The Democrats' Resist anything Trump does mindset (even if it was something they supported before, such as Neil Gorsuch who was elevated to the circuit courts by a unanimous vote, but faced a filibuster and was voted against by 45).
The Democrats tried over and over to be reasonable and compromise during Obama's presidency to no avail. Republicans were consistently evil, petty, and completely unwilling to compromise. They were fine taking ground, but giving it? Not once. Republicans were branded "the party of no" for a reason..
The Gorsuch vote is a perfect example of this. Democrats were against Gorsuch because it was a stolen seat. Garland should have been there already.
I don't think Garland would have been confirmed. I do think he should have at least received a vote, though. As 'revenge' or 'payback' the vote and filibuster do make sense. I was wrong to use that as an example - I was thinking along the lines of qualifications and previous voting position alone.
Obama's presidency was all about extending the olive branch
Obama spoke well, but I don't think he really made much of an effort at compromise. I don't think it would have helped him if he did - the GOP was just too opposed to him. Clinton and Reagan did a lot of compromising.
PoE Origins - Piety's story http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2081910
On October 1, a man shot and killed 58 people at an outdoor concert in Las Vegas -- the largest mass murder in modern American history.
On October 3, President Donald Trump was asked about the impact of the shooting on current gun laws -- and possible future gun control measures. He said that his administration and Congress would "be talking about gun laws as time goes by." Trump was also asked whether the shooting was an act of domestic terrorism. He declined to answer.
On October 4, in Las Vegas, Trump was again asked about possible legislative action on guns. "We're not going to talk about that today," he responded. "We won't talk about that."
Fast forward 30 days.
On October 31, an Uzbek man drives a rental truck in a bike lane in New York City. He kills eight people and injures a dozen more.
Within hours, Trump tweeted this: "In NYC, looks like another attack by a very sick and deranged person. Law enforcement is following this closely. NOT IN THE U.S.A.!" He followed up with a second tweet last night: "We must not allow ISIS to return, or enter, our country after defeating them in the Middle East and elsewhere. Enough!" And a third: "I have just ordered Homeland Security to step up our already Extreme Vetting Program. Being politically correct is fine, but not for this!"
On November 1 (aka today), Trump tweets again: "The terrorist came into our country through what is called the 'Diversity Visa Lottery Program,' a Chuck Schumer beauty. I want merit based." He adds in a subsequent tweet: "We are fighting hard for Merit Based immigration, no more Democrat Lottery Systems. We must get MUCH tougher (and smarter). @foxandfriends"
Prior to a meeting with his Cabinet Wednesday around noon -- about 18 hours after the attack -- Trump proposes action be taken on the diversity lottery program -- the means by which the alleged attacker made it into the US.
"I am, today, starting the process of terminating the diversity lottery program," Trump said. "I am going to ask Congress to immediately initiate work to get rid of this program, diversity lottery, diversity lottery. Sounds nice, it is not nice, it is not good. It hasn't been good and we have been against it."
How about the words Trump uses to describe the men who perpetrated these attacks?
About the Las Vegas shooter, Trump said this: "The wires were crossed pretty badly in his brain. Extremely badly in his brain. And it's a very sad event."
Of the man alleged to have committed the attack in NYC? "This animal who did the attacking."
Notice any difference between the two responses? If you don't, you may want to confirm that your spine is connected to your brain stem and/or your eyes are working properly.
The disparity in Trump's responses is striking -- and telling.
Trump cares deeply about the threat posed by ISIS and international terrorism more broadly. He ran for president explicitly on that message. He promised he would be much smarter and much tougher in the fight against terrorism than President Barack Obama. That fire needed to be met with fire.
He echoed that sentiment on Wednesday. "We need quick justice and we need strong justice," Trump said.
He is far less animated by gun control -- or the debate over the right regulations on guns that happens (and then inevitably disappears) in the wake of these ever-more-frequent mass shootings.
In the wake of the Las Vegas shooting, there appeared to be real momentum behind a ban on bump stocks -- the add-on the shooter used to turn a semi-automatic weapon into something like a fully automatic one.
"We'll be looking into that in the next short period of time," Trump promised on October 5.
But, a legislative-driven ban on bump stocks remains largely stalled in Congress as Republican leaders insist that the better course of action is for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms to handle the regulation change.
"
Trump hasn't said much of anything on bump stocks since October 5.
