CIA and FBI Should Make Public Any and All Evidence That Russia Tampered with Election
U.S. intelligence agencies (not to mention Congress) have little to no credibility with public. They should heed Justin Amash's call for transparency.
The Washington Post and The New York Times have released explosive reports suggesting that Russian hackers actively screwed with the presidential election, even tipping things in favor of Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton. The stories, however, are based on anonymous sources from groups whose records of obfuscations, mistakes, and screw-ups are legendary. At least one elected official, the libertarian-leaning Republican Rep. Justin Amash of Michigan, has called for public disclosure of whatever evidence U.S. intelligence community presented to be made available to Congress:
If intel community has evidence, it should be shared immediately with all of Congress. Be skeptical of any claims from anonymous officials. https://t.co/cBFyRGmypu
— Justin Amash (@justinamash) December 10, 2016
If anything, Amash is too selective in saying all members of Congress (instead of particular members and committees) should be presented the full case. Rather, this is something the voting public should be able to suss out. We'll get to that in a moment.
The Post's assessment of Russian efforts includes statements like this one:
"It is the assessment of the intelligence community that Russia's goal here was to favor one candidate over the other, to help Trump get elected," said a senior U.S. official briefed on an intelligence presentation made to U.S. senators. "That's the consensus view."…
The CIA shared its latest assessment with key senators in a closed-door briefing on Capitol Hill last week, in which agency officials cited a growing body of intelligence from multiple sources. Agency briefers told the senators it was now "quite clear" that electing Trump was Russia's goal, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters.
According to the Post, officials in the Obama administration had been discussing how to deal with Russian activity, including hacks of emails of the Democratic National Committee that were then supposedly given to Wikileaks, for months. The administration ultimately did nothing (or at least nothing public) with their suspicions. Wikileaks denies that Russia was the source for either the DNC emails or the "Podesta emails," which the group released in the final weeks of the election.
In its continuing coverage, The New York Times notes that the new revelations aren't based on new evidence:
The C.I.A.'s conclusion does not appear to be the product of specific new intelligence obtained since the election, several American officials, including some who had read the agency's briefing, said on Sunday. Rather, it was an analysis of what many believe is overwhelming circumstantial evidence—evidence that others feel does not support firm judgments—that the Russians put a thumb on the scale for Mr. Trump, and got their desired outcome.
It is unclear why the C.I.A. did not produce this formal assessment before the election, although several officials said that parts of it had been made available to President Obama in the presidential daily briefing in the weeks before the vote. But the conclusion that Moscow ran an operation to help install the next president is one of the most consequential analyses by American spy agencies in years.
The Times' coverage stresses that the Russian government has disliked Hillary Clinton at least since the early 2000s when, as a senator from New York, she encouraged anti-Russian activities in Ukraine and elsewhere. In 2011, Vladimir Putin publicly accused Clinton, then secretary of state, of instigating anti-Putin demonstrations after he won re-election. By the same token, says the Times, Donald Trump is considered to be chummy and accommodating to Putin. That's all plausible-sounding enough, even if it does leave various loose ends (such as the Obama administration's much-touted attempted "reboot" with Russia and uranium deals involving the Clinton Foundation) unexplained. Is it likely that Russia and Putin took an interest in the U.S. election and that they preferred one candidate over another? Certainly. And it's equally likely that Russia would prefer Trump, who has signaled clearly that he is less interested in hemming in Russia's influence in former Soviet republics and Europe.
At the same time, the stories also function to delegitimate Donald Trump's win in the presidential race, which was narrow to begin with (contrary to the Trump campaign's insistence that he won in a "landslide," it just ain't so). Forget that neither story actually presents even anonymously sourced information that shows Russian (or even Wikileaks) activity tipped the election. FiveThirtyEight's Nate Silver argues that if anything tipped things to Trump, it was FBI Director James Comey's decision to reopen his investigation into Clinton's email scandal:
Comey had a large, measurable impact on the race. Harder to say with Russia/Wikileaks because it was drip-drip-drip. https://t.co/LgJkfYpZCk https://t.co/9FYMNz763b
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) December 11, 2016
Well, maybe, maybe not. There's at least one thing to keep in mind as this story plays out, especially in the post-fact world that the Trump era may have helped usher in: We need more transparency than even Justin Amash is calling for. Given the incendiary nature of the charges being made in the press by anonymous sources at two of the least-reputable organizations in the United States (both the CIA and FBI have long histories of making honest mistakes, incompetent oversights, and outright deception), it's not enough for the intelligence community simply to share its information with the full Congress, which is actually even less trusted than the media. Just 20 percent of Americans have "a great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in newspapers, for instance, while even fewer of us—just 9 percent!—have "a great deal" or "quite a lot" of trust in Congress.
Writing at Medium, former CIA analyst Patrick Eddington argues "Make public all Russian election hacking and influence op intel. Now. Electoral College voters deserve all the facts before casting their votes":
We need this information made public precisely because if it is true, we do need to revisit this election?—?immediately. Even if President Obama has doubts about the CIA's case, this issue is too important for him to decide unilaterally to slow-roll the release of this data until his successor has already been chosen. The American public deserves to have the same information Obama and the Congress have on this issue so that, if necessary, we can undo what the Russian government has allegedly done.
Eddington notes that seven senators wrote to President Obama at the end of November, ostensibly after getting the CIA's most-recent assessment. He says that it's quite possible that Obama, like the FBI, didn't think the case is particularly strong or overwhelming enough to take action. The electors will cast their ballots on December 19 and the time to act is before that.
I'm less interested in the outcome of this particular election, which Trump won according to constitutional practice (indeed, it's not even clear to me that the Russian activity described by the Times and Post would invalidate the results). But we are facing a long-term decline in confidence and trust in virtually all major U.S. institutions. The drop-off is particularly steep in governmental and political areas and is due entirely to incompetent and rotten behavior on the part of elected officials, policymakers, and their supporters in government and the press. Americans didn't simply become cynical in the 21st century. Rather, we elected people who spoke out of both sides of their mouths every time they flapped their gums. Whether George W. Bush believed in weapons of mass destruction or not, the fact is the major argument for invading Iraq came a cropper. At the same time, he and other Republicans insisted they were in favor of limited, smaller government even as they presided its reckless growth in size, scope, and spending. The "anti-war" Obama maintained a secret kill list, for god's sake, and made a hash of the economy, health care, and so much else. Mitch McConnell and Harry Reid, John Boehner and Nancy Pelosi: We know that folks such as these are lying whenever their gums are flapping.
Again, the point isn't that politicians are always liars or that government is always incompetent. It's that trust and confidence in the honesty and efficacy of both have been shredded by (at least) the past 15 years' of experience. The 2016 election underscored the decline in trust and confidence when the two major parties tossed up two candidates who were particularly incapable of being straight with voters.
The 21st century is supposed to be all about transparency, right? Uber works because everyone in the system can keep track of one another, so people generally play nice, right? Government, especially a federal government whose confidence rating is in the crapper, needs to change its behavior and become more open and less shrouded. Having a really open discussion about these truly explosive charges regarding an election that effectively ended in a dead heat between two parties and two candidates that are generally disliked would be a good start toward a better, more believable future.
Related vid: Economic Growth, Coherent Foreign Policy, Trust in Govt: What WON'T Be Settled [on November 8]:
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CIA and FBI Should Make Public Evidence That Russia Tampered with Election
WHAT?! And jeopardize National Security?!
WHAT?! And jeopardize the CIA and FBI ability to selectively leak and thereby influence US policy?!
will we trust organizations that routinely make up false reports to screw over other governments and often create fake reports to get the U.S. citizenry into pleading to go to war with countries just for their material wealth?
