Fuck John Brennan

John Brennan has a new memoir coming out soon called “Never Skeered: My Noble Fight Against Those Who Would Dare Suggest The CIA Does Bad Shit.” I have an unfinished essay in some draft folder somewhere from way back in 2018 about how much John Brennan sucks, but since I’m obviously never going to finish that, I’ll just relay the brief thesis here, which is that John Brennan sucks.

Brennan spent much of the last few years on MSNBC or NBC insisting that Donald Trump, along with others in his administration and family, would be charged with criminal conspiracy with Russia against the United States, constantly assuring viewers that collusion was real, and the imminent charges from the Mueller probe would be spectacular—even as he was far more circumspect when testifying before Congress about those very issues. I don’t think I have to explain why a recent former head of the CIA going on television and making years of claims about his suspicions is different from just about any other idiot pundit doing the same thing.

Brennan’s book, “Unflinching: It’s Not Murder When We Do It,” which no one should read, ever, apparently spends at least some of its length whining about the fact that Donald Trump instructed the CIA and others across US intelligence services to tell Brennan to bugger off if he came around trying to research classified materials. An affront to his honor! A distinct break with tradition! An attempt to stop a good man from exercising his God-given right to write his own hagiographic mem-waahs with complete access to all his enemies secrets, while also hindering his ability to coyly drop non-stories to Joe Scarborough’s audience! Fuck John Brennan and his little respectability war. He and Trump deserve each other.

In 2018, Brennan was interviewed by Mary Louise Kelly on All Things Considered on NPR. Following up on a conversation they had in 2016, Kelly confronted Brennan on his previous assertion that the CIA is not in the secrets-stealing business. Brennan insisted that while other governments might see it as stealing, here in the United States it’s wrong to call it stealing, because it’s perfectly legal for the CIA to do it. He went on to deny that the CIA kills or tortures, because killing and torturing would be illegal. When the CIA does it, it is done only with the blessing of the “highest legal body in the executive branch, which is the Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Justice,” which makes it legal.

I still remember the feeling of unreality I had listening to that interview, sitting in my car. Brennan wasn’t denying the charges, he was denying that anything he or his agency had done was wrong, because it all happened in a legalistic framework designed to justify actions that would otherwise be considered obvious crimes. And this fuckin’ guy was out here presenting himself as the noble, patriotic face of the Spook Resistance? GTFOH, John Brennan. Can you believe this asshole?

Here’s an excerpt, if you don’t want to go read the whole thing.

KELLY: So in other countries, does the CIA steal secrets?

BRENNAN: (Laughter) Sure. Yes, they do in other countries. But again, stealing is not what we do here in the United States, you know, because people were, you know, concerned about what we're doing vis a vis American citizens and on U.S. soil. The CIA's been accused and the intelligence community has been accused of killing people as well. We don't kill. And so I was trying to make the point that we don't break the law.

KELLY: The CIA has carried out targeted assassinations in its history. It's carried out drone strikes that have killed people.

BRENNAN: There's never been an acknowledgement of that at all, absolutely not.

KELLY: You're denying it.

BRENNAN: I'm saying that, well, if there were such a program, it would be a covert action program, and it would be something that wouldn't be acknowledged by the agency or by me. So - but my point is that if the agency had such a covert action program, it would be done wholly consistent with U.S. law.

Race to the Top

On the Marketplace Morning Report on NPR this morning, Nancy Marshall-Genzer reported on a new poll from Gallup that found that non-white people are significantly more likely to have concerns about the cost of care related to COVID-19 treatment than are white people. This is a short report during a segment on economic news that can’t be bothered to point out that the disparity in concern among races about healthcare costs is entirely explained by socioeconomic status, and has absolutely nothing to do with the race of the respondents. Does race play a role—perhaps even a major and determinative one—in socioeconomic status in the aggregate? Of course! And more should be done to correct for inequities built into the system that lead to a disproportionate number of non-white people to be stuck in the sub-$40,000 year jobs that leads to the sort of financial anxiety found in this poll. But the framing of this story obscures or ignores all of that, instead making it seem like non-white people are just oddly more susceptible to COVID-19-related financial instability. The immediate cause of their financial worry is their economic status, not their skin color. This story takes a correlative fact and centers it as a determining cause, to no one’s benefit.

But good work, Gallup! And absolutely fucking God’s work elevating it to a national news blurb, NPR. I’d have never guessed that poor people are more likely to be concerned about the cost of something than are people who are more well off. Time, energy, and money well spent on this poll!

