Why the Electoral College Should Wait Before Voting
December 19, 2016

 
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Lately, I’ve noticed I can’t shake the feeling Russia is actually *shaping* the Trump Administration. I don’t mean they are simply reaping the rewards of having an admirer of Putin defending them as Trump prepares to take the White House. I mean that the subject of “Russia” keeps popping up in places I never expected.

Case in point: When Donald Trump announced his short-list of nominees to be his Secretary of State, the current appointee… Rex Tillerson… was not on it. No one even floated his name as someone who should have been on that list. But you know who WAS on that list? Mitt Romney… much to the dismay of most of Team Trump because of his extraordinary criticism of their guy. But I was fairly certain Romney would get the job, not just because he added “dignity” to an incoming administration sorely lacking in it, but because Toddler Trump… petty, vindictive child that he is, would have just relished the idea of making Romney his “bish” for the next four years.

But this is the same Mitt Romney who… in 2012… declared that “Russia” was “our #1 geo-political foe“. Then… about ten days after the release of the list of candidates for SoS, and following several meetings between Trump & Romney… suddenly a new name was added to the list… Tillerson, the CEO of Exxon/Mobil, someone who also spoke fondly of Russia, had met with Putin himself frequently (telling him that “as CEO”, he only “represented the interests of Exxon, not the United States”), and was even awarded Russia’s highest foreign award… “The Medal of Friendship”… was not only suddenly added to the list from out of nowhere, but quickly catapulted into first place, and announced as the winner of the plum position less than a week later.

Did Trump give Tillerson the job because he liked his take on Russia, or (far more disturbing) did Russia themselves nix the Romney appointment and suggest their friend Tillerson to the Trump transition team? I mean… who ever thought to consider the CEO of freakin’ Exxon for Secretary of State? A man who spent his entire adult life working for Exxon with no discernible connection to politics (even Trump himself has been talking politics for decades and flirting with running for 20 years.) And as I pointed out last week, let us not forget, Trump’s first campaign manager, Paul Manifort, was forced to resign over his ties to Russia.

One of the reasons I despise conspiracy theories is because I despise conspiracy theorists. Few things are more annoying to me than people with all the training of a 6th Grade Algebra student citing as “absolute fact” things they have absolutely no training on, no familiarity with, and cite as “evidence” incredibly sketchy sources, while dismissing actual scientists, researchers, facts & evidence because it dare contradict their cockamamie theories. (I’ve noticed a parallel between Conspiracy theorists and Climate Change deniers. They ignore any and all facts, dismiss and belittle the authorities that produce those facts, and then cite ridiculous shady sources that “confirm” what they already believe is true.) Many of you in the Reality based world may be unaware that The Bush’s and Liberal billionaire “George Soros” are personally behind every political catastrophe of the last 60 years (though “Hillary Clinton” is rapidly gaining on Soros as the Republican-boogyman of choice.) I actually saw a number of people accusing Soros of being “a Nazi informant” during WWII (Apparently, he smuggled Top Secret documents in his diapers.) Name a disastrous event with political ramifications, and you’ll find someone out there (really “out there”) connecting Bush or Soros to it. “#PizzaGate” has the distinction of being linked to all three (Clinton, Soros and Bush. Google it. I won’t provide a link.) I consider myself a pretty tolerant person, but with nearly 5,000 Facebook “Friends”, I found myself “unfriending” someone for the very first time yesterday after they reposted the latest nonsense about “new evidence Obama’s birth certificate is a forgery.” I just couldn’t take it any more. The man has barely a month left in office and these racist Birther asshats are STILL trying to delegitimize his presidency (speaking of which, Trump’s future “Chief of Staff” Priebus, along with Karl Rove and The Heritage Foundation’s Mike Needham, all complained yesterday that claims of Russian involvement in Trump’s victory are all attempts to “delegitimize Trump’s presidency.” I kid you not.)

But I digress. So, I despise conspiracy theories. And the thought I may be entertaining one now gives me pause. But I’m not declaring anything as “fact”, I’m only pointing out observations that disturb me.

During the very first GOP debate in August of 2015, co-host Brett Baier gave Donald Trump the first question on foreign policy, asking him about recent reports that “a top Iranian general”, General Qassem Soleimani, blamed for hundreds of U.S. troops death in Iraq and Afghanistan, “travel[ed] to Moscow to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin.” Trump criticized Obama for his recent hostage exchange to recover POW Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl (which had nothing to do with Iran or the meeting in Russia, but goes on to imply the Bergdahl exchange was with Iran when it was in fact with the Taliban). Trump said absolutely nothing regarding the meeting in Russia, instead criticizing the president on “foreign policy”, and declared he would be “the polar opposite” of Obama.

