The Next President is...

[SurelySerious]

57 minutes ago, Homestar said:

Was there a conversation going on? Sorry, it sounded like a bunch of noise. 

About the same level we get from you anytime anyone mentions Donnie. You know you don’t have to complain about him constantly, right?

[Homestar]

25 minutes ago, SurelySerious said:

About the same level we get from you anytime anyone mentions Donnie. You know you don’t have to complain about him constantly, right?

Sorry. I seriously don’t even know why you’re so pissed about what I said. 

[Guardian]

I seriously don’t see how you could think he is pissed at what you said by reading it.

[Homestar]

16 minutes ago, Guardian said:

I seriously don’t see how you could think he is pissed at what you said by reading it.

Ok.

[SurelySerious]

32 minutes ago, Homestar said:

Ok.

You’re as bad as the crazy account guys with respect to having to get your say in. 

[17D_guy]

Well, Georgia just finished the hand recount...anyone care to guess what happened?

 

@Sim, @Seadogs I see Giuliani has upped the ante with "a national movement to defraud the election."  Still going with that?

 

[ViperMan]

4 hours ago, slackline said:

Appreciate the dialogue that doesn't contain childish insults or sources like Rudy Giuliani or OAN.  

We'll just agree to disagree about the magical panacea, mostly because I'm not sure what you're referring to, what your definition of leadership is, and many other things that might be covered by that blanket statement.  I'll try to define what my idea of leadership is for you, and then we can shift from their to get on target.  Contrary to many fighter pilots' beliefs, EQ is actually incredibly important, even in the vault or stepping, or in the middle of a long sortie in combat.  Someone on here recently dismissed it as if it weren't important because they "just want someone who will hack the mish," or something equally as shortsighted.  A leader in combat should definitely be proficient in their specific mission set, but if they don't know how to actually work with different personalities their tactical prowess will only last so long, and they're inviting problems down the road.  I'm not sure how everything isn't a leadership problem at some level... Sometimes leadership means you picking up the slack and doing it yourself, sometimes it means letting your people stumble through the mental gymnastics to figure it out on their own, and sometimes it means you find the right people for that specific problem, or simply giving your people the parameters in which they should work and being accountable to the consequences.  There's chasms of difference in how to do those things and everything in between.  But that's leadership.  

I never said MX officers should be running the AF.  Their flavor of leadership isn't a cure all for every problem, but unfortunately, until very recently, the AF did a piss poor job teaching their people anything real about actual leadership.  The only people who got that training were very senior, and even then, maybe they did some, maybe they didn't.  I'm sorry, but combat leading is just as niche as running a MX squadron, maybe even more so, and I can't force you to see that, so I guess we'll just agree to disagree there too.  Most of my time in the 60 is combat, so I don't disagree that it teaches you valuable lessons, but not every AF level leadership problem requires a split-second, life or death risk decision.  Most of it is actually very boring.  If you only know combat level, tactical leadership, you'll be ill prepared for dealing with other required types of leadership problems.  Again, nothing I say will apparently make you believe this, but that's your deal, and anyone you supervise will have to manage.  Not saying you're not a great leader, maybe you are, but I'd put solid money that if your attitude is that only combat, aircrew leadership is the way to run the AF, you have unhappy people in your organization.  

I know a lot of great leaders in the AF, but they don't rely on their experience in the cockpit for real leadership 90%+ of the time.  They have worked on making themselves better leaders to benefit the people they are serving.  They read up on how to be better, not just in the vault...

On the pick of Harris being a racist thing, "whatever Russ, whatever..."  That's a fairly cynical, myopic viewpoint.  I think she's a crappy politician, but that's my opinion.  Plenty of people don't.  See, Sim's post about 73 million people thinking DT knows how to lead a country...  We're all entitled to our opinion.  If you label them all as stupid, I can't help you.  Heaven knows there's plenty of people on the left labeling all Trump supporters as stupid.  That's doing wonders for our country...

