No amount of DNC money would have saved Bernie Sanders (not the least of which reason is that he didn't want to be seen as taking money from anyone but his voters). The only thing that could have won the primary for him would have been to have spent a year courting African-American women in the South. Which he most assuredly did not do.
So the DNC held their fingers on the scale for Hillary, that sucks. Reforms should be made going forward.
But isn't it small potatoes compared to the RNC letting a reality star who bragged about being able to sexually assault people because he's famous (among many other things) hijack their party's nomination and now they all have to act like he can do no wrong. This guy hijacked their party, won and is now profiteering off the presidency. He has refused to divest himself from his businesses and has not released his taxes.
The DNC having protections against an outsider hijacking the Primary is almost cute. And probably a better way of doing business than letting some shady scam artist (Trump University, etc) take over your party.
It would be better if election campaigns did not depend on money in the first place. Public funding of campaigns, with a small, equal sum given to every candidate who got x number of signatures on a public petition, combined with ranked-ballot voting (so third-party candidates would not add the element of chance to elections by eating away at a major candidate's vote share), a ban on outside campaign contributions of any amount (if individuals were allowed to donate even a single dollar, people could still sway elections by spending money on fundraising drives to get a single dollar from tens of thousands of people), and a ban on any wages or benefits paid to campaign volunteers (so people couldn't purchase an army of volunteers), would obviate the need for expensive campaigns.
It would be better if election campaigns did not depend on money in the first place. Public funding of campaigns, with a small, equal sum given to every candidate who got x number of signatures on a public petition, combined with ranked-ballot voting (so third-party candidates would not add the element of chance to elections by eating away at a major candidate's vote share), a ban on outside campaign contributions of any amount (if individuals were allowed to donate even a single dollar, people could still sway elections by spending money on fundraising drives to get a single dollar from tens of thousands of people), and a ban on any wages or benefits paid to campaign volunteers (so people couldn't purchase an army of volunteers), would obviate the need for expensive campaigns.
Yes, but we are talking about the ideal, not what exists in a world where a right-wing Supreme Court gutted McCain/Feingold and ruled in favor of Citizens United. The fact is, there is 100% chance every judge Trump appoints will be in favor of those decisions (and at least a 80% chance whoever Hillary appointed would have taken the opposite view). The moment Gorsuch got on the court, any hope of getting money out of politics for another generation (at least) disappeared.
Support a Constitutional Amendment to get money out of politics. This is required because of the Supreme Courts Citizens United ruling allowing money to corrupt our Democracy.
So the DNC held their fingers on the scale for Hillary, that sucks. Reforms should be made going forward.
But isn't it small potatoes compared to the RNC letting a reality star who bragged about being able to sexually assault people because he's famous (among many other things) hijack their party's nomination and now they all have to act like he can do no wrong. This guy hijacked their party, won and is now profiteering off the presidency. He has refused to divest himself from his businesses and has not released his taxes.
The DNC having protections against an outsider hijacking the Primary is almost cute. And probably a better way of doing business than letting some shady scam artist (Trump University, etc) take over your party.
If I may... if the current timeline that Muller & co. are working from is correct, then the Russians started backing Trump in the GOP primary while he still had viable opponents. Rubio (very obliquely) complained about it months ago.
Anyone who's concerned about the integrity of the Democratic primaries should be fully backing Mueller's probe since it appears that the Republican primaries were also compromised.
You don't need the Twitter account of an accused rapist hiding in an embassy to know that, you only needed to watch the episode of Saturday Night Live Hillary appeared on. ANY Democratic strategist would have said Trump would have been best candidate to go against. I thought he would have been.
Beyond that, it still wouldn't be news even if Hillary had PERSONALLY wrote checks and campaigned for Trump during the Republican primaries. Why?? Because Hillary Clinton is an American citizen. Americans can affect American elections. The Trump campaign is accused of accepting direct help from a foreign entity. What you are referring to is nothing more than a team who wins the Western Conference Championship in the NBA hoping that the team that comes out of the Eastern Conference is the one they believe they match up better against. What you are talking about is underestimating your opponent, but nothing resembling "collusion".
