Sorry to keep up the bad news about the election.
Here is the link to the story:
Intel report: Putin directly ordered effort to influence election
http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/06/politics/intelligence-report-putin-election/index.html
This is is the first time in US history that a foreign government has directly and successfully intervened in our presidential election.
Putin directly ordered the hacking of DNC emails and leaked them to Wikileaks and other sites. On his orders, Russian agents planted fake news stories and acted as trolls on logs.
This is a major crisis. It is a political crisis and a constitutional crisis. But who can call for a new election? The Republicans won’t. They control both houses of Congress.
I am in despair: Trump has appointed people to destroy the mission of their agencies. He is not a stupid man. But he is woefully uneducated, ignorant and narcissistic, with a brilliant capacity to tap into racism, sexism, and xenophobia. . Greed is his god. He hoaxed his voters. The founding fathers must be weeping.
Trump is #notmypresident. He is #Putinspuppet.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Trump is worried that no one will show up to his inauguration.
Time to start a protest….#NoShow1/20
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Cheryl,
Every nut and wackadoo will show up for his inauguration. Should be a large crowd of fools and nuts.
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Worth a try
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Sadly also, many mainstream politicians and policy makers will also show up, because the status and power attached to the office of the president, regardless of who is in it, is as irresistible to them, as honey is to bees, or, in this particular case, sh#$t is to flies.
My apologies to the flies for the comparison, since they actually perform an important role in sustaining life, which can’t be said for many whose ambitions are attached to Trump
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Diane–yes, and I am waiting to hear from someone who knows that Rump was in on it from the start. My guess is that he meant it when he said “it’s rigged!” because he knew what the Russians were up to and endorsed it. I have no evidence on this–but the thing is, under the circumstances of what we DO know about Rump and Putin, it seems more than plausible. It’s certainly not more like Rump to do the right thing or to act with integrity when his winning/losing is at issue.
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Catherine,
Trump has neither integrity nor intelligence.
He is #Putinspuppet
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Diane: I hope I didn’t give the impression I thought otherwise.
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Catherine, I was agreeing with you.
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He who shouts the loudest usually have the most to hide.
Or
He who accuses the loudest is always guilty of the same.
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Cheryl: Yes, and I think from Shakespeare: Me thinks you protest too much.
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The USA has become a dystopian society…sad and so very sick!
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YSR,
Today’s landscape is disheartening. But I recognize that astute people are still out there, including you (I frequently appreciate the insights and attitudes your comments express).
We survived Nixon’s election in ’68; the “Love it or Leave it” people; and the Watergate hearings complete with Nixon’s Enemies List.
We each need to pick and work on issues that matter. We must overcome–could be the theme song for Jan 21 march.
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It’s bad. Really bad. But I still have faith in the American people. I have to.
War, economic depression, other botched elections (1876, for example.), terrible injustices done to our own fellow citizens. Our Republic has survived.
One thing is for sure….we’re about to get a long, tough lesson in why the founders of our nation quickly added a Bill of Rights soon after our government was launched.
It’s time for a national civics lesson writ large. The First Amendment Center recently reported that nearly 4 out of 10 Americans surveyed could not name a single First Amendment freedom. Well, here we go…. http://www.visaliatimesdelta.com/story/opinion/2016/12/28/first-amendment-works-will-still/95842218/
Teachers….we have a lot of work to do. When was the last time that public education was so important, so threatened and so worth defending? Today, this blog just became that much more important.
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“I have to.” Never have so few words said so much.
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Thank you, John. You are right.
When I get over the shock of realizing my worst fears–that Putin elected Trump–I will be ready to fight this evil fool.
This was a fraudulent election. A liar and a fool will be president.
#notmypresident
#Putinspuppet
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Diane, you are right;
This was a fraudulent election! The power of my vote was taken from me and 68 million other Americans, by Putin to serve his agenda.
Trumps response is a selfish, thuggish disregard for the integrity of our democracy
Will awareness of this fact resonate and grow around the country, or will our eyes grow accustomed to the dimness of the light, as the significance of this event becomes obscured by a steady stream of half truths and lies ?
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“. . . that Putin elected Trump. . .
Wow! And some proof of that statement which is false on its face?
I prefer to listen to professionals:
William Binney worked for NSA for 36 years, retiring in 2001 as the technical director of world military and geopolitical analysis and reporting; he created many of the collection systems still used by NSA. Ray McGovern was a CIA analyst for 27 years; he briefed the president’s daily brief one-on-one to President Reagan’s most senior national security officials from 1981-85.
From counterpunch: http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/01/06/why-the-dnc-emails-were-leaked-not-hacked/
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Duane,
I suppose that is supposed to prove that Trump was legitimately elected. You can believe that if you wish.
I will wait for someone who has worked in the NSA or CIA in the past 5 years to say that Putin did not hack the emails. Not someone who worked there 30 years ago
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This is constitutionally unprecedented. Should there be another election?
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I know people who feel long after nothing was turned up that Sadam Hussein was successful in hiding the WMDs. Some of these same people are so enamoured of Trump that they accept his disparagement of the CIA and see no contradiction. Astounding.
We thought we had a constitutional crisis when we had watergate. Now it seems no one cares. Who will investigate James Comey and the FBI? Who will investigate the burglary of the Democraric headquarters this time?
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I share your despair. I can’t believe no one has a logical solution to this nightmare. Allowing for the “peaceful transfer of power” to this complete evil nutcase without serious protest and challenges is unconscionable. And now this? Illegitimate and loser. He should not be able to do so much evil. And where was Obama knowing this? Sorry, he doesn’t get a pass. This was way too important for him to keep silent.
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Obama’s silence allowed Putin to take control of our government.
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Yes. It makes no sense to me. Will we ever know all the ties between Putin and trump?
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Jeannie Kaplan: I keep hoping someone will jump ship at Rumper Room and tell all.
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Agree, Diane!
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Jeannie Kaplan: I’m sorry to have to say it, but I think you are right about Obama–it seems he is so worried about being seen as having “sour grapes” and is so enamoured with acting like a civilized president in making a smooth transition, that he’s forgotten his oath to protect the Constitution. And that’s coming from a great supporter. I keep hoping there’s something that we don’t know, but . . . .
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What are the next steps now? If they SHOULD throw out the election results, would it ever happen, and who would be in charge of it happening? If he is impeached and resigns, why should Pence ascend to power if he should not have been elected either? Sorry, I sound a little crazy because the whole situation just seems completely surreal to me.
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Julie,
With the Reoublicans in charge of Congress, they won’t care.
No impeachment. No do-over.
Putin picked our president.
#notmypresident
#Putinspuppet
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Trump will be a PINO, president in name only, too lazy to actually govern, leaving day to day affairs to his radical VP Pence and his radical and Russia-friendly cabinet, lurching into action only when he feels like playing on Twitter or looking powerful, or grubbing some money.
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From the report you referenced: “We did not make an assessment of the impact that Russian activities had on the outcome of the 2016 election.” The title of your post states otherwise.
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That headline was written by CNN.
Well, of course, Putin hacking the DNC and Podesta emails couldn’t possibly have influenced the election. Did you notice that no emails embarrassing Trump were released? Curious.
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Read CNN article you referenced and intel report, did not see “Putin Elected Trump”. Source?
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Matt Renwick,
Here is the CNN HEADLINE:
Intel report: Putin directly ordered effort to influence election
Forgive me for interpreting that to mean: “Putin Elected Trump.”
