1,000 years ago in The New York Times

The federal investigation, involving the F.B.I. and the intelligence agencies, has been going on since the Democratic National Committee first called in a private cybersecurity firm, Crowdstrike, in April.

Preliminary conclusions were discussed on Thursday at a weekly cyberintelligence meeting for senior officials. The Crowdstrike report, supported by several other firms that have examined the same bits of code and telltale “metadata” left on documents that were released before WikiLeaks’ publication of the larger trove, concludes that the Federal Security Service, known as the F.S.B., entered the committee’s networks last summer.

The G.R.U., a competing, military intelligence unit, was a later arrival. Investigators believe it is the G.R.U. that has played a bigger role in releasing the emails.

In an essay published on Lawfare, a blog that often deals with cyberissues, Susan Hennessey, previously a lawyer for the National Security Agency, called the published evidence about Russian involvement “about as close to a smoking gun as can be expected when a sophisticated nation-state is involved.”

Mr. Assange’s threat to release documents, she wrote, “means, put simply, that actors outside the U.S. are using criminal means to influence the outcome of a US election. That’s a problem.”

But American intelligence agencies have their doubts that the Russian intention, at least initially, was to sway the American election. The intrusion began just shortly after Mr. Trump announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination. At the time, his chances looked minuscule. One senior official noted that while the cyberattack might have been intended to embarrass Mrs. Clinton, who was the presumptive nominee, it could not have been aimed at bolstering Mr. Trump.

– The New York Times, July 26, 2016

You read it first in the Spy('s Twitter feed)!

– The Massachusetts Spy, November 19, 2016

Let’s be even blunter. Flynn doesn’t bring to mind serious, sober figures who have served other Republican presidents, people like Colin Powell or Brent Scowcroft or Condoleezza Rice. He seems more in the mold of General Jack D. Ripper from “Dr. Strangelove,” obsessing over a supposed international conspiracy “to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.”

– Scott Lehigh in The Boston Globe, December 7, 2016

Annals of Diplomacy: a Spy Exclusive

By Henry C. Lodge
Diplomatic Editor

You may have heard something about a conversation the Grifter-Elect had with the President of Taiwan, during which he flushed 37 years of successful China-Taiwan policy down the gold-plated hopper.  You may have also heard that the Chinese, while somewhat nonplussed, sent a note of protest to the State Department, as would be expected in such circumstances.  But only in the Spy can you read the text of the State Department's response, leaked to us by a highly placed source who wished to remain anonymous but whose name rhymes with Don Berry:

His Excellency Cui Tiankai    Ambassador of the People's Republic of China        Embassy of the People's Republic of China           3505 International Place, N.W.               Washington D.C. 20008 The United States Department of State presents its compliments to His Excellency Cui Tiankai and has the honor to refer to the His Excellency's Note of December 1 last concerning certain conversations held by the President-Elect with certain persons located on the island of Taiwan. Please be advised that the Government of the United States fully shares His Excellency's concerns regarding such conversation and takes this opportunity to reassure His Excellency that between now and January 20, 2017, the "one-China" policy of the United States Government remains in full force and effect. Please be further advised that the Government of the United States is unable to provide further assurances with respect to any aspect of United States domestic or foreign policy after such date, which will thereafter be under the full control of an ill-informed narcissistic bigot with the intelligence and attention span of a fly caught in a bong. His Excellency should be aware that the people of the United States have, in their wisdom, entrusted the fortunes of the entire world to a man whose view on any issue can be reduced to 140 characters of insult comedy and is any event formed by the last person he spoke to, who is invariably ignorant of the issue at hand. His Excellency should also be aware that the President-Elect's foreign policy team are expected to comprise a National Security Advisor fired from his last intelligence posting for being, in the argot of the intelligence community, "batshit crazy," and the three untutored children of his first marriage when they are not otherwise engaged in decimating the animal kingdom or flogging hideous shoes to those with more money than taste. Please be advised while the Department of State expects to continue in operation for at least a period of time following the Inauguration, we humbly suggest to His Excellency that all diplomatic communications with the incoming administration be conducted through Twitter or an appearance on a morning cable news show to reach the new President. May we suggest to His Excellency that perhaps the best way to influence the next President is to enrich him.  The Department of State believes that the grant of a casino license in Macau to the Trump Organization or the purchase by a Government-affiliated trading company of a few thousand pair of Ivanka-brand pumps would likely resolve all outstanding issues between the United States and the People's Republic of China in a manner likely to satisfy the latter. Upon the opening of Trump Macau, we would expect the next President to look with favor upon efforts by your Government to resolve the Taiwan issue once and for all, up to and including invasion. The United States Department of States avails itself of this perhaps final opportunity to renew to the Embassy of the People's Republic of China the assurances of its highest consideration and best wishes for the future. You'll need it.  /s/ John F. Kerry Secretary of State

