The Cold War is Over

So what do we call this?

The CIA has concluded in a secret assessment that Russia intervened in the 2016 election to help Donald Trump win the presidency, rather than just to undermine confidence in the U.S. electoral system, according to officials briefed on the matter.

A foreign power reached out through this great invention of ours and meddled in our affairs, not just any American institution, but arguably our most important one. Like most of us I imagine, I have been in shock since this story dropped on Friday and the revelation is so unbelievable that I had no idea how to write about it. 

H/T to who ever made this.

First of all, let's be blunt, this was an act of war by Russia. And an act of treason by Mitch McConnell, along with any other Republicans who were complicit. According to the Times article:

According to several officials, McConnell raised doubts about the underlying intelligence and made clear to the administration that he would consider any effort by the White House to challenge the Russians publicly an act of partisan politics.

If the revelation that a foreign power was using clandestine means to at once undermine our system of government and boost their preferred candidate does not rise above "partisan politics," what exactly does? The president of Russia understands how unfit, incompetent, and anti-democratic Donald is and what the vulgar talking yam is likely to do to the government of the United States. There was a movie once about this wasn't there? Or do the authoritarians in our country want us to just forget and look the other way because Russia isn't communist anymore? Of course ole' Vlad wants to elect trump, it will completely destabilize a major competitor all on its own. Authoritarian leaders have no conscience, nor morals so they will do whatever they can to grab power. Is that what happened here? Or are we just supposed to accept trump's bullshit explanation that he had no collusion with any Russian state actors? Or do the Russians have such leverage on Trump that he is as much a pawn as incompetent demagogue and authoritarian of the social dominator variety? Or was he just talking to the air when he suggested that Russia hack Hillary Clinton's emails some more?

Ditto H/T

The only question to investigate now is how far the collusion with hostile foreign agents went and how far those hackers and agents were able to get into the voting machines and software. Then someone needs to find out how much, if any, collusion there was between state governors like Rick Snyder and Scott Walker, the republican state legislators and these same foreign actors. I feel fairly certain these scumbags were just domestically rigging the election with their ID laws and closing polling places, etc. but were they smart enough on their own to come up with the exact laws that would cut Democratic turnout by so much. Scott Walker in particular, while ruthless and immoral enough to want to do everything possible to sabotage his own state and political enemies, lacks the intelligence to implement such a perfect plan. Was he only assisted by the extensive network of seditious authoritarian think tanks and their billionaire funders? Or did they look the other way as hackers cut, erased, or lost Democratic votes?

Do republicans hate Barack Obama so much that they were willing to sell out their country to Russia in order to beat him? The worst part of all this is that we will never really know. It was fairly obvious that the recounts would come to nothing in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, I wish I had been able to write about it before they were over but there was no way in hell the republicans in those states were going to let their crimes against democracy be known or discovered. It is also fairly obvious that we can never trust any election outcome again, every subsequent hack, voter suppression measure, and unaccountable or unoverseeable vote counting system will be even easier than this one.

Wars never truly end do they?