That’s my view.
Trump is #notmypresident
He is #Putinspuppet
Never have we had an election whose outcome was influenced by a foreign power that secretly manipulated the media and public opinion.
Never have we had a president less qualified for the office
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Don’t disagree with any of your assertions Diane. Thank you for sharing this information. More people need to heed it.
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Matt Renwick
Do you believe in the tooth fairy. .If you believe that the constant negative narrative whether true or not did not influence the race enough to swing 1 or 2 percent of the vote in several key states. . You need some serious help.
What CNN should be saying is,” what did Trump know and when did he know it “.
He should be forced to reveal his tax returns as part of a congressional investigation .” to see how indebted he is to
Russian oligarchs. Then impeached.
In fact if the ass in the White House had a bone of courage in his body he should now order the IRS to make them public then pardon himself and all government employees.
I am the last person you could call a Hillary troll. I will not say what I wished on her right till August when it would have been too late to replace her. Diane would block me from the site
This man is dangerous and does not belong in the office.
The only question is are there any Republicans who love their country more than they love power. .
This borders on treason. and that’s what CNN and every other journalist should be saying.
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Matt Renwick
My apologies just read your last reply .
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They have not given the who, what, when and where that this hacking is supposed to have happened. They only say trust us. This from the people who brought us unending war against Iraq based on non-existent weapons of mass destruction and the overthrow of many governments over the last 30 years.
The truth is that all governments are engaged in cyberwarfare including the U.S. Watch the 2016 documentary Zero Days
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Wrong wrong wrong the intelligence services did not say there was a weapons program. If anything they said that it was unlikely .
Dick Cheney a war criminal cherry picked the intelligence . Using the absence of definitive proof that it did not exist as proof positive that it did.
Remember they outed Valerie Plame a covert CIA agent because her her husband Joe Wilson called bullsh@t on Niger selling uranium to Saddam
The article is 2003
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2003/10/27/the-stovepipe
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phla.ken says “They have not given the who, what, when and where that this hacking is supposed to have happened.”
Thank you, phla.ken for demanding that we have a joint investigation in which the investigative powers are given to both Republicans and Democrats to investigate how this hacking happened and what contacts Trump’s campaign had with Putin’s men and when Trump and his high level advisors knew about this hacking and why they kept the illegal activity quiet.
Thank you for demanding that this be investigated right away and all Trump’s advisors and staff be put under oath and forced to answer question from both parties so we can know the truth.
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Putin Elected Trump
I thought it was the deplorables.
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NoReformNeeded: Putin was Jim Jones to the deplorables who drank the KoolAid.
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This is a FYI:
2016 Bill of Rights Day Book Festival
Sat. 1:30 pm ET, Sun. 12 am ET
Book TV presents coverage of the 2016 Bill of Rights Day Book Festival from the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia. Our programming schedule includes:
Panel on preserving America’s founding documents
Conversation with David Keene, author of Shall Not Be Infringed: The New Assaults on Your Second Amendment
Panel on the death penalty and the Constitution
Conversation with Akhil Reed Amar, author of The Constitution Today: Timeless Lessons for the Issues of Our Era
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This just in from The World Post (Huffington Post) regarding fake news and education.
Snip from: Weekend roundup: America’s crisis of social intelligence
The WorldPost Today, 4:00 AM
“If identifying and shutting down hackers has become a key task of intelligence agencies in these cyber times, the new challenge for education is to provide young people with the tools of social intelligence so they can tell fact from fabrication on social media. Stanford professor Sam Wineburg lays out the steps educators need to take to help students discern what is fake news or not. ‘The tools we’ve invented are handling us,’ he says, ‘not the other way around.’ Teacher Lynn Kelley tells her students they fall victim to fake news when they lack the critical distance to be aware of their own biases and assumptions or when they are unable to evaluate claims without the relevant historical knowledge. Natalie Jackson reports on a poll that says most American’s think tweets are not the way a president should communicate.”
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Why isn’t the election being nullified, given this discovery??
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Because that “discovery” is a false one, much like the Piltdown skull. See my post above for a logical explanation of the difference between a hack and a leak and just how ludicrous the assertations that Diane states are.
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Duane,
Sorry to disagree. Even Trump was persuaded by the Intel report he received. He has stopped mocking the CIA.
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Duane,
Why don’t you ask Putin to stop by your house and give you a signed confession. Although I don’t think that would be enough to persuade you that the US will soon have an illegitimate president. You will keep laughing as he destroys every federal program other than the military. Well, at least you can keep your guns and buy more of them.
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Diane,
Did you read the Binney and McGovern article which I linked to? If so, what are your thoughts on their analysis?
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Duane,
Neither of the authors of that article have worked for the CIA or NSA or any other intelligence agency for the past 15 years. They obviously did not read the latest intel report because their article says that Trump “will” get a briefing, but the briefing happened yesterday and he emerged chastened. He was told that the Russians hacked the election, and his response was that it must have been the Russians, the Chinese and others. He did not deny the hacking. What was most important to him was to insist that the leaking of DNC-Podesta emails did not have any impact on the election.
Bear in mind that Hillary won nearly 3 million votes more than he did. With a shift of about 70,000 votes in three states, he would have lost. How can you insist that the Russians did not hack the emails? What is your evidence? They offer none because you can’t prove a negative. Putin had many reasons to prefer Trump, such as his malleability and his ignorance. He is #Putinspuppet.
Why are they defending the legitimacy of Trump’s election? Why are you? Figure that one out.
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And we will continue to disagree on this. That’s life and living!
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Duane,
We have just experienced a silent coup. The Russians put Trump into office because he is a useful idiot who will destroy federal agencies, turn back the clock on civil rights, deep-six research on climate change, and defund as many public services as possible. Scientists are mobilizing to save federal data on climate change and pandemics, which they fear Trump’s chumps will wipe out.
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Diane–I didn’t know that. I’m so glad to hear that they understand the seriousness of our present situation. We all should also purchase a small non-electric typewriter.
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Catherine, I am too old to go silently into this Putin nightmare.
We are in the midst of a coup.
Who else but Putin would want our government to be run by rightwing fools and reactionaries who don’t believe in climate change and want to take away government healthcare?
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I see a different coup, one by the oligarchs who buy off the politicians. We fight them daily here, Gates, Broad, Waltons, etc. . . but those are just the Johnny Come Latelys as the other oligarchs who own the banks and the federal reserve and families like the Kochs, DeVoses, and Bushes-whose fortune was made off of being the Nazi’s banker. There is no need for a Russian boogeyman, we have too many whose only concern is themselves and close family, who own so much that it is obscene and they, like Putin, thrive in being avaricious oligarchs.
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Duane,
Putin is not a bogeyman. He is one of the most powerful men in the world. He just bought our presidency. That doesn’t alarm you. It makes me furious. Angry. Depressed.
No covering up for #Putinspuppet
Just watch as this ignorant egomaniac sets about destroying our country
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Just don’t agree with your analysis of the situation. That’s all. And no, that doesn’t make me a supporter of Putin or of Trump, as they are both abominations on this earth. Sometimes I wish (not really) that I believed in hell because I would be sure they would both be there in the not to distant future. But I don’t believe in that nonsense either, sooo….. it’s just one of those agree to disagree situations.
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Duane,
I will ask Putin to send you a certified letter assuring you that he elected Trump. Not that he is a pal, but I doubt you would believe Putin.
