TWGB: Many Whistles

 

I think tomorrow if things go as scheduled, Trump's lawyers will be discussing whether there are things that Trump should just shut the fuck up about, but the picture I've used is a sweaty man, a saline-injected rotisserie chicken, suddenly finding himself turning on a spit in the supermarket of justice alarmed at the constant heat. He's not going to not talk. He projects, he rages, he confesses. He's a tea kettle on boil. He seethes. 

He whistles. 

Who else whistles? Whistleblowers. We have one recently, an FBI agent who maintains that investigations into TrumpWorld were suppressed, especially the ones involving Rudy Giuliani (who I think foreign ops used like a human dead drop since he's basically just a hollow dignity wraith wandering the earth looking for relevance), Russian money, corruption. things that didn't make TrumpWorld look good. And Charles McGonigal is implicated, which makes nothing but sense to me. 

Whistleblowers Sometimes Fail

 

Whoops. Gal Luft, the GOP's new fake Hunter Biden "whistleblower," was just indicted by the Justice Department for arms trafficking, violating U.S. sanctions against Iran, making false statements to federal agents, and being an unregistered foreign agent for China.

James Comer… pic.twitter.com/cgwcfPbDnE

— MeidasTouch (@MeidasTouch) July 10, 2023

You ever lose track of your very important witness to something and it turns out they were actually an agent of a foreign government just cutting deals left and right with what you might call hostile government entities? Because that's what seems to have happened with one of the GOP House Oversight Commitee's really big guns. You wouldn't have thought, right? 

Anyway, this guy was influencing TrumpWorld from 2016. 

 Among other things, in the weeks before the 2016 U.S. presidential election, LUFT and a co-conspirator (“CC-1”), who is a Chinese national and worked for a Chinese nongovernmental organization affiliated with a Chinese energy company, created a written “dialogue” between CC-1 and Individual-1, in which LUFT wrote Individual-1’s responses and included information that was favorable to China.  The dialogue was then published in a Chinese newspaper online and sent to, among others, individuals in the United States, including a journalist and professors at multiple U.S. universities.  When LUFT was writing the dialogue, CC-1 told LUFT that “[i]n these articles, we do not want to spill all the beans yet, just enough to let ‘people’ know he [i.e., Individual-1] is in the corridor of power to be.  Just broad stroke policy consideration that leaves plenty of room for interpretation and imagination to be filled in later.”  After the purported “conversations” were published, LUFT told CC-1 that certain information, favorable to China, had been “tucked between the lines.”  Shortly after the 2016 election, LUFT and CC-1 also discussed possible roles Individual-1 might have in the incoming U.S. administration and discussed Individual-1 taking a “silent trip” to China.  LUFT responded that “[w]e are debating about his role in the new admin.  There are all kinds of considerations . . .We should talk ftf [i.e., face-to-face] as there can be a supremely unique opportunity for china.”

The Individual-1 looks to be Jim Woolsey.  He was in the loop for a little bit of fuckery. But I'm not saying I understand how all of those parts fit. I just know when the House GOP's witness is kind of a spy for China this is very not good for them.

And I had thought it was pretty bad when one of their whistleblowers was just dead. 

Anyway in other news, the Trump-appointed US Atty investigating Hunter Biden's tax things says he was as independent as independent could be, which would have been my linchpin story if not for the China agent thing. Which lets you all know how well the GOP Oversight stuff is going right now. 

TWGB: It's Really Very Damning

 

Um, the thing with the nuclear secrets and the boxes of stuff just being out where anyone would see them is real. The pictures are like some freaky episode of  Hoarders. Mar-a-Lago staff was calling these boxes "Beautiful Mind Paper" because TFG was obsessed with them. Did I spend the last half-dozen years going around saying "It looks bad because it is bad?" Because shit, look upon the goddamn works of your trunkless idol and despair!

The indictment: Trump had documents about U.S. defense and weapons capabilities and U.S. nuclear programs. pic.twitter.com/vHLwdgWSk0

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) June 9, 2023

Yes. Nuclear program stuff.   Kept in places as insecure as a bathroom and a ballroom, in a country club where randos, including foreign nationals, just wander in and out all the time.  This was revealed after the absolutely damningest transcript of all time, save one:

The transcript of the audio recording suggests that Trump is showing the document he’s discussing to those in the room. Several sources have told CNN the recording captures the sound of paper rustling, as if Trump was waving the document around, though is not clear if it was the actual Iran document.

