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Index » Radio Paradise/General » General Discussion » 2016 Elections Page: Previous  1, 2, 3, ... 94, 95, 96  Next
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miamizsun

miamizsun Avatar

Location: (3283.1 Miles SE of RP)
Gender: Male


Posted: Jan 12, 2017 - 10:29am

 miamizsun wrote:

It’s Going to Be Okay

A lot of people in this country feel like this right now:

 

and there's a follow up



 

a malicious and insensitive bump...
ScottFromWyoming

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Location: Powell
Gender: Male


Posted: Jan 2, 2017 - 5:54pm

 miamizsun wrote:

thanks for that rec

the festival of dangerous ideas occasionally has some good stuff

ronson's full take is over an hour but here's a clip that is worth your while



 
Ooh, I'll get the headphones out and fire that up later... Thanks!
miamizsun

miamizsun Avatar

Location: (3283.1 Miles SE of RP)
Gender: Male


Posted: Jan 2, 2017 - 1:34pm

It’s Going to Be Okay

A lot of people in this country feel like this right now:

 

and there's a follow up




miamizsun

miamizsun Avatar

Location: (3283.1 Miles SE of RP)
Gender: Male


Posted: Jan 1, 2017 - 7:41am

 ScottFromWyoming wrote:

Speaking of, I just read this book-lite from Jon Ronson, mostly about him and Alex Jones (free for Amazon Prime kindle users). The timeline ends before the general election, but it's pretty amusing/scary. Ronson takes credit for "creating" the over-the-top Alex Jones we know and love. 

I read "So you've been publicly shamed" and it's fantastic, so now I'm picking up other stuff by him.

 
thanks for that rec

the festival of dangerous ideas occasionally has some good stuff

ronson's full take is over an hour but here's a clip that is worth your while


Lazy8

Lazy8 Avatar

Location: The Gallatin Valley of Montana
Gender: Male


Posted: Dec 31, 2016 - 9:42am

aflanigan wrote:
One of the interesting aspects of the ongoing discussion here is the fact that the Libertarian Party platform specifically calls for "No U.S. intervention in the affairs of foreign countries". If I'm reading the party website correctly, it's been their official position since 2000 (just in time for the neocons' ascendancy to political power via George W. Bush! The discussion regarding what role votes for third party candidates like Harry Browne and Ralph Nader played in installing an interventionist/foreign policy adventurist in the WH is a discussion for another time and forum). 

As far as foreign intervention in US affairs, one would expect some consistency, particularly since libertarianism seems to be based on consistent and universal application of moral principles. In this case, Kant's first formulation of the Categorical Imperative (supposedly cribbed from the Golden Rule) would seem to apply in both directions: Don't intervene in the affairs of others if you don't want them intervening in yours. One would think, then, that libertarians (or at least Libertarians) would be as repulsed by a foreign government intervening in our elections as they would be by the US government intervening in other countries' elections.

We are consistent: anybody is welcome to add more information to our electorate. Anybody.

We would be repulsed by a foreign power intervening in our elections...had that happened. It didn't. No one's votes were changed for them, no one was kept from the polls, no candidates were removed from the ballot. To the extent that happened it was done by Americans, for the usual crass political reasons.

You seem to think that by chanting "But the Russians told us!" over and over that we should stop knowing what was revealed: that the DNC was coordinating with journalists to get their message out; that the DNC tilted the field in favor of it's preferred candidate in the primaries; that the DNC is utterly incompetent at IT security. If we did the election over should we all have our memories wiped so that inconvenient facts disappear?

The electorate is not a jury, and it isn't bound by any rules of evidence. Anyone is free to tell it anything, for any reason. Anyone is free even to lie to it—as you and kcar are doing—by building the mythology that the election was stolen.

And I get to respond.


kcar

kcar Avatar



Posted: Dec 31, 2016 - 1:54am

 Beaker wrote:

Oh hai.  The stupid senseless arguing in this forum continues.

 kcar wrote:

I stopped reading your posts on “Ask the Libertarian” for weeks at a time because you couldn’t answer even *basic* questions about the political and economic consequences of a Libertarian approach to issues like immigration or trade agreements. Did it amuse you to write pages of bilge over months without making sense or dealing with reality? You have the Libertarian bumper stickers but you’ve clearly never read much about the philosophy or policy approach. 

(snip) 


Speaking of bilge, have you examined your own scribblings in the light of day lately? You know: daylight.   It's what you can find if you get out of the basement and away from the computer.

 kcar wrote:

 And thanks for revealing your ignorance about computer network security. Administrators and cybersecurity companies *can* detect hacking as it occurs. Typically, hacks succeed because of human error and not some undetectable magic as you think. And yes, there is a satisfactory level of verifiability: hacks can be traced to country of origin and hacking group involved. You would know this if you read more before posting.


Ah.  Don't you just know it all, eh, know it all?  Ever heard of a zero-day exploit?  Zero-what?  Now run along and Google that, like a good child.  And then apologize to L8 for being such an arrogant snot-nosed asshole.

 kcar wrote:

Before you post about this issue again—and certainly don’t respond here for my sake, because I am not going to read any more of your empty thoughts that you keep repeating—try to read more. For everyone's sake, please: stop pretending that you have a grasp of Libertarianism and its policy consequences.


Oh hai - Before you post about this issue again—and certainly don’t respond here for my sake, because I am not going to read any more of your empty thoughts that you keep repeating—try to read more. For everyone's sake, please: stop pretending that you have any grasp of IT security and the daily and hourly moving target that it actually is.

And for your reading pleasure, here's a non-technical ( because you're obviously not technically oriented) explanation of the subject you have such interest in:

—————

Via David Burge aka Iowahawk - a thorough dismantling of the media driven 'Russian narrative':


1/ John Podesta, like 100% of everyone who has ever had a email account, received a password phishing email. He fell for it.

2/ According to some accounts, the phishing email had Russian fingerprints/ characteristics in its metadata.

3/ whatever the case, the password purloiners downloaded his emails, which eventually got into the hands of Wikileaks, who made them public.

4/ The emails were mildly embarrassing, revealing frequent circle jerking between the DNC and journalists. Mostly embarrassing to media.

5/ At the time of their release (Oct) they were hardly covered by any media, and largely dismissed as a big fat nothingburger.

6/ Not one of the people whose emails were revealed has ever disputed their authenticity or provenance.

