2016 Democratic Thread

[bmags]

Millions in unreported corrupt payments from foreign governments seems like it ought to be illegal.

 

Remember though Clinton having poor email server management is just as bad as this.

 

Right but we are talking about a campaign manager. He's already fired like 3 of them and I don't think this will be the nail that breaks the "hey, he doesn't seem to have the judgment to be president!"s back.

 

edit: brakes/breaks

Edited August 15, 2016 by bmags

[StrangeSox]

Oh right we're already testing the theoretical depths a candidate can reach at this point, I'm just wondering what sort of legal trouble manafort might have gotten himself into.

 

The books about this campaign will be incredible.

[southsider2k5]

Where do you draw the line with campaign contributions though? I never really thought Hillary's camp would go to campaign contributions to go at Trump. There's far more dirt on Hillary in this respect.

 

Russia = bad.

 

Using the State Department to get money from African oligarchs under the guise of a charity = okay?

Getting money from Saudi Arabia = okay?

Claiming to run on wealth equality but having your donation list full of CitiGroup, JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, etc. = okay?

 

As someone who hates both candidates, Trump is transparently a buffoon and Hillary's supporters should focus on that. Clinton is transparently corrupt. Her supporters should stay away from a corruption pissing contest.

 

Money from dictators isn't a bad thing, right Bernie?

 

http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presid...in-conflicts-of

[StrangeSox]

That story isn't about campaign contributions. It is about his campaign director having direct financial ties to pro-Russian Ukrainian dictators, which is relevant given the rhetoric and party platform changes favorable to Russia coming from the campaign.

 

Eg

 

https://twitter.com/BuzzFeedBen/status/765235041630822401

 

Manaforts interests just keep weirdly aligning with Russia. That's what the story is about, not donations.

Edited August 15, 2016 by StrangeSox

[StrangeSox]

The nyt is also not "Hillary's camp"

[southsider2k5]

So like when Gore/Clinton was getting money from the Chinese?

[StrangeSox]

The posters who make up the majority of the posts in this thread and support a certain individual without exception would be the Hillary's camp I was referring to.

Ah, got it. The Clinton campaign itself is just sitting back and watching trump punch himself in the face repeatedly. The comparison to Clinton foundation donations still doesn't work too well though because it's not like there's a loyal Saudi stooge running Clinton's campaign and changing democratic foreign policy.

 

 

[bmags]

But Clinton isn't focusing on campaign contributions, there is a New York Times article out about Trumps campaign manager who was found on an off books ledger from the Pro-Russian head in Ukraine paying 12 million to Manafort.

 

Aside from the numerous circumstantial questions about the pro-Russian policy that was the singular issue forced by Trump camp in the Republican Platform, Manafort may have broken law in not registering his lobbying for a foreign power.

 

But overall, your campaign manager getting cash transfers from a pro-russian despot is bad. It's bad enough that he was a lobbyist for them, but to be caught in this makes it even worse.

 

 

[bmags]

That something is right of left leaning isn't that important. Fox is can be very unscrupulous in its facts and blatant coordination with the republican party in a way that not even MSNBC is. There is no left equivelant of Sean Hannity touring and running around with Clinton. Not a Maddow. Not an anyone.

 

But it's fine to be biased, it's less fine to be unscrupulous with facts.

 

Reason magazine is a libertarian magazine with a lot of smart, honest writers. Daniel Larison is the same. If someone posted an article from Reason mag it would not get same reaction as Breitbart, because Breitbart peddles in ridiculousness and conspiracy theories and is very often incredibly wrong and it doesn't seem to matter.

 

Same goes for NRO or Commentary, while they have some truly ridiculous editorials, they still are not level of breitbart or daily caller.

 

 

[StrangeSox]

I don't think too many people here are buying into the Clinton Cash claims so that's a pretty loaded question.

 

Msnbc doesn't present itself as a business network, maybe you're thinking of cnbc?

 

 

[bmags]

Are you as informed on Clinton's transgressions in Africa as you are on this matter? Does adding degrees of separation in money transfers and having decades of being corrupt and scummy on a global scale really excuse the same type of behavior?

 

Clinton should have put up a firewall between herself and the Clinton Foundation in 2008, but especially after.

 

But "Does adding degrees of separation in money transfers and having decades of being corrupt and scummy on a global scale "

 

Yes. That does actually matter quite a bit. There is a huge difference in evidence of a quid pro quo of getting cash transactions for lobbying work and then suddenly working for a candidate that is more openly pro russia than we have seen pre WW1 and donating to a charity run by a political family in the hopes that it will get you preferential access down the line.

