Enjoy President Trump, Courtesy of The Kremlin

[pErvinalia]

The US spies on others? So fucking what? It's irrelevant to whether you should be concerned about hostile foreign powers meddling in your elections.

[Seabass]

Wired: BOB MUELLER’S INVESTIGATION IS LARGER—AND FURTHER ALONG—THAN YOU THINK

PRESIDENT TRUMP CLAIMED in a tweet over the weekend that the controversial Nunes memo “totally vindicates” him, clearing him of the cloud of the Russia investigation that has hung over his administration for a year now.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

In fact, if anything, the Mueller investigation appears to have been picking up steam in the past three weeks—and homing in on a series of targets.

Last summer, I wrote an analysis exploring the “known unknowns” of the Russia investigation—unanswered but knowable questions regarding Mueller’s probe. Today, given a week that saw immense sturm und drang over Devin Nunes’ memo—a document that seems purposefully designed to obfuscate and muddy the waters around Mueller’s investigation—it seems worth asking the opposite question: What are the known knowns of the Mueller investigation, and where might it be heading?

The first thing we know is that we know it is large.

We speak about the “Mueller probe” as a single entity, but it’s important to understand that there are no fewer than five (known) separate investigations under the broad umbrella of the special counsel’s office—some threads of these investigations may overlap or intersect, some may be completely free-standing, and some potential targets may be part of multiple threads. But it’s important to understand the different “buckets” of Mueller’s probe.

As special counsel, Mueller has broad authority to investigate “any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump,” as well as “any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation,” a catch-all phrase that allows him to pursue other criminality he may stumble across in the course of the investigation. As the acting attorney general overseeing Mueller, Rod Rosenstein has the ability to grant Mueller the ability to expand his investigation as necessary and has been briefed regularly on how the work is unfolding. Yet even without being privy to those conversations, we have a good sense of the purview of his investigation.

Right now, we know it involves at least five separate investigative angles:

continued...

[Tyrannical]

Thank God for Trump!

House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes claimed it was the Hillary Clinton campaign that was the real Russian collaborator and that it turned the FBI into a weapon against Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential election.

It was Hillary and the FBI that collaborated with the Russians!


Pretty soon, no one will believe the Russian anything anymore

[Brian Peacock]

I wonder where that springs from?

[Animavore]

[Tyrannical]

Comrade Clinton, all makes sense now. They were always desperate for money.

[Brian Peacock]

What about the fact that it wasn't Hillary but Steele who passed a version of his report directly to his former colleagues in the FBI? Surely he wasn't paid to do that? What about those elements of the Steele report that have been borne out? Surely a truth is a truth, or can you just ignore a truth if the person telling it isn't a friend, ally, or loyal supporter?

Begin ignoring these questions in... 3... 2... "Benghaaaaaaaaaaaaaazi!"

[Forty Two]

Thank God for Trump!

House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes claimed it was the Hillary Clinton campaign that was the real Russian collaborator and that it turned the FBI into a weapon against Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential election.

It was Hillary and the FBI that collaborated with the Russians!


Pretty soon, no one will believe the Russian anything anymore

Who believes it now? It's just partisan nonsense.

[Forty Two]

What about the fact that it wasn't Hillary but Steele who passed a version of his report directly to his former colleagues in the FBI? Surely he wasn't paid to do that? What about those elements of the Steele report that have been borne out? Surely a truth is a truth, or can you just ignore a truth if the person telling it isn't a friend, ally, or loyal supporter?

Begin ignoring these questions in... 3... 2... "Benghaaaaaaaaaaaaaazi!"

The Clinton camp apparently was not only paying for the dossier, but funneling information to Steele in order to create it --- Clinton operatives funneled info to Christopher Steele for Trump dossier -
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/20 ... left-out-/ and https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/20 ... e-steele-/ and http://www.nationalreview.com/article/4 ... n-campaign

A second dossier written with information supplied by a Clinton camp associate Cody Shearer - http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/dossi ... le/2648099 and https://www.spartareport.com/2018/02/si ... -to-know/d See also Judicial Watch and The Guardian reports on the same second dossier.

[Brian Peacock]

[Tero]

Thank God for Trump!

House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes claimed it was the Hillary Clinton campaign that was the real Russian collaborator and that it turned the FBI into a weapon against Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential election.

It was Hillary and the FBI that collaborated with the Russians!


Pretty soon, no one will believe the Russian anything anymore

Who believes it now? It's just partisan nonsense.

Well, Trump is now a fool and a lame duck with a one policy mission. The wall. So he may escape the wrath of American people. If he manages to ”run” for reelction just to cheer his base to show up and vote in Nov, he may limp along to the end. But if he gets the nomination and actually runs in 2020, the shit will hit the fan and enough dirt will come out to discredit him in that run.His Russia will be the same as “her emails.” His business practices will add to the crooked Trump legacy.

[Tero]

The Washington Times is just a slightly more serious The Onion with less humor.

[Scot Dutchy]

Pentagon doesn't know what happened to more than $800m in spending, claims report

The Defence Logistics Agency reportedly misstated hundreds of millions of dollars in project spending

Over Two Decades, The Pentagon Has Lost $10 Trillion

Over two decades, the Pentagon has lost an astonishing $10 trillion — and the Defense Department has no idea where it went.