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That’s a good one!!
You are correct, I wouldn’t believe him. That’s part of the problem with being a free thinking skeptic-one always questions authority (even one’s self-yeah tain’t easy).
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Duane,
I am a Jew. I am a skeptic. It would have been stupid to be a skeptic in Germany in 1935. Sometimes you have to recognize that 4+2=6. Not 1, not 7. 6.
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Thank you, Duane.
It’s consoling that not everyone on this site has accepted the apparently comforting delusions and misdirection that will solidify Trump’s support and guarantee his continuing success, since many of his supporters take great pleasure in seeing the likes of us throwing tantrums and having meltdowns in our affluent enclaves.
And now, before I’m accused of being a Hillary-hater or proxy for The Russia, I’d like to propose a thought experiment for those who believe Putin “hacked” the election and has Svengali-like powers over Trump: let’s hypothetically assume every accusation made about Russian hacking of the election is true. Even granting that, what does it say about the candidate the Democratic Party put forward and the campaign her advisors ran? What does it say about the behavior of the Democratic Party over the past thirty-plus years that so many people in traditionally Democratic states either stayed home, didn’t vote for President at all (reportedly 90,00 in Michigan alone, or did Putin hack those votes, too?) or were eager to give a big “F*%$ You” to what they, often accurately, see as smug and complacent beneficiaries of a system that holds them in contempt?
Did Putin want Trump elected? It’s fair to assume he did, both because Hillary maintained an extremely belligerent attitude toward Russia, and because her husband was President of the US while Russia was being looted, often enabled by US interests, in the post-Soviet ’90’s. The Clinton administration directly interfered in Russian elections during that period, aiding the looters and the man (Yeltsin) who shelled the Russian Parliament; so much for “enabling democracy,” as we like to claim we did in Ukraine a few years ago. Putin’s rise and stature in Russia is a direct result of that era, as he is above all a Russian nationalist, and will do what he sees as required for the security and maintenance of the Russian state.
That Trump is a sociopath who will screw his working class voters is both true and beside the point. Yes, he did get the white supremacist/male chauvinist vote (when in recent decades has the Republican Party not gotten it?), but that’s not what elected him, as Rust Belt counties that previously voted for Obama and then turned out for Trump should demonstrate.
There were many reasons for Hillary’s loss, many of them quite ugly and unrelated to her flaws and weakness as a candidate (which are very real and at this point should be inarguable), but this insistence on Russki cyber-phantoms putting in Putin’s personal dupe really smacks of a desperate avoidance of reality, one that aides Trump and the interests that seek to fatten off his administration.
That reality may in fact be much uglier and scarier than purported Russian interference with the election, over-emphasis upon which evades and denies so many different issues. But those issues must be faced if there’s going to be effective resistance to the right wing takeover of the government.
Insisting that some Evil Other is the puppet-master behind the scenes is folly and a waste of time.
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Michael Fiorillo: My-my. What wonderfully screwball notes you write. Let me get this straight: So now we should stop focusing on what is probably the more egregious assault on our country at least since 9-11 and by the most arrogant little man with a little mind, only surpassed in arrogance by the bigger man with a little mine, and with little fingers–because such criticism helps Rump. How kind you are to let us know how misguided we are. Of course, since we are all puppets ourselves, we’ll stop right away! since there is no truth to be had in our “throwing tantrums and having meltdowns in our affluent enclaves.” Even if we WERE in affluent enclaves (we aren’t), it would be far better than living in alt-right JimJonesian silos of ignorance and hate.
You say: “Insisting that some Evil Other is the puppet-master behind the scenes is folly and a waste of time.”
Well, I would agree right away–that might be the case . . . . IF Putin WEREN’T really an Evil Other (he is); and IF Rump weren’t such an admirer of him (he is), and I would say almost if not-quite a full-fledged mindless puppet–I’m surprised his hair has remained so nice considering where his head has been for so long.
Similarly, why such defensiveness about the Russians? And what about our unanswered questions about his tax returns which are still-hidden from the American people–how much does he owe the Russians anyway–what has he promised? Maybe he’s not a puppet, however, how beholding is he? And we might consider the (of course) fake news coming out in some of the underground press about Rump’s “funny” interest in little girls–particularly little Russian girls whom he met on his trips there at the service of Putin. I won’t comment on that except that it’s fake, of course.
Amazing . . . .**”That Trump is a sociopath who will screw his working class voters is both true and beside the point.” Oh really? aren’t those the same voters who live in the rust belt that you speak of? What a coincidence! I wonder what’s next when they realize it.
And BTW, the non-voting electorate has been around for a very long time–long before the Clintons ever came on the scene. So that doesn’t wash in your Hillary-bashing more than your not-so-subtle change of focus (in your paragraph 2) from the Rump-Putin ongoing debacle to, OMG! Horrible Hillary, who got more votes and was so out-of-woman’s-place as to be “extremely belligerent” (aka truthful) in criticizing Putin’s fraudulent handling of his own election and its aftermath.
I really like intelligent discourse. But to you, I say what the sage said: We’ll see.
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Catherine Blanche King,
Well-said in response to Michael Fiorillo.
Can you imagine if the Democrats who hated George McGovern were all like Fiorillo during Watergate? They’d be saying “let Nixon and all his men do whatever illegal activities they want to swing the election because he won by a lot and McGovern was a loser. What we need to do is focus on how much of a lose McGovern was because any illegal activity by Nixon is fine with me as long as I can be proven right about what an awful candidate McGovern was.”
If only the Democrats back then had followed Fiorillo and Swacker and said “let’s shut this watergate hearings down right now and just focus on blaming McGovern”. I’m sure that would have been much better if they had done Nixon’s dirty work for him.
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NYC parent,
I don’t understand why those who are allegedly liberals are so eager to protect Trump and Putin.
I can guarantee the matter will never be investigated once Trump is in office. He will clean out the CIA and install stooges who tell him what a great guy his buddy Vlad is.
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Diane,
I agree and I don’t understand why some posters on here are so anxious to forget the lessons of Watergate.
You don’t ONLY investigate corruption because it absolutely, 100%, without a doubt elected one candidate over another one.
You investigate corruption because when elections are influenced by corruption, then democracy completely fails. And corruption means illegally breaking into the DNC headquarters in Watergate and illegally hacking e-mails and illegally using the FBI to influence the election and violate the Hatch Act.
Here is what is NOT “corruption”: Nixon running an anti-McGovern commercial or one DNC staffer saying something mean about a candidate in an e-mail. Corruption is when a DNC staffer illegally hacks into that unliked candidate’s e-mail to release targeted nasty things to make it look like said candidate was corrupt with the tacit approval of the head of the DNC. Corruption is Nixon having a slush fund of campaign donations to pay for dirty tricks.
The people who hate Hillary Clinton so much that they have helped destroy this democracy have failed to understand the difference. Both on the far right and on the left.
And they are the ones who want us to forget about the corruption actions during the election because it’s all water under the bridge and why should we bother investigating corruption unless we have 100% inconvertible proof that the outcome would have been different had the illegal acts not occurred.
Sadly, without a full investigation, we don’t even know the extent of this election’s corruption. Just like we would never have known the extent of Nixon’s illegal CREEP activities if Duane and Michael’s “let’s bash the losing candidate and move on” had been what Democrats and the American public demanded in 1973.
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Who here that is old enough to have experienced it has forgotten Watergate?
You got the wrong culprits.
