More On Russia’s War on American Democracy THE NEW MCCARTHYISM
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I hate to district us again from the most important issue facing the country going forward — that someone who will never run for president again sucks — but this is very bad:
Russia’s cyberattack on the U.S. electoral system before Donald Trump’s election was far more widespread than has been publicly revealed, including incursions into voter databases and software systems in almost twice as many states as previously reported.
In Illinois, investigators found evidence that cyber intruders tried to delete or alter voter data. The hackers accessed software designed to be used by poll workers on Election Day, and in at least one state accessed a campaign finance database. Details of the wave of attacks, in the summer and fall of 2016, were provided by three people with direct knowledge of the U.S. investigation into the matter. In all, the Russian hackers hit systems in a total of 39 states, one of them said.
The scope and sophistication so concerned Obama administration officials that they took an unprecedented step — complaining directly to Moscow over a modern-day “red phone.” In October, two of the people said, the White House contacted the Kremlin on the back channel to offer detailed documents of what it said was Russia’s role in election meddling and to warn that the attacks risked setting off a broader conflict.
However! We at LGM believe in a Both Sides Do It Fair And Balanced approached to the news, so as a counterpoint let me present this very coherent and refreshingly non-sequitur free defense of Putin from Mr. Oliver Stone:
The Nation: Seventeen US intelligence agencies all came to the same conclusion about Russian hacking, so everybody on the left has to say, “They must know what they are talking about.” So you don’t buy that these 17 intelligence agencies are telling the truth?
Stone: No, because they backed off on it… There were three agencies—the CIA, NSA ,and FBI. They cooked this intelligence. That’s my word [not Putin’s]… These are serious allegations: That Trump was a Manchurian candidate. The influence on the election from the Russians to me is absurd to the naked eye. Israel has far more influence on American elections through AIPAC. Saudi Arabia has influence through money… Sheldon Adelson and the Koch brothers have much more influence on American elections… And the prime minister of Israel comes to our country and addresses Congress to criticize the president’s policy in Iran at the time—that’s pretty outrageous.
Our country is very much in the grip of a dictator: The dictator is money, the military-industrial-complex… It’s beyond absurd to have this kind of expenditure every year on military…
If only the Marxist radical JFK hadn’t been assassinated, we wouldn’t have had any of these problems.