Election 2016

[PhoneLobster]

It kinda looks like the Democrats are now done breaking their "big news" about Russia somehow stealing the election.

It's seems it's still just claims, possibly now specifically from the CIA (totes trustworthy then) that the leaked emails (totally not leaked by the anti-Clinton FBI guys who totally had the opportunity and motivation at the time) were hacked in ways that may have somehow "involved" hackers who... are asserted without proof to be merely "believed" to be "one step away from" the Russian government in other, unspecified, incidents.

You know. The stupid "blame Russia for the emails leaked to wikileaks" that they had been pissing all over the media even before the election.

THAT seems to be the Russian election interference "revelation".

And it is fucking lame ass.

Even if it's true that Russia is responsible and did so to influence the election, (and they aren't even making a particularly strong assertion that it is!), then fucking so the fuck what? Some minor public interest documents were leaked to the public, they were not faked, it wasn't even a major reveal it had shit all impact on the election even compared to the ongoing other email bullshit media campaign which I doubt more than a handful of Americans can even differentiate it from.

The USA with it's track record on far more disruptive and murderous attempts to change foreign governments does NOT get to go and have a long hard cry over such and insanely minor and remarkably legitimate "intervention" in their election.

It was just some minor public interest documents. The Clinton camp needs to get the fuck over it and stop trying to find more easily scape goated messengers to blame. It didn't lose you the election and your continued hysterical attempts at blame shifting won't work, look stupid, make things worse and in the end even if they save the sorry asses of the incompetent Democratic party leadership will only result in dooming the Democratic party and probably your nation.

[Kaelik]

PL, when you are done sucking Trump's dick for the next four years because you hate Clinton so fucking much, I want you to remember all the crazy stupid things you said about how Russia totally didn't hack emails and leak them, and how Comey's reveals totally had nothing to do with Clinton losing, and how the hacked emails totally didn't have anything to do with losing because obviously it was Comey's emails, and how voter suppression totally didn't have anything to do with the outcome because... well you never explained why you believe this stupid thing.

You are literally the reason that everyone has to keep explaining, over and over, as if to a five year old, that Clinton being flawed candidate, Comey leak costing election, Voter Suppression costing election, and Russia hack influencing election are not in fact mutually exclusive things.

It should be obvious, but here PL is to prove that it isn't, and then he can continue to whine about how San Francisco should be Nuked as punishment for Hiroshima some more.

Because nevermind that authoritarians are taking control, the only important thing is that innocent people who have never done the things PL is mad about suffer for the crime of being born in a country that shares name continuity and geography and literally nothing else with a country that did bad things he doesn't like.

[PhoneLobster]

Clinton being flawed candidate, Comey leak costing election, Voter Suppression costing election, and Russia hack influencing election are not in fact mutually exclusive things.

One of these things is not like the others, one of these things is not quiet the same...

Get some fucking proportion. In the mean time, man up and accept that public interest documents SHOULD be in the public domain and that the wikileaks emails release was a good thing. It's a basic fucking test on whether you have any actual progressive principles, if you cannot do that you are the worst sort of anti-left party partisan shill.

[Kaelik]

Clinton being flawed candidate, Comey leak costing election, Voter Suppression costing election, and Russia hack influencing election are not in fact mutually exclusive things.

One of these things is not like the others, one of these things is not quiet the same...

Get some fucking proportion. In the mean time, man up and accept that public interest documents SHOULD be in the public domain and that the wikileaks emails release was a good thing. It's a basic fucking purity test on whether you have any actual progressive principles, if you cannot do that you are the worst sort of anti-left party partisan shill.

You are a fucking idiot. Private emails are not "public interest" just because you personally want Republicans to win elections. This is literally the difference between Deep Throat and Scooter Libby, and you are taking the Libby position.

Again "Literally no evidence of wrongdoing at all, also literally instigated a shooter situation, also deliberate partisan goal sought and achieved, revealed all sorts of private information literally none of which was public interest." That's the situation you are describing as mandatory release.

