17 ms·

This is silly. Check out the two major "targets": Clinton's emails and the DNC. Read about how the Clinton server was "secured" (hint: comically). Read about ho

This is silly. Check out the two major "targets": Clinton's emails and the DNC. Read about how the Clinton server was "secured" (hint: comically). Read about how the DNC has been getting hacked: very simple phishing scams. Everything about the DNC screams shoddy. Why haven't the Republicans been hacked? This isn't a question about politics, its that the DNC clearly has some operational problems. No, what this really is is an information campaign that both countries are playing against each other. You've got Crimea, Syria, other hotspots. Check out Trump's rhetoric: he admires Putin, he clearly doesn't want war. Check out Clinton's rhetoric: conflict. Donald Trump being a racist Neville Chamberlain should make no one excited, but the neoliberal part of the Democratic party (which is clearly ascendant and has been for some time like the neoconservatives) doesn't like getting bullied in retaliation for being a bully.

ak4g 10y ago
What's silly is saying oh, since I read some stuff online about how crappy the DNC security is, I should probably chalk it up to some unknown actor for some vauge hand-wavy reasons instead of taking the statements of the the Director of National Intelligence and the Department of Homeland Security at face value. Why would they lie? What gives you reason to think they (not the DNC!) be that colossally stupid? Why would you do anything other than take allegations of yet another Kremlin attempt to interfere in fair elections as seriously as the people of Europe and Ukraine have learned, the hard way, that they must?
- dxhdr 10y ago
  > taking the statements of the the Director of National Intelligence and the Department of Homeland Security at face value Frankly, it's hard to do that in a post-Snowden, post-Comey world.
  - ak4g 10y ago
    Then use your critical thinking. I'll repeat the question: > Why would they lie? What gives you reason to think they (not the DNC!) be that colossally stupid?
    - zigzigzag 10y ago
      Because it helps them justify a larger budget? This is ridiculous. Why would they not lie? The US intelligence community appears to lie reflexively about everything. Why would anyone take their words at face value?
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
  - grandalf 10y ago
    > it's hard to do that I'd say it's completely impossible to do that :)
    - tptacek 10y ago
      For what it's worth, and apropos this thread, I responded to your comment about this issue from earlier this week (sorry it took me so long). https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12664172 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12664172
      - grandalf 10y ago
        Thanks for replying. I don't disagree with any of your conclusions but I'll reply in that thread with a brief comment in a moment.
    - marcosdumay 10y ago
      There are some people that, if they told me the sky was blue I'd look around for unexplainable chromatic aberrations.
- wyager 10y ago
  >Why would they lie? Are you joking? Do you not see the massive political motivation there? And of course, the US government has a great track record with telling the truth about security issues.
  - tomjakubowski 10y ago
    What's the political motivation for the DNI to lie? Clapper isn't really a politician and as far as I know he's not affiliated with any party.
    - dragonwriter 10y ago
      > Clapper isn't really a politician No one who gets any position that requires Senate confirmation is "not really a politician" (and, yes, that includes general/flag officers in the military) -- they may be purely bureaucratic rather than electoral politicians, but they are politicians nonetheless. But, yeah, I don't see a lot of evidence that Clapper is a Democratic (or other) partisan.
    - turar 10y ago
      Russia just told the US that if Americans attack Syrian troops, Russia will intervene on Syria's behalf. That should be the major story actually.
  - ak4g 10y ago
    Of course I do, which is why I asked the 2nd question: > What gives you reason to think they (not the DNC!) be that colossally stupid? The political motivation is what would make lying here colossally stupid.
- zzzcpan 10y ago
  What would be the point in telling the truth? There is no truth, no lies, just carefully crafted words to pursue political agendas. I fail to recognize any difference between carefully selected truth and a lie. They all are used to achieve the exact same thing.
- alasdair_ 10y ago
  > taking the statements of the the Director of National Intelligence and the Department of Homeland Security at face value. >Why would they lie? One reasonable reason for why they would lie is that their jobs are somewhat political and the person being targeted is likely going to be their boss soon. Claiming Russia is behind the hacks draws attention away from the hacks themselves, the shady campaign finance allegations they brought to light and the fact that Clinton was storing classified data in her home (I know the hacks were not of that particular server, but the two are still related.) In a world where James Clapper is willing to egregiously lie, under oath, to congress, the default assumption that these people can be trusted to automatically tell the truth is suspect. So far, the main evidence that I can find that links the hacks to the Russian government are two things: 1. Some of the documents had Russian metadata added to them. 2. The timing of the attacks seems to follow public holiday schedules for the Russian government. These are both reasonable items of circumstantial evidence but it doesn't seem to be enough to accuse a foreign government directly. Since this event has national political implications, and since the people making the statements have good reasons for being less than truthful, I am happy waiting for better evidence before making a decision one way or the other.
  - whybroke 10y ago
    So The Director of National Intelligence and the Department of Homeland Security are conspiring to provoke a serious intentional problem solely to distract from an already admitted to and apologized for personal server that is only important to Trump voters (ie won't change the election outcome)? Doesn't that sound just a tad wild even for a conspiracy theory?
    - ZoF 10y ago
      Yes, it is the "already admitted to and apologized for personal server" that this would distract from; certainly not the ongoing email leaks or content of those already released. The server was a simple 'mistake' anyone could 'accidentally' make; I honestly think people don't understand how easy it is to accidentally configure a mailserver, happened to me just this morning. >Doesn't that sound just a tad wild even for a conspiracy theory? Sadly, it doesn't sound wild at all.
- turar 10y ago
  Why wouldn't they lie?
- Animats 10y ago
  If the announcement came from, say, Major General Mark W. Westergren, USAF, Deputy Chief NSA/CSS, it would be more credible. He's not a political appointee, and should know in detail what's going on in this area.
  - meowface 10y ago
    Why would that make a difference? If the US government is so brazen to force a public official to lie about this, they would make him lie about it, too. (There's almost no chance there is a conspiracy here. I think it is probably Russia.)
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    > If the announcement came from, say, Major General Mark W. Westergren, USAF, Deputy Chief NSA/CSS, it would be more credible. He's not a political appointee I am aware of no commonly used definition of "political appointee" that does not include (among others) all officers of government that go through the appointment-by-the-President-and-confirmation-by-the-Senate process that applies to -- as well as to officials that get more media attention for this process -- all military officers (and with notably more personal attention in the process to 1-star and higher ranks -- generals and admirals.)
  - dnautics 10y ago
    All O7- and above are not apolitical; all flag officers in all services must be nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate at each promotion beyond O6. It's often a rubber stamping process, but it is there. Denial of promotion and individual intervention is relatively frequent. Technically all officers also have this treatment but Senate oversight and intervention is much lower, and the batches are much bigger.
