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Latest WikiLeaks Reveal Suggests Facebook Is Too Close For Comfort With Clinton (hothardware.com)
MojoKid writes: As we quickly approach the November 8th elections, email leaks from the Clinton camp continue to loom over the presidential candidate. The latest data dump from WikiLeaks shines a light on emails between Hillary Clinton's campaign manager, John Podesta and Facebook Chief Operating Officer, Sheryl Sandberg. In one email exchange, dated June 6th, 2015, Sandberg expresses her desire for Clinton to become president, writing to Podesta, "And I still want HRC to win badly. I am still here to help as I can." While that was a private exchange, Sandberg also made her zest for seeing Clinton as the 45th President of the United States publicly known in a Facebook post on July 28th of this year. None of that is too shocking when you think about it. Sandberg has every right to endorse whichever candidate she wants for president. However, a later exchange between Sandberg and Podesta showed that Mark Zuckerberg was looking to get in on the action a bit, and perhaps curry favor with Podesta and the Clinton camp in shaping public policy. Donald Trump has long claimed that Clinton is too cozy with big businesses, and one cannot dismiss the fact that Facebook has a global user base of 1.7 billion users. When you toss in the fact that Facebook came under fire earlier this year for allegedly suppressing conservative news outlets in the Trending News bar, questions begin to arise about Facebook's impartiality in the political race. The report also notes that Sandberg is at the top of the list when it comes to picks for Treasury Secretary, if Clinton wins the election. In an interview with Politico, David Segal, executive director for Demand Progress, said "[Sandberg] is a proxy for this growing problem that is the hegemony of five to ten major Silicon Valley platforms." Lina Khan, a fellow with the Open Markets Program at the New American think tank adds: "If a senior Cabinet member is from Facebook, at worst it could directly interfere [in antitrust actions]. But even in the best of cases there's a real worry that it will have a chilling effect on good-faith antitrust efforts to scrutinize potential anti-competitive implications of dominant tech platforms."
It gives the serfs the illusion that they have some say in who their rulers are.
What happened to the BoA materials? Did wikileaks not release them because they're not personally relevant to Assange and his own personal feuds?
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
Who says companies can't favor one candidate or party over the other. Fox News clearly favors republicans and that just seems to be accepted.
If you reply, do so only to what I explicitly wrote. If I didn't write it, don't assume or infer it.
All the media companies online and off-line, Paul Ryan and his Republican insiders, The DNC, all foreign governments except Russia and China. Women, Blacks, Mexicans, disabled people, ex soldiers, they're all plotting against Trump. Jeb Bush, big plotter, Ted Cruz and his sleazy push polls,Fox News and its clown announcers, CNN and their boring anti-trump panelists, Charles Koch and his puppets, MSBNC crazy crazy fraudsters, Marco De Rubio the joke phoney light weight, John Kasich the Absentee Governor who supports Mexico..... ALL PLOTTING!
It's time for the non-Democrat, non-Republican, white, male, full-fit, but not military, who are not in the media, or online media, it's time for that MAJORITY to rise up and put Trump into power he so richly believes he deserves!
Make America Great Again!
This illustrates the problem of virtual public spaces and real danger to freedom of speech and association that comes with digitization of all means of communications. Currently, FB and Twitter are free to censor political speech and push political agenda. You could argue that in 2016 as a politician you are effectively censored if you don't have access to FB and Twitter. This shouldn't be the case, insofar politics these should be considered virtual public spaces and any censorship of this kind should be disallowed.
In China, the people who control the media support the party. And the party makes sure the top people who control the media get rich.
We are no different.
I am being inundated with all sorts of pro-Trump posts by one of my friends. All the anti-Clinton conspiracy posts. Every damn one of them. Including one that was so bad that even Fox News published a retraction.
So as far as I can tell FB isn't shaping much, otherwise they would have tweaked that mysterious algorithm that only shows you posts from people that they want you to see and then for everything else goes "What post? I don't see any post? What do you mean you saw a post 5 minutes ago and now you can't find it in your feed? No idea what you are talking about."
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
Trump barely fundraised? Seriously. They even caught one of his PACs (with his son Eric in it, no less), trying to launder $2 million in Chinese donations yesterday:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/10/24/exclusive-investigation-donald-trump-faces-foreign-donor-fundrai/
"You shouldn't put any of this on paper, The reporter said a Chinese client wished to donate to the PAC to support Mr Trump's campaign. Mr Beach appeared interested despite raising concerns about his nationality and saying he would need to know the donor’s identity. He suggested the donation could be put through a social welfare organisation called a 501(c)(4) - or C4 - , which unlike a PAC is not subject to a blanket ban on receiving foreign money, and not required to name donors."
