US Politics Mega-thread - Page 7226

The Kremlin paid an army of more than 1,000 people to create fake anti-Hillary Clinton news stories targeting key swing states, the leading Democrat on the committee looking into alleged Russian interference in the US election has said.

Senator Mark Warner, the Democrat ranking member, and chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee Republican Senator Richard Burr, appeared together at a press conference to give an update on the investigation ahead of the first witnesses appearing today.

Mr Warner said: “We know about the hacking, and selective leaks, but what really concerns me as a former tech guy is at least some reports – and we’ve got to get to the bottom of this – that there were upwards of a thousand internet trolls working out of a facility in Russia, in effect taking over a series of computers which are then called botnets, that can then generate news down to specific areas.

“It’s been reported to me, and we’ve got to find this out, whether they were able to affect specific areas in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, where you would not have been receiving off of whoever your vendor might have been, Trump versus Clinton, during the waning days of the election, but instead, ‘Clinton is sick’, or ‘Clinton is taking money from whoever for some source’ … fake news.

“An outside foreign adversary effectively sought to hi-jack the most critical democratic process, the election of a President, and in that process, decided to favour one candidate over another.”

The key states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania which Mr Warner named all fell narrowly - and unexpectedly - to Donald Trump.

The Senate Committee will examine whether the Trump campaign co-ordinated with the Russians to hire the army of trolls.

Mr Warner and Mr Burr were keen to stress they were unified in the investigation, in spite of reported in-fighting along political lines.

Mr Burr said he did not want to “take snapshots” of where the investigation stood but hinted the committee had spoken to Ret Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, Mr Trump’s former Director of National Intelligence who stepped down from his post after ties to foreign governments were revealed.

A parallel investigation is running in the lower House of Representatives, but this has been marred by calls for chairman Devin Nunes to step down following allegations he is co-operating with the White House.

On March 30 2017 20:54 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:
Why is this woman giving interviews or even appearing in public?



Everytime she speaks the GOP gets a political ad out of it.

On March 30 2017 23:19 LegalLord wrote:

She did nothing wrong; her resignation was just taking one for the team.

Yes, the Democratic Party apparatus is stupid enough to think that people buy that. Trump winning would not dissuade them.

Pastor Jerry Morrell was not playing to his audience. “I was asked if Donald Trump is a man of God,” the evangelical preacher told the congregation of The Way of Holiness church on the outskirts of Buckhannon, West Virginia. “I said: ‘No, I don’t see him as a man of God. Or, at this point, a godly man. I think he’s a man whose heart can be touched by God. I think he may be open to that’.”

A silence fell. The cries of acclamation greeting much of the Pentecostal pastor’s sermon drained away.

“Y’all got real quiet when I said that but I have to tell it like it is,” Morrell pressed on. “I’m praying for our president. Let him have the wisdom not to say some things and not to put some things out on Twitter,” he said. “We ask you to set a guard over Mr Trump’s mouth and Twitter”.

On that, there was agreement. Eighty percent of white evangelicals backed Trump for president, but worshippers at The Way of Holiness church were not without their doubts.

“To be honest with you, I voted for Trump but if I’d had another choice I probably would not have,” said Thrayron Morgan, a grandmother from a military family attending church that day. I pointed out there was another choice: Hillary Clinton. “No! That’s not my other choice. We’ve had enough of that,” she said with a laugh. “It was very difficult for me. Very difficult. In fact it was a toss-up between not voting at all and voting for him. I really had to pray about that.”

Morgan had lots of problems with Trump but a big one was the way he spoke about women and immigrants. “I don’t think he should talk about people like that. Even the homosexuals, you hate the sin not the sinner. As a Christian, I don’t believe in treating people the way he treated some people,” she said.

Morgan’s mind was made up by the supreme court. She wants to see a court “following Godly principles” and she had little doubt that Clinton would have nominated the wrong kind of justices. “That’s important to me. On abortion number one. Same-sex marriage. Anything to do with either one of those. And I have a feeling there may be some issues come up even later that may touch on Christian principles too. I have no clue what, but you never know when something might come up that’s against my beliefs,” she said.

In parts of West Virginia, it is said there are two reasons to vote: God and coal. Both have been in retreat for years. In a state where families still pray at the restaurant dinner table, and mines were once the engine of prosperity, Trump won with the promise of revival.

But there’s a paradox. Evangelicals may doubt Trump’s commitment to God, but they calculate he will be good for their push to inject more religion into American life. On the other hand, those who voted for Trump because he promised to bring back coalmines often admire his business skills – but they do have doubts about whether he can deliver.

So far, conservative Christians have not had reason to be disappointed. Trump’s appointment of evangelicals to his cabinet – including an attorney general who advocates an end to the wall between church and state, and an education secretary who wants to “advance God’s kingdom” through public funding of religious schools – has sent the right signals. And just in case Trump veers off course, evangelicals are counting on Mike Pence, an advocate of teaching creationism alongside Darwinism, to steer the president straight.

The belief that America’s leaders have been more interested in foreign adventures than looking after those at the bottom of the pile back home runs through many West Virginia communities.

Ricky Farnsworth flies a Confederate battle flag from an improvised steel rod flagpole outside his trailer home. When I ask why he’s hoisted such a divisive symbol in a state mostly carved out of Virginia to join the Union cause, he smiles.

“I will not fly an American flag other than that one. I would rather have a Chinese flag, a Japanese flag, a Russian flag. Fuck the United States. They’re the most cruelest country there is. Letting your own people starve and sending aid overseas. Going over and killing people in other countries and then building them back up. What business did we have in Vietnam? What business did we have in Iraq?” he said.

Farnsworth used to work on oil rigs but the toll of injuries, including a lost finger, and the general wearing down of his body forced him out of a job. Now, at 59, he lives on a little more than a $1,000 a month in disability payments. Farnsworth is an unflinching if maverick Trump supporter. He denounces the rich but believes the billionaire president will Make America Great Again. He speaks of Obama as “the black guy” and said he knows for sure the former president is not American. Yet he supports Obamacare and doesn’t understand why the US can’t replicate Canada’s health system.

“Money don’t excite me. I don’t worry about it even though I don’t have it. I don’t hardly buy food because it’s too damn expensive,” he said. “I go to the diner and eat a little bit. Two beets, a half spoonful of bacon bits, a half spoonful of shredded cheese. I’ll put a little bit of coleslaw, a little bit of cottage cheese. Four peaches. I’ll eat that. I ate that yesterday. I ain’t eaten nothing since that. I won’t eat nothing today. That’s what I live on.” That and a steady supply of chewing tobacco.

Farnsworth sees Trump’s wealth as evidence that he is looking out for ordinary Americans.

“Why would he downgrade himself if he didn’t want to help the United States? His home was more valuable than the White House,” he said.

The retired oil worker regards taxes with the same scorn as much of conservative America, although his objection comes with a twist not so often heard among Republicans. Why, he asks, should the poor pay taxes when the rich don’t contribute their fair share? Yet Farnsworth doesn’t blame Trump for avoiding taxes with his business maneuverings.

On March 30 2017 22:49 zlefin wrote:
It is funny(odd) how the restrictions on things like pilots are so much stricter than on politicians.

I would like to have some sort of standardized routine dementia screening given how old many politicians are.