The broader point here: Trump is more than willing to seize on tragic events when they confirm his previous political and policy beliefs. He will effectively ignore them when they don't.
It's that simple.
With all this time, and we still don't have any official explanation about what motivated the Las Vegas shooter. There's no video from the hotel of the shooter, and it seems as if they are holding back far more than they are telling us. If it were an active prosecution, I could see the rationale. I could also excuse the lack of information if there's some greater threat that they know about that they are working to prevent first.
There was a golden opportunity to outlaw bump stocks, but the only legislation proposed wasn't specifically aimed at them but was broad based, and the potential for the law to be exploited was too great. The DNC completely failed on this one. They could retry it, and this time work with the NRA to come up with language that wouldn't be open to various interpretations. If they did so, it would likely get passed.
When there's an official motive or rationale for the Las Vegas shooting, than it can be acted on. We can't even say the jury is still out on it, because the jury hasn't been convened. I don't ascribe to any conspiracy theories on it, but it still stinks that they aren't telling us more.
PoE Origins - Piety's story http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2081910
The breadth and scope of the Russian-funded ads, which basically played the 4D chess
There's little doubt in my mind the Russians have been trying to influence US politics. They have been doing that since the early days of the USSR. I don't think people appreciate what Russia's direction or purpose is at all.
I only caught the tail end of it on the radio today, but someone at NPR summarized what they know about the various Facebook campaigns and said that essentially, the campaigns were aimed at delegitimizing the politicians. The person mentioned the large Russian campaign in February of this year which was aimed at delegitimizing Trump. Russia wants to weaken any US leaders. The more conflicted a US president is, the more paralyzed they are, and the less they can operate in the global arena.
I'd say that is the Russian perspective. They really don't and didn't care for one US candidate over another. There were and are advantages and disadvantages with both, but that would be true of just about any two potential presidents.
Russia knew it didn't have to back any one side -- it just had to rile all the sides up and watch the fire. And it's hardly surprising which side burned hotter and fiercer: the one that felt like it had been losing those past 8 years.
Longer than 8 years. That was already there, and had been brewing for a long time. How long? It was already a thing back in 1994
It's curious to me -- I've seen my share of symbolic, farcical elections where the outcome was all but a given, usually those following a coup. But I've never seen one where only hindsight, a LOT of hindsight, can show it was a predetermined outcome *that the majority of people didn't see coming*.
Anyone honestly voicing an opinion supporting Trump in the media was vilified. The polls were so skewed they might as well have been making pretzels. The ones that showed their methodology and numbers also showed their bias. Some of them thought that they had crafted a poll that represented what people thought, but their 'corrections' to get there mislead the poll badly. In some cases, it was a mistake in judgement, in other cases, you could see pollsters manipulating the groups they sampled to get the results they wanted.,
I wonder just how influenced an election has to be proven before it can retroactively be declared invalid. Is there even a provision for that in the United States Constitution?
Unfortunately, yes. Some of the early free pres had no qualms with outright slander and lies that would make both Hillary and Trump embarrassed. The claims made in some of the early days of colonialism would make CNN and Breitbart blush. Foreign influence was assumed.
Keep in mind at the time, America had just come out of a revolutionary war in which foreign nations played a part in helping us.
And I've absolutely no doubt those behind the puppet show
If you haven't seen the Podesta emails where the Clinton campaign actually wants Trump to run and win the GOP nomination, you should look at them. Whether they went from hoping for it, to actually working to achieve it, is not something I've seen yet.
PoE Origins - Piety's story http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2081910
Last edited by DalaiLama on Nov 1, 2017, 8:36:30 PM
Oh I get it now. Killing 58 people "because he felt like it" gets a pass while killing eight for political reasons makes you an animal.
When a white guy kills 58 people because he can and feels like it, nothing needs to be done. When an immigrant kills eight people for political reasons, we need to ban all followers of his religion from the country.
Do we know the Vegas shooter killed them because he was white and maybe some of them weren't? If you have seen something official, or even something unofficial that is decently sourced and logically thought out suggesting that those 58 people were killed because of race, I'd be interested to look at it.
Considering how little we know, the fact that he was a former postal worker* probably has more to do with the shooting than his race.
Some thoughts on recent posts, in no particular order:
*The Vegas shooter wasn't here on a "diversity visa." As much as anything, I suspect that the smokescreen over the whole tragedy stems from the Mandalay not wanting to be exposed as liable for the shootings, and the notoriously corrupt LVPD working with them to protect their interests.
