Monday Open Thread

18 thoughts on “Monday Open Thread”

1. This is just bizarre. Why are Republicans pro-Russia? Not just pro-Russia, they are actively running pro-Russian disinformation campaigns. I'm posting this long because it came from Twitter.

   A major disinformation and Russian propaganda channel called "Donbass Devushka", which published a fake version of "secret Pentagon documents," is hosted by a former U.S. Navy officer who was recently discharged from military service.

   The "Mila Girl from Luhansk," who hosts podcasts with pro-Kremlin propagandists, turned out to be Sarah Bils, a divorced American from New Jersey. She was exposed by members of the "North Atlantic Fella Organization" (#NAFO), an online community that fights Russian propaganda.

   On Twitter, "Donbass Devushka" posted filtered photos of herself and wrote that her name was Mila.

   NAFO collated the photos and other information from one of the podcast videos and found out that her real name is Sarah Bils, but she had recently officially changed it to another, more Russian name. Bils is a former U.S. Navy officer, recently discharged from active duty.

   Bils herself claims she was "kicked out" of the military because of her "leftist views." Former associates have expressed concern about her mental health and have called her a habitual liar. Beals' mother claimed that her daughter often made up stories.

   On social media, "Donbass Devushka" claimed she was traveling between the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don and the Ukrainian city of Luhansk in 2014, but in reality, Bils was suing her ex-husband in Oak Harbor at the time.

   When Russia began a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Bils created several Twitter accounts and added Telegram in April.

   Her Telegram channel publishes more "banned" Twitter content, including memes, fake images, and ultra-violence: such as cheering the killing of a U.S. volunteer who went to Ukraine, videos of dead Ukrainians, and supporting videos of a Ukrainian POW being beheaded by Russian mercenaries from the "Wagner" PMC.

   In January 2023 Jack Teixeira of the Massachusetts National Guard shared hundreds of classified documents on his Discord server. The Bellingcat investigation revealed the distribution of documents from Teixeira's Discord to 4Chan, Telegram and Twitter. Two versions of the key documents were distributed: one showed that Russian losses far exceeded Ukrainian ones, and the other badly edited version showed the opposite. Belligcat claims that the falsified versions were created by the Telegram channel "Donbass Devushka", but Bils denies this claim.

   Fox News host Tucker Carlson used the faked version circulated on "Donbass Devushka's" Telegram channel to claim that Ukraine had a 7-to-1 troop loss ratio and is "losing the war" (video). The faked versions were spread by pro-Kremlin propagandists, and "Donbass Devushka" began supporting the well-known Z-channel. In November 2022, The Bell journalists found out that this channel received money from Yevgeny Prigozhin (head pf the PMC "Wagner") and could be linked to the FSB.

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   1. Nothing bizarre about it. Too many Rs are pro-Russia and pro-Putin because Trump is pro-Russia & Putin. Despite the whinings from the far right wing, the Russian involvement in the 2016 election, in favor of Trump, is clearly documented.

      There are other documented instances that far right Rs would rather forget about. Like Eric Trump shooting off his mouth around 2013 that "we (the Trump Organization) get all the money we need from Russia." As recently as February, 2022, just before Putin's invasion of Ukraine, Trump again referred to Putin as a "genius." Trump really wanted to build that Trump Tower Moscow and perhaps still does.

      What's been a surprise to me is that, nationally, far too many Ds allow the far right to set the national stage and the agenda. They'd be better off imitating the old Alice Cooper song: "No More Mr. Nice Guy."

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      1. This has been a problem of the Democratic Party as long as I have been politically active, which is longer than I care to think about. The GOP decides on a message and stick with it, right or wrong, and regardless of what polls say the public temperature on the topic is (Abortion is a great example of this).

         Dems would rather be right, which is a noble concept. But nobility is only so useful when you loose control of Congress, or worse, the White House. They need to develop one-line-few-words slogans like the GOP does. Some ideas I have floated over the years:

         Abortion: There's no room for the government between a doctor and their patient.

         LGBT rights: Equality, period.

         Run restrictions: Gun safety laws save lives.

         But I don't have the narcissistic gene to be a full-time politician, so I am ignored.

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   2. Another reason is …..money, plain and simple. From the New York Times:

      Russia Secretly Gave $300 Million to Political Parties and Officials Worldwide, U.S. Says

      The Russians pay in cash, cryptocurrency, electronic funds transfers and lavish gifts, the document said. They move the money through a wide range of institutions to shield the origins of the financing, a practice called using cutouts. Those institutions include foundations, think tanks, organized crime groups, political consultancies, shell companies and Russian state-owned enterprises.

      We know that one of George Santos' big donors was a Russian oligarch, for example, who funneled his contributions through a third party. It explains how a third-rate grifter and con man was elevated to serious political influence.

