EOMMD

Stranger and stranger.

Post Takes

illegitimate president?

It's about time. I am so tired of the GOP playing hardball with everything and the Democrats just kinda wishy-washy about just about everything. The GOP and SCOTUS stole the election from Al Gore. They stole the election from Hillary Clinton. With such narrow victories, one might think they would extend an olive branch to the Dems, but no, in all cases, they pound the Dems as much as possible. And here comes Obama, extending a hand across the aisle and they did all they could to chop it off.

From the Los Angeles Times.

Was the 2016 election legitimate?

By VIRGINIA HEFFERNAN

We need to talk about a forbidden subject: the legitimacy of the current president.

There’s been a code of silence around President Donald Trump’s shady victory in 2016. It’s one of those tiptoe-around-it things that the American family just doesn’t talk about. And with good reason. Whatever your politics, it’s perilous to question the soundness of an American election.

Raising the question of Trump’s legitimacy risks detonating a full-blown crisis of faith — kindling distrust not just in Trump, but also in the system that installed him.

But fear of facing the legitimacy question has not stopped Americans from harboring profound doubts, if only “deep down in places you don't talk about at parties,” in Aaron Sorkin’s phrasing from “A Few Good Men.”

As more and more facts about Trump’s incongruous victory emerge, the doubts gnaw harder — and grow harder to ignore. A nation devoted to majority rule has a minority president. Who squeaked into office on an electoral college technicality. Against most data projections. Using dark money. Using voter suppression. Using Russian disinformation.

And, most chilling of all, with a massive assist from the Russian military, which not only hacked the Democrats, but also hacked voting software and a voting-system manufacturer. Some people were motivated to vote for Trump because they believed Russian lies about Hillary Clinton’s health or email. But at least they got to cast their votes, and have them counted.

Others, many who planned to vote against Trump, were kept from the ballot entirely. In Wisconsin, as Mother Jones has reported, discriminatory ID laws prevented 45,000 eligible voters from participating in the election, including 23,000 in two heavily Democratic counties. Trump won Wisconsin by 22,000 votes.

The attorney general of Wisconsin, Brad Schimel, even boasted recently that Trump won Wisconsin chiefly because tens of thousands of eligible voters were turned away. We’ve long known that Russian hackers attempted to break into the nation’s voter databases. But NBC reported this year that they succeeded. Senior intelligence officials said that Russia compromised seven states, including California, Florida, Illinois and Texas.

There are other good reasons to ask questions about the election. In Florida, exit polls on election day had Clinton winning by 1.3 % of the vote. When the votes were tallied, Trump beat her by 1.2%.

None of this data is conclusive. But it absolutely does not suggest that American citizens should shut up, forget it, and will away all the evidence that something’s rotten in our electoral system. If it didn’t hurt your candidate this time, next time it might.

When, in 1974, President Gerald Ford pardoned former President Richard Nixon, he sounded noble. He claimed that to put Nixon on trial would cost the nation its newfound “tranquility.” Why rock the boat by bringing Nixon, who’d already been subject to so much “degradation,” to trial?

Why indeed. Ford was arguing for repression, when oh, say, maybe justice might have been the surer route to real tranquility. He was telling the nation what abuser apologists tell victims. Don’t press charges. Think of all your abuser has suffered. It’s classier to move on.

Likewise, for years, Justice Antonin Scalia insisted that Americans must move on from Bush vs. Gore, the highly unusual 2000 Supreme Court decision that gave the presidency to George W. Bush. Scalia would get testy when asked questions, snapping at audiences: “Come on, get over it.”

Bush vs. Gore became the case that must not be named. Don’t interrupt Scalia’s tranquility. Those who kept asking were also called bad sports, still sulking about the election. A protester around the time of the Supreme Court decision mocked those who’d voted the Gore-Lieberman ticket using Gore’s campaign logo. It read: “Sore Loserman.”

Sound familiar? Trump has been desperately trying to get voters to “move on” from the 2016 presidential election and to get special counsel Robert S. Mueller III to “move on” from the Russia investigation.

He’s also shouted into the wind that, against all evidence, the Russia investigation is a plot by sore-loser Democrats. Aw. Hasn’t Trump suffered enough?

No. It’s the American people — of every stripe — who have suffered, seeing our democracy in such devastating disarray. And the remedy for that suffering is not to suck it up, pretend everything’s fine, and let criminals hold on to ill-gotten power and money.

