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The GQP: Trumpist Death Cult


Hugo Stiglitz

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2 hours ago, Chuckie Finster said:

He's discussed earlier in the thread, but he's also the same man who went blind from getting into a physical altercation at thirty-fucking-two years old.  

I was curious so I googled.  Seems everyone is tight lipped about it.  "Altercation" is all anyone seems to know.

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6 minutes ago, Horn Under a Bad Sign said:

Republicans propose using 2.5 billion dollars from Texas' rainy day fund to build Trump's wall in Texas:

https://www.statesman.com/news/20190211/texas-republicans-to-propose-tapping-rainy-day-fund-for-border-wall

So they refused to tap it for emergency Harvey recovery but they'll tap into it for the wall? 

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1 minute ago, Js1 said:

So they refused to tap it for emergency Harvey recovery but they'll tap into it for the wall? 

Is it for an act of kindness and humanity (helping disaster victims)?  FUCK THAT SHIT.

It it for a made-up crisis to put on a show about how big a "fuck you" you can show to brown people?  THAT'S FISCALLY RESPONSIBLE!

Seriously, in the real-time Choose-Your-Own-Adventure that is Republican politics, at every decision point, they simply choose "whatever a raging asshole would do."  It makes the story so predictable.

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Just found out that the man who founded and owns Buc-ees, Arch Aplin, is not only an Aggie but gave 50,000 dollars to the Dan Patrick campaign.  Won't be back in Texas for quite awhile but I will never stop patronize a Buc-ees again, unless it's to take a shit. 

Edited by Horn Under a Bad Sign
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Putin adviser weighs in on Republicans:

 

Americans who worry about Russia election interference should stop focusing on such trivialities and instead realize that the idea that they have a choice over how they are governed is a mere illusion, Vladislav Surkov, an adviser to Russian President Vladimir Putin, wrote in an op-ed published this week.

“The illusion of choice is the most important illusion, the main trick of Western democracy especially…. The rejection of this illusion in favor of the reality that everything is predestined will allow society to reflect first on our vision of democratic development,” Surkov wrote. “Foreign politicians talk about Russia’s interference in elections and referendums around the world. In fact, the matter is even more serious: Russia interferes in your brains, we change your conscience, and there is nothing you can do about it.”

https://www.newsweek.com/russia-president-vladimir-putin-election-americans-1327793

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5 hours ago, Satchel said:

there is nothing you can do about it.”

False.  We can do what Finland does, educate our population and laugh at the Russians when they try to run their bullshit on us.

Why Is Finland Able to Fend Off Putin’s Information War?

https://www.google.com/amp/s/foreignpolicy.com/2017/03/01/why-is-finland-able-to-fend-off-putins-information-war/amp/

But in the face of this mounting pressure, one of Russia’s neighbors has emerged unusually resistant to the wider information war waged by Moscow across Europe: Finland.

Like other countries along the Baltic Sea or in Eastern Europe, Finland has seen a notable increase in fake news stories and propaganda targeted against it that can be linked back to Russia since Moscow’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. These attacks have sought to undermine the government and often coincided with military shows of force along the Russian border.

But unlike its neighbors, Helsinki reckons it has the tools to effectively resist any information attack from its eastern neighbor. Finnish officials believe their country’s strong public education system, long history of balancing Russia, and a comprehensive government strategy allow it to deflect coordinated propaganda and disinformation.

“The best way to respond is less by correcting the information, and more about having your own positive narrative and sticking to it,” Jed Willard, director of the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Center for Global Engagement at Harvard, told Foreign Policy. Willard, who is currently working for the Swedish government, was hired by Finnish officials to help them develop a public diplomacy program to understand and identify why false information goes viral and how to counter propaganda.

That initiative started at the top. In October 2015, Finnish President Sauli Niinisto took the first step, when he acknowledged that information warfare is real for Finland, and said that it was the duty of every citizen to combat it. In January 2016, the prime minister’s office enrolled 100 officials in a program across several levels of the Finnish government to identify and understand the spread of disinformation based on Willard’s advice.

