Freaked out by Yesterday's News? Try this

[Maeve]

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/1/30/1737140/-Freaked-out-by-yesterday-s-news

I promise if you read it you’ll feel better. Not to say everything’s fine, because things are not at all fine. We’re in very troubling times. But we’re not defeated, we have good, strong people in influential places, and collectively we’re gonna save our country. Our job is to flip the house and senate and governorships and state legislatures in November, and flip them hard.

The unroll is below for those who don’t like to click through tweets. I’m going to see if I can get a couple more hours of sleep now. Having read this, it should be easier. Hope this makes your day a little better and much thanks to annieli and greenbird!

Basically, for those who don't click thru---Wray isn't doing what tRump wants and may have de-fanged the fight against the FBI.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

1. But if Wray really isnt a bad guy or a Trump castradi...

...Trump could always do to Wray what he did to Comey.

[dchill]

5. I think I almost HOPE for that.

Almost.

[avebury]

2. More from the article above.

Today, immediately after apparently nudging McCabe out the door, Wray announced his replacement...

...and the guy he picked is in many ways Trump's worst nightmare.

David Bowditch. An FBI career man. A mini-Mueller.

8/

Bowditch isn't JUST an FBI veteran, he has the kind of pedigree Republicans would usually experience the kind of erection you have to call your urologist over.

He was a police officer. He joined the FBI and was a sniper on SWAT teams. He was on the Joint Terrorism Task Force

9/
He fought gangs and was instrumental in a history-making gang prosecution.

The guy is a caricature of the kind of "Law and Order" background Trump alleges he cares about.

In a word: he's unimpeachable.

==

Chris Wray just did exactly what he did with James Baker's role.

He not only robbed Trump of his ammo, he returned fire with a Howitzer.

[blueinredohio]

3. Trump already said he wants to replace Wray with Tom Cotton

[avebury]

4. Best tweet of all:

The most delicious little morsel in this pie to the face is this though...
Chris Wray just sent a 90-decibel message right into Trump's earhole:
"Come after whoever you want. There are a million more behind 'em. There is no stopping the FBI."

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/1/30/1737140/-Freaked-out-by-yesterday-s-news

[underpants]

6. Very good

[Hortensis]

7. Most pollsters are saying we'll take the house,

looking like a sweep even. Senate less likely, BUT senate Republicans are overall less extreme than their house counterparts. And less vulnerable to special interest control.

As for worrying about Russia, yes. BUT, note that almost all efforts to steal elections focus on persuading voters, and of course blocking those who can't be turned. For those who anxiously wonder if democracy isn't already lost, of course not! It's about the vote. Just ask Putin and the Kochs if you don't believe it.

Countdown to the midterms: 280 days.

[Lonestarblue]

8. I do not trust Russia or Republicans.

Although no changes in votes were proven from Russian hacking in 2016, that doesn’t mean they didn’t happen. There seems little reason to bother hacking both voter registration databases and voting systems unless you meant to do some harm. And now that Russian hackers, and indeed every hacker in the world, knows how easy it is to mess with U.S. voting systems, what’s to stop them in 2018 from changing votes or changing registrations of Democrats so they aren’t allowed to vote. Republicans will not object if they win. Remember that in the 2016 recounts, officials were not allowed to access the computer programming and files behind the totals. That’s truly the only way to know whether votes have been changed.

[Hortensis]

9. I trust them to fight ruthlessly to retain and consolidate

power, including by any illegal means they think can get away with to achieve victory. For them, the will of the people is only a tool to be used or a problem to be smashed, and that includes most of today's elected Republicans. They have been thoroughly corrupted.

But the path to power is still through elections. That's why they're working so hard to influence voters. Their biggest strategy is not stealing votes but rather

* For the right, to motivate turnout by stoking outrage through lies.

* For the left, to deceive and discourage "those who lack all conviction" into not voting for Democrats.

* Voter suppression.

This is how they won in 2016. They don't need to leave a trail of electronic tampering if they can duplicate their success in undermining belief in those who are weak and easily turned.

The vote rules.

