Right, it’s assuming Putin has something nobody else has seen that is so damaging that Hillary would be his puppet. It would also have to be personally damaging to her alone, because if it were damaging to general US interests then it hurts whoever is in the White House. If he had something personally damaging to Hillary she could just step down and let the VP take over, international crisis averted, blackmail attempt thwarted.
The opposite line of reasoning is also true-- Putin could have all kinds of dirt on Trump, and is actively pushing for his election so he can manipulate him once he’s in the White House. I’m not sure I believe that either, but it’s equally plausible.
Putin has also shown himself to be very obvious over the years. When a dissident ex-spy dies in London from a rare radioactive isotope, or a revolt suddenly erupts in border areas of Ukraine after they vote in a pro-western government, even Russians know what’s going on.
As of today, multiple independent security agencies have determined that the source of the emails was Russian.
Attribution … Who are they? What are their motivations? Where is their proof? Were any of them hired by the DNC to do damage control up to and including PR?
Do you know how difficult it is to forensically attribute a hack like this to as sophisticated a nation-state actor as Russia? Why is the Clinton camp pushing this message so hard, while nobody else seems to be?
What does the FBI say?
Snowden claimed on twitter today that the NSA has the capabilities to corroborate who exfiltrated the data. What does the NSA have to say?
It’s plausible. It’s kind of sad that an effect of this is to throw Bernie under the bus, as if it’s his fault that some of his supporters are blinded by fury and possibly influenced by Russians. Dude wants to toss a bit of cold water on the fire, but it might be a bit too little too late for some.
So far, ousting DWS has been good, but then idjits have been acting the fool up in the convention, and I have had enough of that shit with the Republicans. Hilary’s still a damn fine politician, and entitled to our respect. She’ll make a decent president, and if we want to have any chance of implementing any of the progressive changes that we’ll usher in by voting for progressive local politicians, she’ll be the one we want in office.
It doesn’t mean anyone needs to make it EASY on her, but there’s “holding the feet to the fire” and there’s “booing Michelle Obama,” and these are not the same thing.
I’m not fucking Google News, man. Come on. Do you want me to copy paste various articles with all of that info? In the time it took you to write your post, your answers were a browser search away. Have at it.
I don’t think Putin needs dirt on Trump, he already seems pretty manipulable. Amenable to Putin and Russian interests, and history of catering to them for potential financial gain down the line, easily mislead/misinformed, hot headed, inexperienced etc.
That itself is a big knock against some sort of complex blackmail scheme, and a big part of why its already so clear Putin is pushing for Trump. You don’t need to blackmail Trump. His slim policy proposals are already in line with Russia/Putin’s aims. And he’ll be susceptible to much more boring and routine forms of manipulation. He can be baited, he’ll buy into Russia’s denials and propaganda (and already has actually), he can be easily lead by the nose by treating him as if he’s making a “deal” in some fashion. And uninformed enough that he won’t know the difference. And then there’s all his financial connections to Putin’s circles, combined with his refusal to cut himself off from his various businesses while in office. You don’t need a conspiracy theory, or really any complexity to see why Trump is good for Putin. And vice versa.
Seriously, that’s your answer? Some of the questions were shall I say leading questions.
If you choose to dig beneath the Google News headlines, it’s not so cut and dry. Are you an expert? Why do these so called experts and their so called proof get left out of pretty much every story and accepted as prima facie evidence?
On the other hand, you know who also was seeing eye to eye with Putin? Silvio Berlusconi – basically Trump’s model. Did that do anything to the Italy-NATO relationship? Absolutely not – Berlusconi remained a staunch atlanticist who didn’t invade Iraq only because of humongous internal opposition (still provided logistic support and peacekeeping right after “mission accomplished”, though).
Similarly, interests and policies of the US military-industrial complex are so entrenched and long-term, that no single US President can realistically be expected to change them in a drastic way. Trump would likely soften his stance on Ukraine (because he genuinely does not care) and have a wonderful bromance with Putin in the same way Silvio had: they both like women, boasting and looking tough. From there to dismantling NATO is a huge leap that you simply can’t make in 4 years even if you wanted to, with all the Lockheeds of this world breathing on your neck about who’s gonna buy their F35 shit from now on.
You Americans are making the same mistakes Europeans made with Silvio: you take Trump seriously, you think everything he says is “reasoned policy”. It’s just crowd-pleasing and boasting, total showmanship! When it comes down to business, behind the curtains, these people are as logical, intelligent and practical as anyone. For all their posturing, they tend to act as you would expect your average white rich guy to act, which means, not bringing about nuclear holocaust or abolishing NATO on a whim.