“Secret. This is secret information. Look, look at this,” Trump says at one point, according to the transcript. “This was done by the military and given to me.”

This here is classified--please, non-eligible person to receive this data, look. 

TWGB: Holding On to A Memory

It takes a lot of people to circumvent the systems that keep the kind of top secret stuff Trump took top secret, so this really suggests to me that the White House was a free-for-all by the time he left it, and that's pretty bad. I mean, national security is kind of important, right? And this breach of our national security by one mad ex-employee feels like we are not really as secure as we want to be. He clearly had help--and still has defenders. 

I'm calling Trump a disgruntled ex-employee in part because there is an argument made that Trump isn't bound by the PRA because he isn't an employee of the USG, etc. He was though. As an ex-president, I guess he hasn't got any business to do anything with presidential records, now. But a president is a public servant. He serves the US people. Or he's supposed to.

Passport to Nowhere

 

So Trump team now publicizing this email, which shows:

1) DOJ obtained three passports (two expired, not one, as Trump said) and alerted Trump lawyers
2) They were recovered by a filter team, which weeds out privileged info.
3) Trump publicized this after DOJ offered them back pic.twitter.com/lz8wneIQ0a

— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) August 15, 2022

So, it looks to me like Team Trump tried to gin up a little outrage by pretending that the FBI seized Trump's passports. But the FBI didn't mean to take them, and offered them back, so? What was the damage? They want to front like Left Wing media went hog-wild assuming this meant that the FBI were letting Trump know he shouldn't try to leave the country because he had a date with judicial destiny? 

Huh. I don't suppose this is a "gotcha" on our side, based on what TrumpWorld constantly tells us: if it looks bad, it is bad. There's no reason not to believe TrumpWorld was getting out in front of the actual narrative to muddy the waters. Claim that passports were taken (because yeah) and ascribe fuckery but, no, they offered them back. 

What does it mean? Hey! We don't know! I think that's great, though. Trump is in the midst of so many grand juries and investigations, and we literally know basically shit about any of them. Maybe Lindsey Graham and Rudy Giuliani are getting their fucking around card punched with a finding out flash because they got some letters coming their way. I'm not a lawyer, so I don't know how fucked they are. 

I only know TrumpWorld may have thrown out the passport thing to make Trump seem especially put upon. But we know he did the 1/6 thing and the FBI truly did take a couple dozen boxes of stuff from Mar-a-Lago. Like, no matter what the deflection is, it still looks a lot like Trump still very seriously violated the Presidential records act. 

All things considered, you can't whatabout away whether Trump really had Top Secret shit at his winter White House.  He did, and it was wrong to do that. 

Red Sky At Morning, Everyone Take Warning

Fires across the West are raging, driven by wind on a landscape shaped for blazes by climate change. “This could be the greatest loss of human lives and property due to wildfire in our state’s history," said Gov. Kate Brown of Oregon. https://t.co/VL9NCLt1vI

— NYT Climate (@nytclimate) September 9, 2020

I started this year blogging about Fire and Water to mark that climate change is real and disastrous, and its effects were manifest around the world. These days the fires are close to home on the West Coast, and it's a terrible time to be made aware that not only does our current administration care little about it but they have tried to politicize federal aid in the case of west coast wildfires, and in the case of hurricane-related damages. (People are still looking into the exact death toll of Hurricane Maria, which still may not be wholly known. The power has never been fully on in Puerto Rico since then.) The images from California and Oregon are eerie, like something from some future dystopia we are living right now.

People are displaced and rendered homeless by such events, and by now, one can almost speculate that Trump does not care about this, because does he even seem to care about the folks rendered homeless and displaced by the economy that exists in the wake of his COVID-19 response? Don't displaced people lose the address from which they once could vote, for example?

Even Trump's neglect can be construed as purposeful, once you've fathomed how shitty a soul can actually be.

TWGB: The Big Questions

I asked Giuliani again if he and Trump have a representation agreement. His response: “All I can tell you is that I still represent him as I have since April 2018. End of story.”

