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Trump Opposes Plan For US To Hand Over Internet Oversight To a Global Governance (reuters.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: U.S. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump opposes a long-planned transition of oversight of the internet's technical management from the U.S. government to a global community of stakeholders, his campaign said in a statement on Wednesday. Congress should block the handover, scheduled to occur on Oct. 1, "or internet freedom will be lost for good, since there will be no way to make it great again once it is lost," Stephen Miller, national policy director for the Trump campaign, said in a statement. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, a former presidential primary foe of Trump's who has refused to endorse the real estate developer, has led a movement in Congress to block the transition, arguing it could cede control of the internet itself to authoritarian regimes like Russia and China and threaten online freedom. Technical experts have said those claims are baseless, and that a delay will backfire by undermining U.S. credibility in future international negotiations over internet standards and security. Publicly proposed in March 2014, the transfer of oversight of the nonprofit Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, is expected to go forward unless Congress votes to block the move. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton supports the Obama administration's planned transition to a global community of technologists, civil society groups and internet users, according to policy positions available on her campaign website.
When it comes to free speech, I'd still rather them be in charge than just about anyone else.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
The last I'd heard, news fact-checking organizations were reporting that he told the truth 15% of the time. Why would I ever care what the opinion of someone like was?
And don't tell me "because he's going to be president". The people of the United States are still smarter than that.
Bruce Perens.
For example, what happens if I want to access content that another country and/or religion deems offensive to their god?
Are those people now going to have a say in how the internet should operate? Will they be able to prevent me from viewing such content from another country?
As much as I hate to admit it, even with all the stuff going on today, the US is still one of the least fucked up countries on the planet. It worries me what will happen to the internet if everyone suddenly gets their say in how it's operated. And I don't say this as an American either, since I'm Canadian.
He will change his mind 15 times, not even remember what his position was, and probably end up losing the election anyway. Even if he wins the election, we will be too busy dealing with WW3 to care about internet oversight.
Be afraid of anyone that wont change their mind. Dream on about losing the election though, you're clearly just a Hillary shill.
What makes you think he changes his mind. Perhaps he's just saying what he needs to get elected...just like everyone else in the mix, particularly Hillary.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
The last I'd heard, news fact-checking organizations were reporting that he told the truth 15% of the time. Why would I ever care what the opinion of someone like was?
And don't tell me "because he's going to be president". The people of the United States are still smarter than that.
Here's one of your news organizations fact checking some things about Donald Trump.
Bruce, I don't know if you've noticed, but the media sometimes misrepresents things. For example, the polls say that 44% of Trumps supporters have a college degree, which the media is quick to point out is less than 50%, so Trump supporters are mostly uneducated.
What they (and you) fail to notice is that the national average for college degrees is 30%, so on average Trump supporters are more educated than the national average. (And here's a reference to the analysis as backing for that statement.)
From that article:
What’s more, Silver found that 44% of Trump voters have college undergraduate degrees, compared to 29% of US adults.
What I don't understand is why Clinton supporters always resort to insults.
I mean, you're especially recognized as being a smart person, yet I don't see you posting a rational reason why Clinton would be a good president.
Set aside that she's not Trump, because there are at least two other candidates, can you point to one thing she's done that has been of benefit to the people of this country? (With links please - don't just make things up.)
Bruce, You're a smart dude.
Can you explain why you need to defend Clinton... with insults?
P.S. - The term "offensive" is used entirely too much recently, but I was honestly offended by your statement. It was an insult, targetting a clearly defined group of people; hence, offensive.
I don't agree with everything Trump wants to do It's pretty obvious to anyone that knows anything Trumps position is way better for the internet than turning it over to an international panel that can start censoring the hell out of it. The U.S. is already not prefect in that regard but they are WAY better than, say, Iran, Saudi Arabia, or North Korea... or China.
The fact is Trump has been demonized beyond belief on so many issues where Hillary is worse... Trump is far less racist than Hillary (just look at past Hillary remarks like arriving late because she was on "Colored People Time"). Trump chose a black woman to win and work with on the Apprentice - sure it's a TV show but she did work for him and supports him, as do a number of prominent black celebrities. Because they knew Trump before the media tried to tear him down.
