WSJ Crowdsources Investigation of Hillary Clinton Emails

PvtVoid writes: The Wall Street Journal now has a page up that encourages readers to sift through and tag Hillary Clinton's emails on Benghazi. Users can click on suggested tags such as "Heated", "Personal", "Boring", or "Interesting", or supply their own tags. What could possibly go wrong? I'm tagging this story "election2016."

Comments

WSJ is owned by NewsCorp now, right?

[TWX]

Yawn...

Re:WSJ is owned by NewsCorp now, right?

[Anonymous Coward]

Read this link..

You MIGHT learn something.

Although your addle-brained Fox Derangement Syndrome doesn't correlate well with intelligence.

Re:WSJ is owned by NewsCorp now, right?

[mbone]

The news side is fairly reliable. The editorial page has been brain-dead since the Carter administration, and that was long before Rupert Murdoch bought the paper.

Re:WSJ is owned by NewsCorp now, right?

[NemosomeN]

Saying someone is not credible because they are part of an organization that is not credible is not ad hominem.

Re:WSJ is owned by NewsCorp now, right?

[Anonymous Coward]

You say that.

But did you watch Australia's election in 2013?

http://i.imgur.com/MyU1MDV.jpg

Re:WSJ is owned by NewsCorp now, right?

[garyisabusyguy]

I think that 'Association Fallacy' would be closer than Ad Hominem

However, I do not think that it is a fallacy to doubt the credibility of any 'news' source that is part of the News Corp family

News Corp has demonstrated a decided bent in favor of the American right wing of the political spectrum, and it would be wise for anybody to take that into consideration when weighing the value of 'news' generated by any member of the New Corp family

Re:WSJ is owned by NewsCorp now, right?

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh... if you dismiss every argument from a person (or organization) simply because "I don't believe them to be a credible source," then you are not addressing the merits of their argument with your own logic, you are attempting to duck having to engage in debate by claiming that everything they say is a lie, unbelievable, or in-credible.

That's kind of the textbook definition of an ad-hominem attack.

Rachel Maddow recently criticized Ted Cruz over his position on Operation Jade Helm in Texas. If my response is:

"I love Ted Cruz and am sure that it's safe to disregard any criticism of him by MSNBC, because Rachel Maddow is just not credible."

Do you see how I've failed to address any part of her criticism, and just dismissed her arguments out of hand because she has cooties or something? Yeah, that's an ad hominem attack. And you just tried to justify it.

Re:WSJ is owned by NewsCorp now, right?

[TWX]

In a world where an organization dedicated to publishing the damning evidence of cults is forced into bankruptcy and then purchased by one of those cults, who continues to operate the organization as a means to identify individuals against their cause, I'm generally willing to take the acquisition of a group originally with certain positions by a group with differing positions with a bit of a grain of salt.

The Wall Street Journal has been a decent publication, but is now owned by a media entity whose management staff has an agenda and has nakedly used its media holdings to advance that agenda. The very name, "NewsCorp," is doublespeak when the bulk of their prominent content is not news. I have no doubt that WSJ's acquisition was in part strategic.

Not that it's much consolation to an anonymous coward like you, but I don't exactly put a lot of stock in CNN or MSNBC or whatever they're currently called either. The 24-hour news cycle is one of the worst things in that because it's ad-revenue based, it has to continually attract attention to itself to remain profitable, so it makes much ado about nothing in order to keep its audience. That means polarizing the audience because there's nothing people love more than to have some feeling of theirs reinforced. They're all echo-chambers that feedback on their respective audiences.

Re:WSJ is owned by NewsCorp now, right?

[Karmashock]

It is still a fallacy though.

Let me help you understand how to stop fallacies:

X must equal Y because Variable M that does not require under all circumstances that X must equal Y given the presence of Variable M.

So for example, does news corp or the wallstreet journal ALWAYS lie? Obviously not.

What is more, MUST they lie? For example, if we had a computer program that reported on a binary value and it always gave the opposite value to whatever it read. Then you could conclude that variable X was the opposite of whatever that program said. Neither newscorp nor the Wallstreet journal are reliability reporting the opposite of anything.

Therefore it is logically fallacious to say that something they said is a lie because they said it.

See?

Fallacies are about LOGIC. Not you fucking politics.

You can't say anything is automatically bullshit no matter who says it because no one is reliably wrong 100 percent of the time.

You can of course take what they say with a grain of salt. You can choose to ignore them. You can hold any sort of opinion you want.

You cannot say that everything they say is wrong or that any given thing is wrong simply because they said it.

You have to actually wade into the issue and form a discrete opinion of it.

If you can't be bothered to do that, then your opinion is based entirely on your own bias and the value of your opinion is based on the value of your bias. Which in this place is literally nothing.

Re:WSJ is owned by NewsCorp now, right?

[NicBenjamin]

It's the paper for business-oriented conservatives. Their news sides has always been pretty good (it's not smart to invest on what you want to be true), but the editorial side has never been what non-business conservatives would describe as "sane."

They're always convinced the world would be a paradise of joy if only the big bad government would let businessmen have their way with everyone else. During the Civil Rights movement they were squishy about Dr. King on their best days, they were the ones beating the "FDR is a Commie" drum when he created Social Security, etc.

Re:WSJ is owned by NewsCorp now, right?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah yes I remember how the WSJ and FOX went after Bush, Cheney, Libbey and Rove when they used a private email server (gwb43.com) for a private email server for use in the White House whose stated purpose was to avoid FOIA requests. You know the instance where Bush and Rove were embroiled in two competing scandals — the Valerie Plame scandal, in which operatives for Vice Pres. Dick Cheney, including Rove and Scooter Libby, were accused of unmasking Valerie Plame, a CIA specialist in the black market for weapons of mass destruction, for purely partisan reasons, and the U.S. Attorney purge, in which Rove’s political operation in the White House was accused of ordering Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to purge eight U.S. attorneys who were qualified prosecutors and replace them with political hacks with little or no prosecutorial experience. During the investigation, it came to light that Rove’s server had been used to send official, non-political emails — correspondence that was required by law to be preserved under the Presidential Records Act. On April 12, 2007, Rove’s operation admitted that it had deleted at least 5 million emails from the server. In December 2009, technicians who had examined the server reported that the number of emails that had been deleted was far greater — 22 million.

It is not an Ad Hominem attack nor addle-brained Fox Derangement Syndrome when the group we are complaining about the attacks on Clinton, but under similar if not identical circumstances they didn't attack Bush, Cheney and Rove

Re:WSJ is owned by NewsCorp now, right?

[TWX]

Okay, post-acquisition, did WSJ make a point of investigating the Sarah Palin private yahoo e-mail that she used for business while in power as the Governor of Alaska to circumvent Alaskan law? I don't remember coverage of that being terribly strong. I also don't remember WSJ asking the public to comb through through the gwb43 e-mail personally.

Re: WSJ is owned by NewsCorp now, right?

[Anonymous Coward]

I would argue it's not even right wing anymore, but has become entirely libertarian in their hate of all government. Except the one that signs all their social security and medicare checks.

Re: WSJ is owned by NewsCorp now, right?

[mattwarden]

Yes, let's stick to the news sources that are unbiased like...

Re:WSJ is owned by NewsCorp now, right?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have the weirdest boner right now.

I think I love you.

Re: WSJ is owned by NewsCorp now, right?

[ganjadude]

no... its not libertarian. We dont like fox anymore than you do. if you were correct, they would not have treated ron paul the way they did, and they would not be treating rand paul the way they are now

Re:WSJ is owned by NewsCorp now, right?

[Whiteox]

Classic! When I walked past the 'Kick this mob out' stack, I stopped and re-read it before I walked away, shaking my head. Until then, I always thought there would be some propriety in journalism. I was wrong and I will never forget that.

Re:WSJ is owned by NewsCorp now, right?

[RabidReindeer]

You're trying to turn it around and imply that just because a non-credible source occasionally reported the truth that you can therefore automatically accept that source's assertions are always true or that that particular assertion has somehow become credible all by itself.

You cannot "bootstrap" the credibility of a source off a one-off sample. Just because a stopped clock shows the correct time doesn't mean that it can be depended to do so anytime you look at it.

It rates up there with "the Enemy of my Enemy is my Friend" - they've already proven their ability to be an enemy.

Re:WSJ is owned by NewsCorp now, right?

[RabidReindeer]

You are referring to the mathematical logic concept known as "implication". Just because P implies Q doesn't mean that Q cannot be true event if P is false, only that Q MUST be true if P is false.

Therefore just because Q is true, that doesn't make P a credible indicator. When Q is true, it is true regardless of P's truth or falsehood and therefore lends no credibility to P.

Re:WSJ is owned by NewsCorp now, right?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're trying to turn it around and imply that just because a non-credible source occasionally reported the truth that you can therefore automatically accept that source's assertions are always true or that that particular assertion has somehow become credible all by itself.

Okay, and here we have a textbook case of a strawman argument. I never said that the "WSJ is always credible." I never even remotely implied that. What I stated was that simply hand-waving away arguments you don't like on the basis of who is saying them is a *textbook* case of an ad hominem argument, and it is.

If you want to make an argument that WSJ is often biased, then by all means do so.

If you want to make an argument that WSJ is often factually incorrect, then by all means do so.

But don't expect anybody to take you seriously if you engage in facile rhetoric like, "Oh of course we can disregard everything the WSJ says about Hillary Clinton, they're simply not credible." It's weak-ass logic, and all it does is underscore your own partisan biases. If you want to be taken seriously, then attack the *argument*, not the *man or woman making the argument.*

Re:WSJ is owned by NewsCorp now, right?

[Karmashock]

Not really. The credibility of the source does not mean what they report automatically true or false.

What I'm talking about is more elemental than what you're talking about.

Philosophy sits on top of logic as logic sits above math in the way that math is above physics and the way that physics is above biology.

Mathematics is applied symbolic logic. But logic itself is a different persuit and cannot be conflated with mathematics. And logic is itself a product of philosophy which can be neither conflated with logic nor mathematics.

When one speaks of fallacious logic, one speaks of logic... not math. You can represent most logical concepts in symbolic form though rarely with sustainable accuracy. There is a translation when you go from logic to math and frequently there are conflations of similar concepts and terms which leads to fallacies.

As such it is far more reliable to maintain the logic in a more conceptual context since it is less likely to go through translations and thus introduce errors.

Your example did just that thus baring out the wisdom of what I just said.

Sometimes it is helpful to express things in purely symbolic forms. But only when you have defined your variables properly and have not made the extremely common mistake of conflating similar concepts.

Re:WSJ is owned by NewsCorp now, right?

[lgw]

You have to actually wade into the issue and form a discrete opinion of it.

By far the coolest part of all this is now a "crowd" will form an opinion about Clinton and Benghazi from reading her emails. Primary sources FTW. Not want any journalist wants them to think, not a quote picked carefully for a political ad, but by actually reading what was said at the time. That's more informed democracy already than I expected in this whole election cycle!

Re:WSJ is owned by NewsCorp now, right?

[Anonymous Coward]

Even for non-business conservatives, the editorial side wasn't "sane".

After the Comcast deal got killed, the WSJ's editorial page was lamenting the fact the big bad government refused to listen to Comcast and ignore the fact that the merge would have given Comcast at 50+% marketshare of internet services in the country.

As if that wasn't enough, the editorials argued that Comcast's poor customer service would have been solved, AFTER the merge, if the big bad government had simply left it to the "invisible hand of the market".

Re:WSJ is owned by NewsCorp now, right?

[ganjadude]

so if FOX is our "enemy" who is our friend??? MSNBC??? CNN???? National Enquirer???

Re:WSJ is owned by NewsCorp now, right?

[TWX]

My point in originally posting *yawn* it's worth taking with a grain of salt. I was judging the reporter, not the report. It may be factual, or it may be wildly inaccurate, or it might be factual from a technical perspective by narrowing or qualifying the statement, I do not know. I do know that I'm not going to take NewsCorp's word for it.

Fact of the matter is, I do not trust NewsCorp's motives as I do not know what those motives are in-whole, but the way I interpret their past direct actions, ie, that which they have themselves published or broadcast through their various properties, leads me to not assume that their intentions are what they seem to claim them to be. Even if they immediately decided to be wholly transparent and above-board it would probably take several years for me to be able to trust them, as there's usually no benefit in changing a negative opinion once it has been demonstrably earned.

Re: WSJ is owned by NewsCorp now, right?

[jd2112]

Take Fox News and MSNBC coverage of any given story and split the difference and you might get something vaguely resembling the truth.

Re:WSJ is owned by NewsCorp now, right?

[wyattstorch516]

Right, and George Stephanopolus gave Hillary Clinton 75K for her "charity" without telling anybody. Amazing how nobody here was unhappy about that.

Re:WSJ is owned by NewsCorp now, right?

[phantomfive]

Well said.

Re:WSJ is owned by NewsCorp now, right?

[TWX]

Your local news is probably the closest to being a friend for broadcast television. By only running three or four hours of news every day, they don't have to sensationalize news in-general just to survive, the bulk of their other programming does that for them.

I personally like NPR and some of the PBS news, but they're not infallible and they've made mistakes.

