(05-30-2017 09:50 AM)OldOwlNewHeel2 Wrote:  

(05-29-2017 08:06 AM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  

(05-29-2017 02:46 AM)RiceLad15 Wrote:  

(05-28-2017 12:50 PM)OptimisticOwl Wrote:  Presumably, the Democrats think the incoming Administration should sit back and party until January 20, and then start from scratch, while perhaps Trump's team thought it best to hit the ground running.

Not at all. As a lot of articles have explicitly stated, the foundational action (meeting with a ambassador, setting up back channel communications) are fairly routine. It is the circumstance (number of meetings, who was attending meetings, how the meetings were being held, how the meetings were being reported, how the back channel was trying to be set up) that are concerning and suggest that there may be more to the situation than meets the eye.

Actually, no, they aren't, and that's exactly the point. Take Jeff Sessions, for example. He had two "meetings" with "Russians" over a six month time frame, one in his office and one a chance encounter at an event, both openly known. That's not how you engage in nefarious activities.

Just because one is incompetent at performing nefarious deeds doesn't make the deeds less nefarious. Just nefarious and stupid.

\Start from an assumption of guilt and then make everything fit.

(05-30-2017 09:50 AM)OldOwlNewHeel2 Wrote:  

(05-29-2017 08:06 AM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  

(05-29-2017 02:46 AM)RiceLad15 Wrote:  

(05-28-2017 12:50 PM)OptimisticOwl Wrote:  Presumably, the Democrats think the incoming Administration should sit back and party until January 20, and then start from scratch, while perhaps Trump's team thought it best to hit the ground running.

Not at all. As a lot of articles have explicitly stated, the foundational action (meeting with a ambassador, setting up back channel communications) are fairly routine. It is the circumstance (number of meetings, who was attending meetings, how the meetings were being held, how the meetings were being reported, how the back channel was trying to be set up) that are concerning and suggest that there may be more to the situation than meets the eye.

Actually, no, they aren't, and that's exactly the point. Take Jeff Sessions, for example. He had two "meetings" with "Russians" over a six month time frame, one in his office and one a chance encounter at an event, both openly known. That's not how you engage in nefarious activities.

Just because one is incompetent at performing nefarious deeds doesn't make the deeds less nefarious. Just nefarious and stupid.

No, but the nonexistence of nefarious deeds makes them a lot less nefarious.

(05-28-2017 08:15 AM)OptimisticOwl Wrote:  And in any case, what fire is all this smoke alleged to prove? It still all comes down to an allegation that Trump and the Russians worked together to hurt Clinton's campaign by revealing the truth. Is that a crime? If so, every PAC on both sides in the country is guilty. It only becomes a problem if there was a quid pro quo...

It is a crime to hack into servers and emails. See the Electronic Communications Privacy Act. No one - and I mean no one at all, across the entire political spectrum - disputes that a crime was committed in the DNC hacking and leaking. The only question is whether the hackers (the Russians) acted alone.

If Team Trump actually colluded with the Russians toward that end, that's conspiracy at a minimum, and while I'm not going to look up the legal definition of treason, it would certainly fit my working definition. And I'm a card-carrying Republican.

I doubt they did collude, at the end of the day, but the "even if they did, so what?" defense is where I get off the train.

You're jumping to quite a few unwarranted conclusions there.

(05-30-2017 12:39 PM)illiniowl Wrote:  It is a crime to hack into servers and emails. See the Electronic Communications Privacy Act. No one - and I mean no one at all, across the entire political spectrum - disputes that a crime was committed in the DNC hacking and leaking.

What if the supposedly "hacked" information walked out of the building on Seth Rich's thumb drive? Where is the crime there? At this point there is no hard evidence of a hack--no trail of evidence, nothing really but opinions based on soft and circumstantial evidence at best. And there has been no evidence to contradict alternative explanations that have been offered.

Quote:The only question is whether the hackers (the Russians) acted alone.

Aside from the question of whether there was an actual hack (and the democrats' reluctance to give the FBI access to their servers certainly raises some questions there), there is no hard evidence that the hackers (if any) were in fact Russian. You have the opinions of the intel community, based not upon hard evidence but upon the estimation that the procedures were consistent with prior Russian activities. I've seen nobody actually connect any dots with hard evidence. Have you?

