I trust Kurt Eichenwald more than I trust Wikileaks. Just for the record.
LOL! You must not have any workings in the oil industry, do you?
Wow, big secret. Take money away from Russia, it will destabilize Putin! Why haven’t we tried that before?
I mean, what did she say that any half-baked pundit on CNBC didn’t say during the price free fall?
Waht do you think about Russian state-controlled media fabricating emails in an attempt to meddle in US elections? Does that count as “regime change?”
Shit, forgot that Trump brought up Blumenthal at the debate last night.
2 debates he dismissed the idea of Russian hacking.
I mentioned this over in the Stretch Run thread, but I’m starting to think Russia’s attempts to screw up our election is a genuine act of war.
You know - Eichenwald has pointed out that Russian news agency Sputnik knew about this phoney Blumenthal letter as soon as the leak was posted. I think it’s obvious that Putin patsy Donald Trump was tipped off ahead of time, too.
Exactly.
Got a “I am a Republican but I am voting for Hillary” ad on TV tonight.
Every. Single. Vote. Matters.
I think this thread should be entitled “Russia works with Wikileaks to promote Trump Presidency”. 
The timing on the speech transcripts was very wrong, though we don’t know when the hackers got them. Transcripts of Hillary speaking in favor of free trade, Wall Street self regulation* and ‘public and private positions’ could have been seriously damaging when Sanders was hammering her on the speeches and her sincerity in her relatively new positions as protectionist and crusader against Wall Street**. Neither of those things would be as big deals now even if there wasn’t all this attention on Trump’s problems.
So the hackers might just not know how to time this stuff. If something is a genuine bombshell it’s not too soon now. It takes time for the media wave to crest. What you release at the last minute is stuff where there’s less to it than appears on the surface once people take time to look into it, you don’t give them the time.
*it could be construed that way
**as Senator from NY she was openly WS’s friend, so is Schumer relatively speaking, it’s a big industry even for the state as a whole, no big surprise.
Suppose republicans become aware of the likelihood that Trump and Putin have a real relationship – like an irrefutable evidence trail of a relationship. And suppose the republicans still continue to support Donald Trump’s presidency in spite of this knowledge. What does that say?
“Real agenda?” Call me paranoid, but it sounds to me like someone is preparing fuel for four to eight years of Congressional hearings about supposed wrong-doing by the HRC administration.
I mean, I fully expect that to happen. Republicans will focus on “investigations” into bogus charges and made-up conspiracies, so that they don’t have to commit themselves to any actual legislative work. This is because their real agenda is unworkable. If they hold to their platform, 60% or more of the voters will reject them. If they don’t they can’t win their own primaries. To quote a computer, the only way to win is not to play, so they do investigations and witch-hunts instead.
I think that if I re-affirmed my loyalty to Trump today, I’m drinking… again… tonight.
An attempted regime change. Of course the Russian government is in a defensive posture, while the US and NATO have surrounded Russia.John T seems to think it is already policy to bring down Putin. He makes a good point.
Do you support Clinton’s efforts to bring down Putin? I seem to recall you claiming there was no evidence Clinton and Nuland would attempt a regime change in Russia. I had hope when her crony deals with Russia were exposed, but now I see that that may have just been a money grab and she is actually ideologically inclined to go full crazy. Either that or she is shaking him down for another deal.
Got any opinion about Wiki Leaks and its possible links to Russian hacking?
I think it’s good for the American public to know what those in and close to the government are doing. Furthermore I think it is good for the US government to be undermined and politically handcuffed by these leaks. I don’t see a problem with Wiki Leaks working with whomever is able to get the information.
Do you think it’s good that Russia is feeding an American presidential candidate fake plagarized intel that he can repeat to undermine his opponent? 'Cause that’s whats going down.
Wikileaks is a Russian propaganda tool. Everything they release is suspect.
So you’ve seen them already?
I would kinda agree with this if I believed that the hacking was what it purported to be, which is bringing dark secrets of governments to light. You could argue that Trump is not yet a member of the government, but he’s definitely already working with those who are part of its apparatus and yet there is a very one-sided attempt to undermine the election outcome.
I actually accept the position that we need to take a step back and get off our moral high horse about Russia. The hacking should end but there also needs to be a better effort to get back to the negotiating table to reset relations on a range of issues. It also needs to be pointed out that hacking to sow doubt on an election, while potentially harmful, is not nearly the worst of what Russia can do. They could always decide to hack the global stock markets. I don’t doubt for a moment they have the means. Indeed these hacks have basically been Moscow’s warning to the rest of us.
I don’t think he argues that it’s good, but that the United States is effectively using “soft” power to threaten Putin’s regime in Russia – there’s no dancing around that fact. We operate naively, foolishly with the notion that economic sanctions are not acts of war – but that’s not how they’re viewed by the people who are dealing with their consequences. Russia, unlike a lot of countries, has the means to fight back.
I say this as someone who’s definitely outraged by the hackings and believes we should confront Russia more directly about them. But confrontation by itself is a stupid policy that our government has foolishly used for several decades because it has assumed a) moral high ground and b) that it has the power to impose its will on others. Yes, I think we should talk about Ukraine and Crimea, but we should also talk about missile defense, the future of NATO, and how the United States and Russia can find ways to get along even if we have different views on what globalization looks like.
Of course our foreign policy should be designed to influence other nations in ways that benefit us. That’s what foreign policy is.