Do you really think HIllary or Kamala would have been any better?

 There are a few reasons that I voted Green in 2016 with the major one being there is no way I would vote for Hillary Clinton: even if ranked choice voting as involved. There would have to be a lot of slots for other options before I would vote for her. 

And I have three dogs who I would write in before I would vote for her.

No sexism. Unless the reason you wanted me to vote for her was that she was a woman. Both Kamala and Hillary are pretty bad choices.

I've gotten into them before, but this one needs to be hammered into your head if you think Hillary should have been an option:

 Misogynistic, anti-semites for Jill Stein.

Yeah, right!

Can't forget 'Orrible 'Arris:

 

The Problem Isn’t Bernie, It’s the Party.

Given that health care is a big topic, I think he would have had a lot more appeal. Toss in that he comes from a historically red State (Vermont). The only people he didn't appeal to were the big donors.

Who Rigged the 2016 Elections? Hint: It wasn't the Russians

The reason I know that Russiagate was a crock was that I saw what went on.

And here is the documentation that the DNC rigged the 2016 primary:
https://medium.com/@brandondegraff/the-dnc-rigged-the-2016-primary-for-hillary-clinton-c0752fbf3140

BC Degraff does a fantastic job of documenting what happened to the Sanders campaign in 2016.

What gets me is that this was so blatant, yet MSNBC and Wretched Madcow never addressed this. Instead the media spent a lot of time on the Russian Interference distraction tactic.

Any "Russian interference" was negligible compared to the internal corruption of the system.

Now, why isn't Adam Schiff spending his time on this?

Oh, yeah, the Democratic party was the perpetrator.

Trump Will Be President in 2020

This is like my desire to post that he was going to win in 2016 when I saw early on that the Electoral Votes were being tallied, instead of the popular vote.  That was because I knew the popular vote wouldn't matter.

I am saying this early on because I am hoping maybe a warning might reach the right eyes since I am already seeing the same trends that led Trump win in 2016 happening again.

First off, forgetting Whitewater and its outcomes. Bill Clinton was impeached, but was acquitted which might be the same result if Trump is impeached. Except it will make Trump stronger. Toss in the Democratic Party higher ups don't want it happening.

Of course, this presupposes that Trump will be the 2020 Republican nominee. Which is fairly certain unless someone comes in and does what Bernie Sanders did in 2016. That was to offer a choice to the Republican voters who don't want to run one of the most unpopular candidates ever.

But unpopularity doesn't matter which is something neither party has learned since they don't have to. They are the duopoly and the sheep will keep voting for the lesser evil.

So, as in 2016, the Democrats will end up with a candidate who is unpopular. Sanders will face some of the same shit he had in 2016 less the media blackout. But I am sure that the Democratic Party "members" won't want him running based on his "not being a democrat".[1]  Of course, they will support Liz Warren.

Liz Warren is another story. Her brand was tarnished in 2016 when she went with Clinton instead of Sanders. She was heckled at the 2016 DNC with shouts of "We trusted you." UMass Amherst released a poll of the 2020 Democratic primary in Massachusetts, and Warren garnered just 11 percent of the sample. That is not good in a state where her name recognition is already high and Democrats are as intimately familiar with her record as any 2020 voter is going to get.

The irony here is that Warren was a republican well into the 90s. Possibly into the 2000s! A lot of progressives don't trust her any more.

Liz is one of many Sanders clones running which will give him competition, but there is only one Bernie. Although, I just learned about Sanders signing the Democratic loyalty oath which would mean that he is now a Democratic party member and one of the complaints about him is gone.

But, I don't think some of the party members will forgive Sanders for 2016.

The main things that bother me about the Democratic Party: that they failed to be honest about what happened in 2016 and that they will run another unpopular candidate are the real bottom line here.

I agree with Camille Paglia who said:

If the economy continues strong, Trump will be reelected. The Democrats (my party) have been in chaos since the 2016 election and have no coherent message except Trump hatred. Despite the vast pack of potential candidates, no one yet seems to have the edge.

While I supported Sanders in 2016. I'm not sure I would do it now. I think Bernie's time was in 2016. The Democratic party brand is tarnished beyond repair (and the Republicans are way too far out).