The remedy is to keep speaking up, work for electoral reform to restore free and fair elections, and of course let justice run its course in the form of the investigations into Russian interference and Trumpland complicity.

In the meantime, typesetters, cue up your asterisks. You might need them.

1919 World Series*

2016 presidential election*

Original.

Wilbur Ross

Trump is certainly stirring shit up at a breakneck pace. I had not seen the below On Assignment report by Jonathan Engle from November of last year, and it's still relevant. It prompted a thought. With so much bullshit going on, with all the lying and deception, I wonder if the Russian sanctions we put in place really are adversely affecting the business of Putin's friends. Maybe that is just misdirection, a smokescreen to blind us to what is really going on, whatever the fuck that might be.

Saharan dust

Here in South Texas, we are still being attacked daily by a largely unseen entity. We can barely perceive what is happening, but everything is being coated by a layer of dust. And dirt. And grime. And alien bacteria!! 

Here comes the Saharan Dust

The Sahara Desert, the Caribbean, and Texas may be several thousand miles apart, but a massive cloud of dust connected these places in late June 2018.

On June 18, satellites began to detect thick plumes of Saharan dust passing over Mauritania, Senegal, Gambia, and Guinea-Bissau before moving out over the Atlantic Ocean. For the next ten days, the skies over West Africa and across the tropical Atlantic were stained a distinctive shade of yellow as winds pushed pulse after pulse of Saharan dust to the west. According to one preliminary analysis, this brought the tropical Atlantic one of its dustiest weeks in 15 years.

The map above shows dust crossing the Atlantic on June 28, 2018, as represented by the Goddard Earth Observing System Model, Version 5 (GEOS-5). A simulation from GEOS-5 shows plumes of dust from as far away as Iraq and Saudi Arabia blowing across North Africa in mid-June. However, much of the dust that crossed the Atlantic Ocean appeared to be coming from the Bodele depression, a dried lake bed in northeastern Chad.

GEOS-5 is a global atmospheric model that uses mathematical equations to represent physical processes. Measurements of physical properties like temperature, moisture, and wind speeds and directions are routinely folded into the model to keep the simulation close to observed reality as possible. The millions of calculations involved in such a detailed model require thousands of computer processors.

Several satellites have captured images of the dust crossing the Atlantic. NOAA shared a striking image from GOES-EAST on June 27, 2018. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) sensors on the Terra and Aqua satellites also imaged the dust several times. On June 24, 2018, the MODIS on Aqua acquired the image below, which shows clouds swirling into an eye-catching pattern as winds flowed around the Cape Verde islands. The entire scene is hazy because of the dust.

Normally, hundreds of millions of tons of dust are picked up from the deserts of Africa and blown across the Atlantic Ocean each year. That dust helps build beaches in the Caribbean and fertilizes soils in the Amazon. It affects air quality in North and South America. It likely plays a role in the suppression of hurricanes and the decline of coral reefs as well.

More at The Earth Observatory

John Gartner

David Pakman recently interviewed Dr. John Gartner, the founder of "Duty to Warn" and author of "Rocket Man: Nuclear Madness and the Mind of Donald Trump."

Dog Days

Oy! It has been hot! Even on South Padre Island. Lately there has been very little wind and heat indices have been up in triple digits. Enough already!! I need to go to the mountains!

from the Port Isabel-Padre Island Press

Dog Days of Summer

by Dina Arevalo, Editor

If you’ve been outside during the daytime at all this past week, then you’ll have realized we are well and truly into the dog days of summer. There’s only one word one can use to describe the weather: hot. 

Actually, I can think of a few others: sweltering, scorching, brutal, hellish, relentless, unpleasant and humid. We’ve seen record temperatures all across the Rio Grande Valley, and even here along the coast, where things tend to stay a few degrees cooler thanks to that gulf breeze, heat indices have risen into the triple digits. Even if the mercury says it’s only in the upper 80s or lower 90s in Port Isabel or on South Padre Island, it feels a lot more like 100- 105 degrees. 

Like I said, it’s hot. Very hot. 

Even once the sun goes down, the heat lingers, the air simmering like a wet blanket pulled out of the dryer too soon. 

And making things worse has been the Saharan dust that’s blown across the Atlantic and settled over our skies over the past couple of weeks. I was out at the beach at dawn last week and the dust was so thick, especially along the horizon, that the rising sun was nothing more than a dull yellow-grey disc floating above the waves. Instead of rays of golden light glittering off the wave caps like millions of sparkling sequins, the early morning light was feeble and wan, the waves crashing ashore almost looked brown in the muddy light. 

