Obama taking actions against Russia for "Election Hacking"

[DutchTexan]

2 minutes ago, ivan134 said:

That's not what the issue is. @Hunter259 called out someone on his BS about how going after Russia is just liberals being bitter about losing by telling him that the reports of the hacking (again, I'm not saying the reports are correct or not because they haven't really shown us evidence) were done by the FBI and CIA which are both headed by Republicans right now. @ThomasD starts talking about how that doesn't matter since they both answer to Obama. When he was called out about why Obama didn't stop the investigations to Hillary's emails, he says it's because he doesn't want to be impeached. How does someone get impeached for exercising a power vested to him?

I stand with @Hunter259 and @ThomasD Just because they are Republican doesn't mean they can't be corrupt or facilitate unethical(or illegal) situations.  

 

Technically, the president should not have the power to say what is investigated and what is not, but he can influence it, not formally though. The whole impeachment for shutting down an investigation argument does hold merit, in my opinion, because had he shut it down when there really was shady circumstances, he could have been impeached and then prosecuted for . Or at the very least sent a signal of corruption at the highest level, giving Hillary absolutely no chance to continue his failed polices. 

 

I mean, there is a whole wiki article dedicated to impeachment attempts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efforts_to_impeach_Barack_Obama which I find hilarious 

[DutchTexan]

6 minutes ago, wrathoftheturkey said:

Calm the fuck down, people.

[DutchTexan]

1 minute ago, wrathoftheturkey said:

 

[kamuixmod]

Wasnt there a time where Obama said that any Cyber Attacks would be counted as a declaration of war?

[Tech_Dreamer]

Wow, Apparently the terms "believes"  "possibly" & "could be" is the solid evidence democrats need rather than real deal/evidence, this is kinda like that weird scramble for the distraction, almost as if they'd possibly go to war to another country over it , oh wait..

 

[Guest Kloaked]

10 hours ago, ivan134 said:

Uhhh yes it is definitely tin foil hattery, but keep telling yourself whatever you need to feel better.

Uhhhh ok. You do the same, pumpkin. Make sure to take some Midol™.

9 hours ago, wrathoftheturkey said:

(and i know it, don't go around telling everybody everything I think about everything on every politically-related thread *cough* @Kloaked *cough*

Edgy post mate. 2/10

 

 

Am I not allowed to talk to other forum members about political topics?

[ivan134]

1 hour ago, Kloaked said:

Uhhhh ok. You do the same, pumpkin. Make sure to take some Midol™.

Edgy post mate. 2/10

 

 

Am I not allowed to talk to other forum members about political topics?

If I even pretended for a second that what you said actually happened at your polling place, YOUR place is the one that needs to fix its issues.

 

No one checks for ID here in my part of Massachusetts. When you go in, you tell them your name and address. You're giving a ballot and your name is crossed off the list. For me to be able to go back in and vote again, not only would I have to know the name and address of someone else who lives in my town, I would also have to hope that the person hasn't voted yet so I don't have to deal with questioning of who is the real identity.

 

Even if I were able to pull this off, I am still just one person and one person cannot influence the outcome of an election of this magnitude. You would need millions of people to be in on this conspiracy and pull it off flawlessly and that is virtually impossible.

 

http://phys.org/news/2016-01-equation-large-scale-conspiracies-quickly-reveal.html

 

Let's go even further and say they were able to successfully pull this off. Why the fuck would they do this in California or any other state that historically votes blue? Hillary Clinton lost EVERY single swing state. If the Clinton campaign wanted to orchestrate voter fraud, California is the dumbest place to do it.

 

Ignorance really is bliss. You can go ahead and call me a bigot again for good measure because "you have different opinions". Unlike you, I live in the real world and go by facts and provable things, not opinions. Keep telling yourself it's not tin foil hattery if that makes you feel better.

 

[Thunderpup]

Ok so i am super late to this party, and it has long since veered off topic from the original post, however i will give my 2 pesos nonetheless. 

 

After reading through the document posted from the FBI a couple of times i get the feeling that they are deliberately misdirecting people into a predetermined conclusion.  

 

First they detail a history of sorts of state sponsored cyber aggression by the Russian Government; which is kind of a "duh" thing as most countries with delusions of power, to include the U.S., do that very same thing.  then they go into very specific detail the methods two groups associated with the RIS have targeted organizations; and they do state they targeted and gained "access" to "systems" associated with a political party.

At that point they stop being specific and start with being vague.  They never say what information was gleamed from the attack, or whether specific information that we know was leaked to the press was a direct result of said attack.  Further there is no mention of whether they suspect other groups, or inside parties, to have also leaked information to the press concurrent but not associated with this attack.

