by Steve Timmer

Dec 17, 2016, 5:30 PM

Dogs get blamed for farts, too

There was a reprint of a WaPo article in the Strib this morning, about how the FBI was now agreeing with the CIA about Russian hacking of the DNC and Clinton campaign chair, John Podesta. Great, I thought, seizing the newspaper, now we will get to the bottom of this!

But not really. It was just more conclusory allegations. You would almost think that people thought if they repeated something often enough the public would believe it. Of course, they do believe that, for good reason, because the public often does.

We can’t tell you how we know; we just know. You will have to trust us.

And Richard Nixon had a secret plan to end the Vietnam war. He couldn’t tell us about that, either. It turned out, sadly, he didn’t have one.

Trust, but verify. I heard that someplace, but it’s good advice.

The supreme irony in this is that we’re being told about the nefarious Russian election interference by the CIA. That’s really rich. Usually the CIA doesn’t bother with elections, naturally; it just engineers the overthrow of a democratically-elected government. Just ask Chile and Iran.

The Russians did it because Vladimir Putin doesn’t like me, says Hillary Clinton. Just like the seventh grade. She did say some mean girl things about Putin a few years ago (from the first link):

Clinton said she believed [and believed is the key word in this whole paragraph] Russian-backed hackers went after her campaign because of a personal grudge that Putin had against her. Putin had blamed Clinton for fomenting mass protests in Russia after disputed 2011 parliamentary elections that challenged his rule. Putin said Clinton, then secretary of state, had “sent a signal” to protesters by labeling the elections “neither free nor fair.”

You have to wonder if a “signal” is all we sent. Maybe we sent Victoria Nuland with a big bag of cookies, too!

Perhaps the Russkies did do it, or perhaps it was a leak, not a hack, as the Wikileaks people say it is. And still, no one has ever said that a single thing published by Wikileaks from the DNC or Podesta — or from anyone else, for that matter — was false.

It seems that everyone wants to flog this story, but nobody, including the CIA and now the FBI, wants to illuminate it.

If they won’t — or can’t — make a record on this, I’m not buying it, and I hope you don’t either, my friends.