nt

The accurate reports by WikiLeaks were twisted and distorted by right-wing media, but I'm not aware of any good-faith charge that the emails attributed to Podesta were fabricated or had been altered in any way.

Oooooooo-kay.

I pose the question about veracity, so you read that as my giving my answer, namely that I have no reason to doubt their veracity? That doesn't follow at all.

Back in the Cold War days, the hostile foreign country (I assume you meant "country" rather than "company&quot was the USSR. Faced with criticism of its internal practices, that country frequently countered with "And you are lynching Negroes", pointing to lynchings in the American South as a tu quoque argument. That allegation served the interests of the hostile foreign country. It also happened to be true. This particular source's general unreliability and clear bias didn't constitute adequate basis for concluding that its every statement was false.

For the purported Podesta emails, what do we know? Here's what I know:
* The release came from WikiLeaks, which IMO has a good track record; releases that it attests to be credible have been credible.
* As against that, WikiLeaks, by itself, can't obtain such material. Instead, it relies on other parties, who may have their own agendas. Regardless of what role Russia actually played in this particular publication, we know for sure that the release served the interest of someone (actually multiple someones). Thus, there was a motive for fabricated or altered emails.
* I don't remember reading that Podesta or anyone else listing as sending or receiving an email publicly disputed the authenticity. That's a piece of evidence, though of course it's not dispositive.

I didn't follow the details of the whole thing, because there was nothing in the emails, even if they were 100% accurate, that would sway me away from voting for Clinton. You referred to "fake news" so I asked what basis you have for that characterization. If you have nothing more than your attitude toward Russia, but you consider that to be sufficient basis, then that's your answer.

Not "kinda sorta" either.

wow. Just. wow.

For a moment let's just assume that "supported by a hostile foreign government" is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and can be shown by indisputable evidence. I doubt that's true, but let it pass.

The point I made was that the hostile foreign government, amorally pursuing its own interests, will sometimes find that its interests are served by the truth.

If WikiLeaks did not have a good track record, then you could have catalogued numerous instances in which WikiLeaks had publicly put its imprimatur on a document release, but the documents had turned out to be spurious. Your silence on that score speaks volumes.

Of course, my question was about specifically the Podesta emails. Even if WikiLeaks has always been right before, this could be their first mistake/hoax. Even if WikiLeaks had repeatedly lied, they wouldn't possess reverse infallibility, and this particular release might be the stopped-clock one that was valid. That's why I asked for specifics about the purported Podesta emails -- so far, without result.

And, of course, Land Shark is quite correct that the smearing of WikiLeaks is irrelevant to the point in the OP, that post-election inquiry has only a limited ability to correct election fraud. If your point is that even a hand recount of paper ballots wouldn't correct biased reporting that preceded the election, well, yes, I think everyone can agree with you on that.

It is also *VERY* easy to find the reports about Russia funding Assange.

So, we're not assuming "for the sake of a logical fallacy argument" that these things are true. These things are true. It is a statement.

You're welcome.

We're talking past each other.

Did any of those 19 intelligence agencies say that the purported Podesta emails released by WikiLeaks were fabricated or altered in any way? If you can give me a link that says so, I'll click on it with interest. Otherwise, you may continue to inveigh against the Russians without further interference from me.

Full title: U.S. 2016 Unadjusted Exit Poll Discrepancies Fit Chronic Republican Vote-Count Rigging, not Random Statistical, Patterns

An early version of this paper was posted on DU but I can't find it. This is the latest version that is now also posted on OpEdNews: http://www.opednews.com/articles/U-S-2016-Unadjusted-Exit-by-Ron-Baiman-2016-Elections_Exit-Polls-161208-153.html

Abstract: U.S. 2016 general election unadjusted exit poll (UEP) analysis finds that it is nearly impossible to think of a plausible statistical, or innocent exit poll error, rationale for the one-sided “red shift” (and anti-Sanders shift) UEP discrepancy patterns, with the most highly significant discrepancies occurring in key battle ground and deep-red states, in recent U.S. elections. These repeated patterns of exit poll discrepancies with official vote counts are in practice, statistically impossible, but highly politically consistent. Given what we know about how U.S. elections are conducted, a reasonable conclusion is that these in all likelihood reflect differences in how votes are counted, not counted, or miscounted by partisan and largely unmonitored and unregulated election officials. As Greg Palast has pointed out, this does not even have to include broad based hacking or rigged machine miscounting (though incidents of this have been found in states with large exit poll discrepancies in earlier elections) but simply the process of discarding and not counting numerous spoiled, provisional, early, mail-in, and absentee ballots, based on illegal partisan voter registration stripping and partisan and repressive local election vote counting rules and procedures

I was hoping to reply to some questions on the earlier paper but can't find the thread! Thank you, Ron Baiman