Moscow Mitch blocks two election security bills.

[The Romulan Republic]

https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/454 ... oscowmitch

MSNBC host Joe Scarborough on Friday lashed out at Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, calling him “Moscow Mitch” over his inaction on legislation to address Russian election interference.

Scarborough made the comments about the Kentucky Republican during a segment on “Morning Joe” after McConnell blocked two election security measures. The hashtag #MoscowMitch quickly began trending on Twitter following his comments.

Scarborough, a former GOP lawmaker, called McConnell's actions "un-American."

"How can Moscow Mitch so willingly turn a blind eye not only this year to what his Republican chairman of the Intel Committee is saying, to what Robert Mueller is saying, to what the FBI director is saying, to what the DNI [director of national intelligence] is saying, to what the CIA is saying, to what the United States military intel community is saying,” Scarborough asked.

“How can Moscow Mitch keep denying that [Russian President] Vladimir Putin continues to try to subvert American democracy?”

Scarborough accused McConnell of "aiding and abetting Vladimir Putin’s ongoing attempts to subvert American democracy" and said it was "un-American" for McConnell to block the Senate from taking up election security legislation.

"He is aiding & abetting Putin’s ongoing attempts to subvert U.S. democracy, according to the Republican FBI, CIA, DNI…All Republicans are saying Russia is trying to subvert U.S. democracy & Moscow Mitch won’t even let the Senate take a vote on it. That is un-American.--@JoeNBC pic.twitter.com/vV1TekFgHF

— Morning Joe (@Morning_Joe) July 26, 2019


The nickname took off on social media, with more than 65,000 tweets mentioning the nickname on social media as of Friday morning.

If you kill two election security bills you should be arrested for treason before the day is out. #MoscowMitch

— Elayne Boosler (@ElayneBoosler) July 26, 2019
Mitch McConnell blocked two bills to increase security for our upcoming 2020 election. Evidently, #MoscowMitch does not think Trump can win without Russia’s help.

— Andrea Junker (@Strandjunker) July 26, 2019
Thanks to #MoscowMitch for making our elections less safe... pic.twitter.com/GAi7tnaLQE

— Fred Crow Jr. (@Teamster160) July 26, 2019
#MoscowMitch helped a Russian oligarch donor by easing Russia subscribe against his partner, Paul Manafort's top Kremlin connection.

Today, he killed two election security bills.

Putin bought him for thirty pieces of MAGA-stamped silver.https://t.co/5QldNAzKa9

— Grant Stern (@grantstern) July 26, 2019
Hey #MoscowMitch, Did you know #45isapuppet? We do. pic.twitter.com/NYQFCD50JG

— Sam (@slipperyhero) July 26, 2019


Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) on Thursday tried to get consent to pass a House bill that requires the use of paper ballots and includes funding for the Election Assistance Commission. It passed the House 225-184, with one Republican voting for it.

But McConnell objected to the bill and accused Schumer of pushing “partisan legislation.”

Under the Senate’s rules, any one senator can request consent to pass a bill, but any one senator can object.

The Senate majority leader then objected when Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) asked for consent to pass legislation that would require candidates, campaign officials and their family members to notify the FBI of assistance offers from foreign governments.

McConnell's block came after former special counsel Robert Mueller warned about continued Russian interference in U.S. elections during his Wednesday congressional hearings.

“We are expecting them to do it again during the next campaign,” Mueller said.

Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday also released its long-awaited bipartisan report on Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

Among the key findings of the report, the committee writes that “the Russian government directed extensive activity, beginning in at least 2014 and carrying into at least 2017, against U.S. election infrastructure at the state and local level."

The report also assessed that all 50 states were targeted in 2016 in some way.

All fifty states were targeted.

One bill would fund the Election Assistance Commission, and require paper ballots. The other would require reporting of offers of aid to campaigns from foreign governments.

They got all of one Republican vote in the House, and then McConnell denied them even a vote in the Senate. Because apparently even allowing a vote on ensuring a fair election is "partisan".

The Republican Party is wholly culpable in this, and their 2020 campaign strategy could not be more plain: to leave our election system wide open, and hope that Vladimir Putin pulls a repeat performance.

McConnell, of course, defended himself by using the "McCarthyist" line against his critics (while the actual McCarthyist in the White House accuses everyone who disagrees with him of treason).

[Xisiqomelir]

Did last time's interference sum up to more than Facebook trolling in the end? As in they compromised a voting machine or so?

How were the bills going to stop any of the above?

[The Romulan Republic]

Did last time's interference sum up to more than Facebook trolling in the end? As in they compromised a voting machine or so?

