(Figure 1: Maskirovka Principles)
Back on October 20th, Thomas Rid reported out an excellent piece of long form journalism on Russian meddling in the US election at Esquire. Rid’s piece specifically focused on kompromat or compromising materials and hacking. Specifically releasing blended real and fabricated materials to achieve one’s strategic goals. Rid’s piece zeros in on the frightening combination of Russian/Russian sponsored hacking and the release of kompromat materials.
What changed over the past year, however—what made the DNC hack feel new and terrifying—was Russia’s seeming determination to combine the two. For the first time, Russia used a hacking operation, one that collected and released massive quantities of stolen information, to meddle in an American presidential election. The inspiration and template for this new attack was a poisonous cocktail of fact and fabrication that the Russians call kompromat, for “compromising material.”
Rid deconstructs and explains what we’ve been observing with the leaked materials from the Podesta gmail, DNC, and DCCC hacks.
CrowdStrike was soon able to reconstruct the hacks and identify the hackers. One of the groups, known to the firm as Cozy Bear, had been rummaging around the DNC since the previous summer. The other, known as Fancy Bear, had broken in not long before Putin’s appearance at the St. Petersburg forum. Surprisingly, given that security researchers had long suspected that both groups were directed by the Russian government, each of the attackers seemed unaware of what the other was doing.
On June 14, less than an hour after The Washington Post reported the breach at the DNC, CrowdStrike posted a report that detailed the methods used by the intruders. The firm also did something unusual: It named the Russian spy agencies it believed responsible for the hack. Fancy Bear, the firm said, worked in a way that suggested affiliation with the GRU. Cozy Bear was linked to the FSB.
But here’s where things get interesting, the folks running this kompromat operation made a mistake, they were sloppy.
Matt Tait, a former GCHQ operator who tweets from the handle @pwnallthethings, was particularly prolific. Hours after the first Guccifer 2.0 dump, on the evening of June 15, Tait found something curious. One of the first leaked files had been modified on a computer using Russian-language settings by a user named “Feliks Dzerzhinsky.” Dzerzhinsky was the founder of the Cheka, the Soviet secret police—a figure whose mythic renown was signaled by a fifteen-ton bronze statue that once stood in front of KGB headquarters. Tait tweeted an image of the document’s metadata settings, which, he suggested, revealed a failure of operational security.
A second mistake had to do with the computer that had been used to control the hacking operation. Researchers found that the malicious software, or malware, used to break into the DNC was controlled by a machine that had been involved in a 2015 hack of the German parliament. German intelligence later traced the Bundestag breach to the Russian GRU, aka Fancy Bear.
There were other errors, too, including a Russian smile emoji—”)))”—and emails to journalists that explicitly associated Guccifer 2.0 with DC Leaks, as the cybersecurity firm ThreatConnect pointed out. But the hackers’ gravest mistake involved the emails they’d used to initiate their attack. As part of a so-called spear-phishing campaign, Fancy Bear had emailed thousands of targets around the world. The emails were designed to trick their victims into clicking a link that would install malware or send them to a fake but familiar-looking login site to harvest their passwords. The malicious links were hidden behind short URLs of the sort often used on Twitter.
Today we have further confirmation of the ongoing kompromat operation. Mark Hosenball at Reuters (h/t: Josh Marshall) is now reporting that US intelligence agencies, including the FBI, are now investigating released hacked emails that show very obvious signs of being tampered with.
The FBI and U.S. intelligence agencies are examining faked documents aimed at discrediting the Hillary Clinton campaign as part of a broader investigation into what U.S. officials believe has been an attempt by Russia to disrupt the presidential election, people with knowledge of the matter said.
U.S. intelligence officials have warned privately that a campaign they believe is backed by the Russian government to undermine the credibility of the U.S. presidential election could move beyond the hacking of Democratic Party email systems. That could include posting fictional evidence of voter fraud or other disinformation in the run-up to voting on Nov. 8, U.S. officials have said.
In fact they include complete fabrications, which is something that experts like Malcolm Nance have argued for weeks that we are seeing.
“We have no way of knowing whether this is real or not unless Hillary Clinton goes through everything they’ve said and comes out and says it cross-correlates and this is true,” said Malcolm Nance, a former U.S. intelligence analyst who has spoken frequently in defense of the Democratic nominee and has made the case that the WikiLeaks releases contain manipulated information.
Hosenball goes on to document the kompromat:
In addition to the Carper letter, the FBI has also reviewed a seven-page electronic document that carries the logos of Democratic pollster Joel Benenson’s firm, the Benenson Strategy Group, and the Clinton Foundation, a person with knowledge of the matter said.
The document, identified as a fake by the Clinton campaign, claims poll ratings had plunged for Clinton and called for “severe strategy changes for November” that could include “staged civil unrest” and “radiological attack” with dirty bombs to disrupt the vote.
Like the Carper letter, it was not immediately clear where the fraudulent document had originated or how it had begun to circulate.
On Oct. 20, Roger Stone, a former Trump aide and Republican operative, linked to a copy of the document on Twitter with the tag, “If this is real: OMG!!”
Benenson’s firm had no immediate comment. Craig Minassian, a spokesman for the Clinton Foundation, said the document was “fake.” He said he did not know if the FBI had examined it.
Stone did not respond to emails requesting comment.
It is unclear how any of this might fit into the ongoing accusations and assertions, including the battling leaks from seemingly different factions within the FBI, about links between Trump, his current or former aides/advisor, and his business’s financial ties to Russia. Regardless of how the Russians are involved, what is clear is that Putin is definitely getting what he wants: making America and democracy look terrible as part of his larger strategic objective to roll back the current global order.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
Looks like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, maybe Trump is Putin’s duck? He keeps telling us he is.
Baud
Clearly fake. Clinton’s plan involves biological weapons.
Did these emails come from wikileaks?
Lit3Bolt
The Republican argument for making common cause with Russia and the KGB: “At least they’re white.”
jl
@Baud: Dammit Baud, if you had got your ass in gear and won the damn nomination, the disruption plan would involve lots of free beer in the vicinity of polling places.
You really let the country down.
SP
Gee, what could have given away the Stone document as a fake? The claim Hillary is down 50, the argument that Bill Mitchell is taken seriously on the Twitters, or the recommendation to skip the smallpox release and instead FAKE AN ALIEN INVASION?
But hey, RCP probably folded that poll result into their model.
Patricia Kayden
@Lit3Bolt: I’m sure that’s how White Supremacists like David Duke feel although I’ve met Russians who were not White.
This meddling by Russia and Assange are unprecedented. It’s as if we’re in the Twilight Zone.
Villago Delenda Est
@Lit3Bolt: Back in the day, the Russians kept insisting they were as white as Brits, French, and Germans, and all should unite against the “Yellow Peril”, but also, too, the saying was “scratch a Russian, find a Tatar.”
Baud
@SP: Nate Silver has already downgraded Clinton’s chances.
piratedan
well as of yet, they still haven’t tripped to the fact that we send subliminal cultural attacks on them via cat videos and mayhap they never will.
Major Major Major Major
What’s surprising to me is that they’re so bad at this. Being sloppy with metadata and URL shorteners here and there I can understand, but their misreading of the electorate, political climate, and media is almost shocking.
jl
@Lit3Bolt: Does seem like the very serious patriotic party tends to find alliances of convenience with foreign governments during presidential elections. The murky doings of some McCain and Dub/Cheney people were involved in the blow-up of the Russia/Ossetia/Georgia border conflict in 2000. And that lead to some convenient saber rattling by McCain, which ended quickly after it was clear the scheme would not work.
Rombot didn’t bother with foreign intrigue, maybe because they convinced themselves the polls showed a big win for them and foreign assistance was not needed.
Baud
@jl: I didn’t realize it at the time, but it’s clear Russian meddling cost me the nomination. Can’t blame them. I look better than Putin on horseback.
Villago Delenda Est
@Baud: Nate is being very, very conservative in the hopes of maintaining his rep, which has taken some hits recently for being too attuned to the Village.
jl
@Baud:
” I didn’t realize it at the time, but it’s clear Russian meddling cost me the nomination. Can’t blame them. I look better than Putin on horseback. ”
WTF? That means you drank up all the free vodka and didn’t share?