- travmatt 10y ago
  Also, a republican led incident response firm attributed the hacks to Russia.
- Natsu 10y ago
  > Why would they lie? - To distract us from their own incompetence. - To avoid talking about the content of those leaks (from memory, the WaPo is an arm of the DNC that they hold illicit fundraisers with, the DNC funneled all of the money to Hillary from the outset so Bernie never had a shot, etc.) - To paint Trump as an agent of a foreign power (he's bad enough even after you filter out the nonsense). They turned off logging on those servers to avoid transparency. If they want me to believe claims like this, I'll need to see the full server logs from the email server. Oh, wait, they destroyed those. How convenient. My thoughts are that the elections will continue to get worse as long as we keep voting for lizards to keep the wrong lizard from winning. Anyone who tells you you're limited to the choices made for you on the ballot bears some personal responsibility for the mess.
- TheSpiceIsLife 10y ago
  It's comical that anyone claims US presidential elections are fair. I'm not picking a political side here, both parties are duping the voters.
qaq 10y ago
Because Putin is actually actively trying to get Trump elected? Most likely because he has enough dirt on him to manipulate him.
- Mikeb85 10y ago
  > Most likely because he has enough dirt on him to manipulate him. Or, you know, doesn't want WWIII, like the rest of us.
  - qaq 10y ago
    Could you count how many times in history yielding to bold advances of power hungry ruler served as effective deterrent to war?
    - greendragon 10y ago
      You're right, Putin shouldn't stand by idly as America builds a missile shield around Russia to negate their ability to launch nukes... We already have a deterrent for war with Russia. Russia knows this, I think the US is forgetting it.
      - qaq 10y ago
        A lot of countries forget a lot of things US & other major nuclear powers conveniently forgot how they negotiated Ukraine to surrender worlds 3d largest nuclear arsenal in exchange for "security guarantees". US is acting prudently in building up missile shield around Russia since in the event of russia collapse who knows what will happen to their nuclear weapons.
        rangibaby 10y ago
        There was worry with the collapse of the USSR that Russian nukes would be donated to terrorists. It was a very common theme in 90s fiction. It ended up not happening at all, in fact the only major nuclear proliferation since then has been from Pakistan to North Korea, which is not mentioned by the western media because Pakistan is a very important ally against the Soviets. Wait...
sanderjd 10y ago
Could you define your intended definition for the terms "neoliberal" and "neoconservative"? Unfortunately these are bandied about so often that their definitions are hazy to me and seem subjective, so I don't feel like I can really reason about what you're saying without having the terms defined.
- grandalf 10y ago
  "Neoconservative" is often described as "liberals with guns". In the US the word "liberal" does not mean laissez faire oriented, it means leaning toward statism. Neoconservatives are typically of the opinion that the US can effectively intervene in foreign politics through the use of force, and they view such intervention through a moralistic lens. They typically attempt to justify interventions by using typically progressive causes such as "freeing women from oppression under Saddam's rule" or preventing other illiberal practices from happening. While the circumstances used to justify military action are sometimes true, the defining characteristic of the neoconservative view is that the US should be actively promoting "democracy", "freedom", "women's rights", etc. all around the world. When it comes down to it, these things are typically used as an excuse for the US to destroy lots of infrastructure, kill lots of people, and attempt to enact regime change. Some notable examples of neoconservative intervention are the US invasion of Iraq and the US invasion of Libya. What's interesting is the way that highly politicized statements about other countries, their customs, and their leaders are taken seriously in the US. At this point, most American support a neoconservative view of the proper US role in world affairs, and the moral high ground the US has with which to judge foreign situations. Statements made advocating a neoconservative approach to world affairs must be political (and persuasive) in nature, because unlike the traditional causes for war (invasion, invasion of neighboring territory, etc.) without quite a lot of convincing it would not be apparent that intervention would be helpful or the alleged outcome possible simply by projecting force.
  - hackuser 10y ago
    > In the US the word "liberal" does not mean laissez faire oriented, it means leaning toward statism. I'm not sure this is completely true. It's how conservatives frame liberals, but that's part of scoring political points. It does have some truth, but the mainstream of the Democratic Party, for example, is strongly free-market (ask the progressives, who despise them), and conservatives prefer a powerful government for security and law enforcement, religion (prayer in schools), abortion, etc. I'm saying this in as non-partisan a way as possible: Encapsulating the opinions of a hundred million people in a sentence is tough, however. The best generalization I can come up with is that 'liberals' seek progress and change, and 'conservatives' seek to protect what they already have - and those perspectives apply to the economy, culture, and much more. Liberals want to develop clean energy to deal with climate change, conservatives want to preserve existing oil and gas industries. Liberals want to promote integration and the rights of minorities, conservatives want to protect traditional mores. Liberals believe the world can move forward and become more peaceful, conservatives believe humanity will never change and want military power. Of course, very few real people actually fit those definitions.
tdb7893 10y ago
Do the Republicans have better operational security for some reason? Especially with these being simple phishing attacks (which are targeted by their nature) I don't think it's an unreasonable to say that these are targeted.
- ch4s3 10y ago
  I seriously doubt that. I've know a few people that have worked for either party in a technical capacity and I've never heard anything impressive about opsec. In fact, during the '08 election Palin and several Republican lawmakers were the victims of phishing or similarly low hanging fruit variety attacks. Maybe they're just lucky this time around. Maybe the DNC has higher value info, maybe they hired a few unusually careless people. It will probably take awhile to gain any real insight.
  - NotSammyHagar 10y ago
    I'd guess that they just didn't release the republican national commmittee hacked fruit yet. If I was russia, I'd obviously hack both. In a normal year, probably the Russians would be for the dems. It's just this bizarro election year where the dems are the hawks.
    - ch4s3 10y ago
      Both parties have shifted dramatically towards hawkish positions since 2001, even in the face of waning public support for foreign adventurism. I'm curious to see how long it takes the pendulum to swing back.
      - NotSammyHagar 10y ago