Y’all amaze me with your ability to twist what I write, put words in my mouth and on and on. Ay ay ay ay ay!
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I apologize for all my transgressions
My Russian control agent, Dmitri, made me do it, but I now see the error of my ways, and will make sure to denounce The Devil when in church.
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Rosemarie Foy writes: “Why isn’t the election being nullified, given this discovery??”
Turning the Titanic comes to mind. But my guess is, even if they tried (try?), they’d need some rock-solid evidence that Russia’s actions actually DID change the election, and not (merely or even) reasonable inferences, in order to do so. And no one can inspect everyone’s motivations for voting for or against anyone.
In this case, I think Russian interference did change the election because to say naught doesn’t pass my critical smell test which sends up automatic winces every time I think: maybe it didn’t. And more, I think that Rump was privy to it all along. So I go with the reasonable inferences–but not without a tsk tsk since, from the beginning, a respect for evidence has always been so “evident” in the rhetorical renderings of Rump.
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Agree. But the investigation – which should include people testifying under oath in the hopes that there is a John Dean on Trump’s staff with a modicum of love for country over love for money and power who will not lie under oath.
Or let them all lie under oath and when the truth comes out — as it eventually will — let them all be thrown in jail. But get the high and low officials of Trump’s campaign and his big funders with ties to Russia under oath to answer questions about all contacts with any people connected to Putin and his intelligence services.
What did they know and when did they know it? Under oath.
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Putin “elected” Trump? No. That is a ridiculous assertion. Wanting Trump elected is not “electing” Trump. Using media to push your own opinions for public consumption is not “electing” Trump. The U.S. does the same thing to its own people — it’s called propaganda. More influential than Russian propaganda in U.S. politics is AMERICAN PROPAGANDA. Where is the report on how U.S. propaganda influenced the election?
How noble of “Russia” to expose the truth about the U.S. government’s own operations to its public through the WikiLeaks documents. If WikiLeaks was indeed initiated by “Putin,” which is still taken as a matter of faith and not proof, the WikiLeaks documents are the democratic party’s own operations in their very own words. The Russians tried to “undermine faith in our democracy” by making our government transparent, how bizzare. Turns out, we’re not a democracy! We’re an oligarchy. Thanks, Putin, for letting more people know.
I’m sure the Clinton campaign never told lies to propagandize and indoctrinate the public. They never used the media as an arm of their campaign. They were truthful about Bernie Sanders, about Hillary Clinton, about the problems we face as a nation and the reality of U.S. politics.
But the WikiLeaks “propaganda” proved that… U.S. politics is built on U.S. propaganda.
Surely the establishment never tried to build itself up in the public eye, and get their own people elected… truth or lies be damned? SURELY THE RUSSIANS ARE THE PROBLEM HERE, and this is not a charade to divert attention from the establishment’s own failings in governance.
We are a democracy. We are a democracy. The democratic party cares about me. We are a democracy. If I repeat it enough times (and don’t listen to Putin) it will come true.
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And the illegal actions of All the President’s Men didn’t elect Richard Nixon. Therefore, had Ed Detective been in charge, he would have demanded that the Watergate hearings be shut down immediately.
FYI, Ed Detective: There is a difference between illegal actions and negative campaigning. You investigate what contacts a campaign had with a perpetrator when a CRIME is committed that benefits one candidate. What did the candidate’s men know and when did they know it? One of the hallmarks of democracy is that citizens recognize that very important distinction. I’m sorry that you don’t.
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^^^and the fact that you condone illegal hacking against your political enemies speaks volumes. Can you imagine the illegal hacking that the Democrats could have done if they WERE corrupt like the people you give a pass too? We’d know what was in Trump’s tax returns — if they had the ethics that you seem to be condoning because after all, “blah blah propaganda blah blah Wikileaks”.
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How did you get this: “And the illegal actions of All the President’s Men didn’t elect Richard Nixon. Therefore, had Ed Detective been in charge, he would have demanded that the Watergate hearings be shut down immediately.”
…from what I said?
You are, as seems customary for you, responding to a straw man.
What I actually said is that Diane’s statement about Putin “electing” Trump is incorrect, and the complaints about Russian influence are overblown and hypocritical. The argument is that Putin “influenced” the election — however, Putin and “the Russians” were ultimately a minor influence on the election. American propaganda had far greater an influence, but there will be no government reports calling out the U.S. media regarding its “corruption” of “democracy.” And there will be little mention in the media about how all the “intelligence” agencies have a history of lying to the public for political purposes, including the “confidence” that Iraq had WMDs.
This report, and the outrage over it, is a nice political cover for the fact that democracy has already “failed” in our country, long before “Trump” and “Putin” happened in 2016. It is a faux outrage. The problems are right here at home, in your own government, in your own media. And part of the Russian “interference” was to show us, TRUTHFULLY, exactly that! The accuracy of the WikiLeaks documents remains undisputed, even by the “intelligence” agencies and the democratic party who would most love to invalidate their authenticity.
You don’t seem to know it, but your own government is highly responsible for acts of criminality and injustice. Your own media is a bunch of frauds and liars. Your own democratic primary was rigged by its own party and the U.S. mainstream media. U.S. government has interfered in foreign elections, governments, economies, and societies as a matter of regular foreign policy. The U.S. political system, electoral system, and other systems like the healthcare-to-bankruptcy-pipeline, and the tuition-to-debt-pipeline, are jokes and cancers on the entire first world.
But surely, the Russians are the problem. THEY stole our democracy.
I never said the problem was the investigation into Russian interference. I’m saying it is a minor problem in comparison to other problems, and is being utilized to cover for the real failure of U.S. institutions.
You have once again illustrated an inability to read what people are actually saying, and a tendency to project your assumptions onto others. I have no faith in your ability to argue clearly with me, so once again, do not expect me to respond any more to your ‘attempts’ at sensibility. You are still just a troll to me.
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Ed, please take a deep breath and count to ten. On the one hand, you infer opinions about NYC’s comments that just aren’t there. On the other, you have very definitive views about issues that don’t stand up to objective scrutiny.
First, you assume things as concrete fact about which you cannot possibly have the depth of certainty you claim to have. For example, when you state that “complaints about Russian influence are overblown and hypocritical” you actually cannot possibly have enough information available (nor do I) to conclude this as a categorical fact.
Second, you justify and absolve hacking because “[t]he accuracy of WikiLeaks” was “TRUTHFUL[ ].”
Let’s take the second point first. Yes it was, as you say, truthful. But the information that came out was not a surprise to anyone who had been following the election. It was patently obvious, for example, that Debbie Wasserman Schultz and her loyal DNC staffers were “putting their fingers on the scale,” so to speak, in favor of Hillary Clinton. I also saw evidence of this with my local Democratic Party office. The other information was perhaps embarrassing to certain individuals, but there was certainly no sinister nor illegal activity revealed. The scandal that many chose to overlook, as you do, is that the real scandal was the fact that illegal agents—it’s really immaterial if they were foreign or domestic—broke into privileged information accounts. (Hence, I believe, NYC’s Watergate analogy: it was not the break in that brought Nixon down, it was the use of governmental resources to attempt to cover it up.)
Now let’s go to the first point. What is not “overblown and hypocritical” is the fact that Russian hacking resources tried to influence the election. True, as Clapper testified, we will never know how that translated into voter outcomes. What is indisputable, however, is that the Trump campaign went into the final weeks of the campaign not with the goal to appeal to their supporters, but instead focused virtually all their resources to depress voter turnout among potential Clinton supporters. Their focus was not committed supporters; they would not waver anymore than the Trump true believers, regardless of what the core motivation of either side’s supporters were.