Elmo
@Lit3Bolt: You jest, but I have seen posts at FreeRepublic that come very, very close to using those exact words.
Adam L Silverman
@Lit3Bolt: @Patricia Kayden: @Villago Delenda Est: There have been longstanding, at least a decade if not longer, connections between the American extreme right (white supremacists, white nationalists, neo-NAZIs, now the alt-right, etc) with extreme elements in Russia. This has especially manifested as Putinphilia.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Baud:
Mary G
Fuck Putin. We are going to get our woman elected and push Obama to crack down on Comey and the FBI after. Just got an email that Democrats here are getting up at 6 a.m. Saturday to start calling battleground states all weekend or until their voices give out. Keep fighting. GOTV.
All this other stuff, scary as it is, is a shiny object distracting us from our primary purpose. Get a Democratic president and Senate majority elected on Tuesday. Then we can turn to this crap from Putin, the KKK, etc. etc.
Villago Delenda Est
@jl: That shit with Georgia in 2008 demonstrated decisively that McCain is a dilettante when it comes to global strategy. There was no way to include Georgia in NATO because the logistics are damn near impossible, even for the miracle workers who do logistics for the US Military.
jl
@Adam L Silverman:
” Putinphilia.”
Can you say that on a family blog? Sounds dirtier than ‘Pooty-Poot’.
Major Major Major Major
@Villago Delenda Est: as regular readers may have noticed, Silver is basically dead to me after this election if Trump doesn’t win or almost win.
Patricia Kayden
@jl: Yet Republicans love to play up the Red Scare and run their mouths about communism. Funny that.
GrandJury
@Baud: This just shows how bad the Russian Gov’t is at understanding Western Culture. To them that fake email probably sounded believable.
I’m sure they probably have people who are much better at it but those people are probably busy doing more serious spy stuff. They are probably not good with computers either.
I hear Edward Snowden is looking for a job. Would not be surprised if he was already doing stuff for them.
Patricia Kayden
@Mary G: That’s the spirit!! Yes we can! Yes we will. Because we must. Trump will never be my President.
And let’s get a Senate that President Clinton can actually work with.
Adam L Silverman
@Major Major Major Major: Considering that despite the sloppiness they are actually getting results, I’d say they’re better at it than their lack of expertise would seem to indicate. Most Americans have no idea about what I’ve put up top or in the three previous posts. But they do know about all of Clinton’s emails that were hacked (even though they’re actually Podesta’s) and all the terrible stuff in them (even though it runs the gamut from the mundane of how to actually run a professional campaign to the delicious risotto recipe).
Adam L Silverman
Maddow just teased a scoop, for after the break, that’s going to break everywhere else tomorrow and will impact the election after talking about Russian hacks (and Russian aircraft carriers). Don’t touch that dial!
Adam L Silverman
And its Eichenwald, Trump campaign, and Russian hacking.
jl
@Villago Delenda Est: My point was unscrupulous resource to foreign intrigue by GOP. Somebody or group of bodies encouraged Sakashvili to do some irresponsible filibustering. Regardless of differing views about the border conflict there, It ended up a mess. I think one of McCain’s foreign policy advisers was doing some murky ‘consulting’ in Georgia at the time.
Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap
@Adam L Silverman:
Your liberal media !
Major Major Major Major
@Adam L Silverman: sounds like another of Eichenwald’s lead balloons. Not that there isn’t substance, just, well, nobody cares.
ETA: @Adam L Silverman: All that means is that they successfully got “Hillary” and “emails” into the same headline. The content has as you mention been immaterial. Maybe that’s the point, but if so it feels like a wasted opportunity.
Mnemosyne
@Major Major Major Major:
How did they misread the media? They produced sloppy, barely believable shit that should have been discredited immediately, and the media ran with it just like the hackers wanted.
I do think that the Russians misread the electorate, because they didn’t realize that white media pundits and white Republicans are not the majority of the electorate. On the other hand, they seem to have read the Republican electorate just fine.
BethanyAnne
I haven’t really been keep up with the threads around here. So, I don’t know which troll adopted this position, but I’d bet one has: It’s so cute that Americans are finally concerned about other countries messing around in elections now.
Villago Delenda Est
@Patricia Kayden: The thing is, they never quite grasped that the problem with the Soviet Union was that it was Russian Communism, reflecting Russian political culture. These guys have been tyrannical assholes from Ivan Grozny on. The nominal ideology has very little to do with their day to day behavior.
Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap
@Major Major Major Major: Yep, I’m watching now. No sex or Hillary emails, so pffft.
Adam L Silverman
@Major Major Major Major: Unfortunately. It will depend on what he actually reports out.
Peale
So, where can one release this dirty bomb to win the election for Clinton? Just asking for a Friend. I was thinking the Villages in Florida, but my friend thought it was too obvious.
jl
@BethanyAnne:
” It’s so cute that Americans are now concerned about other countries messing around in elections now. ”
Hmm… has there been an ‘Orange Revolution’ yet? Is that color taken?
Villago Delenda Est
@jl: Unscrupulous Rethug foreign intrigue dates back to Tricky Dick sabotaging the Paris Peace Talks and the shitty grade Z movie star playing footsie with the Ayatollahs.
Adam L Silverman
@jl: That was Ukraine.
GrandJury
To all the pantswetters worried about polls. Read this CNN interview with Sam Wang and calm down.
Warning, a video + audio clip will autostart with one of their annoying bobbleheads talking about how tight florida is. So might want to hit the mute button.
hovercraft
@Lit3Bolt:
This is why they need to keep the country white, or rather “Make The Country White Again”
Bill E Pilgrim
@jl: That’s how you say ” I feel ya” in Russian.
JPL
@Adam L Silverman: If it isn’t about sex, no one cares.. By no one, I mean Repubs.
jl
@Villago Delenda Est: Thing is, Russia is up to no good wrt to Ossetia/Georgia border conflict. But, from what I read, Sakashvilli did some stupid shit that caused a little war, conveniently timed to be during an election when some kind of foreign policy dust-up would, by conventional wisdom, favor the GOP, and coincidentally had been a very recent (or current, I forget) client of McCain’s main foreign policy advisers, and McCain was on TV yelling about it almost before the first artillery barrages stopped.
Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap
@JPL: Unless we get the honeypot tape with the underage participants ain’t no big deal.
Adam L Silverman
@JPL: Even then they don’t care unless it involves a Democrat. When was the last Republican to resign or be driven out of office over a sex scandal? Foley? That was it. Hastert stayed in. So did Vitter and Sandford is back.
liberal
LOL
Major Major Major Major
@Mnemosyne: ok, maybe not the media. You know, if all you paid attention to was the MSM i could see how you’d end up thinking white republicans were the vast majority of voters…
jl
@Adam L Silverman: OK, Too bad. Trump needs another tone of spray-on tan and hair dye then. We want our own color revolution, not some second hand one.
Baud
@Tilda Swinton’s Bald Cap: Yep.
Joel
@Adam L Silverman: you should check out Sam Bees piece this week — the one with the trolls. The US right wing is primed for exploitation.
Villago Delenda Est
@jl: Russia is up to no good EVERYWHERE in the former territory of the Empire and the USSR. They want that empire back. The thing with Georgia is it was a lousy place to make a stand, as to actually support Georgia’s foolishness with any military presence is a logistical nightmare.
BethanyAnne
@jl: Just thinking that the news of Russia interfering in American elections probably is a source of great amusement in Chile or Iran.
Mike J
@Villago Delenda Est: They may want their empire back, but they don’t have the cash for a fifth floor walk-up.
Jay S
I’m not sure how or if this squares with the NYC FBI leaking Clinton damaging stuff via a Giuliani-Trump connection. I suppose it might be compartmentalization, but is there a unified conspiracy theory here somewhere?
Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap
@Jay S: Ha, my theory is the Russian hackers are helped the FBI fake emails and then load them on Weiner’s laptop. Just kidding, or am I ?
gogol's wife
@BethanyAnne:
Da, eto ochen’ umnoe zamechanie.