Trump also wanted to cooler evaluate NATO commitments before taking action, and yet the media portrays him as a warmonger. Why? Because they know Hillary is way more dangerous in charge of the nuclear arsenal, she has actually started wars and would be all to happy to start more to prove how tough she is (and to reward loyal Clinton foundation donors).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I think it is the first time he has mentioned it.
I'm more interested that he stop the TPP and renegotiate/cancel the anti American NAFTA trade giveaway.
better to win WWIII than to open our borders and drown in 3rd world terrorists.
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
Isn't America getting authoritarian itself, especially the Republican?
B.S. If conservatives wanted to censor the internet, they had 20+ years to do so. Ask yourself who is doing the censoring on college campuses these days. I'll save you the trouble of not answering the question and inform you that it's not conservatives.
The bottom line is this: ICANN as it has been for the past 20+ years isn't broken and doesn't need changing.
because the mega-corps who run the show want us to. They're afraid Europe, China & India will make their own Internet with blackjack and hookers and they'll have to spend money supporting their apps on 2 different internets. The internet isn't for porn, it's for offloading the cost of your corps communication infrastructure onto the taxpayer.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Any policy director who thinks that ICANN is relevant should be fired. Trump isn't very smart but he should be smart enough to realize that ICANN prioritizes on money above all else. Realizing that he should be well aware that they haven't had any meaningful power or control in a long time. That he managed to find a policy person who can't figure this out is astonishing.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Well even if that's true, what he says right now (to win the election), doesn't matter. What you are talking about is pandering, which Hillary certainly does. I don't think Trump is smart enough to even pander properly.
I accept a few posters going off the deep end, not reading the copy or just plain not understanding the issues, but practically every post with a score missed the point entirely.
This whole issue is just a boring technical matter. The only reason it is news is that politicians with an axe to grind want to make it so.
ICANN has been running successfully as an international corporation with multinational stakeholders for much more than a decade now. Its one remaining tie to the US is the contract that it has with the Department Of Commerce to manage internet names and numbers. That contract will lapse unless renewed at the end of September and ICANN will then carry on exactly as it has been, except without the theoretical DOC control, the US then becomes a stakeholder like everyone else.
I think it is the first time he has mentioned it. I'm more interested that he stop the TPP and renegotiate/cancel the anti American NAFTA trade giveaway.
Trump has already stated that he opposes the TPP.
Putting Trump in charge is probably similar to just deciding which bills are vetoed and which aren't via coin flip. He could make some really good decisions, or some really bad ones. He might do better than Hillary, or worse. It just depends which tweets from which people made him angry that day.
Trump also opposes the TPP. https://www.donaldjtrump.com/p...
I don't think Trump would be helpful towards winning this hypothetical WW3 that he started, nor do I think he will do anything to help keep terrorists out of our country. He's just a fucking asshole and an idiot that was born with money and unencumbered by ethics.
'Nobody thought the Brexit campaign could possibly win'
- except for the clear majority who thought that it could (and would) win.
been there and done. Trump is SO stupid. This issue is dead.
Hillarie's many instances of deeply held racism are easy/ to find if you search just a little.
She's an old white lady from the south, You do the math.
You're literally making the argument that Trump can't be racist because he has black friends.
Since you appear to be too stupid to understand my comment (which is of course to be expected from someone only able to play the race card in place of real argument), it's not that he has black friends and supporters (though that in itself is an indicator) - it's that in actions taken over a long period at times when he was not running for office, he did not act against people based on color (or indeed gender). Real people are judged by actions, not just words or the words especially of others that hate them.
If you are also so stupid as to equate the federal government investigating the actions of a company with the actions of using a nuclear arsenal against another nation; if indeed you are that stupid who can be blamed but yourself, possibly your parents? But you've had long enough to correct any misapprehensions they might have fed you, so your delusions are of your own peculiar brand, or more likely fed to you by the rich eco-chamber that is the modern liberal press and parroting supporters.
With any luck, perhaps time you may be able to think for yourself once more, rather than simply vomited what is fed to you by your masters.
I'll let you have the last word, as the delusional people will chatter on so and I am busy with real work and life.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Who cares? It's ICANN. We just build a new domain system that doesn't have a central naming authority based on blockchain or something. Seriously, the internet blows now because all the domains are taken and every time ICANN creates new TLDs, they either ransom them off and/or it's a land grab by squatters. That system is already broken and garbage. I'd much prefer a proof of work system. Want a vanity domain? Go rent yourself an AWS compute farm for a few weeks.