 

For one thing, that's because the Clinton Foundation actually does perform a lot of charity work. For two, it's not clear that even when the access is given that it matters. That distinction matters. You wrote that the russian hack of emails on the DNC showed them openly trying to manipulate the media (one, that is literally what every political organization does) to help one candidate, and while that email did say that, there is no proof they ever actually did anything.

 

Having tried to coordinate many gatherings, the idea that you can perform a massive conspiratorial campaign from a single 2-email thread makes me envious. The world is really messy and even when the President tries to get everyone to talk about X he can't even do it. So frankly, a full dump of emails from a heated campaign only showing that, kind of tells me that things really aren't as corrupt as the Alex Jonesers want you to believe.

 

The emails that were just dumped show examples of elbow rubbers of clinton trying to get people special favors from Abedin. That's bad, except we actually know the outcomes and that those people weren't actually set up with a meeting and weren't actually given ambassadorships.

 

On the other hand, we do know that Trumps camp for some reason scrubbed hawkish language toward Russia in Ukraine. And had they twisted arms for a whole bunch of things it wouldn't be that strange because for one that was a terrible policy that they are probably right on!

 

But that's a lot different than just drawing the lines (x donated, x got arms) when there are a lot of history of previous arms deals and reasons anyway.

 

The psychoanalysis is that the Clinton's, after his 8 year term of having cooked up nothing scandals brought up to congress ad nauseum, stopped giving a s*** about appearances of conflicts of interest and figuring people will come at them regardless.

 

That's not good, because there are a lot of people that are relying on them and they need to be more disciplined.

 

It would be pretty easy for her to cut out her hanger ons and put stuff in a trust and she doesn't.

[StrangeSox]

Cnn is garbage and I don't think you'll find many people defending them, but some links expanding on your claims would be helpful.

[Balta1701]

Do I have to link to one of the biggest stories of the year? Considering you are on this board almost solely for politics (never see you on the baseball side), I wouldn't think you'd need a link on it...

You're the only person I've seen, even including the poster here who believes all media are out to destroy his candidate, state that DWS fell because she was trying to manipulate CNN specifically.

[StrangeSox]

I will admit to mainly following the trump hilarity this year, but I don't recall the specific scenario you claimed regarding cnn as Balta said. I'm generally familiar with the dnc emails story and didn't hear anything like that.

[bmags]

So when CNN distorts the facts and sabotages a candidacy by the influence of the DNC and the DNC's most principal member has to step down that's just bias? Or is that media corruption? I think it's the latter. I don't watch the mainstream media but I think that's far worse and damning to our country than whatever Fox does as an obvious Republican leaning station.

 

What?

 

The DNC is supposed to be neutral. A hacked email of internal emails showed they were antagonistic toward Sanders. The head was fired.

 

But the head was also fired because she had very little support and the DNC has been cut in half by OFA.

 

I'm not really going to bat for CNN or any 24 hour news network. DO they get spun? Um, yeah. Their news consists of a host, and then 4 panelists, who are openly affiliated with some political party.

 

But, people don't really watch cable news. There's a lot of media that exists. You could have this amazing campaign that embeds a bunch of shills to put forth your talking points and tells everyone on every 24 hr network your spin and it would do ... basically nothing.

 

 

[bmags]

I didn't know I had a candidate. Could you teach me who my candidate is?

 

That's referring to Greg.

[bmags]

I assume you are talking about the religion email from the CFO but I don't understand how that relates to CNN.

[StrangeSox]

Trumps foreign policy speech today called for "extreme vetting" of immigrants and their offspring (?) and a war spoils system.

[Quin]

 

In other news, Rudy Giuliani is going insane.

[bmags]

Eh, those emails did exist but they were on an internal email chain, and there was no evidence that it was actually carried out or communicated to anyone> There was no push of surrogates ever questioning religion from Clinton, either.

The email doesn’t specify who "he" is, but it seems like a reasonable guess that Bernie Sanders was the target. If the DNC followed through on this plan — attempting to expose Sanders as an atheist in order to discredit him with Christian, especially Southern Baptist, voters — it would represent a big departure from the DNC’s neutral role.