 

This means the document in question does not in anyway draw a direct line between the information released by Wikkileaks and the Russian attack. Nor does it provide any information that shows the information released by wikkileaks is in anyway false.  Which means assange's claim that the information he released came from a DNC insider has not been refuted.  

 

 

22 hours ago, Memories4K said:

You're right.
If there was actual election hacking by Russia then we should look into it, but we should .....

This is kind of why i am not taking this as seriously as some other folks.  To me this is not much different than a whistle blower, like Edward Snowden, releasing this information.  Yes the release of information is grossly illegal, but that doesn't change the fact the American people had a right to know about it.  

I'm irked another country, any country, was able to so easily access a major political party's systems here in the states, but i'm also irked about the skeletons that political party was hiding in their closet. 

14 hours ago, DutchTexan said:

Technically, the president should not have the power to say what is investigated and what is not, but he can influence it, not formally though. The whole impeachment for shutting down an investigation argument does hold merit, in my opinion....

Texan is correct.

 

The President isn't supposed to have 100% authority over every aspect of the executive branch; such power would mean he controls those who are supposed to police him.

 

It is for this reason why OIGs exist (Office of Inspector General) who are largely independent of their respective agencies and even the branch of government their agency reports to.  It was the OIG who did the initial investigation into the e-mail scandals in response to her statements from the congressional investigation into the Benghazi attack, as well as the IRS targeting scandal.  

 

Unfortunately the agency responsible for prosecution (DOJ) does report to the president making it very hard for anyone affiliated with a sitting president to get prosecuted for wrong doing.  Further it allows said US president to use the DOJ to selectively target members of political parties facing possible legal actions. IE turn a blind eye to your own party's wrong doers but still go after the opposition. 

[Misanthrope]

10 pages?

 

Looks like it's working as intended: Keep people talking about the Russians and the hacks, not about the actual content of said "hack" which includes dangerous and even criminal activities by the Democratic Convention. 

 

Why is everyone so susceptible to such blatant dog and pony show?

[Kamina]

Voting tallies weren't hacked and it's an alleged hack on the DNC and Podesta emails.

 

John Podesta fell for a phishing link and was hacked because he's incompetent. The DNC emails exposed that the entire media was trying to RIG the election for Hillary. Saying Putin tried to influence the election is utter deflection from what is said in those emails.

 

[ace_cheaply]

On 12/29/2016 at 8:20 PM, ivan134 said:

Why don't you provide the evidence for me that half of California's votes were illegals.

Half?  Probably not.  Some amount?  Obviously.   

 

Why would an elderly couple receive nearly a hundred ballots, with different names with the exact same address?

http://www.dailybreeze.com/government-and-politics/20161103/how-more-than-80-election-ballots-mysteriously-landed-at-one-address-in-san-pedro

 

Sure, it was a singular mistake. That's believable. 

 

From the same article:

Quote

 

In a separate case, a Gardena woman told the Daily Breeze that her husband, who crossed into the country from Mexico illegally eight years ago, had received a vote-by-mail ballot for Tuesday’s election.

 

While he is now petitioning the U.S. government for citizenship, she said he does not have any papers or even a driver’s license, leaving him stumped about how he would receive an official ballot. His name and address on the ballot were both correct, his wife said, adding that he had never even tried to register to vote.

 

 

Why did some counties in Detroit have more votes than they have registered voters?

 

http://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/politics/2016/12/12/records-many-votes-detroits-precincts/95363314/

 

Quote

 

The problems were the worst in Detroit, where discrepancies meant officials couldn’t recount votes in 392 precincts, or nearly 60 percent. And two-thirds of those precincts had too many votes.

 

 

[apm]

no one ever uses (russian) proxies to hack stuff.

[jaggysnake57]

is it just me or has this forum gone to shit?

[alicskysareblue]

On 12/29/2016 at 11:29 PM, ivan134 said:

That's not what the issue is. @Hunter259 called out someone on his BS about how going after Russia is just liberals being bitter about losing by telling him that the reports of the hacking (again, I'm not saying the reports are correct or not because they haven't really shown us evidence) were done by the FBI and CIA which are both headed by Republicans right now. @ThomasD starts talking about how that doesn't matter since they both answer to Obama. When he was called out about why Obama didn't stop the investigations to Hillary's emails, he says it's because he doesn't want to be impeached. How does someone get impeached for exercising a power vested to him?

Hey this is a serious issue and goes beyond political parties of a foreigen goverment can get a hold of secure information annd manipulate elections what else coild they do? Influence. Senate or hous of represenative. Influence domestic polices or maybe even gain secrete intel of the department of defense?

