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JANUARY 6,2017 ODNI REPORT:DEMOCRATS DESERVE LOSING THE ELECTION |
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Written by Barry Kowal
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Jan 06, 2015 at 10:08 PM |
JANUARY 6,2017 ODNI REPORT:DEMOCRATS DESERVE LOSING THE ELECTION
On Friday,January 6,2017 The US intelligence
community released the unclassified findings of its investigation into what it
says was Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election,hours after
President-elect Donald Trump received a briefing on the probe.
The ODNI devoted seven pages to RT (Russia
Today) and its influence on the election "by serving as a platform for Kremlin
messaging to Russian and international audiences." The report claimed
"Russian media made increasingly favorable comments about President-elect
Trump as the 2016 US general and primary election campaigns progressed while
consistently offering negative coverage of Secretary Clinton."
RT's pro-Trump campaign began in March 2016,
according to the ODNI,by "consistently" casting Trump "as the target of unfair
coverage from traditional US media
outlets" that were "subservient to a corrupt political establishment."
The Office of the Director of National
Intelligence (ODNI) released the report called "Assessing Russian Activities
and Intentions in Recent US Elections".
The report did not provide any hard evidence
of Russian interference,relying instead on analyses from the CIA,FBI and NSA
that drew on intelligence collected by the three agencies. The CIA and FBI have "high confidence" in the results of the report, while the NSA only has "moderate confidence."
The key judgments made by the US
intelligence community came from "a body of reporting from multiple sources
that are consistent with their understanding of Russian behavior," which was
based on "the behavior of Kremlin-loyal political figures,state media and
pro-Kremlin social media actors, all of whom the Kremlin either directly uses
to convey messages or who are answerable to the Kremlin." Similar tactics, the
ODNI concluded, were also used to drive "consistent,self-reinforcing
narratives" about Ukraine and Syria.
As per the report,high confidence is defined
as judgments "based on high-quality information from multiple sources," while
moderate confidence means the information is "credibly sourced and plausible
but not of sufficient quality or corroborated sufficiently to warrant a higher
level of confidence."
There are several things I find disturbing
about this report.For one this report was conducted by the CIA.The same CIA
that said in 2002 that Sadam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.Which
turned out to be false.Yet we should believe the CIA.
Further,James Clapper released this report
for the NSA.The same James Clapper who lied before the US Congress in 2013 when
he said under oath that the NSA doesn't conduct massive surveillance on US
citizens. Edward Snowden later proved this to be false.Clapper lies to congress
and nothing happens to him.While Snowden reveals the truth and is living in
exile in Russia facing many years in prison back in the USA.
Now when the NSA says they have "moderate confidence" that means they do not
know. They only have jealously.Julian Assange has stated on numerous occasions
that the Russians were not involved in hacking the DNC.Who do you believe
Assange or a man who has lied to congress under oath?
Another disturbing fact to this report is when it says:
"Russian media made increasingly
favorable comments about President- elect Trump as the 2016 US general and primary
election campaigns progressed while consistently offering negative
coverage of Secretary Clinton."
That statement implies that Americans are
unable to make comprehensive decisions insulting their intelligence.
What is even more frightening is that this
report may be used as a pretext for censorship.Then Americans will only have
access to the narratives being orchestrated by CNN,ABC,MSNBC,Fox (so-called)
News,the Washington Post,New York Times and other outlets of the main stream
media.
This fiasco started last year when
Wiki-Leaks released the John Podesta emails revealing that the DNC stole the
primaries away from Bernie Sanders.Rather than addressing the substance of the
emails Hillary Clinton attacks the messenger by accusing Russia.
Then when Hillary lost the election in
November President Obama jumped on the bandwagon because the election was a referendum
on his legacy. He acted like a petulant child by trying to box Trump in by
creating tension in US-Russian relations by doing such things like banning
drilling in the Arctic,imposing sanctions on Russia and ordering Russian
diplomats and their families to leave the USA in 72 hours.
Obama leaves the White House on January 20 and he is slamming the door while
leaving feces on the welcome mat for Trump.
The US media had no problem going along for
the ride. After all,they were making favorable comments about Hillary just like
RT was making favorable comments about Trump.
Now,the NSA,CIA and FBI have no problem
promoting the propaganda. After all they are part of the war machine and the
war machine needs a boogie man.As long as the USA can create a narrative that
Russia is nefarious many countries especially in Europe would be more than
willing to purchase weapons,aircraft and bombs which increases the bottom line
for defense contractors.
