Congratulations, Stupid.

[dada]

Alright. Liberals and points left are all friends again.

Depends how defined, right? I resist easy attacks on "liberals" when the term is not defined clearly, given the abuse of this term in the American context of the last 40+ years as a right-wing caricature of everything to the left of Reagan. I am not liberal in any proper definition of the term (except maybe in the sense of supporting protection of individual rights), but you and I are in an environment wherein a majority by a long process of training and conditioning have been rendered incapable of identifying us except as "liberal."

What next? I certainly hope two million at the Million Women March, for a start. So big that it dwarfs the Inauguration turnout. In a way that can't be ignored. Because that will be attempted. The same media that 99% made the Trump candidacy, and then attacked it for a month, will continue to operate predictably and by business model in the next phase, by completely normalizing everything about it, and legitimating all of its views as part of the spectrum of acceptability no matter how openly and aggressively stupid, violent or destructive of world and country. Since it's the president of still the democratic and most wunnerful and bestest country in the universe ever conceivable. A big chunk of the market voted for the beast, after all, and though they don't cover it the media corps are of course very well aware that this demographic has a higher average income than that of the non-Trump voters.

The other danger if MWM is successful will be cooptation, of course. I could stand Sanders and Warren speaking, but god what if Clinton should appear?!

.

When I use the word liberal, I'm thinking conservative left, as opposed to radical left. But yes, everyone on the left is a liberal, and liberals are bad. And they're all friends again in this scenario.

That's right, who will give the big speeches. How about Michelle Obama and Jill Stein.

And yes, the media is a total shit-show, and will continue to be for the forseeable future. How does one go about attacking the media in a refreshing new way? I'm trying to figure out what the role of the subversion artist is.

Say we have a 'take this social media poll' ad that asks "Do you agree with the presidential order for the martial law state of emergency? Yes No"

It's too fake-newsy. Hoaxing just isn't as subversive as it once was. And it's basically fancy propaganda.

Is the subversion artist reduced to mere meme generation? Doomed to haunt a digital wasteland of eternal cultural recupability? There must be more effective avenues for the subversion artist to subverse.

[JackRiddler]

It's been a problem for satire and subversion for decades, I guess. In a world with the Westboro Baptist Church as a serious thing (just to take one example), how can you do a parody version that exposes its absurdity so that people get enlightened about it, etc. etc.? (I like the WBC example because when I saw them with "God Hates Fags" rainbow signs near the 9/11 site on 9/11/2004, I believe, my first thought was that this was a pretty funny performance piece by actual New York theater fags).

Anyway, stupid is bipartisan, so my rundown of the DHS-FBI report on "election hacking."

They couldn't release this a couple of weeks ago when the electors asked for it?

They did. In fact, it's the same collection of laughable shit and meaningless assertions as was available already prior to the election. The exact same, in fact, reinforcing that there is actually no additional evidence for them to provide.

It's online here:

https://www.us-cert.gov/sites/default/f ... -20296.pdf

My annotated summary:

1. All of the following requires the absurd and insulting premise that the publication of DNC/Podesta mails swung anything in the presidential election and, if these mails were available for exposure due to Russian actors, would therefore constitute a "Russian" "hacking" of said "election."

2. APT28 and APT29 ("advanced persistent threats" known as "Cozy" and "Fancy" bears) are still presumed to be "groups" (as opposed to a single man in underwear) and "reported" to be associated with Russian intelligence services ("RIS"). Take it on faith, because someone we may or may not know somewhere inside this great big U.S. government said it's pretty surely so. What kind of a commie are you, to not believe us? The use of many abbreviations further firms this up as Serious.

3. APT28 & APT29 are believed to have employed an incredibly advanced means of infilitration known as phishing. This technology may be available to persons of the Russian persuasion! (Not in the current report, but it's all over the press and even Obama said the gem about Russian being so "hierarchical" that "nothing" could happen without Putin's approval, so remember the following: Nothing using computers and e-mails and possibly involving Russia or Russians, especially such who are aware of the advanced phishing technology, is likely to ever, ever happen except at the personal instigation and approval of one Vladimir Putin, because it's a very hierarchical place. Russia, that is. Brrr, Russians. I should know, because I am the son of the dictator Putin by his secret Nigerian princess bride, and he has disowned us, and I need your help in unlocking my mother's Swiss bank account of 30 million USD, which I will share 50-50 with you if you can help me by sending me the $2000 bank access fee.)

4. According to the DHS/FBI report, repeating the same bullshit you've already heard, the APT Bears launched their Cyber 9/11 by sending thousands of phishing mails to "hundreds" of U.S. and other corporations and institutions. This claim renders the rest of this story moot as far as having a specific connection to "hacking" an "election," but never mind. (It also makes the Nigerian princess spam comparison pretty relevant, but NEVER MIND.)

Wait, I gotta insert this sentence. I LOVE IT:

In summer 2015, an APT29 spearphishing campaign directed emails containing a malicious link
to over 1,000 recipients, including multiple U.S. Government victims.

