CIA: Russia manipulated the election to install Trump

Bombshell. Assange says it wasn't Russian government. SamFisher falls in a faint

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/vi...ur_source_was_not_the_russian_government.html

 

That's a good quote and that's how I tend to think. I'm not a conspiracy guy. Am I an idiot? Maybe maybe no but I try to be cognizant of my idiocy. It's that kind of thinking that helps me with the stock trading stuff I do. I don't think at this point I'm simply being skeptical just to be a skeptic. I think what I'm saying simply makes the most sense to me after viewing everything that has come out.

The bottom line is that nothing has sat well with me during this Russian witch hunt because it just doesn't make much sense based on all the information present. I feel like I have to purposefully try to fool myself in order to go along with what the govt has claimed. Whistleblowers and other experts who are analyzing the information are finding significant faults with the govt's claims. They are all saying everything points to a leak versus a hack. These people have little reason to lie and some have been proven to be spot on with extremely bold claims in the past. The NSA could make this an open and shut case, but they have not provided the information that clearly shows a hack. If the clear evidence of a hack hasn't been provided at this point then there is a strong chance it doesn't exist.

I don't think it is a conspiracy as much as it was effectively a panic. The Dems and HRC got caught with their pants down and immediately looked for a scapegoat during the election. They blamed the Russians and couldn't back down from these claims after they made them so boldly. Further, there is a recent history of the govt immediately blaming the Russians without proof for what was more than likely a leak with the NSA hacking tools being exposed. I don't think that comes too much into play here, but it is interesting to note.

I think the other thing is you are looking at things from a logical step 1, step 2, step 3 perspective. I don't think that kind of explicit planning was present based on how things have played out. As you know people don't always act logically when they are being effectively blindsided and publicly exposed. As Joe Lewis said, "Everyone has a plan until they've been hit". The outsider attack claims were the Dem's version of damage control. These claims still have yet to be proven. I think things spiraled out of control with these Russian claims after the election was lost. The DHS report was put together in a rushed fashion by all accounts. Seemingly by accident it showed that older, easily obtained Ukrainian malware was installed. There was no evidence of a highly advanced state attack. It showed no clear Russian connection. Nothing has showed a clear Russian connection and the whistleblowers are still saying it was a leak. At some point I think you have to at least consider that maybe the well connected whistleblowers that have been proven right before might be correct again.

I don't know if Obama stands to gain anything other than to just look like he took some action against this supposed Russian hack. I think he got dragged along on this ride. The actions he took were minimal and almost come off as doing something just to save face for the Democrats after they got so attached to this Russia claim. I think he wants this to just go away in my speculation.

Time will tell if I'm just being an overly skeptical fool or not. If I am then oh well I'll learn and move on. My pride and ego won't be devastated if I'm completely off base, but things just don't make any sense. At this point I would prefer it to be Russians considering how bad it would look for us if it was truly a leak that the Dems tried to cover up.

 

Assange's word is worthless.

 

media basically reporting any computer with malware is under cyber-attack by Putin, so dumb

malware and phishing has been around as long as the Internet, and Russia has always been a big source of it. Freakout now is just an attempt to delegitimize the election, or a coping mechanism to explain the election loss.

meanwhile in Russia

 

I probably had one or two days to "give Trump a chance", but he hasn't pivoted towards "looking Presidential" with his tweets unraveling decades of hard fought foreign policy or his press Secretary acting like she's talking to children.

But whatever, he's President whether I like it or not. I don't know why Connies are hell bent to live purely on spite, but maybe this President will work out better for them.

Highly doubtful...I would make a $200 tipjar bet that in 2 years, Conservatives will still exhibit the same paranoid finger pointing behavior at their beloved liberals even with total control of Federal and State governments. Their hubristic cluelessness demands reason for their failures.

 

I've been thinking about this recently, and unless the next 4-8 years go off without a hitch, this might play out like the G.W. Bush years. Many conservatives I know continuously denied the explicit problems that were slowly crumbling the nation's foreign policy and economy. Everything was fine to many on the right as long as there was a Republican president in the White House. All conservatives aren't monolithic of course, but the tough questions within the party only came when the evidence was staring them right in the face. Money had to be lost and people had to die for opinions to shift - and it did so much slower than any of us would have liked.

I'm willing to give Trump a shot. It's in our best interests to do so. He's not G.W. Bush in a number of different ways, both positively and negatively. But there are already ominous danger signs on the horizon of his presidency. The outright denial that Russia could have accomplished something nefarious w/ regards to our cyber security raises many more questions w/ me than it eases my concerns.

 

I think the eagerness among Trump and his partisans to pick a fight with China when their economy and markets are on shaky ground is the bigger threat towards uprooting the status quo.

We should rightly be sore at Russia for having our asses handed to us with our proxy war in Syria, but I just don't see the big picture regarding that mess other than to capture a flag while blowing up thousands of brown people and suspected Islamists. I totally hope we don't use this theatre as an excuse for picking a deeper fight with Russia because the assumption was the battleground with Russia was through the backchannels, and this open saber rattling reminds me of the **** authoritarian countries pull by blaming the US and making their people ignorant to their inward problems.

Oh right, there's potential Twenty Year War on Terror to win, except in this case, it's bleed deeply into geopolitcal Jenga that is the Middle East where you have different regional players (some of whom are our allies) wanting different goals and achieving them through different means (some of whom are our allies). There's a circus rebellion inside that big tent, started by a former president's "reinventing wheels in order to fit them into square pegs" foreign policy. Obama twisted it deeper by fostering doubt among allies as to how committed we are by signalling how flaky and unreliable they are.

