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PeopleUnited
2017 Apr 6, 12:54pm
No one comments on this statement? Perhaps people are not sure if you are serious.
Dan8267
2017 Apr 6, 1:09pm
If anyone wants to challenge what I've said, do so. I can defend this position quite easily. Good ideas only become stronger when questioned.
The Russians did not interfere with our elections. They influenced them and rightfully so.
Sorry you are dead wrong on 2 fronts.
It would have been rightfully so if ALL of "shenanigans" were in the public and the public could decide which they thought were worse. Only publishing one side was a deliberate attempt to influence the outcome. Which it may or may not have done since we don't know what information wasn't revealed and how it would have affected the voting.
It is not in the purview of a foreign intelligence service to break our laws or decide what the public has a to right to know. Falsely equating that to legal investigations by law enforcement is really intellectually dishonest.
Good ideas only become stronger when questioned.
You didn't have an idea, you had an opinion.
Shaman
2017 Apr 6, 2:03pm
Foreign intelligence is not and has never been governed by our laws. Just like or intelligence services completely ignore the laws of other nations whilst spying. I made a joke at the expense of the king of Thailand once! That's a very serious crime ... if I was there! But I'm not so I can't be prosecuted.
Jeez bob get a bettter argument.
I actually agree with Dan for once. Transparency is a good thing. If the GOP is up to no good, voters should be allowed to weigh that in their decisions. Same with the DNC.
Or any other politician. I have a feeling that as technology advances, the privacy of politicians will decrease. Or to put it metaphorically: when the lights come on, the cockroaches scatter.
FNWGMOBDVZXDNW
2017 Apr 6, 2:15pm
If Trump worked with them, it was a big no-no. Stay tuned. If Russia was right to meddle, then we should sure as fuck use similar methods against Putin. Furthermore, we should divert 30% of our defense budget to this activity. The reason that Russia is doing it is that they can't compete directly, so they need to get the most political leverage for their buck so to speak. What do you think Dan. Should our nation spend $200 billion per year on propaganda to change peoples opinions around the world?
Tenpoundbass
2017 Apr 6, 2:15pm
I wonder what would happen if Trump was on a witch hunt now that he won. If he started going after all of the EU states and members that openly tried to undo the underpins of Trump's campaign. It was nothing but election meddling. The Murals of Boris and Trump making out, Obama's apology tours, PM's speaking out against Trump the candidate.
Give me a break, and go find out who commissioned the Polls, you'll find the same guy that was writing two checks.
one to Nate Silver to make up bullshit polls, then another check to the guy spreading the lies that Nate was Great, and has never been wrong before.
Nobody heard of him before the election, haven't heard hide nor hair of him since.
How's comes it only matters when Putin does it? Even though out of anyone around the world. He had less to do with the election, than Most EU leaders tried to derail Trump at every turn. So did the media, so did politicians. There needs to be liability rules in the future. If you can't back up your wild claims without at least a Wikileak, then you shouldn't be able to say Russians pissed on someone.
Russia didn't need to think about our election.
Dumb ass Republicans did the job for them.
Patrick
2017 Apr 6, 4:19pm
On the contrary, Democrats handed the election to Trump when they nominated Hillary.
Rew
2017 Apr 6, 4:22pm
As long as all sides exhibit/enforce the same amount of transparency, I'm good with OP, except I think a country directly running a propaganda campaign is pretty overt action. Russia is not 'right' to do this.
... when they nominated Hillary.
Not really. It took some doing to lose to Trump. Very close race. Pretty divided country.
Foreign intelligence is not and has never been governed by our laws. Just like or intelligence services completely ignore the laws of other nations whilst spying. I made a joke at the expense of the king of Thailand once! That's a very serious crime ... if I was there! But I'm not so I can't be prosecuted.
Jeez bob get a bettter argument.
Of course they are governed by our laws. If they get caught violating them here they go to jail. If they get caught outside the country then they get away with it if they can't be extradited. , but it doesn't make it legal. What an absurd thing to say.
They influenced them and rightfully so.
What else would you have no trouble with a foreign power influencing? The stock market? The internet? The electric grid? Air traffic control? What is your mechanism for picking and choosing what a foreign power can rightfully influence?
PeopleUnited
2017 Apr 6, 6:28pm
On the contrary, Democrats handed the election to Trump when they nominated Hillary.
Exactly!
@Dan
I actually pretty much agree with you. The Russians certainly have every right to seek to influence the world in a manner that they deem most appropriate. I'm not sure we can believe the media or what it says about who hacked what, who leaked what, etc.. but it is a right of every person and every state to act in their own self interest.
I also agree with the fact that transparency is the only perfect way to reveal truth and root out evil.
Dan8267
2017 Apr 6, 6:35pm
It would have been rightfully so if ALL of "shenanigans" were in the public and the public could decide which they thought were worse. Only publishing one side was a deliberate attempt to influence the outcome
Sure, publishing the evils doings of one side and not the other is suboptimal, but don't tell me for a second that you would be OK with suppressing the knowledge of the Holocaust in 1935 if the anti-Nazi group didn't also publish some of the unethical practices of the Allies. Hiding one side's misdeads solely because the other side's misdeads aren't exposed by the same people or at the same time is simply bullshit.
And again, does any person with a political agenda reveal things that hurt their own side? No. But if the only way to get the truth is for the opposition to expose their enemy's dirty laundry, then the answer is to help both sides reveal the laundry of the others, not to suppress the truth to make an even playing ground.
Falsely equating that to legal investigations by law enforcement is really intellectually dishonest.