*Had Bernie won the Dem nomination instead of Hillary, I have a hard time imagining any thinking person actually casting a vote for the man. Aside from being a card-carrying Socialist(!), he made all sorts of preposterous promises which made the most shaky of Donald Trump's look sober and grounded in reality (and President Trump soldiers on, nibbling away at the obstacles to his agenda...)
*The institutionalized Left is eating itself alive, and the GOPe is beginning to disintegrate as well, as the waters in DC slowly swirl down the drain.
*Some people still hoping against hope that, somehow, Trump will be found guilty of some high crime or misdemeanor and removed from office, seem not to fathom what the ongoing investigations are bound actually to turn up, and have been. Others speak in more (or often less) veiled terms about violence (let's see what happens in the US on 11/4), and their rhetoric sometimes alludes to "taking out" the POTUS. How much of that did we ever see directed at Obama, let alone from sitting members of Congress?
Donald J. Trump is still President of the United States of America, and I'm happy with the job he's doing, all things considered. MAGA! =^[.]^=
Fascinating stuff. As the article quotes, this isn't about who won. It's about national security.
Spoiler
The breadth and scope of the Russian-funded ads, which basically played the 4D chess Trumpsters are always going on about, is simultaneously ingenious and a strong indication of how easily read and manipulated American political motivations really are. These ads quite literally hit every base, and there's proven penetration in the form of 'likes' and clicks. Russia knew it didn't have to back any one side -- it just had to rile all the sides up and watch the fire. And it's hardly surprising which side burned hotter and fiercer: the one that felt like it had been losing those past 8 years.
Of course *we* all knew about it. We're net-savvy. We know social media has been compromised as a legitimate vox populi for years. But everyone's slightly crazy, slightly racist aunt doesn't.
It's curious to me -- I've seen my share of symbolic, farcical elections where the outcome was all but a given, usually those following a coup. But I've never seen one where only hindsight, a LOT of hindsight, can show it was a predetermined outcome *that the majority of people didn't see coming*. I wonder just how influenced an election has to be proven before it can retroactively be declared invalid. Is there even a provision for that in the United States Constitution? Could the Fathers have seen this coming? I'd say not, any more than they could see domestic terror perpetrated by assault rifles or the undermining methodology of Trump coming.
With the less-than-encouraging title: "What Happens If The Election Was A Fraud? The Constitution Doesn’t Say."
I mean, the average modern American's faith in the 'democracy' of the process was already shaky, given the convolution of the Electoral College and the strange blurring between 'democracy' and 'republic' that constitutes the US political system, but this is a whole other level of destabilisation.
What does America, so staunchly cleaving to its sacred documents and its (ironically) unassailable amendments, do when it is attacked on a front it never even really knew existed? History says: fight back; make it a war. Good luck doing that when your Commander-in-Chief still calls it 'cyber', refers to his ten-year-old son as 'good at it', tries to deflect potential massive Russian social media influence as the work of '400 pound trolls living in a basement' *and* ultimately benefited from the insidiously deep Russian campaign to violently influence the 2016 election now proven as a fact.
Less than a simple removal of Trump and his, I've come to see a conclusion that the 2016 election was invalid would be the best outcome of any sort of investigation. This transcends the frankly silly finger-pointing as to who was more crooked out of the candidates. They both were. I think everyone can agree on that. But more importantly, the race they were running was fixed, not in terms of who would win (although I do think it does come back to that, since Trump was unashamed in his pro-Russia stance the whole way), but it terms of the conditions of the race itself.
They both were crooked but only one of them won. One of the reaped the rewards of this playact. Just how much of it was known to be a playact by the winner is almost irrelevant.
But if a race is proven retroactively invalid, well, you can't take the gold medal away from the person who came second. And Trump really, really likes his gold medal. He throws tantrums at *anyone* even vaguely hinting at him not deserving it. Any hint that the race was fixed (i.e. that his win was invalid) sends him into a Twitterstorm of excessive exclamation marks and caps. Imagine the furor resulting from a genuine attempt to take that medal away.
And I've absolutely no doubt those behind the puppet show now revealing its social media strings (now that the show is over and there's no clear path to a do-over, a safe enough revelation) knew how obstinately the designated winner would cling to his first place prize. More importantly, unlike the other horse in the race, Trump has a long, long history of working with Russians as a private businessman. Nothing really wrong with that in and of itself. I can't say that he was 'chosen' for his role in the play but he is almost uniquely qualified to be the favourable winner of a heavily Russian-influenced election.
