McCain: "Every American Should Be Alarmed By Russia's Attacks On Our Nation"

Trump must have been fuming when he launched his latest crazed, Adderall-fueled Twitter attack. It was against two senior Republicans though, not the millions of people protesting his unconstitutional Muslim ban over the weekend. Whether Putin hacked the electronic machines in Macomb County, Michigan, just stole and released embarrassing e-mails from Democrats or just wished Trump well, his stake in the 2016 election was primarily centered on two premises-- to weaken NATO and get them to stop threatening Russia and to end the painful economic and financial sanctions enacted when Russia launched a revanchist annexation of Crimea, both reasonable goals. When he had a chit-chat with his candidate this past weekend, things weren't going as smoothly as he might have hoped. Trump is well on his way to being the most despised president in history-- and in record time. He's toned down-- at least for now-- his campaign to undermine NATO. And, in light of mammoth bipartisan opposition, he's admitted it's "too early" to talk about dropping the sanctions against Russia.

Congressional Republicans have signaled him to forget getting rid of the sanctions. Yesterday Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said he's "absolutely opposed to lifting sanctions on the Russians. If anything, we ought to be looking at increasing them." A bipartisan group of senators have introduced legislation to extend and codify the sanctions, which would put Trump in an extremely awkward position, having to pick between what most Americans want and what his Kremlin puppet master demands.

A couple of weeks ago, in an OpEd for the L.A. Times, political cartoonist David Horsey, wondered aloud if Americans will be able to count on McCain to protect American interests from the strange, kleptocratic Trump-Putin bromance. Like many Americans, Horsey is thinking Trump's affinity for Putin might be even worse than it looks and he's not shy of using the word "treason."

The Republican senator from Arizona is a conspicuously honorable man in a profession filled with people who sell their honor rather cheaply. There is nothing more important than honor to a third-generation military man like McCain. He proved that through five years of confinement and torture as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam. While many, if not most, of his Republican colleagues in the Senate and House are putting themselves through ideological contortions to get aligned with the erratic narcissist who is now their leader, McCain is resisting. He is a hero and he is a patriot and it is not hard to imagine that, right now, McCain’s righteous anger is rising to a boil as he sees the president-elect of the United States discounting hard evidence of Russian espionage aimed at undermining American democracy.

McCain has characterized Russia’s meddling in the 2016 presidential election as nothing less than an act of war and he repeated that charge on Thursday during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing that received testimony about Russian cyber-espionage from leaders of the intelligence services. As committee chair, McCain had called the hearing to inform the public about the hacking operation that stole data from computers in the campaign headquarters of Hillary Clinton and fed it to WikiLeaks, the rogue operation run by Julian Assange. The key witness, Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper, made it clear that the highest officials in Moscow, including President Vladimir Putin, approved the invasion into the American election and that the efforts extended beyond the hack into dissemination of false information through social media.

“Every American should be alarmed by Russia’s attacks on our nation,” McCain said. “There is no national security interest more vital to the United States of America than the ability to hold free and fair elections without foreign interference.”

One very important American, though, is showing no alarm at all — at least not about the Russians. Donald Trump has been playing a strange game in the weeks before he moves into the White House. He has repeatedly cast doubt on the intelligence reports, pretended he knows more about hacking than the intelligence experts and mocked the intelligence agencies themselves. Even as he sends out a steady stream of tweets slandering the people on whom he will be relying for crucial information when he becomes commander in chief, Trump has praised Putin, expressed agreement with the version of events offered by Assange and criticized the sanctions President Obama imposed on Russia in retaliation for the hacking.

What is going on here? Is this just one more defensive reaction from the hyper-defensive Trump? Is he obsessed with protecting the legitimacy of his presidency against the overblown rhetoric of some on the Democratic side who say the Russians skewed the vote and cost Clinton the election and from the more serious and unanimous conclusion of the intelligence agencies that the Russians’ actions were intended to help his campaign? If so, he is putting his own self-interest ahead of the national interest.

Is there something deeper? Is his affinity for Russia a product of his longtime business ties with that country? Why has Trump been such an ardent admirer of Putin? Does he see him as a role model?

Putin has stifled democracy in his homeland, shut down independent media, neutered rival political parties, subverted elections in other countries, seized Crimea, conducted a proxy war against Ukraine, overseen a savage slaughter of civilians in Syria and stands accused of ordering the killings of political enemies and journalists. Why is Trump drawn to such a person, even as he questions the value of America’s NATO alliance and the unity of Europe?

