Seen on the street in Kyiv.

Words of Advice:

"If Something Seems To Be Too Good To Be True, It's Best To Shoot It, Just In Case." -- Fiona Glenanne

“The Mob takes the Fifth. If you’re innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?” -- The TOFF *

"Foreign Relations Boil Down to Two Things: Talking With People or Killing Them." -- Unknown

“Speed is a poor substitute for accuracy.” -- Real, no-shit, fortune from a fortune cookie

"If you believe that you are talking to G-d, you can justify anything.” — my Dad

"Colt .45s; putting bad guys in the ground since 1873." -- Unknown

"Stay Strapped or Get Clapped." -- probably not Mr. Rogers

"The Dildo of Karma rarely comes lubed." -- Unknown

"Eck!" -- George the Cat

* "TOFF" = Treasonous Orange Fat Fuck, A/K/A Dolt-45,
A/K/A Commandante (or Cadet) Bone Spurs,
A/K/A El Caudillo de Mar-a-Lago, A/K/A the Asset., A/K/A P01135809

Wednesday, April 22, 2020

Don't Forget: Russia and China Are Our Enemies, Not Our Friends

The alarming messages came fast and furious in mid-March, popping up on the cellphone screens and social media feeds of millions of Americans grappling with the onset of the coronavirus pandemic.

Spread the word, the messages said: The Trump administration was about to lock down the entire country.

“They will announce this as soon as they have troops in place to help prevent looters and rioters,” warned one of the messages, which cited a source in the Department of Homeland Security. “He said he got the call last night and was told to pack and be prepared for the call today with his dispatch orders.”

The messages became so widespread over 48 hours that the White House’s National Security Council issued an announcement via Twitter that they were “FAKE.”

Since that wave of panic, United States intelligence agencies have assessed that Chinese operatives helped push the messages across platforms, according to six American officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to publicly discuss intelligence matters.
Want to bet that the Usual Suspects in the Right-Wing Batshit Factory picked up those bits of Chinese propaganda and spread them?

Me neither.

Bad information and shoddy supplies seem to be China's two-pronged attack on the rest of the world.

Meanwhile, despite Trump's rugged belief that Russia hasn't interfered in American elections, the Senate found differently.
A bipartisan Senate report released Tuesday affirms the U.S. intelligence community’s conclusions that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election in a far-ranging influence campaign approved by Russian President Vladimir Putin and aimed at helping Donald Trump win the White House.

The report rejects Trump’s claims that the intelligence community was biased against him when it concluded that Russia had interfered on his behalf in the election.
It's clear, now: Those that deny that Russia has interfered in American elections are either Kool-Aid-Drinking Trumpanzees (Russian "useful idiots") or Russian assets.

8 comments:

seafury said...

Yeah yeah yeah but HILLARY !!!!!!!! On a related note, my resident trumpanzee in the break room at work, said "that bitch pelosi gave Harvard 40 billion! " I tried to explain that their endowment was 40 billion. I was told to get over it Hillary lost. Sigh

DTWND said...

Fury, you can’t fix stupid. They get something in their mind and refuse to realize they’re wrong.

Dale

Tod Germanica said...

I've met plenty of trumpites, some monied or would be monied expats in Baja Mexico even, who are helpful, kind, not even very stupid really. Like Christians. Personally charitable but holding wicked beliefs. Such people never much notice trump's cruelty, corruption, stupidity, racism, treason, senility...Because he saved them a buttload of money! Trump is the king of the philistines in this age of the philistine. To trump and his cultists it is always about the bucks. It has to be about something when you are so empty inside, like trump is. So it's about the money. His name signed on your pandemic welfare check. Like he paid it. What a little man.
Only three sitting presidents have not been reelected. Please make this worthless criminal turd number four.

0_0 said...

Russia tried hamhanded interference. I'm nowhere near convinced that it accomplished jack shit.
Russia also fed disinformation to Steele- you remember, the foreigner who was paid by Hillary's campaign to smear her opponent in the 2016 election- and people are still screeching about "Trump colluded with Russia!!!"

Neither Russia nor China is friends with any of us. Everyone should keep that in mind. They (and Iran) are trying similar shit to blame this year's coronavirus on the USA.

Ten Bears said...

The Steele Dossier has been demonstrated by two separate congressional inquiries to,have had no influence on anything. It is a dog-whistle. It is bullshit, a lie. Every goddanmed bit of it. You have zero credibility, zero.

dinthebeast said...

It is unsurprising that consumers of propaganda believe propaganda to be harmless and ineffective.

-Doug in Sugar Pine

0_0 said...

The Steele Dossier- the Clinton- funded and requested foreign interference in our elections- was used to call Trump a tool of Russia and as "evidence" of collusion with Russia. It played a central role in the FISA warrant to wiretap Carter Page, which should outrage anyone. It is correct to call it "a dog-whistle, ...bullshit, a lie. Every goddamned (sic) bit of it."

Doug, I am sure you would know.

Dark Avenger said...

Mueller asked Trump directly about two of the things he said in this speech (the Russia if you’re listening comment and the assertion they’d look at recognizing Crimea) and obliquely about a third (his public disavowals of Russian business ties). Trump refused to answer part of one of these questions entirely, and demonstrably lied about another. Publicly, Mueller stated that Trump’s answers were totally inadequate. And these statements happened even as his campaign manager and Konstantin Kilimnik were plotting a clandestine meeting to talk about carving up Ukraine.

The FBI may have done this to stay way-the-fuck away from politics — though, to be clear, Trump’s call on Russia to find more Hillary emails in no way fits the bounds of normal political speech.

But by doing do, they ended up using far inferior sourcing, and distracting themselves from actions more closely implicating Trump directly — actions that remain unresolved.

The Carter Page application certainly backs the conclusions of the DOJ IG Report (though it also shows I was correct that DOJ IG did not know what crimes Page was being investigated for, and as such likely got the First Amendment analysis wrong). But it also shows that the Steele dossier, which fed the FBI’s inexcusable confirmation biases, undermined the FBI investigation into questions that have not yet been fully answered.

https://www.emptywheel.net/2020/04/21/the-nuances-of-the-carter-page-application/

Russia, if you’re listening........