Putin pinky-swears he didn't do it

[Wild Bill]

Thanks Fat Cat, your kind words means a lot for me :)
But seriously, whole picture the same as was in Russia before election. Almost all think that their opponents are payed bots.

[Fat Cat]

It’s almost like I was using sarcasm and hyperbole to make a point.

[nafod]

... Russian troll-bots garnered

You think all those who are not agree with your political views are just fools who bought "bullshit" from russian bots.

Politics?

Politics is arguing about who should pay for health care, or citizen rights, or America’s role in the world, or figuring out how to get the garbage collected.

Actually believing Jade Helm was the gubmint planting probes up the rectum, or that Scalia was wiped out by the cabal...that isn’t politics. That’s pure mouth breathing stupidity and gullibility. And making the argument it happened isn’t a political argument. It is an argument about facts.

Anyone who slurped up that Jade Helm stuff was imminently trollable and primed by their upbringing and suffering blows to the head to be a fool who would buy Alex Jones’ food additive products, I agree, but that doesn’t make breaking and entering into private email systems, or Russians pretending to be American patriots to spread the patently false bullshit OK.

I do admire Putin’s craftiness here. Well played, smart move. It disappoints me to see my own citizens play right into his hands.

[Turdacious]

Is there any compelling evidence that the Russian interference helped Trump directly— not that they intended to help him but that their efforts actually did? Maybe there are other reasons that people who voted for Obama twice voted for Trump.

You look at the margin of victory in the key states and the impact of the stolen emails on the polls, along with the number of 'likes' that the Russian troll-bots garnered, and absolutely it had an impact. Of course it did.

1. If I recall, his margin of victory in those key states, if you break it down by district, was smaller than the margin of victory for Republican candidates in those districts.
2. The 'likes' by troll-bots is also hard to quantify because Facebook hasn't been forthcoming about the data. Fer instance, we don't know: how many of the likes were from other troll-bots, or how many of the likes were from undecided voters in those districts.
3. It's hard to quantify the impact of the stolen emails because the polls were so flawed.

Most importantly, you haven't accounted for the similarity between Trump's 'America First' economic populism and Obama's economic stimulus. As Biden pointed out, and he may have done before the election, her message was designed to appeal to progressives, not struggling working class voters.

This whole debate may be helping Republicans more than Democrats because it's keeping Dems from accepting they can't build a winning coalition around a progressive message.

All of your arguments are correct as to currents that swayed the voters, but some critical currents were supplied by Russia supporting Trump with stolen emails and with trollbots. When it is close, every bit matters, and it was close. No Russian interference/collusion with the Orange One, and its still a close election but with a different winner.

You're making a lot of assumptions regarding a very small number of voters in about four states. You're also not accounting for the impact of flawed polls which had a lot of people convinced (including me) that Hillary was going to win easily.

[nafod]

You're making a lot of assumptions regarding a very small number of voters in about four states. You're also not accounting for the impact of flawed polls which had a lot of people convinced (including me) that Hillary was going to win easily.

Not really. I'm not assuming that the emails were stolen or that Russian bots ran a very broad disinformation campaign on our social media. Those are facts. In watching how polls move based on email releases, there is a direct line from the Russian actions to poll movements. Fact. No assumptions needed to know it had an effect.

Again, if wasn't close, it wouldn't have mattered. When it is close, it all matters, including bad polls, bad weather, verbal slip-ups, suppressed or over-emphasized news stories, and of course Russian interference and collusion.

[nafod]

Thanks Fat Cat, your kind words means a lot for me :)

I love you too, WB. Keep on bringing it, shipmate.

[Turdacious]

Overall, then, my view on the effects of Russian interference is fairly agnostic. I tend to focus more on factors — such as Clinton’s email scandal or the Comey letter (and the media’s handling of those stories) — that had easier-to-prove effects. The hacked emails from the Clinton campaign and the DNC (which may or may not have had anything to do with the Russians) potentially also were more influential than the Russian efforts detailed in Friday’s indictments. Clinton’s Electoral College strategy didn’t have as much of an effect as some people assume — but it was pretty stupid all the same and is certainly worth mentioning.

