But It's Just A Theory...A Game Theory

Author and corporate strategist Eric Garland gave an interesting and messy analysis of the current Russia/Trump long game on Twitter on Sunday, and it's been captured on Storify for people to read.

<THREAD> I’m now hearing this meme that says Obama, Clinton, et al. are doing nothing, just gave up.

Guys. It’s time for some game theory.

— Eric Garland (@ericgarland) December 11, 2016

This subversion can take many forms: driving wedges between US-Commonwealth-Euro intel cooperation, break up NATO, create chaos.

— Eric Garland (@ericgarland) December 11, 2016

Plus, the Russians f**king rule at covert shit. Always have. Ask a cold warrior. Mucho respect for our adversaries. They do clever work!

— Eric Garland (@ericgarland) December 11, 2016

Russians as *people* are civilized, artistic, enamored of brilliance and tragedy, and generally proud. And should be. They do not like this.

— Eric Garland (@ericgarland) December 11, 2016

While the West is frivolous and lazy and "Post-History," the clever take advantage. And here begins our present story.

— Eric Garland (@ericgarland) December 11, 2016

It's worth a read and does have some good content, but I caution you, it's pretty rambling at points and other people have done better jobs for a fraction of the credit Garland is getting for this, and that's a problem.  Still, it's another point of view worth looking at. And yeah, the Russians kicked us when we were down, just like we did to them in 1990.

I Don't Have The Energy Anymore To Care

Trump looks like he's going to name former Texas GOP Gov. Rick Perry to head the Department of Energy.  You know, the infamous third department Perry couldn't name in the GOP debates when asked which federal departments he wanted to get rid of.

Donald Trump has narrowed his search for energy secretary to four people, with former Texas Governor Rick Perry the leading candidate.

People familiar with the president-elect’s selection process said two Democratic senators from energy-producing states -- Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota and Joe Manchin of West Virginia -- are also in the mix, along with Ray Washburne, a Dallas investor and former chairman of the Republican National Committee.

If Trump picks any of the four he’ll break with recent tradition of putting scientists at the top of the Energy Department. Among other things, the agency is responsible for policies on the safe handling of nuclear material and on emerging energy technologies.

Trump met with Perry and Washburne while attending the Army-Navy football game in Baltimore on Saturday. It was at least the second time he’d spoken to the men for potential roles in the new administration. Trump interviewed Heitkamp at Trump Tower in New York on Dec. 2, and is scheduled to meet with Manchin on Monday.

Again, the Obama administration's Department of Energy, under Dr. Ernest Moniz, was vital in coming up with the president's clean energy plan. Under Perry, it will certainly become the Trump's climate change denial arm as America will get back into the natural gas and nuclear plant business. After all, we'll need to award plenty of government power plant projects to Trump's oil, gas, and coal donors, and we'll have to purge those pesky climate change scientists after all.

Meanwhile, Trump's friends in Saudi Arabia and Russia are happily looking at even more oil production cuts to send oil prices up worldwide.  I sure hope you didn't think the Trump era was going to continue with gas prices at $2.00 a gallon, did you?

Who did you think was going to end up paying for those hundreds of billions in oil profits?

Mexico?

StupidiNews!

• President-elect Donald Trump has once again antagonized China by suggesting over the weekend that the 40-year-old "One China" policy will now be dependent on trade deals.
• New figures for 2015 show that for the first time, opioid-related drug deaths exceeded firearm homicides in the US, just 8 years ago gun deaths were five times more common.
• A newly-proposed train tunnel project connecting NYC and New Jersey could tie up traffic on the West Side Highway for years.
• A new lawsuit against traders from several major global banks accuses them of fixing the price of silver for years as Deutsche Bank AG has turned over "smoking gun" evidence.
• New DNA evidence found in Lithuania suggests that the smallpox virus as we know it may only be a few centuries old, not several millennia old as previously thought.

Last Call For A "New Direction"

I really don't have too much hope for Democrats in the Senate to beat back what's coming.

It was a blunt, plain-spoken set of senators who gathered last Monday at the Washington home of Senator Heidi Heitkamp, Democrat of North Dakota, dining on Chinese food as they vented frustration about the missteps of the Democratic Party.

