2016 USA Presidential election thread II: And. Here. We. Go!

[Kincard]

I think the last time someone checked less than half of Americans could name the three branches of government. To be fair I think that was the general populace and not voters- though I think that's still kind of a problem when people like Trump show up to stroke the anti-intellectual side of Americans into voting.

It doesn't matter if you provide all the tools for people to get informed, it's human nature for most people to not actually give a shit what Aleppo is or what China is actually like because most people just care that they have an okay job, a loving family/social life and a hobby to take up their time. It's more likely for someone to be watching some shitty meme cat video or the trailer to Dr. Strange than the bloody footage of Syrian kids getting the shit bombed out of them. I mean, that's part of where the supposed "whitelash" this year was coming from, that working class Whites aren't going to give a shit about progressive agendas if they can't even find a job (though I guess some argue that's just rhetoric and said movement doesn't actually exist).

On the other hand, it's the politicians' jobs to be immersed in this stuff all the time, so its only natural for them to tend towards being more knowledgeable on the topic. Well, in theory anyway, on the other hand we got "what's Aleppo" being taken seriously as a candidate by a sizable chunk of people so who fucking knows. But I think I'm still more keen on listening to someone like Jon Huntsman or Gary Locke tell me how US-China policy should be handled over the popular opinion of a bunch of Americans who still refer to them as commies without any hint of irony.

[Ksandra]

Zero

I would say slightly more than zero, but not much. Like 1-3%.

It's interesting to watch this shit go down. The reality is, the GOP wants to preserve the GOP, but they hate that Trump is going to be their president.

It comes down to how many care more about preservation than they do about hating trump.


1% also has to be added because nothing has gone as expected this cycle.

[Qeomash]

There was an FCC rule about what could be said on the news, or at least providing equal time when reporting on political news. It was repealed under Reagan and the language removed entirely under Obama.

And this has been traced to when the beginnings of our deep party divides started. FOX news was created specifically to fill the staunchly conservative demographic after that provision was removed.

To be fair, "balance" was still very far from perfect beforehand. But at least they put up a much better effort at it than they do now.

[Qeomash]

Double post for serious question:

I am not convinced that Russia is behind the hacking. (To be sure: I am 110% not a Trump supported, nor did I really like Hillary). I have so far been unable to find any concrete evidence through the deluge of half-assed reporting on it.

What I know:

• Podesta received a spear phishing email to his gmail stating, "Someone in Crimea has attempted to gain access to your account, you should change it here: www.notgoogle.com/resetpassword"
• Podesta correctly forwarded it to the relevant IT department, which responded, "Yes this is legitimate, you absolutely should reset your password here: www.actualgoogle.com/resetpassword"
• Podesta recieves that response and resets his password...by clicking on the first link.

After that, Podesta's email was accessed and scraped from with a connection leading back to a Russian proxy server. As far as I know, this is where the trail goes cold because I highly doubt that the CIA would be able to follow that particular connection through the proxy to whatever the actual source was. If the hacker was half competent, the hacking would have been done via several proxy server hops to muddle the trail further.

The CIA says that the hacking is "consistent with the methods of Russian hackers" or something similar. Unfortunately, this type of attack is also consistent with the definition of spear phishing.

What I would like to know, is how they are sure that the Russian proxy was the beginning and end of the chain? How exactly is this "consistent with Russian hackers". I want actual details, but I haven't been able to find them, if the CIA has even released any.

(Yes, it probably was Russia. But it's also still possible that it wasn't and we're even more of a laughing stock in Moscow than just for electing Trump.)

[archibaldcrane]

Whatever evidence there is hasn't been made public, but at least apparently the CIA and FBI agree that the DNC (and Podesta?) hacks were Russian. They seem to differ about Russia's motivations.

[Aerin]

I might be in the minority on this, but I honestly hope the U.S. Government has ways of tracking this down that the general public doesn't know about, and that they keep it that way.

[Krandor]

Whatever evidence there is hasn't been made public, but at least apparently the CIA and FBI agree that the DNC (and Podesta?) hacks were Russian. They seem to differ about Russia's motivations.

Didn't the FBI explicitly say it wasn't Russia at one point, or did I fall into another t_d pothole?

