Democratic Party Presidential Candidates for 2020

[Salome]

Where would that be? Time magazine, The LA Times, The Guardian, The Independent, The Hill and The New York Times apparently.

It’s cute the way all you groupthink kids suddenly put so much value on media outlets when you think they support you. Otherwise it’s all about how they’re keeping your “real” candidates down.

The Time article is by the Libertarian Cato Institute douchebag who went around insisting that HRC was going to start bombing everyone if she got elected. He was part of that “Donald the Dove” pundit idiot brigade.

The LA Times article is about how Obama slashed the number of soldiers we have overseas by huge numbers and shifted our military to focus on technology and specialist engagements and how that was a mixed bag.

I’m starting to think none of you know what “warmonger” actually means.

 

[Soen Eber]

Yeah! Get another "heavy hitter" to enforce hivemind!

GET IT RIGHT!!

 

[Essence Lumin]

It’s cute the way all you groupthink kids suddenly put so much value on media outlets when you think they support you. Otherwise it’s all about how they’re keeping your “real” candidates down.

My point of linking those articles was in reference to your statement

When you hit the point where Obama is a warmonger and Putin is just a dude we have to work with, you’ve entered a dimension of nonsense where it’s impossible to engage you seriously.

If it is impossible to engage Cristalle seriously over such a statement I guess that is how you feel about all of those well known publications. No matter how you spin it, as The Guardian pointed out, Obama was at war longer than any other president in US history.

 

[Salome]

My point of linking those articles was in reference to your statement

Yet you don’t seem to grasp that linking articles that don’t prove your thesis is silly. Odd, that.

If it is impossible to engage Cristalle seriously over such a statement I guess that is how you feel about all of those well known publications.

Actually, yes. Since our fourth estate failed across the board in 2016, I’m far more skeptical about what news I take seriously. I check by-lines. I examine headlines vs the content of the articles. The banner on most publications is sadly just not worth what it used to be. As such I’ve changed where I gather my information from to focus mostly on activists, boots-on-the-ground reporters,as well as academics, and experts of credibility.

No matter how you spin it, as The Guardian pointed out, Obama was at war longer than any other president in US history.

Obama inherited wars, had to deal with a hostile Congress, and quite a bit of both intelligence community and military fuckery. Of course he made choices many of us disagree with. I’m sure he wishes he had a few choices back.

Again, I don’t think you know what a warmonger is.

 

[Cristalle]

US at war in 7 countries — including Niger; US Army rebuilds Afghan firebases; F-35s to India?; and just a bit more...

www.defenseone.com

Exploding the wars from 2 to 7

It’s cute the way all you groupthink kids suddenly put so much value on media outlets when you think they support you. Otherwise it’s all about how they’re keeping your “real” candidates down.

The Time article is by the Libertarian Cato Institute douchebag who went around insisting that HRC was going to start bombing everyone if she got elected. He was part of that “Donald the Dove” pundit idiot brigade.

The LA Times article is about how Obama slashed the number of soldiers we have overseas by huge numbers and shifted our military to focus on technology and specialist engagements and how that was a mixed bag.

I’m starting to think none of you know what “warmonger” actually means.

When Trump bombed a Syrian airfield the first time, Clinton bragged about how much farther she'd go. Never mind the fact that Syria never attacked us in 9/11, never mind that we were arming people to take out Assad and in on multiple sides there, and that we are there illegally. We started that conflict. It's lawlessness.

 

[Cristalle]

Oh fuck off with this nonsense.

This is completely uncalled for.

 

[Salome]

All the Ways Trump's Campaign was Aided by Facebook Ranked by Importance

There are better sources where academics share research that shows how the multi-million years-long efforts by Russia had more meaningful effects such as driving narratives, altering norms, motivating Americans into action by false events, etc. I remember this one being pretty good, but I need a nap and only scanned it, so if it’s not the one I remember I’ll try and dig it up.

How Russia Helped Swing the Election for Trump

A meticulous analysis of online activity during the 2016 campaign makes a powerful case that targeted cyberattacks by hackers and trolls were decisive.

www.newyorker.com

But it really doesn’t matter what you share. Once they’ve decided to believe Russia was no big deal despite all the evidence we already have, they’re not going to be swayed by pesky reality.

