Obama's sanctions on Russia for "hacking" have frightening implications

No, I'm not referring to the drumbeat for a march to conflict (war, even if by proxy) with Russia, though it is related. I'm referring to something more local. These hacks were against the DNC. The Obama administration, Democrats, and the complicit media have been claiming the hacks were against our system of elections, hinting strongly, and quite intentionally, that our system of government was the target.

This is problematic.

The DNC is a private, non-profit corporation. Most state and local parties are organized similarly. Some states have officially recognized parties and regulate how their elections for board members are conducted, but otherwise even these parties act more or less like private entities. Claiming that the hacks were against the United States somehow is misleading at best. At worst it sets a terrible precedent: using the official diplomatic and military power of the United States to retaliate on behalf of private corporations simply because these organizations have a political purpose.

It's frightening because it represents one more step down the path of government by an elite few (those that control the parties). Our government already has so many problems because of the stranglehold parties have on it. This act just makes it harder to change.

On a side note, it is especially rich that a political party would have the US government retaliate on its behalf in light of the United States' deep and long-standing tradition of casting mono-parties in communist countries as representative of despotism. The Doublethink is thick.

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action on behalf of a quasi-corporate entity using the full force and prestige of the US government. Today it was reported that American and German troops have moved into eastern Europe taking advantage of the dissolved Warsaw Pact and the fact that these countries are now in NATO. It's a move that continues the encirclement of Russia, something the Elder Bush promised would not take place.

That the USA starts wars on behalf of global capital - petro & Industrial Ag - is a given. Obama has extended military & diplomatic protection to the Democratic party.

Even if - and it's a big "if" - Russia were responsible for putting Clinton campaign emails into the public sphere, no one, to my knowledge, has said that these emails are fabricated. The emails are what they are: A cascade of the DLC wing's corrupt deeds and a sense of entitlement over anything the wage earning class may need or aspire to.

Thanks for this.

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"The justness of individual land right is not justifiable to those to whom the land by right of first claim collectively belonged"

GreyWolf's picture

"The DNC is a private, non-profit corporation." — BayAreaLefty

“Fascism should rightly be called corporatism, as it is the merger of corporate and government power.” — Benito Mussolini

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OzoneTom's picture

...but when pressed, none of the folks I have spoken with have been able to answer a question about naming one thing that has been reported that might have swung votes from Her.

Of course it is a trick question since virtually none of the contents of the mail has been widely reported by their trusted media, and of course anything that was reported has been ignored by these individuals as well as the general public.

Those of us who have familiarized themselves with the (certifiably accurate) content of the releases of course have plenty to be angry about, but are a tiny minority of the populace.

The people I have talked with consider themselves to be more aware of current events and better-informed than average citizens. Yet somehow all of those racist/misogynist middle-class blue collar whites in "blue firewall" states supposedly heard enough from WikiLeaks to derail the electoral votes which "should have been hers."

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CB's picture

Podesta leaks. The most damage was done to her 10+ months ago with Benghazi! and her private server fiasco with the subsequent FOI requests of her emails to the State Department. The coup de grâce was done by FBI investigator Comey reminding the electorate about that fiasco.

After the primaries, the entire election hinged on who was the least disreputable/despicable candidate. I agree with the results. I prefer to have my enemy standing straight up in front of me rather than by my side with a knife at my back.

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Big Al's picture

Because of the Democratic party?

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CB's picture

Bernie Sanders was my last hope of remaining a democrat. Large 'D' democrat, like millions of others, evaporated during Obama's 2 term's. I'm now fully Independent - a pox on both their houses.

Hillary and the DNC have destroyed the Democratic party. It will take several Republican terms doing some real shit stuff to revive it.

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imo.

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asterisk's picture

even before Hillary started running. Obama's refusal to do anything about the banksters and her embrace of his position on this are a big problem.

People in flyover states tend to be well-informed about who starts wars because their kids are the ones that come home in the body bags. They are much more observant about warmongering than some people think.

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CB's picture

podium so she could be seen.

their kids are the ones that come home in the body bags

Sadly, yes. The "deplorables" simply don't earn enough money to keep their kids out of the military.

BTW, who the hell came up with that talking point - "basket of deplorables"? I believe it was the Anointed One Herself because it was part of a fundraising speech. The moment those words came out of her mouth, I knew she had (royally) fucked herself.

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sojourns's picture

building their own Iron Curtain. Has been really since the fall of the Soviet Union.

