Quote from TaheenMage »Its more a call to lead by example - but I don't see Lady Lich doing any of the gun-grabbing. I imagine the continual gun-grabbing that went on under the table, and in their house per the Wikileaks stuff, soured Lady Lich on gun-grabbing.
edit - Trump did the birther thing, Hillary was a rape enabler. They both have their skeletons.
Being a defense attorney does not make you a rape enabler. People who think that lawyers who defend criminals are somehow complicit in the crimes or are guilty by association if they do their job disgust me. It demonstrates a complete lack of respect for American values or the rule of law.
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Not to state the obvious, but this is the Debate section. Your views on immigration, abortion, and climate change are going to be challenged here, because that's the point. Everyone's views are challenged here. Does being challenged make you feel unwelcome? Would you rather we all just smile and accept your viewpoint uncritically? Do you think you might go find other forums where people will do that? Because if so, guess what: you're not condemning an echo chamber, you're looking for one.
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Now, sure, some people were shocked on Nov. 8 because of the echo chamber. The Huffington Post projected a Clinton win with 99% confidence -- that was clearly bull. But some people were shocked because the result was legitimately shocking. Polling data are not an echo chamber, and they really did favor Clinton from beginning to end. Trump himself has said that he went into Election Day expecting to lose. And, of course, Trump did lose the popular vote; the polls weren't that far from wrong.
Were there people out there who were confident Trump would win? Oh yes. The Huffington Post may have given Clinton 99% odds, but I also saw Trump supporters projecting that he would be the first candidate to sweep all fifty states. They could only be so confident by being in their own echo chamber: one which insulated them from the data or told them to ignore them. This echo chamber also had to downplay Trump's naked self-interest, his utter contempt for facts, and his myriad failings as a human being while at the same time spinning Hillary Clinton into a criminal mastermind on the basis of no evidence whatsoever. So considering one echo chamber elected a man totally unfit for the White House, while the other chamber merely thought that guy would lose, no points for guessing which one I'm more concerned about right now.
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All this was in the New York Times article you were bashing, by the way.
There are two possibilities: he is working for Russia or he isn't.
If he is not working for Russia, he is going to say he is not working for Russia.
If he is working for Russia, he is still going to say he is not working for Russia.
Because him saying he is not working for Russia would happen either way, it does not constitute evidence either way. Something is only evidence if it would not happen any other way.
Of which I still have yet to see you cite a single word of incriminating evidence. Which, again, has been the goalpost I set for you all along.
(a) Now who's moving the goalposts? (b) Yes, they actually are; that's what the "Bear" means.
Reading comprehension, dude. "If you had evidence for a 9/11 conspiracy as solid as [this] = you don't have evidence for a 9/11 conspiracy as solid as this. You believe in that conspiracy on the basis of no admissions of guilt, no paper trail, no evidence of any of the sort that you're demanding here. Your bar for evidence is, in fact, absurdly low for it. But when it comes to Russian hacking, this for some reason you don't want to believe, so the bar suddenly becomes absurdly high, and all the real and demonstrable links to Russian agents -- the sort of links you do not have for 9/11 -- are just "speculation". Be consistent. Set the bar at the same standard for both cases.
“Our primary targets are those highly oppressive regimes in China, Russia and Central Eurasia, but we also expect to be of assistance to those in the West who wish to reveal illegal or immoral behavior in their own governments and corporations.” -- Julian Assange, 2006 (source 1 source 2)
...and not to belabor the point, but Russia kills journalists.
Words for you to live by.
Do me a favor: google "Trump China Taiwan". Then try to tell me Trump is peaceful.
Evidence?
Accessing private email servers is not protected by the U.S. Constitution. If I hacked into your emails and published them online, I would be criminally liable. Notwithstanding that, it's a bit rich of you to praise Russia for exercising freedom of speech when that is a freedom the Russian government has been strangling to death domestically. Siding with Russia against the United States in this is siding with a nation that has one of the most extensive state-controlled media systems in the world against a nation that has enshrined journalistic independence as its literal first political ideal. Which, again, is why it's so bizarre that Wikileaks and Assange have decided to do exactly that.
Nobody here is saying the emails are fake.
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I wasn't posting that as evidence of the Russia hack. I was posting that as evidence that you had made a patently false statement about the FBI's findings. At least have the decency to own your mistake.