        Maybe the 2020s will see an end to support for war in the US, but it will take the continuing reduction of the old white conservative white people class, that seems to lose about 1% of the voting population a year. I'm a white person but not conservative, and I do come from that group. These demographic changes take a while to percolate through the political leadership, because the folks that liked military action will have to age out of leadership. So while I'm voting for Hillary, I wish she was a lot less a part of the conservative dems that generally support military actions. I think what will probably happen is that the decreasing political power of conservative older (mostly white) people will lead to even more national extremism, and then the demographic changes will force the republicans to change to attract conservatives who aren't white. It saddens me to feel this is all but inevitable. I'm from a southern state but now live in one of those economically successful liberal coastal tech hubs. I wish there was more opportunity in the state I grew up in, but mostly I just see them wasting time and passing laws against gay people and transgenders in my home state. Interestingly there is a similar issue facing China. If China and the US can avoid fighting a war against each other for 15 years, then the population of China will experience a movement to having many fewer workers per retired person, partly caused by having had so many more male than female children, they will get older. For example, see http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/06/chinas-twilight-years/480768/ http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/06/chinas-t.... My fantasy then is China and the US don't destroy the world in a fight, and by 2030, China will be more focused on internal issues around retirement and economic retraction than trying to take small south China sea islands from the Philippines. Of course, US history shows that there's nothing that excites the population than a good war. Similar forces are at work in Russia too, with an aging population. And then China can gradually transition to being a real democracy (yeah, just like russia did, for a little while :-)). Putin is not going to live forever, but will he still be in power in 30 years?
AgentME 10y ago
>Read about how the Clinton server was "secured" (hint: comically). Read about how the DNC has been getting hacked: very simple phishing scams. Everything about the DNC screams shoddy. The worst thing is that you tend to get blamed for "victim-blaming" when you point this sort of thing out. No one ever wants to admit that they should have paid attention to security instead of jury-rigging things together incompetently. People like to make analogies to hackers being street-robbers attacking interesting-looking defenseless people. If you suggest that people should have secured their infrastructure better, they look at you like you suggested that people walk around on the street with body armor. No! Most hacks you hear about are like if a bank kept everyone's money in a pile in the corner of the front lobby and insisted on an honor code to make people stay away from the pile. Yes, the thief that takes something from the pile committed a crime, but that bank was incompetent in securing what their consumers trusted to them and has a great share of the blame.
- sounds 10y ago
  Ok, good analogy on how _businesses_ run their internet security. However, the government, and the DNC too, are only interested in security when they can't just use their thugs instead. We're way behind in cyberwarfare precisely because our federal government thinks like a thug ... or in other words, like a big dumb criminal. The DNC gets political mileage out of being hacked because they can create a controversy (blaming Russia) and look good (their opponent isn't as anti-Putin as they are). Why should they ask their contractors for better security? They pay top dollar and are getting what they want: none of the hassles of real security, and if ... when they get hacked, they get to choose their response: (1) blame Russia (2) blame Trump (3) blame the contractor (4) blame the government I'm sure there are more response strategies, I'm just too lazy to think them all up. The point is, they're not ignorant of their incompetence. No, they are very competent and manipulating the ignorant masses who will believe them when they announce "Russia did it!" (Everything I just said applies equally to the R party as well.) If the DNC, RNC, or federal government was even halfway smart in their criminal mindset, they'd secure their systems. Maybe plant some honeypots. Probably fire all the government contractors who are leaving them wide open.
  - 10y ago
tptacek 10y ago
It is not the argument that the DNC was so secure that only Russia could have owned it up. Literally nobody thinks that. Everyone agrees the DNC's security was comical. The problem for Russia skeptics is that as easy as it was to own up the DNC, it is in fact very difficult to own it up in a way that points a finger back to Russia, because the "finger" in this case is a collection of IOCs forensically taken from previous attacks that are in most cases known only to law enforcement and to a few very reputable attribution firms.
- feklar 10y ago
  Sabu disagrees, claims the methods and tools are widely shared on the same criminal forums http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/news/450298715/DNC-hack-raises-questions-about-cyber-attribution-methods http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/news/450298715/DNC-hack...
  - tptacek 10y ago
    Well if SABU disagrees with Mandiant and CrowdStrike...
    - Natsu 10y ago
      Hmm, their claims don't actually necessarily disagree that I can see. One says this RAT is used by Russians, the other says it's available to more than just the government. If anyone truly wants to refute it, they just have to visit the forums SABU found and figure out if it's the right tool or not.
      - tptacek 10y ago
        The RAT(s) used aren't the only IOC here!
        Natsu 10y ago
        True. But if they missed finding one thing that's publicly available, how can we say they missed nothing else? It's a big internet out there. I don't think anyone can say that things are unavailable, only that they haven't seen them.
makomk 10y ago
The other problem that Clinton has is that her rhetoric is one of conflict, but when it comes to Russia the current administration is decidedly lacking in bite. So she's got to lean on the idea that Trump's "Putin is stronger than Obama" statement is dangerous, unpatriotic support for someone annexing countries and committing war crimes to paper over the fact that, well, it rather seems to be true given the way the US folds like paper whenever Putin annexes countries and commits war crimes.
Angostura 10y ago
I'm not entirely sure what your argument is here. Yes, the Democrats servers may not have been well secured. How does that affect the issue of whether or not the Russian state was responsible for the hacking or sought to influence the election?
- alasdair_ 10y ago
  Not the OP but: If the servers were poorly secured, the number of entities that could have hacked them goes from "nation states" to "damn near anyone who wanted to" With a much larger pool of potential actors, it's more difficult to conclusively assume that exactly one actor is behind all of the hacks to the exclusion of all others.
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    > Not the OP but: If the servers were poorly secured, the number of entities that could have hacked them goes from "nation states" to "damn near anyone who wanted to" The argument that Russia did it has never been that "only a nation state could do it" (which would leave lots of possibilities besides Russia). It was that forensic analysis revealed specific indicators of specific threat groups that have been previously identified as being operated by specific components of the Russian government being the parties involved in the attacks. Motive is also a factor. I mean, yeah, the door being unlocked means anyone could have gotten in without breaking it down and killed the guy, but its kind of natural to zero in on the guy whose fingerprints were on the knife and who had a motive to commit the murder.
    - tajen 10y ago
      Except, maybe China retrieved the emails, but was more careful to leave no trace and didn't say it. Which means they can have been used in order to blackmail people against the interest of the United States, without us knowing, which makes whoever didn't secure the server a treator. What would you say if a guard let a foreign spy walk into the pentagon? Blame the spy?
pmoriarty 10y ago
"Check out Trump's rhetoric: he admires Putin, he clearly doesn't want war. Check out Clinton's rhetoric: conflict." Trump is playing up the strong man role to the hilt. Clinton is playing up the strong woman role. No matter how fond Trump is of another stereotypical strongman, do you really think that if he gets in to office and then tells Russia to get the fuck out of the Ukraine or Syria that he's going to take no for an answer? Clinton will be much the same, except maybe not quite so batshit insane. I'm afraid that no matter which candidate gets in to office, it's almost a certainty that there'll be war. We'll just be lucky if we scrape by without it turning nuclear.
