Andrea Mitchell spoke with Delaware Senator Chris Coons, a conservative Dem on both the Senate Foreign Relations and Judiciary committees. He thinks the FBI and/or other intelligence agencies have transcripts (and presumably tapes) that would serve as the proverbial smoking gun to end the national nightmare that a trump Regime would trigger. Remember, it's only been 5 or 6 weeks."There are transcripts," Coons told Mitchell Friday, "that provide very helpful, very critical insights into whether or not Russian intelligence and senior Russian political leaders, including Vladimir Putin, were cooperating, were colluding with the Trump campaign at the highest levels to influence the outcome of our election. If that information is stonewalled or hidden away and if we are not able to get that on the Senate Intelligence Committee, House Intelligence Committee, then I think that has real consequences for our democracy."Rachel Maddow began her Friday show with a blockbuster report on the courageousness of someone few Americans have likely ever heard of, Alexei Navalny, a Russian opposition figure running-- if he can-- against Putin for president. The whole 22 minutes clip is at the bottom and it's worth watching and listening to in its entirety. But I want to focus on just one small aspect, one that relates to our own situation we find ourselves in because there are enough morons in our country, who, like my brother-in-law, found their ways to a polling station and voted for the least qualified person to ever get elected to the presidency.
Who do you think is the richest man in the world? And if you ask somebody who's connected, who's worldly, who's been around, every single one of those people, every single time will give you the same answer. They will say, "the richest man in the world, obviously, in Vladimir Putin."And on paper, that shouldn't be true, right? The salary of the Russian president is a fraction of what even the U.S president gets paid. Vladimir Putin has never had a job outside the Russian government. He's never had any disclosed business ties, any official investments we are allowed to know about. But, you know what? The whole 'oligarchs thing,' the whole conversion of all state run enterprises of the Communist Soviet Union... all those billions, even tens of billions of dollars that have moved in the past 20 years? Alllll of that money is believed to have gone, to some degree, through Vladimir Putin's pockets. He is widely believed by people in a position to know to be the richest man in the world-- and by a lot... all of that wealth has been stolen an/or extorted and/or kicked back to him over his 17 years in office running an increasingly autocratic Russian government.Technically, yes, there's a Russian Parliament but it is like a vestigial organ at this point. Basically it's the adenoid of the Russian government; it's the tonsil. Technically there is also a court system in Russia. But you know what? That's Putin too.
Look at these two pieces of shit. They're not a check on Trump; they are his enablers, his conspirators. McConnell and especially Ryan are so excited to get their reactionary, backward anti-human agenda signed into law that they don't seem to care what deprecations the Trump Regime visits on our country.I don't want to see another Civil War. I don't believe there is any way to avoid one and avoid a Trumpist take over of America-- on a kleptocratic/kakistocratic level of Russia-- that would avoid a Civil War. There is one thing and one thing only-- a 2018 take over of Congress by the Democrats. The horrible, lame, corporate-beholden, incompetent, venal, untrustworthy careerist Democrats. The only hope to stop Trumpism... that stinking pile of excrement led by the inept hands of Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi in Congress. But it's worth it to stop Trump. The candidates Blue America supports are not garden variety Democrats like the ones I just described. They're the good ones. They'll ameliorate the horror of going from Trump-- and Bannon and Miller and Sessions and Wilbur Ross and Gorka... and the generals-- to the party of Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Rahm Emanuel and Steny Hoyer. Want to help? The candidates you'll find by hitting the ActBlue thermometer ion the right have been vetted and are courageous and public service-minded. They're worth helping get elected to the House this year and next. Yeah... courageousness is important-- so, so important, so, again, watch the whole Maddow segment:
