Those sanctions were not for Russian meddling in the election so to imply they were imposed for doing so is disingenuous..

You support the guy and seem to take every opportunity you can here to reinforce that. It doesn't seem to support this claim.

They weren't?

http://www.cnn.com/...nced-by-white-house/

I stand corrected. Thanks and apologies Trail. I was thinking of the Russian involvement in Crimea.

Say what?

The December 29 expulsions and Jan 2 sanctions were very clearly for Russian meddling:

Obama:


"

While Trump was saying we should just "move on" and do nothing.

The sanctions from 2015 that were rolled back were sanctions for unspecified hacking,



We don't know, precisely, what that was in response too. But election hacking certainly falls into the category of "threat to national security." And it was serious enough to declare a "national emergency," so whatever it was, the Obama administration didn't like it.

And rolling them back in the context of the more recent specific election hacking isn't exactly taking a tough stance in my mind.

Nothing disingenuous about it. The facts aren't particularly kind to your attempted argument, here.

See above... :o)

Sure it does. Remember the ol' Sticks and Stones children's rhyme? It really works.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/...m_term=.afb0690f6df7

Long but good read.

DWS is one ugly duck.

If you were the DNC, would you allow Trump to have access to your server?

The hacking is over, the election is over. We know who did it. What purpose is served at this point?

I assume there are things on there that they don't want public. I do not assume, though there could easily be, things that are nefarious. Maybe Pedestal doesn't want the rest of his recipes made public.

ETA - I'll leave Pedestal because it is a nice little autocorrect - but Podesta

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I'm beginning to think that we are much more fucked than I thought.

I hope they can see their way clear to letting this go...

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How does Danny Hart sit down with balls that big?

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Think about how pissed Obama must have been with Putin. I think he did not realize how much Hillary pissed in Putin's Wheaties, and that Putin would get even if possible. Bad for Obama, because he desperately wanted Hillary in to protect his legacy. Putin came out the big winner, with a hapless Trump the recipient of the office due to a feud among heads of state. Dems are still screaming in agony at the loss, and at Trump undoing lots of Obama's executive actions with those of his own.
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ps. don't let Trump see that bolded line, or he'll call me out on Twitter.

They faked the Russian hack? Just a stupid conspiracy theory.

Why does everyone assume it was the Russians who hacked the DNC? Are these the same mouth pieces that talked about a Russian/Trump collusion for 8 months?
As far as I know Wikileaks Julian Assange continues to deny that Russian government was the source of the hacked (Spearfished) emails from the DNC and Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta. I think Wikileaks has a far better track record of telling the truth than our intelligence agencies. According to Jeh Johnson (DHS) these agencies never even got hold of the DNC server.


What I find so amazing, is the lack of scrutiny/punishment for the DNC who got caught rigging the election.


From the media- Russia Russia Russia!!! The media on the DNC Hillary favored rigging... crickets...

We don't have to assume. We pay a lot of people to figure this out. They did. Russia tried to influence our election through nefarious means.

Why are you apparently OK with that? The part that is amazing is how many supposedly patriotic people are willing to blow that off.

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I'm beginning to think that we are much more fucked than I thought.

Is this a new revelation to you? Is Russia trying to influence an election actually new to you? I have no idea if Russians hacked the DNC servers or not, but this fall back that you are using is simply amazing - they (Russia, Soviets) have been trying to influence our government since the cold war began and ended. Do you realize we do the same thing?

It's ironic that we only know about the latter because of the former.

Not true at all. You know about the HRC rigging because of Wikileaks. You think the Russians are behind Wikileaks because Rachel Maddow says so and the Dems paid some media organization to produce a 'dossier'.

No evidence yet...after 8+ months of Maddow getting high ratings.

The whole Russia thing is getting funnier and funnier. The people espousing it keep seeming crazier and crazier...birther types.

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Who's Rachel Maddow? (which I mean semi-seriously....I'm aware she's a TV personality of some sort, but that's about it - I don't watch TV)

Putin basically boasted about it. You could call that just Putin trolling/lying, I suppose....

There's also a leak from the dreaded unnamed sources that the CIA has "high confidence" that the GRU was behind the hack. (NY Times)

But if you don't trust Putin, the NY Times, or unnamed sources and you're interested in learning more about the technical details and why most private cybersecurity experts who've examined the data put a pretty high probability that it was the Russians, Ars Technica makes a pretty good case. And here. Using data from private cybersecurity firms. And Ars is pretty credible on the subject. And they're no stooge of the "security establishment."

There's no definitive proof that "Guccifer 2.0" was the Russian state itself vs. some private hackers who routed their work through Russia. Like all counter-intelligence analysis there's almost always a degree of uncertainty. Since professional spies usually practice decent tradecraft and don't leave obvious evidence. But given the pretty definitively proven other Russian election hampering combined with the Crowdstrike stuff, I'm pretty comfortable making the jump. If better evidence comes along I'm willing to reconsider. But until then it's Occam's Razor for me.

I do look forward to Mueller's report.

yep!

She also has a serious blinking issue going on! Googled blinking and this popped up...is she fibbing?

The eyes can, however, still provide useful insights into whether or not your suspect is lying. An increased blink rate is often consistent with telling lies. On average people blink 6 - 8 times per minute when not lying. When blinking at this rate their eyes remain closed for approximately 1/loth of a second.

No, I don't trust 'unnamed sources'. I especially don't trust the NY Times, especially when the only thing they can make money/eyeballs on is the Russia thing.

Per your post, however, you apparently trust Ars Technica/Crowdstrike who is LITERALLY PAID BY THE DNC. Please read the article you linked...it's right there. A cool name and hacker-ey looking website doesn't impress me.

I suggest you find some better sources. Perhaps the FBI? Oh wait, the DNC didn't want the FBI to look at their servers...only folks that they were paying like your 'source' Ars Technica.

To any reasonable non-partisan observer, there is no evidence here yet. There is, however, plenty of proof that Trump's policies are going to cause massive damage.

To the majority of today's democrats, however, they only care about the red herring Russia crap. It's hilarious and sad at the same time.

ETA add Crowdstrike as the contractor for the DNC.

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Ars is not paid by the DNC. And a half dozen of Crowdstrike's competitors confirmed what they saw.

But thank you for your skepticism. I read and consider contrary opinions to try to keep myself honest. I'll avoid using absolute terms and instead use "high confidence," etc in the future.

But I'll mark this thread because I think eventually there'll be more revealed, and it'll confirm my judgment. But if it doesn't, I'll come back here and take it like a man.

Fair enough. If I read your article correctly, though, Crowdstrike's 'competitors' all confirmed what they saw based on what they were given...which was data given to them by Crowdstrike via the DNC.

Thus, at the end of the day, Crowdstrike and all of their competitors are relying on information from the DNC.

If you trust the DNC...I've got a huge bridge to sell you!

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