I’m not sure how much longer this heat will last, but I hope things cool down soon. Meanwhile, it’ll be the dog days of summer — or La Canicula as many folks here in the Valley refer to it — for a couple more weeks yet. 

Most everyone knows that the dog days of summer is that period of time in late summer when the days seem to be the hottest, but what people may not be aware of is that this time period has little to do with man’s best friend. 

According to The Farmer’s Almanac, the dog days weren’t named for our favorite four-legged companions, they were actually named after the stars. It’s during the dog days that the star Sirius and the constellation Canus Major rise above the horizon at the same time as the sun. For the United States, that means that this year’s “dog days” run from about July 3 – Aug. 11. 

Ancient Egyptians noticed that the Nile River’s annual floods tended to take place around this time of year. Meanwhile, the Romans believed that Sirius — rising and setting at the same time as the sun during this time of the year — lent its heat to the sun, which was why the dog days were so hot. 

Even though I know there isn’t a grain of truth to that second theory, it’s easy to see why the Romans thought so. Because, in case I haven’t mentioned it enough times already: it’s hot. 

hookworms!

Have I been living in a cave? I did not know that you could contract hookworms by walking on contaminated soil, such as you may find at the beach or perhaps on a forested trail. Good thing I rarely go barefoot, I guess.

Hookworms burrowed into a teenager's skin during a trip to Florida

The Washington Post

Kelli Mulhollen Dumas said she thought the small, red bumps on her son's skin were bites from chiggers or mosquitoes.

Her son, Michael, had just returned from Florida, and she knew he had spent a lot of time outdoors. But within days, she said, the 17-year-old had several more spots — then “his whole backside” was covered. Ultimately, Dumas said, areas on her son's feet, legs and buttocks were covered in a red, itchy rash — the telltale sign of certain type of hookworm, a parasite that can infect both animals and humans.

Dumas said the doctor confirmed that it was cutaneous larva migrans, a skin condition caused by larvae from animal hookworms, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Dumas, from Memphis, said her son and several others contracted the parasite after visiting Pompano Beach, near Fort Lauderdale, in mid-June during a trip to South Florida.

Hookworms are spread through the feces of animals or humans who have the parasite, and people can get them by simply walking barefoot on sand or soil that has been contaminated, according to the CDC. 

Michael had been buried up to his neck in sand.

A spokeswoman for the Florida Department of Health in Broward County would not confirm the reported cases but said in a statement to The Washington Post that the health department “is currently looking into this inquiry.”

There are two main types of hookworm: human hookworms and animal, or zoonotic, hookworms. Bobbi Pritt, director of the Clinical Parasitology Laboratory in the Mayo Clinic's Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology, said both kinds can be transmitted to people, and it happens in a similar way — animals or humans infected with the parasite defecate into sand or soil and, because their feces carry the parasite's eggs, the ground then becomes contaminated. Once in the ground, Pritt said, the eggs hatch into larvae, or immature hookworms, and when people come into contact with them, they can penetrate the skin.

The results vary based on the type of hookworm. Hookworm is an intestinal parasite, so when human hookworms penetrate a person's skin, they migrate into the bloodstream and take up residence in the gut.

However, animal hookworms cannot adapt to the human body, so the larvae usually never make it into the person's intestines, Pritt said. Instead, Pritt said, the larvae, which are microscopic, roam around in the person's skin — causing those red, squiggly marks — trying, but unable, to mature or to reproduce. Pritt said that eventually the larvae die.

Susan Montgomery, epidemiology team lead of the Parasitic Diseases Branch of the CDC’s Center for Global Health, said that animal hookworm infections in humans are typically treated with medications, such as an anti-parasitic. But even without treatment, Montgomery said, the parasite will die within several weeks. She said people do not usually report feeling larvae move in the skin.

The mother said that her son has also developed a staph infection from the hookworms. He is on medications to treat not only the parasite but also the staph, a bacterial infection that, when not promptly and properly treated, can become life-threatening, according to the Mayo Clinic.

