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Read the article. I'm just pointing out what it says. I don't know whether those statements are true or not. But quoting them out of context and make strawmen is the completely wrong thing here.
According to the journalists who wrote that article it's all about technicalities. The quote about pettifoggery also comes from Dubelier and Seikaly according to the article, who work for Mueller. They accuse the defendants of using that tactic. Pot calling the kettle black? Maybe. But again, the journalists from that site appear to agree with Mueller's team. Nearly a month before this they published this article here. They even appear to feel the need to mention that judge Dabney Friedrich was appointed by Trump.

Remember how they then sued all those random Russians claiming they planted fake news or whatever?

One of those parties has lawyers fighting it and (oddly enough!) they suddenly aren't eager to go to trial any longer. Despite the fact that the lawyers have made an appearance and subjected their client to the courts (despite being in Russia), the government is now trying to question whether they were properly served and should be in court at all!

See, the trick is they were going to use this to rack up an unopposed victory by having the other parties not show up--and why should they agree to be bound by US law when they're Russians, any more than we should willingly subject ourselves to Russian courts? They could then use this as 'proof' despite the fact that they would have never had to prove even one tiny thing to get a default judgement.

So they're left either answering discovery questions they don't want to or to drop the charges. Honestly? My bet is on the latter, they try to sever the charges against the one party and claim unopposed victory over the other, but we'll see...

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/05/04/mueller-russia-interference-election-case-delay-570627

https://www.politico.com/f/?id=00000163-2d3b-d9b5-af73-ffff51b70001

Remember how they then sued all those random Russians claiming they planted fake news or whatever?

One of those parties has lawyers fighting it and (oddly enough!) they suddenly aren't eager to go to trial any longer. Despite the fact that the lawyers have made an appearance and subjected their client to the courts (despite being in Russia), the government is now trying to question whether they were properly served and should be in court at all!

See, the trick is they were going to use this to rack up an unopposed victory by having the other parties not show up--and why should they agree to be bound by US law when they're Russians, any more than we should willingly subject ourselves to Russian courts? They could then use this as 'proof' despite the fact that they would have never had to prove even one tiny thing to get a default judgement.

So they're left either answering discovery questions they don't want to or to drop the charges. Honestly? My bet is on the latter, they try to sever the charges against the one party and claim unopposed victory over the other, but we'll see...

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/05/04/mueller-russia-interference-election-case-delay-570627

https://www.politico.com/f/?id=00000163-2d3b-d9b5-af73-ffff51b70001

The Russians he charged actually showed up in court, and Meuller's team tried to run away and hide:

Judge rejects Mueller's request for delay in Russian troll farm case

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.

...

How'd Mueller's crack team try to delay? Oh, yeah, by saying the Russians weren't properly served (but damn, they were at the hearing...):

On Friday, Mueller’s prosecutors disclosed that Concord’s attorneys, Eric Dubelier and Kate Seikaly, had made a slew of discovery requests demanding nonpublic details about the case and the investigation. Prosecutors also asked a judge to postpone the formal arraignment of Concord Management set for next week.

The prosecution team sought the delay on the grounds that it’s unclear whether Concord Management formally accepted the court summons related to the case. Mueller’s prosecutors also revealed that they tried to deliver the summonses for Concord and IRA through the Russian government, without success.

“The [U.S.] government has attempted service of the summonses by delivering copies of them to the Office of the Prosecutor General of Russia, to be delivered to the defendants,” prosecutors wrote. “That office, however, declined to accept the summonses. The government has submitted service requests to the Russian government pursuant to a mutual legal assistance treaty. To the government’s knowledge, no further steps have been taken within Russia to effectuate service.”

The reply from the Russians' lawyers was brutal:

In a blunt response Saturday morning, Concord’s attorneys accused Mueller's team of ignoring the court’s rules and suggesting a special procedure for the Russian firm without any supporting legal authority.

“Defendant voluntarily appeared through counsel as provided for in [federal rules], and further intends to enter a plea of not guilty. Defendant has not sought a limited appearance nor has it moved to quash the summons. As such, the briefing sought by the Special Counsel’s motion is pettifoggery,” Dubelier and Seikaly wrote.

The Concord lawyers said Mueller’s attorneys were seeking “to usurp the scheduling authority of the Court” by waiting until Friday afternoon to try to delay a proceeding scheduled for next Wednesday. Dubelier and Seikaly complained that the special counsel’s office has not replied at all to Concord’s discovery requests.

I guess Meuller didn't expect the Russians to actually show up for their trial.

And now Meuller has to respond to discovery....

The Russians he charged actually showed up in court, and Meuller's team tried to run away and hide:

Judge rejects Mueller's request for delay in Russian troll farm case

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.

...

How'd Mueller's crack team try to delay? Oh, yeah, by saying the Russians weren't properly served (but damn, they were at the hearing...):

On Friday, Mueller’s prosecutors disclosed that Concord’s attorneys, Eric Dubelier and Kate Seikaly, had made a slew of discovery requests demanding nonpublic details about the case and the investigation. Prosecutors also asked a judge to postpone the formal arraignment of Concord Management set for next week.

The prosecution team sought the delay on the grounds that it’s unclear whether Concord Management formally accepted the court summons related to the case. Mueller’s prosecutors also revealed that they tried to deliver the summonses for Concord and IRA through the Russian government, without success.

“The [U.S.] government has attempted service of the summonses by delivering copies of them to the Office of the Prosecutor General of Russia, to be delivered to the defendants,” prosecutors wrote. “That office, however, declined to accept the summonses. The government has submitted service requests to the Russian government pursuant to a mutual legal assistance treaty. To the government’s knowledge, no further steps have been taken within Russia to effectuate service.”