I'll also add that Mueller is no longer just probing Russian influence in the election, but obstruction of justice and ANYTHING else he might find. This situation exists because Trump fired Comey and THEN admitted on national TV it was because of the Russia probe. Trump today also said he is sad and angry that he can't PERSONALLY direct the DOJ to go after Hillary Clinton. He is upset he can't act like Putin, Duterte, or Erdogan.
So the DNC held their fingers on the scale for Hillary, that sucks. Reforms should be made going forward.
But isn't it small potatoes compared to the RNC letting a reality star who bragged about being able to sexually assault people because he's famous (among many other things) hijack their party's nomination and now they all have to act like he can do no wrong. This guy hijacked their party, won and is now profiteering off the presidency. He has refused to divest himself from his businesses and has not released his taxes.
The DNC having protections against an outsider hijacking the Primary is almost cute. And probably a better way of doing business than letting some shady scam artist (Trump University, etc) take over your party.
If I may... if the current timeline that Muller & co. are working from is correct, then the Russians started backing Trump in the GOP primary while he still had viable opponents. Rubio (very obliquely) complained about it months ago.
Anyone who's concerned about the integrity of the Democratic primaries should be fully backing Mueller's probe since it appears that the Republican primaries were also compromised.
When people mention Hillary "stealing" the primary from Bernie, the entire charge is utterly nebulous. No one ever mentions specific actions taken, what states were affected and taken from Bernie, and what specific tactics the DNC engaged in that caused the primary to swing to Hillary. It could be anything and everything, and it's impossible to nail down what anyone is suggesting because no one offers any examples.
On the other hand, I can tell you EXACTLY what most liberals who have been following the Russia story since last summer THINK happened with Russia. Which is that members of the Trump campaign reached out and struck a deal to have Russian hackers bombard American social media with anti-Hillary propaganda. To do so, they would have needed knowledge of American electoral politics from the inside, meaning people tied to the Trump campaign telling them to target (specifically) Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan, using data from Cambridge Analytica to micro-target people most likely to be influenced by the Russian campaign.
I have to disagree. Russia has been interfering in other countries' elections for years before 2016 rolled along--if there was any collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government (and I've already said why I don't think there was), I'm reasonably certain it would have been Russia's idea, and not the Trump campaign's.
I'd take anything from Assange with a massive grain of salt. He's proven himself to be at best a pawn of the Russian government and at worst he works for them. He's citing stolen and/or doctored sources. Not reliable, has an agenda, and is probably a pawn of Russia.
Has Assange ever published anything critical of Russia? Plenty of opportunities with information releases like the Panama papers, or even to look historically at incidents like the Russian apartment bombings.
“The saddest thing is that because I’m the president of the United States, I am not supposed to be involved with the Justice Department. I’m not supposed to be involved with the FBI.” -Trump Thursday on conservative radio show in Washington
“I don’t know, is it possible that they paid $12.4 million for the dossier? And how was it ― which is total phony, fake ― and how was it used?”
The company, Fusion GPS, claimed they were paid $168k but facts don't matter when you can exaggerate.
Anyway, this morning he's trying to skirt the "not supposed to influence the Justice department rules" that were put in place to prevent the President from jailing his rivals after Nixon's Saturday Night Massacre.
First of all "everybody"who? Your friend Jim from Paris? John Barron? Who? I don't know anyone crying out for wasting more money on Hillary. She's got no power and close to zero influence. The only reason she matters at all is Trump keeps bringing her up so people keep asking her if the latest outrageous thing Trump said is actually true.
And not even reverse psychology there just trying to shame the FBI and Justice Dept into being his pawns while maintaining a hairs worth of distance so he can claim "no I didn't ORDER them!"
No matter what you think of Hillary, the idea that the President of the United States craves the power to personally order the prosecution of his political opponent should send chills up the spine of anyone who wants to hold on to a semblance of a free country.
This failure to get encrypted information in a timely manner causes law enforcement to waste even more valuable time and resources than it should have. And it could have potentially deadly consequences,
In other words, he wants tech companies to turn over encrypted communications because of the latest NYC attack. He would like law enforcement to be able to read anything they want whenever they want to--they want all the keys so they can unlock all the doors.