Lots of governments in the West don’t have the same kind of narrative to respond with as does Helsinki.A homogeneous country of 5.4 million people, Finland routinely ranks at the top of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s quality of life metrics and, in addition to strong social welfare programs, the country’s education system is the best in the world, according to the World Economic Forum.

Willard says this combination of widespread critical thinking skills among the Finnish population and a coherent government response makes a strong defense against concerted outside efforts to skew reality and undermine faith in institutions.

“This stuff is real. It is as real as war,” said Willard. “But the Finns very quickly realized this and got out in front of the problem.”

René Nyberg, a former Finnish ambassador to Moscow, says Finland has a couple of key advantages when it comes to parrying Russian disinformation. Helsinki is painfully well-versed in dealing with Russia, as it has had to do through war and annexation, and most recently the decades-long staring match of the Cold War. That left Finland with a sober understanding of the Kremlin’s real motives. Plus, it helps that Finland is not Russia’s main target when it comes to undermining European unity.

“The real intensity is Germany … Merkel is the main course,” Nyberg told FP. “We’re just a side dish.”

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He's discussed earlier in the thread, but he's also the same man who went blind from getting into a physical altercation at thirty-fucking-two years old.  
I was curious so I googled.  Seems everyone is tight lipped about it.  "Altercation" is all anyone seems to know.

Given that he's an anti-gay crusading Republican, the "altercation" probably stems from him offering blow jobs in a truck stop bathroom.

Sent from my SM-G920V using Tapatalk

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8 hours ago, Horn Under a Bad Sign said:

Just found out that the man who founded and owns Buc-ees, Arch Aplin, is not only an Aggie but gave 50,000 dollars to the Dan Patrick campaign.  Won't be back in Texas for quite awhile but I will never stop patronize a Buc-ees again, unless it's to take a shit. 

He supports trans folk?  Who knew?

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17 minutes ago, David Dennison said:

They hate themselves.

 

That's the saddest line up of misfit toys I've ever seen.

It really is.  I am old enough to remember when the Republican and Conservative movement actually had thinkers (even if they weren't always right, or even treacherously wrong, they were thinkers).  Friedman, Buckley, Will, Krauthammer, etc.  Now, it's just con artists and grifters.  Jesus.  Look at what these fucks have become.  It is utterly bankrupt if ideas or intellect.

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11 hours ago, Horn Under a Bad Sign said:

Just found out that the man who founded and owns Buc-ees, Arch Aplin, is not only an Aggie but gave 50,000 dollars to the Dan Patrick campaign.  Won't be back in Texas for quite awhile but I will never stop patronize a Buc-ees again, unless it's to take a shit. 

I have never gotten the Buc-ees love.  I'm not going to go to a fucking Walmart-sized store on a road trip.  

In light of Buc-ees being aggy owned, I'm surprised their bathrooms aren't know for the glory holes, instead of their cleanliness.  

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1 minute ago, David Dennison said:

Oh, don't worry about that. We're all up in their shit and have been since about 1946.

We need to do more.  We need to go after them on the pressure points that matter -- Putin's crooked cronies.  Small things...but big enough to get their attention, and let them know that we can and will play.  Interfere with their business interests.  Torpedo transactions.  Hack a bank account or two.  Enough to let them know that if they want to engage in internal fuckery, and expatriate their dollars, we'll mostly leave them alone.  But if they continue to engage in external fuckery, there will be reciprocal fuckery.

From the folks I know on the periphery of the world of intel counter-fuckery, we absolutely have the means, and indeed have deployed them in the past.  My concern is that we are currently in a stand-down mode because the Russians have done an end-around on us.  We need to undo that particular problem.

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2 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

We need to do more.  We need to go after them on the pressure points that matter -- Putin's crooked cronies.  Small things...but big enough to get their attention, and let them know that we can and will play.  Interfere with their business interests.  Torpedo transactions.  Hack a bank account or two.  Enough to let them know that if they want to engage in internal fuckery, and expatriate their dollars, we'll mostly leave them alone.  But if they continue to engage in external fuckery, there will be reciprocal fuckery.

From the folks I know on the periphery of the world of intel counter-fuckery, we absolutely have the means, and indeed have deployed them in the past.  My concern is that we are currently in a stand-down mode because the Russians have done an end-around on us.  We need to undo that particular problem.

