This is so despicable. Politics should end at the water's edge. Even AOC stops short of defending Maduro.

Hopefully Trump severely sanctions Petrocaribe nations that continue to do business with Maduro and defend him during OAS meetings.

A "classical socialist" that is against a minimum wage, against union ownership of wage rates, and not in favor of complete ownership of the means of production by workers. Got it.

Huh? You only have one of those correct. It is true I am against government-mandated minimum wages, but I am completely in favour of ownership of the means of production by the workers and union ownership of wage rates.

@HylianSwordsman woah woah, you went waaaaaaay back there. First let me say something real quick, I don't doubt that russia is trying to hack us, and I don't doubt that we are trying to do the same to them. I'm pretty sure this has been the case for ages but that's besides the point. Oh and here's another point for tulsi since you brought it up. She had a bill on congress for having a paper trail with our voting machines. Just gonna put that out there real quick. I think you're misunderstanding me still. I'm not saying Russia is an ally, but I'm not gonna sit down and get caught up emotionally on what wasn't there and what was there. The troll farms that russia did had less than 3k people see. It wasn't enough to sway any elections, is it a problem? sure but in the case of Russia gate it wasn't a thing. I'm just saying 1 thing and 1 thing only. Russia gate is not a thing, and its using American's fear and dislike of Russia against them.

I'm not out here saying Russia is good and great or anything of the sort, I'm saying looking at all the evidence provided, anyone saying Russia hacked our elections doesn't have a rock to stand on. If you said they tried to influence or tried to hack I'd believe you but their impact was miniscule at best this time around. I'm trying to approach this from an objective angle and that requires evidence. If you keep bringing me evidence you claim to be the big deal but its fake constantly would you believe it? That's the same with me and Russia Gate, that's why I say what I say.

And with the guy on Venezuela... I'm not even gonna bother at all. Anyone thinking the USA is trying to help Venezuela while strangling their economy with sanctions and constantly threatening their leader who has free and fair elections isn't looking at the facts, or is just repeating establishment talking points. I don't know about you, but I watched videos of boots on the ground in venezuela, its funny how its a completely different picture from what america describes and how the majority of the country was against this coup. I'm just gonna leave that there and that's the last time I'm responding to you quoting me on this topic. You have it in your head that Maduro is an evil man, a dictator when he is in fact not.

Then that bit after the hyphen was worded quite confusingly. Thought you meant you thought that the list after the hyphen was also harmful to businesses. But also you say you want a corporate board of directors at all, when a classical socialist would want to eliminate that whole class and have business not be structured in such a hierarchical way.

My fault then, my English is horrible.

On a corporate board of directors, it makes sense from an administrative point of view. The difference between one elected from the workers is that they will administrate based on worker needs rather than the needs of the disinterested profiteering class. A board of directors elected from the workers makes a big business more democratic than one which lacks one altogether; especially if the board is elected from outside upper management (which is conceivable due to conflict of interest).

I wouldn't mind talking of this in another thread (it's off-topic in this one).

Jesus. Maybe stop getting your news from conspiracy-minded YouTubers or Russian State Propaganda. It's good you won't reply to this topic because you seem to be a lost cause.

I'll say this though - maybe go to Florida and talk to some refugees. Don't go repeating Maduro propaganda points unless you want them to punch you in the face.

Makes sense though. Gabbard doesn't give a shit about oppressed, tortured incarcerated starving people and dying children and neither do you.

So I'm not sure what you think Russia gate is that you think it didn't happen? If you're saying we lack evidence that Trump only won the electoral college because Russia changed some votes in three states, then yeah, we lack that evidence, thank God, because that would be terrifying. But you can't just dismiss the troll farms by saying it was 3,000 people. Those 3k worked round the clock, it was all they did, and they focused on swing states, so yeah, they could have reached the 10,000 or so voters in Michigan needed to swing that, the 20,000 or so in Wisconsin to swing that, and the 40,000 or so in PA needed to swing that. Add a few thousand to each state to be exact, and each troll would have to convince about 27 people to swing the election in those states. I think they probably got to a lot more than that. Again, it doesn't mean that Hillary only lost because of that, like I said, she should have crushed Trump to a fine powder given who he was and she would have if she weren't so uniquely toxic. The point here is just that Russia is doing it, it definitely could make a difference in a close election, and that should be enough for you to care about it. On principle, you should care about it, because even if it didn't swing an election, a candidate taking office with a weaker mandate than they otherwise would have earned is bad for our country. You're letting the fact that it was Clinton that was affected cloud your judgement here. Russia's interference is bad news.