7/ Fast forward to December. The October nothingburger has now magically transformed into "vote hacking" and "election hacking."

8/ new narrative: treasonous Trump operatives conspired with Putin to hypnotically mesmerize Clinton voters into pulling the wrong lever.

9/ This is not Alex Jones or angry conspiracy kook Facebook uncles, it's the NYTs, the WaPo, our beloved State Radio.

10/ how effective has this been? If polls are to be believed, 50%+ of Democrats believe the Russians literally modified vote tallies.

11/ none of this is a defense of Trump, or his kleptocrat pal Putin. It's an indictment of our garbage narrative-driven media.

12/ it shouldn't have to take a drunk internet nobody to point any of this out, but hey, here we are.

————————

 Feel free to resume your fact-bereft screeching and howling.  It's so very becoming. And amusing. 





 
"Ever heard of a zero-day exploit?"

Did I ever claim that all hacking can be detected as it happens? No. But I took issue with Lazy8's claim that the only way we can learn of hacks like the one that hit Podesta and DNC is after they're announced by the hacker. That claim is nonsense. Even the FBI knew that the DNC network was hacked and called the DNC about it, months before the DNC did anything. The DNC has to take most of the blame for that fiasco: the evidence of intrusion was plain for them to see. 

Lazy8's notions that there are no effective security measures to address computer networks and that we should we accept foreign intrusion into our sensitive networks without retribution is absurd. Lazy8 in my opinion clearly fails to consider the practical consequences of his political and policy opinions. He failed to suggest what type and level of network hack by a foreign agent would require a response by the US government.  He repeatedly ignores counter-arguments and counter-facts to his assertions and repeats claims that have previously been debunked. I gave up following his conversation with other RPers on the "Ask the Libertarian" thread for weeks because he would not move from theory to policy, where the thread had started. I find his fatalistic acceptance of the hack into the DNC system (apparently he still believes that we can't tell who did it) incredibly naive and based on a failure to keep up with the news. 

"And then apologize to L8 for being such an arrogant snot-nosed asshole."

Gosh, Beaker, I didn't know that Lazy8 couldn't speak for himself. Oh wait, he can: he was quite annoying and arrogant towards me in the "Ask the Libertarian" topic thread and here too. Yes, I gave as good as I got. Not sure when you got the RP Forum Sheriff badge, though. 

As for the David Burge's claims that you list: the CIA and FBI concluded that the Russian government was behind the DNC hack. Burges' point 5 is just wrong: as soon as they were leaked out, the DNC emails consistently made the top left corner of major newspapers and online new sites. Debbie Wasserman Schultz sure could tell you that the DNC materials were noticed: she had to resign her DNC chairmanship over her emails about Bernie Sanders, just as the Democratic Convention was starting. Pollsters noticed that the Wikileaks material had a measurable effect on voter behavior for both Democrats and Republicans in post-election analyses.

I agree somewhat with point 4: there was nothing terribly informative about the DNC leaks when it came to addressing HRC's fitness to be POTUS. As I've posted here before, I believe that the Wikileaks material helped Trump win but it was hardly the only factor or even the main factor. HRC was a flawed candidate who didn't speak to rural and Rust-belt anger. Trump did voice that anger and was a real change from the straw-stuffed establishment candidates. Trump won legitimately. Trump likely would have won even if the DNC emails didn't get leaked. 

Wikileaks didn't hypnotize anyone. That said, the Democrat-only leaks were definitely bad press for HRC. Did the Russians throw the election to Trump? No, but you cannot avoid the fact that the Russians meddled in our elections. Even if the meddling had backfired and gotten HRC a landslide win, that kind of active interference in our popular elections is not something that the US government can tolerate. Yes, we've done it in the past to other countries. It was wrong. But in simple terms of power, a country with the top-level clout of the US cannot let that kind of challenge pass.

Osama bin Laden committed to the 9/11 attack on the WTC towers in part because he believed that the '98 attack on US embassies and the '00 attack on the USS Cole (something that barely registered with the US public) showed that the US was cowardly and would not strike back. The hack of the Democratic and Republican computer systems and the selective release of Democratic material is a significant increase in a type of publicly visible attack on the US, like the attacks on the embassies and the Cole that without response will encourage others to attack us.  


ScottFromWyoming

ScottFromWyoming Avatar

Location: Powell
Gender: Male


Posted: Dec 30, 2016 - 10:51pm

 Beaker wrote:

9/ This is not Alex Jones or angry conspiracy kook Facebook uncles, it's the NYTs, the WaPo, our beloved State Radio.



 
Speaking of, I just read this book-lite from Jon Ronson, mostly about him and Alex Jones (free for Amazon Prime kindle users). The timeline ends before the general election, but it's pretty amusing/scary. Ronson takes credit for "creating" the over-the-top Alex Jones we know and love. 

I read "So you've been publicly shamed" and it's fantastic, so now I'm picking up other stuff by him.
kcar

kcar Avatar



Posted: Dec 30, 2016 - 9:04pm

 Lazy8 wrote:


"And nobody showed up but you! Even the casket's empty. How...sad. Sorta."

Finally something we can both agree on: you suck at comebacks.


I stopped reading your posts on “Ask the Libertarian” for weeks at a time because you couldn’t answer even *basic* questions about the political and economic consequences of a Libertarian approach to issues like immigration or trade agreements. Did it amuse you to write pages of bilge over months without making sense or dealing with reality? You have the Libertarian bumper stickers but you’ve clearly never read much about the philosophy or policy approach.

Does it bother you, btw, that multibillionaire Charles Koch helped found the Cato Institute so he could have a policy mouthpiece that would support his desire for less taxes and fewer environmental restrictions on his hydrocarbon businesses? Billionaires like Koch are a major force behind Libertarianism but support it only when it makes them richer at everyone else's expense. Check out Jane Myers’ book “Dark Money.”

"You want to negotiate a cessation not to spying but to just a certain type of spying. Which we can only detect when they make the results of that spying public."

Interference with another nation’s democratically elected governments and popular elections should be out of bounds for all nations. The US did it quite a few times back in the ’50-‘60s and got caught at it, with disastrous long-term consequences to the countries and our international relations. It’s one reason that the Iranians still hate us so much, for instance, and still oppose us in the Middle East:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat


As a practical matter, foreign compromise of a domestic popular election invites destabilization of domestic politics, loss of popular faith in elections and continuation of foreign interference. A country as powerful as the United States loses influence and prestige when it does not retaliate against cyberattacks on its own elections. As a practical matter, I don’t think that the US should interfere with popular elections of other countries: it generally hurts us in the long run.

