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| Meet your new oligarchs. The Russians knew how to do this. [image source] |
Ugly Facts About Trump's Plan to Finally Destroy the Democracy
The Russian Intelligence Agency [СВР РФ] hackers couldn't quite do it completely last time,
so Trump is making it easier for their next attempt.
Jeff Sessions -- Confederate Darling
Ever wonder why Trump and the Republican Senate chose to embarrass themselves by hoisting Jeffry Beauregard Sessions up to the Attorney General spot?
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| A repeat of the Civil War? Maybe. |
Of course Sessions already had plenty of smelly baggage which was certain to attract the attention of the "always hungry to suppress minority voting" Republicans in the Senate. Among plenty of other "quite stinky" credentials, Beauregard earned his stars in the Confederacy by suppressing voting and other blatantly anti-democracy schemes through the years of his checkered political career. [Jeff Sessions as Spent His Whole Career Opposing Voting Rights/TheNATION]
Under the Trump-Russia-Goldman-Sachs "Presidency" Sessions will be responsible for the legality of US elections until he leaves office. If anyone expects this catastrophe to improve as it matures, go shopping for some good swamp property next to the ocean.
The Mysteriously Missing 3 Million Illegal Clinton Voters
Both before and after Trump lost the election by 3,000,000 votes, he was incessantly bellowing about the election being "rigged." The primary motivation for this endless lament was Trump's own psychological obsession with winning the popular vote. Ironically, even while these complaints were being issued to a grotesquely animated, Hillary hating rally crowd, the election was, in fact, "being rigged" -- by the bots and hackers patiently toiling for the Russian Federation Intelligence Service using the data generated by the private analytic companies hired by the Trump campaign.
However, following his Inauguration this incendiary line employed by Trump in his on-going effort to keep his now dwindling voter base energized brings a politically unavoidable "problem" with it. Hillary Clinton's rather impressive performance in the final death throes of the Republican "computer server" interrogation didn't phase the trailer park troglodytes blindly dedicated to being Trump loyalists. Most of them wouldn't be particularly interested in the difference between a private server and a granite tombstone.
There was never so much as a shard of evidence to support Trump's "explanation" of the election loss. MeanMesa's use of the term, "shard" includes even such arcane, possible sources as the ultra-right wing media -- the voices which Trump relies upon to provide his day to day "news" and political information.
Meet Kris Kobach's Voter Suppression "Cross Check"
If you're Trump, it's a marriage made in heaven.
Vote suppression expert, Jeff Beauregard Sessions, can be the flower girl.
Kobach's voter suppression scheme was a "thoroughly modern Millie." That is, Kobach's scheme would not have been possible until modern times made lists and lists of voter identifications into large, yet theoretically manageable data files which could be maintained by state governments. Now, Kobach was the Secretary of State of Kansas, a personal "garden" of the multi-billionaire, extra creepy Koch brothers -- two of the most rabidly "conservative" ideologues in the 20th Century. [Billionaire Daddy Koch founded and financed the John Birch Society shortly after the Korean War.]
The Koch brothers' "head gardener" for the "Kansas experiment" was another, eager, "conservative" ideologue named Sam Brownback, a right wing political hack who became Governor of Kansas. Sam implemented all sorts of Koch brothers-style tax reduction and other reforms, utterly bankrupting the State of Kansas which had, previously, enjoyed a healthy, robust agricultural economy. State economic matters have, currently, reached such a drastic state of collapse that the Republican State Legislature has now legislated the unthinkable -- tax increases in an effort to "stop the bleeding."
In fact this effort turned out to be "robust enough" that this State Legislature has now even over ridden Brownback's VETO of the tax increase bills. Remember, Kobach was Sam Brownback's hand picked Secretary of State.
Well, one very clear problem the Republicans were facing as they entered the 2016 political campaign was, stated generally, that there were far too many "wrong colored people" who were probably going to vote for Hillary Clinton. This was not only the case in Kansas, but also all across the "field of red" states. The Koch brothers, Sam Brownback and Kris Kobach simply HAD to do something. It was becoming an electoral "emergency" -- precisely the conditions which have always brought out the worst in Republicans.
In an effort lubricated quite generously by the billionaire Koch brothers, Kris Kobach devised a rather clumsy -- yet potentially effective scheme -- to "turn the tide" back into the favor of the old white men with all the money. This scheme turned into what is now called "Cross Check." Racists and crackers all across the Confederacy fell in love with Kobach's anti-democracy conspiracy immediately.
"Cross Check" first searched out names of Americans who could not legally vote for some reason. These unfortunate citizens were, at first, selected from Kansas voter registration rolls, but later the list of "unable to vote" Americans was rapidly augmented by names from the other states which were eagerly "on board" with the Kobach scheme. In no time Kobach's list was literally spilling out of the computer files where it had been stored.
Now, we must look at the "clumsy" part. It turns out that this part was not only "clumsy," but also devilishly ingenious.
If an American in, say, the State of Mississippi were name Alonzo Juan Sanchez, and Alonzo was not legally able to vote because he was, say, a convicted felon, "Cross Check" instantly reduced his name in the computer file to simply Alonzo Sanchez. At once, all the cracker states participating in Kobach's "Cross Check" scheme "de-registered" every Alonzo Sanchez from their corresponding voter registration lists. This was done very quietly.