Indeed, have these people not yet learned that there are certain delicate matters that must never be mentioned, let alone divulged to the public? This includes “whistle-blowing” of all sorts, and inappropriately deadpan “satire” too. Surely no one here would dare to defend the outrageous “First Amendment dissent” of a single, isolated judge in America’s leading criminal “parody” case? See the documentation at:
https://raphaelgolbtrial.wordpress.com/
And yet, despite these basic facts, we now hear voices arguing that information should be made “public.” To which the obvious reply is, give us a break. The fastest way to get Snowden back here and into a place where he belongs is to ignore these little matters and let our incoming national leader handle the matter. Only then will America be great again, so let’s take a step back from this “free and open access to information” baloney.
I haven’t RTFA, but the headline is spot on. All of this innuendo concerning the election results is going to poison the peaceful transfer of power, an institution worth preserving for obvious reasons.
You’re not going to like the article.
Having RTFA, I don’t get your point.
The article is suggesting the CIA should release the evidence they used to conclude Russia helped Trump win and this evidence would presumably do more to “poison the peaceful transfer” than rank innuendo.
It’s called “put up or shut up” and I agree.
If the evidence is that damning then everyone needs to know. If not, then we need to move on.
All of this innuendo concerning the election results is going to poison the peaceful transfer of power, an institution worth preserving for obvious reasons.
Ehhh… Tree of Liberty is looking pretty wilted and if there must be trouble…
The Progressives lost the election and that had been deemed to be impossible.
They don’t give too shits about preserving any institutions.
And you’re right about that tree of Liberty.
One note on that mucking up the peaceful transfer of power….. Has Hillary’s camp notice how extremely fucking ecstatic the military is about Gen. Mattis? I don’t think Hillary will have the military on her side for her takeover bid…..
The Daily Squat: Dumping a steaming pile of news on you daily.
LOL, that’s pretty damn funny. I never saw that site before until now.
And the best part is that they’re just as credible as the Washington Post and the New York Times!
Guess you didn’t read the teen vogue article that discussed how venerated the NY Times is. All of the sycophants were out praising it as the article of the year.
Rather, it was an analysis of what many believe is overwhelming circumstantial evidence ? evidence that others feel does not support firm judgments ? that the Russians put a thumb on the scale for Mr. Trump, and got their desired outcome.
I appreciate the selective use of the word “feel” but it sounds to me like feelings all around.
So you’re going with your feelings on this on, I confused.
If you have enough zeroes they’ll eventually add up to something.
Only for very large values of zero
0/0 = 1?
This is really simple math. “Many” > “others.”
The Trump administration is going down if they release this information.
Says the same people who were positive Hillary was going to be President.
Why do you think that? Unless there is some true bombshell about actively tampering with vote totals (which seems highly unlikely, since that is *not* the sort of thing you sit on for any reason), Russia’s actions seem limited to selectively releasing negative but true information about one campaign and not the other. But there was plenty of negative coverage of Trump. I fail to see how Russia’s actions in the most likely scenario could invalidate the results of the election.
Because TrumpBUSHHITLER!!!! MISOGYNISTISISISISISISISIT, RACCCISTTTTTT, and Hillary is the golden one who will save our souls and Redeem our virtues!!!!!!!!!!
Trump was asking the Russians to interfere on his behalf and here we find out yes, they did interfere. That’s textbook criminal conspiracy. Words have meaning.
“Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press”.
I may be wrong, but I believe Russia already had the e-mails (perhaps this is still unknown). Trump doesn’t get credit for asking for them after the fact. If he knew they had them, and he’s asking for them to be released, then that’s not a crime (or shouldn’t be).
But the Russians did not find the 30,000 Hillary emails that are “missing”.
And Trump was obviously telling a political joke at the expense of Hillary.
That’s not a “joke.” A “joke” would be suggesting that Hillary sent the emails through a woodchipper.
But the Russians did not find release the 30,000 Hillary emails that are “missing”.
Pretty sure they were reading her email before she was.
Which was a joke, first of all, and second, does not constitute interference in an election unless journalists dredging up dirt on politicians also constitutes interference in elections, in which case journalists are a clear and present danger to our democracy.
LOLZ, as if Russia would ever need or ask for permission to try to hack someone. All major states constantly spy on and attempt to surveil other states, we got into hot water a few years ago when it was revealed we were tapping communications from even friendly nations like Merkel’s Germany.
This whole idea that Russia wouldn’t have tried to hack emails (if indeed it was them or someone they sponsored) doesn’t even pass a simple logic test.
Foolish mammal! Only your species can be so inept as not to see the mechanations of Your Future Reptilian Overlords at work. Perhaps when the orbital bombardments start your question your absurd theories.
Last species to try that was a race of herd creatures resembling elephants. We kicked their ass with a steam punk ship.
Yeah, it’s no fair that the Russians would selectively leak information about one candidate. That’s the media’s job.
Like selling uranium from the small US stockpile to your sworn nuclear enemy? Or knowingly deleting subpoenaed emails? Factual evidence showing collusion with media during the campaign will be the downfall. Nah, well just blame one comment by one guy toward the end.
Fuck them all. Lock’ em all up. This deflection of “oh, but Killary did this” has nothing to do with Donald Trump’s crimes.
What “crimes”? Be specific and lay,p out your evidence (not innuendo).
Lol. It’s not sentient.
Shut the fuck up, Tulpa.
If the Trump administration goes down, what administration is going to go up? How exactly is that going to work?
I’m guessing it’ll be the side with the most Generals on it. Trump appears to have a decided advantage there….
Fuck that if that happens America is going down too.
There are many many of us who will not allow Hillary to steal the office of President, or allow Obama to remain in it past his term……
Yes, but they won’t, because the entire thing is ridiculous and there is no evidence. The only evidence uncovered would be of them making this shit up.
Also, the Democrats are starting to make it clear that they do not want elections unless they can always go their way.
Waahhhh! We lost!!!
Does this numskull have any idea what type of damage it would do to the country if he were able to get his way on this?
There are glaring contradictions in your statements.
This one isn’t sentient.
You’re not in a position to say what is or isn’t true concerning these allegations. You should keep your mind open to the possibility the entire thing isn’t ridiculous.
Taco Cheese|12.12.16 @ 10:42AM|#
“You’re not in a position to say what is or isn’t true concerning these allegations. You should keep your mind open to the possibility the entire thing isn’t ridiculous.”
You’re a fucking troll. Get lost.
Not even an interesting one, on the level with Hillary sycophant Mint Berry Crunch. *blocks*
Shut the fuck up, Tulpa.
The old saying, “To move your enemy, entice him with something he is sure to take.” You’ve got to wonder if the Russians really had this grand scheme, would they have been caught or did they want to get caught? I’m no hacker, but it seems like you could do it without getting busted if you had the resources. The whole thing is complete conjecture at this point, but off to the races we go.
STUXNET, just let it out in the wild, then trigger it later.
“You should keep your mind open to the possibility the entire thing isn’t ridiculous.”
I want this on a t-shirt.
I’ve been seeing FB petitions to the EC since the election. When someone points out that it isn’t worth jeopardizing faith in our institutions, the general response is that normally that would be correct, but Trump is even more dangerous than undermining the results of the election.
It’s lunacy. There are constitutionally provided mechanisms for dealing with corrupt Presidents. The downsides to screwing with the election results are huge by comparison to that, but they don’t seem to care.
They are convinced that Trump is an existential threat to the country. If I felt that way I guess I would endorse some pretty extreme actions as well. But as much as I dislike Trump, I definitely don’t think he is an existential threat.
In other words, they’re willing to burn the whole thing down.
