Notable problems with the "Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections" report. The ICA's most salacious, oft-reported parts were a scam.
Thank you for the pdf--𝐎𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐈𝐧𝐯𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐠𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐀𝐧𝐝 𝐑𝐞𝐟𝐞𝐫𝐫𝐚𝐥-- our full-time jobs as Racket News Readers seem to be reading Racket News reports on this topic. As Racket Readers are true patriots getting news that is not pre-digested by corporate media-- we find this is time well-spent. Thanks to everyone here who does read all this which is not easy for Matt and Greg to compile, but the kind of deep analysis we all need to move ahead.
Jeez. Some of the details in this - "The Russians knew that Clinton's State Department friends were promising money to religious organizations in return for support of the candidate" seem like the worst thing in the whole scandal!!! The Russians knew it then, but we still didn't today!?!?
Now let's talk about Robert Mueller, who clearly determined that this was all nonsense almost immediately, yet kept his "investigation" open for TWO YEARS so that the Deep State would have a pretext for ignoring Trump's presidential authority.
Federal institutions spent most of a duly-elected president's term acting like he wasn't legitimate, undermining and even openly rebelling against his orders. All the while Mueller gave everyone in Trump's orbit a bureaucratic colonoscopy, ultimately nailing a staffer or two so that left-wing America could triumphantly exclaim (as a coworker of mine proudly did in the office) "Is it still a witch hunt when they find actual witches?"
Yes, Sean. It's still a witch hunt when you claim that Trump is Putin's Manchurian candidate and come away with cold case tax evasion charges for Paul Manafort.
Contemporaneous reports say that Mueller had the same problem that Biden had(2019-2024)...severe mental incapacity. That whole circus was run by Andrew Weissmann. Mueller was barely aware of what was going on.
Looked at another way, Mueller oversaw the idiocy that was going to happen anyway from Weissmann and others and kept them from breaking anything permanently - from overstepping EVEN MORE...
He was the one that stopped things where they went, didn't pursue obstruction, etc...
His answer to the question about his knowledge of Fusion GPS ("never heard of 'em") said all that was needed about his familiarity with details of the case. He just racked up a few thousand billable hours doing probably almost nothing. His bill was surely in low seven figures and paid for bupkis.
Mueller also was used to throw a bag on ony public requests for info. couldnt be released due to "ongoing investigations." mueller was part of the coverup.
In 2019 Mueller ordered the SWAT-style pre-dawn FBI raid of the home of dangerous suspect, Roger Stone, accused of the violent crimes of obstruction, making false statements, and witness tampering. A network camera crew just happened to be in the neighborhood. "The Justice Department's original recommendation of SEVEN TO NINE YEARS (emphasis mine) was reduced after intervention by senior officials, following public criticism by President Trump.[160] This led to all four prosecutors withdrawing from the case."
JD, I think the real motivation for continuing the investigation was to try to manipulate President Trump into committing an act that could be called obstruction of justice. They went after Manafort in order to coerce him to falsely testify against Trump. Someone, maybe Rush Limbaugh, reported that Manafort had told him this and said that he had nothing on Trump. Regardless of whether the charges against Manafort were justified, he should be praised for not committing perjury.
While you're at it, let's talk about the Bipartisan Senate report on Russian interference in the 2016 election.
The one that was constructed from a two-year investigation that surveyed hundreds of documents and thousands of interviews that the ICA didn't have access to, that ultimately concluded that the basic conclusions of the ICA were correct.
Is the argument here that Senate Republicans (who were free to challenge any claims they perceived as biased or partisan) and Senate Democrats cooperated to create a massive body of fake evidence, from fake interviews to fake documents, in order to screw Trump?
Because that's what the 'Russiagate' story ultimately requires to be viable, and the size of the conspiracy you'd have to be talking about. That would truly be bigger than Watergate, but given the fact that Trump bullshitted his base about a grand Deep State Epstein conspiracy for ten years, until it gets prosecuted in a court of law, with evidence that stands up to legal rigor, you'd have to be pretty credulous to believe it.
Again nothing of this will ever find its way to any MSM outlets. They have already established their narrative. This is just about nothing it’s all old news this is just Trump using lawfare to go after his political opponents and delegitimization of the pristine intel agencies by a bunch of Trump toadies. Any convictions will be reported under the color of how terrible this is. The MSM knows it’s completely wrong but it will never ever admitted that and in fact will double down with even more lies to distract the zombies on the left.
I think a lot has come from this--maybe not indictments and punishment, but for the people taking the time to read and understand this (not easy, for me at least)--eyes opened and innocence lost. But skeptical going forward. If the end result is readers no longer accept what we are told, that's a victory. And there are thousands reading this.
Did the deep state spike the punch against Trump in the Epstein files? A manufactured poison pill of sorts that might make the Steele Dossier blush. That’s a plausible reason for the administration’s 180 degree pivot on release, pre and post POTUS.