5. Apparently Podesta or other persons belonging to an unspecified U.S. political party, being noobs (and I don't blame'em), clicked on said phishing links and provided their passwords to the nefarious plotters, who may have been Russians reported by our unnamed friends to be associated with Russia.

6. Certain Podesta and DNC mails (unspecified here but these are what we mean) showed up online after said "hack." This made the DNC and Clinton campaigns very upset.

7. (my addition) Prior to election, Clinton campaign presented the above set of claims with the patently false additional claim that this was influencing the election results. Clinton campaign got so busy talking about this rather than providing programmatic alternative to Trump that they forgot to win the election.

8. QED! Yes! Slam-dunk!!!

9. Unfortunately, even with the nefarious-looking graphics, that was only four pages, so let's add another 8 to beef it up, on how it's important to watch out for phishing mails and don't click on one if you get one. Just don't, okay?

.

[Luther Blissett]

I've seen this now a few times just within the past few days.

[JackRiddler]

Comes across as genuine, but who can say?

I have some choice words on it, but only if it's confirmed.

However, I have seen other examples. Not as radical as this one, but similarly people not knowing that ACA and "Obamacare" are the same thing.

[Luther Blissett]

Jimmy Kimmel can go away, but this is more of the same. I'm trying to find any of the other examples from the last few days but I'm coming up empty.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sx2scvIFGjE

[JackRiddler]

.

My examples were from FB feeds by friends reposting comments from their own friends.

But as per your post, and as per what we have all fucking experienced with our compatriots, it's totally believable.

[JackRiddler]

p. 28 of MI6 Curveball the supposed British agent memoranda on Russia/Trump.

"Russian leadership disappointed that leaked e-mails on CLINTON have not had greater impact in campaign."

Now that's a very realistic detail.

[JackRiddler]

.

Interesting that this is the second paragraph in the Times coverage - elsewhere it's being played like it's some UK spy doing the reports.

So maybe the real story here is they've seen this stuff already before November, and didn't cover it then?

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/10/us/p ... gence.html

WASHINGTON — The chiefs of America’s intelligence agencies last week presented President Obama and President-elect Donald J. Trump with a summary of unsubstantiated reports that Russia had collected compromising and salacious personal information about Mr. Trump, two officials with knowledge of the briefing said.

The summary is based on memos generated by political operatives seeking to derail Mr. Trump’s candidacy. Details of the reports began circulating in the fall and were widely known among journalists and politicians in Washington.

[barracuda]

So maybe the real story here is they've seen this stuff already before November, and didn't cover it then?

Originally reported on by Corn at MotherJones in October, supposedly IC has been working to verify since before then.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/201 ... nald-trump

[JackRiddler]

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/201 ... a-contacts

The material, which has been seen by the Guardian, is a series of reports on Trump’s relationship with Moscow. They were drawn up by a former western counter-intelligence official, now working as a private consultant.

The Guardian has not been able to confirm the veracity of the documents’ contents, and the Trump team has consistently denied any hidden contacts with the Russian government.

Private consultant for whom in this case? Must be Clinton internal memos, surely? It takes a few paragraphs to get to that.

The reports were initially commissioned as opposition research during the presidential campaign, but its author was sufficiently alarmed by what he discovered to send a copy to the FBI. It is unclear who within the organisation they reached and what action the bureau took. The former Democratic Senate leader, Harry Reid, has lambasted Comey for publicising investigations into Hillary Clinton’s private server, while allegedly sitting on “explosive” material on Trump’s ties to Russia.

The rest of this is interesting:

The Guardian can confirm that the documents reached the top of the FBI by December. Senator John McCain, who was informed about the existence of the documents separately by an intermediary from a western allied state, dispatched an emissary overseas to meet the source and then decided to present the material to Comey in a one-on-one meeting on 9 December, according to a source aware of the meeting. The documents, which were first reported on last year by Mother Jones, are also in the hands of officials in the White House.

McCain is not thought to have made a judgment on the reliability of the documents but was sufficiently impressed by the source’s credentials to feel obliged to pass them to the FBI.

The Senate armed services committee, which Senator McCain chairs, launched an inquiry last week into Russian cyber-attacks during the election.

McCain was reluctant to get involved, according to a colleague, for fear the issue would be dismissed as a personal grudge against Trump. He pushed instead for the creation of a special Senate committee to look into connections between campaign staff and Moscow, but the proposal was blocked by the Republican leadership.

McCain told the NBC programme Meet the Press on Sunday: “I would like to see a select committee. Apparently that is not in agreement by our leadership. So we will move forward with the armed services committee and I’m sure foreign relations and intelligence committee will as well.”

But the senator added: “It is possible if enough information comes out, that that decision could be reversed. I still think it’s the best way to attack the issue.”

Asked on the same programme on whether an investigation was ongoing into campaign links to Moscow, Senator Lyndsey Graham, another conservative Republican said: “I believe that it’s happening.”