And thanks for revealing your ignorance about computer network security. Administrators and cybersecurity companies *can* detect hacking as it occurs. Typically, hacks succeed because of human error and not some undetectable magic as you think. And yes, there is a satisfactory level of verifiability: hacks can be traced to country of origin and hacking group involved. You would know this if you read more before posting.

"Then why would anyone enter an agreement with us, ever? Russia included. The rules don't apply to us because...we're number 1! We're just negotiating the rules that apply to you."

And yet, countries *do* negotiate with us. Because power is still the pre-eminent force in international relations. The US is committed to mutually beneficial relationships because it needs friends around the world to secure its own interests but on certain matters it can and must lay down the law. “Don’t screw with our elections” is one of those non-negotiable matters.

Your posts on this story concerning the DNC hack and the work of Cozy Bear and Fancy Bear prove again and AGAIN that you simply haven’t read much about it. You just parrot the same wrong ideas over and over again: we can’t trace a hack, we can’t stop a hack, all information is good, we should let anyone and everyone influence our elections. It’s one thing to be a fool, but a lazy fool is inexcusable.

"So now they've hacked Republican computers too? You must have access to some serious intelligence mojo!"

Again: you simply aren’t following the news. The CIA and the FBI reported that Democratic and Republican computer networks were hacked. Not just the DNC and RNC. Jesus, trying to inform you is like trying to hold water in a sieve. Why are you so proud of your ignorance?

The Russians aren’t going to pull out of Ukraine because of our sanctions. Crimea is too important to them militarily and the Russians still want to keep Ukraine in economic dependence to Russia. They will negotiate with us behind the scenes on Ukraine and other matters if their country gets pushed towards long-term recession or suffer international reversals. The Russians will stop or slow campaigns of interference involving our elections if we hurt their leaders’ wealth or the nation’s economy enough. Simply throwing up our hands and shaking our heads as you would have us do gives us nothing that we want from Russia.

"And I'm almost certain you have some kind of point here, but this example seems to undercut it. We need to teach the Russians a lesson so they don't do...what they're already doing, and have been doing since the early part of the last century."

Do you have a short-term memory problem? Perhaps you’re recovering from a stroke? If you cause any country sufficient economic or political pain via sanctions imposed by a community of nations, the target country will negotiate. It is possible to enter into formal, verifiable *and* enforceable negotiations with Russia about cyber-espionage. And no, war is not the only way to curb Russian behavior. How you jumped to that conclusion is beyond me. You take pride in being ignorant and I have no patience with that.


Your fatalism and ignorance about this subject are shocking. You repeatedly run away from the fact that the Russians regularly try to spread false information to break down trust among nations and amongst citizens involving their governments. You repeatedly try to dodge the fact that the Russians stole and released DNC information to shift the election to Trump.

Just because the DNC information was true as far as we know does not make the Russians’ actions acceptable. You repeatedly ignore evidence that does not jibe with your vague ideas that all information is good and gosh we can’t stop those Russians so let’s just it slide. You seem to have a childlike disconnect from the notion of practical consequences, just as you did in the Libertarian thread. Do you have any suggestion about how we should respond to the Russian hacks and interference, or do actually think that such tolerating aggressions will majickly work out for us in the end?

My main concern with this matter is that the Russians went far beyond regular espionage and secret information-gathering. Once they discovered our political parties’s computer network vulnerabilities, they *actively* set out to interfere with our elections.

I agree with you that a free flow of information is desirable and beneficial to democracy. If a newspaper, American or foreign, had obtained the DNC information without being actively involved in criminal activity and published it, I would have had no problem with that as long as the information obtained was newsworthy. The Pentagon Papers controversy has some similarities with the DNC matter.

But the Russians selectively gathered information and timed the release of that information to influence popular opinion and NOT to spread truth. The CIA and FBI agree that the Russians hacked into Republican computer systems. It is inconceivable that the Russian government found no embarrassing information about the GOP or had no damaging information about Trump—but the Russians provided no bad info about the GOP or Trump while doling out DNC-email information. Stop trying to hide behind a professed allegiance to a free flow of information.

Before you post about this issue again—and certainly don’t respond here for my sake, because I am not going to read any more of your empty thoughts that you keep repeating—try to read more. For everyone's sake, please: stop pretending that you have a grasp of Libertarianism and its policy consequences.

Your understanding of public policy and international relations seems desperately limited, as if your positions on current events revolve more around trying to feel good about yourself than trying to understand the world. Gary Johnson had policy proposals that if enacted would have had disastrous consequences—on immigration and tax reform, e.g., as I pointed out to you—but you still thought Gary was keen because you locked onto “less government is better” and gave up thinking beyond that.

 

If you really do live in Montana, that’s a good thing. If you had any real political influence or power at a national level, it would be disastrous. Except for Putin.




aflanigan

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Location: At Sea
Gender: Male


Posted: Dec 30, 2016 - 10:34am

One of the interesting aspects of the ongoing discussion here is the fact that the Libertarian Party platform specifically calls for "No U.S. intervention in the affairs of foreign countries". If I'm reading the party website correctly, it's been their official position since 2000 (just in time for the neocons' ascendancy to political power via George W. Bush! The discussion regarding what role votes for third party candidates like Harry Browne and Ralph Nader played in installing an interventionist/foreign policy adventurist in the WH is a discussion for another time and forum). 

As far as foreign intervention in US affairs, one would expect some consistency, particularly since libertarianism seems to be based on consistent and universal application of moral principles. In this case, Kant's first formulation of the Categorical Imperative (supposedly cribbed from the Golden Rule) would seem to apply in both directions: Don't intervene in the affairs of others if you don't want them intervening in yours. One would think, then, that libertarians (or at least Libertarians) would be as repulsed by a foreign government intervening in our elections as they would be by the US government intervening in other countries' elections.

The typical response when such logical inconsistencies are pointed out is, "libertarianism is a big tent with a lot of different variants/flavors". Which is certainly a fair observation, and equally applicable to other political parties and philosophies. Some progressives during Truman's administration agreed with his focus on fighting communism, even at the expense of civil liberties. Some conservatives (viz the 2016 GOP presidential candidate field) are not deficit hawks. Some liberal voters (e.g. Catholics) are not in favor of abortion.