If Obama did it w/ Russia-gate post 2016 to Trump and got away with it, manufacturing bad mojo against Trump vis-a-vis Epstein files by Biden’s folks can’t be dismissed.
Federal judge today declined to release the Epstein 2019 Grand Jury transcripts that Trump asked DOJ to unseal. But might those GJ transcripts eventually be released to public after all the ‘due process’ black sharpies come into play, for those named within but have decent legal counsel?
That Grand Jury transcripts would show what the government had on Epstein, and likely no deep state shenanigans infected.
They're also here, in these comments. A few days ago I got into a dispute with regard to the Epstein files in these comments with one of these clones, with the usual insults thrown in as part of their usual argument style. I don't understand what's in it for them to parrot that party line. Maybe Postmaster in Dufur, Oregon is in their future?
I think some of the documents were released at the beginning of July. People were very recently ragging on Matt for not naming president Obama as ringleader/co-conspirator. Proof came in the newer tranche. Any convictions will also include evidence and a trial. These will be public. We can hope that enough people will be swayed to demand more integrity from our politicians, even if they don’t admit the full extent of their crimes. Phucque the MSM outlets.
I used to think that people would always gravitate toward an objective and traditionally moral conclusion. What I failed to understand is that about half of the population are mentally fucked by their low capability to regulate their own emotions, and that it was our old traditional media that pulled them back from their tendency toward disinformation, fatalism, hysteria and mythology.
Now that media actually foments disinformation, fatalism, hysteria and mythology.
So, the half of the population that was only fucked are now fucking insane.
No matter how much detail is published on this sordid and treasonous Russiagate story, the half of the population that is fucking insane will never believe it, or else they will just clutch alternate irrational conclusions to make themselves feel better.
"about half of the population are mentally fucked by their low capability to regulate their own emotions"
(1) Agreed, although I would extend your definition of inadequacy to other mental limitations (other psychological, intelligences, etc.) as well as external resources. In most cases, these cannot simply be regarded as their own moral faults. The moral fault lies in the psychopathic leadership that we, IMHO the conscious, have so far been allowing them to take charge. We need a new systemic way to manage this, because neither the US Constitution, nor any other ideology or government structure, knows sufficiently how to do this in the modern complex world.
(2) Mental and resource limitations also apply to the majority of MSM staff implementing the fomentations, especially the younger staff with more recent education.
It's been said before that the most pernicious aspect of this deception (assuming it was a deception) was the lasting damage done to our public's opinion of Russia. Public opinion shapes a great deal in elective societies. I can't help but wonder whether events of the last nine years might have been much different if a sizable fraction of our voters hadn't been brought to view Russian power as deeply malevolent.
Addendum: I try to be clear-eyed about Russian interests. In many respects, their interests aren't our interests, and it seems to me Russia's leadership is steely-eyed about advancing their interests. But that is what any nation does. I do not view Russia as especially malevolent, while knowing we must counter their actions in many cases.
Remember, Russia is (once again) a dictatorship. That means the Russian government does not serve the Russian people, but the dictator’s ego, whims, and delusions.
It wasn’t to serve Russian interests when Stalin wiped out the Red Army’s experienced generals on the eve of World War II. It didn’t do Germany much of a favor when Hitler went to war against Russia, the British Empire, the United States, and the Jews, all at the same time.
Increasing Russia’s enormous land area a fraction of a percent, at the expense of a new Cold War, does not serve the Russian people. Nor does the impossible (and arguably insane) goal of undoing 700 years of cultural evolution and turning Ukrainians back into Russians.
Russia’s war continues because the dictator refuses to admit he was wrong, and would rather treat the Russian people as cannon fodder.
We all know about Stalin. I don't think Putin is equivalent to Stalin. Nor do I pretend to know Russian public opinion at this moment, but it was crystal clear fifteen years ago that Putin was very popular. Like I said, I don't know how popular Putin is now, nor do I think that what I said hinges on that question. The current Russian regime is what it is. I want our government to deal with it realistically--which generally means taking its expressed interests seriously and countering those where those interests cross ours.
At any rate, what good would be done by lying to our public about the Russian regime's actions and intentions? As I said earlier I am not convinced we were deceived, though I think it is likely. But it doesn't matter how evil we might think that regime is, when the question is WHAT IN FACT they did. No amount of lies are justified by any moral condemnation; the entire reason we are in the epistemic mess we are now in, is precisely because a substantial number of people have become convinced that the ends justify the lies.
My point is, the Russian government isn’t pursuing “Russian interests”, so called. It’s pursuing Putin’s interests — or, more precisely, Putin’s desires and delusions.
A Russian defeat would be in Russia’s interest; for the same reason that defeating and discrediting the Junta in the Falklands War was very much in Argentina’s interest.
