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Still lacking any evidence that voting machines were hacked or any part of the electoral process was hijacked. The worst damage? Emails related to the actual ri

by j_m_b 10y ago

Still lacking any evidence that voting machines were hacked or any part of the electoral process was hijacked. The worst damage? Emails related to the actual rigging of the Democrat Party primaries and the collusion of the media with the Democrat party. Its very hard for me to believe that a state actor is behind such seemingly altruistic actions. Voters saw the worst of Trump and Clinton and choose the lessor of two evils. Wikileaks and "the Russians" simply provided a level playing field.

ohwello 10y ago
How on earth did a leak of DNC emails, but no corresponding RNC leak, help people figure out the lesser of two evils or provide a level playing field? Seems obvious that leaks assisting the pro-Putin candidate were not altruistic.
- AnthonyMouse 10y ago
  Assuming Clinton had those dirty secrets and Trump had nothing equivalent, that's what a level playing field looks like. If you want to assume there were also some dirty Trump secrets that didn't come out then it seems like the only way to "level the playing field" would be for e.g. Venezuela to hack the Republicans and air their dirty laundry too. And people are running around saying how terrible this is and asking "what if everybody did this?" But it seems like the answer to that question is, then people would know more relevant information about their political candidates. Or politicians would get better at computer security. Which of those is supposed to be bad?
  - coolgeek 10y ago
    > Assuming Clinton had those dirty secrets and Trump had nothing equivalent Those are two rather incredulous assumptions considering that: - Clinton released all of her tax returns, whereas Trump didn't release any - The Clinton Foundation has been audited by at least three well respected, independent, organizations (garnering top ratings from all), whereas we know comparatively little about the Trump Foundation (or whatever it's called), yet it's admitted within the last six months to several inappropriate expenditures or donations, and is likely being investigated for more - Trump sits atop a network of literally hundreds (if not thousands) of "independent" corporations designed solely to evade disclosure, liability, taxes or some combination thereof
- rdtsc 10y ago
  Level is relative here. But remember DNC candidate had 6 or more multibillion dollar mass media corps actively supporting their candidate, POTUS was campaigning for them, had a top strategy team, support from tech giants, Wall St., huge contributions from countries like Saudi Arabia and so on. A few emails leaked I would say still wasn't a level playing field but it was close?
  - the_why_of_y 10y ago
    "mass media corps actively supporting their candidate"? How? By wasting hours of coverage on irrelevant emails instead of relevant policy issues? https://shorensteincenter.org/pre-primary-news-coverage-2016-trump-clinton-sanders/ https://shorensteincenter.org/pre-primary-news-coverage-2016... Look at figure 7, Clinton media coverage 84% negative in tone, twice the ratio as Trump's! Now compare that to the many millions worth of free coverage that Trump got, because he knew how to exploit the media's lust for controversy. http://mediamatters.org/blog/2016/10/26/study-confirms-network-evening-newscasts-have-abandoned-policy-coverage-2016-campaign/214120 http://mediamatters.org/blog/2016/10/26/study-confirms-netwo... 100 minutes of Clinton emails vs. 32 minutes of policy issues for all candidates combined - who do you think benefits from that, the candidate with realistic policy proposals, or the one who wants solve all problems by building a wall?
- beowulf_cluster 10y ago
  To be fair, he called Trump the "lessor" of two evils. Though, that seems like a low-ball figure.
bobwaycott 10y ago
First off, while there was an irrefutable bias in the DNC during the primaries, and shitty moves made against Sanders as a result of that bias, that is not the same thing in any way to rigging the primaries. That's a much stronger allegation with no evidence I've yet seen provided. The DNC was deplorable and idiotic in its rejection of Sanders and active working against his campaign. But the primaries were not rigged. Second, how exactly was a level playing field created by leaks that targeted a single party and candidate? Was there some demonstrable advantage HRC and the DNC possessed versus GOP candidates and the RNC, which was neutralized in a fair fashion by the leaks, thus creating an equitable and balanced standing among all the parties and candidates? That seems to require quite a lot of evidence and explaining. Third, I don't think there has been any stated allegations from the Obama administration or intelligence services regarding hacking voting machines and tallies. I realize some people are suggesting it without any evidence being out there. But the administration doesn't appear to be making those claims from all I've read so far. That's a wholly different issue that would require an incredible amount of organization, effort, and evidence proving it occurred. "Hacking the election" seems to almost be used as a bit of a colloquialism, more akin to "life-hacking", and where administration officials are concerned, specifically focused on the data breaches and leaks in an effort to "life-hack" the election through creative social and political engineering, not manipulating voting tabulations. However, voting machines != electoral process. They are merely the mechanism by which the process culminates in a decision. The machines can be entirely sound, while the process can be hacked and manipulated. Also, a couple of nitpicks: - It's the Democratic Party, not Democrat Party. It's members are called Democrats, not the party itself. - In this instance, you wanted to use "lesser" not "lessor".
- dilap 10y ago
  I agree not rigged, but giving Hillary debate questions in advance comes pretty close. In my opinion, the DNC emails and the Trump "grab 'em" tapes are similar -- you can argue that it's private material that should've stayed that way, but you can't argue that the material didn't reveal helpful truths about the candidates. Finally, a recent poll found 50% of Democrats think that Russia tampered with the vote tallies in the election. This is insane, and the direct result of mainstream media irresponsibly using the phrase "hacked the election" to refer to the (alleged) hacking of DNC emails by Russia. Fake news.

by j_m_b 10y ago

ohwello 10y ago

How on earth did a leak of DNC emails, but no corresponding RNC leak, help people figure out the lesser of two evils or provide a level playing field? Seems obvious that leaks assisting the pro-Putin candidate were not altruistic.