That should smooth things over.

Only the Loathsome, Part III

By A.J. Liebling
Content Deconstructor

We have now marshaled our forces sufficiently to dig our way through the final portion of “Kevin” Dowd's column in last Sunday's New York Times.  We can't go on much longer, so, breaking our promise to readers of line-by-line analysis (of course, if we were as narcissistic as “Kevin”'s choice for President, we'd just deny we ever said it), let's skip ahead a paragraph or so.  (For those of you who came in late, we have Kevin in quotes because we don't know if he's real or just a chance for sister Maureen to tell us what she really thinks while retaining plausible deniability.)

After berating college students who skipped class because they were upset at the imminent transformation of the United States of America into a kleptocracy (apparently, college students, unlike he-men firemen, policemen, and newspaper columnists aren't entitled to personal days off), “Kevin” decides to take a shot at what the kiddos are studying at college these days:

Not one of the top 50 colleges mandate one semester of Western Civilization. Maybe they should rethink that.

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! Maureen, you've heard of Columbia College up there on 116th Street?  Here's its description of its required freshman course, Contemporary Civilization:

The Core Curriculum is the set of common courses required of all undergraduates and considered the necessary general education for students, irrespective of their choice in major. . . .

Introduction to Contemporary Civilization in the West

Founded in 1919 as a course on War and Peace Issues, the central purpose of Contemporary Civilization is to introduce students to a range of issues concerning the kinds of communities – political, social, moral, and religious – that human beings construct for themselves and the values that inform and define such communities;. . .

We're not going to go through 50 fucking websites just to prove that “Kevin” doesn't know jack shit about higher education, but here's two more:

At the University of Chicago, thought by many others besides “Kevin” to be a pretty fair school, undergrads must take two courses from the following list:

	Readings in World Literature I-II-III
	Philosophical Perspectives I-II-III
	Greece and Rome: Texts, Traditions, Transformations I-II-III
	Human Being and Citizen I-II-III
	Introduction to the Humanities I-II-III
	Reading Cultures: Collection, Travel, Exchange I-II-III
	Media Aesthetics: Image, Text, Sound I-II-III
	Language and the Human I-II-III

Closer to home perhaps, here are the core requirements of one fine school within rock-throwing distance of Annandale, Georgetown:

• One course in writing
• One course in the Humanities: Arts, Literatures, and Cultures (HALC)
• Two history courses
• Two theology courses
• Two philosophy courses

Kevin Dowd remembers when college taught you how to think white

They also have to take science courses so they can understand that women do not have to remain silent whilst menstruating, a tidbit lost on “Kevin”'s preferred candidate.  Maybe “Kevin” should rethink getting his information on the state of American academe from Rush Limbaugh.

Let's move on to “Kevin's” next nugget:

Mr. Trump received over 62 million votes,

A mere 2,500,000 fewer than Hillary Clinton, which doesn't seem to slow down “Kevin”'s entirely unearned triumphalism.

not all of them cast by homophobes, Islamaphobes, racists, sexists, misogynists or any other “ists.”

That's true.  Some were cast by poor whites in Appalachia because they thought the Tangerine-Faced Grifter would help them.  Perhaps “Kevin”'s definition of “help” includes cancelling their Obamacare-provided health insurance thus allowing them to depart their grim lives years earlier.

I would caution Trump deniers that all of the crying and whining is not good preparation for the coming storm. 

