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He was chosen by the RNC

You misspelled "Hillary".

https://www.politico.com/magaz...

The President is responsible for the activities of the people who work for him. That's the job.

Oh really? Then are we to presume the con artist is responsible for the FCC lying about being "hacked" when the Net Neutrality public response was out, when in reality they were overwhelmed by people who wanted to keep NN in place? Instead, the head of the FCC used at least one person's dead mother to post a fake comment.

Or how about the former head of the EPA, Scott Pruitt, who was essentially bought by big industry, who spent taxpayer money like it was water, had a security detail to rival the president's, who had secretive rooms installed (at taxpayer expense), and got a sweetheart deal from an energy lobbyist on a condo rental?

Or the head of FEMA who used government vehicles to drive back and forth between his home in North Carolina and Washington, a six hour trip, each weekend?

Considering all the scandals in this administration, it doesn't appear the con artist cares one wit about the activities of those who work for him. Even more so when one considers the criminals who worked on his campaign and are going to jail.

As a member of the Republican administration, shouldn't Ajit Pai be happy that California is executing it's State's Rights...

GOP only favors States' Rights when the Democrats are in power, just like "fiscal discipline".

In practice, GOP is in the back pockets of corporations. Well, both parties are, to be fair (though not to the same degree.) We are more plutocracy than democracy. Campaign donations are legalized bribery and should be capped, but the GOP courts ended most capping, arguing more or less that such bribery is "free speech" and that corporations should have most of the same rights as humans.

It does look like we are on a slippery slope whereby the richer the rich get, the more money they have to bribe to keep getting richer in a feedback cycle. The increasing inequality is objective evidence of such a cycle. Beware, though, history shows it may end badly.

I don't know the minutia of why the catering firm would be named but I think focusing on that is a red herring compared to the actual suspicion on Concord management.

Well that's a pretty good bit of reasoning, but apparently Mueller never actually expected to have a trial of any kind and was indicting to show he was indicting.

A federal judge has rejected special counsel Robert Mueller’s request to delay the first court hearing in a criminal case charging three Russian companies and 13 Russian citizens with using social media and other means to foment strife among Americans in advance of the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

In a brief order Saturday evening, U.S. District Court Judge Dabney Friedrich offered no explanation for her decision to deny a request prosecutors made Friday to put off the scheduled Wednesday arraignment for Concord Management and Consulting, one of the three firms charged in the case.

The 13 people charged in the high-profile indictment in February are considered unlikely to ever appear in a U.S. court. The three businesses accused of facilitating the alleged Russian troll farm operation — the Internet Research Agency, Concord Management, and Concord Catering — were also expected to simply ignore the American criminal proceedings.

https://www.politico.com/story...

Yes yes sentence first, trial later. Wouldn't want lack of evidence, lack of a criminal, lack of a crime getting in the way of justice.

I hate to say this, but the executive order is likely illegal and a violation of the first amendment. The constitution extends its protections to foreign nationals while they reside in the country. Of course as Alan Dershowitz has pointed out, so far no one has a crime that actually involves the Russians. Well unless you count Mueller indicting a company that didn't exist until after the elections

https://www.politico.com/story...

If the Russians have time travel this is all moot anyway.

What we're really struggling over is whether this event means we should do something about greenhouse gas emissions.

Let's put it this way. The con artist doesn't believe in climate change and his next big step is to curtail methane gas emission regulations.

That said, he also used global warming (his words) as the excuse to build a sea wall for his failing Irish golf course:

"If the predictions of an increase in sea level rise as a result of global warming prove correct, however, it is likely that there will be a corresponding increase in coastal erosion rates not just in Doughmore Bay but around much of the coastline of Ireland. In our view, it could reasonably be expected that the rate of sea level rise might become twice of that presently occurring. ... As a result, we would expect the rate of dune recession to increase."

"As with other predictions of global warming and its effects, there is no universal consensus regarding changes in these events," it states. "Our advice is to assume that the recent average rate of dune recession will not alter greatly in the next few decades, perhaps as far into the future as 2050 as assumed in the [government study] but that subsequently an increase in this rate is more likely than not."

.. Americans didn't vote for him, and so they don't feel any need to go along with his random bullshit.

Actually, they did. Fair and square. Even if you are thickheaded and misguided enough to only go by the so-called popular vote, which is honestly irrelevant in a representative republic, and toss the constitution in a paper shredder because it didn't yield the results you wanted this time around, it was still damn near half the voting populace that voted for him. Electorally, it was a landslide; popular vote-wise, it was not, it was actually still fairly close. 2 or 3 million out of 200 million registered voters is just a .5% to 1% difference at best.
https://www.politico.com/story...
I certainly didn't expect it but it's what happened, and maybe you ought to follow Hillary's advice before the election to accept the results; or be a happy hypocrite.

