August 31, 2022

This is a LOT bigger than [Redacted].

What we are seeing is a form of warfare ordinary citizens rarely see.

This is the unraveling and exposure of a long-term offensive by a hostile power with multiple operational goals:

* Infiltrate, subvert, and degrade the operational capacity of the government of the United States.

* Destroy the capacity of America's intelligence community to effectively gather useful intelligence and carry out counterespionage operations.

* Provoke civil unrest, division, and disunion by the use of propaganda operations that also support the other goals of the offensive.

* Infiltrate, subvert, and degrade the mission orientation and action capability of institutions charged with armed security and safety of America, both military and civilian organizations.

* Create a substantial and heavily-armed cadre of American citizens prepared to engage in civil violence and attacks on the U.S. government.

At this point, it seems reasonable that anyone who claims otherwise should be investigated for active conspiracy in the offensive and/or unwitting action as a covert (unknowing) asset.

Most likely many of those claiming otherwise are merely dupes and ignorami. But the higher in the government they are, the more access they have to power and influence, the more likely it seems they are assets or conspirators.

DoJ and all of the government organizations involved in dealing with this offensive and mounting an effective counter-offensive are being exceptionally careful and deliberate for some very good reasons, including an awareness that their own organizations are already riddled with assets and agents who will be diligently attempting to subvert their efforts by "poisoning the tree", spreading disinformation and distraction, etc.

This has been a very long game indeed, and the turnaround, to be effective, will not be fast. There may be some swift actions here and there, but for the most part, it will take place very quietly, on a need to know basis in many decentralized but coordinated action groups, and we won't hear much about it.

In the long run, whether [Redacted] ends up in a Supermax or not is possibly one of the less consequential results of the counter-offensive. It may happen, or not. You can bet the calculations are being run very carefully with great attention to factors that most of us will never know. If "highly public accountability" becomes a very important thing, we may see a perp-walk. If that is subsumed in more concrete operational goals that would yield key gains overall, you can be they'll still find ways to make the remainder of [Redacted]'s life extremely unhappy.

He is ***ked either way.

It's enough for me-- IF we ultimately win this quiet, covert war. Thoroughly. Completely. And with lasting effect.

specifically,
Bright

August 29, 2022

I am NOT 'hoping' for riots when [Redacted] is perp-walked. But I do believe they'll be useful.

Riots are not peaceful protests. I could totally support peaceful protests, as they would generate many amusing misspelled signs and loony chants, etc. Everyone has a right to protest and I support the rights of [Redacted]'s cultists to do so as well.

Riots, on the other hand, are not good no matter what 'cause' they are in aid of. Riots are the worst impulses of human pack mentality acting out violence and destruction and they rarely end well for anyone. No one has a right to riot, the freedom to do so is not guaranteed in our Constitution in any way.

However.

If the GOPpies doomsaying "riots if [Redacted] faces the consequences of his criming and treason" are offering this up as a 'threat' I should remind them what happened the last time.

January 6th, 2021.

I've lost track of how many of those rioters have been identified, arrested, indicted, tried, and sentenced, and how many are awaiting trial. Hundreds, anyway.

And this is a good thing. Because the only risk greater than the riots that may or may not result from [Redacted] being held accountable are the consequences of IMPUNITY. Should [Redacted] NOT be held accountable, what will the next wannabe-authoritarian dictator manage to accomplish with the aid of their Oligarch enablers and funders?

Riots will at least allow law enforcement the opportunity to identify and hopefully get some of the worst of the would-be fascists rooting for the death of American representative democracy off the streets.

So, no... I'm not hoping we get those riots. I'm hoping we get ACCOUNTABILITY. And if that provokes riots, well, hopefully that will allow additional ACCOUNTABILITY. So we'll put them to good use, regardless of the painful cost.

You can't scare me with that B.S.

Just thought you should know, GOPpie traitors.

disgustedly,
Bright

August 26, 2022

"Kitchen Timing" - A Legacy From Joe Biden's Mom

Joe Biden grew up in a quintessential Irish Catholic family in the 1940s and 1950s. He was the oldest of four kids. You can bet he spent plenty of time helping his Mom - that's what a good son did, back then.