Re:WSJ is owned by NewsCorp now, right?

[stephanruby]

So for example, does news corp or the wallstreet journal ALWAYS lie? Obviously not.

No one said that they always lied.

No one even said that they lied, only that they were not credible.

For instance, if I said that the advice of financial advisers was not credible because it was no better than a bunch of monkeys randomly throwing darts at a list of mutual funds. It wouldn't necessarily mean that those financial advisers purposefully lied with their advice.

For instance, it could mean that they have a bias of some kind, known or unknown. It could mean that they prefer to choose funds that sound cool and trendy, so that themselves sound cool and trendy when speaking to clients. It could mean that the person who hired them or the person who owned their company had a bias of their own and selected financial advisers that followed the same financial schools of thoughts that he did. It could mean a number of other things too.

Re:WSJ is owned by NewsCorp now, right?

[nbauman]

I'm in the news business. This is a right-wing attack job.

In my professional judgment the WSJ used to be the best, most reliable news source in English. Then Murdoch took over, and turned it into a right-wing propaganda sheet. It was a tragedy. This crowd-sourcing of Hillary's emails is maybe the worst example of their partisan bias and seeking sensationalism.

I read the WSJ daily for 40 years (along with the New York Times, Washington Post, and professional magazines like Science and JAMA). I used to pick up their stories, and interview the same people they interviewed.

I knew reporters who wrote for the WSJ. I believed, and most journalists I knew agreed, that the WSJ was the best newspaper in the English language. The reason I liked it was that the news sections were as objective and fact-checked as humanly possible, and one of the few publications not influenced by advertisers and political pressure from the publisher. They really were fair and balanced.

The WSJ's defining moment was in the 1950s when they got leaked photos of the new model GM cars, which were a big trade secret. GM threatened to cancel their advertising if they published it. The WSJ told them to fuck off. Newspapers didn't do that. It was a long time before they accepted GM's advertising again.

An editor at McGraw-Hill once told me that if he picked up a story from the NYT, he would have to check it for accuracy, but if he picked up a story from the WSJ, he could take a chance without checking because he could depend on them to get it right.

If I read a story in the WSJ, I could depend on them getting everything right. (The quick formula is, get all sides; and especially if you attack somebody, get their side too.)

I remember one story on welfare reform in California in which the reporter quoted everybody, from the governor's assistant in charge of welfare, to the supervisors, to the caseworkers, to several welfare mothers. The story made it clear that welfare "reform" wasn't working, merely harassing welfare recipients and making it harder for them to get back on their feet.

A. Kent Macdougal was a WSJ reporter until he retired to teach journalism. He wrote an article in Monthly Review, the marxist magazine, about his experience. (Can't find it online, sorry.) He said that in his career in the WSJ, he could write whatever he wanted, as long as he followed the formula for getting all sides and supporting every statement with documented facts, even though he was a socialist who was criticizing the capitalist system in the WSJ's own pages. The WSJ was one of the few places where you could read news stories that actually criticized the American free-market system, and stood up to companies like GM. I follow health care and drugs, and the WSJ published some of the great exposes of drug companies and the medical establishment.

The ironic thing about the WSJ was that they had a very liberal news section, and a very right wing editorial page. I used to enjoy the editorial page because every day they would publish a tightly-argued, logical, well-documented right wing argument, and I would have to figure out where they made their mistake. Sometimes I had to agree that they were right, and they changed my mind. That's a good editorial page. However, there was a sharp division between the editorial section and the news section.

When Rupert Murdoch bought the WSJ, it was a tragedy for journalism and even for democracy, because the WSJ was the best thing you could read to be an informed citizen and voter.

Ironically, the best business story the WSJ ever did was their coverage of the takeover of their own newspaper by News Corporation. They gave the whole background of the ownership and control of the WSJ, and how the older generation of the Bancroft (sp?) family was committed to the mission of great journalism, but the younger generation just wanted to get higher dividends. And some of those editors and reporters, who knew they would be leaving, gave the best story ever of how un

Re:WSJ is owned by NewsCorp now, right?

[Anonymous Coward]

News Corp has demonstrated a decided bent in favor of the American right wing of the political spectrum

That's putting it a little mildly, don't you think? "News Corp has been sucking the cocks and fingering the buttholes of the American right wing of the political spectrum" would be a more accurate characterization.

Re: WSJ is owned by NewsCorp now, right?

[ClickOnThis]

Take Fox News and MSNBC coverage of any given story and split the difference and you might get something vaguely resembling the truth.

That is yet another fallacy.

Re:WSJ is owned by NewsCorp now, right?

[penguinoid]

It is still a fallacy though.

It's not a fallacy to warn others that an unreliable source is unreliable.

Re: WSJ is owned by NewsCorp now, right?

[Anonymous Coward]

Rand and Ron Paul would have never bailed out the banks, that's why!

Re:WSJ is owned by NewsCorp now, right?

[Karmashock]

Are you really so far gone that tautology doesn't look like a fallacy for you?

You say they're not credible... why? Because they're not credible? Oh well, glad that got sorted out.

So you must accept that the God invented the universe etc as well right? Because that is also backed up with tautology and circular logic.

You're expecting me to accept the GIVEN that a host organization is inherently non-credible and that therefore all subsidiaries are not credible and therefore that a given story submitted by such a subsidiary is also not credible.

Your entire argument is a cascading waterfall of fallacious shit where the shit flows through a logic tree supported by assumed givens at the top then pools at the bottom where it is pumped up and pours through the system all over again.

Genius.

As to you saying a financial adviser is credible or not... exactly how do you substantiate that position? You just saying " they don't know what they're talking about" is meaningless without some sort of supporting argument. Absent that you have an unqualified opinion that isn't worth anything.

I will take news from ANY source and evaluate it rationally. MSNBC does some good reporting sometimes and sometimes Fox does some good reporting. No one is all bad or all good. And discounting any given story simply because of the source is fallacious.

Let me explain what that means again because I don't think you understand what a fallacy is in the first place.

A statement is fallacious if it is not 100 percent true. If you say "everyone in my car is hungry after six hours in the car"... well, you might know YOU are hungry and MOST of the people in the car might be hungry but you don't know that EVERYONE in the car is hungry. It is fallacious because it isn't known to actually be true. It doesnt' follow that because YOU are hungry and everyone else SHOULD be hungry that they all actually ARE hungry. Maybe someone is dead. Maybe someone has been pigging out in the back eating snacks. Maybe anything. You don't know.

That is what it means for something to be fallacious. This passive slippery shit logic that so many people are comfortable with is inherently fallacious because people are not giving any attention to whether things MUST be true or MUST be false. You simply go with "probably" and "maybe" and "should" and thus don't actually fucking know anything.

As to bias, simply dismissing a source out of hand especially when they're passing no judgement on the source material but literally offering the RAW data for public evaluation is itself bias... on your part.

Admit it, apologize, and promise not to do it again. Or surrender any shred of intellectual credibility you were presumed out of common courtesy.

I have no patience for this shit.

Re:WSJ is owned by NewsCorp now, right?

[Karmashock]

It is a tautology to say something is X because it is X though... and tautology is fallacious.

You're saying a parent organization doesn't share your political leanings and so all subsidiaries are going to be polluted with BADTHINK and BADTHINK is all lies and UNGOOD because it wasn't approved by one of your ministry of truth censorship outlets.

The WSJ is releasing the RAW emails. Explain to me how the Rupert Murdock cooties get on your new messiah's emails when they are not altering them at all?

Explain it.

Actually don't. There's no excuse for your position. Any source offering the RAW data cannot impune the raw data... by definition. The data is fucking raw. If I am the slimmest liar ever and I give you raw unmodified records then those records include none of my slimy lies because its fucking raw.

The pathetic kneejerk reaction against anything not part of the leftist echo chamber should make you ashamed of yourself.

Re:WSJ is owned by NewsCorp now, right?

[ClickOnThis]

Great post. Moderators take note.

But I'm a bit confused by the last paragraph of the article you quoted. Why would the new WSJ not embrace "death tax" if it was a dog-whistle for its opponents?

Re:WSJ is owned by NewsCorp now, right?

[Mashiki]

I didn't know that Sarah Palin was previously a Secretary of State, had access to 'eyes only' information or anything like that either. I'm not saying what Palin did was correct, but the trust level was already far lower than what Clinton had access to.

Re:WSJ is owned by NewsCorp now, right?

[penguinoid]

It is a tautology to say something is X because it is X though... and tautology is fallacious.

Wrong again. Tautology means "logically guaranteed to be true". That's pretty much the opposite of fallacy.

Let me give you some examples:
X or not X -- tautology, logically guaranteed to be true
If X, then X -- tautology, logically guaranteed to be true
Suppose X. Therefore, X. -- fallacy, looks like a tautology but isn't.

Re:WSJ is owned by NewsCorp now, right?

[QuantumPion]

If they did and came to the conclusion that there was nothing illegal or corrupt about them, would you believe them? No, you would just call them shills for her campaign. So why bother. Let the left-wing media report on right-wing problems and let the right-wing media report on left-wing problems. That seems fair.

Re:WSJ is owned by NewsCorp now, right?

[sycodon]

Requiring that "credible" information only be spoon fed to you by MSNBC is the sign of a moron and Face Painting Homer.

Re: WSJ is owned by NewsCorp now, right?

[ClickOnThis]

I have been modded down. Whatever.

If one side is lying and the other side is telling the truth, then the truth is not somewhere in the middle.

I'll let the reader decide which side is which.

Re:WSJ is owned by NewsCorp now, right?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hypocrisy is the alternate spelling of Slashdot.

Re:WSJ is owned by NewsCorp now, right?

[Anonymous Coward]

You are a Face Painting Homer who will vote for anyone with a D after their name. The alternative is a hypocritical moron who doesn't vote because none of the candidates are good enough for him.

Your knee jerk condemnation of anything not blessed by the Gods of Progressives is a sure sign of an mentally challenged partisan.

Re:WSJ is owned by NewsCorp now, right?

[Anonymous Coward]

Fact of the matter is, I do not trust NewsCorp's motives as I do not know what those motives are in-whole, but the way I interpret their past direct actions

Fact of the matter is, whether or not *you* trust NewsCorp's motives has no bearing on whether or not they are saying something accurate. If someone - even someone you aren't inclined to trust - tells you a demonstrable truth, then they are telling the truth, no matter *what* you think of them.

If they are NOT telling the truth, then by all means, shout from the rooftops that they're a bunch of liars - you can, and SHOULD, call people out for lying. But remember that a single lie does not mean everything a person ever says from now until judgment day is a lie.

Evaluate arguments on the basis of their merits, not on the basis of your biases.

Re: WSJ is owned by NewsCorp now, right?

[jmac_the_man]

A 4chan hacker (whose father JUST HAPPENED to be a Democrat state-level politician in Tennessee) hacked Palin's email and couldn't produce any evidence of wrongdoing because she was only using the private account for private communication and not state business.

A judge later ordered Palin's emails released to the New York Times in response to a FOIA request they filed. The Times crowdsourced their investigation by posting the archive online (which is exactly what the WSJ is doing, by the way.) Neither the Times' professional investigation nor the crowdsourced investigation show any evidence that she conducted state business over the private emails.

Re:WSJ is owned by NewsCorp now, right?

[khallow]

By only running three or four hours of news every day, they don't have to sensationalize news in-general just to survive, the bulk of their other programming does that for them.

Well, that and their ability to regenerate crime sprees on the fly. I've seen a number of such stations which don't go beyond reading the local crime blotter and cute pet stories.

Re:WSJ is owned by NewsCorp now, right?

[khallow]

I'm in the news business. This is a right-wing attack job.

So what? I don't expect everything to last forever. Read something else and move on. If the WSJ lost a bunch of readership, then it wouldn't matter that it has slid so much.

Re: WSJ is owned by NewsCorp now, right?

[jmac_the_man]

Hey dumbass. While you're on your journalistic high horse, you forgot to mention that David Carr, the guy who wrote the piece you quoted, ISN'T A REPORTER. Carr is an opinion columnist and the Times presents the story as a column (from a WSJ competitor) rather than actual news.

You're also an incredibly stupid liar. If anyone clicks through the link, they will see that you are lying about the Carr piece. You left out the first five paragraphs of the piece. These are the first two:

Sunday was the second anniversary of the sale of The Wall Street Journal to Rupert Murdochâ(TM)s News Corporation. At that time, a chorus of journalism church ladies (I was among them) warned that one of the crown jewels of American journalism now resided in the hands of a roughneck, and predicted that he would use it to his own ends.

Yet here we are, two years later, and The Wall Street Journal still hits my doorstep every morning as one of the nationâ(TM)s premier newspapers.

In 2009, Carr was worried that the WSJ MIGHT be used by Murdoch as a conservative weapon, but in the two years he had owned the WSJ to that point, Murdoch hadn't started doing so.

I'd imagine that if the WSJ had started down that path, you'd have something more recent than 2009.

Re:WSJ is owned by NewsCorp now, right?

[Anonymous Coward]

My, what big words you use.

