The 2016 Presidential Election Trainwreck

[Pelado]

You didn't mention that all these Russian cyber attacks on the democrats and DNC happened on Obama's watch. If the DNC/democrats got hacked then isn't it ultimately Obama's fault? What did Obama's people at the CIA, FBI, NSA, DHS, and the other 13 intelligence agencies do to detect and stop this cyber attack? This is all starting to smell like cyber version of 9/11 where all the so called "intelligence" agencies failed to do their job and protect us. Heads need to roll! Personally I think about 11 or 12 of these government intelligence agencies should be shut down or merged. Again they have proven that they are worthless in stopping threats so why have them? The Obama administration failed us just like Bush administration failed us by not detecting and stopping the 9/11 attacks. Now, not only do we have worry about being blown up by terrorists we have to worry about being hacked by the Ruskies. Thanks government!

Was anyone else frustrated that W's solution to the ineffective sharing of intelligence between various bureaucracies was to introduce a new department with its own bureaucracy?

[Uncle Ted]

Was anyone else frustrated that W's solution to the ineffective sharing of intelligence between various bureaucracies was to introduce a new department with its own bureaucracy?

Yeah, that and the so called "patriot act" is pure government BS. Obama bitched about the patriot act as a senior but didn't do a damn thing about it as president other than sign the extension bill.

Remind me why Obama has been a good president again?

[Uncle Ted]

The CIA is up to its old tricks: overthrowing a democratically elected government. Only this time it’s our government.

Embedded Tweet

Yeah, the CIA doesn't assassinated people either. Those are not the CIA drones you are looking for.

[Uncle Ted]

I miss when this guy was on MSNBC...

[falafel]

I miss when this guy was on MSNBC ESPN...

FIFY. Unwatchable in his current form.

[Walter Sobchak]

What did Obama's people at the CIA, FBI, NSA, DHS, and the other 13 intelligence agencies do to detect and stop this cyber attack?

Well, for one, not all the other agencies agree with the CIA assessment.

UNPACKING THE NEW CIA LEAK: DON’T IGNORE THE ALUMINUM TUBE FOOTNOTE

This post will unpack the leak from the CIA published in the WaPo tonight.

[...]

One source for this story — which sounds like someone like Harry Reid or Dianne Feinstein — claimed that this CIA judgment is the “consensus” view of all the intelligence agencies, a term of art.

“It is the assessment of the intelligence community that Russia’s goal here was to favor one candidate over the other, to help Trump get elected,” said a senior U.S. official briefed on an intelligence presentation made to U.S. senators. “That’s the consensus view.”

Except that in a briefing this week (which may have been what impressed John McCain and Lindsey Graham to do their own investigation), that’s not what this represented.

The CIA shared its latest assessment with key senators in a closed-door briefing on Capitol Hill last week, in which agency officials cited a growing body of intelligence from multiple sources. Agency briefers told the senators it was now “quite clear” that electing Trump was Russia’s goal, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters.

The CIA presentation to senators about Russia’s intentions fell short of a formal U.S. assessment produced by all 17 intelligence agencies. A senior U.S. official said there were minor disagreements among intelligence officials about the agency’s assessment, in part because some questions remain unanswered. [my emphasis]

That’s a conflict. Some senior US official (often code for senior member of Congress) says this is the consensus view. Another senior US official (or maybe the very same one) says there are “minor disagreements.”

Remember: we went to war against Iraq, which turned out to have no WMD, in part because no one read the “minor disagreements” from a few agencies about some aluminum tubes. A number of Senators who didn’t read that footnote closely (and at least one that did) are involved in this story. What we’re being told is there are some aluminum tube type disagreements.

Let’s hear about those disagreements this time, shall we?

Here’s the big takeaway. The language “a formal US assessment produced by all 17 intelligence agencies” is, like “a consensus view,” a term of art. It’s an opportunity for agencies which may have differing theories of what happened here to submit their footnotes.

That may be what Obama called for today: the formal assessment from all agencies (though admittedly, the White House purposely left the scope and intent of it vague).