I don't see a lot of calls for violence on the #antifa hashtag. Funny enough, most of the posts seem to be opposed to anti-fa (with a few leaning towards violence...

Here's a thought: Antifa is just a boogieman created by Fox News and other right wing media outlets to mask and excuse right wing violence with "Whataboutism".

So you have seen calls for violence on the antifa hashtag.

Antifa is a domestic terrorist organization. Is the Independent a right wing media outlet? What about Politico?

Defending active terrorism and a terrorist group causing thousands of crimes, many of them violent, and over 100 million in property damage within the US alone is a deplorable thing to do.

You mean the fake news about Fake News. The deranged conspiracy theory that Putin knew years in advance that a failed game show host could be president, and set out to get him elected by spending a few thousand dollars on Twitter trolls in a $9 billion election.

Yep, that's the one, a ridiculous conspiracy theory thrown out as the entire basis for the criminal investigation into collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.

FTFY. It's not people who learned a damned thing about Iraq claiming that that Putin is such a master chess player. One that he started grooming a lecherous businessman between one of his several bankruptcies to be president, yet completely unable to anticipate the blowback. Oh, and that genius Putin was dumb enough to collude with someone as dumb as Trump, which means the NSA/CIA/FBI would know, and so too would have President Hillary. Who had the election in the bag until she simultaneously slapped her base in the face while not bothering to campaign in a third of the country.

It's alllllll Russiagaters.

He's switched from "it didn't happen" to "I didn't know about it" to "it wasn't illegal".

Which it isn't, if you're referring to the meeting between Junior and the Russian lobbyist who offered to give dirt on the Clintons. Which didn't actually give any dirt to the Trump campaign, but said lobbyist met Fusion GPS founder both before and after going to Trump Tower. You know, the same law firm behind the Steele Dossier. There's also more dembot swiftboating here, as the Clinton camp was perfectly happy accepting dirt on Trump from Ukrainians.

Pointing out democratic hypocrisy is invariably met with "she lost, get over it" or "that's whatabboutery". Tough cookies. Either you want Hillary indicted for collusion and actually paying foreign intelligence agents to swing an election (see Steele Dossier again), plus money laundering for the Hillary Victory Fund, or you're a partisan hack.

I guess the next logical step is a Nixon style "It's not illegal if the president does it".

Yeah, sure - if there was no break in at the Watergate hotel, no secret tapes recorded in the Oval Office, and no Saturday Night Massacre. Just an unhinged conspiracy theory from Democrats and never-Nixon Republicans that Nixon was a crook.

Another plot hole: why would Russia try to interfere in an election were both parties have been virulently anti-Russian for over a century. Bush tore up the ABM treaty and ringed Russia with missile "defense" systems that would allow the US a higher chance of launching a first-strike and surviving the counter-attack. Obama overthrew a democracy on Russia's border, starting bringing it into NATO and had the largest number of troops in eastern Europe since WWII. To contain Russia's "aggression".

You guys have as much evidence as the Birthers and Chem Trailers have to back up their nutjob theories. But at least those wackos weren't trying to start WWIII.

An evangelical apologist? Go figure...

https://newrepublic.com/minute...
https://www.rollingstone.com/p...
https://www.al.com/living/inde...

And next on evangelical docket? Getting rid of Sessions to protect Trump.

https://www.politico.com/story...

None of those have anything at all to do with Trump or his campaign though, especially nothing to do with The Russians!

LoL! You're a funny guy!

> (collusion isn't actually even a crime)

Collusion is the descriptive word the news media has settled on to cover many potential illegal actions by the Trump campaign, which could range from aiding and abetting (18 USC 2) to conspiracy per se (18 USC 371) to conspiring to violate several potentially applicable laws like: 18 USC 1030—fraud and related activity in connection with computers; 18 USC 1343—wire fraud; or 52 USC 30121—contributions and donations by foreign nationals. Also, 18 USC 2381—for, contrary to a widespread belief that there must be a declared war, the Justice Department as recently as 2006 indicted for “aid and comfort” to our enemies, the form of collusion better known as treason. Collusion is the perfect word to cover such crimes, pejorative and inclusive.

-- What Is Collusion? Is It Even a Crime?, POLITICO Magazine, July 12, 2017

Why? Because black people can't get ID cards apparently.

No. Because poor people can't get ID cards because poor.
And we've arranged this country so that 90% of black people are poor.
But plenty of poor whites get screwed over too. That's kinda how racism works, there is always collateral damage and it always falls on the weakest.

Also, the biggest purveyor of the myth of voter impersonation - Kris Kobach the Kansas secretary of state - got his ass handed to him in court because not only could he not prove it in court, he couldn't even prove it in real life either - with all the resources of the state he was only able to find nine, mostly senior-citizen republicans, who genuinely thought they were following the law. For example:

“I’d vote for president in one state, and local issues in both places,” he told POLITICO Magazine. He said he’d been doing this ever since his property tax bill on a hotel he owned in Goodland had doubled in one year in 2004.

