Something I think is interesting is a guy named John Schindler who wrote the Observer piece this last weekend detailing how the IC is withholding intelligence from the president. He tweeted yesterday that his sources are saying that the IC will bury this new administration. He gained quite a bit of credibility last night when the WSJ published an article basically saying the exact same thing he said in his observer piece.
BTW there's some activity in Schindler's twitter feed suggesting Russia is gearing up for another push into Ukraine.
Something I think is interesting is a guy named John Schindler who wrote the Observer piece this last weekend detailing how the IC is withholding intelligence from the president. He tweeted yesterday that his sources are saying that the IC will bury this new administration. He gained quite a bit of credibility last night when the WSJ published an article basically saying the exact same thing he said in his observer piece.
BTW there's some activity in Schindler's twitter feed suggesting Russia is gearing up for another push into Ukraine.
Saw that as well.
Sounds like further build up of military along the border. Honestly I'm surprised it's taken Putin this long.
Something I think is interesting is a guy named John Schindler who wrote the Observer piece this last weekend detailing how the IC is withholding intelligence from the president. He tweeted yesterday that his sources are saying that the IC will bury this new administration. He gained quite a bit of credibility last night when the WSJ published an article basically saying the exact same thing he said in his observer piece.
BTW there's some activity in Schindler's twitter feed suggesting Russia is gearing up for another push into Ukraine.
Saw that as well.
Sounds like further build up of military along the border. Honestly I'm surprised it's taken Putin this long.
Waiting for the worst of eastern european winter to subside?
Something I think is interesting is a guy named John Schindler who wrote the Observer piece this last weekend detailing how the IC is withholding intelligence from the president. He tweeted yesterday that his sources are saying that the IC will bury this new administration. He gained quite a bit of credibility last night when the WSJ published an article basically saying the exact same thing he said in his observer piece.
BTW there's some activity in Schindler's twitter feed suggesting Russia is gearing up for another push into Ukraine.
Saw that as well.
Sounds like further build up of military along the border. Honestly I'm surprised it's taken Putin this long.
Waiting for the worst of eastern european winter to subside?
More likely he's been distracted by his loss of influence over the trump administration and trying to wrangle it back under his thumb.
He seems like a classic fascist, rather than the weird corporate fascist like Trump
Nah, Mattis would much prefer that we didn't go to war, and didn't have to fight. Being Pro-Military doesn't mean he wants to use the military as the main diplomatic method. He's had way too much first hand experience with what happens from that.
He's also not the type of person who spouts off about how much better things used to be, and he tends to view people from other countries and other cultures favorably.
Mattis doesn't really fit the profile of a fascist, and he doesn't seem to be collaborating with Trump or his administration. I get the impression that Mattis would be Mattis no matter who appointed him, and he's not afraid to point at the administration and call them out no matter who is in charge.
Its just amazing a member of the presidents cabinet has to dispute their own presidents lies and cooperation with a hostile foreign power.
Two of them, really, given that Nikki Haley seems to be living in a world where Pence is already president or something (parroting stock GOP foreign policy points instead of the Trump line, especially with regards to Ukraine).
Something I think is interesting is a guy named John Schindler who wrote the Observer piece this last weekend detailing how the IC is withholding intelligence from the president. He tweeted yesterday that his sources are saying that the IC will bury this new administration. He gained quite a bit of credibility last night when the WSJ published an article basically saying the exact same thing he said in his observer piece.
Yeah John Schindler has been doing good work and seems to have some high up sources. He's former NSA, so that's not too surprising.
If he really does fire everyone who has been causing him problems in the Intelligence Community, they're just going to be causing him problems from somewhere that's harder to monitor instead.
It's not like these are people who lack the skills for interfering in governments from the outside.
Any one else worried Trump actually guys the IC and replaces it with his cronies?
This strikes me as being like trying to hold up a police station with a butter knife.
Idk, every time I think "there's no way he can do that", he does.
I mean, you can do it, but the fact is that the agency is almost assuredly built so that it can survive outside interference and anyone that trump stuffed into the top would be outmanouvered easily.