To this decidedly centrist group, the 2016 election was nothing short of a fiasco: final proof that its national party had grown indifferent to the rural, more conservative areas represented by Democrats like Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Joe Donnelly of Indiana and Jon Tester of Montana, who attended the dinner. All face difficult re-election races in 2018.

The party, these senators said, had grown overly fixated on cultural issues with limited appeal to the heartland. They criticized Hillary Clinton’s campaign slogan, “Stronger Together,” as flat and opaque, according to multiple people present at the dinner, some of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Most of all, they lamented, Democrats had simply failed to offer a clarion message about the economy with appeal to all 50 states.

“Why did the working people, who have always been our base, turn away?” Mr. Manchin said in an interview, recounting the tenor of the dinner conversation.

Moderate Democrats are not alone in their sense of urgency about honing a new economic message. After a stinging loss to Donald J. Trump, liberals in the party are also trying to figure out how to tap into the populist unrest that convulsed both parties in 2016. Only by making pocketbook issues the central focus, they say, can Democrats recover in the 2018 midterm elections and unseat Mr. Trump in 2020.

“We need to double down and double down again on the importance of building an economy not just for those at the top, but for everyone,” said Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, a high-profile progressive who is seen as a leading potential opponent for Mr. Trump.

This pocketbook-centered approach offers an added benefit in the minds of Democratic strategists: It papers over the party’s differences on how much to focus on cultural issues.

There is little appetite among most Democrats to substantively revise their stances on issues like abortion, gay rights, gun control and immigration, where trends on the national level continue to favor the party. By constructing a platform focused on an overarching theme of economic fairness, Democrats are hoping to avoid yoking their candidates to a more divisive agenda that could sink them in states like North Dakota and West Virginia, which are crucial to control of the Senate.
This is markedly different from the approach that party leaders have taken over the last eight years, when President Obama defined the party from top to bottom with his personality and policies. Instead, Democrats intend to focus on a sparer agenda of bread-and-butter priorities that can win support from both liberal and moderate officeholders — and appeal to voters just as much in red states as along the two coasts.

It's abortion, gay rights, gun control and immigration that Democrats will now be running away from. Most importantly it's issues of race that will be ignored.  Democrats will simply pretend Obama never happened.

Voters of color will not.  If we're going to go with a combination of Bernie "It's always about class" whitewashing and Centrist Dem triangulation, the Obama coalition will disintegrate for good and the GOP will rule this nation for a generation.  If we even last that long.

Good luck, Dems.  Good luck chasing the white vote and taking the black, Hispanic, and Asian vote for granted.

2020's going to get ugly soon if this prevails.

The Last Senate Race, Decided

As expected, Republicans had an easy time winning last night's Senate run-off in Louisiana, where Republican John Kennedy (there's some irony for you) dispatched Democrat Foster Campbell by 20 points, keeping retiring Sen. Diaper Dave Vitter's seat for the GOP.

A five-time elected state treasurer, Kennedy rode Louisiana's inexorable bend toward the Republican party and the popularity of President-elect Donald Trumpto win the elected post he has coveted for much of his public career.

Kennedy, 65, will join an emboldened Republican Party in Washington. The GOP kept its majority in the House and control of the Senate -- Kennedy's addition increased that lead to 52-48. Trump, Vice President-elect Mike Pence and GOP congressional leaders have vowed to pursue an aggressive agenda on Day One.

The results confirmed Kennedy's dominance despite Campbell's attracting a late-inning surge of donations from Democrats distraught over Trump's surprising Nov. 8 victory. After raising few outside funds for much of the campaign, the 69-year-old public service commissioner brought in more than $2.5 million in individual donations during the weeks just before and after the presidential election.

"We did everything humanly possible," Campbell said in his concession speech. "We knew going into this race that it was going to be tough."

Kennedy had tried for a Senate seat twice before, falling to Vitter in 2004 as a Democrat and to Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., in 2008 as a Republican.

But this was his time. Kennedy led the race from the beginning and outlasted 23 rivals, including two well-financed Republican congressmen and two formidable Democrats, to win a quarter of the votes in the November primary.

U.S. Reps. Charles Boustany, R-Lafayette, and John Fleming, R-Minden, endorsed Kennedy after their losses. New Orleans lawyer Caroline Fayard, the other top Democrat in the field, gave reluctant support to Campbell after a bruising primary battle.