Quote:If Team Trump actually colluded with the Russians toward that end, that's conspiracy at a minimum, and while I'm not going to look up the legal definition of treason, it would certainly fit my working definition. And I'm a card-carrying Republican.

Conspiracy to do what? Conspiracy is an inchoate crime that requires has to have an illegal objective, plus mens rea, in order to be criminal. See the following concise definition at: http://criminal.findlaw.com/criminal-cha...iracy.html

"A criminal conspiracy exists when two or more people agree to commit almost any unlawful act, then take some action toward its completion. The action taken need not itself be a crime, but it must indicate that those involved in the conspiracy knew of the plan and intended to break the law. One person may be charged with and convicted of both conspiracy and the underlying crime based on the same circumstances."

What is the illegal act that is the object of any conspiracy that you allege?

Before you go proclaiming treason, you might want to look up that definition.The relevant section on of the Constitution (Article II, Section 3) states the following:

"Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court."

Did anyone levy war against the US? Did anyone adhere to an enemy? Give an enemy aid and comfort? What enemy?

Quote:I doubt they did collude, at the end of the day, but the "even if they did, so what?" defense is where I get off the train.

I agree with this. If there was collusion to commit an unlawful act, then I have no use for the "even if they did, so what" defense. I have no use for the same defense applied to Hillary and her non-secure server, et al, to be clear. Same rule cuts both ways.

But what we have so far is a (really fairly small) number of contacts between people with some connections--some loose, some tighter--to Trump or the Trump administration. For example, Jeff Sessions is not going to plot a conspiracy with one meeting with Russian diplomats in his office and another chance occurrence at an event that they both happened to attend, both events openly chronicled over a six month period. That's not how you do conspiracies. You have more meetings, closer together, and they're in secret. Now if Sessions had such meetings, then the question could legitimately be raised. But I've seen no evidence of that. Have you?

If it wasn't for the fact that we saw Russia trying to influence the French election in the exact same manner that they did the American election, I would be less convinced they played a role. But I find it shocking that some people still think that Seth Rich, as opposed to Russia (a country with very obvious motives) is the more likely culprit for the mass email dump.

(05-30-2017 12:39 PM)illiniowl Wrote:  

(05-28-2017 08:15 AM)OptimisticOwl Wrote:  And in any case, what fire is all this smoke alleged to prove? It still all comes down to an allegation that Trump and the Russians worked together to hurt Clinton's campaign by revealing the truth. Is that a crime? If so, every PAC on both sides in the country is guilty. It only becomes a problem if there was a quid pro quo...

It is a crime to hack into servers and emails. See the Electronic Communications Privacy Act. No one - and I mean no one at all, across the entire political spectrum - disputes that a crime was committed in the DNC hacking and leaking. The only question is whether the hackers (the Russians) acted alone.

If Team Trump actually colluded with the Russians toward that end, that's conspiracy at a minimum, and while I'm not going to look up the legal definition of treason, it would certainly fit my working definition. And I'm a card-carrying Republican.

I doubt they did collude, at the end of the day, but the "even if they did, so what?" defense is where I get off the train.

I am NOT a card-carrying Republican, just somebody who wants things to make sense. And this whole Russian/Trump mashup makes no sense. so I will ask again, what is all this stuff supposed to prove? If the emails had been tampered with, altered to reflect badly and falsely on Hillary, or fake ones planted, clearly that would be a problem. But just publishing the truth? Weirdest crime ever. Tell me, how is what the Russians are alleged to have done any different from what every reporter aspires to do - to dig up facts and bring them into the light of day? Or what every PAC in the country does - publish the truth about political candidates.

I agree hacking is a crime, as is leaking classified info. But collusion? That requires a request, agreement, a quid pro quo, acting in concert and to what end? To publish the truth? This story just does not hang together.

Nobody has yet presented a scenario that makes sense. Just a lot of innuendo about smoke.

I think the Russians are having a big belly laugh at the way they have incited turmoil and divided this country, with the help of the DNC and the MSM.