mnglkhn2 10y ago
Wait for this to be use on Sunday's presidential debate. The timing is also interesting: end of weekly news cycle, Friday afternoon. Hence, not much time to digest but enough to use for sound bites.
- douche 10y ago
  Hmm, a Friday afternoon dump like all the other ones...
ting_bu_dung 10y ago
no, Donald Trump isn't just a racist neville chamberlain. Donald Trump is a psychopathic, women-hating, racist, tax-dodging, russia-affiliated antichrist who will bring shame and destruction to America.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
throwanem 10y ago
> Donald Trump being a racist Neville Chamberlain Neville Chamberlain? Really? And who, in this curious conception, fits the role of Hitler?
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
aggie 10y ago
You presume Trump has a strategy in mind with regards to Russia. I think it's just as likely he has no intention of actually being president and just likes the attention he's getting, so he will say whatever he feels like in the moment. He thinks Putin is a macho strongman leader and that's the image he has crafted for himself, so it feels right to praise him and draw parallels.
tptacek 10y ago
Putin "doesn't want war"? He invaded and annexed another country.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  GP clearly said Trump doesn't want war (implicitly, specifically war with Russia), citing as one bit of support Trump's admiration for Putin. Not that Putin doesn't want war.
  - tptacek 10y ago
    Ah! I mis-read. Thanks.
- oneloop 10y ago
  Do you know what his explanation for that is?
  - tptacek 10y ago
    Do you care what his explanation for that is? He invaded and annexed part of another country.
    - oneloop 10y ago
      Yes, I do care. I think morally there are circumstances where attack is justified, for example if one believes to be under very serious danger. Do you not agree with this? Another question is whether or not that is the case for this instance - we can discuss this too. But do you or don't you agree? And if you don't agree, do you apply the same standard to all the times our country invaded another? This by the way was also the justification to invade Iraq and Afghanistan. Again, whether the fears at the time were correct (they weren't) is a different question. But if the mistake had been honest, I would say the attack would've been morally justified. Do you agree? (I'm just trying to understand whether you really see the world in black and white in which case I'm not really interested in talking to you, or whether you can see that some times circumstances can be quite extreme which might call for extreme measures, in which case I'd be interested in finding out where we're disagreeing.)
BryantD 10y ago
"Why haven't the Republicans been hacked?" Assumes the conclusion. Possibly they have been hacked, but the hacker sees no value in releasing that information. The publicly available data at hand may not be enough to reach a conclusion here.
PakG1 10y ago
its that the DNC clearly has some operational problems. I wonder if there was no possible way to identify Russians (disregard the question whether the evidence is reliable and sufficient for a moment), or worse, if there was valid and sufficient evidence that the perpetrators were completely domestic, would this change the dialog at all? As in, would they suddenly start saying that they are taking measures to better protect government systems? Let's put aside the hope that they'd admit they screwed up and apologize. When was the last time you heard an intelligence official say that? Just hearing them say that they'll be securing systems better would be astounding for me, and I wonder what it would take to get an announcement like that.
oneloop 10y ago
> Check out Trump's rhetoric: he admires Putin, he clearly doesn't want war. Check out Clinton's rhetoric: conflict. I am embarrassed to say, but you've just changed my mind to vote for Trump. I'm fundamentally a single issue voter. I think the most important problem is one that no one in the world is talking about right now: escalation with Russia. The situation has slowly been getting worse since 2002 when the US withdrew from the anti-ballistic missile treaty [1] and is getting worse faster. I also think there's a massive misinformation from the US government about its interactions with the Russian government. What I mean is that the narrative that the US government tells its citizens is that anything that the former does is very well justified (eg bombing Syria) whereas anything that the later does is just because Russians are evil (eg invading Ukraine). Yes, obviously the Russian government uses the same misinformation on their citizens, the difference is that the US is much more successful at this game at the international level. The problem with the citizens specifically is that if two governments are enemies and they have the support of their respective populations... you can imagine what a small leap it is to start war. Yes, Trump is a racist dimwit, but I think that is secondary compared to the consequences of more war. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Ballistic_Missile_Treaty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Ballistic_Missile_Treaty
- HelloMcFly 10y ago
  What an incredibly myopic view. Trump plays conflict every bit, if not more, than Clinton; the one area Trump is less conflict-focused is Russia, whose semi-totalitarian leader Trump admires and would like to emulate. [1][2] Trump is the only candidate who has openly floated the idea of using nuclear weapons. [3] Trump is ready to start a political pissing war with Mexico over a wall. [4][5] Trump wants to ban all Muslim travel to the US, and profile all US Muslims. [6] Trump, the "Law and Order" candidate, would prefer to convict minority men based on police testimony alone, never mind the courts [7] Trump is more militaristic, by his own admission, then George W. Bush [8] Trump called for direct intervention in Libya just like other leaders [9] Trump basically wants to steal oil from Iraq using our troops as the muscle [10] Trump is doing more sabre-rattling with China than Clinton, by a mile [11] Trump wants China to invade North Korea, or just have its leader assassinated Trump, the anti-conflict vote? He makes everyone an enemy, including and especially our own citizens. His followers like him because he's a strongman, a bully. But sure, he's the anti-conflict vote because he admires Putin. Never mind the fallout for everyone else, especially poor, non-white citizens. I suppose if you think an actual war is likely or possible with Russia then your fears are founded. That seems more than outlandish to me, and far from justification for putting a racist, misogynist bully in charge or the country and nominating Supreme Court justices. --- 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCHQPCXbt1w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCHQPCXbt1w 2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVTAaJ1fzfc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVTAaJ1fzfc 3. Do you need a citation for this? 4. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/07/24/donald-trump-is-expanding-his-muslim-ban-not-rolling-it-back/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/07... 5. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/06/19/donald-trump-calls-profiling-muslims-common-sense/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/06... 6. http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/donald-trump-says-central-park-five-are-guilty-despite-dna-n661941 http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/donald-trump-s... 7. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PakHtuTrvV8&feature=youtu.be&t=49m46s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PakHtuTrvV8&feature=youtu.be... 8. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnZFQiDR4hQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnZFQiDR4hQ 9. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZxD_RFvXpA&feature=youtu.be&t=22m50s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZxD_RFvXpA&feature=youtu.be... 10. Watch the debates 11. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/09/27/did-trump-really-just-suggest-that-china-should-invade-north-korea/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/09/27...

