Tornado Alley (PROG)

[fuagf]

Part 158, some of Russian meddling, and related, material from F6 big ones. These from Monday, 03/05/18, headed,
WATCH: Parkland High School Shooting Survivor Emma Gonzalez’s Powerful Speech Demanding Gun Control
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=139018686

If the speech by Emma Gonzalez in that first doesn't bring tears to your eyes, that could be just one condition
of living in such a tragic gun culture which you have to tolerate. The young people protesters today will vote.

The tenth and eleventh segment down

Revealed: Russian support for Bernie began during NH primary

The Beat with Ari Melber
2/19/18
Special Counsel Mueller's indictments reveal Russian support for both the Trump and Bernie Sanders 2016 campaign. While there is no equivalence between the two campaigns
when it comes to Russia, this shocking footage raises questions about what Mueller alleges was an international criminal conspiracy to defraud U.S. Elections.
©2018 NBCNews.com
http://www.msnbc.com/the-beat-with-ari-melber/watch/revealed-russian-support-for-bernie-began-during-new-hampshire-primary-1165228611873 , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3q3sHCpJB7g [with comments]

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After Mueller indictment, Bernie aide says they didn’t know Russians were helping

The Beat with Ari Melber
2/19/18
Special Counsel Mueller’s latest indictments reveal Russian interference in the U.S. Presidential Election began as early as the 2016 New Hampshire primary.
Bernie Sanders’s campaign digital director tells Ari Melber "it would have been impossible" for the campaign to know about attempted Russian interference.
©2018 NBCNews.com
http://www.msnbc.com/the-beat-with-ari-melber/watch/after-mueller-indictment-bernie-aide-says-they-didn-t-know-russians-were-helping-1165229635824 , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cbhfwvh05A [with comments]

Leave one to

Inside the Russian troll factory indicted by the DOJ
All In with Chris Hayes
2/19/18
The “Internet Research Agency” is “some kind of factory that turned lying, telling untruths, into an industrial assembly line,” said someone
who once worked there. “I immediately felt like a character in the book ‘1984’ by George Orwell,” they added to the Washington Post.
©2018 NBCNews.com
http://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/inside-the-russian-troll-factory-indicted-by-the-doj-1165271619971

Approaching halfway, this pair

New White House security rule could force Kushner, others out

The Rachel Maddow Show
2/19/18
Rachel Maddow looks at how a new White House rule to remove people who haven't been granted
permanent security clearance from White House jobs could snare Jared Kushner and many others.
©2018 NBCNews.com
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/new-white-house-security-rule-could-force-kusher-many-others-out-1165337155728 , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDJziycP3LQ [with comments]

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Mueller mention of new evidence suggests more Manafort charges
The Rachel Maddow Show
2/19/18
Barbara McQuade, former U.S. attorney, talks with Rachel Maddow about why Robert Mueller would mention new
evidence of a crime in Paul Manafort court papers without adding new charges that correspond to that evidence.
©2018 NBCNews.com
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/mueller-mention-of-new-evidence-suggests-more-manafort-charges-1165347907555

Leave two to this one

Russian foreign minister takes advantage of uncorrected Pence lie
The Rachel Maddow Show
2/19/18
Rachel Maddow points out that while CIA Director Mike Pompeo corrected his misstatement about the impact of Russia on
the 2016 election, Mike Pence has allowed his lie to linger and has now been cited as fact by the Russian foreign minister.
©2018 NBCNews.com
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/russian-foreign-minister-takes-advantage-of-uncorrected-pence-lie-1165396547570

Bad lie, Pence. The intelligence agencies have not made a decision on the Russian
meddling impact on the election. Pompeo's was walked back by CIA. Have you yet?

