Donald Trump Jr. makes it to the cover of Time Magazine.

And look, it's not even fake!

From the article: 

So, how bad is it? Investigators in Congress and the Justice Department have miles to go before determining whether President Trump or his son, son-in-law or advisers cooperated--or even conspired--with Russian officials to tilt the outcome of last year's election. But this much is now clear, thanks to Trump Jr.'s Twitter stream: whether the Trumps teamed up with the Russians or not, they certainly wanted to. And that overrides the months of denials from the Trump orbit that there was anything to what the President has repeatedly called a "witch hunt." When Trump Jr. was asked on July 24, 2016, about Democratic claims that Russia was trying to help the Trump campaign, he responded with unmitigated outrage on CNN. "It's disgusting. It's so phony," he said. "I can't think of bigger lies."

I wonder if he he can think of bigger lies now?

Because I sure can. 

In the run up to the election Hillary Clinton's emails dominated the perceptions of the American voters.

Courtesy of HuffPo:

 During last year’s election, the polling firm Gallup regularly asked Americans if they’d read, heard, or seen anything about the presidential candidates in the last few days. Those who had ― usually two-thirds or more of the public in any given week ― were asked to elaborate. 

The researchers then pulled out the words used by the public to describe what they were hearing about both candidates, as part of an effort to figure out what information was reaching voters and staying with them. 

In a chart of the most common words used in relation to Clinton between last summer and Election Day, the word “email” quite literally crowds out the rest, with several of the other most prevalent words also alluding to perceptions that she was scandal-plagued. 

With emails so prominently on the minds of the voters, which was constantly being reinforced by the Wikileaks drip drip of leaks from hacked Democratic email accounts, is it really any surprise that Comey's letter had the effect that it had?

It was almost a perfect storm of coordination between the Republicans, the Russians, and the far left who were just looking for a reason not to vote for Hillary in the general.

Rep. Jason Chaffetz decides it is better to continue the Clinton witch hunt than to bother investigating Trump's ties with Russia.

Courtesy of the AP: 

The Republican chairman of the House Oversight Committee, who has refused Democratic requests to investigate possible conflicts of interest involving President Donald Trump, is seeking criminal charges against a former State Department employee who helped set up Hillary Clinton's private email server. 

Rep. Jason Chaffetz of Utah sent a letter to Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Thursday asking him to convene a grand jury or charge Bryan Pagliano, the computer specialist who helped establish Clinton's server while she was secretary of state.

Pagliano did not comply with two subpoenas ordering him to appear before the oversight panel. The GOP-led committee later voted to hold him in contempt of Congress. 

Earlier this month, Chaffetz met with Trump at the White House and agreed not to discuss oversight. He has rebuffed calls for his panel to look into Trump's businesses and possible conflicts. 

Chaffetz said in a statement that allowing Pagliano's conduct "to go unaddressed would gravely harm Congress' ability to conduct oversight."

I am literally so disgusted by this that I cannot even come up with anything clever to say about it.

It is like these partisan pricks cannot even be bothered to PRETEND they are doing their actual jobs anymore. 

Makes a lot of sense.

Last spring during primaries social media was so consumed w anti-HRC vitriol from the left it was difficult to speak out in support. 1/

— Sandy Garossino (@Garossino) January 14, 2017

Most HRC supporters just kept quiet, as hateful rhetoric rose to near hysteria by Bernie supporters. Two main reasons for silence. 2/

— Sandy Garossino (@Garossino) January 14, 2017

a) It was obvious that publicly and strongly supporting HRC would result in immediate attack on social media. Because corrupt, obv. 3/

— Sandy Garossino (@Garossino) January 14, 2017

b) HRC supporters knew that to engage with the furious Bernie supporters risked alienating badly needed support during the general. 4/

— Sandy Garossino (@Garossino) January 14, 2017

Consequently, very strong HRC support was muted, and anti-Clinton clamour rose to near hysteria. “She’s going to be INDICTED!” 5/

— Sandy Garossino (@Garossino) January 14, 2017

The Steele memo suggests that much of this rhetoric was deliberately driven by Russians acting in concert w Trump campaign. 6/ pic.twitter.com/FOPRIbt3CP

— Sandy Garossino (@Garossino) January 14, 2017

Further, to an unknown extent, Steele memo suggests that Jill Stein was pulled into Putin’s orbit as part of anti-Clinton pro-Trump plan. 7/

— Sandy Garossino (@Garossino) January 14, 2017

Steele memo outlining Putin paid to bring Stein, Carter Page, and Flynn to Moscow; photo of Stein, Flynn, Putin at RT dinner. 8/ pic.twitter.com/xtjAnAI4Tc

— Sandy Garossino (@Garossino) January 14, 2017

Interesting, in light of Trump pro-Sanders strategy, that Bernie has been absolutely silent on Russian hacks and election interference. 9/

— Sandy Garossino (@Garossino) January 14, 2017

What’s especially interesting about Sanders’ silence on the Russian hacks is the CV of his chief strategist, Tad Devine. 10/

— Sandy Garossino (@Garossino) January 14, 2017

Sanders’ chief strategist Devine worked on TWO election campaigns for Putin’s man in Ukraine, Yanukovich.

