http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/20/us/politics/presidential-debate. html

And that's coverage from the supposedly "neutral" New York Times, not some shameless Democratic Party rag; you can find similar coverage coming out of every corporate fake news outlet from that time period. Even Fox News criticized Trump over that remark!

"The election results must be respected" isn't some obscure old narrative that one could be forgiven for flip-flopping on, either; it's not like dredging up McCarthyism and giving it a positive spin. This talking point happened in recent memory (less than two months ago), and all of the stories are still readily accessible to the public, none of them having been digitally memory-holed yet.

I don't know which would be worse. A Trump presidency, or perception that pressure from the left caused a Trump presidency to be cancelled at the last minute. Because invoking a practice that hasn't been a serious thing since well before you couldn't own black people in most of the country, to reverse an election in an already hyper-partisan environment, particularly when a group of prominent liberal media personalities put themselves forward as the figurehead seems like it could have severe negative repercussions.

I mean, maybe if Trump is the next Hitler it'd be worth it. I would just say though, that in my life Saddam, Milosevic, Bin Laden, Ahmadinejad, Putin, Assad, and now Trump have all been Hitler. I'm pretty sure none of them are Hitler. I will admit that maybe this is just going to wind up as the fable of the culture that lacked any real historic memory or ability to communicate without analogy or reference who cried Hitler.

Hitler was way more focused. Trump is in it for his ego, or that's what he wants everyone to think. I just hope the military is prepared to lock down the nukes or stand down if he gives them ridiculous orders, like annex Canada or some shit.

I'm kinda with Gravid here, though I think a lot depends on how peronalistic Trump wants to make his presidency or if his vile kids have any intention of following him. But in a country where millions and millions of people cold pass over at least a couple good-enough Repub candidates and vote for Donald Trump, we were going to end up with something like this eventually. Maybe once a few people get shot at an anti-Trump protest somebody's actually going to change their minds. But most countries get the leaders they deserve.

Without the Electoral College, the ageless Elder God who currently takes the form of George Soros would have been given free reign to wrap his wealth- and culture-draining tentacles around America by Hillary Clinton, his most faithful succubus. Whatever its origins, it ended up performing a very useful function. By inserting a boorish civic nationalist into the White House, it might even have saved a kicking and screaming America from itself.

Right, because we're SO much better off with a Putin lackey whose followers are already engaging in Brown Shirt behavior.

Also, do you want to really say "most faithful succubus" and then tell me that misogynist BernieBros are a myth?

If she's a succubus, she's not a very good one, because she definitely looks her age.

The Electoral college was ACTUALLY created to appease the Slaver states, who had a low voting population despite having a large overall population, and were agitating, claiming they'd be slaves themselves. This was pre CW, one of the measures intended to try and prevent it, or secession, from happening.

It failed, obviously, but stuck around regardless, as a continued measure to attempt to appease rural states and take a bit more control from the hands of the "rabble".

> If she's a succubus, she's not a very good one, because she definitely looks her age.

Look, kidfucker nocturno, we know you like 'em young, like, prepubescent young, but do you really have to make it this easy to point out?

We give a few hundred nobodies the power to elect the president. One of them is 19 years old. They technically have the power to vote for whoever they feel like but it would be a massive shitshow if more than a handful actually broke with the party. It's an insane system any way you look at it.

"Miss Henson's 6th grade class
Maybe once a few people get shot at an anti-Trump protest somebody's actually going to change their minds. "

I don't know, I think there's a statistically significant percentage of the population who can hardly wait for this t happen.

I don't think the Electoral Collage was a straight-up "industrial populous North versus a slaveowning South" compromise. That's anachronistic. The North didn't get all that industrial until well after 1812. At the time the Constitution was adopted the most populous state was Virginia. It really was a big state vs small state thing.

And even today, less populous states aren't necessarily richer or poorer. Vermont (small, Northern) is wealther per capita than California (big, Western) or Texas (big, Southern & Western), which are in turn wealthier than Tennessee (small, Southern). And none of those four are swing states!

The Electoral College is arbitrary and stupid, but not inherently eeeevil -- and of course there's a distant chance it could rescue democracy on Monday.

^^^

Ok so I've seen this joke a few times now, and it's clever, but there is a serious problem with it.

The traumatism that is the Trump Presidency HAS NOT HAPPENED YET. The stages of grief, if they are a valid construct, relate to dealing with the aftermath of a traumatism.