(05-30-2017 03:26 PM)RiceLad15 Wrote:  If it wasn't for the fact that we saw Russia trying to influence the French election in the exact same manner that they did the American election, I would be less convinced they played a role. But I find it shocking that some people still think that Seth Rich, as opposed to Russia (a country with very obvious motives) is the more likely culprit for the mass email dump.

I'm convinced Hillary hired the same people to murder Seth Rich as she did for Vince Foster. Or maybe someone she knew from the child sex-trafficking ring she was running out of the pizza shop.

More seriously, I do tend to think stupidity, incompetence, and greed are more likely explanations than some grand conspiracy in most cases, including this one. But the oddities are getting harder and harder to explain away.

I mean we have Republican senators, former NSA and CIA chiefs saying this stuff was unusual and sets off red flags. It's not something Dem bloggers and just made up.

(05-30-2017 03:26 PM)RiceLad15 Wrote:  If it wasn't for the fact that we saw Russia trying to influence the French election in the exact same manner that they did the American election, I would be less convinced they played a role. But I find it shocking that some people still think that Seth Rich, as opposed to Russia (a country with very obvious motives) is the more likely culprit for the mass email dump.

One, you're conflating two issues. I don't think there's any question that Russia would try to influence any election anywhere. Same for China, same for probably a half dozen to dozen others, including us. But that prompts some additional questions, not a conclusion.

To what extent, if any, did they succeed?
Is there any evidence of collusion with Trump or his campaign or anyone else?
How exactly is the Russian attempt to influence the French election "exactly like ours"? I don't think there's any evidence of collusion in the French election, and if it's exactly like ours that means no collusion here, right?
Why is the idea that it was Russian hacking better supported by any evidence than the idea that Seth Rich did it?

(05-30-2017 03:49 PM)JustAnotherAustinOwl Wrote:  I'm convinced Hillary hired the same people to murder Seth Rich as she did for Vince Foster. Or maybe someone she knew from the child sex-trafficking ring she was running out of the pizza shop.

Well, that's a lot of smoke for there to be no fire.


See how that works?

(05-30-2017 10:31 AM)OptimisticOwl Wrote:  

(05-30-2017 09:50 AM)OldOwlNewHeel2 Wrote:  

(05-29-2017 08:06 AM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  

(05-29-2017 02:46 AM)RiceLad15 Wrote:  

(05-28-2017 12:50 PM)OptimisticOwl Wrote:  Presumably, the Democrats think the incoming Administration should sit back and party until January 20, and then start from scratch, while perhaps Trump's team thought it best to hit the ground running.

Not at all. As a lot of articles have explicitly stated, the foundational action (meeting with a ambassador, setting up back channel communications) are fairly routine. It is the circumstance (number of meetings, who was attending meetings, how the meetings were being held, how the meetings were being reported, how the back channel was trying to be set up) that are concerning and suggest that there may be more to the situation than meets the eye.

Actually, no, they aren't, and that's exactly the point. Take Jeff Sessions, for example. He had two "meetings" with "Russians" over a six month time frame, one in his office and one a chance encounter at an event, both openly known. That's not how you engage in nefarious activities.

Just because one is incompetent at performing nefarious deeds doesn't make the deeds less nefarious. Just nefarious and stupid.

\Start from an assumption of guilt and then make everything fit.

Actually, I started with a presumption of incompetence and Trump is putting everything nicely into place for me.

(05-30-2017 10:50 PM)OldOwlNewHeel2 Wrote:  

(05-30-2017 10:31 AM)OptimisticOwl Wrote:  

(05-30-2017 09:50 AM)OldOwlNewHeel2 Wrote:  

(05-29-2017 08:06 AM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  

(05-29-2017 02:46 AM)RiceLad15 Wrote:  Not at all. As a lot of articles have explicitly stated, the foundational action (meeting with a ambassador, setting up back channel communications) are fairly routine. It is the circumstance (number of meetings, who was attending meetings, how the meetings were being held, how the meetings were being reported, how the back channel was trying to be set up) that are concerning and suggest that there may be more to the situation than meets the eye.