Newscorp and the Wall Street Journal are not credible when it comes to political stories. That is backed up by reams of evidence. You can cherry pick whatever arguments you like and build whatever logical constructs you care to around them, but it will not alter the fact, in the least, the the Wall Street is not credible when it comes to reporting on people against whom they have shown a pretty consistent and longstanding bias.

Re:WSJ is owned by NewsCorp now, right?

[WindBourne]

Read this link..

You MIGHT learn something.

Although your addle-brained Fox Derangement Syndrome doesn't correlate well with intelligence.

How funny. You did not learn. He was actually accurate in saying that. But you accuse him of a personal attack, when in fact, it was not. It might be an attack by association, but that is something totally different. However, the fact is, that WSJ is owned by murdock and has turned from conservative to loony tunes since that time.

Re:WSJ is owned by NewsCorp now, right?

[WindBourne]

In fact, WSJ actually used to be conservative. Now, they are more loony tunes. Basically, they went from economics to political over the last 7 years.

Re:WSJ is owned by NewsCorp now, right?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh my god, I just came.

Marry me?

Re: WSJ is owned by NewsCorp now, right?

[electrosoccertux]

BBC. I'm ok with BBC

Re: WSJ is owned by NewsCorp now, right?

[slick7]

I doubt it. The mainstream media liars spin everything, yeah you heard me, NSA. A better use of investigational crowd-sourcing of Hitlery Rotten Clinton would be on Whitewater and Benghazi. FTFY.

Re:WSJ is owned by NewsCorp now, right?

[Karmashock]

Wow.

No. Tautology means you're defining a given with itself.

If I say someone is a thief because they're a thief then that is tautology.

It is a kind of circular logic.

You're saying news corp is untrustworthy... this is a given from you. You're not offering any justification for it.

Then you use that given to say that subsidiaries of news corp must be untrustworthy as well because news corp is untrustworthy. This is one of the several false association fallacies.

And then you're saying that because those subsidiaries are untrustworthy a given story from those subsidiaries is untrustworthy... even though the story in question is a FUCKING RAW DATA DUMP. This is another false association fallacy compounded with blind fucking pigheaded mulishness when confronted with fucking facts. That isn't even a fallacy. That is just some retard pointing at the Sun and saying it isn't there.

That's bullshit. And if you don't see the several logical fallacies in that then you're an idiot.

First, the entire line of logic is fallacious.

Second, even if news corp -> WSJ -> this story were untrustworthy, the issue is that this is a RAW data dump and therefore the trustworthiness of the people posting it is irrelevant unless you're claiming that the data itself has been tampered with?

Your entire position is laughable from any rational stand point. You're wrong. And I just validated that position above quite firmly. I am not interested in you wasting any more of my time. You can either apologize for being a jackass or I will just say "good day, sir".

Your choice. Either way, I'm done with you.

Re:WSJ is owned by NewsCorp now, right?

[Karmashock]

I'm starting to understand why fire axes are so popular in the zombie apocalypse... they don't run out of ammo. These people are so fucking stupid. They just come at me drooling all over themselves while chewing their own tongues. I load another shell of logic into my boomstick of reason... blow the top of their rotten face off with an obvious fatal counter argument... then cock another logic shell and move on.

But my god there are a lot of these idiots.

Re:WSJ is owned by NewsCorp now, right?

[Karmashock]

As to WSJ being non-credible... tell us MR AC why is that?

You do realize that they're saying the same thing on this issue that the New York Times and MSNBC are saying right? There is no political division in so far as the facts are concerned here. The left wing media is turning on hillary. Its already over. All that remains is stripping anyone in her coalition dumb enough to think they can shrug this off of any remaining credibility. This is going to get uglier and uglier. And you're not going to be able to count on any credible media allies to back you up. The establishment media has already abandoned you. And most leftwing alternative media has also abandoned you. That includes politico and huffington post. Its over.

Do as your allies already did... turn on hillary and save what remains of your credibility. If you don't... you'll just lose.

Honestly, I hope as many of you refuse to listen to that sage advice as possible. It will just make the political bloodbath to come all the more complete. ;)

Re: WSJ is owned by NewsCorp now, right?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your mom likes BBC too...

Re:WSJ is owned by NewsCorp now, right?

[Karmashock]

No one is reading 10,000 emails. You're going to want someone to pick an email interest out of the flock. for closer scrutiny.

Re:WSJ is owned by NewsCorp now, right?

[cold fjord]

I'm in the news business. This is a right-wing attack job.

So you're here to offer a Left-wing attack job?

An editor at McGraw-Hill once told me that if he picked up a story from the NYT, he would have to check it for accuracy...

Interesting that you go on to quote the NYT attacking the WSJ.

Now when (if) I read a WSJ story, I have to ask myself, "What did they leave out because the publisher, or some big business like GM, didn't like it?" like any other newspaper

Did you bother to identify what the NYT left out in their story? And the fall of the WSJ is, in essence, to lower them to the level of the NYT? That is damning.

I'm also wondering what you left out?

Re:WSJ is owned by NewsCorp now, right?

[Anonymous Coward]

Only problem is these are the post-deletion ones.

So they were biased long before anyone ever got to read them due to the omissions.

I'm still glad people are getting access to primary sources, though. The more primary sources and the fewer layers of BS layered on top of the news, the better.

Re:WSJ is owned by NewsCorp now, right?

[penguinoid]

Tautology

Re:WSJ is owned by NewsCorp now, right?

[Anonymous Coward]

"It is still a fallacy though."

No it isn't. The word "credible" is a big clue that we are not dealing with a formal argument, since credible is not well-defined. For any issue we care to consider, we are not able to determine whether a news organization is in the set labelled credible. At least not if we have a life.

"If you can't be bothered to do that, then your opinion is based entirely on your own bias and the value of your opinion is based on the value of your bias."

Yeah, no. If you knew what you were talking about, then you'd distinguish a formal logical argument and (essentially) induction. What you call bias may simply be a well-calibrated internal probability measure, aka *experience*. But hey, next time you're on trial for murder, be sure to loudly object "genetic fallacy!" when your own lawyer discounts the only evidence against you by a paid informant.

Re:WSJ is owned by NewsCorp now, right?

[snkhere]

Many thanks for this very informing post. One follow-up question, what news sources (online and offline) would you recommend as alternatives to the (pre-Murdoch) WSJ? What is your opinion on the FT?

Re: WSJ is owned by NewsCorp now, right?

[mlkj]

LWN.

Re: WSJ is owned by NewsCorp now, right?

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is what happens when NewsCorp owns something. Of the deep end bat shit crazy right wing political witch hunts with an eye on making sure the wealth transfer to the rich continues.

Re: WSJ is owned by NewsCorp now, right?

[Anonymous Coward]

Irrelevant. They can all be enemies. The right does love their us vs them way of looking at things, but the truth is that just because one entity is an enemy does not automatically make the others friends.

Re:WSJ is owned by NewsCorp now, right?

[RabidReindeer]

Again, just because a stopped clock can be indicating the correct time, that doesn't mean that it can be relied on to indicate the correct time. You cannot "bootstrap" credibility from an un-credible source just because the un-credible source sometimes repeats the truth. That is just as true whether you assert symbolically (mathematically) or in words. The mathematics, after all, is merely a codification of the words to permit seeing the problem more concisely.

An un-credible source may emit both true and false stories, but because it's un-credible, you cannot draw any conclusion as to the truth or falsehood of any invividual story. For that, you must disregard the un-credible source and go find credible ones.

To do otherwise is the opposite of wisdom.

Re:WSJ is owned by NewsCorp now, right?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCQT53wiZ30

Re: WSJ is owned by NewsCorp now, right?

[Anonymous Coward]

PBS/NPR are actually pretty unbiased. Just most Americans are dumb enough to prefer Fox/MSNBC/CNN.

And of course, there's always CSPAN..

Re: WSJ is owned by NewsCorp now, right?

[Anonymous Coward]

The BBC is a bunch of pro-Labor hacks. Okay, okay, they're not *hacks*, they're quality journalists, and they do try to keep their opinions from being ostentatious and obnoxious, but they're definitely a lot happier with Labor than they are with the Conservatives (to say nothing of UKIP). They also dislike the SNP a little (mostly for being separatist -- other than that they're basically Labor Plus).

Re:WSJ is owned by NewsCorp now, right?

[Xyrus]

You have to actually wade into the issue and form a discrete opinion of it.

By far the coolest part of all this is now a "crowd" will form an opinion about Clinton and Benghazi from reading her emails. Primary sources FTW. Not want any journalist wants them to think, not a quote picked carefully for a political ad, but by actually reading what was said at the time. That's more informed democracy already than I expected in this whole election cycle!

Not really. The amount of cognitive dissonance that runs through this country when it comes to things like politics and, sadly, science, is quite staggering. People aren't going through those emails to become informed. They're going through them for dirt/vindication/etc. of whatever biases they have.

There's going to be a thousand cherry picked quotes out of context and a thousand facepalms. Fox news will more than likely take some of the juiciest out-of-context quotes and try to make Hillary sound like the next Pol Pot. MSNBC will make her out to be a saint. CNN will create some sort of pointless 3D fly through graphic that has nothing to do with anything and will make blue hairs think they didn't take their meds.

Whatever. "If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him." -Cardinal Richelieu

Re:WSJ is owned by NewsCorp now, right?

[Xyrus]

The news side is fairly reliable. The editorial page has been brain-dead since the Carter administration, and that was long before Rupert Murdoch bought the paper.

As long as it isn't politics or science.

Re:WSJ is owned by NewsCorp now, right?

[FooAtWFU]

they were the ones beating the "FDR is a Commie" drum when he created Social Security, etc.

FDR was a Commie, though. We only see Social Security seven or eight decades after the fact, but the FDR administration completely overhauled the nation's economy, especially the agricultural sector, placing enormous swaths under extensive government control, with explicit production targets and price targets. The administration actively disbelieved in competition and a free market, and thought it could restore the nation to prosperity by paying people to fallow their land and by burning crops. By "disbelieved in a free market", I don't mean that they had a bunch of Regulators out there keeping Rich and Powerful People from doing Bad Things. I mean that they kept the Rich and Powerful People in business because they were rich and powerful friends of the FDR administration, and they did a lot to help them.

The FDR administration's interventions are a primary reason that the Great Depression was so Great. Fortunately, most of them were disassembled after World War II, resulting in an impressive game of catch-up as the nation returned to economic growth and prosperity (and unfortunately convincing some people that war is an economic catalyst instead of an exercise in spending valuable effort blowing stuff up, including some of the most economically valuable stuff out there, human lives).

Anyway. If you hate Big Agriculture, factory farms, and crop monocultures, then you should despise FDR, who erected the system which brought them upon us.

As for the rest, Social Security was the icing on the cake. It's an out-and-out wealth transfer in a way that the other programs, but at least it's an honest wealth transfer -- a generational wealth transfer, and future generations are likely to be richer. It makes a ton of economic sense as a transfer program (by tying your retirement pay to actually working it avoids the worst negative incentives of transfer programs, among other things). You just need to make sure the demographics and economic growth work out relative to the benefits -- easily doable. From an economic standpoint, it's wildly superior to the current health-care reform effort, which... let's just say it hasn't been a wild success at delivering its headline promise of cheaper health care for all.

Re: WSJ is owned by NewsCorp now, right?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you never listen to a source how can you know if what they say iis true or false?

Re:WSJ is owned by NewsCorp now, right?

[NicBenjamin]

So let me get this straight:
FDR caused a world-wide depression two years before he took office. He never had economic control over most of the world, but he nonetheless made the global depression worse. He was a commie in the 30s and early 40s, despite the fact he never sent anyone to the Gulag (kinda the defining aspect of Communism in the 30s and early 40s), the business community fought him tooth and nail the whole way (at one point forcing him to seize Montgomery Ward's entire company because the Chairman preferred forcing a strike and ending his war production to dealing with his unions) but he enriched his friends in business, etc.

That makes almost as much sense as claiming ObamaCare hasn't kept costs in line. It has. Of course you did preface it by saying "cheaper," so you will probably weasel your way into a claim that it was supposed to reduce cost-growth not keep cost-growth within inflation; but then it was never sold as a way to reduce overall costs. If that had been the sales pitch there would have been no need for new money to fund it. It was sold as a way to cut costs for individuals, and (thanks to the subsidies) it's mathematically impossible for it to fail at that task.

Re: WSJ is owned by NewsCorp now, right?

[ArmoredDragon]

Yes because everybody loves listening to a monotone voice for hours on end, as monotone means proper unbiasedness. And we get great gems of news stories like "Ottawa just began increasing the number of bike lanes throughout the city" because news stories like these are so heartwarming, even if you don't live in the same country as Ottawa.

Re:WSJ is owned by NewsCorp now, right?

[Anonymous Coward]

Calling something a "Tautology" is not a compliment in traditional logic. From your own fucking link, Captain Assburger:

The word tautology was used by the ancient Greeks to describe a statement that was true merely by virtue of saying the same thing twice, a pejorative meaning that is still used for rhetorical tautologies. Between 1800 and 1940, the word gained new meaning in logic, and is currently used in mathematical logic to denote a certain type of propositional formula, without the pejorative connotations it originally possessed.

