Obama administration is close to announcing measures to punish Russia for election interference

[DonViejo]

Source: The Washington Post

By Ellen Nakashima December 27 at 1:32 PM

The Obama administration is close to announcing a series of measures to punish Russia for its interference in the 2016 presidential election, including economic sanctions and diplomatic censure, according to U.S. officials.

The administration is still finalizing the details, which are also expected to include covert action that likely will involve cyber operations, the officials said. An announcement on the public elements of the response could come as early as this week.

The sanctions part of the package culminates weeks of debate in the White House about how to revise an executive order from last year meant to give the president authority to respond to cyberattacks from overseas, but which did not originally cover efforts to influence the electoral system.

The Obama administration last year rolled the order out to great fanfare as a way to punish and deter foreign hackers who harm the United States’ economic or national security.

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/the-white-house-is-scrambling-for-a-way-to-punish-russian-hackers-via-sanctions/2016/12/27/0eee2fdc-c58f-11e6-85b5-76616a33048d_story.html?utm_term=.1032b861bf4c&wpisrc=nl_evening&wpmm=1

[gordianot]

1. They should take away Trump's twitter account until he is sworn in.

The United States is about to swear in to the Presidency a domestic traitor.

[Initech]

13. Trump should have his Twitter account taken away indefinitely.

And I think nothing less than full sanctions and a full trade embargo should be acceptable. They fucked up big time with this one. And Tillerson should not be allowed to collect his prize billions.

[bucolic_frolic]

2. Donald will immediately reverse them

and be seen as cozying up to Russia and praising Putin

He won't think anything of it

What will the American public think?

[Charles Bukowski]

5. The optics would be terrible.

Last edited Tue Dec 27, 2016, 10:59 PM - Edit history (1)

[0rganism]

14. i doubt his supporters will be watching

of those that are, some will approve
the remainder will likely be placated by the pending removal of support from the UN

[Igel]

22. We've seen there are three options with such an order.

1. Enforce it.

2. Annul it.

3. Ignore it.

For (3) there are all sorts of excuses. Don't have the money; don't have the manpower; don't interpret it the same way; say that it's in progress; say that it's covert.

It's the same set of options for dispensing with a bill that was passed by Congress and signed into law.

[still_one]

25. exactly

[sheshe2]

4. How do you know there is no actual evidence?

[Charles Bukowski]

6. Rush Limbaugh told him.

[etherealtruth]

7. I suppose If one is totally ignorant related to reliable news and sources one would think that

Educate yourself. Do not rely on your ignorance and the ignorance perpetuated by others.

[sheshe2]

9. Ooopsie...poof!

We hardly knew thee.

[bucolic_frolic]

12. It was a test of #FakeNews

to see what the gullible public is willing to swallow

We're not that dumb here!

[Sunlei]

15. that was trump! he's a DU troll.

[sheshe2]

16. Oh n0oooos!

He is on twitter and the intertubes now.

MIRT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thanks for the laugh, Sunlei.

[Botany]

8. Say hi to Vlad for me.

BTW 16 different agencies of the Fed. Government all said that
Russia interfered w/the elections.

enjoy your stay.

[sheshe2]

11. they gone

[red dog 1]

18. lol

[Richard D]

10. I wonder . . .

I wonder if Russia will be as badly punished as America will be under a drumpf presidency.
Russia is definitely getting the better deal here.

[olddad56]

17. I wonder how many Russians will be allowed to migrate to the US once Trump is in office.

[HoneyBadger]

20. Or how many adoptions are getting shut down right now

[EL34x4]

28. Just the hot ones.

Trump does enjoy his Eastern Europeans!

[red dog 1]

19. Why did Obama wait so long?

"The Obama administration is close to announcing a series of measures to punish Russia for it's interference in the 2016 presidential election.."???

Obama should have called Hillary early on Wednesday November 9th to ask her NOT to concede, pending a thorough DOJ/CIA/NSA investigation of the Russian interference in the election.

