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National Debt Under Trump Rises to $21.7 trillion. And the right's only answer is more tax cuts. Say again who believes money grows on trees?

According to that article, as well as others, Schumer did offer to authorize the funding, but to only appropriate 1.6B (if you believe the White House budget director on the record about the meeting), in which case we'd still be in this exact same place where they are gridlocked over appropriations for a wall.

Does make one wonder why Schumer is so opposed to a wall now, if he was apparently fine with it before.

All of the photos of the packages show absolutely no post marks, barcodes, cancelled postage..

[ ... blather deleted ... ]

None of the packages shown have ever been in the USPS system, nor Fedex, UPS, etc, etc..

What the fuck?

The fuck is that you're an uninformed idiot.

From Fact Check: 'Canceled Stamp' Conspiracy (a conservative opinion site, BTW):

Lastly, the premise that if a stamp is not canceled it was therefore not mailed through the USPS is incorrect. As the executive director of the American Philatelic Society, Scott English, tells TWS Fact Check, “It is possible for mail to go through the mail without being cancelled by the USPS. There are still hand-stamped packages and in other cases, a postal clerk will use a magic marker to draw a line through stamps. There is no standard throughout the country.”

You're a retard. That's simply stating that sometimes there's a fuckup and the worker PHYSICALLY MISSES when cancelling or FORGETS to cancel.
Do you actually believe that somehow happened for all of these packages, at every point along the delivery?

All of the photos of the packages show absolutely no post marks, barcodes, cancelled postage..
[ ... blather deleted ... ]

None of the packages shown have ever been in the USPS system, nor Fedex, UPS, etc, etc..
What the fuck?

The fuck is that you're an uninformed idiot.
From Fact Check: 'Canceled Stamp' Conspiracy (a conservative opinion site, BTW):

Lastly, the premise that if a stamp is not canceled it was therefore not mailed through the USPS is incorrect. As the executive director of the American Philatelic Society, Scott English, tells TWS Fact Check, “It is possible for mail to go through the mail without being cancelled by the USPS. There are still hand-stamped packages and in other cases, a postal clerk will use a magic marker to draw a line through stamps. There is no standard throughout the country.”

However, whatever steps taken should be done with actual planning by competent people that understands the complexities. Trump's administration clearly hire the dumbest and most unqualified grifters.

That applies to every single issue that trump has glommed on to. His schtick is to say "You hate foo? I hate foo too!! You should support me!" But foo is always secondary to his grifting. At best he neglects foo because it doesn't make him richer, but when foo becomes an obstacle to him, he abandons it.

Consequently everybody who thought they would get their issues addressed is actually getting fucked. If you cared about NSA spying on innocent people, the end result of trump's war on spies is going to be increased support for spies as the fact that they actually caught him and his crew conspiring with foreign countries. If you were a steel worker, you won't get jackshit because the steele corps are keeping all the profits for themselves. If you wanted better healthcare, all you are getting is more sabotage. If you were a democrat who didn't like how Comey treated Clinton, he tried to co-opt you into supporting his firing of Comey. If you wanted more racism, trump's going to fire his most effective racist because sessions won't do enough to protect trump from a criminal investigation.

ET4S: Everything Trump Touches Turns To Shit.

When you dig deeper in the articles, and read the speeches and comments, they really do sound apologetic.

Give me an honest answer: Do any of Obama comments rise to the level at which Trump was making excuses for Russia with the following remarks?

"In an interview with Fox News's Bill O'Reilly, which will air ahead of the Super Bowl on Sunday, Trump doubled down on his “respect” for Putin — even in the face of accusations that Putin and his associates have murdered journalists and dissidents in Russia.

“I do respect him. Well, I respect a lot of people, but that doesn’t mean I’ll get along with them,” Trump told O'Reilly.

O'Reilly pressed on, declaring to the president that “Putin is a killer.”

Unfazed, Trump didn't back away, but rather compared Putin's reputation for extrajudicial killings with the United States'.

“There are a lot of killers. We have a lot of killers,” Trump said. “Well, you think our country is so innocent?”

I want you to read that last sentence again: "well, you think our country is so innocent?" and ask yourself what the narrative would be if Obama had said that.

I know that the steady stream of outrage, corruption, ridiculousness, disinformation and misdirection can mean a lot of Trump's stuff gets lost in the shuffle. But even a staunchly conservative publication like the Weekly Standard can recognize that Trump blames America first.

https://www.weeklystandard.com...

Did Barack win re-election handily because of Obama Derangement Syndrome? It was epidemic throughout the Right & Reich wing of America for 8 years.

Uh, yeah. . . about that "Reich wing" . . .

The Nation and the Nazis

There’s nothing much funny about white supremacists. But reading along as a left-wing Nation correspondent hangs out with white supremacists and realizes she shares some political beliefs with them? Well, this should be entertaining.

Writer Donna Minkowitz describes a secret meeting organized by alt-right figure Richard Spencer that she crashed in mid-November at an organic winery in Maryland. Upon arrival, Minkowitz writes that she was surprised to find that the discussion centered not only on the usual brown-shirt Jew-hating you might expect from neo-Nazis, but also on what she says is a “new emphasis on economic issues” that she found “seductive.”