Their focus, to put it charitably, was “low information voters.” This meant if even a very small fraction of voters who harbored some sort of reservations about Hillary Clinton could be discouraged from not voting or even, for those improbable few who might switch from Clinton to Trump, their strategy would have been successful. That’s where the Russian hacking comes in. There can be no questioning that their intention of discouraging voter turnout aligned perfectly with the Trump campaign’s strategy of the closing weeks of the election; to increase Clinton’s negatives to the point where enough people decided it wasn’t worth it to vote for her.
What we know about Putin is that he harbors ill will to the U.S. because of the demise of the Soviet Union. He sees U.S.-Russian relations as a zero-sum game: when one gets stronger or more prosperous, the other goes in the opposite direction. There is ample evidence of that he is trying to recoup as much of the former Soviet Union as he can. The taking of Crimea, the war against Ukraine, and the palpable fear that the Baltic States have of Russian military is a part of this. So is, for that matter, the prestige associated with the Olympics, the World Cup, and the goal of the athletic doping scandal (see your history of how the Soviet Union and East Germany used their Olympic programs to do the same, this is not new).
People like me and many who voted for Clinton were motivated in large part to vote for her because we perceived Trump as a clear and present danger to our civic health, economy and national security. As a strong Sanders supporter, I was able to discern to my satisfaction that Clinton would be a far better choice and would not endanger fundamental American values and institutions. Whatever financial scandals she may have had in her past pale to the wanton disregard for workers, the law, and the potential quasi-privileged royalty that Trump threatens to institute. I’m sure you pride yourself in your knowledge about the Founders of our nation and the Framers of the Constitution. Their fundamental goal—indeed that reason why we became an independent nation—was a governing power based on lineage or privilege of birth. That is what we are now reverting to when Trump ignores nepotism or conflict of interest laws. We also see it in his choices of his cabinet and the obvious goal of politicizing the civil service and other non-political functions. This weakens our nation and fulfills the most cherished wish of Putin and his worldview. There is nothing in Hillary Clinton’s record, regardless of how much one might hate her, that even approaches the mindset of what we now can call Trumpism.
That’s why Russian hacking matters. It is not trivial or “overblown.” Nothing that has been revealed since the election has lessened those fears. In fact, they have only been geometrically increased, something I did not think could be possible last November 9.
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It appears the Russian hysteria has contributed to the inability of many blog users here to read and understand what I’m saying.
Where did I say “hacking is OK” (which is a complex issue) or “breaking the law is fine” (which is also a complex issue). My basic argument is something else entirely. Russia is less a threat to US politics than US politics, and this “report” is weak sauce and is being used to divert attention from more fundamental flaws in our system.
Yes, I can certainly say that it is overblown and out of proportion, due to myself reading the report, following the election very closely, and monitoring everyone’s reactions to this report (including how most people commenting and in hysteria did not even read it).
You are the one making assumptions here.
Don’t waste your time on drawn out strawmans.
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Ed,
While you may think the report is overblown, I think–as a citizen and a historian–that the intervention of a foreign power to influence our election is the most momentous event of the past half century or more in our domestic politics. Considering that Trump plans to abolish Obamacare, ignore climate change, eliminate gun control, cut funding for scientific research, and spend billions for school privatization, this is a calamity for our society and our future.
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Diane, can you tell me how Putin “elected” Trump? Did he change the votes? Did he do anything more than a mild amount of what our own media does?
What about all the other things that “elected” Trump? Wealth inequality and the economic recession? A failure of U.S. politics? Student debt? Hillary and her terrible campaign? The voters? Jill Stein and Green Party?
But “Putin” did it. Please provide how, because the report does not satisfy.
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Ed,
Seventeen intelligence agencies agreed that Putin ordered the hacking of emails from DNC and Podesta. They were given to Wikileaks to release every day so that there was almost never any discussion of substantive issues. No discussion of climate change or federal support for public health and research on pandemics. No discussion of anything but emails. Russian agents disseminated fake news. Employed trolls. You don’t think it mattered. That’s your opinion. But we now have the most ignorant neofascist with the most unqualified cabinet in history. You hate Hillary so much that you would like to continue bashing her but she is no longer relevant. What matters now is that we have the most reactionary, most anti-knowledge, most anti-science, most unqualified cabinet in our history. Putin is thrilled and Trump is already boasting about what good friends they will be.
Remember this if Putin invades the Baltic nations and Trump says it is not our business. Then Poland, then Hungary. God forbid.
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I’m sorry to see that diane didn’t remove/deleted my rebuttal to this post. There was nothing I can see that was against her rule of civility, in it.
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didn’t approve, I mean.
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Ed Detective writes: “Did he (Putin) do anything more than a mild amount of what our own media does?
What about all the other things that ‘elected’ Trump?”
Two teaching moments for you: First, what media does and what a foreign country does differs in fundamental ways. Second, A high public response to a specific news event doesn’t mean everyone has abandoned what they know about other events–(tongue in cheek) even for us on this site.
The third thing is, your reading Putin’s and the press’ actions through the same qualitative lens (the press is only “mildly” different) reveals a certain lack of nuance in your thinking. That, and your assumption that anyone here thinks it’s ALL Putin’s fault, tells me that perhaps you are projecting your own lack of nuance on others here–and that you haven’t been reading the posts here. Maybe it would be helpful to do so lest you further insult our intelligence and further reveal the limitations of your own.
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The title of this post is literally “Putin elected Trump.” That is a lot of the outrage over this report, and the argument being made by now, by lots of people, is that Hillary Clinton would be president if not for Russia/Putin. You may not think “Russian interference” single-handedly put Trump in the white house, but apparently millions of people do, maybe even Diane Ravitch. Real oversight of you, there.
“Two teaching moments for you: First, what media does and what a foreign country does differs in fundamental ways.”
Wow, what a lesson. I certainly didn’t know that. My point was that the excent of Russian’s “influence” was the leak of U.S. official’s own emails, and a much smaller influence of their own media on the U.S. public — as stated in the report.
“Second, A high public response to a specific news event doesn’t mean everyone has abandoned what they know about other events–(tongue in cheek) even for us on this site.”
Of course it doesn’t mean that. And yet the title of this post is “Putin elected Trump,” which is the argument I was responding to.
“The third thing is, your reading Putin’s and the press’ actions through the same qualitative lens (the press is only “mildly” different) reveals a certain lack of nuance in your thinking.”
I think you still miss the point I was making. Putin’s “actions” affected our election much less than our own press did. Understand?
You are being much more “insulting” than I have been.
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Ed Detective,
The Rusdians played our media like a violin.
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I have heard a story from several well-informed people that the Russians have compromising photographs of Trump, taken in Moscow in 2012 when he was there for the Miss Universe contest. http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/12/russian-intelligence-trump-moscow
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Ed, where did I write “hacking is OK” or “breaking the law is fine”? Next you’ll be accusing me of being a Bilderberger or in favor of putting fluoride in the water supply to brainwash our youth. Even with truckloads of bales I couldn’t keep up with the straw men you accuse me of building.
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Greg, I was paraphrasing your strawman accusations toward me.