Whatever that review is intended to be, what happened as soon as Obama announced it is that the CIA and/or Democratic Senators started leaking their conclusion. That’s what this story is.

Update, 12/10: This follow-up from WaPo is instructive, as it compares what CIA briefed the Senate Intelligence Committee about the current state of evidence with what FBI briefed the House Intelligence Committee about the current state of evidence. While the focus is on different Republican and Democratic understandings of both, the story also makes it clear that FBI definitely doesn’t back what WaPo’s sources from yesterday said was a consensus view.

[Maximus]

Romney officially not SoS. Welcome, Putin shrill

[Uncle Ted]

FIFY. Unwatchable in his current form.

Didn't watch him when he was on ESPN but he should have stuck with sports.

[Uncle Ted]

Well, for one, not all the other agencies agree with the CIA assessment.

UNPACKING THE NEW CIA LEAK: DON’T IGNORE THE ALUMINUM TUBE FOOTNOTE

The CIA hasn't been this interested in who was president since Kennedy... and didn't they assassinate him?

[Uncle Ted]

Romney officially not SoS. Welcome, Putin shrill

Trump was just playing with RMoney and he was dumb enough to fall for it... twice.

Donald Trump Interviewed Mitt Romney to ‘Torture’ Him, Roger Stone Says


The longtime informal adviser claims that Trump just wanted to see the former presidential candidate squirm.

Donald Trump’s long-time but informal adviser Roger Stone says the Secretary of State job was dangled in front of Mitt Romney in order to “torture” him for previously opposing the president-elect.


During a Sunday appearance on InfoWars with Alex Jones, a conspiratorial media outlet that has become a mouthpiece of the next president, Stone called Romney a “choker” and said that Trump was simply toying with him.


“Donald Trump was interviewing Mitt Romney for Secretary of State in order to torture him,” Stone claimed on the program. “To toy with him. And given the history, that’s completely understandable. Mitt Romney crossed a line. He didn’t just oppose Trump, which is his democratic right, he called him a phony and a fraud. And a con man. And that’s not the kind of man you want as Secretary of State.”

[...]

http://www.thedailybeast.com/article...tone-says.html

[Moliere]

Fusnik is right about you.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Maximus]

Trump was just playing with RMoney and he was dumb enough to fall for it... twice.


http://www.thedailybeast.com/article...tone-says.html

...at least according to roger stone

[Uncle Ted]

The Dems should be bitching at Obama for being a "snowflake"... he opened the door for the Ruskies:

Obama’s Weakness Invited The Russians To Meddle In U.S. Elections


The CIA now says Russia intervened in the 2016 election in order to elect Donald Trump. If that's true, it's Obama's fault.
[...]

But even still, this misses the bigger picture. In 2012, Obama and the Democrats openly mocked Mitt Romney for suggesting that Russia was the number one foreign policy challenge facing America. Who can forget Obama’s debate quip that the 1980s called and “wants their foreign policy back”? Everyone on the Left had a good laugh.


How could it be, then, that just four years after Russia was the butt of Democrats’ jokes about Romney, it’s now a major threat to American democracy? The terrible truth is something no Democrat will admit: the Russians were always a threat, and Obama didn’t take them seriously. Our weakness abroad—in Syria, in Ukraine, in the South China Sea—emboldened Putin and endangered American interests and standing, and undermined our ability to maintain order and dissuade strongmen like Putin from revising the international order.
[...]

Don’t hold your breath waiting for Obama and the Democrats to admit they were wrong about Russia. To do so now would be to admit that the past eight years of Obama’s foreign policy approach to Moscow have been an unmitigated disaster, and that Russia’s efforts to undermine Americans’ confidence in democracy have been largely successful. And we can’t have that.

http://thefederalist.com/2016/12/13/...u-s-elections/

[Jeff Lebowski]

...at least according to roger stone

Roger Stone is a horrible human being. Speaks volumes that he is a Trump insider.

[Uncle Ted]

Trump picks Perry as Energy Secretary.

The third one was Energy... Let's hope that he gets it shut down.