Politics: The Final Frontier

[Guard Dog]

2 hours ago, smjjames said:

Are you talking about the National Popular Vote thing? Not sure which states you mean.

You can't make the electoral college go away without amending the Constitution. But each state CAN decide for themselves HOW those electors are chosen. Colorado, New Mexico, & one other have decided their electors will go to the winner of the national popular vote, regardless of whether the candidate won their state or not. Most people think that will benefit the Democrats but sooner or later the shoe will be on the other foot. It ALWAYS is. 

[smjjames]

42 minutes ago, Guard Dog said:

You can't make the electoral college go away without amending the Constitution. But each state CAN decide for themselves HOW those electors are chosen. Colorado, New Mexico, & one other have decided their electors will go to the winner of the national popular vote, regardless of whether the candidate won their state or not. Most people think that will benefit the Democrats but sooner or later the shoe will be on the other foot. It ALWAYS is. 

Weren't those for the National Popular Vote compact thing? It doesn't take effect until they have a total of 270 and they're still 74 short. It's not likely that it'll get applied to 2020 in time anyway. Also, the method is going to get legal challenges for sure, and theres already a possible electoral challenge coming up in Colorado.

[ShadySands]

When I went to some art festival a few weeks back there were a bunch of people trying to get signatures for that

[Blarghagh]

Watching the Mueller hearing and checking social media at the same time is a trip. At the risk of sounding like an Enlightened Centrist(tm), both sides are wildly misrepresenting what's said, but the right wing stuff is absolutely bonkers. Deep state elderly abuse! Wild!

Of course, the worst part is that all the questions boil down to "I didn't read the report, I'm  too lazy to do my job". I, a foreigner with no stake, literally informed myself better than the governing body of the most powerful nation on the planet.

Credit where credit's due, at least the dems let him talk. The GOP fellas just yelled what they want him to say at him with increasing spittle.

[smjjames]

Yeah, it went just about the way you'd expect from Congress. A closed door hearing might have been more informative and would deny the Republicans their chance to posture. Then again, they'd be freer to spin it as however they'd like, and the point of this was to try to get nuclear bombshells out of Mueller and publicly.

Maybe they could have done better if they did it watergate hearing style. It's an opinion piece, but I'm pointing at how they could have done the hearing.

[Guard Dog]

Regarding the Mueller show today. There are no saints in hell, no honest people in government. Every last one of them is there to tell a story that is both partially true and partially false. Here is the thing.... nothing will come of it. It's all theater. It's 2020 soundbites and commercial fodder. 

 

Anyway in other news: https://www.oregonlive.com/politics/2019/07/democratic-activists-worry-tulsi-gabbard-will-launch-third-party-presidential-run-to-help-donald-trump-win.html

I'd still vote for her.

Edited July 24, 2019 by Guard Dog

[smjjames]

Pfft, BS at those activists. It's WAY too early to be worried about some third party threat, and if there is a third party run by another Democrat, it'd likely indicate some kind of weakness or dissatisfaction with the nominee or splits within the party (as opposed to Trump putting the RNC in a chokehold). Though arguably, if Biden continues poor performance, somehow gets nominated despite that, and still does poorly in debates against Trump, I may very well consider voting third party.

I suppose she might make a bid for VP, though a Harris-Gabbard ticket would probably be contentous, unless it's all posturing and no real ill will between the two. There have been President-VP pairs which didn't get along all that well, just not in the modern era.

[Guard Dog]

19 minutes ago, smjjames said:

There have been President-VP pairs which didn't get along all that well, just not in the modern era.

Nixon & Agnew hated each other from what I read.  Reagan and Bush were definitely not friendly either. Don't know about Clinton & Gore. I don't recall ever reading anything about their dynamic. GWB & Cheney were friendly but that was not a marriage of convenience like the others I mentioned. Don't know about Carter and Mondale. Mondale was such a mean spirited and all-together ill-tempered a-----e I don't know how the affable Carter could have tolerated his presence. Just my own opinion but I don't think Obama thought too much of Biden. He was definitely frozen out of any meaningful activities in the administration. 

