Oh, I am very aware of what was meant by Neal's post; his comment does, indeed, have nothing to do with "the Department, Trump, bible thumpers or cronies" and I never intended my comments to so indicate. Yes, the Russkies can very easily shut down manned NASA projects simply by parking the bus. My comments are meant to address the fact past history has proven the decline of NASA is more due to domestic neglect and that much of the impetus for the woeful state of NASA has been due to the efforts of those parties who, for philosophical or fiscal reasons, have sought to, and have mainly succeeded, in paring down arguably the most productive, dollar for dollar, entity in the US...

The Far Right is already going after their usual bugaboos like Social Security (which no less a notorious Lefty than Ronald Reagan declared to have no impact on the deficit), family planning, and all the other usual suspects. I have heard, on various Right radio shows and TV broadcasts murmurings about dredging up such dead issues as school prayer, flag burning and "Under God/In Go We Trust" amendments, and there appears to be a renewing effort to launch yet another decency/anti-porn push in Congress (you would have thought the Meese Commission Report, Tipper Gore's music clean-up crusade, among others, would have been the end of that dead horse). Almost without exception, none of the proposed efforts would pass the requirements for amendments and if they did, would not pass SCOTUS Constitutional review, regardless of how stacked a bench they might seek. What the US populace must be wary of is the sideshows that spring up whenever an extreme faction of any party tries to wrest control and enact narrow partisan agendas; will we be distracted by the folderol of the Far Right while they move to do harm to the basic standards of the Constitution? Misdirection, distraction, bellicose denunciations, and more are the tolos and stock in trade of those,of any party stripe, who do not necessarily want you to know they may not be working in the general best interest. It very often is very important to pay attention to the man behind the curtain and ignore the bellowing Great Oz; if you do, you might just find the reality of your situation...

The soon to be Great And Grand Wizard is someone of whom 56% of the voters did not have the confidence enough to vote for and that is important because the popular vote is truly the will of the people: one person, one vote. The Electoral vote may be the one that matters as far as the political game is concerned, but the popular vote, particularly if it goes against an office holder, or soon to be office holder, is an ominous sign for their party and, in particular, for those all-important mid-term elections...

As a perspective, in 2012 Obama reelection effort garnered a total of 65,915 795 popular votes; by contrast, Trump garnered 62,979,879 popular votes, 2,935,916 popular votes short of Obama's 2012 total, not very much of a bell ringing achievement. No matter how you slice it, Trump is not in a position to claim high popularity or approval, much less a mandate from the people of the US...




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Not sure how you construed this from my post. :hmmm:

Well, I have not seen the evidence that Russia did anything. All I have seen is finger pointing and blame shifting for Hillary's well earned loss.

Wait until the night of the inauguration. A past president removed the W on the keyboards and some fine China from what I was told. Maybe I'm wrong.

Hmm...

That Obama "Obama waved his feeble fist" line followed by "...I think some people want to make everything about Trump. Same as they did with Obama, Bush, Clinton, etc...." smacks a bit of glass houses and blackened pots... :D

I'm well aware Trump is not your guy. Neither Obama nor Trump are my guys. All I'm really hoping for is Trump not tanking the economy like Dubbya, but with all those Wall Street weasels on his team and some of the other suspect choices he"s made, it may be a long hope...



<O>

This type of childish harassment is, unfortunately, a common occurrence when there is a change in administration. Kinda silly and embarrassing when you think about it. But it seems to be a tradition for some reason.

I call it destruction of public property and theft.

Dubbya didn't tank the economy. He was merely present while certain progressive Democrats tanked it. When they decided that home ownership was a right and required banks to make loans which couldn't be repaid, while "community organizers" like our current President shook down banks by requiring them to make large amounts of loans to unqualified applicants in order to open branches in "their" areas, then the runaway train to disaster was fully underway.

Dubbya's error was not to stop that train or even to talk about the inevitable catastrophe that was 100% guaranteed sooner rather than later. To underscore that we also failed to understand the cause, we then elected one of the community organizers to be President.

