Hillary Clinton says Tulsi Gabbard is a 'Russian asset'

acbytesla said:
I think this is ABSOLUTE NONSENSE pulled straight from your backside. If you don't believe they know a voluminous amount about Putin and the people that surround him then my view is you are uninformed. We spend billions of dollars to know as much as possible about the various leaders and even more about our adversaries.
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Perhaps I should have rephrased. theprestige explained it pretty well I think.
 
Venom said:
Perhaps I should have rephrased. theprestige explained it pretty well I think.
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You think? It seems to me that he basically said we didn't. No real proof of anything. Just a claim.

He faults Hillary for not pressing a reset button on relations with Russia. But all plans by mice and men can go awry. It's like playing chess. You may have a strategy for playing your opponent, but that strategy can and usually does change when they make a move you didn't account for. Russia with its policies made it impossible to press the "reset".
 
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acbytesla said:
You think? It seems to me that he basically said we didn't. No real proof of anything. Just a claim.

He faults Hillary for not pressing a reset button on relations with Russia. But all plans by mice and men can go awry. It's like playing chess. You may have a strategy for playing your opponent, but that strategy can and usually does when they make a move you didn't account for. Russia with its policies made it impossible to press the "reset".
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No the point is the reset was ultimately ineffectual and perhaps was started on naive assumptions. The warning signs about what direction the regime really was headed for were there just before Obama took office.

It's not really a partisan thing.
 
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Venom said:
No the point is the reset was ultimately ineffectual and perhaps was started on naive assumptions. The warning signs about what direction the regime really was headed for were there just before Obama took office.

It's not really a partisan thing.
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Perhaps, it was folly to even think a reset was possible with a dictator who had a history of fixing elections in his own country. I don't blame Clinton or Obama for a stated plan to improve relations with Moscow, Just as I don't blame them for not carrying out that initial plan.

You cannot play the game in a vacuum. Sometimes you have to change your plan to deal with the other guy's moves.
 
Childlike Empress said:
I endorse it completely with the full power of my St. Petersburg troll factory assessment card.
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Finally some honesty :) Anyway, wittingly or unwittingly Gabbard is very useful to Russia which is quite strange for a non-republican politician. Will be interesting to see her further actions in this campaign.
 
llwyd said:
Finally some honesty :) Anyway, wittingly or unwittingly Gabbard is very useful to Russia which is quite strange for a non-republican politician. Will be interesting to see her further actions in this campaign.
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Before relatively recently, it was almost exclusively non-Republicans who opposed the regime change wars.
 
kellyb said:
Can you quote the relevant parts, because I just looked over it all again, and I don't see anything in my links about "unwitting assets" (besides the post 2016 stuff, which I linked to just to prove that it was a brand new use of the word.)
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For pete's sake:

kellyb said:
theprestige said:
I don't care about that. I care what Hillary meant. I care what others in this thread mean. If your deal is the warping of language, by all means carry on. But arguing with me about it is pointless. Because I. Don't. Care.
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It's meant to CONFLATE being an actual agent or operative of Russia, with someone who's merely insufficiently dedicated to thwarting anything Russia might want.

eta:
Between 2014-2016, "Russian asset" meant "financial assets of Russia."

https://www.google.com/search?q="Ru...ce=lnt&tbs=cdr:1,cd_min:2014,cd_max:2016&tbm=

2016-2018, it suddenly means this:
https://www.google.com/search?q="Ru...=cdr:1,cd_min:1/1/2016,cd_max:12/31/2018&tbm=


https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-acting-like-russian-asset-experts-say-2018-7
National security experts warn Trump is behaving more and more like a 'controlled spy'
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Glenn Carle, a longtime former CIA spy, said he wasn't the least bit surprised by Trump's actions because "it's becoming more and more clear that Trump is either a witting or unwitting Russian asset."

"People say this is so mystifying, but it's not," Carle said. "Intelligence assets become convinced to be spies for multiple reasons. It might start with kompromat or financial hooks, and the asset may be convinced he is acting as a patriot until he becomes accustomed to his role."

Carle added: "Trump clearly responds favorably to praise. And over the years, the handling officer — Putin, in this case — realizes what the asset wants, and that's what they provide. Trump wants to be told he's the greatest, so that's what you tell him, over and over again, until he comes to believe that is the motivation for his actions."
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/blog...republican-party-is-becoming-a-russian-asset/

The entire Republican Party is becoming a Russian asset
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But look past the modest number of Republicans saying that Trump has gone a bit too far here or there, and you see a very different picture. The truth is that the entire GOP is well on its way to becoming a Russian asset.
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kellyb said:
My whole point was that this new definition is STRICTLY a byproduct of Russiagate.
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And so far you have not demonstrated it. Your attempt at providing evidence for that claim backfired because some of your links directly contradict you, or are not mutually-exclusive with the opposing view. This isn't rocket science.

Well, there probably was some element of defense at play there.
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Gods, are you buying into that as well?

You don't invade countries in response to the threat of a different country and call it defensive.

Accomplice always implies knowledge.
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Starting to see a pattern here.

Maybe instead of getting stuck on narrow definitions you should instead just understand what people mean by those words and operate with that in mind so we can MOVE ON.
 
Belz... said:
And so far you have not demonstrated it. Your attempt at providing evidence for that claim backfired because some of your links directly contradict you, or are not mutually-exclusive with the opposing view. This isn't rocket science.
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I think what's going on here is just that your lack of reading comprehension skills make dialogue with you impossible.

Unless you're just pretending to be confused.

Either way, everyone else in the thread understands my posts, so I'm bowing out of this pointless and futile fail of a discussion with you.
 
