Over/Under

[Vander]

I'm going to set the Over/Under for Trump remaining in office at 3 years. Anyone taking the over?

[woodchip]

Me, unless he dies in office.

[Tunnelcat]

Under, for the sake of our country.

[Vander]

The Over/Under has now been adjusted to 1 year. Anyone take the over?

[callmeslick]

taking the under. Pence may be President in less than a year, and depending on how closely linked to the Russian scandal,maybe Ryan.

[CDN_Merlin]

I'm hoping under 1 year.

[Tunnelcat]

I hoping under, but now I'm betting slightly over. It's amazing. Trump has a way of taking absolute crap and turning it into something more like sour candy that he knows many Americans will tolerate. But eventually, all that crap will start to stink to high heaven and that sour candy won't smell or taste so good to anyone anymore.

[Spidey]

I’ll take over.

And goodbye...dorkey headlight!

[Tunnelcat]

I’ll take over.

And goodbye...dorkey headlight!

Lucky you. I've got a little more posting to go before I get rid of the thing.

[woodchip]

If you get caught up in the manufactured news by the the left, you'll of course say under a year. As it seems the same people who thought Trump wouldn't last when he first announced his candidacy, will say "under". As I rightly predicted back then, I now predict Trump will win a second term. The problem you haters have is you think by listening to CNN or MSNBC that no one likes him (Rasmussen has a approval of 55%) or that the Dems will force him out of office (a group who themselves are the ones slowly going down the toilet). Only way to remove Trump is by a health issue or some foaming at the mouth liberal assassinates him. I just wonder how many here would secretly applaud that.

[Tunnelcat]

Good Lord!

[Ferno]

If you get caught up in the manufactured news by the the left, you'll of course say under a year. As it seems the same people who thought Trump wouldn't last when he first announced his candidacy, will say "under". As I rightly predicted back then, I now predict Trump will win a second term. The problem you haters have is you think by listening to CNN or MSNBC that no one likes him (Rasmussen has a approval of 55%) or that the Dems will force him out of office (a group who themselves are the ones slowly going down the toilet). Only way to remove Trump is by a health issue or some foaming at the mouth liberal assassinates him. I just wonder how many here would secretly applaud that.

I find it funny that almost as soon as Trump started claiming "fake news", you did too.

Almost as if you're reading and reciting memes.

"Trump said it, so it must be true!"

[Top Gun]

"Fake news" is a great signal for who should be legally required to wear a helmet in public.

[callmeslick]

If you get caught up in the manufactured news by the the left, you'll of course say under a year. As it seems the same people who thought Trump wouldn't last when he first announced his candidacy, will say "under". As I rightly predicted back then, I now predict Trump will win a second term. The problem you haters have is you think by listening to CNN or MSNBC that no one likes him (Rasmussen has a approval of 55%) or that the Dems will force him out of office (a group who themselves are the ones slowly going down the toilet). Only way to remove Trump is by a health issue or some foaming at the mouth liberal assassinates him. I just wonder how many here would secretly applaud that.

I find it funny that almost as soon as Trump started claiming "fake news", you did too.

Almost as if you're reading and reciting memes.

"Trump said it, so it must be true!"

it's both a bit funny and whole lot sad, if you read Social Media. The Trump camp gobbles up a rather transparent attempt to discredit the folks who are slowly gathering the information. Oh, and that Rasmussen poll has been essentially laughed at by any competent polling agency. "Likely Voters"? You are citing a poll of likely voters in 2020 now? The overall public approval is 40%, which is beyond dismall. Even 55% would be laughably behind Obama, Bush,(two contentious figures) and most others, at this point of the Presidency.

[Tunnelcat]

Even though Trump's approval ratings have been staying around 38 to 40%, which is mostly due to his die hard base, his disapproval numbers have been slightly climbing over time.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/201617/gallu ... roval.aspx

[Vander]

The Over/Under has now been adjusted to 6 months. Anyone take the over?

[woodchip]

"Fake news" is a great signal for who should be legally required to wear a helmet in public.

OK TG, show me some facts about the russians influencing our elections like you read about in the news.

[Vander]

woodchip, what's your opinion of this? Do you reject it completely? Waiting for something more than circumstantial evidence? If it's the latter, does it at least give you pause?

[callmeslick]

if this British report is correct, and the Senate is going to have this guy testify, your over under may be about right.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 08456.html

yes, that may be blood you see on the water.

[Tunnelcat]

if this British report is correct, and the Senate is going to have this guy testify, your over under may be about right.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 08456.html

yes, that may be blood you see on the water.