Major Major Major Major
@Jay S: the FBI contains multiple factions ratfucking each other.
different-church-lady
I’m leery of this “bomb dropping tomorrow” thing. It has the same kind of aroma as Assange’s empty threats. Pre-announced bombs tend to fizzle.
Mnemosyne
@BethanyAnne:
Yeah, I doubt those guys would have much sympathy for us. However, the other Western democracies are probably freaking the fuck out right now and checking for hacks, because if Russia is doing this to the US, you know they’ve been doing it to Germany, France, Great Britain, Spain, etc. etc. etc.
Major Major Major Major
@different-church-lady: there’s also been a bomb dropping tomorrow for about 15 yesterdays at this point.
Mnemosyne
@Jay S:
AFAICT (and Adam can correct me), the conspiracy is that the Russians are feeding disguised propaganda to the US right wing, which is grabbing it with both hands without investigating the source and running to the media to get them to cover it. So it’s not (necessarily) that Republicans know they’re spouting Russian propaganda, but that’s still where the stuff they’re saying is coming from.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
this is… interesting
Peale
@Major Major Major Major: yep. I’m Kinda over these “hints” at “scoops”
Millard Filmore
@Lit3Bolt:
And don’t forget they are both against teh gays also too.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: CIA to the rescue!
Peale
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: well, that’s kind of a pick your poison situation. Yay! The CIA might be on our side?
srv
If all this were true, what would Comrade Vlad have to do before Obama acts? The clock is ticking.
dmsilev
@different-church-lady: Tomorrow is really the last day that a pre-planned bomb could usefully drop. Less news coverage over the weekend, and then Monday/Tuesday is really too late to change anybody’s mind. So, we’re almost there.
BethanyAnne
@Mnemosyne:
Mary G
Why do we even need another bomb dropped on Trump? Aren’t the things we know about him enough already?
Omnes Omnibus
@Major Major Major Major: I do not think that many Russians really grasp Democracy. The majority of Russian history has been autocracy. I think a good number have tried, but I am not sure how well it took.
Major Major Major Major
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: spooks vs. executive branch is what emailghazi has always been about, this would surprise me not at all.
GregB
Trump is hoping for a Circus Peanut Revolution with the alley-oop from the Breitbart/FBI/KGB axis.
JeffH
A friend of mine with a much stronger stomach than I have tends to monitor the alt-right nuts and he’s currently laughing over the fact that apparently they’ve decided that Podesta talking about food in the stolen e-mails is actually a code involving child trafficking. Supposedly they are getting incredibly worked up over it.
Omnes Omnibus
@jl: Nixon and Reagan. How could you forget them?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: spy vs spy, and leak vs leak
Peale
@BethanyAnne: as a point of order, we did not interfere with elections. Otherwise we wouldn’t have needed to organize the coups.
EZSmirkzz
Let’s not loose sight of the forest for the trees in all of this. If these stories are true, and to what extent they are or are not is still to be determined, what is glaringly obvious is the political system of the United States is becoming destabilized, whether by capitalist, leftists, rightists, and various and sundry ethnic, religious, and racial interlopers, depending on which periscope one tends to view the world through, and our political, and economic leaders seem to have no awareness of that destabilization, and therefore lack any motivation to address what is becoming the most dangerous threat to the United States since the invasion of 1812. We need not discern motives of any foreign power at this point, only acknowledge the threat thereof.
Given the acrimony of red/blue, conservative/liberal online exchanges, the collapse of the fourth estate, and the continuing decline in American civic educational levels, and frankly a fullness of bread and abundance of idle time, we have reached a state where Russia, of any other hostile state for that matter could and would exploit what we like to refer to as internal affairs, which would be true only if American powers were exclusively exercised within our own borders. It require extremely dedicated men and women to the principles and duties of democracy, in political, economic and public realms to hold republics together, something which this country no longer produces in any measurable quantity which has led us into this state of affairs, and the ensuing chaos will inevitably lead to the destruction of our current political state. We are dooming ourselves to repetition of the rise and fall of other democracies, which perished under the weight of their empires, whether Greek or Roman.
We no longer base our political parties on philosophical principles, but on the wants and desires of an increasingly ill-informed, judgmental population, being lead astray by ever more self-centered power corrupted politicians whose sole political purpose is the retention of their own fiefdoms of dolts and peasants. Having no monsters abroad to conquer, they have invented them here at home, unable or unwilling to grasp and deal with the historical reality of post WW2 America.
If Russia is indeed involved as deeply as is suspected, then they may very well fear the rise of Clinton and the neo-cons to power. If all these things are true then, what leverage they have on Trump will only be applied once he assumes the office of President.
It is time that all of our civil servants remember, no matter what their position, that the final say of guilt or innocence belongs to a jury of American citizens in a trial, and not they themselves, in whatever capacity they serve, at whatever level they occupy. It is not in their purview to destabilize the republic, even though they think themselves the paragons of patriotism.
BethanyAnne
@Peale: Ha, good point.
Major Major Major Major
Jesus, what the fuck is going on at Silver’s place? He has Hillary down to like 2/3.
Adam L Silverman
@Villago Delenda Est: It was also a bad outcome of the Bush 43 Administration building the Coalition of the Willing (Billing) for Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF). The Bush 43 folks, as well as surrogates like Senator McCain, wink winked and nudge nudged the Georgians that if they helped us out it would help get them into NATO. We had the Georgian Battalion, the 33rd, attached to our BCT. When Russia rolled into Georgia we, of course, facilitated them going home. 3 of the 8 KIAs up to that point in our OE since we took over from the previous BCT were Georgians. They kept asking us: “You’re coming? You’re coming to help us too? We came to help you.” Perhaps the only time I’ve ever been embarrassed to be an American.
dmsilev
@EZSmirkzz:
Umm, no. Clinton may have a more hawkish outlook than Obama, but she bears no resemblance to the neocons.
Adam L Silverman
@Jay S: Most likely no.
Jay S
@Major Major Major Major: Yeah, intra-agency rivalry could be one explanation, or inter-agency FBI vrs the world. The Giuliani connection seems to be NYC mostly ex-FBI via The Daily Beast. There have been claims of NYC vrs DC office wars. But there was an assertion that most of the FBI was both anti Clinton and pro Trump.
Seriously, I’m not sure anyone has any real insight into the agency’s psyche. There’s just a bunch of unsourced talk. Much of it contradicting.
dmsilev
@Major Major Major Major: His model this time round has a lot of screwy features, basically he adopted a kitchen-sink approach to adding in correction factors and additional data inputs and stuff. As a result, he’s got seriously too many adjustable parameters (for instance, he adjusts polls based on a ‘trend’ analysis which explicitly amplifies fluctuations). It’s just a mess now.
different-church-lady
@efgoldman:
Pravda.
GregB
Larry Sabato on the noiz saying that one if the untold stories is the mobilized Hispanic vote coming out for Clinton. Says she will win Nevada and NC.
Adam L Silverman
@Mnemosyne: They are. It was in some of the reporting on the hacks. The European leadership is scared to death that if Putin can pull this off in the US, after financing Brexit/UKIP under the table, then what chance do they have for their own internal politics, as well as for maintaining the EU and NATO.
Davis X. Machina
@Lit3Bolt: Allies for the Revolution can be more easily found if we are free to canvass both the state’s present friends. and the state’s present enemies. In promoting the Revolution, and the leading role of the Party as the Vanguard of that Revolution, one must be ruthless in jettisoning, if necessary, any lingering loyalty to the presently-existing historical state. It is doomed to wither away after the Revolution anyways.
The Republicans are the last major Leninist party in the West.
Mnemosyne
@Jay S:
The contradictory talk is what’s making me think it’s an intra-agency war (possibly intra to multiple agencies) that’s spilling out into the public. Everybody has their side that they’re trying to sell and everyone has an agenda.
Major Major Major Major
@dmsilev: I know, I’m just complaining. His model is terrible but my friends keep sharing it on FB so I keep seeing it ?
