WampaLord posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-Lvv1f5Qu4

Willie Tomg posted:

absolutely, 100% unironically (not implying you're being ironic)

is pepsi ok posted:

first they weaponized crickets and now whales? what if they deploy a squad of highly trained bears to knock out my air conditioning in the middle of summer

Willie Tomg posted:

Brandor, I really don't want to put your back up here, but: What if this outcome was entirely predictable many years ago not through hermeneutic exegesis of hitherto common nouns, but actually looking at material relations and making empirical observations upon them?

What if--and I truly don't mean to sound insane here--what if some people on a forum were trying to tell you about this process *for literal years, now?*

Willie Tomg posted:

Your point about language is good! it's also kinda quaint in the year 2019 though; Chomsky is whom Chomsky is mostly on the basis of originally talking about those linguistic models, and the rest is... well... historical materialism. Because when you start talking about abstracts in a serious way other than spinning your wheels, you start grinding into observable realities which can be observed, measured, and yes: predicted to within a confidence interval.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KG1Ima2FiMM
https://twitter.com/MollyWolly8/status/1028687465891147776

mila kunis posted:

Lightning Knight posted:

Didn’t the Navy try and weaponize dolphins?

BrandorKP posted:

Mueller Objected to Barr’s Description of Russia Investigation’s Findings https://nyti.ms/2DEvWEQ

quote:

“The special counsel emphasized that nothing in the attorney general’s March 24 letter was inaccurate or misleading,” a Justice Department spokeswoman, Kerri Kupec, said in response to a request for comment made on Tuesday afternoon. “But he expressed frustration over the lack of context and the resulting media coverage regarding the special counsel’s obstruction analysis.”

RandomBlue posted:

https://twitter.com/nprpolitics/status/1123584112646688769

For those of you who say this isn't an issue voters care about, you're wrong. This is definitely an issue Democrat voters care about. Not taking action is going to depress dem turnout.

BrandorKP posted:

Helsing things like this:


Are kind of problematic for your opinion.

Helsing posted:

It would be easier for me to respond if you explained why you think that.

BrandorKP posted:

It's still a possibility that Barr is full of poo poo and misrepresenting the facts as presented in the report. When I write reports for lawyers the goto rule is: stick to the factual, avoid any analysis let the lawyers do the concluding. My reports get written as dry factual accounts, this allows them (the party that hired us) to snip parts out to reference and omit others to build a case to protect the party they represent. If Barr is full of poo poo the risk for him is that any one else sees the report, and that's a big risk for something like this. I'm inclined to think it's not been excessively spun because other parties are eventually going to see the report but if it has, lol.

BrandorKP posted:

70% of Dems think impeachment should proceed. You'd rather move on to building something new. Which group of people are the constituency for that?

Easy Diff posted:

The saddest thing for me was learning about Gangstalking. Basically, people with undiagnosed paranoia are convincing themselves there's a mass conspiracy to keep tabs on them via spies hidden in plain sight. What makes it sad is that these people are all posting hour+ long screeds to youtube and reinforcing each others' delusions and it's terrifying to see basically the mentally ill prey on other mentally unwell.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LPS7E-0tuA

drilldo squirt posted:

Isn't this what happened to the sonichu guy?

The Hill posted:

Assessing who Putin's preferred 2020 candidate will be

BY JANUSZ BUGAJSKI, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR — 04/30/19 03:30 PM EDT

The Kremlin is apparently gearing up for a sustained intervention in the 2020 U.S. presidential elections.

The core of Robert Mueller's special counsel probe provides overwhelming evidence that Russia’s intelligence services intervened in the 2016 U.S. elections and aimed to help Donald Trump win the presidency. However, Moscow’s calculations may have changed regarding whom to support in the November 2020 ballot.

As President Vladimir Putin faces mounting public protests at home, he will seek to deflect attention by undermining U.S. democracy and disrupting policymaking. The White House is mistaken if it calculates that this will again work in Trump’s favor.

The Trump presidency has deeply disappointed the Kremlin, as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has strengthened its capabilities in Europe. Moscow’s targets — Ukraine and Georgia — are now better armed, and economic sanctions against Moscow have been reinforced. Hence, Putin may well favor one of Trump’s Democratic opponents.

Moscow’s disinformation and influence operations will have two primary aims: to help foster confusion and conflict during the U.S. election campaign and to prevent the election of former Vice President Joe Biden.

Biden has a long congressional track record of strengthening NATO, understands the extent of Russia’s imperial ambitions and is most likely to increase U.S. pressure on Moscow if elected.