What Hillary won't do is contradict herself 3 times in 3 minutes every time she opens her mouth.
Play Command HQ online
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Ted Cruz is wrong about how free speech is censored on the Internet
--some non-American who wouldn't know what he was talking about.
-------------------
This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
How about we do it the other way around? If UN doesn't like ICANN, they can offer their own sanctioned alternative and see how many people would sign up.
The US government has a history of not censoring the web. Those sites have a history (with the possible exception of PornHub) of doing underhanded/shady things to close down the competition. Do you really think that its int their interest to let the next huge startups thrive. Or will a set of "neutral" rules slowly accumulate that favorite incumbent companies.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
So far I've not been convinced it is broken the way it is except in some abstract aesthetic sense. The old saw generally makes sense, "If it ain't broke; don't fix it." I feel this is one of those instances.
{^_^}
Conservatives have tried many times to censor the internet, mostly because they fear the pornography it makes so easily accessible. They have failed in their attempts, but not for lack of trying.
"a global community of technologists, civil society groups and internet users" is a list that does not include any governments - authoritarian or otherwise.
This is REDUCING the number of governments who can do harm to the internet - not increasing it. Just because the US has not previously abused this power does not mean we should trust that no future US government would do so. Hell there is a presidential candidate right now who has previously expressed a desire to massively censor the internet - "coincidentally", that candidate is the same one who opposes this move...
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Oops, bad typo => s/the Modern Liberals of the political Right /the Modern Liberals of the political Left/
Even a broken clock is right twice a day. It's not like evil dictators throughout history never had *any* good ideas.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
That's better than Hillary, who sells out to Wall St and Saudi Arabia, and tells the American people what polls suggest she should say in order to get elected.
I doubt he'll start WW3, that's bad for business. He will probably pick lots of fights with Congress and insult foreign leaders, which will stymie any residual political agenda he has, whatever it may be. Personally, I consider that preferable to Hillary actually succeeding at her crony capitalist domestic agenda and continuing her horrible foreign policy track record.
Of course I don't know if Trump is racist or just exploiting racism for political gain, but it's racism.
It's a distinction without a difference. What he actually believes in his heart of hearts is irrelevant. Only his actions matter and his actions are CLEARLY racist.
Look at Detroit. The population there has collapsed from 1.8M in 1950, to less than 700k today. There are vast tracts of empty houses, and abandoned strip malls.
Some clarifications. You are talking about the City of Detroit, not the much larger Detroit Metropolitan Area which is actually what most people mean when they talk about "Detroit". Metro Detroit includes Oakland, Macomb and Wayne counties. Metro Detroit has a population of nearly 4 million. Oakland County is among the wealthiest counties in the USA.
Regarding the "vast tracts of empty houses", many of those are in the process of being torn down and frankly fixing them would be more costly in many cases than building new. You can't simply plunk a bunch of refugees down there because in the spots you are talking about there are no grocery stores, shopping, etc. There also isn't much in the way of nearby jobs - most of the jobs in the area are outside of the City of Detroit or downtown, not in the blighted neighborhoods. It's not a bad idea to encourage refugees and Detroit (city and metro) has been quite welcoming but the project would require more than just plunking a bunch of people down in dilapidated housing with no further support.
The day after the vote lots of people on TV and social media expressed regret voting to leave, saying that they "only wanted to send a message" or punish David Cameron, and didn't think it would actually happen.
That was even before the promises started to be reneged on.
Also, Scotland didn't vote for it, and neither did Gibraltar. The UK is about to break up.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Some conservatives want to censor critics, because they resent speech without repercussions. Even worse, they want to censor companies like Twitter's right to say who can use their service and on what terms.
Others want to censor porn, sex education, abortion assistance etc. Some want to censor ISIS.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
This is not a troll, although I understand why some would read it this way.
If Trump wins, the majority of people in Europe would worry that the internet is effectively in the hands of an insane leader and a country that is moving in the same direction as Putins Russia. Europeans will never trust any country that's ruled by a guy like that.
You Americans still treat it like *your* internet. And even though you apparently don't trust any American politicians, you still think it should be them that have control over something as global as the internet is. I'm puzzled.
