Domain: washingtonpost.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to washingtonpost.com.
Comments · 10,374
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Re:Right has zero access to "societal machine"
That's true to a point as long as you do a few things:
Like bury reports on right-wing violence?
No wait, that's the opposite, isn't it?
1) Group all anti-government, non-Muslim religious based attacks as well as white supremacist attacks into the far-right category while at the same time often miscategorizing other attacks such as classifying Fort Hood as 'workplace violence' even with Hasan's confession about his motivations. That actually required an act of Congress to have to the dead and wounded be recognized as victims of a terrorist attack and awarded Purple Hearts.
I remember another act to get other people Purple Hearts.
What was even worse was the Congressional call, where so many people thought they were getting Medals of Honor. That dismayed me. even more than trying to make a drug-addled depressed person into some sort of concerted act of terrorism.
2) Assign political motivations to non-political attacks. Not all attacks by right wingers are motivated by their ideology in the same way not all attacks by left wingers or Jihadists are motivated by theirs; sometimes an attack in a parking lot is just road rage with no deeper meaning.
Deny actual motivation and declare he's just crazy.
Seriously, any right-wing violence is immediately dismissed as mental illness by their pundits, or worse yet, blamed on the left.
3) Start tracking after 2001 and stop tracking after 2015.
Like this?
4) Change the definition of threat as it suits your needs. In some reports "threat" is based off of actual deaths and in others it's by incident. So when you need a bigger number you count the 5 times someone was harassed on the street (with no injury) and say that is a bigger threat than a single shooting that killed multiple people.
Could have told you that ten years ago.
There is also the fact that many Jihadist plots are stopped before the threat ever materializes due to the massive manpower dedicated to just that while far right attacks are not due to their limited nature and next to no dedicated special policing (they seem to be mostly of the "lone gunman", small or single target variety which are very difficult to prevent) . i.e. it's hard to stop a crazy person with a knife until the attack starts vs someone trying to buy large quantities of explosives.
Oh really?
It's just another case of statistics telling you whatever you want them to and not necessarily the truth.
Is that why you oppose the phony statistics often cited by the right?
You do, don't you? Even Jon Kyl's?
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Re:Right has zero access to "societal machine"
That's true to a point as long as you do a few things:
Like bury reports on right-wing violence?
No wait, that's the opposite, isn't it?
1) Group all anti-government, non-Muslim religious based attacks as well as white supremacist attacks into the far-right category while at the same time often miscategorizing other attacks such as classifying Fort Hood as 'workplace violence' even with Hasan's confession about his motivations. That actually required an act of Congress to have to the dead and wounded be recognized as victims of a terrorist attack and awarded Purple Hearts.
I remember another act to get other people Purple Hearts.
What was even worse was the Congressional call, where so many people thought they were getting Medals of Honor. That dismayed me. even more than trying to make a drug-addled depressed person into some sort of concerted act of terrorism.
2) Assign political motivations to non-political attacks. Not all attacks by right wingers are motivated by their ideology in the same way not all attacks by left wingers or Jihadists are motivated by theirs; sometimes an attack in a parking lot is just road rage with no deeper meaning.
Deny actual motivation and declare he's just crazy.
Seriously, any right-wing violence is immediately dismissed as mental illness by their pundits, or worse yet, blamed on the left.
3) Start tracking after 2001 and stop tracking after 2015.
Like this?
4) Change the definition of threat as it suits your needs. In some reports "threat" is based off of actual deaths and in others it's by incident. So when you need a bigger number you count the 5 times someone was harassed on the street (with no injury) and say that is a bigger threat than a single shooting that killed multiple people.
Could have told you that ten years ago.
There is also the fact that many Jihadist plots are stopped before the threat ever materializes due to the massive manpower dedicated to just that while far right attacks are not due to their limited nature and next to no dedicated special policing (they seem to be mostly of the "lone gunman", small or single target variety which are very difficult to prevent) . i.e. it's hard to stop a crazy person with a knife until the attack starts vs someone trying to buy large quantities of explosives.
Oh really?
It's just another case of statistics telling you whatever you want them to and not necessarily the truth.
Is that why you oppose the phony statistics often cited by the right?
You do, don't you? Even Jon Kyl's?
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Re:Right has zero access to "societal machine"
That's true to a point as long as you do a few things:
Like bury reports on right-wing violence?
No wait, that's the opposite, isn't it?