— Olivia Nuzzi (@Olivianuzzi) October 11, 2019

In a mean way, the $64,000 question to Rudy Giuliani was always what Olivia Nuzzi put to him, obliquely: Is your ass really covered by the president's favor on purpose in writing? Because this SOB will throw you over like boxers that "shrunk" in the wash. In a senseless goober way, Giuliani's response does not seem to indicate that he thought this shit through. Because the Magic 8Ball in Trump's head is reading "Situation Hazy" at the mo'. He might have lunch with him, sure. Like you have a pleasant meal with someone who has broken up with you but wants to maintain the peace.

Yeah. I'm saying Trump is definitely that guy. Giuliani is wearing treads right now from the front wheels of the bus and waiting on the last wheels to have their way with him.

He's that guy that casts about for people to do his dirty work when he doesn't want it to turn back on himself. (This is probably why he has "acting" this and that offices--he wants people who will just do a thing for him, not even being fully sure of the rules or the equities of their department.) Folks at the Pentagon worried if the delay in Ukraine aid was kosher, as well. It starts to look like Trump's definition of "deep state" is just "professionals in government who understand their jobs and reject his ideas". Needless to say, Pentagon and OMB docs are so subpoenaed right now. And really ought to be.

We've now heard from the "You're Fired!"'d Ambassador Masha Yovanovich, who is a badass.

“Although I understand that I served at the pleasure of the president, I was nevertheless incredulous that the U.S. government chose to remove an ambassador based, as best as I can tell, on unfounded and false claims by people with clearly questionable motives,” she said.

Ms. Yovanovitch’s testimony, which could help build momentum for the impeachment inquiry, captured the arc of her troubled tenure in Ukraine: how Mr. Giuliani and his allies mounted a campaign against her based on what she described as scurrilous lies, how the State Department capitulated to the president’s demands to recall her, and the upshot — losing an experienced ambassador in a pivotal country that is under threat from Russia and in the middle of a change in government.

Her situation--being removed from her post because of an influence campaign led by foreign actors, who rankled at her focus on corruption because they rather liked their brand of corruption, is definitely a big part of the story, here. But also important is her message about what government service means, and what Trump's lack of leadership has done to the State Department:

More broadly, she portrayed the State Department as a whole as “attacked and hollowed out from within.” Unless it backs up its diplomats, especially in the face of false attacks by foreign interests, she said, more of them will leave and the wrong message will be transmitted around the world.

“Bad actors” in Ukraine and elsewhere will “see how easy it is to use fiction and innuendo to manipulate our system,” she warned. “The only interests that will be served are those of our strategic adversaries, like Russia.”

As if on cue, we have the resignation of a top advisor to Sec. of State Mike Pompeo. An example of the drain of good people.

Maybe it's in part a reaction to Yovanovitch's testimony that Trump's folks decided Ambassador Sondland should speak, but this might not be great for Trump: Sondland is expected to say that Trump told him to say there was no "quid pro quo" but you know what? There really was one. There really in retrospect was.

Huh.

But let's just keep this in mind, what with the timely release recently of volume 2 of the Senate report on Russian interference. The Russians definitely did interfere in the 2016 election. The Ukraine stuff Giuliani and Fox News have been peddling is bogus. And, in case you missed it, Weird Rudy enlisted Ukrainian folks affiliated with Dmitry Firtash who is under the tutelage of Semion Mogilevich meaning they were putting Russian money into US elections--while supposedly on a mission to debunk Russian involvement in US elections.

This seems pretty circular and entirely dumb. I guess one of the big questions is "Did Giuliani know this was circular and dumb?" and that should be rapidly followed by "Did Trump know this is returning to the scene of the crime AG Barr just tried to absolve your stupid orange-peel ass of?"

The current issues regarding Trump's impeachment based on the Ukraine call aren't separate from the Mueller report or the longer Russian counterintelligence investigation--they are part of the very same issue with respects to Trump's corruption and biddability by foreign powers. It should be viewed as both the core question of his impeachment, how he abuses his office for any international dealings, whether for emoluments (personal financial gain) or his own personal power, and of his re-election campaign--can someone under such a cloud be considered fit to continue to serve?

I say he never was capable of adhering to his oath of office and has always been illegitimate. But I do not fault those who only now realize what a mistake placing trust in Trump has been (even if you ignored a shit-ton of bigotry and misogyny and other fucknuttery in the process).

Those who stick with him, though? What the entire fuck is wrong with you?