I’m willing to burn the whole thing down, as long as I’m the one controlling the guillotines. I don’t think the statists would like where that one would go for them.
The progs are so far into their echo-chamber that they honestly believe everyone would be on their side.
They literally watched 62 MILLION of their countrymen vote for Trump and STILL believe that Trump has no support from anyone.
They are INSANE…..
Hillary, by still pushing this bullshit instead of just letting it go, is an actual threat to the country and if she had won the electoral college I’d be holding onto my butt and hoping the ass raping wouldn’t be too bad. Exactly like I am for Trump.
These people are fucking insane.
Well the general sentiment I’m getting from a lot of lefties on the internet was that if Trump voters were dead Hillary would have won.
The hate being pushed by the left these days is of epic proportions. Violence will be following.
I’ve started to see FB leftists talking about stocking up on gas masks for protection from air pollution and tourniquets in case of mass shooting (apparently leftists have fantasies of mass shootings when Republicans become President).
Plus, I’ve seen one FB leftist post about hopes for a coup or a foreign government to invade and institute regime change on the US.
I got that he said the point of the electoral college was to prevent trump-like outcomes and that we need to abolish it. Maybe I read it wrong but I don’t care enough to check.
You cannot release made up political smear.
Its a desperation move by Democrats who are running out of option before Trump’s inauguration and Hillary is reinvestigated and indicted.
Is Hillary going to be reinvestigated and indicted? Didn’t Trump already renege on that?
Trump took prosecution off the table. Hillary keeps putting it back on the table.
She’s sure as hell been such a fucking shit about losing that yeah, she’s earned a hard look charges and real jail time.
I thought she was an awful human being before the election. She’s a fucking traitor and inhuman pile of dog shit.
Deplorable enough for you Hill??
This isn’t just Democrats, though. John McCain, Lindsey Graham? The R’s before their names are pretty huge.
McCain and Graham! Now loved by lefty losers!
So McCain and Graham show the ability to think outside of obvious partisan thinking, and it somehow makes THEM, or the people who wouldn’t ordinarily support them, the idiotic partisan hacks?
Update: now Mitch McConnell has supported further investigations. Still think this is a silly witch-hunt by sore losers?
Yes. It is.
The RINOS are turncoats.
The CIA hasn’t actually said anything. Some anonymous twit who may or may not exist claims the CIA is accusing the Russians.
Exactly. Fake news again from WaPo.
Yeah, but it must be true because the legacy media absolutely KNOWS it’s true.
(sigh)
A third possibility, which is not nearly as likely as #1, is that Obama hates Hillary.
Obama doesn’t hate Hilary near as much as he loves his legacy.
There’s another option, which is that Obama was picturing himself on Hawaii during the briefing and missed that tidbid. No big deal though, right?
In regards to people going after Trump for criticizing the CIA, et. al. on this, I see this like I see going after a candidate’s family.
Going after a candidate’s family is generally considered below the belt, but that changes if the candidate uses his family itself as a campaign issue. Project yourself as an excellent example of a good father, in contrast to your opponent, and your opponent pointing out that your daughter is peddling her ass in the street in exchange for heroin becomes fair game (if that’s what she’s doing).
The CIA is like that.
If the CIA wants to start commenting on the President Elect’s legitimacy, then the CIA becomes a legitimate target of the President Elect.
Exactly. I don’t think people really understand the seriousness of this whole situation. Federal institutions needs to remain apolitical (at least in appearance). I don’t like Trump, but he would be right to fire the entire upper management of the CIA upon taking office.
Quite frankly, given the total lack of development of Human Intelligence sources and means, and the lack of focus on said Human Intelligence sources and methods, due largely to the culture of the CIA (and the focus on the DI versus the DO), most of those people should be fired anyways.
Well yeah… I’d say that about most of the federal agencies, but the CIA has a particularly horrible record.
I would like to see the CIA diminished to only supplying information, spying only. no more gun running to so called favored leaders of any nation and nothing more, just information.
It wasn’t ok when the FBI said things that might do damage to Hillary. It’s totally ok when the CIA (who hasn’t actually made any statement) does the same and it might damage Trump. Hmm, that’s odd. It’s almost like someone is engaging in bias here. Ahh, the smell of desperation in the morning…
You are making a terrible false equivalence. Comey’s letter 11 or whatever days before the election was complete nonsense. The FBI literally came out and said 8 days later “oh, this is nothing, never mind.” Releasing a statement when and how he did was at the very least amazingly short-sighted as to what effect it could have on the election, and at worst actively attempting to sway the election. Comey deserves a great deal of criticism over this. Considering how this played out, there are zero explanations where he didn’t act foolishly or even recklessly.
The Russian emails though…? This has been a story simmering in the back round for months, and now some ranking figures in both parties are calling for a greater investigation. There’s clearly a lot more legs to this story, and represents a far greater problem. More than anything though, this wasn’t a domestic power doing some shit – this was a foreign agency potentially interfering in US elections. Calling “hypocrisy!” when someone says one thing about one story and another thing about the other is to be willfully ignorant of the facts of each case.
mortiscrum|12.12.16 @ 12:09PM|#
“…Comey’s letter 11 or whatever days before the election was complete nonsense….”
Pathetic loser still in denial.
You lost. Siddown and shaddup.
How libertarian of you. I still live here and free speech is still a thing, so I’ll continue to post my opinions, thankyouverymuch.
Free speech also means the freedom to tell people to shut up when they’re spouting nonsense.
Well yes, but that concept loses a bit of its luster in the context of almost never having seen Sevo post ANYTHING but “fuck you liberal asshole” or similar.
If the Russians hacked the vote totals, yeah, that’s interfering. But if the hacked the DNC servers and released the info? Not much different than what the U.S. has done over the years.
That doesn’t make it right, though, in either direction.
I’m not trying to make an argument that if it proves true that Trump shouldn’t be president. He was elected; it’d take a lot bigger scandal than this to safely remove him from office and not cause more damage to the country as a whole. I do NOT support any of the wackadoo efforts to prevent him from being sworn in.
But that doesn’t mean that this isn’t still potentially a big story. A foreign power engaging in espionage to sway the outcome of our elections? That’s a big fucking deal, and I want to know more.
None of this is really about attacking Trump’s legitimacy.
It’s really about the progressives that run the Democratic party defending their own legitimacy.
The primary cause of the Democrats losing to Trump is because the progressives who’ve been running the Democratic party over the past eight years demonized whites for being racist, Christians for being homophobes, blue collar workers for being stupid rednecks, and middle class workers for refusing to sacrifice their standard of living because of global warming.
Hating people on that basis is a huge part of what being a progressives is all about, and if that’s the reason the Democrats lost, then the Democrats lost because they’re being led by progressives.
The progressive are desperate to convince their support base and their donors, that they’re not the reason why the Democrats lost–so they come up with the electoral college excuse, the citizens united excuse, the Comey excuse, the fake news excuse, and now the Russian hackers excuse.
“The primary cause of the Democrats losing to Trump is because the progressives who’ve been running the Democratic party over the past eight years demonized whites for being racist, Christians for being homophobes, blue collar workers for being stupid rednecks, and middle class workers for refusing to sacrifice their standard of living because of global warming.”
And they’re going to double down on it now. Stay tuned for space aliens and bigfoot causing the Democrats to lose the next election.
Yeah, that’s a fair point . . .
If progressives are the polar opposite of libertarians, we shouldn’t bother cluing the progressives in on the truth.
If the Demcorats lost because they’re led by progressives, then nobody tell them. Just let them think it was Russian hackers–and maybe they won’t change a thing.
Even if you told them, which they’ve been told quite a bit after the election, they wouldn’t believe it. There’s no chance of talking sense into them even if you tried.