 

But Marshall denied that Sanders was the target (though he wasn’t able to explain who the target was, making this denial a bit hard to believe), and, more importantly, there’s no evidence that the plan was actually carried out.

http://www.vox.com/2016/7/23/12261020/dnc-...leaks-explained

 

That article includes a paragraph on the politico reporter sharing their story pre pub which is lazy and bad but also...basically what you'd expect from politico.

[StrangeSox]

This coming from Rudy guilliani of all people is hilarious

 

https://mobile.twitter.com/davidmackau/stat...252560592728064

[Balta1701]

Okay I might be misrepresenting something wrong but from my understanding but this is what I thought happened.

 

-DWS and the DNC fed CNN anti-Bernie, pro-Hillary talking points. They're supposed to be a neutral entity but they attacked Bernie and focused on his negatives and supported Hillary and avoided all her faults. The DNC Leak happened and she had to step down to shame the party from further embarrassment. IE, they manipulated a willing media network to shut down the outsider opponent and prop up the establishment candidate.

DWS was both trying to create a favorable debate schedule for hillary (unknown challengers always want more debates) and there were lower level discussions of how to assist her. Pretty much everyone could see that she was doing that with the debate schedule as of last fall, which is why Sanders supporters have had it out for her for forever, deservedly so. That plus no one really seems to have liked her anyway.

 

There were further, down the line discussions of things that could be done, including things that would have crossed lines in morality like attacking Sanders for not being a good enough Jew.

 

Those people should clearly have resigned. That behavior was clearly inappropriate on the part of the DNC. Furthermore, DWS should have resigned just for failing to keep their computer systems secure, as should a bunch of their tech people.

 

But the other side worth pointing out is - outside of the debate schedule, which they wound up fixing after appropriate pressure was applied, no one seems to have alleged that the DNC really did anything as a solid effort to stop Sanders. There weren't DNC officials on CNN or anything like that asking about his religion - Hell it barely came up. Stealing a point from here as well as several other writers - there were clearly inappropriate discussions on the part of DNC officials, but I haven't seen evidence that they did anything other than discuss those things.

 

That's the part I'm specifically asking you to support. You've claimed CNN specifically ran DNC pro-Hillary, Anti-Sanders press releases. That's something I haven't seen at all.

 

Furthermore, the claim that CNN was somehow particularly pro-Hillary isn't one I've seen supported in data - I can only cite the "full network" survey from the spring but she had the most negative overall coverage.

 

The DNC was discussing things it shouldn't have been, but that had zero influence on this race.

[CrimsonWeltall]

In other news, Rudy Giuliani is going insane.

 

Why is that insane? Everyone knows Obama was elected in 1999 shortly after he founded ISIS.

[StrangeSox]

Time traveling Obama strikes again

[Chisoxfn]

I hate Trump as much as the next guy in here so I want to make it clear before I get lumped in with that loon for offering a counterpoint to the obviously biased posters.

 

Tony made the point of Fox being watched more than CNN and that's true but the almost the ENTIRE media is at least slanted to the left other than Fox. That's probably why Fox News is the most watched news station in the country because the people on the right only have one place to go.

 

Here is a liberal outlet ranking all the news outlets on a liberal-conservative spectrum: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix...heir-audiences/. Other than internet outlets, Fox News is the only one on the right. I mean, MSNBC, which is supposed to be a business-oriented network makes a point of profit shaming on the regular. Embarrassing. This doesn't even factor Hollywood's media and other places like ESPN who gave someone with a penis "Woman of the Year."

 

The DNC's lead official just had to step down disgracefully because they were caught in a conspiracy in controlling the media, their content and in turn, the public opinion. They were caught. This just happened. Yet all of the people on the left are laughing at the idea that the media is biased. I don't get it. So despite all the people in this thread laughing at the very idea of this, it should be fresh in your brain regardless of your affiliations.

 

Then come at Trump for some possible corrupt contributions/relationships when their preferred candidate is the most corrupt politician in modern American history.

I think CNN is less left aligned then FoxNews is right aligned. My view is CNN is the best place to get news and I don't think that highly out of FoxNews for well news. FoxNews was my go to news station 4 years ago and they have went into the tubes more recently. None of it is perfect but I feel CNN does a pretty good job getting as many different commentators as possible which provide you with many differing views and thus enable any individual to holistically listen to various views and think which ones they prefer. Sure, there are people who lean one way vs. another, but hard to not have that exist to some extent.

 

People can rip at me all you want, but I think CNN's election coverage has been pretty good. I also am smart enough that I can listen to something and come up with my own opinion on it and can also blow off or read through a lot of BS that all of these organizations spin.