Russian Cyber Hacks On US Electoral System Far Wider Than Previously Known (bloomberg.com)

An anonymous reader shares a Bloomberg article: Russia's cyberattack on the U.S. electoral system before Donald Trump's election was far more widespread than has been publicly revealed, including incursions into voter databases and software systems in almost twice as many states as previously reported. In Illinois, investigators found evidence that cyber intruders tried to delete or alter voter data. The hackers accessed software designed to be used by poll workers on Election Day, and in at least one state accessed a campaign finance database. Details of the wave of attacks, in the summer and fall of 2016, were provided by three people with direct knowledge of the U.S. investigation into the matter. In all, the Russian hackers hit systems in a total of 39 states, one of them said. The scope and sophistication so concerned Obama administration officials that they took an unprecedented step -- complaining directly to Moscow over a modern-day "red phone." In October, two of the people said, the White House contacted the Kremlin on the back channel to offer detailed documents of what it said was Russia's role in election meddling and to warn that the attacks risked setting off a broader conflict.

Comments

But, her emails!

[Anonymous Coward]

The plot thickens...

Re: But, her emails!

[Anonymous Coward]

Did it thicken? People running an insecure internet facing server left open an exploit that led to a shell, and the attackers downloaded databases? Same as Citi, Home Depot, Target, etc etc etc. Sounds to me to be the same old MO.

Re: But, her emails!

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing can forgive the horror she inflicted on the american people by running her own personal email server!!!

Re:But, her emails!

[Penguinisto]

To be fair, Clinton did have an unsecured Exchange server hanging on the public Internet, and her lieutenant John Podesta fell for the world's dumbest phishing scam... I mean, c'mon.

(note: I voted Libertarian and live in the People's Republic of Oregon, so I have no dog in this fight and could not have possibly affected the results. That said...)

As for the dreaded hax0rz TFA details, how come during the election season Obama said, flat-out and public, that there was no interference going on and that everything was fine? Further more, he never warned the alleged affected state election officials. I mean seriously, one would think that if he were concerned about it at the time, he (or rather, his administration) would have at least informed the IT folks over the affected systems so that they could at least try and remediate and harden things?

I'm not saying that the Russians never tried (though nobody is saying if they succeeded or not), but it's damned odd that it only became a concern for the Obama administration after Clinton ended up the loser.

If she had won, would we even be hearing about any of this, or would the response from the MSM be a demand that the complainers remove their tinfoil chapeaus?

Re:But, her emails!

[the_skywise]

Let's also not forget that there was a major push by Homeland Security to nationalize the election process at this time too. This might still be going on.

Re: But, her emails!

[Anonymous Coward]

Holding SCI documents on an unclass server is really fucking bad, but Russia didn't care about that. A good question to ask would be, "Why did Russia consider Clinton an existential threat?"

Russian actions weren't able to modify votes cast. They were likely to get caught even without the ability to modify a single vote. What risk/reward ratio were they looking at?

Re:But, her emails!

[smooth wombat]

how come during the election season Obama said, flat-out and public, that there was no interference going on and that everything was fine?

Two reasons. A) it would have created confusion and panic in our voting system as to whether votes were being correctly recorded (with electronic voting we don't know, but that's another issue) and B) it would have given another excuse for the con artist to claim the election was being rigged (though you'll note he never said which way it was being rigged).

but it's damned odd that it only became a concern for the Obama administration after Clinton ended up the loser.

No it's not. It was a concern since they called Moscow directly to let them know we knew what they were doing. Similar to above, had Obama said anything about Russia interfering with the election it would have been seen as an excuse and would have given more fire to the con artist's delusions about the election being rigged.

would we even be hearing about any of this, or would the response from the MSM be a demand that the complainers remove their tinfoil chapeaus?

Yes, we would have, because since Hillary would have been president, the same Republican-led House and Senate which are running interference for the con artist over the current Russia investigations, would have spared no expense to get to the bottom of what happened. They would have used it to claim her presidency wasn't legitimate or it was tainted, neither of which they are doing now. They would be digging as deep as possible to find every scrap of information regarding Russia's interference, the exact opposite of what they are doing now where many members are saying it's no big deal and the investigations should be dropped.

Re:But, her emails!

[mi]

I mean seriously, one would think that if he were concerned about it at the time, he (or rather, his administration) would have at least informed the IT folks over the affected systems so that they could at least try and remediate and harden things?

Washington elites were so sure, Hillary would win, they didn't want to publicize the hacking attempts for fear of delegitimizing her.

Now that she lost, they are sabotaging the actual winner with this unending allusions and unstated allegations and innuendo — to slow him down and prevent him from implementing, what the voters voted for.

Re:But, her emails!

[Sarcasmooo!]

I don't necessarily agree with Obama's response (though, to be clear, it wasn't a non-response--he expelled 39 Russian diplomats and closed their compound, which he accused them of using as a base of operations for espionage), but the Obama administration has said publicly that their reasoning was, if they made statements about an ongoing attack which they were still trying to figure out, it would have been seen as an attempt to sway the outcome of the election. And they aren't wrong, it would have.

Since you seem like a reasonable person who's curious about the issue, I'd suggest reading my other post in this thread.

Re:But, her emails!

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously how blind is your love for a big serving of Trump that you can even pretend to believe such nonsense. The outside world looks in with complete disbelief at how deluded many Americans were during that whole campaign...

Re: But, her emails!

[Anonymous Coward]

There is literally no evidence supporting either collusion, or vote manipulation. You're a fucking moron tricked by fake news.

Re:But, her emails!

[nine-times]

As for the dreaded hax0rz TFA details, how come during the election season Obama said, flat-out and public, that there was no interference going on and that everything was fine?

I don't think that's true. I remember there being talk, even before the election, that the Russians were attempting to hack the election, and that it was very troubling. It was reported at the time that Obama had contacted Putin and had told him to "cut it out". It was so well known to be an issue that Clinton accused Trump, in one of the national debates, of being a Russian puppet. This was no secret.

What the Obama administration had said is that they didn't have evidence that votes were actually changed. That is, they knew there were various attempts to influence the election in different ways, but they didn't know for sure (or at least, weren't prepared to reveal) whether Russia had been able to actually change votes in the computerized voting systems. For that, you'd need to do an extensive recount. Unfortunately, in some of these locations, where isn't necessarily a paper trail to recount.

People in the Obama administration have indicated that Obama didn't want to come out too strongly/directly saying, "Hey everyone, Russia is trying to hack the election in favor of Trump!" because he was concerned that it would seem like a partisan attack, rather than an unbiased statement of fact. Along with everything else, Trump was saying that he wasn't going to accept the results of the election unless he won, so Obama didn't want to throw the validity of the election into doubt. Still, the administration did say that the Russians were trying to influence the election, and they seemed to be doing it in order to help Trump.

Re:But, her emails!

[bobbied]

The plot thickens...

Not really... This was on Obama's watch.. What was HE doing about this? (hint.. He told the Russians to "stop it!") Was this effective? About as effective as the "red line" in Syria..

Re:But, her emails!

[MightyMartian]

The actual winner spends a far portion of each and every day sabotaging himself. No one needs to help Trump, and it's all the Republicans can do just to keep up with him and try to cover for him.

Re:But, her emails!

[Anonymous Coward]

Buuuttt heerrr eeeeemmmaaaiiilllsss

Re:But, her emails!

[bobbied]

How very partisan of you... Do a bit of critical thinking about this whole mess and you will realize that Obama is the one who gets the blame for this, it happened on HIS watch. As I recall, the Clinton Campaign and the Obama administration were acting all huffy about Trump refusing to accept the election results in advance (remember that?). Remember all the assurances that it would be a fair election then? Oh sure, Clinton was a shoe in right? All this was going on right up to the last debate... About the same time as the "Access Hollywood" tapes that should have done in Trump's campaign... He was going to lose, and lose badly, and everybody knew it so the election was going to be FAIR and the Russians where NOT an issue.

What changed?

Do some critical thinking and think about the history of this, don't just fall for the sound bite news coverage of all this... I know it's hard to ignore the shrill voices on both sides of this at times, but do try..

Re:But, her emails!

[silentcoder]

And then, it turns out, Trump isn't accepting the validity of the election EVEN THOUGH he won !

He just cannot accept the idea that 3 million more people voted for his opponent, so he keeps trying to claim that their votes were the results of massive and unprecedented fraud !

Re:But, her emails!

[Anonymous Coward]

As others have explained, he did more than just write a sternly worded letter, but yes, it was about as effective as the "red line" in Syria, namely it was about the most effective that was possible at the time.

Re:But, her emails!

[Penguinisto]

Two reasons. A) it would have created confusion and panic in our voting system as to whether votes were being correctly recorded (with electronic voting we don't know, but that's another issue) and B) it would have given another excuse for the con artist to claim the election was being rigged (though you'll note he never said which way it was being rigged).

First up, seriously, ditch the name-calling. I get that you hate the guy (thanks to that), but let's keep it objective.

Trump did say that the election may be rigged, yes... but Obama's response was to totally refute it. I understand the argument of not wanting to cause panic or uncertainty, but Obama's administration specifically said nothing to the state election commissions - that part is the most troubling. Did he think it would be rigged in Clinton's favor and so didn't bother, or (Occam's argument) did he fail to do so out of ...? It's not a case of avoiding panic if you have an underling send word to various elections commissioners - that is, assuming something actually happened (or happened successfully) to imperil said voting machine infrastructures.

No it's not. It was a concern since they called Moscow directly to let them know we knew what they were doing. Similar to above, had Obama said anything about Russia interfering with the election it would have been seen as an excuse and would have given more fire to the con artist's delusions about the election being rigged.

I'm pretty certain that a simple admonition wouldn't deter any spy agency, let alone as old, subtle or as skilled as the Russian ones. And Trump was the only one complaining publicly about it (Clinton joined Obama in telling everyone that he was simply complaining for no reason).

Perhaps they (Obama and Clinton) pooh-poohed the charge due to a misguided notion that the election, if rigged, would put Clinton in the White House (or worse, that perhaps they were assured that the real hacking attempts were occurring via some Russian VPN connection from DNC-paid operatives)? I don't hypothesize that last bit without basis, mind - after all, the Democrat National Committee literally (both publicly and privately) rigged the primaries to prevent Sanders from winning the nomination, so the possibility is certainly there.

I also have a very hard time believing that there was any success in the alleged effort (if it were via Russian attempts), else we would have heard about it loudly, publicly, and with mountains of concrete evidence made public - by every elected Democrat and media source to lay eyes on said evidence.

Yes, we would have, because since Hillary would have been president, the same Republican-led House and Senate which are running interference for the con artist over the current Russia investigations, would have spared no expense to get to the bottom of what happened. They would have used it to claim her presidency wasn't legitimate or it was tainted, neither of which they are doing now. They would be digging as deep as possible to find every scrap of information regarding Russia's interference, the exact opposite of what they are doing now where many members are saying it's no big deal and the investigations should be dropped.

I disagree with part of this, and here's why: Certainly, there would be shouting from certain quarters of the Republican Party, but it would be as effective as the whole 'birther' outcry... in that it would be just a few "nutjobs" speaking about it, and I daresay that the MSM (CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, et al) would have quickly relegated it to the realm of Alex Jones and Jesse Ventura.

Re:But, her emails!

[Anonymous Coward]

> Two reasons.

This. Obama lied for very good reasons since he loves us so much.

Trump hates us so he tells the truth about voting fraud. He wants us to panic and suffer.

Re: But, her emails!

[Anonymous Coward]

The people who died in Bengazi are not laughing. But "what difference does it make" to people like you.

Re:But, her emails!

[swillden]

how come during the election season Obama said, flat-out and public, that there was no interference going on and that everything was fine? Two reasons. A) it would have created confusion and panic in our voting system as to whether votes were being correctly recorded (with electronic voting we don't know, but that's another issue)

It's worth pointing out that when the election is very close, it's far more important for democracy that people have confidence in the accuracy of the election result than that it actually be accurate. That may seem like a bizarre thing to say, but think about it. If the election is very close, it's because the electorate does not have a clear preference. This isn't to say that individual voters don't have clear preferences, but the electorate as a whole, under the system we use for determining the will of the people, doesn't have a clear preference.

Since the people don't have a clear will the election can go either way without going against the will of the people. In fact, in very close elections the result can go either way based on various random factors which in an ideal world shouldn't have any effect. Stuff like the weather. This means that the actual result of a close election cannot undermine the legitimacy of the democracy.

What can, and does, undermine democracy is when people say "Not my president", and in a very close race it takes very little to create enough doubt to enable people to say that. Of course, even in a landslide victory it's always possible for the supporters of the loser to take this tack, but in doing so they're demonstrating contempt for the very notion of democratic process. When it's very close, though, it's easy for people to make the argument that their guy/gal lost only because of X, Y or Z inaccuracies in the electoral process, and so the elected officeholder is illegitimate, not because democracy isn't the proper way to choose government.

To be clear, I despise Donald Trump with a purple passion, but he is my president and I will absolutely continue to honor the office and respect his legal and proper actions within that office (while retaining the right to criticize vociferously any I disagree with, and to encourage investigation, impeachment and possibly prosecution in the event of any illegal and/or improper actions). This attitude with regard to the office (and every other elected office) is, IMNSHO, exactly what all Americans need to hold if we're to avoid undermining our nation.

So, IMO, Obama did exactly the right thing in trying to fight Russian interference on the one hand, and keeping it quiet on the other, because fear about the legitimacy of the electoral process would have severely undermined the legitimacy of whoever won... and in a close election legitimacy is distinct from and more important than accuracy. That said, we absolutely do need to investigate any identified weaknesses in the electoral processes, and fix them lest we find ourselves in a situation where the electorate does have a clear preference and the processes deliver a contrary result.

Re:But, her emails!

[elwinc]

If you are referring to declaring current voting systems "critical infrastructure" I hardly see that as a major push to nationalize. If you are referring to something else, please be so kind as to provide infor,mation and links.

Re:But, her emails!

[OhPlz]

Trump is doing a fine job, it's the media that should be ashamed of themselves. The whole Paris accord thing was no surprise, he said during the campaign that we'd ditch it. People are upset because he's actually doing some of the things he said he'd do, which never happens in politics.

Re:But, her emails!

[Anonymous Coward]

Hasn't the whole russian interference in the american voting system (and visa versa) been going on since forever?

Re: But, her emails!

[Anonymous Coward]

Her personal emails could have gave attackers the information they needed to phish or otherwise hack critical government systems. But of course, denouncing Snowden for leaking top secret government files while doing the same thing is completely understandable, right?

Re: But, her emails!

[Anonymous Coward]

Simple. The US admitting that Russia could control a US election is bad. Not only would it affirm the power Russia has but it would also divide the US populace further. How much faith would you have in US democracy if the government tells you a foreign power controls the outcome? You would divide yourselves between those that believe it and lose trust in the governments ability to handle the vote or those that don't believe it and buy further into anti-government conspiracies.

Decision makers likely felt they would just deal with the outcome and never admit what went down. But Trump never fell in line and his crews blatant attempts at dismantling the government have led to a crisis internally.

The only reason you are hearing things now is because of all the leaks. The leaks however aren't being controlled. The issue is that the more people find out about Trump's tied to Russia the more people are disagreeing with the direction things are headed.

There is a real battle going on in Washington on how to handle these things. But with all the politics involved, there is no certainty on how things will play out. It's obvious.

I can't stand what Russia has done to our country but you can't help but admire how genius the attacks have played out. Divided we will continue to fall

Re:But, her emails!

[Anonymous Coward]

You're a fucking moron. You think everything Obama did IN REGARDS TO TOP SECRET INTEL is going to be known BY YOU, JOE MORON PUBLIC? Lol, dumbass.

Re:But, her emails!

[Trailer Trash]

Similar to above, had Obama said anything about Russia interfering with the election it would have been seen as an excuse and would have given more fire to the con artist's delusions about the election being rigged.

So, how does that jive with your alternate reality where Trump is a Russian puppet? I mean, wouldn't Russian puppet Trump already know about the rigging and all that since it's rigged in his favor?

Watching you people devolve into the basic equivalent of 9/11 troofers has been fascinating.

Re:But, her emails!

[nine-times]

That always seemed like a bizarrely stupid argument to make. He claims that there were literally millions of fraudulent votes across the country. Meanwhile, he won some states by a few thousand votes. If we assume that he's correct, that there was massive voter fraud, but we have no evidence who who received the fraudulent votes, then we have every reason to enterain the possibility that Clinton actually won the election.

He's presenting an argument, the natural conclusion of which is that his legitimacy as president is uncertain. Either he's lying and making things up, or he should be prepared to step aside after a thorough investigation and recount.

Re:But, her emails!

[Anonymous Coward]

So basically you're saying Obama didn't trust the American people with the truth and lied to them. Part of his open administration no doubt.

Re:But, her emails!

[cyberchondriac]

I'm tired of the exaggerated propaganda that summaries like the one here uses to categorize Podesta's email breach as Russia's hacking the "electoral system".
Podesta's emails do not comprise the electoral system. It's perhaps a half-truth if given if a much broader, vague definition of "electoral system", but half-truths are often more devious than outright lies.
I'd love to see a solid reliable poll of how many people in the street are actually under the impression that election servers and machines were hacked by Russians to give Trump the edge.

Re: But, her emails!

[mschwanke97402]

If you discredit our democracy and generally cause an uproar then you undermine our country as a whole. Keep at it for a while and our country collapses or devolves into some sort of regional / political civil war.

Re:But, her emails!

[MightyMartian]

Can you define "fine job" for me? He hasn't done much, and much of the little he's done is either trapped by the courts or by Congress.

Re:But, her emails!

[cyberchondriac]

Yes, we would have, because since Hillary would have been president, the same Republican-led House and Senate which are running interference for the con artist over the current Russia investigations, would have spared no expense to get to the bottom of what happened. They would have used it to claim her presidency wasn't legitimate or it was tainted, neither of which they are doing now. They would be digging as deep as possible to find every scrap of information regarding Russia's interference, the exact opposite of what they are doing now where many members are saying it's no big deal and the investigations should be dropped.

It was tainted, given the genuine corruption of the DNC in shafting Sanders (that lawsuit is still pending), the immediate resignation of Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, and the proven collusion with CNN's Donna Brazile.

Re: But, her emails!

[Anonymous Coward]

He is a fucking moron, and most people outside of the United States know this. It will take a while to admit this when you voted for the guy. But you will, eventually.

Re:But, her emails!

[jedidiah]

I don't need blind love for Trump. I just need to know a few people in the rust belt and be willing to listen to them.

If the best you've got is insults, your argument is pants.

Re:But, her emails!

[phantomfive]

You're using too much logic analyzing his words. It's BS, and he knows it's BS, and that is exactly why he said it. Like many salesmen, Trump is a bullshitter, and the bullshit is a distraction technique as much as anything. Don't be distracted by it.

Re:But, her emails!

[orgelspieler]

I think B) hit the nail on the head. Obama, in his typically naive manner, probably thought the American people weren't a bunch of racist asshats. So he assumed Hillary would win, and saw no reason to cast aspersions on her win by sounding a public alarm that the hax0rz are trying to infiltrate state databases.

Ugh. Can you imagine? Think about how bad his whining is now. He wins, but still he claims the election was rigged by busloads of fake voters. Why?! Does he really believe that crap, or is he fucking with us? But if he had lost.... oh my god. The breitbart foxosphere would have been assploding with stupid.

Re: But, her emails!

[Anonymous Coward]

Me too, but then I RTFA.

Re:But, her emails!

[orgelspieler]

We accept the election results, as the inevitable incarnation of American narcissism, incompetence, and discourtesy. I've said all along that Trump was going to win because he's the president America deserves. We just want to make sure Russia knows to GTFO and let us elect our own idiots in peace.

Re:But, her emails!

[the_skywise]

I see it as nationalization.

Voting systems are constitutionally defined as being under the control of the states who then submit their representatives for voting for legislation and for the electing the President.

Homeland Security wanted to regulate state election systems under the guise of "critical infrastructure." That's a power grab and it starts with them just mandating certain security requirements. Then they need to "inspect" the systems and "check" the records to make sure they're secure. Then you end up with a standardized election system and, of course, Homeland Security can peek at the results at any time they want.

There was a similar call after the 2000 elections as well - part of how we ended up with all these "electronic voting systems" that Diebold made and were all easily hackable. The feds were well on their way to enforcing a standardized election system at the time too until the states balked.

Re: But, her emails!

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there paper trail to prove It?

Re:But, her emails!

[orgelspieler]

I don't think "con artist" is name calling; it is just shorthand to describe his business habits to date. He convinces people to do things not in their best interest by lying to them. He puts on a good show and gets people to have confidence in him, and then produces zilch. Just look at Trump University, the Taj Mahal debacle, or the Trump Network (vitamins). None of has proven to be illegal (yet), but none of it was ethical. Hopefully he'll do better for we the people than he did for his previous clients and investors.

Re: But, her emails!

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you suggesting that polls of Joe six pack replaced forensic investigations?

Re:But, her emails!

[Rob Y.]

To some extent, the assumption that Clinton would win drove some of the effects that caused her to lose.

Comey pretty much up and said he factored that assumption into his decision to notify Congress about emails on the Wiener laptop. I still don't get the logic behind this, but it goes something like "if this comes out after the election, I'll be accused of having covered for her". Which leaves out the flip side of "if these 'new' emails turn up nothing new, I'll have damaged her for no good reason".

Likewise, Obama didn't want to be seen as politicizing info on Russian hacking prior to an election that he thought was pretty much in the bag anyway.

Yes, to some extent, this is a media story because an American presidential election might actually have been turned by this stuff. Which is not to say we shouldn't have heard about it had Clinton won. But that's more a function of media shallowness than of media bias. After all, most of us here would argue that the media should've been paying attention to insecurities in the voting system all along...

Re:But, her emails!

[Anonymous Coward]

Who is this "outside world" you're speaking on behalf of? There are a LOT of people outside the US that support Trump. (inb4 "yeah a lot of people in Russia" type jokes). Even in EU countries, where the bureaucrats seem to largely despise him.

Re:But, her emails!

[Anonymous Coward]

What changed?

Comey interfered with the election and handed Trump the presidency.

Re:But, her emails!

[whoever57]

I don't agree with your analysis. I think that all of Trump's actions can be adequately explained by applying Hanlon's Razor.

Re: But, her emails!

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, you sweet, sweet summer child... what a simple world you must live in to actually think this way.

Re: But, her emails!

[Anonymous Coward]

Anybody as successful as Donald Trump has been has a huge number of business projects to sift through and cherry pick for the ones easiest to distort.

Re: But, her emails!

[Green Mountain Bot]

Pot, meet kettle.

Re:But, her emails!

[Ogive17]

Now that she lost, they are sabotaging the actual winner with this unending allusions and unstated allegations and innuendo â" to slow him down and prevent him from implementing, what the voters voted for.

Did you type this with a straight face?

Trump is sabotaging himself. Also, maybe he should have been a bit more careful with his birther talk and crooked Hillary talk.

The biggest issue with Trump not getting his way is that in reality, not that many voting age Americans actually cast their vote for him. He clearly lost the popular vote (I know it doesn't matter and I'm not complaining about it) but he only received 26% of the registered voter votes. That means nearly 75% of registered voters did not vote for him.

So let's not pretend the guy swept into the Oval Office on a wave of public support and is only flailing around because Democrats are repeatedly bringing up Russia.. it has about as much impact as the birther movement during Obama's entire 8 year tenure. Please remember Republican's only goal was to oppose everything from Obama.. and they said it publicly.

We basically have a bunch of spoiled, entitled brats in Washington.. and most will get reelected.

Re: But, her emails!

[cyberchondriac]

What? No, that's not what I said. I have nothing against six packs!

Re: But, her emails!

[Archtech]

The people who died in Bengazi are not laughing.

But the people who killed them are. And they are ISIS - the terrorist crew whom Colonel Qadafi's column was on the way to deal with when the West decided to blow them away and send Libya back to the Stone Age.

Now they are busy killing, torturing and destroying in Syria.

Yay Yay USA! We came, we saw, millions died.

Re:But, her emails!

[Archtech]

I don't think "con artist" is name calling; it is just shorthand to describe his business habits to date.

That's an accurate description of virtually all American politicians. Trump, the Clintons, the Bushes, Obama... go back as far as you like. (Lincoln may have been honest).

Re:But, her emails!

[Anonymous Coward]

Watching you people devolve into the basic equivalent of 9/11 troofers has been fascinating.

And watching you Trumpa-Loompas defend that idiot in the face of overwhelming evidence is mind-boggling.

Re:But, her emails!

[kelanos]

Congrats, you've identified how business is done everywhere and by every successful person Now take the next step and stop blaming it all on the first example you saw

Re:But, her emails!

[silentcoder]

Trump's actions can only be adequately explained by a trained psychiatrist.
Personally - looking at the markedly obvious deterioration in his speech patterns and ability to form coherent sentences between videos of himself in the 1990s and now - I have my money on either dementia or final stage neurosyphilis.

Re:But, her emails!

[werepants]

That's an accurate description of virtually all American politicians. Trump, the Clintons, the Bushes, Obama... go back as far as you like. (Lincoln may have been honest).

False equivalency fallacy. Trump is of a different breed altogether than prior politicians - just look at politifact (or any fact-checking organization you choose) and you'll see that he is far and away less honest than any other modern politician, regardless of party.

Re:But, her emails!

[Anonymous Coward]

"Huffy"?

Look, refusing to accept the election results in advance isn't a partisan thing, it's refusing to pay the price of entry to democracy. From the moment he even raised that as a question, Trump should have been removed from the ballot then and there - because from that moment on, it was clear that whatever he was, it was something completely incompatible with "democracy".

You'll notice that even the most strident of the despised "MSM", even now, aren't suggesting the election be re-run or Trump impeached over this issue. All the arguments for Trump's impeachment are independent of whether the election was hacked.

Re: But, her emails!

[Anonymous Coward]

More anonymous sources... I believe every word.

And I'm shocked, yes shocked, that there are hackers in Russia.

I wonder how many times the voting databases were hacked by darkMaurice and basementbob....but we only focus on Russia.....better headlines and click bait.

Sigh.

Re:But, her emails!

[Anonymous Coward]

Politifact is so obviously biased towards liberal politicians it's a complete mockery of fact checking. They'll bend over backwards to give liberals a true rating and do even more gymnastics to rate conservatives as false. If you can't see that, you really need to examine your own biases.

Re:But, her emails!

[Plus1Entropy]

As I recall, the Clinton Campaign and the Obama administration were acting all huffy about Trump refusing to accept the election results in advance (remember that?). Remember all the assurances that it would be a fair election then?

You are equating 2 different issues.

The first is then-candidate Trump's claim that if he lost the election it was because it was rigged. He wasn't talking about foreign interference, but that the normal election process was corrupted somehow. He still claims this is the case, by the way. He honestly believes to this day that he won the popular vote.

The second issue is Russia at least attempting to interfere in the election. This has nothing to do with the results of the election. Clinton accepted the results with no issue. But just because the Russian's were unsuccessful doesn't mean we should all just shrug and pretend everything is OK.

Re: But, her emails!

[Anonymous Coward]

Hackers gonna hack. Computers are not secure. Why is there no serious call to return to paper voteing? With the many vulnerabilites found in voting machines, corruption and hacking, a paper record is a lot harder to manipulate and easier to physically secure verification.

Re:But, her emails!

[Plus1Entropy]

In classic conspiracy theory fashion, those involved have to be simultaneously the smartest and stupidest people in the world.

The Democrats got 3 million illegal votes on the books, but none of them showed up in the states where 70,000 votes (IIRC) could have made the difference.

Re:But, her emails!

[bobbied]

Clinton accepted the results with no issue.

Really? I don't think she's accepted the results, even yet. She has blamed everybody and the kitchen sink for her loss INCLUDING the Russians and as I remember, she was very slow to accept the results and concede (took until after noon the next day). Her surrogates have fostered both the violent and riotous "resist" movement (which she has openly supported) and foisted this fictional Russian Collusion narrative that has dominated the press for the last 6 months. Certainly she's not denounced any of this stuff.