Because they were provisional ballots, they were never actually counted. But that didn’t matter to Kobach who in 2015, after a local prosecutor’s decision not to open a case, charged Wilson with three felonies and seven misdemeanors.

But it gets better. Turns out it was all a scam. Kris Kobach of Kansas personally made a million dollars by ginning up fears of immigrants, getting them to pass unconstitutional ordinances and then hiring him to defend them and lose in court.

Farmers Branch, Texas, wound up owing $7 million to Kobach and a team of lawyers. Hazleton, Pa., took on debt to pay $1.4 million and eventually had to file for a state bailout. Fremont, Neb., raised property taxes to pay for Kobach’s services. None of the towns is currently enforcing an ordinance he helped craft.

Racism has always been a way for the rich to grift on the poor of all races. Hell, the KKK required its members to buy over-priced hoods from KKK-certified tailors who gave kickbacks to KKK leaders.

What are you talking about - Obama said he directly talked to Putin and told him to cut it out before the 2016 election. You mean that didn't work?!?

Obama says he told Putin to ‘cut it out’ on Russia hacking

President Barack Obama said Friday that he told Russian President Vladimir Putin in September to “cut it out” in regard to allegations that his nation engaged in cyberattacks against the U.S. electoral process. Obama added that further hacking by Russia did not occur following Obama’s admonition.

What else could Obama do? Obama asked McConnell to issue a joint statement condemning Russia's election meddling and McConnell refused.

McConnell deliberately obstructed the defence to an attack on his nation's electoral foundations. When this is all said and done McConnell should be sitting in a cell next to Trump.

What are you talking about - Obama said he directly talked to Putin and told him to cut it out before the 2016 election. You mean that didn't work?!?

Obama says he told Putin to ‘cut it out’ on Russia hacking

President Barack Obama said Friday that he told Russian President Vladimir Putin in September to “cut it out” in regard to allegations that his nation engaged in cyberattacks against the U.S. electoral process. Obama added that further hacking by Russia did not occur following Obama’s admonition.

Go ahead, Mod me a troll because you disagree with reality. Destroying ballots to avoid a recount while subpoenaed for said ballots happens.

You are completely missing what I am trying to say. Let us pretend we are attending a conference on qualfonic energy, which is completely made up. Let us suppose that someone has just given an address with a serious criticism of this form of energy. Would you be more likely to trust this criticism if it came from someone who has had nothing good to say about it or from someone who was a major proponent of it? Hopefully you can understand why people might take the comments from the latter person more seriously given no other information.

Neither. They both have motivations to lie. I'd want to fact check the claims of either person because the first one might be inventing a criticism and the second one may be omitting other major problems. You're a fool if you think either of them is more trustworthy than the other. Furthermore, a proponent admitting a minor flaw, is a classic hustle technique to get you to buy into the product that they're pitching.

If this were not the case you would understand why a source pointing out all of the things that Trump has lied about or misrepresented is not sufficient proof of your claim. You need to compare it to other politicians and I am not convinced that Trump is significantly worse. He certainly is not a truthful politician, but few are and we tend to forget the myriad lies and cover-ups of controversies that surround past politicians. I suspect that if we were discussing some subject where you were not in agreement with the conclusion, you would be quick to employ the same arguments I have used here, but you dislike Trump so much that your emotions blind you to reason.

Trump's lies corrode democracy.
There's a long history of presidential untruths. Here's why Donald Trump is 'in a class by himself.
How Does Trump Stack Up Against the Best — and Worst — Presidents?
Trump’s Lies vs. Obama’s
Donald Trump running the most dishonest White House ever, says historian
Comparing Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump on the Truth-O-Meter
Are Clinton and Trump the Biggest Liars Ever to Run for President?

That is not to say you are a bad person, because everyone is that way about something that they take personally. My point is that in this particular area, you are not a good source absent significant and quality evidence.

How much evidence do you need? If you're really interested, there's a lot more stuff on Trump's lack of honesty and his place in the world of American politics in respect to that, but I think it's telling that presidential historians (who ought to know quite a bit about past presidents) have (spoilers) ranked him last place out of all of America's presidents. That's pretty unusual, most politicians get ranked in the middle somewhere during their terms, neither best nor worst.

In this country, the exchange rate for gold to silver has been determined by “the state” in 1792. At the very latest from that point on, “the state” had control over the “financial system” in its entirety. The idea that cash somehow protects you is even more absurd as its value has been controlled directly the lastest since the introduction of the classic gold standard in the 1870s.

Cryptocurrencies can easily be banned at which point the man on the street will want to be involved with them about as much as he wants to be involved with child pornography. Nobody outside of the “I only use Protonmail and Signal” crowd cared about crypto beyond trying to make a quick buck.

I don’t have strong views on Trump either way, but he was absolutely offering to fabricate jobs through sovereign intervention. The entirety of the Rust Belt was told that we will tariff foreign goods and “return the jobs back to America”, the most prominent example being Carrier. This is literally “the state” forcing companies to create jobs for some people at the cost of everyone else. This is day care-level economics.

Indeed, I don’t speak for my fellow citizens, because I am not an elected representative. Here is the person that my fellow citizens have elected to represent them and he does speak for me and my fellow citizens: https://www.politico.com/story... As a country, we are perfectly fine with surveillance for the purposes of security. Cash too will be abolished the moment it becomes convenient, nobody will cry about it outside of a few drug dealers, illegals and internet paranoiacs.

Frankly, I am really growing a little tired of this exchange. You seem to be very opinionated on things you obviously don’t know anything about and that is hardly much fun for me. Your entire argument boils down to “boo boo I lived in a shit country with shit institutions, so we should make the public sector as inefficient as possible and everyone who thinks otherwise will go on my boo boo list”. Like all extremist stances, it’s silly and poorly thought through. I firmly recommend you reading any introductory work on institutional economics.

If Republicans were really serious about illegal immigration they'd propose solutions to illegal immigration that would actually stand a chance at working well like making the already existing e-verify system mandatory for employers in this country. No jobs for illegal immigrants means no illegal immigrants, it's incredibly simple.

How is that going to happen when Democrats opposed an amnesty grant for "Dreamers" in exchange for an immigration overhaul? Do you think they're ever going to accept nationally mandated e-verify? Democrat states have become "sanctuary" states. Democrats have become the party of illegal immigrants.

But no, stupid ideas like a massively expensive wall that will do nothing to change the simple supply and demand nature of illegal immigration and the labor they provide and thus do very little to solve the problem is what's popular right now among Republicans.

It was only 25 billion for the wall, along with an end to chain migration, and a focus on merit-based immigration. What were the Democrats opposed to?

That last part I will freely admit is pure speculation on my part but the fact that the Republican party is more concerned about making noise about illegal immigration than they are about solving it is easily observed.

Look at which states have mandated e-verify, versus which states are "sanctuary" states. I do agree there are business-friendly cuckservatives like Paul Ryan who have no interest in stamping out floods of cheap labor.

You understand that all of what you wrote happened under Obama, not Trump, right?
https://www.politico.com/story...
https://wilsonquarterly.com/qu...

Story by DNC leader at the time claiming the DNC primary was rigged.

You are the fucking idiot. You are also that bigot I kept calling out a few weeks ago. How is your KKK shrine coming along you fucking bigot.

Was Georgia’s Election System Hacked in 2016?

...This was odd because around the same time the Russians were targeting other states, a security researcher in Georgia named Logan Lamb discovered a serious security vulnerability in an election server in his state. The vulnerability allowed him to download the state’s entire database of 6.7 million registered voters and would have allowed him or any other intruder to alter versions of the database distributed to counties prior to the election. Lamb also found PDFs with instructions and passwords for election workers to sign in to a central server on Election Day as well as software files for the state’s ExpressPoll pollbooks—the electronic devices used by poll workers to verify voters’ eligibility to vote before allowing them to cast a ballot.

The unpatched and misconfigured server had been vulnerable since 2014 and was managed by the Center for Election Systems, a small training and testing center that until recently occupied a former two-story house on the Kennesaw State University campus. Until last year, the Ccnter was responsible for programming every voting machine across the state, raising concerns that if the Russians or other adversaries had been able to penetrate the center’s servers as Lamb had done, they might have been able to find a way to subvert software distributed by the center to voting machines across the state.

But Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp, who was the only state election official to refuse security assistance from the Department of Homeland Security prior to the election, has insisted for more than a year that his state’s voting systems were never at risk in the 2016 election, because DHS told him the Russians had not targeted Georgia....

Georgia Says No Thanks To In-Depth Election Security Help From Feds

An interesting survey to check. Twelve of the 16 respondents who planned to vote in 2016 had already planned to vote for Hillary. And registered Democrat journalists outnumbered GOP members by 3 to 1. Interestingly, though, that same survey shows that the journalists - overwhelmingly Hillary supporters and liberal - thought Fox News did the best job of hosting debates.

There is plenty of evidence that the Russians were involved in all sorts of various hacking and active measures and whatnot

Sure, and what were the effects of all that hacking and meddling? 50k USD spent on Facebook advertisements (compared to ~1.3 billion spent by Trump and Hillary),and to quote Mueller's boss Rosenstein, there was not a single hacked voting machine, nor any evidence of collusion.

To the particular point, the prior indictments against the Russian nationals are far more detailed than standard indictments, they are so called "speaking indictments." The most recent one this month against the GRU hackers detailed the particular methods they used and quite a bit of the timing of the attacks.

