Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

Moscow Mitch. Joe Scarborough sure got that one right when he came up with that, and he's a republican (now officially excommunicated)! It's a miracle!!!

Moscow Mitch, you are Putin's number one guy in the $enate. Queen of the Russo-Republican Party. Traitor, fist puppet of oligarchs, aider and abettor of the Trump-Putin plan for America. Where's your tiara Moscow Mitch? Stashed in a closet with all those bags of Russian rubles? Those "campaign contributions" better known as bribes? Is your tiara emblazoned with special Baltic Sea amber? Is it in a suitcase, wrapped up in the blueprints for that aluminum smelting plant that your oligarch buddy Oleg Deripaska promised to build for you in your home state as an additional bribe? Yeah, in your deep red, and we mean red, home state of Kentucky?

Moscow Mitch: You don't want to pass election security laws because demographics show that fair, honest, and un-fiddled with elections might give the democrats an advantage? You sell out your country. You smirk and say your Russo-Republican colleagues at the state level can "take care of it?" You know, as do we, that you need to assure your top, Donnie Trump, of his reelection by hook and by crook. One of the bills you boasted about sending to your "legislative graveyard" even proscribes a paper trail for every ballot. Can't have that now can we? How many more voting machine companies do we need to have owned by your Russian comrades? What's the frequency Moscow Mitch? How many will be enough for your Moscow Masters?

I tell ya what, Moscow Mitch: Since your boy Trump's one man sleazefest, Attorney General William Barr, has called for bringing back the death penalty for federal crimes, how about we dust off an old antique electric chair to use on you after we find you guilty of your treason? Maybe the one we fried your role models Julius and Ethel in? How ironic would that be?

You're so smug about this, Moscow Mitch. You operate in plain sight. Why? Because none of your Washington nest of accomplices, fellow travelers and comrades will do anything to rid us of you and your boss at 1600 Kremlin East.

We're going to, in fact, need a lot more of those lovely antique electric chairs. Feel the nice smooth wood, Moscow Mitch, as we strap you in. I know part of you is going to kinda like that part. We're gonna need enough chairs for every $enate Repug and any of their Democratic accomplices who sit idly by and do nothing about Putin's lap-dancing dummy, aka your president. And let's make the new electric chairs in America and have good, patriotic, talented union electricians wire them. Even better and maybe more appropriate Moscow Mitch, let's put you in one of those cages our I.C.E Gestapo toss kidnapped kids in. We can electrify the cage and wrap you in one of those aluminum blankets and then turn up the dial. No need for cooking instructions. Low, medium, or high; your choice, Moscow Mitch, although I'd love it if you'd go for low. Choose a nice simmer, let all that fat just melt off slowly into a reeking puddle of Moscow Mitch ooze. Yeah, I know that toxic waste is a problem but, hey, we can feed it to some pigs. They'll eat anything.

Why Is #MoscowMitch Trending So Strongly On Twitter?

Former Florida congressman, former Republican Party hack, former Trumpanzee amigo Joe Scarborough first pounded and pounded and pounded on the term "Moscow Mitch" on his MSNBC morning show this past Friday. If you missed it, watch what may well wind up being an historic television moment in the video clip above.

You have Robert Mueller, a lifelong Republican, the most respected FBI director in the history of this country, a Vietnam War hero, a guy who made the U.S. Army Rangers Hall of Fame, a guy who said "Russia is trying to invade Americ right now"... Moscow Mitch says it's a hoax. You have his own Intelligence Committee in the Senate, led by Republican Richard Burr, saying that Russia tried to infiltrate all 50 states in 2016 and is going to it again. Moscow Mitch calls it a hoax. You have the Republican, Trump-appointed FBI director saying that the Russians infiltrated America's democracy and are going to try again. Moscow Mitch calls it a hoax. You have the Director of National Intelligence saving that the Russians tried to infiltrate our election system, tried to subvert American democracy [and] they're going to try it again. Moscow Mitch said it's a hoax. You have Trump's appointed director of the CIA saying that the Russians are trying to undermine American democracy, that the Russians tried in '16 [and] will try again. Moscow Mitch calls it a hoax. You have military intel community knowing-- because they were fighting the Russians in 2015-2016 and are still fighting them everyday to stop they from continuing to infiltrate American democracy... Moscow Mitch says it's a hoax. I understand that there's an oligarch that;'s going to be setting up a big aluminum plant in Moscow Mitch's home state...