What Trump believes or maintains about the popular vote is immaterial, and I think if you actually listened to his statements on this, you will understand he's not exactly holding the position you think. He's claiming there was significant fraud that ran up his opponent's votes. Fraud did exist and there were reports that it was significant at the time, though perhaps not as much as Trump would like. However, his language is imprecise at times, so it's hard to know for sure, but I don't think he believes what you think. But he DOES believe (correctly) that HE is president by the rules of the contest, and that's really all that matters.

Re:But, her emails!

[DamnOregonian]

You need to take a step back, man.
You're wearing some really fucked up shades.

I am so goddamn glad I didn't really give a shit about either candidate this round- I wonder if I sounded as ridiculous as you do when I used to.

Stark. Raving. Mad.
You need a vacation.

Re:But, her emails!

[DamnOregonian]

First up, seriously, ditch the name-calling.

I get what you're saying... But in this instance, as a point of fact, the man is a self-admitted con artist. That's not calling a name. Nobody cared. They thought that equated to smooth operator, or master executive.

Re: But, her emails!

[Anonymous Coward]

They were caught. Recounts were asked for due to evidence but only dimissed for BS reasons.

Re:But, her emails!

[DamnOregonian]

Both of the private national party organizations are tainted as fuck. They're organizations to get their people elected, nothing more, nothing less, and at any cost.
That being said, you shouldn't paint all adherents of a party's overall ethos or platform with the brush that the organization charged with getting them elected rightfully deserves.

Re:But, her emails!

[Plus1Entropy]

Coming up with excuses as to why you lost is not the same as not accepting the results. I'm not saying she "accepted" the results in an emotional way (who cares?), but in a legal and political way: she did not contest the results of the election and conceded defeat to Trump.

Re: But, her emails!

[Anonymous Coward]

Politifact is biased. That doesn't change the fact that the curse the gypsies placed on Trump would kill him instantly if he were to ever tell the truth.

Re:But, her emails!

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think the other people on that list left a verifiable trail of ripped-off victims behind them

Re: But, her emails!

[Anonymous Coward]

He is merely in your face dishonest. Not your slippery career politician kind of dishonest. Which is worse?

Re:But, her emails!

[OhPlz]

The stock market is doing great. Other NATO members are actually paying their share. We're out of the Paris accord which would cost us a fortune and had no enforcement mechanism for countries that would do nothing. He's pushing back on lawless sanctuary cities. We're out of the TPP. The pipelines were approved. And yes, he's trying to keep terrorists out, but the courts keep getting in the way.

Re: But, her emails!

[Anonymous Coward]

Here! Here! If those that died were all Muslims/terroists then the world is a better place!!

Re: But, her emails!

[zedaroca]

undoing misclick...
Mod parent up

Re: But, her emails!

[Anonymous Coward]

No we don't... You Trump supporters all got conned...

Re: But, her emails!

[Anonymous Coward]

Because that would question the rotten culture of the lefties and the Computer corporations.

Dont you dare to question their holy Cyberspace, there are trillions at stake !!!

And you know: trillions are the undisputable truth !

Re: But, her emails!

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, DieBold Just pursues the AmericanDream of raking in Cash, no Matter what.

Surely they bribed some lefty officials in the Process. So from the perspective of the corrupt communist, all was fine.

Mind you, 90 percent of These Social Scientists are morally broken people With nà regards to Fairplay and national interest.

They are internationalist thieves.

Re: But, her emails!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, Sure. You lefties are habitual Liars and deceivers. Instead of real Work you scheme how to steal the property of others, including the ibtellectual property from Computers.

Re: But, her emails!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not a Hillary fan, and I get tired of the attitude Democrats had, and still have, that it's my responsibility, my duty, to vote for her. That said, the guy that got in, that you complain isn't able to do what the voters voted him in for, doesn't represent the majority of the voters... I agree that they competed in an electoral system, and that the objective was electoral votes, so we'll never really know what would have happened in a competition for the popular vote. But let's not make it sound like he has the support of the American people when he doesn't.

Re:But, her emails!

[Trailer Trash]

1. I didn't vote for Trump, and would never do so.
2. Evidence of what?

Re:But, her emails!

[Anonymous Coward]

It also means that ~75% of voters didn't mind him becoming president, or they would have voted against him. You cant claim the 50% who were too lazy to vote, they just didn't care either way.

Re:But, her emails!

[houghi]

wouldn't Russian puppet Trump already know about the rigging and all that since it's rigged in his favor?

As a puppeteer: you do not tell the puppet what he is going to do. You just guide him in that direction and make it look as if he did it by him/her/itself. The ultimate goal is to let people believe there is no puppeteer.
The puppet has no say in it.

Re:But, her emails!

[bobbied]

OK, so why is she providing tacit support to the "resist" movement which in general does NOT accept the election's results and why is she blaming the fake Russian collusion narrative, even partially? She did say "it's hard not to believe" Trump colluded with the Russians, when there was little evidence...

I think she is using all this to her political advantage. Sure she realized that there was zero chance at a legal challenge succeeding, but that was only after all the recount foolishness we went though and the effort to sway electoral college electors to change their votes. (You do recall all that right?)

So sure, she conceded nearly a day late, then has been stirring the pot of discontent since. Shame on her for helping the Russians sow discontent and doubt in the minds of the electorate, mostly on her side of the spectrum. This is something the Republicans DON'T generally do, but Democrats often engage in that damages the country.

Re:But, her emails!

[backwardsposter]

I think the problem is they're not eating their own dog food. When Clinton was thought to be winning, Obama's administration was even saying we should accept the election results. Then when the DNC lost, turns out they only meant that if they won.

Re:But, her emails!

[cyberchondriac]

I agree they're both tainted and set up to get people elected, they're basically a financial platform. They both want their party members to toe the line and agree with exactly every tenet they officially profess, it's far too rigid a system.

Re:But, her emails!

[Trailer Trash]

In the looney left version of reality, Trump and his team have been meeting with the Russian puppetmasters repeatedly starting long before the election. So your explanation makes no sense. Of course, the entire point I was making was that it's impossible to reconcile both looney left positions so throwing in your third position wouldn't actually cause more issues.

Re: But, her emails!

[Ol Olsoc]

Nothing can forgive the horror she inflicted on the american people by running her own personal email server!!!

Trump is much more efficient. He hands out classified data directly to the people he is working for. That's called the personal touch.

Re: But, her emails!

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually paper votes are ridiculously easy to hack - the Democrats have been doing it for decades: voting in multiple polling stations, dead people's IDs, illegal immigrants voting, Shell game with stuffed ballots.

The uproar is not about voter fraud, it's the side that won that is causing the left to freak out. They thought they had democracy beat.

Look at the protests against the election results in the UK. Lefties just hate losing is all.

Re:But, her emails!

[Ol Olsoc]

how come during the election season Obama said, flat-out and public, that there was no interference going on and that everything was fine?

Because O'Blama said it, therefore as the Kenyan in chief, he was lying. Amiright?

Looks like the whole thing has just been solved, tovarisch!

Re: But, her emails!

[Anonymous Coward]

Does your parallel universe have a name?

Re: But, her emails!

[Anonymous Coward]

Not about losing. The losing/winning argument is stupid. It's about electing an admitted serial sex abuser and reflexive fantasist to the Presidency. The chaos of the first four months is the natural result of conservatives abandoning all pretense of principles and making a grab for power and wealth no matter how destructive to the republic. You can't vote for a guy who simply cannot tell the truth and then blame anyone else for the trouble it causes.

Re: But, her emails!

[WeezulDK]

I'm glad someone else thinks like I do, but It's a fallacy that if you don't win the popular vote that somehow you don't "have the support of the American people"... Yes, you do, just not *all* of them. You'll never have the support of *all* of the people. It doesn't work that way. I'm so sick and tired of people saying "not that it matters, I'm not complaining, but Trump didn't win the popular vote"... My response to them is always: SFW!!!! If it doesn't matter, WHY ARE YOU BRINGING IT UP?!? Do you even CONSTITUTION?!? It's a dishonest debate trick. Period.

Here's something that doesn't click with a lot of people: The electoral system is 50 separate State (plus 1 for DC) elections, with the weight of the individual elections given more "points" by merit of their populations when it comes time to tally up the winner. So in effect, the popular vote is only a statistic in the end, but not a deciding factor other than the popular votes only matter *within each state*, to show who won each *state*. Now, after that, you tally up your points. This is an equitable and fair way to involve each state without disenfranchising the lower-populated states, otherwise it would be California, Texas, Florida, New York deciding the elections with their "winner take all" point assignment to electoral votes. If I were to make a change to shut the "popular vote" idiots up, I'd make every state apportion points via the amounts voted for each candidate, and the winner is the one who reaches the appropriate electoral vote goal or 51% of the electoral votes. People have no problem with frickin March Madness or Baseball or Superbowl Playoffs, but can't seem to get on board with the Electoral College... It boggles my mind.

If anything, the greater crime is the "faithless electors" and primary vote rigging. Everybody bitches about how not having elections via the popular vote is somehow the "greatest threat" to democracy, when in reality it's the people within the process voting against their electorate's wishes and the Party procedural hijinks that the Dems used to lock Bernie out (while "legal" in implementation but quite honestly unfair to Bernie if you really objectively look at the whole thing). That, and this idea that if you're not a career politician that somehow you're "unfit" to govern... I'm sorry but that's just elitist hogwash. You can't open a newspaper today without seeing examples of how corrupt "career" politicians truly are.

Re:But, her emails!

[swillden]

I think the problem is they're not eating their own dog food. When Clinton was thought to be winning, Obama's administration was even saying we should accept the election results. Then when the DNC lost, turns out they only meant that if they won.

I don't see any calls by the Democratic party, or Obama, or Clinton, or anyone else, to set aside the election results. There is concern that maybe Trump's campaign illegally colluded with the Russians. If that's the case, the lawbreakers should be identified and prosecuted, but I don't think anyone serious would actually call for setting aside the election results. There's nothing in the constitution that allows that or says what to do about it if it's done. In the event that evidence were found to prove that Trump, personally, was involved, then he should be impeached and tried for it, and Pence would step into the presidency. If Pence were also found to be guilty, then Orrin Hatch would be president, and so on down the line until we found a member of the line of succession that wasn't involved in this hypothetical massive conspiracy.

And if it turns out that no one in Trump's campaign colluded with the Russians, but the Russians changed the outcome of the election all on their own, then the obvious response is diplomatic sanctions against the Russians and an overhaul of our election infrastructure to make sure it can't be done again. But the election is done, the results are final, Trump is president until Jan 2021, barring death, resignation or impeachment and subsequent removal by the Senate.

Re:But, her emails!

[Ol Olsoc]

OK, so why is she providing tacit support to the "resist" movement which in general does NOT accept the election's results and why is she blaming the fake Russian collusion narrative, even partially?

Because this is America, and despite your fondest wishes Vlad, she is fucking allowed to do what she pleases, and if it butthurts people like you, I'm all for it.

I suspect you are doing your best to make that sort of thing illegal..

Re:But, her emails!

[bobbied]

Lost the argument I see.... Need your safe space?

I'm just pointing out that Clinton has unclean hands here. I get that she's playing political games with all this and I don't begrudge her that. However, I do take exception to those who willingly ignore just how complicit she is in all this "the election was unfair" foolishness. She's a Clinton, she's got dirty hands and you should admit that to yourself...

Re:But, her emails!

[backwardsposter]

The concern grew out of the aversion to accept the election results. Not out of any evidence of the collusion

Re:But, her emails!

[swillden]

The concern grew out of the aversion to accept the election results. Not out of any evidence of the collusion

You have any evidence for that claim?

What I see is that we do have evidence of multiple instances of Russian attempts to influence the election, both via influencing public opinion (e.g. DNC email hacks) and directly (e.g. hacking election machines), and we also evidence of multiple meetings between Trump campaign representatives, Trump associates and Trump political appointees with Russian officials, including several that Trump's team appears to have attempted to conceal. That's clearly enough to motivate a serious investigation.

Re:But, her emails!

[MercTech]

"convinces people to do things not in their best interest by lying to them. He puts on a good show and gets people to have confidence in him, and then produces zilch."

You do realize that portion of your statement thoroughly applies to Hilary Clinton and Barak Obama as well, don't you? Both have proven to lie to the populace for self serving reasons over and over. In the case of Hilary Clinton, it is a 30+ year track record of questionable ethics and lies.

Re:But, her emails!

[Ol Olsoc]

Lost the argument I see.... Need your safe space?

Oh child, you had to go there, seriously? Using those words is like calling people snowflakes or Social Justice warriors. Sorry sir, my point is that as an American, she, and we are still allowed our opinion, you are even allowed yours. Your "safe space" comment doesn't even make any sense.

But hey - I get it. That's the limits of your argument.

Re:But, her emails!

[scatbomb]

The biggest issue with Trump not getting his way is that in reality, not that many voting age Americans actually cast their vote for him. He clearly lost the popular vote (I know it doesn't matter and I'm not complaining about it) but he only received 26% of the registered voter votes. That means nearly 75% of registered voters did not vote for him.

Wow you've drank the coolaid I see. I seriously doubt that any president has ever won a majority (>50% of all voters). I wouldn't be surprised if voter turnout was a little low in 2016 since we were all forced to choose between the veritable turd sandwich or giant douche once again and the voters are growing more and more frustrated as their parties abandon them. Unfortunately weak minded individuals like yourself don't realize that they're being played by the state by parroting their propaganda and further reducing the chance we'll ever restore sanity to our government. So thanks a lot for your contributions in digging a hole we'll probably never get out of. Anyway, most of the time the winner of plurality gets the most electoral college votes, but there have been many times (such as 2016) that the plurality winner lost in the electoral college. This was a typical election, the deep state and state-run propaganda outlets are creating hysteria in order to incite the butthurt Democrats and create chaos to distract Americans and the administration. Trump is completely falling for the bait instead of focusing on the agenda that got him elected. You're right that he's had almost no success in implementing his agenda, but you must realize that the deep state, the deep state-run media, and the global elites want it that way, and they don't care about you at all. They'd have preferred Hillary since she would have been easier to bend to their will, but having Trump mired in hysteria is a close second. This outrage is not for your benefit, it's for their benefit. You're just a pawn.

Re:But, her emails!

[slashdotwannabe]

Uhhh... what's wrong with a standardized voting system? I get that managing elections is delegated to each state under the Constitution, and I agree with that, but how is that mutually exclusive from having a comprehensive, standardized set of voting systems that are verifiably secure? If this election has taught us anything, it's that we seriously need to get up off our asses and modernize how we vote, or others will do it for us (not modernize, but VOTE)

Re: But, her emails!

[david_thornley]

Yup, they have no opportunity to laugh at the Republican Congress that denied Clinton's request for adequate funding for security.

Re:But, her emails!

[slashdotwannabe]

I mean, wouldn't Russian puppet Trump already know about the rigging and all that since it's rigged in his favor?

Of course not. Need to know applies. The only thing President Trump needs to know is that the FSB has tapes of him pissing on prostitutes or details of some shady deal with some Russian mobster or another or whatever it is they have on him.

Re:But, her emails!

[david_thornley]

If the "resist" movement didn't accept Trump's win, they'd all go home. They're still against Trump, which is still legal in this country, and they're trying to stop some of the things he and other Republicans are doing. There is absolutely nothing sinister about this. It's part of political influence and lobbying.

Re:But, her emails!

[david_thornley]

The DNC is not a government organization. It is a private organization, and one of its jobs is to nominate a good candidate for President. They decided, and I still agree, that Clinton was more electable than Sanders (I supported Sanders to try to move the party to the left, not because I thought he'd be the stronger candidate).

Sanders is not a Democrat. He is a self-described socialist. You may have noticed that various people on Slashdot equate anything described as socialism* with Stalin's or Mao's rule. The Republican mud-slinging brigade would have had a field day with that. The DNC was correct to take this into account.

*"Socialism" really doesn't have much of a defined meaning any more. It used to be the direct or indirect ownership and/or control of the means of production by the people, which, as it turns out, is not a very good idea. It then started to be used to describe people interested in social welfare, which is what Sanders means by it.

Re:But, her emails!

[david_thornley]

In other words, you know some marks in the con game Trump runs. The people in the rust belt have legitimate complaints. I don't think many of them have addressed their problems well, but that's really none of my business. Believing that Trump would was a very serious mistake. Heck, believing anything Trump says on the basis that he says it is a serious mistake.

Re:But, her emails!

[bobbied]

There IS something illegal about inciting riots, destruction of property and generally breaking laws during your protesting. Not all "resist" participants are involved in such stuff, but I don't hear very many of them calling for the people who are doing these things to stop. In fact, I hear exactly the oppsit when you hear the rhetoric from the democratic leadership.

This includes Clinton. I've not heard her say anything other than unqualified support of the "resist" movement. She's not called for non-violent protesting, she's not denounced the violence. Silence is compliance in this case. Both Clinton and high ranking Democrats have not denounced any of this. But this is par for the left's course. Remember Obama's "If you bring a knife we will bring a gun" speech? I do. Is the imagery lost on you? I hope not.

But really, it's clear why they do this... As in all unethical and immoral behavior involving politicians, follow the money.... Clinton is protecting her donations by giving at least lip service to the causes they want her to. Clinton may not approve of this stuff, but apparently her principles don't hold enough sway to actually cause her to clearly denounce it, so I figure she's complicit.

Re:But, her emails!

[Ogive17]

Drank the coolaid? Hah.

I simply pointed out 3/4ths of registered Americans did not vote for him, so he didn't start out with huge support.. even many in his "own party" didn't outright support him.

Your entire post seems based on me being a HRC fan. I don't support Hillary. The two I would have liked see win the primaries were Sanders and Kasich because they seemed like the only two who act like adults.

Trump is full of shit, you don't need state-driven media to realize it. The guy is a salesman, that's it. Hillary had the most non-genuine personality.. completely scripted and fake. It's unfortunate the DNC forced such a flawed personality to the front.

Re:But, her emails!

[david_thornley]

In other words, since some people who act under the auspices of the "resist" movement break the law, the whole movement is despicable unless all the Democratic leaders denounce the violence somewhere you happen to notice? There are always lunatic fringes of movements, and as long as I've been following these things it's accepted that lunatic fringes will do bad things.

I said "act under the auspices" and meant it specifically. How many violent people are actually part of the resist movement, and how many are there to discredit the movement? Anyone can show up at a Pastafarian demonstration, mingle, and then commit violence.

The Obama quote, as reported (Snopes couldn't find video, but did find contemporaneous news reports) was not in the context of violence, but was rhetoric to call for a fight against the Republican campaign. In addition, it didn't call for violence, but a not entirely disproportionate response to some sort of attack. If I've got a gun and someone attacks me with a knife, I'm not going to abide by Barsoomian honor and refuse to use a more effective weapon, but it doesn't mean I'm going to shoot anyone who doesn't attack me. If you're going to wave away Trump's remarks about Second Amendment fans going after Clinton and offering to pay legal expenses to anyone attacking a protester at his rally, you're sounding awful picky about Obama, particularly since you have to reach back nine years to get a quote that more or less supports what you're saying.

Re:But, her emails!

[bobbied]

The language you choose in your rhetoric is important. Obama's choice of words are thus important, and using images of violence in a political debate is what I'm decrying and asking to stop. Plus....

I'm merely showing the long history here. There are plenty of recent examples of main stream democratic supporters and leaders who have engaged in vitriolic rhetoric which was couched in violent terms. It is the democratic way to make people angry, oh not with the democrats, but with the republicans or groups that can be grouped with the republicans. We get this in your gun control rhetoric all the time. Oh yes, Republicans want people to die because they don't support Obamacare.... See what I mean yet or do I need to keep coming up with examples?

Re: But, her emails!

[orgelspieler]

Then by all means, cherry pick some businesses he's been in that are completely above board. I welcome the information! It would be a blessing to know that the leader of the free world is NOT a vapid charlatan.

Re:But, her emails!

[orgelspieler]

That is absolutely false. There are thousands of businesses in America run by ethical people who give a shit about their customers and don't try to con them out of money. If it were otherwise, why would so many companies try to keep their reputations on Google reviews as spotless as possible? True, there have always been successful cheaters, and there have always been ethical losers. But by-and-large most humans don't want to be an asshole. That's what makes Donald Trump such a stand out. He just cannot be shamed.

Re:But, her emails!

[orgelspieler]

You do see the difference in persuading somebody to vote against there best interest versus conning them out of thousands of dollars, right? And last time I checked, Hillary isn't president, and I didn't ever claim she was ethical. So you can GTFO with that red herring.

Re:But, her emails!

[kelanos]

That is absolutely false in the context of which I spoke. Those businesses that you refer to are not really successful, they are just waiting around to be consumed by Corporation.

Stop focusing on Donald Trump, exert your analytical energy elsewhere, you are falling for an extremely stupid trick. Stop trying to justify your obsession by saying things like "he stands out". He stands out because you are complacent enough to open your mouth under the funnel of the Media. If you sorted out your mind you would see he is a lesser emissary of great evils.

But no, you have studied so hard and know so much, you deserve the scapegoat you want! Grow up.

Re:But, her emails!

[Archtech]

No, I suppose most of them were killed.

Re:But, her emails!

[david_thornley]

Repealing the ACA without an adequate substitute is going to kill quite a few people (or, if you prefer, leave them to die). Someone who wants to take away the ability of the non-rich to pay for treatment for pre-existing conditions, for example, is at least OK with people dying.

Re:But, her emails!

[bobbied]

Are you SURE you want to make this an issue? I believe that the Pro Life folks would have a few choice things to say using the same logic...

Actually, it could be argued that the ACA will kill more people than it "saves" because it will remove a lot of the profit driven innovation in healthcare and force a lot of people to spend a lot of money on insurance that they'd otherwise use on food, clothing and housing expenses....

Re:But, her emails!

[david_thornley]

The ACA got tens of millions of people on decent health insurance that didn't have it before. It didn't cut the profit motive for innovation in health care.

Of Course They are

[Anonymous Coward]

How else do you explain Obama getting elected not once, but TWICE?

Fake news

[Anonymous Coward]

Fake news

Re:Fake news

[Anonymous Coward]

Came to unironically post this especially in the light of the Comey testimony.

Re:Fake news

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

Pretty much this, as long as it's just "three (anonymous) people with direct knowledge of the U.S. investigation into the matter" spouting off.

If there's something we need to know, publish it and stand behind it (with your names and titles) already. This dribble of whispers from the shadows is why most people treat the "Russians hacked the election" stories with a healthy does of suspicion.

Re:Fake news

[Anonymous Coward]

If there's something we need to know, publish it and stand behind it (with your names and titles) already.

Former FBI Director James Comey came out and testified in public under oath.

The Russians interfered in our election during the 2016 cycle. They did with purpose. They did it with sophistication. They did it with overwhelming technical efforts. It was an active measures campaign driven from the top of that government. There is no fuzz on that. It is a high confidence judgment of the entire intelligence community and the members of this committee have seen the intelligence. It's not a close call. That happened. That's about as unfake as you can possibly get. It is very, very serious, which is why it's so refreshing to see a bipartisan focus on that.

Re:Fake news

[Anonymous Coward]

If you repeat it enough, it will become truth.

Re:Fake news

[bobbied]

If you repeat it enough, it will become truth.

LOL.. The sum total of the efforts from the left since November 9, 2016... Keep repeating it... Keep the investigations going.. Because it's not the "nature of the evidence, but the seriousness of the charges" that matters when you play the political game well.

Re:Fake news

[Anonymous Coward]

> publish it and stand behind it

What? Thousands of articles have already been published about this. We know this is true because so many have. The media wouldn't be talking about this so much if it wasn't.

Re:Fake news

[jedidiah]

Argumentation by symlink simply isn't good enough. Try posting the relevant part of the transcript. Preferably a small direct part of it rather than forcing everyone to wade through the whole thing.

"It's illegal. Here's a login for Westlaw. Go see for yourself."

Re:Fake news

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't worry bro, 0111 1110 and other Putinbots are on the job. You'll have your talking points shortly.

Re:Fake news

[Anonymous Coward]

He DID post the relevant part of the transcript. If you disagree, why don't YOU post the part you think is more relevant instead of just maintaining your Trumpian bluster.

Re:Fake news

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you miss the part in his testimony where he said they'd be 'trying to influence US elections for a long time'? He didn't actually state it that way & it was part of answering a question if he thought the Russians would continue this behavior in the future.

So, sure the Russians have been meddling in democratic elections forever, we meddle in their "elections" and other domestic activities. Consider the Trump Administration's 'condemning the arrest of 1000 peaceful protesters" recently (yesterday or the day before). TECHNICALLY this is 'meddling in domestic affairs' that should 'in theory' be off limits. Of course NOBODY is going to stop doing this regardless of which 'side'/country you're from.

So I'm mystified by:
1) The 'shock' expressed by everyone & their dog that the 'Russians' (or anyone else) is 'messing in US elections'.
2) The 'shock' at the APPARENT sophistication of the recent attempts where I say 'apparent' since its quite likely the systems broken in to had extremely lax security & any 'script kiddie' could have done it not just a 'nation state'.

Now, if you want to 'do something about it' first recognize you can't stop 'meddling' by anyone where by that I mean things like 'fake news' (what us old-timers would call a 'disinformation campaign' which has been going on since the beginning of time) AND more importantly the '3 letter security agencies' should be working to help SECURE our systems (their 'security' agencies right?) rather than creating their own hacking tools to break in to those systems & calling for 'back doors' & such to make everyone LESS secure.

Think about it. The most revealing aspect of this whole mess isn't about Russia at all but that there is clear indication that the supposed security agencies we rely on to protect us have the exact same tools & abilities as Russia, maybe even more sophisticated to the point that we can't TRUST that any hacking was from Russia rather than from our internal 'security services'. And no I'm not saying I believe that to be true, I'm saying the 3-letter security agencies have created such an atmosphere of distrust that there is sufficient reason to believe it MIGHT be true & certainly no guarantee they wouldn't do something like this in the future even if they weren't responsible 'this time'.

O yeah, 1 other thing that would limit any impact of this kind of thing in a 'democratically elected government' is REDUCE THE SIZE OF THE GOVERNMENT. In other words, if the US Federal government was not so powerful then the harm any individual President could do or group of Congress critters could do would be minimal. Put control back in the States hands where it belongs and try to change society by winning 'hearts & minds' NOT by fiat of federal law. Changing 'hearts & minds' is WAY harder but also WAY safer and enduring in the long run as laws can be easily changed. 'hearts & minds' are not so easily changed and that's a good thing (TM) once you have them 'on your side'.

And?

[Anonymous Coward]

Did it change the outcome of the election?

No?

Then why do we care?

This thing is a complete non-story and is simply Democrats whining about how they lost an election they thought they were sure to win. Well, they didn't. They lost. Stop complaining and stop with the pointless Russia-bashing.

Re: And?

[Anonymous Coward]

How can you tell either way without an investigation?

Re: And?

[Anonymous Coward]

Tell us how you can hack paper ballots.

Re:And?

[Anonymous Coward]

the banks won. the defense industry won. the rich people won. But those would have won either way.

Re: And?

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't hack the ballot, you use propaganda to influence voters.

Re: And?

[Anonymous Coward]

Tell us how Russia controls Facebook

Re: And?

[dromgodis]

You don't hack the ballot, you use propaganda to influence voters.

You mean just like politicians do?

Re:And?

[Opportunist]

And people keep berating me when I tell them that it doesn't matter which branch of The Party wins.

Seriously, the whole shit in the US smells more and more like the democracy theater they had in the Soviet states. Some countries there allowed you to actually vote for different candidates. Yes, really. They even had some parties to offer a puppet show of democracy (quite literally so). But in the end, they all stood for exactly the same. Maybe you could hear some sort of nuance on this or that topic, but in the end, the socialism had to win at the end, the fight towards communism continues and The Party is always right.

Re: And?

[Penguinisto]

You don't hack the ballot, you use propaganda to influence voters.

You mean just like politicians do?

...and media corporations, and special interest groups, and political parties, and talk radio jocks, and co-workers, and advertisers (to an extent), and even private corporations (again, to an extent), and...

Re: And?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't need to, a surprising number of voting machines in America do not use paper ballots
http://www.salon.com/2011/09/27/votinghack/

Re: And?

