There really can’t be any further doubt:
On Friday night, Mr. Trump’s transition team insulted the American intelligence community by saying that officers had misrepresented the threat of weapons of mass destruction ahead of the Iraq War, meaning that they should not be trusted with their conclusion of Russian meddling in the presidential election.
In a new twist, Mr. Trump will meet on Monday with Carly Fiorina, the former Hewlett-Packard chief executive, to discuss the job of director of national intelligence, a senior transition official said. [h/t TPM]
The sound you hear is every H-P veteran shrieking in shock and despair. This is screaming-of-the-lambs scale horror, Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn madness.
Fiorina’s picture is in the dictionary next to “Fail Upward.”
To speak the obvious: she has, as far as I know, exactly zero professional intelligence training, and nothing in her work (or, for the last several years, unemployment) record suggests she’s mastered what you’d want America’s eyes on the secret world to possess. There’s no way to justify appointing Fiorina to this position unless you take Trump at his word and believe that he believes there’s simply no reason to bother with anything so frivolous as data, information, or knowledge of the world, our friends and adversaries alike.
Coyote is laughing…but at least this gives us all an excuse to revisit an old favorite:
ETA: I’m just hoping our Adam isn’t drowning himself in a butt of sack right now.
Image: H. P. Lovecraft, Cthulu sketch, 1934
SFAW
Ya know, I don’t think I’ve ever been one to ask where that damn meteor is. But I’m pretty fucking close, right about now.
Poopyman
Please proceed, Mr. Trump! The Electors are taking note, IhopeIhopeIhope.
tobie
I just heard Fiorina refer to China as our “adversary” in her brief statement to reporters as she was leaving Trump Towers. China, she suggested, may be behind the hacking. In the case of Russia, she downplayed the intelligence as “purported Russian hacking.” The woman is lethal. I’ve always found her scarier than Trump, which is saying a lot.
Brachiator
Hopefully, this is a feint.
Trump has met with a lot of people (*cough* Mitt Romney) and they have come away (so far) with nothing. Trump’s people enjoy getting the media to jump and speculate. But I wonder how well their speculation has matched the ultimate choices.
However, if this turns out to be real, it is on par with some of Trump’s other idiotic appointments.
Fingers crossed.
Poopyman
Meanwhile, the top of the CNN webpage is this:
The question being, is he going to slow-walk this, or what?
Corner Stone
What kind of a fucked up year is 2016 that I find myself agreeing with Joe No Child Support Walsh?
Tom Levenson
@tobie: Intelligence pros will not be pleased. I don’t believe we’ve ever seen a presidency that, even before it begins, initiates open war between itself and the deep state.
Corner Stone
@Poopyman: He’s going to show trial it all the way. Nothing substantive will happen or ever come of it but another whitewash.
Betty Cracker
Trump has nothing but contempt for Fiorina because he sees her as an unfuckable woman who dared to challenge him. That he’s considering her for this post conveys the depth of his contempt for the US intelligence community — and is likely meant to send that message.
Also, Mouth of Shitgibbon (Kellyanne Conway) was on the TV today trying to spin Trump’s clear and unmistakable dismissal of the IC’s conclusions and lack of confidence in their competence into criticism of the Clinton campaign. She’s going to need a bigger dreidel.
Yarrow
People posting in thread downstairs – apparently McConnell is calling for investigations.
Stacy
She just came out and called China out biggest adversary and may have been behind the hacking of the election.
Corner Stone
@tobie:
There is no way she is scarier than Trump. Good God.
raven
If my dog had a face like that. . . .
Poopyman
BTW, Mr. Levenson, Trickster God in this case is Uncle Vlad. And yes, I suspect he is toying with us. I wonder if we’ll be able to see when he’s let out enough line and starts to reel Trump back in?
XTPD
@tobie: I always thought of her as the real-life version of Mallory Archer.
Corner Stone
@Tom Levenson:
Tom, love that you used the H.P. sketch to tie this all together.
Kay
@Poopyman:
Another question being how he worked to withhold this from the public until after the election and then his wife got a Cabinet appointment.
Keith G
Mr. Trump will become president which is the most horrendously challenging set of tasks in the world. He his going to be in charge of a cluster fuck and as that becomes more obvious, the nest of vipers that make up his staff and cabinet will turn on each other and on him.
Gonna be quite interesting.
Tom Levenson
@Corner Stone: ;-)
Yarrow
The electoral college vote this week is a key deadline. However there is one last chance:
If enough pressure builds, there will certainly be one member of the House and one Senator who will sign an objection to the vote for Trump. Keep up the pressure. Call your reps!
Betty Cracker
@Tom Levenson: I wish the spooks would just go ahead and leak all the dirt they have on Trump, right now, before the EC vote next week. You know there must be mounds of it. If not our spooks, China’s would do — he’s a threat to them as well as to us. C’mon spies — spill!
Thoroughly Pizzled
He doesn’t KNOW anyone else. He has no friends and no close associates. I imagine the effort that Obama went through to stock his administration with talent, and then I look at this travesty. Trump may already be the worst president in U.S. history.
Chris
As I recall, they were ordered and pressured from every possible direction to make the intelligence say what the powers-that-be wanted it to say. Then this turned out to be bullshit, and the same powers-that-be went “oh, what an abominable failure of the intelligence community! How terrible! We must hold our intelligence community responsible so that this never happens again!” and then used that as a pretext to keep it on an even tighter political leash.
“The CIA bungled Iraq” is one of the many polite fictions Official Washington entertains because the “Bush lied, people died” reality is just so unprecedentedly uncivil.
Corner Stone
@Betty Cracker:
I think the scarier part of Trump dissing the IC and refusing to take PDB’s is the fact that he isn’t asking them any questions about anything. Any part of the world, any topic he may have an interest in. Nothing.
Mikefromarlington
Trumps team is good at distractions. This is what they did with Mitt as well. Distract everyone from more impressive grant matters like Russia.
Seems everyone is taking the bait.
dmsilev
@Yarrow:
Sort of. I get the sense that he’s trying to set up a situation where any investigation gets slow-walked to death and eventually just goes away.
Chris
@tobie:
That’ll make the Russians happy. The other two superpowers at each other’s throats while they get away scot-free.
Kay
Frankly the only person I trust to talk about Trump and Russian influence is Hillary Clinton. She was right and she knows more about the issues around it than any of these people.
Let me know when they ask her what she thinks. The rest of these people are clowns.
dmsilev
@Corner Stone: Perhaps the intelligence community could reframe the daily briefs around the question of which Trump-branded properties are potentially under threat on that particular day.
(can you imagine the shit-fit he’d throw if some terror group blew up a Trump-branded property in some random country?)
Corner Stone
I saw the question posed elsewhere on twitter – “If you were in the IC and had a source placed in the Kremlin. Would you brief the President on developments this source revealed? Knowing it would probably lead to their death?”
Major Major Major Major
@Corner Stone: scarier looking though. She’s got the same “itchy human suit” problem Cruz does.
Adam L Silverman
I’m good. Just finalizing my application for the French Foreign Legion.//
Tom Levenson
@Mikefromarlington: There’s a lot of truth in what you say — but I don’t think the Fiorina scam (as I’d be unsurprised to discover it is) is working; her attempting to rope China into this draws more attention to the underlying disaster, rather than obscuring it.
KG
@Tom Levenson:
I don’t know, there’s still more than a couple of old Cold Warriors in the Senate. Besides, for all their faults, the GOP does take threats (real and perceived) to sovereignty quite seriously.
Yarrow
@dmsilev: I think that’s what he wants too. I suspect the Russians have stuff on McConnell and he knows it, or suspects they do. So he’s trying to play both sides. However, this Russian stuff apparently has legs. From a comment in the thread downstairs:
If the ladies on The View are talking about this, it’s gone mainstream. White, suburban stay-at-home moms watch The View (among others). Security moms. You think they like hearing the President-elect is owned by Russia?
Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap
Trump just trashed the F-35 program and Lockheed Martin stock nose dived.
Corner Stone
@dmsilev:
It’s coming. Isn’t it inevitable?
ETA, not to go all nutty ass conspiracy theory or anything but I would not bet against Russia sneakily making it happen somewhere in a NATO country. Just to see what happens. Or maybe Turkey?
KG
@dmsilev:
Honestly, it’s only a matter of time. Come January, in a lot of places Trump = USA (yes, it makes me sick typing that, but that’s what it means when you’re head of government/head of state for the world’s largest superpower)
mkro
As you spend your days shaking your head at this Twilight Zone shit, I recommend readind Kevin Drum’s quick rundown of Sam Wang’s analysis of how Trump won.
