U.S. Politics: Feelings Trump Facts

[Kalbear]

6 minutes ago, snake said:

I'd like to know too, as well as why they have doubts about the purpose behind the hacking.  I'd really like to know how they surmised that Putin personally ordered it.

The current logic has to do with how the Russian chain of command works, especially in their intel system. Putin had to have ordered it because that is how all large-scale intel programs work in Russia. That, at least, is what has been publicly released. Honestly, there's probably not much more that is needed; we know for instance that Putin does things at a smaller scale, like authorizing Snowden's flight from Hong Kong personally. 

[Altherion]

7 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

But seriously, Obama specifically ordered intel to do this report. Which they did. How is this surprising to you? In addition to that, congressional members ALSO requested this information, and they provided it. Why is this surprising?

Because ordinarily, they would be trying to downplay their failure as much as possible -- especially given that they're getting a new boss in two weeks.

[snake]

14 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

The current logic has to do with how the Russian chain of command works, especially in their intel system. Putin had to have ordered it because that is how all large-scale intel programs work in Russia. That, at least, is what has been publicly released. Honestly, there's probably not much more that is needed; we know for instance that Putin does things at a smaller scale, like authorizing Snowden's flight from Hong Kong personally. 

I had never read anything of substance on that.  Got a link?  Be interesting to read.

Google only gives me accusations by Chuck Schumer and he's not really all there so they can be discounted.

[Mexal]

37 minutes ago, snake said:

WMD in Iraq, no NSA spying, Iran-Contra, the numerous overthrows of foreign governments.  This is but a sample of the lies the the IC have told in the past and was believed by most.  I fail to see how anyone can take anything they say at face value without some strong evidence.

WMD in Iraq was a mess, agreed. It was also heavily manipulated by the Bush Administration to purposely mislead the public. And even if it was a failure and it's all the intelligence agencies fault, you act like they wouldn't learned anything since, that they wouldn't be fully aware of their credibility due to shit like that and that they wouldn't be absolutely sure of what they're putting out into the public now because of past public credibility issues.

Saying the NSA isn't spying is a lie told to prevent foreign actors from understanding how it is we gather intelligence. It is not a lie the IC told after a full congressional/executive report was requested and issued. The Iran-Contra affair, which took place 30 years ago in a different world, was initially about an attempt to release hostages. It was a scandal, but i wasn't a lie to the American public to falsely accuse a state actor. 

The only comparable is WMD in Iraq.

Anyway, not going to argue. The Republican party used to be the hawks, used to be the ones that wanted to dominate by strength, that had the "no one will fuck with us without repercussion" attitude. They trusted the intelligence, they used the intelligence organizations to propagate their agendas and they strongly believed in the work they were doing. It is only now, because the intelligence concludes that Russia acted on behalf of the Republicans, that they dismiss the work. It's ridiculous that you don't see this and that you have to do whatever you can to throw this into question. Though I guess that's not to be surprised given the million dollars spent on Benghazi, the ~10 hearings and 8 congressional reports that all said the same thing.

30 minutes ago, Altherion said:

Because ordinarily, they would be trying to downplay their failure as much as possible -- especially given that they're getting a new boss in two weeks.

This isn't a failure of intelligence agencies. This is a failure of the DNC. The intelligence agencies cannot protect every person from phishing attempts.

[Kalbear]

16 minutes ago, snake said:

I had never read anything of substance on that.  Got a link?  Be interesting to read.

Google only gives me accusations by Chuck Schumer and he's not really all there so they can be discounted.

It was in the Edward Jay Epstein article published in Newsweek this week. While you might think this is incorrect, there's also a press conference that Putin announced this in as well.

Quote

 

For example, Obama knows his administration did not strand Snowden in Russia. (And why trap an American intelligence worker with a headful of secrets in an adversary nation?) On June 14, 2013, the Justice Department filed a criminal complaint against Snowden for theft and violation of the espionage laws; on June 22, the State Department invalidated his passport except for return to the U.S., and its senior watch officer confirmed that the American Consul General in Hong Kong had notified Hong Kong authorities that Snowden's passport was invalid. (Even accounting for a 13-hour time difference, the passport was invalid while Snowden was in Hong Kong.) So, instead of scheming to trap him in Moscow, the U.S. government did all it could to prevent him from boarding a plane to Moscow and defecting to Russia.