The reply from the Russians' lawyers was brutal:

In a blunt response Saturday morning, Concord’s attorneys accused Mueller's team of ignoring the court’s rules and suggesting a special procedure for the Russian firm without any supporting legal authority.

“Defendant voluntarily appeared through counsel as provided for in [federal rules], and further intends to enter a plea of not guilty. Defendant has not sought a limited appearance nor has it moved to quash the summons. As such, the briefing sought by the Special Counsel’s motion is pettifoggery,” Dubelier and Seikaly wrote.

The Concord lawyers said Mueller’s attorneys were seeking “to usurp the scheduling authority of the Court” by waiting until Friday afternoon to try to delay a proceeding scheduled for next Wednesday. Dubelier and Seikaly complained that the special counsel’s office has not replied at all to Concord’s discovery requests.

I guess Meuller didn't expect the Russians to actually show up for their trial.

And now Meuller has to respond to discovery....

They got a huge tax break instead of an all-but-guaranteed tax hike.

Yeah, actually not. Clinton's plan contained significant cost reductions for people making under $50K/yr. Under trump, we got tax cuts for millionaires and tax bills for the middle class.

Unemployment is way down.

Not for rural whites. In fact, its still so bad for them that Michigan republicans are trying to exempt them from their draconian medicaid work requirements.
Also, those people at that Carrier plant that he "saved?" Yeah, they got fucked.

The stock market is way up.

(A) Doesn't mean squat for majority of people because they don't own stocks.
(B) Rate of growth in the stock market is slower than it was under Obama.
(C) China has stopped buying soybeans. Not just tariffs, full stop, buying em from somewhere else. China is the #2 largest market for US soy and soy is the #2 US crop export.

Denuclearization, peace, and potential reunification in Korea,

Not anything to do with trump. The sanctions only resulted in a ~20% increase in black market currency exchange, showing that it wasn't a big deal for a country that survived the great faminine of the 90s on nothing but Juche. Moon Jae-in is leading trump around by the nose. Though I guess you could say the fact that trump is so easily played by Moon is a point in trump's favor. So sure, promise that gloryhound a nobel prize if that's what it takes to keep him from screwing up everybody else's work.

Tons of sex cults and human trafficking rings have been broken up.

Ah, so now you reveal yourself as one of those RWNJ dumbasses. In fact, its the nothing of the kind. If anything, they've been cracking down on easy targets - adult sex-workers, not trafficking victims. Meanwhile Trump knowingly endorsed an actual pedophile.

Corrupt leaders and former leaders of many countries are actually being brought to justice.

Yeah. Putin. Duterte. Netanyahu MBS They've all been locked up!!! Yay!

The wall is being built.

Lol. He couldn't even get his own republican party to pay for it. Much less mexico.

Next year there will be no unconstitutional personal mandate for health insurance.

Yay! That's already working out so great for republicans.
Never mind how he totally fucked rural whites with empty promises about the opioid epidemic.

The article is full of lies. Here is an example:

Lawful Permanent Residents (green card holders) have never been banned from entering the U.S., regardless of their country of birth..

Bzzzt! I'm sorry, but that's incorrect. Perhaps it's your post that's the lie? LPRs were banned as part of Trump's first travel ban. The second one (February 1, 2018) added the exemption for LPRs. See this, or basically any article that covered the travel ban. "White House Counsel Don McGahn issued 'authoritative guidance' on Wednesday clarifying that key parts of Trump's controversial executive order, which is aimed at citizens of seven majority-Muslim countries, will no longer cover green card holders ..." and "'They no longer need a waiver because if they are a legal permanent resident they won't need it anymore,' Spicer told reporters during a daily briefing."

A lot of the idiosyncratic weirdness is due to the fallout from the Kennesaw incident with the state's voter registration system last year. Among other things, election worker passwords were publicly available. Lawsuits are still in motion, I believe, including one against the SOS, I think. The bill in a lot of respects is an attempt to close the barn door after the horses left a different barn altogether. WABE has a good timeline here:

https://www.wabe.org/two-georg...

Politico has some good info as well here:

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

Otherwise it's the usual shoot-the-messenger stuff governments all over are well known for.

When it was actually investigated, it turned out the IRS was actually more lenient to tea party groups than left-wing groups....the left wing groups just didn't whine about it.

https://www.politico.com/story... [politico.com]
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/1... [nytimes.com]

One major problem with your assertions is that neither of the links you posted to support it, actually support it. Neither says the IRS was more lenient to right than left, all they say is that the IRS also had some keywords they used which would show more left-wing groups.
The bias wasn't that they didn't look at left-wing groups, it was that a typical left-wing process might take a couple of months at worst while when looking at a tea party group, it would take years.
Here's a story from the NY Times (your source) about the legal settlements:

The settlements were the conclusion of two legal battles that have dogged the I.R.S. since the initial lawsuits were filed after a 2013 treasury inspector general’s audit that found groups with “Tea Party” or “Patriot” in their names received more scrutiny over their applications for tax-exempt status. The revelations plunged the I.R.S. into a firestorm that ultimately led to the ouster of its acting commissioner and prompted accusations that the agency was being used as a political weapon by the Obama administration.

and

the I.R.S. “expresses its sincere apology” for the “heightened scrutiny and inordinate delays” the groups experienced when filing tax forms from 2009 to 2012.

In the agreement, the I.R.S. also admits to being wrong in demanding unnecessary information from the plaintiffs and screening groups based on name or policy affiliation.

The problem wasn't that someone looked carefully at their applications (like they did for some of the left-wing groups), the problem was that they required additional approvals and deliberately delayed their applications in order to keep them from being effective and harassed them with multiple unwarranted information requests, for example, their group members, donations, literature, etc...

What about when the Obama administration use the NEA to advocate for Obama care???

