U.S. Elections: The Trumph of the Will

[Shryke]

3 hours ago, DunderMifflin said:

The Brad Marshall jew or atheist for several points difference email looked like some evidence to me.

I read somewhere that he denied he was talking about Bernie there. I still have my doubts.

Evidence of what exactly? That someone said "Hey, maybe someone should do this" followed by nobody doing it cause it never came up?

Cause that seems like rather the opposite of evidence to me.

 

If they wanted to do that, why even have a long drawn out process for deciding the candidate? Just have a decision by committee and be done with.

What is hypocritical is actually having a process in place that is supposedly democratic and then put a thumb on the scales. If they think they know who the best candidate is then letting millions of people spend their hard earned money and time for a candidate is simply not being respectful to their wishes.

Anyway, the Democrats have managed to take what should have been a slam dunk and turned it into a tight contest. Now we this whiff of corruption swirling around the Clinton campaign again. Everyone here can sit and make as many excuses as they want, but if you step outside the bubble this is how the country is thinking.

Where's the thumb on the scale though?

Like, it's clear the DNC preferred Clinton. She did, after all, spend years actually working to secure the support of the people who make up the Democratic party.

But there's no evidence so far they actually, like, did anything to alter the results of the primary, which are what actually got Clinton the nomination.

The most you've got is shit like the timing of the debates, which has no actually seemed to do anything to effect viewership anyway.

[Shryke]

1 hour ago, Inigima said:

This is such an inane question I don't know how to answer it.

Where's the evidence?

The only way you don't know how to answer it is if you don't actually have any evidence. Otherwise this should be an incredibly simple question to answer.

 

It is evidence they were not neutral and that they were scheming of  ways to fuck over a candidate that wasn't the one they wanted.

It's evidence some people said some shit in email. Where's the evidence anything came of it?

I can send a work email talking about shifting my work's focus into selling child prostitutes but that doesn't make my workplace a sex trafficking ring.

 

 

Like, at the end of the day, there's a shitload of emails here that no one here has read all of. But the ones that are getting posted on various random websites as "damning" I haven't found to be anything of the sort. It's shit like "DWS thinks Weaver is an idiot".

[Boris the Blade]

3 minutes ago, Shryke said:

Where's the evidence?

The only way you don't know how to answer it is if you don't actually have any evidence. Otherwise this should be an incredibly simple question to answer.

So you just ignore the fact they actively discussed ways to potentially harm another candidate because they didn't follow through with it?

[Shryke]

2 hours ago, Xray the Enforcer said:

No, you wouldn't. You might send a section for comment. But sending the whole thing? That shit is just not done by independent journalists. Like, I don't even send whole articles to my own organization before I pub them, and the stakes are much lower...

And if sending whole articles for comment is how Politico runs its org, then I am comfortable in writing those cowardly motherfuckers off as not a legit journalistic enterprise at this point. And that's my professional opinion as a long-time journalist.

Well, I mean, it's Politico. It was formed, as I remember, to basically publish DC gossip and super fast in order to, in their minds, detail stories in political news as they develop.

There's a reason Charles P. Pierce nicknamed it Tiger Beat On The Potomac.

[IheartIheartTesla]

56 minutes ago, TrackerNeil said:

And even if the DNC put a thumb on the scales, did it change the outcome? Would Sanders have racked up another 300 delegates? Has this made a difference?

What does it matter how much difference it makes? Maybe you can ask that question January of next year, while we ponder 4 years of a Trump presidency.

If collusion is proven, my first question wouldnt be about the magnitude of the effects of it, but rather what kind of ethics allowed it to happen in the first place.

[Shryke]

6 minutes ago, Harakiri said:

So you just ignore the fact they actively discussed ways to potentially harm another candidate because they didn't follow through with it?

Yes. Why shouldn't I?

If nothing actually came of any of these discussions, then there was no "thumb on the scale". At that point, your charge against the DNC is reduced to "it's constituent employees had opinions on the Sanders vs Clinton race, but did nothing about it".

That's not even weak tea. That's a teabag sitting on the table next to a cold glass of water.

[Boris the Blade]

9 minutes ago, Shryke said:

It's evidence some people said some shit in email. Where's the evidence anything came of it?

I can send a work email talking about shifting my work's focus into selling child prostitutes but that doesn't make my workplace a sex trafficking ring.