It’s not the progressives themselves that can be convinced. It’s the honest liberals out there who let them take over the reigns of the party.
There are real live liberals out there whose support the progressive depend on for their leadership role in the party. This is all a play for their support.
Meanwhile, Trump is trumping his way into a war with China because he doesn’t understand the “One China” issue.
This is why Trump’s suggestion that “One China” is another bargaining chip, which the U.S. can play or not play as it likes, is both misleading and risky. On the one hand, it apparently misses the subtle, but extremely significant, differences between the American “one China policy” and the Chinese “one China principle.” On the other, it endangers the central tenet of American policy in the area ? the maintenance of the status quo.
Apparently “the status quo” involves China getting frisky and belligerent in the South China Sea I guess. Let’s not dare call a spade a spade lest we offend the neighborhood bully threatening our friends. Fuck China, they’re goddamn commie bastards.
Anyone else remember Comey swearing up and down last summer that there was no evidence the Russians or any other foreign power hacked Hillary’s or the DNC’s email account? Back when saying the Russian’s didn’t hack her account was useful to getting her elected, they were all about the Russians having nothing to do with any of this. Now that she is lost and the goal is to undermine Trump, suddenly the Russians were behind it all. What changed since last summer other than political expediency?
Excellent point, John. I also recall solemn assurance that there was no evidence that any foreign power looked at Hillary’s butt-naked and wide-open email account. I don’t recall anyone giving such assurances on the DNC account, but I think I recall that it was initially hacked by a Rumanian with no connections to Russian intelligence. Personally, I think it was a leak by a disgruntled insider, probably a Bernie supporter disgusted by the DNC cheating to help Hillary.
Gucifer. Reportedly a cab driver living in Romania. But now it takes an entire country of supposedly super hackers headed by an evil super genius to do the same.
It takes tremendous resources to guess which letters in “password” were replaced with symbols.
I think that when the Whitehouse officially announces that Russia ‘hacked’ the election, they should have that Ancient Aliens guy do the announcement.
Too bad Leonard Nimoy isn’t still alive. He could do it as a special edition of “In Search Of”.
Great. I guess that task now falls to Zach Quinto.
The government has had little to no credibility with the American public since I was a child some 60+ years ago. And considering that settlers would move into hostile territories to get get away from the government I suspect they never have. You need to remember only 3% of the colonists fought for independence. The vast majority probably just wished both sides would just go away.
The idea that the CIA is complaining about one country interfering in another country’s election broke my irony meter.
If the Russians were behind this, we should know about it. We don’t want foreign governments interfering in our elections just on principle.
But it doesn’t really matter where the truth came from does it?
Here’s an example: The Zimmerman Telegram.
The British intercepted and released the Zimmerman Telegram because they wanted us to join them in their war effort, and they thought it might shock us out of our isolationism.
But what difference does it make whether we learned the truth from our own efforts or from the efforts of a foreign country that was trying to manipulate us?
The important thing is that we learned the truth.
If the Russians were behind this, then we should know that, too–just like any truth. More truth, the better.
The Zimmerman note was sent over US diplomatic cables. the Brits had cut all German owned cable at the start of the war and the US was allowing Germany to use its cable. So the Germans were using US cables to plan a war against the US – and the Brits intercepted it and then gave it to the US (while lying about which cables it was sent on – the other option being the Swedish cable – because the Brits didn’t want to tell the US they were spying on US cables) so we would have an ‘acceptable reason’ to declare war against Germany. When in reality, we were gonna enter the war anyway (for banking/arms trade reasons – none of which were legal for a supposed ‘neutral’) in a couple of months on the Brit/French side once the Russians collapsed (which everyone knew was just a matter of time/means) and Germany focused West.
Yes – transparency is a good thing. But it will never happen because all sides are a bunch of scum-sucking cockroaches who can’t stand the light of day.
We’re talking about drumming up public support for the war–like we’re talking about the Russians drumming down support for Hillary.
The point is that where the information came from or the motivations of the people who exposed the truth shouldn’t be anywhere near as important as the truth itself.
If Snowden’s motivations had been nefarious rather than good, the truth he revealed would have been just as important regardless.
“The point is that where the information came from or the motivations of the people who exposed the truth shouldn’t be anywhere near as important as the truth itself.”
This is a fairly common “progressive” tactic: insisting that information should be regarded as false or irrelevant because the motives of the person delivering that information are said to be bad, or because that person is said to be gaining some kind of benefit by making people believe that information.
Naturally, there are huge exceptions granted to this:
– When Democrats lobby for “investment in green energy” while taking tons of donations from solar and wind power companies
– When Democrats exalt the wonders of big government while taking billions and billions in donations from public sector unions (which are funded by wages taken from the checks of government employees).
Could someone explain the difference between Russian Influence and NYT influence? So if an anonymous source publishes Trumps’s Tax return, that’s a just good journalism.
But if another another anonymous source publishes internal DNC Emails, that’s the end of Democracy as we know it.
Elections are supposed to be internal affairs. I understand why people feel differently about the NYT releasing something vs Russian hackers.
Elections are supposed to be internal affairs.
Internal to what? – S. Dahlmia
Why? I mean I’m all for nationalism, but If Russia or Germany has information that might be germane to our elections then it seems like we should know about it as an informed electorate.
It’s a fair point – the truth is the truth and it shouldn’t matter where it comes from or what the motivations behind it are. All I can say is that it *does* matter to a lot of people, because intentions and group identity matter to a lot of people. When the NYT says something it’s seen as within bounds because they are part of the in-group, their writers can vote and will live under the new president. The assumption is that their interests are America-centered, and even if they are wildly different than the interests of some other Americans, it’s part of a debate between Americans.
When Russia says something it’s seen as out of bounds because they are part of the out-group, they can’t vote and won’t live under the new president. The assumption is that their interests are Russia-centered, and even if they align with the interests of some Americans, they aren’t supposed to be part of the debate.
I’m not very motivated by intention-based reasoning or in-group vs out-group competition (which is probably why I am a libertarian), but I am somewhat motivated by them (because I am still human), and I certainly understand where others are coming from.
Absolutely. To pretend like this was unique in the history of elections or even US elections is the height of absurdity. This story seems to mostly be about violating decorum. In other words, it’s 100% 2016. That may not be a good thing but it’s hardly worth the amount of ink being spilled over it.
CNN did all they could to ‘hack’ the election and Hillary still lost.
And we all know Ted Turner is an alien, therefore, Foreign Interventions in the ELECTIONSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!
No no no. This isn’t about foreign governments giving money to Candidates campaigns or charitable foundations, that is completely 100% ok.
This is about EMAILS.
Fucking Progressives. Corruption is just fine and dandy, but having your shit IT security bit you in the ass because well anyone could hack it is totally a BIG FUCKING DEAL.
Rather, it was an analysis of what many believe is overwhelming circumstantial evidence
Who are these “many” what have actually seen and analyzed the circumstantial evidence? Names, pls.
What is this circumstantial evidence?
All I have seen is anonymous second-hand hearsay (at best). For an allegation such as this, you better have some pretty compelling evidence, and not, “Trust us” isn’t evidence.
in the post-fact world that Trump era may have helped usher in
Oh, FFS. The “post-fact” world has been here for some time, and was a creation of our partisan media putting its thumb on the scales. Trump is a player, but he joined a game that has been going on for decades.
I don’t know why reason insists on embarrassing itself with shit like “post fact world”.
“Post-truth” is just a way for journalists to rationalize having covered for Obama’s stupid lies.
When I read that from Reason staff, I think they’re using it tongue-in-cheek.
It’s terrible that Trump has ruined Pols pristine reputations for honesty and integrity. I’m so disillusioned now. I mean if you can’t believe a politician (mostly ex-lawers), what hope is there. Next someones going to tell me Santa isn’t real.
