Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Fight for a just cause, love your fellow man, live a good life.

Balloon Juice, where there is always someone who will say you’re doing it wrong.

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

When you’re a Republican, they let you do it.

When do the post office & the dmv weigh in on the wuhan virus?

You are so fucked. Still, I wish you the best of luck.

I’m just a talker, trying to find a channel!

This fight is for everything.

The words do not have to be perfect.

Baby steps, because the Republican Party is full of angry babies.

“woke” is the new caravan.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

Democrats have delivered the Square Deal, the New Deal, the Fair Deal, and now… the Big Joe Biden Deal.

After dobbs, women are no longer free.

“And when the Committee says to “report your income,” that could mean anything!

The choice is between normal and crazy.

If you still can’t see these things even now, maybe politics isn’t your forte and you should stop writing about it.

The lights are all blinking red.

We’ll be taking my thoughts and prayers to the ballot box.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

The media handbook says “controversial” is the most negative description that can be used for a Republican.

Trump’s legal defense is going to be a dumpster fire inside a clown car on a derailing train.

Let there be snark.

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Russiagate Open Thread: Maria Butina Released from Federal Prison

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Per NPR:

… The Russian national, who pleaded guilty late last year to conspiring to act as a clandestine foreign agent, was released Friday into the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Now she’s expected to be deported quickly back to Russia.

Her release closes a fraught chapter for Butina, who for months occupied a spotlight in the federal investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. Prosecutors accused Butina of scheming to forge a connection between Moscow and the Trump administration, as well as several heavy hitters in the conservative political community — including officials at the National Rifle Association and the National Prayer Breakfast…

She still has at least one NRAphilic defender — “U.S. Rep for KY’s 4th District, Chairman 2nd Amdt Caucus, Political Science Denier”:

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Black PSYOP, l’Affaire Ukraine, AG Barr’s Investigation, and the Impeachment Inquiry of the President

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The short definition of Psychological Operations, popularly known as PSYOP, is the weaponization of information for effect. The effect being to influence the targeted population, whether a group, an organization, a society, an element within a society, or a government, to either undertake an action or to prevent an action from being taken. Black PSYOP refers to the attempts to launder the influence operation through a legitimate third party that is not connected to those conducting the influence operation. Former FBI Special Agent and Counterintelligence Officer Asha Rangappa provided an excellent run down with one of the classic historical examples in a tweet thread on Tuesday.

Yesterday, Julian Sanchez’s tweeted an analysis of the leaks indicating that the DOJ (read AG Barr) had opened a criminal investigation into how the counterintelligence investigation into the President’s campaigns contacts and connections with both formal and informal Russian state actors, as well as Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election was started and undertaken. I think his assessment is plausible. You can find that thread here:

With one exception. Specifically that Sanchez doesn’t tie what he’s describing in to the larger influence operation. That larger operation, which is a domestically focused Black PSYOP, has three lines of effort, each with multiple parts, and they all are now interconnected.

1) The Ukrainian deliverable.
A) The real deliverable wasn’t manufactured dirt on the Bidens. Rather, it was getting Zelensky to go on CNN to announce the opening of an investigation into the Bidens, because CNN is a mainstream news outlet and is in opposition to the President in its reporting. As soon as that happened, the President’s team would have campaign ads running 24/7 with this. They’d be pushing the reporters they often use, or who are primed for this type of cheap high like Ken Vogel, at mainstream outlets to get all over Zelensky’s announcement, thereby further laundering it and disseminating it through mainstream and legitimate outlets.
B) The fallback, when Zelensky wouldn’t play ball, was to have Hannity interview Shokin – the disgraced, corrupt prosecutor who was forced out under pressure from the US, EU, the IMF, and others. From the reporting over the past two or three days, Parnas and Fruman and Giuliani were all going to Vienna to arrange for this to happen the next night, which would be the night after Parnas and Fruman were arrested. It was also the night after Barr both returned to the US from his “fact finding trip”, met with the SDNY, and then had dinner with Rupert Murdoch.
C) The Romania and China gambits are also fallbacks. The President’s senior advisor for trade issues, Peter Navarro refused to answer CNN’s Jim Sciutto’s questions yesterday about whether the PRC had been told that in order to get a trade deal they had to manufacture dirt on Hunter Biden. I think it is reasonable to conclude that his refusal to answer should be taken as a yes. NBC/MSNBC had new reporting on Hunter Biden and Romania earlier this evening.
D) Barr’s criminal investigation is another fallback here. In this case it turns the DOJ into the propaganda laundry.