[Forty Two]

The US spies on others? So fucking what? It's irrelevant to whether you should be concerned about hostile foreign powers meddling in your elections.

Jesus, dipshit. Do you ever read what you respond to?

I said it is a legitimate issue to be "concerned about hostile foreign powers meddling in your elections." However, only a complete and utter idiot would leave the analysis there, and not ask (a) what do you mean by acts of "meddling" specifically, and (b) what evidence has been presented to support the allegations that they are occurring, and also (c) what evidence is there that any Americans are in cahoots with the meddlers?

To say "OMG! the Russians are meddling in our elections!" doesn't tell us shit. They're meddling! They're using Pokemon Go! http://money.cnn.com/2017/10/12/media/d ... index.html That's one thing.

If there is proof there is "hacking" going on, then that's quite another. So, the intelligence services should fucking prosecute the criminals, or identify them for us, or present the concrete evidence that the hacking occurred, and was done by the Russians.

Even The Nation, however, gets it: https://www.thenation.com/article/russi ... than-fact/

Clinton has had a lot to take in. Since Election Day, the controversy over alleged Russian meddling and Trump campaign collusion has consumed Washington and the national media. Yet nearly one year later there is still no concrete evidence of its central allegations. There are claims by US intelligence officials that the Russian government hacked e-mails and used social media to help elect Donald Trump, but there has yet to be any corroboration. Although the oft-cited January intelligence report “uses the strongest language and offers the most detailed assessment yet,” The Atlantic observed that “it does not or cannot provide evidence for its assertions.” Noting the “absence of any proof” and “hard evidence to back up the agencies’ claims that the Russian government engineered the election attack,” The New York Times concluded that the intelligence community’s message “essentially amounts to ‘trust us.’” That remains the case today.

Then there is Facebook’s disclosure that fake accounts “likely operated out of Russia” paid $100,000 for 3,000 ads starting in June 2015. The New York Times editorial board described it as “further evidence of what amounted to unprecedented foreign invasion of American democracy.” A $100,000 Facebook ad buy seems unlikely to have had much impact in a $6.8 billion election. According to Facebook, “the vast majority of ads…didn’t specifically reference the US presidential election, voting or a particular candidate” but rather focused “on amplifying divisive social and political messages across the ideological spectrum—touching on topics from LGBT matters to race issues to immigration to gun rights.” Facebook also says the majority of ads, 56 percent, were seen “after the election.” The ads have not been released publicly. But by all indications, if they were used to try to elect Trump, their sponsors took a very curious route.

The ads are commonly described as “Russian disinformation,” but in the most extensive reporting on the story to date, The Washington Post adds multiple qualifiers in noting that the ads “appear to have come from accounts associated with the Internet Research Agency,” itself a Kremlin-linked firm (emphasis added).

The Post also reveals that an initial Facebook review of the suspected Russian accounts found that they “hagd clear financial motives, which suggested that they weren’t working for a foreign government.” Furthermore, “the security team did not find clear evidence of Russian disinformation or ad purchases by Russian-linked accounts.” But Russiagate logic requires a unique response to absent evidence: “The sophistication of the Russian tactics caught Facebook off-guard.”

The Post adds how Russian “sophistication” was overcome:

As Facebook struggled to find clear evidence of Russian manipulation, the idea was gaining credence in other influential quarters.

In the electrified aftermath of the election, aides to Hillary Clinton and Obama pored over polling numbers and turnout data, looking for clues to explain what they saw as an unnatural turn of events.

One of the theories to emerge from their post-mortem was that Russian operatives who were directed by the Kremlin to support Trump may have taken advantage of Facebook and other social media platforms to direct their messages to American voters in key demographic areas in order to increase enthusiasm for Trump and suppress support for Clinton.

These former advisers didn’t have hard evidence that Russian trolls were using Facebook to micro-target voters in swing districts—at least not yet—but they shared their theories with the House and Senate intelligence committees, which launched parallel investigations into Russia’s role in the presidential campaign in January.

The theories paid off. A personal visit in May by Democratic Senator Mark Warner, vice-chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, “spurred the company to make some changes in how it conducted its internal investigation.” Facebook’s announcement in August of finding 3,000 “likely” Russian ads is now an ongoing “scandal” that has dragged the company before Congressional committees.

A recent front-page New York Times article linking Russian cyber operations to voting irregularities across the United States is headlined, “Russian Election Hacking Efforts, Wider Than Previously Known, Draw Little Scrutiny.” But read on and you’ll discover that there is no evidence of “Russian election hacking,” only evidence-free accusations of it.

The evidence-free concern over Russian hacking expanded in late September when the Department of Homeland Security informed 21 states that they had been targeted by Russian cyber-operations during the 2016 election. But three states have already dismissed the DHS claims, including California, which announced that after seeking “further information, it became clear that DHS’s conclusions were wrong.”

But this story might actually tell us a lot more about the attitudes of pundits and lawmakers towards their audiences. On top of the 3,000 ads identified by Facebook, Twitter has now informed Congress of around 200 accounts “linked to Russian interference in the 2016 election.” Twitter has 328 million users. To suggest 200 accounts out of 328 million could have had an impact is as much an insult to common sense as it is to basic math.

[Tero]

A lot of words. There was no occlusion. Because Hillary. And Pizzagate real. Pee pee tapes not. Got it.