It's so interesting how when Trump won in 2016, elites insisted that he had subverted the election with Russian help, but when he lost in 2020, the electoral process had apparently been rectified and returned to its sacred form.
Evidence is abound that the 2020 elections was neither free nor fair. Joe Biden, didn't "earn" 81 million votes. There are far too many unexplained anomalies to dismiss out of hand that Biden was elected.
That and how the Republican poll watchers were harassed, bullied, not allowed to observe and even kicked out altogether. They even did it on camera knowing nothing would ever be done about it.
Of course, we all watched as six swing states allegedly stopped voting at night and then miraculously hundreds of thousands of votes for Biden in laughable percentages(90% of military for Biden🤣) were dumped from their warehouses. We live in a banana republic.
Trump won the electoral college in 2016 by getting a relatively tiny number more votes in a few states. The voting populace is essentially tied. In 2020, a pandemic year with the economy limping along, it swung ever so slightly the other way. That doesn't seem strange.
Combined this with the extensive examination of the evidence by multiple courts-the one in Pennsylvania is the best summary, because that's where Trump had the best case, and there's almost 200 pages going through it all. Occam's razor suggests the simpler explanation over the one that requires extensive cooperation and competence)
And Biden didn't "earn" votes. As with 2016, everyone was voting *against* the other side.
Just as Russians didn't turn 2016, fraud didn't turn 2020.
They have coined the neologism "fortified" for the suppression/slanting/censoring efforts they undertook in 2020.
To me, it just indicates a vile violation of the democratic process, a flex, a flaunting of power. And the mainstream media remains easily bought or intimidated or indoctrinated.
These folks* have all ready science fiction where a favored few own everything and live in absolute luxury while the mass of plebes are poor and desperate. It's a trope, a simple exaggeration of existing conditions, but it looks good to them, visualizing themselves in that top echelon.
*-"these folks" Ah shit, ya caught me. Of COURSE it means "you know, the kind of people I'm talking about". The people in the class of citizens that can generate election-influencing efforts from the social platforms.
PA is the obvious case. Philly didn't swing PA back blue, the Philly suburbs swung PA. For every voter Trump picked up in deep red counties, and flips among working class whites in rust belt counties around Pittsburgh, he lost suburban women and the college educated, many of who historically voted GOP.
College requires no intelligence to graduate. It requires free time and money. There ain't no college looking to embarrass a potential future donor by expelling them for "academic" reasons.
There are so many unexplained anomalies that none of them can be substantiated despite official audits, court cases, and contracted investigations. Its funny that the people so upset about the media repeatedly allegedly unprovable claims of Russian interference have no qualms about repeatedly alleging unprovable claims of election fraud.
Statistical evidence abounds. The "error" rate of absentee ballots decreased by a factor of 10x from one election to the next. Either Americans got much smarter and/or less lazy (which one look at the local gentry would tell you ain't so) or something fishy was going on.
Oh, sure, statistical evidence? Like four out of five dentists surveyed recommend sugarless gum for their patients who chew gum. What's your source? It's not the election commissions of the various states or counties. Its not something that was ever discovered in any post election recount or audit. It's not something that a single GOP AG or US Attorney could prove or establish. It's kind of like Russian collusion. If you repeat the story enough among people who really want to believe a certain conspiracy, then I guess its true.
Joe Biden is barely breathing. He wears AR contact lenses( the most horrific technology that contains a camera to provide a printed script, a mapping system and provides a virtual reality that enables Biden to appear functional. Ditto Biden’s “ signature” reflective sunglasses that he wears whether or not the normal conditions that sunglasses are designed for.
The guy is literally a bionic robot.Google”AR Contact lenses and images of Biden where his eyes appear large, black and eerily devoid of visible sclera. The wire spotted peeking out from Biden’s jacket during the speech actually activated the lenses. Everybody was focused on his ears, hoping to find wig transmitters. But they never looked at his eyes. The technology has not yet been made available… except to Biden and his Deep State handlers. That is how he was able to miraculously survive the debate. I have lost any faith in our government, fair elections or a decent media that provides honest journalism. We are no better than a third world nation ruled by despots. In fact, we’re worse.
Trump, expecting to lose in '16 was already talking election rigging. It was his built in excuse for losing. Who can really be surprised that he deployed it in '20 when he did lose?
Every election has fraud; it's the job of the candidate to win decisively enough to get past the margin of fraud. Anyway, Trump had no fear of being wrong, but it was very egregious in 2020 with all the unconstitutional changes to election practice in states by executive officials rather than the legislatures. All in the name of COVID.
Having a great deal of heartburn with the sudden private funding (with strings) of election offices (already funded by taxpayers) - I will note that many Democrats expected a Blue Wave. They didn't even get a ripple. They got Biden and that was it. Now, possibly this was Machiavellian brilliance, to not obviously tip their hand across the board, or that margin of fraud was well less than the margin of victory.
I've had this argument with too many Trump supporters - who will all argue that by conventional standards, Trump should've won the election. The problem with that argument is, Trump was never a conventional politician. Trump incited every bit as much opposition as he did enthusiasm.
Trump won in 2016 because he was the perfect foil for Hillary on both policy and personality. There could never be a more perfect opponent for Trump than Hillary, whose record is unmatched for parroting the received knowledge of the Beltway and whose personality exudes elitism and insincerity, even when she might be sincere.
His loss in 2020 was basically a reflection of his personality in that he is constitutionally incapable of self refection and criticism and lacks the simple maturity to admit he could just possibly be wrong about anything. Had he simply admitted he had taken covid not seriously enough and was now changing course to match his new understanding, he would have won. Donald being Donald, however, is incapable of seeing any issue other than on how it impacts himself.
His strength is his weakness, all of that depending on whether he is the challenger or the incumbent.
He's got a great chance in 2024 if he doesn't Super Size himself to death.
I'm no great political analyst, but I've been saying since 2016 that if the DNC hadn't gamed the nomination for Clinton, Sanders would have beaten Trump. We'll never know, of course, but it's fun to think about.
As Jimmy Dore says, and any independent thinking person would agree, they'd rather lose with a corporate Dem than win with a progressive. Coming in second in the two horse duopoly race still pays handsomely.
The whole purpose of the Dem party is to be the gatekeeper for what is permissible on the left.
I don't think Sanders would have beaten Trump in 2016. Sanders is literally a socialist and he would not have carried the metro suburbs in swing states.
Clinton lost because she could never change the narrative from her emails and is a horrifically bad politician. She has no personal charisma and is a terrible campaigner.
Sanders was my candidate of choice (i wrote him in, even) but i remain unconvinced that he would have beaten Trump. I think even more Democrats and Hillbots would have refused to vote for Sanders than Berners who refused to vote for Hillary. (Remember the PUMAs from '08? Multiply that number by a lot.)
No, we'll never know if he would have won. But we do know for sure that she lost.
I think Biden has been wrong about almost everything. The rest, the SCOTUS is barring him. Biden is being forced to essentially keep most of Trump's policies. SO! Trump obviously saw the issues in the CORRECT LIGHT.
Trump was nuked by all MSM including Associated Press, that went along with the biased and misinformation of the MSM media. I don't use them as a source anymore.
NYT is now allowing non subscribers get free access. Perhaps they need the readership to get ads.
