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Old Yesterday, 21:04
Dotheboyshall
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No that was never the case, that was reinforced in the hearing today, so you can drop this line of thinking.
Doesn't mean he doesn't fear it. Any evidence that Russia preferred trump and took measures to "help" would mean trump being, at the very least, embarrassed - which given trump's thin skin is probably not a good idea.
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Old Yesterday, 21:16
batdude_uk1
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Doesn't mean he doesn't fear it. Any evidence that Russia preferred trump and took measures to "help" would mean trump being, at the very least, embarrassed - which given trump's thin skin is probably not a good idea.
Russia may very well have phished the DNC, and planted fake news stories, but that doesn't mean that they won the election for Trump.

Trump won fair and square, the votes were not tampered with, people voted and the votes were counted, and Trump won in the end, that is without question.

People trying to delegitimise Trumps win are in the wrong here.

Russia may have wanted Trump to win, who knows, but that doesn't mean that they changed the election in his favour, the two are very different things.
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Old Yesterday, 22:09
oncemore
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Russia may very well have phished the DNC, and planted fake news stories, but that doesn't mean that they won the election for Trump.

Trump won fair and square, the votes were not tampered with, people voted and the votes were counted, and Trump won in the end, that is without question.

People trying to delegitimise Trumps win are in the wrong here.

Russia may have wanted Trump to win, who knows, but that doesn't mean that they changed the election in his favour, the two are very different things.
"Russia may very well have phished the DNC, and planted fake news stories"

"Trump won fair and square"

Pick one.

Again with the fragility. If Russian hacking caused a vote to swing in one direction or the other, we should know about it, investigate it and try to figure out a way to avoid it in the future. Only Trump (and his 'fans') are triggered by this because it means that maybe not everybody loves their God Emperor.

Honestly if the shoe was on the other foot, Trump would be making a huge stink about this and Republicans would be out of their flippin' minds. But since it happened to Clinton and the DNC, conservatives don't mind ignoring a foreign government meddling in our elections. I think we know where their loyalties lie.
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Old Yesterday, 22:26
BomoLad
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This is the same Trump who indicated he'd only accept the result of the election if it was to his liking. I recall reading this thread at the time and a lot of his supporters argued this was a sensible position for him to take.

Now the CIA say they've uncovered evidence of Russian interference in the election, suddenly it's all irrelevant and we should move on?
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Old Yesterday, 22:56
nethwen
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Assange! Not exactly a credible source to put it mildly.
With a 100% accuracy record, I think you are wrong there.

Assange was also something of a hero to Democrats when he was publishing the indiscretions of the Bush Jr years. Funny that.

How did Assange know?
The password was in one of the leaked Podesta emails. I remember reading it at the time - I can't remember the email number now, though. Podesta also left his phone behind in a taxi at one time.
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Old Today, 01:29
johnny_boi_UK
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Well James clapper has stated that his finger prints were all over the false data on Iraq wmds...

And you wonder why there are some of us that are suspicious over the Russian hacking allegations
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Old Today, 01:58
MARTYM8
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For those who might be interested series 6 of Celebrity Apprentice USA is starting on BBC1 at midnight this Sunday. It's an all star season and 'super villain' Omarosa - who has been given a job in his new administration - returns. She has a major fall out with La Toya Jackson in one episode.

Ivanka, Eric and Don Jr reprise their roles as the President elects' advisors.

https://youtu.be/geNjA1XtMyM
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Old Today, 04:23
johnny_boi_UK
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Black and decker opening a new plant in the US because of uncertainty with Mexico and china
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Unread Today, 09:01
paulschapman
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Have they provided a trace route?
You can spoof IP address, but yes one of those reports does include the IP address. The issue however is not just down to the technical idea of tracing through IP addresses and saying look an address in Russia. Indeed the Russian Embassy has a number of satellite buildings which have been the source of hacking.

There is also Human intelligence that inform the security services, there is meta data in the connections and comparisons with previous hacks where the hackers have been known. There is no way that the security services will give evidence of the first of those.
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Unread Today, 09:04
paulschapman
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There's a staggering difference between tribesman of Afghanistan and a nation backed by the usa and other western powers.
Apart from being insulting to those in Afghanistan - those tribesman have held back pretty much all of the world's super powers since the days of the British Empire and the Raj. I am not however talking about a traditional battle - but undermining the political process.

