Where have all of the Republicans gone?

Discussion in 'Political Opinions & Beliefs' started by dgrichards, Nov 18, 2020.

  1. Asherah

    Asherah Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Trump's been in office 4 years, and has pushed for an indictment of Hillary. So your excuse for the double standard doesn't hold water.
     
  2. Lil Mike

    Lil Mike Well-Known Member

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    Editing my reply seems indicate that you are losing steam and lost your argument. First, you were the one who brought up Hillary, not me. Second, my full reply in case you actually want to make a legitimate response:

     
  3. Asherah

    Asherah Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I didn't "edit your reply", I quoted a portion to provide the context for my response.

    The FBI was not "on her side" under Obama, that"s a presumption on your part. And that presumption evaporate after Trump took office. He hated her, promised to lock her up, and repeatedly complained that she hadn't been indicted. Based on your standard, you have to consider her innocent.

    Oh, and yes - I brought up Hillary. I did so because you invented a special pleading to rationalize your refusal to consider Trump guilty of obstruction of justice. As I expected, you don't use your standard consistently.
     
  4. spiritgide

    spiritgide Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    The investigation may have been lawful in formation- it was not lawful in motivation and purpose, it was done with malice and without a basis in fact. That makes the investigation itself a criminally conspired act, just as someone being arrested and charged with made-up case in order to damage their reputation would be. The people investigating might be there with legal conditions, but this is similar to false arrest and malicious prosecution. It can be done legally, but not honestly or respectably.

    Someone can sue you on some fabricated allegation that alleges you defrauded them. If you don't defend it, they win by default. If you do defend it and win, you will still have a certain number of people who will never be sure they can trust you, and unless you can prove malice, counter-sue and win, you will have to pay for your own defense. They will have succeeded in harming your good name and causing you substantial expense and loss of time- but that's legal, so.... you would see nothing wrong with that, right?
     
  5. Asherah

    Asherah Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Wow! Such hyper-partisan nonsense! Real crimes were identified, real criminals were indicted, and Trump was vindicated in terms of criminal conspiracy, and NO false arrests were made.

    No rationalization excuses Trump's criminal behavior, nor does it explain why Trump so desperately discouraged cooperation with the investigation. It makes no sense.

    Consider a parallel scenario in which a President has actually committed some crimes that he's afraid will be discovered. He could do exactly the same thing, dangling pardons to his partners in crime. He could use exactly the same excuses, asserting he's innocent and therefore within his rights to hinder the investigation. By your reasoning, that would be perfectly fine. Clearly, guilt can't be established BEFORE an investigation is done, so investigation are needed to make that determination.

    Innocence does not make one immune to prosecution for obstruction. The statutes and precedents make that abundantly clear.
     
    Last edited: Nov 23, 2020
  6. spiritgide

    spiritgide Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Just can't see beyond your tunnel, I guess. I stated examples to make it easier for you to grasp the concept, but- you missed it again.
    Prosecution not based on legitimate cause IS abuse of the person it focuses on. It's usurping the credibility of the entire justice system, for political gain.
    Failing to prosecute (as in we know the dossier was fake "evidence" constructed as a political weapon by Hillary and crew) is also abuse- of the whole damn system, and the trust of the American people.
    INCLUDING ANY DEMOCRATS THAT STILL HAVE ETHICAL STANDARDS. I keep waiting for one to stand up and speak truth to the rest.
     
  7. Lil Mike

    Lil Mike Well-Known Member

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    1. I did use a consistent standard.

    2. You didn't understand it.
     
  8. Asherah

    Asherah Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Had Trump been PROSECUTED for conspiring with Russians, you'd have a point. You're whining about possible errors that may have been made prior to Mueller being appointed to lead the probe. No prior error has any bearing on the fact that Mueller was leading an authorized inquiry, and the Obstruction of Justice statutes apply as a matter of law. There is no exception made for innocent people who are investigated, and any innocent person could justifiably say he was abused by being investigated. In his report, Mueller references the law:

    It remains to be seen what errors were made prior to Mueller taking over the investigation: Durham's report has not yet been released. The errors that have come to light so far have not shown there to be some sort of conspiracy to get Trump, Republican partisan talking points notwithstanding. No matter what was done, it doesn't alter the fact that Mueller was engaged in an authorized enquiry, and Trump acted to impede it. There is no doubt whatsoever that he did this. If indicted, it will not get him off the hook to plead that it was unfair to investigate him - that wouldn't work for anyone.
     