Furthermore, the stages of grief are best applied to trauma resulting from a non-ethical event, like a natural disaster or disease, or at least when the agent of the trauma is no longer present. When the agent of the trauma is still around and causing harm, dealing with your grief using that model seems very unhealthy.

Finally, given the above two points, the joke is extremely insensitive to the future victims of Trump. People are going to be deported, people are going to be victims of hate crime, the media's ability to inform the citizenry will be further reduced.

"Get over it" now is giving up before the fight has even begun.

On the other hand, they're pointing to stage 4, Depression. I can understand that; this election can be enough to cause a person to freeze up altogether.

Had they pointed to stage 1 ("Denial") or stage 3 ("Bargaining"), I'd see it as a joke about "ha ha, get a load of those people who haven't given up hope yet". But that's not where they went with it.

That more favourable interpretation makes sense Bort.

To be honest I googled "Kuber-Ross" and saw that it was the stages of grief thing, and didn't look at which stage was 4.

There's no way any other candidate is getting 270.

I think realistically the only thing it could do is make enough Republican electors vote "not Trump" to make him fall short of 270. In that case it goes to the house of representatives and establishment Republicans pick the next president.

Best case if that happens is that we still get a shitty president, but it causes enough of an uproar that the electoral college is finally done away with. Then it becomes a lot harder for Republicans to rig the election via targeted voter suppression in only 3 states.


(Apparently there are Democratic electors refusing to vote for Hilary. The Bernie base retardation extends even to them.)

Sadly, I'm not surprised about anything the BernieBros do; they worship a guy who sacrifices Christian infants. And by the way, I'm not being anti-Semitic when I say that.

(Since people have trouble figuring this out lately: I am Doing A Thing analogous to Void71 calling Hillary a "succubus" even though Hillary's foes all swear up and down that they aren't motivated by misogyny.)

'Also, do you want to really say "most faithful succubus" and then tell me that misogynist BernieBros are a myth?'


"How Clinton lost Michigan — and blew the election"


http://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/michigan-hillary-clinton -trump-232547


Succubi are attractive & clever. Hillary is a most likely a Vrock.

Bort would rather Trump be President than Bernie, if those were the only two options.

No; because I'm not a broken piece of crap, I would have supported whichever Democratic candidate won the primaries. Come the general election, the pressing goal has to be keeping Republicans out of office. I've been saying this for years.

Don't try to project your brokenness on me.

I voted for Hillary twice this year, with pride. Right now I support ANYONE with the ovaries to oppose Trump: Bernie, Hillary, Barack, the CIA, Michael Bloomberg.

Shame that Bort is not one of those people. He just said: "I think Bernie supporters are racist anti-semites... and I'd have joined them if he won the primary." That's even shabbier than Mitt Romney, who can at least justify HIS selling-out as a failed attempt to moderate the new Cabinet.

Hm, on further consideration I am being too mean to Bort, whose heart is i. The right place. I can't say that Trump-haters should unite then immediately focus my anger on him. Sorry about that.

By the same token I *would* like to see you go easier on the Bernie voters. But in any case you're all right in my book.

Thanks man! I thought maybe you misunderstood me.

I have no real problem with Bernie supporters who were willing to vote for Hillary because that's the responsible thing; you're right, I should do better bearing them in mind. But those who didn't vote Hillary -- and those who did and do demonstrate genuine signs of misogyny -- do not deserve benefit of the doubt.

Also I was a jerk to you and I apologize. I too have some choice in these matters, and I chose to be a jerk.

Hard not to bite at each other -- these times are frustrating as hell. :-)

I just watched the "Community" rerun where Jeff and Annie were running for student president, and man, it stings. Jeff's goal was to prove that politics is stupid and a man talking in empty platitudes can beat a hard-working woman with actual ideas. He even accused her of believing she was "entitled" to be student president.

This country is Greendale.

If Hilldawg had won there wouldn't be a mountain of evidence that the next president was installed there by the fucking Russians.

But one thing I've learned in the past month is that people fucking adore their false equivalences and will twist themselves into any ridiculous shape to preserve them.

>>If Hilldawg had won there wouldn't be a mountain of evidence that the next president was installed there by the fucking Russians.

What's the evidence?