The NEA is not part of the government, and the Hatch act does not apply.

What about sending the IRS after the tea party?

When it was actually investigated, it turned out the IRS was actually more lenient to tea party groups than left-wing groups....the left wing groups just didn't whine about it.

https://www.politico.com/story...
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/1...

What about using the "Fairness Doctrine" to shut down Rush Limbaugh?

The Fairness Doctrine ended in the 1987.

What about how the DoJ employees use 90% of their personal earnings to donate to democrats they are investigating?

[citation required]
Btw, DOJ employees aren't paid that well and still must consume food.

What about Joe Biden telling everyone to vote against Robert Bork -a judicial nominee- because Bork wasn't a democrat?

The horror of the Senate doing it's job of "advise and consent".

Bork had many bad rulings during his judicial career. And that's not a partisan statement - he was overruled many, many times. What Bork did is applied his political beliefs to the cases before him instead of applying the law. That's not what a judge is supposed to do.

Far more skilled judges, like Scalia and Thomas, cloak their political beliefs in the law. Such that they are technically applying the law while serving their political ends.

What about the state department under Obama trading favors with foreign interests for domestic privileges and campaign donations?

Wait....the State Department negotiated with foreign interests?!?!?!?!! How shocking!!!1!!eleven!! Next you'll tell me the Defense Department has a few weapons.

As for campaign donations, [citation required]. Keep in mind the scummy Clinton Foundation donations are not actually a campaign donation.

This guy tells people he wants Trump re-elected and that is politicizing the federal government ??? What ??

He promoted Trump while acting as an FCC commissioner. That's a violation of the Hatch act. Invite him to speak but leave off his title, and it's not a violation.

Federal law says incumbents are allowed to campaign on military bases. That's because it was expected when the laws were written that people are going to have political views and they are going to fundraise and they are going to run for office !

And this is relevant because......? And when supplying your justification, keep in mind the President and VP are exempt from the Hatch act.

If you vote out your politicians regardless if they do a good job

That's not really the problem. The problem is that once they get in it's damn near impossible to get them out of office no matter how badly they do. Incumbents get re-elected at rates over 90% thanks to a combination of voter apathy, gerrymandering, confirmation bias, and other factors.

As for the "no tax increases, never!"-attitude, that really doesn't work at all for tax revenue drops or increased costs, particularly unexpected ones (like natural disasters).

Of course you are correct but good luck getting that fact to penetrate the skull of your typical "taxes = evil" republican or worse, one of the tea party variety. So now we have a national debt of around $21 Trillion which is about $65,000 owed for each man, woman and child in the US. The ONLY way this is going to go away is to raise taxes combined with some rather drastic cuts to the military and/or medicare. (the rest of the budget isn't big enough to make a difference) The fact that tax revenues fluctuate is utterly lost in the political debate.

Yep, the very same Andy McCabe whose wife got almost $1 million from Hillary.

Did McCabe issue ‘Stand-Down’ order on FBI Clinton Email Investigation?

Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe is now facing possible criminal charges for lying under oath about leaks he made to The Wall Street Journal in 2016, in an effort to salvage his reputation and give his account to journalists who were questioning whether he gave a “stand-down” order to FBI agents investigating the Clinton Foundation.

Multiple former FBI officials, along with a Congressional official, say that while there may have been internal squabbling over the FBI’s investigation into the Clinton Foundation at the time, there was allegedly another “stand-down” order by McCabe regarding the opening of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of her private email for official government business.

McCabe’s stand-down order regarding Clinton’s private email use happened after The New York Times first reported Hillary Clinton Used Personal Email Account at State Dept., Possibly Breaking Rules in March 2015 and before the official investigation was requested by the Justice Department toward the end of July 2015.

After The New York Times publication, the FBI Washington Field Office began investigating Clinton’s use of private emails and whether she was using her personal email account to transmit classified information. According to sources, McCabe was overseas when he became aware of the investigation and sent electronic communications voicing his displeasure with the agents.

“McCabe tried to steer people off the private email investigation and that appears to be obstruction and should be investigated,” said one former FBI official with knowledge of the circumstances surrounding the investigation. ...

Who among James Comey, Loretta Lynch, and Barack Obama had to be aware of this?

Given that Obama also sent emails to Hillary's illegal email server, I'm betting it goes right to the top.

Obama used a pseudonym in emails with Clinton, FBI documents reveal

President Barack Obama used a pseudonym in email communications with Hillary Clinton and others, according to FBI records made public Friday.

The disclosure came as the FBI released its second batch of documents from its investigation into Clinton’s private email server during her tenure as secretary of state.

...

Found the article I remembered from January that first mentioned him as a possible replacement:

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/01/05/nsa-mike-rogers-to-retire-267634

Sounds like Trump didn't give them enough time to fully research this guy before forcing the vote.

Another Politico story: Church of The Donald

Nope. McCain (2008) and Romney (2012). You are bad at your trolling job Ivan, go back to training school. You failed army reject!

I'm not going to even try convincing you of how idiotic you are, but for others who might read that post...

1. The whole "neoliberal" accusation is a catch-all slur hurled at anyone who has the audacity to not want to go whole-hog down the road to communism. Socialism is fine for things that the private market cannot or should not provide, such as health care. And in fact, Hillary Clinton has been fighting for universal health care since the early 1990s--it's one of the reasons that right-wingers hate her so badly, because as first lady, she was doing that instead of being a nice, demure housewife. For everything else, the free market is the best way to go. The best systems of government in the world are a healthy mix of both, but the trick is in finding the right balance. Bill Clinton did a great job starting us down that road from Reagan's/Bush's deregulate everything strategy, and Obama did a great job pushing us further, as evidenced by the improvement in our situation today. This notion that anything short of turning the US into a communist country is "neoliberal" is idiocy pushed by the Tea Party of the left. It's also a great way to turn off the public-at-large. As a famous man once said, "if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao, you ain't gonna make it with anyone anyhow."