But it failed. On June 23, Snowden boarded an Aeroflot jet bound for Moscow, even though he didn’t have a valid passport. The fact that an airline basically controlled by the Russian government allowed him to board could only mean someone intervened to get Snowden on that plane and then mounted a “special operation,” as the Russian newspaper Izvestia put it, to take him off the plane before the other passengers once it landed.

On September 2, 2013, Russian President Vladimir Putin resolved the mystery regarding who intervened on Snowden’s behalf in a televised press conference: He personally authorized Snowden’s trip to Russia after the American had met with Russian “diplomats” in Hong Kong.

 

 

[snake]

5 minutes ago, Mexal said:

WMD in Iraq was a mess, agreed. It was also heavily manipulated by the Bush Administration to purposely mislead the public. And even if it was a failure and it's all the intelligence agencies fault, you act like they wouldn't learned anything since, that they wouldn't be fully aware of their credibility due to shit like that and that they wouldn't be absolutely sure of what they're putting out into the public now because of past public credibility issues.

Saying the NSA isn't spying is a lie told to prevent foreign actors from understanding how it is we gather intelligence. It is not a lie the IC told after a full congressional/executive report was requested and issued. The Iran-Contra affair, which took place 30 years ago in a different world, was initially about an attempt to release hostages. It was a scandal, but i wasn't a lie to the American public to falsely accuse a state actor. 

The only comparable is WMD in Iraq.

Anyway, not going to argue. The Republican party used to be the hawks, used to be the ones that wanted to dominate by strength, that had the "no one will fuck with us without repercussion" attitude. They trusted the intelligence, they used the intelligence organizations to propagate their agendas and they strongly believed in the work they were doing. It is only now, because the intelligence concludes that Russia acted on behalf of the Republicans, that they dismiss the work. It's ridiculous that you don't see this and that you have to do whatever you can to throw this into question. Though I guess that's not to be surprised given the million dollars spent on Benghazi, the ~10 hearings and 8 congressional reports that all said the same thing.

Well, the intelligence report was of "high confidence" with regards to WMD.  And the other examples were of how untrustworthy the IC can be because of their propensity to lie a lot in public.  Well, not just lie, but to get caught lying. 

And it is quite the turn about in the US.  The Democrats have become the hawks and the Republicans the doves. 

7 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

It was in the Edward Jay Epstein article published in Newsweek this week. While you might think this is incorrect, there's also a press conference that Putin announced this in as well.

 

Well I wouldn't pay much heed to that.  Barton Gellman has basically debunked the whole article.  And Kalbear.  Seriously man.  This guy used to write for Breitbart.  Breitbart!!!!

[Mexal]

Can you link me to the article debunking the Newsweek articles?

[DMC]

9 hours ago, aceluby said:

How many years of GOP explosive spending is it going to take for you guys to understand that it's the GOP that spends like there is no tomorrow?  Reagan did it.  Bush did it (and was ousted when he actually tried paying for it).  Bush 2 did it.  And it looks like Trump is on the same path.

40 years and you still think the GOP is good for the economy.

Right.  One of my favorite ribs towards Republican friends is showing them graphs like this, which demonstrates the actual rises in "big government" over the past 36 years have largely been concentrated during the Reagan and Dubya administrations, while Clinton, Obama, and Poppa Bush kept spending relatively static over the entirety of their tenure.

8 hours ago, TrackerNeil said:

Not to seem like a smarty-pants, but I hear this all the time and it's not really true. The ACA passed the Senate 60-39, in regular order, over a filibuster. The House passed the same bill, then a bill was passed via reconciliation to make a few small fixes that the GOP had promised to filibuster.

