Rand Paul: NSA Routinely Monitors Americans’ Communications Without Warrants

Nope. I stated the opposite: that all of the evidence already pointed us in this direction. No blind trust required.

>The mistake you make here is to assume that we can apply common sense

Ah, yes, the ol' "who ya' gonna trust, me or your lyin' eyes?" defense. Sorry, I prefer that my fellow Americans leave our eyes and brains switched on. We really need them these days, what with the shills and propagandists running rampant.

>the landscape of "facts" we are considering has been contrived and heavily influenced

The landscape of facts to which many of us are referring don't require quotes and include the otherwise inexplicable words out of Trump's mouth, coupled with his actions, removal of key parts of the RNC platform in Russia's favor, secret connections with his aides and the subsequent lying and admissions, etc. We know enough as irrefutable fact without relying on our intelligence agencies. Odd that you suggest we ignore it all.

>I'm not arguing that Russia did not meddle...our default judgement should be to de-escalate rather than escalate tensions

This argument comes straight out of Trump's mouth and makes no sense. It's essentially an argument for encouraging any adversary who wishes to extract concessions from us to simply attack us.

And, where else do we advocate responding to direct attacks with kindness? Where else do we advocate not holding aggressors responsible and instead to appease or "de-escalate", as you put it? Indeed the normally bellicose Trump himself has inexplicably treated our allies far less favorably than a foreign aggressor. Now, why is that?

> And, where else do we advocate responding to direct attacks with kindness? Where else do we advocate not holding aggressors responsible and instead to appease or "de-escalate", as you put it? Indeed the normally bellicose Trump himself has inexplicably treated our allies far less favorably than a foreign aggressor. Now, why is that?

This is the argument George W. Bush made about Iraq and why it was necessary to overthrow Saddam.

> Odd that you suggest we ignore it all. > Ah, yes, the ol' "who ya' gonna trust, me or your lyin' eyes?" defense

I think it depends on what you consider evidence. If you can't imagine renting a VPS in Ukraine and running some scripts on it, I suppose the evidence is convincing.

Nope. Just the facts.

>This is the argument George W. Bush made about Iraq

"Because, Iraq" is not a magical dismissal for everything the U.S. does forevermore. It's possible (and sensible) to disagree with the Iraq War and Russian attacks on our democracy. In fact, that's where most Americans stand.

>If you can't imagine renting a VPS in Ukraine and running some scripts

Yeah, that or the 400lb guy in his basement makes more sense than what the U.S. intelligence agencies concluded.

But, AGAIN, ignore the agencies and just look at Trump's counterintuitive, but consistent behavior.

Nowadays we call that populism. And we don't like it one bit! /s

The only pattern is this: Trump says something outrageous and gets the media focused on what he said. This continues until he says another outrageous thing, attracting attention at will. He's like a human teasing a cat with a bamboo pole with a piece of yarn attached.

I don't assume any motive other than to control media attention. GWB used this technique when Rumsfeld said various outrageous things (such as about torture), and WJC used the technique effectively during his scandals.

What is Trump's motive? Certainly his remarks during the campaign about wanting better relations with Russia were intended to stir the pot, not to (stupidly) telegraph some sort of quid-pro-quo with the Russian government.

> Now you're walking back your claim by conflating it with cyberhacking?

I am not making the claim as my own view, simply stating that one of the objectives of all this is to get Americans to take cyber warfare seriously. The likely scenario for cyber attacks are surprise attacks on infrastructure that will not be easy to attribute blame for, so the public must be ready to suspect the likely foes so that consent for military action can be granted in a timely fashion.

> Many Americans love our country, in spite of its mistakes. We believe the solution is to push for it to be better in accordance with its ideals, not advocate that foreign adversaries undermine it or to appease those who do.

This is a silly comment. Of course Americans want America to be successful. I think you overlook the decades long strategy the US has had toward Russia which, if it is in fact part of Russia's strategy, the election meddling fits into, as does the vilification of Russia.

> Any right-thinking American is indignant at any attack on our freedom and democracy.

Yet in this case the "attack" simply revealed one of our pols to be a bit more corrupt and dishonest than anyone realized. It's hard to say whether this actually harmed the US. FWIW the closure of the Clinton foundation after donations dried up following the scandal suggest that it was a gray market campaign finance scheme.

> Any right-thinking American is indignant at any attack on our freedom and democracy.

I figured you represented the right-wing view, and yes, the American right is very hawkish about Russia.