Personally, I tend to share the libertarian disdain for foreign intervention of any kind, especially when it is the product of adventurism or political notions such as "exceptionalism", rather than based on a true moral imperative such as dealing with genocide or other egregious violations of human rights. 

And yes, both the US and Russia are no stranger to election meddling. Does that mean we shouldn't decry such behavior as citizens? Should we sit on our hands and not ask for an end to this sort of thing because our elected leaders decided to do play these games in the past?

Perhaps it would be naive to urge the people who pull the foreign policy levers to set an example by refraining from engaging in intervention in the politics, economy, or military struggles of other countries. No doubt there will be members of Congress who will jump at the chance to decry the destabilization and political vacuum potentially created by any withdrawal of US troops.
Lazy8

Lazy8 Avatar

Location: The Gallatin Valley of Montana
Gender: Male


Posted: Dec 28, 2016 - 4:24pm

kcar wrote:
Oh, honey, don't worry: you didn't even explain it to yourself. It's a shame that you post so much and think so little, but that's your funeral.

And nobody showed up but you! Even the casket's empty. How...sad. Sorta.

I hope this line you keep pursuing is as amusing for you as it is for me. It gives me a chuckle every time you beat that drum.

https://www.state.gov/e/eb/tfs/spi/ukrainerussia/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_sanctions_during_the_Ukrainian_crisis

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-28400218

and more recently, 

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-ukraine-crisis-russia-usa-sanctions-idUSKCN1175E0

Controls against the Russian financial sector and Russian economy have measurable effects. A more drastic measure against Russia would be the US and EU aggressively partnering to slow or even embargo natural gas supplies from Russia to EU member nations. That would cause serious pain to the Russians. We could slow or stop controls against Russia when it enters into a mutual, verifiable agreement to stop cyber-theft and -interference related to popular elections. 

No one would take seriously a mutual agreement between Russia and the US to completely stop spying on each other. The Russians' hacking into Republican and Democratic party computer systems to steal data and influence the election crosses way over an acceptable threshold of national surveillance into an area dealing with an one nation's active attempt to destabilize the legitimate and codified political operations of another nation. 

If you seriously believe that this sort of tit-for-tat leading to mutual agreements is uncharted territory for the two countries, you simply have not read much history. And yes, it is possible to determine with a high degree of confidence when a cyber-attack is run or supported by a national government.


Well, the Russians are still in eastern Ukraine and aren't leaving any time soon so it seems the goal of the sanctions isn't to get them to change behaviors so much as to let them know we're displeased.

You want to negotiate a cessation not to spying but to just a certain type of spying. Which we can only detect when they make the results of that spying public. Which may be all you're bent about anyway; had they simply used that information to blackmail President Hillary once in office maybe that would be within the nebulous boundaries you're certain they crossed.

What part of this is verifiable exactly? OK, we promise no more spy on campaign. Sign X. Shake hands, drink vodka, photo op. Problem solved? You'd believe a word of that kind of promise?

Yes, I would call that an act similar to one of open war. The US and the Israelis set out to damage and delay Iran's attempt to transform low-grade uranium supplies into weapons-grade purity. The Iranian government has repeatedly called for the destruction of Israel and has developed missile systems capable of hitting Israel with a nuclear weapon. It was purifying far more uranium than it needed to develop medically useful nuclear isotopes (its public cover story). 

Israel and the US determined that Iran was on course to attack Israel and took steps to stop it. The Stuxnet virus attack and the sanctions against Iran deterred Iranian production of weapons-grade uranium and accelerated the attainment of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action . Welcome to the concepts of Realpolitik and Machtpolitik

The very real and ugly fact is that a country with the power and influence of the United States does not always have to play by "the rules."

Then why would anyone enter an agreement with us, ever? Russia included. The rules don't apply to us because...we're number 1! We're just negotiating the rules that apply to you.

So what if Putin decides Russia is powerful enough that the rules don't apply to her either—whom do we appeal that to?

You seem to want a foreign policy as thin-skinned and bellicose as...well, Donald Trump. Look, we have nuclear weapons. So do other countries. We can't strut around the world thumping our chests and threatening war (or almost-war, or whatever you're calling the tantrum you insist we throw) every time someone dares offend us. We have to face the world (large parts of which don't like us) like grown-ups.

I'm unhappy enough with Trump at the helm of our military. I suppose it's small comfort that you aren't there, but I'll take what relief I can from it.

A lack of response to the Russian hacks of Republican and Democratic computers will just encourage the Russians to do it again and/or underwrite misinformation campaigns during American elections. And yes, the decline of Americans' skepticism about the trustworthiness of their sources of news makes it much easier for the Russians to spread dezinformatsiya. Oh look, they already have:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/29/world/europe/russia-sweden-disinformation.html

So now they've hacked Republican computers too? You must have access to some serious intelligence mojo!

You could post examples of Russian misinformation going back to before the cold war. And I'm almost certain you have some kind of point here, but this example seems to undercut it. We need to teach the Russians a lesson so they don't do...what they're already doing, and have been doing since the early part of the last century. Despite all previous lessons.

By your logic, it would be perfectly all right for other nations to reveal their private conversations and agreements with the American government or steal classified information and publish it to influence our elections. Or fabricate stories such as the Comet Ping Pong rumor about HRC's supposed involvement with a pedophile ring running out of a DC pizza parlor. 

In terms of stopping Russia from pulling this stunt again, there sure are mechanisms, including doing the same thing to them or attacking the ruble in financial markets or...

You have this limited notion that the release of information trumps the fact that the information was stolen by a government breaking into computer systems. You fail to consider that the information had little or no relevance to fitness of HRC as a potential president and that the information came out in such a way as to influence public opinion right before the election. This was not an attempt to inform the public, it was an attempt to imply that HRC and the DNC was more corrupt than Trump and the RNC. And if the United States does not aggressively deter Russia from doing this again, Russia will likely move into spreading unsubstantiated rumor and outright falsehood. 

Really, do you think that the US should let this theft and interference slide? The US would have a target on its back if it did nothing. What Russia did this year went far, far beyond any other dezinformatsiya campaign inflicted on the US. By your logic, we should throw open all our computer systems and let everyone take anything  and publish anything they want. Because Libertarianism.