Why seductive? Because the white supremacists’ views on economic issues sound a lot like, well, like views espoused by the Nation and Democratic party progressives. In what could pass for Bernie Sanders campaign literature, she quotes Spencer saying “I support national health care” and railing against “the trillions spent in insane wars.” Minkowitz also quotes Spencer blasting the GOP tax plan as “stupid ... Reaganite nostalgia” and supporting a universal basic income. Another speaker decried that everything is seemingly becoming “corporatized and capitalized.” Wait—is this a white supremacist conference or a New York Times editorial board meeting?

Back to the future & "big tent" progressivism. That bunch was never on the "Right" in the US. And now that anti-Semitism is becoming "respectable" again on the Left (even if wearing the beard of "anti-Zionism") . . .

"Lenin is the greatest man, second only to Hitler, and that the difference between Communism and the Hitler faith is very slight. " -- Joseph Goebbels, as quoted in the New York Times, Nov. 27, 1925

"Do not believe, even for a moment, that by stripping me of my membership card you do the same to my Socialist beliefs, nor that you would restrain me of continuing to work in favor of Socialism and of the Revolution." -- Benito Mussolini, Nov. 25, 1914

So can you give me some links to the "Pentagon trolls?

Sure, here is some relevant reading:

Military's 'sock puppet' software creates fake online identities to spread pro-American propaganda
Pentagon ramping up public relations offensive: Agency moves to bolster image in face of mounting criticism of Iraq war
U.S. Media Knew Kosovo Reports Were Propaganda
Meet The State Department Team Trying To Troll ISIS Into Oblivion
Military Plays Up Role of Zarqawi -- "The U.S. military is conducting a propaganda campaign to magnify the role of the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, according to internal military documents and officers..."
Pentagon Paid for Fake âAl Qaedaâ(TM) Videos
The Government's Social Media Propaganda Machine
âoeOn the Offensiveâ: US State Dept. Gives $40M Boost to âoeTroll Farmâ Propaganda Efforts
How the American government is trying to control what you think

That should get you started.

Of course, our mass media tends not to emphasize such American skulduggery and propaganda. They'll do an initial report on the issue, but it's rarely, if ever, put into the news loop and repeated over and over and over again. Funny how that works, eh? It makes one think of Ted Turner, the founder of CNN, who once bluntly said, "There's really five companies that control 90 percent of what we read, see and hear."

If you want any more you'll have to search for it.

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

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

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

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

Oh, and if you support Bernie for 2020:

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

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

You've left out some of the real charms of the current era.

Profs claim scientific objectivity reinforces 'whiteness'
Professor Claims Math, Algebra And Geometry Promote ‘White Privilege’
The Appalling Protests at Evergreen State College
All-women's college asks profs not to call students 'women'
Professor notes men are taller than women on average, SJWs storm out angrily
Americans who practice yoga 'contribute to white supremacy', claims Michigan State University professor
Conservatives, Libertarians Are ‘on the Autistic Spectrum,’ Says Duke Professor
Victimhood Culture Only Getting Worse, Professor Warns
Professor: Small Chairs in Preschools Are Sexist, ‘Problematic,’ and ‘Disempowering’
Prof creates checklist for detecting white supremacy

Believing in meritocracy, promoting a "collegial" environment, and even deciding “to stay out of all of this ‘identity politics’” are all forms of tacit white supremacy, she claims.

She Carried A Garrotte!

I blogged yesterday about a mob trying to shut down Jordan B. Peterson and others at Queens University in Kingston, Ontario, and wondered aloud, “Where are there police?!” Well, turns out one of the SJWs was arrested after breaking the glass . .

Officials say officers searched her backpack and found a weapon — a metal wire with handles commonly known as a garrotte.”

I could go on, there are so many stones unturned.

You are confusing the alt-right with various other non-right groups, such as neo-Nazis. The press has been doing that on purpose for the last couple of years, and some people who have nothing to do with the alt-right have been trying to pretend that they are for fun and profit.

Here is the core of alt-right philosophy: What the Alternative Right is

And here is an article about a writer going to a meeting organized by Richard Spencer. Spencer likes to pretend that he is alt-right, but he supports about 95% of the Democrat platform/Socialist agenda, which makes him not only not alt-right, but also not any-right. Money quote:

Because the white supremacists' views on economic issues sound a lot like, well, like views espoused by the Nation and Democratic party progressives. In what could pass for Bernie Sanders campaign literature, she quotes Spencer saying "I support national health care" and railing against "the trillions spent in insane wars." Minkowitz also quotes Spencer blasting the GOP tax plan as "stupid ... Reaganite nostalgia" and supporting a universal basic income. Another speaker decried that everything is seemingly becoming "corporatized and capitalized." Wait - is this a white supremacist conference or a New York Times editorial board meeting?

http://www.weeklystandard.com/...

Lucas wants the Empire to stand for evil, so he tells us that the Emperor and Darth Vader have gone over to the Dark Side and dresses them in black.

But look closer. When Palpatine is still a senator, he says, "The Republic is not what it once was. The Senate is full of greedy, squabbling delegates. There is no interest in the common good." At one point he laments that "the bureaucrats are in charge now."