Next someones going to tell me Santa isn’t real.
Oh, no…he’s real. And he’s a hell of a good guy: Boy who asked for last wish dies in Santa’s arms
That’s pretty heartbreaking
Whether the Russians were behind it seems irrelevant to me.
They showed us the truth.
If Snowden had revealed the truth for nefarious reasons, he’d still have revealed the truth.
Is anyone accusing the Russians of manipulating evidence or planting evidence?
P.S. The Podesta emails were potentially more damaging than what the Russians are alleged to have hacked.
P.P.S. The donations that the Clinton Foundation publicly reported to the State Department were more damaging to her reputation (by my account) than anything the Russians are alleged to have hacked.
IP addresses from Russia
It would be hard to know less than me about the internet, but I know for a fact that I can use, not even spoof, but use, an IP address from Russia using a virtual private network and Tor.
If that’s all they got, they got nuthin’.
My understanding was that they used malicious code that’s supposedly a signature of Russian hackers, but malicious code gets traded around the internet, as well.
Our intelligence community missed the invasion of Georgia, the invasion of Ukraine, they missed the Russians’ intent to get involved in Syria, too, but this they’re absolutely sure of?
I strongly suspect there are political motives behind this. Regardless:
1) It doesn’t matter where the truth came from
2) If Trump survived the Allred brigade accusing him of being the infamous Handy McGropester, he’ll survive this.
This is a tempest in the media.
From what I’ve read, the particular hack used was one developed by the Russian military. Some say this is evidence of Russian involvement but I’ve also read that it was an older version of the Russian hack, indicating it was not Russian involvement since they would have used a newer version and the use of the older version indicates somebody who had gotten ahold of the earlier version once it had become general knowledge in the hacking community. Hacks have a fairly short shelf life because as soon as they’re seen a few times counter-measures are developed against them. You can use any old hack against an unsecured server, you ain’t gonna be hacking a top-notch secure server with any old off-the-shelf stuff.
Podesta apparently succumbed to a simple phishing attack:
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/th…..n-podesta/
I don’t see how you can tell where that came from.
FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver argues that if anything tipped things to Trump, it was FBI Director James Comey’s decision to reopen his investigation into Clinton’s email scandal…
Because the voting public was riveted by a story about email.
It reinforced the all-important “grandma doesn’t ‘get’ email” narrative.
No, it reinforced the Hill and Bill have been shaking down everyone with money and loose morals for decades.
Considering that the alleged “interference” was to reveal what assholes the DNC were being, in their own words in their own emils, maybe it would be wiser for the Democrats to stop bringing this story to the public’s attention.
Maybe they could work on their email security, or even better yet, doing some self-examination.
If they lost because Hillary’s reputation was destroyed, Hillary’s reputation had been destroyed long before anything Russian hackers are alleged to have revealed.
And they didn’t only lose because of Hillary’s awful reputation. They also lost because for eight years, the progressives who run the Democratic party have demonized the very voters they needed to win.
For the record, according to Gallup, Hillary’s favorability rating was at 40% in the last Gallup poll available–September 12-25, 2016.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/161…..-news.aspx
That was from before the email revelations came out–I think the earliest ones came in October.
If you look at that Gallup site, Hillary’s favorable ratings haven’t been over 50% since July of 2015. They’ve stayed at around 40% since January of 2016.
He unfavorable rating, on the other hand, has been over 50% since August of 2015, and in that last September 12-25, 2016 survey, her unfavorable ratings were at 55%–again, I believe that’s from before when the emails in question came out.
I suppose someone might argue that the emails broke the camel’s back, but someone could reasonably counter that the camel’s back had been broken back in July of 2015.
So I’m supposed to believe that people willing to overlook Benghazi, a secret email server, blatant lying about said server, war-mongering rhetoric, a Clinton Foundation which is pay for play and probably criminal, etc etc, and vote for Hillary anyways, but a few internal DNC memos changed their mind. What does that say really.
It says they’re desperately fishing for a reason their candidate lots that isn’t, she’s a fucking despicable harpie???!
“…that the Russians put a thumb on the scale for Mr. Trump, and got their desired outcome…”
How, specifically, did they do so? Press releases? Releasing purloined information? Propagandizing?
Unless the information was false, they did nothing that other countries and organizations weren’t already doing for Clinton:
“European foreign ministers back Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/
Thumb on the scale?
Different rules
Don’t blame the unethical actions exposed, blame the snitch who exposed them.
Yeah, and how little self-respect does the DNC have to say, Russia caused Hillery the elction by exposing their deplorable behavior to tip the scales of the primary in her favor
This suggestion makes me wonder, has the CIA ever tried to put its thumb on the scale of any foreign elections? Never mind, I know that’s crazy talk.
Don’t be silly; they don’t bother, they just assassinate people.
What exactly is Trump going to do for Putin? Let him run over the Ukraine? Have a free hand in Syria? Try to shut down fracking to keep the price of oil and gas high and Europe dependent on Russian gas? Did Trump tell Putin he would “have more flexibility once he was elected”? Did someone hear trump saying that on a hot mic when Trump thought what he was saying was private, because that would be a big fucking deal, right?
Oh, just end all the sanctions against Russia and then team up with our dear friends, Russia and Assad, to fight “terrorism”.
Shut the fuck up, Tulpa.
He could sell Eastern Europe short in exchange for Russia pulling support away from Iran, Syria, et. al.
Poland may be our staunchest ally.
“Poland is one of the most consistently pro-American nations in Europe and the world, with 79% of Poles viewing the U.S. favorably in 2002 and 67% in 2013.[1] According to the 2012 U.S. Global Leadership Report, 36% of Poles approve of U.S. leadership, with 30% disapproving and 34% uncertain,[2] and in a 2013 BBC World Service Poll, 55% of Poles view U.S. influence positively, the highest rating for any surveyed European country.[3]”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Poland?United_States_relations
I’d support going to war over Poland.
Sell them uranium.
So IOW, your diary?
Please don’t feed vermin.
The little media boys who cried wolf for years are now crying bear. GFY.
“We can work with Russia – wouldn’t that be nice?” – And the Trumpkins cheered.
Though, they will be crying once the price of gas doubles due to TrumPutin’s nuking the middle east and north africa.
There there, Trumpkin.
I doubt it would double, even if Trump were to nuke the ME and North Africa. It might double for a month or two, until the frackers brought enough rigs back online, then the price would decrease again.
We already know pretty much everything there is to know: Podesta and others apparently fell for phishing originating from Russian addresses; Republicans apparently did not. Those E-mails then got leaked to the West.
It’s an inference that the Russian government sponsored the hacking; of course, it could also have been Republicans, Sanders supporters, Persians, Peter Thiel, or anybody else with enough money to hire a Russian hacker gang.
But even if it was the Russian government, so what? They released accurate and relevant information about one of the candidates. And while phishing may technically be illegal, it is hardly much of an “attack”, and falling for it is itself an indication of unsuitability for high office.
And how about the massive support Clinton received from the European intelligentsia? Lots of European leaders were insulting Trump and praising Hillary in the runup to the election; how is that different? Well, I suppose it is different in the sense that their actions weren’t even fact-based.
“But even if it was the Russian government, so what? They released accurate and relevant information about one of the candidates.”
This pretty much invalidates the hair-pulling and garment-rending; the hacks released honest information.
Unless you choose to argue that candidates should be able to keep unethical (and possibly illegal) behavior hidden, you should applaud the hacks and ask why the Clinton machine tried to keep them hidden.
Do you know who else said that the American people are corrupt and lazy and easily manipulated and poisoned by the propaganda of the Russians/Jews/Shariah/Drugs/Clowns?
