Lazy8 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.  

 ScottFromWyoming wrote:
And what do you think might be done about it? Seriously.

Is the incentive to meddle going to go away?

Are the means to meddle going to go away?

Is there such a thing as a sanction that could effectively punish it? Even if you were willing to apply it (and I hope you aren't, but people get all irrational when they're angry) to a state, what if next time it's a pimply-faced teenager in India, or an anarchist collective in Norway? What disincentive are you going to apply that would reach every anonymous hacker with an axe to grind or lulz to seek?

I think we all realize the answer to these questions is no.

This is a fact of life now. If you have a dirty little secret and the stakes are high enough someone will try to expose it. If that dirty little secret would sink your chances in an election maybe the problem isn't the exposure, it's the secret.

 Lazy8 wrote: 
No, we're trying to consider (the possibility of) foreign meddling with our elections as a standalone issue.

steeler wrote:
Jeebus, am I accidentally typing in Elbonian or something? You (and every other lefty on this page) is trying to make the issue who revealed the information.

I
don't
care

who revealed the information. If the information changed the outcome of the election then the people who changed their votes didn't care either. Is the information true? The people who wrote the leaked emails haven't denied it, so it seems it was. If you want the culprits...there they are.


Yes. That is exactly my point. And the louder you all chant "the Russians!" in seeming unison the more obvious it is.

If the Russians hacked the DNC's email then the DNC needs to work on IT security. The Russians aren't about to stop hacking whatever they can get into. We are geopolitical rivals, and chances are other actors (state and private) are trying to hack emails too. They will continue. No amount of hand-wringing or public protests will change that.

I think you realize that.

And of course we'd all be shocked if the White House were playing politics with an issue as important as exactly who it was who revealed the DNC's dirty little secrets, but c'mon—it's not like they weaponized the IRS against political opponents or something.

 steeler wrote: 
True, and that's just the matter of re-opening the investigation. There's also the matter of Comey making a public statement about re-opening the investigation, even though "senior Justice Department officials" and "Justice leadership" strongly discouraged him from doing so because it would go completely against FBI and DOJ policy about not commenting on an ongoing investigation and not interfering with an election. 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/justice-officials-warned-fbi-that-comeys-decision-to-update-congress-was-not-consistent-with-department-policy/2016/10/29/cb179254-9de7-11e6-b3c9-f662adaa0048_story.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/30/us/politics/comey-clinton-email-justice.html?_r=0

 kcar wrote: 
not to mention, if the politics of the White House could be imposed so completely on the intelligence agencies, how would one explain Comey reopening the investigation into the emails with voting having already started in some states?

 steeler wrote: 
There is no f*#kin' way that the career intelligence analysts in the federal government would remain silent if the White House tried to force heads of the CIA and FBI to publicly lie about those organizations' assessments of possible Russian involvement in hacks of Republican and Democratic party computer systems.

The CIA and DIA were not silent about the pressure placed on them from Dubya's White House to link Saddam Hussein with Al Qaeda—the last time I can remember when intelligence was manipulated to suit a President. Unfortunately, the press did not sufficiently report analysts' complaints because the country was looking for vengeance for 9/11. There are way too many media outlets now—mainstream and alternative—for that toeing of the line by the mainstream press to occur today. 

Trump won the election. I think he likely would have won even if DNC emails didn't get leaked: there were too many voters voting out of anger and not enough voters committed to Hillary as President. We can argue whether the RNC et al had better cybersecurity or whether the Russians decided not to leak RNC material, but it should be obvious that the Russians' leak of DNC emails had an effect on Democratic and Republican voters, an effect not counterbalanced by any similar leak of RNC material. The Republican party was doing the same sort of things that were revealed in the DNC email leaks. (Hell, GOP leaders were openly meeting about how to kill Trump's popularity and then how to change party rules to block his nomination. DNC emails disparaging Bernie Sanders pale in comparison). 

In the end, American voters made their own choice—a catastrophic one, in my opinion. They were not brainwashed by the Russians, but it's quite likely that many voters never thought much about whether the DNC emails or Hillary's email servers were game-changing issues.

I think the Russian government's involvement in the hacking of the DNC's emails via Fancy Bear and others is a far, far bigger deal than the actual content of the DNC emails. As editorialists have written, governments have found ways to influence elections in other countries and our own government has done so. But what the Russians did went too far and they should pay dearly. If you think I'm basing that opinion solely on an attitude favoring American exceptionalism, so be it. For all you Trump supporters, if the Russians had put their thumb on the scales against Trump, you would be baying for blood.   

 Lazy8 wrote:

 
Maybe I misconstrued what you have been posting. I thought I have seen several of your posts talking about a lack of evidence and corroboration, and partisan leaks.    That seems to go more towards casting doubt on the veracity of reports of Russian hacking as opposed to taking exception to a false sense of outrage over those purported hackings. I know you are protesting the latter, but it seems you also are arguing the former.   

As I said in my opening post on this subject, what has been revealed about the DNC through these hackings/leaks does not necessarily mitigate concern about the hackings being the work of the Russian government —if that is the case. Your assumption seems to be that the allegations against the Russians — or at least the public angst over it — is designed to be just an attempt to distract people from what has been revealed about the operations of the DNC. Certainly there are some in the public who likely are doing exactly that. My point is that I doubt that is what the Obama administration is doing.  If it is, then we have way bigger problems than what was revealed by the leaked DNC emails.  ,        

 steeler wrote:
I didn't say they were lying, they're just faking the outrage. Unless they really are outraged, which is worse: they should be grown-ups about this.