All this is not good for the US electoral
process nor is it good for US-Russian relations. It is also not good for the
world. Remember, Russia has nuclear weapons and it might not be good for
"Ronald McDonald" to continue poking the "Dancing
Bear".
All this has occurred because the Democrats
are angry about losing the 2016 election and they are digging their own grave.
They are just whistling in the wind. There was a much more viable issue the
Democrats could have raised to protest the "Trump" victory. This is a
report submitted by Greg Palast of voter suppression and voter fraud committed
by Republicans and Donald Trump surrogates after the 2016 election.This was
later made into a movie.
Before a single vote was cast,the election
was fixed by GOP and Trump operatives.
Starting in
2013"just as the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act" a coterie of Trump
operatives,under the direction of Kris Kobach,Kansas Secretary of State,created
a system to purge 1.1 million Americans of color from the voter rolls of
GOP controlled states.
The system, called Crosscheck, is detailed
in Palast's Rolling Stone report,
"The GOP's
Stealth War on Voters," 8/24/2016.
Crosscheck
in action:
Trump
victory margin in Michigan:
13,107
Michigan
Crosscheck purge list:
449,922
Trump
victory margin in Arizona:
85,257
Arizona
Crosscheck purge list:
270,824
Trump
victory margin in North Carolina:
177,008
North
Carolina Crosscheck purge list:
589,393
On November 9,2016 we saw Crosscheck elect a
Republican Senate and as President, Donald Trump.The electoral putsch was aided
by nine other methods of attacking the right to vote of Black, Latino and
Asian-American voters,methods detailed in Palast's book and film,including "Caging," "purging,: blocking legitimate registrations and wrongly shunting millions to "provisional" ballots that will never be counted.
Trump signaled the use of "Crosscheck" when
he claimed the election is "rigged" because "people are voting many,many
times." His operative Kobach,who also
advised Trump on building a wall on the southern border,devised a list of 7.2
million potential "double voters" 1.1 million of which were removed from the
voter rolls by Tuesday.The list is loaded overwhelmingly with voters of color
and the poor. Here's a sample of the list:
No, not everyone on the list loses their
vote.But this was not the only racially poisonous tactic that accounted for
this purloined victory by Trump and GOP candidates.
For example,in the swing state of North
Carolina,it was reported that 6,700 Black folk lost their registrations because
their registrations had been challenged by a group
called Voter Integrity Project (VIP).VIP sent letters to households in Black
communities "do not forward." If the
voter had moved within the same building, or somehow did not get their mail
(e.g. if their name was not on a mail box), they were challenged as "ghost" voters. GOP voting officials happily
complied with VIP with instant cancellation of registrations.
The 6,700 identified in two counties were
returned to the rolls through a lawsuit.However,there was not one mention in
the press that VIP was also behind Crosscheck
in North Carolina;nor that its leader, Col. Jay Delancy, whom Palast tracked for
years has previously used this vote thievery, known as "caging," for years.Doubtless
the caging game was wider and deeper than reported.And by the way,caging,as
Palast's Rolling Stone co-author, attorney Robert F. Kennedy Jr.,tells Palast,is "a felony,it's illegal, and punishable by high fines and even jail time."
There is still much investigation to do.
For example, there are millions of "provisional" ballots, "spoiled" (invalidated) ballots and ballots rejected from the approximately 30 million
mailed in. Unlike reporting in Britain,US media does not report the ballots
that are rejected and tossed out" because,after all,as Joe Biden says,"Our
elections are the envy of the world." Only in Saudi Arabia, Joe.
But,the evidence that has already been
exposed makes me sadly confident in saying,Jim Crow,not the voters,elected Mr.
Trump.
 Donald Webster accused double voter
What about
those exit polls?
Exit polls are the standard by which the
US State Department measures the honesty of foreign elections. Exit polling is,historically, deadly
accurate.The bane of
pre-election polling is that pollsters must adjust for the likelihood of a
person voting. Exit polls solve the problem.
But three times in US history,pollsters have
had to publicly flagellate themselves for their "errors." In 2000,exit polls gave Al Gore the win in
Florida;in 2004,
exit polls gave Kerry the win in Ohio,and now, in swing states, exit polls gave
the presidency to Hillary Clinton.
So how could these multi-million-dollar
Ph.d-directed statisticians with decades of experience get exit polls so wrong?
Answer:they
didn't. The polls in Florida in 2000
were accurate.That's because exit pollsters can only ask, "How did you
vote?" What they don't ask, and can't,
is,"Was your
vote counted?"
