2016 elections.

[Jay]

and would simply continue taking bigger and bigger payoffs from big oil and big pharma and wall street and continue its slow march to the right. fuck all that noise, i won't be a part of it

I'm curious if you have any proof that Hillary specifically is taking payoffs from corporations.

Yeah, it's called the Clinton Foundation donation ledger.

[Arlos]

So, fellow Bernie fans, but who won't vote for Hillary, I have a hypothetical for you: Say she picks Bernie as her VP, and he accepts. Do you still refuse to vote for her then?

[Zanchief]

and would simply continue taking bigger and bigger payoffs from big oil and big pharma and wall street and continue its slow march to the right. fuck all that noise, i won't be a part of it

I'm curious if you have any proof that Hillary specifically is taking payoffs from corporations.

Yeah, it's called the Clinton Foundation donation ledger.

Oh. I guess that's the smoking gun then. Conjecture. Enjoy the revolution then.

[Jay]

It's not about a revolution or anything that out of this world. If America votes for Trump then America deserves what it gets. My state is super blue so it doesn't matter, but even if it wasn't, I won't vote for a lesser evil. A vote is an endorsement and I do NOT endorse Hillary Clinton. I think she is part of the problem, not the answer.

[Harrison]

"Conjecture" hahahah

What more proof do you want? It's a downright literal bribe.

[Zanchief]

I think you need to look up the words conjecture, proof, bribe and literal. Might as well throw in the rest of them while you're researching.

[brinstar]

I'm curious if you have any proof that Hillary specifically is taking payoffs from corporations.

like is she personally taking payoffs? i don't know. i am pretty sure she's not dumb enough to leave proof of such just laying around where any goon from NE can just google it. $675,000 in speaking fees from Goldman Sachs ain't nothing to sniff at though

besides don't mischaracterize my comment: it was specifically an indictment of her party, of which she is the flagship candidate. the party itself and (most of) the campaigns it runs are the entities which i was accusing of taking corporate payoffs. their whole machine is built of super PACs running on trainloads of dark money - millions upon millions of dollars poured in from drug manufacturers and investment banking and private prisons and fossil fuels industries. the fuck you think they throw all that money around for? funsies?

[Zanchief]

A bit more reasonable a position. The reason they do it is because they think one candidate over another will be beneficial to their company. Do you really think Clinton would risk her career just for a donation to her non-profit charity? Think things through guys.

[brinstar]

A bit more reasonable a position. The reason they do it is because they think one candidate over another will be beneficial to their company. Do you really think Clinton would risk her career just for a donation to her non-profit charity? Think things through guys.

do i want a president whose policies will be favorable to certain companies? no i do not. because invariably those companies base their business practices on fossil fuels, private prisons, harmful investment trading with consumer deposits, profit-driven pharmaceutical companies, etc, all of which regularly (and sometimes gleefully) sacrifice the public good on the altar of profit via outsourcing, environmental destruction, slave wages, and so on

goddamn man, why is that leap too hard for you to make? what's the effective difference between me saying "companies donate millions because they know they will receive special treatment and favorable (de)regulation in return" and you saying "naw man they donate because golly gosh they think one candidate over another will be beneficial to their company"? like there's literally zero difference in net outcome, none whatsover

and if your argument is that since such bribery has been basically legalized, it's foolish to argue against it, then no, i reject that too. legality and morality are not mutually inclusive and never have been

but if you're telling me my choice of candidates is between one who reaps millions upon millions from banks and prisons and oil companies and telecoms and pharmaceutical companies and who knows how many other undisclosed "dark money" sources, and another who rejects all that noise and only accepts small individual donations from everyday citizens? that's not even a real choice

[Zanchief]

No I'm saying, all your assertions are false based on your own bias. There is no evidence that any of her policy decisions are swayed by any donations. You don't like how the system works, fine, I don't either, but to say that she's in the pocket of someone who's made a private donation to her company or her non-profit charity is absurd. You believe this because you want to believe this. You should believe or disbelieve it based on facts, which you don't have.

Like I've said many times, from my irrelevant vantage, Sanders would be my choice, but to say if he doesn't win lets burn it to the ground seems really naive, especially when your reasoning for not supporting another candidate is very dubious.

[Harrison]

I feel like he's trolling, because he can't be seriously implying that Clinton doesn't do things that benefit her corporate overlords; she only takes the bribes and it has no correlation to her policy direction, that's it.



Let's be clear here. As Brin already stated, the legality of the bribes is irfuckingrelevant. They are bribes by definition. She gets paid by Goldman Sachs to do X, she isn't going to do Y which harms her source of wealth. It just isn't going to happen.

[Lyion]

So, fellow Bernie fans, but who won't vote for Hillary, I have a hypothetical for you: Say she picks Bernie as her VP, and he accepts. Do you still refuse to vote for her then?

A view from the other side, a la moderate conservative leaning libertarian: If Trump is the nominee I'll vote for Hillary. I know who she is, and while disagreeing on some policies with her, Trump disgusts me.

Hillary won't put Bernie on the ticket. He brings her nothing but a few young voters and better support in deep blue states. Her advisors will find the person who gives her a chance in purple states. If Rubio or Cruz are the nominees I expect her to pick someone like Julian Castro. If it's Trump, she'll choose someone like Mark Warner.

On the flip side, Sanders would completely lose face if he went from being a 'movement' candidate to a shill for Hillary, who is indeed a Wall Street Candidate. She won't offer, but even if she did I doubt he'd accept. At 76 it's not like he has a path to the Presidency in 8 years.