The New York Times Spreads Misinformation About COVID-19
The New York Times has published a "fact check" by Linda Qui declaring that Donald Trump's lawyers "made a number of inaccurate or misleading claims" during the Senate impeachment trial. In reality, much of the article consists of flagrant falsehoods propagated by Qui and the Times.
Drop boxes, tons of mail-in ballots, both known sources of massive fraud, lots of ballots with only the top line filled out...the general unpopularity of Biden - if he was so popular, why was he almost out of the race in April until some smoke-filled room deal made him the anointed one?
Anyway there was a lot of fraud in 2020. Arguing that point is silly; of course there was.
So according to the numbers for PA - one of the key swing states - the Biden vote was not delivered in Philly and Pittsburgh (where Dem machines run things and obviously get away with a lot). He outperformed Hillary across the state, even in York County where I live and that is red as red gets.
That's too pat; Trump won the county with about 22k more votes than he got in 2016, and Biden got in the mid-20s more votes than Hillary.
That doesn't explain why a heavily minority place like Philadelphia generates 603000 or so votes for Biden when Obama managed 574800 in 2008, with a miniscule population gain between 08 and now. Makes no sense. Or Allegheny with a population drop of somewhere between 5 and 10 percent delivering 430k votes for Biden as opposed to 368400 for Obama. Makes no sense at all.
8 out of the 10 top voter turnout states were uncompetitive blue states. The other two were places with allegations of significant fraud that went blue. You see a similar trend at the bottom of the list, 7/10 Trump states. Anyway, the fraud was there, you choose not to see it.
"Drop boxes, tons of mail-in ballots, both known sources of massive fraud"
That's just silly, which you usually aren't. Oregon's been all-mail in, with heavy use of drop boxes, for 20 years, with no hint of fraud. Believe me, this state is hypersensitive about scandal. Washington and California have been using them almost as long.
Could there be problems from introducing them in a hurry, or in a generally corrupt state? Sure, but that applies to any system.
I agree that a fraud-free election is unlikely, but not a single court would buy the challenges Trump's campaign attempted, including Republican judges. Either it was no dirtier than usual, or the campaign's challenges were totally incompetent.
I don’t live in Oregon and frankly it’s one of only six states I haven’t visited.
I have lived in five states and they all had something in common, but let me refer to New Jersey since I lived there the longest and I know how it operates better than the others.
In Jersey, you register to vote through either the normal mechanism or the motor voter thing, which is very loosely coupled. In my experience, the motor voter thing will take care of registering you to vote but will not take care of removing you from the rolls in your old precinct/county.
When you go down to vote, your name is on a ledger page. You sign your name on this master ledger page, and (in the past) you’d go into a booth with those lever machines that punch holes in a huge punch card that is in a cartridge in the back of the machine. They probably have different machines now (I’m told so) but the general process is pretty much the same.
Now, I think this system descends from when everyone in a precinct didn’t change much and the assumption was that you would be recognized. This hasn’t been true for a long time.
I haven’t dug deeply into the GA or WV systems, which different in requiring id, but the MD system was not dissimilar to NJ, though my experience is that the MD motor voter implementation actually culled the roll in your old municipality. VA was completely different and there was no signed ledger. I flashed an ID and I got handed a ticket and brought it to another person who let me in a voting booth. Note VA required an ID, but let you sign an ID attestation at the precinct if you forgot your ID, which isn’t all that different than the ledger systems in NJ and MD.
In an in-person voting situation, the processes in all five states would have prevented double voting in the same precinct unless the workers all colluded, which is very unlikely. The absentee process of counting the absentee ballots after the election day and EV ballots tended to work, and the absentee system hadn’t been abused in the past. The numbers were small, insufficient to turn an election and the parties in most places seemed to take it as a mission to have pretty much the same number of absentee ballots in circulation.
I was never thrilled about the ledger system – for one thing, it hardly prevented someone from voting under another person’s name. But to take that system and apply it to mail-in ballots, there’s virtually no control. Add drop boxes to the mix and you’ve made it convenient to generate and deposit ballots without expending postage, having to make sure postmarks make sense or committing mail fraud.
I could think of PKI based solutions that might work for remote voting, but that would entail getting everyone a key. Absent that kind of security, everyone should have to show up at a polling place and flash id. It’s untrustworthy otherwise.
In short, you might be comfortable with that, but I’m assuredly not.
I seem to remember Jeff Merkley being pretty strong on this kind of thing back in the first decade of the century, along with the Paul family. They were all interested in EFF stuff and the like.
While I have no use for either party, they'll most likely take back Congress in the 2022 elections and if Trump doesn't die before then, he's got to be the favorite for 2024. Biden will be too old if still alive and Harris is despised everywhere, especially among progressives. She's basically Obama without the fake charm and intelligence.
It's all the same to me anyway; this is a failed empire, done in by the same hubris and overreach of all its predecessors.
Although I have no use for the "short fingered vulgarian"; he was the one who cut the deal on getting out of Afghanistan and who threw enough money at big pharma to get the vaccines in record time. Surely in a nation of 350 millions there's a competent person who could be president?
There are no doubt quite a number among 350 million competent enough to be president, and none of them will ever be let near either wing of the totalitarian duopoly's nomination process to even be heard of, much less voted for.
I am starting to believe that every four years we should just draw a name out of a very big hat that includes the names of all eligible Americans. The person who is selected would surely be as qualified as the current occupant and most definitely be less corrupt. Not to mention less arrogant and more willing to respect diverse opinion.
It is astounding to me that the man who is President, the other man who is demanding passage of a $trillion+ budget, and the woman who is telling me she knows I am all for it haven't really had anything other than a government job FOR DECADES! Have any of them ever had to figure out payroll taxes, worry about whether they can make enough to open the door on their business, had their kids washing dishes to make ends meet? Of course not.
He did a few more things too. Threw $1800 at the desperate when the $600 topoffs were cut off, and Nancy wouldn't pass a skinny deal with the Repubs. And whatever you think of the border situation, Biden had kids in cages (oops, pods) too, and Trump had nowhere near the mess Biden has now.
I was on a comment thread a few weeks ago in which a Trumper insisted that Democrats underestimate how many people love Trump. I countered that actually, the right vastly underestimates how many Democrats hate Trump's stinking fucking guts. So they turned out in record numbers to beat his ass, and that's exactly what happened.
As a third party lefty, it's obvious to me that both the (R) and (D) tribes are so insular and self affirming, that reality means little to them. Both these tribes' inability to see reality and to be intellectually honest on nearly everything, is scary to my mind.
How people can't see that voting for the candidate that they see as the lesser evil, especially as that lesser evil is clearly more evil with each succeeding election, is a losing proposition and is precisely why we're where we are, defies all logic.
Haven't these people noticed just how chummy the Obamas and Clintons are with the Bushes?
You're right. I've thought for a long time how the choir of each side exists in their own reality, equally certain that they're right. They've each swallowed the Kool Aid provided by the elites of their respective parties. I don't see much hope for change anytime soon.
We'd have been better off if Trump had won instead of Biden/Harris - two of the most inept politicians alive. I know, heads will explode at that thought, but just give it some time. When republicans control both houses and Trump is back in the WH in 2025, you can think back to this comment. Had Trump won in 2020, Dems would have had full control of congress after 2022 and the WH in 2025.