Ok, let's go slow.  Again, while this is technically correct - in that the Senate's version eventually passed as the official PPACA on March 23, 2010, this would never have been the case without the supplementary Health Care and Education Reconciliation (HCER) act passed one week later.  So, the claim the ACA was not passed by reconciliation - while I'm sure great trivia and pedantically precise - is an intellectually dishonest depiction of the bill's legislative history and context.

Quote

[Upon Scott Brown's election on 1/19/10], the president did not know whether, or how, to proceed. The House and Senate had passed different versions of the bill and could not come to terms. Republicans were unified in their resistance. He considered his options, including Mr. Emanuel’s “skinny bill.” Whatever the course, aides said, Mr. Obama was insistent that health care not be put into a “time capsule,” never to be opened again in his tenure.

...

If there was one thing Ms. Pelosi knew she could not do, though, it was force the House to pass the Senate bill. (House liberals objected to its lack of a government-backed insurance plan, conservatives thought it too permissive on abortion financing, and the entire caucus felt queasy about special deals like the so-called Cornhusker kickback that would have given Nebraska extra money to pay for Medicaid.)

What the reconciliation bill did (along with expanding Pell grants as a rider, incidentally) was quite appropriately "reconcile" the issues between House and Senate Democrats over the ACA that they were still working out in conference.  These provisions may seem trivial to us now, but they were not at the time.  Certain changes (e.g. eliminating the Stupak amendment and eliminating pork doled out in the Senate bill that already had names like the "Cornhusker kickback" for Ben Nelson, albeit the "Louisiana Purchase" for Mary Landrieu stuck) and heightened lobbying (and promises) by the White House were entirely necessary to get a number of Democratic factions on board, and this is reflected in the major provisions of the HCER addressing the issues between changes that are italicized in parentheses in the above quote.  To reiterate:  After Brown's election, the ACA does not happen without the reconciliation bill.

[LongRider]

4 hours ago, OldGimletEye said:

Yeah. I guess you're right. LOL.

Time to put on my Paul Revere outfit, now.

Don't forget the teabags hanging off yur hat, the best part of that look.  By far.

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

6 minutes ago, snake said:

Well I wouldn't pay much heed to that.  Barton Gellman has basically debunked the whole article.  And Kalbear.  Seriously man.  This guy used to write for Breitbart.  Breitbart!!!!

 So how does he get from China to Russia without a passport on a Aeroflot flight without some assist from the State? When you dismiss everything on the basis of the source, you're not left with much. Seems to me that one is fairly obvious given the circumstances.

[OldGimletEye]

Just now, LongRider said:

Don't forget the teabags hanging off yur hat, the best part of that look.  By far.

 LOL. Thanks for the reminder. If I am going to go out and be ridiculous, it's important I do it right.

[TrackerNeil]

7 minutes ago, dmc515 said:

Right.  One of my favorite ribs towards Republican friends is showing them graphs like this, which demonstrates the actual rises in "big government" over the past 36 years have largely been concentrated during the Reagan and Dubya administrations, while Clinton, Obama, and Poppa Bush kept spending relatively static over the entirety of their tenure.

Ok, let's go slow.  Again, while this is technically correct - in that the Senate's version eventually passed as the official PPACA on March 23, 2010, this would never have been the case without the supplementary Health Care and Education Reconciliation (HCER) act passed one week later.  So, the claim the ACA was not passed by reconciliation - while I'm sure great trivia and pedantically precise - is an intellectually dishonest depiction of the bill's legislative history and context.

What the reconciliation bill did (along with expanding Pell grants as a rider, incidentally) was quite appropriately "reconcile" the issues between House and Senate Democrats over the ACA that they were still working out in conference.  These provisions may seem trivial to us now, but they were not at the time.  Certain changes (e.g. eliminating the Stupak amendment and eliminating pork doled out in the Senate bill that already had names like the "Cornhusker kickback" for Ben Nelson, albeit the "Louisiana Purchase" for Mary Landrieu stuck) and heightened lobbying (and promises) by the White House were entirely necessary to get a number of Democratic factions on board, and this is reflected in the major provisions of the HCER addressing the issues between changes that are italicized in parentheses in the above quote.  To reiterate:  After Brown's election, the ACA does not happen without the reconciliation bill.

