Donald Trump and US politics

My goal was to try and raise the conversation level to one of actual discussion. I have failed. Farting gifs have won. I concede defeat.

You may return to your regularly scheduled programming.

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ChanBalam wrote:

My goal was to try and raise the conversation level to one of actual discussion. I have failed. Farting gifs have won. I concede defeat.

You may return to your regularly scheduled programming.

That's a rather poor attitude. You could have stated your impressions about the video and been done with it, but you had to say: "This is truly a video for stupid people."

You initially lowered the conversation level. Please don't whine now that you're getting what you gave.

So... what's everyone been doing as we wait for 3.0 or act 8 beta?

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ChanBalam wrote:

Trolling POE: OT

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Just don't even bother.

Ah. Got it. Thanks.

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Laurium wrote:

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ChanBalam wrote:

My goal was to try and raise the conversation level to one of actual discussion. I have failed. Farting gifs have won. I concede defeat.

You may return to your regularly scheduled programming.

That's a rather poor attitude. You could have stated your impressions about the video and been done with it, but you had to say: "This is truly a video for stupid people."

You initially lowered the conversation level. Please don't whine now that you're getting what you gave.

At the risk of over intellectualizing things, the video is an objective object that can be analyzed on its content. the speaker attempted to make a logical progression to get to an conclusion. From a thoughtful stand point the video failed. From an emotional perspective it clearly succeeded in feeding the emotions of those who were targeted. Mr. Wittle is either stupid or misleading his audience. If he believes that his message makes rational sense (as he states) then he is ignorant. If he knows it is false and pushes it anyway, he is appealing to those who will ignore any logic and respond to his red meat message. He is labeling his audience as stupid. I wanted to talk about the video. Apparently, personal attacks are easier.

I'm not whining at all, just acknowledging that this thread isn't a discussion platform for politics.

LOL libs/MSM getting fee fees hurted by Trump doing less than 1% of their bullshit. Hope he never let up.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/07/02/white-house-battles-backlash-after-trump-tweets-slam-cnn.html

About the Russian Interference thing.

Look, I understand if one wants to say "there was no collusion between Trump and Russia". So far one can make that argument as there's no evidence of such thing.

BUT

What are the basis for saying that Russia didn't attempt to interfere with the election? The former Director of the FBI said under oath that the attempt was real:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAHhY7hAgqk

What is the point of ignoring this? Does people fear that acknowledging such thing will undermine the legitimacy of Trump as President? People shouldn't see it that way. Although there was an attempt to hack the voters database, and there was a "campaign of disinformation" spreading false articles by fake accounts on social media(russian bots), there's no indication that this might have influenced the outcome, after all it's not like the voting machines were hacked.

So saying that "Putin gave Trump the Job", might sound convincing, but is speculation, there's no way to determine if the outcome would be different.

STILL

The fact that there was an attempt to influence the outcome should sound red alarms all over.

Take it for example: If someone pointed a gun at your direction, shot and missed, would you say: "Nothing to see here, everything is okay!" ?

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There was an attempt to influence the outcome of the last election, and denial will only hinder the effort of preventing this from happening again.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAZRVi4-sfQ

Last time was Putin favoring Trump, since that might be considered a success for him he might end up doing it again in the future. Since the "backlash" from the U.S. is negligible other countries might try to join this new game.

Imagine 2 or 3 countries supporting each candidate, flooding the social media with propaganda and turmoil trying to influence the election. Hacking Governmental Databases/Private Stuff, trying to get anything that could tip the election in favor of their chosen candidate.

Did any of you imagine that? Now, do you want your electoral process to become this circus?

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Also, I find amazing that people say: "I support the military" or "I support the law enforcement", but go as far as "The intel community said something I didn't like lately, so fuck them!"

Really, like lots of agencies, with lots of people that swore to protect the U.S. and some people choose to believe that all that people might be lying to them...

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P.S.: Trump might not have colluded, but Carter Page, Mike Flynn and Paul Manafort are shady as hell. I wouldn't put my hand at the fire for any of them.

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Xavderion wrote:

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ChanBalam wrote:

My own bias explains that imbalance by noting that smarter people tend to lean left rather than right and the charlatans tend to lean right because their audience is more susceptible to being taken advantage of.

I almost choked laughing. Classic Dunning-Kruger.