That's true about Biden/Harris and why I didn't vote for them. Biden doesn't know which way to put on his Depends. I don't know which way to put mine on, either, but I'm not the most powerful person in the known universe. Your scenario is pretty speculative but who knows. Interesting -and scary - times.
Not sure what the others meant by "conventional standards" but I am pretty sure if the massive amount of tampering with the election systems of multiple states had been averted and/or the standards, which were largely still in place, for rejecting ballots had been adhered to, yes, Trump would be POTUS.
About 44,000 votes spread through 3 states with notable election irregularities would have thrown the election to the then Republican House. Other states were less narrow but had similar issues with ballot security. I don't think Trump won in a landslide but the case for his winning a narrow electoral college victory is a very logical analysis.
He lost PA as narrowly as he had previously won it. That shouldn't be that hard to understand. Hillary ran a wretched campaign in '16 and all but threw the state away, so Trump's win - which was critical - was a fluke.
Yawn, none of the three states I refer to are PA, although PA's irregularities were also rampant. On the contrary, it is Biden's win that is the fluke. In the absence of the pandemic to create a cover for widespread distortion of the voting process, it is far more likely the swing states would have gone against Biden.
Fair enough. The Trumpers really need to admit (even if they still want to maintain suspicion of Dem election integrity) that Trump did it to himself. So many ways; simple common sense ways, he could have added 5 or more percentage points to his total and he just couldn't help himself.
You're just repeating a trite truism that dismisses corruption as normal and acceptable no matter how outrageous - while blaming the victim(s) to boot. No, we have not had a Russiagate every election. No, the press has not always been this useless and corrupt.
Oh yes the press has. You believed in a lie of a balanced press corps, but you weren't the only one. A lot of actual journalists did too. I don't think many do now.
Fraud is there every time, more or less. It's more now. And corruption IS normal. Maybe I just had an early awakening to this as I grew up around criminals and politicians (pretty much identical, that Venn diagram is pretty much a circle).
A lot of them didn't realize that their state had gone back to PRE COVID procedures like Checking Signatures of Voters and Witnesses and no more "Biased Ballot BOXES" being picked up by un named people and delivered without a date. The idiots thought COVID Free-For-All would last for ever.
Maybe so, but Trump's efforts to influence Pence's counting of electors was not so different from the ballot counting shenanigans. A different VP would have complied, and where would we be then?
You do realize that Trump was trolling the Democrats and they fell for it, hook line and sinker. Now they publish articles in their tame media talking about how difficult they made things for Trump by banning him from all social media, but for all intents and purposes they removed their foil, which is why Biden is sunk around 40% approval and Trump is actually more popular.
Seemed to me like they did him a favor. He can reach his peeps, but they can't.
He was also doing a bit of payback for the Russiagate thing, and that also worked. Really, they're trying to take the cake from the Republicans and become the stupid party, and making a very good case for it. I said from the beginning that they would have been wise to just ignore him and everything he says, but they just can't.
Nobody can. Nobody could. Soon, nobody will be talking about anything but. Uncle Donny is the relative you grudgingly are obliged to invite to Thanksgiving dinner, the guest no one sure as hell wants to sit next to, but for the following weeks, months, years he's the one everyone remembers. "Remember that Thanksgiving 20 years go when Uncle Donny...." Do you really think Trump in his current public role is ignorable? In our current media ecosystem? No.
There was no way Pence was going to comply with that, nor would any other VP, at least if they wanted a long lifespan. At that point, i'd fully expect someone to come out shooting. You can't gainsay the expressed will of the people without bloodshed. That said, there is some question whether this election result was the expressed will of the people.
Was that "built in excuse" or was it what he fully expected to happen?
If you listen to Democrat politicians speak, you have your evidence that they have little regard for truth.
Does that indicate in any way their willingness to "bend the rules" to win elections? We've already seen how they got ADMITTED support from legacy media and the tech platforms, worth BILLIONS of dollars of in-kind support, so, they weren't cheating based on what? Their definition of cheating??
"Curmudgeonly" doesn't HAVE to mean dumb or naive.
Yes... especially since the whole thing stunk to high heaven of rigging and of deceit. Offshore tallying, surprise absentee votes showing up later and later into the night. At least when Clinton lost it all made sense: her tiny crowds of fans to claiming to keep hot sauce in her fucking purse.
Seems the corpulent machine couldn't get off it's cancerous and seamy belly in time to mobilize against the Orange Man.
They blew him off until it was too late and their usual scummy behavior didn't work. They stepped it up a few notches since 2016. They went "Full Retard". Never go full retard.
Someone still has to explain to me how before the elections, Biden was supposed to win all bell weather counties and thus win the election and yet after the election, Trump won 19/20 bell weather counties and still lost?
Again. I can’t explain it to you because your 19/20 stuff is unsourced and gibberish. In PA, a swing state, he crushed Trump in the suburban counties around Philly. That’s where all the people live. The same was true in the metro areas in the various swing states. With AZ and GA, Biden won every swim state he was supposed to win, including the high population counties.
Trump in fact won every bellwether county except for 1 in 2020. That’s a clear as day fact. Anyway, the Democrats, including the Democratic-aligned media, spent 4 years investigating bogus Russia collusion allegations that turned out to be Clinton/DNC funded lies. Trump was under attack by political opponents using agencies of the FBI, DOJ to, what, take out the duly elected President. Who in the fuck would accept at face value that the 2020 election was the most secure election in history? Election rules were changed in the middle of a campaign, what fool believes changing rules in the middle of a contest is fair? Nobody who’s honest! The best part: If the 2020 election was totally on the up and up then why are the Democrats so desperate to stop audits and investigations. I don’t trust Democrats, the media, or you.
It was the "most secure election EVER", even though downtowns across America had boarded up in advance out of concern that the Left would riot if the votes had gone slightly differently.
What's more interesting is that the same people who believe that an investigation into possible Russian interference undermined Trump's entire term and administration; but repeatedly claiming election fraud with zero provable evidence is completely harmless to the current administration.
In 2016, Trump won in the normal way that presidents win elections in the US. In 2020, Biden won in the normal way the presidents win elections in the US. That's it, that's all there is. (in the normal way, since 1840!)
If you had gone cage match, he'd have just shouted you off of his stage and probably wouldn't have aired that segment.
Bill... if you're reading this, old buddy, then understand that when you once spoke to power against the Republican religious agenda and we all cheered, it doesn't mean we're going to cheer as you help even worse people keep their grip on power.
If you're really and truly delusional, I have sympathy for you.
If you're intentionally muddying the waters to perpetuate an obvious ploy at attacking civil process and conducting a terror war on home soil, I have the deepest loathing for you.
Matt, I really liked the analogy you made with those poor Japanese soldiers who held to the very last owing to their fanaticism and brainwashing. This conjured up and image in my mind of someone rowing ashore to some remote Pacific island and finding a babbling and paranoid Bill Maher running around wearing a loincloth and officer's sword, still believing the war is going on even though it's 20 years later.
Maher is earning his future place as "the Scorned", and with gusto.
Maher's ship sailed into DNC-CIA embrace looong ago, like Michael Isikoff's and zillion others -- DNC-CIA budget bags are bottomless and journalists can be purchased inexpensively.
