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Read the rules in the OP before posting, please.In order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a re-read to refresh your memory! The vast majority of you are contributing in a healthy way, keep it up! NOTE: When providing a source, explain why you feel it is relevant and what purpose it adds to the discussion if it's not obvious. Also take note that unsubstantiated tweets/posts meant only to rekindle old arguments can result in a mod action. |
On October 10 2016 03:48 GGTeMpLaR wrote: Guess that says something about the 'merits' of democracy when two shitty candidates are your choices. IDK if it's democracy in general, or America's shitty, sorely-outdated brand of democracy.
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8/10 of the trending topics on my Facebook are about Trump's vid lol.
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On October 10 2016 04:02 OtherWorld wrote:Show nested quote +On October 10 2016 03:50 JW_DTLA wrote:On October 10 2016 03:45 zlefin wrote:On October 10 2016 03:39 JW_DTLA wrote:On October 10 2016 03:06 Liquid`Drone wrote:why do you want more bombing?  Bush2 was all about invading other countries and spreading American systems by force. Obama represents a big retreat from American Interventionism abroad. I think there is an argument to be made that we should have been intervening more during the Arab Spring. I know nobody likes this, but the Libya intervention needed to have more people on the ground. Ambassador Stevens and the CIA mission in Benghazi should have been models for a lighter foot print intervention to make sure forces of order won after the destruction of the Ghadaffi regime. The response to the Benghazi attacks should have been doubling down and putting more money and men into making sure the tattered remnants of the secular armed forces of Libya held more ground. Instead, we ran away and now ISIS and Jihadists are seizing Libyan cities. HRC was the big proponent behind a harder Libyan intervention. Yes, we lost people in the Benghazi attack, but that should have been a lesson in going in with more security and proof we needed to be there. EDIT: also, at the time I opposed any intervention in Syria in the early stages. Now I am questioning whether that was a good idea (500k+ dead has made me doubt nonintervention). Obama is doing pinpoint bombing of ISIS, which I approve of. But that is all we will ever be able to do because the Russians have squatted all over the place. the places are a shitshow; there is no intervention that will be truly effective; the ones that would be most effective are enormously expensive; and I'm still not sure how they screwed pu so bad on properly rebuilding iraq. Intervention tends to be very costly, do you want to pay that much in money and lives? there's a lot of places in the world which could use intervention, we can't afford to fix them all. I'd say before intervening more, we should work on improving our nation building capabilities so we can usefully intervene and leave places in better shape. Otherwise intervention just isn't worth it. When it comes to intervention, I have heard the following arguments of which I largely approve. We need to imagine three realms of intervention. (1) The Arab world (Levant, North Africa, Syria). We will do only pure kinetic intervention here. Drones, special forces, contractors will be sent to hunt and kill Jihadists to keep their logistical strength down. America tried to intervene and build up new societies (Iraq war 2) but it was a disaster. (2) The near Muslim world (Nigeria, Philippines, Indonesia, Central Africa, etc.). We send substantial aid and foreign deployed trainers to make sure that forces of order don't fall to occasional Jihadists uprisings. We don't engage in firefights, but we provide a sort of "Arsenal of Democracy" welfare line to weaker governments. (3) Afghanistan. Permanent low intensity occupation to save American credibility. Yeah. And guess who's paying for all those military interventions?
America. But I would say it is worth the cost. Syria is a pretty big disaster and the North African refugee crisis is destabilizing both our allies and the United States (see, Trumpism). If we stay out of the total occupation and rebuilding game it shouldn't cost as much as Iraq War 2. Bear in mind that the United States is easily able to bear the cost of Obama's low level Afghanistan Occupation and Iraq War 3 in the Levant. What I am proposing is upping the spending to include support for the Near Muslim world BEFORE the Jihadist revolutions get going.
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On October 10 2016 03:32 zlefin wrote: I wonder if we could use this trump debacle to get the GOP to switch to using approval voting for its primary process.
of course, personally I don't like the gop even having control over its process as a so-called private entity. Have you ever registered Republican, voted Republican, or attended one of the party's caucuses/delegate votes?
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On October 10 2016 03:32 zlefin wrote: I wonder if we could use this trump debacle to get the GOP to switch to using approval voting for its primary process.
of course, personally I don't like the gop even having control over its process as a so-called private entity.
The GOP already altered their primary process in the wake of Trump I think-the nice thing about having a convention full of delegates that hates a candidate who doesn't give a shit about the platform or anything besides himself was that the delegates were able to do pretty much anything they wanted rule-wise as long as they cast their vote for the nomination properly.
