Well, this is special.
Evidence of Russian meddling in the 2016 election is “now really incontrovertible,” White House National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster said Saturday.
“As you can see with the FBI indictment, the evidence is now really incontrovertible and available in the public domain, whereas in the past it was difficult to attribute for a couple of reasons,” McMaster said while speaking at the Munich Security Conference just a day after the Justice Department announced several indictments in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference.
Compare and contrast to this from earlier in the week:
President Donald Trump still isn’t buying that Russia interfered in the 2016 election.
Even as his intelligence chiefs unanimously told a Senate panel Tuesday that Russia meddled in 2016 and is planning to do so again in 2018, three sources familiar with the President’s thinking say he remains unconvinced that Russia interfered in the presidential election.
So, the president still isn’t buying something that his National Security Adviser says in incontrovertible. And this is something impacting our national security and the integrity of our elections.
See the problem?
Just speculating, but I noticed a throwaway line in an article in The Hill reporting on the Russia indictments (at http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/374302-five-key-takeaways-from-the-russian-indictments).
The second paragraph says that Rosenstein’s presser was “hastily convened.”
Could it be that the FBI learned that the White House was planning something dramatic that would drop later in the Friday news-dump time cycle.
I don’t know, maybe something like a Friday night massacre.
Or did the FBI just get sick and tired of every Republican on the planet parroting the talking point that Trump is a right and honorable man and the only thing driving the Russia investigation is a corrupt FBI and DOJ?
Not sure, but the timing of the release of the indictments, especially if done “hastily,” invites speculation.
I myself don’t read “hastily convened” as the same as “hastily planned.” I’m inclined to suspect that the conference may have been carefully orchestrated, but only minimal notice given in advance. If this is so, I’m not sure why–perhaps to pre-empt the Republican noise machine before it could get out in front.
Of course, anybody’s guess is (at least) as good as mine.
Good point on minimal notice – I had not considered that.
He’s giving Mueller cover.
What he did was become the face of the investigation. He’s Mueller’s boss, and now the questions go to him, while Mueller can continue to grind away.
So my take is `hastily convened’ means it had to immediately follow the release of the indictment.
It’s important to remember that Rosenstein knows virtually everything Mueller knows, and by doing that presser he showed he supports, and will not fire Mueller.
.
Yep, and he wanted to preemp his other boss as well.
I have misgivings about Rosenstein. Hopefully misguided.
According to the time line described in the indictments, the Russians started their operations as far back as 2014. They probably had people in place and ready to interfere in the primaries. I wondered all the way through, how could Trump just railroad over that entire pack of candidates the way he did. I know some were crazy choices to begin with, but Trump seemed like about the craziest choice in the bunch. Jeb and a few others at least seemed like more reasonable choices, but any time they seemed to get any traction some nasty shit would show up in the news or on line. Makes me wonder.
They were certainly were active in 2014. In June 2015, I posted Putin’s hackers and agents to my personal blog. In it, I included a video about a Russian hacking attack on a French TV station and quoted the N.Y. Times article The Agency. That expose described the efforts of the Internet Research Agency (IRA) to sow panic in the U.S. by disseminating disinformation online during 2014. One of them was the Columbian Chemicals Hoax, which took place in September 2014. The Wikipedia article mentions a “Louisiana News” Facebook page that began posting articles in August 2014, including ones about the bogus Columbian Chemicals explosion. That’s the earliest I can find evidence of IRA using Facebook for disinformation. The same Twitter accounts used in the Columbian Chemicals hoax later spread hoaxes about Ebola and police shootings in December 2014.
Must note that the donald was in Moscow 11/13 with the Miss Universe contest. By 2014 the Russians were here doing research for their operation. NO COLLUSION.
He and his advisors have repeatedly told reporters he was planning a run in 2014 and had staff by 2015.
Scott Stedman:
NO COLLUSION!
