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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."
"Other speakers will include four of Trump's children, Las Vegas casino owner Phil Ruffin, and actor and former underwear model Antonio Sabato Jr."
WTF? Is this a presidential convention or the debut of some big-titted pop star's latest crappy album?
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
I really want to like Donald
Just out of curiosity, why?
I hate Hillary with a passion, but any sentence out of Trump's mouth makes her look like Gandhi in comparison.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
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.
Don't sell this, the 114th Congress short. They did accomplish something. They passed Public Law 114-152, the National Bison Legacy Act which names the bison as the national mammal of the United States.
They also voted to name no fewer than 27 post offices after people you've never heard of (probably donors).
And they voted to repeal Obamacare for the 60th, 61st, 62nd and 63rd times.
You are welcome on my lawn.
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...
Anyone who supports Trump is certainly not a libertarian. In fact, it was clear that Thiel had abandoned libertarianism when he gave an interview two years ago. During the interview, he said that he was opposed to competition because "it's very, very hard to make money" when there's competition!
That's so cute. He thinks he will get to talk at the convention. Actually we have him scheduled for the Leviticus 20:13 event.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
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
As someone who's actually KNOWN Bernie Sanders (to the extent that I've lived in Burlington when he was Mayor, met the guy, argued with him, etc, I don't have any personal relationship with him) for 30 years, and greatly appreciated what he's brought to national politics in the last year or so, I believe this 'Sanders supporters hate Hillary' meme is mostly bunk. There may be a very vocal minority of people who became 'Sanders supporters' suddenly in the last 6-12 months because it was fashionable and they yell and squawk about how much they 'hate Hillary' because that's apparently fashionable too.
See, I would draw a huge distinction. I dislike the ESTABLISHMENT, and all the dirty tricks that the powers which be have used against Sanders IS galling. Clinton is ABSOLUTELY a pillar of that community. OTOH if you look at her in terms of an actually realistic view and not the bizarro-world distorto-vision that FOX News and etc have created around her, she's a relatively center-left candidate with fairly conventional views for a President. Nothing is going to change vastly, but its likely she'll implement some modest policy changes and programs that are part of the agenda for more left-leaning people. In fact she'll probably continue largely in the same vein as Obama, with increases in the minimum wage, labor-friendly policies outside of trade, some expansion of publicly funded healthcare, and otherwise she's probably closer to Nixon than to say Kennedy.
The bad things will be the environment, which Clinton seems to have little interest in at a critical juncture, and the military-intelligence-police-industrial-state that seems to have been building itself under every president of the last 70 years happily regardless of what policies they supposedly espouse. I'm not even convinced a President Sanders or somesuch could change those things.
"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.
As an European I haven't been following all the details, but if I am not mistaken, Trump is actually relatively supportive towards gays (especially if compared to others within Republican party) even if he does not support recognizing gay marriage at the moment. There was story about this issue on New York Times:
Donald Trump's More Accepting Views on Gay Issues Set Him Apart in G.O.P.
>"Besides, among republicans I've seen anti-2nd amendment and pro-choice."
Exactly. It seems popular here (and many places) to think that all Republicans are identical and believe the same things. They don't. Many Republicans do not support anti-abortion. Many Republicans support certain gun control. Many Republicans do not push a religious agenda of any sort. Also, despite the summary and prevailing theory, being anti-gay marriage doesn't mean being anti-gay nor does it automatically make it a religious issue. There is probably more variation in the Republican party than any other at this point (and one reason for things like the Tea Party splinter).
In the same light, not all Democrats think we should go further in debt, should prevent private gun ownership, have a forever-growing Fed, or that we would should tax everyone out of existence.
And it also doesn't mean that all Libertarians think we should have no national defense, have no regulations, should have no federal government, or should allow corporations to rape the environment.
>"The expectation that they MUST share ALL of the same views as their party is the whole reason we're stuck in this two party rut to begin with."
It is one of many reasons... of course the biggest reason we are stuck in a rut is because of a stupid two-party system, which can never change without changing to a ranked voting system... which itself can never change because the two-parties won't allow it.
So we are always stuck with voters having to pick between what they think is the lesser of two evils OR vote AGAINST the party they are most afraid of.... and usually fueled by single issues such as those I listed above.
For one, he's a lot less likely to be in need of anti-discrimination laws. He's not exactly afraid of being fired for being gay. If some bakery refuses to serve him, he can probably just buy the bakery itself outright, or ten others like it. He's probably not worried about being beaten up for being gay because he can hire a massive personal security detail. Money of the kind he's got carries a -LOT- of privileges.
It's probably easier to think of him as someone who politically is rich and libertarian first, and gay only second or third at best.
Then there is the email bullshit, she used exactly the same system that previous *republican* administrations did,
100% false. Rice did not use email, and Powell did not use a server that he or his staff operated.
But my problem is not even that she used a server -- it's that every time someone asks her about this, she lies.
"It was allowed." (It wasn't)
"My predecessors did this." (they didn't)
"I didn't receive classified information." (over 100 documents...)
"Those documents were inappropriately classified after." (the 100+ documents were classified AT THE TIME).
She just keeps feeding into this mantra that she lies and is untrustworthy. No one else needs to paint this picture -- she is doing this all on her own stating easily provable lies. She's not total absolute 100% pants-on-fire like Trump is, but she makes it really difficult for anyone to vote FOR her.