Did Russians interfere in the 2016 U.S. elections and is such interference acceptable?

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LeafByNiggle said:
Attempting to influence an election per se is not necessarily bad. As you point out, many people and groups do it all the time in a variety of ways. But when the influence is performed through illegal means and presented in such a way as to hide the identity of the agents of influence, it becomes problematic.
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So, specifically, which votes in which states were illegally tampered with? The only place I know of is in the city of Detroit where more people voted than were registered
 
LeafByNiggle said:
Yes, those are the rules for choosing a president. That does not mean those are good measures of popular support. A bare majority of a bare majority can be as small as 26%. Even smaller if you allow for various state sizes.
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So, by your math, Trump has very significant support. I am not aware of any state where 26% of the vote can win the state. The national plebiscite doesn’t count for anything. It means nothing because we are not a democracy. Clinton’s edge is accounted for in exactly two states. It means nothing except for the electoral votes in those two states.
 
BoomBoomMancini said:
It means a lot if the question is “who received the most votes?” It just doesn’t mean anything if the question is “who won the election?”

No one is disputing that Trump won the most electoral votes and, therefore, the election.
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Who received the most votes in a national plebiscite means nothing
 
Rumors swirling that Michael Flynn has agreed to cooperate with the FBI and Trump staffers have been deleting everything from their phones and computers due to expected subpoenas. I think it’s going to be an interesting week.
 
LeafByNiggle said:
Attempting to influence an election per se is not necessarily bad. As you point out, many people and groups do it all the time in a variety of ways. But when the influence is performed through illegal means and presented in such a way as to hide the identity of the agents of influence, it becomes problematic.
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That’s pretty much how the CIA and Dept of State has operated in foreign countries, for example we had no legal right to wire tap Merkel’s cell phone.

I’ll concede it’s highly probable that Russia targeted the RNC and DNC networks to gather intel (we do the same). What else did they do that you also believe was illegal?
 
JonNC said:
Who received the most votes in a national plebiscite means nothing
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It means a lot if the question is “who received the most votes nationally?” In our system, that doesn’t determine who wins. But that doesn’t mean it’s a meaningless question.

Let’s use an analogy. Say you have a baseball game. Team A has a great pitcher who gives only a few hits, but because the fielding on his team is terrible, Team B scores two runs. Team B has a mediocre pitcher who gives up a lot of hits, but Team A never scores thanks to excellent fielding by Team B.

If the question is “who won the game” then the obvious answer is “Team B”. If the question is “which team had a better pitcher” then the answer is “Team A.” You can recognize that Team A had the better pitcher while still acknowledging that they lost the game.
 
Faithdancer said:
Yeah I was just about to vote for Hillary, then I got that text in Cyrillic…
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“Friend! Hello, it is I, your very much American comrade! I am hailing from USA! Go team Super Bowls! Mark Damon is big movie star! Anyway, I am telling you that you must not vote for wife of former hillbilly executive. Instead, you must cast most decisive vote for golden haired star of reality programming! It is the path for win bigly! We shall celebrate by drinking many Bud Light beers, no?”

I got the same text…:eek:
 
dvdjs said:
Can you link to these rules? And to data that indicate Trump was favored in ostensibly uncounted absentee ballots.

When searching for them, I found some links that assert otherwise:
fvap.gov/vao/vag/appendix/faq
help.vote.org/article/8-are-absentee-ballots-counted
snopes.com/2016/11/13/who-won-the-popular-vote/
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Yep, keep holding on to that popular vote thing. Really, flood the room with links! If you’re trying to prove something, I don’t know what it is. You still seem to think this popular vote myth somehow invalidates our President. It does not!
 
Michael68 said:
Yep, keep holding on to that popular vote thing. Really, flood the room with links! If you’re trying to prove something, I don’t know what it is. You still seem to think this popular vote myth somehow invalidates our President. It does not!
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Not at all. The links appear to invalidate the odd, unsourced claim of mwigs that absentee ballots are not fully counted. You have not yet disclosed what ballots you think are not counted, and why. But the discussion was provoked by Vinny who made some speciaous claim about what the “people” wanted,
 
Theo520 said:
That’s pretty much how the CIA and Dept of State has operated in foreign countries, for example we had no legal right to wire tap Merkel’s cell phone.

I’ll concede it’s highly probable that Russia targeted the RNC and DNC networks to gather intel (we do the same). What else did they do that you also believe was illegal?
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That much the FBI and CIA guys agreed to – intel gathering is the ordinary thing Russians do (and we do). What surprised them is that this time the Russians made public the DNC and Dems’ (embarrassing) info in order to hurt and cripple Hillary’s presidency (if she became president) and to hurt her chances of winning (tho it seems they actually expected her to win).

They also flooded the campaigns and voters with disinformation, some untrue, some exaggerated, and some that embarrassing information, and as Leaf pointed out did not reveal it was from them (the Russians).

However, they did make it very obvious acc to Comey and Rogers (at least to the FBI & CIA) that they were behind the Guccifer and WikiLeaks dumping, as if they wanted to show their soft electronic might against us.

The whole purpose, Comey and Rogers surmise, was to demoralize Americans and make them lose faith and trust in our democratic processes. So it just may be that they could do the same to the Republicans next time to get them all in a frazzle.

That’s why it’s important that there be general agreement among Americans that such interference by hostile foreign countries is unacceptable (whether or not one believes it happened in 2016), and that we work to prevent it in the future.