I don't know, and I actually mean that. One of my friends, a political scientist, used to try to disabuse his students in Introduction to Public Policy of the notion that a democracy acts with any unitary agency. After stating that thesis he would pull his cigarettes from his shirt pocket and say "For instance, do you realize that we have a 'grow it but don't smoke it' policy in this country?" The point being that in (alleged) democracies, we shouldn't expect any consistency of policy decisions relative to any notion of "the public interest." That has a venerable theoretical pedigree, through Condorcet and Black to its culmination in Kenneth Arrow's "Impossibility Theorem" for which a Nobel Prize was awarded.
So too, in a so-called dictatorship, interests of various parties are weighed and balanced. To say that Hitler or Pol Pot or Mao or Stalin were unitary executives--in the sense of coherent unitary rational agents--seems debatable in that they all had to balance interests to remain in power. Arrow's impossibility theorem rears its ugly head no matter what. No "one" can ever be a "dictator" in the sense you seem to imagine. Russian policy is, in all likelihood, still Bismarck's ugly sausage, the outcome of competing interests in Russia. To call Putin a "dictator" is naïve--if by that you mean a unitary agency determining Russian policy. By "agency" or "agent" I mean a coherent set of rational preferences determining actions. Ken Arrow basically proved by formal logic that this notion of rational agency was impossible.
Because of the way this was reported in the media that my sister trusts, she hasn't spoken to me in more than eight years. I will never forgive all those who lied.
There is a very clear distinction between what actually happened and the narrative of "infrastructure" versus influence being peddled by the left. Elie Lake just penned a piece that was completely deceptive and ignored the main issues of the Dec 8 briefing which was pulled and the next day 180 under direction from Obama. Underlined by the late Dec 9th/10th leaks to the press that there was Trump/Russian collusion and interference before any work had been started.
One fact that was raised by Michael Flynn was that the pulled briefing would have also been distributed to him and the Trump team
One note: The new CIA assessment was already completed BEFORE the 12/9 Obama meeting -- they were briefing Congressional members in closed-door meetings the week beforehand.
When Obama ordered the new assessment, he knew exactly what it was going to say. The meeting was the pretext to trot out the already-written assessment and leak it to the press. This is from an article published 12/10, the day after the meeting:
Citing anonymous officials briefed on the issue, the Post says the CIA shared its findings with senators in a closed-door briefing LAST WEEK, saying it was now "quite clear" that Russia's goal was to tip the presidency in Trump's favor
Your source for this is NPR. With the article being published on December 10th. You rely solely on an anonymous official who said senators were briefed last week. Sounds like firm evidence to me. Even though it totally contradicts the newly released documents that say there was no intelligence whatsoever to indicate that Russia interfered to help Trump. I prefer to rely on actual evidence from the analysts themselves and their opinion at the time.
The other statement that gets tossed around as fact is that Russia hacked the DNC. There is absolutely nothing that proves this and the FBI for some odd reason didn’t even look at the thumb drives before concluding their investigation
“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,” a senior US official who was briefed last week on an intelligence presentation made to US senators told the Washington Post. “That’s the consensus view.”
The Washington Post story is here, published on Dec 9:
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.
---------------
So yes, I think it's pretty safe to say the meeting happened, which means the CIA report was already written THOUGH NOT YET PUBLISHED THROUGH NORMAL CHANNELS. And it was written for the express purpose of being leaked after the Obama meeting on 12/9.
I also must conclude that you have not read all of what Matt has written and the back up documents attached. Either that or it might just be your don’t want to believe what occurred no matter the evidence indicates
I mean....I literally went through the 114 pages yesterday, which is how I came across this in the first place. But yeah, I probably just don't know what I'm talking about.
Then tell me why all the analysts at the CIA put in writing that there was no evidence that Russia interfered to help Trump. In fact there was intelligence that said more likely wanted to help Hillary.
Why did Brennan ignore his own analysts that there was no evidence to reach that conclusion.
I would hope you agree that the Steele dossier was a fabrication and that Steele himself was considered unreliable by the very same intelligence community. They knew it was a fake and Brennan once again overruled his own analysts who objected to giving it any credence let alone using it as the basis for the report’s conclusion
So you think Obama called all these people to the White House to direct them to prepare a report that was already complete?
Because that's what the intelligence actually said, but since that narrative wouldn't hurt Trump, the CIA came up with a different one. And it was obviously written BEFORE December 9th because it was LEAKED on December 9th. The meeting was the excuse to trot out the "new" assessment THAT WAS ALREADY COMPLETED.
The meeting certainly wasn't to actually faithfully look into the issue.
Turned on the 4:00 local news for NBC and CBS to see if this story got a mention. Nope. Just Epstein, the Idaho student murders, and “Black man punched in face”. As, Trent and Johnny sang, “I hurt myself today…”
Laura Ingraham is covering this on Fox today. She just ran a 2018 clip of Clapper telling CNN Anderson Cooper that the order of Trump/Russia investigation was ordered by Obama.
"This list is far from incomplete, as you’ll see from the HPSCI report listed below and Matt’s story, “In Brutal Disclosure, Russia Hoax Finally Revealed.”"