But if it’s hard to prove anything about Russian interference, it’s equally hard to disprove anything: The interference campaign could easily have had chronic, insidious effects that could be mistaken for background noise but which in the aggregate were enough to swing the election by 0.8 percentage points toward Trump — not a high hurdle to clear because 0.8 points isn’t much at all.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/ho ... -election/

Remember when Hillary was supposed to win the 2008 Democratic primary in a walk? Not her first rodeo.

[JimZipCode]

Remember when Hillary was supposed to win the 2008 Democratic primary in a walk? Not her first rodeo.

She's not what you'd call a gifted, natural politician.

[Turdacious]

We know, for example, that some institution linked to the Russian government — likely the infamous Internet Research Agency — bought ads on Facebook between 2015 and 2017, with the assumed intent of stoking anger and partisanship. We know that the ads concerned wedge issues like immigration, the Second Amendment, and police brutality; we even know what some of the Russian pages and accounts were. And we know that around 3,000 ads were purchased at a cost of around $100,000. Other platforms like Google and Outbrain are investigating Russian ad buys on their networks as well.

Here’s what we don’t know: whether or not, and to what extent, those ads were effective at swinging votes.

Digital advertising is a complicated business, and it can be a bit of a black box. Even with the absurd amount of data collected by Facebook and its various third-party partners, it can be hard to pin down the actual effects of a given campaign — and everyone is incentivized to play up or play down results.

http://nymag.com/selectall/2017/10/did- ... ction.html

Not exactly huge spending. That My Pillow dope spends north of $20m a year.

[Turdacious]

Here's what's gotta bother white nationalists. Putin got bent over by this guy:

And took it dry FWIW

[Gene]

Is there any compelling evidence that the Russian interference helped Trump directly— not that they intended to help him but that their efforts actually did? Maybe there are other reasons that people who voted for Obama twice voted for Trump.

You look at the margin of victory in the key states and the impact of the stolen emails on the polls, along with the number of 'likes' that the Russian troll-bots garnered, and absolutely it had an impact. Of course it did.

I suspect that most voters had forgotten the emails by the fall. After eight years of Obama Trump supporters were willing to go with him as a dark horse candidate.

Other registered voters stayed home. In Pennsylvania 2,500,000 stayed home in 2016. If just 110,000 more had come out to vote for Hillary she might be "President Clinton" today. I know those numbers because local Clintonistas screamed at me about Gary Johnson, who according to the Corporate Media's Cunt-In-Chief, Rachel Maddow, cost Hillary HER Presidency. A few came by to apologize after realizing that twenty five times as many voters as who voted for Johnson didn't vote for anyone.

[Gene]

This got around in 2016. Long lines in areas where Sanders and Hillary contested the primary. March 22 2016, USA Today.

Yesenia Alteres, 18, waited for more than 20 minutes in a line that wrapped around the Maryvale polling place. Alteres was prepared to cast her first-ever vote in a presidential race, unaware that as a registered Independent her vote would not be tallied in the presidential primary.

An organizer broke the news to her when she reached the front of the line.

Alteres said she would have voted for Sanders.

Alex Speth, 31, was casting his first ballot in Arizona after moving to Phoenix from Davenport, Iowa. He waited about 2 ½ hours in mid-afternoon, he estimated, and was surprised at the length.

Was it worth it?

"We'll see," said Speth, a Sanders supporter.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/pol ... /82134252/

This year's primaries have been filled with complaints about the voting process. Voters in Arizona were furious that they had to wait up to five hours to cast ballots. Thousands of New Yorkers had their names mistakenly dropped from voter registration rolls.

Republican candidate Donald Trump called his party's nominating system "rigged." Bernie Sanders said the Democrats' nominating system was "dumb."

[Gene]

From the Atlantic May 17 2016

In a statement Tuesday, Sanders said that the the campaign “believes in nonviolent change, and it goes without saying that I condemn any and all forms of violence, including the personal harassment of individuals.” But he also added, “If the Democratic Party is to be successful in November, it is imperative that all state parties treat our campaign supporters with fairness and the respect that they have earned.”