Possibly mixed with a tinge of urine.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/10/politics/ ... er-update/

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/01 ... ald-trump/

[woodchip]

woodchip, what's your opinion of this? Do you reject it completely? Waiting for something more than circumstantial evidence? If it's the latter, does it at least give you pause?

Confident that emails were hacked by Russia? No proof but even still if you are going to run maverick servers out of a kitchen closet then it is you who are to blame for having piss poor security. And lets not forget that Obama was guilty of the same thing against the Israeli elections :

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/201 ... netanyahu/

And lets throw this factoid in from your link Vander:

The USIC and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) assess that it would be extremely difficult for someone, including a nation-state actor, to alter actual ballot counts or election results by cyber attack or intrusion.

So no, I'm not much impressed.

[woodchip]

if this British report is correct, and the Senate is going to have this guy testify, your over under may be about right.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 08456.html

yes, that may be blood you see on the water.

Isn't that the same dossier that buzzfeed was roundly ridiculed for? Or are you trying to change polluted water into sparkling whine?

[Vander]

Confident that emails were hacked by Russia? No proof but even still if you are going to run maverick servers out of a kitchen closet then it is you who are to blame for having piss poor security.

So your only reaction when you contemplate the possibility it might have happened is to comment on security? Do intentions play into your thinking at all? If Russia attempted to influence our elections for your preferred candidate, do you try to square what they want with what you want? Does anything like that enter your thinking?

Would you at least admit it looks suspicious, granting that suspicion is not guilt?

And lets not forget that Obama was guilty of the same thing against the Israeli elections

I've said here before that I think theres a bit of karmic justice that the US is on the receiving end of things we do. That doesn't make it right!

And lets throw this factoid in from your link Vander:

The USIC and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) assess that it would be extremely difficult for someone, including a nation-state actor, to alter actual ballot counts or election results by cyber attack or intrusion.

So no, I'm not much impressed.

Just because the voting system itself wasn't hacked doesn't mean hacking wasn't used to influence the vote!

[callmeslick]

if this British report is correct, and the Senate is going to have this guy testify, your over under may be about right.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 08456.html

yes, that may be blood you see on the water.

Isn't that the same dossier that buzzfeed was roundly ridiculed for? Or are you trying to change polluted water into sparkling whine?

no one ridiculed a damn thing, especially when the first 4 of the 17 items have checked out, via intelligence agencies.

[callmeslick]

meanwhile, after having contacts with folks that they denied ever having contact with, the Trump team actually DID force the GOP to moderate it's platform language on Russian/Ukranian matters. The ONLY CHANGE the Trump camp requested in the platform proposal.
http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/3/ ... l=facebook


the fact that Woody doesn't smell the stench yet isn't really shocking.

[callmeslick]

meanwhile, this summary is worthwhile. This writer has worked up to proven treachery, not quite treason....
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/w ... li=BBnb7Kz

[woodchip]

So your only reaction when you contemplate the possibility it might have happened is to comment on security?

No, since there is no smoking gun evidence this is all speculation. I am more concerned that foreign entities hack into our agencies and get classified information.

Do intentions play into your thinking at all? If Russia attempted to influence our elections for your preferred candidate, do you try to square what they want with what you want? Does anything like that enter your thinking?

The only thing that enters my thinking is, if we know people will attempt to influence our elections, why are we not better prepared? Remember, influencing our elections happens all the time. Both parties do it. The press does it. Bloggers do it and cartoonist do it. Russia would just be another entity. It is better that the emails of Clinton and Podesta were revealed than assassination by innuendo and fake news. Don't know about you but I get tired of the child like means one side will go to in order to demean someone.

Would you at least admit it looks suspicious, granting that suspicion is not guilt?

It is as suspicious as Obama's birth certificate story and Hillary's Benghazi story.

Just because the voting system itself wasn't hacked doesn't mean hacking wasn't used to influence the vote!

I think you are clutching at straws if you think that. Remember, Hillary had more of the popular vote...other than they were in the wrong states.

[woodchip]

meanwhile, this summary is worthwhile. This writer has worked up to proven treachery, not quite treason....
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/w ... li=BBnb7Kz

I guess the editors note sums it up:

Editor’s note: The opinions in this article are the author’s, as published by our content partner, and do not necessarily represent the views of MSN or Microsoft.

I could write a opinion piece and have the total opposite view. Would you give me any more credence?

