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[LoSboccacc]

I still find it weird how many "pro-equality" people are okay with violent suppression of free speech when it's used against them. Maybe that one commie was actually right about the political degradation of USA...

it's chilling watching the full interview, thinking it was recorded 40 or so years ago, and watching him spell the current actual situation word by word.

[Starver]

(Russia was openly saying if we elected her, THEY would declare [war]. That is pretty damn compelling when a national government with a spy aparatus that rivals our own has such reservations. Surely they knew a shitload more than we did about her.)

...hyperbolae aside, or else Putin is just far better with the WIFOM than you considered, has a shitload of information on Trump and say (and do) just the right things to swing things away from the competent candidate with little leverage available and towards the (proven) inpolitic candidate with (not yet proven) plenty of leverage.

'Tis done now, though, whatever happened.  Let's just study the hindsight, academically, as and when it becomes visible...

[TempAcc]

We need to consider the fact that the american intelligence community is way younger than Russia's. The american IC was born out of learning stuff from defected and captured german secret service people and whatever the UK was willing to teach during and after ww2. Russia's IC has been developing for far, far longer and has way less obstacles in its way than the CIA, for example. Putin wasn't kidding that, in the event of a war with the US, asymetric warfare tactics would be the way to go, which is obvious since Russia can't take the US on with military might alone, even with fancy ICBMs pointed at key places.

[Sergarr]

Russian IC only became something more than complete disaster after the October Revolution, with the Iron Felix of Communist Party fame overseeing its renewal. Before it, they were known for having their agents be almost literally in charge of various domestic terrorist organizations, yet not shutting them down. Sort of like FBI with white supremacist organizations nowadays. They also ignored communist infiltration almost completely.

Also I've never heard Putin talking about "asymmetric warfare tactics", the go-to strategy for fighting USA or any other opponent of similar magnitude has been "nukes, nukes everywhere" since 2001.

[Starver]

When you're setting up (frexample) a covert cyber-disinformation beaureu, the point of its assymetry is that it isn't really in the public eye.  Your public, either.  But your public want to see you do something, so "nukes everywhere!" (with most right-thinking opponents not imagining you'd want to use them, even, but they're probably not the audience) may satisfy the home crowd.

[wierd]

Sergarr:

That, coupled with Putin's record of *NOT* making idle threats, gave me considerable pause, and influenced me far more than any propaganda from RT ever could have.  Putin giving his cold dead-eyed stare, and asserting in a quiet voice what he would do in response, was damn terrifying.

I would rather have had Bernie. Damn I wish he had won the primary.

Americans are too used to boistrous, loud, and constantly recanting politicians. Russian politics are not like that.

[Reelya]

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/22/donald-trump-cia-speech-win-twitter-protests

Appearing on ABC’s This Week on Sunday, senior Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway said it was time for the president “to put in his own security intelligence community”

This should really be getting more comment. It's a frankly alarming idea that the president would get to create his own personal secret police. While this could merely mean changing the people at the top, it sounds far more sweeping as an idea, when she phrases it as making literally their own "security intelligence community".

To be honest. Trumps no Hitler. But Trump may be a Stalin. Purging qualified officials from every department and replacing them with hand-picked yes-men is very Stalinesque. But of course it doesn't do squat for efficiency.

[wierd]

That is how all of our 3 letter agencies started.

The FBI was Hoover's, for instance.
DHS was Dubya's.

The question is-- "Do we really need YET ANOTHER three letter agency?"

[Reelya]

The question is-- "Do we really need YET ANOTHER three letter agency?"

The even bigger threat is one without any letters, because it's not officially on the books.

[Sergarr]

That is how all of our 3 letter agencies started.

The FBI was Hoover's, for instance.
DHS was Dubya's.

The question is-- "Do we really need YET ANOTHER three letter agency?"

There doesn't appear to be any strong movement against the ever-increasing number of intelligence agencies, no. They're shrewd enough to present themselves as being "on their side" to both sides of political spectrum at the same time. See: the current adoration some liberals have with CIA for "taking a stance against Trump", despite said Trump literally authorizing illegal torture prisons for said CIA.

[Starver]

BIGLIER

Best Intelligence, Greatest Learning, Information Efficacious Representatives

[wierd]

'UGE

Unit for Global Extortion

[martinuzz]

M.A.F.I.A
Murrica's Alternative Facts Intelligence Agency

[Starver]

Permanent Unit for Trump's Infiltration of Normality

[Frumple]

But of course it doesn't do squat for efficiency.

... if anyone even started expecting efficiency out of this presidential term, much less still thinks it now after the EOs and tentative budget discussions and whatnot, I think they may actually be literally brain damaged. It would take that level of issue to come to the conclusion. Guy's entire platform on everything related to the subject (everything period, really) has basically boiled down to "fuck efficiency, if we screw the right processes it'll make things better for some of us". Even his (and general republican) proposals for downsizing have been effectively (if, giving them incredibly large amounts of charity, perhaps not intentionally) tailored to make sure everything about the shrinking things in question works worse and costs more money per unit of effort during and after the process.

We are not entering a period of qualitative or quantitative improvements in the functioning of governmental organizations, here. Pretty much the exact opposite, and the exact opposite, if not literally a campaign promise, close enough to one it might as well be. The closest things get to it, is the promise that somehow after everything's been screwed up and fucked down to the point it can no longer operate on the scale it needs to to address the scope of problems it deals with, they're going to goddamn magically manage to improve their functioning, while costing less and doing more. Don't ask how that's going to work when it's physically goddamn impossible. God will provide even if reality can't, and if that don't work there's always insistent and willful delusion shored up by a media willing to throw out every ounce of it integrity it could possibly have to support it.