No clue what you're talking about on CA, don't really care.  If everything in CA but the Redwoods and Yosemite fell into the Pacific Ocean tomorrow, I wouldn't mind.  CA is full of crazies, so of course they're going to do/say stupid things.  

I was mostly referring to the displacement of basic job competency and it's replacement with "leadership" that has occurred throughout all levels of our society - including the Air Force. Good leaders can be many different things - one thing they ALL must be is extremely competent in their basic job responsibilities. I think there are valid complaints throughout the AF that such a reversal of priorities has taken place. I fully support the notion that EQ and people matter and agree that there is a mindset of "hacking the mish is all that matters" is sometimes used to disparage all the "queep" that exists in the AF. Some of that is justified, but it is usually used to justify laziness or neglecting other important shit. That doesn't mean leadership is more important than basic job ability.

Cynical? Myopic? Ok. Sure. Do you have a counter argument? Or are Clark Griswold quotes valid for kills in this debrief now? My test for racism is swapping some of the variables and seeing what it looks like. Donald Trump saying he's only going to hire straight, white males is the same thing as Joe Biden saying he's going to only hire a woman of "color." One of those gets a pass (nay, applause) - one most certainly doesn't. Undergirding both of those different (but same) statements is the tacit argument that those immutable characteristics provide value in a place where the other person cannot. i.e. it values man over woman, or white over black, or woman over black, or black over white. No one I know is comfortable making that argument. If they're put to the task, some sort of hand-waving like "representation" comes out, but that just shifts the racism to who's being represented...we keep it treetop, but at the end of the day, it's racism. Frankly, none of this (IMO) should even require defense or justification - it should be common ground we all can agree on.

California is an example of a democrat monolith that is completely out of control and is trying to do absolutely ridiculous things. I don't live there, either. I just worry about what might come out of there. Wasn't asking you to care about CA, I brought it up to help you see "my" bigger picture and where I'm coming from re: the democrat establishment. To bring it back to the original point, again, I'm much more worried about an empowered democrat establishment that has the entire corporate media complex carrying water for them, as opposed to one singular personality, such as Trump or Obama.

[Prozac]

 

So I admittedly didn’t watch the whole press conference but HOLY SHIT, Rudy and the gang are claiming that Venezuela, with help from the Chinese and the Cubans, designed and built rigged American voting machines, and that the whole scheme was masterminded by none other than Hugo Chavez (who, last time I checked, was dead)! No shit, I’m not embellishing here, that’s actually a claim they’re making. It’s time for Republicans to distance themselves from this clown show. Sim, I know you’re about to tell us all about this is all true and how Chavez is still alive and has taken over Epstein’s island and is hosting the Clintons and Soros there as we speak. Cool. The scary thing is a good chunk of the country would believe all of this. If it weren’t for that fact, I’d find this fucking hilarious. 

[Darth]

36 minutes ago, Prozac said:

The scary thing is a good chuck of the country WILL believe all of this.

Fixed it for you....

[gearhog]

1 hour ago, Prozac said:

 

So I admittedly didn’t watch the whole press conference but HOLY SHIT, Rudy and the gang are claiming that Venezuela, with help from the Chinese and the Cubans, designed and built rigged American voting machines, and that the whole scheme was masterminded by none other than Hugo Chavez (who, last time I checked, was dead)! No shit, I’m not embellishing here, that’s actually a claim they’re making. It’s time for Republicans to distance themselves from this clown show. Sim, I know you’re about to tell us all about this is all true and how Chavez is still alive and has taken over Epstein’s island and is hosting the Clintons and Soros there as we speak. Cool. The scary thing is a good chunk of the country would believe all of this. If it weren’t for that fact, I’d find this fucking hilarious. 

What’s the greater threat to our freedoms and democracy: believing our election process isn’t flawed or believing that it is flawed?

[Prozac]

31 minutes ago, torqued said:

What’s the greater threat to our freedoms and democracy: believing our election process isn’t flawed or believing that it is flawed?

The threat is believing it is flawed when it actually isn’t. At least not enough to affect an election. 
 