Skip one to, just into the second half, this one

New revelations in book are fodder for Mueller probe
The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell
2/19/18
Chris Whipple's new version of "The Gatekeepers" reports the dramatic scenes of ex-Chief of Staff Reince Priebus racing to save Attorney
General Jeff Sessions' job amid Trump's rage over Sessions' recusal from the Russia probe. Whipple joins Lawrence O'Donnell.
©2018 NBCNews.com
http://www.msnbc.com/the-last-word/watch/new-revelations-in-book-are-fodder-for-mueller-probe-1165110339877

Trump to Sessions, idiot! Pence rushes out to car in W Wing parking lot. Priebus runs and catches him with engine running. Gets him back to W Wing
office. Bannon and Pence come in and talk Sessions out of resigning then and there. Later offers Trump letter of resignation. Trump says no. LOLOL

Skip two to these four

Ex-Intel staffer: Trump indictment reaction 'all about himself'
The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell
2/19/18
Mieke Eoyang, ex-House Intel staffer, says Russians "couldn't pick a better candidate to back" than Trump, who is refusing to appropriately
acknowledge the election interference laid out in Mueller's indictment. Jonathan Alter & Daniel Dale join Lawrence O'Donnell.
©2018 NBCNews.com
http://www.msnbc.com/the-last-word/watch/ex-intel-staffer-trump-indictment-reaction-all-about-himself-1165338179896

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After Mueller indictments Trump fails to criticize Russia

The 11th Hour with Brian Williams
2/20/18
Trump spent the weekend after Mueller indicted 13 Russians on Twitter attacking Obama, Congress,
the FBI, Democrats - even Oprah - but never said anything bad about Moscow. Our panel reacts.
©2018 NBCNews.com
[originally aired February 19, 2018]
http://www.msnbc.com/brian-williams/watch/after-mueller-indictments-trump-fails-to-criticize-russia-1165375555642 , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ETnPvH8Rr4 [with comments]

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Is fmr. Trump aide Rick Gates about to flip on Manafort?

The 11th Hour with Brian Williams
2/20/18
The Los Angeles Times reports fmr. Trump campaign aide Rick Gates will plead guilty
and would testify against fmr. Trump campaign boss Paul Manafort. Our panel reacts.
©2018 NBCNews.com
[originally aired February 19, 2018]
http://www.msnbc.com/brian-williams/watch/is-fmr-trump-aide-rick-gates-about-to-flip-on-manafort-1165375555976 , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4SX4E1f-N0 [with comments]

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FBI insider: Russia hacks a '9/11 for information warfare'
The 11th Hour with Brian Williams
2/20/18
In the days since the Mueller indictments, Trump's had nothing to say about Russia or Putin or protecting our nation
from further attack. Fmr. FBI Special Agent Clint Watts and fmr. U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul react.
©2018 NBCNews.com
[originally aired February 19, 2018]
http://www.msnbc.com/brian-williams/watch/fbi-insider-russia-hacks-a-9-11-for-information-warfare-1165381699774

Bottom line neither Trump nor his administration has done anything to prevent Russian meddling in future elections. Nothing.

To "stashed February 19, 2018:"