2. Clinton's "superpredator" comment wasn't racist. It was an offhand comment that she admits she shouldn't have used in referring to how gangs at the time were no longer just groups of kids innocently hanging out. And in that respect, she was right--at the time crime was skyrocketing and there was a massive public demand that actions be taken to bring it down. And actions were taken. And it was brought down.

But this one comment keeps coming up from Bernie Bros as "evidence" that Clinton is racist. The reason this one quote comes up every time is because in reality, Clinton has a consistent record of fighting hard against racism. That's why she was endorsed by virtually every civil rights leader and won the black vote in the primaries by over 50 points. The notion that Clinton is racist is a ludicrous lie invented and propagated by the right-wing nuts, and believed by gullible left-wing nuts who are looking for any excuse, no matter how farfetched, to hate her.

3. Yes, I flatly deny that her voting record looks like a money stuffed republican. As a senator, she consistently voted for policies that benefited the poor and middle class, not the rich.

4. No, Trump supported Bernie because it was a split in the vote among liberals. And Trump has this uncanny knack for appealing to stupid people. The fact that you listened to him means... well... there's no tactful way to say it. You're a stupid person. And Trump's tactic worked, creating this "I'm going to vote for Jill Stein" bullshit. To be fair, Democrats were doing the same thing, trying to exploit the "Never Trump" split in the Republican party. The difference is that unlike liberals who buy into the opposition's divisive rhetoric and propaganda, conservatives stick to their ideological guns with religious-like fervor. This will continue being a problem into the foreseeable future because while both sides have stupid people, one side's stupid people are malleable enough for this tactic to actually be effective.

5. Russia helping Bernie Sanders is fact. It's a particularly inconvenient one that Sanders is lying about to this day, but that doesn't make it any less true.

They engaged in operations primarily intended to communicate derogatory information about Hillary Clinton, to denigrate other candidates such as Ted

Choices:

[ ] Take responsibility for doing everything they could to stop well liked candidate Bernie Sanders from winning the primary. Take responsibility for putting up a horrible and incredibly disliked candidate.
[ x ] Make excuses and sue the other side because they won with an equally horrible candidate.

It gets worse. Trump was the hand-picked opponent of the Hillary campaign - pied piper strategy.

She couldn't even win when she got to pick her opponent.

One of the first articles about the Clinton/DNC funding issue, back in early spring of 2016:
https://www.politico.com/story...

It was largely ignored by the mainstream news outlets. Even *neutral* NPR waited until June before finally mentioning it, and then only referencing it passing in an article about something completely different.

Compare that to now, where we have a new article every day referencing Cambridge Analytica.

The Democrats considered Donald Trump a "pied piper" candidate and tried to *cause* the very same problem you think they solved with superdelegates in the Republican party - https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/11/hillary-clinton-2016-donald-trump-214428 - that is to try to give the Republicans an "unelectable" candidate. So it really calls into question whether "win at any cost" is a better goal than "uphold democratic ideals no matter what."

You might have felt "mugged" by Reagan, but your supposed robber doesn't actually use superdelegates. And your superdelegates caused your loss. And if that wasn't enough, you also failed in large part due to your own attempt to use the lack of superdelegates against the Republicans with the Pied Piper strategy!

The thesis that you need these to win flies in the face of a lot of evidence showing that this anti-democratic institution actually caused the Democratic loss.

Hilary and the DNC actively promoted Trump, because they thought he was the easiest candidate to beat.

He was the easiest to beat. And she still lost.

Hilary and the DNC actively promoted Trump, because they thought he was the easiest candidate to beat.

Hillary, far more than Russia, is the reason Trump is president.

In other words, the more you are a value to a company the more they will pay you in salary and benefits. Vacation leave is nothing more than additional pay and in most companies is negotiable. If you are working as a burger flipper your salary is not that high and the extra benefits are the same.

CEOs sit in each other's compensation committee or otherwise signal to other executives that they will approve excessive pay in return for reciprocal arrangements. For example Steve Ballmer was an epic failure of a CEO. He wasted countless billions of dollars. Remember the Zune?

Forbes reported that Microsoft shareholders had a negative total return of nearly 17.6%, with the stock down 36%, according to data from FactSet, from the day Ballmer took over as CEO in January 2000 until he retired.

At his retirement he was worth $17.2 billion.

CEOs don't receive pay cuts when they fail and indeed often receive eight figure salaries and it's one of the well known paradoxes of labor economics. People should in fact be paid up to the margin product of their labor. In fact they are not. Lowly retail workers for example have more than doubled their productivity since 1973. However their real wages have declined. Measured by their contribution to GDP they should be paid much more than they are currently paid. But Amazon and other retailers are able to distort the labor market.

Remember the recent stories about their workers peeing in a bottle and working in prison-like conditions? That would not occur at full employment if the law and other social constraints weren't heavily tilted in the favor of corporations and CEOs.

Sometimes people have leverage to demand very high pay. However for very highly compensated individuals (> $2 million a year in wages + bonus + stock etc) that may not reflect their true economic value. They sometimes can distort the labor market to their advantage. It's well known in labor economics that physicians are overpaid because the supply of residencies in the USA is capped by Congress. Conversely the high salaries paid to developers right now does reflect their economic value and the market is not distorted because you don't need a license to program.

It's comforting to think everyone has the lot they deserve, unfortunately such a notion is patently false.

Can we go ONE thread without jumping backflips off of moving platforms in 4-D mental gymnastics to blame LITERALLY EVERYTHING on the President?