Oh, wait, that’s easy: Hillary Clinton!
I can name at least one crisis that would make Russia hacking DNC emails look like spilled milk. That would be if Trump isn’t sworn in as president in January. You want to see this country erupt, overplay that fucking hand.
I’m rooting for chaos now. I’m game.
I don’t think they even have the first clue about what that would mean
I’d rather not see the country break down into open civil war just yet.
I think this is why Trump chose Pence. “Ok. If you want me gone so bad, Here you go, Mike. Have a seat right there in the Oval Office. Oh, wait, I see you’re changing your mind.”
I think this is why Trump chose Pence. “Ok. If you want me gone so bad, Here you go, Mike. Have a seat right there in the Oval Office. Oh, wait, I see you’re changing your mind.”
Pence was chosen to shore up the wobbly so-con vote, and he wasn’t really even needed.
I think Pence was chosen because a bunch of others said “no thanks”
There is that. Flynn was off the table because he was pro-choice, but I’d love to know how many outright “no”s Trump got. His brand was fairly toxic at that point.
His list was limited, but Trump also wanted a Veep that was basically invisible. He probably would’ve run without one if he could have.
Wasn’t Ivanka just a few months too young?
That would be master trolling.
Especially because when asked, he could just say, “Isn’t this what you are doing with your daughter, Mrs. Clinton?” And because Hillary is so corrupt and self serving, it would’ve been seen as accurate.
Yes. That would cause a civil insurrection. What a fucking nightmare
Well there may be evidence of a hack. Just not the one they are thinking
DHS Hack
Unless someone one has actual evidence that someone hacked the Diebold voting machines, then gtfo.
Agreed.
The dems are pissed that the DNC’s bad behavior was outed by the someone. Anything that makes Hillary look bad must be a conspiracy.
Who cares about Russia when we KNOW the FBI stole the election from Hillary?!?
Warning: Heavy-duty Salon derp
They just cannot accept that their candidate was so pathetic that she lost to TRUMP, for pete’s sake!
She needed to have a whole lot more people fooled into thinking that train of baggage wasn’t there. They weren’t fooled; they saw it, they held their noses and voted Trump.
SO MUCH baggage. How lefties could pretend it was all made up by the VRWC eludes me.
Because the Conspiracy is vaster than you know!!!!! The Koch Brothers totally donated to Trump’s Campaign, and they donate more money to right wing conspiracies than George Soros and Tom Steyer and hundreds of other millionaires and billionaires donate to Left wing causes!!!! These are totally verifiable numbers I pulled out of my butt!!!!
I’m not sure what I’m the hacked dnc stuff would have changed the election? The only thing that i recall pissing people off was how Bernie was treated. No one needed hacked emails to tell them that though. Everyone already knew.
The Russians owned Hillary, she gave them 20% of our uranium she created the high tech group in Russia paid for mostly by American corporations and she got over 100 million into her foundation. All of Hillary’s protestations against Russia were just cover for her own acts. and that is what is happening today excuses for her failure and convenent cover up.
And the fact that a lucrative Cold War with China has never really materialized, so Russia is a fallback position to keep the defense money flowing to certain key districts.
Just spitballin’ here, but both are pretty easily explained
*places tin foil hat over heart*
“overcharge”, which in Russian vernacular means “rip off”
The Russian word ?????????? that was written on the button has no “rip off” meaning. At all. The Americans looked stupid because the word was mistranslated but there’s no need to exaggerate the screw-up.
It wasn’t a screw-up by the linguists at the State Department. It was reported at the time that the folks who came up with the “Reset Button” and implemented it were members of the Clinton Team. Basically some college kid getting an internship at the Clinton Foundation used Google Translate for “Reset” and they put it on the button.
It’s more important for the dems to keep the discussion on Russia instead of the content of the emails in question. One email shows Podesta describing how to manipulate the polls by oversampling the demographics which Hillary was doing well. If this ever happened, we would have seen its affects in the real world. You know, like some polls showing Hillary with a much greater lead than other polls.
But why talk about election manipulation of the democrats when we can talk about the Russians instead? 😉
Wait. The democrats oppose the Russians now? When the fuck did this happen?
Probably when Russia interfered with the Obama’s admin’s plans for Syria.
Used to be they were like the dog in the RCA ads listening to his master’s voice.
Before that. It started when Russia sided with the Serbs in the late 90s. Bill Clinton sided with the militant Muslims, providing air support by bombing Serbian trains and civilian infrastructure as well as the Chinese embassy in Belgrade. Hillary visited the Yugoslav theater under sniper fire to express her solidarity.
Perestroika?
It seems like Trump is taking the wrong tack here. He should lead with a Clinton style “These accusations are old news”, and follow up with “they’re anonymously sourced.”
Back in September and October, there were plenty of stories that security experts had traced the DNC and Podesta hacks to Russian hacker groups, leading to strong circumstantial evidence that Russian government actors were leaking Democrat dirty laundry to help Trump.
These stories don’t have much new, with the possible exception of the claim that the RNC was also hacked but not leaked.
I would have recommended that he respond, via Twitter, as follows:
“What difference, at this point, does it make?”
With a link to Hillary caterwauling in Congress.
double-plus-good
The one thing none of the stories making wild claims about Russia’s “intent” in its hacking efforts ever bother to clarify….
….is whether or not the Russian government actually was able to sway anyone’s votes – and how many.
Meaning – so what if their *intent* was to achieve X? Was X achieved *because* of their efforts, or did X happen anyway for reasons they had no influence over?
Are we truly to assume that the election was magically swung in favor of a boorish reality-TV character over that of a former Secretary of State and career politician with decades of experience…. by a few russian keyboard monkeys? That sans Russian computer-fuckery…. we’d have a different president?
How did that work exactly? it seems to me that there was never any polling data that would show that any single events sunk Clinton – rather it was a steady accumulation of unpleasant truths about her, either things that came out of her own mouth, or consequences of her transparency-evading behavior while Sec State.
And even if the Russians were connected to the email-leaks (*some people assert vehemently they are not; and the WSJ suggested that the only ‘hacks’ that CIA connected russians to were document-thefts in may-june 2016)… what made them damaging? “Russian intent?” No = it was their exposure of behind-the-scenes scumbaggery between Dems and media. None of which Russians invented
basically, all the charges seem to come down to is, “Russians use hacking for political reasons.”. Guess what? so does every country on earth.
And who is the #1 international political hacker? And who has the longest track record of trying to influence elections abroad?
To believe that Russian behavior here was ‘unusual’ would be to assume that the same stuff isn’t happening all the time to everyone everywhere. Companies get hacked almost daily by the Chinese. Individuals get phishing scams all the time. Some of these activities cause serious damage – but most are simply background noise in a world where computers are used all the time for everything.
The fact that “some hacking occurred” in a political context basically means nothing unless you can demonstrate that said hacking had not just “an effect” = but significant enough an effect that had it not happened, that the outcomes would have been different. Otherwise its simply pointing fingers wildly and looking for “something other than the candidate herself” to blame for her loss.
Including Russian elections.
They are just looking for an excuse for failure other than themselves. The excuse is a moving target looking for a place to stick.
Terrible candidate, no charisma, shady past, present corruption, sense of entitlement, likely poor health, incompetent campaign strategy, husband who can’t keep his dick in his pants.
Had to be the Russians.
You believe Clinton was a “Terrible candidate, no charisma, shady past, present corruption, sense of entitlement, likely poor health, incompetent campaign strategy, husband who can’t keep his dick in his pants” only because of Russian propaganda.