Had it not been for the Comey FBI interference, Hillary was well on track to win over 300 EC votes.
If you factor in Russian interference, Sam’s prediction of a landslide would have become reality.
With these factors affecting the outcome just enough around the edges in key EC swing states, we are now stuck with 4 years of hell.
This was always the danger of the GOP putting a crazy unqualified candidate on the national stage for POTUS.
It is also the burden that our weak establishment media will need to carry with them for the length of history for not calling our the Trump team more forcefully for lying, deceiving and racism.
Tom Levenson
@Tilda Swinton’s Bald Cap: Not entirely in disagreement w. the Shitgibbon there. The F-35 is a pretty fucked up plane and program. Blind pigs and all that.
3Jane Tessier-Ashpool (a/k/a Lorinda Pike)
TL’s post (and illustration) and the sub-references in the comments confirm to me that we have some damn eclectically well-read people in this cyber-spot. But so far I think Ms. Cracker has the lead with “Mouth of Shitgibbon”.
Made me do a spit-take with my breakfast smoothie…. ;-D
Yarrow
@Corner Stone:
I hope we start hearing our elected representatives, punditocracy and media ask the same types of questions.
Corner Stone
@Tilda Swinton’s Bald Cap:
Ahh, but XOM is up over $2 today, almost 3%. So it all evens out.
Wapiti
@dmsilev: The IC could include it in every daily brief. Make it up if need be. He thinks he’s the most important person in the world, and clearly everyone else does too. Make him think that he is risking his fortune (his preciouss!) if he becomes President.
The Moar You Know
@tobie: Possible but unlikely. They just aren’t that good.
Possible but unlikely. The Russians are fielding the best hackers in the world at the moment, bar none. If a US election were interfered with, even marginally, via network attacks, I look first to the Russians, then to the Israelis. They have the ability and the motive.
And cybersecurity in general is what I do, so let me say this: America is so far behind we may not be able to catch up. Ever. The opposition may have flat-out won this war, and that’s of concern as that battlespace is where all our money is.
Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap
@Tom Levenson: Agreed, it’s just interesting to see how he is totally controlling everything right now.
Betty Cracker
@Corner Stone: Wow, good question. Hadn’t thought of it from that angle, but yeah, these are the problems you have when there’s evidence your CiC has been compromised by a foreign power.
Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap
@The Moar You Know: You know we don’t have to connect every goddamn device to the Internet, just sayin’ Not yelling at you.
tobie
@Corner Stone: Okay…let me rephrase. They’re both lethal but in different ways. He’s the vile pig who whips up his followers into rabid rage; she chronically speaks with a forked tongue, disseminating so much false information and, even worse, false innuendo that it’s almost impossible to fact check. Anyway…this is all just horrible.
schrodinger's cat
विनाशकाले विपरीत बुद्धि
The Thin Black Duke
Call me paranoid, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Trump is going to suffer “a fatal heart attack” before the end of his presidency.
dedc79
In January, Trump’s appointees should all get together to film one of those “No, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night” commercials
Brachiator
@Tilda Swinton’s Bald Cap:
Nose dived. Nice choice of phrase.
Corner Stone
@Major Major Major Major:
There is nothing scarier than looking at that butthole mouth motherfucker and considering he will be our next POTUS.
manyakitty
@dmsilev: That’s a legit good idea.
Lurking Canadian
She’s the perfect choice if the intention is to merge CIA and FBI then have the new agency collapse. That kind of thing is her forte.
Mnemosyne
@Keith G:
There’s a reason why the Chinese wish of “May you live in interesting times” is considered a curse.
Yarrow
@Tilda Swinton’s Bald Cap: Christ this is so true. Had to look for an oven. Except for the cheapest ones, they’re all boasting how they’re connecting to your smartphone for checking temperatures, pre-heating the oven, etc. It’s stupid.
Ella in New Mexico
First, before anyone gets too weirded-out, who the fuck knows if this story is actual or if it’s just another Kelly-Reince-Pence propaganda machine push to keep the media’s eyes off Russia taking over the rest of the cabinet?
Second–is it possible that Trump–or what the heck, the Kelly-Reince-Pence machine– really, truly is secretly begging FOR GOD’S SAKE WILL SOMEONE JUST STOP HIM ALREADY!!!!!!!
He really did not want this. How many ways can he show you people that he desperately needs you to get him an out of there?
rikyrah
CIA and MI6 say the same thing.
I never ever thought I would write this – I believe the CIA.
Damn…what a wild twist of events.
Chris
@Adam L Silverman:
Français par le sang versé!
You should be commissioned just in time to see Marine Le Pen become president :D
Corner Stone
Is anyone else terrified by the thought of what happens if China decides it needs to save face by insulting Trump?
Adam L Silverman
@Poopyman: He’s announced it will go through regular order. The Senate Intel and Armed Services Committees. No select (special) committee.
schrodinger's cat
@Corner Stone: I am more scared of the man-child in waiting than the Chinese or anyone else.
Corner Stone
@KG:
Link or source for this claim?
Adam L Silverman
@Corner Stone: These briefings do not include sources and methods, just finished intelligence that has been vetted and signed off on for dissemination.
Yarrow
I love George Takei.
Sufferin' Succotash
Has anyone ever mentioned the fact that Trump has The Innsmouth Look???
p.a.
Hey, we had a good run. Our epitaph: Helped Defeat Fascism, Outlasted Communism, Made Some Effort to Overcome Our Own Bigotries.
Yarrow
@Adam L Silverman: I think they’ve got something on McConnell and he’s hoping that he can slow walk the investigations. Look like he’s taking this seriously but nothing has to change. I don’t know if it’s going to work out that way for him.
tobie
@Ella in New Mexico: I think this is right. The jabs today at Lockheed Martin and the floating of Fiorina’s name as DNI are meant to distract from the Russian hacking issue, which is gaining traction. The other big story are the implicit and explicit attacks on China, which are very dangerous.
Davis X. Machina
@Adam L Silverman: Can the President order an executive-branch agency to reveal sources and methods? Just askin’….
Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap
@Corner Stone: Well, any CEO of a company that manufactures consumer electronics is probably none too happy.
Yarrow
Interesting “retweet” by Trump in 2014. (His version of a RT, with the quotation marks).
Chris
@KG:
I can’t decide if I’m surprised by this turn of events or not. On the one hand, I’ve always believed that if our right wingers ever ended up in a France-1940 type situation, where an occupying power gave them a chance to settle their scores with the liberals, the radicals, the uppity unassimilated minorities, etc, there’d be tons of them crawling out of the woodwork to serve the new regime. Patriotism be damned.
But I never actually expected it to happen short of something like, well, France-1940, which our nuclear arsenal made impossible. And in the meantime, I expected simple national pride and reflexive nationalism and resentment of any other country that tries to challenge us to keep those temptations away. Swooning over Putin and wishing we had a real manly man like him in charge, yes, actually disregarding his fucking with the U.S. electoral system, no. (The response to Crimea, after all, was generally “Obama’s a chicken for not standing up to Putin,” not “let’s roll out the red carpet and invite them to march all the way to NATO headquarters.”)
My imagination failed me there.
Poopyman
@Corner Stone:
Or alternatively, if you knew of a Kremlin upper-level official who you’d like to see taken out of the way, simply refer to him in a PDB as “our source in the Kremlin”, then see what happens.
Yarrow
Robert Reich on Facebook:
Corner Stone
@Adam L Silverman: Thanks, Adam. I understand the briefing wouldn’t have Igor’s name attached to the intel. But, from my expertise gained by years of study in the Len Deighton Bernard Samson novels, IIRC once something is known and that something is leaked back to the people that do not want it known, those people try to determine who the fuck leaked that thing that is now known that they did not want known.
mai naem mobile
Maybe he’s still doing crazy shit to let the electors not vote for him because he knows he’s in over his head. Nah…too narcissistic for that.
trollhattan
@Betty Cracker:
Unlike the–cough–FBI it would seem the CIA and NSA et al tend to keep their yaps shut and I don’t foresee anything other than that from them. If we’re to learn anything specific it will come from congress, and they’re busy tying themselves in knots at the moment.
RareSanity
@Adam L Silverman:
Can you briefly elaborate the difference between regular order investigation and special committee investigation?
catclub
@dmsilev:
Plus the helpful press did not mention before the election the list of targets all those Trump branded properties represent.
trollhattan
@Yarrow:
Boom goes the Sulu.
Brachiator
@Corner Stone:
Already happened. Where you been?
Last week a talk radio host was crowing about how he loved how Trump was telling the Chinese that “there was a new sheriff in town” with the Taiwan call. Wonder what he thinks about it now?