Actually, no, they aren't, and that's exactly the point. Take Jeff Sessions, for example. He had two "meetings" with "Russians" over a six month time frame, one in his office and one a chance encounter at an event, both openly known. That's not how you engage in nefarious activities.

Just because one is incompetent at performing nefarious deeds doesn't make the deeds less nefarious. Just nefarious and stupid.

\Start from an assumption of guilt and then make everything fit.

Actually, I started with a presumption of incompetence and Trump is putting everything nicely into place for me.

A rereading of your statement does not lead to that conclusion.

So I'd like to address something, as it seems like OO and Owl#s keep responding to my posts in a way that suggests they are mischaracterizing my opinions.

Based on the articles I have read, I am not 100% convinced there was any collusion between the Trump team and Russia. I think evidence exists that suggests there could have been collusion, but there is neither a smoking gun or substantial enough cursory evidence that has been made public to outright say there was.

I am 99% convinced that Russia played an integral role, if not THE integral role, in hacking the DNC and releasing a treasure trove of emails prior to the election, with at least the explicit goal of hurting the chances of HRC.

I am 99% convinced Russia did the same thing in the French election, with the explicit goal of hurting Macron's chances, and helping France's nationalist/populist/pro-Russia candidate in Le Pen.

I am highly skeptical of the Trump team, specifically with respect to their relationship with Russia, for a laundry list of reasons - but I am not at the point of stating anything done by Trump or his team should be an impeachable offense. If you notice, I have only talked impeachment when it came to the potential of obstruction of justice with respect to the firing of Comey. They have just done too many things (lying about meeting with Russian officials multiple times, firing the FBI director, etc.) that don't pass the smell test and leave a lingering stench of there being something more there, as opposed to business at usual.

I think some people in the admin have acted in ways that demand some sort of repercussion (a la Flynn).

I think that, however, the situation is being handled as it should be. Investigations have been launched to attempt to confirm the role Russia played in the election and the methods that were employed, as well as into any potential role the Trump team had in the attempted external influencing of our presidential election.

I am a bit concerned about the ease with which some on this board brush off any suggestion of foul play, unless I am misunderstanding their responses. For example, I brought up my concerns over a number of ways that the Trump team poorly handled their interactions with Russian officials during the transition period, and the push back I get is a defense of the number of times Session's met with Russian officials, but what was conveniently left out was that, when asked about Trump-Russia interactions, he lied about and said he did not have communications with Russian officials. That's a perfect example of some of the smoke I am concerned about - why volunteer such a strong stance (having no communications with Russian officials), when it should not be an issue at all? He could have either stated he had a routine meeting or two, or not said a word about his personal interactions (because he was not asked about his personal interactions).

Maybe this will help us discuss the same issues, because at the moment, it seems like my positions are continually misrepresented.

(05-30-2017 06:15 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  

(05-30-2017 03:26 PM)RiceLad15 Wrote:  If it wasn't for the fact that we saw Russia trying to influence the French election in the exact same manner that they did the American election, I would be less convinced they played a role. But I find it shocking that some people still think that Seth Rich, as opposed to Russia (a country with very obvious motives) is the more likely culprit for the mass email dump.

One, you're conflating two issues. I don't think there's any question that Russia would try to influence any election anywhere. Same for China, same for probably a half dozen to dozen others, including us. But that prompts some additional questions, not a conclusion.

To what extent, if any, did they succeed?
Is there any evidence of collusion with Trump or his campaign or anyone else?
How exactly is the Russian attempt to influence the French election "exactly like ours"? I don't think there's any evidence of collusion in the French election, and if it's exactly like ours that means no collusion here, right?
Why is the idea that it was Russian hacking better supported by any evidence than the idea that Seth Rich did it?

This is a pretty impressive response.

You chose pretty much the one potential aspect of the situations that was dissimilar (suggestion of collusion by some in the US, none so far as far as I know if France) to try and refute my point. But that wasn't even what I said. I did not say the entire situation was exactly alike - I said the manner in which Russia tried to influence the election was exactly the same. Both elections dealt with the release of a treasure trove of emails from one candidate, prior to the election, with the goal of swaying the vote away from them. And neither of those email dumps were done with the explicit goal of shedding light on some truly heinous, illegal, immoral, etc. act - they were done to see if people could work themselves into a fervor and create controversy out of the gigabytes of communications released (hellloooooooooo Pizzagate).