The best part about all these indictments is that if the people in question never show up for trial, the Mueller investigation never has to present any evidence, so it's feasible to suggest that it's so flimsy as to be laughed out of court. Indictments /= convictions.

Funnily enough, lawyers representing some of the companies named in the previous round of indictments showed up in court to start discovery (where the prosecution presents its evidence so that a defense can be mounted), and Mueller wasn't ready to go to trial and present what evidence he had, if indeed he has any, and he asked for an extension. That should make it pretty clear that all he wants is headlines to look like he's doing something. My suspicion is that he was attempting to derail Trump's meeting with Putin as the last rounds of indictments were announced on the Friday afternoon before Trump's Monday morning summit with Putin.

https://www.politico.com/story...

if you can simply deny that information out of hand, and call it "fake news", then what point is there in providing any more information? What will be believed short of reality providing a swift kick to the groin?

Fake news is the wrong term to use as it's not even news to begin with. Everyone with more than two brain cells knows that every major country is constantly trying to hack everyone else, but as the "news" you're presenting is completely irrelevant to the point you're trying to make, I can understand Okian Warrior's (mis)use of the term.

America is the only country in the world where it's leader is actively pushing for more coal to be burned. https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/2...
https://www.politico.com/story...
Don't take my word for it, stick 'Trump' and 'coal' into Google, pull your head out of your arse and enlighten yourself.

notice, no americans in that indictment... and probably there is an expectation that this "accusation" won't be defended.

Foreign governments rarely show up to a US court to argue they were not guilty.

Thus a baseless accusation can stand because there is no due process because there is no trial generally.

I'd like the Russians to show up. Just send some lawyers to represent their clients. Force the Justice Department to actually argue their case in a court of law.

Already, the justice department was surprised when some Russian companies they accused sent lawyers. And the result was effectively a retraction of the accusations almost immediately.

Some people will accuse me of political bias... these people haven't been paying attention to this circus.

https://www.washingtonexaminer...

https://www.politico.com/story...

Effectively, an accusation was made where there was no belief that there would be a defense because there typically isn't one in these cases. Lawyers showed up unexpectedly... and it turns out that the Mueller team actually isn't ready to argue the case.

Which begs the question of why they would accuse someone.

Is that how the FBI normally works? Accusing people of things they can't prove in court?

Generally not especially when the accusations are formal legal charges.

So why is Mueller not following standard FBI protocol? Why in fact, has everything to do with this cloud of issues not been done according to standard protocol?

Because it is a political game. And its one that I'm actually pretty happy we're having because all the rats are coming out of the wood work. We know who most of the bad apples are in the justice department just by seeing whether or not they follow protocol. If they break protocol... why did they do that? To serve the interests of justice? Or to help grinding a political axe? Because if the former, then very well... but if the latter... they probably shouldn't be in that position.

The indictment lodged in Washington, D.C., accuses the Russian spies of hacking into the Democratic National Committee and the presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton [...] The accused also hacked into state boards of elections, secretaries of state, and into companies that provided software used to administer elections

What have the FBI, the NSA, and the rest of our wonderful "intelligence" apparatus been doing, while this was going on?

Oh, yeah, they were busy trying to sabotage Trump...

At least, there is some silver lining to all this in that there is no longer any doubt, Russia is an adversary — if not an outright enemy. A big and welcome change of both long- and short-term trends.

But don't let that distract you from the soccer championship...

It sure is. And those are very right-wing sites I tell you.

In related news, family values stalwart Rep. Jim Jordan (R- The Holler), turns out to have been jacking it to boys getting molested for years as a wrestling coach. And what is it with Republican wrestling coaches and the sexual abuse of young men? It wasn't that long ago that the most powerful Republican in the nation did hard penitentiary time for molesting boys. What is it that draws Republicans to become wrestling coaches?

https://www.politico.com/story...

http://www.chicagotribune.com/...

Technically, Hastert was charged with and pled guilty to financial crimes (related to how he was bribing a victim to stay quiet) rather than for the actual molestation.

The bill was signed into law by President Donald Trump on April 11, 2018

Show of hands: Who is surprised that Republicans would enact these kind of repressive laws as soon as they got into power? The Great Leader can engage in all the prostitution he likes, but the rest of you better clean up your act.

In related news, family values stalwart Rep. Jim Jordan (R- The Holler), turns out to have been jacking it to boys getting molested for years as a wrestling coach. And what is it with Republican wrestling coaches and the sexual abuse of young men? It wasn't that long ago that the most powerful Republican in the nation did hard penitentiary time for molesting boys. What is it that draws Republicans to become wrestling coaches?

https://www.politico.com/story...

http://www.chicagotribune.com/...