 

 

Like, at the end of the day, there's a shitload of emails here that no one here has read all of. But the ones that are getting posted on various random websites as "damning" I haven't found to be anything of the sort. It's shit like "DWS thinks Weaver is an idiot".

My god you DNC apologists have some horrible comparisons, but I'll bite. You would most likely be charged with conspiracy to run a child sex ring. Back to the shit DNC and how they willingly discussed the potential of bringing up his religion to hurt him with religious people. The party he was running for president under was willingly talking about sabotaging him. It doesn't matter if they followed through with it, but the issue is they were willing to throw that idea around. 

 

 

[Shryke]

Anyway, let's talk about something tangentially related to this instead that's may be starting to pick up steam.

Namely, Trump and his connections to Putin.

Here's a decent primer from John Marshall on the issue:

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/trump-putin-yes-it-s-really-a-thing

The TLDR is that there's alot of things linking Trump and his campaign Russian interests. Money, his campaign manager Manafort, his foreign policy advisor, the only thing he cared about in the GOP platform and the lining up of Russian state media behind Putin.

And beyond that, there's other things like General Flynn as one of his top VP choices and a supporter of Trump also having links to RT, which is essentially a russian-state propaganda mouthpiece. And then you've got this "mysteriously" timed leak very clearly aimed at weakening Clinton based on a hack that is almost certainly linked to the Russian government and disseminated by an organisation who's leader also has links to RT. A group who also, as I pointed out before, deliberately leaked the credit card numbers, social security numbers, passport numbers, addresses, names and all sorts of other details of random people.

None of this should be terribly surprising since Putin has been doing this same kind of thing in europe, funding and promoting far-right groups to destabilize the West in general. And Trump's praise of Putin has been out there for awhile now. (he loves him a fellow strongman authoritarian)

 

The surprising thing is stuff like the story above from TPM or an op-ed today in the Washington Post or now the Clinton campaign itself:

So this may pick up steam over the next few weeks.

[Shryke]

As an important side note, their shitty behaviour with people's personal information here, their obvious attempt to influence the US election with this leak and their connections to the russian government should also make you consider what you are looking at with this stuff from Wikileaks and what they are trying to get you to think.

[Kalbear]

 

15 minutes ago, Harakiri said:

Back to the shit DNC and how they willingly discussed the potential of bringing up his religion to hurt him with religious people. The party he was running for president under was willingly talking about sabotaging him. It doesn't matter if they followed through with it, but the issue is they were willing to throw that idea around. 

 

First of all, we have one person emailing once. We don't even have their responses to it. one person. once. It's clearly not 'the party' unless you consider that one person the spokesperson for the entire party. 

And we have evidence that they didn't end up doing it - because they didn't end up doing it. 

And bringing up a point to attack Sanders isn't 'sabotage'. 

It does matter that they didn't do it, because actions matter a lot more than just talking about something. As we've seen with a whole lot of people when you leak their personal emails or their discussion emails, you find a whole lot of shitty talking about other people. Whether or not the entire DNC hated Sanders and Weaver (they certainly did) doesn't matter, because their personal views don't matter when you're talking about neutrality. 

[all swedes are racist]

Yeah, wiki leaks even tweeted that including SSNs etc was "not an error".  That's way more fucked up than confirming some personal/institutional preferences or biases. 

[Kalbear]

While I tend to think conspiracy theories are total bullshit, this one is interesting because it hits the Trump fans right in their National Enquirer feels. There's enough stupid coincidence to hint that there are problems there, and that's all the Alex Jones' of the world really need to start feeling a bit woozy. 

[Boris the Blade]

11 minutes ago, Dickwad Poster #3784 said:

 

First of all, we have one person emailing once. We don't even have their responses to it. one person. once. It's clearly not 'the party' unless you consider that one person the spokesperson for the entire party. 

And we have evidence that they didn't end up doing it - because they didn't end up doing it. 

And bringing up a point to attack Sanders isn't 'sabotage'. 

It does matter that they didn't do it, because actions matter a lot more than just talking about something. As we've seen with a whole lot of people when you leak their personal emails or their discussion emails, you find a whole lot of shitty talking about other people. Whether or not the entire DNC hated Sanders and Weaver (they certainly did) doesn't matter, because their personal views don't matter when you're talking about neutrality. 

Semantics. 

It's so nice to see someone stick up for such shitty behavior from people within the DNC. I mean, it's totally not an issue that someone in the party threw that idea out there is it? 