Another fact!  That makes two in a row.  He is absolutely correct that crying and whining is not good preparation.  Organization and resistance work much better.  We did like the neologism “Trump denier.”  That's different from “climate denier” – an individual who like the Tangerine-Faced Grifter denies the irrefutable scientific proof of human-caused global warming, an issue of no interest to “Kevin,” unlike say freshman college course requirements.

The liberal media, both print and electronic, has lost all credibility.

I come here not to defend the liberal media, whatever that is, but only to note that “Kevin” has provided us with the moron's version of a Buddhist koan.   If a column in in the “liberal media” says the liberal media has lost all credibility, then is “Kevin” Socrates?  We'll go with no.

I am reasonably sure that none of the mainstream print media had stories prepared for a Trump victory. 

I am reasonably sure that “Kevin” pulled this out of his blowhole. If he really wanted to know what preparations the media had made for election night, perhaps his sister could have picked up the telephone and called Dean Baquet, her executive editor and boss.   Sadly that would require an act of “journalism,” a craft last practiced by Maureen Dowd during her salad days on the late lamented Washington Star (died 1981).

Here is a final word to my Democratic friends.

To quote Tracy Lord, “Of whom he has many I'm sure.”

The election is over. There will not be a do-over. So let me bid farewell to Al Sharpton, Ben Rhodes and the Clintons. Note to Cher, Barbra, Amy Schumer and Lena Dunham: Your plane is waiting. And to Jon Stewart, who talked about moving to another planet: Your spaceship is waiting. To Bruce Springsteen, Jay Z, Beyoncé and Katy Perry, thanks for the free concerts.

This gets to the heart of  “Kevin”'s artichoke.  For him and his fellow white louts, the campaign was not about the economy (as Annandale has been living large at the Federal teat for generations), managing complicated and dangerous crises in the Middle East and Eastern Europe, keeping the world from drowning our children, or making life better for the downtrodden.  It was about white male triumphalism: the supposed right to gloat over a list of mostly female, minority, and Jewish celebrities that “Kevin” now feels entitled to patronize, because of how 100,000 votes fell in three Midwestern states.  (By the way, you can try to make fun of Jon Stewart if you dare, but his joke was making the obvious point that if you fear that the Tangerine-Faced Grifter will blow up the world, as you should, moving to Canada is hardly a solution.)

Ridiculing celebrities on the left is considered quite a sport among the white supremacist set, so it's hardly surprising to see “Kevin” piling on.  Liberals don't get to have equal amounts of this fun, because what's the point in roughing up Scott Baio and Ted Nugent?

“Kevin” saved his KO punch for the end:

And finally, to all the foreign countries that contributed to the Clinton Foundation, there will not be a payoff or a rebate.

That riff hasn't aged too well, has it? In the last week alone, we've seen the Grifter-Elect profit from foreign countries booking events at his DC hotel, and from countries like Argentina and the Philippines hiring the Grifter-Elect's real estate partners to influence the G-E. And since the G-E refuses to divest his holdings, instead entrusting them to Santino, Fredo, and Michaela Trump, he'll be in position to profit from not only foreign deals but also, just to name a few, going easy on penalties for a German bank to which he owes $650,000,000 and nobbling the National Labor Relations Board so that he can violate with impunity the collective bargaining rights of ill-paid maids at his Las Vegas sh*thole.

But “Kevin”'s not worried, because he knows that a Cabinet and White House staff composed of former Goldman Sachs partners, white supremacist mouthpieces, reactionary hacks, and billionaire finaglers will no doubt stand up for average hard-working Amurricans like him.  While that crowd of swindlers is robbing him and our poor country blind, stealing Medicare from “Kevin” and his contemporaries, and leaving 20 million Obamacare recipients to expire in the street, they'll provide “Kevin” what what's really important to him: a steady diet of insult comedy, unearned gloating, and the chance to put the non-white, the non-hetero, and the non-testicled in their place.

He must be so proud of himself.

