We need to step back for a moment, take a deep breath and engag our brain. We need to examine ourselves in a serious manner. We have attitudes and psychological issues that interfer with our success as a nation. This last presidential election resulted in someone who is greatly dis-liked by many in this country. The previous president was also someone who was greatly disliked by many in this country... disliked to the point that many members of congress vowed to do all in their power to cause him to fail.
We must ask ourselves, do we truly want the president of the United States to fail? Where does that leave the rest of us? No person, no president can possibly live up to the expectations of us all.
Some of us can demonize Trump and call him all sorts of names in an effort to discredit him even before he starts his presidency. He may, in fact, be some or all of those things he is being called. But, in truth, his opponent was no better... just different. Had Americans recognized a 'better' candidate on the other side of the ballot, that other candidate would have won.
As examples of where we are, we have these two current articles from these two 'respected' publications that seem to have stepped off into some other land outside of reality.
Regarding the concept that the Russian leader may have involved his nation in the outcome of our election process one must wonder, isn't that what we do all of the time? We constantly travel the world attempting to influence who leads this country or that. And when manipulating elections doesn't work, we simply invade so that we can 'install' our choice for the leader of this country or that.
And, the evidence, if it can be designated as such, regarding the Russian hacking is very weak. The stories even go so far as to allow one to imagine Vladimir V. Putin sitting there at his lap-top and personally hacking Trump into the White House... come on people, let's get a grip !!!
Putin Led a Complex Cyberattack Scheme to Aid Trump, Report Finds
from The New York Times by Michael D. Shear & David E. Sanger
WASHINGTON — President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia directed a vast cyberattack aimed at denying Hillary Clinton the presidency and installing Donald J. Trump in the Oval Office, the nation’s top intelligence agencies said in an extraordinary report they delivered on Friday to Mr. Trump.
The officials presented their unanimous conclusions to Mr. Trump in a two-hour briefing at Trump Tower in New York that brought the leaders of America’s intelligence agencies face to face with their most vocal skeptic, the president-elect, who has repeatedly cast doubt on Russia’s role. The meeting came just two weeks before Mr. Trump’s inauguration and was underway even as the electoral votes from his victory were being formally counted in a joint session of Congress. Soon after leaving the meeting, intelligence officials released the declassified, damning report that described the sophisticated cybercampaign as part of a continuing Russian effort to weaken the United States government and its democratic institutions. The report — a virtually unheard-of, real-time revelation by the American intelligence agencies that undermined the legitimacy of the president who is about to direct them — made the case that Mr. Trump was the favored candidate of Mr. Putin. The Russian leader, the report said, sought to denigrate Mrs. Clinton, and the report detailed what the officials had revealed to President Obama a day earlier: Mr. Trump’s victory followed a complicated, multipart cyberinformation attack whose goal had evolved to help the Republican win. The 25-page report did not conclude that Russian involvement tipped the election to Mr. Trump. The public report lacked the evidence that intelligence officials said was included in a classified version, which they described as information on the sources and methods used to collect the information about Mr. Putin and his associates. Those would include intercepts of conversations and the harvesting of computer data from “implants” that the United States and its allies have put in Russian computer networks. Was It a 400-Pound, 14-Year-Old Hacker, or Russia? Here’s Some of the Evidence Reports released by information security companies provide evidence about the hacking of United States political officials and organizations. Much of the unclassified report focused instead on an overt Kremlin propaganda campaign that would be unlikely to convince skeptics of the report’s more serious conclusions. The report may be a political blow to Mr. Trump. But it is also a risky moment for the intelligence agencies that have become more powerful since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, but have had to fend off allegations that they exaggerated intelligence during the buildup to the Iraq war. The declassified report did describe in detail the efforts of Mr. Putin and his security services, including the creation of the online Guccifer 2.0 persona and DCLeaks.com to release information gained from the hacks to the public. “Putin and the Russian Government aspired to help President-elect Trump’s election chances when possible by discrediting Secretary Clinton and publicly contrasting her unfavorably to him,” the report by the nation’s intelligence agencies concluded. Mr. Trump, whose resistance to that very conclusion has led him to repeatedly mock the country’s intelligence services on Twitter since Election Day, issued a written statement that appeared to concede some Russian involvement. But Mr. Trump said nothing about the conclusion that Mr. Putin had sought to aid his candidacy, other