U.S. Politics: Feelings Trump Facts

[Altherion]

22 minutes ago, Manhole Eunuchsbane said:

What's maddening about this to me is that there's really no good reason for Trump to stick his head in the sand on this one. It's not like anyone is saying he's complicit. In fact, it makes him look shadier to pretend it didn't happen. At the end of the day this is just all about his ego. 

The Democrats and their allies have been trying to create many narratives to delegitimize Trump's victory. One of these narratives (with two variants: the unwitting and the complicit) is that Trump is the pawn of the Russians and would never have won the election without their illegal assistance. The recent behavior of the intelligence agencies lends strength to the unwitting pawn variant and Trump is naturally trying to discredit it. It's a propaganda battle and it's difficult to say who is winning or losing. Hopefully, once January 20th comes around, most of this nonsense will go away.

[snake]

2 minutes ago, Altherion said:

The Democrats and their allies have been trying to create many narratives to delegitimize Trump's victory. One of these narratives (with two variants: the unwitting and the complicit) is that Trump is the pawn of the Russians and would never have won the election without their illegal assistance. The recent behavior of the intelligence agencies lends strength to the unwitting pawn variant and Trump is naturally trying to discredit it. It's a propaganda battle and it's difficult to say who is winning or losing. Hopefully, once January 20th comes around, most of this nonsense will go away.

Well the conspiracy theory about the RNC being hacked can now be put to rest as that seems to have not been the case, although if Trump's statement is at all accurate an attempt was made.

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

Just now, Altherion said:

The Democrats and their allies have been trying to create many narratives to delegitimize Trump's victory. One of these narratives (with two variants: the unwitting and the complicit) is that Trump is the pawn of the Russians and would never have won the election without their illegal assistance. The recent behavior of the intelligence agencies lends strength to the unwitting pawn variant and Trump is naturally trying to discredit it. It's a propaganda battle and it's difficult to say who is winning or losing. Hopefully, once January 20th comes around, most of this nonsense will go away.

So what? He won. What happens if the next time around the Russians prefer the Dem candidate? Maybe he might want some protection at that point. The more important point is he should be troubled by a foreign power fucking with our election process.

I don't believe your "unwitting pawn" theory washes, as the FBI was clearly in Trump's corner.

My point is there doesn't have to be a propaganda battle. Trump can take this information seriously and still maintain that he won the election fairly. The two aren't mutually exclusive. 

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

1 minute ago, snake said:

Well the conspiracy theory about the RNC being hacked can now be put to rest as that seems to have not been the case, although if Trump's statement is at all accurate an attempt was made.

How has that been put to rest?

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

6 minutes ago, Altherion said:

 that Trump is the pawn of the Russians and would never have won the election without their illegal assistance. 

One can be true without the other. I firmly believe Trump is a Putin pawn in the not so literal sense, but he still could have won without Russia's interference. 

[Mexal]

36 minutes ago, snake said:

One interesting detail of note, the hack of the DNC servers relies upon the evidence of third-party, private cyber security firms for evidence.  The FBI, apparently, repeatedly, asked for access to the DNC servers but were denied.  That seems very strange to me.

The DNC, of course, says it was never asked.

Hmmmm, who to believe?????

Link

 

This is a poor misrepresentation of what's in this link.

Quote

“The FBI repeatedly stressed to DNC officials the necessity of obtaining direct access to servers and data, only to be rebuffed until well after the initial compromise had been mitigated," the agency said. "This left the FBI no choice but to rely upon a third party for information. These actions caused significant delays and inhibited the FBI from addressing the intrusion earlier."

While intelligence agencies hadn’t previously confirmed that the DNC refused to provide access to its computers, they had disclosed that they depended on private cyber security companies.

In October, Timothy Barrett, spokesman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, said that U.S. intelligence "independently observed technical activity that is consistent with the forensic evidence identified by a private cyber-firm and is consistent with our general understanding of cyber activities by the Russian government.

You're right in that the FBI did rely upon third party information (which shouldn't be a big deal if the data is accurate as these guys are professionals and it's fairly easy to determine the authenticity) initially, but if you read further, it said the delay in getting to the servers inhibited the FBI from addressing the intrusion earlier. It did not say that the FBI never examined the servers or evidence. It also says that US intelligence independently observed activity consistent with the forensic evidence. 

The only debate here is whether the FBI did in fact get rebuffed at the time of the hack or whether they ever asked to view them in the first place which was also reported. This matters in term of how to handle situations like this in the future and the role the FBI played in addressing this prior to the election, but it should have zero relevance to the ultimate conclusions the intelligence community came up with after a full investigation took place.

