"QAnon doesn't scare me. Trump's acceptance of them and GOP silence scares me. If the GOP does not repudiate them then we must assume they have willingly become the Party of Bigfoot and Putin. History will not be kind to those leading the GOP today."
~ Reader Comment on Washington Post QAnon story
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I have a theory -- not a conspiracy theory, just a theory -- that one of the reasons for current ineffectiveness and fecklessness of Congress is that most members don't move to Washington D.C. when they get elected.
They live wherever they live -- Texas, Nevada, Delaware, Maine, Michigan -- and fly to Washington, stay in a temporary living space, apartment or something, while supposedly conducting the nation's business, and then fly back HOME.
Their "home" is not in Washington and what they do there is not really taken very seriously in their subconscious minds.
When you commute long distances like that, frequently, a gigantic share of your mental, physical, and spiritual energy is taken up with sheer logistics -- go to the transportation, go where you're going, get there, Yah-da-dah-dah-dah-Whatever,
then go back to the transportation, go again, be tired, take a nap, eat something, wait for the time and the miles to pass, pretend to work (put some papers on your lap), blah blah, ("never been so tired in my life, I must be working Really Hard...") and then Get There, to the other place where you live, sleep. Get Ready To Go Again....
No wonder many of them avoid their own constituents.
One way to keep from getting burnt-out in a situation like that, is to simply Stop Paying Any Attention.
You don't have to Pay Attention in Washington. Your party leaders will tell you how to vote....
I mean, this is just a theory. I'm not hanging out with these people. But I do know that if you run for an office and win and get the job, but then refuse to move to where that job is--Washington--then you're really not taking the job seriously, and the only thing that makes this OK, currently, with our American Congress, is that they're all doing it. Like any custom in society, it becomes The Way We Do Things.
Your real life is where your Real House and your Real Family are at. People go to Washington without their spouses and children and dogs and cats... It's like a business trip, or vacation. When you're in Washington it's like, you're there, but not really.
When you fly Home again, that's when things will get Real. Here in the nation's capital, we just toe the party line and wait for it to be over.
This way of doing things may have affected Congress and its ability to work in several ways. Here are two of them:
1. The quality of Congress' work has suffered because no one in Congress really cares about it, on a serious level. And
2. with this type of set-up -- Live At Home And Just Fly In And Out Of Washington -- the office of U.S. representative and senator attracts a different type of person: people now run who think shorter term, and are out for what they can get for themselves, short-term.
This could explain the much more prevalent smug smirking and wild-eyed stares that you see on some of these people in photographs.
------------------------ A possible third result would be this: none of these current members of Congress learns anything new, partly because they haven't time, their time is sucked up with logistics of getting back and forth, and partly because they don't move to Washington and interact in the community with their fellow members of Congress.
They don't learn about the larger world and different points of view and situations; they can coast through several two-year terms in the House or six-year terms in the Senate, holding comfortably to the same world view and stoic prejudices they had when they began, without gaining any new understanding of anything.
If it wasn't so pathetic, it would be laughable.
This is a theory, based on what I observe and hear. Maybe it's wrong -- I'd love to be wrong. But it makes some sense, in theory, that this is why we don't see the statesmen of yesteryear, only the dullards of today, when we look at politicians.
Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio,
Our nation turns its lonely eyes to you,
Woo -- woo -- whoo ...
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Mueller indictment (continued)
[highlights provided for readers who want to skim]
64. The Conspirators used the same funding structure -- and in some cases, the very same pool of funds -- to purchase key accounts, servers, and domains used in their election-related hacking activity.
a. The bitcoin mining operation that funded the registration payment for dcleaks.com also sent newly-minted bitcoin to a bitcoin address controlled by "Daniel Farell," the persona that was used to renew the domain linuxkrnl.net.
The bitcoin mining operation also funded, through the same bitcoin address, the purchase of servers and domains used in the GRU's spearphishing operations, including accounts-qooqle.com and account-gooogle.com.
b. On or about March 14, 2016, using funds in a bitcoin address, the Conspirators purchased a VPN account, which they later used to log into the @Guccifer_2 Twitter account. The remaining funds from that bitcoin address were then used on or about April 28, 2016, to lease a Malaysian server that hosted the dcleaks.com website.
c. The conspirators used a different set of fictitious names (including "Ward DeClaur" and "Mike Long") to send bitcoin to a U.S. company in order to lease a server used to administer X-Tunnel malware implanted on the DCCC and DNC networks. And
to lease two servers used to hack the DNC's cloud network.
Statutory Allegations
65. From at least in or around 2015 through 2016, within the District of Columbia and elsewhere, Defendants VIKTOR BORISOVICH NETYKSHO, BORIS ALEKSEYEVICH ANTONOV, DMITRIY SERGEYEVICH BADIN, IVAN SERGEYEVICH YERMAKOV, ALEKSEY VIKTOROVICH LUKASHEV, SERGEY ALEKSANDROVICH MORGACHEV, NIKOLAY YURYEVICHKOZACHEK, PAVEL VYACHESLAVOVICH YERSHOV, ARTEM ANDREYEVICH MALYSHEV, ALEKSANDR VLADIMIROVICH OSADCHUK, and ALEKSEY ALEKSANDROVICH POTEMKIN, together with others, known and unknown to the Grand Jury, did knowingly and intentionally
conspire to transport, transmit, and transfer monetary instruments and funds to a place in the United States from and through a place outside the United States and from a place in the United States to and through a place outside the United States, with the intent to promote the carrying on of specified unlawful activity,
namely, a violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 1030, contrary to Title 18, United States Code, Section 1956(a)(2)(A).
All in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 1956(h).
COUNT ELEVEN
(Conspiracy to Commit an Offense Against the United States)
66. Paragraphs 1 through 8 of this Indictment are re-alleged and incorporated by reference as if fully set forth herein.
Defendants
67. Paragraph 18 of this Indictment relating to ALEKSANDR VLADIMIROVICH OSADCHUK is re-alleged and incorporated by reference as if fully set forth herein.
68. Defendant ANATOLIY SERGEYEVICH KOVALEV ... was an officer in the Russian military assigned to Unit 74455 who worked in the GRU's 22 Kirova Street building (the Tower).
69. Defendants OSADCHUK and KOVALEV were GRU officers who knowingly and intentionally conspired with each other and with persons, known and unknown to the Grand Jury,
to hack into the computers of U.S. persons and entities responsible for the administration of 2016 U.S. elections, such as state boards of elections, secretaries of state, and U.S. companies that supplied software and other technology related to the administration of U.S. elections.
Object of the Conspiracy
70. The object of the conspiracy was to hack into protected computers of persons and entities charged with the administration of the 2016 U.S. elections in order to access those computers and steal voter data and other information stored on those computers.
Manner and Means of the Conspiracy
71. In or around June 2016, KOVALEV and his co-conspirators
researched domains used by U.S. state boards of elections, secretaries of state, and other election-related entities for website vulnerabilities.
KOVALEV and his co-conspirators also searched for state political party email addresses,
including filtered queries for email addresses listed on state Republican Party websites.
72. In or around July 2016, KOVALEV and his co-conspirators hacked the website of a state board of elections ("SBOE 1") and stole information related to approximately 500,000 voters, including names, addresses, partial social security numbers, dates of birth, and driver's license numbers.
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(TO BE CONTINUED > > > )
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