Only the loathsome, Part II

By A.J. Liebling
Content Deconstructor

Several bottles of Pepto-Bismol later, we're ready to wade further into the muck, by which of course we mean Kevin Dowd's not-so-hostile takeover of her sister's lame-o New York Times column.  We got through four lines before we started to feel dinner coming back up the way in went in, so let's see how far we get this time.

Here are the next two paragraphs:

Preaching — and pandering — with a message of inclusion, the Democrats have instead become a party where incivility and bad manners are taken for granted, rudeness is routine, religion is mocked and there is absolutely no respect for a differing opinion. This did not go down well in the Midwest, where Trump flipped three blue states and 44 electoral votes.

The rudeness reached its peak when Vice President-elect Mike Pence was booed by attendees of “Hamilton” and then pompously lectured by the cast. This may play well with the New York theater crowd but is considered boorish and unacceptable by those of us taught to respect the office of the president and vice president, if not the occupants.

This section refreshingly contains one almost-true statement: Hillary Clinton did lose four Midwestern states that Barack Obama won in 2012.  Maybe “Kevin” forgot that Iowa and Ohio are not the same place.  As for the rest of it, it's hard to know whether to call it projection or projectile vomiting.  The Democrats are the party of incivility?  The party of routine rudeness?  He understands that those clips from Hillary's campaign ads were not of her, but of her opponent, doesn't he?  Maybe that was the problem!

Possibly “Kevin” (we keep his name in quotes because we aren't sure whether he exists or whether he's Maureen's John Barron) forgot, wasn't offended by, or, most likely, is desperately trying to drop down the memory hole the torrent of unspeakable abuse launched by his beloved Tangerine-Faced Grifter-elect. We'll just reprise a couple of the T.-F. G.'s greatest hits, although the full list of his insults filled two pages in the newspaper that provides a lifetime of ease to his sister.  Making fun of disabled reporters?  Deprecating women reporters who recalled his misogynistic insults against women by speculating they had blood coming out of their “whatever?”  Describing his opponent as “crooked” and a “nasty woman?”  Maybe this passes as fair comment in Annandale, Virginia, but most Earthlings would describe the T.-F. G.'s campaign as one in which incivility was taken for granted and rudeness was not only routine, it was the main attraction.

Which brings us to  “Kevin”'s next smear: the tired old chestnut that Democrats or liberals or both mock religion.  Who, when, and where?   While “Kevin” is at it, maybe he could describe one act of religious faith ever committed by the Tangerine-Faced Grifter.  Hint: going to church to cheat on wife one doesn't count.

Absolutely no respect for differing opinion? That's got to be a new height of fatuous projection.  How many people got beaten up at Clinton rallies by goons egged on by the candidate?  How many member of the press were cursed at Clinton rallies while being insulted by the candidate?  If you think that it's the Democrats who don't respect differing opinions, then brother you're living in the Jew-S-A.

The only example of supposed rudeness and disrespect “Kevin” can dredge up didn't happen until after the campaign, but he'll fire it up anyway because it's a handy way to sling mud at Jews, gays, and liberals, or as “Kevin” so delicately calls them, the “New York theater crowd.”  In “Kevin”'s retelling, it's another example of decadent liberal values that would never happen in The Heartland.  Except when the opening day crowd in Indianapolis lustily booed their hatemongering Governor, a troll by the name of Mike Pence.

We can't pass over “Kevin”'s effort at condescension.  He alleges that his ilk were properly brought up to respect the President.  They were?  Maybe “Kevin”'s fellow travelers who were passing around smears about the President's birth, parentage, and racial background didn't pay close enough attention.  Oh and speaking of respecting Presidents, let's just recall the slogans about former President Bill Clinton emblazoned on Bangladeshi-made T-shirts lapping over the paunches of Tangerine-Faced Grifter rallygoers.

We're now nauseated again and we're barely halfway through “Kevin”'s little composition.  We'd call it sad and pathetic but right now we're in the holiday spirit and we wish goodwill to all, even the haters and the losers.  Like “Kevin.”

Only the loathsome, Part I

By A.J. Liebling
Content Deconstructor

Very recently we had a little fun with the estimable (in his mind at least) New York Times columnist David Brooks.   We made up a silly award, took a few shots at his latest column and basically goofed around.  That was the appropriate response we thought to his somewhat lukewarm take on the recent electoral unpleasantness.

