I can muster pretty much zero interest. None of what is said is going to impact confirmation. The republicans highjacked a scotus appointment. Do I think they would think twice about confirming a guy who has already been pre-vetted for their half dozen checkboxes. Also I don't think the democrats are going to meaningfully oppose an actual confirmation so it's just like whatevs.

The republicans in congress already stole this scotus seat and it's not coming back. Opposition has to be based on things that will ultimately get them out of office.

Gorsuch could admit to killing three month olds and drinking their blood to live longer and he would still be confirmed. (Babies 90 days younger would be a deal breaker).

Basically agree except I think that a liberal candidate could also use many of Trump's techniques as well. The basic problem is that the skills needed to get elected are only mildly correlated with the ability to govern. They often go hand in hand and usually people with only the first ability are stopped before they reach the finals. But if they are not they will beat an opponent without their talent.

The solution of course is to make harder for gullible people to decide the country's fate, but no one wants to do that.

The reason emailgate stuck was because the FBI was putting out press conferences and writing letters, which simplified the scandal from "what she did" to "being under FBI investigation".

i always thought it was suspicious that trump was ALWAYS very conciliatory about bernie voters, not even offering them anything to get their votes, but consoling them like, "wow crooked hillary really screwed you guys over, i feel bad for you". and evidently bernie was targeted by the troll army to drive unnecessary division among liberal voters with fake news reposts and deploying highly sophisticated and aggressively confrontational bots like hastendan to depress democratic turnout.

so trump has links to the fsb troll army, whether it can be proven he colluded or if he was given "bad" advice, i imagine trump will ultimately get away with it. plus what's in it for republicans in congress to stop this? lol

or you could go with the candidate that gets the most votes

Not sure if you're aware of this:

Democratic House Candidates Were Also Targets of Russian Hacking
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/13/u...king-dccc.html

Obama's problem all along was that no GOP congresspeople were born in Kenya

So Huffington Post did an article on foreigners trying to cash in on the fake news phenomenon with Sanders supporters. In one part it lists a comical Google translation for a Facebook Group, Bernie Sanders Lovers. You could imagine what they were aiming for was Lovers of Bernie Sanders, or Bernie Sanders' Admirers, or something. So Huffington Post emailed them for a comment about being foreigners with, perhaps, ties to Russia. Here's their response.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/...b0ed71826cdb36

You don't think its possible that Trump's techniques would have won the popular vote if that had been the rules they were operating under? In any case he got more votes than his positions, without his persuasive abilities (which some would say included lying) would have gotten. A saner seeming candidate with similar abilities would win the popular vote.

The constant drumbeat of Benghazi(!) also hurt her, despite the "scandal's" complete lack of coherence or substance. Even the Clinton Foundation stuff had regular conservatives (in my circles at least) confidently asserting that she was just as corrupt as Trump.

Trump lost by 3 million votes. He won EC by 40K votes in 4-5 states. He's bigly unpopular despite what Trumkins think.

https://twitter.com/maggieNYT/status/844325752468312068

Yea we already knew that. Like Trump wasn't going to install his children and relatives in the executive branch. Come on.

Also makes all those pictures in meetings make more sense. She always had the position, they were just waiting for the cries of nepotism to die down.

I think those things didn't bleed through to the normies, though. That's what we're talking about here. #ImWithHer people will believe to their dying day that Hillary had the election stolen by Putin, but regular folks? It's just a buzz of scandal.

Now a buzz of scandal is better than no scandal at all, but without easy to connect dots there's just no there there

Yeah if it wasn't for Comey breaking the law and releasing the letter to Congress about their Clinton investigation DURING THE VOTING PERIOD, she is absolutely the President right now no doubt in my mind. Now he needs to be charged with violation of the Hatch Act, especially since we know TRUMP was under investigation at the same time but he didn't feel the need to disclose that.

Yea I agree. It's insane. Comey, Trump, Sessions, and Flynn should all be in jail.

short answer - no. what "rules" were they operating under that suppressed his ability to earn votes? he topped out whatever his brand of candidate would ever see in terms of vote count. and even with the interference, he fell 3 million short. no candidate, given his flavor of politics, will do better

Just a reminder that this complaint was filed months ago.

Former Bush Ethics Lawyer Files Complaint Against FBI Director for Email Disclosures
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slate..._director.html

WaPo 1/18/17 - Russia’s radical new strategy for information warfare

Andrey Krutskikh, a senior Kremlin adviser, made the startling comments at the Russian national information security forum, or “Infoforum 2016,” held Feb. 4 and 5. His remarks were transcribed by a Russian who attended the gathering and translated for me by an independent European cyber expert.
...
According to notes of Krutskikh’s speech, he told his Russian audience: “You think we are living in 2016. No, we are living in 1948. And do you know why? Because in 1949, the Soviet Union had its first atomic bomb test. And if until that moment, the Soviet Union was trying to reach agreement with [President Harry] Truman to ban nuclear weapons, and the Americans were not taking us seriously, in 1949 everything changed and they started talking to us on an equal footing.”

Krutskikh continued, “I’m warning you: We are at the verge of having ‘something’ in the information arena, which will allow us to talk to the Americans as equals.”

iirc you'd require voters to pass a knowledge test. That's one way to limit the impact of gullible people. The left's package to remedy the same problem includes well-funded public education and broadcasting alongside campaign finance restrictions and limits to media conglomeration. The right... will give us vouchers to attend religious school to learn that e.g. climate change is a Chinese scheme to undermine America

Assuming such a plan was constitutional, how would it work? How would we ever get everyone to agree on the test questions for example? Seems impossible simply from a practical standpoint

Remember when the Secretary of State went to the far East with only a single, non-pool journalist? Well that journalist has now filed an interview/profile from that:

https://twitter.com/nktpnd/status/844366344908877824



Jesus.

I haven't even read it all yet, but that quote is such a doozy.

More, from the same passage:

Better God than Putin, I guess???

This is the guy who's negotiating peace with North Korea. Great.

Yea, believable story. A billionaire oil exec not saying "I got better **** to do with my billions" when the offer comes in to be sec of state. When I logic through this, it doesn't make sense. What does make sense however is that he became sec of state to oversee the lifting of sanctions so that he and Putin can do their 500 billion dollar oil deal. That seems to make sense.

When this is all over, whatever's left of humanity is probably never going to let white people have the vote ever again,

Neil Gorsuch does not belong on the Supreme Court
by Elizabeth Warren