Adam L Silverman
@Mnemosyne: From what I put up top, yes. I haven’t seen the Eichenwald reporting, so I really don’t know exactly what he’s delineating.
Omnes Omnibus
@Peale: Of course we interfered with elections. We did not do it successfully in the places where we resorted to engineering coups.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Adam L Silverman: Rachel Maddow has a preview, sounds like what she got was a partial preview, don’t know how quickly that stuff gets up on line
Bill E Pilgrim
@efgoldman:
“The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle”
Jay S
@Mnemosyne: @Adam L Silverman: I agree, but it is strange that the Russian email links and the recent Huma email kerfuffle intersect with FBI investigations. Ones that might be at cross purposes.
dr. luba
@Adam L Silverman: All the more reason to continue, if not crank up, the sanctions. The sooner Russia goes bankrupt, the sooner they may have to cut back on meddling abroad.
Omnes Omnibus
@EZSmirkzz:
You are a silly person.
Major Major Major Major
One of my idiot friends just posted two things on FB in a row. One, a meme saying doctors should be judged not by how many patients they put on medicine but by how many patients they take off medicine; and two, wondering why if the Standing Rock protests are happening on Indian land the protestors don’t just get a bunch of guns and shoot anybody who tries to take them away.
Wow, she is insane. Stein voter, by the way.
Peale
@GregB: I do hope it turns out to be true. The mid term elections have also been brutal and insulting to Hispanics with little impact on participation rates. While I always expected Hillary to get A larger share than Romney, we need more voters.
hovercraft
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I am shocked, shocked, surely “Clinton Cash” was not an unimpeachable source of the Clinton’s corrupt dealings. For the DOJ to not accept the findings in this investigative tome, is proof of the DOJ’s bias against Trump and their coddling of Hillary Clinton.
Adam L Silverman
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: This was sort of reported out the other day with the reporting that Comey wanted, and got, the FBI’s name kept off the released assessment over Russian being behind the hacking. I think its also a difference in how each side does counterintelligence. This comes down to personnel is policy. The folks doing the investigation on the Agency side are in the Directorate of Analysis. They are highly educated, very smart folks who’s specialty is doing research and analysis. The FBI investigators are a combination of special agents and professional analysts. The former are Federal cops. The latter are also highly educated, very smart folks who’s specialty is doing research and analysis, but they work for the special agents. So you can kind of see how the dynamic would go.
https://www.cia.gov/offices-of-cia/intelligence-analysis/what-we-do.html
https://www.fbi.gov/services
Mandalay
@dmsilev:
Sam Wang: Clinton Nov. win probability: random drift 97%, Bayesian 99%
Nate Silver:Who will win the presidency? Chance of winning Hillary Clinton 66.5%
So if Trump wins, Sam is obviously more wrong than Nate.
But if Clinton wins, is Sam more obviously right than Nate? If not, why not?
mike in dc
The good thing is that the FBI “bombs” are being defused fairly rapidly. The Clinton Foundation thing is getting shot down hard by follow up reporting, and the stories about the animus of some agents for Clinton basically undermines their whole attack.
I don’t know if there will be a blockbuster dropping tomorrow, but there should be at least some moderately damaging stories about Trump. Fahrenthold is going to wrap up his investigation of the Trump Foundation, there’s the Times story on Trump fudging his income reporting, and the Eichenwald story about the Russians trying to make Trump their Siberian Candidate. Plus there may be something dropped by a Clinton superpac, someone at the Apprentice, and/or a NeverTrumper. Maybe some new women coming forward. Who knows, really? Trump is definitionally a target-rich environment.
Mnemosyne
@Jay S:
In my paranoid moments, I wonder about there being another Robert Hanssen currently inside the FBI, but one who’s a lot better at covering his tracks.
Adam L Silverman
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Pete Williams from NBC has also debunked the investigation into the Clinton Foundation:
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/nbc-news-pete-williams-reports-fbi-really-isnt-conducting-clinton-foundation-investigation/
Baud
@Major Major Major Major: Do you have any normal friends?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Mnemosyne: I don’t think they need a conscious traitor, just an idiot who thinks he’s saving the country from Hitlery.
One of things Wayne Barrett I think pointed out is that the culture of the FBI is very male, very conservative, very Catholic, and looking up Hanssen on Wiki I was reminded that he was a member of Opus Dei
SP
Hypothetically, if the final bomb were the rumored Trump Moscow orgy sex tape- will tanking his campaign have been worth the collective brain damage from seeing such a monstrosity?
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: You’ve talked with M4 before. What do you think?
Joel
@Mandalay: That is correct, actually.
The only way to test confidence is retroactively — if you hedge you should be penalized for that, even if you favored the winning outcome.
aggregating the aggregators:
NYT/Upshot: Clinton 86%
Huffpo/Pollster: Clinton 98%
DKOS/Linzer: Clinton 93%
I’m not sure I’d give 99% on anything, really, but 90+ percent makes a fair amount of sense.
BruceFromOhio
Adam, you are like a contemporary Steve Gilliard. Thank you for your attention to detail, and your writings. This stuff takes time to read, consider, and comprehend, and you share all this in a way that lets others benefit from your perspective.
It is greatly appreciated.
PPCLI
@efgoldman: Yes. Like when there was a widespread delusion across the wingnutosphere in Texas that a large military training exercise was actually a process of preparing for martial law. When it was finally pointed out by trusted military people (i.e 100% Americans) just how insane they were being, they said, “OK, we were wrong. Our soldiers weren’t massing to round us all up and ship us off to camps. But it’s Obama’s fault for acting in such a tyrannical fashion As to make the theory absolutely believable!”
This is not a joke, I heard this on right-wing radio repeatedly.
Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Kind of like SCOTUS then.
Adam L Silverman
@EZSmirkzz: You understand the neo-Cons, despite some hemming and hawing because of Trump, are not Clinton supporters, not Democrats, and are highly unlikely to have much influence, let alone actual positions, in a Clinton 45 Administration.
Omnes Omnibus
@SP: Yes.
Major Major Major Major
@Mandalay: the whole point of a prediction is accuracy. If Hillary wins Sam is the most right of them all since he’s had her at 99% for a while now.
Adam L Silverman
@efgoldman: RT and/or Sputnik News.
Baud
@SP: Yes.
dmsilev
@SP: Look on the bright side. We will have finally, indisputably, reached peak wingnut. Because there’s nothing that could possibly be worse than a Donald Trump underaged-girl sex tape made by Russian Intelligence. I simply refuse to believe that anything worse could exist.
PPCLI
@SP: I’m going to fast forward through the hot Putin-on-Trump sex with my eyes closed….
Omnes Omnibus
@Tilda Swinton’s Bald Cap: No.
@Adam L Silverman: And no.
different-church-lady
@Baud: On Facebook, nobody has any normal friends.
Adam L Silverman
@Davis X. Machina: Without a doubt.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Mandalay: This, despite being in Politico, is a good article. The most interesting part is about how with polls that jump around a lot week to week this is heavily due to one party or the other less enthusiastic about responding to polls, but that doesn’t actually mean anything about what happens when people finally vote.
Internal polling with larger samples shows less volatility.
This seems a good tally of tallies, none of them have her losing and none of them have him getting more than 215.
Major Major Major Major
@Baud: @Omnes Omnibus: I have many normal friends, but why would I complain about them here? I can start giving you updates on their nihilist means and opinions on Beyoncé if you’d like.
divF
@Davis X. Machina: Boy, that brings back memories…
Joel
While we’re on the subject of statistics, I should note that the temperature was 80 degrees here in Western PA this week. I haven’t lived here long enough to comment on how abnormal that is, but it’s pretty abnormal. We’re not going to get a frost for another week, at least.
Poopyman
@srv: Pooty-poot ought to think twice before stepping into an electronically controlled elevator.
Baud
@Major Major Major Major: That’s what passes for normal in your world?
PPCLI
@Major Major Major Major: I hope they don’t evaluate physicians treating type 1 diabetes that way.
hovercraft
@GregB:
John Ralston said earlier that the winner of Nevada should be known after tomorrow when more than 60 % of the state will have voted. He was the first one yesterday when the CNN poll showed Trump up by 5 or 6 to call bullshit. The shitgibbon has mobilized the Latino vote like nothing else we’ve seen. And as the POLITICO article I linked to earlier showed, in Florida he is polling really low among Latinos, beating Hillary by only 7 points with Cuban Americans.
Omnes Omnibus
@Major Major Major Major: I have very few normal friends. Weirdness is what makes them interesting. My point being, I meant no insult.
Jay S
@Mandalay: No,
It’s really about error bars and probabilities. The winner or loser alone doesn’t tell us much since both models allow for either one to win. The variance of the results from each of the states might tell us who had the better model, but my statistics knowledge is fairly basic.
Mandalay
@Joel:
OK, gotcha. But suppose Clinton just scrapes in by a handful of votes. In that scenario wouldn’t you feel in your gut that Nate’s hedging was “more correct” than Sam’s 97% probability? (I’m asking because the issue confuses me.)
bluehill
@Mnemosyne: The Russians seem to understand Americans enough to know which buttons to push. They understand where the fissures are in our country and are using these soft weapons to open them up further aided by a some opportunists/idiots like Roger Stone, Breitbart, etc.
From that perspective it’s a cost-effective strategy. It’s a different form of asymmetrical warfare (although I’ll defer to Adam) like 9/11 in some ways only using disinformation rather than airplanes. I think OBL was hoping that the attack would compel the U.S. to attack Afghanistan, which was highly likely regardless of who was president. I don’t know if he thought that the U.S. would then turn it’s attention on Iraq. I’m guessing that was just a bonus outcome.
For the Russians, I don’t know if they think the odds of Trump winning are that high despite their efforts. That could be their longshot outcome. That or a civil war. I think their more realistic goals are to widen further the divisions among the populace, within the government and between the populace and the government. Basically just to create a lot of infighting so that our attention in focused inwards making it easier for them to do muck around in Europe and the Middle East. Yes, I’ve read too many Clancy novels.
Villago Delenda Est
@Mnemosyne: The Russians know exactly what the wingnuts want to hear, and so they provide it. They know that no vetting or even hesitating will take place, the wingnuts will run with it, because for a change, it’s not coming from a voice inside their head, so it must have some credibility to it.
Adam L Silverman
@Mnemosyne: The FBI is a law enforcement agency that has grown into a domestic security and intelligence one as well. This is, because of the statutes that created it, the actual role of the Department of Homeland Security. The Intel Community, the other 18 agencies (17 within the DOD and the CIA, which is purely civilian), are by charter and statute outward looking focusing on potential foreign threats and other issues within the international realm. So there is a very, very different focus and worldview of what the two different communities do. And of the people that self select and are selected by hiring authorities to work in them.
Major Major Major Major
@Baud: comic book stuff, the onion, yes on light rail… a Steely Danzig mashup is making the rounds!
Omnes Omnibus
@Mandalay: No.
EZSmirkzz
@Omnes Omnibus: Actually I’m an informed person, and that little bit of verbiage is what the left, and some on the right are articulating about Clinton. I suppose you will expand on your comment beyond the “you’re a puppet” mental gymnastics of Trump won’t you?
Adam L Silverman
@Omnes Omnibus: Or in the case of Iran under Mossadegh, sent someone to foment a coup, who wound up hiding in a basement and the coup happened anyway and he then took credit for doing a good job to his superiors.
Baud
@Major Major Major Major: I was just having fun. I gots no friends.
Bill E Pilgrim
Election 2016 – Moose and Squirrel: The Sex Tape.
I’ve given up thinking “Okay, this is now as weird as it could get”. We’re well through the looking glasnost, comrades, hold on to your ushanka. And pour me a pair of stroikas.
Adam L Silverman
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: It’ll go up between midnight EDT and 8 AM EDT. Eichenwald had only this to say about Maddow’s coverage:
divF
@Bill E Pilgrim: I drink mine out of a granyonyi stakan, TYVM.
Jeffro
@GregB:
Can’t say I’m surprised this is an ‘untold’ story, as this would be a) Hispanic voters who are b) for Clinton. If they’re not Trump wackaloons at a rally or air quote “undecided” “voters”, this wasn’t their year to get any press, that’s for sure.
Villago Delenda Est
@SP: If it destroys the lives of his vile spawn out of Ivana, yes.
EZSmirkzz
@Adam L Silverman: Agreed. I thought that a rather minor point in my post.
I should add, I suppose if we wish to discuss Neo-cons we should define the term.
Davis X. Machina
@Adam L Silverman: Right down to the wagon-circling around Trump. Democratic centralism in action.
Major Major Major Major
@Mandalay: winning is a binary choice, and since the point of a prediction is to predict something in advance, the model that zeroed in on the winner confidently and first should be the winning model. If your concern is their more granular accuracy then yes I’d look at the states. I would also discount the last week of the campaign because at that point just averaging polls is going to be your most accurate “model”. There’s no real prediction.
Mandalay
@Bill E Pilgrim:
Interesting and heartwarming, yet Nate has Trump on 243 right now. Go figure.
Bill E Pilgrim
@divF: Ushanka a whole stroika in one go? Danny Wa?
Villago Delenda Est
@Adam L Silverman: We’ve already seen all this “indictments are just around the corner!” crap back in the 90’s from that utter fraud Starr.
Omnes Omnibus
@EZSmirkzz: Informed does not eliminate silly. If you think that HRC is a neocon, you are missing something. Neocon =/= more interventionist than you like.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Adam L Silverman: my summary would be he has details about Russia working to support Trump with the long term goal of destabilizing NATO, and Europeans are very nervous about a potential Trump presidency. One detail: The Russians thought Trump would have to drop out of the race after attacking the Kahns, they briefly stopped feeding stuff, she didn’t say to whom, but I assume Assange et al.
Adam L Silverman
@Peale: Here you go:
and
Omnes Omnibus
@Adam L Silverman: Jeez, yes, that too.
divF
@Bill E Pilgrim: If that’s what you are serving, I can drink anyone under the table.
Joel
@Mandalay: Not really.
A prediction should have a margin and an error. The win probability is derived from both of those numbers.
You can credit someone for having the correct margin — e.g. the vote shares in each state/nationally and some predictors try to do that. That’s a measure of accuracy. But precision matters too, and that’s where the error comes in. Aggregators like Wang attach high confidence (low error) to their predictions. Silver is the opposite. Their margins are probably actually pretty close. It’s hard to know with Silver, exactly, because his model isn’t completely transparent.
Jeffro
@PPCLI:
Now there’s a fun one to take on at the Thanksgiving table with Gramps…
Peale
@Villago Delenda Est: or they don’t, but just are lucky. I mean, if you believe that Hillary would condone releasing radiation to steal an election, that the kingdoms of Morocco and Saudi Arabia and the UAE are our enemies, that 10,000 Syrians were brought in to the country and granted immediate voting rights to swing Idaho to Clinton, that Bill and Hillary kept a 13 year old as a sex slave while he was governor of Arkansas, that The Clintons need money so John Podesta traffics children for them…how hard do you really have to try to pollute the wingosphere..
Major Major Major Major
@Mandalay: Nate has been a huge outlier all year and as has been discussed probably has a really shitty model. I say probably because he won’t release any methodological details, which also happens to be a hallmark of shitty models and shitty modelers, at least in my industry.
Baud
@Adam L Silverman: O’Donnell had someone on a couple of days ago that said Hillary was getting a large share of GOP early votes in Florida. The full survey was supposed to be released and be a bombshell, but I haven’t heard anything about it since.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Mandalay: Hey just throwing out the evidence I see. He’s really good, but just one of many. He deserves attention having gotten it so right before, but well, opinions vary.
God knows I can’t predict what’s going to happen.
Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap
@Baud: Thought I saw that at DKos.
Mandalay
@Joel: OK. Thanks.
Poopyman
@dmsilev:
Well, there’s clown porn. Oh wait! That is clown porn.
Baud
@Tilda Swinton’s Bald Cap: I don’t go there.
Omnes Omnibus
@Poopyman: Eek!
Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap
@Baud: Cool.
Peale
@Poopyman: it wouldn’t be too bad. They’d scramble the bodies and faces of the girls to protect them, and us from watching underaged sex acts, so all we’d really see is…oh. No.
redshirt
What crazy times! Too bad Russia didn’t think of this strategy 150 years ago. If they had gotten involved in the hot Civil War (as opposed to this Cold one), they might have made a real difference.
This time they are just helping America purge itself of the GOP. Through very dangerous means.
Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap
@Peale: In theory anyone possessing or seeing that could be in deep shit. So I guess it gets turned over to the FBI, oh shit …..
Adam L Silverman
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: this goes to the personnel is policy issue. There are basically four cohorts of employees at the FBI. The political appointees running things at the top (Director for instance). Then three groups of civil servants: special agents, analysts, and professional staff (office administrators, things like that). Of these the special agents are what Barrett was referring to. And here there is both a self selection bias and then an internal selection bias. Self selection in terms of who decides to apply to become a special agent. Internal selection in terms of who the hiring committees determine is the make, model, and type that they want and then over the course of a career in terms of promotion. So if the folks at the top of this cohort of FBI personnel are predominantly white, male, Catholic, and conservative they will tend to select recruits and other special agents for promotion who fit the same make, model, and type. We see this in the military as well on the promotion boards there.
Major Major Major Major
@redshirt: this being balloon juice I’m sure somebody will correct you with a link to some time Russia interfered in the civil war any second.
mike in dc
@Adam L Silverman:
So, basically, the seeds of Trump’s defeat were laid…during his announcement of his candidacy.
PPCLI
Thanks, Adam, this was really a terrific post. Quality information, backed up by interesting documentation, I learned new things on almost every line.
pseudonymous in nc
The story about prepping for “cyberattack Tuesday” isn’t a surprise.
Everyone’s assuming DDOSes, but I’m more concerned about a torrent of shitposting either about Hillary or about supposed voter fraud or saying that polling places are closed or… you know the stuff. I’m also worried about the equivalent of SWATting at polling places.
Kay
I would just like to congratulate the IRS for not leaking Trump’s tax returns, although Republicans have been attacking the people who work there for the last 8 years on totally made-up grounds.
Glad SOME people are professionals and not prone to petty, vindictive tantrums.
redshirt
@Major Major Major Major: Hope so! That would be a cool historical fact I never learned. I’m always open to new knowledge.
Baud
@Kay: Ha!
Joel
@Adam L Silverman: When you say, “make, model…” it makes me think of a day when law enforcement (for better or worse) is automated. I actually think that will happen, but not in our lifetimes.
Mnemosyne
@bluehill:
Well, this is where my crazy cockeyed optimism as an American peeks out: I think that the US is decades ahead of Western Europe when it comes to dealing with multicultural issues, so if the Russians think it will be as easy to divide us along ethnic/racial lines as it has been in places like Scandinavia where they’re essentially confronting the issue for the first time, they’ve badly miscalculated.
There will not be a civil war in the US if Trump is not elected. Nah. Ga. Happen. There just aren’t that many angry white people who are also young enough and disaffected enough to form some kind of guerrilla movement. We all saw how fast the Malheur occupation broke down into chaos. How are those guys going to pull off some kind of nationwide civil war?
Adam L Silverman
@BruceFromOhio: Thanks and you’re quite welcome.
divF
@Adam L Silverman: Hasn’t the military done a better job than the FBI at diversity, i.e. promoting POC, and more recently women?
Adam L Silverman
@PPCLI: Never forget!!!
https://scontent.cdninstagram.com/hphotos-xpf1/t51.2885-15/e15/11205707_662559587178807_1446061182_n.jpg
Miss Bianca
@Baud: Jesus. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry at the combination of sheer malice of intent and sheer klutziness of execution. “Dirty bombs”? FFS.
But, you know, it would *politicize* things to release any details of Trump’s dealings with these fuckers. Talk about dirty bombs…
Alain the site fixer
@Adam L Silverman: is that Kermit Roosevelt?
Omnes Omnibus
@divF: Yes.
Lizzy L
From Fox:
The Russian propagandists are smiling…
Peale
@Kay: yep. I was thinking about that the other day. This FBI crap is not normal and we shouldn’t pretend that it is.
dmsilev
@Peale:
But at least the fact-checkers would finally be able to weigh in on that claim Trump made back during that primary debate about the size of his pen!s.
Adam L Silverman
@Joel: I lived in Carlisle for four years and the Philadelphia suburbs for one. That’s unusual.
PPCLI
@Major Major Major Major: Well, they had a longer game in mind. They took advantage of the post-civil war chaos to sell Alaska to the U.S. in 1867, already beginning the preparations for the emergence of Sarah Palin.
mike in dc
@Lizzy L:
How many blondes work at RT?
Baud
@PPCLI: Bastards!
dmsilev
@Miss Bianca: There was also the faked polling memo showing Trump ahead 77-19 or something like that. I think it’s like the Nigerian Prince scam emails: supposedly, they’re deliberately non-grammatical and obvious so that the scammers don’t waste their time on people likely to see through the scam, but instead filter for the seriously credulous.
Davis X. Machina
@Mnemosyne:
It won’t happen immediately. Political, and then economic stasis for a few years, followed by local and particularlist attempts to circumvent it, with that then degenerate into Freikorps-esque actors. Committees of public safety, local militias, etc.
That’s how the American revolution went…. there was no Bastille.
Adam L Silverman
@bluehill: Its a form of asymmetric/unconventional warfare. Its basically a type of Psychological Operations.
Villago Delenda Est
@JeffH: It’s always projection with these assholes. Always.
Kay
@Baud:
Complete and utter bullshit – they smeared those people for 8 years- and yet not one of them leaked douchebag’s tax returns although everyone in the world wants them and they could easily do it.
They’re extremely poor judges of character, conservatives.
hovercraft
@Baud:
From TargetSmart and William & Mary College Here is the document. Several people who are familiar with Florida politics dismissed it, and since it didn’t fit the horserace narrative the media ignored it. You know if it had said Clinton was losing a bunch of democrats and the experts dismissed it, it would still have led every broadcast.
Villago Delenda Est
@Davis X. Machina: The American Revolution was not against a central state; it was against a colonial power by 13 separate political entities. The Brits signed 13 peace treaties with 13 colonies. The Brits still view it as a civil war they lost.
Adam L Silverman
@EZSmirkzz: No worries, I saw your other replies and understand better what you were trying to say.
Major Major Major Major
@pseudonymous in nc: certainly possible, but I recall from the prior two elections I was worried about similar things and they didn’t happen. At any rate, GOTV! Gotta make the final tally unhackable!
Baud
@Kay: but that would be scandalous!
@hovercraft: I’m a little skeptical too, but you are right about the double standard.
Adam L Silverman
@Villago Delenda Est: Yep, they always air reruns the week of the World Series.
Timurid
@Mandalay:
The only way Silver gets vindicated in this scenario is… the hard way.
Wang will owe him many bottle caps, if Nate can somehow make it past all the Deathclaws in the Princeton Wastes and collect in person…
Miss Bianca
@Adam L Silverman:
Knowing your opinion of Frau Doktor Maddow, I’m going to take this as an indication that I should keep breathing, over here.
Adam L Silverman
@Omnes Omnibus: About what you’d expect from a guy named Kermit.
FlipYrWhig
@Jay S: How about this? The FBI team working on Trump and the Russians keeps getting warmer and warmer, but the FBI team working on random Hillary Clinton crapola keeps coming up dry, so the second group thinks, Fuck this, this isn’t fair, we all know she’s dirty anyway, let’s take her out while we still have a chance.
Jeffro
@Davis X. Machina:(re: an American Civil War 2)
meanwhile, Paul Waldman sums up the ACW 2 pre-game show quite nicely and by “nicely” I mean concisely and with just the right amount of chills down the spine…
redshirt
Why can’t we have the last debate tonight? The Thursday before the election?