 

Edit: I seriously doubt Gabbard will make a 3rd Party run. She would be done in the Democrat Party. She might be anyway. She does not seem to subscribe to the heavy handed authoritarianism the Democrats are pushing these days. 

Edited July 25, 2019 by Guard Dog

[smjjames]

I might have been thinking of those who really hated each others guts.

Good point on Gabbard, it's still pretty strange for those activists to be worried about third party challenges so early. It's possible that they were thinking of the rifts that have opened up (and some that haven't fully healed from 2016), but it's not something to worry about so early on.

[ShadySands]

Probably just casting aspersions. She's taking a somewhat different approach than the others and this is a good way to vilify her.. and probably still hate from when she broke with the DNC and backed Bernie. IIRC Leferd held a similar opinion on how she should be punished.

[Malcador]

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/07/tech-firms-can-and-must-put-backdoors-in-encryption-ag-barr-says/

"The deployment of warrant-proof encryption is already imposing huge costs on society," Barr claimed in remarks at a cybersecurity conference held at Fordham University Tuesday morning. Barr added that encryption "seriously degrades" law enforcement's ability to "detect and prevent a crime before it occurs," as well as making eventual investigation and prosecution of crime more difficult.

The existence of encryption means "converting the Internet and communications into a law-free zone" that criminals will happily take advantage of to do more crimes, Barr added, likening it to a neighborhood that local cops have abandoned.

The cost of encryption, he said, is measured in "victims" who might have been saved from crime if law enforcement had been able to lawfully intercept communications earlie

 

Edited July 25, 2019 by Malcador

[Guard Dog]

Watching some of the replay of the Mueller show. You know the most important thing he said in the whole three hours? On election "tampering"

Quote

"They're doing it as we sit here, and they expect to do it in the next campaign,"

No one gave a s--t about that part. The Democrats want to prove Trump broke the law (he did). The Republicans want to prove this whole thing was a biased witch hunt started under false premises (it was). So one gave a s--t about the most important part. We are so screwed. Debt is out of control, the border is out of control, the government is reduced to two tribes of warring nincompoops who are only concerned with f-----g each other (either connotation of the term would be equally correct). Rights are ignored, liberties suppressed, We're under constant surveillance, we are blundering from one pointless war to another, and foreign powers are f-----g with our elections (which is what they call internet trolling these days I guess). Meanwhile citizens want handouts, immigrants want hand outs, SJWs are getting all the attention and you're a f-----g racist if you object to any of it.  There are, maybe, a handful of people who could right the ship. None of them are likely to get elected into any kind of position to do so. 

I'm telling you, Odovacar is leading the foederati up the Palatine right now and no one even knows it. 

Edited July 25, 2019 by Guard Dog
Bad grammar

[Skarpen]

https://www.newsweek.com/jeffrey-epstein-found-fetal-position-jail-cell-marks-around-his-neck-1451039

 

[Bartimaeus]

I mean, the Democrats have attempted to pass election security bills specifically for fighting against the Russians, but McConnell has prevented them from being voted on. Not much more they can do about it.

[Guard Dog]

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/9579851/boris-johnsons-cabinet-first-meeting-new-prime-minister/

Quote

In an echo of Trump he vowed Britain would be "the greatest place on Earth" after Brexit, with major reforms to tech, farming and the country's town while carbon emissions will fall to zero by 2050.

MBGA 

[Malcador]

"Night of the blond knives", hah. 

[smjjames]

1 hour ago, Guard Dog said:

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/9579851/boris-johnsons-cabinet-first-meeting-new-prime-minister/

MBGA 

Too bad Trump didn't run with that sort of attitude rather than FUD.