Of course, the conservative media is downplaying the shit out of the Chinese reaction. Somebody may even be keeping the news from Trump since he has not sent out a Twitter message in response.
catclub
@tobie:
traction among people who read BJ is not a very representative sample.
jk
@Betty Cracker:
I love this phrase for a new subject tag.
Yarrow
Nice to see strong language like thishttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/mike-morell-russia-election-hacking_us_584eb2cde4b0bd9c3dfd73cc.
trollhattan
@Tilda Swinton’s Bald Cap:
Interesting, given Bibi ordered 17 more F-35s after Trump’s crowning.
catclub
@rikyrah: I do too.
But the lack of mention of all the times the US (CIA) has seriously influenced the elections and governments of other nations is wonderfully hypocritical. Memory hole seems to have opened up.
jk
@mai naem mobile:
Trump is such an unprecedented mental basket case that anything is possible.
Mnemosyne
@Adam L Silverman:
I’m assuming that the people in charge of vetting it are now going over it with a fine-tooth comb to make sure there’s nothing that could even potentially compromise any ongoing operation or operative.
Jeffro
@Betty Cracker:
Made my day here Betty :)
Davis X. Machina
@catclub: Let’s face it. Eight years of Trump, or Pence, after Trump strokes out, is just the penance we have to perform because of Mossadegh.
I hope someone tells the Iranians, and that they’re grateful.
catclub
@Yarrow: I just made a comment that it is wonderfully hypocritical that there has been little mention in all these discussions of all the times the US – via the CIA – has influenced elections and governments in other countries. The outrage seems to be coming from people who just fell off the turnip truck. whocooodanode?
Adam L Silverman
@The Moar You Know: If it was the Israelis it would appear to be China. That’s their go to cover when they do stuff – make it look like a China op done just well enough to work, but just poorly enough to leave (fake) finger prints.
trollhattan
@Brachiator:
For them to give a rodent’s hindquarters would require them to care what China thinks. To the contrary, they want China taken down a notch (or five) and Trump! is just the manly man to get ‘er done.
Corner Stone
@Brachiator: I saw that comment referenced somewhere but did not catch the fact that it was in their state run paper. If he hasn’t blown up about it yet then I have to agree it’s likely someone didn’t read it to him. Or stopped short of including that phrase.
I know he knows nothing about anything except how to flap his butthole mouth, but I wonder if anyone around him is literally on their knees telling him how great he is and China’s a nothing and a nobody and he can forget all about them.
catclub
@Davis X. Machina: Also Greece in 50’s and 60’s if I am correct. Dictatorship rather than a hint of reds.
catclub
@Davis X. Machina:
plus another 30 years of young conservatives on the Supreme Court.
gvg
A quick google found these names considered by Trump for DNI Adm Mike Rodgets, Indiana Sen. Dan Coats Pete Hoestra, Paetreus, Francis Townsend, Guiliani and now Fiorana. Its been about a month since the election. ADH elect IMO may never get his cabinet filled. there was also stories that he wanted to eliminate the DNI position so he could reorganize the Intelligence community again post 911.
There are similar lists for every cabinet position. He doesn’t know enough people to find people. He would clearly be a really bad boss who is going to fail and ruin everyone associated with him’s reputation. He doesn’t know what the jobs do so he doesn’t understand the qualifications needed. Competent people are running away and hiding from him.
I have no belief that the electoral college will save us, but I understand people want it to. I think it needs to be eliminated.
The point has been made that we don’t know most of his ownership and debts so we can’t evaluate conflict of interest. He refused to release his tax return & IRS didn’t leak it because it wouldn’t be legal. that said could the Congress subpoena his tax return and quietly look it over? they have the ability to investigate and compel testimony. I don’t see any other way to know. past presidents didn’t make us compel a tax return but I think Congress could force it.
jk
@Yarrow:
Agreed, that’s a powerful statement from him. Charlie Rose had several conversations with him during the campaign. Maybe, he’ll invite him back on his show to discuss this topic.
Then, there’s this comment from former CIA Officer turned CNN intelligence analyst Bob Baer:
h/t http://lawnewz.com/video/fmr-cia-officer-shockingly-calls-for-new-potus-election-amid-latest-russian-interference-claims
Kay
I want Hillary Clinton to investigate this. It lends some much-needed credibility :)
Appoint her independent investigator. All of these other people are compromised/complicit/in cahoots and have to recuse.
Adam L Silverman
@Davis X. Machina: I’m sure he can. I don’t think the request would be met favorably. You never show the client/consumer raw product. That’s part of what got Cheney in trouble. He thought he was both smart enough and experienced enough to be able to make his own analytical judgements. He was wrong on both counts.
rikyrah
@Kay:
tell the truth, Kay.
Yarrow
These Nazis are everywhere.
Brachiator
@trollhattan: RE: Last week a talk radio host was crowing about how he loved how Trump was telling the Chinese that “there was a new sheriff in town” with the Taiwan call. Wonder what he thinks about it now?
The obvious fallacy is to believe that the entire world will back down when Trump spouts bullshit just because pundits and politicians do.
And hell, I would even say that Trump obviously doesn’t know how to do deals since he showed his hand early and pointlessly irritated someone that he absolutely must do business with.
Mnemosyne
@catclub:
Even more ironically, the “meddling” that Putin seems to blame the US for in Ukraine doesn’t seem to have had much to do with us at all, and a whole lot more to do with the massive corruption of Putin’s puppet Yankyuovich.
And, of course, if Putin and Bibi manage to goad Comrade Trump into attacking Iran, I don’t think the Iranians will take much comfort in the knowledge that the US got Mossadegh’ed when the bombs start falling on Tehran.
Cermet
@Corner Stone: What!? The drump hates the F-35 programs and thinks its junk!? Damn him – that was my hobbyhorse to ride; now what can I complain about? If the dump hates it I…damn, no; I can’t do it! Damn him!
The Moar You Know
@Tilda Swinton’s Bald Cap: Could not agree more, but in general that’s not the problem we’re bitching about here. However, machines that tabulate votes (I’m not that worried about individual machines so long as from the factory they pass a security audit) absolutely should never be connected.
Kay
@gvg:
There is no “conflict of interest” after Trump. No one can ever again be held to that standard or norm. That’s gone.
Trump sets new low bars for everything. His 4 or 8 year term is just the immediate damage. It will be profound and lasting. The Trump Rules are now “the rules” and everyone else will demand them. It’s only fair.
PPCLI
My hope is that this is just an exercise in humiliating a former opponent, just as he did with Romney. Make him/her grovel and see how much shit he/she will eat, then dump them.
Though maybe his thinking is: “We need to know about the cyber! She did the cyber!” So perhaps we should count ourselves lucky that he isn’t going to appoint his 10-year old son head of the CIA.
Cermet
@schrodinger’s cat: Wow, beautiful script that puts our boring type to shame… but, what does it mean?
Mnemosyne
@Davis X. Machina
I’m sure that all of the Guatemalans who recently escaped widespread violence in their country will be happy to be deported back to the slaughter now that they know that the US government got treated the same way their government did.
tobie
@catclub:
I could well be mistaken but my sense from the little I’ve seen of CNN today is that Russian influence on the elections is the big story of the moment. I thought that was why McConnell suddenly changed his tune and, while not authorizing a special investigation, he did agree to a congressional investigation into Russian hacking. The only reason he would do this is if he felt some pressure.
Yarrow
Hmmmm….I have a comment in moderation. Is it the word N a z i that triggered it? Something else?
Davis X. Machina
@catclub: The CIA were that evil…. I guess three Supreme Court nominations plus eight years of Trump, or Pence after Trump strokes out, just isn’t enough penance.
RaflW
@Yarrow: I agree. McConnell was starting to see that he was quite exposed on the suppression issue before the election. To save his own hide he will favor an ‘investigation’ that will drag on and do nothing.
McConnell is a serious snake in the grass, and like Francis Underwood, doesn’t care who he has to push off the subway platform to save himself.
Adam L Silverman
@Corner Stone: Sort of. Everyone is constantly running counterintelligence ops to try to shore themselves up. Its part of the reason that raw intel reports are not disseminated, just finished intelligence. And its why the Intel folks, usually just shorthanded as the CIA, and the FBI butt heads constantly. The FBI wants names, dates, times, locations, and details. The Intel folks are basically doing a modified version of social and behavioral science research and analysis look at material from all sources – open and classified, from a variety of inputs – human, signals, geospatial, etc. They then take that, vet the sourcing, vet their queries, hypothesis, assumptions, findings, and conclusions, and arrive at a final, consensus product known as an estimate. When you hear the DNI or DCI or NSA Director or NCTC Director come out and state “we have high confidence in this estimate”, its about as close as someone indicating they’ve got findings at the .05 confidence interval, or for our Baysian readers, that the results are deeply in the tail and do not bind zero. Intelligence work is done by highly skilled artisans – for both collection and analysis. The FBI’s work is law enforcement. Completely different frame of reference.
