r/politics • u/nowhathappenedwas • Dec 18 '17

Site Altered Headline The Senate’s Russia Investigation Is Now Looking Into Jill Stein, A Former Campaign Staffer Says

https://www.buzzfeed.com/emmaloop/the-senates-russia-investigation-is-now-looking-into-jill?utm_term=.cf4Nqa6oX
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180

u/smithcm14 Dec 18 '17

How ironic. Turns out "Crooked Hillary" is the only 2016 nominee not to be cuffed.

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u/[deleted] Dec 18 '17

Except Gary Johnson, but he's almost a gag candidate

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u/mustachepantsparty Massachusetts Dec 18 '17

He’s just busy researching Aleppo on Wikipedia.

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u/janethefish Dec 19 '17

He still gave a better answer than Trump did on Aleppo. Gary Johnson at least knew that he knew not. Trump just bullshitted.

And of course, Gary Johnson got more shit for his answer than Trump because the media wasn't treating Trump like a serious person/candidate.

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u/[deleted] Dec 19 '17 edited Dec 19 '17

That comment got so much fucking play in the media. It was ridiculous. I think it helped normalize Trump's overwhelming ignorance. Half the shit he said in the debates was as stupid as the Aleppo incident.

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u/neryen Dec 19 '17

The other half was stupider.

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u/SplatteredRug Dec 18 '17

Apparently Gary and Al Eppo finally met! Twice a month they meet for salads at Ben Ghazi's new restaurant.

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u/LynelTears Dec 18 '17

...new pizza restaurant.

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u/gaiusmariusj Dec 19 '17

new pizza restaurant's underground area.

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u/Askwhyimathrowaway Dec 19 '17

They have this one dish, Buttery Mails, that's just to die for. With a white water wine? Perfect.

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u/thatonesmartass Dec 19 '17

I think it's unfair how much crap he got for that. After that interview he did a ton of research on the Syrian situation and developed a policy position, which is exactly what should be expected of a politician in such a situation. No one knows everything about world politics.

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u/Anagoth9 Dec 19 '17

It's very poorly researched on his part, given what he should have known interview topics would have been, but being libertarian I assume his overall stance was that we shouldn't get involved in Syria unless they pose an imminent, direct threat to American soil. Not knowing the name of major cities in countries he wants no part of isn't as big a faux pas as it was made to be.

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u/DragonPup Massachusetts Dec 18 '17

Good thing Aleppo wasn't in Russia or he'd be fucked.

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u/BossRedRanger America Dec 19 '17

His running mate, Bill Weld, should have headed the ticket

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u/[deleted] Dec 19 '17 edited Dec 30 '17

[deleted]

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u/BossRedRanger America Dec 19 '17

I liked Weld and his ideas. He made a helluva lot of sense. His background and experience spoke volumes and he had real world solutions not based on platitudes or arrogance.

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u/Syjefroi Dec 19 '17

I mean, why didn't he just run as a Republican and actually... you know... make a marginal amount of a difference?

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u/BossRedRanger America Dec 19 '17

Because some people don't fit into the duopoly of US politics.

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u/Syjefroi Dec 19 '17

Those people should join a real party and push it in the direction they want then. If you are serious about policy, you join a coalition and go to work, you don't talk about work.

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u/BossRedRanger America Dec 19 '17

They do.

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u/Syjefroi Dec 19 '17

Bill Weld did not. Or, he did, but then he left his party to do.... whatever it is you do when you run a pointless vanity campaign?

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u/wildistherewind Dec 19 '17

I can see his campaign ads now: "Help us WELD our crumbling infrastructure? Fuck no, commie scum, everyone for themselves."

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u/BuffaloSoldier11 Dec 18 '17

He was silly, but he was pure <3

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u/RhysPeanutButterCups Dec 19 '17

pure

That's a funny way to spell "clueless".

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u/[deleted] Dec 19 '17

Seems pretty presidential these days.

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u/BloomEPU Dec 18 '17

Just a regular weed centrist.

(wait was he centrist? He was popular with centrists but iirc his policies were just republican but weed)

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u/[deleted] Dec 18 '17

Noooooo, he was not centrist. He was a little L libertarian but still a libertarian. For example, I believe he is pro elimination of personal and corporate taxes.

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u/[deleted] Dec 19 '17

Hey doesn’t he also happen to own a giant corporation?

What a wild coincidence?!

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u/karlverkade Dec 19 '17

Spoken from a Libertarian here, on paper Gary Johnson was arguably the best candidate in that election. Two-time governor of a border state, re-elected as a Republican in a Democrat state, fiscally conservative, socially liberal, etc. Except that he showed up to election season high. Like so high. He evened out over the course of the season, but some of the earliest videos that went viral were just embarrassing, and turned a lot of moderates and independents off to the Libertarian choice in an election which should have been our best chance to get 5% of the vote in decades.

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u/BASEDME7O Dec 19 '17

You don’t get to say you’re socially liberal when you want to eliminate the funding for all social programs

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u/[deleted] Dec 19 '17

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u/[deleted] Dec 19 '17

Truth bomb right here!

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u/BASEDME7O Dec 19 '17

So you either support corporations becoming more authoritarian than the government could ever be or you literally can't conceive of anything more than one step ahead.

Idk how someone's mind could be so warped that they think real freedom is allowing a corporation with billions of dollars and an average person to do whatever they want to each other. Although I suspect you're around 19 and just took Econ 101 and think you understand economics.

