McCain was referring to an appearance on “Fox News Sunday,” in which Trump said new revelations about Russia’s influence on his behalf are “ridiculous. It’s just another excuse. I don’t believe it. Every week it’s another excuse. We had a massive landslide victory, as you know, in the Electoral College.”
McCain contends that also he’s concerned about Trump’s posture toward Russia and Putin, saying: “Vladimir Putin is a thug and a murderer and a killer and a KGB agent. Let’s call Vladimir Putin for what he is. Does that mean you don’t deal with him or talk to him? Of course you talk to him. But you do it the way that Ronald Reagan did, and that’s from a position of strength.”
While McCain’s position regarding the manner in which Putin should be dealt with may be entirely correct, there’s still an open circumstance which cannot even be addressed yet. And that derives from the fact that Trump hasn’t even taken office yet, nor has he indicated how Putin will be dealt with.
Compounding his irrationality, McCain went on to say that he “hope's” Trump takes the advice of people like his appointee for the Defense Department, retired Gen. James Mattis, on how to deal with Russia. He also raised concern about potential secretary of state, ExxonMobil’s CEO Rex Tillerson, who’d worked closely with Putin since the 1990s on a handful of deals. “It’s a matter of concern to me that he has such a close personal relationship with Vladimir Putin,” McCain said, “And obviously they’ve done enormous deals together and that would color his approach to Vladimir Putin and the Russian threat.”
The point here being that, what McCain’s obviously missed is that unlike, rigid, inside the box, narrow-thinking politicians, Trump’s surrounding himself with a cadre of experts in their individual fields precisely to fill his own personal voids of knowledge and experience. And who better to bring the best intelligence available about Putin and Russia than someone who’s know and dealt with him for 30 years.
Nonetheless, McCain couldn’t let the chance go by to add that, according to him: “The facts are there about Russian behavior and Russian -- not just hacking into the United States 2016 election campaign, but throughout the world.”
So here we have a continuation of the recent theme with which contrarian politicians insist on promoting another illogical theme. Because foreign “hacking” at the levels required to be effective in a national election is almost impossible to accomplish.
In that regard, while surfing for information regarding hacking, an article by Dan Goodin, Security Editor at Ars Technica was found at stechnica.com.
Written on November 7th, less than 24 hours before polls opened for the election, Mr. Goodin wrote a “periodic reminder” about antiquated voting machines that are subject to fraud “should hackers get physical access to them.”
After the warning, farther along in the text, Mr. Goodin explained in detail: “Security experts have been quick to point out that hacking enough votes to alter an election is prohibitively hard to do. As already noted, most hacks require physical access to machines that by law are required to be monitored by election officials. What's more, machines used in US elections are extremely diverse. Taken together, these characteristics probably prevent hacks from scaling to the volumes that would be required to change the outcome of a national election.
“Still, the hacks might be used to alter a relatively small number of results in swing states, where outcomes have been known to be decided by fewer than a few hundred or a few thousand votes.”
Mr. Goodin’s conclusion regarding the small chance of affecting outcomes certainly proved correct, whereas Trump’s lead increased in Wisconsin due to the recount, although the number was minimal, having no real impact at all. And yet, it was Trump, not Stein or Clinton, who was most concerned before the election took place. He long warned of an election system "rigged" against him, going so far as to rebuff calls that he pledge to accept the results should Clinton receive a majority of electoral college votes.
As Trump's opposition of all sorts continues grasping at any and all arising straws, the bright and insightful John Bolton, proposed another alternative.
Cyra Master @thehill.com writes that the former U.N. Ambassador told Fox News’ Eric Shawn on Sunday: ‘“It is not at all clear to me, just viewing this from the outside, that this hacking into the DNC and the RNC was not a false flag operation.”
Pressed about using the phrase “false flag” and whether he was accusing an entity in the U.S. of involvement, Bolton said, “We just don’t know. But I believe that intelligence has been politicized in the Obama administration to a very significant degree.”