Dude. Trump literally claimed credit for airline safety. This isn't mental gymnastics, its measuring him by his own chosen standards.

Trump Takes Credit for Airlines' Safety Record
President Donald Trump on Tuesday appeared to claim that his policies in his first year in the White House resulted in the commercial aviation industry posting its safest year ever in 2017 — though the U.S. had gone years without a U.S. commercial airline fatality before he took office.

“Since taking office I have been very strict on Commercial Aviation,” Trump tweeted Tuesday morning. “Good news - it was just reported that there were Zero deaths in 2017, the best and safest year on record!”

Trump was referring to reports that 2017 marked the safest year in global commercial aviation ever, with no passenger jet fatalities recorded. But, as Reuters reported, there were fatalities in accidents involving turboprop airplanes and cargo aircraft.

... it "caught 29 leakers," last year and noted that 12 of those were arrested. "These people not only lose their jobs, they can face extreme difficulty finding employment elsewhere," ...

... I imagine Trump will pardon them too.

By your standards, the Attorney general must be a tinfoil fucknut too then.
https://www.politico.com/story...

> Jesus fucking Christ you're fucking dumb. It's well known he hates her.
Its also well-known that he hates Trump and in fact anything American, but you Liberal morons just can't handle that because the truth undermines your whole rabid conspiracy rant.

Seriously. It's hilarious to watch the mental gymnastics of Google's CEO openly tauting that he's DIRECTLY working with a presidential candidate to "use our data" to help the candidate.

  - Facebook sold some ads. Who the fuck reads Facebook ads?
  - Google literally used their entire platform (read: tracking your information) + "muh algorithms" to assist a candidate.

And IN RETURN, the CEO got, and I quote, "a virtual open door to access the White House at will"

https://www.googletransparency...

https://theintercept.com/2016/...

https://mashable.com/2009/04/2...

https://www.wired.com/2008/11/...

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

https://www.theguardian.com/te...

"Eric Schmitt, 'CEO of America' "

And these are LIBERAL WEBSITES running these articles. So you can't even play the whole "alt-right / foxnews / fakenews / Russia-wrote-it" Red Herring bullshit.

Of course, I don't know why we're restricting to Obama either. Under Hillary, they did the same thing (for likely the same quid-pro-quo arrangement):

https://www.washingtonpost.com...

http://www.googletransparencyp...

https://qz.com/823922/eric-sch...

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

https://qz.com/520652/groundwo...

So with literally DOZENS upon dozens of professional articles dedicated to the subject from dozens of separate news organizations, anyone who ignores this well-established fact is throwing their head in the sand and humming, and not worthy of a debate response and should be downvoted accordingly for low signal-to-noise ratio.

  -> Google did everything Facebook did, and far more.

Seriously. It's hilarious to watch the mental gymnastics of Google's CEO openly tauting that he's DIRECTLY working with a presidential candidate to "use our data" to help the candidate.

  - Facebook sold some ads. Who the fuck reads Facebook ads?
  - Google literally used their entire platform (read: tracking your information) + "muh algorithms" to assist a candidate.

And IN RETURN, the CEO got, and I quote, "a virtual open door to access the White House at will"

https://www.googletransparency...

https://theintercept.com/2016/...

https://mashable.com/2009/04/2...

https://www.wired.com/2008/11/...

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

https://www.theguardian.com/te...

"Eric Schmitt, 'CEO of America' "

And these are LIBERAL WEBSITES running these articles. So you can't even play the whole "alt-right / foxnews / fakenews / Russia-wrote-it" Red Herring bullshit.

Of course, I don't know why we're restricting to Obama either. Under Hillary, they did the same thing (for likely the same quid-pro-quo arrangement):

https://www.washingtonpost.com...

http://www.googletransparencyp...

https://qz.com/823922/eric-sch...

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

https://qz.com/520652/groundwo...

So with literally DOZENS upon dozens of professional articles dedicated to the subject from dozens of separate news organizations, anyone who ignores this well-established fact is throwing their head in the sand and humming, and not worthy of a debate response and should be downvoted accordingly for low signal-to-noise ratio.

  -> Google did everything Facebook did, and far more.

Where are exactly are these toxic masculinity articles you're reading all the time?

A selection of the first google results page:

https://www.harpersbazaar.com/...

https://www.huffingtonpost.com...

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

https://www.care2.com/causes/w...

https://www.refinery29.com/201...

http://thefederalist.com/2018/...

https://www.usatoday.com/story...

https://www.them.us/story/beyo...

Mass shootings are blamed on toxic masculinity, male entitlement, male fragility, "boys are broken", "its us or them [men]", "toxic masculinity is killing us", "end men", the list is hundreds of thousands long.

Also, let us know when there's another female shooting like this to support your article. You need at least 2 to start I think.

Women aren't called mass shooters for whatever reason. They are called rampage killers or mass killers.

https://www.vice.com/en_us/art...

The reason there are so few women that kill many people? Same reason why there are so few successful business women, female CEO's, and female prisoners: risk aversion. Both good and bad risk taking brings radical success or failure. Men do it more and reap the consequences for good or ill.

That's not my experience at all. I've been on the pro GMO side of this ever since I heard it was a thing, primarily out of distrust of food alarmists (there's enough bullshit about food to turn all of California, where these myths are the most prevalent, dark brown. My biggest peeve of the moment is that people actually think MSG is bad, but the opposite is actually true.)

