What is happening to our country?
The Republicans in the House of Representatives voted to strip funding from election Security.
The GOP House voted this morning, 217-199, to zero out election security funding. Minority Whip Steny Hoyer couldn’t believe it: “Surely we can rise above pandering to party and Putin to act on behalf of our freedom and our security.”
And House Democrats broke into chant of “USA! USA!”
November can’t come soon enough. This is an existential crisis and our democracy is literally at stake.
This isn’t just Trump or Trumpism and we can’t count on “true conservatives” or Never Trumpers to do the right thing. The Republican Party is corrupt to its core. They’d rather be traitors and open the door to Russia’s help than lose their grip on power.
Vote.
VOTE.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Maybe they should have chanted, Kompromat, Kompromat!
This is our showdown with corruption, internal and external, far and wide.
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Under what pretext did the Republicans pass this amendment? Incredible!
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I smell a Pooootin.
Say it everywhere: The Republican Party is corrupt to the core.
Vote! And vote with your money and time every day.
And, call for IMPEACHMENT. Start with him and go down that sleazy list.
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It’s worth saying again:
The sides are incredibly clear. You can either be for the Constitution and the Republic, or you can be for Russia and its proxies: Trump, the Republican party, and the NRA.
Shouldn’t be a difficult choice for most people.
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Yet more evidence that a substantial number of Republicans have been bought off and made compliant via 10s of millions of dollars funneled through the NRA by Russia. Treasonous anti-American sellouts. What has happened to the party of Ronald Reagan and William F. Buckley?
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This is in-your-face TREASON from Trump’s enablers who, just like him, only deny Russian meddling because they’ve actually sought it out and wanted it, in order to gain power and, now, to maintain their power. But I think they are forgetting about the majority popular vote, which Trump lost by nearly 3M, the Independents, all the swing voters, as well as Republican voters whose eyes were opened by Trump’s traitorous behavior with Putin. This will come back to bite him and his treasonous party. The number of voters who regret they voted for Trump are increasing: https://www.inquisitr.com/4991839/trump-regrets-helsinki-vladimir-putin-twitter/
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A voting machine vendor admits it installed remote access software on its voting machines which could make them vulnerable to hacking. It could be nothing, but it could be a gigantic Achilles heel. It is something to consider. https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/mb4ezy/top-voting-machine-vendor-admits-it-installed-remote-access-software-on-systems-sold-to-states
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I also read that and I think it is GIGANTIC.
“The nation’s top voting machine maker has admitted in a letter to a federal lawmaker that the company installed remote-access software on election-management systems it sold over a period of six years, raising questions about the security of those systems and the integrity of elections that were conducted with them.”
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/mb4ezy/top-voting-machine-vendor-admits-it-installed-remote-access-software-on-systems-sold-to-states
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kathyirwin1: I agree with you. A friend of mine went to a tech show in Chicago and it was proven that someone tech savvy could hack into voting machines in 10-15 minutes.
I wonder if this is why, in some states, Trump won. Exit polls didn’t match what was calculated inside. I do not like the thought of not have paper trails to verify how everyone voted.
This is especially dangerous since Putin wants Trump to remain in power.
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Lots of Russians and Romanians are tech savvy.
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What kinds of voting machines are vulnerable? Chicago uses a paper ballot, though each ballot is fed into a machine that reads it.
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Any electronic machine is susceptible to hacking. Changing the vote you cast
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“‘I Really Regret’ Voting for Him: Swing State Trump Supporters Turned Off After His ‘Total BS’ Russia Walk Back: The president’s overtures to our adversary are becoming too much for these voters”
https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/i-really-regret-voting-him-swing-state-trump-supporters-turned-after-his-total-bs
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“‘I don’t like the uncertainty:’ Wisconsin voters split after Trump-Putin summit”
https://edition.cnn.com/2018/07/17/politics/wisconsin-voters-donald-trump-putin-summit/index.html
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Republicans are not good for this country. They are not the same as Democrats.
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Rand Paul blocks Sanders’s Russia resolution, calls it ‘crazy hatred’ against Trump
BY JORDAIN CARNEY – 07/19/18 12:26 PM EDT
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) on Thursday blocked a resolution from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) that backed the intelligence community’s assessment of Russian election interference and demanded President Trump speak with special counsel Robert Mueller.
Sanders asked for unanimous consent to try to pass his resolution, saying senators “must act” if they are “serious about preserving American democracy.”
