Mueller Time

https://www.justice.gov/file/1035477/download

13 Russian Nationals indicted in Mueller investigation on charges related to meddling in US elections

The Internet Research Agency, operating out of St. Petersburg, was described in the indictment as a hub for a sophisticated operation designed to reach millions of Americans to disrupt the political process in the United States. Its annual budget was millions of dollars; its stated goal was to “spread distrust toward the candidates and the political system in general.” 

The goal of the Russian operation, which was dubbed the “translator project” and began in 2014 with a monthly budget of $1.25 million, was “information warfare against the United States,” the indictment alleges.  

-from NYT article.  This is where your money is going, dear True Russians.

Trump has broken the Oath

The Oath of Office:
I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

Trump is already in violation of the oath.

Dashboard confessional

http://dashboard.securingdemocracy.org/

Information literacy is important.  The link above is a tool to track Russia propaganda.  Be informed and mine for facts.

Icon*

*photo found on google images from this blog post (but it's not the author's photo either)

Bill Browder

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/bill-browders-senate-judiciary-committee-hearing_uk_597ee55ce4b02a4ebb7675a6

Magic ruble from the heart

Attacking other countries is not an act that resides in the heart.  Your magic ruble will not come back to you.

True Russian people, I bet you are really pissed off to know that money that could be spent on and inside your own country is used instead to attack other nations.  What a major mismanagement of rubles and a waste too.

Good luck.  I'm with you in spirit.  I have my own mobsters to fight.

See you when we are free from tyranny.  Peace.

Grassley knoll

Excerpts of Senator Chuck Grassley's letter regarding Rinat Akhmetshin found on DailyKos:

Dear Secretary Kelly:

I write to obtain information regarding Mr. Rinat Akhmetshin, a Russian immigrant to the United States who has been accused of acting as an unregistered agent for Russian interests and apparently has ties to Russian intelligence.
In July of 2016, Mr. William Browder, the CEOof Hermitage Capital Management, filed a formal complaint with the Justice Department alleging that Mr. Akhmetshin, among others, has failed to register under the Foreign AgentsRegistration Act (“FARA”) despite undertaking a lobbying campaign on behalf of Russian interests.
1 The Committee is looking into the circumstances surrounding this lobbying effort and the potential FARA violations involved.
2 It is important for the Committee to gather additional information on Mr. Akhmetshin as part of this process. Mr. Akhmetshin is a Russian immigrant to the U.S. who has admitted having been a “Soviet counterintelligence officer.”
3 In fact, it has been reported that he worked for the GRU and allegedly specializes in “active measures campaigns,” i.e., subversive political influence operations often involving disinformation and propaganda.
4 According to press accounts, Mr.Akhmetshin “is known in foreign policy circles as a key pro-Russian operator,”
5 and Radio FreeEurope described him as a “Russian ‘gun-for-hire’ [who] lurks in the shadows of Washington’s lobbying world.”
6 Mr. Akhmetshin reportedly entered the U.S. in the 1990s and became a U.S.citizen in 2009, while also retaining his Russian citizenship.
7 Despite all of this information, and despite Mr. Akhmetshin’s admission to the press that he had been a Russian intelligence officer, in response to a different press inquiry, “Akhmetshin denied that he ever worked for Soviet military intelligence, something he would have had to declare when he applied for U.S. citizenship.”
8 The circumstances of Mr. Akhmetshin’s immigration into the U.S. and his eventual U.S. citizenship are relevant to the Committee given his alleged ties to Russian intelligence and actions as an unregistered agent of Russian interests.This information is also relevant because he was reportedly working with Fusion GPS, the company that oversaw the creation of the controversial dossier alleging a conspiracy between President Trump and the Russian government, on the pro-Russian lobbying effort at the same time the dossier was being created.

Full letter

How do you know if you haven't checked?

I feel like a mom telling a child to look in his room for his missing shoes.

This article is very concerning.  Govt official say there is no evidence, but what evidence has been gathered?

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/dhs-doesnt-want-to-know-about-vote-hacks

DHS officials from former secretary Jeh Johnson to acting Director of Cyber Division Samuel Liles may be adamant that machines were not affected, but the agency has not in fact opened up a single voting machine since November to check.

“Although we continue to judge all newly available information, DHS has not fundamentally altered our prior assessments,” the department told TPM.

Computer scientists have been critical of that decision. “They have performed computer forensics on no election equipment whatsoever,” said J. Alex Halderman, who testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee last week about the vulnerability of election systems. “That would be one of the most direct ways of establishing in the equipment whether it’s been penetrated by attackers. We have not taken every step we could.”