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"I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones."
John Cage

sojourns's picture

when it is now widely accepted that it is Kim Kardashian in concert with Instagram that is responsible for the attacks upon the DNC as well as young people losing their religious values. It's all over Facebook.

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"I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones."
John Cage

Pricknick's picture

So the Kardashian link works for me.

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Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.

Deja's picture

If only I didn't see those people boinking, all would be right with the world. My bad lol.

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social media as being the latest reason she lost. What a damn joke.

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sojourns's picture

"Correct the Record" using Hillary shillbots all over tweeter, places like GOS (which Markos is a shillbot), facebook, et al?

many many millions.

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"I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones."
John Cage

asterisk's picture

I liked Hillary in 2008. The more I saw of her more rabid followers--whether they were being paid or not-- the more negative my view of her became.

I have even wondered if TOP is really trying to elect Dems.
I have seen posts there saying that if you don't follow the party line get out-- we don't want your vote. I recently spent parts of a couple of days at TOP saying repeatedly that Trump voters are human beings and not all of them are racist, sexist, etc., etc., etc. Quite a few responses effectively said "They are evil monsters we don't want their racist vote."
Some of them claim that anyone who did not vote for Hillary is really a Trump voter. When I posted a comment about Obama's drone assassination of a 16-year-old American kid I was accused of being a Trump voter (among other interesting things).
I have never been banned or TO'd anywhere, and cannot recall ever even getting an HR on one of my comments. If Hillary was paying the trolls and/or the site owner she paid to successfully drive many potential supporters away.
This stuff is at a lot of sites other than TOP, but those site are not explicitly controlled for the supposed benefit of Dems.

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sojourns's picture

"I have even wondered if TOP is really trying to elect Dems."

That place is downright incestuous achieving little more than being a sanctuary for mental masturbation. They are more about being SJW's than they are being an open Democratic website.

I don't know what Markos' end game is or if he even has one other than profiting by hanging on the to apron strings of the DNC. At the rate they are going, I expect GOS to be dead by the time the next election cycle rolls around, save for a few die hards who have invested unbelievable amounts of time there. Sooner than that if the DNC continues to practice the art of non-addressing their fundamental flaws. It's not looking good. I believe that they have already succeeded in enlarging the body of independent and 3rd party voters.

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"I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones."
John Cage

the dualistic thinking that is inherent in the structure of America's political System. Viewing the world as they tend to do, strictly from within the framework of the R/D duopoly, Kossacks leave themselves little room for alternative, and possibly more objective perspectives. When all matters of social import are reduced to a contest between Them and Us, disagreement gets defined as opposition, open debate becomes difficult, and new ideas cannot be assimilated.

TOP has fallen into the age-old trap of mistaking its map for the territory the map is meant to describe. The USA is far too complex an amalgam of shifting political, economic, and religious groupings to be accurately understood solely by means of an R versus D categorization. In fact, both the R and D categories are becoming less and less useful as descriptors of reality, as time goes on.

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native

I too have wondered about the statements of 'Russian direct interference in US Elections' when both of the hacked/leaked document bundles had to do with the 'private corporations/personnel' of DNC, NOT with an actual government agency or function. The DNC is *not* part of, or equivalent to, 'th US election' or any part of the US government.

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divineorder's picture

but with so much happening in too short a time I had not sifted out the heart of it like BayAreaLefty has done so well, here.

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A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.

I think a lot of people don't understand our primary process and what the DNC is. For lack of a better term, the 'alt-right" has had a lot of successs educating people that the Federal reserve is a private bank by always always including that in reference to the Fed. Maybe it could work for the political parties?

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Big Al's picture

for private corporations and citizens, that's how it works. Sanctions against Venezuela are for the oil and gas companies; sanctions against Iraq during the 90's, same thing. These sanctions against Russia aren't for the DNC, that's just the cover story. They're part of the imperialist plot to demonize Russia and lay the groundwork for further action. All wars are for private interest, regime changes, it's all for the banks, corporations, the rich, all private entities. I'm not sure what this changes.

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private corporation, it's that the intervention was done specifically to conflate the private corporation with the government itself, because of the circumstance that the private corporation is for an explicit political purpose, and more specifically it is a specific one (DNC). I think Obama would have taken similar measures had the RNC been the victim of hacking, although the political implications there may have held his hand to some extent.

I don't think he'd have done the same thing if the Green Party or the Constitution Party or any other "minor" party had been the victims. That's an important point, in my opinion.