Palpatine believes that the political order must be manipulated to produce peace and stability. When he mutters, "There is no civility, there is only politics," we see that at heart, he's an esoteric Straussian.

Make no mistake, as emperor, Palpatine is a dictator--but a relatively benign one, like Pinochet. It's a dictatorship people can do business with. They collect taxes and patrol the skies. They try to stop organized crime (in the form of the smuggling rings run by the Hutts). The Empire has virtually no effect on the daily life of the average, law-abiding citizen.

Also, unlike the divine-right Jedi, the Empire is a meritocracy. The Empire runs academies throughout the galaxy (Han Solo begins his career at an Imperial academy), and those who show promise are promoted, often rapidly. In The Empire Strikes Back Captain Piett is quickly promoted to admiral when his predecessor falls down on the job.

And while it's a small point, the Empire's manners and decorum speak well of it. When Darth Vader is forced to employ bounty hunters to track down Han Solo, he refuses to address them by name. Even Boba Fett, the greatest of all trackers, is referred to icily as "bounty hunter." And yet Fett understands the protocol. When he captures Solo, he calls him "Captain Solo." (Whether this is in deference to Han's former rank in the Imperial starfleet, or simply because Han owns and pilots his own ship, we don't know. I suspect it's the former.)

But the most compelling evidence that the Empire isn't evil comes in The Empire Strikes Back when Darth Vader is battling Luke Skywalker. After an exhausting fight, Vader is poised to finish Luke off, but he stays his hand. He tries to convert Luke to the Dark Side with this simple plea: "There is no escape. Don't make me destroy you. . . . Join me, and I will complete your training. With our combined strength, we can end this destructive conflict and bring order to the galaxy." It is here we find the real controlling impulse for the Dark Side and the Empire. The Empire doesn't want slaves or destruction or "evil." It wants order.

None of which is to say that the Empire isn't sometimes brutal. In Episode IV, Imperial stormtroopers kill Luke's aunt and uncle and Grand Moff Tarkin orders the destruction of an entire planet, Alderaan. But viewed in context, these acts are less brutal than they initially appear. Poor Aunt Beru and Uncle Owen reach a grisly end, but only after they aid the rebellion by hiding Luke and harboring two fugitive droids. They aren't given due process, but they are traitors.

The destruction of Alderaan is often cited as ipso facto proof of the Empire's "evilness" because it seems like mass murder--planeticide, even. As Tarkin prepares to fire the Death Star, Princess Leia implores him to spare the planet, saying, "Alderaan is peaceful. We have no weapons." Her plea is important, if true.

But the audience has no reason to believe that Leia is telling the truth. In Episode IV, every bit of information she gives the Empire is willfully untrue. In the opening, she tells Darth Vader that she is on a diplomatic mission of mercy, when in fact she is on a spy mission, trying to deliver schematics of the Death Star to the Rebel Alliance. When asked where the Alliance is headquartered, she lies again.

Leia's lies are perfectly defensible--she thinks she's serving the greater good--but they make her wholly unreliable on the question of whether or not Alderaan really is

Trump was given $2 billion plus in free media coverage.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/0...
https://secure.marketwatch.com...
http://www.weeklystandard.com/...
https://www.washingtonpost.com...
https://fivethirtyeight.com/fe...

Duckduckgo returns lots more with my query, "worth of free media coverage 2016 election Trump"
If the media had ignored him or only ran paid advertisements, Trump would have been a lot less likely to have won

Except that Iran learnt that lesson and distributed it all over the country.

Except that may be enough of a countermeasure for something to remain after an Israeli attack. But nothing will remain, if America's airforce does it...

they have underground facilities that could even be MOAB resistant. Not an easy thing to do.

It does not have to be "easy", it has to be possible — and we know how.

The recent attack on Syrian airbase (and smaller-scale bombings of Hezbollah by Israel) have shown, that Russian radar and other air-defenses are useless against today planes and missiles we have. We know, where those Iranian facilities are and, after destroying Iranian radars and SAM-installations, we can keep bombing them with impunity — until we either destroy them all, or Iran cries "uncle".

At any rate, the main point was, "giving diplomacy a chance" was wrong — and so obviously wrong, given the fresh example of North Korea, one would be justified suspecting, Obama (who not only lifted sanctions, but gave Iranians nearly two billions in cash) did it deliberately — such as out of some perverse sense of "fairness" to put Israel in check.

For years the fans of Iran have attacked people like myself on two fronts:

• Iranians are peaceful and do not seek nuclear weapons;
• Iranians are fully entitled to nuclear weapons because Israel.

It always made me smile, how the two groups never argued with each other... And now we have the third argument: yeah, they probably are seeking nuclear weapons, but there is nothing we can do about it...

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

The Election Came Down to 77,744 Votes in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan.

It's only a problem when a Democrat does it better.

Well, Dems do the personal enrichment from being in power better.

Because just averaging in the Clintons accounts for that.

Remember the FIFA corruption cases? Well, those got rolling because US Attorney General Eric Holder was part of the US delegation trying to win the 2022 World Cup, and Holder got pissed off at all the corruption.

Bill Clinton was also part of the delegation. He got paid.

It could put CNN out of business

You mean Breitbart who literally, in the truest sense of the word, has put up false and fake information (it can't be called news). Even Bannon has called them out for posting fake information.