Footnotes:
[1] Sanders signed a loyalty oath to the Democratic Party, but I think some Clinton supporters will still hold a grudge.

See also:

• Top Democrat says Trump impeachment is 'off the table until it's on the table'
• Elizabeth Warren agrees Democratic race 'rigged' for Clinton
• Why the Differences Between Sanders and Warren Matter
• How Progressive is Elizabeth Warren?
• Bernie Sanders-Style Politics Are Defining 2020 Race, Unnerving Moderates
• Bernie Sanders Will Hit Huge Obstacles in 2020
• Hillary Clinton's High Profile Is Hurting the Democrats
• Camille Paglia: ‘Hillary wants Trump to win again
• How to Lose an Election (Again) in Three Easy Steps

My vote didn't count in the 2016 Presidential Election.

In fair disclosure, I am an independent who voted with the Democrats since I vote in a jurisdiction where there is a closed primary. I supported Bernie Sanders in the primary. Then I voted for Jill Stein.

My vote for Jill Stein in no way influenced the outcome of the election. Clinton still would have lost even if all the people who voted for Jill Stein where I am registered to vote. An aside here: people who voted for Jill Stein weren't very likely to vote for either duopoly candidate.

Still even if my state had voted for Hillary Clinton, that wouldn't have made too much of a difference where the voting really counted: the Electoral College. It might have shifted a few votes, but it wouldn't have given Clinton the 270 votes needed to win.

The popular vote is irrelevant to the outcome of the election as I have pointed out. It has nothing to do with Russia and everything to do with the constitution.

I find it liberating to know that I am able to vote my conscience knowing that the popular vote is meaningless.

Russian Interference refuted.

It's really easy.


Hillary Clinton won the popular vote. Hillary Clinton won the popular vote with 65,853,516 (48.5% votes) to Trump's 62,984,825 (46.4% votes) Clinton's margin  of victory in the popular vote was larger than John Kennedy's and Richard Nixon's, I've seen a statistic that her popular vote margin was the third largest in US elections! (It was the third highest for someone who lost an election, it was also fairly significant among the people who won the election)

Multiple candidates in American history have been elected president with far smaller margins than Clinton's in the popular vote. According to figures from the Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections—and as alluded to by one Atlantic reader—they include:

James Garfield in 1880: 0.09 percentage points

John F. Kennedy in 1960: 0.17 percentage points

Grover Cleveland in 1884: 0.57 percentage points

Richard Nixon in 1968: 0.7 percentage points

James Polk in 1844: 1.45 percentage points

Since the final vote count did, indeed, put her well above 2 percentage points ahead of Trump, her margin went beyond those of winning presidential nominees Jimmy Carter in 1976 (2.07 percentage points) and George W. Bush in 2004 (2.47 percentage points). And all this is not to mention the presidents who’ve been elected without winning the popular vote at all. That’s a list that includes Bush in 2000, and Trump.

2,868,686

That is the number of popular votes that Hillary Clinton had over Donald Trump. It was a number that was 2.1% more of the popular vote than Donald Trump won.

That is a number which is larger than the population of 16 States and District of Columbia (Nevada, New Mexico, Nebraska, West Virginia, Idaho, Hawaii, Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Montana Delaware, South Dakota,    Alaska, North Dakota, District of Columbia, Vermont, and Wyoming). It is slightly less than the populations of 4 States: Mississippi, Arkansas, Kansas, and Utah). It is slightly more than the combined populations of Alaska, North Dakota, District of Columbia, Vermont, and Wyoming (2,578,472).

It's also a number which is larger than most of the 100 largest US Cities (Only NYC and LA have a larger population).

Now, given that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by a significant margin: How did Donald Trump become President?

Russian Interference?
The Electoral College?

It was the Electoral College that made Trump President, not any foreign interference.

OK, let's do it right if we want to investigate why Trump is president.

First off, there needs to be an investigation of the US election process altogether from campaign funding to the actual mechanics of running them (e.g., gerrymandering).

Next, there needs to be an investigation of the Democratic Party and how they treated Bernie Sanders, which was the subject core to Russiagate. That was what all those hacked e-mails mentioned.