A Day With No Surprises

Trump warns against U.S. accepting Bahamian refugees who survived Hurricane Dorian

Trump: “I don’t want to allow people that weren’t supposed to be in the Bahamas to come into the (U.S.) — including some very bad people & very bad gang members.” https://t.co/fqnnxFkijd

— David Begnaud (@DavidBegnaud) September 9, 2019

It's not that today was a slow news day, mind you, that I found it to be day with no surprises. If Trump tries to justify not letting Bahamian refugees into this country because he thinks there might be some "very bad people", why, how is that a surprise when he's used the same justifications for barring migration from Central and South America and banning Muslims? It might seem shockingly racist and xenophobic, in addition to being mind-blowingly cruel, but surprising?

Nope.

News has been broken regarding the Scottish airport that has been used recently by US flight crews who went on to berth at his Turnberry property. "NOTHING TO DO WITH ME" Trump Tweeted--which pretty much is the sort of denial I have come to take to be equal to an admission. By "nothing to do with", Trump means nothing more than, he didn't book them in himself. The Air Force and Congress will be examining this further.

Oh. Another investigation? Must be a day ending in "y".

Should This Stand?

This is going to be a pretty short post because it's already the wee hours and I am certain there will be great shades of fuckery to confront on the morrow, but there is something especially weird about the tendency that President Trump has to undermine the various intelligence agencies who actually do the work of gathering information and analyzing it to provide context that should inform Trump's decision-making process. This relationship should not be either adversarial, nor should it be a top-down thing where Trump dictates what "reality" is.

The IC has provided credible information that ISIS is still active, that North Korea has not stepped down its nuclear program, that Iran is still largely abiding by its nuclear agreement, and that while border security is important, the overland threat is sort of not that big a priority. And Trump rubbishes it all, and then posts the above Tweet that tells us not to believe our eyes and ears about what IC professionals who have sworn an oath to protect and defend this country are saying, believe Trump! Trump might trash treaties and hate NATO and not even understand what defending allies is about, and for that matter, believes climate change is a hoax even though the Pentagon takes it seriously now, and has been doing so for years.

Any person with an open and rational mind, being confronted with information from people who have made it their lives' work to provide high-quality information in the service of their country, would try to incorporate at least some of it into their own frame of reference to try and do their own job better.

Not Donald Trump. He seems to find expertise suspect and is intensely uncomfortable with the very idea that he might not be the smartest person in the room. And it seems like he prefers to take his cues from actually stupid people, like the cast (I cannot call them "journalists") of his favorite shows on the Fox News channel.  Could anyone think for an instant that Lou Dobbs knows more than the FBI about law enforcement or counter-terrorism? (Dobbs has the distinction of being an original "birther" and having been dropped by CNN for his especially anti-immigrant views. His only distinguishing quality seems to be his bigotry.) Let alone weighing in on the rare genius of other Fox personalities like Tucker Carlson and Jesse Watters, who do not understand that the sun and wind still can generate electricity even when it is very cold, because they are functionally science illiterate, and who promote racist propaganda because they are...

Well, by any stretch, not persons who should be trusted over the actual people doing national security work, anyhow, regardless of whatever low esteem they should actually be held in. But it nonetheless remains that Trump, despite having qualified professionals that could provide him with good information, prefers his entertainment to inform his world.  Quite possibly because he lacks the attention span for anything other than "the shows".

But there are fewer professionals available to try and amend Trump's odd mental topiary,  owing in part to the thanklessness of the job and Trump's own limited arsedness to replace the brain-drain in his administration with good quality people, if he could even get them. In fact, his recent shut down was explained somewhat anonymously as an opportunity to purge careerists--quite baldly admitting that expertise wasn't really the Trump Administration's thing.  

Long story short, Trump harps on the Deep State because competent people see through his bullshit, and this gives him a lot of discomfort. So how long will anyone want to stay on when words will be put in their mouths, and their genuine assessments will be supplanted with Trump's casual falsehoods? Especially when he prefers, when his lie is called out, to continue not listening. 

What Did the President Know and Did He Know He was Doing it?

I can't get over the idea that President Trump might not even know what the hell he's doing, even if that is the jist of several articles published about him recently. But with a sad, heavy sigh, I look at the very dumb, very obvious latest: the story from the Washington Post, now corroborated by several outlets, that Trump revealed classified intelligence produced by one of our allies to the Russians at the little meet and greet that was so weird as to be notable last week.