We were offered an argument of this form: "Person A is not credible, because they are part of an organization that is not credible." An argument that defines itself using unsubstantiated, circular logic.

"Why is the organization not credible?"
"Because Person A is a part of it, and they're not credible!"
"And why is Person A not credible?
"Because they're part of this organization that's not credible!"

When your assertions are garbage, your logical constructions that use them are garbage as a result.

Re: WSJ is owned by NewsCorp now, right?

[garyisabusyguy]

"Do you even lift?"

Look Bro, you may want to take some time listening, watching, or even reading these two sources before claiming that they got nothing to do with 'Merica. It may do your outlook a world of good

Re: WSJ is owned by NewsCorp now, right?

[ArmoredDragon]

Look Bro, you may want to take some time listening, watching, or even reading these two sources

I have.

Re:WSJ is owned by NewsCorp now, right?

[nbauman]

Great post. Moderators take note.

But I'm a bit confused by the last paragraph of the article you quoted. Why would the new WSJ not embrace "death tax" if it was a dog-whistle for its opponents?

My sense is that Murdoch wants to use the WSJ for his propaganda, but he wants to maintain the pretense that it's still an accurate and objective newspaper, so he can't overdo it. Calling inheritance taxes a "death tax" in the news pages was overdoing it.

I remember when they printed that article, and people were complaining in the comments pages that the story was propaganda. The reporter apologized.

Re:WSJ is owned by NewsCorp now, right?

[FooAtWFU]

No, of course FDR didn't cause the Depression (just extended it).

He was a commie in the 30s and early 40s, despite the fact he never sent anyone to the Gulag (kinda the defining aspect of Communism in the 30s and early 40s)

If you want to be pedantic about what is and what isn't Communism, you could at least break out the Manifesto because I can think of a lot of ideological nitpicks that you could put in advance of "did not establish a gulag".

the business community fought him tooth and nail the whole way ... but he enriched his friends in business, etc.

Yeah, go read about the National Recovery Administration. Essentially they suspended antitrust law if you adopted a certain minimum wage. Clarence Darrow (of Scopes Monkey Trial fame) briefly headed up the National Recovery Review Board, a body which issued a few nice reports on how effectively this crushed smaller businesses, and was then promptly dissolved. You could try reading one or two. (Of course the Supreme Court found the act establishing the administration unconstitutional, leading to the Judicial Procedures Reform Bill of 1937, an utterly transparent attempt to pack the Supreme Court.) The Montgomery Ward incident, incidentally, was much much later, in 1944, during the war.

but then it was never sold as a way to reduce overall costs.

Hahahhahahahahahahhaha... let's see what Google can say on the topic in the next 15 seconds... Key White House allies are dramatically shifting their attempts to defend health care legislation, abandoning claims that it will reduce costs and the deficit and instead stressing a promise to "improve it." -- Politico, 8/9/2010. (I'm sure I could find more coverage in the event that you don't think Politico's worth the paper it's printed on.)

Re:WSJ is owned by NewsCorp now, right?

[nbauman]

Many thanks for this very informing post. One follow-up question, what news sources (online and offline) would you recommend as alternatives to the (pre-Murdoch) WSJ? What is your opinion on the FT?

I don't know of any substitute. The nice thing about the WSJ was that I could get a complete overview of everything important in one place. You could read the front page of the WSJ every day in 5 minutes, and at least be aware of everything important.

The most important thing was that I could trust them to give it to me as straight as they could. If I read a story in the WSJ that a job training program wasn't working, I'd see right there that the reporter talked to people on all sides, looked at the evidence, and the evidence was that it wasn't working. It wasn't because one of the publisher's right-wing editors decided to attack job training programs.

(The NYT had those very problems of advertisers and publisher's calling the shots. For example, their second-biggest advertiser was the automobile industry. The publisher, AO Sulzberger, actually ordered his editors to run stories about how auto safety and pollution regulations were destroying the economy. He wrote a memo that got out. And they did a lousy job of covering the Vietnam war.)

I don't want to make it sound like I let the WSJ do my critical thinking for me, but they did a lot of the preliminary work.

So now I'm back to reading news media on all sides, and evaluating each story myself on a case by case basis. If I read the NYT, and Democracy Now, etc., with some effort I can figure out something close to the truth. I know the FT has a lot of fans, but I don't read it regularly so I can't evaluate it.

I mostly follow medicine right now, and the professional journals, like Science, New England Journal of Medicine, etc. do a pretty good job. Once in the while, the editors will go too far, and get fired, which is what happened at Journal of the American Medical Association and Canadian Medical Association Journal. Maybe that's proof that the editors are willing to push it as far as they can.

But there was a time when I could tell a college student, "Read the WSJ every day and you'll have a pretty good idea of what's going on in the world." I can't say that any more.

Re:WSJ is owned by NewsCorp now, right?

[nbauman]

When I'm writing something, I like to run it past somebody who disagrees with me, to see whether I got anything wrong.

If this is the worst that you and jmac_the_man and cold fjord can come up with, I'm confident I got it right.

Re:WSJ is owned by NewsCorp now, right?

[Anonymous Coward]

And your formalism is an over simplification. The problem with Fox News is that they introduce a systemic bias into their reporting. What they say is not necessarily strictly true or false (it's impossible to properly quantify this, which is why your argument is not compelling), but it is often presented in a way that promotes their agenda. It's that quality that makes them an untrustworthy source.

Re:WSJ is owned by NewsCorp now, right?

[penguinoid]

We were offered an argument of this form: "Person A is not credible, because they are part of an organization that is not credible."

Which isn't a tautology, because not all people who are part of a low credibility organization, are themselves of low credibility.

The OP made an assertion (that NewsCorp has low credibility), and used that assertion and fuzzy logic to substantiate his warning (that the WSJ might therefore inherit some of that low credibility). None of which is a logical tautology, since it is not logically guaranteed to be true. Nor is it a rhetorical tautology, since it has the tone of an assertion rather than a proof.

Re:WSJ is owned by NewsCorp now, right?

[foreverdisillusioned]

None of those statements are tautologies. A tautology is more along the lines of "If this statement is true then this statement is true."

Also, tautological statements need not useless outside of formal logic / math. The theory of evolution by natural selection hinges on the ramifications of the statement "that which survives and reproduces, survives and reproduces" (and its negation.)

Re: WSJ is owned by NewsCorp now, right?

[DocHoncho]

If one side is lying and the other side is telling the truth, then the truth is not somewhere in the middle.

While that may be true in general, you seem to be making the unwarranted assumption that MSNBC is necessarily telling the truth. It's far more likely that both Fox and MSNBC are telling the truth about some bits, and lies about others and so "splitting the difference," or trying to take the most true(ish?) bits from each source would lead one closer to a balanced understanding of the topic at hand.

Don't fool yourself, both sides are full of shit, it's just different colors of shit.

Re: WSJ is owned by NewsCorp now, right?

[DocHoncho]

That's easy. How closely does the source match with your own preconceived notions on the topic at hand? The closer it does so, the truer it is.

Re:WSJ is owned by NewsCorp now, right?

[NicBenjamin]

No, of course FDR didn't cause the Depression (just extended it).

He was a commie in the 30s and early 40s, despite the fact he never sent anyone to the Gulag (kinda the defining aspect of Communism in the 30s and early 40s)

If you want to be pedantic about what is and what isn't Communism, you could at least break out the Manifesto because I can think of a lot of ideological nitpicks that you could put in advance of "did not establish a gulag"

Why would I do that?

Communism is a living political movement. It is defined, not by the words on a page, but what actual human beings who believe in the movement think the words mean. In FDR's era that was being a Vanguard party and frequent purges of opponents of the Revolution. If you were speaking about an Italian from 1970 it would be completely different.

Using it the way you're using it is like claiming Dubya actually wanted to murder the entire House of Windsor out of revenge for the Famine, or that he was identical to Saddam because all use the label "Republican."

Even if you were using word on a page, the fact that he didn't foment a bloody Revolution, ushering in a Dictatorship of the Proletariat, is enough to prove that anyone who claims he was Communist in that sense is more then a little deranged.

the business community fought him tooth and nail the whole way ... but he enriched his friends in business, etc.

Yeah, go read about the National Recovery Administration. Essentially they suspended antitrust law if you adopted a certain minimum wage. Clarence Darrow (of Scopes Monkey Trial fame) briefly headed up the National Recovery Review Board, a body which issued a few nice reports on how effectively this crushed smaller businesses, and was then promptly dissolved. You could try reading one or two. (Of course the Supreme Court found the act establishing the administration unconstitutional, leading to the Judicial Procedures Reform Bill of 1937, an utterly transparent attempt to pack the Supreme Court.) The Montgomery Ward incident, incidentally, was much much later, in 1944, during the war.

You know what Communists do when the Court rules against them? Shoot the court. That's kind of the defining aspect of Communism. Capitalism is inherently unfair, the system is stacked against us, therefore we must have a Revolution to destroy the system. There's no pacifism in the Manifesto.

You can accuse somebody who uses a legal procedure to try to pack the Court of being a Social Democrat and a hardass, but accusing them of being Communist is just not sensible. It's ad hominem for ad hominem's sake, it exposes you as intellectually bankrupt, and worst of all it's fukcing boring.

I mean you're using fucking ad hominem. At least be creative about you juvenile leaf-brained smeller of other people's farts.

but then it was never sold as a way to reduce overall costs.

Hahahhahahahahahahhaha... let's see what Google can say on the topic in the next 15 seconds... Key White House allies are dramatically shifting their attempts to defend health care legislation, abandoning claims that it will reduce costs and the deficit and instead stressing a promise to "improve it." -- Politico, 8/9/2010. (I'm sure I could find more coverage in the event that you don't think Politico's worth the paper it's printed on.)

Reread your source. Scratch that, read your source.

It says nothing about what the White House said the plan would do. It it so far removed from the White House that it's impossible to describe in a single clause. A Think Tank supporting the White House was urging people to stop saying "it will cut costs." To those actually involved in the movement cut costs is a well-known shorthand to say "reduce cost grow

Re:WSJ is owned by NewsCorp now, right?

[khallow]

What is there to disagree with? Your post is well written and interesting enough to read. I just don't get why I'm supposed to care.

Re: WSJ is owned by NewsCorp now, right?

[electrosoccertux]

I dont' know who those parties are. They actually present facts as they come in as opposed to having a bunch of 'experts' talk about nothing in particular.

talking about BBC-covered US-news

Re:WSJ is owned by NewsCorp now, right?

[Anonymous Coward]

As to WSJ being non-credible... tell us MR AC why is that?

You do realize that they're saying the same thing on this issue that the New York Times and MSNBC are saying right?

Crowdsourcing bad information on someone is a move that is more typical of Anonymous, or Rush Limbaugh, or even Rupert Murdoch. It's not something that the New York Times or MSNBC would encourage themselves.

The left wing media is turning on hillary.

The true left wing media, the tiny sliver of it that's left of it anyway, turned on Hillary as soon as she became a warmonger.

What's left now is the corporate media. By the way, I also dislike Hilary. However, this doesn't change my original point about the credibility of the Wall Street Journal because it's owned by Murdoch.

Re:WSJ is owned by NewsCorp now, right?

[Karmashock]

And yet it would be a fallacy to say a stop clock has the wrong time. You don't know that. You also don't know that a working clock has the correct time. A working clock could have the wrong time always.

In fact, a working clock almost always has the wrong time and never has the right time. At least not to the second. But a stopped clock will be 100 percent accurate for two seconds out of the day.

Again... this is just simple logic and you either understand simple logic or I have to educate you which would require some humility from you and patience from me. Since neither is likely to happen... if you do not understand BASIC logic then I'm going to just deem you irrational by definition and move on.

If you DO grasp basic logic then you understand what is and is not a fallacy.

What is more, you've not established that fox etc is a stopped watch. In fact, the vast majority of what is printed even by very biased sources is entirely accurate. What changes is the framing of the discussion more than anything. The actual FACTS tend to be accurate.

So if you don't like fox, what you actually don't like is the way they frame a story.

Okay.

But in this case there is no framing. It is the literal raw data without context.

So you can't cite bias. Literally cannot. That you did merely speaks poorly for YOUR bias.

When someone releases RAW data and you claim bias... you're the bigot. ;)

Re:WSJ is owned by NewsCorp now, right?

[Karmashock]

As to crowd sourcing information, in what way is that a bad way to do it?

As to crowdsourcing being an inherently right wing activity, explain how that is the case? it is more common of the open source kickstarter world than anything.

You're really just sounding like a closed minded bigot here... Just fyi. You might want to watch that least you actually become a bigot. And you'll regret that and hate yourself eventually.

Just trying to spare you some regret and the occasional humiliation.

As to the credibility of the WSJ, in what way are they not credible? If neither MSNBC nor the NYTs are left enough for you than what remains? Pravda? Tell me what you consider a credible news source so I can laugh at you.

Dare you.

Re:WSJ is owned by NewsCorp now, right?

[Karmashock]

As to systemic bias, no more so than any other source. CNN, the BBC, PBS, the NYTs, The LA Times, the Guardian... etc. They all have their bias.