Imagine a situation in which your Wing Commander calls out your life support shop for improperly packing chutes. Now, let’s say they’ve passed every inspection, the MSG Commander was personally hired by the WG/CC, and despite the fact that they are human and occasionally make mistakes, there is no reason to believe they aren’t doing their jobs to the best of their abilities or aren’t meeting established standards. Yet the WG/CC still believes there is a problem. Is he within his rights to order additional inspections? Sure. Let’s say he does that and they still find the life support shop meets standards. Would it be good for the organization if the CC then publicly lambasted the entire process? Would it be appropriate for him to fire the MSG/CC without cause or to call individuals within the life support shop to demand evidence of wrongdoing? How about incessantly posting about the whole situation on Twitter or sending several base-wide emails a day complaining about how he hasn’t been treated well by the organization he’s supposed to be running? That there’s some deep seeded conspiracy amongst CGOs that’s hamstrung him since he showed up? Do you think his actions might have a negative effect on the Wing’s mission? Do you think he might be poisoning the trust of his airmen for years to come? That’s exactly what Trump is doing on a nationwide scale. Maybe things have changed, but the people I worked with in the Air Force would have never accepted this kind of “leadership”. 

[ViperMan]

53 minutes ago, torqued said:

What’s the greater threat to our freedoms and democracy: believing our election process isn’t flawed or believing that it is flawed?

False choice. The threat is anytime your perception doesn't match or correspond with reality.

[Pooter]

6 hours ago, Seadogs said:

This comment section is on par with r/politics on Reddit. Good job guys 👍

As long as you're upset about it, I can rest assured we're making some amount of sense. 

Edited November 20, 2020 by Pooter

[Pooter]

These Rudy press conferences just keep getting better. First four seasons total landscaping and now he's got an oil slick running down the side of his face. This stuff is high comedy and that's before we even get to what he said in the press conference.  Today the legal team was supposed to "release the kraken" in terms of fraud evidence.  
 

Turns out "the kraken" is just Rudy waving more random affidavits around and telling us he can't show them to us... because people might get doxxed. I wonder if the trump legal team has ever heard of redacting names from a document.  Maybe that wasn't a known technique the last time Rudy was in a courtroom three decades ago.

 

It's amazing to see how many people are still clinging to this sinking ship, but I guess that's the magic of internet anonymity. It lets you have all the fun of contrarianism without any of the embarrassment of being personally associated with this absolute clown show. 

[gearhog]

6 hours ago, Prozac said:

The threat is believing it is flawed when it actually isn’t. At least not enough to affect an election. 
 

Imagine a situation in which your Wing Commander calls out your life support shop for improperly packing chutes. Now, let’s say they’ve passed every inspection, the MSG Commander was personally hired by the WG/CC, and despite the fact that they are human and occasionally make mistakes, there is no reason to believe they aren’t doing their jobs to the best of their abilities or aren’t meeting established standards. Yet the WG/CC still believes there is a problem. Is he within his rights to order additional inspections? Sure. Let’s say he does that and they still find the life support shop meets standards. Would it be good for the organization if the CC then publicly lambasted the entire process? Would it be appropriate for him to fire the MSG/CC without cause or to call individuals within the life support shop to demand evidence of wrongdoing? How about incessantly posting about the whole situation on Twitter or sending several base-wide emails a day complaining about how he hasn’t been treated well by the organization he’s supposed to be running? That there’s some deep seeded conspiracy amongst CGOs that’s hamstrung him since he showed up? Do you think his actions might have a negative effect on the Wing’s mission? Do you think he might be poisoning the trust of his airmen for years to come? That’s exactly what Trump is doing on a nationwide scale. Maybe things have changed, but the people I worked with in the Air Force would have never accepted this kind of “leadership”. 

Not a very good analogy, brother. The chutes are manufactured and packed by a foreign third party contractor off base. Your own inspectors found flaws.