Kennedy embraced Trump's winning strategy of anti-Washington rhetoric, adding his own twang and homespun folksiness to its delivery, and coasted to a victory in the final four weeks.

Kennedy will take his oath of office in January just as Trump completes his move into the White House.

"I'm already working with John to ensure a smooth transition to the Senate, where I know he'll hit the ground running," Vitter said.

It still means Republicans don't have too much of a margin of error, but if Democratic Sens. Heidi Heitkamp or Joe Manchin leave to join the Trump administration, it's possible that Republicans could be right back to 54 seats in 2017, and most likely Trump's agenda will pass without incident.

Sunday Long Read: The Missing Man

Maybe the last great "Memento" style story in America by TNR's Matt Wolfe: A man found naked behind a Burger King dumpster in Georgia in 2004 couldn't remember who he was, or why he was there, and in the age of information it still took years for anyone to figure out who he was.

Early one summer morning, Son Yo Auer, a Burger King employee in Richmond Hill, Georgia, found a naked man lying unconscious in front of the restaurant’s dumpsters. It was before dawn, but the man was sweating and sunburned. Fire ants crawled across his body, and a hot red rash flecked his skin. Auer screamed and ran inside. By the time police arrived, the man was awake, but confused. An officer filed an incident report indicating that a “vagrant” had been found “sleeping,” and an ambulance took him to St. Joseph’s Hospital in Savannah, where he was admitted on August 31, 2004, under the name “Burger King Doe.”

Other than the rash, and cataracts that had left him nearly blind, Burger King Doe showed no sign of physical injury. He appeared to be a healthy white man in his middle fifties. His vitals were good. His blood tested negative for drugs and alcohol. His lab results were, a doctor wrote on his chart, “surprisingly within normal limits.” A long, unwashed beard and dirty fingernails suggested he had been living rough. But the only physical signs of previous trauma were three small depressions on his skull and some scars on his neck and his left arm.

Psychologically, though, something was obviously wrong. Doe refused to eat or speak. He kept his eyes shut. Whenever a doctor touched his chest, he thrashed his limbs. After several days, Doe ate some ice chips and spoke a few words to a nurse. He said he had lived in the woods for 17 years. Asked his name, he replied, “They call me B.K. around here.” No, she said, your real name. “B.K.,” Doe said. “But you’re getting me confused.” Then he went silent.

On the eighth day, Doe became agitated. He cursed at the nurses, calling them “beasts” and “demons.” When they tried to get near him, he swung his fists and spit. Doe asked to see a priest, then denounced him as an imposter. “You’re all devils,” he murmured. Doctors diagnosed him with catatonic schizophrenia and prescribed Haldol, a powerful antipsychotic.

Doe was transferred to the psychological ward at Memorial, a public hospital across town. When questioned, he claimed not to remember his name, or where he lived, or how he had arrived in Georgia. He suspected, he said, that he was from Indianapolis, and that he had three brothers, though he could not recall their names or faces. In fact, Doe said, he could not think of a single person he knew. His memory contained only a few dim images: the inside of an old movie theater, a long road through a cornfield, some streets in a city he believed to be Denver. The only thing about himself of which he was certain, Doe said, was his birthday: August 29, 1948.

The doctor treating Doe suspected he was feigning amnesia. Doe seemed too lucid to be suffering from schizophrenia, and his memory for impersonal facts remained unimpaired. He was aware, for example, that George W. Bush was president and that, in 2003, the United States had invaded Iraq for the second time. Only his own past was hazy. Pretending to lose your memory in this way is an old trick, not uncommon among people running away from something. Other staff at the hospital, however, believed Doe. The man’s distress seemed genuine.

In January 2005, four months after he was found, Doe was transferred to the J.C. Lewis Primary Health Care Center, a residence for the homeless and indigent in downtown Savannah. He told Micheal Elliott, who oversaw the center, that he was tired of everyone calling him “B.K.” Doe said he thought his real name was Benjaman, spelled, unusually, with two “a”s. He couldn’t remember his last name, but he decided on Kyle as a replacement until his real name could be found.

