I don't get it

[Sociopathicsteelerfan]

(03-21-2017, 10:03 PM)fredtoast Wrote: Not one person said anything about "hacking an election".

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2016/12/14/heres-what-you-need-to-know-about-the-cias-assessment-into-russia-hacking-so-far/?utm_term=.eecb9aeb383d

[Benton]

Quote:Unfortunately I haven't seen Star Wars. And I understand what you're saying Benton but does that not sound like a lot of fear mongering to you? It's not completely impossible that Trump actually doesn't care about America but it's also not impossible that he does. I feel like the theory behind this whole "Trump-Russia-Collusion-Destroy Democracy" thing requires so many moving chess pieces and bouts of extreme strategy and luck that there's a very small chance that any of this could actually happen, assuming there's a real huge danger and lack of care for America to begin with.

To the bold, sorry for drawing the comparison. I thought that was one of those 'everybody has seen it' movies. I think you got what I was tossing out there, though. That Trump is basically out for Trump and the left and right are running in circles chasing each other while he loots the coffers.

I think it's been fairly obvious Trump doesn't care too much about America. Or the poor. Or minorities. Or white people. Or black people. Or men, or women. Or the students going to school or the elderly. I don't think he understands democracy enough to care one way or the other about it.

What Trump cares about is money and power. I don't think he's out to destroy America because that would require him to have some kind of interest in it. If you gave him the option of fixing all of the current problems and being a four-year president OR staying in power for eight years and only fixing his own problems, I have no doubt he'd chose the latter.

And for the first couple months he's gotten that opportunity. He's appointed incompetent, inappropriate people to powerful positions and used executive orders to benefit him directly and indirectly. That includes his friends who have piles of money to invest in his projects, and will stand to make more money off deals with Russia. But he hasn't gotten to the legislative balance side of it yet. And I don't think he's going to like that nearly as much. Legislators have to go back home at some point. They know how it's going to go over if they go back and tell poor voters they've just lost health insurance, assistance with heating bills, funding for public buildings and help with feeding their family, etc.

[*michaelsean*]

(03-22-2017, 11:09 AM)hollodero Wrote:  

It's not so much about fear, it's about seeing things as they are. We Europeans are quite aware about Russian policies and Russian propaganda attacks, you are in sheer denial, for whatever reason.
I have a hunch about that reason too: Democrats said Russian influence was a problem, so as a counter-reaction it really isn't and Putin is in fact America's friend. That's the complete line of thinking I ascribe to you, feel free to correct this.
 

"The 1980's called, they want their foreign policy back."

Now I laughed when W melted in Putin's deep blue eyes, but I don't remember Democrats laughing when Obama brushed aside Romney's concerns about Russia.

[Fan_in_Kettering]

Why would then Russians prefer Trump? Hillary gave them 20% of American uranium.

[Belsnickel]

(03-22-2017, 11:57 AM)Fan_in_Kettering Wrote: Why would then Russians prefer Trump? Hillary gave them 20% of American uranium.

Okay, first, that's a false claim. Second, Putin hates Clinton, see my first post in this thread. He doesn't like Trump, but he hates Clinton.

[GMDino]

(03-22-2017, 11:57 AM)Fan_in_Kettering Wrote: Why would then Russians prefer Trump?  Hillary gave them 20% of American uranium.

That's the kind of thing I'm talking about when I say people just read headlines and don't care about the story or the truth.

http://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/article/2017/feb/16/donald-trump-repeats-his-mostly-false-claim-about-/

Quote:"And by the way, it would be great if we could get along with Russia, just so you understand that. Now tomorrow, you’ll say ‘Donald Trump wants to get along with Russia, this is terrible.’ It’s not terrible; it’s good. We had Hillary Clinton try and do a reset. We had Hillary Clinton give Russia 20 percent of the uranium in our country. You know what uranium is, right? This thing called nuclear weapons and other things, like lots of things are done with uranium, including some bad things."


He repeated the 20 percent claim twice more.

It was almost word-for-word what Trump said while campaigning in Waukesha, Wis., in September 2016. He said then that Clinton "gave up 20 percent of America's uranium supply to Russia."

Our rating of that claim was Mostly False.

As we reported at the time:

Trump’s reference was to Russia’s nuclear power agency buying a controlling interest in a Toronto-based company. That company has mines, mills and tracts of land in Wyoming, Utah and other U.S. states equal to about 20 percent of U.S. uranium production capacity (not produced uranium).

Clinton was secretary of state at the time, but she didn’t have the power to approve or reject the deal. The State Department was only one of nine federal agencies that signed off on the deal, and only President Barack Obama had the power to veto it.

Go here to read that fact check.

This is why the wikileaks were effective.  People didn't read them...they just believed what Trump and the noise machines said about them.  It was the death of a thousand cuts....there was no way for the Clinton campaign to stay on topic and even TRY to get her message out when they had to constantly refute claims that were simply untrue...or at least spun to make them seem much worse than they were.

Why would Russia support Trump?

They probably own him.  Who knows how much money he has tied up with Russian banks?

