Time to face facts: Assange played the left like a fiddle on TPP

[JCanete]

71. I very much agree they could be being blackmailed. Frankly, I'm sure the GOP

congresspeople are used to being blackmailed, at least implicitly. At some point though, if the interests of their actual bosses run up against the interests of Trump, Putin, whoever, shit's going to go one way or the other. The concern is that all those in power are on the same page, and everybody is fine with moving towards totalitarianism, but again, if that's the case, then it is less Putin, and more the state of our own national politics, and our own corporate interests influencing them.

You are right though, and this is a HUGE, not exactly new, but increasingly worse problem...foreign money influencing our elections and policies via "benign" business deals, sometimes even buying public assets out from under us, and apparently infusing money into super-pacs. I'm also wary, though you may take issue with it, of Middle Eastern Billionaires dropping huge chunks of money into cause oriented institutions like the one created by the Clintons. But to your point, again, the all mighty dollar has been put first and country last, and between foreign interests, and our own corporations that may as well be foreign interests at this point, there is too much control (or at least sway) over our politicians by people who have no vested interest in America and its longevity as a free and thriving state.