Kay
@rikyrah:
I would love to hear her explain it, now that she doesn’t have to worry about appearing “nice” or “likeable” like girls have to be. They interviewed McCain over and over to critique Obama’s Presidency, to the point that it became a running joke. Let’s hear from Clinton. Many more people voted for her. If “credibility” with the public is what we’re after she’s the one to lend it.
Brachiator
@Corner Stone:
The editorial continues:
Clearly, they are ready for him and have escalating responses ready, if necessary. Trump has needlessly started a fight even before he formally takes office. He is either getting some bad advice, or he truly is stupid. Or both.
The Moar You Know
@Corner Stone: Nope. The Chinese are masters of the art. ShitGibbon won’t even know he’s been insulted.
(I’m a big Anthony Bourdain fan, but one of the most agonizingly bad episodes of his show is the one where he goes to China and has dinner with a billionaire and doesn’t realize that):
1. His incessant questioning about the “Communist Party” makes him look like a country bumpkin from forty years ago, a total American moron of the worst kind,
2. 1/4 of the way through the segment, his host is so insulted and fucking pissed off about it he’s making fun of him to his face and Bourdain doesn’t even realize it.
ShitGibbon won’t get it either. Probably talk about how awesome and respectful the Chinese are right up until the ICBMs start coming in.
PPCLI
@Kay:
” There is no “conflict of interest” after Trump. One can ever again be held to that standard or norm. ”
Republicans will still demagogue about trivial Democratic apparent-but-not-real conflicts of interest, Trump or no Trump, and Fox news will take up the call 24/7. The mainstream media will reply with a resounding “Both Sides Do it”.
Corner Stone
Wow. I bet Jonathan Chait is feeling a little silly right about now.
rikyrah
@Kay:
YYYEEEEESSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!
Jeffro
Just a quick email to my RW dad and brother this morning…
How do you say…”house of cards” in Russian?
Looks like the Electors have asked to be briefed on Russian interference in the election before the Dec 19th vote…good for them, putting their country first.
Meanwhile, some interesting questions are finally being asked. Here’s Jennifer Rubin of the WaPo, in a column titled, “The Russian story is not about Hillary Clinton” (since so many Rs rush to false equivalencies when trying to defend Trump/Putin):
JR:
There are three categories of questions that should be the focus going forward:
Russian motives/Trump motives: We don’t know if Vladimir Putin’s espionage on Trump’s behalf was undertaken with some specific expectation or understanding about Trump’s future conduct; on the belief Putin could manipulate pro-Russian advisers around Trump; or simply on the observation that Trump is an egomaniac and ignoramus whom Putin could play. We don’t know whether personal affinity, economic self-interest or something else prompted Trump to adopt pro-Russian positions (e.g., weaken NATO) and take Putin’s side against U.S. intelligence agencies. Congressional investigators should get to the bottom of Trump advisers’ ties to Russia, any communications during the campaign between Trump’s team and the Kremlin and the post-election conversations that have taken place.
Personnel picks: How did he wind up with so many Russian apologists in his inner circle? Eric Edelman and David Kramer wrote recently:
[Flynn] appeared at the 10th anniversary dinner last December for RT, one of the Kremlin’s most scurrilous propaganda outlets. Flynn sat at Putin’s table and was reportedly paid to give a speech during the festivities. Although Flynn’s defenders claim he was tough on Putin in conversation, no independent evidence has emerged to confirm that. Paul Manafort served as Trump’s campaign chairman until controversy over his ties in Ukraine to the pro-Russian former President Viktor Yanukovych forced him off the team in August. Carter Page, cited by Trump as an adviser earlier this year, has had various business dealings in Russia and gave a speech in Moscow in July in which he slammed U.S. policy toward Russia.
All of these individuals have called for lifting sanctions on Russia and returning to a normal bilateral relationship.
Did these advisers promote pro-Putin views or did Trump pick them because he was already favorably inclined toward Putin? Add in Rex W. Tillerson, who has advocated against sanctions and has a chummy relationship with Putin stemming from negotiations between Exxon and Russia. Is this mere coincidence? It is essential that Congress or an independent investigation determine what, if any, financial ties exist between Russia and the Trump team.
How, if at all, will Trump’s Russia policy change because of Russia’s intervention in our election? Trump seems bent on denying Russia did anything wrong, suggesting that far from responding to the attack on our electoral process Trump wants to cozy up to the Russian bear at the expense of allies. “Trump could upend EU policy toward Russia and derail the sanctions regime. Lifting Western sanctions on Russia while it still occupies Ukrainian territory would embolden Putin into thinking he has reconsolidated a sphere of influence along his borders,” Edelman and Kramer write. “It would put an end to the effort to impose costs for his military aggression without requiring him to live up to any of the conditions, including withdrawal of forces and return of control of the border to Ukraine, required by the Minsk cease-fire agreement signed in February 2015.”
If a presidential candidate had fallen under the influence of an ex-KGB agent it is hard to say how he would be doing anything different than Trump is now — hiring Russian sycophants, nixing anti-Russian candidates, denying overwhelming evidence of Russian espionage, suggesting our obligations to NATO are not ironclad, ignoring human rights violations in Russia, etc. Maybe Trump is simply misinformed or careless. But why do all his “errors” tilt in favor of Putin?
The issue then is not whether Putin compromised our election but whether Trump and his advisers are compromised. The latter is a frightening notion, one that should take precedence over partisan backbiting — and every other issue until the questions are satisfactorily resolved.
*Not noted in the article, but just in case y’all were unaware: the only thing the Trump team changed in the standard GOP issues/platform at the convention? Making sure the platform no longer called for giving weapons to Ukraine to fight Russian and rebel forces, contradicting the view of almost all Republican foreign policy leaders in Washington.
Roger Moore
@Tom Levenson:
Sure, but there are better and worse ways of bringing that point up; tweeting a quick comment is not one of them. I seriously wonder if somebody on the Trump team is coordinating short selling on stocks that Trump is planning on trashing; they could have made serious bank already if they had.
Davis X. Machina
@Adam L Silverman:So if Trump exercises his executive branch powers, its poof! Langley > Trump > FSB.
It’ll save Putin the cost of covering the US target, and free up resources for the assault on the Nordics and the EU.
max
The sound you hear is every H-P veteran shrieking in shock and despair.
Yep. The Trump administration is just as stupid as I’d imagined it would be. This is exactly the sort of thing that proves Ayn (rhymes with swine!) Rand completely and utterly wrong.
There’s no way to justify appointing Fiorina to this position unless you take Trump at his word and believe that he believes there’s simply no reason to bother with anything so frivolous as data, information, or knowledge of the world, our friends and adversaries alike.
If she’s going to proceed, Fiorina-style, to attempt to make the IC better, which will result in probably reducing the grip of the surveillance state on the throat of the 4th amendment, I might have to consider this a dumb, but perhaps divinely-inspired choice.
max
[‘Silver linings…’]
Citizen Alan
@Corner Stone:
Unlike fiorina, Trump has not actually gotten any specific people killed through his incompetence or venality. Those people who were shot and killed at the Planned Parenthood clinic in California last year died as a direct result of fiorina lying about videos that did not exist.
aimai
@max: The only thing Fiorina can do at a place like the CIA is become a witting or unwitting catspaw, controlled by whichever internal cabal of top level people get to her first, or figure out the best way to blackmail and control her first.
Adam L Silverman
@RareSanity: A special committee, such as the House Special Committee for Benghazi, is created at the direction of the chamber’s leadership, is chartered to do its specific work, present its findings, and then disband. It is a type of ad hoc committee and one with a specific task and purpose. Regular order committees, or standing (regular) committees, exist regardless of any specific event or events and have a wider range of responsibilities. For instance, the Senate Intelligence Committee’s, and its sub-committee’s, job is to oversee the US Intelligence Community, how it functions, its budget (this is the committee that does the appropriation for the IC, though given that 16 members of the IC are part of DOD, it shares that with Armed Services), advises and consents on nominations for leadership of the IC – things like that. So investigating Russian influence operations into the US election will be one of many of its tasks, not its sole task.
eldorado
does coyote have a russian equivalent? regardless, this is the best explanation of our current predicament. it’s too bad the result is just as likely to blow everything up as anything else.