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riverlover's picture

Bait and switch, confuse the average Joe or Jill more, muddy the stream. May we rise in 2017 to say No deal to many shovelfuls a-coming. c99, we try to speak truth. Broadcast far and wide. That's a start.

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Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.

GreyWolf's picture

The general facts were that a house had a large side lot that the owners used as a neighborhood playground, with a few rides and vendors, that was open to the passing public. BUT, when a colored person tried to visit that person was ejected. The court held that since the home had used its side lot as a public park, it was therefor de facto a public park and had waived private property rights of refusing individual service.

During the primaries I had felt that, using that line of reasoning: since the DNC was [expected to be] performing a public service of running a [fair] primary, Bernie should have sued under breach of contract under UCC 'use for an implied purpose' (i.e. a fair primary).

Now Obama has jumped right over arguing that 'the DNC is acting as an arm of the government' and went straight to assuming, as a plank of his argument, of his accusations, that 'the DNC is acting as an arm of the government'. Which, jumps me back to my first line of thought, since 'the DNC was acting as an arm of the government' the DNC violated Bernie's (Civil and contract) rights.

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asterisk's picture

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thanks.

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edg's picture

If China hacks the political arm of the KKK, will the US government place sanctions against China? If Israel hacks the Green Party's server, will we stop giving money and weapons to Israel and sanction Netanyahu?

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From a certain point of view of what is being charged, our entire democracy relied on one man's emails. Because his personal emails were exposed, our entire democracy has been compromised and shaken. Who knew that Podesta stood alone between us and tyranny and chaos. Read his emails, and centuries of democracy goes down he tubes.

The only answer to the violation of the most important man in our democracy? WAR.

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How the Russian "Election Hacking" Story Was Sold to Americans by Hillary Clinton & the Media - (10:38)

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z88KgCYMjMo width:430]

A new poll shows that 50% of Clinton voters believe that Russia literally tampered with the vote tallies. This conclusion, believed by a large number of voters, is far-removed from the original claim that Russia simply hacked into the emails of the DNC and John Podesta. So how did we get here? Why do Americans believe the election itself was literally hacked? It's pretty simple: Hillary Clinton's team—along with the mainstream media—worked in tandem to sell this disingenuous story to Americans... and they've bought it.

Hacking an email and hacking an election are two completely different things.

If it's one thing I learned during the primaries . . .

And the other thing was . . .

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Or Debbie Whatshername-(I did nothing, I saw nothing)-Schultz.
For the life of me, I can never tell them apart!

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With their hearts they turned to each others heart for refuge
In troubled years that came before the deluge
*Jackson Browne, 1974, Before the Deluge https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SX-HFcSIoU

gulfgal98's picture

(and I am definitely not accusing you, LSM), but the thing that grates on me is the charge that Russia hacked the DNC and is responsible for the Wikileaks of their emails. This is totally false and there is no proof that Russia hacked the DNC. Julian Assange and other close members of the Wikileaks team have unequivocally asserted that the DNC emails were not hacks, but were provided to them by a DNC insider. That makes them leaks, not hacks. Many people believe that insider was Seth Rich who was mysteriously murdered soon afterward.

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

A lot of my friends, well ex friends, have fallen for the whole been hacked nonsense. To them I am a Trump loving Russian stooge. I am talking about people I have known for years who have totally had their minds warped by this election.

I gave up thinking about politics, and commenting on it, during Obama's second term. This election, and the aftermath, has forced me to confront issues friends and I have glossed over for a few years. They're true believers. I am not. To them I am a traitor.

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One Day it will be Someday

asterisk's picture

in my lifetime. It is my impression that the hatred coming from the supposedly liberal/progressive center left is even worse than the aggression coming from the right-wingers.
If we keep fighting each other we may not notice what the 1% are up to. I think Occupy really scared the Uber-Rich.

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divineorder's picture

reading BAL's essay.

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A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.

But we have a system of laws and a political structure based on property rights. It seems only natural that the US government lashes out at a country that attacked its private interests.

If the latest news is to be believed, Russian malware infecting a private utilities lap top, I'm not sure we won't see more sabre rattling.

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asterisk's picture

Putin must be getting real bored if he has nothing better to do than hacking laptops in Vermont.
Panic was about to ensue at TOP. The Pinko Putin-worshiping Russkies are invading Vermont! Fleas for your lives!!!!!!!!!!!
I decided to come over here for some fresh air.

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Bisbonian's picture

Obviously, Bernie was in on it.