In 2000,in Florida, GOP Secretary of State
Katherine Harris officially rejected 181,173 ballots, as "spoiled" because
their chads were hung and other nonsense excuses.Those
ballots overwhelmingly were marked for Al Gore. The exit polls included those
181,173 people who thought they had voted,but their vote didn't count.
In other
words, the exit polls accurately reflected whom the voters chose,not what
Katherine Harris chose.
In 2004,a similar number of votes were
invalidated (including an enormous pile of "provisional" ballots) by Ohio's GOP
Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell.Again,the
polls reflected that Kerry was the choice of 51% of the voters. But the exit
polls were "wrong" because they didn't reflect the ballots invalidated by
Blackwell.
And here we go again.2016:Hillary wins among
those queried as they exit the polling station,yet Trump is declared winner in
GOP-controlled swings states.And,once
again,the expert pollsters are forced to apologize,when they should be
screaming,"Fraud! Here's the evidence
the vote was fixed!"
Now there's a new trope to explain away the
exit polls that gave Clinton the win. Supposedly,Trump voters were ashamed to
say they voted for Trump.Really? ON WHAT PLANET? For Democracy Now! and Rolling
Stone Palast was out in several swing states.In Ohio,yes,a Black voter may have
been reluctant to state support for Trump.But a white voter in the suburbs of
Dayton,where the Trump signs grew on lawns like weeds,and the pews of the
evangelical mega churches were slathered with Trump and GOP brochures, risked
getting spat on if they even whispered, "Hillary."
This country is violently divided,but in the
end, there simply aren't enough white guys to elect Trump nor a Republican
Senate.
The only way they could win was to eliminate
the votes of non-white guys,and they did so by tossing Black provisional
ballots into the dumpster,ID laws that turn away students "the list goes on.
It's a web of complex obstacles to voting by citizens of color topped by that
lying spider, Crosscheck.
Now "Hillary" who got a lot of
money from donators rather than blaming Russia for hacking should be using her
donations and hollering "voter fraud" at the top of her lungs. The leadership
of the DNC ignore this issue even with the black caucus wing of the DNC hollering.This
is an issue with much more merit. If "Hillary" were successful this
could lead to an impeachment of Trump or delegitimize the "Trump"
victory and many of the Republican congressional victories.At the very least it
would have made Republicans quite more vulnerable in 2018 and 2020.
But instead the Democrats pursue the frivolous
accusation of hacking the DNC. Democrats are locked out of power in Washington
after losing the White House and failing to win back Congress.Hillary Clinton's
defeat has left the party without a unifying leader,and its hold on state
legislatures has eroded significantly during President Obama's time in
office.But as bleak as current circumstances are for the Democratic party, the
political landscape ahead may be even more challenging.
To start,Democrats must confront what looks
like a punishing Senate map in 2018.The party that controls the White House
tends to lose congressional seats in midterm elections,but it seems unlikely
that Democrats will regain control of the Senate two years from now,much less
the House of Representatives.
Republicans
significantly outnumber Democrats in the House and only need to protect eight
Senate seats in 2018 while Democrats must defend twenty-five seats.
Adding to the challenge, Democrats have 27
senators up for reelection while Republicans only 9.Some are in states Donald
Trump won by double digit margins such as
North Dakota,West Virginia,Montana,Indiana and Missouri.Those aren't the only
perilous races:Democratic incumbents also need to defend Senate seats in Ohio,
Pennsylvania, Michigan,Wisconsin, and Florida,states that voted for Obama in
two presidential elections before switching to vote for Trump.In 2018 you may
get a veto proof Congress which you can not block with a filibuster. "There's
no question in 2018 the map will be extremely difficult for Democrats."
For now,however, the outlook is grim for
Democrats. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, Republicans
have control of both state houses as well as the governor's mansion in twenty
four states, while Democrats have total control in only seven states in the wake
of the 2016 elections.
The extent to which the party's power has
eroded at the state and national level makes the the task of rebuilding all the
more urgent for Democrats.It also makes the task far more difficult. Tough odds
may convince some demoralized Democrats in Congress to retire, altering the
match-ups in the 2018 midterm races.But even if that happens, the electoral map
will remain challenging for the party. As a result, Democrats should prepare
for the possibility that they may face additional setbacks in the near-future
that make it even harder to regain a substantial foothold in Washington and
statehouses across the country. Then by complaining about Russian hacking and
voter fraud by 2020 we may see the demise of the Democratic.For their ignorance
and stupidity they help and are continuing to help "Trump" and the Republicans
to continue running the country.
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Last Updated ( Dec 04, 2017 at 11:17 AM )
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