering in our elections.

it beggars belief to think anyone can pinpoint who did what unless there is proof, which the NSA/CIA, etc will never show us. so we have educated guesses by those with an agenda. all the while the Democrats use McCarthyism to attack Trump, who is liable to be re-elected due to Hillary or other Democrats not offering any reason for the deplorable to vote Democratic.

boy what incompetents we have in the Government. a country with the economy of Italy, who spend 1/10 what we do on defense, can defeat the election system of America, which spends more than 680 billion a year on the Defense Dept/aka Dept of War.

boy is this some pissed off people crying about spilt milk???!!!!!

all this money spent to defend this country by all these 17 Defense agencies can’t stop nor prove anything other than they don’t like losing so they will blame the Russians for losing a gimme election, so to cast aspersions and do whatever they can change the “Narrative” by blaming the OTHER/Russians, in this case. today the bad guy is the Russians, who will it be tomorrow?

Meanwhile Trump and the Republicans are busying undoing the New Deal and selling America to the highest bidder. and the Democrats just sit there crying, the Russians!, the Russians! it was my election, but the Russians stole it! My god, people. what a sad two bit excuse of so called American integrity.

But of course, it is all the Russians fault. let’s all join in and throw more temper tantrums while the Earth is being killing by Corporate Greed, which both the Republicans and Democrats are behind. but don’t go there, it’s all the Russians fault!!!

Is America Great or what? You betcha!

Not only does the indictment have assertions without actual evidence, but it asserts that the twelve are, “members of the GRU, a Russian Federation intelligence agency within the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Russian military.”

That’s sort of like saying that the FBI is an investigation agency within the Federal Bureau of Ineptitude.

GRU are the initials of the Russian words for “Main Intelligence Directorate,” so the GRU is not within the Main Intelligence Directorate, the GRU is the Main Intelligence Directorate.

Further, in 2010 the name of the Russian agency in question was changed to Intelligence Directorate and has been known since then as the GU.

And we are supposed to be taking this clownish investigation seriously?

I am pretty surprised that no one here seems to think it matters at all that is almost certain that the Trump campaign conspired with Russia to influence the campaign. That’s okay? Then what isn’t? Maybe it did not matter much, but what about next time? What if in a similar situation someone like Russia does change vote counts with the assistance of one of our own? Tough luck? Everyone does it? To me it was treason, maybe ineffective but the effort was there.

Fairness Doctrine
reinstate it
the thing worked fine for decades
kept hate speech out of radio and television
made unbridled propaganda too expensive for oligarchs to wallow in

at first Rush Limbaugh was actually alarmed that Obama would put it back in place
what with Democrats briefly dominant in Congress and all
interesting that he didn’t get the memo that the fix was already in

on 7/13 under the Kill Me Now subhead, this link was posted at Naked Capitalism

http://thehill.com/homenews/396511-poll-obama-sit-atop-list-ranking-best-president-in-americans-lifetime

kill me now indeed

pardon the multiple posts

Occurs to me that my complaint about Obama and the Congressional Democrats declining to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine fits well with the frame that Bruce Wilder and Stewart M described here.

It could also be argued that declining to put the fairness rule back in place contributed more materially to Trump’s election than the Russians.

Please correct me if I’m wrong.

Donald Trump(R) appointed Dan Coats(R) who initiated the Special Counsel Investigation where Rod Rosenstein(R) chose Robert Mueller(R) to create a witch hunt against Donald Trump(R), with the whole thing being masterminded by Hillary Clinton(D) and her supplicants(D) and henchmen(D).

One would think that this alone, should keep any sane person from ever voting (R) ever again.

@StewartM,

There is a word for the kind of suburbanite-entitlement Clinton-feminism you describe. It is called Goldman-Sachs feminism, and it is concerned with breaking through the Tiffany Glass Ceiling.

