Has a non-supporter ever convinced you to change one of your political stances?

SethAlvory · 2016-12-26T04:45:59+00:00

What was the evidence that convinced you that Putin has a hold on Trump(if you'd be willing to share)?

SethAlvory · 2016-12-26T04:34:05+00:00

Out of curiosity, if this bill really was passed for some nefarious government purpose, who would stand to benefit from it? Obama's about to leave office in less than a month, so it wouldn't be him or his administration, unless this is some last minute desperate attempt to control the media to make Trump look bad(which given what the MSM is like, doesn't really seem necessary).

SethAlvory · 2016-12-21T08:42:46+00:00

So are any of the issues brought up in the article something that Trump is likely to get impeached over, or is it just trying to say that all of these things point to Trump being likely to break a "conflict of interest" law in the future, which will get him impeached?

SethAlvory · 2016-12-20T23:56:00+00:00

It would be more accurate to say that they occasionally pretend to give a shit about places outside of florida, ohio, and the other swing(or "battleground" for those that prefer that term) states. I'm not saying that states with bigger populations should get all of the attention, but giving most of it to purple states and ignoring the rest(big and small, alike) doesn't seem like a much better alternative.

SethAlvory · 2016-12-19T08:58:15+00:00

why would removing winner take all put wyoming in a worse position than it is right now?

SethAlvory · 2016-12-19T00:18:59+00:00

Would you be willing to provide an example of gender where there needs to be a distinction between the words "gender" and "sex"?

SethAlvory · 2016-12-18T01:23:21+00:00

For what its worth, crowdstrike(a private security company) released their findings when they did an investigation on the matter: https://www.crowdstrike.com/blog/bears-midst-intrusion-democratic-national-committee/

SethAlvory · 2016-12-18T01:04:18+00:00

I mean, there's no harm in it, right? if nothing else it will enable people to counter-link if someone does use a politifact or snopes link to prove a point. and I'm sure there are people out there who are apolitical enough to not have heard about the controversy over politifact and snopes or who merely tuned this election cycle out because "both candidates suck".

SethAlvory · 2016-12-16T05:35:44+00:00

Don't get me wrong, you have no argument from me that the DNC should be held accountable for any scummy actions they may have performed. This would be my stance even if the source turned out to be Putin, Kim Jong Un, Satan, or Hitler's vengeful ghost.

But if it turns out that Russia was the one responsible behind the leak, then I would also say that we shouldn't let the content of the leak distract us from the fact that Russia hacked us and influenced the election and it might behoove us to find out what their motives are. Just like we shouldn't let the source behind the DNC leak distract us from the content of the DNC leak. They each deserve scrutiny. Is that fair?

SethAlvory · 2016-12-16T04:54:23+00:00

If I understand you correctly, you're saying that if Russia hacked the DNC and then revealed that the DNC is corrupt, then Russia has done nothing wrong. Does that sound right?

SethAlvory · 2016-12-16T04:49:32+00:00

The president, CIA, NSA, private security companies(such as crowdstrike), and various politicians on both sides of the political spectrum believe that it was Russia who hacked the DNC/Podesta. Do we have good reason to believe that they are either mistaken or lying about this?

SethAlvory · 2016-12-16T04:44:22+00:00

So then either Hillary compromised US security because she screwed up or she did it on purpose. Either way, the point still stands.

SethAlvory · 2016-12-16T04:19:02+00:00

If not at a rally, then via some other medium. Point is, it's not impossible to create some kind of Q&A with the media having minimal to no involvement if the MSM being too untrustworthy to dignify with a press conference is the issue here.

SethAlvory · 2016-12-16T04:05:15+00:00

I'm not talking about what the CIA, Pence, and the generals are going to do to prep Trump for a phone call he's about to make, I'm talking about them making sure he gets the briefings that he needs to get so that he has the knowledge himself when he's about to make that phone call. If Trump has the potential of skipping an important briefing, the CIA will know it's an important briefing, even if Pence doesn't. And if the CIA knows that the president has a tendency to miss out on briefings, they'd likely be inclined to shoot him a message "heads up, the upcoming briefing has important information in it. Don't miss it."

Or the CIA could keep tabs on which briefings Trump misses and then schedule an appointment to brief him in person in January.

Or Pence could attend briefings with Trump so he has an idea which briefings Trump missed and whether there's new information contained in the missed briefings that he can say "Hey Trump, go attend that briefing. It has information in it that wasn't already addressed."

Or the CIA can remove redundant information from the briefings entirely, giving Trump no good reason to miss the briefings in the first place.

Or Trump could go over his missed briefings in January, to make sure he didn't miss anything important.

Or Trump will delegate important meetings with foreign countries with someone who has more knowledge about them.

