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The facts don't matter, especially not to the media.

There are many fact checking websites which provide unbiased data regarding the truthfulness of our political leaders. Let's examine a few. Keep in mind that they are comparing 8 years of Obama's presidency to 100+ days of Trump.

A search of Snopes.com articles concerning Barack Obama (329) vs Donald Trump (865).

Politifact.com summary of Barack Obama vs Donald Trump. The two graphs are very informative.

FactCheck.org summary of Obama's Whoppers vs Trump's Whoppers.

While none of these sites gave Barack Obama a free ride, FactCheck.org declared Donald Trump the King of Whoppers. I think that Burger King has a trademark infringement case here.

If you dismiss these sites as biased, or blame the mainstream media for twisting the facts, then the problem is probably you. You have let the semantic web tailor an experience that feeds you all of the misinformation (alternative facts) that aligns with your world view. As such, changing your paradigm would be uncomfortable, so you double-down on all of the stories that have been proven false (Pizzagate, Seth Rich's murder, etc...). If these stories rile you up, then the objective is met. The whole point is to stir up the crazies.

As such, you need to continually verify that you are not being brainwashed by either the right or the left. You need to wait-out sensational stories until they are fully vetted. You need to focus on facts, not bluster on with opinions.

The facts don't matter, especially not to the media.

There are many fact checking websites which provide unbiased data regarding the truthfulness of our political leaders. Let's examine a few. Keep in mind that they are comparing 8 years of Obama's presidency to 100+ days of Trump.

A search of Snopes.com articles concerning Barack Obama (329) vs Donald Trump (865).

Politifact.com summary of Barack Obama vs Donald Trump. The two graphs are very informative.

FactCheck.org summary of Obama's Whoppers vs Trump's Whoppers.

While none of these sites gave Barack Obama a free ride, FactCheck.org declared Donald Trump the King of Whoppers. I think that Burger King has a trademark infringement case here.

If you dismiss these sites as biased, or blame the mainstream media for twisting the facts, then the problem is probably you. You have let the semantic web tailor an experience that feeds you all of the misinformation (alternative facts) that aligns with your world view. As such, changing your paradigm would be uncomfortable, so you double-down on all of the stories that have been proven false (Pizzagate, Seth Rich's murder, etc...). If these stories rile you up, then the objective is met. The whole point is to stir up the crazies.

As such, you need to continually verify that you are not being brainwashed by either the right or the left. You need to wait-out sensational stories until they are fully vetted. You need to focus on facts, not bluster on with opinions.

Except the facts do not bear out that police forces are institutionally racist. Not even kind of.

What IS a fact is blacks kill more blacks than any police force.
https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-t...
vs
https://www.washingtonpost.com...
And bear in mind the police number isn't only a list of deaths, regardless of justification. So the number is REALLY small. (Sorry the dates don't jive, best I could do - but the point is there)

Which is a worse issue?

What IS a fact is that blacks have the highest proportion of children born out of wed lock. (a whooping 75%)
http://www.politifact.com/trut...

But, nah, let's not fix any of that. Let's get straw man to blame it all on. Let's have less policing. I mean it works so well in Chicago.

This is (mostly) false. Classified information exists subject to Executive Order 13526 (the actual document has been revised over the years, and gets a new number each time), not an act of Congress[1]. As an Executive Order, it's subject to presidential changes at any time: the president cannot violate his own orders.

[1] There are a few classifications of things that might be subject to additional scrutiny: treaties ratified by the Senate (NATO, etc), information on nuclear weapons and materials (born secret per the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 -- this data is classified even if you derive it in your basement, and they could feasibly prosecute you for doing so), and possibly the identities of covert US agents.

Even after several news organizations apologized and retracted their statements about "17 intelligence organizations all agreeing", Politifact continued to offer apologetics for their favored media outlets, saying it wasn't a big deal (being factually incorrect), as long as the overall notion was in the right direction.

http://www.politifact.com/trut...

Contrast this to the near anal-retentive literal manner in which PolitiFact analyzes other stories.

What about Senate seats?

Impacted by turnout reduction due to gerrymandering, and voter restrictions.

Governorships?

Add above, plus off-year elections for more manipulation.

State legislatures?

You mean the groups doing the gerrymandering in all but a handful of states?

Even if you leave out the fact that Democrat-controlled states gerrymander Congressional districts just as much as Republican-controlled ones (as you have conveniently done),

That's actually not true.

I get it, you want to believe it is true, despite the facts not supporting it. However, even the most strident defenders have to admit that Republicans have obviously done it in more states. But so what if it were true? That means nothing, it is still immoral and a betrayal of principles.

Why don't you just get past your partisan biases? All they're doing is causing you to lie.

that doesn't explain why the Ds have been getting their asses kicked over and over in all the races I mention above.

Your premise is also flawed. Check out the elections.

But yes, voter discrimination and the effects of gerrymandering to depress turnout do have an impact.

Including the New York Times

Donald Trump inaccurately suggests Clinton got paid to approve Russia uranium deal

So move on to your next talking point, Vlad.

Trump trolls really don't take it well when their little black balloons get pricked, and sometimes they have mod points. Downmodding is so much easier on the brain muscle than actually thinking about a rebuttal. They can easily do it in the time it takes to have a shit, a big selling point.

Well then... let's remedy that so we can have some objective discussion.. what constitutes a "socialist" nation in your view and why

No thanks. If you really think the thing you like isn't similar to all the bad things, then you're probably right.

I will say that I'm predisposed to be against government giveaways, and a big part of the reason is that US society and institutions have been unkind to me. A huge number of people seem to be largely motivated by condescension or hatred, and many of the rest are happy to pursue their own self-interest regardless of who else gets hurt. So "being a part of society" has not much appeal and any help I've received has already been repaid many times over.

If you've had a different experience, then perhaps that's why you have a different attitude.

It makes a kind of sense for Danes (for example) to look around and see other Danes, feel a sort of kinship or at least something in common, and conclude that systems setup to help might be handled sensibly.

But I live in the US, so I've learned to reflexively distrust anyone making claims, anyone in authority, and anyone who wants something from me. And that attitude seems wiser and wiser all the time. I look around and mostly see people I need to protect myself from, not a society of people I can count on.

The last guy they told us to trust famously said "If you like your health care plan, you can keep it."

Including the New York Times

Donald Trump inaccurately suggests Clinton got paid to approve Russia uranium deal

So move on to your next talking point, Vlad.

9% of Pakistanis view ISIS as positive. The intelligence services aided the Mumbai terrorist attacks. In comparison a little embezzlement by the PM is a small concern.

To say that he has a... "casual acquaintance with truth and reality" is an understatement.

If that gang of sociopaths tell you it's July and the sky is blue, begin to doubt the existence of seasons and colors.

You can say that again.

No, nothing so obviously as pizzagate. Snopes is very subtle when they politicize things.

Perhaps, but you aren't. Not even in the slightest way.

Sometimes they debunk the spirit of the claim, rather than the facts (which may be true).

Good for them. Sometimes the worst lies are built around a facade of truth. That sort of behavior has been known since the times of the ancient Greeks.

Sometimes they invalid a claim by pointing out that some details are wrong, even though the origin of the claim is generally true.

Perhaps, but that is a valuable bit of fact-finding in itself. There can be a kernel of truth in every argument, but it can still tell you quite a bit when you examine the mistruths used to lead people astray. See also the Greeks.

Here's an example of the first: "Claim: Hillary Clinton successfully defended an accused child rapist and later laughed about the case." http://www.snopes.com/hillary-...

The stated claim is 100% true, yet snopes calls it "mostly false". She got the defendant a better deal and later laughed about it on film. Also notice the claim does not match the URL ("freed" versus "successfully defended"; they do not mean the same thing.)

Actually, this is the point where you're not being subtle, since the claim actually DID refer to "freeing" the accused, as numerous instances of that kind of use for this "attack" can be found. Including the image they show on that very page. Furthermore, getting a plea deal? Hardly unusual or exceptional.

Then of course, you get on the whole bit of laughter. Which you would be better off admitting is a rather tenuous
attack, people can laugh at many different things when discussing something, and you, not being a mind-reader, might have trouble proving what she was actually thinking, but in this case, the tapes indicate plenty of other circumstances that elicit humor.

Still, what you seem to be doing, is taking your interpretation and representation of the claim, as the only "true" one, and ignoring the versions actually in circulation, in order to attack Snopes.

Now, Snopes has all the details on why this particular event does not make her an evil person, but lists the claim as "mostly false".

Because it is. It is nothing more than a hysterical attack on Hillary Clinton with no particular merit to it. That's why they added so many falsehoods in order to make her look bad.

In fact, it says a lot more about the character of those who attempt to use it than Hillary Clinton.

By labeling a claim "mostly false" that is 100% factually true (even if the spirit of claim is false), they are inserting their own biases into the discussion and not merely presenting facts. They are also throwing red herrings unrelated to the original claim into the mix to make the "mostly false" claim more defensible. They are editorializing.

By insisting that a blatantly scurrilous attack is 100% factually true(when it is not, except by reducing your own particular factual claim to such a very limited remark that it doesn't reflect the claims actually being used by the attack), you are inserting your own bias into the discussion, and throwing a red herring to try to distract from your obvious selective editorializing on Snopes.

(Disclaimer: This is neither an anti- nor pro- Hillary Clinton post. This is merely a convenient example that I could remember off the top my head.)

Yet the very inclusion of your disclaimer makes it obvi

No, nothing so obviously as pizzagate. Snopes is very subtle when they politicize things.

Perhaps, but you aren't. Not even in the slightest way.

Sometimes they debunk the spirit of the claim, rather than the facts (which may be true).

Good for them. Sometimes the worst lies are built around a facade of truth. That sort of behavior has been known since the times of the ancient Greeks.

Sometimes they invalid a claim by pointing out that some details are wrong, even though the origin of the claim is generally true.

Perhaps, but that is a valuable bit of fact-finding in itself. There can be a kernel of truth in every argument, but it can still tell you quite a bit when you examine the mistruths used to lead people astray. See also the Greeks.

Here's an example of the first: "Claim: Hillary Clinton successfully defended an accused child rapist and later laughed about the case." http://www.snopes.com/hillary-...

The stated claim is 100% true, yet snopes calls it "mostly false". She got the defendant a better deal and later laughed about it on film. Also notice the claim does not match the URL ("freed" versus "successfully defended"; they do not mean the same thing.)

Actually, this is the point where you're not being subtle, since the claim actually DID refer to "freeing" the accused, as numerous instances of that kind of use for this "attack" can be found. Including the image they show on that very page. Furthermore, getting a plea deal? Hardly unusual or exceptional.

Then of course, you get on the whole bit of laughter. Which you would be better off admitting is a rather tenuous
attack, people can laugh at many different things when discussing something, and you, not being a mind-reader, might have trouble proving what she was actually thinking, but in this case, the tapes indicate plenty of other circumstances that elicit humor.

Still, what you seem to be doing, is taking your interpretation and representation of the claim, as the only "true" one, and ignoring the versions actually in circulation, in order to attack Snopes.

Now, Snopes has all the details on why this particular event does not make her an evil person, but lists the claim as "mostly false".

Because it is. It is nothing more than a hysterical attack on Hillary Clinton with no particular merit to it. That's why they added so many falsehoods in order to make her look bad.

In fact, it says a lot more about the character of those who attempt to use it than Hillary Clinton.

By labeling a claim "mostly false" that is 100% factually true (even if the spirit of claim is false), they are inserting their own biases into the discussion and not merely presenting facts. They are also throwing red herrings unrelated to the original claim into the mix to make the "mostly false" claim more defensible. They are editorializing.

By insisting that a blatantly scurrilous attack is 100% factually true(when it is not, except by reducing your own particular factual claim to such a very limited remark that it doesn't reflect the claims actually being used by the attack), you are inserting your own bias into the discussion, and throwing a red herring to try to distract from your obvious selective editorializing on Snopes.

(Disclaimer: This is neither an anti- nor pro- Hillary Clinton post. This is merely a convenient example that I could remember off the top my head.)

Yet the very inclusion of your disclaimer makes it obvi

You don't use Snopes to fact check the news-- there are sites like factcheck and politifact for that. You use Snopes for debunking those god-damned "memes" that fly around like mosquitoes, like (the front page on Snopes today) the photo of a whale in a Venice canal, or don't buy Kelloggs Bran flakes because they contain dried ground-up cow dung, or that Donald Trump married Madonna in a secret ceremony in Utah.

This. Snopes is invaluable for a quick "That is not true" link for that kind of stuff.

For political stuff... it's a maybe. If they debunk some slanderous rumor about a conservative or Republican, that's pretty definitive. Slanderous rumors about liberals or Democrats... maybe still useful; read the article carefully and check their sources. I've found that though they have a bias, they aren't liars. (At least, I haven't caught them in a lie.)

Example I recall from way back when -- there was some utterly idiotic rumor that Ashcroft was terrified of calico cats because he thought they were minions of the Devil or some such. At first, Snopes marked that one "unconfirmed", though they did report that Ashcroft laughed out loud when asked about it. A week or so later, it had been improved to "False".

I very strongly suspect a rumor of similar stupidity about a Democrat would have been stamped "False" from the very beginning.

Snopes is way overrated. Relying on Snopes as an authority for fact checking news is foolhardy.

I think you're missing the point. You don't use Snopes to fact check the news-- there are sites like factcheck and politifact for that. You use Snopes for debunking those god-damned "memes" that fly around like mosquitoes, like (the front page on Snopes today) the photo of a whale in a Venice canal, or don't buy Kelloggs Bran flakes because they contain dried ground-up cow dung, or that Donald Trump married Madonna in a secret ceremony in Utah.

Snopes often provides few, if any, additional details beyond what has already been published elsewhere.

Most of these idiotic internet rumors aren't debunked elsewhere.

Difficult to effectively fact-check CNN, NY Times, Washington Post, etc without field reporters to gather details on the ground and various quality sources. Simply regurgitating and comparing what other news sources have published, alone, isn't much of a fact-check.

This isn't the site to fact-check CNN or the NY Times. This is a site that debunks idiot email "memes" showing me a civil-war era photograph of soldiers that shot a pterodactyl.

The electoral college is an equalizer similar to the way each state gets 2 Senators and a population-proportionate number of Representatives.

Nope. It's an de-equalizer, due to the way it is allocated and the way the House is apportioned.

It even lets under 25% of the population decide the presidency.

Without it, the mob rules (queue Black Sabbath from the Heavy Metal soundtrack.)

The Electoral College mostly serves to discredit elections when it produces a questionable result, it serves no purpose in preventing "mob rule" whatever you mean by that bogeyman word. Or any other abuses. Don't believe me? Check the election of 1876.

Historically, it was created because Philadelphia would have been able to dictate to the entire country.

Historically, Philadelphia wasn't even the largest city in the country at the time, let alone capable of real attempts at dictating to the country by population. It wouldn't happen.

No, they came up with the Electoral College because they knew they wanted a separate Chief Executive, but lacking a consensus for the popular vote at all (South Carolina didn't even have that for selecting its electoral college members until after the Civil War), they came up with the half-assed system they started with, that didn't even last until the 1810s because it was so broken in terms of procedure.

Utter BS to your statement there is no vote fraud. You're playing semantic games. There has always been, and always will be, vote/election fraud. Otherwise, how to explain dead people voting, 100% (sometimes 100%+) turnout for one candidate, people found guilty of fraud, etc.

Seems to me you're playing semantic games, and BSing yourself. Even those claims of "100%" turnout are faked up.

You might find some technical points to quibble over, ask for more precise speech, but that's a boomerang that comes back to roost in your own house.

forever avoiding the 'common defense' part

About one-sixth of federal spending goes to national defense. The US accounts for around 1/3 of all military spending on planet earth, and more than the next 7-8 countries combined, depending on how you count.

I'd love to avoid some of that. Then maybe there would be something in the budget for infrastructure and health care. Instead of spending money on things that build the economy (healthy workers; roads, bridges, bike lanes and fibre broadband to the home for them to get to work or transport the result of work), we build up and arm enemies and build weapons with which to blow them up.

THE 9th is the most often overturned appeals court of any, so maybe there is hope for a Supreme Court overrule.

They are 3rd on the list of most frequently overturned decisions, not first. Please do a little fact checking before you post.

Source: http://www.politifact.com/pund...

Yes it does. If out of the hundreds of other kids in my school, nearly all of which had chicken pox as children, not one of them, their siblings, or cousins died of it, then yes, that makes it rare.

Well, I did say "super-rare", but I will grant you that chicken pox is rarely fatal - the CDC numbers seem to be about 100 death per 3,500,000 cases, or 1 death per 35,000 infections. Still worth preventing in my mind but I can see that it is well within the risk level of things that we find "acceptable". Traffic deaths in the US are about 1 death per 10,000 per year people for comparison.

If the same standard of rarity and epidemic used for diseases like measles, mumps, and chicken pox were applied to vaccine damages to children we would hear nothing at all on the news except a constant screaming about the hundreds of thousands of kids with permanent damage caused by vaccines.

I guess you'll have to colour me unconvinced. What exactly are the "hundreds of thousands of kids" you are referrig to? If you referred to them earlier in more detail, I don't seem to be able to find it.

The only info I can quickly find (such as https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... ) seems to indicate that the vaccinated have slightly lower death rates immediately following vaccination - but the deaths are virtually all in the elderly, and it did not look at "permanent damage" less sever than death (which incidentally is pretty permanent).

Oh, a bit more searching turns up http://www.politifact.com/pund... which gives a bit more detail using the VAERS data. It does look like there might be as many as a 100+ deaths associated with vaccines, with the strong caveat of the relationship between correlation and causality. Of course that is ALL vaccines, so even for just chicken pox, the "lives saved" seems to be on the same order as the "lives lost" for all vaccines combined. If each specific vaccine prevents more deaths than can be attributed to that specific vaccine, then the calculations seem to be in favour of widespread use. I would be interested in further research about these sorts of calculation.

Lies, beget lies, which beget lies.

CNN ratings, which were already low have dropped even lower

You are simply denying facts.

CNN has most watched second quarter on record, from June 27th, 2017 / Now in the Top 10 in all categories for cable networks.
http://cnnpressroom.blogs.cnn....

Trump's claim that CNN ratings are down is 'pants on fire'.
http://www.politifact.com/trut...

This is post is just bizarre. Why didn't you fact check first? Don't you understand how your credibility depends on not posting outright falsehoods?

I wonder what the numbers would look like if you included working age people on "Social Security Disability".

And what if you included Senior Citizens, Homemakers and Kindergartners!

Well that's nice yet completely not relevant, when I was referring to WORKING AGE PEOPLE.

Many homemakers are working age. Durp. But I guess you missed the point of what I was saying, didn't you? Strange, I included a link, which you MYSTERIOUSLY ignored.

Try reading it, so you can understand my point, which was to say, it's easy to claim things are terrible, but sometimes under scrutiny, it isn't quite so.

People who CLEARLY can work, yet claim they are "disabled". When their disability is just being unemployed. If you don't think people game the disability system like this in the US, boy do I have a bridge to sell you.

Yes, yes, you're very concerned, and those despicable people getting disability who don't deserve it are so terrible. Your hand-wringing hysteria is not impressive, or convincing, because you are simply denigrating a wide group of people without any actual substance or information to validate your assertions.

It'd be one thing if you bothered to look for a report first, but no, you didn't, you just leaped right to it. The thing is, I've heard the noise over disability before, and it's not at all impressive, no more than the people clamoring over Medicare Fraud, Welfare Queens, or Waste in Government Budgets.

William Proxmire was just grandstanding with his awards, and so are you. Reagan was even worse, as was Newt.

Durp, the military has been shedding jobs since the end of the Cold War.

No it has been outsourcing jobs since the end of the Cold War.

Oh, you want to complain about that? Go ahead, but that wasn't what you said, now was it?

We'll just ignore the fact that the Department of Defense is still one of the largest employers in the world with over 3 million people.

Oh gosh! That's almost as many people as there are public school teachers in the US!

Even if those numbers are down from 30 years ago, that's still a shitload of people.

Not so impressive when the country's population has increased by a third.

If you don't want to see the US Military as a jobs program, that's fine, be in denial.

If you want to employ people by the government as a jobs program, might I suggest an alternative that would be more beneficial?

Lets not forget all of the handouts to Defense contractors that costs billions of dollars for overpriced equipment that even the military doesn't want.

If you want to complain about that, you should make that your complaint.

Sadly, that's not even involving people working in the US!

Tell me again how that isn't a jobs program and corporate welfare?

Your remark, and I quote, was "and you are too old to go into the military(the other jobs handout program)" which was missing the nature of the US downsizing of its military. They killed the Space Shuttle too.

Rhetoric, Blather, and Disingenuous Gabble.

So asking serious questions about the policies of the US Government and how its spends its money is apparently a bad thing now?

You're not serious. If you were serious, you wouldn't be engaging in your particular pattern of behavior. You'd also realize that y

Unemployment numbers don't count those who just straight up gave up on looking for work.

Yeah, Unemployment is meant to be those seeking work, not those not seeking work.

I wonder what the numbers would look like if you included working age people on "Social Security Disability".

And what if you included Senior Citizens, Homemakers and Kindergartners!

It could be almost 100 million!!!!

It seems the primary disability here is the lack of ability to find a job and you are too old to go into the military(the other jobs handout program).

Durp, the military has been shedding jobs since the end of the Cold War.

Lies, damn lies and statistics.

Rhetoric, Blather, and Disingenuous Gabble.

Successful voter fraud isn't detected.

That's a brilliant self-perpetuating delusion, worthy of the best conspiracy theorists. If a voter-fraud study turns up no evidence, it's not because there's no voter fraud, it's because the fraudsters are too good at it! And there are millions of them! Millions, I say!

You can't state that it's rare or a "minuscule" problem without at least a basic investigation into the votes cast and counted.

Well, you have a point there. Oh wait, you don't:

https://www.brennancenter.org/...
https://www.washingtonpost.com...
http://www.politifact.com/flor...
http://www.scholarsstrategynet...
http://fortune.com/2016/10/18/...
http://www.projectvote.org/blo...

[Ignoring the remainder of your speculative, strawman-filled, fact-challenged rant.]

Your Google Fu is weak. Pay attention to the Youtube video where you can watch Charles Bolden, NASA Chief under Obama, state unambiguously that he was directed to reach out to the Muslim world to make them feel good about their contributions to science and engineering.

This guy has to be a hired psyop. Everyone knows the US spent billions to fuck up Ukraine.

US spent $5 billion to destabilize Ukraine The United States spent $5 billion on Ukraine anti-government riots Neocons and the Ukraine Coup U.S. Admits It Spent 5 Billion to Overthrow Ukraine Victoria Nuland's Admits Washington Has Spent $5 Billion to "Subvert Ukraine" Nuland: Fuck the EU

The US spent billions to overthrow an elected president in Ukraine, created riots. Now Joe Biden's runs Ukraine's oil companies.

Did you even read your own links?

"That’s a distorted understanding of remarks given by a State Department official. She was referring to money spent on democracy-building programs in Ukraine since it broke off from the Soviet Union in 1991.

We rate the claim Pants on Fire."

This guy has to be a hired psyop.
Everyone knows the US spent billions to fuck up Ukraine.

US spent $5 billion to destabilize Ukraine
The United States spent $5 billion on Ukraine anti-government riots
Neocons and the Ukraine Coup
U.S. Admits It Spent 5 Billion to Overthrow Ukraine
Victoria Nuland's Admits Washington Has Spent $5 Billion to "Subvert Ukraine"
Nuland: Fuck the EU

The US spent billions to overthrow an elected president in Ukraine, created riots.
Now Joe Biden's runs Ukraine's oil companies.

I am not a big Trump fan, but he is our president. That said, this media BS of bashing Trump every 3 seconds is getting old, and people are seeing it for the partisan BS that it is:

Lets see, Jeff Bezos owns Amazon and owns the Washington Post, but Joe sixpack doesn't know who Jeff Bezos is, but everyone knows Amazon, and Trump associates the two in his tweet. Not really all that inaccurate, just semantics and partisans looking for any negative story that they can put up about Trump without losing their jobs.

The reality is that we now have CNN firing 3 reporters for completely BS stories. We have a CNN reporter admitting on hidden camera that the Trump-Russia thing is total bullshit, and in general, we have 90% of the news stories on Trump being negative. Put yourself in his shoes. He gets elected and immediately gets slammed with this bogus Russia collusion investigation and the media is basically making up stories for months from anonymous sources that turn out not to be true (CNN stating that Comey would testify that he never told Trump that he was not being investigated and then the next day Comey testifies to the exact opposite, i.e. that he had told Trump several times that Trump was not being investigated but refused to make that information public, etc.)

I will not be at all surprised if when we drill down on the Russian collusion scandal, we actually find that this is an Obama/Clinton contingency plan to try to illegally steal an election.

Here are some undisputed facts on collusion with Russia:
- Republicans have been hostile to Communist Russia for 7 decades, Democrats have been friendly.
- Obama was caught on a hot mic telling the Russians that after his re-election he could be more flexible http://www.weeklystandard.com/...
- Hillary Clinton presided over a deal where she allowed 20% of US Uranium resources to be sold to the Russians, after which millions of dollars were donated by the interested parties to the Clinton Foundation, and Bill gave a speech in Russia for around $1M, where his normal fee was around $100k https://www.nytimes.com/2015/0...
- Hillary Clinton presided over the "Russian Reset" an attempt to normalize relations with Russia just a few months after they invaded Georgia (not the US State, the country)... http://www.politifact.com/trut...
- President Obama learned of Russian hacking attempts in the summer of 2016, and yet he chose to do nothing (supposedly out of fear of revealing sources and methods, which is BS; the entire point of intelligence is to protect the country, if you don't do that, there is no point in having sources and methods in the first place), and now he may get his ass hauled in front of congress to explain why he did not try to better secure the election that his party is so upset about losing. http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-...

I could go on, but you get the point. There is a Russian connection, but it is not Trump, it is Obama and Hillary, and the entire Russia-Trump collusion farce was a misdirect to try to thwart the investigation of the real scandals.

The entire Trump-Russia connection consists of a few Trump advisors who had business deals with Russia or Russian interests (try to find a successful multinational that doesn't do business in/with Russia, I bet Amazon has Russian deals) and one Trump advisor who jumped the gun after the election and started talking to the Russian ambasador before Trump was sworn in. Legal scholars say that this could have been prosecuted but highly likel

A statute, even one passed by Congress, is invalid if it abridges a constitutional right. Congress cannot give the president the power to take away rights guaranteed by the constitution.

The statute was signed by President Truman - a democrat. Obama signed a similar order to Trump except it was for a longer period of time and gave more advanced warning.

As has been pointed out many times elsewhere, the Obama restrictions may be "similar", but were not the same as the Trump restrictions:
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2017/jan/30/donald-trump/why-comparing-trumps-and-obamas-immigration-restri/
http://www.snopes.com/trump-immigration-order-obama/

"He called me a genius," Trump said of Putin at two campaign events in February, three times in April, in a May interview on CNN, at a June rally in California, twice in July, and at an August town hall in Ohio

No, they're firmly against being forced, literally at the point of a gun with threat of jail time and having their possessions taken away, to be generous. Liberals LOVE to be generous with other people's money, and even more so when they can make people criminals if they're not generous in exactly the way that obeys their ideology.

I'll take that over Conservatives, who want to make people criminals for being generous by giving out food and shelter to the homeless, providing medical care, and their sexual lives.

Asking for help from (and offering help to) like-minded people isn't even remotely the same as being forced on pain of imprisonment to do the same thing, after, of course, also being forced to pay for a huge body of government middle-men and their supporting infrastructure that do exactly nothing towards the actual expense (say, funding a surgery) being met.

Actually, in the US, very little of your expenses go towards funding the surgery. There's a reason why so many other countries spend less per capita, and yet achieve better results. It isn't the middle-men though, it's the skimming off the top, the landscapers, the interior decorators, and the golf courses. Oh yes, it's the RICH guys getting richer, not the government workers.

But I don't get any government-provided health care.

Actually, you do, lots and lots of it. Go out and say thanks.

I do, though, now have to pay several times more for government-required features on my health insurance, like ... mandated full maternity coverage for a couple that won't be having any babies.

Nope. You don't pay one bit more, in fact, you pay LESS, because the insurer actually recognizes SIGNIFICANT savings in expenses based on covering maternity care, rather than ignoring it.

And of course, absolutely zero actual health care in exchange for thousands of dollars in required payments, until over thirteen thousand more has been spent in cash, first. That's all in addition to taxes, of course.

Nope! The government isn't doing that. In fact, you're lying about it. Fortunately for you, you're not under oath, so nobody in government can do a thing about it. But we can call you a liar.

Still, you accidentally made a good point. Paying a ton of taxes should indeed entitle one to the services one buys with those taxes. What about the people who don't actually pay any taxes?

Indeed, infants should be put to work in tiny areas, after all, we spent lots and lots of money on the little parasites. Some of them cost over a million dollars in the first months of their life. And what do they do? Scream and poop.

And how do you define "adequate?"

Using a dictionary. What are you, a moron? I bet you don't even know the difference between "define" and "determine" either.

Should Grandma get a $50,000 knee replacement surgery and all of the surrounding care because it would make her a little more comfortable?

Knee replacement surgery can be done for under 12,000 in Germany. I suggest you stop overpaying, and eliminate the overhead and waste. You know those hospitals with extensive landscaping and water fountains, and interior decorating? Yeah, turns out your money is being spent on that, not actual medical care. That's right, funding your surgery pays for a lot of excess, not actual medical care.

That's not even supporting infrastructure. That's just a bunch of money being wasted. Ask Rick Scott, he knows.

OK. But wouldn't she also be more comfortable in a newer car that doesn't cramp her right leg so much?

A good article on the subject is at PolitiFact

The TL;DR version is that the AFL-CIO started campaigning for a 40-hour week in 1886. There was a workplace explosion three days after the AFL-CIO's announcement, killing several, and resulting in a few trials & executions. That brought the 40-hour work week into international news, where it remained.

The Ford Motor company famously introduced the policy in 1914, but wasn't the first company to do so. A couple of years later, a strike by railroad workers crippled the nation's commerce, so the government mandated they get overtime pay in 1916. (This is not unlike strikes by longshoremen in recent years).

Overall, the labor unions deserve most of the credit, for doggedly pursuing the idea and seeing progress for nearly sixty years.

http://www.politifact.com/trut...

Nobody cafés about Y2K bug anymore.
This is a stand for the nest election: Trump had signed more laws then anyone else did.
This is an easy target. Expect more laws
  tot follow.

Nice try, but the idea of Red State Socialism (Republican states get more federal spending than they pay in federal taxes) is well supported.

Citation? Date range?

Politifact claims it's the 6th, 11th, then 9th.
Findlaw also says it's the 6th.
In 2015 it looks like it was the 11th, and in 2014 it looks like the 2nd, 3rd, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 10th and 11th came ahead of the 9th in reversals.

But Fox news agrees with you, even though the year they select, 2012, it was not the most overturned, with the 1st, 6th, 8th, and 11th having more (the 9th was tied with the 5th).

I'm not sure how this counts as tap dancing...

MOST of the circuits are struck down MOST of the time when the SCOTUS takes a case because they only take cases where at least four of them think there's an issue needing decision. You can see the stats for all the circuits here: http://www.politifact.com/pund... The 9th Circuit is the largest and handles 4000 more cases per year than the next highest circuit, so it isn't surprising that a huge percent of the overall SCOTUS cases would come from that circuit.

There's lots of meticulously researched and sourced articles out there. Just because you can't use google doesn't mean there isn't any evidence.

#1 Trump won because the best the Democratic Party could offer was Hilary Clinton.

Ad nauseam...

Yes, we have a lesser of two evils party system in this country. Both the Democrats and Republicans play the game of telling their respective bases what they want to hear and then find out how much of it they bought, on election day. Funny thing is though, some of the wining side's agenda actually becomes reality.

So as a voter, it's still to your advantage to vote for whatever bullshit sounds best to you, because *some* of it will stick.

Those were his prepared statements. What he said during questioning was:

“At one point, [Ms. Lynch] directed me not to call it an ‘investigation’ but instead to call it a ‘matter,’ which confused me and concerned me,” Mr. Comey said of Ms. Lynch. “That was one of the bricks in the load that led me to conclude I have to step away from the department if we are to close this case credibly.”

Mr. Comey said the language suggested by Ms. Lynch was troublesome because it closely mirrored what the Clinton campaign was using.

Acknowledging that he didn’t know whether it was intentional, Mr. Comey said Ms. Lynch’s request “gave the impression the attorney general was looking to align the way we talked about our investigation with the way a political campaign was describing the same activity.”

Mr. Comey told lawmakers that Ms. Lynch’s intervention was a key factor in his decision to buck Justice Department tradition and publicly announce in July the details of Mrs. Clinton’s case and why he decided on his own not to bring a legal case against the former first lady.

Quote source

And if you don't care for that one:

Another.
And another.

The evidence of tampering with the justice system by Loretta Lynch was far more damning than the evidence of Trump.

You should add to that list the infuriating refusal to release her wall st. speech transcripts until 'everyone else does first'. And avoiding press conferences. Then there was the big lie about what happened in Benghazi... the list just goes on and on, doesn't it?

Believe it or not, those didn't come to mind. Maybe, fortunately, she's fading in my memory.

You should add to that list the infuriating refusal to release her wall st. speech transcripts until 'everyone else does first'. And avoiding press conferences. Then there was the big lie about what happened in Benghazi... the list just goes on and on, doesn't it?

It seems reasonable for Trump's team to have taken what MIT said a couple of years ago at face value:

According to John Reilly, who co-directs the Joint Program on Science and Policy of Global Change at MIT, the Paris agreement would reduce global temperature by two-tenths of one degree Celsius compared with earlier climate treaties.

The Paris deal was expected to reduce global temperatures by building on the earlier 2009 Copenhagen Accord, imposing deeper carbon emission cuts on signatories and bringing new countries like China into an international climate pact.

Yet as the Paris Agreement was under negotiation, Reilly co-authored an MIT report that criticized the deal for not making steep enough cuts in emissions to reach the Paris agreement’s ambitious goal of capping this century’s temperature increases at 2 degrees Celsius.

"Those pledges shave 0.2 C of warming if they’re maintained through 2100, compared with what we assessed would have been the case by extending existing measures (due to expire in 2020) based on earlier international agreements in Copenhagen and Cancun," Reilly said in October 2015, when the MIT study was published. "We are making progress, but if 2 C stabilization is our goal, it’s not nearly enough."

Just because Reilly now, AFTER the announcement, says that things have changed and it may make a little bit more of a difference than before, doesn't mean anyone misunderstood what his team said 2 years ago. He specifically was on record with the 0.2 C number as what the Paris Agreement would accomplish. It just happens that his number then was in a context where smaller was better for Reilly's political goals around global warming and now he's in a situation where smaller is worse for his political goals.

The fact-checkers seem to agree with Trump regarding what the MIT study claimed.

According to John Reilly, who co-directs the Joint Program on Science and Policy of Global Change at MIT, the Paris agreement would reduce global temperature by two-tenths of one degree Celsius compared with earlier climate treaties.

http://www.politifact.com/trut...

from how Trumpcare (grandiose over a House vote that is Dead in the Senate)

Well, they gotta do something, obamacare is failing under its own weight, and many voted to get rid of the damned thing, this is him trying to keep election promises.

I'm going to put "Pass a pretend law that doesn't even work that merely checks off a list that gets buried in the morass on the Senate" as doing less than nothing.

It's just a pretend act, by a pretentious pompous turnip. If the ACA is failing, Trumpcare will do nothing to ameliorate it.

Muslim Ban (Even aside from the issues in court, the sudden implementation was flawed)

Hmm...he was wanting to restrict travel from a small subset of countries with heavy terrorist activity, that was largely the same list the Obama administration restricted for awhile when he was in office?

Again, seems more common sense than acrimony or racism....it does happen these areas are largely muslim, but hey...if we have an upturn in terrorist Buddhists or Presbyterian activity, I expect to enact similar restrictions

Ah, but Obama didn't make the mistake of saying "HEY, let's revoke these bans as they're flyign into the country" let alone the even more egregious mistake of shouting his "Muslim Ban" to confirm the animus for all to see. Obama made a lot of mistakes, to be sure, but not on that one.

That's where Trump lost out. He should have simply moderated his words as "I will take steps to increase security and prevent terrorism" but instead he went to rallies and called for a Muslim Ban and no matter how many other words and phrases he salts into it, that's still going to haunt him.

And even if not that, he should have simply called for a review WITHOUT immediately cancelling all the existing documents that had been approved.

He might have gotten away with that and looked like he was keeping his promises, but instead, he did what he did, he said what he said, and that'll haunt him.

Websites linger too.

...we know we have another indication that he just wants to tear down Obama.

Well, a lot of people didn't like many of the things Obama did, and hence voted for someone to reign them in vs continue another 4 years of the same policies.

Oh, Trump isn't going to rein anything in, he's rushing off like Mr. Toad on a Phaeton, heading right to the cliff. He's got the crop, not the reins.

See, you leave out the key part: When you do it just because you just want to tear Obama down, rather than actually seek out valid and actual substance on which to base policies and practices, that's where you are making your own self clear. And boy did Trump do that when he revealed the truth on immigration. He drew all the lines himself.

And it ain't a pretty picture. Doesn't help him one bit either. At this rate, the Norwegians are going to give Obama ANOTHER prize just to spite Trump.

Again...keeping election promises...

You keep relying on that. It's going to haunt you too.

Hell, he could have scored more points by simply forwarding it to the Senate as a treaty.

OH just great..then it *would* have made it binding....no thanks.

No, the treaty being forwarded to the Senate wouldn't have made it any more binding, even assuming they'd ratified it. You do know that they can choose to reject a treaty, don't you?

You don't need to be willfully obtuse, it doesn't serve much purpose.

If they rejected it, he could proclaim that the "Senate Spoke, and

You're right; the main promise does seem to be a 5 point thing.

But it got expanded in use. Including his tweets.

Also, as a partial change in my tune, I'll leave politificat's score card here with the comment that it does look like he's actually doing okay so far on actual promises.

So there are around 100K schools in US.. Schools spend about $12K/student/year, retrofit of each locker room should be doable for a simular one time fee. I would rate this as quite doable if public sensibilities have changed and this brings everyone comfort and greater focus on studies rather than students getting into fights after criticizing each others anatomic development.

I keep seeing people say that but all the evidence I can find does not really support that statement.

http://www.politifact.com/wisc...

From what I can find the statement is only partially true. The Obama administration put in more restrictions on travel from those countries and didn't allow the visa waiver program to apply to those countries but did not actually try to ban them. It also looks like the list changed over time based on recommendations from the intelligence agencies.

You also ignored the emoluments issue entirely. It is like you latched on to one small thing you could attack while ignoring the overall issue. That is nitpicking and not useful.

Michael, Michael, Michael, if you're going to lie, try to at least make your lie believable. In this case, Clinton didn't personally approve the sale, and the state department was only one of nine U.S. agencies that did approve the sale, only Obama, himself, could have vetoed the sale unilaterally and it also received approval from Canadian regulators.

Why are you telling lies?

The DNC never claimed the emails were false,

They did claim the emails were false, in a smarmy walk-backable way.

Their claim was refuted simply, by DKIM.

Really? What are you referring to?

Maybe some stuff Trump said?

That's why, for example, judges and jurors are sought to be impartial.

There you are! Justifying Trump's dismissing a judge as "biased" because he was of Mexican descent...Racist, racist, racist!

Of course, attacking a judge because of his ancestry is indeed, racist, and Trump's admissionsa actually showed his own realization of the bias and animus he had been demonstrating.

That is what Trump chose to do. He picked a deliberate course of racial antagonism to attack a judge in a lawsuit where it was immaterial. In the media. Nothing more. Remember, Trump University? It didn't get filed as a request for recusal in court, it was merely engaging in political aggrandizement. You don't get a judge to act in a case just because you go on CNN and pout like a crybaby.

You do know this, right? Trump was whining about a judge. He chose to do it with an included racist spin, so it only reflects on Trump. Not the judge. In the realm of public opinion. At least, until it becomes relevant to a legal matter. Now personally, I blame Trump's political advisers, who should have at least made Trump temper his remarks, but he still has a problem with running his mouth. Or twitter fingers, as the case may be. But he's not the only one with a problem with that in his administration. That sort of thing can reflect on you.

Which was why when somebody takes your statements, applies them to you, in a legal case, and submits them to court, well, then you have a judge rule on it.

Now if you want to see a judge who got in trouble because of their own actions, let's try one. That's one where a