[snake]

18 minutes ago, Manhole Eunuchsbane said:

How has that been put to rest?

Apparently the RNC was not hacked.  Therefore no RNC hack = end of RNC hack conspiracies.

Although, again apparently, there was a failed attempt.

[IamMe90]

Just now, snake said:

Apparently the RNC was not hacked.  Therefore no RNC hack = end of RNC hack conspiracies.

Although, again apparently, there was a failed attempt.

I fail to see how a vaguely worded statement put out by a campaign that lies like it breathes puts anything to rest. 

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

Just now, IamMe90 said:

I fail to see how a vaguely worded statement put out by a campaign that lies like it breathes puts anything to rest. 

Exactly. "Cause Trump said so" doesn't cut it, I'm afraid.

[OldGimletEye]

Just now, Tywin et al. said:

One can be true without the other. I firmly believe Trump is a Putin pawn in the not so literal sense, but he still could have won without Russia's interference. 

I just want to say, while I think this Russia stuff is something that probably should be investigated, I'd hope the Democratic Party shouldn't or won't be permitted to feel sorry for itself cause "Russians". It has a lot of soul searching to do and needs to figure out what it is going to do going forward.

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

1 minute ago, OldGimletEye said:

I just want to say, while I think this Russia stuff is something that probably should be investigated, I'd hope the Democratic Party shouldn't or won't be permitted to feel sorry for itself cause "Russians". It has a lot of soul searching to do and needs to figure out what it is going to do going forward.

Agree with that 100%. 

[Mexal]

9 minutes ago, snake said:

Apparently the RNC was not hacked.  Therefore no RNC hack = end of RNC hack conspiracies.

Although, again apparently, there was a failed attempt.

From everything I read, there was one attempt to hack a single RNC email address that was for a Republican operative who no longer worked with the party. All 200+ other email attempts were for the DNC or Clinton campaign. Details matter.

[snake]

3 minutes ago, Manhole Eunuchsbane said:

Exactly. "Cause Trump said so" doesn't cut it, I'm afraid.

Well with their track record, two high confidence endorsements from the CIA and FBI and a "moderate" confidence from the NSA, is not a slam dunk.  Or is it?   Lol. 

Why is the NSA only moderate?  What is the disagreement I wonder?

[Swordfish]

1 hour ago, Mexal said:

This and the leaked emails were used to spawn a number of conspiracy theories spread through fake news that were read millions of times and believed by a significant portion of our population. Swordfish will likely blame the individuals who believe it, not the state actor that helped spread the lies but only because it benefited the Republicans. If the shoe was on the other foot, we'd be hearing a very different story from him. The hypocrisy is astounding. 

Utter nonsense.  i do not support the republicans, and I certainly don't support Trump.  

Believe it or not, not everyone who disagrees with you is a republican or a Trump supporter.  I realize for die hard partisans this is a tough concept to grasp though, so I'll give you a pass.

And what lies are you talking about here?  What lies and fake news are the Russians accused of being responsible for, specifically?

 

Quote

The US isn't Libya. They are the world's largest super power. They can and should do something to discourage this. Not deny it even happened.

I see.  So it's only ok for the US to interfere in the establishment of leaders in other coutries, but not ok for other countries to disclose the misdeeds of those who are attempting to get elected in the US.

Makes perfect sense.

 

39 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

They weren't intervening in an election, they were trying to prevent a genocide perpetrated by a dictator. Not exactly the same thing.

I agree in a sense.  Like, just disclosing stuff that is actually happening is a lot fdifferent, for example, than takling an active hand in raising and toppling the governments of other soverieng nations.

[Mexal]

4 minutes ago, snake said:

Well with their track record, two high confidence endorsements from the CIA and FBI and a "moderate" confidence from the NSA, is not a slam dunk.  Or is it?   Lol. 

Why is the NSA only moderate?  What is the disagreement I wonder?

This is disingenuous. Their track record? Do you have top secret/SCI or any other clearance where you'd be privy to their successes? Last I read, our intelligence agencies have stopped roughly 50 different high threat level plots of terrorism and I'm sure there are many more. And it's not like we're talking about one agency where the rest disagree, all 17 intelligence agencies in the US agree. Who else would know the truth if we can't trust all our intelligence agencies to conduct an investigation?

[Kalbear]

4 minutes ago, snake said:

Well with their track record, two high confidence endorsements from the CIA and FBI and a "moderate" confidence from the NSA, is not a slam dunk.  Or is it?   Lol. 

Why is the NSA only moderate?  What is the disagreement I wonder?

