13 Russians, 3 businesses indicted by Mueller/Rosenstein in connection to Trump

[KingVamp]

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I see a lot of people in those comments throwing around the 4.2% gdp growth rate. How reliable is this number? It seems the deficit is raising and there are already talks about welfare cuts. Who is benefiting from this growth?

 

[Taleweaver]

If the anonymous op-ed in the NYT yesterday showed anything, it's that there really is an entrenched sabotage operation being conducted within the Federal bureaucracy.

Either that, or the anonymous author is full of shit and lies.

Which is it?

If you ask me: neither.

Look...this might sound really harsh on fans of Donald Trump, but really: he is absolutely inadequate for the duty. And the thing that his voters have problems getting through their thick skull is that this is not because he is hindered by his political enemies (EVERYONE is hindered by political enemies, no matter what side you're on...it's a straight-up given in politics, even though Trump acts like he's the first president ever who had people with conflicting opinions) but because he had no political experience whatsoever when starting the job. And as much as he thinks otherwise: he doesn't have a talent for it. At all.


Let's take an example from Woodward's book: after the chemical attack in Syria, Trump's reaction to Mattis was "Let's kill <Syrian President Bashar al-Assad>" (source).
I'm not a strategist or even militia, but acting directly on emotion like that is a recipe for disaster. Like it or not, Syria has strong allies. Flat out killing someone in another country instantly loses all diplomatic ties you might need and even turns allies in fearful doubt.

So Mattis's refusal isn't so much an "entrenched sabotage operation" as it is serving America over the acts of the president of America. And that should be, because that is really what separates a president from a dictator.

And to get back to that "deep state" source...is it really news? If you look at Trump's tweets and compare it to America's actions, there is (luckily) quite some disparity. I mean...I made a joke earlier about him throwing nukes at people laughing at his hair, but I honestly think that the chance of that really happening is something that scares the rest of the white house to death. And what other option do they have? Quit the job and be replaced by someone with less of a conscience? Openly disagree and be equally replaced with someone with less of a conscience? Or just stay on board and secretly hope that someone finally dares to call in an impeachment procedure?

 

[KingVamp]

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I know his is shorter, but I wanted to show the contrast here.

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If you want to go straight to Obama's speech, skip the first 5mins.

 

[Xzi]

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I know his is shorter, but I wanted to show the contrast here.

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If you want to go straight to Obama's speech, skip the first 5mins.

I had already almost forgotten what it felt like to have a president who speaks in complete sentences. Even GWB was a master orator in comparison to Trump, though.

 

[KingVamp]

This puts a huge smile on my face. lol

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[Joe88]

Nazis are bad. Now try saying “Radical Islam...” https://t.co/2jS4b8OgwJ

— Robert J. O'Neill (@mchooyah) September 7, 2018

 

[TotalInsanity4]

https://twitter.com/mchooyah/status/1038129278871846918

You know the funny thing is that I think you'd have a hard time finding someone who wouldn't condemn "radical Islamic" extremist terrorism. It's when people start saying that all Muslims have at least the potential to be terrorists that I think you'll (rightfully) meet some heavy opposition

 

[Lacius]

https://twitter.com/mchooyah/status/1038129278871846918

Nazi is a term we should all be able to agree is bad. Radical Islam is a buzz term meant to equivocate terrorism and Islam, and it's used by people who already conflate the two. It's reasonable to not want to be seen as doing the same.

Right-wing terrorism by white men is also a far bigger problem in this country than Islamic terrorism. Perhaps we should start using the terms radical white, radical Christian, or radical conservative.

 

[Deleted User]

You're a few hundred articles behind if you're just now reading the first one, and that stuff is all but confirmed, as well as corroborated by all the US intelligence agencies. The charges have moved much closer to Trump himself at this point, there's not a whole lot you can do against individuals outside of the country who have committed crimes against us.

Sorry for taking so long to reply, I was on vacation

Anyway, you misunderstood my statement, I was saying that I don't think they could have influenced the election to the point that it would have changed the outcome. Not that it never happened. Hillary lost because she was Hillary, plain and simple. A Russian hacker did not jump out of the computer screen to force me to vote for Trump. I voted for Trump because the alternative would've been so much worse.

 

[Lacius]

Sorry for taking so long to reply, I was on vacation

Anyway, you misunderstood my statement, I was saying that I don't think they could have influenced the election to the point that it would have changed the outcome. Not that it never happened. Hillary lost because she was Hillary, plain and simple. A Russian hacker did not jump out of the computer screen to force me to vote for Trump. I voted for Trump because the alternative would've been so much worse.

Nobody is arguing that the Russian meddling occurred in a vacuum. There were a lot of other factors, not the least of which being Secretary Clinton's general unpopularity. However, the Russians clearly influenced the election, and considering Trump's narrow Electoral College victory, it's more likely than not that the Russians tipped the election enough in Trump's favor that he won.

This is all ignoring very real concerns that the Russians coordinated with the Trump campaign when it came to the dissemination of hacked emails and other election-meddling techniques.

 

[NZ_reg]

Personally, I don't believe that Russia is powerful enough to make any noticeable interference into foreign elections. But that would be extremely satisfying to give America their own medicine.