[Tunnelcat]

You know what woodchip? You're missing out on one important point with all this, that Trump is letting the Russia story get under his skin like a bug bite that itches. Why in the hell doesn't he just drop all the 6:00AM infantile Twitter tantrums and laser-focused obsessing with what maybe the FBI is investigating about his possible campaign's involvement with Russia and ignore the media and Dem rantings and instead concentrate on doing his job for the country? What's he's doing now is called "tunneling", focusing all his attention on one insignificant thing, which is not really important in the bigger scheme of things right now. He can't focus because he's nothing but a malignant narcissist obsessed with his image, not his job. That's what you get when you hire an entertainer to run the country.

[callmeslick]

Doubling down on the obvious lie about Trump Towers being 'bugged' by Obama is a sure sign of desperation, or complete derangement. Let's deconstruct this. No President has the power to order wiretaps on a candidate already under the Protection of the Secret Service, I'd suspect. Second, as Lindsay Graham alluded to, it he was under surveillance, it had to pass by a Federal Judge to approve it, which implies a hell of a lot of preliminary evidence as to a direct threat to the nation. The whole thing, on top of previous goofy asides blaming Obama for imaginary stuff gets the bulk of us conjuring up THIS sort of image of our 'dear leader'.

[Vander]

No, since there is no smoking gun evidence this is all speculation.

This is precisely what I'm asking you to do here, speculate. Let's be honest, you do an awful lot of speculating when it comes to the other side, but now you're shy?

The only thing that enters my thinking is, if we know people will attempt to influence our elections, why are we not better prepared?

I generally agree with this, we should be better prepared. Be it through critical thinking skills to thwart propaganda or better understanding of IT security if we're going to place suce a reliance on IT. But blocking out potentially unflattering information actively harms critical thinking.

It is as suspicious as Obama's birth certificate story and Hillary's Benghazi story.

Both sides do it, am I right? We dismissed your stories, so you get to dismiss our stories. How about we look at each story on their own merits?

I think you are clutching at straws if you think that. Remember, Hillary had more of the popular vote...other than they were in the wrong states.

Hillary winning the popular vote is not a data point that contradicts the possible effectiveness of such an operation. She could've won the popular vote by a larger margin. And to be clear, I'm NOT saying this is the only reason she lost the election. There are a multitude of things I believe contributed to Clinton losing, not least of which are her own faults or the fact that there are people that disagree with her actual policy positions.

[woodchip]

This is precisely what I'm asking you to do here, speculate. Let's be honest, you do an awful lot of speculating when it comes to the other side, but now you're shy?

OK, I'll play Ken and Barbi dress up. If you remember back during the primaries it was Trump who said the elections were rigged and he might not accept the results. It was Hillary Clinton who said rigging the elections was not possible blah blah blah. So Hillary loses and she creams her jeans over it and the dems come out and say it was a rigged election and the Russians are at fault. So for my speculation 2 cents, this all looks like a concerted attempt by the left to discredit Trump and try to get him out of office because he is not "legitimate". So to deflect this Trump has cleverly orchestrated a "Obama tapped my phones" story which seems to have worked perfectly.

Both sides do it, am I right? We dismissed your stories, so you get to dismiss our stories. How about we look at each story on their own merits?

Neither story has any merit.

[Vander]

If you remember back during the primaries it was Trump who said the elections were rigged and he might not accept the results. It was Hillary Clinton who said rigging the elections was not possible blah blah blah. So Hillary loses and she creams her jeans over it and the dems come out and say it was a rigged election and the Russians are at fault.

Ha! Trump won and he's complaining it was rigged. (with less evidence, circumstantial or otherwise, than the Russia angle) My understanding is that if Democrats believe any one out of the ordinary thing turned the election, it was Comey. Pretty sure that's what Clinton herself said afterwords. But there are a lot of Democrats, and there are a lot of reasons Clinton lost, so your mileage may vary.

I myself wouldn't consider what the Russian's allegedly did was "rigging" the election. People can vote for whoever they want. I consider "rigging" an election to be more of an attack on the implementation. Changing vote tallies, voter suppression, voter fraud, etc.

So for my speculation 2 cents, this all looks like a concerted attempt by the left to discredit Trump and try to get him out of office because he is not "legitimate".

I agree with this. Democrats are using Russia as a cudgel against Trump to try to weaken him, as well as cover for their own shortcomings. I personally lean toward the Greenwald/Tiabbi side of things, that getting out over our skis on this Russia stuff is potentially going to have negative consequences to both our relationship with Russia as well as cause us to overlook the very real failures of Democratic Party.