It's why companies have ditched advertising on the fake site.

But let me guess, "alternative facts"? Or is it a camera in a microwave?

Just fund The Rods from God (Jun 07, 2005 ) AC, The rod launcher.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/...
"tandem satellites"
"number of tungsten rods, each up to 20 feet in length and 1 foot in diameter."
"dropped on a target with as little as 15 minutes notice, would enter the Earth's atmosphere at a speed of 36,000 feet per second"
i.e. what was the Conventional Prompt Global Strike (CPGS) or Hypervelocity Rod Bundles.

1) What do you mean by "lots"? Is it growing as fast as the rate of population growth?

2) Silicon Valley income is over inflated compared to all US wages. Nice job picking the highest paid workers in the US. People in Flint make far less.

3) Americans get the best health care they can afford or go without. Incomes continue to drop while health care costs rise. Income: http://www.weeklystandard.com/... and health care costs:
http://www.weeklystandard.com/...

4) If you are making $10 an hour then 600 USD a month is unaffordable.

5) Price per square foot doesn't matter it is the monthly income that matters. Median US income is about 57K USD see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... or 3800 assuming a 20% tax bracket (which may be low). This works out to about 40% of take home which is above the 1/3 of income reccomended for housing.
http://www.investopedia.com/mo... and see http://www.bankrate.com/calcul...
The number for a 30000 home I came up with is 65K USD WITHOUT the cost of food, clothing, transportation, education and medical care.

6) You concede the cost of education to me.

7) Inflation is a zero sum game. If costs of goods goes up and incomes lag, workers lose.

8) OK. WHat is your definition of inflation? If prices go up and income does not keep pace we have inflation. Note the CPI does not include many items of importance such as food and transportation.

All I can say is that what I see and is conveyed to me by others can be explained by statistics.

The price of gadgets doesn't matter real people need real goods.

1) What do you mean by "lots"? Is it growing as fast as the rate of population growth?

2) Silicon Valley income is over inflated compared to all US wages. Nice job picking the highest paid workers in the US. People in Flint make far less.

3) Americans get the best health care they can afford or go without. Incomes continue to drop while health care costs rise. Income: http://www.weeklystandard.com/... and health care costs:
http://www.weeklystandard.com/...

4) If you are making $10 an hour then 600 USD a month is unaffordable.

5) Price per square foot doesn't matter it is the monthly income that matters. Median US income is about 57K USD see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... or 3800 assuming a 20% tax bracket (which may be low). This works out to about 40% of take home which is above the 1/3 of income reccomended for housing.
http://www.investopedia.com/mo... and see http://www.bankrate.com/calcul...
The number for a 30000 home I came up with is 65K USD WITHOUT the cost of food, clothing, transportation, education and medical care.

6) You concede the cost of education to me.

7) Inflation is a zero sum game. If costs of goods goes up and incomes lag, workers lose.

8) OK. WHat is your definition of inflation? If prices go up and income does not keep pace we have inflation. Note the CPI does not include many items of importance such as food and transportation.

All I can say is that what I see and is conveyed to me by others can be explained by statistics.

The price of gadgets doesn't matter real people need real goods.

Using their own words is lying? Only In Trump's America I guess can you get away with having someone quote you & call it a lie.

Also in Trump's America:
The one where the appointee for the Attorney General (top lawyer in the country) thinks grabbing a woman's pussy isn't sexual assault.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/...

TWS: But beyond the language, would you characterize the behavior described in that [video] as sexual assault if that behavior actually took place?

SESSIONS: I don't characterize that as sexual assault. I think that's a stretch.

And the one where Trump just setlled a civil suit for $25M against Trump University because it was so fucking fake.

Let me guess, you think these are lies too.

It was what the front page of HuffPo looked like the day of, so it wasn't an article. Google "huffpo NH goes racist sexist" and this article has a screenshot: http://www.weeklystandard.com/...

Also I saw it myself the day of.

Now? The right wing have always accused the ACLU of having a liberal bias.

And you think that is "odd"?

The ACLU’s Communist, Atheist Roots
The ACLU’s untold Stalinist heritage

They aren't quite as bad as they started, but they still are trying to drive American society towards its vision, which is very different than that of the Founders.

Then again, I'm not sure there is anything they haven't accused of having a liberal bias.

I'm curious, have you even investigated to see if there might be anything to it?

Survey: 7 percent of reporters identify as Republican
Republicans’ media bias claims boosted by scarcity of right-leaning journalists

Survey shocker: Liberal profs admit they’d discriminate against conservatives in hiring, advancement
Moving Further to the Left

Lawyers are more liberal than general population, study finds; what about judges?

Do you think we need to cover unions? Civil servants?

And if you have the curiosity, you might find a surprise or two, or three.

Some places to find new perspectives:
National Review
Weekly Standard
Commentary
Reason
Instapundit
Dennis Prager / Prager U
Hugh Hewitt

The way the government does things, I can see someone gaining that kind of lofty position not getting a briefing on it.

On January 22, 2009, Clinton signed a statement that said that she had "received a security indoctrination concerning the nature and protection of classified information", and that she understood the procedures. You can see the signed statement here.