And every holiday, every big occasion, Joe got to watch the unique talent of an Experienced Mom: "Kitchen Timing"

This is a skill few of us appreciate until we're old enough to be responsible for preparing festive meals for our own family and friends.

Kitchen Timing is not easy, people. You need to know exactly when and how to do every step involved in preparing multiple dishes - some of them complicated and only rarely served - so that they all reach the table at peak edibility: Hot things hot. Cold things chilled. Crispy things crisp. Smooth things smooth. No lumps in the gravy, no melted edges on the Jello salad.

You need to know when to purchase your ingredients, so they'll be fresh and available. When to start prepping them. How long to marinate, chill, pre-heat, etc. How to coordinate one oven and four stove burners for maximum efficiency. When to add the final seasonings. How long to "rest" the roast.

Start too early - you have potatoes sitting there getting cold and crusty, rolls becoming chewy, salad greens going limp.

Start too late - you inevitably end up burning something, dealing with lumps in the gravy, underdone veggies, cream that won't whip because the beaters and the bowl aren't cold enough.

It's a mix of art, craft, and most of all - experience.

Joe learned it at his Mom's knee, and took those skills into politics with him.

What, after all, is an election, but a Major Feast for which a political party has to have every dish presented at peak readiness for the voters?

We are watching a master who studied at in the kitchen of a master, prepare our Midterm Election Feast, people. And everything is going to reach the table at its best, a veritable crescendo of political cuisine.

Thank you, Catherine "Jean" Finnegan Biden. You done good. I bet your Thanksgiving dinners were awesome.

appreciatively,
Bright

August 15, 2022

Document classification/declassification is not the equivalent of divorce in Islam.

A person, even a person with the highest level of power and security clearance, yes, even the Commander-in-Chief, the President of the United States, cannot just state before a witness or two "I declassify you" and make it so.

Declassification, like classification, is a process, part of the legally-mandated information management protocols of the U.S. Government.

While a single official (such as the President) can initiate that process, they cannot complete it. Depending on the type of document and the topic matter and the level of classification, the declassification process may require a review and sign off by various agencies/officials. If they are unwilling to do that sign off, there is an appeal process that requires additional review and sign-off.

Once any/all required declassification sign-offs are complete, the process is still not finished. The declassification process must be logged and the item's classification status changed in all records, catalogs, and histories pertaining to that item. All copies of the item itself must be retrieved, re-covered (provided with an up-to-date on-item indicator of its new status), and its new storage location(s) and access protocols logged and noted.

Then, and only then, is a document fully declassified.

For [Redacted] to say "I declassified that" without a process log showing that all of those steps were completed is as ridiculous as him claiming that up is down because he made it so.

Oh, wait... he does that all the time.

::sigh::

dismissively,
Bright

August 13, 2022

Lawyers Who Take Toxic Clients

I have a friend who's married to one of these. He's a decent human being and a topnotch lawyer and not all his clients are toxic, but he's definitely known as the go-to guy when a perp is likely guilty of some particularly heinous crime. He gets them off sometimes, and sometimes not.

Of course he's always being asked WHY he takes on these scumsuckers?

We had that conversation with him and this is what I took away from it:

FIRST, and most important reason (to him): He truly believes in our system of law and justice and that everyone must be a) presumed innocent until proven guilty; and b) provided with competent legal representation when they are under criminal prosecution. According to Stan (not his real name, I live in a smallish town), the scuzzier perps and those accused of the greasier crimes, often have to rely on crappy, slapdash legal representation even if they can afford to pay. He thinks that's wrong.

SECOND, and this reason I think kind of embarrasses him, but is understandable to a point: Those are often the "fun" cases, for a born courtroom lion like him. The deck is stacked heavily against his client, there's a whole Perry Mason vibe going on that sometimes overrides the shadow of the crime in questions. They're a challenge he can't resist.

Even so, we asked... some of those people are really awful human beings, seriously so... how CAN he?