Interesting, I hadn't heard that before so I looked into it. Assuming this article is accurate, plants with higher CO2 available are storing up more carbs at the expense of nutrients.

Neither did Trump.

https://www.politico.com/story...

If you are going to make legal pronouncements it helps if you understand the law

Attempting to subvert the United States of America into an authoritarian dictatorship and the government into some Dominionistic nightmare out of The Handmaid's Tale

That is incredibly funny given what is actually happening.

I forgot who but, somebody made a good point about this switch to solar & renewables: it's going to crash the economy.

You make good points. I however think otherwise. For example, I think Trump's rollback of Obama's financial regulations that were designed to abate another 2007 - 2008 crash will put us in even more danger. As I watch the stock market soar, I can't get the word 'bubble' out of my mind.

...We've got massive amounts of investment wealth tied up in fossil fuels. People's retirements are heavily vested in them...

Admittedly, some do think it's a good idea to invest mostly in a single stock or industry, but I don't think that's a good idea for fossil fuels; the writing is on the wall. Diversifying your stock portfolio has always been a good idea, anyway.

Before Trump, the solar industry was booming. The fastest and largest growing job market was in renewable energy, specifically solar (1). Trump has seriously curtailed this growth with tariffs and elimination of tax credits, while at the same time, Trump has repealed rules and promoted coal, shale oil and fracking. As a result, oil production is up, and it has become much less affordable for business and home owners do go solar (2). Nonetheless, I find it telling, and perhaps foretelling, that the oil industry isn't happy about Trump's steel tariffs, NAFTA spats, and other policies (3). Something's not right; something smells and just seems rotten. And as the Ruskies say, a fish rots from the head down. But I digress.

Even with this turnabout, solar and renewable energy will soon be consistently cheaper than fossil fuels, and in some cases are cheaper now (4). I suspect that a few years after the US becomes the world's leading crude oil producer (5), solar and renewables will begin to surge and eventually dominate. Cheaper is better for the average consumer and business alike, which is better for the economy, and so the marketplace will abide. Eventually. Best to divest your fossil fuel investments before then. At least diversify while you still can.

BTW, some say fusion reactors are economically viable now (6). It may be true, but I expect it will take some 20 years before they come online. Such is the nature of the beast. Eventually my money will be on them. After all, cheaper is better.

(1) http://money.cnn.com/2017/05/2...

(2) https://ntknetwork.com/u-s-oil...

(3) https://www.politico.com/story...

(4) https://www.forbes.com/sites/d...

http://www.businessinsider.com...

https://www.engadget.com/2018/...

https://about.newenergyfinance...

http://energyinnovation.org/20...

https://about.newenergyfinance...

(5) http://money.cnn.com/2018/01/0...

(6) https://phys.org/news/2015-10-...

Especially since Holmes was a big Clinton supporter

So was Donald Trump.

http://time.com/3962799/donald...

https://www.politico.com/story...

https://www.vanityfair.com/sty...

There's no need to gut, abolish, or eliminate it. This is a modern problem that only began a few decades ago. This problem exists because a group of people did exactly what you're saying we shouldn't do: they ignored the intent of the amendment.

Here's the most salient bit from the linked article (emphasis in the original):

From 1888, when law review articles first were indexed, through 1959, every single one on the Second Amendment concluded it did not guarantee an individual right to a gun. The first to argue otherwise, written by a William and Mary law student named Stuart R. Hays, appeared in 1960. He began by citing an article in the NRA’s American Rifleman magazine and argued that the amendment enforced a “right of revolution,” of which the Southern states availed themselves during what the author called “The War Between the States.”

At first, only a few articles echoed that view. Then, starting in the late 1970s, a squad of attorneys and professors began to churn out law review submissions, dozens of them, at a prodigious rate. Funds—much of them from the NRA—flowed freely. [...]

This fusillade of scholarship and pseudo-scholarship insisted that the traditional view—shared by courts and historians—was wrong. There had been a colossal constitutional mistake. Two centuries of legal consensus, they argued, must be overturned.

All of which is to say, it wasn't until 1960 that anyone in legal circles even suggested that the Second Amendment was intended to protect the rights of everyone to have guns, and even then, it was just a (clearly biased) law student floating the notion. It was only in the late 1970s that the idea gained traction as the NRA started to put their marketing might behind it.

So the big question then is, when did the school shooting epidemic start? Well, take a look at the list of school shootings in the US and decide for yourself. At a glance though, I'd say that there seems to be a marked jump in the number of shootings at pretty much the exact same time that the public was being fed this dangerous new interpretation of the Second Amendment. Correlation != causation, of course, but it's interesting nonetheless, and might be an encouragement to return to the original intent and interpretation of the amendment.

Bullshit.

Et tu? First, the CNBC link that you claim is "the original article" is dated a day later than the Mashable article you provided upthread. Second, the Mashable article was honest enough to appeal to the original Politico article from 2016 -- the CNBC article doesn't even pretend to cite a source.