A hell of a lot more. First, there were the add and fake new campaigns (involving fraudulent groups/identities) across not just Facebook but other social media. We've also known about the hacks of the DNC and Democratic officials (which were then disseminated through Wikileaks and other outfits, and timed to benefit the Trump campaign). We also know Manafort shared polling data from the campaign with a Russian operative, which raises the possibility that Russia was using the Trump campaign's polling data to micro-target the same groups of voters. We know about Russia setting up opposing rallies in the wake of the election (technically this could be called social media trolling, but that seriously downplays the implications, ie that they were likely attempting to instigate violent clashes between protesters).

We also now know that they compromised the voting systems of all fifty states in some way (ie gaining access to voter databases, for example).

Did they actually change the vote total in any state? Not as far as we know. Is it possible that they could do so in the future, if they continue to expand their efforts and we continue to leave our system open? Probably.

Dismissing it as "just some Facebook" trolling is a tactic used by collusion denialists to pretend that nothing important happened, because, you know, just a little election sabotage is okay (and also ignores that social media can and does have a large political impact all on its own).

How were the bills going to stop any of the above?

Paper ballots would secure our elections against any future tampering with electronic voting machines, and would be worth doing with or without the Russia factor. Here in BC, when we have an election, you just go behind a privacy screen, check or fill in a box on a paper ballot, and those paper ballots are then hand-counted at the end of the day (I know because I volunteered as an observer for the vote counting process for the BC Green Party in the last provincial election).

It strikes me as a much simpler and more tamper-proof system than what the US tends to use. But fraud possibilities aside, there is big money in electronic voting machines, and those companies donate to politicians.

Requiring a campaign to report offers of aid from a foreign government also seems a logical move, and is likely designed both to keep us informed of attempts to interfere with our elections, and to ensure that if any campaign is aware of offers of such aid, and decides it would be to their benefit to allow it to happen, we don't get another situation like the outcome of the Mueller probe, where they turned up numerous examples of collusion but decided none of them were technically chargeable.

Unless there is something really odious buried in the details of these bills (which I admit is possible, especially given the tendency to attach unrelated riders on to bills), then the only reason to block them, to not even grant them a vote on the Senate floor, is because you want our elections to be easier to tamper with, without reprecussion for those abetting the tampering.

[Gandalf]

Getting rid of the electronic voting machines would just make elections run better anyway, regardless of the security issues.

[The Romulan Republic]

Indeed. There's absolutely no reason not to do it, other than extreme knee-jerk partisanship, or else one form of corruption or another (whether its donations from companies that make voting machines, or wanting it to be easier to tamper with election results).

[aerius]

How about you actually enforce your existing election laws. You already have 101 laws in the books which if they were actually enforced would've stopped this goddamn clown show before it even started.

[The Romulan Republic]

How about you actually enforce your existing election laws. You already have 101 laws in the books which if they were actually enforced would've stopped this goddamn clown show before it even started.

Why not both?

There are systemic flaws that need to be addressed across the board. Some involve needing to enforce existing law better. Some involve needing to close legal loopholes. These are not contradictory goals, but rather complimentary ones.

[aerius]

Why not both?

There are systemic flaws that need to be addressed across the board. Some involve needing to enforce existing law better. Some involve needing to close legal loopholes. These are not contradictory goals, but rather complimentary ones.

There's not much point in passing new laws when there's little to no interest in enforcing existing ones; you'll just end up with a bunch of new laws on the books that are ignored just as thoroughly as the existing ones. Go ahead and pass them if it makes you feel better, but don't expect them to actually have any significant effect, cause they won't.

Let me put this bluntly. I doubt there's a higher up politician who has an actual interest in real, effective reform of how the system currently works because it will massively butt-fuck them. Yes they'll talk about it from time to time to appease their base, but they don't really want it. And the people accept that for the most part, we accept that politicians are crooked assholes and we don't threaten to string them up from lamp posts. Pass all the laws you want, it's not going to change anything until there are widespread credible threats to the continued well-being of those in power.

[The Romulan Republic]

So, aerius basically defended McConnell blocking Democratic election security bills designed to prevent foreign election interference, without even allowing a vote, by saying that all politicians are just as bad, and therefore there's no point reforming laws. This is of course the entire purpose of Whataboutism and "Both Sides" rhetoric: to defend and legitimize the worst players and denigrate those who oppose them by putting them on an equal footing. Then he whines about how everyone accepts all politicians being corrupt, after people like him have spent years telling them that that's the case. But his objection is not to this reflexive, simple-minded cynicism, not at all: its that they don't all agree with his (not even thinly-veiled) advocacy for domestic terrorism, and believe that all politicians as a class should be mass murdered, or at least threatened with mass murder.