And so did Paul Manafort. 11/ pic.twitter.com/NQmDUlm0nm

— Sandy Garossino (@Garossino) January 14, 2017

The whole world watched as Hillary Clinton was dragged through the mud in & humiliated in the most abusive campaign in US history. 12/

— Sandy Garossino (@Garossino) January 14, 2017

13/ https://t.co/dpklmApjtV

— Sandy Garossino (@Garossino) January 14, 2017

And it all worked like a charm. HRC’s approval ratings, which averaged around 60% during/after SoS tenure, suddenly plummeted to 37%. 14/ pic.twitter.com/3wTBvrexum

— Sandy Garossino (@Garossino) January 14, 2017

Media danced to the tune like puppets. "Emails Emails Emails!"

Comey/Wikileaks, reinforced message that HRC emails = untrustworthy. 15/

— Sandy Garossino (@Garossino) January 14, 2017

If Steele memo is to be believed, a great deal of pro-Sanders & Stein/anti-HRC hysteria was a Russian propaganda op. 16/

— Sandy Garossino (@Garossino) January 14, 2017

It was EXTREMELY effective in silencing HRC supporters early & building the CrookedHillary theme that finally took her out. In 3 states. 17/

— Sandy Garossino (@Garossino) January 14, 2017

I actually was going to write something very much like this, until I stumbled upon these tweets.

And don't think Garossino and I are alone in this either.

Courtesy of the Daily Mail:  

Perhaps the starkest case in point is Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein and her constituency. In December 2015, the Kremlin feted Stein by inviting her to the gala celebrating the 10-year anniversary of Kremlin-funded propaganda network RT. Over a year later, it remains unclear who paid for Stein’s trip to Moscow and her accommodations there. Her campaign ignored multiple questions on this score. We do know, however, that Stein sat at the same table as both Putin and Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn, Trump’s soon-to-be national security adviser. She further spoke at an RT-sponsored panel, using her presence to criticize the U.S.’s “disastrous militarism.” Afterward, straddling Moscow’s Red Square, Stein described the panel as “inspiring,” going on to claim that Putin, whom she painted as a political novice, told her he “agree[d]” with her “on many issues.” 

Stein presents herself as a champion of the underclass and the environment, and an opponent of the surveillance state and corporate media, and yet she seemed to take pleasure in her marriage of true minds with a kleptocratic intelligence officer who levels forests and arrests or kills critical journalists and invades foreign countries. Their true commonality, of course, is that both Putin and Stein are dogged opponents of U.S. foreign policy.

To sum up, though we are correct in giving a large amount of the blame for Trump's "victory" to the ease in which the Russians were able to manipulate the Right Wing, we also have to recognize that there are those on our side of the ideological fence who are just as easily manipulated.

Putin's victory was in recognizing that the fringe in both parties are searching for validation, and that once given can be a ring by which to lead them around by their proverbial noses.

You have got to be kidding me!

Now hold on, we can't be wasting our time investigating Donald Trump. We still have Clinton e-mails to read.

Courtesy of Buzzfeed: 

The election may be over, but the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee will continue its investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email use at the State Department, Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz told reporters Monday. 

“This was never a political targeting from the beginning. Just because there’s a political election doesn’t mean it goes away. So of course I’m going to continue to pursue that,” Chaffetz said. 

He said it remained a priority for the committee, though he noted, “I’ve got a lot of top priorities.” 

“It’s potentially one of the largest breaches of security in the history of the State Department. It cannot and should never be repeated again. How was it that so much information was able to migrate out the door? These are still open questions that we need to finish up so they don’t happen again.”

No, it was by no measure "one of the largest breaches of security in history."

If Chaffetz is looking for that he may want to keep his eyes on the incoming administration.  

The hate these Republicans have for Hillary Clinton verges on the psychotic.

Which, by the way, is yet another reason why we needed her as our President.

After all the only reason for them to fear and hate her this much is because of what they thought she might accomplish while occupying of the White House.

And anybody who terrifies the Republicans this much, will always be my number one pick for Commander-in-Chief.

Federal judge orders release of FBI search warrant to search Huma Abedin's e-mails. Update!

Courtesy of Fox News: 

A federal judge on Monday ordered the release of the search warrant the FBI used to reopen their probe into Hillary Clinton’s private email server days before the November election. 

U.S. District Judge P. Kevin Castel ruled Monday morning that the public had a right to see the warrant, which he said was secretly filed with the court on Oct. 30. 

“The search warrant, the application for the search warrant, the affidavit in support of the application for the search warrant, and the search warrant return will be unsealed and posted on the Court's electronic case filing system” subject to redactions, Castel said in his order. 

The court dispute concerns the warrant agents used to get access to emails stored on a computer belonging to Anthony Weiner, the estranged husband of top Clinton aide Huma Abedin.

The Justice Department could block this order if they choose, but if not we might actually find out what excuse the FBI came up with to hijack our election.

And that is a question which I really think deserves a damn answer.

Update: Okay so now we have our damn answer. And that answer appears to be that there was no reason for the warrant.

That is the Facebook page of the California defense attorney who filed the lawsuit to gain access to this warrant.