I'm not a fan of either Trump or Clinton. But Trump being president scares me less then Clinton being presideint. I'll keep an open mind until election day, though.

Clinton became Secretary of State in 2009. I doubt she got her briefing on preserving records in 2012.

Ok, I found it:

"I hereby acknowledge that I have received a security indoctrination concerning the nature and protection of classified information, including the procedures to be followed in ascertaining whether other persons to whom I contemplate disclosing this information have been approved for access to it, and that I understand these procedures." -- Signed by H R Clinton 22-01-2009

Her signed acknowledgement of taking the training is already publicly available.

Oddly enough, I don't and mine was less than 15 years ago.

You recall at least having HAD the briefing, right? She supposedly couldn't even remember that much, despite having signed paperwork about the briefing.

This is a total troll article and complete flamebait. But what else do you expect? When the Left does not in the least believe that fairness should apply to the enemy side? When the media is marching in lockstep, taking its marching orders from the government, what are We The People supposed to do? This is not journalism, it is storytelling designed to advance a left-wing agenda packaged as facts but is nothing but politics. It's sad that the critical thinking skills of educated people can't decode a simple situation like this, but that's where we are today.

There's a huge difference between Colin Powell and Hillary Clinton: by the time Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State, email had become the standard way to do things, there was an email system all set up for her, and there were regulations requiring her to use the official email system unless she had a good reason to do something else (and to routinely use her own email system required approval she never asked for and never got).

Colin Powell says he didn't send or receive classified information. Recently, a grand total of two emails that were sent to him were "retroactively classified" (to use Hillary Clinton's term). Neither of the two were classified "Secret" or above. In comparison, of Hillary Clinton's known emails, over 2100 contain classified information, 65 "Secret", 22 "Top Secret" (source)

In 2005, after Colin Powell but before Hillary Clinton, rules were developed over use of email. Colin Powell couldn't have broken them as they were put together after he was already gone, but Hillary Clinton absolutely broke them. She avoided using an official account set up for her to use, and went to great lengths to continue to use it rather than the official one. And she was required to take a training course every year about how to properly keep secrets, but there is no evidence she did so. She took the class once right after she got the job and then never took the class again.

And of course, even if Colin Powell was guilty of the exact same crimes as Hillary Clinton, that still wouldn't excuse her.

And it's obvious to anyone with common sense what her motive was: she wanted to control access to her emails. Some of her email could be embarrassing if someone read it (after filing an FOIA request) so she wanted to make sure there were no official copies of anything she didn't like. She committed conspiracy to avoid keeping Federal records that she was legally required to keep.

If you are willing to excuse Hillary Clinton for this kind of egregious lawbreaking, then you will have no moral right to complain later when President Trump does something just as bad. We're geeks here in ./ and we understand well enough to damn well know why what she did was stupid as well as illegal and wrong. Don't give her a pass for immoral behavior just because she is on your side. If you have to hold your nose and vote for her because you really really just can't even Trump, then fine and dandy, but just admit it to yourself: you would be voting for someone willing to break the law and lie about it (as proven by this email controversy).

http://www.weeklystandard.com/why-colin-powells-emails-are-not-like-hillarys/article/2000949

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2015/03/10/the-misleading-democratic-spin-on-hillary-clintons-emails/

http://townhall.com/tipsheet/guybenson/2016/02/05/no-the-powell-and-condi-classified-emails-story-is-not-a-gamechanger-n2114842

look its a propaganda bot

Is that the Search Engine that doesn't show Senator Clinton as voting for the Southern Border Fence?

I'm not entirely unsympathetic to your point, but I think you need to be careful about what you wish for.

Go back and watch the debates between Gore Vidal and William Buckley.

A Buckley Revival by Andrew Ferguson, August 2015

But what gasbaggery it was! ... The two had a bitter rivalry in print, as ABC executives well knew, though rivalry is probably too mild a word. They loathed each other. The "analysis" they were hired to provide quickly became a oneupmanship of insults and ad hominem argument. It didn't take Vidal long to call Buckley the "Marie Antoinette of the right" and for Buckley to refer to Vidal, the author of the ambisexual novel Myra Breckinridge, as a "pornographer." Then things got personal.

The pressure rose till the gasket blew in an infamous exchange on the third night of the second (Democratic) convention. When Buckley defended the police in their violent encounters with demonstrators outside the convention hall, Vidal called him a "crypto-Nazi." Buckley responded by citing his own service against the Nazis in World War II, calling Vidal a "queer"—this used to be an insult—and volunteering to "punch you in your goddamn face," after which, Buckley went on, "you'll stay plastered."

For the rest of his life Buckley admitted to being ashamed of the moment—not merely for the lapse in manners but for allowing so crude a provocation to produce exactly the effect Vidal intended. But the two weeks of convention analysis, with a narrative arc of intensifying on-air hostility between two compelling characters and a tidy climax to round it off, was an excellent career move for them both. They dined out on it for decades—though never, of course, with each other. Their mutual contempt provided a Punch-and-Judy foreshadowing of what soon became known as the culture wars.

This is a lovely piece of writing, even if its sympathies are tilted in Buckley's favour. To think that W. had a speech writer of this caliber standing behind him. How could one possibly know after W. mangled his words?