“Umbrella Man” Smashed Windows with Bad Motivations

Remember back at the beginning of the Minneapolis George Floyd protests, when that guy dressed in black, carrying an umbrella, was filmed smashing out the windows of an AutoZone that would soon be looted and burned to the ground? Turns out he’s some sort of White Supremacist in a couple of fun clubs, the Hells Angels and the Aryan Cowboys, according to the Washington Post.

I remember seeing on social media that this guy was a cop—in fact, a particular cop!—a meme that made the rounds all the way from leftist twitter to boomer moms on Facebook. They’re not naming the individual at this point, so of course some people out there are still certain that he’s also a cop. Anyway, the real cops are now saying that this guy was smashing windows to incite violence and chaos and discredit an otherwise peaceful demonstration. I guess it worked, half-a-billion in property damage later.

I think there are just about as many “Umbrella Man” White Supremacist assholes out there as there are violent, burn-it-all-down anarchists out there—not very many. But we seem to know what to do with the Aryan Cowboys hammering out AutoZone windows of the world, and we’re a bit more confused about the other kind, almost to the point where we pretend they don’t really exist.

All I know is that I wouldn’t go fight in the streets with Umbrella Man, because that’s what Umbrella Man wants me to do. I wouldn’t go fight in the streets with Trump’s and Barr’s secret DHS police force, because that’s what Trump and Barr want me to do. And I wouldn’t go out smashing up Starbucks and federal courthouses and whatever else, because that’s what all those assholes—Umbrella Man, Trump and Barr, some small number of actual anarchists—want me to do.

Elon Musk Immediately Fulfills Cast Iron Brains Prophecy

Shortly after I predicted it in this week’s podcast, Elon Musk said on Twitter that he’d be happy to license Tesla’s powertrain and software technology to other companies, if only it meant helping the world get to a more sustainable future sooner than later.

Don Draper: Kodak’s nuCarousel lets us travel around and around and back home again, to a place where we know we are loved—like all great pharmaceuticals.

On Tuesday, Donald Trump announced that Kodak was getting into pharmaceutical manufacturing. Using the Defense Production Act, Kodak will get a loan from the government of nearly three-quarters of a billion dollars to produce generic drugs and hopefully ease some of the choke points in the global supply chain. Kodak stock, which had been trading at about two bucks a share, now costs around $40 per share, which, according to my math, is significantly more than two dollars.

What’s interesting is not that a massive loan from the government and a bold new direction for one of America’s proudest companies prompted a spike in share prices—all the way up to $60 each for a moment on Wednesday morning—but what happened before the announcement even took place. After seeing daily trading volume for the last month of between 50,000 and 200,000 shares changing hands per day, on Monday—the day before the announcement—Kodak saw a volume of 1.6 million shares traded.

Surely, no one in the Trump administration is dumb enough to have bought Kodak stocks on Monday, though that may be because no one in the Trump orbit is smart enough to have bought Kodak stocks on Monday, either. But word got out to somebody, somehow! It would be very interesting to find out the who and the when. This is your capitalism, this is your free market. Can you believe these assholes?

Donald Trump, Noted Reader

This morning, Donald Trump was tweetin’ hard. He retweeted out a bunch of clips from Fox News, he tweeted praise for Fox’s primetime lineup, and he retweeted an op-ed from Nikki Hailey warning that electing Joe Biden would undo everything that Donald Trump had achieved that was somehow not actually a Joe Biden endorsement, despite all the evidence of, well, you know, look around! Trump also retweeted an op-ed from Fox’s Judge Andrew Napolitano that explicitly calls Donald Trump a totalitarian.

The simplest explanation is that Trump saw the cool, very strong photo of cops in riot gear standing over a cowering protester and said “this good!" before thumbing the retweet button. The other simple explanation is that he accidentally fat-thumbed it. A slightly less likely possibility is that he read the first couple of paragraphs, which reads as an indictment of local law enforcement, and assumed there was nothing bad about him in there, headline be damned. The least likely explanation is that Trump thinks it’s cool to be called a totalitarian, and that people thinking he’s a big strong dictator burnishes his strongman image, and that what Napolitano thinks is damning is actually flattering to him, but I guess we can’t rule that out, either.

Regardless of why it got retweeted by the president’s account, one thing is certain—it’s impossible to know anything about anything right now, and that’s very bad. There is no making sense of this particular piece of communication. Some will say he’s too dumb to know Napolitano is upset with him. Some will say he knows exactly what he’s doing, and it’s funny, actually, how much you don’t get it. Some will say he’s demonstrating power, some will say he’s functionally illiterate.

Everyone will be certain. Everyone will know. From nothing, they will know. Meanwhile, all I know is, can you believe these assholes?