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> It is worded to sound like there was kind of a major breach or votes were almost altered. I agree with you here, the headline is over the top. I do think the

> It is worded to sound like there was kind of a major breach or votes were almost altered. I agree with you here, the headline is over the top. I do think there is too much hype about anything Russian-related. However, I think you are misrepresenting what the article actually says. This preparatory activity seems like more than just scanning port 22. A few sentences later: "Officials said there were some attempts to compromise networks, but most were unsuccessful. Only Illinois reported that hackers had succeeded in breaching its voter systems." And "The Wisconsin Election Commission, for example, said the state’s systems were targeted by “Russian government cyber actors.” So the Russian government was trying to break into US election infrastructure. Does this justify the breathless coverage of the "Russia Scandal" on the news? Maybe not (but 24/7 news is always outraged about something). But does this mean the Russia thing is on the level of crop-dusting conspiracies? No, and it's wrong to suggest that. > He said that Trump was mean to him basically. This sentence seems a bit dishonest. Sure, Trump may have been mean to Comey. But we are talking about the President of the United States firing the head of the investigative body of the Department of Justice, not some playground bully. Comey detailed several instances where he felt Trump was pressuring him to end an investigation into members of his campaign. Trump then fired Comey when he didn't stop the investigations, and said that he was thinking about the Russian investigation when he fired him. Maybe this is mean, but there is clearly something here that should be investigated. > Every minute or time spend on this Russia thing, is a minute not spent on seeing how to organize better politically, maybe clean up the DNC, form a new party. These would all be good things. The biggest impact of the Russia coverage, IMO, is that it insures the Mueller investigation is carried out to its completion and Trump can't silently make it go away. We already know Trump would try to fire the leader of the investigation, he's done it once. I'm not convinced that the investigation will find anything, but there is enough evidence to justify a full investigation into the Trump campaign's Russian connections.

rdtsc 9y ago
Good news! Mueller did get Manafort. So that's good progress. There is very little about Russia in it though. It was mostly when he represented Ukraine and all the corruption and payments he received from that. > Only Illinois reported that hackers had succeeded in breaching its voter systems. [...] So the Russian government was trying to break into US election infrastructure. They stole 200k registration records. Was it the Russian government though? Russia and whole Eastern Europe is the origin of a lot of such attacks. Did they alter any votes? I imagine if the system was not secured, the Chinese, and anyone else out the would have eventually found and got the records. If they contain SSNs it would be useful for identify theft. If that's the only evidence of "collusion", it's pretty flimsy and certainly doesn't warrant all the time and effort put into it. The OPM hack which lead a lot of intimate details about the lives of millions of US govt workers which hold clearances, was many orders of magnitude worse. Yet, the media and everyone else seems to have largely forgotten about. Nobody talks about Chinese running our government or blackmail dossiers. Even though it would be a lot more plausible given the successful attack there. > Comey detailed several instances where he felt Trump was pressuring him to end an investigation into members of his campaign. Trump then fired Comey when he didn't stop the investigations What if Trump didn't collude with Russia. We have to consider that possibility. Yes he was constantly being accused of it. It would get got annoying after a while. Imagine you're the CEO and one of your subordinates is investigating you for something you didn't do. You might let them do it for a while, so they convince themselves there is nothing there. But after some time enough and enough and if they just seem to waste their time, they'd be let go. They why wouldn't Comey come clean and say exactly what the collusion was and lay everyone on the table so speak. He had nothing to lose, here he was fired for it it was his chance to prove to the world where the collusion was. > Mueller investigation is carried out to its completion and Trump can't silently make it go away. It does go on. So that's good news, and there are nice results already. Another corrupt lobbyist and Republican campaign manager behind bars is a good thing in book.

rdtsc 9y ago

Good news! Mueller did get Manafort. So that's good progress. There is very little about Russia in it though. It was mostly when he represented Ukraine and all the corruption and payments he received from that. > Only Illinois reported that hackers had succeeded in breaching its voter systems. [...] So the Russian government was trying to break into US election infrastructure. They stole 200k registration records. Was it the Russian government though? Russia and whole Eastern Europe is the origin of a lot of such attacks. Did they alter any votes? I imagine if the system was not secured, the Chinese, and anyone else out the would have eventually found and got the records. If they contain SSNs it would be useful for identify theft. If that's the only evidence of "collusion", it's pretty flimsy and certainly doesn't warrant all the time and effort put into it. The OPM hack which lead a lot of intimate details about the lives of millions of US govt workers which hold clearances, was many orders of magnitude worse. Yet, the media and everyone else seems to have largely forgotten about. Nobody talks about Chinese running our government or blackmail dossiers. Even though it would be a lot more plausible given the successful attack there. > Comey detailed several instances where he felt Trump was pressuring him to end an investigation into members of his campaign. Trump then fired Comey when he didn't stop the investigations What if Trump didn't collude with Russia. We have to consider that possibility. Yes he was constantly being accused of it. It would get got annoying after a while. Imagine you're the CEO and one of your subordinates is investigating you for something you didn't do. You might let them do it for a while, so they convince themselves there is nothing there. But after some time enough and enough and if they just seem to waste their time, they'd be let go. They why wouldn't Comey come clean and say exactly what the collusion was and lay everyone on the table so speak. He had nothing to lose, here he was fired for it it was his chance to prove to the world where the collusion was. > Mueller investigation is carried out to its completion and Trump can't silently make it go away. It does go on. So that's good news, and there are nice results already. Another corrupt lobbyist and Republican campaign manager behind bars is a good thing in book.