Benjaman Kyle quickly became a favorite of the nurses, who took turns trying to jog his memory by peppering him with questions. One nurse remembered him as “higher functioning” than the other residents, most of whom were chronically homeless, and he enjoyed reading his way through the shelter’s tiny library. He was also an inveterate pleaser who constantly volunteered for chores—fetching food, stripping beds, mopping floors. Because of the cataracts, he could see only a few feet in front of him, so he moved the mop in small circles on the floor around his shoes until the room was clean. In the absence of a fixed identity, Kyle adopted a provisional one as a member of the shelter’s staff. He soon became indispensable, accumulating a thick ring of keys that he kept in a loop on his belt. One day, Elliott watched him assemble an ersatz uniform of a white shirt, white shoes, and white pants taken from the donation closet.

Two years after Kyle arrived at the shelter, Katherine Slater, a middle-aged nurse with a warm, grandmotherly manner, began working night shifts. Kyle was often up late, and the two became close. Slater wasn’t sure she believed he had amnesia, but she felt badly that he had been separated from his family. She resolved to help Kyle figure out who he was.

Their journey takes years, but it's a fascinating mystery for your Sunday reading.  Put aside some time for this one, it's a meaty read even by SLR standard, and enjoy.

A Game Of Heidi And Goal Seek

I had a pretty dim view of ND Dem. Sen. Heidi Heitkamp before, but given her awful stance on the DAPL pipeline through Standing Rock Sioux country in her state and the Trump/Russia revelations, I don't understand why she's throwing what's left of her soul away being Trump's Ag Secretary.

Sen. Heidi Heitkamp has emerged as President-elect Donald Trump's leading choice for Agriculture secretary, sources close to the transition tell POLITICO.

The first-term Democrat from North Dakota and member of the Senate Agriculture Committee has been a vocal advocate for farmers and broke from her party on several controversial policy issues, including the labeling of genetically modified foods and environmental protection for wetlands and waterways.

A special election to replace Heitkamp would almost certainly turn her seat over to a Republican, so the choice would give Trump a chance to appear conciliatory to Democrats, albeit with a lower-profile Cabinet role, while allowing the GOP to bolster its Senate majority.

Heitkamp's office and Trump's transition team did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Heitkamp, who met with the president-elect at Trump Tower on Dec. 2, is facing a tough race in a deep red state in 2018. In a further sign she is a strong contender for a Cabinet post, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell met with North Dakota Rep. Kevin Cramer on Tuesday about a potential open Senate seat. A source close to the transition said gaining another Republican Senate seat was on the list of reasons for picking Heitkamp.

So again, Heitkamp would be betraying her party by working for a man who almost certainly betrayed his country to Russia.

That's a great resume to have, seriously.

Last Call For Trump Cards In The Russia's Deck

Trump cares not for your accusations of Russian interference in our elections.  Trump will choose an oil CEO with hundreds of billions in oil contracts with Russia for Secretary of State anyhow.

President-elect Donald Trump has selected Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson as his nominee for secretary of State, NBC News reported Saturday.

Tillerson, who met with Trump on Saturday at Trump Tower, is expected to be offered the post this weekend, The New York Times reported.Tillerson had reportedly jumped to the front of the pack of candidates in recent days, despite not being mentioned on shortlists as recently as last week.

Trump transition spokesman Jason Miller said in a tweet Saturday afternoon that there would not be an announcement about the State position until at least next week, though he did not refute NBC's report that Tillerson had been selected.

Several other media outlets reported Saturday afternoon that Tillerson was Trump's likely pick to become the nation's next top diplomat.

Keep in mind Tillerson has zero government experience like Trump.  That job will be handed to the new Trump Deputy SoS: John Bolton's Mustache.

Critics have already called into question Tillerson’s ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“I don’t know what Mr. Tillerson’s relationship with Vladimir Putin was, but I’ll tell you it is a matter of concern to me,” Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said during an interview with Fox News on Saturday.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Tillerson negotiated an energy partnership with Putin in 2011 that the Russian president said could be worth $500 billion.

The following year, Tillerson received the Russian Order of Friendship, one of the highest awards the country bestows upon foreign nationals.

Reuters reported earlier this year that the Exxon Mobil deal with Russia had been put on hold due to sanctions levied against the Kremlin for its annexation of Crimea in 2014. The company has said it intends to resume the deal after sanctions are lifted — a process that Tillerson could help expedite as secretary of State.

So you see this is really about Trump, Putin, and Tillerson getting hundreds of billions in oil money.  Trump is making a mockery of our government and simply doesn't care, and never did. Our government has been sold for oil cash.