1) Group all anti-government, non-Muslim religious based attacks as well as white supremacist attacks into the far-right category while at the same time often miscategorizing other attacks such as classifying Fort Hood as 'workplace violence' even with Hasan's confession about his motivations. That actually required an act of Congress to have to the dead and wounded be recognized as victims of a terrorist attack and awarded Purple Hearts.
I remember another act to get other people Purple Hearts.
What was even worse was the Congressional call, where so many people thought they were getting Medals of Honor. That dismayed me. even more than trying to make a drug-addled depressed person into some sort of concerted act of terrorism.
2) Assign political motivations to non-political attacks. Not all attacks by right wingers are motivated by their ideology in the same way not all attacks by left wingers or Jihadists are motivated by theirs; sometimes an attack in a parking lot is just road rage with no deeper meaning.
Deny actual motivation and declare he's just crazy.
Seriously, any right-wing violence is immediately dismissed as mental illness by their pundits, or worse yet, blamed on the left.
3) Start tracking after 2001 and stop tracking after 2015.
Like this?
4) Change the definition of threat as it suits your needs. In some reports "threat" is based off of actual deaths and in others it's by incident. So when you need a bigger number you count the 5 times someone was harassed on the street (with no injury) and say that is a bigger threat than a single shooting that killed multiple people.
Could have told you that ten years ago.
There is also the fact that many Jihadist plots are stopped before the threat ever materializes due to the massive manpower dedicated to just that while far right attacks are not due to their limited nature and next to no dedicated special policing (they seem to be mostly of the "lone gunman", small or single target variety which are very difficult to prevent) . i.e. it's hard to stop a crazy person with a knife until the attack starts vs someone trying to buy large quantities of explosives.
Oh really?
It's just another case of statistics telling you whatever you want them to and not necessarily the truth.
Is that why you oppose the phony statistics often cited by the right?
You do, don't you? Even Jon Kyl's?
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Re:Contribute != opinion and/or ads
You can't rely on your gut when it comes to dealing with the FEC. Unless your gut has passed the bar exam.
Did Facebook ads traced to a Russian company violate us election law
Betteridge's Law of Headlines aside, there may well be an indictable offense here.
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Re: News at 11
Yes, I remember pizzagate. I also remember post-election riots, a recount in several states that appears to have fizzled-out, accusations of Trump colluding with Russia, Republican congresspersons being shot by an leftist inspired by anti-Trump news stories (from "legitimate" network and cable news sources), etc.
You also seem to have forgotten the multi-sourced reports before the election that Trump, at most, had a one-in-four chance of winning. That may or may not have discouraged potential voters from voting for Trump but it certainly discouraged potential Trump campaign contributors: 2016 election/campaign finance.
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Re:Good reasons and bad reasons.
As opposed to my-birth-certificate is none of your business or my-college-records are none of your business but I'm a Rhodes scholar and professor of constitutional law but get my EOs overturned at a record breaking level Obama?
By any number of metrics, the Obama administration was the least transparent administration in history, bar none. Just because you happened to agree with him doesn't change that fact. Obama had the largest number of lobbyists working in the white house in the last 50 years. The Obama administration lied to judges so they could spy on journalists and the AP to find white house leaks they didn't like. There is a list 3 feet long of incidence where the Obama admin concealed information from the public for political advantage.
https://www.washingtonpost.com...
http://reason.com/archives/201...
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/ru...
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/o... -
Re:Trump says, "Wait, their all black & spanis
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Re:This is not what was intially reported
Err.. no, they weren't. The initial report was:
Most of the ads and accounts didn't have to explicitly do with the election or either of the then-candidates, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Instead, they were focused on divisive political topics, including LGBT issues, immigration and gun rights.
If you read that as "pro-Trump", that's on you. Don't go crying "false information".
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Re: The medical cartel...
It's far more expensive to market those drugs, apparently.
Gotta recoup those costs too. -
Re: Too bad....
>First off, Germany doesn't have "over a million" Syrian refugees. At best estimates, it has between 600,000 and 700,000. This article:
https://www.washingtonpost.com...
Says Germany's official tally for net new refugees in 2016 was 890,000. The article was written in September of 2016. It's now September of 2017. I would say a million+ refugees is probably a fairly safe extrapolation.
>Second, nobody in Germany ever claimed that they were "vital to the economy". You just made that up out of whole cloth.
https://www.theguardian.com/bu...
See, this is why normal people fucking hate the left. You are all liars. IMF has made that argument, Merkel and her henchmen have made that argument. Multiple times. Of course it's bullshit, just like your claim that no one is making it. That's what you guys do, get caught in a lie, move to another lie.