Sure, Putin asks him to host Lavrov and Kislyak and try to keep Kislyak on the down-low, and they talk about this and that--and Trump gets around to dishing some classified intel. Well, the POTUS does enjoy the discretion to declassify intelligence if he thinks it's warranted. It's part of the toolkit. It's right up there with firing the FBI Director--a thing he can do if he wants to. A privilege of being the executive. But why that information, to the Russians, in the Oval Office...

It would be great if we could even be assured that Trump was working with the Russians on intelligence on purpose, right? If he could just be normal and say we are working together against ISIS and this is necessary and steps were taken to not fuck everything up by contacting the ally that obtained the intelligence in question to protect the source and not burn our Five Eyes relationship...

But I don't think he is capable of that mature kind of high-functioning decision-making (whether you would agree with the reasoning of my scenario, it would be on the up-and-up). The thing with Trump is, he really is out of his league in this arena and his defining personality trait is to show off. What was he doing in the "Access Hollywood" tape, really, but crudely showing off about what he gets away with when it comes to women? He showed off for Shinzo Abe at Mar-A-Lago, even if that wasn't great security protocol.  He got giddy showing his nice Russian friends that he too, gets information, and blurted out something he shouldn't--

Plausible? Well, the alternative is he knew very well what he was doing, and intentionally wrecked some of our intelligence alliances after having done not a super-great job of conveying his competence to the IC here at home. See, when some serious person like James Clapper conveys the thought that Trump has left our institutions "under assault"--this might not just mean deliberately.  He could do untold damage unknowingly, thoughtlessly, uncaringly, too. And the intent is beside the point, because the result is the same. And we can't even take serious Trump surrogates and cabinet members at their word because this administration has shown public duplicity on numerous occasions. And we are only what, not--116 days in? It feels like an eternity, rather like you might feel if you were in the backseat of a bus being driven by a toddler. Let me be uncharacteristic and say, there is a pretty good take from David Brooks (I don't say that thing, do I?) And, the idea that Trump is just an egomaniac adult baby meets with Josh Marshall's overall Trump's Razor doctrine of assuming the stupidest when it comes to him.

But all the same, whether we think Trump is actually treasonous or just too stupid to be president, he is fulfilling the warnings made about him.

He just can't be trusted.

The Internet of Made-Up Things

I just don't know about this, you guys...

Alternative Facts and Real Propaganda

On Sunday, Kellyanne Conway tried to cover up for Sean Spicer's peculiarly lying and hostile beration of the assembled media for reporting a verifiable thing--that the crowd for Donald Trump's inauguration was a bit thin--by asserting that he was providing "alternative facts."

"Alternative facts", Chuck Todd was forced to explain, would be "falsehoods". Because facts are things that are true. The alternative to them is things that are not. He did not use the more accusatory term "lie", although if Trump spin keeps trying to soulcycle their way through reality, they might discover that indoor and outdoor spinning ain't the same animal and that no matter how tough an artificial regime is, it isn't the dirt bike trail of actual politics--lying might still be, new political climate or not, an "eat-dirt" wipe-out event where policy rubber meets the human road. (Damn. That extended metaphor. Fuck it. I'm keeping it. Tom Friedman eat your heart out.)

So give it another day, and WH Press Secretary Sean Spicer is back out here "disagreeing with facts".

Yep. Still on about crowd size for some bizarre reason. Which sort of makes me wonder--how is this the thing this poor meaty bloke is forced to make his stand on? Why the insistence on crowd size? It's fucked up! Let's face it--I watched a video after the fact of the inauguration speech because I was at work that day. That was not an endorsement. It was being an interested citizen. Watching the inauguration via any means other than getting your ass down there was the "RT doesn't equal endorsement" of political activity.

But here's another thing that came up--there seems to have been a cadre of Trump staff that applauded at Trump's Saturday showing at Langley. The ones that applauded were his peeps.  This shouldn't surprise--he had staffers applaud at his many file-foldered folderol a couple weeks back. Hell, we know via FEC disclosures that Trump paid (well actually he didn't...) for part of his 2015 presidential announcement audience.