ak4g 10y ago

What's silly is saying oh, since I read some stuff online about how crappy the DNC security is, I should probably chalk it up to some unknown actor for some vauge hand-wavy reasons instead of taking the statements of the the Director of National Intelligence and the Department of Homeland Security at face value. Why would they lie? What gives you reason to think they (not the DNC!) be that colossally stupid? Why would you do anything other than take allegations of yet another Kremlin attempt to interfere in fair elections as seriously as the people of Europe and Ukraine have learned, the hard way, that they must?

dxhdr 10y ago
> taking the statements of the the Director of National Intelligence and the Department of Homeland Security at face value Frankly, it's hard to do that in a post-Snowden, post-Comey world.
- ak4g 10y ago
  Then use your critical thinking. I'll repeat the question: > Why would they lie? What gives you reason to think they (not the DNC!) be that colossally stupid?
  - zigzigzag 10y ago
    Because it helps them justify a larger budget? This is ridiculous. Why would they not lie? The US intelligence community appears to lie reflexively about everything. Why would anyone take their words at face value?
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- grandalf 10y ago
  > it's hard to do that I'd say it's completely impossible to do that :)
  - tptacek 10y ago
    For what it's worth, and apropos this thread, I responded to your comment about this issue from earlier this week (sorry it took me so long). https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12664172 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12664172
    - grandalf 10y ago
      Thanks for replying. I don't disagree with any of your conclusions but I'll reply in that thread with a brief comment in a moment.
  - marcosdumay 10y ago
    There are some people that, if they told me the sky was blue I'd look around for unexplainable chromatic aberrations.
wyager 10y ago
>Why would they lie? Are you joking? Do you not see the massive political motivation there? And of course, the US government has a great track record with telling the truth about security issues.
- tomjakubowski 10y ago
  What's the political motivation for the DNI to lie? Clapper isn't really a politician and as far as I know he's not affiliated with any party.
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    > Clapper isn't really a politician No one who gets any position that requires Senate confirmation is "not really a politician" (and, yes, that includes general/flag officers in the military) -- they may be purely bureaucratic rather than electoral politicians, but they are politicians nonetheless. But, yeah, I don't see a lot of evidence that Clapper is a Democratic (or other) partisan.
  - turar 10y ago
    Russia just told the US that if Americans attack Syrian troops, Russia will intervene on Syria's behalf. That should be the major story actually.
- ak4g 10y ago
  Of course I do, which is why I asked the 2nd question: > What gives you reason to think they (not the DNC!) be that colossally stupid? The political motivation is what would make lying here colossally stupid.
zzzcpan 10y ago
What would be the point in telling the truth? There is no truth, no lies, just carefully crafted words to pursue political agendas. I fail to recognize any difference between carefully selected truth and a lie. They all are used to achieve the exact same thing.
alasdair_ 10y ago
> taking the statements of the the Director of National Intelligence and the Department of Homeland Security at face value. >Why would they lie? One reasonable reason for why they would lie is that their jobs are somewhat political and the person being targeted is likely going to be their boss soon. Claiming Russia is behind the hacks draws attention away from the hacks themselves, the shady campaign finance allegations they brought to light and the fact that Clinton was storing classified data in her home (I know the hacks were not of that particular server, but the two are still related.) In a world where James Clapper is willing to egregiously lie, under oath, to congress, the default assumption that these people can be trusted to automatically tell the truth is suspect. So far, the main evidence that I can find that links the hacks to the Russian government are two things: 1. Some of the documents had Russian metadata added to them. 2. The timing of the attacks seems to follow public holiday schedules for the Russian government. These are both reasonable items of circumstantial evidence but it doesn't seem to be enough to accuse a foreign government directly. Since this event has national political implications, and since the people making the statements have good reasons for being less than truthful, I am happy waiting for better evidence before making a decision one way or the other.
- whybroke 10y ago
  So The Director of National Intelligence and the Department of Homeland Security are conspiring to provoke a serious intentional problem solely to distract from an already admitted to and apologized for personal server that is only important to Trump voters (ie won't change the election outcome)? Doesn't that sound just a tad wild even for a conspiracy theory?
  - ZoF 10y ago
    Yes, it is the "already admitted to and apologized for personal server" that this would distract from; certainly not the ongoing email leaks or content of those already released. The server was a simple 'mistake' anyone could 'accidentally' make; I honestly think people don't understand how easy it is to accidentally configure a mailserver, happened to me just this morning. >Doesn't that sound just a tad wild even for a conspiracy theory? Sadly, it doesn't sound wild at all.
turar 10y ago
Why wouldn't they lie?
Animats 10y ago
If the announcement came from, say, Major General Mark W. Westergren, USAF, Deputy Chief NSA/CSS, it would be more credible. He's not a political appointee, and should know in detail what's going on in this area.
- meowface 10y ago
  Why would that make a difference? If the US government is so brazen to force a public official to lie about this, they would make him lie about it, too. (There's almost no chance there is a conspiracy here. I think it is probably Russia.)
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  > If the announcement came from, say, Major General Mark W. Westergren, USAF, Deputy Chief NSA/CSS, it would be more credible. He's not a political appointee I am aware of no commonly used definition of "political appointee" that does not include (among others) all officers of government that go through the appointment-by-the-President-and-confirmation-by-the-Senate process that applies to -- as well as to officials that get more media attention for this process -- all military officers (and with notably more personal attention in the process to 1-star and higher ranks -- generals and admirals.)
- dnautics 10y ago
  All O7- and above are not apolitical; all flag officers in all services must be nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate at each promotion beyond O6. It's often a rubber stamping process, but it is there. Denial of promotion and individual intervention is relatively frequent. Technically all officers also have this treatment but Senate oversight and intervention is much lower, and the batches are much bigger.
travmatt 10y ago
Also, a republican led incident response firm attributed the hacks to Russia.
Natsu 10y ago
> Why would they lie? - To distract us from their own incompetence. - To avoid talking about the content of those leaks (from memory, the WaPo is an arm of the DNC that they hold illicit fundraisers with, the DNC funneled all of the money to Hillary from the outset so Bernie never had a shot, etc.) - To paint Trump as an agent of a foreign power (he's bad enough even after you filter out the nonsense). They turned off logging on those servers to avoid transparency. If they want me to believe claims like this, I'll need to see the full server logs from the email server. Oh, wait, they destroyed those. How convenient. My thoughts are that the elections will continue to get worse as long as we keep voting for lizards to keep the wrong lizard from winning. Anyone who tells you you're limited to the choices made for you on the ballot bears some personal responsibility for the mess.
TheSpiceIsLife 10y ago
It's comical that anyone claims US presidential elections are fair. I'm not picking a political side here, both parties are duping the voters.

qaq 10y ago

Because Putin is actually actively trying to get Trump elected? Most likely because he has enough dirt on him to manipulate him.