A warrant that he claims shows no probable cause.

If he is accurate it would appear that the Clintons have fairly good lawsuit on their hands, and I think a criminal investigation of James Comey is in order as well. 

Was the FBI's interference in this election a bigger scandal than Watergate?

Rank-and-file FBI investigators on the Clinton case seem to have said, "If we can't indict her, we'll deny her the presidency." So they did.

— Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) December 14, 2016

So the columnist whose tweet is posted above wrote a rather long and expansive examination into what exactly the FBI did to interfere in the 2016 election.

You can read the entire thing here, but for the purposes of this post I will concentrate on the twelve most important bullet points:

(1) Abedin told people after the discovery that “she [was] unsure how her emails could have ended up” on the computer the FBI found them on, suggesting that if she’d ever been contacted by the FBI in early October she could have helped them dialogue through the situation (as the idea that she had deliberately withheld these emails from the FBI never made any sense, given the Bureau’s unwavering insistence that Abedin had always been cooperative with them, and the pointlessness of Abedin risking federal Obstruction of Justice charges and federal prison time to hide emails that were—as we now know—not just without any evidentiary value but in fact duplicates of emails she had already turned over to FBI investigators); 

(2) consensus in the media and beyond, as summarized by The Washington Post, was that “an announcement from the FBI in early October, when the emails were discovered, might have been less politically damaging for Clinton than one coming less than two weeks before the Nov. 8 election,” a fact no one in the FBI could have failed to appreciate, given its obviousness (even notwithstanding the agents’ enormous, day-to-day professional investment in the situation); 

(3) a report in The New York Times indicated that, during the more than three weeks the Weiner investigators kept their discovery from Director Comey, they nevertheless shared their new information with the ”tremendously angry” (see #6, below) rank-and-file FBI investigators from the Clinton email-server case (the New York Times having reported on October 30th that the discovery of “new” Abedin emails in early October “prompted a renewed interest among agents who had investigated Mrs. Clinton for her use of a private email server as Secretary of State” [emphasis supplied]); 

(4) after the late-October revelation that the FBI had found new emails on Weiner’s computer on October 3rd, rank-and-file FBI agents told the media that “there was no chance the email review could be completed before Election Day” (thus ensuring it would disrupt the Clinton campaign through the casting of all ballots, early and in-person), only to be overruled by Director Comey within 24 hours, with Comey decreeing that the relevance of the new emails would be determined by Election Day (as it ultimately was, after many millions of Americans had voted early, and before many more millions could hear about the second, exculpatory Comey letter; nevertheless, the stark disparity between the rank-and-file’s comments to the media and Comey’s comments remains unexplained); 

(5) a member of Trump’s inner circle, Rudy Giuliani, confessed on the Lars Larson radio program that current FBI agents working on the Clinton investigation had illegally leaked information to him about the Abedin emails before it became public and before Director Comey had been told of the emails, and, moreover, were intending to leak this information—if they were unable to get Comey to do it via the implicit threat of a leak—as an (in Giuliani’s words) pro-Trump “October Surprise,” thereby establishing a political motive among a faction of the FBI in the timing and dissemination of information about the emails (”Darn right I heard about it,” said Giuliani, “[and] I can’t even repeat the language I heard,” referring with this latter remark to the agents’ anger at not being able to indict Hillary Clinton for multiple federal felonies in July of 2016; concurrently, Jim Kallstrom, who headed the New York field office of the FBI in the 1990s, also admitted to Fox News to receiving leaks about the Clinton investigation from current FBI agents working on the case); 

(6) Giuliani further disclosed that a faction of rank-and-file FBI agents within the New York field office felt “tremendous anger” toward both Director Comey, Hillary Clinton (the subject of their investigation, who they believed should have been indicted in July), and “a pretty corrupt Obama Justice Department” (many of whose officials might have retained their posts if Clinton were to win election to the presidency), and we know from The Chicago Tribune that Comey wrote “the Comey Letter” only because he believed these same rogue FBI agents in New York were planning to leak the “new” evidence in the Weiner case (which leak would have violated numerous federal criminal statutes, and which plan to leak would already be regarded as a criminal conspiracy by law); 

(7) the Abedin emails turned out to have no evidentiary value, and indeed were in many instances duplicates of emails already held by the FBI, which fact Comey likely could have determined himself even from meta-data alone (had he been given the opportunity to do so during the first week of October); 

(8) Giuliani mysteriously took himself out of the running for any position within the Trump administration on the very same day (December 9th) that The Washington Post and The New York Times ran stories about Russian interference with the 2016 presidential election, thereby beginning a period of heavy scrutiny for both the FBI and CIA’s actions before and during the election, with the stated reason for Giuliani’s demurral from a once-certain Cabinet position being his potential conflicts of interest abroad (which conflicts are reportedly far fewer in number than those of either the President-elect or the President-elect’s nominee for Secretary of State, and occur in the context of an administration that has thus far expressed no concern at all about foreign business entanglements); 