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United Kingdom13775 Posts
On October 10 2016 03:53 Liquid`Drone wrote:Show nested quote +On October 10 2016 03:39 JW_DTLA wrote:On October 10 2016 03:06 Liquid`Drone wrote:why do you want more bombing?  Bush2 was all about invading other countries and spreading American systems by force. Obama represents a big retreat from American Interventionism abroad. I think there is an argument to be made that we should have been intervening more during the Arab Spring. I know nobody likes this, but the Libya intervention needed to have more people on the ground. Ambassador Stevens and the CIA mission in Benghazi should have been models for a lighter foot print intervention to make sure forces of order won after the destruction of the Ghadaffi regime. The response to the Benghazi attacks should have been doubling down and putting more money and men into making sure the tattered remnants of the secular armed forces of Libya held more ground. Instead, we ran away and now ISIS and Jihadists are seizing Libyan cities. HRC was the big proponent behind a harder Libyan intervention. Yes, we lost people in the Benghazi attack, but that should have been a lesson in going in with more security and proof we needed to be there. EDIT: also, at the time I opposed any intervention in Syria in the early stages. Now I am questioning whether that was a good idea (500k+ dead has made me doubt nonintervention). Obama is doing pinpoint bombing of ISIS, which I approve of. But that is all we will ever be able to do because the Russians have squatted all over the place. Now you are arguing for more interventionism in the form of troops, and in that case I don't fundamentally disagree. Bombs however kill far too indiscriminately and cause far too much terror and suffering for the civilian population for me to be okay with them. Troops on the ground, that's real commitment and real risk - and thus gives serious incentive to only engage in conflicts where it really is absolutely necessary. Like I understand bombing cities during total war conflicts (not really seen since ww2) where breaking the spirit of the civilian backbone is important to win the war efforts. And while I'm no expert on military strategy, I can see how using bombs as a tool to scatter and disorganize enemy troops is also highly effective (and sometimes necessary). But my impression of bombs used as a warfare-tool in the middle east for the past 30 years is that they have created so much suffering in the civilian population that any military victories gained through bombs has been offset by increased anti-american and anti-western sentiments within the bombed civilian population. More troops on the ground and more interventionism, that's a fair argument - I might not support it - but I'm not gonna fight you on it. Bombing cities however, that's basically terrorism imo. Sometimes you do have to bomb civilians, or at the very least accept that civilian damage will be the result of a concentrated bombing effort, if you really want to have any results. The unfortunate reality is that terrorist movements thrive strongly on the "blend into the populace" strategy and if you let them, they will hold cities hostage knowing that you will not be willing to hurt civilians in the process (or, on a related note, destroying resources that are used by both terrorists and civilians). So while it is a valid concern to try to minimize civilian casualties, it often isn't possible to separate the terrorists from the civilians in a way that will allow the terrorists to be attacked while the civilians are spared. And that will often mean bombing cities. It's one of the brutal realities of battling terrorism, among many others.
Of course, the people who die at the hands of those bombing efforts, and their immediate families, will likely not forgive and will harbor resentment for a lifetime. But remember that the existence of those terrorists kills people every day, and if bombing civilians stops the war, more people will survive and that fact will not be lost on the survivors.
What causes more suffering is the inability of the US to act intelligently when it comes to who it chooses to back in their bid for power in the MidEast. The entire terrorist movement is descendant from those who the US enabled by providing training and material aid to, without any thought as to what would be the result when it would fall upon future generations to clean up the mess.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2016/10/09/the-deep-disgust-for-hillary-clinton-that-drives-so-many-evangelicals-to-support-trump/
This is actually a really good read I found on Facebook. I think it makes a lot of sense. More content in the link.
According to the latest Post-ABC poll, 70 percent of white evangelicals hold an unfavorable view of Clinton, compared with 55 percent of the public overall who say the same thing. Among respondents, 72 percent of evangelicals say she’s not honest and trustworthy.
This has been puzzling to some observers, especially after Trump’s crass comments about women were revealed Friday. Trump is, after all, a thrice-married, casino-building businessman who has been widely criticized for bigoted remarks, name-calling and other behavior deemed un-Christ-like.
Clinton, on the other hand, is a churchgoing United Methodist who has long ties to leaders in the evangelical community. She taught Sunday school and, as a senator, attended weekly prayer breakfasts.
But white evangelicals’ anger toward Clinton, while at a fever pitch now, has been building for decades.
She symbolizes much that runs against their beliefs: abortion rights advocacy, feminism and, conversely, a rejection of biblical ideas of femininity and womanhood. Perhaps even more significantly, Hillary Clinton, as an outspoken and activist first lady, is inextricably tied in the minds of conservative Christians to their loss of the culture war battles beginning with Bill Clinton’s first term in 1993.
Michael Cromartie, director of a program on evangelicals and civic life at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, said that whenever he hears justification of Trump support, it is almost always couched as a way to keep Hillary Clinton from the presidency. Three-quarters of evangelicals cited dislike for Clinton as a major reason they support Trump, according to a recent Pew Research poll.
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Some more quotes for Doodsmack:
"If anytime during the five years I thought I'd rather not go through with it - promise or no promise I'd back out so fast it would make your head spin."
"I don't speak writable English."
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On October 10 2016 04:07 Danglars wrote:Show nested quote +On October 10 2016 03:32 zlefin wrote: I wonder if we could use this trump debacle to get the GOP to switch to using approval voting for its primary process.
of course, personally I don't like the gop even having control over its process as a so-called private entity. Have you ever registered Republican, voted Republican, or attended one of the party's caucuses/delegate votes? I've voted for a few republicans locally. no more than that. You seem more like a republican type; do you think the party apparatus might be willing to favor a shift to approval voting?
also, not really clear on what your questions have to do with my point, but I suppose they don't really need to.
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United States42007 Posts
On October 10 2016 03:38 pmh wrote: Hillary is such a weak candidate that the risk that trump wins is still to big,so now they try eliminate trump,s ticket before the election lol. Er, early voting has already begun. Trump needs to win states that he's significantly behind in like Florida or he has already lost. I'd be very happy to bet that Trump has lost at this point, even on 3:1 odds.
