Ambrose Burnside posted:

Also blame the Clinton campaign for deliberately choosing to neglect campaigning and outreach in places like that and pouring most of their resources into cities that were already going to vote for them.

Postess with the Mostest posted:

You voted for the guy who promised to implement every TRC recommendation within hours of its release oh wait I get your point.

PT6A posted:

Honestly, I think that's the problem: Hillary/the Democrats didn't lie enough.

the talent deficit posted:

trump won on memes and filter bubbles and misogyny. i'm in texas right now and every single trump voter i talk to has no idea what his platform is; like at all. they can recount in minute detail every lie told about hillary clinton tho. i'm not just talking to the crazy ones either. it's literally all of them

Postess with the Mostest posted:

Why do white women dislike Clinton so much?

quote:

The truth is that his administration made it extremely difficult for its own foreign-policy experts to be heard. Both Clinton and Holbrooke, two incredibly dedicated and talented people, had to fight to have their voices count on major foreign-policy initiatives.

Holbrooke never succeeded. Clinton did — but it was often a battle. It usually happened only when it finally became clear to a White House that jealously guarded all foreign policymaking — and then relied heavily on the military and intelligence agencies to guide its decisions — that these agencies’ solutions were no substitute for the type of patient, credible diplomacy that garners the respect and support of allies. Time and again, when things seemed to be falling apart, the administration finally turned to Clinton because it knew she was the only person who could save the situation.

...

On the campaign trail, Obama repeatedly stressed that he wanted to get things right in the broader Middle East, reversing the damage that had resulted from the previous administration’s reliance on faulty intelligence and its willingness to apply military solutions to problems it barely understood.

Not only did that not happen, but the president had a truly disturbing habit of funneling major foreign-policy decisions through a small cabal of relatively inexperienced White House advisors whose turf was strictly politics. Their primary concern was how any action in Afghanistan or the Middle East would play on the nightly news, or which talking point it would give the Republicans.

quote:

But Clinton shared Holbrooke’s belief that the purpose of hard power is to facilitate diplomatic breakthroughs. During many meetings I attended with her, she would ask us to make the case for diplomacy and would then quiz us on our assumptions and plan of action. At the end of these drills she would ask us to put it all in writing for the benefit of the White House.

PT6A posted:

Yeah, I know. He was a great liar, and he won.

Now, here's the bonus question: did I actually believe he'd implement every TRC recommendation? What do you think?

Trudeau has basically done exactly what I expected him to do, which is why I'm, overall, fairly positive on the Trudeau government so far.

PT6A posted:

I'm beginning to regret voting Liberal and I don't even have legal weed to calm myself.

PT6A posted:

Goddamnit, why can't we have at least one party that isn't completely loving moronic? The Liberals can go get hosed at this point, as far as I'm concerned. They've made 0 progress on any of the issues I actually care about. As far as I can tell, their list of accomplishments is:

1. Accept more refugees (admittedly a good thing, but hopefully something that would've happened anyway)
2. Travel and take selfies all the time

quote:

“Between 2008 and 2014 in Ontario, 22 people were charged with anal intercourse under Section 159

rawrr posted:

Well actually...

http://foreignpolicy.com/2013/03/04/the-inside-story-of-how-the-white-house-let-diplomacy-fail-in-afghanistan/


Writer is obviously biased in favour of Clinton, but this was written in 2013 and gives a more nuanced view of the situation than Hawkish Hillary.

e:

Hillary Clinton posted:

You’ve seen the reports. Russia’s hacked into a lot of things, China’s hacked into a lot of things. Russia even hacked into the Democratic National Committee. Maybe even some state election systems? So we gotta step up our game. Make sure we are well defended and make sure we are able to take the fight to those who go after us. As president I will make it clear that the United States will treat cyber attacks just like any other attack. We will be ready with serious political, economic and military responses.

crowoutofcontext posted:

http://ipolitics.ca/2016/11/14/liberals-to-repeal-anal-sex-ban-in-criminal-code/

Wow, didn't know this anal sex poo poo was still in the Criminal Code


Yikes

crowoutofcontext posted:

http://ipolitics.ca/2016/11/14/liberals-to-repeal-anal-sex-ban-in-criminal-code/

Wow, didn't know this anal sex poo poo was still in the Criminal Code


Yikes

Postess with the Mostest posted:

Well actually..

JVNO posted:

I have to say, watching Samantha Bee's segment on 'Hillary Rodham' was really goddamn sad though. I wanted a progressive firebrand like that in politics, not the hawkish establishment war monger that was served up. After that segment, I really can't tell if I'm angry at Hillary for betraying her principles, or annoyed at our American/Canadian culture for forcing her to in order to get anywhere in politics. Ironic that what she had to abandon on the ground floor may have cost her once she reached the glass ceiling.

rawrr posted:

I can see why you're reading that as "if my e-mails are hacked I'll be bombing the Kremlin", but I read that as it was stated, that those are three ways that the US can "be ready with" to respond to state sponsored cyberattacks. Maybe the ~optics~ would be less terrible to people who don't give her the benefit of the doubt, if she clarified that the response would be proportional to the impact of the attacks. If there isn't a policy in place like how things are currently then there is no downside to engaging in cyberattacks.

Foreign Policy posted:

On Thursday, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph Dunford told the Senate Armed Services Committee, “For now, for us to control all the airspace in Syria would require us to go to war with Syria and Russia."

Helsing posted:

Helsing posted:

(...) the sitting President who made such a mess of his two terms in office (...)