I mean, the French email dump occurred at the beginning of the two days of media blackout - it's incredibly obvious that the goal was to try and create a controversy that Macron could not respond to.

But if you want to go out even more high level, the two elections were surprisingly similar (but not EXACTLY the same). Both included a populist/nationalist figure that was very vocal about the potential dangers of immigration, were fairly polarizing, had support from the conservative elements of their country, and were relatively public about trying to be friendlier to Russia (Le Pen even went and met with Putin in Russia shortly before the election).

(05-31-2017 02:46 AM)RiceLad15 Wrote:  This is a pretty impressive response.

Thank you. Sarcastic comment deserves sarcastic response.

Quote:You chose pretty much the one potential aspect of the situations that was dissimilar (suggestion of collusion by some in the US, none so far as far as I know if France) to try and refute my point.

The reason I "chose" that aspect is because it is the only aspect that matters. If you take away the collusion aspect, then the story is that the Russians tried to hack our election, period. Well, duh. We knew that. They've been trying to hack everything of ours that they could ever since hacking became possible. So has China and probably a dozen other countries. And we do the same to them. That's why Hillary's security lapses were so significant.

This is what I don't understand. The fact that Hillary exposed classified national security information to potential hackers is no big deal, but the fact that those hackers got into Podesta's email is a major crisis? How does that work?

(05-31-2017 06:31 AM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  

(05-31-2017 02:46 AM)RiceLad15 Wrote:  This is a pretty impressive response.

Thank you. Sarcastic comment deserves sarcastic response.

Quote:You chose pretty much the one potential aspect of the situations that was dissimilar (suggestion of collusion by some in the US, none so far as far as I know if France) to try and refute my point.

The reason I "chose" that aspect is because it is the only aspect that matters. If you take away the collusion aspect, then the story is that the Russians tried to hack our election, period. Well, duh. We knew that. They've been trying to hack everything of ours that they could ever since hacking became possible. So has China and probably a dozen other countries. And we do the same to them. That's why Hillary's security lapses were so significant.

This is what I don't understand. The fact that Hillary exposed classified national security information to potential hackers is no big deal, but the fact that those hackers got into Podesta's email is a major crisis? How does that work?

You are 100% in the wrong on the collusion being the only aspect that matters.

While there is a chance you are correct that other foreign entities have attempted to influence elections before, there is no evidence that they have actually succeeded in doing so.

Do you remember similar, foreign driven scandals in 2000, 2004, 2008, 2012?

The two elections I am talking about represent the first time that a foreign power has overtly tried to influence the outcome of an election - and they did so in the exact same way.

Also STOP BRINGING UP HILLARY. There is absolutely no value added in this discussion. The WhatAboutism is getting really tired and old. It's also a really bad whataboutism. I don't actually care so much that the hackers got into DNC and Podesta emails, as much as I care about that fact that a foreign country did so, with the explicit aim of trying to influence our electorate in order to get something they wanted.

But I'm glad you care so much about the security of our classified materials. To play some devil's advocate, I assume you were pissed about the sharing of information on our nuclear subs with Duerte, or that Trump is trying to get world leaders to call his cell phone, or that Trump reviewed the N. Korea missile test briefings in public at Mar A Lago, or that Trump tweets using an unsecure cell phone, and on and on.

Like I said, I don't care about the hacking because of the security concerns, I care about it because of why it happened and why it was done.

There's a chance that foreign entities have attempted to influence elections before? A chance? How naive are you, anyway? Playing dumb is not an attractive argumentative technique. Do you know nothing about CIA's history? What part of Obama did not overtly attempt to influence the Israeli election?

Foreign governments do anything they can to advance their interests, including hacking anything they can. We do the same. That's not going to stop any time soon. It's a matter of survival. As I see it, we have three possible reactions:

1) Piss and moan,
2) Nuke Moscow,
3) Take every precaution to secure information from hackers.

