Mueller indicts 12 more Russians/Indictment refers to an unnamed American co-conspirator

Someone asked about Switzerland?

http://sites.utexas.edu/culturescontexts/2017/02/05/switzerland-pioneer-of-right-wing-populism/

The ascent of a narcissistic autocrat with a white nationalist platform to the presidency of the United States has shocked the world. While the nationalist right played a relatively marginal role in US politics until quite recently, there are other countries with a long history of successful populist politics. Perhaps the best example is Switzerland where nationalist right-wing politics have been practiced successfully for two generations. Their rise has been incremental, gradually normalizing xenophobic and exclusionary discourses.

Click to expand...

Introversion said:

If this goes as badly as I fear it might, I think it behooves everyone to know where the exits are. Get a passport now. If you have another country in mind and they speak another language, learn that language now. Look into that country’s immigration requirements. Have a “bugout bag”, and keep critical papers (birth certificates, passports, etc) and some cash in it.

I understand the opposing view, that we need to stand and fight. But “as bad as I fear” recognizes that no one rang a “it’s too late now” bell during the rise of Nazi Germany. I’m determined that my loved ones aren’t slowly boiled in place if the US goes outright fascist. (I don’t think it’s likely it does go that way, but for the first time in my 58 years, I believe that it could.)

Click to expand...

Right now, the US is considered a safe country of origin, so asylum is not a realistic solution right now (I know I tried and failed to build an asylum colony in France, and lost everything in the attempt). It probably won't be an option until it's too late.

cbenoi1 said:

I don't see citizens with banners walking down main street USA nor shops plastered with "Dump Trump" stickers either.

From here looking South it's business as usual.

-cb

Click to expand...

You know, I have looked around and wondered how it's possible for us all to go to work like life is normal. For us to smile and talk about our weekend plans or what we packed for lunch. Heck, for my family to leave Saturday morning for what promises to be a really amazing and relaxing 2-week vacation. But at the same time...how do we not? I do what I can to resist right now. Honestly, I have to be careful. I work for government, so I'm afraid to do too much. But I do what I can.

I don't want to alter or disrupt my daughter's life unless we have to.

So we go on with our lives and do what we're comfortable doing to resist and pray (or hope) that something will be done to reverse all this, even though the more and more I read, the less and less I think that will ever happen.

RedRajah said:

Someone asked about Switzerland?

http://sites.utexas.edu/culturescontexts/2017/02/05/switzerland-pioneer-of-right-wing-populism/

Click to expand...

Oh. Well. That's depressing. I was hoping we could move there when the shit hits the fan.

Alpha Echo said:

Oh. Well. That's depressing. I was hoping we could move there when the shit hits the fan.

Click to expand...

It does seem to be a widening worldwide phenomenon.

Of course, the US being the US, we couldn't let the UK upstage us, so we followed up the disastrous Brexit vote by breaking a bunch of post-WWII worldwide alliances.

I hope the rest of the world takes us as a warning and wakes up soon.

White House: Trump asked senior aide to invite President Putin to Washington in the fall

In a tweet Thursday, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said discussions were under way.

Sanders said Trump agreed to a “working level” dialogue between the Russian and U.S. staff.


“President Trump asked @AmbJohnBolton to invite President Putin to Washington in the fall and those discussions are already underway,” Sanders tweeted.

Click to expand...

Of course he is.

To hand him the keys?

My first thought. I saw a political cartoon welcoming Putin to the white house, with the American flag as a welcome mat.

Which "people" is the question.

Yeah but Europe and the Western world are not the only places you can make a good life for yourself.

Introversion said:

If this goes as badly as I fear it might, I think it behooves everyone to know where the exits are. Get a passport now. If you have another country in mind and they speak another language, learn that language now. Look into that country’s immigration requirements. Have a “bugout bag”, and keep critical papers (birth certificates, passports, etc) and some cash in it.

