Yes. The integrity of the election is a foundation that enables Americans to believe that an election was fair and free. When they are meddled with, people will wonder whether the winner is legitimate. President Obama must have known what the Russians were up to but he let it happen anyway. His response is too late and too lame.
People can wonder all they want. People are still demanding that Bush illegally stole the election in 2000 and that did not require Russians at all.
Yes, the government should protect the election process. No, Obama did not screw anything up when the Russians successfully hacked into a private organization and released information they did not want released. What matters is how we deal with it. Obama and the government are not all powerful - they cannot protect everyone from international cyber threats.
What SHOULD have happened is that the DNC should not have blatantly incriminating communications that show how disingenuous the process is.
By interfering in the election in the manner in which they did, the Russians have succeeded in bringing into question the legitimacy of Donald Trump's victory. People will always have at the back of their minds that Trump was elected by dirty tricks.
Again, people that already would have demanded he was not legitimate anyway. There is no proof that the Russians had enough effect to swing the election and even less talk about WHY that effect even happened. Hint - it is because the bullshit games the AMERICAN politicians were playing with the election.
I understand FOX News is the most popular TV news station among Americans who also listen in great numbers to far right hate radio. This fact singles them out and also how everything is presented with spin. Conservative voters are able to get a steady diet of spin and lies from stations like these which have the appearance of being fair and balanced but clearly are not. The real news story was how the Russians were hacking into American political networks and then leaking the stolen information to Wikileaks who published it but the hate radio and FOX News, like the Russians, mock the truth.
You singling them out is nothing but partisan bull. The NY Times, HuffPo, MSNBC, ABC etc. etc. ALL reported on the leaked emails. That is what news agencies do - they report news. YOU just do not like the fact that such news was not good for the DNC. FOX did not spin any of the information on those other networks nor are they any less biased in their BS.
Hell, the NY Times OPENLY biased themselves for Clinton - something that a 'news' agency should NEVER do but seems just fine in the modern asinine view of what a reporter is:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/25/opinion/sunday/hillary-clinton-for-president.html?_r=0
FOX News and hate radio are not obliged to publish stolen data planted by the Russians.
Instead you think they should cover up information that does not help the democrat candidate? Still utterly silent on the illegal acquisition and publishing of Trump's records...
It is the nature of cyber warfare to select what they want to leak, to put a slant on it and release it in time to have the FBI believe they have thousands of emails that might prove Hillary Clinton is a criminal.
And instead they released everything. The timing was all about hyping up wikileaks viewership. They released torrential waves of emails.
Stories need not be 100% factual or 100% fake. It can have elements of both. Good reporters consider their sources and motivations to get at the real truth and editors have to consider if publication is snaring them in the plot.
And this one does not. It is all factual. End of story. They hacked DNC emails and then released them. The fact that the DNC wants them to be fake does not change the reality that they are not.
I agree that the Russians tried to meddle in the American presidential election. The difference between us is that I believe they have been successful.
The difference between us is that I am sticking to the facts of the situation and you are demanding that something happened (the Russians 'stealing' the election) that has no basis. They stole nothing - they released INFORMATION. That is NOT stealing an election. It is meddling in the process but does not amount to determining the outcome
No, I do not believe Hillary Clinton was responsible for the Russians annexing Crimea.
Never said she was responsible. I said the US (under her SoS) tried to meddle in Ukraine's election. Russia responded by annexing Crimea. Russia is still responsible for their actions. We are still guilty of trying to meddle in a sovereign nations election as well.
Not likely. Putin does not care what the US releases - he controls the media in Russia and ergo the messages that get to the people.
Obama: 'Public shaming' won't deter Russia from future cyberattacks
Obama has publicly said that such a strategy would do little.
I disagree with President Obama on this. Publishing bad stuff about Putin will annoy the kleptocrat and that would be a good thing.[/QUOTE]
I doubt that will matter - we have done FAR worse to them already and it has had almost no effect. It is because Putin knows we do not have the backbone to back up what we claim we will do. It is why we are loosing all influence over in that area of the world to Russia - they back their shit up.
Obama's FP (and Hillary's tenure of SoS) has been an abysmal failure.