[Hairshirt]

I take no offense whatsoever, after 5 years of college football ( yep 5 probably didn't help) I assume half my brain is worthless mush.

[Silencer]

The thing with a "rigged" election, is that media bias is not rigging. It's bias. (and also a huge conundrum for a media that needs to be able to say what it wants so that they aren't censored by the government, but also should really be legally bound to not lie, manipulate facts, or otherwise mislead their viewers - you know, how news 'used to be' in everyone's nostalgia vision)

Given no-one is really having to put words in Trump's mouth, it's not even identifiable as bias because you can just accurately repeat his words and it portrays him as a terrible person.


A rigged election would be one in which Bernie could not have won. Or in which Trump could not have won. In order for that to happen, just to take the 2012 election as an example, the 127 million votes cast, of which Obama got ~66 million, and Romney got ~61 million - in order to rig that election, you'd have to commit so much voter fraud, as to invent another six million votes just to draw even. And the margin in that race was only 4% - currently the margin for Trump/Hillary is something closer to 6%, and depending on who you ask can be as high as 12%. Even FOX is showing 7%. And Bernie v Hillary? 12%, or nearly four million votes.

( Incidentally, there are like 40 cases of suspected voter fraud over the past decade - that's 40 votes out of about a billion. So if there was voter fraud going on in this election, it would have to occur on a scale approximately 2,000,000 times more than in the past decade, to shift the result by ten million votes. In one election.)

Alternatively, the entire vote counting system would have to be fraudulent, and adjust the numbers by ten million votes or more - and that kind of fudging would be unbelievably hard to cover up for any length of time. It would also perforce have to call into question every single election the country has held - after all, if they do it for Hillary, an undeniably better qualified candidate than Trump whose own party actually supports her, why not for Obama? Or Bush? Or Bill Clinton? Or Reagan? Or Nixon? Do we really believe that voting in the US has been so manipulated for all those elections? Or is it just because it's Hillary? Because one of those answers is an Illuminati-level conspiracy theory, the other is...well, probably sexist or blind hate.


That's not to say the US voting system is perfect, or that it's not regularly manipulated - just that the changes made are usually done through legal means (gerrymandering, voter ID laws, messing with the number of available ballots, changing registration deadlines, etc), not through some grand conspiracy - and that those manipulations usually 1) disenfranchise minorities first, and 2) don't have a significant enough impact on the outcome to be a game-changer.

[Abyss]

I'm reasonably certain Hillary and the Dems didn't 'conspire' to bring forward multiple women who claim to have been sexually harassed or assaulted by Trump.The media reports it because it's news about a presidential candidate. That's not bias, that's doing what they do.

[Tiste Simeon]

Primateus, on 21 October 2016 - 09:52 PM, said:

But that is a schoolyard argument.

"Well, he started it!"

The entire Trump campaign succinctly summarised.

[Vengeance]

I Got Crabs, on 21 October 2016 - 06:46 PM, said:

Project Veriatas(sp) vid is interesting.

Real interview with Veriatas

Basically the same scum bags that tried the hit on planned parent hood.

[Vengeance]

Hairshirt, on 22 October 2016 - 03:43 AM, said:

worry, on 22 October 2016 - 01:38 AM, said:

Oh yah, I wouldn't deny that there are scuzzy political operatives among Dems and Reps both. I just think it's still penny-ante stuff that doesn't jibe with this huge conspiracy narrative about the presidential election (and the videos are claiming to show that, at least by implication, in being called "Rigging the Election").

Well Trump is an idiot, let's start there. The reality of the entire election from primary to general election is kinda shady however. Anyone with half a brain can see or admit that. The DNC obviously conspired to have Hillary beat Bernie. They scheduled less debates, they put them on at odd times or against stiff tv competition. They fed Hillary questions prior to debates, etc. Can we really as intelligent people not all agree the media is biased? Fox obviously leans right while everyone else leans left. Through wiki leaks we've seen numerous instances of reporters/media sending articles/interviews sent to Hilarys campaign for "approval".

Now we have these tapes where contractors paid by Hillary admitting to inciting violence in Chicago at that rally that was shut down. So what was the media's response to the riots? "Well Trumps rhetoric caused this." Well no......... Democratic operatives caused this, paid for by Hillary.

Trump has delivered the rigged election message like the idiot he is. What he should have said is that election is rigged because Hillary, in collusion with most of the media has rigged this election from the very beginning with her own party shunning Bernie. From wiki leaks we've seen the media bend over backwards to help her by letting her see stories prior to publication.

Instead he somehow managed to bungle it and it blew up in his face....... because he's dumb.

Oh and btw there's open investigations in 4 states right now of voter fraud.

I'm still voting for Hillary though.

4 red states. They are investigating minority registerations. Nothing racists to see here. One and investigations don't mean shit when they don't find anything.

The whole trump rally thing in Chicago is bullshit. His ralley was at a liberal colleague on the near west side. A college surrounded by Hispanic and black neighborhoods. If there was violence the trump supporters would have been executed. There was no violence at all. I kneow people who were protesting his ralley and the only violence was started by trump protesters. It was the stupidest place to have a republican ralley. The only place worse would have been in central Harlem or Mexico City.

[Abyss]

Mex City would have been the best rally ever.

[amphibian]

The media bias exists more in a sense that the media has the most interest in creating a neck-and-neck race for President - no matter who is running. If anything, Trump has received far more favorable bias than Clinton for the past year plus.

[Macros]

If Trump has as much of a chance as media seems to suggest be I weep for humanity.

[Abyss]

Doubtful, but 'orange troll doll drools, yells at women' isn't nearly as catchy a headline as 'Trump commits to victory over "nasty woman", polls uncertain'.

[Morgoth]

Vengeance, on 22 October 2016 - 05:41 PM, said:

I Got Crabs, on 21 October 2016 - 06:46 PM, said:

Project Veriatas(sp) vid is interesting.

Real interview with Veriatas

Basically the same scum bags that tried the hit on planned parent hood.

Weren't they the omes that made that false Acorn video too, back in 2008?

[Vengeance]

Morgoth, on 23 October 2016 - 07:38 AM, said:

Vengeance, on 22 October 2016 - 05:41 PM, said:

I Got Crabs, on 21 October 2016 - 06:46 PM, said:

Project Veriatas(sp) vid is interesting.

Real interview with Veriatas

Basically the same scum bags that tried the hit on planned parent hood.

Weren't they the omes that made that false Acorn video too, back in 2008?

Yep the same exact ones. They go in and interview people then chop up abd edit the shit out of the videos so that it fits their view point then publish it.

Not journalists not documentarians just piece hitmen.

[Cause]

Is the Pentagon really demanding 10 000 soldiers pay back their enlistment bonuses?

How are the american people reacting to that?

[Primateus]

Reading some of it, it does seem like it. However, it seems it's because internal audits have shown they were "overpaid". As in, they received too much money. A dick move, sure, but I have had to do the same as well.

This post has been edited by Primateus: 24 October 2016 - 01:31 PM

[Vengeance]

While the audit shows that they were overpaid it wasn't due to the guard members themselves. It was due to the guard recruiters trying to meet high quota's during the start of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. The recruiters were under enormous pressure to get people signed up. So they would just hand out bonuses and not fill in all of the paperwork or make sure that the signee qualified for the bonus. It was criminal which is why several of the recruiters went to jail. It is extremely unfortunate that solder who server now have to repay for something that wasn't their fault. If there was justice then it would be written off.

[worry]

This is the big bombhsell that was promised in Part 3 of the Veritas/O'Keefe thing:


Took a screenshot cuz you can't embed Tweets here but I don't think anything more than this visual is necessary to get how hilarious this is, plus I don't think anyone wants to get mired in Drudge clickthroughs.

[worry]

Nice essay on the absurdity of Trump as an "anti-war" candidate: https://medium.com/@...ow-bbe07c9611da

Just read up on the bonuses thing mentioned above, and it's so awful. Definitely agree with Venge's take. Apparently the apparatus is set up so individual payments can be waived/postponed but the entire debt can't be, and it's all a bureaucratic nightmare.

[Cause]

If I was promised money to go war and then they demanded it back I would lose my shit!

[Silencer]

Yeah, I mean it's pretty annoying when that happens in a regular job - and frankly I think if your accountant/payroll people fuck up, that's on them, and the company, not the unwitting recipient who may have spent that money already - but surely the right thing to do here is to write off the loss. It's not like the defense budget is small or anything.

[Morgoth]

It also seems strange from a legal perspective. If I am promised payment for a service, and that promise was made by someone whom I reasonably could trust (like a recruiter from the army) then that is a contract made. If the recruiter is later found to have exceeded his authority in a way I could not have know (like promising a higher pay than he was authorized to do, as long as it was within reason), surely then the contract is still valid. Especially as the service has already been rendered and paid for as per the contract.