So you can blame Dubbya partly. But primary responsibility goes to Obama, Pelosi, Barney Frank and their progressive movement, along with the banks, who were promised a federal bailout when the chickens came home to roost.

As LeBron James, not known for being a white, anti-minority, antisemetic bigot, says "Nothing is given. Everything is earned. You work for what you have." It explains why giving these irresponsible people loans didn't work. They didn't work for what they had. Therefore they didn't value what they had. They didn't sacrifice to protect what they had because they weren't required to sacrifice to obtain it.

They went down. The banks, which should have been permitted to go down also, were bailed out with the money meant to bail out the people who lost what they were given to begin with.

The community organizer then fiddled (with healthcare) while the economy burned. To make the unemployment rate look good he merely took millions off the unemployment rolls and put them on the disability rolls. Then, declaring the crisis over he abandoned the economy, with 90 million people not employed, the lowest job participation ratio since just after World War II.

The worst devastated are inner city minorities, the very people Obama was elected to help. They, in exchange for their faithful votes, are 30% unemployed, even by the rigged rules which vastly understate their numbers. Crime in those inner cities is burgeoning as they lose hope that anybody cares. They've been betrayed by their own. Who can blame them?

If Trump can see the opportunity that can be realized by saving those abandoned in the inner cities, it's over for the progressive movement. But I haven't heard a word about this most important thing he could ever do since he was elected. I hope that 's just because the news media doesn't want to give him any ideas.

Nothing is given. Everything is earned. If something is given, it is lost, sooner rather than later. Opportunity is the only real help. Handouts only last until they are squandered.

Wikileaks has repeatedly said the emails came from a disgruntled dem party official. Who knows maybe it's true?

At this juncture who really cares where these emails came from? Let's talk about what was contained in the emails and the true face of the DNC. What a great distraction with Russia, cloak and dagger....:doh:

...and Wikileaks, and Assange, are closely linked to the Russians...



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For those who may want to see an actual report by actual investigators instead of the faceless voices of talk radio, the talking heads of TV pundits, or the tweets galore out in the Web, here is a link to the Joint Analysis Report (JAR) issued by the Department of Homeland Security, NCCIC, and the FBI, issued Dec 29 2016, on the matter of Russian hacking and election influencing efforts. It is only 13 pages in length, so its not a hard read:

https://www.us-cert.gov/sites/defaul...-2016-1229.pdf

The report mentions a Joint Statement from the Department Of Homeland Security and Office of the Director of National Intelligence on Election Security; here is a link to that memorandum;

https://www.dhs.gov/news/2016/10/07/...ector-national

It should be noted the JAR is a release of declassified information; a larger amount of data and evidence is classified and has been shared, in an appropriate manner, with appropriate agencies in the Administration and with House and Senate leadership and the Congressional members of both houses who sit on the various intelligence committees; also of note is the acceptance of the findings by the Congressional leadership and members of both parties as to the culpability of the Russians in the matter of election hacking...

The report makes for interesting reading, although I am sure there are those who will not let a little matter like facts get in the way of their dogma...


"I know no safe depositary of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power."

--Thomas Jefferson to William C. Jarvis, 1820

"Though [the people] may acquiesce, they cannot approve what they do not understand."

--Thomas Jefferson: Opinion on Apportionment Bill, 1792

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."

--Thomas Jefferson to Charles Yancey, 1816


...knowledge is power...




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The thing is - I do not trust those reports at this time, as we have previous experience of such reports being falsified in the past in order to attain political ends. I would guess that this argument was already mentioned (and thus I appologise for probably over using it) but this looks like the pre-Iraq reporting or more recently US reporting on ISIS and Syrian rebel movement in general (where the reports regarding ISIS were changed in the military intel apparatus in order to suit the political needs at the time).

Regarding the reports, such as the 13 page one that you have linked, it does not have evidence regarding how they attributed the attacks. In fact the majority of that report is about how to prevent and deal with the attacks. Morever the report itself is poorly writen, as they mix the names of the actors with the software used (page 4 of the report) making me doubt the competence of it's authors and it's credibility.