Last week, Dumas posted a warning to other parents — on Facebook:

Michael went to Miami June 20. He was buried in the sand for fun and it has become our nightmare. Four people contracted a parasitic infection, hookworms, from the Pompano Beach. Michael has the worst case, by far. He has taken Clindamyacin, Ivermectin, a steroid dose pack, and Albenza which cost $1356 for 6 pills (yes that is with insurance and yes I had to pay it!). But you can get them for $0.30 per pill in Honduras. Thank you, FDA. We have been to the pediatrician 4 times, to a dermatologist and have a follow up appointment today. He is in pain and this is AWFUL. Never be buried in sand or allow your children to be either! I am only showing a few pictures because it is so disturbing. Please SHARE THIS POST AND WARN OTHERS. The Health Department in Pompano Beach said “Everyone knows to wear shoes on the beach because you can get parasites.” I assured them everyone does NOT KNOW THAT!!

Although some people may not experience symptoms with hookworms, the most common symptoms are itchy skin and rashes, according to the CDC. People with more severe infections may also experience abdominal pain, diarrhea, a decreased appetite and weight loss, among other symptoms.

To avoid potential infection, the CDC recommends “not to walk barefoot in areas where hookworm is common and where there may be human fecal contamination of the soil” or to ingest the soil. Montgomery, with the CDC, said that people should wear shoes on the beach and then sit on a towel. She said it's also important for pet owners to have their dogs and cats regularly dewormed.

Dumas told The Post on Wednesday she wants others to be aware of hookworms because “I don’t want anyone else to go through what my son has been through.”

“I’ll never walk on the beach again without shoes,” she said.

Original.

Cheez-Its-Christ

from the inside out!

advice

This "guide" is supposed to be for people 65 and older. Hell, I'm close enough.

1. It’s time to use the money you saved up. Use it and enjoy it.  Don’t just keep it for those who may have no notion of the sacrifices you made to get it. Remember there is nothing more dangerous than a son or daughter-in-law with big ideas for your hard-earned capital. Warning: This is also a bad time for investments, even if it seems wonderful or fool-proof. They only bring problems and worries. This is a time for you to enjoy some peace and quiet.

 

2. Stop worrying about the financial situation of your children and grandchildren, and don’t feel bad spending your money on yourself. You’ve taken care of them for many years, and you’ve taught them what you could. You gave them an education, food, shelter and support. The responsibility is now theirs to earn their own money.

 

3. Keep a healthy life, without great physical effort. Do moderate exercise (like walking every day), eat well and get your sleep. It’s easy to become sick, and it gets harder to remain healthy. That is why you need to keep yourself in good shape and be aware of your medical and physical needs. Keep in touch with your doctor, do tests even when you’re feeling well. Stay informed.

 

4. Always buy the best, most beautiful items for your significant other. The key goal is to enjoy your money with your partner. One day one of you will miss the other, and the money will not provide any comfort then, enjoy it together.

5. Don’t stress over the little things. You’ve already overcome so much in your life. You have good memories and bad ones, but the important thing is the present. Don’t let the past drag you down and don’t let the future frighten you. Feel good in the now. Small issues will soon be forgotten.

 

6. Regardless of age, always keep love alive. Love your partner, love life, love your family, love your neighbor and remember: “A man is not old as long as he has intelligence and affection.”

 

7. Be proud, both inside and out. Don’t stop going to your hair salon or barber, do your nails, go to the dermatologist and the dentist, keep your perfumes and creams well stocked. When you are well-maintained on the outside, it seeps in, making you feel proud and strong.

 

8. Don’t lose sight of fashion trends for your age, but keep your own sense of style. There’s nothing worse than an older person trying to wear the current fashion among youngsters. You’ve developed your own sense of what looks good on you – keep it and be proud of it. It’s part of who you are.

 

9. ALWAYS stay up-to-date. Read newspapers, watch the news. Go online and read what people are saying. Make sure you have an active email account and try to use some of those social networks. You’ll be surprised what old friends you’ll meet. Keeping in touch with what is going on and with the people you know is important at any age.

 

10. Respect the younger generation and their opinions. They may not have the same ideals as you, but they are the future, and will take the world in their direction. Give advice, not criticism, and try to remind them that yesterday’s wisdom still applies today.

 

11. Never use the phrase: “In my time.” Your time is now. As long as you’re alive, you are part of this time. You may have been younger, but you are still you now, having fun and enjoying life.

 

12. Some people embrace their golden years, while others become bitter and surly. Life is too short to waste your days on the latter. Spend your time with positive, cheerful people, it’ll rub off on you and your days will seem that much better. Spending your time with bitter people will make you older and harder to be around.

