Malcolm Nance retired from government service in 2001. He is not a member of the intelligence or security services. His views do not reflect theirs. His cogent book "The Plot to Hack America’ was written as a private if knowledgeable citizen, and aggregated publicly available information and analyses that newspapers and websites had produced. In fact, the book demonstrated exactly what I’m asserting: that in 2016, even in the face of plain and ever-strengthening evidence of Russian interference and Trumpist collusion that was obvious to the ordinary concerned citizen, the FBI/CIA unaccountably failed to understand, or properly and proportionately investigate, the Russian threat. That’s my point. Why the fuck did it take self-appointed Twitter investigators and freelance security experts like Nance to join the dots, and indeed uncover the dots, of the Russian hit-job? Why have Facebook and Twitter only now starting to produce obviously relevant data? Why, as @mkposs notes, has Kaspersky software only now been outlawed? Might it be connected to the fact that the CIA, Homeland Security, and FBI rank-and-file lean Republican and white nationalist? I don’t know the answer to that, but I have my fucking suspicions.
I appreciate your candor. I’ve never held it against anyone for supporting Bernie, whose message resonated with me quite a lot–and I’m very happy that the Medicare thing is now gathering steam and will support him fully on that. But how they supported him is a different matter.
I find almost unforgivable the orchestrated defamation of Clinton, and everyone supportive of her, once she’d won the primary by millions of votes–even though, at that point, she was the only goddamn thing standing between the country and a deranged GOP president and a GOP Supreme Court. Like a lot of people, I detected or suspected Russian trolling as it was going on–in particular the attempts to delegitimize Clinton’s primary victory, which the Russians must have been all over and which the Young Turks encouraged and the Sanders campaign allowed to flourish, with consequences that to this day damage the Democratic party. He still hasn’t made a point of discrediting that accusation.
[quote=“clare, post:64, topic:62176”] [writing to irasdad]
P.S. Your (damn clever) snark is part of why I got pulled into TPM, and committed to pay dues.
[/quote]
It isn’t just that @irasdad comes up with damn clever snark, it’s that he does it consistently, 27-28 hours a day. You’ve outed yourself, Snarkbot 3000. Quit hiding behind that human avatar.
Makes me love Michelle Obama even more. You know these cockroaches can’t stand her because she’s a brilliant, exciting woman, and black at the same time.
I’m not sure what the leanings of CIA are, but on the other two you’ve identified a big problem—whether it has to do with the reaction to Russian interference and penetration or not.
As for Nance’s not being in service, yes but: he claims to be in touch with colleagues still in the field, and he doesn’t appear to put the perception fault on the agencies’ backs.
I think the weak spot is congress, and specifically congressional Rs. Of course the WH is either involved with the cancer or maybe simply ignoring it, which is pretty much the same thing. It essentially goes without saying that they will never be of help.
The diff is that @irasdad snark is multi-layered and interactive. The troll bots aren’t really capable of that kind of snark. They just throw shit against the wall and wait for a dumbass deplorable to scoop it up.
“Our sources … gave us inside statistics of Tea Party News,” Zakharov told TPM. “[W]ith 22 000 followers their tweets were read by 1.6 million users.” So the Tea Partiers were useful idiots of the KGB. Would they care if they even knew?
Many of the paid Russian Trolls were fake Sanders supporters (like the so-called “Berniebros”) intent on dividing the Democratic party and discouraging people from voting for Clinton.
Stein was a non-factor in the race. Continuing to bring her name up is simply grasping at a very tiny straw.
I don’t doubt that he was trying to do what was right, but he never fully grasped the bad faith on the Republican side. Nominating Republican Comey for FBI Director was another fatal error.
Reading these tweets from Russian trolls sounds an awful lot like the rhetoric from the NRA. It makes me wonder if they are, in fact, one and the same. Ditto for the Tea Party.
Strictly speaking, the DHS didn’t “outlaw” use of Kaspersky SW, they are banning use of Kaspersky products in federal departments and agencies and requiring all Kaspersky products to be removed within 90 days. Still, probably a good idea to look for substitutes if you are using Kaspersky. I have Kaspersky on a couple of Android devices (phone and tablet). Better start my own hunt…