Again, if Politico or anyone else really got their hands on a copy of the application, there would be plenty of copies out in the wild for all to howl over. Ponder for a quick moment why that isn't the case.

We don't have the most corrupt government in the modern world, but the US is such a big economy that our slide into corruption is really hard for the world to ignore. Authoritarian regimes are typically very corrupt, and when you look at the list of places you'll find a lot of corrupt countries. Russia is a kleptocracy, as are a lot of other ex-Soviet central asian states, and the Yanukovych regime that was overthrown in Ukraine was almost breathtakingly corrupt. States highly dependent on natural resource income for their economy are known for falling victim to corrupt regimes. The Arab spring was also due in large part to corruption, not just the religious and ethnic strife that has taken hold in places like Syria, the initial stages of it that ousted the Tunisian regime were clearly focused on corruption.

I can't disagree with the overall prescription of clamping down on bribery. Corruption almost seems to be an ideology for a lot of people, and the SCOTUS rulings of Citizen's United and especially McDonnell v United States made it easier to funnel money to politicians and much harder to prosecute bribery.

It's not all doom and gloom though, Malaysia's extremely corrupt government was just voted out in a huge surprise result, so they have at least a chance of pulling back from the abyss of corrupt rule.

You have yet to provide any evidence of your accusations. When confronted with that, you point to a cover up.

Well that's amusing coming from someone who wants to claim convenience as the sole motivating factor for exclusively using a private server for state business. When not even the example of the destruction of the records despite a preservation order can possibly stand as evidence in your eyes, then it seems that you're only interested in moving the goal posts.

Because it would seem to me that 88 people would seem more like a conspiracy to me.

Well maybe. I wouldn't put it past the Cheney administration to want to avoid things being entered into the public record. But what was the opinion of Meredith Fuchs, an attorney for the National Security Archive?*

Asked if the losses of the e-mails were deliberate, neglectful or accidental, Fuchs said, "The Bush Administration had sloppy practices and they had no sense that it mattered.They way they handled it to me suggested they didn’t take their record preservation obligations seriously. To me, the way they dealt with us during the litigation signaled that."

Seems like negligence on the their part, but I don't see where highly classified information was stored on insecure devices.

Trump also doesn't have anything to do with the State dept. being sued to release these records in a timely manner, or with the original FOIA lawsuit that revealed the private email server to begin with.

tilting at windmills means attacking imaginary enemies. Unfortunately there is no lack of people who want to mislead or bury the truth to satisfy their own political preferences.

Current WH staff setting up their own private accounts after the election to use for White House business was not a notable issue. It went away in a few days.
https://www.politico.com/story...

The Bush WH staff using a private server for WH communications during the sell-job for the Iraq War in 2002-2003, and then wiping the server, deleting 22 million emails rather than hand any over to the government records office, was not an issue. It went away in a few days at the time, and again in a few days during the 2016 election when Newsweek magazine attempted to revive the story:

http://www.newsweek.com/2016/0...

No, I am not waving my arms around crying conspiracy. The press really did harp on the HRC email story, some 30X as much coverage as "issues" got; but the thing is, people kept clicking on the stories; and not changing channels; and the press responds to that.

I really don't understand it and don't have a theory for why Americans are so fascinated with the slightest wrongs done by Democrats (I mean, FIVE investigations of Clinton firings in the WH travel office??) and so uninterested in the most jaw-dropping things done by the right, but they just are. I think Al Franken had it right, that the only press bias is a "sell eyeballs to advertisers" bias and the unfairness of it all must be laid at the feet of The People themselves. Truly, Americans have the government they deserve.

Here's my two "greatest hits" on that score:
1) Nixon's collusion with a foreign power (S. Vietnam) to ruin the 1968 Peace Talks to deny Democrats a win during the election campaign was called treason by some who became aware of his calls to them via CIA wiretaps:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/0... ...20,000 Americans died in the ensuing four years. (NB: Might have happened either way; but Nixon's *intent* was to extend the war.)

2) Eight news organizations paid to have the Florida ballots carefully and repeatedly recounted and found that Gore won no matter how you counted hanging chads and dimples and all that:

https://www.consortiumnews.com... ...the Washington Post put that story on page a10 and it was gone in a few days. I was actually unaware of it, and I'm a news junkie.

So that's what will happen to this story too. I don't know why it works this way with American news, but it does.

Both those links come from Jon Schwarz' eye-opening history in The Intercept last December:
https://theintercept.com/2017/... ...where Schwarz dryly notes that:
"For their part, the elite print and broadcast media accepted the right’s critique that they were – as huge profit-driven corporations naturally tend to be – horribly liberal. " ...and I'm sure that's part of it. But the news media can't control stories all THAT well. People really do just look away after a few days, from Republican malfeasance, all the way up to torture. Heck, Democrats look away from it, including Obama looking the other way on torture.