Yarrow
@RaflW: That’s why we have to keep up the pressure. Call your damn reps! Let them know you want a big investigation now. Special investigator. How can we have a Russian puppet for a president? Etc. McConnell will do what will save him. If that saves him, even if it burns Trump, he’ll do it.
catclub
@jk: Meanwhile, Mara Liasson was making a point that NOBODY was considering ‘relitigating’ the past election based on the fact that the Russians ( and Comey) spoiled it. They just want an investigation so that it won’t happen again. Thanks, Mara.
bluehill
I’m going to assume that Bannon/Kushner have a plan and Trump is executing it rather than assume it’s just another of Trump’s ADD fueled rants. Not sure why they are going after some of these defense companies. Maybe they bought a bunch of put options before those tweets went out. Easy money when you know you can move the market that way. Could be a way to bring big business to heel or bring in donations to the reelection fund. Workers probably like it and the costs of these things probably is too high.
Still trying think of reasons why they are poking the Chinese so much. I’m speculating that they want to make the Chinese the existential enemy rather than Islam.
Adam L Silverman
@trollhattan:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7xvi6GL9Fk
Kay
@Citizen Alan:
That’s actually why I loathe her. She’s the poster child for upper class women moaning about how much they love babies. It’s a “type” in the anti-abortion movement and they’re always the most vitriolic and sanctimonious.
Roger Moore
@Davis X. Machina:
He can order anything he wants. Just ask King Knut.
SenyorDave
So perhaps we should count ourselves lucky that he isn’t going to appoint his 10-year old son head of the CIA.
Would probably rank as one of his top three appointments
Chris
@Brachiator:
Yep.
Trump is a supremely pampered and privileged asshole who’s never heard the word “no” in his life. He’s going to keep pushing boundaries until he hits a real wall that tells him when to stop, the kind he’s never run into yet. The problem is that in international relations, the damage from hitting that kind of wall is usually prohibitively high.
Adam L Silverman
@Mnemosyne: They always do.
schrodinger's cat
@Cermet: Its Sanskrit, when your destruction is imminent you lose good sense.
This is a rough translation, the original is much more spare.
Yarrow
@Jeffro:
Where did you hear this? Do you have a link?
trollhattan
@Brachiator:
It’s telling that Trump is attracted to the extraction industries, since he can more or less understand digging stuff out of the ground and making money selling it. But the WalMarts and Targets and home Depots and Macy’s and Apples and HPs etc must be freaking out at the thought of tariffs and trade wars. They HAVE to be burning up the communication channels telling Trump’s handlers (whomever they actually may be) to get him to back the hell off.
And he won’t.
Kay
@catclub:
Does anyone believe this anymore? After Bush v Gore, after Iraq, after the financial meltdown, after this massive clusterfuck of an election?
Powerful people are never held accountable. Instead we get “prevent this happening again” Prevent what? We don’t know what they’ll do next time yet.
They’ll just do something different next time.
Anonymous At Work
Adam,
Do people appointed or nominated & confirmed to Intelligence posts automatically get the necessary clearance for those jobs, site-unseen? What’s the vetting process like in those situations for someone like Fiorna to get the highest security clearance when she might not be able to pass it on her own?
Davis X. Machina
@Adam L Silverman: It’ll be the last thing the agencies involved do, in their present shape and form.
Their energies will shortly be re-directed at our real enemies… whoever they are today. Let me check Twitter….
Davis X. Machina
@trollhattan: WalMart’s customers will be thrilled to pay 3x the present price for an electric blanket, provided they get to watch someone else shiver. The actual corporation will survive either way.
tobie
This is a little out there but as we’re talking about surveillance agencies, I’m reminded of this Buzzfeed story from June about Trump listening on the phone calls of workers, residents, and guests at Mar-A-Lago. Hope someone follows up on this story, should Fiorina become a nominee for DNI. It would be a good way to bring up hers and Trump’s serial offenses in one fell swoop.
catclub
@tobie:
in 2001 fixing our system of elections was the big story of the moment. We got Diebold machines.
Occupy Wall street was the big story of 2013? nothing. I take that back – a few states have increased minimum wage.
Ferguson and Black lives matter was a big story of the moment – killings of unarmed black men by cops (with no convictions) continue.
How about the Newtown massacre and gun control as the big story of the moment?
I wish you and us luck.
rikyrah
@Kay:
uh uh uh
joel hanes
@raven:
A face like that …
I wish that this were below you. It should be.
Chris
@Adam L Silverman:
I’ve read something about this from Bob Baer’s biography. In his case he was talking about the investigation into the Aldrich Ames debacle, which involved the FBI being brought to Langley and trying not only to determine what happened but how to prevent it from happening again. His complaint was that under all the new rules about security and reporting contacts with foreigners that were being implemented on the FBI’s advice, most of his early recruitments and contacts in the Cold War wouldn’t have been able to pass muster.
Brachiator
@The Moar You Know: RE: Is anyone else terrified by the thought of what happens if China decides it needs to save face by insulting Trump?
Being called “ignorant as a child” seems plain enough to me.
Being told, “we got some shit for you if you keep acting up,” is also pretty clear.
Or in the more diplomatic Chinese editorial:
I look forward to Trump’s reply.
Cermet
@schrodinger’s cat: Rather deep and appropriate. Always thought Sand-script the most beautiful written form of communication. Now that written English, as taught here in the US, is giving up its closest form – cursive – is also down right depressing.
Adam L Silverman
@Davis X. Machina: Langley doesn’t go away easily. And they learned some important lessons from how VP Cheney treated and manipulated them.
HRA
Apologize if this has been already shown.
The election has to be undone somehow.
Mnemosyne
@Adam L Silverman:
Well, sure, but now they’re going from a mature adult president who understands the consequences of releasing information in an uncontrolled way to a tantruming toddler with a Twitter account. The standard is going to have to be different. Otherwise, they’re handing the keys of a semi truck to a 3-year-old and saying, “Have fun, Donnie!”
Roger Moore
@Cermet:
He’s trolling for bribes to keep it going.
Brachiator
@trollhattan:
Trump is supposed to have a meeting with high tech leaders later this week. This also should be a hell of a get together. I wonder what Trump, who does not use email, understands about the high tech industry (and there are aspects of high tech industry with ties to China trade).
Mnemosyne
Also, too, if I were a smart young journalist (which I am not), I would start looking into any connections Fiorina has with Russia. Because you know they’re there.
Adam L Silverman
@Anonymous At Work: They have to go through the clearance process. This is a whole of person investigation and for these positions should include a lifestyle polygraph. If they fail the clearance review process, they will have a chance to challenge the adjudicator’s findings. Could the President force a clearance through? Possibly, though I’ve never heard of it happening.
This is also, most likely, why Giuliani is out of the running. He couldn’t get through the foreign contacts/connections section of the investigation because of his lobbying and security advising work. Its going to be a problem for Flynn too. And a number of others.
schrodinger's cat
@Cermet: The Sanskrit script is called Devnagari.
Dev == God
Nagar ==town
So literally, God’s script
Elie
@Betty Cracker:
We don’t know that they haven’t — The “right” places may not be visible to us yet. Sometimes takes a little time for things to play out or for the pressure to build in the right way. Noticed he shut his pie hole today…
I can only hope that he continues to appoint these unprepared and incompetent people in roles where they will leave him unprotected due to their and his cluelessness and incompetence. He truly has no idea nor, it seems, any of the people advising him since he only seems to listen to those who only listen to him. It amazes me that some of the generals like the so called Mad Dog would care so little about their own reputation to assist this creature destroy this government — which he is genuinely trying to do, it appears. Their names will be remembered allright, but not in the way they hope for.
Corner Stone
@Roger Moore: Lockheed hasn’t donated $1M to the Inauguration Party Committee just yet?
Lizzy L
I think the meeting with Fiorina is a distraction, part of the con, and also one of T’s dominance games.
Roger Moore
@Brachiator:
Obviously they’re just saying that to hide their responsibility for the hacking that helped to elect him.
HRA
It looks like my link did not take.
China flexed it’s military muscle today over the South China Sea as a warning to DT. I will try to find it again.
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/309908-china-flies-nuclear-bomber-to-send-message-to-trump
Davis X. Machina
@Adam L Silverman: You can reorganize them out of existence, or relevance.
And count on the active assistance of the progressive community. Everyone old enough to remember the Church Committee will be right in there helping Trump along.
Adam L Silverman
@Chris: Very different mindset, very different way of approaching the world. I highly recommend this:
http://www.experts.com/content/articles/patrick_lang_3_bureaucrats_versus_artists.pdf
The author was one of the people that trained and mentored me.