I dunno man, though it wasnt bad it was also very... expected. I dunno how you guys are still entertained, loads of dudes around here are so predictable it has long ceased to be funny. Hell, im starting to suspect a certain few are bots.
What im saying is, not to you but to these dudes... try harder... you guys are honestly depressing me with how simple you are. I can see some knowledge but a lot of mental blocks going with it.

Regarding investigation, I feel like slapping a lot of idiots around here for how little scrutiny they employ if it suits what they want when so far I've seen nothing at all. Unsupported claims are meaningless and not giving specifics just implies that the specifics are actually ridiculously weak. If its something as simple as propaganda and whatnot I'll say:
WHOOP-DEE-FUCKING-DOO, you fucking mongoloids, that shit's been happening since forever on both sides, welcome to the real world.
You wanna impeach the don because you dont like him, I get it I get it, but get something tangible otherwise stop pretending to be detectives, you arent one, and most if not all that I see meet the requirements to NOT be allowed in an investigation, you dont want truth, you want to validate your hatred for a man who you will never ever be even half of what he is. You are not to be trusted.

Russia may equal Trump in your mind, but so far it does not in reality. You are not mentally Ill (I hope), so learn to distinguish reality from fiction. Some have near cult-mentality regarding this.

(This is probably going to be my last series of posts re:Russia/election sub-topic, and I'm going to try my best to make it conclusive. It keeps coming up ITT, so to match soneka's effortful post, I'll do the same.)


Publicly, Russia definitely hacked the election.

The NSA data-dump (via Reality Winner) shows as much in addition to Comey's testimony. It's pretty hard to deny this while also claiming with a straight face that things are working as normal.

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The reasoning to disbelieve this claim is a combination of:
- distrusting the NSA/TLAs in general which people probably should ever since they got caught with their hand in the cookie jar re: domestic surveillance,
- distrusting the DNC with e-mails leaked that imply they might have thought up the Russia thing as a last-ditch attempt to scare people into votes,
- understanding that countries often and routinely attempt to hack each other as a matter of course; that 2016 is nothing out of the ordinary,
- the ease of the DNC and Podesta e-mail hacks (ostensibly phishing e-mails, for both) doesn't scream state actor,
- a history of warmongering on false evidence, specifically referring to "WMDs" in Iraq and acknowledging the unwholesome state of our military-industrial complex.

Even accepting a few of those above is enough to side on the side of "this is some made-up bullshit intended to beat war-drums and/or steal power", with the collusion story being extra, bonus, cherry-on-top made-up bullshit to directly steal power.

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Personally, this is the most salient point:

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soneka101 wrote:

Imagine 2 or 3 countries supporting each candidate, flooding the social media with propaganda and turmoil trying to influence the election. Hacking Governmental Databases/Private Stuff, trying to get anything that could tip the election in favor of their chosen candidate.

Did any of you imagine that?

Unequivocally YES.

We, the USA, have had zero qualms (via our CIA) showing the world how little problem we have with election-meddling. To expect none others to do the same in kind to us, or for everyone to not do it to everyone, is beyond naive.

Past that, we're in a computer-driven world. Computers have evolved to be so hilariously unsafe, undependable systems that the amount of trust we currently put in them is far too much. Relying on them as critical election infrastructure is just asking for abuse.

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I'm not comfortable with it at all.

Ultimately, I believe this: The DNC is the most responsible party for losing control of their e-mails -- not Russia or anyone else.

I would rather see us improve our systems than incentivize letting them degrade! If the DNC isn't punished for this, then there will be no incentive to avoid having this happen time and time again, and in fact will be an incentive to have it happen again on purpose!

I want us to improve, and the way that that happens is looking toward the future for solutions instead of looking into the past for blame.

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If we're lucky, we may get out of this with only scrapes and bruises. Maybe Manafort or Flynn get hosed and we put some more sanctions on Russia, then we get to move on.

The worst case is either a civil war following a coup attempt on the part of the Democrats or directly attacking Russia ("cyber attacks are equivalent to physical attacks", as HRC said during the debates). Both lead to massive loss of life, loss of prestige, and would set the world back immensely (while anti-American groups presumably die from ejaculating too hard).

Daily reminder that the DNC explicitly denied the FBI access to their "hacked" servers on several occasions and the FBI was totally okay with not being able to investigate that because... reasons.