than insisting that he still believes the Russian attacks had no effect on the outcome. The president-elect’s written statement came just hours after Mr. Trump told The New York Times in an interview that the storm surrounding Russian hacking was nothing more than a “political witch hunt” carried out by his adversaries, who he said were embarrassed by their loss to him in the 2016 election. Speaking by telephone three hours before the intelligence briefing, Mr. Trump repeatedly criticized the intense focus on Russia. “China, relatively recently, hacked 20 million government names,” he said, referring to the breach of computers at the Office of Personnel Management in late 2014 and early 2015. “How come nobody even talks about that? This is a political witch hunt.” Later, Mr. Trump sought to blame the Democrats for any cyberattacks that might have occurred. “Gross negligence by the Democratic National Committee allowed hacking to take place,” he said in a Twitter message posted about 11 p.m. “The Republican National Committee had strong defense!” Vice President-elect Mike Pence told reporters that he and Mr. Trump had “appreciated the presentation” by the intelligence officials and described the conversation as “respectful.” Mr. Pence said the new administration would take aggressive action “to combat cyberattacks and protect the security of the American people from this type of intrusion in the future.” Mr. Trump, who has consistently questioned the evidence of Russian hacking during the election, did so again Friday before he met with the intelligence officials. Asked why he thought there was so much attention on the Russian cyberattacks, the president-elect said the motivation was political. He also repeated his criticism of the American intelligence agencies, saying that “a lot of mistakes were made” in the past, noting in particular the attacks on the World Trade Center and saying, as he has repeatedly, that “weapons of mass destruction was one of the great mistakes of all time.” But after meeting with the intelligence officials, Mr. Trump appeared to moderate his position, |
Shortly before the end of the year, the president-elect was asked for his response to a fellow Republican’s insistence that sanctions should be applied against Russia because of its alleged participation in hacking during the election. He said:
It’s going to be a long few years, so we had best pace ourselves. Donald Trump is a buffoon. He is a racist. He is a misogynist. He is a thin-skinned thug and a charlatan. He is a vulgar bigot and xenophobe. He is a liar and a plutocrat. All of those things are true; none of them are the point. Concentrating on them can build a white-hot furnace of self-righteous rage that will most likely lead to self-immolation. It will create great sketches and memes and nurture a sense of despair and grievance that can marinate in self-indulgence. There will be plenty of material for those on the liberal left who wish to be angry. But those who wish to channel that anger into an effective resistance face a stiffer challenge.
There are plenty of pathological people with Trump’s qualities roaming the planet making themselves and those around them miserable. Trump did not invent racism, stupidity, Islamophobia, or nationalism. He is not the first to enter the White House with discriminatory intent. The presidency is not a meritocracy—there have been far too many stupid white men in that office for anyone to seriously believe it is occupied by those best equipped to run a country. Nor will Trump have to construct an authoritarian regime that lays waste to human rights from scratch; he has an edifice intact, built by predecessors of both parties. Reality is bad enough; we do not need to amplify its horrors with myths. We have not seen his like before at this level—but he didn’t come from nowhere. Trump is dangerous. His campaign emboldened bigots of all kinds. It resonated not just nationally but globally, where the far right, from France to Finland, has emerged as the principal electoral beneficiary of the financial crisis. His campaign dispensed with electoral norms in favor of violence and race-baiting. As such, he not only represented a threat to democracy, but in a far more enduring sense, his candidacy was also the product of a democracy already in crisis. The reason why Trump matters isn’t because he’s an awful person. The problem with Trump is not that he’s stupid. It’s that he won—that he took those qualities to the nation, flaunted them openly and brazenly, and emerged the victor. This point can be overstated. He did not win the popular vote. Thanks to the lowest turnout in 20 years, Trump won a smaller percentage of the eligible vote than John Kerry, John McCain, Mitt Romney, and Gerald Ford did when they ran for the presidency—and they all lost. He got the same proportion of the white vote as Romney in 2012 and Bush in 2004, and only a little more than McCain in 2008. This was not a stampede by members of the far right; they walked through an open door held ajar by the ambivalence of many and the arrogance of a few. But it cannot be denied. “Elections have consequences,” Barack Obama warned Republicans shortly after taking over in 2008. That’s still true. And because Trump won, he now has power—the kind of power that can end lives and destroy the planet. The hands that once “grabbed pussy” now have access to the codes. His personality is offensive; it’s his power that is truly scary. Fortunately, while the right is emboldened, it is not ascendant. Trump’s victory illustrates the weakness of the Republican Party’s leaders, not their strength. They wanted anyone