Belz... said:
Gods, are you buying into that as well?
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Well, it was a Foreign Affairs magazine link, published by the Council on Foreign Relations, a well-known mouthpiece for the Kremlin.
You got me!

:)
 
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Scopedog said:
Is Jill Stein 'also' a Russian asset apart from some other personal characteristic (ie, she's a third-party candidate and also a Russian asset) or is Jill Stein 'also' a Russian asset apart from the unnamed Democratic primary candidate that is being supported by Russia?
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And now for some context:

Well, I think there's going to be two parts and I think it's going to be the same as 2016: "Don't vote for the other guy. You don't like me? Don't vote for the other guy because the other guy is going to do X, Y and Z or the other guy did such terrible things and I'm going to show you in these, you know, flashing videos that appear and then disappear and they're on the dark web, and nobody can find them, but you're going to see them and you're going to see that person doing these horrible things."

They're also going to do third party again. And I'm not making any predictions but I think they've got their eye on somebody who is currently in the Democratic primary and are grooming her to be the third party candidate. She's the favorite of the Russians. They have a bunch of sites and bots and other ways of supporting her so far, and that's assuming Jill Stein will give it up. Which she might not, 'cause she's also a Russian asset.
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"They" and "me", here, can't refer to Putin, who cannot possibly run for the US presidency. It refers, rather obviously, to the GOP candidate and his team.

Is Gabbard a favorite of Russia? Well yes - as opposed to Biden, Warren, and oddly enough Kamala Harris, all of whom they have directed attacks against. Dolt 45, being a laughably corrupt idiot, would obviously take advantage of this, as he did back in 2016.

Is Stein a Russian asset, wittingly or not? Well, yeah...yeah.

Did the GOP try this in 2016, with Bernie Sanders? Well...yeah, but he slapped them down, and has only gone on Fox News to push his agenda, not to badmouth democrats and nod approvingly to James O'Keefe's latest scam video, unlike...Tulsi Gabbard.

Would any of this have worked without the GOP's ongoing voter suppression efforts, and Comey breaking department protocol to interfere a mere 10 days before the election? Nope, and that's why I'm not too concerned about this.

UIOW, you're pretty much hanging everything on a single word ("also") in a side issue of the actual subject - which was what the GOP strategy will be, not what the Russian strategy will be. You should know better.
 
Mumbles said:
Is Stein a Russian asset, wittingly or not? Well, yeah...yeah.
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Except for the fact that there's no such thing as an "unwitting asset," or at least, it wasn't a classification of anyone, ever, before Russiagate.
 
kellyb said:
I think what's going on here is just that your lack of reading comprehension skills make dialogue with you impossible.
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What a fantastically dishonest post! :mad:

You initially claimed that this usage of the word is new, and CE argued that it was tailor-made for the topic of this thread (2019). The fact of the matter is that it has been used more broadly for a good while. The fact that you can find quotes using the word more narrowly is completely irrelevant. Your own link shows that the initial claim was wrong and that it's been this way for at least a few years.

And all of this is IRRELEVANT anyway. You understand EXACTLY how people are using that word but instead of arguing based on that usage you spend endless pages getting stuck on exact definitions.
 
Belz... said:
What a fantastically dishonest post! :mad:

You initially claimed that this usage of the word is new, and CE argued that it was tailor-made for the topic of this thread (2019). The fact of the matter is that it has been used more broadly for a good while. The fact that you can find quotes using the word more narrowly is completely irrelevant. Your own link shows that the initial claim was wrong and that it's been this way for at least a few years.

And all of this is IRRELEVANT anyway. You understand EXACTLY how people are using that word but instead of arguing based on that usage you spend endless pages getting stuck on exact definitions.
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Whatever. LOL I was super-clear about what I meant:
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=12864050&postcount=292
me said:
That's not what the word "asset" ever meant before Russiagate.
It's borrowing the definition of "asset" as the word is used in economics, as in "financial asset", and applying it to geopolitical and spy stuff.

Nobody ever called anti-war or anti-nuclear voices "Soviet assets" during the Cold War. Nobody called Cindy Sheehan an "al-Qaeda asset" during the war on terror/Iraq war.

This new definition and use of the word of "asset" is really dangerous for democracy, and I think we should stop using it and legitimizing it.
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...and everyone besides you has had no problem understanding me.

Re: "all of this is IRRELEVANT anyway. You understand EXACTLY how people are using that word but instead of arguing based on that usage you spend endless pages getting stuck on exact definitions" ...we've already been over that, too, and either you missed it or you can't comprehend this:

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=12865785&postcount=368
me said:
abc said:
People forget one simple fact.

Words don't have fixed meanings, they only have usages.
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Normally I'm very agnostic on the morphing on language over time, but this is a really dangerous sort of misuse of the word "asset".

Under this new definition of the word "asset", all the Vietnam protesters were "Soviet assets". Anyone who effectively opposes war with Iran is an "Iranian asset". Etc and so on.

This new use just sort of slipped under the radar before now, because it started with speculation that Trump was a "Russian asset", and originally, people were meaning it in the "Russia has blackmail material on him and can control him with it" sense. Then, when that didn't pan out evidence-wise, they didn't just let it go, but started to just re-tool the word asset to expand the definition to more and more people, including the "unwitting" aspect, which is completely contrary to the pre-Russiagate definition.
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kellyb said:
Whatever. LOL I was super-clear about what I meant:
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Fine, that's on me.

But it does not negate the rest of my points, which you have not addressed.

...and everyone besides you has had no problem understanding me.
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You don't speak for anyone but yourself.

...we've already been over that, too, and either you missed it or you can't comprehend this:
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I'm not sure exactly what point you think that makes, but I'm starting to be rather tired of your repeated personal attacks. Either address my points or don't.
 
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