I like to offer up a political post of some sort once in a while, but I have begun and trashed the whole thing on several occasions and am making no progress what so ever. In truth I am rather befuddled and simply unable to embiggen the conversation with anything sensible because the nonsensical currently refuses to cooperate. I can not make heads or tails out of any of it.
The unkind will say I am always befuddled and confused, but all in good humor, that is simply a post for another day….
First off, it appears our current president once paid some taxes. Yes, and? Well, I am not quite sure what the “and” really is. This bit of news is like a joke that blows in the wind completely lacking a punchline. I have absolutely no idea what this is supposed to mean. Is there some context I am missing here, some relationship to something else I cannot see? Would somebody please explain the joke to me? I feel like the dumb person in the room.
Second we have this intelligence thing going on, basically everyone is spying on everyone else, for political purposes of course, which may or may not be legal given the circumstances, circumstance which are totally confidential…..except when they aren’t, except when they must be deliberately leaked in some act of plausible deniability.
On the bright side, 17 intelligence agencies all confirm having…. no real tangible evidence of much of anything at all, which is now a settled fact, due to their agreement on the matter. But never mind all that, one has come to accept these bizarre pronouncements from the Alphabet People. The real question is actually, who are they? I don’t really care WHAT the 17 intelligence agencies agree on not knowing, I want the WHO of the story.
WHO are these 17 distinct Alphabet People and why do we actually need 17 of them? What does one group do that the others cannot? Also, can you name them? Can anyone? We have the CIA, the FBI, the NSA, Homeland Security…and then my mind goes blank. I am not alone here, I actually spent about 3 hours trying to research the matter before realizing I am a complete moron for not just dropping the whole thing and taking a walk out in the sunlight.
All is not lost however, we did manage to locate at least a couple of Russian hackers, which helps the narrative a great deal. What narrative, you may ask? Dunno, really. Yahoo suffered a large data breach, and “the Russians did it,” or so say the Russians who actually caught the guys. There is some question in my mind as to how “Russian” the Russians really are, when their own government was trying to hunt them down and put them in prison. The news keeps calling them “Russian agents” and “Russians spies” which I suppose is technically true because they are from Russia. And yet they don’t appear to have been actually working for the “Russian government,” which kind of makes that “Russian agent” thing read like a lie, too. Are we speaking of genetics here, country of origin, or WHO is actually employing them? Those sort of details kind of matter to the entire storyline. In my mind a “Russian agent” is someone who works for the Russian government and not just some guy who lives in Russia and has personal AGENCY.
One of the guys who was caught back in December by the Russians, was actually charged with passing info along to the CIA! The Justice Dept has now promptly filed a lawsuit against him too, but the fact that he was actually assisting US, does call into question his precise loyalties to Russia.
Somewhat amusing, I did rediscover that spying on one’s own self is generally frowned upon in most quarters, so of you wish to save face among your peers, you do what any self-respecting person does, and simply ask the British to do it for you. (Or whoever you wish to exchange services with.) So you simply convince the British to spy on your own people and you agree to spy on theirs and then you can both just share the love and data in a less unseemly manner.
Who knew? There are actually rules and etiquette within the spy world. Sadly, like everything else in our modern world, even that is often breached.
There, I have done my best to present a political post, to embiggen the uh…. mind boggling confusion, and to leave you all scratching your heads in wonderment.
Susan Irene Fox said:
Now that you’ve enlightened on the Russia thing, would you please do the same for the ACA/AHCA????
LikeLike
insanitybytes22 said:
You have found the missing Alphabet People! The ACA/AHCA spies!
No wait, this has something to do with healthcare, doesn’t it? 🙂
LikeLike
Susan Irene Fox said:
😀
LikeLike
lovelifeandgod said:
I’m so confused about the current state of political affairs, I think I lost a few IQ points. Now I’m gonna fail my exams. Thanks for nothing, CNN. 😦
LikeLiked by 3 people
insanitybytes22 said:
Ha! That’s the spirit, Ada! We’ll just sue them all for robbing us of our brain cells.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Tiribulus said:
I had never heard the word “embiggen” in my life. Though it was possible to surmise what it might mean, I had to look it up.
Please refrain in the future from using words I don’t know.
Thank you 🙂
LikeLiked by 2 people
insanitybytes22 said:
Ha! Like that’s going to happen anytime soon. I like to use words I don’t even know.
