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It's strange that the Republican party being represented by exactly the kind of person I have always imagined you all to be has had the completely paradoxical result of making me finally realize that conservatives come in many shapes and sizes that are absolutely nothing like what I imagined you all to be.
I've severely misjudged you, have done so for years. Sorry about that. Must try harder.
It's okay. I do the same thing with cat people. I mean... Why?!
Heyyy... here's a pitch for how Trump might script his concession speech from John Oliver.
And in a perfect universe, we would discover that both Trump and Hillary are actually not U.S. citizens and therefore, both are disqualified from being President. Then we could just. . . start over.
--Chaser9
And yes, I do enjoy just posting random, crazy things in this very serious thread. 
We could put them on no-fly lists and take away their right to run for office!
And in a perfect universe, we would discover that both Trump and Hillary are actually not U.S. citizens and therefore, both are disqualified from being President. Then we could just. . . start over.
--Chaser9
And yes, I do enjoy just posting random, crazy things in this very serious thread.
Being white, they don't have people demanding to see their birth certificates. We take them at their word that they are natural born US citizens.
Okay, back up.
Obama wasn't called out because he was black. Asking for a birth certificate isn't unusual when someone is running for President. Hell, John McCain and Ted Cruz both had their eligibility called into question. Race wasn't a factor. The fact that Obama's background included a foreign father and dual citizenship muddied the water. An old bio of his stated that Obama was born in Kenya (which Obama failed to refute) and raised in Indonesia. And despite having an American mother, there were issues raised with his eligibility due to how long his mother had lived in America after the age of 16 (since his mother was only 18 when he was born). People wanted to check to see if he was actually eligible to run, which is something that he does have to be able to prove. Whether they were stretching or not, they did have a right to ask for proof of his eligibility.
The thing that caused the birther movement to become a giant mess was that Obama did not provide that evidence. He just ignored it, which is not supposed to be an option if he wanted to get on the ballots.
He did not release a birth certificate until 2011. Long after his first campaign, but before his reelection. Why? Because it was a tactic. It was a way for him to point his finger and accuse people of being wacky conspiracy theorists whenever they questioned him. If they questioned his ties to radicals, it's just those wacky birthers. If they question whether or not he was actually experienced enough to be President, it's just those wacky birthers.
Obama apparently had nothing to hide, so why was it even an issue? Why did he have to be evasive for years? Why did he spend over a million dollars in legal fees, fighting requests to see a document that he could have handed over in five minutes?
Every time Obama is questioned, people say it's because he's black. And that's bull. Obama is questioned because he is either incredibly stupid, or incredibly dirty. He uses race as a mean of rallying people. He feeds into the growing racial divide that is inching us closer to a race war than I ever thought possible in my lifetime. Race is just another item in his political toolbox. Obama is questioned no more than any other President, and he provides far less answers than most.
Obama is questioned no more than any other President, and he provides far less answers than most.
Hillary's going to make him look like an open book.
Asking for a birth certificate isn't unusual when someone is running for President.
Yes, it is. It had not once ever happened before Obama's election, nor has it happened in this year's election. That's the very definition of unusual.
Yeah but if Ted Cruz was in this election and beating Hillary, the Democrats would be freaking out about the fact that he was born in Canada. Trying to work the system isn't partisan.
Frankly, all candidates should have to at least prove eligibility when running. We complain about tax records and medical records, but eligibility is basic.
And again, it had far more to do with his parents and his upbringing than his skin color. There was absolutely no reason for him not to put that question to rest within a day, much less years.
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2016/10/ … roval.html
Finally SOMEONE has the balls to state the reality. Invasion of privacy for both elected officials as well as pretty much ANYONE else has become far too commonplace and accepted. This is probably my biggest issue in the entire election. It's out of control. The complete lack of safeguarding as well as non-existent prosecution of hackers is simply unacceptable. Obama Administration has been completely useless on this subject, as previous administrations were. Hell I'd assume old Hilly would make this a top priority (ha ha ha) given her issues with emails! But I don't expect that to be the case.
All true. That's the weird thing about Wikileaks. They're stealing information that they have no right to, and they are wrong. But then again, we can't unknow what they've released, and some of that exposes unethical or criminal behavior.
That makes neither side of that issue right. It's like a drunk driver hitting a car that has a dead body in the trunk.
How the information was acquired doesn't make any difference to me. Were you guilty or were you not guilty? None of this stuff is going to be prosecuted so it's all about the court of public opinion. If someone running for political office is lying to us, I want to know about it. Republican, Democrat, whoever. Whether it's intercepted by the FBI, the Russians, or Martians. Illegal evidence gathering might matter in a trial, but it doesn't make the person any less guilty of the crime.
If we're mad that the Russians are stealing our emails, then we need to make cyber security a priority. Because if they can hack all these emails, they have much much more info where that came from.
And, yes, of course they got into the server.
I agree that cyber security should be a priority. When it comes to Hillary, this is a horrible topic. She either has to admit that she used her own server because she was trying to avoid investigators (which we know from the 2008 video anyway), or she has to admit that she has no idea how this internet thingy works and what email-mabobs are. For a President in the 21st century to have no grasp of such things is a pretty big deal.
Well this the problem with electing people born in the 40s....neither of these people knows anything about modern technology. Mark Cuban says that Trump has someone print off emails, he writes a handwritten response, and then someone types up the email response. That's how he does emails. It's insane.