Although the Russians’ efforts must have helped Trump, it’s virtually impossible to demonstrate just how much they helped. The example you used of Jeb Bush shows one reason why — Bush himself was a terrible candidate all by himself, and one not likely to appeal to many Republican voters in this election.
Another reason is that the whole Republican Party was campaigning for Trump anyway. Yet another reason is that Trump would not have won if Democratic turnout had been larger in a few swing states, but can you show that the Russians reduced the Democratic turnout? etc., etc.
Fortunately it isn’t necessary to prove that it was the Russians that put Trump over the finish line. All that has to be proved is a foreign conspiracy to INTERFERE WITH the American elections. And they do seem to have the goods.
The Colorado Republican Party wanted nothing to do with Trump. Of course, like loyal partisans, they supported him once he was nominated but I believe several prominent Republicans refused to attend the convention. I’d have to dig around to verify that, but that’s my recollection.
(That’s what you consider a “serious question”? Serious, maybe, but degree-of-difficulty starts with a decimal point.)
That decimal-point high bar is apparently too out-of-reach for republicans.
Also, when I learned the phrase 43 years ago, it was “opinions are like assholes: everyone has one and they all stink.” Every time I see your tag-line I am briefly transported back in time to 1975.
. . . as you point out, no part of it’s original, though, as far as I know, my formulation combining them is.
I’m sure I’d heard your version, but don’t recall having the last bit in memory when I came up with this formulation for my sig. Even if I had remembered, I’d have left it out, since it veers away from the intended point, which is not that all opinions stink, but rather . . .
. . . on second thought, and since you reminded me of this and prompted me to search it up, it’s already explained in detail here, in response to one of the moronic trolls (“AustinSax”) who dropped in for a while during election season 2016 to stir up rancor and took — or at least pretended — great umbrage over that signature. (S/He might have had a point if I’d included the ending from your version, but since I didn’t, and since he persisted ranting against it even after repetition of my patient explanation . . .)
. . . here (+ “bonus” links therein!), a few exchanges down the subthread that starts at the link in the comment above.
I think I found the Pond around June 2016, so I missed the exchange you linked – thanks for sharing the history.
I like your tag line for two reasons: it’s true, and it reminds me of my youth (“and they all stink” was funny when I was 14, even if it was certainly incorrect).
. . . funny when you’re 14, no? Ah, adolescence. Couldn’t pay me to go back there, though.
“[D]egree-of-difficulty starts with a decimal point.”
Not in diving. Even the lowest difficulty dives start with a one in the units place.
What sport were you thinking of?
As in, “that question was so easy its degree-of-difficulty starts with a decimal point” (i.e., it’s less than your [theoretical] minimum 1.0).
That’s the joke.
Oops. Joke’s on me.
Trump being “unconvinced” of something is Trump-speak for denying what is more likely a damaging truth. For example, Trump was essentially not convinced that Rob Porter beat up his ex wives, insisting that Porter’s denials are enough for him to not believe it.
And if asked he’d probably say he’s “unconvinced” that he had an affair with Stormy Daniels or McDougal.
Rather than give Trump the power and play on his terms, why not just take the facts with a dollop of common sense and go from there? That’s what McMaster did, and what any reasonable person would do, in the face of evidence and facts.
. . . which he tacitly admitted by dismissing it as “locker-room talk” — reportedly morphed into him telling “friends” (“scare quotes” cuz I doubt he actually has any) he’d become unconvinced that was him on the tape!
Unclear whether he’s such a sociopath that he just routinely floats lies like trial balloons as they pop into his head to see if they’ll fly . . .
. . . or he really is just fucking batshit insane.
He’s an unethical sales guy.
Shit just rolls off his tongue like prattle from an auctioneer.
This line isn’t working? Try another, and another and another then get aggressive. Buyer starts using facts? Just gaslight them. You think those are facts? That’s fake news. Don’t listen to those people they’re liars, I’m the only one who can save your ass.
There’s no morality involved, just keep shoveling the shit until something sticks or the mark just gives up, exhausted.