No, if anyone anywhere is allowed to have private information, then I don't actually have to supported targeted partisan releases of information that isn't public interest at all.

[Voss]

Honestly don't know anything about PA recount off the top of my head.

Decided tomorrow (unless the judge decides not to), but the short version is probably not.
http://www.mcall.com/news/nationworld/p ... story.html

Basically, Stein/Stein's people dropped the state case, then suddenly filed a federal case for an emergency injunction which now has to be decided before Tuesday. And apparently...

To win the emergency injunction, Stein's lawyers must show that Stein would suffer irreparable harm if the recount and examination are not allowed.

Which is an fucking odd standard to hold in voter fraud. Because it has zero to do if people shifted 50,000 votes from Hillary to Trump, but only if specifically Stein was meaningfully affected in some fashion.

And the state's experts are basically saying go fuck yourself (and 'why didn't you do this earlier,' to which the reply is it's a fucking arcane process that apparently has to be done in every single voting precinct in the state, by at least 3 voters in that precinct, and how and where to do it isn't exactly accessible information).

So, my bet is on 'probably not.'

Clinton being flawed candidate, Comey leak costing election, Voter Suppression costing election, and Russia hack influencing election are not in fact mutually exclusive things.

One of these things is not like the others, one of these things is not quiet the same...

Get some fucking proportion. In the mean time, man up and accept that public interest documents SHOULD be in the public domain and that the wikileaks emails release was a good thing. It's a basic fucking test on whether you have any actual progressive principles, if you cannot do that you are the worst sort of anti-left party partisan shill.

So, as a result, you believe that intelligence agencies should NOT do and release a study and evidence on whether or not other parties were fucking around with the election? Foreign cybercrime against government systems is actually a real public interest matter.

[Grek]

Someone explain to me what the Media's motive is for not covering the Russian electoral influence. Surely that would get good ratings?

[Kaelik]

Someone explain to me what the Media's motive is for not covering the Russian electoral influence. Surely that would get good ratings?

1) Media has been being accused of liberal bias for literally longer than any of us has been alive. They care about money, so they do things like try to avoid the impression of liberal bias in the mistaken belief that it will get them more money. Look at the dumb shit CNN did, hiring Trump's Campaign manager and giving all his surrogates free uncontested air time all the time. Look at what NYT did, hiring a literal crazy person as public editor who's job is apparently to suck of right wing shills while calling for punishment for journalists who tweeted things she doesn't like from their personal twitter. Or how right now they are begging people who support Trump to come write for them, qualifications or no.

The idea that they would not want to look like alarmists who were rattling the cage against Trump because of their bias, in fear of losing revenue is pretty easy to see, even though in fact, it has never and will never get them more revenue, since they can never compete with Fox, who at this point is losing viewers to Brietbart.

2) If I told you tomorrow that I had very good evidence that we had reached the actual Climate Death Threshold and there was no recovery, but my evidence wasn't 100% or was still clearing Peer Review, you'd probably reject it, not just because the evidence isn't there, but because accepting it is mentally so terrible that your entire life kind of has to change. So when people say "Yep, Russia definitely hacked the DNC, and definitely has ties to Trump, and we have tons of evidence, but the CIA, unlike the FBI, is not going to release this info to avoid interfering in the election, and no, we can't give you all the raw data, because much of it is classified" it's not that weird that the media would say "I refuse to believe I have been Putin's stooge for the last two months!!!!!!! You are just lying for partisan gain, and I won't report it, because I don't want to admit to being Putin's stooge."

3) Everyone thought, for very good reasons, that Clinton would win, and therefore it wouldn't matter, so hey, are you going to piss off all the dumb Trumples for no reason? Those are your customers!