 

[Salome]

When Trump bombed a Syrian airfield the first time, Clinton bragged about how much farther she'd go.

Yes. She supported disabling all of Assad’s military airfields and said she regretted not pushing Obama harder on it. Funny how you leave off the part about where this was directly addressing horrific poison gas attacks and the threat of additional chemical weapon action.

 

[Eunoli]

I like how everyone has forgotten how horrified we were at the devastating human right's abuses that were going on in Syria at that time and how disappointed the majority of people were that we hadn't done more to stop it.

 

[Anya Ristow]

$100k is nothing.

One of the firms who gathered the social media data and reported to congress was New Knowledge. Its CEO, Jonathon Morgan, was suspended from facebook for spreading misleading info during the Alabama senate race between Doug Jones and Roy Moore. He created fake conservative pages on facebook and bought retweets to promote the pages. He also created false evidence that Russian twitter bots were backing Moore.

His budget for this "experiment" on a live election? $100K.

He characterized the amount spent as far too small to have had an effect. In reporting on it, the NYT repeated his characterization as fact.

 

[Cristiano]

Cristalle
Sorry I was so harsh, but to see you describe those who disagree with you as just participating in group think while those who agree with you are all enlightened free thinkers is absurd and insulting.

 

[GoblinCampFollower]

Yes. She supported disabling all of Assad’s military airfields and said she regretted not pushing Obama harder on it. Funny how you leave off the part about where this was directly addressing horrific poison gas attacks and the threat of additional chemical weapon action.

It does not immediately follow that our involvement would have saved more lives than it would have killed. I think Hilary's enthusiastic support of the Iraq invasion was indefensible and her support of regime change in Libya made me worry she didn't learn from the experience.

...That said, I still would prefer her aggression over the way Trump abandoned the kurds just now. I've long been very eager to attack her enthusiasm for war, but at least I feel very confident she wouldn't have fed great allies to the wolves.

I think Obama was a happy medium in that he wasn't as aggressive as Hilary, but also realized he couldn't just pull out of a war zone on a whim. I think Obama genuinely wanted to get us out of all conflicts, but wasn't willing to abandon people to do it.

 

[Salome]

It does not immediately follow that our involvement would have saved more lives than it would have killed. I think Hilary's enthusiastic support of the Iraq invasion was indefensible and her support of regime change in Libya made me worry she didn't learn from the experience.

I agree there’s no way to know if our involvement would have saved lives in the long run. There’s a reason I don’t seek out jobs where those kinds of decisions are on the line. I brought it up because the context mattered. It is shady as fuck to say she wanted to bomb more than Trump without the context of the horrific gas and chemical attacks that she was directly addressing and the fact that her goal wasn’t to bomb randomly but to remove the facilities that enabled the attacks. As for Iraq, if she’s disqualified for that position, then pretty much every political figure that was active at the time is, too, with the exception of a few like Barbara Lee. There were far, far too many people that were enthusiastic about going into Iraq. I remember how lonely it was to be against it before we knew Cheney/Bush had manufactured intel and lied on the national stage to get us into the war. I think the “enthusiasm” you mention is an eye-of-the-beholder issue, but it’s fair to say she’s more aggressive than your or I would be (which makes us minorities in the electorate). But that’s a very, very far cry from being a “warmonger” who willfully and deliberately instigates and goads military action. (I know you didn’t call her that, but that’s the context my previous posts were addressing).

I think Obama was a happy medium in that he wasn't as aggressive as Hilary, but also realized he couldn't just pull out of a war zone on a whim. I think Obama genuinely wanted to get us out of all conflicts, but wasn't willing to abandon people to do it.

When Obama was elected, my biggest concern was that he wouldn’t have enough political capital to assert authority over the military-industrial complex and I think that was unfortunately true. He thought he was going to be able to dismantle Gitmo, etc. But that was never going to happen. All the small steps he took in those directions have been completely reversed. When the reality of what he was up against sunk in, I think he shifted to a mindset of “if I can’t stop it, I can try to be smarter about it” and that was a mixed bag to say the least. But now we have the Greenwald spoon-fed left trying to morph that into “warmonger” ffs. It’s exhausting.