"What am I supposed to call him," Scarborough continued, all worked up into a self-righteous rage, "Cocaine Mitch?... He's Moscow Mitch! He is aiding and abetting Vladimir Putin's on-going attempts to subvert American democracy according to the Republican FBI, CIA, DNI, Intel Committee... all Republicans-- are all saying Russia is subverting American democracy and Moscow Mitch won't even let the Senate take a vote on it. That is unAmerican!

McConnell is under fire-- and not just by Scarborough. Reporting for the New Republic, Seth Hettena, author of Trump/Russia: A Definitive History wrote on Thursday that close to the end of Mueller's day of testimony, Raja Krishnamoorthi, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, "got Mueller to admit that the FBI currently has an ongoing investigation involving false statements by Michael Flynn, President Trump’s short-lived national security advisor... The job of FBI counterintelligence was and is to neutralize the threat posed by foreign intelligence-- which, in this case, means dealing with what the special counsel’s report called Russia’s 'sweeping and systematic' effort to interfere in the 2016 presidential election. But the investigation’s low visibility shouldn’t diminish its importance, which is no less than a probe into whether the president himself was acting on behalf of Russia’s interests.

The FBI, as the lead agency for exposing, preventing, and investigating intelligence activities on U.S. soil, sent officials with the bureau’s Counterintelligence Division to meet regularly with members of the special counsel’s team. For more than a year, FBI agents were embedded in Mueller’s office. Their purpose, according to a little-noticed section of the special counsel’s report, was “to review the results of the investigation and to send-- in writing-- summaries of foreign intelligence and counterintelligence information to FBIHQ and FBI Field Offices.” But not all of the information in those summaries appeared in Mueller’s final report.

...While Mueller may not have found enough evidence to support criminal charges over the Trump campaign’s ties to the Russian government, there is little doubt that the president’s behavior toward Russia and its leader, Vladimir Putin, poses a threat to national security. A criminal president is obviously a threat to the nation, but so is a president who can’t or won’t respond to the ongoing threat of foreign interference.

Mueller said Wednesday that Russia’s efforts to interfere in U.S. elections were occurring “as we sit here,” and he almost seemed to regret that the danger posed by Russia wasn’t more strongly emphasized in his report. “Over the course of my career, I’ve seen a number of challenges to our democracy,” Mueller said. “The Russian government’s effort to interfere in our election is among the most serious.”

Mueller warned that during the coming presidential election, the U.S. would face an even bigger threat than the one he investigated. “Many more countries are developing the capability to replicate what the Russians have done,” he said.

“This deserves the attention of every American,” said Mueller, reiterating a plea from his brief May 29 press conference.

But attention will not likely come from Trump. During last month’s G20 summit in Osaka, Japan, the president treated the threat to the 2020 election as an opportunity to further bond with his Russian counterpart. Responding to a reporter’s question, Trump playfully pointed his finger at Putin and said, “Don’t meddle in the election.” Putin just laughed.

The president might think that the ongoing Russian effort to interfere in American democracy is still a big joke. Here’s hoping the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division still doesn’t.