Kremlin intervention in the 2016 elections demonstrates that America is a soft target for foreign subversion. Russia’s intelligence services have probed American politics for many years, seeking to gain influence or obtain intelligence on personalities, politics and policy.

However, under the Putin regime, the Kremlin became more ambitious in its intentions and more capable in its operations.

Russian state services focus on at least five entry points into U.S. elections: hacking, hoaxing, corrupting, compromising and penetrating. The hacking strategy consists of intercepting, altering, forging and releasing personal communications to discredit presidential candidates.

Selections of stolen documents are provided to Russian surrogates such as WikiLeaks for general release at politically opportune occasions during election campaigns.

The hoaxing strategy entails planting and disseminating false stories about politicians and parties through both the traditional media and social platforms. The fabricated accounts can be positive or negative, but the purpose is to spread rumors that may stick in a voter’s mind even if the stories are subsequently debunked as false.

Even spreading fraudulent stories about collusion with Russia can serve Moscow’s objectives by denigrating certain politicians and campaigns while generating political disputes.

The corruption strategy involves enticing, duping, bribing or recruiting political activists, lobbyists, journalists and academics to promulgate Moscow’s conspiracy theories or whitewashing its policies. The Kremlin’s well-tested European model of financial corruption is likely to be more comprehensively applied in the U.S.

The compromising strategy focuses on gathering scandalous and salacious material that can be used to blackmail political leaders and affect U.S. policy. Russian services would be failing in their duties if they did not gather "kompromat" — i.e., compromising material — on all major U.S. politicians and businesspeople.

The Kremlin can hold this material in reserve in case it needs to generate scandals against an incumbent president and undermine White House policies.

The fifth method is a strategy of penetration. Hackers recruited by the Kremlin will seek to gain access to election rolls and voting systems, possibly to alter voter information and affect elections at local and state levels.

Although it is unclear what precise impact this may have on the vote count, the information gained can be used in subsequent elections to target particular voters.

Moscow’s five methods for influencing the outcome of elections relies on favorable political conditions in contemporary America. Polarization between the two major parties is so profound that foreign actors have space to infiltrate and provide a candidate with useful assistance against a domestic opponent.

Partisan rifts are also reflected in a deeply divided electorate, which is susceptible to conspiracy theories and negative propaganda against the rival party.

A divided political environment also fosters neglect and naiveté among decision-makers about Moscow’s strategic aims. The utopian idea that Russia can be a strategic partner lulled much of the political establishment to sleep until the extent of Moscow’s intervention in the 2016 elections unfolded.

During the past decade, America has become a vulnerable society with a false sense of security. Although the FBI and other government branches can defend against major cyberattacks, it is more difficult to protect against propaganda, disinformation and political penetration. And Washington remains largely passive in a much-needed intervention to undermine the Putin regime.

Putin’s preferred choice in the November 2020 elections is likely to be a progressive or populist Democrat. The Kremlin will assess which candidate:

--has a weak record on the NATO alliance and international military involvement;
--has previously voiced sympathies for leftist dictatorships; and
--is more likely to reach out for a new “grand bargain” with Moscow that will allow it to extend its “sphere of influence.”

Such a candidate would be in a position to perform the function that Trump proved unable to accomplish.

Janusz Bugajski is a senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA). He is the former director of New European Democracy Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). Follow him on Twitter: @JBugajskiUSA.

BrandorKP posted:

70% of Dems think impeachment should proceed. You'd rather move on to building something new. Which group of people are the constituency for that?

Owlofcreamcheese posted:

I feel like being internet infamous kinda makes sonichu the only person on earth that needs to worry about gangstalking.

Helsing posted:

Look Brandor, the cute widdle conspiracy theory that you fed and sheltered is a big boy now. Gosh they grow up so fast.

BrandorKP posted:

It's a mistake to not recognize that I am also talking about something that is material. Let's use the freedom example. In the fourties and fifties you have Birchers and Libertarians giving talks in lovely hotel convention spaces. Then on the radio. They intersect with and write for the segregationists (and religious right)and later the southern strategy republicans. Eventually people like Roger Ailes come out of this and shape television networks. Others like the Kochs also start those think tanks, university programs, and social programs. On the other side freedom is very much materially present in the civil rights movement (are we not yet free?) and similiar real physical things happen. I'm real. You're real. We are having a conversation about how we live our lives. That conversation isn't just a hermeneutic exegesis of hitherto common nouns. It's about material relations. It's an observable phenomena. But it hasn't been easily measurable. That creates a particular type of error. An example is the behaviorists not talking about love because it wasn't easily measurable. Ignoring the observable but hard to measure can be grave error with serious consequences.