If he fires the entirety of the agency then he winds up with something out of a Tom Clancy novel with a large organization of spies that is completely untethered to the government and has an axe to grind with what amounts to amateur hour opposing them.
As is so often the case with trump, The tar baby parable from songs of the south applies.
Any one else worried Trump actually guys the IC and replaces it with his cronies?
This strikes me as being like trying to hold up a police station with a butter knife.
Idk, every time I think "there's no way he can do that", he does.
I mean, you can do it, but the fact is that the agency is almost assuredly built so that it can survive outside interference and anyone that trump stuffed into the top would be outmanouvered easily.
If he fires the entirety of the agency then he winds up with something out of a Tom Clancy novel with a large organization of spies that is completely untethered to the government and has an axe to grind with what amounts to amateur hour opposing them.
As is so often the case with trump, The tar baby parable from songs of the south applies.
Not to mention he shit show our intelligence community would be having to start from scratch if he fired a majority/most/all of the IC. I think he might try, but a lot of those positions are probably hard for him to directly affect.
Any one else worried Trump actually guys the IC and replaces it with his cronies?
This strikes me as being like trying to hold up a police station with a butter knife.
Idk, every time I think "there's no way he can do that", he does.
I mean, you can do it, but the fact is that the agency is almost assuredly built so that it can survive outside interference and anyone that trump stuffed into the top would be outmanouvered easily.
If he fires the entirety of the agency then he winds up with something out of a Tom Clancy novel with a large organization of spies that is completely untethered to the government and has an axe to grind with what amounts to amateur hour opposing them.
As is so often the case with trump, The tar baby parable from songs of the south applies.
Not to mention he shit show our intelligence community would be having to start from scratch if he fired a majority/most/all of the IC. I think he might try, but a lot of those positions are probably hard for him to directly affect.
This is true, but I'm trying to frame this in perspective of actualizing what trump wants with regards to the IC (I.E. an end to leaks that undermine his credibility).
Because yeah, if theirs anything that trump has shown he's ambivalent towards it's foreign intelligence agencies working against US interests.
I can see a scenario in which Trump gets impeached over this. But someone has to make the case to Republican congressional leadership that the stain from allowing him to remain in office is going to be worse than the impact of their/his base revolting over the impeachment. Though, honestly, I'm not sure how much more pressure the base can really bring considering that they've spent a decade now burning the moderate edges off the elected officials.
FBI says they aren't going to press charges over the phone call.
I am very, very tempted to just say, 'Welp, obviously Comey is a mole,'... but this isn't exactly unprecedented. Washington always protects its own, regardless of how clear cut the crime is.
If Putin wants to test Trump's resolve, I feel like there are less risky places to do it than Ukraine. Like giving Trump marching orders to report to Syria.
A mass firing of the intelligence community would be horrific, you couldn't compromise our security any harder if you just opened the CIA's servers up to the internet
A mass firing of the intelligence community would be horrific, you couldn't compromise our security any harder if you just opened the CIA's servers up to the internet
Not firing, just reducing their salary to $1 a year.
If they were patriots they would stay anyway.
There's no plan, there's no race to be run
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
A mass firing of the intelligence community would be horrific, you couldn't compromise our security any harder if you just opened the CIA's servers up to the internet
Not firing, just reducing their salary to $1 a year.
A mass firing of the intelligence community would be horrific, you couldn't compromise our security any harder if you just opened the CIA's servers up to the internet
Not firing, just reducing their salary to $1 a year.
If they were patriots they would stay anyway.
If thought there was a leak problem now...
I didn't say it was a smart move.
There's no plan, there's no race to be run
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
FBI says they aren't going to press charges over the phone call.
I am very, very tempted to just say, 'Welp, obviously Comey is a mole,'... but this isn't exactly unprecedented. Washington always protects its own, regardless of how clear cut the crime is.
In fairness no one has ever been prosecuted under the logan act, it would probably be hard to stick. Dead letter would be a reasonable defense.
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Captain Marcusnow arrives the hour of actionRegistered Userregular
Still though: Good on Mattis for refusing to co-operate with Russia; the US and Russia don't really share any geopolitical goals on the international stage outside of the broadest possible terms.