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"I’m a human being, first and foremost, and as such I’m for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole.” —Malcolm X

asterisk's picture

connection in Vermont.
Either that or they were worried that the Peoples Republic of Burlington is going to take over Russia.

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Strife Delivery's picture

I saw only a little bit of that "story". The Russians are upping their game going after...Vermont. Think I saw someone wonder if it was an attack against Sanders... Sigh.

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but "fairy tale" would be a better term for it. Lately, the "latest news" has been anything but believable. I haven't seen an official disinformation campaign like this, since the run up to the invasion of Iraq.

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native

divineorder's picture

but made the mistake of going back to have a look. The Greenwald haters are out in full force with straw, man !

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A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.

Amanda Matthews's picture

need Vickie Nuland's chocolate cookie recipe. Undermining duly elected governments is always okay if served up with neo-liberal treats.

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I'm tired of this back-slapping "Isn't humanity neat?" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are. - Bill Hicks

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry. - Frank Zappa

Bob In Portland's picture

I keep seeing "Ukrainian" pop up with all these "DNC hack" stories. PropOrNot, the anonymous judge of what is and isn't fake news as pronounced by WaPo, has according to NewsBud, used a Ukranian fascist salute in an early posting, strongly suggesting that PropOrNot is an intelligence op with Ukrainian fascist connections. I suspect that a lot of the faux stories about hacking in fact come from a CIA-directed disinformation shop set up in Kiev after the fascist coup there. When MH17 was downed, Ukrainian sources immediately released an alleged tape of Donbas rebel military personnel discussing the downing of the airliner. However, a closer examination showed that it was a forgery, using radio discussions of previous battles, specifically about shooting a Ukranian cargo plane landing in an airport within the battle zone. That strongly suggests that the Ukrainian government knew that MH17 would be shot down and had that tape prepared when the shootdown occurred. We know that Ukrainian fighter planes guided the airliner over the battle zone where Ukrainian forces had several BUK batteries.

In order to sell the story of "Russia" shooting down MH17 the west had to employ Bellingcat to spread a story that Russia somehow snuck a BUK unit across the Ukrainian border, the Russians, or untrained rebels, shot down the airliner with the BUK, and then snuck the BUK back across the border. Bellingcat's theory was disproven, leaving the Ukrainian BUKs (or the accompanying Ukrainian fighter planes) as the main suspects. Bellingcat was also the source of the discredited claim that Assad used sarin gas against his own people (Seymour Hersh had a long, detailed report, published overseas, which debunked that.) The tape of the conversations between the Ukrainian control tower and the airliner at the time of the shootdown were immediately seized and disappeared.

On the Sunday after the shootdown, John Kerry, claimed he had absolute proof of where the missile was launched from and yet the US has never released that information, even when the family of the only American victim on MH17 asked Kerry to release that information. That is, the same lack of proof by the US on that particular incident happens again with the "Russian hack" story.

The long story short, the mainstream media presumes that whatever comes out of the CIA and American intelligence generally is fact, when in reality there is no section of the US government which has more consistently lied to the American public than its intelligence services, especially the CIA. The infiltration of the American media by the CIA was revealed during the congressional investigations of the 70s, and by Carl Bernstein. A reading of Christopher Simpson's THE SCIENCE OF COERCION (a pdf of it is available without charge, here: https://historicalunderbelly.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/0195102924.pdf) shows that the earliest uses of propaganda directed at American citizens occurred at the end of WWII.

Remember, the CIA has demonstrably lied about its involvement in the assassination of the president fifty years ago, and still is hiding documents about that crime. There is no reason to ever take the word of our intelligence services at face value because they've lied to us repeatedly. WMDs? Yellowcake? Aluminum tubes? Lies. We went into Afghanistan to catch bin Laden? Lies. The Reagan-era narratives about our Deep State's interventions in Latin America were lies. In fact, the CIA used the same story of bad guys shooting at peaceful protests in three different places where the US was directing regime change: Ukraine, Syria and Venezuela.

Having paid attention to a lot of the shit being shoveled from Langley over my lifetime, I would suggest that this "Russia hack" story has the very same stench as many of the past stories the CIA has provided our media. Remember when the media repeated the lie that North Vietnam attacked our navy in the Gulf of Tonkin? That's what we were told back then. It was a lie then. It's still a lie. The people responsible for the deaths of millions in Southeast Asia for that lie were never punished. The CIA's work with Operation Condor, which spanned Pinochet's fascist coup in Chile, the generals' coup and disappearances of Argentinians, the Bolivian cocaine coup and any number of fascist regressions in Latin America, were done by our intelligence services without any justice being served here in the US.

