Mercer-sponsored Cambridge Analytica seems to have been widely employed as a Republican Party analog of Nixon’s plumbers. Their ratfucking appears to have been directed towards producing and maintaining a Republican congressional majority, starting in 2014. Needless to say, CA at least skirted the law: common decency and other social norms on politicking appear to have been written out of their playbook. At the very least, evidence points to their providing foreign managerial personnel for campaigns, in violation of the Federal code. Wylie appears to have a lotta the inside dope.
Following on their responsibility to put party before country, we can doubtless look forward to Wylie’s testimony giving rise to another memo from Nunes and a Justice Department referral from Grass-fed and Graham, or suitable equivalents from the GOP leadership of the relevant commitees.
The possibilities are sickening.
Among other things that is an extremely interesting data point. Yesterday we were dealing in our reasonable, welcoming way with a troll whose account was created in, you guessed it, 2014 and never used until recently. And @squirreltown made the observation that a lot of accounts had been created then and never used.
I’m sure there are an endless variety of little ’ booby traps ’ lying around out there…
The demographic arrows have been pointing in a particular direction for a while …way before 2014 ----
and for a party that pursues power … over all other things …
criminal activity is the only avenue left —
every entity that has faced extinction has not done so willingly …
Yeah Gore said in an interview today I think that democracy was hacked long before 2016 and he didn’t mean 2014.
As an afterthought, the GOP’s public line after the 2012 loss was that they had to do better ‘outreach.’ Apparently, their donors thought that was CA and its full business model.
There’s always a point in movies like the one we’re living through where some general says, “We’re through the looking glass here, people.” We’ve known there was state-sponsored crap like this going on for a while now. But to see it right here, jeeze, it’s like seeing the gremlins jump out of your kitchen drawers and linen cabinets. Too bizarre. And right when we need all hands on deck to deal with this, the captain’s working for the other side. 
Yeah … most of us here have been watching the erosion a long time …
It’s just in the last while though … with those demographic numbers …
that it has picked up to a panic pace ----
It will get worse before they are stamped out entirely … just like a virus —
They’ve been laying the groundwork for 50 years —
As I recall. it was part of the discussion on the progressive internet after Kerry’s loss in 2004. I believe it focussed on Ohio, and in the end nothing came of it. So, I’m not a surprised, but disappointed that nothing could be made of it before suicide-bombing levels of damage were done.
Yeah and for good reason - that was the election where before 9 PM Kerry was ahead and a woman ratwing journalist got a call from Rove who said - don’t say anything about who is winning yet. It’s going to change. And it did, 9 PM CST. Ohio went for Bush and it was all over.
Yeah, I recall it was pretty gut wrenching.
It was - I started crying and cried for the next 4 days.
I wasn’t that upset when Trump won - I was sicker, but not as grieved.
That would be my point.
It has been happening for a long long time.
It’s been a one sided dirty fight ever since kennedy was killed.
If it wasn’t for computers and everything since, we would still be reading local papers and a few politics pages out of the big named papers. Imagine that. lol
The same gop message without the details and with the same intent.
win at any and every cost.
Now all we need is people to pay attention and get to the damn voting booth.
We the People happen to be smart enough to figure it out with all the info available between truth and lies to make an intelligent decision.
I am not talking about congress either. lol
Wasn’t 2012 when the GOP performed its much ballyhooed self-necropsy?
@tena It’s also worth remembering that the man responsible for that “win,” the GOP’s IT guy Mike Connel, mysteriously died in an airplane crash* on his way to testify about the Ohio voter fraud. Also, John Conyers wrote a report about these massive shenanigans.
*I’m guessing weaponized anthrax wasn’t yet available at the time.
Definitely more of a body not-high.
Yeah it was - that is the perfect way to put it.
I never got to crying about Kerry and Ohio. First,I found it infuriatingly outrageous, when that word still meant something. Then, when Kerry let it go, sickening and, ultimately, really disheartening. From here, it sounds like arrested grieving, but I couldn’t see that when I was in it.
Trump’s win was just stunning – I was in shock and horrified.
Horrified is also a good word for it. It was like falling into a black hole.
As much as Iike your comments, and I like them a lot, I may not be able to forgive you for planting this one in my head today. 