So between the elderly president we'll have and the elderly folks on the Supreme Court, we have a lot of people who are out of touch making all our most important decisions. Awesome.
I propose that we do away with the Supreme Court and leave all of those major decisions up to a panel of YouTube vloggers!
(this was a joke. I am not quite that insane)
WikiLeaks back in 2006-2010 was a whistleblowing organization. It operated with a submission system and protocol, that was properly vetted. At some point, that was thrown out the window, when a number of people quit WL. They pointed to Assange as breaking the fundamentals of the organization. WikiLeaks largely went quiet until a year or so ago. All of a sudden, they were dumping the NSA story, followed by tons more that embarrassed and put many people in danger around the world. Why? How? That matters. It's the Russian government sponsoring hacking, and basically handing it over to Assange, who then recklessly dumps it out. This is serious espionage. Frankly the British should tell Ecuador to go to the hell, pull that turd out of there, and extradite him to the United States. This man is a DANGER to the United States.
Meanwhile Trump says the election is rigged.....face palm
Agreed about Assange being a danger.
But Trump isn't wrong. We have election officials admitting as much on video. We have Clinton campaign workers discussing how they are fine with discarding republican voter registrations, or not providing republicans with mail-in ballot options. It's no secret. In past elections, we've had well over 100% of the voters in some towns, all voting for one party.
The election is rigged. The system is corrupted. The question is, how rigged is it?
Agreed about Assange being a danger.
But Trump isn't wrong. We have election officials admitting as much on video. We have Clinton campaign workers discussing how they are fine with discarding republican voter registrations, or not providing republicans with mail-in ballot options. It's no secret. In past elections, we've had well over 100% of the voters in some towns, all voting for one party.
The election is rigged. The system is corrupted. The question is, how rigged is it?
OTOH, we've had Republican governors and legislatures purging eligible Democratic voters off of the rolls.
None of this is anything new, nor should it be shocking to anyone who has been paying attention.
I still don't understand how the source makes the evidence less damning.
Yes, we need to be protecting our data. Yes, it's Russia. But here's the problem:
1) What do you want us to do about it?
2) The emails are still showing *a lot* of issues with Hillary Clinton
If we're going to blame the Republicans for nominating a horrible candidate in Donald Trump, equal blame needs to be given to the Democrats for nominating Hillary Clinton. The fact that one of these guys has to win doesn't mean that one of them should win. One will be president but neither should be.
Let's put it another way.
A man is recorded on an illegal wire tap. Strictly illegal. Should not exist. On the recording, he says he has a compulsion to abuse children. He has to do it. Nothing will stop him. He doesn't admit to any crime, but a lot of crime is strongly implied. The wire tap cannot be used as evidence, and they cannot convict him of some child abuse that he's the main suspect in. He's set free, and he applies to be a teacher at your local elementary school.
You cool with that? The wiretap shouldn't exist according to the law, and he wasn't convicted of any crime.
Trump saved his worst for last in terms of debate performances. Just brutal.
Trump saved his worst for last in terms of debate performances. Just brutal.
He's gearing up to "move" his followers to a new media empire, aka Trump News or whatever. It's clear this has been his aim for a long time, maybe the ENTIRE time. He has no interest in actually being elected President.
That being said, refusing to accept the official results nationwide, especially results that are likely to see him CLOBBERED, is disgusting, unconstitutional, and most importantly DANGEROUS. He has inflamed quite a few crazies along the way, and if he goes forward with this rigged shit, one could only imagine the violence that may well ensue. To light a match on a fuel full of hatred, anger, angst, desperation, etc., is very bad. This was perhaps the most irresponsible moment in the history of the American Presidential electoral history. Even I never imagined he would be this vile and pathetic. I cannot wait to see his face on November 8th, after losing in a landslide.
I'm willing to go on record as saying that this is all being overblown. There's not going to be widespread riots or violence or a Civil War. CNN has become Liberal Fox News and is just trying to scare people.
If Trump doesn't concede......nothing will happen. She doesn't need him to concede to become president, and life will just go on. Will there be some people who are mad? Sure. Will there be some people who get drunk and set a storefront on fire? Sure. But followers of this election are de-humanizing their opponent's followers, and it's distorting people's vision of reality. People that follow Trump are....people. They don't want to go to jail, and they don't want to die in a violent fight. The reason why there's not going to be widespread violence is the same reason why none of Trump's followers have taken a shot at her despite hundreds of opportunities. Because people are crazy, but they're not that crazy.
We've had problems like this before. Al Gore was speaking the other day and people broke out a "You Won!" chant. Democrats don't believe that he lost, sixteen years later, and there wasn't widespread violence. There wasn't a destablization of democracy. People were mad...and then they got over it. They might see something about the 2000 election and get upset again, but no one took matters into their own hands.
And if your only argument to the contrary is "Republicans are crazier and more violent!" then the problem is more you than anything else.
Trump will concede. He's playing the media just like he did with the Birther thing. That's what the "I'll keep you in suspense" nonsense is about. He'll have a big press conference, they'll spend an hour or so listening to hype for whatever new project he has going on (Trump TV, probably), then he'll do a quick one sentence concession at the end.
As for 2000, the worst thing that happened in response to Bush being declared the winner was his motorcade getting pelted with garbage on inauguration day. I doubt we even get that this time around.