Don't be surprised if the incident that triggers even worse US-Russia relations happens in Ukraine. They seem to have their fingers in this anti-Russian propaganda campaign.

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Deja's picture

I'd love to read essays about all of the things you mentioned. Maybe a series?

It's both fascinating, and terrifying. I know a little about some of it, but you know so much more.

Please?

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It's concise, accurate, and timely. And yes, Ukraine is definitely a potential flash point. A question: What do you suppose Trump will do in regard to CIA machinations there? Do you think as I do, that a Trump vs CIA confrontation is in the offing?

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native

dervish's picture

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"Obama promised transparency, but Assange is the one who brought it."

I continue returning to BAL's idea: namely that the DNC is being identified as part of the US govt. structure.
So that acts against Dem Party instead of being a case of "sharp business" are cause for war.

This is so fucking wrong. Might it actually involve a point of law?
Hence my cry. I am pretty sure we could find someone to prove the square root of 2 is irrational.
Do we have a lawyer here who can comment on BAL'S "jailhouse brief"(which I take as a demand for the govt. to stop unconstitutional activity.)

"Good law is where you find it." wtf

Just recently posted about Ruiz vs. Estelle.
Monument in law- convict David Ruiz beats TDC in case lasting 30 years.(Ruiz died in TDC prison)
This case came from the "belly of the Beast." But he won.

http://www.workers.org/2005/us/david-ruiz-1201/
https://www.clearinghouse.net/detail.php?id=960

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The Putin-Hacking-Outrage people are very much the same people who have spent decades building their self-identity on the idea that Democrats were the smart party and Republicans were the stupid party. The same people who were totally convinced that anyone who failed to vote for Democrats was too stupid to be taken seriously. The same people who loved to talk about toothless hillbillies marrying their feeble-minded cousins.

These self-proclaimed smartest people in the whole world are full of disdain for the stupidity of people who believe in and support sleazy televangelists, but here they are now, believing in and supporting a person thousands of times sleazier than any televangelist, for reasons that are way, way more stupid than those of the televangelist-supporters. The payoff for the televangelist-supporters is the belief that they'll be going to Heaven, which they see as a very good thing. What could the payoff be for the Putin-Hacking-Outrage supporter besides nuclear war with Russia? And what could be stupider than nuclear war with Russia?

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absolutely nothing. Yet here we have supposedly intelligent, highly esteemed, highly-educated ivy league graduates advocating for policies that would lead to exactly that. What are we to make of this?

I would hazard to guess that there is something deeply wrong within the bowels of the US educational establishment. That its very raison d' etre has been perverted to serve the interests of an elite class of capitalistic predators whose financial sponsorship of our institutions of higher learning has enabled them to co-opt and control access to professional advancement.

To say nothing of the base level of the American educational system, which is abysmal. And shameful. Under-funded, neglected, too often politicized, and rife with petty bureaucratic quarrellng, America's high schools have been tasked to do a job which they are utterly ill-equipped to do. This is a tragic and devastating state of affairs, one which our so-called Liberal Party has done little or nothing to even articulate, let alone to address.

Little wonder that right-wingers revert to home-schooling, when the quality of free, public education has fallen so low, and been so politicized and circumscribed by ideology.

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native

absolutely nothing. Yet here we have supposedly intelligent, highly esteemed, highly-educated ivy league graduates advocating for policies that would lead to exactly that. What are we to make of this?

I would hazard to guess that there is something deeply wrong within the bowels of the US educational establishment. That its very raison d' etre has been perverted to serve the interests of an elite class of capitalistic predators whose financial sponsorship of our institutions of higher learning has enabled them to co-opt and control access to professional advancement.

To say nothing of the base level of the American educational system, which is abysmal. And shameful. Under-funded, neglected, too often politicized, and rife with petty bureaucratic quarrellng, America's high schools have been tasked to do a job which they are utterly ill-equipped to do. This is a tragic and devastating state of affairs, one which our so-called Liberal Party has done little or nothing to even articulate, let alone to address.

Little wonder that right-wingers revert to home-schooling, when the quality of free, public education has fallen so low, and been so politicized and circumscribed by ideology.

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native

absolutely nothing. Yet here we have supposedly intelligent, highly esteemed, highly-educated ivy league graduates advocating for policies that would lead to exactly that. What are we to make of this?