 

During the cold war the u.s got involved in foregin elections or helped rebel groups to overthrow goverment, it all backfired on the u.s

 

Noe whether you are for or against trump is none of my business but please see this hack for what it is an attempt to undermine and influence our goverment

[ionbasa]

Didn't feel like creating a new thread for this, but it's relevant to this discussion:

 

Julian Assange: Russian government not the source of leaked emails

 

Quote

While President Obama, the FBI and CIA claim to have evidence that Russia hacked Democratic Party officials during the presidential election, Assange alleges that the officials are letting politics get in the way of truth.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2017/01/03/julian-assange-russian-government-not-source-leaked-emails/96106052/

 

Quote

In excerpts released prior to airing, Assange is adamant that the hacked emails his organization released of Clinton official John Podesta did not come from Russia, as the Obama administration has claimed.

 

“We can say, we have said, repeatedly that over the last two months that our source is not the Russian government and it is not a state party,” Assange said.

 

More than 50,000 emails were released during the 2016 presidential campaign, exposing dubious practices at the Clinton Foundation, top journalists working closely with the Clinton campaign, key Clinton aides speaking derisively of Catholics and a top Democratic National Committee official providing debate questions to Clinton in advance.

 

Hannity told Fox News' Bill Hemmer "I believe everything (Assange) said," and praised the Internet activist for his commitment to government transparency. 

 

Despite the Obama administration’s claims that Russia was behind cyber-intrusions meant to interfere with the U.S. election – and punitive measures taken against Moscow last week – Assange said nobody associated with the Russian government gave his group the files.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/01/03/assange-russian-government-not-source-wikileaks-emails.html

 

Personally, I feel like the Russian narrative isn't adding up. I recently wrote a forum post after the Washington Post falsified that Russians 'hacked' a Vermont utility grid, here: 

 It was later revealed that the Washington Post fabricated their story and there was no Russian involvement. At best our media is becoming a propaganda machine,  so for now I'll remain sceptical.

[TidaLWaveZ]

12 hours ago, ionbasa said:

snip

From all the information I've seen the most evidence I've seen is "the method in which the attack was carried out is the same method used in a previous hack tied to Russia".

 

This train of thought gives us two possibilities:

 

1. They are assuming or just purporting that it was the Kremlin with no real evidence

2. They aren't willing to divulge the means in which they could tie the attack to Russia

 

Either way our current administration is in the wrong. It just drives me insane that so many people are buying into this out of confirmation bias and the lack of knowledge to question the reports. 

[Randolph_Bubba]

On 12/29/2016 at 3:42 PM, TidaLWaveZ said:

 

 

 

I had no choice but to post this, not necessarily because of the Obama Administration's actions, but more out of my curiosity I have with the included FBI report.  I've rifled through it multiple times and I'm hoping the community may find or understand something that I'm missing, specifically the part where they can directly attribute either the DNC hacking or some other large scale attack that had a major influence on the Presidential election. Hopefully someone can shed some light on the report, because I'm not seeing the connection. 

 

https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3248231/Report-on-Russian-Hacking.pdf    -FBI report posted by The New York Times 

 

 

The Obama administration struck back at Russia on Thursday for its efforts to influence the 2016 election, ejecting 35 Russian intelligence operatives from the United States and imposing sanctions on Russia’s two leading intelligence services, including four top officers of the military intelligence unit the White House believes ordered the attacks on the Democratic National Committee and other political organizations.

 

- The New York Times

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/29/us/politics/russia-election-hacking-sanctions.html

 

What do you think? Is there damning evidence that Russia influenced the 2016 US Presidential election within the FBI's report?

I find it funny the US Government has provided no proof of Russian hacking, however I do think it was Russians who hacked the US I don't think it was the Russian government specifically. For all I know it was the (communist) Chinese that happened to be in russia.

[TechGod]

On 30/12/2016 at 9:54 AM, Ion4545 said:

I doubt they tampered with the election I think it's just a bunch of liberals still whining about how trump won and are still trying to find a way out of it. All I'm saying is if trump called election tampering if he lost it would have been called a conspiracy. It wouldn't have had this much coverage if the circumstances were reversed

This is just sad. If trump had lost you conservatives would be yelling bloody murder. 

[Sharkyx1]

Of course it's only a risk of hacking or not my president when the libs lose

[ionbasa]

2 hours ago, TechGod said:

This is just sad. If trump had lost you conservatives would be yelling bloody murder. 

You know what's funny? Everyone keeps talking about how Clinton won the popular vote. Last I checked, California doesn't decide the president for all the other 49 states.