Hand it over to the ITU (or similar), and every country should manage its own TLD much like they manage their own phone numbers.
You would not register a domain with the ITU, but with your country's authority.
No, because she can't think very fast on her feet, and this is a negative.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
I think that a story about a likely future world leader's stance on technological issues fits perfectly well on a tech news site.
You call that thinking?
Play Command HQ online
The guy is a salesman. Go shop for a used car and you'll see what I mean.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
If for no other reason, post like this serve the purpose of exposing the true lack of enlightenment of most Slashdot posters. This is a non-issue for anyone with any tech savvy, but slap DJT in the title and it becomes about freedom and kicking out Syrian refugees. If you agree with Trump on this matter, you really don't understand the issue (like him) and probably have no business being here.
If there was an upheaval in Syria, why was it the responsibility of Germany or any European country to take them in? The only ones who had the 'moral' responsibility, if any, would have been Syria's neighbors and the class of countries that Syria is a member of - Arab Muslim countries. In other words, Jordan, which has done a fair deal, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and maybe other countries like Libya, Yemen, Emirates, et al. At least in those countries, the Syrians wouldn't have been in a totally alien environment, and either they wouldn't dare to rape the host countries' women, or if they did, it would be b'cos it would be okay: at least, there wouldn't be the cultural incompatibilities. After one's done w/ Arab Muslim countries, next would come Turkey, a non-Arab but Muslim country to their north. But neither the US nor Europe are either Muslim nor Arab, and none of them owe squat to the Syrians for any reason whatsoever
The Detroit economy needs jobs, not hard workers. When the auto industry started shutting down factories, Detroit fell. Importing more labor, won't fix the problem.
Are you talking about the City of Detroit or the Detroit Metropolitan Area? Detroit City (population ~700K) has seen better times. Detroit Metro (population ~4 million) is doing just fine. Like any big city it has it's good areas and bad. Oakland county just to the north has plenty of jobs and is among the wealthiest counties in the USA. The just just aren't assembly line jobs anymore for the most part. Detroit Metro wasn't hit as hard as places like Flint or the City of Detroit by plants closing/moving because the economy is more diverse.
That's better than Hillary, who sells out to Wall St and Saudi Arabia, and tells the American people what polls suggest she should say in order to get elected.
I was not making a comparison to Hillary. I personally think Hillary is the better choice of the two, but I realize this is an election year with two horrible options, and I can't blame anyone for choosing a bad option this year. I will definitely be voting for someone other than these two pathetic excuses for candidates. I don't live in a swing state, and my vote doesn't count regardless of who I vote for.
I doubt he'll start WW3, that's bad for business.
It is. But, Donald Trump is a terrible business man who cares much more about his ego than any business.
He will probably pick lots of fights with Congress and insult foreign leaders, which will stymie any residual political agenda he has, whatever it may be.
I think having his plans stymied is the best case scenario for a Trump presidency. Unfortunately he will be the commander in chief, and he doesn't need congress to order an airstrike on a foreign country. He doesn't have the power to "declare" war without congress, but he certainly has the power to get another country(ies) to declare war on us.
I consider that preferable to Hillary actually succeeding at her crony capitalist domestic agenda and continuing her horrible foreign policy track record.
Even if we are just considering foreign policy, there are not many people I would want in the white house less than Hillary Clinton. But the republican party somehow managed to find a person that would make me *want* HIllary to win. And that person is a 70-year old man-child who (as much as a despise crooked Hillary) cannot in good conscience trust with the nuclear codes.
And no, I don't want to see Hillary succeeding in pushing her corrupt agenda. If she is elected, I sincerely hope everything she wants to do is stopped. And yet, I still find this situation preferable to potential carnage that Donald Trump has convinced me he is capable of.
A major part of the ISIS strategy has been inspiring Muslims in the West to launch terror attacks. If Trump does his extreme vetting and virtually ends Muslim immigration, that would go a long way into eliminating domestic ISIS attacks. And in Syria, if he re-does the alignment to take the US out of NATO and into an alliance w/ Russia against ISIS and other Islamic powers (including possibly Iran), that will be a good thing. As it is, Europe had always been an unreliable ally of the US both during the Cold War and since, so Trump is better off dumping them in favor of Russia. If US and Russia can come together, nothing would be a greater death rattle of Islamic power
Going back a way, there were the Comstock laws. I'm not sure how well politics of that period align to today, but given that there was a strong religious element in their support I think it can be considered more conservative than liberal.
There's the Communications Decency Act, 1996, struck down by the supreme court. In principle it just criminalised distribution of pornography to minors, but as it's pretty much impossible to verify age online it effectively banned all pornography.
Child Online Protection Act, 1998 - a rehash of the CDA, also struck down.
Children's Internet Protection Act, 2000, which - among a few other things - mandated pornography filtering in all public libraries as a condition for funding.
Most of these have bipartisan support, because no politician is going to vote against a law that is presented as protecting children, however ill-defined the threat. But one side of the divide is much more concerned: Almost every major social-conservative pressure group has, as one of their core principles, the regulation or prohibition of pornography. The AFA, FRC, FotF, all of the state Family Policy Councils, and it's one of the points in the most recent GOP manifesto. The liberals, on the other hand, really don't care very much.
Reason Trump supporters said nothing about Irish Catholics then was that Trump wasn't in politics, and so there was no such thing. He himself was a Democrat - was even a Jesse Jackson supporter in 1984, the year that Reagan won all but MN and DC, and so the people who are his supporters today were at that time a mix of Democrats and Republicans.
Also, w/o condoning the IRA or excusing anything they did, one thing that was that was different about them - theirs was a local struggle limited to getting Northern Ireland to secede from the UK and become a part of Ulster/Ireland. The terror attacks that they ran were limited to Britain and Northern Ireland. Since they weren't bombing the US for the sake of making us Catholic or having us replace English w/ Gaelic, they were never in the RADAR of most Americans. Politically, Anglophilic Americans did tend to oppose them, while Irish Americans were mixed - Sean Hannity for instance had debates w/ one former IRA leader over their use of terror.
Very different from Jihadi groups, who want to establish a worldwide caliphate, not only in Muslim countries like Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, but also in non-Islamic countries in Europe, the Americas, Asia and Africa.
Btw, when did the IRA murder any Americans?
This is actually a better skittles analogy than Don's, although even his was good. I once read somebody make a similar analogy w/ coffee. Let's say you were at a seminar, and at the snacks table, you saw 36 cups of coffee all poured out, and someone told you that ONE of those cups was laced w/ cyanide. Would you try ANY of them?
So the Classic Liberal Right wants to stop children getting pornography and you have a problem with that ? We do know that the Far Left does want to sexualize children early, and you agree with this? in fact the Left is sexualizing children in schools with very shocking messages at very young aqes (as it promotes an4l sex to eight year olds etc - I know because my sibling's children have been taught all this)
Meanwhile, the Left is pushing for actual censorship of Free Speech - like Obama working here to give Russia, Iran, China and the 57 member Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) which votes as a bloc in the UN General Assembly control over all our Free Speech. Hillary Clinton's backing of the anti-Free Speech criminalization of anything that defies Sharia speech codes in the evil UN HRC 16/18 is an example of this.
You are on the wrong side of history, and on the side of the totalitarians and islamists. History will not judge you kindly. You think you are working against 'Right totalitarianism' but you are utterly blind to the fact that totalitarianism requires Collectivism and that comes from the Left and their Islamist allies. Smarten up, please.
So, ICANN loses centralized control over the DNS system. Big deal.
What would stop a wholly-American-controlled agency from simply establishing a new American-controlled DNS system that overlays the existing infrastructure? Absolutely nothing.
Hell, you or I can do this *right now*, by establishing our own DNS zone and force users within your territory to use *your* DNS root servers instead of those for the larger global Internet. Sure, you'll lack access to the larger global network, but at least you'll have all the control you want.
At least two hours after the first results came in. Took a while for the trends to show.
Because he thinks it's the Toilet Paper Pirate that's been emptying the TP holders in his hotel.
Or because he actually has a grasp of what it is and how damaging to the country it could be. I know, it is utterly impossible to see past your current notions. You just can't fathom that you could possibly be wrong and that Donald Trump might actually be intelligent. Next time, instead of getting your information from memes and left-leaning news sources, just watch a Trump speech all the way through. Watch the upcoming debates. Listen to him straight from the source, not second or third hand.