Politician's too, the best investment you can make. A few thousand bringing millions in return and it's all perfectly legal, certified by the supreme court. You know, that giant legal fiction called "rule of law"! Almost everyone believes that scam, like law's were carved in stone by god herself instead of what is actually happening, lobbyists literally write the law's and the obsequious toads in government pass them. How anyone can believe such obvious codswallop boggles my mind.
2 DNC oligarchs (Biden, Pelosi, Schumer) are even WORSE (censorship, they concocted Russia-gate hoax, torture of Julian Assange, Daniel Hale’s persecution for Obama’s drone crimes, $16+B Haiti-corruption under Hillary/Obama – Biden-family corruption pales in comparison)
The ONLY solution – vote THIRD party – now and forever. ALWAYS vote – but VOTE for a Third (or fourth, fifth..) party – at ALL levels, especially at LOCAL levels (vote OUT each and every incumbent).
“If you always vote for the lesser of two evils, you will always have evil, and you will always have less.” [Ralph Nader].
Only ACTION: Sustained organized mass civil disobedience - not distractions like DNC-controlled hollering and tweeting....
I thought that you did the best you could in the limited amount of time you had to refute Maher’s allegation. Seriously, the woman from Reason monopolized the whole segment. You couldn’t have explained the entire situation in the limited time you had. It’s funny how the same people who call Trump an idiot, clown, knucklehead, still claim he was able to mastermind an entire Russian spy network. Laughable to the extreme.
Just for the record, Taibbi quite directly called Trump a clown, and manages not to make the claim about masterminding a Russian spy network. The man walks and chews gum at the same time, which we need way more of in journalism.
When politics is your religion and government is your God, anyone questioning the official narrative is branded an apostate. Welcome to the new Inquisition.
Bill Mayer didn't just pull a quote out of context, but lied about the source itself?
Surprise, surprise.
Why did you ever bother to go on his show, Matt? He is intellectually dishonest (to put it politely) and actually extremely rude and hostile to those with whom he disagrees. It's like the old joke about not wrestling with a pig - the pig likes it and you only end up all muddy.
Matt needs marketing the same as anyone else. Maher is going to track the mainstream so that he can get guests. It's all preordained and the main reason I don't watch TV.
He was one of the rapid ones castigating anyone who questioned the official BS 911 story. Tells you a lot. Maybe he's just stupid and was behind the door when brains were handed out. However if he is a will partisan shill then he deserves the deepest contempt.
Great work Matt. I don't blame you for tamping down the urge to correct Maher. I could see it in your eyes when he blathered out the nonsense. He is tip toeing around right now. Some of his recent monologues have been pretty good (refuting the wacko progressives), but he knows who butters his bread. As for the import of the article, well it appears we have fiction writers employed to "make" things up to support the storyline of the persons not interested in a functioning democracy. It was all dogshit!
Well the point is he came back with this very detailed response. You think he is going to get into a long format discussion on the Bill Maher show? 90% of the audience are full on tribal.
There are ways to challenge Maher and his position, which would expose what frauds both are. Matt is smart and experienced enough to know how to do it. 'Fumbling' is not the way to kill a lie.
There is a good chance Maher read this article. If you push these things live in front of Maher's audience ( his income ) he will recoil and dismiss it. Even though it is hard to believe, Maher is human.
Thanks for doing actual direct interviewing and reporting, Matt. Most journalists are just parroting whatever rolls off of the AP. The painful part is that the FBI and Congress do the same. Truth is hard to find these days. Thanks for a glimpse of it.
Actually, most “journalists” are just parroting whatever the CIA, FBI and “sources close to the investigation” tell them. Would that they would simply parrot the AP; we might get a half-way honest story then.
Matt, Thank you. Thank you for not accepting the horseshit that was stuffed down our throat for 5 years. When are all those assholes in the media going to surrender their pulitzers anyway?
Maher is just another overpaid establishment shill. There was no way he was going to allow you to destroy the Russiagate narrative. Evidence has no effect on true believers no matter the religion anyway. Yes, Bill, Russiagate is no different than any other religion. It requires blind faith in something never proven to exist.
Wow! Super-sensitive polling data. Hillary 45% versus Trump 40% (or vice-versa) in certain states. If that isn't collusion, if that isn't a threat to the republic, I don't know what is. Those Russkies! How will they threaten us next? :-)
Let's face it: Ike was right. Only Americans will defeat America. And there's plenty among us doing their best to live up to Ike's sentiment. And I'm not talking about January 6th.
Reminder, anyone who says the Russians swung the election with a $40K ad spend on Facebook . . . has a pretty piss-poor opinion of the American electorate.
I know he became a saint after he died, but John McCain.....his role in this. Keating Five always loomed to me as indicating there might be a history there.
The Keating Five absolved him of his saintly POW holiness for me. I don't belittle what he went through, or the losses he suffered but it doesn't make him a good person. Shitty people get beaten and tortured as POWs just the same as good ones.
Still... ripping everyone off in an obvious scam like that was enough for me to see how shitty a politician he was.
Agreed. Having done the time in the field, I have to tell everyone that there are great, fine, upstanding Americans in the service. And there are shitbags who steal shit from their fellow soldiers, fuck their wives, etc.
Don’t miss it. You’ll pee your pants laughing. Promise. I love the way Tim just keeps elevating and elevating his voice, rhetoric, and grossness as he parodies her.
It's so interesting how when Trump won in 2016, elites insisted that he had subverted the election with Russian help, but when he lost in 2020, the electoral process had apparently been rectified and returned to its sacred form.
Evidence is abound that the 2020 elections was neither free nor fair. Joe Biden, didn't "earn" 81 million votes. There are far too many unexplained anomalies to dismiss out of hand that Biden was elected.
For me the best evidence the 2020 election was fishy is the national media's relentless and strident insistence that it wasn't.
That and how the Republican poll watchers were harassed, bullied, not allowed to observe and even kicked out altogether. They even did it on camera knowing nothing would ever be done about it.
Of course, we all watched as six swing states allegedly stopped voting at night and then miraculously hundreds of thousands of votes for Biden in laughable percentages(90% of military for Biden🤣) were dumped from their warehouses. We live in a banana republic.
And the wholesale departure from existing election practices ---
Since when are mail-in ballots the most secure (rather than the most fraud-prone) method of voting?
Since when are ballot "drop boxes" scattered around city streets acceptably secure for elections of any type?
Since when is signature verification not required?
Since when are poll watchers excluded (as you mentioned) or corralled 10's to 100+ feet from the action?
In Philly, for example: https://www.inquirer.com/photo/convention-center-plays-host-phillys-ballot-counting-20201103.html
It's negative data, but yeah, convincing as hell.
Trump won the electoral college in 2016 by getting a relatively tiny number more votes in a few states. The voting populace is essentially tied. In 2020, a pandemic year with the economy limping along, it swung ever so slightly the other way. That doesn't seem strange.
Combined this with the extensive examination of the evidence by multiple courts-the one in Pennsylvania is the best summary, because that's where Trump had the best case, and there's almost 200 pages going through it all. Occam's razor suggests the simpler explanation over the one that requires extensive cooperation and competence)
And Biden didn't "earn" votes. As with 2016, everyone was voting *against* the other side.
Just as Russians didn't turn 2016, fraud didn't turn 2020.