(9) as reported by The Chicago Tribune, a Los Angeles attorney, E. Randol Schoenberg, is now asking a New York City judge to release, on Thursday, the search warrant the FBI sought for the Abedin emails on Weiner’s computer—with what probable cause to believe they contained evidence of criminal conduct one can, in view of the facts in this article, only begin to imagine—with Schoenberg’s stated purpose being to determine whether “someone in the Manhattan orbit of then-candidate Donald Trump may have provided a false lead to the FBI” regarding the Abedin emails (alternatively, as observed by The Gothamist, the search warrant could turn up “funny business by overly zealous conservative FBI agents”); 

(10) the lawsuit in New York was made necessary by the FBI’s inexplicable refusal to turn over its FOIA-eligible investigatory materials to Attorney Schoenberg in the 20-day window mandated by law, or even to respond to Schoenberg’s request at all, which refusal would have assured, absent Schoenberg’s lawsuit, that this information would remain under wraps prior to the Electoral College vote; 

(11) the judge in the New York lawsuit now says he may release the entirety of the search warrant prior to the meeting of the Electoral College on Monday, December 19th, acknowledging thereby the potential political relevance of the material; and 

(12) if the search warrant is in any way irregular, or the FBI’s redactions from it suspicious, this could confirm political collusion at the FBI and thereby increase the number of “Hamilton Electors” from their current reported 20 to the 38 needed to throw the 2016 presidential election to the House of Representatives—which temporary delay in Trump’s ascension to the presidency would allow ample time for investigations of both FBI collusion with the Trump campaign and multifaceted Russian interference with the presidential election.

There is actually a lot more in the post, but these points alone are more than enough to suggest, if not prove, that there was a definite conspiracy to deny Hillary Clinton the presidency.

Then add to that the Republican witch hunts over Benghazi and the private server, Russian hacking, and voting irregularities, and there simply is no longer any doubt.

In my opinion Watergate was child's play compared to this, and what is even more troubling is that it is about to be swept under the rug by a media that is desperate to maintain access to the new president at the expense of reporting the most egregious attack on our democracy perhaps in our entire 240 year history.

Vice News files lawsuit against FBI for records about their interference in the 2016 election.

Courtesy of Vice: 

VICE News is suing the FBI, demanding the bureau release records related to its curious disclosures, behind-the-scenes actions, and apparent leaks in the days leading up to the U.S. presidential election. 

The wide-ranging Freedom of Information Act lawsuit was filed Tuesday morning in conjunction with Ryan Shapiro, a doctoral candidate at MIT and research affiliate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University. Earlier this month, VICE News and Shapiro filed more than 50 FOIA requests with the FBI seeking documents about the bureau’s discussions regarding Donald Trump, along with other documents that would shed light on the FBI’s decision a week before the election to tweet newly posted records from a long-dormant Twitter account about Bill Clinton’s 2000 pardon of financier Marc Rich. 

The pardon, a controversial decision by the former president, was investigated at the time by current FBI director James Comey while he was U.S. attorney. 

Our FOIA lawsuit notes that the FBI failed to respond to our requests for expedited processing. We argued that we urgently needed the documents to immediately inform the public. Among the FBI records we seek to compel the FBI to disclose: 

• Allegations of the FBI violating the Hatch Act by allegedly using its authority to influence the course of the 2016 U.S. presidential election • Internal discontent at the FBI regarding the bureau’s Hillary Clinton investigations 

• All leaks of information by the FBI to the media and political operatives about FBI investigations of Clinton 

• All FBI communications with Breitbart News; Breitbart executive chairman Steve Bannon, who Trump named his chief strategist and White House counselor after Bannon served as his campaign CEO; former Trump campaign manager Corey R. Lewandowski, Fox News, and Fox News hosts Bret Baier and Sean Hannity; former New York City mayor and Trump adviser Rudy Giuliani; and Republican strategist and Trump campaign adviser Roger Stone 

• White nationalist Richard Spencer, his National Policy Institute, and the “alt-right.”

I am not sure how successful this lawsuit will be, but I am pretty stoked to read about any records they might get from it.

Especially the ones about the Clinton e-mail investigation as well as anything to do with Bretibart or Fox News.

Yeah, I would really like to see those.

Judge orders FBI to produce search warrant application which allowed them to search for Hillary Clinton's e-mails.

Courtesy of Reuters:  

A U.S. judge on Tuesday directed federal prosecutors to show him the search warrant application used to enable the FBI to access emails related to Hillary Clinton's private server that were discovered shortly before the Nov. 8 presidential election. 

U.S. District Judge Kevin Castel in Manhattan ordered prosecutors by Thursday to turn over the application, which investigators obtained shortly after FBI Director James Comey informed Congress of newly discovered emails on Oct. 28, 11 days before the election won by her Republican opponent Donald Trump. 

Castel made the order as he considered whether any portion of the search warrant materials could be made public in response to a lawsuit filed by Randol Schoenberg, a Los Angeles-based lawyer who specializes in cases to recover artwork stolen by the Nazis, seeking to force the release of the documents. 

In court papers, Schoenberg said the public had a "strong interest" in the disclosure of the search warrant materials, saying transparency was "crucial" given the potential influence the probe had on the election's outcome.

Yes we most certainly DO deserve to know what happened here. 