Well, I'm glad I didn't do that. I've stated that America is better off that the Russians did the right thing for the wrong reason. I never said or implied that Putin and his thugs were the good guys, but when the mafia shoots the terrorist to stop him from detonating a bomb that would kill everyone on main street including those paying the mob "protection money", I don't jump in front of the bullet to save the terrorist. Sometimes those with bad intentions still do the right thing.
On the contrary, Democrats handed the election to Trump when they nominated Hillary.
This is mainly true, and even without the Russians Trump would probably have still won. However, let's say the Russian revelations of the Democrats' unethical behavior was enough to have pushed the election from a Hillary win to a Trump win and without them Hillary would have still won. I'd still say we're better off with the Russians doing what they did. And even if, say, the Chinese hacked into the IRS and published Trump's tax records, and that caused Hillary to win, I'd still say we're better off with the Chinese doing that. Transparency is more important than who wins the election. The political machinery behind the politicians is more important than the actual politicians.
What else would you have no trouble with a foreign power influencing? The stock market? The internet? The electric grid? Air traffic control? What is your mechanism for picking and choosing what a foreign power can rightfully influence?
We live in a global community where every person's voice can be heard by every other person. The fact that it was men working for the Russian government who copied the emails instead of Anonymous or some fat Chinese hacker living with his parents is irrelevant. The information exposed was truthful. That is all that matters. Who exposes the truth or why isn't what's important. The only legitimate problem you can complain about is that there isn't enough such exposure of both side's behavior.
Should foreign governments and foreign citizens influence the stock market? Hell yes. Merely by participating in a market, you are influencing it. If we don't want foreigners or foreign governments to influence the stock market, then we have to make sure they can't buy stocks or mutual funds of U.S. stocks even indirectly through others. This is not how our stock market works. Plenty of foreigners and foreign governments own stocks including bank stocks.
Now one could make the case that the entire stock market shouldn't exist because it is inefficient, lowers wealth production, and introduces unnecessary and pointless instability into our economy, but that's a whole 'nother discussion.
The Internet must certainly should be influenced by everyone in the world including governments. It is a world-wide resource and it should represent everyone.
Hacking into the electric grid or air traffic control is not free speech. It is not political debate. It is not whistle-blowing. Equating those things to what the Russians did would be like equating the reporters who uncovered Watergate to terrorists who crashed planes into buildings on 9/11. It is clearly a false equivalency.
Whistle-blowing is free speech and is good for society even if the whistle-blowers have the worst of intentions. To claim otherwise is to state that we are better off ignorant. That is never the case.
The Russians certainly have every right to seek to influence the world in a manner that they deem most appropriate.
It would be utter hypocrisy for us to object to the Russian government, or any government for that matter, attempting to influence public opinion in one of our elections. The United States has a very long and seedy history of influencing elections in other countries, and the shit our government did is way more illegal and scary than what the Russians did. The Russians just forwarded some politicians' emails. Don't even get me started on what our government has done in the elections of other countries.
The bottom line is that the American people not only have a right to know what our politicians are doing with our government, but we also have the right to listen to the opinions of foreigners about how we should vote. Any person can always reject the opinion of another person, but why should we not be allowed to hear those opinions? I have no problem discussing who I should vote for with some guy in China, France, Chad, Canada, or any other country. I'll decide if that person is persuasive.
MisdemeanorRebel
2017 Apr 6, 6:47pm
If Russia was right to meddle, then we should sure as fuck use similar methods against Putin
We already do. In fact we interfered in Russian Elections BEFORE Putin was a thing back in the 90s and the MSM bragged about it.
http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,136204,00.html
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jan/05/americans-spot-election-meddling-doing-years-vladimir-putin-donald-trump
https://www.thenation.com/article/we-should-be-shocked-shocked-at-reports-of-russian-interference-in-us-elections/
Obama brazenly interfered with Israel's elections also, an ally no less.
http://www.dailywire.com/news/11524/democrats-decry-russia-influencing-us-election-james-barrett
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/193029
The Russians did not interfere with our elections. They influenced them and rightfully so.
The Russians did not hack our elections. They did not rig the election. They broke into an email server, copied emails, and revealed them to the public. The emails were not altered. Although technically, Russian hackers did have to violate our laws, they didn't do anything nearly as invasive as what the CIA, the FBI, and local police do every single day trying to catch criminals. Hell, the TSA is far more invasive.
Furthermore, the public has a right to know the content of those emails. The problem wasn't that the information was misleading. The problem is precisely that the public got the real, honest, and accurate picture of what goes on every single day in politics. The only down side is that the revelations were one-sided. It would have been better if in addition to Clinton being hacked, the IRS was hacked and Trump's tax records were made public. That didn't happen, but it doesn't negate the fact that the public should have found out about all the unethical shenanigans that key Democrats including Hillary and the chairman of the Democratic National Committee were doing.
We live in a highly connected world in which every person's voice travels across the world at the speed of light. Every single person on the planet has influence over the U.S. election merely by existing, merely by discussing ideas, merely by voicing opinions. Conversely, every single American has influence over all elections in the world, including foreign ones for the exact same reason. It is legitimate for the Russians, even Putin, to try to influence popular opinion. The way to deal with this situation is to embrace full transparency, not selective transparency depending on who's doing the talking.
The Russians did the right thing for the wrong reason. It's still the right thing. The public should know every unethical thing the Democrats have been doing. And the public should know every unethical thing the Republicans are doing. Transparency is inherently good and it is critical in a republic that the public is accurately and completely informed.
Our republic has to be strong enough to continue to function in a world where everyone can hear everyone else's ideas and opinions. If our republic and our elections cannot handle this, then our society is doomed to fail. I don't think our system is that weak. I don't think Americans are that weak.
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