And for the I-don't-know—how-manyth-time: who hacked the DNC's emails is interesting/amusing/whatever, but it doesn't change what was in them. The point I made a page or so ago in starting this latest exchange was this: What was in them is what changed the course of the election, if indeed it did. No one is responsible for that content but the DNC. Not the Russians, not the Republicans, not Fox News. They didn't write them, they revealed them.

If those revelations turned the election the blame should fall on what was revealed, not who revealed it.

 Lazy8 wrote:

 
The reference to Soviet Union instead of Russia was my mistake; a typo.   

Healthy skepticism of those in office is part of democracy.  However, I do not go as far as you apparently do in considering nearly everything emanating from government officials (and the media reporting on what government officials are saying)  to be lies until proven otherwise.  Right now, given what I have read, I tend to believe what is being reported as being the views of the intelligence agencies and am inclined to believe that version and not that of the Russians or Trump's.  It makes no sense to me that the Obama administration, from the President on down through directors of the various intelligence agencies, would be putting out a scenario that falsely accuses Russia solely for partisan political purposes, in the waning days of the Obama presidency.  Does that scenario make sense to you? Not me.          

steeler wrote:
What little has been said by intelligence agencies has been leaked to reporters friendly to the (Democratic) administration. We don't know what they actually said, and there is nothing to corroborate it. And if it's true that Russia hacked the DNC emails why would they act surprised? Given the opportunity of course they would; that's why countries have spies. That's why our own intelligence agencies bugged Angela Merkel's phone.

So why leak this supposedly classified information that's so sensitive no one will speak on the record or provide any of the evidence? Because it stokes the partisan outrage that distracts from what was revealed.


An investigation will be an excellent opportunity for grandstanding, virtue signaling, and bellicose chest-thumping so it's not only warranted, it's virtually guaranteed.


Yes, assuming it happened—this is the first I've heard of it. And it sounds like the kind of pro-forma objection anyone in that position would be expected to make. Another country caught spying on us! Outrageous! Stop immediately or there will be Serious Consequences!

It was also time travel, as there hasn't been a Soviet Union for 25 years. So that's pretty cool too. Not sure what good it would do to warn Gorbachev about this "email" thing tho...


I'm proposing that everybody stop feigning shock and outrage and making threats they have no intention of following thru with. Y'know...honesty.

 Lazy8 wrote:

  Are you lumping the various intelligence agencies in within those bent on creating a distraction? 

How about those Republican congressmen who have called for an investigation? Is an investigation unwarranted?

It has been reported that the Obama administration used the "red phone" to communicate to the Soviet Union right before the election (purportedly on Halloween — scary) to warn them against any interference with the election.  Was that just political theater, to be revealed later for the purposes of creating a public distraction?

That there may not be a particularly  viable enforcement mechanism does not. in and of itself, render an action unobjectionable.  Statements of disapproval do carry some weight in the world of diplomacy and global relations.

You seem to be positing that if there is not a particularly viable enforcement mechanism, everyone, including those in the administration, should just shut up and act as if nothing happened.    

        

 

 

       

 islander wrote:
OK, let's get started! We'll stop buying...whatever it is Russia still sells us. Until...what?

How do you know when something invisible has stopped? What's the goal here—just to vent phony rage at the actions of a sovereign nation?

Normally sanctions have some kind of objective: allow UN inspectors in to count artillery shells, return to the bargaining table, release a political prisoner...something. Articulate a verifiable goal or it's just another endless war-on-the-moment's-boogieman.

 islander wrote: 
economic sanctions only hurt the vulnerable

there's not a lot we can do regardless

except huff and puff

if it was up to me i'd go full tilt boogie on the trade



 

 Lazy8 wrote: 
This would be my vote. A nice public statement from Trump and Tillerson saying "we know what you did and we won't stand for it, as a result we will not even discuss the lifting of the sanctions already in place until we see a stop to these activities". Of course we would have to stop the same/similar activities, and we would have to see Trump/Tillerson not act to support the fossil fuel industry at the same time, so as a betting man I'll sit this one out.

 Lazy8 wrote:
True. But that doesn't mean that other releases wouldn't have consequences. If not, then why the slow "drip, drip, drip" reveal of the DNC e-mails?  An honest look at the timing of "bombshells" and their impact on the polling would show that number and timing certainly do have an impact. That is why I think Comey's announcement was more significant than Russian involvement (although I'd still say less serious despite the impact). 

Again, cumulatively there was less than 90K votes that determined the election. if 45K had switched, or those 90K stayed home (or some combination thereof), we would be talking about how Trump was Robbed and how we can hand the presidency to someone who can't even screen for basic phishing scams.

 steeler wrote:
The outrage may not need to be calibrated in a partisan fashion, but it clearly is.

One of the key indicators of this is the suggested response: haven't seen one. What do the outraged want as a response, again assuming the accusation is true?

Go to war?
Economic sanctions?
Hack Putin's emails and publish them so his political opponents can read them in prison?
Expel an ambassador?
Sternly-worded letter?

What would be the point of any of that? What behavior would it be expected to change?

The kerfuffle is an attempt to distract our attention from what was revealed, an ad hominem on a giant scale. Yes, Putin has an agenda. So does the DNC and its apologists. The facts remain.

 islander wrote:
What's in plain sight is plenty bad enough. More revelations would not change our understanding of his character or competence.

 miamizsun wrote: 
It doesn't look like anything to me.

 islander wrote: 
:gritteeth: