'The Hillary Leaks' - Wikileaks Releases 19,252 Previously Unseen DNC Emails (zerohedge.com)

Reader schwit1 writes: The state department's release of Hillary emails may be over, but that of Wikileaks is just starting. Moments ago, Julian Assange's whistleblower organization released over 19,000 emails and more than 8,000 attachments from the Democratic National Committee. This is part one of their new Hillary Leaks series, Wikileaks said in press release.:"Today, Friday 22 July 2016 at 10:30am EDT, WikiLeaks releases 19,252 emails and 8,034 attachments from the top of the US Democratic National Committee -- part one of our new Hillary Leaks series. The leaks come from the accounts of seven key figures in the DNC: Communications Director Luis Miranda (10770 emails), National Finance Director Jordon Kaplan (3797 emails), Finance Chief of Staff Scott Comer (3095 emails), Finance Director of Data & Strategic Initiatives Daniel Parrish (1472 emails), Finance Director Allen Zachary (1611 emails), Senior Advisor Andrew Wright (938 emails) and Northern California Finance Director Robert (Erik) Stowe (751 emails). The emails cover the period from January last year until 25 May this year."
The emails released Friday cover a period from January 2015 to May 2016. They purportedly come from the accounts of seven key DNC staffers: Andrew Wright, Jordon Kaplan, Scott Comer, Luis Miranda, Robert Stowe, Daniel Parrish and Allen Zachary.

A quick scan of the emails focus on Bernie Sanders and dealing with the fallout of many Democrats opposing Hillary Clinton and calling the system "rigged." Many of the emails exchanged between top DNC officials are simply the text of news articles concerning how establishment democrats can "deal" with the insurgent left-winger. Update: 07/22 17:41 GMT by M :Guccifer 2.0 has claimed responsibility for the leak.

Comments

Doing Trump's work for him

[Anonymous Coward]

Are they hoping Democrats will just say "oh we want Bernie instead" ? Trump will fuck you Americans up in ways no one can imagine yet.

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[Anonymous Coward]

Hillary and the democrats will continue selling our freedom down the river in return for "free stuff." You may want to live in a society where the government dictates everything from on high, but many of us don't - and it used to me the majority of the USA that wanted freedom and not a handout.

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[Anonymous Coward]

Given you live under a rock in Tanzania, I really don't see why you care. Especially since you have no facts.

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[Anonymous Coward]

The last 30 years we have been fucked in ways no one could have imagined. This is the status quo these days. The only difference today is they are not using lube anymore.

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[blackomegax]

You realize that you have no freedom, right? You give 40+ hours of your week away to corporate bosses, just so you can feed yourself. That's called slavery. Getting a handout and not needing to slave at a job would GIVE YOU MORE FREEDOM. It astounds me that you right-wingers have been brainwashed so hard you're basically stockholm'd zombie slaves to capitalism.

Re: Doing Trump's work for him

[pchasco]

Hmm. If you could be honest with yourself for a minute you'd accept the truth that everyone in America wants it for free. The only difference is that democrats want a safety net that they can't afford, whereas Republicans simply want their roads, their military, and their Medicare and want to live tax-free, apparently paying for the programs with manna from the sky.

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[Anonymous Coward]

What you want is a gilded cage. That's not freedom.

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[Opportunist]

And what you want is the freedom to choose whether you want to have a home or whether you want to eat.

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[Penguinisto]

Small point of order: Slavery requires no consent from the slave. Having a job means there's a *voluntary* consent between you and the employer.

You also failed to mention the act of self-employment (contracting, consulting, proprietorship, etc).

That said, there is still the small semi-slavery that is excess taxation, excess regulation, etc., although people tend to disagree on what constitutes 'excess' in these cases.

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[trybywrench]

I sell my expertise and time to the highest bidder so I can afford to purchase the things I want. My skills and time are worth more to the market than any handout will every be. It's not slavery at all.

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[Dishevel]

So if you have to pay for the things you need and want, you are a slave.
The path to freedom, according to you is for those that have earned a lot of money to give up the money they worked for so that you can be "Free".
In other words. The "Slaves" should pay for the freemen to be free?



WTF?

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[bev_tech_rob]

Are they hoping Democrats will just say "oh we want Bernie instead" ? Trump will fuck you Americans up in ways no one can imagine yet.

Yea....I'm bracing for it.......not gonna be a pretty wreck...

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[Anonymous Coward]

Getting paid to work is not slavery, the word doesn't mean what you think it means.

Re: Doing Trump's work for him

[bev_tech_rob]

Hmm. If you could be honest with yourself for a minute you'd accept the truth that everyone in America wants it for free. The only difference is that democrats want a safety net that they can't afford, whereas Republicans simply want their roads, their military, and their Medicare and want to live tax-free, apparently paying for the programs with manna from the sky.

Damn...where are my mod points when I need them? Well put!

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[fireylord]

So now you tell me personally what I want eh?

Thanks for informing me, I clearly didn't know what I wanted before...

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[0100010001010011]

want to live in a society where the government dictates everything from on high

You mean like who I'm allowed to have sex with? What women are allowed to do with their bodies?

You'd almost think they were to the point of micromanaging bathrooms.

Re: Doing Trump's work for him

[Anonymous Coward]

You just gave me Forrester Whitaker eye. Thanks.

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[postbigbang]

The highest bidder isn't as important to me, as the ability to exercise and develop my crafts, and not be chained. Certainly I serve others, but the money isn't the highest priority. Living well, doing things for my family, friends, colleagues, and my discipline are also important, too.

There is such a thing as wage slavery, and it has to do with the fact I have gifts that others either don't have, or have no means to develop into a "highest bidder" market. The market for these individuals doesn't even guarantee vacation, or even full-time hours to gain meaningful benefits from.

Worse, they could be in contractor hell, essentially employees but for an IRS definition, unable to get taxes withheld, benefits of any kind, and sometimes payment on terms that bankruptcy lawyers know all too well.

We don't have to be Darwinian. We can be kind.

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[Anonymous Coward]

You have a choice to work for a corporation, small business or, gasp, start your own business.

A socialist society is actually a hearken back to the days of serfdom. Where the king owned all the land and all the animals, etc. The lords were given jurisdiction over various regions. People would toil in their fields, but the Lords and King always got their share of whatever you did.

Capitalism grew out of those days as people wanted the freedom to do as they wanted. To decide how hard they would or would not work. What sort of work they did. To own their own destiny. People rebelled against being serfs.

Yes, people complain that "corporations own them". There are lots and lots of employers out there. You get to decide who you work for. Or even work for yourself. Move to Socialism, and you end up with a very small elite ruling class (equivalent to a monarch and lords) ruling over every detail of your life. No choice at all. They decide what products are good for us and will be made. They decide the allocations of what is manufactured and not. They decide the winners and losers. We evolved away from that non-free system centuries ago. Yet, human laziness, jealousy and greed (of the lazy and jealous) wants to return to the chains of serfdom. People like Hillary are more than eager to be at the top of the heap and relish the power they'd have.

Re: Doing Trump's work for him

[Anonymous Coward]

We are more than willing to pay a fair tax for the essentials that the government is needed for. What we don't agree with is waste, inefficiencies and wealth redistribution programs.

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[Immerman]

Of course slavery requires consent of the slave. A slave who refuses to work is no slave at all, only a victim of abuse and probably eventually murder.

That the violence in a rigged economy is homelessness and starvation not directly imposed by any specific individual does not fundamentally alter the fact that consent is often coerced.

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[Anonymous Coward]

Not sure what decisions Trump will actually make on his own. The story about Trump from the Kasich suggests that he will be outsourcing the function to Pence who will be ghost president as well as vice president. Nevermind that Pence is pro TPP. Trump will be focusing on the pr front.

Re: Doing Trump's work for him

[nine-times]

The only difference is that democrats want a safety net that they can't afford, whereas Republicans simply want their roads, their military, and their Medicare and want to live tax-free, apparently paying for the programs with manna from the sky.

So Democrats want a safety net they can't afford while Republicans want tax breaks they can't afford. Meanwhile a lot of the Republicans also want to have our government run as a theocracy, having our laws based on morals gleaned from their experience handling snakes and speaking in tongues.

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[JackieBrown]

You'd almost think they were to the point of micromanaging bathrooms.

How the fuck do you mange to keep twisting things like this?

It is the Democrats telling business that all sexes should be able to use the male or female bathrooms. It is them saying that the government has the right to tell people how a bathroom has to work. The republicans are saying the government should stay out of it, not take over it. The dems are the ones using this as yet another power grab.

How do you turn that into anything other than democrats attempting to take over the regulation of something as basic as a toilet?

You mean like who I'm allowed to have sex with?

Where are you getting this from? Or are you so restrictive and controlling that you think that people should only be allowed to have sex if they are married?

What women are allowed to do with their bodies?

Short of abortion which is a much more complicated issue than you seem to grasp, what are you referring to here? Or do you honestly believe that not giving something for free means that you are against something? In which case, why are the democrats against people having cars, TV's, homes, etc?

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[Anonymous Coward]

What women are allowed to do with their bodies?

Are you implying that a woman having contractions should be able to terminate her pregnancy?

Re: Doing Trump's work for him

[Anonymous Coward]

After the showing at the RNC this week, I think we're beyond Theocracy and heading straight into Fascist Dictatorship territory...

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[Anonymous Coward]

Being a contractor is awful. I charge 3x as much as someone in house, deduct a lot of expenses that I wouldn't otherwise be able to do, and get to choose my hours (within reason). I work 60 hours a week for 30 weeks a year, and I spend the rest of the year traveling, having a good time, and playing in a band (as a hobby, not a passion or to try to get rich/famous).

Please, please, please save me from this nightmare.

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[Grishnakh]

Wow, you guys are really, really stupid. The NC case was about government-owned bathrooms. The government has every right to dictate who uses which bathroom in a government-owned facility. Go read the NC law itself, it's about government facilities, and is absolutely about the government telling people which bathroom they have to use. This is exactly the opposite of what you claim.

Moron.

Re: Doing Trump's work for him

[pchasco]

First... Im not super-confident that many Republican legislatures WOULD certainly outlaw "unnatural" sex. However... Republicans definitely overwhelmingly want to outlaw gay marriage, which is the height of regulating people's private and religious lives. This to me is not any more or less odious than regulating my bedroom.

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[postbigbang]

And you're obviously managing this well, and perhaps can charge a decent amount, profiting well net-of-expenses. Others aren't so lucky, and corporations flaunt personnel numbers while cutting their pension liabilities, and other costs of employment in doing so. They've also shaken the employment market, and make US Labor Dept employment numbers obscured by the 1099ers in the workforce. Overall, I'd say contracting can be fun and lucrative, but it also stacks the deck on the side of contracting organizations, rather than the labor supply, and also shifts a lot of costs to government burdens, as well.

Re: Doing Trump's work for him

[cant_get_a_good_nick]

I've heard:

Democrats are tax and spend. Republicans are borrow and spend.

In that context, Democrats slightly better, at least they realize there's a cost.

Re: Doing Trump's work for him

[Anonymous Coward]

Like this BILLION $ scam http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/article91231277.html

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[Anonymous Coward]

What women are allowed to do with their bodies?

But what if the fetus is female? Shouldn't she have some say in what to do with her body?

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[Anonymous Coward]

Well they used tabasco sauce back in the 2000 election, so perhaps no lube would actually be preferable. However I'd say they've now moved onto ghost pepper sauce.

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[TsuruchiBrian]

The label "wage slavery" and the phenomenon to references certainly exist. I don't think it's good, but I think the label trivializes actual slavery. I think underpaying people can certainly be exploitive, but I don't think this should be conflated to what actual slaves were/are subjected to (e.g. being treated as property). Slaves could be (and were sometimes) murdered and raped by their masters with accountability. Slaves were split up from their families.

Re: Doing Trump's work for him

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot their guns. Republicans want lots of guns. Hey - maybe a nuke or two for assurance.

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[Anonymous Coward]

You're welcome. Glad I could be of help.

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[Anonymous Coward]

We either get Das Fuhrer Trump of we get Her Right Royal Empress Hilary. Either way it'll be a dictatorial moron who claims to know crap when it is convenient and claims ignorance otherwise.

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[Anonymous Coward]

The fact that this was modded troll shows the Ameri-centricism of Slashdot. Go ahead and pretend the rest of the world doesn't exist. You'll remember when you're refugees.

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[postbigbang]

I'm not trying to diminish the horror of real slavery, but the analogy sticks. Consider that full-time slavery and part-time slavery are vectors from each other.

Perhaps "wage submission" is a better way to describe it, but the connotation of no-choice still applies.

The captives on a ship in the Indonesian Ocean are slaves, we can agree. Those in submission to the only job in their neighborhood they can get, Burger King, are voluntarily submitting to the Burger King franchise's policies, and in a way, a meaningful way, they are slaves to both the wages and the policies, as the alternatives are not viable for them-- they must submit or migrate or starve.

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[Anonymous Coward]

Earned is a funny word to use for those who withhold resources from those who have none in order to extract labor from them. History suggests that they haven't "earned" anything except for what the public allows them to have. And when the public determines they haven't "earned" what they withhold, the public will take the resources back. History is your friend, it keeps one from making dumb statements like yours.

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[Anonymous Coward]

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

I'm doing OK so the system works.

When your job is eventually outsourced, done by machine, or simply obsolete, what will you do? How then will you sell yourself to earn a living?

Surely you can always just "find a job" right? Just pick one of the job tree... oh wait, no of course not. You'll "work hard" and "study" and "learn a new trade" and "work harder than everyone else" etc, etc, and surely THAT's what got you your job. Nevermind the hundreds if not thousands of skilled workers who are still unemployed. Nevermind the fact that people work hard everywhere and that the luck of the draw is what got you where you are today.

No you are a special snowflake and you EARNED your job. You earned a spot in the lottery fuck boy. Your hard work made you eligible to be pulled out by the ruling class to earn a living-- the others who worked just as hard? The guy next to you who is probably way smarter but for whatever reason didn't get picked? Fuck him, you got yours.

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[Anonymous Coward]

Historical revisionism is apparent. Luckily, the US is alone in swallowing this revisionist bull. The rest of us know the reality.

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[Anonymous Coward]

Who needs lube after 30 years?

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[Anonymous Coward]

You'd almost think they were to the point of micromanaging bathrooms.

How the fuck do you mange to keep twisting things like this?

It is the Democrats telling business that all sexes should be able to use the male or female bathrooms. It is them saying that the government has the right to tell people how a bathroom has to work. The republicans are saying the government should stay out of it, not take over it. The dems are the ones using this as yet another power grab.

How do you turn that into anything other than democrats attempting to take over the regulation of something as basic as a toilet?

Well, having male and female bathrooms at all is discriminatory (it's the same shit as whites only bathrooms/ drinking fountains).
Enshrining that discrimination in law rather than leaving it as something most people voluntarily respect but nobody can actually enforce is the power grab.

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[DRJlaw]

The republicans are saying the government should stay out of it, not take over it.

ROTFL,

It's the republicans in state government telling the democrats in a city government that the city cannot permit those nasty transsexuals to use the public bathroom of their choice.

To wit:

Transgender people who have not taken surgical and legal steps to change the gender noted on their birth certificates have no legal right under state law to use public restrooms of the gender with which they identify. Cities and counties no longer can establish a different standard. Critics of the Charlotte ordinance cite privacy concerns and say it was "social engineering" to allow people born as biological males to enter women's restrooms.

McCrory's office says businesses arenâ(TM)t limited by the bill, and that private companies and private universities can adopt new or keep existing nondiscrimination policies.

Tell us again how a city government should not set a policy for its own bathrooms and state government is staying out of it, not taking over it.

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahh, so you're a whore. Thanks for clearing that up.

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[Ogive17]

Good luck policing that law. Guess they'll do a "package" inspection at the door now, for security reasons of course.

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[naughtynaughty]

They are only slaves to the choices they freely made. Ranging from where they live, what they did to educate themselves and how far they are willing to travel to get a job that isn't at the neighborhood Burger King.

Choices have consequences and sometimes the consequence is only being able to work at a Burger King for minimum wage.

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[Anonymous Coward]

I saw a documentary on the Soviet Union once. It was nice, everyone had a nice little life. If you wanted a car, you signed up to a waiting list and deducted some small amount of your 'pay' and 8 - 10 years later you would (maybe) get a POS Lada. If you were in the ruling class you got something bigger, with more power and better made. (still a POS by the standard of the day though).

If you wanted a television, you signed up on a waiting list and 3 - 5 years later you got a little Black and White tv set. If you were in the ruling class, you got a color tv.

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[Darinbob]

It'll be huuuuge! And luxurious. Just like Atlantic City.

Re: Doing Trump's work for him

[Anonymous Coward]

Hear this out of people who don't want to have to work for a living all of the time.

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[naughtynaughty]

Earned is the correct word to use to refer to resources that were paid for with earnings.

I don't withhold my resources (ie my retained earnings) in order to extract labor from people. I've always just offered to pay people a fee for their labor, which happens to be the same way I earn most of my money.

If you don't have any resources I'd suggest a two step approach:
1) Perform labor for a fee
2) Don't spend all the money you were paid for your services

Now I do admit that it is far easier if you can just replace step 1) with "Have someone give you some of their stuff", I can assure you that not working and getting paid only works if the percentage of parasites is sufficiently small. Too many parasites and the host dies.

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[lgw]

Earned is a funny word to use for those who withhold resources from those who have none in order to extract labor from them.

Where do you imagine those resources came from? Someone worked to create them.

It is a fundamental requirement of society that we each contribute as much to society as we consume, over our lifetimes. No amount of wishful thinking will change that. We measure that with money, but money itself is meaningless. Oh, we may be nice enough to carry a few people out of charity, but when that "few" goes beyond the legitimately disabled, the whole thing unravels.

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[postbigbang]

Those born into choices often don't understand the context of those that don't, weren't born into choices, tried, failed, or have been subjugated.

Consider those that won't even be on a computer today, because of so many reasons. They seem like wallpaper on the streets of towns and cities across the country. Their struggles are many, and choices, few.

Some struggle mightily, and might get by, and might not get by, for reasons not within their control. You can chest-thump and espouse that everything is in their control, but it doesn't change the fact that the reality is different than that.

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[Dishevel]

So. If I risk money and invent a thing, and hire people to make it and pay them an agreed upon wage and after some years I get rich ...
I am now a slave owner that has earned nothing?
There is a reason that loser fucks continue to be loser fucks.
It is because there is no way to convince them that they have any power over their own lives.
They are scared that if they concede that they have power over their lives that they will suddenly be responsible for their own happiness.
They are not happy and get their only "Joy" from blaming others.

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[aristotle-dude]

You realize that you have no freedom, right?

You are right, we used to have freedom until you nanny state lefties decided what we can eat, watch, drive, build and fly on our own property. California is the worst for over regulation.

You give 40+ hours of your week away to corporate bosses, just so you can feed yourself.

37.5 hours on average. I can more than feed myself. I can travel to exotic places, stay at 5 star resorts, buy my fiancee a nice diamond solitaire engagement ring and support numerous charities and ministries.

That's called slavery.

No, it is called a job or a career.

Getting a handout and not needing to slave at a job would GIVE YOU MORE FREEDOM.

No, it would indenture me to be a slave of the state by requiring me to hand over more of my money. Someone has to work to produce. We cannot all be welfare bums.

It astounds me that you right-wingers have been brainwashed so hard you're basically stockholm'd zombie slaves to capitalism.

Yeah, sorry but I have a nice 6 figure salary, 5 weeks of vacation and a nice benefits package. I do sometimes work overtime but rarely.

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[aristotle-dude]

Historical revisionism is apparent. Luckily, the US is alone in swallowing this revisionist bull. The rest of us know the reality.

Apparently, you skipped school during the history lesson. It is not revisionist. It is an accurate description of serfdom which eventually morphed into mercantilism and trade guilds and eventually we ended up with entrepreneurship and capitalism. Capitalism is the great equaliser. It allows the low born to rise up through society and become part of the ruling class. Some of the "old money" rich want to see a return to serfdom and that is why they are systematically trying to destroy the middle class to prevent the lower classes from having an avenue to escape poverty. They want to stay rich themselves but keep any more people from pulling themselves out of the muck of poverty.

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[Anonymous Coward]

The fallacy of your argument is that you dont have to get a job, house, family, etc. You can live free but you choose not to.

The choice is not black and white, work for the man or starve.

You could work for a few years, save up money, and buy a piece of property. Build your own place on it and live off the land.
You could work for a few years, save up money, and buy a used sailboat. Sail around the oceans and get your food from the sea.
You could move to one of the places in Alaska where people still live off the land and earn a little money from it to get things they need.

As to your homeless and starvation, you can be homeless and not starve. There is lots of food just growing out in parks, along trails, and in small streams and creeks. There are people who choose to be homeless and free. Traveling by hitchhiking and staying in national and state parks. Living off the food the gather and taking the odd job to make a little cash when needed.

There are 1000's of ways to live your life. All it takes is a little imagination, a willingness to do it, and the mindset that nothing is going to stop you.

None of these ways involve you sitting on your ass and demanding the government give you shit for free. That is not freedom, that is slavery to the Government!

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[Anonymous Coward]

It was about a hell of a lot more than that, you shill:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re: Doing Trump's work for him

[Anonymous Coward]

First... Im not super-confident that many Republican legislatures WOULD certainly outlaw "unnatural" sex. However....

14 states still had anti-sodomy laws on the books when the Supreme Court invalidated them all in 2003.

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[smugfunt]

Where do you imagine those resources came from? Someone worked to create them.

Who created land?

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[MalleusEBHC]

You mean like who I'm allowed to have sex with?

Where are you getting this from? Or are you so restrictive and controlling that you think that people should only be allowed to have sex if they are married?

14 states had anti-sodomy laws on the books until SCOTUS put an end to that shit in Lawrence v Texas 13 years ago. 13 years ago, that's it. That's not too long ago, and you can be sure that most of those states wouldn't have changed the law unless forced to do so by the courts.

And while it may now be legal to have sex with whoever you want, in many states you can be fired or evicted because your bigoted boss or landlord is upset that you're having said sex. What good is that freedom if you can lose your job and your home for exercising it?

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[Anonymous Coward]

It is the Democrats telling business that all sexes should be able to use the male or female bathrooms.

How is a bathroom male or female? Last I checked, most have sinks, and most have doors which hide toilets which are 100% identical. How much can people talk about nothing?

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[Anonymous Coward]

And you're obviously managing this well, and perhaps can charge a decent amount, profiting well net-of-expenses.

Yeah, I'm managing it well. It's not something that everyone can (or wants) to do, but with a bit of extra work you can have a whole lot of extra leisure time.

Others aren't so lucky

I take issue with this statement. Are you trying to say that I lucked into the 20 years of hard work and skill that allows me to do what I do?

corporations flaunt personnel numbers while cutting their pension liabilities, and other costs of employment in doing so.

That's why I can charge so much more. I'm paying my self employment tax, my own retirement fund, my own healthcare.....if a fee exists, I'm paying it. If I were bad at money or didn't care about saving for retirement I could probably get by with working about half the amount that I do. I'm putting in the same amount of time as regular employees, I'm just doing it on my schedule and coming away with more money by doing it.

They've also shaken the employment market, and make US Labor Dept employment numbers obscured by the 1099ers in the workforce.

How does this "shake" the employment market? How are the numbers obscured? Are companies not filing the 1099s with the proper entities? Do the proper entities not talk to each other the way they should? That's not the fault of those getting a 1099 at the end of the year.

Overall, I'd say contracting can be fun and lucrative,

I agree with this wholeheartedly. I'll retire in the next few years, well ahead of most people my age, without the benefit of coming up with "the next big thing".

but it also stacks the deck on the side of contracting organizations, rather than the labor supply,

How does it stack the deck? They're spending that money on me one way or another. Whether they pay me outright or if they take out taxes and chain me to a cube, I'm taking the same amount of money. It stacks the deck against the regular W2 employee in my favor because I can work for several different companies at once, or I can work on one company for a short period and walk away when things are finished so I'm taking money from more hands than one. That allows me to earn more, including taxes, medical, retirement, insurance, whatever, than your standard desk (or shop, or whatever) employee since I'm taking out of several budgets instead of being tied to one.

and also shifts a lot of costs to government burdens, as well.

Why? How is what I do shifting costs to government burdens? I'm not being an ass here, I have never heard this argument.

It seems like you don't have a good grasp on what a hungry contractor can accomplish, and how it really moves things into our (the people rather than the companies) favor. We're not shackled. We don't have to kiss anyone's ass, we just have to be professional. We can work in our underwear a lot of times. We can go on vacation for as many weeks as we want. We have greater choice in how to deal with our retirement plan, our insurance, and our own benefits. Due to the nature of a 1099, we are beholden to no one but our own good sense. If we're treated badly they'll need to find someone else with our expertise and willingness because we can and will walk away (made possible by knowing how to save all the extra money you make so you're never hurting so badly that you can't walk away). That can be difficult when a lot of us who are in the same field know each other and will tell each other who sucks to work with. Companies have to play nice with us because they'll lose us, they have to pay us more because we demand more, and can't tell us how to do our job, only what they want to accomplish in the end.

Does it work for everyone? No, for a variety of reasons. Some family, some personal, and some people just can't wrap their minds around

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[lgw]

Unless you're a farmer (and that's about the hardest job around), what are you going to do with unimproved land?

Assuming you want not just land, but housing or a shop, with utilities and so on, then we're back to "where did those resources come from".

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[Yunzil]

The republicans are saying the government should stay out of it, not take over it.

Um, no dude. The Republicans are literally legislating bathroom usage. In other words they are taking it over.

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[postbigbang]

We mostly agree. You have the brain power to have accomplished these things, and have given value to your life. There are a significant number of those that started with nothing, and still have nothing, and have had subjugation to overcome their entire lives. It transcends racial, cultural, ethnic, and other boundaries.

To be on /., you have to have a lot of skills that you may believe are simple but for some, not so. The issues are many. Your high-value gets you paid, and you know what to do with the 1099 and your life. Others are not equipped to do so--- for the aforementioned wide variety of reasons. Their choices are fewer, yet they need the same basics you and I do, and the system is rigged against them, to exploit them, and to rob them of even basic dignities.

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[Penguinisto]

That the violence in a rigged economy is homelessness and starvation...

...and that affects the business proprietor, welfare queen, or consultant... how?

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[kartaron]

You still have you rights should you choose to express them. Thats the meaning of inalienable. You just have an elected tyranny which seeks to punish you for expressing those rights.

Re: Doing Trump's work for him

[Anonymous Coward]

We are more than willing to pay a fair tax for the essentials that the government is needed for. What we don't agree with is waste, inefficiencies and wealth redistribution programs that don't benefit us directly or benefit other people in any way.

FTFY.

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[kartaron]

Outcomes dont determine whether an act is 'slavery' or more accurately an immoral imposition on the rights of a human. The act of imposing is the immoral act. If government takes all the profit from running a business therefore making that business insoluble, (such as $15 minimum wage making entry level workers un-hireable) The government has only indirectly hurt the employee, by harming the rights of the employer to operate his business in an equitable manner. More to the point, If the employee votes to enable or encourage the government to impose heavy demands (such as comprehensive medical coverage) on said business owner, the employee is immorally imposing mob rule impositions on the minority business owner (if he were part of a majority he obviously would have won the majority vote) and the only one harmed by the resulting poor economy would be the business owner since the employee is complicit.

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[pagedout]

*sigh* I think you have that wrong. Those born into situations where people tell them they have no choices tend to get angry when you try to help them out by pointing out paths that they could use to better themselves. Parties that rely on keeping said people angry or content do their best to keep it that way.

No matter what you have been lead to believe by your echo chamber (and yes we all have an echo chamber) there are many people that live good lives without the internet. Don't let a tool become your life, its still just a tool.

Some people will not get by, the only way to tell if it is in their control or not is to push them to (or off) the brink. Arguments revolving around proving someone doesn't have the will to do 'X' are inherently worthless unless you are willing to prove it. The only way to help everyone get by is to take choices away from those who fail to get by.

So, given all this I have a moral solution for you. Anyone that can't get by should be given a free small plot of land, a reasonable set of tools, one year of food and the freedom to make their choices in life.

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[BlueStrat]

Well, having male and female bathrooms at all is discriminatory (it's the same shit as whites only bathrooms/ drinking fountains).

Wow.

There are male and female bathrooms because males and females are anatomically different because they are different sexes and have methods of expelling bodily waste which are different! The two sexes also each have personal and individual rights and needs for privacy.

And did you really actually just dare compare separate bathrooms for males & females to fucking *slavery*!?!? OMG! You think MLK or Malcolm X would be OK with that comparison? Do you think anyone with any knowledge of the history of slavery, with a rational and reasonable sense of proportion and relative importance/significance, would agree?

I can easily understand why you would post this garbage as AC.

Strat

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[kartaron]

Been an employee and a contractor. Contractor is so much better and more freeing. I never once thought, Oh if I could only have my taxes withheld... I got to dictate terms for my jobs, I got the benefit of tax exemptions which pay for my working vehicle. All expenses are tax write offs. It was downright pleasant and for once my time put into being better at a job, paid me directly instead of paying my boss. Also, it was government which took the opportunity away from me, forcing me back into an hourly position so they could get that 40% cut from my weekly check.

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[Anonymous Coward]

If the employee votes to enable or encourage the government to impose heavy demands (such as comprehensive medical coverage) on said business owner, the employee is immorally imposing mob rule impositions

Do tell, in your world, what's the difference between "mob rule" and "representative democracy"?

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[smugfunt]

then we're back to "where did those resources come from".

The point, which you are trying to blithely assume away, is that ultimately somebody took those resources for free and used them to live off the labour of those who didn't.

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless you're a farmer (and that's about the hardest job around), what are you going to do with unimproved land?

Assuming you want not just land, but housing or a shop, with utilities and so on, then we're back to "where did those resources come from".

Well, duh... you're going to sell the land to get money. The question reamains.... "who created land?"

Re: Doing Trump's work for him

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I guess that explains the doubled deficit over the last ~8 years.

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[TsuruchiBrian]

I'm not accusing you of diminishing the horror of real slavery. I am saying that the term "wage slavery" does. And even if the conditions of wage slavery and real slavery were the same (and they aren't), the reasons for those conditions are important. The only reason a person is a real slave is because a person has proclaimed ownership over them and this ownership is recognized by whatever society they are in. A wage slave may be stuck working for their current employer, but their situation is not caused by their employer, nor would the sudden death of their employer help their situation, it would probably make it worse by providing even fewer options for employment, and leaving them in an even more desperate situation.

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[Anonymous Coward]

There are male and female bathrooms because males and females are anatomically different because they are different sexes and have methods of expelling bodily waste which are different! The two sexes also each have personal and individual rights and needs for privacy.

Different AC, but when I moved into my apartment, I didn't ask if it was setup for a male or female bathroom because toilets are identical. And when I go to a public restroom there are doors which enable all sorts of privacy. What kind of bathrooms are you going to?

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[postbigbang]

They already ARE in desperate situations, as many minimum-wage earners (or even close by in some areas) are beholden to their jobs. US and state federal laws protect some, but for others, they really ARE beholden to their employers, on an inclining scale.

Work with a few, directly, to understand their concerns, and how they are sucked dry of things like withholdings for uniforms, arcane unpaid travel to sites, and more.

Slavery doesn't necessarily mean chattel. And the subtleties can be gruesome.

Re: Doing Trump's work for him

[Anonymous Coward]

You are aware that Ted Cruz, the darling of the Evangelicals, got almost no votes and was just booed off the stage? You are aware that a several of the right's biggest celebreties are gay? An openly gay Silicon Valley man recieved huge cheers during his speech at the RNC?
This isn't 1994 anymore. The Church branch never had the power you think they do, and they don't even have that much any more. The biggest thing the religious folks want to is be left alone.

The Democrats, though, have rallied behind someone that thinks the government to run all aspects of life. CS Lewis had something to say about that type of tyrant...

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[Anonymous Coward]

Earned is the correct word to use to refer to resources that were paid for with earnings.

Not always. Example: the resources didn't belong to the seller. You don't earn those resources even if you pay for them with your earnings; they don't belong to you.

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, no dude. The city tried to legislate bathroom behaviors, and the state told them they weren't allowed to. In fact, the state went so far as to say that the city could not require people to have transgender bathrooms, but if someplace didn't allow them, they had to supply alternatives (such as uni-sex or individual bathrooms) instead.

Can you believe that? Saying that people can choose how to accommodate transgender people? No! That cannot be allowed! The Democrats must be allowed to FORCE EVERYONE TO BEHAVE THEIR WAY. No alternatives allowed, no choice allowed, and certainly no conscience allowed.

Re: Doing Trump's work for him

[Anonymous Coward]

The level of education and rational decision that goes into their voting. Voting by emotion is mob rule, and also the current rule de juré

Re: Doing Trump's work for him

[naughtynaughty]

Governments did outlaw "unnatural sex" in many states until the US Supreme Court ruled in Lawrence v Texas in 2003 that essentially reversed a previous decision from 1986.

Republicans didn't have an exclusive on intolerance for "unnatural sex".

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[Anonymous Coward]

Trump will fuck you Americans up in ways no one can imagine yet.

Why don't you worry about your own politicians wherever you live? Chances are, they have been "fucking you up" for decades and you are too dumb to even notice it.

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[aristotle-dude]

It is the Democrats telling business that all sexes should be able to use the male or female bathrooms.

How is a bathroom male or female? Last I checked, most have sinks, and most have doors which hide toilets which are 100% identical. How much can people talk about nothing?

Men's rooms generally have urinals. They generally stink like urinals mixed with a lot of poo smell. Ladies rooms do not have urinals and fancier establishments have places for sitting down and talking as well as a makeup table with a large mirror.

I generally spend as little time as possible in public men's rooms because of the odour.

They are nowhere near identical or you simply travel in different social circles than I do. I know something about what lady's rooms look like based on what I hear from my fiancee and other ladies. Oh, I forgot, this is slashdot so most of you do not know any ladies besides your mother.

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[ooloorie]

You give 40+ hours of your week away to corporate bosses, just so you can feed yourself.

More than half of American workers are either self-employed or work for a small, privately-held business. The Fortune 500 and government employ about the same percentage of the US labor force, about 17%.

If you work as a corporate "wage slave", that's your own choice, and perhaps your own lack of skills. The majority of Americans don't even work for "corporate bosses", and most of those who do probably do so by choice.

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[ooloorie]

And what you want is the freedom to choose whether you want to have a home or whether you want to eat.

You get housing and food if and only if you do something productive, something that your fellow Americans value enough that they are willing to pay your for it.

Re: Doing Trump's work for him

[Anonymous Coward]

Republicans definitely overwhelmingly want to outlaw gay marriage, which is the height of regulating people's private and religious lives.

Marriage is not private nor religious, according to the state. It is a standard contractual business arrangement (which is public and completely within the purview of the state). You're conflating a couple of unrelated ideas under the "marriage" category.

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[lgw]

timately somebody took those resources for free and used them to live off the labour of those who didn't.

How do you use unimproved land to live off the labor of others? No, really? It produces no income or other value unless you either work it or improve it.

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[smugfunt]

How do you use unimproved land to live off the labor of others?

You rent it to someone who needs it.

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[reboot246]

The very essence of freedom is the freedom to fail. Without that possibility, you're not free and you won't try as hard to do anything. Most successful people have failed many times before hitting a success. It's not how many times you get knocked down, it's how many times you get back up and keep trying.

Re: Doing Trump's work for him

[kenai_alpenglow]

You do realize that under obama the national debt has skyrocketed more than all the presidents before him? Democrats are tax, BORROW and spend. That gives the edge to the republicans. Though I don't like the borrow bit from them either.

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[kenai_alpenglow]

This. If you got boy-parts, you go to the little boys' room. If you got girl-parts, you go to the little girls' room. If you don't like that, you go to the "family bathroom". Simple.

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[kenai_alpenglow]

or if you're in some of the....rougher.... schools, there are no stall/doors/privacy. You do your business all out in the open, before God and the other occupants.

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[Anonymous Coward]

That may be good news for Assange, as Pence is less likely to declare war on Ecuador.

Re: Doing Trump's work for him

[Anonymous Coward]

Almost:

Democrats are: Tax, Borrow and SPEND SPEND SPEND!!, Republicans are Borrow and SPEND!

Both equally horrible.

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[Grishnakh]

A Republican nut-job shows himself!

It wasn't about anything besides making life miserable for trans people, you religious moron.

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[Grishnakh]

It's worse than that: the law references birth certificates, so a "package inspection" isn't going to catch people who have had transition surgery. So this means they need to require everyone to carry around a birth certificate and present it when using the restroom, and they need police at every public restroom on government property to check this.

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[lgw]

Needs it for what exactly? You keep asserting that unimproved land has some mystical value, but I'm not seeing it. The majority of such land in the US is owned by the government - local, state, and national parks. There are a few huge private ranches, to be sure, but they're more trophies/status symbols than wealth. There's some unimproved land in the US that's actually rented out, but that's mostly "reverse sharecropping" that more-or-less pays for the property taxes, and again not a source of meaningful income.

Land becomes valuable when you build something useful on it (and not always then).

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[smugfunt]

Needs it for what exactly?

Everyone needs land, if only for a place to stand.

mystical value

Market rental value. It's only zero until someone wants to use it.

Land becomes valuable when you build something useful on it

Or someone else builds something near it.

Re: Doing Trump's work for him

[LynnwoodRooster]

Well, when you consider that the safety net (Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid, welfare, and the interest on the debt racked up) consumes 100% of all Federal revenues - it looks like the Democrats have won.

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[TsuruchiBrian]

They already ARE in desperate situations, as many minimum-wage earners (or even close by in some areas) are beholden to their jobs

I think I already implied that when I said losing their current job would leave them in a *more* desperate situation (i.e. that their situation was already desperate).

US and state federal laws protect some, but for others, they really ARE beholden to their employers, on an inclining scale.

They are certainly dependent on their employers. Whether our society unfairly forces people to be dependent on their employers is another question. But actual slaves are not dependent on their owners, which is why so many slaves tried to escape (i.e. they were much better off without them).

If I go to a third world country and start handing out $1 bills to everyone, those people might come to depend on me. That doesn't mean it is my fault that they only have $1. I am the reason they don't have $0. I am not saying that employers are being charitable, or that they are not sometimes exploitive. I am saying that the employer regardless of how good or bad they are, are providing another option that the workers can refuse if another better opportunity comes along. Actual slaves do not have that option.

Wage slaves are still free to choose the best option out of whatever limited options they have. Even exploitive employers are increasing rather than decreasing those options.

If the foxconn plant in China closes the ratio of labor supply to demand has just increased, driving the price of labor even further down, and those workers will now be forced to work in an even worse plant getting paid even less money.

Work with a few, directly, to understand their concerns, and how they are sucked dry of things like withholdings for uniforms, arcane unpaid travel to sites, and more.

Being a wage slave is different than beign a victim of fraud, even if those 2 things can and often do go together.

The workers in Dubai are probably actually just slaves (rather than just wage slaves). They are victims of fraud. Their contracts are not honored. Their passports are confiscated. They are not allowed to leave. The justice system is rigged against them. They are wage slaves in that they make low wages, but they are not *just* wage slaves.

Slavery doesn't necessarily mean chattel. And the subtleties can be gruesome.

Not anymore. Thanks to "wage slavery", it can also refer to poor people in America making minimum wage.

I think it should be possible to feel empathy for people in a difficult situation, and want to do something to help those people without needing to conflate the situation they are in slavery. At the same time it is important to recognize that there is still actual slavery happening in the world today even if it is not labelled as such.

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[TsuruchiBrian]

Some of those choices were made when these people were still children. It's much harder for a child born into a broken home with no culture of education to break the mold, pull themselves up by their bootstraps, and become a great student. It's not as hard for a child to make good choices when they were born into an affluent family that was able to give them the tools to make good choices.

I think making people accountable for their choices is a good thing when it is actually fostering better choices. When you are holding people accountable for the choices they made as children, and the choices their parents made, especially when those consequences are a primary roadblock to making good decisions, is cruel.

To me this is like punishing people for being obese by withholding healthy food from them.

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[Opportunist]

And if someone cannot provide this, he's supposed to starve to death, I assume?

You are aware that the fraction of people accepting this fate without instead trying to kill you and take what's yours is rather low, yes?

Re: Doing Trump's work for him

[Anonymous Coward]

Derp

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[ooloorie]

And if someone cannot provide this, he's supposed to starve to death, I assume?

Not at all. But if you cannot provide value to your fellow human beings and failed to prepare for that situation (by saving and insurance), you necessarily rely on charity and you logically always lose your freedom to choose.

You are aware that the fraction of people accepting this fate without instead trying to kill you and take what's yours is rather low, yes?

The fraction of people who end up in that situation is exceedingly small in societies in which people understand that the only way to actually have freedom is to contribute value to society and save for a rainy day. Societies where large numbers of people don't understand that end violently no matter what.

Re: Doing Trump's work for him

[c.s.carlson6]

You act like this is an option for everyone. "have insurance and save for a rainy day"?! Many people live paycheck to paycheck. Even if they don't, it's not always just one rainy day they encounter; maybe the saying, "When it rains, it pours." stuck around because life often seems to go that way?

Re: Doing Trump's work for him

[Anonymous Coward]

Your story is bullshit. You've never swung a hammer. One day when your gonads drop and you get out of moms basement you'll see how the real world works.

Re: Doing Trump's work for him

[ooloorie]

You act like this is an option for everyone.

Not at all. There are always people depending for their survival on charity or welfare or "entitlements", sometimes through no fault of their own. That's a given. What AC and I are pointing out is that calling that situation "freedom" is ludicrous. AC called it a "gilded cage", although it's usually not even gilded.

Re: Doing Trump's work for him

[Anonymous Coward]

you accidentally left off seething hatred and blatant racism from your list of conservative core values

Re: Doing Trump's work for him

[Anonymous Coward]

I came here to hear really bad excuses to vote for hillary. You do not disappointed. FYI, Hillary and Trump are the same choice.

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[dbIII]

How the fuck do you mange to keep twisting things like this?

The twist is red tape in the bedrooms from the "freedom" and "small government" party. For added hilarity there's the strange fear of the impossible with worries about Sharia law by the people who are actually trying to enforce something similar with pointless red tape in the bedrooms.
The Republican party was not always like this. People keep on using "1950s values" as an insult but they've actually gone backwards in some ways since then due to a fringe taking things over.

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[sumdumass]

People get angry because despite your good intentions, it actually insults them to some degree as well as most of the time being completely impractical.

An example of impractical is savings. There used to be a bunch of non- practicing financial gurus going around saying if you just put $10 a week in savings that it would be some fortune in 20-30 years due to compound interest. They would use 3% or more for the interest rate and mathematically it was sound. The problem is that unless you already had a lot of savings, you cannot find any savings or investment vehicles paying close to that kind of interest and most of the practical choices (bank account) actually charged you more than the interest they would pay to deal with such a small balance.

Another is go to college. That's easier done when fresh out of highschool before you have to work 2 low paying jobs to get by and support a family. You used to be able to work your way through college but costs now, along with mandatory dorm living for the first year or two has done away with that and with interest rates, you are likely to waste any increased income for the first 20 years paying for the school loans.

It is not just making the right choices, making them at the right time in life is key too.

This is not to say that people do not have the ability to better themselves. They certainly do in most cases. It just isn't always as simple as it seems on paper. When something seems simple and is pointed out to someone else, it gets a bit insulting because they likely already ran into some road block in trying it.

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[sumdumass]

That's really a non point. The people who claimed that land originally are long dead and gone by several generations or more.

Anyone with land today have either paid for it themselves or it has been passed down in inheritance and paid for by taxes to government. Your premise is that it belongs to society. Society already accounts for it via taxes and if you don't pay them, they take it from you.

Re: Doing Trump's work for him

[sumdumass]

He likely did that so he would not appear to be an ignorant twit who has to rely on false accusations to make a point. However, i would like to thank you for coming in and spouting that ignorant crap just to keep the talking points alive.

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[sumdumass]

This bathroom law, just like any other law will only come into play when there is a complaint or obvious infraction which would likely cause a complaint. Birth certificates can have their gender changed in all 50 states so someone actually doing the change are unaffected after the change.

What would happen is someone would complain about some pervert in the bathroom. They would investigate and if in the correct bathroom sent about their way. It is only meant to stop perverts from preying on people in areas they should be safe from this shit.

And yes. .. it has already happened in several places where a pervert claimed to identify as a female in order to get into a women's restroom.

  http://www.dailywire.com/news/...

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[colinwb]

"Most successful people have failed many times before hitting a success." - Avoiding debts by using limited liability or by you or your company declaring bankruptcy is a type of welfare. It may well be that limited liability is necessary to encourage entrepreneurs and limit the consequences of failure, but don't take full advantage of it and then ask the government - and the rest of us who haven't run away from debts - to leave you alone.

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[Immerman]

Unfortunately for your argument, there's not really much evidence that raising the minimum wage causes problems - in fact pretty much everywhere it's been increased we've seen quite the opposite effect. Minimum wage salaries are typically only responsible for a tiny percentage of the cost of the products or services being sold, and the cost of doubling them can easily be passed on to the customer. Meanwhile, doubling the wages of a large fraction of the population considerably increases the size of the customer pool, and thus the available profits for the business.

As for "harming the rights of the employer to operate his business in an equitable manner", what world are you living in? The vast majority of the US economy consists of corporations that have pocketed 99% of all the productivity gains of their employees for the last several decades, while worker wages have remained largely stagnant. That's hardly operating a business in an equitable manner.

If you want to talk about the government immorally imposing demands on society - how about we start with the completely artificial strong property laws that allow a tiny percentage of the population to concentrate the vast bulk of societies wealth into their own hands over the course of generations? Without those laws individuals can only accumulate as much wealth as they can personally defend, insuring a far more equitable wealth distribution. If we're going to have such laws, then we need counterpoint laws to prevent the terrible excesses that they enable.

Re: Doing Trump's work for him

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, the "public" is free to try and "take them back". And we'll be free to defend what is ours. Just for your information, our abilities to defend our property far exceed your abilities to threaten it. We also happen to have powerful allies. All you have is numbers. Numbers that can dwindle very quickly.

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[colinwb]

"There is lots of food just growing out in parks, along trails, and in small streams and creeks. There are people who choose to be homeless and free."

That was a practical option when most people were employed in farming (or, indeed, in hunter-gathering), and you could find some spare land not owned by anyone else. (Or at any rate not owned by anyone you couldn't cheat out of their land.) As you observe there are still some people in modern economies who can live that way. But I suggest that in, for example, the UK or the USA that life style can only sustain relatively few people, and that if large numbers of people tried it now there would be widescale failure of resources and/or fighting over scarce resources. See the posts above by ultranova and Christopher C.

Re: Doing Trump's work for him

[pchasco]

Sorry. I actually meant to type "WOULDN'T," as in they would certainly outlaw it if they could.

Re: Doing Trump's work for him

[pchasco]

I disagree. It is my government which has conflated two somewhat disparate ideas into one. When a person goes to a chapel and swears before God that he will love, honor, etc., that is a religious ceremony. When you get a marriage license, combine your assets, joint-file taxes and all that other business, that is the contractual marriage. Government has decided that legal marriage is necessarily constrained by The tenets of a certain subset of Christian versions of holy matrimony. Government should get completely out of the "marriage" business and offer only civil unions regardless of the sex of the two entering into the agreement.

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[Opportunist]

I love your kind. On one hand expect everyone to "save and have an insurance", on the other hand you're fine with paying people barely enough to get by.

The only reason you allowed slavery to be abolished is that it is more expensive to feed and shelter slaves than what you have to pay now.

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[smugfunt]

That's really a non point.

Many people these days are trying to figure out exactly how the elite are screwing them over. The private monopolisation of land and natural resources is one of the ways. It makes no difference that today's landlords are not the original expropriators, they are still extracting unearned income from the nation.

Society already accounts for it via taxes and if you don't pay them, they take it from you.

It depends where you live. The landlords always try to use their considerable political clout to move taxation off land and onto labour. The entire rental value of the unimproved land should be taxed. Not many places do that.

Re: Doing Trump's work for him

[colinwb]

Ted Cruz didn't got booed off the stage of the Republican convention because the audience disliked his politics: it was because - for the reasons Cruz gave - he wasn't going to endorse Trump as the Republican candidate. I'll grant you that if there was a popularity contest in the Senate, Cruz would probably be in the 101st position.

Disclaimer: that's the first - and probably the last - time I've defended Ted Cruz. If I lived in the US and my only choice was to vote for Ted Cruz or Donald Trump, I'd probably go to the nearest desert and stick my head in the sand. As it happens, I live in the UK, and we have our own problems with political clowns and demagogues. It's interesting that Donald Trump's former campaign manager had such a low opinion of Trump's supporters that he thought they'd have problems understanding words like "demagogue" and "denominator". And that he has sufficent science expertise to be able to call Stephen Hawking a "so-called genius".

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[sumdumass]

Property taxes were one of the first taxes in the U.S. .over the years, even at lower values, more taxes than the current value of the land would have been paid. I'm not sure it is important to distinguish between the rental value in this regard. Government generally exempts itself from its own property taxes but they don't give land away any more.

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[pagedout]

I am not sure I follow you.

People get angry because that is what they have been told they are supposed to do. Despite deplorable conditions peasants in medieval settings were not as unhappy as you would think they should be...
http://www.voxeu.org/article/h...

As for being insulted that is not any of my concern. If you find your life in a deplorable state and you find someone offering suggestions as insulting then you are probably not motivated enough to fix your life so all I can say is that I am sorry I caused you pain by helping you see your options. Please move your bitching into the worthless Empathy Line to the left and we we know not to help out any more.

The $10 a week at 3% thing is pretty bad advice on face and I can only presume only the mathematically challenged would buy into it. That is like $520 saved a year or $15,600 over 30. To parley that into riches would take Hillary style luck (read corruption). So the whole thing is stupid on face.

That being said your, 'no investments for the poor person' line just just as silly. A quick search of the internet shows banks in my area offering things like 'rewards checking' that (comes with a couple minor stipulations like having direct deposit set up) but offer in the 2%-3% range on up to some mid-level amount of cash ($10,000-$20,000). That should easily get you started.

As for collage I love how you mix 'got myself into bad financial straights' with collage is unfavorable. Yes, if you have already got yourself in a hole anything you do will (at least temporarily) make the whole deeper. What you should be doing is looking for things that might make it worse in the short term but have long term payouts.

Looking again at my local area a 2 year community collage degree is about $6k. Many of them transfer to my local 'real' collage and are equivalent of the first two years of a four year degree (I know as this is what I did). So if you haven't already dug yourself into a hole this is really not that bad. If you have dug yourself into a hole then you look into loans, grants, or companies that offer tuition help to employees.

Again just in my local area a 2 year degree is good for some low level technical job. Probably talking $25k-$35k for a helpdesk/operations position. Most of these companies with cover some tuition reimbursement so if you want to do better the $21k (and two more years) to get a BS isn't that hard.

Yes, you are talking about 2-4 years of hard work and little leisure time. That being said compared to work even 100 years ago it really isn't 'hard' work.

Now, I know there are other paths. If you are fit and/or good with dirty jobs I have a friend who swears by sanitation worker positions. I have a relative who has done really well using the military as a stepping stone to being a mechanic. There are a million ways to success but all of them take some discipline.

Your 'right time' argument is true but doesn't look at the whole picture. Life is compound. Every good thing you do makes your life easier, every bad thing makes it harder. So the sooner you make good choices the better off you will be.

As for the 'road blocks' I can only be insulting and channel Yoda 'There is no try, there is only dew.' or wait was that a commercial... Seriously don't buy into the anger and hopelessness. Remember in the richest country in the world 10% of those born into the lowest 20% of earners makes their way to the highest 20% of earners. Your life is yours to make better!

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[smugfunt]

Property taxes were one of the first taxes in the U.S.

In the early days property was one of the few sources of wealth. Only property owners were worth taxing.
Property taxes have several desirable characteristics: they are hard to evade, they cannot be shifted onto others, they are fairly easy to assess and they are fairly constant. If they are high enough they discourage speculation and hoarding. They keep land prices affordable and they encourage wide ownership and development.

over the years, even at lower values, more taxes than the current value of the land would have been paid. I'm not sure it is important to distinguish between the rental value in this regard.

The sale value largely depends on the rental value. The rental value depends not only on the land itself but on its surroundings. Improvements to the surroundings made by the community increase the rental value of the land through no effort of the landowner. That increment rightly belongs to the community.

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[sumdumass]

Nonsense. If the value of land increases, it belongs to the current owner. The rental value has less impact than the use value. For instance farmland valued at commercial real estate values can make taxing costs more than production revenue. This is important because you can build a factory almost anywhere but you cannot go without food or the products agriculture supports.

Seeing how property taxes are generally a percentage of value, it is already accounted for in the assessment. The assessment happens anytime the property is sold, when it's zoning use is changed, or biannualy in my area whichever comes first.

The land is still paid for and not free. It is not important to distinguish these differences.

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[sumdumass]

I'm positive you don't follow. You also cannot find a simple compound interest calculator either. $10 a week at 3% is closer to $25k.

And check those 2-3% checking accounts and you will find a minimum balance requirement that most paycheck to paycheck people will not be able to keep. But go ahead and live in your half the information world telling people how to live their lives and not figure out why they get pissed at you.

As for your college response, i have to ask if you actually read anything i said? It seems like you ignored all of it in order to push some point i already discounted. Perhaps that is why people get pissed at you.

I did not say going into debt was the problem. I said later in life, you have responsibilities other than just yourself and when you are already working two jobs to raise a family, it can be impossible to take the time to go to school. There are only 168 hours in a week. When 80 or more are taken up working, getting to work, and getting ready for work, you don't have much time left for school even if you happen to be lucky enough that classes are available when you are not at work. But go ahead and suggest their kids can starve or live on the street because you declared that they can quit a job and go into debt for school. While your at it, see if they were told to act pissed off when you declare they can better their life. Oh, and BTW . I worked through college back in the 90s when you still could. I was in debt to the tune of only $5k in student loans (because I wanted a motorcycle) when I graduated.

People can work their way outb of these situations but it just isn't as simple as you want to make it seem. People do compound their problems all the time. Often by the time they realize it and want to make a change, it is extremely more difficultto do. If you are single and in your 20s, it is a lot easier than someone with kids working two jobs paycheck to paycheck.

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[smugfunt]

I think you've drifted into confusion between the rental value and the sale value, also the unimproved value and the improved value. Property taxes are generally assessed on the sale value which includes improvements.

I am saying that a landowner should, in effect, rent the land from the community at its market rate as unimproved land. If he makes improvements that should not affect the 'ground rent'.
If he sells it with improvements, for more than he bought it for, he can keep the profit. He earned it.
If the community builds a city round it and rezones it as suitable for millionaires' mansions, that should affect the ground rent.
That may mean it is no longer viable as cattle pasture (or whatever) in which case the owner can either build mansions or sell it to a mansion builder.
If he sells, should he keep the profit? He didn't really earn it, it was created by the community. But the community is recovering the additional value through the increased ground rent, so perhaps we can consider the profit as compensation for having to move.

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[sumdumass]

Property taxes are assessed at the value if sold today at the time of the assessment. All improvements and other values including rental if any will be covered in that valuation.

You do not own anything if you are renting it. It is absurd to think otherwise. But the city or jurisdiction gets more by assessing based on the sale value. If they build a mall or upscale restaurant near it and the value increases, it will be reflected in the next assessment and the community benefits. Everything you are trying to accomplish is already accounted for.

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[smugfunt]

You do not own anything if you are renting it. It is absurd to think otherwise.

It depends what is meant by 'own' of course. If you can dispose of something as you want and prevent others from using it you 'own' it even if those rights are conferred by a contract with the community rather than by a promise from God or the strength of your arm. You said yourself if you stop paying your tax they will take your land.

Everything you are trying to accomplish is already accounted for.

Some jurisdictions come close I suppose but what I am proposing (the idea comes primarily from Henry George if you missed it) is less a material change than a different way of thinking about it, which can lead to a better way of doing it.

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[pagedout]

First your comprehension is a bit rusty. I claimed nothing about what the compound interest would be other than to take the $15k that you actually saved and turn it into anything substantial in 30 years would take luck that is... suspect. I figured anyone could run some math an see where it could take them. Obviously I was wrong so lets start with a goal. Figure your goal is to buy a house worth $150,000 in 30 years. Saving $10 a week means you would need a >12% annually compounded interest rate every year to make it. This is obviously silly, unless you have some connection somewhere (read illicit dealings) you can get 2%-7% pretty reliably. Anything more appears to be luck (ya sure), and soon followed by the other kind of luck that wipes you out.

I will not 'slashdot' any of my local banks but I can tell you that I have an account with a $5 minimum, no fees (if you take e-statements), and if I have set up auto-deposit, and use my debit card a few times a month I get 2-3% on up to $15,000. This was attractive when I was a starving collage kid and its still attractive now that I am doing better. So they exist I would suggest looking around your local banks to see what they offer.

Yes, if someone has no money that is not locked down they have no options in regards to savings. If this is the case why would you even care what interest rates you could get as they won't do you any good. This sounds more like parroting someones talking points then real concerns. If this is your situation the name of the game then is reduction of costs and short-term boosts in earnings. If someone can put back $10 a week it would help them weather emergencies better and that is far more important than getting interest on a bank account anyway (3% interest earned isn't anything compared to your >15% interest you will pay on the credit card you use to bail your ass out of a jam).

Yes, I read your collage rant. Yes I responded to parts of it by telling you how people can succeed. Yes, everything is easier when you haven't dug yourself into a hole (hmm.. prety sure I already said that). Few holes are bigger than caring for another life for 18 years. You discount that collage is doable while looking out from the bottom of a large debt (what having kids should be considered). If you haven't made some really bad choices you can work your way through collage, I did, recently. So in general yes, collage is good and affordable if you are willing to work for it. If you are 70 years old with a mountain of dept then collage wont help you a bit.

Yes, I read your post more than once. Perhaps you should consider that you discount advice too rapidly and respond like your case is the general case everyone runs into. You move into attacking people because they are unable to provide you with magic faerie dust that fixes your particular situation. People get pissed at me because I don't offer the worthless 'you did all you could' crap that is so common now. My friends bring real financial concerns to me and we talk about strategies of dealing with them. They don't come to me for a shoulder to cry on, that would be my wife's department. Empathy is for end of life situations and breakups. Everything else deserves careful consideration and an action plan.

Other points
- Mandatory dorms - read about community collages, no dorms, cheep
- Interest rates - don't take loans unless you really have to
- Interest on 20 years of school loans - This I didn't touch as it seemed obvious. Get a decent degree when you have few costs, it shouldn't be that expensive. Even if you had to take loans to cover the whole cost your talking sub $30k. Increase in earnings should cover this in a few years. Pay it off BEFORE you increase your life style. Get a degree in something desired, not basket weaving.

Perhaps people get tired of trying to help because suggestions to a general problem are always shot down with specifics from someone who has already spent a large portion of their life getting themselves into trouble. The base suggestion

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[Anonymous Coward]

Now you've got me worrying, could I have the wrong bathrooms installed in my house? Because both my wife, who has ladyparts, and me, who has manparts, use the same bathrooms and hadn't noticed before.

Or could it be you and the GP are in some way wrong in thinking that toilets are incapable of being used in a unisex fashion?

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[Anonymous Coward]

Note that all these people in your article are already subject to existing laws. So what was the point of this one? What does it criminalize? Strange, your lips are saying "predators" and what's coming out is "transgender people". You should take that show on the road...

Re:Doing Trump's work for him

[Agripa]

They are only slaves to the choices they freely made. Ranging from where they live, what they did to educate themselves and how far they are willing to travel to get a job that isn't at the neighborhood Burger King.

You left out their choice of who their parents are.

Re: Doing Trump's work for him

[Anonymous Coward]

I haven't swung a hammer in many years (since I was in college), and that's not what I'm contracted to do. There are many kinds of contractors. I happen to be an application integration specialist.

Re: Doing Trump's work for him

[Anonymous Coward]

Your argument ignores the fact that a high minimum wage is just another barrier to entry for those small and/or new businesses that don't necessarily benefit from the increased customer spending power. Most of that money will be spent in big box stores and big sites who can afford to keep their prices low. Anyone competing with Amazon (especially in California) will find it harder to stay in business.

The "vast majority" that control the productivity benefit far more from minimum wage increases than anyone else does.

Re: Doing Trump's work for him

[Immerman]

Are you seriously arguing that having a populous that can afford your products is an impediment to small businesses? And obviously the majority of the benefit goes to the majority stakeholders in the economy - the majority benefit of *any* economic growth goes to them - anything that helps people, and doesn't specifically exclude or disadvantage them, will tend to benefit them most.

Yes, it does make for some additional difficulty for startups, but the alternative (baring direct income assistance) is to say that the most disadvantaged people should continue to be required to work 60-80 hours per week to have any chance of getting ahead. Because that's the reality of the current situation.

The Hillary

[Anonymous Coward]

Is on the loose! Run to TRUMP!

This confirms my previous speculation

[damn_registrars]

When Assange previously was given front-page status on slashdot for having a cache of Hillary emails to release, I said I figured he was going to do it to help Bernie Sanders win the election. After all, if Hillary were to actually fall out somehow before November, Sanders would be the only choice the party could present. Being as every poll that ever asked voters about Sanders vs Trump showed Sanders completely wiping the floor with Trump, this strongly suggests that Assange has a favorite here.

Re:This confirms my previous speculation

[Anonymous Coward]

Assange just wants to stir shit up to get publicity. I doubt he cares what shit he stirs, as long as people pay attention.

Re:This confirms my previous speculation

[im_thatoneguy]

this strongly suggests that Assange has a favorite here.

Trump?

Re:This confirms my previous speculation

[quantaman]

When Assange previously was given front-page status on slashdot for having a cache of Hillary emails to release, I said I figured he was going to do it to help Bernie Sanders win the election. After all, if Hillary were to actually fall out somehow before November, Sanders would be the only choice the party could present. Being as every poll that ever asked voters about Sanders vs Trump showed Sanders completely wiping the floor with Trump, this strongly suggests that Assange has a favorite here.

There's a lot of emails. Assange was probably just taking time to review the material and figure out how to release it.

I don't know what Assange's political views are but I doubt that's a huge factor here. If someone gives him a big dump of emails from a major organization he's gonna publish them with maximum publicity.

Re:This confirms my previous speculation

[Anonymous Coward]

More like Assange hates America, and he believes that Trump will do more harm than anyone else.

Re:This confirms my previous speculation

[cdrudge]

Assange was probably just taking time to review the material and figure out how to release it.

Why would he need to review it to know how to release it? If you're ultimately going to dump the data, just dump it and let the people read it for themselves. Don't pre-filter it or spin it one way or another.

Re:This confirms my previous speculation

[Penguinisto]

It won't matter, if the sheer number of "Bernie" bumper stickers replaced by "Clinton" bumper stickers here in Portland is any indication (most within the same effing week).

The dubious beauty of partisan politics is that for partisans, the people are almost interchangeable, and they'll hold their nose and vote for anyone - as long as the candidate they've been told to fear doesn't win.

I do wonder though if my father-in-law got intellectual whiplash when he went from Facebook postings of "Hillary is a corrupt wall street hack - vote Bernie!" to "But Hillary is honest and has integrity!" within less than a week.

Re:This confirms my previous speculation

[quantaman]

Assange was probably just taking time to review the material and figure out how to release it.

Why would he need to review it to know how to release it? If you're ultimately going to dump the data, just dump it and let the people read it for themselves. Don't pre-filter it or spin it one way or another.

There might be sensitive or personal information that he doesn't think should be made public or there might be bombshells that he wants to specifically advertise.

Re:This confirms my previous speculation

[Altus]

yeah, but these days the plurality of people are independents and not actually democrats or republicans. A fact that both parties like to ignore.

The 2 party system is a joke

Re:This confirms my previous speculation

[Anonymous Coward]

Trump will completely wipe the floor no matter if he's going up against Bernie or Hillary.

Re:This confirms my previous speculation

[TsuruchiBrian]

Assange already got in trouble for carelessly releasing material that endangered people's lives. So I would hope he at least skim the material to make sure there wasn't any information that would potential get anyone killed shortly upon release (i.e. like outing embedded spies, etc). Now normally onemight assume that no sensitive subjects like this could be found in "normal" email traffic, but given the circumstances, I think he should still check.

Re:This confirms my previous speculation

[GrumpySteen]

these days the plurality of people are independents and not actually democrats or republicans. A fact that both parties like to ignore.

Not even close. The majority of people are fairly consistent in voting either Democrat or Republican. The concept of gerrymandering wouldn't exist and wouldn't work if most people were actually independent and voted along anything other than party lines.

Re:This confirms my previous speculation

[Anonymous Coward]

you aren't wrong here, but the leap from Bernie support to Hilary support is far less than from Bernie to Trump. I've seen a lot of people jumping on the Jill Stein train.

Not quite on topic, but when did it become a sin to change your beliefs?

Re:This confirms my previous speculation

[GameboyRMH]

That's IF there's a bombshell in there that's sure to ruin Hillary. If it's just mundane stuff (my bet), it will only hurt Hillary (who would now have to deal with "Climategate"-style hyper-scrutiny over every little comment that can be framed as remotely incriminating) and help Trump. Worst of all would be if there's something bad in there but not bad enough to hand Sanders the nomination, that could threaten to hand Trump the win over Hillary.

If there is a bombshell you'd be right.

I think Assange knows better than to help Trump, the only question is if the blood has drained from the higher-functioning parts of his brain because his ego has a boner.

Re:This confirms my previous speculation

[Anonymous Coward]

But that's not what I see in my echo chamber! Everyone I know votes on the issues, not the party! No one likes the major candidates except for one whacko! My anecdotal experience means more than actual evidence!

Re:This confirms my previous speculation

[Mariner28]

These are DNC emails, not State Department. Unless there's talk about sending burglars to the RNC national headquarters to steal documents (where'd we hear that before?), I don't think anyone's going to get killed over these. But then again, there's all those right-wingnut conspiracies about people Hillary and Bill had killed over the years... ;-)

Re:This confirms my previous speculation

[phantomfive]

The concept of gerrymandering wouldn't exist and wouldn't work if most people were actually independent and voted along anything other than party lines.

That's a really good point.

Re:This confirms my previous speculation

[Anonymous Coward]

The population has been doing half the work of gerrymandering anyways. We've been moving to places that conform to our political preferences for years now.

Re:This confirms my previous speculation

[Rei]

Indeed, he's hardly made a secret of it. Assange is anti-abortion, pro-Paulite, anti-NATO, pro-Putin, pro-Assad, anti-EU, and disturbingly comfortable around white supremecists. Why on Earth wouldn't he support Trump over Clinton?

Re:This confirms my previous speculation

[damn_registrars]

Worst of all would be if there's something bad in there but not bad enough to hand Sanders the nomination, that could threaten to hand Trump the win over Hillary.

I have a hard time imagining many voters who are on the fence between Trump and Hillary at this point. If the results are bad - though not bad enough to drive Hillary out of the race - I could expect it to maybe drive some people who would vote for her to vote third party instead. It doesn't seem real likely that such people would occur in large enough numbers in battleground states to flip the election to Trump, though.

Re:This confirms my previous speculation

[Fwipp]

Just a couple days ago Wikileaks was decrying Twitter's for banning professional shit-thrower Milo.

I think Wikileaks was noble-intentioned for about ten minutes. Then Assange went off the deep end and it became yet another haven for white supremacist libertarians.

Re: This confirms my previous speculation

[Anonymous Coward]

That banning was bullshit. Milo is right about a lot of stuff.

Re:This confirms my previous speculation

[Anonymous Coward]

> I don't know what Assange's political views are

He grew up as a feral in Australia, so he would probably tend towards the left wing. Which makes me wonder if he's got anything on Trump.

Re:This confirms my previous speculation

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you don't realize just how far down the rabbit hole this goes.

There is no Assange. He is a fiction, created by a small clique that owns all the media, used as controlled opposition.

Trump is indeed the manchurian candidate, but if you think racism is the biggest problem in the world and the reason we don't have heaven on earth, you're too stupid to understand the game that is being played.

Re:This confirms my previous speculation

[MachineShedFred]

It's almost shocking that the electorate in Portland would shift from the most liberal candidate (full stop) to the most liberal remaining viable candidate without a single thought of hypocrisy.

No, wait, that's exactly what Portland always does.

Re:This confirms my previous speculation

[Anonymous Coward]

The most divisive anti-Hillary agitprop never really came from the Bernie faction, it was spewed out by the RNC in hopes of splitting the Dem vote

Kinda ironic considering how fractured the republican party is these days

Re:This confirms my previous speculation

[Tranzistors]

So, what should Bernie fans do? Skip voting? Vote for other candidate they didn't support in the first place? Since Bernie endorsed Hillary, it would make sense to change the stickers even if it is non-partisan move.

Re:This confirms my previous speculation

[Anonymous Coward]

I am not sure if you can be both a libertarian and a supremacist at the same time.

Re:This confirms my previous speculation

[Anonymous Coward]

Write "Sanders" on the ballot? I know, I know, too much effort.

Re:This confirms my previous speculation

[ScentCone]

There might be sensitive or personal information that he doesn't think should be made public

Since when has that stopped him?

The ONLY consideration on his part is whether he's got his hands on something he can personally leverage to improve his own situation and stick himself back into public focus.

Re:This confirms my previous speculation

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're not to the left of Chairman Mao, you're Hitler!

Re:This confirms my previous speculation

[Dare nMc]

It is really bad etiquette to DOC innocent people. IE you should at least make sure their are not home addresses, SSN, phone numbers, credit card numbers, etc before you release. It would also be polite to remove innocent but embarrassing details: things like sickness, illness, VD's, victims names of things like rape, phishing...

Re:This confirms my previous speculation

[Anonymous Coward]

Bernie fans should indeed skip voting until they learn how to think critically.

Re:This confirms my previous speculation

[mister_playboy]

Correct, and that constitute strong proof that no one, not even liberals, actually enjoys "diversity".

Home is where you don't have to explain yourself.

Re:This confirms my previous speculation

[TsuruchiBrian]

I'm not saying I expect to find any dangerous emails. I'm just saying it makes sense to check before leaking.

Re:This confirms my previous speculation

[Anonymous Coward]

So anything else to back that up other than the word of the little man that lives behind your closet door?

Re:This confirms my previous speculation

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree, Assange is just an annoying little prat.

I mostly don't care that the world is corrupt and imperfect. Everyone is on some level or another, including me.

Re:This confirms my previous speculation

[bug1]

Wikileaks release new material to aid transparency in one of the most polarizing elections the US has faced in a long time.
People ignore the material and focus on the motives of Assange, whilst complaining about Assange getting all the attention.

Part of the problem...

Re:This confirms my previous speculation

[phantomfive]

anti-abortion.......pro-Putin

Really?? (overall he's kind of a weird mix, tbh)

Re:This confirms my previous speculation

[Anonymous Coward]

You clearly run in a different crowd than I do, because of the Bernie supporters I know only about half are even voting Hillary, and none of them have anything positive to say about it.

Re:This confirms my previous speculation

[phantomfive]

Home is where you don't have to explain yourself.

Interesting thought.

Re:This confirms my previous speculation

[Anonymous Coward]

It's almost shocking that the electorate in Portland would shift from the most liberal candidate (full stop) to the most liberal remaining viable candidate without a single thought of hypocrisy.

No, wait, that's exactly what Portland always does.

Neither Bernie Sanders nor Hillary Clinton are liberal. Unless of course, you mean the new-Orwellian-Liberal-that-actually-means-the-opposite-of-Liberal, liberal.

One is a self-proclaimed Socialist, and other is corporatist. Both lean pretty far from classic liberalism.

Re:This confirms my previous speculation

[Fwipp]

What, your google's broken? https://twitter.com/wikileaks/...

Re:This confirms my previous speculation

[Fwipp]

Maybe not, but they certainly identify as libertarians, and they're definitely white supremacists.

Re: This confirms my previous speculation

[Fwipp]

You can be right about 99% of the things in the world and still be a total asshole and a terrible human being.

But really, if you think he was right about any of the stuff he got banned for... you're too far gone to listen to anything I'll say.

Re:This confirms my previous speculation

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, cause members of the DNC would never have classified emails mixed in with personal shit, right?

Re:This confirms my previous speculation

[dbIII]

It's a fairly safe bet that Hillary herself was behind the molehill into a mountain situation that has Assange hiding in an embassy toilet in fear of rendition to the US.

Re:This confirms my previous speculation

[dbIII]

Wikileaks has never been about support it's been about leaking incriminating material, which is why Assange has been hiding in an embassy toilet in fear of rendition to the US since back when Hillary would have been the one to give that order.

Re:This confirms my previous speculation

[SuricouRaven]

Given that Assange's freedom is dependent upon maintaining Putin's good will, it's hardly surprising he is pro-Putin. He risked everything to expose one corrupt government, do you think he'd support another? It's just an act to keep his host appeased.

Re:This confirms my previous speculation

[dbIII]

yeah, but these days the plurality of people are independents and not actually democrats or republicans. A fact that both parties like to ignore.

The 2 party system is a joke

So much so that a speech by Obama's wife only needs the word "dignity" to be removed to work perfectly when used by Trump's wife :)

Re:This confirms my previous speculation

[SuricouRaven]

It's supposed to be all DNC, but people do misuse email - they use their personal account for work, their work account for personal, and in politicians case their office account for politics and vice versa. Hillary has been the latest scandal of that nature, conducting government business using a personal email account, but she isn't the first politician to be caught doing that - and she escaped prosecution because it's something so commonplace that any prosecution of her would only be driven for political reasons. Everyone does it.

Re:This confirms my previous speculation

[Anonymous Coward]

Most states don't count write-ins unless the candidate registered there ahead of time.

Re:This confirms my previous speculation

[serbanp]

Don't you hate the moment you click the "Submit" button only to figure out what a stupid comment you just posted?

Despite having a few traits in common (they're both men, born on their respective birthday, and had been involved with disclosing secret stuff), Assange and Snowden are two different persons. If anything, Assange should be dependent upon maintaining President Correa's goodwill.

Re:This confirms my previous speculation

[shutdown -p now]

This sort of thing won't make anyone switch from Hillary to Trump (or vice versa). But the main danger isn't third parties - it's people simply not showing up to vote, because of disillusionment.

Re:This confirms my previous speculation

[SuricouRaven]

Almost: It actually took me about three minutes (estimate) to realise my mistake, when I saw Snowden's name in another comment and thought 'oh... that's the other guy.'

Being fair to me, it is easy to them up, as they are both well-known for somewhat similar acts, and both have fled their home countries to escape arrest.

Re:This confirms my previous speculation

[damn_registrars]

Sure, although I suspect that for both parties the bigger driving force for the vote is the fear of the other candidate winning. A President Drumpf would likely be disastrously bad for me. From the other side there is nothing that stirs up anger from the GOP as much as the name Clinton.

Re:This confirms my previous speculation

[shutdown -p now]

Personally, I agree. But I know too many people who are willing to take the risk of Trump just to stick a finger to Clinton and DNC. I think it's foolish, but nevertheless, if there are enough of them, it may just add up.

Of course, the other side has a similar problem. Which is why I think that it's basically a contest of who can motivate more to show up to vote against the other guy. And given the potential consequences, I'd rather not take chances, even when small quantities of votes are at stake. Brexit should be a lesson to us all.

Re:This confirms my previous speculation

[starbird56]

Reminds me of Pelosi: “But we have to pass the bill so you can find out what is in it..."

Re:This confirms my previous speculation

[quantaman]

Reminds me of Pelosi: “But we have to pass the bill so you can find out what is in it..."

It reminds you of quote-mining?

Re:This confirms my previous speculation

[MachineShedFred]

Good job arguing with something that nobody said.

I said that both of them were the most liberal viable candidate at the time they were still running. Which is still true, unless you somehow think that Trump is going to enact more progressive / liberal policy than Clinton would.

Re:This confirms my previous speculation

[jwhitener]

Correct, and that constitute strong proof that no one, not even liberals, actually enjoys "diversity".

Home is where you don't have to explain yourself.

Home is where I don't have to listen to lies, it has nothing to do with diversity. Someone who believes the Earth is 5,000 years old isn't going to add value to my life with meaningful debate.

And liberal blue areas are WAY more diverse than red areas. I've lived in both. My red rural life was 100% white people, the vast majority of whom were conservative. In my current urban blue area, I work with dozens of different races, ethnicities, and countries of origin. Our work even has things like "diversity day" where we learn about different cultures. I highly doubt any red area workplace has something similar.

Believing in something with no proof (or disbelieving in something that has lots of evidence supporting it) doesn't qualify you as having just a "different way of thinking, equally valid to others".

(just wrote small novel... not worth it, deleted the rest).

Talk about trolling

[Anonymous Coward]

This is about the DNC, may be about Hillary, but she never sent them. Hillary might be slimy and rotten as the DNC but really she isn't the one orchestrating them.

Re:Talk about trolling

[Anonymous Coward]

If you would read some of the emails, she and the DNC were walking hand-in-hand. Who is orchestrating whom isn't exactly clear at this point.

Re:Talk about trolling

[Anonymous Coward]

Bullshit, Hillary is DEEPLY connected with all the decision makers in the DNC. Debbie Wasserman Schultz was formerly Hillary's campaign manager in 2008, her brother is Vice President of NGP VAN (with the president also actively campaigning for Hillary), and these leaks contain a lot of strong evidence about all the ways the DNC has conspired against Senator Sanders and expressed their contempt for everyone that competes with or opposes Hillary.

Anything incriminating?

[LichtSpektren]

It's not a secret that Clinton is a rather vile person, so whatever rude and dirty things she says to other Democrats is of no consequence.

The question is, is there anything in there that's incriminating? If not, it doesn't really matter.

Re:Anything incriminating?

[schnell]

I was going to ask the same thing. To be a "whistleblower" organization (as described in the summary) is to call attention to illegal activities that have been suppressed. If there is no evidence of wrongdoing here, all Wikileaks is doing is violating people's privacy. While it might be interesting to read the internal e-mails of politicians, executives or celebrities, if there is nothing illegal going on then it's ultimately just voyeurism that doesn't justify distribution from a dodgily (probably illegally) obtained source.

Re:Anything incriminating?

[dpidcoe]

The question is, is there anything in there that's incriminating? If not, it doesn't really matter.

This would imply that it matters even if it is incriminating, something that a brief examination of the history of the Clintons calls into question.

Re:Anything incriminating?

[Anonymous Coward]

The left fucking loves FOIA, Wikileaks, etc...

Until it can be used against them. Then it's just "violating privacy".

Re:Anything incriminating?

[jellomizer]

For the most part that is all what Wikileaks seems to do.
Nothing really surprising, unless you are really naive about the world.

Should I be shocked that the Publicly the Civilian casualties count was lower than the actual?
Should I be shocked that a Military which is volunteer and not extremely selective and their ages are in the late teens and early 20's would have a bunch of people who will act less than professionally and cause trouble?

So why should I be shocked to find that When she is running for a position she is working with strategies to counteract her opponent?

Perhaps they should leak my email to find out that I spend a lot of time explaining my work and trying to avoid getting yelled at for the users mistakes?

Re:Anything incriminating?

[future assassin]

> Wikileaks is doing is violating people's privacy.

Well that would be true if the powers that be never stated, If you got nothing to hide... Unless Citizen Prime has more protection/freedom under the law then Citizen Common.

Re:Anything incriminating?

[Teun]

In established US politics there is no left.

Re:Anything incriminating?

[squiggleslash]

Dunno, I went through them, and the only emails I saw that looked kinda shady were between her and an apparent long time friend with a pseudonym of "yugedeal@hotmail.com" where she appeared to be orchestrating some attempt to hijack the Republican nomination by having her friend win the nomination. Apparently "Yugedeal" would spout a lot of the kinda racist, sexist, what-liberals-think-Republicans-like crap before the nomination, insulting most of the party's big wigs (leaving them in disarray) while attracting support from the grassroots, and then reveal it was all a hoax the day before the election.

Not sure what came of the plan. The last email in the thread was just a "Good luck today Don!" sent June 16, 2015. I assume from the silence since that nothing came of it.

Re:Anything incriminating?

[Anonymous Coward]

If "Guccifer 2.0" had anything interesting to release as a result of the hack, they'd have done it by now for the notoriety. This is like one of these Anonymous "splinter" groups who flail for attention on IRC, then failing to get it decide to break one inconsequential hack up into several inconsequential, but heavily-hyped news releases... Throw in a few bold claims, we'll take down this entire CDN, that entire network for 24 hours. Post it on Slashdot because they'll post any garbage at this point, post it a few places people actually read as well.

Guccifer has nothing of interest to offer to the debate, to the public interest or even to Slashdot's bog/blog roll. All they have is a bunch of lame e-mails from lame politicians. Nothing of consequence, just boring people talking about each other and themselves.

Re:Anything incriminating?

[Anonymous Coward]

The DNC is supposed to treat candidates equally until nomination. This data implies Sanders was thrown in as a patsy and says directly the DNC did everything possible to run him out of town during the primaries since he wasn't getting steam rolled--very AGAINST what the DNC should have been doing.

FYSA: I think Sanders is almost as nuts as Trump. That still doesn't excuse this.

Re:Anything incriminating?

[Grishnakh]

Hey, don't lump everyone together. There's plenty of leftists who are all in favor of FOIA, Wikileaks, etc., and still think Hillary is a corrupt sell-out. It's really the establishment-lovers who defend her.

Just like "the right" has several different camps, with some overlap (the Evangelicals, the Big Business lovers, the Tea Partiers, the economic libertarians, etc.), and sometimes these groups are opposed, leading to Trump's nomination for example, "the left" also has several different camps, with some overlap: the environmentalists, the SJWs, the radical feminists, the Big Business lovers (but they love different big businesses than those on the right), the union supporters, the equal rights supporters, etc. Hillary vs. Bernie (just like everyone vs. Trump on the right) has exposed a huge schism on the left. True Bernie supporters and other actual leftists (not Hillary-loving centrists) and anti-establishment folks are all in favor of this stuff; it's only the establishment people who are going to call this "violating privacy". These DNC high-ups are greatly affecting our politics, and quite likely choosing our next leader, so we have every right to read their emails. Even more so when you consider that these very same people are big proponents of the NSA spying on us; turnabout is fair play.

Re:Anything incriminating?

[Nikkos]

Left and Right are always relative to each other.

Don't you Euros have other things to worry about these days?

Re:Anything incriminating?

[im_thatoneguy]

it's only the establishment people who are going to call this "violating privacy".

So it would be a good use of the NSA's infrastructure to spy on Trump's campaign? I guess call me a corporate establishment shill but that sounds pretty sketchy.

Re:Anything incriminating?

[Orgasmatron]

Wrongdoing is not a synonym for illegal, and whistleblowers often reveal things that, while technically legal, are disgusting and wrong.

Re:Anything incriminating?

[Orgasmatron]

Think wider.

The Democratic National Committee is an organization of and for the Democratic Party (aka, the voters), and should be neutral until the party members have selected their candidate. I think a lot of Sanders supporters are going to be disgusted to see how "their" party plotted and schemed to defeat their candidate, and also how "their" party stole their money and handed it to Hillary. Well, now that Bernie has ripped his mask off, I'm not so sure. But they should be pissed.

Also, did you see how the allegedly objective and neutral news organizations colluded with Hillary? I didn't think it was possible for the approval ratings of the mainstream media to get any lower, but they are working hard to shed those last few percent.

How about the soft bribery of the delegates going on? Think any of them are going to have some explaining to do after this?

Re:Anything incriminating?

[Anonymous Coward]

> Wikileaks is doing is violating people's privacy.

Well that would be true if the powers that be never stated, If you got nothing to hide... Unless Citizen Prime has more protection/freedom under the law then Citizen Common.

A right of privacy is inferred in our bill of rights. (Protection from unauthorized searches and seizures.) Sure we regularly ignore it, when the 'papers' are stored in someone else's digital location, but the right is there (and shouldn't be ignored.)

The purpose of the exception is so that, upon probable cause, a warrant can be issues to attempt to find evidence for the prosecution of a crime.

The hacker/wikileaks
1) were not duly elected judges/representatives
2) had no probable cause
3) found nothing (afaik)

In this case this is just violating privacy. Now if they found evidence of illegal or at least immoral actions, they might have something, but it sounds like just the normal business of a political organisation. Basically if your going to violate privacy, you'd better have a better reason than just because you'd like to hurt some person organisation.

Re:Anything incriminating?

[Teun]

Our worry are a certain hairdresser's customers, Donald Trump, Boris Johnson and Gerard Wilders.

Beside their strange hairdo they also share versions of an ultra right-wing and populist view.

Re:Anything incriminating?

[kenai_alpenglow]

I know you're trying to be funny, but before you throw the "sexist" card out there, it was the *DEMOCRATS* who refused to sit some delegates simply because they were the wrong sex (Vermont delegation). "Racist" is thrown out by the left so often it no longer has any meaning.

Re:Anything incriminating?

[hey!]

But in this case what's revealed is internal political strategy discussions which are very interesting, but hardly wrong.

Re:Anything incriminating?

[phantomfive]

The Democratic National Committee is an organization of and for the Democratic Party (aka, the voters), and should be neutral until the party members have selected their candidate.

Anyone who knows about super-delegates knows that's not the case.

Re:Anything incriminating?

[Anonymous Coward]

in addition to being pawns for Putin

Re:Anything incriminating?

[hey!]

I was a Sanders supporter, and I'm neither surprised nor particularly upset. You have to be realistic. Hillary has been active and well-known in the party since 1974, when she rose to prominence as a whip-smart young staff attorney of the Children's Defense Fund. She's spent the last forty years, building contacts and networks in the Democratic party, including nationally as first lady for eight years and with nearly successful presidential run that took her across the entire country. She has a massive rolodex, war chest, and ground organization.

Bernie Sanders only joined the party in 2015. That the DNC was less than perfectly impartial towards the two won't come as news to an Bernie supporter, but to be frank the idea that long-time party insiders and activists would treat someone who joined the party last year the same as someone who's been a big deal in the party for decades is simply unrealistic.

Re:Anything incriminating?

[quantaman]

It's not a secret that Clinton is a rather vile person, so whatever rude and dirty things she says to other Democrats is of no consequence.

No. Every since the right decided that she didn't know her place as a first lady they've been telling everyone who will listen that she's the devil incarnate.

It's just disturbing that at some point a bunch of progressives have jumped on board because apparently everyone knows she's evil so it must be true!

Oddly enough her philandering husband who probably knew the email situation, and is certainly involved in any Clinton Foundation conspiracy theories, is still generally popular.

Re:Anything incriminating?

[drinkypoo]

But in this case what's revealed is internal political strategy discussions which are very interesting, but hardly wrong.

Are you kidding? Everything about them is wrong. It's not the DNC's job to ignore the Democrats.

Re:Anything incriminating?

[squiggleslash]

it was the *DEMOCRATS* who refused to sit some delegates simply because they were the wrong sex

Yeah, the Democrats have a policy concerning equal numbers of each gender which the Vermont delegation initially violated. Not seeing an example of sexism here, but an attempt to avoid it.

"Racist" is thrown out by the left so often it no longer has any meaning.

I'm pretty sure it does, it's just a sizable number of the right, particularly the alt-right, both understands that "being racist" is considered bad, but that they have no problems with a society that deals black people the short end of the stick, that they have an irrational fear of brown people, and even - in some quarters, most Republicans don't fit into this category, but many on the alt-right do - that they're worried about the influence of Jews.

Re:Anything incriminating?

[kqs]

Think wider.

The Democratic National Committee is an organization of and for the Democratic Party (aka, the voters), and should be neutral until the party members have selected their candidate. I think a lot of Sanders supporters are going to be disgusted to see how "their" party plotted and schemed to defeat their candidate

Huh?

There were two major candidates. One is a lifelong democrat who is part of the biggest fundraising team in the democratic party's history, who has regularly campaigned for and helped democratic candidates, and who has pushed democratic policies (and helped set democratic policies) their entire political career. The other is an independent who just recently declared themself a democrat for the express purpose of winning this primary and "leading a revolution" in the democratic party, who is not known for helping or fundraising for democrats and who has policies which are similar to but still rather different than the democratic party's policies.

Look, I like Bernie and I respect Bernie's goals, but his goal was to take over and explode the democratic party. Why do you think the current democratic party leaders would be neutral about this? That's insane. Of course they dislike him and fear him and did not want him to win; from their point of view, that is the only rational behavior.

Note also, you say "until the party members have selected their candidate". Bernie wants more open primaries because many of his supporters are independants, not democrats. I don't know if open primaries are good or bad, but when you have open primaries you no longer have "the party members" selecting a candidate, you have anyone who decides to vote in that party's primary selecting. That may be good or it may be bad, but it ain't the same thing.

Re:Anything incriminating?

[DerekLyons]

The Democratic National Committee is an organization of and for the Democratic Party (aka, the voters), and should be neutral until the party members have selected their candidate.

"Voter" != "Party Member". Very few people actually realize this.

Re:Anything incriminating?

[Anonymous Coward]

... It is not possible to be both objective and neutral at the same time. If you're objective, you must favor the better candidate. If you're neutral, you cannot.

Re:Anything incriminating?

[phantomfive]

Dilbert called it

Re:Anything incriminating?

[Anonymous Coward]

In Europe everyone who doesn't agree with the current politics is extreme right, racist, or just a neo-Nazi.

But Left and Right does no longer exist. They have blended together into a centrist party, going from the center-left to the center-right.

Because American politics is different then European politics, the current rulers and its voters will call the US extreme right.

Just look at Teun for example who names three politicians who he doesn't agree with and calls them ultra right-wing.

But Wilders isn't ultra-right wing. He is a liberal politician who was member of the VVD (the current ruling party in the Netherlands), but who didn't agree with the foreign policies towards Muslim countries, and the national policies of throwing lots of money towards Muslim organizations. So he didn't agree with the political correct idea and is put in the ultra right-wing camp.

Another 'extreme-right' politician in the Netherlands was Pim Fortuyn. Who was member of the PvdA and a social-democrat. He was a homosexual living in a neighborhood with many Muslims. There were a lot of problems in his neighborhood, like there were all over the country in neighborhoods where the amount of Muslims reached a critical mass. He named the problem and wanted to do something about it: or accept Western values or go back to your country. He didn't agree with the political correct idea and was put in the ultra right-wing camp. He was killed by a left wing voter.

I worry about it a lot, and although I'm a social-liberal myself, I'm also in favor of the core liberal values, especially free speech and free thinking. Politic correctness is against free speech. By opposing politic correctness and saying a thing like our small village has problems with Moroccan drugs dealers who sell drugs to kids, I'm all of the sudden a racist extreme-right neo-Nazi. But there is a problem with Moroccan drugs dealers who live in the big city some 15 km to the east and who sell drugs to kids and adults in my village. They make the place unsafe. They camp at the playground at night. Many needles are found on that same playground, so no kids play there anymore. Just imagine if your kid gets stung by a needle used by a HIV heroin addict...
This has been going on for about 5 years now, and the police doesn't do anything because it would be racist to just arrest Moroccans to search for drugs because that would be 'ethnic profiling' and our left wing mayor doesn't want that. Now he can brag how safe our community is because there are no criminal activities. The looking away tactic of the current European politicians, the politic correct way...

When someone says anything about these problems, and tries his luck with the media, the media will not accept the stories because they also have to meet the political correct standard. There is no drugs problem in our small village .... naming the problem will turn you in a extreme right-wing populist.

That is very worrisome, because there are problems. The only problems that get media attention are when many people are killed. Criminal activities aren't mentioned. Being intimidated aren't mentioned. Being called names like infidel, christian dog, you will burn in hell, ... aren't mentioned. Being spit at isn't mentioned. Girls who disappear from school to get married in an arranged marriage in the homeland aren't mentioned. Classes where an alternative history and science has to be taught to prevent a horde of bloodthirsty Muslims making amok aren't mentioned. Police doesn't do anything about it. When a naive teacher tries to educate about for example the history of the Roman Empire with its era where is was fully Christian (including Levant and North Africa), the local Imam calls for action and hundreds will gather at the school to intimidate the director to adjust what is taught. But these things are never mentioned.

People know this happens, normal politicians know this too. But everybody is taken hostage by the p

Re:Anything incriminating?

[Anonymous Coward]

YES.

Higher ups at the DNC proposed and approved a plan to spam Craigslist with sexist fake Trump ads. link

The DNC controls the narrative at NBC News, and scolds their anchors whenever the Hillary coverage isn't positive enough. link

The DNC has off the record meetings with multiple media groups - leaks anti-Sanders propaganda to them. link

DNC details their underhanded plans to attack Sanders' Jewish religion. Why they're attacking their own candidate during a primary, you can only come to one conclusion. link

Re:Anything incriminating?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice deflection, partisan hack. Hillary calls you guys "useful idiots" behind your backs.

Re:Anything incriminating?

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting how speaking out against hordes of foreign invaders pouring into your country, sucking up huge amounts of public money, and causing crime and other problems is now considered "far-right". Or is it just those looney lefties spewing hyperbole again?

Re:Anything incriminating?

[Anonymous Coward]

The DNC supported someone who's been a loyal Democrat longer than 75% of Slashdot's viewership have been *alive*, over a guy who joined the Democrats literally last year?

We can talk all day about "should" but please let's not delude ourselves.

Re:Anything incriminating?

[shutdown -p now]

Take this email, for example:

https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emai...

If this were two Hillary campaign staffers discussing it, it would be very sleazy, but not blatantly wrong.

The problem is that it's two DNC staffers. Since DNC effectively organizes the primaries on federal level, they're supposed to be neutral. Instead, we see people not only expressing a clearly non-neutral opinion on one of the candidates, but they are actually plotting to do something that would benefit one candidate by hurting another.

Contrasted with the official DNC claim that they were, indeed, neutral, this is pretty damning. Not illegal, most likely, but as far as reputation goes, it's going to hurt. And Clinton will be affected by it as well, simply because she was the beneficiary of it.

Re:Anything incriminating?

[Teun]

As with any section of the population there will be criminals among the refugees and economic immigrants.
It is open for debate if the percentage is higher than in the original population and no, they don't suck up 'huge amounts of public money'.

The problem lies more with the economic immigrants abusing the asylum systems to gain entry.
The immigrant problem the likes of Boris complains about (other EU citizen) is a non-problem, mainly caused by too low wages, too little housing and too generous benefits in the UK, all problems caused and maintained by his Tory government, not Brussels.
As the UK (the über-Tory Maggie Thatcher!) had signed up to the EU including the free movement of capital and persons these people should not even be called immigrants.

Although I'm right now in the UK I am living in The Netherlands and I can tell you the people he is complaining about are net contributors to the UK economy, not leaching on it's benefits, similar can be said about the Hispanic immigrants to the US that Trump rallies against, like without them the average American lawn would be a wilderness.
Those that Wilders and le Pen are afraid of (immigrants from Africa and the Middle East) need better chances at integration, including more pressure on them to actually integrate or else be send home.

Another EU problem is when we tore down the internal borders we conveniently 'forgot' to transfer part of the thus generated monies to a joint border protection on the outside. Brussels would like such but the individual member states are reluctant.

Re:Anything incriminating?

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone who votes for Democrates is a right-wing voter, regardless what you Americans claim, you have no left wing!

Re:Anything incriminating?

[Grishnakh]

Context is important here, and left vs. right is relative. Here in America, Democrats are "left" because there's only two parties with any real strength, so one's right and one's left, and it's undeniable that the Dems are to the left of the Reps (the degree is what's debatable). But yes, compared to politics in Europe, or even compared to the Green Party which is active here in the US, the Dems are definitely right-wing.

So no, not everyone who votes Democrat is a right-winger; anyone who's seriously left but wants to vote for a candidate who actually has a shot at winning has to vote Dem. Of course, this is what leads us to the current predicament too.... There really isn't any way around it though, thanks to Duverger's Law; it's very rare (though it does happen once in a while) that a 3rd party can rise up and gain power in a system that uses first-past-the-post (plurality) voting. The last time it happened here was when the Whig party died out and the Democratic-Republicans split into two.

Re:Anything incriminating?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that a piece of corn in your teeth?

Re:Anything incriminating?

[Anonymous Coward]

Think wider.

The Democratic National Committee is an organization of and for the Democratic Party (aka, the voters), and should be neutral until the party members have selected their candidate. I think a lot of Sanders supporters are going to be disgusted to see how "their" party plotted and schemed to defeat their candidate, and also how "their" party stole their money and handed it to Hillary. Well, now that Bernie has ripped his mask off, I'm not so sure. But they should be pissed.

Also, did you see how the allegedly objective and neutral news organizations colluded with Hillary? I didn't think it was possible for the approval ratings of the mainstream media to get any lower, but they are working hard to shed those last few percent.

How about the soft bribery of the delegates going on? Think any of them are going to have some explaining to do after this?

I have only one thing to say. BERNIE SANDERS IS NOT A DEMOCRAT. He was "running as a Democrat" but he is not a member of the party. So why do you think that the party headquarters should be supporting someone WHO IS NOT ONE OF THEM.

I have to shout because the Bernie-istas don't get it.

Re:Anything incriminating?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sigh! So you have swallowed, hook-line-and-sinker, the big lies the Grumpy Old Party has been pushing for decades now--exaggerating her every failing, and even making sh*t up to discredit her. They would have done the same to Bernie had he become a threat to them--lurid stories about the porn novel he wrote in the 70s would have played nightly of Fox News. The talk-meisters would have linked him to the socialist failures of Chaves in Venzuela, and we soon would have been hearing snickers about his vanity and big ego; and maybe some hard-to-disprove insinuations about smelly dealings when he was Mayor of Burlington..

Wake-up! The GOP Congress has been ruining the country with ill-informed economic ideas and a cynical return to tribalism that pits one groups of Americans (liberals) against another ("the American People"). Worse yet, Trump is a Putin-loving preener, who will go after any American who doesn't want to kiss his golden throne.

Nobody who is smart should want to hear about those "damn emails."

Re:Anything incriminating?

[Anonymous Coward]

It is absolutely the DNC's job to ignore Democrats.

Not all of them, sure. But enough.

Imagine if the DNC were obliged to espouse every policy requested by some significant subset of their party. They'd be changing policy thirty times a day. Their job is, precisely, to prevent that happening by creating and maintaining a single, coherent policy platform. That is: to ignore their own base.

If you don't trust them to do that fairly, then that's another problem entirely.

Re:Anything incriminating?

[ebvwfbw]

In established US politics there is no left.

Says who? I understand the left has done a great deal to distort what is left and right. However there is a right and there is a left. The left is almost always wrong. The right is always conservative and uses what works. That's why they're on the right. You can also think of it as left - insane and stupid, right - sane.

Re:Anything incriminating?

[dpidcoe]

And? The secretary of state is supposed to understand how to properly handle classified information, but it's not like anything meaningful happened when they didn't. The rules clearly don't apply to these people, so why should this be any different?

Re:Anything incriminating?

[jwhitener]

What is revealed wasn't illegal acts, but rather, that while the DNC claims to be impartial, they were not.

The public image of the RNC and DNC has always been as impartial organizations, who let the voters decide via primaries who is going to represent the parties. Most people who follow politics know that bias exists, and that it would be foolish to assume that the RNC/DNC give each primary candidate equal treatment behind the scenes.

These email leaks just flat out proved that they are very partial to one candidate over the other.

If the DNC wants to just do away with primary voting and pick someone to represent them each cycle, that is totally fine. They are a private club, not a party of government beholden to the people. The issue, is that the claimed to be fair, when they were not.

Re:Anything incriminating?

[jwhitener]

I don't care that the DNC favored Hillary, but I do care that they claimed in public, and in their written rules to being an impartial organization, when in fact they were the exact opposite.

If they want to flat out pick a candidate and have no primaries, that is fine. They are a private club, not a public government office. They can make up any rules they want. The problem is that they broke their own rules.

I am 100% certain the RNC was doing similar things against Trump behind the scenes as well. The difference is Trump is just masterful using/misusing/abusing media. Bernie's campaign lacked those media skills.

What a mess

[ilsaloving]

So I can't even hazard a guess as to what's gonna happen this election. The US has a choice between a politician so sleezy as to be a caricature of a cliche politician, and a narcicistic psychopath who would quite happily plunge the world into world war 3 if someone makes fun of the size of his hands.

I mean, really? W. T. F.?

The only real option is if the entire country banded together and voted for an independent, but I just don't see that happening cause all the majority of people can see is the romantic idea of what their "team" represents, rather than look at what's actually happening.

Re:What a mess

[js3]

Did you even read the article?

Re:What a mess

[im_thatoneguy]

The US has a choice between a politician so sleezy as to be a caricature of a cliche politician, and a narcicistic psychopath who would quite happily plunge the world into world war 3 if someone makes fun of the size of his hands.

I love how people assume Hillary is "a sleezy politician" based on the word of a "narcissistic psychopath and pathological liar who would plunge the world into world war 3."

Here's a wild idea. Maybe Hillary isn't a sleezy politician and the narcissistic pathological liar who would plunge the world into world war 3 is... *gasp* lying about her just like he lies about everything else.

The most dirt Trump seems to have on Hillary is:

1) She kept a private email server against institution best practices which ended up having 100 emails (out of hundreds of thousands) that had information the FBI considers top secret.
2) She kept a private email server against institution policy in which someone emailed her classified documents that were mis-labeled.
3) She passed NAFTA while first lady (which the CBO has concluded neither really hurt nor helped employment overall). (But Trump is totally fine with his VP who is a huge free trade advocate).
4) She voted for giving Bush the power to use military force against Sadaam. (But Trump is totally fine with his VP making the same choice.)
5) She won't say "Radical Islamic Terrorism" enough.

Even for a narcissistic pathological liar like Trump that's a pretty short list of attacks.

Re:What a mess

[Black Parrot]

If I were Trump, I'd find campaign issues other than "crooked" and "bad judgement" to run against:

"crooked" - Under investigation for fraud, probably soon to be under investigation for bribery to get earlier fraud investigations squashed.

"bad judgement" - Three wives, four bankruptcies.

Re:What a mess

[Carcass666]

She didn't pass anything as first lady, that's not how it works. As part of the Obama administration, she did plug TPP pretty hard. But your point about Trump having a running mate who was for every free-trade deal made (including TPP), while making a major campaign issue out of how bad they are is pretty lame.

Re:What a mess

[Anonymous Coward]

story explaining how she approved the sale of 20% of US uranium to Russia in return for massive bribes. Bribes she said she would not take while secretary of state, on a decision that she refused to recuse herself and department from because of the bribes, failed to disclose said bribes as she had promised before taking position, and failed to report them to the IRS meaning she had to amend her tax returns years later or be convicted of tax fraud (something you would have gone to jail for)

Not sure why you are being ignorant. She also funneled $55 million to Laurite university and got Bill $16.5 million of that taxpayer money in the process. Wonder why Trump University left the news so quickly? Its because of that story that he brought up for them mentioning his possible problem, and they aborted all news to prevent their outright illegal activity from becoming too public.

No, she is the most corrupt politician.

Re:What a mess

[Anonymous Coward]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitewater_controversy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillary_Rodham_cattle_futures_controversy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_House_travel_office_controversy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_House_FBI_files_controversy

Trump's a maniac and shouldn't be put in charge of an elevator, much less a country. That doesn't mean Hillary's anything other than business as usual from the most crooked city in America.

Re:What a mess

[Anonymous Coward]

It's cute that you think the only reason so many people dislike her is because Trump told them to.

Long before people thought Trump had a real shot there were a lot of us hoping to see someone decent come out of the Republican primaries, because we didn't like the idea of Clinton getting the Democratic nomination, and knew it was inevitable. And then a couple dozen terrible R nominees later we're depressed because there isn't anyone we would feel right voting for.

Re:What a mess

[ilsaloving]

Why would I do that? This is slashdot. :)

Re:What a mess

[Anonymous Coward]

People have been calling out both Hillary and Bill for being sleazy and corrupt for nearly 30 years. It has nothing to do with Trump's recent attacks. She has a very dogged history and you're showing complete ignorance by thinking it is a new line of attack.

Re:What a mess

[clubby]

It's quite possible to hold a disfavourable view of Hillary Clinton without ascribing any integrity or awareness to Trump. I think her cozy relationship with Wall Street is at best an appearance of impropriety, and she should be more circumspect about such things. I also think she ran a private email server to circumvent FOIA, and I really like FOIA, so I tend to frown upon non-compliance. I also agree with Comey's assessment of her recklessness. Not everyone shares these views, but I do think most people consider them defensible positions, as opposed to most of the garbage that comes out of Trump's mouth.

Re:What a mess

[Anonymous Coward]

FWIW, Most that stuff accusing Hillary being a sleezy politician didn't originate with Trump (although he has no problem parroting it).

For example, all the email server crap came to light when she was investigated for the supposed Bengazhi coverup...

Trump may be a narcissistic pathological liar, but he didn't originate any of this stuff (you give him too much credit). You are committing a what is known as a genetic fallacy, but you don't even attribute the source correctly.

I love how people attempt deflect the issue about Hillary a stereotypical sleezy politician w/o addressing the issue head-on.

Don't get me started about the Clinton foundation... It's really just a sad state of affairs concerning our presidential choices are this time around...

Re:What a mess

[TsuruchiBrian]

This isn't about Trump or the Republicans. Someone can be a sleazy politician on their own merit. I don't give a shit how many times she says "radical islamic terrorism". Bengazi is obviously a witchhunt. It's obvious republicans are just attacking her any way they can and seeing what sticks.

Here is what actually bothers me about her in no particular order

1. She was willing to lie about being shot at by snipers in order to boost her foreign policy cred.

2. She fucked up on the whole email server thing. Rather than just admitting it, she maintained that even though it was a bad decision, that nothing she did was against the rules.

3. She says she stood up to wall street when she told them to "cut it out". She says the reason wall street donated money to her was because she was keeping them safe after 9/11.

4. The timing of when her opinions change make it seem like she is just jumping on popular trends rather than actually having any sort of moral conviction. (e.g. her position on gay marriage, fracking, etc)

Is she the most dishonest politician there ever was? No. Are other politicians just as dishonest or even more dishonest than she is? Probably. Are the Republicans and Donald Trump unfairly trying to make her seem more dishonest than she really is? Yes. Has she been held to a different standard because of gender bias? probably.

All of this is important to note, but it doesn't change the fact that she is dishonest. She is willing to lie when she thinks it will benefit her. She is a liar. She is not more of a liar than other politicians especially republicans or Trump, but she is a liar nonetheless.

Attacking the wild accusations against hillary from the right is easy. That doesn't mean that there are not legitimate issues with her honesty.

I get that Donald Trump is worse. Given the choices, I hope she wins. But I don't see the point in sugar coating what we are getting, if/when we stop Trump.

Re:What a mess

[TsuruchiBrian]

If you were Trump, you would not have won the Republican nomination for president.

Re:What a mess

[rahvin112]

You forget:

1. Loves dictators, frequently praises them (including Saddam).
2. Want's to change the 1st amendment to remove public criticism of public figures; under Trump it would be illegal to criticize him.
3. Plan's to end all criticism of rights abuses by other nations. No longer will the US be there pointing out regimes that are torturing and murdering their people.
4. Will refuse to come to the aid of our NATO members if they aren't spending enough on defense basically making the US a liar and untrustworthy.
5. Believes all foreign diplomacy is based on money.

To be honest, i wouldn't be surprised if Trump wants to rewrite the constitution to remove all freedoms and I fully believe he would send American soldiers to die because some foreign leader insulted him.

Re:What a mess

[Anonymous Coward]

3. Plan's to end all criticism of rights abuses by other nations. No longer will the US be there pointing out regimes that are torturing and murdering their people.

To be fair that's kind of glass houses situation at the best of times. If you want to get on the moral high ground regarding torture and murder then maybe you should stop doing it yourself, american government.

Re:What a mess

[Anonymous Coward]

Well said, pretty much sums up how I feel too.

The only positive thing I can put forward is that Hillary can actually govern. Whether she would govern well I'm not sure. The Clinton's have always lied about stupid things, a lot of the time they shouldn't have been asked about it in the first place.

Both Bill and Hillary have endured Republican witch hunts, neither came out clean as you'd expect from a politician. I wonder if you shed as much light on Trump's dealings as they have on Hillary's if people would still be harping the same tune.

Re:What a mess

[im_thatoneguy]

She didn't pass anything as first lady, that's not how it works

That was my point. Trump talks about all the things she did while first lady such as NAFTA. It's absurd.

Re:What a mess

[Anonymous Coward]

Hillary has proven herself to be a very competent politician

It really depends on what your opinion of politicians is

I would much rather have her dealing with Putin and the dissolution of the EU than a profit-taking businessman with demonstrably low ethics

Re:What a mess

[oh_my_080980980]

Nice try Potsy.

1. Clinton used a personal email server that was not authorized by the State Department and had she asked them (which she claimed but didn't) the State Department would have denied her.

2. Clinton violated the Espionage Act by allowing classified information to end up on her personal email server through gross negligence.

Based on the facts Clinton should be indicted.

Re:What a mess

[Anonymous Coward]

Is loved by dictators, frequently praised by them (Putin, Kim Jong-Un)

Re:What a mess

[oh_my_080980980]

Why? Clinton uses her time as First Lady for qualifications to be president. She also championed the crime bill. It's only absurd if you ignore the reality.

Re:What a mess

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you happen to notice that each one of those "controversies" was created from thin air by the right wing and only led to the creation of later conspiracies as each was disproved

You are demonstrating just how effective propaganda is if you really buy into this crap

Re:What a mess

[Anonymous Coward]

Hillary has praised many dictators, including Putin, and supports Iran.
Hillary has sworn to try to repeal the First Amendment as part of her first 100 days program - remember, she sued to get a movie critical of her shut down, and it's makers punished.
Hillary ran the State Department, which has supported putting nations like Saudi Arabia and Kazakhstan onto the UN Human Rights Council, while simultaneously removing them from Human Trafficking and slaving reports.
Hillary opposed getting involved in the Ukraine, despite the fact the US was promised to protect them from invaders. I see no reason why you think she'd honor any other agreement, if it was inconvenient.
Hillary knows that all foreign policy is based on money - hers. If she gets paid, the State Department will approve international sales, trade agreements, land transfers, anything! Just pay her first, and she'll make sure you get anything you want.

Honestly, Hillary has already sworn to remove the 1st, 2nd, 4th, and 9th Amendments. Trump's a blowhard, but Hillary is evil. When she beat out Sanders, the US was doomed. And people like you that think rough words are worse than criminal acts are the ones that are to blame.

Re:What a mess

[Anonymous Coward]

The most dirt Trump seems to have on Hillary is...

Except for maybe your weird item #5, how the fuck did Trump get involved in this topic? Trump wasn't the discoverer of any of this.

In fact, you even point out that item #4 that doesn't makes sense to attribute this stuff to Trump. Almost all the Republicrats agreed to go to war with Iraq, and since Trump is trying to fit in, he has to be pro-Iraq-war too, hence his VP choice.

America already had a poor opinion of Clinton, before anyone knew Trump was running. That's why everyone voted against her in 2008. Quit trying to give Trump credit for outing Clinton; he's just jumping on the bandwagon because it might increase his votes (because so many people are stupid enough, that when they vote against Clinton, they'll think they need to vote for Trump).

Re:What a mess

[Anonymous Coward]

That is why we should vote for the candidate most likely to be impeached: Trump. We already know you cannot impeach a Clinton.

Re:What a mess

[Babel-17]

And allow me to mention that those are just examples of her ethics in action. It's too bad that the sum total of it will only be painfully clear to those who were busy with other things/not registered as Democrats till after the convention. I was a registered Democrat in 1999/2000 and yet I still sent money to John McCain in order to stop Bush getting elected. My point is that I felt a need to say "No" what he represented, and I did so. There are ways to say "No" to Clinton and yet still voting for her if push comes to shove in your state, and you feel obligated to do so. Even a token one dollar/five dollar/twenty seven dollar donation to a third party candidate sends a message. Even just replying with approval when someone correctly notes her ethical shortcomings, like I'm doing here. Believe me, the Democratic party and the powers that be do notice. I've made several small donations over the years and I get targeted for surveys by the DNC, and my union before I retired and then let my retired book lapse. I always gave them an earful. My union tried to pin me down by asking "If you can only choose between Trump and Clinton ...". I refused to play along. I had the surveyor laughing by the end. "I'm laughing because I know you'll say 'Bernie Sanders' to this question". I stood up at my union hall and gave the VP of my local my opinion of my national union endorsing Clinton (as a retired member with a book I could still attend meetings). Lol, the rest of the board steered clear of our conversation. My point with all of that rambling narrative is that we can be heard, and if we're loud enough the system will adjust. If we say we won't accept Clinton, and the polling backs it up, she and Bill can be said to have developed health issues and the party will insert someone who will win. Probably Biden somehow. Everything is poll driven, and focus group driven, these days. While the owners of the media look fondly at Clinton even their coverage will start to pander to the public sentiment if we the public show a huge appetite for coverage of Clinton's foibles and misdeeds. Click those links and comment accordingly, avoid the ones encouraging you to hold your nose and vote for her. I sent my most telling message last week. I sent in to my local board of elections a change in voter registration from Democratic to Green. I voted in my local primary for congressperson first, then I went to the library to get the form. I read that the post office has them as well. I filled it out, sealed it, and took it the post office for a stamp, no envelope required in my area. I feel like I spoke up.

Re:What a mess

[Anonymous Coward]

I would much rather have her dealing with Putin and the dissolution of the EU than a profit-taking businessman with demonstrably low ethics

The irony of this statement is that Clinton actually has more examples of demonstrably low ethics but you know gotta keep that narrative going.

Re:What a mess

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.factcheck.org/2015/04/no-veto-power-for-clinton-on-uranium-deal/

"The author of “Clinton Cash” falsely claimed Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State had “veto power” and “could have stopped” Russia from buying a company with extensive uranium mining operations in the U.S. In fact, only the president has such power."

Re:What a mess

[Anonymous Coward]

Another Republican giving no context to his claims, linking to an article that doesn't support his half truths.

"explaining how she approved the sale of 20% of US uranium to Russia in return for massive bribes"

Eh, no. They were company donations to the Clinton Foundation.

And your definition of bribes would screw the majority of the military industrial complex, probably the past 4 presidents, and Trump would already freaking be in jail. The entire oil industry would be screwed with their Nigerian and Saudi dealings, and the Bush family would be fubar'd to hell given their Bin Laden connections. The RNC would be shit with their Koch and related contributions too. (What, you think Koch hasn't paid millions to influence environmental policy to the tune of millions which he funnels back in? Nice bridge you have scrapped in your back yard.) And 3/4s of the DNC too would go up in smoke too.

Do I like her look in this? Hell no. It's more a continuation of the asshole dealings the Clintons keep getting themselves into when they know better but tried to sleaze their way through. But if you're trying to spin this as she's "more" or "most" corrupt, you might want to apply to standards to other candidates in this presidential cycle and see who is left. The worse offender is still Trump. And there would be maybe two candidates that might have emerged unscathed, and neither are the ones remaining anyways.

You're trying to sling mud not realizing it's sloppy wet, you're palming your throw with open fingers and whiffing 90% of it on yourself.

"Bribes she said she would not take while secretary of state"

More like she was supposed to disclose the donors but didn't, she wasn't supposed to stop acceptance of donations to the foundation. And what she was supposed to do didn't have any legal force behind it anyways.

So I'll adopt your strategy and through it back at you--You know why no one gives a shit about the Uranium One deal? Because they already know, suspect, and see what Trump has done and said he will do as president and how that will favor his own business dealings.

"on a decision that she refused to recuse herself and department from because of the bribes"

Translation--Even if she had recused herself, the deal would have gone through, so she didn't really do anything wrong, but you're going to try to pretend that recusing herself would have mattered or improved your impression of her.

And she's not going to recuse the State Department from determining that deal. Only herself. If you're seriously suggesting the State Department should have been on the outside on a uranium deal, that's as absurd as the rest of your misrepresentation of her actions.

You have to spin it the way you did, because otherwise you'd have to admit there were other US agencies, and Canadian agencies, that approved of the deal anyways and wanted it to go through. iow, if she had recused herself, you would be attacking her for being in a position to recuse herself (oh, wait, you did that already).

Just like you left out the background of this deal--It was to improve Russian relations at the time, but that went downhill with the Ukraine. Part of the unsaid is they wanted this to go through to reduce availability in the US energy sector as well as a matter of unspoken US policy as well as played card during economic sanctions if Russia steps out of line (which they did).

"failed to report them to the IRS meaning she had to amend her tax returns years later or be convicted of tax fraud (something you would have gone to jail for)"
&
"and got Bill $16.5 million of that taxpayer money in the process"

iow, she did nothing wrong. And I mean, really, wtf you thinking, Trump hasn't even released his tax returns last I heard.

Ooo, Bill got money. Trump laughs at the $16.5 million with what he and the 4 bankruptcies he walked into, bankruptcies I could say he purposeful fell into to fuck over and not pay swaths of people and their businesses by r

Re:What a mess

[kenai_alpenglow]

you forgot "that if anyone else not named 'Hillary Clinton' had done would have gone to prison". And despite the FBI's claims, INTENT is not required. Or so it was explained to me in my security training. Probably also to that the poor guy on the sub taking a selfie....

Re:What a mess

[Anonymous Coward]

> Clinton uses her time as First Lady for qualifications to be president.

If she does (and I haven't seen it, though I don't pay much attention to her campaigning) its at the bottom of the list miles behind being a senator and being secretary of state.

But... I get the impression you are one of those "she's a bitch!" types so it doesn't really matter, does it?

Re:What a mess

[khallow]

"explaining how she approved the sale of 20% of US uranium to Russia in return for massive bribes"

Eh, no. They were company donations to the Clinton Foundation.

How do you think bribes happen? There's an awful lot of money being pumped into this trust by parties that had past dealings with the Clintons.

Re:What a mess

[Anonymous Coward]

And that my friends is an example of the Big Lie

Don't even try and lie small, make it huge and repeat it endlessly

the morons will follow you and since intelligence is based on a bell curve, you will get half of the population in your corner

Re:What a mess

[hey!]

You know, taking the dichotomy you propose as accurate, I'd go with the sleazeball hands down. You might not like them but you can work with sleazy people if you know what they are. They are simply pursuing their self-interest and respond predictably according to realistic calculations of where that lies.

A narcissist on the other hand you can't work with on the basis of realism because he's not rooted in the real world. He operates in a fantasy world. A sleazeball won't act in a way that harms himself but a narcissist, while every bit as self-oriented and deceptive will, and then go looking for scapegoats, even when that does more damage. A sleazeball only scapegoats when it's to his advantage.

So would you rather deal with someone who is rational but selfish, or someone who is unpredictable, self-destructive and selfish?

Re:What a mess

[LynnwoodRooster]

But the commercials on TV say she solved children's medical problems back when she was First Lady! How can this be? Are you telling me a campaign commercial is WRONG?

Re:What a mess

[LynnwoodRooster]

Further, the FBI - Comey - even stated flat-out she broke the law. The ONLY reason they were not recommending indictment is he did not believe a single Federal prosecutor would bring charges. Not that there weren't crimes committed, or actions worthy of charges - but that she was politically shielded.

Re:What a mess

[Anonymous Coward]

If we keep going this way twenty second century children will study
twenty fist century history, the fall of the democracies or how the west fucked itself

Re:What a mess

[drinkypoo]

That was my point. Trump talks about all the things she did while first lady such as NAFTA. It's absurd.

The first lady has substantial influence over public opinion. It's why Nancy Reagan was such a spectacular cunt for voicing her homophobic views on AIDS.

Re:What a mess

[Anonymous Coward]

5. Believes all foreign diplomacy is based on money.

Well, I think Donald Trump is a complete piece of shit, but that last one is right on the money. International diplomacy is all about the money, and anything else you might hear is just a cover story.

There's nothing wrong with that either, money is ultimately how we measure value, so it gives us a good stick to measure whether a diplomatic decision is in our interests.

Re:What a mess

[kqs]

You're over thinking this. Trump likely doesn't believe in anything he has said. As far as I can tell, he only believes that he needs more money and more respect. He won't re-write the constitution because it would take too much effort and wouldn't make him money. I have no idea what he would do, but you cannot guess based on his previous words.

"send American soldiers to die because some foreign leader insulted him" seems pretty spot on, though.

Re:What a mess

[kqs]

All those investigations, no indictments, virtually no evidence. Either she is a criminal mastermind who makes Lex Luthor seem like an incompetent dunce, or her political enemies investigate her because gullible rubes will believe that investigations PROVE that she is guilty.

Fortunately, betting that the public are gullible rubes is a very safe bet, as this election has shown.

Please don't be a gullible rube.

Re:What a mess

[Anonymous Coward]

We should not have invaded Iraq and killed Saddam. We should not have bombed Libya and had Gaddafi sodomized to death by terrorists.

Re:What a mess

[Anonymous Coward]

None of this was "disproved", but just keep up the lies, they're pretty good comedy material.

Re:What a mess

[dbIII]

Hillary has praised many dictators, including Putin, and supports Iran.

Reagan supported Iran with cold hard cash and he's seen as the equivalent of a Saint.
Going back even more there's "good old Uncle Joe Stalin".
People in politics just keep on saying this stuff. Look at how there is hardly a bad word for China for example.


I suggest you look at what very much appears to be blatant bribes from Pfizer associated with dropping the penalty against them or a pile of other things instead of such distractions which apply almost totally across the board.
Who seriously was proposing getting involved in the Ukraine? Anyone?

Re:What a mess

[dbIII]

She didn't pass anything as first lady, that's not how it works.

Trump pushing that line and dragging his family around really looks like he's getting President and King mixed up.

Re:What a mess

[dbIII]

you forgot "that if anyone else not named 'Hillary Clinton' had done would have gone to prison"

Rice, Powell and a pile of others that also let classified emails get into unclassified places didn't. David Petraeus who sold secrets for sex didn't go to prison either.

Re:What a mess

[SonicSpike]

Which one is which?

Re:What a mess

[Anonymous Coward]

An indictment would be a travesty. If every individual with a clearance were indicted for every unintentional spillage of classified information, I suspect there would be no competent senior people left working on classified matters, and the whole system would collapse. Each unclassified message involves judgements about what can be safely said. I suspect it can be a lot harder than most people realize to get it right every single time--especially in the heat of a crisis.

None of this stuff would have come out if the House Republicans hadn't violated what I understand to be one of the basic tenets of investigations, which is: don't talk publicly about spills. But they were much less interested in keeping our secrets safe than they were in spilling political blood.

Re:What a mess

[Anonymous Coward]

You appear not to have read the whole story you linked to (especially the qualifications and corrections), and maybe you haven't read much political history, period.
  "The most corrupt politician"!--not even close!
"If you can bear to hear the words you've spoken [and deeds] twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools..."

Re:What a mess

[ebvwfbw]

So, do you have any source for this, or is it just out of your ass (for some people that's their mouth)?

Funny how you talk about Nato... have you read "dreams from my father" by Barry? He'll even read it to you himself. He has already destroyed American credibility abroad. Plenty of examples if you bother to read the news.

Re:What a mess

[Outta_the_way_peck!]

Must you keep reminding me she is from Chicago?

Re:What a mess

[TsuruchiBrian]

Also I don't see why having 3 wives shows bad judgement on Trump's part. It's like a hockey team winning 3 Stanley Cups.

Re:What a mess

[TsuruchiBrian]

I don't know that Hillary can govern. She certainly has experience as a government official (as senator and secretary of state), but I am not sure I would consider this to be "governing". Maybe being secretary of state involves governing of some sort (I don't really know), but being a senator is not governing. Being a legislator involves doing what the people who give you money tell you and collecting that money. This is why we have so many incompetent legislators. It takes no skills or talent other than winning an election.

Yeah, Bill and Hillary have endured witch hunts. And to a large extent Trump is enduring a witchhunt as well. It seems like about half the accusations against trump are not true. He is still a shitty human being. I would put Hillary and certainly Bill in this same category. They are all shitty.

Re:What a mess

[jwhitener]

6. Wants to treat people differently under the law based on protected classes like religion.

Re:What a mess

[jwhitener]

explaining how she approved the sale of 20% of US uranium to Russia in return for massive bribes.

Your article does not say that.

Like all of Hillary's "scandals" over the years, not one shred of proof, but a whole bunch of innuendo.

It's sad that Asausage supports racists

[Anonymous Coward]

He is helping tRump with his run to become our ruler and David Duke, the KKK murderer that ran for the Democrat primary to become our ruler in 1988 but fortunately failed. He is helping them because he is obviously a racist. I guess it also helps that he hates and rapes women which is why he loves tRump and hates Hillary so much. His kind hates us so much.

Re: It's sad that Asausage supports racists

[Anonymous Coward]

It's interesting that Duke switched from Democrat to run for the senate in La.

Re:It's sad that Asausage supports racists

[D00MSlayer]

His Kind? What is he... an alien? Is he apart of the underground gathering of Crab People plotting to rule the world? These are questions that need serious answers. I believe you are the only one who can provide them. Please. Show us the way, O Wise One.

Re:It's sad that Asausage supports racists

[Anonymous Coward]

It is sad that you project so much racism. Perhaps you should take medication deal with all this anger about emails. The are a lot of real healthcare professionals that can help you.

Re:It's sad that Asausage supports racists

[Anonymous Coward]

You can spot an insane person a mile away because they think doing silly childish things like writing Trump as tRump accomplished anything beyond signifying that you cannot have a rational conversation with said person.

You can also spot a racist because they say things like "he is obviously a racist" with no basis or evidence beyond their own preconceived notions.

Food for thought.

P.S. I hate your kind as much as I hate Trump's kind.

Re:It's sad that Asausage supports racists

[Mike Van Pelt]

His Kind? What is he... an alien? Is he apart of the underground gathering of Crab People plotting to rule the world?

*gasp!* THAT'S IT!! It all makes sense now. ALL of it!!!

Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

If that was true, why didn't he release all this BEFORE they nominated Hillary?

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Right???

Re:Why?

[_xeno_]

They haven't nominated Hillary yet. Her coronation is next week at the Democratic National Convention. Which means it's still conceptually possible that they could nominate someone else.

They won't, of course. But it's still theoretically possible. In some other universe where criminals get charged for their crimes.

Re:Why?

[clubby]

In some other universe where wealthy and/or powerful criminals get charged for their crimes.

FTFY

Re:Why?

[coinreturn]

Because if you look at who the emails are from, according to TFS, none are from Hillary. The headline is clickbait.

Re:Why?

[Grishnakh]

Yep, in Star Trek, that's the universe where most Star Trek episodes occur: the universe where humans are generally benevolent, intelligent, and ethical beings, and also highly competent at their work.

Star Trek did show our universe a few times; it's called the "mirror universe", and in it, humans are generally evil, imperialistic assholes who'll stop at nothing to gain more power.

My new ultimate goal in life is to invent a device which allows me to "slide" into that other universe.

Re:Why?

[im_thatoneguy]

They haven't nominated Hillary yet. Her coronation is next week

I didn't know that nominating the primary candidate with the most votes of any party in a democratic election was a "coronation". Did Kings also win the most votes? It's been a while since I read up on monarchies, guess I forgot that detail.

Re:Why?

[Yunzil]

Her coronation

Yeah, how dare they nominate someone who earned more votes and delegates than her opponent? They should just give Bernie the nomination because you like him.

In some other universe where criminals get charged for their crimes.

In this universe you have to identify something they did that you can prosecute them for first.

Re:Why?

[ScentCone]

I didn't know that nominating the primary candidate with the most votes of any party in a democratic election was a "coronation"

It has the "coronation" feel to it because it's been a foregone conclusion since before Sanders suddenly woke up one morning and decided he was a Democrat and joined the party so he could push Hillary into a more publicly-visible lefty posture. He had no chance of beating the Clinton machine and the fully assembled corporate, media, and entertainment industry backers that had already picked her, and he knew it.

Re:Why?

[ScentCone]

Because if you look at who the emails are from, according to TFS, none are from Hillary. The headline is clickbait.

They're not from her, but they're directly or indirectly all ABOUT her and the DNC's unwavering Coronate Hillary position. What else did you think was going to be the focus of the matter? Yoga and wedding plans? Right.

Re:Why?

[TheGratefulNet]

OT: but in star trek, the enterprise crew are not the humans of the future.

the kingons are. in fact, its hard to tell many humans from klingons, if you ignore the obvious diff in looks and language.

the dog-eat-dog view is widely held by humans. 'its not enough that I win; you must also lose'. that summarizes much of humanity, sad to say.

there's no chance people will progress to star trek level of kindness, justice and understanding. we don't have it in us, by in large. the good humans are the tiny tiny minority in this world.

I don't take pleasure in saying this. but its just true, that's all.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well that explains Movember

Re:Why?

[Grishnakh]

WTF??? This is patently absurd.

Klingons have a rich warrior culture that values honor above all else. They made that abundantly clear in countless episodes.

Humans (in this universe we inhabit) do not have a warrior culture, and definitely do not value honor. If we did, we would not be about to elect Trump or Hillary (or almost anyone else that was running).

The Klingons most resemble various old traditional cultures, such as the Japanese Samurai culture, which of course is long dead.

The ST race that was meant to most resemble modern humans is the Ferengi: profit above all. However, even the Ferengi had some real values; they thought it was important to properly assist underdeveloped cultures to develop economically and technologically, so that they could become good trading partners. Bombing them into submission was not part of their ethic.

No, I think the Terran Empire depicted in several ST episodes (not just "Mirror, Mirror", but also an excellent ENT 2-parter called "In a Mirror, Darkly") is a very accurate depiction of modern human culture transposed into a future with warp drive.

But I do agree with your final assessment about good humans being the tiny tiny minority.

Re:Why?

[quantaman]

They won't, of course. But it's still theoretically possible. In some other universe where criminals get charged for their crimes.

Fortunately in this universe that decision is left up to legal authorities instead of lynch mobs.

Clinton isn't a completely unique situation, the closest examples seem to be Alberto Gonzales, John O'Neill, and Bryan Nishimura. All three removing classifier material, Gonzales and O'Neill weren't charged and Nishimura got 2 years probation.

All three involved no intent to distribute to unauthorized parties. Gonzales and O'Neill were essentially careless while Nishimua was deliberate.

I see Clinton as belonging with Gonzales and O'Neill, all three mishandled docs while performing their official duties and non attempted to expose the docs on purpose.

Nishimua is the only one who was deliberately taking docs out of classified systems, and he only got 2 years probation.

Given those precedents the decision not to prosecute seems quite defensible.

It's also kinda funny how I can barely remember hearing a peep about Gonzales when he arguably had more intent to break the law than Clinton. There's no evidence that Clinton was trying to send classified info on her mail server, but Gonzales, the Attorney General, clearly knew he had classified info when he carried it in his briefcase and took it home.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean, in some other universe where people are presumed guilty until proven innocent? There is no evidence that Hillary Clinton is a criminal.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

WTF??? This is patently absurd.

You mean this discussion? Probably.

It's like neither of you realize that it's a work of fiction, defined and constrained by its creation, in all its various forms.

Including the funny noses. Klingons, Cardassians, Borg, even Vulcans, exist to serve the needs of the story, as manufactured as the Jem'Hadar and the Vorta.

And races like the Tholians or Species 8472 were just too expensive to depict very often.

Klingons have a rich warrior culture that values honor above all else. They made that abundantly clear in countless episodes.

And counter it in others, where Klingons are brutal, deceptive, and self-serving.

That's fiction for you. Especially fiction written by a multitude.

Humans (in this universe we inhabit) do not have a warrior culture, and definitely do not value honor. If we did, we would not be about to elect Trump or Hillary (or almost anyone else that was running).

The Klingons most resemble various old traditional cultures, such as the Japanese Samurai culture, which of course is long dead.

The Japanese Samurai Culture that was as corrupt and deceitful as any? Do you really believe the story they told about themselves, or are you simply unfamiliar with the real history?

Besides, check out Duras, Gowron, and more. Even that whole business with the Augment virus.

The ST race that was meant to most resemble modern humans is the Ferengi: profit above all. However, even the Ferengi had some real values; they thought it was important to properly assist underdeveloped cultures to develop economically and technologically, so that they could become good trading partners. Bombing them into submission was not part of their ethic.

No, the Ferengi were never meant to portray or resemble modern humans, they were meant to be a caricature that the writers could use, and they were an ill-defined one at first, only becoming somewhat better defined once DS:9 made use of them, but even then, some of the past was a constraint upon them, which eventually got addressed.

By the most grotesque appeal to cultural revisionism I could imagine. It still makes me cringe.

No, I think the Terran Empire depicted in several ST episodes (not just "Mirror, Mirror", but also an excellent ENT 2-parter called "In a Mirror, Darkly") is a very accurate depiction of modern human culture transposed into a future with warp drive.

But I do agree with your final assessment about good humans being the tiny tiny minority.

The Terran Empire has nothing to do with human culture. It was simply a creation for a story, and as limited as any of the others.

Really, you're trying to get milk from stones, the value you're trying to get, isn't there.

You might as well watch programs like GATE or The Irregular at Magic High School. Or Sliders.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

OT: but in star trek, the enterprise crew are not the humans of the future.

the kingons are. in fact, its hard to tell many humans from klingons, if you ignore the obvious diff in looks and language.

the dog-eat-dog view is widely held by humans. 'its not enough that I win; you must also lose'. that summarizes much of humanity, sad to say.

there's no chance people will progress to star trek level of kindness, justice and understanding. we don't have it in us, by in large. the good humans are the tiny tiny minority in this world.

I don't take pleasure in saying this. but its just true, that's all.

You have it wrong, the Klingons seem "human" to you, because they exist to be the adversaries of the Federation, but as the writers were themselves human, they wrote into the Klingons a character which they were familiar with, rather than any defined nature that exists independently. It just had to be one that caused problems for the crew of the Enterprise. Or made some other story point, as in the case where Worf was crippled, or his brother wanted to kill himself.

Of course, the story of Trek includes Roddenberry's insistence that the humans of the Federation would always behave properly according to his standards, with virtue and without conflict. Practically it's own version of the Hays Code.

In many ways, this makes it a poor choice to understand human nature, except perhaps as an ideal, though it does serve some point of illumination. And of course, that rule was thrown well out the window at some point, elsewise Sisko wouldn't have set up a Romulan senator with a fake holovid to try to bring them into the war against the Dominion, though even that was left to the alien to be the heavy in the end.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wallow in your ignorance.

Re: Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

You have the device already.
It's called a "ballot".
The problem is that you keep stupidly ignoring the way it works 3 out of every 4 years, and then you keep getting tricked by the establishment wing of one party who are also running the education systems, mass media, "social media" and who deploy entertainers and scream about phoney social issues none of the candidates care about --- and you let them fool you into voting for the dudes with the beards.
Stop being manipulated.
Why are you certain you will get good results supporting the half black half white guy and that he is so superior to the half white half black guy?

Re:Why?

[msauve]

"the kingons are"

ITYM Ferengi.

Re:Why?

[coinreturn]

Because if you look at who the emails are from, according to TFS, none are from Hillary. The headline is clickbait.

They're not from her, but they're directly or indirectly all ABOUT her and the DNC's unwavering Coronate Hillary position. What else did you think was going to be the focus of the matter? Yoga and wedding plans? Right.

So fucking what? It's not a Hillary scandal. Political parties have inside favorites - film at 11:00.

A quick scan of the emails... reveals more gossip

[fustakrakich]

Look, Anna Nicole Smith is dead. Let her rest in peace already!

Paid For

[Anonymous Coward]

By the RNC and the Trump For President campaign, and probably the Peter Thiel as well.

Re:Paid For

[Anonymous Coward]

But wikileaks is a russian intel psyop. But russia endorses Trump. Make up your mind!

Hah!

[fireylord]

I do love how random commentators, particularly anonymous ones, love telling people what everyone else is purported to want.

Such class

Re:Hah!

[Anonymous Coward]

love telling people what everyone else is purported to want.

A ten cent cigar will do...

Re:Hah!

[Dishevel]

To be fair though it certainly seems like people now are much more willing to give up opportunity and freedom for the illusion of security (Economic and otherwise) and to be removed from the list of responsible parties for their lives.

Re: Hah!

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want trump you are a fucking moron

Re:Hah!

[ultranova]

To be fair though it certainly seems like people now are much more willing to give up opportunity and freedom for the illusion of security (Economic and otherwise) and to be removed from the list of responsible parties for their lives.

As the world continues getting more interconnected that list keeps growing longer. Your fortunes are ever more dependent on what other people do, the current economic crisis being an excellent example. Nor can this trend be reversed because advanced technology depends on specialization. In such a world being responsible for yourself means abandoning the pleasant fantasy that you depend on no one, and seeking to influence the forces that shape your world to make them take your needs into account.

Re: Hah!

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want trump or hillary you are a fucking moron.

TFTFY.

Re:Hah!

[Dishevel]

I have no such fantasy.
I guess if I wanted to I could gain the skills and lose some benefits and live off the grid.
I do not want to though and most people have no such want.
But the TSA does not make you safe. More police on the streets, does not make us safe.
The Patriot act does not make us safe. Safety is an illusion that we are selling our freedoms for.

Minimum wage laws have created no jobs. When people are not taking shitty jobs because the benefits that come from not having a job are better, it causes real issues.

I tell my children this all the time. "When something is wrong in your life. Finding someone other than yourself to be "At Fault" will never benefit you. Always strive to find what you can do differently. This is where you gain power."
It is just truth. If you ever truly can find nothing you can do in your life differently to get better results, you win. You are a powerless victim. No fualt can be assigned to you. Nothing you could ever do to change things.
Feel better?

Re:Hah!

[AK Marc]

So for all the talk of a Democratic nanny state, you want a Republican one, with a "tough love" nanny. But still trying to treat everyone else as you would treat children. Change the nanny, it's still a nanny.

Re:Hah!

[Dishevel]

If removing tax penalties for getting married and making the drug laws sane and effective is "Nanny State", I do not think you understand "Nanny State".
Not sure why you think I feel a deep seated need to fall in with the Republican party?
Do you think that every person that values family and responsibility is a Republican? Do you think that all Republicans hold these ideals to be truth?
Would be nice, That though is simply not true. The Republican party is closer to the Democratic party than you would like to think.

Re: Hah!

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope you strangle on your boot straps.

Re:Hah!

[Dread_ed]

Safety is an illusion that we are selling our freedoms for.

I wholeheartedly agree with everything you stated with the exception of the above statement. Safety is a state of being you generate. It is a status of prepared existence. No you cannot prepare for every occurrence. No need to worry if you will get shot by a sniper, blown up by a nuclear strike, or hit by a falling meteor. You can't prevent or minimize those things. You cant avoid lightning strikes either and they are much more likely.

Recognizing what you can avoid, minimize, or eliminate with precautions, premeditation, constructive habits, and (dare I say it!) forearming yourself is where safety begins. Training and rigorous execution of the aforementioned is how safety is generated. Expecting safety from external sources is complete insanity. Just about every other person, law enforcement included, will put their life ahead of yours. This is natural and should be expected. Add in that old truth "when seconds count, the police are minutes away" and the list of parties responsible for your safety when it really matters drops precipitously. So when life and limb are on the line, how then can you have the expectation of safety from someone other than yourself? The hard truth is that in almost every circumstance you can't. To expect otherwise is to surrender your self determination to the hands of "fate" and the tender mercies of criminals.

An exception to this would be certain friends, my children, and my wife when I am with them. I will put myself in harms way, lay down my life if necessary, to prevent harm to them. While this dedication to the life of others may not be rare among friends and family, it is exceedingly rare with strangers. I can't stress this enough: Do not expect strangers and law enforcement to save you when the shit hits the fan. Rely on yourself, train yourself, take precautions, act intelligently, and know that you will win no matter what. And if winning means dying to save those you love or those you decide should live, act decisively and without restraint.

Sorry for the rant, but this is something I feel strongly about.

Re:Hah!

[LynnwoodRooster]

Safety is an illusion that we are selling our freedoms for.

I wholeheartedly agree with everything you stated with the exception of the above statement. Safety is a state of being you generate.

One party wants to ensure you do not have the right to generate that state of safety. The Democrats (and anyone opposed to issuing concealed carry permits to those with clean criminal backgrounds) want to ensure you do not have the ability to protect yourself, that you must rely upon the State for that. And because they would be the ONLY resort for safety - they own you that much more.

Re:Hah!

[Dishevel]

Truth.
Yes the Democrats do not think that I have the right to protect myself.

But
The Republicans are not far behind. They think I should not be able to protect myself from them.

Re: Hah!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, this. Exactly. The choices for president are beyond stupid.

But ever since I saw we came we saw he died ive figured Hillary really gets off on others suffering and while it's awful I prefer trump to that madness.

Or we could just find ourselves a more anarchist leaning Sanders clone that would be nice.

Re: Hah!

[c.s.carlson6]

Overall I get the sense that we agree on the big picture, but why not have a little more faith in others? For starters, it's really not an option to be an entirely self sustainable individual in the world. Unless you're capable of providing your own health care, concocting medicines, growing food, building and maintaining infrastructure, designing, running, and maintaining electrical systems, cutting and drawing lumber... Few people probably have the knowledge to do all these things, and nobody has the time to. The point is that society is necessary. Instead of writing everyone off as untrustworthy, why not seek out and form a strong network of friends? Good friends are also reliable parts of a social safety net.

Re:Hah!

[AK Marc]

I tell my children this all the time. "When something is wrong in your life. Finding someone other than yourself to be "At Fault" will never benefit you.
Always strive to find what you can do differently. This is where you gain power."
It is just truth. If you ever truly can find nothing you can do in your life differently to get better results, you win. You are a powerless victim. No fualt can be assigned to you. Nothing you could ever do to change things.
Feel better?

You want to treat the people like your children. Still a nanny state.

Re: Hah!

[Anonymous Coward]

same difference for those with registered accounts. unless your real name and address is publicly available

Re: Hah!

[Anonymous Coward]

The biggest improvement to safety from violence you can make is to move out of the USA. Not to buy a gun.

Re: Hah!

[jafiwam]

The biggest improvement to safety from violence you can make is to move out of the USA. Not to buy a gun.

Actually, it's;

Don't be depressed. (#1 killer with guns)

Don't hang around criminals, or be one

Don't be male and black in the inner city, or hang around black males in the inner city

Avoiding either of those last two reduces the "risk of getting shot" by about 98%. Both, and it's closer to five nines percentages. There is still some latent risk, like from stray bullets, random robberies, negligent discharge, etc. I agree, if you have a tendency to be depressed, you shouldn't own a gun. (Goes for any other mental illness really.)

The FBI and CDC have stats that show this, go look them up. If you line up those rates with those of other countries, US beats most of europe as far is "no violence" most of the time especially if you count recent numbers after lots of immigration.

If you are a white, asian, or hispanic, not a dumbass and not a criminal, having a gun in the house makes no goddamn difference. And you can offset some of the "random robbery" risk to boot. (There are as many as 6 million "defend but no shoot" self defense actions every year. Guns work for that without firing a shot. Many of these are out and about though, so carry concealed or open. There arent many people counting these though, probably for political reasons. NRA has some stats somewhere if you want them.)

Lastly, if you move out of the USA all the positive aspects of a firearm go away, along with freedom of speech, freedom of religion and a bunch of other stuff.

So, basically, "don't be a dumbass" and all of a sudden your "risk of getting shot" drops precipitously.

Re:Hah!

[Dishevel]

Well then. In order to not treat you like a child ...
Don't worry, nothing is your fault. All your life problems are beyond any hope of you fixing or having any control over. You are noting but a blameless victim

Feel better?

Re: Hah!

[LynnwoodRooster]

Well, don't move to Europe! It seems that there were 55% more casualties per capita from mass public shootings in EU than US from 2009-15. Mass killings are the real "random violence" acts. Most shootings in the US are from suicide (number one cause, actually), and from gang warfare (where both sides - victim and killer, either know each other or know about each other). Actual random shootings in the US? Per capita are a lower than in the EU.

Re: Hah!

[athenaprime]

You can't shoot cancer and heart disease.

Re: Hah!

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is Wikileaks celebrating the Russian hack of the DNC? This is about as dumb as Snowden talking about the data the NSA was and is gathering compared to what Amazon and Apple knows about us?

Re: Hah!

[Anonymous Coward]

Wise words.

Nothing from Hilary herself

[seniorcoder]

I suppose Hilary's private email server has saved her from being published by Wikileaks.
A previous poster suggested something incriminating would catapult Sanders into the DNC nomination spot.
If nothing actually incriminating is found, but something unfavorable is revealed, that would then help The Donald.

Re:Nothing from Hilary herself

[Black Parrot]

I think Assuange is just trying to stay relevant.

And not doing a very good job of it.

Re:Nothing from Hilary herself

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think he realized he was getting into the entertainment business, and it really doesn't suit him.

Re:Nothing from Hilary herself

[oh_my_080980980]

Actually the FBI did but they decided against indicting Clinton...

Re:Nothing from Hilary herself

[slew]

I suppose Hilary's private email server has saved her from being published by Wikileaks.

A previous poster suggested something incriminating would catapult Sanders into the DNC nomination spot.

If nothing actually incriminating is found, but something unfavorable is revealed, that would then help The Donald.

FYI, as a public service, wikileaks maintains a searchable database of Hilary's private email server documents obtained from FOIA request.

Of course now wikileaks is also hosting these newly obtained DNC emails. These DNC leaks mainly serve to discredit the DNC as to being fair to the Sanders campaign and probably mostly serve to open up old wounds among Sanders supporters. I doubt that Sanders could get catapulted to the nomination, but perhaps embolden his supporters to attempt the same stunt that the #NeverTrump folks tried (and failed) to do in the Republican Convention (ie., unbind the delegates).

Re:Nothing from Hilary herself

[TechyImmigrant]

>I suppose Hilary's private email server has saved her from being published by Wikileaks.

This. I would not be at all surprised if the current leaks were not the work of political opponents in government. Yet they don't contain emails from her own server.

If I was in her position, I would consider state department email servers to be far from secure from her political opponents in government and having her own email server seems to have actually kept her personal emails out of their hands. She had pretty much said as much. She did the right thing, whether you like it or not.

Can we get them all in .PST format?

[swb]

It might be easier to deal with.

tu é paranóica porque abusa de menores

[Anonymous Coward]

Quer dizer que quando Eu descobrir o nome dessa retardada, Eu vou processá-la por violação de correspondência, e ainda por cima dizer para a polícia federal que ela usa nome falso para trabalhar e continuar revebendo pensão? Por isso que essa puta vive dando a bunda. Se alguém, se interessar, a vó dessa retardada tá limpando as minhas cuecas, procurando maconha nas minhas gavetas pra saber o que Eu sei da vida dela.

NEW speculation..

[Anonymous Coward]

When Hillary is crowned queen (king? dicktator?) of the U.S., she's gonna go after this guy, and Ecuador for 'hiding' him in plain sight, hard. He will be dead or in Swedish prison (wouldn't that be an upgrade from current living conditions?) on trumped (hah!) up charges, before the first (sadly) mid-term election of her administration. Why did he choose Ecuador? No, not because it was the only country that would take him (many would love to snub the U.S.). It was the proximity to the Colombian embassy (same building) and the easy access that may allow to certain Colombian "exports" (coffee and chocolate are just two of the more popular ones).

Deeply offensive, beyond spoiled brat

[raymorris]

> You give 40+ hours of your week away to corporate bosses, just so you can feed yourself. That's called slavery.

So you think that sitting in your air-conditioned office posting on Slashdot and getting paid $100K for doing so is just exactly like slavery https://qph.ec.quoracdn.net/ma...

Sometimes I wish you whiny little spoiled liberals could spend six seconds on the whipping post in order to start getting a clue how incredibly fortunate you are. I EXPECT you to be a whiny, spoiled brat, but when you start saying that your experience of sitting here posting on Slashdot is *slavery*, just like people who are chained up and whipped, you cross the line and I'm going to call you on it. Your ridiculous "I'm a victim because I didn't get a free iPhone 6" crap trivializes the real suffering of actual victims, and it's deeply offensive.

Re:Deeply offensive, beyond spoiled brat

[Anonymous Coward]

Because people have it worse than you, you can't have criticism?

Fuck that mentality.

Re:Deeply offensive, beyond spoiled brat

[phantomfive]

Because people have it worse than you, you can't have criticism?

You can always criticize, everyone has free speech. Just be aware that in some cases, you'll seem like a whiny little brat. This might be because you are.

Re:Deeply offensive, beyond spoiled brat

[Anonymous Coward]

Sometimes I wish you whiny little spoiled liberals could spend six seconds on the whipping post in order to start getting a clue how incredibly fortunate you are.

I see. So it's "the liberals" that are spoiled, and "the conservatives" that had to work hard for every red cent?

You're embarrassing yourself. Please leave slashdot, you're making it worse, and it's already terrible. I've seen your posts for years, and I'm tired of them. Stop trying to turn "the liberals" into some horrible other who's a collective of sub-humans.

Re: Deeply offensive, beyond spoiled brat

[Anonymous Coward]

Seen his posts for years and still you wont even put your name on your comment.

Lol

Re:Deeply offensive, beyond spoiled brat

[Anonymous Coward]

You had me until 'liberals'. All humans can be whiny, spoiled and entitled, and it seems to me that I hear the most whiny, spoiled entitlement from the religious right.

Re:Deeply offensive, beyond spoiled brat

[Anonymous Coward]

you are already rated at a 5 on this post, but if I could I would login just to raise this posting up to a 1000000! seriously, morons calling work = slavery! What a bunch of whiny fucks.

Re:Deeply offensive, beyond spoiled brat

[Anonymous Coward]

Your lack of knowledge of history is showing. And your preference for logical fallacy over actual discussion is noted as well. You can be as "deeply offended" as you want, but you're on the wrong side of history. Stop whining and grow up, you manchild.

Re:Deeply offensive, beyond spoiled brat

[Anonymous Coward]

He says while the US experiences the highest level of income disparity it has ever seen.

No one is complaining that they didn't get a free i-phone six. They are complaining that after working their way through college, accumulating massive amounts of debt, and struggling through a recession, the status quo is to reward the people and companies that are destroying the mobility in American society that you pretend you love so much. You want social mobility? Massive unemployment and huge profits for corporations isn't going to help anyone achieve the American Dream-- it's destroying that dream and creating some neo-fuedalistic society, a sham version of capitalism.

It's not whining to want to make the country a better place. Recognizing that human beings have inalienable rights is something our forefather's did over 200 years ago-- the rights of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness". We have resources to provide people with universal heathcare, to provide people with food, water, shelter, and give them the freedom to pursuit happiness in whatever way they want. What will it cost us? It will mean that instead of earning 1.5 billion dollars a year some company will only earn a billion. It means that being rich in America will mean only being able to afford a 200 room mansion, a private jet and a fleet of sportscars an only have 20 million set aside for a rainy day instead of 40 million.

No one "earned" that money-- they won it in the lottery that is our economic system. They were a lucky bastard who did well. What a lot of people want is the SYSTEM that lets someone become a rich bastard ALSO make sure that the people who don't become rich bastards have a place to sleep, food to eat, and good health. The rich won't be quite as rich and the poor won't be quite as poor-- that' all, no socialist revolution, no communist bread lines.

It disgusts me that this is so hard to understand. People act like they are somehow special and earned their place in our society with no help from the society itself-- as if the crooked rules in the economic system weren't benefiting the rich after they bought and sold the politicians. If "having money" means you "earned that money" then the future of our society is undeniably going to become one of violence. When economic opportunity dies up, people will turn to violence, and all the creative accounting and luck in the market will be useless against one pissed off guy with a .45.

Good luck with your awesome Darwinian society.

Re:Deeply offensive, beyond spoiled brat

[Anonymous Coward]

Do... do you think the average person makes 100k a year and has an office job? You can't really be that out of touch with reality.

Re:Deeply offensive, beyond spoiled brat

[ScentCone]

How does the fact that someone else makes more money than you do make you a slave? Be specific. Try to be intellectually coherent, too. Oh, and while you're at it, you make more money than most people in the entire world ... is your willingness to accept that money making other people slaves? No? I see.

Re:Deeply offensive, beyond spoiled brat

[mea_culpa]

You get yourself into this trouble by living beyond your means. My parents and grandparents didn't grow up with air conditioned 2000sf+ homes with attached garages, satellite TV, smartphones, or more than 1 car (which also didn't have AC or automatic anything),

Kids today somehow think that they are entitled to everything their parents worked so hard for and more. It's absolutely disgusting.
I can't really blame them though, after all they were raised this way.

Go read the Compound Effect or The Slight Edge. Being wealthy has nothing at all to do with luck. If it did, then lottery winners wouldn't be going bankrupt soon after their winnings. It has everything to do with day to day choices you make compounded over time. Nothing more.

Re:Deeply offensive, beyond spoiled brat

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope, "first world problems" are actually important and should be respected more. Otherwise we put them on hold while the rest of the world catches up and THEN have to deal with all these issues? While you may be incapable of walking and chewing gum, few others are.

Re:Deeply offensive, beyond spoiled brat

[phantomfive]

Nope, "first world problems" are actually important and should be respected more.

Respected more? Brown people's problems don't matter as much to you, I guess. What a great human being you are, you deserve so much. :/

Re:Deeply offensive, beyond spoiled brat

[Anonymous Coward]

You're espousing an essentially religious belief, that if you are virtuous bad things will not happen to you. Shit happens, and your sense of control is illusory.

You have more freedom than you think

[zerofoo]

A friend recently showed me 20 acres of land in Texas for $8000.00. Sure there are no utilities and it is in the middle of nowhere, but it's cheap.

Through your own sweat, you could build a little house and live off the grid and off of the land.

I realize that the cost of that "freedom" from my corporate bosses would require lots of sweat equity.

My corporate job provides me with benefits, paid time off, and a relatively stable life. I willingly trade some freedom for those benefits - absolutely no one is forcing me to take that deal.

Where the brainwashing has occured is on the Democratic side. Every year Democrats convince more people that more things are "rights" and therefore the people are entitled to those goods and services - without having earned them.

The people forced to provide those goods and services for those that haven't earned them are the real slaves.

Re:You have more freedom than you think

[Anonymous Coward]

The people forced to provide those goods and services for those that haven't earned them are the real slaves.

Ironically, that would be people working 40 hours a week. So, in a sense, OP was right.

Re:You have more freedom than you think

[Anonymous Coward]

A friend recently showed me 20 acres of land in Texas for $8000.00. Sure there are no utilities and it is in the middle of nowhere, but it's cheap. Through your own sweat, you could build a little house and live off the grid and off of the land.

No you can't. Substance farming is possible (it is a horrible way to live), but the parts of Texas where it is possible are much more expensive than that, because that's very good farmland. There are parts of Texas that won't even support cattle. BTW, 20 acres is nothing for raising cattle.

Re:You have more freedom than you think

[Anonymous Coward]

What goods are you talking about?

You have an odd idea of what Democrats are trying to convince voters of especially when you compare to Republicans which are offering much of the same just in different places. Think about what it would take to enforce the retarded Muslim ban idea? The only positive for building the wall to Mexico is that it would employ a lot of people for a lot of years and cost tax payers untold billions and be foiled with a simple tunnel.

I'm unsure why you think you should have to "earn" healthcare. I'm also unsure why you think people should "earn" paying for education when it used to be free in this country. We just wanted to provide adequate funding so that it is free again or at least lower cost. Maybe you should stop listening to conservative pundits that are anything but conservative these days. The amount government expansion required to deport 11 million illegal immigrants would make creation of the DHS seem small in comparison. Republicans these days are all about expanding government reach, not reducing it like you seem to think.

The reason Bernie was/is so disruptive is that he actually wants to hold people accountable for their actions which should be something a lot of Republicans could get behind. The $15/hr minimum is obviously unattainable but the idea is that you have to increase minimum wage because it has stagnated and doesn't mean anything anymore. Certain regions could absolutely go to there but some places that would prompt massive unemployment if done all at once. Of course none of the options say to do it overnight either.

When you look at Bernie's platform as a mandate, or as a direction to go in then it is not nearly as scary. It doesn't have to happen over night but it is hard to argue that all people deserve to survive and illness we have the ability to treat. That people shouldn't have to go bankrupt because they had a heart attack especially since they were probably ensured. We have a whole new insurance industry around supplemental insurance now to cover things that used to be covered by normal insurance.

This race is really about how bad a two party system is. Trump and Bernie made massive inroads because neither party is delivering on their promises. The scary prospect is that people think governing is at all like running a business. They are very different skillsets. You can argue about Trump's ability to run a business but you can't argue that he has no experience governing and is going for the biggest governing job there is right off the bat. That would be a person skipping all the training to be an electrician and immediately working on high voltage transmission lines! You need to learn how it all works, as you gain experience you become qualified for higher and higher end projects. A person off the street isn't going to suddenly start developing AI. They are going to learn to code first, then they will learn a few other languages, then they'll be really good at math and then finally they'll be building neural nets. You can't just skip to the end.

Re:You have more freedom than you think

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you send me the info for this land? I'd like to buy it. Seriously, no joke (or sarcasm).

Re:You have more freedom than you think

[Ogive17]

That's how society evolves.. something that was a luxury a century ago is now a basic necessity.

I personally feel that all citizens should get free basic health care (anything elective is out of pocket) and free secondary education (community colleges, must maintain good grades). I think these things can be done simply by making government more efficient.

The older I became, the more of the world I experience, the more I came to believe the current Republican party is the opposite of progress. They want to act like it's still the 1950s.

Re:You have more freedom than you think

[Anonymous Coward]

Where the brainwashing has occured is on the Democratic side. Every year Democrats convince more people that more things are "rights" and therefore the people are entitled to those goods and services - without having earned them.

And the worst offenders call themselves Progressives.

Re:You have more freedom than you think

[danbob999]

You'd likely end up spending much more than 40h / week to build and maintain your house and grow and prepare your food. I wouldn't consider that having more freedom. You would have less free / leisure / sleep time.
And you would also need to pay your property taxes so you would need a little income. And I hope you didn't plan on getting sick or having children as you will either be out of luck or on welfare.

Re:You have more freedom than you think

[Darinbob]

The thing with healthcare is that some level of care gets provided whether the patient can pay or not. So that raises costs overall. Also not getting healthcare makes other people less healthy. Opting out of the system screws it up for everone else. A reform was needed, we got one though it had flaws, and yet people complain about being required to pay for insurance. But America is still in a individualist oriented mindset, as in it's all about me and everyone else can go screw themselves.

Yes the two party system is screwed up. But it wasn't designed to be that way, it just happened due to the nature of the rules set up and the environment it takes place in. Winner takes all, lack of communication, complexity of understanding the issues, etc. So where other countries might have a coalition that takes place after a general election, we have coalitions that are formed during the primary elections which naturally end up being dominated by extremists and true believers in their party and not by moderate voices.

And Trump doesn't really run businesses, he mostly invests in them, lends his name, etc. How the country will be run if he's president is a complete unknown at the moment because it all will depend upon who he gets in the cabinet, the people who might actually know how to run things (if we're lucky). With Hillary everyone has a pretty good idea of what names might be in the cabinet and actually deciding policy, and we know if we like or dislike them, but with Trump everything is a huge unknown (huuuuuge).

Re:You have more freedom than you think

[Anonymous Coward]

Texas is a "free" state. Many other states' governments now require monthly minimum payments be made to "public" utilities as a form of corporate welfare. Living off the grid is illegal in such places.

Re:You have more freedom than you think

[Anonymous Coward]

You still have to watch out for civil forfeiture
Civil forfeiture laws allow the government to take cash, cars, homes and other property suspected of being involved in criminal activity. Unlike criminal forfeiture, with civil forfeiture, the property owner doesn’t have to be charged with, let alone convicted of, a crime to permanently lose his property.

Re:You have more freedom than you think

[Anonymous Coward]

But but ... I want my free stuff. I don't care who pays for it, just give it to me. Me, me, me .... WHINE WINE WHINE !
[sarcasm]

All very good points. If anyone is becoming slaves, it's the middle class, slaving away at work and then being taxed out the rear to support the "entitled" welfare class.

Re:You have more freedom than you think

[rahvin112]

For $8000 if you tried to live on it completely self-sufficient you'd be dead in less than 3 days.

Much like my own home state Utah there is land just as cheap, and it is so cheap precisely because it's only value is grazing cattle every few years. There is little to no water, the climate is adverse to growing anything but desert grasses. You couldn't subsistence farm this land with all the money in the world to get you started. In other words, it's cheap because it has little value just as the market shows.

I ran into a fool like you many years ago that claimed there is no population limits, after all look at all that open land out there in the desert. Are you completely ignorant of what it takes survive and farm?

Re:You have more freedom than you think

[Anonymous Coward]

The thing with healthcare is that some level of care gets provided whether the patient can pay or not. So that raises costs overall. .

So why then is healthcare in the US three times the cost per head in the UK which has universal health care free at the point of use?

Re:You have more freedom than you think

[Anonymous Coward]

You're confusing freedom with happiness.

Re:You have more freedom than you think

[GPS Pilot]

I'm unsure why you think you should have to "earn" healthcare.

Somebody has to "earn" it; doctors' salaries (to name just one category of healthcare costs) don't pay themselves. There are four ways that healthcare (or health insurance) can be paid for:

(1) out of the patient's assets
(2) by a wealth redistribution program (people other than the patient pay for it, coercively)
(3) by charitable contributions (people other than the patient pay for it, voluntarily; for example, Shriners Hospitals are funded this way)
(4) some combination of the above.

The system used in the U.S. is some-combination-of-the-above (4). As per-capita GDP grows, and people become more able and willing to be charitable, the ethical way to govern would be to shift sources of funding away from the coercive (2) and toward the voluntary (3). Note that the most efficient economic decisions are made when people spend their own money (1), not when they spend other people's money (2 and 3).

We have a whole new insurance industry around supplemental insurance now to cover things that used to be covered by normal insurance.

What country do you live in? Here in the U.S., "normal" insurance is now required to cover even frivolous things like gender reassignment surgery.

Re:You have more freedom than you think

[Anonymous Coward]

What if rich and poor people both enslave the rest of us? What if the rich are a worse burden?

Re:You have more freedom than you think

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed. Remote property in my area which does have water and topsoil starts at 30k an acre. 50k if it has easily exploitable resources like reasonably flat terrain or trees.

Re:You have more freedom than you think

[whodunit]

This race is really about how bad a two party system is. Trump and Bernie made massive inroads because neither party is delivering on their promises.

I am so sick of people who fail to understand our two-party system that I want to fucking scream. The small parties that exist in any parlimentary system (labor party, green party, consumer party, religious party, businessman's party, etc,) all exist in our system as well, but because first-past-the-post voting is our system, they all have to band together into the biggest coalition they possibly can in order to have a chance at winning. So the party primaries tend to produce candidates with very broad appeal across their respective side of the spectrum. Thus whoever wins the Presidency has at least 50% of the country supporting them to begin with, as opposed to a parliamentary system where the "winners" try to hash out a coalition post-facto and they pick a chief executive, not the voter. The "winners" have a much narrower segment of the populace behind them - a much smaller mandate - and the Prime Minister pick is the result of politicians doing horse trading, not the will of the people.

The fact that Bernie got so far - and that Trump actually bucked the establishment party entirely, like the Bull Moose before him - just demonstrates the flexibility of the system. The Scary Party Apparatus was unable to stand against him, because they stood against the will of the voters.

You need to learn how it all works, as you gain experience you become qualified for higher and higher end projects.

The entire history of our nation disagrees with you. On average, Presidents win the Presidency about 15 years after their first significant electoral victory. Long-time career politicians, like Senators, do not win the Presidency very often at all. (Obama didn't even serve a full term as a Senator before running for the top job.) That's because people don't vote for candidates with too much baggage; and career politicians have traded too many horses and used cars to be very convincing when they claim to have strong principles on this or that. The people who tend to win the Presidency tend to be powerful personalities with clear-cut agendas - and they are not, as a rule, career politicians.

This is by design. See Federalist Paper No. 70, specifically the concept of "energy in the executive." Congress is the domain of the deal-making career politician; where compromise rules and change is implemented very gradually. The executive branch was intended by the Founding Fathers to be a fire under Congress's ass; for the office - and the holder of that office - to provide the impetus and energy that Congress, by design, cannot have.

The President is not a god damned Prime Minister. They're not some balding bureaucratic asshole picked by other balding bureaucratic assholes. They're a powerful - and individual - expression of the popular will, and that's important considering the incumbency rate of Congress is over 90%. Please, I implore you, and everyone else - do some fucking reading about our god-damned political system before you sit there and spout off more fucking bullshit about how unutterably awful you think our system is. It isn't fucking rocket science. It's all available online. You can buy the Federalist Papers in paperback form for a few bucks off Amazon. You fancy yourself an educated voter? Go get the fucking education.

Hey, stupid Americunts!

[Anonymous Coward]

Left winger = worker or state ownership of the means of production.

The pre-'80s British Labour Party was centre-left, in that they supported a programme of nationalisation of the commanding heights and, to some extent, smaller businesses, supported by high union membership and union control.

Fidel Castro and Vladimir Lenin were definitively left wing, discarding markets and private property rights entirely (i.e. nothing but entitlement to items of non-commercial personal property).

Wanting to add a little more Scandinavian welfare statism to capitalism makes you centrist, not left wing.

Hillary and Trump are both firmly to the right of the global political spectrum.

HTH.

Oh, and I was brought up in Poland as a Soviet satellite state. I'm no Commie, but I do know how horrid it was in practice, and you spoilt fucking American snowflakes who like to see everything black & white & wrong need to grow up and see that idealistic extremism swinging in any direction is self-harmful.

Re:Hey, stupid Americunts!

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi, fellow AC! Different cultures have different terms for different things. HTH! :-)

Re:Hey, stupid Americunts!

[nedlohs]

The "global political spectrum" is irrelevant. They are running for President of the United States not President of the Globe.

Re:Hey, stupid Americunts!

[Anonymous Coward]

That's only the definition of "left wing" in most of Europe. Globally, Europe is pretty left, and America is mostly center, slightly center-right. What Hillary and Trump both are is authoritarian.

Where is the Technical /. Discussion?

[0100010001010011]

If you search for the top senders a 'noreply' is on there.

If you start digging through the e-mail sources there's some pretty interesting (but politically boring) data in there.

Someone is running "CommuniGate Pro SMTP 6.0.4" in 2016. It was released on 28-Mar-2013 and has had Bug fixes since then

https://messages.whitehouse.go...

Is not resolvable from the outside it seems.

Politics aside, is this a copyright violation?

[Overzeetop]

Since these are private communications - not government data - and each email is a creative work by the author, would this potentially be subject to copyright infringement, to the "value" of the communications (which may only arguably be $10-20 a piece if you count time spent x nominal billing rate), triple damage for intentional distribution, times the number of downloads (or x1 if it was uploaded to a torrent, and then copyright infringement applied to all who are torrenting)? Could several of the key documents be registered and then, if subsequently distributed by others, in for the $150,000 per infringement violation - and could that be applied to any organization which disseminates [even non-fair-use excerpts] of the works?

Re:Politics aside, is this a copyright violation?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, random communications aren't creative works and thus aren't covered under copyright law. If all the emails were poems then yes, but I highly doubt they are.

Re:Politics aside, is this a copyright violation?

[clubby]

I heard once that if a US Army band plays a song, they can't copyright the performance, because the band members are all active-duty personnel, paid by the American taxpayer, and there's a rule against copyrighting the creative works of public servants.

I'm probably getting part of that wrong, though. Can anyone clear this up definitively?

Re:Politics aside, is this a copyright violation?

[clubby]

Mental note: formulate all future work-related correspondence in Haiku. (I'm going to be so popular around the office!)

Re:Politics aside, is this a copyright violation?

[Overzeetop]

Even if the performance wasn't copyrighted, unless the arrangement and the original work was either public domain or written on government time, the recording would still carry the music author's copyright and would not be allowed to be reproduced without a license.

Re:Politics aside, is this a copyright violation?

[Overzeetop]

But they weren't random communications. They were intentionally created for a particular purpose and crafted and formatted to present more than basic data. There are also thousands of attachments, many of them presumably reports and pictures - all of which would definitely be works which fall under copyright. This post is even copyrighted, as useless as it is, and the terms of using this site are that I grant /. the non-exclusive right to redistribute it.

Re:Politics aside, is this a copyright violation?

[Orgasmatron]

You are completely correct. No court would ever uphold a copyright claim on these emails.

CFAA? yes
Espionage act (if any are classified)? yes
Copyright? no

Re:Politics aside, is this a copyright violation?

[Sloppy]

each email is a creative work by the author

Yes, good point! Without the government sticking their guns in everyone's faces and enforcing the email-writer's monopoly on commercially profiting from their blood, sweat, and tears, what incentive would party members have to communicate with each other?

If we don't properly enforce this monopoly, party members will give up and stop emailing each other! Then where will be be?

Re:Politics aside, is this a copyright violation?

[drinkypoo]

But they weren't random communications. They were intentionally created for a particular purpose and crafted and formatted to present more than basic data. There are also thousands of attachments, many of them presumably reports and pictures - all of which would definitely be works which fall under copyright.

well, no. "A work of the United States government, as defined by the United States copyright law, is "a work prepared by an officer or employee" of the federal government "as part of that person's official duties."[1] In general, under section 105 of the Copyright Act,[2] such works are not entitled to domestic copyright protection under U.S. law and are therefore in the public domain." So stuff sent to the server might well fall under such, but anything sent from the server is uncopyrightable.

Re:Politics aside, is this a copyright violation?

[TechyImmigrant]

>well, no. "A work of the United States government [wikipedia.org],

The DNC isn't the government.

Let All Sing Along.

[Anonymous Coward]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkq9FNrp3wE

Privacy- is it worth Anything?

[Anonymous Coward]

You did notice that none of these e-mails were from Hillary, right?

I was going to ask the same thing. To be a "whistleblower" organization (as described in the summary) is to call attention to illegal activities that have been suppressed. If there is no evidence of wrongdoing here, all Wikileaks is doing is violating people's privacy. While it might be interesting to read the internal e-mails of politicians, executives or celebrities, if there is nothing illegal going on then it's ultimately just voyeurism that doesn't justify distribution from a dodgily (probably illegally) obtained source.

Yes, it's amusing how slashdotters are all in favor of privacy, unless it's somebody they don't like.

Re:Privacy- is it worth Anything?

[Anonymous Coward]

god-ole slashdot looks more and more like a haven for astro-turfing each day

I doubt that the average slashdotter really hates Hillary, it is all of the paid posters being given low uid's that makes it look that way

Whining

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone hates it. Even other whiners.

Where are the Trump emails?

[gosand]

After all, fair is fair. Let's have all the dirty laundry aired.

Accurate definitions [Re:Hey, stupid Americ...]

[Anonymous Coward]

Left winger = worker or state ownership of the means of production.

That's the definition of socialism, not the definition of left-wing.

You have implicitly defined "left wing = socialism", which is not a correct definition. Socialism is an economic philosophy; "left wing" is a political position. Economic policy is just one aspect of political positions.

Well...

[argStyopa]

...I think Hilary and Bill are as dirty-rotten & blatantly corrupt as the day is long...but if we've had what now, 2 dumps of "info" from the leaks and AFAIK nothing has jumped up obviously to bite her in the ass?

I have to either
a) commend them on the rigor of their operational security, or
b) expect that all the very best bits are still yet to come in Sept or Oct, when the splash will be large enough.

I honestly don't know which I hope. I really, truly don't want her as president, but then I don't want Trump EITHER.
I'm hoping for the enormous asteroid 2016.

Re:Well...

[Anonymous Coward]

Watergate didn't find anything incriminating, nor did the invasion of Palin's email in 2008. Maybe it's because most people don't put blatant criminal activity into writing? Remember, Hillary got burned and almost indicted for deleting emails back in 1996, too - hence, the attempt to have a private, non-FOIA server.

But I'll second your SMOD 2016 nomination.

Re:Well...

[Alomex]

So let me get this straight, the absence of evidence is mere proof of their culpability? Not that you are biased or anything.

They have been accused for 25 years non-stop of the many crimes; and while some sleazy stuff has been found, under extensive examination by a Republican prosecutor (kenneth starr) and a republican head of investigation (FBI) nothing worth prosecuting was ever found.

The problem - we're past "leaks"

[dnaumov]

I am increasingly feeling that importance of various leaks is being diminished constantly and consistently. At this moment it's starting to feel that it's utterly irrelevant what new information comes out about Hillary and/or Trump. The supporters of both have made up their minds and they basically plain DON'T CARE. Can anything be done about it? No idea.

I got Bernie

[rsilvergun]

He did exactly what I wanted. He moved the party platform to the left. That was also his stated goal. He never expected to win. This was slowest about keeping Clinton on her toes. Worked, too.

Re:I got Bernie

[LynnwoodRooster]

Thank goodness Hillary! has such a strong, strong record of being 100% truthful and reliable in her public statements!

Someone has a death wish here

[Anonymous Coward]

When (not if) Hillary becomes President of the United States of America, there will be NOWHERE those guys will be safe from her wrath. They will be arrested, deported, tried, imprisoned, and killed. Or kidnapped, tortured and killed. Or found, targeted by drones, and killed. All they can hope for is a swift and painless death. And then Hillary will have the internet reshaped according to her wishes.

Trump Smrt!

[DarthVain]

So what you are saying is that Donald Trump is more in touch with all American voters when he says he is going to build a wall and make somebody else pay for it?

With whose water

[rsilvergun]

Dummy? That land is 8k for a reason. Where are you going to get water to grow food? There's a reason nobody settled there, ya know? The reason the America southwest was settled was the govt paid to irrigate and developer land. It wasn't bootstrappy capitalists. You know why house prices are going up? Developers ran out of free land they could build on that you and me paid for. Christ..

Re:With whose water

[naughtynaughty]

Developers in the Southwest don't get and haven't ever gotten free land to build on, at least not in my lifetime.

The State of Arizona was deeded large amounts of federal land when Arizona gained statehood. The land was put into trust with the sale and leasing of the land required to pay for public schools. They don't give developers any of that land for free, one recent parcel went for over $1M/acre for unimproved land.

In 2013 they received over $300M from land sales and leases.

Oh, it actually was bootstrappy capitalists that built the original canals the make up the Salt River canal system in Phoenix, they were later bought by the federal government who still owns them today. Neither the bootstrappy capitalists or the federal government gave away the water from those canals for free. Not back then and not today.

Delegate Selection Process

[dbreeze]

https://drive.google.com/file/...
Nothing really new but combing thru all this stuff may be fun...

Re:

[srichard25]

Actually, Democrats just want everyone else to pay for their safety net.

Not really, no.

[Anonymous Coward]

People say that all the time. I see no evidence Hillary is particularly 'authoritarian".

She seems to a basic, middle-of-the-road politician, not really unusual in any way.

Not "authoritarian" except possibly by the standards of the most fringe elements of the libertarians, who consider pretty much every law authoritarian.

Loved #10808, Politico entanglement

[Anonymous Coward]

Politico passing stuff to Hillary team for pre-approval. The cheerleader getting pre-approval from the captain of the team.

Move along. Nothing to see here. It's all just "standard" journalism...

Every time this sort of stuff is exposed, it's explained away as "normal", and even "ethical" and no sign of collusion, or an unusual event. Does anybody think Politico clears their Trump pieces with Trump?

Twitter blackout now

[bongey]

#DNCLeaks was trending number 2 and then disappeared.

Re:Twitter blackout now

[bongey]

http://www.washingtontimes.com...

Why healthcare is broken..

[thesupraman]

No, sorry, you pretty much have it 100% wrong.

You seem to think the problem with healthcare is that everyone is not 'included'. That is very very wrong, and pretty much what the healthcare industry wants you tho think, congratulations at swallowing the hook, line, and sinker.

The problem with healthcare is that an essential service, and one which is NOT optional for people, is run at a massive private PROFIT for the incumbents.
They have, for a long time, worked with the government to massively regulate out any form of competition, and are currently working to regulate in all users to maximise profits.

The WHOLE reason Us healthcare (and many others) is so catastrophically overprices and inefficient is that it is run PURELY for profit, and regulated for protection of that profit. Whoever people have little choice about using healthcare - your other choice is being sick or death..

People think regulations are used to control the providers, however it is almost exactly the opposite - regulations exist to stop competition from new providers, and to make sure only the massive incumbents are allowed, and hence there is no real competition.

Compare the costs of healthcare to unregulated services available in Asia, which often provide better service, with the same or more advanced capabilities, BETTER patient outcome records, and at a much MUCH lower price... Good examples are South Korea and Thailand private medical services.

Your governments and your Health companies (providers, insurers, and overseers) and using your health to empty your wallets, and letting the people without enough cash simply suffer, as a scare tactic so they can squeeze the rest harder. Land of the free! ra ra!

Re:Why healthcare is broken..

[sumdumass]

Your sort of right but wrong. Profit is not the problem with expensive health care. The problem is government involvement and patents.

You can track the skyrocketing medical costs back to the mid 1960s with the creation of Medicare. Before that, medical bills were largely affordable and hospitals would carry a financing balance. With Medicare, the government started saying it cost to much to pay for the seniors and soon started averaging costs of medical procedures in 5 or so geographical regions. They then said this is all Medicare will pay and you have to accept it else you cannot accept any insurance. This also marked the widespread acceptance of HMOs as Medicare used them.

The problem with this setup is that it doesn't take into consideration the difference between small town community hospitals and state of the art treatment centers. The averaging was low for a lot of big city hospitals with higher costs and high for smaller ones with lower costs. Congress soon realized that Medicare was still to expensive and started paying only a percentage of the average. Once the medical professionals noticed the averaging, it was found that by inflating costs, they could increase the averaging and regain payment. Insurance companies objected to this so they recieved discounts to bring the costs back down. This brought about the in network and out of network distinctions in most medical plans. Because these were preferred partner discounts, they didn't count the discounted rate towards the averaging but the original rates.

Now enter government investments into the medical industry in the form of grants and such for research (mostly in public universities). This brought new costs and they were already expensive mostly due to knowing that whatever costs they would only recover a small portion of it. Universities were partial it not complete owners of patents involved and they expected this royalties to be income for their endowments.

What is left is a rate that is a magnitude higher than what insurance and government programs pay being charged to people not covered by either. There is an incentive for this to continue more because tax liability for hospitals and some medical providers became tied to an amount of free and reduced services provided to the poor and needy. Why do two of X for a lower effective tax rate when you can do one and count the costs as a loss.

Yes, greed has a lot to do with it. But the system is rigged in the first place. Poor people who don't pay only increase your costs if you do not have insurance or government coverage. The costs are inflated largely to get around government skipping out on their bills.

Now this doesn't cover the pharmaceutical industry who are riding the wave. They are somewhat tied to the patent system mentioned before but fund a lot of research themselves.

Re:Why healthcare is broken..

[colinwb]

"Your sort of right but wrong. Profit is not the problem with expensive health care."
To get one thing out of the way first: I'm in the UK, and I don't think there is anything wrong with profit in providing healthcare, provided the companies/people making the profit are operating in a reasonably free market. That said, I do like a system which provides universal healthcare. (So to parts of the Republican Party I probably seem like a pinko cheese-eating surrender monkey commie.)

"The problem is government involvement and patents."

To quote an AC replying (I think) to another post:
"The thing with healthcare is that some level of care gets provided whether the patient can pay or not. So that raises costs overall. ."
--So why then is healthcare in the US three times the cost per head in the UK which has universal health care free at the point of use?

So, what that AC already said (subject to the caveat below), plus this graphic from the Kings Fund, a well-respected UK organisation researching healthcare, and a question:
Do you have any evidence that the US is getting value for money by apparently spending about 45% per more of per capita GDP on healthcare than, for example, Germany, which has a similar per capita GDP to that of the US.?

Caveat: gdp per capita: UK about 42,000usd, USA about 53,000usd, about 1.25 times the UK;
healthcare spend as a percentage of GDP: UK about 8.7%, USA about 16.3%, about 1.9 times the UK;
so the US cost per head is about 2.4 times that for the UK.

Re:Why healthcare is broken..

[sumdumass]

The costs of health care in the U.S. is skewed in its reporting. It is accounted in several ways which doesn't represent the actual costs.

One way is to take the average costs calculated by the government and extrapolate that at the number of claims. This inflates the real costs being paid. The other way is to statically calculate procedures through reported insurance claims and compare that to the gross earnings of medical fields as applied to tax returns. There we have the same problem of costs to poor and unpaid bills being written off because showing a large write off qualifies them for lower tax rates.It essentially allows them to claim a non-profit rate when they are a for profit venture. This again skews the costs evaluations but are also surprisingly similar to the other methods.

Now I already explained how and why the costs are so much for uncovered patients. The total actually spent on health care does not add up to the amounts reported.

But does that translate to getting more value? Yes and no. In some areas of health care the answer would be yes. There are several MRI and other specialty equipment in more places and the wait to get access to one is lower. But in some places the wait to get to see you primary care doctor can be longer. You also have the issue in the uk where they will cease treatment on some elderly patients and put them prematurely on an end of life care plan to save resources or open bed space (a sort of soft euthanasia).

Hillary planned to attack Bernie for atheism

[Anonymous Coward]

This gives all sorts of insight into team Hillary.

Planned to attack Bernie as an atheist in Kentucky and West Virginia, where they presumed it would hurt among Baptists....

That campaign is completely SATURATED with stereotyping and identity politics.

They presume all sorts of stuff about Baptists, Kentuckians, West Virginians, Atheists, Jews, etc and cynically planned to manipulate Bernie into exposing a presumed vulnerability with which they might then manipulate the supposed rubes in the "Bible Belt". In Hillary world, all the "others" are obviously dumb and easy to manipulate along stereotypical lines.

NEWSFLASH: Nobody in the "Bible Belt" is under any delusion that Trump is particularly religious, and Ted Cruz tried that same sort of stupid identity politics against Trump. The supposedly manipulable religious who were supposed to be bigoted against a non-Bible-thumper voted for Trump over Cruz. It's not just a religious thing. These idiots who work in campaigns, in BOTH parties, slip into the trap of thinking they can over-analyze everything and categorize everyone and then manipulate anyone. This is toxic politics and might be tied to all the data mining that increasingly helps campaigns of all stripes put populations under microscopes and think they understand PEOPLE by looking at NUMBERS.

Re:A quick scan of the emails... reveals more goss

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not offtopic! This whole damn story is pure gossip! Exactly like the Anna Nicole Smith thing. What, did somebody get triggered again? Jebus! This world is doomed! DOOOMED!

Consistent with the definition of slavery

[GPS Pilot]

The people forced to provide those goods and services for those that haven't earned them are the real slaves.

That's really quite consistent with the definition of slavery. To the extent that the fruits of your labor are confiscated, you are enslaved.

If, between local, state and federal government, 60% of your income is confiscated, you are 60% enslaved.

This assertion does not break down just because some of the confiscated funds are directed back to you in the form of government benefits. Traditional slaves received meager food, clothing and housing benefits too.

Am I an anarchist who believes we should all be 0% enslaved? No, I have a gut feeling that society would thrive best if we were all about 17% enslaved.

It is why I stopped pushing for change...

[Anonymous Coward]

And started pushing for 'emigration'.

The rational amongst us who AREN'T partisan, and understand the consequences of either Clinton or Trump winning have no chance of being adequately represented in American society. Futhermore those of who qualify as techies or nerds are having the rights most important to us trampled on with the ever expanding surveillance apparatus and tightening IP laws for rightsholders not creators/users. This is a situation that we are too small in number to fix.

What we can do however is pool our money, mindshare, and similiar policies and upon emigrating from the US, found somewhere that represents our identity, our expectations of law and order, and our choices in how to advance technology within whatever legal, moral and ethical boundaries we choose to enforce upon ourselves as a group, instead of allowing those choices to be made by people who have neither the motivation nor intellect to educate themselves thoroughly on a topic before taking measures that are often reactionary, ineffective, and crippling to the advancement of society as a whole.

There are opportunities now to do this, but only if enough of the crowd who cares is willing to take the uncomfortable steps necessary to jump into their own 'interesting times' and find out if they will become a turning point for future society, or but a footnote drowned under the tide of mediocre masses.

Not that strawman again

[Anonymous Coward]

What women are allowed to do with their bodies?

I don't care what women do with their bodies. But neither men nor women should be allowed to dismember someone else's body (such as the body of their unborn daughter or son).

Snowden hates Hillary...

[arthurh3535]

...because she's stated that she would back prosecuting him if he came back to the USA. (This is one of the few, main points that I disagree with her policy myself, BTW).
So if Hillary gets elected, he's got at least another four years before he can try to come back under a (possibly) different president.

ThreatConnect Analyzes the DNC Breach / Guccifer 2

[Anonymous Coward]

Here is a great set of analyses of the Guccifer 2 thing:

https://threatconnect.com/tapping-into-democratic-national-committee/

https://threatconnect.com/guccifer-2-0-dnc-breach/

https://threatconnect.com/reassesing-guccifer-2-0-recent-claims/

RMake america great againe:What a mess

[Anonymous Coward]

I think I've just worked out how he plans to make America great again - he plans to make it illegal to say that America isn't great.

And?

[jandersen]

I have never been able to get my head around the way American politics is mainly about insignificant nonsense and hysterical posturing. So, people seem to be up in arms, basically because Mrs Clinton is a Clinton; I think we know that it is not about whether she is honest, competent, experienced. Nor is it about whether she get money from the wrong kind of rich people etc. After all, it would be so very hard to find a politician in the US who is not far too close to big money and whose character is several shades less than the purest white, and I find it highly surprising that the crap there undoubtedly is on Trump is not mentioned at all. But even more purprising is it that there are so many who eem to shut down their mental faculties and refuse to even think for a moment about the things he is promising - which he clearly can't deliver, and just as clearly has not spent any thought on how to implement.

SAy he gets elected - how long will it take before the wild excitement turns to disappointment and then outright hate? And when that happens, will he continue in style and whip up more shit against whoever is a convenient scapegoat - the Mexicans, the Muslims, whatever? Be careful what you wish for.

Re: And?

[Anonymous Coward]

American politics is for Americans.

No one ever accused the average American of any form of sophistication, political or otherwise.

They can't even use a knife and fork correctly for heavens sake.

The truth hurts

[Anonymous Coward]

When she was first lady, she was caught hiding documents which were sought by the courts in her Arkansas messes within the residence part of the White House until the statute of limitations ran-out. The FBI filed a draft indictment of her, but the Justice department which serves the President (then her husband, Bill Clinton) chose not to indict her. That's hardly a good thing. The draft indictment is still under seal and there is still a court case underway to unseal it.

As Secretary of State her server setup was clearly illegal, as the FBI director himself admitted when you read the entire statement, but the Justice Department, which like the FBI works for the President (Obama) chose not to indict, though they said they would take action if anybody else did it. Oh, and her purjury before congress was obviously illegal but the FBI director claimed he did not investigate it because nobody told him to. The chairman of the comittee to which she lied on national television has now filed his official referral and the FBI must now investigate.

The fact that Democrat-run institutions have repeatedly failed to prosecute Hillary, a top Democrat, is no sign of innocence.

Bernie not a democrat till November 2015

[Anonymous Coward]

Since Bernie didn't declare himself a democrat for most the time covered by the leaks, why would he expect help from the democrats?