Exactly. All this talk about how it's going to destabilize the government is insane talk. It's why I say CNN is just Liberal Fox News. It used to be Fox News that was just throwing out crazy conspiracy theories, but CNN is just as bad now. It's fear mongering and overblowing everything.
No matter who's elected, we're all going to wake up November 9 and realize how stupid we were for worrying so much about this.
Now I'll say this about Hillary. There's talk of the GOP fearing that they could lose their stranglehold on the House. If that happens and the Democrats take the House, Hillary will have *ZERO* excuses if she can't make people's lives markedly better. You can't blame the other party when your party has control of all three branches. And since Democratic policies aren't universally perfect, all the Republican nominee next time has to say is, "Hey, they had full control, and look how bad things are."
In other words, she better be as qualified and prepared as they think she is. If she's not, expect the swing the other way to be massive.
The problem is, we have people on video talking about rigging the election. It isn't a conspiracy theory, it is actually happening. What do we do with that information?
We also have those same people talking about hiring hundreds of people, some mentally ill, to spark violence at Trump rallies. What happens with that information? Investigations? I doubt it.
You can't blame the other party when your party has control of all three branches.
Sure you can. The Republicans have been doing it since they lost the senate in 2006. They had full control for the first six years of the Bush administration and it was a disaster.
James O'Keefe of Project Veritas is a known con artist and scammer whose big gimmick has always been to secretly film people and the re-edit their conversations into something that appears to incriminate them for racism, human trafficking or worse only for unedited footage to reveal his fraud. Even a cursory Google of this man made it clear that his videos cannot be taken as truthful. The logistics of having the same people vote repeatedly in different jurisdictions under multiple names in order to make a sufficient difference in a Presidential election are physically impossible. The claim that postal workers can screen for Republican mail in ballots is absurd; they are not distinguishable from the exterior.
I'm sorry. I'm totally in sympathy with your disdain for Clinton and Trump, but the idea that the system is rigged given the massive decentralization and bipartisan nature of the vote counting matched with detached voting machines -- I just don't think that's remotely plausible and James O'Keefe doesn't have the credibility to do an exposé on the Colonel's secret spices never mind voter fraud.
If she's not, expect the swing the other way to be massive.
It won't happen. People will continue to vote for the same garbage over and over expecting that their lives will somehow change for the better the next time. It's insanity.
Slider_Quinn21 wrote:If she's not, expect the swing the other way to be massive.
It won't happen. People will continue to vote for the same garbage over and over expecting that their lives will somehow change for the better the next time. It's insanity.
Some people's lives will be better in four years. Some will be worse. Hardly any of that will be determined by the occupant of the White House.
Yeah, O'Keefe has that reputation for releasing heavily edited videos... But most of those reports that I've seen were blatant lies, where the journalist reporting simply failed to click on the link to the full videos.
And sorry, but if his videos were just scammed, several of the people involved with the latest batch wouldn't have been fired or stepped down. Where have his videos been proven to be lies?
Every nightly news report is heavily edited. Every article is heavily edited. The famous Donald Trump bus conversation was heavily edited, and nobody minds any of this. It's only when the Democrats look bad that we suddenly raise the bar.
The idea of people bringing in hundreds or thousands of votes illegally does bother me. In 2000, the results came down to an incredibly narrow margin, so we can't pretend that thousands of votes won't mean anything.
Having one illegal vote bothers me, no matter what impact it has. This is a basic right that we have as American citizens. Having one legitimate vote cancelled out by one illegal vote pisses me off. Having one citizen's vote erased by the will of someone who isn't a citizen pisses me off. People give their lives to secure these rights and violating that system disgusts me on a very basic level. We need more outrage over these things, because we have let it slide for too long. We always wave our hands and say that if it were really a big deal, someone would do something about it. But who is going to do anything about it when the people in charge are the ones rigging the system? Nothing ever comes of voter fraud, and that is wrong. Voter fraud should be met with severe punishment. (And when I say that, think less "Orange is the New Black" and more "Arrow, season one")
James O'Keefe's fraudulent videos have caused many people to lose their jobs. State Director for Rural Development Shirley Sherrod was forced to resign for making racist remarks as seen in an O'Keefe filmed video. The full video, later released, showed that Sherrod's story had been about initially racist thinking that she had overcome and made sure not to affect her job -- but O'Keefe exerpted and edited the video so that the attitudes Sherrod refuted appeared to be the ones by which she worked. Juan Carlos Vera also lost his job due to O'Keefe manipulating video to make it seem like Vera was engaged in human trafficking when Vera was humouring an apparent trafficker and then promptly called the police. And that's only two of many cases where O'Keefe's video, once gathered in full, was found to have been edited specifically to alter the hypothetical into the seemingly factual or taking views that the speaker was criticizing and presenting them as views that the speaker was presenting as their own.
It's what O'Keefe did before and is doing again and we're simply in the middle of the story where we've yet to see the full material in which his lies will be exposed.
I agree with you that any voter fraud is outrageous especially given the many people who sacrificed and often died to create a less horrific version of humanity in which we all participate in a free and fair electoral process. But I think that any claims that Presidential elections are or can be rigged are absurd and in the same realm of calling 9/11 an inside job or Barack Obama an illegal immigrant or suggesting Coca Cola has some secret formula that is anything other than sugar.