Adam L Silverman
@Davis X. Machina: Not going to be easy to do.
Elie
@Brachiator:
And of course this is the time he is fucking with his own intelligence agency. Man is cray-cray and is putting all of us including his moron Republican yes men, in extreme danger. The Chinese are a little full of themselves these days as well. Two hard headed sides give little wiggle room for negotiation without losing face. Who is gonna mediate or moderate all the trash talk?
mai naem mobile
@Brachiator: he’ll have Barron right there because he’s real good at the cyber. Real good at the cyber.
trollhattan
@Brachiator:
“Interesting” is a good word.
“We would like all the H-1B visas now, please.”
“I’ll get back to you after I deport all the Guatemalans.”
Botsplainer
@KG:
The smart play for every terrorist group in earth is to target Trump branded properties. It is like a bonus miles program for press exposure.
Keith P.
People seem to forget how shitty of a job W. was doing prior to 9/11. Once the towers fell, a ton of people suddenly saw him through the prism of exuberant patriotism. Take that away, and he was really in over his head. His signature accomplishments to that point were No Child Left Behind and cutting federal stem cell research. Trump is going to be worse, as he’s taking the ideology-yes/pragamatism-NO! route, plus, if we get attacked under his watch, the Dems aren’t going to fall for the “let’s all come together for America!” trick again.
Corner Stone
@Adam L Silverman: Link no work. You fix.
Elie
@catclub:
Oh their side has to initially say that but everyone knows that certain kinds of information and realities may change that. These folks are scared as shit that a whole lot of stuff is gonna come apart. They may not be able to ignore or suppress what went down, and they know it. They are just trying to comfort themselves as they walk into this very dark place with no maps, light or compass….
tobie
@catclub: So I guess you’re saying that it would be better if no attention were paid to Russian influence in the 2016 election. WTF? I take your point that the media is no friend to the left. Since the election we’ve all been mulling what we can do given the overwhelming odds against us. Any ideas?
Chris
@Keith P.:
All true.
Corner Stone
@SenyorDave:
A very credible source called my office and told me Barron von Trump is the best at cyber. That he is so good, so good, it is unbelievable. Some people are also saying this is true, believe me. We are going to have the classiest cyber, the very best, it’s going to be yooog cyber.
sukabi
@Poopyman: why yes they are…
Chris
@Adam L Silverman:
Link doesn’t work for me either, though I won’t try to compete with Corner Stone’s eloquence in summarizing the problem.
matryoshka
@Ella in New Mexico: Yes, it’s like a child amping up his bad behavior so you will rein him in. He has no internal locus of control and responds only to external reward. Electors, please put on your big-boy pants and stop him.
Adam L Silverman
@Corner Stone:
http://www.experts.com/content/articles/patrick_lang_3_bureaucrats_versus_artists.pdf
Davis X. Machina
@tobie: Puppets. Huge puppets. With papier-mache heads.
Elie
@Keith P.:
Keith, I think we are in a way different place than then… Maybe you are right, but the velocity at which shit is coming to really bad head and on so many levels, is way different than even W’s horrible time. We have a foreign power that has breached our government and controlled the outcome of an election. We have half of the current government terrorized by a creature with no limits and who has surrounded himself with arrogant and incompetent people who truly would like to destroy what remains of our government. Yes, we can have a number of terror events that could put us in a worse spot, but I think the CIA and other intelligence and security agents are aware of these risks. We are in uncharted waters….
Adam L Silverman
@Corner Stone:
http://www.experts.com/content/articles/patrick_lang_3_bureaucrats_versus_artists.pdf
Corner Stone
@Adam L Silverman: It’s breaking after bureaucrats/ I just get a white blank page with nothing to choose from or read.
Where the hell is Steeplejack when he is so desperately needed?
The Moar You Know
@HRA: But it won’t be. SO WHAT IS THE PLAN?
Failing to plan for Hillary’s loss may be the greatest mistake Democrats as a party have ever made. It was always a possibility. It should have been taken a lot more seriously.
Corner Stone
@Davis X. Machina: Maybe some “Free Mumia” sweatshirts?
Adam L Silverman
@Corner Stone: I just fixed it in a response to you, but try this:
http://www.experts.com/content/articles/patrick_lang_3_bureaucrats_versus_artists.pdf
tobie
@Davis X. Machina: Am thinking of something along those lines for the women’s march. This may not be effective for anything but morale boosting but at least that’s something.
JPL
@Corner Stone: At the bottom it say search goggle and there you will find a link
maybe this is direct
http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2012/10/httpwwwtypepadcomsiteblogs6a00d8341c72e153ef00d83451d3f569e2post6a00d8341c72e153ef0115709f8ac1970bedit.html
sukabi
@Betty Cracker: I would think China would spill, just because he keeps calling them “Jina”…
Chris
@Adam L Silverman:
That did the trick! Thanks!
Corner Stone
@Adam L Silverman: FINALLY! I can stop bitching about not being able to read free content!
Adam L Silverman
@Corner Stone: I’ve now fixed it everywhere I’ve posted it, so you should be good to go.
patrick II
@KG:
That was when the Russian threat was from communists. Now that it is Putin and their fellow fascists, the new Trumpian party will view Russian interference as a brother giving a helping hand.
cmorenc
@Brachiator:
Trump’s not the one actually choosing most of the appointments – Pence is, behind the scenes. Trump’s public flirtation with Fiorina as the Intelligence post nominee most likely is along the same dynamic as his public flirtation with Romney as potential SOS or his publicized meeting with Gore about climate change – the real point is luring rivals, critics etc to come to him with a faux show of conciliation, to make them pubicly kiss his ring, and then a few days later, humiliate them with a kick in the ass.
Had Trump been the prime chooser of nominees, his selections would likely be far more eclectic and much less consistently ideological, albeit the majority would be of clearly conservative bent, and some of them would be just as dangerous in their own way as the ones Pence is picking. But probably not quite as consistently bad as the ones Pence is selecting.
boatboy_srq
@Stacy: She must have REALLY hated the personal computer business. HP left deeper scars than we thought.
Adam L Silverman
@Corner Stone: I honestly have no idea what the problem was. I was posting the link copied directly from the navigation bar. Fortunately its been posted in more than one place.
Corner Stone
@JPL: Hey, don’t you insult my goggle-fu! My goggle-fu is just fine, believe me! There is nothing wrong with the size of my goggle-fu!
danielx
Carly Fiorina for director of national intelligence? Hey, why not? Given the collection of mountebanks, looters and incompetents that he’s already assembled this comes as no great surprise.
Okay, with the possible exception of Mattis.
@Chris:
This. Thank you.
cmorenc
I never thought I would pine for the competence Ronald Reagan and most of his appointees (James Watt and Ed Meese being notable exceptions). OK, so we’re grading Reagan’s appointees on a curve here, but if we were offered the choice of trading Trump for a re-animated Reagan (but no other possible alternative) – we’d be idiots to not take it in a heartbeat. I NEVER NEVER EVER thought there was any possibity I could even think that way, but here we are. Trump is really that cataclysmically terrible.
Corner Stone
Holy shit.
A Guide to Donald Trump’s Huge Debts—and the Conflicts They Present
my emphasis
hovercraft
@Corner Stone:
The type of year where the kool aid is starting to wear off some of the morons who’ve done this to us. Unfortunately the vast majority are still enjoying the Shitgibbons ability to “shake things up.” Joe Walsh is amoral and an idiot, but he is a true believer in a “tea party revolution”, he wanted someone who would come in and blow up the system, like the shitgibbon said it would do, the fact that it’s instead bringing in a bunch of plutocrats to rape and pillage the nation is “shocking” to him, he thought we were going to get a bunch of “Joe the Plumber” type appointments. People from “real America” who would come in with their heartland common sense values to drain the swamp. Instead we are getting the swamps bottom dwellers.
reality-based (the original, not the troll)
@KG:
Re GOP taking threats to our sovereignty seriously – assuming facts not in evidence? See “Bin Laden Determined to Attack the US with airplanes”, George W, etc.
Though i suppose one could argue that that wasn’t a threat to sovereignty.
What this whole horror has made clear to me is that the GOP has only ONE core belief – that rich people shouldn’t pay taxes.. ALL the rest – balancing budgets, national defense, etc – are window dressing.
gex
@Corner Stone: You know. Like when Bush announced a federal ban on stem cell research after the briefing about Bin Laden attacking us with airplanes.
Brachiator
@cmorenc:
Has anyone actually corroborated this theory?