It’s true that the odds have always been against Sanders. But there is a difference between a candidate who amasses a competitive advantage playing by the rules and a candidate who actively breaks the rules. Part of what could make the rift between Clinton and Sanders supporters so hard to repair is that the two camps don’t necessarily agree on what side of that distinction each candidate is on, or whether or not there is even a meaningful distinction to be made. Many Sanders supporters believe that elements of the political landscape, such as the campaign-finance system, are fundamentally corrupt. So, in their eyes, even playing by the rules could signal corruption—for example, by relying on money from super PACs. The Clinton wing of the party, on the other hand, adopts a far more pragmatic approach, arguing that it’s necessary to play by the current rules to win the presidency and ultimately enact reform. But the more that Clinton is seen as a corrupt figure—as opposed to a politician simply advocating for a different, more incrementalist model of political change—the harder it will be for her to successfully extend an olive branch to disaffected Democrats and angry Sanders supporters.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/ar ... ed/483168/


Were the Democrats a house divided in the fall of 2016? Looks that way.

[Gene]

You won't find a single mention of wikileaks in those articles. You can see the anger of Sanders supporters.

How many Sanders supporters stayed home on election day 2016? Why assume that they'd give Hillary a vote? Hillary who made $255,000 in one day at Goldman Sachs? Hillary who hasn't driven herself in a car since the 1990s? Hillary who hasn't earned a dime working with her hands? Sanders did carpentry work until he reached his forties.

Bill Clinton saw this "disconnect" with working Americans.

'Bill didn't buy the excuse that Comey would cost Hillary the election,' said the source. 'As far as he was concerned, all the blame belonged to [campaign manager Robby] Mook, [campaign chairman John] Podesta and Hillary because they displayed a tone-deaf attitude about the feeble economy and its impact on millions and millions of working-class voters.

Bill was so red in the face during his conversation with Hillary that I worried he was going to have a heart attack. He got so angry that he threw his phone off the roof of his penthouse apartment and toward the Arkansas River.'

During the campaign, Bill Clinton felt that he was ignored by Hillary's top advisers when he urged them to make the economy the centerpiece of her campaign.

He repeatedly urged them to connect with the people who had been left behind by the revolutions in technology and globalization.

'Bill said that constantly attacking Trump for his defects made Hillary's staff and the media happy, but that it wasn't a message that resonated with voters, especially in the rust belt,' the source explained.

'Bill always campaigned as a guy who felt your pain, but Hillary came across as someone who was pissed off at her enemy [Trump], not someone who was reaching out and trying to make life better for the white working class.'

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... house.html


Even Hillary supporters would probably admit that it's pretty stupid to talk about rigging elections in emails. Hillary deserved to lose the election because of such dumbassity.

The rest of us did not deserve Donald Trump as President.

[Gene]

So now it can be told: Bill Clinton cost his wife the presidency.

Almost three hours into a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, FBI Director James Comey shed new light on his decision to go public about his agency’s investigations into Hillary Clinton’s emails, first in July 2016 and again, with devastating effect, in late October, 11 days before the election.

The specific reason he cited: Bill Clinton’s decision to board Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s plane in late June, when their planes were both on a tarmac in Phoenix. “The capper was — and I’m not picking on Attorney General Loretta Lynch, who I like very much — but her meeting with President Clinton on that airplane was the capper for me,” Comey said. Comey decided to “step away” and announce, without consulting the Justice Department, that Hillary Clinton shouldn’t be charged.

In Comey’s telling, this public announcement in turn required Comey to speak up again in October, when more emails were found. “Having done that [the public announcement] and then having testified repeatedly under oath that we’re done,” he said, “it would be a disastrous, catastrophic concealment” not to go public on Oct. 28 with the newly discovered emails.