[Hentai007]

Tinfoil hat and crazy talk time

Well, they had a list of all employees with access to the vote tabulation equipment. they could have found a handful in each state that were both poor and hardcore trump supporters and offered them both money and a chance for their guy to win in exchange for plugging in this USB stick to some of the machines...

now do i think that actually happened? oh god no, the amount of time and planning that would take for something with a pretty high risk of failure would be totally insane, even for Putin (or Putey Put Put as W used to call him) but to offhandedly say "No way tampering was possible" seemed short sighted.

I mean, no offence to you, Trump and his folks were saying the vote was rigged leading up to the vote, some going so far as to say they would assassinate Clinton were she to be declared the winner as the election was bogus. I think saying "hey, maybe we should look into this a little more" is fairly tame by comparison.

Re: And?

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean like CNN, WaPo, NYT, etc. did?

Re: And?

[ShanghaiBill]

You don't hack the ballot, you use propaganda to influence voters.

You mean just like politicians do?

No.
Politicians lie.
The Russians leaked the truth.

Re: And?

[Headw1nd]

Most of the objections I've seen as to why Russian hacking couldn't work have been along the lines of "It would take a lot of effort" or "it would be too complicated". Given the available resources of Russia and the stakes in play I can't really say those objections hold any water. Without the ability to review the source code of all voting machines and randomized auditing of paper ballots there is simply too much potential for influence in a close race, which seems to be the de facto standard these days.

Re:And?

[0111 1110]

Totally agree. The only difference here is that Trump isn't a normal politician and may have some racist or at least anti-Muslim views and some more extreme ideas than usual. So far nothing has come of it and the rest of the system (house, senate, judicial) is all regular politicians. So it may end up like Obama wanting to close Gitmo but not being able to (assuming you believe he wanted to). Luckily a president is not quite a dictator. Not yet at least.

Note how the travel ban went nowhere and so far I haven't read about any Muslim internment camps or mass deportation of Muslim Americans. If Trump seriously tries to do any of that stuff then I'll start to seriously worry, but for now he's all bark and no bite. At least so far. It's kind of entertaining to see how the Dems are reacting. I've never seen this kind of rage or bile before. Not even the most Hilary hating conservative was ever this enraged. Nothing like hatred to unite people, eh?

In some ways the other side of the pond worries me more. Trump isn't advocating the end of encryption, human rights (except for Muslims of course), and uh the internet while she's at it. Hopefully the political system over there can prevent her from actually doing any of that extreme stuff. There's a lot of dangerous anti-Muslim talk over there too, but May is not nearly as much an islamophobe or xenophobe as Trump. Unfortunately they both tend to go in for overly simple solutions to complex problems, but then so do most politicians. The Philippines with their president's policy of Murder All Drug Dealers (and users) as a way to solve the drug problem there is my favorite illustration of this.

Re: And?

[Anonymous Coward]

And the truth was repugnant to many democratic supporters. Case closed. Speak plainly and consistently in public and private and this woukd never have been an issue. Organizationally screw over Bernie and risk his supporters losing faith if they find out.

Re:And?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, the whole shit in the US smells more and more like the democracy theater they had in the Soviet states.

And that's why Obama's policies were exactly the same as Trump's?

Re:And?

[nine-times]

I'm not going to berate you, but I think you're wrong.

Or actually, let me start with this: I think it's unfortunate that we have a two-party system. I think we should consider rethinking our elections in order to allow more parties to have more of a voice. I'd also agree that we should do something about campaign finance to restrict the undue influence held by the rich. So maybe we'd agree on that much.

However, we've certainly seen that there is a difference between Republicans and Democrats. If you look at the things Obama tried to do, and then you look a the things Trump has been trying to do, those are definitely different sets of things. What's more, I think a lot of the difficulty in promoting 3rd parties is actually the fault of the people. It's tribalism. Political parties are like sports teams, and which one you want to win isn't really about which one is best or which one is going to implement good policies. It's all identity politics, and part of the reason for that is it's what voters are choosing.

Re: And?

[davide marney]

The voting machines are not internetworked. The attacks described here were not against voting equipment but against voter registration databases which have web interfaces.

I am an election official in Virginia. Every one of these scenarios I've looked at about how easy it is to modify voting equipment have thoroughly improbable -- and in some cases, physically impossible -- scenarios. America is physically a very big place. Virginia has thousands of individual voting precincts. To modify the source code, you'd have to launch a simultaneous, in-person sneak attack at thousands of locations, all without getting caught. That is just not a credible scenario. In some of these scenarios, they have people literally opening up a voting machine on election day, which is really preposterous. Every voting machine is under the constant gaze not only of multiple officers, but also all the voters waiting in line. That in-my-eyesight requirement is one of the reasons I am strongly in favor of in-person voting.

We have been running elections for hundreds of years, now. We do know a thing or two about how to secure them.

Re: And?

[ganjadude]

and that is != hacking the election.

also you are crazy if you dont think we dont try and use propaganda to influence voters of other countries and vice versa.

Re: And?

[davide marney]

You know, we DO know about digital signing. And defense in depth. And chain of custody. And to top it all off, you can't just attack some of the machines, they are spread out in thousands of locations across each state. You have to win a majority of ALL the precincts.

So no, your scenario of just popping a USB drive into a couple of voting machines is not going to work. It's a lot, lot harder than you think.

Re: And?

[Hentai007]

Like I said, it would be too hard to pull off and I don't think it happened. But should we not at least investigate?

I mean, isn't it odd in NC that enough people split the ballot to elect a Democratic Governor but not Clinton? I mean in a normal election I wouldn't find that very odd, but to vote Dem on one side and Trump on the other? That's a big swing. But hey, who knows? ... a lot of Bernie's Socialists suddenly became Libertarians which is the complete opposite of socialism...

Re: And?

[bobbied]

How can you tell either way without an investigation?

You do realize that the biggest net gain for the Russians is the PR here right? They may not have changed even one vote cast, but all this consternation about how they "hacked" the election undermines the electorate's confidence in the process.

Putin is sitting back chuckling about how a little bit of hacking has placed his name and image in front of the world and inflated his image which increases his ability to stay in office.... Then, the gift that keeps on giving, pits Americans vrs Americans which only makes the USA weaker. Apart from achieving some military victory of the USA there is nothing better for him...

Re:And?

[Noble713]

The only difference here is that Trump isn't a normal politician and may have some racist or at least anti-Muslim views

According to this CNN link , the six countries on the travel ban were Sudan, Libya, Iran, Yemen, Somalia, and Syria. All of them have either extremely poor security situations with rampant domestic terrorism and active insurgencies, or in Iran's case an extremely antagonistic relationship with the US government and Israel (which has major lobbying power in the US). These countries are 10% of the world Muslim population. They are also some of the most dangerous and active conflict zones in the world today, and possess training environments for the radicalization of second-generation immigrants in Europe to turn into terrorists.

You know what countries AREN'T on Trump's travel ban? Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, Nigeria, Turkey, and Egypt. Combined they are home to 56.7% of the world's Muslims, and while some of them have security problems and active jihadi insurgencies, they also have more robust security apparatuses.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

So is Trump really anti-Muslim, or simply enacting pre-emptive security measures and risk avoidance?

In comparison, his erstwhile opponent in the Presidential race voted in favor of Operation Iraqi Freedom. The collapse of security in Iraq in 2003 is STILL costing Muslim lives to this day due to ISIS, which even a conservative estimate would place in the high hundreds of thousands of fatalities 2003-2017. This is also the same woman who **LAUGHED** about the overthrow and extra-judicial lynching of a Muslim head of state (Qaddafi). https://youtu.be/UtH7iv4ip1U

So I'm just curious if you also consider Hillary Clinton to be a racist anti-Muslim? Or is it just Trump?

Re:And?

[OhPlz]

We're at the point where the government is so involved in everything that elections are nearly pointless. A lot of us will never find a candidate that truly represents us, or even comes close. There are huge divides within the existing two parties for that reason. Bringing more parties in the fold just makes it more challenging to find the least repugnant choice. We need to decrease the amount of federal government and return to the union of states that we're supposed to have. Government works best when it's local.

Re:And?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't tell the difference between a boring centrist and an idiot right wing traitor because you are fucking stupid.

Try not being such a fucking retard all the time and pay attention to what's happening in front of you, moron.

Re: And?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. The difference is corps, SIGs, talk radio jocks, co-workers, and private sector goons don't have a nuclear missiles pointed at you and your loved ones. I'd say they are all far less dangerous than a far right leaning country with a massive bone to pick with us and every reason to see us wiped out of existence.

Re:And?

[nine-times]

We're at the point where the government is so involved in everything that elections are nearly pointless.

I think it really depends on what you mean by "pointless". From the rest of your post, it really sounds like anything that doesn't give you exactly what you want is "pointless". I don't think that's a very fair assessment.

If you want the federal government to disband and form a confederacy instead, then you're right to think that neither Republicans or Democrats will bring you closer to that goal. However, if you think that the election won't have an impact on your life, or on the lives of your friends and family members, you're probably wrong.

Re:And?

[0111 1110]

So I'm just curious if you also consider Hillary Clinton to be a racist anti-Muslim? Or is it just Trump?

Those aren't very compelling examples. Neither was at all directly related to religion. Hillary is probably as islamophobic as most Americans are, but not as much as Trump. Trump advocated blocking all Muslims from entering the US during his campaign. I guess it could be worse. He could have advocated putting the ones already in the US into camps or deporting them, but it's a pretty extreme measure that is presumably based on some pretty extreme view along the lines of Muslim = Terrorist.

the six countries on the travel ban were Sudan, Libya, Iran, Yemen, Somalia, and Syria. All of them have either extremely poor security situations with rampant domestic terrorism and active insurgencies, or in Iran's case an extremely antagonistic relationship with the US government and Israel (which has major lobbying power in the US).

Blocking entire countries because of a tiny tiny tiny minority of people living there is in itself tribalist and the sort of simplistic over-generalized thinking that racism is all about. The sheer magnitude of innocent people caught in that ginormous net is extremely unjust by any measure. That some Americans are terrified of a tiny minority of people from those countries wearing towels on their heads does not make it any more rational or just.

Is Trump the man really a racist and islamophobe as he is painted by the left? I don't really know because I don't personally know the guy, but some of the things he has said have justifiably scared people about what he might be capable of. When it comes to that he at least gives me pause. His policies certainly do tend at least toward xenophobia and isolationism. The actual 6 country version of the travel ban is just a small taste of what he might be capable of. After all he did originally advocate blocking everyone who believes in a particular religion from entering the country.

What some people find confusing I think is that while terrorists are usually Muslims or at least Arabs, Muslims are not usually terrorists and actually neither are Arabs. Actual terrorists are almost as rare as aliens. They may as well not exist at all and we should really treat them as if they don't because attention is what they are looking for. All of this fear just encourages them and shows them what cowards we really are.

Re:And?

[apoc.famine]

In case you missed it, Trump is the man who said he wanted, a, "total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States". I'll point out that he didn't say, "I want a total and complete shutdown of citizens from the following countries with poor security situations entering the United States...." Had he said that, it wouldn't have been blatantly anti-Muslim. And this is also a man who said he wanted to shut down mosques.
 
FFS, the courts are using his own anti-Muslim tweets and speech snippets to kill his Muslim ban.
 
How in the world do you manage to hate Hillary so much and love Trump so much that you conflate the two on their attitudes towards Muslims? As soon as Hillary makes some anti-Muslim tweets and suggests policies to ban them and shut down mosques, they'll be equal. I'm somewhat skeptical that that will happen.

Re:And?

[Anonymous Coward]

They said it was supposed to be a temporary measure for 100 days to get a handle on things and establish a tougher vetting process.

It has been more than a hundred days and no new vetting process has been announced.

Re:And?

[phantomfive]

Or actually, let me start with this: I think it's unfortunate that we have a two-party system. I think we should consider rethinking our elections in order to allow more parties to have more of a voice.

It won't matter. The government is going to be a reflection of the populace. As long as the populace is focused on stupidities instead of real issues, then no system of elections or campaign finance reform will fix that.

IF you want to improve government, focus on educating the populace. It's hard, but at least it will have an effect.

Re:And?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why the hell are non-citizens who are not currently on US soil afforded protections of the Constitution? Why do they even matter?

Re:And?

[Anonymous Coward]

What some people find confusing I think is that while terrorists are usually Muslims or at least Arabs, Muslims are not usually terrorists and actually neither are Arabs. Actual terrorists are almost as rare as aliens.

Tell that to the British who just said "there are too many jihadists to track all of them" after the bridge massacre. Not all Muslims are terrorists. But all terrorists are Muslim. (And no Tim McVeigh was not a Christian.)

Re: And?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not control per se but pervasive: https://m.slashdot.org/story/318389

Re: And?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's funny, I can imagine this thread happening on a forum for Iranian nuclear scientists a few years back.

"Impossible! they would have to have access to all the centrifuges! and they are all air-gapped!"

I'm sure you're knowledge of security is top notch, is it unassailable? is it possible something could have happened you didn't foresee? should we not even look into it? that seems like a stupid way to look at the issue. It's already clear the Russian government was trying everything possible to get their man in office, why not look into any possibility? Other than the fact you are personally happy with the result and want to leave it alone.

Re:And?

[whoever57]

Also not on the Travel ban: Saudi Arabia. You, know, the country from which most of the 9/11 attackers came.

Re: And?

[jbengt]

But with our first-past-the-post, winner takes all, electoral college system, you wouldn't have to alter very many individual precinct or county vote tallies to help sway a close election, if you chose the right ones.

Re: And?

[Obfuscant]

You know, we DO know about digital signing. And defense in depth. And chain of custody.

I'm interested in your ideas. Please tell me how I can digitally sign my ballot, and how we manage the chain of custody as it either sits overnight in the ballot drop-box or passes through the USPS system.

You have to win a majority of ALL the precincts.

In our local Senate district, it is quite common for the Republican candidate to win in a majority of the counties, yet a Democrat goes to Washington because he won the county with the big city in it. Of all the elections I know, none except the US Presidential election does anything more than summing all the votes for all the political subdivisions and the plurality takes all.

Re: And?

[mixed_signal]

At least the politicians in the U.S. are part of the U.S... Foreign interference is quite different.

Re:And?

[Noble713]

Yes, thankyou for pointing that out. I should have included a blurb about Saudi Arabia, which, like Israel, has HUGE lobbying power in DC even though the Saudis deserve to be front and center on our shitlist.

Re:And?

[jbengt]

And yet Trump touts that his travel ban IS a ban on muslims. That greatly increases his chances of losing in court, which, I think he realizes, would be helpful to him with his base, since he could then claim loudly and repeatedly how the unfair, "liberal" courts are preventing him from keeping America safe.

Re: And?

[Anonymous Coward]

Trump won by fewer than 75,000 votes.

Re:And?

[whoever57]

I think you missed my point.

The omission of Saudi Arabia shows that the ban is unconnected to security issues, which refutes your main point.

What remains is a ban on Muslims who don't come from countries where Trump has current or hopes for future business interests.

Trump openly expressed his desire for a Muslim ban. We should take him at his word.

Re:And?

[whoever57]

And let's not forget that the first version of the ban wasn't a ban on citizens of those countries travelling to the USA: it was a ban on Muslims from those countries travelling to the USA.

Also, Trump wants the Justice department to defend the original, explicit, Muslim ban in court.

So, yeah, anyone with a couple of brain cells to rub together can see that it's a Muslim ban.

Re:And?

[Noble713]

I live in Japan, itself an extremely xenophobic nation. As a non-white immigrant it's annoying but I understand and respect their policies, from the perspective of national cultural preservation and social integrity. Japan's strict stance on assimilation means that it's almost impossible for disgruntled ethnic enclaves to really thrive here, and they have NO tolerance for non-Japanese responding to conformist pressure with violence/protests/etc....

I have close friends here who are Iranian Shia expats, been here for decades. Ya know what's funny? The wife of the family often talks politics with me and says "Why is everyone so mad at Trump? Of course you should ban those people from your country. They're dangerous!" Middle-aged Muslim woman says its not smart to allow Muslim refugees into America. That's a headline you'll never see on CNN. Now besides the obvious irony of someone who fled the Iranian Revolution* complaining about present-day refugees, this married couple is upper class and extremely well-educated (usually a requirement for long-term residence in Japan). Do we have any easy, reliable means for verifying the education, background, or criminal history of refugees from the 6 Travel Ban countries? Highly unlikely. They are practically failed states.

*Some of her uncles were Generals in the Shah's Army....all "disappeared".

The sheer magnitude of innocent people caught in that ginormous net is extremely unjust by any measure. That some Americans are terrified of a tiny minority of people from those countries wearing towels on their heads does not make it any more rational or just.

The United States is not under any international or domestic legal obligation to allow travelers or immigrants from elsewhere. We have that right as a sovereign nation to control our borders. As for "innocent people" and "unjust"......How's that White Man's Burden working out for you? Do we elect our public officials to do what is in the best interests of American citizens, or the best interests of foreigners? The two are often not overlapping on a Venn diagram.

That some Americans are terrified of a tiny minority of people from those countries wearing towels on their heads does not make it any more rational or just.

How tiny is the tiny minority? Is it 1% of Muslims? That's 18 million jihadis. Even if it were 1% of the 6 Travel Ban countries, that's 1.8 million jihadis. If we add those 1.8 million to the US population of ~326 million, they would be about 0.5% of Americans. Would you still shop at Wal-Mart if 1 out of every 200 customers was just waiting for the best time to blow himself up at the checkout line? Are you willing to accept that risk? For what purpose? What do we really lose by saying "You know what, I think we're just NOT going to let you guys come here until you get your shit straight." What are the second- and third-order effects of increasingly frequent terror attacks attributable to radical Islam? Effects on the economy? Effects on overall quality of life from the inevitable security theater?

Thing is, it's NOT a "tiny minority". Check out the data from the Pew Research Center: 2014 study. Look how many are at least kinda-sorta ok with the idea of using suicide bombings against CIVILIANS. Bangladesh? 47%. Turkey? 18%. Egypt? 24%. That means those 3 countries alone have 100 MILLION Muslims who think it's okay to blow up women and children in defense of Islam. Is that your idea of a "tiny minority"? Let's also throw in the 25% of American Muslims who agree with them: http://www.reuters.com/article...

Ya know if we were really smart....we would filter a Muslim ban by allowing women 16-30 a fast track to immigration. Women are usually politically radicalized by th

Re:And?

[jbengt]

Why do they even matter?

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men . . .

Re: And?

[Anonymous Coward]

Notice "the Goddamned Russians" isn't on that fucking list...

Re:And?

[Anonymous Coward]

>implying a white man who owned so-called people didn't write that about other white men

Re:And?

[Noble713]

Honestly the dude is his own worst enemy. He puts his foot in his mouth on a seemingly daily basis and I think his staff spends as much time putting out helmet fires that HE creates as they do fighting with the Deep State shadow government and actually attempting to run the country.

Re:And?

[Noble713]

What remains is a ban on Muslims who don't come from countries where Trump has current or hopes for future business interests.

Ok, I can kinda agree with you on that one. I have a real problem with the US-Saudi Petrodollar relationship. The memes for this pic practically write themselves: ( http://media.philly.com/images... ). But a real-estate guy like Trump should see that KBR-style reconstruction contracts in Libya at least could be a big business opportunity. So maybe he's asleep at the wheel on security AND business?

Re:And?

[Noble713]

And let's not forget that the first version of the ban wasn't a ban on citizens of those countries travelling to the USA: it was a ban on Muslims from those countries travelling to the USA.

If that's the case.....yeah it's kinda stupid. Anyone can claim that they've converted to some other religion and there isn't really any way to verify it with their home country one way or the other. A guy named Achmed the Not-Yet Dead Terrorist could carry a King James Bible and say he found Jesus on the flight and wanted to get baptized. "Oh ok, not a Muslim. Step right through." Security theater.

Re: And?

[sound vision]

And that's why Russia launched the campaign in the first place. Undermine trust in the political system and cause internal instability. It's worked beautifully. That doesn't mean we shouldn't investigate and work to secure the election process. We should have started that 15 - 20 years ago, really, when we started bringing out electronic voting. We have been talking about it on Slashdot for well over a decade.

Re:And?

[whoever57]

A radio program interviewed one of the people who did the vetting, and guess what? They do have sufficient information to vet the people from Syria quite well, despite the lack of a functioning government. In fact, they can vet people from Syria better than many countries.

As for Pakistan: do you really think that we get truthful information from the Pakistani government? If you believe this, then I may have a bridge or some prime Florida real estate to sell you.

Re: And?

[bobbied]

Sure, we need to protect ourselves from such efforts by the Russians (or any other group who wants to try this)....

But.. Do we need to compound the electorates' doubts by hoisting up unfounded accusations of criminal activity by one of the campaigns as if they where all true? Truly, all the trumped up (pun intended) charges about all this only serve to further the Russian's gains and multiply the results of their efforts.

Personally, I would have preferred that we concentrated in on the REAL issue (The Russians activities) and let all the rest of the political based accusations which have no basis just go away. It should NEVER had been blown up into what it's become over the last 9 months and letting it happen has only served to further aid the Russians in their gains.

Re:And?

[sound vision]

What Trump promised was a Muslim ban, which is exactly what his tribalist base wants. The text of the order was a (piss-poor) attempt to deliver on that in a (maybe) legal way, per the man's own words. Any other reading of the situation requires you to let someone pull the wool over your eyes.

Regarding the effect of the ban itself, it's even worse security theater than the TSA. It could be 6 countries, or 13 countries, or we could ban international travel altogether, and it wouldn't help. A bit of critical thinking while examining the backgrounds of those committing the attacks would tell you this. Or, you could take the word of the intelligence agencies (any, take your pick), who have concluded that nationality is not a reliable threat indicator. Unlike the TSA, however, the travel ban wastes more than money, time, and freedom. It wastes our country's standing and credibility.

What Hillary thinks isn't relevant to any of this.

Re:And?

[Opportunist]

Found the politician!

Re:And?

[Noble713]

Or, you could take the word of the intelligence agencies (any, take your pick), who have concluded that nationality is not a reliable threat indicator.

Citation needed. DuckDuckGo is only giving me an article about a draft internal report by the DHS: https://www.bostonglobe.com/ne...

It wastes our country's standing and credibility.

With whom, exactly? Three of the five BRICS have their own Muslim insurgency problems, and two of those three are ruthlessly pragmatic authoritarian regimes who don't really like us anyway. Of the remaining 2 BRICS, Brazil is too occupied with Presidential corruption woes of their own and a shaky economy. Out in Asia, our friends in Korea and Japan are xenophobic assholes, and down in the Philippines Duterte is struggling with his own Muslim insurgency that is flaring up. Duterte, who is busy moving into Russia and China's sphere and has been reducing ties with the US. Yeah, we're really gonna win him over by being nice to Muslims. The Israelis and Saudis have got us by the short hairs regardless. The most populous country in Africa, Nigeria, is....also trying to put down a brutal Muslim insurgency (seeing a trend here?) So who are we losing standing with? South Africa, and the Europeans? Those brilliant folks who have opened the floodgates to their own cultural instability and possible demise? The Turks might accomplish with starving civilians (interesting how they don't seem eager to shelter their fellow Muslims) what they couldn't accomplish over hundreds of years of invasions: https://counterjihadreport.com...

Re:And?

[OhPlz]

I'm not proposing we disband the feds, I'm proposing that we restrict them to the powers granted by the Constitution and stop them from always doing an end-run around those limits by taxing us and only giving some of the money back to our states if they comply to demands that the feds have no authority to demand. The minimum drinking age being tied to highway funds is the first example that comes to mind. The feds have no authority to set a minimum drinking age, but they found a way. It's a perversion of the government we're supposed to have.

As for "exactly what I want", the problem is that the feds are into so much, you're going to have to prioritize your vote based on a small number of issues. That's not great representation.

Re:And?

[Anonymous Coward]

Neither. You're the racist here.

Re:And?

[0111 1110]

Humans get human rights regardless of where they were born. Even a sentient non-human would get them.

Re: And?

[houghi]

But the vote WHERE changed. It changed how people voted. They did not hack the voting system. They hacked the voters. I am old enough to know that the most important part of hacking is social engineering.

Re: And?

[bobbied]

So... In a country blessed with a first amendment.... How's this an issue we can fix?

You may not like it, but freedom of speech is a given around these parts. Granted it's got good and bad parts, but over all it's not something we want to try and abridge... Right?

So how do you propose we keep the Russians from doing this kind of thing? I'm not sure we have much leverage on that. We can secure our voting systems, tighten our controls on who gets to vote where and keep the results untainted, but I don't think we can control the media or the internet. Perhaps we could tighten up the libel protections for public figures, but I don't think even that wouldn't run crosswise to the 1st amendment.

Personally, I think an educated and well informed electorate is your best defense from such outside influences.... However, you can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make him drink...

Re:And?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not the responsibility of the USA to take care of everyone.

Re:And?

[0111 1110]

It isn't about takiing care of anyone, AC. It's about treating everyone as if they are the same species, which they are. It's just logic. And fairness.

Re: And?

[david_thornley]

Different places have different voting systems. I'm happy that Virginia's voting is pretty secure (so is ours in Minnesota), but some places still use easily hackable machines.

Re: And?

[david_thornley]

We know a lot more about security than some voting machines use, yes. However, given that the precinct totals are summed, it isn't necessary to hack all the voting machines to change the results of a close election.

Re:And?

[david_thornley]

In 2003, lots of people were convinced that Iraq had nuclear and chemical weapons, and was on the verge of using them, because that was the bulk of the information available, and one reason for that was that the Bush administration was controlling much of the information to set up an attack. Some intelligent and informed people I know thought that the invasion was necessary. Given the bad information going around, I'm not blaming any member of Congress for voting for the invasion of Iraq. I blame the Bush administration for setting up the misleading information and for botching the occupation.

Re: And?

[Headw1nd]

I lived in Virginia, and I always believed it takes voter security more seriously than many other locations, so I thank you for your work.

That said, I think there is a lack of imagination when it comes to these things. Why couldn't source code be modified long before the election, and then activated through updates or maintenance? How many precincts would need to be compromised to throw a close election? How many highly positioned people would need to be compromised at the Department of Elections to influence counts? What would it take to actually trigger a recount?

Yes, elections are hundreds of years old, but there have been fraudulent elections for just as long.

Re:And?

[Obfuscant]

And let's not forget that the first version of the ban wasn't a ban on citizens of those countries travelling to the USA: it was a ban on Muslims from those countries travelling to the USA.

If that's the case.....yeah it's kinda stupid.

But since that wasn't the case, it is irrelevant. The OP lied. The ban was on immigrants and non-immigrants from those countries, period. It's pretty easy to find a copy of the original order. For example, here it is in its entirety. Section 3(c) is the relevant part. If I could copy it out of the EO under evince I would paste it here. It says nothing about Islam, Muslim, or religion in any way. The ban is based on the country of origin.

'russians'

[bonedonut]

at least thats where the guys spoofing IPs made it look like all the hacks were coming from.

Re: 'russians'

[davide marney]

Only 39 states? With thousands of attacks per minute on your garden-variety server? That's a weirdly specific number.

Re:'russians'

[Anonymous Coward]

at least thats where the guys spoofing IPs made it look like all the hacks were coming from.

Where is there any proof it was the Russians other than DNC and the media?

Re:'russians'

[Anonymous Coward]

If the DNC were really smart they would have planted evidence on Hillary's email server.

Re: 'russians'

[GLMDesigns]

Bingo. Give the man a f**king cigar.

Every server gets constantly "attacked."

Make the data public and let us examine it.

As of right now it's like Dan Rather saying he has evidence that George Bush's basically did a poor job in the National Guard and it comes out that the evidence was manufactured. (Memos, that were supposed to be from the 1970s, were written in Microsoft Word. OOOPS)

We would never had known that Rather and his crew were lying if they hadn't released the memos.

Now they've smarted up. They save that we have "evidence" but they don't release it. This is something that can be dropped into Github and we would have tens of thousands of people combing through the data.

Re: 'russians'

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably equal to the number of states that voted Trump... The other 11 were safely blue, voted "correctly" and therefore don't need investigation.