[Gromnir]

7 hours ago, Guard Dog said:

 

No one gave a s--t about that part. The Democrats want to prove Trump broke the law (he did). The Republicans want to prove this whole thing was a biased witch hunt started under false premises (it was).  

witch hunt?  well, investigation were not a public spectacle against which trump and others could not defend themselves from a manufactured and illusory threat. not only do the witches exist, as you appear to recognize by your quoted material, but the initial investigation were secret... which ironic were one o' the many republican criticisms o' obama-- why didn't obama make the russian threat public? am not sure if gd has, like so many, fallen victim to the sockpuppet level o' theatre offered by trump defenders to deflect, but the original investigation o' bad American actors and their entanglements with dastardly russians began considerable before the trump campaign for presidency. in fact, the only reason the trump campaign got targeted by fbi and law enforcement is 'cause the trump campaign Voluntarily brought folks such as manafort into the fold, folks who already knew they were being investigated. if the trump campaign had done any kinda due diligence and vetted campaign people, they woulda' wholly avoided any kinda investigation. 

so, the witches exist and you agree they is a real and serious threat. should end witch hunt claims. no?  am not sure what false pretenses you reference save for the trump loyalist conspiracy theory nonsense which wholly ignores actual timeline o' the investigation. as to bias, who cares? fbi gets info suggesting multiple folks is involved with russians for illicit purposes. when those suspect people becomes involved in the campaign o' a major candidate for US Presidency, does the motivation to investigate increase or decrease? given gd recognition o' the threat identified by mueller, answer appears to be one shared by gd and investigators, eh? so the fbi discovers some o' the information they received which led to initiating the investigation o' bad russians and their american stooges were from sources with a metaphorical axe to grind. again, so what? given the danger gd recognizes, the info had to be investigated and once it became obvious the witches were real and numerous, the discovery that some informants were biased became a relative minor concern. 

regardless

felt like cassandra. our prophecies, which we thought should be axiomatic to numerous lawyers on the judiciary and intelligence committees who s'posed read the report, went complete unheeded. mueller were never gonna say more 'bout obstruction and as such the vital information from the mueller testimony were limited almost entire to the last 30 minutes o' the intelligence committee questioning. other than when defending the integrity o' his team, mueller only became chatty when questioned 'bout the scope and nature o' the russian interference, and the complicity o' numerous folks in the trump campaign.  mueller were quite willing to deride trump campaign failures to do the right thing and to observe how such failures o' character threaten to result in normalization o' what should be considered unthinkable-- candidates for major US political office not only accepting but inviting foreign interference. instead o' spending 6.5 hours trying to get mueller to discuss topics 'bout which there were no chance he would speak, coulda changed focus and questioned mueller on the one thing he clear wanted to speak to-- witches. 

mueller wanted to speak 'bout the extent to which the witches had involved themselves in the 2016 campaign and the threat those witches posed insofar as future elections. while hardly enthusiastic, mueller were also willing to speak to the mistakes made by the trump campaign (and trump in particular) insofar as being willing pawns to the witches. 

republicans predictable wanted to speak 'bout conspiracy theories and to attack integrity o' mueller's investigation. no surprise. democrats. 

*shrug*

another wasted opportunity. 

so it goes.

HA! Good Fun!

[Malcador]

https://www.forbes.com/sites/fernandoalfonso/2019/07/25/donald-trump-stood-in-front-of-a-fake-presidential-seal-heres-the-man-who-made-it/#1c182d0919f6

 

Well that is one funny way to leave your job.

 

Edited July 26, 2019 by Malcador
paywalled link first time.

[Guard Dog]

Gromnir,

 

Oh the witches were definitely real. Trump's involvement with them might not have been, but they were real. The problem of the FBI monitoring Trump, the easy acceptance of the Steele report as genuine despite multiple misgivings of people in the know, and the Clinton campaign's connection to Russian interests just gets glossed right on over though. Of course Trump DID attempt to obstruct the investigation. He probably figured they were looking to frame him. Or maybe he had knowledge of guilt of something that ended up not being discovered. Who the heck even knows. 