Sure we do. Combating Islamic terrorism is perhaps the biggest; Chechnya being relatively quiet right now is an aberration. Also I really don't think that's his decision to make.
Yet another annoying example of the Washington establishment's irrational hatred of Russia. When every politician and think-tank from the far-left to the libertarians to John "Bombs" McCain lines up on a foreign policy issue and shrilly insists that we must oppose Russia on everything, that's when the discerning man should be suspicious.
Like if you want to believe that the Russkies "meddled" in our election by leaking DNC emails that showed the DNC had a hate-on for Bernie, then sure, go for it, though the intel community hasn't released hard evidence. Let's say that they did.
A., how does that merit such a disproportionate response- if a DNC staffer leaked those emails (as everyone thought at first) this'd be a nonissue.
B., we meddle in other countries' elections all the time, constantly, and other countries routinely meddle in ours. CAIR's suborned to the Gulf States, AIPAC and the JDL are run by Israel, and everyone from the Brookings Institution to the Center for Strategic and International Studies takes wads of foreign cash in exchange for lobbying politicians. Heck, even the Chamber of Commerce gleefully acts as a way for other countries to funnel cash into American elections. Like, the Russians exposed institutional corruption? Oh no! How dare they!
It's not like there were Russian hands on voting machine levers (though given our absolutely awful voting machine security it's only a matter of time before someone does). It's not unreasonable that Flynn (who really hate Islamic terrorism) told the Russians "hey, don't worry about sanctions if you team up with us in that fight" before he entered office. It doesn't make it legal to promise other countries things before you're in a position to act, but under-the-table diplomacy has been around for as long as there have been tables.
The Russians aren't evil or insane, and there's no reason why we can't sit down at the bargaining table and hammer out agreements with them. Especially when we're best fuckin' buds with Saudi "chop off hands and kill rape victims" Arabia and "Apartheid 2.0" Israel. Immediately and unilaterally taking diplomacy off the table is a bad thing. There's more to foreign policy than threats of invasion and sanctions.
Still though: Good on Mattis for refusing to co-operate with Russia; the US and Russia don't really share any geopolitical goals on the international stage outside of the broadest possible terms.
Sure we do. Combating Islamic terrorism is perhaps the biggest; Chechnya being relatively quiet right now is an aberration. Also I really don't think that's his decision to make.
Yet another annoying example of the Washington establishment's irrational hatred of Russia. When every politician and think-tank from the far-left to the libertarians to John "Bombs" McCain lines up on a foreign policy issue and shrilly insists that we must oppose Russia on everything, that's when the discerning man should be suspicious.
Like if you want to believe that the Russkies "meddled" in our election by leaking DNC emails that showed the DNC had a hate-on for Bernie, then sure, go for it, though the intel community hasn't released hard evidence. Let's say that they did.
A., how does that merit such a disproportionate response- if a DNC staffer leaked those emails (as everyone thought at first) this'd be a nonissue.
B., we meddle in other countries' elections all the time, constantly, and other countries routinely meddle in ours. CAIR's suborned to the Gulf States, AIPAC and the JDL are run by Israel, and everyone from the Brookings Institution to the Center for Strategic and International Studies takes wads of foreign cash in exchange for lobbying politicians. Heck, even the Chamber of Commerce gleefully acts as a way for other countries to funnel cash into American elections. Like, the Russians exposed institutional corruption? Oh no! How dare they!
It's not like there were Russian hands on voting machine levers (though given our absolutely awful voting machine security it's only a matter of time before someone does). It's not unreasonable that Flynn (who really hate Islamic terrorism) told the Russians "hey, don't worry about sanctions if you team up with us in that fight" before he entered office. It doesn't make it legal to promise other countries things before you're in a position to act, but under-the-table diplomacy has been around for as long as there have been tables.
The Russians aren't evil or insane, and there's no reason why we can't sit down at the bargaining table and hammer out agreements with them. Especially when we're best fuckin' buds with Saudi "chop off hands and kill rape victims" Arabia and "Apartheid 2.0" Israel. Immediately and unilaterally taking diplomacy off the table is a bad thing. There's more to foreign policy than threats of invasion and sanctions.