What is more, you're mostly reacting to the editorials on fox etc because their actual facts are the same as everyone else's facts. The facts are not in dispute.

And I should point out that pretty much the ENTIRE media has turned on hillary not just the right wing media.

The New York Times has turned on her and so has MSNBC.

Beyond that, you can't cite bias in this case because they're releasing RAW information.

You literally cannot with ANY credibility cite bias. So when you cite bias YOUR credibility is damaged because it is literally impossible.

And since you did do that... and you still don't realize it... that damages your credibility FURTHER.

Frankly, all the credibility you had was credibility gifted to you out of common courtesy. Given that you've proven that you are personally unworthy of it... I'm going to just conclude you're a fruitcake and move on.

Good day.

Re:WSJ is owned by NewsCorp now, right?

[Jack Griffin]

In my professional judgment the WSJ used to be the best, most reliable news source in American.

FTFY.
I don't read/watch/listen to much American Media, but NPR seems to be quite balanced.

Re:WSJ is owned by NewsCorp now, right?

[Karmashock]

Wrong. You're conflating reality with his argument.

If I say "something is not credible because I said so"... that is not a falsifiable argument. Non-falsifiable arguments are fallacious.

If I instead said "something is not credible because they said X = 2 when it was later found out that X = 3" then THAT would be something we could examine and would be an argument that was at least based on some kind of logic. And that logic could be validated or disproven.

But simply saying something is not credible because... because... is bullshit.

On top of that... we're talking about a raw data dump.

A raw fucking data dump.

Either explain how you bias a raw data dump in any kind of sustainable way... I mean, if they removed or changed emails or added one... it is going to be found out pretty much instantly and they're going to take a beating for that.

I think you know damn well they did nothing of the kind. First, they don't need to. Second, while they have political leanings they haven't lied about anything so far as I know... the WSJ has one of the better journalistic records of any paper anywhere. The NYTs has been caught in some very nasty journalistic ethics issues over the years as have many other papers. CIte one the WSJ got into of any significance?

But beyond that, it is a raw data dump. And simply saying a raw data dump is fallacious because the aren't sucking your favorite politician's cock... is itself worthy of intellectual contempt.

Re:WSJ is owned by NewsCorp now, right?

[Anonymous Coward]

Evaluate arguments on the basis of their merits, not on the basis of your biases.

The question is whether something is worth evaluating. Evaluation requires time and effort; one may very reasonably decide not to apply that effort to something coming from a source with a significant history of untrustworthiness, particularly when less-biased sources (by which I don't mean NBC -- biased in the opposite position -- but, for US news, something like Al Jazeera or the BBC) are available.

Of course, sitting here talking about items other than the purportedly factual content at hand is also an expenditure of effort. :)

Dear WSJ

[Anonymous Coward]

We are not your personal army.

Re:Dear WSJ

[Anonymous Coward]

What would your reaction be with the political labels reversed?

Re:Dear WSJ

[Anonymous Coward]

What would your reaction be with the political labels reversed?

The exact opposite....

Hillarhea! accomplishment outside who she married?

[Anonymous Coward]

Please. Someone name me ONE Hillarhea!!! accomplishment outside of her marrying Bill.

Mark it zero

[Anonymous Coward]

Benghazi to you!

Re:Mark it zero

[Tablizer]

GOP 2016 campaign sticker:

  2016: Ben Ghazi / Jerry Mander

Re:Mark it zero

[un1nsp1red]

Jerry's an environmentalist who married a feminist. I don't think he'd run on that side of the aisle.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J...

What could go wrong?

[Anonymous Coward]

Some libtards will try to "be funny" and make a buzzfeed story out of it. WSJ moderators will untag the distraction and continue on with a job the liberal media has abdicated their responsibilities on. MSNBC will offer snark and tell their faithful don't look at the scary emails. Their ratings will continue to slide.

A large majority of democrats dislike Hillary. They don't have anyone else to choose from (Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden? lol) so they are pinching their nose and defending the indefensible.

Re:What could go wrong?

[Anonymous Coward]

Meanwhile, independents just sit back and watch the name calling and shake their heads in disgust. Also, if the current candidate spectrum tells us anything at all, it guarantees we are continued to be FUCKED! Just like the last 30-ish years!

Such a sad low for a once great paper

[Jahoda]

But, we all knew exactly what the Wall Street Journal would become once Rupert got his greasy little hands on it 10 years ago. Just another tabloid rag.

Re:Such a sad low for a once great paper

[Anonymous Coward]

Rupert has little, greasy hands? Momma like!!

Re:Such a sad low for a once great paper

[rmdingler]

Just another tabloid rag.

How many once proud and reputable representatives of the news media have gone this route, simply because it's what drives the ratings that fill the advertising coffers?

By and large, the general public will lay out money for the Enquirer and People an order of magnitude more frequently than for a Time, Newsweek, or US News.

Re:Such a sad low for a once great paper

[msauve]

"Just another tabloid rag."

Gotta compete with the NYT.

Re:Such a sad low for a once great paper

[Tablizer]

By some accounts the regular articles are not that biased; it's the editorial section that resembles the usual Rupert style.

Re:Such a sad low for a once great paper

[un1nsp1red]

I thought that was the Post's job?

Re:Such a sad low for a once great paper

[RabidReindeer]

But, we all knew exactly what the Wall Street Journal would become once Rupert got his greasy little hands on it 10 years ago. Just another tabloid rag.

It did and it didn't. On the one hand, it added a "New York Post" aspect that's not worth the screen space it pollutes.

On the other hand, it spews out a lot of general political nonsense in its editorial pages. But then, that largely predates Rupert's takeouver. And besides, if it wasn't for editorial pages, where would the wackos of the world get a chance to speak? Outside of talk radio, anyway.

On the gripping hand, the WSJ does seem to be reasonably sane when it comes to purely financial matters. David Wechsel's appearances on NPR always seemed to me to be relatively free of the sort of wishful thinking that ideological thinking colors interviews and reports with.

You can't **PROVE** she's lying!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

When THAT'S the BEST thing you can say about Hillary's record, that's quite telling.

(And the obvious rejoinder is: YET!!!)

Same thing Washington Post did with Palin's

[Salo2112]

http://www.politico.com/blogs/...

Re:Same thing Washington Post did with Palin's

[Anonymous Coward]

...except that this project was halted due to blowback.

"WSJ stunt to maximize anti-Clinton engagement"

[guanxi]

Remember that the Wall Street Journal is owned by the same people who own Fox News and several tabloids that are even worse, the News Corp (i.e., Rupert Murdoch); you can even see WSJ reporters on Fox.

It's well established that their owners exercise few journalistic ethics and little regard for the truth, and they publish pro-GOP propaganda, along with incitements to prejudice, anger and hate. Why does anyone trust them?

This stunt should not be a surprise.

Re:"WSJ stunt to maximize anti-Clinton engagement"

[rubycodez]

Not relevant, the Clintons are thieves, scammers and liars anyway. Their "charity" spent more on office supplies than actually giving aid, look it up.

Re:"WSJ stunt to maximize anti-Clinton engagement"

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's what Rupert was up to in 2013...

http://i.imgur.com/MyU1MDV.jpg

He has 65% of paper distribution in Australia.

Re:"WSJ stunt to maximize anti-Clinton engagement"

[Anonymous Coward]

https://yourlogicalfallacyis.c...

Please explain how "reviewing Hillary Clinton's emails from her time in office" automatically constitutes "publishing pro-GOP progaganda"? If you think that the mere act of inspecting and republishing public records is pro-GOP propaganda, then I submit you have a terribly low opinion of Mrs. Clinton, and expect that she engaged in a lot of malfeasance and abuse during her time in office.

It's funny that you're trying to discredit this *before a single word has been uttered by anybody* about the content of the emails.

Re:"WSJ stunt to maximize anti-Clinton engagement"

[dunkindave]

I say not relevant for a different reason. The emails that have been released are those that Clinton decided should not be deleted, so unless she made a mistake, there shouldn't be anything incriminating left to find. And to make sure, after extracting and turning over all the safe emails, sorry I meant official emails, she wiped the disks. Maybe there was nothing there, but her actions sure look like those of a guilty person, so either she is stupid or she is guilty. I don't want either in the White House (again).

Re:"WSJ stunt to maximize anti-Clinton engagement"

[Anonymous Coward]

Kinda like Rick Scott and his HCA scandal You know the one where Scott's company had to pay $600 million as a result of Medicare fraud. Of course because Scott is a Republican that makes it OK he's not a thief

Re:"WSJ stunt to maximize anti-Clinton engagement"

[ATMAvatar]

Please explain how "reviewing Hillary Clinton's emails from her time in office" automatically constitutes "publishing pro-GOP progaganda"?

It's the "on Benghazi" part you omitted. You know, the tragedy where four people were killed, and Fox elevated it to 24/7 coverage, national crisis levels for multiple years trying to uncover a cover-up conspiracy that didn't exist.

Re:"WSJ stunt to maximize anti-Clinton engagement"

[Anonymous Coward]

I did look it up...

http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2015/apr/29/rush-limbaugh/rush-limbaugh-says-clinton-foundation-spends-just-/

Re:"WSJ stunt to maximize anti-Clinton engagement"

[Anonymous Coward]

Quite honestly she looks brilliant if she actually did bad things, and was smart enough to cover her tracks unprecedented in comparison to any other politician I can think of.

If she hadn't covered her tracks, you'd be mocking her for her stupidity/ignorance; correct?

And if she wasn't actually guilty, you'd call her ... foolish, maybe?

Give credit where credit is due. She might be far more untrustworthy than any other current politician due to her knowledge/anticipation/shrewdness, but that doesn't diminish how adept her actions were.

Re:"WSJ stunt to maximize anti-Clinton engagement"

[Anonymous Coward]

So... you're rendered incapable of reading and assessing the content of Clinton's e-mails because the link to them is owned by the vast, right-wing conspiracy?

Re:"WSJ stunt to maximize anti-Clinton engagement"

[Anonymous Coward]

You talk as if the other main stream news organizations have any merit or balance.

Hint: They don't.

If it's on TV, it's most likely contaminated with bullshit.

Re:"WSJ stunt to maximize anti-Clinton engagement"

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to mention the GOP/TP using their deaths to try to score political points, which is downright fucking vile.

Re:"WSJ stunt to maximize anti-Clinton engagement"

[Anonymous Coward]

You know....that's exactly how most people describe the liberal controlled media that shills for the Democrats. Except, those people are honest unlike you. (0/10) I notice each year how Democrats act more like political Nazis. Your political cult does nothing but race bait and play the "rich" card while you "champagne liberals" spend money we don't have to help buy the next election. Can't win with the race card...just import millions of illegal aliens and push the transgender unicorn agenda to the front lines. Both parties are opposite sides of the same coin. Our freedoms die. Our government lies. Corruption rules the day. Skin color, religion, and gender are the only thing you people look at any more. People like you exploit others. You are a parasite. And I stopped caring about liberty, justice and freedom a long time ago thanks to the cancer you people have become. Heh. Who cares anymore. Let the world burn.

Re:"WSJ stunt to maximize anti-Clinton engagement"

[Anonymous Coward]

I work in healthcare IT.
Do you know what we are told to do with EVERY computer, EVERY hard disk ?
Wipe them.
Don't you do this ? Haven't you just read about the 500 Million cell phones that are not getting wiped ENOUGH ?

Oh, I don't mean "just a format", I mean "10 passes with random data written to desktops" and "put the server drives in a special oven".

So unless you want your data or your companies data or your whatever data .. you should wipe and remove all disks. She did.

Standard Operating Procedure for all businesses.

Re:"WSJ stunt to maximize anti-Clinton engagement"

[Anonymous Coward]

Now, now. No need for false dichotomies. Politicians can be both stupid _and_ guilty.

Re:"WSJ stunt to maximize anti-Clinton engagement"

[Bing Tsher E]

By the 'tragedy where four people were killed' do you mean the instance where Ambassador Stevens, an openly gay man, was captured by Islamic Terrorists, then tortured and sodomized before being killed?

There couldn't possibly have been anything premeditated there. It's common practice when a gay man is tortured, sodomized, and murdered, to just say four people were tragically killed. And then the media typically blames it on a film that riled up the murderous torturers. Happens all the time. Nothing to see here. Let's all move along now. We've got people to get elected in a week or so.

Re:"WSJ stunt to maximize anti-Clinton engagement"

[MrL0G1C]

You have a first past the post system which means like us in the UK you're kind of screwed, you can vote for Clinton or you can vote GOP which from past experience means someone who is likely a climate denier and a war-monger. Or you can vote 3rd party but then your vote doesn't count and if you're in a state that always stays with the same party then again, your vote doesn't count.

Re:"WSJ stunt to maximize anti-Clinton engagement"

[ultranova]

Why does anyone trust them?

No reason, but also no need - they're simply publishing documents.

This stunt should not be a surprise.

This "stunt" is what the press is supposed to be doing. Judge actions by themselves, not by whether you happen to like whoever's doing them.