>Third, 86% of the population of Syria is literate. I haven't seen any study of how the refugee population differs from the population at large in this respect, so the most reasonable assumption is that approximately 86% of the refugees are also literate.
LOL. So you believe those official government statistics published by Syria on literacy rates, eh? Here you go:
http://www.zeit.de/2015/47/integration-fluechtlinge-schule-bildung-herausforderung
>I get that you need to demonise the Left so that you can safely hate them and not listen to their arguments. Really, I understand. But don't spread your bullshit here.
Blah blah blah, anonymous coward ends with: "I don't have the energy to lie any more, so I'll just do an ad hominem attack to close..". -
Re:Mark Zuckerberg
It had apparently very little to do with politics but more an particular policy issue, everyone with half a brain can pretty much understand this because https://www.washingtonpost.com.... Ohhh look the corporate whore had a something like one thousand million dollars to spend and $100,000 buys you pretty much fuck all but propaganda must be served and the corrupt democrats must not be held accountable, otherwise all the other corrupt politicians will also fall. So how much did Israel spend on the elections, how much did Saudi Arabia spend on the elections and as a side note, how about a list of all countries that contributed to the Clinton Foundation where the bulk of the money went on insider massive salaries. Hell, $100,000 would not even buy you into the Clinton Crime Clan upon a temporary associate guest status https://www.washingtonpost.com..., so what did Saudi Arabia get for over 35 million dollars, apparently lots of guns and bullets.
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Re:Mark Zuckerberg
It had apparently very little to do with politics but more an particular policy issue, everyone with half a brain can pretty much understand this because https://www.washingtonpost.com.... Ohhh look the corporate whore had a something like one thousand million dollars to spend and $100,000 buys you pretty much fuck all but propaganda must be served and the corrupt democrats must not be held accountable, otherwise all the other corrupt politicians will also fall. So how much did Israel spend on the elections, how much did Saudi Arabia spend on the elections and as a side note, how about a list of all countries that contributed to the Clinton Foundation where the bulk of the money went on insider massive salaries. Hell, $100,000 would not even buy you into the Clinton Crime Clan upon a temporary associate guest status https://www.washingtonpost.com..., so what did Saudi Arabia get for over 35 million dollars, apparently lots of guns and bullets.
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Re:Not even to locate?..
They're not a suspect. There's no warrant.
Huh? The two aren't tied together.
If they had cause to suspect someone, they could probably go get a warrant.
A warrant requires probable cause — a fairly high standard to meet. A suspicion does not — and using a lower standard may be justified. Or no standard at all, as is the case in TFA.
Are you ok with the city cops keeping a database of everyone's [cellular phone -mi] location at all times?
I certainly prefer not to think about it, but I don't see, how it is different from officers with phenomenal visual memory patrolling the streets — and sharing their observations with each other in the evening.
If that does not require a warrant for every person observed, the use of computers (which do have phenomenal memory) should not either...
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Re:Mark Zuckerberg
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Re: At least...
Yes, yes it has. Read your link. Your own link says that they revised the results but that AGW is still occurring - no shit, that's not really disputed except by people who don't pay attention to the science. Nobody (sane) is denying that the Earth is warming. However, it's not spiking like it was in their original predictions. In fact, warming has been less than the models predicted. It's not a hockey stick, but a gradual warming.
Citation:
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/jou...
Distilled version for the regular people:
https://www.washingtonpost.com...
The data doesn't match the models, warming is less than predicted. Nobody (sane) is denying that the planet is warming or that CO2 is a primary cause.
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Re:Hypocrits
Are those same Democrats also going to suggest legislation to make it illegal for the US government to interfere and try to influence foreign elections? Things we have been doing as a nation for decades? Things which Obama openly did?
Our elections are our business and I'm all for keeping foreign money out of them. But we have no pedestal to preach from considering our history of meddling.
No shit.
Why do you think Putin wanted HilLIARy! to lose?
Note the date on this Washington Post story (before HilLIARy! snatched defeat from the jaws of victory and managed to lose to Donald Fucking Trump):
The long history of the U.S. interfering with elections elsewhere
So, what particularly pissed off Putin about HilLIARy!?
Oh, yeah: Ukraine crisis: Putin adviser accuses US of meddling
Sergei Glazyev said the US was spending $20m (£12.3m; 14.8m euros) a week on Ukrainian opposition groups, supplying "rebels" with arms among other things.
Accusing the US of ignoring the Memorandum on Security Assurances, he suggested Moscow could also intervene.
The American embassy in Kiev declined to comment on his accusations.
...
Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych is due to meet Mr Putin on Friday in Sochi, on the opening day of the Winter Olympic Games there.
He held talks in Kiev with US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland on Thursday, at which he said he favoured dialogue and compromise with the opposition.
Meanwhile, an audio recording has been posted online, which is purported to be a hacked phone conversation between Ms Nuland and US Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt, in which the female speaker dismisses EU efforts to resolve the crisis, using an expletive.
Remember "Fuck the EU"?
Who was Secretary of State for THAT?
Oh, yeah. HilLIARy!
Paybacks are a motherfucker, eh?
Imagine the Russians fomenting a coup in Mexico that put into power fervently anti-US groups willing to go to war to reclaim parts of the US Southwest that used to be parts of Mexico. Imagine pretty much every other country in North and South America working to prevent such a thing from happening. Imagine a Putin lackey being caught saying "Fuck the OAS".
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Re:Flying Cars When Hell Is Frozen
You don't think autonomous driving and battery tech hasn't improved dramatically since the 70s? There are some very real advances happening. Keep in mind, cars were once only for the rich, too.
My assumption is that in 100 years you'll get in a small, probably multirotor craft, tell it where you want to go, and it will take off and fly you there. Pretty good chance it might even function more like uber than be personally owned by individuals.
Keep in mind the first commercial flight was barely 100 years ago, that's a long time from now in terms of technological development, but a blink of the eye in the history of mankind. -
Re:hah, DC my ass.
Given that Jeff Bezos owns the biggest house in Washington, as well as the biggest newspaper in DC, clearly the CEO of Amazon wants to be in Washington, DC. And his personal preference may well be the most important opinion in the relocation committee.
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Re:The memos were fake
Now that's about the laziest criticism you could have come up with. That Wikipedia article cites 86 sources, many of which reference even more sources.
Here, have a couple:
http://voices.washingtonpost.c...
http://media.washingtonpost.co... -
Re:The memos were fake
Now that's about the laziest criticism you could have come up with. That Wikipedia article cites 86 sources, many of which reference even more sources.
Here, have a couple:
http://voices.washingtonpost.c...
http://media.washingtonpost.co... -
Re:Is that a normal denomination?
There's talk to ban the $100 bill as well. Depending on your political views, it's either a good idea or a globalist conspiracy.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/02/16/its-time-to-kill-the-100-bill/
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Essay by the author in the Washington Post
Franklin Foer wrote an article "How Silicon Valley is erasing your individuality", which seems to be an abridged version of the book.
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Re: Good news
The lying MSM Washington Post has a new article about that: "Federal probe into House technology worker Imran Awan yields intrigue, no evidence of espionage"
tl;dr Awan, his family and friend neglected security barriers, probably stole equipment.
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Link to actual article
Here's the actual source from the Washington Post rather than some blog or whatever the source cited in the summary is.
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Re:Remind me...
What makes you think corporations becoming larger than the government will happen? That's one of many things that anti-competition law is designed to prevent.
Are you sarcastic? I'm sure you are!
- https://www.researchgate.net/publication/295938213_Multinational_corporations_A_new_global_dimension_-_Corporations_bigger_than_governments
- http://www.globalissues.org/article/234/the-rise-of-corporations
- http://www.globalissues.org/article/51/corporations-and-human-rights
- https://www.corporations.org/system/top100.html
- http://www.globalissues.org/article/52/pharmaceutical-corporations-and-medical-research
- https://archive.skoll.org/2011/02/21/corporations-are-more-powerful-than-governments/
- https://www.businessinsider.com/25-corporations-bigger-tan-countries-2011-6?op=1
- https://business.time.com/2012/01/27/are-companies-more-powerful-than-countries/
- https://www.cbsnews.com/news/5-myths-about-big-business-vs-big-government/
- https://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/16598-focus-monsanto-protection-act-proves-corporations-more-powerful-than-government
- http://www.globalissues.org/article/54/tax-avoidance-and-havens-undermining-democracy
- https://makewealthhistory.org/2014/02/03/the-corporations-bigger-than-nations/
- https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jun/02/control-nation-states-corporations-autonomy-neoliberalism
- http://www.confrontcorporatepower.org/how-corporations-influence-the-government/
- https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/03/15/these-25-companies-are-more-powerful-than-many-countries-multinational-corporate-wealth-power/
South Korea is also known as "Republic of Samsung":
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Re:$50 million?
They better add a few zeroes to that.
This. $50mil is is like change stuck in the couch of the Federal Government, not enough to do anything but maybe fund a study that will produce a paper in 8 months that nobody will read. And then there's that "up to" part to really let the air leak out of the balloon.
This is a big country, with a huge, interconnected, antiquated power grid that needs complete re-thinking in a world of public and private solar, heat waves, hurricanes, hackers and insecure control equipment, and a population more dependent than ever on a reliable supply of electricity. Of course, the DOE is under the command of a man who pledged to abolish it, so I wouldn't expect any miracles. But "up to $50 million" won't inspire much of anything.
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Re: Early education more important
Fixed your shoddy misquote. Kinda obvious that you'd prefer to misleadingly edit a post, instead of honestly and affirmatively address it, but no reason to let it slide:
Which home culture is that ScentCone? Your only specific example is DC, a jurisdiction under the explicit control of Congress, which is made up of individuals across the nation, so why are they failing to act to ensure DC schools are performing well? Were so many Congressional members subjected to this culture you castigate? Did you mean to say American culture is the problem?
No, congress does not run the DC school board or the DC school system. Which you know, though you're implying they do so you can cravenly dodge the substance of the matter. Nice attempt to avoid the reality of the situation.
Nope, Congress does have authority over DC, including the school board, as the Constitution explicitly states:
To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States.
You know this, and can't argue it, but want to cravenly deflect the issue and avoid the reality of the situation. Congress could fix any problems in DC schools, if they wanted. They have the legal authority to do so. Your precious GOP has a majority in both houses, and the presidency. Why aren't they fixing it?
I cite DC because YOU, along with me, get to pay for a large portion of that very high per-student expense and its historically awful per-student results.
Nope, you didn't cite that as your reason, and it's not true, since DC actually pays more in federal taxes than 22 states, and a higher per capita rate, and receives less federal funding for its schools than many states.
Oh sure, you could argue that all DC taxes are federal taxes, but that's due to it being a federal entity empowered by the US Constitution. No escaping that one.
Shall we examine the exact same problem in Baltimore, or Detroit, or Chicago?All cities run for decades, of course, by liberal Democrats.
You may forget, but as I asked, what local culture does DC have, and how does it compare to the failing schools in Alabama, California, Texas, Florida, Indiana, Wisconsin, New York and elsewhere? They have failing schools, and no, they aren't universally run by liberal Democrats. For example, try this information. And in fact, in many states, like Tennessee, the schools are ultimately under state supervision, not a city government, so focusing on the city itself can be misleading.
In fact, as you've claimed in your posts, Republicans are in charge all over the place. So why haven't they fixed anything yet? Why can't they managed to be the shining city on the hill that's inspiring to us all? Did Ronald Reagan rest on his laurels and ignore the report? Was George W. Bush unable to handle the problem with his "compassionate conservativism" as he claimed?? Have the Republicans elected across the country been unable to come up with solutions?
Ah, but all you can do is blame the dreaded "liberal Democrats" the scourge you assert is what ails us, and you don't even have to use a thinly veiled dog-whistle for that, do you? You're allowed, ev
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Re:Has Google sued anyone for patent infringement?
I mean, has Google ever found someone violating one of their patents, and been the first to file an infringement lawsuit?
You mean like Google Inc (Motorola) v Apple Inc?
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Re:Don't cherry pick the data
The terms the WAPO used here, one year ago, were "hurricane drought" and "terrifying. "
https://www.washingtonpost.com... -
How is this any worse than domestic propaganda?
I see fake news on TV all the time. The worst of the stories get retracted -- eventually. The worst fakers get fired or reassigned (Dan Rather, Brian Williams, etc.) But there is a steady stream of anonymously sourced stories, presented as "news", only to magically disappear when it becomes obvious that somebody made it up.
http://www.washingtonexaminer....
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://www.washingtonpost.com...
http://dailycaller.com/2017/06...
http://elections.huffingtonpos... -
Re:Two Words....
Class action suits rarely (never?) help the actual victims.
Sure, and locking drunk drivers up rarely (never?) brings back people killed by drunk drivers.
Stop thinking of class action lawsuits as something the individuals "win" to make things all better.
Class action lawsuits ARE an effective tool in preventing otherwise omnipotent mega-corporations from trampling all over consumers, and they're one of the very few that don't depend on bribable politicians or idiotic voters.
Don't think they're effective in instilling fear in corporations? Then explain to me why equifax is so desperately trying to avoid them that they tried the laughably bad tactic of forcing people to give up their right to it to know if they had been hacked? Just as an extra "LOL fuck you"?
Class action lawsuits aren't to make everything right again, legal punishments never do. -
More like goes along with CYA...
Like... just as "representatives of Facebook" had to come out to the congressional investigation that they've "discovered" that they've sold "roughly 3,000 ads", from June of 2015 to May of 2017, for "approximately $100,000" to "about 470 inauthentic accounts and Pages" which were "affiliated with one another and likely operated out of Russia."...
...their "computer scientist at Facebook" found these ""collusion networks" run by spammers" (not Facebook mind you... not their fault) "producing as many as 100 million fake "likes" on the systems between 2015 and 2016"... in a scam "users are knowingly entering into... to falsely obtain "likes.""Like... see... Facebook is totally NOT responsible for what other people do with their accounts.
And you can't even imply that Facebook was somehow... I don't know... being criminally negligent with its security.
Just look at how they "purged millions of fake accounts" and that whole 'nother "extensive Facebook scam involving fraudulent "likes" that Facebook said it had disrupted in April".Surely it's just coincidence that there's a paper out on "collusion networks" of "spammers" and "users"...
A paper outlining the research was first posted Wednesday and will be presented at the Association for Computing Machinery Internet Measurement Conference in London in November. One of the authors is Nektarios Leontiadis, a threat research scientist at Facebook.
...the very same day Facebook comes out about knowingly selling adds to Russian troll factories trying to influence US elections...
Representatives of Facebook told congressional investigators Wednesday that the social network has discovered that it sold ads during the U.S. presidential campaign to a shadowy Russian company seeking to target voters, according to several people familiar with the company's findings.
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Re:Public Info?
Victims are normally just expected to be diligent about disputing any accounts opened in their name they didn't authorize. No way half the population will get a new SSN.
You see, I think that victims being diligent is just as much the wrong answer as getting a new SSN. It isn't our responsibility to catch bad guys in the act when they use our name and SSNs to obtain credit. It is the credit reporting agencies' responsibility to exercise due diligence in determining whether or not someone should extend credit in my name, and in determining whether claims of failure to pay back said credit are legitimate or the result of fraud. That's literally what companies are paying them to do!
More to the point, calling anything "identity theft" is, in fact, a lie. It isn't identity theft, because you can't steal someone's identity. We should just cut all the politically correct crap and call it what it is: libel arising out of gross negligence.
When a company makes false claims about an individual, that's libel. It is illegal. So when a credit bureau claims in writing that you obtained credit that you did not, they are violating the law, and you can sue them. If every victim of so-called identity theft—every victim of gross negligence by credit bureaus to exercise due diligence—were to sue the credit reporting agencies for libel, they would have two choices: go out of business or start doing their [expletive deleted] jobs.
More to the point, because it occurs en masse, one could argue that it rises to the level of criminal libel, at least in states where such laws still exist (including California, as of last year).
Of course, libel is just the beginning of the laws that the credit bureaus are breaking. If I were an attorney general, I would have long ago prosecuted the heads of the major credit reporting bureaus under RICO statutes, because they're quite literally profiting from every side of identity theft:
- They profit from not having to incur the cost of due diligence to ensure that requests for credit are legitimate.
- They profit from selling the potentially libelous credit reports to companies.
- They profit from selling "credit watch" services to protect people's credit from future fraudulent credit requests and the libel arising out of those requests. (That's a nice credit score you have there. It would be a shame if something... happened to it.)
Literally, these credit watch services do nothing but protect the consumers from libel by the credit bureaus that sell the credit watch services. That's the textbook definition of racketeering! How are these people not in jail yet? Because they have money? Because they're hiding behind the corporate veil? These companies should simply be RICOed out of existence.
I've said for years that the only thing that would ever force these clowns to clean up their act would be if every SSN in the U.S. got compromised, and that it was only a matter of time before the entire credit bureau industry came crashing down like a house of cards. With this one incident, our country got most of the way there. That 143 million people is almost everyone who has applied for credit or bought cable TV service or phone service or really just about anything else in the past ten years. It includes nearly the entire working population of the U.S. Clearly, SSNs are not even slightly useful as a "secret" anymore, and any credit bureau claiming otherwise is peddling libel and fraud.
So what remains is for the credit bureaus to pull their heads out of their collective a**es and implement a proper callback-based verification scheme in which a reasonable attempt is made to verify every request for
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Re: Global problem
No, you should stop reading Breitbart news. You are wrong.
Any change in definition happened under Bush, not Obama.
More explanation here. Unless you would like to claim that Obama was president in 1996?
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Re:Why?
Did you bother to read Ted Cruz's reason? Two thirds of the money for post-Sandy aid was pork unrelated to hurricane Sandy. Such fiscal malfeasance is why the federal government should not be in the disaster recovery business.
Did you bother to fact-check Ted Cruz's reasons? Even if we accept the claim of materials unrelated to Sandy, that doesn't mean that they were pork, they could be related to other disasters of a similar nature. Or NOAA funding. Oh noes, the horrors. Making sure weather predictions are funded.
Of course, given that it was in the House, then it's Ted's own party to blame for any Pork, so go ahead, name names, why don't you?
Let's see the guilty parties identified. Ted could have done that at the time, and proposed removing those things, but he didn't.
Oh wait, Ted was just grand-standing. Well, now the roosters come home, and he's going to have to identify the pork in the bill to pass a clean one.
Oh wait, he won't?
Huh.
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Re:They're neither "outside" nor "fact-checkers"
This.
President Trump’s 492 false or misleading claims in his first 100 days
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Re:Shut up
a longer video about why you shouldn't talk to the police, at all.
I recently heard the mother of all shouting arguments and then even some gunfire from a home across the valley from me, and guess who I called? Yep, nobody. Hopefully only property damage was involved. But I'm not calling in an attack on the neighbor's land, and then having the cops come over here and shoot me.
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You guys aren't even noticing the biggest fraud...
I drive a 2001 VW diesel car. Still runs good as new after 16+ years. Still perfectly legal, because it was manufactured before the EPA arbitrarily changed the emissions goal posts to shut VW's diesel cars out of the USA car market.
How can domestic companies compete with VW cars that get better fuel mileage, longer range, and never break? They can't! THAT is why we're seeing this smackdown on VW.
Go read the book "Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand. The USA companies are attempting to succeed, not through superior technology, production and trade, but by trading influence and favors with politicians and their bureaucracies.
The fact that an ENGINEER, the very type of person that has skills necessary to generate innovation and technological progress, has been wasted on developing a "bureaucracy defeat device" rather than an actual beneficial technological advance and then subsequently sent to JAIL should be a wake up call to engineers everywhere.
In Atlas Shrugged, competent engineers, executives, and workers alike slowly started fading away to toil in private rather than continuing to work for the public where bureaucracy can smack them around.
Don't be surprised when bridges and dams start failing in the future. Oh wait, already happening...
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Re:In related news
Don't forget the five police officers shot and killed in Dallas because a leftist was upset over supposed police targeting of black men (even though that is a lie). But you know, the whole "no true Leftist..." defense...
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Re:They're surprisingly well organized
You're just noticing the Left more because the Right owns the media and is using it to push it's narrative.
The right owns the media and controls the narrative? I guess that's why members of the press self-identify as Democrats versus Republicans at a 4:1 ratio. Must be all those right-wingers at the New York Times, ABC, CNN, MSNBC, etc. I guess the 20 to 1 endorsement rate of Hillary! over Trump is just the right wing manifesting itself in the media.
Seriously, put down the bong, drop your copy of Hillary!'s excuse/blame-fest "What Happened?", and, well - go away.
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Re: Horrible
Often long lost relatives want to remain that way for good reason.
What could possibly go wrong? This, for example: Mother charged with murdering daughter
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Re:Hearts and minds!
Which is why a previous administration tried to lift sanctions in exchange for Iran stopping it's nuclear program.
The same way two Administrations earlier we tried the same with North Korea? That played out beautifully, didn't it?
Unfortunately this administration doesn't understand how diplomacy and foreign policy work,
Rather, because they do understand it better than you do...
Short of invading (which would be much, much harder than Iraq), there's no way we can stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons.
Israel stopped Iraq's nuclear-weapons program without invading. Iran's is better protected, but our weapons today are much better than Israel's were in 1981.
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Re:Still the same?
That's the best example you can give? Kaepernick? Well, when he gets fired from a job because someone complained about him to the Human Resources — then you'll have a counter-argument.
You sole citation seriously equates government-sponsored "safe spaces" — from which people are excluded based on their race — with web-sites (like Breitbart), to which everyone is welcome? Pathetic drivel intended for the pathetic Illiberal stinkies... Like yourself.
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Re:Still the same?