That leads into how did two of the most unpopular candidates ever get chosen to run for president?

A biggie is that there has to be an examination of the Electoral College, which was the real cause for Trump being President.

Finally, let's look into the misconduct of the press from the media blackout of a popular candidate to the pushing of a nonsensical foreign interference led to a Trump win (and why the fuck can't they shut up about it).

The bottom line is that Russiagate has been a big distraction from much more pressing problems.

See also:

• How did two unpopular candidates win?
• How the Hillary Clinton campaign deliberately "elevated" Donald Trump with its "pied piper" strategy

Of Course MSNBC and the US Mass media can't let Russiagate Drop.

It was stories like this that probably helped increase voter apathy.

The thing is that Clinton's winning the popular vote by a large margin, yet losing in the Electoral College totally changes the narrative. How did the Russians cause that outcome?

Russian Interference had nothing to do with Clinton's loss.

My Response to Congressman Adam Schiff

Who asked:

“My colleagues might think it’s okay that the Russians offered dirt on a Democratic candidate for president as part of what’s been described as an effort to help the Trump campaign. You might think that’s okay,” he starts, establishing a motif. “You might think it’s okay that when that dirt was offered to the president’s son, who played a pivotal role in the campaign, that the president’s son did not call the FBI or adamantly refuse. No, instead he said he would love it.”

Well, you have every reason to be upset, Congressman Schiff, since that dirt was internal Democratic Party communications that left the party not looking very good.

Toss in that the publication of those messages may have come from an internal Democratic Party leak who was upset about the Democratic Party failing to follow its internal rules. But it wasn't a revelation since most of that was being talked about amongst the Sanders Supporters.

Things like the Media blackout of Sanders and that the Democratic party and the media may have been behind what managed to get Trump into office.

Toss in the Clinton supporters said that these e-mails weren't going to be an issue. Remember that one? I sure do. But, it's really funny how this fuck up has to be atoned for. so find a convenient scapegoat by blaming the Russians.

Toss in the class action suit alleging that the DNC had committed fraud by taking donations in a “rigged” primary battle. Part of the lawsuit claimed that the DNC favoured Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton over Sanders which was in violation of the DNC charter.

Who was behind AP declaring Hillary Clinton the winner of the California and Several other primaries on the 6th of June, the day BEFORE the primaries?  Was that the Russians? Are you OK with that?

How about these allegations of Democratic misconduct? Are you OK with that? (I've tried to find compilations that show the actions of the DNC in 2016 in regard to suppressing dissent and Bernie Sanders campaign)

The following clip addresses the lack of democracy in the US: Internal forces are doing far more than "Russian Intervention."

Why the fuck didn't the Democrats do something about the Electoral College after the 2000 election? Why the fuck are you trying to get people to ignore that the Electoral College was behind Trump's victory in 2016? Are you OK with that?

Yeah, dude, you've got every reason on the planet to get all upset about the "Russian Collusion" thing because at the core of it all is Democratic Party bungling which you, your party, and the media don't want to take responsibility for. Are you OK with that?

Especially since it meant that your party preferred to lose with Hillary Clinton to an opponent who wasn't supposed to win instead of running with a popular candidate. Are you OK with that?

Yeah, it's a fuck of a lot easier to claim "foreign interference" instead of admitting your side fucked up and we ended up with Trump.

But you might be OK with the fact that YOUR PARTY FUCKED IT, which is why you want to keep the "Russian Interference" charade going on after the Mueller Investigation confirmed what I have been saying all along: That the real misconduct is internal to the US, in particular the DEMOCRATIC PARTY. And that the body that made Trump president was the Electoral College.

So, the congressman doth protest too much, methinks.

Because his party fucked it and he doesn't want that made public.

See also:

• The Real Costs of Russiagate
• RussiaGate as Organised Distraction
• Democratic Autopsy - Autopsy: The Democratic Party in Crisis
• America Is Not a Democracy
• Here Are 7 Things That Went Wrong on the Democratic Convention's First Day
• Hillary Clinton's Post Truth Claims as to why she Lost to Donald Trump
• Russiagate is Excuse for Democratic Party Failure
• How the Hillary Clinton campaign deliberately "elevated" Donald Trump with its "pied piper" strategy
• Deep Faith in the Deep State Gives Dems a Set Back

The Problem of Analysing the US 2016 Presidential Election

There's a big problem with trying to analyse the US 2016 Presidential Election.