 

[Salome]

I’m not sure what good it will do, but just as a random reality check, the whole “Russians only spent $100k on Facebook ads, so it's no big deal” talking point is wrong on a massive scale. The $100k figure is based only on national ads only on Facebook, and only from the sources we’ve been able to identify so far. It doesn’t include the money spent on other social media formats like Twitter, having banks of people creating and engaging in organic content, the spies and operatives who used fake cover stories to observe our elections and harvest data, ops that we know targeted local elections, etc. The parts of the Mueller report we’ve seen indicate Russia spent years and at least $1.5 million per month on swinging the 2016 election for the GOP. That’s based only off what we’ve already found out. So I’m not sure if the 100k figure has become a talking point in misinformation campaigns or what, but it’s disturbing to see the enormity of the Russian operation (which is still ongoing) be reduced to just a few Facebook ads and memes.

 

[Free]

Oh fuck me.

Dick’s Sporting Goods CEO Reportedly Considering Third-Party Presidential Bid

Billionaire Ed Stack is mulling a third-party run, according to reports.

www.forbes.com

 

[Jolene Benoir]

Yes, as you wrote earlier Russia did not and is not putting its eggs in one basket. They were able to penetrate and possibly alter voter information (dunno if related, but my info was different after having voted at the same polling location for 25 years), they injected malicious SQL code into State and local election offices as well as the makers of voting machines, they funneled money via the NRA, they worked with Assange to release the DNC hack, they worked with Manafort to receive crucial polling data in four swing states (Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Minnesota), they worked with and/or received voter information via Cambridge Analytica, and of course used that data for targeted ads/postings on every social site such as Twitter, FB, Reddit, etc...You name it, the Internet Research Agency was on it.

Do we really believe that after such a successful operation and with not only the barn door left wide open now, but an invite and blocking of security measures that they wouldn't take it further, much further?

But sure, it's just some FB posts that only grandma shares, right?

 

[Cristalle]

Cristalle


Sorry I was so harsh, but to see you describe those who disagree with you as just participating in group think while those who agree with you are all enlightened free thinkers is absurd and insulting.

I'm not using such lofty terms, but I think that both side of this issue tend to think the same of the other.

 

[Cristalle]

Yes, as you wrote earlier Russia did not and is not putting its eggs in one basket. They were able to penetrate and possibly alter voter information (dunno if related, but my info was different after having voted at the same polling location for 25 years), they injected malicious SQL code into State and local election offices as well as the makers of voting machines, they funneled money via the NRA, they worked with Assange to release the DNC hack, they worked with Manafort to receive crucial polling data in four swing states (Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Minnesota), they worked with and/or received voter information via Cambridge Analytica, and of course used that data for targeted ads/postings on every social site such as Twitter, FB, Reddit, etc...You name it, the Internet Research Agency was on it.

Do we really believe that after such a successful operation and with not only the barn door left wide open now, but an invite and blocking of security measures that they wouldn't take it further, much further?

But sure, it's just some FB posts that only grandma shares, right?

I said that the parts I am most concerned about are the parts like the code and voting machines. I didn't say that Russia did nothing. I'm sure that they have had people here for decades. There are activities that we do need to be concerned about, but the free speech ones are much more difficult to deal with and measure their impacts. You can't make a direct translation between dollars spent on this and people who stayed home or voted third party.

 

[Essence Lumin]

Oh fuck me.

Dick’s Sporting Goods CEO Reportedly Considering Third-Party Presidential Bid

Billionaire Ed Stack is mulling a third-party run, according to reports.

www.forbes.com

I don't know who he thinks would vote for him. On the one hand he is according to the article, a major republican donor. On the other hand, getting rid of the guns at Dick's won't win him a lot of friends with the right wing nut crowd.

 

[Anya Ristow]

I'm shocked only that this is the first of these I've heard.