    Last edited: Nov 24, 2020
  9. spiritgide

    spiritgide Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Of course, we learned later that Mueller was in a condition of diminishing capacity; that he was not actually running the investigation and that his "team" was heavy with prejudiced members; led by Andrew Wiessmann for god's sake- and that team included Peter Strzok. The objective was hardly impartial investigation; it was just the facade used to legitimizing a witch hunt. Even if you can lie to yourself in the mirror every morning and feel good about it, you know that's true.

    It apparently worked for Hillary; we know of a great many things she should have been investigated for but those who should have done so simply passed. Destroyed devices, disappearing phones, obvious acts to erase evidence. Things that had they been Trump's actions, the same people who passed would be erecting the gallows in anticipation of an execution- and they certainly tried. Maybe that double standard doesn't bother you, but it should bother any citizen who respects justice and democracy in this nation.

    People of good character and goodwill simply don't run their affairs like they were crack addicts, where anything is justified by what they crave.. Regardless of their emotions, they maintain integrity and self-respect. People are different in the standards they set, but the standards of honest people will never excuse themselves from the same acts they blame others for. When you discard all pretense of it and forget that their ever was a bar of ethics, you no longer fit the class of people of good character and good will at all.

    Such people do not deserve respect. They have none for themselves, they give none to others unless it serves their purpose, and even then it's fake. These are not the people who make America a better place; they are the spoilers, regardless of how they justify themselves.
     
    Last edited: Nov 24, 2020
  10. Asherah

    Asherah Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    This demonstrates the futility of trying tho have a rational discussion with a member of the Trump cult. You could not refute what I said in my last post, so you shift to alternative right wing B.S. to rationalize Trump's crimes.
     
    Last edited: Nov 24, 2020
  11. spiritgide

    spiritgide Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Well- when you figure out how your participation in a discussion means you also listen rather than ignore and deny, you may be able to have discussions,. providing you can refrain from insult.

    The door is open to realistic democrats and has been all along- we just can't find any.
     
  12. Turin

    Turin Well-Known Member

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    You mean where they can go to lie their arse off in their own echo chamber and not have their lies challenged.
     
  13. Turin

    Turin Well-Known Member

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    Thats the Trump cultist way.
     
  14. spiritgide

    spiritgide Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    So say the people who invented lies and denial in the modern political world, and call it "reality".

    The truth is the truth. Lies by any interest don't change it- but they change the way people think and believe, because lies and manipulation of perceptions have come to dominate the media.
    Seems nearly all of that is coming from a one side. The rioters are- peaceful protestors. The police are all evil, lets destroy them. Prisons are evil, let's start eliminating them too. National monuments are evil, it's righteous to tear them down because I don't like them- Or, I just want to trash things and I can claim they perpetuate evil. The immigrants have a right to come here without permission; we have an obligation to give them what they want. All white people including babies are racists because they are white. The looting of Chicago's miracle Mile shopping area wasn't crime, it was reparations, and doesn't matter anyway because those stores had insurance.

    Funny, I can't think of any of those anti-freedom, anti-democracy kind of moves endorsed by Trump or republicans or conservatives. Perhaps you failed to notice those things? Perhaps you aren't offended by them?
     
  15. Asherah

    Asherah Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    ...the Trump cult. Both the left-wing and right wing media spin facts, and that invariably pisses off the other side. But Trump has been a focal point for disseminating false information, rarely (if ever) admitting he got something wrong. It is definitely a good idea to take media reporting with a grain of salt, and to research further to extract facts from spin. But with Trump, I question if there's much in the way of core facts to try and extract. To be clear, I haven't researched this, so I could be mistaken, but the number of falsehoods he's uttered is staggering. He has perfected the art of manipulating the perceptions of his supporters, so that they take Trump falsehoods either as factual, as jokes, or simply irrelevant. It was brilliant demagoguery to take advantage of the mistrust of the mainstream media; it made him immune to factual, negative reporting.
     
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  16. freedom8

    freedom8 Well-Known Member

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    Your preaching honesty and respectability show how worried you are about Trump possible prosecution and indictment in 2021.

    But sure, that shouldn't happen as you want to safeguard his "good reputation". Your'e very good at blaming people who want justice for so-called "bad reasons" or with "malice"; it's much better of course to make sure criminals are kept unharmed!
     
  17. freedom8

    freedom8 Well-Known Member

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    It's funny to observe how well you're copying Trump technique of getting out of the subject and embarking on a moaning litany whenever you are short of plausible arguments!
     