TRUMP WASN'T POPULARLY ELECTED

He was elected by the Electoral College, which isn't tied to the popular vote.

As I like to point out, that Hillary Clinton had a significant amount of the popular vote kind of trashes most of the "she was unpopular" analysis. Since she WAS popular: just not where and how it counted.

So, talking about what the Clinton campaign and the Democrats did to lose the election seems wrong. Unless you are doing it in a strategic manner.

The Clinton campaign thought that no one would vote for trump. That led to the assumption that most of the brown states in this map would vote for Clinton. That's why there were all the predictions of a "landslide" for Clinton.

She could have pulled off a win if she had taken Florida and any one of AZ, MI, NC, PA, or WI, but she didn't. But that isn't really about the popular vote as much as it is about the workings of the Electoral College and failing to realise that a "safe" state may not be that safe (e.g., MI, PA, and WI).

I'm going to add that I learned that Andrew Therriault, the former DNC director of data science, reacted, “Irony of her bashing DNC data: our models never had MI/WI/PA looking even close to safe. Her team thought they knew better.””

The real upshot of all this is that what counted were the Electoral College votes and getting enough to get all a states votes: since Clinton probably would have won if the Electoral College votes somehow reflected the popular vote.

But the real bottom line assumption was that there was no way she would lose to Donald Trump.

Boy, we're they WRONG.

See also:

• Hillary Clinton's Post Truth Claims as to why she Lost to Donald Trump

Remember Whitewater?

I was at some American Bar Association thing during the early Clinton Years where Webb Hubbell attracted a lot of attention since President Clinton had made him an Associate Attorney General. He was one of the many to fall from the investigations into President Clinton.

But one thing that came out of the Whitewater investigation was Hillary Clinton's Cattle Futures Trading:

Guided by her friend Jim Blair, an experienced commodities trader, Hillary began investing in cattle futures, and saw her initial $1,000 investment grow to nearly $100,000 in less than a year. That gain came in for considerable scrutiny during Bill's presidency; one analysis estimated that even under the most generous of assumptions, the odds of a return that large during the period in question are about one in 31 trillion. Hillary was also allowed to buy 10 cattle contracts (normally worth $12,000) with only $1,000 in her trading account, increasing suspicions that she had received favorable treatment because Bill held political office. A later White House investigation into the trades found no evidence Hillary committed any trading violations.

OK, that last part about "no evidence Hillary committed any trading violations" is a fudge: the statute of limitations had tolled. That meant that there is no way that Hillary Clinton could be investigated for insider trading: no matter how slimy this affair appears. So, it's been something of a footnote in Hillary Clinton's career.

Here's 60 Minutes' coverage on this:

On the other hand, REFCO, the financial services company that handled these trades is another thing. Looking into that company's history one finds that it had a long history of shady deals finally collapsing in $430 Million in bad debts.

Anyway, for the people who want to point out all the non-Russian collusion prosecutions that came from the Mueller report: I really wouldn't chortle since Hillary Clinton came out of Whitewater smelling like shit.

Enough that it was one of the many reasons I couldn't vote for her.

Although, the Russiagate thing seems really similar to this in that the Trump supporters see it as a vindication of Trump. The Russiagaters have lost perspective and see the result as something successful even if the prosecutions are in no way related to the issue of Russian influence.

And some of them may never result in charges actually being brought against foreign nationals.

On the other hand, Hillary Clinton's supporters have a lot of nerve talking about allegations which will never result in charges when you consider the Cattle Futures trading thing.

See also:

• Whitewater, explained for people who don't remember the Clinton presidency
• Washingtonpost.com: Whitewater Time Line
• FBI’s top lawyer believed Hillary Clinton should face charges, but was talked out of it

Any serious investigation of "Russian Influence" needed to look at both parties.