AnthonyMouse 10y ago
Assuming Clinton had those dirty secrets and Trump had nothing equivalent, that's what a level playing field looks like. If you want to assume there were also some dirty Trump secrets that didn't come out then it seems like the only way to "level the playing field" would be for e.g. Venezuela to hack the Republicans and air their dirty laundry too. And people are running around saying how terrible this is and asking "what if everybody did this?" But it seems like the answer to that question is, then people would know more relevant information about their political candidates. Or politicians would get better at computer security. Which of those is supposed to be bad?
- coolgeek 10y ago
  > Assuming Clinton had those dirty secrets and Trump had nothing equivalent Those are two rather incredulous assumptions considering that: - Clinton released all of her tax returns, whereas Trump didn't release any - The Clinton Foundation has been audited by at least three well respected, independent, organizations (garnering top ratings from all), whereas we know comparatively little about the Trump Foundation (or whatever it's called), yet it's admitted within the last six months to several inappropriate expenditures or donations, and is likely being investigated for more - Trump sits atop a network of literally hundreds (if not thousands) of "independent" corporations designed solely to evade disclosure, liability, taxes or some combination thereof
rdtsc 10y ago
Level is relative here. But remember DNC candidate had 6 or more multibillion dollar mass media corps actively supporting their candidate, POTUS was campaigning for them, had a top strategy team, support from tech giants, Wall St., huge contributions from countries like Saudi Arabia and so on. A few emails leaked I would say still wasn't a level playing field but it was close?
- the_why_of_y 10y ago
  "mass media corps actively supporting their candidate"? How? By wasting hours of coverage on irrelevant emails instead of relevant policy issues? https://shorensteincenter.org/pre-primary-news-coverage-2016-trump-clinton-sanders/ https://shorensteincenter.org/pre-primary-news-coverage-2016... Look at figure 7, Clinton media coverage 84% negative in tone, twice the ratio as Trump's! Now compare that to the many millions worth of free coverage that Trump got, because he knew how to exploit the media's lust for controversy. http://mediamatters.org/blog/2016/10/26/study-confirms-network-evening-newscasts-have-abandoned-policy-coverage-2016-campaign/214120 http://mediamatters.org/blog/2016/10/26/study-confirms-netwo... 100 minutes of Clinton emails vs. 32 minutes of policy issues for all candidates combined - who do you think benefits from that, the candidate with realistic policy proposals, or the one who wants solve all problems by building a wall?
beowulf_cluster 10y ago
To be fair, he called Trump the "lessor" of two evils. Though, that seems like a low-ball figure.

bobwaycott 10y ago

First off, while there was an irrefutable bias in the DNC during the primaries, and shitty moves made against Sanders as a result of that bias, that is not the same thing in any way to rigging the primaries. That's a much stronger allegation with no evidence I've yet seen provided. The DNC was deplorable and idiotic in its rejection of Sanders and active working against his campaign. But the primaries were not rigged. Second, how exactly was a level playing field created by leaks that targeted a single party and candidate? Was there some demonstrable advantage HRC and the DNC possessed versus GOP candidates and the RNC, which was neutralized in a fair fashion by the leaks, thus creating an equitable and balanced standing among all the parties and candidates? That seems to require quite a lot of evidence and explaining. Third, I don't think there has been any stated allegations from the Obama administration or intelligence services regarding hacking voting machines and tallies. I realize some people are suggesting it without any evidence being out there. But the administration doesn't appear to be making those claims from all I've read so far. That's a wholly different issue that would require an incredible amount of organization, effort, and evidence proving it occurred. "Hacking the election" seems to almost be used as a bit of a colloquialism, more akin to "life-hacking", and where administration officials are concerned, specifically focused on the data breaches and leaks in an effort to "life-hack" the election through creative social and political engineering, not manipulating voting tabulations. However, voting machines != electoral process. They are merely the mechanism by which the process culminates in a decision. The machines can be entirely sound, while the process can be hacked and manipulated. Also, a couple of nitpicks: - It's the Democratic Party, not Democrat Party. It's members are called Democrats, not the party itself. - In this instance, you wanted to use "lesser" not "lessor".

dilap 10y ago
I agree not rigged, but giving Hillary debate questions in advance comes pretty close. In my opinion, the DNC emails and the Trump "grab 'em" tapes are similar -- you can argue that it's private material that should've stayed that way, but you can't argue that the material didn't reveal helpful truths about the candidates. Finally, a recent poll found 50% of Democrats think that Russia tampered with the vote tallies in the election. This is insane, and the direct result of mainstream media irresponsibly using the phrase "hacked the election" to refer to the (alleged) hacking of DNC emails by Russia. Fake news.