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Paypal Founder Peter Thiel To Speak At Trump's Republican Convention (nbcbayarea.com)
Slashdot reader speedplane writes: The New York Times is reporting that renowned Venture Capitalist, Paypal Founder, and Gawker Litigation Funder, Peter Thiel will be speaking at the Republican National Convention. The original story does not state what Thiel will discuss at the convention, only that he'll be speaking the last day, but there's plenty of speculation.
Facebook issued a statement that though Thiel is on their board of directors, his appearance was "personal," saying Thiel "is not attending on behalf of Facebook or to represent our views." NBC reports Thiel will be the first openly-gay man to speak at the convention in 16 years, "as party leaders refuse to soften the GOP's formal opposition to gay marriage," noting Thiel "has been a staunch supporter of Donald Trump's run for the oval office, previously supported Ron Paul for president and has identified himself as a conservative libertarian in the past... Other speakers will include four of Trump's children, Las Vegas casino owner Phil Ruffin, and actor and former underwear model Antonio Sabato Jr."
Facebook issued a statement that though Thiel is on their board of directors, his appearance was "personal," saying Thiel "is not attending on behalf of Facebook or to represent our views." NBC reports Thiel will be the first openly-gay man to speak at the convention in 16 years, "as party leaders refuse to soften the GOP's formal opposition to gay marriage," noting Thiel "has been a staunch supporter of Donald Trump's run for the oval office, previously supported Ron Paul for president and has identified himself as a conservative libertarian in the past... Other speakers will include four of Trump's children, Las Vegas casino owner Phil Ruffin, and actor and former underwear model Antonio Sabato Jr."
A(nother) self-loathing destructive psychopath with money.
Why is it so important to stop people doing what they want when it doesn't affect you in the slightest?
Tax benefits, hospital visitation, inheritance issues, insurance costs...and on, and on, and on.
Things that heterosexual couples take for granted that gay couples could not prior the the legalization of marriage equality nationwide. Do this: Be in a heterosexual marriage for 15 years, and follow your spouse's ambulance to the hospital. Then have a nurse deny you access to their bedside because your "marriage" offends her sensibilities. This same shit had to be fought over interracial marriage as well.
Perhaps your spouse dies in that hospital. Now have their family swoop in and take away your home, along all the money from your spouse's bank accounts. Sure, they could set up trusts and contracts and PoA's, but the point is, I'm married, and if I die, my wife by default is my next of kin. I don't have to do any of that noise, and neither should someone else just because they're gay. Inheritance and capital gains were an even worse issue.
Try having a shred of empathy for people whose circumstances are different from yours, how does that sound? Gay people don't necessarily care if people "like" their marriage, but they should be equal under the law. Statements like yours sound like they're straight out of 1963 and just repurposed from "Coloreds" to "Homos".
I like music
That, or he just doesn't care, because his money insulates him from any of the negative impacts - and he believes that their policies related to his money are far more important to him. It's a cynical/selfish calculation, but that doesn't make it irrational. Not everyone votes solely based on just one issue.
Its fashionable to hate Hillary, period. I personally don't hate her at all and the idea that I "should" is just bullshit propaganda. The controversies around her have been massively overblown. How many fucking times have the Republicans investigated Benghazi? Far more times (and spending much more tax dollars) than the government spent investigating 9/11. Fuck, Michael "I make movies for teenage boys" Bay even made a movie about it, but he never made a movie about 9/11. Then there is the email bullshit, she used exactly the same system that previous *republican* administrations did, and regardless as this is slashdot I assume people here are smart enough to know that email is in no way a secure messaging protocol. It doesn't matter who hosts your server, as soon as you hit "send" that email may well travel half way around the world before it gets to its destination, getting copied and stored by god-knows-who. For all the talk that folks on sites like slashdot and reddit make for "thinking rationally", why the hell is it so many seem utterly incapable of doing that when it comes to Clinton? How, for example, can you bridge the ideology gap between voting for Bernie Sanders (a socialist, who agrees with Hillary Clinton on a wide swath of issues) or Ron Paul (a staunch libertarian) and then switching to Donald Trump, a guy who has espoused no consistent stance on almost anything and has flippantly proposed dozens of blatantly unconstitutional actions? The mind fucking boggles.
he understands that this is just something that they had to put in to keep the Religious Right from bolting, along with all of that anti-abortion stuff.
You know what else they'll have to do in order to keep the religious right from bolting? Follow through on the anti-gay and anti-abortion stuff.