  18. spiritgide

    spiritgide Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    You are aware that the left has been obsessed with defining everything possible as lies and falsehoods? Nobody's perfect; you take the people you know well with a grain of salt when you think they are wrong, until it actually makes a practical difference in life. The left has been collecting every possible thing as ammunition for the ongoing attack. We didn't see a campaign from Biden for example- had he been in an election such as would have existed a few terms back, he would be the horse that never got our of the gate. Biden didn't win, didn't have to sell a platform, declare what he would do or who he would appoint, and normally that would insure you lost heavily. What has happened is that Trump lost the battle with the people assaulting him personally. Nor have you seen much in the way of claims that Trump's economy is bad, that his jobs record especially for minorities is bad- because they have been great. Those things are critical and tangible results; they matter to everyone regardless of them even realizing it. Trump gets attacked for as little as his tan or the colors of ties he picks. Many conservatives and republicans have complaints about Trump from the personal standpoint, but the results seem to be a bit more important than the petty stuff. There are no politicians that don't distort truth, bend the perspective and throw mud at one another. There are also few that get anything done right or keep their promises- Trump set some records in that respect. He has already been appointing lobbyists, employees of his wife and others that clearly are such.

    The single worst aspect of what has happened over the last term is the extent of manipulation of public perception by the big tech people, who at this point control what you think you see- and that controls your perception and opinion- and vote. This is a condition that has emerged, been made possible by the tech explosion, by the reliance of people on media for their world view- and by the demise of the journalistic ethics of the past. Google can and has been documented for example suppressing conservative views, boosting liberal view content. I don't mean based on one or two things- but by a study with thousand of people running the tests to measure it. If people fail to speak out about that and perhaps even move to make such data suppression a crime, it will control all information- and that my friend is propaganda. That is precisely what Hitler used to shape his citizen's perspective, it is what N Korea uses today- and those people think their nation is a world leader, and their leader an infallible god.

    Trump didn't bring the tech/media situation about, but he's called it out and fought it- and still, a great many people have believed the biased media position; they seem unaware of the extent they are being manipulated. Trump's leaving will not stop that, and Biden not only has no control of it, as he owes those people a huge political debt- so they own a piece of him, and you can bet they will collect.

    Things have not just got better. For the left, they have just created their own forest fire. Could I be wrong? Always possible. I prefer not to wait until my house in on fire to prove it.
     
  19. spiritgide

    spiritgide Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I'm not worried about that, other than the vendetta that has become an obsessive disease of the left. We have dem politicians in congress right now that think they should be collecting names of Trump supporters to "punish them".

    Talk to the people in all the riot-torn cities where dem leaders called off police and catered to arsonists and thugs. Ask them about the democratic view of "Justice".
    Truth isn't one sided, and any person that can't recognize both the good and bad involved here- is a hypocrite, and deserves zero cred.
     
  20. freedom8

    freedom8 Well-Known Member

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    No vendetta needed; just let prosecutors do their job.
     
  21. spiritgide

    spiritgide Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I'm all for that, with the understanding you investigate and prosecute for just cause- not political control or revenge.
    That's where the problems have been.
     
  22. Asherah

    Asherah Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I object to treating "the left" as an entity. Nevertheless, I agree that some people have been obsessed with cataloging Trump's many untruths, but I don't see what's wrong with it. It seems a good idea to show the quantity of disinformation he spreads.

    I disagree with labeling every falsehood a "lie", because that implies Trump knows what he's spreading is false. I think most of the time, he believes the falsehood he spreads. My guess is that he has a pathological level of confirmation bias, and a cavalier attitude whether or not he is factually accurate. Some of the nonsense he posts seems aimed at showing the fringe-lunatic segment of his supporters that he's with them.

    True, but there is a spectrum of individual veracity. Trump is at the extreme end. But if you're going to excuse his untruthfulness in this way, it becomes hypocritical to complain about untruthfulness from other sources - such as Democratic politicians, and the media. Why not just chalk up their inaccuracies with "nobody's perfect"?

    If you're referring to the flagging of misinformation, what's the problem? That seems a public service.

    Can you point me at the study? I've heard conservatives make this claim repeatedly, and I've seen denials (for example, this). But I have not seen an unbiased analysis supporting the claim. Looking forward to it.
    I could respect a desire for unvarnished truth, but Trump is clearly not a champion of truth. He's just blasting the sources you don't like, and countering with more extreme falsehoods. This is worse manipulation than anything coming from MSNBC.

    That seems to be the fear of both liberals and conservatives. Liberals express this with respect to Fox News, OANN, Newsmac etc, just like conservatives express it about MSNBC and CNN. I think the real problem is the polarization of new sources. People gravitate to the sources that present the perspective they agree with. So the manipulation is really reinforcement and a tendency to make people more extreme.