The poles for instance are fiercely independent and I would guess the baltic likewise would be aswell.
Not if you use ethnic Russian people in those countries - which is what they did in the Ukraine - and given the 50 years of rule under the Iron Curtain they will be enough.
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Unread Today, 09:08
John259
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There are reports today that Russian officials celebrated Trump's election victory and their part in securing it:
https://www.buzzfeed.com/jimdalrympl...ted-trumps-win

I'm just providing the link to this story, not necessarily agreeing with it because I don't know how reliable the source is.
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Unread Today, 09:09
Alrightmate
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That's not at all what happened. Wikileaks wasn't some random news channel pundit in Austria commenting on the US Election, they were putting out hacked documents, and pushing the narrative that the DNC threw the election and that there was something damning in Clinton's emails. Neither was true, but the drip of leaks kept the narrative going, and created another scandal. Comey's announcement really iced it.

There is a difference between releasing hacked emails, and doing investigative journalism. That you can't tell the difference between the two is your problem. Plus your position just glosses over the fact that all of these emails and releases targeted Democrats and Clinton, and none targeted the RNC or Trump. That fact speaks volumes.
You can call them documents if you wish, but we all know that they were emails which contained quite casual and informal exchanges at times, where people within the DNC revealed who they were and what they were doing as part of their campaign strategy.
We aren't talking state secrets here, we're talking about a clumsy and ethically questionable campaign strategy which people were only made aware of due to the DNC's lazy approach to security protocol.

Wikileaks didn't tell people how to read the emails by as you describe pushing a narrative. They just put them out there for public consumption. The only narratives which evolved from that is based on what readers of the emails reported. You are entitled to think whatever you think about the contents of those emails. I guess that if the content was benign then anyone who voted based on whatever they read in the emails wouldn't have given Clinton a thumbs down.
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Unread Today, 09:09
paulschapman
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Seriously? FGS - to secure their budget? You're having a laugh.

This really is an Emperors new clothes scenario - when is someone gonna have the balls to tell Trump to grow up and stop acting like a spoilt child. He is an ignorant and incompetent fool and ridiculing and belittling US national security on Twitter is a stupid and dangerous game to play.
Democrat minority leader Charles Shumer said much the same thing on MBNC - thing is the security services are going to know where a lot of skeleton's are buried - Trump keeps on like this I would not be surprised if one of skeleton's emerges.
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Unread Today, 09:13
John259
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Trump keeps on like this I would not be surprised if one of skeleton's emerges.
Indeed. But I guess they'd want to make sure to flush Pence down the tubes at the same time as Trump.
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Unread Today, 09:19
Alrightmate
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I love how is everyone suddenly so worried about Eastern Europe. Where the **** were all these people when we truly needed help and were occupied by USSR? Nobody helped us, and we still managed to survive, people were leading their lives in a totalitarian regime, and a good amount of people even miss some aspects of that evil communist regime as free education, healthcare and meds, granted jobs and how our art scene was thriving because foreign music and movies were banned. It were hard times, and I dont want them to return.

If you ask my people now if they are worried about Russian aggression though, they arent. What they are worried about is the escalation of tension between Russia and the West. Noone wants another Cold War. The current sanctions against Russia are enough to deeply hurt our economy. And noone wants to be dragged into some proxy war, or open war against Russia. We all understand that we would be the ones at the front line, and most probably see our countries destroyed if that happened (frankly, I think the Obama/Clinton administration was heading into that direction). So a person in the White House who doesnt express anti-Russian rhetoric and looks towards restoring and normalizing the relations instead is a welcomed change.
Thanks for your insight. Do you mind me asking which country you're from? You don't have to answer that if you don't want to.
You're right in that escalating tensions put countries bordering Russia in a very precarious position. Since the break-up of the USSR it's been good to see some Eastern European nations developing in their own way and becoming up and coming independent nations in their own right. If they don't like how something is going they will speak their mind to power. It's a slow process but a worthwhile journey.
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Unread Today, 09:23
Alrightmate
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So no actual proof that the hacking was done by the Russians.
At least the BBC are framing it as 'allegedly' which I guess you have to give them some credit for.
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Unread Today, 09:33
dizzie
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Indeed. But I guess they'd want to make sure to flush Pence down the tubes at the same time as Trump.
If they are wanting to take down both of them, they would be better targeting one at a time. Take down Trump - I'm sure he has some very impressive skeletons in his closet, then Pence is the de facto POTUS. Only then do an increasing drip feed of the appalling things Pence did during his tenure in congress and particularly as IN governor. I really think Pence is unelectable, on his own, and he got the VP almost as the invisible man of Trump's campaign. Pence is actually a very dangerous invisible man - once he's visible, then it's easier to target his overt support of some rather awful hate groups.

Basically, Trump is making some people with deep resources of intelligence data rather unhappy right now. He may be able to get rid of the political appointees - the figureheads of the various agencies - but he can't get rid of the rank and file, who are the ones who are being disparaged by Trump's assertions of untrustworthy work.