[Mechalich]

The media - especially TV media - struggles to explain complicated subjects. The Russian hack, involving as it did multiple layers of intermediaries, Wikileaks, and a bunch of complicated (and in many cases classified) evidence as to how it was known that Russian agents (or at least hackers they'd hired) were responsible, is a complicated story. It was further complicated by the fact that once the hacked emails were released they became news and the media was justified in talking about them but they totally failed at providing sufficient reminders that 'these emails are available to be talked about because of nefarious Russian hackers who are specifically trying to elect Trump because of complicated reasons regarding Trump's sympathy to various aspects of Russia's national interest' in a concise and convincing way.

Many people, including hardcore Trump supporters, are aware of the DNC hack and believe that Russia was responsible. Many of them even consider that a dick move on the part of Russia (sympathy for Putin is not, in my experience, one of the traits Trump shares with a large number of his supporters), but they are unable or unwilling to connect the dots between the DNC hack, the wikileaks emails, and Russian manipulation of the election.

[PhoneLobster]

So, as a result, you believe that intelligence agencies should NOT do and release a study and evidence on whether or not other parties were fucking around with the election? Foreign cybercrime against government systems is actually a real public interest matter.

They can say what they want, I wouldn't trust a word of it considering their known track record and agendas. But in theory it's fine for them to complain about hacking, it would be nicer however if they complained about hacking that actually mattered.

It's not however cool to constantly attack whistleblowers, no matter who they might be, just because you don't like the damage done to you from the public seeing some genuine factual evidence that you were doing things you publicly claimed you were not. Even if the things you were caught out on were minor and not especially criminal.

It is even LESS cool to try and beat up that minor gotcha into an excuse or scapegoat for your own independent massive failure as the ruling faction of a political party. And that is what this is. It is an attempt by the neoliberal incompetents that have captured the democratic party to cover up their systematic and vast incompetence with a distraction. "Look over there RUSSIA STOLE THE ELECTION, see, our failures weren't in any way our fault, don't primary me, let me keep my high ranking strategic position in the party! IT WASN'T MY FAULT PLEASE BLAME RUSSIA, OR ASSANGE, OR COMEY, or, or, anyone, always anyone but the leaders of the democratic party that got you here"

[Kaelik]

Is PL more or equally post truth than a Trumple? Honest question.

I mean, we are apparently now being told by PL "I think that if I refuse to read things they don't count" that in addition to Russia totally not actually hacking anyone, that this issue is a fabrication by the democrats to cover for losing the election. Which is weird, because they brought it up before the election, and then Mitch McConnell threw a hissy fit about how it couldn't be released because that would be bad to influence the election. I guess PL's is now claiming that everything that the reports say happened before the election is also part of a majestic series of lies to cover for losing an election.

Also, apparently, this is all being done by Obama to cover for losing an election and keep his position in the Democratic party, even though he won two elections and isn't keeping any position, and the head of the DNC is now a Sanders supporter who has taken over since the election, and Clinton is no where to be seen on this issue, and any plans she does or does not have are secret.

Or maybe, and this is, I know, way less likely than all of those not at all nonsense claims PL is making, maybe, PL has no fucking clue what he is talking about, doesn't understand who the CIA is, doesn't understand who does and does not have the ability to coordinate anything at all with the CIA, and doesn't even know the current state of the Democratic party, because any amount of knowledge about literally anything might not agree with the stupid narrative he is writing in his head, so it should all be avoided at all costs.

[angelfromanotherpin]

https://storify.com/NotEasyBNGreen/real-peotus-vs-trump

[Ancient History]

Part of the issue is, the Republican base is naturally suspicious and conspiracy-minded; it's why they had such a fucking field day with the Benghazi investigations and the email non-scandal. However, they also only care about such scandals and conspiracies that fit what they already want to believe. That's why the GOP could do such a blatantly retarded job at ratfucking as they did with Trey Goudy's committee, despite the fact that there was nothing scandalous in the first place.

And the media isn't equipped to handle it. It's more than wanting to tell a "non-biased" story and the GOP acting like cartoon supervillains; it's beyond epistemic closure. ~60 million Americans don't care about the truth, and basically gave the GOP a blank check to do whatever they fucking want. These are people who only want to hear what they want to hear, and are willing to compromise any and all aspects of their ideology in opposition to...the opposition. Whoever it is this week.

