Now That Trump's President... (not any more!)

Do you remember when Bernie said, during one of the debates against Hillary, that "it might not be good politics, but I think she's right. Americans are sick and tired of hearing about Hillary's damn e-mails!" I remember Trump, the day after, saying: "Bernie just handed Hillary the primaries" and he was so right. It's now coming back to haunt him and his supporters. We were sick and tired of Hillary's lies and we wanted to know more about what her e-mails contained. There is a big difference!

 

And who cares if Russia hacked the DNC or not? This smells like bullshit to me, another way to turn our attention away from the serious concerns at play here. It's what the e-mails reveal that's interesting, not who had the courage to find a way into their system. Also, have you noticed how almost no one in the mainstream media is talking about Julian Assange?! They barely mention Wikileaks! All they want to talk about is Russia, Putin, Trump, dictatorship, Russia, Putin, Trump, dictatorship, over and over and over and over again, on every major news channel. Why should I believe the Clinton machine if they tell me the hackers were coming from Russia, when everything else they've been saying for a year to justify Hillary's private servers were lies and make-believe?

 

And why is no one preparing themselves for the next huge leak, which, according to Julian Assange, should allow the FBI to indict Hillary Clinton?

Edited July 26, 2016 by MassfreeKid

Who cares if a foreign power hacked one of the major political parties in the US?!?!??! Do you not perhaps think it might be a good idea to care about that, and what the emails contained (which so far don't make the DNC look great, but don't really say much against the Clinton campaign directly, and even the DNC stuff is only slightly bad, not illegal, and not evidence that the primaries were rigged).

 

The Trump and Putin angle is certainly an important one, it's not clear at this point where the truth lies, but it's certainly worth worrying about.

 

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/07/donald-trump-working-for-russia.html

 

http://thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/in-the-know/289241-george-will-raises-possible-trump-link-to-russian-oligarchs

 

Trump has had known associations with mobsters in his property dealings, wouldn't surprise me if he's in bed with corrupt russian fuckers too.

  On 7/26/2016 at 7:04 PM, caze said:

Who cares if a foreign power hacked one of the major political parties in the US?!?!??! Do you not perhaps think it might be a good idea to care about that, and what the emails contained (which so far don't make the DNC look great, but don't really say much against the Clinton campaign directly, and even the DNC stuff is only slightly bad, not illegal, and not evidence that the primaries were rigged).

 

The Trump and Putin angle is certainly an important one, it's not clear at this point where the truth lies, but it's certainly worth worrying about.

 

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/07/donald-trump-working-for-russia.html

 

http://thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/in-the-know/289241-george-will-raises-possible-trump-link-to-russian-oligarchs

 

Trump has had known associations with mobsters in his property dealings, wouldn't surprise me if he's in bed with corrupt russian fuckers too.

yeah unfortunately atm the evidence is not particularly substantial but the notion of president trump with ties to Russia is...well, utterly insane and considerably frightening.

 

I can see how people might think the attention to trump/russia ties is just trying to deflect attention from the misdeeds of the dnc (which it is in some cases) but it's absolutely worth investigating and making sure the connections are made abundantly clear to the public.

 

as for the dem delegates -- sorry my confusion, it seemed you meant protest general -- I don't think they're going to get trump elected. both parties have considerable reasons to be disgruntled about their candidates and are bitching about it. par for course innit.

 

also this made me lol: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/07/26/the-creator-of-the-viral-pro-trump-act-usa-freedom-kids-now-plans-to-sue-the-campaign/?tid=sm_tw

Edited July 26, 2016 by Alcofribas

  On 7/26/2016 at 5:00 AM, Alcofribas said:

 

  On 7/26/2016 at 4:44 AM, LimpyLoo said:

Wonder what the Greenwald camp have to say about the Putin angle..

lol

 

 

If only there were some way to find out.

Oh believe me, I looked after I posted

And it's exactly what I expected: Motivated Reasoning up the wazoo

(With the U.S. Gov't it's guilty until proven innocent, and with Putin it's innocent until proven guilty)

  On 7/26/2016 at 7:35 PM, chenGOD said:

 

  On 7/26/2016 at 5:00 AM, Alcofribas said:

 

  On 7/26/2016 at 4:44 AM, LimpyLoo said:

Wonder what the Greenwald camp have to say about the Putin angle..

lol

 

 

If only there were some way to find out.

 

 

Snowden should run for president!