2) The Firtash initiative. Firtash wants off house arrest in Vienna and out from under the extradition order to send him to the US to face the Federal crimes he’s been indicted for. The reason Firtash wants this done is because he’s Putin’s man in Ukraine’s natural gas industry. If Firtash can get back to Kyiv he can then once again try to take over Ukraine’s natural gas sector, suck it dry of profits, and fuck up its operations, which will force the Ukrainians to buy natural gas from Russia while removing Ukrainian natural gas as an alternative to Russian natural gas for the rest of the EU market. This all benefits Putin, who is Firtash’s krysha (roof/ceiling) in the Russian mob. Just as he is for every other one of these oligarchs aligned with him.
A) Firtash’s efforts weren’t going very far, so he fired his US attorneys and hired Toensing and DiGenova. They then hired Parnas to do their translation work despite it being reported that Firtash and most of his staff speaking fluent and/or functional English.
B) Firtash was laundering manufactured dirt and conspiracy theories about the Bidens, about the Democrats working with Ukraine to steal the 2016 election, etc through Parnas and Fruman and Toensing and DiGenova to Giuliani. Giuliana who was being paid/worked for Parnas, but also somehow also Parnas’s boss.
C) Toensing and DiGenova are also working for free to assist Giuliani with manufacturing dirt on the Bidens.

3) The lift Russian sanctions initiative. Here’s where it all ties together, by laundering these conspiracy theories, especially that the Democrats and the Ukrainians, in conjunction with DNI, CIA, FBI, NSA, and DOJ, conspired to steal the 2016 election by running a false flag (maskirovka) operation to make it look like Russia was actually conspiring with Trump, his campaign, Republicans, and major conservative movement organizations to steal the 2016 election, it provides a fig leaf for Trump to order the lifting of US sanctions against Russia that went on after the seizure of Crimea and the invasion of Donbass and were expanded as a result of Russian interference in the 2016 election.
A) Manafort, through his attorney, was feeding Giuliani this conspiracy theory from jail and then prison.
B) This provides cover to pardon Manafort and Flynn and several others.
C) It was reported today that DiGenova and Toensing are the attorneys representing the conspiracist masquerading as an investigative journalist John Solomon who was (finally) just fired from The Hill. And here is where #3 wraps back into #1. Solomon was laundering all of these conspiracy theories, from Uranium 1 to the Democrats conspired with the Ukrainians, the DNI, the CIA, the FBI, the NSA, and the DOJ to frame the Russians for trying to steal the 2016 election in order to steal the 2016 election for the Democrats to the Biden bullshit.

A couple of final points. Both Giuliani and Toensing and DiGenova are now claiming that Parnas, Fruman, and now, I suppose, Solomon cannot be deposed, questioned, etc by investigators since they were either working for Giuliani and/or Toensing and DiGenova or are represented by them and therefore everything they know is either attorney-client privilege or attorney work product. So you can’t ask Giuliani about what Toensing or DiGenova are doing. Or what Parnas or Fruman are doing. You can’t ask Toensing and DiGenova about what Giuliani, Parnas, and/or Fruman are doing. You can’t ask Parnas and Fruman what Giuliani or Toensing or DiGenova are doing. You can’t ask Toensing and DiGenova what Solomon is doing. You can’t ask Soloman what DiGenova and Toensing are doing. You can’t ask Firtash what Giuliani, Toensing, DiGenova, and/or Parnas and Fruman are doing. You can’t ask Giuliani, Toensing, DiGenova, and/or Firtash is doing. And because Giuliani claims all of this is on behalf of his client, the President, you also can’t, because of executive privilege, ask Giuliani, Parnas and Fruman who are working for him and who he is working for, and/or Toensing and DiGenova who are assisting him pro bono and employing Parnas anything because they are all covered from having to divulge anything or answering any questions under executive privilege.

