Putin has finally won

FOXNews and Rush et al have been stirring up this sort of crap longer than Putin has been in a position to influence them to do so.

Putin is a problem, and he makes it worse. But he's an opportunist. The roots of this lie within, not without.

That it's a proven fact that a foreign country has been meddling in our countries affairs for the last few years.

Sure, Rush et al have been bloviating for years and years. Rush hasn't been about dividing this country in the same fashion that the Russians successfully pulled off and in just 3 years.

We didn't get here in 3 years.

See:

Thom Hartmann: How the GOP Used a Two Santa Clauses Tactic to Con America for Nearly 40 Years

The only thing wrong with the U.S. economy is the failure of the Republican Party to play Santa Claus.
-Jude Wanniski, March 6, 1976

https://www.alternet.org/right-wing/two-santa-clauses-or-how-gop-conned-america-nearly-40-years

And:

tonight, we'd still have our domestic power struggles and conflicts.

Separation, I think you're missing the enormous battle going on right now in this country for our future direction. What's been plotted and worked toward for 40 years has finally come to a boil.
Kavanaugh's presence on SCOTUS is intended to, over time, help others like him reinterpret the constitution to make this country a more authoritarian state, more in line with what the Hamiltonians intended long ago but failed to achieve. We'd still have elections, although senators would probably be appointed by elites in each state. But control would be vested in wealthy ruling classes, and our government would no longer be a Jeffersonian democracy of, by and for the people.

The Kavanaughs among us have always thought that's a very good and necessary thing, extremely overdue and desperately needed before sovereignty of the people destroys us. You heard his angry and rather hysterical claim that by not seating him America would "reap the wind" for years to come. This is likely in good part where that nonsense is coming from. Those of us who are not authoritarians and don't need the real comfort of having leaders make decisions for them of course disagree.

That's what I think's going on. Liberalism (and to some degree moderate conservatism) on one side, i.e., the Democratic Party, liberal and some mod con political independents, minority and women's interests, businesses, and religions on one side. Right wing religion, laissez faire/libertarian business, extreme wealth, white nationalism all in the mix on the other. And Russia, assisting them temporarily by launching some of its own missile strikes at our democracy, but hardly defining.

COUNTDOWN TO MIDTERMS: 38 days.

Russians or Americans trying to subvert our way of life.

that exports raw commodities for quick profits instead of developing a manufacturing base. It's made up of poor people and run by criminals. It's likely to stay poor for a long time to come also. Their culture has always been intensely authoritarian, communism merely a secular version.

If we were internally united, we'd have joined with other nations long ago to convince his nervous fellow kleptocrats it was in their interests to remove Putin and stay within their national borders. We came close to that at one point in the Obama/Clinton years. Note that Trump has refused to actually impose the additional sanctions congress has passed but has not been able to remove the old ones that were and are causing real pain.

He did a lot through Facebook, but Murdoch fertilized the soil.

But the effects can even be felt here. I see the distrust even here too. If a person with a low post count posts something divisive...are they really just ignorant? Maybe it was worded wrongly? Are they being a troll?

The information bubbles that we surround ourselves with online will eventually revert us further back to tribalism as more and more things become affected by social media and the internet.

The problem that I always have had is that I give everyone the benefit of the doubt. I cant count how many times it has bitten me in the ass and I still havent learned from it.

It's not that we don't share all the political faults of men, but all the ways politics has gone very wrong in this era are stronger in men. Greater involvement by women in public discourse and policy is going to help restore a better balance.

Eventually change will inevitably involve backlash and power struggle, though. There's already great resentment and anxiety at the continued empowerment of women. On the more civil end, we'd better expect lots and lots of articles and panels bemoaning the feminization of America.

Can't wait.

Population -- 51% female, 49% male
House of Representatives should have 222 women
Senate should have 51 women

Actual:
84 in House
23 in Senate

A record number of women will be on the ballots in November. Not enough to reach the ideal, above, though.

do need enough women to be able to get pissy and demanding. Threaten to form their own caucuses.

I noticed the senate judiciary committee's actually at the forefront of senatorial women's rights with 4 out of 21 members women, all Democrats of course. Most committees don't have more than 1 or 2 at most.

They already caucus. We're doomed in November.

See the Executive Summary:
http://cawp.rutgers.edu/sites/default/files/resources/representationmatters.pdf

At the time of our study — the CAWP Study of Women in the 114th Congress—only 20 women served in the Senate and 84 in the House. Although their numbers were small, even more problematic for their influence was their party distribution and institutional position. The presence of women was much more heavily concentrated in the party out of power. Women constituted fewer than 10 percent of all Republican legislators across the two chambers, with six women senators and 22 representatives. Women were much better represented on the other side of the aisle, constituting about one-third of all Democrats, with 14 women senators and 62 representatives.

Yet what we find in our research — based on interviews with 83 of the 108 women who served as Senators, Representatives, and Delegates — is that the women on both sides of the aisle in the 114th Congress very much believe that their presence and their voices mattered, and they provided considerable evidence of achievements despite the overall environment of gridlock and party polarization in which they operated. They shared example after example of working on bipartisan legislation with other members of Congress, both women and men. A majority of the women we interviewed believe that women are more likely than their male counterparts to work across party lines. Large numbers of congresswomen express the belief that women are more consensual and collaborative than their male colleagues, and in interview after interview — in different ways using different words—they explained that women are more results-oriented, more likely to emphasize achievement over ego, and more concerned with achieving policy outcomes rather than receiving publicity or credit. Our interviews revealed that a shared work style, common experiences as women, and personal relationships forged in single-sex spaces within Congress enable women to work together across party lines. Women of color—who constituted a record number of members in the 114th Congress—emphasized the significance of their presence in Congress and the imperative of including the perspectives of women of color and minority communities more generally in the policymaking process.

Women numerous enough to set agendas, not pride themselves on affecting them.

Big-stick wielders, their support group function left behind.

kavanaugh shit has always been there. it's where resistance to civil rights, the monuments, confederate flag, anti gun control etc come from.

It is now being exploited by old school KGB.

publicized in every newspaper and on every cable and TV station, and only 225 white nationalists came?



Charlottesville was not what people imagine. The vast majority of the crowds there that day came out of civic duty to reject. Succeeding rallies have been lucky to draw a couple dozen, and those typically came with the marchers. I live in the deep south, and these people aren't welcome here. KKK chapters in our and a nearby county had to join together a few years ago to scrape together enough members to hold a meeting. Don't even know if that succeeded, haven't heard anything.

Don't let your fears warp your thinking by causing you to only look for and inflate dangers.

From the beginning we have been in the midst of a rejection, a backlash against a genuine white nationalist backlash to too much change, but it's been under-noticed because alarm at and sensationalizing of the surfacing of this evil has focused attention on it. You probably haven't noticed that there has far less of this acting out in 2018 than during its high after the election of Trump.

Never back down from these turds.