We're going to have to work to get it back.

Trump Cards, Con't

Donald Trump really does think we're stupid: America as a whole, and black voters in particular.

On a “thank you” victory tour across the country Friday, President-elect Donald Trump claimed that low voter turnout among African Americans helped him win on Election Night.

“The African American community was great to us,” Trump said at an evening stop on his “USA Thank You Tour” in Grand Rapids, Michigan. “They came through big league. And frankly, if they had any doubt, they didn’t vote. And that was almost as good. Because a bunch of people didn’t show up, because they felt good about me.”

Trump also thanked the Latino community and women.

“And women,” he said. “My goodness. We did great with women, so I want to thank women.”

Democratic rival Hillary Clinton won African American voters over Trump, 89 percent to 8 percent, the Washington Post reported. In comparison, President Barack Obama won the group 83 percent to 6 percent in his 2012 reelection against Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

Clinton lost in part because voter turnout was low in urban areas and she received a lower margin of support from demographic groups that turned out to vote for Obama. At the same time, Trump received a boost in support from working-class white voters and won Michigan, a state that went for Obama in 2012.

Low Black voter turnout may be indirectly connected to Trump’s suggestion that his supporters commit voter suppression. In the months leading up to the election, Trump nudged his supporters to “watch” polling places in “certain areas” to make sure everything is on the “up and up.” He also appeared to encourage supporters to show up with friends to “go check out areas because a lot of bad things happen.”

Got that?  Some black voters stayed home because they were confident Trump was going to win.  He's gloating at we're the reason he won, specifically so that white liberals attack us and maybe start looking the other way when those nationwide GOP voting restrictions come down because it won't harm them, they think.

I am already desperately tired of this idiot and he's not even president yet.

Time To Cut The Nets

Republicans aren't stupid enough to cut Social Security, are they?  After all, the average Trump voter is on the older end of the scale of the American electorate and the oldest Boomers will be 72 starting next year, with millions retiring over the next four years of the Trump administration.  The famous Tip O'Neill political adage that "Social Security is the third rail of American politics, you touch it and die" still has to apply in the Trump era, right?

Funny story about Republicans, to "save" things they like to burn them down.

Amid all the hand-wringing over Republican plans to eviscerate Medicare and Medicaid and repeal the Affordable Care Act, it shouldn’t be overlooked that the GOP has the knives out for Social Security too. 

The latest reminder comes from Rep. Sam Johnson, R-Tex., chairman of the Ways and Means Social Security subcommittee. Johnson on Thursday uncorked what he termed a “plan to permanently save Social Security.”

Followers of GOP habits won’t be surprised to learn that it achieves this goal entirely through benefit cuts, without a dime of new revenues such as higher payroll taxes on the wealthy. in fact, Johnson’s plan reduces the resources coming into the program by eliminating a key tax --another way that he absolves richer Americans of paying their fair share, while increasing the burdens of retirement for almost everyone else.

Predictably, this plan has already been hailed by the Committee for a Responsible Budget, a billionaire’s front group that likes to portray itself as a neutral budget watchdog. (The foundation of hedge fund billionaire Peter G. Peterson, whose hostility to Social Security is well-documented, provided $3.3 million in funding for the committee in 2015; that’s the equivalent of about half the group’s revenue of $7.1 million in 2014)

Johnson's bill is a disaster, and while it does cut benefits modestly for the wealthiest Americans, the massive SS payroll tax cuts on top earners would more than make up for it.  The people who get screwed the most? Gen Xers and older Millennials like myself as the plan would push the retirement age up to 69 for anyone under 50 right now, and we would receive significantly fewer benefits due to cost-of-living adjustments.

Johnson's bill also makes it easier to work for more than 35 years and accrue benefits up to 72 (The Wal-Mart greeter clause!) but harshly cuts benefits for people who haven't put in 35 years of taxable work (you know, like women who have left the work force to have families, grad/post-grad students who may not get started working until their 30's etc.) when they retire.

The big giveaway is the bait-and-switch on the benefit cuts for the richest Americans.  Instead, they'll make a boatload on lower taxes, particularly the wealthiest folks.  They'll try to sell this as "means-testing" to make sure "people who don't need benefits aren't getting the most" but it's a complete scam: the tax savings the richest Americans will get out of this guarantees they'll be the ones winning.