After a lot of high-minded flapdoodle about even assholes being entitled to equal treatment under the law, yada yada yada, he allowed as how he doesn't actually accept EVERY scum-sucking sleazebag who asks him for representation. He always examines what's known about the case, how good the evidence is, etc., and forms an opinion on what he can do for the potential client.

Then he lays out the possible outcomes for the potential client. This is "The Talk". In every case, of course, he'll work insanely hard to get a 'not guilty' verdict. But he also tells the potential client what the OTHER possible outcome could be, and what he, Stan, would be able to do for the client in that case. And he gives a few carefully-worded hints about which outcome he thinks is most likely to prevail.

"A smart potential client," he allows, "will read between the lines and hear what I'm telling him, which is that if I can't get that not guilty verdict - and I think there's a realistic chance that I can't - what I CAN do is negotiate for him, get the best possible deal from the DA, or the best possible sentencing option from the judge. That client will promise their cooperation and I'll take their case and do my best for them. If the prosecution is the least bit careless or slipshod, I might get that not guilty verdict, but if I don't, I can generally get them a better sentence than they might have gotten with a less experienced counsel."

"And sometimes," he told us, "when I give the potential client 'The Talk', and let them know that there's no guarantee I can get the not guilty verdict, they don't want anything to do with me. And I'm always happy to send them elsewhere."

What I wonder is: How many times has [Redacted] gotten a similar "Talk" from an attorney he's thinking of hiring, and what did he do about it? Decide to keep looking? Or lie to the attorney about his willingness to cooperate and get the best possible deal if things don't go they way he wants?

speculatively,
Bright

August 12, 2022

Lookit the dots! Let's connect them!

Dot: How classified and Top Secret documents are handled in the Executive Branch
Which is very carefully and methodically. All White House documents as soon as they are created (by a computer, saving or printing them) or collected (handwritten notes, drafts, etc.) are LOGGED with a taxonomy that describes the source and the subject matter. The "Classified" and "Top Secret" documents are supposed to be handled according to strict protocols about where and by whom they can be viewed, how and where they can be stored, and how they can be disseminated and handled during the dissemination. [Redacted] ignored these as he ignores any and all rules that inconvenience him, of course, but there were plenty of staffers doing their jobs, and those documents were logged and their existence known.

Dot: Documents "going home" with [Redacted]
The majority of White House documents are not classified and/or Top Secret - they are logged and tracked, rules apply to their storage and retention, but they are not strictly controlled like classified/Top Secret material. And there are vast amounts of them - everything from phone messages to visitor logs to meeting notes to briefing papers to clippings-with-comments to doodles with ideas jotted in the margins to letters from citizens to correspondence from bureau employees and congresscritters... That is a huge volume of documents that are identified and logged but not necessarily controlled. And while they are not supposed to be disseminated without following procedures, there isn't as much to stop that happening as there is with classified/Top Secret material. They can get photographed by phone cameras, sent as email attachments and printed out, carried outside the White House document ecosphere and copied there, etc. LOTS of documents. So yes, easy for [Redacted] and co-conspirators to accumulate many, many boxes of documents that they later appropriated.

Dot: The National Archives document review
The sheer quantity of documents makes it a big task. The amount of hugger-muggering about with documents, ignoring document handling protocols, etc., by the [Redacted] Administration must have made it a MONUMENTAL task to sort out what existed, what went missing, what showed evidence of illicit dissemination, etc. And given the consequential nature of the investigations, they wanted to be very certain indeed. Those ducks didn't just need to be in a row, they had to be drilled like the Rockettes. And that went double and triple for every document in the classified/Top Secret categories. Those had to be logged, tracked, and you can bet that even if the tracking logs are incomplete, there is a trail attached to each one, a little story of who viewed it, when and how, how it was handled, any information about how opportunities for dissemination, etc. But that shit takes a lot of time.

Dot: Retrieval of 15 boxes
See above. Once those boxes are inventoried, the inventories need to be compared, item by item, with the investigation's lists of what was missing and/or might have been illicitly disseminated, and information compiled about potential harm, etc.