"Republicans do not use the IRS to suppress opposition [washingtonpost.com]"
-neither do democrats. and its not suppression to enforce the law as written against groups from both sides of the spectrum (which is what actually occurred."Republicans do not use political correctness to suppress free speech [latimes.com] in the workplace nor outside"
-Yes they do. https://www.washingtonpost.com..."Republicans neither threaten nor use violence [theatlantic.com] to suppress free speech"
-a couple dozen trump rallies and protests inside restruants while armed say otherwise.youre still just another delusional troll with racist tendencies.
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Re:Still the same?
I care that both are doing this
Except Republicans flatly do not do this:
- Republicans do not use the IRS to suppress opposition
- Republicans do not use political correctness to suppress free speech in the workplace nor outside
- Republicans neither threaten nor use violence to suppress free speech
and will call out both until it stops.
There is no both here. it is solely the Democrats, who do this sort of thing. For the Greater Good[TM], of course...
The case at hand is not about dissent or opposition, but about felony rioting — and conspiracy to commit same. If smashing cars is illegal, it is normal — indeed, imperative — for police to find and prosecute the law-breakers, and they are doing it by the book.
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Re:Taxes != theft
Venezuela is getting there pretty damn fast. And the shit-hole known as India*, where tax evasion was so bad that they had to change the currency. 60% of households are without a toilet, no proper sewer system, people shitting in the open on sidewalks, that's what tax avoidance gets you. It's now even grounds for divorce because an Indian court has finally ruled that making women hold it in until after sunset so they can take a dump outside (hopefully unseen) is cruelty.
They keep saying "taxation is theft," but ignore the fact that if you don't pay your fair share, you're stealing from everyone else who has to make up the difference. Not paying tax is theft.
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Re:Good, nazis need to pay
There were 20 million or more Tea Party supporters.
I wouldn't rely on that polling.
According to the SPLC, a far-Left anti-right orgranization, there are about 50,000 white supremacists (neo-Nazis, KKK, etc) in the entire US.
And mysteriously, Republicans opposed it when the FBI presented a report on them. Fortunately, there are others.
From those numbers alone, you can see your basic premise is bullshit.
Your argument is merely your opinion, it isn't especially convincing. But other opinions exist.
The fringe was ignored not because it was accepted, but because it basically DOESN'T EXIST outside of a media focus.
Nope. It wasn't just ignored. The right-wing fought hard to have it buried.
Why do you think the media always talks about Duke and Spenser?
Why do you think those are the only people they talk about?
None of the Tea Party marches endorsed racism, or supported Nazis, or advocated for oppression of opposition groups.
That long-repeated claim is about as believable as the claims that the Tea Party rallies don't leave a mess behind.
On the other hand, the Communists and Anarchists have always had a strong presence on the Left, in Occupy, BLM, and now Antifa. Antifa, which has now been declared a domestic terrorist organization for their continued use of violence against civilians in the pursuit of their political goals...
Declared by who? You? That's not convincing.
But your own condemnation reveals your lies, so I know better than to expect you to admit your mistake. I remember that the Communists, anarchists, the NAACP, the Unions, Occupy, BLM, and now AntiFa, have all been denounced by the right, and condemned, no matter what.
It loses its punch after a while. Meanwhile, you ignore the right-wing violence, and even endorse it. But "blood libel" isn't something you mind spreading to others.
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Re:Google means search with google
But these companies have an army of lawyers who would send cease and desist letters to newspapers and other organizations when they use brandnames generically. Xerox used to be very aggressive about it.
They have to. At least over here it's not general, widespread generic use that can make you loose your brand, but you have to proof that you took appropriate action to defend your brand.
I wonder if there is a way for Google to find people using the word "google" in a generic sense.
At least they tried.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
https://www.heise.de/newsticke...
http://www.literaturcafe.de/go...And if you want, you may look up the official definition of "to google"
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Re:Why can't they offer some proof or evidence?!
That analysis has been questioned by several. In fact the nation that did a story on it is now reviewing their own story for accuracy. There are just too many unknowns and holes in their report. https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com] https://www.techdirt.com/artic... [techdirt.com] https://www.aol.com/article/ne... [aol.com] http://thehill.com/policy/cybe... [thehill.com]
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Re:Which is it??!
That analysis has been questioned by several. In fact the nation that did a story on it is now reviewing their own story for accuracy. There are just too many unknowns and holes in their report. https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com] https://www.techdirt.com/artic... [techdirt.com] https://www.aol.com/article/ne... [aol.com] http://thehill.com/policy/cybe... [thehill.com]