Re:'russians'

[Anonymous Coward]

> Where is there any proof it was the Russians other than DNC and the media?

The DNC did hand their server to a Democrat organization for investigation, so there's that... right?

Re: 'russians'

[bobbied]

Ah the glory of "Anonymous sources say".

Personally, I don't pay much attention to any story accusation that involves a source that is not known.. The press is going to need to come up with *something* beyond that or I'm going to pretty much ignore their conclusions.

Re: 'russians'

[Anonymous Coward]

Why are these systems even online? I live in a backwater of upstate New York. Our election systems are all offline networks. No Internet even available to them. There are also other physical limitations to "altering" voting data. That said, we then have to submit those super-secure results to the State via some backwards website that's probably running on an NT server. People don't need to know who won at 9:01pm.

Re: 'russians'

[flynnieous]

Illinois, which voted for Hillary, was hacked.

Re: 'russians'

[Anonymous Coward]

The NSA proudly announced publicly several months ago they, the NSA, were able to manufacture digital evidence such that electronic "fingerprints" could make it appear as though another nation had perpetrated an intrusion or mere reconnaissance of a remote computer system. The media are in bed with the corrupt politicians and bureaucrats, not to mention the government employees leaking classified information (not referring to Edward Snowden or Chelsea Manning).

Re: 'russians'

[Anonymous Coward]

Didn't something like 12 different intelligence agencies, the former FBI director, several current and former chiefs various three-letter agencies, and today even the testimony of the current Attorney General all say that Russia did *try* to hack into not merely the DNC but the broader election apparatus as well? Discount the anonymous ones if you like, but that's a lot more than "anonymous press sources say". I'd still like to see more of the evidence too, and the latest claims are as-yet poorly substantiated, but unless you draw the conclusion that all of them are lying about it or that the investigation is botched, it's hard not to accept that the Russians tried to influence the election and that it was a bigger effort than a bunch of script kiddies doing it for fun.

Re: 'russians'

[sound vision]

The decision to publicly confirm this *now* probably has something to do with Reality Winner leaking similar (the same?) information last week. Up until now, the public focus had been on the psy-ops. Lawsuits filed in November regarding attacks on election systems were thrown out for a lack of standing. Which was probably the right thing to do, our intelligence agencies should be investigating things like this, not courts and lawyers.

There are legitimate reasons that the "they" you speak of wouldn't release the evidence. First, your "they" seems to be a conflation of the NSA and Dan Rather. Our intelligence agencies do not perform the same job as the press. Intel guys are engaged in covert ops where secrecy is critical to success. The press are in the business of exposing secrets that the public should be aware of. It's likely that the NSA got some details through mass-surveillance operations that they don't want us to know about. Even in the absence of that, it seems prudent for them to thoroughly comb through what they have, and confer with the more traditional, physical spy agencies to see if they have anything relevant. Maybe that even involves waiting for agents with a physical presence in Russia to find out more.

I'd love to see the evidence made public immediately, but if it comes down to waiting or compromising the investigation, I'd rather wait. Especially considering that investigations of this type don't particularly lend themselves to crowdsourcing, given the highly secretive/proprietary nature of the actors on both sides.

Re: 'russians'

[GLMDesigns]

Do you actually believe there was a "hack" - an altering or deletion of voting data?

And do you believe it was to help Trump? There's no reason to think that Hillary wouldn't play ball with the Russians. All they would have to do is donate to her foundation. Evidence that Hillary would work with the Russians include removing early warning systems from the Baltic states,uranium mine, giving the Shah's money back to Iran.

If you believe that the above is possible then you should be advocating that we return to the old mechanical systems. They are unhackable.

Re: 'russians'

[Anonymous Coward]

That's very strong and decided of you. Very manly too.

Re: 'russians'

[doccus]

Well, I think they gotta stir the pot again since it's become uninteresting to the general populace. Gotta have a new story with "the Russians Did It!". Especially now seeing as they can't go to war with a big bad bogeyman if they're percievad as innocent of all the malicious acts the MSM is trying to blame on the Ruskies!

Re: 'russians'

[david_thornley]

Do you actually believe there was a "hack" - an altering or deletion of voting data?

I actually believe that it might well have happened, that Russia would likely do it if they could, and that they have the capability, and that there are very good reasons why most of the evidence is not public.

If you believe that the above is possible then you should be advocating that we return to the old mechanical systems. They are unhackable.

If you're referring to the old machines with levers, they were hackable. It just had to be done a machine at a time, not wholesale in software.

Any voting system needs to keep anonymous voter-verifiable ballots. In my state, we use a large form and black in circles, and these are then fed into a machine, automatically counted, and stored. I'm not saying the machines can't be hacked, but if there's any suspicion of hacking or other inaccuracy (such as a very close election), the paper ballots can be counted.

Re: 'russians'

[GLMDesigns]

I agree about the anonymous voter verifiable ballots. 100%.

I guess we have a different definition of hackable. Of course you can corrupt vote counters. You can have ballot boxes in the trunk of a car. Etc. I just don't call that hackable.

Re: 'russians'

[AutodidactLabrat]

Nobody hacks the machines with levers
They repeat the 2004 Ohio fiasco and hack the compiling computers

Re: 'russians'

[david_thornley]

When I was young (get off my lawn!), we didn't have no compiling computers. However, it was possible to pre-set the lever-based voting machines with votes, and there were ways of disguising that fact.

But as long

[SlashDread]

as the Orange Clown didn't order it, it's all FINE right?

Re:But as long

[Opportunist]

Does it really matter whether the wig or the plastic doll did it? Turd sandwich or giant douche (and you may even choose who is who), does it matter?

Be honest.

Re:But as long

[SlashDread]

No.
It is however clear that the Plastic Doll didn't order Russia to hack herself. Not so clear about the Orange Wig. After all, the wig did state he would welcome criminal acts like that.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Re:But as long

[dwillden]

No, he was joking, based on the assumption that the Russians had previously hacked the DNC and several others associated with the Democratic party leadership and thus most likely Hillary's server as well (years before back when she was Sec state and running the unsecure server), and thus they would likely have hoovered up the 30,000 missing emails she had deleted after her term as Sec State ended. Thus he made a Joke (a non-serious statement designed to elicit laughter) about asking the Russians if they had the missing emails. It was a joke, in the context it was clearly a joke, and only an idiot bound an determined to make it something else would consider that off the cuff statement anything but a joke.

but keep trying to claim it was a serious statement.

Re:But as long

[bobbied]

as the Orange Clown didn't order it, it's all FINE right?

Not in the least, of course it matters.. However... WHY have we been accusing Trump of organizing this for literally MONTHS? He didn't have anything to do with this if you take what Comey says to be true. Seriously, why all the sputtering and spitting about collusion we've been hearing since before Trump took office?

However, I'd like to point out that we still haven't seen any evidence that "The Russians" managed to change the count of votes cast, only that they where trying to disrupt what they could.

Re:But as long

[JWW]

Why? Because Hillary couldn't handle losing to Trump.

Its one of the largest temper tantrums in history, from a woman who should any longer be respected by anyone at all....

Re:But as long

[david_thornley]

The eternal cry of the Trump supporter: "He was just joking!" whenever he says something embarrassing. Apparently, there's no way to tell whether he was serious or not when he said something.

Didn't we talk about this 10 years ago

[Anonymous Coward]

at length about why computer voting was bad? Now there are investigators to suit a political agenda, but they could have done this investigation during the last 12 years. Suddenly there's a problem but it's intended to erode confidence in the current administration.

Re:Didn't we talk about this 10 years ago

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know why this isn't higher. We have no one to blame but ourselves. We have intentionally built an insecure country, both technologically (e-voting with no paper trail) and emotionally (lobbing "un-American" at people for not wanting to give up their freedom to beat the terrorists). I, personally, think the globalist elites have been laughing all the way to their bank in Panama.

Re:Didn't we talk about this 10 years ago

[OhPlz]

My state has paper ballots that are machine scanned, but we retain the paper ballots in case of funny business. Any states not doing the same should reconsider their methods.

Stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

This article just dropped and I am already seeing a whole lot of stupid in the comments. Take this shit seriously, you twats. Things like this can topple nations.

Re:Stupid

[ausekilis]

You should read up on classical conditioning, specifically learned helplessness. There's already enough 'bad' when it comes to voting. Electronic voting doesn't work. Hand counting is inaccurate. There's a disillusion about whether or not a person's vote really matters since elections are based on this screwed up electoral college system - where a chosen few (compared to the general public) can decide who leads.

There have been activists and those speaking up, sure... but until our elected officials actually listen and do something about it, we're just going to keep going on this downward sloping status quo. The anarchist in me thinks "good, get rid of these career politicians that only want to pad their own wallets and retire into C-level golden parachute jobs". Then I see things like the uprising in Egypt and worry that the U.S. could go to that extreme.

Re:Stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

>implying all nations do not have a vested interest in attempting to influence other nations' elections.

Of course Russia is going to attempt to subvert! It's not news.

Re:Stupid

[Opportunist]

We are talking about a nation that had the choice between a buffoon and a slimy eel that made Nixon look like a honest person, decided for the buffoon who is now pretty much telling the whole world and everyone who wants to listen anything and everything he does outside of what time he sits on the can, the country is fighting wars it cannot win (and probably there also isn't anyone left who really wants to), you're on the brink of a civil war (and if you keep pushing more and more people into poverty, it's only a matter of time and numbers 'til you reach critical mass), the air in some parts of the country is close to poisonous (but we go back to coal as a power source), there are numerous economy bubbles about to pop any minute... ...and you want us to take THIS bullshit seriously? Of all the things that we could and should take seriously and tackle, this is somewhere around number 2245.

Re:Stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

TFW you're a nihilist and don't give a shit what happens.

Damaging your faith in your fellow man is my mission, and one that I am succeeding in.

Re:Stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

Things like this can topple nations.

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNDWBWFrpjM

Re:Stupid

[0111 1110]

Take this shit seriously, you twats. Things like this can topple nations.

Most of the time it doesn't matter who gets elected. If I thought the election of one parties candidate over the other would somehow overthrow the government I'd definitely be in favor of that though. That would be awesome. Some chance at real change finally.

It's not the Russians you should worry about anyway. It's Libertarians like me. I don't give a fuck about democracy, but I do care about human rights a lot. If I could hack into the voting system and get a (sane/moderate) Libertarian elected would I do it? Fuck yes. Welcome back to 1776, motherfuckers.

Hell who wouldn't try to influence an election to get a shot at seeing their own particular utopian views put to the test? Socialist party? The Green Party? You really think it's just the Russians who care which candidate gets elected here? A more useful question would be who wouldn't want to hack the election results if they could? Hell the Green Party might could justify almost any action based on their belief that they would truly be saving the world from armageddon if they were in power.

It could even be argued that an easily hackable election system could be a good thing. A chance for real change. Maybe even for the better. The majority is usually wrong about most things because most people are very stupid, particularly in the US. So how about giving some minority views a chance?

Re:Stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

Those chosen few are chosen by the voice of the people of their state. Their votes do represent the voice of the people except for the occasional rare unfaithful elector. Which while there were a couple this time around they were not enough to change the outcome. We could go to a state by state popular vote and still get the same results. Trump won 30 states, Hillary ignored several key states and only won 20.

Re: Stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody does bleak like Bill.
Here's one for all you Krembots in St Putinsburg:

When sorrows come, they come not single spies.
But in battalions.

Re:Stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

"Hand counting is inaccurate"

What draws you to that conclusion?
How many people vote in your precinct? A thousand? Five thousand tops?
With a team of people, how long would it take for them to go through a few thousand pieces of paper?
A few hours? With the teams (from a number of parties -- no cheating!) checking each other's work, accuracy can be ensured.
Sure, we won't have 'instant' results, but fuck the media: this is our governance we're talking about here, not some game show. CNN can wait, dammit!

Once everyone agrees on the precinct totals, they can be uploaded to the mothership along with the chain of custody. QED

Re:Stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

>It's not the Russians you should worry about anyway. It's Libertarians like me.

Good one. You're a member of a group of 100k, tops. In a country of 330 million.

>I don't give a fuck about democracy,

Come back when you understand how a democracy works.

>but I do care about human rights a lot.

Democracy is how grown ups enforce and regulate human rights.

>If I could hack into the voting system and get a (sane/moderate) Libertarian elected would I do it? Fuck yes.

And given your posting, you'd brag about it, and given your idiocy when it comes to basic governance and human history, you'd get caught by the FBI, NSA, CIA, etc. within a year, and you'd serve 20 to life in a maximum security prison for wire fraud, vote tampering, conspiracy, normal fraud, terrorist acts, treason, and whatever else they can throw at you.

But they'd be merciful in comparison to me. You're not even human to me.

>Welcome back to 1776, motherfuckers.

We can never go back to 1776. Ever. Police have fully automatic weapons and tanks now, the Internet will always be here in one form or another, and you can never go back to the one off event of the American revolutionary war.

>Hell who wouldn't try to influence an election to get a shot at seeing their own particular utopian views put to the test?

The world is not you, King Nothing. Not all of us are as self centered.

>It could even be argued that an easily hackable election system could be a good thing. A chance for real change. Maybe even for the better.

Civilization is a delicate balance of opportunity and stability - never forget that.

> The majority is usually wrong about most things because most people are very stupid, particularly in the US.

Found the self centered American. People can be educated at a young age but America does not do enough of that for it to matter. It's people like you that are the problem - people like me are telling you to educate yourself - go watch 300+ episodes of Modern Marvels, all of the Colbert Report, all of the Daily Show with Jon Stewart, all of Last Week Tonight, and then come back.

And until you do, you will be an ignorant hick.

> So how about giving some minority views a chance?

The House, by a rule from 1920, is forced to have 435 members. The republicans, who are by far the minority party by voting population, refuses to add possible states, such as the US Virgin Islands, Washington DC, Puerto Rico, Guam and American Somoa specifically because all of those places, and indeed, most voters, are liberal.

No republican president has won the popular vote since George HW Bush, in 1992, and that trend shows no sign of slowing down. By 2050, minorities will outnumber whites. Give the US thirty years. It'll turn blue.

Re:Stupid

[Green Mountain Bot]

I don't give a fuck about democracy, but I do care about human rights a lot.

Good fucking luck getting the latter without some form of the former.

Re:Stupid

[Plus1Entropy]

I care about human rights a lot, but I would totally violate everyone else's to ensure I got what I wanted. Just like the Founding Father's intended.

Re:Stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

Hand counting is inaccurate

What draws you to that conclusion?

Two words: hanging chads.

And the idiom is "leads to that conclusion".

Re:Stupid

[0111 1110]

The founding fathers were libertarians and terrorists by modern standards and they would go completely insane if they could see how badly we have fucked up their precious Republic. With hindsight they could probably write a constitution that would hold back tyranny for a bit longer, but ultimately people are cunts and will always try to seize power when they can.

Re:Stupid

[0111 1110]

Good fucking luck getting the latter without some form of the former.

Even if that's true it was certainly not the primary value of our Libertarian Republic. It was just an incidental detail. The real point was Lockean Natural Rights. They wanted people to be left alone to pursue their own goals as long as they didn't violate anyone else's basic human rights. This basic principle has been so twisted that people think the point of our special snowflake of a republic was majority rule.

Democracy was already a thing before gaining independence from England. If that's all our founders cared about America would have been nothing special. But in fact it was a country founded on more profound principles than that: on the philosophy of John Locke and to a lesser extent Rousseau and Voltaire.

Re:Stupid

[Plus1Entropy]

people are cunts and will always try to seize power when they can

You mean just like you said you would do given the chance?

Re:Stupid

[0111 1110]

Good one. You're a member of a group of 100k, tops. In a country of 330 million.

Not saying it would be easy, but it would be funny if the election results could be that badly distorted. No doubt people would suspect foul play. Anyway the plausibility of the results isn't the point. The point was that lots of people would love to change the outcome of our elections including many of our own citizens.

Come back when you understand how a democracy works.

It obviously doesn't work especially when all the choices are horrible and the candidate with fewer votes wins.

Democracy is how grown ups enforce and regulate human rights.

Did you really just use the verbs 'enforce' and 'regulate' with human rights? Seriously? You don't even understand what they are. Google "natural rights' and "john locke" Pathetic that any American should be so ignorant of the principles our country was founded on.

And given your posting, you'd brag about it

Where have I bragged about anything? And anyway what does going to prison have to do with anything? If I could get a Libertarian president elected I might consider prison a small price to pay.

But they'd be merciful in comparison to me. You're not even human to me.

Maybe I'm not human. Maybe I'm a sentient synthetic organism sent here to destroy your planet by getting a Libertarian elected. It would certainly mean armageddon, but maybe that is exactly what your species deserves.

We can never go back to 1776. Ever. Police have fully automatic weapons and tanks now, the Internet will always be here in one form or another, and you can never go back to the one off event of the American revolutionary war.

I was referring to our freshly post war republic-if-you-can-keep-it. Our little noble experiment. The American government of the 18th century. Not sure if a Libertarian president could do very much in resetting the clock, but he might be able to do some cool and interesting things regardless.

If it were up to me though I'd divide up the country into ideological territories so everyone would have a place to call home. A few states for Libertarians if only because that was the principle upon which the entire country was founded in the first place. Wyoming would seem like a good start there. At least one state for the die hard Marxists who don't care how many times the system has proven that it just cannot work. Something for the Greens. And of course the rest could be split up into the Democrats and Republicans who could then maybe even fight wars with each other. How entertaining that would be.

The world is not you

You can't know that.

No republican president has won the popular vote since George HW Bush, in 1992, and that trend shows no sign of slowing down. By 2050, minorities will outnumber whites. Give the US thirty years. It'll turn blue.

Well blue has already turned so red it may as well be purple. In thirty years both parties will be even more similar to each other. So similar in fact that it really will be increasingly difficult to argue that it is a two party system at all.

Re:Stupid

[0111 1110]

The idea of a Libertarian seizing power is kind of funny. The power to set people free. The power to reduce the power of the government. The whole point of the Libertarian philosophy is to reduce the amount of power the government has over the individual: to minimize coercion and tyranny, I wouldn't really want to force people to be free, but I would like to offer freedom to all of those who want it.

What I meant was that special interest groups will always try to achieve their own selfish pragmatic goals at the expense of others. That is quite distinct from utopians or idealists like myself who are trying to achieve a philosophical principle rather than some form of narrow self interest. Actually in terms of self-interest I would probably be better off with a fully socialist government than a Libertarian one.

Re:Stupid

[Plus1Entropy]

You are forcing people to adhere to your definition of freedom. You assert that more government = less freedom in all cases, but not everyone agrees with that premise. You say you would "offer" freedom to those who want it, but what you are really offering is anarchy.

While a system of anarchy may start off with everyone "equal", that equality will quickly evaporate as control of resources is seized by those who have more power. These imbalances of power can't be prevented as they can occur naturally due to something as simple as geography. I can't be free if I can't access fresh water, all I am free to do is die of dehydration.

That is quite distinct from utopians or idealists like myself who are trying to achieve a philosophical principle rather than some form of narrow self interest.

Said every dictator ever. Are you the only person in the history of humankind who cannot be corrupted by power?

Actually in terms of self-interest I would probably be better off with a fully socialist government than a Libertarian one.

Not sure I understand. I thought the whole point of Libertarianism was that everyone acting in their own best interest achieves the best result overall? Now you're saying that in order to achieve what you consider to be the best result overall, you have to act against your own interests?

Re:Stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

Hell who wouldn't try to influence an election to get a shot at seeing their own particular utopian views put to the test?

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Re:Stupid

[0111 1110]

You are forcing people to adhere to your definition of freedom. You assert that more government = less freedom in all cases, but not everyone agrees with that premise. You say you would "offer" freedom to those who want it, but what you are really offering is anarchy./quote

I never said less government is equivalent to more freedom. That is in oversimplification. Less coercion is equivalent to more freedom. If you had a large government that allowed people to do what they wanted then it would still be a free society.

Yes I would force people to not coerce others. That is the only coercion I and many other Libertarians believe in. If you or anyone else wants to hurt or injure or enslave another human being we believe we have the right to use force against you. Even to injure or kill you. The idea that a person has the right to kill or hurt others but others do not have the right to do the same to them is absurd. If you object to the word 'freedom' then lets use another: non-coercion or voluntarism: the egalitarian idea that no human has more rights than any other, that no one has the right to force another person to do anything against their will. The core of Libertarianism is voluntarism. We don't believe in the Devine Right of Kings or of anyone else to physically interfere with another human being. That no one of our species is 'higher' than anyone else and so in no position to order anyone else around.

I wouldn't force people to do anything except be tolerant of how other people may want to live. What I would be offering if I could would be the opportunity for some people to live in a society where neither the government nor anyone else can give them orders that they must follow like a slave. Yes I know most people don't mind following orders and being slaves as long as they get paid, but not everyone feels that way.

If you want a socialist or green environmental utopia where everyone works for the government and everyone gets paid the same either in money or goods and burning fossil fuels is illegal I would be totally fine with that. I believe that every human should have a society that they are comfortable living in. What I don't want is to be forced to participate in that society.

What I would like is the choice of living in a place like the US used to be in the 18th century. That kind of small minimalist government with almost no taxes or regulations. Yes not everyone wants that. That is why our species should have different kinds of societies. It's a big enough planet. There is enough room for societies founded on different principles.

The only thing I would not allow if I were King of the Planet would be the sort of society that North Korea represents where people are literally imprisoned and not allowed to leave or societies where slavery or murder or rape were permissible. No human has any right to deprive others of their life or physically coerce them in any way. So those sort so societies are inherently unjust and immoral and invalid.

There should always be mobility between human societies. Maybe I want to live a few years in a Libertarian limited government utopia and then relax for a few years by moving to a Socialist utopia where I can just go on the dole or receive a Minimum Basic salary or where I am guaranteed to always be able to find work. Then live in a Pragmatic Republic with a mixture of both principles as most countries are today. For me the point is for humans to be happy and content with the society in which they are living. Right now there are lots of Pragmatic Republics not based on any ideals or principles at all and there are a handful of Marxist Utopias of varying degrees of success depending on how you define success, but there is not a single government that resembles the US of the 18th century or France just after their revolution. That is the situation that Libertarians like me would like to remedy. Although realistically the only way that's going to happen is in a new territory. Antarctica maybe in defiance of the idi

Re:Stupid

[0111 1110]

Not sure I understand. I thought the whole point of Libertarianism was that everyone acting in their own best interest achieves the best result overall?

No. The point of Libertarianism is non-coercion or voluntarism. Which system happens to produce the most widgets at the best price is precisely NOT the point of it.

now you're saying that in order to achieve what you consider to be the best result overall, you have to act against your own interests?

If you are very poor then yes. That's a possibility. It might be in my best interest at least financially to rob a bank, but that is clearly not in the best interest of the bank or of society overall. If you don't have a job and have no prospects of getting one or if you are just very very poor then obviously a more socialist system might be helpful. In my case I am just very very poor. So in terms of money I might be better off in a more Robin Hood-ish system, but I don't believe such systems are just or as efficient as something more laissez faire.

Something like one of those experimental Minimum Basic Income systems would be particularly great. Although I'm not sure it can be made to work especially since I think there is a tendency to choose a pretty high Minimum Basic possibly because the people designing the system are obscenely rich and can't imagine that it is possible to live on less money. Instead of erring on the high side as I am sure they are doing they should be erring on the low side and raising it only if it seems effective at that initial level.

Bloomberg.com?

[Anonymous Coward]

Move along, folks. Nothing to see here.

Re: Bloomberg.com?

[Anonymous Coward]

Quite right. I won't believe a word until it's on rt.com.

Double Down

[Archangel Michael]

When at first you don't succeed, double down!

We've been hearing, non-stop for almost a year, about "Russians Hacked the Election!", without a single shred of evidence, except from "unnamed sources" and shit. When we have the source (WikiLeaks) telling us ... it wasn't the Russians or any state actor.

It was the Russians that caused Hillary's medical problems
It was the Russians that caused Hillary Campaign to ignore the Rust Belt
It was the Russians that caused Hillary and the DNC to conspire to rig the Primary
It was the Russians that caused Podesta to be a douchbag
It was the Russians that caused Hillary to lose. THAT is the ONLY explanation !

It was the Russians who caused the American people to be stupid and vote for Trump.

Keep it up guys, and you'll never get back in power.

Re: Double Down

[Anonymous Coward]

Whatever you say comrade.

Re:Double Down

[Anonymous Coward]

-American people to be stupid and vote for Trump.
They voted for Hillary. millions more than for Trump.

Re:Double Down

[Anonymous Coward]

You would have a better point if the polls leading up to the election didn't all show Hillary winning with high confidence. The fact that the outcome was so out of line with polls is why the investigation is important, if only to refute that the Russian attempts at vote tampering made a difference, and re-instill confidence in the election's outcome.

Re:Double Down

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, if you count illegal voters. Personally I'm much more concerned about the fact that I am that our election system makes absolutely no effort to track down voter fraud than the fact that Russians might have - what, had access to voter records or the emails of some town clerk somewhere? The summary doesn't make it clear, but remember that these hacks did NOT effect voting machines. They effected the computers of office drones who work with elections. There's no evidence they were even targeted specifically as election workers, they have been just incidentally hit.

Re:Double Down

[the_skywise]

Dewey Beats Truman.

Re:Double Down

[Anonymous Coward]

If you voted for either Hillary or Trump you are stupid. Both are clowns.

Re:Double Down

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup, change the story comrade. Make those Amerikanski fight over their puppet masters instead of looking at our own.

Re:Double Down

[Anonymous Coward]

You ignoramus it isn't about the electoral outcome THIS TIME. This is an attack at democracy's foundation. The election is done, the president is legitimately elected for better or worse. Next time if the Russians succeed it will cause legitimacy problems on a huge scope and that's the Achilles' heel of the whole process. We need to stop making this about partisan bullshit and start thinking about how to mitigate this crapola. Unfortunately, the legitimately elected commander-in-chief has been too busy trying to cover his own ass the past 6 months instead of stepping up and providing actual leadership. Accept this: Russia is trying to fuck with us. And it will eventually end this little experiment in democracy if we keep blaming each other instead of the Russians. Swallow your pride, deflate your incredibly massive ego, and put your goddamned party second to the needs of your country motherfucker! LIKE A GOOD PATRIOT WOULD.

Re:Double Down

[Fire_Wraith]

So you think we should just ignore all of the massive amount of evidence from a dizzying array of sources, many of them independent and professional with no stake in the political world, just because you think it's all a gigantic sour grapes excuse argument? Because Hillary Clinton is just that powerful that all of these people and organizations are busy trying to invent a giant excuse just to, what, make her feel less crappy about herself? Really?

You do realize it's possible to simultaneously think that Clinton lost for unrelated reasons, and that Russian information operations and interference is an extremely serious thing, right? It's also possible to consider that maybe the Russians weren't trying to sway the election for Trump, so much as to cause chaos and sow doubt, with a goal of undermining the USA while strengthening internal divisions?

Or that maybe we should start thinking of this not as some f*cking partisan thing, but about how maybe we should look to protect our elections from outside interference just because outside interference is bad, and that maybe, just maybe, we ought to be able to feel like our elections are secure just because having secure elections is a good thing by itself?

Re:Double Down

[Anonymous Coward]

This isn't about winning or losing an election. It's about whether a foreign government tried to infiltrate and influence the election process regardless of who they were attempting to influence. If you think that's okay to have happened, then you can expect to see plenty of attempts in future elections.

Someone interested in democracy should want the election to occur without people trying to break into the election counting equipment and fiddle with the data. It's long been known that the electronic voting system more vulnerable than it should be, and there have been attempts to improve it. This effort isn't about "you guys" or "us guys" in power, it's about an insecure system that needs to be made more robust before the next election happens. You'd think in a place like /., with a very LONG history of complaints about the weaknesses of voting machines and the process, this need would be immediately recognized. For many years people were saying things like "I want a paper receipt of my vote, so I can check it before it goes into a sealed box as a paper backup for recounts", things like that. Instead we get people like you who think it's about "winning" or "losing". That it's all political spin. No. It's about confidently knowing the result is valid.