Russia literally invaded and annexed foreign lands twice since the beginning of the century and will continue to do so.
And the bold-ed above is idiotic. By this logic, because we invaded Iraq that means other countries get to invade us. The government should always protect and serve the people it represents and denounce foreign actors that attempt to meddle with such service.
Still though: Good on Mattis for refusing to co-operate with Russia; the US and Russia don't really share any geopolitical goals on the international stage outside of the broadest possible terms.
Sure we do. Combating Islamic terrorism is perhaps the biggest; Chechnya being relatively quiet right now is an aberration. Also I really don't think that's his decision to make.
Yet another annoying example of the Washington establishment's irrational hatred of Russia. When every politician and think-tank from the far-left to the libertarians to John "Bombs" McCain lines up on a foreign policy issue and shrilly insists that we must oppose Russia on everything, that's when the discerning man should be suspicious.
Like if you want to believe that the Russkies "meddled" in our election by leaking DNC emails that showed the DNC had a hate-on for Bernie, then sure, go for it, though the intel community hasn't released hard evidence. Let's say that they did.
A., how does that merit such a disproportionate response- if a DNC staffer leaked those emails (as everyone thought at first) this'd be a nonissue.
B., we meddle in other countries' elections all the time, constantly, and other countries routinely meddle in ours. CAIR's suborned to the Gulf States, AIPAC and the JDL are run by Israel, and everyone from the Brookings Institution to the Center for Strategic and International Studies takes wads of foreign cash in exchange for lobbying politicians. Heck, even the Chamber of Commerce gleefully acts as a way for other countries to funnel cash into American elections. Like, the Russians exposed institutional corruption? Oh no! How dare they!
It's not like there were Russian hands on voting machine levers (though given our absolutely awful voting machine security it's only a matter of time before someone does). It's not unreasonable that Flynn (who really hate Islamic terrorism) told the Russians "hey, don't worry about sanctions if you team up with us in that fight" before he entered office. It doesn't make it legal to promise other countries things before you're in a position to act, but under-the-table diplomacy has been around for as long as there have been tables.
The Russians aren't evil or insane, and there's no reason why we can't sit down at the bargaining table and hammer out agreements with them. Especially when we're best fuckin' buds with Saudi "chop off hands and kill rape victims" Arabia and "Apartheid 2.0" Israel. Immediately and unilaterally taking diplomacy off the table is a bad thing. There's more to foreign policy than threats of invasion and sanctions.
Russia almost certainly ensured some future nuclear conflict with its invasion of Ukraine after the treaty they signed a while back. They assassinate journalists. They aren't exactly neutral guys.
Putin has been using methods up to and including war and outright murder to reinforce his own hold on Russia and destabilize the current(former?) largely functional world order working solely from the rationale that it's better to rule in Hell than serve in Heaven.
If that isn't evil I don't know then I am not sure what is.
Like if you want to believe that the Russkies "meddled" in our election by leaking DNC emails that showed the DNC had a hate-on for Bernie, then sure, go for it, though the intel community hasn't released hard evidence.
The IC has given Democrats, Republicans, and the Trump administration itself enough evidence to convince all of them that the hacks occurred. To question it is nonsense and was settled in the Russian hacks thread.
Still though: Good on Mattis for refusing to co-operate with Russia; the US and Russia don't really share any geopolitical goals on the international stage outside of the broadest possible terms.
Sure we do. Combating Islamic terrorism is perhaps the biggest; Chechnya being relatively quiet right now is an aberration. Also I really don't think that's his decision to make.
Yet another annoying example of the Washington establishment's irrational hatred of Russia. When every politician and think-tank from the far-left to the libertarians to John "Bombs" McCain lines up on a foreign policy issue and shrilly insists that we must oppose Russia on everything, that's when the discerning man should be suspicious.
Like if you want to believe that the Russkies "meddled" in our election by leaking DNC emails that showed the DNC had a hate-on for Bernie, then sure, go for it, though the intel community hasn't released hard evidence. Let's say that they did.
A., how does that merit such a disproportionate response- if a DNC staffer leaked those emails (as everyone thought at first) this'd be a nonissue.
