Intelligence Community sayeth: “The bad Russians have been mucking about in our elections. Yes!”
But, wait, Big Red Car, who exactly is the “Intelligence Community”?
Ahhh, you are a very astute observer of the condition politic in the United States of America, aren’t you?
So, the Big Red Car is a little skeptical at the pronouncement that the “entire intelligence community is unanimous in the assertion that the Russians hacked the election.”
OK, so, Big Red Car, who is the Intelligence Community?
The Intelligence Community reports to the Director of National Intelligence and consists of the following embedded intel entities:
1. Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine, Coast Guard Intelligence, DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency);
2. Departments of Energy, State, Homeland Security, Treasury, DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency);
3. CIA, FBI;
4. NSA (National Security Agency), NRO (National Reconnaissance Office), National Geospatial Intelligence Agency
As you can see, dear reader there are sixteen members, many of whom you have likely never heard.
I thought there were SEVENTEEN, Big Red Car?
Ahh, you are a stickler for detail, dear reader, as well you should be. The seventeenth is the Office of the DNI (Director of National IntelligenCe).
Calling baloney!
So, the Big Red Car is calling “baloney” on the notion that Coast Guard Intel or the National Geospatial Intel Agency is actually tasked with nosing about in or concerned with the American elections.
You? You think the DEA is monitoring Russian involvement in the US elections? Or the Navy?
So, the Big Red Car is offering the following hypothesis: This is all a bunch of baloney. Half of these agencies have NOTHING even remotely related to the American elections in their charters and the assertion that the entire IC is unanimous in their conclusion that the Russians hacked our election is pure baloney.
If you like your intelligence community member then you may keep your intelligence community member, y’all!
But, hey, what the Hell do I really know anyway? I’m just a Big Red Car. Be good to yourself. It’s 85F in Winter Park, Florida today. 
Time for a routine equipment check. Check your loser detector here:
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2016/12/16/13/3B70EE8300000578-4039350-image-m-4_1481894508831.jpg
Well for a short post this has a long conversation. So everyone gets hacked sooner or later, The content is what drives the value of that hack. Outside that DJT was tweeting everything making his mails boring the content of Podestra, DNC, and others was in line with what drove this election. ELITE MANIPULATION OF OUR SYSTEM.
Demographically the largest item was the no show or Obama voters, young and minority. Hum, so the e-mail content Pissed off those two groups! The mails laughing at Religious Voters, Jewish and Catholic , energized those votes. So from a content of the hack Putin is brilliant for writing these! Oh you mean we are not talking about content here?
I don’t care who hacked, (maybe how) but I do care about the info. What is the difference between a fat Russian in his moms basement or a guy in a garage who calls himself deep throat?
One of my theories on this, which I espoused to my naif wife last night [1], was that this is simply laying the groundwork for the public for when we get our hands caught in the cookie jar again with some other country. Then the writers and the idiots on the street think ‘oh it’s ok they do it to us’. It honestly makes no sense at all strategically, for any other reason that I can think of, to make such a public disclosure other than the obvious point of trying to cast doubt and get a dig on the Trump administration. Obviously there is this shit going on all of the time. Perhaps if this had been brought out prior to what we had done with Merkel there would have been less trouble with that.
And of course one other thing. If you are sophisticated enough to hack these types of things you are also good enough to make it look like someone else was doing it or at least draw attention away from yourself.
Lastly as far as knowing for sure that Putin was behind it since anyone who has ever visited the spy museum in Washington DC (worth a visit) even knows how trustworthy is a spy telling a spy something anyway? Who knows how many levels of manipulation are going on in those communications?
[1] I got her into the habit of watching the Lester Holt every night with me.
I used to take the news from the mainstream media (MSM) seriously and when I saw what looked like errors carefully and rationally debunk that news.
No more: I wasted a lot of time discovering the deeper truths. For one, rationality has next to nothing to do with it. Rational debunking is just water that rolls off that duck’s back. and responding rationally is just a waste of time, keystrokes, etc. It’s better to look at the old standard, “Always look for the hidden agenda.”.