Only one of those makes any sense. Hillary (hell, yes, she is relevant to this discussion) and Podesta didn't do that one. In at least one case, they got burned (we don't actually know about the other case, but the smart money would be on yes).

I personally think that it is poetic justice that Podesta (and by extension Hillary) got busted for the kind of lax attitude toward information security that was supposedly no problem when Hillary was exposing classified national security information to the world.

I'm no Trump advocate, by a long shot. If you look at my posts, I've pretty much then him to task for his stands on immigration, free trade, the wall, NAFTA, and recent reports that he may roll back the Obama moves regarding Cuba. But let's see, what national secrets is he giving away with any of the moves you mention? That we have two nuke attack boats close to North Korea? Duarte knows that. Hell, I know that. Without revealing, or even having access to, any classified information, I can say that two nuke boats in the China Sea would be standard procedure, and that puts them pretty close to Korea. Giving away exact location would be a security breach, but he didn't do that.

As an aside, I found it interesting that several articles about it got into the weeds over whether nuclear subs meant nuclear-powered or armed with nuclear weapons. How stupid are the people writing those articles? That's a problem here, there's way too much being written by people who have no clue WTF they are talking about. All our submarines are nuclear-powered. Have been for years, public knowledge. The nuke-armed boats, meaning the boomers, would never be close to North Korea. The water is too shallow, detection would be too easy, and thy could be trapped if detected. They're going to be in the open ocean. They can hit any target in the world from the open seas, so no need to get in close. Attack boats carry Tomahawks, which used to be nuclear capable, but their nuke warheads were put out of commission as part of one or another nuclear accords. All this information is in the public domain. Take a look at a copy of Janes' Fighting Ships in your local library. Information is classified because it can have a prejudicial impact, or worse, on US national security. Information that is in the public domain is not classified. I'm failing to see anything about the others you list the rises to the level of being classified.

As for your last comment, I care about security concerns. I care about why it happened and why it was done too, but I've been around the block enough to realize that it's going to happen no matter how much I care about it.

Sorry you feel so misunderstood and mischaracterized, lad. The only person I know who is equally misunderstood and mischaracterized is ....me. I too have had to take the step, several times, of stating my positions on much of this explicitly. Gets old, doesn't it?

You are more reasonable than many others, and so I direct a lot of my responses to you while ignoring the others as best I can.

Russia probably did the hacking. Wikileaks did the publishing. The question is why? For Russia, the assumption by antiTrumpeters is that they did it to influence the election toward Trump for some reason. But there are better possibilities. One is simply that they hated Hillary. She alienated Putin personally.
Another is that the DNC stuff was so much easier to get. A third is that they were just trying to sow discord and polarize our electorate, and to freeze our government into inaction on the off chance that Trump won. If so, working perfectly. If so, who is playing into their hands now?

Nobody gave Trump a snowball's chance in hell of winning. Do we really think that the Russians' polling is so much better than ours that they noticed, months before the election, that Trump just needed a little push, and publishing a few emails without editing would provide that tiny but adequate push? Damn, they are good. And still, the question is, why would they prefer Trump over Clinton? other than the personal animus that Putin had for her, of course. Did they expect him to lift the sanctions? Get out of the way in syria? That is the quid pro quo that is missing.

The French election is different primarily in the timing.

Rail against the Russians playing us all you want. i will join you. Russians, keep away!!!! But when it comes to the "nefarious" conspiracy theories pushed by some, they are quite simply, ridiculous.

There is also " no evidence that they have actually succeeded" as you say, in influencing THIS election. Zero. Nada. None. Hillary's excuses to the contrary, I can think of a hundred reasons that had more impact than the emails. "Deplorables" comes to mind. Benghazi comes to mind. Stagnant wages come to mind. The dissatisfaction with the status quo and "more of the same" comes to mind. But Hillary losing was an upset of cataclysmic nature. I didn't expect it. There has to be an explanation why things didn't go as expected. Has to be that somebody cheated, right? Has to be. No other way to explain it. Either that or witchcraft.

