Russian meddling??

Though it's fun, I've been skeptical about this from the start. (Yes, @Dr. Krieg will doubtless lose no time in decorating this post with a facepalm or a stooopid.)

It's not that I think Vladimir's actually a Nice'n'Cuddly Guy once you get past his spook exterior. I've simply never understood what them Roose-keys are supposed to have done. Could have done to influence the election. Much as Putin would have liked to.

And I think a lot of anti-Donaldista Americans (and I know droves of 'em) just don't want to accept the fact that Donald actually won. By a hair of course. And thanks to the pathetically undemocratic Electoral College to be sure. But he still won within the parameters of the system in place, which the Dems would be defending to the last ditch if Hillary, rather than Donald, had been elected with a sharp minority of the popular vote.

Anyway, I think this piece by Andrew Levine (no Trumpista he) puts it very well.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/03...it-matter-if-there-actually-is-a-there-there/
"(...) The Russia connection story could, like a magic bullet, change everything overnight. I say “could” because, at this point, it is far from clear that there actually is enough of a Russia connection to keep the story from falling apart, even in our post-truth world.

But if it turns out that there is – if there is something genuinely scandalous there beyond the fabrications of the Democratic Party’s propaganda machine — Republicans might find themselves with no choice but to jump ship.

If and when it comes to that, they wouldn’t be all that reluctant — they hate Trump too, and Pence is once of their own.

At this point, there is no predicting how the Russia connection story will bear up under scrutiny or what its consequences will be. Trump’s victory has put the world so far out of joint that it no longer seems even worth trying to estimate probabilities.

How ironic it would be for anything good to come out of the Russophobic nonsense that Team Hillary introduced into the contest for the presidency and that they still promote. What sore losers they are! It could happen, though, and however pointless it may be to speculate on the odds, I like to think that the chances are no worse than fair to good.

At this point, all we know for sure about Russian meddling is that the intelligence community says it took place.

Should we take them at their word? They have been known, after all, to cook their analyses to serve political ends, and they have a proven record of unreliability. Thanks to Wikileaks, we also now know that they are not nearly as competent or, with regard to privacy rights, as upstanding as they purport to be.

But, when it comes to meddling, they surely know, or ought to know, whereof they speak. The CIA practically invented interfering in the elections of other countries.

In any case, getting Americans to think that the Russians are up to something is child’s play, no matter how reliable, or not, the evidence may be.

There are many reasons why.

For one, it gives Trump’s opponents something besides all the obvious things to use against him. The idea that Russian meddling helped Trump win diminishes the legitimacy of his victory and therefore of the Trump presidency itself. (…)

American meddling in Ukraine has been especially egregious. The conventional wisdom, of course, is that it is Putin’s meddling – it would be more honest to say his reactions and countermeasures – that justify vilifying him and making an enemy of the country he leads.

Had Hillary won the election, as everyone thought she would, Russia would have had to deal with an American President more bellicose, reckless and Russophobic than Obama or Bush, and with a foreign policy team as hostile towards Russia as any since the early days of the first Cold War. They could hardly not have wanted to avoid that.

But what could they do? Even if they did what we are told they did – hack into the servers used by the Democratic National Committee and then turn their findings over to Wikileaks — all they did or could have come up with is documentary evidence of what everybody already knew: that the Democratic Party’s establishment was doing all it could to insure that Clinton, not Bernie Sanders, would be the Democrats’ nominee.

It bears repeating, even so, that the only reason to think that the documents Wikileaks published were fished out by the Russians is that the CIA and other intelligence agencies say so. Wikileaks says otherwise, and they are infinitely more honest and reliable. (…)

there is a very pertinent question that politicians and media pundits never ask and seem not even to have noticed: did any of the DNC documents Wikileaks published affect the electoral outcome even one iota?

This question is central to the entire kerfuffle, and it practically answers itself. And yet the wrong answer is almost universally assumed.

To hold that the Russians wanted to hack into the DNC server to help Trump win, one would have to ascribe a level of prescience and subtlety to the Russian intelligence services that is almost certainly beyond their ken. (...)"

If you still don't know what the Russians did to influence the election then you either have been living in a bubble or you are just plain stupid.

Dindins, rather than call me names, you might be good enough to explain.

Preferably after you've read my fuckin' post + quoted passages fercrissakes.

Or are you forever stuck in name-calling mode?

With this new wilkileaks dump, it's entirely possible the CIA could be making it look the Russians were doing it.

Shut. Up.

1. Suspecting the Russians is not proving the Russians.

2. Supposing it was the Russians, the leaks only revealed truths about the DNC. Is the charge "Those Russians influenced the election by showing what we Democrats are really up to" really going to do much damage?

3. The farther we get from the election, the less this is going to matter.

Ok, comrade.

Yes, I agree. I think it was some disgusted DNC staffer or possibly a new Snowden.