Instead of pressing Trump to answer the question, Baier moves on to the next question: “Another new development today, Senior Defense officials tell Fox they strongly suspect Russia was behind the cyber attack on the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs office… (shutting down the email system of some 4,000 Pentagon employees for ELEVEN DAYS.) Did you forget about this first report of Russian hacking? I sure did, and it appears most of the Media has too.

The subject of “Russia” does not come up again until the second GOP debate when host Jake Tapper asks Trump:
 

TAPPER: Russia is sending troops and tanks into Syria right now to prop up a U.S. enemy, Bashar al-Assad. President Obama’s incoming top general says, quote, “Russia presents the greatest threat to our national security.”

Mr. Trump, you say you can do business with President Vladimir Putin, you say you will get along, quote, “very well.” What would you do right now if you were president, to get the Russians out of Syria?

TRUMP: So, number one, they have to respect you. He [Putin] has absolutely no respect for President Obama. Zero.

Syria’s a mess. You look at what’s going on with ISIS in there, now think of this: we’re fighting ISIS. ISIS wants to fight Syria. Why are we fighting ISIS in Syria? Let them fight each other and pick up the remnants.

I would talk to him [Putin]. I would get along with him. I believe – and I may be wrong, in which case I’d probably have to take a different path, but I would get along with a lot of the world leaders that this country is not getting along with.

 

(I highlighted the “Why are we in Syria?” comment because Trump’s defenders were all over the TV yesterday criticizing Obama for not going into Syria to fight ISIS sooner.)

No criticism of Putin aiding America’s enemy Assad. Instead, he repeats his recent claim he would likely “get along with Putin”, and his response to Russia arming Syria would be to have a chat with Putin.

Somewhere between the first & second GOP debates is when Trump started speaking positively of Putin as someone he would likely “get along with.”

During ABC’s ThisWeek yesterday, host Martha Radditz said what I’ve been thinking as of late: “I remember when Republicans opposed the Russians on *everything*. And any Democrat that dared speak positively of them were roundly ridiculed by them.” And now we have Republicans defending Russia and the president-elect himself criticizing & doubting our own intelligence. His future Chief of Staff Priebus followed suit on “Meet the Press”, saying “If the CIA/FBI has any solid proof, let them hold a press conference and reveal it to the world.” And why not? After all, these are the same people who defended Dick Cheney for outing an undercover CIA agent for partisan reasons. Publicly exposing U.S. intelligence sources & methodologies comes second to defending the Republican Party.

I posed an observation on Facebook last week. I’m literally astonished by the number of people defending Russia over our own intelligence agencies on this issue, asking: “When did Russia become a paragon of virtue?” I can understand not trusting the word of the CIA (though most point to the CIA under George W Bush to justify that mistrust. Trump included.) But whatever you think of the CIA, Russia is 20x worse. Remember, Putin is former KGB and has basically appointed himself president for life, having been appointed to the job by his predecessor Boris Yeltsen back in 2000. And other than a brief interruption when he was term-limited into stepping down and turning the presidency over to Medvedev from 2008 to 2012 where Putin appointed himself “Prime-minister” until he and Dimitri could swap jobs four years later, Putin has been the defacto leader of Russia for nearly two decades. He arrests & imprisons his political opponents, and even has his critics assassinated (and now I’ll hear from all the Conspiracy Theorists on just how many people Hillary Clinton has had killed. Spare me.)

Here’s a question: Toddler Trump speaks approvingly of Putin now, but how will he deal with Russia (friend of Syria & Iran) once he becomes president? Trump doesn’t like Iran. But how does he go after Iran on any issue without angering Putin? Just how long does anyone expect that bromance to last? Remember that Trump and Ted Cruz had a little bromance going on when Cruz refused to join the chorus criticizing Donald Trump the way all his other opponents were before the Primary. Cruz even tweeted last December: “@realDonaldTrump is terrific. #DealWithIt”. And because of this, Cruz quickly rose to second place behind Trump in the polls. Threatened, once the primaries began, Trump and Cruz turned on one another quickly, soon becoming the worst of enemies. I have grave concerns regarding how quickly Trump turns on those who displease him. One of the reasons I didn’t support Hillary Clinton was her recklessness regarding the use of military force and her inability to foresee the possible consequences of that recklessness. She advocated for a No Fly Zone over Syria to protect the rebels. But Russia was bombing those same rebels from the air. Clinton’s policy could potentially had us firing upon Russian MiG’s and starting WWIII. And even if she avoided that, there was no predicting what mess her next hawkish actions would get us into.

In contrast, I think Trump’s unpredictability and childish fickleness makes him an even greater threat to the stability of national security. If his bromance with Putin goes the same as it did with Cruz, things could turn very nasty very quickly. And then what?