But as I have each of the other times I have explained my position here, if one tries to tell the story in such a way that the investigations are warranted, they don't hold water. Might as well have John Cleese testify that Trump turned him into a newt. I keep asking for the narrative of what yall think happened, and all I get is comments about smoke, or incompetency, or bad attitudes,, but never any coherent narrative of what it is that you think happened that investigation will show to be true.

What's wrong with bringing up Hillary? She was the loser in whose behalf all this angst is being played out. she was the candidate that had over a quarter century of public and private actions that played into the loss, actions that are defended by many who attack Trump. It is legitimate to point out inconsistencies in people's positions. maybe the word hypocrisy does not have to enter into it.

I feel your pain, Lad.

(05-30-2017 09:59 PM)OptimisticOwl Wrote:  

(05-30-2017 03:49 PM)JustAnotherAustinOwl Wrote:  I'm convinced Hillary hired the same people to murder Seth Rich as she did for Vince Foster. Or maybe someone she knew from the child sex-trafficking ring she was running out of the pizza shop.

Well, that's a lot of smoke for there to be no fire.


See how that works?

"Smoke" from current or former FBI directors, CIA directors, NSA heads, etc. is a lot different than "smoke" from nutjobs like Alex Jones or sleazebags like Sean Hannity.

(05-31-2017 08:37 AM)OptimisticOwl Wrote:  Sorry you feel so misunderstood and mischaracterized, lad. The only person I know who is equally misunderstood and mischaracterized is ....me. I too have had to take the step, several times, of stating my positions on much of this explicitly. Gets old, doesn't it?

You are more reasonable than many others, and so I direct a lot of my responses to you while ignoring the others as best I can.

Russia probably did the hacking. Wikileaks did the publishing. The question is why? For Russia, the assumption by antiTrumpeters is that they did it to influence the election toward Trump for some reason. But there are better possibilities. One is simply that they hated Hillary. She alienated Putin personally.
Another is that the DNC stuff was so much easier to get. A third is that they were just trying to sow discord and polarize our electorate, and to freeze our government into inaction on the off chance that Trump won. If so, working perfectly. If so, who is playing into their hands now?

Nobody gave Trump a snowball's chance in hell of winning. Do we really think that the Russians' polling is so much better than ours that they noticed, months before the election, that Trump just needed a little push, and publishing a few emails without editing would provide that tiny but adequate push? Damn, they are good. And still, the question is, why would they prefer Trump over Clinton? other than the personal animus that Putin had for her, of course. Did they expect him to lift the sanctions? Get out of the way in syria? That is the quid pro quo that is missing.

The French election is different primarily in the timing.

Rail against the Russians playing us all you want. i will join you. Russians, keep away!!!! But when it comes to the "nefarious" conspiracy theories pushed by some, they are quite simply, ridiculous.

There is also " no evidence that they have actually succeeded" as you say, in influencing THIS election. Zero. Nada. None. Hillary's excuses to the contrary, I can think of a hundred reasons that had more impact than the emails. "Deplorables" comes to mind. Benghazi comes to mind. Stagnant wages come to mind. The dissatisfaction with the status quo and "more of the same" comes to mind. But Hillary losing was an upset of cataclysmic nature. I didn't expect it. There has to be an explanation why things didn't go as expected. Has to be that somebody cheated, right? Has to be. No other way to explain it. Either that or witchcraft.

But as I have each of the other times I have explained my position here, if one tries to tell the story in such a way that the investigations are warranted, they don't hold water. Might as well have John Cleese testify that Trump turned him into a newt. I keep asking for the narrative of what yall think happened, and all I get is comments about smoke, or incompetency, or bad attitudes,, but never any coherent narrative of what it is that you think happened that investigation will show to be true.

What's wrong with bringing up Hillary? She was the loser in whose behalf all this angst is being played out. she was the candidate that had over a quarter century of public and private actions that played into the loss, actions that are defended by many who attack Trump. It is legitimate to point out inconsistencies in people's positions. maybe the word hypocrisy does not have to enter into it.

I feel your pain, Lad.