There is no question that if a Democratic president-elect were to show such a kinship with a Russian dictator while making so many disparaging remarks about the CIA and other American intelligence agencies, Republicans in Congress would be preparing articles of impeachment and the right-wing media would be screaming “treason!” Odd how that is not happening now.

Luckily, there is McCain-- plus other old-school conservatives like South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham who have expressed their guarded concern. What about when they are unguarded? When they are talking privately, what are they saying? How great is their alarm? What will they do to defend their country from a man for whom “intelligence” is a dirty word? What will honor demand of John McCain?

Big Money Interests Investing Heavily In Their Most Subservient Political Handmaidens

I would call this Horsey cartoon from yesterday's L.A. Times pretty risqué. It uses an image of a cocaine snorting Miss McConnell to portray and mock his addiction to extreme right-wing Koch brothers cash. David Horsey is a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist for the Times and he can get away with stuff like this. He also wrote the piece the cartoon accompanied. "The dilemma," he wrote, "facing the true grass-roots tea party believers-- the dilemma they do not acknowledge-- is that their primary goal of whittling and whacking away at big government undercuts their secondary goal of saving the middle class from the greedy grip of big corporations." He contrasts this innocence from the right-wing populists with what the Democratic Party stands for.

If Democrats have a unifying philosophy, it is that government needs to be effective enough to curtail the economic and environmental abuses of unfettered capitalism. Republicans, on the other hand, preach the dogma that smaller government and unrestricted corporate power serves the best interests of the common man and woman.

The tea party folks have largely bought into that belief, but still are uncomfortable with Republicans who appear to be too much in thrall to big business. That is partly why a big tea party effort was mounted against Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in Kentucky’s Republican primary. McConnell was rightly seen as the epitome of the GOP establishment that the tea partiers so disdain. Yet, even with major support from national tea party organizations, such as FreedomWorks and the Senate Conservatives Fund, challenger Matt Bevin could not depose the incumbent senator.

Inevitably Horsey goes to the audio tape of McConnell paying abject obeisance to the Kochs and their billionaire guests at a soirée for extreme right-wing billionaires-- plus 3 of the most craven of this cycle's Koch-owned puppets, Tom Cotton (AR), Joni Ernst (IA), and Cory Gardner (CO)-- at the St. Regis Monarch Bay resort in Dana Point (ironically an area of Orange County first developed by L.A. Times right-wing publisher, real estate baron and eugenicist Harry Chandler in 1923). Darrell Issa is the congressman who represents this very white, very conservative GOP enclave. "Caught on an audio recording," wrote Horsey, "the message the minority leader gave to that gathering of super-rich campaign donors might dissuade the more populist-leaning tea party voters from ever giving their support to the man who stands a very good chance of being majority leader come January."

In his remarks, McConnell proved himself to be a devoted servant of Wall Street and big corporations, which should be no surprise to anyone who has paid attention to the man’s political career. He boasted about his pro-billionaire agenda-- he has tirelessly fought against raising the minimum wage, repeatedly opposed extensions of unemployment benefits and scuttled changes in student loan rules that would help struggling students with a small tax on the country’s wealthiest citizens-- and pledged to continue the fight against other so-called big-government programs, such as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and restrictions on the financial services industry that were imposed after high-flying bankers and financiers nearly destroyed the U.S. economy in 2008.

The core focus of his pitch to the plutocrats was a reassertion of his vehement opposition to campaign-finance limits. He praised the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling that said corporations have the same rights to political activity as real human beings. “So all Citizens United did was to level the playing field for corporate speech,” McConnell said, as if corporate moguls like the Kochs are even competing in the same league as the common man on the street when it comes to political spending.

McConnell also reminded the audience that he had opposed earlier restrictions on campaign spending passed by fellow Republicans. “The worst day of my political life was when President George W. Bush signed McCain-Feingold into law in the early part of his first administration,” he said.

McConnell wants corporations to spend as much as they want in political campaigns, and he happily accepts their donations (for the last five years, Wall Street interests have been the biggest contributors to his campaign committee). In return, he will continue to fight any limit on corporate power, diligently carrying on a Republican tradition that stretches back to the days of the robber barons of the 19th century. When McConnell is out campaigning among coal miners and farmers, he speaks as if he is the champion of the little guy, but the real McConnell comes through when he is behind closed doors with his billionaire backers (according to one Democratic source, that group includes a fifth of the Forbes 400 list of the wealthiest Americans).

The question is whether tea party voters can stomach this. Will they hold their nose and show up to vote for McConnell? As the nation moves into the fall congressional campaign season, the McConnell/Grimes race could go either way. If tea party voters really want to be rid of McConnell, all they may have to do is stay home on election day.