I don't think either of the two parties has clean hands in the "foreign influence" and election rigging thing. The Dems were basically caught screwing Bernie and pushing Trump in the e-mails the Russians were alleged to have given to Wikileaks.

There have been non-MSM media coverage which questioned the Russiagate thing.


Consortium News has republished articles originally appearing when they called the entire fiasco into question now that Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s final report resulted in no one being accused of “colluding” with Russia to steal the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Consortium’s Bob Parry was in the forefront of Russia-gate scepticism, recognizing its domestic and geopolitical dangers.

An irony of the escalating hysteria about the Trump camp’s contacts with Russians is that one presidential campaign in 2016 did exploit political dirt that supposedly came from the Kremlin and other Russian sources. Friends of that political campaign paid for this anonymous hearsay material, shared it with American journalists and urged them to publish it to gain an electoral advantage. But this campaign was not Donald Trump’s; it was Hillary Clinton’s.

Personally,I think that any investigation of election misconduct in 2016 needs to look at both parties and not focus on one or the other. On the other hand, you have to question whether a candidate who acted as if he wanted to lose the Election, Trump, was in anyway really doing anything wrong.

Anyway, there is a lot wrong, but I don't think Russiagate is the real problem here.

See also:

• Consortium News’ Record on Russia-gate—A Series of Articles on How CN Covered the ‘Scandal’: No. 1—‘The Sleazy Origins of Russia-gate’
• How the Hillary Clinton campaign deliberately "elevated" Donald Trump with its "pied piper" strategy

HILLARY CLINTON WON THE POPULAR VOTE!!!

I feel like a broken record, but the Mueller Report thing vindicated people who were Russiagate Sceptics.

Hillary Clinton won the popular vote with 65,853,516 (48.5% votes) to Trump's 62,984,825 (46.4% votes), but lost in the electoral college by receiving 232 (43.1%) of the electoral votes to Trump's 306 (56.8%) vote

That fact pretty much refutes the "Russian Influence" bullshit.

While the Electoral College may suck, it does make it hard for external forces to screw up an election. Assuming each state (+ DC) gives all its votes to the Republican or Democrat using the "winner take all system", there There are 2 to the 51st power or 2.25 quadrillion (2,250,000,000,000,000) possible outcomes! Since there are no states with one or two electoral votes, a final total of 1, 2, 536 or 537 is not possible, assuming each state gives all its votes to the popular vote winner of that state.

That is because there are two possible outcomes (blue or red) for each state and DC, this is the same as flipping a coin 51 times and recording, in order, the outcome of each.

Anyway, there are a lot of ways that Clinton could have won the Electoral vote, but she didn't for whatever reason. But I am pretty sure that those reasons were domestic, and came from the Democratic Party: NOT FOREIGN.

So, the fact that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote should have been the end of the Russian Influence shit.

But that would mean that people would have to look at what is wrong with US Elections.

The Third Party Mindset.

OK, this blog post is from a Libertarian site. It's not Green, but it shows the mindset of people who voted for the third parties. Switch "Jill Stein" for \"gary Johnson" and this could be taken from a Green Party site:

I’m so tired of hearing this nonsense from both sides: "A vote for Gary Johnson is a vote for Hillary.  A vote for Gary Johnson is a vote for Trump."

For Heaven’s sake, ENOUGH of that broken record!  Remember the Electoral College?  That institution that guarantees one party will take all the state’s electoral votes in the presidential election?  Unless you live in 1 of 9 or 10 battleground states, the Electoral College guarantees your vote doesn’t matter.

Yep. There was a lot of talk about whether one was in a safe state or not. But the real bottom line was this:

5% in the general election will get us federal funds, automatic ballot access in all states, and inclusion in the national polls and the debates.  Gary Johnson has polled in the 20-30% range between last week and today.

The real issue for a lot of third party voters was to get the 5% ballot access since we knew winning was impossible. On the other hand, the 5% share of the vote for a third party seemed possible.

Maybe we could have done something to change the way elections are run in the US.

Source:

• Electoral College: your vote doesn't count in 40 states

More proof that the Election Rigging is Internal, not External.

Exhibit No 1: The US Presidential Debates.