It’s a tragic chain of events: If Bill Clinton hadn’t boarded that plane in June, Comey might not have spoken out in July, which means he wouldn’t have felt compelled to speak up again in October, which means Hillary Clinton would have won the election in November

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... 545b337215

[Fat Cat]

"Tragic"

[JimZipCode]

"Tragic"

It's labeled an opinion. Not reporting.

[JimZipCode]

"Tragic"

It's labeled an opinion. Not reporting.

[Gene]

All of your arguments are correct as to currents that swayed the voters, but some critical currents were supplied by Russia supporting Trump with stolen emails and with trollbots. When it is close, every bit matters, and it was close. No Russian interference/collusion with the Orange One, and its still a close election but with a different winner.

Except that the Election wasn't "close". There were 200,000,000 million registered voters in 2016. ( https://www.politico.com/story/2016/10/ ... 016-229993 )

Clinton/Kaine - 65,853,514
Trump/Pence - 62,984,828
Johnson/Weld - 4,489,341
Stein/Baraka - 1,457,218
McMullin/Finn - 731,991
Castle/Bradley - 203,090

Total - 135,719,982

Stayed Home/Scattered votes - 64,280,018. This is more people than who voted for Trump.

The electoral votes were much wider. He got 304. She got 227. That's not close but it's a lot like the Kennedy/Nixon contest. 303 to 219. Kennedy got 49.72 percent to Nixon's 49.55 percent of the popular vote.


To prove Russian collusion you'd have to demonstrate that Hillary lost electoral votes in close States because of the Wikileaks releases. Stealing her emails hasn't been proven, there is no forensic trailed being offered, just allegations.

I personally think that Trump knew about the leaks and floated a trial balloon to distract people. "The Russians should hack her". While the Democrats waste energy looking for imaginary high crimes and misdemeanors he's free to do whatever.

[Gene]

Hillary had some odd health problems....

Her eye movements indicated something odd. Some of the comments are baseless in this clip but you can see her left eye tracking oddly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwlTxZG8FDQ


The fainting spells didn't help either.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2ePyLt6K6M

She's continued fall down episodes after the election.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rbp3yne4h_4

Americans don't want physical wrecks running the country. This is why FDR hid his handicaps. He knew that people would hold it against him.


Why blame the Russians when you can blame a shitty campaign, candidate health problems and abusing Sanders supporters? Cause the Military Industrial Complex needs a new Cold War?

[Gene]

It's labeled an opinion. Not reporting.

Lot more plausible than "Putin did it!".

Be ironic if we learned years later that Trump had the Russians pretend to steal emails in order to lead the Democrats into pointless pursuits.


Kind of like how we learned that Ted Kennedy tried to collude with the Soviets back in the 1980s.

Kennedy made Andropov a couple of specific offers.

First he offered to visit Moscow. "The main purpose of the meeting, according to the senator, would be to arm Soviet officials with explanations regarding problems of nuclear disarmament so they may be better prepared and more convincing during appearances in the USA." Kennedy would help the Soviets deal with Reagan by telling them how to brush up their propaganda.

Then he offered to make it possible for Andropov to sit down for a few interviews on American television. "A direct appeal ... to the American people will, without a doubt, attract a great deal of attention and interest in the country. ... If the proposal is recognized as worthy, then Kennedy and his friends will bring about suitable steps to have representatives of the largest television companies in the USA contact Y.V. Andropov for an invitation to Moscow for the interviews. ... The senator underlined the importance that this initiative should be seen as coming from the American side."

Kennedy would make certain the networks gave Andropov air time--and that they rigged the arrangement to look like honest journalism.

"Tunney remarked that the senator wants to run for president in 1988," the memorandum continued. "Kennedy does not discount that during the 1984 campaign, the Democratic Party may officially turn to him to lead the fight against the Republicans and elect their candidate president.

"The document," Kengor continues, "has stood the test of time. I scrutinized it more carefully than anything I've ever dealt with as a scholar. I showed the document to numerous authorities who deal with Soviet archival material. No one has debunked the memorandum or shown it to be a forgery. Kennedy's office did not deny it."

https://www.forbes.com/2009/08/27/ted-k ... 4ea2b359ab