Today, the Electoral College will be voting for President of the United States based upon the result of the 2016 election. But in all due honesty, I’m not completely confident Donald Trump was the legitimate winner of the election. In such a close election, all anyone needed to do was flip just three key states that were within 1-percent, and that’s exactly what happened. Maybe he did so legitimately, but as long as we vote into Black Boxes that leave no paper trail, we’ll always be at risk of Election Fraud. Please sign & share my petition:
 

Petition for paper voting receipts

 

Our government would NEVER publicly admit our election was hacked and our next president was selected by an enemy nation even if an investigation proved it to be true. Without a safeguard like my petition above calls for, such an announcement would destroy what little faith millions of Americans have left in our Democracy and simply no longer bother to vote.

If electors are worried about not having enough time for such an investigation, I remind them that the inauguration doesn’t HAVE to be on January 20th. That date is not in the Constitution. In fact, before Franklin Roosevelt, most presidents were not inaugurated until March. It was FDR who moved up the date to January 20th so he could get back to work as quickly as possible in the midst of the Depression.

There have been only 8 “faithless” electors (Delegates that didn’t vote the same as their constituents) since 1900. Today, there could be as many as 80. That’s astounding. It is unlikely however that even these “unpledged” delegates will vote against the currently perceived state results without solid proof the outcome of the election was actually manipulated. And there’s no way to know that before today’s vote.

WaPo columnist Dan Balz had the same thought as me last week: It is possible, even likely, Trump is unwilling to admit even the possibility of Russian meddling in our election for fear it might influence the Electors and cost him the presidency. But perhaps after the vote today and his presidency is assured, THEN he might be willing to concede the possibility of Russian intervention in our election and even admit a willingness to do something about it if an investigations reveals it to be true. I doubt this however because it would be a blow to Trump’s massive ego. He will NEVER be willing to admit he didn’t win “fair & square”. Even now, he denies he lost the (meaningless) “Popular Vote”, stating he actually won “if you don’t include the millions who voted illegally”… a ridiculous & baseless claim with no foothold in reality. Behind the scenes though, if it turns out Russia *did* deprive Trump of “an honest victory”, he could become quite furious with Putin and the “bromance” would be over.

For anyone still questioning “How do we know Russia is behind the hacking of the DNC?”, I posted this ABC News video listing just a few of the ways we know. And former Secretary of Defense Bob Gates (who was also once head of the CIA under Poppy Bush) said yesterday that when the CIA says they are “certain” about something, there’s no question it’s true. For naysayers like Trump who point to claims of WMD’s, I point out that only Bush’s hand-picked stooge George Tenet called their existence a “slam dunk” despite concerns about the intel Dick Cheney was force-feeding them. But I can assure you that the examples cited in that video aren’t ALL the ways we know of Russian involvement. We almost certainly have spies working within the Russian government that have obtained classified documents and/or been privy to high-level meetings where the topic was discussed, but we can’t reveal that evidence without compromising those sources… and people like Priebus know it. Which is why it is so disingenuous of them to demand “a press conference where they lay out all their proof on the table.” Either they KNOW we can’t do that, or they really DON’T give a rats ass about jeopardizing our agents & sources the way Cheney did to Valery Plame and all of her secret sources (some of whom unquestionably died as a result.)

Trump’s frequent praise of Putin and defense of Russia even over our own intelligence, the people he has appointed to serve him having close ties to Russia (Manifort, Tillerson), people critical of Russia quickly thrown overboard (Romney), incidents of Russian hacking of government computers going back at least 18 months, and Trump is refusing classified briefings at a time when we KNOW much of it must be about the mounting evidence of Russian hacking. He doesn’t want to hear it, so he’s refusing those briefings. Those disturbing factoids are more than enough cause for me to say I can’t be 100% sure Russia didn’t meddle in our election. It could have been as innocent as finding out what the Clinton camp knew and leaking that information to people within the Trump campaign, or it could have been as severe as outright Election Theft, flipping a few key states to ensure the candidate friendly to them won, and the candidate Putin had a personal grudge against lost.

So yes, I have my doubts. And you’re a dishonest ideologue if you are certain one way or the other that you KNOW what happened… because you don’t.
 

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December 19, 2016 · Admin Mugsy · One Comment - Add
Posted in: Election, mystery, Politics, Scandals, Seems Obvious to Me

One Response

  1. Mugsy - December 22, 2016

    Another Russian tie? Is Ivanka palling around with Putin’s girlfriend?
    http://www.rawstory.com/2016/08/ivanka-trump-is-sight-seeing-in-croatia-with-bff-vladimir-putins-girlfriend/

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