 

[Lacius]

Personally, I don't believe that Russia is powerful enough to make any noticeable interference into foreign elections. But that would be extremely satisfying to give America their own medicine.

They have more than enough power to interfere in foreign elections. We know what they did and roughly how many voters they affected.

 

[KingVamp]

I don't know how true this is and I can't find another source talking about it, but...

http://wikipediawehaveaproblem.com/...r-trolls-tweets-trails-and-trump-before-2015/

 

[dAVID_]

I don't know how true this is and I can't find another source talking about it, but...

http://wikipediawehaveaproblem.com/...r-trolls-tweets-trails-and-trump-before-2015/

News that's only talked about on one site usually means one of these:

• The article is fake news.
• The article is very new.
• The article doesn't have enough evidence to support it.

I think it's 1 and 3 most of the time.

 

[TotalInsanity4]

Nobody is arguing that the Russian meddling occurred in a vacuum. There were a lot of other factors, not the least of which being Secretary Clinton's general unpopularity. However, the Russians clearly influenced the election, and considering Trump's narrow Electoral College victory, it's more likely than not that the Russians tipped the election enough in Trump's favor that he won.

This is all ignoring very real concerns that the Russians coordinated with the Trump campaign when it came to the dissemination of hacked emails and other election-meddling techniques.

So curious, but why would you say Hillary would have been "so much worse"? What would you say influenced your opinion most towards that viewpoint?

 

[Xzi]

Anyway, you misunderstood my statement, I was saying that I don't think they could have influenced the election to the point that it would have changed the outcome. Not that it never happened. Hillary lost because she was Hillary, plain and simple. A Russian hacker did not jump out of the computer screen to force me to vote for Trump. I voted for Trump because the alternative would've been so much worse.

It wasn't as simple as just hacking the election (though several individual states did report their election systems were hacked). They used a combination of tactics including a massive social media manipulation campaign, hacking the DNC, and they helped Trump against not only Hillary but his challengers in the primary as well. It's also worth keeping in mind that the final difference in votes needed to win the electoral college was only ~80,000 across two states. Ignoring Russia for a moment, 5% of Trump voters say they would've changed their vote if Trump's porn star affair had been made public during the campaign, but that alone would've been enough to flip the election to Hillary. It's foolhardy to believe that Russia couldn't also have manipulated at least 5% of the vote in the direction they wanted. Especially because every US intelligence agency is on the record stating that's exactly what they did.

 

[Lacius]

So curious, but why would you say Hillary would have been "so much worse"? What would you say influenced your opinion most towards that viewpoint?

You quoted the wrong person.

 

[TotalInsanity4]

You quoted the wrong person.

Whoops, you're right

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Sorry for taking so long to reply, I was on vacation

Anyway, you misunderstood my statement, I was saying that I don't think they could have influenced the election to the point that it would have changed the outcome. Not that it never happened. Hillary lost because she was Hillary, plain and simple. A Russian hacker did not jump out of the computer screen to force me to vote for Trump. I voted for Trump because the alternative would've been so much worse.

So curious, but why would you say Hillary would have been "so much worse"? What would you say influenced your opinion most towards that viewpoint?

 

[Deleted User]

So curious, but why would you say Hillary would have been "so much worse"? What would you say influenced your opinion most towards that viewpoint?

Hillary being a pathological liar for one. Another was that I hated her policies. And my own conservative bias.

I'm not saying Trump is amazing, or even good. But when he lies, there's reasoning behind it.

Hillary lies 'just because'.

At the very least Trump is somewhat competent in politics and business, and he's generally not going to lie for no good reason.

Hillary is just... bad.

I'm not the kind of conservative who'll bash the democrat party against the wall, and I'll even readily admit there are lots of smart people on their side who can think up some genuinely good policies. If a democrat was running for president with policies I agree with, I'd readily throw my vote at that guy.

Even if she had great policies that were guaranteed to work, I still wouldn't trust her. She has repeatedly shown an inability to tell the truth, even when facts are staring her in the face and it would be more beneficial to tell the truth.

It wasn't as simple as just hacking the election (though several individual states did report their election systems were hacked). They used a combination of tactics including a massive social media manipulation campaign, hacking the DNC, and they helped Trump against not only Hillary but his challengers in the primary as well. It's also worth keeping in mind that the final difference in votes needed to win the electoral college was only ~80,000 across two states. Ignoring Russia for a moment, 5% of Trump voters say they would've changed their vote if Trump's porn star affair had been made public during the campaign, but that alone would've been enough to flip the election to Hillary. It's foolhardy to believe that Russia couldn't also have manipulated at least 5% of the vote in the direction they wanted. Especially because every US intelligence agency is on the record stating that's exactly what they did.

The electoral college is independent of the popular vote. How the results are reported and how EC members talk with each other is a closely guarded federal secret. Not even the Russian government can pierce a closed system like this, no matter how much they want to.

All of the tactics you're talking about were designed to increase Trumps popular vote, which doesn't make much sense seeing as how trump LOST the popular vote.

 

[Glyptofane]

The Slimes article is fake, I'm assuming anyway. If it is real, well, pretty shallow really.

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This puts a huge smile on my face. lol

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I found him very funny also.