I totally agree with you re: the false equivalences (it was odd seeing people who were so worked up about Pussygate get so nonchalant about Hillary's emails, the Russia-baiting, and her track record in the state department), but I'm not sure what to think about this "mountain of evidence" regarding America's hottest new conspiracy theory - which, as near as I can tell, amounts to unsourced celebrity speculation, and a provably false claim, by Ms Clinton, in regards to the 17 intelligence agencies. Even Joe McCarthy had the decency to carry around an actual honest-to-god list of known Russian operatives, so I'm genuinely curious as to what else I've missed.

"genuinely curious"

On the off-chance that you're being sincere, I just Googled for "russia election evidence". It wasn't hard. First link is an article from Time magazine:

http://time.com/4600177/election-hack-russia-hillary-clinton-d onald-trump/

From the final paragragh: "The private firms admit their open source evidence is not conclusive, but say in the world of cyber-attribution, this is close to as good as it gets. Those familiar with the classified evidence say there is even more convincing information that has not been released."

By the way, the incredible ease with which I found this information, yet you were somehow unable to find it for yourself, suggests that the biggest problem here isn't Putin. It's voters just like you, who are too lazy to do even the basic research before forming your opinions.

There was a time when, if a person wanted to be informed, they'd pick up Time or Newsweek or the local paper. There's a good chance they'd get an imperfect grasp of the news, but it was a start, and the great promise of the Internet was that a person could research further to fill in the gaps. But instead, people have gotten lazier, unwilling to pursue facts and instead satisfying themselves with whatever "news" fell into their Inbox.

Voter laziness is totally the prime culprit. We have greater access to information right now than ever before in human history; there's no excuse not to fucking fact-check shit when it usually takes less than a minute.

That's why, if it's a widely discussed topic like this (a more obscure topic is a different story) I'll happily tell people going "WHERE'S YOUR EVIDENCE?" to blow it out their asses. You could have found it yourself in the time it took you to write that, and if you did, maybe your dumb ass would get some much-needed fact checking experience. Even leaders within Trump's own party are calling for an investigation into Putin's tampering now, and their threshold for evidence is so sky-high that some of them still think the ice caps are only melting because a cow in Peru farted.

Right, so in other words - you have no evidence.

I have looked into this matter before, Mr Bort, and your source is pretty much representative of the arguments put forth by Hillary's Tinfoil Hat Brigade. When even the sources which claim to support this "Trump is a Russian agent" conspiracy theory freely admit that there is no evidence to support said conspiracy theory - just a slim trail of circumstance, coincidence, and speculation - I can't imagine how anyone (who has read further than the headlines) could walk away from this story with the impression that there is a "mountain of evidence" to support it.

And that's just the start. Just as with those PizzaGate lunatics, this RedScare 2.0 that has sprung up from the ashes of Hillary's campaign is riddled with narrative inconsistencies and gross failures in reason. For example, why would it MATTER who was behind the hacks? The content of the hacks, and what they reveal about both the DNC and the American system as a whole, is FAR more important than any bickering over mere provenance (particularly in light of the fact that we are well-past the DNC being able to deny the veracity of the leaks). And even, assuming for the sake of argument, if those darn Commies were indeed behind this attack (and not one of the recently-murdered DNC staffers), and were indeed trying to "influence" our election - well, so what? What is the philosophical principle we are operating under here? Is our principle that elections, perhaps even the people's opinions in general, SHOULD NOT be under the influence of powerful outside groups that have biases or vested interests in certain areas? Well, if that's our principle, then why are we not taking up arms against lobbyists, George Soros, or the corporate media itself?! "Russian hackers" may or may not have tried to swing the election by revealing truths to the American public, but Time Magazine has provably tried to swing elections for the better part of a century now. We certainly can't condemn the Russians but not Time - so what do we do? Go after both? Go after neither?

Oh, and don't even get me started on the CIA - one of only two intelligence agencies to actually speculate on this matter - and THEIR track record with rigging elections! Perhaps instead of jumping on the AMAZING EVIDENCE 100% PROOF (which is literally "somebody may have hacked the DNC with a piece of software that this dude I know says a Russia IP used once!"), the employees of America's opinion industry could be discussing subjects like whistle blower rights, political censorship laws, and the possible assassination of Julian Assange...?

"genuinely curious"

I was right to have my doubts.