Plus they knew they wouldn't get the easy breaks with Clinton who has a track record.  Trump can be easily manipulated by being flattered.

[*wildcats forever*]

(03-22-2017, 02:58 AM)Vas Deferens Wrote: You are probably right.  But in all honesty I voted 3rd party because of HRC's:

1.  Extended stay and statements in the race against Obama in 08, coupled with her pleading for funds to recoup the cost of those additional unnecessary expenses.
2.  The idea that 4 of the 5 last presiding presidents would share 2 names makes me want to pay a group of vagrants to defecate on everything I own and spend my days living in Belize on the insurance claim.
3.  Bernie was a far superior candidate and the way the DNC, specifically DWS did him dirty reinforced my belief these people do not have the people's best interest in mind, rather their own.  I had that opinion of the situation well before the DNC email leaks that semi-exposed what I already knew.

That being said I had the luxury of voting for Johnson due to my state being bluer than VD's region after a trip to the shoe show.

This was the main thing that drove me away from HRC, and I wasn't all that enthused about her before then because of your first two reasons. WTS, I still preferred her over Trump, and believed voting for anyone but her was a positive for Trump. Damned sad as that was ......

[Vas Deferens]

(03-22-2017, 02:13 PM)wildcats forever Wrote: This was the main thing that drove me away from HRC, and I wasn't all that enthused about her before then because of your first two reasons. WTS, I still preferred her over Trump, and believed voting for anyone but her was a positive for Trump. Damned sad as that was ......

Yup. Anyone was better than dumpf. Living in CO I had the luxury of knowing that I could vote 3rd party without essentially voting for dumpf.

[Dill]

(03-21-2017, 04:37 PM)bfine32 Wrote: I have a question. Does anybody think the leaks had a real bearing on the outcome of the election? I think folks minds were made up given her history of posting on her private server and the deletion of 1,000s of emails after she was told to turn them over.

I've always said she lost the election the moment she called 1/4 of the Nation's voting population deplorable.

In my view, the decades of negative Faux coverage are the primary reason the elections was close. The Clintons have long been subject to a double standard by rightward leaning voters and some in the middle.

Since it was a close election, especially in some of deciding states, it is very likely the Russians affected the outcome of the election.

The 1/4 "deplorables" were never going to vote for Hillary.  Why would that one remark would affect voters more that Trump's comments about fat women, Mexican rapists, and what celebrities can do to women?

The private server was a problem, certainly, but the alternative was still someone who knew nothing about government and didn't understand how that might be a problem, some one unfocused, unserious, offering quick fixes and magical resolutions. 

 

[Dill]

(03-22-2017, 11:57 AM)Fan_in_Kettering Wrote: Why would then Russians prefer Trump?  Hillary gave them 20% of American uranium.

Just to add something to what other posters have said: If you are Putin you are not a friend to the US, and you will be happier if the US has a weak leader.

Russians watching the debates had to notice Trump's lack of focus and understanding of policy. In the last debate he was completely thrown off his game, and ended just being rude and stewing in his own anger. 

Trumpsters might cheer and claim Trump won because he called Hillary a "nasty woman" in public.

But if you are Putin, you definitely want that guy sitting across the negotiation table from you, the guy who can be thrown off track and distracted and who doesn't have command of details--not Hillary.

Add to this the fact Trump appeared willing to damage US alliances and the kind of soft diplomacy which had so often put Russia at a disadvantage, and Trump would definitely be preferable. Remember he had millions of voters backing him on this.

The only negative--perhaps not a small one--would be that Trump could potentially disrupt the international economy in a manner that hurt Russia.

[Dill]

(03-22-2017, 09:42 AM)Matt_Crimson Wrote: I find it ironic that people who hate Trump accused him of fear mongering about ISIS as a way to get his travel ban pushed, yet here they are fear mongering about the big bad Russian guys that will infiltrate our democracy and destroy it by releasing information about the DNC scandal. Now, I'm not saying that the Russians don't have any ill will toward us whatsoever. I'm not even saying that the Russians don't want to increase their influence around the world considering we want the same thing. What I'm saying, is that all this Russian fear mongering of them destroying our democracy through the release of hacked emails is a bunch of over-exaggerated hooey when we are doing far more to destroy our own democracy through our own media and political attacks against one another. It's not like Russia conjured up and meticulously planned out and initiated some story about the DNC cheating its way to the elections. THIS ACTUALLY HAPPENED. Not because the Russians made it up, but because we, the Americans did it ourselves. But lets not talk about our self inflicting nature as Americans which is far more damaging than anything Russia has done. Lets just talk about how Vladmir Putin is possibly the antichrist ushering in the end of days. To me it's fear mongering to avoid our own faults.

But the Russian interference ACTUALLY HAPPENED as well, didn't it?  One can grant that Americans were "destroying themselves" or whatever, and still see this as a serious threat, can't one? 

It's like a foreign bank broke into your hometown bank where your savings are, maybe with complicity of one of your bank officers, in order to disrupt your banks services to improve theirs, but you are saying the relation of all your banks officers to each other was already dysfunctional, so it's laughable to worry about a break in when the bank officers were already damaging the bank themselves?