And further I think we deserve to get a peek into James Comey's e-mails as well so we can see just who it was who pulled his strings and had him break protocol to undermine our election process.

Trump's pick for deputy Secretary of State, John Bolton, thinks he knows who is behind these Russian hacks, President Obama.

Courtesy of TPM: 

Donald Trump’s reported pick for deputy secretary of state alleged Sunday that reports Russia intervened in the U.S. presidential election may be a “false flag” planted by the Obama administration. 

“It's not at all clear to me just viewing this from the outside that this hacking into the DNC and the RNC computers was not a false flag operation,” former U.S. ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton said in an interview on Fox News. 

Bolton questioned why FBI Director James Comey said the agency did not find any “direct evidence of foreign intelligence service penetration” in its review of Hillary Clinton’s private email server, but found “cyber fingerprints” while looking into alleged hacks of the Democratic and Republican National Committees. 

“The question that has to be asked is why did the Russians run their smart intelligence service against Hillary's server but their dumb intelligence services against the election,” Bolton said.

Why did Comey not find “direct evidence of foreign intelligence service penetration?”

Because she was smart enough to have a private server and they could not find a way to hack her that's why!

How hard is that to figure out?

But no it makes so much more sense that the President orchestrated a hack of the State Department, the DNC, and the Clinton campaign in order to help the guy who accused him of not being born in America to win the presidency.

And THIS is the guy that Doanld Trump feels should be second in command of the State Department?

Pollster Nate Silver comes right out and says it, without the Comey letter Hilary Clinton would now be our President.

Clinton lost 4 states (FL, MI, WI, PA) by ~1 point. If not for Comey/Russia, she probably wins them all by ~2 points & strategy looks great.

— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) December 10, 2016

So if you're going to second-guess, a way better question is whether Clinton needed a better October Surprise response strategy.

— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) December 10, 2016

There's more evidence, too: Late-deciding voters broke strongly against Clinton in swing states, enough to cost her MI/WI/PA. pic.twitter.com/8r801ahDQO

— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) December 11, 2016

I'll put it like this: Clinton would almost certainly be President-elect if the election had been held on Oct. 27 (day before Comey letter).

— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) December 11, 2016

That was essentially the point that I made right after the election as well.

The Russians and Wikileaks worked together to undermine Hillary's trustworthiness, hoping to disenfranchise the still butt hurt Bernie supporters among others, and when that did not deliver enough votes for them in the polls they unleashed the FBI director.

From my point of view it seems inarguable that James Comey did what he did at the behest of somebody wanting to help Donald Trump win this election.

Whether that was the Russians, the Republicans, or Donald Trump himself remains unclear, but it is was obviously SOMEBODY connected to Trump winning. 

THAT means that Comey should be removed from this post, and  investigated thoroughly.

However that is now unlikely, because the guy he risked his career to get elected, did in fact get elected, and there is NO way that he will support an investigation against his benefactor.

Sarah Palin promotes fake news story while slamming young people for getting an education. (The Palins don't cotton to no "edjumication.")

This of course links once again to that "Young Conservative" page which I think we all know is probably run by a bunch of middle aged white dudes.

On the site it misrepresents one of the Podesta e-mails that Russia so kindly hacked so that it could be used to defeat Hillary and undermine our democracy.

The e-mail references a Clinton Global initiative staff member bragging that they "had" Colbert do a show interviewing Bill Clinton.

The tag line after the e-mail on the YC page says, "So, kids thought they were smart because they’re informed by a comedian, yet said comedian was just doing Hillary’s bidding the whole time."

Essentially the conservatives seem to think that millennials seeing a person being interviewed  by a comedian will trick them into becoming liberals.

What makes this even more ridiculous is that Stephen Colbert already addressed this Wikileaks leak, and mocked its conclusions, two days ago. (Fun starts at the 4:30 mark.)

You know perhaps somebody ought to explain to Palin that since she is now pushing a story promoted by Wikileaks, which is based on hacked data from the Russian government, that she is now doing the bidding of Vladimir Putin.

That is quite a change for the woman who once claimed that she single handedly kept Putin out of Alaska during her time as Governor.

Don'tcha think?

Enraged by baseless conspiracy theory man opens fire inside Washington pizza joint.

Source

Courtesy of The New York Times: 

A man fired a rifle on Sunday inside a Washington pizza restaurant that has been subjected to harassment based on false stories tying it to child abuse, the police said. No one was hurt, and the man was arrested. 

The man, Edgar M. Welch, 28, of Salisbury, N.C., told the police that he had come to the restaurant, Comet Ping Pong, in northwest Washington, to “self-investigate” what is being called Pizzagate, an online conspiracy theory asserting, with no evidence, that the restaurant is somehow tied to a child abuse ring. He entered the restaurant shortly before 3 p.m. with a rifle and fired it at least once inside, the police said. 

The gunfire sharply escalated what had already been a tense period for the restaurant, its employees and the quiet neighborhood since the fake stories began spreading. Dozens of threats against employees had been made via email and social media. 

People inside the restaurant fled, and the police locked down the area, ordering patrons of a nearby bookstore and cafe called Politics and Prose to remain locked inside. Officers with rifles and protective gear surrounded the restaurant and apprehended Mr. Welch. Two additional firearms were found, one on Mr. Welch and the other in his vehicle, the police said. 