I feel like this year, everytime Trump was exposed to the general public, his numbers tanked. But when he can stick with his rallies and hide behind Conservative media, his numbers rise. As if voters are fooled into voting for him.
A debate now would force each candidate to bring their A game for the final stage. Too bad it will never happen.
Kay
@Peale:
They held 4 years of fake hearings where they’d order people to appear and then scream at them for 2 hours.
Somehow the IRS managed not to interfere in the election although they are actual innocent victims of Republicans.
Mandalay
@Kay:
My understanding from someone who works for the IRS is that it would be impossible for an employee to anonymously access Trump’s tax records.
I don’t know what the penalties would be for an IRS employee to leak Trump’s tax history, but I can imagine that they are sufficiently severe that there is no need to heap praise on IRS employees for avoiding almost certain prosecution.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Matt Yglesias is reviewing some of the FBI’s greatest hits, from Hoover to BLM, including…
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Oops.
Adam L Silverman
@Baud: I saw it. It was released as mentioned. I didn’t spend hours going through it, but from a cursory glance I didn’t see anything unusual or out of the ordinary.
Major Major Major Major
@Timurid: I would play that game. Though I believe Wang’s preferred form of bet involves eating a bug.
different-church-lady
@Baud: I thought early votes didn’t get counted until election day. They talking about exit polling at early voting places?
hovercraft
@PPCLI:
Has the FSB/KGB been using Obama’s time machine? Damn them!
SiubhanDuinne
@Major Major Major Major: l
Pro tip: Eschew redundancy.
Major Major Major Major
@Mandalay: the penalties are yuuuuge. No, really. It’s super illegal.
Baud
@Adam L Silverman: I hope it holds up. Sounds positive.
@different-church-lady: It’s essentially exit polling.
Omnes Omnibus
@Adam L Silverman: K III wrote a nice little book about judicial activism. I recommend it highly.
hovercraft
@Baud:
I agree, those numbers were way to good to be true, and Steve Schale who’s Florida judgement I trust also called bullpucky.
Another Scott
@redshirt: The Carter – Reagan debate was held October 28, 1980. It didn’t go so well for Jimmy.
There are substantial risks in holding a debate too close to election day.
Cheers,
Scott.
redshirt
@Another Scott: Risks for the loser. The Winner, I assume, would win a late debate.
Imagine Hillary and Donald debating tonight. It would seal Hillary’s victory.
Mike in NC
Why are any of you hand-wringing idiots following Nate Silver or Chuck Todd? Joe Scarborough is a better source of defeatism.
catclub
@redshirt:
yep. Manafort told Trump he should win by saying nothing from June onward.
The press would focus on Hillary. It would have worked better than him being in public. Luckily his ego would not countenance such a thing.
Major Major Major Major
I feel like the media will be ready for a Clinton surging at the last second storyline Saturday/Sunday followed by one day of rampant speculation and then CHAOS AT THE POLLS!!!
MisterForkbeard
@redshirt: I doubt that. The moderators and Trump would just keep asking about The Emails, and there’s not much Hillary can do to stop them short of calling out the FBI on live TV… which wouldn’t work out well. It would look really bad.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mike in NC: Some people like doom porn. It’s not my kink.
different-church-lady
Open thread. Good.
I’m going to need to lean on you folks for a bit in ways I wouldn’t usually. As mentioned earlier, the other on-line dive I hang in has been overrun by Trump Trolls. When I’m feeling emotionally unsteady (which is a lot lately) I usually go there to get a bit of support. But I’m already plenty spooked by reality, so in my current state I couldn’t possibly put up with their reality distortion right now.
Any rate… might be asking for some solace and advice if insomnia sets in tonight.
Another Scott
@Mandalay: It’s a felony:
HTH.
Cheers,
Scott.
Major Major Major Major
@different-church-lady: have you seen Crazy Ex-Girlfriend? First season is on Netflix. Ripping good musical comedy/drama. Golden globe best comedy and best actress last year.
Mnemosyne
BTW, here’s the email I just got from the Clinton campaign:
Yes, ma’am!
Omnes Omnibus
@different-church-lady: Try this.
Adam L Silverman
@Major Major Major Major: @redshirt:
Well there’s this:
http://www.voltairenet.org/article169488.html
Trentrunner
@Major Major Major Major: Second this. But know: If you start to think the main characters are annoyingly clueless, damaged, and oblivious, it’s intentional. Be patient.
And the song/video parodies are great!
Mnemosyne
@different-church-lady:
No worries, this is usually a good place to hang out for such things. Though I should probably tell you that late-night has been pretty dead for a while now — everyone seems to be getting to sleep at a decent hour or something.
redshirt
@different-church-lady: I have a great anti-insomnia technique, if you’re interested.
Major Major Major Major
@Adam L Silverman: I knew it would be you! Though I expected something more substantial.
different-church-lady
@redshirt: does it involve keeping a person in suspense?
Adam L Silverman
@divF: Yes, but its easier to give the military orders to do something because of the nature of the laws governing the services, recruitment, etc.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Baud
@Mnemosyne: That’s excellent
Adam L Silverman
@Alain the site fixer: Yep.
Jack the Second
You can’t necessarily critique Nate Silver any one election, but you can over several elections.
If Nate is going into the final week of the election with a 2/3rds chance of the winner winning, then 1 year in 3 he should pick the wrong one. If he consistently picks the winner, 10, 20 elections in a row while just saying 60, 70, 80% likely, then he’s low balling it, intentionally or not.
Personally, I’m a little skeptical that Nate wouldn’t be playing up the horserace angle and low balling the odds, just because: (a) he is now running a business based on people continuing to be interested in the election (b) he wants the election season to end even less than cable news, since he can’t report on car crashes and missing white girls in the off-season and (c) you can still be wrong with a 90% certainty, quite a bit, but it would destroy his credibility in the eyes of the innumerate. Much safer to be right with a 70%.
Alain the site fixer
@Adam L Silverman: funny. Grew up with his grandson. Kooky parents. Always thought he’d been a “hero” so interesting to learn of it being semi-accidental. I guess being bold in claiming credit can make one go far!
Lizzy L
@Jeffro: I read that this morning and had to go for a long walk, it freaked me out quite a bit.
Adam L Silverman
@hovercraft: Unless Scherr (now emeritus), Schiccitanno, McDaniel, and Smith at UF political science say its bogus, then its not. They are the experts on politics and polling in Florida.
Mike J
They aimed low in ye olden dayes.
Omnes Omnibus
@Jack the Second: Hence our lack of trust with him this time around.
redshirt
@different-church-lady: I… don’t think so. Maybe? Probably not.
Peale
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: not to be a stickler, but doesn’t Thomas Friedman write about the same thing?
redshirt
@Adam L Silverman: So what did Russia do in the American Civil War? I sense a thesis……
different-church-lady
Yay! The Teddy Roosevelt documentary I did a little work on has hit the airwaves!
‘What Would Teddy Do?’
Fair Economist
@Jack the Second:
We don’t have enough elections to say anything yet, but we do have enough states. By his probabilities Nate should have missed 8 states in 2008+2012, and he only missed one. So, yes, his uncertainty is too high.
Adam L Silverman
@Major Major Major Major: I just did a quick google search, I’m trying to watch something.
Adam L Silverman
@Alain the site fixer: He did do a lot of other things. I think he was also involved in the Bay of Pigs mess.
SRW1
@Major Major Major Major:
You mean, like, the intertoobz is the man-bites-dog tool for the little guy?
Gian
@redshirt:
the Russian fleet was though to have helped the Union during the treason for slavery war. Of course that wasn’t the real Russian aim, but their visit was at least seen as helpful. (they wanted to get away from the British Navy in the event a dispute over Poland went to war)
max
@redshirt: So what did Russia do in the American Civil War? I sense a thesis……
Nothing.
There was a bit of a feedback loop between the Tsar and US. The Tsar freeing the serfs became an argument for freeing the slaves. But the liberal reformers in Russia were taking cues from the US at the time. Then he sold us Alaska. Alexander was a liberal (of some sort) and his predecessor, Nicholas was a conservative.