    The good news is that anyone truly interested in facts can find them. Instead of worrying about the distorted views presented by the non-preferred media source, it would be better to encourage individuals to see through the spin.
     
    Last edited: Nov 24, 2020
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  23. freedom8

    freedom8 Well-Known Member

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    OK.
    Examples? Roger Stone? Flynn? Cohen?
     
  24. Asherah

    Asherah Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Hillary Clinton.
     
  25. spiritgide

    spiritgide Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    But, not a good idea to show the disinformation spread to attack him, or anything he tires to do? Not a good to spread information about what is done well or accomplished?
    THAT is the problem. The measurement is like a scale that only responds on the negative side.

    There is a spectrum, agreed. Some people's exaggerations are expression of enthusiasm, over-confidence, ego, etc- but not meant to harm or manipulate. When a person distorts or fabricates in order to harm steal, the spectrum becomes entirely different, and far more relevant to the state of the nation's health. If you brag about your ability in the stock market but make no money, you are simply bragging. If you are making money but using schemes like pump and dumps, you are a crook. The first national interest here is not money, it's providing the conditions and environment where the people can thrive and the American promise- the dream- is alive. A plumber with a crack showing and a stinky cigar- whose pipes hold water and deliver- is invariably more valuable than a philosopher on the mountaintop who's theories don't.

    Why and how things are inaccurate matters a great deal.

    .

    I knew I could do so, because Tucker Carlson interviewed the person directing that research on his Nov. 22 show. The man's name was Robert, last name started with a E, but I didn't write it down. However, Carlson's shows are available on Youtube, so I did a google search for it. Funny- seems all his other shows play correctly- but that particular one, which clearly showed how google had been suppressing conservative views, seems to have some kind of- malfunction. The show comes up but when you attempt to run the video- all you get is an audio track of what sounds like Arabic language.

    Google has somehow blocked the vid and inserted garbage. Technical difficulty that somehow only applies to a program critical of them? Of course. How does Arabic become the sound track on a video that won't play the visual??? Never seen that particular kind of error before- anywhere, ever. But they didn't suppress the access.... did they suppress the display of it?

    So- had to dig deeper. The person leading this is a widely published clinical psychologist, Dr Robert Epstein. Here's a link that accesses the story; probably go to the "original story" link in this abbreviated reference.

    https://www.nyman.media/news/robert-epstein-google-shifted-a-minimum-of-6-million-votes-in-2020/

    Tracking through some of this, I came up with a working link to the program segment:
    https://twitter.com/i/status/1331057517095489539

    If you don't want to spend that time, here's some quotes that cover the vital stats-


    “First of all, we had 733 field agents in three key swing states this year: Arizona, North Carolina, and Florida, and we preserved more than 500,000 ephemeral experiences… That’s about 30 times more data than we got in 2016,” said Epstein.


    “Google search results were strongly biased in favor of liberals and Democrats. This was not true on Bing or Yahoo. The bias was being shown to pretty much every demographic group we looked at, including conservatives…. Conservatives got slightly more bias in their search results than liberals did. How do you account for that?”


    “We also found what seems to be a smoking gun. That is, we found a period of days when the vote reminder on Google’s homepage was being sent only to liberals — not one of our conservative field agents received a vote reminder during those days.”


    Epstein says that Google “backed off” after he went public with his findings. “They literally shut off that manipulation that night, and so for four days before the election they were showing vote reminders to everyone, finally.”

    You are of course correct in saying people gravitate toward what they want to hear; things that re-enforce their position, make it righteous. That excludes opposition views- and balance in understanding.
    I maintain that the greater the integrity and self-respect of the individual- the less this is true. An intelligent mind always wants verification of truth, good or bad- not a diet of pablum.

    Sadly, there is a great deal of human weakness involved here. It's easier to slip back than to push forward, easier to procrastinate than act now, easier to take the choice that seems easy than to ask the hard questions that might upset a comfortable choice. Many people prefer a comfortable lie over an uncomfortable truth. The weaker the person is in self-confidence, the more this is true. The conditions of this weakness in America is growing. More and more people buy the political snake oil of somebody else will pay, it will be free, you are entitled, the endless marketing ploys made by people who want the power- but have no real intention of doing the job they take properly. If you ask yourself which politicians promote that kind of thing, you get a pretty clear picture of which side prefers the voters to think like sheep.

    If you can't question what you think you know, and have to shut out any view that might make you do so- you are exactly where those politicians want you to be.

     

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