I understand the opposing view, that we need to stand and fight. But “as bad as I fear” recognizes that no one rang a “it’s too late now” bell during the rise of Nazi Germany. I’m determined that my loved ones aren’t slowly boiled in place if the US goes outright fascist. (I don’t think it’s likely it does go that way, but for the first time in my 58 years, I believe that it could.)

Click to expand...

I agree. The IRS just recently started revoking passports on citizens who are past due on tax debt. Right now I think the limit is $50,000 and above but I wonder if that will change in the future.

Alpha Echo said:

You know, I have looked around and wondered how it's possible for us all to go to work like life is normal. For us to smile and talk about our weekend plans or what we packed for lunch. Heck, for my family to leave Saturday morning for what promises to be a really amazing and relaxing 2-week vacation. But at the same time...how do we not? I do what I can to resist right now. Honestly, I have to be careful. I work for government, so I'm afraid to do too much. But I do what I can.

Click to expand...

I know what you mean. I go to my little job, day in and day out, and I wonder if everything's going to fall apart, but unless and until that happens... gotta pay the bills. I have to live as if tomorrow will be pretty much like today.

There's a quote from Primo Levi's "Se Questo e un Uomo," recounting the night before he and all the other residents of the ghetto were shipped off to Auschwitz, (they were told they'd be leaving the next day, and they had a good idea what awaited them, even if they didn't know the details):

E venne la notte, e fu una notte tale, che si conobbe che occhi umani non avrebbero dovuto assistervi e sopravvivere. Tutti sentirono questo: nessuno dei guardiani, né italiani né tedeschi, ebbe animo di venire a vedere che cosa fanno gli uomini quando sanno di dover morire. Ognuno si congedò dalla vita nel modo che più gli si addiceva. Alcuni pregarono, altri bevvero oltre misura, altri si inebriarono di nefanda ultima passione. Ma le madri vegliarono a preparare con dolce cura il cibo per il viaggio, e lavarono i bambini, e fecero i bagagli, e all’alba i fili spinati erano pieni di biancheria infantile stesa al vento ad asciugare; e non dimenticarono le fasce, e i giocattoli, e i cuscini, e le cento piccole cose che esse ben sanno, ed i cui i bambini hanno in ogni caso bisogno. Non fareste anche voi altrettanto? Se dovessero uccidervi domani col vostro bambino, voi non gli dareste oggi da mangiare?

Click to expand...

My translation skills aren't the greatest, but it roughly reads:

"And the night came, and it was such a night that you knew human eyes could never witness and survive. Everyone felt this: none of the guards, neither Italian nor German, had the heart to come see what people do when they know they must die. Everyone took his leave of life in the way that most suited him. Some prayed, others drank without measure, others intoxicated themselves with some last, nefarious passion. But the mothers stayed up late to prepare, with sweet care, food for the trip, and washed the children, and packed suitcases, and at dawn the barbed wire was filled with infant's laundry stretched in the wind to dry; and don't forget the swaddling, and the toys, and the pillows, and the hundred little things that they knew well, and which all children need. Wouldn't you do the same? If you had to be killed tomorrow along with your child, would you not feed them today?"

Sometimes all you can do is go along as if things are normal.

lizmonster said:

It does seem to be a widening worldwide phenomenon.

Of course, the US being the US, we couldn't let the UK upstage us, so we followed up the disastrous Brexit vote by breaking a bunch of post-WWII worldwide alliances.

I hope the rest of the world takes us as a warning and wakes up soon.

Click to expand...

My entirely uneducated speculation is that accelerated climate change - specifically, its impact on food and water supplies - will be the ultimate short-circuit to... well, a huge swath of current civilization, and it'll happen sooner than anticipated (because we're all still squabbling and dithering about like we have all the time in the world when we don't, when we may well be past the point of no return. As the Andalite Aximili once said in The Animorphs, planning ahead is not a human virtue.) Further uneducated speculation indicates that something of us may well survive, but nothing like what we have now, and likely nowhere near the numbers...

Lyv said:

My first thought. I saw a political cartoon welcoming Putin to the white house, with the American flag as a welcome mat.