This makes some sense. But so would the idea that Bannon and Trump’s son-in-law and others are prime movers on cabinet picks. Does anyone know Pence well enough to be certain that the choices reflect his ideological bent?
Chris
@cmorenc:
There are exactly two things I’ll say for the Cold War right –
One, that for all their many, many, many issues, they were not uniformly bigoted in the way that the modern one is. You especially have them forming ties with all kinds of immigrant communities on the basis of shared anticommunism – the Chinese, the Vietnamese, the Cubans, and every kind of East European. (The kind of ties that really wouldn’t be too hard to form in our Arab, Persian, or Afghan refugee/immigrant communities nowadays, but you’d never catch them lowering themselves by talking to the wogs these days).
Not everything about those ties was healthy by a long shot, but it did act as some sort of check on the bigotry you see running rampant now – Reagan offering amnesty to Central Americans is an example.
Two, something I’ve only begun to say very recently, since Trump’s nomination: they took foreign superpowers hostile to the West seriously. Never thought I’d see the day when “do not start threatening the integrity of NATO and saying nice things about an aggressive Russian government at the same time that it looks like that government might want to move west” would become a partisan issue. But apparently, it is.
(By “the Cold War right” I don’t mean the entire right wing of the time, obviously. But Republican administrations did at least tend to lean in that direction).
Botsplainer
@Tom Levenson:
No need to do the tweet, though – the tweet is just a threat.
It isn’t his desire to kill the program – he’s actually running a “pay to play” gig against the Lockheed board – and stands a fair chance of success.
“Support Me, or Die” is the message.
tobie
@Corner Stone: Can’t imagine the amount of the debt we don’t know anything about. This is just the icing on the cake.
hovercraft
@Betty Cracker:
White House Hits Back Against Trump, Bolton Claims Of Hacking ‘Conspiracy’
“President Obama is certainly not the first president to have enjoyed the benefits of the experts in our intelligence community,” Earnest said in his daily press briefing, responding to a question about Trump’s recent comments. “I’m confident that the President-elect would benefit from that advice, if he remains open to it.”
“You did not need a security clearance to figure out who benefited from malicious Russian cyber activity,” Earnest said in response to a separate question.
“The president-elect did not call it into question. He called on Russia to hack his opponent. He called on Russia to hack Sec. Clinton. So he certainly had a pretty good sense of whose side this activity was coming down on,” he continued. “The last several weeks of the election were focused on a discussion of emails that had been hacked and leaked by the Russians. These were emails from the DNC and John Podesta, not from the RNC and Steve Bannon.”………
In response to a question about Bolton’s claim, Earnest said “I will rule out that the United States, in any way, engaged in the kind of false flag operation that a wide range of irresponsible conspiracy theorists have put forward. So we can dispense with that.”
The fat that the Whit House has to waste time fielding such bullshit questions, shows how far through the looking glass we’ve gone.
artem1s
@mai naem mobile:
I think you’re right. He’s not that clever really. He is too narcissistic to admit he is in over his head. A narcissist is completely capable of grasping their inadequacies, they just react to that knowledge completely differently than a normal sane person would. He will obfuscate, ignore and generally put off anything he doesn’t understand because facing up to it scares the shit out of him. A malignant narcissist as deranged as The Shitgibbon, will do anything, and I mean ANYTHING to keep the charade going. And the charade is he’s the bestest leader ever. And IMO he doesn’t understand foreign policy or international commerce in the least. He’s a glorified mall developer. He has no idea what goes on in the world outside of bullying small contractors out of their money. In his mind there is nothing that could go wrong that would affect him, so it’s not his problem.
I have a hard time believing that the security community and/or the military will be as willing to wait this disaster out as they were W. They had reason to believe that W wouldn’t be a complete fuck up. And there was no way his handlers would let him hand the country over to Putin. Do some dirty back room deals with that asshole, sure. But when Rove slipped up and burned one of the CIAs assets, he nearly went to jail and W had to throw Libby under the bus to mollify them. This mess is a lot bigger than outing Valerie Plame. And no way is the CIA going to take the blame for an August 8th memo for Shitgibbon or Pootey Poote.
cmorenc
@Brachiator: Whether it’s Pence or Bannon or both, the consistent hard-core RW ideological nature of the picks is the signature of someone similarly ideological being the one in actual charge of the selection process – and Pence as transition team head is the most likely to be in the driver’s seat, albeit with some possible assists from Bannon.
Tom Levenson
@Botsplainer: Yes. The leverage a President has on this kind of thing is large. Though not as large as Trump might think. The F-35, e.g., has a lot of defenders in Congress. But that he’s even playing w. national security on this level is a disgrace, whether or not he’s holding the cards he thinks he is. (And yes, even though I and many think the F-35 is a dog whose cost actually makes the US military weaker by crowding out less glamorous, more effective measures, the choice of weapons systems is still a nat-sec question and Trump’s fucking with it can’t be excused by his momentary lighting upon a reasonably worthy target.)
HRA
@The Moar You Know:
I wish I knew what plan would serve to stop these fears I feel for the future of everyone with this beyond bizarre daily example of a highly inept new administration on it’s way in to run our country.
catclub
@Keith P.:
Also US P3 reconnaissance plane held by china and US sub sinking a Japanese fishing boat while showboating for VIPs.
Brachiator
@Betty Cracker:
Slow today. Just got it. Bigger dreidel.
Bravo!!!
Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class
@Tom Levenson:
The F-35 is the F-111 of 2005-2020 era.
Plus, it is ultimately even less useful, as the F-111 did make a transition of sorts and was used in some roles during the Vietnam misadventure as the FB-111. There will be no such transition for the F-35.
Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class
Apropos of nothing whatsoever, I have taken to greeting people with “io Saturnalia”, the traditional greeting in honor of the holiday season rapidly coming upon us.
Among my “Happy Holidays” wishing librul friends, it causes initial puzzlement, followed by guffaws.
Davis X. Machina
@Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class: You can buy “Put the Saturn back in ‘Saturnalia'” merch….
jl
@Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class: Io Saturnalia! back to you. We need to get on the stick and do one this year, to bring an auspicious beginning to the Reign of Trump. Wandering around bullying and threatening people into giving you stuff is the new Christmas cheer. After Trump is pres, only the rich will be allowed to do that.
Edit: You got some nice stuff? Where do you live? Let me know and I’ll be around with some bricks to party down, dude!
Adam L Silverman
@Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class: The F-35 is really for the export market. We can’t export the F-22 because the Israelis would want it and the concern is that like everything else we sell them (with the money we give them) that they’ll take it apart and then sell the design specs under the table to the people they usually sell stuff to under the table: China, North Korea, and Iran. So we had to come up with something else that could be sold through Foreign Military Sales and that was the F-35, the Strategic Strike Paperweight.
Poopyman
The Kremlin doesn’t seem inclined to keep its head down:
aimai
@The Moar You Know: Uh…I fail to see what planning would have done? The power structures are the power structures. There’s nothing to plan for until you see where the chips fall.
Adam L Silverman
@Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class: All Holidays Matter!
Chris
@Adam L Silverman:
I knew they sold all kinds of stuff to China and accepted where it went from there as a cost of doing business. Iran, though? Fucking hell.
Corner Stone
@Poopyman:
“Oh, geez guys. Could you at least give it a few days?”
/RexT
jl
@Poopyman: Sad thing is, the plutocrat and oligarch Tillerson, and some of the generals, are Trump’s better, more responsible, appointments. Tragedy or farce, or both? That is the only question now.
Yutsano
@schrodinger’s cat: Abugidas just fascinate me.
hovercraft
@Adam L Silverman:
If we know they do this, why do we still sell them any advance weaponry? I know that we want them to maintain an advantage over the rest of the countries in the ME, but couldn’t we do that without basically financing and supplying two of the countries we claim* are the biggest threats to our national security?
* I’m now of the opinion that “real America” is the biggest threat to this nation, but hey, I’m just one of those coastal others, so what do I know.
Jeffro
@cmorenc:
I vote for “both” – burning down government agencies from the inside serves both of their agendas.
Adam L Silverman
@Chris: They’ve been selling under the table to Iran since the Shah’s days. Its why the Reagan Administration used them as the cut out in Iran-Contra. Its also why I think they freak out every year over an Iranian nuclear program. Once a year they do an audit of all the crap they’ve sold the Iranians under the table and when its done they look at it and go: “Holy shit! Do you know what they could build with this stuff?”
Adam L Silverman
@hovercraft: Its complicated.
jl
@hovercraft: thanks for that comment. Same question came to my mind.
@Adam L Silverman:
‘It’s complicated’
I am a disgruntled US citizen (though admittedly another one of the coastal scum), who no longer accepts that explanation at face value. Maybe you could explain further in post?