The fact that the Russians (or who ever you want to pick on, including random people just doing it for the lols) were unsuccessful in their attempts doesn't mean the widespread, coordinated existence of those attempts is trivial. It means there's a challenging computer security problem that must be understood and addressed. Every time you try to make it into some kind of "sore loser/huge winner" game, you are trivializing the whole democratic process and putting it in danger the next time votes need to be counted.

Re:Double Down

[alvinrod]

If you replace "the Russians" with "the Jews" this would all sound like something spouted by some kind of rambling far-right conspiracy nut. Some people are too attached to the idea to let go of it now.

One would think that this would result in a push from both sides for open-sourcing the voting machines so that they can be properly audited, evaluated, and strengthened against attacks, but I don't see either party proposing that. Instead it's just an opportunity for political mud-slinging and grandstanding.

Re:Double Down

[Anonymous Coward]

> We need to stop making this about partisan bullshit and start thinking about how to mitigate this crapola

This would be rational if the Democrats *actually believed* that the election was within a stone's throw of having the vote tallies generated by the Kremlin.

Do you see any Democrats saying that?

While I respect your view that the takeway lesson should be that we need to secure our voting mechanisms even more, I seriously doubt that this is why these stories keep popping up (sans evidence). The entire POINT of the story is to convince as many Americans as possible (right down party lines, lol!) that the president is somehow not legitimate. Look at the ludicrous overuse of the tagline "hacked the election", to mean "didn't hack the election, but did expose various unpopular, unethical, and just possibly illegal actions of the Democratic party". No *rational* person would choose that phrase, but it was on EVERY mainstream news media source for months. At least some Americans believe that Russia manipulated votes because of this propaganda.

Also telling: Democrats in Congress aren't busy calling for extra layers of physical and logical security. If this was a real concern, they'd have some bill in debate that establishes standards and makes available money.

That's how rational actors would handle this threat if it were real. Instead, we just see constant narrative pushing.

> commander-in-chief has been too busy trying to cover his own ass the past 6 months

Pay attention then! Democrats are doing whatever they can to question his legitimacy. They are suing him in every favorable venue, trying to stop every action, the media is shitting all over him constantly, and every breathless and urgent lie is followed up by a very quiet and whispered correction a few days later, every headline bullshit followed up by a page 12, 8 point retraction. For Trump to react to this massive push from the sore losers is totally expected. You would expect him to react this way if he were guilty and had a bunch of shit to hide, AND you would expect him to react this way if he were under ceaseless and ludicrous attack. If this were a totally rational situation, you'd have the Democrats united around whatever they ACTUALLY BELIEVE he did wrong, instead of playing Impeachment Bingo about shit they don't like.

Re:Double Down

[Anonymous Coward]

It's called the shy Tory effect.

When you are ostracized because you have a different opinion, it colors your responses to polls.

Re:Double Down

[Gravis Zero]

Keep it up, and the Democrats will never get back in power. Which is fine by me. The Republicans too are proving just as inept. Which is fine by me. Perhaps we'll actually get a viable third party that doesn't whine like a bitch when they aren't in power, and actually is constructive when they are. -- Archangel Michael

So who has to win to make you stop whining like a bitch? ;)

Re:Double Down

[Anonymous Coward]

maybe we should look to protect our elections

Who cares? No matter who gets elected, the result is the same: bigger government. More laws, more power over the people, more consolidation of power, more injustice. You don't honestly believe that voting can reverse the natural trend of every government, do you?

Re: Double Down

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for highlighting another method used by the Kremlin's surrogates: spread distrust in a nation's institutions. "They're all the same". "They all tell lies". "Don't trust any of them".

Re: Double Down

[Anonymous Coward]

When at first you don't succeed, double down!

That is what you did, isn't it?

We've been hearing, non-stop for almost a year, about "Obama faked Birth certificate is Secret Muslim!", without a single shred of evidence, except from "unnamed sources" and shit. When we have the source (Hawaii) telling us ... it wasn't faked and they're tired of the bullshit.

It was the Muslims that caused America's debts.
It was the Muslims that caused the GOP to only pass a repeal of the ACA, not a replacement.
It was the Muslims that caused Newt and Callista to commit adultery. And Bentley. And Sanford. And Hastert. And...
It was the Muslims that caused the GOP to commit rampant gerrymandering that keeps getting defeated in court.
It was the Muslims that caused McCain and Romney to lose. THAT is the ONLY explanation !
It was the Muslims who caused the American people to be stupid and vote for Obama! Twice.

Keep it up guys, and you'll never get back in power.

You just hate that not only is Trump a fake Republican, he is incompetent, and a secret Russian stooge, and you can't do anything except suck up to him more.

Even as his Muslim ban fails. His Mexican wall collapses. His Trumpcare plan is so abysmal, they can't even talk to the American people about what is in it.

And yes, I remember how you misquoted Pelosi.

Face it, at this rate, the GOP is going to commit suicide.

Re: Double Down

[AgNO3]

I know Karma is a BITCH that is biting the US on the ass right now. Maybe there needs to be equal not less or more outrage out how we are in all kinds of other elections. Pres Obama comments to the british prior to brexit vote. While different is still tampering and we would flip a wig if British PM said similar things during a US vote.

Re:Double Down

[Archangel Michael]

People who actually care about Liberty. Yes, I am a Liberty Bitch, whining about the steady erosion of Liberty by idiots on the Left and the Far Left. If you're not whining about the loss of liberty, then you're part of the actual problem ;)

Fuck Liberty, the constitution and laws, we have "Progressive" agenda to force on everyone.

Re:Double Down

[0111 1110]

So you think we should just ignore all of the massive amount of evidence from a dizzying array of sources

Seriously? What evidence? They haven't shown us any yet. They are just making claims and they don't have a lot of credibility. We're supposed to take them, of all people, on faith? Known liars?

But even if they do have absolute proof that they are willing to show us that the Russian government really did hack our election computers so what? It's not an act of war. No one was hurt by it. It's not a big deal. It just means we have to improve the security of our electronic voting system or fix whatever they showed to be vulnerable.

The one response to this that should not be on the table is saber rattling and unfortunately that is exactly the response I am seeing from a lot of angry Dems at the moment. At least online. I don't want to go back to a cold war with Russia and I don't see how any sane person would. North Korea has fucking concentration camps, is working on nuclear ICBMs and has openly threatened to attack us and we haven't gone to war with them over it. In comparison this is nothing. We should just thank them for helping us improve our weak computer security and leave it at that. What else can we do anyway?

Let's say Putin says, "Yeah we messed with your insecure election computers. It was fun! What are you gonna do about it?" Well what would you have us do about it? Ask them nicely to stop? Go to war? How are you going to stop them? For that matter how will you stop anyone else from doing the same thing? Maybe some kid in Sri Lanka or Argentina will be the next one to break in and have some fun. That's why computer security is a thing. Are we going to declare war against every country that breaks into our computers?

Re:Double Down

[Anonymous Coward]

>You do realize it's possible to simultaneously think that Clinton lost for unrelated reasons, and that Russian information operations and interference is an extremely serious thing, right? It's also possible to consider that maybe the Russians weren't trying to sway the election for Trump, so much as to cause chaos and sow doubt, with a goal of undermining the USA while strengthening internal divisions?

Russia nor anyone else need to do anything to create confusion and division.

Obama and the Democrats are doing a fine job taking care of that. Or you're gonna say all that "resist" shit they keep pushing through their media machine is really helpful?

If anything, that's what's messing the US up.

Re:Double Down

[Archangel Michael]

They voted for Hillary. millions more than for Trump

I rest my case. :-D

Re:Double Down

[Gravis Zero]

If you think it's just people on the left then you are blind to what is really happening.

Re: Double Down

[Entrope]

Governments are pretty distinct from the agents of a given religion in that they can, and do, act in concert on a wide variety of subjects based on decisions from their senior leaders.

There is no head of Judaism, and lots of Catholics would tell the Pope to mind his own business if he said all good Catholics should tamper with votes. On the other hand, we've all seen news about despots and tyrants, and know how they coordinate the actions of their underlings.

Re: Double Down

[Entrope]

"agents" should read "adherents". Gboard gets worse by the day.

Re:Double Down

[Archangel Michael]

foreign government tried to infiltrate and influence the election process regardless of who they were attempting to influence

You mean like Obama did in French, German and Israeli elections?

It isn't like this is a secret, it is just ignored because it is inconvenient to the narrative that left is trying to portray about how they care about free and fair elections

We know they don't care, because, they were caught, not only internationally, but in our own National Elections conspiring to rig elections and debates, which is .. part of the reason Hillary lost (IMHO).

We do have way more actual evidence of the DNC, Obama, and Hillary actually doing the things Trump is only accused of doing. But that isn't important, because THE RUSSIANS HACKED THE ELECTIONS (no evidence provided)

Re:Double Down

[Archangel Michael]

I don't think it is just the people on the left. They are just the ones the press ignores. The press in the US is biased against the Right, and thus, calls the right out every time they fuck up. I'm not worried about the Right taking my rights, and the left's attempts scare the piss out of me.

Just look at who is actually rioting over things. Let me know when the left is actively threatened by anyone on the Right the way that the left threatens people on the right.

Re:Double Down

[OhPlz]

And Romney was supposed to win easily over McCain. This stuff happens, especially if you rely on phone polling. Only certain types of people will even bother answering those calls. It's going to heavily bias the results.

Re:Double Down

[OhPlz]

Secure elections? Obama's administration did everything possible to stop states from requiring an ID to vote. Let's fix the simple things first and worry about these mythical Russian influences some other day.

Re:Double Down

[Anonymous Coward]

Learn about American politics, fix it or vote for one of two parties.

Re:Double Down

[ebyrob]

> So you think we should just ignore all of the massive amount of evidence from a dizzying array of sources,

Ya we should. Just like we ignored the research of a dizzying number of security experts who said voting with computers is stupid. (not was, is)

Re:Double Down

[Anonymous Coward]

lookie there, another spit-fillled trumpet.

here's some more real insight to boil that hatred within you even more. better grab an aspirin or nitro capsule, you'll need it:

had trump not sought-out and received "foreign help" in the election... trump would have lost - clinton would have won, despite every single misstep her campaign made

Re:Double Down

[Anonymous Coward]

Poll data is still gathered through landline phones. How many people do you know of that still has a landline in their house?

Re:Double Down

[Gravis Zero]

The press in the US is biased against the Right, and thus, calls the right out every time they fuck up.

To be fair, the politics in the US are the farthest right of any country on the planet. What's considered "left" in the US is very conservative in most EU countries. I keep hearing people repeating the line that "taxes are legalized theft" which is an absurd notion unless you are living in Somalia. We have a growing problem of people thinking we should just let people in need die of starvation rather than help them and I'm not even exaggerating. It's a total lack of faith in civilian government and the deification of the military that scares me because it will only lead to a totalitarian society. We spend so much money making weapons and waging war while refusing to spend money to help our own people.

Re:Double Down

[aquacrayfish]

Well what would you have us do about it? Ask them nicely to stop? Go to war? How are you going to stop them?

This beyond pathetic. You're argument is, it's a hard problem, so don't bother trying?

Re:Double Down

[Anonymous Coward]

RTFA. There was an attack signature generated from the IL compromise(s) which the other states searched for and 38 other states found. A signature is more than just an IP address.

You may get 1000's of attempts from the outside, but what happens on the outside and what you have logs for on the inside combined is much more specific. **For instance, if they are uploading a file / bytecode to a specific place with the same hash across 39 states differing electoral management systems but has never been seen before in public anywhere else (including after the attacks)**--that's pretty damn specific without considering anything else that may be part of the signature

(**--I have no specific knowledge of this investigation, but those to whom do this specific info will be very likely be highly restricted)

Re:Double Down

[phantomfive]

That's a good point. There's a way to keep hackers out of voting machines, and connecting them to the internet is a really, really dumb idea in the first place.

The vast majority of posts I've seen on this haven't been about securing voting machines, they've been about attacking ${POLITICIAN}. I'm out, back to blackboxvoting.org.

Re: Double Down

[Anonymous Coward]

You're comparing cyber-security breaches/issues to public comments by elected public officials?

Biggest case of false-equivalence on slashdot right now? Can't tell if serious or not...

Re:Double Down

[vladimir.sakharuk]

I hope someone will publish "Anonymous Russian proxy for Dummies"

Re:Double Down

[Anonymous Coward]

oh...riiiight. You're one of those Benghazi nutters.

Re:Double Down

[Anonymous Coward]

The burning question not even Preparation H can handle is who is "Anonymous Source"? Where does Xe live? What does Xe eat for breakfast?
At what point will Anonymous Source release the logs to show how these Russian Rapscallions penetrated so deep into the Servers and minds of these great lands. When does Anonymous Source release all the nefarious details of these exploits so that we can have justice and remove the Pretender Trump and his cabal of Crypto Russians.
Everything I have read indicates Putin (obviously an Anti-Christ) personally used his mercenary hordes of Russian Hackers (I'm looking at you 4Chan) to corrupt the media and hack the minds of the American voters in favor of Trump the pretender. Now, obviously, this is no easy task so there is plenty of evidence. We have voting machine logs, we have router logs, we have firewall logs and DNC server logs. Anonymous Source your people need you. Please release the evidence.

Re:Double Down

[Anonymous Coward]

Are we going to declare war against every country that breaks into our computers?

I say we practice proactive security and nuke any other nation with computers.

It's the only way to be sure.

Re:Double Down

[Anonymous Coward]

To be fair, the politics in the US are the farthest right of any country on the planet.

Lunacy.

Get off the internet. You have some soul searching to do.

Re:Double Down

[moeinvt]

"I keep hearing people repeating the line that 'taxes are legalized theft' which is an absurd notion"

You're right. It's absurd. We should say "taxes are legalized extortion".

The word "theft" means taking something directly from a person without their consent. That's not how government works. In extortion, the rightful owner gives up their property under threat of violence. That's exactly how the government operates.

Government demands that you hand over a certain amount of your personal income. If you refuse, they will send men with guns to attempt to kidnap you and throw you in a cage. If you resist being kidnapped and thrown in a cage, they will use violence against you. That's "extortion" cloaked in a veil of legitimacy.

Re:Double Down

[sysrammer]

"In comparison this is nothing. We should just thank them for helping us improve our weak computer security and leave it at that." "Well what would you have us do about it? "

1. Thank you rossiya for meddling in our election. I remember all those wonderful nights last summer reading the obvious russian trolls on this site and many others. I found it very annoying but you seem to have found kindred souls.
2, We are suitably chastened. We should drop all investigations, covert and overt, as the proper reaction to this.

You know, if HC had won Trumpists would be all over this and more. The bile coming from the brietbarts of the world would make what the dems are doing now look minor. Let's remember that the whole "fake news" meme came from altright (altrusskiy?) sites creating story after story about "coming to take your guns" and "fema camps" and "king obama" stuff.

Humanity is so hypocritical.

Re:Double Down

[Obfuscant]

If you think that's okay to have happened, then you can expect to see plenty of attempts in future elections.

Even if you don't think that's ok to have happened, you can expect to see plenty of attempts in future elections. What's your point?

Someone interested in democracy should want the election to occur without people trying to break into the election counting equipment and fiddle with the data.

And if wishes were horses then beggars would ride. Some people try to "break into" the election system every time there is an election. That applies to computerized systems, but it can also be as simple as an election worker with a bit of pencil hidden under a bandaid on a finger invalidating paper ballots by mismarking them while being counted. You can't stop people from trying. You can "want" all you want, but it will mean nothing in the long run.

Re: Double Down

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not aware of anyone I know not having a landline.

Re:Double Down

[d34thm0nk3y]

You mean evidence exactly like this?

The Intercept Discloses Top-Secret NSA Document on Russia Hacking Aimed at US Voting System

The top-secret National Security Agency document, which was provided anonymously to The Intercept and independently authenticated, analyzes intelligence very recently acquired by the agency about a months-long Russian intelligence cyber effort against elements of the US election and voting infrastructure. The report, dated May 5, 2017, is the most detailed US government account of Russian interference in the election that has yet come to light.

Re:Double Down

[d34thm0nk3y]

Seriously? What evidence? They haven't shown us any yet.

Top-Secret NSA Report Details Russian Hacking Effort Days Before 2016 Election

Re: Double Down

[Anonymous Coward]

Inb4:
Where's the evidence?
There's no proof.
Biased sources.
Fake news.
What about the WMDs in Iraq?

Re:Double Down

[whoever57]

Obama's administration did everything possible to stop states from requiring an ID to vote. Let's fix the simple things first

How about we fix the broken things first? There is close to zero evidence of impersonation of voters, so requiring an ID would make zero difference, except to make it more difficult for people who tend to vote for Democratic candidates to vote. Oh, wait: that's the real purpose of requiring ID to vote.

There are also real problems like purges of voter rolls for legitimate reasons also catching thousands, or tens of thousands of people whose names should not have been removed from the rolls.

Re:Double Down

[Anonymous Coward]

No one fucking scrap of evidence yet.

Oh yeah sure sure we totally believe it was the russians and not hillary being a giant cunt.

yup. right. whatever.

Re:Double Down

[Archangel Michael]

Taxes are regressive. All of them.

Three People in an elevator hold an election, the two "poor" people elect one, who proposes a "Tax" on the Rich, everyone votes again, and money is taken (under threat) from the rich person for the "benefit of the majority of people". Does that sound "fair" to you?

If it doesn't, then you realize that taxing people for "redistribution" is nothing short of theft/extortion. There is no moral justification to forcibly take what isn't yours to the benefit of someone else. NONE.

Re:Double Down

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you have a single fact to back that up?

(Captcha: liberals)

Re:Double Down

[Obfuscant]

We spend so much money making weapons and waging war while refusing to spend money to help our own people.

Maintaining a standing army is one of the few specific functions of the federal government, while charity is supposed to be a function of the states or the people. Yes, I, too, think states spend way too much money maintaining their standing armies (national guards).

We have a growing problem of people thinking we should just let people in need die of starvation rather than help them and I'm not even exaggerating.

Yes, you are. We have a number of people who think charity is not a government function and that private charity should be the fallback, not taxpayer funded ones. Funny how this is supported by the Constitution. We have a growing number of people who think the federal government should be responsible for people from cradle to grave, which is the actual problem.

It's a total lack of faith in civilian government

A faith that isn't supposed to be necessary, for a function that it isn't supposed to have.

Re:Double Down

[Anonymous Coward]

What mountain of evidence? I've seen none. What I've seen is pure BS.

If you think state-level elite hackers would leave breadcrumbs like that, you're a complete idiot. The whole premise is absurd on its face.

Re:Double Down

[Obfuscant]

Three People in an elevator hold an election, the two "poor" people elect one, who proposes a "Tax" on the Rich,

In other words, a democratic government is the only one in which those who vote for a tax can escape the obligation to pay it. Alexis de Tocqueville

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury. -- misattributed to Alexis de Tocqueville, but true nonetheless.

Re:Double Down

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude you lost get over it

Re:Double Down

[kelanos]

>Or that maybe we should start thinking of this not as some f*cking partisan thing, but about how maybe we should look to protect our elections from outside interference

Or how we can prevent our people from being divided by brainlessly accepting what they hear from their favorite news source.
This is an issue with education.

Re:Double Down

[Gravis Zero]

You're right. It's absurd. We should say "taxes are legalized extortion".

Taxes are regressive. All of them.
[...] taxing people for "redistribution" is nothing short of theft/extortion.

No, taxes are a payment to maintain society, part of which is law and order. I propose that people be able to opt-out of taxes and in return they are unable to utilize any part of society that are paid for by taxes. This means you cannot use the roads, neither the fire department nor police will respond to your calls for help and any sort of legal recourse is unavailable. If someone want to break into your house, murder you then take your things then the state won't lift a finger because state employees (the entire justice system) are paid for with taxes. However, tax paying citizens will be protected from you, so any crimes against them will be prosecuted. How many hours do you think you would last under those conditions?

Re:Double Down

[Gravis Zero]

We have a growing problem of people thinking we should just let people in need die of starvation rather than help them and I'm not even exaggerating.

Yes, you are. We have a number of people who think charity is not a government function and that private charity should be the fallback, not taxpayer funded ones.

And when private charity will not or can not sustain them, then what? They die of starvation or turn to crime, that's what. That is not an exaggeration, that's a point of fact.

Re: Double Down

[Anonymous Coward]

"in our own National Elections"

But we're not talking about elections to the Duma.

Re:Double Down

[Anonymous Coward]

> dizzying array of sources, many of them independent and professional with no stake in the political world,

Most of them were anonymous, so I don't know how you could say that. Quick, how many sources can you name and what evidence did they rely upon?

Crowdstrike, which wrote a report wherein they couldn't identify old, Ukranian malware called P.A.S. or the fact that most of the IPs in the signature were plain old Tor exit nodes? Maybe Trend Micro, which wrote a report that just said "yup, it's Fancy Bear" without bothering to say why? The 17 agencies (i.e. the Coast Guard & co.) who never actually looked at any servers, just some conclusions passed to them? McMullen & the DNC's pissgate dossier, which they couldn't actually confirm any facts out of? The story about the "Trump server" communicating with a Russian bank... that turned out to be some stray DNS queries someone wiretapped... that were the result of a 3rd party marketing site getting Russian spam emails?

Or the dizzying array of anonymous sources and self-referential citogenesis operation going on in the Daily Beast, HuffPo, WaPo, etc.?

Could you even have come up with that list on your own? How far have you looked into any of this beyond merely parroting conclusions you agree with as presented in the media?

Re:Double Down

[Archangel Michael]

I have NO Problem with taxes, understanding that taxes are regressive (all of them).

Therefore, we must come up with a way to avoid taxes doing things that are required by life and living. All taxes should be completely avoidable by the average person, who wishes to avoid them. Taxes on Cigarettes and Alcohol sold in stores are good examples of taxes that are avoidable. Nobody needs either, and therefore are completely avoidable. Taxes on Income (which the Really Rich do not pay) are not.

The really rich only pay taxes on Realized gains, not on the value of the increase in the assets (stocks, ownerships, real estate etc), and even then are discounted heavily (as capital gains), preserving their wealth better than a working slave, making $15 / hr Min Wage.

The problem isn't taxes, it is the regressive nature that most people cannot avoid. Hell, some places even tax the Electricity being produced by your solar panels, that never leaves your property. At that point, you might as well tax SEX in your bedroom, because even the confines of private property isn't beyond the reach of the state.

And for the record, we had police, fire, roads and schools LONG Before we had over burdensome taxes that takes a lawyer or three to decipher. Its funny how THOSE are the first thing Socialists proffer up as "cuts" when tax revenue goes down, and never their failed social experiments. Nicely done BTW.

Re:Double Down

[Plus1Entropy]

Actually the polls were more accurate than they were in 2012. The analysis of the polls was what was wrong.

First of all, the election was much closer than 2012, so it was well within the possibility that a normal polling error could change the result. This amplifies the "mistake" in people's minds. In 2012 the polls were less accurate, but the errors favored Obama, who won anyway, so no one cares ("The polls said he would win, and he did.").

FiveThirtyEight was getting a lot of flack for giving Trump a 30% chance while some models had him at less than a 1% chance to win.

Again, you could say their model was "wrong" because it gave the person who didn't win a higher chance, but that's not how probabilities work. If you flip heads twice in a row you don't then say "well clearly then it can't be a 50/50 chance". The 30% was probably about right: it's an upset, but not a huge one, if Trump wins.

Re:Double Down

[Plus1Entropy]

The effect of the 'shy' Trump voter is debatable.

Re:Double Down

[OhPlz]

There's zero evidence because we don't ask for IDs, so we can't know if it's actually happening. It's not just impersonation either. If you register voters without asking for a legit ID, you have no idea if they're even a citizen let alone if they actually live in the district. Anyone can come up with a telephone bill with their name on it. Government issued IDs are much harder to get, and I know my state has been arresting a lot of people trying to get one with fraudulent papers. It has nothing to do with poor people, unless you're suggesting they're too moronic to figure out how to get an ID.

Re:Double Down

[Anonymous Coward]

There is close to zero evidence of impersonation of voters,

As evidenced by this statement, you do not understand the concept of authentication and have no business discussing this matter.

Re:Double Down

[0111 1110]

You know, if HC had won Trumpists would be all over this and more.

Why would that make a difference? Hillary won the popular vote anyway by a significant margin and so far no one is claiming any votes were changed. Although I'm not sure how they can be so sure that not a single vote was changed. Perhaps they will elaborate.

Re:Double Down

[Gravis Zero]

I have NO Problem with taxes

So we're back to them not being extortion... or are you just ok with extortion? ;)

understanding that taxes are regressive (all of them).

I'm not qualified to say they are all like that but in general, I agree US taxes are very regressive. What you haven't said is what needs to be done to reach a solution.

I think the solution is to protect our government from non-representative influence. The most basic of issues is campaign finance and the election system. Campaign finance should be obvious because the rich/corporations are funding the politicians they like and thus having a disproportionate influence. However, nobody can vote in somebody that will even attempt to address the issue because of the election system. With the current power structure, I only see one way to wiggle our way out of a non-representative government: ranked voting. The first-past-the-poll is what is preventing the most basic representation because of its reductive nature expressed as "tactical voting". The way to reform the system is for people to vote for their district to use ranked voting. I would suggest campaign finance reform at a district level but it seems too easy for parties to quash with the "free speech" argument whereas it's almost impossible to defend first-past-the-poll voting. Anyway, with a number of districts using ranked voting, there will be the support needed to change many things at a state level, including the current data-driven districting system that is locking the nation into the control of the dominant political party. Finally, with proper representation in congress, we can actually change federal tax laws to something sane.

I also think that taxes should be used as feedback loops to maintain society. Things that people need to survive should be paid for by taxes and the things that impede their health (thus needing more tax supported health care) should be taxed. This would also address climate change as it's a danger to everyone.

And for the record, we had police, fire, roads and schools LONG Before we had over burdensome taxes that takes a lawyer or three to decipher.

What you aren't mentioning is that crime was quite high and the initial tax code was 800+ pages. However, I agree that the tax code should be simplified. The problem we have is corporations that make tax software have a vested interest in its complexity. The simplest solution to this is to have the IRS release the tax law in a quantified algebraic form that could easily be used in a tax software engine and be updated without changes to the code. The harder solution is the government reform described above.

Its funny how THOSE are the first thing Socialists proffer up as "cuts" when tax revenue goes down, and never their failed social experiments.

There are plenty of failed social experiments that they need to cut but which are you referring to?

Nicely done BTW.

Wait, how did this become my doing? I don't like the state of the nation any more than you.

Re:Double Down

[houghi]

mythical Russian influences

The infor,ation about the emails influenced the election, That is enough to make it important to investigate.
The fact that you ALSO need to do the rest is true.

Do understand that the hacking that was done was less of a technical hack, but more of a social engineering hack.

Go back to what Cracking is and it alwas was social engineering. (No idea why hackers who are so good at social engineering can't get laid.)

Re:Double Down

[OhPlz]

Investigate it to what end? If Russian hackers did get into anything, those systems need to be secured. We can't have the Secretary of State hiding an email server in her bathroom. Are you planning on taking Russia to court? It'll never happen. Are we going to hold the Dems who used weakly secured servers responsible, or the ones that fell prey to obvious social engineering? Nope. That will never happen either. Find where we're exposed, secure it, move on. Anything else is pointless.

Re:Double Down

[Anonymous Coward]

SO the next step will be. Digitized Citizen ID, with a chip in it, that you insert into a reader to identify you as a resident, then insert into the voting booth computer so your vote can be generated.

Re:Double Down

[david_thornley]

Ever hear of the clause that gives Congress authority to tax and spend for the general welfare, without further restrictions? The Constitution specifically authorizes Federal spending on assisting poor people, providing health care, etc.

Re:Double Down

[AutodidactLabrat]

Ultimately, the republican stance is always very "Wide" and ignores any crime by a Republican "IOKIYAR" is their rule
A subset of Reagan's 11th Commandment

Re:Double Down

[Obfuscant]

No, taxes are a payment to maintain society,

Not all taxes are for that purpose. Some, if not many, purport to have that purpose but are truly just a means of either social engineering (e.g. "sin" taxes on alcohol, pot, booze, etc), or wealth redistribution (e.g. "carbon taxes", which are not intended to actually fix the "pollution" from carbon dioxide, but to give free money to people not based on on the impact upon them but on them being alive, taken from "evil corporations" -- rich people.)