B., we meddle in other countries' elections all the time, constantly, and other countries routinely meddle in ours. CAIR's suborned to the Gulf States, AIPAC and the JDL are run by Israel, and everyone from the Brookings Institution to the Center for Strategic and International Studies takes wads of foreign cash in exchange for lobbying politicians. Heck, even the Chamber of Commerce gleefully acts as a way for other countries to funnel cash into American elections. Like, the Russians exposed institutional corruption? Oh no! How dare they!
It's not like there were Russian hands on voting machine levers (though given our absolutely awful voting machine security it's only a matter of time before someone does). It's not unreasonable that Flynn (who really hate Islamic terrorism) told the Russians "hey, don't worry about sanctions if you team up with us in that fight" before he entered office. It doesn't make it legal to promise other countries things before you're in a position to act, but under-the-table diplomacy has been around for as long as there have been tables.
The Russians aren't evil or insane, and there's no reason why we can't sit down at the bargaining table and hammer out agreements with them. Especially when we're best fuckin' buds with Saudi "chop off hands and kill rape victims" Arabia and "Apartheid 2.0" Israel. Immediately and unilaterally taking diplomacy off the table is a bad thing. There's more to foreign policy than threats of invasion and sanctions.
Russia literally invaded and annexed foreign lands twice since the beginning of the century and will continue to do so.
And the bold-ed above is idiotic. By this logic, because we invaded Iraq that means other countries get to invade us. The government should always protect and serve the people it represents and denounce foreign actors that attempt to meddle with such service.
Also, we shouldn't lose sight on what kind of cooperation we're talking about here: joint military operations. Russian rules of engagement are straight up incompatible with modern US military doctrine. Generally speaking, US forces focus more on precise strikes that minimize civilian casualties whenever possible...whereas RU strikes don't really view civilian casualties as being all that bad (they were all probably terrorists or terrorist sympathizers, amirite?).
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BTW there's some activity in Schindler's twitter feed suggesting Russia is gearing up for another push into Ukraine.
Saw that as well.
Sounds like further build up of military along the border. Honestly I'm surprised it's taken Putin this long.
Waiting for the worst of eastern european winter to subside?
More likely he's been distracted by his loss of influence over the trump administration and trying to wrangle it back under his thumb.
Nah, Mattis would much prefer that we didn't go to war, and didn't have to fight. Being Pro-Military doesn't mean he wants to use the military as the main diplomatic method. He's had way too much first hand experience with what happens from that.
He's also not the type of person who spouts off about how much better things used to be, and he tends to view people from other countries and other cultures favorably.
Mattis doesn't really fit the profile of a fascist, and he doesn't seem to be collaborating with Trump or his administration. I get the impression that Mattis would be Mattis no matter who appointed him, and he's not afraid to point at the administration and call them out no matter who is in charge.
Two of them, really, given that Nikki Haley seems to be living in a world where Pence is already president or something (parroting stock GOP foreign policy points instead of the Trump line, especially with regards to Ukraine).
Though UN Ambassador isn't really cabinet.
absolutely
This strikes me as being like trying to hold up a police station with a butter knife.
Idk, every time I think "there's no way he can do that", he does.
Yeah John Schindler has been doing good work and seems to have some high up sources. He's former NSA, so that's not too surprising.
It's not like these are people who lack the skills for interfering in governments from the outside.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
I mean, you can do it, but the fact is that the agency is almost assuredly built so that it can survive outside interference and anyone that trump stuffed into the top would be outmanouvered easily.
If he fires the entirety of the agency then he winds up with something out of a Tom Clancy novel with a large organization of spies that is completely untethered to the government and has an axe to grind with what amounts to amateur hour opposing them.
As is so often the case with trump, The tar baby parable from songs of the south applies.
Not to mention he shit show our intelligence community would be having to start from scratch if he fired a majority/most/all of the IC. I think he might try, but a lot of those positions are probably hard for him to directly affect.
This is true, but I'm trying to frame this in perspective of actualizing what trump wants with regards to the IC (I.E. an end to leaks that undermine his credibility).