David Dill, a voting systems expert and professor of computer science at Stanford University quoted in the report, said hackers can easily breach election systems regardless of whether they’re able to coordinate widely enough to alter a general election result.

“I don’t know why they wouldn’t try to hack voting machines and I don’t know what would stop them,” Dill told TPM. “Any statement that says ‘We haven’t see evidence of X’ also means ‘We haven’t lifted a finger to investigate.’”

Why do we have to consistently ask our government to do their job?!

Barbra Streisand is Nuts

This is what I have become.  I am now sending rambling emails grappling with my gut feeling.

I really wish that movie guy's voice said "Barbra Streisand is Nuts" in this trailer

BURR: Are you confident that no votes cast in the 2016 presidential election were altered?
COMEY: I'm confident. When I left as director I had seen no indication of that whatsoever.
                        -from here

Later in the hearing, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark) asked Clapper, “the intelligence community says, ‘It would be extremely difficult for someone – including a nation-state actor to alter actual ballot counts or election results by cyberattack or intrusion,’ and you say to that earlier today as well that we have no evidence that vote tallies were altered or manipulated in anyway?”

“That’s correct,” Clapper said.
                        -from here

Jeh Johnson: "I know of no evidence that through cyber intrusion, votes were altered or suppressed in some way."  -this particular quote is only quoted in rightwing online presence??  I just noticed this.  I got it from the Hill opinion blog below (spin link)

Oh good!  Here’s a spin that Republicans are taking…Obama’s Homeland Security was trying to hack into voter registration systems in some states… Cybersecurity experts have confirmed…oh really?  So vague.  However…this WSJ story might be interesting if I could read it..well, it looks like it was a nothingburger (can’t believe I'm using that term-Twitterhead)

Ok, so this is why I still have reservations after three different people in the federal government claim that no votes were altered.  God, this is insane…

From what I have read, some of these machines did not have the security features turned on –such as an auditing function.  How much jurisdiction and authority does the federal government have over state elections systems?  How do they check or verify the votes?  I don’t know if I should believe, but via @mikefarb I have seen places in Wisconsin and I think Georgia where the tallies were inconsistent.  The federal government is doing an audit on all of these machines???  How did they have the time?  How can they if the feature is turned off?  So yes, Feds can say with confidence they have seen nothing to indicate altered votes, but what measures have they taken to investigate each county/state?  They have information already with 50 states and however many counties?  I’m fully for mail in/paper ballot at this point.

Also…another thought.  Maybe the question of whether Kremlin hacked is the problem.  Maybe Kremlin helped, but maybe someone inside the US hacked.  That’s a little wacko, but just a thought.  Why did Republican voter data firm leave 198 million voter data exposed online for three days?

Why did Jeh Johnson’s attempt to designate our elections systems as critical govt infrastructure meet with opposition (and why was it not that already? I think I saw due to view of too much federal intrusion).  Johnson said he did it anyway. ? 

Also this exchange is weird, but only because I don’t understand it (at 33:02, Schiff, but more specifically around 33:44 and something about pollsters and social scientists) This article states that said designation would have given states priority if they sought help in possible cyberattacks.. huh??  Our voting machines are not a priority?

I’m considering becoming a poll worker.  I don’t know if I should be a democrat or republican election judge.  Do the democrats oversee the republicans and vice versa or do democrats sign up to be republican election judges because they think they are corrupt and the same for republicans?  Why is there a partisan distinction?  

I need to research this Senate Intelligence Committee hearing

Call to expel McConnell

Senate Major "Leader" Mitch McConnell is a threat to the health of our Nation.
He must be expelled from his position and Congress.
He did not tell the people of the U.S.A. that our election process was under attack when he became aware of it in late 2016.
His obstruction during his time in Congress has earned the previous Congress the worst in recorded history.
He receives dark money that must be investigated.
He is now working in secret to pass a health insurance bill for our nation.  We will not know what is in the bill until it is signed.  Our elected Democratic leaders will not be privy to information contained in this bill nor be allowed to add a single remark.
This is not Democracy, only kleptocracy.

This expulsion of McConnell should be akin to those Congressman that were expelled for supporting the confederacy.
Or perhaps similar to Senator William Blount of Tennessee?
Maybe the man who said his worst day of his career was when a bill that had to do with Campaign Finance Reform was signed into law will succumb to the fate of Senator James Simmons of Rhode Island.

Either way, it needs to be done.  And as you can see it has been done.
Congress, take out the trash.