About the Maddening Crowds

The day after Donald Trump was sworn in as the United States' 45th president, a rather astonishing thing happened--an extraordinary, mostly woman-centered, nonviolent protest, occurring globally (even in Antarctica!) took form. Numbering in the millions, this is one of the largest demonstrations ever--maybe it calls to mind some of the anti-Iraq war protests circa 2002-2003? They were pretty global and well-attended--but no. This was a unique experience of sisterhood and brotherhood, intersectional support for human rights and a call-out for dignity and against (really!) President Trump's lack of concern for all of the same.

Let this lovely backdrop of unity and positivity highlight our Trump era contrast: the just-yesterday sworn-in President made a visit to Langley, ostensibly to make things less awkward between himself and the intelligence community. I don't think it worked. Standing in front of a wall commemorating the sacrifices of CIA line officers to bitch about whether you're getting good press is possibly not a good look. It's also probably pretty awkward to be gung-ho about torture and indicate a willingness to go back to Iraq to take the oil of another country as if we didn't have people still serving there when Iraqis might take those statements some kind of way, but I am probably confused about whether the far larger issue that should be consuming us all is his inauguration's crowd-size.

No, really. This was such a big thing in Trumplandia that WH press secretary Sean "The Forehead" Spicer was called out to pretty much lie about whether the Trump inauguration, was, too, the biggest and best inauguration ever. But it really wasn't. And really, everyone knows it isn't necessarily the crowd-size, but what you do with it anyway, right? (Although if you give a short but brutal, and it turns out, Steve Bannon-penned speech after bragging about writing it all your damn self, maybe you are a bit of a prat.) But that isn't good enough, Spicer strongly suggested. The journalists are just unfairly size-queening the incoming Administration.

Whatevs, says I. Maybe there is some kind of partisan "dick-measuring" to be had between whether Obama or Trump had the bigger inauguration package. But neither of them had quite the support that was shown today for the pussies.

In Russia, Computer Hacks You!

So, it had to come to pass that the US would no longer pretend that the DNC hack and so forth wasn't identifiably a Russian dezinformatsiya op and would call the actual blackguards out. They are making several Russian operatives persona non grata and dismantling their covers--bye bye spies! The hackers looted the DNC and Podesta but for what it's worth, they didn't loot our ability to find them out and call them out.

What I want noted is that this hack had to do with influencing voters based on biased storylines about one candidate--Hillary Clinton, to a degree to which GOP candidate Trump was not similarly subjected. It wasn't about hacking the actual polling places or election machinery--Greg Palast is a longtime skeptic regarding the accuracy of our elections, but he notes that the problem goes back to who even gets to go to the polls, and who gets to count. There are major systemic problems with our bid at actually achieving full registration of eligible citizens and participation of same. This is different than any idea that the voting machines themselves were necessarily compromised. It's the voting public that was.

But when the issue is brought up to PEOTUS Trump himself, the whargarble that comes out is a little troubling:

“I think we ought to get on with our lives,” he said. “I think that computers have complicated lives very greatly. The whole age of computer has made it where nobody knows exactly what is going on. We have speed, we have a lot of other things, but I’m not sure we have the kind, the security we need.”

Mr. Trump took questions Wednesday from a handful of reporters as Don King, the sports promoter and a longtime friend, stood next to him. He has not held a formal news conference since July, though he promised on Wednesday to hold one in early January.

"We have speed"? Not a comfort to those of us who expected that a little meth made the merrier re: his dry mouth and sniffling in the debates. But his comment that computers made things more complicated, from a guy whose spell check never prevents embarrassment on Twitter? Yes, I think I understand your idea of "complication". He doesn't really understand what "the cyber" is all about.

I sort of feel sympathetic to the idea that at some level, Trump lives in anxiety that he was elected POTUS as a fluke and wants to deny the Russian hack because he wasn't literally in the loop. But I look at who was on his crew, like Carter Page and Paul Manafort, and I feel like if he was up to the job, he would have known. Did Trump not realize he was surrounded by operatives of foreign governments? Did he not know what was happening in and about his campaign, or why WikiLeaks was so helpful to him?

But that sympathy only goes so far before it turns to concern--he doesn't care that a foreign power used information it stole to interfere in our democratic process? Or--he doesn't care because it benefited him?  He says we should "get on with our lives" and just ignore the hack? And his paid liars also just go out and lie about this. (Of course, Russia would never have an intelligence op right here in the US. No, really. She said that.)