       

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      1. This all makes me sick. And these are the chest thumping, tri fold hat, flag waving folks. Patriots for treason. Putin's days, and/or days in office, are few anyway.

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      2. As was Trumps financing ( easily hidden in real estate transactions) .  Once Italian and Jewish mobs diminished in NYC area Soviet Union collapse enabled Russian mob influence. 

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         1. “enabled Russian mob influence…..” My reading 30 years ago pointed to the Chechen Mafia running things in New York City, a subset of the Russian mob.

            More recently, muckrakers identified loan money, connected to a Russian oligarch, that likely is propping up Trump’s Truth Social social media site.

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      3. "Russia secretly gave $300 million……." Some of that supposedly went to the UK to fund the Brexit crowd.

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   3. Anything they can do to "own teh libz" they will do.

      If Democrats are against it, they're for it.

      If Democrats are for it, they're against it.

      It's fucking stupid.

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      1. You nailed it Chickenheed. It's possibly the most asinine way to behave, but here we are.

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2. Enforce the UCMJ military rules of evidence 505 and DOJ  US code 18 section 798 again filling up Leavenworth. 

    

    

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3. "Marxist Götterdämmerung" – David Brooks at the Atlantic. 

   David Brooks is a privileged idiot, who often writes about the thoughts and feelings of the little people, but this is pretty good:

   "The first great project of the national conservatives is to man the barricades in the culture war," David Brooks reports from the National Conservatism Conference.

   "Over the past few decades there have been various efforts to replace the Reagan Paradigm: the national-greatness conservatism of John McCain; the compassionate conservatism of George W. Bush; the Reformicon conservatism of the D.C. think tanks in the 21st century.

   But the Trumpian onslaught succeeded where these movements have so far fizzled because Trump understood better than they did the coalescence of the new American cultural/corporate elite and the potency of populist anger against it. Thus the display of Ivy League populism I witnessed in Orlando might well represent the alarming future of the American right: the fusing of the culture war and the class war into one epic Marxist Götterdämmerung."

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4. Losers all. 

   "Over the past few decades there have been various efforts to replace the Reagan Paradigm: GROW DOD and while I was fighting in earliest part of Iran/Iraq war delayed releasing hostages for another 6 months via John Connolly. Then sold arms to Iran…… jackass. 

   the national-greatness conservatism of John McCain; DID NOTHING maybe saved ACA with a thumbs down. 

   the compassionate conservatism of George W. Bush; IRAQ ignored Afghanistan. 

    

    

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   1. Republicanism is a marketing & branding exercise.

      Democratinism is a set of programs to help people and manage the economy.

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      1. And it seems like your set of programs gets trumped and trampled very often by the marketing and branding.

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      2. I'd put it slightly differently, Park. Republicans sell "product," Democrats sell "process."

         Most people don't give a rat's ass about how their sausage is made; they want sausage. Now that means they're probably eating rat's ass in that sausage, but as soon as you explain that to them, you're not offering sausage anymore. You're reforming the process of sausage making, and that's a much harder sell.

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         1. I'd say the opposite, Meiner. Democrats sell "product", i.e. Obamacare, Covid Vaccine and testing, the Recovery act, PPP, infrastructure jobs,  public education, cannabis law reform, guarantees that reproductive rights won't disappear, etc. Real concrete help in real people's lives.

            However, it's not enough….we still have poverty, homelessness, etc,    and we aren't very good at selling our "product"….we tend to let others tell the narrative for us, and not to our benefit. 

            Republicans focus on "process"….public education is a necessary evil because kids might find out it's OK to be gay or divergent sexually – or learn history from a point of view other than the victor's. Because OMFG, someone might feel guilty or uncomfortable or have to change their assumptions.

            Meanwhile, gun manufacturers are very skilled at selling "product" because of the perceived vulnerabilities created by Dem "process"…I've seen more new bumper stickers featuring AR15s than the usual cutesy or inspirational slogans and cartoons.

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5. Polsters might have heard the term "constitutional carry," but our state constitution here in Colorado actually says Coloradans don't have a default right to carry concealed weapons. Of course, GOP reps have introduced HCR1003 which would ask voters to strip the words "nothing herein contained shall be construed to justify the practice of carrying concealed weapons" from the state constitution.

   Obviously, this resolution won't pass the legislature so we won't vote on this particular measure this year, but it might be a good idea to get ready for a similar citizen initiative at some point. I'm not a full-on gun hater per se, but really don't want to live in a state with severely relaxed limitations on concealed weapons carry.

   https://leg.colorado.gov/sites/default/files/documents/2023A/bills/2023a_hcr1003_01.pdf

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