I don't think it's rigged either. The only conspiracy theory I'm willing to entertain is the idea that the Clintons orchestrated the whole election, but even then, I think it's more dumb luck than anything Machiavellian. It's been reported and is well known that it was Bill Clinton that convinced Trump to run. It's been reported and even more known that Hillary was going to be the nominee this year (since no one legitimate even challenged her). So when Bill Clinton suggested that Trump run, it was absolutely a political move.
I don't even think it was done so that Trump could win. I think it was a sabotage mission to attack more-legitimate candidates like Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush. I don't think even the Clintons (puppet-masters at their best) thought he'd actually get the nomination. But then he did, and he's the one Republican that can't beat her.
The conspiracy theory I like is why Trump won't release his taxes : because there'd be a nice big check from the Clintons in there.
While I don't doubt that Trump's volatile lack of self-control won Clinton her presidency, I think it is grossly disproportionate to hold Bill Clinton responsible for Trump serving as the Republican nominee. This is a political party who decided that the best person to represent their values, their philosophies, their strategies and their methods for how to govern would be a failed businessman bailed out by his father whose successes came through hiring contractors and securing investments in collapsed enterprises where the contractors and investors would suffer while Trump walked away with the money he owed them and the money they'd paid him. A man who can't focus on a conversation for me than 10 minutes at a time. A person who was infamous for sexual harassment and bragged about it on Howard Stern's radioshow, a man who ran a fraudulent university where the main product was getting to pose next to a cardboard cutout of him for photos. A conman with a crappy TV show and a supposed billionaire whose campaign hats are poorly stitched and whose untailored suits don't fit.
**
On the subject of voter fraud, if anything, Project Veritas is attacking fair and democratic elections by using O'Keefe's usual methods of misleadingly edited footage (as he always has) to undermine trust, faith and confidence in a voting system that is a model of equality and trustworthiness. Even if every single one of O'Keefe's claims were true, you could not possibly steal a Presidential election in this fashion because you could not possibly create enough false identities for multiple voting with registered names in order to sway the results in a contest of this size, nor could you monitor the supposed fraudulent voters to ensure they voted as instructed, nor could the massive expense for so little numerical gain make any possible sense.
You would have to be the stupidest person alive to try to steal a Presidential election by bussing the same groups of people to different jurisdictions.
Well, again, I don't think he was placed there by Bill to win. He might have also recommended that he run for genuinely friendly reasons. But let's be honest....his wife was running. His wife was going to be running against him or against his party. He wants his wife to be president. So either he was setting Donald up to fail, setting the Republican Party up to fail, or he's a naive idiot. At this point, all three are possible in my mind.
I think Bill knew what kind of person Donald is, and he thought two things. He's going to say a bunch of terrible things about the other candidates, and Republicans are never going to elect him. Maybe he thought it'd be good for Donald's ego or his bottom line. Maybe he thought Donald would have some fun. But even in his wildest dreams, I don't think Bill thought that Donald would win the nomination....just weaken the eventual nominee enough that Hillary could beat him.
It's just funny because Hillary has run exclusively on how dangerous Trump is. So her family essentially created the monster and then created the white knight to defeat their own monster.
Hmm. I have a number of lady friends and they are all, without exception, pretty much like Jill Stein. I adore my Jill Steins, but I wouldn't want any of them to be President. I could see them in some department of arts and culture. If they were to run for President, I would politely explain why I think this is not their calling. There was a point to this rambling, but it has temporarily escaped my mind, so please instead enjoy John Oliver's take on how you all have a very tough choice ahead of you.
I'm seriously considering using my vote to express how much of a joke this election is....and voting for a dead gorilla. Or maybe I'll vote for Quinn Mallory.
The fact that we can't even get good third party candidates makes me think we need to tear the whole presidential process down and start over. No one good wants the job. Just moron after moron after moron.
The fact that we can't even get good third party candidates makes me think we need to tear the whole presidential process down and start over. No one good wants the job. Just moron after moron after moron.
Our "first past the post" presidential system discourages smaller parties. We'd be better off with a parliamentary system.
I'm seriously considering using my vote to express how much of a joke this election is....and voting for a dead gorilla.
I'm seriously considering using my vote to express how much of a joke this election is....and voting for a dead gorilla. Or maybe I'll vote for Quinn Mallory.
The fact that we can't even get good third party candidates makes me think we need to tear the whole presidential process down and start over. No one good wants the job. Just moron after moron after moron.
INT. APARTMENT - AFTERNOON
Ib goes to his door and open it to find himself staring at
the face of Jerry O'Connell. Instantly enraged, Ib makes a
fist and prepares to swing --
IB
You treacherous, ungrateful,
backstabbing piece of --
QUINN
Whoa, whoa, whoa! It's me!
IB
Oh. Quinn.
(instantly relaxing)
So sorry. Thought you were the other
guy.
QUINN
This has been happening all day. On
the flight to get here, women kept
throwing drinks in my face. At the
airport, this one lady punched me in
the stomach. She looked like Sabrina
the Teenaged Witch.
IB
Melissa Joan Hart! So awesome! D'you
think she's in town for a show and
that is not what's important right
now! Come in, come in -- what can I
do for you?
QUINN
Well, I saw on the Sliders.tv message
board that your friend Slider_Quinn21
is so depressed about the election
that he's thinking of writing "Quinn
Mallory" on his ballot. Please ask
him not to do that.
IB
He's got no good options, Q-Ball!