else, and now they are unable to control him. He openly derides and baits them. Notwithstanding his braggadocio, he remains vulnerable. His agenda is no more unassailable than his victory was unfathomable. But there is nothing inevitable about his demise. If the liberal left is going to challenge him effectively in the coming years, then it must learn the lessons of its defeat. The Democratic machine does not need a tune-up—it needs a complete overhaul. For far too long, it has been too arrogant, complacent, or contemptuous (and sometimes all three) to make an argument beyond “at least we’re not them.” The reason why Trump was able to attain power is not because he had better ideas, made better arguments, had greater organizational capacity, or even spent more money. The reason he was able to win was because those charged with opposing him offered not hope, but the status quo, in a country where inequality between rich and poor and black and white is growing. He won because his opponents believed their own PR. Hubris sent them to Arizona when humility would have kept them in Pennsylvania. He won because, emerging from a period of economic crisis, the multimillionaire businessman whose catchphrase is “You’re fired” looked less like a representative of the establishment than the liberal who claimed she represented the interests of the poor. If he is stupid, then what are we?  |
conceding that “Russia, China, other countries, outside groups and people are consistently trying to break through the cyberinfrastructure of our governmental institutions, businesses and organizations, including the Democrat National Committee.”
The report described a broad campaign of covert operations, including the “trolling” on the internet of people who were viewed as opponents of Russia’s effort. While it accused Russian intelligence agencies of obtaining and maintaining “access to elements of multiple U.S. state or local electoral boards,” it concluded — as officials have publicly — that there was no evidence of tampering with the tallying of the vote on Nov. 8.
The report, reflecting the assessments of the C.I.A., the F.B.I. and the National Security Agency, stopped short of backing up Mr. Trump on his declaration that the hacking activity had no effect on the election.
“We did not make an assessment of the impact that Russian activities had on the outcome of the 2016 election,” the report concluded, saying it was beyond its responsibility to analyze American “political processes” or public opinion.
The intelligence agencies also concluded “with high confidence” that Russia’s main military intelligence unit, the G.R.U., created a “persona” called Guccifer 2.0 and a website, DCLeaks.com, to release the emails of the Democratic National Committee and of the chairman of the Clinton campaign, John D. Podesta.
When those disclosures received what was seen as insufficient attention, the report said, the G.R.U. “relayed material it acquired from the D.N.C. and senior Democratic officials to WikiLeaks.” The founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, has denied that Russia was the source of the emails it published.
The role of RT — the Russian English-language news organization that American intelligence says is a Kremlin propaganda operation — in the Kremlin’s effort to influence the election is covered in far more detail by the report than any other aspect of the Russian campaign. An annex in the report on RT, which was first written in 2012 but not previously made public, takes up eight pages of the report’s 14-page main section.
The report’s unequivocal assessment of RT presents an awkward development for Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, who is Mr. Trump’s choice to serve as national security adviser. Mr. Flynn has appeared repeatedly on RT’s news programs and in December 2015 was paid by the network to give a speech in Russia and attend its lavish anniversary party, where he sat at the elbow of Mr. Putin. Mr. Flynn has since defended his speech, insisting that RT is no different from CNN or MSNBC.
The report also stated that Russia collected data “on some Republican-affiliated targets,” but did not disclose the contents of whatever it harvested.
Intelligence officials who prepared the classified report have concluded that British intelligence was among the first to raise an alarm that Moscow hacked into the Democratic National Committee’s computer servers, and alerted their American counterparts, according to two people familiar with the conclusions.
The British role, which has been closely held, is a critical part of the timeline because it suggests that some of the first tipoffs, in fall 2015, came from voice intercepts, computer traffic or informants outside the United States, as emails and other data from the Democratic National Committee flowed out of the country.
The conclusions in the report were described on Thursday to President Obama and on Friday to Mr. Trump by James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence; John O. Brennan, the director of the C.I.A.; Adm. Michael S. Rogers, the director of the National Security Agency; and James B. Comey, the director of the F.B.I.
The key to the public report’s assessment is that Russia’s motives “evolved over the course of the campaign.” When it appeared that Mrs. Clinton was more likely to win, it concluded, the Russian effort focused “on undermining her future presidency,” with pro-Kremlin bloggers preparing a Twitter campaign with the hashtag #DemocracyRIP. It noted that Mr. Putin had a particular animus for Mrs. Clinton because he believed she had incited protests against him in 2011.