[Blasted]

So is wikileaks done now?
I'm guessing that a fairly sizeable portion of their supporters are left-leaning Bernie-ish voters who rather dislike the idea of being Russia's mouthpiece.
I find it hard to believe that their libertarian supporters are going to stump up the difference, rather than continuing to support Breitbart et. al.

[angelfromanotherpin]

Last I heard, wikileaks was now going after Merkel in Germany, as part of Russia's continuing program to empower fascists everywhere.

[Kaelik]

Last I heard, wikileaks was now going after Merkel in Germany, as part of Russia's continuing program to empower fascists everywhere.

That's probably the FBI leaking all of Merkel's stuff, I have it on the good authority of one butthurt guy with no idea what he's talking about that Russia had nothing to do with the wikileaks of the DNC or Clinton emails.

[MGuy]

So is wikileaks done now?
I'm guessing that a fairly sizeable portion of their supporters are left-leaning Bernie-ish voters who rather dislike the idea of being Russia's mouthpiece.
I find it hard to believe that their libertarian supporters are going to stump up the difference, rather than continuing to support Breitbart et. al.

You'd be wrong. If this guy is any indication there are plenty of libertarians willing to do so. In this very video he suggests that the American people should be grateful for their interference because they acted like journalists should. He's not the only one who takes this kind of stance, and considering the way this guy, people like PL here, others I've seen in various places have decided that Russia is just doing the natural thing and railing against the unjust and corrupt West out of the kindness of their hearts and the information they released is not at all suspicious.

[PhoneLobster]

...people like PL here, others I've seen in various places have decided is true...

I really need to point out, again, on the basis of the reports we have so far the language from the actual intelligence agency sources on this stupidity does not currently constitute a concrete accusation against Russia. There is wording that at worst is things like "high confidence that" Russia was "involved". I even saw some really laughable shit like this one "hackers who were said to be one step removed from the Russian Government" I mean fuck what that does that even pretend to really MEAN when you try to pin it down at home? Because it sure as shit sounds like a lot of ways to say "we have no concrete evidence of anything".

Even THAT stuff needs to then have insider source back downs including things like " A second senior official cited by the Washington Post conceded that intelligence agencies did not have specific proof that the Kremlin was “directing” the hackers" and my favorite "the report said the intelligence analysts’ conclusion about Russia’s motives did not mean the intelligence community believed that Moscow’s efforts altered or significantly affected the outcome of the election".

The people "deciding" what is true here are the ones filling in their own blanks and conclusions between deliberately uncertain statements coming out from intelligence sources. Right now what you have is a bunch of intelligence sources using language that amounts to "We refuse to be clearly pinned down to any specific claim about a state or individual but maybe Russia was involved, somehow, maybe indirectly, through some guys, that they might be involved with, somehow".

It might change, this might all be part of the democrats beat up before finally releasing some actual evidence, or at least an actual concrete accusation. But it kinda looks like this has peaked at "actually we got nothing".

The reality is that at least as of yet we still have nothing but deliberately loose implication and speculation, speculation that is no less credible, and significantly less assertive, than what Wikileaks has to say about where they received the email leak from.

But of course you won't believe Wikileaks someone trying to convince you to like Clinton and ignore her latest and tiniest scandal told you they were Anti-Semitic Russian Pizzagate Spies. Why trust an organization with a long track record in high quality public interest leak publication those commie fuckers should all be droned so they stop mildly embarrassing the establishment!

Russia is just doing the natural thing and railing against the unjust and corrupt West out of the kindness of their hearts and the information they released is not at all suspicious.

Even if Russia is involved in this it doesn't make it a bad thing, even if they did it in entirely personal interest it doesn't make it a bad thing, even if they didn't do the right thing and release MORE public interest information about OTHER people it still doesn't make it a bad thing.