As for tracking it down, if we're talking about both Podesta and the DNC falling into a phishing scam, there really won't be any effective way to track it down other then if wikileaks straight up reveals the source. Like said, the main reasoning (at least from public information) is because of associated ip addresses, which can be spoofed quite easily tbh

[Day]

Didn't the FBI explicitly say it wasn't Russia at one point, or did I fall into another t_d pothole?

As for tracking it down, if we're talking about both Podesta and the DNC falling into a phishing scam, there really won't be any effective way to track it down other then if wikileaks straight up reveals the source. Like said, the main reasoning (at least from public information) is because of associated ip addresses, which can be spoofed quite easily tbh

FBI came out in Oct I think and said there was no clear tie to Trump.

Hope you donation banning cowards missed me :3

[Dimmauk]

FBI came out in Oct I think and said there was no clear tie to Trump.

Hope you donation banning cowards missed me :3

We all knew this Day would come.

[chazzyphizzle]

im pretty sure every intelligence agency in america unanimously says it was russia, but the FBI doesnt believe there is enough evidence to claim they were trying to help trump win, just that they were trying to undermine the democratic process in general. correct me if i'm wrong tho

[Day]

That is correct and I believe I just caught CIAs Clapper on TV kind of re-iterating that same point, I need to go back and see what that was, not sure when it was recorded. In my opinion, Russia probably thought Hillary would be elected and were trying to de-legitimatize her before she took office. I'm way more inclined to believe they were trying to hurt Hillary than help Trump, while might not be a clear difference at the end of the day since only 2 main candidates, I doubt they expected a Trump win.

[Dimmauk]

I'm sure the FBI also wasn't trying to help Trump when they swayed undecided voters with the Wiener email bullshit

[Day]

Seems like they would have helped back in July and forced a case, FBI is really dumb.

[Tyrath]

Or you know, the last minute "bombshell" that would have the most impact.

Can't force a case when theres nothing to really go after.

[Gryffes]

I'm sure the FBI also wasn't trying to help Trump when they swayed undecided voters with the Wiener email bullshit

He sent an addendum memo.

It was chaffetz who posted on twitter saying the case was reopened - which the media then ran with, without bothering to verify what the actual fucking story was ( which was basically nothing ).
If the media wants to blame anyone they should blame themselves.

[Krandor]

Why would they blame themselves, it got them all a bunch of views at the time and the overall end result of a Trump presidency is a wet dream for the media networks.

[Andalusian girls]

I wouldn't be so foolish as to suggest we get rid of representative government altogether in favor on some supposed ultra technocrat philosopher king shite because as you said, similar lines of thought have led to some pretty ugly things. I guess I just have what's probably an unpopular opinion in that I don't think having a body of experts having a stronger influence or guiding hand on the outcome is necessarily a bad thing, basically kinda sorta like the Superdelegate system the Democratic Party already has. But we all know the verbal bludgeoning a lot of people were using (from both sides this year) was how it's inherently unjust because it's not a direct popular vote. True that I can see situations where the political elites end up having blinders on to issues the hoi palloi are dealing with (and I'm sure many would argue exactly that happened this year with Clinton) but the opposite can also be true, where the experts see issues that the masses may not be aware of.

I mean, we trust the President to select important personnel for several government positions which aren't popularly elected, after all. Is that really so different?

quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

[Athas]

Where the hell's Green Arrow when you need him?

[Niiro]

The solution to shit government elected by the ignorant masses isn't to take power away from the masses, it's to make them less ignorant and thus less likely to elect a shit government.

But in order to do that you generally need people in government to fund good public education, which becomes harder when the ignorant masses elect people that want to dismantle such systems.

Government is hard.

[Greatguardian]

Public education in most places that aren't Detroit isn't necessarily unfunded. My district spends tens of millions on licenses for edutainment supplement software that i don't even use beyond the initial diagnostic exam because it is terrible. Companies lobby administrators to sign contracts for programs that take years to implement and even more years to accumulate data on to compare to previous baselines (not that such comparisons are meaningful anyways because standards are constantly changing).

Public education has significantly more issues than money. Mandatory education for >50 million public school students in one of the most diverse first world countries on the planet is a mind blowing endeavor that should not be taken lightly.