Here is a quote from one of the many articles I found when I went looking for the statement from the League of Women Voters about why they stopped hosting the Presidential debates (do a search on "League of Women Voters Presidential debates" for some interesting reading).

The Commission on Presidential Debates, a non-profit institution, is organizing the debates this year, as it has since its founding in 1987. Led by a board of high ranking members of the two major parties, the Commission largely operates behind closed doors, where it pre-screens questions and vets moderators. Though opaque, this week audiences caught a glimpse into how the body makes decisions. Its chief, Janet Brown, said it was the duty of the candidates, not of the moderator, to fact check each other.

Here is the video I was looking for:

The takeaway line from the speech is:

The League of Women Voters is withdrawing sponsorship of the presidential debates … because the demands of the two campaign organizations would perpetrate a fraud on the American voter. It has become clear to us that the candidates’ organizations aim to add debates to their list of campaign-trail charades devoid of substance, spontaneity and answers to tough questions. The League has no intention of becoming an accessory to the hoodwinking of the American public.

The League made sure that the debates were run in a truly impartial manner before the two parties created The Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD), which is a non-profit corporation established in 1987 under the joint sponsorship of the Democratic and Republican political parties in the United States.

If that doesn't stink to you, then you probably should go back to believing the Russians rigged the election. This commenter pretty much sums up what the debates have become:

Instead of any substantive exploration of the candidates' proposals, we will be treated to a mélange of showmanship and complaining, obstinacy and irrelevance, petty quibbles, grandstanding, pandering, half-truths, and punchlines. The candidates will be rehearsed, the moderators timid, the questions calculated, and the answers at once too short and too long. We will learn little to nothing that could not be discovered at this very moment by any Google user of modest skill. And inevitably, we will drink — a shot for every boast, a chug for every lie — because drinking games have become as guaranteed a fixture of our presidential debates as the candidates themselves. Is it any wonder debate viewership has been on a steady decline for decades?

The bottom line is that the CPD has made it hard for third parties to get involved in the debates. Toss in that the debates have no real substance. That's because they are a pointless exercise in duopoly PR.

There is a reason that Climate Change got short shrift  no attention whatsoever in the 2016 debates. It is impossible for third parties to get the 15% share of the voting public without any publicity.

The CPD is one of many examples of how the US elections are not "free and fair".

On the other hand, isn't having a president who wasn't popularly elected enough to persuade you of that?

See Also:

• Presidential Debates under the League of Women Voters
• The secretive commission that controls the presidential debates
• How Presidential Debates Became ‘a Fraud on the American Voter’
• How Third Parties Are Kept Out Of Presidential Debates
• End the presidential debate cartel 
• How the Hillary Clinton campaign deliberately "elevated" Donald Trump with its "pied piper" strategy

I don't get why Russiagate is a thing.

OK, the Mueller report is out: where are the indictments? For that matter why isn't everybody talking about it?

crickets chirp.

Let's toss in that James Clapper is alleged to be a perjurer. But like Hillary Clinton and the insider trading thing we can't talk about it since the statute of limitations has tolled. No matter how much both of those things stink.

Anyway, lots of talk about nothing which resulted in all the same issues still being around to cause trouble.

I am betting that Trump gets a second term because of the failure to address the problems that plagued the 2016 election.  His victory will be from a failure to learn from those mistakes.

See also:

• Why 2020 Democrats Are Nervous About the Mueller Report 
• The Mueller report no one's talking about - POLITICO

Reasonable Doubt

Ok, the presupposition is that Russians somehow interfered in the US election. Question would be how?

Were they responsible for Hillary Clinton being the Democratic Party Nominee?
Were they responsible for Trump being the Republican one?
Were they responsible for Bernie Sanders?
Given the Democrats made it clear that the e-mails weren't an issue during the election: why would their revealing them have rigged the election?

Since I mentioned "attempt", there is another legal issue here called "reasonable doubt", which is the standard in a criminal prosecution. The evidence must be so convincing that no reasonable person would ever question the defendant’s guilt. The standard requires that the evidence offer no logical explanation or conclusion other than that the defendant committed the crime. The doubt doesn't need to be absolute, only reasonable.