That way, the election results would not have been officially confirmed, and recounts could have been asked for by HRC, especially in states with obvious voting anomalies like Florida, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Arizona and North Carolina.

What did Obama do?

He called Hillary early in the AM on Wednesday and suggested that she SHOULD concede!
(Despite her having a plurality of the popular vote, with results still coming in)

WTF?


(K&R, thanks for posting, DonViejo)

[Igel]

24. What was hacked wasn't so much the machines

as the populace.

The tool was the American press, freely using what turned out to be non-fake news in sensationalist ways that served another's purpose.

What's been avenged is the hacking of a political organization. The claim is that the RNC was also subject to phishing, but their security was better. Now, I've been the subject of phishing; I fell for it, as far as I know, once. When they say don't click on links in email that you don't know, they mean it. That's the hacking that'll be avenged. Having some stupid DNC folk stupidly click on stupid links embedded in fake email. And then not checking up on it when they were told they'd been hacked.


Anyway, it's with the populace that the voting anomalies lie, really. We can point to the recount that showed nothing, and to the non-recounts and claim that the lack of recount masks pretty much anything we want. (They didn't recount the votes in Pennsylvania, which means they're hiding that it was actually Iosip bin-Lloyd y Kyriakos that won the election, the guy I cast my write-in vote for! Yeah. Whatever.)

The little recounting that happened disproves those particular claims of "election hacking" in any normal sense of the phrase. What would be left would be having the courts try to rule that in their opinion voters were swayed by news that they shouldn't have heard, and then have the courts rule that individual state elections must be voided and reheld. Of course, given the law saying when other things have to happen, that would have required also having a court (and then the appeal court, then SCOTUS) rewrite not only 50 state laws in detail, but also federal law on the electoral college and inauguration. Yes, 50 state laws, because SCOTUS would be wrong to just say that those a particular candidate won have to be re-voted.

[red dog 1]

27. There were no real recounts done

In WI, MI & PA, the votes counted on electronic voting machines..the ones with no paper trail...the ones called "push & pray"..were simply re-run through the same rigged, vote-flipping manner....those weren't recounts.
Funny how Trump did so much better in counties with "touch & pray" voting machines.

As far as the rest of your reply, I agree with most of it.

Except for your "the tool was the American press."

The real "tool" was that rat bastard & traitor FBI Director James Comey!

Were it not for Comey's Hatch Act-violating letter to GOP Congressional leaders,
"the American press" would not have mattered in those last 11 days before the election.

Clinton would have won, despite all the negative press she got, had it not been for Comey's treasonous act 11 days before the election..
HRC was ahead of Trump by more than 11 points, and Republicans were shaking in their boots fearing not only losing the election, but also the U.S. Senate.

IT'S COMEY'S FAULT!!

[triron]

30. My thoughts as well.

[LaydeeBug]

32. This! OMG! Thank you! Reading this was like tonic. nt

[GeorgeGist]

21. I'm not a politician or a lawyer ...

but I suspect messing with our electoral system would fall under harming national security.

[red dog 1]

29. I agree, and Obama would have been right to call for an immediate FBI-CIA-NSA investigation ...

..into the National Security breech which all the intelligence agencies agreed came from Russian hackers....Obama COULD have acted on November 9..but he didn't..and now it's too late.

[smirkymonkey]

23. +1000

[apcalc]

26. Too late Obama to save our country. This is worth just about nothing.

Trump in, HRC out
Putin got what he wanted
What Obama does, Trump will undo.

Who is gonna save us from the goddam FBI, btw?

We are screwed.

[triron]

31. yep

[TomCADem]

33. Disagree. Doing Nothing Would Facilitate Cover-Up

It is sort of like saying that the murder occurred, the victim is dead, therefore it is too late to do anything about it.

[Skittles]

34. oh wow, he'd doing more than telling them to cut it out?