No, I *was* genuinely curious. I had hoped that maybe you guys knew something I did not; hoped that, perhaps, new information had arisen, namely some actual evidence which supports the DNC conspiracy theory. The alternative was that you two were either a) uninformed, or b) aware of the current state of the publicly-disclosed evidence (i.e. nothing), and chose to willfully misrepresent the strength of the Truther's case.

I still am curious. If you've got anything better - or rather, if you can FIND anything better in the coming days or weeks - I'd love to hear about it!

Well we aren't doing the investigation, EH, so no we don't have access to the log files and other forensics. What we do have, out here in the cheap seats, is a number of curious facts.

1) Donald Trump burned American and European banks so many times, they stopped loaning him money. He has for many years been using Russian and Chinese banks.

2) He refuses to release his financial records, so we don't know how much in debt to said entities he is. No president has done this in our lifetimes.

3) His choice for secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, recently inked a 500 billion dollar oil exploration deal with russia. This earned him a "friend of putin" award, apparently the equivalent of our Presidental medal of freedom? There is a problem though. Due to US sanctions, the deal can't be acted on.

4) The DNC was hacked. But more importantly, perhaps crucially, SO WAS THE RNC. But only the DNC information was leaked.

So the culprit, whoever it was, clearly wanted the republican candidate to win, and also has a big stash of material that they can release to fuck the winner over if they need to control him. If just the DNC was hacked, I'd suspect the RNC of course. But that's not the case, both were. And our winner? He has substantial business interests in russia, as do his oily friends, which will be greatly aided by the dropping of sanctions.

I think what you need to do, EH, if you want to make any headway here, is to come up with a more compelling argument for another actor. Please do not waste our time "logically proving" that there is no connection between any of the facts I have laid out. For we KNOW that the DNC and the RNC were hacked. Someone did it. We have suspects. You need to pick one, and assemble the facts to prove guilt. I don't want to hear from you how russia is innocent because nothing connects to anything else (logic!) , I want to hear how whoever you think did it is guilty.

I'll be happy to build up the putin narrative, it's really a compelling one and ties a great many horrible old facts together. Frankly, I was joking not more than a few months ago about Don being the Manchurian Candidate, but after Tillerson, I'm beginning to think it's not a joke. Dude is looking like a dumpster fire at this point. Even the fucking republicans are asking questions. I've never, in my entire life, seen that happen. Ever. I suggest this is worth considering.

..although I guess in this case, it would be the Kremlinian Kandidate?

China would be #2 suspect, but you see how much trouble Don is causing them. If any of his cabinet swing East, I've yet to hear of it. Guy in underwear in basement is a distant #3: possible but highly unlikely given the consequences of doing this without State support. We kill people with drones for a lot less.

Thanks to OscarWildcat for taking the time to write what I've been too lazy to write.

EH is wont to claim that people have no evidence such that journalism in NY Times or the Washington Post doesn't count as evidence. Well, EH if you're going to claim those news sources are not reliable sources of evidence, then the burden is on you to make that case--not merely make the case for an alternative narrative, as OscarWildcat suggests--but make the case for why we should think NYT and WP are not reliable sources.

This is a tall order for you, EH. You cannot simply point to articles that were published in NYT or WP that turned out to be wrong and then claim that _every_ article is wrong. Every person can be wrong, that's trivial and doesn't make your case. You have to show why particular articles and particular claims are wrong. And again, this does not mean being skeptical of anonymous sources--if you want to take issue with anonymous sources, perhaps insinuating the source is made up, you need to frame your argument within the history and tradition of anonymous sources, explain where or not you think all anonymous sources or some are illegitimate within that history, then show why and how a particular journalist was motivated to make up a source, then you need to provide hard evidence that the journalist in question actually made up the evidence.

EH, you get lost the logical space of possibility; you'd do better finding your way in the space of likelihood.

Simon - it's not ME who is claiming there is no good evidence. It's TIME MAGAZINE who is claiming there is no good evidence. I have not now (nor do I believe I have ever) "claimed that the NY Times or Washington Post does not constitute evidence"; quite the contrary, I have accepted what outlets like the New York Times and Washington Post have posted *as true*, and pointed out the logical consequences of their very own words. You can read the article for yourself in the link which Mr Bort so helpfully provided!



Mr Wildcat - thank you! You are always a breath of fresh air, my friend, and I would hope that Messrs. Bort, Xenocide, et al would take some lessons from you on how-to-formulate-an-argument.

Unfortunately, you are incorrect. Or at least, your arguments are insufficient in regards to the subject at hand.