/FB leftist
Since none of this was Clinton’s fault and the results were due to a screw job by the Rooskies, the Dems need to start priming Clinton to run again in 2020. Please, please keep her and Pelosi in the spotlight as the faces of the Democratic Party and keep calling large swathes of the American public misogynist bigots. That’ll sway ’em.
So, for the sake of argument, let’s assume that the CIA is actually right, and that the Russians really did cyber-coup our election in favor of trump, and in general just the worst case scenario here, the question then becomes….why are we spending billions on intelligence agencies while surrendering our civil liberties to an unelected unaccountable police state if they can’t actually protect us from legitimate threats to our national security?
It’s almost as though A. Legitimate security from every conceivable threat is not actually possible, and therefore shouldn’t be the primary deciding factor for policies, B. Our security is not actually the real reason for the increases in spending for said agencies and the accumulation of power by said police state, or C. A and B.
Nah, we just need to give up more freedoms and spend more money to be effective-we need to do the wrong thing harder.
Glen Greenwald had what i think is the best reaction to the WaPo’s doubling down on modern McCarthyism =
Anonymous Leaks Are Not Evidence
Worth a read
McCarthy was crazy, but he wasn’t entirely wrong.
Granted he did more harm than good, but unless someone really comes out and releases something solid, the current Russian scare is far dumber than McCarthyism.
If Marx ever got one thing right, it was, “History repeats itself, first as a tragedy, second as a farce.”
It sure applies here. At least McCarthy was right that commies in fact agents embedded in the federal bureaucracy. The tragedy was that he went overboard on the allegations.
This time around, of course, it’s a farce through and through.
Glenn Greenwald stating the obvious via a long-winded distraction from the obvious.
At least during McCarthyism Soviet sympathizers had an actual ideology to latch onto. Assange, Snowden, and Greenwald all seem just to be dupes.
Please don’t feed the troll.
Go fuck yourself.
Speak up, blank white space.
Pathetic loser. Unblank me and maybe you’ll hear an actual libertarian opinion every now and then instead of the usual pro-Trump horseshit that pollutes this space and is apparently is fine with you.
No, really, blank white space. Type it louder.
What kind of sad micropenised moron would actually blank out people for having opinions that don’t square with his own stupid fucking moronic cult shit.
ALL CAPS, Tony. I hear that gets through the filters.
I hear people who use filters never went through puberty below the waist.
Please do not feed vermin. Doing so encourages them to return and spread disease.
But that blank white space could be anyone. Anyone, Sevo.
Man, ignoring him really pisses off the little fascist, doesn’t it?
Who are you people talking to?
Who are you people talking to?
Who are you calling “you people”?
It’s literally like taking food out of his blank white mouth.
He’s been saying that you’re super smart and he wishes that he was your son.
I wanna play too! How do I turn blank white space into a blank white space?
I hope blank white space isn’t watching. He might turn white with rage.
How dare the Russians try to tip the scales against Hillary in the general by exposing or attempts to tip the scales against Bernie in the primary! DNC
More to the point, it’s ‘How dare the Russians try to tip the scales by showing just how deeply we were inserted into Herself’s rectum!’
/Legacy Media Progs
If Hillary had an ounce of class she would say sure I want this investigated, but the electors should respect the will of the people they represent when they cast their ballots. No Mulligans.
It’s funny too that the Democrats have suddenly decided that doubting the CIA is horrible horrible treason. Especially since Obama (remember him?) just threw the intelligence community under the bus rather than take responsibility for his misjudgement regarding ISIS.
It really is something isn’t it? After the Iraq fiasco who believes anything the CIA says without seeing the hard evidence? It’s like the left has descended into mass delusion.
We must be in some real shit if nothing the CIA has ever done since Iraq can be trusted.
Or perhaps the problem then was selectivity and confirmation bias, just as it is now. Because surely you don’t mean to say that everything the CIA has been doing for 13 years has been a lie.
That’s absolutely not what I’m saying. What I am saying is that taking them at their word (although it’s really WaPo’s word) on a politically charged issue would be naive at best. They have a track record of bending the truth and flat out lying to achieve a perceived benefit and, as you rightly pointed out, politicians and the media are more than happy to take their findings and twist them to their own ends.
And if we had the exact same sourcing that the Russians were helping out Democrats it would be the single biggest scandal in the history of the country, here and everywhere else.
Partisan hacks are partisan, news at eleven.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, something we have not received. I’m open to it but I want to see proof, not accusations and innuendo. If you want to unquestioningly consume what the CIA feeds you be my guest but don’t be surprised when you end up with cyanide poisoning.
Nobody’s consuming it unquestioningly. Why does Glenn Greenwald get to compose a 10,000-word essay on how you shouldn’t blindly accept everything an anonymous source says and then get called brilliant for it? Are we in kindergarten?
There are a lot of Russian ducks walking and quacking here though, and I’m not sure I understand it when people like him essentially try to get us to stop talking about it like it’s nothing.
Vermin stink up the place.
Especially losers in denial; they have a particularly wretched stench.
Hell, its not just that we haven’t seen extraordinary evidence, we haven’t seen any evidence at all, on account of anonymous second-hand hearsay isn’t evidence.
On top of the lack of evidence, I’ve never heard an even slightly plausible reason for Russia to do any of this. The Russians sure as hell pull dirty tricks but they don’t do it randomly. What, I’m supposed to believe that Vladimir Putin is afraid of Hillary? Jesus Crackers.
To make Americans lose trust in their democratic system. Then, when it became possible that Trump could actually win, to help Trump win, because he’s not only an easily manipulated moron, but a pro-Putin one at that.
It is a bit of a cinematic farce but Putin is kind of a self-styled movie villain.
That’s what passes as plausible for you, Dr. Strangelove?
More plausible than the claim that Russia wasn’t engaging in any cyber-espionage.
“Nobody’s consuming it unquestioningly.”
He actually said this with a straight face.
A troll mischaracterized something you said? Heaven forfend.
All right thinking people know that the Truth is icky and therefore verbotten. Especially if it makes a Democrat look bad.
And remember, Tony thinks it’s perfectly okay to line his political opponents against the wall, so you really don’t need to pay attention to anything he has to say.
We can start by hearing what the CIA actually has to say. Up to now, there’s no proof that they’ve even said anything about this.
There’s just a news report, like a million others that relied on anonymous sources. Be vigilant about it all you want, but nobody is taking anything as gospel truth, and the selective outrage here has a definite orange tint to it.
At this point there’s no “it” to be vigilant about.
The idea that the Russian government is involved in shenanigans is not all that shocking to me, being as I’m a veteran of the Cold War era. But I still need to see some evidence, just like I (and you too if you’re even slightly honest) demanded for the claims that Saddam Hussein had nukes.
The claim that Russia didn’t interfere doesn’t come without the requirement of evidence either, considering our own government said so. Meanwhile Trump is stuffing his cabinet with people with very strong Putin ties. That’s the extraordinary thing, as well as how many commentators want us to pretend like none of this is happening.
“considering our own government said so”
Bwuhahahahahaha! This just gets better and better!
Exactly–now you’re in the position of supplying evidence that the US government lied about this.
You can be dogmatically anti-government all you want, but defaulting to trusting Russia’s over the US’s is a bit ridiculous.
I’m in no such position. As I’ve stated before there is no evidence that the U.S. government even said any of this. Until the U.S. government takes an official position there’s literally nothing to argue about.
Well, there’s the implied claim that the Washington Post just made it all up. We need some evidence and explanation for that too.
It boils down to a matter of trust. Neither the Washington Post nor the U.S. government has earned my trust. They’ve lied for my entire life. I know you have no use whatsoever for principles, but why would you believe institutions that have lied to you for decades?