Good luck decrypting that. If you are both brilliant *and* extremely lucky you *might* be able to crack it...but I highly doubt it. It is an encryption algorithm of my own design.
As I suspected, the apoplectic reaction (mostly on the left, by the way) yesterday to Donna Brazile's attempt to get her feet back in political punditry by doing a self-serving hit job on Hillary's bailout of the DNC was WAY overblown and premature. NBC News got ahold of the actual memo. And not only did it only pertain to preparations for the general election, but it also specifically stipulated that other candidates could make similar arrangements:
AND in other news....guess what?? All those times I was told I was crazy for thinking Wikileaks or anyone who stole emails might also ALTER those emails?? Lo and behold:
Not sure if I blame Assange for this one. Seems more plausible that the Russian agent just made a minor tweak for effect, and Wikileaks wasn't aware of the alteration. The edits don't seem to change the meaning of the original document.
Not sure if I blame Assange for this one. Seems more plausible that the Russian agent just made a minor tweak for effect, and Wikileaks wasn't aware of the alteration. The edits don't seem to change the meaning of the original document.
Simply offering as an example of it actually happening, and that it isn't at all out of the realm of possibility for hackers to be, let's say, less than pure in their intentions.
It's more obvious after this week that the Harvey Weinstein revelations have created a shift in the entertainment industry, and culture at large, that seems permanent in regards to the days of being able to get away with sexual assault because you are in a position of power are over. Kevin Spacey, Director Brett Ratner, Danny Masteron of "That '70s Show", an Executive at NPR. It's rare you see something take hold this quickly, but careers are disappearing in the blink of an eye. It's pretty crazy to watch .
Is it fair to say, at this point, that there is more hard evidence linking Clinton's machine to Putin, the new boogeyman, than there is to Trump? I think recent revelations make that a defendable position.
"The news that the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee paid for research used in the discredited Trump-Russia “dossier” is a bombshell. But even more shocking — and overlooked — is the revelation that the firm the Clinton campaign hired to compile that dossier, Fusion GPS, is the same firm that has been accused in recent congressional testimony of launching a smear campaign in Washington against Sergei Magnitsky, the Russian lawyer who was tortured and killed in a Russian prison in 2009 after uncovering a $230 million tax theft by 23 Kremlin-linked companies and individuals close to President Vladimir Putin.
Here’s the bottom line: We have congressional testimony, under oath, that Clinton hired the same firm to smear Trump that Putin reportedly used to smear Magnitsky. Moreover, we also know that the Fusion GPS dossier relied on senior Russian government officials for much of the dirt it compiled, including “a senior Russian Foreign Ministry figure” and a “former top level intelligence officer still active in the Kremlin.” Together, those are bombshell revelations. "
The Washington Free Beacon, a conservative group, also hired that exact same firm for the exact same purpose. And they did so before the DNC hired Fusion GPS.
Shall we then conclude that both Democrats and Republicans were colluding with Russa, because both of them hired this supposedly Russia-aligned firm to do the exact same job?
Anti Trump Republican Russian Agents and Clinton Machine Russian Agents obtaining oppo research from inside the Kremlin to take down Donald Trump, Russian Agent. What a time to be alive.
Also, it bothers me as someone who supported his nomination run how little Sanders cares about the whole thing. Maybe he's just upset about being called Crazy Bernie (lol), but he's gone from denying any rigging occurred to viewing the whole thing as a distraction.
So if he's not interested in serious investigation or change what will happen when a DNC held unaccountable feels the temptation to rig the game for another establishment figure? Will we need to rely on the saving grace of "Russian hackers" to reveal our own undemocratic processes?
At which point we would be making the strange claim that the Democratic and Republican parties are actually allies and secretly conspired to deny Trump the election... and yet, despite being working on the same completely undocumented conspiracy, are somehow not working together to impeach the man, even though they have the legal power to do so.
I've complained about this in the past, this idea that massive numbers of Republicans are secretly pawns of the Democratic party. There are vague conspiracy theories about the "deep state" and anti-Trump forces of unknown nature, and it just reminds me so, so much of reading Chinese Communist party propaganda claiming that America was secretly giving money to every dissident in China, or anti-Zionist radicals in the Middle East saying there was a Jewish conspiracy behind the world order, or Hindutva extremists saying that American academics were working with Islamic nations to support anti-Hindu Islamic communist forces in India...
