Yet Another Major Russia Story Falls Apart. Is Skepticism Permissible Yet? (Greenwald)

 R_P wrote: 
The new "Red Scare". 

Kremlin influence in America: The evidence right under our nose

 aflanigan wrote: 
https://www.vox.com/world/2017/7/31/15959970/donald-trump-authoritarian-children-corruption

 miamizsun wrote: 
Don't hold your breath. The kleptocracy model of civilization (using the term in Jared Diamond's sense, not Wikipedia's)  has sustained itself uninterrupted for centuries, and consistently demonstrated the ability to conquer or eliminate more egalitarian societies/political models.

these sanctions, like all sanctions, just punish the plebeians

silly political posturing at the expense of the vulnerable

seeking a sustainable peaceful solution through political force and violence is like running east looking for a sunset

remind me to act surprised when this buffoonery eventually fails

I was thinking that Russiagate is starting to look like the program to report and promote UFO sightings (to suppress talk about all the strange flying machines then being tested over the western desert) so the opening line of “The Big Fat Compendium Of Russiagate Debunkery” struck a cord:

“Russiagate is like a mirage: from a distance it looks like something, but once you move in for a closer look, there’s nothing there. Nothing. Nothing solid, nothing substantial, nothing you can point at and say, ‘Here it is….'”

If so the question is: What is Russiagate supposed to prevent us from talking about?

This article is an interesting example of crowd-sourced journalism, which is new to me. It seems to be enabled by Twitter.

 sirdroseph wrote: 
 Translated: "I read an article there that I didn't like."

Vox has had some pretty impressive mood swings but they're new. Read everything with a grain of salt, and their mission to report and explain in the same article is fraught with peril, but on the whole, I think most of the things of theirs that I've read have been solid. Some are junk, just like everywhere. 

 miamizsun wrote: 
No one knowledgeable claims that conservatives have a monopoly on ignorance or gullibility.

Does being the minority party increase the incentive to abandon common sense and skepticism regarding digesting propaganda and fake news? We shall see.

 ScottFromWyoming wrote: 





It is surprising for the same reason you and I would be surprised if Fox News "reported" a flattering story about Hillary Clinton, Vox is like Fox for more reasons than the similarity in letters.

 miamizsun wrote:

• Why is it surprising? 
• Of course
• Nothing to "decide." If I decide "no," it's still true. That's the problem with truth.

i'm a bit surprised this is from vox

but is there any truth to this claim?

you decide

Democrats are falling for fake news about Russia

 

President Donald Trump is about to resign as a result of the Russia scandal. Bernie Sanders and Sean Hannity are Russian agents. The Russians have paid off House Oversight Chair Jason Chaffetz to the tune of $10 million, using Trump as a go-between. Paul Ryan is a traitor for refusing to investigate Trump’s Russia ties. Libertarian heroine Ayn Rand was a secret Russian agent charged with discrediting the American conservative movement.

These are all claims you can find made on a new and growing sector of the internet that functions as a fake news bubble for liberals, something I’ve dubbed the Russiasphere. The mirror image of Breitbart and InfoWars on the right, it focuses nearly exclusively on real and imagined connections between Trump and Russia. The tone is breathless: full of unnamed intelligence sources, certainty that Trump will soon be imprisoned, and fever dream factual assertions that no reputable media outlet has managed to confirm.

Twitter is the Russiasphere’s native habitat. Louise Mensch, a former right-wing British parliamentarian and romance novelist, spreads the newest, punchiest, and often most unfounded Russia gossip to her 283,000 followers on Twitter. Mensch is backed up by a handful of allies, including former NSA spook John Schindler (226,000 followers) and DC-area photographer Claude Taylor (159,000 followers).

There’s also a handful of websites, like Palmer Report, that seem devoted nearly exclusively to spreading bizarre assertions like the theory that Ryan and Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell funneled Russian money to Trump — a story that spread widely among the site’s 70,000 Facebook fans.

 R_P wrote: 
I actually saw that handoff from Maddow to O'Donnell live.  I had already heard that notion was being put out on MSNBC.  

Schocked ?  No.  Just seeing it happen by chance was enough to make me groan and look for something else to watch.

pathetic ... Fox does not have a monopoly on that quality. 

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Sees a “Russia Connection” Lurking Around Every Corner

One day after her network joined the rest of corporate media in cheering for President Trump’s missile attack on Syria, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow was back to regular business: seeing Russian collaboration with Trump at work.

It’s “impossible,” fellow anchor Lawrence O’Donnell told Maddow on April 7, to rule out that “Vladimir Putin orchestrated what happened in Syria this week – so that his friend in the White House could have a big night with missiles and all of the praise he’s picked up over the past 24 hours.”

Maddow concurred, suggesting that only the FBI’s ongoing probe into Trump’s alleged collusion with Russian electoral interference will determine the truth. “Maybe eventually we’ll get an answer to that from (FBI Director) Jim Comey,” Maddow said.

The Washington Post noted that the “conspiracy theory” drew “derision from across the political spectrum.” But it was not out of place.

MSNBC, the country’s most prominent liberal media outlet, has played a key role in stoking the frenzy over Trump’s alleged involvement with Russian meddling in the U.S. presidential race — in lock step with the Democratic Party’s most avid partisans. (...)

 R_P wrote: 
unfortunately the political left and right (if that even means anything anymore) have moved to close the horseshoe

what's the difference -because- unhinged zombies

i used to think that they were annoying but harmless

not anymore, they're hell-bent on exacting violence

they want power and they want to punish/extinguish all thought not in alignment with their beliefs

Putin Derangement Syndrome Arrives (Taibbi)
Whatever the truth about Trump and Russia, the speculation surrounding it has become a dangerous case of mass hysteria

 R_P wrote: 
Forced sterilizations!  What a fantastic idea!

The Sleazy Origins of Russia-gate

(...) In other words, there are huge holes in both the evidence and the logic of Schiff’s conspiracy theory. But you wouldn’t know that from watching and reading the fawning commentary about Schiff’s presentation in the mainstream U.S. news media, which has been almost universally hostile to Trump (which is not to say that there aren’t sound reasons to consider the narcissistic, poorly prepared Trump to be unfit to serve as President of the United States).

The journalistic problem is that everyone deserves to get a fair shot from reporters who are supposed to be objective and fair regardless of a person’s popularity or notoriety or what the reporter may personally feel. That standard should apply to everyone, whether you’re a foreign leader despised by the U.S. government or a politician detested for your obnoxious behavior.

There is no professional justification for journalists joining in a TV-and-print lynch mob. We also have seen too often where such wrongheaded attitudes lead, such as to the groupthink that Iraq’s hated dictator Saddam Hussein was hiding WMDs, or in an earlier time to the McCarthyism that destroyed the lives of Americans who were smeared as unpatriotic because of their dissident political views.

So, yes, even Donald Trump deserves not to be railroaded by a mainstream media that wants desperately – along with other powerful forces in Official Washington – to see him run out of town on a rail and will use any pretext to do so, even if it means escalating the risks of a nuclear war with Russia.

And, if mainstream media commentators truly want a thorough and independent investigation, they should be demanding that it start by summoning the people who first made the allegations.