Which means that both sides can play the game of casting accusations while creating doubt, and the way things line up at present it looks like McCain and his compatriots better get used to accepting Trump and his chosen subordinates.
One of the many articles regarding the issue was found @yahoo.com/news. A reader, Kyle, commented following that one: “It’s funny how the same people who are pushing this “fake news” story about the Russians hacking our election are the same people who for the past year have been telling us that there is no possible way that the Russians could have hacked Hillary Clinton’s private unprotected email server.”
883 others “liked” Kyle’s comment, which was representative of the vast majority of others who also believe the hacking topic is purely political, pursued by anti-Trump Republican factions and frustrated Clinton supporters.
And then, a friend sent this one yesterday.
What was also quite interesting is a quick look back into recent history relating to a reader’s comment following Dan Goodin’s column above, written the day before the presidential election.
At that time, reader jennysaurusrex wrote: “Meh, this entire election has been a fix since day one...no need to rig the polls. You could literally have run anyone against donald trump and won, which begs the question...
“how were these two duds allowed to get this far in the first place?
“We may have the right to vote, but nowhere are we guaranteed the right to choose from qualified, desirable candidates
...which begs the more important question...
are we then actually living in a free nation?”
54 readers agreed with her analysis, all of them proven unequivocally wrong.
On another aspect of the election as a subject Mallory Shelbourne also @thehill.com, headlined her column yesterday: “Bartiromo knocks view of 'elites' during campaign”
Ms Shelbourne writes that Fox Business "Mornings with Maria" host “Maria Bartiromo slammed the establishment and members of the media Sunday, saying they failed to see the economic issues that mattered to Americans during the presidential campaign.”
On "Cats Roundtable" on 970 AM in New York, Bartiromo said: “Obviously the elites, the establishment, the media, they had no idea what the people wanted and had no idea where the people were in terms of economic issues, in particular jobs. I think it was very much about the working man and woman. And I think there’s a big portion of the population out there who was saying, 'You know that, I’m the forgotten man and woman. I’m the one who has not seen their wages move in 20 years.”
Noting that investors are seeing that “the Trump plan is a growth plan, and the incoming administration’s changes will pass through because of the Republican sweep. She then said: “Businesses are sitting on cash because, before the election, they didn’t know what was around the corner. They were getting just strangled by regulations.”
The article caught the eye because I watch her program every morning and to my knowledge, when Trump won she and every other member of her daily cast were shocked right out of their shoes. It took them several days to digest what had happened, and to my eye it still looks like they still haven’t really a clue as to what’s transpired.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I have no issue with Ms Bartiromo, her show is generally quite informative. However, presenting herself as one who really knew what voters wanted is not only presumptuous on her part, its downright ludicrous.
Then on Friday on Fox News Channel’s “Shepard Smith Reports,” “Fox News Sunday” host Chris Wallace previewed his upcoming Sunday interview with Trump in which he said Trump was acting as if he were already commander-in-chief.
Wallace went on to say, “I heard you on the other side of the break talking about the fact that I’ve been covering presidential transitions since Ronald Reagan in 1980. I have. And this is just as different, in fact we’ll call the program ‘The Trump Way’ because he is doing things differently than any president-elect I can remember. In a sense, he is almost more the president than the president is.”
Wallace went on: “We pay more attention when he speaks about China or what he is going to do about jobs or economic policy and saving jobs, It has more traction than when President Obama says things. So he is not waiting until the takes the oath of office on January 20. He is kind of the commander-in-chief already.”
This guy’s mentioned because, during the entire campaign Wallace downplayed, wrote off or ignored Trump to the extent that I stopped watching the farce he calls a show and haven’t tuned in since. He’s an incredibly arrogant, boring, waste of airtime who apparently has finally woken up to smell the coffee brewing around him.
Professionally, he’s like the guy mentioned here before who paid attention to the sign in the restaurant that said “Watch your Coat.” And while he was watching the garment on the hook, somebody walked by and stole his lunch.
That's it for today folks.
Adios
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