 

13. Do not surrender to the temptation of living with your children or grandchildren (if you have a financial choice, that is). Sure, being surrounded by family sounds great, but we all need our privacy. They need theirs and you need yours. If you’ve lost your partner (our deepest condolences), then find a person to move in with you and help out. Even then, do so only if you feel you really need the help or do not want to live alone.

14. Don’t abandon your hobbies. If you don’t have any, make new ones. You can travel, hike, cook, read, dance. You can adopt a cat or a dog, grow a garden, play cards, checkers, chess, dominoes, golf. You can paint, volunteer or just collect certain items. Find something you like and spend some real time having fun with it.

 

15. Even if you don’t feel like it, try to accept invitations. Baptisms, graduations, birthdays, weddings, conferences. Try to go. Get out of the house, meet people you haven’t seen in a while, experience something new (or something old). But don’t get upset when you’re not invited. Some events are limited by resources, and not everyone can be hosted. The important thing is to leave the house from time to time. Go to museums, go walk through a field. Get out there.

16. Be a conversationalist. Talk less and listen more. Some people go on and on about the past, not caring if their listeners are really interested. That’s a great way of reducing their desire to speak with you. Listen first and answer questions, but don’t go off into long stories unless asked to. Speak in courteous tones and try not to complain or criticize too much unless you really need to. Try to accept situations as they are. Everyone is going through the same things, and people have a low tolerance for hearing complaints. Always find some good things to say as well.

 

17. Pain and discomfort go hand in hand with getting older. Try not to dwell on them but accept them as a part of the cycle of life we’re all going through. Try to minimize them in your mind. They are not who you are, they are something that life added to you. If they become your entire focus, you lose sight of the person you used to be.

 

18. If you’ve been offended by someone – forgive them. If you’ve offended someone - apologize. Don’t drag around resentment with you. It only serves to make you sad and bitter. It doesn’t matter who was right. Someone once said: “Holding a grudge is like taking poison and expecting the other person to die.” Don’t take that poison. Forgive, forget and move on with your life.

 

19. If you have a strong belief, savor it. But don’t waste your time trying to convince others. They will make their own choices no matter what you tell them, and it will only bring you frustration. Live your faith and set an example. Live true to your beliefs and let that memory sway them.

 

20. Laugh. Laugh A LOT. Laugh at everything. Remember, you are one of the lucky ones. You managed to have a life, a long one. Many never get to this age, never get to experience a full life. But you did. So what’s not to laugh about? Find the humor in your situation.

 

21. Take no notice of what others say about you and even less notice of what they might be thinking. They’ll do it anyway, and you should have pride in yourself and what you’ve achieved. Let them talk and don’t worry. They have no idea about your history, your memories and the life you’ve lived so far. There’s still much to be written, so get busy writing and don’t waste time thinking about what others might think. Now is the time to be at rest, at peace and as happy as you can be!

Samantha Bee

Another voice yelling into the wilderness. Samantha Bee's Full Frontal on WTBS is an acquired taste.

Frank Zappa

I had never seen this appearance by Frank Zappa on the old and defunct Mike Douglas show. Pretty cool.

GOP Russian asset

Perhaps the GOP is just as compromised by the Russians as Trump seems to be. Sure would be sweet to see some prominent Republicans named in the upcoming Mueller indictments.

The entire Republican Party is becoming a Russian asset

by Paul Waldman

Washington Post

In the past few days, President Trump has given at least some Republicans reason to express displeasure over his relationship with Russia. First he performed a pathetic ritual of subservience before Vladimir Putin, standing beside the Russian leader — after a private meeting between the two, which no aides were permitted to attend — and dismissing the copious evidence of a Russian attack on the 2016 election in deference to Putin’s word.

Then we learned that Putin had suggested that we make Americans available to the Kremlin for questioning, including Michael McFaul, the former U.S. ambassador to Russia, in exchange for allowing us to question some of the agents who carried out the cyberattack. Trump had called it “an incredible offer,” and the White House said he was considering it, before finally backing down after the Senate unanimously passed a resolution condemning the idea.

But look past the modest number of Republicans saying that Trump has gone a bit too far here or there, and you see a very different picture. The truth is that the entire GOP is well on its way to becoming a Russian asset.