  On 7/26/2016 at 7:54 PM, LimpyLoo said:

Oh believe me, I looked after I posted

And it's exactly what I expected: Motivated Reasoning up the wazoo

(With the U.S. Gov't it's guilty until proven innocent, and with Putin it's innocent until proven guilty)

the very first sentence paraphrases greenwald's statement that it would be no surprise if russia was involved. he indicates that nevertheless people should remain skeptical of accusations coming out of the clinton campaign and the dnc after the embarrassing email leaks, which appears to be an utterly prudent observation imo.

 

the rest of the piece examines the merits of the theory as it's been laid out so far and Edward fucking Snowden is quoted suggesting the nsa can and should utilize xkeyscore to find out if russia was involved and to make their discoveries public. that's right, Edward snowden believes the nsa should employ surveillance technology to investigate Russia.

 

the pro-putin bias you're after is just not there mate.

Edited July 26, 2016 by Alcofribas

Did you notice the "yeah but America does it too" hedge in that same paragraph?

 

He did the same thing when responding to criticism of his association with RT ("yeah but American media is all owned by corporations"), and when (grudgingly) addressing Russia's civil rights and human rights issues

 

Find me a single quote where he concedes a criticism of Russia WITHOUT "yeah but America" directly afterwards...as you know, in psychology that's called "rationalization": when one tries to minimize a bad act by comparison. And hey it's also free chance to trash on America!

  On 7/26/2016 at 9:23 PM, LimpyLoo said:

Did you notice the "yeah but America does it too" hedge in that same paragraph?

 

He did the same thing when responding to criticism of his association with RT ("yeah but American media is all owned by corporations"), and when (grudgingly) addressing Russia's civil rights and human rights issues

 

Find me a single quote where he concedes a criticism of Russia WITHOUT "yeah but America" directly afterwards...as you know, in psychology that's called "rationalization": when one tries to minimize a bad act by comparison. And hey it's also free chance to trash on America!

as i see it the problem with your argument lies in the notion that greenwald is attempting to "minimize" the bad acts of russia in this instance. as an american journalist i think he sees it as something of a duty to counteract the hypocrisy of his peers. if you want to encounter arguments about how bad putin and russia are you have basically the entire mainstream american media offering that angle. so while he acknowledges that putin very well may have had his hand in this he considers it irresponsible to stop there and not work to broaden the picture to show that this kind of behavior is precisely something that other western powers do all the time, including the us. not a lot of average people are aware of that and thus their perspective on international affairs is skewed against russia in accordance with ruling class ideology. it appears to me he considers it part of his journalistic agenda to correct what he thinks is a deliberately one-dimensional and hypocritical world-view painted about russia in which the role of the us is deliberately white-washed. what is more, he is some one who personally learned his lesson about the misinformation about Iraq that was propagated by the us media in concert with the bush administration and is thus particularly concerned that we are not lead into further conflicts by such roads.

 

you can certainly disagree with his assessment (I def do sometimes) and his tactics but he simply isn't pro-putin nor is he somehow trying rationalize or apologize for the russian regime. it seems that he is just trying to counterbalance what he sees to be a standard, lopsided view of russia that tends to come out of war-mongering channels in washington.

 

honestly, you can probably just email him and ask him what he thinks about Russia. i'm pretty sure we both know the answer.

Edited July 26, 2016 by Alcofribas

Limpy, try reading the article without your pre-conceived bias.

 

To paraphrase: Governments do this, and yes that includes the American government. Here is some evidence that the US government does this, and based on this evidence, it is safe to assume that other governments do this. Also, it's not a hedge, it's a statement of fact.

 

Now, you could argue the fact that this (influencing other states) has been a matter of statecraft since before the idea of nation states is beyond question, so I'm not sure why this is supposed to be a big revelation. However given what we know about the lead-up to the Iraq war and the "evidence" presented in support of that minor debacle (please read the words "minor debacle" with dripping sarcasm), suspicion is not unwarranted. The author does a good job of laying out what we know so far, and even indicates that all things point to Russian involvement.

 

There's no pro-putin bias in the article at all. There is some pro-Sanders/anti-Clinton stuff toward the end though.

 

I should just consult with chen before I post, he'll do a better job lol

Edited July 26, 2016 by Alcofribas

Nah, you doest musulman.

are Japanese Sunni muselmen properly referred to as Wasabi?