Nope: Russians didn't turn 2016 or 2020. But Google, Facebook and Twitter rigged the election for Joe Biden in 2020.
They have coined the neologism "fortified" for the suppression/slanting/censoring efforts they undertook in 2020.
To me, it just indicates a vile violation of the democratic process, a flex, a flaunting of power. And the mainstream media remains easily bought or intimidated or indoctrinated.
These folks* have all ready science fiction where a favored few own everything and live in absolute luxury while the mass of plebes are poor and desperate. It's a trope, a simple exaggeration of existing conditions, but it looks good to them, visualizing themselves in that top echelon.
*-"these folks" Ah shit, ya caught me. Of COURSE it means "you know, the kind of people I'm talking about". The people in the class of citizens that can generate election-influencing efforts from the social platforms.
PA is the obvious case. Philly didn't swing PA back blue, the Philly suburbs swung PA. For every voter Trump picked up in deep red counties, and flips among working class whites in rust belt counties around Pittsburgh, he lost suburban women and the college educated, many of who historically voted GOP.
And we all know how our colleges are pumping out A+ students, while adjusting merit by lowering the bar.
Then what does that say for the people who don’t have the brains and ambition for even these marginal degrees.
College requires no intelligence to graduate. It requires free time and money. There ain't no college looking to embarrass a potential future donor by expelling them for "academic" reasons.
There are so many unexplained anomalies that none of them can be substantiated despite official audits, court cases, and contracted investigations. Its funny that the people so upset about the media repeatedly allegedly unprovable claims of Russian interference have no qualms about repeatedly alleging unprovable claims of election fraud.
Statistical evidence abounds. The "error" rate of absentee ballots decreased by a factor of 10x from one election to the next. Either Americans got much smarter and/or less lazy (which one look at the local gentry would tell you ain't so) or something fishy was going on.
Oh, sure, statistical evidence? Like four out of five dentists surveyed recommend sugarless gum for their patients who chew gum. What's your source? It's not the election commissions of the various states or counties. Its not something that was ever discovered in any post election recount or audit. It's not something that a single GOP AG or US Attorney could prove or establish. It's kind of like Russian collusion. If you repeat the story enough among people who really want to believe a certain conspiracy, then I guess its true.
Well, then where is it?!
Joe Biden is barely breathing. He wears AR contact lenses( the most horrific technology that contains a camera to provide a printed script, a mapping system and provides a virtual reality that enables Biden to appear functional. Ditto Biden’s “ signature” reflective sunglasses that he wears whether or not the normal conditions that sunglasses are designed for.
The guy is literally a bionic robot.Google”AR Contact lenses and images of Biden where his eyes appear large, black and eerily devoid of visible sclera. The wire spotted peeking out from Biden’s jacket during the speech actually activated the lenses. Everybody was focused on his ears, hoping to find wig transmitters. But they never looked at his eyes. The technology has not yet been made available… except to Biden and his Deep State handlers. That is how he was able to miraculously survive the debate. I have lost any faith in our government, fair elections or a decent media that provides honest journalism. We are no better than a third world nation ruled by despots. In fact, we’re worse.
This is satire, right? Please tell me that this is satire.
Trump, expecting to lose in '16 was already talking election rigging. It was his built in excuse for losing. Who can really be surprised that he deployed it in '20 when he did lose?
Every election has fraud; it's the job of the candidate to win decisively enough to get past the margin of fraud. Anyway, Trump had no fear of being wrong, but it was very egregious in 2020 with all the unconstitutional changes to election practice in states by executive officials rather than the legislatures. All in the name of COVID.
Having a great deal of heartburn with the sudden private funding (with strings) of election offices (already funded by taxpayers) - I will note that many Democrats expected a Blue Wave. They didn't even get a ripple. They got Biden and that was it. Now, possibly this was Machiavellian brilliance, to not obviously tip their hand across the board, or that margin of fraud was well less than the margin of victory.
I've had this argument with too many Trump supporters - who will all argue that by conventional standards, Trump should've won the election. The problem with that argument is, Trump was never a conventional politician. Trump incited every bit as much opposition as he did enthusiasm.
Correct.
Trump won in 2016 because he was the perfect foil for Hillary on both policy and personality. There could never be a more perfect opponent for Trump than Hillary, whose record is unmatched for parroting the received knowledge of the Beltway and whose personality exudes elitism and insincerity, even when she might be sincere.
His loss in 2020 was basically a reflection of his personality in that he is constitutionally incapable of self refection and criticism and lacks the simple maturity to admit he could just possibly be wrong about anything. Had he simply admitted he had taken covid not seriously enough and was now changing course to match his new understanding, he would have won. Donald being Donald, however, is incapable of seeing any issue other than on how it impacts himself.
His strength is his weakness, all of that depending on whether he is the challenger or the incumbent.
He's got a great chance in 2024 if he doesn't Super Size himself to death.
I'm no great political analyst, but I've been saying since 2016 that if the DNC hadn't gamed the nomination for Clinton, Sanders would have beaten Trump. We'll never know, of course, but it's fun to think about.
As Jimmy Dore says, and any independent thinking person would agree, they'd rather lose with a corporate Dem than win with a progressive. Coming in second in the two horse duopoly race still pays handsomely.
The whole purpose of the Dem party is to be the gatekeeper for what is permissible on the left.
And that would have been their worst nightmare. They much preferred a Trump WH to a Sanders WH. They got to keep their gravy train and hold on power.
I don't think Sanders would have beaten Trump in 2016. Sanders is literally a socialist and he would not have carried the metro suburbs in swing states.
Clinton lost because she could never change the narrative from her emails and is a horrifically bad politician. She has no personal charisma and is a terrible campaigner.
Sanders was my candidate of choice (i wrote him in, even) but i remain unconvinced that he would have beaten Trump. I think even more Democrats and Hillbots would have refused to vote for Sanders than Berners who refused to vote for Hillary. (Remember the PUMAs from '08? Multiply that number by a lot.)
No, we'll never know if he would have won. But we do know for sure that she lost.
I agree.
I think Biden has been wrong about almost everything. The rest, the SCOTUS is barring him. Biden is being forced to essentially keep most of Trump's policies. SO! Trump obviously saw the issues in the CORRECT LIGHT.
Trump was nuked by all MSM including Associated Press, that went along with the biased and misinformation of the MSM media. I don't use them as a source anymore.
NYT is now allowing non subscribers get free access. Perhaps they need the readership to get ads.
The New York Times Spreads Misinformation About COVID-19
https://www.allsides.com/news/2021-10-13-0825/new-york-times-spreads-misinformation-about-covid-19
https://www.toronto99.com/2021/10/08/superspreader-of-misinformation-new-york-times-corrects-story-that-exaggerated-child-covid-19-hospitalizations-by-over-90/
Analysis: The New York Times' Brazenly False 'Fact Check ...
Search domain tennesseestar.comhttps://tennesseestar.com › 2021 › 02 › 18 › analysis-the-new-york-times-brazenly-false-fact-check-about-trumps-impeachment-trial
The New York Times has published a "fact check" by Linda Qui declaring that Donald Trump's lawyers "made a number of inaccurate or misleading claims" during the Senate impeachment trial. In reality, much of the article consists of flagrant falsehoods propagated by Qui and the Times.