We can separate how the information was obtained from the propagation of the information. When other information gets stolen we treat the break-in as a crime and prosecute when we can. It isn't about whether it's all right or not, it's about whether we're willing to go to the lengths it would take to stop it. Most of us are not—that means going to war. Nothing short of that would have a prayer of actually working. None of the sanctions you've been going on about have changed the behavior they were triggered by. We will be spied upon as long as there is something useful to learn about us.

But once that information is in the wild it's impossible to gather it back. People are going to know it. You can try and criminalize transmitting it but you can't stop it.

I don't want to go to war with Wikileaks, the half of this equation you (so far) haven't advocated punishing. They have done exactly what you are describing—they've published (among other things) diplomatic correspondence. If someone leaks it to them they'll do it again. They serve a vital function: they expose the misdeeds of the powerful. Without them and others like them the powerful get to punish those who embarrass them and the weak get surveiled by the powerful with impunity. We can't be in favor of the free flow of information (which—guilty as charged—I am) only when it's convenient for your tribe. You're either in favor of the free flow of information or you're not. You're either willing to go to war to keep people from knowing something or you're not.

Putin is willing to do that. We're not better than Putin because we're better at shutting people up, we're better than Putin because we are willing to let people speak—even people we don't like, even to say things that we don't want heard.

Because, if you need a reason, we're not thin-skinned despots who think the rules don't apply to us.
rhahl

rhahl Avatar



Posted: Dec 28, 2016 - 12:44pm

 Red_Dragon wrote:


At least no one is talking about war with Russia anymore, which is why we got a relief rally in stocks and a sell-off in bonds.

Regarding stocks: Sell at the sound of trumpet. Buy at the sound of cannon Nobel Peace Laureate leaving office.


rhahl

rhahl Avatar



Posted: Dec 28, 2016 - 12:44pm

 Red_Dragon wrote:


 At least no one is talking about war with Russia anymore, which is why we got a relief rally in stocks and sell-off in bonds.

Sell at the sound of trumpet. Buy at the sound of Nobel Peace Lariat leaving office.
Red_Dragon

Red_Dragon Avatar

Location: Dumbf*ckistan


Posted: Dec 28, 2016 - 8:38am


kcar

kcar Avatar



Posted: Dec 23, 2016 - 6:24pm

 Lazy8 wrote:
kcar wrote:
We should punish the Russians for acts of espionage and sabotage that approach open acts of war.

1. You need to look up what the words "war" and "sabotage" mean.
2. How do you propose to punish the Russians?
3. How will you know if those punishments were effective? When do we stop?
4. In 2010 the US government attacked Iranian nuclear facilities with the Stuxnet virus, causing actual physical damage. If exposing the emails of a political campaign approaches "open acts of war" what would you call this, and would Iran be justified in retaliating?

Sanctions and reprisals should cause the Russian government significant economic and political pain and/or cause it to open quiet negotiations with us so that both sides limit such behavior.

Like what? And do you seriously expect a geopolitical adversary to actually stop spying on us, even if they agreed to? I mean, would this be a pinky-swear situation, or more of a handshake thing?

I have no desire to coax out of you your notion of what would constitute a hack of the presidential election: you might take longer to explain it than your months-long attempt to outline Libertarianism in real-world politics. The Russians deliberately broke laws in order to make Clinton look bad. I believe it's likely that the Russians did get damaging information from the RNC (contrary to kurtster's WSJ "exclusive" article that provided no supporting detail) but chose to hold it back in order to help Trump.

Let's stop playing semantics. The Russians deliberately helped shift public opinion towards Trump through criminal activity. If I hacked into your company's computer system to steal and selectively leak embarrassing information about you and your company that didn't necessarily have bearing on the firm's competence but caused it to lose a major contract, I would go to jail and/or face lawsuits. 

Did the Russians control the election results? No. Did they screw up our vote counts? No. Did other factors contribute to HRC's defeat? Yes, many. But the Russians had a significant impact on voters—by discouraging would-be HRC voters and undecideds and by firing up Trump voters.

If you let the Russians slide on this, they will try to throw American public opinion again. There is nothing preventing the Russians from leaking false documents and information the next time.

1. There's nothing stopping the Russians—or anyone else—from leaking false documents now, and they have done so for decades.
2. Perhaps this is a foreign concept to you, so I'll try to type slowly: absolutely everyone should be welcome to try influence American opinion; there is no mechanism to stop them nor should there be.
3. Your list of questions (with the answer "no" to them) is a pretty good summary of what would constitute interfering with an election, so perhaps you didn't need to coax it out of me after all.
4. Sorry I was unable to explain libertarianism to you, but I encourage you to keep trying. It's really not that complicated.
5. Yes, virtually all acts of espionage are illegal, at least in the country being spied on. Also: the pope is catholic.

 

4. Sorry I was unable to explain libertarianism to you, but I encourage you to keep trying. It's really not that complicated.

Oh, honey, don't worry: you didn't even explain it to yourself. It's a shame that you post so much and think so little, but that's your funeral. 

"2. How do you propose to punish the Russians?
3. How will you know if those punishments were effective? When do we stop?"

https://www.state.gov/e/eb/tfs/spi/ukrainerussia/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_sanctions_during_the_Ukrainian_crisis

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-28400218

and more recently, 

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-ukraine-crisis-russia-usa-sanctions-idUSKCN1175E0

Controls against the Russian financial sector and Russian economy have measurable effects. A more drastic measure against Russia would be the US and EU aggressively partnering to slow or even embargo natural gas supplies from Russia to EU member nations. That would cause serious pain to the Russians. We could slow or stop controls against Russia when it enters into a mutual, verifiable agreement to stop cyber-theft and -interference related to popular elections. 

No one would take seriously a mutual agreement between Russia and the US to completely stop spying on each other. The Russians' hacking into Republican and Democratic party computer systems to steal data and influence the election crosses way over an acceptable threshold of national surveillance into an area dealing with an one nation's active attempt to destabilize the legitimate and codified political operations of another nation. 

If you seriously believe that this sort of tit-for-tat leading to mutual agreements is uncharted territory for the two countries, you simply have not read much history. And yes, it is possible to determine with a high degree of confidence when a cyber-attack is run or supported by a national government. 

"4. In 2010 the US government attacked Iranian nuclear facilities with the Stuxnet virus, causing actual physical damage. If exposing the emails of a political campaign approaches "open acts of war" what would you call this, and would Iran be justified in retaliating?"