The result was that when thousands of voters named Alonzo Sanchez -- voters who actually lived in other states and who were not convicted felons -- appeared at the polls to vote, they discovered that they were no longer registered. This happened to hundreds of thousands [possibly millions] of voters in the 2016 election.
When names commonly used by black Americans or Hispanic Americans were fed through this system, the result was...well...not only President Trump, but also dozens of states with band new, bright red, freshly "elected" Republican state legislatures.
Okay. This may stink, but in "Cross Check's" multi-state aftermath, not nearly enough parts of the US government remained to function as the historical representative democracy which could do anything about it.
Now, President Trump has appointed Kris Kobach as the Director of the his Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, which is to be chaired by recent hate radio talk show host and Vice President Mike Pence. [What Is Kris Kobach Up To?/POLITICO]
The Presidential Advisory Commission
on Election Integrity
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| "We're not in Kansas anymore." [OZ-YouTube] |
Naturally, the Presidential Advisory Commission's first order of business will be to do something about finding the three million mysteriously illegal, Clinton votes.
However, no matter how obsessed with this vacuous idea the President may be, one of the "steps along the way" required to make Kobach's criminal election scheme either "work" or, at least, "look like it works" will, necessarily, be the creation of a gigantic data pool of all citizens who have ever voted. Kobach has already begun this process by soliciting the voter rolls from individual states.
The data he wants to incorporate into this file would include the name, address, age and party affiliation of each of these voters. Additionally, Kobach thinks that the President should also be able to look up the voting history of every one of the "registered to vote" Americans. [Forty-four states have refused to give certain voter information to Trump commission/CNN]
Now, all of this would be nasty enough, but there is more.
Finally, We Get To the Russians
The commercial US media has completely botched this story.
Americans are still left uncertain about what Trump and the Russians did to them.
There has been a credible narrative about what the Russians had planned to accomplish during the election. The foundation of this version of the tale is based on the fact that Putin absolutely hated Hillary Clinton after Russians protested against him earlier in 2015. The Russian dictator soundly blamed Clinton -- then US Secretary of State -- for "stirring up" his Russian subjects.
In this quite plausible narrative Putin's initial ambition was to seriously damage Clinton as a candidate with the further hope of weakening her as President later. In September or October of 2016 there were no active voices speculating a Trump victory beyond the rancid alt right media.
There is little doubt that the Trump campaign was already connected to the Russian effort at the hip. Since the election White House Trumpkins have been dragged kicking and screaming into "come to Jesus" moments during which they have finally admitted to extensive and repeated contacts with the Kremlin.
The Russian cyber attack breached the voter registration rolls in 39 states. [The following Denver Post article is excerpted. Visit the original article 2017/06/13/Russian-breach_in_39-states-US-elections/DenverPost]
Russian breach of 39 states threatens future U.S. elections
The new details show the scope of alleged hacking
that federal investigators are scrutinizing
In many states, the extent of the Russian infiltration remains unclear. The federal government had no direct authority over state election systems, and some states offered limited cooperation. When then-DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson said last August that the department wanted to declare the systems as national critical infrastructure — a designation that gives the federal government broader powers to intervene — Republicans balked. Only after the election did the two sides eventually reach a deal to make the designation.
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| Were the Russians Trump's and Kobach's own "flying monkeys." [image] |
We all watched this Russian intervention deliver the White House to Trump, but we may have missed the scheme's additional, anti-democracy damage. Just as state after state handed Trump electoral college votes following his election loss, many of these same states were busily "electing" US Congressional and Senate candidates who were "riding the same wave" of patchy Russian propaganda.
However, while the Republican criminals were stealing the election for Trump, something else was also happening to the US election process.
By penetrating the state [and county] voter registration files the Russians were also tabulating a troubling collection of voter data. Yes, there were no direct election crimes such as the electronic interference with voting machines, but with the data collected from the state and county files, the Russians were able to delicately target individual voters in "contested" Congressional Districts as propaganda targets.
In the past propaganda efforts have been massive, targeting large populations. Those conducting these nation-wide propaganda efforts accepted the idea that no matter how persuasive the content might be, it would only be effective on a portion of the population targeted. All this changed in the propaganda efforts leading up to the 2016 election.
The Russians provided the Trump campaign with the voter information needed for this effort, but the Trump campaign -- in collusion with their Russian counter-parts -- provided the incredibly vast data available to them from the analytics companies Trump hired. Most of these data analysis contracts were conducted under the executive management of Jared Kushner.
Further, very little of this election crime was intended to sway particular voters from Clinton to Trump. Instead, the anti-Clinton propaganda was intended to dissuade potential Clinton voters from going to the polls at all.
THIS is how Trump and the Russian finally won the election. Trump's shockingly complete disregard for the importance of rectifying this vulnerability is easily understood.
Trump/Kobach For 2020!
No, MeanMesa isn't kidding.
Although ultimately successful, the Russian efforts were stymied by the fact that US voter data is distributed among so many state and county files. This is why the Russians were only able to penetrate critical voting districts in 44 states.
Thanks to the new data files in the Presidential Advisory Commission for Election Integrity, the Russians shouldn't encounter such "heavy lifting" when they re-install Trump in four years.
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