...It's just that I've studied so many conspiracy theories, and this new one looks just like all the others. All these theories accuse nameless, formless, shadowy groups of hatching secret plots behind closed doors to do evil things using unspecified means. There is seldom ever more than an abstract hint of the who, the what, the when, the where, or the how--the only clear and consistent thing is the "why":
Because they're sneaky evil people who are just trying to hurt us good people for no reason.
All these theories have the same appeal. They give people a scapegoat and a simple explanation for all of their troubles and tell people that they're the heroic underdogs fighting the evil oppressors--without actually demanding that they form any concrete battle plan or solution for the problem besides "get rid of the bad guys."
Conspiracy theories aren't just the ideas of fringe lunatics like the "jet fuel can't melt steel beams" crowd. You see allegations of secret plots even in mainstream politics these days, whether it's the Trump collusion story or the "deep state" conspiracy theory or any number of other smaller theories. Lots of people believe in sinister plans concocted behind closed doors.
What exactly would be the Russian motive for helping Clinton? Clinton and Putin have hated each other for years.
Anti Trump Republican Russian Agents and Clinton Machine Russian Agents obtaining oppo research from inside the Kremlin to take down Donald Trump, Russian Agent. What a time to be alive.
Also, it bothers me as someone who supported his nomination run how little Sanders cares about the whole thing. Maybe he's just upset about being called Crazy Bernie (lol), but he's gone from denying any rigging occurred to viewing the whole thing as a distraction.
So if he's not interested in serious investigation or change what will happen when a DNC held unaccountable feels the temptation to rig the game for another establishment figure? Will we need to rely on the saving grace of "Russian hackers" to reveal our own undemocratic processes?
Possibly because despite everything, he's an adult who is serious about actually helping people in whatever capacity he can, and realizes that a fractured Democratic Party leaves Trump and the Republicans free reign to dismantle the healthcare and social safety net of millions of people. In juxtaposition to most of his supporters, I might add, of which I was one until he lost the Ohio primary and he was mathematically finished.
We already KNOW what happened at the DNC. And seriously, does everyone realize that the DNC is a private organization, and not an official arm of the government?? They could choose their candidate by having a Tootsie Roll eating contest if they wanted to and it wouldn't be illegal. Same goes for the RNC.
And again, this idea that people who voted for Trump are up in arms about the candidate-selection process of the Democratic Party is absolutely laughable. I've never once in my life spent a second thinking that, as a Democrat, I have some say in how the Republican Party chooses their nominee. Other people (Independents I guess) may be able to VOTE in Democratic primaries or caucuses in some states, but that is up to the State parties. But in most cases, you have to be a registered Democrat to vote in the primary. The Democratic and Republican parties are the two sides by default because no third party has arisen to take them on. They are private organizations, and as long as there are no laws broken in regards to campaign finance (and the Supreme Court guaranteed that what happened at the DNC was legal), they have absolute discretion about how they run their party.
So yeah, investigate Hillary for the 476th time in the last 25 years. Just like every time before, nothing will come of it. If Hillary Clinton was a the criminal mastermind everyone thinks she is, she would have been taken down and put away LONG, LONG ago. Investigate the DNC and find out that what they did is perfectly legal because of right-wing Supreme Court decisions regarding money and politics. It appears Trump is going to order them anyway like a tin-pot dictator.
I mean, what Democrat are you going to vote for at this point?? My guess would be Tulsi Gabbard. And that isn't happening.
It is laughable that people equate Democrats having a preferred candidate and also Hillary's people taking over payments from Republicans on Fusion GPS' research with what the Trump people have done.
Why was Fusion GPS gathering intel out of the country on Donald Trump!? Why were they interviewing and gathering Intel from Russian sources? Because Trump was in bed with Russia!! Hello, he has significant ties to Russia! No need to investigate in Nebraska, Ivan, because this guy is taking hundreds of millions of dollars from Russia. You follow the money there.