Yes, I would call that an act similar to one of open war. The US and the Israelis set out to damage and delay Iran's attempt to transform low-grade uranium supplies into weapons-grade purity. The Iranian government has repeatedly called for the destruction of Israel and has developed missile systems capable of hitting Israel with a nuclear weapon. It was purifying far more uranium than it needed to develop medically useful nuclear isotopes (its public cover story). 

Israel and the US determined that Iran was on course to attack Israel and took steps to stop it. The Stuxnet virus attack and the sanctions against Iran deterred Iranian production of weapons-grade uranium and accelerated the attainment of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action . Welcome to the concepts of Realpolitik and Machtpolitik

The very real and ugly fact is that a country with the power and influence of the United States does not always have to play by "the rules." Thucydides touched on that in the Melian dialogue in "The Peloponnesian War." You might argue that the Russians have that right too, and I would agree with that. However, Russians went way too far. It's my understanding that the Russians tried to cast doubt on American elections because they felt we'd interfered with Ukrainian elections that went against Russia's interests. However, the Russians did not interfere with a client state of the US but with the US itself. 

I'm sure you remember 9/11. Perhaps you remember that bin Laden felt justified in attacking the United States for corrupting the world and trying to suppress Islam. bin Laden came to believe, after a perceived lack of American response to the 1998 American embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya and the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole, that a morally bankrupt and cowardly US government would not retaliate against an attack on the WTC towers. (Apparently he was not familiar with Pearl Harbor.)

That perception of weakness caused attacks to escalate. A lack of response to the Russian hacks of Republican and Democratic computers will just encourage the Russians to do it again and/or underwrite misinformation campaigns during American elections. And yes, the decline of Americans' skepticism about the trustworthiness of their sources of news makes it much easier for the Russians to spread dezinformatsiya. Oh look, they already have:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/29/world/europe/russia-sweden-disinformation.html


"2. Perhaps this is a foreign concept to you, so I'll try to type slowly: absolutely everyone should be welcome to try influence American opinion; there is no mechanism to stop them nor should there be"

By your logic, it would be perfectly all right for other nations to reveal their private conversations and agreements with the American government or steal classified information and publish it to influence our elections. Or fabricate stories such as the Comet Ping Pong rumor about HRC's supposed involvement with a pedophile ring running out of a DC pizza parlor. 

In terms of stopping Russia from pulling this stunt again, there sure are mechanisms, including doing the same thing to them or attacking the ruble in financial markets or...

You have this limited notion that the release of information trumps the fact that the information was stolen by a government breaking into computer systems. You fail to consider that the information had little or no relevance to fitness of HRC as a potential president and that the information came out in such a way as to influence public opinion right before the election. This was not an attempt to inform the public, it was an attempt to imply that HRC and the DNC was more corrupt than Trump and the RNC. And if the United States does not aggressively deter Russia from doing this again, Russia will likely move into spreading unsubstantiated rumor and outright falsehood. 

Really, do you think that the US should let this theft and interference slide? The US would have a target on its back if it did nothing. What Russia did this year went far, far beyond any other dezinformatsiya campaign inflicted on the US. By your logic, we should throw open all our computer systems and let everyone take anything  and publish anything they want. Because Libertarianism


Lazy8

Lazy8 Avatar

Location: The Gallatin Valley of Montana
Gender: Male


Posted: Dec 23, 2016 - 7:16am

kcar wrote:
We should punish the Russians for acts of espionage and sabotage that approach open acts of war.

1. You need to look up what the words "war" and "sabotage" mean.
2. How do you propose to punish the Russians?
3. How will you know if those punishments were effective? When do we stop?
4. In 2010 the US government attacked Iranian nuclear facilities with the Stuxnet virus, causing actual physical damage. If exposing the emails of a political campaign approaches "open acts of war" what would you call this, and would Iran be justified in retaliating?

Sanctions and reprisals should cause the Russian government significant economic and political pain and/or cause it to open quiet negotiations with us so that both sides limit such behavior.

Like what? And do you seriously expect a geopolitical adversary to actually stop spying on us, even if they agreed to? I mean, would this be a pinky-swear situation, or more of a handshake thing?

I have no desire to coax out of you your notion of what would constitute a hack of the presidential election: you might take longer to explain it than your months-long attempt to outline Libertarianism in real-world politics. The Russians deliberately broke laws in order to make Clinton look bad. I believe it's likely that the Russians did get damaging information from the RNC (contrary to kurtster's WSJ "exclusive" article that provided no supporting detail) but chose to hold it back in order to help Trump.

Let's stop playing semantics. The Russians deliberately helped shift public opinion towards Trump through criminal activity. If I hacked into your company's computer system to steal and selectively leak embarrassing information about you and your company that didn't necessarily have bearing on the firm's competence but caused it to lose a major contract, I would go to jail and/or face lawsuits. 

Did the Russians control the election results? No. Did they screw up our vote counts? No. Did other factors contribute to HRC's defeat? Yes, many. But the Russians had a significant impact on voters—by discouraging would-be HRC voters and undecideds and by firing up Trump voters.

If you let the Russians slide on this, they will try to throw American public opinion again. There is nothing preventing the Russians from leaking false documents and information the next time.

1. There's nothing stopping the Russians—or anyone else—from leaking false documents now, and they have done so for decades.
2. Perhaps this is a foreign concept to you, so I'll try to type slowly: absolutely everyone should be welcome to try influence American opinion; there is no mechanism to stop them nor should there be.
3. Your list of questions (with the answer "no" to them) is a pretty good summary of what would constitute interfering with an election, so perhaps you didn't need to coax it out of me after all.
4. Sorry I was unable to explain libertarianism to you, but I encourage you to keep trying. It's really not that complicated.
5. Yes, virtually all acts of espionage are illegal, at least in the country being spied on. Also: the pope is catholic.


kcar

kcar Avatar



Posted: Dec 22, 2016 - 8:04pm

 Lazy8 wrote:
 kcar wrote:
Lazy8's 9:58 pm post claims that Americans have no options for reprisal, that this is the new normal, that even kids can do what the Russian government did. There is sufficient evidence, however, based on the costly tools used, persistence of effort, nature of information taken and also leaked that the hack could only have been a government-sponsored effort. Russia has quite a few financial and economic vulnerabilities that the US government could exploit. But I don't think Trump is smart enough to understand the pernicious effects of the Russian hack. Unpunished, however, Putin will do this to us again.

So we should punish Putin (well, Russia—that is, Russians in general) for...revealing the truth.