We're lucky he's not voting for
Donald Trump; we can't ask him to
vote for Hillary Clinton if he
doesn't support her --
QUINN
I understand the burden in a
democratic process where there's no
good choices in front of you. I have
two responses for him.
IB
Two? Why two?
QUINN
The first: due to the Electoral
Colleges and rampant gerrymandering,
he could fairly consider the act of
voting meaningless since across 535
congregational districts, only 18 are
swing jurisdictions.
IB
Ohhhh, Americans.
QUINN
Slider_Quinn21 could reasonably stay
home and keep out of it. However,
following this line of thinking, the
Professor would say that any
abstinence from the electoral
procedure is an abdication of one's
entitlement to lamentation with
regards to political undertaking.
IB
Huh?
QUINN
If he doesn't vote, he can't
complain.
IB
You realize, you just basically said
nothing whatsoever.
QUINN
So if we discard the option of not
participating, your friend's best
route for participating without
supporting candidates he doesn't
agree with is to vote for whichever
of the six is least likely to win.
IB
The dude with the tiger zoo? The dude
with the tiger zoo!
QUINN
Yes. The dude with the tiger zoo. Go
with Joe Exotic. Then your friend has
done his due diligence and I'll
respect him.
This has been a public service announcement for
Slider_Quinn21 paid for by the What Would Quinn Mallory Do
Campaign.
I think that if someone who was well known enough decided to drop the Republican or Democrat title and run with a different party, they could give that party a chance of being a player in a presidential election. The ting is, it would have to be someone who could possibly win the nomination with the repubs or dems, so it doesn't look like an act of desperation.
There are few people who could actually pull that off, but I'm hopeful that it can happen someday. Y'know, maybe we should do away with the party titles all together and let people fight to get on the ballot on their own merits, without an R or D after their name.
Okay, back to voter fraud...
It happens. We've seen it happen in elections for senators, etc. It's pretty much known that there is corruption of the system, but there isn't a lot that can be done about fraudulent votes once they're cast. I think that it's more likely that you could go after an organization that brings in fraudulent voters, and that should happen.
All it would take to do major damage to an election is to add a few thousand votes to areas that are very close. Imagine having six hundred extra votes in Florida during the 2000 election. We'd have an entirely different history right now. And even if the attempts to influence the election with fraudulent votes doesn't work, those people who commit that crime or organize that crime should be held accountable. That is not a small crime.
I've yet to see evidence that O'Keefe fakes his videos. Clearly, you can say that he is biased in which stories he pursues, but if the implication is that he is editing these videos to be something that they aren't, or to make people say things that they aren't, there is no evidence to support that. And again I have to say that it's incredibly unusual for people to complain about video reports being edited, since every news report that we see on TV is highly edited. I've seen major news outlets editing around comments that politicians have made, or framing a shot to make a tiny protest look like a huge mob, and that's still seen as "respectable" journalism.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not a fan of the media lying to us. If there is evidence of O'Keefe fabricating stories, I want to see it. Until that happens, I don't see how his investigations can be written off. If these recent videos are lies, why are people being fired or stepping down from their positions?
You can find countless websites that say that O'Keefe is a con man or whatever (all with articles highlighting Hillary's crimes, I'm sure), but where is the evidence? What are they basing it on? Just the fact that his reports are edited in the same fashion as pretty much every single news reports on television or on the internet? Is there some sort of proof that his reporting is more fraudulent than any of the "legitimate" news sources? Or are they just bashing the man who is going after liberal organizations and causes? Do they hold more liberal outlets to similar standards? Did they demand to get the full recording of the Trump video/audio? Do they hold debate moderators accountable when they provide answers for the candidates who can't seem to find answers for themselves?
I'm all for asking questions. I want as much information as possible. But unless those websites are just as interested in exposing the dishonesty of the mainstream media, I don't see how they can hold a special grudge against Project Veritas, which is at least up-front with their political leanings.
Is there voter fraud? I do think so, but is it possible to organize it effectively to impact a US Presidential election in the fashion that it could make a difference? Not in the ways O'Keefe claims. The country's too big and spread out; O'Keefe's described techniques for rigging may seem simple (bus people around to vote under false identities) but would be so convoluted to set up that you couldn't possibly get the number of false identities and willing participants and successful outcomes in place to pull it off at any significant scale. The reports of actual, verified voter fraud show it to be incredibly minute and irrelevant although no less an attack on liberty and freedom.
As for O'Keefe, his 'work' on Shirley Sharrod and Juan Carlos Vera where he edited their footage to make them seem racist and to be a human trafficker -- his fraud is a matter of public record. In the case of Sharrod, she was fired from her job at the US Department of Agriculture. Then the videos were reviewed in full and her 'racism' was shown to be her describing attitudes she didn't agree with. She received a full apology from the US Government and the offer of a new position. With Vera, police officers had records showing that he immediately called the authorities to report potential human trafficking. He sued O'Keefe and O'Keefe paid out $100,000. You can Google it yourself and it's just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to O'Keefe being completely dishonest and untrustworthy. I would sooner trust pilight to give me constructive criticism.
Currently, there is no proof that his latest work is fraudulent, but considering he's never produced anything that wasn't, he has accumulated sufficient reason to dismiss his material given his past history.
I don't really have the time to gather and present further research to you to bolster what is a known, proven, and very validated set of criticisms against O'Keefe and his 'journalistic' practices; it's all out there on the internet anyway, Informant. If you don't agree with the truckload of courtcases and wrongful firings where O'Keefe's lies were later exposed, you and I will simply have to do what we usually do -- shake hands, agree to disagree and move on to this week's ARROW.