Looking for something to do August 12th? Bring a Russian flag

What's this all have to do with McConnell and why #MoscowMitch is a thing. McConnell blocked Obama from going public with the information about Russia trying to steal the election in real time while it was happening. (I bet Obama is sorry he was such a woos and paid any attention to the treasonous McConnell.) And now McConnell is preventing the Senate from even voting on legislation from preventing Russian meddling again in 2020. Schumer, too scared to refer to McConnell as Moscow Mitch, said, not-memorably this week, "We are not going to let Leader McConnell put the bills passed by the House into his legislative graveyard without a fight. You're going to hear from us on this issue over and over again." The Senate Democrats are such a bunch of pussies they deserve this kind of non-leadership. But we don't.

At least Wyden (D-OR) publicly called McConnell "Russia's biggest ally" and Durbin (D-IL) accused him of "abdicating his responsibility to protect American democracy so he can protect a President who unravels it day-by-day."

Miss McConnell MoscowMitch, with as straight a face as a compulsive liar and lifelong closet case can ever have, claimed the legislation he blocked was "partisan." One bill requires the use of paper ballots and the other mandates that candidates and campaign officials notify the FBI of assistance offers from foreign governments. That could only sound "partisan" to traitors working for a foreign pay-master.

I hate to see the endearing term "McTurtle" disappear, but... because it's Mitch McConnell, we're talking about, there's got to be even more money changing hands. And, sure enough, Nicole Goodkind's report last week for Newsweek covered that:

"McConnell said he wouldn't allow a vote on the bills because they were 'so partisan,' but, as previously reported, earlier this year McConnell received a slew of donations from four of the top voting machine lobbyists in the country," wrote Goodkind. "The plans would likely burden the two largest electronic voting machine vendors in the United States, Election Systems & Software and Dominion Voting Systems, with new regulations and financial burdens. Together, the companies make up about 80 percent of all voting machines used in the country and both have far-reaching lobbying arms in Washington D.C. Many of those lobbyists have contributed to the McConnell campaign, reported Sludge last month, an investigative outlet that focuses on money in politics."

"It's not surprising to me that Mitch McConnell is receiving these campaign contributions," the Brennan Center for Justice's Lawrence Norden told Sludge last month. "He seems single-handedly to be standing in the way of anything passing in Congress around election security, and that includes things that the vendors might want, like money for the states to replace antiquated equipment."

McConnell's actions seemed even more out of balance with his party, as the Senate Intelligence Committee⁠—led by Republicans⁠—released a report later on Thursday claiming Russians have targeted voting systems in all 50 states in 2016. Though there was no evidence votes were changed, in Illinois "Russian cyberactors were in a position to delete or change voter data."

Laughably, most Senate Republican zombies are absolutely behind McConnell on this; in other words: traitors. Last month it was Tennessee traitor Marsha Blackburn. This time it was Mississippi traitor Cindy Hyde-Smith-- who blocked two election protection bills and cybersecurity legislation on the Senate floor right after Mueller’s testimony and then dismissed the storm of criticism she got as nothing more than "political theater." Other Republicans are claiming it's too late to do anything for 2020 and they should focus on protecting the voting systems for the 2022 midterms and just let "nature" take its course for 2020; Oklahoma Republican James Lankford leads that camp.

A Spy Named McTurtle? Do We Need-- God Forbid-- Another HUAC Now?

Undoubtably one of the worst chapters in American history revolved around a House committee established in 1938-- HUAC: the House Un-American Activities Committee. Late in its existence it worked in tandem with Wisconsin's deranged fascist Senator Joseph McCarthy. But when HUAC was established Congress was firmly controlled by the Democrats, who were eager to investigate "disloyalty and subversive activities" by private citizens, public employees, and organizations suspected of having ties to the Russians. It wasn't formally abolished until 1975. The roots of HUAC were actually honorable-- Democrats John McCormack and Samuel Dickstein investigating fascist plots against America, including the plans for a Wall Street/DuPont coup (Smedley Butler) against FDR. When it morphed into HUAC, the first chairman was a Texas Democrat and with deep Nazi sympathies and rabid hatred for communists, Martin Dies. At first, HUAC was commonly known as the Dies Committee and was more a laughing stock than a genuine threat. Joe Starnes of Alabama ranted and raved about Greek playwright, "Mr. Euripedes" preaching class warfare and asked the head of the head of the Federal Theater Project (a part of the New Deal) if Christopher Marlowe had been a commie.