Dot: The implications of classified/Top Secret material misappropriation
There are degrees of classification with "Top Secret" being, well, at the top of the list as far as how much potential damage the illicit dissemination and/or transmission of a document could do. Everyone, even [Redacted] very certainly got briefed about the consequentiality of such material, the handling protocols required, the tracking procedures in place and the penalties for messing them about. It's almost certain that such material, if it existed amongst the larger body of appropriated documents, was "hidden" by various means - illicitly copied, removed from tracking logs, reported as destroyed (but not destroyed), etc. The amount of time required to identify a) a reasonable suspicion that such material existed among the documents appropriated; and b) tangible and/or circumstantial evidence of hiding sufficient to verify those suspicions; would be substantial. (See: ducks, Rockettes, above)

Dot: Request for search warrant
If, upon completion of the review of materials returned subsequent to the initial subpoena, credible suspicions still existed that classified/Top Secret material remained missing, a more stringent review and risk analysis was probably undertaken. The risk analysis would be the biggie. A list of 'potentially illicitly disseminated' classified/Top Secret material would be combed by experts - what might that particular document reveal? Who would it be of value to, and how? What damage could it do if it fell into these hands? Or these other hands? How likely would that be to happen? (It's not always easy to pass such hot material along without leaving tracks.) What might the mechanisms be for such transmission? Every detail of actual or circumstantial evidence relating to the illicit dissemination would be checked and re-checked.

Dot: "A tip"
Someone at MAL saw something. Whether they were looking, not at the impressive-looking (but probably NOT classified/Top Secret) document [Redacted] was waving around, but at the pile it was taken from, and recognized some indicator of what else was there, or whether [Redacted] was stupid enough to actually wave around something that would be recognized, by someone who had good reason for NOT wanting that particular item transmitted somewhere (maybe to a business competitor, etc.) as classified/Top Secret, the tipster provided confirmatory evidence that such material remained at MAL. That may have been the tipping point for preparing the affidavit and putting the warrant request in play. Or, it may not... it may have been:

Dot: Opportunities for Transmission
You can bet that everyone [Redacted] and his flunkies has been in contact with, in any way, has been noted. In [Redacted]'s place the "protection" of a former President was undoubtedly subsumed in a larger "surveillance" mission, because they knew perfectly well what a grifting shitheel loose cannon he is. And the instant any suspicion of classified/Top Secret material being off the reservation surfaced, that surveillance would take on a very specific focus: WHO would such material be transmitted to, HOW, and WHEN. Keep in mind that such espionage deals are not organized overnight. Especially when a grifting seller wants to maximize their revenue from the process. They would have to negotiate a price, and set up the transmission in a manner that hopefully could not be traced back to them. It takes time. But as soon as those running the surveillance, and those tracking the potentially-available illicit material, get whiff of a possible payoff-and-subsequent-transmission going down, they would HAVE to act, and act fast.

Dot: Potential Negotiation Opportunities
Since his retirement, [Redacted] has largely remained in his regular orbit of Marm-a-lardo, Bedford, New York, and the Jugend Rally circuit. Those are not places where a high-level potential purchaser would go unnoticed. He hasn't traveled abroad or attended many events where such folks might have legitimate reasons for being there. Until recently. And what happened recently? Wasn't there some golf tournament with a heavy international attendance and sponsorship?

The lines between all those dots make a very interesting final picture.

Just speculatin' here.

pixellatedly,
Bright

August 11, 2022

Here's the deal about "the Feds" and DOJ/FBI/various law enforcement agencies:

Us old people remember back 50 years ago, when we were hitting the streets for civil rights, stopping the bombing and defoliating in Vietnam, and ending military conscription...

We all remember "Don't trust those mofos." And we didn't. We knew they'd bend the rules until they squeaked, even break 'em if they thought they could get away with it to lock our young asses up.

