I wasn't disagreeing with him and have known about our own worshipers of Putin fro a while. Russia is the white supremacists great white hope to stop white genocide. The meh is more meant as. Yeah ok, still think he is in on it and active in the collusion whether a puppet of admirer.

trump knew he was doing shady **** with rusher because he fired comey because of the rusher thing and then bragged to a couple russian officials in the oval office about how the pressure is off because comey is fired

no u

He's not totally wrong for once

A critique of Trump and Putin being ideological allies making it harder to prove collusion: Trump had plenty of motive to collude outside of ideology, but Putin didn't. It seems pretty obvious the reason Putin was game is because Trump is a kindred spirit.

Sad day when you can't trust a hacker to just release emails he illegally got.

I think a lot of us did. I recall one of the many, many hills that ikestoys martyred his skewered beaten body on was, well before Trump, "lol no, conservatives don't like Putin".

Doesn't this type of trolling by reps from super safe right wing seats just inflame the issue and make it harder for Trump and "conservatives"? I mean, I realize one could have said that about 100 GOP tactics in the last 20 years, but I'm really thinking Lucy might just leave the football there this time.

The thing is, in a democracy, numbers matters, but intensity may matter more, and libs to moderates to some conservatives are pretty much foaming at the mouth over Trump and I don't think these old style games that worked with an uninterested electorate will still work. I could be wrong, but losing strategies often win, until they don't (cf Trump's entire life).

Republicans have been gushing over Putin for a long time. Even before Trumpmania, sexxxy bare-chested Putin on horseback was held up as a foil for Obama.

Think how long they've been reading Russian propaganda without even knowing it.

Matt Gaetz is that can of hairspray Chris Hayes interviewed last night who kept saying we need to jump-start the economy which is why these tax cuts are so muy importante

Lots of folks have been

He wasn't just a foil for Obama. Remember if you're getting published articles and Daily Show pieces (e.g. the stuff I linked to), those are targeted at elite GOP and right-winger opinions, people with a medium to publish that liberals can call out.

Reading the rank and file was way way more transparent. They loved his aggression against minorities and gays and the way he threatened terrorists and the way he didn't suffer lectures from human rights nerds and the litany of masculinity cult/authoritarian stuff they admired. The right wing grievance and culture war machine's next reactionary step rightward was always going to be into flirtation with fascism and authoritarianism from there, and strongman worship was a logical next step.

So much of the left and even some wayward Never Trumper's criticism of the Russia story is that the collusion is transparently with a country that does not have our best interest at heart. Trump is such a two-bit scamming scoundrel, so desperate to win, whatever whatever, he would betray America and buddy-up to an authoritarian ghoul, incredible how soulless Trump must be to go those lengths.

But it's critical to realize tens of millions of Americans have warmed up to the Putin style. At that point doing a bunch of stuff favorable to Russia moves from "collusion" to "policy" much as we don't want to admit it.

There's a story for the left to tell here that I think could still hit home with voters, and I suspect Trump's deep unpopularity IS because a lot of Americans retain just the slightest shred of decency and really don't want to become Russia-lite. And the pretty transparent Trump/Putin friendliness is not going to be popular outside of the deplorables.

But the way the story seems to bend to chalk it up to grift and Trump's personal failures and fails to draw the bigger ideological picture is a mistake. It's not that Russia controls Trump as a puppet, but instead that Trump and a whole political movement behind him have become brazenly and outwardly authoritarian and their foreign policy choices are simply reflections of what the party has become.

The Russian sanctions bill was passed almost unanimously though, and the magnitsky act was passed with a huge majority. Doesn't seem like something the GOP would do if they & their supporters absolutely loved Russia & Putin.

Go ask the random deplorable what they think about the GOP congress versus their view of Trump: GOP Congress are a bunch of pussy RINO swamp creatures who haven't fallen in line behind hero Trump. And the average deplorable and angry old white zoned out on FNC haven't the foggiest clue what The Magnitsky Act is and why they should care at all but go check out the comments section of a news article about Putin's persecution of gay men in Chechnya if you want to see the true deplorable mindset about Putin on display.

How's everyone pronouncing "Guccifer", by the way? Ages ago, I heard some people on TV talking about it and they pronounced it "Goose-ifer". The double-c had me pronouncing it "Gooch-ifer". Am I wrong?

Yea, is that a new thing? Or have they always hated the congress they voted for? Because we're talking pre trump

Also this hmmmmm



How is Roger Stone not under indictment right now?

I've talked about this over the years but if you want the average GOP voters take, just go to FreeRepublic or Breitbart comments.

The story:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-.../3561661/posts

Let's cut to the quotes:

Most of these might be Russian bots but probably not. Been like this for years and years. If you're watching the GOP Congress to figure out where America's right wing is at, you're looking at the wrong signals. The rank and file deplorable thinks he's a great Christian, a true genius, leading the fight against degenerate European and American globalists.

Crazy to think Stone might be a low-level target in this whole investigation.

Not new but the modern average right winger seems qualitatively angrier than in the past. Hard to measure. I do think to some extent the GOP had the inmates under more control say before 2006-2008 and before that, they were more standard fare partisans that I think the *average* professional Democrat assumes they are still dealing with out in the American wild. Instead of complete ****ing lunatics these people have turned into. I've written at length that these fascist movements are due to both environmental context AND innate deplorableness. So take some kind angry, kinda paranoid, kinda racist people and mix in black presidents, their ****ty suburbs getting infested with opiates, the recession spooking them, epistemic closure / oppositional culture setting in and the effects of a closed right-wing media ecosystem, the deep rot of social/spatial segregation etc etc. All of that is taking taking normal everyday deplorables and turning them into completely unhinged sputtering looney toons, taking soft-deplorables and turning them into more strident angry idiots, etc.

America's always had bad people, circumstances are making it worse.

And anyway so I do think the average right winger now seethes at their party more than they used to but it was kinda common too, say 10-20 years ago. Just a little less common, a little less forceful.

It's not entirely new. A lot of this crowd blamed the Romney and McCain losses on the GOP establishment.

I think the spirit Putin liked about Trump is the spirit of grift.

Someone in the White House fell asleep long enough for agencies to sneak out a damning report on climate change