Drop boxes, tons of mail-in ballots, both known sources of massive fraud, lots of ballots with only the top line filled out...the general unpopularity of Biden - if he was so popular, why was he almost out of the race in April until some smoke-filled room deal made him the anointed one?
Anyway there was a lot of fraud in 2020. Arguing that point is silly; of course there was.
So according to the numbers for PA - one of the key swing states - the Biden vote was not delivered in Philly and Pittsburgh (where Dem machines run things and obviously get away with a lot). He outperformed Hillary across the state, even in York County where I live and that is red as red gets.
That's too pat; Trump won the county with about 22k more votes than he got in 2016, and Biden got in the mid-20s more votes than Hillary.
That doesn't explain why a heavily minority place like Philadelphia generates 603000 or so votes for Biden when Obama managed 574800 in 2008, with a miniscule population gain between 08 and now. Makes no sense. Or Allegheny with a population drop of somewhere between 5 and 10 percent delivering 430k votes for Biden as opposed to 368400 for Obama. Makes no sense at all.
8 out of the 10 top voter turnout states were uncompetitive blue states. The other two were places with allegations of significant fraud that went blue. You see a similar trend at the bottom of the list, 7/10 Trump states. Anyway, the fraud was there, you choose not to see it.
"Drop boxes, tons of mail-in ballots, both known sources of massive fraud"
That's just silly, which you usually aren't. Oregon's been all-mail in, with heavy use of drop boxes, for 20 years, with no hint of fraud. Believe me, this state is hypersensitive about scandal. Washington and California have been using them almost as long.
Could there be problems from introducing them in a hurry, or in a generally corrupt state? Sure, but that applies to any system.
I agree that a fraud-free election is unlikely, but not a single court would buy the challenges Trump's campaign attempted, including Republican judges. Either it was no dirtier than usual, or the campaign's challenges were totally incompetent.
I don’t live in Oregon and frankly it’s one of only six states I haven’t visited.
I have lived in five states and they all had something in common, but let me refer to New Jersey since I lived there the longest and I know how it operates better than the others.
In Jersey, you register to vote through either the normal mechanism or the motor voter thing, which is very loosely coupled. In my experience, the motor voter thing will take care of registering you to vote but will not take care of removing you from the rolls in your old precinct/county.
When you go down to vote, your name is on a ledger page. You sign your name on this master ledger page, and (in the past) you’d go into a booth with those lever machines that punch holes in a huge punch card that is in a cartridge in the back of the machine. They probably have different machines now (I’m told so) but the general process is pretty much the same.
Now, I think this system descends from when everyone in a precinct didn’t change much and the assumption was that you would be recognized. This hasn’t been true for a long time.
I haven’t dug deeply into the GA or WV systems, which different in requiring id, but the MD system was not dissimilar to NJ, though my experience is that the MD motor voter implementation actually culled the roll in your old municipality. VA was completely different and there was no signed ledger. I flashed an ID and I got handed a ticket and brought it to another person who let me in a voting booth. Note VA required an ID, but let you sign an ID attestation at the precinct if you forgot your ID, which isn’t all that different than the ledger systems in NJ and MD.
In an in-person voting situation, the processes in all five states would have prevented double voting in the same precinct unless the workers all colluded, which is very unlikely. The absentee process of counting the absentee ballots after the election day and EV ballots tended to work, and the absentee system hadn’t been abused in the past. The numbers were small, insufficient to turn an election and the parties in most places seemed to take it as a mission to have pretty much the same number of absentee ballots in circulation.
I was never thrilled about the ledger system – for one thing, it hardly prevented someone from voting under another person’s name. But to take that system and apply it to mail-in ballots, there’s virtually no control. Add drop boxes to the mix and you’ve made it convenient to generate and deposit ballots without expending postage, having to make sure postmarks make sense or committing mail fraud.
I could think of PKI based solutions that might work for remote voting, but that would entail getting everyone a key. Absent that kind of security, everyone should have to show up at a polling place and flash id. It’s untrustworthy otherwise.
In short, you might be comfortable with that, but I’m assuredly not.
I seem to remember Jeff Merkley being pretty strong on this kind of thing back in the first decade of the century, along with the Paul family. They were all interested in EFF stuff and the like.
Without the pandemic, Trump would still be President and the Senate would still be in GOP hands.
While I have no use for either party, they'll most likely take back Congress in the 2022 elections and if Trump doesn't die before then, he's got to be the favorite for 2024. Biden will be too old if still alive and Harris is despised everywhere, especially among progressives. She's basically Obama without the fake charm and intelligence.
It's all the same to me anyway; this is a failed empire, done in by the same hubris and overreach of all its predecessors.
Harris is basically Obomber "turns out, I'm really good at killing people" without the fake charm and intelligence. I love that, so spot on!
I'm pretty sure Harris will be President within 18 months.
The Senate would be in GOP hands if Trump hadn't pissed all over Georgia to spite the GOP.
Stacey Abrams pissed all over Georgia.
Doubt that. Just ask Stacy Abrams.
Although I have no use for the "short fingered vulgarian"; he was the one who cut the deal on getting out of Afghanistan and who threw enough money at big pharma to get the vaccines in record time. Surely in a nation of 350 millions there's a competent person who could be president?
There are no doubt quite a number among 350 million competent enough to be president, and none of them will ever be let near either wing of the totalitarian duopoly's nomination process to even be heard of, much less voted for.
I am starting to believe that every four years we should just draw a name out of a very big hat that includes the names of all eligible Americans. The person who is selected would surely be as qualified as the current occupant and most definitely be less corrupt. Not to mention less arrogant and more willing to respect diverse opinion.
It is astounding to me that the man who is President, the other man who is demanding passage of a $trillion+ budget, and the woman who is telling me she knows I am all for it haven't really had anything other than a government job FOR DECADES! Have any of them ever had to figure out payroll taxes, worry about whether they can make enough to open the door on their business, had their kids washing dishes to make ends meet? Of course not.
He did a few more things too. Threw $1800 at the desperate when the $600 topoffs were cut off, and Nancy wouldn't pass a skinny deal with the Repubs. And whatever you think of the border situation, Biden had kids in cages (oops, pods) too, and Trump had nowhere near the mess Biden has now.
I was on a comment thread a few weeks ago in which a Trumper insisted that Democrats underestimate how many people love Trump. I countered that actually, the right vastly underestimates how many Democrats hate Trump's stinking fucking guts. So they turned out in record numbers to beat his ass, and that's exactly what happened.
As a third party lefty, it's obvious to me that both the (R) and (D) tribes are so insular and self affirming, that reality means little to them. Both these tribes' inability to see reality and to be intellectually honest on nearly everything, is scary to my mind.
How people can't see that voting for the candidate that they see as the lesser evil, especially as that lesser evil is clearly more evil with each succeeding election, is a losing proposition and is precisely why we're where we are, defies all logic.
Haven't these people noticed just how chummy the Obamas and Clintons are with the Bushes?
You're right. I've thought for a long time how the choir of each side exists in their own reality, equally certain that they're right. They've each swallowed the Kool Aid provided by the elites of their respective parties. I don't see much hope for change anytime soon.