You specifically said: “Second, you justify and absolve hacking because…”
No, I didn’t simply “justify and absolve hacking.” That was beside the point and I never addressed the justification of the hacking, which, as I said, is a complex issue.
You said: “The scandal that many chose to overlook, as you do, is that the real scandal was the fact that illegal agents…”
You said I overlook the “scandal,” and in that process, I therefore think it’s “OK” the “illegal” agents did what they did. AKA, break the law. Once again, I did not make a black-and-white statement about it being simply “OK” to break the law.
A suggestion to all here is to think beyond mere bounds of legality. Legal things can be horrible to do, and illegal things can be anywhere from terrible to not a bad thing at all. Just because hacking “illegal” took place, that doesn’t make it necessarily “right,” but at the same time it doesn’t automatically invalidate whatever came out of the illegal act.
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FBI Finds Nixon Aides Sabotaged Democrats
By Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward
Washington Post Writers
Tuesday, October 10, 1972; Page A01
“FBI agents have established that the Watergate bugging incident stemmed from a massive campaign of political spying and sabotage conducted on behalf of President Nixon’s re-election and directed by officials of the White House and the Committee for the Re-election of the President……..
Perhaps the most significant finding of the whole Watergate investigation, the investigators say, was that numerous specific acts of political sabotage and spying were all traced to this “offensive security,” which was conceived and directed in the White House and by President Nixon’s re-election committee.
The investigators said that a major purpose of the sub rosa activities was to create so much confusion, suspicion and dissension that the Democrats would be incapable of uniting after choosing a presidential nominee.”
But Ed Detective says “Just because hacking “illegal” took place, that doesn’t make it necessarily “right,” but at the same time it doesn’t automatically invalidate whatever came out of the illegal act.”
Ed Detective, you haven’t yet said if you think the hacking and dirty tricks that were specifically designed to aide the Trump campaign should be investigated or not. Should they? Because if Watergate had never been investigated, we would be left thinking today that nothing had really happened that was so bad.
Here is another quote from the 1972 article about Watergate:
“‘Intelligence work” is normal during a campaign and is said to be carried out by both political parties. But federal investigators said what they uncovered being done by the Nixon forces is unprecedented in scope and intensity.”
“UNPRECEDENTED IN SCOPE AND INTENSITY”
That’s why Watergate needed to be investigated. That’s why Trump’s campaigns ties to Russia need to be investigated.
Either you agree it should be investigated thoroughly or you don’t. And no one knows what it is you believe, Ed Detective, but you certainly seem to keep posting as if you don’t believe the hacks and planting of fake stories and Russian interference is worthy of investigation. But those actions were EXACTLY what the Watergate investigation were all about. Were the actions of CREEP all a big nothing to you? And if not, why aren’t you just as outraged at what happened during this campaign and demanding a thorough investigation instead of bashing the people who want that.
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NYC public school parent and Ed Detective: “But Ed Detective says ‘Just because hacking “illegal” took place, that doesn’t make it necessarily “right,” but at the same time it doesn’t automatically invalidate whatever came out of the illegal act.’”
In this case, I think it does invalidate what came from it. You are talking about what information was leaked. Others are talking about the act of sabotage that leaked it. When you cheat in a game and “win,” or dope in the Olympics and your athletes “win,” it invalidates those wins. Similarly, if Trump won by sabotage, then his win is invalidated.
Even if you don’t consider the actual voting, I think there is enough Putin evidence to throw a HUGE question of validation over the entire election (and I think, considering its timing, it DID throw it over–and I don’t cared WHAT actually did come from the leaks themselves–there’s no comparison. My guess is that the full truth about the sabotage will come out sooner or later, including the question of Trump’s complicity in it.
But as Diane reflects in her notes, we don’t need that to know–by everything that Trump is and does–that Trump’s major method is cheating; that he fooled a good part of the electorate, and that he is “not ready for the prime time” of the presidency–on any level of consideration. If he were of his right mind, and considering himself for the presidency, he would have fired himself a long time ago. We’re quickly returning to tribalism.
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Trump is a fraud, a liar, a con man.
His election was illegitimate.
Those on the left who continue to insist the Russians did not influence the outcome are enabling Trump.
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GregB: Nicely said–especially this: “Clinton would be a far better choice and would not endanger fundamental American values and institutions. Whatever financial scandals she may have had in her past pale to the wanton disregard for workers, the law, and the potential quasi-privileged royalty that Trump threatens to institute.”
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Thanks for taking up the baton, Ed Detective (wink, wink)!!
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Stop making excuses for Trump.
Wink, wink
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I thought I was alone in the deep despair that I feel.
Hillary Clinton was the one we elected.
Putin gave us this orange baboon.
Now, we have to fight him at every chance we get… we the people!
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We’ve been hacking elections for more than a century
http://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2017/01/08/been-hacking-elections-for-more-than-century/okjziXPQDiegx53ABtpUOO/story.html?s_campaign=bostonglobe%3Asocialflow%3Atwitter
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Linda Try writing something like that in Russia, about Russia.
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And your comment has what to do with the price of tea in China, Catherine?
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Linda,
That makes me feel very content that Putin hacked our election and installed his puppet.
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Diane and Linda: (and Duane Swacker) About the Boston Globe article and my earlier response to it:
Nice article. However, it should be no surprise to us here how oligarchs and their corporations encroach on government(s) and try to bash it out of existence with their money, slick, and sleaze. It’s just that we’ve been focused on education.
Some years ago (2005), I was enlightened about this from seeing John Perkins on BookTV. talk about his book: “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man.” Now he has a new book (BookTV.org MAY 28, 2016) called: “The New Confessions of an Economic Hit Man” (see subheading below).
In Perkins’ book, he talks about corporate takeovers (using “economic operators”) that have a country’s natural resources in their sites–and so true democracies (as the Globe article suggests) are anathema to these corporations’ goals and their “economic operators.” They’d rather own a dictator (resonant with
Henry Kissinger’s famous statement?) And so democracies are labeled “socialist” or “communist” with the hopes of raising fears from the cold war and before. (Red Alert to Those Concerned: those fears are dying, and new generations are coming forward–you’ll have to find another way to demonize democracy.)
But my earlier comment to Duane was a quick response after reading the article, and it was late. But, on reflection, the comment holds: (Try writing what the Globe wrote in Russia, about Russia.)
First, our oligarch-to-democratic-government relationship speaks to an ongoing failure of our democracy–ultimately in the people and in our representatives. What is different from Russia presently is that WE still have our Constitutional Rights as is evident again in the Globe article where (I hate to even write this) the writer is not intimidated out of writing, or already imprisoned or dead–precisely because of the ACTIVE PRESENCE OF freedom of speech and press, the rule of law, due process, and habeas corpus.
It’s the threat to those things above that take this whole conversation WAY beyond party politics and into the history of the rise and fall of civilizations. WE can still distinguish the ideals and practices embedded in the U.S. Constitution from corporations–but not for long if the present movement continues on its path. Again, try to write such an article in Russia about Putin. WE can still write and talk with relative impunity. It’s not over yet.
https://www.c-span.org/video/?406401-1/new-confessions-economic-hit-man
VIDEO BOOKTV SUBHEADING: “John Perkins talked about his book ‘The New Confessions of an Economic Hit Man,’ in which he shares stories about the work that economic operators do to cheat countries around the world out of trillions of dollars. … Perkins’ 2005 book, ‘Confessions of an Economic Hit Man..”