Mikeb85 10y ago
> Most likely because he has enough dirt on him to manipulate him. Or, you know, doesn't want WWIII, like the rest of us.
- qaq 10y ago
  Could you count how many times in history yielding to bold advances of power hungry ruler served as effective deterrent to war?
  - greendragon 10y ago
    You're right, Putin shouldn't stand by idly as America builds a missile shield around Russia to negate their ability to launch nukes... We already have a deterrent for war with Russia. Russia knows this, I think the US is forgetting it.
    - qaq 10y ago
      A lot of countries forget a lot of things US & other major nuclear powers conveniently forgot how they negotiated Ukraine to surrender worlds 3d largest nuclear arsenal in exchange for "security guarantees". US is acting prudently in building up missile shield around Russia since in the event of russia collapse who knows what will happen to their nuclear weapons.
      - rangibaby 10y ago
        There was worry with the collapse of the USSR that Russian nukes would be donated to terrorists. It was a very common theme in 90s fiction. It ended up not happening at all, in fact the only major nuclear proliferation since then has been from Pakistan to North Korea, which is not mentioned by the western media because Pakistan is a very important ally against the Soviets. Wait...

sanderjd 10y ago

Could you define your intended definition for the terms "neoliberal" and "neoconservative"? Unfortunately these are bandied about so often that their definitions are hazy to me and seem subjective, so I don't feel like I can really reason about what you're saying without having the terms defined.

grandalf 10y ago
"Neoconservative" is often described as "liberals with guns". In the US the word "liberal" does not mean laissez faire oriented, it means leaning toward statism. Neoconservatives are typically of the opinion that the US can effectively intervene in foreign politics through the use of force, and they view such intervention through a moralistic lens. They typically attempt to justify interventions by using typically progressive causes such as "freeing women from oppression under Saddam's rule" or preventing other illiberal practices from happening. While the circumstances used to justify military action are sometimes true, the defining characteristic of the neoconservative view is that the US should be actively promoting "democracy", "freedom", "women's rights", etc. all around the world. When it comes down to it, these things are typically used as an excuse for the US to destroy lots of infrastructure, kill lots of people, and attempt to enact regime change. Some notable examples of neoconservative intervention are the US invasion of Iraq and the US invasion of Libya. What's interesting is the way that highly politicized statements about other countries, their customs, and their leaders are taken seriously in the US. At this point, most American support a neoconservative view of the proper US role in world affairs, and the moral high ground the US has with which to judge foreign situations. Statements made advocating a neoconservative approach to world affairs must be political (and persuasive) in nature, because unlike the traditional causes for war (invasion, invasion of neighboring territory, etc.) without quite a lot of convincing it would not be apparent that intervention would be helpful or the alleged outcome possible simply by projecting force.
- hackuser 10y ago
  > In the US the word "liberal" does not mean laissez faire oriented, it means leaning toward statism. I'm not sure this is completely true. It's how conservatives frame liberals, but that's part of scoring political points. It does have some truth, but the mainstream of the Democratic Party, for example, is strongly free-market (ask the progressives, who despise them), and conservatives prefer a powerful government for security and law enforcement, religion (prayer in schools), abortion, etc. I'm saying this in as non-partisan a way as possible: Encapsulating the opinions of a hundred million people in a sentence is tough, however. The best generalization I can come up with is that 'liberals' seek progress and change, and 'conservatives' seek to protect what they already have - and those perspectives apply to the economy, culture, and much more. Liberals want to develop clean energy to deal with climate change, conservatives want to preserve existing oil and gas industries. Liberals want to promote integration and the rights of minorities, conservatives want to protect traditional mores. Liberals believe the world can move forward and become more peaceful, conservatives believe humanity will never change and want military power. Of course, very few real people actually fit those definitions.

tdb7893 10y ago

Do the Republicans have better operational security for some reason? Especially with these being simple phishing attacks (which are targeted by their nature) I don't think it's an unreasonable to say that these are targeted.

ch4s3 10y ago
I seriously doubt that. I've know a few people that have worked for either party in a technical capacity and I've never heard anything impressive about opsec. In fact, during the '08 election Palin and several Republican lawmakers were the victims of phishing or similarly low hanging fruit variety attacks. Maybe they're just lucky this time around. Maybe the DNC has higher value info, maybe they hired a few unusually careless people. It will probably take awhile to gain any real insight.
- NotSammyHagar 10y ago
  I'd guess that they just didn't release the republican national commmittee hacked fruit yet. If I was russia, I'd obviously hack both. In a normal year, probably the Russians would be for the dems. It's just this bizarro election year where the dems are the hawks.
  - ch4s3 10y ago
    Both parties have shifted dramatically towards hawkish positions since 2001, even in the face of waning public support for foreign adventurism. I'm curious to see how long it takes the pendulum to swing back.
    - NotSammyHagar 10y ago
      Maybe the 2020s will see an end to support for war in the US, but it will take the continuing reduction of the old white conservative white people class, that seems to lose about 1% of the voting population a year. I'm a white person but not conservative, and I do come from that group. These demographic changes take a while to percolate through the political leadership, because the folks that liked military action will have to age out of leadership. So while I'm voting for Hillary, I wish she was a lot less a part of the conservative dems that generally support military actions. I think what will probably happen is that the decreasing political power of conservative older (mostly white) people will lead to even more national extremism, and then the demographic changes will force the republicans to change to attract conservatives who aren't white. It saddens me to feel this is all but inevitable. I'm from a southern state but now live in one of those economically successful liberal coastal tech hubs. I wish there was more opportunity in the state I grew up in, but mostly I just see them wasting time and passing laws against gay people and transgenders in my home state. Interestingly there is a similar issue facing China. If China and the US can avoid fighting a war against each other for 15 years, then the population of China will experience a movement to having many fewer workers per retired person, partly caused by having had so many more male than female children, they will get older. For example, see http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/06/chinas-twilight-years/480768/ http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/06/chinas-t.... My fantasy then is China and the US don't destroy the world in a fight, and by 2030, China will be more focused on internal issues around retirement and economic retraction than trying to take small south China sea islands from the Philippines. Of course, US history shows that there's nothing that excites the population than a good war. Similar forces are at work in Russia too, with an aging population. And then China can gradually transition to being a real democracy (yeah, just like russia did, for a little while :-)). Putin is not going to live forever, but will he still be in power in 30 years?