Trump'd screwed up his businesses and reputation so badly with multiple bankruptcies and lawsuits no one would lend him money any more, but he wanted more money.
And he hangs around guys like Manaford, Carter Page, Papadopoulos, and plenty of others with ties to Russia! Why bring in Manaford, with his dumb James Bond lifestyle with 3 passports and ties to laundering money from Russian Oligarchy? Trump was a Republican candidate for President, this was the guy he decided to use? And Carter Page is all about money in fossil fuels in Russia. Trump Jr eagerly met with Russian spies to get stolen info. Sessions has perjured himself at least three times saying "russia? No never heard of it" while Papadopoulos told Sessions he could set up a Trump Putin meeting during the campaign.
Edit: And I forgot to mention Mike Flynn this guy was so dirty Trump was warned that hey the Russians have serious compromising info on him, don't hire him. Trump did anyway. He made him in charge of the NSA! He had to go later when his corruption started getting out and he retroactively registered as a foreign lobbyist.
When discussing the collusion, I think many people forget that Russia doesn't interfere with other countries' businesses because they think it will directly benefit them. They seem to be more interested in weakening the rest of the world. Because in a world of fractured, weak and divided states, Russia is safe. How many partially recognized states and quasi-states like Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Donetsk people's republic are there around Russia now?
They wouldn't help Trump because he's pro-Russia. They'd help him because he's bad for USA and USA's ties to other western countries. Which is why you can find ties to Russia just about anywhere where there's a chance you can divide people into groups that'll hate each other.
Oddly enough Russia would be weaker in a world with fewer international norms because Russia is not very strong economically or strategically. Russia profits by paying lip service to norms and subverting them. After all Dick Dastardly wouldn't have a chance of winning in the Wacky Races if everyone else was cheating too....
On conspiracy theories I have been in bed with a cold but got a good belly laugh to clear my sinuses out of this comment on twitter:
"Bin Laden spent his final years on YouTube comments section, getting angry at conspiracy theorists who said 9/11 was an inside job."
Comments
So the DNC held their fingers on the scale for Hillary, that sucks. Reforms should be made going forward.
But isn't it small potatoes compared to the RNC letting a reality star who bragged about being able to sexually assault people because he's famous (among many other things) hijack their party's nomination and now they all have to act like he can do no wrong. This guy hijacked their party, won and is now profiteering off the presidency. He has refused to divest himself from his businesses and has not released his taxes.
The DNC having protections against an outsider hijacking the Primary is almost cute. And probably a better way of doing business than letting some shady scam artist (Trump University, etc) take over your party.
Support a Constitutional Amendment to get money out of politics. This is required because of the Supreme Courts Citizens United ruling allowing money to corrupt our Democracy.
Anyone who's concerned about the integrity of the Democratic primaries should be fully backing Mueller's probe since it appears that the Republican primaries were also compromised.
Beyond that, it still wouldn't be news even if Hillary had PERSONALLY wrote checks and campaigned for Trump during the Republican primaries. Why?? Because Hillary Clinton is an American citizen. Americans can affect American elections. The Trump campaign is accused of accepting direct help from a foreign entity. What you are referring to is nothing more than a team who wins the Western Conference Championship in the NBA hoping that the team that comes out of the Eastern Conference is the one they believe they match up better against. What you are talking about is underestimating your opponent, but nothing resembling "collusion".
I'll also add that Mueller is no longer just probing Russian influence in the election, but obstruction of justice and ANYTHING else he might find. This situation exists because Trump fired Comey and THEN admitted on national TV it was because of the Russia probe. Trump today also said he is sad and angry that he can't PERSONALLY direct the DOJ to go after Hillary Clinton. He is upset he can't act like Putin, Duterte, or Erdogan.
On the other hand, I can tell you EXACTLY what most liberals who have been following the Russia story since last summer THINK happened with Russia. Which is that members of the Trump campaign reached out and struck a deal to have Russian hackers bombard American social media with anti-Hillary propaganda. To do so, they would have needed knowledge of American electoral politics from the inside, meaning people tied to the Trump campaign telling them to target (specifically) Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan, using data from Cambridge Analytica to micro-target people most likely to be influenced by the Russian campaign.