To the bolded only - she didn't win the election, is not POTUS, and is not involved in any way, shape, or form, with the current state of affairs. The conversations circling Trump have nothing to do with the flaws of Hillary as a candidate, just the actions that Russia took during our elections and if Trump and his team were involved with them.

And as to pointing out inconsistencies, I don't see how her email handling is connected in any way, shape, or form, with the release of hacked emails. If the issue at play here was security, then I can buy that. But the issues here are influence from a foreign gov't, possible collusion, etc.

If you don't mind, maybe you could explain a bit better how those are connected. I certainly don't see it.

(05-31-2017 08:35 AM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  There's a chance that foreign entities have attempted to influence elections before? A chance? How naive are you, anyway? Playing dumb is not an attractive argumentative technique. Do you know nothing about CIA's history? What part of Obama did not overtly attempt to influence the Israeli election?

Foreign governments do anything they can to advance their interests, including hacking anything they can. We do the same. That's not going to stop any time soon. It's a matter of survival. As I see it, we have three possible reactions:

1) Piss and moan,
2) Nuke Moscow,
3) Take every precaution to secure information from hackers.

Only one of those makes any sense. Hillary (hell, yes, she is relevant to this discussion) and Podesta didn't do that one. In at least one case, they got burned (we don't actually know about the other case, but the smart money would be on yes).

I personally think that it is poetic justice that Podesta (and by extension Hillary) got busted for the kind of lax attitude toward information security that was supposedly no problem when Hillary was exposing classified national security information to the world.

I'm no Trump advocate, by a long shot. If you look at my posts, I've pretty much then him to task for his stands on immigration, free trade, the wall, NAFTA, and recent reports that he may roll back the Obama moves regarding Cuba. But let's see, what national secrets is he giving away with any of the moves you mention? That we have two nuke attack boats close to North Korea? Duarte knows that. Hell, I know that. Without revealing, or even having access to, any classified information, I can say that two nuke boats in the China Sea would be standard procedure, and that puts them pretty close to Korea. Giving away exact location would be a security breach, but he didn't do that.

As an aside, I found it interesting that several articles about it got into the weeds over whether nuclear subs meant nuclear-powered or armed with nuclear weapons. How stupid are the people writing those articles? That's a problem here, there's way too much being written by people who have no clue WTF they are talking about. All our submarines are nuclear-powered. Have been for years, public knowledge. The nuke-armed boats, meaning the boomers, would never be close to North Korea. The water is too shallow, detection would be too easy, and thy could be trapped if detected. They're going to be in the open ocean. They can hit any target in the world from the open seas, so no need to get in close. Attack boats carry Tomahawks, which used to be nuclear capable, but their nuke warheads were put out of commission as part of one or another nuclear accords. All this information is in the public domain. Take a look at a copy of Janes' Fighting Ships in your local library. Information is classified because it can have a prejudicial impact, or worse, on US national security. Information that is in the public domain is not classified. I'm failing to see anything about the others you list the rises to the level of being classified.

As for your last comment, I care about security concerns. I care about why it happened and why it was done too, but I've been around the block enough to realize that it's going to happen no matter how much I care about it.

I understand your position about what the fundamental concern is based on the possible reactions to a cyber incursion like we experienced, but I don't understand how that is connected to our previous conversation.

The previous conversation about how similar the email releases were for the US and France really isn't related to your concerns. To compare the two, we really should only care about the tactics used and the methods employed to try and influence the election. I say that because it connects the dots to point towards a common adversary that likely had a common goal.

Your comment has more to do with post-act analysis/reaction, where as mine is more about identifying the adversary and their goals. Both of those are important, and I would argue my point is potentially more. If you can identify your adversary and their goals, you can better defend against future attacks. Macron's team was able to identify the potential issues they were going to face after the US elections, and not only were they able to fend off a number of phishing/hacking attempts, but they also created some of their own counter "fake news" to disrupt and distract the hackers (http://www.newsweek.com/emmanuel-macron-...-le-596310)

I don't really get how someone who says the care about the how and why then just blows off two successful attempts by the same country to hack and release emails, with the goal of supporting the same type of candidates, when that helps to make it clear that the perpetrator is obviously willing to try and mess with some powerful countries to try and advance their interests.