all roads lead back to this picture
Oh hi there, are you watching the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing we told you about yesterday, on Russian interference in the 2016 election and whether the Trump campaign actively colluded with the Russians? We are! It already started ... so YOU'RE LATE! But you didn't miss much. Basically they did their opening statements, and Democratic committee vice chair Mark Warner has been subtweeting the everliving BALLS out of Devin Nunes, emphasizing that over here in the grown-up Senate, where the grown-ups live, they will be doing a serious, bipartisan investigation, which is very different from the House Intelligence Committee investigation, which is basically Nunes flicking poo everywhere and trying to protect his real dad Donald Trump.
Anyway, let's watch it together, and we will liveblog it for you also too! With dick jokes! And Russian pee hooker jokes!
10: 47:Right now it is just a bunch of so-called "experts" saying "information" about how Russia's hacking and meddling isn't just an American operation, and it's been going on for a looooooooong time. Also a guy named Clinton Watts just pronounced the word "spectrum" like "spRECTUM." It was not the finest pronunciation moment in Senate hearings.
11: 04:Expert guy says Russia influenced 2004 and 2014 elections in Ukraine, probably screwed with Brexit but he's not sure, and also is screwing around in all the elections in Europe right now. FAKE NEWS.
11: 07:The expert guy (who has a name and it is CLINTON WATTS) also said earlier that Sen. Marco Rubio, who is questioning now, was a victim of Russian election interference. Maybe that's why he gives a shit! (Also the thing about how he hates Donald Trump with every fiber of his being.)
11: 21:Everybody driving home the point that Russia does this to BOTH SIDES, so it doesn't matter if you are a Democrat or a Republican, you should be against this. Also, too, EVERYBODY IS ACTING LIKE A GROWN-UP. And you can tell Richard Burr and Mark Warner are friendly and like each other!
11: 31:Clint Watts points out that one good way to start investigating this Russia stuff is to look at how Russia keeps murdering people implicated in this investigation, ALLEGEDLY. It's true, Russian diplomats are dropping like flies. because that's how Putin is.
WHEN ARE WE GOING TO GET TO THE PART ABOUT HOW THIS IS HILLARY'S FAULT?
11: 37:Oh hi, this is kind of a sexxxy senator, Martin Heinrich of New Mexico! Hi there, senator!
11: 45:BOOM! Clint Watts says outright that part of the reason Russian active measures worked in this election is that THE TRUMP REGIME, and also the campaign before that, specifically use/d fake news-style active measures to spread disinformation to the American public. It was in response to a question from dead-eyed Oklahoma Republican senator James Lankford, and even he is being a grown-up about this!
11: 49:Clint Watts says he already knows he'll be targeted by Russians in efforts to discredit him, and part of the problem these days is we literally don't know what America's position on all that is. He's saying basically that Trump is gay for Putin, so none of us are safe. Hooray!
12: 04:Russia hacked "three to four thousand" people, on both sides of the aisle, according to Clint Watts. He says Russia is sitting on "information nukes," so that's comforting.
House of Representatives, you look like a dumb idiot right now.
12: 09:IMPORTANT POINT JUST MADE: Russia would have succeeded with its meddling, even if Hillary Clinton had been elected, because the part of the aim was to smear her as much as possible regardless of the outcome.
12: 12:Hey Devin Nunes, are you watching? Because this is what is happening right now:
12: 14:This is also very, very comforting:
And yay, it is Senator Kamala Harris's turn to ask questions! We are going to make her president someday, oh yes we are.
12: 18: Hey, do y'all remember back when Matt Taibbi was good?
12: 25:Here is a fun detail! Russian bots actually target Donald Trump on Twitter with active measures fake news when they can tell he's online. Why? Because he's stupid and falls for it. U-S-A! U-S-A!
12: 33:And that is that, until after lunch! It starts again at 2: 00 PM Eastern! A lot of good information was shared, and everybody acted like a goddamn adult who actually cares about this issue, and nobody is running up to the White House to brief Donald Trump on fake "intelligence" they just found in their butt about "wire tapps." Good job, Senate Intelligence Committee! We will see you after lunch!
2: 08:Hi, we are back! You can watch the entirety of this morning's hearing below, and below that is your new livestream for the afternoon hearing! We are going to learn about all of Russia's cyber capabilities, and we don't mean like cyber-sexxx. (UNLESS WE DO.)
2: 22:We are still having opening statements. Now look, the guy talking is a British, but do not get excited and think he is the British spy who wrote about the pee hookers. There is more than one British guy in the world, so just cool your jets. This guy is a professor at King's College London named Thomas Rid.
