We should have known, as soon as we introduced elections systems that could not be physically audited, that sooner-or-sooner "the 'wrong' candidate would win an election." And that then there would be hell to pay. (Although, I admit, "blame it on the Russians" is a bit of a stretch ...)

At this point, it seems to me that "the Washington Political Establishment" is prepared to stop at nothing to try to "put 'the correct candidate'" into the Oval Office. How we about have the Supreme Court appoint the next President, as they did once before? (To hell with the House of Representatives!)

But: "the electors choose the President," and by then it had already been bleated that "Moscow did it." Nevertheless, "the electors in question," presumably being made fully aware of these allegations (and various other excuses posed by still-disbelieving Clinton-ites), did not change their votes. In fact, six of them changed their votes to vote against Hillary Clinton.

"What part of 'NO' don't you understand?"

Perhaps the Democrats should remember a line that they put in their now-collectible 'Madame President' swag: "Get Over It.™"

Your beloved candidate not only lost the election ... but, fair and square ... but she lost it badly.

"Get Over It."

The report of three intelligence agencies, not seventeen, state that there is "high confidence." Okay only two state there is high confidence the third only has "moderate confidence."

High confidence per the definition in the report means their judgements MIGHT BE WRONG. Below is an exact quote of the definition from the publicly available report.

Watched the certification of the electoral vote on C-Span on January 6. A few Representatives got up to object, some more than once, and were told that the objection needed to be in writing and signed by both a Representative and a Senator. Those that rose more than once to be told the same thing were apparently slow on the uptake.

The question is though how serious were those democrat representatives about objecting to the certification? They had to know in advance that the written objections had to bear the signature of a Representative and a Senator. If they had been serious about objecting, not just wanting a clip of their objecting to be shown on news reports, they had plenty of time to secure the signature of at least one Senator. I write this because I am sure there are plenty of democrat Senators (and some Republicans like McCain and Graham) that dislike the President-elect and could have been persuaded to sign off on objections to the certification.

Could it be that the elected officials in Washington know that if these allegations of hacking are seriously investigated they will find there is no "there there"? Could it be they know that Wikileaks was in fact provided with the information by an insider at the DNC who was upset over the treatment of Bernie Sanders? A U.K. news organization has come out and stated that a former British Ambassador was provided the emails from a DNC insider.

I watch things like c-span also.

Lets all do the ghost vote dance. C'mon now. Not to be confused with the native American Indian Ghost dance.

The language alone should be a clue that there is no real proof - you will see on any 'news' outlet or online, language from the State Dept. with words such as 'we assess' or 'confident' - clearly language indicating ambiguity. If there were actual proof you would see a stronger set of words such as 'we have evidence' or 'we can confirm' or whatever.

So the fact that there are constant news conference with such ambiguous language is automatically a red-flag - but make no mistake, actual strong language was used before the invasion of Iraq - so - yea, forgive me if I still call bullshit on the Russians being responsible for anything.

Wow, I would laugh if it weren't sad - looks just like the antics of former Soviet Satellite states - and here in TX no doubt - good job *claps*.

-edit

Reminds me of the Discworld series (RIP Sir Terry Pratchett) - character 'The Patrician' - One Man, One Vote - He's the man, so he gets all the votes

So we find out it was easy for a 10 year old to hack the DNC. Hardly the work of the Russians. Bernie supporters maybe.

Maybe they were 10 year old Russians?

Or maybe it was this guy....

http://www.politico.com/magazine/sto...14598?cmpid=sf

"The overseers of the U.S. intelligence community have not embraced a CIA assessment that Russian cyber attacks were aimed at helping Republican President-elect Donald Trump win the 2016 election, three American officials said on Monday."

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-us...-idUSKBN14204E

Intelligence officers might be persuaded to "mutter in the right direction" to assuage the hurt feelings of a professional politician who never woke up and realized that "it might be an oncoming train," but they're not going to stake their reputations on it.

In any case, let this be a lesson learned: "an election, of all things, must have a paper trail."

People don't mind performing financial transactions electronically, but an election is a far more serious matter. We should have known this. (Plenty of pundits did know this.)

But it's silly, frankly, to "blame the Russians." Plenty of the people in that country are right now "looking at us very strangely." (Plenty of people in the U.S., too.)

Correct, and to reiterate points from previous posts from me (politico,etc) the people who are trying to sell us the idea it was the Russians, are also the very same people that sold us the Iraq War - people aren't falling for it, and are obviously looking to other sources for news, dare I say even wanting perspectives other than the US, hence now there is a major 'fake news' campaign here - I do not necessarily doubt that say RT has an agenda of it's own, but outright saying it was also responsible some how for the victory of Trump, that to me is a fallacy at best, and a bad joke at worst - RT has a Russian view yes, but at least it is another view rather than just what ABC,CBS,FOX,CNN,NBC,NY-Times, etc put out all day - sorry but they make RT much more credible at this point anyways as far as I'm concerned.

I feel this is also relevant:

Any indictment would have to come from the Attorney General of the United States and would then grind itself through the Court system. It could not come "from President <anyone>."

I daresay that the future President will be savvy enough not to mention it at all. If the DOJ decides to recommend indictment, and if the AJ decides to issue one, then he can simply remain at arm's length.

It frankly seems to me that this whole thing is more of an IT issue(!) than any sort of malfeasance. The Secretary of State relies upon her staff to handle her information-handling affairs in an appropriately secure manner. She might not have been technically savvy about exactly where and how traffic was handled – and if her IT Staff did not quickly identify that "classified information that is within the purview of the SOSUS is not being handled securely for any reason," well, why not?

To me, the primary responsibilities of the SOSUS are diplomatic. Of course they are "profoundly sensitive." Why can't she rely on her staff?

I frankly am very unpersuaded that anyone who holds the Office of the Secretary of State of the United States would be so dis-respectful of the Office, and of the Country, to have actually "knowingly and willingly and intentionally" violated information security ... so as to have committed a Felony (a.k.a. "Treason"). That, to me, is an enormous stretch, reserved for Benedict Arnold. I'm not at all persuaded that there is any truth to it. "No, I don't like Hillary Clinton, but I do not believe this."

(My "bozo bit" just got flipped.)

Also: how the hell did Edward Snowden ... so far as I know, "a cockamimie government IT contractor(!)" ... obtain access to apparently-authentic(!) State Department cables in the first place?!?! Whatever happened to "information compartmentalization" and "need to know?"

I do think that the Department of State and maybe many other Departments need to "start handing out indictments," all right! And maybe they need to start with their IT staff!

Well at this point if gov agencies such as NSA, and groups like the DNC have such lax or poor security, then quite frankly they deserve it - And as for Snowden him like Assange I applaud for trying to wake people up to the truth.