If this sounds familiar, it is similar to how Roy Cohn handled his legal representation of the organized crime families he represented in New York. They’d hold all their business/decision making meetings in his dining room with him present or with him on the phone in case of an emergency, so it was all covered under attorney-client privilege. Nobody, from any angle of inquiry, can say nothing about nothing and no one because everything is privileged.

Finally, I guarantee that there is an equivalent of the Black PSYOP delineated in #1 queued up for Warren, Sanders, Harris, and Buttigieg as the front runners. And if a new front runner emerges from the primary field, one will be cooked up for them too.

Open thread!

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The New York Times Botched Their Reporting on Secretary Clinton’s Remarks About a Democratic Primary Candidate Being Groomed

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If you can remember back to last week, The New York Times ran a story that Secretary Clinton had stated that the Russians were grooming one of the female Democratic primary candidates for a third party run as a spoiler to ensure the President’s reelection. She also took a justified and accurate swipe at Jill Stein. It turns out that The New York Times made an error in their reporting. And they’ve corrected it. But, as appears to be standard operating procedure for The New York Times, they didn’t announce the correction. The now corrected article doesn’t actually make logical sense anymore as it includes Congresswoman Gabbard’s initial response to the assumption that Secretary Clinton was referring to her. Congresswoman Gabbard’s initial response was based on the misquote/misreporting that Secretary Clinton stated that the Russians were grooming this unnamed female Democratic candidate.

This really significant error set off days of commentary slamming Secretary Clinton, which included the President weighing in both on Twitter and in remarks to one of the press gaggles he has every day. It also allowed Congresswoman Gabbard who was not named by Secretary Clinton to use this for fundraising. And Congresswoman Gabbard did so using terminology and verbal imagery that is usually only directed at Secretary Clinton by Republicans, conservatives, and Russian bots and trolls! Secretary Clinton is, of course, correct in her analysis, especially as now properly and correctly reported. Some of Congresswoman Gabbard’s biggest promoters, especially on and through social media, are the various neo-nationalists, neo-fasicsts, neo-NAZIs , and white supremacists that are collectively labeled the alt-right and conservative media figures, as well as a host of Russian backed and funded bots and trolls.

This also led to a number of people, including several other Democratic primary candidates, coming to Congresswoman Gabbard’s defense because she’s a veteran. As if current or former US military personnel haven’t unintentionally aided foreign actors from allies to peer competitors to hostile foreign actors, as well as deliberately selling out the US. And the same goes for civilian, non-uniform US personnel. Names like Arnold, Pollard, Manning, Snowden, Hansen, and Ames come right to mind. Just because one has served the US, in uniform or out, in a war zone or in much more permissive environments, doesn’t automatically confer some sort of special protection from doing the wrong thing, intentionally or unintentionally, at a later date.

While Congresswoman Gabbard pledged several months ago that she wouldn’t run as a third party so as not to spoil the election for the Democratic nominee and throw it to the President by allowing him to once again lose the popular vote while eking out a narrow Electoral College victory, this has been a concern for almost 10 months. I delineated this concern last January in a discussion of whether Senator Sanders might be pushed to run third party by his key advisors, supporters, and surrogates if he didn’t get the nomination (emphasis mine)!

Sanders, no matter what he does, has the potential to function as a super spoiler for the Democrats in 2020. Think Jill Stein’s effect on the electoral college on steroids. And if he decides he’s going to be a team player and not do so, his trusted agents won’t play ball and you’ll have the same problem regardless. And we can now add Congresswoman Gabbard to the potential spoilers category emanating from Sanders orbit.