The NSA's moderate confidence is about the purpose behind the hacking, not the actions of it, IIRC. Though I am curious as well as to where the differentiation is. 

That said, while it may not be a slam dunk it is significantly more credible than Trump saying, well, anything. Or Assange, for that matter. Even Trump didn't deny this at all in his point afterwards - he merely said that the hacks had zero effect on the election, which was not at all what the assessment stated (and point of fact, it deliberately stated it was NOT going to make that point). 

[Altherion]

30 minutes ago, Manhole Eunuchsbane said:

So what? He won. What happens if the next time around the Russians prefer the Dem candidate? Maybe he might want some protection at that point. The more important point is he should be troubled by a foreign power fucking with our election process.

Maybe, but there doesn't appear to be any reason to trust our intelligence agencies to provide this protection. Part of the thing that makes this situation so bizarre is that the agencies are loudly publicizing what amounts to a complete and utter failure. Counter-intelligence is part of their job (arguably the most important part) and if what they say is true, they completely failed to do it in a case which impacts our highest level of leadership. Usually, one would expect them hush something like this up to the best of their ability, but here they're doing the exact opposite.

37 minutes ago, Manhole Eunuchsbane said:

I don't believe your "unwitting pawn" theory washes, as the FBI was clearly in Trump's corner.

The FBI is not monolithic and neither are the other agencies. It may also be that they're not willing to fully back one party or the other.

39 minutes ago, Manhole Eunuchsbane said:

My point is there doesn't have to be a propaganda battle. Trump can take this information seriously and still maintain that he won the election fairly. The two aren't mutually exclusive.

He's trying to do this too:

Quote

"While Russia, China, other countries, outside groups and people are consistently trying to break through the cyber infrastructure of our governmental institutions, businesses and organizations, including the Democrat National Committee, there was absolutely no effect on the outcome of the election, including the fact that there was no tampering whatsoever with voting machines," Trump said in a statement after the meeting.

Basically, both the Democrats and the Republicans are throwing various arguments at the population and checking to see what sticks.

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

8 minutes ago, Altherion said:

He's trying to do this too:

But he takes it to an extreme. He poo-poos the information in an effort (I assume) to assuage his own ego.  

[Kalbear]

14 minutes ago, Altherion said:

Maybe, but there doesn't appear to be any reason to trust our intelligence agencies to provide this protection. Part of the thing that makes this situation so bizarre is that the agencies are loudly publicizing what amounts to a complete and utter failure. Counter-intelligence is part of their job (arguably the most important part) and if what they say is true, they completely failed to do it in a case which impacts our highest level of leadership. Usually, one would expect them hush something like this up to the best of their ability, but here they're doing the exact opposite.

It's almost as if the current POTUS ordered them to do a full public-facing statement about the actions of Russia. Huh. Weird how that works.

As to it being a failure - it's certainly a different attack methodology than what the intel agencies have been working against previously. Hacking emails of political parties and using them to undermine a campaign is not the same as finding out about attempted terrorist attacks using dirty bombs. I think more than anything this points out how incredibly vulnerable current democracies are. It also points out to certain failure modes that should be addressed.

But seriously, Obama specifically ordered intel to do this report. Which they did. How is this surprising to you? In addition to that, congressional members ALSO requested this information, and they provided it. Why is this surprising?

[snake]

11 minutes ago, Mexal said:

This is disingenuous. Their track record? Do you have top secret/SCI or any other clearance where you'd be privy to their successes? Last I read, our intelligence agencies have stopped roughly 50 different high threat level plots of terrorism and I'm sure there are many more. And it's not like we're talking about one agency where the rest disagree, all 17 intelligence agencies in the US agree. Who else would know the truth if we can't trust all our intelligence agencies to conduct an investigation?

WMD in Iraq, no NSA spying, Iran-Contra, the numerous overthrows of foreign governments.  This is but a sample of the lies the the IC have told in the past and was believed by most.  I fail to see how anyone can take anything they say at face value without some strong evidence.

 

17 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

The NSA's moderate confidence is about the purpose behind the hacking, not the actions of it, IIRC. Though I am curious as well as to where the differentiation is. 

That said, while it may not be a slam dunk it is significantly more credible than Trump saying, well, anything. Or Assange, for that matter. Even Trump didn't deny this at all in his point afterwards - he merely said that the hacks had zero effect on the election, which was not at all what the assessment stated (and point of fact, it deliberately stated it was NOT going to make that point). 

I'd like to know too, as well as why they have doubts about the purpose behind the hacking.  I'd really like to know how they surmised that Putin personally ordered it.