That said, this particular cat fight was notable at the time for being the rare exception to the prevailing etiquette, rather than daily fare. So yes, it was a different time—one already rushing headlong in an all-too-familiar direction.

It may be bigger than you think because leading conservative and Fox commentator, Bill Kristol, is calling for a search for a viable independent to contest Clinton and Trump despite the Wall Street Journal editorial board calling for Republicans to back Trump (as Republicans are wont to do in the past). As Joe Biden would say, "this is a big fucking deal" (TM).

IANAL, but my understanding of the definition of "Contribution" as described in 42.17A.005 (13)(a)(iii), (13)(b)(iv), and (13)(b)(vii) suggests that it wouldn't. Also, that's only the Washington state legislature's rules, so they probably don't apply to federal elections (unless Facebook is based there, I suppose).

My guess is that it would count the same as any other earned media. However, if it hypothetically were considered an in-kind contribution to Trump's opponents (e.g., if none of the above exceptions existed), then that would also imply that the ~$2 billion of free media coverage Trump has received to date was also a contribution in kind.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/...

There was a two and a half year cliff. We are just on our way into that now. Yes, this does mean a reduction in so-called "Cadillac Plans", orwise known as "Good health insurance.

In addition, in states like New York and California, which set up exchanges, have their own sunset coming on the federal subsidy; this was the big argument between Red States, like Alabama, who refused to set up exchanges of their own, and the federal government last year when those sunsets started to kick in, and the question was whether the sunset provisions applied in those states, or whether the fed, if it wanted people to have the subsidy, would have to continue paying all of it themselves, rather than the states having to pick up the bill.

Ironically, it was tied to creating a state exchange, so there are good legal arguments why the fed would have to carry the load they willingly shouldered when they picked up for the lack of state exchanges.

The jury is still out on who is going to foot the extra Medicaid costs, but the bill is definitely coming due for the unions, and they are seriously unhappy.

I expect that if this keeps up for any significant period of time, since it's on the order of 22% of Verizon employees, if we are to believe the 40,000 employee numbers, that we will be seeing Verizon call centers opening up in the Philippines to take advantage of the recently fast-tracked TPP (Trans Pacific Partnership) agreement.

"May you live in interesting times..." applies, I think.

The research funding dictated who had a voice.

And those with the voice, can get more research funding. Is not it nice, when the government is picking winners?

Climate science has a harder problem to address, but is as rigorous as is reasonable in the circumstances.

I wonder, what you mean by "rigorous" here. Lysenko, for example, rigorously persecuted adherents of the reactionary Mendelian genetics. And, when their activities endangered the favor he held with the government, denounced them as "enemies of the people".

Something that could never happen in a free country. Right?

Is it really a reliable scientific theory, if police are called on to silence its opponents?

Now that the battle to normalize homosexuality is largely won there are a growing number of voices in society (including academicians) working to normalize pedophilia.

No there aren't.

Yes, there are. And I'll note that there are social scientists, psychologists, psychiatrists among them. Some of them aren't simply trying to "better understand" something "icky" but are trying to move policy and social acceptance. There are others working for it to gain acceptance.

And this isn't something that was just going on 30-40 years ago, it is sill going on.

One other thing, if the research is truly in its "infancy" as you claim, then why the advocacy for normalization and decriminalization? Wouldn't a prudent, ethical researcher adopt the principle of "do no harm"? I would think they would adopt that outlook until far more is known, but that doesn't seem to be the universal stand.

'Paedophilia is natural and normal for males' - How some university academics make the case for paedophiles at summer conferences

"Paedophilic interest is natural and normal for human males,” said the presentation. “At least a sizeable minority of normal males would like to have sex with children Normal males are aroused by children.”

Some yellowing tract from the Seventies or early Eighties, era of abusive celebrities and the infamous PIE, the Paedophile Information Exchange? No. Anonymous commenters on some underground website? No again.

The statement that paedophilia is “natural and normal” was made not three decades ago but last July. It was made not in private but as one of the central claims of an academic presentation delivered, at the invitation of the organisers, to many of the key experts in the field at a conference held by the University of Cambridge.

Other presentations included “Liberating the paedophile: a discursive analysis,” and “Danger and difference: the stakes of hebephilia.”

Hebephilia is the sexual preference for children in early puberty, typically 11 to 14-year-olds.

Another attendee, and enthusiastic participant from the floor, was one Tom O’Carroll, a multiple child sex offender, long-time campaigner for the legalisation of sex with children and former head of the Paedophile Information Exchange. “Wonderful!” he wrote on his blog afterwards. “It was a rare few days when I could feel relatively popular!”

"Pedophilia Chic" Reconsidered - The taboo against sex with children continues to erode

UNTIL VERY, VERY RECENTLY, public questioning of the social prohibition against pedophilia--to say nothing of positive celebration of child molestation--was practically non-existent in American life. The reasons why are not opaque. To most people, the very word "pedophilia" summons forth a preternatural degree of horror and revulsion; and the criminal law that reflects those reactions has consistently treated the sexual molestation of minors as a serious and eminently punishable offense. So it is small wonder that, historically speaking, the taboo against using legal minors for sex was no more publicly controversial in the United States than the prohibitions against, say, cannibalism or bestiality. Those few partisans of the idea who did sometimes sally forth customarily found themselves regarded as the lowest of the social low, even by the criminal class.