We aren't the entire reason why Russia currently has a shrinking population, a wrecked economy, and dwindling life-expectancy, but we helped a lot. We don't even have to do it clandestinely anymore. Sanctions and our power over the international banking system goes a long way toward interfering with business interests and torpedoing transactions. Our fuckery is the reason why they decided to start meddling in the first place. The United States has played a large role in bringing the Russian state to its knees.

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2 minutes ago, David Dennison said:

We aren't the entire reason why Russia currently has a shrinking population, a wrecked economy, and dwindling life-expectancy, but we helped a lot. We don't even have to do it clandestinely anymore. Sanctions and our power over the international banking system goes a long way toward interfering with business interests and torpedoing transactions. Our fuckery is the reason why they decided to start meddling in the first place. The United States has played a large role in bringing the Russian state to its knees.

You discount their headlong leap into kleptocracy post-USSR.  There is hundreds of billions in economic activity happening in Russia......almost none of which flows to the people, almost all of which flows to a literal handful of kleptocrats/oligarchs.  Enterprises went from being state-owned to criminal-owned (and even the remaining purportedly state-owned enterprises are run by and for the benefit of the criminals) -- and the people remained peasants.

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1 minute ago, Brisketexan said:

You discount their headlong leap into kleptocracy post-USSR.  There is hundreds of billions in economic activity happening in Russia......almost none of which flows to the people, almost all of which flows to a literal handful of kleptocrats/oligarchs.  Enterprises went from being state-owned to criminal-owned (and even the remaining purportedly state-owned enterprises are run by and for the benefit of the criminals) -- and the people remained peasants.

I understand all of that. The result is an extremely weak state and a diminished geopolitical foe. 

Sadly, their nuclear arsenal allows them to remain a permanent member of the UN Security Council and a state to be taken seriously in world affairs.

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1 hour ago, Brisketexan said:

We need to do more.  We need to go after them on the pressure points that matter -- Putin's crooked cronies.  Small things...but big enough to get their attention, and let them know that we can and will play.  Interfere with their business interests.  Torpedo transactions.  Hack a bank account or two.  Enough to let them know that if they want to engage in internal fuckery, and expatriate their dollars, we'll mostly leave them alone.  But if they continue to engage in external fuckery, there will be reciprocal fuckery.

From the folks I know on the periphery of the world of intel counter-fuckery, we absolutely have the means, and indeed have deployed them in the past.  My concern is that we are currently in a stand-down mode because the Russians have done an end-around on us.  We need to undo that particular problem.

I remember on some podcast my wife makes me listen to on long car trips somebody was talking to some former advisors to Obama, and they were asked why Obama didn't do something to punish Russia and Putin for their chicanery during the election. The response was something along the lines of "We discussed loping a zero off of Putin's offshore bank accounts, but we were worried that their response would be far worse. The fact was that Russia was way ahead of us in cyber warfare. We would not be able to defend ourselves against an all out cyber attack. without resorting to an actual shooting war. So we sanctioned some people, that sort of thing. And we told the incoming administration about their meddling, thinking they would work to close the cyber gap. We didn't anticipate that the Trump administration would completely embrace Putin, rather than work to stop the meddling."

Anyway, that response makes Obama look incompetent, but makes DOTUS look treasonous.

tldr: Tell me something I didn't already know.

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This is a good interview with David Sanger about cyber warfare.

Quote

DAVIES: And can I just go back to the attack on Putin himself? There was this thought you could expose his secret assets, I think maybe even make some of his money disappear. What were the objections?

SANGER: ...The Federal Reserve doesn't like any idea in which you sort of legitimize going into a central bank and making money disappear because they think at that moment, you have started the war of all against all and everybody will lose confidence in the financial system - again, the fear factor that we discussed. There were concerns that you could expose Putin's connections to the oligarchs and the Russians would yawn.

https://www.npr.org/2018/06/19/621338178/journalist-warns-cyber-attacks-present-a-perfect-weapon-against-global-order

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  • Hugo Stiglitz changed the title to The GQP: Trumpist Death Cult


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