“Beyond a reasonable doubt” doesn’t mean, however, that the prosecution must eliminate all unreasonable doubts a jury could possibly have. Nor must the prosecution prove the case beyond a shadow of a doubt or to an absolute certainty. These would be impossible burdens because only witnesses to an alleged crime can be certain—and even then, not all witnesses can be certain. Rather, this highest of standards requires—after consideration of all facts—only one logical conclusion: that the defendant is indeed guilty.

So, if there is another explanation, which is far more plausible, then we have reasonable doubt. Anyone pushing Russiagate has to address the fact that Hillary Clinton was an unpopular candidate who ran a poor campaign that lost in the electoral college.

That means we can have something which is a far more obvious and better explanation, then we have reasonable doubt. Anything that makes the allegations questionable is reasonable doubt.

In my case, I have yet to see how the Russians did anything beyond point out the flaws in the system. What happened was more like someone witnessing a crime and then reporting it.

See also:

• Critical Cybersecurity Takeaways From Hillary’s Email Debacle
•  Hillary Clinton’s emails: What you need to know

Why isn't stuff like this being discussed in USMSM when they mention Russiagate?

More evidence that any rigging or corruption in the 2016 Presidential Election was home grown.

I'm sorry, but you have a fuck of a lot of explaining about the suppression of Bernie Sanders and his supporters during the primary to address before anyone even thinks of mentioning Russians.

Let's toss this in for good measure.

Attempt in law.

Now people are telling me that the Russians attempted to rig the US election.

OK, Black letter: Attempt is comprised of three elements: (1) intent to commit a crime; (2) conduct that constitutes a substantial step toward completing the crime and (3) a failure to complete the crime.

The question is were elements (1) and (2) present?

Now, maybe the Russians DID intend to rig the election, did they do anything substantial to complete that crime?

On the other hand, we have internal DNC memos where they talk about having Trump be the "Pied Piper Candidate"?

Now, it's a totally different kettle of fish if the people who actually DID the crime were US citizens and the Russians were the ones who reported it.

There is a difference between and attempt and reporting a crime. I think the Russians reported what was going on.

The Russians didn't instigate it. The DNC did.

See also:

• Wikileaks: Podesta e-mails Pied Piper
• 5 Missteps That May Have Doomed the Clinton Campaign
• The Podesta Pied Piper Plan is not a conspiracy, it’s the truth.

More Electoral Colege, or ONCE AGAIN: No, the Green Party, or any other third party, did not cost Clinton the election

Another point the "Greens cost Clinton the election" crowd miss in their fixation with the three states Clinton thought were safe (Michigan, Pennsylvania,and Wisconsin) miss is that Clinton could also have won with just the votes from Florida and any one of the three "safe states".

The Florida scenario would also mean that she would have won with 21 States and the District of Columbia (see the atttached pic for how this all would have worked out).

If anything, the fact that the popular vote is meaningless is one of the more significant reasons for voting Green (toss in the Environment is far more my "single issue" if we are going there). 

While people may try to shame people who vote third party, the fact is that the popular vote is meaningless as long as the Electoral College is in effect.

Additionally, the Electoral College protecting the small states argument is also fallactious.

If anything, the 2000 and 2016 Elections have demonstrated that the Electoral College is another relic from the US Constitution that needs to be purged.

See Also

• Did Jill Stein voters deliver Donald Trump the presidency?
• No, Jill Stein Did Not Cost Hillary Clinton the White House
• Did third-party candidates Jill Stein and Gary Johnson lose Clinton the election? 
• Jill Stein: Democratic Spoiler Or Scapegoat? | FiveThirtyEight
• The Electoral College Was Meant to Stop Men Like Trump From Being President
• The Electoral College is Profoundly Undemocratic By Design 
• Trump owes his victory to America’s unique Electoral College system
• How the Electoral College Rigged the Election for Donald Trump
• The Electoral College effect — in 3 cool charts
• America's Unique and Controversial Electoral College  
• 9 Things You May Not Know About the Electoral College
• Hillary Clinton’s Popular-Vote Victory Is Unprecedented—and Still Growing
• Why Electoral College wins are bigger than popular vote ones
• Hillary Clinton's Lead Is Greater Than Multiple Former Presidents'