The the worst offenders have all been Democrats. Their reasons are usually because they think GMO harms the environment (the opposite is true) they think it causes cancer, (false) they're on a crusade to make everybody eat organic (try finding an organic purist that isn't a Democrat. Vegans almost universally fall in this category as well, and try finding a vegan that isn't a Democrat.) Another reason it's usually Democrats is because of their very anti corporate stance, and/or they just hate Monsanto, not even bothering to consider that the technology itself is separate from the companies that employ it. The bill to ban GMO labeling was mostly supported by Republicans and mostly opposed by Democrats. Although Obama did sign the bill, in spite of his base labeling him as a coward for "caving to Republicans", and indeed many well known left leaning people here on slashdot were whining about their "right to know" about food's very immaterial GMO status every time that I told them the only purpose is to stigmatize it (i.e. labeling Jews.) Ironically, these guys want to know that more than they want information about material facts that manufacturers aren't required to put on labels, like the arsenic content of apple sauce.

But, if that doesn't satisfy you, then this should help:

https://www.isidewith.com/poli...
https://newrepublic.com/articl...
http://www.weeklystandard.com/...
https://reason.com/blog/2016/0...

Oh, and if you support Bernie for 2020:

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

It's all but guaranteed that if Bernie gets elected, and Democrats have a supermajority in Congress, (the later if which could likely happen, given the shit coming out of Republicans lately, especially with net neutrality) you can bet your ass that GMO would end up banned, which would be a huge setback for the United States.

If they were all solved then why are the big ISPs suing to keep states from enacting NN laws? AND trying to get a law passed that will stop future NN laws? https://www.politico.com/story... Sorry I confused the ISP with the FCC. Gee no idea why that would happen /s.

"ICE, the federal agency tasked with Trump's program of mass deportation"

Hate to ruin your agenda, but...
https://www.politico.com/story...

Throwing Obama into Michigan at the last second like that is evidence of "Oh fucking SHIT!!!" at the highest levels of the Democratic Party.

Sure was, but isn't that last minute panic evidence that Hillary did not target those states?

Yes, she was that bad of a candidate.

Easily the worst of all time, as she lost to Trump. Speaking of Obama, he every-so-politely called Hillary out for her lazy hubris after the election:

• "You know, I won Iowa not because the demographics dictated that I would win Iowa. It was because I spent 87 days going to every small town and fair and fish fry and VFW hall, and there were some counties where I might have lost, but maybe I lost by 20 points instead of 50 points," Obama said.

2016 was Hillary's election to lose, right up until she lost it. Had to work hard to do it, too.

You left out Hillary buying up the DCCC debt, owning it financially, then voting herself in as the primary candidate. You also left out where the DNC said “The party has the freedom of association to decide how it’s gonna select its representatives to the convention and to the state party,” said Spiva. “Even to define what constitutes evenhandedness and impartiality really would already drag the court well into a political question and a question of how the party runs its own affairs. The party could have favored a candidate. I’ll put it that way.”

How about you hear it from a former skinhead?

Yes, real, actual nazis are getting more organized and are exploiting the reactionary racism and sexism of the public.

So you're calling Donna Brazile a liar?

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/11/02/clinton-brazile-hacks-2016-215774

Bad example, the Koch brothers hate Trump
https://www.vanityfair.com/new...

When they agreed with Trump on something Politico actually found it newsworthy and posted a story about it
https://www.politico.com/story...

Trump has a low opinion going back to at least the election
https://twitter.com/realdonald...

Their strong dislike of Trump is still very current
http://www.breitbart.com/big-g...

All Hilary had to do was take him seriously and campaign properly (or at all) in the swing states.

... Seems they were pretty serious. The thing is ... no matter how much money you spend buying makeup for a pig, it's still going to be a pig.

This passes for argument? She's a pig, that's why she lost? How about she was, and is, hated. And why? What do people around her say?

Yet, among those who know Mrs Clinton, even critics praise her integrity. She is a politician, therefore self-interested and cynical at times—yet driven, they say, by an overarching desire to improve America.

I think the real reason everyone hates her is because negative ads work in politics. She's been in the political eye for 20 years, and for 20 years, republicans have been deathly afraid of such a conservative dem. Here's one article that touches on it:

For more than two years, Republicans did more than demonize her—they criminalized her, first through the Benghazi hearings (a congressional boondoggle if ever there was one), and later, by representing her use of a personal email server—a politically unwise decision, but one that resulted in not a single felony or misdemeanor charge—as a national emergency. It created a toxic environment and false narrative that may have led especially gullible voters to believe that Clinton, if elected, would face imminent impeachment, removal and imprisonment. In its pursuit of this scorched-earth project, the GOP was aided by mainstream journalists who covered the email story far out of proportion to its legal consequence; bad actors who exploited today’s fractured media environment; and the Russian government.

Now, tell us how this is supposed to be better than a paper ballot.... idiots

I'll tell you, Chad. First, paper ballots can have questionable disputes as to whether they were filled out correctly, have "hanging chads" and other controversial issues. Are you old enough to remember the Gore-Bush Florida fiasco?

Blockchaining anonymized ballots, then making them publicly available for everyone to count, validate, etc. should stop officials destroying ballots before a recount, as in the primary involving Debbie Wasserman Schultz in 2017. BTW, Even digital ballots can be destroyed, as they were in the special election for the seat Jeff Session vacated.

Finally, restricted ballot access, paper or digital, may hide other things potentially more devastating to the electoral process. Did state so-in-so lie when they said that although the Russians did break in, they didn't compromise their election? And Whether or not the Russians (or whoever) compromised the Presidential election this last time, have there been even more egregious problems in the past? What could all this portend for the future?

We should follow Sierra Leone's lead, "Blockchain the vote", and draw open the curtain on a supposedly fair and free, but definitely a suspiciously concealed electoral process.

https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2008/01/17/the-legacy-of-hanging-chads

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_United_States_presidential_election_recount_in_Florida

https://www.politico.com/states/florida/story/2017/12/15/experts-browards-elections-chief-broke-law-in-destroying-ballots-150258

https://gizmodo.com/alabama-supreme-court-okays-destruction-of-digital-voti-1821223685

The NRA is shitty org, up there with the tobacco peddlers. But America's problem is less about gun ownership and more about our twisted gun worship. We are obsessed with guns, for some reason we have this idea that our Constitution wants us to have them to over throw the government.

