And the hits just keep on coming

An occasional compendium of disgusting news

Something called the National Intelligence Council declassified a report yesterday called “Foreign Threats to the 2020 U.S. Federal Elections,” which found, to absolutely no one’s surprise, that Russian President Vladimir Putin headed up yet another attempt to get his hand-puppet Donald Trump reelected as president of the United States.  I think the only people who didn’t see that coming were two Republican doomsday preppers who are currently buried in a nuclear bomb-proof bunker somewhere in the mountains of Idaho.  Which won’t reduce by even a scintilla the carping from the right that the “establishment” (whoever that is this week) is foisting yet another “hoax” on an unsuspecting public about their Dear Leader, Donald “I’m still relevant but you just can’t see it because I can’t tweet anymore” Trump.

The intelligence report found that Putin authorized operations “aimed at denigrating President Biden’s candidacy and the Democratic Party, supporting former President Trump, undermining public confidence in the electoral process, and exacerbating sociopolitical divisions in the US.”  The usual suspects were involved:  The Lakhta Internet Research troll farm, which you might recognize by its former moniker, the Internet Research Agency, the very same troll farm tightly connected to Putin which was indicted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller for interfering with the 2016 election on behalf of, you guessed it, Donald J. Trump.  Of course Konstantin Kilimnick, former close associate of Paul Manafort, himself former campaign chairman for Donald Trump, makes a star appearance, this time alongside someone called Andriy Derkach, a Ukrainian legislator, who was used at Putin’s direction to influence an unnamed person “close to former President Trump and his administration” with “influence narratives,” including “misleading or unsubstantiated allegations against President Biden.” For those without a scorecard, that would be Rudolph Giuliani, who appeared on the well-known Trump loon-network OANN with Mr. Derkach peddling nonsense about Biden and Burisma that was spread all over the conspiracy right-wing-o-sphere, including Fox News, InfoWars, and NewsMax.

Trump, of course, has spent the last four years decrying the “hoax” about Russian influence in his 2016 win over Hillary Clinton, despite the findings of the Mueller investigation and his indictments of a dozen Russian GRU agents for hacking Democratic emails and distributing them widely with the help of Trumpazoid Bootlicker Roger Stone.  And I’m sure we’ll be hearing him yapping about the “hoax” being spread by this intelligence report. 

We just won’t be hearing it on Twitter, that’s all.

The other big disgusting piece of news is that well-known right-wing billionaire venture capitalist Peter Thiel has decided to jump back into the arch-conservative political swamp with a $10 million donation to a Super PAC in Ohio that is supporting a potential run for the Senate by the Rhinestone Hillbilly himself, J.D. Vance.  You remember J.D., don’t you?  He is the author of the memoir “Hillbilly Elegy” and recent fan of Donald Trump who has been tweeting wild attacks on “liberals” because they are standing by while his hero is “cancelled” by Twitter and Facebook. Every liberal pundit in the world was eating from his hand back when his book came out because Vance somehow managed to create himself as a representative of the “forgotten” white working class that was destroying itself because it had been written off by the rest of America – most especially including “liberals” -- and was drowning itself in oxycontin and methamphetamine.  Or at least every one of the forgotten white working class was destroying themselves with drugs except for J.D. Vance, who managed to save himself – or so he implied in “Hillbilly Elegy: -- by joining the Marine Corps, going to college and getting a Juris Doctor from Yale Law School.

This is very bad news for the United States Senate, because $10 million is the kind of money that can swing elections in a state like Ohio that is already dominated by Republicans.  Apparently heiress Rebekah Mercer, she of Breitbart fame and impeccable right-wing credentials, has also decided to get behind the Rhinestone Hillbilly J.D. Vance.  Can Steve Bannon be far behind?

I’m telling you, these people are going to be causing us trouble as long as they’re drawing air.  And Putin is going to be right there with them, fiddling with our elections and promoting J.D. Vance’s hero, Donald Trump, and probably J.D. Vance himself.