Putting Trump in charge is probably similar to just deciding which bills are vetoed and which aren't via coin flip. He could make some really good decisions, or some really bad ones. He might do better than Hillary, or worse. It just depends which tweets from which people made him angry that day.
Except he has already showed that he knows how to make decisions, or at least, how to listen to people who do. Do you think he knows every aspect of business inside and out? No, no one does. It's too broad of a topic. But he knows how to pick advisors and listen to them. If he didn't he would not have been so successful in business. Do you think he just got lucky? Out of 500+ entities with his name on them, he's had, I believe, two or three bankruptcies. 99%+ success rate. And even that, bankruptcy can be argued as a legitimate business strategy. He has a track record of success.
If he didn't he would not have been so successful in business.
I think this is a myth. Apparently he would have made more money, had he just left the money he inherited from his father in an index fund. If Trump is such a great businessman, why is his level of success not better than a typical retirement account (which requires no effort to manage)?
And even that, bankruptcy can be argued as a legitimate business strategy. He has a track record of success.
Bankruptcy is a legitimate business strategy. What is not legitimate is getting free shit by refusing to pay people for their labor, and using your wealth and lawyers to deter people from seeking justice. Neither is running a fake charity to exploit the generosity of others for your own personal benefit. What Trump has done a good job of illustrating, is how a child can be "successful" (i.e. have an ROI almost equivalent to an index fund) if he has lots of money and no ethical standards.
He has a track record of success.
Only if your standard if success is not super high.
Nearly everyone who knows business will argue that Trump has been successful. I do not personally know a whole lot about running a corporation, so I will not sit here an pretend I do. But I have been thoroughly convinced by those who do know business very well, including close friends who deal with it daily, who have explained to me that Trump has been successful at business. If you want to discredit him, I don't think that angle is the best approach. All the experts that I personally know, whether they like Trump or not, at least agree that he is a good businessman.
I think at this point, it's really a guessing game of which of the two is more dangerous. My reading is that with Trump, I'm seeing his stupidity and incompetence fully exposed; I don't think the man is capable of holding anything back. Hillary has learned to play her cards close to the chest, and I think there is a power-hungry psychopath hiding behind her public persona. I suspect she would have no qualms ordering someone killed if it served her political purposes and she felt she could get away with it. Hillary has screwed up badly as SoS, and shown that she is rather resistant to advice. And the Clinton political machine also has enormous power, both domestically and abroad. On balance, Hillary still scares me more than Trump.
I think the other factor, though, is simply to go by the issues. When I take the isidewith.com questionnaire, Hillary comes dead last for me after Johnson, Trump, and Stein.
Well, it's still a few weeks until this circus is over and a lot can happen.
Nearly everyone who knows business will argue that Trump has been successful.
I don't think this is an objective claim. How shall we define people who "know business"? Also, it doesn't matter what people who "know business" think. It matters what the facts are.
I do not personally know a whole lot about running a corporation, so I will not sit here an pretend I do.
I don't know anything about running a corporation or making it successful. I do however know about math. If someone starts his career with X dollars and runs a series of corporations for many decades, and at the ends all he has to show for it is Y dollars in assets, which is about the same ROI than the entire market on average, it makes them a mediocre business man at best. Add on top of this that the fact that it seems like he also engages in a pretty decent amount of fraud, and it looks even more pathetic.
But I have been thoroughly convinced by those who do know business very well, including close friends who deal with it daily, who have explained to me that Trump has been successful at business.
So if you know nothing about business, and don't claim to, how do you know your friends are good at business and consequently whether their opinion is accurate?
If you want to discredit him, I don't think that angle is the best approach.
I'm not trying to discredit him. I spend roughly half my time defending trump from false accusations (e.g. misquotations, etc). I think he is doing a perfectly good job of discrediting himself.
All the experts that I personally know, whether they like Trump or not, at least agree that he is a good businessman.
There are plenty of people saying that Trump is a bad business man. Are those people experts? How would you even know if you know nothing about business and don't claim to?
Here is my advice. Don't listen to experts (self-proclaimed or otherwise). Do your own research.
Here are just some random articles I found doing a quick google search.
http://fortune.com/2015/08/20/donald-trump-index-funds/
And here is one critical of this comparison
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2015-09-03/should-donald-trump-have-indexed-
This isn't some kind of weird angle I came up with. And whether we have the right numbers or not (only Trump and his accountants and lawyers know that), this is in my opinion a legitimate and objective comparison of how well Trump did vs. how well someone could do with no business or financial skills if they had started with the same amount of money.