Now Mueller, it's obvious he was not intimately involved in the creating of the report. It's also obvious there were investigators on his team with a political ax to grind that arguably tainted their work. Deleted text messages, formatted and destroyed mobile devices. Happens so often these days no one even comments on it anymore. They might have been right in their assessment of Trump and the Russians but by no means were they walking the path of impartial righteousness. 

Do you know what I see here Gromnir? Corruption. Nothing but as far as the eye can see. There are no "good guys" to be found. No player in this sad spectacle is clothed in virtue. Not Mueller who was at best and absentee landlord, as worst and unwitting participant in a conspiracy hidden in an investigation. Not the Obama admin who had known for years about Russian activity and only got the FBI and DOJ  involved to undermine a candidate he didn't like. Certainly not Clinton whose sins are already well known. Not the Congress who only want to hammer the aspects of the story that suits their chosen narratives. Naught but villains to be had here. 

And what are the Russians doing exactly? Internet trolling? False info on social media sites? Oby stuff? Releasing hacked emails from the DNC demonstrating the whole rotten lot of them is a mob of arrogant and snotty jerks that think they are better than everyone else?  Had they practiced even bare modicum of the professionalism demanded by just about every job in the country that would have been a big "ho hum". It's well established they can't "hack" our election  and change a result. So if this is the Russian's "grand strategy" they are hardly the chessmasters we've been taking them for. We obviously don't need their help in electing unqualified buffoons and bad leaders to office. We're doing a swell job of that already. 

I can fix this Russia problem right now: Hey RNC & DNC, don't buy Kapersky. Every one knows that s--t does not work. While you're at it don't be f-----g a------s in your internal correspondence. Treat people with respect in private and maybe it will start to rub off in public. 

Hey America: Don't believe anything you read/see on the internet. You don't know where it came from. You would't eat a sandwich you found in the street would you? Same thing. While you're at it you probably shouldn't take what you see on TV or newspapers at face value either. What you see is likely true, but not all the truth. 

Of course you can't stop political types from being jerks. After all it is a smug sense of self superiority that leads them into public "service" to begin with. And you can't stop Americans from believing everything they read. You can't save people from themselves. 

Edited July 26, 2019 by Guard Dog
Speech to text screwed up

[Gromnir]

2 hours ago, Guard Dog said:

Gromnir,

 

Oh the witches were definitely real. Trump's involvement with them might not have been, but they were real. The problem of the FBI monitoring Trump, the easy acceptance of the Steele report as genuine despite multiple misgivings of people in the know, and the Clinton campaign's connection to Russian interests just gets glossed right on over though. Of course Trump DID attempt to obstruct the investigation. He probably figured they were looking to frame him. Or maybe he had knowledge of guilt of something that ended up not being discovered. Who the heck even knows. 

Now Mueller, it's obvious he was not intimately involved in the creating of the report. It's also obvious there were investigators on his team with a political ax to grind that arguably tainted their work. Deleted text messages, formatted and destroyed mobile devices. Happens so often these days no one even comments on it anymore. They might have been right in their assessment of Trump and the Russians but by no means were they walking the path of impartial righteousness. 

Do you know what I see here Gromnir? Corruption. Nothing but as far as the eye can see. There are no "good guys" to be found. No player in this sad spectacle is clothed in virtue. Not Mueller who was at best and absentee landlord, as worst and unwitting participant in a conspiracy hidden in an investigation. Not the Obama admin who had known for years about Russian activity and only got the FBI and DOJ  involved to undermine a candidate he didn't like. Certainly not Clinton whose sins are already well known. Not the Congress who only want to hammer the aspects of the story that suits their chosen narratives. Naught but villains to be had here. 