HUAC stopped being a joke when it put together plans to round up Japanese-Americans and put them in concentration camps. When it was later suggested that the HUAC would be of more service to the country if it investigated the KKK, that was voted down and one white supremicist who was clearly ahead of his time and would probably be in Trump's cabinet today, Mississippi Democrat John Rankin noted admiringly that "The KKK is an old American tradition." Two decades later, in 1965, HUAC, finally took a few moments out of railing against commies to focus on the KKK. When HUAC became a permanent committee, the first chair was Edward Hart (D-NJ) and it was full steam ahead as an anti-Russian/anti-Communist vehicle.

It has been suggested that in light of the Republican Party pandering to Putin and the Russians, perhaps House Dems need to bring back HUAC and give it the mandate to look into the connects between McConnell's-- Moscow Mitch as Joe Scarborough has dubbed him-- and Trump's refusal to protect American elections from the Russians. One DWT corespondent suggested that he is "wondering if we are witnessing a latter-day Cambridge Five with Mitch McConnell declining to protect our electoral system from foreign hacking." Further, he thinks it significant that McConnell like Guy Burgess, Anthony Blunt, and Donald MacLean is a closeted gay man vulnerable to exposure. "McConnell is hiding a damaging [for him] sexual history. Is this a sell-out because of kompromat, or is this simply GOP politics? In either case, why are the Democrats not taking a page from the standard GOP playbook" to show how the Republicans are working with the Russians to undermine America? He wondered if the House should consider an actual resurrection of the House Un-American Activities Committee to investigate Republican connections to past and current election tampering in advance of the 2020 elections?




When I told my correspondent that just the thought of HUAC makes me shudder with horror, he later wrote that "Of course you are right. My impulse was irony that is expressing a frustration with what Teresa Tomlinson diagnosed so convincingly this morning on your site: the Dems don’t have balls. They need to learn some lessons from the GOP and do some forceful grandstanding that captures the nation’s attention. Unfortunately, as you point out consistently well, many don’t have any convictions to rally around. Alas. Willing to share the name of the hotel in Yangon that you referred to on Feldman’s show?" [The hotel is The Strand for anyone else wondering.]

Chip Proser, HUAC artist

In his New York Magazine column today, Andrew Sullivan wrote about why Mueller's testimony didn't shake the country up the way it certainly should have. (Keep in mind that when Sullivan uses the words "we" and "us" he always means elites and insiders.) "The Mueller hearings," he wrote, "told us almost nothing that we didn’t know already. We knew that the president welcomed assistance from a foreign power in order to win an election, and has fawned over his political patron in this endeavor, Vladimir Putin, since he became president. We knew that though he was not competent enough to construct a conspiracy, he was eager to collude with a foreign foe to defeat his domestic one. And we knew that he then lied about it as baldly as he lies about almost everything, and tried repeatedly to obstruct the investigation into the affair. His attorney general then blatantly lied about the key conclusions of the Mueller report, distorting the public debate for weeks as he kept the contents under wraps, and then bet that Americans, with our gnat-like attention spans, would simply move on. We also knew that in contemporary America, none of these facts matter in the slightest. The notion that the average citizen should care deeply about the rule of law and constitutional norms-- and even actively defend them-- has become terribly passé. Now, all that truly matters is whether we are entertained by someone who can command televisual excitement the way Trump does on a daily, hourly basis. If he can’t, whatever the underlying facts, no one gives a damn. American political elites are no better. The president’s assault on the Constitution has merely revealed the Democratic Party as the lame farce we knew it was. Its ancient, pusillanimous congressional leadership was never going to do what duty, rather than politics, requires."