I would hazard to guess that there is something deeply wrong within the bowels of the US educational establishment. That its very raison d' etre has been perverted to serve the interests of an elite class of capitalistic predators whose financial sponsorship of our institutions of higher learning has enabled them to co-opt and control access to professional advancement.

To say nothing of the base level of the American educational system, which is abysmal. And shameful. Under-funded, neglected, too often politicized, and rife with petty bureaucratic quarrellng, America's high schools have been tasked to do a job which they are utterly ill-equipped to do. This is a tragic and devastating state of affairs, one which our so-called Liberal Party has done little or nothing to even articulate, let alone to address.

Little wonder that right-wingers revert to home-schooling, when the quality of free, public education has fallen so low, and been so politicized and circumscribed by ideology.

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native

My apologies. I'm deep into a bottle of Jameson's here.

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native

And what could be stupider than nuclear war with Russia?

Dog made the world real
So that it is good to dig.

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I strongly dislike political parties and think the whole concept should be abolished. However, even though the Democratic party is a private institution I still think the hack was an attack on America. The Democrats and Republicans may be private institutions but they run America. It shouldn't be that way, but it is. America has been ruled by a few elites since forever, I think that ship has sailed.

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on a non-governmental private organization. You are simply wrong about the facts, here. The hack, assuming Russians actually did it, is little different than the NK hack on Sony. The difference is this time the the punishment is being cast as a retaliation for an attack on America's government, which it was not.

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CB's picture

It was more of a whistle-blowing. No one has claimed the contents of the revealed emails were not truthful. Donna Brazile tried to lie say that her emails were altered but was soon proven wrong due to cryptographic signatures and was forced to resign.

The reveal of the DNC emails was most likely a leak and not a hack. This report by Craig Murray who had "contact with William Binney, who was Technical Director at the NSA and actually designed their surveillance capabilities", lays out, in detail, why it could not be a hack.

The DNC was supposed to be a "big tent" for getting the best Democrat elected, not for the preemptive crowning of a queen well before the primaries had even started. I'm sure there would have been many insiders who were upset on how Sanders was being deliberately marginalized in the push to place Hillary on the throne. If I was an insider I most likely would have done the same. This behavior of the DNC during the primaries disgusted me because it exemplified the immorality of the Clinton Machine™ and is one (of many) reasons I dumped Hillary.

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Lookout's picture

this was primarily a leak...NOT a hack.
A DNC staffer was murdered but not robbed this summer in DC.
http://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/Man-Shot-Killed-in-Northwest-DC-...
Assange and wikileaks offered a reward.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-08-10/wikileaks-assange-hints-murdere...

The Podesta leaks could have been a phishing scam
http://nypost.com/2016/10/29/heres-how-hackers-stole-50000-of-john-podes...
or could have been accessed when he lost his phone
http://www.inquisitr.com/3628787/wikileaks-clintons-campaign-chairman-lo...

Red baiting is a useful silencing tool. The media of mass distraction. Don't get caught up in it.

Besides it sure would be nice to see as much coverage of the email content as the worry about the source.

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

but only if you construe the exposure of "privileged" information to be an attack. IMO the internet and everything on it is by its very nature, part of the global public domain. If you want something to be "private" or proprietary, you do not put it on the web.

Trump has said something similar to this recently. Something to the effect that he prefers human couriers to convey confidential messages. He is totally right about this.

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native

Bisbonian's picture

the public via the FOIA, if Hillary had followed the law.

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"I’m a human being, first and foremost, and as such I’m for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole.” —Malcolm X

I think "Western" corporate media are more worried about Russian incursion into their information monopoly, than anything else. At the moment, RT is upstaging them at every turn, by providing high-quality, more or less objective analysis of world affairs. Meanwhile CNN, MSNBC, etc. continue to broadcast what is ever more obviously propaganda.

I think the "Western" media giants, including NYT, WaPo, Guardian, and Der Speigel, plus major US tv networks are in a state of near panic, as RT and other sources now provide alternative, and in general better and more accurate journalism than they do.

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Bisbonian's picture

Leak is from inside. That matters a lot. They are trying to cover the fact that it was a leak, by blaming someone from outside. That matters if we want to know what really happened, and it matters if we don't want to go to war with Russia. YMMV.

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"I’m a human being, first and foremost, and as such I’m for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole.” —Malcolm X

k9disc's picture

that, right?

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“Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” ~ Sun Tzu