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A post-script to my note about Perkins’ book “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man”: (probably below this note now.)
I think when we talk about “WE” in such articles as the Globe, identifying that WE as the U.S. Government alone, with no corrupting influences by corporate oligarchs going on, is naive at best and misleading at the least. But of course that’s the way most of us understand it, well as most of the world who are affected by it and who, without that crucial distinction in place, view the US as, at best, duplicitous and at worst, wholly hypocritical and dangerous. WE need to understand that WE are at least in an ongoing struggle of principle between global corporations and democratic governments, including our own.
I speak for myself, but also I think for many of us: I am indeed outraged at Putin’s actions–as are so many others in the world when the undifferentiated WE do what WE can to destroy democracies–as they and we should be. But in fact, though multi-national corporations often work under the umbrella of our good name, the benefits of that work are not going to the U.S. people or to our government. They are going to those corporations. In fact, our name has been sullied on this account for a very long time.
So to call such actions as the Globe writer exposes for their readers actions of the United States Government is not telling the whole truth of the matter.
And we should continue to be outraged–we join in the outrage of all people whose democracies are threatened by the powers that be–don’t we?
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From today’s NYT
“The country’s highly partisan politics, with cable channels and websites devoted to pressing an agenda for the fully convinced and the half-convinced, made it more vulnerable to any disclosures that could capture a news cycle. Add to that the uniquely Russian combination of covert espionage and the disclosure of the emails it harvested, as well as the release of “kompromat” — compromising information about politicians and policy makers — and “fake news,” a tactic not above American officials at times.”
Sounds familiar, anyone? Gary Hart, anyone?
Way before the internet, the US already published compromising info about opponents.
Way before the internet the US already meddled in the politics of other nations.
Seems a bit hypocritical to be so indignant.
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Rudy,
In Gary Hart’s era, politicians had a sense of shame.
Trump has none. There are nude shots of the First Lady all over the Internet.
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@ Ed Detective
Diane did not approve your post?
@ Diane
How do you respond to the 2013 repeal of the Smith Mundt Act? This is at least the third time I’ve mentioned it but not a peep. Why is that? Taking on the issue of Russian propaganda when you refuse to admit the obvious doesn’t make sense….unless you are here as a part of that game as well.
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Maybe she is busy with real facts!
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Thank you. I needed some humor!!
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Well, then , if it is laughter you want… here is this post at GQ.
Laugh away… but observable reality is hard to beat.
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Well, here are a few of the facts from my rebuttal.
There is no direct evidence in the report of Putin/Russia initiating wikileaks, simply a “reassurance” by intelligence agencies which have a history of lying to the public. Nor, from what I can tell, was it a report by “17” intelligence agencies. It was signed by “three” agencies, the FBI, CIA, and NSA, who are far from innocent if we’re concerned about criminality.
American government has meddled in foreign affairs more than any other government. CIA is more guilty than Russia of their own charges.
The WikiLeaks exposed operations of government and campaign officials in their own words.
The Russian media reached far, far, far, fewer people than U.S. media. Therefore, if the charge is “propaganda,” U.S. media is far more responsible than “Russia Today” for “interfering” in the U.S. election. Just because the lies and imbalanced coverage came from within our own borders doesn’t make this any less true.
The Clinton campaign also employed “trolls,” planted stories with the media, and had political allies who spread lies and broke rules in Clinton’s favor.
This report, and the hysteria surrounding it (coming from establishment pundits), are being used to divert attention from the failure of U.S. institutions and officials.
If Russia goes “war mode” on the world (as if the U.S. hasn’t already), because of Trump, the question still remains of whose fault that is. That Russia “elected” Trump is assumed and accused, not proven.
I am not a Russia defender, a Putin defender, or a Trump defender.
I am a defender of the truth, which is necessary for liberty and justice. Criticism of American government, and the media, and the public’s hasty reaction to governemt and media, is not support for fascism. In fact, it is necessary to combat fascism.
Looks like that will be my last post here for a while.
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Trump is #notmypresident
He is #Putinspuppet
You will never see the two words “president” and “Trump” in consecutive order coming from me
There comes a time to call out demagogues. That time is now.
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Yes, he is a demagogue, but moe than that… there is something very Wrong with that man!
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Ed Detective: that’s okay–I was naive enough to think you might understand my own notes–for instance, that most here are not one-issue ideologues or simpletons who reject quickly and on principle what they don’t “like.” And yet you keep implying so in your notes. That’s your straw man and you seem to love it.
Ed–to believe IN EVERY CASE that someone is lying or not lying is equally uncritical. I know they have lied before Congress before. In this case, however, I happen to believe the intelligence offered before Congress knowing that they cannot always give the sources of evidence.
Though I don’t think it will make a dent in your straw-man idea, I’d like to fill that in: If Trump’s private communications had been released, they’d be damning. But we don’t need those to make our reasonable judgments about him. Diane’s succinct summations reflect my own thoughts on this matter–the reasons for these judgments are all over this site, in videos and direct quotes, and in the general fascist tenor of what’s presently going on. But you know that. Those judgments are also based on years of observation that continue to reflect a very sick individual who has become, in our political environment, the answer to the long-suppressed need for an ideologue by many in our culture.
The “topper” of that whole tenor is the recent call by Kelly Ann Conway (I think it was on CNN–but it came from her own mouth) to not listen to what Trump says, but to “know what’s in his heart.” Imagine what reasonable Republicans would say if that were anyone else’s claim–and they’d be right–but such critique doesn’t seem to apply to Trump?
None of that, however, would absolve anything wrong or illegal that was revealed about Clinton in the wikileaks (as you seem to think everyone here thinks). Nor should such revelations from either side be blown out of proportion and gleefully waved before already-rabid crowds and with the frightening (and illegal) add-on to throw someone in jail. (But of course we should know what’s in Trump’s heart–it makes my teeth hurt to even write that.)
No matter–no one can get to the truth of the “Why” question by abstracting the content from its context or cause, namely, from either the motivations or the recent activities of Putin and then Julian Assange. There are a load of reasons we can point to in order to answer that question: Why did Clinton lose the election? And we should always start with the fact of the actual numbers of the election. Within that one frame, she lost because of the outmoded electoral college.
But from there, we can know how close the vote was within the electoral framework in each state.
From there, we can know that any one of several other issues can easily have swayed the election ever-so-slightly–and so enough in the above context–to change the end-outcome. From there, we cannot get into each person’s voting motivations. However, we can know that November surprises are not new to our election process and that they have been hugely influential, and often were unfair, at the least because they afforded no time for reflection or critique.
From that question and then from our present knowledge, we can easily say that wikileaks is only a conduit for Putin’s intentions of swaying the elections. If the contents were damning, Putin and Assange were responsible for their exposure. Because the votes were so close, it is reasonable to me to think that Putin’s initiating activities could easily have been the “straw” (so to speak) that actually swayed the election by that exposed content going to those motivations of the people–and those in the context of both the (a) absence of exposures from Trump’s communications and (b) the timing. The slow leaks occurred, with exceptional quality of selection and timing. Though built on Comey and several other factors, it easily could have swayed many people’s minds as they approached the ballot box.
Further, my view is that several critiques of the Clinton campaign were correctly drawn, and that Obama is right that aspects of the base were neglected. But again, the actual election numbers and the closeness of each of the electoral results in each state tell me that this is probably only the difference between (1) her winning by a slim margin and (2) her having experienced an landslide.