The police closed down a normally busy Connecticut Avenue, which runs in front of the restaurant, for several hours Sunday as they searched the area for other potential threats.

If you are not a Right Wing lunatic you probably have not heard of pizzagate, so visiting this BBC article will bring you up to speed.

In a nutshell it was the result of a some prankster sites purposefully misreporting the content on those Podesta e-mails and a bunch of simple minded knuckledraggers taking it from there.

So even though Snopes identified this as bullshit back in November, it did nothing to change the minds of these cretins and this is the result.

It just goes to show that fake news is not only dangerous, it can in fact prove fatal.

Hillary Clinton's popular vote lead has now reached over 2 million. Just a little ammo for you as you head off to face that conservative uncle this Thanksgiving day.

Our real President at a Rhode Island bookstore.

Courtesy of Politico:  

Hillary Clinton’s lead over Donald Trump in the popular vote surpassed 2 million Wednesday morning, according to Dave Wasserman of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report. 

Clinton has garnered 64,223,958 votes, compared to Trump’s 62,206,395 votes. 

By Nov. 15, the Democratic nominee’s advantage had crossed the 1-million mark and ballooned to 1.5 million by Sunday.

This is now the largest discrepancy between the electoral college and the popular vote in American history.

So when that conservative family member starts strutting around the dinner table crowing about how your side lost and their side won, remind them that it is only because of our archaic voting system. And that in hearts of the majority of the American people Hillary Clinton is the actual winner.

Also remind them that Hillary Clinton was unjustifiably investigated and attacked by the Republicans over her private e-mail server in the early days of the campaign, even though the Bush administration also used private servers and destroyed 22 million e-mails that the American people were never allowed to see.

That led to a completely unprecedented FBI "investigation" which ultimately exonerated her. 

Then remind them that the Russian government hacked the White House, the State Department, the DNC, and the Clinton Campaign all in an attempt to get a hold of Hillary's e-mails, most of which she managed to keep out of their clutches by utilizing that private server.

You might also remind them that the Russians then leaked what they DID find to Wikileaks who distributed it for media consumption in an attempt to help Donald Trump win this election.

At that point you should mention that when it looked like that might not be enough, and Clinton was handily leading in the polls, that FBI Director James Comey then broke longstanding protocol to essentially suggest that Hillary Clinton might still be under investigation due to new evidence that might or might not exist. (Of course it did not exist which is something Comey could easily have discovered well before his announcement.)

You may or may not inject into the conversation at that point the fact that there are also a number of top computer experts who are urging the Clinton campaign to call for a recount after finding numerous troubling discrepancies in the vote count.

To sum the whole thing up you might look into that smug face of theirs and declare that maybe Trump won, and maybe he didn't.

But what we know for sure is that he not only lied about his opponent at every opportunity, but that also he benefited from the criminal cyber attacks against our country by a foreign nation and the interference of the FBI, without whom he would NEVER have had a shot at wining.

In other words he would have lost if he had not cheated, and if others had not cheated on his behalf.

Then you reach over and grab that last serving of pumpkin pie, because you just won the argument and you totally deserve it.

Exit polls show that late voters broke strongly for Donald Trump, Gee what happened around that time which might have had an impact?

Courtesy of the Washington Post:  

The polls were wrong, and now Donald Trump is the president-elect of the United States. Everyone knows this. 

Except that's not the whole picture. Some of the polls were wrong to a degree, yes, but there was also something at work in the final days of the election: People who decided late broke strongly for Donald Trump in the states that mattered, according to exit polls. And without this apparent late surge, Hillary Clinton would be our president-elect — not Trump. 

In fact, if you look at the four closest states where Clinton lost — or, in the case of Michigan, where she's expected to lose — exit polls show late-deciding voters in each of them went strongly for Trump in the final days. In Florida and Pennsylvania, late-deciders favored Trump by 17 points. In Michigan, they went for Trump by 11 points. In Wisconsin, they broke for Trump by a whopping 29 points, 59-30.

And these weren't small groups of voters. The number of undecided and third-party-supporting voters who were still free agents in the final week was as many as 1 in 8 voters nationally -- an uncharacteristically high number for the eve of an election.

1 in 8 undecided voters would suggest that a large number of these folks were not terribly thrilled with either candidate, but what could have caused them to break so hard in Trump's favor?

Gee I wonder: 

The FBI on Friday dropped a bombshell on Hillary Clinton’s campaign less than two weeks before Election Day, announcing that it is reviewing new evidence in its investigation into her use of a private email server as secretary of state. 

 In a letter to several congressional committee chairmen, FBI Director James Comey wrote that, “In connection with an unrelated case, the FBI has learned of the existence of emails that appear to be pertinent to this investigation.” 

Comey said he was briefed on those emails on Thursday and that he “agreed that the FBI should take appropriate investigative steps designed to allow investigators to review these emails to determine whether they contain classified information, as well as to assess their importance to our investigation.” 

Seven days later, just two days before the election, Comey essentially said "Never mind, nothing to see here."

But it was too late.