INT. APARTMENT - AFTERNOON
Ib goes to his door and open it to find himself staring at
the face of Jerry O'Connell. Instantly enraged, Ib makes a
fist and prepares to swing --IB
You treacherous, ungrateful,
backstabbing piece of --QUINN
Whoa, whoa, whoa! It's me!IB
Oh. Quinn.
(instantly relaxing)
So sorry. Thought you were the other
guy.QUINN
This has been happening all day. On
the flight to get here, women kept
throwing drinks in my face. At the
airport, this one lady punched me in
the stomach. She looked like Sabrina
the Teenaged Witch.IB
Melissa Joan Hart! So awesome! D'you
think she's in town for a show and
that is not what's important right
now! Come in, come in -- what can I
do for you?QUINN
Well, I saw on the Sliders.tv message
board that your friend Slider_Quinn21
is so depressed about the election
that he's thinking of writing "Quinn
Mallory" on his ballot. Please ask
him not to do that.IB
He's got no good options, Q-Ball!
We're lucky he's not voting for
Donald Trump; we can't ask him to
vote for Hillary Clinton if he
doesn't support her --QUINN
I understand the burden in a
democratic process where there's no
good choices in front of you. I have
two responses for him.IB
Two? Why two?QUINN
The first: due to the Electoral
Colleges and rampant gerrymandering,
he could fairly consider the act of
voting meaningless since across 535
congregational districts, only 18 are
swing jurisdictions.IB
Ohhhh, Americans.QUINN
Slider_Quinn21 could reasonably stay
home and keep out of it. However,
following this line of thinking, the
Professor would say that any
abstinence from the electoral
procedure is an abdication of one's
entitlement to lamentation with
regards to political undertaking.IB
Huh?QUINN
If he doesn't vote, he can't
complain.IB
You realize, you just basically said
nothing whatsoever.QUINN
So if we discard the option of not
participating, your friend's best
route for participating without
supporting candidates he doesn't
agree with is to vote for whichever
of the six is least likely to win.IB
The dude with the tiger zoo? The dude
with the tiger zoo!QUINN
Yes. The dude with the tiger zoo. Go
with Joe Exotic. Then your friend has
done his due diligence and I'll
respect him.This has been a public service announcement for
Slider_Quinn21 paid for by the What Would Quinn Mallory Do
Campaign.
Is it weird that this was strangely convincing?
As for O'Keefe, his 'work' on Shirley Sharrod and Juan Carlos Vera where he edited their footage to make them seem racist and to be a human trafficker -- his fraud is a matter of public record. In the case of Sharrod, she was fired from her job at the US Department of Agriculture. Then the videos were reviewed in full and her 'racism' was shown to be her describing attitudes she didn't agree with. She received a full apology from the US Government and the offer of a new position. With Vera, police officers had records showing that he immediately called the authorities to report potential human trafficking. He sued O'Keefe and O'Keefe paid out $100,000. You can Google it yourself and it's just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to O'Keefe being completely dishonest and untrustworthy. I would sooner trust pilight to give me constructive criticism.
The Shirley Sherrod video was Breitbart.com, not an O'Keefe investigation. Unless I'm missing something, which is entirely possible since I'm sleep deprived. If I am missing something, please let me know.
Juan Carlos Vera did call (his cousin) a police detective to discuss the incident. I don't know if a police report was actually filed. If there was, I can't find it. Regardless, the settlement reached was not about the editing of the video or the smearing of any character, it was a case of recording without consent. If action was taken to investigate this matter, there was no way of knowing until after the video was uploaded. There was no indication that I'm aware of to suggest that Vera attempted to break off the conversation or get rid of O'Keefe as soon as he came in. In fact, he claims to have played along with the whole routine... which begs the question of how O'Keefe was deceiving anyone when the man that people claim we were deceived about was going along with the whole thing.
Currently, there is no proof that his latest work is fraudulent, but considering he's never produced anything that wasn't, he has accumulated sufficient reason to dismiss his material given his past history.
Again, even his video with Juan Carlos Vera was not fraudulent. At best, it was a wacky Three's Company scenario, wherein both parties were trying to catch the other party and it was all a wacky misunderstanding. Everyone probably would have laughed it off... except, O'Keefe did record the man without consent. That does not make the video a fake, or give O'Keefe a history of faking videos. It gives him a history if violating the California law about recording people without consent. For what it's worth, he could do that where I life, no problem. There would have been no lawsuit or settlement if it had been done here.
I don't really have the time to gather and present further research to you to bolster what is a known, proven, and very validated set of criticisms against O'Keefe and his 'journalistic' practices; it's all out there on the internet anyway, Informant. If you don't agree with the truckload of courtcases and wrongful firings where O'Keefe's lies were later exposed, you and I will simply have to do what we usually do -- shake hands, agree to disagree and move on to this week's ARROW.
This season really is better than those seasons which shall not be spoken of. I mean, they're not absolutely perfect, but the episodes are much better. I still don't like the John Jr. thing though.
O'Keefe was Breitbart's protege in this sort of 'journalism' and he and Breitbart were partners in the Sherrod affair, having been working together since 2009.