I wonder if the purge of US intel comunity (especially the CIA) by Trump would change things, or if this patern of behaviour would contrinue, just with another vector.

I think that's the idea.

Page four is a listing of Russian Intelligence Services (RIS) alternate names; it is very likely some of the software and the agencies' alternate names are shared. There is reference to attachments in the report, CSV and XML files; these and a description of the JAR can be found at the following US-CERT link:

https://www.us-cert.gov/security-pub...Cyber-Activity

The real meat and potatoes of the investigation is still classified at this point; however, the acceptance of the report and its underlying evidence by those of both political parties who have been authorized and have seen and read the full report has been overwhelming and no verifiable concrete evidence to dispute the findings have been acknowledged to have been presented either to Congress or the Administration. If there is any sloppy work, it is at the hands of the RIS who woefully failed to hide their tracks. Perhaps there has been a quiet purge in the RIS over this issue..

I don't really think an intelligence purge of any great extent is forthcoming; should the evidence be made public after a purge, the question would become "Why were the people who were right, ousted?" and "What sort of incompetency is it to blindly purge for political purposes?". The downside may be too great and the gain too little. Add to that the impression of Trump acquiescing to Putin as a reason for a purge of US Intelligence and it becomes an even stickier mess. Besides, those purged may just decide to do a little whistle blowing themselves...

The issue of election interference is beyond partisan politics; rest assured, if Clinton had been the apparent beneficiary of Russian interference, the issue would have been the same, if not louder. I tend to agree with House Speaker Ryan (GOP) who has stated action should have been taken long ago against Russian interference by the Administration and that Congress needs to do a full and complete bipartisan investigation. Trump may want to "Move on", particularly since his election already has enough taint, but there will be investigations and there will be hearings, private and public, and there is nothing Trump or his minions can do about it, legally or Constitutionally. The issue is about the very foundation of the US electoral systems and its reliability and veracity. If conducting a thorough investigation means Putin might stop sending love letters to Trump, so be it...

Incidentally, the JAR report is just a summary; a more detailed report will be issued in the coming days...



<O>

The list says "Reported Russian Military and Civilian Intelligence Services (RIS)" followed by "Alternate Names" which implies that they a) discuss RIS - actors and b) discuss the objects of the same nature - alternative names for the objects of the same nature - RIS/actors.
By naming both actors and tools they show that they either do not have the ability to write reports or that they do not know the difference between the two, for example if this part of the report was writen separately, after all the bulk of the said report is not about attibution but about prevention and other security measures.

Further you imply that:
- there is sufficient evidence in the (classified version of the) report.
- that said evidence is valid.
As we have seen previously (Iraq being the best known example but there are others) this is not nessesary the case so I would not trust the report, especially if there are simpler explanations around (ie wikileaks explanation about a whistleblower) and if the reports themselves lack data and are writen incompetently.

Regarding the purge. You assume that they are right. What if they are wrong, and the politicians in those agencies (after all the high end officers can also be political apointees) have warped the reports? Morever the purge is nessesary as not only is the intel comunity known to falsify their reports to fit a political agenda (Iraq? ISIS?) but they would also sabotage POTUS policies, much like Pentagon sabotaged the Russia-US deal over Syria.

I'll put Seth Rich's name into that hat.

Nah, a short aside about Obama does not equate to making the "Russian hack" about Obama. It's not like I spent 1000 words on the Bible-thumping GOP. :03:

But while we're on the subject of our President, it will be interesting to see if he brings his celebrated integrity to bear on the end of term Presidential pardons. He's actually been fairly heroic in this department. I'm interested to see if he upholds that stance. Or will he go out in a Bill Clintonesque splurge in clemency just before leaving office. I know there's the Hillary issue, will Obama pre-empt Trump and give her a pardon like Ford gave Nixon? And how about the Illinois gov. Blagojevich? Or that fruitcake Bradley Manning? Nah, I doubt that in his case, he is probably part of the Russian hacking machine. What do you think? Controversial pardons coming up, or not?

Wouldn't be the first suspicious death associated with the Clintons.