I know most here don’t like Rachel Maddow (we just started watching her program a few weeks ago), but here is a segment from her program re what the Russians said re cyber warfare against the US – see msnbc.com/transcripts/rachel-maddow-show/2017-03-21
… in February of last year, a senior aide to Russian President Vladimir Putin gave a presentation at a Moscow Information Security Forum and in this open source forum, he promised the Russian military and intelligence services had developed what they considered to be the equivalent, the strategic equivalent of a nuclear bomb, but for information warfare. This is a speech that was first reported by David Ignatius at the “Washington Post.”
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He got the speech translated from Russian. It’s Vladimir Putin’s cyber war senior adviser telling his audience in Moscow last February, quote, “You think we are living in 2016, no, we are living in 1948. Do you know why? Because in 1949, the Soviet Union had its first atomic bomb test, and if until that moment, the Americans were not taking us seriously in 1949, everything changed and they started talking to us on an equal footing. I`m warning you,” he said, “We are on the verge of having something in the information arena that will allow us to talk to the Americans as equals.”
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lynnvinc said:
That much the FBI and CIA guys agreed to – intel gathering is the ordinary thing Russians do (and we do). What surprised them is that this time the Russians made public the DNC and Dems’ (embarrassing) info in order to hurt and cripple Hillary’s presidency (if she became president) and to hurt her chances of winning (tho it seems they actually expected her to win).

They also flooded the campaigns and voters with disinformation, some untrue, some exaggerated, and some that embarrassing information, and as Leaf pointed out did not reveal it was from them (the Russians).

However, they did make it very obvious acc to Comey and Rogers (at least to the FBI & CIA) that they were behind the Guccifer and WikiLeaks dumping, as if they wanted to show their soft electronic might against us.

The whole purpose, Comey and Rogers surmise, was to demoralize Americans and make them lose faith and trust in our democratic processes. So it just may be that they could do the same to the Republicans next time to get them all in a frazzle.

That’s why it’s important that there be general agreement among Americans that such interference by hostile foreign countries is unacceptable (whether or not one believes it happened in 2016), and that we work to prevent it in the future.

I know most here don’t like Rachel Maddow (we just started watching her program a few weeks ago), but here is a segment from her program re what the Russians said re cyber warfare against the US – see msnbc.com/transcripts/rachel-maddow-show/2017-03-21
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So, in other words, the truth about Hillary Clinton was wrong! We should only believe what Hillary and the DNC and the media said about Hillary, not the truth. Ok, whew, ummmmmmm, no
 
lynnvinc said:
That much the FBI and CIA guys agreed to – intel gathering is the ordinary thing Russians do (and we do). What surprised them is that this time the Russians made public the DNC and Dems’ (embarrassing) info in order to hurt and cripple Hillary’s presidency (if she became president) and to hurt her chances of winning (tho it seems they actually expected her to win).

They also flooded the campaigns and voters with disinformation, some untrue, some exaggerated, and some that embarrassing information, and as Leaf pointed out did not reveal it was from them (the Russians).

However, they did make it very obvious acc to Comey and Rogers (at least to the FBI & CIA) that they were behind the Guccifer and WikiLeaks dumping, as if they wanted to show their soft electronic might against us.

The whole purpose, Comey and Rogers surmise, was to demoralize Americans and make them lose faith and trust in our democratic processes. So it just may be that they could do the same to the Republicans next time to get them all in a frazzle.

That’s why it’s important that there be general agreement among Americans that such interference by hostile foreign countries is unacceptable (whether or not one believes it happened in 2016), and that we work to prevent it in the future.

I know most here don’t like Rachel Maddow (we just started watching her program a few weeks ago), but here is a segment from her program re what the Russians said re cyber warfare against the US – see msnbc.com/transcripts/rachel-maddow-show/2017-03-21
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Can’t stand Rachel Maddow!!!’ No Thanks!!!
 
Sojourner003 said:
You might be surprised at what you hear. There is always the internet to prove her wrong. I guess it depends how one investigates the truth.
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I tried to get through the arrogance and condescending attitude for a long time.
 
Sojourner003 said:
You might be surprised at what you hear. There is always the internet to prove her wrong. I guess it depends how one investigates the truth.
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Btw, I’ve stopped watching all televised MSM including Fox since the inauguration. No point!
 
Michael68 said:
So, in other words, the truth about Hillary Clinton was wrong! We should only believe what Hillary and the DNC and the media said about Hillary, not the truth. Ok, whew, ummmmmmm, no
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I guess I wasn’t clear. There were some embarrassing truths re the DNC – like how they did wrong things to help Hillary and hurt Bernie in the primaries, etc. But in addition to that the Russians also spread some exaggerations and lies about Hillary.

So it was both true things that were not meant to be revealed (and were), and some false things.

I guess if they had been against Trump and had been able to get his tax returns and emails that he deleted re a court case he was in (and the judge had ordered he release those to the court), then that may have hurt Trump. Perhaps. I guess we’ll never know.

However, there are some neg things about Trump that are fairly well known they could have used if they had wanted to do a cyber-blitz against him.
 
Michael68 said:
Btw, I’ve stopped watching all televised MSM including Fox since the inauguration. No point!
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One of the best news sources, which we always watch is Democracy Now! (which is available on-line, if you can’t get it on your TV).

The others, as you say, are not that good – mainly because they are corporate media and have to dance to the tune of their sponsors.
 
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