“For sure, there will also be people who remain convinced that nothing untoward occurred. Nonetheless, it appears the highest levels of government during the final days of the Obama administration orchestrated a deception designed to deceive us all.”
Two things: You’re right. I’ve had a couple of online back and forths with some true believers and they all have one thing in common: denial on cocaine. I mean it’s fucking breathtaking how apparatchik-y these dumbasses are. They all assume it’s binary and that all of us that lend any credence to any of this have simply crawled up Trump’s ass. Full disclosure- I voted for the guy but it stung. I would have voted red no matter what against KHarris, but would have felt way better about it with almost any other candidate other than Nikki Haley. What a cunt. But they just can’t see that there are smart, tuned-in, middle class citizens that are simply tired of wall to wall bullshit all the goddamned time. To them it’s either agree with them, or they want you dead. Think I’m exaggerating? Get into a convo with one of these window-licking trogs and watch what happens.
I’m in one right now and it’s hilarious and disconcerting simultaneously.
Also, on the last sentence- I don’t think any of us knew the extent of what was happening. At that point in late 2016, I was aware that MSNBC, CNN, etc and ALL affiliates were deeply biased. Coincidentally the only people that doesn’t apply to are the people that I’m referring to. They still believe all of it. So, I forgive people for thinking “holy shit did we just elect a compromised psychopath?” But not now. Not after all this, and quite frankly not after 2019 at the latest. If you’re (the proverbial you, not YOU you, Matt) still proclaiming that this isn’t a conspiracy to subvert a sitting president, you’re fucking retarded and you might as well just start swallowing political celebrity loads for a career.
Matt. Great job on this. This is your bone. You and Walter have had to endure quite a bit to have this moment. I encourage to stay with it despite the heckling you are getting. (Hopefully subscription numbers are up. We, your subscribers, are very proud of the work you have done.)
The whole affair goes beyond, and the term was de rigueur around this time, gaslighting. It was a dumpster fire, and these idiots set the country ablaze. Welcome to Brennan's world.
Kathleen, I ask myself the same question and have done so for several years (and probably like you, many years before Trump's ride down the escalator). And like you I can cite the usual explanations. Perhaps naively, I see it as one of liberalism's innate contradictions confronting our psychological need for continuity. We need more than liberal proceduralism. Our current "liberal" system sometimes allows (it seems too often) vicious vegetation to overwhelm the garden. The current incentives in our system encourage toxicity. MT wrote a book about this as it applied to media. Call it the Isokoff effect (or name your villain or media company; I like Tapper). Human nature (dare I say) may need more than unbridled tolerance. This accelerant may destroy us. The 64k question remains, what about free speech and other potential contradictions and/or paradoxes. The hope is, if there are enough (though not infinite) degrees of freedom, the garden should prosper and grow. Saying this, I still despise the msm weasels.
I think they saw Trump as a dangerous disruptor of the status quo. It's how he campaigned and how he's now governing. They were cozy in their elite bubble to which he posed a threat. Nothing else I can think of explains the absolute hysteria of anti-Trumpism.
Let’s be honest. Everyone is trying to make some sense of this and track the intelligence.
You can’t. This was a lynching and the poor suspect has been hung. They now want to gather up the scattered mob. Problem is the MSM and Democrats are part of the MOB.
Thank you for the pdf--𝐎𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐈𝐧𝐯𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐠𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐀𝐧𝐝 𝐑𝐞𝐟𝐞𝐫𝐫𝐚𝐥-- our full-time jobs as Racket News Readers seem to be reading Racket News reports on this topic. As Racket Readers are true patriots getting news that is not pre-digested by corporate media-- we find this is time well-spent. Thanks to everyone here who does read all this which is not easy for Matt and Greg to compile, but the kind of deep analysis we all need to move ahead.
Jeez. Some of the details in this - "The Russians knew that Clinton's State Department friends were promising money to religious organizations in return for support of the candidate" seem like the worst thing in the whole scandal!!! The Russians knew it then, but we still didn't today!?!?
Now let's talk about Robert Mueller, who clearly determined that this was all nonsense almost immediately, yet kept his "investigation" open for TWO YEARS so that the Deep State would have a pretext for ignoring Trump's presidential authority.
Federal institutions spent most of a duly-elected president's term acting like he wasn't legitimate, undermining and even openly rebelling against his orders. All the while Mueller gave everyone in Trump's orbit a bureaucratic colonoscopy, ultimately nailing a staffer or two so that left-wing America could triumphantly exclaim (as a coworker of mine proudly did in the office) "Is it still a witch hunt when they find actual witches?"
Yes, Sean. It's still a witch hunt when you claim that Trump is Putin's Manchurian candidate and come away with cold case tax evasion charges for Paul Manafort.
Contemporaneous reports say that Mueller had the same problem that Biden had(2019-2024)...severe mental incapacity. That whole circus was run by Andrew Weissmann. Mueller was barely aware of what was going on.