The Burden of Trump's National-Security Staff
Those toiling inside this administration are fooling themselves if they think they can somehow rise above the character and temperament of this president to shepherd this country through to a more normal time.
What a contrast.
I woke up on Sunday morning and first read the news accounts of National-Security Adviser H.R. McMaster’s cogent speech [ https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/mcmaster-says-evidence-of-russian-meddling-is-now-really-incontrovertible-as-he-woos-european-allies/2018/02/17/4a27f560-10e8-11e8-a68c-e9374188170e_story.html ] to the Munich Security Conference. I then read the president’s tweets. And some more tweets. And, just when I thought he was done, some more tweets.
As I have written before [ https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/01/trump-foreign-policy/549671/ ], you have to give this administration some credit for having assembled some pretty good foreign policy talent. The Republican Party arguably didn’t have the deepest bench on foreign policy in 2017, having been out of the executive branch for eight years, and some of the best talent available to the administration after Trump was elected was ineligible for having signed one of the infamous Never Trump letters [ https://warontherocks.com/2016/03/open-letter-on-donald-trump-from-gop-national-security-leaders/ ] over the course of the 2016 campaign.
Nonetheless, I’ve been struck, in conversations with the men and women serving in the Department of Defense or on the National Security Council, by how good and earnest many of the people working for this president’s administration are. Some of them are true believers, but far more common are retired or active duty military or intelligence officers (like McMaster) dragooned into political service, or longtime Republican Hill staffers who kept their noses clean in 2016. These folks are, as one friend told me, just keeping their heads down and concentrating on what they can affect rather than the things—like the president’s tweets—that they cannot.
But here’s another thing that struck me, which has been noted by other people who speak often to those in this administration: how rarely people mention Trump’s name. You can have an hour-long conversation with someone serving in a national security billet in this administration, and they will tell you all about their problems and policies without ever mentioning the name of the president they are serving—unless I bring it up. It’s almost as if they are trying to serve this country in spite of their president rather than through him.
I take two things away from this experience: one, that all of us on the outside are little delusional, and two, that everyone serving on the inside is also delusional.
On the one hand, those of us on the outside of this administration are subjected to a never-ended torrent of reporting about this president: about his temperament, about his businesses, about his affairs, and about his family. And just in case he disappears for a few days, he tweets something outrageous just to remind us he’s here.
Most of what takes place in the U.S. government on a daily basis, though, doesn’t actually require the president. I served three combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan under President Bush and then another three years in the Pentagon under President Obama and never met either man. Why would I need to? I was just a grunt and, later, a fonctionnaire executing the president’s policies, most of which did not require the direct intervention of the president. We should all remember, as our government and our nation becomes more and more inseparable in the public consciousness with the character and temperament of Donald Trump, that the government is bigger than even his outsize personality.
On the other hand, especially after this weekend, those toiling on the inside of this administration are fooling themselves if they think they can somehow rise above the character and temperament of this president to shepherd this country through to a more normal time.
Reading McMaster—either in Munich or in his national security strategy [ https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/NSS-Final-12-18-2017-0905.pdf ]—is to read the words of a man laboring under the delusion he works for someone saner and more thoughtful than the current occupant of the White House. That delusion is unsustainable, in large part because the founders created a powerful executive in foreign policy, and successive generations have seen fit to increase the power of that executive. This, I would argue, is appropriate: in a time of war or in international negotiations, one voice needs to speak for the United States.
Today, that voice belongs to Donald Trump. As a result, Germany’s foreign minister sadly noted, “We are no longer sure whether we recognize our America.”
I’m not sure I do either. Growing up in the last decades of the Cold War, when our favorite movie as kids was, naturally enough, Red Dawn [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Dawn ], I could not have imagined a day when our president—and his party, which both fears and enables him—would stand in the way of our country formulating a strategy to counter the threat Russia and disinformation campaigns present to our democracy. Since the threat affects every American who consumes content on the internet, and every state that administers elections, the president needs to be the one to formulate our response. His party must insist he does so—or be complicit in his inaction.
The president must lead [ http://www.defenseone.com/technology/2018/02/trump-has-never-asked-intelligence-chiefs-stop-russian-election-meddling-intelligence-chiefs-testify/145969/ ] in order for our country to take the necessary steps to counter Russian interference in our electoral process, but for the president to do that would be for the president to implicitly admit that his own election was affected to some degree by Russian meddling.
And, as this weekend demonstrated [ https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/18/us/politics/trump-blames-obama-and-democrats-for-failing-to-stop-russian-meddling.html ], this president’s ego is too fragile for him to admit that.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/02/the-burden-of-trumps-national-security-staff/553691/

more: https://www.google.com/search?q=the+burden+of+trump%27s

Laughing? Not so much. Most Russians just wish the election-tampering story would go away
http://www.latimes.com/world/europe/la-fg-russia-indictments-20180219-story.html

President Trump, I'm Russian and I'm Not Laughing
I fear the indictment of Russian internet trolls may lead to less freedom for both Americans and Russians.
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-02-19/mueller-s-indictment-of-russian-trolls-may-backfire

more: https://news.google.com/news/story/dJTsxhQ0Nw8XadMX9wiBtLvhIsrvM?ned=us&gl=US&hl=en

