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Calling it now: Dems snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in 2016.

Started by Doktor Howl, August 04, 2015, 12:19:20 AM

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Cain

NATO's been on Trump's shit list for a while.  Along with many other US military allies.

Yes, certain European countries don't keep to the spending limit that NATO should.  But some (ahem Greece, France, Poland, Turkey) also overspend.  Does that balance out in the long run?  Eh, couldn't say. 

The point is, everything Trump has been saying suggests he wants to return to an Imperial Athens style of tributary alliances, wherein other nations pay America what is essentially protection money in order to benefit from American military power.  There's a reason the world has, by and large, rejected that form of alliance system in the current period.

Junkenstein

It may be worth noting that the term "tribute" has seen increasing use in political senses. It goes without saying that there's multiple implications with such a term.

And thanks, I've not been worried enough about Trump until recently. We're firmly in the strange times now and I'm only expecting increasingly odd and horrible things to occur.
Nine naked Men just walking down the road will cause a heap of trouble for all concerned.

Prelate Diogenes Shandor

Quote from: LMNO on July 21, 2016, 12:43:52 PM
Weird of me to say this, but I'm really glad Trump is the nominee.

Cruz' speech last night showed that he'd have been a real threat, rhetorically, against Clinton.  Scariest thing I heard all night.

I read an article about his speech. Didn't he accuse the Democrats of doing all the horrible things the Republicans have been doing (telling you who to marry, telling you what to believe, etc.)
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrTGgpWmdZQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVWd7nPjJH8


It is an unfortunate fact that every man who seeks to disseminate knowledge must contend not only against ignorance itself, but against false instruction as well. No sooner do we deem ourselves free from a particularly gross superstition, than we are confronted by some enemy to learning who would plunge us back into the darkness -H.P.Lovecraft


He who fights with monsters must take care lest he thereby become a monster -Nietzsche


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Q. G. Pennyworth

I want you all to know that if you never hear from me again I've had a hate aneurysm after listening to Trump's speech before bed. Every single republican who cheered for "protecting the lives of LGBT Americans" while enthusiastically supporting bathroom bills that put the lives of trans people in immediate danger can choke to death on every toy bad dragon produces. I hate them all.

The Wizard Joseph

Quote from: Q. G. Pennyworth on July 22, 2016, 04:02:16 AM
I want you all to know that if you never hear from me again I've had a hate aneurysm after listening to Trump's speech before bed. Every single republican who cheered for "protecting the lives of LGBT Americans" while enthusiastically supporting bathroom bills that put the lives of trans people in immediate danger can choke to death on every toy bad dragon produces. I hate them all.

I'm not sure what this means exactly, but I like it!
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LMNO

Quote from: The Wizard Joseph on July 22, 2016, 08:02:33 AM
Quote from: Q. G. Pennyworth on July 22, 2016, 04:02:16 AM
choke to death on every toy bad dragon produces. I hate them all.

I'm not sure what this means exactly, but I like it!

I'm guessing dildoes.

POFP

Quote from: LMNO on July 22, 2016, 01:00:03 PM
Quote from: The Wizard Joseph on July 22, 2016, 08:02:33 AM
Quote from: Q. G. Pennyworth on July 22, 2016, 04:02:16 AM
choke to death on every toy bad dragon produces. I hate them all.

I'm not sure what this means exactly, but I like it!

I'm guessing dildoes.

The ones that release the eggs inside? Hence "Dragon?" Because I'd pay to see that.
This Certified Pope™ reserves the Right to, on occasion, "be a complete dumbass", and otherwise ponder "idiotic" and/or "useless" ideas and other such "tomfoolery." [Aforementioned] are only responsible for the results of these actions and tendencies when they have had their addictive substance of choice for that day.

Being a Product of their Environment's Collective Order and Disorder, [Aforementioned] also reserves the Right to have their ideas, technologies, and otherwise all Intellectual Property stolen, re-purposed, and re-attributed at Will ONLY by other Certified Popes. Corporations, LLC's, and otherwise Capitalist-based organizations are NOT capable of being Certified Popes.

Battering Rams not included.

LMNO

I think the ovipositor dilodes are more "Alien" and less "Dragon".

But hey, google "Bad Dragon" and browse the products at your convenience.

POFP

Quote from: LMNO on July 22, 2016, 01:33:17 PM
I think the ovipositor dilodes are more "Alien" and less "Dragon".

But hey, google "Bad Dragon" and browse the products at your convenience.

Oh yeahhhhh...

Also, can't really at the moment as I'm at work. Only reason I asked.  :oops:
This Certified Pope™ reserves the Right to, on occasion, "be a complete dumbass", and otherwise ponder "idiotic" and/or "useless" ideas and other such "tomfoolery." [Aforementioned] are only responsible for the results of these actions and tendencies when they have had their addictive substance of choice for that day.

Being a Product of their Environment's Collective Order and Disorder, [Aforementioned] also reserves the Right to have their ideas, technologies, and otherwise all Intellectual Property stolen, re-purposed, and re-attributed at Will ONLY by other Certified Popes. Corporations, LLC's, and otherwise Capitalist-based organizations are NOT capable of being Certified Popes.

Battering Rams not included.

Freeky

Yep, they're a sex toy company.  And apparently based out of Arizona.