I believe you have it backwards when you imply that the NRA exists because of gun worship. It's more accurate to say gun worship exists because of the NRA. There is plenty of research on the forming of the NRA and their later hijacking of the second amendment, but this one is among the more thorough accounts.

With big government. https://www.politico.com/magaz...

You mean this Trey Gowdy?

“There is a Russia investigation without a dossier,” Gowdy said. “The dossier has nothing to do with the meeting in Trump Tower. The dossier has nothing to do with an email sent by Cambridge Analytica. The dossier really has nothing to do with George Papadopoulos’ meeting in Great Britain. It also doesn’t have anything to do with obstruction of justice. So, there is going to be a Russia probe even without a dossier.”

Gowdy, who is not seeking reelection, remained resolute about the need for an investigation and pronounced himself “100 percent” behind Mueller. “Look, Russia tried to interfere with our election in 2016 with or without a dossier.”

Funny that the memo - and the response to the Democratic rebuttal - act as though the dossier is some core part of the Russia investigation, something that Gowdy fundamentally disagrees with. Where's your source that Gowdy "WROTE the FUCKING thing"? Because here's what I find Nunes himself saying:

Hours after the memo came out on Friday, Nunes gave an interview on Fox News during which anchor Bret Baier asked him if he wrote the memo. "Yes," Nunes replied, saying other Republican lawmakers, like House Oversight Committee chair Trey Gowdy, also contributed.

"Did you read the actual FISA applications," Baier asked, referring to the documents that the memo cites in part as evidence of improper conduct by US law-enforcement officials.

"No, I didn't," Nunes said, before adding that Gowdy was part of a designated group that reviewed the intelligence, took notes, and reported it back to committee members.

But hey... "wrote it" vs. "took notes", no real difference... And clearly the memo reflects Gowdy's view that the dossier has little significance to the Russia investigation as a whole! (/snark)

>Ross Ulbricht

You mean the guy they gave immunity to, or the guy they gave immunity to? You forgot the one important thing, none of them ever go to jail.

And if Hill-dog did nothing wrong (God, we're still talking about it...), why did everyone around her get immunity deals?

https://www.thedailybeast.com/...

http://www.washingtonexaminer....

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

Give it up; the entire entertainment industry is political now. Celebrities get harassed when they *don't* denounce Trump, movie writers get harassed when they *don't* have every permutation of gender/race/religious identity represented on-screen...

With the Chinese loyally turning every flaming turd of a movie ever released into a multi-hundred-million dollar profit and liberals queuing up to throw money and eyeballs at anyone that can reassure them of their smug righteousness on a nightly basis, they have no reason to worry much about profits anymore and have decided to use their platform to browbeat the wrongthinkers into submission with endless condescending hectoring until everyone votes democrat like good little citizens.

Because that worked so well for them in 2016.

Wait a minute, weren't you calling Romney "Hitler"? Why yes you were!.

People are in fear of Russians. Absolute nutty paranoia. Let's all get some perspective and tamp down the troll farm panic. It's 90 people with a shaky grasp of English and a rudimentary understanding of U.S. politics shitposting on Facebook. Our reaction to them is all out of proportion to their influence and will harm us more than they ever could. When even the New Yorker is ridiculing the idea that there is some great Russia conspiracy, you know it's all over but the crying.

Trump's tweet about Moscow laughing its ass off was unusually (perhaps accidentally) accurate. Loyal Putinites and dissident intellectuals alike are remarkably united in finding the American obsession with Russian meddling to be ridiculous. The intellectuals are amused to see Americans so struck by an indictment that adds virtually nothing to a piece published in the Russian media outlet RBC, back in October; I wrote https://www.newyorker.com/news... at the time that the article showed the Russian effort to be more of a cacophony than a conspiracy. The Kremlin and its media are, as Joshua Yaffa writes https://www.newyorker.com/news..., tickled to be taken so seriously. Their sub-grammatical imitations of American political rhetoric, their overtures to the most marginal of political players, are suddenly at the very heart of American political life. This is the sort of thing Russians have done for decades, dating back at least to the early days of the Cold War, but those efforts were always relegated to the dustbin of history before they even began.

Goldman, the Facebook V.P., has seen more of the Russian ads and posts than most Americans, and his imagination clearly strains to accommodate the push to take them seriously. It's hard to square words like "sophisticated" (frequently used by the Times to describe the Russian campaign) with posts like one from an apparently fake L.G.B.T. group promoting something called "Buff Bernie: A Coloring Book for Berniacs" http://www.nydailynews.com/new... with catchy English-language copy: "The coloring is something that suits for all people." It's hard to apply the description "bold covert effort" (used by Politico https://www.politico.com/story...) to the enormous amount of social-network static https://twitter.com/AdrianChen... that Russian trolls produced. To Goldman, it may all look like a giant gray mass in which only a few colorful ads and posts have any meaningâ"and that meaning is hard to discern.

It is exceedingly unlikely that we will ever have a clear understanding of whether Russian meddling affected the outcome of the election. But a huge number of Americans imagine that it did. They imagine that exposure to a foreign effort to muddle American politics can fundamentally change the fate of this countryâ"and by imagining it, they render the country all the more muddled, divided, and vulnerable.

which means they'll notch up a lot more victims than they would be able to in a more traditional society

Is that the one where women are subservient to their husbands? Did you know that Amish communities have huge problems with incestuous rape? Kind of like the whole Josh Duggar thing. When you try to sublimate sexual energy it gets misdirected. The traditional ideal of no sex before marriage didn't protect women from cads—it made them afraid to speak up when they were raped because part of that "traditional ideal" is that a non-virgin women is tainted. Guys like Weinstein aren't notching up more victims, their crimes are simply being exposed. Furthermore, one only has to point to Mississippi to see that a culture of abstinence before marriage leads to tons of teen pregnancies and premature marriages.