Political scientists rank Trump last, Lincoln first in presidential greatness survey
https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/19/politics/trump-lincoln-presidential-greatness-survey/index.html

Exclusive: Mueller's interest in Kushner grows to include foreign financing efforts
https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/19/politics/mueller-investigation-kushner-foreign-financing-efforts/index.html

more: https://news.google.com/news/story/dlLf_OTgr2bKKFMmPnL_xGw8B-yqM?ned=us&gl=US&hl=en

A former Russian troll speaks: ‘It was like being in Orwell’s world’
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2018/02/17/a-former-russian-troll-speaks-it-was-like-being-in-orwells-world/

more: https://www.google.com/search?q=a+former+russian+troll+speaks

The Agency
From a nondescript office building in St. Petersburg, Russia,
an army of well-paid “trolls” has tried to wreak havoc all
around the Internet — and in real-life American communities.
By ADRIAN CHEN
JUNE 2, 2015
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/07/magazine/the-agency.html

Podcast
Longform Podcast #171: Adrian Chen
December 9, 2015
https://longform.org/posts/longform-podcast-171-adrian-chen

more:
https://www.google.com/search?q=the+agency+chen
https://www.google.com/search?q=the+agency+chen+podcast

For the weary White House, Florida shooting offered a ‘reprieve’ from scandals
The White House was under siege.
Domestic abuse allegations against a senior aide were ignored, pointing to a potential high-level coverup. Two Cabinet secretaries were caught charging taxpayers for luxury travel. A Playboy centerfold alleged an extramarital affair with the president. And the special counsel’s Russia investigation was intensifying. The tumult was so intense that there was fervent speculation that President Trump might fire his chief of staff.
But a gun massacre at a Florida high school last Wednesday, which left 17 dead, seemed to shift the media glare away from the Trump scandals and gave embattled aides an opportunity to re­focus on handling a crisis not of their own making. While the White House mourned the loss of life in Parkland, Fla., some aides privately acknowledged that the tragedy offered a breather from the political storm.
A tentative plan for White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly to address the news media from the briefing room Wednesday — where he would have faced intense scrutiny over his role in the mishandling of the domestic abuse allegations against former staff secretary Rob Porter — was scuttled.
One White House official said the shooting forced the White House to focus on critical and serious issues — like consoling the victims and trying to heal the nation — rather than getting bogged down in what they view as more trivial West Wing drama.
“For everyone, it was a distraction or a reprieve,” said the White House official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to reflect internal conversations. “A lot of people here felt like it was a reprieve from seven or eight days of just getting pummeled.”
The official likened the brief political calm to the aftermath of the October shooting in Las Vegas that left 58 dead and hundreds more injured. That tragedy united White House aides and the country in their shared mourning for the victims and their families.
“But as we all know, sadly, when the coverage dies down a little bit, we’ll be back through the chaos,” the official said.
In the few instances in which officials answered questions, the focus was mostly on the shooting in Florida. In two appearances Friday on Fox News Channel, deputy press secretary Raj Shah was not asked about Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin charging taxpayers for his wife’s lavish travel — a controversy that in a normal ­media environment might have prompted questions about whether the president would fire Shulkin.
“From an awful, cynical, purely political point of view, the tragic events in Florida probably helped the White House this week by distracting from the awful wave of scandal and bad news they have faced,” said Michael Steel, a Republican strategist.
The three-day Presidents’ Day weekend added to the hiatus, with Trump traveling to his private Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla., with only a few aides and giving others on his beleaguered staff a chance to rest and recuperate.
Among those accompanying the president was Kelly, who earlier in the week appeared in serious jeopardy of losing his job. The chief of staff had lost the support of some senior aides, and last Tuesday evening rumors were rampant that his days — or even hours — were numbered because Trump had been sounding out friends and advisers about possible replacements.
Wednesday’s shooting, how­ever, effectively stabilized Kelly’s standing internally, officials said, shifting the media glare away from him and giving the retired four-star Marine general a chance to perform his job in helping to coordinate the federal response. Although Trump remains frustrated and at times angry with his chief of staff, Kelly’s presence on the weekend trip to Mar-a-Lago was interpreted as an indication that he was on firmer ground with his boss.