But for those of you who like their bullshit served up sizzling hot and with a snarl, you couldn't do much better than Maureen Dowd's latest effort on Sunday, in which she channeled the rage of her real or imagined Trump-lovin' brother, “Kevin.” After over a year of responding to vile drivel from entitled white men with dumb yuks, we broke our funny bone on this one.

Despite the lack of opportunities for cheap laughs, it is critical to analyze the contents of this screed essentially line-by-line so that we can begin to understand the revolting stew of bigotry, entitlement, and ignorance that motivates what Mo chooses to call her “affluent, educated suburbanite” scumbag of a brother assuming he in fact exists.  It's almost as important to note that not one of the factual claims in “Kevin”'s “column” proves to line up with reality.

Goggles, nose clips, boots, and latex gloves on, we dig in.  “Kevin” starts with a man who brought dignity, honor, a social conscience, and a keen intelligence to the White House, despite his Kenyan birth:

The election was a complete repudiation of Barack Obama: his fantasy world of political correctness, the politicization of the Justice Department and the I.R.S., an out-of-control E.P.A., his neutering of the military, his nonsupport of the police and his fixation on things like transgender bathrooms. 

Claim 1: how can an over 2 million vote margin for the Democratic candidate be described as a repudiation, much less a complete one?  Of course, it can't, but it is important for “Kevin”'s worldview to be premised on the false notion that he and his bro the tangerine-faced grifting President-elect represent the majority.  In this case, though, you'd really have to call “Kevin”'s  majority silent, because something that doesn't exist can't make any noise.

Kevin Dowd looks more like his sister every day

But we haven't even gotten to the end of the first line yet.  Claim 2 is that President Obama, an astute observer and consummate pragmatist, lives in a “fantasy world” of political correctness.  By this “Kevin” must mean that President Obama's unceasing efforts to ameliorate America's great racial divide is a pointless fantasy, because entitled white racists like him and his candidate will forever malign persons of color, women, those with alternative gender preferences or identifications, the disabled, and anyone else who doesn't resemble Liz Lemon's old boyfriend.  Is such a hope a fantasy?  No, a fantasy is the claim that Barack Obama was born anywhere else than Honolulu, Hawaii or that his religion is anything but Christianity.  Who lived in that fantasy world, “Kevin?”

OK we've finished the first line. Let's turn to “Kevin”'s reference to politicizing the Justice Department.  He doesn't cite any examples of such nefarious activity during the Obama Administration.  So let's give him a few.  President Karl Rove's successful effort to purge U.S. Attorneys because they refused to bring dubious voting fraud cases against Democrats is politicizing the Justice Department.  Thinking that the President decides who is prosecuted is politicizing bigly.  Obama doesn't think like that; “Kevin”'s man-child does.

Indeed at this point we're suspicious that we're not getting an argument here as much as a wilted word salad of different reactionary and white supremacist talking points.  The politicization of the IRS?   The Republicans have worked hard to peddle that story to the credulous (like “Kevin”), when in fact all they ever had was the effort by career, not political, IRS officials to make sense of a poorly-drafted statute that does in fact distinguish political from other activity.  Some “scandal.”

That brings us to line three.  The EPA is out of control because why exactly?  No doubt “Kevin” believes conveniently that global warming is a liberal conspiracy, not a threat to our (and his) children.  Perhaps he thinks that Lower Manhattan flooded for the first time in history because of, insert whatever cheap shot “Kevin” would throw at New York here.  But New Yorkers, who have spent billions of dollars cleaning up the mess left by Superstorm Sandy, know well the threat of rising sea levels from melting ice caps.  If it really was a liberal conspiracy, why would liberals engineer an event that requires the closing of the L tunnel for two years?  How are they supposed to get to Williamsburg?  “Kevin” probably doesn't care, but a lot of Clinton voters do.

And if the EPA is really throttling our economy (which is the full false talking point), why has the economy grown for 70 months, and at an annual rate of 3.2% in the past quarter?