According to the report passed to Comey, Russian intelligence allegedly gathered compromising material during Trump’s stay in Moscow in November 2013, when he was in the city to host the Miss Universe pageant.

Another report, dated 19 July last year said that Carter Page, a businessman named by Trump as one of his foreign policy advisers, had held a secret meeting that month with Igor Sechin, head of the Rosneft state-owned oil company and a long-serving lieutenant of Vladimir Putin. Page also allegedly met Igor Divyekin, an internal affairs official with a background in intelligence, who is said to have warned Page that Moscow had “kompromat” (compromising material) on Trump.

Two months later, allegations of Page’s meetings surfaced in the US media, attributed to intelligence sources, along with reports that he had been under FBI scrutiny.

Page, a vociferous supporter of the Kremlin line, was in Moscow in July to make a speech decrying western policy towards Russia. At the time he declined to say whether he had been in contact with Russian officials, but in September he rejected the reports as “garbage”.

The Guardian has learned that the FBI applied for a warrant from the foreign intelligence surveillance (Fisa) court over the summer in order to monitor four members of the Trump team suspected of irregular contacts with Russian officials. The Fisa court turned down the application asking FBI counter-intelligence investigators to narrow its focus. According to one report, the FBI was finally granted a warrant in October, but that has not been confirmed, and it is not clear whether any warrant led to a full investigation.

A month after Trump’s surprise election victory, Page was back in Moscow saying he was meeting with “business leaders and thought leaders”, dismissing the FBI investigation as a “witch-hunt” and suggesting the Russian hacking of the Democratic Party alleged by US intelligence agencies, could be a false flag operation to incriminate Moscow.

Another of the reports compiled by the former western counter-intelligence official in July said that members of Trump’s team, which was led by campaign manager Paul Manafort (a former consultant for pro-Russian politicians in Ukraine), had knowledge of the DNC hacking operation, and in return “had agreed to sideline Russian intervention in Ukraine as a campaign issue and to raise US/Nato defence commitments in the Baltics and Eastern Europe to deflect attention away from Ukraine”.

A few days later, Trump raised the possibility that his administration might recognise Russia’s annexation of Crimea and openly called on Moscow to hack Hillary Clinton’s emails.

In August, officials from the Trump campaign intervened in the drafting of the Republican party platform, specifically to remove a call for lethal assistance to Ukraine for its battle against Moscow-backed eastern rebels.

Manafort stepped down in August as campaign manager and the campaign steadily distanced itself from Page. However, Trump’s praise of Putin and defence of Moscow’s actions in Ukraine and Syria remained one of the few constants in his campaign talking points.

Manafort has denied secret links with Moscow calling the allegation “an outrageous smear being driven by Harry Reid and the Clinton campaign”.

Since then, Trump has consistently cast doubt on Russian culpability for hacking the Democratic National Committee, defying a consensus of 17 national intelligence agencies. After Obama deported 35 Russian diplomats in retaliation for Moscow’s intervention, Trump praised Putin for not carrying out tit-for-tat deportations of US diplomats. “I always knew he was very smart,” he tweeted.

An FBI spokesman declined to comment after the CNN report.

Repeating this since it's both remarkable and funny (if you're the RI type, anyway).

The Guardian has learned that the FBI applied for a warrant from the foreign intelligence surveillance (Fisa) court over the summer in order to monitor four members of the Trump team suspected of irregular contacts with Russian officials. The Fisa court turned down the application asking FBI counter-intelligence investigators to narrow its focus. According to one report, the FBI was finally granted a warrant in October, but that has not been confirmed, and it is not clear whether any warrant led to a full investigation.

That's what, the third or fourth time out of XX tens of thousands of requests since the 1970s?

.

[barracuda]

Must be Clinton internal memos, surely?

Smells like Poppy to me.

[JackRiddler]

Ah! Yes, of course!

I forgot there was a Bush brother running at some point in this thing -- what's his name again?

But the memos start after that race was long over.

Are you taking the piss on me?

[The Consul]

Urine a pickle, Mr. T. Hard to believe, since Adolph allegedly loved it, too. And scat as well. Oh where oh where can a true follower draw the line? A lot to be forgiven there, so evangelicals will be titillating. But can The Donald cry? Will he weep out a wailing plea to the Lord to forgive? Guess Schumer wasn't joking.

Thinking more and more The Onion is most non partisan source. I will only believe it if Michael Falk says it didn't happen.

[barracuda]

Are you taking the piss on me?

Lol, I guess that was unavoidable.

But no, I'm saying it was passed from Jeb! to the Never-Trumpers.

[seemslikeadream]

Amanda ‏@mandaguagliardo 4h4 hours ago
If you logged into Twitter looking for @realDonaldTrump jokes, urine luck. #GoldenShowers
17 replies 519 retweets 2,125 likes



BrooklynDad_Defiant! ‏@mmpadellan 4h4 hours ago
So...are you going to the...Urine-auguration?
#GoldenShowers
#ResistTrumpTuesdays