There's no point in denying this any more. Journalists have always tended to lean left more than right, but 2016 has shown that all pretense of integrity and independence has completely evaporated. Rigged polls, collusion with PACs and the DNC, mudslinging directed at the RNC candidates while ignoring third party options and DNC scandals of the same magnitude as Watergate, and making unsubstantiated accusations of foreign interference by Russia while ignoring the foreign money from Soros and extreme Islamic regimes influencing the electoral process. Nothing is off limits to the same group that doctors audio recordings to falsely show racism and hypes up stories of a few cops committing criminal acts against black people while ignoring the fact that black on black violence is at epidemic levels.
Rigging the Facebook feed to promote pro-DNC pro-Clinton pro-SJW causes is IMO an effective subliminal ploy even for those that scroll past it so they can see funny pictures of their friends' kids. They're cutting off Twitter feeds and FB pages of people they don't like too even though they have not violated the user agreement. All of them will stop at nothing to brainwash and browbeat us into one mind, and use the SJWs to persecute those who disagree with the positions like useful idiots.
But it isn't just here as we've also seen in Europe with the hiding of stories and statistics on the effects on violence and crime due to mass migration from the third world. And, at this point, anyone who is a blind follower of political parties or of the media is a fool ready to be controlled to the will of an elite willing to throw us back into an effectively feudal system.
Welcome to the Ministry of Truth. We have always been at war. All dissent is doubleplusungood. You don't even need to imagine a boot stomping on a human face forever because it's already coming through your computer screen.
Really? You think it sounds pretty good? Are you okay with it when the police and the judge are buddies? Are you okay with it when you got on the polices wrong side and you're claiming the police wrongfully arrested you and you're trying to convince the judge that his buddy is lying?
And if you don't get why I used that analogy then we're done here. We'll never see eye to eye.
I don't think even the lowliest serf is ignorant anymore that every media outlet and talking head is campaigning for Hillary.
I wonder, though, if this won't backfire. People don't like being lied to, deceived, having information kept from them, or being talked down to like the media is doing. The average voter might lean right or left, but they want the process to be fair, and the media to be fair, and for the ballots to fall where they may.
This growing perception that the media will never relay the truth about Hillary or honestly investigate her scandals, that all the corporate interests (including Google and Facebook now) are manipulating public opinion for her - people aren't going to like this nonsense. I wonder if it won't cost her more votes than it nets her.
The only respect I've seen shown him is when he married an ugly women after he made his fortune.
?
Priscilla Chan isn't a supermodel, but she's a very beautiful woman.
You realize why, right? Those people think it's wrong to give Trump money.
I think Peter Thiel is an asshole, and I'm happy to give any company shit that employs him or takes money from him or helps him in any way. That's my right. Your right is to think the same about Zukerberg. Don't use Facebook. Don't give him or any company he has an interest in any money directly or indirectly. That's completely fine by me.
Really? You think it sounds pretty good?
Yeah. It mean's she'll actually be an effective President. Having ties is only equivalent to being subject to undue influence in the minds of conspiracy nuts.
The ironic thing about the Wikileaks dump of Podesta's emails is that they give a picture of a highly effective political organization, which makes me want to vote for Clinton even more than I did before. I'm not the only one I know who feels this way.
I can see the left and right coming together on this. The right hates Clinton, and so does much of the left. Both are sick and tired of her lies, manipulation and the dirty tricks political machine. I would never vote to put Clinton the Second back into the White House again, but for me it is even more about her coziness with Wall Street and her penchant for wars of regime change (e.g., Libya) and her pro-trade deal and drill-baby-drill stances than it is about her lies and deceitfulness.
A brain is a terrible thing to waste... Mind? That's debatable.
Is the government there to serve the interests of the biggest businesses, or the people? Because you know what'll really help the American middle class is millions of more H1-B visas for FaceBook.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
I am voting third party, even though I have always voted Republican in the presidential election.
I wish people would revolt. Everyone likes to pretend that we wouldn't vote for the worst person in the world just because they bear our favored party's lablel. Well, this time around both sides get to prove it. To prove that honest government is more important than my desire for my side to dominate.
If not now, when?
If you are saying this without sarcasm you are an idiot. Agree/disagree with Wikileaks all you want but at least know what the organization is about.
WikiLeaks specializes in the analysis and publication of large datasets of censored or otherwise restricted official materials involving war, spying and corruption. It has so far published more than 10 million documents and associated analyses.
IOW, they specialize in government dealings because that is what is 'censored or otherwise restricted official materials'.
The difference is that if you have dirt on Trump any media source will publish it and you won't need protection from the government. If you leak government secrets you either get jailed, holed up in Russia, or worse. The point of Wikileaks is to protect the leakers from the government you mongoloid.
There are plenty of other news organizations that are digging up dirt on Trump. Or did you forget getting grabbed by the pussy? Or did you forget the X million of dollars losses in a tax return leak? Or did you forget the lawsuits of Trump University?
FFS. Apologetic shills just get to me in the morning before I have had my coffee.
I guess "ugly" is a code word for "intelligent and educated, and not a bad looker, either, except that she's not white"?
I can find fault with Zuckerberg on a lot of counts, but his taste in women is not one of them.
Disclaimer: I'm also married to an intelligent and educated Chinese woman who is also not a bad looker, so I may not be without my own prejudices in this regard.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Of course, it's often a bad business decision to make one's political views public. Just ask the CEO of Chick Fil-A, for example.
But sure, it wouldn't normally be a problem..... except with Facebook and other forms of social media, their purpose is supposed to be to give a voice to EVERYONE who wants to use it and contribute content. If that can't be done impartially, it means the site can't be used properly for its stated purpose. (If you have to worry that your content might get censored/deleted or somehow marginalized so it shows up far less often in feeds than those expressing other viewpoints -- you need to find a different web site to use.)
Fox News can report the news any way they see fit .They hired their staff to do things the way they wished, and they own the network. That's not the same thing.
"Why at this point does it even matter?"
Seriously, the media organizations in this country have decided that HRC would be our next president. It doesn't actually matter what she did or didn't do, the legality, the money, etc.
To be clear: the voting is a pointless detail.
-Styopa
That is funny, because, in my phone's google now feed (and I am a moderate) has been a 3 to 1 conservative poppycock to real news stories. Maybe in the non-personalized versions, but I have blocked some conservitive news sights, and now it's filled with breitbart, rt, and crazy sites like "Center for Research on Globalization"
You realize WikiLeaks doesn't obtain the files themselves, right? They publish what they're given. If they were given Republican/Trump docs and then they sneakily held on to them to protect them, the leaker would just hand the docs over to CNN. Either the Republicans run a tighter ship with better security, or there's nothing incriminating/shady to leak.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
So Hillary has made friends in businesses. So has Trump. The fact is, few politicians are completely clean. If you get into politics, you’re almost forced to play dirty because you know your competition isn’t going to pull any punches either.
Magazine of the John Birch Society. Yep, I need to hear from them.
Ah, the argumentum ad hominem! Always strange to see a logical fallacy modded up...
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
The problem with revolting is that, what ever comes after, there is no guarantee that it will be better. More often than not it is worse.
Anybody that still has karma, I recommend that you do NOT make comments in this thread.
Here be dragons!
-- I was raised on the command line, bitch
It bugs me that this is even an issue. Why are so many people apparently willing to get their news from Facebook?
Develop some critical thinking skills, people.
#DeleteChrome
Yeah, it's unreal how many posts in my feed I get pushing a pro-Trump agenda, even from people who I know that I never in any way respond to anything they post. In fact, the crazier the post, it seems like it makes more likely to get a big push from Facebook. I remain appalled by a post a former classmate shared from another person who equated voting for Hillary Clinton to be identical to being a Jew "willingly" matching to the Nazi gas chambers in WWII. No joke. I have a policy that I don't post political stuff in my account and I almost never respond to what others post, but that is just so appealingly wrong that it amazes me that people actually don't think at all about what they pass on that others say. I see stuff constantly from right wing friends who post insisting that the US is teetering on the edge of disaster and that if Hillary Clinton becomes president it is GAME OVER for the USA. Apparently Facebook has some trending news stories section that I never use but enough people do use and that's where the shaping of articles was going on.
none of the things he has *said* are worse than the things she has *done* is the issue
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Both sides!!!1!?!!!
Thiel gave $1.25M to a candidate who'd just had it revealed he has serious problems with women (to put a politically correct spin on it), who is/was telling people he wouldn't accept the results of the election if he loses, and who previously has supported violence against his opponents, who is threatening legal sanctions against his opponents and the press, and who has engaged in racial scapegoating and in dehumanizing minorities.
Clinton has done none of those things (with the possible exception of one dubious comment about "predators" aimed at criminals in the 1990s that she's since apologized for.) So yeah, even though we don't like Clinton very much, we absolutely reserve the right to be angry that someone's response to a candidate boasting they can sexually assault women and get away with it is to give him money.
If Thiel had given money to Jeb Bush, nobody would have bat an eyelid. Nobody was angry when numerous billionaires gave Romney, McCain, or Bush Jr lots of money at the last few elections either. The fact you can't tell the difference between donating to Trump and donating to those guys or Clinton suggests you've been living under a rock this election campaign - or else actually think there's nothing wrong with sexual assault, opposing democratic elections (and supporting violence in politics), silencing critics, and attacking minorities.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
effective at what exactly and to whos benefit? not the american people thats for sure
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Right.