BTW, Trump has indicated that absolutely none of the 200 US ambassadors will remain in their posts after January 20th. Of course, it's customary for every ambassador to tender their resignation upon the inauguration of a new President, but usually ambassadors with school-aged children are left in their posts until a more convenient time to replace them.

Trump seems to think it's OK that every single embassy will be vacant on Jan 21st - so he's got another few hundred positions to fill in the next 2 weeks! I do get that he wants a clean sweep of all the major posts, and to have his own representatives in these offices, but I'm not sure he really understands the complexities of these diplomatic positions, and just how delicate a job it is to put the right people in the right positions, in so many of these places. Wanna bet the list of new ambassadors reads like a list of Trump's golfing buddies?!
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Unread Today, 09:37
Alrightmate
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Russia rarely works like that and Putin with his background in the KGB has experience of how to do it. Russia works by infiltration. By persuading like minded people in the target country to support Russia - they did it in Afghanistan, and that is what they are doing in Syria, by cultivating a like with Assad.

Once it creates a pro-Russian group in the target country then that will agitate for Russian support.
Hmm, interesting. I'm trying to think of which other country that reminds me of. It must be a country which spews out their own propaganda in the media which is perpetuated by unwilling members of the public who are unaware of the irony of their own comments and sometimes act as agitators and provocateurs themselves. It's like they're completely oblivious to it.
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Unread Today, 09:39
Alrightmate
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What about the Russian takeover of Crimea and eastern Ukraine?
What about it? That is quite a complex thing in itself to cover.
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Unread Today, 09:42
John259
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What about it? That is quite a complex thing in itself to cover.
Some posters were saying that the Russian military is largely ineffective. I mentioned Crimea and eastern Ukraine as a proof that it is far from ineffective.
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Unread Today, 09:43
Alrightmate
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So the new line is "people are too stupid to understand the evidence"

No wonder Trump won.
I saw something on CNN a few months ago when the presenter told the viewers that it is illegal to read the Podesta emails, but as they are the media they're allowed to, and luckily they are there for the public to explain to them what the emails mean.
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Unread Today, 09:51
BomoLad
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Democrat minority leader Charles Shumer said much the same thing on MBNC - thing is the security services are going to know where a lot of skeleton's are buried - Trump keeps on like this I would not be surprised if one of skeleton's emerges.
This seems inevitable to honest. It'll quickly be determined, if it hasn't already, that Trump's presidency is against the national security interests of the country. I suspect they'll move to first undermine his presidency by leaking all of his skeletons, which they undoubtedly know about, in an attempt to make his continuation in the job untenable.
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Unread Today, 09:52
Alrightmate
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There are reports today that Russian officials celebrated Trump's election victory and their part in securing it:
https://www.buzzfeed.com/jimdalrympl...ted-trumps-win

I'm just providing the link to this story, not necessarily agreeing with it because I don't know how reliable the source is.
The celebrations were reportedly discovered in communications intercepted by US intelligence officials. The report, on Russian hacking and cyber activity, has not been made public, but unnamed officials spoke about it to multiple news organizations.


Hacking's fine. But it's just not the correct etiquette to do it when there's a presidential campaign in America being run.

I can't believe how casually that's being reported with absolutely no irony or self-awareness whatsoever.
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Unread Today, 09:55
Alrightmate
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Some posters were saying that the Russian military is largely ineffective. I mentioned Crimea and eastern Ukraine as a proof that it is far from ineffective.
Fair enough.
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Unread Today, 09:59
Alrightmate
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This seems inevitable to honest. It'll quickly be determined, if it hasn't already, that Trump's presidency is against the national security interests of the country. I suspect they'll move to first undermine his presidency by leaking all of his skeletons, which they undoubtedly know about, in an attempt to make his continuation in the job untenable.
If he had skeletons in the cupboard to uncover I think they would have certainly done that in the election campaign. During which time the best thing they could dig up was an 11 year old video about grabbing women's pussies, and a couple of allegations of sexual assault which mysteriously evaporated into nothing.

If you honestly believe that he has skeletons which they undoubtedly know about, do you really think it was a smart strategy to willfully lose the election with the plan to bring those skeletons up when their opponent is inaugurated as the president?
Why would they wait? Surely the primary purpose was to get Clinton into the White House? Why would they just sit on it and wait for Trump to become the president in order to bring him down?

And what do you mean by they 'undoubtedly' know about his skeletons?
I doubt it. Is this the kind of certainty somebody acquires when they are prepared to accept a theory without being shown evidence?

When you say that Trump's presidency is against the national security interests of the country does this take into consideration that the Republicans didn't get hacked but the Democrats did due to their own casual approach to security?

I do agree with you that they more than likely have a probable strategy of trying to mess things up as much as possible for him though. Just not convinced on the detail.
All this stuff about Russia will be a part of it.
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