The ultimate A-B tester.
What precisely does “meddling” mean?
In regard to questions 4 to 8, I can’t get too excited as the US government has intervened in that way in many many foreign elections.
And more questions.
“Meddling” is just too generic a term to mean anything. Right now, IL Governor Bruce Rauner is meddling in the Democratic primary by paying for attack ads against a Democratic primary candidate. But apparently that is not illegal meddling.
Well, just paragraph 7 alone from the indictment is pretty specific:
“7. In order to carry out their activities to interfere in US. political and electoral processes
without detection of their Russian affiliation, Defendants conspired to obstruct the lawful functions
of the United States government through fraud and deceit, including by making expenditures in
connection with the 2016 US. presidential election without proper regulatory disclosure; failing
to register as foreign agents carrying out political activities within the United States; and obtaining
visas through false and fraudulent statements.”
Those actions, as part of their “meddling,” violated our laws.
Rauner’s meddling is legal because it is being done with the proper disclosures, etc.
IOW Number 5. Thank you.
Rauner is also an American citizen and probably not using Russian money carry out his political activities.
As I said, legal meddling.
Ahem…Voice?
Some of the most incendiary and polarizing things you have written here in the last couple of years are the sorts of things the Russians are shown in the indictment to have written and fomented in social media platforms and elsewhere.
You always mistrusted Clinton and the Democratic Party, but your shit is turned up to 11 on those subjects now.
You show all signs of having been taken in by the Russian influence campaign described in the indictment. Not the general American public. You.
A sign of how effective that influence campaign has worked on you is that you appear indifferent to the possibility you’ve been influenced by a foreign government which does not have the best interest of the United States in mind.
A sign of how effective that influence campaign has worked on you is that you appear indifferent to the possibility you’ve been influenced by a powerful foreign government which implements and supports policies which you claim to oppose.
A sign of how effective that influence campaign has worked on you is that you have been presented with direct evidence that the top government leaders in your own country, leaders who are implementing policies which you claim to oppose, gained their power partly from an influence campaign by a foreign nation.
And your response to that fact which you now appear to be conceding is, in effect, “I can’t get too excited…” by the fact that my own government is doing things I am vehemently opposed to “…as the US government has intervened in that way in many many foreign elections.”
I sincerely hope you can come to see the job the Russians appear to have done on you. And if not you, perhaps others here can see the job they appear to have done on you.
This doesn’t mean that those who are unhappy or even angry with the Clintons and the Democratic Party have had their views created from whole cloth by this disinformation campaign.
What I’m noting is that there were millions of Americans on the left of the political spectrum whose anger became so extreme from August to November 2016 that they looked at the Trump abyss and said, in effect, “Fuck it, that outcome would be what the Democratic Party deserves.” These Americans, you included, became effectively convinced in effect that we all deserved Trump and the GOP.
What I’m noting is that many of those people, you included, did not write, speak and act that way before this influence campaign began.
Me: “Citizens United was one of the worst decisions in Supreme Court history.”
Also me: “I don’t care if Russian oligarchs utilizing a foreign intelligence service pump millions of dollars of money on campaign targeting and disinformation to sway an election.”
Question for you. Is there ever a circumstance when a government is justified in interfering in another country’s election?
Now I’m either a comymp or a commie dupe.
ROTFLMAO.
The current Russian government has strayed far, far from communism. This is a bizarre take.
I sincerely wish you wouldn’t dismiss this so easily. The harsh rhetoric you have used to discuss your views in the last two years is a change from your previous behavior. In the wake of the information in Friday’s indictment, I’m asking you to consider why.
How about we split the difference, merge your 2 false choices, and identify you as a nincompoop?
I certainly don’t need to reply because you are so adept at putting words in my mouth. Excuse me, I have to go ask Putin what he wants me to post next.
That is a fairly comprehensive answer.
The Russians want us to be closed off and angry with each other. I’m seeking something different for us. We’ve got elections to win.