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On October 10 2016 02:01 Danglars wrote:Show nested quote +On October 10 2016 01:43 LegalLord wrote:On October 10 2016 01:33 Rebs wrote:On October 10 2016 01:18 Adreme wrote: Ive still been waiting the past 30 pages (reading most every post) for someone to actually explain what makes Hilary corrupt. I mean I know all the scandals and have looked closely at them for both sides but the problem with hers is the closer you look the more it just looks like a whole bunch of nothing and no one has given me a scandal that did not turn out to be a whole bunch of nothing. Bro just search anything GH has posted since Bernie lost.. Not a bad place to start; in general just looking at any strings of discussion that GH has almost always been involved in regarding Hillary's dirty dealings is a good way to go about it. Beyond that, I'm not going to bother. It's not a topic I have much interest in rehashing because it's not very interesting or productive, and explaining things to Adreme is about as productive as trying to explain imperialism to Cowboy24. I arrived at the same conclusion. Candidates in the past might have taken some searching to convince yourself. Hillary's outline of corruption and missteps (like FP) has been reported on in many major news outlets because of the size and scope. If you're still asserting smoke and mirrors instead of serious issues at this point, it's willful self deception. I'm assuming this means you don't care to discuss the issue with me if I don't already agree that Hillary is a criminal that should be locked up. But maybe someone in the thread who considers Hillary unfit for office because of her scandals can answer me.
I think I've done a reasonable job trying to become informed on some of the big Clinton scandals this year. I read the entire long-form article Politico did on the FBI investigation's findings on the Clinton email server. I've read several articles about the Clinton Foundation allegations of "pay to play." I've tried a few times to figure out what the hell is the deal with Benghazi, but pretty quickly lost interest. I admit there are some other older scandals with the Clintons that I've never bothered to learn the details of (Juannita Broaderick, Whitewater), but in my defense there are so many scandals and non-scandals with the Clintons over the years that it gets very hard to sort out which ones were real and which ones were largely manufactured efforts by Republicans to smear their opponents.
From the research I've done, I wouldn't claim anything so bold as "all this talk of Clinton scandals is just smoke and mirrors by Republicans," but it also doesn't seem like she's actually done anything criminal. Here, I'll explain scandal by scandal:
+ Show Spoiler [Benghazi] +From what I can tell the main allegations that can still at least arguably stick are that there were requests for additional security at the embassy, but the State department never really followed up on those requests, which is unfortunate, but not really to do with Clinton herself. It was certainly an oversight by the State department, but obviously it's easier with the benefit of hindsight to recognize how important that request was, and at any rate it seems a bit unfair to tie all of that to Clinton herself (it seems unlikely that kind of request would ever wind up being directly considered by the SoS; it would probably get granted, denied, or ignored at some lower level of management.
The other allegation is that there were different stories being told by the goverment in the immediate aftermath of the attacks than what really happened, and that these stories were known at the time to be false by the people telling them. So Hillary, Obama, etc. knew that it was a terrorist attack but still said it was a protest about a video or w/e. I never bothered to learn the exact timeline of what we said it was at each point in time, and what it seems like the administration actually knew at those points in time, but it doesn't seem that bad as scandals go for the government to tell one story about acute foreign issues as they're happening, and another story after the fact. You're gonna have a lot of different intelligence at any given time, and there's a lot of complex questions when an event is still ongoing of how much of that information should be kept classified and how much should be made public, and I would strongly suspect the bias is to wait to make most stuff public until the event is over; the risk on one side is that we give up classified information that damages our interests abroad, while the risk on the other side is that the public has to wait a few weeks to get the real story.
+ Show Spoiler [Email stuff] +I've had some trouble figuring out what exactly was illegal in this story and what was just poor IT work. But I certainly can understand how in an organization as big as the State Department you can get a phenomenon wherein for a variety of systemic reasons, a culture of neglecting certain requirements can happen. Like, the main allegation of criminality seems to come from the lack of recordkeeping – government officials are supposed to make sure all their documents, correspondence, etc. are preserved for the historical record – but on a day-to-day basis when you have a job to do, that sort of requirement easily falls by the wayside, without any malicious intent.
Like, I work in an FDA-regulated pharmaceutical research lab, and there's all sorts of requirements in data-keeping and such that you have to work very hard to keep everybody following, because with pressing deadlines and new employees always coming in who have to be trained on all the regulatory requirements, it's very easy for people to forget about something they're supposed to do, or to never learn it properly in the first place. Our lab has the benefit of most of the upper management having been in the industry for decades, having a shit ton of experience with the requirements we have to follow and how to spot when someone isn't following them. If someone wasn't taking data appropriately, their paperwork would eventually go through management's desk and they'd spot that someone was, for instance, not putting their initials and the date after every note they made on the paperwork, and that person would get talked to about the requirements of good documentation practice.
In the State department it seems like you had a combination of constant turnover in management (I mean, the SoS and her whole team is getting cycled out every 4 years or so), constant and urgent foreign policy issues that demand attention, and woefully inadequate technical support every step of the way. Add to that a completely technology-illiterate SoS, and it's not hard to imagine how good record keeping practices would fall by the wayside. The two more extraordinary claims I've heard is that this disorganization and failure in record keeping was actually an intentional obfuscation used to avoid FOIA requests, and that Clinton intentionally kept security lax to sell state secrets to CF donors, both of which appear to have no evidence, and ring of conspiracy theorizing - the idea that this apparently disorganized bureacracy is actually a well-oiled machine built to look like a disorganized bureaucracy.
+ Show Spoiler [Clinton Foundation] +There's a couple allegations on this one. The first is that the Clinton Foundation isn't a real charity, but in fact a slush fund for the Clintons' various nefarious purposes. This one is pretty demonstrably untrue. Fiorina cited the amount of money the Clinton foundation gives to other charities, an admittedly low number, as evidence that they don't really do charity work, but the explanation is a lot simpler: they don't give their money to other charities, they do the charity work themselves. In fact, inasmuch as impartial judges of the quality of charities can be found (a la Charity Navigator), the Clinton Foundation seems to be a fairly efficient and effective one.