Junkenstein

On a slightly different note, I think I've figured out what is making this election cycle so grim for me. In short, it's essentially a massive campaign against the other from every perspective. There's very little Pro-Clinton/Trump propaganda kicking around compared to the swathes of anti-clinton/trump crap. It's not been about any of their possible plus points, just how much worse the other one will be/is.

It's actually pretty worrying as who-ever wins will just keep on shouting that it would be so much worse with the other in charge. Depending on various choices and multiple events beyond anyones control, the repeat of this in 3 years or so will probably just be even worse.


In other news, there's a few interviews kicking around of journalists interviewing trump delegates about how THE WALL will be constructed, what it will look like, etc. Answers range from "Just like the Great wall of china" to "It's a metaphor" and most structures in between. If anything of this sort actually occurs, it's going to be graft and corruption on a scale previously unimaginable to humankind.

Nine naked Men just walking down the road will cause a heap of trouble for all concerned.

Cain

The hack of DNC material was...suspiciously well timed as a leak.

It's almost like some sort of group of Russian hackers grabbed the information, then sat on their hands before leaking it to Wikileaks and The Intercept at a time for maximum impact.  And then - because Greenwald displays an almost childlike lack of curiousity in why he is getting the information he gets and, well, who the fuck knows what Assange is thinking anymore - no-one questions why it all just happens to fall this way.

It's because Russia is trying to game the election to put in power a President who is financially in debt to Russian oligarchs tied to Putin and who on a political and personal level admires Putin, to the point he is willing to consider throwing NATO allies under a bus.

And I feel like I'm taking fucking crazy pills, because apart from Josh Marshall and some political science professor at NYU no-one is even talking about this.  Trump infamously doesn't care about policy.  He led the RNC write his entire presidential policy platform.  Except one bit.  One tiny bit.  He strenuously objected to, and got dropped, proposals about arming Ukraine against Russian aggression.  Out of all the things in the world to care about, and Trump cares about that?  Trump's blacklisted by most American banks, which should be newsworthy in and of itself.  So in the early 2000s he went to Russian billionaires, hand in cap.  Only these weren't just any Russian billionaires, they were known cronies and political allies of Putin.  All his advisors, from Paul Manafort to Carter Page, have significant Russian oligarch-linked histories and interests (Carter Page worked with Gazprom.  Gazprom, it's Putin's personal treasure chest of goodies).

The whole point is to get the Dems fighting amongst each other when they should be focusing on their actual political enemy and geopolitical rival and they are falling for it.  Every fucking time.

LMNO

Cain, you're scaring me.

Anyone else, I'd call them a crank. But from you........

Junkenstein

The bank thing is hardly shock given his financial history. His financial history in general would be shameful for any nominee and should be the go to thing to point at when trump talks about anything with financial implications, which is pretty much everything.

On a slightly different note, is greenwald/intercept worth it's own thread? This is not the first time at taking a very strange approach with information received.  Any notable related parties possibly steering the ship?
Nine naked Men just walking down the road will cause a heap of trouble for all concerned.

Cain

Quote from: LMNO on July 24, 2016, 05:08:06 PM
Cain, you're scaring me.

Anyone else, I'd call them a crank. But from you........

Well here's Josh Marshall's own story

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/trump-putin-yes-it-s-really-a-thing

QuoteTo put this all into perspective, if Vladimir Putin were simply the CEO of a major American corporation and there was this much money flowing in Trump's direction, combined with this much solicitousness of Putin's policy agenda, it would set off alarm bells galore. That is not hyperbole or exaggeration. And yet Putin is not the CEO of an American corporation. He's the autocrat who rules a foreign state, with an increasingly hostile posture towards the United States and a substantial stockpile of nuclear weapons. The stakes involved in finding out 'what's going on' as Trump might put it are quite a bit higher.

There is something between a non-trivial and a substantial amount of circumstantial evidence for a financial relationship between Trump and Putin or a non-tacit alliance between the two men. Even if you draw no adverse conclusions, Trump's financial empire is heavily leveraged and has a deep reliance on capital infusions from oligarchs and other sources of wealth aligned with Putin. That's simply not something that can be waved off or ignored.

And here's Vice talking specifically about the hack:

https://motherboard.vice.com/read/guccifer-20-is-likely-a-russian-government-attempt-to-cover-up-their-own-hack

Quote"If this is, as it appears to be, a Russian intelligence operation, that's how a blown operation was rapidly transitioned into an influence operation and a disinformation and deception campaign, which started to mitigate the blowback," The Grugq said. "Given that the media is currently reporting that the cover hacker was responsible, and not Russian intelligence services after all, it seems the deception operation is working."

Given all the evidence available, as well as the timeline of the events, it's "more likely than not" that the whole operation, including the Guccifer 2.0 part, was orchestrated by Russian spies, according to Thomas Rid, a cybersecurity expert.

"One of the most convincing details to me is how quickly this hacker apparently came out with this pretty sophisticated false flag operation, including leaking files and talking to various media outlets. It's too smooth for one hacker," Rid, who is a professor in the Department of War Studies at King's College London, told me in a phone call on Thursday.

And this is how Wikileaks reacted to being fingered as a suspect:



Meanwhile, here is how a Russia Today "journalist" responded to the allegation: