American Politics Thread: Orange is the new POTUS

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Originally Posted by GGG

Isn't one of the issues with the internet is that you are no longer responsible for the consequences of your free speech. Now the name and shame usually has too harsh of punishments but if this person wasn't anonymous would he have posted the rest of his racist content.

I don't know who this guy is or what other stuff he's posted - I gather he's basically a troll? Or a white supremacist? In any event, I take your point about the anonymity of the internet creating a cesspool that detracts from the quality of discourse. One of the incentives to put forward good ideas is reputational. Unfortunately, the internet can't get that right either, and completely overreacts to minor errors in judgment or jokes in poor taste half the time.

That caveat offered, though, in this case it seems like CNN is only really concerned with the animated GIF Trump retweeted. That's obviously protected speech on the part of whatever his name is. It has content - "Trump is kicking CNN's ass right now" is content, even if it happens to be pretty stupid content. It conveys meaning, even if it happens to be pretty stupid meaning. To effectively blackmail someone because you don't like the statement they put into the public sphere strikes me as pretty deplorable (can we start using that word again yet?)... it suggests people should take away the lesson "if I say something mean about CNN and it gains traction for reasons outside of my control they'll try to ruin my life".

[photon]

Originally Posted by 2Stonedbirds

So they didn't give Hilary the questions to a debate beforehand and attempt to influence the outcome of an election?

The Clinton campaign was sent one debate question, not "questions". The campaign was also sent questions for an earlier town hall. There's no indication that the questions were given to Clinton.

"CNN" didn't give the questions to the campaign, the questions were forwarded to the campaign by Donna Brazile, at the time interim head of the DNC and who had been one of the many talking heads CNN has on. CNN dropped Donna after what she'd done was found out.

[PostandIn]

Originally Posted by 2Stonedbirds

So they didn't give Hilary the questions to a debate beforehand and attempt to influence the outcome of an election? Gotcha.

"But Russia!" Give me a break.

NVM. Answered above.

[GirlySports]

Holy Crap Illinois!

Three years without a state budget? Huh?!

[2Stonedbirds]

Originally Posted by photon

The Clinton campaign was sent one debate question, not "questions". The campaign was also sent questions for an earlier town hall. There's no indication that the questions were given to Clinton.

"CNN" didn't give the questions to the campaign, the questions were forwarded to the campaign by Donna Brazile, at the time interim head of the DNC and who had been one of the many talking heads CNN has on. CNN dropped Donna after what she'd done was found out.

Yeah, she was canned AFTER they were found out. Your response still doesn't answer how Donna got the questions in the first place. A pound of flesh doesn't excuse CNNs culpability.

[ResAlien]

She should have been canned before they found out? I like it. Bold.

[2Stonedbirds]

"Hey Mr Coyote, how come all the chickens are dead?"

"Beats the hell out of me, but we had to let Owl go."

Maybe she wasn't canned beforehand because attempting to influence the election was the plan all along? Had to save face, that ol chestnut?

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Originally Posted by 2Stonedbirds

Yeah, she was canned AFTER they were found out.

That's usually how it works...?

Your response still doesn't answer how Donna got the questions in the first place.

Why should Brazile not have had access to the questions? She was a commentator who was likely to be on the CNN panel afterwards and probably wanted to come up with some things to say about the topic. Why would that be nefarious?

EDIT: Okay, you are making zero sense whatsoever.

[photon]

Originally Posted by 2Stonedbirds

Your response still doesn't answer how Donna got the questions in the first place.

Could be she overheard or accidentally saw them. Could be someone else who had knowledge of them leaked one to her. Could be the president of CNN hand delivered them to her.

She likely didn't have access to all the questions otherwise she would have passed on all the questions, which is suggestive of a more accidental or similar scenario rather than CNN themselves giving her the questions in a document to pass on.

But in the end it isn't known how she got the questions in the first place, all we know for sure is that she was the one who passed them on. Drawing conclusions on speculation is how people end up shooting in a pizza place to save the children in Clinton's child sex trafficking ring.

Originally Posted by 2Stonedbirds

A pound of flesh doesn't excuse CNNs culpability.

What else should CNN do if she overheard or peeked into a file folder? Other than tightening up any internal processes?

[KootenayFlamesFan]

Getting one question in a debate to CNN trying to influence the election seems like a pretty massive leap, imo.

[2Stonedbirds]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

Why should Brazile not have had access to the questions? She was a commentator who was likely to be on the CNN panel afterwards and probably wanted to come up with some things to say about the topic. Why would that be nefarious.

Gee, I don't know, because she was the head of the DNC and the mouth breathers at CNN surely are not that stupid as to think they wouldn't end up in Hilary's hands? You can't possibly be this naive.

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Apparently I can, because it was a primary. The DNC had tons of information and access that it could have used to benefit one candidate over the other, but it's not supposed to. It turned out later that they apparently did favour Clinton, but that wasn't known at the time.

There's no reason to assume she overheard or looked at a folder to get the questions. There's no reason she shouldn't have them, on the understanding (which should be implicit) that they be kept confidential from the campaigns. The only action that was at all problematic was the delivery of the questions to the campaign and the candidate. Until that happened, nothing nefarious had occurred.

[2Stonedbirds]

That's one tight ship they are running over at CNN.

[DuffMan]

Originally Posted by 2Stonedbirds

That's one tight ship they are running over at CNN.

got anything else, other than the one question, that affected the election, more than the Russian meddling?

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Once again, it did not impact the election. It impacted the democratic primary process (arguably, though probably not very much if at all). Trump lied about this repeatedly during the general election campaign to make it seem like the question leak was about Hillary's debates against him, and people are apparently still confused about it.

[nik-]

It doesn't need to be one or the other, sometimes it's just both.

[photon]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

and people are apparently still confused about it.

It's likely the same people that were outraged at NPR yesterday for tweeting 'propaganda' when they were tweeting the Declaration of Independence.

[getbak]

What was the leaked question anyway?

With the way these politicians prepare for debates, I can't imagine that there are too many questions that are ever asked that catch them off guard. Even if there is a tough question, they all know how to answer the questions they want to answer, even if it's not the question asked.

[wittynickname]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

No, you made fun of uneducated hicks. But the working class in the U.S. today is largely made up of uneducated hicks, which is why the Democrats are no longer the party of the working class.

Just exactly what "working class" are you talking about? A massive percentage of the US work force is now working in fields like retail/hospitality or with companies like Uber and Lyft. Far gone are the days where "working class" was majority factory workers/miners.

Working class people are those people scraping by on 7.25/hour because we can't possibly imagine raising the minimum wage. Working class people are those who rely on Medicaid to help cover their healthcare needs because their employers don't pay enough, nor give them enough hours to qualify for benefits. Working class people making under $50k voted for Clinton. Millions of "working class" people live in the "elite cities" where Clinton was overwhelmingly the winner. You're confusing midwest/rural types as "working class," because "working class" includes a huge array of people in cities as well.

Republicans refuse to raise the minimum wage, and in many states they prevent even smaller communities from raising it. They want to cut Medicaid. They want to cut any and all social safety net services that protect the working class and keep them from becoming destitute. Republicans are absolutely not the party of the "working class," they're the party of the people who hate abortion and gays and immigrants and science and education and love guns and coal.

The West has become a meritocratic knowledge economy, where the educated and adaptive 20 per cent reap the rewards while the uneducated provincial middle and working class see their quality of life relentlessly declining. 15 years ago it was not socially acceptable for liberals to mock the working class and poor. Now, snickering derision is perfectly acceptable because, after all, it's those morons' own fault. Why can't they all just learn to write code, move to Seattle, and get a condo?

First of all, you have millions of people in the US with college degrees who are working jobs that barely cover the bills, especially in bigger cities. These are people who have plenty of economic instability, and yet they still overwhelmingly voted Democrat. Working class includes all those people working in urban and suburban shopping centers. It includes Damien the Starbucks barista in downtown Manhattan just as much as it includes Joe the Walmart employee from rural West Virginia. The difference is that the Starbucks employee in NYC sees various cultures and embraces the diversity of it. The Walmart employee wants to go back to the days where white men ran everything and women knew their place and gays were in the closet. Look up the stats--economic insecurity wasn't the leading factor that led Trump voters. Fear of change and diversity was. "Working class" is just a euphemism for white people in middle America who responded to Trump's xenophobic vitriol.

Secondly: Why can't they learn to code? When people want to raise the minimum wage, the first reaction is "Well they should just get a better job, fast food isn't a career!" So if their argument against a better minimum wage is that "well then, get a better job" why don't they look at their current situation and do something about it?

These coal miners in Appalachia who have been watching the steady decline of coal for decades refuse to listen to their own bootstraps argument. Rather than moving forward and accepting that times are changing, rather than finding new careers for themselves, they just whine and complain that the world left them behind. The world has been leaving them behind for decades, everyone saw it happening, but they refuse to adapt, so we're all now supposed to coddle them after they've spat on education for decades, after they've spent years voting against their own best interests?

Why should they expect everyone else to cater to them, when they refuse to adapt for anyone or anything else?

Sorry not sorry, guys. I grew up in a city decimated when the steel industry died. It was ugly and it hurt this city immensely, and the only way Pittsburgh survived is progress. Pittsburgh is thriving now because as a city we banded together and found new industries and technologies. So I don't have too much sympathy for people who refuse to do anything to help themselves and insist on living in the past.

[chemgear]

MOD EDIT: Spoilered for size:

Spoiler!