CBS:

Quote

 

"FBI has found hackers accessed two states' election databases. By Rebecca Shabad. Updated on: August 29, 2016 / 11:47 AM / CBS News

The FBI has found that hackers accessed Arizona’s and Illinois’s state election databases, CBS News has confirmed.

The bureau issued an alert to state election officials of the attempted hacks, which was sent earlier this month and it referenced two attacks in two states that are under investigation. At least one site was compromised, CBS News confirmed.

The two states that were targeted were Arizona and Illinois, and while the FBI released a statement, it didn’t offer any details.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/fbi-foreign-hackers-accessed-state-election-systems/

 

CNN:

Quote

It's no secret, given the hacks that have plagued the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign. But security researchers warn that it's just the beginning.

"There's not even a doubt in my mind that there are other actors out there that have yet to be found," Crowdstrike CEO George Kurtz told CNNMoney. "I'm sure there will be other hacks that come out over the course of this election and certainly beyond that."

Kurtz, whose firm was brought in by the DNC to investigate the hack, called the hack a watershed moment.

He said Crowdstrike has been fielding calls from Washington as political parties wrap their heads around a new type of threat: Hackers trying to manipulate the U.S. election.

Far from Washington, hackers descended on Las Vegas to show off their party tricks at Black Hat, the annual conference that puts security on the frontlines. They hacked cars, ATMs and mobile devices. This year, there was a new addition: a simulated version of a hackable electronic voting machine, assembled by security firm Symantec.

https://money.cnn.com/2016/08/09/technology/voting-machine-hack-election/

The New York Times:

 

[slackline]

The New York Times:
 

So, you’re sayihg they found these issues 4 years ago, but sat by and did nothing in the interim? Sure. Where’s the proof of this statement? Otherwise you’re using 4 year old information that is irrelevant.

And, we don’t manufacture our own parachutes...


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[gearhog]

45 minutes ago, slackline said:

So, you’re sayihg they found these issues 4 years ago, but sat by and did nothing in the interim? Sure. Where’s the proof of this statement? Otherwise you’re using 4 year old information that is irrelevant.

And, we don’t manufacture our own parachutes...


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Yes. That's what I am saying. Would you like to dispute it with something other than "Surely not!"?

 

NOVEMBER 3rd, 2019:

 

 

Edited November 20, 2020 by torqued

[gearhog]

13 minutes ago, slackline said:

So, you’re sayihg they found these issues 4 years ago, but sat by and did nothing in the interim? Sure. Where’s the proof of this statement? Otherwise you’re using 4 year old information that is irrelevant.

And, we don’t manufacture our own parachutes...


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What is your personal statute of limitations for the relevance/recency of evidence? Perhaps I can find some within it.

New York Times, again. Think they replaced all the voting machines in the last year? It's up to you to prove that they did. The burden of proof lies with the claimant.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/30/us/politics/pennsylvania-voting-machines.html

Quote

 

A Pennsylvania County’s Election Day Nightmare Underscores Voting Machine Concerns

How “everything went wrong” in Northampton County.

• Nov. 30, 2019
•  

EASTON, Pa. — It was a few minutes after the polls closed here on Election Day when panic began to spread through the county election offices.

Vote totals in a Northampton County judge’s race showed one candidate, Abe Kassis, a Democrat, had just 164 votes out of 55,000 ballots across more than 100 precincts. Some machines reported zero votes for him. In a county with the ability to vote for a straight-party ticket, one candidate’s zero votes was a near statistical impossibility. Something had gone quite wrong.

Lee Snover, the chairwoman of the county Republicans, said her anxiety began to pick up at 9:30 p.m. on Nov. 5. She had trouble getting someone from the election office on the phone. When she eventually got through, she said: “I’m coming down there and you better let me in.”

With clearly faulty results in at least the judge’s election, officials began counting the paper backup ballots generated by the same machines. The paper ballots showed Mr. Kassis winning narrowly, 26,142 to 25,137, over his opponent, the Republican Victor Scomillio.

