Yeah, vetting is an 'ugly process', when you can't stand any legit scrutiny into your life,

job performance, actions.

I imagine t Rump thinks looking into a mirror is an ugly process, too, and blames the mirror.

We can multitask, Dave. How's Jim Trafficant been doin?

Way back in the '30's, Nat Geo did a bunch of pro-Hitler reporting,

before the mob/intel nazi rat Murdoch ever hit the scene.

Mueller could speed things up a bit by

immediately raiding Cohen's lawyer's lawyer's office.

He's delighted to have such a puppet administration running our country into the ground, agreed.

Delighted to see attacks against our feds and intel, and NATO and all our allies, our economy, military preparedness, infrastructure. Delighted about Syria, Ukraine.

I just saw a little piece of O'Reilly's new pay podcast, where he was whining about the 'attack on whites' politically, how the US is just throwing out whites from elected positions, so minorities can take over politically. Striking that the repug party, the alt right nazis and birchers, and the fake news propagandists all scream and cry about how unfair the world is against them, how they're 'being attacked.'

The MRA's attack women, then scream and cry about how they're being attacked, and everyone should listen to their whines and whinges. The 'surpremacists' attack all Black and Browns, then scream about how their scary dark enemies are attacking 'poor Whitey'. They attack Jews and Moslems, then scream about how christianity is being attacked. Gun nuts rack up a big bodycount, then we hear them whine about how the bad guys (U.S. school kids) are attacking them and trying to take their guns. etc.

They do this all the time, standard operating procedure. Attack and cry that you're being attacked. Having to hear their whining is an attack on our ear drums and mental sensibilities. It's an offense, offensive. The best defense is a good offense, an offense that occurs while you're offensively whining that you 'have to defend yourself.' Those whines are another offense, an obscenely offensive offense.

Krugman dug up Kissinger's Doctoral thesis for the intro of his book The Great Unraveling. The nazi repugs, both the tRump dirtbags and the birchers who took over the mainstream GOP, Ryan, the teabags, etc. are a revolutionary power in their own minds, so is Nigel and Boris, Britain First, Le Pen, Putin. They're all buddies. They want a nazi dictatorship, or a 'caucasian nationalist Stalinist dictatorship'. Prof Paul quoted Henry's writing -- "The distinguishing feature of a revolutionary power is not that it feels threatened ... but that nothing can reassure it."

So they keep making attacks, trying to gain ground in every area they want to put down their 'enemies' and opposition. Then they also keep going on the mainstream media to scream and cry about how they're 'the real victims here'. They've gamed the refs for decades about how unfair the mainstream media is to them, so we get to hear hours of them whining on the mainstream media about how unfair the mainstream media is to their point of view version of reality. While they have an army of OReilly fake media sources backing them up and attacking reality for them all the time. They whine about fake news, on the real news, while calling it fake news.

They want a complete nazi take over, and they can never be reassured no matter how many levers of power they've grabbed, how many attack-political-enemies irons-in-the-fire they have going.

That being the case, it all comes down to do they believe it? In their heads, are they the victims?

Despite their attempt to have a doublethink style reality where both things are true, there is just an either or possibility here. Either they believe it, Poor O'Reilly thinks they're being attacked. Il Douche A thinks he's being attacked. They believe it. So they're really whining.

Or Putin and his nazi buddies know they're lying while they're whining about being attacked, know they're on the attack but feel the need to whine for the record, about how they're being attacked. They're completely self assured but saying they need reassurances. We in the reality based community have to be the adults and reassure the scared child by humming him a bedtime lullaby that sounds like 'make the world go away'. We have to seriously entertain the 'stop hitting yourself' thesis, and say 'there there, it will be all right' while this obnoxious little dead eyed runt sore loser poisoner would be world ruler who's an 8 year old school yard bully in short pants hits us with our own hand and says he's the victim who wants it to stop.

Either they believe it, and they're whining about it, or they don't believe it, and are whining about it. I'd like to just cut to the chase, go bumper sticker mentality on the nazis and putinistas, and just say 'stop whining about it, you whiny little bitch.' (Hard to believe I'd say that after droning on and on for all those paras, but it's true.) When dealing with those jag offs, it's sometimes best to just cut to the chase and not do nuance. Bumper sticker them. That's all they ever do. 'build the wall, lock her up, drain the swamp, maga, fake news'. It's an effective tactic against the tee rump teabags a lot of the time, though I agree that it's important to keep polonium Vlad's actual death squad armed incursion tactics and style in mind.

Sanctions were working, the existing ones are driving Vlad and his buddies into the ground. The new ones will hammer the last nail into Vlad's kleptocrat group's coffin, financially. They won't be able to get their stolen billions out, won't be able to make any financial moves. Less money, less adherents and people who fear them.

The old one, where he got into arms dealing, you mean?

Odd that he was quoted last year as saying that he and Drump would die in prison, then a couple of weeks ago, he was making a lot of appearance on the news shows saying there was no quid pro quo in the Moscow real estate deal he and Drump were working on during the campaign.

And it was annoying to see Flynn appear at a campaign event backing some repuglinazi candidate a couple of weeks ago, too.

"when his agenda might help the district" , ie, when hell freezes over.

This OP made me laugh. Not at your misfortune of having to see that face

over and over again. Just at your expression of outrage at the misfortune.

I mute him all the time. Hate all of his faces, the smug one, the mussolini one, the one where he thinks he's cute, the angry outraged one, the one where he looks imperious and in a mental fog simultaneously, like li'l bush, the one where he closes his eyes and beams like Shkreli.

I really hate the photo carel style of MSNBC shows that I like, where while they're talking about seriously nazi moves dRump is making, they show a loop of various still shots of that asshole.

In fact, once the election results were confirmed, the first thing I thought about was how we were being sentenced to see and hear from this thing, over and over, and hear about him, over and over, all the time, for years.

Way worse than even the Palin situation, because she was safely out of power, and look at how much coverage we got about her while she lost. Knew it was going to be exponentially worse since their new Palin 'won'.

Complete immersion in that sewer, being constantly exposed to him gets his stink all over us.

Having to have years of news that just sounds like 'tRump tRump tRump tRump tRump tRump'. My mind recoiled in horror.



But, like Naomi Klein said, shock wears off.

I never trusted privatized hacker sig intel. It'd be like trusting Erik Prince in a battlefield sit

But I do also think that our far-right old hands in the agencies were and are on the side of the Putin luvin birchers, via electronic hijinks.

They're behind the hacks as much as russkie intel.

I've been saying psy-ops all along.

Bannon is psy ops, bircher jones is psy ops, the National Enquirer is psy ops, the whole alt right is psy ops. All those shitty reality tv shows that dRump comes from are psy ops.

Where there's military intel, there's sig intel. Part of sig intel is bugging, data hacking, communications infrastructure, but part of sig intel is psy ops.