One could call the Clintobama-Holder obsession with making sure that there are some Oligarchs of every race and creed and sex and gender to be Rainbow Oligarchism. One could call them. . . the Rainbowligarchy.

Willy:

“Donald Trump(R) appointed Dan Coats(R) who initiated the Special Counsel Investigation where Rod Rosenstein(R) chose Robert Mueller(R) to create a witch hunt against Donald Trump(R), with the whole thing being masterminded by Hillary Clinton(D) and her supplicants(D) and henchmen(D).”

Now you’re thinking like a Trumper!

@different clue

“And also, Clinton could have used a Secured State Department Server, the way she knew she was legally required to do. She didn’t have to put all her emails on a hackable private basement or bathroom or whatever server. Also, the DNC could have maintained some level of security around its computer functions, which it apparently felt it was too good to have to be bothered doing.”

The Enron “smartest people in the room” were on the loose again. With the same results.

Minor-ish comment to Bill H. You said,

[i]Further, in 2010 the name of the Russian agency in question was changed to Intelligence Directorate and has been known since then as the GU.[/i]

The agency name is “Glavnoe Razvedyvatelnoye Upravleniye”. The word order is the same as the english translation, so GU would stand for just “Main Directorate” (it’s the same GU as in the old familiar GULag – Glavnoye Upravleniye Lagerov (Main Directorate for Camps). Intelligence Directorate would be RU.

The new name for the GRU since 2010, in any case, is not ‘Intelligence Directorate’, but ‘Main Directorate of the General Head of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation’ (Glavnoye Upravleniye Generalnovo Shtaba Vooruzhyonykh Sil Russkoy Federatsii). It shortens to GU GSh VS RF, but Russians still refer to it, even semi-officially, as just GRU. Sometimes you see it as GUGSh, but nobody calls it just GU.

There is certainly an irony embedded in ignoring the misdeeds of the Clinton campaign, which made the revelation of emails damaging, while using the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act as a basis for prosecuting the conduct of spies.

A key thing to watch for is Mueller using a legal theory of conspiracy to go the next step and try to criminalize the receipt of the stolen documents. That has always been the holy grail for the authoritarians: if you can criminalize the publication of “secrets” then all the news that is fit to print is what is released to the media officially. Every rain thing you see or read is a corporate or official press release. Anything else is a crime.

Thank you, Hillary. You shredded public records law. You shredded campaign finance limits. You destroyed the Democratic Party as a vehicle for expressing the popular will. Now, you will have enabled the Deep State to get what they have always wanted: an official secrets act enabling both governments and business corporation from publishing any information they have that do not want published. We cannot have election interference like that!!!

As someone said “All the names end in “vich”. It’s a vich-hunt!”

Trump voters should be banned from ever voting again.

Or take a test to prove they’re no longer stupid. And pay for it.

Al Gore won the most votes in the 2000 election.

Hillary Clinton won the most votes in the 2016 election.

2 of the last 3 Presidents did not win the most votes in the election. They have nominated 4 wealthy white men to lifetime appointments of the Supreme Court.

The minority in the Senate received 23 million more votes than the majority.

Soon, states representing 30% of the population will control 70% of the Senate seats

The Electoral College and the Senate are part of a Constitutional system designed by the “Founding Fathers” to preserve and protect the power of wealthy white men, and it has been spectacularly effective at doing that for our entire history.

We don’t live in a democracy or even a representative republic. We live in an oligarchy controlled by wealthy white men.

That is the fundamental problem.

@NR: I hear that eeevil Russians stole HRC’s only copy of the Constitution, so she wasn’t able to find out about the Electoral College. Not only that, but those wily Russkies bought every spare copy at the local Barnes and Noble, just to be on the safe side.

If that weren’t enough, Putin personally convinced HRC not to bother to campaign in the upper Midwest with the icky flyover people. Far more pleasant to stay in California and divide the spoils of the inevitable victory with bog donors and campaign bundkers. “You have got zis van in bag, baby!”