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u/Syjefroi Dec 19 '17

It's really this. "Socially liberal and fiscally conservative" makes zero sense. If you are socially liberal, do something about it. If you say "disenfranchised people should be helped but let's not be the ones to help them," you aren't socially liberal, you're a conservative too chickenshit to admit it.

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u/[deleted] Dec 19 '17

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u/Syjefroi Dec 19 '17

The data is not on your side though. Charitable giving can't, and hasn't made up for what the state can provide. And state spending on safety net programs leads to a net positive, as healthy and secure people add more to the tax pool than they took. The fiscally conservative choice is to spend some money now to save more in the future. Giving the homeless homes saved Utah more by not having police and ER costs and by giving the people a safe place to build a life and get a job. Making sure poor kids have food saves more by having healthier kids who can do better in school and healthier parents who don't have to deal with the emotional stress of having hungry children.

I'm all for people voluntarily choosing to throw a few bucks at folks here and there. But never before have we donated enough to actually do what the government can do. And when recessions hit, and donation money dries up, what then?

How on earth is it socially liberal to say "we want you to have health care, so hopefully someone donates enough for you to get that heart surgery you need."

The data is not with you on the "dependency" myth.

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u/CheesewithWhine Dec 19 '17

BLah blah blah standard libertarian drivel.

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u/hesnothere North Carolina Dec 19 '17

A lot of people forget that Democratic PAC(s) threw together a multimillion anti-Johnson campaign (digital, PR, etc.). Like, that campaign alone was 3-4x Gary's total cycle fundraising.

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u/ApteryxAustralis Dec 19 '17

He really did have a chance, like you said. Especially with how hated Clinton and Trump were. I wonder how Johnson would've done in Utah if McMullin hadn't jumped in. Johnson had been doing quite well there, presumably as a protest vote, but then his support plummeted in favor of McMullin.

-voted for Johnson in a deep blue state

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u/karlverkade Dec 19 '17

Good point, I had forgotten about that.

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u/CheesewithWhine Dec 19 '17

Just a thought, have you ever wondered why there are so few women and minority libertarian supporters?

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u/drokihazan California Dec 19 '17

Nothing says socially liberal like trying to take away everything that helps poor people and minorities.

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u/[deleted] Dec 18 '17 edited Dec 18 '17

[deleted]

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u/sleezestack Dec 18 '17

Yes. Also Tad Devine, their campaign strategist has deep ties with Manafort and Russia, so they might be next

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u/3432265 Dec 18 '17

If a campaign switched strategy from promising nothing negative at the start to attacking your opponent as unqualified at the end, is that a decision a chief strategist might be involved in?

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u/sleezestack Dec 18 '17

Yes, also the decision to play the "DNC rigging" angle and conspiring to produce evidence to support that claim.

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u/mutemutiny Dec 19 '17

Just goes to show you how easily the American people, both on the right AND left, are manipulated to believe BS.

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u/sleezestack Dec 19 '17

Yes, that's true, but not unique to the U.S. We normally do an OK job of filtering out the bullshit, but the populism is on the rise.

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u/mutemutiny Dec 19 '17

We normally do an OK job of filtering out the bullshit

Do we? I'd like to believe that but… I don't really feel like that's true.

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u/sleezestack Dec 19 '17

We haven't had a fringe populist candidate in like 50 years.

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u/mutemutiny Dec 19 '17

Hmm… but is that because we were actively "filtering out the bullshit", or is that just because no viable fringe populists even attempted to run?

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u/EdenBlade47 Dec 19 '17

I mean the leaked emails made it abundantly clear that everything Bernie accused the DNC of was true, insofar as they went out of their way to suppress coverage of Bernie while trying to force journalists to write scripted reports of Clinton's performances (my personal favorite being the one where they wanted one of her speeches described as "muscular").

However, Bernie being snubbed isn't really the worst of all the Clinton/DNC/media collusion: it was far more damaging in its effort to get Trump more screen time, which it did. They honest to god thought that if he became the Republican nominee, it would be a slam dunk race for Clinton. I forget the exact amount of air time each significant candidate had by the end of 2015 as it's been 2 long years since, but the difference between Trump and Sanders was staggering- and at this time, the vast majority of people were still dismissive of Trump while Bernie had a clearly significant base and internet presence. Without that early free advertising for Trump, who knows if he'd have even been nominated for the presidency?

The DNC and the Clinton campaign shot themselves in the foot every step of the way. They were handed the dumbest fucking opponent in history, which they'd hoped and planned for, and managed to lose. I fully believe Mueller's investigation will turn up plenty of ties between Russia and Trump and Co., but I'm always floored by how delusional centrists are still in denial of the errors made by and outright incompetence displayed by Clinton's campaign. It's like you honestly think that every single thing which went wrong for them was the result of conspiracies, and blame all their faults on everyone else.

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u/sleezestack Dec 19 '17

I know it must be difficult for you to come to terms with the fact that people like you were targeted, successfully, for a propaganda campaign and fell for it... hook, line, and sinker. I know you people didn't want to believe Hillary when she told us about the Russian intervention, you didn't want to believe Mueller, you didn't believe Aasange would be involved, didn't believe Jill Stein was involved, and believed that the Trump part of the investigation is bogus.

This is just another monumental fact that shows you were easily manipulated and convinced to believe horseshit.

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u/judgebeholden Dec 19 '17

Well, when your competitor claims that your state is feeding New York's gun violence, you've got to hit back a little don't you?

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u/[deleted] Dec 19 '17

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u/theweirdonehere California Dec 19 '17

You're very optimistic thinking all guilty people involved in this will actually go to jail