We'd have been better off if Trump had won instead of Biden/Harris - two of the most inept politicians alive. I know, heads will explode at that thought, but just give it some time. When republicans control both houses and Trump is back in the WH in 2025, you can think back to this comment. Had Trump won in 2020, Dems would have had full control of congress after 2022 and the WH in 2025.
That's true about Biden/Harris and why I didn't vote for them. Biden doesn't know which way to put on his Depends. I don't know which way to put mine on, either, but I'm not the most powerful person in the known universe. Your scenario is pretty speculative but who knows. Interesting -and scary - times.
Not sure what the others meant by "conventional standards" but I am pretty sure if the massive amount of tampering with the election systems of multiple states had been averted and/or the standards, which were largely still in place, for rejecting ballots had been adhered to, yes, Trump would be POTUS.
About 44,000 votes spread through 3 states with notable election irregularities would have thrown the election to the then Republican House. Other states were less narrow but had similar issues with ballot security. I don't think Trump won in a landslide but the case for his winning a narrow electoral college victory is a very logical analysis.
He lost PA as narrowly as he had previously won it. That shouldn't be that hard to understand. Hillary ran a wretched campaign in '16 and all but threw the state away, so Trump's win - which was critical - was a fluke.
Yawn, none of the three states I refer to are PA, although PA's irregularities were also rampant. On the contrary, it is Biden's win that is the fluke. In the absence of the pandemic to create a cover for widespread distortion of the voting process, it is far more likely the swing states would have gone against Biden.
Fair enough. The Trumpers really need to admit (even if they still want to maintain suspicion of Dem election integrity) that Trump did it to himself. So many ways; simple common sense ways, he could have added 5 or more percentage points to his total and he just couldn't help himself.
"it's the job of the candidate to win decisively enough to get past the margin of fraud."
Such a superficial and ignorant view that completely dismisses the differences between 2016 / 2020 and prior elections. Wake up, dude.
Tell me how it isn't true, please.
You're just repeating a trite truism that dismisses corruption as normal and acceptable no matter how outrageous - while blaming the victim(s) to boot. No, we have not had a Russiagate every election. No, the press has not always been this useless and corrupt.
Oh yes the press has. You believed in a lie of a balanced press corps, but you weren't the only one. A lot of actual journalists did too. I don't think many do now.
Fraud is there every time, more or less. It's more now. And corruption IS normal. Maybe I just had an early awakening to this as I grew up around criminals and politicians (pretty much identical, that Venn diagram is pretty much a circle).
A lot of them didn't realize that their state had gone back to PRE COVID procedures like Checking Signatures of Voters and Witnesses and no more "Biased Ballot BOXES" being picked up by un named people and delivered without a date. The idiots thought COVID Free-For-All would last for ever.
Maybe so, but Trump's efforts to influence Pence's counting of electors was not so different from the ballot counting shenanigans. A different VP would have complied, and where would we be then?
You do realize that Trump was trolling the Democrats and they fell for it, hook line and sinker. Now they publish articles in their tame media talking about how difficult they made things for Trump by banning him from all social media, but for all intents and purposes they removed their foil, which is why Biden is sunk around 40% approval and Trump is actually more popular.
Seemed to me like they did him a favor. He can reach his peeps, but they can't.
He was also doing a bit of payback for the Russiagate thing, and that also worked. Really, they're trying to take the cake from the Republicans and become the stupid party, and making a very good case for it. I said from the beginning that they would have been wise to just ignore him and everything he says, but they just can't.
Nobody can. Nobody could. Soon, nobody will be talking about anything but. Uncle Donny is the relative you grudgingly are obliged to invite to Thanksgiving dinner, the guest no one sure as hell wants to sit next to, but for the following weeks, months, years he's the one everyone remembers. "Remember that Thanksgiving 20 years go when Uncle Donny...." Do you really think Trump in his current public role is ignorable? In our current media ecosystem? No.
One would wish. It's the reaction to him that is the destructive part. But I agree, that kind of discipline doesn't exist.
The Washington Post would have a blank first page if Trump disappeared.
Humility is becoming more important than stupidity. One party is trying to boss everyone around, and one isn't.
Uh, which one is it you think that isn't interested in telling you how to live your life?
There was no way Pence was going to comply with that, nor would any other VP, at least if they wanted a long lifespan. At that point, i'd fully expect someone to come out shooting. You can't gainsay the expressed will of the people without bloodshed. That said, there is some question whether this election result was the expressed will of the people.
Was that "built in excuse" or was it what he fully expected to happen?
If you listen to Democrat politicians speak, you have your evidence that they have little regard for truth.
Does that indicate in any way their willingness to "bend the rules" to win elections? We've already seen how they got ADMITTED support from legacy media and the tech platforms, worth BILLIONS of dollars of in-kind support, so, they weren't cheating based on what? Their definition of cheating??
"Curmudgeonly" doesn't HAVE to mean dumb or naive.
You're right. Just something I thought was worth pointing out.
Oh election fraud is a perennial and convenient argument - all depending on who lost. Bush v. Gore ring any bells?
Yes... especially since the whole thing stunk to high heaven of rigging and of deceit. Offshore tallying, surprise absentee votes showing up later and later into the night. At least when Clinton lost it all made sense: her tiny crowds of fans to claiming to keep hot sauce in her fucking purse.
Seems the corpulent machine couldn't get off it's cancerous and seamy belly in time to mobilize against the Orange Man.
They blew him off until it was too late and their usual scummy behavior didn't work. They stepped it up a few notches since 2016. They went "Full Retard". Never go full retard.
Someone still has to explain to me how before the elections, Biden was supposed to win all bell weather counties and thus win the election and yet after the election, Trump won 19/20 bell weather counties and still lost?
Again. I can’t explain it to you because your 19/20 stuff is unsourced and gibberish. In PA, a swing state, he crushed Trump in the suburban counties around Philly. That’s where all the people live. The same was true in the metro areas in the various swing states. With AZ and GA, Biden won every swim state he was supposed to win, including the high population counties.
Trump in fact won every bellwether county except for 1 in 2020. That’s a clear as day fact. Anyway, the Democrats, including the Democratic-aligned media, spent 4 years investigating bogus Russia collusion allegations that turned out to be Clinton/DNC funded lies. Trump was under attack by political opponents using agencies of the FBI, DOJ to, what, take out the duly elected President. Who in the fuck would accept at face value that the 2020 election was the most secure election in history? Election rules were changed in the middle of a campaign, what fool believes changing rules in the middle of a contest is fair? Nobody who’s honest! The best part: If the 2020 election was totally on the up and up then why are the Democrats so desperate to stop audits and investigations. I don’t trust Democrats, the media, or you.
It was the "most secure election EVER", even though downtowns across America had boarded up in advance out of concern that the Left would riot if the votes had gone slightly differently.
What's more interesting is that the same people who believe that an investigation into possible Russian interference undermined Trump's entire term and administration; but repeatedly claiming election fraud with zero provable evidence is completely harmless to the current administration.
In 2016, Trump won in the normal way that presidents win elections in the US. In 2020, Biden won in the normal way the presidents win elections in the US. That's it, that's all there is. (in the normal way, since 1840!)
If you had gone cage match, he'd have just shouted you off of his stage and probably wouldn't have aired that segment.
Bill... if you're reading this, old buddy, then understand that when you once spoke to power against the Republican religious agenda and we all cheered, it doesn't mean we're going to cheer as you help even worse people keep their grip on power.
If you're really and truly delusional, I have sympathy for you.
If you're intentionally muddying the waters to perpetuate an obvious ploy at attacking civil process and conducting a terror war on home soil, I have the deepest loathing for you.
Matt, I really liked the analogy you made with those poor Japanese soldiers who held to the very last owing to their fanaticism and brainwashing. This conjured up and image in my mind of someone rowing ashore to some remote Pacific island and finding a babbling and paranoid Bill Maher running around wearing a loincloth and officer's sword, still believing the war is going on even though it's 20 years later.
Maher is earning his future place as "the Scorned", and with gusto.
Maher's ship sailed into DNC-CIA embrace looong ago, like Michael Isikoff's and zillion others -- DNC-CIA budget bags are bottomless and journalists can be purchased inexpensively.
Politician's too, the best investment you can make. A few thousand bringing millions in return and it's all perfectly legal, certified by the supreme court. You know, that giant legal fiction called "rule of law"! Almost everyone believes that scam, like law's were carved in stone by god herself instead of what is actually happening, lobbyists literally write the law's and the obsequious toads in government pass them. How anyone can believe such obvious codswallop boggles my mind.
1 Trump and GOP are truly HORRIBLE.
2 DNC oligarchs (Biden, Pelosi, Schumer) are even WORSE (censorship, they concocted Russia-gate hoax, torture of Julian Assange, Daniel Hale’s persecution for Obama’s drone crimes, $16+B Haiti-corruption under Hillary/Obama – Biden-family corruption pales in comparison)
The ONLY solution – vote THIRD party – now and forever. ALWAYS vote – but VOTE for a Third (or fourth, fifth..) party – at ALL levels, especially at LOCAL levels (vote OUT each and every incumbent).
“If you always vote for the lesser of two evils, you will always have evil, and you will always have less.” [Ralph Nader].
Only ACTION: Sustained organized mass civil disobedience - not distractions like DNC-controlled hollering and tweeting....
Spot on! Ralph Nader is an honorable and honest man who literally has saved millions of lives, just in auto's.
> If you had gone cage match, he'd have just shouted you off of his stage and probably wouldn't have aired that segment.
As I understand it, the show is live. Going full cage match is the only option. There are ways to shut the shouters up.
Right on!
I thought that you did the best you could in the limited amount of time you had to refute Maher’s allegation. Seriously, the woman from Reason monopolized the whole segment. You couldn’t have explained the entire situation in the limited time you had. It’s funny how the same people who call Trump an idiot, clown, knucklehead, still claim he was able to mastermind an entire Russian spy network. Laughable to the extreme.
Just for the record, Taibbi quite directly called Trump a clown, and manages not to make the claim about masterminding a Russian spy network. The man walks and chews gum at the same time, which we need way more of in journalism.
When politics is your religion and government is your God, anyone questioning the official narrative is branded an apostate. Welcome to the new Inquisition.
Great reporting as usual. Keep on keepin’ on.
Bill Mayer didn't just pull a quote out of context, but lied about the source itself?
Surprise, surprise.
Why did you ever bother to go on his show, Matt? He is intellectually dishonest (to put it politely) and actually extremely rude and hostile to those with whom he disagrees. It's like the old joke about not wrestling with a pig - the pig likes it and you only end up all muddy.
Matt needs marketing the same as anyone else. Maher is going to track the mainstream so that he can get guests. It's all preordained and the main reason I don't watch TV.
He was one of the rapid ones castigating anyone who questioned the official BS 911 story. Tells you a lot. Maybe he's just stupid and was behind the door when brains were handed out. However if he is a will partisan shill then he deserves the deepest contempt.
Maher is not stupid. Just bought.
I'm sure Matt went on for the exposure and audience. How could one not?
A valid reason. The performance didn't justify it, unfortunately.
Right on!
Great work Matt. I don't blame you for tamping down the urge to correct Maher. I could see it in your eyes when he blathered out the nonsense. He is tip toeing around right now. Some of his recent monologues have been pretty good (refuting the wacko progressives), but he knows who butters his bread. As for the import of the article, well it appears we have fiction writers employed to "make" things up to support the storyline of the persons not interested in a functioning democracy. It was all dogshit!
> I don't blame you for tamping down the urge to correct Maher
Then what's the fucking point? Weak sauce.
Well the point is he came back with this very detailed response. You think he is going to get into a long format discussion on the Bill Maher show? 90% of the audience are full on tribal.
There are ways to challenge Maher and his position, which would expose what frauds both are. Matt is smart and experienced enough to know how to do it. 'Fumbling' is not the way to kill a lie.
There is a good chance Maher read this article. If you push these things live in front of Maher's audience ( his income ) he will recoil and dismiss it. Even though it is hard to believe, Maher is human.
Well-stated
Thanks for doing actual direct interviewing and reporting, Matt. Most journalists are just parroting whatever rolls off of the AP. The painful part is that the FBI and Congress do the same. Truth is hard to find these days. Thanks for a glimpse of it.
Actually, most “journalists” are just parroting whatever the CIA, FBI and “sources close to the investigation” tell them. Would that they would simply parrot the AP; we might get a half-way honest story then.
Matt, Thank you. Thank you for not accepting the horseshit that was stuffed down our throat for 5 years. When are all those assholes in the media going to surrender their pulitzers anyway?
Maher is just another overpaid establishment shill. There was no way he was going to allow you to destroy the Russiagate narrative. Evidence has no effect on true believers no matter the religion anyway. Yes, Bill, Russiagate is no different than any other religion. It requires blind faith in something never proven to exist.
Wow! Super-sensitive polling data. Hillary 45% versus Trump 40% (or vice-versa) in certain states. If that isn't collusion, if that isn't a threat to the republic, I don't know what is. Those Russkies! How will they threaten us next? :-)
Let's face it: Ike was right. Only Americans will defeat America. And there's plenty among us doing their best to live up to Ike's sentiment. And I'm not talking about January 6th.
"Those Russkies! How will they threaten us next?"
Buy even more weird on-line advertising?
Reminder, anyone who says the Russians swung the election with a $40K ad spend on Facebook . . . has a pretty piss-poor opinion of the American electorate.
I know he became a saint after he died, but John McCain.....his role in this. Keating Five always loomed to me as indicating there might be a history there.
The Keating Five absolved him of his saintly POW holiness for me. I don't belittle what he went through, or the losses he suffered but it doesn't make him a good person. Shitty people get beaten and tortured as POWs just the same as good ones.
Still... ripping everyone off in an obvious scam like that was enough for me to see how shitty a politician he was.
His cheerleading for war was filthy as well.
Agreed. Having done the time in the field, I have to tell everyone that there are great, fine, upstanding Americans in the service. And there are shitbags who steal shit from their fellow soldiers, fuck their wives, etc.
Hero worship must be tempered.
McCain is a corrupt moron. Good riddance.
Not a fan. No one liked pointlessly getting US soldiers killed like John McCain.
And Tim Dillon’s Meghan McCain riff was PRICELESS. I still laugh out loud when I watch it. Hyena giggles, every time.
I’ll have to google it
Don’t miss it. You’ll pee your pants laughing. Promise. I love the way Tim just keeps elevating and elevating his voice, rhetoric, and grossness as he parodies her.