LikeLiked by 2 people
atimetoshare.me said:
I love your word “embiggen” almost as much as I love the president’s word, “bigly”.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Debbie L said:
Ah, this now makes it all perfectly clear for me!!! And guess what? I use to work for one of those alphabet soup intelligence agencies….
LikeLiked by 1 person
insanitybytes22 said:
I believe you! I know a couple of people who used to work for these agencies and they seem to be as baffled as I am. Also,really,really grateful to be retired now. 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
Debbie L said:
Oh, yes, so grateful! It’s been 10 years for me since I retired….ah the good life!
LikeLike
Mel Wild said:
“Is there some context I am missing here…”
Only that if someone is of the “other” political party, and doesn’t think like me and doesn’t do or say what I think he or she should do or say, then they’re not only stupid and wrong about everything that ever comes out of their mouth, but they also have evil intent for everything they do…
Make sense now? 🙂
The splinter in the brain comes from trying to glean rational, disinterested and unbiased information from the news…How would you sell that to the corporate sponsors? No scapegoating finger-pointing, no ratings.
LikeLiked by 2 people
insanitybytes22 said:
Good point! One of my pet peeves is that people simply can’t be evil, alien overlords, while at the same time being pathetic and incompetent. You simply have to chose one or the other!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Mel Wild said:
The strange logic of vitriolic politics. 😜
LikeLike
Julie (aka Cookie) said:
this really has the making of a great movie—and we can get all the whiny crybabies in Hollywood to walk another red carpet and make nasties about conservatives and the President—such fun….
LikeLiked by 1 person
Mike said:
Your facts interfere with my reasoning. You must have got them from an Alt-Right
Russian Fascist Nazi.
LikeLiked by 1 person
insanitybytes22 said:
I hear you! I have long been calling my top secret Russian friend, “Dimitri.” So naturally who do they arrest? Some guy named Dmitriy. Not only am I fraternizing with alleged fascists, apparently my Russian spelling stinks, too.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Tiribulus said:
Probably the same guy who told you to use the word “embiggen.”
LikeLiked by 1 person
Mike said:
Cyrillic can be stinky. I know.
LikeLiked by 1 person
patrickhawthorne01 said:
Ok…Out of all the responses, no one asked you how you came about using embiggen. Did you know it beforehand or just happily happen upon it?
LikeLike
insanitybytes22 said:
It came from pop culture somewhere,the Simpsons perhaps? Can’t remember. Regardless, I was once having an pleasant discussion with a rad/fem when she promptly kicked me out declaring I did, “nothing to embiggen the conversation.” So I left and took her word. 🙂
LikeLiked by 2 people
Salvageable said:
Nicely played. J.
LikeLike
Tricia said:
17 intelligence agencies, seriously? I would think we would run out of alphabet letters to name them all. 😉
LikeLike
leannrene said:
Beautiful. Just beautiful. One of the best political posts I’ve read in the last few months 😀
LikeLiked by 1 person
Citizen Tom said:
Why 17 intelligence agencies? Well, it actually makes more sense than you might think. The military does something similar. So let me illustrate the problem with that.
We have divided our military into five services: Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force and Coast Guard. Further, we deploy our forces under the control of theater commanders. Each of the theater commanders has control of the troops he needs only so long as he needs them to get the job done. Then he loses control of those troops. In some cases, a theater commander may only have a staff assign to him for planning purposes. In that case he may only command troops during exercises. On the other hand, the Pacific theater is huge. So the guy in charge of that theater is always busy.
Why operate that way? Why are soldiers always rotating between assignments? It keeps a general from gaining excessive personal loyalty of the people he commands.
Look into history and you will find the Romans had a problem they never really solved. When they sent their legions out to fight the barbarians, those legions had a nasty habit of coming back to take over Rome.
Just like military forces, intelligence agencies can pose a threat to civil government. Hence, the people in charge have sacrificed some efficiencies by dividing our intel people up into various agencies with certain spheres of responsibility. Given it is the White House’s responsibility to integrate much of the information and dictate and overall strategy anyway, I suspect the overall efficiency of our Intelligence operations depend more upon who is in the White House than it does the breakup into Alphabet divisions. Nevertheless, because of the breakup, the rivalry between the various agencies helps the civil government to maintain control.
LikeLike