Are there a few Republican dissenters? Sure. But perhaps we’re having difficulty viewing that whole picture because what’s happening is so utterly bonkers that we can’t quite bring ourselves to see it clearly. So let’s review just some of the things we know:

• In 2016, the campaign of the Republican nominee for president was approached multiple times by representatives of the Russian government offering to help them win the election. These offers were welcomed with enthusiasm. The campaign was also led for a time by a political consultant with deep financial and personal ties to a Russian oligarch and a Kremlin puppet in Ukraine.
• Multiple members of the Trump team had contacts with the Russian government that they later lied to conceal.
• As part of its attack on the American electoral system, Russian intelligence hacked into Democratic Party systems. Some of the information it found there was released publicly and promoted gleefully by Republicans at all levels in order to help the Trump campaign; information relating to down-ballot campaigns was passed to Republicans, who used it in order to maintain their hold on the House of Representatives.
• Amid the insistence from the intelligence community that in 2018 Russia will likely attempt to once again penetrate the computer systems of state election agencies, Republicans this week killed an effort to provide funding to states to bolster the security of their election systems.
• As part of a lengthy effort to infiltrate the National Rifle Association, an important Republican interest group, an alleged Russian spy began a romance with a Republican activist, met multiple Republican leaders and fostered a relationship between American gun advocates and Russians. On the night of Trump’s victory, she messaged “I am ready for further orders” to her handler, a Russian banker named Alexander Torshin who is close to Putin.
• The NRA dramatically increased its spending on the 2016 presidential campaign from past years, pouring $30 million into their effort to elect Trump. The FBI is investigating whether that money may have illegally come from Russia, funneled to the organization by Torshin.
• The Trump administration has announced a change to IRS rules so that groups like the NRA will no longer have to identify their donors on their tax forms, making such money almost impossible to trace in the future.
• Over the last few years, the Christian right, another key part of the GOP coalition, has grown increasingly close to Putin, whom they see as an ally in a global clash of civilizations between Christianity and Islam.
• In Congress, Republicans have undertaken an aggressive campaign to discredit and, many of them plainly hope, shut down the probe into the Russian attack on America. Though they mounted seven separate investigations of Benghazi, they are nearly united in their position that no further investigation into a hostile foreign power’s attempt to manipulate the American electoral system is necessary.
• Fox News, which functions as the propaganda arm of the Republican Party, has aired relentless attacks on the Russia investigation and calls for it to be shut down.
• Despite the mountain of unambiguous evidence of the Russian attack in 2016, the overwhelming majority of Republican voters continue to say no such attack occurred.
• Hard-core Trump supporters are beginning to argue that even if Russia did attack the American electoral system, it was actually a good thing because it helped Donald Trump get elected.

That last argument has not yet filtered up to more mainstream Republican figures, but give it some time. When Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III closes his investigation and presents all his evidence (and more indictments, surely), no one will really be surprised to hear Republican members of Congress and prominent conservative media figures saying that it all worked out for the best because Hillary Clinton isn’t president, and we should just move on.

The president himself has laid the groundwork for that argument to spread. Not only has he repeatedly cast doubt on whether the attack occurred, he insists that he himself didn’t “collude” with Russia, and no matter what, there’s no proof that the attack changed votes, as though that would somehow make the whole thing okay. And you may recall that when news broke that his son, son-in-law and campaign chairman met with a group of Russians in hopes of getting dirt on Clinton, an outreach that had been presented to them as “part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump,” the president claimed that “I think from a practical standpoint most people would have taken that meeting,” as though working with Russia to defeat his opponent was the most natural thing in the world.

We can speculate on exactly why Trump has been so eager to become Putin’s flunky; it’s obviously a complicated story with roots that go back decades. But what about the rest of the GOP? Some of them have embraced the annexation of their party with gusto, while others are clearly more reluctant. But let’s not forget that they were reluctant to make peace with Trump’s takeover of the GOP, too. Eventually, they realized that since Trump had captured the hearts of the Republican base, they had no choice but to get on board if they wanted to survive.

The same has happened, and will likely continue to happen, with Russia. Had you told them 10 years ago that Russian intelligence was going to mount a comprehensive assault on an American election, they’d say that they would respond to such an attack with a furious rage and leave no stone unturned in learning every detail about it so that any collaborators could be mercilessly punished and no such attack could ever occur again. Today though, they’re mostly eager to get everyone to think about something else.

It may be because they’ve convinced themselves that no tactic is too repugnant, no alliance is too distasteful, and no moral compromise is too loathsome when you’re serving the lofty goal of keeping Democrats from power. Or it may be that they’re terrified that their rabid base will decide that they are insufficiently devoted to the cult of Trump. Whatever the reasons, they’ve traveled a long way down this road already, and it doesn’t look like they’re turning back.

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