AgentME 10y ago

>Read about how the Clinton server was "secured" (hint: comically). Read about how the DNC has been getting hacked: very simple phishing scams. Everything about the DNC screams shoddy. The worst thing is that you tend to get blamed for "victim-blaming" when you point this sort of thing out. No one ever wants to admit that they should have paid attention to security instead of jury-rigging things together incompetently. People like to make analogies to hackers being street-robbers attacking interesting-looking defenseless people. If you suggest that people should have secured their infrastructure better, they look at you like you suggested that people walk around on the street with body armor. No! Most hacks you hear about are like if a bank kept everyone's money in a pile in the corner of the front lobby and insisted on an honor code to make people stay away from the pile. Yes, the thief that takes something from the pile committed a crime, but that bank was incompetent in securing what their consumers trusted to them and has a great share of the blame.

sounds 10y ago
Ok, good analogy on how _businesses_ run their internet security. However, the government, and the DNC too, are only interested in security when they can't just use their thugs instead. We're way behind in cyberwarfare precisely because our federal government thinks like a thug ... or in other words, like a big dumb criminal. The DNC gets political mileage out of being hacked because they can create a controversy (blaming Russia) and look good (their opponent isn't as anti-Putin as they are). Why should they ask their contractors for better security? They pay top dollar and are getting what they want: none of the hassles of real security, and if ... when they get hacked, they get to choose their response: (1) blame Russia (2) blame Trump (3) blame the contractor (4) blame the government I'm sure there are more response strategies, I'm just too lazy to think them all up. The point is, they're not ignorant of their incompetence. No, they are very competent and manipulating the ignorant masses who will believe them when they announce "Russia did it!" (Everything I just said applies equally to the R party as well.) If the DNC, RNC, or federal government was even halfway smart in their criminal mindset, they'd secure their systems. Maybe plant some honeypots. Probably fire all the government contractors who are leaving them wide open.
- 10y ago

tptacek 10y ago

It is not the argument that the DNC was so secure that only Russia could have owned it up. Literally nobody thinks that. Everyone agrees the DNC's security was comical. The problem for Russia skeptics is that as easy as it was to own up the DNC, it is in fact very difficult to own it up in a way that points a finger back to Russia, because the "finger" in this case is a collection of IOCs forensically taken from previous attacks that are in most cases known only to law enforcement and to a few very reputable attribution firms.

feklar 10y ago
Sabu disagrees, claims the methods and tools are widely shared on the same criminal forums http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/news/450298715/DNC-hack-raises-questions-about-cyber-attribution-methods http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/news/450298715/DNC-hack...
- tptacek 10y ago
  Well if SABU disagrees with Mandiant and CrowdStrike...
  - Natsu 10y ago
    Hmm, their claims don't actually necessarily disagree that I can see. One says this RAT is used by Russians, the other says it's available to more than just the government. If anyone truly wants to refute it, they just have to visit the forums SABU found and figure out if it's the right tool or not.
    - tptacek 10y ago
      The RAT(s) used aren't the only IOC here!
      - Natsu 10y ago
        True. But if they missed finding one thing that's publicly available, how can we say they missed nothing else? It's a big internet out there. I don't think anyone can say that things are unavailable, only that they haven't seen them.

makomk 10y ago

The other problem that Clinton has is that her rhetoric is one of conflict, but when it comes to Russia the current administration is decidedly lacking in bite. So she's got to lean on the idea that Trump's "Putin is stronger than Obama" statement is dangerous, unpatriotic support for someone annexing countries and committing war crimes to paper over the fact that, well, it rather seems to be true given the way the US folds like paper whenever Putin annexes countries and commits war crimes.

Angostura 10y ago

I'm not entirely sure what your argument is here. Yes, the Democrats servers may not have been well secured. How does that affect the issue of whether or not the Russian state was responsible for the hacking or sought to influence the election?

alasdair_ 10y ago
Not the OP but: If the servers were poorly secured, the number of entities that could have hacked them goes from "nation states" to "damn near anyone who wanted to" With a much larger pool of potential actors, it's more difficult to conclusively assume that exactly one actor is behind all of the hacks to the exclusion of all others.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  > Not the OP but: If the servers were poorly secured, the number of entities that could have hacked them goes from "nation states" to "damn near anyone who wanted to" The argument that Russia did it has never been that "only a nation state could do it" (which would leave lots of possibilities besides Russia). It was that forensic analysis revealed specific indicators of specific threat groups that have been previously identified as being operated by specific components of the Russian government being the parties involved in the attacks. Motive is also a factor. I mean, yeah, the door being unlocked means anyone could have gotten in without breaking it down and killed the guy, but its kind of natural to zero in on the guy whose fingerprints were on the knife and who had a motive to commit the murder.
  - tajen 10y ago
    Except, maybe China retrieved the emails, but was more careful to leave no trace and didn't say it. Which means they can have been used in order to blackmail people against the interest of the United States, without us knowing, which makes whoever didn't secure the server a treator. What would you say if a guard let a foreign spy walk into the pentagon? Blame the spy?

pmoriarty 10y ago

"Check out Trump's rhetoric: he admires Putin, he clearly doesn't want war. Check out Clinton's rhetoric: conflict." Trump is playing up the strong man role to the hilt. Clinton is playing up the strong woman role. No matter how fond Trump is of another stereotypical strongman, do you really think that if he gets in to office and then tells Russia to get the fuck out of the Ukraine or Syria that he's going to take no for an answer? Clinton will be much the same, except maybe not quite so batshit insane. I'm afraid that no matter which candidate gets in to office, it's almost a certainty that there'll be war. We'll just be lucky if we scrape by without it turning nuclear.

mnglkhn2 10y ago

Wait for this to be use on Sunday's presidential debate. The timing is also interesting: end of weekly news cycle, Friday afternoon. Hence, not much time to digest but enough to use for sound bites.

douche 10y ago
Hmm, a Friday afternoon dump like all the other ones...

ting_bu_dung 10y ago

no, Donald Trump isn't just a racist neville chamberlain. Donald Trump is a psychopathic, women-hating, racist, tax-dodging, russia-affiliated antichrist who will bring shame and destruction to America.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

throwanem 10y ago

> Donald Trump being a racist Neville Chamberlain Neville Chamberlain? Really? And who, in this curious conception, fits the role of Hitler?