Because yeah, if theirs anything that trump has shown he's ambivalent towards it's foreign intelligence agencies working against US interests.
He energized their base in a way that hasn't been seen in a generation
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
Will the DoJ under Sessions pursue it though?
He'll pursue the person he perjured against.
pleasepaypreacher.net
Are they being given bad intel from FBI sources?
pleasepaypreacher.net
At least now they know they have bad sources, I guess
These are individual people. It's reasonable to expect some of them support Trump and the GOP. There are probably factions coalescing now.
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
I am very, very tempted to just say, 'Welp, obviously Comey is a mole,'... but this isn't exactly unprecedented. Washington always protects its own, regardless of how clear cut the crime is.
I thought he got less votes than both Romney and Mccain
Trump and Putin are discussing military cooperation in Syria
If the US and Russia are actively cooperating in Syria, it gets kind of hard for the US to bomb Russian tanks when they roll in to Ukraine.
Not firing, just reducing their salary to $1 a year.
If they were patriots they would stay anyway.
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
If thought there was a leak problem now...
I didn't say it was a smart move.
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
In fairness no one has ever been prosecuted under the logan act, it would probably be hard to stick. Dead letter would be a reasonable defense.
Yet another annoying example of the Washington establishment's irrational hatred of Russia. When every politician and think-tank from the far-left to the libertarians to John "Bombs" McCain lines up on a foreign policy issue and shrilly insists that we must oppose Russia on everything, that's when the discerning man should be suspicious.
Like if you want to believe that the Russkies "meddled" in our election by leaking DNC emails that showed the DNC had a hate-on for Bernie, then sure, go for it, though the intel community hasn't released hard evidence. Let's say that they did.
A., how does that merit such a disproportionate response- if a DNC staffer leaked those emails (as everyone thought at first) this'd be a nonissue.
B., we meddle in other countries' elections all the time, constantly, and other countries routinely meddle in ours. CAIR's suborned to the Gulf States, AIPAC and the JDL are run by Israel, and everyone from the Brookings Institution to the Center for Strategic and International Studies takes wads of foreign cash in exchange for lobbying politicians. Heck, even the Chamber of Commerce gleefully acts as a way for other countries to funnel cash into American elections. Like, the Russians exposed institutional corruption? Oh no! How dare they!
It's not like there were Russian hands on voting machine levers (though given our absolutely awful voting machine security it's only a matter of time before someone does). It's not unreasonable that Flynn (who really hate Islamic terrorism) told the Russians "hey, don't worry about sanctions if you team up with us in that fight" before he entered office. It doesn't make it legal to promise other countries things before you're in a position to act, but under-the-table diplomacy has been around for as long as there have been tables.
The Russians aren't evil or insane, and there's no reason why we can't sit down at the bargaining table and hammer out agreements with them. Especially when we're best fuckin' buds with Saudi "chop off hands and kill rape victims" Arabia and "Apartheid 2.0" Israel. Immediately and unilaterally taking diplomacy off the table is a bad thing. There's more to foreign policy than threats of invasion and sanctions.
Russia literally invaded and annexed foreign lands twice since the beginning of the century and will continue to do so.
And the bold-ed above is idiotic. By this logic, because we invaded Iraq that means other countries get to invade us. The government should always protect and serve the people it represents and denounce foreign actors that attempt to meddle with such service.
Russia almost certainly ensured some future nuclear conflict with its invasion of Ukraine after the treaty they signed a while back. They assassinate journalists. They aren't exactly neutral guys.
If that isn't evil I don't know then I am not sure what is.
The IC has given Democrats, Republicans, and the Trump administration itself enough evidence to convince all of them that the hacks occurred. To question it is nonsense and was settled in the Russian hacks thread.
Also, we shouldn't lose sight on what kind of cooperation we're talking about here: joint military operations. Russian rules of engagement are straight up incompatible with modern US military doctrine. Generally speaking, US forces focus more on precise strikes that minimize civilian casualties whenever possible...whereas RU strikes don't really view civilian casualties as being all that bad (they were all probably terrorists or terrorist sympathizers, amirite?).
Not sure how you view Politico, but this article from ten-days ago went over this very topic.