Yet the attacks, the report said, began long before anyone could have known that Mr. Trump, considered a dark horse, would win the Republican nomination. It said the attacks began as early as July 2015, when Russian intelligence operatives first gained access to the Democratic National Committee’s networks. Russia maintained that access for 11 months, until “at least June 2016,” the report concludes, leaving open the possibility that Russian cyberattackers may have had access even after the firm CrowdStrike believed that it had kicked them off the networks.
Adam Goldman, Matthew Rosenberg and Matt Apuzzo contributed reporting.
The report described a broad campaign of covert operations, including the “trolling” on the internet of people who were viewed as opponents of Russia’s effort. While it accused Russian intelligence agencies of obtaining and maintaining “access to elements of multiple U.S. state or local electoral boards,” it concluded — as officials have publicly — that there was no evidence of tampering with the tallying of the vote on Nov. 8.
The report, reflecting the assessments of the C.I.A., the F.B.I. and the National Security Agency, stopped short of backing up Mr. Trump on his declaration that the hacking activity had no effect on the election.
“We did not make an assessment of the impact that Russian activities had on the outcome of the 2016 election,” the report concluded, saying it was beyond its responsibility to analyze American “political processes” or public opinion.
The intelligence agencies also concluded “with high confidence” that Russia’s main military intelligence unit, the G.R.U., created a “persona” called Guccifer 2.0 and a website, DCLeaks.com, to release the emails of the Democratic National Committee and of the chairman of the Clinton campaign, John D. Podesta.
When those disclosures received what was seen as insufficient attention, the report said, the G.R.U. “relayed material it acquired from the D.N.C. and senior Democratic officials to WikiLeaks.” The founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, has denied that Russia was the source of the emails it published.
The role of RT — the Russian English-language news organization that American intelligence says is a Kremlin propaganda operation — in the Kremlin’s effort to influence the election is covered in far more detail by the report than any other aspect of the Russian campaign. An annex in the report on RT, which was first written in 2012 but not previously made public, takes up eight pages of the report’s 14-page main section.
The report’s unequivocal assessment of RT presents an awkward development for Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, who is Mr. Trump’s choice to serve as national security adviser. Mr. Flynn has appeared repeatedly on RT’s news programs and in December 2015 was paid by the network to give a speech in Russia and attend its lavish anniversary party, where he sat at the elbow of Mr. Putin. Mr. Flynn has since defended his speech, insisting that RT is no different from CNN or MSNBC.
The report also stated that Russia collected data “on some Republican-affiliated targets,” but did not disclose the contents of whatever it harvested.
Intelligence officials who prepared the classified report have concluded that British intelligence was among the first to raise an alarm that Moscow hacked into the Democratic National Committee’s computer servers, and alerted their American counterparts, according to two people familiar with the conclusions.
The British role, which has been closely held, is a critical part of the timeline because it suggests that some of the first tipoffs, in fall 2015, came from voice intercepts, computer traffic or informants outside the United States, as emails and other data from the Democratic National Committee flowed out of the country.
The conclusions in the report were described on Thursday to President Obama and on Friday to Mr. Trump by James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence; John O. Brennan, the director of the C.I.A.; Adm. Michael S. Rogers, the director of the National Security Agency; and James B. Comey, the director of the F.B.I.
The key to the public report’s assessment is that Russia’s motives “evolved over the course of the campaign.” When it appeared that Mrs. Clinton was more likely to win, it concluded, the Russian effort focused “on undermining her future presidency,” with pro-Kremlin bloggers preparing a Twitter campaign with the hashtag #DemocracyRIP. It noted that Mr. Putin had a particular animus for Mrs. Clinton because he believed she had incited protests against him in 2011.
Yet the attacks, the report said, began long before anyone could have known that Mr. Trump, considered a dark horse, would win the Republican nomination. It said the attacks began as early as July 2015, when Russian intelligence operatives first gained access to the Democratic National Committee’s networks. Russia maintained that access for 11 months, until “at least June 2016,” the report concludes, leaving open the possibility that Russian cyberattackers may have had access even after the firm CrowdStrike believed that it had kicked them off the networks.
Adam Goldman, Matthew Rosenberg and Matt Apuzzo contributed reporting.
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