“The Congress must make it clear that we accept the assessment of our intelligence community with regard to Russian election interfering in our country and in other democracies,” Sanders said during a Senate floor speech.
Under Senate rules, any one senator could block his request.
Sanders’s resolution would also demand already passed sanctions legislation be fully implemented, move to protect the election system and “not accept” interference in Mueller’s investigation, including the firing of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.
But Paul objected to the resolution, saying it was a sign of “Trump derangement syndrome” coming to the Senate. Paul has been one of Trump’s most vocal defenders in Congress in the wake of the president’s sit-down with Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier this week…
http://thehill.com/blogs/floor-action/senate/397879-rand-paul-blocks-sanders-russia-resolution-calls-it-crazy-hatred
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Rand Paul, poster boy for hypocritical libertarian double-speak and gibberish. In the end, Paul is aiding and abetting a vicious demagogue and incompetent POTUS. We need 51 Bernie Sanderses in the Senate, instead we have 51 far right nihilists.
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Looks like we’ll never know what was said between Trump and Putin. I find this to be a huge threat on our democracy. Trump cannot be trusted. He never has said anything bad about Putin. There is something WRONG in this picture.
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Obama, Bush veterans dismiss Trump-Putin interpreter subpoena..The Hill
Former officials from the Obama and George W. Bush administrations are pouring cold water on the idea that President Trump’s interpreter from the summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin should appear before Congress.
While multiple former Obama officials say they understand the desire to talk to one of the only people in the room with Trump and Putin, several argued it would set a dangerous precedent.
“For the same reasons why we need to protect our own diplomats, there is a real concern about having translators be subject to subpoenas,” said David Mortlock, director of international economic affairs at the White House National Security Council (NSC) under Obama.
He acknowledged that there is “legitimate concern about what the president may have promised Vladimir Putin.”
But he said subpoenaing an interpreter is a bridge too far, and would prevent presidents from speaking freely.
“They’re at the center of diplomatic relationships and it raises concerns about whether you can truly have diplomatic communications,” he said.
http://thehill.com/homenews/house/397995-obama-bush-veterans-dismiss-trump-putin-interpreter-subpoena
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This is wild speculation on my part, but I’ll bet that either the interpreters, DT or VP were wired and the proceedings were recorded in secret. Was there any kind of security in the room, secret service and the Russian equivalent?
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I often wonder why someone in our government wouldn’t slip a mic in Trump’s belt or something unbeknownst to him. I wonder a lot of things actually.
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Joe: It’s totally possible that Putin recorded it without Trump’s knowing. It would give hime more to hold over the Orange IDIOT’s head. Just a thought…maybe I’m getting paranoid.
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It’s really difficult, if not impossible, for an interpreter to be able to talk about what exactly was being said. I’ve done a tiny bit of interpreting in American Sign Language, and interpreters are so focused on getting the words (or signs) right that there’s not a ton of time to process or remember what is being said.
I don’t think that having the interpreter testify would get enough detail to really help here.
I’m hoping that the U.S. or the Finns recording the thing. The Russians most likely did.
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Threatened: You may be right. I read that interpreters were having a horrible time interpreting Trump since he doesn’t speak in complete sentences, repeats himself and goes off topic. His English is impossible to understand.
Anyone who translates from Trump’s English to Russian would have his/her hands full trying to figure out what the Ignoramus is saying.
I’m sure that Putin recorded the whole meeting. If Trump said anything that can’t get out, it is just one more thing to hang over tRump’s head.
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As Diane said, VOTE. I would add to vote Democratic since the GOP has gone berserk, off the rails into a far right wing libertarian alternate universe of anti-science and regressive troglodytism on steroids.
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I now tell Democratic candidates I meet that I will vote for them, but if they win, I have pledged to try to make their lives as miserable as possible if they support regressive policies.
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Well, I for one am glad they’re not obsessing over voter security. That means no more voter ID laws, right? Everybody gets to vote. Right? Right.
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We can’t take for granted that all Americans actually want to protect our democracy. Many things have eroded our reverence for democracy: our casual, reflexive bashing of politics and politicians; esteem for corporations, which are dictatorships; the watering down or disappearance of democratic and patriotic catechism in our elementary schools (partly the fault of the America-is-evil crowd); the many opiates of the masses (video games, Netflix, pot, etc.) that makes people tune out and not care…
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Most Americans are ignorant of Russia and the type of tyranny it represents. Thus Trump’s kowtowing to Putin doesn’t worry them. We teachers must educate them. We must go door to door and explain what they should have learned, but didn’t, in school.
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