The next claim – “neutering” the armed forces – is another rubbish GOP talking point.  It's most notable for demonstrating what “Kevin” really fears: that women, Negroes, immigrants and other undesirables will cut off his withered old nuts and we don't know redistribute them?  In any event, Obama's military had enough testosterone to dispatch Osama bin Laden to the bottom of the sea, unleash drones at terrorists over half the world, overthrow Qaddafi (maybe not a great idea but hardly an example of armed impotence), while fielding 420,000 GI's, 182,000 Marines, a 282-ship Navy, and 317,000 Air People.  This piddling force cost only $585,000,000,000 last year.

Speaking of what “Kevin” really fears, let's go to the next talking point, by which “Kevin” means that President Obama does not uncritically support police massacres of black people, especially unarmed ones.  Do you think that the police, alone among government agencies, should be immune from criticism?  If you do, you're white!  Wrong, too.  Again, what “Kevin” really mourns here are the lost days when the police could treat minorities and other undesirables with impunity, whether stopping and frisking them because they brandished a pack of Skittles or drilling them with bullets because they were armed with cell phones.  Of course, the President's statements are replete with praise of law enforcement, but any suggestion that the 5-0 might need to control its tendencies, now available on video, to mistreat minorities constitutes an unbearable threat to “Kevin” and his buddies.

We're almost done with Part I of “Kevin”'s rant.  And now another of “Kevin”'s fears generates another whopper.  Did I miss the 20-minute section of Obama's State of the Union Address when he embraced the cause of transgender bathroom access?  Wasn't it in fact loathsome state bigots who turned a non-issue – the right of people to use the bathroom consistent with their sexual identity – into a controversy?  Didn't the Obama Administration act only in response to such brazen violations of basic human rights?  This one we honestly don't understand: what is “Kevin” so terrified about?  If someone dresses, acts, and identifies as a man, which bathroom should he use?

Presumably “Kevin” agrees with loathsome Ted Cruz's suggestion that transgender individuals simply hold it until they get home.  We'll end Part I with a constructive suggestion: any trans person denied bathroom access by bigoted state laws should take a dump on “Kevin”'s azaleas.

Why We Fight: Know the Allies

KABUL, Afghanistan — As heavy snow fell on the muddy arena in northern Afghanistan where a traditional game of buzkashi — two teams of horsemen fighting for a dead goat — was underway on Friday, a scuffle broke out near the stands. It was not just another group of hotheaded fans going at it.

The man who had thrown the punch is the vice president of Afghanistan, Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum. And he did not stop there: To drive the humiliation home, he put his foot on the chest of his downed victim, a political rival named Ahmad Ishchi, who was then beaten by the general’s bodyguards, thrown into the back of an armored vehicle and taken away, said several of Mr. Ishchi’s relatives, many of them speaking on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation.

“Dostum came there, and he walked around the stadium, — then he called Ahmad Ishchi over to him,” said Gulab Khan, a relative of Mr. Ishchi who was among about 5,000 spectators at the game. “After talking with him for a couple of minutes, he punched him, and his bodyguards started beating him with AK-47s. They beat Ahmad very badly and in a barbaric way.”
 

The account of General Dostum’s actions — while not unexpected for a former warlord with a history of accusations of human rights violations and abuse, including physical acts of retaliation against allies and rivals — underscores fears about someone a heartbeat from the presidency.

With President Ashraf Ghani traveling on an official visit to Central Asia, General Dostum is technically the acting president. For more than two days, he has held a political rival hostage in one of his properties, with members of Mr. Ishchi’s family increasingly concerned about his health. On Sunday, hundreds of protesters gathered outside the vice president’s pink palace in the northern city of Shibarghan, pleading with him to free Mr. Ishchi. The protesters remained all day, but General Dostum did not meet with them. His guards simply told the protesters that the general was busy or resting.

Spokesmen and advisers to General Dostum did not respond to requests for comment, despite promises from several of them. Aides who had accompanied the general to the game, and who were shown at his side in official pictures, flatly denied they had been there. . . .

– The New York Times, November 28, 2016