And what are the Russians doing exactly? Internet trolling? False info on social media sites? Oby stuff? Releasing hacked emails from the DNC demonstrating the whole rotten lot of them is a mob of arrogant and snotty jerks that think they are better than everyone else?  Had they practiced even bare modicum of the professionalism demanded by just about every job in the country that would have been a big "ho hum". It's well established they can't "hack" our election  and change a result. So if this is the Russian's "grand strategy" they are hardly the chessmasters we've been taking them for. We obviously don't need their help in electing unqualified buffoons and bad leaders to office. We're doing a swell job of that already. 

I can fix this Russia problem right now: Hey RNC & DNC, don't buy Kapersky. Every one knows that s--t does not work. While you're at it don't be f-----g a------s in your internal correspondence. Treat people with respect in private and maybe it will start to rub off in public. 

Hey America: Don't believe anything you read/see on the internet. You don't know where it came from. You would't eat a sandwich you found in the street would you? Same thing. While you're at it you probably shouldn't take what you see on TV or newspapers at face value either. What you see is likely true, but not all the truth. 

Of course you can't stop political types from being jerks. After all it is a smug sense of self superiority that leads them into public "service" to begin with. And you can't stop Americans from believing everything they read. You can't save people from themselves. 

you have complete bought into the trump defender script, eh?

the steele dossier were not accepted w/o reservation but it were only a small portion o' fisa and clinton's russian interests is for the most part, smoke and mirrors. the whole uranium nonsense makes us laugh at the stoopidity o' the folks believing such silliness.

the deleted text messages were the result o' a technical snafu, and All the lost messages were eventual recovered, so nothing there as well, and yeah, there were a couple folks working on the investigation who clear loathed the notion o' a trump Presidency, but not only were such folks fired immediate when it were discovered they were desiring a trump fail, but their work product were thoroughly inspected afterwards and it were revealed that in spite o' their email mouthiness, they actual performed professional and w/o bias. imagine trying to find a beltway attorney who didn't have an opinion 'bout trump one way or another, eh? Gromnir has personal advocated for kkk, cultists and notorious gang members, and if somebody read through our emails to discover what we thought o' those clients, it would look damning.  the thing is, we were up front 'bout our loathing o' kkk and hare krishnas and norteños before we represented 'em. even so, our personal dislike didn't prevent us from acting professional. it is part o' the job. for chrissakes, do you think criminal defense lawyers are impartial 'bout their clients?  lawyers and judges is quite capable o' compartmentalizing. nevertheless, am admitting the emails looked bad and they needed be fired... and they were.

your obama complaint is a bit nonsensical. obama had zero whatsoever to do with directing where the fbi investigations went. manafort's multiple attempts to get paid by russians and ukrainians via his campaign connections and papadopoulos explicit telling australian diplomats that the russians were possible providing the trump campaign with "dirt" on clinton is why the trump campaign got investigated.  only part obama were involved with is keeping the investigation quiet until after the election... which Helped trump. 

you complain how the dangers o' the russians is trivial 'cause is little more than a steaming internet sh!t burger, and everybody knows how stoopid such silliness is, yes?  fair characterization? 'course you are parroting the wholly unsupported nonsense started and spread on the internet by the trump loyalists and fox and breitbart to distract and deflect. the thing is, am doubting you realize how you were manipulated. you believe you is too clever to fall for such nonsense. how many others is just like gd, eh?

HA! Good Fun!

[Raithe]

[Raithe]

[Gfted1]

I think the term hes meaning to use is "concentration camps".

[Elerond]

17 hours ago, Gfted1 said:

I think the term hes meaning to use is "concentration camps".

https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/us-citizen-detained-by-ice-francisco-erwin-galicia-border-officials-conditions-bad-almost-self-deported/?__twitter_impression=true

I don't know, what would you call place where you are put without trial because government officials don't like how you look, where you have not any sort of rights even though you have shown them easily verifiable documentation that their given reason to imprison you is false.

I would bet that there would be riots in Texas if it would take three weeks to check if your ID is legit when you go buy a gun.