You write:
Who “we,”, neocentrist?
Oh…you mean the Deep State that controls both parties.
Oh.
Nevermind.
Yore freind…
Emily Litella
I don’t think there’s anything very deep about who and what influences elections in this country. It’s big bucks. Kochs, Waltons, mega financial institutions, NRA, MIC,etc.
It’s “deep” if you don’t understand what is happening, Heart. And as far as I am concerned, anyone who still supports the mainstream DemRats and RatPubs either doesn’t have a clue or is in collusion with the ongoing swamp rot.
There is no third choice. As the I Ching says in the hexagram named Breakthrough:
All else is either the result of weakness, stupidity or collusion.
AG
Except you are channeling Evola and Aleksander Dugin in TRUMPeting an international fascist third wave.
FUCK “Evola and Aleksander Dugin!!!” Never read ’em; don’t give one half a shit about them. I see what I see and say what I have to say. Do not try to lump me with hustlers on any sides of the various power games. I pay no attention to them.
They may be hustling for Russia or they may not be. I am simply saying what I see.
You don’t like it?
Go read some other hustlers and then find other ways to blame original thinkers.
AG
That’s right, you’re not the People’s Front of Judea. SPLITTERS!!
You’re the Popular Front!
Over there.
No duh. If you have no understanding, everything’s deep.
You didn’t include the Russians on your list, they are big players like the Kochs.
NYT ran a piece on this 30 months ago, June 2015.
IRA
Please note I ended with an etc. Because I was not making any pretense of it being complete. However, one could be paying attention and not picked up on the Russian role. In the past week commenters with solid backgrounds in intelligence, counter-intelligence and foreign policy have all said the 13 indictments showed more than they had thought was true.
Maybe election fiddling too, like that Ebola scare before but not after the election.
NYT
Oh, yes, I was struck at the time by how suddenly the months-long hysteria over Ebola just dropped off the news. Mission accomplished, I guess.
It’s important to keep in mind that Trump is our penance for Mossadegh.
I’m not sure yet whether his second term is penance for Diem, or Allende, or Gaddafi, or someone else, exactly, but we can work that out later.
The important thing is that we had it coming, and the decorous thing to do is to shut up and take our punishment.
Or we could curbstomb people who take that attitude.
Hopefully you do not mean that in the literal sense.
This?
It is time to accept our fate: Idiocracy is the film that lays out our inevitable future. Truly a masterpiece of prophecy. The only question is will Trump be the first White House occupant to mandate all crops be hydrated with Gatorade or some equivalent thereof, deeming “electrolytes: it’s what plants need.”
We is already there for some time now.
However, much of it’s brilliance is negated by Mike Judge’s a-hole isolationist (from anyone not white male upper middle class) libertarianism politics. The fact that he so strongly supports Alex Jones and bought into let’s blow shit up and try Trump, almost makes the film a self-fulfilling prophecy like some wanker Twighlight Zone. He is a great observer which leads to some great comedy, but too insular and myopic to lead to a more enlightened path in his limited advocacy and his films
Snark about murder and its consequences is so lame, X. Would you be so funny if it was your family that had suffered the mortal consequences of militarily imposed economic imperialism?
I hope not.
WTFU.
Your shtick is increasingly less amusing.
People are dying; your country is in danger of collapse from within and you are being…arch…about it all.
Lame like a motherfucker.
AG
. . . the unchallengeable arbiter of lame.
With the cherry garnish on top being the ultimate, untoppable-ever irony of ag — ag! — declaring . . . to anyone . . . anyone at all, who ever lived . . . anywhere . . . ever:
Yours too.
I’ll be here after you are out of work.
Bet on it.
Watch.
ASG
. . . at least according to . . . wait for it . . . you!
. . . you?
Define it (according to you).
Or are you reduced to PeeWee-Herman-level (“I know you are but what am I?”) “argumentation” now?
Oh, sorry. To be reduced to that level you would have had to at some point exhibited some higher level. My bad!