It's shameful.

Your President-Elect, America

I don't know if picking up the US unmanned sub device was a bit of a "prank" by China to tweak us for having elected for the office of Commander-in-Chief a person who hasn't even taken office before starting a tremendously awkward diplomatic situation with them. I do think it is well and good that the device be returned to show that there is still some goodwill.

I also, however, think that Donald Trump's reaction to the situation is, how would we say? Unpresidented. As in--not at all the way a president would.

"Let them keep it!" (Which I have screen-capped, because really?) is an expression of sour grapes. We don't want it anyway. But there is a principle involved in getting it back. They lodged a formal complaint over Trump's Taiwan shenanigans regarding a disruption in the One China recognition. The US lodges a formal complaint over the marine drone. They will return the device--

Is he possibly worried we'll hand him over to make everything square? While I like the idea more than I like the idea of getting rescued from the potential of his misadministration by the "Hamilton electors", I think he should be quite safe in his Trump Tower.

But if this is how he intends to signal what he thinks about foreign policy (via series of badly-conceived social media missives), I'm not sure how safe he'll be in Washington, D.C.

(Not physically unsafe, mind you---we are not a nation of savages. But as he's already made steps to alienate the intelligence community on the issue of the Russian hacking, I can't help but think what he's doing with respects to China is also getting him crossways with State career folks. It's not really an auspicious start.)

Intelligence Briefings are Apparently for Losers

Donald Trump does not care for intelligence briefings. It has been apparent for more than a minute. His reason for shunning intelligence briefings is pretty novel, though (as in, no person previously voted in as president would have actually thought this) because he just thinks it is repetitive and , well, he thinks he's pretty smart.

Wow. Wow. Ok.  Um, sometimes the daily briefing has different things so that you will understand what intelligence professionals are finding out as they happen to find it out. This should inform how you form and deploy strategies to minimize harmful outcomes to defend the state. It really won't be the same every day. Sometimes it is really, really important.  Also, I think he has the weird idea that "intelligence" means that he is being given it because someone somewhere thinks he is not "smart"--like an intelligence briefing is when people notice you might be a quart or so low, intelligence wise, and try to top up your tank. As if he feels stricken that people are trying to inform his insecure naiive ass about anything.

As opposed to, yes, there are people who try to (and sometimes risk their lives to) gather intelligence to keep our country (which means specifically--it's leadership) well apprised of what is going on in the world. Trump seems utterly unaware that this is meaningful or how it impacts on his ability to do his new job or the work involved in producing the briefing that he should feel honored (as his VP-to-be, Mike Pence, understands) to receive.

I don't like that a person who gets info from InfoWars is lackadaisical about consulting with our intelligence agencies. He definitely seems in need of lots of understanding he does not have.

I Think We Knew, Right?

Sure, if you were to ask me whether I took claims about the DNC hack seriously when it was first discussed, I'd have said...

Oh wait. I did say something about it--I just didn't think it would work. I also kind of thought more people would find the connections between several of Trump's advisors with Russia to be troubling. Somehow that story never really developed that way I hoped it would. I mean, wouldn't it just seem apparent that Putin and friends would put a thumb on the scale for a President whose intention seemed to be dismantling what the US has achieved in the last eight years both at home and abroad? Wouldn't he want a political newcomer who didn't understand the system he was trying to wrest control of and thought that the problems the US faced boiled down to...bad "branding"?

So the WP story that there's consensus in the intelligence community that this is what actually happened doesn't really throw me. Nor am I shocked (!) at Senator Harry Reid's letter to FBI Director Comey that straight-up says that Comey had information that he didn't disclose. I mean, Mercy! You can't expect an FBI Director to drop possibly campaign-damaging info like that before an election! It's not like this was about something important, like, I don't know, Hillary Clinton's emails...

My eyebrows do raise a little when Donald Trump flat-out denies that it happened. Surely, a data breach by a foreign intelligence should be at least a concern to an incoming president? Because maybe (this time) next time it could be the RNC getting hacked? And who knows how that information might be used? Embarrassment? Leverage?

Of course it ought to be looked into.

Wayne Simmons: He is That Guy

Or maybe he is not that guy.