I'd believe the Americans first.
“I don’t know, is it possible that they paid $12.4 million for the dossier? And how was it ― which is total phony, fake ― and how was it used?”
The company, Fusion GPS, claimed they were paid $168k but facts don't matter when you can exaggerate.
Anyway, this morning he's trying to skirt the "not supposed to influence the Justice department rules" that were put in place to prevent the President from jailing his rivals after Nixon's Saturday Night Massacre.
First of all "everybody"who? Your friend Jim from Paris? John Barron? Who? I don't know anyone crying out for wasting more money on Hillary. She's got no power and close to zero influence. The only reason she matters at all is Trump keeps bringing her up so people keep asking her if the latest outrageous thing Trump said is actually true.
And not even reverse psychology there just trying to shame the FBI and Justice Dept into being his pawns while maintaining a hairs worth of distance so he can claim "no I didn't ORDER them!"
My response?
GaCbAaaqDfAtDzCrAmBxBkAtfjdgawEzGdBzdgfvawfcmgbqcxbmalbagharAsFkAmfpetbaBaBzAsdyciaqcnAgafbyffarAkAaAwdlAxajagadAobxbvajBtRhBi KlCaBqubbtepHwDxBzBpGnAhDhFnAdekigbfAzEvAqbfbiagFuGhBwBnEkAlbgbeagcxhnazCiDiAkfhhhbfbaBzaabqatagaoefalcxhnazBvasAyBcafAvFgHqBtajAxAtBqGyAihomsbyArBvaptdagej
Good luck decrypting that. If you are both brilliant *and* extremely lucky you *might* be able to crack it...but I highly doubt it. It is an encryption algorithm of my own design.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/elections/memo-reveals-details-hillary-clinton-dnc-deal-n817411
AND in other news....guess what?? All those times I was told I was crazy for thinking Wikileaks or anyone who stole emails might also ALTER those emails?? Lo and behold:
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/at-least-one-document-hacked-by-guccifer-20-was-edited-to-draw-reporters-attention-report/article/2639589
"The news that the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee paid for research used in the discredited Trump-Russia “dossier” is a bombshell. But even more shocking — and overlooked — is the revelation that the firm the Clinton campaign hired to compile that dossier, Fusion GPS, is the same firm that has been accused in recent congressional testimony of launching a smear campaign in Washington against Sergei Magnitsky, the Russian lawyer who was tortured and killed in a Russian prison in 2009 after uncovering a $230 million tax theft by 23 Kremlin-linked companies and individuals close to President Vladimir Putin.
Here’s the bottom line: We have congressional testimony, under oath, that Clinton hired the same firm to smear Trump that Putin reportedly used to smear Magnitsky. Moreover, we also know that the Fusion GPS dossier relied on senior Russian government officials for much of the dirt it compiled, including “a senior Russian Foreign Ministry figure” and a “former top level intelligence officer still active in the Kremlin.” Together, those are bombshell revelations. "
Shall we then conclude that both Democrats and Republicans were colluding with Russa, because both of them hired this supposedly Russia-aligned firm to do the exact same job?
Also, it bothers me as someone who supported his nomination run how little Sanders cares about the whole thing. Maybe he's just upset about being called Crazy Bernie (lol), but he's gone from denying any rigging occurred to viewing the whole thing as a distraction.
So if he's not interested in serious investigation or change what will happen when a DNC held unaccountable feels the temptation to rig the game for another establishment figure? Will we need to rely on the saving grace of "Russian hackers" to reveal our own undemocratic processes?
I've complained about this in the past, this idea that massive numbers of Republicans are secretly pawns of the Democratic party. There are vague conspiracy theories about the "deep state" and anti-Trump forces of unknown nature, and it just reminds me so, so much of reading Chinese Communist party propaganda claiming that America was secretly giving money to every dissident in China, or anti-Zionist radicals in the Middle East saying there was a Jewish conspiracy behind the world order, or Hindutva extremists saying that American academics were working with Islamic nations to support anti-Hindu Islamic communist forces in India...
