Special Counsel Mueller Charges 12 Russian Intelligence Officers With Hacking Democrats During 2016 Election (cnbc.com)

Special counsel Robert Mueller has obtained a new indictment charging 12 Russian intelligence officers with hacking Democrats to interfere with the 2016 presidential election, and with stealing information of about 500,000 American voters, the Justice Department announced Friday. From a report: The indictment lodged in Washington, D.C., accuses the Russian spies of hacking into the Democratic National Committee and the presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton, and of releasing emails obtained from that cybersnooping with a a goal of influencing the election. The accused also hacked into state boards of elections, secretaries of state, and into companies that provided software used to administer elections, according to Deputy Attorney Rod Rosenstein. Rosenstein said he briefed President Donald Trump about the case earlier in the week.

Comments

As they say in Russia

[melted]

The mountain gave birth to a mouse.

Re:As they say in Russia

[Oswald McWeany]

The mountain gave birth to a mouse.

Perhaps they need basic biology lessons. They're sacrificing biology to teach hacking instead.

Re:As they say in Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

In Soviet Russia, that is. In modern Russia, "giving birth" is more efficient, so the most minimal "mouse" is "an elephant".

Re:As they say in Russia

[sjames]

You consider an unfriendly power hacking our election to be somehow mouselike?

So you won't mind if a bunch of hackers make sure Ficus wins every election for the next 10 years?

Re: As they say in Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

Figgers.

Re:As they say in Russia

[AmiMoJo]

Give it time, it's still early days. Watergate took 4 years, Iran Contra took over six.

Re:As they say in Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

Found the Russian

Re:As they say in Russia

[PopeRatzo]

The mountain gave birth to a mouse.

Actually, the number of mice is now over 30, and the mountain is a long way from done. And never forget what a single mouse can do to an elephant, especially a big, wet, orange elephant with bone spurs.

Re:As they say in Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

Russians are up on their Aesop.

Re:As they say in Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

"hacking our election" ... still haven't given up on that whopper, ehhh?

Re:As they say in Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

Amimojo 15 years from now: "What do you mean it's dragging on? This investigation has produced 577 indictments and as such is the largest political scandal in American history. Investigations of this complexity take time. What does it matter that 567 of those charged are Russian nobodies that never had any chance of appearing in a courtroom? Try to see the big picture here guys! Look, Mueller mental faculties are as sharp as ever, and the wheelchair hasn't slowed him down at all!"

Re:As they say in Russia

[aticus.finch]

The mountain gave birth to a mouse.

Actually, the number of mice is now over 30, and the mountain is a long way from done. And never forget what a single mouse can do to an elephant, especially a big, wet, orange elephant with bone spurs.

How awful does some have to be to lose to a big wet orange elephant with bone spurs?

Re:As they say in Russia

[amicusNYCL]

Very awful, and highly disliked (you might even say the second most-disliked candidate in the history of presidential polling, after Trump himself).

But that is completely irrelevant to the question of whether or not Russians are actively trying to influence elections and subvert democratic processes in the US and Europe.

And it's troubling that so many people in the US are trying to discredit an investigation into whether or not our democratic processes are being actively subverted.

Re:As they say in Russia

[aticus.finch]

Give it time, it's still early days. Watergate took 4 years, Iran Contra took over six.

And proving that 9/11 was an inside job is taking 17 years. What was your point?

Re:As they say in Russia

[butchersong]

I'm... withholding judgement until they provide some evidence. I don't think you can say they "hacked" the election unless you're using it in the loose "life hack" modern parlance... they allegedly hacked some DNC servers and exposed some (alleged) corruption. That doesn't really equal hacking the election.

Re: As they say in Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

The only real question is whether the surprise that a country like Russia would try to influence our elections is knowingly false or simply a byproduct of your (and the rest of the left's) closed-minded world view and hatred for anything different from you.

Re:As they say in Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

Proving the United States never landed on the moon is taking 49 years. What was your point?

Re:As they say in Russia

[sjames]

Have you forgotten all the ads and fake media campaigns?

Re:As they say in Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

All most all of which were delivered AFTER the election

Re:As they say in Russia

[sjames]

Wow, that's a lot of cool aid!

Re:As they say in Russia

[XxtraLarGe]

Have you forgotten all the ads and fake media campaigns?

No, who could ever forget the Highly Effective fake media campaigns? Here Are 14 Russian Ads That Ran on Facebook During The 2016 Election

Re: As they say in Russia

[Millennium]

There's literally no reason to expect that this investigation should be over in a paltry 18 months. No credible investigation of a figure as public as the President has ever been over nearly that quickly, whether or not it found anything. These things take time.

Liberals generally do have some severe problems when it comes to holding their own to different standards than their opposition (or, when that isn't feasible, changing the standard in self-serving ways). But so far, this has not been one of those cases. The investigation has been fair and impartial thus far, to the point that it has withstood every attempt to "prove" that it was ever anything else.

Bottom line: go back to /pol/, creep.

Re:As they say in Russia

[fafalone]

Considering what comes out of peoples mouths when they explain why they voted for Trump or still support him, arguing that no one is stupid enough to have been influenced by something that dumb isn't very persuasive.

Re:As they say in Russia

[fatwilbur]

It has been proven that US organizations heavily influenced (attempted at least) the last Canadian federal election, mostly through radical environmental NGOs, many supported by billionaires who could care less about the environment and more about their own pockets. Should Canada be indicting and prosecuting US citizens?

I say the internet is free reign for opinions. Literally, we're talking a few memes and some facebook posts.. education is our only option to conquer that now that the technological cat is out of the bag, meaning we need to teach people to think critically. Long shot, I know.

Lastly, I generally support Trump as I think his decisions have demonstrably advanced his country's interests, often at the expense of mine. His personal faults aside, I wish we had such a strong leader many times, and not the usual fluff pieces we see from all leaders of the G7. His job is to advance US interests, not anyone else's, and he's doing that. We can clearly see how much foreign investment has shifted into the US from my country as a result of his policies. I'd put up with a blowhard for real results like that any day. Though I think personal attacks are fair game, most of it is pretty stupid and childish ("big wet orange elephant with bone spurs" - really??), but then again, in general I believe we should be pretty critical of any politician.

Re:As they say in Russia

[sjames]

That's the ads. Seperate from (but related to) fake media campaigns.

You'll never gain understanding if you studiously look away like a baby that doesn't want strained peas.

Re:As they say in Russia

[aticus.finch]

Very awful, and highly disliked (you might even say the second most-disliked candidate in the history of presidential polling, after Trump himself).

Yeah, the polls hated him more than her, but the voters hated her more than him. As the election demonstrated, it was the will of the voters, not the will of the pollsters. Their estimates of who was more hated is irrelevant because we have an objective measurement of who actually was hated more.

And it's troubling that so many people in the US are trying to discredit an investigation into whether or not our democratic processes are being actively subverted.

What's troubling is that even though no actual evidence has come to light in the 18 months since the allegations were made the conspiracy theories still abound.

Re: As they say in Russia

[amicusNYCL]

That is some pretty finely distilled idiocy you've managed to put in a single sentence.

I don't think anyone is surprised that Russia is attacking us. The question is how they are, and what are we going to do to protect ourselves. The answer is not to stop the investigation.

If you want to politicize the issue like a complete fuckhead, that's your choice.

Re:As they say in Russia

[amicusNYCL]

Should Canada be indicting and prosecuting US citizens?

If there is evidence that Americans committed crimes against Canada, then yes.

I say the internet is free reign for opinions.

For better or worse. The old-time village idiots have now gone global.

His job is to advance US interests, not anyone else's, and he's doing that.

I disagree. First, the only interests he advances are his. Second, attacking countries like Canada, Germany, the UK, etc, who have been our allies for decades and who have stood by us on every important international issue, is not in our interest. Neither is starting a trade war with China where "victory" for either side is impossible.

Re:As they say in Russia

[amicusNYCL]

Yeah, the polls hated him more than her, but the voters hated her more than him.

Well, the popular vote shows otherwise, but the major takeaway is that both major parties put up absolutely awful candidates and tried to convince everyone that voting for anyone else was pointless. 45% of the electorate decided to stay home because of that. The D-R system is actively damaging the US.

As the election demonstrated, it was the will of the voters, not the will of the pollsters.

It was the will of the electoral college, not the people who took the time to vote.

Their estimates of who was more hated is irrelevant because we have an objective measurement of who actually was hated more.

Right, the person with fewer votes, which also matches what the polls say. In a competition between the 2 most-hated candidates in the history of presidential polling, #1 got fewer votes than #2, which is what you would expect.

What's troubling is that even though no actual evidence has come to light in the 18 months since the allegations were made the conspiracy theories still abound.

I know exactly what you mean. We have a special investigator who is able to control his people and not leak information, and he has a ton of evidence that he is still collecting and occasionally issuing indictments around, but people want to claim that since he's not releasing all of his evidence, which would destroy his investigation if he hasn't completed it yet, that this means that there is in fact no evidence of the thing he's actively investigating. It's troubling, I agree. He's obviously working with the best interests of the country in mind, and it's troubling that so many people have these conspiracy theories around him and want to politicize his work.

Re: As they say in Russia

[kenh]

I'm more upset that a major political party can't figure out how to secure their email, especially Jon "password" Podesta, who thought it a good idea to send his password off to hackers as part of a phishing attack. (Extra embarrassment for the underling that forgot the word 'not' when he advised the email in question was legit, when he meant to say 'not legit.')

The minute we (USA) stop inter fearing in other country's elections the world will start to take note of our objection to Russian meddling.

Re: As they say in Russia

[kenh]

Were any of those 577 convictions over collusion with Russians?

So far, none have been.

Re:As they say in Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

"Strong" leaders are for morons. If you crave a "strong" leader, you're a half-wit. He isn't confronting enemies, he's inventing bogeymen to sow fear and discord. NATO isn't taking advantage of us. Canada isn't taking advantage of us. Great Britain isn't taking advantage of us. The media is doing about as well as it's always done: a damn sight better than him or any other politician, to the enormous benefit of the citizenry. Trade deficits don't mean what he thinks they mean. It's all a colossal fraud, because he's a moron who needs something to agitate other morons against.

The Dow is flat over the last 7 months. Indicators suggest that a recession is around the corner. He's shitting on the free press (there's a reason it's the first amendment), shitting on the internet, shitting on the judicial system, shitting on NATO (which is a good and important thing), shitting on allies and trade partners, shitting on the environment, shitting on women's rights. I'm fine with stricter immigration limits, but he even managed to do that in the cruelest, stupidest, most ham-fisted way possible, with no thought given to knock-on effects.

The head of Ethics didn't resign in protest because Trump is a smart guy doing good work. The head of the EPA didn't resign in disgrace because Trump picks the best people and fosters a productive environment. His cabinet isn't stocked with friends and family because he thinks they'll do the best job. He doesn't have 60% turnover because he's mentally stable.

He's a known abuser of women. He's serially bankrupt. He's tied to the Russian mob, the US mob, and the real-estate business (I slipped a half-joke in there for you). He has lied openly and obviously to the American people (Remember tax returns? Remember claiming he had a plan for ISIS, and that it definitely wasn't "let the generals do whatever they want"?)

Remember when he claimed to know a lot about "the cyber"? Then he said bleaching hard drives is a difficult, expensive, time-consuming process. Then he suggested a joint Cyber Force with Russia, who have been hacking the US non-stop for years, often to his personal benefit.

Remember (and it happened repeatedly, so you have ample opportunity) when he sabotaged members of his own party because they praised him insufficiently?

Remember when he supported a child molester for public office?

Remember when he announced that the US no longer needed to worry about North Korea? In case you hadn't heard the completely unnecessary reporting, he was laughably incorrect.

Remember when he organized a year-long investigation in to "fraudulent voting" designed solely to find excuses for his loss of the popular vote?

Remember when he praised Nazis?

Do you want the kind of strong leader who tries start a Cyber Force with your adversary, while pretending (TWO YEARS INTO HIS TERM) said adversary hasn't done anything wrong?

He's a stupid, petty, selfish, cruel, lying, philandering, treacherous bully, whose sclerotic mind can't process anything that's happened since the 80s. His personal failings are of a type, number, and magnitude that he is unable to surmount them. They have directly contributed to the many types of waste, fraud, and abuse that he and he cronies have perpetrated while in office.

To the degree that his election represents a grand experiment with an "outsider" candidate, it has been on obvious and horrific failure, to the detriment of the majority of Americans. In 50 years, when America is irrelevant on the world stage, textbooks will highlight his election as the turning point - the day America stopped leading, and starting whining, and whining, and whining until the world learned to ignore us.

Re: As they say in Russia

[kenh]

The mueller investigation is about finding evidence to substantiate the unverified claims that initiated the investigation.

The gov't never had any actual evidence of trump campaign collusion with the Russians.

Re:As they say in Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah! remember when they arrested President Reagan? Remember ?

And they sent Oliver North to jail? Remember when President Reagan and Colonel Oliver North went to prison for years?

and it wasn't just a bunch of photos of guys in suits and uniforms with their hand raised up like "I DO SOLEMNLY SWEAR THE TESTISMONY I AM ABOUT TO GIVE WILL HAVE LITTLE OR NO IMPACT ON MY FUTURE FREEDOM OR CAREER"

Re:As they say in Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

They penetrated voter roll databases in 21 states. We are told there's no evidence they changed any of the data. Ok, fine. If I penetrate Sony's internal databases and don't change anything have I not "hacked Sony"?

They didn't just exposed "alleged corruption" either. They read the campaign's strategy e-mails. Are you under the impression that there's no value in knowing your opponent's strategy ahead of time? Knowing what they're worried people think, what they don't yet realize is going to be exposed, what cities they think are most important? Preparing counterpoints ahead of time?

Most of all, though, if they'd been plotting to shoot Clinton and hadn't pulled it off that would still be conspiracy to murder. This was certainly conspiracy to hack the election. The level of success is sufficient to justify prosecution but their guilt does not require complete success in any way.

Re:As they say in Russia

[HermMunster]

I guess I did hear about the $40,000 paid in ads before the election and the $60,000 paid after, sure. I did read some of the media campaigns that weren't really media campaigns rather they were mostly muted whimpers for attention. Moreover there were significantly greater number of news pieces claiming Trump was this or that. I heard about Hillary's breaking of the law (I was in the military and I had a security clearance), I heard all about how she didn't do this or that when in reality what she did was break the law.

Hillary lost because people would rather have a scoundrel than a criminal in office. I turns out that the scoundrel isn't such a scoundrel afterall.

Re:As they say in Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

Add your post as one more example of the alt Left denigrating half the country while its stocks soar, and its record lowest unemployment rates are recorded, among other objective benefits. Elitism based on ignorance drives sane people away.

Re:As they say in Russia

[superwiz]

Except in both of those case it was pretty obvious that a President was involved. No one seriously thinks that Trump colluded with Russia. They just think it's a good albatross to hang on his neck.

Re:As they say in Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

So-called indictments of Russians who Mueller never expects to have to try in court is simply for PR purposes. Mueller doesn't even have evidence against the one company that unexpectedly showed up to defend itself (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-russia-concord/lawyer-for-russian-company-says-muellers-office-slow-to-hand-over-evidence-idUSKCN1IH2VP).

The only reason for this Mueller investigation and indictments like this are to lower Trump's poll numbers enough for impeachment. Mueller's investigation will not stop until Trump's poll numbers get lowered. It doesn't seem to be working.

Re:As they say in Russia

[HermMunster]

They are, both internally and externally, but not how partisan hacks are attacking the problem. No matter what, it takes evidence provided in a court to prove someone's guilt. Let's have that first.

To say the least a lot of countries tried to interfere. The President of Mexico did. The Prime Ministers of the UK and Canada did. The UK Parliament also did. You can go back and find the media's coverage of the hostile rhetoric broadcast via American media companies that was certainly intended to interfere with the election process by influencing uncertain voters. It's the same thing as astroturfing and our American media partook in collusion with those countries on purpose knowing how the American people are influenced. Like Mika on MSLSD said, they are the ones who are to tell us what to think.

I'm sorry, but unless you have evidence to submit to the public so that we can hear and judge for ourselves then it is just more propaganda. I'm not going to just take it that these are secret matters and that we shouldn't be allowed to know it while accepting the judgment of some very questionable individuals some of whom are quite obviously deep state. Show us, let us hear the trial, let us see the evidence, and if we conclude they are guilty then so be it, otherwise it's just more propaganda. It's more like Mueller trying to extend his tenure. The last bit of indictments resulted in the accused fighting it and we are finding the weaknesses in the claims.

Re:As they say in Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

We know Russia has always tried to influence US (and other elections), just as the US and other countries try to influence things. Russia has messing with the US for decades going back to ads taken out in newspapers, on radio, and now on the Internet. There have been several known previous attempts of the Soviets directly trying to influence US election, so this isn't some new phenomenon. Oh, remember that time Ted Kennedy colluded with the Russians and said he would work with them if they helped the Democrats defeat Reagan?

https://www.forbes.com/2009/08/27/ted-kennedy-soviet-union-ronald-reagan-opinions-columnists-peter-robinson.html#3a0f9963359a

Re:As they say in Russia

[sarren1901]

No, she probably just went against established security policies for people with security clearance, which technically is not the law, but she did it on purpose and knowingly. Hillary is not stupid. She's pretty fucking intelligent actually. She's also really good at politics. She had a private email server so she could hide what she was doing from everyone. Why does an appointed official need to hide their communications from the government that she works for?

Whether or not her private email was safer is not the point and quite debatable. Government should be transparent. Her having a private email server is anything but transparent.

Re:As they say in Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

What said you'd be able to see such evidence? If it existed, your whole population would have already done so.

Re:As they say in Russia

[nnet]

So his claim Russia is a competitor, and not an enemy does what to bolster your argument?

Re: As they say in Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

People are loving those minimum wage jobs!

Re: As they say in Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

Where's your proof?

Re: As they say in Russia

[amicusNYCL]

Well, I don't know why that matters. Because Mueller is not investigating whether or not there was collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign. He is investigating whether and how Russia tried to influence our elections. And, if someone's preferred party played a part in that influence, and that is the reason why that person opposes the investigation, then that person is an absolute partisan idiot who is putting their own preferred political party above the country.

Re:As they say in Russia

[Bing Tsher E]

Hillary lost because she wouldn't campaign in historically Democratic strongholds, because they were filled with the deplorable sort of Democrats.

Re: As they say in Russia

[Bing Tsher E]

No credible investigation of a figure as public as the President has ever been over nearly that quickly,

Mueller is on record saying that President Trump is not under investigation.

Re:As they say in Russia

[amicusNYCL]

Why do you assume that we aren't going to get to see a lot of the evidence that has been gathered? Do you really expect any evidence at all to be released before the investigation is finished? Naturally, in an investigation of this scope, the judge is going to decide that certain things shouldn't be released, but I'm confident we're going to see a lot of what Mueller has found.

Show us, let us hear the trial, let us see the evidence, and if we conclude they are guilty then so be it

That's not exactly how the justice system works. We have a whole system set up for this, you know that right? Can we just follow the same rule-of-law process that we've been following for who knows how long? Is that so bad? Do we really need to continue to degrade the rule of law in this country to benefit Trump? We don't owe Trump shit.

I'm going to purposefully ignore your use of the absolutely idiotic term "deep state." This is a term completely manufactured by conspiracy theorists pushing their agenda, and I like how you mix that in with calling everything else propaganda. It has a real nice ring to it.

Re: As they say in Russia

[Bing Tsher E]

I don't think anyone is surprised that Russia is attacking us. The question is how they are, and what are we going to do to protect ourselves. The answer is not to stop the investigation.

They are attacking us the same way the US has historically, for many years, attacked elections in foreign countries.

Re:As they say in Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

If Mueller winning was any better than Russia winning something, then sure. On the contrary, there's something VERY wrong with Mueller. What was he thinking when he put that investigatory team together? Was he thinking that all the Republicans would see his attempts as a form of political censure and deplatforming? Maybe he had a point there.

On the other hand, given that they were trying to put a case together from scratch before Trump had any chance to make any of the moves they are alledging, including planting the evidence and hiring the so-called Russian spies themselves, what can you say?

Re: As they say in Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

I was in the military and I had a security clearance

Herm, dude, for the sake of full disclosure you should make clear you're talking about the Russian military

Re: As they say in Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

You're more upset about a password on Clinton's email server than with the Russian state hacking the election?

Just what kind of American are you, kenh?

Re: As they say in Russia

[datavirtue]

Yeah....total yawnfest. When its over heads are going to roll. Trump is going to go on a revenge spree. Hopefully the FBI will never be the same.

Re: As they say in Russia

[datavirtue]

It was not a failure. The point was to elect an outsider and disrupt the status quo. Mission accomplished. I dont think most of us had high hopes about what would transpire during his presidency. The man is a genius when it comes to playing the media. I will give him that.

The parties better pull thier head out of thier ass or he will win the next election.

Re:As they say in Russia

[benjfowler]

The evidence presented today is massive, incredibly detailed and irrefutable.

This increasingly-shopworn piece of Russia-shill stupidity -- the bad-faith demands for "evidence" -- needs to die.

And the shills themselves should be looking over their shoulders. Today has proven that Western intelligence knows EXACTLY who the shills and spies are, in EXTRAORDINARY detail. If you lot know what's good for you, you'll get off the internet and find a more honest line of work. Being grounded in Russia for the rest of your miserable lives will be bad enough -- life can get much worse. I understand that American jails are not nice places. Why tempt fate?

Re:As they say in Russia

[benjfowler]

Compared to Watergate, this is running at light speed.

Re: As they say in Russia

[datavirtue]

Most likely reason.

Re: As they say in Russia

[datavirtue]

If by attack you mean: wait for the chaos and then run fake news on facebook.

I guarantee every state/terrorist/drug lord/dictator is doing the same thing to many differrnt people.

For an election this isnt much of a threat to me...unless it makes my candidate lose...then it's gloves off.

Re: As they say in Russia

[datavirtue]

Relax dude....these countries cant afford to get all gaffy over these "attacks."

Re: As they say in Russia

[Dare nMc]

incorrect,

he is continuing to investigate the president but does not consider him a "criminal target" at this point.

Re:As they say in Russia

[rtb61]

Want to play that game, not a problem. Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq was a lie, I am an Australian and Australians were killed in Iraq based upon that lie. That is a criminal act, I wont to see the Americans responsible charged with murder, every single last one of them for the murder of Australian soldiers in a war for profit (good thing I oppose the death penalty, else you know exactly the penalty I would prefer) and those fuckers were killing allies for profit and not the enemy, tried sentenced and spend the rest of their lives in prison and bloody Americans should want the same damn bloody thing for those Americans murdered in a war for profit. It's in the past, thanks Uncle Tom Obama the Choom Gang Coward and that asshats should also be prosecuted for failing to uphold the oath that he took when he corruptly and criminally failed to ensure justice was served. So how many Americans did the Russians kill, versus how many Australians the Americans killed in a war for profit and it will never be in the past for me until justice has been served and I can not understand Americans who let it slide or corrupt Australia politicians who do the same.

Re:As they say in Russia

[Ol Olsoc]

The evidence presented today is massive, incredibly detailed and irrefutable.

This increasingly-shopworn piece of Russia-shill stupidity -- the bad-faith demands for "evidence" -- needs to die.

It was said best said by Macbeth:

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.

Re: As they say in Russia

[Ol Olsoc]

The mueller investigation is about finding evidence to substantiate the unverified claims that initiated the investigation.

The gov't never had any actual evidence of trump campaign collusion with the Russians.

The only way there ius no evidence is if you have no intention of believing it. That's okay - there are people who believe there was no moon landing, that 9-11 was an inside job, that Ted Cruz'z father helped kill JFK, that the Kenyan Terror baby was born in Kenya, that Bill Clinton sent his Arkansas bodyguards to be killed at wake, the Clinton's have killed 50 plus people now, that FDR ignored the radar in Hawaii, and all manner of conspiracy theories.

You are just another member of that group. There is plenty of public information that show a whole lot of wrongdoing. Hard to believe there won't be more coming out very soon.

Re: As they say in Russia

[Uberbah]

The only way there ius no evidence is if you have no intention of believing it. That's okay - there are people who believe there was no moon landing, that 9-11 was an inside job, that Ted Cruz'z father helped kill JFK, that the Kenyan Terror baby was born in Kenya, that Bill Clinton sent his Arkansas bodyguards to be killed at wake, the Clinton's have killed 50 plus people now, that FDR ignored the radar in Hawaii, and all manner of conspiracy theories.

That's nice, except for the fact you have that completely and utterly backwards. Russiagaters have as much evidence for their theories that the Birthers do that Obama was born in Kenya and is a muslim. Facts.

Re:As they say in Russia

[Uberbah]

Well, the popular vote shows otherwise

No such thing as popular vote in the United States. Trump didn't bother to campaign in New York and California - where Hillary's margin of "victory" comes from - because he knew he wouldn't win either state. Instead, he went to the Rust Belt - where Hillary didn't bother to campaign - to ask people for their vote. If presidential elections were decided by a popular vote (and they should be) it would have been a completely different race, with completely different results. Millions of Republicans stayed home in California and New York, or voted Libertarian. Same for Democrats in states like Texas and the Green Party.

So, talking about the popular vote is not just pointless, it's outright misleading.

Re: As they say in Russia

[Uberbah]

I don't think anyone is surprised that Russia is attacking us.

You should be, given the fact that both parties have been openly and extremely anti-Russian for over a century. May as well suspect a gay person of trying to interfere in an election between a rabidly homophobic Mormon and a rabidly homophobic Catholic.

Re:As they say in Russia

[Uberbah]

Give it time, it's still early days. Watergate took 4 years, Iran Contra took over six.

Those investigations started in response to known crimes. Whereas this investigation is still in search of a crime....like Whitewater. This is nothing more than Democratic revenge for the years of horseshit investigations of Bill Clinton. You should go all out and hire Ken Starr to try and manufacturer a perjury charge on Stormy Daniels.

Re:As they say in Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

Bullshit, stop lying, there have been guilty pleas and indictments. That's not nothing. trumps campaign manager has been charged with money laundering.

Re:As they say in Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

Accept it: Most people didn't want this clown. He has no popular mandate for his 'policy'. The fact that he and you don't care doesn't change that. Lie about birth certificates all you want, at least Democratic Presidents have the majority of the people on their side.

Re:As they say in Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

Quantity does not mean quality. In fact it's usually the opposite. It matters little that unemployment is down if people are not happy with their work. That creates an upset, burned out society that will eventually get sick of the bullshit and organize.

Re:As they say in Russia

[Uberbah]

Considering what comes out of peoples mouths when they explain why they voted for Trump or still support him

That entire line of argumentation is invalid, given the party Trump was running against. No one is better at stabbing their voters in the back than Democrats are, but you wouldn't see the incessant "just LOOK what the president has done, Hillary voters!!!!" if she had won.

Re:As they say in Russia

[Uberbah]

Accept it: Most people didn't want this clown.

Most people didn't want his equally atrocious opponent in the general election.

He has no popular mandate for his 'policy'.

Never said he did. You do know that having a functioning bullshit detector on the dumbest conspiracy theory of all time doesn't make one a Trump supporter, yes?

Lie about birth certificates all you want

Never have. I bring them up because Russigaters have as much evidence for their theories as the Birthers do for theirs.

Re:As they say in Russia

[Uberbah]

Indictments that have nothing whatsoever to do with Russiagate or Trump. You know that Whitewater produced 15 indictments, yes? Indictments that had nothing to do with Bill or Hillary Clinton? So, Dembot, call Ken Starr and see if he's available for another witch hunt.

Re: As they say in Russia

[reanjr]

What you describe is the hacking of the DNC, not the hacking of an election. That's where the language gets imprecise to the point of being intentionally disengenuous or incendiary.

Re: As they say in Russia

[reanjr]

Are you seriously that dumb to think no one believes there was collusion between Trump and Putin?

Re: As they say in Russia

[Ol Olsoc]

The only way there ius no evidence is if you have no intention of believing it. That's okay - there are people who believe there was no moon landing, that 9-11 was an inside job, that Ted Cruz'z father helped kill JFK, that the Kenyan Terror baby was born in Kenya, that Bill Clinton sent his Arkansas bodyguards to be killed at wake, the Clinton's have killed 50 plus people now, that FDR ignored the radar in Hawaii, and all manner of conspiracy theories.

That's nice, except for the fact you have that completely and utterly backwards. Russiagaters have as much evidence for their theories that the Birthers do that Obama was born in Kenya and is a muslim. Facts.

Meth is bad, mkay?

Re: As they say in Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

Paul Manafort, the campaign manager for Trump who has a long history of lobbying for Russian interests in the baltics, lied under oath about secret meetings with Russian diplomats.

So... What was the equally credible fact supporting the birther claim again?

Re:As they say in Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

That entire line of argumentation is invalid, given the party Trump was running against. No one is better at stabbing their voters in the back than Democrats are, but you wouldn't see the incessant "just LOOK what the president has done, Hillary voters!!!!" if she had won.

Amen brother. I tuned out the media after listening to months of "OMG OMG OMG You won't believe what Trump did this time. He left the seat up on the toilet again!" The left and their media don't seem to realize the hyperbole gets old and eventually we stop listening.

Re: As they say in Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

Learn the yield curve you retarded troglodyte.

Re:As they say in Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, that's a lot of cool aid!

First of all it's Kool-Aid, not cool aid. Second, GP is partially correct. Only a portion of ads were purchased prior to the election. Third, from the sample ads I've seen, only someone with a IQ of 70 could believe they influenced a vote. It follows that those crying wolf over "Russian Hackers" either have a very low opinion of their opposition, or they themselves are none too bright. I'd vote all of the above.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/19/technology/facebook-executive-russia-tweets-fact-check.html

https://www.weeklystandard.com/holmes-lybrand/fact-check-were-all-russian-facebook-ads-purchased-only-after-the-election

Re:As they say in Russia

[sjames]

You act as if you expect disagreement from me. I was opposed to the entire snipe hunt that was Iraq. Personally, I didn't want Clinton or Trump.

But I fail to see how rooting out some corruption is not better than leaving it all in place.

Re: As they say in Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

I was in the military and I had a security clearance

Herm, dude, for the sake of full disclosure you should make clear you're talking about the Russian military

And THIS is exactly one of the reasons Hillary lost.

Re:As they say in Russia

[sjames]

First, the stuff served at Jonestown was an off brand, not the real thing.

Second, the paid ads were a minuscule part of it. Perhaps you missed the bit about all the sock puppets Twitter is purging and all the actually fake news on Facebook.

Re:As they say in Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

The FBI hasn't looked this bad since the days of Hoover. Comey, McCabe, Strzok, Page... A fish rots from the head down.

Re:As they say in Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

> That's the ads. Seperate from (but related to) fake media campaigns.

Not just the ads, but the astroturfing and gaming of influence peddlers. The front page of Reddit was consistently populated from /r/TheDonald posts during the election. It is still unclear how much of that was state sponsored, but I have little doubt it was significant.

Re:As they say in Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

First, the stuff served at Jonestown was an off brand, not the real thing.

It still wasn't "cool aid" either. Wikipedia calls it "Flavor Aid" which is "made by The Jel Sert Company in West Chicago, Illinois. It was introduced in 1929.[1] It is sold throughout the United States as an unsweetened, powdered concentrate drink mix, similar to Kool-Aid brand drink mix." Whatever the case, there is no "cool aid." This just reinforces the case that your facts are not well researched or verified. In the common vernacular, the saying is well known as "drinking the Kool-Aid" regardless of the branding of the actual mix.

Second, the paid ads were a minuscule part of it. Perhaps you missed the bit about all the sock puppets Twitter is purging and all the actually fake news on Facebook.

Any overreaction by Facebook or Twitter is not prima facie evidence of election tampering or any so-called "hacking" by any foreign power. Twitter and Facebook have both been accused of locking and removing accounts of individuals which have political or vocal opinions that they disagree with. Additionally, these account purges are for so-called "fake" accounts, whatever that means, where they detected sudden changes in account behavior and not in particular to remove Russian influence from social media discourse. And Facebook's criteria of "fake news" could be applied to any of the "opinion" based talking heads from CNN, FoxNews, MSNBC, CBS, or ABC; well known to spin stories to suit their agendas.

http://fortune.com/2018/07/13/twitter-followers-donald-trump-barack-obama/

Re:As they say in Russia

[sjames]

Here, have another cup.

Re:As they say in Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

>What's troubling is that even though no actual evidence has come to light in the 18 months since the allegations were made the conspiracy theories still abound.

We don't know what the evidence is yet, it hasn't been released. It should be heartening, not troubling, as ongoing investigations should NOT be disclosed to the public. What is troubling to me is the number of folks like you who constantly pretend to be psychic about what evidence will or will not appear. We don't know, we aren't on the investigation staff. Just WAIT and we'll see what is actually there.

Re:As they say in Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

> is that both major parties put up absolutely awful candidates

We agree, both were terrible.

> and tried to convince everyone that voting for anyone else was pointless

Voting for anyone except the two candidates is a waste of time in the US system. The combination of having two terrible candidates and a broken bipartisan system means failure in every direction.

Re:As they say in Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

The is a load of horseshyt. Mueller knows that he will never have these people testify. This is grandstanding on an industrial scale. This move by Mueller is to give the illusion of progress in a fishing expedition that has provided no evidence of a crime. And all this so called 'hacking' occurred on Obama's watch. Remember that!

Re: As they say in Russia

[danskal]

If Trump is so squeaky clean (newsflash: he is not), why was he so incensed that his "fixer" was raided by the FBI?

Re: As they say in Russia

[danskal]

I know why you think that - and it's because you watch fox news. They are desperately saying lalallalala nothing to see here. But the truth is that lots of people have already been indicted - they are just working their way up the tree until they have enough canaries singing to impeach a president.

Fox news viewers are going to be a problem, though. The channel has hidden so much from them, and sent out so many lies, it's going to end up a bit like Japan after the war ended. There were many japanese that continued the war for years because they refused to believe that Japan had waved the white flag.

Re:As they say in Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

I see. You have no credible answer to my argument or any facts to back yours. I see you have a low UID number. I guess you must have a low IQ number too.

Re:As they say in Russia

[sjames]

I have no answer that will convince someone who would rather believe anything BUT the truth.

Re: As they say in Russia

[PopeRatzo]

They are attacking us the same way the US has historically, for many years, attacked elections in foreign countries.

The US has invaded Mexico on several occasions, so I assume you don't have a problem with Mexicans immigrating here without documents. I mean, if you're going to be consistent.

Re:As they say in Russia

[PopeRatzo]

Most people didn't want his equally atrocious opponent in the general election.

And yet, she got 3,000,000 more votes.

Never have. I bring them up because Russigaters have as much evidence for their theories as the Birthers do for theirs.

Except there are over 30 indictments and five guilty pleas and counting. Unlike the birthers, who had absolutely nothing, yet managed to get Obama elected twice for their troubles.

Re: As they say in Russia

[superwiz]

I am not dumb. So rethink your premises.

Re:As they say in Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

I provided references from Wikipedia, NY Times, Weekly Standard and Fortune Magazine. I do not believe "emotions" when the facts say otherwise. Would you like to see the ads that "hacked" the election? The idea that anyone would take this serious is ludicrous. Consider this is the best that the New York Times could use to present their "hacked election" case.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/01/us/politics/russia-2016-election-facebook.html

Re:As they say in Russia

[sjames]

You provided irrelevant references. Here is a picture of a duck.

Re:As they say in Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

I love right wing media complaints that amount to "Trump is doing so many awful and or stupid things the damn liberal media is biased for not just ignoring them since there's so many!"

Re:As they say in Russia

[Uberbah]

And yet, she got 3,000,000 more votes.

Which is an utterly worthless talking point at best, and outright sophistry at worst. There is no such thing as a popular vote for president in the United States. With the EC, millions of people stay home or vote third party because they live in a partisan state and the outcome is a foregone conclusion. If presidents were elected based on a popular vote (and they should be) races would be conducted entirely differently and voters would respond entirely differently. People who would ordinarily stay home would show up at polls because each and every vote would actually matter. People who would normally vote for Libertarians or Greens as a protest vote would instead cast their ballot for one of the main parties, because their vote would actually matter.

Trump didn't bother to campaign in CA and NY - where Hillary's margin of "victory" comes from - because he knew he had no chance at those electoral votes. Instead, he went to the Rust Belt and asked those voters to come out for him, states where Mrs. Nafta decided it would be a great idea to no-show.

Except there are over 30 indictments and five guilty pleas and counting.

None of which have anything to do with Trump or Russiagate in general. You know that the Whitewater investigation produced fifteen convictions - does that mean that the investigation wasn't a pile of partisan bulllllllshit crafted by opponents of a president they just didn't like?

Re: As they say in Russia

[Uberbah]

I know why you think that - and it's because you watch fox news.

This is why you never go full partisan: it makes you say really stupid shit. I'm a socialist, you dumbass, and the last network I watch is Fox News. All you're doing is mindlessly repeating the 2003 trope that anyone who questioned the Iraq war was a Saddam Lover, with different variables.

But for the invasion of Iraq, the Bush Administration actually presented evidence. It was either shit evidence or faked, but it was actually presented. Now the public is being fed a similar tall tale by the same group of compulsive liars without any evidence whatsoever but you Charlie Browns are just eating that shit up. With a spoon.

Re:As they say in Russia

[PopeRatzo]

There is no such thing as a popular vote for president in the United States.

Of course there is. It may not be the deciding factor, but the vote is taken nonetheless, and it is the best metric we have for what percentage of people wanted a certain person to be president. They are actual votes cast by individuals.

None of which have anything to do with Trump or Russiagate in general.

Three of those convictions address Russiagate and Trump directly.

You know that the Whitewater investigation produced fifteen convictions

From an investigation that took 6 years. The Trump/Russia investigation has been going on for about 16 months.

does that mean that the investigation wasn't a pile of partisan bulllllllshit crafted by opponents of a president they just didn't like?

So, are you saying right here, right now, that the Whitewater investigations and all the subsequent investigations of Hillary Clinton were all "partisan bullshit crafted by opponents" of someone Republicans just didn't like? Is that your story now?

Re:As they say in Russia

[Uberbah]

Of course there is.

There is no popular contest for president, so there is no popular vote. It's a meaningless number, as meaningless as talking about Hillary's popular vote "victory" in the primary when that ignores caucus states. And in Hillary's case her general election "victory" comes almost entirely from just two states, NY and CA. The only vote that matters is the one in the Electoral College, and candidates campaign accordingly - unless you're as incompetent as Hillary, and don't bother to show up in any of the states between Pennsylvania and Iowa. Hell, she even came within 50,000 votes of losing Minnesota, the only state to vote against Reagan in both of his elections.

Zero of those convictions address Russiagate and Trump directly.

Again, fixed.

From an investigation that took 6 years. The Trump/Russia investigation has been going on for about 16 months.

Russiagaters keep saying that as if its supposed to mean something. It means nothing when Mueller hasn't even established probable suspicion of any Russian interference or collusion with Trump, much less probable cause.

So, are you saying right here, right now, that the Whitewater investigations and all the subsequent investigations of Hillary Clinton were all "partisan bullshit crafted by opponents" of someone Republicans just didn't like? Is that your story now?