 

“People were questioning, and even I questioned, that if some of the numbers are wrong, how do we know that there aren’t mistakes with anything else?” said Matthew Munsey, the chairman of the Northampton County Democrats, who, along with Ms. Snover, was among the observers as county officials worked through the night to feed the paper ballots by hand through scanning machines.

The snafu in Northampton County did not just expose flaws in both the election machine testing and procurement process. It also highlighted the fears, frustrations and mistrust over election security that many voters are feeling ahead of the 2020 presidential contest, given how faith in American elections has never been more fragile. The problematic machines were also used in Philadelphia and its surrounding suburbs — areas of Pennsylvania that could prove decisive next year in one of the most critical presidential swing states in the country.

 

 

Edited November 20, 2020 by torqued

[gearhog]

9 hours ago, Prozac said:

 

So I admittedly didn’t watch the whole press conference but HOLY SHIT, Rudy and the gang are claiming that Venezuela, with help from the Chinese and the Cubans, designed and built rigged American voting machines, and that the whole scheme was masterminded by none other than Hugo Chavez (who, last time I checked, was dead)! No shit, I’m not embellishing here, that’s actually a claim they’re making. It’s time for Republicans to distance themselves from this clown show. Sim, I know you’re about to tell us all about this is all true and how Chavez is still alive and has taken over Epstein’s island and is hosting the Clintons and Soros there as we speak. Cool. The scary thing is a good chunk of the country would believe all of this. If it weren’t for that fact, I’d find this fucking hilarious. 

Just watched the press conference.

What exactly are you disputing? That Smartmatic has connections to US voting machines?

https://medium.com/@jennycohn1/updated-attachment-states-have-bought-voting-machines-from-vendors-controlled-and-funded-by-nation-6597e4dd3e70

Or that Smartmatic was originally developed in Venezuela for the purpose of rigging elections?

Quote

B. 04 CARACAS 3291 C. 05 CARACAS 3076 D. 05 CARACAS 3783 CARACAS 00002063 001.2 OF 004

------- Summary -------

1. (C) The Venezuelan-owned Smartmatic Corporation is a riddle both in ownership and operation, complicated by the fact that its machines have overseen several landslide (and contested) victories by President Hugo Chavez and his supporters. The electronic voting company went from a small technology startup to a market player in just a few years, catapulted by its participation in the August 2004 recall referendum. Smartmatic has claimed to be of U.S. origin, but its true owners -- probably elite Venezuelans of several political strains -- remain hidden behind a web of holding companies in the Netherlands and Barbados. The Smartmatic machines used in Venezuela are widely suspected of, though never proven conclusively to be, susceptible to fraud. The company is thought to be backing out of Venezuelan electoral events, focusing now on other parts of world, including the United States via its subsidiary, Sequoia. End Summary.

-------------------- Who Owns Smartmatic? -------------------- 2. (C) Smartmatic was founded in the late 90s by three Venezuelans, Antonio Mugica, Alberto Anzola, and Roger Pinate. According to Mugica's conversations with poloffs in recent years, the three had developed a network capable of handling thousands of simultaneous inputs. An early application was ATMs in Mexico, but the U.S. presidential election in 2000 led the group to consider electronic voting platforms. The company formed the SBC consortium with Venezuelan telecom provider CANTV (at the time 28-percent owned by Verizon) and a software company called Bizta. Mugica said Smartmatic held 51-percent of the consortium, CANTV had 47 percent, and Bizta, 2 percent (ref a). The latter, also owned by the Smartmatic owners, was denounced in June 2004 by the press for having received a US$200,000 equity investment from a Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela (BRV) joint venture fund called FONCREI; a Chavez campaign adviser was placed on the board as well. Bizta reimbursed what it called the "loan" when it was made public and shed the Chavista board member.

 

[gearhog]

7 hours ago, ViperMan said:

False choice. The threat is anytime your perception doesn't match or correspond with reality.

False claim. You didn't inform me as to what the reality is in this case, and should you want to, you would only able to relay what your perception of it is.

[slackline]

Yes. That's what I am saying. Would you like to dispute it with something other than "Surely not!"?
 

