CNN: No one cares about Russia

[A Theist]

1. I don't think I'd go as far to agree that what the Russians did after they gained access amounted to forcible hacking. There's a difference between forcible entry and robbing something by force and using a con scheme to rob something by deceit. They masqueraded as something trusted and took what they wanted by deception. The DNC and Hillary didn't even know they were plundered until everything showed up on WikiLeaks. While the methods were different the end result was still the same, though. One by force. The other by deceit.

Gonna risk using an argument from authority here, but, well, I'm a hacker (the good kind). I test the security of systems by trying to hack into them. So I kinda know what I'm talking about. It's very difficult to hack directly into a network from the Internet and gain anything of value. The DNC hack either happened by someone clicking on a malicious link which downloaded and installed malware on their system, or by giving away their credentials, which the hackers then used to breach the network and install malware.

Either way, once the malware is installed, that's forcible hacking. Malware isn't passive, it's active. It purposefully scours the network looking for things to exploit, exploits them, and sends stuff back to its controller. Exploits were certainly used to gain access to the email database.

There's a better writeup on the hack by the company that investigated it: https://www.crowdstrike.com/blog/bears-m...committee/

Also, hardly any company has sufficient technology installed to detect that they have been compromised.

2. It could also be more accurately argued that Hillary lost the election because one of the dems'  largest and once loyal voting base broke for Trump, the white blue collar working class in the rust belt and coal states. Some of those states hadn't voted for a Republican president in 30+ years. During her whole campaign she didn't even step one foot in Wisconsin, and lost it. While she focused her message on identity politics, Trump went into those areas and campaigned that he was going to bring back coal and manufacturing jobs. They felt abandoned by the democrats, and these were the same areas that helped elect barack to two terms in the White House. Even now, what message do the democrats have besides resist Trump? Their party is too divided between the far left Bernie / Warren types, the moderate Manchin / [color=#000000]Heitkamp types, and the establishment Shcumer / Pelosi types. The only thing holding them together is, resist Trump. With the economy taking off the way it is now and no real message from the dems I doubt that they're going to do as well in the mid terms as they are hoping. I think that Hillary lost the election because of her poor campaigning.

3. Yeah but, still, what we may think are weird connections doesn't prove collusion. Look at all the hype surrounding the Nunes memo about FBI abuses and the obama administration using FISA warrants to spy on the Trump campaign. Weird coincidences, sure. Until something's actually proven it's just an interesting set of coincidences as far as I'm concerned.... Trump isn't the first candidate / politician to say that they want to improve relations with Russia. Remember Hillary's reset button that she gave to Lavrov? It was a symbolic gesture that the obama administration wanted to improve relations with Russia.

I pretty much agree with everything you said above, except I think you are wrong about the mid-terms, at least the way things have been going, Dems have been flipping Republican seats, or expanding their own margins in currently Democratic seats pretty consistently for a year now. I think the chances of a Democrat controlled House are pretty high, and I think the chances of a Democrat controlled Senate are growing (though currently I think the chances of Republicans holding the Senate are higher).

That's good info. You have everything laid out pretty good. If all of this is what happens in a Phishing scheme, what would be the difference in forcible hacking vs phishing?

I don't know, though. I know historically that the party in power usually loses seats in both houses of Congress in the mid term elections. But this time the Dems are so divided into different factions with their separate agendas and messages that I just see an uphill battle for them in the mid terms. The only thing that's loosely holding them together is their hatred for Trump. Their Party's going to have to come up with something other than resist Trump. But, mid terms are down the road a bit, so we'll see.