Nor is it evidence of the Russians not doing it. You claimed that it was. That was incorrect.
You: Why are we talking about Russian hacking? The content of the emails is what matters!
Me: Okay, show me evidence of a crime in the emails.
You: ... Why are we talking about the content of the emails? The Russian hacking is what matters!
Is the highly oppressive regime in Russia a "primary target" of Wikileaks? Obviously not. Assange did not tell the truth here.
Are you freaking kidding me?
Me: Show me evidence of the U.S. interfering in a foreign election.
You: Here's eleven seconds of Hillary Clinton discussing the rebellion against a man who never stood for an election in his life, and rolling her eyes at the suggestion that she was involved.
So wait, the emails don't matter all of a sudden?
When articles report fabricated and factually incorrect information, that's pretty good reason to call it "fake". And we're not talking about fake news, anyway.
*sigh* If only...
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By that logic, Bill Clinton also didn't do it because he said he didn't do it.
And the hypothetical 9/11 conspirators didn't do it because they said they didn't do it.
If you think that Clinton did it, or that the 9/11 conspirators did it, you acknowledge the possibility that someone can do something even if they've said they didn't do it. Therefore, it is possible that Assange did it even though he's said he didn't do it. Therefore, Assange saying he didn't do it does not constitute evidence that he didn't do it.
Assange started WikiLeaks promising to focus on revealing the state secrets of authoritarian regimes like Russia and China.
Where are those state secrets, exactly?
You said he has every reason not to lie because lying would ruin his record. If the truth is that he is working for Russia, telling the truth would ruin his record more than lying about it.
Do you? For this, or literally anything you claim?
Or it could have been the Russians.
Or it could have been the Russians.
In case you missed it somehow: Fancy Bear and Cozy Bear are Russian.
They didn't just use the same program, they used the same Bit.ly account.
If you had evidence for a 9/11 conspiracy as solid as documented tactics, tools, server addresses, and online accounts used in the attack that are distinctive to a covert operations group known to be sponsored by the U.S. government and act in its interests, you would be shouting it from the rooftops.
If you're absolutely determined not to credit it, then I can't make you. But it is credible.
Parallel logic, like I showed above.
You really weren't. I quipped that WikiLeaks is a big site because you hadn't directed me to anything in particular on that site. For that matter, you still haven't. (Complain all you like about moving the goalposts, but it's a bit rich when you haven't even passed the initial goalposts.) So when you say that the Times is a big site when I have directed you to a particular article... like I said, faceplant.
They're chronicling Assange's public actions. All the evidence is out in the open, they're simply aggregating it to show that there's a pattern. Do you dispute any of what they say Assange has done, or that there's a pattern? I repeat: where are the promised state secrets from Russia and China?
They go on to explain how exactly they believe Assange is being used by Russian intelligence services. But that doesn't work as well for your position as an out-of-context quotation.
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You asked for discreditation, and it is that. If a statement by someone who has every reason to lie cannot be independently verified, we cannot trust it -- i.e., we cannot credit it -- thus it is discredited. Maybe it's true, maybe it's false, but it's not proof of anything.
Do you notice how, for your arguments, you're saying the argument stands if it is not disproven, but for my arguments, you're saying the argument fails if it is not proven? That's called a "double standard". By your own standard for yourself, we should believe my sources, because you have not disproven their claims. And by your own standard for me, we should not believe your sources, because you have not proven their claims. Either way, you lose.
Now, this is an actual ad hominem argument. You are using discredit a claim based on a(n alleged) fact about the source that is not relevant to the claim. Is any claim the Times makes about Assange untrue? If so, which ones, and what's your evidence that they're untrue?
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But I'm more concerned with what effect they think a nannying little message like "Before you share this story, you might want to know that independent fact-checkers disputed its accuracy" is going to have. That tone is only going to piss off people predisposed to believe the story.
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Now, what can be independently verified, and has been, is that the DNC was hacked by two known Kremlin-backed hacking groups (source) and Podesta was also spearphished by one of those groups (source). It's still theoretically possible given what we know that the Russians got in but didn't do anything, and then WikiLeaks got access to the same information by other means. But it sure seems like a suspicious coincidence. Especially given Julian Assange's troubling pattern of pro-Russian behavior (source).
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