monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

...they aren't going to stop because the Russians believe in fair play, they have to be stopped.

We definitely do need to beef up our cyber-security and hacking detection methods, though.

If by "amount to nothing" you mean impeachment, then of course you're right.

What's happening right now isn't "nothing" though. The negative press this president is getting and creating for himself is exactly what is needed to keep the extremes of your Republican Party in check.

Regarding #2 ---- I'm going to put this in bold here, because it's important. The Republicans are blocking the Democrats from working on a bipartisen solution. Actively and completely blocking them.

The only idea the Dems had to fix the ACA, was to enact Single Payer. That's not fixing anything, that's making it worse.

Keep in mind that when Democrats pull dirty tricks like this against Republicans, the Republicans turn around and do the same thing right back at them.

Finally, didn't you hear about the Russians hacking the voter rolls in several states? Oh, they don't cover that in right wing news, so you never heard about it. The Russians were hacking the lists of eligible voters in several counties, especially the ones that lean strongly Democratic. If you'll remember 2000, there were extreme problems with people in Democratic leaning counties disappearing from the voter rolls and told they were ineligible to vote on Election Day.

Really? Opposition Research is not a "thing"? Then how come it's written in the campaign budgets year after year. How come I saw Roger Stone on TV some years ago saying his job was doing Opposition Research when questions arose about his visits to clubs which featured women in leather and masks suspended in cages from the ceiling?

Opposition Research is a thing.

The issue isn't 'oh ****, the Russians helped Trump', the real issue is that the Russian govt. is disrupting our election process, sowing doubt, and doing everything it can to destabilize the country. Look around, for Christ's sake, they are meddling in France, Germany and every country they can infiltrate. Nothing has changed since 1917 for Russian goals....just the tools at their disposal.
Yes, yes, yes the hand wringers are worried that the Democrats will attempt to nullify the election, they won't. The democrats aren't happy but they know they lost the election. That's it, they lost and there are no avenues to crown a runner-up. What everyone should be in a panic over is the ease with which the Russians have inserted themselves into our elections....they aren't going to stop because the Russians believe in fair play, they have to be stopped.

We definitely do need to beef up our cyber-security and hacking detection methods, though.

Just one example is those pills they would spike her drinks with that caused her to **** her diapers during debates, and then fall down, fainting, as she left.

layman wrote:

Just one example is those pills they would spike her drinks with that caused her to **** her diapers during debates, and then fall down, fainting, as she left.

I'm not familiar with this.

Ukrainian efforts to sabotage Trump backfire

Kiev officials are scrambling to make amends with the president-elect after quietly working to boost Clinton.

Ukrainian government officials tried to help Hillary Clinton and undermine Trump by publicly questioning his fitness for office. They also disseminated documents implicating a top Trump aide in corruption and suggested they were investigating the matter, only to back away after the election. And they helped Clinton’s allies research damaging information on Trump and his advisers, a Politico investigation found.

A Ukrainian-American operative who was consulting for the Democratic National Committee met with top officials in the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington in an effort to expose ties between Trump, top campaign aide Paul Manafort and Russia, according to people with direct knowledge of the situation.

The Ukrainian efforts had an impact in the race, helping to force Manafort’s resignation and advancing the narrative that Trump’s campaign was deeply connected to Ukraine’s foe to the east, Russia.

The Ukrainian antipathy for Trump’s team — and alignment with Clinton’s — can be traced back to late 2013. That’s when the country’s president, Viktor Yanukovych, whom Manafort had been advising, abruptly backed out of a European Union pact linked to anti-corruption reforms.

“Now, it seems that a U.S. election may have been seen as a surrogate battle by those in Kiev and Moscow,” Merkel said.

maporsche wrote:

Not bullshit. The republicans are actually, in fact, holding closed door meetings with just 13 white republican men.

What special significance do you believe there is in them being "white men?"

In an interview this month, Chalupa told Politico she had developed a network of sources in Kiev and Washington, including investigative journalists, government officials and private intelligence operatives. She said that, when Trump’s unlikely presidential campaign began surging in late 2015, she began focusing more on the research, and expanded it to include Trump’s ties to Russia, as well.

She shared her findings with officials from the DNC and Clinton’s campaign. The day after Manafort’s hiring was revealed, she briefed the DNC’s communications staff on Manafort, Trump and their ties to Russia, according to an operative familiar with the situation. She quickly found herself in high demand.

A former DNC staffer and the operative familiar with the situation agreed that with the DNC’s encouragement, Chalupa asked embassy staff to try to arrange an interview in which Poroshenko might discuss Manafort’s ties to Yanukovych.

Chalupa confirmed that, a week after Manafort’s hiring was announced, she discussed the possibility of a congressional investigation with a foreign policy legislative assistant in the office of Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio), who co-chairs the Congressional Ukrainian Caucus.

Asked about the effort, the Kaptur legislative assistant called it a “touchy subject” in an internal email to colleagues that was accidentally forwarded to Politico.

Chalupa further indicated in her hacked May email to the DNC that she had additional sensitive information about Manafort that she intended to share “offline” with Miranda and DNC research director Lauren Dillon

This included “a big Trump component you and Lauren need to be aware of that will hit in next few weeks and something I’m working on you should be aware of.”

. . . a sharp dressed man holding a butchered elephant's tail.

Everybody Is Forgetting That Clinton Allies Did The Same Thing As Don Jr

Many journalists reacted breathlessly to a New York Times report on Sunday revealing that President Trump’s oldest son, Donald Trump Jr., met with a Russian lawyer who indicated she had damaging information about Hillary Clinton.

Many Trump critics claimed that the NYT report supported the theory that members of the Trump campaign were somehow involved in the Russian government’s hacking of Clinton campaign chair John Podesta and the Democratic National Committee.

But Trump Jr., Kushner and Manafort’s lone meeting with the Russian lawyer pales when compared to the coordination between Clinton allies and Ukrainian government officials who hoped to see Clinton win the 2016 election.

After Trump’s shocking electoral victory, the Ukrainian government told Politico, “We have never worked to research and disseminate damaging information about Donald Trump and Paul Manafort.” But Andrii Telizhenko, a former Ukrainian embassy officer, told Politico that he was assigned to work with Chalupa.

Oksana was keeping it all quiet,” Telizhenko said, but added that “the embassy worked very closely with” Chalupa, the DNC operative.

Senate panel weighs bill to cut U.S. funding to Palestinians

With momentum growing in Congress to support legislation that could cut U.S. aid to the Palestinian Authority over its payments to convicted terrorists and their families, a senior White House official told Fox News that the administration won’t reward terrorism.

The committee’s ranking member, Sen. Benjamin Cardin, D-Md., said the Palestinians simply must end payment to terrorists. “It’s an incitement to violence,” Cardin said.

The Palestinians spend about $300 million a year – nearly eight percent of their annual budget -- on payments to convicted terrorists and their families. Just last week Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said he would never stop the payments.

One Middle East expert who has worked closely with Congress on Israel and Palestinian issues said the Obama administration blocked any serious effort in Congress to hold the Palestinians responsible.

“For the Trump administration, stopping Palestinian terror payments is near the very top of their list of concerns. Certainly they're not going to lobby on behalf of the Palestinians like the Obama team used to do. So Congress is now going to take the actions against Palestinian terror incitement that lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have long wanted to take.