But lets look at what we know. We know that Russia engages in cyber warfare as a tool for pushing their interests in regional conflicts and political bodies, targeting both social media as well as opponents directly. This was established well before Trump came down the golden escalator, and is grounded in fact as well as logic. I would be surprised if they didn't do this, because we also know for a fact that this is the type of stuff we do. All(almost?) of our intelligence agencies have concluded they targeted our election with these methods, methods we've seen them use before. So while the evidence released for what is allegedly the most effective thrust of this attack: the DNC hack and subsequent info dump, is mostly circumstantial and deniable, I give this an 8/10 on the believable scale.

We know that Trump has been financially supported by Russian money for the last decade after his string of bankruptcies left him unable to secure investment locally. This is undeniable, yet it must be granted we don't have a complete picture of all this, due to his refusal to release his tax returns. "Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets." "We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia." And it must be said there isn't anything necessarily wrong with having financial ties to Russian money.

We also know that Trump was out in front spreading the intel take from this alleged operation. "I love Wikileaks." "Russia: If you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing.” People in his orbit appeared to have foreknowledge of subsequent releases. After being briefed that US intelligence considered this a foreign operation, Trump still pushed it with little apparent concern.

So while there is a leap over some missing evidence that must be taken to conclude that Trump actually colluded with Russia to win the election, the gap isn't exactly big. He was very open in his courtship of Russia during the campaign, and this earns him some points with me. I give him a little benefit of doubt. But then there are things he did hide, campaign contacts with Russians and such. Can that be chalked up to political optics? Maybe. Like I said in another thread, barring some specific actions by the Trump camp, all of this is probably perfectly legal on his end. Certainly outside of norms, but likely legal. But it is a thread of history that I think must be fully explored, and quickly, if we're going to make informed decisions at this crucial historical inflection point.

[Tunnelcat]

This is precisely what I'm asking you to do here, speculate. Let's be honest, you do an awful lot of speculating when it comes to the other side, but now you're shy?

OK, I'll play Ken and Barbi dress up. If you remember back during the primaries it was Trump who said the elections were rigged and he might not accept the results. It was Hillary Clinton who said rigging the elections was not possible blah blah blah. So Hillary loses and she creams her jeans over it and the dems come out and say it was a rigged election and the Russians are at fault. So for my speculation 2 cents, this all looks like a concerted attempt by the left to discredit Trump and try to get him out of office because he is not "legitimate". So to deflect this Trump has cleverly orchestrated a "Obama tapped my phones" story which seems to have worked perfectly.

Well, McCain is now telling Trump to put up or shut up. It'll be interesting to see if Trump comes through, or stays silent like the lying propagandist he's shown himself to be. I hope McCain keeps dogging him on this one.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/pow ... -prove-it/

And woody, even if the Russian's little Dem email leaks didn't have any affect on our election, because in my opinion, Hillary herself was always the negative issue, there is a distinct possibility that Trump is being blackmailed by the Russians to do their bidding and destroy our position as a world leader. The Russians spy on everyone of note who visits their country and Trump has stayed in those heavily bugged Russian hotels while doing business. In fact, he should be worried that he WAS spied on, but by the Russians. Why else all this constant Russia love from Trump and all that Russian involvement surrounding Trump's campaign staffers? I mean, all this BS is a diametrically 180 degree shift from the long held Republican anti-Russia stance and I can even see a lot of Republicans tying themselves into pretzels to come to terms with it. Something smells in Trumpland.

[callmeslick]

summary of todays BS: 'Wiretap' didn't really mean wiretap, or maybe it did. Microwaves can take your picture. We still need to investigate Obama, not Trump. So sayeth the bootlicking lackeys in the Trump White House.

[Tunnelcat]

I heard that microwave comment from Conway this morning. I think she meant TV's, but I guess when she's spinning some nonsense response that's really an evasive answer to the original question, her brain becomes confused. By the way, if Trump needs to blame someone,he needs to blame the originator of all this spying on American citizens, GEORGE W. BUSH. Yeah, I know I'm a broken record on this bastard, but I've got to give credit where credit is due.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 00021.html

[Spidey]

Edited...

Wire taps are so last century, why limit your surveillance to phone conversations, when the government can literally listen to every word you say and see everything you do.

[Tunnelcat]

Edit, wrong quote:

It was Trump who said: "How low has President Obama gone to tapp(sic) my phones during the very sacred election process". Maybe he's the one living in the last century.

[callmeslick]

in a related note, I just picked up a new microwave for the house here in Delaware. Joe Biden recommended it.









seriously, maybe the Donald got the Obama 3000 model



I cannot for the life of me understand why there hasn't been official inquiry into the sanity of the POTUS.

[Top Gun]

Maybe it's that his entire administration is pants-on-head retarded, and so he doesn't stick out quite so much himself.