At any rate, I can believe those who used social media to play chess with the American people took a long, hard look at the US constitution to see if there was any established response to a retroactively invalidated election. They must have been happy to discover there wasn't.
Having read the article, I can say it isn't about national security. It's about propaganda... but so is all advertising, so that was obvious beforehand. But propaganda is nothing more than claims used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view. The truth has its own propaganda, and lies have their own propaganda; the falsehood that one genuinely believes true has its own propaganda, and the truth one genuinely believes false has its own propaganda. To outlaw propaganda means, in practice, to outlaw claims promoting political causes or points of view the government doesn't favor, as well as claims publicizing flaws in causes or views that it does.
The claim you are making here is: by merely making claims, by simply speaking to thousands of Americans, Russian actors somehow invalidated an entire presidential election. This is an extraordinary claim you are making, because what you're saying is that Russia does not have freedom of speech as far as US politics is concerned. (And you're Australian. How is your argument not hypocritical? But I digress.)
The idea that people from other nations lack the same freedom of speech as Americans is dangerous, because freedom of speech is something whistleblowers depend on when the government breaks its own rules... for example, by infringing upon the freedom of speech of Americans. How could those deemed "Russian actors" defend themselves if falsely accused?
We don't need government to fight disinformation. There are fact-checkers out there, as well as people critical of the fact-checkers, and people critical of them, etc. Everyone is free to listen to the arguments and make up their own mind. The same was true for these Russian ads. And what if a foreign nation makes a valid, reasonable argument about US affairs? Is that something we want to prevent?
I am frankly horrified that you would so adamantly view the free speech of any entity, foreign government or otherwise, as a crime that renders moot the voluntary, conscious decisions of those who he and said speech. I am frankly more horrified that such is the clear intent of this Washington Post article. I mean, I'm not saying Russia is the good guy here, any more than I believe CNN fake news is good, or antisemitic /pol/ memes are good. But I wouldn't dream of uttering the phrase "CNN's fake polls were criminal election fraud, thus Clinton's victory must be overturned and CNN prosecuted." Lying. Isn't. Fucking. Illegal. And it fucking shouldn't be. What's next, trying to criminalize stupidity?
Your entire post is nauseating. 1984 isn't an instruction manual, you know.
Oh I get it now. Killing 58 people "because he felt like it" gets a pass while killing eight for political reasons makes you an animal.
When a white guy kills 58 people because he can and feels like it, nothing needs to be done. When an immigrant kills eight people for political reasons, we need to ban all followers of his religion from the country.
I think we can all agree that Usama bin Laden was not a Nazi. Despite that, we all agree he was a horrible person.
The Las Vegas shooter (according to the official narrative, because I am kinda on the line about whether to go conspiracy theorist mode on this one) was a mass murderer and a horrible person. He wasn't apparently a terrorist, or if he was he did a really shitty job of getting his political message across.
*Had Bernie won the Dem nomination instead of Hillary, I have a hard time imagining any thinking person actually casting a vote for the man. Aside from being a card-carrying Socialist(!), he made all sorts of preposterous promises which made the most shaky of Donald Trump's look sober and grounded in reality
Sorry, but this is delusional. Against Hillary Rodham Felon, Trump narrowly eeked out victory in several key states; any candidate significantly stronger than Clinton would have defeated Trump soundly. Card-carrying socialist though he may be, Sanders was a much, much stronger candidate than Clinton (which is a bar so hilariously low it is a struggle to imagine those who don't clear it). Sanders would have annihilated Trump. Maybe you should send Mrs. Clinton and her campaign some thank-you cards for their hard work in rigging things so the Democrats lost.
When Stephen Colbert was killed by HYDRA's Project Insight in 2014, the comedy world lost a hero. Since his life model decoy isn't up to the task, please do not mistake my performance as political discussion. I'm just doing what Steve would have wanted.
Last edited by ScrotieMcB on Nov 1, 2017, 11:27:08 PM
You know you suffer from TDS when you truly believe that a couple of Russians who spent 150k on Facebook ads can outweigh Hillary's billion dollar campaign.
GGG banning all political discussion shortly after getting acquired by China is a weird coincidence.