...It's just that I've studied so many conspiracy theories, and this new one looks just like all the others. All these theories accuse nameless, formless, shadowy groups of hatching secret plots behind closed doors to do evil things using unspecified means. There is seldom ever more than an abstract hint of the who, the what, the when, the where, or the how--the only clear and consistent thing is the "why":
Because they're sneaky evil people who are just trying to hurt us good people for no reason.
All these theories have the same appeal. They give people a scapegoat and a simple explanation for all of their troubles and tell people that they're the heroic underdogs fighting the evil oppressors--without actually demanding that they form any concrete battle plan or solution for the problem besides "get rid of the bad guys."
Conspiracy theories aren't just the ideas of fringe lunatics like the "jet fuel can't melt steel beams" crowd. You see allegations of secret plots even in mainstream politics these days, whether it's the Trump collusion story or the "deep state" conspiracy theory or any number of other smaller theories. Lots of people believe in sinister plans concocted behind closed doors.
What exactly would be the Russian motive for helping Clinton? Clinton and Putin have hated each other for years.
We already KNOW what happened at the DNC. And seriously, does everyone realize that the DNC is a private organization, and not an official arm of the government?? They could choose their candidate by having a Tootsie Roll eating contest if they wanted to and it wouldn't be illegal. Same goes for the RNC.
And again, this idea that people who voted for Trump are up in arms about the candidate-selection process of the Democratic Party is absolutely laughable. I've never once in my life spent a second thinking that, as a Democrat, I have some say in how the Republican Party chooses their nominee. Other people (Independents I guess) may be able to VOTE in Democratic primaries or caucuses in some states, but that is up to the State parties. But in most cases, you have to be a registered Democrat to vote in the primary. The Democratic and Republican parties are the two sides by default because no third party has arisen to take them on. They are private organizations, and as long as there are no laws broken in regards to campaign finance (and the Supreme Court guaranteed that what happened at the DNC was legal), they have absolute discretion about how they run their party.
So yeah, investigate Hillary for the 476th time in the last 25 years. Just like every time before, nothing will come of it. If Hillary Clinton was a the criminal mastermind everyone thinks she is, she would have been taken down and put away LONG, LONG ago. Investigate the DNC and find out that what they did is perfectly legal because of right-wing Supreme Court decisions regarding money and politics. It appears Trump is going to order them anyway like a tin-pot dictator.
I mean, what Democrat are you going to vote for at this point?? My guess would be Tulsi Gabbard. And that isn't happening.
Why was Fusion GPS gathering intel out of the country on Donald Trump!? Why were they interviewing and gathering Intel from Russian sources? Because Trump was in bed with Russia!! Hello, he has significant ties to Russia! No need to investigate in Nebraska, Ivan, because this guy is taking hundreds of millions of dollars from Russia. You follow the money there.
Trump'd screwed up his businesses and reputation so badly with multiple bankruptcies and lawsuits no one would lend him money any more, but he wanted more money.
And he hangs around guys like Manaford, Carter Page, Papadopoulos, and plenty of others with ties to Russia! Why bring in Manaford, with his dumb James Bond lifestyle with 3 passports and ties to laundering money from Russian Oligarchy? Trump was a Republican candidate for President, this was the guy he decided to use? And Carter Page is all about money in fossil fuels in Russia. Trump Jr eagerly met with Russian spies to get stolen info. Sessions has perjured himself at least three times saying "russia? No never heard of it" while Papadopoulos told Sessions he could set up a Trump Putin meeting during the campaign.
Edit:
And I forgot to mention Mike Flynn this guy was so dirty Trump was warned that hey the Russians have serious compromising info on him, don't hire him. Trump did anyway. He made him in charge of the NSA! He had to go later when his corruption started getting out and he retroactively registered as a foreign lobbyist.
They wouldn't help Trump because he's pro-Russia. They'd help him because he's bad for USA and USA's ties to other western countries. Which is why you can find ties to Russia just about anywhere where there's a chance you can divide people into groups that'll hate each other.
On conspiracy theories I have been in bed with a cold but got a good belly laugh to clear my sinuses out of this comment on twitter:
"Bin Laden spent his final years on YouTube comments section, getting angry at conspiracy theorists who said 9/11 was an inside job."