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Russia and American elections, now featuring radical republicans as co-stars


Pancho

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37 minutes ago, elfenix said:

common misconception. we have the electoral college because even among free citizens the right to vote was subject to different requirements, some requiring property ownership, some requiring a tax to be paid, some allowing free black men to vote, and new jersey even extended the franchise to unmarried women property owners. so a state which extended suffrage would have comparatively more votes to count in a system where more votes wins. it didn't exactly encourage democracy in the way that having a direct election would have encouraged the states to extend the franchise much faster than than did, but that's not antidemocratic.

https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/debates_719.asp

keep in mind that many states didn't adopt winner take all in the electoral college (which makes it much more antidemocratic) until the second competitive election in 1800, and in the first party system you voted (if you did, some states the legislatures just picked) for an elector, not the person at the top of the ticket.

anyway, the original system was so dumb it was axed after just two competitive elections because *of course* political parties were going to emerge.

YES.

also. When I was in college I slept with a girl from Virginia who was really into James Madison. And other stuff.

Not stable, though. 

Edited by Bozo_Casanova
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Just spitballing here, but what if the GOP and its supporters made the case for the Electoral College and Senate filibuster to American voters WITHOUT threatening to kill the Vice President and partnering with Russian military intelligence.  Is that idea worth a stress test or nah? 

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1 hour ago, MC Fresh Breath said:

Not all the time, and not this time, but sometimes I think "he might have a point here and maybe isn't just trolling."  But then you use the 'leftist' label and I tend to toss all those thoughts out the window .   I promise you, 99.9% of the posters on this board are absolutely not leftists. Trust me, I'm a leftist.  

 

Incredulity is here to be dumb as fuck and post terrible gifs, and he's almost out of gifs

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We are almost done with Fox focus group testing and while I still think that “weaponized DOJ Deep State fake news” has an outside shot, the official line is going to be “we actually just really agree with Putin so it doesn’t make a difference if he pays us.” 
 

The former is far stupider, but it’s much scarier for the country that the latter is the line they think is more palatable.

 

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40 minutes ago, 956 Worldwide said:

Just spitballing here, but what if the GOP and its supporters made the case for the Electoral College and Senate filibuster to American voters WITHOUT threatening to kill the Vice President and partnering with Russian military intelligence.  Is that idea worth a stress test or nah? 

If Texas or Florida flipped for Harris, Some in the GOP are going to make a case to ditch the Electoral College.

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31 minutes ago, 956 Worldwide said:

We are almost done with Fox focus group testing and while I still think that “weaponized DOJ Deep State fake news” has an outside shot, the official line is going to be “we actually just really agree with Putin so it doesn’t make a difference if he pays us.” 
 

The former is far stupider, but it’s much scarier for the country that the latter is the line they think is more palatable.

 

 

Victims who were paid hundreds of thousands of dollars. How much were you victimized Lil Marco?

 

 

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9 hours ago, Tuco said:

Fuck yes.  

From the article: 

They were at the center of this early on. Butina published an article in their magazine in early 2016. They hosted Trump's foreign policy speech in April 2016.  Think tanks are practically indistinguishable from lobbyists, but their funding is completely dark.  

now wait just a minute. are you suggesting that it's always been that dark Russian nra money tho?

jesus christ it's been so fucking obvious and they were doing it right in the fucking open the whole time

Russia owns these fucks in probably a half dozen different ways each

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2 hours ago, RDCanecutter said:

Can we cut to the chase and figure out which bribes Tommy Tuberville took?

The Russians tried but the confused bagmen at the Opelika Buick dealership just kept telling them that NIL had made this kind of strategy irrelevant. 

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Trying to challenge them?  The Constitution has an amendment procedure embodied in Article V.  It has been amended 27 times since 1789 and the first 10 were proposed within six months of ratification.
Senate rules change all the fucking time.  There's nothing sacrosanct about them.  We didn't even have cloture until 128 years in, and they changed that again, about 50 years later.  It's about time to change it again.
None of this is in the least anti-democratic.  It's part of the system.  The Senate itself is purposely anti-democratic and so is the electoral college.  In 1913 we made the Senate more democratic by subjecting senators to popular vote instead of appointment by the states.  
It's all in the game, yo.
What isn't in the game is theocratic authoritarianism.
 

I like this TwiceHorn
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7 minutes ago, hayden_horn said:

now wait just a minute. are you suggesting that it's always been that dark Russian nra money tho?

jesus christ it's been so fucking obvious and they were doing it right in the fucking open the whole time

Russia owns these fucks in probably a half dozen different ways each

The two most obvious Republican crimes (go away Twice) have been Russian money funneled through the NRA and MTG being the pipe bomber (go away Ohio). 

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1 hour ago, Biff Tannen said:

The two most obvious Republican crimes (go away Twice) have been Russian money funneled through the NRA and MTG being the pipe bomber (go away Ohio). 

 

didn't those nra douches just get a slap on the wrist ?

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12 hours ago, elfenix said:

common misconception. we have the electoral college because even among free citizens the right to vote was subject to different requirements, some requiring property ownership, some requiring a tax to be paid, some allowing free black men to vote, and new jersey even extended the franchise to unmarried women property owners. so a state which extended suffrage would have comparatively more votes to count in a system where more votes wins. it didn't exactly encourage democracy in the way that having a direct election would have encouraged the states to extend the franchise much faster than than did, but that's not antidemocratic.

https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/debates_719.asp

keep in mind that many states didn't adopt winner take all in the electoral college (which makes it much more antidemocratic) until the second competitive election in 1800, and in the first party system you voted (if you did, some states the legislatures just picked) for an elector, not the person at the top of the ticket.

anyway, the original system was so dumb it was axed after just two competitive elections because *of course* political parties were going to emerge.

That's a valid point, but just one guy's views.  They knew damn well it put a firewall between the office and the electorate, which is undemocratic, and they were ok with it.  See Madison, again, in Federalist 10.  Also see Federalist 68.

Direct election of the President was never under meaningful consideration.

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12 hours ago, 956 Worldwide said:

Just spitballing here, but what if the GOP and its supporters made the case for the Electoral College and Senate filibuster to American voters WITHOUT threatening to kill the Vice President and partnering with Russian military intelligence.  Is that idea worth a stress test or nah? 

 

11 hours ago, atomheartbevo said:

If Texas or Florida flipped for Harris, Some in the GOP are going to make a case to ditch the Electoral College.

I mean, somewhere there are some intelligent, if evil, folks in the GOP that have to process that removing the EC, or ranked choice voting, will force more moderate voices to the forefront and push out the crazies, and that the GOP can start winning elections again, right? I mean, you know, without cheating and gerrymandering. 

Edited by SydneyCarton
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11 hours ago, 956 Worldwide said:

We are almost done with Fox focus group testing and while I still think that “weaponized DOJ Deep State fake news” has an outside shot, the official line is going to be “we actually just really agree with Putin so it doesn’t make a difference if he pays us.” 
 

The former is far stupider, but it’s much scarier for the country that the latter is the line they think is more palatable.

 

Little Marco and these GQP influencers are channeling their inner Clay Davis.  Take the $$$ and ask questions later (even though they already know the answer).

image.gif.fdff01a042cf7f4f909cbf2376ec3c60.gif

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1 hour ago, TwiceHorn said:

That's a valid point, but just one guy's views.  They knew damn well it put a firewall between the office and the electorate, which is undemocratic, and they were ok with it.  See Madison, again, in Federalist 10.  Also see Federalist 68.

Direct election of the President was never under meaningful consideration.

They knew that, but it wasn't the point. Direct election of the President of the United States simply wasn't logistically possible in 1787, they had to come up with something else. And they couldn't. They got to near the end of the convention and hadn't figured it out, so they left how to pick the President to a select committee. Because it was hot and everyone wanted to go home, that committee settled on "what if we did a separate Congress that wasn't Congress and only met to pick the President?"

The electoral college isn't really part of the intended design of the federal government at all. It's not fundamental to the separation of powers, nor was it designed with the intent to limit the actual democratic input into the selection of the President. It was a last-minute kludge that everyone settled on because nobody could come up with a better idea that garnered enough support.  

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13 minutes ago, wildcat09 said:

They knew that, but it wasn't the point. Direct election of the President of the United States simply wasn't logistically possible in 1787, they had to come up with something else. And they couldn't. They got to near the end of the convention and hadn't figured it out, so they left how to pick the President to a select committee. Because it was hot and everyone wanted to go home, that committee settled on "what if we did a separate Congress that wasn't Congress and only met to pick the President?"

The electoral college isn't really part of the intended design of the federal government at all. It's not fundamental to the separation of powers, nor was it designed with the intent to limit the actual democratic input into the selection of the President. It was a last-minute kludge that everyone settled on because nobody could come up with a better idea that garnered enough support.  

Does any other country, (past or present) have anything close to an electoral college system in electing their highest office?  Honest question because I have no idea. 

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At the most innocent, these podcasters knew they were being paid large sums of money for doing next to nothing. Tenet Media was paying the podcasters, like Rubin, $400K per month to produce 16 monthly videos of a couple of minutes each. Then Tenet would publish the videos on their platform(s) getting a few thousand views each. 

I don't see that being a crime say from Rubin's standpoint. Employers are allowed to overpay for services even to a ridiculous extent. Employees are allowed to be overpaid.

Where these podcasters look stupid is that they 100% knew the value of these videos nowhere met the level of pay. Rubin or Pool must closely follow the # of views and $/views. They would be well aware that Tenet was paying most likely 1,000 to 10,000x the expected return. Once again, not a crime but you should somewhat ask questions if your boss decided to 1000x your salary.

And if you're in the realm of political discussion, isn't a necessity to aware of who is paying you insane amounts of money? 

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I feel bad for that lawyer named Eduard Grigorian

1 minute ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

At the most innocent, these podcasters knew they were being paid large sums of money for doing next to nothing.

This is the gist of the indictment against Henry Cuellar (obviously he's not a podcaster)

Edited by chainsaw
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2 minutes ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

Does any other country, (past or present) have anything close to an electoral college system in electing their highest office?  Honest question because I have no idea. 

For President, the US is the only country. You could argue that Prime Ministers are effectively selected by an electoral college-like process. Take the UK. Basically each congressional district decides their rep (MP) and the MP of the majority decide the prime minister. 

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8 minutes ago, 956 Worldwide said:

This is a hell of a way to tell the FBI that they should investigate you.

image.thumb.png.2a19e9d700047747dc1023af865b21f4.png

"want our voices silenced"

If you're being paid by Russia to spit out propaganda and disinformation.... yeah maybe.

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