You’re absolutely right. John Oliver is a very humorous entertainer. Thanks for the share.

I think we should absolutely listen to him vs a credible expert in the cybersecurity field: https://www.cisa.gov/news/2020/11/12/joint-statement-elections-infrastructure-government-coordinating-council-election

I beg to differ on burden of proof. I am on the side of the elections being within the bounds of normal error, acceptable inconsistencies that would not turn the outcome of the election. You are claiming it was fraud and citing (maybe not recently) things like epochtimes, gatewaypundit, Rudy Giuliani, and yes, the most truthful man of them all, the President. Let’s not forget John Oliver, a paid entertainer that I agree is absolutely worth a watch, but doesn’t quite meet the level of professional journalism. Jimmy Fallon and Trevor Noah are also hilarious, but you won’t find me using them to back my point other than tongue in cheek. Let’s just go ahead and cite Tucker Carlson while we’re at it. Oh by the way, he’s on the record in a court of law saying his viewers should not see him as a source of truth and facts...


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[Prozac]

53 minutes ago, torqued said:

Just watched the press conference.

What exactly are you disputing? That Smartmatic has connections to US voting machines?

https://medium.com/@jennycohn1/updated-attachment-states-have-bought-voting-machines-from-vendors-controlled-and-funded-by-nation-6597e4dd3e70

Or that Smartmatic was originally developed in Venezuela for the purpose of rigging elections?

 

Yes. 
https://apnews.com/article/fact-checking-afs:Content:9740535009

CLAIM: Dominion Voting Systems, one of the most widely used election technology firms in the United States, is owned by the company Smartmatic through an intermediary company called Indra. 

AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. Both Dominion and Smartmatic have released statements saying no ownership relationship exists between the two competing firms. Indra Sistemas, a Spanish company, told The Associated Press in an email it has never developed any project or had a commercial, contractual or corporate relationship with either firm.

And yes, I chose to trust AP over the “community journalism” of Medium. 

[Kiloalpha]

The trenches dug on both sides of this election fraud thing are kind of hilarious.

Both have valid points. The right is wise to be suspicious when the left has labeled the President as Hitler during/after this election. Wouldn’t you commit fraud to prevent Hitler from winning in an election?

The left is wise to call BS on the President’s claims when he’s lied about so many other things in the past. If a girl kept lying to you about random shit, do you trust her latest excuse? Of course not.

The burden is on the President’s team to show wrongdoing. This conjecture of “Venezuelan companies changing votes” makes for an interesting backdrop, but doesn’t show me actual fraud or a reason to not assume Biden won.

I want facts. Numbers. Dates. Names.

That might be impossible to provide, and yet fraud was actually committed. In that case, you eat this loss and get these state legislatures to fix their damn voting laws. You don’t go try to have states invalidate votes and appoint electors on their own, or whatever crackpot theory I’ve seen floating around the Internet.

If the “Kraken” doesn’t materialize, but Trump kept telling everyone that it was there ... what a sad end to a fairly successful presidency policy wise.

[dream big]

On 11/18/2020 at 9:24 PM, Sua Sponte said:

He was a U.S. Senator, which last time I checked, is sorta a big deal. 

What were some of his notable legislative achievements in either Illinois or US senate..??

[Prozac]

1 hour ago, torqued said:

Just watched the press conference.

What exactly are you disputing? That Smartmatic has connections to US voting machines?

https://medium.com/@jennycohn1/updated-attachment-states-have-bought-voting-machines-from-vendors-controlled-and-funded-by-nation-6597e4dd3e70

Or that Smartmatic was originally developed in Venezuela for the purpose of rigging elections?

 

Oh btw, the article you posted was written in January of 2018 and Medium is leading off today with the headline: I Refused to Accept My Child’s Apology, and It Made Everyone Happier.  In fact, I don’t see a single article regarding this year’s election on their website. It appears that the amateur journalism website has wisely chosen to stay out of politics. I wonder if they would stand by the nearly three year old article you are using to make your case?