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WikiLeaks offers $20,000 for information on former DNC staffer's murder

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Re: WikiLeaks offers $20,000 for information on former DNC staffer's murder

#191

Post by mtanski »

ethbro wrote: post #145
mtanski wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think calling the primaries "rigged" misses a lot of nuance about the Parties in the US and the situation at hand. First, parties are clubs and they can have their own rules about their internal elections and campaigns. The rules of the normal election at federal level do not apply. The whole free association thing. Second, Bernie is not "real" democrat. He was prior and plans on returning to the Senate as an indep…

I'd be more inclined to give the two main parties the benefit of the doubt if their survival wasn't essentially guaranteed by the existing federal election method & media landscape.

I'm not really trying to give either party, or in this case the DNC the benefit of the doubt. I don't have any reservations about either party being particularly democratic (as in the party elites have most of the power).

I'm just not naive about how they work but ultimately I believe they can run however they want to.

If we want to reform the system that we have (two part) it's clearly not going to come from the parties. I'm personally in favor of having open primaries in every state with relatively late voter registration, getting rid of the electoral collage and the rule that if there's mo majority the senate decides the election.

Re: WikiLeaks offers $20,000 for information on former DNC staffer's murder

#192

Post by ComteDeLaFere »

patrickaljord wrote: post #5
dvcc wrote: post #2

WikiLeaks is becoming a political mess with Assange leading the charge. The philosophy that all information should be public is just absurd. There is a reason that the whistle-blowers prior passed their information to reporters, it allowed for certain pieces of information to be redacted. Sending out the name of every woman voter in Turkey does not benefit anyone. Leaking the private conversation of a man and his dau…

I find it weird that all these critiques from liberals come just when Wikileaks released info that the DNC primaries were rigged. Before that, it was pretty much all praise. Now, it turns out one of their informant may have been the victim of political assassination and you focus on the fact that they released a conversation of a dad and his daughter, which is of course a blunder but still, compared to the other pote…

I'm not sure this is accurate. In fact, conventional wisdom says that Assange is pursuing this as revenge against HRC, who has historically been a major opponent of his. If he isn't pursuing revenge against her, then why isn't he going after the RNC?

Re: WikiLeaks offers $20,000 for information on former DNC staffer's murder

#193

Post by mtanski »

mason240 wrote: post #143
mtanski wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think calling the primaries "rigged" misses a lot of nuance about the Parties in the US and the situation at hand. First, parties are clubs and they can have their own rules about their internal elections and campaigns. The rules of the normal election at federal level do not apply. The whole free association thing. Second, Bernie is not "real" democrat. He was prior and plans on returning to the Senate as an indep…

>First, parties are clubs and they can have their own rules about their internal elections and campaigns. Literally no one is saying otherwise. This is such a tired and ridiculous strawman.

> Literally no one is saying otherwise

Nice, Argumentum ad populum.

After following this election pretty closely I have observed that many people do not in fact understand how the parties operate and that the primaries are a party and not a legal construct. It's possible that people either have faulty ideas how the party process is run, or just do not have enough experience with it (many new Bernie voters).

Re: WikiLeaks offers $20,000 for information on former DNC staffer's murder

#194

Post by alex_hitchins »

skylan_q wrote: post #190
alex_hitchins wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But he can leave. He isn't in jail. It is his choice to stay where he is. I really can't see why people insist he is being held there against his will.

Yes, you're right. I suppose it is a very comfortable position to be in and we should envy him. Thanks!

I'm not sure it's a position that would be envied as such, I guess everyone is different. I suppose if you were wanted for questioning by police for a serious crime that you wanted to evade and you hadn't got a friendly government seeking positive news coverage to give you a legal loophole to remain at large, you might.

Re: WikiLeaks offers $20,000 for information on former DNC staffer's murder

#195

Post by lhnz »

dvcc wrote: post #2

WikiLeaks is becoming a political mess with Assange leading the charge. The philosophy that all information should be public is just absurd. There is a reason that the whistle-blowers prior passed their information to reporters, it allowed for certain pieces of information to be redacted. Sending out the name of every woman voter in Turkey does not benefit anyone. Leaking the private conversation of a man and his dau…

>> Sending out the name of every woman voter in Turkey does not benefit anyone.

Stop passing on incorrect information. That wasn't them: https://glomardisclosure.com/2016/08/08/what-a-hit-piece-aga...

Re: WikiLeaks offers $20,000 for information on former DNC staffer's murder

#196

Post by michaelt »

mtanski wrote: post #40
patrickaljord wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it weird that all these critiques from liberals come just when Wikileaks released info that the DNC primaries were rigged. Before that, it was pretty much all praise. Now, it turns out one of their informant may have been the victim of political assassination and you focus on the fact that they released a conversation of a dad and his daughter, which is of course a blunder but still, compared to the other pote…

I think calling the primaries "rigged" misses a lot of nuance about the Parties in the US and the situation at hand. First, parties are clubs and they can have their own rules about their internal elections and campaigns. The rules of the normal election at federal level do not apply. The whole free association thing. Second, Bernie is not "real" democrat. He was prior and plans on returning to the Senate as an indep…

Currently, the presidency is like a public park bench placed on private land. The bench is public property and everyone has the same theoretical right to sit on it - but there are only two paths to the bench, and both paths' owners charge huge fees.

A hundred years ago, it probably seemed possible to build a third path - but with our modern understanding of game theory, we know a two-party system is the inevitable result of first-past-the-post. Building a third path is impossible.

This creates an inconvenient contradiction - the moral legitimacy of the person sitting on the bench derives from the fact that everyone has the same right to sit on it, but we can quite plainly see the criteria for moral legitimacy are not met in practice.