Click to expand...

Goes well with the Constitution TP they're using in the washroom. I hear they're planning a menu of eagleburgers and freedom fries.

MaeZe said:

We just had eight years of Obama and while not perfect, it wasn't scary. This is backlash, and maybe some other perfect storm elements like Russian bots and trolls stirring up discontent.

But the country didn't become fascist overnight. This is just that one step back in the two steps forward, one back sequence.

There will be an incredible voter turnout in Nov. I'm sure of it. You'll feel better then.

Click to expand...

As Fox Mulder said, I want to believe...

Provided our votes aren't already discounted/hacked/short-circuited.

I live in a compromised state. And I'm someone who has a tiny bit of privilege. But I'm already getting questioned when I go to vote.

Kjbartolotta said:

To hand him the keys?

Click to expand...

Putin already owns the keys.

Dan Coats, Trump's own Director of National Intelligence, had no idea Trump had invited Putin to the White House (he doesn't know what was said in the summit either. The moment he found out was caught on video:

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders announced the planned visit in a tweet, saying that national security adviser John Bolton extended the invitation and that “discussions are already underway.”

As the late afternoon tweet landed, Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats was on stage at the Aspen Security Forum in the middle of an interview with NBC’s Andrea Mitchell, who broke the news to him. Coats, clearly surprised, took a deep breath.


“Say that again,” he said. “Did I hear you?”


She repeated the news.


“Okaaaay,” Coats said. “That’s going to be special.”

Click to expand...

I saw that last night too. I am a little under the weather with a summer cold, so decided, like Scarlet O'Hara, that I'd think about it in the morning. I switched Rachel off and went to bed. I used to think "How freaking stupid does he think we are?" Now I can only think "How freaking stupid are WE the people? This morning the news here is all about the farm bailout. This is a touchy subject with my neighbors of the red necks. They hate all aid going to folks with brown and white necks but write the farm welfare off as Necessary for Agriculture to Thrive. They purely hate to hear their subsidies called welfare. This is going to cause ripples in the Sevenlevens. The pastures are full of cattle that aren't getting sold. Wake up Silly Wabbits. You have been scwewed! --s6

shakeysix said:

This is a touchy subject with my neighbors of the red necks. They hate all aid going to folks with brown and white necks but write the farm welfare off as Necessary for Agriculture to Thrive. They purely hate to hear their subsidies called welfare.

Click to expand...

Wasn't there some bonehead executive order lately about cutting down welfare?

-cb

Where do you think they're going to get 12-billion emergency dollars?

The clerk at our local Sevenleven is one of my old students--a very intelligent girl who should have gone on to college but did not have the funds or the discipline. Now she is treading water in a sea of MAGA hats and red necks. We have long, whispered exchanges on the stupid things people who supported Trump are saying. I think there are maybe ten of us non-Trumpers in this whole county. This new Farm bailout is going to be big talk. Even Fox was calling it Farm Welfare, because, I thought anyway, that Republicans are against welfare and bailouts. No one says much to me out loud because I have a reputation for a short fuse. Me? The sweetest of the sweet old lady teachers. --s6

PS--Say a prayer for the cashier. She is trying to get out of the county--no ex, no kids, no elderly parents, no ground to farm, things that hold so many of us here. She has another job interview in KC coming up.

The trick is to get a job but she has to drive 4 hours to interview and then back home again. If she does get a job she has to have $3,000 or so in savings to get an apartment in a big city. The kid is a math brain and should be in college but no one listens to me. I guess because I have a short fuse. This county would shorten anyone's fuse!

Some people have started calling it the Baleout.

This is the place for bales-- all over the place right now. They'll need those bales this winter to feed the cattle they can't sell. --s6

We need to look at how our country is doing in terms of jobs, economy, security, crime rate... If getting better or worst. Days of ethical journalism are gone. So please pay attention to reality and not what media says... Let us love this country and its citizen irrespective of race and religion.