Here, the MSM screaming about the Russian hackers attacking our elections, etc., seems to have the hidden agenda: (1) The MSM wants shocking headlines to get eyeballs to get ad revenue. Or we have another case of “follow the money”. (2) Even though the election is over and Hillary and the Democrats lost, not just the White House but, if count state and federal legislators and statehouses, lost very badly across the country, the MSM, apparently from deep blue newsrooms, is still highly biased and, now, looking for anything they can find to discredit the Trump White House and the rest of the Republicans. (3) The MSM is still playing their game of gang up, pile on, mob behavior with a large fraction of the MSM all pushing the same Russian hacker story. As usual, their evidence is from junk down to nothing at all. (4) Each day the MSM has a lot of space to fill; so, they fill it. Maybe they fill the space with the best content they have, but the quality of that content doesn’t have to be any good. Just because the MSM has to fill the space, even if the best content they have should be just flushed, doesn’t mean that we have to pay attention to that content. Instead, when the content is obviously junk, just click away to something else or, horrors, do some work, relax, think, take a nap, etc.
MSM junk: We expected something else? Or, “The news is always the same. Only the names change.”
But, as we know, such MSM headlines change faster than the weather report and in a week or so will be gone, replaced by another gang up, pile on mob behavior, deliberately distorted, fabricated, lying story.
The attitude of total contempt for the newsies goes way back: Once I saw such contempt in an old movie, an Andy Hardy movie from the 1930s. People were laughing at the newsies then, and the laughing should continue unless finally we just ignore them and get our news via the Internet and much more directly.
This will be an interesting year (2017) as we see what Trump does. If someone in his inner circle would drill into his head the way to make fun of MSM’s fake news line where he’s outside the box will pay off for him in several ways.
Well, he’s selling his brand.
So, he wants to look fully open minded so has Al Gore and Leo DiCaprio up to Trump Tower to talk about global warming.
He has Romney up to talk about whatever, Secretary of State?
He has Kissinger up.
He took the call from Taiwan and, thus, showed China that he is no pushover. When China took the scientific ocean drone, Trump suggested that they should just keep it: So, they remain a thief, and he doesn’t want to get military on them.
He talked with Bill Clinton and said nice things about the conversation; so, he looks like he is trying to bring the country together.
His .GOV Web site has his version of the news on the transition, e.g., looks well done and has bios on each of his nominations. So, he looks serious.
He noticed that winning the election was not enough support for his brand so did a thank you tour where, again, he could get 30,000 people to show up. There he repeated many of the promises he made in the campaign. So, he continued to keep up his support.
He has continued to Tweet, on the newsie Hillary propaganda on the Ruskies as why she lost and, now, on the attack in Berlin by Ali Abdul Jihad al Fatwah bin Big Truck with a remark about how civilization needs to wake up, get smart, or some such.
For what he’s going to do, to me, first cut, it looks like a lot of common sense. Second cut, for a lot of that stuff, he’s going to have to look into the macro economics and push the projects ahead in about the right order and at about the right speed monitoring that he doesn’t shoot some big parts of the economy in the gut, overheat other big parts of the economy, etc.
There are a lot of latrines in the world, and I believe that Trump will decline a lot of opportunities to go to war in them.
For the Jihaders, his “We will get/keep the radical Islamic terrorists the Hell out of our country.” or some such — I believe that we very much can and that he definitely will.
Keeping Jihaders out of the US looks radical only because for the past 8 years we were so eager to let them in. The strange part is not that we want them out but why we were so eager to let them in.
You’re right about paying attention to the effect different movements have on something else, be it foreign policy or economic.
Otherwise, the media could never figure out that a lot of what he says and/or positions is to achieve the best beginning point at the bargaining table.
Well you surely demolished that straw man!
You are going to need some bigger blinders to ignore Russians involvement in this election, comrade.
.
Reading comp problem, Jess.
The hypothesis is not that the Russians were not hacking but rather the absurd notion that seventeen American intel agencies were “unanimous” in their conclusion. This faux fact is often recited as some imprimatur which is simply not true.
While not said, I would also suggest that there is nothing for anyone to worry about as long as one doesn’t archive 60,000 stupid emails.
It should come as no revelation to anyone that the Russians bear us ill will and that as long as the Russians are not confronted and repelled, they will continue unabated in their bad behavior. Unpunished bad behavior encourages escalation.
The Russians forced HRC to avoid Wisconsin and other Rust Belt states and we know how that turned out.
Merry Christmas!
BRC
https://www.themusingsofthebigredcar.com
My mistake. I haven’t heard that 17 intel agencies were supporting this. Quite rediculous.
Though I’m not sure why your first post in two weeks is about the semantics of the issue, rather than the fact that Russians absolutely did engage in an effective espionage and influence operation to get DJT in the White House. DJT denies it, and puts Putin’s buddies in his cabinent. But I guess the narrative is that DJT is ‘smart’ and this is good strategy. Keep your friends close and your enemies even closer or something.