When people tell you who they are, believe them. The Republican platform is the document in which the Republican Party tells you who it is. Believe it.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Except of course that before "marriage equality" was imposed by the courts many states were passing domestic partnership laws. Domestic partnership laws solved all of those issues. The advantage of domestic partnership laws was that they were not limited to people in a sexual relationship. This meant that two people could share a house and other things without being sexual partner and have all of those benefits as well.
In time, it is likely that such laws would have made it feasible to remove marriage laws, with their religious overtones, from the books altogether.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Remember? This is the guy who advocates replacing the Republic with some sort of crazy dictator/king/something. Well, he sees an opportunity for it to happen, because if Trump is elected? There won't be elections anymore. Not in the way we think of them now. They'll be rigged sham affairs more like what goes over in places like Russia. THAT is what he's behind. Not that he probably thinks Trump specifically should be in charge, but once you've ditched the reality of people having a say in the system then guys like him with loads of money figure they'll rearrange things to suite themselves. Its a rather vapid fantasy, but there are fools of all stripes in this world.
"Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem." -- Jefferson
Right, because treating same sex couples equally under the law--that is to say, not kicking them out of the ambulance; not having their homophobic relatives contest their wills and leave their widows and widowers nothing--somehow instantaneously nullifies and "fucks up" your heterosexual marriage, your rights, your recognized status under the law.
Are those rights now DENIED to you simply because they are recognized for same sex couples? You still don't understand. Your so-called "right" to be a pompous, bigoted asshole; your right to treat a group of people as inferior under the law, is not a right. The only thing that gets fucked up here is that you don't get to take out your prejudices against gays and lesbians and call that your "religious freedom."
This idea of needing to "protect heterosexual marriage" because it is somehow "threatened" by men marrying men, and women marrying women, is really a statement to the effect that straights regard their own marital bonds to be so fragile, so tenuous, that they need the security of denying other people their rights, to say to other people how THEY should be recognized when that has no bearing on their own status in society. How pathetic for you that you feel that way.
You are taking what he said out of context.
No I am not. He says directly in the interview that "capitalism and competition are ... really antonyms". In other words, Thiel believes that competition is incompatible with capitalism.
For all the talk that folks on sites like slashdot and reddit make for "thinking rationally", why the hell is it so many seem utterly incapable of doing that when it comes to Clinton? How, for example, can you bridge the ideology gap between voting for Bernie Sanders (a socialist, who agrees with Hillary Clinton on a wide swath of issues) or Ron Paul (a staunch libertarian) and then switching to Donald Trump, a guy who has espoused no consistent stance on almost anything and has flippantly proposed dozens of blatantly unconstitutional actions? The mind fucking boggles.
I think it's just confirmation bias. I think in the mid-90s the right became really uncomfortable with the idea of a first lady exerting political influence. They figured that was going way outside her role and trying to usurp her husband's power so they started labelling her as lying and manipulative and really haven't stopped.
The thing with repeating labels like that is they don't really need to be accurate, you just need to keep repeating them and people eventually figure there's something to it (otherwise why would you be saying it?).
So now everybody is convinced that Hillary is really manipulative and deceptive, throw in something like the email scandal and if you already assume she's lying then it just re-enforces the whole narrative.
I stole this Sig
Except of course that before "marriage equality" was imposed by the courts many states were passing domestic partnership laws. Domestic partnership laws solved all of those issues.
Water under the bridge now, but I always thought this was the right solution... as long as it was taken one step further: Establish standard legal structures for domestic partnerships that mirror existing legal structures for marriage but can be used by any pair (or more, for that matter) of competent adults, then classify all existing marriages as domestic partnerships and stop issuing marriage licenses. Just have civil unions/domestic partnerships for everyone.
That approach would have left "marriage" as a purely symbolic and religious act, and left it up to churches to decide how they wanted to define it. Undoubtedly, some churches would refuse to solemnize gay marriage while others would be fine with it... indeed some churches might be established precisely in order to provide that religious service for the LGBT community. No need to make anyone feel like their religious freedom is being trampled, and no need to treat any segment of society differently.
This was my position on the issue from the early 90s when it first started to get some traction. I knew from the beginning that there was no way the restriction on homosexual marriage could be justified under the 14th amendment, and that if the religious right wanted to preserve the institution of marriage the way they saw it they needed to get government out of it, but instead they tried to fight it head on, and lost.
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