>Your shtick is increasingly less amusing.
LOL. Pot. Kettle. Black.
I see the problem and raise you. I happened to founder into a vey busy blog called Moon of Alabama and came across a seething mass of stooges who fervently believe the whole Russian Indictment is nothing more than deep statism.
When you have citzenry this far into the lunatic fringe you’re in deeper trouble than you might imagine.
http://www.moonofalabama.org/2018/02/mueller-indictement-the-russian-influence-is-a-commercial-marke
ting-scheme.html
I haven’t waded over into that swamp in ages. Used to be the sort of unofficial companion blog for Billmon’s defunct Whiskey Bar blog. Billmon seems to have dropped off the face of the earth, and MoA went off the rails a long time ago. Your link did encourage me to go back through MoA’s earliest archives. Hard to believe, but the regulars there once upon a time genuinely admired Barack Obama.
So I had to go take a look at that. It appears he is a little afraid that Mueller may come after him as a foreign national not registered in the US and he has also published negative opinions against Clinton. Interesting. But I doubt he has the infrastructure as the Russians had.
MOA is totally wack. For them, everything RT says is the absolute truth.
Booman writes:
Here is a list of U.S. National Security Advisors since the office’s inception:
Do you see all of the proven villains in that list, with Henry Kissinger marching right at their head?
Yes, Trump appointed McMaster. Maybe he thought that the generals he appointed would remain as politically “neutral” as the armed forces are supposedly meant to be in this system, and maybe he defined “neutral” as pro-Trump.
That’s two mistakes to add to his own long list, right there.
I still think that this whole stinking Trump/anti-Trump thing is going to wind up…one way or another…being terminated by military power. It may happen in many ways…fast and furious, subtly and bureaucratically political or whatever else promises to work…but I can see Mattis, McMasters and the other (supposed) Trump generals sitting down in a safe room somewhere, shaking their heads sadly and saying “I think that enough is enough, here. It is unavoidably time for us to take a stand.”
And they will.
But they could damned well take him apart.
AG.
P.S. Just to at least somewhat interrupt the almost inevitable centrist kneejerk reaction of “Oh!!! He’s pro-military, too!!!” here on this progressively ex-progressive blog, let me say that…just as I was not being “pro-Trump” in early statements that he was going to win the nomination and election…neither am I “pro-military” for saying this. The Democratic and Republican Parties are in the midst of a <U<huge</u> fail in this Trump situation, and I see the distinct possibility of a constitutional crisis headed ’round the next bend, especially if the Democrats win some sort of majority in Congress.
You asked for it with your almost total incompetence, and so did the Republicans.
You got it.
Enjoy the fruits of your non-labors.
From the indictment:
“…6. Defendant ORGANIZATION had a strategic goal to sow discord in the U.S. political
system, including the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Defendants posted derogatory information
about a number of candidates, and by early to mid-2016, Defendants’ operations included
supporting the presidential campaign of then-candidate Donald J. Trump (“Trump Campaign”) and
disparaging Hillary Clinton…
…43. By 2016, Defendants and their co-conspirators used their fictitious online personas to
interfere with the 2016 U.S. presidential election. They engaged in operations primarily intended
to communicate derogatory information about Hillary Clinton, to denigrate other candidates such
as Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, and to support Bernie Sanders and then-candidate Donald Trump.
a. On or about February 10, 2016, Defendants and their co-conspirators internally
circulated an outline of themes for future content to be posted to
ORGANIZATION-controlled social media accounts. Specialists were instructed to
post content that focused on “politics in the USA” and to “use any opportunity to
criticize Hillary and the rest (except Sanders and Trump–we support them).”
b. On or about September 14, 2016, in an internal review of an ORGANIZATIONcreated
and controlled Facebook group called “Secured Borders,” the account
specialist was criticized for having a “low number of posts dedicated to criticizing
Hillary Clinton” and was told “it is imperative to intensify criticizing Hillary
Clinton” in future posts.