[brinstar]

No I'm saying, all your assertions are false based on your own bias. There is no evidence that any of her policy decisions are swayed by any donations. You don't like how the system works, fine, I don't either, but to say that she's in the pocket of someone who's made a private donation to her company or her non-profit charity is absurd. You believe this because you want to believe this. You should believe or disbelieve it based on facts, which you don't have.

Like I've said many times, from my irrelevant vantage, Sanders would be my choice, but to say if he doesn't win lets burn it to the ground seems really naive, especially when your reasoning for not supporting another candidate is very dubious.

lmfao

dude it's capitalism 101. if there is no return on investment, you don't invest. you want me to believe it's just blind coincidence that politicians' policy stances regularly and measurably shift based on who's filling up their campaign chests? jesus christ

there was a bankruptcy law being worked on in the late 90s while slick willy was still prez, and wall street loved it. at the time, HRC met with liz warren, who informed her that the law would be atrocious for regular people - so when HRC found that out, she pretty much sprinted into the oval office and had WJC abandon his support for it. the bill came around again a few years later, but this time freshman senator HRC, riding a tide of wall street donations, voted FOR it. the same. exact. bill. what more do you need? her voice on tape actually saying "i changed my stance 180 degrees because of donations"? a signed affidavit? and you call ME naive



anyway, lyion: agreed on all points

[Zanchief]

Accusations of bribery warrant more than conjecture to me, yes. Not to you, and that's fine.

[brinstar]

so yes, you want a goddamn signed deposition, and anything short of that is completely unfair conjecture

i can't roll my eyes hard enough

what's it like to live in fairy tale land where there's no such thing as bribery and where corporations just throw around millions of dollars for literally no reason?

[Harrison]

Hahahahah

Requests for absurdly undue levels of veracity are fucking hilarious.

"I won't stop believing in chemtrails until I've seen every single aircraft in existence personally."

[Zanchief]

Um you have only the insinuation of guilt, without a shred of evidence. Yes, that's exactly the same. I guess it's no coincidence that you have blind faith in things that also align with your world view. I do not, since I have no opinion one way or the other. I can be objective, you guys clearly can't.

[brinstar]

without a shred of evidence

except for measurable and documented shifts of ideology that are favorable to certain industries directly following campaign contributions from those industries, nah not a shred lol

I can be objective

not about this, apparently

nice try though

[Zanchief]

Hahahahah

Requests for absurdly undue levels of veracity are fucking hilarious.

"I won't stop believing in chemtrails until I've seen every single aircraft in existence personally."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_equivalence

[brinstar]

oh, and

So, fellow Bernie fans, but who won't vote for Hillary, I have a hypothetical for you: Say she picks Bernie as her VP, and he accepts. Do you still refuse to vote for her then?

yes i still refuse, albeit broken-heartedly. under no circumstances will i support a pro-fracking pro-corporation pro-war pro-establishment anti-democratic candidate in bed with arms manufacturers and TBTF banks and pharmaceutical companies and the fossil fuels industry, no matter who the running mate is.

[Zanchief]

without a shred of evidence

except for measurable and documented shifts of ideology that are favorable to certain industries directly following campaign contributions from those industries, nah not a shred lol

Measured how? Doesn't it bother you that you don't ask any questions when information is presented to you that agrees with your beliefs? Doesn't that scare you a bit? If you heard a piece of news that Bernie took a bribe you'd immediately try to find out how it was wrong. You hear a story from the 90s about some wallstreet bailout and you assume it's true without any thought put into it's feasibility.

This is why politics are so bad right now. People think facts are subjective. They don't care about the truth.

[brinstar]

sorry zanchief, i'm done with you on this. i can see what point you think you're making, but as long as you have no interest in entertaining even the idea that pouring unlimited campaign contributions into politics JUST MIGHT have a corrupting effect on the process, quite obviously skewing the system toward the people who can afford to do so, i'll continue to find that unwillingness somewhere between naive at best and dishonest at worst.

PS

a pro-fracking pro-corporation pro-war pro-establishment anti-democratic candidate in bed with arms manufacturers and TBTF banks and pharmaceutical companies and the fossil fuels industry

remember when we used to call people like this "republican"?

[Zanchief]

I don't agree with the process, but there's a giant leap from, this process leads to corruption, to this candidate is corrupt. In order to connect those dots you need...oh never mind you get the idea.

On to fracking since you brought it up twice. Do you have any of that pesky evidence Fracking is bad? I'll spoil your fun, you don't. It sounds bad. But there's very little evidence that's its actually bad. I'd rather my politicians listen to silly scientists rather than reactionary environmentalists. That's the same thing we accuse the right of with global warming, only in this case, you're on the wrong side.

[brinstar]

are you serious? get the fuck on google, i'm not wasting my time finding a billion links for you documenting how fracking leads to harmful methane leaks and increased seismic activity due to rapid changes in pressure between rock strata

quit trolling you're better than this

[brinstar]

back in the real world, bernie just scored a MAJOR upset in michigan

fivethirtyeight blog had him losing to hillary by 22 points, but they were about 24 points off lol

she whacked him hard in mississippi (why?) so in the end she'll take a few more delegates home, but a 22 point loss in MI would've meant an almost impossible deficit to overcome. this race is far from over - late march and most of april will see a string of big sanders wins, and he's got enough small-donor cash to last all the way to the convention