The other allegation is that regardless of the effectiveness of the charity, Clinton had conflicts of interest when the State Department had dealings with charity donors (or, as an even stronger claim, that Clinton was selling State Department influence in return for CF donations). Given that there is often a lot of direct interaction and overlap between NGOs and government operations, particularly the State Department, these kinds of conflict of interest questions have come up before. It seems like in general, the Clinton Foundation's response was a decent one (full disclosure of foreign donors), but the follow-through wasn't always there; sometimes donors didn't get disclosed the way they should have been. Some investigations have tried to identify specific cases in which someone donated to the foundation in exchange for some concession from the State Department or Hillary herself, but the links have generally seemed fairly weak; in some cases it looks like someone donated a lot of money to Hillary in order to get a meeting with her, but in many of these cases she did not then make the concession that this person was seeking, so at most, people donated for the chance to meet with her, but didn't get what they wanted from the meeting.
In short, if the allegation is criminality, it really doesn't seem to me that the case is that strong. If the allegation is corruption, then I guess I'd want to know specifically what is meant by "corruption" before agreeing or disagreeing that she is obviously corrupt. If it means literally making policy decisions on the basis of bribes from foreign powers, the evidence looks pretty thin to me. By broader definitions of corruption, though, you might say any politician who bases their policies even partly on what donors to their campaign would want (and what would earn them more donations in the future) is corrupt. At the absurd extreme, you might say any politician who makes policy changes in order to win votes is corrupt, engaged in a clear quid pro quo with the voters. But by conventional definitions, in which politicians receive bribes, payouts, etc. in exchange for policy changes, I haven't found good evidence.
Of course, if the allegation is merely incompetence, there's plenty in all of these cases to blame Hillary for. Surely we'd like a Secretary of State who could identify the ailing record keeping culture of the State Department and recognize the importance of reforming that system immediately. Whether or not Hillary ever saw those requests for more securty in Benghazi, she still might be held responsible in a sort of "the buck stops here" sense. And if the Clinton Foundation had a good idea on foreign donor disclosure, but didn't follow through as well as they should have, surely that reflects poorly on Clinton as one of the main figures behind that foundation. Honestly, I hate the idea of having a President who apparently never learned how to use a desktop computer. But if we're just talking about incompetence, here the "lesser of two evils" argument starts to have a fair amount of sway. I think most people think that when it comes to running a government, Hillary has a lot more experience and evidence of competency than Trump.
If I've gotten facts wrong or missed critical details on any of these scandals, feel free to correct me. But if I understood you correctly, you believe that anyone who has made a good-faith effort to learn about Clinton's scandals would quickly learn how obviously bankrupt she is, and I hope I've sufficiently demonstrated myself as a counterexample.
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It has been his pride and his palace, a soaring black skyscraper overlooking Manhattan that seemed to match Donald J. Trump’s ambition and ostentatiousness.
But Trump Tower, since Friday afternoon, has become a kind of lonely fortress for its most famous occupant, who holes up inside, increasingly isolated and upset, denounced almost every hour by another Republican official.
Mr. Trump was asked to stay away from a party gathering Saturday afternoon in Wisconsin, where Speaker Paul D. Ryan and other state luminaries took the stage, a striking rebuke that left the Republican nominee for president with no place to go on a Saturday 31 days before the election.
So he remained inside his enormous penthouse apartment on the 66th floor, and his corporate suite 40 stories below, for almost all of Friday and Saturday.
At times he was joined by his small circle of loyalists, who arrived to prepare him for Sunday night’s debate against Hillary Clinton but instead spent much of the time trying to figure out how to undo the damage wrought by the surfacing of an 11-year-old video recording on which he can be heard gleefully describing pushing himself on women and sexually assaulting them.
At other times, Mr. Trump retreated to Twitter, where he retweeted posts from an account that says it belongs to a woman who had long ago accused Bill Clinton of rape.
Mr. Trump called a few reporters but lacked his usual gusto.
And he kept returning to watching coverage on CNN, the cable outlet he derides as biased against him but still tunes in to most often, and becoming more upset as he saw Republican officials condemn him one by one.
Mr. Trump has been rattled by the release of the 2005 video recording, according to two people with direct knowledge of his mood who were granted anonymity to candidly describe the situation.
He was urged to be humble, and he felt that he had been, in an apology video that his campaign released early Saturday. But he was criticized for ending his statement with a dig at the Clintons and for not apologizing to his wife, Melania, in his remarks. To him, the criticism was an affirmation that “nothing he can say or do” would reduce the hostility directed his way, according to one of the people with knowledge of how he feels.
Inside the tower on Saturday, different plans of action were discussed. Mr. Trump and his advisers considered a joint television interview that he and Ms. Trump would give to a major network, an echo of the 1992 appearance by the Clintons on “60 Minutes” after Gennifer Flowers claimed that she had had an affair with Mr. Clinton.
The deliberations over a possible interview were moving ahead despite Ms. Trump’s lack of interest in appearing on camera. But then Nancy O’Dell, the former “Access Hollywood” host whom Mr. Trump had lewdly described in the recording, issued a statement denouncing his comments. And then more tapes of Mr. Trump speaking crudely about women, this time on “The Howard Stern Show,” turned up on television.
The discussions about the interview were quickly dropped.
Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, an observant Jew who normally does not work on the Sabbath, was among those who gathered with him on Saturday, although the candidate’s oldest daughter, Ivanka, was not. Mr. Trump’s oldest son, Donald Jr., was there. Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey and Rudolph W. Giuliani also showed up, as did the Republican National Committee chairman, Reince Priebus.