In what bizarre fantasy land does a foreign government not get to release even minor factual information during your election campaign? In what bizarre hypocritical freak out world is that in ANY way remotely a scandalous means to influence a foreign government compared to, you know, bombing it into the stone age? I note there is STILL no one on the reds under the bed freak out side manning up to that fact.

[MGuy]

And there you have it.

[Mechalich]

And there you have it.

Quite.

I'm not sure which is worse, the delusional denials of interference by a foreign power, or the twisted idea that releasing the private internal emails of the Democratic National Committee - which included legally protected personal information of staff members that is a crime to disclose without express permission - is 'public interest information.'

The DNC hack was a crime. If the hackers could be identified and extradited from wherever they happen to be - which is almost certainly somewhere in Russia - they'd face jail time.

[Mechalich]

And there you have it.

Quite.

I'm not sure which is worse, the delusional denials of interference by a foreign power, or the twisted idea that releasing the private internal emails of the Democratic National Committee - which included legally protected personal information of staff members that is a crime to disclose without express permission - is 'public interest information.'

The DNC hack was a crime. If the hackers could be identified and extradited from wherever they happen to be - which is almost certainly somewhere in Russia - they'd face jail time.

[Username17]

There is essentially no chance of the 'leftists' who supported wikileaks ever admitting that they have spent the last few years as the useful idiots of a right wing authoritarian regime. Expect double, triple, and quadruple downs.

Consider Greenwald. Supposedly the issues he cares about are personal privacy, journalistic freedom, and gay rights. Do you honestly think he is ever going to admit that by supporting the hacking of Podesta's private emails in support of the election of noted homophobe Mike Pence over 'gay rights are human rights and human rights are gay rights' Clinton at the behest of known journalist assassin Vladimir Putin that he has fucked over all three causes he supposedly cares about for the foreseeable future? Of course not!

No one admits to being wrong on the internet, and having directly assisted the rise of international fascism is not going to cause any kind of introspection on anyone. We are fucked, and the Kremlin's useful idiots who spent the ladt year regurgitating right wing made up scandals in the West are going to their graves blaming Hillary Clinton for not having a cool enough dress or whatever the fuck.

-Username17

[DSMatticus]

Why trust an organization with a long track record in high quality public interest leak publication

I think the better question is why you think Wikileaks is that thing you just said. Actually, that's a terrible question; there's the risk that if I ask you something you might answer, and having to listen to you is just awful.

Wikileaks track record includes personal phone numbers, credit card numbers, social security numbers, and the identity of informants on various terrorist organizations. Wikileaks is a garbage dump. There are valuable things in garbage dumps. There's also worthless junk, people's bank statements, and hepatitis. And Wikileaks dedication to being a garbage dump is currently being weaponized by partisan actors; you'll note that you have the DNC's emails, but not the RNC's. That's not because the old white guys who run the RNC are better at tech security than the old white guys who run the DNC. That is because behind the scenes substantially more resources are being spent to discredit progressivism than fascism, because in a completely unsurprising twist it turns out that the rightwing were the corrupt ones all along! Wow! Shocker!

Also why the fuck don't you people have PL on ignore yet? I challenge you to name a single PL post in the last year that was worth reading. This is all it is, this is all it ever was, this is all it ever will be. It's bad, and you motherfuckers keep talking to him and then I click through like an idiot and it's exactly as bad as I thought it would be. We have idiots who are actually kind of useful, people whose skulls are thick enough to bounce meaningful points off of, but they usually know when to shut up and walk away, which is an important part of what makes them tolerable. PL does not have that.

[PhoneLobster]

blaming Hillary Clinton for not having a cool enough dress or whatever the fuck.

I've seen people attempt to completely sidestep and talk down the blatant failure of neoliberalism in a lot of ways.

But trying to reduce it to a choice of fashion statement is... creative...