You need a picture drawn with crayons? Whitewater was a bullshit partisan witch hunt - and so is Russiagate. Let's cut to the chase: Mueller has never bothered to examine the DNC servers, the alleged hacking of which is the entire foundation of Russiagate. And if he cared about election interference, he'd be going after Hillary for doing in fact what Trump has thus far been baselessly accused of: colluding with foreign intelligence agents to swing a general election (paying for Steele Dossier). Nor has he gone after Cambridge Analytics, when that foreign company has outright bragged about changing election results in the US. And he was caught completely unprepared when the Twitter troll farm actually sent lawyers to challenge his claims in court.

So either Mueller is so incompetent he couldn't find his ass with both hands and assistance from three interns, or this investigation was a farce from the very beginning. Pick one.

Re: As they say in Russia

[Uberbah]

None of which has anything to do with Trump or Russiagate, moran. Fifteen convictions came out of the Whitewater investigation - but nothing was ever found on the Clintons. It doesn't matter if Mueller finds out that Kellyanne Conway is the real Golden State Killer - if there's no collusion between Trump and Russia, his investigation was nothing but a perversion of the American justice system where investigators need probable suspicion and aren't supposed to have general warrants.

Re: As they say in Russia

[Uberbah]

Stop taking it, then. You guys have any tinglings of awareness when you start throwing out bullshit when challenged instead of facts?

Re: As they say in Russia

[Ol Olsoc]

Stop taking it, then. You guys have any tinglings of awareness when you start throwing out bullshit when challenged instead of facts?

No, Actually I'm ridiculing you. Find your own facts tovarisch. They are out there. Problem is, you are either a Russian shill, or a useful idiot who has no plans of paying attention to the facts. Eithr way, you are my playtoy.

You serve no purpose to me other than to make fun of you, and if I can get you into a spittle froth mouth rage, which you are always near to anyhow, then my work here is done, Ivan.

Now - continue entertainimg me.

Re:As they say in Russia

[PopeRatzo]

So either Mueller is so incompetent he couldn't find his ass with both hands and assistance from three interns, or this investigation was a farce from the very beginning. Pick one.

Five convictions so far. And counting. Not so incompetent.

If you really thought Mueller was incompetent, you wouldn't be so keen on seeing him fired and the investigation closed. Tick tock.

Re: As they say in Russia

[Uberbah]

You mean where I point out you're the last village idiot insisting the Emperor is wearing the finest livery when it's obvious to everyone that he's wearing nothing but boxers? Someday you'll have the same response to Russiagate that you'll have when your grandkids ask you if you were one of those people running around smearing Iraq war skeptics as Saddam Lovers back in 2003. "Uh, no junior, I always knew Bush and Cheney were lying to us. I totally wasn't a gullible fool and an total asshole to anyone who actually knew better. Promise!"

And Cheney actually went through the trouble of presenting evidence. Fake or bullshit evidence, but evidence nonetheless. Who knew he could have skipped all that work and just made assertions without a shred of evidence, and people like you would just eat that shit up. With a spoon. Shit handed to you from the very same liars.

Re: As they say in Russia

[Ol Olsoc]

You mean where I point out you're the last village idiot insisting the Emperor is wearing the finest livery when it's obvious to everyone that he's wearing nothing but boxers? Someday you'll have the same response to Russiagate that you'll have when your grandkids ask you if you were one of those people running around smearing Iraq war skeptics as Saddam Lovers back in 2003. "Uh, no junior, I always knew Bush and Cheney were lying to us. I totally wasn't a gullible fool and an total asshole to anyone who actually knew better. Promise!"

And Cheney actually went through the trouble of presenting evidence. Fake or bullshit evidence, but evidence nonetheless. Who knew he could have skipped all that work and just made assertions without a shred of evidence, and people like you would just eat that shit up. With a spoon. Shit handed to you from the very same liars.

Excellent! That was tneertaining so keep it up. I love it! Thank you anyhow Alexi , but remember, I am a harsh taskmaster, so you'll have to up your game with every reply. Hugs and kisses, and word up! TTFN. Youre doing a hellava job so far.

Re:As they say in Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

> But that is completely irrelevant to the question

Uh, isn't that COMPLETELY RELEVANT as the influencing involved much of the negative campaigning - whether initiating or embellishing FoxNews' anti-Hillary shitstorms?

Re:As they say in Russia

[strikethree]

But that is completely irrelevant to the question of whether or not Russians are actively trying to influence elections and subvert democratic processes in the US and Europe.

Forgive me, but I was under the impression that every government everywhere tries to interfere with every government they have relations with. I have always assumed it was part and parcel of world politics.

Why is this suddenly a big deal now? Why isn't the NSA/CIA keeping the elections safe? I mean, ostensibly, that IS their job. To me, Mueller is an indictment against the Secret Apparatus behind government as failing to do their jobs appropriately. There is nothing new going on that hasn't been going on for centuries, other than specific methods like email hacking.

So why now? What changed? Why is the general population being recruited to deal with this shit? Something not normal is going on and I am fairly certain it has nothing to do with actual subversion of the elections.

Re: As they say in Russia

[amicusNYCL]

Sounds like we would be A Number One at stopping those attacks then, so why haven't we?

Re: As they say in Russia

[amicusNYCL]

No, that's not what I mean by attack. It's not what the nation's 17 intelligence agencies and congressional committees mean by attack either. Try again.

Re: As they say in Russia

[amicusNYCL]

given the fact that both parties have been openly and extremely anti-Russian for over a century

Isn't it curious, then, that one party is actively trying to discredit or simply end the investigation?

Re:As they say in Russia

[amicusNYCL]

No such thing as popular vote in the United States.

There is, actually. See, states report how many people vote for each candidate (it even goes finer than that, counties do this too!). When you total all of that up, that's called the "popular vote." Tune in next week for more Basic Facts, where we talk about how it's not possible to determine what information a special prosecutor does or does not have when his organization does not leak anything.

Trump didn't bother to campaign in New York and California - where Hillary's margin of "victory" comes from - because he knew he wouldn't win either state. Instead, he went to the Rust Belt - where Hillary didn't bother to campaign - to ask people for their vote.

OK, that's a complete non-sequitor from the previous statement, but OK, sure.

If presidential elections were decided by a popular vote (and they should be) it would have been a completely different race, with completely different results.

I know, and I'm not arguing against that.

So, talking about the popular vote is not just pointless, it's outright misleading.

It is literally the only metric we have. The electoral college results are directly derived from the popular vote in each state.

Re:As they say in Russia

[amicusNYCL]

Forgive me, but I was under the impression that every government everywhere tries to interfere with every government they have relations with. I have always assumed it was part and parcel of world politics.

OK, you're forgiven.

Why is this suddenly a big deal now?

The question is whether or not laws were broken this time.

Why isn't the NSA/CIA keeping the elections safe?

That's a great question to ask, and hopefully the results of this investigation will give insight into that and also suggest additional ways we should be protecting ourselves.

Re:As they say in Russia

[strikethree]

OK, you're forgiven.

Thank you.

Are you saying that such interference does not happen any more?

The question is whether or not laws were broken this time.

I am pretty sure foreign entities do not much care if they break another entity's laws when it suits them.

That's a great question to ask, and hopefully the results of this investigation will give insight into that and also suggest additional ways we should be protecting ourselves.

I hope so too. It is not good to have anyone influencing elections discreetly, or, not so discreetly.

Re:As they say in Russia

[amicusNYCL]

Are you saying that such interference does not happen any more?

No, I'm suggesting that all new kinds of interference are possible now that haven't been before. More to the point at hand though, the real question is whether or not the behavior of people on the Trump campaign or Russia broke any laws. If that is the case, then those people should be prosecuted, it's that simple. If any other interference breaks laws, those people should be prosecuted as well. I'm not suggesting that past evidence of interference should mean that current crimes do not get prosecuted.

I am pretty sure foreign entities do not much care if they break another entity's laws when it suits them.

That's fine. If, for example, Russian agents are shown to have committed crimes in the US, and Russia doesn't want to hand those people over, then we'll take that into consideration when dealing with Russia in the future. We can also stop those people from doing business with any American financial institution, for example. That's fine. If anyone in the US committed crimes, then they should be arrested and charged.

Re:As they say in Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

Highly effective? That simpleton crap is considered a smoking gun?

Would someone please compile a comprehensive collection of the negative memes, fake news, and conspiratorial one liners that never-trumpers and the left in general vomited across facebook during the campaign and on thru to today? I'd do it but I don't have three years to kill.

Re: As they say in Russia

[sysrammer]

"Liberals generally do have some severe problems when it comes to holding their own to different standards than their opposition".

Totally agree. And, I'd like to add, one can replace "Liberals" with "Conservatives" without being incorrect. In fact, I'd say one could simply replace it with "People" and be done with it.

Douglas Adams summed it up nicely: "People are a problem". Also, oblig. reference to XKCD (without the actual reference) regarding filing another bug report to God about human (lack of) thought processing.

Re: As they say in Russia

[sysrammer]

Trump is a master businessman and master entertainer. Putin is a master spy and a master politician. Trump misinterprets his role in the relationship.

Re:As they say in Russia

[Uberbah]

Five convictions so far. And counting. Not so incompetent.

Convictions that have nothing to do with Russia or Trump - but you knew this already. And you also dodged the fact that Mueller has never had the FBI examine the DNC servers. That the moment it became bloody obvious that the emperor had no clothes.

If you really thought Mueller was incompetent, you wouldn't be so keen on seeing him fired and the investigation closed. Tick tock.

There's as much justification for this investigation as if the FBI suspected Trump of plotting the attack on Pearl Harbor. This whole operation is nothing but a giant case of Swiftboating from butthurt Hillbots - Hillary's own campaign workers worried that Uranium One would be her biggest vulnerability - and deflection from who actually rigged an election in 2016.

Blind partisan tribalists reaaaaaaally need to get over this habit of finding deranged reasons to try and deny presidents of the opposing party any legitimacy. In the 90's, Republicans lost their freaking minds accusing Hillary of being a lesbian communist who had scores of people murdered as a part of the Clinton drug cartel in Arkansas. And then lost their damn minds again at the thought of a Kenyan-Muslim being president of the USA. They were complete whackjobs - but they had just as much evidence that you Russiagaters do of any collusion between Russia and Trump. Particularly when Trump has been WAY more confrontational with Russia than Obama ever was.

Re:As they say in Russia

[Uberbah]

Isn't it curious, then, that one party is actively trying to discredit or simply end the investigation?

Not when the probe has no justification for being, and is a grotesque perversion of our entire justice system. Needing probable suspicion for an investigation has been tossed out the window, but general warrants are brought back in after being banned for a few centuries, with the exception of the last bullshit partisan witch hunt - Ken Starr's obsession with the Clintons in the 90's. An obsession now mirrored in Russiagate Democrats, who have become exactly what they used to hate.

No such thing as popular vote in the United States.

There is, actually.

There is not. There is no popular contest for president in the United States, so there is no popular vote. It should be that way, but until the elitist Electoral College is disbanded, we are stuck with a system where candidates campaign in a handful of "battleground" states. Not across the country, so we're back to cross country vote totals being a meaningless statistic.

Trump didn't bother to campaign in New York and California - where Hillary's margin of "victory" comes from - because he knew he wouldn't win either state. Instead, he went to the Rust Belt - where Hillary didn't bother to campaign - to ask people for their vote.

OK, that's a complete non-sequitor from the previous statement, but OK, sure.

If by "non-sequitur" you mean "gosh, that means the popular vote really is a meaningless number", then yes.

The Electoral College is literally the only metric we have.

FTFY. With the EC, small states don't matter. Large states don't matter. Neither blue nor red states matter. Only "battleground" states matter, and candidates campaign accordingly. Unless you are as incompetent as Hillary Clinton, and spend all your time trying to run up your vote totals in two coastal states while flatly ignoring all the ones between Pennsylvania and Iowa.

Re:As they say in Russia

[amicusNYCL]

Not when the probe has no justification for being, and is a grotesque perversion of our entire justice system.

That's an interesting justification, I don't hear that from the party apparatus much. It sounds like they're trying to discredit the investigation completely on purely partisan grounds, as if the United States has not and is not currently being attacked by Russia, which it is.

Regardless of the motivation for beginning the investigation: considering the fact that the entire intelligence community, including the DNI appointed by Trump, agrees that Russia has been and is currently attacking us, do you think we should end the investigation and, what, just ignore what Russia has been and is doing? How about the spy trying to infiltrate the GOP and NRA, just let her go because some people have the personal opinion that the basis for the original warrant was incorrect? Would it maybe be a decent idea to have that warrant looked at by a judge instead of listening to TV hosts or whoever farts out an opinion on Twitter that day?

There is no popular contest for president in the United States, so there is no popular vote.

This is just an argument over terminology, not substance.

If by "non-sequitur" you mean "gosh, that means the popular vote really is a meaningless number", then yes.

No, that's not what I mean by non-sequitur.

so this...

[Anonymous Coward]

... is what cyber-war looks like

Now that they have established what was done, the next step is to identify who helped them to do it...

Re:so this...

[Anonymous Coward]

Follow the trail of orange slime... ew, why is it all over Ivanka's panties drawer too?

Re:so this...

[Rob Riggs]

I give you this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EZFBB-MntE

I've seen lesser crimes called treasonous by the same person.

Re:so this...

[Anonymous Coward]

You still can't get over the fact that Donald Trump is a shitty businessman who has no idea what he's doing much to the long term detriment of the United States, can you?

Re:so this...

[Anonymous Coward]

The two are not mutually exclusive.

Hillary Clinton lost to an incompetent businessman who had (and has) no idea of how to be President of the United States. She's that bad.

Re: so this...

[Anonymous Coward]

So if Ivanka had run a better campaign she could have hooked up with the learned, cultured, witty and seriously rich George Soros instead of the booby prize Donald Trump? Wow, does she know?

Re: so this...

[Anonymous Coward]

I was beginning to believe no one understood this fundamental truth. Thank you for restoring a slight belief in the human race.

Re: so this...

[Anonymous Coward]

This. A million times this. I would rather have Putin himself be our president than her.

Re:so this...

[TheFakeTimCook]

The two are not mutually exclusive.

Hillary Clinton lost to an incompetent businessman who had (and has) no idea of how to be President of the United States. She's that bad.

...or the Russians are that good.

Re: so this...

[TheFakeTimCook]

This. A million times this. I would rather have Putin himself be our president than her.

Careful what you wish for!

Re:so this...

[amicusNYCL]

Really though, Hillary Clinton lost to the single most-disliked candidate in the history of presidential polling. The major reason she lost is probably because she's in second place on that list.

Re:so this...

[Darinbob]

I'll readily agree to that. But doesn't mean I have to bow and grovel to the moron in charge. We were given a choice of two awful people. The problem is with all the hypocrites saying "we won, so shut up and take it!" when during the Obama years they were bitching and moaning just as loudly. I'm really annoyed that people treat politics like it was a simple sports game. Modern political discussion is like listening to two drunk guys in a bar.

Re: so this...

[Anonymous Coward]

You prefer Fat Nazi?

Re:so this...

[jwhyche]

You would think that the butt hurt would start to fade by now. But I guess believing her coronation was ordained by God only to find out you're wrong must hurt. Must hurt more waking up every morning to a world where Trump is actually doing a good job and has been right about virtually everything he has said.

Re: so this...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hillary got 3 million more votes than trump.
Hillary had to fight the trumps, the Russians, and got back-stabbed by the FBI and still won the popular vote. so she didn't win the election but more people wanted her over trump. Accept it.

Re: so this...

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget Fox News and the rest of the "liberal media" that thought 30 minutes of empty Trump podium was more interesting than one of her speeches, and held her emails as equal, and perhaps more equal, to each and every sin he committed on the campaign trail.

Re:so this...

[meglon]

Shes not that bad. Republicans abused their offices and drug her through the mud for years with the fake Bengazi bullshit and all of the conspiracy theories bullshit, just like the propagandists they are. They lied, and smeared her, and their half brain dead base ate it up. You think she's bad because you've heard so many complete fucking idiots parrot the same bullshit for so long. Goebbels came up with that playbook; not surprising that right-wingers are still using it.

Time spent by congress investigating these embassy murders: 0 seconds.

On 15 December 2001, gunmen killed a Nepalese security guard at the U.S. Embassy in Kathmandu.

On 22 January 2002, an attack on the American Center in Calcutta killed five policemen.

On 20 March 2002, a car bomb exploded across the street from the U.S. Consulate General in Lima, Peru killed nine Peruvians.

On 14 June 2002, a truck bomb exploded outside the U.S. Consulate General in Karachi, Pakistan killed 12 people (one U.S. Marine was injured).

On 28 February 2003, a gunman killed two policemen at the U.S. Consulate General in Karachi, Pakistan.

On 30 June 2004, a suicide bomber killed two people (including himself) at the U.S. Embassy in Tashkent, Uzbekistan.

On 6 December 2004, Islamist militants attacked the U.S. Consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, killing nine security guards and staff.

On 29 January 2005, a rocket attack on the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad killed two Americans working there.

On 2 March 2006, a car bomb exploded outside the U.S. Consulate General in Karachi, killing at least four, including a U.S. diplomat and his driver.

On 12 September 2006, Islamic militants attacked the U.S. Embassy in Damascus, Syria, killing a Syrian security guard.

On 9 July 2008, gunmen attacked the U.S. consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, killing three policemen.

On 17 September 2008, members of al-Qaeda attacked the U.S. Embassy in Sanaa, Yemen with vehicle bombs and rocket-propelled grenades, killing 12 Yemeni guards and civilians (including one U.S. civilian).

On 27 November 2008, a car bomb went off about 200 yards from the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, killing at least four.

Yet $14 million (or more, by the end) spent investigating Bengazi after 8 investigations had already shown there was none of the (stupid fucking conservative) conspiracy theories correct. http://www.politifact.com/trut...

You think Hillary is bad because of a partisan hack job by republicans abusing their power for years.

Re: so this...

[Anonymous Coward]

An Anonymous Coward declared:

This. A million times this. I would rather have Putin himself be our president than her.

Prompting TheFakeTimCook to caution:

Careful what you wish for!

Er ... I thought it was pretty clear that the sock puppet quoted above is ALREADY on Team Putin.

I'm just sayin' ...

(Posting as AC only so as not to undo prior upmods in this thread.)

--

Check out my novel ...

Re:so this...

[greythax]

Which world is that? The land of make-believe? In the real world he is starting trade wars with our staunchest allies.

Re:so this...

[jwhyche]

Why its this world you silly goose. I suppose he is starting these trade wars like when he started that nuclear war with North Korea. Oh wait, no he didn't..

Don't worry, I'm sure they will come up with a pill for TDS soon.

Re: so this...

[greythax]

I'm guessing you missed his "Trade wars are good and easy to win" tweet. It's ok, try hard and you can rationalize it. Or just choose your eyes and ignore reality. Seems to have worked for you so far.

Re:so this...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hillary lost because you and everyone else is a Nazi monster. Just ask her followers.

Re: so this...

[jwhyche]

People who live in reality don't have to rationalize anything. We just accept what is happening and truth. That truth being, Trump is doing a good job. No amount of "rationalization" by people with TDS will change that.

Of course by living in reality if Trump stops doing a good job we will accept that too.

As for his tweets, I don't see why anyone really pays attention to them. Well they are good at setting TDS people to frothing. When like the mythical nuclear war that didn't happen they have conquered up another boogie man when that didn't work out. They specter of a trade war. Which, to give them credit as a better chance of happening but not likely.

See here is what really happened. Trump stated that the trade deals between friends and allies was unfair. Like his NATO comments, that also pissed everyone off, he is of course correct. Like the nuclear comments this has sent the left off in a tizzy spouting 'Trade War! Trade War!" Which like the earlier nuclear war that didn't happen, this will probably not happen ether.

Would you like to know why? Sure you would. Because both sides, again like in the case of the nuclear war that didn't happen, know that a trade war would benefit no one. So here is what will happen. People that actually know what they are doing will get together. They will hammer out some agreements, then the politicians, like Trump will come in and take credit.

There. Is that all clear now? Now that, that is settled lets get on with more important conversations.

Re: so this...

[kenh]

That California, NewYork and Florida really, REALLY wanted HRC to be President doesn't 'trump' the will of the other 47 states.

Hillary was so confident she would win she flat-out ignored 3 states in the general election, only to lose them by the slimmest of margins... HRC made a decision to focus on fund-raisers at the end of the campaign, a campaign in which she put-spent her opponent 2:1, and lost.

BTW Trump won because he ran against Hillary, Hillary lost because she ran as Hillary. I dare say many/most trump supporters voted against Hillary as opposed to voting for Hillary.

Re: so this...

[greythax]

First of all, you are damn right i think what he tweets is important. He is the face of us diplomacy. You should care more as well.
Secondly, what exact about the us/ Canadian.steel and aluminum trade was so unfair? I'm sure, like him, you don't know. Why are you ok with him using a power only granted to him for the purpose of national defence on our allies? Or does Papa know best and it doesn't matter what he does, because you just know, deep down, he is a good guy.

The reason we get upset is because you folks, after years of manufactured outrage over Obama, refuse to hold his feet to the fire about absolutely anything he does. Just as long as he gives you a little smug upturned smile and calls all his ideas the best, you praise him. No matter how badly he fucks with the deficit. No matter how many dictators he snuggles up to. No matter how many times he publicly flaunts that he is a vile, mean little man. As he said, in his words, he could shoot someone in the middle of fifth avenue and not lose any voters. That's how little he respects you. But still you worship him.

The man is a joke, and you are the punchline.

Re:so this...

[magzteel]

Shes not that bad. Republicans abused their offices and drug her through the mud for years with the fake Bengazi bullshit and all of the conspiracy theories bullshit, just like the propagandists they are.

Bengazi wasn't fake. Real people died there. I'm not blaming Clinton or the Obama administration for that, even though mistakes were made. These are dangerous places where stuff happens.

But I do blame all of them for the cover-up where they blamed it on some poor schmuck for making a YouTube video and ruined his life. They knew it was a lie but they pushed it anyway. It was a shitty thing to do.

https://www.nytimes.com/2012/1...
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2016...

Re: so this...

[kenh]

The vast majority of what you listed were examples of LOCALS being killed/attacked, not us citizens - some are, most are not.

Re: so this...

[jwhyche]

There is what I was waiting for..

Not only do those suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) suffer from the ability to separate fantasy from reality, it also clouds their ability to carry on a rational discussion. This should be evident. The subject was incensed by by a factual statement but was unable to refute it. The subject continued to get more agitated as more facts where placed in front of him. Facts that while true, didn't fit with the subjects world view as viewed under the effect of TDS.

The final straw for the subject came when these facts where combined with a rational projection of what will probably happen. Unable to refute these facts and a rational projection that didn't fit with the subjects world view he was driven into a rage (frothing.) This is common result of trying to engage subjects under the effect of TDS.

As clearly seen by the subjects last post in this thread it should be clear that the subject has lost all contact with reality where it comes to a successful Trump presidency. At this point there is nothing more to be gained by continuing to engage such subjects. Medical intervention is usually required after this point.

Any questions?

Re: so this...

[greythax]

Sick burn dude.

Re: so this...

[jwhyche]

Truth hurts. You decided to get personal, I just decided to distance myself from you. You didn't come here to debate, you came to argue. If I can't educate you, I'll educate people that are reading.

Re: so this...

[datavirtue]

In the face of China Putin is weak. They are fucking us both over while we try to scratch eachothers eyes out.

Re: so this...

[datavirtue]

"Fake Benghazi bullshit"

Totally fuck you. What a piece of shit.

Re: so this...

[Anonymous Coward]

You didn't come to debate, only troll

But got played for the fool you were.

Re:so this...

[Uberbah]

...or the Russians are that good.

If they were that good, you'd have President Sanders right now. You don't.

Re: so this...

[Anonymous Coward]

The man lies, cheats, and deceives everyone. He holds no values. When pressed on issue, he gives no answers.I don't know why you are so defensive of him. He had shown himself to be incapable of giving an honest answer and sticking with it. Is it any wonder people get upset when they hear him speak? He's the least genuine politician I've seen in a while, and that's saying something.

Re: so this...

[Anonymous Coward]

in 2026 TDS will be added to the dsm iv as a real mental illness.

and we're going to have to pay for those shitbag vicious people. again.

Re: so this...

[Anonymous Coward]

The only derangement being suffered here is cunts like you who think despite every scrap of evidence and bullshit Trump spews, that orange dickhead is doing a good job.

Re: so this...

[Anonymous Coward]

You are completely deluded - but the phenomenon is not new, people in the US have had a long tradition, maybe even since the founding days, of misrepresenting and being confused about political and social reality. The first Kinsey reports are typical examples, many people in the US tried to stop their publication, because the results of the surveys didn't match their self-deluded expectations. The "special perception" of US Americans is a historical result of the Christian cults on the basis of which the country was funded, some of which were and still are fairly crazy even for the moderate standards of ardent theists.

The sad fact is that Trump is destroying America's reputation beyond recognition and has already managed to shift strategical alliances considerably. Internationally, the US has never before been as separated and alone from the rest of the world as now. Living in the US, you might not be able to see that but I can tell you with certainty that US's reputation has been shattered like never before in the rest of the world and will take a long time to repair the damage he's done. The first big blow to the US was Bush Jr. Since then the US has lost all moral credibility even among people who ardently defended the US against anti-Americanism. People like me, for instance, who have relatives and friends in the US. This stopped with Bush Jr. and his and Rumsfelds endorsing of torture, illegal long-term imprisonment without due process, and illegal kidnapping all over the world.

That Trump has managed to top Bush Jr.'s negative achievements tenfold is a kind of achievement in itself. Now people rightly point out now that the US's time has kind of ended. Destroying alliances, revoking agreements and contracts, that's easy and takes just a day or two. Building them up takes decades. Right now, basically every head of government is just waiting for Trump to go away, but afterwards the US will be in a very bad shape for reasonable negotiations, especially since it's no longer considered a partner that actually keeps their word.

As for domestic policies, I don't care. The US has so many domestic problems, mostly with human rights and their rotten justice system, that it doesn't really seem to matter who is the president. It does seem fairly stupid to still believe that Trump will somehow save the US middle class, but that little self-delusion only seems like the icing on the general misperception of Trump supporters in the grand scheme of things.

Re: so this...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why are you racists getting so hung up on skin color.

Re: so this...

[Anonymous Coward]

Any questions?

Yes.

Can you just answer the questions stead of projecting your own problems on other people?

Re: so this...

[danskal]

If 8-9 investigations failed to find anything, then perhaps there's a teensy chance that there was nothing to find?

Re: so this...

[danskal]

To be fair, by your definition, the whole world suffers from TDS. Fox-news-republicans are like the old man driving on the highway, leaning out of his window and shouting at the cars zipping by him: "YOU'RE ALL GOING THE WRONG WAY".

Re: so this...

[Anonymous Coward]

As a non-American I love the job he is doing. American power is predicated on its influence and its soft power. Trump is currently convincing people around the world that they should instead be looking to Europe and China because America is capricious and generally untrustworthy. So now people all around the world are making decisions that will lead to a multi-polar war. Big and small decisions are constantly being made that can favour America or not. Thanks to Trump, the 'not's will win out because we are daily being convinced that America will just screw you over eventually anyway.

Re:so this...

[Anonymous Coward]

She is first on that list, believe me.

Re: so this...

[Anonymous Coward]

If you think China won't screw you over you haven't been paying attention. At least the U.S. government vacillates between taking it in the ass at all levels with leftist leadership and trying to repair the damage by being a right-wing "bullies". China leadership will always be a subversive sneaky backstabbing ally.

As for Europe.. Please, everyone go to Europe for your hand-outs and protection from now on. Let them be damned if they do, damned if they don't from here on out. We're exhausted from it. Ingrates.

This has 0 to do with the election

[Anonymous Coward]

And by "hacking" we mean - sent a phishing email asking to verify passwords that somebody at the DNC responded to.
Note also the same "Russian Hackerz" tried this with the RNC too but nobody bit.

Re: This has 0 to do with the election

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, that form of hacking is still a crime, and that includes other entities such as the aforementioned state boards of elections, secretaries of state, and companies that provided software used to administer elections. A real problem.

Unlike you know, the hysterics Republicans went into when it was the Georgia elections systems that they could find some way to blame on Obama. And they still think Obama ordered Trump to separate children from their parents.

Re: This has 0 to do with the election

[Reaper9889]

Well, citation needed, but frankly, the fact that we hear nothing from the Trump campaign suggests four possibilites:
(1) the russians tried and failed (but I think it is clear that Trump would tell everybody about this, if this was the case)
(2) the russians tried and succeded but found nothing of interest. In the words said to be by Cardinal Richelieu:
If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him.
(On the other hand, I guess you might argue that Trump does not fit into the category of most honest of men)
(3) the russians tried, succeed and found something
(4) the russians did not try

I think the first two, as argued, are not likely to be the right one. The last 2 suggests something problematic.

Re: This has 0 to do with the election

[tsqr]

(3) the russians tried, succeed and found something (4) the russians did not try I think the first two, as argued, are not likely to be the right one. The last 2 suggests something problematic.

Wait, what? You think it's problematic if the Russians did not try?

Re: This has 0 to do with the election

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh yeah just that he was the son of Democratic state representative Mike Kernell (a fact curiously omitted from the wikipedia page you're quoting from) at the time meant he was just a "wayward individual" and not trying to subvert an election the way those nasty foreign governments were.

Re: This has 0 to do with the election

[Anonymous Coward]

Ask Manafort what type of court he thinks has most had an impact on his life.

Mr. I-got-Gotti Mueller is indicting everyone whom he thinks evidence shows proof that they violated US law. Some are beyond reach (at least for now, but yes, probably forever). Some aren't.

And yes, public opinion is a thing. Timothy McVeigh was shredded in the court of public opinion. But he also faced another court too, and it handed down and executed a death sentence. Whenever criminal courts are involved, public opinion is necessarily involved too. I think this stems from the public's opinion that justice should be upheld, i.e. laws are a good thing to have and criminals should be punished. People are genuinely interested in seeing bastards go down.

If I were the president, I would be terrified that someone will make a plea deal. That's how Mueller got Gotti. Everyone Mueller is indicting now needs to either get paid some big hazard pay, or else they need to be assassinated before they squeal. Gotti wasn't fast enough. Perhaps Trump is a better criminal. We'll see how the stable genius handles this. Murder or money?

Re: This has 0 to do with the election

[Anonymous Coward]

sent a phishing email asking to verify passwords that somebody at the DNC responded to.

Stick with the program, Ivan, nobody sent an email. Seth Rich gave the data to the Russians, don't you remember?

Note also the same "Russian Hackerz" tried this with the RNC too but nobody bit.

Nobody had to, the RNC passed their data to the Russians quite willingly (via a middle man whose name will appear in future indictments).

Re: This has 0 to do with the election

[Reaper9889]

Yes, if there are 4 targets and you atrack 3, the obivous question is why not the 4th as well. I have not been able to come with more than 2 reasons: either it is too dangerous or you have an agreement. I can not see how in the concret case that hacking the Trump campaign (assuming no agreement) would be more dangerous for the russian goverment than hacking the other 3.
Therefore, this case suggests some agreement betwen Trump and the russian goverment, which I feel is problematic.

Re: This has 0 to do with the election

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no evidence, therefore we have proof!

You are an idiot.

Re: This has 0 to do with the election

[Anonymous Coward]

You think Russian spies are actually going to be arrested or tried?

Are you fucking retarded?

Also, there is not, and has never been, a single piece of evidence that Trump colluded with Russia. Not even once. You're living in a fantasy.

Re: This has 0 to do with the election

[Anonymous Coward]

During the news conference they included the following statements:

  "There is no allegation in this indictment that any American citizen committed a crime" So I guess they are going to shut down the Mueller investigation? After all the purpose of the investigation is to identify American citizens who were working with the Russians to manipulate the election.

"There is no allegation that the conspiracy altered the vote count or changed any election result." And this beauty re-enforces the previous statement.

The purpose of the Mueller investigation was to identify any conspiracy aimed at manipulating the election results and they announced no conspiracy existed.

And all the indictments against Trump's associates have nothing to do with the election or collusion with the Russians.

Re: This has 0 to do with the election

[fatwilbur]

What I would read into that is that the Russians were just allocating limited resources, and like everyone else, assumed Trump wasn't going to be elected. There has been data showing they turned their efforts to delegitimizing Trump's presidency after he won.

Re: This has 0 to do with the election

[Anonymous Coward]

The last group of people they indicted, some of the organizations didn't exist during the election... #fail

Re: This has 0 to do with the election

[Talderas]

I'm not exactly sure which four targets you're referencing but I'm going to go on the assumption you're alluding to the three targets listed in the indictment (DNC, Clinton campaign, State Election board) along with Trump. Looking at only the targets listed in the indictment and tossing in Trump is your own bias showing. Russia did attempt to hack RNC assets, that much was admitted by Comey in Jan 2017. They were successful against state and local RNC groups as well as older RNC domains but did not succeed against RNC's main systems.

The most likely motivation behind Russia's activities was to sow discord by increasing uncertain and friction among the populace and not to specifically help a single candidate. By targeting faction neutral assets (election boards), both major political party campaigns, and Hillary Clinton the most likely answer to your set of four questions is actually point 1 or 2 rather than 3 or 4. The fact that Trump hasn't bragged about not being hacked or the Trump Campaign is silent about not being hacked is fairly in line with their method of operation. There's no evidence to support that assertion or can be misrepresented to support that assertion. I would actually lean strongly towards your second option being the real outcome. A bunch of nothing in emails would play along very well with the general discord objective. How better to rile up people against one particular person than by not releasing the pointless crap that you obtained about their opponent?

Re: This has 0 to do with the election

[Anonymous Coward]

If they step foot in America they will.

Re: This has 0 to do with the election

[Anonymous Coward]

But republican mouth Breathers said the Russians didn't interfere.

Each new article that comes out they dig themselves a deeper and deeper hole.

Re: This has 0 to do with the election

[Anonymous Coward]

That was the plan all along.
Get a braggart simpleton elected and then as the stupid decisions pile up foment as much chaos as possible.
With any luck you can get your rival to fubar themselves for a decade.

Re: This has 0 to do with the election

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone else noticing a pattern in these flamewars?

Trump critics think he's not going to get away with it, and what'll happen is that one of the perps that Mueller pops will roll over on the boss, in order to get a sentence reduced. (But it's not clear how many, if any, easily-arrested American were indicted today, though there's one rumor about a .. Congressperson?!)

Trump supporters think he will get away with it. They think Trump is smart enough to only give orders through one of his capos, and nobody beneath that station will be able to honestly say they got an order from Trump himself. The street dealers can't give you the Godfather, they'll remind you.

I'm more on the Trump critic side (I do think he is an awful president) but I actually lean toward the Trump supporter position, in that I think he'll stay insulated. There's an important thing you have forgotten, revealed in your money-or-murder question.

He's the president, and that means he has pardoning powers. And one of the first things he did when taking office, was to use that power very visibly, and on some particularly notorious figures. He's already claiming he can pardon himself, which isn't really the goal (though it might be a backup plan) mainly because he wants everyone to remember he can pardon. "I can pardon, and I don't care if it gets me a reputation as the softest-on-crime president in US history" is the loud-and-clear message from the president to everyone.

Imagine you worked for him, and you were looking at a 20 year sentence. Mueller says "we'll make it 4 years if you rat him out." 4 years?! Pfft. Trump can offer you zero years.

What the president ought to do (and this would rapidly take all the steam out of Mueller) is simply pardon everyone Mueller indicts. Another indictment? Another pardon. Repeat until there's nobody left to flip. Nobody needs to be paid off (though it would still help) or murdered, and Trump can still win.

He can get you out of prison. Why the fuck would you roll on him? John Gotti did not have this. Everyone who compares Trump to a mafioso is a fucking moron, because this guy is president. Criminal investigators can't use the same tactics on a president, and if that's Mueller's game, he's going to lose.

Re: This has 0 to do with the election

[Anonymous Coward]

You think Russian spies are actually going to be arrested or tried?

Actually, I find it very doubtful. Also, if these spies are at all smart they will never step foot into the USA or any country that has extradition treaties with America. Just my take.

Also, there is not, and has never been, a single piece of evidence that Trump colluded with Russia. Not even once. You're living in a fantasy.

Point of order, but I believe that is what the Special Counsel headed by Robert Mueller is still looking into. We will see in the coming months how that plays out.

Re: This has 0 to do with the election

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you've missed an obvious and nefarious 5th possibility:
(5) The Russians tried, succeeded, but chose to hold onto whatever information they found for future insurance/control.

I think this possibility is just as likely as any of those you listed above.

Re: This has 0 to do with the election

[Anonymous Coward]

D'oh, I just read your list again and realized that was number 3.

I do think it's worth expounding just a bit on the implications of that possibility... that the GOP could be compromised into going along with whatever Russia wants.

Re: This has 0 to do with the election

[Anonymous Coward]

I like how this entire wall of text is written under the supposition that Trump is in fact guilty of collusion, so that the only issue is will / won't he be convicted? I guess you figured no one would notice if you slipped that wild assertion in there under a manufactured heap of nuanced views.

Re:This has 0 to do with the election

[Anonymous Coward]

The RNC just kept all their data on unsecured servers. That way they could "leak" it all they wanted without fear of repercussion.

Re:This has 0 to do with the election

[quantaman]

And by "hacking" we mean - sent a phishing email asking to verify passwords that somebody at the DNC responded to.

If only there were a document with actual details:

Page 4 paragraphs 14-17 has several defendants changed with the development and deployment of their malware called "X-Agent" on the DNC servers.

Page 8, 23-24, they researched for vulnerabilities in the DCCC and DNC networks, which they seemingly used to install more malware and safely navigate the servers.

Sure, initial access seems to have been phishing, but stuff like screwing with server logs and installing keyloggers is definitely hacking.

Note also the same "Russian Hackerz" tried this with the RNC too but nobody bit.

Correction, the RNC was also hacked, they just didn't release any info.

Now, the RNC hack was of older email accounts so it wouldn't have been as damaging. It's also quite possible they didn't try as hard to hack the RNC because Clinton was their primary target.

Re:This has 0 to do with the election

[benjfowler]

Right. Spear-phishing and whaling, backed by extremely well-resourced nation-state level intelligence services, expertly searching for human vulnerabilities to exploit.

No, nothing to see here at all.

Re: This has 0 to do with the election

[Anonymous Coward]

The purpose is to link Russia to Seth Rich's murder and wikileaks

And Russia Shrugs

[Only Time Will Tell]

I'm sure Russia will be falling over themselves to round these guys up and turn them over to the U.S. We can hold a trial in absentia to help make us feel better, but these individuals will never see the inside of a courtroom unless they are paying a parking fine in Mother Russia.

Re:And Russia Shrugs

[skids]

Yeah we might as well give up and just let these guys wander around the globe and use bank accounts anywhere they please since we can't lock them up. Heck just forget the whole thing happened, I'm sure they learned their lesson.

Re:And Russia Shrugs

[PopeRatzo]

I'm sure Russia will be falling over themselves to round these guys up and turn them over to the U.S. We can hold a trial in absentia to help make us feel better, but these individuals will never see the inside of a courtroom unless they are paying a parking fine in Mother Russia.

The purpose of these new indictments is not to bring Russian intelligence operatives to justice. The purpose is to establish grounds for conspiracy charges against Americans. There's still a lot more to come from this investigation. Don't think for a second that this is some sort of conclusion. That mistake has been made every time new indictments are brought: "Is that all Mueller has?" is the cry from the Trump camp every time one of these new indictments is announced. You can tell from the unforced errors coming out of the Trump administration that the pressure is building.

Re: And Russia Shrugs

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice try Schlomo! They still got nothing!

Re:And Russia Shrugs

[Anonymous Coward]

What kind of asinine and downright UNCONSTITUTIONAL rationales are you supporting here PopeCrapso?!
Mueller makes up fake indictments that won't be defended and are therefore automatically "won" in the courts.
Mueller then uses these "victories" as proof that crimes were committed to charge Americans with related charges?
And you have the unmitigated GALL to call yourself an American who supports civil rights?!

You want to know what fascism looks like folks? Look at PopeCrapso here. THIS is why we have a 2nd amendment.

Re:And Russia Shrugs

[PopeRatzo]

This whole investigation was based on a false pretense.

That "false pretense" has already led to five convictions.

Re:And Russia Shrugs

[DigiShaman]

technicalities. Anyone can be convicted if you financially drain them to where they either slip up or just say anything to make it go away. If I had the unlimited purse of the US Federal Government to prosecute you, you'd be convicted too.

They've got NOTHING!

Re:And Russia Shrugs

[Anonymous Coward]

Those "five convictions" had NOTHING to do with the Russian investigation or its original charter but were other UNRELATED crimes that appeared during the investigation.

But you know that PopeCrapso you unmitigated hypocritical hack.

Re:And Russia Shrugs

[Anonymous Coward]

And here we have, on full display, the delusional ramblings of an extreme leftist suffering under the grips of Trump derangement syndrome. Ohh, what's that ... the psychology experts are telling me that it's now recognized as a full blown chronic illness. You see, when you've staked all your credibility on a specific outcome by repeating the same accusations and insults over a period of years, it becomes impossible to step back from the precipice and regain your perspective. The sanctity of your entire worldview is riding on the gamble. Only the gambler doesn't see it as that - the situation is so dire that his car keys are in the pot, but he can only see it as a sure thing. It cannot be otherwise. He has long ago silenced those rational voices of doubt by becoming even more fanatic in his beliefs. The cards being drawn aren't very favorable, in fact, but the gambler remains convinced of certain victory until the end.

Re:And Russia Shrugs

[bongey]

US hacked Russian networks that is the only way some of the evidence in this indictment could have been gathered. Russia just needs to turn around and indict some CIA/NSA agents. The whole indictment is nonsense.

Re:And Russia Shrugs

[Anonymous Coward]

lol, they are currently harbouring a well-known fugitive named Edward Snowden.

So, probably no. Probably not going to arrest native Russians for doing exactly what they asked them to do.

Re:And Russia Shrugs

[ody]

This whole investigation was based on a false pretense. Backed up by ZERO evidence. The whole investigation was 100% Clinton backed opposition research against Trump.

The conservative website "The Washington Free Beacon" already admitted eight months ago that it hired (funded by a "major Republican donor", no less) the research firm that produced the infamous dossier before it ever made it into the hands of the Democrats. But I guess even Republican admissions are Fake News when they don't agree with your agenda.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/1...

Re:And Russia Shrugs

[PopeRatzo]

technicalities.

Here in the US, we refer to those technicalities as "felonies".

Anyone can be convicted if you financially drain them to where they either slip up or just say anything to make it go away.

With all the dark money floating around the GOP, you think any of these convicted felons were "drained"? No, the thing that shook them was the proposition of sitting in a jail cell, eating a baloney sandwich and crapping on a stainless steel toilet, like Paul Manafort is doing right this minute.

If I had the unlimited purse of the US Federal Government to prosecute you, you'd be convicted too.

Um, what you call the "unlimited purse of the US Federal Government" is actually the limited budget of the United States Department of Justice, which is part of the Trump Administration. So, unless you believe that a Republican President and a Republican Congress are going to throw the entire US Federal budget into prosecuting their own leader for something he didn't do, you should probably rethink that whole line of thought.

Re:And Russia Shrugs

[PopeRatzo]

US hacked Russian networks that is the only way some of the evidence in this indictment could have been gathered.

Nope, that would be inadmissible. More likely the information has come from one of the US co-conspirators who are or were part of the Trump campaign. The best guess is Roger Stone and/or Mike Flynn.

Re:And Russia Shrugs

[Anonymous Coward]

> "Is that all Mueller has?"

I don't understand that kind of attitude either. At a minimum, they've got 5 guilty pleas from people involved with the campaign, including the person appointed as the National Security Advisor! And they've indicted someone who was the Trump campaign manager, the only consolation being that he was fired from the job and the indictments aren't for campaign activities. That short list pretty bad all on its own and is only the beginning.

For something declared as a witch hunt they're finding a lot of witches.

Re:And Russia Shrugs

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah you might as well. Who are 'these' guys besides a bunch of names on paper? Couple of photos?

And what will you do when Russia issues them completely new identities? Do you think creating a fake name for a spy is simply inconceivable? Are you even sure the original name is real? Please issue a bank freeze for your double-fake nobody who doesn't care.

You have nothing. They learned nothing, and you will do precisely nothing.

Re:And Russia Shrugs

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't think for a second that this is some sort of conclusion. That mistake has been made every time new indictments are brought: "Is that all Mueller has?" is the cry from the Trump camp every time one of these new indictments is announced.

To be fair, that usually follows the "we've got him now!" chants from liberals.

Re:And Russia Shrugs

[phantomfive]

There's still a lot more to come from this investigation. Don't think for a second that this is some sort of conclusion. That mistake has been made every time new indictments are brought: "Is that all Mueller has?" is the cry from the Trump camp every time one of these new indictments is announced.

I kind of wish there would be less noise until the investigation finishes. But I guess noise is the new normal.

Re:And Russia Shrugs

[bongey]

Nope idiot how would they know keystrokes entered on a Russian server. Ie NSA /cia malware was installed on it. Read the actual nonsense from the doj

Re:And Russia Shrugs

[Uberbah]

At a minimum, they've got 5 guilty pleas from people involved with the campaign, including the person appointed as the National Security Advisor!

Which are all:

1) Complete bullshit

2) Have nothing to do with Trump colluding with Russia. Which is the entire basis for Mueller's witch hunt.

Re:And Russia Shrugs

[Uberbah]

Here in the US, we refer to those technicalities as "felonies".

Uh huh. You guys should go all out and hire Ken Starr to interrogate Trump on the Stormy Daniels affair, and then indict him for perjury at the first pretense.

Re:And Russia Shrugs

[Anonymous Coward]

Muller is better than Starr: five convictions vs none.

Re:And Russia Shrugs

[PopeRatzo]

Uh huh. You guys should go all out and hire Ken Starr to interrogate Trump on the Stormy Daniels affair, and then indict him for perjury at the first pretense.

Nah, Stormy's just a sideshow. Don Jr and Ivanka get brought in and offered deals and then Trump ends up naked on the White House lawn in a thunderstorm going full King Lear before being gently led off personally by Robert Mueller in a yellow DOJ slicker. Trump's confused face is framed in the window of the black van as it's being driven to the federal lockup. DIssolve to a shot of a smiling Michael Cohen driving the van. Fade to black. Benny Mardones singing "Into the Night" plays over the credits. But stay through all the credits for a bonus scene of unwigged Trump negotiating with the cashier at the prison infirmary for a bag of zoom zoom and wham whams.

The real action is on the treason front. Count on it.

#StormysComing
#TrustTheProcess
#Qanal
#FollowTheBlackPresident

Re:And Russia Shrugs

[Uberbah]

Muller is better than Starr: five convictions vs none.

None? Try FIFTEEN, kemosabe.

Investigations into Whitewater uncovered real wrongdoing. Fifteen people, in total, were convicted of various charges. The McDougals were convicted of fraud, as was Jim Guy Tucker, Clinton's successor as governor of Arkansas. Webster Hubbell, a law partner of Hillary's who served in the Clinton Justice Department, pleaded guilty to fraud charges. But ultimately, none of the many investigations into Whitewater â" including, most famously, one by independent counsel Kenneth Starr â" found that the Clintons did anything criminal. The conclusion was that it's likelier they were victims of Jim McDougal's malfeasance than that they were co-conspirators.

And none of Mueller's indictments have anything to do with Trump or Russiagate. So far you're 0 for 2, one more and you're out.

Re:And Russia Shrugs

[Uberbah]

Uh huh. You meet for coffee on Tuesday's with some Birthers, who are also convinced that just any day now, proof will emerge that Obama really was born in Kenya?

Any day now...

Re:And Russia Shrugs

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, do you think that the American government is as stupid as you to depend on Russian goodwill to turn these people over. Of course no one expects that to happen. However, these indictments against GRU officials can be the basis for sanctions against Russia, freezing of bank accounts outside Russia, Interpol notices to bar free travel outside Russia,etc.

Re:And Russia Shrugs

[ebvwfbw]

They may have poked the bear. I think if I were Putin I'd say - game on. Poke me and you're going to pay. Send his people over here, bring the Russian government to bear on this matter. Force Mueller to go through discovery and show it to be the bullshit that it is. Find all of the people involved, show that they are criminally liable and force the American government to put them in jail or risk an international incident. That could be Obama, Hillary, Clapper, Comey, etc. Most of what they need to put people in jail is already out there. The IG report, Judicial watche's material, etc. He could shut them down good.

This was a really stupid move on Mueller's part I think.

Re:And Russia Shrugs

[sysrammer]

stop yelling. you are getting spittle all over your greybeard.

Re:And Russia Shrugs

[skids]

Judging from the amount of effort that Russia puts into fighting the Magnitsky Act it's quite a bigger inconvenience.

So

[AHuxley]

"Russia" used cryptocurrency? Something the USA can follow.
"Russia used the "internet"? A communications system the USA has some skill with...

Now the media is told of "how" "Russia" got caught so such skilled US investigative methods cant be used again...

US police methods never get told to the media in real time. Decades later the USA might declassify something about a project.

Re:So

[superwiz]

According to Wikipedia, Russian finance ministry considers transacting in all crypto-currencies illegal.

Re:So

[benjfowler]

Criminals always think they're too smart to get caught.

Doesn't surprise me that the Russian mafia-Chekist nexus thought that there were oh-so-clever, using Bitcoin, thinking that FinCEN couldn't follow the money. Unfortunately for them, the blockchain is a permanent, secure record of every transaction ever made. Whoops.

Re:So

[AHuxley]

The why would the US mil/gov tell the world that they can track in real time back to any person?
Thats one law enforcement method any advance nation will now totally avoid.
The USA just gave up on decades of easy collection ability.
When the US gov talks of how it collected information in real time, its fake news.
Read about a US collection project 30 to 50 years later, that might be true.

hmm

[cascadingstylesheet]

First of all, that sound you hear is Russia, quaking in it's boots, lol

Secondly, the US government conducted espionage against a U.S. presidential campaign, with the goal of either making it lose, or as a fallback to be an "insurance policy" in case that candidate won. Any charges going to filed in that? Anything? Beuller?

Re:hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

US law-enforcement conducted an investigation into law-breaking by citizens involved in a presidential campaign. How is that not what they are supposed to do? Do you get a Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free card if you work on an election campaign? It's bad enough that Trump will just pardon them all eventually (unless he gets impeached first).

Re:hmm

[NoNonAlphaCharsHere]

Um, no. That's just a, what's that word? Oh, yeah, a LIE. In the course of "conducting espionage" against Russian intelligence operatives OPERATING IN THE US, the FBI recorded the Russians talking to Carter Page, Trump's foreign policy advisor, who they had previous evidence of collaborating with Russian Intelligence. But that's nothing to get suspicious about, right? No reason to follow up on that, right?

Re:hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

A foreign policy advisor to a presidential candidate talked to a foreign power!?!? Oh No!m ZOMG stop the presses. I smell evil afoot.

Re:hmm

[Oswald McWeany]

First of all, that sound you hear is Russia, quaking in it's boots, lol

Secondly, the US government conducted espionage against a U.S. presidential campaign, with the goal of either making it lose, or as a fallback to be an "insurance policy" in case that candidate won. Any charges going to filed in that? Anything? Beuller?

You know, for a long time it would have been the Republicans who were willing to stand up to Russia and prevent their abuses and they would have called the Democrats weak, or doormats in their handling of Russia. The roles seem to have switched. The Democrats are enraged at Russia and wanting to stand strong and the Republicans are now the doormats.

I wonder why?

Re:hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

And lied to the FBI about it... a crime...

Re:hmm

[MikeMo]

Because they think that rage makes the Republicans look bad, and because they think it hurts Trump. No other reason.

Re:hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

How convenient that you omit that Page immediately turned around after first contact and helped the FBI bust those intelligence operatives.

Re:hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Secondly, the US government conducted espionage against a U.S. presidential campaign, with the goal of either making it lose, or as a fallback to be an "insurance policy" in case that candidate won. Any charges going to filed in that?

Depends on what evidence turns up. Mueller might be too stupid to know how to run a faith-based investigation, so there probably hasn't been much progress along those lines yet. This is why Trump is furious at Sessions for recusing himself, because Sessions does know how to perform a faith-based investigation, but he won't do it!

On the bright side, though Mueller is weak on faith, he's good at evidence, so we now have a second wave of crooks getting indicted by grand juries. And that's now a second confirmation that the "witch hunt" hypothesis is wrong.

That means Mueller is probably going to stay on the job, so he may indeed have the opportunity of investigating the thing you were talking about. The catch is that he only knows how to use evidence and he's incompetent at faith, so I wouldn't be too optimistic.

Re:hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

not your native language, is it?

Re:hmm

[Alascom]

It is important to include all relevant facts.

Peter Strozk, the FBI boss in the news for saying he would "stop Trump" from becoming President, was the person who paid Stefan Halper as an FBI informant and placed him inside the Trump campaign.

Stefan Halper then used his influence inside the campaign to recommend and hire Carter Page, who is now accused of being a Russian spy.

So the trail of facts seems to show a very very different story.

1. FBI's boss (Peter Strozk) hires a mole
2. FBI place mole inside Trump campaign (due to fear of russia)
3. FBI Mole recommends and hires a Russian spy (Carter Page)
4. FBI gets warrants to spy on campaign based on Russian spy "infiltrating" the campaign - Peter Strozk (see 1) leads the investigation
5. Opponents claim Trump colluded with Russians and deny FBI bias.

If Occam's razor can provide a better way to interpret these facts, please share.

Re: hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh dear, cascadingstylesheet, you already did the Bueller thing as an a/c. Don't just use the examples given.

Trolling for Mother Russia Handbook Hint no. 45:
Adopt and adapt much-loved American cultural icons, eg. Ferris Bueller.

You and AHuxley ought to have steered clear of this one instead of leaving your Kremlin paw prints all over it.

Re:hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

The Dems were only nice to Russia because they wanted to wheel and deal and sell them , I don't know. Maybe 25% of the U.S. Uranium reserve?

Re: hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

You either don't know or don't care how the FBI works, much like the Republicans who interrogated Strzok. To suggest that he paid Halper is just stupid. From Strzok's testimony.

"At every step, at every investigative decision, there were multiple layers of people above me, assistant director, deputy director, director of the F.B.I., and multiple layers of people below me, section chiefs, unit chiefs and analysts, all of whom were involved in all of these decisions," he told Mr. Gowdy after the chairman pressed him. "They would not tolerate any improper behavior in me any more than I would tolerate it in them."

Re: hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Does that somehow forgive him or purge his wrong doings?

Re: hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL. Yea she sold uranium she didn't own. Also how does a person "own uranium". Can normal people even do that?

Re:hmm

[cascadingstylesheet]

It is important to include all relevant facts.

Peter Strozk, the FBI boss in the news for saying he would "stop Trump" from becoming President, was the person who paid Stefan Halper as an FBI informant and placed him inside the Trump campaign.

Stefan Halper then used his influence inside the campaign to recommend and hire Carter Page, who is now accused of being a Russian spy.

So the trail of facts seems to show a very very different story.

1. FBI's boss (Peter Strozk) hires a mole 2. FBI place mole inside Trump campaign (due to fear of russia) 3. FBI Mole recommends and hires a Russian spy (Carter Page) 4. FBI gets warrants to spy on campaign based on Russian spy "infiltrating" the campaign - Peter Strozk (see 1) leads the investigation 5. Opponents claim Trump colluded with Russians and deny FBI bias.

If Occam's razor can provide a better way to interpret these facts, please share.

Exactly.

Re: hmm

[fatwilbur]

Oh please - if you buy his BS that a chief agent within the FBI doesn't have the pull to get what he wants done, I have some land in Florida to sell you.

Re:hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

FURTHERMORE! Carter Page was actually a FBI informant who had cooperated with counter intel division from 2014 through MAY 2016 in the FBI's effort to indict and convict Russians. Byt October, the FBI was casting Carter Page as a foreign entity before the fisa court to obtain the type of warrant designed to capture terrorist bombers on the way to their target.

FURTHERMORE , look for what should be there and IS NOT. The FBI never investigated the alleged russians who had clintoninan dirt. Mifsud at the time etc...
The FBI bored into the Trump team.

FURTHERMORE, when did it become the responsibility of the FBI to protect the reputation of Candidate Clinton by opening a counter intel investigation on Papadopoulos. OUt of one side of their mouth, the FBI says clinton's emails are a nothing burger. Out of the otherside of their mouth, it was imparative to aquire a warrantless wire tap on Papadopoulos because some stranger in a random bar offered him clinton emails.

How much more do you need?

Re: hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

You either don't know or don't care how the FBI works, much like the Republicans who interrogated Strzok. To suggest that he paid Halper is just stupid. From Strzok's testimony.

"At every step, at every investigative decision, there were multiple layers of people above me, assistant director, deputy director, director of the F.B.I., and multiple layers of people below me, section chiefs, unit chiefs and analysts, all of whom were involved in all of these decisions," he told Mr. Gowdy after the chairman pressed him. "They would not tolerate any improper behavior in me any more than I would tolerate it in them."

Yeah, multiple layers of people who refuse to state under oath that they actually read the FISA warrants they signed to spy on the Trump campaign.

Not the greatest source it's clearly biased, but the embedded video clearly shows Rod Rosenstien - one of Strzok's "multiple layers of people above me" - refusing to state that he actually read the FISA warrants he signed.

Nevermind the fact that Strzok has no credibility at all - which is why Mueller shitcanned him in the first place.

Ask Steven Hatfill how Robert Mueller's FBI worked - he got seven million dollars from the FBI because of their fuckups.

Ask the four Boston men framed by the FBI for a murder in order to protect Whitey Bulger how "the FBI works". They got $101 million for their troubles. Guess what? Robert Mueller's fingerprints are all over the coverup of THAT....

Re:hmm

[jeff4747]

If Occam's razor can provide a better way to interpret these facts, please share.

Ok:

FBI announces in late 2016 that they have an active investigation into the Trump campaign working with Russia to affect the election.

That would toss the election to Clinton, since it was pretty close. And it would be really, really easy for the FBI to do if they actually were out to sabotage Trump. Just a press release, like the multiple press releases they sent out for their investigation into Clinton.

Instead, the FBI announced the investigation into Clinton's emails, including a big announcement reviving it in October. The FBI didn't talk about the investigation into the Trump campaign, and actively turned the press away from it by claiming the investigation didn't involve the Trump campaign.

That would be a really bad idea if they were actually out to get Trump.....but it doesn't fit the narrative so the imbalance in press releases somehow doesn't get included when you talk about including all facts.

Re:hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

So one FBI agent manufactured all the russia collusion in a grand conspiracy theory.

Or the more likely obvious answer of: Trump is in bed with Russia

Some things that he would help:
Trump showing his taxes to make his financial ties more transparent (for many years, like Hillary did), explains his close personal family and business ties to Russian oligarchs over the past 10+ years, and all the Russian funded pro-Trump advertising that affected millions of Americans, the anti-NATO stance (which helps Russia), fake anti-China stance that really ends up hurting America & capitalism, etc...

Sometimes the obvious answer, is the obvious answer. We need proud honorable Republicans to stand up for our country and demand it. At the moment they are cowering under the threat of the Trump angry mob.

Re:hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm glad you believed my fake news :) . Thanks for the ad revenue! I got over 2 million unique hits on that one, lots of good funding of leftist politicians and causes from that one!

Re:hmm

[BrianMarshall]

If Occam's razor can provide a better way to interpret these facts, please shave.

FTFY

Re:hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

It is important to include all relevant facts.

Says the guy leaving out all the facts about Trump's sons and campaign employees meeting with and/or accepting large amounts of cash from Russians.

Re:hmm

[Orestesx]

Your trail of "facts" would be compelling if they were true, but they are not. Carter Page was part of the Trump team since at least March 2016 when he was identified by Trump as a foreign policy consultant. Halper was never part of the Trump team and didn't meet Page until July 2016. So I don't know how you think Halper was responsible for Page getting hired by Trump.

Re:hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Instead, the FBI announced the investigation into Clinton's emails, including a big announcement reviving it in October.

They had to or the NYPD would've done it for them. The NYPD found classified emails on Anthony Weiner's laptop (while investigating him for sexting with a teen), and the guy was just the husband of Hillary Clinton's top aide, Huma Abedin. The FBI was forced to say something.

As for why the FBI didn't try to sting Trump before election day, that's easy, the entire plan was the backup in case he won.

Don't worry America!

[Anonymous Coward]

Russian President Donald Trump has issued a pardon for these victims of law enforcement overreach so that they can go about their business as he praises the Great Putin who unlike his enemies is a strong and virile man.

Re:Don't worry America!

[Anonymous Coward]

Half the country is still in "election mode", and wake up each and every day fighting to keep trump from being elected... or as the case is now... fighting to try and have him impeached.

When your run your campaign on "fear, he's hitler, he has the launch codes and will vaprorize the earth, he's a war monger, guitly of this form of x-ism and that form of y-ism" but then don't diffuse the situation after your campaign loses?

The losing side still hasn't found it's outlet for all the cognitive dissonance it's experiencing.. and still hasn't had their come to jesus (er... steve jobs?) moment of understanding "hm... maybe I was wrong about all this and should just move on with my life?"

Re:Don't worry America!

[Anonymous Coward]

And this is new to you?

Re:Don't worry America!

[Anonymous Coward]

That's nothing compared to the cognitive dissonance of Republicans, who went from commie-haters to being the biggest pals of Russia ever within a single day.

Re:Don't worry America!

[Anonymous Coward]

Half the country is still in "election mode", and wake up each and every day fighting to keep trump from being elected... or as the case is now... fighting to try and have him impeached.

When your run your campaign on "fear, he's hitler, he has the launch codes and will vaprorize the earth, he's a war monger, guitly of this form of x-ism and that form of y-ism" but then don't diffuse the situation after your campaign loses?

Trump's campaign was run on fear too. Fear of the swamp! Fear of the illegals! The brown people!

The losing side still hasn't found it's outlet for all the cognitive dissonance it's experiencing.. and still hasn't had their come to jesus (er... steve jobs?) moment of understanding "hm... maybe I was wrong about all this and should just move on with my life?"

Yes this would never happen if a Democrat were elected, everyone would be peaceful about it and oh wait

Re:Don't worry America!

[Anonymous Coward]

The Democrats actively destroyed themselves with the way they handled the nomination and the way they rain the campaign following the nomination. Hillary herself went out of her way to alienate the voter base she desperately needed because she, like most of the Democratic party, just felt that Trump was a joke of a character and didn't stand even the tiniest of chances of actually being elected.

On the other side, the Republican party basically ignored Trump right up to the point he won the nomination, then fell all over themselves trying to figure out how the fuck this happened. But, Trump campaigned by drumming the hot-points and pushing every button her could because it kept the media focused on him. Hillary essentially disappeared in the cloud of Trump being covered 24/7 for being too outrageous to be a politician.

Neither party comes off looking good to anybody with half a brain. Unfortunately, there's a lot of Americans that refuse to engage enough synapses to qualify.

Re:Don't worry America!

[Anonymous Coward]

Neither party comes off looking good to anybody with half a brain.

Don't blame me. I voted for Kodos.

Re:Don't worry America!

[Anonymous Coward]

Half the country is still in "election mode", and wake up each and every day fighting

To be fair, that's what you're supposed to do, and most of America's problems over the last few decades are related to failing to do that.

The reason Republicans lost to Trump is that they didn't give a fuck until after the primaries. (If they had cared, they would have brought forth a candidate to beat him.) And that's what happened to the Democrats too (though it worked differently, the end result was the same). By the time most people started to think about what do to, Clinton and Trump were already their parties' nominees and the country was doomed to have an unusually bad president; we just didn't know who it would be.

Let's hope Americans finally learn to stay in "election mode" perpetually, that is, always be thinking politically instead of just for a couple months every two years (or worse, every four years). Don't trust the parties. They tell you the election is in the fall. But really, the election is happening every day.

If you can't spot the sucker, maybe it's you. If you can't figure out who to vote for, maybe you should be running.

Re:Don't worry America!

[Darinbob]

That's because Trump continues to campaign. Continuing to hold political rallies even in off years is rare to see in democratic republics.

Re:Don't worry America!

[Darinbob]

Politics is is all about being a socially acceptable means of being a hypocrite in public.

Your party in power: "He needs to be allowed to govern"
Your party out of power: "He's abusing his office"

Re:Don't worry America!

[benjfowler]

Continuous campaigning is a thing these days; Trump himself is too stupid and lazy to think of doing that himself -- he's just riding on the fact that the GOP is just incredibly good at winning elections.

Doomed

[sycodon]

If any part of this case relies on the examination of the DNC servers by Crowdstrike then any half competent attorney could take it apart.

1. The server will need to be provided for examination by defense experts.
2. The chain of custody is non-existent.

No server, no evidence. No evidence, no conviction. Even then the lack of any chain of custody calls into question the quality if any evidence found on it.

Re:Doomed

[AHuxley]

Re "Even then the lack of any chain of custody calls into question the quality if any evidence found on it."
The cyber currency will do that part.... ??? Now the world knows how the USA tracks it all.

Re:Doomed

[E-Rock]

Blockchain is the most trackable currency ever invented. No secret government anything needed.

Re:Doomed

[Anonymous Coward]

If any part of this case relies on the examination of the DNC servers by Crowdstrike then any half competent attorney could take it apart.

1. The server will need to be provided for examination by defense experts.
2. The chain of custody is non-existent.

No server, no evidence. No evidence, no conviction. Even then the lack of any chain of custody calls into question the quality if any evidence found on it.

And you law enforcement / computer investigation / first hand knowledge of the case is anything that didn't come from your ass?

This is no your local PD pissin around, these are people who have worked on this for their career.

Re:Doomed

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah.. Don't quit your job and go in to Law.

Re:Doomed

[Anonymous Coward]

If any part of this case relies on the examination of the DNC servers by Crowdstrike then any half competent attorney could take it apart.

Sounds like a variant of the old "ask to see the radar guns calibration certificate to get out of a speeding ticket" bullshit. Consider the possibility that America's most decorated, competent, and revered (by everyone except about 25% of the country starting 6 months ago) criminal prosecutor would avoid a charge that "any half competent attorney could take it apart" at this point in their career under the highest stakes of said career.

Or maybe its like you said and the most through investigation of our time missed the part where a 5 word request blows up their case. If it was me, I'd be using this genius law mind to bill $10000/hr, not posting my musings on /. To each their own...

Re:Doomed

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a friend in federal prison who thought that too. You (like my friend) sound like a non-lawyer who thinks he knows more about the law than an actual lawyer.

Slashdot is full of people who fit that template for any number of subjects (law, climate, physics, etc.).

Re:Doomed

[Anonymous Coward]

Right, because a grand jury is so easy to dupe. *eyeroll*

Re:Doomed

[Orgasmatron]

Don't worry. It isn't like Russia is going to extradite a dozen of their GRU operatives to stand trial.

Re: Doomed

[Anonymous Coward]

*if any part of this evidence relies on crowd strike*

I think you mean *if the only evidence is from crowd strike*

Re:Doomed

[Uberbah]

Right, because a grand jury is so easy to dupe. *eyeroll*

Of course it is, moran. The trope that a prosecutor could "indict a ham sandwich" exists for a reason.

Re:Doomed

[Uberbah]

If any part of this case relies on the examination of the DNC servers by Crowdstrike then any half competent attorney could take it apart.

Sounds like a variant of the old "ask to see the radar guns calibration certificate to get out of a speeding ticket" bullshit.

If you're completely incompetent and willfully clueless, I supposed you could see it that way.

Re:Doomed

[Uberbah]

This is no your local PD pissin around, these are people who have worked on this for their career.

People who have never bothered to examine the DNC servers first hand. Which either means they are too incompetent to be running this investigation, or this investigation was a farce from the beginning.

Pick one.

Re:Doomed

[AHuxley]

What will the USA do when real skilled lawyers show up and request discovery again?

Re:Doomed

[PopeRatzo]

No server, no evidence. No evidence, no conviction. Even then the lack of any chain of custody calls into question the quality if any evidence found on it.

You're completely wrong about the FBI "not having the server".

The DNC server was forensically imaged by incident response experts, those snapshots were cryptographically signed, cataloged, and turned over to the FBI. Copies reside at Quantico, Ft Meade, and the Bureau's DC office.

The FBI has the server. There is evidence. Look beneath the Fox News surface and learn these things for yourself.

Re:Comey Testimony

[AHuxley]

But the "cyber currency". The internet says so. No need to think about the server and any forensic analysis.

Why did they brief Putin's employee?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems like a waste of time. It's not like he cares we had our asses handed to us.

Vote count and election results not changed

[schwit1]

Rosenstien added details from the podium ...

There is no allegation in this indictment that any American citizen committed a crime.
There is no allegation the conspiracy changed the vote count or affected any election results.

Re:Vote count and election results not changed

[sessamoid]

Rosenstien added details from the podium ...

There is no allegation in this indictment that any American citizen committed a crime. There is no allegation the conspiracy changed the vote count or affected any election results.

He's already charged and obtained guilty pleas from Americans in this investigation, just not in this particular indictment.

Determining any effect on the election was never in the purview of the Mueller investigation, just actions taken and the underlying intent. If you think a concerted misinformation campaign had no effect at all on voters, you are free to believe so. You are also free to believe and Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny.

Re:Vote count and election results not changed

[MikeMo]

Yes, but, still, no evidence of collusion.

Re:Vote count and election results not changed

[penandpaper]

If you think a concerted misinformation campaign had no effect at all on voters

misinformation campaign as in targeting both sides with trolls and memes. Oh, and airing the dirty laundry of the DNC, the Clinton campaign, and Hillary.

The dirty laundry wasn't misinformation. It probably persuaded some votes particularly Bernie supporters.

How many voters do you think changed their mind because a few trolls and memes that mostly occurred after the election? Methinks you are the one inclined to believe in fairy tales.

Re:Vote count and election results not changed

[Anonymous Coward]

Does President Trump, calling out publicly for Russians to hack his political opponent, in front of an audience of thousands and broadcast around the world and saved for your viewing pleasure on Youtube constitute collusion?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EZFBB-MntE 24 second mark.

Re:Vote count and election results not changed

[bobbied]

He keeps saying that... Again and Again... He said it LAST time he charged a pile of Russians.

Honest brokers of the facts *should* include this disclaimer any time they start talking about what these charges mean. If they don't, they are ignorant of all the facts, or purposely being misleading. In the first case, they need to check their sources and use better ones. I the second case, they need to be dismissed as the partisan hacks they are.

Re:Vote count and election results not changed

[Brett Buck]

That may well be technically true. However, the information that the DNC systematically conspired to rig the primary for The Chosen One, against Bernie, certainly seemed to have an effect. Additionally, the most damaging information came from Wikileaks, which got the information from a disgruntled DNC insider, not via "Russian Hacking"

    That's why they are so upset about it, they aren't concerned with the hacks per se, they are concerned with the fact that their own manipulations were laid bare while they themselves ran a sham primary process where the results were pre-ordained.

Re:Vote count and election results not changed

[Anonymous Coward]

No.

Re:Vote count and election results not changed

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no allegation in this indictment that any American citizen committed a crime.
There is no allegation the conspiracy changed the vote count or affected any election results.

Well. Yeah. What's your point?

This is about some Russian spooks that hacked a major political party (A crime) with the express motivation of influencing the US election, and is concerned with those crimes. It states that several prominent online personalities that were active in the dissemination of materials obtained via hacking were in fact GRU operatives.

This indictment does, however, state that US citizens acted as parties that worked directly with those that were indicted, but does not charge them in this indictment. (Mentions an un-named congressperson and someone who is almost certainly Roger Stone) They may or may not be charged separately at a later date.

If you've been paying attention, there are a lot of pieces in this puzzle. Those watching the investigation liken it to the prosecution of a large criminal org (Like the mafia) - Where generally it's effective to establish the crimes of operatives, then link those operatives to bosses.

Remember that Nixon himself was an "Unindicted co-conspirator"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unindicted_co-conspirator

Observers also note that they named Russian spies specifically. That is actually a fairly big deal and lends a lot of gravity to the seriousness of these accusations.

Re:Vote count and election results not changed

[Anonymous Coward]

Your title:

Vote count and election results not changed

and the facts don't match:

There is no allegation the conspiracy changed the vote count or affected any election results.

The former does not follow from the latter at all, and it's not the FBI's job (nor will it ever be) to determine which factors were decisive in an election. Your post is not informative, it is actively disinformative.

Re:Vote count and election results not changed

[Anonymous Coward]

That you have seen. If you have evidence, but not enough to indict the ring leader yet, you dont let the criminals know what you have cause they will get time to try and hide further evidence.

Re:Vote count and election results not changed

[Anonymous Coward]

That's why they are so upset about it, they aren't concerned with the hacks per se, they are concerned with the fact that their own manipulations were laid bare while they themselves ran a sham primary process where the results were pre-ordained.

Are you saying that Hillary Clinton did not receive the required votes to receive the Democratic nomination? That the DNC lied about the vote tallies?

Because that's what it sounds like you're saying to me.

Re:Vote count and election results not changed

[MikeMo]

Dude, he was totally being sarcastic, and if you can't see that, you're either brainwashed or part of the problem.

Re:Vote count and election results not changed

[ole_timer]

if anyone changed their vote, or based it on whatever they read, that's an indictment of the education system...

Re:Vote count and election results not changed

[Anonymous Coward]

So by your book, attempted murder is not a crime, because no-one actually died ?

What is wrong with you people ? Why do you put so much energy and effort into defending scumbags criminals like Trump or Putin ? Are they paying you ? Are you so fanatically camped on the right side of the political spectrum that you will defend ANYTHING, as long as it is republican ? Or, like the people you defend, are you completely devoid of the tiniest shred of human decency ?

Re:Vote count and election results not changed

[Anonymous Coward]

It's really been a hoot watching you guys moving the goalposts as we discover more and more that the Ruskies have been engaging in the very activities you swear up and down they didn't do.

I'm going to come back at ya in six months and see where we're at, I have a feeling I'll need to bring a telescope.

Re:Vote count and election results not changed

[amicusNYCL]

Rosenstein did not claim that election results or vote counts were not affected. Let me bold the important part for you:

There is no allegation in this indictment that any American citizen committed a crime.

Every time Mueller puts anything in a court filing, people can't wait to jump up and conclude that this is all there is, and that this is all there ever will be. That's a bit premature. Mueller isn't finished yet.

Re:Vote count and election results not changed

[amicusNYCL]

No evidence that you've seen, but who the hell are you? You're not the special counsel, right? You're not on his team? You have no idea what evidence they do or do not have or who their targets might be?

OK, I thought so.

Re:Vote count and election results not changed

[amicusNYCL]

Is that the legal defense?

"Dude, I was totally being sarcastic."

I heard on the radio that, the day he said that, a new spear-phishing campaign against the Democrats started. That's stupid though, he was totally being sarcastic, dude!

Re:Vote count and election results not changed

[amicusNYCL]

So, what you're saying, is that we're fucked.

Re:Vote count and election results not changed

[ole_timer]

only to the extent you're relying on the education system to produce critical thinkers...

Re:Vote count and election results not changed

[Ichijo]

Is asymmetrical information better than misinformation?

Re:Vote count and election results not changed

[amicusNYCL]

They certainly don't produce themselves. You can tell based on how people vote.

Re:Vote count and election results not changed

[Dread_ed]

From what he wrote I see he is saying exactly what he wrote and not what you added to it. Namely, that underhanded and dishonest tactics practiced by a political party had repercussions that contributed to that party's loss of an election.

Fruit of the poisoned tree is inadmissible in a court of law, but not in the court of public opinion.

Re:Vote count and election results not changed

[Anonymous Coward]

If you think a concerted misinformation campaign had no effect at all on voters

misinformation campaign as in targeting both sides with trolls and memes. Oh, and airing the dirty laundry of the DNC, the Clinton campaign, and Hillary.

The Right is / was much more likely to spread manufactured ("fake") news:

* http://comprop.oii.ox.ac.uk/research/polarization-partisanship-and-junk-news/
* https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/feb/06/sharing-fake-news-us-rightwing-study-trump-university-of-oxford

And not just a little, but by 30x:

* https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/2/24/17047880/conservatives-amplified-russian-trolls-more-often-than-liberals

Of course the Right thinks that "university study uses fishy criteria to tar right-leaning journalists":

* http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/oxfords-junk-science-on-fake-news/

I ran across an interview (which I cannot now find via search) about a fake news creator, and he said that he tried spreading left-wing fake news for profit as well, but the ROI on time and effort wasn't worth it. He got an order of magnitude more from right-wing ads because it spread much better.

Re:Vote count and election results not changed

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no allegation in this indictment that bobbied is a child rapist.

Yup, they need to point out everything that isn't included otherwise they are biased.

Re:Vote count and election results not changed

[Anonymous Coward]

That the conservatards have spent the last 40 years defunding and dismantling because they keep being told a sky fairy didn't create them. If you're a conservatard, fuck you. If you're a fellow libtard, why the fuck are you deflecting from the problem at hand? You aren't helping.

Re:Vote count and election results not changed

[ole_timer]

or don't vote...

Re:Vote count and election results not changed

[penandpaper]

Either way it describes same thing. One sounds scarier.

Re:Vote count and election results not changed

[penandpaper]

Moving goal posts? "we discover more and more ". We didn't discover anything new with this except for the names of some Russians that are alleged to do things we already knew about.

Re:Vote count and election results not changed

[penandpaper]

Because they would be critical thinkers if they voted just the way you vote. amirite? Get over yourself.

Re:Vote count and election results not changed

[Anonymous Coward]

They certainly don't produce themselves. You can tell based on how people vote.

An indictment indeed. If we ignore the Electoral College, the majority of voters in absolute numbers did in fact vote for Hillary Clinton. As amicusNYCL said,

So, what you're saying, is that we're fucked.

Re:Vote count and election results not changed

[Anonymous Coward]

Critical thinkers would have long ago realized that they aren't bound to the offerings of two major parties and whatever underdog they're throwing a bone to, and we wouldn't have been in this mess having to choose between a confidence man and a dynastic crook.

So yes, we're fucked. Have been for a long time, only now it's coming to a boil.

Re:Vote count and election results not changed

[amicusNYCL]

Fuck off, come talk shit to me when 45% of the electorate doesn't decide to stay home because they're given 2 shit choices and a false narrative that voting for anyone else is worthless.

This isn't about me.

That being said, you want to go over how many people talking shit about "Obamacare" then defended the "ACA" because they had no idea the two were the same thing? Because that clearly shows a lack of critical thinking, and these people vote.

Re:Vote count and election results not changed

[Jeremi]

Dude, he was totally being sarcastic, and if you can't see that, you're either brainwashed or part of the problem.

Or he's unable to receive tone-of-voice metadata over plain ASCII text, just like everyone else.

Sarcasm over a text-only medium is notoriously hard to classify reliably, especially when you have to sort out the sarcastic posts from the genuine idiots and the trolls who are genuinely posing as genuine idiots in order to get a rise out of people.

Hence Poe's Law.

Re:Vote count and election results not changed

[amicusNYCL]

Yeah, that's a major problem. It's also a major problem that 45% of the electorate decided to stay home because of 2 shit choices and a false narrative that voting for anyone else was pointless.

Re:Vote count and election results not changed

[penandpaper]

Um, no. We are partly in this mess because some people like to push for a Pied Piper candidate for the opposing party to push their crappy candidate.

Re:Vote count and election results not changed

[penandpaper]

You complain about voting participation and then complain about the lack of informative voters (you can do the same thing with the recent GOP tax cut) and you think that is evidence of a lack of critical thinking? Get over yourself.

Re:Vote count and election results not changed

[amicusNYCL]

Voting participation is directly related to the fact that the D-R system gives us shit choices every time. That is the system that needs to end, and when people feel like there is a candidate who actually represents them then they will vote. I would even contend that many of the people who do not vote are in fact informed, and that is specifically why they choose to not vote. I disagree with that choice, I think they should vote for the person who represents them the most, but whatever.

Re:Vote count and election results not changed

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't say "um, no" and then agree with me, that's not how this works.

Re:Vote count and election results not changed

[GrumpySteen]

There's no allegation in the indictment that gravity exists, yet you aren't floating off into space even though you jumped to a conclusion with all your might.

Re:Vote count and election results not changed

[Anonymous Coward]

I’ve always taken this to mean only that no direct vote flipping (ie, hacking election systems) occurred. Indirect effects are never going to be reasonably quantifiable. The “She should’a been President” arguments will be around as long as the grassy knoll and moon landing conspiracy theories.

Re:Vote count and election results not changed

[penandpaper]

The States decide their elections. If you don't like your current system then you can convince your fellow statesman to enact your idea and risk your political power. If it is a really good idea you can convince me with action instead of rhetoric to be enacted in my state. I don't think you are smart enough or persistent enough to do that so all you have is empty rhetoric. Womp womp.

What I find funny is that you are now completely off the topic of "critical thinking" and now sperging about tangential issues. Let me guess, if people think just like you about topics that would give you more of what you want they would be "critical thinkers".

Re:Vote count and election results not changed

[Attila Dimedici]

He's already charged and obtained guilty pleas from Americans in this investigation, just not in this particular indictment.

Interestingly enough, none of those indictments or guilty pleas have anything to do with the election or colluding with the Russians. As far as I am aware all of the guilty pleas are to "process crimes"...primarily, lying to the FBI about actions which were not crimes. Further, in one of those cases, the FBI agents who were supposedly lied to had concluded that the person had not lied.

Re:Vote count and election results not changed

[Anonymous Coward]

What "misinformation campaign" are you talking about? The indictments here are about actual emails from the DNC being leaked, so it was more of a whistle-blower type operation. It is kind of amusing that the Democrat leadership's disdain for the American people was laid bare in those email exchanges.

Re:Vote count and election results not changed

[amicusNYCL]

The States decide their elections.

Not presidential elections, they don't. Those are managed by the Commission on Presidential Debates, which pimps out their exclusive televised debates to individual networks. That seems kind of weird for a democracy, doesn't it? That presidential debates are only allowed to be broadcast by one network at a time? I wonder why that is. Obviously, because of the exclusivity that means there are major advertising dollars at play here, there is a huge financial incentive to host a debate.

So, here are some questions for a critical thinker: why do you think access to these debate dollars is so tightly controlled?

Who do you think controls that access?

What do you think would happen if a network aired a debate featuring a candidate who is not a member of one of the 2 sacred parties?

If you want to figure out those answers, look up the history of the Commission on Presidential Debates. Here's a hint: it used to be controlled by a non-partisan entity (not bi-partisan, mind you, which only means D-R, I mean non-partisan). That entity was the League Of Women Voters. Go figure out why they no longer control it, and who controls it, and why you are only ever shown 2 candidates in televised presidential debates.

Let me guess, if people think just like you about topics that would give you more of what you want they would be "critical thinkers".

If people actually thought critically about the election process then they would realize that it is a fraud, and they would demand more choices, and everyone could vote for someone who actually represents them instead of this bullshit lesser-of-evils crap that partisan idiots like yourself suck up. Womp womp.

Re:Vote count and election results not changed

[penandpaper]

why do you think access to these debate dollars is so tightly controlled?Who do you think controls that access?

Debates are not elections. Obviously the two major parties want to stay in power which is why they control the debates in their parties. Idiot. Are yous saying a private institution like a political party cannot set their own rules and agreements with other private institutions? Tell me more about super delegates of the democrats to shit on Sanders. I stand by my assessment that you are not smart enough for anything beyond your emotions and empty rhetoric.

they would realize that it is a fraud

Trump got in to the chagrin of Republicans and Democrats with zero political experience and formerly a registered democrat with magnitudes less money than his opponent. I don't know but that is a win in my book when a non politician can win against more seasoned and more moneyed politicians .

would demand more choices

Then change your state elections and risk your political power and see if your fellow statesmen agree with your empty rhetoric.

bullshit lesser-of-evils crap that partisan idiots like yourself suck up.

Lol, how have I even remotely been partisan in any of these comments? I think you are projecting but then again from a "critical thinker" like you I would expect as much.

Re:Vote count and election results not changed

[Uberbah]

Mueller isn't finished yet.

People keep saying that as if it's supposed to mean something. Mueller hasn't found anything so much as probable suspicion that a crime was committed, much less that it was done by Russia, much less that Trump was involved. If he hasn't found something in 2 years....he's not going to find anything. Don't like it....go sit over there next to the Bushbot True Believers, who are holding out hope that any day now, proof will emerge that Saddam had WMD's and planned 911. You know, more than ten years after even the Bush Administration itself gave up any such claims.

This probe isn't to look for any wrongdoing, it's for the deep state to keep a leash on our game show host president. That fact is so blindingly fucking obvious that Ray Charles could see it with his naked eyes. And Ray Charles is blind.

And dead.

Re:Vote count and election results not changed

[Uberbah]

No evidence that you've seen, but who the hell are you? You're not the special counsel, right? You're not on his team? You have no idea what evidence they do or do not have or who their targets might be?

Russiagate cultists keep repeating this as if it's supposed to mean something. It doesn't mean anything when the investigation has gone on for two fucking years and Mueller hasn't even come up with probable suspicion that a crime was committed, much less probable cause, much less that Trump was in on it.

You wankers are the village idiots screaming that the emperor is wearing the finest livery, when it's blindingly obvious he's got nothin on but his boxers.

Re:Vote count and election results not changed

[Uberbah]

Does President Trump, calling out publicly for Russians to hack his political opponent, in front of an audience of thousands and broadcast around the world and saved for your viewing pleasure on Youtube constitute collusion?

No. Because unlike Russigaters, Russians aren't complete fucking idiots and know that both Democrats and Republicans have been virulently anti-Russian for over a century. Your baseless conspiracy theory makes as much sense as accusing a gay person of interfering in an election between an extremely homophobic Catholic and an extremely homophobic Mormon. Any more stupid questions?

Re:Vote count and election results not changed

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right that the Emperor has no clothes!

But you've got to be intentionally deluding yourself if you think Trump wasn't in on it. Do you have a better explanation for why his campaign had so many inexplicable contacts with Kremlin agents and then lied about them under oath? What explanation do you have for Trump having a campaign NatSec team composed almost entirely of members whose only qualification is their Kremlin contacts? Have you noticed that Trump has no problem routinely insulting every single foreign leader except Putin -- even after having been told since routinely in classified intelligence briefings for the past two years that he's attacking us?

Trump's own Department of Justice just announced that officers of Putin's military have attacked our elections (the heart of our democracy), and all Trump's done about it is kiss Putin's ass. Do you really think that Trump wasn't in on it?

Do you really think that Don Jr. met with Russian agents downstairs from his father to meet about getting dirt on Clinton and completely withheld that fact from his father? Do you really think that all the money Trump owes to Russian banks and his intent to build Trump Tower Moscow have no bearing whatsoever on Trump's relationship with Russia?

And lastly, does Trump really act like an innocent man? An innocent man would simply tell the truth to clear the air and let the investigators do their job. Hillary sat for hours and hours of testimony about Benghazi and email servers, never once refusing to answer questions or pleading the Fifth. A guilty man would lie and attack the investigators. I don't think I need to tell you which path Trump is taking.

dom

Re:Vote count and election results not changed

[Uberbah]

But you've got to be intentionally deluding yourself if you think Trump wasn't in on it.

Because Trump is a fucking idiot. If he was "in on it", so was the FBI/NSA/CIA, who moled Trump's campaign and wiretapped it before they had any excuse for an investigation. Which means Mueller would have had this evidence, in which case he would have presented the evidence to Congress and you would have had articles of impeachment two fucking years ago. The rest of your post is the tired old Gish Gallop that proponents of weak or cultist ideas are prone to use:

The term Gish gallop refers to a fallacious debate tactic in which one barrages one's opposition with a deluge of individually weak arguments which take far too long to debunk individually in a way that sustains the audience's interest. This is all Russiagate amounts to. When Russiagaters tell you that there's "too much smoke for there not to be fire", they are unwittingly telling you "I've been won over by a Gish gallop fallacy." Every single aspect of their argument can be easily debunked without exception, but since there's so much of it and since pundits are assuring them of its reality so confidently, they believe.

Every few weeks there's some major new "bombshell" revelation which Russiagaters get all excited about, only to have people read the actual information in the "bombshell" and find out it's not actually anything incriminating or particularly remarkable. Take all those "bombshells" together, though, and you create the illusion of something real. That's all this nonsense is.

Re:Vote count and election results not changed

[ebvwfbw]

It's almost like - Hey everybody... look at us piss in the wind!

We're indicting people that didn't do anything and may not have been the people that even did it in the first place.

This could take an interesting turn if we look at the DNC's servers and Hillary's server. Obama's stuff seems to be missing now.

Re:Vote count and election results not changed

[Anonymous Coward]

He's already charged and obtained guilty pleas from Americans in this investigation, just not in this particular indictment.

True, but the guilty pleas are unrelated to Russia.

Re:Vote count and election results not changed

[Anonymous Coward]

People keep saying that as if it's supposed to mean something.

Well, yes. It means that he isn't finished yet. There may or may not be stuff coming up later. Nobody knows, except perhaps Mueller and possibly some of his staff. You certainly don't know either way.

Mueller hasn't found anything so much as probable suspicion that a crime was committed, much less that it was done by Russia, much less that Trump was involved. If he hasn't found something in 2 years....he's not going to find anything.

That was a long statement, looking like a statement of fact, which is nothing more than your opinion, the actual facts of which you are talking you have no idea whatsoever.

Let things play out and we shall see what happens.

I have no idea. You should admit that neither do you.

Re:Vote count and election results not changed

[Uberbah]

Cheney must be kicking himself these days. He went through all that trouble to present evidence that Saddam had WMD's and was involved in 911. The evidence was either complete crap or faked, but evidence was presented. Who knew he could have skipped all that work and gone straight to having FBI officials make statements without any evidence whatsoever, and people would eat that shit up.

With a spoon.

Re:Vote count and election results not changed

[amicusNYCL]

Debates are not elections.

Nice deflection.

Obviously the two major parties want to stay in power which is why they control the debates in their parties.

Yeah, obviously. But what about the debates between candidates of multiple parties? Do you have any idea what I'm talking about? Are you trying to deflect, or are you just that dumb?

Are yous saying a private institution like a political party cannot set their own rules and agreements with other private institutions?

No, I am not being nearly so abstract as that. I am saying that the two political parties in power are actively damaging the country by the fact that they hold television networks hostage in their quest to actively exclude every other political party from the national discussion.

I stand by my assessment that you are not smart enough for anything beyond your emotions and empty rhetoric.

Says the person who's not able to comprehend some pretty simple statements.

I don't know but that is a win in my book when a non politician can win against more seasoned and more moneyed politicians .

OK, I also believe that any "career politician" should be removed from office, but that statement you made is a complete non-sequitor. You really have no idea what I'm even referring to.

Re:Vote count and election results not changed

[amicusNYCL]

Mueller hasn't found anything so much as probable suspicion that a crime was committed

People keep saying that like they know exactly what he has. Come on, obviously the only things we know from Mueller are what he files in court. We have no knowledge of what he has or has not found other than what he has told the courts, because he can actually stop his people from leaking until the investigation is finished and he has indicted everyone he's going to indict. Even Ray Charles could see that.

Re:Vote count and election results not changed

[amicusNYCL]

Mueller hasn't even come up with probable suspicion that a crime was committed

I want you to prove that statement. I want you to show everything that Mueller has.

Re:Vote count and election results not changed

[penandpaper]

Good god you are thick in the head. Stating a simple fact is not a deflection.

But what about the debates between candidates of multiple parties?

Are yous saying a private institution like a political party cannot set their own rules and agreements with other private institutions?

What about them? Do you have any idea what I'm talking about? Are you just that dumb? Is it too "abstract" for you? Answer my question and you answer your question. I am being "abstract" because that's our laws currently. If you cannot even accurately describe the current system how in gods green earth do you think you can change it for the better? Idiot.

they hold television networks hostage in their quest to actively exclude every other political party from the national discussion.

You must have missed the Libertarian debates. I am sorry I can't hear you over hostage situation in the news room. It appears that An Allepo appeared to legalize medicinal meth and dissolve the FED.

Says the person who's not able to comprehend some pretty simple statements.

Tell me more about abstraction. Do me a favor and just answer my question honestly. It's very simple and from there you will understand how I sit on the issue and what must be done. But if you can't answer that question then we are at an impasse. (Here's a hint; congress shall make no law).

I also believe that any "career politician" should be removed from office

Good for you. Would you like a smiley sticker or a gold star? I guess you should be relieved that the Career Politician Clinton didn't get in.

Re:Vote count and election results not changed

[amicusNYCL]

Stating a simple fact is not a deflection.

It kind of is when you're trying to state something which I'm not arguing. Yes, debates are not elections, congratulations. That doesn't address anything I said though.

This discussion is absurd, if you're bringing up the Libertarian party debate, or any other third-party debate, then you are completely missing the point about the Commission On Presidential Debates aiming to keep Ds and Rs in power by excluding any other party from participating in debates featuring their candidates. It's really not a difficult point to understand. Go read the Wikipedia article on the Commission On Presidential Debates if you want to understand, and pay special attention to the statement by the League Of Women Voters on why they could no longer sponsor presidential debates. It's obviously impossible to have any sort of rational or logical discussion with someone who makes so much of an effort to miss the point while lobbing out schoolyard insults.

I guess you should be relieved that the Career Politician Clinton didn't get in.

100%. That's why I didn't vote for her.

Take care.

Re:Vote count and election results not changed

[penandpaper]

Of course you have demonstrated your acumen in "critical thinking" because... something something private political parties and debates. Surely, if we change something something debates and something something elections we can a critical think.

Don't worry Betty. Not everyone can be a "critical thinker" like you. We should be so lucky.

Re:Vote count and election results not changed

[Anonymous Coward]

From what he wrote I see he is saying exactly what he wrote and not what you added to it. Namely, that underhanded and dishonest tactics practiced by a political party had repercussions that contributed to that party's loss of an election.

You're absolutely right in that what the DNC did had big repercussions on the general election, but what the DNC did had little if anything to do with Bernie Sanders's loss in the primary.

Re:Vote count and election results not changed

[Uberbah]

Mueller hasn't found anything so much as probable suspicion that a crime was committed

People keep saying that like they know exactly what he has.

Again, we do know exactly what he has: nothing. Otherwise he wouldn't have to keep propping up his "investigation" with manufactured perjury charges, indictments that have nothing to do with Trump or Russia, or indictments of people who will never see the inside of a courtroom. Because if he had something, it would have been presented by now to show cause. The only other possibly is actually worse for Russiagaters: Mueller actually has real evidence that Russia engaged in hacking and colluded with Trump to steal the election, evidence that Mueller is sitting on, which means he's protecting a traitor in the Oval Office.

Heads Russiagaters lose, tails Russiagaters lose.

You can pretend whatever you'd like, but it's simply a fact that one or more of his indictments are in fact relating to Russian interference and communication by Russian government officials and/or agents with the Trump campaign. That's just a simple fact.

It's a fact that treating a federal indictment as proof of anything is a joke, as federal grand juries are under the complete control and direction of federal prosecutors. Mueller could get a grand jury to indict Santa Clause, the Easter Bunny, or Jimmy Hoffa Sr. Notice how Mueller was caught completely by surprise, and completely unprepared for the lawyers that showed up to defend the Twitter troll company in court. Putin also called the FBI's bluff by offering to allow agents to question the named Russian officials in Russia if the FBI would show its evidence.

If you want to act like it's perfectly fine that Trump is there to support Russia and Putin against the interests of the US, great.

Trump has been vastly more confrontation with Russia than Obama ever was - and Obama had the highest number of troops sent to Eastern Europe since WWII and overthrew a country on Russia's doorstep. Trump has signed onto new sanctions, expelled a record number of Russian diplomats, is arming literal neo-Nazis in Ukraine, has artillery in range of St. Petersburg, and a Navy fleet deployed to the Black Sea. I swear you guys would still be calling Trump a "Putin puppet" if Trump had ICBM's in the air on their way to Moscow.

Not when the probe has no justification for being, and is a grotesque perversion of our entire justice system.

That's an interesting justification, I don't hear that from the party apparatus much.

Probable suspicion > probable cause > investigation > warrants > court hearings. That's how this shit is supposed to work. Not take the hairbrained theory from some butthurt Hillbots looking to swiftboat Hillary's Russia problems (Uranium One, Steele Dossier) onto her opponent and pretend that is probable cause that a crime occurred with Trump and Russia.

It sounds like they're trying to discredit the investigation completely on purely partisan grounds

It's all partisan. But Republicans have perfectly good points to make: if collusion with Russia is bad, why isn't Hillary under indictment for collusion with foreign intelligence agents to swing a general election (paying for Steele Dossier). Why is the FBI refusing to cooperate with congressional oversight. Why was Trump being spied on before the government's stated reasons for doing so.

as if the United States has not and is not currently being attacked by Russia, which it is.

But it's not. Russia is the same country it was in 2012, when the same Democrats and media endlessly braying today about Trump and Russia endlessly mocked Mitt Romney for saying Russia was a threat. 2012, w

Re:Vote count and election results not changed

[amicusNYCL]

Again, we do know exactly what he has: nothing.

Listen, I'm sorry you took the time to write that whole thing out but when you start out by asserting something that is objectively and demonstratively false, there's no point in my continuing to read.

It's a fact that the only person who knows what Mueller has is Mueller. If you can't even accept that then it's not worth having a conversation with you. Sorry.

Re:Vote count and election results not changed

[Uberbah]

The alleged hacking of the DNC servers is the entire foundation of Russiagate, but Mueller has never bothered to have the FBI examine them. Instead he's spent all his time farting around with people and events with no connection to Trump, Russia or the 2016 election.

Which either means his investigation was always a farce, or he's too incompetent to run the office Keurig machine by himself.

Pick one.

SOP for state intelligence agencies

[Anonymous Coward]

We do it, Russia does it, everyone does it. It just social engineering with dimwit targets. This hardly seems worth the millions spent, doesn't seem like collusion, Russia will deny, occurred during Obama's presidency, yada yada yada.

Cyrillic in the Guccifer 2.0 docs

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

I remember downloading the Guccifer 2.0 doc cache and looking at the Office metadata (e.g., in the XML). Most of the metadata was wiped, but there were some odd Cyrillic additions and font references scattered about as if some Russian had opened the docs and copied them back.

It would be nice to know what else was used to follow the trail here...

Re:Cyrillic in the Guccifer 2.0 docs

[superwiz]

Stone claims that Guccifer is Romanian. Romanian alphabet uses Latin letters plus a few diacritics which are present in extended ASCII. However, I don't know if they the ASCII encoding is the most commonly used one in Romania. It maybe. But given that Romania was part of the Soviet block, it could be something else.

Wikia says that Windows-1250 is the recommended encoding for Romanian. It doesn't have Cyrillic, but it is not ASCII (Cyrillic is in Windows-1251).

I am not arguing, btw. I don't know quite know how meaningful it is. Just thinking "out loud" I guess. If you can point to the document on a more-or-less safe site, maybe I could make more sense of it.

Re:Cyrillic in the Guccifer 2.0 docs

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually it was followed up and discovered that the specific pattern of Cyrillic metadata could only be created if someone purposefully attempted to fabricate "evidence" of the documents being created on a computer where the Cyrillic was a default and not by simply editing documents on such a computer. The link has a detailed analysis of obscure internal MS Word quirks that outed the fraudsters when they released the US-created Guciffer 2.0 documents. Other types of data forensics also confirm these findings.

Naturally this was promptly and studiously ignored by the "russia-gate" witch-hunters and the MSM.

Stuff like this is why russia-gaters have near zero credibility. They demand blind acceptance of "secret" evidence from US centers of power and utterly ignore publicly available, verifiable data,

Re:Cyrillic in the Guccifer 2.0 docs

[Anonymous Coward]

The Guccifer 2.0 files were long ago analyzed in depth and were shown to be frauds created on an English language default computer in a US time zone. For example see here.

The fact that this is even still discussed is a testimony to the power of MSM brainwashing and the endless desire to "believe" a narrative that starts with predetermined conclusions. All evidence must and is discarded to achieve the end goal.

He's got 5 convictions

[rsilvergun]

And counting. Seems to be going quite well to me. Let's not forget how long Watergate took, and that was just some schmucks at a hotel and not a hostile Foreign power run by ex KGB...

Re:He's got 5 convictions

[Anonymous Coward]

NONE OF WHICH - have anything to do with, so-called, Russian interference in the election but tangential and unrelated crimes discovered during the investigation.

Time to... MoveOn...

Re:He's got 5 convictions

[Anonymous Coward]

"There is no such thing as a former KGB man."
-Vladimir Putin

Re:He's got 5 convictions

[Anonymous Coward]

Just some schmucks! Directed by the Attorney General of US with the approval of the White House. Geezus, you shareblue bois are stupid.

Re:He's got 5 convictions

[Thelasko]

...run by ex KGB...

I prefer KG-used-to-B

Re:He's got 5 convictions

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh yeah you're right on the money... he'll be impeached any day now.

Any day now...

(after he gets elected a 2nd time) ...any day now.... anyone? Bueller?

Let them rant on. The are making sure Trump will be elected to a second term and Muller will be investigating until Noon of January 20th 2025.

Re:He's got 5 convictions

[Anonymous Coward]

none related to Russian collusion. try harder.

Re:He's got 5 convictions

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly! Let them blow their peckers off.

Re:He's got 5 convictions

[amicusNYCL]

Time to... MoveOn...

You'd really like that to happen, wouldn't you? Never mind that you have no idea what evidence Mueller has, or who his targets are, or the fact that no one around him leaks so the only information we have from his investigation is court filings. You want to just end everything, in an investigation primarily to determine whether or not a foreign power is actively influencing US democratic processes. You have no idea what he has, but you want the investigation to end. It almost sounds like you're worried about what he might have.

Re:He's got 5 convictions

[Uberbah]

Never mind that you have no idea what evidence Mueller has

We know exactly what Mueller has: jack and shit, and Jack left town. It's been two fucking years, and not one iota of probable suspicion has been presented, much less probable cause. None of Mueller's indictments have anything to do with Russian interference in the election or colluding with Trump to do so. He's never indicted Cambridge Analytics despite the foreign company outright bragging about interfering in American elections, or for Hillary paying foreign intelligence agents for dirt on an opponent (the Steele Dossier).

This is your Whtiewater investigation, your Benghazi. Just make the circle complete and hire Ken Starr to manufacturer a perjury charge against Trump for the Stormy Daniels affair.

Re:He's got 5 convictions

[amicusNYCL]

None of Mueller's indictments have anything to do with Russian interference in the election or colluding with Trump to do so.

That's simply factually incorrect.

Re:He's got 5 convictions

[Uberbah]

You can play the stubborn jackass card but that doesn't actually work. Mueller has shit, and that's a fact you Russiagaters will just have to deal with.

Re:He's got 5 convictions

[amicusNYCL]

You can pretend whatever you'd like, but it's simply a fact that one or more of his indictments are in fact relating to Russian interference and communication by Russian government officials and/or agents with the Trump campaign. That's just a simple fact. There's not a ton of indictments, so I'm sure you can find at least one example all by yourself.

If you want to act like it's perfectly fine that Trump is there to support Russia and Putin against the interests of the US, great. I'm not going to stop you. I'm also not going to act like I have any idea what information Mueller has or does not have and who he will or will not indict, because no one but him has that information.

Take care.

Re: Comey Testimony

[Millennium]

Comey's testimony was well over a year ago. It is entirely possible that what he said was true at the time -they really hadn't obtained the DNC server or performed forensic analysis- but that they have since done so. No need for anyone to be lying here.

Who didn't tamper with the last election?

[Anonymous Coward]

The DNC sacrificed a viable candidate to be on an old mainstay who fumbled the ball so hard it made the Cleveland Browns look good. Top that off with the FACT that the Whitehouse had Trump under surveillance. In a race between dumb and dumber the only sure loser was the American public.

The DNC deserved to lose the election and any sane minded person would abandon both major political parties at this point. How much do they have to do to show that they're playing this game for their own power elite and not for the man on the street?

The RNC latched on desperately to their only hope. Trump successfully co-oped the party that really didn't have a leg to stand on in the first place. A run at the top office was pretty much on life support from day one but the grass was so dead on the other side of the fence that people ran to anything that didn't look like the same old same old.

Anyone who isn't walking away from these buffoons at this point are just showing how pathetic the voting population has become.

Re:Who didn't tamper with the last election?

[Anonymous Coward]

'viable candidate'

lololololol

no fukkin way was 'old man socialism' ever a viable candidate

Re:Who didn't tamper with the last election?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hillary made Bernie seem viable, I think is the take away here...

And also yes, that's means if Bernie's ideas are crazy then Hillary's ideas are lets say double crazy.

Not to mention she's a criminal in the eyes of most Americans.

Just not the power elite that surround her.

Re:Who didn't tamper with the last election?

[Anonymous Coward]

oh FFS, the Dem primary was designed to cast a wide net and bring young progressives into the fold, that was Bernie's role, and he played it well.

Russian agitprop spun it in order to convince the young progressives that it was some plot to deny the win to Bernie, EVEN THOUGH BERNIE TOLD THEM DIFFERENT. And the russian trolls acting like Bernie Bros slammed the agitprop message home through social media.

Sure, Clinton was using well known campaign tactics, and that may have left them open, but they gops willingness to sell out to our enemies in order to win has to be recognized by anybody who believes the gop care about anything but getting power and lining the pockets of their donors.

Re:Who didn't tamper with the last election?

[superwiz]

It's a said day when the only person making sense is an AC.

Re: Who didn't tamper with the last election?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep. That sums it up pretty good. It was going to be a bummer either way. The only thing that might be a net gain is the pure insanity, maybe our population will think twice in the future? Maybe.

Re:Who didn't tamper with the last election?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hillary made Bernie seem viable, I think is the take away here...

No, not even against Hillary was Bernie viable.
Bernie had appeal in a few of the urban centers in the Northeast and the Northwest. Once the primaries moved to the Midwest and the South, where he had little support, he was done.

Hmm indeed!

[Anonymous Coward]

First of all, that sound you hear is Russia, quaking in it's boots, lol

Secondly, the US government conducted espionage against a U.S. presidential campaign, with the goal of either making it lose, or as a fallback to be an "insurance policy" in case that candidate won. Any charges going to filed in that? Anything? Beuller?

And we should also investigate the people behind those people. Does anyone actually think some government employees are smart enough to pull off a conspiracy?!

Hell no!

They were just tools!

And we all know that the other candidate was supportive of LGBTQ rights. And we have to ask ourselves, who would have a problem with that? What organization has a real problem with LGBTQ rights? Who in the past has actually fought publicly against those rights?

That's right.....

The Boy Scouts of American is behind behind of it!!

Re:Hmm indeed!

[Anonymous Coward]

That's right.....

The Boy Scouts of American is behind behind of it!!

What a twisted knot they've weaved...

Re:Comey Testimony

[Anonymous Coward]

lol-k, they really do not need the server since they have all of the communications, ever, on US networks

I remember before Trump won...

[Anonymous Coward]

...people were asking "how would the left react if Trump won? Would there be rioting? More violence in the streets?"

I don't think anyone would've imagined they'd double down THIS HARD... every discrepancy is chalked up to "muh russia collusion". Just google "russia blamed for" and you'll see the extent of this outlandishness.

Re:I remember before Trump won...

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember when Trump hinted he might question the legitimacy of the election if he lost, and the American left all collectively got on a high horse about respecting the results?

Life is funny.

Re:I remember before Trump won...

[Anonymous Coward]

You're only saying this because you like having a pedophile child-rapist sexual predator as president, because that somehow legitimizes your own desires to rape your daughter, because "if the president does it, then it's not illegal". Come-on. Admit it.

Even Worse

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll one up you on this.

Crowdstrike got caught blaming Russia on a hack in the Ukraine, and had to then claim they made up the evidence blaming Russia.
After that, Crowdstrike recanted that they had evidence that Russia hacked the DNC, they were unwilling to provide a single expert witness to claim Russia did it.

So, in addition to what you said, even Crowdstrike won't say Russia did it.

Muller also charged a Russian company that didn't exist during the 2016 election. He is also refusing to give evidence to defendants from Russian companies that showed up to defend themselves.

It appears Muller is attempting to run foreign policy via charging people who didn't do things. After the Strokz hearing yesterday, I'm not sure why Muller is daring to do anything else. Its obvious his group is corrupt, from the beginning.

Re: Even Worse

[Anonymous Coward]

Sho' thang Boris, I believe every word u say.

The Russians are SO smart

[Anonymous Coward]

I really dislike how this political circus puts Russia in a spotlight as superior to the USA.

Russia is only superior because Hillary cannot be inferior, to anyone.

If you called a square a square, the kettle black, or whatever, Hillary committed a very stupid crime and the Russian's boogey people aren't any smarter or scarier than our guys.

The hack wasn't politically motivated. Hillary exposed all of our asses to the world out of arrogance, and got exposed.

Re:The Russians are SO smart

[Anonymous Coward]

russian syntax

Two movies

[Okian Warrior]

I've been wondering lately whether I'm the subject of cognitive dissonance.

If you follow Scott Adams, he talks about cognitive dissonance as two people watching the same movie and seeing different plots. When called to describe the plots, the two views are wildly different, sometimes polar opposite.

And so for many people Trump is a racist, blowing a dog whistle that racists and liberals can hear clearly. For others, Trump is a practical leader doing what's best for the nation.

Which is the correct view? At this point, probably no one knows - there's no unbiased source of information. Best we can do is get unbiased statistics and raw facts (such as immigration numbers, unemployment, reputable polling) and come to our own conclusions.

Which brings me to the Mueller investigation, which I have always believed to be based on nothing. It seems perfectly obvious that the *amount* of Russian involvement in the election is well into the noise - to the tune of something like $13 million over several months, compared to $3 billion (-ish, depends on what you count) spent by Clinton and Trump.

Am I (and half the country) dismissing something important because of cognitive dissonance?

We might just find out.

The Mueller indictments will be based on evidence which can be examined, and accuses specific Russians of hacking and leaking the DNC through wikileaks.

On the other side, Julian Assange has stated several times that the leaks didn't come from Russia. Julian never identified the actual leaks, speculation has it that it was Seth Rich.

Julian Assange is a sufficiently trustworthy source not to be dismissed out of hand, and the US justice system should allow the evidence to be combed through by the media.

This could turn out to be a good touch-stone for validating one side of the cognitive dissonance claim.

I look forward to the public investigations of the evidence.

It will be good to finally see which movie we're actually watching.

Re:Two movies

[Anonymous Coward]

The Mueller indictments will be based on evidence which can be examined

I'm rather doubtful this assumption of yours will turn out to be true. In the previous indictment of Russian nationals, their lawyers have asked for discovery, and the US government's response was to ask that hearing the case be deferred or that discovery not proceed at this time, arguing that "Improper disclosure would tip foreign intelligence services about how the U.S. operates, which would “allow foreign actors to learn of those techniques and adjust their conduct, thus undermining ongoing and future national security operations". See this story. Since in this case, the defendents are less likely to have some attorney show up, it is possible no evidence will ever need to be disclosed - as the case may never be heard.

Re: Two movies

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems perfectly obvious that the *amount* of Russian involvement in the election is well into the noise - to the tune of something like $13 million over several months, compared to $3 billion (-ish, depends on what you count) spent by Clinton and Trump.

Lawsuit to get restitution for an injury=tens of thousands of dollars, months of delay, tons of effort.

Bullet to shoot somebody=A few bucks at most, as you can reuse the gun, and a tiny amount of time in comparison.

One is a crime, the other is not. But then, you could have learned this by the 1970s, or the 1950s, or even the 1800s.

Re:Two movies

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't put too much stock in Assange saying it wasn't leaked from Russia. It's not that he's lying, but that I'm quite confident than any decent intelligence agency would be able to cover their tracks well enough to fool him.

Re:Two movies

[tsqr]

The Mueller indictments will be based on evidence which can be examined, and accuses specific Russians of hacking and leaking the DNC through wikileaks.

That would be great, but these indictments will never result in a trial, so the supposed evidence will never see the light of day.

Re: Two movies

[Anonymous Coward]

The russian expenditure is likely in the 100s of millions. Also, the crime of leaking your opponents emails is priceless. Thats worth billions in marketing.

The only noise is that people like you keep saying your unaffected by marketing. Thats simply not true.

Re:Two movies

[Anonymous Coward]

The Mueller indictments will be based on evidence which can be examined, and accuses specific Russians of hacking and leaking the DNC through wikileaks.

No, dumb ass, it won't be based on evidence which can be examined because the evidence doesn't come from the FBI, it comes from private security company that was hired by the DNC. Plus, none of the indicted Russians are going to show up to be tried, so there is no chance that any of the evidence can be challenged in court by an opposing councel That's why Mueller indicted Russian intelligence officers when the 13 nationals showed up to challenge the indictments. Mueller won't even let them see the evidence against them, that's how afraid he is of losing. By going after the Russian officers, he pretty much guaranteed not to be challenged in court when they do their trial in absentia.

Re:Two movies

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you a Russian spy?

Re:Two movies

[drinkypoo]

If you follow Scott Adams, he talks about cognitive dissonance as two people watching the same movie and seeing different plots.

Yeah, I saw Trump and thought "what a shitbag", and Scott Adams saw Trump and thought "he'll help me keep my money". Scott Adams ought to know all about cognitive dissonance, he's suffering from it, bigly.

And so for many people Trump is a racist, blowing a dog whistle that racists and liberals can hear clearly. For others, Trump is a practical leader doing what's best for the nation.
Which is the correct view? At this point, probably no one knows - there's no unbiased source of information.

There never has been. But Trump is clearly a racist, based on what he has said, and what he has done.

Best we can do is get unbiased statistics and raw facts (such as immigration numbers, unemployment, reputable polling) and come to our own conclusions.

But every administration lies about unemployment! The official statistic is the U-3, the closest thing to a useful statistic is the U-6 which is higher than the U-3, and the statistic they actually report is the U-2, which is the lowest of the three and a complete, utter, and total lie. Obama told the same lie, and Bush before him, and so on and so forth for literally as long as I can remember. And even the U-6 doesn't actually count all the unemployed!

Which brings me to the Mueller investigation, which I have always believed to be based on nothing. It seems perfectly obvious that the *amount* of Russian involvement in the election is well into the noise

That's not how it works. Social networking means that some expenditures are worth far more than others. Russia reached hundreds of thousands of Facebookers for just ten grand.

Julian Assange is a sufficiently trustworthy source not to be dismissed out of hand,

I don't dismiss what he says in this case out of hand, I dismiss it because he hasn't provided evidence.

It will be good to finally see which movie we're actually watching.

It's not a movie. It's real life. Stop watching, start doing.

Re:Two movies

[quantaman]

And so for many people Trump is a racist, blowing a dog whistle that racists and liberals can hear clearly. For others, Trump is a practical leader doing what's best for the nation.

Which is the correct view?

The one where Trump is a racist blowing a dog whistle (and then telling people that he's blowing a dog whistle incase they didn't hear).

Everyone who isn't lying or in denial should agree that Trump has said and done racist things. The disagreement is about the second part, whether he's "a practical leader doing what's best for the nation".

His supporters think that racism is doing something practical that is best for the nation, his opponents disagree.

Which brings me to the Mueller investigation, which I have always believed to be based on nothing.

Which is incorrect. Just based on publicly available information there's more than enough cause to investigate, and Mueller knows a lot that isn't public.

It seems perfectly obvious that the *amount* of Russian involvement in the election is well into the noise - to the tune of something like $13 million over several months, compared to $3 billion (-ish, depends on what you count) spent by Clinton and Trump.

Am I (and half the country) dismissing something important because of cognitive dissonance?

Yes you are.

You characterized the Russian involvement solely in terms of ad buys, then used the relatively small cash value to trivialize the importance overall. But in doing so you completely ignored the large scale social media campaign and the email hacking which is what everyone actually means by Russian interference.

Of course, I don't know if that's your "cognitive dissonance" or just an effort to mislead.

On the other side, Julian Assange has stated several times that the leaks didn't come from Russia. Julian never identified the actual leaks, speculation has it that it was Seth Rich.

Julian Assange is a sufficiently trustworthy source not to be dismissed out of hand, and the US justice system should allow the evidence to be combed through by the media.

My hunch is that Russia passed the files to an intermediary who fed their Wikileaks contact the "DNC insider" story and Assange is happy to be the "useful idiot" role and play along. Assange doesn't want the repercussions from admitting that Wikileaks was used by Russia, and depending on his future legal situation he might want to pull a Snowden and settle there long term.

Re: Two movies

[Anonymous Coward]

And so for many people Trump is a racist, blowing a dog whistle that racists and liberals can hear clearly. For others, Trump is a practical leader doing what's best for the nation.

No, the racists do believe Trump is a practical leader doing what is best for the nation. There's a reason why they love his blatant bigotry-driven rhetoric, even when he is inane enough to literally claim "We don't have immigration laws" as he somehow managed to mumble together a sentence that leaves everybody who actually knows the history of immigration legislation in the US from the Alien Act to the Quota Act to think he is a retarded dumbass.

Yet mysteriously, you cheer that kind of dementia driven rambling as if it were sublime eloquence?

Re:Two movies

[iMadeGhostzilla]

I too buy into Adam's theory of parallel movies but I am not convinced that looking at what we call evidence can make a person drop their movie. The choice of the movie is rooted in psychological forces few people can control. They would either need a long time to drop their habit of playing the movie -- unlikely to happen with Trump and media as they are! -- or an emotional shock. As the extreme example you have a paranoid person: no external evidence can convince him they are not out to get him.

Me, I think the anti-Trump side is an emotional wreck and they are the farthest from reality.

Re:Two movies

[Anonymous Coward]

If you follow Scott Adams, you're an idiot.

Fixed it for you.

Re:Two movies

[fatwilbur]

Blah, blah, and here we have it: the group who jumps out at every Trump discussion and says he's *obviously* a racist in a runaround attempt to stifle debate. It's not obvious at all - I don't think he's a racist at all. Actually, I would agree he's a racist under the new modern definition of racism whereby anyone who doesn't constantly virtue signal to diversity is a racist. We're all racists, including Trump, under the new definition.

I'm not even sure what you mean by the word anymore.. are you trying to convince me Trump hates black people and would never hire them? Clearly false.

Re:Two movies

[HornWumpus]

Mueller lost that motion. Discovery is proceeding. The clock is ticking, soon the lack of evidence will be open and known.

Mueller is now looking for a reason to drop the case ASAP. But even he realizes that although Hillary's supporters are dumb, cognitive dissonance has limits. Granting it will be cause psychotic breaks for some...

Re:Two movies

[Anonymous Coward]

Julian Assange is a sufficiently trustworthy source not to be dismissed out of hand

ROTFLMFAO

Re:Two movies

[Merk42]

This could turn out to be a good touch-stone for validating one side of the cognitive dissonance claim.

Lol, no. Whichever side doesn't get the answer they want will still claim they were right, and the result was due to corruption, conspiracy, etc.

Re:Two movies

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think Trump is particularity racist, he just wants the support of racists. Stupid racists that vote.

Re: Two movies

[Anonymous Coward]

Julian Assange is not a trustworthy source is the giant gaping hole in your otherwise decent reasoning.

Re:Two movies

[Anonymous Coward]

Trump was sued twice for repeatedly refusing to rent condos to black people, and to screen them out before even showing properties to them. This continued even after he signed agreements to stop the practice.

Explain to me how that is not racist?

Re:Two movies

[cascadingstylesheet]

Blah, blah, and here we have it: the group who jumps out at every Trump discussion and says he's *obviously* a racist in a runaround attempt to stifle debate. It's not obvious at all - I don't think he's a racist at all. Actually, I would agree he's a racist under the new modern definition of racism whereby anyone who doesn't constantly virtue signal to diversity is a racist. We're all racists, including Trump, under the new definition. I'm not even sure what you mean by the word anymore.. are you trying to convince me Trump hates black people and would never hire them? Clearly false.

Exactly. If everybody is a racist, then nobody is.

Every Republican candidate since Goldwater at least has been called a racist, loudly. Nobody listens anymore, except the left, who weren't going to vote for him anyway.

It's just irrelevant theater at this point. Even if a real no kidding racist did somehow run for the nomination, nobody would know, because everyone gets called a racist anyway and no Republican believes it anymore. (And who's fault would that be? Not Republicans'. It would be the boys who cried wolf ... and cried ... and cried ... for decades ... )

Re:Two movies

[jeff4747]

speculation has it that it was Seth Rich.

The problem with this speculation is Seth Rich was not an administrator of the DNC's email system, so he would not have access to the emails in order to leak them. And he definitely was not the administrator of Podesta's GMail account.

But he does serve a useful distraction when building "cognitive dissonance"....

Re:Two movies

[AmiMoJo]

It's a bit of it date now but there's a list: https://www.nytimes.com/intera...

Seems like a little more than failure to virtue signal. His companies discriminating against non-whites was proven in court, for example.

Re:Two movies

[Anonymous Coward]

I think anyone who unironically uses the phrase 'virtue signalling' should be automatically discounted as an obvious troll, completely lacking credibility.

Re:Two movies

[amicusNYCL]

For others, Trump is a practical leader doing what's best for the nation.

Those people are fooling themselves if they think Trump is doing what he does because it's best for the nation. I'm not going to comment on whether his policies are good for the US or not, but his motivation should be crystal clear to anyone who has paid attention to Donald Trump at any point over the last 30 years or so. Everything he does, every decision he makes, is based upon whether or not it is good for him personally. I don't think he cares about the country beyond the fact that he lives in it and wants it to help him through tax breaks or whatever else. Absolutely everything he does is done because he thinks it will benefit him. Even the North Korea thing - the ink isn't even dry yet and he's on TV talking about how their beaches would look great with high-end condo and apartment buildings on them. I wonder what name he imagines on those buildings.

Like I said, I'm not commenting on whether or not his actions benefit the country, but if you think his motivation is anything other than his own personal self-interest, even if it hurts the country overall, then I think you're not paying attention.

Re:Two movies

[MobyDisk]

Racism can be subtle, and not even obvious to the individual. Let me give such an example. When Trump addressed the Jewish Coalition he said:

"I'm a negotiator like you folks, we are negotiators," Trump said, drawing laughter before pivoting to how he would renegotiate the Iran deal. "Is there anybody that doesn't renegotiate deals in this room? This room negotiates them -- perhaps more than any other room I've ever spoken in."

Trump was playing on a Jewish stereotype, one that is often used in a derogatory way. Trump likes to present himself as a dealmaker, so maybe in context it was funny and appropriate. In isolation, we could laugh this off. But we see a lot of statements like this from Trump, and together they create the impression that his view of races and cultures is based on stereotypes and hearsay. He sounds like one of those racists who doesn't even realize they are a racist.

We could stop there, but there are lots of clearer examples than that one. During his campaign, Trump tweeted a phony racist infographic blaming blacks for a large number of homicides. These phony facts are designed to fool people who already have racist stereotypes, and Trump fell for it. Maybe he is not a racist, and he is just dumb? Trump constantly suggested that Barack Obama was a Muslim, intending that to be deragatory. He suggested that Obama's birth certificate stated he is a "muslim" which is of course not something that would be on a birth cerfiticate... so that just feels weird, like how he sees race and religion as something immutable about a person, and something they would want to hide. There's just a lot of stuff like that he does that creates the impression of a racist. You don't have to put on a while hood and march in the streets to be a racist.

Re:Two movies

[drinkypoo]

I don't think Trump is particularity racist, he just wants the support of racists. Stupid racists that vote.

I think it's both. The things he's done to and said about brown people, especially recently, are utterly vile. The things he says could just be bullshit, except that they match the things he does, and actions are the most sensible way to judge people. After all, it doesn't matter what they claim to believe, only what they do to other people.

I don't think Trump is so racist that he would be a KKK member like his pappy was, even if he were destitute and had nothing better to do than hang out in a robe. I think he has more disdain for everyone who isn't him than he has for brown people specifically. But that doesn't make him non-racist.

Re:Two movies

[Anonymous Coward]

Nitpick: That analogy about the movies sounds more like confirmation bias than cognitive dissonance.

Confirmation bias is where everything you take in is colored by what you already think and believe. Cognitive dissonance is the discomfort you feel when you're forced to consider the contradictions between two different ideas you believe in.

Re:Two movies

[Darinbob]

When called to describe the plots, the two views are wildly different, sometimes polar opposite.

And so for many people Trump is a racist, blowing a dog whistle that racists and liberals can hear clearly. For others, Trump is a practical leader doing what's best for the nation.

Which is the correct view? At this point, probably no one knows - there's no unbiased source of information.

I'm not in either, or any, party, I didn't like Clinton or Trump. So when I see Trump and dislike what he's doing, it's not based out of any party loyalty or wanting my side to win the White House Bowl. There's just a whole lot of incompetence at the very top, and things are being run by those underneath.

Trump seems to be very easily influenced just by stroking his ego, which is way out of control Of course, Hillary also had an ego that needed reining in. He's making major diplomatic gaffs this week, embarrassing ones; he goes out of his way to insult our traditional allies and hug our adversaries. His day to day political views appear to change depending upon what alternative conspiracy theory news source he listened to that morning. He lets personal grudges get in the way of thinking clearly. He refuses to listen to advice and goes into meetings unprepared because he seems to think he's a good negotiator. And, OMG, the vast majority of Republicans are opposed to tarriffs and here he goes starting trade wars for no logical reason which will screw up any short term economic boost from the tax cuts - that's just plain old fashioned stupidity.

Re:Two movies

[Anonymous Coward]

I feel like his decisions are less about whether they are actually good for him personally, and more about whether they make him feel good: if they stroke his ego, if they make people want to give him money and/or respect.

I don't think he spends a lot of time considering what's good for anyone in the long-term, including himself.

Re: Two movies

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. If everybody is a racist, then nobody is.

No, that isn't how it works. If everybody is a racist, then you have a big problem with racism. You can't just take your favorite pithy phrase and change a few words and get a coherent statement.

Every Republican candidate since Goldwater at least has been called a racist, loudly.

Actually, the Rightwing has gone all the way back to Lincoln on that one. They really want to deport all the blacks back to Africa.

Nobody listens anymore, except the left, who weren't going to vote for him anyway.

You forgot, the racists. Who like hearing the racist phrasings and ideas put forth, and accordingly vote for it. They listen just fine to how Trump rails at Mexicans and even act like it is offensive for Puerto Ricans to be in America.

It's just irrelevant theater at this point. Even if a real no kidding racist did somehow run for the nomination, nobody would know, because everyone gets called a racist anyway and no Republican believes it anymore. (And who's fault would that be? Not Republicans'. It would be the boys who cried wolf ... and cried ... and cried ... for decades ... )

Actually, that is a hallmark of the Republican party, they don't take responsibility for the results of their own actions, whether it be the post-Civil War retreat on Civil Rights, the Great Depression, the Second World War, their Communist Witchhunts, spiraling debt, invasions of foreign countries, the whole business with drugs, or even the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, or even the prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay.

Fault? The GOP never sees the log in its own eye.

Despite the fact that they have had to disavow six outright White Supremacist candidates in the past few years. Perhaps that 2% of difference is smaller than it seems.

But go ahead, cheer the good people assaulting 92 year olds

Re:Two movies

[Anonymous Coward]

Haha your desperation is glowingly obvious :)

You keep telling yourself that writing on the wall isn't there! You're only prolonging the inevitable, and making that fall so much harder than it needs to be.

Re:Two movies

[Anonymous Coward]

"Which is the correct view? At this point, probably no one knows - there's no unbiased source of information. Best we can do is get unbiased statistics and raw facts (such as immigration numbers, unemployment, reputable polling) and come to our own conclusions."

Oh come the FUCK on... Trump's been caught lying so many times by now that his side doesn't get the benefit of the doubt any more. He just called HIS OWN INTERVIEW FROM A COUPLE OF DAYS AGO "fake news".

The man clearly says whatever he wants to in any given moment with no regard for facts.

Re:Two movies

[Anonymous Coward]

If there was something as oxymoronic as a decent intelligence agency, and they thought they needed to put forth the effort, I'd more easily agree. Yep, the IC lies for a living, I'd know because of my past job history.

Re: Two movies

[cascadingstylesheet]

You make my point. That garbage only works with hardcore leftists. It turns off everyone else. But you can't stop doing it.

Re:Two movies

[superwiz]

They are still entitled to discovery. If they responded to the complaint against them, they are also entitled to a verdict. And before a verdict is rendered, they are entitled to examine the evidence against them.

Re:Two movies

[superwiz]

I think Adams is veering into lala land already. He started advocating for the simulation theory. And if that's not an atheist religion, it sure has all the signs of it.

Re: Two movies

[Anonymous Coward]

It's funny how left-wing name calling is the only name calling that gets old. Right wingers have been calling "communist" and "satanic" nonstop since the 50s to today, but "Nazi" and "racist' are the only epithets that people claim go out of style.

Oh, by the way:

At the time, I was writing a book about the politics of drug prohibition. I started to ask Ehrlichman a series of earnest, wonky questions that he impatiently waved away. “You want to know what this was really all about?” he asked with the bluntness of a man who, after public disgrace and a stretch in federal prison, had little left to protect. “The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”

Dan Baum, Harper Magazine, April 2016
Full Article Link

But please, cry more about liberals not being civil anymore.

Re:Two movies

[iMadeGhostzilla]

Sadly I agree with you. My judgement is he's had a difficult life, and in a way his professional success only made his life harder. He is very intelligent and observant but seems to be sliding into an unhealthy state of mind. It is my wild guess that deep inside he craves what true faith has to offer, but he has an outer shell of extreme rationality he's built for himself to survive and that shell is preventing him for relaxing into that depth his being craves so much. That friction is what is pushing him into that lala land.

Psychobabble I know. Still reminds me of Nietzsche's fate to a degree.

Re:Two movies

[Anonymous Coward]

Both views make sense. Democrats call all Republicans racist and stupid. So of course they will label any Republican politican (ANY) racist and stupid, since that is their definition for racist and stupid, being on the other side. They definitely have their own "facts", given that they do not follow laws and do not respect security or community budgets. To them, the bill for security or schools is something someone else pays. So it will always be. Just don't ask them to sum up the cost, they have no idea.

If they had any credibility whatsoever, we wouldn't see their fingerprints all over all the so-called evidence, and they would be looking for the DNC flunky who ordered the hit on Rich.

Let me put this bluntly, Mueller and his team will be absolutely destroyed on the evidence in court.

Re:Two movies

[Anonymous Coward]

At this point, it doesn't matter any longer. Your side has burnt your foundation right out from underneath yourselves. Should have kept your powder dry when using terms like that. He addressed a group of Jewish people and called them "negotiators"? Cry me a river buddy. Of course you were going to apply "racist" here, just like you do every time. It's entirely meaningless coming from you.

I do not value discussion with Democrats any longer. Since so much about the world is out of bounds or would simply result in you crying and loudly virtue signaling to your bubble, there's far too much you simply can't think critically on. That is a significant disability. It's time you recognized it.

Here are just a few areas which you cannot think critically on:

1. School budgets around the country which are getting hammered by the children of immigrants - they don't make enough to pay enough taxes to ease the burden. You aren't part of the conversation to fix that problem.

2. The Germans and NATO members are relying on US tax payers to pay their defense budgets. Since you dislike Trump, you would continue giving them a free ride. You aren't part of the conversation to fix that problem.

3. The majority of black kids don't have dads at home. Your policies have destroyed their culture's nuclear family. You aren't part of the conversation to fix that problem. Go ahead and virtue signal and call me a racist. I do not value your voice.

Re: Two movies

[Anonymous Coward]

You make my point. That garbage only works with hardcore leftists. It turns off everyone else. But you can't stop doing it.

You made my point. You close your eyes, cover your ears, and shout your imprecations.

After all, as a Partisan Stalwart, you wholeheartedly believe in your dogma, no matter how much it is shown to be complete balderdash and have always been at war with EastAsia.

But hey, go ahead and sow the wind. You will reap your tornadoes.

Re:Two movies

[Anonymous Coward]

I just read your linked list and there's a grand total of one actual racist comment listed there, attributed to hearsay by a former employee. The rest is stuff like "He hired Steve Bannon!" (Who isn't a racist, either) and conflating saying anything negative about anyone who is a minority as evidence of racism.

As for the apartment company, that was about actions taken by managers in the 70s by his Dad's company, not by Trump directly, and while there were some accusations of racism, no racism was admitted to by the company in the resulting consent decree.

Re:Two movies

[benjfowler]

Julian Assange is a very pretty boy, and won't do well in general population. He'll probably end up with the kiddie fiddlers for his own safety.

It wouldn't surprise me at all, if the GRU or SVR had Seth Rich murdered ('mugging gone wrong'), as part of a cack-handed plan to construct an alibi for themselves. It fits with the motive -- Putin's extreme animus against the Democrats, and they certainly aren't shy about murdering people. The Russians certainly are quite fond of killing multiple birds with one stone when running their active measures.

Re:Two movies

[Anonymous Coward]

It can be hard to pin down exactly what "racist" means exactly, and you can argue that it's hard to know what Trump really feels. But it's hard to deny that he's acting like a White Nationalist.

First of all, his slogan, "America First", is the name of a pro-Germany committee in 1941, a White Nationalist party in 1944, and was even used by Pat Buchanan.

When White Nationalists put on a parade and one of them killed a counter-protestor, Trump said "There were good people on both sides".

When it came time to issue a commemoration of the Holocaust, he manage to put forth a statement with ZERO mentions of Jews.

When addressing Europeans he said that immigration is "changing the culture of Europe", which is exactly what White Nationalists fearmonger about.

Mexicans are "rapists", "murderers", "drug traffickers"; Muslims are "terrorists"; immigrants are "infesting" the country -- all espousing White Nationalist views.

Trump was the King of Birthers, and nothing helps White Nationalists think a black president is illegitimate better than thinking that he wasn't a citizen.

And you can claim that all of that is just Trump pandering to his base; that he doesn't really give a shit about White Nationalism. But you can't deny that Trump was convicted of discriminating against Blacks as a landlord.

And he took out a full-page add in four different NYC newspapers that the five black kids rounded up after a white woman was attacked in Central Park should be put to death. The falsely-accused Central Park Five were sent to jail, and when they were exonerated after the real perpetrator confessed, Trump still claimed the innocent men were guilty!

So is he a racist? Or does he just act like one?

dom

Re:Two movies

[phantomfive]

Worth mentioning that Trump purposely says things that will engrage one side. Whether it's "I can shoot someone and people will still vote for me" or "Russia, please hack the DNC", these are careful phrases designed to act as a kind of reverse-dog whistle.

Re:Two movies

[Anonymous Coward]

For others, Trump is a practical leader doing what's best for the nation.

Donald Trump doesn't care about the United States.
Donald Trump doesn't care about the US Constitution.
Donald Trump doesn't care about you.
Donald Trump doesn't care about your family.
Donald Trump cares about Donald Trump and 4 of his 5 children.

Re:Two movies

[Anonymous Coward]

So your "proof" is a hit piece in the opinion section of the New York Times? Most of these issues are non-issues, not telling the whole story, or misrepresenting the facts.

My understanding of the "discrimination" case against renting apartments in the 70s was brought against many renters at the time because when the economy wasn't doing well they were reluctant to rent to people with poor financial qualifications. This disproportionately affected minorities and the government painted it as a racial discrimination issue. And it wasn't "proven in court" because it settled (without officially admitting to wrongdoing).

Re:Two movies

[Anonymous Coward]

We could stop there, but there are lots of clearer examples than that one. During his campaign, Trump tweeted a phony racist infographic blaming blacks for a large number of homicides. These phony facts are designed to fool people who already have racist stereotypes, and Trump fell for it. Maybe he is not a racist, and he is just dumb? Trump constantly suggested that Barack Obama was a Muslim, intending that to be deragatory. He suggested that Obama's birth certificate stated he is a "muslim" which is of course not something that would be on a birth cerfiticate... so that just feels weird, like how he sees race and religion as something immutable about a person, and something they would want to hide. There's just a lot of stuff like that he does that creates the impression of a racist. You don't have to put on a while hood and march in the streets to be a racist.

That graphic is poorly explained but blacks are definitely disproportionately represented in murder statistics and the vast majority of it is black on black crime (mostly gang violence). And if you look at murder statistics where the perpetrator and victim are of different races black on white is much higher represented than white on black. So you can argue how correct the numbers are in this graphic but the general concept is factual. "Muslim" is not a race so I'm not going to respond to that. And last I checked race is immutable so I don't know what you're talking about there.

Re:Two movies

[Anonymous Coward]

Trump is the first president in DECADES to actually finish their campaign promises.

If that's racist i don't fucking care. I like THIS movie.

Re:Two movies

[iMadeGhostzilla]

I don't think there's anything carefully designed about it, Trump is a creature of instincts, but the rest I agree with. It's similar to the wife who enrages the husband by saying outrageous things about him that drive him crazy because they point to his flaws.

Re:Two movies

[Anonymous Coward]

Hint: it is not cognitive dissonance when you're deliberately being obtuse in certain areas.

Re:Two movies

[Anonymous Coward]

It wouldn't surprise me at all, if the GRU or SVR had Seth Rich murdered ('mugging gone wrong')...

The official story is that Seth Rich was shot with a gun 'stolen' from an FBI van parked in the general area. Are you actually implying that Russian spies are connected with people in the FBI?

Re:Two movies

[Anonymous Coward]

>Which is the correct view? At this point, probably no one knows - there's no unbiased source of information

This is why we have science, reason and probabilities. The folks who follow Trump pretty much do not use those tools. If you want to learn about what drives Trumpeters, watch Fox News. Every story is about moral outrage, physical fear, or injury to family and kids. Trump follows that same emotional curve - protect your family from immigrant rapists, give your man work in the coal mine, religious morals need protecting, blah blah. Over and over.

Example, today's Fox News stories:

London mayor slammed over Trump while rising crime rates - classification: Fear of crime (by immigrants)

Re:Two movies

[ebvwfbw]

Not hard. Just ask them - why do you think he's a racist? Certainly your opinion is based on something, otherwise that's irrational.

They won't be able to say because there is nothing to show he's a racist and in fact Trump was held up in the black world as an example of what to be. How he's helped black people and so on. Listen to a black woman Obama voter -

https://www.westernjournal.com...

Re:Two movies

[Anonymous Coward]

We could stop there, but there are lots of clearer examples than that one. During his campaign, Trump tweeted a phony racist infographic [factcheck.org] blaming blacks for a large number of homicides.

Your link is hilarious. The infographic claimed that blacks are responsible for 97% of black homicides, when the real number is 90%, that's practically a rounding error.

As for the Obama issue, there are reasons to be suspicious, but personally I think he lied to get an easier admission to Harvard, the same way Rachel Dolezal pretended to be black.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6M7Rp_Ghv6k&frags=pl%2Cwn
http://web.archive.org/web/20070403190001/http://www.dystel.com/clientlist.html (search Obama's name)
https://www.dailywire.com/news/4872/remember-rachel-dolezal-white-lady-who-pretended-joshua-yasmeh

Re:Two movies

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. If everybody is a racist, then nobody is.

Everybody lies. But that doesn't mean that everyone should be assumed to be a liar.
On the other hand, there are people that lie enough that a consensus forms that they are a liar.

Re:Two movies

[Shotgun]

But following John Stewart, Trevor Noah, or Jimmy whats-his-face makes you informed. Right?

Re:Two movies

[Anonymous Coward]

Literally everybody is "racist". Humans aren't capable of perfectly unbiased output without an extraordinary amount of mental effort and slow methodological writing with plenty of revision and peer review. Your realtime conscientious stream is extremely prejudice and you are incapable of knowing where these prejudices are on your own. That doesn't mean you're hateful or malicious though.

Trump seems to lack a solid super ego to rein in his live thoughts, but he isn't exceptionally racist. Real racists say things like "I'll never have a black doctor because they can't be smart enough" or "Never let a jew into your home or they might trick you into giving them money". Trump seems to not hate anyone, he just doesn't pursue more than surface knowledge about most subjects before talking about them as if he were an expert. And boy does he like to talk like he's an expert on everything.

Re:Two movies

[Anonymous Coward]

Everything he does, every decision he makes, is based upon whether or not it is good for him personally.

He could have lived out his golden years happily without any of this crap that's being flung on him by the MSM and army of social media twits who think exactly like you. He's risked his wife and children's safety and sanity to do something he believes is right and works more than any president I'm aware of. The economy is booming, unemployment is at record lows, uncontrolled immigration is down, he's fighting against global imbalances toward the U.S.A. that have somehow become "status quo", he's fighting the H1B1 bullshit which Slashdot users have complained about for decades, etc. etc. etc. and still, people like you can't find a single good thing to say. Grow the hell up with this Russian (and apparently now North Korean) connection to Trump bullshit. You simply hate the man's personality/demeanor and enjoy posting on the leftist echo chamber that Slashdot has become.

Re:Two movies

[Anonymous Coward]

starting trade wars for no logical reason

No reason? China has been stealing I.P. from the U.S. since I can remember knowing what a business actually is. Compaq computers had a horrible infestation of industrial espionage from China that they fought with daily and that was decades ago. I've been reading about how China has been gaming the trade system for just as long and there's no logical reason to call them out on it? No other president has had the balls (or instability if you prefer) to call them on the carpet and he finally did it. They are fighting back making it into an unavoidably VISIBLE confrontation that they will have a real hard time cheating themselves out of. Bring it on, make it fair, and wrap it up.

Re:Two movies

[Anonymous Coward]

racist : A person who believes a particular race is superior to others.

Blacks are statistically better than whites at sports and other physical activities. That's a racist statement but I'd bet a majority of everyone on the planet would agree.

Mexicans illegal immigrants are empirically harder physical workers than others. Another racist statement though I doubt illegal workers would think so.

Asians are statistically better than all others academically, most would agree. Racism, unless you're Asian.

Whites are statistically better at . Stupid racist.

Re:Two movies

[Anonymous Coward]

Trump definitely doesn't care about you specifically. I know I don't.

Re:Two movies

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, emotions and conspiracy theories are the entire driving force behind the left's primary voter base.

London has been having knife attacks going through the roof, totally-not-terrorists driving trucks through crowded streets, and pursue and jails people who report on immigrant pedo-rings abusing kids. I'd say there's a serious problem in London.

Media bias has never been more pronounced. Shut the hell up with your "science, reason, and probabilities" is only on the left bullshit. You're brainwashed.

Strategically...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ii there's any substance to this, it's more likely that the Kremlin didn't want Hillary as president than they wanted Donald. Hillary's an aggressive war mongerer who'll try to push NATO further east, while Donald's a buffoon who's reducing the USA's diplomatic credibility in the world. Sounds like the Kremlin, if they did do this, did the rest of the world a favour.

Re:Strategically...

[Oswald McWeany]

Ii there's any substance to this, it's more likely that the Kremlin didn't want Hillary as president than they wanted Donald. Hillary's an aggressive war mongerer who'll try to push NATO further east, while Donald's a buffoon who's reducing the USA's diplomatic credibility in the world. Sounds like the Kremlin, if they did do this, did the rest of the world a favour.

I'm sure you're pretty close to it. Russia saw Donald as a weak man they could easily manipulate by guiding his ego. Of all the candidates running for any party- Donald was the one most likely to destroy America's relationships with other countries and weaken America's position in the world.

It was really a smart move by Putin. For the many bad things you can say about Putin, you can't call him stupid.

Re:Strategically...

[drinkypoo]

Hillary's an aggressive war mongerer who'll try to push NATO further east, while Donald's a buffoon who's reducing the USA's diplomatic credibility in the world. Sounds like the Kremlin, if they did do this, did the rest of the world a favour.

Putin's an aggressive war monger who feared pushback from another aggressive war monger. So he wanted Trump instead. Now who's going to oppose Putin? Answer, nobody.

Re:Strategically...

[Dread_ed]

If this is the actual case, "Russia saw Donald as a weak man they could easily manipulate by guiding his ego," (and I believe it is) then you can say many things about Democrats, but you can't call them smart, effective, or mature.

Controlling someone who has their over-inflated ego attached to a very specific self image, and is incredibly eager to present that self image in public, is easy. You appeal to that nature, couch your desires in terms of how it will reinforce the image they want to portray. Play to their ego, mention their legacy, compliment them on possessing those positive traits, and show them how a specific course of action will prove to everyone they possess those positive traits Imply or present scenarios where inaction or action other than what you desire would be detrimental to the image they want to portray or even better, would be seen as evidence their desired image is a fraud. If you are successful, which is incredibly easy if you are mature enough to focus on results rather than your own childish impotent rage, your enemy will bend over backward and crab-walk over fire to show everyone who they are and in the process do exactly what you want.

Democrats have really overdone the second part, impugning his character, saying he's a fraud, a racist, a sexist, a NAZI, a traitor, a heartless ignoramus, etc. They missed the whole first part though, and as such have missed every opportunity to manipulate this man into doing their bidding. They are so emotionally overwrought they have become completely ineffective at politics. It is they, not Trump, who are their own worst enemy. By definition this makes them, as a group, not as intelligent as Trump.

It also makes Putin their political, emotional, and intellectual superior by a huge margin. No wonder they fear him so much. They are incapable of following where his mind goes, impotent to control their actions the way he does, and so helplessly addicted to outbursts of infantile outrage they can't stop, even if doing so meant they could control the White House after a lost election.

If that's not an indictment of the negative effects of partisanship and how it destroys the minds, power, and agency of those who continue to practice it, I don't know what is.

Re: Strategically...

[Anonymous Coward]

Call me not intelligent for refusing to stroke Trump's ego then. If he wants coddling, he won't get it from me.

Not even when he is actually a whiny baby.

Re:Strategically...

[benjfowler]

Don't confuse intelligence and wisdom, with low animal cunning.

If Putin were intelligent and wise, we wouldn't be in this situation.

Re:Strategically...

[Uberbah]

It was really a smart move by Putin. For the many bad things you can say about Putin, you can't call him stupid.

Right - but I can sure call you stupid, you and every other Russiagater. How is it that Putin was so clever and crafty that he knew years in advance that a failed businessman and WWE character could be president, but yet dumb enough not to predict any blowback, and dumb enough to collude with someone as dumb as Trump. Which means the FBI/CIA/NSA would also know of said collusion in real time, which would mean so would President Hillary, as the election was hers to lose until Mrs. Nafta decided it would be a brilliant idea to no-show in the Rust Belt. The same Hillary that campaigned on shooting down Russian jets over Syria.

Then there's the fact that both parties have been extremely anti-Russian for over a century. It's like a conspiracy theory of a gay person interfering in an election between an extremely homophobic Mormon and an extremely homophobic Catholic.

Re: Strategically...

[Dread_ed]

Understood. What you are experiencing is not uncommon. You are so put off by someone that given the choice to A) get what you want from them, or B) complain about/antagonize/obstruct/frustrate/attack them, you will pull lever B. Repeatedly. Even until it kills you.

One could appeal to Machiavelli, where the ends justify the means, as a remedy for such a self destructive mindset. The application is, in this context, apropos as we are looking at the political landscape. All that is required is a reorganization of priorities and viewpoint from the model of taking personal offense and returning personal offence toward a model where you have the end result in mind and work backward to the actions that will create that result. Of course, implicit in this is that you must sacrifice your infantile desire to punish and attack the object of your distaste.

Since this is the price of entry, and so few are willing to pay that particular toll, one could easily come to the conclusion that for most people who habitually yank lever B they have no deeper agenda than that. They aren't really concerned with anything other than venting, attacking, obstructing, and whinging. Dr. Phil would say they already have their payoff. Their complaints aren't really about ends, their complaints are personal. That's a question you would have to answer for yourself. From what you posted, it looks as if you already did, whether you acknowledge it or not.

Re:Strategically...

[shanen]

I think you're oversimplifying and largely misdirecting your analysis. I think that Putin's goals evolved over time. Initially the Russians only wanted to prevent Hillary from winning too strongly and believed that they could weaken her enough so that she would not have a strong mandate to lead in bothersome dimensions. (Much of their clandestine support of Sanders was dedicated to that goal.)

When Putin realized that Trump was a serious contender, he was amazed, and when Trump actually "won" he was happier than Bin Laden when the towers collapsed. Putin knows just how much kompromat the Russians have on Trump. It's not so much that Trump is weak, though that's true, too, but that Trump is a colossal fool and has been owned for decades.

In the form of an elevator pitch, you aren't bankrupt until your creditors pull the plug, and they pulled Trump's plug long ago. The ONLY thing that saved Trump was a pile of dirty money that needed laundering, and the KGB was killing two birds with the one stone. (1) Clean(ish) dollars for filthy rubles. (2) Trump on a leash if they ever needed to jerk it.

At this point, I don't think Putin needs to pull Trump's strings much. I think he has a computer model of Trump that's better than most weather prediction systems. He knows what inputs Trump is getting from FAUX, and he even knows most of the Twitter-based inputs based on when Trump tweets. He probably has sources inside the White House that give him accurate assessments for how little attention Trump pays to such sources as General Kelly and the CIA. From the inputs Putin gets a highly accurate prediction of what Trump is going to do, and if he likes it, then he does nothing. If he doesn't like it, then Putin tweaks the inputs or even the situation until Trump's behavior is back in the "acceptable" range.

Demecrats should declare war on Russia

[jfdavis668]

Use special interest funds to buy weapons, mobilize the rank and file and invade the Crimean.

Re:Comey Testimony

[gtall]

Damn, you caught'em. Please relay your theory to Fox News, they love that sort of thing.

Re:Comey Testimony

[amicusNYCL]

How's the weather in St. Petersburg today? Do the people you work with still call it Leningrad?

32 people charged

[goombah99]

32 people were charged. 12 of those were GRU (russian) agents. 3 were trump campaign personell. Article does not say who/what the others are.

Re:32 people charged

[mi]

The indictment lodged in Washington, D.C., accuses the Russian spies of hacking into the Democratic National Committee and the presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton [...] The accused also hacked into state boards of elections, secretaries of state, and into companies that provided software used to administer elections

What have the FBI, the NSA, and the rest of our wonderful "intelligence" apparatus been doing, while this was going on?

Oh, yeah, they were busy trying to sabotage Trump...

At least, there is some silver lining to all this in that there is no longer any doubt, Russia is an adversary — if not an outright enemy. A big and welcome change of both long- and short-term trends.

But don't let that distract you from the soccer championship...

Re:32 people charged

[sittingnut]

32 people were charged. 12 of those were GRU (russian) agents. 3 were trump campaign personell. Article does not say who/what the others are.

?! wrong.
from zerohedge with screen shot of indictment -
"... there is no indication that any American was a knowing participant in this activity, and no indication that these efforts altered the vote count in any way."
https://www.zerohedge.com/site...

Re:32 people charged

[Anonymous Coward]

Incorrect. there were only 12 russian nationals charged in this indictment.

Re:32 people charged

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a witch hunt! You' won't find anything!

*INDICTMENTS HAPPEN*

oh uh... well you won't find anything on people relating to Trump's campaign

* MORE INDICTMENTS HAPPEN*

oh uh... well you're just BIASED

Re:32 people charged

[Anonymous Coward]

Love how this misinformation is still moderated up -- Score 2, informative.

Re:32 people charged

[goombah99]

Sigh, You read russian propaganda like zerohedge? you must be so misinformed. Just google the it.

Re:32 people charged

[mi]

No one indicted so far needed the Special Counsel to be indicted... None of the indictments implicate Trump in any wrong-doing either.

That you are biased is obvious. That you are so biased, the above truths aren't clear to you, is rare...

Re:32 people charged

[Anonymous Coward]

No it's correct. 32 people have been indicted.

Re:32 people charged

[Talderas]

Get out of here with your facts. They are inconvenient to the rage machine.

Re:32 people charged

[ravenshrike]

Yeah, how's that other trial going? You know, the one where they indicted some foreign companies and then when said companies showed up in court Mueller went "Ummm, ummm, we're not actually ready for trial yet." Welcome to the dog and pony show that is the Mueller special council.

Re:32 people charged

[Anonymous Coward]

My god, that's a bouillabaisse of crappy sources! You must be exhausted from all the work you put into being so wrong.

Re:32 people charged

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh.. What you've got a screenshot of there is not the indictment. That text you circled does not appear anywhere in the document itself. It's from the press release.

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/grand-jury-indicts-12-russian-intelligence-officers-hacking-offenses-related-2016-election

You can read the full text of the actual indictment here. Read it. It's pretty damning.

https://www.justice.gov/file/1080281/download

You and the right-media have clamped on to those lines but it's not an exoneration. It's a clarification, because this indictment is specifically about Russian hackers working for the Russian government specifically to influence the election.

It does, in fact, name US parties as working with those that committed crimes. Proving that they knowingly worked with those committing crimes is beyond the scope of this indictment. - Thought it may be the subject of future ones.

Re:32 people charged

[Tulsa_Time]

No COLLUSION By Any US Citizen

Re:32 people charged

[sittingnut]

everything you disagree is russian propaganda? even when it says russians are indicted?
and googling is the way not to be "misinformed"? lol.
-
in any case i just pointed to what the indictment and rosenstein statement, with source. does indictment says anything different when it is in some other site?
did i use opinion of the site, whatever its bias?
-
you are free to engage in ad hominem logical fallacies, i stick to actual words and facts.

Re:32 people charged

[Anonymous Coward]

Sigh, You read russian propaganda like zerohedge? you must be so misinformed. Just google the it.

ad hominem :

a fallacious argumentative strategy whereby genuine discussion of the topic at hand is avoided by instead attacking the character, motive, or other attribute of the person making the argument, or persons associated with the argument, rather than attacking the substance of the argument itself.

Grow a brain. Your Russia! Russia! Russia!/Trump Derangement Syndrome is showing.

Read Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s remarks on the Russia indictments

there is no allegation in this indictment that any American was a knowing participant in this illegal activity. There is no allegation in the indictment that the charge conduct altered the outcome of the 2016 election.

Wow. Almost word-fucking-word for what the GP post says.

The sad thing is you probably believe your smarter than the GP poster.

Re:32 people charged

[Anonymous Coward]

> russian propaganda like zerohedge

So, no factual disputes with the linked article? Even if it was rt.com, which is actual Russian propaganda, that would still be, you know, helpful.

Got any source for zh being ruskies?

Re:32 people charged

[sittingnut]

it is justice department press release about justice department's indictment of russian agents.

comment i was replying to, said there were "trump campaign personell" charged. that was wrong, as i said. do you agree i am right on that?

and justice department is specific "no indication that any American was a knowing participant in this activity,"
and could you point to pages in indictment where it names americans knowingly "working with those that committed crimes", as you imply it does.

you are free to speculate about future indictments with or (as in your case) without facts.
same way, someone else may speculate, you and i, will be indicted in future as russian saboteurs of slashdot threads. lol.

Re: 32 people charged

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean Prigozhin's company, Concord Consulting? That's still proceeding to trial.

This is different and involves a bunch of GRU officers.

"Russian GRU officers hacked the website of a state election board and stole information about 500,000 voters," Rosenstein said. "They also hacked into computers of a company that supplied software used to verify voter registration information."
The defendants worked for two units of the GRU that "engaged in active cyber operations to interfere in the 2016 presidential elections," Rosenstein said. One unit stole information using spearfishing schemes and hacked into computer networks where they "installed malicious software that allowed them to spy on users and capture keystrokes, take screenshots and exfiltrate or remove data from those computers."

Re: 32 people charged

[Anonymous Coward]

Absence of the allegation not the same as no indication. You are quoting a conclusion that the article made that cannot be made from the press release that the article cited.

Re:32 people charged

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry the text is scanned and not copy-pastable

Pages 16 and 17, Paragraph 43

A candidate for Congress asked Guccifer 2.0 for stolen documents and recived them. The indictment names Russian operatives as the people behind the online persona Guccifer 2.0. This section also details other people working with and exchanging data with those indicted.

Page 16, Paragraph 44.

It's been widely suggested that this person is probably Roger Stone.

Re:32 people charged

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope to hell you are not an american.

If so, americans have now joined the enemy and are actively killing america.

Re:32 people charged

[amicusNYCL]

Are you limiting your scope to the latest indictments? Because people like Manafort and Papadopoulos have already been indicted by Mueller, and some have pled guilty. The scope of his investigation is very large. It's also not over, and he's actually able to control his people so there aren't any leaks, we have no idea what evidence he has or who his other targets are. The only information we get from Mueller is when he files things in court. So it's probably premature for anyone to conclude anything other than what his filings say. Just because there has not been a filing charging someone with collusion, for example, does not mean that there is no collusion or that he's not investigating it or that he doesn't have evidence of it. He just hasn't filed that yet, so let's hold off on making conclusions about what people definitely did or did not do until he finishes his work.

Re:32 people charged

[multi io]

What have the FBI, the NSA, and the rest of our wonderful "intelligence" apparatus been doing, while this was going on?

Oh, yeah, they were busy trying to sabotage Trump

Strzok sat on evidence incriminating Trump campaign members in connection with Russian election interference -- and didn't publish it. And Comey basically threw the election to Trump by reopening the Clinton investigation in late October. That's some strange behaviour for people supposedly trying to "sabotage Trump".

Re: 32 people charged

[ravenshrike]

Yeah. "Proceeding" to trial. When you indict someone, that means you have all your ducks in a row and are ready to go to trail. Mueller had nothing, and is now in stall, stall, stall mode. Dog and pony show.

Re:32 people charged

[mi]

Strzok sat on evidence incriminating Trump campaign members in connection with Russian election interference

Citation needed.

Where is that wonderful "evidence" — Mueller could certainly use it to do, what he was appointed to do: investigate Trump, instead of accusing Russian military of attacking American interests (duh!)...

Re:32 people charged

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately, your "facts" have been proven wrong. You should get used to that feeling, it's gonna be quite commonplace as arrests are made.

Re: 32 people charged

[Anonymous Coward]

He was trying to pad his stats to lend credibility to his kangaroo court. He got caught with his pants down when one of his targets called his bluff.

The Clinton "hack" wasn't the Russians either. Wikileaks reported this long ago.

Clinton admits to committing an act that is against the law and it's "no reasonable prosecutor..."

There's zero evidence with trump and all of a sudden a special counsel is formed that seems to have absolutely no boundaries whatsoever.

Ya, no political bullshit going on here, no sir.

Re:32 people charged

[Theaetetus]

And Comey basically threw the election to Trump by reopening the Clinton investigation in late October.

Whether or not it had a significant effect on undecided voters or voter turnout, consider what would have happened if he didn't reopen the investigation: he had just uncovered a huge number of allegedly "missing" Clinton emails, some of which included classified material, on the laptop of a guy about to be indicted for transmitting Weiner pictures to minors. It couldn't be kept hush-hush, since it was going to be in a publicly-available federal indictment of a major public figure that the media was following. If he tried to sit on it until after the election, then all of the "Obama officials aiding Clinton pedophile-ring" rumors would blow up even more.

Basically, his hands were tied. It was going to become public, and anything other than immediate release and re-opening the investigation would make it look even more like something shady was going on. This was his best attempt to get it back out of the news cycle by election day.

Re:32 people charged

[benjfowler]

You get your "facts" from Zero Hedge. That speaks for itself.

I read that bilge to stay abreast of Putin's lies du jour. I read it, knowing that ZH is a Russian information warfare operation, and partly for masochistic entertainment value. Certainly not to stay informed.

Re:32 people charged

[benjfowler]

This is what gets me. At the time, the FBI was Trumper central, and they were anti-Clinton. Clinton's entitled behavior wrt that mail server upset many people in the FBI. Quite a few people down there thought that Trump was the least-worst option (not that they would allow their politics to affect their professional judgement).

The idiocy of the Stupid Party's claim that the FBI were out to get Trump, is self-evident.

Re: 32 people charged

[benjfowler]

What makes my black heart glow, is knowing these fucking pricks, and everybody working for them, will be grounded for life, or looking over their shoulders for the rest of their lives. Half the world extradites to the United States, and fake identities won't save them.

Re: 32 people charged

[bestweasel]

"Mueller could certainly use it to do, what he was appointed to do: investigate Trump, instead of accusing Russian military of attacking American interests (duh!)..."

The point is, the Russian state still denies attacking American interests (duh!)...

You're wrong about what Mueller was appointed to do. What is odd is that after all your many posts on this subject you still appear not to have grasped the basics. I looked it up, it wasn't hard:

By virtue of the authority vested in me as Acting Attorney General, including 28 U.S.C.
ÂÂ 509, 510, and 515, in order to discharge my responsibility to provide supervision and management of the Department of Justice, and to ensure a full and thorough investigation of the Russian governments efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election, I hereby order as follows:
(a) Robert S. Mueller III is appointed to serve as Special Counsel for the United States Department of Justice.
(b) The Special Counsel is authorized to conduct the investigation confirmed by then-FBI Director James 8. Corney in testimony before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence on March 20, 2017, including:
(i) any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump; and
(ii) any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation; and
(iii) any other matters within the scope of 28 C.F.R. Â 600.4(a).

28 C.F.R. Â 600.4(a) says, in part,

The jurisdiction of a Special Counsel shall also include the authority to investigate and prosecute federal crimes committed in the course of, and with intent to interfere with, the Special Counsel's investigation, such as perjury, obstruction of justice, destruction of evidence, and intimidation of witnesses;

Re: 32 people charged

[AHuxley]

AC GRU is the last group in Russia, the Soviet Union that would be allowed to do anything spy related outside Russia.
A spy in the UK was accepted by the GRU and the GRU was told to hand the spy over to people in the Soviet Union with the ability to protect such a spy.
The GRU wanted the glory and attempted to use the spy as a GRU spy.
The spy in the UK had access to a photocopy machine with no paper counter, no camera and could make unlimited photocopies of MI6/GCHQ level documents kept in a vault. The only limit was the weight of paper in a bag at any one time.
The spy was caught by the UK and the GRU lost the spy who could have advanced further up in the UK spy/mil sector for years.

Russia understood only its best experts would get to spy in the USA, UK and not get caught.
When the USA media talks of advanced spy methods and the GRU its domestic fiction.

Re: 32 people charged

[Uberbah]

The point is, the Russian state still denies attacking American interests (duh!)...

Because Russiagaters have as much evidence that Russia did squat as Chem Trailers do that the CIA is putting mind-controlling gas in jet fuel.

Re:32 people charged

[Uberbah]

And Comey basically threw the election to Trump by reopening the Clinton investigation in late October.

Comey covered for Hillary's criminal, hypocritical, incompetent ass by whitewashing her email server problem while at the same time the DOJ was prosecuting Kristian Saucier for taking unauthorized selfies on a sub. If her name was Hillary Smith she'd be looking at least a decade in prison for obstruction of justice charges alone, for destroying evidence while under investigation. Dembots shouldn't be throwing stones at Comey, they should be giving him daily blowjobs for the rest of his life for keeping their nominee out of a prison cell.

Re:32 people charged

[multi io]

I wasn't criticizing Comey's decision (I know about the conflict that he was in, and I think the man was an outstanding public employee), I was just refuting the parent poster's allegation that the FBI was trying to "sabotage Trump".

Re:32 people charged

[sittingnut]

Unfortunately, your "facts" have been proven wrong. .

where?

Re:32 people charged

[sittingnut]

again does indictment says anything different when it is in some other site? facts are facts, wherever it is on.
you are free to engage in absurd fact free ad hominem logical fallacies; they don't matter to anyone intelligent.

Re:32 people charged

[sittingnut]

that is all you got? lol. people receiving information after it was published? is that knowingly committing crimes?
what next? podesta working for russians because he was stupid enough to got phished?

Re:32 people charged

[sittingnut]

you know that manafort was charged with something totally unrelated to election, that happened years before election, right?
again, you are free to be so desperate as to think and say it is connected, engage in wild speculations and conspiracy theories, and basically live on nothing but airy hope. that is the fate of people who lose in game of life.
others, like me, who are no so situated, and live in reality, are free to place their trust on facts and reason.

Re:32 people charged

[Anonymous Coward]

Bouillabaisse is French; you mean borscht.

Re:32 people charged

[slashdot_commentator]

The problem is not that he reads Zerohedge (which is not necessarily Russian propaganda). The problem is that he's a Trump fanboy stooge who alters what the Zerohedge text actually said. Your problem is that you rely on Google to formulate your opinions for you.

Re: 32 people charged

[bestweasel]

Ignoring your double negative, the feds have the evidence and it will be produced in court at the appropriate time. Here are just the first 6 pages of the indictments against the GRU agents - plenty of meat for the nothingburger there:

COUNT ONE
(Conspiracy to Commit an Offense Against the United States)

1. In or around 2016, the Russian Federation ("Russia") operated a military intelligence agency called the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff The GRU had multiple units, including Units 26165 and 74455, engaged in cyber operations that involved the staged releases of documents stolen through computer intrusions. These units conducted large-scale cyber operations to interfere with the 2016 US. presidential election.

2. Defendants VIKT OR BORISOVICH BORIS ALEKSEYEVICH ANTONOV, DMITRIY SERGEYEVICH IVAN SERGEYEVICH YERMAKOV, ALEKSEY VIKTOROVICH LUKASHEV, SERGEY ALEKSANDROVICH MORGACHEV, NIKOLAY YURYEVICH KOZACHEK, PAVEL VYACHESLAVOVICH YERSHOV, ARTEM ANDREYEVICH ALEKSANDR VLADIMIROVICH OSADCHUK, and ALEKSEY ALEKSANDROVICH POTENIKIN were GRU officers who knowingly and intentionally conspired with each other, and with persons known and unknown to the Grand Jury (collectively the "Conspirators"), to gain unauthorized access (to "hack") into the computers of U.S. persons and entities involved in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, steal documents from these computers, and stage releases of the stolen documents to interfere with the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

3. Starting in at least March 2016, the Conspirators used a variety of means to hack the email accounts of Volunteers and employees of the U.S. presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton (the "Clinton Campaign"), including the email account of the Clinton Campaign's chairman.

4. By in or around April 2016, the Conspirators also hacked into the computer networks of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the Democratic National Committee The Conspirators covertly monitored the computers of dozens of and DNC employees, implanted hundreds of files containing malicious computer code ("malware"), and stole emails and other documents from the and DNC.

5. By in or around April 2016, the Conspirators began to plan the release of materials stolen from the Clinton Campaign, and DNC.

6. Beginning in or around June 2016, the Conspirators staged and released tens of thousands of the stolen emails and documents. They did so using fictitious online personas, including "DCLeaks" and "Guccifer 2.0"

7. The Conspirators also used the Guccifer 2.0 persona to release additional stolen documents through a website maintained by an organization ("Organization 1") that had previously posted documents stolen from U.S. persons, entities, and the U.S. government. The Conspirators continued their U.S. election-interference operations through in or around November 2016.

8. To hide their connections to Russia and the Russian government, the Conspirators used false identities and made false statements about their identities. To further avoid detection, the Conspirators used a network of computers located across the world, including in the United States, and paid for this infrastructure using

Defendants

9. Defendant VIKTOR BORISOVICH was the Russian military officer in command of Unit 26165, located at 20 Komsomolskiy Prospekt, Moscow, Russia. Unit 26165 had primary responsibility for hacking the and DNC, as well as the email accounts of individuals affiliated with the Clinton Campaign.

10. Defendant BORIS ALEKSEYEVICH ANTONOV was a Maj or in the Russian military assigned to Unit 26165. ANTONOV oversaw a department within Unit 26165 dedicated to targeting military, political, governmental, and non-governmental organizations with spearphishing emails and other computer intrusion activity. ANTONOV held the title "Head of Department." In or around 2016, ANTONOV supervised other co-conspirators who targeted the DNC, and individuals affiliated with the Clinton Campaign.

Re: 32 people charged

[Uberbah]

Ignoring your double negative, the feds have the evidence and it will be produced in court at the appropriate time.

If the the Feds had shit, they would have presented it years ago. This investigation isn't about finding evidence for a crime, as there never was any probable suspicion of one in the first place - just a so-lame-it-wouldn't-have-passed-for-a-bad-80's-action-movie excuse from the DNC for losing the most winnable race in history. It's about the deep state reminding a game show host president who's boss.

Here are just the first 6 pages of the indictments against the GRU agents - plenty of meat for the nothingburger there

Good, I was running low on toilet paper. Look, clown shoes, Mueller has never bothered to have the FBI examine the DNC servers, the alleged hacking of which makes up the foundation of Russiagate. Which either means that Mueller is so unbelievably incompetent he shouldn't be left alone with the office Keurig machine least he burn the place down, or this was never a real investigation to begin with.

Pick. One.

Re: 32 people charged

[bestweasel]

I don't have to pick one of your false choices, I'm just enjoying the slow public unraveling of Putin's plots and Trump's sanity. I'm excited to see where that leads.

Re: 32 people charged

[Uberbah]

Yeah, the Chem Trailers and Antivaxxers are also in denial of how far they've planted their heads up their own conspiracy theories, too.

the slow public unraveling of Putin's plots

The plot where Putin was so diabolically clever that he knew years in advance that a bankrupt political novice game show host could be president, that Hillary wouldn't bother to campaign in the states between Pennsylvania and Iowa (and almost lost Minnesota) - yet at the same time such a fucking idiot that he didn't anticipate any blowback. And that a former KGB man would be so unbelievably stupid as to collude with someone as dumb as Trump, which means the FBI/CIA/NSA would know, as would President Elect Hillary as the race was hers to lose right up until the end. And that he would counter $9 billion in corporate propaganda (with $1.2 billion just from Hillary) with....a few thousand dollars for Facebook and Twitter memes. And all to interfere in a race where both parties are virulently anti-Russian and have been for over a hundred years.

Like I said the first time, this wouldn't even pass as the plot to a shitty 80's action movie.

Re:32 people charged

[amicusNYCL]

you know that manafort was charged with something totally unrelated to election, that happened years before election, right?

Yes. Now talk about Papadopoulos and his relation to reality.

Re: 32 people charged

[bestweasel]

Well, seeing as Trump believes Putin's denials, I guess I'll have to accept yours. No Russians it is. Not sure then who all these guys on Slashdot pretending to be Americans, Australians and Canadians are - must be Chinese or something.

Re: 32 people charged

[sysrammer]

Well, seeing as Trump believes Putin's denials, I guess I'll have to accept yours. No Russians it is. Not sure then who all these guys on Slashdot pretending to be Americans, Australians and Canadians are - must be Chinese or something.

Norks, natch.

Re: 32 people charged

[bestweasel]

North Koreans? Tricky to decide, what with their recent internet link with Russia, though the North Koreans' English is more flowery.

"Patriotic American workers pledge their lives and democratic votes to glorious leader Trump whose wise and happy face shines like the sun and whose unequalled political skills will cast down the hated Hillary to be trampled underfoot by the will of the people."

Oh hang on, Trump's been forced to correct himself. It is the Russians after all.

Re: 32 people charged

[sysrammer]

Da.

or...

[Anonymous Coward]

...or the server was analyzed by some other government agency (NSA, Homeland Security) or a private security firm. If Comey perjured himself he should face the consequences of that, but I highly doubt he did.

Re:or...

[atxlakeshore]

Failure to secure the server as evidence and subsequent analysis by a contractor would likely have violated chain of custody to the degree that any evidence derived couldn't be used. We also have the issue of needing a "second opinion" or analysis that can be peer-reviewed.

Do they have H.Clintons job e-mails?

[Anonymous Coward]

Would be great if they were found, they were official documents after all.

Re:Do they have H.Clintons job e-mails?

[Locke2005]

No, Hillary Clinton's private, non-government emails are not official documents. Her mistake was in keeping both her email accounts on the same server, so she would only have to carry one phone.

Re:Do they have H.Clintons job e-mails?

[greenwow]

> carry one phone.

That's a BS excuse. Even my old second generation iPhone from 2008 supported multiple email accounts.https://politics.slashdot.org/story/18/07/13/1629245/special-counsel-mueller-charges-12-russian-intelligence-officers-with-hacking-democrats-during-2016-election.

Re: Do they have H.Clintons job e-mails?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hillary Clinton didn't use an iPhone at that time, so your remark is irrelevant noise.

You would do better to complain that government rules did not require the use of an official government operated messaging system. They still don't.

Re: Do they have H.Clintons job e-mails?

[drinkypoo]

Hillary Clinton didn't use an iPhone at that time, so your remark is irrelevant noise.

It doesn't matter what she used, anything would let you have multiple email accounts. Early Android phones, Crackberries, old-assed Winmo phones, you name it.

You would do better to complain that government rules did not require the use of an official government operated messaging system. They still don't.

No, but they did require the use of an official server for official communications, and the use of a cellphone on the approved list for same. And still do.

Re: Do they have H.Clintons job e-mails?

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesn't matter what she used, anything would let you have multiple email accounts. Early Android phones, Crackberries, old-assed Winmo phones, you name it.

In the fashion that Hillary Clinton wanted it to operate? You're lacking even a claim that you did it, let alone on the way she preferred. Like it or not, your remarks don't cover the exact and precise situation, you are simply asserting it.

The thing is, other people remember the actual problems involved, and their experiences differ from yours.

No, but they did require the use of an official server for official communications, and the use of a cellphone on the approved list for same. And still do.

Nope. They didn't and still don't. Not only is the current President an example of violating that kind of policy, so are his associates like Scott Pruitt and Ben Carson.

Like I said, if you started demanding a fix, you would at least have credibility that you were trying to do right.

Instead? You make fallacious accusations and spurious apologia while ignoring the ongoing misdeeds.

Re: Do they have H.Clintons job e-mails?

[drinkypoo]

In the fashion that Hillary Clinton wanted it to operate?

It does not matter even slightly if it worked the way she wanted it to work, as long as it would do the job. She needed to work with it the way it worked.

As for the server, you're right; she wasn't required to use an official server. I misspoke. What she was required to do was retain all records relating to official business. But we know that they purged substantial quantities of email from the server before handing it over, and we know that Clinton got her own server on the advice of Colin Powell who suggested it specifically for the purpose of destroying evidence. Since the purpose of the server was to circumvent the law, the server was illegal.

I would rather have had Clinton as president than Trump, but don't pretend Clinton isn't a criminal.

Re: Do they have H.Clintons job e-mails?

[Anonymous Coward]

It does not matter even slightly if it worked the way she wanted it to work, as long as it would do the job. She needed to work with it the way it worked.

Nope, if you are accusing Hillary Clinton of something, you need to address her reasons directly, not declare that they don't matter. Because apparently accommodating her preferences was the intent, and as you admit, there is no law requiring a specific system used.

As for the server, you're right; she wasn't required to use an official server. I misspoke. What she was required to do was retain all records relating to official business. But we know that they purged substantial quantities of email from the server before handing it over,

Seems like you're forgetting a step in your accusations. What could be the oversight in your words now? Oh yeah...

and we know that Clinton got her own server on the advice of Colin Powell who suggested it specifically for the purpose of destroying evidence.

I haven't seen Colin Powell convicted either.

Since the purpose of the server was to circumvent the law, the server was illegal.

Unfortunately, you are relying on an intent you have not proven. You should listen to my advice instead. It is much smarter to forbid it entirely.

I would rather have had Clinton as president than Trump, but don't pretend Clinton isn't a criminal.

Don't pretend that the requirement to be a criminal is a conviction, and more importantly, the key point in any accusation is accuracy as to something actually done.

Given the history of wild and spurious accusations against Hillary Clinton, and the Trump defenders continual cries that he didn't do the thing or something(including Trump himself), you will have to recognize that I won't let you pretend your complaints are effective and demonstrating integrity.

There's a reason I keep telling people to fix the problem by changing the rules, rather than making all these empty accusations.

It's about as useful as Trump's own statements that his consent agreements didn't admit to any wrongdoing. Every time I see that, I laugh because for me, that's as good as saying you're not even ashamed of what you did.

Re: Do they have H.Clintons job e-mails?

[drinkypoo]

Given the history of wild and spurious accusations against Hillary Clinton, and the Trump defenders continual cries that he didn't do the thing or something(including Trump himself), you will have to recognize that I won't let you pretend your complaints are effective and demonstrating integrity.

I'm not a Trump supporter or Trump defender, so that's a nothing sandwich.

Re: Do they have H.Clintons job e-mails?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not a Trump supporter or Trump defender, so that's a nothing sandwich

Nope. That's actually why I also have to hold you accountable for your own spurious accusations. That way I can also do the same to them.

It's similar to how I can point out my opposition to the Electoral college preceded Bush/Gore in 2000 so I'm not concerned about the current election, my objections preceded it.

Thus I point out the nature of your own complaints about Clinton, or other things as I see them.

See also the Wind farm retirement discussion.

Re: Do they have H.Clintons job e-mails?

[drinkypoo]

Thus I point out the nature of your own complaints about Clinton, or other things as I see them.

It's similar to how I can point out my opposition to the Electoral college preceded Bush/Gore in 2000 so I'm not concerned about the current election, my objections preceded it.
I was calling Clinton a warhawk before the election. Checkmate, troll.

foreigners?

[Anonymous Coward]

The fact he continues to indict foreigners who will never show up in court should not be lost on anyone.

Also not lost, the non-foreigners: George Papadopoulos (pleaded guilty), Michael Flynn (pleaded guilty), Rick Gates (pleaded guilty), Richard Pinedo (pleaded guilty), Alex van der Zwaan (pleaded guilty), Paul Manafort (awaiting trial), Michael Cohen (referred to US Attorney for New York).

Re:foreigners?

[Talderas]

While your statement is factually correct the narrative to which the submitter is reference is the "Trump-Russia Collusion" narrative. People want it to be true to get rid of Trump. These are all publicly available in indictments.

Papadopoulos - Perjury
Flynn - Perjury
Manafort & Gates - Falsified income tax filings and bank fraud.
Pinedo - Identity Fraud
van der Zwaan - Perjury

Only Pinedo, has anything to do with Russian involvement and that has to do with him selling some of the fraud services to the Russians. Pinedo wasn't involved with Trump's campaign. Each of the indictments of individuals associated with the Trump campaign have nothing to do with the operations of the Trump campaign or even involve the Russians.

Re:foreigners?

[amicusNYCL]

Each of the indictments of individuals associated with the Trump campaign have nothing to do with the operations of the Trump campaign or even involve the Russians.

You should probably re-read the Papadopoulos indictment. His perjury crimes were relating to his statements about which Russians he was talking to, about what, and whether they were before or during the campaign. It turns out that he was talking to Russians who he thought had ties to their government, trying to arrange meetings or get information from them, while he was working with and for the campaign.

I didn't read through the other indictments, but that one example makes your statement false.

Re:foreigners?

[Talderas]

My apologies. I erred when crafting that sentence. I made the assumption that the sentence would be interpreted in the context of the Russian collusion narrative, which is that Trump owes his Presidency to the Russians.

Papadopolous's indictment features a number of false statements regarding attempting to reach out to Russian contacts. The indictment contains no evidence of Papadopolous's statements being much more than an indication that he attempted to arrange a meeting between Trump and the Russian government as well as obtain the alleged hacked Clinton emails. If anything, the indictment goes to prove just how little Papadopolous managed to accomplish. In the end he never got the emails and there was no meeting arranged between the Russians and Trump or his campaign.

Flynn, which I had accidently posted Manafort's indictment also spoke with Russians. Flynn did contact with Russians but contact was also tangential to the collusion narrative. The indictments don't contain specifics but Flynn may have done no more than communicated the preferences of the Trump Presidential Transition Team to the Russians or other nations and encourage them to keep in mind the incoming administration when voting on a UN resolution. Flynn's perjury charges almost certain arose out of a desire to avoid any potential Logan Act prosecution, something that would be a very interesting case to watch come through the pipes with regard to the authority that will be assumed and has been preemptived bestowed on the President-elect via an election.

Re:foreigners?

[amicusNYCL]

I made the assumption that the sentence would be interpreted in the context of the Russian collusion narrative, which is that Trump owes his Presidency to the Russians.

I think that claim would be both irrelevant and counter-productive, and Mueller is not interested in answering that. We have no way to remove Trump if that were true, so it's a pointless exercise, it's not like that can even be quantified and, even if it could, there is not any constitutional way to remove Trump and install, for example, Clinton. It's a non-issue. If Trump actually worked with foreign governments to influence the election then he can and should be impeached and removed, but that's just going to follow the normal impeachment process and we'll end up with either Pence or Ryan (if it happened today).

What Mueller is investigating is if and how Russia is trying to influence US democratic processes, and that should be important to any American regardless of political preference. For some reason one political party is trying to discredit the investigation, but in a perfect world any political party should want that investigation to continue. In fact, it may not even be a bad idea to set up a department or agency who has the sole purpose of continuously monitoring our elections and other democratic processes for any signs of foreign interference.

If anything, the indictment goes to prove just how little Papadopolous managed to accomplish.

That's OK, a criminal's level of success doesn't change whether or not they were breaking the law to start with. Thankfully, it sounds like Papadopolous is cooperating with the investigation. All I'm interested in is the truth - what happened, and what are we going to do about it, how are we going to make the country stronger?

It would be very unfortunate if the country was left weaker because of political opposition towards an investigation into whether or not foreign governments are influencing our elections.

Re:foreigners?

[quantaman]

While your statement is factually correct the narrative to which the submitter is reference is the "Trump-Russia Collusion" narrative. People want it to be true to get rid of Trump. These are all publicly available in indictments.

Papadopoulos - Perjury

His perjury was about a meeting on Clinton's emails that he had with a man whom he knew to be connected to the Russian government.

Flynn - Perjury

Perjury about his phone conversations with the Russian ambassador.

Manafort & Gates - Falsified income tax filings and bank fraud.

Hiding income that they got working for a Russia-backed politician in Ukraine and other Russian interests.

Only Pinedo, has anything to do with Russian involvement and that has to do with him selling some of the fraud services to the Russians. Pinedo wasn't involved with Trump's campaign. Each of the indictments of individuals associated with the Trump campaign have nothing to do with the operations of the Trump campaign or even involve the Russians.

It's surprising that you went to the trouble to link to the indictments that actually contradict your claims.

I mean Papadopoulous, while on the campaign, met with a Russian connected individual to get information on emails that would damage Clinton.

What possible definition of "with the operations of the Trump campaign or even involve the Russians" does that not satisfy?

Re:foreigners?

[Anonymous Coward]

My apologies. I erred when crafting that sentence.

Thank you for making the world a better place by showing that admitting mistakes is not such a big deal that unfortunately some people make it.

Re:foreigners?

[Anonymous Coward]

> Hiding income that they got working for a Russia-backed politician in Ukraine and other Russian interests.

That occurred before Manafort was ever on the Trump campaign, so it really has nothing to do with anything.

> I mean Papadopoulous, while on the campaign, met with a Russian connected individual to get information on emails that would damage Clinton.

Yeah, why would someone working on a political campaign work to find dirt on their political opponent? Next you'll be wondering why Jeri Ryan's divorce records were unsealed.

Re:foreigners?

[quantaman]

> Hiding income that they got working for a Russia-backed politician in Ukraine and other Russian interests.

That occurred before Manafort was ever on the Trump campaign, so it really has nothing to do with anything.

He worked for a (notoriously corrupt) Russia-linked politician and has a lot of connections with Kremlin linked Russians. It doesn't seem like a weird coincidence that he ended up on Trump's campaign?

> I mean Papadopoulous, while on the campaign, met with a Russian connected individual to get information on emails that would damage Clinton.

Yeah, why would someone working on a political campaign work to find dirt on their political opponent? Next you'll be wondering why Jeri Ryan's divorce records were unsealed.

Getting illegally gained intel from a foreign government?

So are you now working towards the theory that it would be perfectly OK for Trump to have colluded with the Russian government?

Re:foreigners?

[Anonymous Coward]

Those perjury deals were the trade-in price. Flynn in particular was looking at decades in prinson for himself and his son for all sorts of nasty stuff. He traded it for perjury and probably 6 months in prison at sentencing.

But you knew that, right?

No Evidence

[Anonymous Coward]

Muller charged 13 Russian companies a few months ago.

They showed up in court to defend themselves. Muller so far as REFUSED to let them see the evidence against them so they can make a defense. I believe he suggested they just plead guilty because the evidence, which they are not allowed to see, is overwhelming. BTW, one of the companies charged didn't exist during the election, so Muller appears to just randomly naming Russians at this point.

You will not be allowed to see any evidence Muller has against Russians. He will claim national security, because reasons.

Re:No Evidence

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not like the FBI gathered the evidence anyway. It NEVER examined the DNC servers because the DNC wouldn't allow it. It was done by private security company like Crowdstrike. The same company that was retained by the law firm Perkins Coie, of which a partner, Marc E. Elias, retained Fusion GPS, the that produced the Trump dossier.

There's other entanglement with the FBI, Fusion, the DNC and Crowdstrike, but I'm not gonna waste time in spelling it out since Shareblue seems to be out in force today modding -1 to any post countering the Russian narrative.

Re:No Evidence

[Anonymous Coward]

Only one company showed up, and all evidence is being shared with their US-based law firm, they just need approval to share it with foreign nationals. So the defense lawyers have everything, they just can't hand over potentially classified information to a foreign national without it being reviewed by the judge, which is just sensible.

Re:No Evidence

[DCFusor]

The Register is censoring comments that disagree with the official narrative. I tried 3 times...This is a full court press to regain control by whoever actually controls the press and the people who still uncritically agree with it when it supports their biases.
.

Frankly, I see more UK interference in the elections - where did that dossier come from? Steele worked for who? Oh, Skripal worked for who? Someone was poisoned with way different effects than a real nerve agent has, survived..and now needs to be kept from the public or any investigation of what REALLY happened?
.

The "we protesteth too much" behavior by congressional Democrats yesterday to prevent Strozk from answering questions...it's becoming obvious even to people who'd like to believe otherwise who's doing the interfering here.?
.

I notice this sturm und drang does not happen with candidates the un-elected got to vet before they ran - once that happens, the bureaucrats have no reason to care how a vote comes out.
Personally, I think things were rigged the other way - which is why there was so much distress when the riggers lost anyway. Look at who is acting silly, hysterical, obstructive, and even promoting violence in the streets. That's not those taking the high road.
Lots of people's rice bowls are filled by ever-increasing government and military industrial complex gimmies. We are seeing just who feels the most threatened at the prospect of peace breaking out - where's that WWIII the progressives assured us we'd be in by now? These jerks create fake enemies just to get a paycheck. We should shuck the schmucks.
.

You don't have to support Trump to see who is asserting their power here, wrongfully, and who the real enemies of the people are. Yeah, it's us...since the government became such a jobs program.

Witch hunt!

[Locke2005]

Sure seems to be an awful lot of witches in the woods these days, eh?

Re:Witch hunt!

[ThinkNextTime]

Witchcraft is easy to prove. Hold them underwater for 5 minutes and if they live, they are witches.

It's not a crime when WE do it

[Anonymous Coward]

but if THEY do, or even flinch, then we accuse them of terrorism etc.

Re: Comey Testimony

[bobbied]

So the DNC has now given up the server(s) for inspection that they once refused to let the FBI have and the FBI declined to force?

From this side of the Muller investigation, it's pretty hard to draw conclusions on this question. We don't know if it was surrendered to inspection under duress or willingly or if it was even looked at by Muller's team or not.

All we have is the charges which indicates that the grand jury has seen enough evidence to, in their judgment, believe that a crime MAY have been committed by the persons/entities being charged. We have no idea what that evidence is.

I heard a nation state hovered Hillarys server

[Anonymous Coward]

If that's the case, cannot wait to have the Russians share her juicy emails (the bit bleached ones) ahead of the mid terms and her revival run in 2020 (the hell freezes over tour, just like the eagles)

Re:I heard a nation state hovered Hillarys server

[arbiter1]

A senator said that all Clintons email's were being forwarded to a 3rd party AKA server was hacked in to but key point he said. The location where emails were going "WASN'T" Russia.

Clinton is a Criminal

[Anonymous Coward]

She carried 13 different devices while Secretary of State.
She lied under oath claiming it was to carry 1 device. Lying under oath to Congress IS a crime.

Re: Clinton is a Criminal

[Anonymous Coward]

Even Congress would not try to twist that kind of fallacious accusation into a lie in a court of law. They will make that kind of political stunt to be sure, but they would balk at going to trial over it.

Why? Because 13 separate devices over a period of time does not preclude her from using said system to consolidate accounts to access on one device.

Re:Clinton is a Criminal

[Anonymous Coward]

"She carried 13 different devices while Secretary of State."

At the same time, yeah?

Use CCleaner. Endorsed by GRU

[Anonymous Coward]

When you want to hide your network infiltration, use CCleaner.

On or about May 31, 2016, YERMAKOV searched for open—source information
about Company l and its reporting on X-Agent and X-Tunnel. On or about June
1, 2016, the Conspirators attempted to delete traces oftheir presence on the DCCC
network using the computer program CCleaner.

That must of been a bit arduous, installing CCleaner on all the servers and desktops to delete traces of their hack. Of course, that leaves all the logs on routers, firewalls, non windows servers, etc. to get rid of

Not News

[callahan2211]

Real news would have been that it has been revealed that at no time has Russia meddled in our election processes.

Re:Not News

[iggymanz]

indeed, the only conclusion we can reach is that the Democrat's IT people were incompetents. It is nonsense to say Russian could in any way "throw" the election, that's not how Trump won. Gerrymandering and strategic winning of key areas, yes.

Re:Keep crying traitor faggot

[Anonymous Coward]

Shesh.... Posts like the above just tell me that ya got nothing more than your vapid claims of criminal activity and you just don't want to be honest about it. Face it AC, you have no proof so all you can do is throw mud and cuss...

Also, it is such foolishness that is actually driving public opinion towards Trump not being guilty of anything. Chicken Little lost credibility by making unsupportable claims, loudly and often and people got tired of listening. Eventually nobody cared what Chicken Little said, even when he was right, they didn't believe him. I think your case would be better served if you where honestly saying, "We don't know yet, Mueller is still looking." and let the venomous rhetoric alone.

Re:Until..

[Anonymous Coward]

Until the government releases the actual evidence

Well, they released it to a grand jury, and the grand jury gave a thumbs-up to the quality. But I agree with you: the public is going to want to see this some day.

federal agencies have a tremendously terrible record on investigating computer crimes.

Indeed! That's what's so amazing about this case. It looks like the investigation turned up actual evidence! They usually fail, but this time they didn't. Suddenly this whole thing just got a lot less questionable but you're right, now there are more questions than ever!

I suspect it all just comes down to motivation, justifying the expenditure of resources, etc. When you're going after the street corner dealer, you only want to spend so many man-hours. But when you're going after John Gotti...

HANG THIS TRAITOR PUNK ASS FAGGOT JFDAVIS

[Anonymous Coward]

How about we just hang treasonous faggot punk asses like you one by one instead? You're traitor scum. We need to hang you bitches from your punk ass faggot necks until you are dead. That's a traitor's due, ask your boss Putin.
     

Crazy Conspiracy Theories

[Anonymous Coward]

Mueller needs to be medicated. He's a nut job and a Russia hater. There was no meddling.

9-11 was a Democratic Party inside job, just like Spygate. Trump is lucky they didn't blow him up and blame al-qaeda. ae911truth.org

Re: Comey Testimony

[Anonymous Coward]

They have to call it St Putinsburg now, since the unexplained appearance of $10 million in dirty money in the collection box led the Russian Orthodox Church to beatify the bare-chested miracle worker.

allowable espionage

[ole_timer]

what's ok for OPM is not for this?

Re:allowable espionage

[benjfowler]

Sure, because the Chinese made off with a bunch of personnel records (and who knows? Maybe Russia was in on it?), then this means that because of Russia's bullshit demands for "equality" and "fairness", we have to let ourselves get bent over, to indulge their pathetic demands to be seen as "equals" of the mighty United States.

Sorry -- but no.

Re:allowable espionage

[ole_timer]

you have no idea what you're talking about...

Yes, Twit1, this is a separate grand jury indctmnt

[Anonymous Coward]

"Schwit1" is impressive, he's able to read! This indictment is indeed separate from indictments of Trump administration officers, yes. Those come later. This one puts Trump on notice as he continues to collude with Putin next week.

Great reading, comrade. Rubles in the mail for you.

Re:Keep crying traitor faggot

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course the parent AC has nothing, Mueller has it. Why would the AC have that, unless you think he works for Justice Dept.

Huh.

[Alypius]

Deputy AG Rosenstein: "There is no allegation in this indictment that any American citizen committed a crime. There is no allegation that the conspiracy changed the vote count or affected any election result."

This isn't an indictment. It's a press release.

Re:Huh.

[ole_timer]

yep. so what if Russians (or any nationality) broke US laws w/o an extradition treaty it's just PR.

Re:Huh.

[Alypius]

At least until the Russians call their bluff and demand discovery, like they did the last time.

Re:Huh.

[benjfowler]

Au contraire. It's a slam-dunk, and the individuals in question are burned as far as the GRU are concerned. They'll never be able to set foot outside Russia ever again.

The indictment is massive, and incredibly detailed. All the Russians making bad-faith demands for "evidence" can shut up now.

Re: Comey Testimony

[snapsnap]

The fact that the FBI didn't try to get the server shows they didn't think there was anything bad on it. Well, I hope so.

Citation: 32 indictments. NYtimes

[Anonymous Coward]

since the Russian Trolls are busy citing Zerohedge and other Russian PR outlets, here's what the NY times says:

"Mr. Mueller has filed more than 100 criminal counts against 32 people and three companies. Among the people previously charged are fourteen Russians and three Trump associates who have already pleaded guilty."

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/0...

Debate tricks

[mi]

How's the weather in St. Petersburg today?

• 2009 — opponents of Obama are all racists.
• 2016 — opponents of Hillary are sexist
• 2017- — supporters of Trump are Russians (and racists too).

At least, dissent is patriotic again now...

Re: Debate tricks

[Anonymous Coward]

At least, dissent is patriotic again now.

Not according to Trump. Any opposition to his greatness is from people who don't love the country. And his supporters feel the same way, my Congressman had multiple calls in a row where they demanded the GOP punish Democrats for not voting as they wished.

Sorry, mi, you are back to Square 0.

PS, it really doesn't help your case when there is documented history of sexist and racist criticism that you refuse to condemn.

Re: Debate tricks

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice links. LOL.

Re: Debate tricks

[Anonymous Coward]

Meanwhile...

Manifort, a political prisoner in the US, is being held in solitary confinement without bail for an IRS problem from 2005.

Yep, Trump is such a dictator that his people are being locked up without bail and having not been convicted, of TAXES.

Re:Debate tricks

[Anonymous Coward]

Aww, did they call you names, snowflake? What a shame.

Re: Debate tricks

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget the money laundering.

Re: Debate tricks

[mi]

Any opposition to his greatness is from people who don't love the country

Citations?

there is documented history of sexist and racist criticism that you refuse to condemn

You lie, boy. Is that it?

Re: Debate tricks

[Anonymous Coward]

Donald Trump himself. Of course, that is the same Donald Trump who just recently denounced as fake news his own video recorded interview.

Which is similar to yourself, and your refusal to admit you wouldn't condemn acts of racism and sexism.

Re: Debate tricks

[mi]

Donald Trump himself.

No links... Khm... Probably, because it never happened.

Mod parent up

[Anonymous Coward]

Russian Trolls seem to be busy today modding this informative one down.

Re: He needed new patsys

[Anonymous Coward]

Another Archangel account? Michael, Michael, you're diluting your brand.

The Russians' lawyers (not the defendants themselves who were "Putin's chef" Prigozhin's Concord Management and Consulting) only showed up in court to try to fish for details of how the evidence against then was obtained. Fortunately the judge was having none of it.

Absolutely

[Okian Warrior]

Are you a Russian spy?

Absolutely.

You value insults over facts?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Just google the it"??? Why should we listen to a half-literate Slashdot poster writing insults when we have source material to read?

Unlike you, Zero Hedge helpfully links to the original indictment.

Clinton is a criminal

[Anonymous Coward]

Does Hillary PAYING Russians for fake data to affect the outcome of an election count as Collusion?

She did, Muller knows she did. Waiting for charges.
Oh you suddenly don't care about Russian collusion?

Non Russian Source citation

[Anonymous Coward]

illustrating ad hominem then? Or are you irony challenged?

Despite Zerohedge, here's what the NY times says

"Mr. Mueller has filed more than 100 criminal counts against 32 people and three companies. Among the people previously charged are fourteen Russians and three Trump associates who have already pleaded guilty."

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/0... [nytimes.com]

Re: Non Russian Source citation

[kenh]

Plead guilty to crimes that pre-date the campaign by years and had nothing to do with collusion...

The just in, Michael Cohen just got a traffic ticket, add another trump associate charge to the list!

Trump will die in Federal Prison a traitor

[Anonymous Coward]

The fact is when Mueller indicts Russians he's building a case that lands at Trump's obese treasonous asshole in Federal Prison. Fact, state prison terms don't begin until his Federal terms are served out first. Fact.

Re:Trump will die in Federal Prison a traitor

[Anonymous Coward]

The fact is when Mueller indicts Russians he's building a case that lands at Trump's obese treasonous asshole in Federal Prison. Fact, state prison terms don't begin until his Federal terms are served out first. Fact.

Yeah, sure.

That's why Mueller indicted a company that didn't even exist when the indictment claims it broke US law.

How about Mueller show some evidence of what he was tasked to find: Trump collusion with Russia. Why has he shown NOTHING on that?

PS - what are the odds that the Russians indicted today stopped at just the DNC and HIllary! campaign servers and didn't hit the illegal one in her basement? Yeah, just about zero. You know? The ILLEGAL server Hillary! LIED about multiple times? The one we already know was hacked by a "foreign agent"?

Facts??

[Anonymous Coward]

That was JUST the indictment at the present moment. It just means they have no evidence - YET. Who knows what will come up in the future.

Jeeze, the Trump supporters are grasping at every straw to get them off the hook that they were Russian tools.

No, lying Tulsa faggot.

[Anonymous Coward]

This indictment is of Russians. It doesn't preclude Americans being charged, as Trump will be on his way to Federal Prison on a completely separate indictment obviously, you treasonous red state faggot.

I just can't wait for this to be over

[TheDarkener]

And I can exhale and say, "Let's finally fucking move on now." It's so obvious what's going on here, it's been obvious since the debates, to me at least.

Re:I just can't wait for this to be over

[Darinbob]

Special investigations tend to keep going on year after year until they finally find the stained dress.

Re:I just can't wait for this to be over

[Anonymous Coward]

THANK YOU!

Detecting trolls and sock puppets on Slashdot

[shanen]

If I ever had a mod point to give, then I might give you one on the grounds that it's the only visible mention of "hackers" in this discussion.

In general, I was not made happy by the lack of "funny" comments, even though it's a serious topic with little room for humor. However, it was more saddening to see the dominance of the discussion by obvious trolls and sock puppets. Does it call for a review of the ontology of lies? Or a new ontology of trolls?

The so-called victory of #PresidentTweety was razor thin. What that actually means is that each and EVERY group that can plausibly claim to have influenced about 80,000 voters has an equally plausible claim to be the margin of Trump's residency in the "dump", as he described the White House. Actually, you could argue for 40,000 if they were voters swung away from Hillary and over to Trump.

There are strong and credible evaluations (including some bipartisan ones) that strongly indicate that the tactics of Putin's goons influenced at least that many suckers among the millions of voters they targeted. Ergo, it's rather hard to deny that Trump owes Putin, but it's only a question of degree. My assessment is that Trump is much more beholden to Mike Pence for delivering the votes of the religious lunatics.

Or perhaps it's more significant that the US government is almost surely more guilty of interfering in elections than the Russians? If money does translate into votes, then it would be a sure call. Do you know how much of the Marshall Plan funding was actually diverted to the CIA? And how much of that dark money was used for meddling in elections in places like Italy and Japan?

Still, it feels worse when our own ox has been gored. It might be worse in this case only because of the old KGB kompromat on Trump that Putin inherited. (I still think the Golden Shower rumor is a clever feint created by Putin to make his puppet feel safer.)

Re: Detecting trolls and sock puppets on Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting read, but I'll offer one correction... If Putin had *anything* to do with Trump defeating Hillary, then the entire country "owes" him.

Re:Detecting trolls and sock puppets on Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

(I still think the Golden Shower rumor is a clever feint created by Putin to make his puppet feel safer.)

Why, in this case? It's entirely to character that he'd be witness to sex acts by whores. He fucks whores. His wife is a whore. He's in big trouble for lying about paying off a whore, let's face it, along with the whole treason or emoluments or tax fraud thing. Why would a fake pee tape rumor make him feel any safer? He's insane, made so by staring down pending doom in a series of double-down wagers and cheats culminating to here. Putin has buyer's remorse frankly.

Re:Detecting trolls and sock puppets on Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, Trump's a moronic colluding traitor - and the world's worst liar. The next Grand Jury indictments won't be Russian nationals. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-russia-clinton-hack_us_5b48d9d0e4b0e7c958faf810

Re:Detecting trolls and sock puppets on Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

My assessment is that Trump is much more beholden to Mike Pence for delivering the votes of the religious lunatics.

Wasn't Manafort involved in some skulduggery about Trump's plane being down for maintenance to get Pence the VP slot over Jersey's Chris Christie? Russia and Pence may not be independent variables.

Re:Detecting trolls and sock puppets on Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

ergo. HAHAHAAHA! You sound so smart, yet cite no sources. Best!

Re:Detecting trolls and sock puppets on Slashdot

[fat_mike]

Trump won 2600 counties to Clinton's 500. That's 84%. How is that razor thin? You can blame the Electoral College but it is there for a reason so that voters in the middle of Kansas or Montana or Nevada or Illinois have just as a loud a voice as everyone else.

Re:Detecting trolls and sock puppets on Slashdot

[AutodidactLabrat]

I think there is the greater question of how many Hillary voters were convinced to stay home rather than vote for the "Suspicious" (but never proven) use of a secure server not belonging to the hacked State Dept..
That constitutes a direct assault on the electoral process.
That said, I also believe that the EC violates the 14th Amendment guarantee of equal rights, privileges and immunities.

Re:Detecting trolls and sock puppets on Slashdot

[AutodidactLabrat]

Dirt doesn't vote, the EC violates the 14th Amendment, and Hillary won by 2.86 million votes to tRump's selective 70K.

Re:Detecting trolls and sock puppets on Slashdot

[HermMunster]

You're saying the constitution is wrong because Hillary lost? We go by the constitution.

Re: Detecting trolls and sock puppets on Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

The other AC got modded down, so I'll reiterate his comment to make sure you get it.

You're a goddamned pinko commie bastard, and you'll claim you're a goddamned republican. You don't believe in patriotism or US ideals, you want a dictatorship.

Re: Detecting trolls and sock puppets on Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

Ignorant or deliberately misleading? The commies aren't in power in Russia - it's ruled by billionaires just like the US except they're even less likely to pay any taxes. That's why Trump loves Russia: lots of cash and no laws.

Re:Detecting trolls and sock puppets on Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

Translation: MAH!! FEELS!!!!@

Re:Detecting trolls and sock puppets on Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, people that own more land have more of a political voice than those that do not.

That was kind of the framers intent, to give the landed estates more power than the poor huddled masses.

Re:Detecting trolls and sock puppets on Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

If Clinton had won the EC would still be honored as a fine example of American democracy and fairness to all. If Clinton won there would have been no Russian investigation. Obama had more than enough evidence of Russian activities aimed at disrupting the election 8 months prior to the vote and remained silent. He fully expected Clinton to win and then any intelligence or evidence of Russian meddling could be downgraded and written off as normal international dirty politics 101. If Clinton won she would still have the US governments collective noses so far up the asses of US "allies" that any US criticism of the international global order would never be heard. Trump is a terrible President and a worse politician but he does have a way of saying things that seem engineered to demolish the status quo. And the status quo has only produced growing and intractable problems that no one is willing to address. And you can judge the effectiveness of his comments by how upset his detractors get. Europe is scandalized by Trumps actions and comments not because Trump is necessarily wrong but a civilized politician just doesn't bring up certain topics in the public arena. Trump inherited every single problem that is currently front and center in todays world. He had nothing to do with setting the immigration policies of this country. All he has done is push to get the current immigration laws enforced. Laws and regulations created by the same people in Congress who are busy blaming everyone except themselves for the immigration clusterfuck. Trump has piled on additional sanctions on Russia. He has piled on additional sanctions on NK and even got the Chinese to honor them. When Trump all but threatened NK with nuclear annihilation he was criticized by friends and foes and told only diplomatic negotiation can solve the festering NK problem. Well anyone can see 60 years of diplomatic negotiations just provided NK with the motivation to build nuclear weapons. Trumps statements about the bigger button on his desk was a refreshing approach. Combined with the draconian economic sanctions there have been no further NK missile since so maybe NK was re-evaluating their plans. When Trump went the diplomatic route and went to have a sit down with the Little Rocket Man he was criticized for doing so. The NK sanctions are still in place. The US carrier group is still sailing around the Korean Peninsula. The only thing Trump agreed to was to re-schedule a military training exercise with SK. How much training do you really need to fire off a couple of nukes and flee up wind to miss any fallout? The US military have been conducting real non-stop operations all over the planet without pause for the past 20 years. They are trained up enough to wipe NK if required. And now Trump is being criticized for sitting down with Putin to talk about some of the tension between the two countries. How are problems ever going to be resolved or even dialed down without talking to your enemy?

Re:Detecting trolls and sock puppets on Slashdot

[Ol Olsoc]

Trump won 2600 counties to Clinton's 500. That's 84%. How is that razor thin? You can blame the Electoral College but it is there for a reason so that voters in the middle of Kansas or Montana or Nevada or Illinois have just as a loud a voice as everyone else.

You need to up your math game. Trump won 100 percent of the votes for Trump.

Re: Detecting trolls and sock puppets on Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

You know that South Korea is just south of North Korea don't you? Do you need me to draw a map, or can you Google it?

Re: Detecting trolls and sock puppets on Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually he won the electoral college by a landslide tard. And thereâ(TM)s no evidence a vote was altered idiot. Trump supporters are still going strong. Democrats donâ(TM)t have a clue what people actually care about.

Re:Detecting trolls and sock puppets on Slashdot

[h33t l4x0r]

Trump won 2600 counties

That's how we know it was hacked!

Re: Detecting trolls and sock puppets on Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot that the only candidate that could have lost to Trump was Clinton

Re: Detecting trolls and sock puppets on Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

The only thing that really matters is that the US mainland is far enough away from NK that the risk of radioactive fallout is minimal.

Re:Detecting trolls and sock puppets on Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

lol, what a fine fantasy world you live in...

If Clinton had been elected the gop would be in constant BENGHAZI rictus and McConnell would be claiming that they could never consider a Supreme Court nominee from a President under investigation.

You know, same old hypocritical shit as, like, always

Re:Detecting trolls and sock puppets on Slashdot

[Jane Q. Public]

You're delusional. The Electoral College doesn't violate the 14th Amendment. Somebody has been shovelling bullshit at you and you've been swallowing it.

Re: Detecting trolls and sock puppets on Slashdot

[reanjr]

"Famous person involved in embarrassing sex act" is the go-to for intelligence agencies around the world when they want to discredit someone. Add to that the tale of Trump renting the room Obama stayed in, and you've got a pretty snopesable scenario.

Re: Detecting trolls and sock puppets on Slashdot

[reanjr]

At no point in American history have we had any form of link between voting and land ownership. One (white) man, one vote.

Re: Detecting trolls and sock puppets on Slashdot

[reanjr]

Never proven? Which facts are you unsure of the evidence on?

Re: Detecting trolls and sock puppets on Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

In the early history of the U.S., most states allowed only white male adult property owners to vote

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_rights_in_the_United_States

Re: Detecting trolls and sock puppets on Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

And now Trump is being criticized for sitting down with Putin to talk about some of the tension between the two countries. How are problems ever going to be resolved or even dialed down without talking to your enemy.

Trump vehemently and venonmously condemned prior administrations for talking with our "enemies" and complained that the negotiations were abject surrenders.

Now Trump has a history of praise and boasting that discredits him from making effective negotiations. Just as his stunt failed with North Korea.

Sorry, but Trump lacks the credibility to deal with Putin for a large segment of America. We have good reason to think it would be a charade.

That's the price of the Turnip's behavior.

Re: Detecting trolls and sock puppets on Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

....Ergo, it's rather hard to deny that Trump owes Putin, but it's only a question of degree....

No, it's not hard to deny the existence of a debt at all. Your logic is not sound. A result that is in both the best interest of President Trump and Putin does not create a debt of any kind.

Re:Detecting trolls and sock puppets on Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

1) Hacking was done on both sides. Democrats apparently sucked more at security and were penetrated.

2) As far as ELECTION hacking goes, it had absolutely nothing to do with one party over another. This has been public knowledge for a very long time, but it won't be shown on MSNBS or other extensions of the Democrat party that charade as news outlets.

The "hacking" attempts on the election were to delete registered voters en masse. The problem is, that Russians thought like Russians. They focused on the top level, but American elections don't work that way. You can delete from the top, but our data flows from the local level up. So it didn't work.

Putin doesn't care if it's a democrat or a republican in office. Quite frankly, he'd have been better off with Hillary in the chair. She's about as corrupt as a person can get and will happily sell anything to any enemy if it gains her and her friends more power. Uranium One anybody?

Bottom line is -- Pointing to Russia's attempts to destabilize the US, as a "stolen" election are moronic and missing the critical point. Russia is not our friend, and they really did try to cause mass chaos in the US during the last election. Not for one party over another, but to harm the United States. Our partisan "news" agencies are doing the citizens a disservice of gargantuan proportions by not reporting on actual news. The entire citizenry should be concerned by the real threat, not a partisan circus.

Re: Detecting trolls and sock puppets on Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

huffypuffypost is not a credible source.

Re: Detecting trolls and sock puppets on Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

Hillary won?!?

Oh my gosh, why then is it PRESIDENT Trump?

Oh yea, Hillary LOST, that is why.

Re:Detecting trolls and sock puppets on Slashdot

[danskal]

Obama did all that he could do: try to imagine how conservatives and fox news would have reacted if he had announced it. Republicans just aren't ready to hear the truth from anyone but right-wingers: Fox news is the culprit there.

He did warn Trump not to hire Flynn.

Re: Detecting trolls and sock puppets on Slashdot

[danskal]

It's much worse than that. Putin is ex KGB. He has access to all the psy-ops knowledge that exists in Russia, and he actually reads security briefings. He has meetings with Trump where Trump is alone. It is child's play for him to manipulate someone like Trump to do his bidding, especially if he has some leverage.

Re: Detecting trolls and sock puppets on Slashdot

[danskal]

> tard

using that word makes everyone ignore your comment.

People who watch fox news care about what fox news wants them to care about. You think I'm wrong about that? Think about it... list the things you care about, and see how well they match up with things fox news bangs on about.

Re:Detecting trolls and sock puppets on Slashdot

[danskal]

You're missing the point entirely. The partisan circus is part of Putin's plan. They actually helped organize protests and counter-protests at the same time and place. For example.....

You are missing another point - Putin _really_ hates Hilary Clinton. She supports sanctions that are a pain in the arse for him, and has been talking tough on Russia the whole time. Trump is just a weak buffoon that he can control as he likes.

Re:Detecting trolls and sock puppets on Slashdot

[Ol Olsoc]

Dirt doesn't vote,

i dunno - rides through the countryside show a lot of ramshackle 1960's mobile homes with a Trans-Camaro on cinder blocks and a yard full of junk.

With a Trump Maga sign prominently on display.

Its so strange that those folk think that the very embodiment of everything they claim to hate will not act in his self interests, not theirs.

Dirt doesn't vote, but Joe Dirt does.

Re:Detecting trolls and sock puppets on Slashdot

[Ol Olsoc]

You're delusional. The Electoral College doesn't violate the 14th Amendment. Somebody has been shovelling bullshit at you and you've been swallowing it.

It depends on which party is getting elected while getting less votes. If a person is a card carrying Republican, the Electoral college is a true gift form Gawd.

Then again, we'll see how their love of the EC shifts if they lose a few elections.

And this to me is what it all boils down to. At this point, if someone claims that the EC is a problem, Republicans start screaming about how it is the law of the land.

It is the law of the land. And that isn't the point. Fact is, in the computer age, it is exceptionally easy to game and allow a candidate who received less votes overall to win the Electoral college.

It is codified and legal minority rule.

That's the problem, Jane Q. The concept of a minority winning over a majority.

Re:Detecting trolls and sock puppets on Slashdot

[AutodidactLabrat]

Yeah, but the source argument was that tRump won because he took more counties.
Dirt doesn't vote. Joe Dirt didn't vote often enough to keep their god from losing by 2.86 million votes.
The EC violates the 14th Amendment. Time for the EC to go

Re: Detecting trolls and sock puppets on Slashdot

[AutodidactLabrat]

That Hillary was "Suspicious" DESPITE the reference from the FBI to not prosecute for lack of evidence

Re:Detecting trolls and sock puppets on Slashdot

[AutodidactLabrat]

That's my point.
The EC is not the law of the land, the Constitution which INCLUDES Amendment 14 is and it forbids unequal counting of votes, or any unequal right or privilege under the law.

Re:Detecting trolls and sock puppets on Slashdot

[AutodidactLabrat]

No. I said the EC is in violation of the 14th Amendment
Just as the 3/5 compromise was dead the moment the 13th Amendment was ratified by 2/3 of the states.

Re:Detecting trolls and sock puppets on Slashdot

[AutodidactLabrat]

No.
The EC has been abhorent at least since Rutherford B. Hayes.

Re:Detecting trolls and sock puppets on Slashdot

[Ol Olsoc]

Yeah, but the source argument was that tRump won because he took more counties. Dirt doesn't vote. Joe Dirt didn't vote often enough to keep their god from losing by 2.86 million votes. The EC violates the 14th Amendment. Time for the EC to go

The Electoral College is an outdated system that is overdue for retirement. It is very susceptible to gaming, and does not have equl representation per capita.

And yes, people can bloviate about it being the law. And the selfsame people are ones who's party has benefited from that unequal representation. Make no mistake, they strut like cock-a-whoops nw, but if Mrs Clinton was elected with a marked minority of votes, we'd be in civil war 2 now.

The discussion that must be had is exactly how a candidate for president can lose while receiving almost 3 million more votes? This indicates a really bad systemic problem. This is the opposite of representative government.

Coupled with the ease with which the American voting system can be manipulated, that's a recipe for disaster.

Oh........ wait.......

Re:Detecting trolls and sock puppets on Slashdot

[AutodidactLabrat]

Agree in both principle and extension
I am of the opinion that the 14th Amendment vitiates the EC as completely as the 13th Amendment vitated the 3/5 compromise.

Re:Detecting trolls and sock puppets on Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

How? Because the U.S. isn't and wasn't intended to be a National Democracy. The most votes isn't the only thing which determines decisions. Protection of minority and individual rights against a tyranny of the majority is built into our system of government.

Re:Detecting trolls and sock puppets on Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

The Presidential election wasn't "razor thin". Trump beat Clinton 304 to 227. That's about a 14% margin in the voting, not a landslide, but hardly close.

Re:Detecting trolls and sock puppets on Slashdot

[Ol Olsoc]

How? Because the U.S. isn't and wasn't intended to be a National Democracy. The most votes isn't the only thing which determines decisions. Protection of minority and individual rights against a tyranny of the majority is built into our system of government.

There is a big difference between protecting the rights of minorities and rule by minorities.

Re:Detecting trolls and sock puppets on Slashdot

[AutodidactLabrat]

You're saying the constitution is wrong ...

No, I'm saying the Constitution is correct, and the EC is unconstitutional thanks to "Equal rights under the law"

Re:Detecting trolls and sock puppets on Slashdot

[AutodidactLabrat]

Wrong
The EC has been contrary to "equal rights under the law" since 1873

Re: Detecting trolls and sock puppets on Slashdot

[AutodidactLabrat]

Putin isn't just "ex KGB". He's x DIRECTOR KGB

Revealing the truth kept private is bad.

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't approve of the methods or the intent but the shit that came out has been entirely ignored because of the methods and the intent. Seems inconsistent at best.

String it along

[Anonymous Coward]

He is only doing this because he knows his investigation is at it's end as multiple judges have already pointed out.

he is just trying to string it along.

Re:Mi is a faggot traitor, disregard Ivantard

[Anonymous Coward]

There should rule from letting 13 yr olds post on Slashdot

No Russian hacker worth a shit

[Anonymous Coward]

Would leave a trail pointing to Russia

Spies hacking

[nsaspook]

I'm shocked to hear that, shocked I tell you.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/w...

No collusion...

[Karmashock]

notice, no americans in that indictment... and probably there is an expectation that this "accusation" won't be defended.

Foreign governments rarely show up to a US court to argue they were not guilty.

Thus a baseless accusation can stand because there is no due process because there is no trial generally.

I'd like the Russians to show up. Just send some lawyers to represent their clients. Force the Justice Department to actually argue their case in a court of law.

Already, the justice department was surprised when some Russian companies they accused sent lawyers. And the result was effectively a retraction of the accusations almost immediately.

Some people will accuse me of political bias... these people haven't been paying attention to this circus.

https://www.washingtonexaminer...

https://www.politico.com/story...

Effectively, an accusation was made where there was no belief that there would be a defense because there typically isn't one in these cases. Lawyers showed up unexpectedly... and it turns out that the Mueller team actually isn't ready to argue the case.

Which begs the question of why they would accuse someone.

Is that how the FBI normally works? Accusing people of things they can't prove in court?

Generally not especially when the accusations are formal legal charges.

So why is Mueller not following standard FBI protocol? Why in fact, has everything to do with this cloud of issues not been done according to standard protocol?

Because it is a political game. And its one that I'm actually pretty happy we're having because all the rats are coming out of the wood work. We know who most of the bad apples are in the justice department just by seeing whether or not they follow protocol. If they break protocol... why did they do that? To serve the interests of justice? Or to help grinding a political axe? Because if the former, then very well... but if the latter... they probably shouldn't be in that position.

Re:No collusion...

[Anonymous Coward]

The Mueller team can support their accusations and indictments - the latter of which you might not know requires an impaneled grand jury to review - far better than you can support your accusations. What gives you unique insight into the mechanisms of the investigation that would make you able to support your allegations? You are conveniently overlooking the fact that several Americans have already been charged, including some who have already pleaded guilty. Your claim of this being

baseless

or

a political game

is certainly not supported by any source you have cited so far. Being as Mueller himself is known to be a lifelong Republican, you have to climb a hill that you have been pushing yourself down in order to make such a claim have any merit.

Re:No collusion...

[DigiShaman]

The first round of Russians wanted a trial. One defendant DID show up. Mueller panicked and asked to delay.

Mueller's bluff was called. I'm going to guess his bluff will be called again!

https://www.theepochtimes.com/...

Re:No collusion...

[quantaman]

notice, no americans in that indictment... and probably there is an expectation that this "accusation" won't be defended.

Foreign governments rarely show up to a US court to argue they were not guilty.

Thus a baseless accusation can stand because there is no due process because there is no trial generally.

I'd like the Russians to show up. Just send some lawyers to represent their clients. Force the Justice Department to actually argue their case in a court of law.

Already, the justice department was surprised when some Russian companies they accused sent lawyers. And the result was effectively a retraction of the accusations almost immediately.

Some people will accuse me of political bias... these people haven't been paying attention to this circus.

Yes I will, because you're mischaracterizing what happened.

Mueller never expected to put any of the Russians in jail. I suspect the reason for the indictments were because a) to display via indictments that they do have actual evidence of Russian collusion, b) they're limited in their ability to travel because of extradition and c) you've got the evidence of a crime, why not indict?

The reason he's trying to delay proceedings is because the defendant in question has zero intention of actually exposing themselves to punishment so there's not a ton of benefit in winning a case against the company. But during a trial Mueller would have to disclose his evidence that supports the charges. And disclosing that evidence would jeopardize the rest of the investigation.

Re:No collusion...

[Anonymous Coward]

I knew the desperation of right wingers would be screamingly obvious at this news, but this post here is a shining example! We're all quite giddy at watching you guys squirm as reality sets in. When arrests start getting made here in the US, I expect many right wingers to be on suicide watch!

Re:No collusion...

[Karmashock]

if you've got evidence then why can't you go to trial?

Because people are running their mouths and actually don't have evidence.

I know I know... bluster and hummms and hahs... take it to court or its just hot air.

Re:No collusion...

[Karmashock]

Its been two years. You've got nothing but self delusion.

You've been trying to get something... anything for 2 years. And "this" is the best you've got so far.

I could say more but that's all you deserve. Two years and nothing. You're not scaring anyone with this stuff.

Re:No collusion...

[DCFusor]

So, you have super-sekrit info on how Mueller's plan is defined? You know what he expected and why he does things? Do enlighten us how you got ahold of those secrets and why you're not a traitor yourself for revealing them.

Re: No collusion...

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that how the FBI normally works? Accusing people of things they can't prove in court?

Yes, that is how the FBI works, and that has been going on since the 1930s. In fact, that is how law enforcement in the US has been working for quite a while.

Did you miss the development of the American Police State?

Congress, by the way, has practiced it for over two centuries now, since the whole Alien and Sedition Act business. Accusations are much better than proof.

That's been patriotic ever since Alexander Hamilton began slandering Aaron Burr.

Re:No collusion...

[quantaman]

if you've got evidence then why can't you go to trial?

Because people are running their mouths and actually don't have evidence.

I know I know... bluster and hummms and hahs... take it to court or its just hot air.

Did you actually read my reply?

They have the evidence. They don't want to go to trial yet because exposing that evidence will make it easier for future targets of the investigation to evade justice.

Think of it this way. I was involved in X, Y, and Z. Individually, they look bad and raise suspicions but you'll probably be fine. But exposing all of them will land me in jail. Now Mueller comes along and asks me under oath if I had anything to do with X, Y, or Z so I say no.

Then Mueller say "aha! I have proof you were involved in X! You just committed perjury, now you're going to jail and it's time to cut a deal!"

That's what happened with Flynn, Panadopolous, and I think Manafort and Gates as well, they didn't know what Mueller knew so Mueller could catch them in a lie.

And that's why the Russians want to force the trial, because the more Mueller is forced to disclose what evidence he has the easier it is for the next subject to figure out what they can lie about and when they should tell the truth.

Re: No collusion...

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, so far the only deluded person we can confirm is Donald Trump who can't even recall his own video interviews, let alone accurately perceive what's happening around him.

Meanwhile the desperation on the right-wing grows ever more tense.

Re:No collusion...

[Uberbah]

Did you actually read my reply?

That's your problem, he did.

They have the evidence. They don't want to go to trial yet because exposing that evidence will make it easier for future targets of the investigation to evade justice.

Then he would have kept all the indictment sealed until he was ready to go trial, cultist. And though the current indictments are for DNC hacking - Mueller still hasn't bothered to have the FBI examine their servers. Don't bother brining up the CrowdStrike report as it isn't fit to be toilet paper, and would be tossed out of court as inadmissible.

So either 1) Mueller is too incompetent to be trusted to run the office Keurig machine by himself, least he burn the place down, or 2) this shitshow has been a farce from day one, and Russiagaters are the most gullible people in the history of the human race.

Pick one.

Re:No collusion...

[thegarbz]

Which begs the question of why they would accuse someone.

No it doesn't. The accusation and not expecting a defence are not at all related to it. That was a blunder to be sure but it certainly doesn't beg this question.

The question of why they would accuse someone who doesn't normally defend is that it has nothing to do with the people they are accusing. Their end game is not to go after some Russian meddling spies in another country. Their end game is to build a case against the American side, and having indictments against co-conspirators solidly helps this case when it comes to light.

Why in fact, has everything to do with this cloud of issues not been done according to standard protocol?

There's a standard protocol here? FBI has a : Do this in case off mass conspiracy for election fraud protocol? To answer your question: exceptional circumstances require exceptional approaches, and they are more than welcome to keep using those approaches. The only thing that ultimately matters is that the law is correctly upheld be it the courts find someone guilty, innocent, or throw out the resulting case due to a Mueller fuckup.

Because it is a political game.

Of course it is. Politicians are involved.

We know who most of the bad apples are in the justice department just by seeing whether or not they follow protocol.

No we don't. That is still dependent on the outcome. The method used to drag people in front of the court doesn't weed out bad apples unless that method is intentionally designed to hinder prosecution by way of declaring mistrial or mishandling of evidence.

Re:No collusion...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup, a political game. A judge that was appointed by Trump effectively rules against Mueller's team. Strange that. I can't help but wonder if this was a "trial balloon" put up by Mueller to see what sort of political interference to expect. Now he knows.

Re:No collusion...

[Karmashock]

no, the blunders are consistent and form a larger pattern.

Just as the Hillary investigation not following protocol either.

https://www.washingtonpost.com...

Why would they be light on the Hillary investigation and then throw out all these baseless accusations that they can't defend in a court of law in the Trump investigation?

Is it a coincidence that they gave Hillary a pass and are exceeding their mandate with Trump?

Fairly consistent coincidence. Just keeps happening. Almost as if it isn't a coincidence.

And the foaming tribal political partisanship of those that want him to burn WITHOUT evidence of anything taints the credibility of those people to claim they are seeking justice.

That the FBI is not following protocol is something that has been remarked upon both by independent councils and by many FBI agents within the FBI that have expressed disgust at the situation. If you want to deny the obvious, then I don't really know what that accomplishes. It convinces no one and ultimately we are headed to a game of chicken here if people like you don't stop. You can't just change the rules whenever it is convenient for you. That might have worked when you were 4 and your mom didn't want to hear you cry when you lost at shoots and ladders... I'm not your mom... you're not four... and I really don't care if you cry. When you clearly apply two different standards based on whether it is in your political interest, your integrity regarding these matters is forfeit.

Apply a consistent standard. The "Russians colluded with Trump on the election" argument is stupid.

1. The allegation ultimately boils down to some facebook targeted marketing was placed. Literally.
2. Some facebook targeted marketing didn't move the needle remarkably.
3. Every american media source is saturated with political propaganda prior to elections further rendering the relevance of a few posts from the Russians that much more laughable.
4. There are a million NGOs engaging in political activism in elections and many of them are super national NGOs... that is non-domestic. They frequently draw funding from outside the country. Which means if you problem is external funding, you could show some interest in shutting down any of those. Ultimately any argument against the irrelevant contribution of the Russians would be one of paper work. If the activist group cited themselves as an NGO then you'd either have to ban Green Peace from participating as well let it happen.
5. Foreign government involve themselves in US elections all the time. The EU and China are doing as is Canada and Mexico. In fact, its quite a bit easier to find their involvement in that election than it is the Russians.
6. There's literally no evidence that there was collusion and the only source of that story is the Hillary Clinton campaign which is a very biased source of information regarding anything she's salty about.
7. A dirty tricks group that was placing violent protesters at BERNIE SANDERS and Trump rallies was unmasked towards the end of the campaign. That group's job was to create problems for rival campaigns. Frankly this Russia story reads as the last dumb gasp of a sad little smear campaign that got out of control.

And if you think I'm wrong... then why after TWO YEARS do you have NOTHING. You do realize it has been two whole fucking years right? And nothing.

The process is playing out. Its like watching a marathon between two runners... and one of them is slowly bleeding to death.

Your position has become a joke. Even SNL is laughing at you.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Re:No collusion...

[Karmashock]

... You need to watch more of your grand mother's police procedural. Maybe go to see her and watch some Law and Order or CSI or something.

Your lack of understanding of how a police investigation unfolds is frankly baffling to me.

For your information, the police generally build a case and THEN accuse people of crimes. Not the other way around. If you're not ready to go to trial, then you don't accuse people.

This is why the FBI was taken to court and was made to look a fool by a judge and the opposing lawyers.

This happened.

That was reality.

Why is it that if the FBI is following protocol that they're confusing judges with why they would do things and being made to look foolish?

Because they're not following protocol. As much is obvious.

And why aren't they following protocol? Do they not know what it is? Are they badly trained? Maybe there is some reason why they're violating protocol? Some... agenda?

Its all transparently obvious. Don't embarrass yourself by defending this farce.

Re:No collusion...

[quantaman]

... You need to watch more of your grand mother's police procedural. Maybe go to see her and watch some Law and Order or CSI or something.

Your lack of understanding of how a police investigation unfolds is frankly baffling to me.

For your information, the police generally build a case and THEN accuse people of crimes. Not the other way around.

You're still ignoring the content of the reply. They HAVE a case, they HAVE the evidence, what they don't want to do is have a quick trial where the defendant isn't in the country and won't be subjected to any punishment if found guilty.

Why is it that if the FBI is following protocol that they're confusing judges with why they would do things and being made to look foolish?

Because they're not following protocol. As much is obvious.

And why aren't they following protocol? Do they not know what it is? Are they badly trained? Maybe there is some reason why they're violating protocol? Some... agenda?

Its all transparently obvious. Don't embarrass yourself by defending this farce.

They are following protocol, they just got hit by a clever legal manouver. The FBI expected to either get a defendant they could put in jail (and potentially turn with a deal), or a defendant who was a no-show and therefore there was never a trial.

Instead the defendant found a loophole where it looked like they could force a trial (exposing some of the FBIs evidence) without showing up and risking a punishment. It wasn't certain if the judge would let them use the loophole, but they did, so now the FBI is in a bind with that particular case.

Re:No collusion...

[Karmashock]

Until it has been presented to a court, that is hearsay and inadmissible in this discussion.

As the plaintiff has shown contempt for the discussion and has been unable to present any material evidence, this case is closed.

You are free to appeal, however you are advised to actually have evidence.

Re:No collusion...

[quantaman]

Until it has been presented to a court, that is hearsay and inadmissible in this discussion.

As the plaintiff has shown contempt for the discussion and has been unable to present any material evidence, this case is closed.

You are free to appeal, however you are advised to actually have evidence.

Accurate... yet once again completely missing the point. I have a suspicious you're fully aware why the FBI is trying to avoid a quick trial for this particular case, you're just looking for an excuse to push the "Fake Investigation" Trumpist narrative.

Re:No collusion...

[Karmashock]

I know why given members of the FBI are perverting the process... the political agendas are pretty clear.

Have you not been listening to the Text Messages that were read aloud in court from FBI agents clearly admitting they were biasing the case for political reasons?

Because... that's already a matter of record.

The jig is up. They were caught red handed. Which is why we're seeing a rather consistent purge of FBI agents and justice department officials WITH EVIDENCE and DUE PROCESS.

Protest as you will, but your dirty little cabal is getting fed feet first into a wood chipper of justice.

Re:No collusion...

[quantaman]

Have you not been listening to the Text Messages that were read aloud in court from FBI agents clearly admitting they were biasing the case for political reasons?

Biasing how? Point out a biased action that either of them took?

As has been pointed out, they very easily could have leaked the very damaging information of an active FBI investigation into members of the Trump campaign colluding with Russia, but they didn't.

Re:No collusion...

[Karmashock]

This is pathetic. The legs of your position were blown off and you're just crawling around. Just stop.

https://www.cnn.com/2017/12/12...

"""I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy's office" -- an apparent reference to Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe -- "that there's no way he gets elected -- but I'm afraid we can't take that risk. It's like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you're 40 . . . . " Page does not appear to have responded, according to records reviewed by CNN.""

Re:No collusion...

[quantaman]

This is pathetic. The legs of your position were blown off and you're just crawling around. Just stop.

https://www.cnn.com/2017/12/12...

"""I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy's office" -- an apparent reference to Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe -- "that there's no way he gets elected -- but I'm afraid we can't take that risk. It's like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you're 40 . . . . " Page does not appear to have responded, according to records reviewed by CNN.""

And if there were some Trump damaging FBI leak immediately after that message, or some official investigative action that didn't really make sense, then you'd have a point.

But you're still missing any evidence of an actual action containing bias, even assuming that text message means what you want it to mean and not what McCabe says, ie:

“I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy’s office [that we protect our source in the Russia investigation by proceeding more slowly since we know] that there’s no way he gets elected [and the result won't matter] - but I’m afraid we can’t take that risk. It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you’re 40 [so we need to be prepared to get to the bottom of any Russian connection before he win's the election and takes office]”

Re:No collusion...

[Karmashock]

The entire investigation is baseless.

On what evidence did you launch the investigation? A smear memo from the Clinton campaign. None of it verified.

What evidence of any corroboration do you have to validate your position outside of the REEEEing of the democrats losing an election and YET AGAIN saying that the system has to be changed because they lost.

It is pathetic. Just because you lose an election doesn't mean the system has to be changed or you were cheated.

Sometimes it means you just lost.

Grow up.

The NSA Leak Is Real, Snowden Documents Confirm

[Anonymous Coward]

https://yro.slashdot.org/story/16/08/19/1347200/the-nsa-leak-is-real-snowden-documents-confirm
Could some one make it look like these agents did it?

Plenty of other reasons

[skam240]

Never mind that now there are actually plenty of good reasons for Americans to not like Russia. From interfering in our presidential election, to invading a European country for seaking to align with the West, to engaging directly in cyber warfare against us and our allies.

Go back a few years and there were far fewer reasons to hate the Russians

Racism Is As Racism Does

[Anonymous Coward]

Right. Big Giant Orange Head never claimed that Obama wasn't born in America? BGOH was the biggest of Birthers. And I seem to recall encouragement for all those racist Republicans who insisted Obama was Muslim.

Now why would BGOH and Republicans dispute Obama's birthplace and religion? Would it be because Obama wore shoes? Perhaps it was because Obama eats food? I know, it was because Obama drives a car!

Never mind that Yugely racist rant about Mexicans being murderers and rapists, and "some are, I assume, good people."

No, none of that is racist. Not at all! Which is exactly what a racist would tell themselves.

Re:He needed new patsys

[amicusNYCL]

I believe the correct spelling of your name should be Arkhangelsk. But, really, feel free to keep linking to a site actively trying to discredit an ongoing investigation into Russians trying to subvert the democratic processes of the US. Let's just act like that's not happening, because that's totally patriotic and in all of our best interests, right?

Really, it's becoming so tiresome that so many people in the US apparently don't want to know whether and how Russia is trying to influence our country at the highest levels. These people seem to love Donald Trump more than they love the US, and it's really weird to see.

Taking the politics out ...

[CaptainDork]

... the Bitcoin aspect may be a bigger story.

Mueller found that the Russian hacker scheme was dependent on bitcoin, and it may have gotten them caught

lol Wishful thinking

[Anonymous Coward]

...soon the lack of evidence will be open and known...Mueller is now looking for a reason to drop the case ASAP

Rudy, is that you? Stop daydreaming, you've got important clients waiting for you.

Seriously?!

[Anonymous Coward]

So why is Mueller not following standard FBI protocol?

.

He is. To the letter. To the pixel. You seem bewildered by the process here, you need to read up about how a Grand Jury operates.

Re:Seriously?!

[Karmashock]

Two years of you people circle jerking and all you've done thus far is make a sweaty degenerate mess of each other.

At what point will you be able to do a trial?

Because it seems clear that you don't have evidence and simply want to draw out the process indefinitely to create problems.

Bad faith has been demonstrated repeatedly and several judges have directly said so in a court of law regarding this cloud of cases.

I'm not bewildered by the process. It is very clear what is going on here.

Re: Seriously?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, you're taking a completely partisan position in defiance of any principles or facts.

Nothing about that should bewilder you or anyone else. What would be astonishing is if you changed from your past behavior.

Re:Seriously?!

[thegarbz]

At what point will you be able to do a trial?

When it's ready. 2 years? Laughably short time span for a case like this.

Re:Seriously?!

[Karmashock]

Just remember, the wheel turns. See yourself asking people to be reasonable when you weren't.

The shoe will be on the other foot and actions will be remembered.

Re: Seriously?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, we remember exactly how Republicans and the GOP behaved, for decades.

Watergate. IranContra. Iraqi WMDs. Birtherism. Trump.

That last one is when they showed they really didn't care but had gone psychopath.

You don't ask the deranged to be reasonable. You put them in confinement.

Re:Seriously?!

[thegarbz]

See yourself asking people to be reasonable when you weren't.

As a matter of interest, what are you talking about? You think it's unreasonable for a case that involves the highest level of government to go for 2 years? Maybe look into how long watergate went for. While you're at it look how long some cases if disputes with local developers go for.

We are well within the bounds of normal at this point.

Re:Seriously?!

[Karmashock]

Watergate?

They had actionable court evidence INSTANTLY in the watergate investigation. They literally arrested people that they could red fucking handed.

And you want to compare that to "this".

You have nothing you can take to court after two years. In watergate there was something to take to court ON DAY ONE.

On. Day. One.

And you compare that to a case that has NOTHING after two years?

Do you want me to go through the watergate investigation in embarressing detail to show all the ways in which that was an absolutely horrible example?

or do you want to concede that one too?

Stay down.

https://youtu.be/s35rVw1zskA?t...

Re:Seriously?!

[Anonymous Coward]

And you compare that to a case that has NOTHING after two years?

How do you support the notion of this case having "nothing"? There have been dozens of indictments now, and several guilty pleas. There have been guilty pleas from people who worked with and for the POTUS himself during his campaign. Even if this doesn't result in the end of the Trump presidency, it is doing a vastly better job of draining the swamp than any action that Trump has made or publicly proposed to date.

Re:Seriously?!

[Karmashock]

How many of them are about Russian collusion?

Name one.

Re:Seriously?!

[thegarbz]

They had actionable court evidence INSTANTLY in the watergate investigation.

Yep. Took 4 years though.

You have nothing you can take to court after two years.

Nope. You believe there's nothing you can take to court after two years. Very few people know what anyone has. That's how it works when you don't run a leaky ship. What we have seen however is that everyone who has seen anything that this has has so far instantly pleaded guilty.

Do you want me to go through the watergate investigation in embarressing detail to show all the ways in which that was an absolutely horrible example?

No. I think we've had enough nonsensical blathering from you for one day.

Re:Seriously?!

[Karmashock]

Your concession that the two situations are not similar happened here:
""Yep.""

They had actionable evidence on day one in the watergate investigation. Two years into this shit you have not ONE incident of Russian collusion with Americans to bias the election. Nothing.

As it stands there is literally ZERO evidence of collusion between not only the Trump Administration but ANY AMERICAN and the Russians regarding election fraud.

And to make matters even dumber, the Russian interference in the election amounted to some Facebook ads which only a blithering idiot would think were relevant in the fucking unending blizzard of propaganda that bombards voters during an election.

What was in any of those facebook ads that swayed anyone?

Keep in mind, the argument is that it changed votes. Examine the literal facebook memes... they were more memes than ads... name one of those memes that actually changed a vote or was even remotely unique?

Here is a New York Times article where they link a bunch of them:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/1...

Do you HONESTLY think that did anything? Because there is no way that someone that was going to vote for hillary or bernie looked at those fucking things and then said "I have decided to change my vote". They're shit posting at best.

You think a 2 year FBI investigation is worth sustaining over some facebook shit posting. That isn't a question. That is an obvious fact. Feel shame.

I went through them all. They were ignorable because there was a shit load of obviously not russian inspired memes saying the exact same thing that were dramatically more common.

And let us also not forget that the REAL scandal was that Hillary perverted the the DNC against Bernie.

SHE EVEN WROTE A FUCKING BOOK ABOUT IT:
https://www.amazon.com/Hacks-I...

This woman was head of the DNC during the end of the presidential election. She details in there what went wrong.

1. Obama f'ed up the Democratic party by focusing on his own political machine to the exclusion of the party leaving it starved of resources and organization.

2. DWS who was head of the DNC was a best incompetent and possibly corrupt and also ran up a lot of debt leaving the DNC in debt to the tune of 20ish million dollars going INTO the presidential election. Going into that election the Republicans had a cash surplus and the Democrats after 8 years in power were 20 million in debt going into the election. Rather than blaming boogiemen for your failure maybe clean your own house?

3. Hillary bailed the DNC out on condition that she would control it PRIOR to winning nomination from her party. Which meant that the primary was a farce.

It goes on and on and on. And no, it isn't controversial... there is empirical evidence for pretty much all of that. Unlike the Russian collusion circus which has no empirical evidence of Russian collusion.

And all you chuckleheads want to talk about is Russian collusion of when there is more evidence of Obama colluding with the Russians. Or did you forget this:
https://youtu.be/keXx0zxTarE?t...

Imagine if you had a video clip of Trump saying that? You would cream your degenerate pants.

But here's the thing. Everything you're doing is predicated on the assumption that people are dumb enough to not follow along. And sure, there are a lot of stupid people for you to prey upon. But you've painted yourself into a corner. Your economic policy. Your political tactics. Your reliance on heavy handed false morality.

You have no credibility, no integrity, and there's no possibly of extending you even common courtesy in this environment so absurdly egregious is this behavior. This political faction you've married yourself to is out of control. And carrying their water in the face of overwhelming evidence is only making it worse.

You're running out of floor, machacho.

Putting on a brave face isn't going to stop this.

Re:Seriously?!

[Anonymous Coward]

How many of them are about Russian collusion?

Name one.

Really? You only want one? Well, George Papadopoulos is a real good example of one. Indictment states he worked for the campaign and colluded with the Russian government.

And of course in case you missed it, he pleaded guilty to the charges.

Compared to any other investigation relating to a sitting POTUS, this investigation is moving at the speed of light.

Re:Seriously?!

[Karmashock]

George Papdopoulos was convicted of lying to the FBI not of colluding with the Russians. What is more, the incident doesn't stretch beyond him thus rendering that a nothing burger.

You need to show collusion. You don't have it and Mueller is signaling that he's going to wrap up that portion of the investigation as there really is no evidence of it.

It is a political circus. Everyone sees it. Deny as you will... its denying the Sun at this point.

Re:Seriously?!

[Anonymous Coward]

you should really try reading the indictment that was linked to before you pretend to be knowledgeable on what it pertains to. you'd make yourself look a lot less ignorant on your rant if you took the time to do so. your desperate hand-waving gestures just expose your partisanship.

Re:Seriously?!

[Karmashock]

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

""On October 5, 2017, Papadopoulos pleaded guilty in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to making false statements to FBI agents relating to contacts he had with agents of the Russian government while working for the Trump campaign.""

He plead guilty to making false statements... not colluding... and the false statements don't even matter because nothing he was lying about ultimately was relevant.

Mueller has done this a couple times. Someone gives an interview, says something wrong... and he charges them with false statements to the FBI. Which is part of the reason no one is talking to him anymore.

If he were throwing the book at people that colluded or committed some criminal act that is more than a technicality, then that would be something. But your example here is pretty typical of his investigation. The best he's got is some people making false statements that don't matter.

The guy said he didn't talk to some people when he did... So what? Its not collusion or election fraud. Its just some of his people saying they didn't do something they did. But if they had admitted they did that thing rather than lie... there would be no charges. You're literally just nailing him for making a misstatement/lie. But what he lied about didn't matter.

So for example if I ate pancakes but told Mueller I ate eggs... he could basically charge me with the same crime and it would have about the same significance.

That you feel THIS is something to be proud of is frankly pretty sad.

You've got nothing. Unless a guy lying about breakfast cereal gets you hot.

Re:Seriously?!

[Anonymous Coward]

how are you capable of typing when your literacy level is that tragically low? in your own words:

contacts he had with agents of the Russian government while working for the Trump campaign

that collusion right there. he had contacts with agents of the russian government and lied to the fbi about it. did you have the same grade school reading instructor as trump? (that would be a surprise as one would expect trump's school teachers would have died long before you were old enough to start school)

Re:Seriously?!

[Karmashock]

Its interesting that you criticize my literacy whilst yourself using a word at the center of your argument that you do not know the definition of in the first place.

Collusion... read the definition:
http://www.dictionary.com/brow...

"Law. a secret understanding between two or more persons to gain something illegally, to defraud another of his or her rights, or to appear as adversaries though in agreement"

You said:
""that collusion right there. he had contacts with agents of the russian government and lied to the fbi about it.""

Now, look at the definition and look at what you said.

Collusion would require some sort of illegal intent. The only illegality was in making false statements to the FBI. But that is merely as already patiently explained to you a false statement... and a false statement is not itself collusion. Collusion would require some sort of conspiratorial effort to obtain something that is itself illegal.

Having a contact in the Russian government is not illegal. Assuming for a moment that Trump wins his election to be president which... as we do not live in the past we know he did... it is prudent for a head of state to have such contacts. Every president from the first to the last has had agents that make contact with agents of other governments. That is not illegal.

Talking to Russians is not illegal. It would have to be for you to have a case and since that isn't the case you have no case.

In the future, you may avoid looking like an ass if you avoid insulting people that are better educated and more intelligent than yourself. I know I know... this statement offends you. But you have no right to be offended. You criticized my grasp of the English language whilst proving that your own grasp is quite poor... and in the same post.

This is merely you mindlessly parroting tribalistic political hyperbole from the dying Clinton political machine.

Trump is Hitler
Trump is worse than Hitler
Trump is a traitor
Blah blah blah... its just sputtering REEEEEing from you people at this point. You've made it very clear that you have no integrity, have lost control over yourselves, and will literally stoop to anything to clutch on to power.

And to make all of that all the sadder, YOU personally have nothing to gain from their webs of corruption and nepotism. You're fighting for an aristocrasy that sees people like you as cannon fodder. You're basically a Neo-Peasant. Ignorant, confused, conditioned to charge mindlessly at whatever banner or crest your lords and ladies tell you to.

You're pathetic. You can be more than you are. Be an individual. Have an idea of your own. Don't just be their peon.

Re:Seriously?!

[Anonymous Coward]

you stuff a lot of insults in there that you certainly can not back up with facts. the fact that you take this matter so personally is probably an insight to why you cannot approach it objectively and you find yourself forced to instead go tribal and desperately throw insults at people who don't agree with you. you really need to read into this before you go around parading as an expert. if you're interested in a mature discussion - rather than slinging one baseless insult after another - feel free to come back, apologize, and try again.

Re:Seriously?!

[Karmashock]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?... ... So YOU throw insults, I provide evidence to show that the insults in question are actually more appropriately labeled upon you... and now you just hypocritically shift to whining about being insulted? You started the insults, you comical internet worm.

Further, unlike your insults, mine were NOT baseless. You insulted ME by saying that I had a poor grasp of the English language and then demonstrated a lack of understanding of a legal term at the core of your argument.

Far from my position being baseless, I provided citations as I have done so throughout this discussion to show you were in error.

Once substanciating my position, I did follow through with "judging" you. But my judgements were based on your statements and citations which justified them.

Now if you have been sufficiently humilitated that you feel you can no longer sustain your arrogant position, then that is progress.

You should have started off respectfully with me. You did not. I am not a stupid man and unlike your positions, mine can supported with evidence and defended.

Next time you engage with me, don't use the AC tag please and treat me with common courtesy at a bare minimum. If you use AC there is a high likelihood that I will ignore your post without reading it. And if you open your discussion with hostility then I'll treat you in kind. As I've demonstrated myself to be more formidable than yourself, this will just lead to you getting wrecked again.

As you appear to not like getting wrecked consider not provoking me. Just an idea.

Re:Seriously?!

[Anonymous Coward]

care to provide a single case of someone throwing an insult at you in this thread? i haven't seen it; though perhaps you have a different notion of what is an insult than i. you very plainly lobbed insults at the ac replies and now you are doubling down on that strategy. if you're trying to convince people that you are supporting a rational argument, you are not doing it well when you can't finish a sentence without resorting to name calling and baseless assumptions. your allegation that others did not "start off respectfully" is nothing short of bizarre when you are the one who seems wholly unable to carry on in this discussion in anything vaguely resembling a respectful tone.
 
how fitting that the captcha is "justify". can you justify your attitude here? survey says no.

Re:Seriously?!

[Karmashock]

""

Re:Seriously?! (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 19, 2018 @10:55AM (#56975502)

how are you capable of typing when your literacy level is that tragically low? in your own words:""

You're an idiot.

And if you think your insult wasn't an insult, then by that same standard, neither was mine.

You're either a very stupid hypocrite or you're so baffled by logic that you think you can create a situation where by a single standard two people that did similar things are not mutually guilty or innocent.

Either way, you're impressively stupid. I mean that sincerely. There are a lot of stupid people on the internet but you're actually doing a pretty stellar job of competing for the 99th percentile of idiocy.

And whilst I'm sure you find your transparently fallacious appeal for civilized argument as a solid chance of winning a moral high ground... The attempt is utterly annihilated by the fact that I've provided links, complete arguments, and only became offensive in RESPONSE to offensive statements from people like you.

Now since you illiterate on top of everything else I doubt this is going to be absorb with any competency by you. You did just challenge me to cite one incident of me being insulted when actually I've received very little from you specifically besides insults.

IF you then say "I'm not THAT AC"... Yes you are. I have no ability to tell you apart. You've gone out of your way to make it impossible for me to tell you apart so I've no choice but to treat you like a singular personality especially when your writing styles are identical and your arguments are identical. I literally cannot tell you apart and you've make proactive efforts to create that situation. You've made your bed. Continue to lie in it.

Re:Seriously?!

[Anonymous Coward]

you put a lot of effort into trying to make a case for your repeated use of insults as a valid strategy to use in a mature discussion. your case fails. you have had many chances to actually engage the topic, but instead you keep lobbing insults. what is it you hope to accomplish by using insults instead of using facts? do you hope that other people will just give up and you can then declare yourself victorious by default, in spite of the facts themselves showing that your argument is invalid?

it doesn't work that way, kid. you have been shown - repeatedly - in this thread where your earlier claims are - at best - not supported by reality. you have routinely declined the opportunity to use actual facts for them - instead offering links to youtube videos or sources that do not actually assist your claims - and have followed up by insulting the people who provide links to actual facts.

you can keep declaring yourself victorious all you want, but it won't make it the case.

Re:Seriously?!

[Karmashock]

Stubborn denial is not an argument.

If that's all you've got, then I'm going to have accept your complete surrender before your own towering stupidity.

That's right. I'm not claiming a win here. This is a full self own on your part.

I provided detailed self consistent arguments and all you're vote is "nah uh"... which wasn't convincing in first grade and the quality of that argument hasn't improved over time.

I'm done wasting my time with you. Here you'll probably try to bait with some silly remark but the pathetic display you've put on here is irredeemable. If my posts were as stupid as yours, I'd also post under AC.

Re:Seriously?!

[Anonymous Coward]

so you're going to continue throwing more insults, and then follow that up by trying to paint over the numerous and massive failings of your attempted argument. you can go ahead and pretend that somehow makes you a winner if you want. the facts were placed in front of you more than once and you responded by telling us how the facts made you feel - notably without giving any indication that you were familiar with them in the least - while following your feelings up with more insults directed at anyone who dared to present any facts that countered your empty rhetoric and silly youtube videos.

if you want to hold to your belief that the investigation is somehow deficient, you are free to hold to that belief. but when you refuse to acknowledge the facts that counter that belief, and then you follow up that stubborn faith-based agenda by slinging insults instead of actually engaging facts and information, you only end up making yourself look that much more detached from the reality of the situation.

after all, if the investigation was really as awful and pointless as you keep claiming, then why doesn't the administration present their side to the investigators? alternately they could just let it play out and plead the fifth in court. attacking it through tweets and press releases does not do anything to lend credibility to their side; nor do repeated threats to fire the investigators.

similarly you yourself have claimed on more than one occasion to have some sort of great insider knowledge on how and where this is all going. if you have that, why do you keep teasing us with it? why not put your cards out on the table?

Re:Seriously?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Kid how do you expect to ever graduate high school (or even GED) when you keep mocking the people who are trying to teach you? Facts are placed in front of you and you counter by trash talking them and ignoring reality. You're a strange case, you really should check to see if your parents HMO can cover some mental health care for you. You're not much different from the kids that go shooting up their schools claiming that they're being bullied.

Re:He needed new patsys

[ArhcAngel]

What's tiresome is people feigning ignorance that this has been happening for hundreds of years and the US is just as dirty as Russia or any other foreign power. What is also tiring is people denying facts because the source of those facts doesn't meet to their approval. The facts of this information is readily available from numerous sources.

Re:Until..

[arbiter1]

They will never release it, I mean first 12 people and 3 companies they charged got a lawyer and Mueller team tried to stall when said lawyer walked in to court and demanded to see the evidence they had. Thank god the judge wasn't having any of that stalling.

Your fallacy today is:

[Anonymous Coward]

Clinton and Trump were already their parties' nominees and the country was doomed to have an unusually bad president; we just didn't know who it would be.

Fuck off with your false eqivolence bullshit. Hillary was in no way as bad or as DEPLORABLE as trump claimed he would be and is showing that he is. Get off your high horse about what we should or shouldn't be doing. You're part of the goddamned problem.

Nice deception you did there

[Anonymous Coward]

NOT ONE of those Mueller/Rosenstein indictments or guilty pleas has ANYTHING to do with Trump, the Trump campaign, the 2016 election, or Russian "collusion".

Most of Meuller's indictments are against Russian citizens (the earlier social media company indictments plus these new ones). The earlier wave are gonna fall apart - he indicted people in Russia to get the name "Russia" out there in the news but with no expectation of ever prosecuting because there is no extradition treaty between the USA and Russia. What Mueller did not expect was that the earlier group would send a lawyer into a US court to fight back and when they did they would expose the shoddy nature of the indictment and would demand discovery. Mueller will either lose those earlier cases or he will drop them, since he does not want to expose info and he has already been embarrassed to have been shown to have indicted companies that did not even exist, people who were not employed by them, etc.

Of the remaining cases, the Flynn guilty plea has gone bad and Mueller has repeatedly asked the judge to delay sentencing - it appears the FBI altered the 302 forms in the case and lied about Flynn lying and that they blackmailed him into pleading guilty. The Manafort case might indeed result in criminal sentences - for tax stuff and unregistered lobbying the dude did over a decade before going to work for Trump. Manafort's old partner plead guilty to stuff related to the Manafort stuff - again NOTHING to do with Trump2016.

Nothingburgers.

Let's have a special prosecutor appointed to look into Hillary2016. Let's see a prosecutor with unlimited resources staff-up with people who worked for Trump or gave campaign money to Trump and then get an unlimited investigatory scope, going after the Clintons, the Clinton foundation, and anybody associated with them, going back at least 15 years.... yup... that would be the equivalent and apparently fair by Democrat reckoning. We already KNOW that the Clinton campaign funneled millions of dollars through the law firm Perkins Coie, to oppo-research firm Fusion GPS, which hired (British spy) Steele who in-turn used Russian spies to create the bogus peeing-prostitutes accusations which were then funelled into the FBI by (FBI employee) Bruce Ohr (whose wife worked at Fusion GPS) to kick-off the investigation of Trump and justify all the wiretapping of the Trump campaign. Thanks to yesterday's Strock testimony, the link of the husband-and-wife team of the Ohrs is now unmasked after over a year of the FBI denying it - and now that we know the FBI knew the docs came from Fusion GPS via the Ohrs, the FBI claim that they did not know it was oppo research funded by the Clinton campaign is also exposed as a lie (because the FBI knows all about Fusion GPS from previous info even preceeding the 2016 election cycle). THIS is why the Democrats on the committee went nutso yesterday so many times yesterday and kept trying to mis-direct the hearing into the subject of illegal alien kids being separated from their illegal alien parents at the border (a totally unrelated matter).

You suck at diversion

[Anonymous Coward]

Some people will accuse me of political bias... these people haven't been paying attention to this circus.

It has nothing to do with this circus, it has to do with the drivel your barf all over your keyboard. You're trying to act like we forget who karmashock is every day we log off here. You act like we can't click your name and see your post history. Your posts from the Obama days are still here. I stopped going back further to Bush but they're probably there too. We KNOW you are a republican cheerleader. We KNOW you'll excuse or justify anything your bois do while rabidly calling for a liberal's head on a pike. You have zero credibility here. I hope it reflects that way in your real life. You don't need to be deciding what you eat for breakfast let alone public policy.

Re:You suck at diversion

[Anonymous Coward]

In B4 GrammarzNatzi

Re:You suck at diversion

[Karmashock]

Really, so did I forget who you are? Mr AC?

See, all you're doing is making baseless character assassinations whilst posting under an AC tag. You could and likely are any number of well known asshats on this board that would laughed out of the channel if you made that accusation.

Which is why you post under AC. Because it helps you lie.

Everyone knows. ;)

Re: You suck at diversion

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently you did forget, Karmashock, or you're arguing with 127.0.0.1 again.

Re:Citation: 32 indictments. NYtimes

[Anonymous Coward]

since the Russian Trolls are busy citing Zerohedge and other Russian PR outlets, here's what the NY times says:

"Mr. Mueller has filed more than 100 criminal counts against 32 people and three companies. Among the people previously charged are fourteen Russians and three Trump associates who have already pleaded guilty."

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/0...

I never, EVER award positive mod points to an AC. But I modded this one +1 Informative, because it actually IS informative ..

(Posting as AC only so as not to undo prior upmods in this thread.)

--

Check out my novel ...

Homophobic haters

[mi]

you treasonous red state faggot.

Khm, this is the second time in this thread that the homophobic slur is used by a faaaar-Left anonymous coward...

Gotta love Trump for triggering his haters into exposing their ugly inner thoughts like this...

ahh, but you have been propagandized.

[Anonymous Coward]

Everybody has been gradually re-programmed by the news media over the intervening years in a truly Orwellian manner to accept a re-written history - and it's people across the entire political spectrum that have been affected. Simple reminder, which everybody is free to prove to themselves by visiting a library and going through the microfilms of old newspapers:

Ken Star's White Water investigation of the Clintons DID NOT wander off-course and stumble into sex and "the blue dress"! Ken Star did not even want to go there; he was a milk toast moderate guy who wanted nothing to do with salacious stuff and was happily investigating a lesser scandal of a Clinton-involved real estate and banking scandal (the White Water matter). There was an entirely separate legal case going on in which a woman (Paula Jones) was fighting Bill Clinton over his allegedly having exposed himself to her when he was governor of Arkansas. In THAT case, she was getting evidence of his prior acts and then-current behavior and Bill was denying everything (shocking, right?). When THAT case blew up and it became clear that Clinton, the head of the executive branch and thus the chief law enforcement officer of the nation) was lying under oath in court and otherwise obstructing justice (he even had his entire staff go out into the Rose Garden of the White House to publicly defend him in the PR battle) the Attorney General saw a need to have a special counsel assigned to the case. Rather than assigning a 2nd one, the AG simply added the Paula Jones related stuff to the list of subjects Ken Star was investigating. Shortly after this happened, Clinton's supporters started portraying Star and his team as sex-obsessed crazies who had begun looking at White Water but then run-off into a sex case; they made this into a meme.

Now, it is common to head both career Republicans and career Democrats in DC complain that special counsels do unending investigations and eventually go rogue, and they point to Star veering off into sex. It's a historical re-write, and it's understandable because EVERYBODY in DC likes to see a special prosecutor going after "the other guys" but they all actually fear that one might someday go after them.

I personally hate the idea of "special counsels" or "special prosecutors" (different but related governing laws) as completely unConstitutional ways for politicians to avoid the responsibility our founders placed into their hands to be the ones who investigate each other and keep each other honest. With that said, however, there is a larger issue at stake here: Do not let these self-centered politicians, or the partisan agitators in the press or on political websites deceive you - GO LOOK AT THE DOCUMENTS FROM THE TIME OF THE EVENT. An evil Orwellian state can only come into existence if the people ALLOW themselves to be gradually fed rewritten history and rewritten dictionaries.

sorry, but no

[Anonymous Coward]

There was congressional testimony just a couple of months ago in which the FBI admitted they have never seen the server. The Democrats hired an outside firm to do an analysis and they provided the report to the FBI. The Democrats are even now refusing to cooperate any further with the FBI.

In case you have confused them, there are two other Democrat server issues which have been in the news which can get easily conflated:

Hillary Clinton had her private e-mail server (actually "servers", since there were changes over time sometimes located at a Clinton facility and sometimes at an outside firm). The last public word on these were [a] the outside firm erased the hard drives on their servers using BleachBit and the tech who did it was given legal immunity in exchange for nothing by James Comey. [b] the server the Clintons had physical control over was wiped and the disassembled and some of the parts were eventually handed over to the FBI. All of these servers were under subpoena at the time of the destruction.

The Democrats in congress had a server (or servers) administered by Imran Awan who was hired by congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz (who at the time was both a congresswoman and was running the DNC). He apparently did many bad things, including apparently stealing computer equipment from the US House, possibly including servers and he also had remote access to those servers and was funneling massive amounts of data from those severs to foreign locations including Pakistan.

All three sets of servers have little in common other than that they were Democrat servers and bad things happened - but since they have all ended up in the news, it's easy to get the details cross-connected in one's mind.

don't be an idiot

[Anonymous Coward]

The previous poster linked to zerohedge, probably for convenience.

The announcement if these new indictments today by Rosenstein on live TV included Rosenstein saying those very disclaimers!

If you give the new indictments ANY credibility then you MUST accept that word of the same guy making them when HE SAID "There is no allegation in this indictment that any American citizen committed a crime. There is no allegation that the conspiracy changed the vote count or affected any election result."

If you won't believe Trump-hating TIME magazine, then go look for the video of the presser on YouTube. Of course, if you have the democrat aluminum foils wrapped too tightly about your cranium, you probably will decide YouTube is part of the imaginary Trump-YoutTube-Russia collusion scheme...

Oh, and the same disclaimer was attached to the previous set of "Russian hacker" indictments.

Re:He needed new patsys

[amicusNYCL]

What's tiresome is people feigning ignorance that this has been happening for hundreds of years and the US is just as dirty as Russia or any other foreign power.

And, what, we should just let it continue? Really, what's your solution? Not investigate? Act like it's not happening? Or just try to shit all over the people trying to protect the country like you did in your original post?

I mean, you understand that we currently live in an age where it is possible to remotely attack infrastructure in ways that used to require a bomber fleet? The US has destroyed Iranian centrifuges. Russia has fucked up Ukrainian power grids. This is reality. But, what, since countries have been spying on each other for centuries, you want to.... what, ignore it? Not determine if we are defending ourselves as well as we could? What exactly? Please respond, this is not a rhetorical question.

If investigating foreign influencing of elections and cyber-attacks is not the thing we should be doing, what do you think we should be doing instead? Spell it out.

I mean, other than attacking the people doing the actual investigating, like you did in your original post. Other than attacking the people trying to make the country secure, what else should we be doing? How about just killing Mueller outright, would that help? Maybe Trump can pick up a little Novichok when he meets Putin, hmm?

What is also tiring is people denying facts because the source of those facts doesn't meet to their approval.

No shit, I agree completely. But what people have against Mueller to try to discredit him or deny what he's doing, I have no idea. He seems like someone genuinely trying to help the country in as apolitically a way as possible, but some people seem to have more love for Trump than for their own country, which is really strange, like I said.

The facts of this information is readily available from numerous sources.

The only source for any facts about the investigation is Mueller himself, and we only see what he gives to the courts. Obviously, if he operated transparently it would cause major problems for his investigation until he can file all of the indictments that he feels are appropriate, and then defend them. It should be obvious to anyone with a brain that has any level of functionality at all that he will not want to release any evidence that will tip off anyone that he is actively investigating before he can indict those people. But some people apparently see that and want to politicize it. I have no idea what the agenda is of the people trying to politicize that, but the well-being of the United States is clearly not high on their list.

Public masturbation of 71855

[shanen]

Z^-1

Nothing to do with a BJ

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it the same "nothing to do with" type of thing like Clinton being impeached over a blowjob? Er, lying to congress. Er, whatever the fuck it was supposed to be about. No one even fucking knows anymore.

You're no better, you goddamned hypocrite.

and...

[Anonymous Coward]

in an alternate universe where the "popular vote" meant something, your statement would mean something.

The United States is NOT a democracy, no matter how much Democrats try to warp it into one; it's a Constitutional Republic with democratic forms of elections.

Mob rule: Two wolves eat a lamb.
Democracy: Two wolves and a lamb vote on what's for dinner, and the lamb is expected to obey the results of the election.
Constitutional Republic: There is a written document that makes some things off-limits even to the majority. If two wolves and a lamb vote on dinner plans, the result of "lamb" is declared unconstitutional.

Our nation's founders deliberately and explicitly rejected democracy as the form of the US Government. Ben Franklin, while exiting the constitutional convention, was asked by a woman what sort of government they had just created for the new nation , and he replied "a Republic, madam, if you can keep it".

I'll take the US Constitution and our republic any day over any democracy; I like my freedom and liberty and life.

Don't blame the EC for failing to do its job

[shanen]

I don't think these attacks on the EC are well justified because the founders were quite clear that one of the main purposes of the EC was to prevent presidents like Trump, whose only campaign tactic is to make mobs angry. The entire notion of "faithless elector" would be anathema to them, because the electors were NOT supposed to be chained to the voters. If the EC was working as intended, Trump is EXACTLY the president they wanted to prevent.

Perhaps a secret ballot in the EC would help? I really think that a lot of the electors might have voted against Trump if they had been able to do so. Given the dislike of Hillary (regardless of whether that dislike was legitimate or ginned up), it is quite possible the EC would also have been unable to vote for her. In that case, they would have had to fall back on the other mechanisms for picking a president, and they certainly could not have found a worse president than #PresidentTweety.

Just a footnote, but don't forget that they wanted a system that would confer strong legitimacy, something like a mandate to lead, after strongly contested elections. I rather wish that they had been able to innovate all the way to a parliamentary system instead of creating such a winner-take-all system.

Re:Don't blame the EC for failing to do its job

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do you even post anymore.

Re: Don't blame the EC for failing to do its job

[Anonymous Coward]

Youâ(TM)re just pissed he won. We could just as easily argue the 14th amendment gives those states a voice. Without the EC they wouldnâ(TM)t have one.

Re:Don't blame the EC for failing to do its job

[Trondheim]

How, exactly, do you know the founders created the electoral college to prevent presidents like Trump?

Re:Don't blame the EC for failing to do its job

[Uberbah]

I don't think these attacks on the EC are well justified because the founders were quite clear that one of the main purposes of the EC was to prevent presidents like Trump

The "Founders" created the EC for the same reason they had state governments elect Senators and only gave white male property owners the right to vote: they were elitist pricks who wanted to present the illusion of a representative democracy, while creating an oligarchy ruled by an aristocracy in all but inherited title. They were deathly afraid of "the mob" having any kind of say, otherwise known as poor and working people having input on their own governance or self-determination.

Re: Don't blame the EC for failing to do its job

[Dynedain]

Because Alexander Hamilton explicitly says so in the Federalist Papers? The process and arguments that resulted in the Constitution isnâ(TM)t lost to the mists of time.

"Talents for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity, may alone suffice to elevate a man to the first honors in a single State; but it will require other talents, and a different kind of merit, to establish him in the esteem and confidence of the whole Union"

Read it yourself, it isnâ(TM)t long:

http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18t...

Re: Don't blame the EC for failing to do its job

[c6gunner]

They were deathly afraid of "the mob" having any kind of say, otherwise known as poor and working people having input on their own governance or self-determination.

As well they should have been. Giving ignorant mobs the ability to dictate government policy is a recipe for disaster. In what other field of human endeavour would this be seen as a good idea? Instead of going to see a trained medical professional would you rather have the mob vote on what treatment you receive for your chest pains?

The political system is designed the way it is in order to provide everyone with an opportunity to have some input while at the same time preventing them from destroying everything (or at least slowing down the destruction).

Re: Don't blame the EC for failing to do its job

[shanen]

I think my Subject: for this branch is a typo... Actually the EC should be blamed for failing to do its job...

However, on the subject of Senators, I think their idea was that a separate basis of power would provide another check and balance. On that line of analysis, direct election of the Senators is a mistake, because it's relying on the same basis as the Representatives in the House.

If I got to rewrite the 17th Amendment, it would change the basis of the Senate to wealth, specifically in terms of taxes paid. Each Senator would represent 1% of the tax revenue of the federal government. That would have been difficult until recently, but now we have computers that can solve large knapsack problems fairly rapidly. We don't need perfect solutions, but basically need to start with large taxpayers distributed around the nation and add enough smaller voters to balance things out for each Senator. You'd know exactly who your senator was and exactly why he was ignoring you.

What about corporations? Darn good question and shows you're awake. The only question is whether to allocate certain senators to corporations or just mix them in as though they were actually human beings. Just depends on the federal taxes actually paid.

Re: Don't blame the EC for failing to do its job

[Uberbah]

As well they should have been. Giving ignorant mobs the ability to dictate government policy is a recipe for disaster

That's just more elitist bullshit in defense of elitist bullshit. You could write an encyclopedia of encyclopedias of encyclopedias of all the fuck-ups in human history caused by elites. Religious wars between Catholics and Protestants? Elites. Slavery? Elites. Either of the World Wars? Colonialism? The US spending more than the rest of the world combined on war pork? Elites, elites, elites.

But go ahead and name one by fuck up by "the mob" that wasn't a directly backlash to elites fucking things up in the first place. French Terror? Wouldn't have happened without the aristocracy keeping boots on the necks of peasants for a thousand years. Cuban Revolution? Wouldn't have happened without colonialism and the US backing the brutal dictatorship of Batista.

The political system is designed the way it is in order to provide everyone with an opportunity to have some input

Not unless you were a white male who owned property. The Founding Pricks were happy enough to apply taxes to people who couldn't vote, though - taxation without representation.

Re: Don't blame the EC for failing to do its job

[AutodidactLabrat]

Nope. Read the 14th. Not one word about State's rights

Re: Don't blame the EC for failing to do its job

[AutodidactLabrat]

The EC is a holdover from the effort to get Slave States to sign the Constitution.
No other cause

Is the GOP afraid? The proof is in the crickets

[ody]

... on http://www.foxnews.com./

wow, just wow.

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you have ANY comprehension of how mentally ill you sound?

I sure hope you have no access to any weapons, and are not permitted to be around children or the elderly without an escort.

Please seek help.

re-read what you typed, and if you still cannot see how batsh*t crazy you sound, RUN to the nearest mental health professional and BEG for treatment.

Wow.

Campaign help from Russians bad, Saudis ok?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hillary Clinton spent about $1.2 billion on her campaign. Donald Trump spent about $600 million on his campaign. Hillary Clinton got at least a few tens of millions of dollars from Middle Eastern nations, whom would be interested in overthrowing Assad. The Bush family was in tight with the Saudi royal family. Just look at how the royalty in the several days after 9/11.

So, it is ok to get campaign help from the Saudis, but not the Russians?

Re:Campaign help from Russians bad, Saudis ok?

[amicusNYCL]

There are specific laws which we have based on foreign powers influencing our elections. If those laws were broken, people should be prosecuted. Why the fuck is that so difficult to understand?

Political affiliations, or which foreign government it is, have absolutely nothing to do with the question of whether or not those laws were broken.

Re:Comey Testimony

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn, you and the moderators with points here are really corrupt!

The "12 charges" is a farce and here is why

[Ulfilas2000]

Since the Chargees to the Charges are in Russian, and are unlikely to appear in court, then it is similarly unlikely that they will defend themselves against the charges. Which means that whatever Rosenstain stuck out there is just a floater for public news and comment. He could claim space aliens hacked the DNC server with the Russians and there is no one to argue otherwise. Hence, it is a farce.

Re:Comey Testimony

[Anonymous Coward]

How's the weather in St. Petersburg today? Do the people you work with still call it Leningrad?

Score:5, Funny

Hey guys. Not sure if you care; probably dont.

But can you guys try a little harder?

Re: Detecting trolls and sock puppets on Slashdo

[Anonymous Coward]

"Billionair"

Mueller hasn't bothered to look at DNC servers

[Uberbah]

....so this is still a farce. Doubly so given the fact he hasn't even raised an eyebrow at Cambridge Analytics, when that foreign company has outright bragged of swinging American elections. Triply so given he DGAF that Hillary actually did what Trump is (without any basis whatsoever) accused of doing: colluding with foreign intelligence agents to get dirt on an opponent for a general election: when she paid for the Steele Dossier. And to the Dembots reading this, don't even bother with the blather that Trump's republican rivals were sniffing around first. That does fuck-all to change the fact that Hillary paid. for. the. Steele. Dossier.

Is that the server...

[Anonymous Coward]

That shouldnâ(TM)t have existed and was scrubbed of most of the dubious content?

Election meddling

[Anonymous Coward]

Itd be swell to see the countries sue O for meddlung in their elections. A truly wonderful spectical.

Re:Comey Testimony

[Uberbah]

How's the weather in St. Petersburg today? Do the people you work with still call it Leningrad?

You recycle that line from 2003, when you were running around calling skeptics of Iraqi WMD's supporters of Saddam?

Re: As they say in Federal Prison

[Anonymous Coward]

Go ahead, keep trying. They also reported that no Americans were involved. But you don't really care about facts now do you.

Trump 2020!!!

I wonder

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder when trumpy was being briefed, do u think he pulled putins cock out of his mouth for enough time to mutter a verbal comment? I seriously doubt it.

Re: As they say in Federal Prison

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not over yet.

Re:Comey Testimony

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sorry, did the GP say something demonstrably false? If so then please point me to your sources.

The trade war...

[Anonymous Coward]

People pay attention to Trump's tweets because it is often a precursor to what he will say as policy or direction for the US government. He also tweets about what is on his mind and has on occasion leaked otherwise confidential information that in the hands of Wall Street traders, is worth money.

I hate to break it to you but the trade war is in progress. It is happening:
https://www.npr.org/2018/07/06/626466823/a-trade-war-between-the-u-s-and-china-has-begun

In China the price of a Tesla car went up...
https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trade-china/tesla-raises-car-prices-in-china-amid-trade-war-electrek-idUKKBN1JZ1AK
This is a direct result of the trade war.

These are what are called facts relating to events that actually happened. Neither are "fake" nor are they "fake news".

If you didn't see this on Fox News, try expanding your reading of current and world affairs.