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White House Supports Claim Putin Directed US Election Hack (bbc.com)
The White House is suggesting that Russian President Vladimir Putin was directly involved in a hacking operation aimed at interfering with the U.S. presidential election. BBC reports: Ben Rhodes, adviser to President Barack Obama, said that Mr Putin maintains tight control on government operations, which suggests that he was aware. White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest added that it was "pretty obvious" that Mr Putin was involved. "Everything we know about how Russia operates and how Putin controls that government would suggest that, again, when you're talking about a significant cyber intrusion like this, we're talking about the highest levels of government," Mr Rhodes said. "And ultimately, Vladimir Putin is the official responsible for the actions of the Russian government." NBC reported that the U.S. had evidence that Mr Putin personally directed how information hacked by Russian intelligence was leaked. The Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence also released a statement asserting Russia had orchestrated the hack, including breaches on the Democratic National Committee and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. The contents of those hacks, passed to Wikileaks and posted online, were embarrassing to the Democrats and shook up the presidential campaign. The NBC report, which cited two unnamed senior officials, said the hacking campaign began as a "vendetta" against Mrs Clinton before becoming "an effort to show corruption in American politics and split off key American allies." Mr Putin is said to have been furious when Mrs Clinton, as secretary of state, questioned the integrity of 2011 parliamentary elections in Russia. He publicly accused her of encouraging street protests.
... nothing of substance here.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
They are just inferring, where is the proof they were involved?
Anonymous sources claim...
CIA Suspects...
White House believes...
None of this is evidence, let alone proof.
All I'm seeing for the past several days is sour grapes, bitterness, and misdirection. What don't they want us looking at?
Obama's options were:
A) Either his ideas and presidency were so bad that he personally drove the country to find and elect someone like Trump, or
B) The Russia-fairy hacked the election.
I'm shocked and amazed that he picked B. What's even more amazing is that all of his political appointees also picked B, while the career intelligence officers that work for them all appear to have picked A.
See that "Preview" button?
There has been no specific evidence shared publicly to confirm Mr Putin's role or knowledge of the hackings.
It's obvious that they post a lot of "in power" propaganda and support pretty much anything that comes out of the White House's media matters. Are things going to switch when Trump gets in and disbands the current propaganda machine or harnesses it for his own use? Or is Slashdot going to follow the globalist machine outlet to wherever it goes after the official controller of the current propaganda mill moves on?
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The Russians didn't:
- Game the DNC system against Bernie
- Keep Clinton from campaigning in the midwest
- Cause Clinton to collapse into a van
- Keep Clinton away from the press for most of the campaign
- Make Clinton call half the country rude names
- Force Clinton to set up a shitty little email server
- Tell Clinton's campaign manager that it's OK to click on "legitimate" phishing emails
Have to agree with Barack when he said, "The 1980's are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back because the Cold War's been over for 20 years." My money is still on a (non-Russian) pissed-off Bernie-backer as the real Wikileaks connection - most of the grey+ hats I know were quite #neverclinton.
In other news, both Wikileaks and Putin deny that Russia did any of this.
Who do we believe? And note that the US isn't showing evidence, just like they didn't show evidence for "weapons of mass destruction".
Assange said specifically that it wasn't the Russians who leaked the information, and he's in a position to know the truth and has an unblemished record. (You may disagree with what he does, but you can't legitimately say that any of his information is made up.)
Furthermore, isn't transparency a good thing? To take a random example, isn't Clinton taking $28 million from Morocco exactly the sort of thing that should be investigated by the news and discussed in public?
Or how about the DNC torpedoing Bernie Sanders' campaign. Isn't that something that's important enough to be transparent to the public?
I have to think that this isn't Russia's problem as much as it was Clinton's.
It's sort of like finding out whether the voting machinery is rigged. On the one hand, it embarrasses the country. On the other hand, transparency leads to fixes.
but don't mention anything to do with George Soros or middle eastern donations to the Clinton campaign you're playing partisan politics.
If you talk about Russia influencing the elections by releasing harmful Clinton emails but never mention the contents of those emails and what it means, you're playing partisan politics.
If you talk about everything above you're having a rational discussion, but having the typical towing the party line headline like this one you're just showing what side you're on.
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The most interesting thing about it is that no one seems to care outside of the media reporting it.
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
Assange was on Hannity today, and again, said the leaks did not come from Russia.
Julian Assange Speaks to Hannity, Says That Russian Gov’t Was Not His Source
I'm glad I lived to see the day that the WHITEHOUSE would complain that the KREMLIN had told the truth, and that this was UNACCEPTABLE.
What a year indeed.
The intelligence agencies are REFUSING to testify to Congress about this "leaked" information. Testimony that may leave them in legal trouble if they purger themselves during that testimony. Thats right, the executive branch is once again REFUSING to answer to the people about something they are claiming.
Until the intelligence agencies testify to the people, in front of Congress, under oath and give specific information showing Russia did hack the election, it is fake news.
Pics or it didn't happen.
Actually, it's more like the Pentagon Papers, which as you might remember were stolen, though they disputed the charge based on him not using them for personal gain and eventually got the charges thrown out due to illegal acts by the prosecution.
Even if we assume the DNC leak was a Russian hack despite the fact that most of the evidence boils down to what can be paraphrased as "trust our anonymous sources, they've got this, it's totally not like that time with the WMDs where we helped cause a war over nothing," the harm from these leaks were the revelations that peoples' votes for Bernie didn't matter and the media will print whatever the DNC tells them to, followed by the media carefully avoiding any actual reporting on the leaks. You saw this on Slashdot where they ignored the important, meaty submissions and posted fluffy crap like the "food groups" of VP candidates (they were sorted by race & sex, with Bernie off by himself in the special group), never mind that we had other leaks showing Tim Kaine was always going to be the VP pick in a quid pro quo arrangement and the entire exercise was a farce where they went through a dance to make it look legitimate.
I mean, just look at how pathetic the media has become:
“Because I have become a hack I will send u the whole section that pertains to u Please don’t share or tell anyone I did this Tell me if I f**ked up anything,”
- Politico reporter Glenn Thrush via the Podesta dump
Do you really expect journalism when we have pathetic hacks like this doing our reporting? I do more actual journalism than this and I have a real job and write comments whenever I'm bored or can't sleep.