Aside from that, I’ve no need to prove anything to anybody. It’s you and your fellow Strangelovians who are trying to persuade the American people that this happened; the burden of proof is 100% on you. You want me to believe this story? Why should I?
Because as libertarians and/or Greenwaldians you guys believe five ridiculous conspiracy theories before breakfast?
Somebody hacked the Democrats and fed Wikileaks stuff that only harmed Democrats. Who do you speculate it was?
Somebody leaked an alleged “assessment” that only harmed Republicans. Who do you speculate it was?
Is he stamping his feet and holding his breath yet?
His mommy pretty-promised him the hag would win!
Here’s the substance of what we have. Rather than substantive evidence of Russian manipulation, we have anonymous claims of Russian manipulation. In other words, we have nothing.
And, moreover, exactly what “manipulation” is being claimed? The only thing I’ve heard asserted is information inconvenient to Ms. Clinton’s campaign. In other words, aggressive reporting.
“Electors demand intelligence briefing before Electoral College vote”
I’m actually surprised to see 1 Republican? but I guess the Democrats needed to a Republican to appear bipartisan.
they require the information ahead of Dec. 19
For what purpose? Will they change their votes? If there really is an invalid election, shouldn’t they resign in favor of their opposite numbers?
it’s not even clear to me that the Russian activity described by the Times and Post would invalidate the results
Unless the Russians changed the actual voting totals, and this can be proved in court, and the states change their electors accordingly, all before the EC votes, then the results wouldn’t be invalidated.
So, it should be perfectly clear to you that the Russian activity, etc., would not invalidate the results.
As I noted earlier, really the only thing the Russians really stand accused of doing is reporting bad news about Hillary Clinton. I know for the press and the Democrats (but I repeat myself), that constitutes a crime. Fortunately, it’s not yet illegal.
More fake news:
It defies belief that somehow Republicans in the Senate are reluctant to either review Russian tactics or ignore them, he said. The Russians are not our friends,” McConnell told reporters at a scheduled year-end news conference.
Proposition: The Ukrainians were actually intervening in our elections but trying to make it look like the Russians so that US opinion would turn against Putin.
The CIA isn’t talking or providing any evidence, just that they pinkie promise they have it. The best information out there from sources close to the CIA essentially say that the Russians were meaner to Hillary than they were to Trump. Yes, that’s it.
Haven’t the liberal learned you can’t trust the CIA after the WMD/ Iraq debacle? They were crying about it for years.
But now the CIA says something they want to hear, they are credible.
Dems strategy to overturn election results
http://hotair.com/archives/201…..-election/
Pull quote, from the judge who wrote the opinion that the Dems are relying on as authority for the courts to overturn an election:
“Substantial evidence was presented establishing massive absentee ballot fraud, deception, intimidation, harassment and forgery,” Judge Newcomer wrote in a decision made public today.
Needless to say, this was all done by the Dems, who saw their guy kicked out of office and replaced by the Repub.
BREAKING NEWS:
Governments Try to Influence Other Government’s Elections!
SMH.
Brought to you by SFNN, the Shocked Face News Network…which should totally be a thing.
Oh, it is. It is.
So what happened to that DNC intern that was mysteriously shot to death while jogging at 5am?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Seth_Rich
yah, know, the one that Assange implicated as the leaker of Clinton’s emails???
Shot in the back multiple times, nothing stolen, both of which are completely typical of robberies. Yup, it was totes def a robbery, like the police say.
I heard on NPR that that was just “fake news”.
I was in Starbucks yesterday and the NYT was sitting on the table. I figured…”hey, it’s free”…why not broaden my horizon. Had to stop after the first paragraph on three different front page stories. It was so obviously skewed, it wasn’t even funny. It made Alex Jones seem like a voice of reason. Talk about “fake news”
I have to change the channel from NBC Nightly News for this same reason. After watching my local news (who are mostly professionals) then hearing the straight propaganda spewed by that network, I can’t take it.
Nah, as soon as it became obvious Obama would not do anything about surveillance they became kulaks.
The only thing that matters if whether there is proof of Russia altering the vote counting process or otherwise manipulating the total number cast. Hacking a political party? Up to the party to protect its dirty secrets.
This, 100%.
I’ve been trying all week to work up any feelings of hurt or betrayal about the Russians feeding us a selective dose of truth to sway public opinion. Can’t. Selective truth about what the Dems really think of us is still better than keeping all that condescension trapped behind closed doors. If they’re so offended about it they’d best get hacking themselves to get the dirt on the Republicans, who I suspect have about the same opinions of their constituents as Podesta and co.
Doesn’t mean that cybersecurity in government contexts shouldn’t be strengthened, but boy am I unoffended by Russia’s involvement.
Try harder. Your country needs you. Wars won’t fight themselves, you know?
Evidence falls into two categories – direct and indirect or verifiable and circumstantial. I suspect little to no direct verifiable evidence exists and what they’re left with is either vague circumstantial evidence they’re left to draw conclusions about or or vague circumstantial evidence they’ve warped and strangled into fake direct evidence for political purposes.
Yup, this is turning into the PizzaGate of the left.
Listen. The end goal is to get the American people to hate Russian enough that a false-flag is readily adopted by the public as a pretext for war with them – that is to say, if they had even the smallest inkling of evidence for this claim, every single news agency would be playing it on a 24 hour loop for months. They don’t have shit or they would have already plastered it to your eyeballs!
i know this “act” of his plays well with his supporters, but sooner or later he’s going to need some kind of actual strategy because he can’t win by not being hillary clinton anymore. it’s simply idiotic politics to be dismissive of this the way trump has. it makes no sense to act like there’s nothing worth investigating, especially when his opinion on the cia’s fallibility will likely change around noon on january 20th. especially when there’s likely nothing there beyond some shenanigans.
A ,,,what does the fbi have to do with this>>it would be akin of asking the forest service the best way to tackle ebola..B,,,,could it be the potus knew the info and choose knot to push the election results one way or the other..C… why would you knot want to know if putin played with the election to get his puppet elected??
Transparency? If the NYT, the Wapo, and the Obama administration agree, don’t you think your concerns are a tad overblown?
Now, where’s my soma?
Show us the “money”.
Americans are currently trying to decide if having the country run by Moscow is an improvement over having it run by Mecca.
(Michael Malice)
Is that the same New York Times and Washington Post that get everything wrong? Or the ones that just make up stuff?
Based on the past decade, and confirmed by the last election, I do not consider either of those rags a reliable source.
No, it is the same NYT and WaPo that get most everything spot on, and piss off Republicans posing as libertarians
http://www.reuters.com/article…..SKBN14204E
Of course that agency doesn’t go along with the authors narrative, so imagine that it is not mentioned.
Johnson got 5%. Live with it.
U.S. intelligence agencies (not to mention Congress) have little to no credibility with public.
Then what good would transparency do?
If they release any info exonerating Putin, Drumpfulans will rejoice. If not, libruls will.
reason.com should opine on what should happen if the allegations are true. Because if they are untrue, we already have a resolution.
But why will Republicans posing as libertarians do that?
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If the Republicans get even more legislatures under total control, they’ll have the ability to amend the Constitution without any input from Washington DC.
You need 34 states to propose an amendment.
You need 38 states to ratify the amendment.
As of January 1, 2017, the Republicans will control all houses of 32 state legislatures.
That count does not include Alaska, which might support a Balanced Budget Amendment anyway, or states like Maine and Oregon, where control of the legislature is closely split.
Hell, for ratification, lots of Democrats might vote for a federal Balanced Budget Amendment.
It can happen, and, yeah, if the Democrats don’t learn anything from this election, it’s even more likely to happen.
After putting Stein up to that ridiculous recount scam, both of them might wind up indicted.