Not really, even if it's a great idea there's bound to be some negative consequence at some point.

If Obama is the one that did it then that mini-scandal is politically useless.

But if it's delayed till after the election then Hillary has to own the decision, and it becomes a talking point for the next election cycle.

Here's what I'd do if I were Russia and I wanted to screw with the election.

Hack the voting machines and state websites for tabulating and reporting results, and have them all go Trump by a few points.

Of course people will realize something is screwy from the exit polls and the voting patterns. They'll audit, figure out what's going on, and the real results will get out, it might take a few hours or a few days but it will get settled and they'll figure out Hillary won.

But do you really expect Trump to just step aside at that point? He'll refuse to concede, insist he won, claim they're cheating and stealing the election from him, and a lot of his supporters will go along for the ride.

It will be like birtherism x10, your already dysfunctional political system will go even further downhill and Russia will have that much more leeway to throw its weight around the neighbourhood.

That's not as true as it used to be. India does still buy military hardware from Russia but they buy less now than they used to and they buy more from the US than they used to. Also, Russia has been cozying up to Pakistan and that doesn't play well in India. Actually the whole "India loves the USSR/Russia" thing was pure idiocy that Ghandi and his cronies started to show how "independent" they were from the West. So India constantly voted as the USSR dictated in the UN and served as an international apologist for them. The only reason the US and Pakistan were ever friends is that India made it so by flatly rejecting the West at the time. The US wanted some influence in the region, so it took what it could get. It's really difficult for me to point to anything worthwhile that India has gotten out of its subservient relationship with the USSR and Russia, which is no doubt why the current Indian government is moving closer to the USA.

Basketball makes up a bigger part of African American culture, generating an excess amount of talent. This is also why there's so many more elite Canadian hockey players. It also explains why volleyball players are disproportionately white (despite a similar height bias).

And yes, there may also be a difference in athleticism, similar to how East Africans are great distance runners and West Africans great sprinters.

However, you can still have discrimination even when the two populations have different talent distributions. One way is by controlling for the talent of the people of each race. If equally talented black basketball players got favoured over white counterparts that would be evidence of discrimination.

Just like equally talented white applicants were being favoured over their Asian counterparts at Palantir.

You might want to rethink how "reasonable" that age discrimination is. Let me give you a true story. Ever heard of Lillian Gish? She lived to be 100 and got famous in the silent screen era, although she did make movies after the sound era started. She worked with Lionel Barrymore on a film, who was roughly 15 years older than her, and played his grand-daughter. Then some years later she played his daughter in another film. Then by 1946 she played his wife in a film. She quipped that if they ever had worked together again she'd have probably played his mother.

Probably a combination of credit card charging and private loans. You might be surprised at the terms allowed under private loans for schooling. Extreme variable rates happen a lot where the student gets suckered into signing it for very low interest rates at first but by 10 years into the loan, the interest rate could be triple or worse if it's still not paid off. Many students grossly underestimate the time needed to pay off these loans and fall hopelessly behind.

Lots of things were probably illegal under Soviet law, like forced mass starvation and mass deportations of Tartars from Crimea.

And Crimea promptly decided they wanted to be Ukrainian.

I wonder how my ancestors emigrated Ukraine ~120 years ago? Were they time travellers or does the question of what an independent nation is get very confusing once you start going back through history?

If you don't want a forced resignation don't open fire on protesters.

A coup followed by an open election which the coup leaders lost.

As exclusively shown on Russia Today (and I mean exclusively).

"Do you want to join Russia?
a) Yes I want to join Russia.
b) No, I understand you're not really asking.
c) Are you even going to bother counting this or do you already have the results typed up?"

How generous of them.

Like Putin sending in Russian troops to take over Crimea, installing a former mobster from a fringe party as a puppet Prime Minister, and then holding a fake vote vote to join Russia.

Figuring out how to present data in a way that doesn't mislead readers in sections where the data gives misleading results.

Because (if I recall correctly) of a lot of the data was proprietary data they weren't allowed to release.

Because they knew people would go quote-mining for things like "hide the decline". Not perfect behaviour but understandable.

I'm not going to go into the rest because it doesn't matter. You've seen the answers before and you'll see them again, you don't care because those facts don't fit your conclusion to global warming being a fraud.

You mean there is a massive list of things that would be affected by a changing climate?

What an entirely obvious idea!

There are 1.7 million post-secondary teachers in the US. Certainly a few hundred thousand full professors in the sciences.

The fact that one 87 year old retired professor called it a scam a year before he died is hardly an effective appeal to authority.

(and yes, I read his actual reasoning, it doesn't hold up)

Cushy ambassadorships go to prominent donors (or their kids). Fishy though far from a "price list", and it's also a standard practice for every administration. It's unfortunate but hardly a revelation, especially since I remember this stuff from 2009.

The POTUS using a pseudonym to communicate via email is hardly a scandal, more of an extra layer of security in case someone does get their hands on classified emails (and possibly a way to make finding records more difficult).

And without knowing his email setup it doesn't prove that he knew her actual email address, only that someone in the White House IT Dept knew it and configured his client to handle it.

Are you thinking of a different batch of emails?

I saw some emails suggesting that the DNC really preferred Clinton (duh) but didn't really do anything pro-Clinton other than try to influence some reporters on stories that also involved the DNC.

This I have not heard of.

Yeah... I follow this stuff pretty closely and I don't even know what fact you're trying to twist.

And if the talks included a quid pro quo about Russia disrupting the US election to help Trump win?

Hell, even if they didn't include include subtle mentions of Russia manipulating the elections what other reason would Trump's campaign have to secretly talk to Russia during the campaign? If Trump wins the election he's got 2 months to set up his transition, certainly that's more than enough time to have discussions with Russia as the President elect.

Secretly telling a rival power, who is already accused of disrupting the elections, that you're going to be their best friend is really damn suspicious.

I'm not sure why you talked about Daily Kos except for the fact that they're both left online news resources.

They're completely different outfits.

As for Vox, I've been reading it a decent amount and I'd consider them journalism. They're not investigative journalism, they don't send reporters digging through old court records to dig up scandals, but it's still journalism.

They mostly do analysis, interviews, and long-form essays. It definitely comes with a wonkish highly progressive centre-left viewpoint (ie, they're big Clinton fans), but it's a valuable resource for understanding the world.

There are slightly bloggy aspects as well, but I don't think that's a bad thing (as you imply). The weakness in traditional journalism is it gets myopic by focusing on what just happened and losing the larger context. Vox's objective seems to be tracking issues long term while adding context and analysis.