Re:"WSJ stunt to maximize anti-Clinton engagement"

[Anonymous Coward]

So you're saying that the coverup didn't exist - so what's the concern that a bunch of idiots are going to waste their time reading through her emails to try and find a cover-up that *doesn't exist*? Seriously - dumping the raw data to the public and saying "here's the data - please demonstrate where I've lied or not told the whole truth or covered up issues," is a fantastic tactic for shutting critics up.

Of course, if the cover-up did exist, and this dump of emails provides the evidence that it does, no doubt you remain ready to shout "NON CREDIBLE SOURCE" at the top of your lungs, even though they're working with the *actual raw dump of emails* directly, right?

I don't think there was a cover-up, but I'm perfectly happy to let other people waste their time reading through a bunch of emails that will finally end up proving them wrong and getting them to shut the fuck up.

Re:"WSJ stunt to maximize anti-Clinton engagement"

[Anonymous Coward]

... and was smart enough to cover her tracks unprecedented in comparison to any other politician I can think of.

Because the actual smart ones didn't leave as many smoking guns behind as she did so it is not a fair comparison.

Give credit where credit is due. She might be far more untrustworthy than any other current politician due to her knowledge/anticipation/shrewdness, but that doesn't diminish how adept her actions were.

So are you saying you like her because she lies about what she did, but does it in a smart way (though perhaps not smart enough)?

Re:"WSJ stunt to maximize anti-Clinton engagement"

[Anonymous Coward]

Not a fair comparison by a long shot since she knew they would still be needed but she wanted to make sure they couldn't be examined. If you were being sued and asked to produce evidence that they knew was on your computer's disk, and you said here is a CD with the info that I have decided is relevant, and oh by the way, I erased the disk so you can't check to make sure I gave you everything, you would go to jail! That is a pretty close analogy to what has happened here.

Re:"WSJ stunt to maximize anti-Clinton engagement"

[Tablizer]

The emails that have been released are those that Clinton decided should not be deleted, so unless she made a mistake, there shouldn't be anything incriminating...

That would be nearly impossible to pull off because one is sending email to at least one other person, and unless you are certain the receiver kept nothing nowhere, you are at risk of being exposed.

Anyhow, it appears that much was usually done by phone instead of email. I suspect she wouldn't put anything urgent or controversial in email.

Re:"WSJ stunt to maximize anti-Clinton engagement"

[dunkindave]

The emails that have been released are those that Clinton decided should not be deleted, so unless she made a mistake, there shouldn't be anything incriminating...

That would be nearly impossible to pull off because one is sending email to at least one other person, and unless you are certain the receiver kept nothing nowhere, you are at risk of being exposed.

In any criminal endeavor or breaking of the rules, there is always a risk of bing exposed which is part of the playing field, so the existence of such risk doesn't mean much. That is why people take steps to avoid being exposed, like destroying evidence such as hard disks.

If you were communicating with someone else for the purpose of coordinating the concealment of your involvement in a fiasco, or at least extent of it, then both parties have a great interest in making sure the communications never come to light. Clinton made sure to use a mail server she owned and controlled, so there was little risk of exposure on her end. Who she may have communicated with is now open to speculation, because of her decision to control the selection of which emails were released and then erase the disks so there was no possibility of a second review. Those are the actions of someone acting guilty, not a person with nothing to hide, and that is why this will haunt her. Elections are an exercise in public perception, and while finding incriminating emails would be very bad, what she has done appears to many to be almost as bad.

I agree that she would have an incentive to disclose any communication she had with someone she believed could have their emails discovered, but then she would have known that at the time such a cover-up may have occurred and emails sent so she would only have sent such emails to destinations she believed safe.

Anyhow, it appears that much was usually done by phone instead of email. I suspect she wouldn't put anything urgent or controversial in email.

You would think that, but then Nixon knew he was being recorded yet participated in conversations in the Oval Office to conduct the Watergate cover-up. Sometimes people don't think. They get used to communicating in a certain way and don't think about the consequences. Unfortunately because she erased the disks we will probably never know.

It's fun!

[Anonymous Coward]

I have already randomly tagged some :)

Re:Hillarhea! accomplishment outside who she marri

[rubycodez]

She is a pathological liar of epic ability

Wrong tag

[Prune]

I'm tagging this story "election2016."

How about "USAelection2016"? While Slashdot has always been somewhat US-centric (or, really, North America-centric), the level of unapologetic chauvinism here has gotten worse over the years. This site has a significant non-US user base and readership, and a lot of articles posted regarding international situations (UK government spying, EU IP laws, etc.). US posters and editors ought to maintain at least an iota of respect for the rest of the world, or risk alienating a good chunk of Slashdot's audience.

Re:Wrong tag

[Anonymous Coward]

Do any other elections matter, really? The US presidential election is wagered on by the entire world, while no one cares about Canada or the EU, and there's no real elections anywhere else due to ideological differences or base corruption.

Re:Wrong tag

[Anonymous Coward]

Do any other elections matter, really?

Yes. (Thanks for the wonderful job of proving the GP's point)

Re:Hillarhea! accomplishment outside who she marri

[Anonymous Coward]

Getting Elected to the U.S. Senate is 1 more accomplishment than you'll ever have.

Not news, not for nerds, doesn't matter

[mbstone]

Guess what Slashdot, people read other websites. I don't read /. for political news. And except for AM radio conservatives, nobody gives a shit about Benghazi.

Re:Not news, not for nerds, doesn't matter

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you not care because the press doesn't care? Do you not care because you were told there is nothing there? Do you not care because you read up on the timeline of events and decided that the administration and secretary of state acted responsibly? Or do you not care because you are okay with the president and secretary of the state blaming a video for the violence? Are you also okay with pulling the video off of youtube? Are you okay with the overall incompetence this president has exhibited with regards to foreign policy?

Re:Not news, not for nerds, doesn't matter

[ScentCone]

nobody gives a shit about Benghazi

Except for people who care that Obama and his administration blatantly lied about what happened in the period right before an election. And we see that Hillary Clinton knew very well that what was being said by both State and White House spokesdroids (and by her, and the president himself) was pure fabricated BS meant to placate prospective voters. They deliberately lied about what happened so that those events wouldn't contradict the narrative that Obama was trying to sell in his re-election bid. The people who actually know this, and who claim they don't care, are desperately hoping that Clinton's complicity in spreading that lie won't remain on people's minds during this upcoming election.

Re:Not news, not for nerds, doesn't matter

[mbstone]

Let me correct myself. I care that four U.S. nationals died, leaving behind grieving loved ones.

But Mr. Obama didn't kill them. Mrs. Clinton didn't kill them.Terrorists did.

Mr. Obama isn't running for president. Whatever was or wasn't done in Benghazi is insignificant compared to the war crimes of Bush, Cheney et al.

Who's more likely to start another needless war if elected president? Mrs. Clinton, or Jeb Bush?

Re:Not news, not for nerds, doesn't matter

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you not care because the press doesn't care? Do you not care because you were told there is nothing there? Do you not care because you read up on the timeline of events and decided that the administration and secretary of state acted responsibly? Or do you not care because you are okay with the president and secretary of the state blaming a video for the violence? Are you also okay with pulling the video off of youtube? Are you okay with the overall incompetence this president has exhibited with regards to foreign policy?

We do not care because it makes no more difference now than what Reagan effed up in Lebanon umpty-years ago.

What happened happened. People due, but relatively few people compared to similar incidents in other times and places and there was no indication that there was something more insidious about the Bengazi affair than a score of similar attacks made around the world since then. Which might themselves have been mitigated if certain people weren't so busy gnawing on old bones that they couldn't be bothered to pay attention to what's happening now.

Re:Not news, not for nerds, doesn't matter

[walterbyrd]

> nobody gives a shit about Benghazi.

What about the cover-up?

If nobody cares about that, when shouldn't we care even less about Watergate? At least nobody was killed in the Watergate scandal.

Re:Not news, not for nerds, doesn't matter

[walterbyrd]

> But Mr. Obama didn't kill them. Mrs. Clinton didn't kill them.Terrorists did.

So GWB has not responsibility for Iraq? After all, GWB didn't directly kill anybody.

Re:Not news, not for nerds, doesn't matter

[Anonymous Coward]

Which lies?

Please proceed. Please proceed, ScentCone.

Re:Not news, not for nerds, doesn't matter

[ganjadude]

by your own logic you should not be bringing bush up. i mean he didnt kill anyone directly either so his hands are clean! (by YOUR own logic)

Re:Not news, not for nerds, doesn't matter

[ganjadude]

the biggest one being that the attacks were due to a movie (that no one saw)

the next was about claiming to have no idea what was going on at the time (some emails that have come to light show she DID in fact know, granted it was a second email address {that she denied having 2 emails prior to locating so make that 3 lies)

Should I go on?

Re:Not news, not for nerds, doesn't matter

[ScentCone]

Which lies?

Here's an idea: how about you tell us which things the administration said about the US deaths in Libya were actually true. Because that will take less time.

Let's just keep it simple: the entire story about a spontaneous demonstration and a mob angry about some video on YouTube was completely fabricated. They knew it wasn't true, and that's been obvious since the day it happened. Today's email dump makes it even more clear. Purposeful, deliberate lying about the death of an ambassador and other Americans, all in the name of tamping down some prospectively unpleasant buzz that wouldn't resonate with the "Al Qeda is on the run!" narrative. Of course you, just like everyone else, already know this. Have fun being a part of theatrics, but just remember that pretending it's not so doesn't make you come across as any more credible. It's kind of embarrassing, actually.

Re:Not news, not for nerds, doesn't matter

[Anonymous Coward]

so you are saying that republicans were lying in their report about Benghazi?

Re:Not news, not for nerds, doesn't matter

[Anonymous Coward]

Needless war?

You should ask those wounded in killed in the Boston Marathon Bombings what they think about that "needless war."

After 9/11, there were no additional terrorists attacks on US soil.

Under Obama, we've got the Marathon bombing and Benghazi.

So, you may call them "war crimes," I call them "keeping America safe." Which he DID.

Re:Not news, not for nerds, doesn't matter

[Anonymous Coward]

If what you say is true what is the need to read these newly released emails? The reason is that Republicans need to keep there 'fabricated' story alive.

Re:Not news, not for nerds, doesn't matter

[Anonymous Coward]

"Terrorists" that Hillary's people hired? Oh, wait. That's just a theory about a conspiracy that happens to align with many facts.

In the Morning.

More likely to start a "needless" war? Depends on your definition of "needless". I'd say Jeb would more likely actually call something a "war", whereas Hillary would more likely call it "peace-keeping" or at least be entertaining enough to come up with a new buzz-phrase. Hillary would probably not only create more conflict, but it'd probably be more profitable for the US Elite.

Re:Not news, not for nerds, doesn't matter

[pipingguy]

So I take it you'll be voting Republican?

Re:Not news, not for nerds, doesn't matter

[Areyoukiddingme]

The people who actually know this, and who claim they don't care, are desperately hoping that Clinton's complicity in spreading that lie won't remain on people's minds during this upcoming election.

What makes you think anybody wants to see Mrs. President Hillary? (Again?) The last time she tried, an unknown senator from Chicago got the nomination, and I'm willing to bet only pat of the reason was "unknown half-black senator." The other part was "not Hillary."

Re:Not news, not for nerds, doesn't matter

[Areyoukiddingme]

And except for AM radio conservatives, nobody gives a shit about Benghazi.

Are you kidding? One of the victims of the Benghazi attack was a major diplomatic power in EVE Online. The game was permanently altered by his death.

He served on the Council of Stellar Management, a position you get by player votes, and there are only 9 members. You have to be very visible and quite well respected to get a seat. You get a free trip to Iceland out of the deal, plus the ability to propose significant changes to the game with the assurance that CCP will seriously consider the proposal. It was a major loss for his corporation in particular and EVE Online in general.

He was also a Something Awful moderator, for what that's worth...

Re:Not news, not for nerds, doesn't matter

[Tablizer]

Except for people who care that Obama and his administration blatantly lied about what
happened

Bullshit. There is no clear evidence for such. I've debated you before about it on slashdot, and you lost the debate by my reckoning. Seems you want to lose again.

Re:Not news, not for nerds, doesn't matter

[iluvcapra]

Let's just keep it simple: the entire story about a spontaneous demonstration and a mob angry about some video on YouTube was completely fabricated. They knew it wasn't true, and that's been obvious since the day it happened. Today's email dump makes it even more clear.

If you've found an email that substantiates any of this it would be news to everybody.

Purposeful, deliberate lying about the death of an ambassador and other Americans, all in the name of tamping down some prospectively unpleasant buzz that wouldn't resonate with the "Al Qeda is on the run!" narrative.

Even if this were true, even if you could establish intentional, premeditated lying, it's not illegal, nor am I sure it's in violation of any statute or guideline, unethical, or even just plain morally wrong. It was clearly established that everyone's talking points were based on reported intelligence at the time. That was over a year ago.

We've gone from "Hillary ordered SPECOPS to stand down!" to "We have an email (which I won't cite) where they weren't talking about Innocence of Muslims..." It's all just so dopey, even the Republicans in congress probably don't wanna keep investigating but they can't let it go because of all the dweebs at home passing around creepy conspiracy emails about Vince Foster. Boehner probably gave the job to Trey Goudy specifically to get him out of his hair and hopefully make some kind of career-ending overreach.