Now if when you say "Russiagate didn't happen" you mean that there's NO COLLUSION, well maybe, but then why would Trump try so hard to cover it up? He let out this recent transcript on purpose because he thought he had nothing to hide, showing he's just that corrupt, but also showing that when he thinks he's in the right, he won't hide. In all likelihood, if he didn't try to work directly with Russia to promise them favors in exchange for their help winning the election, it's probably because he failed to, but did try. And he definitely is the type to try to get other countries to help him win elections, because he fucking confessed to asking Ukraine and released, willingly and on purpose, a written memo on a phone call of him doing so. This is a dude who thinks that's so okay he'll give you written proof of it. So whatever he did with Russia that he tried so hard to hide had to have been bad enough that even he knew it'd be bad to have it out there in the public eye. I don't think people are always rational, but they do have reasons for their behavior, and Occam's Razor says if Trump is acting like he's trying to hide something, it's probably because he has something to hide. I'm not getting emotionally caught up in it, I just don't see any reason to fight against that idea. You're not some intellectual bastion because you insist Trump is innocent until proven guilty.

Okay, let me explain what I mean completely, its been confirmed that less than 3000 people saw the memes the troll farm posted before the election. That's what my 3k number is. On top of that Russia Gate came up of Trump colluding with Russia but also that they hacked the DNC for him etc. Facts point to the DNC not being hacked but that their data was downloaded on to a flash drive, and the speeds of the file transfer backs this up. With that out of the way, there is no proof of trump colluding with Russia and when they kept putting article upon article out trying to say they found conclusive evidence of this they found none. Muller investigated for 2 years and found nothing.

There's also a clip out that Kyle covered a while back when this investigation started and trump was saying "oh F, my presidency is finished. Whenever you have one of these special counsels on you they say you're presidency is over. I'm f, I'm done." I don't think that sentiment comes from him being afraid of them finding collusion but from his corrupt business practises and also the way he said it sounded as though he was going off of what he heard others say. That's what I felt trump was trying so hard to obstruct justice over cause he's an idiot. Also the Ukraine thing trying to be used in this doesn't exactly work considering we found out the clintons did the same with Ukraine and got caught. Regardless of what he did with Russia, the basis of RussiaGate has failed as there was no collusion with the campaign.

Now does he have some illegal dealings with Russia? I'm 100% sure about that, but in the case of Russia gate I'll have to go with show me the evidence of him colluding, considering all the raids and such they did coming up with nothing, I'm pretty sure there's nothing. That however doesn't mean his business ties don't have something going on there, and I think that's where the real smoke is. Not this election meddling nonsense.

Do you want to know why Trump won this election? He won it on 1 single issue. Trade Policy. He ripped Hillary over the TPP and won the rustbelt on that alone.

Also to the other guy on Venezuela, please do some reading on maduro, and the history between the US and Venezuela before you believe every talking point about him being a dictator.

Yeah no. That has not been confirmed. In fact, it's been confirmed that they reached 150 million people through Facebook and Instagram, and deep engagement on Twitter with nearly 3900 accounts that sent 10 million tweets, the most retweeted of which got 6 million retweets.

I've never seen a single article saying they found conclusive evidence of collusion, but I don't care. Again, you think you're some intellectual badass because you're saying Trump is innocent until proven guilty, but the whole point of innocent until proven guilty is to create a high bar for the government to punish someone, not to create an intellectually sound way to know if someone did something or not. Trump is almost certainly not innocent, and you look like a fool defending him.

And mentioning the Clintons doing something as a defense? Come on man, that's whataboutism. You sound like someone from r/The_Donald.

But again, I really don't understand what your point is. Why do you care so much to insist that Trump didn't collude? Why does his winning the election have to be so black and white? The election is over. That Mueller thing would never have changed the outcome of the election. Based on what is publicly known, it sure as fuck looks like Trump wanted to collude, it even looks like he tried to collude. We just don't have solid proof of a direct connection, and even if we did, it's not like that would prove that the collusion was the reason Trump won. Like Hillary said herself "why am I not ahead by 50 points?" Let me answer that for you Hillary, it's because you suck. She lost because she sucks, and anyone not living in a bubble knew she sucked. That doesn't change that Donny boy tried to cheat the election, and that's really fucked up, whether he succeeded at colluding or not, whether the collusion succeeded at making him win or not, it's fucking fucked up. That's all anyone is saying. But you're over here insisting on his innocence like that proves anything. Why lift a single finger to legitimize this guy? I just don't get it man. You've picked one of r/The_Donald's own hills for your battle and you've chosen to die on it. It makes zero sense. Do we know Trump is guilty? No, but who gives a fuck, we're pretty sure he's guilty, and that's enough. It's not enough to land him in jail, but it's enough to impeach him and it's enough to call him a corrupt little fuck who's presidency is illegitimate.