[MGuy]

Honestly, I don't care about PL's opinion on matters. He doesn't have to live with president God Emperor Trump. I'm not sure why he, and others, are trying to justify picking an absolute moron over the status quo, painting it as some kind of failure on the DNC to find the most electable candidate. I don't think 'pride' as Frank puts it, is the reason. I mean, yea PL isn't really going to back down from a position he's taken but he doesn't have to worry about Trump really. I mean Hillary was perfectly electable over anything the Reps could have fielded. The choices boiled down to the business as usual politician who was left leaning and represented the continued a slow but sure march to a better country vs an orange charlatan with no experience in the field at all. Hillary lost because the average American voter is an idiot. Yea the media could've done a better job shepherding the idiots, but we've been eroding away at the quality of our news for a while now. Hell Fox news got ahead just by disregarding facts in place of scandal and controversy (always aimed at the left of course).

It's the nature of capitalism, after all, to go where the money is and since eyes are more easily drawn to scandals than to tedious explanations about how complex the world is I'm actually not surprised. I don't like it but that's the way it is. While people joke about preaching doom and gloom from Trumps presidency I am actually fearful of getting to the time where he becomes the norm. Trump is not like Bush. I had thought that maybe he'd be a meat puppet but no. It turns out that while he doesn't really know what he's doing he is still making disastrous decisions that are bad right out of hand and could have terrible future ramifications that I can't even imagine. Beyond that, he lost the popular vote by quite a bit it seems and may have lost it even harder if more people were allowed to vote. This is big fucking news, and yet in this discussion people like maglag haven't once brought it up because they do not care about the actual elections and I suspect won't actually suffer any consequences because of it.

These cabinet picks, changes in the media, the growing evidence of Russian involvement and voter suppression, these are things that are worth talking about which makes kaelik, AH's, etc posts a lot more valuable than whatever ass pulled bullshit other people are regurgitating. I mean, it's fine to just come down on PL for very staunchly refusing to learn how complicated international politics work but that's just side entertainment. No one really cares. This wasn't like Brexit where it was Status Quo vs ???. This was a clear cut case of Status Quo vs Disaster. Hell even Lago knew that voting against the status quo would lead to disaster which is what he wanted anyway.

[Kaelik]

Honestly, I don't care about PL's opinion on matters. He doesn't have to live with president God Emperor Trump. I'm not sure why he, and others, are trying to justify picking an absolute moron over the status quo,

I'm pretty sure I do know. It goes like this:

PL is a foreigner who is not that old, and hasn't been involved in US politics for that long.

Once upon a time, there was a cold war with a clear and obvious bad guy, then there was a President Bush, who precipitated a stupid Iraq War, but at least defended Kuwait, and then left. Then there was Bill Clinton, and he was mostly pretty chill, there was Kosovo, but that was pretty minor. So up this point, it's easy to imagine that if you spent all your time in Australia badmouthing the US foreign policy, you probably wouldn't get a lot of agreement. But then Bush 2 happened. And suddenly, you could post literally anywhere on the internet, or go literally anywhere in the world, and shit talk american foreign policy, and for the most part, everyone would just agree with you that those dumb americans were fucking things up, even in america. And that was a solid 6 years of the Prime of PL's life.

Then Obama took over, and he didn't do nothing internationally, but he did drastically scale back the fighting and he only made intelligent well informed decisions, that while not perfect, are actually trying to do what's best for everyone. So PL still whines constantly about US foreign policy, because he's been doing that for years, but instead of back slaps and high fives for shitting on those americans, he gets "it's complicated" explanations about how America isn't an evil nation.

So PL is at least unconsciously, and probably consciously, thrilled that Trump will be President, because he doesn't have to care about the Domestic policies that kill millions at all, but now, 2 years from now, when we invade Iran, and he shit talks stupid american foreign policy, everyone he meets will agree with him.

It's literally the simple, PL is a dumb shithead who longs for the good old Bush days, because he values "being congratulated when he shit talks american foreign policy" more than he does "fewer people dying"