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

aggie 10y ago

You presume Trump has a strategy in mind with regards to Russia. I think it's just as likely he has no intention of actually being president and just likes the attention he's getting, so he will say whatever he feels like in the moment. He thinks Putin is a macho strongman leader and that's the image he has crafted for himself, so it feels right to praise him and draw parallels.

tptacek 10y ago

Putin "doesn't want war"? He invaded and annexed another country.

dragonwriter 10y ago
GP clearly said Trump doesn't want war (implicitly, specifically war with Russia), citing as one bit of support Trump's admiration for Putin. Not that Putin doesn't want war.
- tptacek 10y ago
  Ah! I mis-read. Thanks.
oneloop 10y ago
Do you know what his explanation for that is?
- tptacek 10y ago
  Do you care what his explanation for that is? He invaded and annexed part of another country.
  - oneloop 10y ago
    Yes, I do care. I think morally there are circumstances where attack is justified, for example if one believes to be under very serious danger. Do you not agree with this? Another question is whether or not that is the case for this instance - we can discuss this too. But do you or don't you agree? And if you don't agree, do you apply the same standard to all the times our country invaded another? This by the way was also the justification to invade Iraq and Afghanistan. Again, whether the fears at the time were correct (they weren't) is a different question. But if the mistake had been honest, I would say the attack would've been morally justified. Do you agree? (I'm just trying to understand whether you really see the world in black and white in which case I'm not really interested in talking to you, or whether you can see that some times circumstances can be quite extreme which might call for extreme measures, in which case I'd be interested in finding out where we're disagreeing.)

BryantD 10y ago

"Why haven't the Republicans been hacked?" Assumes the conclusion. Possibly they have been hacked, but the hacker sees no value in releasing that information. The publicly available data at hand may not be enough to reach a conclusion here.

PakG1 10y ago

its that the DNC clearly has some operational problems. I wonder if there was no possible way to identify Russians (disregard the question whether the evidence is reliable and sufficient for a moment), or worse, if there was valid and sufficient evidence that the perpetrators were completely domestic, would this change the dialog at all? As in, would they suddenly start saying that they are taking measures to better protect government systems? Let's put aside the hope that they'd admit they screwed up and apologize. When was the last time you heard an intelligence official say that? Just hearing them say that they'll be securing systems better would be astounding for me, and I wonder what it would take to get an announcement like that.

oneloop 10y ago

> Check out Trump's rhetoric: he admires Putin, he clearly doesn't want war. Check out Clinton's rhetoric: conflict. I am embarrassed to say, but you've just changed my mind to vote for Trump. I'm fundamentally a single issue voter. I think the most important problem is one that no one in the world is talking about right now: escalation with Russia. The situation has slowly been getting worse since 2002 when the US withdrew from the anti-ballistic missile treaty [1] and is getting worse faster. I also think there's a massive misinformation from the US government about its interactions with the Russian government. What I mean is that the narrative that the US government tells its citizens is that anything that the former does is very well justified (eg bombing Syria) whereas anything that the later does is just because Russians are evil (eg invading Ukraine). Yes, obviously the Russian government uses the same misinformation on their citizens, the difference is that the US is much more successful at this game at the international level. The problem with the citizens specifically is that if two governments are enemies and they have the support of their respective populations... you can imagine what a small leap it is to start war. Yes, Trump is a racist dimwit, but I think that is secondary compared to the consequences of more war. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Ballistic_Missile_Treaty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Ballistic_Missile_Treaty

HelloMcFly 10y ago
What an incredibly myopic view. Trump plays conflict every bit, if not more, than Clinton; the one area Trump is less conflict-focused is Russia, whose semi-totalitarian leader Trump admires and would like to emulate. [1][2] Trump is the only candidate who has openly floated the idea of using nuclear weapons. [3] Trump is ready to start a political pissing war with Mexico over a wall. [4][5] Trump wants to ban all Muslim travel to the US, and profile all US Muslims. [6] Trump, the "Law and Order" candidate, would prefer to convict minority men based on police testimony alone, never mind the courts [7] Trump is more militaristic, by his own admission, then George W. Bush [8] Trump called for direct intervention in Libya just like other leaders [9] Trump basically wants to steal oil from Iraq using our troops as the muscle [10] Trump is doing more sabre-rattling with China than Clinton, by a mile [11] Trump wants China to invade North Korea, or just have its leader assassinated Trump, the anti-conflict vote? He makes everyone an enemy, including and especially our own citizens. His followers like him because he's a strongman, a bully. But sure, he's the anti-conflict vote because he admires Putin. Never mind the fallout for everyone else, especially poor, non-white citizens. I suppose if you think an actual war is likely or possible with Russia then your fears are founded. That seems more than outlandish to me, and far from justification for putting a racist, misogynist bully in charge or the country and nominating Supreme Court justices. --- 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCHQPCXbt1w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCHQPCXbt1w 2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVTAaJ1fzfc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVTAaJ1fzfc 3. Do you need a citation for this? 4. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/07/24/donald-trump-is-expanding-his-muslim-ban-not-rolling-it-back/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/07... 5. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/06/19/donald-trump-calls-profiling-muslims-common-sense/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/06... 6. http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/donald-trump-says-central-park-five-are-guilty-despite-dna-n661941 http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/donald-trump-s... 7. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PakHtuTrvV8&feature=youtu.be&t=49m46s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PakHtuTrvV8&feature=youtu.be... 8. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnZFQiDR4hQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnZFQiDR4hQ 9. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZxD_RFvXpA&feature=youtu.be&t=22m50s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZxD_RFvXpA&feature=youtu.be... 10. Watch the debates 11. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/09/27/did-trump-really-just-suggest-that-china-should-invade-north-korea/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/09/27...