Helsing posted:

When asked if she'd be willing to shoot down Russian jets Hilary said she doubted it would "come to that". So yeah, this woman wanted to play chicken with Putin. What vital American interest she was serving, or even what humanitarian goal she thought was was improving in a situation where the only possible victors are Assad (bad) or the jihadists (inconceivably awful) is a mystery. But when you're as much of a hawk as Hilary is I guess the idea that maybe America doesn't need to be inserting itself into another quagmire just because Israel and Saudis want them to is a foreign concept.

Postess with the Mostest posted:

"the United States will treat cyber attacks just like any other attack" That can only mean that she's going to ramp up the response to cyber attacks right? There's no lesser attacks. We're not going to treat cyber attacks like tickle attacks. I have to read that as her saying cyber attacks will be treated like other types of attacks that would warrant a harsher counterattack.

Jan posted:

I kind of agree with most of this, except:


And what did you expect him to do when dealing with an openly rebellious Congress who swore up and down they'd veto any significant changes he tried to enact? Usually with no better reason than "It's Obama's idea"?

PK loving SUBBAN posted:

When Trump won, there was a little part of me that went "phew, at least we're not putting boots on the ground in Syria now."

Of course, he'll probably prove me wrong.

Fried Watermelon posted:

Just lol if you think Trump won't send troops to war

If it makes him a buck he will do it

Helsing posted:

Give me a loving break. The Clinton's were deeply embedded within the 'New Democrats' faction of the party which took over in the 1990s and decided to abandon labour and to aggressively court Wall Street. Clinton's people went out of their way to lock up the nomination long before it started by cutting backdoor deals with every major power broker in the party. A pro-Clinton hack was put in place as chair of the Democratic National Committee and proceeded to arrange a debate schedule that would heavily favour Clinton. We know that Democratic officials were leaking primary debate questions to Hilary in advance and that Democratic party officials discussed whether they could somehow use Sanders' Jewish heritage to discredit him. Even after Debbie Wasserman Schultz was forced to resign for not remaining neutral during the primary she was immediately hired by the Clinton campaign.

Nobody forced the Clinton's to be the way that they are. Sanders demonstrated that the party could run a genuinely independent candidate and still pack stadiums full of people and still fundraise hundreds of millions of dollars in small donations. And Trump then demonstrated that even without massive spending you could still win over voters with a strong anti-establishment message. Clinton chose to rely on big money donations because those are exactly the kinds of politics the Clinton's have always practiced not because they were somehow forced into it.

And even the people who will defend Clinton's horrible relationship to Wall Street tend to at least recognize that hawkishness was a genuine Clinton character trait and not something forced on her. She voted for the war in Iraq when most of her party was opposed to it. She oversaw the catastrophic bombing campaign in Libya and turned it from a civilian protection operation into a government destroying military campaign that left the country controlled by violent jihadist gangs (which even Obama admits lead to his greatest foreign policy mistake in office), she mocked Obama's "don't do stupid poo poo" rule in foreign policy, and she was surrounding herself with war hawks and gearing up for a massive escalation in Syria and a confrontation with Russia.

Hilary Clinton wanted to be a feminist icon, so let's grant her a bit of agency and admit that she was the cause of her own misfortunes, and that nobody forced her to become the embodiment of everything wrong with the contemporary Democratic party. Want somebody to be angry at? Be angry at her, her wretched husband, and the sitting President who made such a mess of his two terms in office that the American electorate was willing to turn to an orange coloured authoritarian thug rather than continue with the status quo.

Clinton's stated position in the debates was that she would seek to impose a no fly zone on Syria. That would mean handing the country over to violent jihadists and standing by while the remaining government controlled sections of the country were massacred by groups like Jabhat Fatah al-Sham. It also would have meant potentially shooting down Russian air craft, i.e. playing with the possibility of starting a Third World War. And for what? Why exactly should America be helping a rebellion that has been entirely taken over at this point by Al Qaeda affiliates? Or, more likely, because Clinton and her advisers think it's the job of the American empire to act as the enforcer of Saudi Arabia, Israel, and all the other American allies who think any level of collateral damage and human misery is a worthwhile price to pay to eliminate the Syrian government, even if that means handing the rest of the country over to terrorist militias, just like what happened in Libya.

rawrr posted:

What's special about cyber attacks, by state actors, against another state's interests that doesn't warrant countermeasures like other types of attacks? They have the potential to ruin people's lives (OPM hack), or bias the demographic process (Podesta leaks), so why shouldn't there be a policy of proportional responses as a matter of policy?

The policy issue is that because there's no precedent and perpetrators are more difficult to identify, so formulating a proportional response is more difficult. But that doesn't mean there shouldn't be consequences. Say, if military networks were hacked/impaired/or interfered with in some way, why shouldn't there be a military response, the same way the US took out radar sites in Yemen after its destroyers were fired upon?

Scorchy posted:

So what are you gonna think when John Bolton is Secretary of State

EvilJoven posted:

See the sad thing about all this is I've been saying to people for months that Trump was going to win because Clinton is a gigantic piece of poo poo that can't even whip up support and now that I'm right about that my happiness that the Clinton dynasty is coming to an end is tempered by the fact that I in no way think Trump will be anything but a crappy president.

Welp.

Postess with the Mostest posted:

She can already treat a cyberattack like a cyberattack. What she said is she is going to be treating it like worse kinds of attacks that would require a stronger response. As if people are still seriously blaming the Russians too, at the risk of giving osi an aneurysm jesus christ look at this poo poo http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/10/28/13456368/how-john-podesta-email-got-hacked. So much more likely it was a disgruntled and imo justified Berner.

OSI bean dip posted:

I'm curious to what you guys think a cyberattack consists of.