Two intelligence sources say the FBI agrees with the CIA assessment that Russia interfered in the U.S. election, in part to help Donald Trump, clearing up any confusion and other reporting that the agencies weren't in sync.

And when "they" omit such qualifiers as "in part."

"in part...?" What does that mean? 99%? 20%? 3%?

And then we have this:

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange denied Thursday that hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman John Podesta were stolen and passed to his organization by Russian state actors.

Link

Assange also said:

In addition to the hacked emails from the DNC and Podesta, Assange admitted that Wikileaks received about three pages of information to do with the [Republican National Committee]  and Trump [during the campaign], but it was already public somewhere else."

No doubt it was difficult to find anything bad about Trump that wasn't full blown in the media.

But what's interesting here is that Assange says they received "about three pages." He didn't say emails. This lends credence to the FBI saying that the RNC's system was attacked but the hacker's failed.

So we have Assange saying the Demo info didn't come from the Russians, admitting someone gave them three pages of Repub stuff and the NPR using unnamed sources who claim helping Trump was an "in part" affair and that this is all  based on "consensus."

Say what????????????????

Would you buy a used car with this type of info....much less launch attacks that tear at the very foundation of our country???

Well, based on what has transpired the answer is yes,

And not only this we have notable Gollywood types urging the Electors to disregard who elected them and not vote for Trump.

Of course what that would do is throw the election into the House where the Repubs, after some blow hard sound and fury from the Demos, would elect Trump.

But think maybe the markets might crash, businesses pull back expansion and hiring plans, bad actors such as Russia and China might take advantage of our confusion??

China just seized a US Navy drone in the open sea. That, just in case you missed what Iran did in '79 and China did in '01, is an act of war.

My God. Has he learned nothing from the last 8 yrs? McConnel set up the strategy of NO, and it worked. When the Prez cannot get much done due to intractable opposition, that HURTS THE PRESIDENT, not the opposition.
THAT is the new game plan. Cos it works.

Dems have to oppose every.single.thing proposed.
Force GOP to nuke the filibuster.
OPPOSE. EVERYTHING.

Bottom line, for political policy-making purposes, it's over. We no longer have ANY ground upon which to even discuss,  much less negotiate or compromise with the fascists that have taken over.

Nothing.
Not only do we not share a basic set of common human values with GOP (hey, mocking the disabled is just fine! Sexually assaulting women? Cool!) we don't even have a shared set of f-cking FACTS we can agree upon. (global warming? Doesn't exist! The Chinese made it up! or if it does exist, it's totes NOT cos of man made input!)

Look, it's OVER. We cannot agree on either values or even freakin FACTS.

There is NO negotiating with the GOP.

Unless you're talking about right-wing populists, who are just conservative ideologues trying to sound like they just drank a sixpack.

My money is on Trump's campaign trail "populism" being 99.999 % cynical shuck and jive act tailored to pull Rust Belt votes and not much else.

Anyway I hope this draws attention to Twitter and how it's been a megaphone for online abuse.

I had some interesting discussions w some of my IT contacts re how to better manage it, basically allowing anonymity is a huge part of the issue but there are also good reasons for anonymity.

JOsh Marshall had a great take on it too....how the all white male bosses at Twitter have no idea what it's like to suffer persecution/abuse. Interesting stuff.

For me I might separate accounts into Anon vs not Anon. And you could tweet subject only to Public respondents,

Mrs. Clinton is viewed in Moscow as innately hostile to Russia. Widely held conspiracy theories portray her as seeking to foment unrest that will return Russia to the chaos and depression of the 1990s. Even many government technocrats view her with suspicion that at times verges on paranoia.

She referred to these views at an event on Thursday, telling donors that Mr. Putin's "personal beef" with her had driven Russia's intervention in the American election.

[MAX FISHER DEC. 16, 2016]

might one assume putin would have (allegedly) funneled emails, embarrassing to hillary clinton, to wikileaks irrespective^ of who was the republican candidate?

Jeralyn: "James Comey should still resign. His own behavior during the weeks before the election permanently tarnished the FBI's integrity and reputation."

... the warrant that the FBI obtained to search the laptop belonging to Huma Abedin and Anthony Weiner has been ordered unsealed by U.S. District Judge Kevin Castel, pursuant to a FOIA request by E. Randol "Randy" Schoenberg, an attorney from Los Angeles who first became to public attention as the lawyer for Maria Altmann, the Jewish-American woman who sued the Austrian National Museum over a painting once belonging to her once-prominent Viennese family, which had been seized by the Nazis in 1938. (This case served as the basis for the 2016 "The Woman in Gold.")

Schoenberg was seeking to determine what probable cause the agency provided to suspect that material on said laptop might be incriminating to Hillary Clinton. And just as most of us suspected, the probable cause provided for the warrant was specious at best, further undermining Comey's decision to interfere in the presidential campaign.

Basically, Comey's FBI was operating under an assumption that the mere existence of emails from or to Hillary Clinton constitutes probable cause that a crime may have occurred, and further feared -- baselessly, as it turns out -- that Abedin's laptop may have been hacked. Per an unnamed former federal prosecutor, who corresponded with Josh Marshall at TPM:

"It confirms what we assumed all along: (1) prior to seeking the warrant and to Comey issuing his letter, the FBI had no idea whether these were new emails, or duplicates of emails they previously reviewed--all they could see was non-content header information (to and from); (2) the FBI had no information to suggest that the emails were improperly withheld from them previously; and (3) the FBI had no facts to justify the urgency in seeking a review of the emails prior to the election. This latter point is key. Generally, DOJ policy commands that prosecutors and agents refrain from taking investigative steps (even non-public steps like seeking search warrants) within 60 days of an election in a politically sensitive matter.

"Bottom line: nothing new, no urgency, no obstruction, no reason to defy longstanding DOJ policy and risk affecting the election. And there was simply no basis for Comey's decision to make matters worse by issuing a public letter to Congress."

Mr. Schoenberg, who filed the FOIA request, further weighs in on the matter:

"I see nothing at all in the search warrant application that would give rise to probable cause, nothing that would make anyone suspect that there was anything on the laptop beyond what the FBI had already searched and determined not to be evidence of a crime, nothing to suggest that there would be anything other than routine correspondence between [Hillary Clinton and Huma Abedin]. ... [I don't know] why they thought they might find evidence of a crime, why they felt it necessary to inform Congress, and why they even sought this search warrant. I am appalled."

I'll let Josh Marshall sum it up nicely:

"Comey should be out of a job. It's that bad. But I would argue that it would actually be a disaster if he didn't serve at least through the next four years. Everything we've seen about the incoming Trump administration suggests they'd appoint someone to run the FBI who would approach the job as the president's personal and political enforcer. Comey made a terrible decision. I'm quite open to the idea that he did it because of his personal bias against Hillary Clinton. I think it's even more clear that he did it because he could not control politicized elements within the FBI.

"For all that, the alternative would likely be much worse. I don't believe Comey is a crook and I think he believes in the rule of law. So he becomes the paradoxical beneficiary of his own shameful decision."