But Friday’s indictments by the Justice Department’s special counsel of 13 Russians for interference in the 2016 presidential election — as well as Trump’s furious and defiant cascade of Twitter responses over the weekend — offered an early glimpse of the mayhem that likely awaits the administration when it returns to work Tuesday.
The Russia matter — a tender spot for the president that often prompts him to behave erratically — adds to the growing list of crises the White House expects to be forced to address this week in Washington.
Although staff members have not had to fully grapple with the Porter saga or other controversies in recent days, aides said privately that they have been working behind the scenes to square their accounts and strategize for when the issues resurface in the media.
For instance, Kelly released a five-page memo Friday outlining changes to the security clearance process — a move to silence scrutiny about a process aides acknowledged had grown out of control, but one that raised another perceived problem, that of senior adviser and presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner’s temporary clearance.
“The national tragedy in Florida has really, for now, turned the page on some of these crises,” said Ron Bonjean, a Republican strategist close to the White House. “They’re going to come back, but what it does do is give the White House a chance to collect itself and, if they can, organize a communications strategy and get their ducks in a row.”
In addition to the controversies, the White House will come under pressure this week to champion changes to the nation’s gun laws and to make progress on a stalled immigration deal that both parties believe could prove determinative in the midterm elections this fall.
And the scandals of last week are likely to reemerge. Kelly and White House Counsel Donald McGahn have yet to explain what they knew about the allegations against Porter, when they knew it and why they declined to act until a British paper, the Daily Mail, reported about them two weeks ago. The public accounts offered by the White House differed from sworn testimony by FBI Director Christopher A. Wray last week.
In addition, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, chaired by Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), has launched its own inquiry into the White House’s handling of the Porter allegations.
The White House has said little publicly about the travel expenditures of two Cabinet secretaries — similar to the travel scandal that forced the resignation last year of Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price.
The VA inspector general’s report last week about Shulkin’s travel charges that the secretary’s chief of staff doctored an email and made false statements to create a pretext for the government to pay for Shulkin’s wife’s expenses on a 10-day trip to Europe last summer. The report also found that Shulkin improperly accepted tickets to a Wimbledon tennis match and directed a government aide to act as a “personal travel concierge” to him and his wife.
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt, meanwhile, has drawn scrutiny and ethics questions about his pricey first-class travel, both domestically and internationally. Last week, Pruitt canceled an extensive tour of Israel amid the renewed negative attention surrounding his expensive trips.
There are still more distractions, including the now routine dishing about the West Wing by ousted senior aide Omarosa ­Manigault-Newman, whom Kelly dismissed at the end of last year and has since joined the cast of the reality television show “Celebrity Big Brother.”
There are also personal scandals brewing for the president. Last week, Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model, spoke with the New Yorker about an alleged extramarital affair she says she had with Trump starting in 2006, a little over a year after his marriage to his third wife, Melania.
Separately, an attorney for Stephanie Clifford — the pornographic film star known as Stormy Daniels who has also alleged an extramarital affair with Trump starting in 2006 — said last week that Clifford is now free to tell her story. Clifford’s lawyer argued that Trump’s longtime personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, violated their nondisclosure agreement by publicly acknowledging that he personally paid her $130,000 not to share her account. Clifford has announced a national tour, with appearances from coast to coast between now and November.
Even as the president was sequestered this weekend between Trump-branded properties in his private South Florida paradise, the outside turmoil intruded. As Trump’s motorcade drove between Mar-a-Lago and the Trump International Golf Club on Sunday night, it passed the Ultra Gentleman’s Club. A sign outside advertised an event taking place April 13-14: “Stormy Daniels Making America Horny Again.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/for-the-weary-white-house-florida-shooting-offered-a-reprieve-from-scandals/2018/02/19/04293442-158a-11e8-92c9-376b4fe57ff7_story.html

more: https://www.google.com/search?q=for+the+weary+white+house