Fuck that, it’s a highly criticized issue when the US does interfere with other nation’s politics by many - probably including you.
And like I said, both are really important. The best thing right now is to not just turn this into another binary topic and let both stories unfold. I know I’ve invested many hours reading about this, and the full details will take a long time to come out.
Sadly when it comes to self-fuckery nobody can fuck themselves up better than the DNC. Damn it makes me so sad when something this important is on the line and idiots are at the helm!
. Who knew the TP meant Trump Putin? And who knew the democrats would come to the aid of those two vicious world-rapers?
Who the hell said it was “reasoned policy”? On Trumps end I suspect its fear mongering, ignorance and pandering to further his own financial interests. This is not a guy who’s ever done anything without the aim of benefiting himself personally at the expense of others.
Argue the effects and practicality of what Trumps offering, or his short comings all you want. All I was laying out was the common case for Putin’s interest in the guy. Not necessarily what I think will, or what is likely to, happen.
And not taking Trump seriously is how he managed to get this far in the first place. However frightening his headline proposals are the vast majority of them would be impossible to execute. Whether because of opposition in the rest of our government, or because they’re pretty obviously impossible or unconstitutional. Doesn’t mean a Trump presidency wouldn’t be a disaster for us and the rest of the world. Italy is not the worlds largest economy. Italy (without the rest of Europe) doesn’t have the same level of influence the US has (and I’m not talking about diplomatic or deliberate influence). NATO with out Italy is likely a NATO that can still function. But the US is the worlds largest military, and because of the that the backbone of what makes NATO work. A NATO with out the US, or with a sufficiently disinterested US, doesn’t function or doesn’t exist.
Likewise we’re the worlds largest economy, and one of its largest markets. That means what happens here has an effect, globally, whether you want it to, expect it to, or not. And whether you are directly connected to us or not. Look at 2008, that shit started here, and while plenty of other countries bought into the practices and ecconomic policies that lead to it. The crash kicked off, was caused in large part by collapses here, and rippled out globally. Our experiment with global prohibition killed all but 2-3 distilleries in Ireland, and eventually lead to the start of consolidation for brewing companies across Europe. Trump could fuck us all plenty, even if his nastiest shit is posturing. Even if the worst case scenario doesn’t or can’t happen.
Whatever you think of Clinton you have to admit it would be pretty damn hilarious if the State Dept email got hacked but Clinton’s server somehow remained uncompromised.
While both arguably qualify as name calling, there is still a difference. The one post calling Trump a “manipulable maroon” defines him thus as part of an argument as to why Putin might prefer Trump as president. A different term could have been used, but nevertheless, calling Trump a maroon served a purpose in the argument.
Your two posts which call Clinton the “dowager empress” seem to do so merely out of an urge to either insult just for the fun of it or avoid typing her name.
They’re both insults, but one seems to me to have been used more maturely than the other.
Funny in a hypothetical sense, but what would it mean anyway?
Email isn’t a point to point protocol. It acts very much like physical mail. Messages hop from server to server, in the same way that mail goes from post office to post office, until it gets to you. You don’t have to breach the one server, any server on the path the mail travels will do.
Government agencies that deal with classified information handle this by making sure the entire network, including intermediate servers are under their control. (Why a personal email server might not be suitable for this purpose is left as an exercise for the reader…)
What makes me deeply suspicious of all this is the way Western media attribute everything in Russian to “Putin” the way US fruitcakes bang on about “Obama”. There simply aren’t enough hours in the day for him to do all the alleged plotting. And the assumption that sprawling, chaotic Russia is so capable of getting its act together when the US is full of competing entities, especially within government, seems bizarre.
To me this comes over as Clinton’s PR saying “That Trump - he’s in bed with evil dictator Putin.” It’s an attempt at guilt by association, and on a par with “Can we do Sanders down by accusing him of atheism?” The whole Clinton campaign simply suggests to me, as a disinterested observer, that the Dems are backing the wrong horse. Not quite as wrong at the Republicans, but the Republicans managed to come up with a uniquely awful collection of other candidates.
[quote=“aluchko, post:55, topic:82119”]
Whatever you think of Clinton you have to admit it would be pretty damn hilarious if the State Dept email got hacked but Clinton’s server somehow remained uncompromised.
[/quote]The thing is, as far as anyone knows, that’s exactly what happened.
It’s a story that happens to be considered true by most in the intelligence and security communities. Or you can keep believing your preferred narrative if you like, that’s entirely up to you.