Go ahead and outline the response you propose, but I'm going to repeat my earlier criticism of this approach: how do we know when we're done? When do we lift the sanctions or end the blockade or cease combat operations or whatever?

When Putin says "Sorry, won't do that again"? When we effect regime change in Russia? When this meme stops playing well in the polls? When Putin hacks the RNC and posts something unsavory about Trump?*

How do you know the threat (the terrible threat of revealing embarrassing information) is over?

*To which I'd have to ask what that might be if what we already know isn't enough, but I digress.

 
We should punish the Russians for acts of espionage and sabotage that approach open acts of war. The Russians broke into multiple computer systems (not just that of the DNC) to disrupt our elections. 

Cybersecurity firm finds evidence that Russian military unit was behind DNC hack

A cybersecurity firm has uncovered strong proof of the tie between the group that hacked the Democratic National Committee and Russia’s military intelligence arm — the primary agency behind the Kremlin’s interference in the 2016 election.

The firm CrowdStrike linked malware used in the DNC intrusion to malware used to hack and track an Android phone app used by the Ukrainian army in its battle against pro-Russia separatists in eastern Ukraine from late 2014 through 2016.

...

CrowdStrike’s fingering of the GRU helps to deepen the public’s understanding of how different arms of the Russian government are carrying out malicious and deeply troubling cyber acts in the United States. The director of national intelligence and the homeland security secretary in October publicly blamed the Russian government for interfering in the U.S. election, including through hacks of political organizations and targeting of state election systems.


The Russians deliberately helped time the release of information to embarrass Clinton and the Democrats over a period of weeks. If the intent was merely to release information about Podesta and the DNC, the information could have come out all at once. Instead, it was delivered piecemeal over weeks, to keep the suggestion of scandal at the top of the news. The intent was to embarrass, smear and spread FUD about Clinton. AFAIK there wasn't really anything in those leaked emails that revealed disqualifying behavior by HRC. And the "skullduggery" you refer to at the DNC was going on at the RNC during this campaign, as I pointed out. 

The Russians helped whip up a spectacle that some called a scandal, largely because the press and pundits stated that it was a scandal. The intent started with the desire to spread doubts in American minds about the authenticity of our electoral system—the Russians have done similar things to other countries (they have hacked and leaked info to embarrass companies as well.) The intent changed to tipping the election to Trump

Sanctions and reprisals should cause the Russian government significant economic and political pain and/or cause it to open quiet negotiations with us so that both sides limit such behavior.  

Lazy8 wrote (@8:28 today to ScottFromWyoming) : 

The meme you're working on (that everyone up in arms about this is pushing) is that someone hacked the election.

They didn't. There is zero evidence of that. None. Not from anyone—intelligence agency, hyperventilating pundits, posters on internet forums—nobody. No one hacked the election. 

I have no desire to coax out of you your notion of what would constitute a hack of the presidential election: you might take longer to explain it than your months-long attempt to outline Libertarianism in real-world politics. The Russians deliberately broke laws in order to make Clinton look bad. I believe it's likely that the Russians did get damaging information from the RNC (contrary to kurtster's WSJ "exclusive" article that provided no supporting detail) but chose to hold it back in order to help Trump.

Let's stop playing semantics. The Russians deliberately helped shift public opinion towards Trump through criminal activity. If I hacked into your company's computer system to steal and selectively leak embarrassing information about you and your company that didn't necessarily have bearing on the firm's competence but caused it to lose a major contract, I would go to jail and/or face lawsuits. 

Did the Russians control the election results? No. Did they screw up our vote counts? No. Did other factors contribute to HRC's defeat? Yes, many. But the Russians had a significant impact on voters—by discouraging would-be HRC voters and undecideds and by firing up Trump voters.

If you let the Russians slide on this, they will try to throw American public opinion again. There is nothing preventing the Russians from leaking false documents and information the next time.


Lazy8

Lazy8 Avatar

Location: The Gallatin Valley of Montana
Gender: Male


Posted: Dec 22, 2016 - 8:59am

 kcar wrote:
Lazy8's 9:58 pm post claims that Americans have no options for reprisal, that this is the new normal, that even kids can do what the Russian government did. There is sufficient evidence, however, based on the costly tools used, persistence of effort, nature of information taken and also leaked that the hack could only have been a government-sponsored effort. Russia has quite a few financial and economic vulnerabilities that the US government could exploit. But I don't think Trump is smart enough to understand the pernicious effects of the Russian hack. Unpunished, however, Putin will do this to us again.

So we should punish Putin (well, Russia—that is, Russians in general) for...revealing the truth.

Go ahead and outline the response you propose, but I'm going to repeat my earlier criticism of this approach: how do we know when we're done? When do we lift the sanctions or end the blockade or cease combat operations or whatever?

When Putin says "Sorry, won't do that again"? When we effect regime change in Russia? When this meme stops playing well in the polls? When Putin hacks the RNC and posts something unsavory about Trump?*

How do you know the threat (the terrible threat of revealing embarrassing information) is over?

*To which I'd have to ask what that might be if what we already know isn't enough, but I digress.
Lazy8

Lazy8 Avatar

Location: The Gallatin Valley of Montana
Gender: Male


Posted: Dec 22, 2016 - 8:47am

 ScottFromWyoming wrote:
We're not talking about all those other iterations, and we're not talking specifically about the method of meddling. We're talking about a state, waking up one day and saying, "let's see if we can nudge this election toward our man." And we're also not talking about retaliation. Yes, we need to field some candidates for whom this would not have been so damaging. Good luck. No, what we're talking about is the right's total willingness to accept {possibly-} compromised election results simply because the cards happened to fall their way. This should be a call to identify and implement a more secure and trustworthy system of voting. Hanging chads still a thing? Not really. How about vulnerable electronic voting machines? They might be, I don't know. The ones that don't have a paper ballot never really took hold. Citizens United? I know where you are on that, but money in politics has to be addressed. We got Ross Perot and Donald Trump specifically because they each introduced themselves by pointing out how rich they are. Not any other qualification, just "rich." But the right now thing to look at is how susceptible are our elections to the machinations of a foreign state? Suppose Podesta didn't fall for the "update." How else would they try? We need to be able to believe in the results. Obviously our participation rate is so low now, we must not have much faith as it is.

I know this is disjointed rambling. I'm not expecting you to unpack it. Tonight.  