The Finance sector is investing very heavily in the 2014 elections. So far the biggest single donor from the sector is hedge-fund criminal and wing nut Paul Singer through his company, Elliott Management-- $6,842,53. This cycle the whole sector has already poured $148,543,210 into congressional races, $89,724,597 to Republicans and $58,739,217 to conservative Democrats (primarily Democrats from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party, not real Democrats). Their biggest single investment was in getting Wall Street-owned Democrat Cory Booker into the Senate, which cost them $3,597,949. After that the politicians they did the most to help build power were John Boehner ($2,664,676) and McConnell ($2,458,418).

Here's a list of the 20 Members of the House who have taken the biggest legalistic bribes from the Finance sector this cycle alone. None serve the interests of their constituents. All of them serve the interests of the Wall Street banksters and each has wormed his or her way into a position of power and influence where he or she can be most useful to the worst enemies of American working families on planet Earth:

• John Boehner (R-OH)- $2,664,676
• Eric Cantor (R-VA)- $1,848,125
• Jeb Hensarling (R-TX)- $1,428,259
• Tom Cotton (R-AR)- $1,288,662
• Paul Ryan (R-WI)- $1,225,756
• Kevin McCarthy (R-CA)- $1,003,136
• Joe Crowley (New Dem-NY)- $956,722
• Jim Himes (New Dem-CT)- $918,800
• Scott Garrett (R-NJ)- $912,363
• Shelley Moore Capitol (R-WV)- $847,365
• Pat Tiberi (R-OH)- $821,450
• Ed Royce (R-CA)- $821,218
• Patrick Murphy (New Dem-FL)- $801,750
• Steve Stivers (R-OH)- $799,309
• Gary Peters (New Dem-MI)- $786,080
• Steve Israel (Blue Dog-NY)- $769,050
• Peter Roskam (R-IL)- $702,149
• Steven Daines (R-MT)- $667,056
• Randy Neugebauer (R-TX)- $656,113
• Ann Wagner (R-MO)- $655,138

With the exceptions of Wall Street favorites Tom Cotton and Gary Peters, each running for the U.S. Senate, none of these Members have even remotely competitive races. They are selling their souls to Wall Street to build personal power within their own respective caucuses. Banksters love that kind of ambition in their employees.

Comedy Tonight: With the GOP in full-clown mode, what can you do except laugh?

JUST TO BE CLEAR, THE JUDGE WASN'T
LAUGHING AT HER GOP INQUISITORS

As reported by MediaMatters today:

As Washingtonpost.com tries to manufacture some Sotomayor drama
July 16, 2009 8:49 am ET by Eric Boehlert

Does anybody think this featured photo, complete with the caption "Judge Sonia Sotomayor endures a third day confirmation hearings," accurately reflects Wednesday's rather low-key proceedings?

Didn't think so.


UPDATED: The above photo of Sotomayor is actually of her laughing at the hearings, not enduring them. From the AP caption for the exact same image:

Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor holds her head when questioned about the television show "Perry Mason" by Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn, Wednesday, July 15, 2009, during her confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington.

And yes, Franken's "Perry Mason" quip elicited lots of chuckles.

UPDATE: GOP Obstructionism Falls Apart

One of the more respected and well grounded members of the Party of Know, the more sensible of Indiana's two conservative senators, Richard Lugar, just issued a statement regarding the Sotomayor confirmation:

“I have listened to the testimony of Judge Sonia Sotomayor before the Senate Judiciary Committee, carefully reviewed her public service record, and reviewed recommendations from Indiana constituents and colleagues here in the Senate. Judge Sotomayor is clearly qualified to serve on the Supreme Court and she has demonstrated a judicial temperament during her week-long nomination hearing. Judge Sotomayor has had a distinguished career of public service. She is well regarded in the legal community and by her peers. I will vote to confirm Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination to serve as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.”

So unless one of the DLC shitheads like Bayh, Lincoln, Lieberwhore or Nelson, escapes from the reservation again, this one's all done. No filibuster and the only thing a vote will do now will show the American people which of the GOP extremists besides the 2 from Oklahoma, Pat Roberts and Jim DeMint are the worst of the racist crackpots. Bob Bennett, fearful of a primary challenge from a lunatic fringe extremist back in Utah, has also announced he is opposing confirmation, as is Miss McConnell, nervous that his position as Republican Leader could be jeopardized if he shows any inkling of reasonableness. Olympia Snowe and Mel Martinez joined Lugar in declaring their intention to vote for confirmation. -- Howie

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As Chimpy the Prez and his White House team of legacy-polishers put the finishing touches on the job . . .

Via David Horsey in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer
[click to enlarge]

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