Source
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On October 10 2016 01:43 LegalLord wrote:Show nested quote +On October 10 2016 01:33 Rebs wrote:On October 10 2016 01:18 Adreme wrote: Ive still been waiting the past 30 pages (reading most every post) for someone to actually explain what makes Hilary corrupt. I mean I know all the scandals and have looked closely at them for both sides but the problem with hers is the closer you look the more it just looks like a whole bunch of nothing and no one has given me a scandal that did not turn out to be a whole bunch of nothing. Bro just search anything GH has posted since Bernie lost.. Not a bad place to start; in general just looking at any strings of discussion that GH has almost always been involved in regarding Hillary's dirty dealings is a good way to go about it. Beyond that, I'm not going to bother. It's not a topic I have much interest in rehashing because it's not very interesting or productive, and explaining things to Adreme is about as productive as trying to explain imperialism to Cowboy24. This is the usual respons to your question: "it is so much i cant be bothered to tell you about it but you should know it already anyway."
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On October 10 2016 04:41 ChristianS wrote:Show nested quote +On October 10 2016 02:01 Danglars wrote:On October 10 2016 01:43 LegalLord wrote:On October 10 2016 01:33 Rebs wrote:On October 10 2016 01:18 Adreme wrote: Ive still been waiting the past 30 pages (reading most every post) for someone to actually explain what makes Hilary corrupt. I mean I know all the scandals and have looked closely at them for both sides but the problem with hers is the closer you look the more it just looks like a whole bunch of nothing and no one has given me a scandal that did not turn out to be a whole bunch of nothing. Bro just search anything GH has posted since Bernie lost.. Not a bad place to start; in general just looking at any strings of discussion that GH has almost always been involved in regarding Hillary's dirty dealings is a good way to go about it. Beyond that, I'm not going to bother. It's not a topic I have much interest in rehashing because it's not very interesting or productive, and explaining things to Adreme is about as productive as trying to explain imperialism to Cowboy24. I arrived at the same conclusion. Candidates in the past might have taken some searching to convince yourself. Hillary's outline of corruption and missteps (like FP) has been reported on in many major news outlets because of the size and scope. If you're still asserting smoke and mirrors instead of serious issues at this point, it's willful self deception. I'm assuming this means you don't care to discuss the issue with me if I don't already agree that Hillary is a criminal that should be locked up. But maybe someone in the thread who considers Hillary unfit for office because of her scandals can answer me. I think I've done a reasonable job trying to become informed on some of the big Clinton scandals this year. I read the entire long-form article Politico did on the FBI investigation's findings on the Clinton email server. I've read several articles about the Clinton Foundation allegations of "pay to play." I've tried a few times to figure out what the hell is the deal with Benghazi, but pretty quickly lost interest. I admit there are some other older scandals with the Clintons that I've never bothered to learn the details of (Juannita Broaderick, Whitewater), but in my defense there are so many scandals and non-scandals with the Clintons over the years that it gets very hard to sort out which ones were real and which ones were largely manufactured efforts by Republicans to smear their opponents. From the research I've done, I wouldn't claim anything so bold as "all this talk of Clinton scandals is just smoke and mirrors by Republicans," but it also doesn't seem like she's actually done anything criminal. Here, I'll explain scandal by scandal: + Show Spoiler [Benghazi] +From what I can tell the main allegations that can still at least arguably stick are that there were requests for additional security at the embassy, but the State department never really followed up on those requests, which is unfortunate, but not really to do with Clinton herself. It was certainly an oversight by the State department, but obviously it's easier with the benefit of hindsight to recognize how important that request was, and at any rate it seems a bit unfair to tie all of that to Clinton herself (it seems unlikely that kind of request would ever wind up being directly considered by the SoS; it would probably get granted, denied, or ignored at some lower level of management.
The other allegation is that there were different stories being told by the goverment in the immediate aftermath of the attacks than what really happened, and that these stories were known at the time to be false by the people telling them. So Hillary, Obama, etc. knew that it was a terrorist attack but still said it was a protest about a video or w/e. I never bothered to learn the exact timeline of what we said it was at each point in time, and what it seems like the administration actually knew at those points in time, but it doesn't seem that bad as scandals go for the government to tell one story about acute foreign issues as they're happening, and another story after the fact. You're gonna have a lot of different intelligence at any given time, and there's a lot of complex questions when an event is still ongoing of how much of that information should be kept classified and how much should be made public, and I would strongly suspect the bias is to wait to make most stuff public until the event is over; the risk on one side is that we give up classified information that damages our interests abroad, while the risk on the other side is that the public has to wait a few weeks to get the real story. + Show Spoiler [Email stuff] +I've had some trouble figuring out what exactly was illegal in this story and what was just poor IT work. But I certainly can understand how in an organization as big as the State Department you can get a phenomenon wherein for a variety of systemic reasons, a culture of neglecting certain requirements can happen. Like, the main allegation of criminality seems to come from the lack of recordkeeping – government officials are supposed to make sure all their documents, correspondence, etc. are preserved for the historical record – but on a day-to-day basis when you have a job to do, that sort of requirement easily falls by the wayside, without any malicious intent.
Like, I work in an FDA-regulated pharmaceutical research lab, and there's all sorts of requirements in data-keeping and such that you have to work very hard to keep everybody following, because with pressing deadlines and new employees always coming in who have to be trained on all the regulatory requirements, it's very easy for people to forget about something they're supposed to do, or to never learn it properly in the first place. Our lab has the benefit of most of the upper management having been in the industry for decades, having a shit ton of experience with the requirements we have to follow and how to spot when someone isn't following them. If someone wasn't taking data appropriately, their paperwork would eventually go through management's desk and they'd spot that someone was, for instance, not putting their initials and the date after every note they made on the paperwork, and that person would get talked to about the requirements of good documentation practice.