The statement you replied to was specific to "taxes for redistribution", which excludes those that are truly applied to providing common infrastructure.

Re:Double Down

[Obfuscant]

for the general welfare

The word "welfare" has several meanings, and the one in the Constitution is not "handing out money to people to pay for things they want or need." The adjective "general" might be a clue. Specific help to specific people is not "general".

Re:Double Down

[Obfuscant]

Taxes on Income (which the Really Rich do not pay) are not.

The statistics for tax payments show that the top one percent pays 24% of the federal, state, and local taxes which averages out to be 34% of their income, while the bottom 20% pays only 2% of the taxes using 19% of their income. In all metrics, "Really Rich" certainly do pay taxes.

The really rich only pay taxes on Realized gains, not on the value of the increase in the assets

They pay capital gains when the gain is realized, not when it appears "on the books" as a paper tiger. The poor also pay capital gains at the same time.

and even then are discounted heavily (as capital gains)

Social engineering, to promote investment. Investment is money that other people get to use while the "Really Rich" don't have access to it. And it's not just "Really Rich" who have stocks, etc. Those are parts of many many working people's retirement accounts. I have a retirement plan that consists mostly of stock and bond funds and I pay nothing at all in taxes on gains until I start accessing the money. Nor do I get to write off any losses. If you want to tax people on the paper profits for stocks and bonds at the time the paper profits are made, you are going to be hurting a very very large number of people who are not even close to the "Really Rich" that you don't like.

Hell, some places even tax the Electricity being produced by your solar panels, that never leaves your property.

Fascinating. What I've found by searching for this tax is that it is a personal property tax on the generation equipment, not a tax on the electricity it produces. This is like the personal property taxes on Rich People stuff that the poor people don't ever pay. The government cannot tax the actual electricity unless it is sold, at which point it has "left the property".

There are also some pretty high exemptions, like a lower cutoff of 1MW systems for solar. It is trivial to avoid those taxes.

Re:Double Down

[david_thornley]

Of course "welfare" in that clause did not specifically refer to giving money to the poor. It's broader than that. It does include that as a possibility. Moreover, unless you're going to pull a collectivist philosophy on me, the general welfare is the sum of the welfare of each citizen. Giving whatever to specific people would need a bill of attainder, IIRC. Giving money to people meeting certain qualifications doesn't.

I would never even vote in an electronic booth

[Anonymous Coward]

I would never even vote in an electronic booth. I mean why bother? We know that they are hopelessly insecure. What are we, a nation of 5 year olds? Are we so naive as to believe that if we use insecure voting machines someone isn't hacking them. Voting in an electronic voting machine, with no paper record, is pointless. I have never lived in a state that braindead, but a lot of unfortunate souls do.

Obama's Response: I Told Putin to ‘Cut It Ou

[schwit1]

That's telling him! What was it Putin said about empty threats?

NSA too busy hacking us to protect us from Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

So the NSA was so busy hacking everybody else and creating viruses that they couldn't protect us from election hacking. Why do we pay these guys?

All of this reminds me of the Macarthy Red Scare.

And this is only half of it

[Sarcasmooo!]

And this is only half of the story. Read this, this, and this...and you might begin to understand the breadth and the scope of what Russia is doing online. The Kremlin has built an entire industry manned by thousands, whose sole purpose is to get online and sew chaos, confusion, and doubt. They are why, when you discuss any issue that reflects poorly on Russia on any major website, you get marginalized and bombarded with talking points.

There are conservatives who mirror the Kremlin's message, but these buildings filled with thousands of paid trolls are the originals and the instigators. This is not a game, read the Times story above and you will see the real world consequences; Russia can create fake hysteria in America, made up disasters, and form political causes out of the ether which sway American policy in the direction they like. Russia, right this very second, and since 2014, and into the future--is at war with you, with me, with every Conservative and every Democrat and every Independent--and they don't care at all what you want. They care what 1 man wants, and what he wants is to say fuck you and your country.

Re:And this is only half of it

[Anonymous Coward]

haha you an idiot

Re:And this is only half of it

[110010001000]

You don't know that. Just because people write articles about things doesn't make it magically true. Time, NY Times, CNN are no longer reliable sources of information. They "sew" a lot of misinformation and clickbait.

Re:And this is only half of it

[Anonymous Coward]

Those aren't exactly trustworthy sources. Ever since the last US election CNN and the NY Times in particular have given up any objectivity and pretense of hiding their bias in the pursuit of politicized "news".

Re:And this is only half of it

[Anonymous Coward]

I refuse to Read anything from the sites you mentioned for the simple reason that most of it is FAKE NEWS None of those sites have any Credibility anymore.

The Left can't stand the Fact that they Lost and will do anything to make Trouble for anyone in the New Administration.

If they could just stop Whining about the Loss and take it Like they are Adults and Not Spoiled Children then they could get something done.

Get a Better Candidate than the one you had for if she was a Republican and did what she did the Left would have a Fit if she Got off Scott Free.

Re:And this is only half of it

[Anonymous Coward]

The sanctity of our bodily fluids is at stake!

Re:And this is only half of it

[Sarcasmooo!]

The Times article literally describes a real world hoax fabricated by Russia that you can look up and verify yourself on Wikipedia, in local news stories, wherever you'd like. It also has a sit down interview with a troll who worked in one of these buildings, outside of the building itself--followed by an interview with one of the 'editors' of the Kremlin's fake news outlets that employ these trolls. So let me say this, whether you're a troll yourself or a skeptic who's been duped, it doesn't matter--the truth is the truth.

Re:And this is only half of it

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, BS. Russia is not at war with anybody. How many Americans have been killed by Russia? How many Americans have been killed by Islamic fundamentalists? Which is the fastest-growing group in the US, Russians or Muslims?

Russia is not the problem.

Re:And this is only half of it

[barbariccow]

Russia can create fake hysteria in America, made up disasters, and form political causes out of the ether which sway American policy in the direction they like.

So..... you're saying that you're Russian?

Also, why does it always have to be Russians? Anyone can do that. And they do. Hell, some comedy sites like nationalreport.net are taken serious by some folks.

What it seems you're arguing for is some sort of system where we don't have to worry about lowly people having influence on their leaders, and rather one where the leader's just choose the leaders, since they are above influence. Sounds like a country I've heard of...

Re:And this is only half of it

[Anonymous Coward]

lol

How important is it to have a country that is not run by the Russians? Are you willing to give up fake news and your love of republicans? Are you willing to have a reality check?

What happens when Russia runs the US? What does that look like?

Putin can run his country forever. He can work on influencing America for years and years. We are at a severe disadvantage.

Wake up.

Re:And this is only half of it

[Anonymous Coward]

And the Russian propaganda is different from American propaganda how, exactly..? (Neutral European here, not a fan of either side.)

Re:And this is only half of it

[Anonymous Coward]

Time, NY Times, CNN are no longer reliable sources of information.

Oh please. Trial runs were reported on long before the election.

They "sew" a lot of misinformation and clickbait.

Your Cyrillic to english dictionary is busted, that should be "sow."

Re:And this is only half of it

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't know that.

Is this like "You didn't build that."

Re:And this is only half of it

[Zontar_Thing_From_Ve]

There are conservatives who mirror the Kremlin's message, but these buildings filled with thousands of paid trolls are the originals and the instigators. This is not a game, read the Times story above and you will see the real world consequences; Russia can create fake hysteria in America, made up disasters, and form political causes out of the ether which sway American policy in the direction they like.

Some sources are saying that the whole current hubbub about Qatar is based on a false story that came from these groups. For whatever reason Trump certainly seems convinced that Qatar is ground zero for terrorist funding and I'm just not sure that's really true. I do know that Russia likes to sow discord among US allies and having Qatar end up so angry that they close down the US base there would certainly be an endgame Russia would like to see. Russia is also a master at creating problems and then inserting themselves into the middle of them as a mediator and insisting that only they can resolve them.

Re:And this is only half of it

[argStyopa]

It's amazing that this recognition of the widespread malignant threat posed by Russia only seems to have become evident in the last 8 months? I guess we should thank Trump's administration for highlighting this problem to which the previous administration seemed entirely oblivious at all levels?

http://thefederalist.com/2016/...

Re:And this is only half of it

[Anonymous Coward]

Anybody? How about Ukraine, how about the people fighting against ISIS? You know, just currently at this minute.

And even if there was a bigger threat does not make the lesser threat not a threat.

Re:And this is only half of it

[CrybabiesArePeople]

lol

Re:And this is only half of it

[Anonymous Coward]

I already did a reply that seems to have Disappeared, So just Who is Deleting Posts?

Re:And this is only half of it

[Anonymous Coward]

This post reeks of modern day McCarthyism. Anyone who disagrees is a Russian bot/troll/shill/instigator. It wasn't that bad before the elections but now it's ridiculous. The level of propaganda in US media is unreal. Before the election, there was a strong anti-Russian bias in American media (same against China, Iran, etc.) but not to this degree. Someone turned that shit to 11 a few months before Crooked Hillary's humiliating defeat.

The other day, I was debating politics with someone on reddit and got called a paid Russian shill because I asked for some evidence of the guy's claims. The guy really believed I was hand selected and employed by Putin himself and that I had received monetary compensation interact with people like him on the internet. I'm like, here, I'll take a photo of my US passport if you do the same. Never heard from the person again. Lol.

By the way, I noticed you linked NYT. If you're going that road, why not link Buzzfeed? Shit, why not even link Wordpress blogs you find on Google? Haha

Re:And this is only half of it

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately your sources have been caught being 100% partisan if not absolutely controlled by the Democratic party so any arguments you make will fail no matter how mad you get.

Re:And this is only half of it

[Anonymous Coward]

Lol, this clown. If you paid me 20 bucks, I'd sit down with you outside your building and read your script so you could use me as a source in your fabricated story for your gullible audience.

Re:And this is only half of it

[Anonymous Coward]

So, can you prove you're not a paid Russian shill then?

Re:And this is only half of it

[Sarcasmooo!]

I notice that you didn't check the date on the NYTimes story.

Re:And this is only half of it

[k6mfw]

you get marginalized and bombarded with talking points.

Excellent post especially all the trolls that responded to you.

Re: And this is only half of it

[Anonymous Coward]

There's another Post Elsewhere with Inappropriate Capitals. Is that Yours?

Re:And this is only half of it

[Anonymous Coward]

The word is "sow". And they are more reliably than Breitbart and InfoWars by a long shot. And better than MSNBC and Fox News. But go ahead and bury your head in the sand if you like. It's easy to deal with reality when you pretend it isn't there and go LALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALA

Re:And this is only half of it

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm fairly certain that they've taken over discussion boards like reddit and slashdot (which is why there is no more tech news posted here.only politicrap).

Re:And this is only half of it

[Anonymous Coward]

the Kremlin's fake news outlet

You mean Pravda?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pravda`

Re:And this is only half of it

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope you're just being facetious, but you can't prove a negative.

Re:And this is only half of it

[Anonymous Coward]

points for pointing out the bleeding obvious.

Russia is spying.

However, when it comes to overthrowing governments and screwing with elections, no-one does it more, or better, than us.

The PR bombardment we are seeing is just a distraction from all the BS the Elite have been up to.

Re:And this is only half of it

[Anonymous Coward]

Sow chaos. (not sew)

Re:And this is only half of it

[Anonymous Coward]

Being partisan has nothing to do with the facts of any situation. Unless you're arguing that CNN and NYTimes are reporting stories which are false. Both of them along with almost every news organization gets things wrong in the age of instant gratification. CNN will actually retract, along with MSNBC, and the NYT. You will not get the same from Fox or Breitbart, or Infowars.

Also, rolling your eyes at Trump's latest lie is not being controlled by Democrats, it is being appalled by the behavior of what is supposed to be the highest position in this country. Bush Jr looks downright brilliant and well polished compared to what we have now and increased spending significantly while also cutting taxes leading us straight into our current economic situation which Obama didn't or maybe couldn't do enough to fix. Both of them endured stupid policies signed by Bill Clinton as his success lead to some real bad decisions with long term repercussions.

Re:And this is only half of it

[Anonymous Coward]

Democrats absolutely need a better candidate. You are complaining they are behaving like Republicans after Obama was elected.

Hillary's main problem wasn't her unelectability although that certainly contributed.The main problem is trying to go high when they go low. Republicans have proved again and again, going low works and gets you elected. That is why Democrats keep losing despite have twice the membership. Many of them have learned their lesson so expect them to perform a lot of plays typical of Republicans in the past.

You should stop referring to "The Left" however as such a thing doesn't exist. There is no organization like Breitbart on "The Left." You can feel free to argue the Huffington Post with their overblown headlines but their readership is pale, they don't reach nearly as many people. Who would you describe is the "The Left's" version of Newt Gingrich or Limbaugh or Ann Coulter or to a lesser extent Tomi Lahren? They have no equal. You can argue Bill Maher, Colbert, Trevor Noah, but none of them have any influence politically. That is where the old expression comes from. Herding Democrats is like herding cats. They all go every which way. They are not nearly as organized as Republicans who today are not nearly as organized either due to Trump's erratic behavior.

Re:And this is only half of it

[Anonymous Coward]

That's why the only trustworthy sources are Anonymous Cowards on Slashdot, who are all 100% committed to fair, unbiased reporting.

Re:And this is only half of it

[mmdurrant]

You'd have a point if it wasn't completely fallacious. Messenger doesn't matter, truth is truth, 10 yard penalty, 2nd down, may Jah have mercy on your .

Re:And this is only half of it

[mmdurrant]

... but regardless of the location, that doesn't change the story, right?

You're aiming at the wrong target

Re:And this is only half of it

[Anonymous Coward]

Not so fast...

https://wikileaks.org/vault7/?#Grasshopper

Today, April 7th 2017, WikiLeaks releases Vault 7 "Grasshopper" -- 27 documents from the CIA's Grasshopper framework, a platform used to build customized malware payloads for Microsoft Windows operating systems.

Grasshopper is provided with a variety of modules that can be used by a CIA operator as blocks to construct a customized implant that will behave differently, for example maintaining persistence on the computer differently, depending on what particular features or capabilities are selected in the process of building the bundle. Additionally, Grasshopper provides a very flexible language to define rules that are used to "perform a pre-installation survey of the target device, assuring that the payload will only [be] installed if the target has the right configuration". Through this grammar CIA operators are able to build from very simple to very complex logic used to determine, for example, if the target device is running a specific version of Microsoft Windows, or if a particular Antivirus product is running or not.

Grasshopper allows tools to be installed using a variety of persistence mechanisms and modified using a variety of extensions (like encryption). The requirement list of the Automated Implant Branch (AIB) for Grasshopper puts special attention on PSP avoidance, so that any Personal Security Products like 'MS Security Essentials', 'Rising', 'Symantec Endpoint' or 'Kaspersky IS' on target machines do not detect Grasshopper elements.

One of the persistence mechanisms used by the CIA here is 'Stolen Goods' - whose "components were taken from malware known as Carberp, a suspected Russian organized crime rootkit." confirming the recycling of malware found on the Internet by the CIA. "The source of Carberp was published online, and has allowed AED/RDB to easily steal components as needed from the malware.". While the CIA claims that "[most] of Carberp was not used in Stolen Goods" they do acknowledge that "[the] persistence method, and parts of the installer, were taken and modified to fit our needs", providing a further example of reuse of portions of publicly available malware by the CIA, as observed in their analysis of leaked material from the italian company "HackingTeam".

The documents WikiLeaks publishes today provide an insights into the process of building modern espionage tools and insights into how the CIA maintains persistence over infected Microsoft Windows computers, providing directions for those seeking to defend their systems to identify any existing compromise

Leaked Documents
Grasshopper-v1_1-AdminGuide
Grasshopper-v2_0_2-UserGuide
StolenGoods-2_1-UserGuide
GH-Module-Null-v2_0-UserGuide
GH-Module-Buffalo-Bamboo-v1_0-UserGuide
See more
Marble Framework
31 March, 2017
Today, March 31st 2017, WikiLeaks releases Vault 7 "Marble" -- 676 source code files for the CIA's secret anti-forensic Marble Framework. Marble is used to hamper forensic investigators and anti-virus companies from attributing viruses, trojans and hacking attacks to the CIA.

Marble does this by hiding ("obfuscating") text fragments used in CIA malware from visual inspection. This is the digital equivallent of a specalized CIA tool to place covers over the english language text on U.S. produced weapons systems before giving them to insurgents secretly backed by the CIA.

Marble forms part of the CIA's anti-forensics approach and the CIA's Core Library of malware code. It is "[D]esigned to allow for flexible and easy-to-use obfuscation" as "string obfuscation algorithms (especially those that are unique) are often used to link malware to a specific developer or development shop."

The Marble source code also includes a deobfuscator to reverse CIA text obfuscation. Combined with the revealed obfuscation techniques, a pattern or signature emerges which can assist forensic investigators attribute previous hacking attacks and viruses to the CIA. Marbl

Re:And this is only half of it

[Anonymous Coward]

Not an expert or privy to exclusive info here, but it's no secret that among the aristocracy of petrocrats in Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, and so on, there are a lot of fundamentalists who fund Wahhabi madrassas and violent jihadis. That the focus is on Qatar right now is purely a result of Trump's recent bear-hug of the Saudis. Maybe some strategist (Bannon? stinks like him) decided that the American People want to see an Arab nation scapegoated so as to make the others look cleaner.

Re:And this is only half of it

[Anonymous Coward]

What I get out of this is that our political parties have created a system that gathers, sorts, and analysis demographics and the Russians have hacked into much of it to use for their own purposes.

Re:Obama's Response: I Told Putin to ‘Cut It

[the_skywise]

And then he came out and said the elections were secure and no Russian involvement had affected the outcome!

Summary

[SuperKendall]

The Kremlin has built an entire industry manned by thousands, whose sole purpose is to get online and sew chaos, confusion, and doubt.

So what you are saying is Russia has built a Shadow 4-Chan.

Re:Summary

[Anonymous Coward]

As funny as it sounds, that's not a bad reduction at all. Its shadow 4chan, oddly enough, has seeped into the real one.

No names? Come on.

[Anonymous Coward]

Every single one of these stories tiring trump to Russian hackers have as sources "people familiar with the matter". Can we get one source to go on the record? One official document that shows this? Anything other than "anonymous sources say..."

I understand that sometimes sources have to be anonymous but we are talking about the presidency of the USA and the integrity of our voting systems! Someone grow a pair and go on record!

Re:No names? Come on.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, because the US has such a great record of treating whistleblowers fairly, who wouldn't want to?

Re:No names? Come on.

[MightyMartian]

Comey sat right in a Congressional committee meeting and said out loud "The Russians interfered with the election".

See Jan 24th Arrests

[Anonymous Coward]

It's worth remembering that the US has (or rather had) spies in the Russian FSB and wider Russia:

http://www.newsweek.com/has-putin-just-arrested-two-american-spies-548528

"News broke on January 24 that two Russians—Sergei Mikhailov, the second-highest-ranking officer in the cyber-intelligence unit of the Federal Security Service (FSB), and Ruslan Stoyanov, a private cybersecurity analyst specializing in antivirus programs [side note, he's EX FSB]—were arrested on charges of treason."

And that two of these were arrested a few days after Trump got into power and got hold of an unredacted piss memo naming a current and former FSB agent who had supplied intelligence on the Putin election interference plans.

The obvious implication is, that Trump got hold of the piss memos and passed the names of these spies to the Russians for revenge.

There was a misdirection, a claim that these two WERE BEHIND the US election hacking, but Putin has since suggested Russia might have been framed.... which indicates the bogus nature of that misdirection.

http://nypost.com/2017/02/01/russian-officials-charged-with-passing-secrets-to-us/

"Four Russian security officials were slapped Wednesday with formal charges of treason for passing secrets to the US government, according to published reports."

"Three of the defendants were identified as Federal Security Services (FSB) officials Sergei Mikhailov and Dmitry Dokuchayev, and Ruslan Stoyanov, a higher-up at the cybersecurity firm Kaspersky Labs, CBS News reported."

Re:See Jan 24th Arrests

[AutodidactLabrat]

Boy all means,cite the Right Wing Alt=news site NyPost!

*people with direct knowledge*

[fustakrakich]

Uh huh...

I guess we're going to keep on hearing this 'birther' crap for the next four years at least.

Tear in the Narrative

[Anonymous Coward]

Russians were tampering.

Trump was winning.

There was no correlation.

Discovering now that Russians were tampering proves this lack of correlation even further.

How?

Because in the case of collusion Trump either needs to ask them to interfere (they already were) or help them interfere.

Is someone now going to propose that Trump gave Putin Hillary's password? (12345)

There was no criminal activity from Trump team, but there is still a crap ton of criminal activity swirling around the Democrats.

And Comey needs to go to jail next to Reality Winner.

They can leak notes to one another.

Re:Tear in the Narrative

[MightyMartian]

Translation: I've stuck my finger in my ear, refused to even understand what is alleged to have happened, and want anyone who challenges Trump to be sent to prison.

If members of Trump's team were coordinating with the Russians for timed releases of information against Clinton, then that's treason. Whether Trump was directly involved or not may not be known, but may not even be that important.

So how about you first eliminate that strawman you've created of the allegations to start with, because it just makes you look like either a complete idiot or a liar.

Re: Tear in the Narrative

[KGIII]

I believe the word you seek is 'sedition.' Treason is rather specific and Russia is not, at least officially, our enemy.

Re:Tear in the Narrative

[Anonymous Coward]

WOW. What 'allegations' or 'strawman' is the GP setting up that has to be 'eliminated'? He can't 'prove a negative', e.g. he can't PROVE no collusion, he can't PROVE Trump was not involved in this conspiracy theory that can't be proven as invalid as again you can't 'prove a negative'. So how about YOU and your 'ilk' start providing ANY evidence of this particular 'strawman' or eliminate it entirely as you suggest the GP should.

So the only potential 'strawman' the GP stated was 'crap ton of criminal activity swirling around the Democrats'. Now 'crap ton' is a bit hard to 'size' but let's try:

1) Obama caught on live mike telling a Russian diplomat not to 'worry' as once he's elected he'll 'fix everything' (or similar wording...RUSSIAN COLLUSION!).
2) Obama & Lynch influencing Comey MULTIPLE times including:
2a) Telling him to 'call an investigation a matter'
2b) Privately Meeting with Bill on the tarmac in Phoenix
2c) we now know of a 'private meeting' between Comey & Lynch where Comey referred to ACTUAL EVIDENCE of Lynch saying she would 'not charge Hillary with a crime' regardless of what the FBI found.
2d) Obama signaling on TV that he didn't think what Hillary did was 'criminal' and 'not harmful to national security' (or similar wording) such that it was clear he felt the investigation against Hillary should be dropped and/or that charges should not be laid.
3) Clear indications that SOMEONE likely Lynch 'unmasked American citizen names' from intelligence reports that should NOT have been unmasked as they were captured without warrant supporting an investigation against the American citizen.
4) Many, many 'leaks' of supposed 'confidential information' most of which were likely criminal.
5) Comey himself admitting to stealing government property (his 'memo' and who knows how many other 'memos') & leaking it to the press.
6) IRS illegally investigating 'conservative groups'
7) Crapper lying to Congress about the governments 'surveillance' of American citizens.
8) Obama Administration illegally investigating a conservative reporter for Fox.
9) O shit, I almost forgot, the whole 'Fast & Furious' debacle that clearly has illegal elements & should have had Holder thrown in jail.

Now, I don't know if that equates to a 'crap ton' or not but its a lot of criminal activity or indications of criminal activity 'swirling around the Democrats'. FAR more than this silly 'Trump Administration conspiracy with the Russians'.

Now, I'm no Trump syncophant, I'm a libertarian & find much of what he does just WRONG. But until you 'leftist' start realizing how criminal your 'leaders' are & the wrong headedness of your positions I'll keep calling you out for this bullshit.

"Tried to delete or alter voter data"

[CustomSolvers2]

How could this even be possible? By assuming that the option of a well-planned inside job can be dismissed, how could anyone have access to so delicate information from outside?! Through internet?! Why enabling internet access to something like this?

In any case, I guess that all these systems include a quite powerful logging sub-system recording each single modification; or even better: they don't allow modifications at all. So, even in the unrealistic scenario of anyone actually modifying voting information, I guess that reverting any change should be quite easy.

Clarification: I don't like Trump at all and might even be happy in case that he was proven to be somehow related to all this hacking theory. But I am also an honesty- and fairness-driven person who is completely against baseless accusations of any kind.

Re:"Tried to delete or alter voter data"

[Anonymous Coward]

You're seriously asking how internet-based hacking can happen in this day and age? You believe that all these hypothetical protections you've conjured up were actually put in place in the real world? Have you ever actually worked in the industry, at all?

In the real world, the voting systems in place were old, buggy and unpatched. Researchers had already shown with real proof of concept attacks that the attacks were possible before the election. Hell, the systems weren't even classed as critical infrastructure - there wasn't even a requirement in place for any kind of level of protection.

This kind of this wasn't just possible, it was inevitable.
 

Re:"Tried to delete or alter voter data"

[CustomSolvers2]

You're seriously asking how internet-based hacking can happen in this day and age?

No. I said "why enabling internet access to something like this?", precisely because of understanding that an internet connection makes any system vulnerable. That's why critical infrastructures not requiring internet at all (e.g., machines containing voter's information) shouldn't be connected to internet or to other computers connected to internet.

Have you ever actually worked in the industry, at all?

In software development? During over the last 8 years, by always building very secure pieces of software. In the US voting industry? Never.

In the real world, the voting systems in place were old, buggy and unpatched

A very good reason to not be connected to internet.

Hell, the systems weren't even classed as critical infrastructure

As said, I have no specific expertise in that sub-world, but voter's data (or citizen's data or similar) seem very protection-worthy to me and I guess that any experienced professional should think equivalently.

This kind of this wasn't just possible, it was inevitable.

The whole point of my comment was to highlight that this kind of data breach is likely to be associated with high negligence. In principle, I find hard to believe that people developing so important systems make such big mistakes. But, as said, I have no actual experience in this world and cannot have a worthy opinion regarding the real situation.

Re:"Tried to delete or alter voter data"

[ebyrob]

> "why enabling internet access to something like this?", precisely because of understanding that an internet connection makes any system vulnerable.

We were all basically told by every security expert anywhere not to use voting machines (and if we did to print the votes on paper). On top of this that all the vendors actually chosen to produce voting machines very much sucked at security and didn't care about it. Why would you be surprised after the bureaucrats went ahead and used those voting machines that they'd also hook them up to the internet?

Re:"Tried to delete or alter voter data"

[CustomSolvers2]

We were all basically told by every security expert anywhere not to use voting machines (and if we did to print the votes on paper)

You don't need to mistrust digital records, just to minimise the chances of attackers to access them. Avoiding unnecessary internet connections is the same than making sure that your paper votes are fine (e.g., not putting them in a random room with the door open). Additionally, bear in mind that one thing is a connection to internet (= to the whole world) and a different story is a safe enough local network. Being unreasonably afraid of hackers and thinking that the best way to avoid problems is to not use computers at all don’t seem too sensible either. Why not waiting for the final results of all these investigations, seeing what really happened and how it might have been avoided rather than continue making up problems and solutions which perhaps don't even exist?

Why would you be surprised after the bureaucrats went ahead and used those voting machines that they'd also hook them up to the internet?

As said, I have no specific experience working with the US voting system/administration. No idea what to think on this front.

Re:"Tried to delete or alter voter data"

[AHuxley]

Its not possible at a city or state level in the USA.
Party workers, staff and officials would notice anyone trying to alter vote numbers they have reported and counted.
New staff in secure areas during the election would also be noticed by election workers and officials in the community who know each other well.
Exit poll data would also give some idea to party officials.
One party in the USA had a better message and candidate that got the voters out in the needed states.
Another weaker candidate only got a lot of votes in some states.
In the US system a strong candidate is needed to get out votes around the USA.
Winning a few states with very large populations centres will not win a US election.