Some people would say we should aspire to meet the criteria for moral legitimacy; and therefore that, regardless of their private status, their internal elections for access to the path should be free, fair and open to all.

Of course, other opinions are available. Some people would argue that the private property owners' rights were more important, morally, than the legitimacy of the presidency. Or that the idea of pursuing morality in politics is a joke. Or that our consent to our rulers isn't derived from the moral legitimacy of their being fairly elected, but comes from some other source such as habit or force of arms. Or that everything is a shade of grey, america is better than russia or north korea, and improving sounds like a hassle who can be bothered?

Re: WikiLeaks offers $20,000 for information on former DNC staffer's murder

#197

Post by harshreality »

vasilipupkin wrote: post #186
harshreality wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law In light of that, if you don't believe parties have a duty to be fair to all primary contenders, then I'm at a loss. How do you expect to avoid cronyism and corruption when "private" political parties are outed working to bias primaries and you say that's okay?

what does "fair" mean? A party's purpose is to advance a set of ideas. So, absolutely, the party leadership can choose not to be fair to a primary candidate that does not support those ideas. As an example, if Sanders is a socialist and wants to advance socialist ideas, he can form his own party and have it be on the ballot. And that party should be free to reject primary candidates who are not socialists, no? otherw…

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/23/us/politics/dnc-emails-san...

Don't you think fair means, at a minimum, not doing that kind of thing? The DNC's officials were trying to persuade their own party's voters against one primary candidate and for another primary candidate.

As I understand it, a party's purpose is to organize and provide membership for people sharing whatever ideology they share, who are then (among other things) capable of signing petitions for candidates seeking to run under that Party's name. If enough party members from enough districts sign your petition, you're on that party's primary ballot in that State.

Most of what the DNC and RNC do, or what they should do, is either administrative, or attacking the other party. I'm not defending that DNC vs RNC dynamic; I think we'd probably be better off without the party system, at least as it currently exists as a privatized crony-capitalism bullshit theater with very public repercussions... and I'm also in favor of fixing the voting systems used by the States. But, in the meantime, the DNC and RNC should be banned from trying to influence their own primaries.

If DNC officials want to attack one primary candidate, they should quit the DNC and go work for an opposing primary candidate's campaign. They don't want to do that, because they'd lose the status of working under the aegis of the DNC; they'd be working merely for one candidate or another, any of which could lose.

To put it succinctly, a political party official should act in a purely administrative manner with respect to the party's own internal operation, including its primaries.

Re: WikiLeaks offers $20,000 for information on former DNC staffer's murder

#198

Post by xlxlxlx »

alex_hitchins wrote: post #194
skylan_q wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, you're right. I suppose it is a very comfortable position to be in and we should envy him. Thanks!

I'm not sure it's a position that would be envied as such, I guess everyone is different. I suppose if you were wanted for questioning by police for a serious crime that you wanted to evade and you hadn't got a friendly government seeking positive news coverage to give you a legal loophole to remain at large, you might.

The post you replied to was being sarcastic.

"Questioning by police" is an enormous understatement. If Assange leaves the embassy, he will be arrested, extradited to the US, and likely convicted of treason. His fate would at best look something like Chelsea Manning's, and at worst, execution.

Re: WikiLeaks offers $20,000 for information on former DNC staffer's murder

#199

Post by dragonwriter »

xlxlxlx wrote: post #198
alex_hitchins wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure it's a position that would be envied as such, I guess everyone is different. I suppose if you were wanted for questioning by police for a serious crime that you wanted to evade and you hadn't got a friendly government seeking positive news coverage to give you a legal loophole to remain at large, you might.

The post you replied to was being sarcastic. "Questioning by police" is an enormous understatement. If Assange leaves the embassy, he will be arrested, extradited to the US, and likely convicted of treason. His fate would at best look something like Chelsea Manning's, and at worst, execution.

> If Assange leaves the embassy, he will be arrested, extradited to the US, and likely convicted of treason.

Almost certainly not. The Constitutional definition of treason in the US is such that it is pretty much never charged, outside of TV shows and movies.

The charges usually discussed in the context of the ongoing US criminal investigation of Assange are violations of the Espionage Act, violations of the CFAA, theft/conversion of US government property, and conspiracy.

OTOH, the government that has actually requested his extradition is Sweden, and not for anything related to national security matters.

Re: WikiLeaks offers $20,000 for information on former DNC staffer's murder

#200

Post by vasilipupkin »

harshreality wrote: post #197
vasilipupkin wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what does "fair" mean? A party's purpose is to advance a set of ideas. So, absolutely, the party leadership can choose not to be fair to a primary candidate that does not support those ideas. As an example, if Sanders is a socialist and wants to advance socialist ideas, he can form his own party and have it be on the ballot. And that party should be free to reject primary candidates who are not socialists, no? otherw…

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/23/us/politics/dnc-emails-san... Don't you think fair means, at a minimum, not doing that kind of thing? The DNC's officials were trying to persuade their own party's voters against one primary candidate and for another primary candidate. As I understand it, a party's purpose is to organize and provide membership for people sharing whatever ideology they share, who are then (among other…

Well, I disagree with your last statement. Party officials should act to protect the raison d'être for this party's existence in the first place. As I said above, if you are a socialist, by all means, register a socialist party, get on the ballot in every state, raise enough money for advertising, etc. to be competitive - nothing is stopping you from doing this. That does not mean that non socialist party officials should just roll over whenever a socialist runs in their primaries.

As an example, say what you want, Donald Trump is clearly not a conservative in any meaningful sense of conservatism. What is the long run result of his candidacy? there is a high probability that the long run result is irreversible damage to Republican party. Surely, party officials can act to prevent something like this, and not simply act as disinterested administrators. A political party in the US is essentially a private non for profit organization - that can run its affairs as the leadership of that party sees fit

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