Who knows maybe Trump will release his tax returns for the last 40 years, and we get a clearer picture of how much money he actually has, how much he inherited, etc. Made he is richer than we all assumed, and he's a great business man. Maybe he is much poorer than he claims (as people like Mark Cuban have speculated), and he is actually a terrible business man.
I am genuinely open to both possibilities. The claim I am making is that the comparison to index funds is a good one, and if it turns out he did much better than index funds, I will admit that Donald Trump is a good business man (if not an ethical one). The other claim I am making is that not everyone "good at business" thinks Trump is a good businessman. A lot of that is undoubtedly political, so I would hesitate to say Trump was a bad business man because lot's of people said he was bad, but the opposite is also a pretty dubious claim.
I think at this point, it's really a guessing game of which of the two is more dangerous.
I agree. I don't think there is any way to really know objectively. I am just going with my gut. I don't pretend my gut is more likely to be right than anyone else's.
. My reading is that with Trump, I'm seeing his stupidity and incompetence fully exposed; I don't think the man is capable of holding anything back.
That's how I read it as well. But I think the potential damage from just what we have seen is already pretty fucking scary to me.
Hillary has learned to play her cards close to the chest, and I think there is a power-hungry psychopath hiding behind her public persona. I suspect she would have no qualms ordering someone killed if it served her political purposes and she felt she could get away with it.
That's pretty much how I feel as well. Although I think Trump would also be willing to have someone killed if he thought he could get away with it, and it benefited him, but maybe he is less capable of getting away with something like that, and maybe he knows that.
Hillary has screwed up badly as SoS, and shown that she is rather resistant to advice.
Sure. I think the email thing is a good example of that. I will say I think the whole Benghazi thing is just republicans trying to fabricate a controversy out of nothing. They did find the private email server, but that's not what they were looking for, and it has nothing to do with Benghazi other than it's where the Benghazi investigation ended up.
I sort of feel like something like Benghazi or even the private emails server wouldn't even make the news if it happened in a Trump presidency, because of all the other even crazier shit that would be going on.
And the Clinton political machine also has enormous power, both domestically and abroad.
Very scary!
On balance, Hillary still scares me more than Trump.
That's fair. I'm glad I don't have to make this choice. I live in California, which is definitely going to Clinton anyway. So I will be doing my ritual protest vote, like always.
For some people, it made their lives better. For most others, it made it far worse
Regime change would have made almost every Iraqi's life better -- except for those who lost employment due to de-Baathification, which was about as justified as the de-Nazification program following WWII -- if not for the insurgency that subsequently arose.
Now, you can argue that we should have foreseen the insurgency. But no one in power, of any political stripe, did.
Think about this little-known fact: prior to the invasion of Iraq, the wargamers' best estimate of how many Americans would die in battles with Saddam's forces was 10,000. This estimate was briefed to the president and Congress. It did not deter Congress from voting for the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002. That's right: 374 members of Congress, including H. Clinton and J. Biden, felt that 10,000 American lives was an acceptable cost for deposing Saddam.
The wargamers apparently gave no thought at all to a possible insurgency, because they did not produce any estimate of how many would be killed by insurgents.
So we now know their crystal ball was quite inaccurate in two ways. Actual American deaths were: ~110 killed in battles with Saddam's forces; ~4,387 killed by insurgents; 4,497 total.
Objectively, one could argue that 4497, being much less than the 10,000 anticipated deaths, is an indicator of a very successful operation. But since the insurgency steadily generated bad news for about 8 years, the political perception was different. And that is why Joe Biden could get away with saying Iraq was the biggest mistake in American history. (That pronouncement was a pure political hack on Biden's part. He could not have possibly forgotten what was objectively a far bigger mistake: Vietnam, where 58,315 Americans were killed, even while we failed to meet the objective of protecting South Vietnam from invasion by the North.)
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
Yeah, at this point, I will probably vote third party for president. I think it's important to vote mainly for the other parts of the ballot, in particular, the initiatives.
Absolutely. In california in addition to the normal gamut of propositions that might seem boring, yet have far reaching effects on our state, we also have the choice of legalizing recreational marijuana and abolishing the death penalty.