Your defense of chivalry is equally appalling. Harvey Weinstein didn't rape a bunch of women because no one taught him some chivalric code growing up. A chivalrous society wouldn't have meant that some knight in shining armor would have stopped him from committing his crimes.

While I agree that the pendulum has swung too far in the opposite direction—as illustrated by things like the Aziz Ansari case and tenuous Title IX cases brought about on college campuses—I think you misdiagnose the cause and your proposed solution would just be more problematic. It's a complicated issue, and antithetical to your point, part of the problem probably is that young people take sex too seriously and don't have enough of it.

Did you even know the story about the Florida shooter being part of a white nationalist movement was debunked and retracted?

That's not exactly a fair characterization. The ADL spoke with someone calling himself Jordan Jereb and claiming to be a member of a white supremacist group who said Cruz had participated in training exercises with the Republic of Florida (the white supremacist group).

Florida White Supremacist Group Admits Ties to Alleged Parkland School Shooter Nikolas Cruz

(Note, they have a big Update which includes information indicating it's probably not true)

He also told that to the AP and to the Miami Herald.

Then someone posting under the name Jordan Jereb wrote:

“There was a legit misunderstanding because we have MULTIPLE people named Nicholas in ROF, and I got a bunch of conflicting information and I have not slept for like 2 days.”

White Nationalist Appears to Disavow Connection With School Shooter

The Sheriff in news conferences said they had not been able to confirm any connection to the ROF.

In the end it all seemed to have been orchestrated by trolls.

How white nationalists fooled the media about Florida shooter

The MSM reported updates as they came out. Some of the fringe sites did not report any of the updates and I wouldn't count "Woke Sloth" as MSM. I had never heard of them before this but apparently that was one such site passed around on FB.

Maybe sites like Woke Sloth (and Breitbart and InfoWars) are not good alternatives to the MSM.

https://www.washingtonpost.com...

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

People then point out that well, owning a car is not a constitutional right

Well, there only is an individual's constitutional right to bear arms if you look at the NRA-edited version of the 2nd amendment. You know, the one without the "well regulated militia". https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/nra-guns-second-amendment-106856?o=0

It was actually a bipartisan statement, which would've lead to some legislative action. Thanks, turtle head!

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

Name a piece of information, known by Christopher Steele to be false, spread as if it were true.

But first off, let's back up. Who is Christopher Steele? From Wikipedia:

From 1990 to 1992, Steele worked under diplomatic cover as an MI6 agent in Moscow, serving at the Embassy of the United Kingdom in Moscow.[7][9] Steele was an “internal traveller”, visiting newly-accessible cities such as Samara and Kazan.[4]

Steele's identity as an MI6 officer was one of 115 names Her Majesty's Government attempted to suppress through a DSMA-Notice in 1999.[10][11] He returned to London in 1993, working again at the FCO until his posting to Paris in 1998, where he served under diplomatic cover until 2002.[9][12][13][14] In 2003, Steele was sent to Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan as part of an MI6 team, briefing Special Forces on "kill or capture" missions for Taliban targets, and also spent time teaching new MI6 recruits.[9] By 2006, Steele was heading the Russia Desk at MI6.[4][7][15]

Steele's expertise on Russia remained valued, and he served as a senior officer under John Scarlett, Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), from 2004 to 2009.[15] Steele was selected as case officer for Alexander Litvinenko and participated in the investigation of the Litvinenko poisoning in 2006.[9] It was Steele who quickly realised that Litvinenko's death "was a Russian state 'hit'".[15]

Not exactly some fly-by-night amateur. And rather amusing that you'd accuse someone whose job had been spying on Russia and later investigated the Litvinenko poisoning, determining it to be a Russian hit, of "spreading Russian propaganda"

Steele - again, the former head of MI6's Russia desk - had been an FBI source for years prior, where he had proved useful in a number of investigations unrelated investigations.

During the last election, Steele was hired - first by Republicans, then Democrats - to research Trump. And that he did. It's not even clear that he knew who was the source of his funding; he worked for Fusion GPS. The so-called "Steele Dossier" is not a curated/filtered "report", but rather a series of independent memos from varying sources - and was never presented as anything else. He was paid to collect information, not to analyze and curate it. Some of the information from the dosier that wasn't public at the time has since been independently confirmed. The vast majority has been neither confirmed or denied.

Concerning the Carter Page "memo" from Trump transition team member Devin Nunes (yes, he was part of Trump's own transition team... "Hey, let's investigate ourselves!") suggests that A) the Steele dossier was the foundation of getting a warrant on Page, B) it did not inform them that the dossier had been paid for by a political entity, and C) the fact that it had been noted that Steele made a statement about being worried about Trump becoming president disqualifies him as a biased source.

Except:

A) Page had been on the radar long beforehand, having previously been caught up in a Russian spy scheme and having not only made numerous statements condemning the US and supporting Russia (on Russian TV), but even claimed to be a Kremlin representative. (Seriously, if the FBI hadn't been spying on this guy they should all have been fired for incompetence)

B) The warrant application did state that the dossier had been paid for by a political entity; Nunes's complaint has now amusingly morphed into "the font size was too small".

C) Intelligence courts generally presume by default that sources have some sort of motive, because as a general rule, people who aren't motivated don't act as sources. Furth