Cont: All things Trump + Russia Part 2

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phiwum said:
I don't speak for any much less all liberals. I can speak for myself, however. The intelligence agencies have agreed that Russia tried to interfere with the election via publication of false news articles, social media accounts posing as American voters, and so on. The ability to influence the information that voters use is new and troubling and well worth investigation.
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New and troubling? Russia (as part of the USSR) literally funded and trained opposition groups, including activists and violent protesters during the Cold War. And the political left in the US accused anybody who pointed this out of being a conspiracy theorist or worse.

Publication of false news and comments on message boards simply doesn't rise to the level of a significant threat. It is not only a waste of resources for the government to counter (because the internet is awash with such sewage, and the effect of foreign spies with laughably bad English is a drop in the toilet), but the cure is probably worse than the disease.

Also, why is it a threat to our democracy that a few hundred Russians with bad English post biased crap on our message boards, but it's not a threat that a corporation like the New York Times (over 10% of which is owned by a Mexican) has the influence to determine which news is important (like, e.g., the non-story that Trump treated women he dated poorly or the story in 2008 that McCain might be having an affair with a lobbyist) and which news is unimportant (like, e.g., the Hillary email scandal or the influence peddling of the Clinton Foundation)?

Sorry, not biting at your attempt to bring Obama into this discussion.
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I'm not attempting anything. I predict that the real scandal in all of this is the coordination between the Hillary campaign and the Obama administration to undermine Trump with either false or over-hyped allegations of Russia interference on his behalf.

I am curious: what on earth makes you *less* confident in the claims of our intelligence community? What has changed? Is it that evidence hasn't been presented publicly? Investigations are ongoing, so that is to be expected. No one claimed that the investigations would be quick.
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Two things: First, the intelligence report released in January which supposedly laid out the case was laughably devoid of evidence. I challenge you to read it and not come away with the feeling that the authors had nothing, but were commanded to make the case anyway.

Second, the government has been leaking like a sieve for over a year. That includes the intelligence agencies. Actually, it's nothing new that the government leaks like a sieve (including the NSA), but things have really ramped up since Trump won the election. Given that, I would have expected real evidence of Russian interference to have leaked, or at least strong hints as to what that evidence really was. The fact that nothing of the sort has been reported by anybody is remarkable and makes me think that maybe such evidence doesn't actually exist.

I wasn't speaking of the hacking, but of the possibility that Trump campaign officials may be guilty of breaking laws. I'm no expert on laws regarding campaigns, but as I understand it, soliciting dirt on Clinton from the Russian government may well break campaign laws. If so, that's obviously something to look into.
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I'm pretty sure it's not against law unless there is a quid pro quo. In any case, if the same investigation were done of other presidential campaigns, I
think even more dirt would have come out. Trump's campaign was relatively bare bones and amateurish by comparison, and his political connections were nowhere near as deep as a mainstream politician's.
 
Trebuchet said:
Like taking condemnation of the Russian invasion of Ukraine out of your party platform?
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I think you should go back and check your sources for this, as nothing like that ever happened. Perhaps it is fake news created by Russian bots?
 
sunmaster14 said:
I think you should go back and check your sources for this, as nothing like that ever happened. Perhaps it is fake news created by Russian bots?
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Trebuchet's description was wrong, but Trump did work to change the GOP platform regarding Ukraine (especially regarding providing weapons to Ukraine), according to a number of reliable media outlets.

Of course, you probably knew this and rather than correct the error in a constructive manner, it's just so much more fun to mock Trebuchet, no?
 
sunmaster14 said:
New and troubling? Russia (as part of the USSR) literally funded and trained opposition groups, including activists and violent protesters during the Cold War. And the political left in the US accused anybody who pointed this out of being a conspiracy theorist or worse.

Publication of false news and comments on message boards simply doesn't rise to the level of a significant threat. It is not only a waste of resources for the government to counter (because the internet is awash with such sewage, and the effect of foreign spies with laughably bad English is a drop in the toilet), but the cure is probably worse than the disease.

Also, why is it a threat to our democracy that a few hundred Russians with bad English post biased crap on our message boards, but it's not a threat that a corporation like the New York Times (over 10% of which is owned by a Mexican) has the influence to determine which news is important (like, e.g., the non-story that Trump treated women he dated poorly or the story in 2008 that McCain might be having an affair with a lobbyist) and which news is unimportant (like, e.g., the Hillary email scandal or the influence peddling of the Clinton Foundation)?



I'm not attempting anything. I predict that the real scandal in all of this is the coordination between the Hillary campaign and the Obama administration to undermine Trump with either false or over-hyped allegations of Russia interference on his behalf.



Two things: First, the intelligence report released in January which supposedly laid out the case was laughably devoid of evidence. I challenge you to read it and not come away with the feeling that the authors had nothing, but were commanded to make the case anyway.

Second, the government has been leaking like a sieve for over a year. That includes the intelligence agencies. Actually, it's nothing new that the government leaks like a sieve (including the NSA), but things have really ramped up since Trump won the election. Given that, I would have expected real evidence of Russian interference to have leaked, or at least strong hints as to what that evidence really was. The fact that nothing of the sort has been reported by anybody is remarkable and makes me think that maybe such evidence doesn't actually exist.



I'm pretty sure it's not against law unless there is a quid pro quo. In any case, if the same investigation were done of other presidential campaigns, I
think even more dirt would have come out. Trump's campaign was relatively bare bones and amateurish by comparison, and his political connections were nowhere near as deep as a mainstream politician's.
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I'm willing to wait and see what happens with the investigations rather than take my guess at what's legal, what actually happened and so on.
 
phiwum said:
Trebuchet's description was wrong, but Trump did work to change the GOP platform regarding Ukraine (especially regarding providing weapons to Ukraine), according to a number of reliable media outlets.
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And he flat out lied about it.
 
phiwum said:
Trebuchet's description was wrong, but Trump did work to change the GOP platform regarding Ukraine (especially regarding providing weapons to Ukraine), according to a number of reliable media outlets.
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Your description is wrong too. There was no watering down of the GOP platform. Somebody suggested amping up the pro-Ukraine language, and it was rejected. Also, there is no indication that Trump either pushed for or against it, but it certainly is not surprising that a relatively isolationist and relatively pro-Russia Trump would see the proposed language as contrary to his governing philosophy. See here.

It started when platform committee member Diana Denman tried to insert language calling for the U.S. to provide lethal defensive weapons to the Ukrainian government, which is fighting a separatist insurrection backed by Russia. Denman says she had no idea she was "going into a fire fight," calling it "an interesting exchange, to say the least."

Denman is a long time GOP activist from Texas. When she presented her proposal during a platform subcommittee meeting last month, "two gentleman," whom Denman said were part of the Trump campaign, came over, looked at the language, and asked that it be set aside for further review.

She says after further discussion the pair "had to make some calls and clear it." She says they found the language was still too strong.

The Trump campaign convinced the platform committee to change Denman's proposal. It went from calling on the U.S. to provide Ukraine "lethal defensive weapons" to the more benign phrase "appropriate assistance."
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Of course, you probably knew this and rather than correct the error in a constructive manner, it's just so much more fun to mock Trebuchet, no?
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Of course I knew this, but why shouldn't I mock somebody who wastes my time with fake news? And why single me out for mocking? Pretty much everybody here does far worse than I do, including you.
 
sunmaster14 said:
Of course I knew this, but why shouldn't I mock somebody who wastes my time with fake news? And why single me out for mocking? Pretty much everybody here does far worse than I do, including you.
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Feel free to back that up in a PM, so as not to derail the thread.
 
NoahFence said:
My irony meter exploded.

You have even greater certainty that Russian collusion or even any kind of Russian interference even happened. This even though you aren't privvy to any evidence in the case.
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The difference is that my certainty is highly impressive.
 
Well, it certainly is starting to look as though the Russian influence on the election was larger than previously thought. A question: If it is shown that Russian hackers influenced the election to such a degree that - for example - votes where changed on the order of hundreds of thousands, or even millions, what should be done about it? What could be done?

I mean, what measure should/could be introduced towards Russia, and what should/could be done about the illegitimacy of the current US administration?
 
sunmaster14 said:
They might not think the election results can or should be overturned, but almost all of those liberals who have had a sudden change of heart about Russia are only concerned about Russia's interference because they think it will delegitimize Trump and make it more likely he will be either impeached or rendered a lame duck President.

The Russian interference story is utter garbage and far less important than the interference of the Obama administration, both in the election itself to protect Hillary from indictment and besmirch Trump, but also to undermine Trump's authority from the moment of his election.

Even if the Russian interference is real, a "fact" about which I'm growing dubious, it is to be expected that our adversaries try all kinds of things to undermine us. Things were orders of magnitude worse during the Cold War by the way, when the left acted pretty much as useful idiots for the Soviets. And if conservatives criticized them for their willingness to be Soviet pawns, the conservatives were slandered as being McCarthyite.
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That didn't happen.
And if it did, it wasn't that bad.
And if it was, that's not a big deal.
And if it is, that's not my fault.
And if it was, I didn't mean it.
And if I did...
You deserved it.

:rolleyes:
 
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