Of course this view has nothing to do with reforming the law or democracy, or wanting more ethical politics. You don't advocate sweeping, indiscriminate mass murder against entire professions or classes of people because you want to save the rule of law or democracy. Just like you don't reflexively label all politicians automatically corrupt because you want more ethical politics. You do this to discredit the idea of reform, to get people behind mass violence as the only option, mass violence that would require a strongman to implement, and inevitably lead to strong man rule. Its the same old argument of the aspiring strong man tyrant: Support me and I'll get rid of all of that messy politics and all those dirty politicians. I'll clean it all up and make everything run efficiently and bring real change." And what they mean, of course, is that they'll get rid of all that messy dissent and centralize all power under themselves, by force of arms.

Keep in mind also that we live in a world where things like this happen:

https://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic ... 2&t=168360

That's a Right-wing terrorist group amassing arms, buying hundreds of body bags and quicklime for disposal of bodies, and drawing up murder lists of tens of thousands of German politicians. And by aerius's argument, the main problem there is that they didn't get further, and it doesn't happen more often.

aerius's argument is an blatantly fascistic, anti-democratic one. In addition to being overly-simplistic and morally repulsive, it is tailored to push people toward cynicism, violence, and fascism under the guise of reform. It is also basically one that the Kremlin has been aggressively pushing for years.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0utzB6oDan0

Nearly everything aerius posts in News and Politics is right in line with Kremlin rhetoric, and with the goal of causing a catastrophic breakdown of democracy and the rule of law.

Also, keep in mind that aerius is addressing this to someone here who has actually run for political office, and participated in political campaigns. What aerius is saying is that I, and people like me, should be subject to threats or even murdered for choosing to try to reform our countries through political, non-violent means. And while I would object to such rhetoric on principle even if it had no effect on me, I do take that personally.

[aerius]

TRR has no reading comprehension, either that or he thinks he's actually important. Let me quote what I just said:

Let me put this bluntly. I doubt there's a higher up politician who has an actual interest in real, effective reform of how the system currently works because it will massively butt-fuck them. Yes they'll talk about it from time to time to appease their base, but they don't really want it. And the people accept that for the most part, we accept that politicians are crooked assholes and we don't threaten to string them up from lamp posts. Pass all the laws you want, it's not going to change anything until there are widespread credible threats to the continued well-being of those in power.

Also, keep in mind that aerius is addressing this to someone here who has actually run for political office, and participated in political campaigns. What aerius is saying is that I, and people like me, should be subject to threats or even murdered for choosing to try to reform our countries through political, non-violent means. And while I would object to such rhetoric on principle even if it had no effect on me, I do take that personally.

So either you're deluded enough to think that you're actually one of those in power who are corrupt assholes, or you just can't read because the mere act of seeing my user name drives you into a frenzied rage.

You're talking about a government which passed the Affordable Healthcare for America Act which didn't do a damn thing to stop healthcare costs from going up at the usual rate of 7-8% per year, and turned out to be the best thing ever for the healthcare & insurance industry. And you actually think an election security act will actually do anything to secure elections.

Your belief is that the US government, political system, and various societal beliefs can be peacefully reformed and fixed through activism and political processes. I believe you're wrong and the system is fundamentally broken and FUBAR, whatever you try to do you'll end up with a massive shit show so you might as well get it over with as soon as you can.

PS. I find the following hilarious considering how often you complain about the Electoral College and various other US government institutions being "undemocratic", and you yourself have made similar comments regarding Republican politicians among others.

Of course this view has nothing to do with reforming the law or democracy, or wanting more ethical politics. You don't advocate sweeping, indiscriminate mass murder against entire professions or classes of people because you want to save the rule of law or democracy. Just like you don't reflexively label all politicians automatically corrupt because you want more ethical politics

[The Romulan Republic]

aerius's post summed up in three words: "Burn them all."

Apparently King Aerys was actually a progressive reformer.

And yeah, I regard certain American institutions as undemocratic. The fundamental difference, which aerius attempts to obfuscate with yet another false equivalency/character attack, is that I wish to fix America, while he wishes to further break it.

However, I have not posted in support of murder or threats of murder against Republican politicians or others. At most, I have recognized that there might come a point where armed resistance is necessary. If that is what aerius is suggesting, it is a LIE, and a very serious one, given that it is publicly accusing me of a potentially illegal act.

I hope aerius will clarify what he is saying on this point, so I can determine whether it is necessary to report this post for libel.

[Ralin]

How about you actually enforce your existing election laws. You already have 101 laws in the books which if they were actually enforced would've stopped this goddamn clown show before it even started.

Could you please explain which existing but unenforced laws would require the use of paper ballots and increase funding to the Election Assistance Commission?