As for Vera, he was following the appropriate procedures for dealing with someone proposing human trafficking, which O'Keefe knew full well. If someone comes into your office and wants you to help them sell people into slavery, you play along, collect every piece of info you can, then call the cops, which Vera did. O'Keefe knew full well that he was misrepresenting a man doing exactly what anyone should do in that situation. O'Keefe's other big 'hit' is fraudulent NPR recordings where he re-edited conversations to make it seem like they were accepting money from terrorist organizations.
Unlike previous endeavours, however, this time, James O'Keefe is point blank refusing to release the unedited footage and recordings. This alone should be enough to instantly discredit him even more than he's already been discredited; he doesn't want scrutiny of his evidence, meaning his evidence is bogus.
Anyone who lends credence to James O'Keefe's claims and assertions is doing so not because he's in any way credible or trustworthy, but because he's telling them something they want to hear, something they want to believe so badly that they'll set aside any questions of his ridiculous past and his inane methods and his manipulative editing in order to believe what they've decided to believe. It's, admittedly, the same motivations that lead to people seeing Hillary Clinton as an unquestionable icon of feminism, achievement and freedom.
I think I'm going to back out of this area of discussion now because pointing out to someone that James O'Keefe is a fraud and a liar is like pointing out to them that autism isn't caused by vaccines. It's simply not going to go anywhere; our positions are what they are.
**
I'm glad Slider_Quinn21 appreciated Quinn wading into politics. I think what really works about Quinn's opinion and why I like his character so much -- Quinn would never tell you who to vote for, he would only give you some thoughts as to a strategy on how to make up your own mind.
Not true. I don't have any loyalty to O'Keefe or anything he has done. We are discussing facts here. Breitbart released the Sherrod video. It was not O'Keefe. You are misrepresenting this situation in order to prove a point, and then accusing me of blindly following O'Keefe because he says what I want to hear. I don't know if you are simply remembering this wrong or you're looking at a website for details, but this is false.
So we are saying that O'Keefe took video of a man who was going along with the human trafficking plan, showed the video of exactly what that man was doing, and he is still a fraud because the man who was trying to convince him that he was helping with the human trafficking plan succeeded in making him believe that he was helping with the human trafficking plan? What evidence is there to suggest that O'Keefe had any knowledge of any police report or investigation prior to the video's release? For that matter, is there any record of a police report?
I looked up the NPR report on the NPR situation:
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/ … eral-funds
That report links to the full two-hour recording (which I can't open... Possibly because I'm on a phone). It also has a statement from the man involved, apologizing for what he said in that recording.
As far as I can tell, the Project Veritas headline on those recordings is about media bias, not collusion with terrorists.
http://projectveritas.com/npr-videos/
At different points over the years, I have enjoyed the works of many people. Political journalists, writers, directors, actors, whatever. I have always enjoyed them right up the the point where they do something to rub me the wrong way, and then I let it be known that I'm no longer a fan. Usually loudly and repeatedly. I do not follow anyone blindly. We can discuss these things as much as you'd like. Maybe you'll even change my opinion. But please don't accuse me of being a mindless follower. I am not one. Ever.
EDIT --
Just because I noticed your other post after I clicked "submit"...
The thing is, I looked at your examples from the mindset of "maybe there is something that I didn't know" and thought that I'd change my mind about Project Veritas once I looked into it. However, I looked into it and looked at the facts involved. Not my opinion or my feelings, but facts.
FACT: Shirley Sherrod was not O'Keefe or Project Veritas.
FACT: The lawsuit settled was about recording without consent. There is no claim that O'Keefe misrepresented what was on the video or edited it to make it appear that it was anything other than what it was.
FACT: The NPR recordings did in fact show bias against the Tea Party, which the man accused even apologized for. And the full recording was released. If their edited report was misleading, they appear to have given everyone the chance to decide for themselves.
I don't see how any of this makes me comparable to an anti-vaxxer who is ignoring facts and data. If there is some evidence that I don't have, I'd love to see it. Until then, I simply am not the one who seems to be basing my opinions on feelings or bias.
Informant, I apologize. I've made a mistake. James O'Keefe was a Breitbart employee and the Vera 'scandal' was published on Breitbart in 2009. And yes, they were fraudulent -- O'Keefe intercut footage of himself shot after his conversation with Vera in which O'Keefe dressed up in an absurd outfit and asked more explicitly criminal questions in order to make Vera's responses look more disturbing, and then the intercut footage was presented as the actual conversation on the website.
The Shirley Sherrod video went on Brietbart in 2010 and at the time, most critics including myself thought they were more of James O'Keefe's manipulative editing as it fit his style entirely by choosing select portions of dialogue, intercutting in order to manipulate the conversation and to make someone look bad. The majority of internet coverage at the time accredited the phony editing to O'Keefe as he seemed to be the go-to person for Breitbart's smear videos -- but upon review today, this was never verified and O'Keefe denies he was involved, so it's unreasonable to put this on his list.
However... I'm still going to have to point to the faked Vera videos, the doctored NPR interviews (which were debunked as manipulatively edited and contextualized once full versions were reviewed), an edited video that shows an actor easily scamming a Maine Medicaid office (the full version shows the actor failed to do so), a video of environmentalists talking about other organizations they work with adjusted with voiceover to claim all these mentioned organizations take payoffs from oil companies -- the man is simply a scam artist and it's beyond me how despite a long history of deception, he isn't instantly dismissed. This is what he does. He lures people, films them saying lots of things, edits material into something incriminating and presents a smoking gun that's inevitably exposed as a fake.