Mental incapacity is often mischaracterized by the trope that it is a handicap when in fact it's a highly useful tool for one's colleagues.
See also: Diane Feinstein, Mitch McConnell, et al.
Looked at another way, Mueller oversaw the idiocy that was going to happen anyway from Weissmann and others and kept them from breaking anything permanently - from overstepping EVEN MORE...
He was the one that stopped things where they went, didn't pursue obstruction, etc...
His answer to the question about his knowledge of Fusion GPS ("never heard of 'em") said all that was needed about his familiarity with details of the case. He just racked up a few thousand billable hours doing probably almost nothing. His bill was surely in low seven figures and paid for bupkis.
He has a whole bupkis room added on to his house now.
Mueller also was used to throw a bag on ony public requests for info. couldnt be released due to "ongoing investigations." mueller was part of the coverup.
In 2019 Mueller ordered the SWAT-style pre-dawn FBI raid of the home of dangerous suspect, Roger Stone, accused of the violent crimes of obstruction, making false statements, and witness tampering. A network camera crew just happened to be in the neighborhood. "The Justice Department's original recommendation of SEVEN TO NINE YEARS (emphasis mine) was reduced after intervention by senior officials, following public criticism by President Trump.[160] This led to all four prosecutors withdrawing from the case."
In the neighborhood, across the street at 5AM. Relieving the inordinate actions from this time is not pleasant, but solving the problem is worth it.
Maybe he was pension padding......
That is cold SC.
Of course he was!
It worked.
That is colder FF.
So? Finster's First Law readeth thusly:
"No matter how cynical you think you are, the people who run things are way more cynical than that."
I wish this was not true.
And we’re the voters.
JD, I think the real motivation for continuing the investigation was to try to manipulate President Trump into committing an act that could be called obstruction of justice. They went after Manafort in order to coerce him to falsely testify against Trump. Someone, maybe Rush Limbaugh, reported that Manafort had told him this and said that he had nothing on Trump. Regardless of whether the charges against Manafort were justified, he should be praised for not committing perjury.
While you're at it, let's talk about the Bipartisan Senate report on Russian interference in the 2016 election.
The one that was constructed from a two-year investigation that surveyed hundreds of documents and thousands of interviews that the ICA didn't have access to, that ultimately concluded that the basic conclusions of the ICA were correct.
Is the argument here that Senate Republicans (who were free to challenge any claims they perceived as biased or partisan) and Senate Democrats cooperated to create a massive body of fake evidence, from fake interviews to fake documents, in order to screw Trump?
Because that's what the 'Russiagate' story ultimately requires to be viable, and the size of the conspiracy you'd have to be talking about. That would truly be bigger than Watergate, but given the fact that Trump bullshitted his base about a grand Deep State Epstein conspiracy for ten years, until it gets prosecuted in a court of law, with evidence that stands up to legal rigor, you'd have to be pretty credulous to believe it.
This is so effing tragic for America. Even more tragic are those LEFT in the cult-ure party ok with it.
Linking the download is a wonderful practice and should be an industry standard.
Props.
Charles, reading the footnotes is the Lord's work. Bless you.
This is great work by Greg. Many thanks!
Again nothing of this will ever find its way to any MSM outlets. They have already established their narrative. This is just about nothing it’s all old news this is just Trump using lawfare to go after his political opponents and delegitimization of the pristine intel agencies by a bunch of Trump toadies. Any convictions will be reported under the color of how terrible this is. The MSM knows it’s completely wrong but it will never ever admitted that and in fact will double down with even more lies to distract the zombies on the left.
I think a lot has come from this--maybe not indictments and punishment, but for the people taking the time to read and understand this (not easy, for me at least)--eyes opened and innocence lost. But skeptical going forward. If the end result is readers no longer accept what we are told, that's a victory. And there are thousands reading this.
The MSM are throwing "Epstein" into every piece they do on Trump, regardless.
They do not fool us anymore.
Did the deep state spike the punch against Trump in the Epstein files? A manufactured poison pill of sorts that might make the Steele Dossier blush. That’s a plausible reason for the administration’s 180 degree pivot on release, pre and post POTUS.
If Obama did it w/ Russia-gate post 2016 to Trump and got away with it, manufacturing bad mojo against Trump vis-a-vis Epstein files by Biden’s folks can’t be dismissed.
Federal judge today declined to release the Epstein 2019 Grand Jury transcripts that Trump asked DOJ to unseal. But might those GJ transcripts eventually be released to public after all the ‘due process’ black sharpies come into play, for those named within but have decent legal counsel?
That Grand Jury transcripts would show what the government had on Epstein, and likely no deep state shenanigans infected.
They're also here, in these comments. A few days ago I got into a dispute with regard to the Epstein files in these comments with one of these clones, with the usual insults thrown in as part of their usual argument style. I don't understand what's in it for them to parrot that party line. Maybe Postmaster in Dufur, Oregon is in their future?