First, while I did enjoy the enumerated points you raise, they are problematic on the following counts: (a) you have not provided any *evidence*, simply speculation on *motive*, and (b) each of the points which you have raised has at least one curious counterpart with the pro-Clinton / pro-Establishment camp. For example:
1) the United States government (and thus the establishment which Ms Clinton purports to represent) has, provably, a far bigger debt to the Chinese than Mr Trump ever will.
2) the Clinton Foundation has failed to disclose it's full financial records, which is especially problematic, given the sheer amount of corruption allegations, embezzlement allegations, and yes even foreign government pay-for-play allegations (which, if even part of them were true, would dwarf any potential foreign conflicts-of-interest Trump might have potentially accrued)
3) Half of the US stock of fissile uranium was sold to Russia under Hillary Clinton's watch, possibly in exchange for kickbacks to the Clinton Foundation.
4) Do you have evidence for this? Can you prove that the RNC was hacked, and if so, can you prove it was by the same group? And did Wikileaks ever receive that information?

Does this mean that HILLARY CLINTON is working for the Russians? And the Russians are trying to help Hillary STEAL THE ELECTION? Of course not: there is only speculation on motive here, no evidence.


The second problem is that you have failed to address my OTHER points, which were, briefly:
i) that the content of the leaks is what matters, not the provenance of them (i.e. the truth is never our enemy), and
ii) that even if this conspiracy theory were true (as the previous McCarthy witchhunt was later proven to be), there are no obvious philosophical or ethical principles here which would allow us to condemn Russia's behavior while, at the same time, exonerating other groups who do the same - groups like billionaire Foundations, the corporate media, or the CIA.

Furthermore, Mr Wildcat, since I do not hold out any hope at all of getting a sensible response from my esteemed colleague Mr SolRo, I would also love to hear your own take on this dramatic reversal of the "the Election Results must be respected!!!" narrative, which was all the rage on corporate media outlets during the Presidential debates.

Here again is the link I posted:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/20/us/politics/presidential-deb ate. html

And, with best regards to Mr Bort, a particularly ironic article from (ugh) that bastion of fifth-grade reading material, Time Magazine:

http://time.com/4532679/donald-trump-election-rigged/

Oh, I agree on the second point. I urge democrats to accept that the republican party won the election. This question was put to the President today directly, and he claims that the russian interference stopped after direct discussion with Putin, this before the election.

On the first point, you're positing that Hillary Clinton hacked herself, eh? Well it's an internally consistent position, just like pizzagate. It's choice of postulates is insane, as always, EH. You're living the handle, my friend. Have a donut.

BTW, did you listen to the presser today? Hopey went to town, it was pretty fantastic. Remember that dude we all voted for? Well his head popped up again briefly. "30% of republicans approve of the actions of the former head of the KGB, and see him as less of a threat than the Democrats. Ronald Reagan would be rolling in his grave!". We'll not soon hear the likes of that from the White House.

>> On the first point, you're positing that Hillary Clinton hacked herself, eh?

I'm not suggesting that, no. I'm using it to help illustrate the point that there is a problem with relying on speculation-about-motive, rather than actual, empirical fact. Trump has plenty of motive to want to rig the election, so does Russia. So does Hillary, so does the DNC, so does Soros, so do these celebrities, so do the Egyptians, so does George Bush, so does Bort. Hell, even the PizzaGaters have a valid point when they state that SOME people are pedophiles, and pedophiles would not wish to be caught - but the question isn't whether pedophiles exist or even whether the people in question are pedophiles themselves, it's whether the specific allegations being made regarding pizzeria-sponsored sex trafficking have any good evidence behind them, showing that they are true.

And no, I did not listen to the presser, but given the way Minitrue continues to flip everyone's values and perceptions around (and at such an alarming rate!), it wouldn't surprise me in the least.

Given all the absurd nonsense and the rapidity with which it flies at us these days, I can't help but be reminded of the following passage:


----------
In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend — but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.

The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''
----------

Do you think it's any accident that partisans of both the Clinton/Bush Alliance and the Trump Resistance have taken to embracing the term "post-truth"?

"Sometimes, the only option is to let a fire run its course."

What if the cat couldn't get out?

Wait a few weeks, get one with identical markings and tell the kids it came back.

If they say it's acting weird, tell them it was traumatized and some odd behavior is to be expected.