But I apologize for the Sherrod error. Do I think O'Keefe made it? Yes, but I mis-remembered this as a fact when it's simply a suspicion. Thank you for the correction. But I really don't think this man is your conservative knight in armour. You can do better. I'm going to go back to the ARROW thread now. Best of luck on November 8.
James O'Keefe was a Breitbart employee and the Vera 'scandal' was published on Breitbart in 2009. And yes, they were fraudulent -- O'Keefe intercut footage of himself shot after his conversation with Vera in which O'Keefe dressed up in an absurd outfit and asked more explicitly criminal questions in order to make Vera's responses look more disturbing, and then the intercut footage was presented as the actual conversation on the website.
Wait... That didn't happen at all. The intro to the videos had the wacky pimp outfit and theme song. The videos themselves had normal clothes, and no intercut footage of questions being asked (O'Keefe was wearing the camera, it seems)
The videos show Vera either helping this couple, or pretending to help them. Whichever story you believe to be true, they accurately portray what happened there that day. Now, if a police report was filed or an investigation was started, that should be added to the story, to show that Vera isn't as bad as he looks. But as I said, I can't find evidence of a police report or an investigation. Therefore, there is nothing to back up the claim of his going to the police (it should be noted that he mentions asking his cop relative about the matter in the video, so simply discussing it with his cop cousin doesn't necessarily mean that he was looking to make a bust). Anyway, I don't agree that the video can be called "faked" either way.
But yeah, this conversation isn't getting us very far. It is fine for you to look at the videos and read the reports and feel however you feel about them. I would just appreciate it if you didn't imply that what you're saying is absolute, indisputable fact and anyone who disagrees is a wacko. I'm not basing my opinions on how I feel, I'm basing them on the evidence in front of me.
Oh GOD. Is this my life now? Spending stupid amounts of time talking about ****ing James O'Keefe? I want to die.
The Attorney General confirmed that Vera contacted the police in their investigation and report with their findings from reviewing the full, unedited footage. The full Vera videos show Vera asking for O'Keefe's contact information, times, dates, locations and all of O'Keefe's plans for human trafficking, showing him gathering as much information as possible -- but O'Keefe cut all that in his video so that he could emphasize Vera's apparent willingness to assist in slavery. In other ACORN interviews, O'Keefe and Gilles were met with either information-gathering tactics, stalling, referring them to victims groups and outright refusals of involvement -- all of which would have made it blindingly clear to O'Keefe that ACORN wasn't going to help human traffickers. Instead. O'Keefe edited his footage to present the opposite. In one case an ACORN employee encouraging someone to keep trying to find a place to live was re-positioned as encouragement for creating a human smuggling ring.
O'Keefe's intro is deliberately placed to mislead the viewer to think he wore the fur coat and absurd outfit into ACORN's offices. It's meant to mislead. O'Keefe omitting any footage where ACORN workers offered Gilles help or declared they would not help is again a deceit designed to smear ACORN regardless of truth or facts.
There is no sensible argument to be made that O'Keefe genuinely thought ACORN was a human trafficking operation or that O'Keefe's recontextualizing wasn't purposely designed to fool the audience, and this approach is to be found in all his subsequent work. There's his Medicaid 'interviews' where the edited videos show his trained monkeys successfully scamming for medical care -- while the full footage shows them being asked to leave.
There's the environmentalist groups where O'Keefe's voiceover describes how these groups all accept money from fossil fuel companies and then we hear environmentalist administrators going through a list of all the organizations that take such donations -- except the full footage makes it clear they're just listing off other environmentalist groups they worth with. The NPR interviews show an NPR exec declaring Republicans racist when the full version has the man talking about his Republican heritage, his own conservatism and how he had a conversation with two Republicans and he recounts their reasons for why they voted Obama -- which O'Keefe re-edited to make it seem like this was the the man's own viewpoint.
I've been through the O'Keefe spin-cycle of scandal too many times, I would not trust this man to tell me that water is wet.
Ugh. Talking about O'Keefe makes me sick. This is his Wikipedia Page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_O%27Keefe
Believe what you want. I'm going to go take a long shower to wash O'Keefe off me.
Yeah, I'm not going to continue on this. It's getting us nowhere. You have your opinion about O'Keefe, and that's fine. You can simply not like his methods or believe that his open political leanings invalidate his work. That's fine. But some of what you've read about him or his work does not accurately represent what actually happened or what is in the videos. So you should shy away from using those sources for your debate points.
I did skim through the link you sent, and again, I do think that if Vera handled the situation with the police, it should be noted on the video's website. The video is not fraudulent as originally released, but it should be amended with an update with relevant information. But as with any news report, you always have to do extra homework to find all of the things that you aren't being told. This is why I hate journalists. O'Keefe is no worse than anyone else, he's just not entirely better.
Bad voting booth calibration leads to Republican votes turning Democrat in Illinois:
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/10 … ounty.html
This by far the best predictor of who will win Tuesday:
We're so close now! Predictions anyone?
The next four years will either be a joke or a disaster on a scale that we never imagined possible.
The only up side is that the Obamas will be gone. I can't stand them.
We're so close now! Predictions anyone?
Trump will win the vote, but Hillary will win the election. We'll all lose to Russia who will finally get tired of being blamed for stuff they didn't do.
Wolverines!
Oh. Was I too early?
Clinton will win big
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