.
Believe what you may about the Russians but it is a bit of a stretch to suggest the Russians actually influenced the outcome of the election.
I can’t make any real connection between HRC’s decision not to visit Wisconsin (and the Rust Belt, in general) and the Russians. You?
Or her decision to “rope-a-dope” it for the last 6 weeks of the election. The Russians did that?
In fairness, I think Pres Obama’s view and Pres Trump’s view is identical — both have said the Russians did not impact the election.
It is silly to suggest that Pres Trump has put any Putin “buddies” in his Cabinet and it shows a rabid lack of sophistication to suggest that a CEO of a multi-national oil company, who was involved in a negotiation to develop energy properties in Russia three years ago, is somehow a “buddy.”
In fact, he is likely to have been an adversary in a difficult negotiation though I doubt either of them dealt directly with each other.
I would much prefer that we have people in jobs which entail contact with the Russians who know something about Russia and its leader. Such knowledge can be useful for a number of reasons.
Pres Reagan and Gorbachev got along famously but Reagan still had the sense to “trust but verify” which led to some good outcomes.
Not to get too wonky on you, but take a look at the Gary Johnson, Jill Stein, and other weird party candidates in each of Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Ohio and see how they impact the margin of victory.
The third party candidate votes were far in excess of the margin of victory. Nobody seems to realize that a lot of Republican operatives assisted Johnson and Stein in qualifying for the ballot in those states. There’s an interesting story.
I personally don’t think the Russians had much to do with the voting in any of the critical states. There was clearly a failure in the polling and punditry ranks which attempted to paint a certain HRC victory about 3 weeks out which was simply not true.
There is a lot of bluster about the Russian hacking but not much substance as to what they actually did or delivered. Wikileaks and two other websites provided a wealth of internal emails but I doubt the deplorables in the Rust Belt were actually reading any of that stuff.
Color me very skeptical but very interested in actual “evidence” should it emerge. Evidence would change my views.
BRC
https://www.themusingsofthebigredcar.com
Good rebuttals. Have you read yesterdays NYT piece about it? I’m not sure what constitutes evidence these days, but if it looks like a duck and quacks in Russian, well…
There were many things that effected the election. Certainly HRC own failings, and third party candidates. You can throw a Russian psy-ops campaign in there too. Whether or not it had a large impact is debatable. Whether or not we should just sweep it under the rug like Trump is doing, is not.
As for ol Rex and being Putin’s buddy. Putin literally bestowed upon Rex the “Order of Friendship” a few years ago. I’d say its more than just them doing a few biz deals, which he has been doing with Russia for the past 2 decades.
Yeah the deplorables weren’t reading wikileaks, but lets not pretend that Fox News didn’t cover it non-stop for months.
I give the National Enquirer more cred than the NYT. Think HRC calls it fake news.
But thanks for at least acknowledging BRC’s outstanding rebuttal.
Let’s look at the definition of a Russian “order of friendship”. Let’s divulge the sinister underpinnings of such such thing. OMG, so scary!
The Order of Friendship is awarded to Russian and foreign nationals for special merit in strengthening peace, friendship, cooperation and understanding between nations, for fruitful work on the convergence and mutual enrichment of cultures of nations and peoples; for the active conservation, development and promotion of the cultural and historical heritage of Russia; for great contribution to the implementation of joint ventures with the Russian Federation, major economic projects and attracting investments into the economy of the Russian Federation; for broad charitable activities.
I can’t say I read the National Enquirer.
I never said the Order of Friendship was sinister or scary. But as you pointed out, it’s clearly a non-trivial recognation of someones service to Russia.
In 2007 it was awarded to George Blake, and Brittish double agent in service of the KGB.
.
In my curiosity I would like nothing more than a bit of skullduggery and intrigue — I am natively very anti-Russia and China — but the NYT article is nothing but a bunch of conjecture and speculation from, perhaps, the most flawed news source in the US.
What is missing in all of this is something beyond the Wikileaks reality. If that is all there is then it isn’t much.
I can’t see the Exxon CEO doing anything other than some business. What else could he do? What else does he do? And, I want someone who knows the foreign leaders of places like Russia and China — why wouldn’t we be well served by this?
As to the deplorables — I don’t see the sexists, misogynists, racists doing much of anything other than attending lynchings and cross burnings. For every Fox News devotee there are more than the same number MSNBC, et al, illuminati, no?
It seems terribly inconsequential when it cancels each other so obviously.