In the State department it seems like you had a combination of constant turnover in management (I mean, the SoS and her whole team is getting cycled out every 4 years or so), constant and urgent foreign policy issues that demand attention, and woefully inadequate technical support every step of the way. Add to that a completely technology-illiterate SoS, and it's not hard to imagine how good record keeping practices would fall by the wayside. The two more extraordinary claims I've heard is that this disorganization and failure in record keeping was actually an intentional obfuscation used to avoid FOIA requests, and that Clinton intentionally kept security lax to sell state secrets to CF donors, both of which appear to have no evidence, and ring of conspiracy theorizing - the idea that this apparently disorganized bureacracy is actually a well-oiled machine built to look like a disorganized bureaucracy. + Show Spoiler [Clinton Foundation] +There's a couple allegations on this one. The first is that the Clinton Foundation isn't a real charity, but in fact a slush fund for the Clintons' various nefarious purposes. This one is pretty demonstrably untrue. Fiorina cited the amount of money the Clinton foundation gives to other charities, an admittedly low number, as evidence that they don't really do charity work, but the explanation is a lot simpler: they don't give their money to other charities, they do the charity work themselves. In fact, inasmuch as impartial judges of the quality of charities can be found (a la Charity Navigator), the Clinton Foundation seems to be a fairly efficient and effective one.
The other allegation is that regardless of the effectiveness of the charity, Clinton had conflicts of interest when the State Department had dealings with charity donors (or, as an even stronger claim, that Clinton was selling State Department influence in return for CF donations). Given that there is often a lot of direct interaction and overlap between NGOs and government operations, particularly the State Department, these kinds of conflict of interest questions have come up before. It seems like in general, the Clinton Foundation's response was a decent one (full disclosure of foreign donors), but the follow-through wasn't always there; sometimes donors didn't get disclosed the way they should have been. Some investigations have tried to identify specific cases in which someone donated to the foundation in exchange for some concession from the State Department or Hillary herself, but the links have generally seemed fairly weak; in some cases it looks like someone donated a lot of money to Hillary in order to get a meeting with her, but in many of these cases she did not then make the concession that this person was seeking, so at most, people donated for the chance to meet with her, but didn't get what they wanted from the meeting. In short, if the allegation is criminality, it really doesn't seem to me that the case is that strong. If the allegation is corruption, then I guess I'd want to know specifically what is meant by "corruption" before agreeing or disagreeing that she is obviously corrupt. If it means literally making policy decisions on the basis of bribes from foreign powers, the evidence looks pretty thin to me. By broader definitions of corruption, though, you might say any politician who bases their policies even partly on what donors to their campaign would want (and what would earn them more donations in the future) is corrupt. At the absurd extreme, you might say any politician who makes policy changes in order to win votes is corrupt, engaged in a clear quid pro quo with the voters. But by conventional definitions, in which politicians receive bribes, payouts, etc. in exchange for policy changes, I haven't found good evidence. Of course, if the allegation is merely incompetence, there's plenty in all of these cases to blame Hillary for. Surely we'd like a Secretary of State who could identify the ailing record keeping culture of the State Department and recognize the importance of reforming that system immediately. Whether or not Hillary ever saw those requests for more securty in Benghazi, she still might be held responsible in a sort of "the buck stops here" sense. And if the Clinton Foundation had a good idea on foreign donor disclosure, but didn't follow through as well as they should have, surely that reflects poorly on Clinton as one of the main figures behind that foundation. Honestly, I hate the idea of having a President who apparently never learned how to use a desktop computer. But if we're just talking about incompetence, here the "lesser of two evils" argument starts to have a fair amount of sway. I think most people think that when it comes to running a government, Hillary has a lot more experience and evidence of competency than Trump. If I've gotten facts wrong or missed critical details on any of these scandals, feel free to correct me. But if I understood you correctly, you believe that anyone who has made a good-faith effort to learn about Clinton's scandals would quickly learn how obviously bankrupt she is, and I hope I've sufficiently demonstrated myself as a counterexample.
Thank you for the write-up. This is kind of the same conclusion I made after reading through all the summaries of the scandals independently.
On October 10 2016 02:25 Adreme wrote:Show nested quote +On October 10 2016 01:59 GoTuNk! wrote:On October 10 2016 01:30 Adreme wrote:On October 10 2016 01:24 LegalLord wrote:On October 10 2016 01:18 Adreme wrote: Ive still been waiting the past 30 pages (reading most every post) for someone to actually explain what makes Hilary corrupt. I mean I know all the scandals and have looked closely at them for both sides but the problem with hers is the closer you look the more it just looks like a whole bunch of nothing and no one has given me a scandal that did not turn out to be a whole bunch of nothing. There are really two major issues: she can be a blundering idiot on matters of policy (most blatantly, in FP) and matters of conduct (the whole email issue), and she does a whole lot of favor trading and generally sleazy, if run-of-the-mill, political dirty play. If you're looking for some single truly damning and career ending piece of evidence, it doesn't reside within the current releases of information on her work. If you want to see what I'm talking about in terms of her terrible blundering idiocy and general unpleasant politicking... well you pretty much have to be willfully ignorant not to see it because it's pretty ubiquitous. Everyone keeps saying she is corrupt and just assumes its taken as fact and just never backs it up with anything. So far the only things that have meat are the fact that she admits she made a mistake using that email server and then after that they just start listing things she is involved in say they are corrupt and then never back it up with any facts or evidence and I am just supposed to believe them. I would more then happily believe someone is corrupt but you have to give me evidence. People proved to me that Donald Trump was a bad businessman who cheated everyone he could and would never keep his word to anyone. That belief is based on the actual things he has done but with her no one can give me things she has done to make me think she is corrupt. The email thing was not just "making a mistake". On purpose after that she deliberately tried to cover it up, obstruct justice and basically did as much as possible to hide it until it blew in her face. How about Bill's rape accusations and her help covering it up? He even settled many times. This is actual mistreating of woman, as oppossed to some locker room comments before a TV pilot. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Clinton_sexual_misconduct_allegationsBroaddrick's allegations resurfaced in the 2016 presidential campaign. In various media interviews, Broaddrick stated that Clinton raped her and that Hillary Clinton knew about it, and tried to threaten Broaddrick into remaining silent. She claimed that she started giving some interviews in 2015 because Hillary Clinton's statement that victims of sexual assault should be believed angered her.[7]Or the recently leaked mails of her getting payed to suck up to Wall Street. There is def enough evidence of very shady behavior at the very least, or in my opinion flat out criminal behavior. This seems interesting. The one you quoted I find hard to believe since she made deposition saying she was lying but a couple on that wiki page would be worth getting more information on. I wonder how I would go about finding an unbiased source on it though.