Now we have yet another maverick waiting to accomplish the same "reinvention" that scores of advisors warned the American electorate against. I mean isn't it great to alienate and cut off our flaky friends, tell them to go **** themselves, and let them run elsewhere and spend money on more weapons?

Maybe lowered expectations are meant to be surprised.

 

I sincerely hope you're right. While I think he did as well as anyone could have economically, I'm no fan of Obama's juggling act in the mid-East either. During his presidency he seemingly thought he could handle foreign policy with facile rhetoric and ineffective half-measures. I think that was at least partly borne out of narcissism, the likes of which we've never seen before in our president-elect. Obama went against many of his advisers recommendations (including Hillary Clinton) and it blew up in his face. I hope Trump really does surround himself w/ "the best people." I hope he listens to them too if they tell him things he doesn't want to hear.

I doubt the U.S. will use this to escalate tensions with Russia, but is placating them in Syria and/or lifting the sanctions the right way forward? China seems to desire the international status quo more than the opportunistic Putin, after all. I may be wrong, but China appears to be digging in their heels while they move to stabilize their currency. They don't seem like an immediate concern as long as Trump holds off on massive tariffs. Judging from the business interests he's put in his cabinet so far, I imagine many of them would strongly advise against that.

And sure, Trump says a lot of things but he's already shown he's a pathetically insecure loudmouth who thinks that strongly worded tweets and victory rally speeches will help him on the international stage. He had that zinger about Clinton during the debate and once he won he certainly did a 180 on that. He'll listen to his "people." He has to; he doesn't know anything.

More than anything else since the election though, those incautious tweets and the unconcerned nature of various aspects of the Trump transition have alarmed me. Trump and his staunchest followers have been outright hostile to certain criticisms so far.

 

When it comes to Trump, really, you don't know. Seems to me, Trump is all about the $ and is going to be even less involved in FP (costly to be king). He wants friends, less enemy, and he want other to pay us for our military protection or go it on their own. If other nations want to step up and be the new world-protector, or regional-protector, or against ISIS, let them be - less involvement for the US. SK and Japan should develop nuke to counter NK... then the US military can pull out of those nations.

When is comes to getting US military involvement in conflicts around the world - if Obama is a vacuum, Trump seems to be heading toward being a black hole.

 

Off-topic, @dandorotik

I thought you may enjoy this:

awesome!

 

Wanted to just come back to this point of hand-wringing: 2008 versus 2016. The people wringing their hands are very different. I know it is fashionable to diss and dismiss scholars and historians and economists and people in general with knowledge and expertise (i.e. the establishment), but I can't find learned people writing articles like these in 2008. So to me, the situations are not entirely equivalent, at all, even while they may look similar on the surface of course.

(award winning historian who has covered the Holocaust)
http://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/commentary/2016/11/21/learning-history-can-save-america-tyranny

(from 400 top economists)
http://www.businessinsider.com/economists-denounce-trump-in-open-letter-2016-11

And on and on and on. But again, only time will tell. I will always remain hopeful if not optimistic.

 

Only 17 more days and Obama will be gone. That is a reason for hope even if there is nothing else.

 

Deckard, you have gotten hysterical since Hillary lost. Look the Washington Post has a basically hawkish/ near neo-con editorial line. As an example of a relatively unreformed Cold War liberal you obviously feel more comfortable with this. This does not make you a Trump supporter or a McCain lover or that you worship Dick Cheney.in all matters.

.I do somewhat understand your views as I was also brought up with this mind set. Too bad that despite the Vietnam War, events in Chile, Iran Contra, Iraq etc. you still fall for American exceptionalism and the Russians as the arch boogie men. The Post does some relatively decent reporting on many non war and peace issues. The Post under the ownership of the somewhat conservative libertarian leaning business guy Bezos is not the paper it was and many agree with this.

BTW the above does not mean that I am a Trump supporter.

 

Your outrageous slam at the Washington Post plays directly into the Trump line that the "mainstream media" is not to be trusted. It also supports, in my opinion, Trump in his babbling about creating libel laws to muzzle our free press. That you seem oblivious to this makes you look foolish from where I sit. You can toss whatever political grenades that you feel like tossing in my direction and I'll shrug them off, having always been the owner of my own opinions and happy to defend them, whether others like them or not, but in my humble opinion, at least in this instance, you sound like a fool.

 

Except almost nobody is saying it changed the election results. There are a few, but not many who are making that claim. What I've seen far more of, are claims that the left is claiming that it changed elections. Those claims outnumber actual claims that it changed the result of the election by far.

It's sad that when some folks don't have a reason to attack the left, they'll take some crazy claim apply to the whole left in order to give them a reason to attack the left.

 

in what way is that a 'line'? The emails released showed the media colluding with the Hillary campaign over and over again. It showed them giving Hillary debate questions before hand and asking her approval to publish articles. There is even an email of MSNBC asking the HIllary campaign what questions to ask the Republicans in their primary debate. You have proof beyond a doubt of the media's bias and still you think its false?

 

I don't believe you. The Media can't be that dumb. And if it is, the public can't be... wait. N/M.

 

The title of this thread that we are currently in strongly implies it by saying that Russia "installed" Trump as the president. Actually, that narrative is pretty strong among the left.

 

The whole give Russia a pass on their espionage against the US, or even cheer them on, or excuse them for it by pretending it wasn't them is a strange phenomena.

It's like if there was a football team (The United States), and a portion of the offensive unit (The Right/Conservatives) were hoping and cheering for the other team (Russians) to score 70 points against the defensive unit (Left/Democrats) so that they could give them a hard time at practice on Monday after Sunday's bad game.

Very crazy. It's not the entire offensive unit doing it, just some of them and the coach of the team (Donald Trump).