America's retaliation against Russian hacking.

@farmerman,

I'm not sure what you are arguing, but I don't "support" the hack and I never denied it happened.

I have at various times and in no manner contradictory said that

1) We've seen no evidence. At this point though both select members of Congress and the Trump team have seen the evidence and they are not making noise about it being scant or phony. This is good enough for me. I never expected the public to be provided with evidence that would reveal methods & sources, but I did believe Trump should have, and now he has.

2) I don't put it past our intelligence agencies to involve themselves in domestic politics. I think they did with Iraq and WMDs and again with downplaying ISIS. They serve the president and if he wants them to assist him in domestic politics, they will.

3) I think the manner in which this story was first made known and the heavy emphasis on Putin preferring Trump to Clinton was intended to make it difficult for him and his team to shake up the various agencies. He played into their hand by, predictably, reacting with thin skinned umbrage, and now the case will be made that any shake up is political retaliation against the agencies. I fully acknowledge I know of no proof of this, but it's what I think happened.

4) The DNC & Podesta can prove the e-mail was altered if it was, unless of course they bleached their servers after the hack became known. The clearly have offered no such proof and claims that the e-mail was altered haven't exactly been robust. I don't know what you are talking about with a "Well if it was sent it must be true" template. My argument is if no effort has been made to prove the e-mail was altered, it almost certainly was not. I simply can't imagine a reason why the Dems would not provide proof if they knew it was altered. Maybe you can.

5) Retaliatory steps should be taken against foreign powers attempting to influence our election, and in this case they have been. I don't think Trump should reverse them.

None of these opinions and positions are evidence of a love affair with Putin, a lack of concern for the integrity of our democratic processes, or fear and loathing of our intelligence agencies.

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Apparently there's still one guy who thinks the story is a fraud.

http://www.usapoliticstoday.com/cybersecurity-legend-blows-up-democrats/

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https://scontent-atl3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/15894917_1556123987736786_2161212302412163605_n.jpg?oh=f93d6920029c28731ee3f07b933c8469&oe=58D7D1EB

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@Finn dAbuzz,

Finn dAbuzz wrote:

Apparently there's still one guy who thinks the story is a fraud.

http://www.usapoliticstoday.com/cybersecurity-legend-blows-up-democrats/

Looking at your link, Finn, this isn't just "some guy." This is John McAfee, the developer of the world-renowned McAfee anti-virus software. He says:

Quote:

“The hack on the DNC used a piece of malware a year and a half old and there have been many updates since then, McAfee said. “This was done by an independent one person kid that downloaded the software. Please, this is not an organized hack and certainly not a nation-state that did this.”

"The whole “Russian hacking” narrative is either propaganda intended to incite the American people, to anger toward Russia for some reason, or our intelligence community is so ignorant and naïve that they should all be replaced.”

Pretty strong statement, eh?

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@Frugal1,

There may be some people who voted against Clinton because she was a proven liar who subjected State Department email to security breaches by at least 6 foreign governments (per the FBI). There may be some who voted against her because of some of the outrageous tactics and statements exposed by the email hacks.

There is no need to overstate the situation by claiming that absolutely no one paid any attention to such things, although Clinton supporters unanimously claimed that such matters did not influence them in the least.

Some people did pay attention, and care, I'm sure. But that's beside the point, as far as anything the russians are alleged to have done.

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Hillary lost because she's awful, not because of the Russians

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@layman,

layman wrote:

Looking at your link, Finn, this isn't just "some guy." No kidding? Actually I was being facetious as I just was again here.

This is John McAfee, the developer of the world-renowned McAfee anti-virus software. He says:

Quote:
“The hack on the DNC used a piece of malware a year and a half old and there have been many updates since then, McAfee said. “This was done by an independent one person kid that downloaded the software. Please, this is not an organized hack and certainly not a nation-state that did this.”

"The whole “Russian hacking” narrative is either propaganda intended to incite the American people, to anger toward Russia for some reason, or our intelligence community is so ignorant and naïve that they should all be replaced.”

Pretty strong statement, eh?

It's a very strong statement, but I really don't know the extent of McAfee's credibility. It would seem that he can be considered an expert, but his politics might be tainting his judgement. It happens so frequently these days that it's hard to know who to trust.