Oh, and since you wanted to bring up the spokesman for the party, DWS, the actually head of the DNC so the spokesman if you will, has shown she is not neutral. Also, regarding neutrality and personal opinions, the opinions do have an impact be it consciously or subconsciously, so just stop with that bs.

[Shryke]

5 minutes ago, Triskan said:

Can you imagine the outrage on the right if a Dem candidate was shown to have shady ties to Putin?

It'd be like how they treat Clinton, but there'd be, like, evidence.

[Kalbear]

44 minutes ago, Harakiri said:

Semantics. 

Counterpoint: needless inflammatory rhetoric and hyperbole. 

Quote

It's so nice to see someone stick up for such shitty behavior from people within the DNC. I mean, it's totally not an issue that someone in the party threw that idea out there is it? 

It absolutely is an issue. @IheartIheartTeslais correct in that lots of poorly informed people are going to look at this as yet another example of Clinton being corrupt, despite there not being actual corruption. 

Quote

Oh, and since you wanted to bring up the spokesman for the party, DWS, the actually head of the DNC so the spokesman if you will, has shown she is not neutral. Also, regarding neutrality and personal opinions, the opinions do have an impact be it consciously or subconsciously, so just stop with that bs.

Her personal views have nothing to do with her ability or actions with her position. She certainly hates that fucking scumbag Weaver. That said, the opinions having an impact is what we're actually talking about. What impact was there? You assert there was an impact without evidence. You asserted someone having a suggestion which was not carried out is meaningful as evidence of collusion; I would assert this is evidence of a lack of collusion, given that nothing actually happened. 

Weaver is not required to be an automata in thought or in emails, even at work. That is not and has never been what neutrality means. What neutrality means is acting neutral and giving all parties the same resources without favoring them with any extra values. Where is there evidence that this was not done?

[DireWolfSpirit]

While this debate over the DNC's behavior dribbles on between Clinton supporters and former Bernie supporters, the elephant in the room is barely noticed/mentioned. How fucked up is it that Trump has endless free media for months on end worth hundreds of millions of dollars in free exposure?

The MSM has clung on his every tweet, ran stories on every campaign stop, anchors and talk show host/round tables and interviewees have blathered and droaned over every step, mistep, statement/misstatement, Trump has made for months on end. Its been nothing short of a blitzkrieg of wall to wall coverage on a level that let the Donald skate free with very little ad buying necessarry, due to all the free coverage.

Cornel West was on Democracy Now recently (he endorsed Jill Stein) and asserted Trumps free exposure would have cost any other candidate a billion dollars in ad money/campaign expense. And yet with all this free coverage in the MSM, the lack of critical questioning, the lack of demanding details or explanations from the candidate, has been glaringly ( disgracefully) absent. We havent seen media coverage this pathetic since the Judith Miller days when the NYT was constantly beating wardrums and helping spread faulty intelligence in the run up to the Iraq invasion. 

[Rory Snow]

2 hours ago, Inigima said:

Re: superdelegates, I think the entire system is wildly inappropriate, and so do most people who aren't superdelegates themselves. The DNC knows it, too -- the only way they can stave off an all-out mutiny from their members is to hastily assure people that superdelegates have never changed an outcome and promise that they won't now.

I'm calling BS on this assertion by the DNC. If superdelegates never have or will change an outcome, then why have them at all?

[Shryke]

In good news, DWS is no longer speaking at the convention because of the kerfuffle over the wikileaks attack.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/22/politics/dnc-wikileaks-emails/

[Seli]

4 hours ago, Harakiri said:

So you just ignore the fact they actively discussed ways to potentially harm another candidate because they didn't follow through with it?

It would be negligent of the party not to discuss potential ways the likely candidates could be attacked. Especially blindingly obvious ones in the US context such as religiousity.

Getting the candidate ready to these types of attack in the relatively safe environment of the primaries could be considered a smart move.

[DunderMifflin]

6 hours ago, Shryke said:

Evidence of what exactly? That someone said "Hey, maybe someone should do this" followed by nobody doing it cause it never came up?

Cause that seems like rather the opposite of evidence to me.

I guess we have a different understanding of what evidence is.

That's about as much evidence that there is that Putin/Russia is trying to manipulate the election. Which I think there is evidence of.

My lay opinion is that there's probably some truth in both those things.