[Moostache]

10. I am going on record today to say the 2018 elections will be canceled...

This administration and its lap dog GOP have clearly laid out their intentions...they are puppets of a foreign government and are wholly owned subsidiaries of the Russian mafia and Putin himself. They are in power to achieve two things - the destruction of Western Democratic governance and the securing of a world power structure with the north star in Moscow instead of Washington.

The idea that they would have come this far, this fast and then suddenly allow something like a legitimate election to undermine them is laughable. We will NOT be given a chance in November if we do not riot and resist in February, mark my words and please send them back to me as crow if I am (hopefully) wrong...

[Hortensis]

11. Good grief?

This stuff reminds me of right-wingers during Obama's administration who'd post sightings of train cars taking conservatives to concentration camps. They enjoyed reporting fascist atrocities, post the uncontested disappearance of democracy of course, as online chat between watching TV and running an errand to the grocery store.

Sure, Putin's developed shocking influence in the White House AND in the Republican majority in congress. But he controls neither, and he certainly doesn't control the third branch of government or us. He doesn't get "allow" anything.

When we get power again (assuming our weak sisters develop enough conviction to stop by their polling places and vote us in), we're going to hurt Putin. And then perhaps they will. You do know what happened to Russia's wealthiest kleptocrat before Putin stole that honor, don't you? The name's Khodorkovsky; he's still alive, and his former fellow kleptocrats even eventually let him out of prison.

[Moostache]

12. Like I said, serve me the crow if/when the elections take place...I hope I am wrong.

But if you still hold out belief that these currently hypothetical elections will be tallied and tabulated on the straight and narrow, then you are truly deceived or simply not paying attention. It is not just a full cancellation of free elections that would be necessary, just an extension of the abuses of 2016 replayed in 2018 to greater effect. Everyone seems to have willingly forgotten that Trump LOST that election on popular vote and not by a little bit either, yet he holds sway in a manner that bespeaks a man convinced that he is above the law and ruler of all.

The rule of law either applies to everyone up to and including the President, or it is a sham and a sick joke. We already know there are two systems of justice in America - one for the public at large, and one for those who can pay for the other kind - the kind that celebrities and millionaires or billionaires avail themselves of constantly. Once the underpinnings of the rule of law are swept away - as they currently are being shoved into the dustbin - there is nothing left to stop a wannabe strong man from declaring dictatorial powers and changing the entirety of the Constitution.

The Constitution is a piece of paper in reality...what gives it it's true power and relevance is only the consent of the governed and the systems of law and order built to sustain and enforce it. When the executive branch under Bush began amassing powers to the Presidency it was alarming. This part is going to be wildly unpopular here...and when Obama's administration did not fully reverse those powers and return the balance to the 3 co-equal branches of government, the right wing was NOT crazy is suggesting he should do otherwise...now Obama was a decent man and a true leader who was not interested in doing what the GOP suggested he would, but Trump is barely in the same species as Obama and to be afraid of the power grab now is not the same as the GOP handwringing and conspiracies during the Obama years.

Think of the one thing Republicans do without fail - projectionism. They have been at it for decades, projecting their weaknesses onto the opponent's strengths and vice versa. Under Obama, they attacked the president with false claims not just to influence their base of idiots....but also because it was projections of what THEY WOULD DO IF THEY HAD THE POWER....well, now they DO and they are not just signalling bad intent, they are shredding the Constitution and wiping their asses on our "protections".

The Congress is complicit.
The President is a wannabe dictator.
The courts are stacked and the SCOTUS is co-opted.

Call me crazy, ignore the fires burning and in the AM, when the village has burned to the ground and everyone has lost all, feel better for having the foresight to claim "all is well", when the opposite it true.

It does not take a level of belief or credulity bordering on "the lizard people are doing it" to see that this situation is different than any previous in our national history. The closest historical precedent was Watergate, if the GOP had circled the wagons and said "damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead for King Dick!!!"

Like I repeatedly say, I hope I am wrong and I look forward to the crow if I am...but the current events and the trajectory of the present do not suggest I am seeing chemtrails and going full anti-vax about this...