Re:"Tried to delete or alter voter data"

[CustomSolvers2]

Its not possible at a city or state level in the USA.

Further confirmation of my mostly-focused-on-a-more-technical-level assumptions that actually altering anything relevant to the voting system in a country like the USA is almost impossible, other than perhaps via bribes and under very specific conditions. On the other hand, this fact isn't incompatible with people unfairly (and more importantly: illegally) affecting the result of the election. But as said in some previous comments, I will better wait for the conclusions of all the ongoing investigations before having an opinion about all this.

One party in the USA had a better message and candidate that got...

Sorry, but I am not interested in getting involved in a discussion about politics (in general and, much less, here in Slashdot). I am plainly highlighting my generic position on this front (leftist) and about this specific issue (not liking Trump) to minimise the chances of people wanting to see non-existent motivations to my words.

make friends not war

[0111 1110]

Sounds like it's time for better security in the computerized part of the voting system. Even if the Russian government, as opposed to just individual hackers who might even be spoofing a Russian government IP address for reasons, really is behind this so what? It's not any kind of real attack. If you are advocating that we try to hack their own insecure internet-facing computer systems go for it. Would love to see someone other than Putin or a Putin clone get elected next time. I'm not even convinced this sort of thing should be a crime at all. More like relatively harmless play. Or we could move toward nuclear war with Russia if you want. Up to you.

I personally kind of like the Russkies. I have no problem with them. I think we should stick with staying on friendly and good diplomatic terms with them. I lived through the 80s and I find being friends with them a lot better than Duck and Cover drills. OTOH we all know how cool nuclear war would be. It would truly be 'interesting times'. Plus a lot of Beautiful People would die or at least suffer a reduced quality of life. So I'm cool with either option, but for most people I think the first option would be preferable.

I guess we do live in interesting times in a way. Democrats have become so much like Republicans now that they have become war mongers as long as it suits their agenda in other ways. Although I must admit I don't see how getting on a more cold war like footing with Russia again is going to hurt their arch-enemy Trump. Because Democratic presidents were known for chewing gum and kicking ass but running out of gum? I'm not seeing it. I'm just glad Trump himself is not taking the bait and transforming into Dr. Strangelove.

I can remember back in the 80s when most Democrats were supporters of the ACLU and even human rights. It used to be that Republicans wanted financial freedom (even for poor people in many cases) but government control of our personal lives and Democrats wanted personal freedoms (pro ACLU, pro drug etc) put wanted more government control of the economy (Robin Hood economics). Now both parties want government control of everything just in somewhat different ways, but this pro war stance on the part of the Democrats is something new.

But saber rattling over this is just dumb. You want to investigate Trump for being overly friendly with the Russians (not really a crime imo but whatever) fine, but escalating this into any sort of real conflict just because you want to demonize the Russians because Trump gets along with Putin is harmful to world peace and not really going to accomplish anything you want anyway.

Trump is president. I don't like it either but it doesn't really matter that much who is president. It's mostly business as usual no matter who is living in that big white building. So calm the fuck down people and wipe that drool and spittle from your rabid mouths. This could even be something positive if it helps to make our electronic voting systems more secure or if it starts to get people thinking about how stupid and antiquated our electoral college system is. Democracy is mostly about a wolf and some sheep deciding what's for dinner anyway. It's really individual/human rights that distinguishes us from totalitarian dictatorships. Or really the rights that the government doesn't have. Voting is mostly bread and circus to keep the common people believing they can make a difference.

Re:make friends not war

[Anonymous Coward]

Fucking traitors and collaborators... show some patriotism for once you sack of shit.

Re:make friends not war

[Obfuscant]

Sounds like it's time for better security in the computerized part of the voting system.

Or maybe just a return to non-computerized systems. Yes, computers make finding out who won much faster and make counting easier. They also make miscounting easier.

Do you know what happens if we don't know who won an election for a week or two, instead of by 8:05PM election eve? Absolutely nothing.

Re:make friends not war

[Anonymous Coward]

My goodness, what agility with which 0111 1110 manages to leap to the defense of Russians and write a lot about how "we" should dismantle letter agencies.

Re:make friends not war

[Anonymous Coward]

Voting is mostly bread and circus to keep the common people believing they can make a difference.

"Mission accomplished." -- V. Putin

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

should be content with his great leadership.

[Anonymous Coward]

Russian actions weren't able to modify votes cast.

You seem awfully confident of that. If there is one thing we know, its that e-voting machines are ridiculously insecure. And we've know it for over a decade.

What risk/reward ratio were they looking at?

Putin's singular goal is the elevation of the Russian state with him as its head. Because he's an autocrat that makes western liberalism an existential threat. Anything he can do to discredit western liberalism helps him - if he can convince enough people that american elections are rigged then he can say to his own citizens that real democracy doesn't exist, that the grass is not greener on the other side and so they should be content with his great leadership.

Re:should be content with his great leadership.

[dpilot]

Bump.

Re:should be content with his great leadership.

[Archtech]

Putin's singular goal is the elevation of the Russian state with him as its head. Because he's an autocrat that makes western liberalism an existential threat. Anything he can do to discredit western liberalism helps him - if he can convince enough people that american elections are rigged then he can say to his own citizens that real democracy doesn't exist, that the grass is not greener on the other side and so they should be content with his great leadership.

And because we don't have any idea who you are, or what your aims are, we should simply accept at face value your claim to know exactly what Mr Putin thinks and feels.

Re:should be content with his great leadership.

[Areyoukiddingme]

And because we don't have any idea who you are, or what your aims are, we should simply accept at face value your claim to know exactly what Mr Putin thinks and feels.

The Anonymous Coward is correct, but not because the Anonymous Coward has some secret backchannel access to Putin's brain. The Anonymous Coward is quoting Putin's own words in interviews with Western media, where he publicly and personally floated this theory to see how people would react. It's not guesswork. Putin said these things. It was widely covered in that same Western Media. I bet even Russia Today covered it, because they always repeat what Putin says.

Re:should be content with his great leadership.

[rickb928]

Actually, since the post described Putin's role as an autocrat, it was focused on the definition of his role, and so describing a reasonable, rational set of goals that could be expected pursuant to those goals.

Not, as seems so popular, ignoring long-standing, historical experience, and pleading his motives to be something else, more to the apologist's liking.

Re:should be content with his great leadership.

[Anonymous Coward]

Right now, the new line of "thinking" from my far-right "friends" consists "WE STAND UNITED!" with calls to "deal with traitorous liberals who weaken our country via their lack of support for the President." Basically, it's the same calls to Autocracy that even our founding fathers feared.

Re: should be content with his great leadership.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, Sure. Wer should believe your ilk because you would never lie.

You say it was "Hacking" and what you really mean it was some unclear humint Attack.

You lefties are caught in the spiderweb of your own lies.

Re:should be content with his great leadership.

[guises]

Be careful of the word liberalism: it means something different in the United States. Using the word "liberal" in a positive way will get your argument summarily dismissed by a large number of people, even if you're using the word in a way which they otherwise would not protest.

Re:should be content with his great leadership.

[houghi]

Who cares about influencing the machines if you can influence the people. The Ruskies decided to inform the public about an email server and people changed how they voted.

If they had not hacked it, people would have voted differently.

As always hacking is more about social engineering than that it is about tech stuff.
All you need to do is fool enough of the people enough of the time.

Re: should be content with his great leadership.

[Anonymous Coward]

Or even expose the truth - that often works too.

Re:should be content with his great leadership.

[Ol Olsoc]

Who cares about influencing the machines if you can influence the people.

What manner of bullshit is that? That is some pretty interesting defense of altering the votes there, Boris.

Collect your rubles on the way out.

Re:should be content with his great leadership.

[david_thornley]

We didn't need Russians for that. Comey affected the election by bringing up the email server in the last days of the campaign, even though he didn't have anything new.

Rigged for Hillary

[Anonymous Coward]

Its not like the democrat party hacked/stole the nomination away from Bernie. The Democratic party is to blame for all this. If Hillary won nobody would be talking about Russians.

Podesta didn't fall for the phishing scam

[Zontar_Thing_From_Ve]

To be fair, Clinton did have an unsecured Exchange server hanging on the public Internet, and her lieutenant John Podesta fell for the world's dumbest phishing scam... I mean, c'mon.

To be fair, Podesta didn't fall for the phishing scam. He thought the email was suspicious so he asked a millennial on his staff who was supposedly his email expert about it. The young guy went into an immediate panic and insisted that the email was completely legit and Podesta needed to click on the link immediately. So he did. Nobody will name the staffer or say what happened to him. The guy who fell for the phishing scam was Podesta's trusted staffer who was supposed to know how to detect this kind of thing.

Re:Podesta didn't fall for the phishing scam

[Enigma2175]

Nobody will name the staffer or say what happened to him.

Nobody will name him? So the thousands of articles that have the name "Charles Delevan" don't exist? This interview with the guy doesn't exist? The front page article in the New York Times (complete with a screenshot of the actual email) doesn't exist? Don't confuse your own ignorance with a conspiracy to keep information from you.

Re:Podesta didn't fall for the phishing scam

[gtall]

Well, Podesta didn't fail to click the phishing scam. If officials at his level are that clueless, it doesn't matter how good the hired help is. Those kinds of officials will still lead their organizations into cul-de-sacs of stupidity.

Re:Podesta didn't fall for the phishing scam

[Anonymous Coward]

> To be fair, Podesta didn't fall for the phishing scam.

Really? You believe that?

It's obvious the "staffer" could actually be a Russian operative.

Stop being so stupidly naive.

Re:Podesta didn't fall for the phishing scam

[orgelspieler]

This is one of the interesting features of most conspiracy features. "How come nobody is talking about XXXXX." The answers are normally, "They are, you just choose to ignore it" or "They aren't talking about it because it represents a worldview held by so few people, that nobody would even understand what they are talking about."

I don't bitch when the local news doesn't cover the installation of a new pipe organ in Polynesia with a rare type of reed stop. My wife doesn't complain when ABC doesn't do an expose on her phone's sudden failure to send emails. On the other hand, my son wants to know why nobody's talking about the fact that some kid traded him fake Pokemon cards. Is it because they are trying to hide something? Maybe they knew that kid had fake cards!

I guess conspiracy theorists just never grew up. A kid thinks, "People are not talking about what I think is important, therefore they must be against me personally." A well-rounded adult thinks, "People are not talking about this thing I think is important. They must have better things to do with their time. Maybe I can talk to some people and get their opinion about what's important to them." A typical American conspiracy theorist proclaims loudly, "The media isn't giving my flat-earth theory the air time it deserves, therefore Obama is a secret Muslim who is going to make me gay marry an illegal immigrant atheist."

Re:Podesta didn't fall for the phishing scam

[Fire_Wraith]

Good thing most senior executives and similarly educated intelligent people never fall for spear-phishing. I mean, it's not like spear-phishing is the most common APT attack method, right? /s

Re:Podesta didn't fall for the phishing scam

[Anonymous Coward]

At this point it's becoming too difficult to tell whether you're being sarcastic or not.

Re:Podesta didn't fall for the phishing scam

[Anonymous Coward]

Hahahah, so Charles gave him the link to the trusted Google page for changing his password.. But, it WAS Podesta who clicked the original phishing link.

Re:Podesta didn't fall for the phishing scam

[Anonymous Coward]

According to Enigma2175's sources. It WAS Podesta who fell for the scam, and clicked the phishing link.

The staffer, whether also taken in by the scam or just a typo in their reply like they claimed; actually sent a link to the real, Google page for changing your password. So, it was Podesta who failed to use the correct link.

Easy Fix for the Future

[Anonymous Coward]

Here is the easy fix to avoid future possibilities of our elections being hacked in the future: keep voting off the internet.

Party before country?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not unnamed sources, the FBI, CIA, NSA, House intelligence commitee, Senate intelligence committee have all confirmed it. You had Comey confirm it just the other day.

Various intelligence documents are there to be read, e.g. :
https://prod01-cdn07.cdn.firstlook.org/wp-uploads/sites/1/2017/06/gru-chart-russia-hacking-election-1496684832.jpg

And Trump campaign manager Stone has confessed to his discussions with Guccifer 2.0 (he did it on Russia Today if you want to watch the episode).

http://www.businessinsider.com/roger-stone-dnc-hacker-guccifer-democratic-party-2017-3

"Screenshots of Stone's back-and-forth with Guccifer via Twitter direct messaging were first revealed by The Smoking Gun. Stone later shared them with Business Insider."

i.e. Stone, Trumps campaign manager, himself, confirmed the discussions. Not unnamed sources.

“Payload coming. #Lockthemup," Stone tweeted on October 5.... On October 7 WikiLeaks published the first batch of Podesta emails."

Guccifer 2.0 is a Russian Intelligence Cover, he's not the actual hacker, just an English speaking Russian operative.
https://medium.com/@thegrugq/evidence-guccifer-2-0-is-russian-intel-55f9f8b3f135

Video of Russian Hacker in action

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's not forget that Black Box Voting caught a Russian Hacker on video!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4-wQhtRiP8

Re:Blockchain?

[Anonymous Coward]

Usual reason as to why not is because it would allow you to prove you voted for candidate XYZ, that can cause problems voter intimidation, vote selling and so on.

If it is online it can be hacked

[Anonymous Coward]

So, do not put voting systems online then.

red flag

[micahraleigh]

Any time I see the word "unprecendented" I tune it out.

There must be some part of the journalist brain that involuntarily peppers headlines and articles with that word.

great!

[cascadingstylesheet]

I'm all for secure, recountable paper ballots and IDs to have secure elections. Let's do it!

Amiright, Dems? What's that ... .no?

Re:great!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm all for secure, recountable paper ballots and IDs to have secure elections. Let's do it!

Amiright, Dems? What's that ... .no?

ID's are fine as long as they're issued by the government at no cost to the voter, to anyone registered to vote. (mail it in the envelope with the sample ballot and the notice of your polling place).

The problem with ID laws is they always just assume that they can pick some otehr ID issued fro an unrelated purpose (like a driver's license) and expect THAT to serve the job, or (if we assume less incompetence and more malice) they are intentionally crafted to give the people running the poling place some discretion over who gets to vote by seelctivly enforcing how strictly the info on the ID must match the info in the unrelated database for it to qualify as valid (Steven J. Thomas == Steven James Thomas, but Devon K. Williams != Devon King Williams, for example).

The reason not bothering with ID is superior to a harebrained plan like "use your driver's license" is because turning up to the polling place is the absolute stupidest way to commit voter fraud and can pretty safely be ignored as it won't be able to come anywhere near what somone collecting and filing out absentee ballots can achieve. So worrying about it is peny-wise-dollar-foolish at best, and overtly raciest at worst.

Re:great!

[thesandtiger]

I'm all for voter IDs, assuming the following:

- they are 100% free to the voter, which also means that none of the dependencies may cost money either
- they are available in a way that doesn't require taking time off of work or time away from family or require traveling anywhere
- there are people provided who will help individuals who don't understand how or want assistance in obtaining the ID obtain the ID
- they do not require a fixed address so that the homeless are not disenfranchised

Not everyone is able to take time off of work or travel easily, nor can everyone afford even a nominal amount to pay for the necessary documentation, nor do they understand how to work through a potentially confusing bureaucracy, nor do they have an address, etc. Those people still deserve to have their vote counted.

Anyone who thinks we MUST have voter ID but isn't in favor of doing everything we can to ensure that NO ONE who is eligible to vote is unable to is just a supporter of voter suppression.

What Evidence?

[s.petry]

So you think we should just ignore all of the massive amount of evidence from a dizzying array of sources, many of them independent and professional with no stake in the political world, just because you think it's all a gigantic sour grapes excuse argument?

The person you responded to stated very clearly the same thing most of us who are not leftists/progressives have been saying. SHOW US SOME EVIDENCE! What we have is a report based on 3rd party paid for by the DNC claiming "Russia" hacked the DNC. The FBI requested access to the servers to run a Federal investigation and were REFUSED!

Anonymously source claims are not evidence! For all we know there could be one person responsible for every single anonymous source. Read the statements on the record by Comey, Clapper, Obama, etc.. etc.. who all stated that the Election was not tampered with. Not 1 vote was changed, and according to them not one vote was cast illegally. (and we just had 12 Democrats indited for voter fraud, link so we know that issues exist, but no evidence that a R or Trump did anything illegal). We were promised an investigation into fraud, and I'm hoping it's either underway or will still be completed.

The sources in TFA are all biased sources. I don't see anything new here, just the same old Stalinist tactics we have seen since last July from the Democratic party and MSM. If you want to sway my opinion, start producing facts.

Like many others, I don't fall for appeals to emotion, appeals to authority, or ad hominem. I study facts!

Re:What Evidence?

[Archangel Michael]

If you actually listen to the claims being made now, the Russians Hacked the Elections, no actual evidence needed, because Hillary lost and that is impossible without collusion with the Russians.

Every bit of Actual evidence is from tainted sources, who have already been discredited and caught offering up lies and propaganda.

I don't trust the FBI, CIA or any of the other organizations, because Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence has ALREADY been caught lying, under oath, to congress, and he was the head over all the three letter intelligence agencies.

So, until you actually produce vote changing, influences beyond the list I provided above, how Trump won, and Hillary lost, the best you can do is sounding a lot like "Vast Right Wing Conspiracy" straight out of the Clinton Playbook.

There is actually way more evidence of Clinton colluding with the Russians, than Trump. After all, Clinton is a very smart lady, and Trump is an idiot , but some how, we're supposed to believe the idiot managed to conspire with Clinton's benefactors to win the Election, all under the noses of the American People, who were duped into voting for Trump, because they are stupid, and that is "Russians Hacked the Election".

Please, tell me where my analysis is wrong with FACTS. I'll happily change my view should any facts actually emerge.

Re: What Evidence?

[bestweasel]

Comey and Rogers both told the Congressional Committee that there was Russian interference in the elections.
The Republicans on the committee didn't argue.

You won't accept anonymous or 'biased' sources. What evidence would you accept?

Re: What Evidence?

[s.petry]

Facts are what account for evidence, not baseless biased allegations. If you disagree, remember that an anonymous source alleges that you sell heroin at junior high schools to support your desires for pedophilia. One source not enough? How about 5 anonymous sources, all with the same allegation against you. If baseless allegation counts, turn yourself into the Police for immediate criminal processing.

Re: What Evidence?

[Anonymous Coward]

You guys think they would just give all the details to the public? And not save it for an investigation? Which is probably on-going?

And it speaks to the public's ignorance to intelligence strategies. Sometimes you want your opponent to think you don't know, so you can let them invest resources into an intelligence campaign that won't work.

But whatever, I am sure all of the software developers, mechanics, plumbers, and school teachers of America are the ones with all of the experience in the intelligence world. Not, you know, the people in the industry/field.

The important thing we have found is that no amount of proof will mean anything to the people continually asking for it, so none needs to be given. If anything, it's better to keep it all a secret, so we have an upper hand in cyber war. The fact that this even has to come to light to be used as arguments is annoying, because it is better kept secret.

Re: What Evidence?

[Mashiki]

They both also said that: Trump wasn't involved, the RNC wasn't involved and said that neither were being investigated. So again, why this MUH RUSSIA narrative?

Re: What Evidence?

[Anonymous Coward]

The intelligence agencies would be absolutely thrilled to release the details of their analytical methods. /s

Or are you claiming that these agencies are partisan? Got proof to back that up?

Re:What Evidence?

[Fire_Wraith]

Sorry, no - the evidence is out there, and the intelligence and infosec communities take it seriously, because we're talking about activity that has happened before, is happening now, and will happen again, from the same specific groups. If you can't be bothered to educate yourself on it, I'm not going to rehash it again.

Why? Because it's like trying to argue climate science. You, or at least the majority of people screaming for evidence, won't actually accept any that is given. You'll find yet another excuse to dismiss every single little tidbit, for one reason or another, no matter how farcical of a reason it is. You're too invested in believing the opposite, or at least, being able to reassure yourself that this is something you really don't have to worry about at all.

Except it is. And this isn't partisan at its heart, despite the efforts of many to make it that way. This isn't about Hillary's or Democratic fee-fees. This is about the cold hard fact that Russia tried to interfere on several levels, and by all appearances saw at least some success. Do you think they're just going to change their mind and not do it next time?

Denying the reality won't change it. We need to be taking action to make sure that the next elections are secured, not burying our heads in the sand insisting that nothing is wrong, or that "it's too hard".

Re:What Evidence?

[s.petry]

Sorry, no - the evidence is out there,

Which is exactly why you point to NOTHING! Show me a single fact. Not a statement from a political figure, not a statement from an anonymous source, but a fact. For every unofficial claim of "Russia" hacking there is another statement from that same person (as well as others) ON THE RECORD stating "no evidence" of collusion and Russia did not change or manipulate any votes.

In other words, you are claiming that Clapper, Obama, Comey, etc.. are all Liars who committed perjury. Are you leading the "Lock them up!" chant?

Brush up on your history comrade, I understand the Stalinist/Leninist tactics being used because I have studied them. Other tyrannical states (Germany, Italy, Japan, Cambodia, Cuba, DPRK, etc.. etc.. ) use the same tactics to criminalize people they dislike too.

Re: What Evidence?

[Anonymous Coward]

this has been extensively reported on. if you decide to ignore all of these sources, and instead make a decision based on some other unknown source (i.e. internal circle jerk), you might as well be a flat-earther, bigfoot hunter, UFO spotter, and loch ness fisherman. you put an unreachably high bar of evidence on things you don't want to believe, while putting a very low bar of evidence on things you want to believe. you have become that nutcase.

Re: What Evidence?

[KGIII]

They already told you, they are not going to tell you. It's out there and they're not going to rehash it.

Sheesh...

Don't you know how logic, reasoning, debate, and critical thinking work?

It doesn't even matter, they've already determined you'll dismiss it.

Re: What Evidence?

[Anonymous Coward]

Comey and Rogers both told the Congressional Committee under oath that there was Russian interference in the elections.

FTFY

Re:What Evidence?

[Anonymous Coward]

Like many others, you don't "study facts", you cherrypick "facts" to fit the agenda you want to advocate for.

Nobody, even now, is saying that "votes were changed" in the sense that you seem to mean. But votes were absolutely, unequivocally, beyond any shadow of a doubt, changed in the sense that voters were "persuaded" by means both dishonest and illegal either to change their votes, or not to vote at all. And that this effort was coordinated by a hostile foreign power.

Why doesn't that concern you?

Re: What Evidence?

[Anonymous Coward]

What evidence would you accept?

The undeniable facts from Trump's tweets of course!

Re: What Evidence?

[Anonymous Coward]

faggot

Re: What Evidence?

[bestweasel]

You still haven't said what facts will prove to you that Russia interfered with the US election (this isn't just about the DNC hack)?

Why keep on about the anonymous sources? Why assume that the publicly available evidence is all there is? You and I can't see it, yet. When the various investigations have finished, we'll know more. Senator Burr (R, Ironside) has seen the evidence:

BURR: Do you have any doubt that Russia attempted to interfere in the 2016 elections?
COMEY: None.

BURR: Do you have any doubt that the Russian government was behind the intrusions in the DNC and the DCCC systems, and the subsequent leaks of that information?
COMEY: No, no doubt.

BURR: Do you have any doubt that the Russian government was behind the cyber intrusion in the state voter files?
COMEY: No.

BURR: Do you have any doubt that officials of the Russian government were fully aware of these activities?
COMEY: No doubt.

You come across as a Republican but you don't toe the party line. Why is that?

Re: What Evidence?

[AHuxley]

Re "You guys think they would just give all the details to the public?"
Code litter found by contractors and not the US gov?
The IP range contractors found?
Russian working hours are 9 to 5?
Fragments of "Russian" language in malware code that has been in the wild for years and is well understood by private security firms?
Random malware that has been flowing around the "internet" for years?
AC the 'the people in the industry/field" have presented what they have and its an ip range, time of day, junk AV detectable code litter thats been around for years...

Re: What Evidence?

[AHuxley]

AC lets go down your list
Your https://www.usatoday.com/story... is just saying the 17 intelligence agencies released a report.
Your http://theduran.com/this-is-th... has 17 intelligence agencies released a report. With the NSA been moderately confident.
"the FBI did not even get access to the DNC servers"
"analytical judgment" " CIA’s analysis and the difference between its judgment and the FBI’s assessment"
Lets keep reading
Note the link to "Cyber Firm Rewrites Part of Disputed Russian Hacking Report" in your listed links AC (March 24, 2017)
https://www.voanews.com/a/cybe...

Re: What Evidence?

[david_thornley]

Facts are what account for evidence, not baseless biased allegations.

Sure. However, hard facts are often not released to the public during an investigation.

Now, if there actually is no evidence of Russian interference, why the resistance to an investigation? If the Trump contacts with Russia were innocuous (as they very well could be), why try to cover them up? The Trump administration looks like it's in cover-up mode, and that raises my suspicions.

Re: What Evidence?

[s.petry]

Resistance to propaganda != resistance to an investigation. I don't know anyone who has complained about the investigation. I know plenty of people who complain about the constant stream of statements being made by media conglomerates making baseless claims.

Trump lost the popular vote

[0111 1110]

Didn't Trump actually lose the election in terms of the popular vote? To you foreigners who blame us for voting Trump in we didn't really. The electors did. Not us. We voted in our own version of Theresa May.

If the Russians or someone pretending to be them (maybe it was Aaron Swartz and a team of his undead minions) managed to succeed in altering the results of the election what does this imply about Hillary winning the popular vote by a significant margin but losing in electoral votes? Is it possible that the hackers actually wanted to try to make sure that the unusually extreme Trump would lose? After all most hackers with the skill to pull off something like this are very unlikely to be Trump supporters.

It is unusual for the popular vote to be so much higher than the electoral vote. I mean maybe some electors were bribed to vote Trump, but otoh maybe the popular vote was just the only vote that was hackable. It would be ironic if it turns out that an investigation uncovers that votes were actually hacked in the other direction. That would seem to then imply that it wasn't Russians after all, but rather someone framing them. North Korea maybe?

If I were investigating the first thing I would do is look into the finances of the electors who voted for trump even though the popular vote was against him. The second thing I would do would be to try to figure out how many popular votes were changed and which direction they were changed in. Maybe Trump lost popular votes because some Libertarian hacker altered them to vote for the Libertarian candidate (yay!).

Re:Trump lost the popular vote

[davide marney]

Nonsense. The US election requires one to win a majority of ALL THE STATES. Why? Because it's named the "United States" of America, not just "Amerika".

Clinton absolutely, positively lost the popular vote of ALL THE STATES, and Trump won them. Which is why he's sitting in the Oval Office and she's taken up knitting.

Re:Trump lost the popular vote

[gemtech]

I liked your post until you stated this: "After all most hackers with the skill to pull off something like this are very unlikely to be Trump supporters." But I get your point.

Re:Trump lost the popular vote

[Anonymous Coward]

Didn't Trump actually lose the election in terms of the popular vote? [cnn.com] To you foreigners who blame us for voting Trump in we didn't really.

Yes, yes you did whether you're aware of the fact or not, or choose to ignore it for ideological/political reasons.

The US has been electing Presidents using the Electoral College since the founding. It's not exactly arcane knowledge. If you did not vote and/or organize with the goal of securing electors but instead pursued the popular vote that's your own stupidity & ignorance, and those of your compatriots, at fault.

Quit whining like a bitch, we're tired of your pathetic bad-loserman shit.

Re:Trump lost the popular vote

[Obfuscant]

Didn't Trump actually lose the election in terms of the popular vote?

There is no popular vote for US President, so no, Trump didn't lose "the popular vote".

There are two kinds of people who fall back into "popular vote" mode when referring to the US Presidential elections. The first are those who see a huge mandate for some some specific political agenda that may or may not have been a major issue to the voters. The others are those who are unhappy that their candidate lost according to the rules in place and well known to all participants (at least those who didn't skip civics class the day the Electoral College was covered, and we don't care what ignorant people think). Neither group provides a significant reason to change the outcome.

If I were investigating the first thing I would do is look into the finances of the electors who voted for trump even though the popular vote was against him.