So this is nothing, and will be gone in a few days. QED. I'm willing to lay money on it if anybody is skeptical.

I'ts not just Trump -- don't all people in power do this? I thought this was just SOP -- I'm busy, I've already hired someone else to worry with keeping me safe so I can think about other things. (Not that that excuses them, but offloading things is their rationale.)

Link - An iconic photograph of then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton using her BlackBerry while wearing sunglasses on a military plane in 2011 prompted a recordkeeping official in her office to inquire about whether Clinton had been assigned a State.gov email address, the State Department disclosed this week."

And:Link - Clinton responded on March 8, 2009: Against the advice of the security hawks, I still do carry my berry but am prohibited from using it in my office, where I spend most of my time when I'm not on a plane or in a "no coverage" country.

If these are all (Alt-) Right Wing Fake News Sites (they're the first few Google links), I'm sure someone will soon point this out. Please do, and point to the rebuttals and corrections.

On measure of whether a country is authoritarian is whether it kills other people to get what it wants.

Where in the World Is the U.S. Military? Quote: "... the United States ... maintains nearly 800 military bases in more than 70 countries and territories abroad... Britain, France and Russia, by contrast, have about 30 foreign bases combined."

Book: Base Nation: How U.S. Military Bases Abroad Harm America and the World

Another way to measure authoritarian control: Is the U.S. truly a democracy? Or is most government control hidden from voters? Most U.S. citizens have little or no knowledge of how much taxpayer money the U.S. military spends.

This new strategy must be why the con artist eliminated the top cyber adviser post.

After all, what better way to counter cybersecurity threats than eliminating the person in charge of overall cybersecurity.

Yep, because if we've learned anything about government efficiency and effectiveness, is that adding more layers of bureaucracy always helps. Just think that of how much worse the Chinese OMB hack in 2015 that compromised the private data of 22 million mainly federal workers consisting of SSN's, fingerprints, background check information, and so on, could have been without a cybersecurity coordinator. Or that somewhat lesser known Russian hack on the IRS that amounted to 100,000 tax filing being stolen so that 13,000 bogus returns could be filed for refunds totaling 39 billion dollars. Without that cybersecurity coordinator, the Russians could have bankrupted the US treasury with bogus tax refunds! Yeah, clearly more bureaucracy is needed to mitigate these harmful attacks!

This new strategy must be why the con artist eliminated the top cyber adviser post.

After all, what better way to counter cybersecurity threats than eliminating the person in charge of overall cybersecurity.

> Who did Trump telephone about this course reversal? Look for "sharp" investors who suddenly

The trump crime family has a lot of business in china (for example, most of ivanka's merch is sourced from china). The "sharp" investor here could be trump himself, fishing for bribes that will be routed through his subsidiaries in country. It would not be unprecedented, almost immediately within a month of inauguration, china granted his family trademarks that they had been stalling on.

Also, it should be pointed out, that ZTE was banned because they violated the sanctions on Iran. That's about the most damning proof that Benedict Donald DGAF about actually containing Iran.

Hi Huckleberry, don't forget to bring your evidence to court. Sorry Huck

Here you go. Article by Donna Brazile: https://www.politico.com/magaz...

Let us not forget, this is the same corrupt administration whose head of EPA, who is literally in bed with lobbyists, recently outlawed any science-based studies for the agency. Only if they're funded by businesses who would never, ever manipulate the data, are studies allowed. Anything independent is verboten.

The thing is, this is the same con artist who said he needed to build a sea wall to protect his failing Irish golf course from the effects of climate change.

"A Do nothing/Do minimum option will have the least impact on [natural] processes but the existing erosion rate will continue and worsen, due to sea level rise, in the next coming years, posing a real and immediate risk to most of the golf course frontage and assets."

Which raises the question: if the con artist doesn't believe in climate change and is scrapping this program because it's not needed, why did he need to build a sea wall to protect his failing golf course?

Here's an even better question: how can his uneducated supporters continue to be such hypocrites and not call him out for his own hypocrisy? Are they really that stupid or is it they simply don't care? Either scenario is not something to be proud of, yet they can continue to wallow in their own ignorance.

And that was always the problem with Obama. When voters sent people to Congress to represent their interests, Obama saw those representatives and the voters as an obstacle to his plans. He actively worked around the will of the voters.

Uh....you do realize those people sent do Congress explicitly refused to negotiate with Obama, right?

You can't negotiate with someone who only responds with "fuck you".

Exactly right. Had Obama wished to make the deal permanent, he needed to go to the Senate to have them ratify it. Since the Senate at the time was controlled by Republicans he was in no mood to negotiate with

Your take-away from the Obama administration is that Obama was the one reluctant to negotiate with Republicans?

Were you even paying attention?