Daddy Vladdy Vouches For Trump

Authoritarians gotta stick together:

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday defended Donald Trump over accusations the US leader pressured Kiev to dig up dirt on a rival, saying there was "nothing compromising" in transcripts of the call.

"I see nothing compromising in the conversation between Trump and (Ukrainian leader Volodymyr) Zelensky," Putin said of the phone call that has sparked an impeachment probe in the US.

"President Trump turned to a colleague with a request to investigate possible corruption relating to members of the former administration," the Russian leader said at an energy forum in Moscow.

"Any head of state would have had to do the same."

Yes, any corrupt, political- enemy- and- journalist- murdering former KGB thug would have had to do the same, and much more!

Note to Trump:  Now that Daddy Vladdy has changed his mind and says he's okay with releasing the transcripts of your conversations with him, you should follow his lead, as usual, and release them!  You have nothing to hide, right?!

Parts Of "Peegate" Dossier Corroborated

Parts of the intelligence dossier compiled by a former senior British intelligence officer last year have been independently corroborated by U.S. intelligence, according to CNN. The dossier was originally commissioned by the campaign of J.E.B.! :(  Bush during the Rethug primary campaign, before it was made public late last year. Among the salacious allegations was that neo-fascist Putin poodle Donald "Rump" Trump watched while Russian prostitutes urinated on a bed in a hotel room in Moscow that President Obama and his wife had stayed in previously.

The elements of the dossier that have been corroborated relate to conversations between Russian officials, specifically conversations between senior Russian officials and other Russians matching the time and place as reported in the dossier. According to CNN,

"The corroboration, based on intercepted communications, has given US intelligence and law enforcement 'greater confidence' in the credibility of some aspects of the dossier as they continue to actively investigate its contents, these sources say."

As the dossier's allegations are examined one-by-one by intelligence and law enforcement officials, and are assessed to be credible, the closer we come to understanding what kompromat Russia may have on Rump, and whether Rump is too compromised to be trusted in dealing with an adversarial Russia. Stay tuned.

Quote Of The Day

When conservative pundits start using the "T" word, you can bet there's a roaring fire under all that smoke.  Here's Kathleen Parker yesterday:

In sum, when the president-elect persists in a state of denial, siding with the enemy against his own country’s best interests, one is forced to consider that Trump himself poses a threat to national security. 

In Russia, they’d just call it treason. 

Many of us here in America would call it that, too.  The big question now is, what enormous leverage does Vladimir "Vlad the Invader" Putin have on his new pet poodle?

Report On Russian Efforts To Elect Donald Trump

Here's the unclassified version (pdf) of the report released yesterday by the U.S. intelligence community on Russian efforts to influence the election in favor of neo- fascist Putin poodle Donald "Rump" Trump.

The most often quoted summation of the findings:

"We assess Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election. Russia’s goals were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency. We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump. We have high confidence in these judgments."

Now that we have a glimmer of what the Russians did from their side and why, we await further information on what Rump and his minions did to collaborate with a hostile foreign power. Let's also never forget the role the useful idiots in the "mainstream media" played in un-skeptically spreading the Russo- Republican manure far and wide.

BONUS: Not surprisingly, Putin's poodle is trying to deflect attention; Tengrain has Putin's poodle's predictable tweets, too.

BONUS II:  Robert Reich says "follow the money" to understand why Putin's poodle won't bite the hand that feeds it. No wonder he didn't want anyone to see his tax returns.

BONUS III: The New Yorker's David Remnick has a great article on the Kremlin's joyful reaction to Rump's win, and their successful meddling in the U.S. elections. Appalling take:

[Russian state tv "news"man Dmitri] Kiselyov further praised Trump because the concepts of democracy and human rights “are not in his lexicon.” In India, Turkey, Europe, and now the United States, he declared, “the liberal idea is in ruins.”