You are being hard on Dufur, Oregon and the USPS. (like Avis, they both try harder)...
Something they didn't do when Gates, Hanks, and other left leaning "friends" were known accomplices....
I think some of the documents were released at the beginning of July. People were very recently ragging on Matt for not naming president Obama as ringleader/co-conspirator. Proof came in the newer tranche. Any convictions will also include evidence and a trial. These will be public. We can hope that enough people will be swayed to demand more integrity from our politicians, even if they don’t admit the full extent of their crimes. Phucque the MSM outlets.
Even while the gallows are under construction?
I used to think that people would always gravitate toward an objective and traditionally moral conclusion. What I failed to understand is that about half of the population are mentally fucked by their low capability to regulate their own emotions, and that it was our old traditional media that pulled them back from their tendency toward disinformation, fatalism, hysteria and mythology.
Now that media actually foments disinformation, fatalism, hysteria and mythology.
So, the half of the population that was only fucked are now fucking insane.
No matter how much detail is published on this sordid and treasonous Russiagate story, the half of the population that is fucking insane will never believe it, or else they will just clutch alternate irrational conclusions to make themselves feel better.
Very well put!
"it was our old traditional media that pulled them back from their tendency toward disinformation, fatalism, hysteria and mythology.
Now that media actually foments disinformation, fatalism, hysteria and mythology."
And spin narrative to quell the existential anxiety of the "fucking insane", and they are paid extremely well. (see also Colbert, Maddow, etc..)
"about half of the population are mentally fucked by their low capability to regulate their own emotions"
(1) Agreed, although I would extend your definition of inadequacy to other mental limitations (other psychological, intelligences, etc.) as well as external resources. In most cases, these cannot simply be regarded as their own moral faults. The moral fault lies in the psychopathic leadership that we, IMHO the conscious, have so far been allowing them to take charge. We need a new systemic way to manage this, because neither the US Constitution, nor any other ideology or government structure, knows sufficiently how to do this in the modern complex world.
(2) Mental and resource limitations also apply to the majority of MSM staff implementing the fomentations, especially the younger staff with more recent education.
Mass psychosis always has a source and an ongoing catalyst.
Excellent description!
It's been said before that the most pernicious aspect of this deception (assuming it was a deception) was the lasting damage done to our public's opinion of Russia. Public opinion shapes a great deal in elective societies. I can't help but wonder whether events of the last nine years might have been much different if a sizable fraction of our voters hadn't been brought to view Russian power as deeply malevolent.
Addendum: I try to be clear-eyed about Russian interests. In many respects, their interests aren't our interests, and it seems to me Russia's leadership is steely-eyed about advancing their interests. But that is what any nation does. I do not view Russia as especially malevolent, while knowing we must counter their actions in many cases.
Remember, Russia is (once again) a dictatorship. That means the Russian government does not serve the Russian people, but the dictator’s ego, whims, and delusions.
It wasn’t to serve Russian interests when Stalin wiped out the Red Army’s experienced generals on the eve of World War II. It didn’t do Germany much of a favor when Hitler went to war against Russia, the British Empire, the United States, and the Jews, all at the same time.
Increasing Russia’s enormous land area a fraction of a percent, at the expense of a new Cold War, does not serve the Russian people. Nor does the impossible (and arguably insane) goal of undoing 700 years of cultural evolution and turning Ukrainians back into Russians.
Russia’s war continues because the dictator refuses to admit he was wrong, and would rather treat the Russian people as cannon fodder.
We all know about Stalin. I don't think Putin is equivalent to Stalin. Nor do I pretend to know Russian public opinion at this moment, but it was crystal clear fifteen years ago that Putin was very popular. Like I said, I don't know how popular Putin is now, nor do I think that what I said hinges on that question. The current Russian regime is what it is. I want our government to deal with it realistically--which generally means taking its expressed interests seriously and countering those where those interests cross ours.
At any rate, what good would be done by lying to our public about the Russian regime's actions and intentions? As I said earlier I am not convinced we were deceived, though I think it is likely. But it doesn't matter how evil we might think that regime is, when the question is WHAT IN FACT they did. No amount of lies are justified by any moral condemnation; the entire reason we are in the epistemic mess we are now in, is precisely because a substantial number of people have become convinced that the ends justify the lies.
My point is, the Russian government isn’t pursuing “Russian interests”, so called. It’s pursuing Putin’s interests — or, more precisely, Putin’s desires and delusions.
A Russian defeat would be in Russia’s interest; for the same reason that defeating and discrediting the Junta in the Falklands War was very much in Argentina’s interest.
I don't know, and I actually mean that. One of my friends, a political scientist, used to try to disabuse his students in Introduction to Public Policy of the notion that a democracy acts with any unitary agency. After stating that thesis he would pull his cigarettes from his shirt pocket and say "For instance, do you realize that we have a 'grow it but don't smoke it' policy in this country?" The point being that in (alleged) democracies, we shouldn't expect any consistency of policy decisions relative to any notion of "the public interest." That has a venerable theoretical pedigree, through Condorcet and Black to its culmination in Kenneth Arrow's "Impossibility Theorem" for which a Nobel Prize was awarded.