I went through a bunch of articles from Google searches a few pages back and concluded there's not enough evidence to say one way or the other. http://www.vox.com/2016/1/6/10722580/bill-clinton-juanita-broaddrick seemed the most level headed, left-wing but yeah. The most damning evidence seems to be:
"[Hillary] came directly to me as soon as she hit the door. I had been there only a few minutes, I only wanted to make an appearance and leave. She caught me and took my hand and said 'I am so happy to meet you. I want you to know that we appreciate everything you do for Bill.' I started to turn away and she held onto my hand and reiterated her phrase -- looking less friendly and repeated her statement — 'Everything you do for Bill'. I said nothing. She wasn't letting me get away until she made her point. She talked low, the smile faded on the second thank you. I just released her hand from mine and left the gathering."
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On October 10 2016 04:06 JW_DTLA wrote:Show nested quote +On October 10 2016 04:02 OtherWorld wrote:On October 10 2016 03:50 JW_DTLA wrote:On October 10 2016 03:45 zlefin wrote:On October 10 2016 03:39 JW_DTLA wrote:On October 10 2016 03:06 Liquid`Drone wrote:why do you want more bombing?  Bush2 was all about invading other countries and spreading American systems by force. Obama represents a big retreat from American Interventionism abroad. I think there is an argument to be made that we should have been intervening more during the Arab Spring. I know nobody likes this, but the Libya intervention needed to have more people on the ground. Ambassador Stevens and the CIA mission in Benghazi should have been models for a lighter foot print intervention to make sure forces of order won after the destruction of the Ghadaffi regime. The response to the Benghazi attacks should have been doubling down and putting more money and men into making sure the tattered remnants of the secular armed forces of Libya held more ground. Instead, we ran away and now ISIS and Jihadists are seizing Libyan cities. HRC was the big proponent behind a harder Libyan intervention. Yes, we lost people in the Benghazi attack, but that should have been a lesson in going in with more security and proof we needed to be there. EDIT: also, at the time I opposed any intervention in Syria in the early stages. Now I am questioning whether that was a good idea (500k+ dead has made me doubt nonintervention). Obama is doing pinpoint bombing of ISIS, which I approve of. But that is all we will ever be able to do because the Russians have squatted all over the place. the places are a shitshow; there is no intervention that will be truly effective; the ones that would be most effective are enormously expensive; and I'm still not sure how they screwed pu so bad on properly rebuilding iraq. Intervention tends to be very costly, do you want to pay that much in money and lives? there's a lot of places in the world which could use intervention, we can't afford to fix them all. I'd say before intervening more, we should work on improving our nation building capabilities so we can usefully intervene and leave places in better shape. Otherwise intervention just isn't worth it. When it comes to intervention, I have heard the following arguments of which I largely approve. We need to imagine three realms of intervention. (1) The Arab world (Levant, North Africa, Syria). We will do only pure kinetic intervention here. Drones, special forces, contractors will be sent to hunt and kill Jihadists to keep their logistical strength down. America tried to intervene and build up new societies (Iraq war 2) but it was a disaster. (2) The near Muslim world (Nigeria, Philippines, Indonesia, Central Africa, etc.). We send substantial aid and foreign deployed trainers to make sure that forces of order don't fall to occasional Jihadists uprisings. We don't engage in firefights, but we provide a sort of "Arsenal of Democracy" welfare line to weaker governments. (3) Afghanistan. Permanent low intensity occupation to save American credibility. Yeah. And guess who's paying for all those military interventions? America. But I would say it is worth the cost. Syria is a pretty big disaster and the North African refugee crisis is destabilizing both our allies and the United States (see, Trumpism). If we stay out of the total occupation and rebuilding game it shouldn't cost as much as Iraq War 2. Bear in mind that the United States is easily able to bear the cost of Obama's low level Afghanistan Occupation and Iraq War 3 in the Levant. What I am proposing is upping the spending to include support for the Near Muslim world BEFORE the Jihadist revolutions get going. Well I guess you're free to think that the money of Americans is better spent on bombing people on the other side of the world rather than on trying to solve the USA's internal problems
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Trump has nothing to lose and will appear his most relaxed and will destroy Clinton. She will have multiple marco rubio robot moments and the race will continue
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On October 10 2016 04:24 oBlade wrote: Some more quotes for Doodsmack:
"If anytime during the five years I thought I'd rather not go through with it - promise or no promise I'd back out so fast it would make your head spin."
"I don't speak writable English."
Are these supposed to mitigate Donald's sexual claims or something?