And some of us listened, and some of us didn't, to the older and more experienced heads on the bus, who gave us this chat (I'm paraphrasing, here):

"We want civil disobedience, you bet. But unless you've seen, up close and personal, real, actual civil disorder, don't say that would be a solution. The people who get hurt by it the most are the same people who are getting screwed by the Establishment already.

We want change. We want to keep the pressure up. We want to expose the cruelty, the hypocrisy, the stupidity, the injustice and the corruption. But we don't want the Feds to go away. It's a long slow road to shame them into getting better. But if things tip over into anarchy and civil disorder, we don't win, we LOSE.

Because the overwhelming majority of people in this country understand just how scary that really is and how much they'd be likely to suffer if it happened. And when push comes to shove they'll back corrupt Federal law enforcement that will keep it from happening, over what they'd see as the forces of revolution."

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

The MAGAts and Qnatics and mouth-breathing shills for Putin never learned that. Now they're gonna learn.

"The Feds" may or may not be corrupt assholes, individually and situationally. But when push comes to shove, Americans will line up behind the forces with the mission and the means to keep the gutters from running red.

As it happens, I think by and large the FBI has made considerable improvements in integrity and professionalism from back in Jedgar's day. Again, locally, individually, and situationally, there are still plenty of assholes on their payroll. But by and large they've learned the value of maintaining a reputation.

All bets are off with ICE, of course, but they're not part of the current kerfuffle.

So let the MAGAts scream to "defund the FBI!" as loud as they want and as often. It'll lose them more than they imagine it could ever accomplish.

cynically,
Bright

August 10, 2022

They're coming for you, [Redacted]. It's THE REVENGE OF THE LIBRARIANS!!

Yeah, who's gonna get him, in the end? And for what?

Ripping kids from their parents at the border? Nah, bruh, he walk on that.

Cozying up to every bloody-handed autocrat he could rimjob? Not that either.

Inciting a violent mob to overthrow democratic government in American? Haven't even called the jury on that one yet, but not likely.

Grifting the shit out of the U.S. Treasury at every possible opportunity? Hey, that's just good, red-blooded, Every American Would Do it If They Could stuff.

Too many more to count, but the Teflon Tuchus gonna slide over 'em all.

Until he took on the Librarians, my friends. Until he took on the Librarians.

Yer goin' DOWN, Dude.

FBI Search of Trump's Home Pushes Long Conflict Into Public View



Learn from this, children.

Always return your books on time and in good condition.

Pay your overdue fines promptly.

Renew your library card BEFORE it expires.

And DON'T MAKE NOISE in the stacks or the carrels.

appreciatively,
Bright

August 4, 2022

Risk Analysis for Democracy: Modified Intelligence Appreciation

Start with "knowledge is power": Accurate information is the basis of nearly every kind of planning, policymaking, and/or prosecution of national goals, from allocating budget resources to preventing and dealing with existential threats. Then look at the history of America's national commitment to the acquisition, processing, and use of intelligence.

First, until nearly the end of World War II, less than a century ago, America had almost no intelligence infrastructure at all. What did exist was purely functional and inward-facing, the collection and analysis of statistics and data for mainly economic purposes and the ongoing functional tasks of domestic government - census demographics, crop yields, employment numbers, etc.

Various 19th-century wars (particularly the Civil War) had produced brief spurts of intelligence gathering to facilitate espionage, military planning, subversion, etc., but those were entirely situational. When the war was over, the intelligence was archived, the staff reassigned or dismissed, etc. Only the U.S. military maintained any kind of ongoing intelligence apparatus, and until after WWII, America's peacetime military was small beans and few in the hill, with proportionate intelligence efforts.

After WWII and in the face of U.S. paranoia about the potential threat posed by communism in general and the Soviet Union in particular, America embarked upon a vigorous, expansive program of throwing money at the concept of intelligence, military and civilian.

It was recognized that diplomacy and policymaking must be informed by intelligence channeled through non-military apparatus - military intelligence "sees" through the lens of its own missions and purposes. These, in a democracy, must be at the service of the civilian government and policy establishments. Thus the State Department and the FBI took on new intelligence mandates, the CIA was created, and other departments, civilian and military, were tasked with gathering, providing, and coordinating intelligence for the benefit of the Executive Branch of government.