This social consensus against the sexual exploitation of children and adolescents, however--unlike those against, say, animal sex or incest--is apparently eroding, and this regardless of the fact that the vast majority of citizens do overwhelmingly abominate the thing. For elsewhere in the public square, the defense of adult-child sex

The IRS is a lot of things. Partisan isn't one of them.

Except of course, we have evidence to the contrary. Lerner's past history indicates she wasn't going to carry water in the manner she did, for a conservative administration. And it's worth noting that the same MO in her earlier harassment attack as an FEC bureaucrat mirrored her attacks as an IRS bureaucrat and against the same sort of targets.

I do not support any government that indiscriminately kills civilians (ie Israel) and I hold my own accountable when accidents happen.

Israel doesn't make a practice of indiscriminately killing civilians, and the "investigations" making those sorts of accusations tend to have "issues".

Goldstone: You Cannot Undo a Slander
Israel’s Heroic Restraint
Scandal Rocks the U.N.
The U.N.’s Grotesque Gaza Inquiry
Another Effort to Destroy Israel

Of course they have issues as Israel has an extremely strong propaganda arm.

One might as well argue that the Israeli reports saying otherwise 'have issues'.

http://www.theguardian.com/wor...
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

I do not support any government that indiscriminately kills civilians (ie Israel) and I hold my own accountable when accidents happen.

Israel doesn't make a practice of indiscriminately killing civilians, and the "investigations" making those sorts of accusations tend to have "issues".

Goldstone: You Cannot Undo a Slander
Israel’s Heroic Restraint
Scandal Rocks the U.N.
The U.N.’s Grotesque Gaza Inquiry
Another Effort to Destroy Israel

Murder... Except that's not what it shows.

I am sorry but the Pope is largely ignorant about most of the 'issues' he talks about. He should probably stick to religion. Anytime anyone from the media seriously questions him about issues, its clear he does not know who the players are and has not really thought it thru. I mean he admitted to having not given much thought to the middle class. I don't know you can put your self out there as an authority on income inequality without having thought about the middle class.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/...

Frankly I think the current Pope is a dangerous propaganda spewing fool. It would have been wiser to arrange a CIA hit, than invite him to speak to congress.

RomneyCare was designed for a SPECIFIC State. And the Heritage Foundation recommendations had quite a bit of lowering of regulations AND taxation - nothing at all like Obamacare other than a mandate that everyone should get it.

Most of those "amendments" did things like define 40 hours as a work-week and make sure that Congress also must participate in Obamacare.

Deficit? You mean more than the two TRILLION it's going to cost over the next 10 years?

YOu mean like this alternative?

As a moderate Conservative, you haven't much of a clue about the actual costs of Obamacare or its influence on small business. I've dealt with it first-hand and it's a nightmare...

I don't know about Finland, but in the US the government is spending an amount that equates to $60k per household in poverty (though that figure is somewhat misleading). Some sort of minimum income could let us shrink 90+ government programs into just a few and cut the agencies that hand out the money.

Minimum income programs could also help us address the benefit cliff, which can cause low income workers who get a pay raise to end up much worse off financially.

I don't think anything like this (or anything different at all really) can happen in the US unless there's a major, extremely disruptive change in government. The "insiders serving insiders" government culture will stop any substantial changes.

Of course it sounds insane, I'm only reporting the world as it is: fallen, and corrupt.

Now They Want to Euthanize Children

FIRST, Dutch euthanasia advocates said that patient killing will be limited to the competent, terminally ill who ask for it. Then, when doctors began euthanizing patients who clearly were not terminally ill, sweat not, they soothed: medicalized killing will be limited to competent people with incurable illnesses or disabilities. Then, when doctors began killing patients who were depressed but not physically ill, not to worry, they told us: only competent depressed people whose desire to commit suicide is "rational" will have their deaths facilitated. Then, when doctors began killing incompetent people, such as those with Alzheimer's, it's all under control, they crooned: non-voluntary killing will be limited to patients who would have asked for it if they were competent.

And now they want to euthanize children.

In the Netherlands, Groningen University Hospital has decided its doctors will euthanize children under the age of 12, if doctors believe their suffering is intolerable or if they have an incurable illness. But what does that mean? In many cases, as occurs now with adults, it will become an excuse not to provide proper pain control for children who are dying of potentially agonizing maladies such as cancer, and doing away with them instead. As for those deemed "incurable"--this term is merely a euphemism for killing babies and children who are seriously disabled.

For anyone paying attention to the continuing collapse of medical ethics in the Netherlands, this isn't at all shocking. Dutch doctors have been surreptitiously engaging in eugenic euthanasia of disabled babies for years, although it technically is illegal, since infants can't consent to be killed. Indeed, a disturbing 1997 study published in the British medical journal, the Lancet, revealed how deeply pediatric euthanasia has already metastasized into Dutch neo natal medical practice: According to the report, doctors were killing approximately 8 percent of all infants who died each year in the Netherlands. That amounts to approximately 80-90 per year. Of these, one-third would have lived more than a month. At least 10-15 of these killings involved infants who did not require life-sustaining treatment to stay alive. The study found that a shocking 45 percent of neo-natologists and 31 percent of pediatricians who responded to questionnaires had killed infants.