Oh and one more thing: current Social Security beneficiaries?  They'd get immediately hit by the COLA adjustments and other cuts. In fact the only people who aren't getting screwed right off the bat are Boomers between 50 and 67.

You know, the bulk of the Boomers.  Trump voters, even.

And let's remember, this plan has zero new revenue for Social Security....only big benefit cuts, and even bigger tax cuts for the rich.  Dems need to beat the GOP over the head on this scam on an hourly basis until it dies screaming...then introduce their own plan.

Russian To Judgement, Con't

A major Friday night news dump, and it's a doozy: the CIA straight up told members of Congress in a September briefing that they believed Russia was behind the hacks of the DNC and the Clinton campaign, and fed the information to WikiLeaks with the intent of not just causing irreparable harm to the legitimacy of US elections, but actually damaging Hillary Clinton's chances in the election in order to specifically help Donald Trump.

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.

Intelligence agencies have identified individuals with connections to the Russian government who provided WikiLeaks with thousands of hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee and others, including Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, according to U.S. officials. Those officials described the individuals as actors known to the intelligence community and part of a wider Russian operation to boost Trump and hurt Clinton’s chances.

“It is the assessment of the intelligence community that Russia’s goal here was to favor one candidate over the other, to help Trump get elected,” said a senior U.S. official briefed on an intelligence presentation made to U.S. senators. “That’s the consensus view.”

The Obama administration has been debating for months how to respond to the alleged Russian intrusions, with White House officials concerned about escalating tensions with Moscow and being accused of trying to boost Clinton’s campaign.

These are massively disturbing allegations, but it's clear at this point that the damage to the country from revealing this information is less painful than the damage Trump would do as President.  Republicans of course are screaming, and nobody is screaming louder than the man with Putin's hands in his pocket.

In September, during a secret briefing for congressional leaders, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) voiced doubts about the veracity of the intelligence, according to officials present.

The Trump transition team dismissed the findings in a short statement issued Friday evening. “These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. The election ended a long time ago in one of the biggest Electoral College victories in history. It’s now time to move on and ‘Make America Great Again,’ ” the statement read.

Trump has consistently dismissed the intelligence community’s findings about Russian hacking.

“I don’t believe they interfered” in the election, he told Time magazine this week. The hacking, he said, “could be Russia. And it could be China. And it could be some guy in his home in New Jersey.”

Sure it was, Don.  Because it's not like your financial ties to Russia aren't common knowledge.  You know what I'm not seeing in that three-sentence "statement" from Team Trump?  Anything even remotely resembling a denial. On top of that? Mitch the Turtle and the rest of the Senate GOP also sat on their hands and did nothing. And guess what?  The CIA still thinks Russia screwed Clinton in this election.

The CIA shared its latest assessment with key senators in a closed-door briefing on Capitol Hill last week, in which agency officials cited a growing body of intelligence from multiple sources. Agency briefers told the senators it was now “quite clear” that electing Trump was Russia’s goal, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters. 

The CIA presentation to senators about Russia’s intentions fell short of a formal U.S. assessment produced by all 17 intelligence agencies. A senior U.S. official said there were minor disagreements among intelligence officials about the agency’s assessment, in part because some questions remain unanswered.

For example, intelligence agencies do not have specific intelligence showing officials in the Kremlin “directing” the identified individuals to pass the Democratic emails to WikiLeaks, a second senior U.S. official said. Those actors, according to the official, were “one step” removed from the Russian government, rather than government employees. Moscow has in the past used middlemen to participate in sensitive intelligence operations so it has plausible deniability.

So it's all but confirmed at this point.  An official and formal declaration would be...well...an international crisis, and not the good kind.  And it gets worse.

In a secure room in the Capitol used for briefings involving classified information, administration officials broadly laid out the evidence U.S. spy agencies had collected, showing Russia’s role in cyber-intrusions in at least two states and in hacking the emails of the Democratic organizations and individuals.

And they made a case for a united, bipartisan front in response to what one official described as “the threat posed by unprecedented meddling by a foreign power in our election process.”

The Democratic leaders in the room unanimously agreed on the need to take the threat seriously. Republicans, however, were divided, with at least two GOP lawmakers reluctant to accede to the White House requests.