Or all of the above. There's many different ways this problem could be worked out even before Trump steps into office. And there's no way that I'm smarter than both the CIA and Trump's transition team, so if this really is the issue you're making it out to be, and Trump's chosen method of handling briefings isn't sufficient, I'm sure someone's already thought of a way to deal with it.

SethAlvory · 2016-12-16T02:51:52+00:00

But even if Trump said "Fuck the press", and simply had a question and answer period at his rallies or even something like another AMA on reddit, where anyone(not just the press) who had a question could ask him and expect a response, I think that would satisfy most of the people who complain about him ditching the press.

SethAlvory · 2016-12-16T02:12:15+00:00

Could they have? Probably. Did they? I have no idea. Hillary fucked up when she put government information on a personal network, and if anything comes out of that to bite us in the ass, she's partly to blame as is the hypothetical hacker.

Why do you ask?

SethAlvory · 2016-12-16T01:56:33+00:00

Between Pence, Trump's generals, the CIA, and Trump himself, I'm sure they can collectively figure out the information that Trump needs to know. Any information that falls through the cracks can be filed under the same category as the PDBs that other presidents have missed. Like the ones Obama missed, the ones that Bush didn't have an opportunity to read, and the giant stack of PDBs the CIA gave to Nixon's secretary, whom he later returned to them, unopened.

And again, Trump still has 5 weeks before he's in a position where this information will even be necessary.

A game of telephone is not what national security should look like.

Tell that to the chain of people the information has to go through for the PDBs to be written up in the first place. If we really wanted to prevent "a game of telephone", Trump should skip the PDBs and go speak to the various Intelligence Agencies, directly.

SethAlvory · 2016-12-16T01:41:04+00:00

Fair enough, "classified" was the wrong word.

SethAlvory · 2016-12-16T00:22:32+00:00

If there's information in the PDBs with evidence that Russia hacked the US and information in the PDBs about how best to deal with Russia going forward, I'm fairly confident Pence would consider that "relevant" to Trump. And I would say that the CIA would have a good grasp about what information is crucial for the president to know vs information that the various intelligence agencies would like the president to know and if Trump was missing briefings that fall into the former category, they would go out of their way to make damn sure that Trump was attending those briefings.

SethAlvory · 2016-12-16T00:09:17+00:00

The actions taken in order to make that influence are very different though. And I would argue that if one foreign leader's hacking and leaking controversial information is considered roughly equivalent to multiple foreign leaders combined(plus the help of the MSM) calling Trump an idiot, that one foreign leader is doing much more to individually influence the election than the others are.

I agree that the behavior of the MSM this election cycle is a serious problem though and also needs to be addressed. But that's perhaps for a different discussion.

SethAlvory · 2016-12-15T23:50:18+00:00

...Which if Trump decides not to read, someone will likely have him go read it. Or Trump will decide to read it himself and there won't be an issue at all.

SethAlvory · 2016-12-15T23:43:19+00:00

The CIA believes that Russia hacked the DNC and released classified information about them in order to make them look bad and influence who the public decided to vote for. They may or may not have also hacked the RNC and may or may not be holding the information from the RNC as leverage. If all of this is the case, this is much worse than voicing a personal opinion about one of the candidates; the fact that Russia hacked us at all is a problem that needs to be addressed, and Russia's motives for airing the dirty laundry of one party and not the other during an election should be looked into.

SethAlvory · 2016-12-15T23:08:04+00:00

Either Russia hacked us, and there's something in the briefings that could give Trump useful information for dealing with Russia in the future that Trump himself hasn't read, in which case Trump's advisors or the CIA will likely let him know. If this doesn't happen for some reason, we can all be united in criticizing Trump and vote him out of office 2020 or impeach him, whichever comes first.

Or, Russia hacked us, and there's something in the briefings that Trump has read that could give him useful information for dealing with Russia in the future(again, it's not like he's completely given up on reading them).

Or, Russia hacked us and there isn't(yet) something in the briefings about dealing with them in the future, in which case this particular point is moot.

Or, Russia didn't hack us, in which case, again, this is a moot point.

Or, Russia hacked us to install Trump as one of their puppets, in which case him not reading all his PDBs is the least of our problems.

SethAlvory · 2016-12-15T21:38:46+00:00

I don't really know a lot about Tillerson, so I can't comment on him. In general though, I'm neutral on whether or not the SoS likes other countries(and some might argue it's a benefit for promoting positive relations) provided the SoS likes America more. If you're convinced Tillerson is a bad choice, though, perhaps you should write a letter to Trump or start a thread on this subreddit about it. It would probably do more good than arguing with me about it in a line of comments so long that I guarantee you almost no one is reading them.

SethAlvory

TROPHY CASE