44. Certain ORGANIZATION-produced materials about the 2016 U.S. presidential election
used election-related hashtags, including: “#Trump2016,” “#TrumpTrain,” “#MAGA,”
“#IWontProtectHillary,” and “#Hillary4Prison.” Defendants and their co-conspirators also
established additional online social media accounts dedicated to the 2016 U.S. presidential
election, including the Twitter account “March for Trump” and Facebook accounts “Clinton
FRAUDation” and “Trumpsters United.”
45. Defendants and their co-conspirators also used false U.S. personas to communicate with
unwitting members, volunteers, and supporters of the Trump Campaign involved in local
community outreach, as well as grassroots groups that supported then-candidate Trump. These individuals and entities at times distributed the ORGANIZATION’s materials through their own
accounts via retweets, reposts, and similar means. Defendants and their co-conspirators then
monitored the propagation of content through such participants.
46. In or around the latter half of 2016, Defendants and their co-conspirators, through their
ORGANIZATION-controlled personas, began to encourage U.S. minority groups not to vote in
the 2016 U.S. presidential election or to vote for a third-party U.S. presidential candidate.
a. On or about October 16, 2016, Defendants and their co-conspirators used the
ORGANIZATION-controlled Instagram account “Woke Blacks” to post the
following message: “[A] particular hype and hatred for Trump is misleading the
people and forcing Blacks to vote Killary. We cannot resort to the lesser of two
devils. Then we’d surely be better off without voting AT ALL.”
b. On or about November 3, 2016, Defendants and their co-conspirators purchased an
advertisement to promote a post on the ORGANIZATION-controlled Instagram
account “Blacktivist” that read in part: “Choose peace and vote for Jill Stein. Trust
me, it’s not a wasted vote.”
c. By in or around early November 2016, Defendants and their co-conspirators used
the ORGANIZATION-controlled “United Muslims of America” social media
accounts to post anti-vote messages such as: “American Muslims [are] boycotting
elections today, most of the American Muslim voters refuse to vote for Hillary
Clinton because she wants to continue the war on Muslims in the middle east and
voted yes for invading Iraq.”
47. Starting in or around the summer of 2016, Defendants and their co-conspirators also began
to promote allegations of voter fraud by the Democratic Party through their fictitious U.S. personas and groups on social media. Defendants and their co-conspirators purchased advertisements on
Facebook to further promote the allegations.
a. On or about August 4, 2016, Defendants and their co-conspirators began purchasing
advertisements that promoted a post on the ORGANIZATION-controlled Facebook
account “Stop A.I.” The post alleged that “Hillary Clinton has already committed
voter fraud during the Democrat Iowa Caucus.”
b. On or about August 11, 2016, Defendants and their co-conspirators posted that
allegations of voter fraud were being investigated in North Carolina on the
ORGANIZATION-controlled Twitter account @TEN_GOP.
c. On or about November 2, 2016, Defendants and their co-conspirators used the same
account to post allegations of “#VoterFraud by counting tens of thousands of
ineligible mail in Hillary votes being reported in Broward County, Florida.”
Appears they wanted a puppet President. As it happens I have a post on my FB account just now with a fellow saying Hillary did this and that and telling me both sides do it. And there are the usual fools joining in. I sort of unloaded on him. Those tropes are now well known and are nothing more than misdirection. You have to wonder about people who write that sort of nonsense when this indictment is staring them in the face. They are either captured by the Russians or they are paid trolls. Harsh, I suppose, but there it is.
The indictment doesn’t involve Trump as a conspirator. But his favoritism to the Russians, including not imposing those sanctions on them and etc., are suspicious. Should they ever now connect him to it, there is a word for that sort of thing. I begin to wonder why he does not simply resign.
Resignation = prosecution, at the very least for money laundering. Plus it would be admitting he did something wrong, and as we all know, he’s never had to apologize for anything because he’s never been wrong in his life.