Initially, the CIA, after various transmogrifications rooted in the wartime OSS, was tasked with being the CENTRAL mechanism for gathering, coordinating, appreciating/estimating, and supplying intelligence for the President and cabinet to use in shaping policy and responding to events. It was a nice idea but it never actually panned out thus.

Lacking any history or any real experience of how professional peacetime civilian intelligence services operate, the U.S. did not succeed in creating a functional structure to manage the flow of intelligence from various sources, but it did create some truly epic bureaucratic feuds, rivalries, bunfights, and passionate vendettas within the various branches of government and the intelligence community. The same lack resulted in the creation of an operational structure for the CIA based more on the anything-goes wartime structure of the OSS than on a civilian peacetime agency that could navigate the treacherous shoals of governmental bureaucracy, foreign policy, public perception, domestic political and ideological conflict, and the opposing demands of secrecy and accountability.

However, necessity and Cold-War paranoia ruled, and the CIA eventually stumbled its extremely expensive and often catastrophically incompetent way through the crises of the 50s and 60s, to build enough infrastructure and relationships of dependency in high places to slide through efforts at reform in the 70s with barely a scratch. It did occasionally provide some useful, reliable intelligence. Not always on time, and not always what their "Customer" (the Executive Branch and its head) wanted to hear. In the process it did produce a small percentage of skilled, dedicated, canny and experienced intelligence professionals among the bloated thousands of paranoid ideologues, grifting adventurers, and aimless chairwarmers.

Then came three cataclysmic self-owns in less than 20 years that devastated not only the CIA, but the overall structure of civilian intelligence in America. First was the impossible-to-ignore levels of criminality in Iran-Contra; next came the culmination of a long, willful denial of the realities of the Soviet Union that failed to anticipate and prepare for its collapse, catching everyone flatfooted and resulting in catastrophic dissolution of resources (especially human resources); and the third was the suicidal collusion of the intelligence community with the Bush warhawks to promulgate blatant lies to justify the invasion of Iraq.

Concurrent with the last, "peacetime" ended in America. The Forever War began. The U.S. military had been growing in budget, size, capability, and mission ever since the ludicrously over-hyped build-up in the Reagan era. With the end of peace and soggy chaos engulfing the remains of the official civilian intel services, two disturbing trends built up rapidly, within a decade or so:

First was the "brain drain" of professional intel personnel from the civilian establishment to a burgeoning new network of private-sector intelligence players that could offer them superior compensation packages, and then turn around and contract their services back to the agency(ies) that had provided them with training and experience, at a premium contract price. Blackwater was one of the early ones, along with Booz Allen Hamilton, but the 'industry' is now dominated by acronymic corps that rival government for opacity: CACI, SAIC, CSRA, etc. To whom are they accountable? Answer: NOT the people of the United States of America.

What functions of our intelligence services are not outsourced to unaccountable private mega-corporations have largely, thanks to the End of Peace, been militarized. Of the top echelon of intelligence professionals, some incalculably high percentage now wear military uniforms, replacing the rumpled-suited, cigar-chomping, martini-swilling stereotype of the civilian intel bosses. It has probably improved efficiency in operations as well as coordination and flow of intelligence, but at what cost? The ends of military intelligence are military.

Final risk factor: The last three years have exposed the extent to which a cabal of wealthy oligarchs, ultra-conservative politicians, and extremist ideologues of various racist, religious, and pure lunatic fringe origins have penetrated the various mechanisms of our government. We are also just beginning to learn the extent to which Putin's Long Game of black propaganda, hackery, and social media subversion-on-the-cheap has intertwined itself with those forces.

So, threat assessment challenge: How blind are we, and how much of our intel capacity is in the hands of people whose overt, expressed mission is to subvert our democracy and replace it with an authoritarian oligarchy?

It were well to be aware of these things. We are long, long overdue for a restructuring of our nation's intelligence infrastructure from the very core of the earth to the depths of space.

somberly,
Bright