Free Republic

On Thursday, the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI released a joint report about Russian cyberattacks, titled “Grizzly Steppe.” The report had been expected to lay out more details about intelligence agency’s claims that the Russian government was directly linked to hacks on the DNC and other organizations, but security experts have expressed broad disappointment with the report. Jeffrey Carr, author of Inside Cyber Warfare, wrote on Friday that the report “adds nothing to the call for evidence that the Russian government was responsible” for the campaign hacks. Robert Lee, a former Air Force cyberwarfare officer and cybersecurity fellow...

Eric ZuesseDecember 31, 2016 I’m a former lifelong Democrat, stating here a clear and incontestable fact: Barack Obama is a failed President. It’s true not just because of the sad realities such as that «Top Ex-White House Economist Admits 94 % Of All New Jobs Under Obama Were Part-Time» — or, as the economists Alan Krueger and Lawrence Katz wrote in the original of that study: «94 percent of the net employment growth in the U.S. economy from 2005 to 2015 appears to have occurred in alternative work arrangements». («Alternative work arrangements» referred there to Americans who were involuntarily working...

LOOKING FORWARD TO A GREAT YEAR OF HOPE AND PROSPERITY FOR ALL. Best election ever. MAY HILLARY SOON BE FORGOT AND NEVER BROUGHT TO MIND... Are we really finally done with the wretched woman or is she planning a 2020 comeback? SHE MUST BE PROSECUTED FOR HER CRIMES TO END IT ONCE AND FOR ALL. FReepers had a 20 year battle against the witch. This song was written shortly after we began work on HILLARY! UNCENSORED, which we debuted at Harvard in late October 2007 on her 60th birthday.

In a year when there were hundreds seismic shifts amid the tectonic plates within the body politic, one of the most important was the revelation that Media Polling is just as brutally biased as the media entities who present the polling results. With election 2016 behind us, and before 2017 arrives, the truth behind the intentionally constructed deception must not simply fade back into the shadows. Never again should the American voter trust the polling presented by corporate media. Everything about it is a financed and manufactured fraud.

ar in Review: We keep reading in the mainstream press how terrible 2016 was. We beg to differ. This year was a good one for many reasons. And next year will almost certainly be better. Given the headlines, you'd think the country had suffered another Great Depression, or worse. A small sampling: "Is 2016 the Worst Year in History?" "Everything That Was Terrible About 2016" "A Brief Timeline of Very Bad Years, From 2016 to 65,000,000 B.C." "The Best of 2016: Looking for Silver Linings in a Terrible Year" "The Worst Year Ever, Until Next Year" These dour assessments are...

John Hayward December 30,2016 President Barack Obama’s final weeks in office seem dedicated to setting foreign and domestic policy on fire to make life as difficult as possible on his successor, Donald Trump. Here are some of the biggest mousetraps Obama scattered across the White House floor on his way out: Betraying Israel at the United Nations: Obama’s refusal to block a United Nations vote against Israel, his administration’s shadowy machinations to bring that ugly motion to the floor, and Secretary of State John Kerry’s long-winded broadside against Israel will leave President Trump with a massive political crisis in the...

Liz PeekDecember 30, 2016 Let’s be honest: President Obama is throwing a good old-fashioned foot-stomping world class temper tantrum. He is just beside himself that the stupid American voter elected Donald Trump. How could the country willfully dismiss the erudite recommendation of nearly every news organization in the nation – as well as Obama’s personal plea that not electing Hillary would be a personal insult to him? How could young people not respond to Obama’s call to “bend the arc of history in a better direction?” It is beyond comprehension. But it happened, and Obama is having an extremely difficult...

The Obama administration expelled 35 Russian diplomats and closed two Russian compounds in New York and Maryland in response to a campaign of harassment against American diplomats in Moscow, a senior U.S. official said on Thursday. Wikileaks released a series of tweets this afternoon following the latest move by Obama. Wikileaks says Obama many have violated the Vienna Convention by expelling the Russian diplomats.

Against the backdrop of a sanctions announcement, President Obama’s administration has released a Joint Analysis Report claiming to outline the details of Russia’s involvement hacking into targeted political data base or computer systems during the election. Except it doesn’t. Not even a little. The “Russian Malicious Cyber Activity – Joint Analysis Report” (full pdf below) is pure nonsense. It outlines nothing more than vague and disingenuous typical hacking activity that is no more substantive than any other hacking report on any other foreign actor. This might as well be a report blaming Nigerian fraud phone solicitors for targeting U.S. phone...

President Obama’s punishment of Russia for allegedly hacking the emails of Democratic Party operatives to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election ignores at least two important facts. For one, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, whose hacktivist organization released the thousands of emails that shed damaging light on Hillary Clinton and her allies, denied the Russians were the source. In addition, the Obama administration has developed a reputation for manipulating intelligence for political purposes. The administration announced Thursday that through an executive order, Obama sanctioned two of Russia’s intelligence services, the GRU and FSB, and declared 35 Russian intelligence operatives “persona...

President Barack Obama on Thursday launched a sharp response to Russia’s alleged use of cyberattacks to try to interfere with the U.S. presidential election, including sanctions on top Russian government intelligence services and officials, as well as the expulsion of Russian diplomats from the U.S. Russia threatened to retaliate. A Kremlin spokesman said President Vladimir Putin would determine a response to the sanctions and other measures, saying the “principle of reciprocity applies here,” according to the Interfax news agency. The targets of the sanctions include Moscow’s top intelligence services, the Federal Security Service and the Main Intelligence Directorate, as well...

As part of the "evidence" meant to substantiate the unprecedented act of expelling 35 Russian diplomats and locking down two Russian compounds without a major concurrent political or diplomatic incident, or an act of war, and which simply provides an outlets for the Democrats to justify the loss of their candidate in the US presidential election (sorry, Putin did not tell the rust belt how to vote), the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI released a 13-page "report" on the Russian action done "to compromise and exploit networks and endpoints associated with the U.S. election", i.e., hack it. {..snip..}

The Obama administration struck back at Russia... for its efforts to influence the 2016 election, ejecting 35 Russian intelligence operatives from the United States and imposing sanctions on Russia’s two leading intelligence services, including four top officers of the military intelligence unit the White House believes ordered the attacks on the Democratic National Committee and other political organizations. In a sweeping set of announcements, the United States was also expected to release evidence linking the cyberattacks to computer systems used by Russian intelligence. Taken together, the actions would amount to the strongest American response ever taken to a state-sponsored cyberattack...

A new oil portrait of President-elect Donald Trump was unveiled Wednesday and will join the C-SPAN presidents collection. The picture is the first portrait created of Trump since he was elected. It will be added to the 44 other presidential portraits as part of C-SPAN's "American Presidents: Life Portraits" exhibit. The exhibit has been touring the country since 1999. The portrait was produced by Chas Fagan, a North Carolina painter and sculptor. Fagan said one of the more challenging parts of creating the portrait of the president-elect was his eyes. "In most photos, his eyes are in shadow and difficult...

The Obama administration is finalizing plans to punish Russia for interfering with the recent U.S. election with an announcement could come as soon as Thursday. A senior administration official tells CBS news they will likely name individuals associated with Moscow’s efforts to hack Democratic organizations in the run-up to the presidential election. Officials have said sanctions would likely target leaders in Russia’s largest intelligence agency - which they believe was behind the cyberattacks aimed at helping President-elect Donald Trump -- and operating with President Vladimir Putin’s blessing.

I am already reading so many pundits and other talking heads analyzing the disaster that was this year’s elections. I am adding my own ten cents. Here goes: 1. We are outnumbered We accurately foresaw the enthusiasm, the passion, the commitment, the determination, and the turnout. Married women, men, independents, Catholics, evangelicals – they all went for Romney in percentages as high or higher than the groups which voted for McCain in 2008. It wasn’t enough. What we saw in the election on Tuesday was a tipping point: we are now at a place where there are legitimately fewer Americans...

I need an intervention.

Since the election, several people have privately asked me, "Well, whatever you think about Trump, don't you at least enjoy the attendant outrage of the left? At least that must make you happy, right?" In my misanthropic youth, the answer would have been a resounding yes. But in all honesty, I put away such childishness years ago. I have a rich, full life that affords me ample opportunities for pure joy. I have no need to seek out joy sullied by anger. And again in all honesty, I wish everyone else felt as I do. Living through this disgraceful election,...

December 27, 2016 President Obama claims he could have won a third term if he had been allowed to run – but even if he's right, his coattails haven’t done much for the rest of his party. While Obama’s tireless campaigning, broad demographic appeal and message of “hope” and “change” helped propel him to two terms in the White House, his skills on the stump haven’t translated down the ballot. The Democratic Party suffered huge losses at every level during Obama’s West Wing tenure. The grand total: a net loss of 1,042 state and federal Democratic posts, including congressional and...

El Ducko promises to keep quacking Speaking in his native tongue of capital ‘B’ braggadocio, Barack Obama claims he could have “mobilized” Americans to win a third term in office had he only been the Democratic nominee in 2016 elections, In layman’s’ vernacular: “No way, José!” Hiding from the painful truth in Hawaii, wound-licking can never change this humiliating reality: Obama already ran aground in the election, lurking behind Hillary Clinton’s pantsuit, going for a 3rd term in office—denied to him by more than 62 million people.