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The Trump campaign and Republican National Committee tried to calm nerves Sunday, penning a joint email from their finance chiefs hours before the presidential debate that said both camps were committed to winning the White House.
The email — signed by Trump's top fundraiser, Steven Mnuchin, and Lew Eisenberg, the GOP's finance chairman and a top official in the "Victory" group devoted to electing Trump — was sent to top party and Trump officials declaring, "We have many important events planned over the next few weeks, and we look forward to our continued success."
Mnuchin and Eisenberg dismissed recent stories questioning whether the Victory program is scaling back its efforts to elect Trump as simply "false" and do not go into specifics about the events pledged in the email, which was obtained by POLITICO. But they say, "We will be scheduling a conference call later this week to update you."
"We appreciate your continued support. We are committed to have Donald Trump in the White House."
The move comes as Republicans abandon their nominee and GOP operatives question how long the party leaders will remain committed to Trump, or whether the RNC will instead redirect its attention to preserving congressional majorities.
On Saturday, one day after the leak of a 2005 tape that caught Trump bragging about sexually assaulting women, the RNC sent an email to Victory committee vendors asking them to "put a stop/hold on all mail projects right now" and to wait for further instructions.
One vendor who received the email, and who is helping to produce mail for the Victory committee, said they were under the belief that the committee was trying to figure out whether its messaging needed to be altered in light of the bombshell tape.
There are other clues that the committee may be thinking about down-ballot races. Prior to the release of the tape, the RNC approved a substantial transfer of funds to the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
Source
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On October 10 2016 04:46 Hexe wrote: Trump has nothing to lose and will appear his most relaxed and will destroy Clinton. She will have multiple marco rubio robot moments and the race will continue
I think you underestimate her preparedness, and overestimate Donald's self control. Tony Schwarz, who ostensibly knows Donald better than anyone, has said from the beginning he is incapable of change. So far he has proven correct.
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On October 10 2016 04:45 OtherWorld wrote:Show nested quote +On October 10 2016 04:06 JW_DTLA wrote:On October 10 2016 04:02 OtherWorld wrote:On October 10 2016 03:50 JW_DTLA wrote:On October 10 2016 03:45 zlefin wrote:On October 10 2016 03:39 JW_DTLA wrote:On October 10 2016 03:06 Liquid`Drone wrote:why do you want more bombing?  Bush2 was all about invading other countries and spreading American systems by force. Obama represents a big retreat from American Interventionism abroad. I think there is an argument to be made that we should have been intervening more during the Arab Spring. I know nobody likes this, but the Libya intervention needed to have more people on the ground. Ambassador Stevens and the CIA mission in Benghazi should have been models for a lighter foot print intervention to make sure forces of order won after the destruction of the Ghadaffi regime. The response to the Benghazi attacks should have been doubling down and putting more money and men into making sure the tattered remnants of the secular armed forces of Libya held more ground. Instead, we ran away and now ISIS and Jihadists are seizing Libyan cities. HRC was the big proponent behind a harder Libyan intervention. Yes, we lost people in the Benghazi attack, but that should have been a lesson in going in with more security and proof we needed to be there. EDIT: also, at the time I opposed any intervention in Syria in the early stages. Now I am questioning whether that was a good idea (500k+ dead has made me doubt nonintervention). Obama is doing pinpoint bombing of ISIS, which I approve of. But that is all we will ever be able to do because the Russians have squatted all over the place. the places are a shitshow; there is no intervention that will be truly effective; the ones that would be most effective are enormously expensive; and I'm still not sure how they screwed pu so bad on properly rebuilding iraq. Intervention tends to be very costly, do you want to pay that much in money and lives? there's a lot of places in the world which could use intervention, we can't afford to fix them all. I'd say before intervening more, we should work on improving our nation building capabilities so we can usefully intervene and leave places in better shape. Otherwise intervention just isn't worth it. When it comes to intervention, I have heard the following arguments of which I largely approve. We need to imagine three realms of intervention. (1) The Arab world (Levant, North Africa, Syria). We will do only pure kinetic intervention here. Drones, special forces, contractors will be sent to hunt and kill Jihadists to keep their logistical strength down. America tried to intervene and build up new societies (Iraq war 2) but it was a disaster. (2) The near Muslim world (Nigeria, Philippines, Indonesia, Central Africa, etc.). We send substantial aid and foreign deployed trainers to make sure that forces of order don't fall to occasional Jihadists uprisings. We don't engage in firefights, but we provide a sort of "Arsenal of Democracy" welfare line to weaker governments. (3) Afghanistan. Permanent low intensity occupation to save American credibility. Yeah. And guess who's paying for all those military interventions? America. But I would say it is worth the cost. Syria is a pretty big disaster and the North African refugee crisis is destabilizing both our allies and the United States (see, Trumpism). If we stay out of the total occupation and rebuilding game it shouldn't cost as much as Iraq War 2. Bear in mind that the United States is easily able to bear the cost of Obama's low level Afghanistan Occupation and Iraq War 3 in the Levant. What I am proposing is upping the spending to include support for the Near Muslim world BEFORE the Jihadist revolutions get going. Well I guess you're free to think that the money of Americans is better spent on bombing people on the other side of the world rather than on trying to solve the USA's internal problems It can be spent on both, but basically it's cheaper to spend some money now than a lot more money in the future.
On October 10 2016 04:46 Doodsmack wrote:Show nested quote +On October 10 2016 04:24 oBlade wrote: Some more quotes for Doodsmack:
"If anytime during the five years I thought I'd rather not go through with it - promise or no promise I'd back out so fast it would make your head spin."
"I don't speak writable English." Are these supposed to mitigate Donald's sexual claims or something? They're Richard Feynman quotes.
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