SatanicPanic
@aimai: How would we plan for it anyway? The planning we’re doing in our city right now is based on the fact that we have no idea what is coming. like, no idea.
Chris
@Adam L Silverman:
I’m aware of the good relationship they had with Iran under the Shah (the “strategy of periphery” that consisted of cultivating neighbors on the other side of the Arab world as a counterweight to their Arab enemies). And I’m aware that they tried to continue that throughout the eighties, even after the revolution, for good reasons given that from their POV, Saddam’s Iraq was still the bigger (and closer) threat.
I just thought it had died out by now. That at some point in the last 25 years, they’d decided that Iran was now the biggest threat in the region and therefore no longer a relationship to be cultivated. There’s something surreal about their having kept it up even if, as you say, they do an inventory every few years and go “holy shit!”
jl
@Chris: A little bit of Trump Doctrine embedded in the Israeli government? Great Deelz cannot be turned down?
hovercraft
@Adam L Silverman:
Well of course it’s complicated, but it’s not like you have nothing better to than to break down complicated geopolitical stuff for the BJ community, so why don’t you?
Seriously perhaps you can put this down as one of the things you can try to explain to people like me who are baffled by this. I know with this being the holiday season you probably don’t have time right now, but maybe after the new year, as we await the Trumpocalypse, we can get better insight into the things that will be soon bringing about our demise.
vhh
@trollhattan: It has been reported that the F-35 has a much shorter range than originally planned, because the features needed to make it an “airplane for all seasons” also increased its weight. This is not a big concern for Israel, since their enemies are (relatively) right next door. I also suspect that deals like this may have been a quid pro quo for the extension of the generous package of US arms aid to Israel that was recently signed.
JustRuss
@Roger Moore:
I had the same thought, although I was thinking Trump himself, not someone on his team. I mean, why the hell wouldn’t he? It’s like free money.
Adam L Silverman
@hovercraft: Under the table connections mean that adversaries are communicating, even if its over very narrow economic interests. Allowing those connections to exist and be maintained translates into a reduction for outright conflict when the hyperbole gets out of hand. In short: money talks and bullshit walks.
Same reason we don’t give China grief over maintaining a relationship with North Korea. Someone has to. And by doing so it reduces the likelihood of the North Korean government doing something truly stupid. Eventually the odds will catch up to everyone, but the idea is to make them as long as possible.
Roger Moore
@Adam L Silverman:
And like just about every military procurement program these days, it’s designed much more carefully as corporate welfare for the MIC than it is as an actual weapon. All of these boondoggle programs make a lot more sense when you see them primarily as corporate welfare- or, slightly more generously, an attempt to preserve our capacity to produce top-of-the-line weapons- and only secondarily as attempts to equip the military.
El Caganer
Maybe this has already been brought up, but I saw a news item earlier today in which a former US ambassador to Russia said he believed that Putin wanted to assure Clinton’s loss as payback for what he thought were her efforts to undermine his election in 2011.
Roger Moore
@JustRuss:
Insufficient liquidity.
Debbie1
@Corner Stone: Is that you John McCain?
Mike G
Komrad Trumpovich’s idea of intelligence is people telling him what he wants to hear and “knows” already.
So his DNI needs to be a complete hack who will bully agencies into giving the result the top man wanted, just like in the Bush\Cheney years. Failorina had years of generating self-justifying bullshit at HP so she fits this to a T.
jl
@Adam L Silverman: Good points. Thanks.
A snarky comeback would be ‘Well, it is not all THAT complicated, is it?’ But I would never snark at an august and respected, almost top 10,000 family and kids blog.
jl
@Mike G: On the bright side, people like Fiorina and Botlon might not last, since they are among select few who can lie as outrageously and frequently and shamelessly as Trump. He doesn’t like to be upstaged in any way.
gvg
@Yarrow:
they don’t have to have anything on McConnel, though they might. If they have something on enough other GOP Congrespeople or Mc suspects they do, he may be reacting to fear of losing his job or majority. I wonder if we might see the majority party change because enough Congressmen are arrested for some kind of corruption? Trump is going to encourage graft for himself, it’s going to enbolden others to do it too and I can see a bunch of arrests being the result, plus the public typically reacts by voting other party next election. Scandals that were covvered up but came out are a big part of why we got a majority in 2006. It wasn’t just Bush’s mistakes, it was the GOP congress too. the actions were before 2006 but covered up. Maybe more things are being covered up now. Seems to be the way they act.
gvg
Someone posted an article and an opinion that there had to be someway to undo this election, presumably because the Russians interfeared. Other people have said other countries have do overs if they think the election is invalid. Unfortunately I think this is impossible with out Constitution. we didn’t put in a process for do over and I think its actually specified which day the election has to be and when the electors vote and when the inauguration is.
Most other countries have some sort of call an election when the leading party has lost the confidence or else when the PM calls it, usually calculated to be when he thinks his party will do well. We do it on a regular term basis.
qwerty42
@Thoroughly Pizzled: He doesn’t KNOW anyone else. He has no friends and no close associates. I imagine the effort that Obama went through to stock his administration with talent, and then I look at this travesty. Trump may already be the worst president in U.S. history.
A bunch of cronies, has-beens, never-were’s, kooks, and nazis. Yeah, Cohen was right:
“… One bad boss can be endured. A gaggle of them will poison all decision-making. They will turn on each other. No band of brothers this: rather the permanent campaign as waged by triumphalist rabble-rousers and demagogues, abetted by people out of their depth and unfit for the jobs they will hold, gripped by grievance, resentment and lurking insecurity. Their mistakes—because there will be mistakes—will be exceptional. …”
hovercraft
@Adam L Silverman:
Thanks, makes sense I guess.
SWMBO
@Corner Stone: He’s getting PDB every day. Putin Daily Brief. Pence is getting the Presidential Daily Brief. After all, he’s going to be handling the day to day stuff. Trump is going to handle MAGA. That’s why his Daily Brief is from Putin.
Corner Stone
@SWMBO: No puppet! You’re the puppet!
SWMBO
@Yarrow: Who do you think has something on McConnel? The Russians? Or the CIA?
SWMBO
@Corner Stone: Said by the man in front of the curtain…with the Man behind the curtain wearing a hammer and sickle.
J R in WV
Fiorina had my bro to a dinner to congratulate him for helping complete the merger of HP and Compaq, literally patted him on the back and thanks him personally.
Two weeks later she had him laid off. So he went from major executive for IT firm to managing an assisted living center 12 years later, how long it took for him to find another job in Tejas. She stabbed him in the back the moment he was no longer useful to Carly.
J R in WV
@schrodinger’s cat:
“Vinashkale wrong-headed” ?? Google fails me !!!!
Or did you mean to say exactly that?
schrodinger's cat
@J R in WV: Google is wrong.
Vinash == destruction
Kal=time
J R in WV
@Yarrow:
Oh My!!!
that guy is SO good at this!
Timurid
@schrodinger’s cat:
Kali Yuga,
Or in this case, Kali Yuuuuugea…
schrodinger's cat
@Timurid: What about Kali Yuga?
J R in WV
@Yarrow:
Interestingly enough, my father’s elderly Jewish friend asked him to help her buy a new Cadillac, years ago. He told me he tried to talk her into at least looking at a Lincoln, but she wasn’t interested.
I told him I wasn’t a bit surprised that she wouldn’t look at a Lincoln as it is common knowledge that Ford actively supported German Nazis AND American Nazis during the run-up to WW II.
My dad, an experienced person in the political world, was surprised as he didn’t know this. Every Jewish person in the country knows it, none of them drive Ford products, I was shocked my dad didn’t know it.
J R in WV
@Adam L Silverman:
Doesn’t this paper “Artists versus Bureaucrats” describe the same sort of management that we saw in the military exercise [Millennium Challenge 2002] discussed yesterday? In which the retired Marine Lt Gen commanding the Red force destroyed the Blue Force in the first two days of the exercise. After which the Admiral commanding the entire exercise started it over with new rules enforcing any requirements necessary to enable Blue Force to win, whereupon the Lt Gen commanding the Red Force resigned.
In this case a wily Red Force commander using a different (Iranian) standard of strategic thought destroyed billions of dollars worth of
USNBlue Force fleet resources, killed tens of thousands ofUSNBlue Force sailors and Marines. In two days of combat.A very low Least Common Denominator in Military strategic command nearly identical to that which cost the nation so much in the 1965-1975 wars in SE Asia?
We are so Fuqed!
J R in WV
@schrodinger’s cat:
Thanks, I don’t know much, but I knew Google was wrong!