A fact confirmed by Trump's campaign manager Kellyanne Conway, in responding to a question about an indictment predicted by Fox News based on the Comey letter, which they then had to walk back: 

“Well, the damage is done to Hillary Clinton,” Conway replied. “No matter how it's being termed the voters are hearing it for what it is—a culture of corruption.”

Except there was no "culture of corruption," nor any criminality, and not a great deal of untruthfulness. 

All of those were just the accusations which the conservatives made up for Hillary Clinton and which numerous Republican investigations, Russian hacking, and Wikileaks document dumps, helped make stick.

But it would never have worked without a complicit corporate media and a barely attentive pool of voters.

As I said in my first post of the day, we can no longer refer to the American people as smart.

Former campaign manager confirms that James Comey letter helped Donald Trump win election.

Courtesy of The Telegraph: 

Corey Lewandowski, who is expected to be offered a key position in the Trump administration, described the move as "amazing" and said it gave the Republican candidate the "spring in his step" he needed to win the race. 

"With eleven days to go, something amazing happened," Mr Lewandowski said in a speech at the Oxford Union debating society on Wednesday evening. 

"The FBI's director James [Comey] came out on a Friday and he said they may be reopening the investigation into Crooked Hillary's emails. 

"What that did was remind people that there are two different rules in Washington - those of the elites, and the privileged and those for everybody else. (Actually what it did was to reinforce voter concerns that Hillary would be indicted, when that was never going to happen.)

"When Comey moved forward with that investigation... it allowed the campaign a little spring in their step, and for them to redouble their efforts." 

So now we have the Clinton campaign and the Trump campaign essentially in agreement that James Comey helped steal this election from Hillary Clinton.

In my opinion this entire Trump "victory" is a sham that should be discounted entirely.

However I don't think we have a mechanism in place to do that, plus ANYTHING the Democrats do in response to all of this will be seen as a partisan attack and be dismissed by the media and the majority of Americans completely.

I think we are stuck with this outcome, and no petition or attempt to dismantle the electoral college is going to change that.

NSA chief states unequivocally that Wikileaks helped "a nation state" influence the presidential election.

"A conscious effort by a nation-state to attempt to achieve a specific effect" NSA chief on WikiLeaks https://t.co/kvmrTyVE30 #WSJCEOCouncil pic.twitter.com/AT2pxK2ROR

— Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) November 15, 2016

Courtesy of Quartz:

The head of the US’s National Security Agency said Nov. 15 that a “nation-state” consciously targeted presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, in order to affect the US election. 

In response to a question, Michael S. Rogers, a Naval officer and NSA director since 2014, said on stage at a Wall Street Journal conference that Wikileaks was furthering a nation-state’s goals by publishing hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee and Clinton’s presidential campaign weeks ahead of the election. 

“There shouldn’t be any doubt in anybody’s minds, this was not something that was done casually, this was not something that was done by chance, this was not a target that was selected purely arbitrarily. This was a conscious effort by a nation-state to attempt to achieve a specific effect,” he said.

Rogers did not name the nation-state in question, nor elaborate on the effect it sought, but he didn’t have to.

This, this is what we should all be focusing on right now.

Donald Trump did NOT win this election.

He allowed, or perhaps encouraged, the Russian government and Wikileaks to steal it for him.

Not only that but for reasons which are currently a little fuzzy right now, the FBI also participated in this, let's face it, act of cyber terrorism.

Now the only question remaining is what are we going to do about it?

Clinton campaign believes that Comey letters cost them the election.

Courtesy of Business Insider:

The Hillary Clinton campaign pinned blame on FBI Director James Comey for its stunning election night loss to Donald Trump. 

Navin Nayak, the director of opinion research on the campaign, sent an email to senior staff Thursday evening outlining what the campaign believed were the reasons for its loss. The email, which was first reported by Politico, was confirmed to Business Insider by a Clinton campaign staffer. 

Nayak signaled in the email that the campaign believes two bombshells from Comey in the final days of the election helped swing the electorate toward Trump — an initial Comey letter to Congress that reactivated an investigation into Clinton's private email server, and a subsequent letter last Sunday that again cleared her of wrongdoing. 

"We believe that we lost this election in the last week. Comey's letter in the last 11 days of the election both helped depress our turnout and also drove away some of our critical support among college-educated white voters — particularly in the suburbs," Nayak wrote. "We also think Comey's 2nd letter, which was intended to absolve Sec. Clinton, actually helped to bolster Trump's turnout."

While I also think that the impact of the Comey letter was devastating for Hillary Clinton, that first letter changed poll numbers almost overnight, I also think there were other factors at play.

Such as the third party candidates:

In Michigan, where the election was so close that the Associated Press still hasn’t called the result, Trump is ahead by about 12,000 votes. That’s significantly less than the 242,867 votes that went to third-party candidates in Michigan. It’s a similar story elsewhere: third-party candidates won more total votes than the Trump’s margin of victory in Wisconsin, Arizona, North Carolina and Florida. Without those states, Trump would not have won the presidency.

Some pundits are dismissing the impact of third party voters on the outcome of this election, but I think it is pretty clear they had a significant impact. And I think fewer protest votes might very well have carried the day for Clinton.