But right now it's becoming measurable and even experimentable on.

quote:

At the end of the day where am I sitting? Usually (and currently) down on the waterfront with labor on the piers and on the ships. I have made my choice and I would be somewhere else if I believed something else.

fast cars loose anus posted:

I will never stop laughing if the end result of the Russia nonsense is people going "don't vote for Bernie he's Putin's candidate!"

glowing-fish posted:

2. The history of the Trump presidency, when it is written, will be about the criminal investigations against him. Assuming he is even remembered as anything but a footnote to "And then climate change destroyed civilization", the major lens that Trump will be viewed through is through these investigations, which continue. Even his egregious and inhumane policies, as well as his blundering about the world stage, will still be treated through the lens of his corruption, and how he made those around him even more corrupt. History isn't simple, so Trump's corruption will be viewed as going along with his policy, along with the increasing xenophobia and anti-intellectualism of the Republican Party dating back decades. But Trump's corruption, including but limited to the Special Counsel investigation, is still the primary story about Trump.

Sodomy Hussein posted:

People won't stop defacing his walk of fame star, so I can't wait for the group ballsy enough to try and get him a presidential library or something.

suck my woke dick posted:

except there isn't much of a story beyond "Trump was a massively corrupt dude, tremendously corrupt, with huge levels of corruption like you've never seen before, and he was so dumb he only ever managed to do disorganised crimes "

Discendo Vox posted:

Donald Trump Presidential Public Restroom

glowing-fish posted:

Okay, and a little bit of meta:

In the two threads that I made about the investigations, I was pretty careful to say that federal investigations are complicated things, there will probably never be a smoking gun, and that Trump was probably not acting as a "Manchurian Candidate". Although there have been a few salacious accusations, a lot of the details of money laundering and perjury are pretty dry and procedural. It was a complicated story, basically.

The problem is that most of D&D has just fallen prey to being a venting chamber for the 24 hour news cycle, or even the 12 hour Twitter Sick Burn cycle. Some state office holder in Oklahoma says something homophobic and people shout "Guilliotine" for the next 90 minutes. USPOL made thousands of jokes about Mike Pence loving horses, and they were not funny after the first page. So then we come to something like these investigations, which involves having to deal with legal filings from a half dozen trials over two years, and it is hard to sum it up in a Twitter sized burst.

Self-described advocates for media literacy were like "Oh yeah, the guy who arranged pardons for all those Iran-Contra figures had a news conference and said 'no collusion', and all the big news outlets are repeating it, so it looks like that is the end of the story"

While at times D&D has allowed an interesting form of lateral thinking, and there are some knowledgeable people posting here with good insights, in general, this place just seems to be a place to post their reactions to the news cycle. The people posting things like "Dehumanize Yourself and Face to Bloodshed" as a reaction to Barr's press conference were one of the worst examples of that. Someone can always take a complicated news story, and "win" by posting a single line of Twitter leftism. Someone will probably write a book about Mueller's choices in this investigation, and there is a good case that Mueller should have been more aggressive. But the person posting "Mueller is a Republican Cop" is not making that case. But, right now on D&D, that person "wins".

And that is all I have to say about the matter.

glowing-fish posted:

And that is all I have to say about the matter.

Sodomy Hussein posted:

Just stop closing your threads without notice.

glowing-fish posted:

Because at heart, one of the things that the Serious Adults Who Understand What Is Important are saying is that there are only two sides or factions to any issue, and only one thing can be important at once. Which is I believe the opposite thing that Serious Adults should believe. Yes, I am worried about Davenport, Iowa being underwater, and I also don't think the President should be getting money from AT&T to pay off his mistresses. Life doesn't come down to a single factor, and sometimes we have to think about more than one thing at once.

glowing-fish posted:

Not to brag or anything, but I have not lived in the United States since Trump was president, and sometimes I feel like I am looking in to an alternate time stream. I am Guinean here, telling you that there should be children on the Enterprise.

Slutitution posted:

LOL

https://twitter.com/cenkuygur/status/1126351043619577856

https://twitter.com/cenkuygur/status/1126357598028963840

Progressives in 2019: Trump realizing destroying Venezuela will be the end of his Presidency with his base somehow translates to DIRECT EVIDENCE of Tom Clancy Manchurian candidate bullshit. Does this fat gently caress even remember that Trump won the primaries in part because he was talking mad poo poo about the Bush family and neocon wars in general? Does he not remember the reaction his base had when he bombed Syria? It still amazes me how Trump can make supposedly smart people completely lose their minds like this. ffs Jimmy Dore left TYT just in time. TYT foreign policy positions have been loving awful for years now anyway.