Today's Cartoon Twofer - The Siberian Candidate

(click on images to enlarge)


(Tim Eagan, via gocomics.com)


(Steve Sack, Minneapolis Star Tribune)

"High Level Of Confidence" Trump Pal Putin Was Personally Involved In Campaign Skulduggery

The latest in the unfolding saga of the unholy alliance between Russian autocrat Vladimir "Vlad the Invader" Putin and neo- fascist useful idiot Donald "Rump" Trump:

U.S. intelligence officials now believe with "a high level of confidence" that Russian President Vladimir Putin became personally involved in the covert Russian campaign to interfere in the U.S. presidential election, senior U.S. intelligence officials told NBC News. 

Two senior officials with direct access to the information say new intelligence shows that Putin personally directed how hacked material from Democrats was leaked and otherwise used. The intelligence came from diplomatic sources and spies working for U.S. allies, the officials said. 

Putin's objectives were multifaceted, a high-level intelligence source told NBC News. What began as a "vendetta" against Hillary Clinton morphed into an effort to show corruption in American politics and to "split off key American allies by creating the image that [other countries] couldn't depend on the U.S. to be a credible global leader anymore," the official said.

Ultimately, the CIA has assessed, the Russian government wanted to elect Donald Trump. The FBI [a.k.a., Trumpland] and other agencies don't fully endorse that view, but few officials would dispute that the Russian operation was intended to harm Clinton's candidacy by leaking embarrassing emails about Democrats.  (our emphasis)

That there was Russian interference wasn't a state secret (lowly bloggers knew about it long ago and right up to the election). Unfortunately for our democracy, this was largely ignored by the cretinous, credulous media, which was too busy lapping up Wikileaks' Russian- provided agitprop on Clinton non- scandals and the FBI's Trumpland's diversionary leaks to bother focusing on the biggest story of this or any other election of our time.

A "Most Dangerous Moment" For Liberal Democracy

Confirmation that Vladimir "Vlad the Invader" Putin's intelligence services were actively trying to steer the election to their useful idiot Donald "Rump" Trump fits a pattern of Russia's methodically undermining Western democracies. Putin's "Greater Russia" fantasy demands the weakening of NATO and the European Union, supporting far-right movements in Austria, France, Germany and elsewhere where xenophobia and white nationalism are growing.  Writing in The Atlantic, Larry Diamond presents a thorough and chilling report on Putin's success thus far, the greatest of which is his influencing the U.S. Presidential election outcome for Rump:

"We stand now at the most dangerous moment for liberal democracy since the end of World War II. There are still many more democracies worldwide today than when the Cold War ended. But outside the West, many of them are fragile or rapidly declining....The greatest danger, however, is not what is happening in Asia, Africa, or Latin America. It is the alarming decay of liberal democracy in Europe and the United States, accelerated by escalating Russian efforts at subversion. Putin’s forces are on such a roll that they can no longer contain their glee. One pro-Putin Russian governor recently declared in a radio interview, 'It turns out that United Russia [Putin’s political party] won the elections in America.' Donald Trump’s election victory was an extraordinary political achievement for someone who has never held or sought political office. It drew the support of many tens of millions of voters who rallied to his themes of controlling immigration, changing the way things are done in Washington, generating economic opportunity for those left behind by globalization, or somehow just 'making American great again.' But it probably would not have happened without Russia’s hacking of America’s political process—and on behalf of a candidate who had said he wanted good relations with Vladimir Putin." (emphasis added)

Putin's cunning operations against Western Europe received an ancillary boost when, upon Russia's brutal military intervention in Syria, thousands upon thousands of refugees fled into Turkey and Western Europe, providing the xenophobic, racist and anti-democracy forces there with a pretext to rally voters to their cause. More "glee" for the autocrat Putin.

We are awaiting the nomination of Russophile and ExxonMobil plutocrat Rex "T Rex" Tillerson as Rump's Secretary of State. T-Rex is beloved by Putin, and they have had a warm relationship for many years, owing to the intersection of Big Oil in the U.S. and Russia (where oil revenue is literally money in Putin's pocket). It's important to remember that ExxonMobil skirted the sanctions against Russia in a 2014 deal to drill in the Artic. Assuming he's confirmed, we'll have the first Secretary of State to have received Russia's Order of Friendship, which is awarded to foreign nationals "whose work, deeds and efforts were aimed at the betterment of relations with the Russian Federation and its people." He can certainly be expected to earn that medal again going forward, if Putin's calculated correctly.