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Hack of Democrats' Accounts Was Wider Than Believed, Officials Say (nymag.com)
A Russian cyberattack that targeted Democratic politicians was bigger than it first appeared and breached private email accounts of more than 100 party officials and groups (could be paywalled; alternate source), reports The New York Times, citing officials with knowledge of the case. From the report: The widening scope of the attack has prompted the F.B.I. to broaden its investigation, and agents have begun notifying a long list of Democratic officials that the Russians may have breached their personal accounts. The main targets appear to have been the personal email accounts of Hillary Clinton's campaign officials and party operatives, along with a number of party organizations. Officials have acknowledged that the Russian hackers gained access to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which is the fund-raising arm for House Democrats, and to the Democratic National Committee, including a D.N.C. voter analytics program used by Mrs. Clinton's presidential campaign.
John Ashe: People made up that he was going to testify against HRC in his bribery trial-there is no reason to believe he was going to do so other than to connect his suicide to HRC. My guess is that it was an unprovable suicide (choked by a barbell) to avoid conviction and allow his family to collect life insurance.
Victor Thorne: Holocaust denialist conspiracy theorist, said mean things about the Clintons. This is a fringe author's fringe author, who is more famous dead than alive. I have a hard time believing that he managed to lean anything worth killing for. Plus he appears to have committed suicide.
Shawn Lucas, a process server (not lead attorney!) in a lawsuit going nowhere against the DNC. The conspiracy mongers had to lie (rather than just BS) because even they know that a process server would not have confidential information and killing a process server would accomplish nothing.
But to many the lack of evidence just shows how deep the conspiracy runs...
there's no evidence the Russian government had anything to do with it. There's only circumstantial evidence the attacks even came from Russian soil.
So there's no evidence, and there's circumstantial evidence. Whatever that means.
I can only surmise the media is pretending like it's a set-in-stone fact is because it helps the Democrats politically to be seen as the victims of foreign aggression and distracts from the embarrassing content of the leaks.
Your logic is basically this:
Since the media reporting this falsely,
...as you "surmised"... that's proof I guess...
Trump has made it clear that he perceives NATO as some sort of protection racket
Isn't it, though?
No. It's a treaty, ratified by Congress (which means that abrogating it would be unconstitutional), that says if one member gets attacked, it will be treated as an attack on all of them and all will cooperate in a counterattack. The United States spends the largest amount on NATO only because it has unilaterally made it its own prerogative to spend more than half its budget on defense. If "we spend too much on NATO", then we can just cut our military spending. Telling Estonia "oh well, if Russia attacks you, you're on your own because you didn't pay up" not only encourages Russia to attack, it unravels any obligations other countries might have to help us if we get attacked (as they did in the Iraq War).
As far as nukes, Trump says he "isn't going to take cards off the table", whatever that means.
Of course not. I would never vote for someone who says they would categorically never use nukes, because that defeats the purpose of nukes as a deterrent if you've already sworn never to use them.
Do you think the nuke card should be taken off the table? Why?
If we "swear never to use them", which has been our position for the past 60 years, it's still pretty obvious to anyone with half a brain that we will use them if someone launches a nuclear attack on us. There's a big difference between the card being on the table, and announcing to everyone that you've got this awesome nuke card that you might use under some new unpredictable circumstances. That just emboldens your enemies and frightens your friends.