Regardless of what Congresswoman Gabbard may or may not do next year, The New York Times made a huge error here. They misreported what Secretary Clinton said, which sparked several days of controversy and negative reporting, and then, when they realized they’d inaccurately transcribed the quote, they corrected it without announcing they’d made the mistake and the correction. This isn’t responsible. We are currently living in the fifth or sixth year, depending on when you want to date its start, of an unconventional Russian war against the US that uses information warfare to influence Americans to destroy ourselves. The US is not doing a particularly good job of fighting Russia as the US government and most Americans don’t seem to have figured out that we are at war. One of the major effects the Russians are trying to achieve is to influence Americans through the weaponization of information, misinformation, disinformation, and information for provocation in order to enflame American political; ethnic, racial, and religious; rural, urban, and suburban; sexuality/gender; and economic differences so that Americans destroy ourselves. In order to do this they have to use weaponized information for effect. And the effect they are trying to achieve is to make it impossible for Americans to both agree on what is true, factual, and accurate and, in many cases, even know what is true, factual, and accurate. The objective is to make it so that for Americans nothing is true and, therefore, anything and everything is possible. The New York Times needs to stop doing this. Not least of which because they do it over and over and over again and that pattern leads to an ugly conclusion: that as an organization they’re doing it on purpose. But even if they aren’t doing it on purpose, what they’re doing only assists the Russian’s information war against the US.

Open thread!

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Nyonoksa/Burevestnik Update

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The two barges involved in the August radiation accident in the White Sea are being towed to a radioactive waste storage site on the Kola Peninsula. It is not known whether they hold the reactor responsible for the explosion and short burst of radiation measured in Severodvinsk.

The United States government has concluded that the incident was pretty much as has been speculated, a nuclear accident of some sort as a nuclear-powered missile was being recovered. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Thomas G. DiNanno told a United Nations committee on October 10 that this was the US conclusion, but it was only two sentences.

The United States has determined that the explosion near Nenoksa, Russia, was the result of a nuclear reaction that occurred during the recovery of a Russian nuclear-powered cruise missile. The missile remained on the bed of the White Sea since its failed test early last year, in close proximity to a major population center.

Nothing to indicate what kind of nuclear reaction or how the United States knows this. The news is that they believe the failed test was in early 2018. The nuclear reaction was most likely a criticality incident, but we still don’t know enough about the reactor to speculate much about that. It’s possible that the government has overhead photos of the test or the recovery, perhaps alerted by someone in Russia who knew the schedules.

Background on the story.

Photo: Submarine reactors stored in canisters at the Saida Bay facility, where the barges are being taken. (Thomas Nilsen)

 

Cross-posted to Nuclear Diner

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Russiagate Open Thread: How Many Repub Senators Does the GRU Already Own?

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Sure, it’s not like anyone paying attention didn’t already know this, but you’d think verification of a long-standing, ongoing attack against America by a foreign power would get some traction in the news, yes?

… The long-pending report by the Intelligence panel concluded that Russia directed an aggressive social media campaign to hurt Democrat Hillary Clinton and help Trump in the 2016 presidential election and warns similar efforts to interfere in U.S. politics are still under way. It was a bipartisan endorsement of the finding made by U.S. intelligence agencies and often questioned by Trump.

The report, two years in the making, found that the Internet Research Agency “was overtly and almost invariably supportive of then-candidate Trump to the detriment of Secretary Clinton’s campaign.” As part of that effort, it targeted African-Americans through social media more than any other group…

Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, the committee’s top Democrat, warned of more interference to come in next year’s election. “There’s no doubt that bad actors will continue to try to weaponize the scale and reach of social media platforms to erode public confidence and foster chaos,” he said…

Among the findings were efforts by the Kremlin-directed IRA to convert social media into real-world actions. Operatives posing as U.S. political activists also “sought help from the Trump campaign to procure campaign materials and to organize and promote rallies.”…

The panel urged that lawmakers consider expanding to social media the existing transparency requirements for political advertising on TV or the radio. Facebook, Google and Twitter have all put together ad transparency databases, but differences between them persist and legislative vehicles, such as the “Honest Ads Act” that Warner supports, have stalled.

Senator Kamala Harris, a member of the Intelligence Committee who’s running for the Democratic presidential nomination, said in a statement that the Russian tactics were “designed to suppress the votes of black Americans in particular” and that social media companies must step up their efforts to fight disinformation. She said they need to “ensure their workforces are diverse enough to identify and understand the cultural nuances that foreign actors exploit to divide and harm Americans.”

(Yeah, I still don’t trust Burr, because he’s retreated to the ‘what could us poor Repubs do? They held a gun to our heads!’ defense. Squeak the f*ck up, at the very least, traitor-enabler.)

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‘Repubs in Disarray’ Open Thread: Happy Birthday, Lord Vladimir

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