So too, in a so-called dictatorship, interests of various parties are weighed and balanced. To say that Hitler or Pol Pot or Mao or Stalin were unitary executives--in the sense of coherent unitary rational agents--seems debatable in that they all had to balance interests to remain in power. Arrow's impossibility theorem rears its ugly head no matter what. No "one" can ever be a "dictator" in the sense you seem to imagine. Russian policy is, in all likelihood, still Bismarck's ugly sausage, the outcome of competing interests in Russia. To call Putin a "dictator" is naïve--if by that you mean a unitary agency determining Russian policy. By "agency" or "agent" I mean a coherent set of rational preferences determining actions. Ken Arrow basically proved by formal logic that this notion of rational agency was impossible.
I think your post is very true. That being said, a democracy isn't inherently benign, either.
It’s like the difference between rape and seduction: our leaders have to talk us into things …
In your addendum;
"but that is what any nation does", clearly did not apply when Biden was in the WH.
I dont think most (D as well as most R) presidents had the interests of the US as priority one.
Trump may be the one to turn the tide, as well as getting rid of USAID if we can.
Because of the way this was reported in the media that my sister trusts, she hasn't spoken to me in more than eight years. I will never forgive all those who lied.
These kinds of situations are common, and very sad. Condolences to you and to everyone who has had this happen.
There is a very clear distinction between what actually happened and the narrative of "infrastructure" versus influence being peddled by the left. Elie Lake just penned a piece that was completely deceptive and ignored the main issues of the Dec 8 briefing which was pulled and the next day 180 under direction from Obama. Underlined by the late Dec 9th/10th leaks to the press that there was Trump/Russian collusion and interference before any work had been started.
One fact that was raised by Michael Flynn was that the pulled briefing would have also been distributed to him and the Trump team
One note: The new CIA assessment was already completed BEFORE the 12/9 Obama meeting -- they were briefing Congressional members in closed-door meetings the week beforehand.
When Obama ordered the new assessment, he knew exactly what it was going to say. The meeting was the pretext to trot out the already-written assessment and leak it to the press. This is from an article published 12/10, the day after the meeting:
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/12/10/505072304/cia-concludes-russian-interference-aimed-to-elect-trump
Citing anonymous officials briefed on the issue, the Post says the CIA shared its findings with senators in a closed-door briefing LAST WEEK, saying it was now "quite clear" that Russia's goal was to tip the presidency in Trump's favor
So
Your source for this is NPR. With the article being published on December 10th. You rely solely on an anonymous official who said senators were briefed last week. Sounds like firm evidence to me. Even though it totally contradicts the newly released documents that say there was no intelligence whatsoever to indicate that Russia interfered to help Trump. I prefer to rely on actual evidence from the analysts themselves and their opinion at the time.
The other statement that gets tossed around as fact is that Russia hacked the DNC. There is absolutely nothing that proves this and the FBI for some odd reason didn’t even look at the thumb drives before concluding their investigation
Times of Israel also printed this at the time, citing a story by the Washington Post.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/russia-was-actively-trying-to-help-trump-win-according-to-secret-cia-assessment/
“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,” a senior US official who was briefed last week on an intelligence presentation made to US senators told the Washington Post. “That’s the consensus view.”
The Washington Post story is here, published on Dec 9:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/obama-orders-review-of-russian-hacking-during-presidential-campaign/2016/12/09/31d6b300-be2a-11e6-94ac-3d324840106c_story.html
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.
---------------
So yes, I think it's pretty safe to say the meeting happened, which means the CIA report was already written THOUGH NOT YET PUBLISHED THROUGH NORMAL CHANNELS. And it was written for the express purpose of being leaked after the Obama meeting on 12/9.
I also must conclude that you have not read all of what Matt has written and the back up documents attached. Either that or it might just be your don’t want to believe what occurred no matter the evidence indicates
I mean....I literally went through the 114 pages yesterday, which is how I came across this in the first place. But yeah, I probably just don't know what I'm talking about.
Then tell me why all the analysts at the CIA put in writing that there was no evidence that Russia interfered to help Trump. In fact there was intelligence that said more likely wanted to help Hillary.
Why did Brennan ignore his own analysts that there was no evidence to reach that conclusion.
I would hope you agree that the Steele dossier was a fabrication and that Steele himself was considered unreliable by the very same intelligence community. They knew it was a fake and Brennan once again overruled his own analysts who objected to giving it any credence let alone using it as the basis for the report’s conclusion
So you think Obama called all these people to the White House to direct them to prepare a report that was already complete?
Because that's what the intelligence actually said, but since that narrative wouldn't hurt Trump, the CIA came up with a different one. And it was obviously written BEFORE December 9th because it was LEAKED on December 9th. The meeting was the excuse to trot out the "new" assessment THAT WAS ALREADY COMPLETED.