2: 29:A theme that has come up repeatedly, and that British guy is talking about RIGHT NOW, is that part of why Russia's fake news games and Russia's WikiLeaks games work is that the media laps it up like a bunch of idiots. HEY, Wonkette wrote about that the day after the election, in a piece called Dear Media: HI! GO FUCK YOURSELF!
2: 33:Expert dude says it "absolutely stretches credulity" to act like Russians didn't do all the hacking, so we guess if Donald Trump was right about a 400-pound guy sitting on his bed in New Jersey, that guy's name was Sergey.
2: 39:Marco Rubio is talking about how the Russians tried to fuck with his campaign during the primary, and also Russians have targeted him in a cyber way AS RECENTLY AS YESTERDAY.
2: 42:OK, we're pretty sure Rubio is just cold asking these guys which anti-virus software he should use on his Obamaphone.
2: 45:Retired General Keith Alexander, who commanded cybers for Obama, just said we should NOT go to war with Russia over its hacking and meddling, and this was Marco Rubio's face, for real:
2: 48:Dianne Feinstein started her questioning by telling the general she had never seen him out of his uniform and told him he looks good. LOL #FEINSTEINFLIRT
2: 56:Senator Roy Blunt is bored with this panel of computer nerds, says this morning was way funner.
3: 00:If these computer nerdwads are boring you like they are boring Roy Blunt, here, have a video of that great moment from this morning, when Clint Watts said Russia fake news propaganda works because Trump is an idiot who spouts the same shit:
Russia expert says Trump strengthened Russian propaganda: "Part of the reason active measures works...is they parrot the same lines." pic.twitter.com/tTGHLDfKvR
— ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) March 30, 2017
3: 03:Senator John Cornyn says he gets email all the time that's pretending to be James Comey or Apple Computers, trying to make him change his password. He wants to know is this Russian spear-phishing, or does James Comey really need him to change his password.
An interesting point they just made, though, is that the Russian phishers actually target people very specifically, like sending fake emails ABOUT YOUR JOB and stuff. So! Watch your emails closely, especially if you are a senator investigating Russia!
3: 14:This is like a free clinic in "Passwords, How Do They Work?" British expert guy says if John Podesta had had two-factor identification on his email, the last month of the campaign would have been VERY different. Imagine, no #PizzaGate, no spirit cooking, no closely held risotto secrets, Hillary Clinton would probably be the president right now ...
3: 22:AW YEAH, LET'S TALK ABOUT WIKILEAKS AND JULIAN ASSANGE BEING TOTAL SHITS, and let's do it in a bipartisan way!
3: 28:James Lankford is making us a-skeered.
Lankford actually just asked to make sure nobody is doing FALSE FLAGS to make it look like Russia is doing the hacking. Shut up, scary face man.
3: 41:Kamala Harris: Please explain to Americans how to stop reading fake news.
The Americans say "SHRUGGIE." The British guy says hey, how about you read a real newspaper like The New York Times or The Washington Post . We would add that you probably should read Wonkette every day of your life, unless you want to be A Idiot.
3: 49:Looks like we are heading toward the end of this thing! Chairman Richard Burr is asking his questions now, and he would like to know how Russia got all the emails to WikiLeaks, and are we EVEN going to pretend WikiLeaks doesn't know it is a Russian front.
British expert guy says we can't be sure if WikiLeaks knows it's a Russian front, but pffffffft, Wonkette thinks we all know the answer to that question.
4: 00:FALSE ALARM, it is not over. Senator Angus King wants to know if Guccifer 2.0 is one person, or a bunch of people, or robots, or some goats. British man Thomas Rid says it's definitely multiple people, because some of them talk with smiley emojis and some of them don't.
4: 02:FALSE ALARM AGAIN, IT IS OVER! We thank you for joining us today to learn things, and we hope you'll come back every day for the rest of your natural life to learn more things. If you enjoyed our livebloog, please give us a love offering of money!
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"We would add that you probably should read Wonkette every day of your life, unless you want to be A Idiot."
Wonkette NEVER once put on the cheerleader outfit and started jumping up and down about WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION SISS BOOM BAH and HOW IMPORTANT NEO-CONS ARE THINKING DEEP THOUGHTS and all the crapola that the New York Times swallowed to get this shit show rolling.
And the NYT's "coverage" of a grandma's email server didn't seem to be particularly of importance. But they ran with it anyway.
Now WAPO, they got Nixon's pelt hanging in their Man-Cave. I'll cut WAPO some slack.
But the NYT's? Fuck those guys.
It does make him a marvelous disinformation source for those who are multi-dimensional chess players.
Or testing their levels.