I see you skipped civics class. Electors who voted for Trump did so because they were selected by their States to cast their votes for Trump. What you just admitted is that you would waste the taxpayer's money investigating why someone did what they were expected and selected to do.

The second thing I would do would be to try to figure out how many popular votes were changed and which direction they were changed in.

You didn't get the memo. There is no vote fraud. Nothing to see here, move along.

Re:Trump lost the popular vote

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no popular vote for US President, so no, Trump didn't lose "the popular vote".

There is a popular vote, and it is counted for President, and Trump DID lose it. Just like several before him.

That he actually bothered to try to claim a landslide, and fabricated an excuse about illegal voters, rather than admit it, speaks poorly of himself.

There are two kinds of people who fall back into "popular vote" mode when referring to the US Presidential elections.

There are two kinds of people who fall back into denying the existence and validity of the popular vote when referring to the US Presidential elections.

First, there are the naive fools who think that the Electoral College is some sort of effective institutional bulwark that doesn't let the popular masses decide dangerous things, which they find very scary, especially when thinking the ones who live in states that don't vote as they do. They're ignorant, and don't even understand the Electoral College offers no protection or systematic defense, a known fault since the 1800s.

Then there are the crass manipulators who know they lost it, know the Electoral College is an abomination that distorts the election process to the point of absurdity, but defend it anyway, since their moral stance depends entirely on the advantage of the moment.

You're one of the latter. It is quite obvious, and that's why your words are less persuasive than Jeff Sessions today. You actually provide a significant reason to refer to the Popular Vote Loser, and to continue to protest what is obviously a broken and flawed electoral system.

The others are those who are unhappy that their candidate lost according to the rules in place and well known to all participants (at least those who didn't skip civics class the day the Electoral College was covered, and we don't care what ignorant people think).

Actually, objections to the rules were in existence before the current election. And many people actually look past the superficial lessons of the Electoral College, and actually learned about the flawed processes in 1800(the first contested election!), 1824(what a Corrupt Bargain!, 1876(Just after the Civil War, and they handed back segregation for what?), 2000(The Supreme Court shot itself in the foot on that one), and now they can add 2016 to the list. YAY! (In fact, 1876 was probably the most flawed, and almost nobody learns about it. HMMM!!)

The second thing I would do would be to try to figure out how many popular votes were changed and which direction they were changed in.

You didn't get the memo. There is no vote fraud. Nothing to see here, move along.

Trump says otherwise. Who are we to argue? He insists that the election process was so corrupt, 3+ million votes were illegal.

Across the whole country. That means dozens of Congressional Representatives and Senators have to be removed, not to mention a plethora of state officials. But the President speaks, and he would know, wouldn't he?

It'll be fun, watching the prosecutions.

Re:Trump lost the popular vote

[0111 1110]

There are two kinds of people who fall back into "popular vote" mode when referring to the US Presidential elections.

You forgot the third kind who just think the electoral college system is stupid, antiquated, and unjust and think it is silly to call ourselves a democracy when the candidate with the minority of votes wins. It does underscore the pointlessness of voting though. What a waste of time.

I actually didn't care at all who won the last election. The only reason I might start to care is if Trump actually starts doing some crazy stuff he has talked about like banning all muslims from entering the country or building his crazy wall. So far he can't even get his limited travel ban. So I'm not bothered.

Personally though I think the popular vote should matter more than the electoral one. One man one vote I say. If you are going to make some citizens' vote count more at least base it on something meaningful like maybe IQ. Maybe the 'electors' should be required to have a formally tested IQ of at least 150 to qualify. Hell while we are at it maybe we should disqualify anyone with an IQ of less than 150 from voting at all. You'd have to qualify before you were allowed to vote. That would be fun.

Electors who voted for Trump did so because they were selected by their States to cast their votes for Trump.

I'm just familiar with the basic idea of the electoral college. I don't really know the details. My understanding was that the electors are generally supposed to vote along with the popular vote in their jurisdiction, but that they don't have to. You are saying 'the state' tells the electors who to vote for? If that's the case then the elector system is even more pointless than I thought. So who exactly is it that tells the electors who to vote for?

You didn't get the memo. There is no vote fraud. Nothing to see here, move along.

How can we be sure of that? I wasn't aware that it was so definitive. In fact I'm still waiting for the evidence of the tampering to actually be presented. Of course if votes had been changed I wouldn't necessarily expect our intelligence services to tell us that. Because reasons.

Re:Trump lost the popular vote

[Anonymous Coward]

Good job spelling "Amerika" with a "k", comrade!

Re:Trump lost the popular vote

[Anonymous Coward]

Nonsense. The US election requires one to win a majority of ALL THE STATES.

No, it does not, that is not in the law at all. In point of fact, with a 538 member college, a minimum of 11 states is required.

And those states, they don't require an actual majority either.

http://www.npr.org/2016/11/02/500112248/how-to-win-the-presidency-with-27-percent-of-the-popular-vote
http://www.nationalpopularvote.com/written-explanation

Clinton absolutely, positively lost the popular vote of ALL THE STATES, and Trump won them.

Nope, that's not how the 2016 election went, in fact, Clinton is still 3+ million ahead.

Sorry, but you don't get to make up facts. Not once, not twice. Not a third time.

Re:Trump lost the popular vote

[david_thornley]

The US Constitution places few limits on electors, saying that they will be selected as the state decides. Most states choose them according to which Presidential candidate gets the plurality of votes in that state. I think two subdivide it further.

Many states have laws prescribing who the electors have to vote for. I don't think any of these laws have been tested in court, and I think them of at best questionable constitutionality.

And, yes, it's pointless. It was originally set up to give slave states more influence in who became President, and in the hope that the electors would actually use some judgment. Neither is applicable nowadays.

Re:Trump lost the popular vote

[Obfuscant]

You forgot the third kind who just think the electoral college system is stupid, antiquated, and unjust

No, the "third kind" are really either just upset that their candidate lost and want the system changed under the assumption that their preferred candidate will win the next time under a different system. At which time, they will probably find fault with the new system when their candidate loses again, and the cycle will repeat. Or they are ignorant of the system and don't understand why it is the way it is.

and think it is silly to call ourselves a democracy

The United States is a confederation of states, as should be evident from the name of the country. The one election that selects a federal leader is conducted under a system that represents that political organization. All the other elections are simple plurality of the popular vote wins. Since I understand the difference between a state of the US being composed of counties, and the US being composed of individual states, I have no problem with the Electoral College system. It is a rather intelligent means of factoring in both citizen and state interests in the federal leadership. And I have said that even when my candidate lost.

Personally, I find the argument that we should elect a President the same way we elect the local dog catcher because that's how we elect the dog catcher to be particularly unconvincing.

If you are going to make some citizens' vote count more

The system as it stands doesn't do that. Nobody sits down and says "we're going to make Joe Smith's vote count double Bill Brown's." It DOES include state interests when making the decision.

I would point out that ANY voting system makes some people's votes worthless. Anyone who votes for a losing candidate under ANY system has wasted their vote. The 49% of the people who voted for Joe Smith when Bill Brown wins with 51% might as well not have bothered voting. Does this disturb you? If you are disturbed by the losers having their vote count less in the Presidential election, then the entire voting system must drive you nuts. And before you talk about other voting systems, this applies to ANY system. Any system that has a winner and losers winds up with the people who voted for the losers having their votes made worthless. Even the system used in GB where districts elect MPs and the Prime Minister comes from the majority party (or coalition sans majority) results in every vote for losers counting for nothing.

You are saying 'the state' tells the electors who to vote for?

No, I didn't say that. Let me quote it again for you:

Electors who voted for Trump did so because they were selected by their States to cast their votes for Trump.

The electors are selected by the State, which is not "the state" telling them, it is the people of the state who have bothered to cast a ballot.

If that's the case then the elector system is even more pointless than I thought.

Since you don't understand how the electors of a state are selected and why they vote for the candidate they do, it is clear that your understanding of the Electoral College system is pretty minimal, and your arguments against it are based more in ignorance than in reason.

How can we be sure of that?

Whoosh. We don't look, that's how we can be sure of that. We don't look for vote fraud from ineligible voters, we don't look for it otherwise. Except now, because ineligible voters are likely to vote for the party that gives them free stuff (like the Daley machine in Chicago would hire people to vote multiple times, e.g.) and "otherwise" is the current excuse for why that same party's candidate lost this time. One kind of fraud preferentially helps one party, so anyone who wants to investigate and prevent it is "racist"; the other kind must be why they lost

Re:Trump lost the popular vote

[Obfuscant]

I don't think any of these laws have been tested in court, and I think them of at best questionable constitutionality.

Since Article II, Section 1 is explicit in saying that the electors shall be selected in the manner determined by the Legislature of each state, it would be a difficult argument to make that the Constitution does NOT pass control of the electors to the states explicitly, with the limited exceptions remaining in Article II, Section 1. There is nothing in the Constitution that prevents the Legislatures from deciding that the voting choice of the electors cannot be used to decide who the electors are.

And, yes, it's pointless. It was originally set up to give slave states more influence in who became President,

It was originally set up to lessen the imbalance that more populous states had over less populated ones in the selection of the President and Vice President -- the only election that selects a leader of the entire US. Every state gets two electors just for being a state, not just the slave states.

and in the hope that the electors would actually use some judgment.

"in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct". Where does it say the electors get to decide? Since it does not, then this is a state matter, and the states' Legislatures have been given sole authority here. If they say "you must vote the way the popular vote of the state tells you", the Constitution does not contradict that.

I think a close precedent would be the SCOTUS decision that stopped yet another recount in Florida, which was based on the same clause. The Florida legislature had determined the means of counting and recounting Florida votes and how the result would be certified, and SCOTUS ruled that it did not have authority to mandate yet another recount once those previously determined rules had been followed. The Florida legislature was responsible for the selection of the electors.

Re:Trump lost the popular vote

[david_thornley]

The Constitution says that the electors will be selected according to the individual state's decision. However, once selected, is it legal for a state to constrain the vote? It's certainly legal to have parties supply slates, which will be selected according to the popular vote in the state. That doesn't necessarily mean an elector pledged to a candidate has to vote for that candidate. I haven't heard of any "faithless elector" cases getting into the courts. You mention the 2000 Florida election, but that court case was about how electors are selected, not about what they can legally do (or illegally do - it's conceivable that a vote cast for another candidate would be illegal but binding).

With regard as to who the EC was for, you're thinking of the two votes from the Senators. In fact, slave states had more representation in the House per free citizen, with slaves and other unfree persons counting as 3/5 of a person despite not being able to vote. Basing the number of electors on the Senate and House representation means that slave states got more electors per voter than free states.

As far as my comment on the electors using judgment, I got that from the Federalist Papers, I believe number 68, and I think that can be taken to be part of the original intent. The idea was that the electors would correct some of the popular vote mistakes, that they would not vote for a creature of a foreign government or a popular but unqualified candidate. You can see how well that worked in December 2016.

This is correct.

[WillAffleckUW]

Note that any voting system that uses networked registration has vulnerabilities, but the most resilient are those with paper ballots, automatic voter registration starting at 16, a DSS copy facing the Net, and optical scanners that are not networked.

Re:This is correct.

[Obfuscant]

but the most resilient are those with paper ballots, automatic voter registration starting at 16

No "voting system" that automatically registers people who have no expressed interest in participating is "resilient". It creates voter lists filled with usable identities for vote fraud, especially in a vote-by-mail system where all of those people are mailed a ballot whether they want them or not. Every ballot thrown out at the post office is a potential source of an invalid vote, and every unwanted ballot sent to a home is a potential ballot cast by the spouse or other resident. The necessary regular purging of moved/died/etc people who had no interest in voting anyway creates another opportunity for political bickering over one party trying to disenfranchise people -- people who had never voted and are no longer legal voters anyway.

But registration is not a "voting system", it is a registration system. The voting system is how those registered voters actually do their voting.

So tell me: did *anyone* read the articles?

[whitroth]

What the presumably Russian crackers were after was altering things like voting roles, resulting in voter suppression.

You know, *exactly* like the GOP has been doing with gerrymandering, and having people at the polls challenging voters' registration, and the mass dropping of folks from the voting roles.

One that sticks in my mind was a guy not allowed to vote because he was registered in another state. Note, he was whatisname, jr, and it was his *father* who was registered in another state.

And there is *no* national system to move registrations when you relocate. Who here has ever relocated, and written to their old state or commonwealth to let them know to remove them from the old voter roles?

Re:So tell me: did *anyone* read the articles?

[Obfuscant]

You know, *exactly* like the GOP has been doing with gerrymandering,

Democrats have never gerrymandered? And I hate to remind you, gerrymandering has nothing at all to do with, nor any effect on, presidential elections.

... and the mass dropping of folks from the voting roles. ... And there is *no* national system to move registrations when you relocate.

So in your last paragraph you lead with the reason why voter rolls need to be purged every so often. Or "massive dropping of folks" who no longer deserve to be able to vote in a district, as you put it.

Of course there is no national system to manage voter registrations. Voting is not a national process. It's managed at the county/parish level, with perhaps a state level of oversight. (In Oregon we register at Dept. Motor Veh., and that registration is forwarded to the county of residence for processing.) That's because it is a local function, and we have exactly ONE election that has a nationwide result. One. But many many at the state and lower levels.

war with Russia?

[k6mfw]

Although we've never been in a shooting war with Russia/USSR (exception of early skirmish of US troops on Russian soil in parts of WWI, dogfights with Mig15s and F86s, shootdown of recon planes in 1950s plus U2 in 1960) I wonder as they say tensions are increasing even though Trump and his cronies are buddy buddies with Putin and his cronies. We scream about hacks and cyberwar, can we say things will get serious if Trump pulls ABM missiles and F22s out of Poland?

What about the primaries and caucuses?

[damn_registrars]

While those are run by local parties in the US, there is still opportunity for an outside player to influence or interfere with them. When I went to the caucus this year I left knowing the result of my own precinct but nothing beyond that, and many people left without waiting to find out the result of their own precinct. Certainly the Russians knew early in the nomination process that Trump was by far the candidate most favorable to them; why would they not want to interfere at that point?

Re:What about the primaries and caucuses?

[Anonymous Coward]

The effect the Russians can have on primaries and caucuses is negligible compared to the effect both parties' national committees have. Just ask Bernie.

Re:Blockchain?

[ebyrob]

Keeping votes secret while counting them in voting machines has been compared to providing secure DRM to publishers. Given any kind of determined attack it's almost impossible to secure. I don't think block-chain is going to help much with that.

Of course all of this is in a theoretical framework where machine manufacturers are probably open source, competent and actually care if their machines are secure. Realistically most of these guys would just put the block-chain in to look secure and then back door everything.

Only Trump

[stolidobserver]

Russia must have decided that Obama was a big enough blow to the US that there was no reason to hack his elections...

Re:Only Trump

[stolidobserver]

To clarify something: This is not about whether an election tampering happened, it's about the federal government securing the rights to control all aspects of future elections by ramping up the scare tactics of an "insecure vote". I see in this thread they have succeeded in getting you all off topic.

You're an idiot!

[Anonymous Coward]

Herd mentality and naive twats like you that believe this proven bullshit( the Russians did it... ) are what can topple the "sovereignty" of nations

Who is Anonymous Source?

[Anonymous Coward]

The burning question not even Preparation H can handle is who is "Anonymous Source"? Where does Xe live? What does Xe eat for breakfast?
At what point will Anonymous Source release the logs to show how these Russian Rapscallions penetrated so deep into the Servers and minds of these great lands. When does Anonymous Source release all the nefarious details of these exploits so that we can have justice and remove the Pretender Trump and his cabal of Crypto Russians.
Everything I have read indicates Putin (obviously an Anti-Christ) personally used his mercenary hordes of Russian Hackers (I'm looking at you 4Chan) to corrupt the media and hack the minds of the American voters in favor of Trump the pretender. Now, obviously, this is no easy task so there is plenty of evidence. We have voting machine logs, we have router logs, we have firewall logs and DNC server logs. Anonymous Source your people need you. Please release the evidence.

Reply to This

Some other things

[Anonymous Coward]

As a European I think it would be naive, or just arrogant, to think that whatever information a government agency has in some matter isn't tainted by errors, flaws, or things one could label "false flag".

Ofc, the country known as United States of America has no credibility with me, making it too easy to frown on all the accusations I am reading about interference in a country's election process, because the country is just not interested in holding a moral high ground, and it probably never was. Simply subscribing to certain ideas of morality, doesn't make you 'moral', and so the things you do reflect poorly on you when you behave badly as a country.

Re:Obama's Response: I Told Putin to ‘Cut It

[Anonymous Coward]

And I bet you would have talked about how Obama was trying to wreck the election if he had come out and said that we just don't know what or how much tampering was done!

Sabotaging Trump

[mi]

The actual winner spends a far portion of each and every day sabotaging himself.

Whether this is true or not, it has littled-to-nothing to do with my point. Which is that major newspapers and TV-channels do try their worst to sabotage him. Your attempts to change subject from that to Trump's own actions are just that — attempts to change subject.

Now, we may disagree on judging such sabotage — whether it is commendable or despicable for these guys to slow down the President's fulfilling his promises — but you can not deny the fact of it.

Re:Sabotaging Trump

[MightyMartian]

If, by sabotage, you mean they report what he says and does, then I concede the point, but then again, that's their job, so if Trump doesn't want them sabotaging him, he should stop giving them so much fodder.

Re:Sabotaging Trump

[mi]

If, by sabotage, you mean they report what he says and does, then I concede the point

No, by "sabotage" I mean publication of falsehoods and innuendo, which, without stating an accusation, masterfully create a perception of the impeachment-worthy "high crimes and misdemeanors" having already been committed by the President.

he should stop giving them so much fodder.

What "fodder" did he give anybody to accuse him of treason? None — but for months we were talking about it... Indeed, Comey, of all people, knew perfectly well, the charges of "treason" are so baseless, there is not even an investigation about them — but still maneuvered to have a special prosecutor appointed to investigate something — even though no one can even state a coherent accusation, much less prove anything.

That is done to sabotage his agenda — there is no other plausible explanation — an undeniable and objective fact...

Re: Sabotaging Trump

[Anonymous Coward]

Ooo poor baby. Here let me share my birth certificate conspiracy theory...

Re: Sabotaging Trump

[WeezulDK]

Ooo poor baby. Here let me share my birth certificate conspiracy theory...

That was originally introduced by the Clinton campaign? What about the "Russian" conspiracy? Who pushed that narrative first? Right... It was the Clinton campaign again... Are we starting to sense a pattern?

Re:Sabotaging Trump

[david_thornley]

If Trump wants to look innocent of impeachable crimes, he needs to either divest himself of his business holdings, or become a lot more transparent. Any money he accepts from a foreign government without consent of Congress is unconstitutional, as is any money he accepts from any government in the US aside from the compensation specified by law. I don't have proof that he has violated an emoluments clause, but it seems awfully likely.

Re:Sabotaging Trump

[mi]

If Trump wants to look innocent of impeachable crimes

Whatever he wants, I want every and all suggestion of him being a "traitor" to be met with the proverbial: prove it, bitch.

Any money he accepts from a foreign government without consent of Congress is unconstitutional

I'll just leave this here.

I don't have proof that he has violated an emoluments clause, but it seems awfully likely.

There is no question of fact here — he really is getting money from abroad, because he ran an international business before becoming President. The remaining question is that of law — whether or not what he is doing is illegal. But even if it were, it would not have constituted treason.

Re:Sabotaging Trump

[david_thornley]

I don't remember personally accusing him of treason. In peacetime, I doubt that it's possible to commit treason.

Trump is getting money from abroad, but as long as it's from strictly private sources that's constitutional. The question of illegality depends on whether he's getting money from foreign or domestic governments, as the law is pretty clear here. Obviously, that wouldn't be treason, which I don't remember ever accusing him of, but violating the Constitution in business dealings while President is certainly an impeachable offense.

Russian Hackers for Clinton

[Anonymous Coward]

If the Russians really did do all of this hacking to influence the election (no evidence has been shown), how do we know they were helping Trump? Remember how Trump was saying the election was "fixed" and Obama and Clinton were saying that it wasn't and that Trump should just accept the results? But then Trump won and Clinton and Obama changed their tune and said the Russians were hacking the election to help Trump.

I suspect that there was some sort of Russian hacking going on, just like always. But they were trying to influence the election in favor of the Dems. If Clinton had won, all of the Russian hacking stories would never have appeared on CNN. But since she lost, the Dems are now trying to sway public opinion by repeating the mantra "The Russians Did It". This is all to firmly plant the idea in enough people's minds, so that if the truth ever does come out, very few people will believe it.

Except this is all made up exaggerated crap.

[Anonymous Coward]

I only pray that for every step they make to create more lies about Russia, that Putin makes it even harder for them to pollute agenda 2030 into Russia. Putin should reinforce the border and lock out big pharma companies from in any form from any country 3-fold for every time these lies are made up.

You lie

[Anonymous Coward]

Story explaining it.

Comey, under oath, said no federal agency looked at the DNC servers. It was looked at by CrowdStrike, paid by the DNC to claim Russia hacked the servers. Since Muller has been appointed, and lying under oath is likely to get jail time, CrowdStrike is no longer willing to say Russia hacked the DNC servers.

So you have exactly ZERO people on this planet willing to say Russia hacked the DNC servers. Think about that, not a SINGLE person is willing to say what you claim while under oath.

Why are you making things up? And then you attack people for pointing out your lies? Maybe its you who is denying the facts, seeing as now you have been shown them and haven't been able to show a single thing to support your claims. Truth-denier

Help

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you spell out your own critical thinking process from start to end on this because I'm interested but don't know what exactly is the deception here and where to begin

He's not arguing for anything.

[Anonymous Coward]

...

Back Channel? Aren't those 'BAD' (TM)?

[Anonymous Coward]

The most INTERESTING part of this is that it admits that Obama had a 'back channel' to Moscow/the Russians. Something the press tore the Trump Administration up for trying to set up via Kushner. Yet another demonstration that if 'done by Trump' = 'BAD'(TM), done by Obama (or any other President) = 'GOOD'(TM).

And no, this shouldn't matter what the collective 'pipe dreams' are in respect to any conspiracy theories of 'collusion' may be. Back channels have been in place in all administrations for like 'ever'. Trying to paint Trump's attempt to set one up as anything other than 'normal procedure' demonstrates the left's total cognitive dissonance.

You don't want "evidence"

[Anonymous Coward]

The evidence will be presented when the certainty for success is highest. You don't want any evidence any way. You just want to bitch. Any thing we presented as evidence would be hand waved away. We could show you a video of dude point blank shooting someone in the head and you would scream it's fake. We're figuring out your republican bullshit and we're changing the game. Suck it, deplorable.

Soooo - the Russians exposed the candidates?

[bwanagary]

All this hooplah isn't about Russians hacking the election - influencing the voters. The point being missed is that _if_ the Russians hacked and released facts about a candidate that the voters disliked enough to change their vote for another candidate, it means that that the "hacked" candidate was simply exposed for what they really are. If the accusers are right then Russia didn't "make up" the facts - just made them visible to all. Kinda like wikileaks. The deceit of hiding facts that voters would not support is the true "hacking the election". Now the lamestream media - they do make up the "facts". Where's that outrage?

Podesta consulted an "expert"

[Anonymous Coward]

Podesta did not just fall prey to a simple scam. He forwarded the email to an IT staff member who accidentally text-replied "it is authentic" when he meant to send the message "it is NOT authentic."

Straw men

[s.petry]

Nothing at all like arguing climate science. The majority of people agree that pollution is a problem, but disagree that taxing a populace (US) and redistributing their wealth will fix anything.

In the "Russia" investigation, it is well known that Russia hacks and attempts to hack the US. Just like China does to the US and Russia, the US does to Russia and China, etc... The specific allegation is that Russia "changed" the outcome of the election and stole it from Clinton. That allegation is where facts are lacking, and all we have are "anonymous" reports and innuendo/allegation. That is a very serious charge not to have facts.

Get off your high horse. I have worked in IT Security for 3 decades. I

VOTING MACHINES!

[Anonymous Coward]

I knew this would happen. The problem is voting machines.

To be frank, I thought it would happen FAR earlier. I thought Mitt Romney would end up president. I warned people THEN... you give machines the vote, and they'll elect a friggin' robot!

keep repeating it..

[Anonymous Coward]

that will make it more true, just like the bible. hammer it in till it's accepted.

Hand counting works

[aberglas]

You do not have to speculate. Look at Australia. All properly scrutineered. And with a more complex multi vote system as well.

Cost is about US$4/vote to run the entire election, including the count. Much less than the computerized systems.

There is a reason that the US loves voting machines. And it is not cost. It is the fact that they CAN be hacked.

What did they actually do?

[Anonymous Coward]

As in, actually do.

More fake news

[AHuxley]

The US election system cant be "hacked" to show different results by "computers" at a federal or final state level.
State workers and party officials would notice at a city and state level. Their counted numbers would not match.
Russia would have to fly in staff that the FBI would notice.
Russian staff would have to drive and fly out to many different US cities and get election jobs.
The new Russian staff would have to work next to all the existing US staff on site and try and alter "votes" before they are counted?
The FBI would notice the influx of new workers and quick staff changes would be reported.

How does this happen?

[mmdurrant]

Seriously - any competent sysadmin who reads Slashdot knows "These systems should not have any kind of networked access. None."

Yet... somehow it happens. Goddammit we suck.

OMG Obama

[Anonymous Coward]

Trump won. GET OVER IT! He's driving this shit shuttle now. Instead of whining, how about you grab those boot straps (like you tell us on a regular basis), cinch them up real tight and fix the problem if you think you republitards are so goddamned smart. Problem is, you aren't, and there's no way you can fix shit. All you know is bomb the fuck out of it.

Re: OMG Obama

[Anonymous Coward]

Trump is less shitty than communist mihammedist supporter Obama.

Flogging a dead horse

[Anonymous Coward]

This dead horse has been flogged so badly it must have been leaked by Disney.

I used to trust Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't believe this right wing malarkey even gets shared as a news story...

What about Georgia?

[Anonymous Coward]

The State of Georgia and 9 other States caught the DHS attempting to hack the elections NOT THE RUSSIANS.

The State of Georgia produced clear evidence that it was the DHS and the DHS acknowldged that an attempt was made from their network. I have read every report on the Russian hacks and there is NO EVIDENCE to support any of this smoke and mirror propaganda.

I worry more about our own government and worry about the Russians. Yes we are under attack by our own government.

Her e-mails?

[ebvwfbw]

Can we just charge her with violations of the espionage act just like anyone else would be and have a regular trial? Otherwise we'll be hearing about this crap forever. Just like anyone else, if she's guilty put her in jail. If not, then STFU. Just like anyone else.

The real story here is Obama used a "back channel" to talk to Russia and asked them to knock it off. So not even Obama trusted his own people. Even so, he knew about it and still failed to protect us, and he was in charge. Not Trump. So why blame trump? That should be what we are upset about. Not this bullshit narrative that Trump somehow colluded with them. We know he didn't. They knew it then and pushed that BS on us anyway.

Electorial College might be a problem?

[eionmac]

Europeans who have a direct vote to elect "Presidents" (hand counted) consider the usefulness of an electorial college a slightly bad thing now travel and communication are so easy.
The USA electorial college is somewhat similar to the UK system where the majority party is allowed to nominate its leader for Prime Minister, which usually happens. However there is an overriding vote in that the Queen (of the Commonwealth [note 1] does not need to accept or offer to that noninated person). (Note 1) Once during her reign she had in conjunction with her appointed representative in one Commonwealth country, removed the 'in place Prime Minister" (but with stalemate budget/parliament problem) and replaced her/him with another, so that parliament could continue and government budget could work. This is the Sovereign's reserve power against the 'major party electorial college'. not working correctly.

Bottom Line

[kattisch]

Bottom Line is that there was NO evidence that any vote was changed. Good enough for me.

Well

[moni67]

Khum, khum... Are there any credible proves we can SEE somewhere besides "we are confident that..."?

russian nonsense

[ronspinabella]

This russian collusion is all a bunch on nonsense. They are just trying to stall trumps agenda by having this garbage on the news every night

cheating wife

[Anonymous Coward]

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