[Hortensis]

13. Moostache, you seem very sincere. But

"currently hypothetical elections?"

How many of the people who share your general beliefs will even bother to go vote?

And how many of those who did in 2016 hung their dispirited resentments on Hillary and/or the Democratic Party and sabotaged America by voting for Jill Stein or Trump himself?

I'm seeing a huge dissociation between claiming to worry about hostile forces and behaviors that help enable them.

In other words, if you mean it, stop carrying water for Putin by posting this dispirited shit and go to war against the Republicans.

[Moostache]

14. The 2018 elections remain hypothetical until they happen, that is fact.

Putin is an antagonist and opportunist, the one stirring the pot for personal gain and advantage...the real enemy is the GOP and the hideous beast that currently 'leads' it, Trump - complicit in their efforts to maintain power against a structural and demographic deficit which makes their brand increasingly poisonous to their future as power brokers in the legislature, and simply an egomaniac run amok for Trump. The natural course of time would indicate that their days are numbered as a leading force in policy...so how to best fuck the system to ensure their impact is still holding sway long beyond the time their numbers say it should fade?

I do not believe 2000 was "won" by Bush...Florida was a disgrace and theft.
I do not believe 2004 was "won" by Bush...Ohio was stolen by fraudulent voting machines and the fix was in to retain power then.

2008 was beyond their ability to steal due to the complete collapse of the global economy and inertia that made stemming the tide of votes impossible without extraordinary means that they did not have - such as unified party control of all branches of the government.

2012 was SUPPOSED to be a rerun of 2004...do you NOT remember the turd blossom losing his shit on Fox News that night about the early call of Ohio? Do you believe that was coincidental?

I do not believe 2016 was "won" by Trump...77,000 votes are EASY to change when it only takes a few dozen per precinct across 3 states and stealing an election has been shown possible with larger totals in single states previously...

I believe that this is eventuality of a slow motion coup d'etat that has been in motion for a very long time - like a glacier moving across the land, it cannot be stopped once in motion, and its damage is only truly apparent after it recedes - and I believe the fallacy of elections turning the tide is peeing into the wind. Elections that allow a man to assume power, and become a modern dictator in a years' time, when he lost the public vote by more than 3 million ballots are not changing a damn thing...

There is a fight coming, and its not against Putin, the fight is going to be a second Civil War for the soul of what remains of the concept and idea of "America"; and it is the end result of that glacial destruction of American politics by the GOP since the advent of Reaganomics and straight through to Trumpsim...truth be told, it started with Kennedy's assassination and has never really stopped, just moved in fits and starts sometimes accelerating and sometimes lagging.

Since Kennedy there have been a total of FOUR (4) Democratic administrations - Johnson (derailed by Vietnam and hatred of the Civil Rights legislation and Great Society), Carter (derailed by Iranian hostage crisis and complicity between Reagan campaign and Iran), Clinton (derailed by his own lack of self-control and an increasingly efficient apparatus of obstruction and mud slinging that Hillary was right to label a 'vast right wing conspiracy', even though it would be used as a rallying cry by Ailes and Fox for years after) and Obama (derailed by outright racism and obstruction at every level of government as the pattern repeats but grows more virulent every time a Democrat is elected.

I do not view these things in a vacuum or as singular events. I believe they are related, and I believe if you follow the arc of their history that these add up to a currently ascendant party that should not be in power but has managed to rig the system to make it happen anyway. I see a party in power that has no moral compass and no intention of relinquishing the reins as the result of an election either. They believe that the economy alone was what prevented a McCain-Palin adminstration...and maybe they are right, because if the wave had not crested behind Obama after the housing market imploded and the Great Recession took hold, we may be sitting in the 5th consecutive Republican administration now...though it would likely have been President Palin and Vice-President Trump.

No matter how it is viewed, I believe faith in elections alone to change this trajectory is myopic. We are facing a party that doesn't play by the same rules that Democrats shackle themselves with....things like honesty, integrity, honor...we cannot win the fight when they bring guns and we are throwing stones.

[Hortensis]

15. Midterms November 6, 2018. Coming fast.