The funny thing is that just as the House Select Committee on Benghazi's credibility is cratering, one of the terrorism analysts that FOX Mushroom Farm used to call for further investigation, Wayne Simmons, has been determined to be a fraud, who is not only making up his level of expertise, but using it to further a political agenda.

Take note, Wayne Simmons and the Citizens Commission on Benghazi is basically the equivalent of a Facebook conspiracy theory fanpage hosted by Aim.org, which based on the linked posts, is really all about Hillary Clinton. Wow.

You know, it doesn't matter to me so much whether this guy was a paid analyst for FOX News or was put on the camera just for free because they felt like it--they wanted his product. His credentials were besides the point. They promoted any bullshit thing that came out of his lying mouth because they liked it.

Who vets experts or checks facts? That would be so very close to journalism. Since when was that FOX News' job?




But more here. (Apparently, they haven't decided if this video is private or what--the embed may go down.)

Dr. Carson Makes the Right Point

Just to stay with the topic of vaccination for a moment longer--today a handful of possible presidential hopefuls made comments about where they stand on vaccination. Now, I guess my last post tells you where I stand. NJ Gov. Chris Christie expressed a need for "balance" regarding vaccination--which was elaborated as follows:

Christie, however, said, “There has to be a balance and it depends on what the vaccine is, what the disease type is, and all the rest.” He added, “Not every vaccine is created equal and not every disease type is as great a public health threat as others.”

Hm. I'll admit I don't get a flu shot, myself.  I have the social schedule of a shut-in and don't regularly deal face-to-face with the public. But even so, I'd definitely get one if I dealt with kids or the olds. Even if the flu shot isn't 100% effective--it would be worth it to reduce the likelihood that I'm going around infecting people who, unlike me, aren't strong as an ox and wouldn't shake the flu as easily. But I kind of think he isn't signifying about things like the yearly crapshoot that is the flu vaccine. I'm not sure what he's talking about. The MMR vaccine is the topic of the day, and it's very effective. But you know...the HPV vaccination was a little controversial, no?  (As in, yes, as in, why do people think they can be taken seriously if they just quote some anecdotal stuff from random acquaintances?)

KY Sen. Rand Paul also had some things to say about vaccinations, and the possible link to "profound mental disorders". That connection? Not at all proven. Correlation is not causation. Besides which, Rand Paul hangs with Alex Jones who thinks there is a weather machine. That's only a couple hops from worrying about the lizard-people who run the UN.

But Dr. Ben Carson, who, don't get me wrong, says a lot of things I don't agree with, makes the overall point of why vaccination is important:

“Although I strongly believe in individual rights and the rights of parents to raise their children as they see fit, I also recognize that public health and public safety are extremely important in our society,” Carson said in a statement to BuzzFeed News.

Carson said diseases of the past should not be allowed to return because of people avoiding vaccines on religious or philosophical grounds.

“Certain communicable diseases have been largely eradicated by immunization policies in this country and we should not allow those diseases to return by foregoing safe immunization programs, for philosophical, religious, or other reasons when we have the means to eradicate them,” Carson said in the statement.

Ed Snowden Gave An Interview to Brian Williams.

And Brian Williams has freely taken. I'm not any kind of big old national security blogger, and I've never fully made up my mind where to stand on the subject of Ed Snowden, because he is just sui generis.  It is exactly true that his exploits have raised a conversation hitherto unthinkable--and I might add that what we will do exactly about it remains unthinkable, also. But I think the thing that everyone gasped about when it was dropped as a come-on to the rest of the interview was his claim that he is a "spy"--like, having worked for the CIA. NSA, and DOD under cover, what else would you even call him?

I don't know. Since he got treed in an airport after his passport was burned with no alternative but somehow to go to Russia, I'm thinking other terms might apply. I've called him the "Spy who Came in from the Warm" because "spy" is the only thing that makes sense, whether in the old-fashioned "working for a nation-state" sense or even in the less-conventional corporate-spy sense.

After all this, I'm giving it even odds that he's still a limited hang-out for US spy programs that were getting outed anyway and and doing modest and even overlooked tasks as "Our Man in Moscow" currently.

Or whatever. I've read way too many spy novels as a kid and am way too warped by the Cold War mentality now to think anyone is ever a straight-dealer where cloak, dagger, and digital data are concerned. Which is why I can't really appreciate whether this interview actually provided "information" per se.