I suspect that things were well sorted out a month from election day and that all the to-ing and fro-ing was just the pundits and pollsters getting it wrong. They got it horribly wrong and then they became part of the hustle themselves. No, the media is the worst place to look for accurate news.
One thing is for certain — all the freakin’ experts (including the folks who are feeding us the Russianifaction of all things) got it terribly wrong. How did they so quickly start to get things right again?
It’s all going to be fine.
BRC
https://www.themusingsofthebigredcar.com
Well this isn’t going away so get comfortable. This is from this morning:
“U.S. intelligence officials now believe with “a high level of confidence” that Russian President Vladimir Putin became personally involved in the covert Russian campaign to interfere in the U.S. presidential election, senior U.S. intelligence officials told NBC News.”
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/u-s-officials-putin-personally-involved-u-s-election-hack-n696146
Putin is incredibly smart and strong politician. He knows exactly what he is doing. We are going to need a leader to stand up to him over numerous issues. Is this going to be Trump? Or Putins comrade, Tillerson? My worry is that Putin is playing chess, and Trump is playing checkers and tweeting about the bad review Vanity Fair gave his restaurant. Even the American people (Republicans) are now enamoured with Putin.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d8f061e86cd445167d2f193f48dc0ffe5f8ad48a65a34fefd313e4ea0b530d58.jpg
This cult of personality for both Trump and Putin is going to have some real consequences. I seriously hope this is all part of Trumps masterplan because it seriously looks like he is being played like a Russian fiddle.
.
There is no doubt whatsoever in my mind that the Russians were involved to the extent they could be in the American elections and have been for years. We did and do the same thing to them as you pointed out elsewhere.
Why would it come as a surprise to anyone that Putin — former KGB guy — would take an interest in this?
I am extremely skeptical that anyone in the IC actually “knows” this type of thing as it involves HumInt and they would be unwilling to expose such a source.
I would take it a little more seriously if it were reported in a more reputable press organ, like the Nat’l Enquirer?
Still, what could they actually do other than to engage in classic propaganda?
They didn’t tell HRC to blow off the Rust Belt or to call Trump supporters “deplorabes.”
As an aside, I believe HRC could have won had she done some specific things differently chief amongst them to actually work harder and to get away from attacking DJT and focus on policy.
Clearly, between the two candidates Trump is and was the one most likely to invigorate the American military which is the single greatest threat to Russia’s global hegemony and expansionist ambitions, so I am a little non-plussed as to why Putin would seek to support Trump v HRC.
That doesn’t make much sense to me.
I suspect the Russians got exactly what they want — chaos and an overblown sense of their power. Two things they always seek.
Merry Christmas!
BRC
https://www.themusingsofthebigredcar.com
I was listening to one of the reporters on te radio today and the interviewer asked them that clearly this involved Humint and Putins inner circle so why would they want to expose those contacts. The reporter said they (NBC) had meetings about this issue among themselves and with the IC, and did it anyways because they felt it was important.
As you have said before, things have changed and there are new or no rules. To me this doesn’t feel like some typical Russian espionage. Yes there has always been spies and stealing info, but I don’t recall Russia ever actively trying to weaponize that info and influencing elections. If you think Russia just wants a little Chaos, I think you are vastly underestimating them.
At the end of the day, I suspect this all comes down to money. And the half trillion dollar arctic oil well. Obama blocked that deal, and I bet HRC would have too. I don’t know what DJT thoughts on the matter are but you can be damn sure what Rex has on the agenda.
Money seems to be a theme with DJT and his cabinet of billionaire globalists. While I have my issues with career politicians like the current treasury secretary, i feel like they can at least be called patriots and would put America and Americans above personal business dealings.
.
The Russian sanctions which precluded Exxon’s involvement in the Artic JV happened some time ago.
The Russians went forward — piecemeal — with other competitors who cut a better deal for Russia.
That opportunity is no longer in play.
Hard to believe the CIA meets with NBC when they refuse to brief the House Intel Committee after a written request.
BRC
https://www.themusingsofthebigredcar.com
It always sure made me wonder just how everyone “knows” about Putin’s adornment of Trump — and then assigns him the almighty superpowers to have the seasoned dem rust belt voters turn their back on HRC. It’s right out of the National Enquirer’s playbook. Arguing that rouge sun spot activities were to blame would make more sense.
.
Do you believe that Coast Guard Intel believes that the Russians hacked into the recent election?
https://themusingsofthebigredcar.com/intelligence-community-russians/
Who are the members of the IC?
BRC
https://www.themusingsofthebigredcar.com