I sure would hate to sound pedantic. 

[LongRider]

2 hours ago, Manhole Eunuchsbane said:

So what? He won. What happens if the next time around the Russians prefer the Dem candidate? Maybe he might want some protection at that point. The more important point is he should be troubled by a foreign power fucking with our election process.

For fucks sakes, ^^^^THIS^^^^ a thousand times!   Trump and his denial and accusations of the CIA, FBI reports being wrong is maddening because it's a threat and he needs to just shut up and work with the spooks and the congress to get to the bottom of it and try to stop what other cyber spying is happening now and in the future.  The election is over and it seems Trump's still so super sensitive about it.  Like Biden said "Grow the fuck up Donald."

[Kalbear]

19 minutes ago, snake said:

Well I wouldn't pay much heed to that.  Barton Gellman has basically debunked the whole article.  And Kalbear.  Seriously man.  This guy used to write for Breitbart.  Breitbart!!!!

again, the Putin press conference where he declares this is available. This isn't hard to fact check. If you have something debunking THAT, let me know. 

[Kalbear]

As an example, here's Barton Gellman 'debunking' that claim:

 

[snake]

3 minutes ago, Mexal said:

Can you link me to the article debunking the Newsweek articles?

It was a series of tweets.

 

8 minutes ago, Manhole Eunuchsbane said:

 So how does he get from China to Russia without a passport on a Aeroflot flight without some assist from the State? When you dismiss everything on the basis of the source, you're not left with much. Seems to me that one is fairly obvious given the circumstances.

The Hong Kong authorities had no reason to hold him and declared that he had left through a lawful and normal channel.  I think his passport may have been revoked but he had no knowledge of it and because of the shoddy paperwork HK authorities did not enforce it.

 

3 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

again, the Putin press conference where he declares this is available. This isn't hard to fact check. If you have something debunking THAT, let me know. 

Cannot find what you are referencing to.  Is it where Snowden called in to Putin's Q & A? 

[DMC]

33 minutes ago, TrackerNeil said:

I sure would hate to sound pedantic. 

Touche.   Anyway, forgot to add...

8 hours ago, TrackerNeil said:

Speaking of screwing up, this entire issue is a loser for them. Repeal will antagonize millions of a voters and the entire healthcare industry, but not doing so will piss of their voters. If I were the GOP, I'd pass a repeal that essentially keeps all of the ACA except for a few unpopular bits and renames it the Ronald Reagan Healthcare Goodies Act. Then I'd lie shamelessly and claim to have repealed "Obamacare." 

Since that dark day known as the second Tuesday November 2016, I've viewed the bolded as the most likely outcome.

[DMC]

53 minutes ago, snake said:

Well, the intelligence report was of "high confidence" with regards to WMD.  And the other examples were of how untrustworthy the IC can be because of their propensity to lie a lot in public.  Well, not just lie, but to get caught lying. 

Yeah, granted, Iraq and WMD's was a giant failure.  However, the boilerplate criticisms of intelligence communities sans WMDs primarily rely upon the revelations found in the Rockefeller commission and subsequent Church Committee which began the establishment of congressional oversight via the Intelligence Committee.  Since then, throwing Iran-Contra out there is not germane.  It was initiated and directed by staffers within the administration, namely the NSC, and thus has little to do with intelligence agencies' (independent) dubious relationship with the truth towards public disclosure as well as nothing to do with the quality of their intelligence gathering.

Does CIA, the FBI, and the DNI have their own agendas IRT Russian involvement?  Sure.  But those agendas traditionally conflict with each other rather than align as they are.

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

2 hours ago, snake said:

It was a series of tweets.

So Newsweek bad, Tweets good? 

[LongRider]

Former Mexican President Vincente Fox can play the twitter game too.  Guess he's not too impressed with Trump saying he's building the wall and will bill Mexico for it.

But wait, there's moar!

and lastly, he really knows how to hurt a guy.

So Trump has Mexico pissed off now, China not too happy either.  How about Canada, Brazil or South Africa too?  Hell, why not.