Re:Not news, not for nerds, doesn't matter

[Tablizer]

the entire story about a spontaneous demonstration and a mob angry about some video on YouTube was completely fabricated. They knew it wasn't true

First, we still don't know the full reason why the attack happened. And the main perp admitted he was indeed upset by the video. Wether it was the main reason or not, the perp wouldn't discuss further.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06...

And as far as the Susan Rice announcement, it was suggested by a team member that evidence of possible terrorism not be immediately made public because it may give clues to the terrorists that their involvement was known about. Whether that reason was tainted by political bias or not is hard to say, we can't x-ray their neurons. It's speculative either way.

I've explained this to you before on slashdot, but you ignored it for unknown reasons.

Re:Not news, not for nerds, doesn't matter

[Anonymous Coward]

It's only news if a Republican did it.

We just expect the Democrats to be corrupt.

Re:Not news, not for nerds, doesn't matter

[CrimsonAvenger]

a second email address {that she denied having 2 emails prior to locating so make that 3 lies)

A second email address? Seems to me the email I address I saw mentioned was hrod17@clintonemail.com.

So, who picks hrod17 as their SECOND email address on a private domain? I know that when I was doing the same thing, I just stuck a "2" on the end of my original email address....

Re:Not news, not for nerds, doesn't matter

[Anonymous Coward]

We could keep you nearly 100% safe if we stripped away all your freedoms and kept you in a small cement room 24hrs per day. Sound like a good deal?

Re:Not news, not for nerds, doesn't matter

[Xyrus]

nobody gives a shit about Benghazi

Except for people who care that Obama and his administration blatantly lied about what happened in the period right before an election. And we see that Hillary Clinton knew very well that what was being said by both State and White House spokesdroids (and by her, and the president himself) was pure fabricated BS meant to placate prospective voters. They deliberately lied about what happened so that those events wouldn't contradict the narrative that Obama was trying to sell in his re-election bid. The people who actually know this, and who claim they don't care, are desperately hoping that Clinton's complicity in spreading that lie won't remain on people's minds during this upcoming election.

Except for people who care that Bush and his administration blatantly lied about what happened in the period right before an election. And we see that Colin Powell knew very well that what was being said by both State and White House spokesdroids (and by him, and the president himself) was pure fabricated BS meant to placate prospective voters. They deliberately lied about what happened so that those events wouldn't contradict the narrative that Bush was trying to sell in his re-election bid. The people who actually know this, and who claim they don't care, are desperately hoping that Powell's complicity in spreading that lie won't remain on people's minds during this upcoming election.

The hypocrisy is real.

At least if there was some sort of conspiracy involved, this one kept the body count in single digits and didn't destabilize an entire region of the globe. But whatever helps you sleep at night.

Re:Not news, not for nerds, doesn't matter

[Anonymous Coward]

> nobody gives a shit about Benghazi.

What about the cover-up?

If nobody cares about that, when shouldn't we care even less about Watergate? At least nobody was killed in the Watergate scandal.

I've heard it said that it's often not the "scandal" that gets people into trouble, but the (attempted) cover-up.

Re:Not news, not for nerds, doesn't matter

[Bing Tsher E]

Probably those damned spammers got ahold of her addy the first sixteen times, but things finally calmed down.

That funny smell is something else. Look! It's probably coming from that pony over there!

Re:Not news, not for nerds, doesn't matter

[Bing Tsher E]

The narrative for Hillary Clinton is "she hasn't been convicted of anything so she's electable."

It's so sad that there is a portion of the American public that will fall for that.

There are so many thousands of other people better suited to be president.

Did I type 'thousands' up there?? OMG.

Re:Not news, not for nerds, doesn't matter

[Microlith]

What about the cover-up?

What coverup? Oh, the one that has to be there so the GOP can blame Obama for something. Fuck, people talk about "BDS" but "ODS" is damn near a clinical diagnosis in the reactionary population here.

Re:Not news, not for nerds, doesn't matter

[ganjadude]

good point, i meant more along the lines of 2nd that we know of

Re:Not news, not for nerds, doesn't matter

[Anonymous Coward]

Uhm, a US Embassy is not the same thing as a full-scale military deployment.

And the embassy was probably there long before Hillary Clinton ever came on the scene...

Re:Not news, not for nerds, doesn't matter

[Anonymous Coward]

Who gave this clown a "5"? Check first.

Re:Not news, not for nerds, doesn't matter

[ScentCone]

so you are saying that republicans were lying in their report about Benghazi?

No, I'm saying that the Obama administration, with the direct involvement of Hillary Clinton, was lying - deliberately, repeatedly, for weeks - about what happened. In order to influence the imminent election.

Re:Not news, not for nerds, doesn't matter

[ScentCone]

Who gave this clown a "5"?

People tired of other people apologizing on behalf of the Obama administration, and those already tired of Hillary weasel-wording on the subject.

Re:Not news, not for nerds, doesn't matter

[mOzone]

he/she blamed youtube video for attack .. hideing the fact they knew cause and refused help and aid to people in danger >knew of danger weeks in advance

Then watched them die

Re:Hillarhea! accomplishment outside who she marri

[ShanghaiBill]

Please. Someone name me ONE Hillarhea!!! accomplishment outside of her marrying Bill.

1. She was a senator
2. She was secretary of state
3. She was a successful attorney
4. She was an extremely successful commodities trader

Re:Hillarhea! accomplishment outside who she marri

[Anonymous Coward]

Senator.
Secretary of State.
In her own right, is one of the most influential women alive by virtue of her success and power.
married Bill Clinton, one of the most influential men alive.
Had a kid.
Successful lawyer.

What's on your resume, champ?

I'm not even all that big a fan of Mrs. Clinton, but trying to cut her down by giving her derpy nicknames and claiming she's never accomplished anything is just fucking weaksauce.

Why not?

[Maltheus]

After you wade past the trolls, Disqus is already the best fact checker for any story out there. Obviously, you have to follow up with a search to confirm what you read in the comments, but that's where I usually find the most important (unreported) portion of most stories.

Same is true of slashdot. Which is why most of us don't even RTFA.

Re:Hillarhea! accomplishment outside who she marri

[schwit1]

I'm assuming you are being sarcastic.

1. 1. Getting elected senator from a state that is overwhelming democrat is an accomplish, really? What did she accomplish AS the carpet bag senator?
2. 2. Her being Sec of State was payback for supporting Obama's election.What did she accomplish AS Secretary of state besides getting an ambassador killed?
3. 3. Successful attorney of child rapists
4. 4. On HRC's commodities trading ... It is pretty obvious that Hillary had something better than luck. She had well-placed friends who wanted her to have $100,000. The likelihood of such a return on such an investment was close to lottery odds, twenty-four chances in a million.44 This was in a decade in which no speculator made more than $400 profit a day with one contract of cattle futures. Yet Hillary managed to make $5,300 a day. Such a return would have required her holding thirteen contracts, involving 232 tons of beef with a value of $280,000.

Re:Hillarhea! accomplishment outside who she marri

[rmdingler]

Or. Bill and Hilary pulled over driving in rural Arkansas to refuel. Hillary bounded out of the car to hug the man who came out to pump her gas.

"What the heck?" asked Bill.

"Used to date him years ago," replied the Missus.

"Hmm... " he chuckled, "so if you married him, you be the wife of the owner of a service station."

"No," she replied quickly, "if I married him, he'd be the President of the United States."

Re:Hillarhea! accomplishment outside who she marri

[ganjadude]

sarcasm I hope???

Would be moot if the reports are released

[Anonymous Coward]

This story is the definition of a fishing expedition. The reports that Hillary Clinton was not in the wrong will not be released until after the election. This stunt is to look for some vague coincidences from which to spin a fairy tale.

Crowd-sourced investigation?

[onemorechip]

Oh, I'm sure *that* will be impartial. (rolls eyes}

Re:Crowd-sourced investigation?

[jandrese]

I wonder how many articles are going to be tagged "penis"?

Re:Crowd-sourced investigation?

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder how many there would have been without your suggestion.

Not true

[Etherwalk]

And except for AM radio conservatives, nobody gives a shit about Benghazi.

You would think so, but evidently not. If nobody cared, the State Department wouldn't time the release for take-out-the-trash Friday (the day when you get the least news cycle result). Instead, the timing points to an obviously politically motivated timing utterly inappropriate to a theoretically neutral unit of government.

I think you are insensitive clod

[Anonymous Coward]

You have never thought that U.S. Senators are reading and commenting on Slashdot? I am the U.S. Senator and I have been elected and reelected.

For the record, /. is more interesting and more informative than the fantasy games that my colleagues Congress and Senate are spending their time on.

A Step To Bring Justice To The President USA

[Anonymous Coward]

The Patriot Act needs to be continued.

Why?

The NSA has, embarrassingly, gathered all electronic communications of every member of Congress and staff, every Supreme Court Justice and staff, and the President and White House Staff.

This trove constitutes the greatest threat to the Federal Government of the USA. It can be used, by FOIA, and for Blackmail by the peoples of the USA against their elected and unelected Federal Employee perpetrators for Felony Crimes against the peoples of the USA and High Crimes and Treasons against the peoples of the world.

Want to see George W. Bush and Barak Hussein Obama (and three thousand bureaucrats) in shackles before the Court of the Hague ?

Renew the Patriot Act and send Bush and Obama to Hell !

Do I get to say "Both parties are corrupt"

[Anonymous Coward]

And "we need a credible third party that will actually serve the people" so I can modded up to +5?

Re:Hillarhea! accomplishment outside who she marri

[ganjadude]

she managed to get elected senator of my state of NY, eventhough she was horribly unqualified

She managed to become sec of state... also horribly unqualified

thats an accomplishment!

Maybe someday we'll know why we invaded iraq

[Required Snark]

Now that the Republicans are so worried about bad decision making in foreign policy, perhaps they will turn their attention to the monumental failures before and after 9/11. You know, like the warning given to George W Bush about the possibility of an Al Queda attack on the US. The one that he and his entire administration completely ignored.

And then there was whole problem of invading the wrong country for the wrong reason. Oops. I wonder how that happened. We still don't know.

None of the hijackers were from Iran. Fifteen were from Saudi Arabia, two from the Emirates and one each from Egypt and Lebanon. Not an Iraqi in sight. The were all Sunni member of Al Queda, and citizens of (at the time) US allies in the Arab world.

And then there was the problem with no weapons of mass destruction. Oops again. There were no biological weapons. There was no uranium separation/enrichment program. "Iraq's WMD capability ... was essentially destroyed in 1991" ... No evidence was found for continued active production of WMD subsequent to the imposition of sanctions in 1991 The chemical weapons that Iraq had in the 1980's that were used against Iran were built using technology imported from the West.

So why was all the intelligence about Iraq wrong? That is an unanswered question. The Republican controlled Congress never stepped up to the plate to ask any hard questions. Gosh, I wonder why?

Of course, there is a clue: PNAC, or the Project for the New American Century. PNAC released a Statement of Principles in 1997 calling for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. It was signed by Dick Chaney, Donald Rumsfeld, Scooter Libby, Elliot Abrams, Eliot A. Cohen, Aaron Friedberg, Peter Rodman, Henry Rowen, and Paul Wolfowitz, who all ended up working for the Bush administration. One would almost think that they used 9/11 as an excuse and made up a bunch of crap to make it happen.

Back to Benghazi. It was a big mistake and four people died. In Iraq he US military alone suffered 4,425 total deaths (including both killed in action and non-hostile) and 32,223 wounded in action. The civilian death and injured toll is staggering, and still going up.

So fuck the WSJ, and fuck the Republican Party. Collectively they are mass murderers. When they scream about Benghazi it's like child molesters complaining about someone playing their radio too loud. The fact that they have so much power shows that voters in the US have less intelligence then a pack of inbreed poodles.

Re:Maybe someday we'll know why we invaded iraq

[phantomfive]

So why was all the intelligence about Iraq wrong? That is an unanswered question. The Republican controlled Congress never stepped up to the plate to ask any hard questions. Gosh, I wonder why? Of course, there is a clue: PNAC, or the Project for the New American Century [wikipedia.org]. PNAC released a Statement of Principles [wikipedia.org] in 1997 calling for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein [wikipedia.org]. It was signed by Dick Chaney, Donald Rumsfeld, Scooter Libby, Elliot Abrams, Eliot A. Cohen, Aaron Friedberg, Peter Rodman, Henry Rowen, and Paul Wolfowitz, who all ended up working for the Bush administration. One would almost think that they used 9/11 as an excuse and made up a bunch of crap to make it happen.

Sounds like you have the answer to your question.

Re:Maybe someday we'll know why we invaded iraq

[Anonymous Coward]

I salute you sir. Couldn't have said it better myself.