However as bad as the FBI intrusion and the third party votes were, I also think we need to remember that the Russian hackers and Wikileaks definitely had an impact as well.

We have now seen more of Hillary Clinton's e-mails than any other presidential candidate in history, and I would argue that if we had been given a similar peek into Donald Trump's e-mails he would not only NOT be the president-elect but he would probably be serving time. 

I keep hearing idiots saying that Hillary Clinton lost this election, but if that were true it would not have required the combined forces of the Republican party, conservative media, Wikileaks, Russia, and the FBI to bring her down. 

So did James Comey cost Hillary Clinton the election?

Well if he did he certainly had a lot of help in doing so.

Newsweek reveals why this latest FBI e-mail "investigation" was never really a thing.

Courtesy of Newsweek: 

The Federal Bureau of Investigation determined that almost every email discovered in a laptop used primarily by the husband of an aide to Hillary Clinton was a duplicate of previously produced documents or personal emails, a person close to the case told Newsweek. As a result, FBI Director James Comey sent a letter to Congress Sunday saying the new emails have not changed the bureau’s earlier decision that no crime occurred with Clinton’s use of a private server while she was secretary of state. 

Less than two weeks ago, Comey set the election on its head when he informed Congress that his agents had located emails that “appear to be pertinent” to the Clinton investigation. At that point, the FBI did not have a warrant to review the emails, nor had they sought permission from the owners of the laptop to search it. In fact, people involved in the case said, the FBI never asked either the Clinton aide, Huma Abedin, or her husband, former Congressman Anthony Weiner, if they would voluntarily allow for such a search. 

The night of the disclosure, Newsweek reported that the emails were from as many as three accounts—one through Yahoo, one on the domain clintonemail.com, and one from an account Abedin used in support of one of Weiner’s campaigns for office. Last week, Newsweek learned that that account was through Gmail. In other words, Abedin’s personal account provided by the State Department for non-classified emails was not involved. Abedin, who did not know Clinton used a private server for her emails, told the bureau in an April interview that she used the account on the clintonemail.com domain only for issues related to the secretary’s personal affairs, such as communicating with her friends. For work-related records, Abedin primarily used the email account provided to her by the State Department.

So to be clear the FBI should have realized from the very beginning that they were never going to find a "smoking gun" in these e-mails.

And yet James Comey issued that letter to Congress on October 28th anyway.

The Newsweek article goes on to say that the reason there were duplicates of e-mails on this laptop is that Huma sent them from her non-classified e-mail at the State Department so that she could print them at home for Hillary because the State Department is apparently several decades behind technologically.

NONE of the e-mails she sent herself were confidential or classified, they just contained information pertinent to her boss who it seems likes to read them on actual paper.

In another interesting aside, despite what the Trump campaign might want you to believe, Edward Snowden suggests that the FBI COULD have gone through the e-mails on this laptop in a matter of hours.

@jeffjarvis Drop non-responsive To:/CC:/BCC:, hash both sets, then subtract those that match. Old laptops could do it in minutes-to-hours.

— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) November 7, 2016

If true that means that the FBI should have figured this whole thing out well before Comey sent that letter to Congress on October 28th.

And yet he sent it.

Wikileaks, Russia, the Republicans, and now the FBI, all working as one to stop Hillary Clinton from becoming our next President.

Who ever thought that the idea of a female President would be so terrifying?

James Comey releases yet another statement about the investigation into Hillary Clinton's private e-mail server, that essentially says "Move along, nothing to see here."

Here's the letter from Comey, following up on last Friday's announcement (via @frankthorp) --> pic.twitter.com/9zwatHuRHa

— Hallie Jackson (@HallieJackson) November 6, 2016

That's right after turning this election on it's head two Fridays ago by suggesting that there was new evidence which might suggest that Hillary Clinton broke the law, NOW James Comey is saying, two fucking days before the election, that he was full of shit.

Courtesy of the Washington Post:  

FBI Director James B. Comey notified key members of Congress Sunday afternoon that after reviewing all of the newly discovered Hillary Clinton emails the agency stands by its original findings against recommending charges. 

Comey wrote that investigators had worked “around the clock” to review all the emails found on a device used by former congressman Anthony Weiner that had been sent to or from Clinton and that “we have not changed our conclusions expressed in July.” 

The conclusion from Comey provided one last twist to the 2016 presidential campaign and came just two days before Clinton will face Republican Donald Trump on Election Day.

Of course this comes almost too late as the damage from that first letter has already impacted this election in a negative way for the Democrats.

And the frustrating part is that if the FBI had just reviewed the supposedly "new " information BEFORE Comey sent that initial letter, ALL of this never would have happened. 

So for those of us who are progressives and Democrats it is up to us to get this new information out to as many people who have not yet voted as possible.

Tweet, Facebook, blog, do whatever you can to inform the voting public that, despite what the Republicans and Trump campaign have been saying, Hillary Clinton is NOT facing an indictment.

And for the record she never will.

However I hope the same cannot be said for FBI Director James Comey.

P.S. By the way does everybody remember when Donald Trump referred to Comey's earlier letter as "bigger than Watergate?"