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.

Some of the Republicans in the briefing also seemed opposed to the idea of going public with such explosive allegations in the final stages of an election, a move that they argued would only rattle public confidence and play into Moscow’s hands.

The White House wanted to make sure everyone was on board with this, but Mitch McConnell said no, as he has for eight years. More importantly this seriously thrown the legitimacy of Trump's win into doubt and Republicans like McConnell would have rather won with Russian help than a fair election.  Remember that.

And all of this above?  That's the shot.  Here's the chaser, from the NY Times.

American intelligence agencies have concluded with “high confidence” that Russia acted covertly in the latter stages of the presidential campaign to harm Hillary Clinton’s chances and promote Donald J. Trump, according to senior administration officials.

They based that conclusion, in part, on another finding — which they say was also reached with high confidence — that the Russians hacked the Republican National Committee’s computer systems in addition to their attacks on Democratic organizations, but did not release whatever information they gleaned from the Republican networks.

This just got potentially serious, guys.  History book serious.

Last Call For Climate Of Hostility

The Trump administration is preparing the Great Purge of the Unworthy from civil service positions, starting with (of course) Trump's Energy Department hunting down the scientists, policy experts and administrators behind the Obama administration's climate change initiatives.

Advisers to President-elect Donald Trump are developing plans to reshape Energy Department programs, help keep aging nuclear plants online and identify staff who played a role in promoting President Barack Obama’s climate agenda. 

The transition team has asked the agency to list employees and contractors who attended United Nations climate meetings, along with those who helped develop the Obama administration’s social cost of carbon metrics, used to estimate and justify the climate benefits of new rules. The advisers are also seeking information on agency loan programs, research activities and the basis for its statistics, according to a five-page internal document circulated by the Energy Department on Wednesday. The document lays out 65 questions from the Trump transition team, sources within the agency said. 

On the campaign trail, Trump promised to eliminate government waste, rescind "job-killing" regulations and cancel the Paris climate accord in which nearly 200 countries pledged to slash greenhouse gas emissions. Trump, though, hasn’t detailed specific plans for federal agencies. The document obtained by Bloomberg offers clues on where his administration may be headed on energy policy, based on the nature of questions involving the agency’s research agenda, nuclear program and national labs.

Under Obama, the department played a major role advancing clean-energy technology through loan guarantees and incubators, while writing efficiency rules for appliances. The department leans heavily on tens of thousands of contractors, who supplement the work of its roughly 13,000 direct employees. 

Two Energy Department employees who spoke on condition of anonymity confirmed the questionnaire and said agency staff were unsettled by the Trump team’s information request.

I would be too, because they will be the first heads to roll.  When I said that the Trump administration's official position on climate change is that it's a best bad science to be eliminated and at worst a dangerous hoax, either way Trump was going to claim that Obama cost the nation billions and that this "government waste" was always going to be purged.

"Science" in the era of Trump is whatever Trump and his billionaire corporate cabinet and junta council of generals wants it to be.

Dissent In The Age Of Trump

And the stifling of dissent in the age of Trump begins in earnest as Trump's inauguration committee is making sure no protesters are allowed anywhere near Washington DC landmarks in the first days of the Trump administration.

For the thousands hoping to echo the civil rights and anti-Vietnam rallies at Lincoln Memorial by joining the women’s march on Washington the day after Donald Trump’s inauguration: time to readjust your expectations. 

The Women’s March won’t be held at the Lincoln Memorial. 

That’s because the National Park Service, on behalf of the Presidential Inauguration Committee, filed documents securing large swaths of the national mall and Pennsylvania Avenue, the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial for the inauguration festivities. None of these spots will be open for protesters.

The NPS filed a “massive omnibus blocking permit” for many of Washington DC’s most famous political locations for days and weeks before and after the inauguration on 20 January, said Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, a constitutional rights litigator and the executive director of the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund.

Previously, Verheyden-Hilliard has led court battles for protest access on inauguration day itself.

But banning access to public land for protesters days after the inauguration is “extremely unique”, she said in a press conference held by the Answer [Act Now to Stop War and End Racism] Coalition. 

“It hasn’t come up in any way previously, where you’ve had a groundswell of people trying to have access on the Saturday, January 21, and thousands of people want to come, and the government is saying we won’t give you a permit,” she said. 

“What they’ve done is take all of these spaces out of action,” she said, many of which, the Answer Coalition noted in its press release, are “historic spaces for dissent”. 

It’s partly a practical issue. Inauguration bleachers and viewing stands started being erected on 1 November and it will take until 1 March to completely clear the major public spaces from all of the inauguration works, said Mike Litterst, spokesman for the NPS. 

“They’re construction zones, effectively,” said Litterst. 

But the plan greatly limits the options for public protesting.

Now, if this is standard practice by the National Park Service to lock down the area around the National Mall for four months during a presidential inauguration for security that's one thing.  But in 2009 I remember the Mall being open to the public so millions could get seating, and while Barack Obama gave his famous speech at the Lincoln Memorial in the days before his inauguration I certainly don't remember the landmark being off limits for months after the inauguration.

But of course Trump isn't going to allow it.  That's something America will need to get used to. Bush's "free speech zones" where protesters were roped off miles away from Bush events were all too common in the man's second term disaster.  Trump is doing this from day one.

Or maybe we should, you know, not get used to it and fight it.

Black Lives Still Matter, Con't

It's safe to say at this point that Black Lives Matter is the catch-all boogeyman of racist Trumpmerica, and the fact of the matter is people will blame the movement for everything from hangnails to global conspiracies.  But it's blaming BLM (and by extension all black people in America) falsely for criminal acts that is going to end up causing bloody consequences.

A New York firefighter was arrested after allegedly setting fire to his own home in an apparent attempt to smear anti-police brutality activists. 

Jason Stokes pleaded not guilty Tuesday to arson in connection with the August fire at his house in Endicott, reported WBNG-TV. 

A family member said at the time that they believed their home was targeted because of the “Blue Lives Matter” flag flying out front. 

Investigators found the message, “lie with pigs, fry like bacon,” written on some siding outside the burned home. 

The slogan apparently referenced an incident from August 2015, when some demonstrators chanted, “pigs in a blanket, fry them like bacon,” during a Black Lives Matter protest at the Minnesota State Fair that was widely reported by conservative media. 

Pro-police websites blamed the fire at Stokes’ home on “terrorists” associated with the civil rights group. 

Prosecutors now believe the 41-year-old Stokes wrote the message to help cover up his crime, although they’re not sure why.

Why a firefighter would burn down his own home?  Who knows?  Insurance fraud, domestic violence, job stress as a firefighter, there are reasons.  But the pre-meditated plan to blame Black Lives Matter was obviously because Stokes thought he could easily get away with it.  And in other places in America, he would have.  Nobody would have questioned his story.

As it is, investigators didn't charge Stokes for four months.  In the meantime, while all of these angry "Blue Lives Matter" folks were running around avenging an attack on one of their own, how many black people in Broome County, New York were questioned, harassed, surveilled?  How many were falsely connected to this crime?  They were more than willing to call Black Lives Matter "terrorists" here in this incident.

So what happens when the next white firefighter or cop or first responder commits a crime, and blames Black Lives Matter for it when Trump's Homeland Security is in charge?

What happens when that blood runs red in the streets?  Because that day is coming, and probably a lot sooner than you think.

What's to stop them?  Maybe this time the actual bad guy got caught.  As a black person in America, I'm betting my life on not "fitting the description of the suspect" on a daily basis.  What happens when the description and scene of the crime matches me?  It was bad enough before, but in the Trump era?

People are going to die.  That's a fact.  Another hashtag, another news story, another trial, possibly, but no justice.  That I know.

StupidiNews!

• South Korea's National Assembly has voted overwhelmingly to impeach President Park Geun-hye, she faces corruption charges as the country's high court now decides her fate.
• In the wake of legal experts saying Ohio's "heartbeat bill" 6-week abortion ban is unconstitutional, Ohio Republicans have passed a 20-week ban as a backup measure.
• The Senate has easily passed a $618 billion defense spending bill without controversial amendments, the measure goes to President Obama's desk.
• Fortune 1000 company legal counsels are pushing big law firms to promote more women and minority lawyers as statistics find 75% of law firm partners are white men.
• Famed Mercury 7 astronaut, WW II and Korean War marine pilot, Ohio GOP senator, and the first man to orbit the earth, the legendary John Glenn has passed away at the age of 95.