Though it could yet be Donald's undoing, true or not. He hates the Republican leadership and lusts for revenge.
They hate him back.

As soon as they start viewing him as a liability, they may well pull the plug. And "Russian meddling" will be as good a pretext as any.

(Gosh, I'm still waiting for Dindins to cough up the goods.)

Thanks, Krieger. You never let me down.

Saying the Russians tried to influence the election isn't the same as saying Hillary would have won otherwise.

This kid calling Nono comrade.

Krieg is just as hyper partisan as most leftist Word Forgers.

I'm of two minds about this.

On the one hand, Putin is an unscrupulous bastard with whom I sure wouldn't want to be stranded on a desert island.

On the other hand, I'm basically willing to view his "foreign aggression" as fundamentally defensive (within the framework of Russian Encirclement Paranoia of course). If Russia set up missiles in the Canadian prairies or northern Mexico, would the US get its knickers in a twist or what? Of course it would. For the same reason as the Russians.

So I don't understand what ----- other than holding on to power for freaking ever and killing journalists and holding fake elections and imprisoning unruly oligarchs ----- Putin's dastardly ambitions are supposed to amount to.

I'm a citizen of a European country and I think it's prudent to have credible armed forces just in case.

But the US broke its word to Gorbachev about NATO expansion. And went ahead with it up the wazoo.
Yeah, that's easy to say when you're not Ukranian or Latvian. But such are the misfortunes of being born in the wrong place.

To me, Finlandization of these countries is the way to go. But that'll never happen.

Dude. Just stop.

Are you seriously this retarded, Boy Jenee? This child thinks I'm a lefty, guys.

Depends on what the definition of russian meddling is as Bill Clinton would say.

I agree. Nobody knows what they did on social media, say. But in that case, Breitbart "meddled" bigtime. So did Comey (that was probably huge -- we'll never know).

But the idea that Russia somehow swung the election is bullshit. Not that the will wasn't there, but they lacked the means.

And --- even if it were the case that Mastermind Putin won it for Robotic Donald --- I'd say "Suck it up, Merkins! Who but you invented meddling in foreign elections?"

That is really it, now isn't it?

You could try picking up a newspaper or watching something other than Russia Today.

It is not my job to educate you and my only position is to say, wow, you are clueless to not know the details after five months.

Of course nationalistic pride is important to Putin the Politician. I don't discount it.

But let's talk about Historical Reality. Do you deny that Encirclement Paranoia is fundamental to the Russian mindset, the way militarism is to the American mindset, or the family circle to the Italian mindset?
If you don't, then you've got a lot to learn. If you do, then I can't understand why you're incapable of viewing NATO expansion through Russians eyes.
Gorbachev --- no friend of Putin, on the contrary --- has frequently condemned NATO expansion, which has violated the promise he received from the Americans and on the basis of which he took down the Iron Curtain.
Is Gorby some sort of Stalin?? If not, why do you suppose he's so upset???

So would I if I were them. But it's a pipe-dream. There is no way that the US is going to go to war with a country bristling (like the US is) with nukes just to save Estonia or whatever. It simply ain't happenin'.
It is Wishful Thinking, not the above-mentioned Reality.

A question for you: What would the US reaction be if Russia set up "defensive" missiles and other anti-ICBM gear in Mexico and Canada.
It would naturally be the same as Russia's.

I don't have to like Russian Encirclement Paranoia to take it seriously. You should take it seriously too.

So, Russia very much sees a show of strength in eastern Ukraine (or Georgia back in 2008) as self-defence. It's saying You've gone too far (inviting Ukraine and Georgia to join NATO) and we're biting back.
It may not look that way from Chicago, but it sure as hell does from Chelyabinsk.

What is the distance between Syria and Russia? About 300 miles, less than half the distance between Chicago and New York.
Has Russia had a problem with jihado-wacko terrorism? Yes it has.

I'm not saying I would do exactly what Putin did, but Russia has far more grounds for intervening in the Syrian civil war than the US ever had.

So, sorry Quest. I think you've bought into the NATO narrative.
Again, you don't have to like the Russian mindset, you just have to see its inevitability, and take it from there.

Translation: I have No Fuckin' Idea but I don't want to expose this fact to public view.

Googoogaga, eh Lube?

If it comforts you to think that then fine. Or you could bother using the search function and find one of the many posts after the election where this issue was extensively discussed already. In the mean time, I think I will keep laughing at your see no evil act.

"On the other hand, I'm basically willing to view his "foreign aggression" as fundamentally defensive"

Are you German?

Ain't a question of comfort, but of whether I wish to waste my time giving the benefit of the doubt to Ranter like you.

You could write a brief summary, as I would. Or, like, produce a smidgeon of proof.
But you're incapable of doing that.

Either that, or a Russian.

Nono is meddling in Wordforge!