Its why we have the electorate system in place. 1 state does not decide the fate for the other 49.

Quote

If you take California out of the popular vote equation, then Trump wins the rest of the country by 1.4 million votes. And if California voted like every other Democratic state — where Clinton averaged 53.5% wins — Clinton and Trump end up in a virtual popular vote tie. (This was not the case in 2012. Obama beat Romney by 2 million votes that year, not counting California.)

http://www.investors.com/politics/commentary/its-official-clintons-popular-vote-win-came-entirely-from-california/

 

Secondly, if trump had lost. He'd just petition for a recount. Jill Stein fell through with Wisconsin, and it turns out that Trump received 131 more votes. That being said, Stein couldn't petition a recount for all 50 states. The big two candidates can. If it ever comes to that, we should all be worried, especially if recounts show discrepancies or anomalies. If that were to happen, people both in the US and outside in the world playing field would lose faith in our system. I do have to applaud Jill Stein's efforts. For a third party candidate, she didn't do too bad.

 

Edit: Just to throw around  some interesting statistics, the four largest counties (by area) in California: San Bernardino (largest county in the United States), Inyo, Kern, and Riverside counties voted Republican by at least ~45%. Inyo and Kern counties  had over 50% going for Trump. I'm pretty sure we can infer a few things given CA is a predominantly blue state, that being more people are now going 'against the grain' with Democrats. I want to stay impartial with this discussion, but I just wanted to point this out. Dems had their chance with Bernie, but chose Clinton instead. They picked the wrong candidate in my opinion.

[SansVarnic]

2 hours ago, ionbasa said:

California doesn't decide the president for all the other 49 states.

They certainly do try hard to though. And amongst a lot of other BS they try to push around the US. [Southern] California is such a sad place, beautiful albeit sad.. 

[ionbasa]

1 hour ago, SansVarnic said:

They certainly do try hard to though. And amongst a lot of other BS they try to push around the US. [Southern] California is such a sad place, beautiful albeit sad.. 

Not all of  CA is bad. I live in Southern California in a rural suburban area. Unfortunately, I agree with you the BS the politicians try to push. A lot of people are unhappy with the way things have been going in SoCal in particular. It's a beautiful place, from our mountain ranges, to our beaches, the desert cities to the valleys. Under democrats we've seen an explosion in poverty in big cities, and much more. Unfortunately they've created this system that keeps people in perpetual poverty, and its been abused, things like temporary assistance programs, Section 8 Housing, etc.

[ThomasD]

On 12/30/2016 at 0:29 AM, ivan134 said:

That's not what the issue is. @Hunter259 called out someone on his BS about how going after Russia is just liberals being bitter about losing by telling him that the reports of the hacking (again, I'm not saying the reports are correct or not because they haven't really shown us evidence) were done by the FBI and CIA which are both headed by Republicans right now. @ThomasD starts talking about how that doesn't matter since they both answer to Obama. When he was called out about why Obama didn't stop the investigations to Hillary's emails, he says it's because he doesn't want to be impeached. How does someone get impeached for exercising a power vested to him?

That's at least the second time you have greatly misrepresented what I said.

 

Here is my FULL quote

 

On 12/29/2016 at 11:45 PM, ThomasD said:

That's more of a political question than a legal question.  Maybe he didn't think they would find anything.  Maybe he thought the investigation could be used for political gain (like Clinton and Monica.)  Maybe he thought they would find something and didn't want to be impeached like Nixon 

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturday_Night_Massacre

 

Your guess is as good as mine.

 

Edit:  Maybe he was more concerned about looking bad than actually being bad.

 

YOU are the one who has chosen to focus on only ONE possible answer (guess actually.)

 

You might have more credibility if you wouldn't grossly misrepresent people to the point of dishonesty.  But, given your overall behavior in this thread I do not think it likely.

 

And here's ONE MORE bit of speculation on my part.  Maybe Obama didn't remove Comey because he knew the FBI never really investigated the DNC hack and didn't want his replacement to actually conduct a real investigation.

 

http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/312767-fbi-never-examined-hacked-dnc-servers-report#

 

“The DNC had several meetings with representatives of the FBI’s Cyber Division and its Washington (D.C.) Field Office, the Department of Justice’s National Security Division, and U.S. Attorney’s Offices, and it responded to a variety of requests for cooperation, but the FBI never requested access to the DNC’s computer servers,” DNC deputy communications director Eric Walker told BuzzFeed in an email."

 

How do you conduct an investigation without looking at the actual scene of the crime???

 

[TheReal1980]

USA is amazing.

[TheReal1980]

USA is amazing.