Re:Maybe someday we'll know why we invaded iraq

[kenwd0elq]

"So why was all the intelligence about Iraq wrong? That is an unanswered question. The Republican controlled Congress never stepped up to the plate to ask any hard questions. Gosh, I wonder why? "

WTF are you talking about? EVERY nation's intelligence service agreed that Saddam was working to obtain nuclear weapons, and everybody ALREADY KNEW that he had chemical weapons - because he had already USED them, in Iran and on his own people.

Re:Maybe someday we'll know why we invaded iraq

[Anonymous Coward]

Including nations with considerable investment with Saddam's circumvention around economic sanctions, including France and Russia. They had billions in the balance and none of them stepped up to say US analysis was wrong.

Re:Maybe someday we'll know why we invaded iraq

[Anonymous Coward]

citation needed, specifically about the nuclear weapons part because that's total bullshit.

Re:Maybe someday we'll know why we invaded iraq

[Required Snark]

I quoted Wikipedia articles to verify my statements. Hussein used chemical weapons against Iran when they were fightiing a proxy war for the US and it's allies. I quoted that Wikipedia article too. I showed evidence that the only chemical weapons in Iraq were left over from the Iran-Iraq war.

The justification for going to war was based on all the bad intelligence pushed by the Bush administration. For example Colin Powell said that his incorrect statement to the United Nations were "a 'blot' on his record."

The Blair government in England published the September Dossier claiming that Iraq was seeking yellowcake uranium and that it could used weapons of mass destruction in 45 minutes, It was found to be completely wrong: "Without exception, all of the allegations included within the September Dossier have been since proven to be false". An inquiry after the war was told by Major General Michael Laurie, one of those involved in producing the dossier: "the purpose of the dossier was precisely to make a case for war, rather than setting out the available intelligence, and that to make the best out of sparse and inconclusive intelligence the wording was developed with care."

The British, like the Bush administration, deliberately lied. They did not, in fact, have credible or actionable intelligence.

I pointed out not only that they were wrong about everything, but that they had previously stated intentions to topple Saddam Hussein. If it was a crime investigation, this would supply clear motive.

You have quoted nothing. Your reply is an opinion with no external references. I made a point to quote sources like Wikipedia that have some claim to objectivity.

Bush, Cheney, all the people who signed the PNAC statement, are far right ideologues who instigated an unnecessary war of aggression. They used propaganda and lies to achieve their ends. The result is an unmitigated disaster that has destabilized the Middle East. You are an accessory after the fact and you share their guilt. You are known by the company you keep.

Re:Maybe someday we'll know why we invaded iraq

[bradley13]

I agree with your comments about the Iraq war (see my other comment below), but I disagree with brushing off Benghazi. Both major parties in the US are corrupt. The fact that one party has done evil is no justification for excusing evil by the other party. Benghazi, in terms of the number of deaths, was small compared to the various wars. Note, however, that Obama's administration carried on with those wars, with Guantanamo, and with lots of other lovely things.

The reason Benghazi is currently important is that it appears to be characteristic behavior for a major presidential candidate: Hillary Clinton is a narcissist, and likely a sociopath. What she wants is more important than a few corpses (Benghazi), or than federal statutes and regulations (email server). Anyone who wasn't a member of the innermost circle would have gone down in flames for actions like these. She has that support, or perhaps she knows where other people's indiscretions lie, so she is untouchable.

Someone of her apparent character (or lack thereof) as president of the world's largest military power? Shudder...

Re:Maybe someday we'll know why we invaded iraq

[Anonymous Coward]

What he wrote is a collection of stupid that ignores a large number of facts. A pity you couldn't do better, it wouldn't be hard.

Re:Maybe someday we'll know why we invaded iraq

[cold fjord]

Did he find the answer? Even if you look past the misleading statements, distortions, and glaring ommissions in the original post, the section you quote above is a huge distortion in itself based on the omission it contains. Why do you think he omits any mention of the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 passed Congress and signed by President Clinton? Because it didn't have the same list of names in it? Because the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 was passed with the support of Democrats and signed into law by a President who is a Democrat?

President William J Clinton - Statement on Signing the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998, October 31, 1998

Re:Maybe someday we'll know why we invaded iraq

[phantomfive]

Yeah, getting rid of Saddam was a goal for a long time. Bush merely implemented it (poorly).

Here's a tag for ya...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Smells Like Bullshit".

The NYT Did It To Palin

[kenwd0elq]

And this is so much different in what the NYT did when they did the same thing to Palin's STOLEN emails..... how, exactly?

Re: The NYT Did It To Palin

[jmac_the_man]

In fairness, the son-of-a-Deomcrat-politician 4chan hacker didn't publically release the emails. The NYT got the emails for tge crowdsourced investigatio. through a FOIA request and a court order.

Re: The NYT Did It To Palin

[jmac_the_man]

Sorry, my mobile keyboard ate that. The NYT got the emails for the crowdsourced investigation through a FOIA request and a court order.

Email Headers and Metadata

[RoccamOccam]

I don't know the answer to this, but I suspect I know the answer: does Hilary's printed email dump (which is all that she will provide) include the email headers and associated metadata that comes with an electronic copy of an email?

I rather doubt that she has; but, I ask because she claims that she has fulfilled her obligation by providing printed versions of the emails. So, even if we were willing to concede that incredibly dubious claim, has she really complied with the law by not providing the entire electronic record?

Obviously, this part of the email can be quite important (just ask the NSA), so if she isn't providing that, what is her justification for not doing so?

If the law doesn't specifically make an exemption for that, then it can't be omitted. When she received an email, the header is a part of the email that she received. Therefore, it is part of the official record.

It must be in there SOMEWHERE!

[damn_registrars]

Obviously, the email that the Benghazi conspiracy nuts are looking for - the one where Obama tells Hillary to launch their secret Islamist army against the Americans so he can bring about his New World Order - is in there somewhere.

Re:It must be in there SOMEWHERE!

[ULTROS]

She deleted the good stuff

Re: "WSJ stunt to maximize anti-Clinton engagement

[jmac_the_man]

Well, these are Hillary's emails from that time period. If they show her and her advisors discussing how it had to be a YouTube video, we'll know they were giving us the best information they had at the time. On the other hand, if they're talking in the emails about how it was an al Qaeda terrorist attack at times when they were claiming to the American people that it was a YouTube video, we'll know it was a coverup.

Re:Hillarhea! accomplishment outside who she marri

[iluvcapra]

1. Getting elected senator from a state that is overwhelming democrat is an accomplish, really? What did she accomplish AS the carpet bag senator?

Note that she had to get around the entire Cuomo machine to do this. I don't know, go to a state that's overwhelmingly Republican and get yourself elected senator, just being from the right party isn't worth much.

2. Her being Sec of State was payback for supporting Obama's election.What did she accomplish AS Secretary of state besides getting an ambassador killed?

Note that she had to run neck-and-neck with him basically to the convention in order to get to that point, she won 48% of the Democratic popular vote and dozens of states, including New York, Florida and California. I don't know what you mean by "ambassador killed," Issa spent years on the Benghazi committee and got nowhere, he eventually quit and the Speaker had to establish a new select committee just to keep the faux outrage in the news. Stop reading your grandpa's emails.

3. Successful attorney of child rapists

John Adams: successful attorney of murderous british soldiers. Are you really suggesting that we should hold lawyers in any way accountable for the crimes of their clients? Do some people not deserve lawyers? Or do they only deserve bad ones?

4. On HRC's commodities trading ... It is pretty obvious that Hillary had something better than luck. She had well-placed friends who wanted her to have $100,000. The likelihood of such a return on such an investment was close to lottery odds, twenty-four chances in a million.44 This was in a decade in which no speculator made more than $400 profit a day with one contract of cattle futures. Yet Hillary managed to make $5,300 a day. Such a return would have required her holding thirteen contracts, involving 232 tons of beef with a value of $280,000.

In other words, you got nothing.

Re:Hillarhea! accomplishment outside who she marri

[Anonymous Coward]

Didn't she flunk the bar exam?

Um, no...

[bradley13]

"WTF are you talking about? EVERY nation's intelligence service agreed that Saddam was working to obtain nuclear weapons, and everybody ALREADY KNEW that he had chemical weapons"

Um, no. I live in Switzerland, and based on the European news at the time it was completely clear that Saddam had nothing left. He may have wanted such weapons, but what he had left was a shell-game he was playing with UN inspectors, with empty shells.

When Bush announced the Iraq attack, and I told my family back in the US that he should be impeached for telling such blatant lies, they were shocked. They totally bought into those slick PowerPoint slides from Colin Powell. That was the moment it became clear to me that the US (and their lapdop the UK) had determined that they wanted to attack Iraq, and had run internal propaganda campaigns to support this.

Apparently the deception holds to this day...comes from getting your news only from within your local country, which is pretty typical for both the US and the UK.

Stop The Political Posts

[Anonymous Coward]

PLEASE

Get enough of this bullshit elsewhere.

Hypocrites Arise!

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing like seeing the favorite ox getting gored to bring out the declamations against any attempt at actual transparency.

Better to be told what's in the scraps of original source material by contributors to Big Hill's slush fund than actually get to know the truth.

I'd tag all of them "Boring"

[Anonymous Coward]

Benghazi, seriously? This has been ridden to death. All relevant information is public already. When will they start discussing her actual policies?

And remember:

[Anonymous Coward]

Palin's WERE from her actual personal account (unlike Hillary, Palin did her government work on her government account NOT a private server). As a result, Palin's government e-mails were properly archived, accessible to government archivists and investigators, and accessible by public FOIA filings and any applicable courts if needed. Oh, and Palin's personal account was accessed and dumped into the public arena by a Democrat hacker.

These Hillary e-mails are only about 300 out of the thousands SHE screened and chose to hand-over; She deleted tens of thousands of e-mails that we are now never going to see and we have only her word for it that they were not relevant, AND she wiped her server so nobody would ever be able to recover them even if a court ordered it. Yup, that's "transparency" in the Obama/Clinton era...

Hey, doofus, you just made Bush's case for war

[Anonymous Coward]

You warped foil-hat wearing lefties who keep ranting that Bush is to blame for 9/11 because he did not interpret a memo that said "Usama Bin Laden is planning to attack the United States" (at some vague time in the future, possibly involving planes) to mean "airliners will be hijacked on Sept 11 2001 and flown into buildings" then scream that Bush was evil/stupid to take us into war in Iraq when the SAME intelligence people gave him a flood of very-specific memos about Saddam Hussein having weapons of mass destruction.

hmmmmmm

Had Bush ignored the much-more explicit Iraqi WMD memos (which were not just from US agencies but also the intel agencies of several or our allies) and then had the US been attacked with such a weapon, you guys would be the first in line to screech that he was evil/incompetent and to blame for that too. It's your damnably partisan hack narrative that forces a president in Bush's position to do what he did - no president in either party could have ignored that WMD threat so soon after 9/11

Unfortunately for you guys, even the leftists at NBC had to admit that the whole Valerie-Plame-and-hubby set of assertions related to yellowcake uranium in Iraq were wrong. Those claims had been used to massively mislead the American people to think Bush lied us into war, but they were just as wrong as the claims Bush listened to. You see, there WERE large stockpiles of the stuff in Iraq and we and Canada quietly moved it out after we removed Saddam from power. I'm not some sycophant GOP jerk who will say that this means Saddam had nukes - he did not, but it CONFIRMS the assertion Bush made to the American people that Saddam had acquired yellowcake. Bush did NOT say Saddam had WMDs, he said that he had been given reports that Saddam was rebuilding his WMD program (this was a true statement - Bush had been given multiple reports from multiple agencies that said this).

Of course, now that the Obama administration has prosecuted the Boston Bomber for use of a WMD (re-defining pressure cookers to be WMDs) Democrats can no longer claim there were no WMDs in Iraq - that country is clearly FULL of WMDs...

and here's a fun pair of facts:

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Palin's private e-mails (which she clearly never thought anybody outside her friends and family would see) which were illegally exposed by the Democrat hacker, were revealed to contain NOT A SINGLE CORRUPT ACT when exposed to the blowtorch of scrutiny of thousands of activist Democrats.

2. Clinton hid ALL her e-mails on a private server, then carefully screened them all and handed over to the government only the ones she knew would not hurt her before erasing tens of thousands she did not want anybody to see and the wiping the server so no court order could ever get at them.

Tell me again, WHO is more-trustworthy with power?????

Re:Hillarhea! accomplishment outside who she marri

[GbrDead]

5. She can set up her own home mail server.

Unequal treatment

[Anonymous Coward]

There were tens of Benghazi type attacks on American consulates overseas during the Bush administration, although none of those attacks killed an American ambassador like the Benghazi attack did. But where was the outrage, the never-ending investigations, and the political attacks against Bush administration officials for all of those attacks? The Wall Street Journal and Republicans are so full of shit. They didn't even notice when the same types of attacks happened when their choice of president, George W. Bush, and his cronies were running the show.

Crowdsourcing Emails is a Right wing attack job

[BenderTheRobot]

You state the premise and then go off on a tangent, sir.

Re:Hillarhea! accomplishment outside who she marri

[ULTROS]

Marrying someone and having a kid is not a political accomplishment. I will give her one accomplishment. She has the uncanny ability to avoid media scrutiny and can dodge a felony better than Teflon Don.