The meeting certainly wasn't to actually faithfully look into the issue.
It’s the same quote from the NPR story. Nothing new about this one
Turned on the 4:00 local news for NBC and CBS to see if this story got a mention. Nope. Just Epstein, the Idaho student murders, and “Black man punched in face”. As, Trent and Johnny sang, “I hurt myself today…”
We are used to this, Mayor. we are here. we know. sad for those whose eyes don't see and ears don't hear.
Laura Ingraham is covering this on Fox today. She just ran a 2018 clip of Clapper telling CNN Anderson Cooper that the order of Trump/Russia investigation was ordered by Obama.
I saw this! That’s damning
Maybe Matt T. will air it Friday.
Not a single one of these CIA guys thought to go to the Inspector General or Congress with this. Shameful.
Yep, No Joe Turner in this scenario.--
Three Days of the Condor vibes.
pretty sure Nunes and Patel had whistleblowers at the time
Then thank makes Nunes and Patel complicit in concealing this information from the country for the last 7 years.
??
https://irp.fas.org/congress/2018_cr/nunes-memo.pdf
"This list is far from incomplete, as you’ll see from the HPSCI report listed below and Matt’s story, “In Brutal Disclosure, Russia Hoax Finally Revealed.”"
I think that's meant to say complete.
Proofreaders rule.
Not in the intelligence community, apparently!
Yikes. Fixing now. Thank you.
“For sure, there will also be people who remain convinced that nothing untoward occurred. Nonetheless, it appears the highest levels of government during the final days of the Obama administration orchestrated a deception designed to deceive us all.”
Two things: You’re right. I’ve had a couple of online back and forths with some true believers and they all have one thing in common: denial on cocaine. I mean it’s fucking breathtaking how apparatchik-y these dumbasses are. They all assume it’s binary and that all of us that lend any credence to any of this have simply crawled up Trump’s ass. Full disclosure- I voted for the guy but it stung. I would have voted red no matter what against KHarris, but would have felt way better about it with almost any other candidate other than Nikki Haley. What a cunt. But they just can’t see that there are smart, tuned-in, middle class citizens that are simply tired of wall to wall bullshit all the goddamned time. To them it’s either agree with them, or they want you dead. Think I’m exaggerating? Get into a convo with one of these window-licking trogs and watch what happens.
I’m in one right now and it’s hilarious and disconcerting simultaneously.
Also, on the last sentence- I don’t think any of us knew the extent of what was happening. At that point in late 2016, I was aware that MSNBC, CNN, etc and ALL affiliates were deeply biased. Coincidentally the only people that doesn’t apply to are the people that I’m referring to. They still believe all of it. So, I forgive people for thinking “holy shit did we just elect a compromised psychopath?” But not now. Not after all this, and quite frankly not after 2019 at the latest. If you’re (the proverbial you, not YOU you, Matt) still proclaiming that this isn’t a conspiracy to subvert a sitting president, you’re fucking retarded and you might as well just start swallowing political celebrity loads for a career.
Matt. Great job on this. This is your bone. You and Walter have had to endure quite a bit to have this moment. I encourage to stay with it despite the heckling you are getting. (Hopefully subscription numbers are up. We, your subscribers, are very proud of the work you have done.)
The whole affair goes beyond, and the term was de rigueur around this time, gaslighting. It was a dumpster fire, and these idiots set the country ablaze. Welcome to Brennan's world.
Sean, every day I wonder--why did they do this? I know the easy answers, but--as MT said to Isokoff--shame on you.
Kathleen, I ask myself the same question and have done so for several years (and probably like you, many years before Trump's ride down the escalator). And like you I can cite the usual explanations. Perhaps naively, I see it as one of liberalism's innate contradictions confronting our psychological need for continuity. We need more than liberal proceduralism. Our current "liberal" system sometimes allows (it seems too often) vicious vegetation to overwhelm the garden. The current incentives in our system encourage toxicity. MT wrote a book about this as it applied to media. Call it the Isokoff effect (or name your villain or media company; I like Tapper). Human nature (dare I say) may need more than unbridled tolerance. This accelerant may destroy us. The 64k question remains, what about free speech and other potential contradictions and/or paradoxes. The hope is, if there are enough (though not infinite) degrees of freedom, the garden should prosper and grow. Saying this, I still despise the msm weasels.
I think they saw Trump as a dangerous disruptor of the status quo. It's how he campaigned and how he's now governing. They were cozy in their elite bubble to which he posed a threat. Nothing else I can think of explains the absolute hysteria of anti-Trumpism.
Occam's razor for the win, Robert. I agree with you.
Let’s be honest. Everyone is trying to make some sense of this and track the intelligence.
You can’t. This was a lynching and the poor suspect has been hung. They now want to gather up the scattered mob. Problem is the MSM and Democrats are part of the MOB.