^^をロロ

笑

democrats formally nominate hillary clinton for president

 

https://youtu.be/vxObTM26Xtk

 

now suing trump campaign

  On 7/27/2016 at 12:52 AM, Nebraska said:

democrats formally nominate hillary clinton for president

 

kinda expected more trolling by bernie supporters, but it looks like it went relatively smooth in that regard, the trump scare is real i guess.

 

  Quote

 

The crowd erupted in cheers when South Dakota’s delegates cast their votes, putting Mrs. Clinton over the threshold for the nomination.

that's something i really don't get. getting climpton into the presidency is as exciting as installing a new graphics card driver or something, she barely even passes for human.

Edited July 27, 2016 by eugene

  On 7/26/2016 at 9:50 PM, chenGOD said:

Limpy, try reading the article without your pre-conceived bias.

 

To paraphrase: Governments do this, and yes that includes the American government. Here is some evidence that the US government does this, and based on this evidence, it is safe to assume that other governments do this. Also, it's not a hedge, it's a statement of fact.

 

Now, you could argue the fact that this (influencing other states) has been a matter of statecraft since before the idea of nation states is beyond question, so I'm not sure why this is supposed to be a big revelation. However given what we know about the lead-up to the Iraq war and the "evidence" presented in support of that minor debacle (please read the words "minor debacle" with dripping sarcasm), suspicion is not unwarranted. The author does a good job of laying out what we know so far, and even indicates that all things point to Russian involvement.

 

There's no pro-putin bias in the article at all. There is some pro-Sanders/anti-Clinton stuff toward the end though.

We're not talking about the author of that article, we're talking about "Greenwald et all".

 

If someone were to say to me (e.g.) "Hillary is a crook"

And I replied "yeah but so is Trump"

That would be me trying to minimize Hillary's crookedness by contrast/comparison...

 

If every time someone criticized Hillary

I replied with "yeah but Trump..."

What are the possible motivations behind that tendency? I think a reasonable person would eventually start to think "this person doesn't want Hillary's standing to fall, relative to Trump", no?

 

(I would call that bias, and I think most people would. And it doesn't even matter if the "yeah but" statement is factually correct: the fact that I brought it up out of nowhere every single time is the telling bit.)

 

Your explanation about this time doesn't account for all the other myriad times he's exhibited this "yeah but" linguistic tic (I will post other examples below if need-be)

When criticized for his coziness with Putin-backed RT, Greewald said:

 

"There is apparently a rule that says it’s perfectly OK for a journalist to work for a media outlet owned and controlled by a weapons manufacturer (GE/NBC/MSNBC), or by the U.S. and British governments (BBC/Stars & Stripes/Voice of America), or by Rupert Murdoch and Saudi Prince Al-Waleed Bin Talal (Wall St. Journal/Fox News), or by a banking corporation with long-standing ties to right-wing governments (Politico), or by for-profit corporations whose profits depend upon staying in the good graces of the U.S. government (Kaplan/The Washington Post), or by loyalists to one of the two major political parties (National Review/TPM/countless others), but it’s an intrinsic violation of journalistic integrity to work for a media outlet owned by the Russian government."

 

 

In other words: "yeah but America..."

Russia bombs a hospital, Greenwald uses it as an excuse to rant about American foreign policy:

 

https://theintercept.com/2015/10/03/one-day-after-warning-russia-of-civilian-casualties-the-u-s-bombs-a-hospital-in-the-war-obama-ended/

Please don't, we've gone over this all before, and no-one else here wants to see it again.

 

RE: that article you posted

He's condemning the US for bombing a hospital, after they criticize Russia for doing exactly that same thing. Hardly a rant.

 

Look here's why he does what he does

 

 

 

  Quote

Fixating on the rights abuses of distant governments while largely ignoring those committed by one's own does not only demonstrate the glaring insincerity of the purported beliefs. Far worse, it is an abdication of one's primary duty as a journalist and as a citizen: to oppose, first and foremost, the bad acts of one's own government.

 

To criticize the US is not the same thing as supporting Russia. This is not a difficult concept to understand.

The one time Greenwald mentioned Russia's anti-gay laws?

 

"Russia has awful anti-gay laws; therefore, Snowden should return to US, which imprisons whistleblowers for decades" - drooling jingosists

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) August 1, 2013

Chen, you tell me I have a bias, and so here I am defending my case

You clearly have an anti-Greenwald bias.

 

At the same time, Greenwald, who is very critical of American foreign policy, does not have a pro-Russia bias.