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@Finn dAbuzz,

Quote:

President-elect Donald Trump accepts the U.S. intelligence community's conclusion that Russia engaged in cyber attacks aimed at disrupting the presidential election and may take actions in response, his incoming chief of staff said on Sunday.

Reince Priebus, the former Republican National Committee chairman, said Trump understands that Moscow was behind the intrusions into the Democratic Party organizations. "He accepts the fact that this particular case was entities in Russia so that’s not the issue," Priebus said on "Fox News Sunday."

Priebus' comments marked a major shift. Trump has repeatedly dismissed claims that the Russians were trying to help him, arguing that those charges are the product of his political opponents trying to undermine his victory.

Source

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@Walter Hinteler,

Where did you get that bullshit?

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@gungasnake,

I don't know if it's bullshit, but I do know that I gave the source. (It's actually on Fox news as well)

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@gungasnake,

It is a story that's making the rounds... much like stories of HRC winning by a landslide.

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@Walter Hinteler,

Not sure why you directed this to me Walter except that once again you've assumed something about my opinion that it not the case.

If you go back a post or two from the one to which you responded you will find that I indicated that Trump and his team have been shown the "proof" of the intelligence agencies and since there have not been any tweets or statement about the evidence being too scant or even phony, I assumed that they accepted it. Your Fox News link merely confirms what I surmised.

It's absurdly hypocritical for Democrats to tut-tut about "making nice" with Russia when they were all for Obama and Clinton's "Reset" and the implication was that Bush & Co had unnecessarily complicated the relationship, but this is to be expected.

Trump is going to have to get a bit smarter about quick reactions of pique that snare him in his opposition's traps. It was unwise from the beginning to publicly disparaged the intelligence community. Hopefully he'll learn.

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@Finn dAbuzz,

Finn dAbuzz wrote:

Not sure why you directed this to me Walter except that once again you've assumed something about my opinion that it not the case.

Right: I should have replied to all.

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@Finn dAbuzz,

Finn dAbuzz wrote:

Trump is going to have to get a bit smarter about quick reactions of pique that snare him in his opposition's traps. It was unwise from the beginning to publicly disparaged the intelligence community. Hopefully he'll learn.

His reaction was more that of a candidate and not the elected president in my opinion.

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@Finn dAbuzz,

Finn dAbuzz wrote:

No kidding? Actually I was being facetious as I just was again here.

Well, sure, I figured as much, and my statement was made for the benefit of others, not you. Your form of understatement is the opposite of creating "click bait," so I figured most posters wouldn't even look at it.

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@layman,

"It's a very strong statement, but I really don't know the extent of McAfee's credibility. It would seem that he can be considered an expert, but his politics might be tainting his judgement. It happens so frequently these days that it's hard to know who to trust."

Yeah, Finn, I don't anything about him either, although he is an American, speaking from Memphis Tennessee, and obviously an expert in the field. I haven't even read the latest intelligence report, but his summary of it (deliniating 4 reasons why they reached conclusions they did) is presumably accurate.

You don't have to be an expert to understand that his reasons for saying that basing conclusions of russian involvement on those given reasons is unjustified make perfect sense.

He claims it couldn't possibly be any state actor, but assuming it was, this seems like the best way to create a "false flag," as if, for example, the Chinese were doing the hacking but wanted to make it look like it was Russia. No sophisticated state actor would expose itself in this way.

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The following is a brilliant analysis of the "Russian hacking" and the intelligence agencies reported findings, by Andrew McCarthy in National Review.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/443655/intelligence-report-fbi-cia-nsa-russia-vladimir-putin-hillary-clinton-john-podesta-donald-trump?utm_campaign=trueAnthem:+Trending+Content&utm_content=5872c5da04d3015d48fb91b1&utm_medium=trueAnthem&utm_source=facebook

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@Builder,

The Russian stooge. And his buddy tRump.

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@Finn dAbuzz,

Yeah, Finn, good analysis there. This whole fake "issue," insofar as it relates to Podesta's email getting hacked, is really barely worth any response.

As I stated in a prior post, any claim that the disclosure of his emails, whoever hacked them, "undermines democracy" or "interferes with" the election process is prima facie absurd.

Every single dollar spent on TV campaign ads, on candidate rallies, etc., is specifically and intentionally designed to "influence the outcome of the election." It's called "campaigning," eh? What else is new?

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America's retaliation against Russian hacking.

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