Now go ahead with your straw-man analyses.
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Dear Catherine;
Thank you for taking the time to explain to someone who makes such an argument, what he is missing. Your argument is wonderful and speaks of a fine intellect.
Most people are impervious to the facts… confused and accustomed to the tactics of the spin doctors. Everything points to the interference, and one cannot expect the intelligence services to offer the ‘how they did it.”
What ED is missing, is how our allies, who work with us and depend on the sophistication and authority of our intelligence SERVICE, are going to react when the PRESIDENT— forgetting that he is not at a rally or running for office— degrades truth because he wants to SPIN the FACTS that HE LOST…. not a landslide for him… he is in that office by luck and malfeasance.
BTW, I write at Oped news, and if YOU want to email me and talk to me privately, as a number of people who write here, do, then go to http://www.opednews.com/author/author40790.html
AND MESSAGE ME WITH YOUR EMAIL. I will respond.
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“…degrades truth because he wants to SPIN the FACTS that HE LOST…. not a landslide for him… he is in that office by luck and malfeasance…”
Malfeasance – defined as wrongdoing, especially by a public official.
So, which public official are you accusing of wrong-doing now?
Luck? Yes.
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LOL!
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Susan Lee Schwartz: Thank you for your words and invitation.
If I may, an afterthought to my earlier note–if Ed and others here **really wanted the whole truth** as they profess to do, they would understand that in the context of an election, the timing of the leaks (which I mention in that note but did not emphasize), was deliberately too close to the election to allow a measured truth to emerge–measured by the voters with some time to think about it and with some other truthful input. That thought would have been in the context of the election as a whole–unhurried–and revealed in relation to Trump–and the correlative absence of his taxes and his record of communications. The whole truth would have emerged in the context of discussions with those who might add some relevant substance as well as information from those who would counter Trump’s gleeful overblown and twisted use of them.
As it was, the revelations leaked, one and a time, just before the American people were to vote; as a culmination of a decades-old barrage of over-blown and even vicious bad-mouthing; just after Comey, and with only enough time to garner the un-tempered immediate response of the American people–from shock and intense fear and doubt, rather than from thoughtful consideration from whence the whole truth commonly emerges. That was not truth. It was what it was intended to be: RED MEAT for Trump’s supporters and FEAR MONGERING for fence-sitting voters.
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All the authentic observers of this election, the ones who have the facts and the ability to analyze, agree with what you just said.
Our election was compromized period.
We now have a very dangerous, stupid, and psychotic person in the oval office.
period.
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Susan–yes, indeed. My hope is that he will self-destruct, in part from the conflicting personalities in his group of similarly insane groupies, but not take us all with him.
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Susan Lee Schwartz: I get:
“This site can’t be reached–www.opednews.com took too long to respond.”
Am I doing something wrong–I’m certainly no technical whiz.
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I had no trouble when I clicked on it.
here is the address again of my author’s page
http://www.opednews.com/author/author40790.html
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Susan Lee Schwartz: Okay–it worked this time, thank you.
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Catherine, I am not going to read much past someone’s first line when they say something like “I was naive enough to think you might understand my own notes.”
I addressed your impression of me somehow thinking that “most here are not one-issue ideologues or simpletons who reject quickly and on principle what they don’t “like.” I didn’t say or imply such a thing — and yet it is true, as I said before (and you’ve seemed to ignore), that millions of people — some of them right here on this blog, including Diane Ravitch it seems — believe that Trump wouldn’t be in the White House if it weren’t for Russia/Putin.
Which is a fantasy, and a politically/personally convenient one. First it was Jill Stein, then Comey, now Russia, maybe Bernie himself — it was always blaming anything but Hillary or her campaign, anything but the media, anything but who and what was really most responsiblefor the way this election turned out.
I’m not going to continue addressing “why,” over and over, that the title of this blog post is a fantasy. But even if “Russian propaganda” had a minor influence on the election results, there were hundreds of other things that had minor influence on the election results, up to Hillary Clinton herself and her terrible campaigning, and the way the DNC decided to “boost Trump” as one of their “pied piper candidates” (google it if you don’t know about this) because they thought Trump would be easy to beat, and the way the U.S. media is far more influential than Russian media (which was often highly critical of Trump), and that the US MEDIA gave Trump ~$2 billion of free coverage. Where’s the “intelligence report” and all the outrage about these other things?
The ‘Russia’ report is weak and is being used to distract from issues that matter more and played more influence in the election. My entire point. Blaming Russia is not looking at this clearly.
You don’t get to pick one thing and say that’s the problem that “got Trump elected.” YOU may not be thinking that way — and I don’t think that way — but some people ARE, and that is the allegation I have addressed, and those are the people I have addressed from my first comment on this page.
Please do not comment toward me anymore if you do not think I can “understand”what you say. I didn’t even read past your first paragraph.
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Ed Detective: Okay. Your simpleton straw man is again evident in this last post. Is that short enough for you?
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There’s a difference in claiming lots of people are making a simpleton argument, now, than calling them all simply simpletons. Obviously I wouldn’t have been reading/commenting on this blog for years, mostly in agreement with most posters here, if I thought that way.
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Susan said: “What ED is missing, is how our allies, who work with us and depend on the sophistication and authority of our intelligence SERVICE, are going to react when the PRESIDENT— forgetting that he is not at a rally or running for office— degrades truth because he wants to SPIN the FACTS that HE LOST…. not a landslide for him… he is in that office by luck and malfeasance.”
Oh so that’s the thing I’m missing? I never even mention Trump except when I say that he’s a liar — and that it’s the establishment’s fault for him getting into office — yet you still seem to believe that I’m siding with Trump. Enough said.
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Catherine said: “My hope is that he will self-destruct,”
Ah, so you are a troll. Got it.
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Too many movies, I guess, but self-destruction is never safe for the ones standing around when that happens!
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Unless you were talking about Trump, not me, in which case I agree and apologize. The reply order got mixed up, and I thought you were replying to Susan’s comment toward me.
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Ed Detective Right–I was talking about Trump–I try not to use pronouns–that’s why.
Onward.
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@ Susan Lee Schwartz
Smith Mundt Act is a fact, Susan. Do your homework. http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/05/congress-propaganda
Board of Governers are calling the staged shots. Look at them. All appointees of the President with exception of Kerry who has always been a Hillbot.
@ Diane
Why does the bitter truth of the DNC emails leave HRC supports silent or deflecting? Have the ethics of the establishment sunk so low? Is this the way children should learn to deal with wrongdoing – deflect and point fingers at another problem – real or staged?
This about an establishment caught with its pants down.
Every time you bring up Russia/CIA/FBI Political Play and here’s who is and is not buying it.
If you voted for Hillary you are a “Russia did it” and the “Content of DNC deception is beside the point” (It IS the point)! If you voted for anyone other than Hillary you are not buying the propaganda. Odds are in the favor of the masses. Are there any Bernie fans who are buying this hogwash?
Love the flip floppers on Assange – from the Left and from the Right! Get in line for what completes your narrative.
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I am a founding member of the Bernie campaign and I went to high school with him. Do not pretend to know me, or tele to do my homework. You may think that you know something that I do not, and may even have information that I do not, but YOU may not speak to me in that manner.
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Bernie’s take on why Hillary Lost. Truth to Power. #KeepinItReal
http://www.npr.org/2017/01/06/508385203/bernie-sanders-says-trump-won-because-democrats-are-out-of-touch
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