Russian interference in the US was mostly a early 20’s-early 50’s affair, consisting of CCCP penetration into the US. (And Henry Wallace was their choice for president, even though they weren’t his choice of party.)
It was the British and the French who looked to take advantage of the Civil War.
max
[‘I would presume the narrative about Trump being run by Moscow is run by the usual sorts in DC using Wallace as their model.’]
Villago Delenda Est
@redshirt: They had much closer to home issues to deal with back 150 years ago. For example, Alexander had just emancipated the serfs, and they had Turks and Brits and French and Great Game affairs to deal with. The Americas were pretty much off the map, even though they held Alaska, and were happy to sell it off to Seward in 1867.
Gian
@max: @max:
http://www.loyno.edu/~history/journal/1983-4/delehaye.htm
I know it’s a journal article and all but it does cite to other sources. The Russian Fleet did visit New York and San Francisco, in 1863.
Major Major Major Major
@SRW1: huh?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
one poll, no idea of the sample, et cetera, but I’l take good news where I can get it these days
Mary G
@Kay: I’ve been thinking about that, too. Some government agencies work well no matter how much the right screams about them.
kd bart
@Another Scott: As a current IRS employee who does not have access to tax records, haven’t since 1997, this is true. At one time I worked in Automated Underreporter and had access to individual returns & IDRS. I had to turn over to my manager any case that cane across my desk an individual I knew. It happened a few times. I do recall seeing quite a few celebrity tax returns.
NotMax
@Alain the site fixer
Appears a recent FYWP update has re-enabled fonts.googleapis, which conceivably is slowing down the front page?
Librarian
Russia supported the Union during the civil war. It showed this support most famously by sending its navy to visit NY and San Francisco. Russia wanted to show that, unlike Britain and France which considered recognizing the Confederacy, it was a true friend of the US.
http://www.voltairenet.org/article169488.html
Librarian
I just contributed to the Russia/Civil War discussion, but it’s in moderation.
Mike J
@NotMax: And don’t forget, we still have problems with naked links, which is resolved by simply turning off outbound link tracking in the yoast plugin.
Lizzy L
Do not go to TPM, their election Scoreboard at the top of the page is now showing Clinton’s EVs at under 270. Stick with Sam Wang.
Major Major Major Major
@Lizzy L: TPM’s is weird. Most of the tracker trackers don’t even include it.
ETA: just donated.
burnspbesq
@Baud:
You can bet that if it was Jack Ryan running for Prez, Clark and Chavez would be taking care of Putin as we speak.
redshirt
@Lizzy L: No way we lose this one. NO WAY.
Peale
I wonder if Russia did anything in Mexico during the same time. I mean someone had to support the Mexicans in that shameless land grab.
ruemara
When you consider that the Nation & Katherine Vandehuevel have been pushing that we need to ally with Russia and we need to stop this new cold war, then the Intercept & Glenn G are also talking about how it’s all being overstated this ridiculous Russian connection. Toss in Putin’s dinner buddy, Jill Stein… it does make one wonder how so many key left icons are so enamoured with a state that goes against pretty much every progressive value.
Major Major Major Major
@redshirt: This is not a fundraising email from a campaign that’s losing:
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Major Major Major Major: This too belies the notion that they’re panicking about internal polls, from Buzzed
redshirt
@Major Major Major Major: I wonder if Clinton could afford a “Speech to the Nation” on the major networks Monday night. Maybe a 4 minute ad buy where she gives a direct speech to the voters.
redshirt
@ruemara: The far right and far left have finally joined forces and aligned their efforts with… Fascist Russia.
Go figure.
Lizzy L
@Major Major Major Major: Good! I sent some $$ last night. And my Hilz T-shirt (it says “Proud to support Mme. President”) and bumper stickers arrived today!
sukabi
@Major Major Major Major: sounds more like what drumpf thinks.
Major Major Major Major
@redshirt: It’s so weird.
@redshirt: Obama did that half-hour infomercial in 2008. Dunno if anybody watched.
redshirt
@Major Major Major Major: I did. But I was an Obot back then.
It’s “funny”, the only time I felt as nervous during 2008 was when the Reverend Wright stuff first came out in like March. I was, at the time, like, “here we go”! But Obama handled it easily, of course.
Wish I could say the same now.
Lizzy L
Nancy LeTourneau at Washington Monthly reported this today:
I thought it was especially interesting (startling, though) coming from Issa, who was point man on those multiple investigations of The Emails. I suspect he’s saying this only because Doug Applegate is seriously threatening him, and he wants to appear like a reasonable man, but I know the Republicans in the House are in no way unified. Having Issa push back publicly against the talk about treason and impeachment is good.
redshirt
@Lizzy L: It’s good on the surface, but you’re right, he’s only saying such because he wants to win an election.
This is the calculus all politicians undergo. They ultimately do reflect their constituents.
SRW1
@Major Major Major Major:
“I have many normal friends, but why would I complain about them here?”
NotMax
@Peale
Mid-19th century Mexico? That would be France.
Vhh
@Major Major Major Major: Nate has to keep the money-losing ESPN happy with clicks to keep their support for his core business, which is sports betting (as he openly admits). So he needs to keep volatility up so that people of all stripes read his site N times per day. Remember that polling I s seasonal, elections come every 2 years and the big ones every 4 years. It’s harvest time now !!
Ruckus
@Kay:
Hard to judge something you have no experience at.
Lizzy L
@redshirt: It’s good because it contributes to the disunity and bad feelings among the House Republicans. I don’t want them unified (against Hillary); I want them disorganized and quarreling with each other. The evil bastards.
2liberal
i haven’t read the entire thread yet but the maddow teaser about tomorrows story is about a Newsweek front page story on Trump and the Russians
redshirt
@Lizzy L: They’ll all be very organized come 11/9.
Peale
@NotMax: I meant did Russia support Mexico against France and England?
sukabi
@hovercraft any bets that when it’s all sorted out that the “secret Clinton Foundation recordings were provided by James Okeefe and his idiots….
Miss Bianca
@Lizzy L:
Reminds me of how Soviet newscasts used to start out: “There have been no riots in Red Square. Absolutely no protestors have been shot.”
Origuy
@Villago Delenda Est: How The Russian Navy Saved The Union In The Civil War
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Mike in NC: If I watched Joe of the Morning today, I’d probably end up guzzling my mouthwash.
low-tech cyclist
How stupid, or how totally tunnel-visioned (I guess that’s just a specific kind of stupid, now that I think about it) would you have to be to think that might have had a remote chance of being real?
J R in WV
@jl:
Seriously, years ago, many years ago, a neighbor called late on election day and asked if I could drive him over the hill to the polling place to vote. I had already voted with Mrs J. But the answer was always yes to a question like that!
After Tommy got out and went into the school (now long gone) I got out and strolled up the cars parked across the street from the old school, where I saw a Good Old Boy parked in his PU truck. This fellow ran a local garage and towing service, and seemed to have mechanics that could fix stuff.
So I went over to chat while waiting for Tommy to mark his ballot. And after talking for a few minutes in the gathering darkness, Billy Joe said, “Business today is about over, you might as well have some of this” and pulled a case of bottles of whiskey out from under the passenger seat of the truck.
I was appalled, and said “Well, you know I voted this morning, and just ran Tommy over so he could vote.” Billy told me as he already said, business was over, this was just one friend giving someone something he was done with. To be polite, I took the bottle, said “Well, thanks a lot, we’ll enjoy it this evening!” and Billy Joe said “That’s what it’s for, to make election day more fun!”
I called the Feds later that night. Then we drank it.
No point in wasting a perfectly good bottle of really cheap whiskey. Tommy’s been dead for decades, so this really was in a previous universe. They don’t pass out whiskey on election day any more, and polling places are protected, no one allowed to hang out in the parking lots.
Now we see more sophisticated attempts at voter fraud, like dozens of absentee ballots completed in the same handwriting. Busted!
The Very Reverend Crimson Fire of Compassion
@redshirt: Here you go. We’re nothing if not a full-service commentariat.