It took the Dutch almost 30 years for their medical practices to fall to the point that Dutch doctors are able to engage in the kind of euthanasia activities that got some German doctors hanged after Nuremberg. ...

Killing babies no different from abortion, experts say

The authors therefore concluded that “what we call ‘after-birth abortion’ (killing a newborn) should be permissible in all the cases where abortion is, including cases where the newborn is not disabled”.

After-Birth Abortion - The pro-choice case for infanticide.

No, I didn’t make this up. “Partial-birth abortion” is a term invented by pro-lifers. But “after-birth abortion” is a term invented by two philosophers, Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva. In the Journal of Medical Ethics, they propose ....

2. Prior to personhood, human life has no moral claims on us. I’ve seen this position asserted in countless comment threads by supporters of abortion rights. Giubilini and Minerva add only one further premise t

Some people within the United States may disagree with you. [blacklivesmatter.com]

Seriously? BlackLivesMatter? If you have to refer to a "movement" born out of a lie — that the robber Michael Brown, supposedly, had his arms up when he was shot — your whole position gets seriously compromised.

Pot, meet Kettle. Kettle, meet Pot. [mxgm.org]

An inflammatory collection of lies and innuendo based, once again, on the sorry fate of another thug, whose reaction to being followed in the street was to "whoop the shit out of the cracker".

If, while alleging "historical" and "nationwide" victimhood, you don't have decent poster-boys, something must be wrong with your premise.

The anonymous GP is right: we aren't actively killing nor seriously repressing a large number of our own people. Not usually. And if/when it happens, it is a cause of outrage here in the US, whereas in China, North Korea, Cuba or under ISIS it is accepted, grudgingly or otherwise...

But then, I suppose that proverbial kettle of Joseph McCarthy and the pot of Lavrenty Beria are equally "black" to you too...

Already solved.

Land value tax and pegging the amount of basic income as a percentage of GDP or revenue.

There was a study I believe out of Canada that found replacing traditional forms of welfare with basic income was equivalent with welfare costs, excluding administration.

If you include administrative costs, the cost of welfare goes up to $61,320 per person

http://www.weeklystandard.com/....

Certainly simply cutting a check would be cheaper, and you could get rid of several other programs like Social Security (as well as getting rid of the payroll tax). Pegging it to revenue (or some other measure of the economy) insures the system stays in check.

Land value tax also keeps taxation in check, so revenue has to track with the economy as well (no $100 houses in Detroit with $100,000 tax liens). As above, reducing the overhead costs also means you can get rid of other taxes and simplify the system while reducing corruption. As an added benefit, this scales easily with increased automation (which apparently California will be a hotbed of development).

I was leery of essentially taxing a form of wealth, but the benefits are just too great to ignore.

Obama wanted [theatlantic.com] to extend the war, not end it. But the Iraqis refused to let U.S. forces go on committing mass murder with impunity, so Obama had to adhere to the withdrawal timeline negotiated by Bush.

That's a popular theory, but it doesn't seem backed up by the evidence. It looks like Obama merely grabbed onto that as an excuse to leave. Check out this New Yorker article for example. From the reports, Obama was not pushing to leave troops, he was stalling and looking for a way out:

President Obama, too, was ambivalent about retaining even a small force in Iraq. For several months, American officials told me, they were unable to answer basic questions in meetings with Iraqis—like how many troops they wanted to leave behind—because the Administration had not decided. “We got no guidance from the White House,” Jeffrey told me. “We didn’t know where the President was. Maliki kept saying, ‘I don’t know what I have to sell.’ ” At one meeting, Maliki said that he was willing to sign an executive agreement granting the soldiers permission to stay, if he didn’t have to persuade the parliament to accept immunity. The Obama Administration quickly rejected the idea. “The American attitude was: Let’s get out of here as quickly as possible,” Sami al-Askari, the Iraqi member of parliament, said........Many Iraqi and American officials are convinced that even a modest force would have been able to prevent chaos

Obama seemed to affirm that fact when he was debating Romney. He said:

MR. ROMNEY: [W]ith regards to Iraq, you and I agreed, I believe, that there should have been a status of forces agreement. Did you —

PRESIDENT OBAMA: That's not true.

So it seems pretty clear Obama was against leaving a small force in Iraq.

Blaming the Bush timetable is silly.....he had several years to change the timetable (and not to mention that Bush was an idiot so doing anything because that is what Bush planned is utterly moronic. If Obama said, "I did this because Bush planned it" then I would have significantly less respect for him if he really meant that).

.... the Obama administration doesn't seem to have much interest in extraditing him (and executing him (as the conspiracy theory goes)). A future Hillary Clinton administration, on the other hand, ....

Why Clinton Cash Has Bi-Partisan And National Importance

Since 2001, the Clinton Foundation has amassed a staggering $2 billion, mostly in chunks from globally powerful individuals, multinational companies and foreign countries.

“Clinton Cash”: Disputations

House of the Stackd Deck of Cards

I guess the ACA had nothing to do with this then.

http://politicalticker.blogs.c...
http://www.weeklystandard.com/...