If we fear our elections may be the target of meddling we need to harden the targets. That's on us.

They haven't been. The meme you're working on (that everyone up in arms about this is pushing) is that someone hacked the election.

They didn't. There is zero evidence of that. None. Not from anyone—intelligence agency, hyperventilating pundits, posters on internet forums—nobody. No one hacked the election.

Someone added some information—true information—to the electorate. That information was never intended to be public; it was supposed to be hidden from us—because it was evidence of skullduggery by the people who wanted it hidden. Maybe that made a difference, maybe it didn't, but no one interfered with the election.

If you're trying to turn this into yet another panic about how we conduct elections you're doing it based on...nothing. We could drop another couple of gigabucks* on well-connected equipment manufacturers and big city politicians and probably accomplish as little as we did last time.

*Fiscal impact of the 2002 Help America Vote Act (congress' response to the last time somebody lost an election and insisted it must have been caused by the process): $2.2B.


sirdroseph

sirdroseph Avatar

Location: Not here, I tell you wat
Gender: Male


Posted: Dec 22, 2016 - 5:33am

It is really liberating to be completely divorced from the duopoly. All of this means nothing to me and it is a beautiful day! Plus I have always been pro Russian / anti NATO and American Imperialism since the 90's so this is all music to my long awaiting ears.


kcar

kcar Avatar



Posted: Dec 22, 2016 - 12:01am

 ScottFromWyoming wrote:

We're not talking about all those other iterations, and we're not talking specifically about the method of meddling. We're talking about a state, waking up one day and saying, "let's see if we can nudge this election toward our man." And we're also not talking about retaliation. Yes, we need to field some candidates for whom this would not have been so damaging. Good luck. No, what we're talking about is the right's total willingness to accept {possibly-} compromised election results simply because the cards happened to fall their way. This should be a call to identify and implement a more secure and trustworthy system of voting. Hanging chads still a thing? Not really. How about vulnerable electronic voting machines? They might be, I don't know. The ones that don't have a paper ballot never really took hold. Citizens United? I know where you are on that, but money in politics has to be addressed. We got Ross Perot and Donald Trump specifically because they each introduced themselves by pointing out how rich they are. Not any other qualification, just "rich." But the right now thing to look at is how susceptible are our elections to the machinations of a foreign state? Suppose Podesta didn't fall for the "update." How else would they try? We need to be able to believe in the results. Obviously our participation rate is so low now, we must not have much faith as it is.

I know this is disjointed rambling. I'm not expecting you to unpack it. Tonight.  

 
AFAICT you and Lazy8 are focusing on two different matters. Lazy8 welcomes the fact that the Russian hack revealed the "behind the scenes" workings of a modern political organization. He seems to think that the revealed emails provided more information to voters, causing them to change their votes or intent to vote for HRC. If I'm reading his thinking correctly, it doesn't matter whether Fancy Bear and Cozy Bear worked alone or with the Russian government  or whether a mainstream American newspaper obtained and published the emails. 

Normally I would agree that more public information about our political parties and system of government is better than less. However, Lazy8 apparently assumes too much about the impact of the INFORMATION in the leaked emails and too little about the impact of the SPECTACLE of the leaked emails story. Frankly, I doubt that there was much information in those leaked emails that resonated so much with voters that they made a conscious decision to trust the Democrats less. I think that the leaked emails just provided a spectacle or appearance of wrongdoing. People often don't pay attention to the information in a story but they do pay attention that so many reporters and pundits are talking about the information. A college friend often chose a side on a controversial matter only by siding with the people that were yelling the loudest, not the most logically.

I don't have much faith in the average voters anymore.They don't gather facts so much as they absorb impressions. The Russian hack of the DNC, I believe, was a deliberate attempt to raise unwarranted FUD about HRC by fueling more stories about DNC emails and about the party's off-camera doings. Any embarrassing info would have done the trick. The leaks didn't have to be substantive and AFAIK weren't. 

My take—that the Russians just wanted to generate any bad press for HRC and some voters moved away from HRC because of the leaks—isn't terribly complimentary of the average voter. But I don't think you sway American voters with facts; you get 'em with rumors, innuendo, and the claim that there's a scandal. If I'm right, then the Russians did try to sway the election through smears of the Democrats.

Lazy8 also apparently fails to consider that no similar information leak occurred on the Republican side. (kurtster pointed me to an "exclusive" WSJ story reporting that the lack of RNC information was due to superior cybersecurity and not a Russian decision to try to influence the election. See his post on the Trump thread on 12/16/16 @ 9:07pm. I'm skeptical of the accuracy of the story and posted as much in the Trump thread, right after kurtster's post. I based my take on reading the piece on the WSJ site). The CIA and FBI apparently agree that the Russians hacked the RNC as well as the DNC. I've read non-WSJ newspaper reports stating that the Russian government consciously decided not to release embarrassing RNC material in order to sway the election. Those reports state that the Russian government at first merely wanted to spread doubt among Americans about the authenticity of the elections but pushed to steal and leak info about the Democrats when they saw the chance. 

In terms of the election's outcome, the DNC hack may not  have had a decisive impact. Again, people were angry and wanted change. They were already suspicious about HRC's use of a private email server. Democratic voters were split between HRC and Bernie. Trump was reality-show refreshing and entertaining. It's likely that many voters had such low expectations of Trump's uprightness and integrity that any RNC leak wouldn't have done much damage. Again, it looked like the GOP was going to dissolve mid-campaign amidst its own scandals and backroom machinations, but people still voted for Trump. 

But any secret Russian influence on our elections that involves the theft of information and selective release of it in order to sway voters is unacceptable and intolerable. If the Russians had started leaking any unflattering information about Trump (has untreatable syphilis) or Gary Johnson (wets the bed) in the closing weeks of the campaign and HRC narrowly won, I think the Trump and Johnson supporters would've been outraged. The Russians created more spectacle and unwarranted FUD about the Democrats. They went way past sowing doubt about American elections in general. 

Lazy8's 9:58 pm post claims that Americans have no options for reprisal, that this is the new normal, that even kids can do what the Russian government did. There is sufficient evidence, however, based on the costly tools used, persistence of effort, nature of information taken and also leaked that the hack could only have been a government-sponsored effort. Russia has quite a few financial and economic vulnerabilities that the US government could exploit. But I don't think Trump is smart enough to understand the pernicious effects of the Russian hack. Unpunished, however, Putin will do this to us again. 
 


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