Because we hate Wall Street, let's instead put a billionaire real estate scammer whose entire adult life has been spent trying to kiss up to investors and banks to get loans for his businesses, and who refuses to reveal what banks he's in debt to in power.
Because we oppose the Libyan conflict, let's put in power someone who wants to bomb the children of terrorists, insists that waterboarding isn't harsh enough, wants more nations to have nuclear weapons, wants to build a new generation of nuclear weapons, and spent his first security briefing repeatedly asking why we're bothering to have nuclear weapons if we're not going to use them.
Because we oppose free trade, let's put in power someone who spent his entire career - up until he decided to rebrand himself as a populist for this election - championing free trade, built his empire on dumped steel and undocumented workers, and - until it was shut down as a scam - championed the benefits of outsourcing on his Trump University page.
I'm not even sure where you're getting that Clinton has been big "drill baby drill" champion, but Trump has literally called for "drill baby drill" in speeches, including lifting all federal restrictions on offshore drilling and elimination of the EPA.
So if you want to cut off your nose to spite your face, go right ahead, but please understand why many people will not be joining at you.
And if your argument is "I'm not supporting either of them" - if you don't vote for one, you're supporting the other. Not to the degree of voting directly for the other, but you're still supporting them. Because that's the way the US electoral system works.
"99 dead duelists of Dios on the wall. 99 dead duelists of Dios! Take one's ring, pass it around..."
I find both candidates to be revolting.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
"Thiel gave $1.25M to a candidate who'd just had it revealed he has serious problems with women (to put a politically correct spin on it),"
Sure sounds like Hillary/Bill to me.
" who is/was telling people he wouldn't accept the results of the election if he loses,"
Maybe you have a point there. After all, it sounds like Trump is agreeing with Al Gore and that's not a good look.
" and who previously has supported violence against his opponents,"
Yeah, Hillary supports violence right now and violated campaign finance laws to coordinate the violence. Ever seen Project Veritas?
" who is threatening legal sanctions against his opponents and the press,"
Sounds like Clinton to me too.
" and who has engaged in racial scapegoating and in dehumanizing minorities."
Basket of Deplorables. Not to mention the racist lynch mob waiting for any "minority" who gets uppity and doesn't lick Massa Hilary's boots like a good little house slave.
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
Virtually all mainstream media is in collusion with the hegemony that is the Democratic Party, the Republican party leadership, the federal bureaucracy, popular media, banking, and the capital markets worldwide. Only those not paying attention or those relying only on the most popular and most loyal media for their information. You wonder why I include the Republican Party leadership? Do not. They are only interested in preserving their positions of power. They collude with their traditional opposition to do so, and have for more 30 years or more.
This is indisputable.
The actions of Facebook and others, especially Twitter (which is the worst), in deleting or censoring right-wing and conservative thought are undeniable. This occurs regularly without explanation or acknowledgement, and has been happening since before this election cycle. Even the last cycle. The state of affairs is such that they, the hegemony, are becoming brazen and overt. This is unfortunate for them, for there are fewer secrets than ever.
I appreciate the advice to avoid commenting for fear that I will burn karma, but the truth is always an offense to the guilty and the ignorant. I plead with the ignorant to look carefully and make up their minds.
The guilty are beyond redemption at this point.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
I think this is a different group.
Sandberg is angling for a cabinet position: after having graduated from growing up in a wealthy and privileged family to becoming a billionaire, her ambitions are higher, and what else is there other than political power? And even if she doesn't get the cabinet position, sucking up to the Democrats is good business for Silicon Valley companies.
Of course, there is an enormous amount of hypocrisy and self-delusion in Sandberg's positions. She has led such a privileged life that 99.9% of the men whose backs she walks on can only dream of.
Wrong group. The New American is indeed a magazine published by the John Birch Society, as clearly stated on their web site . However, the original poster made an error. Lina Khan is a fellow in a program run by The New America Foundation , which was founded in 1999. According to Soucewatch, the New America Foundation received over $6 million through 2013 from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and lesser amounts from other foundations. https://tech.slashdot.org/stor...
Hooray! An effective president at going to war! At empowering Walll Street! At colluding with big business! At conspiring against open and fair elections! At being above the law! Who needs a president that is constrained by law when we can have an effective leader that 'gets business done'?
And you get modded as a troll. I wish I had mod points to fix that because as others have noted the comment is wrong.
Because of your partisan mindset, you assume that because the Democrats are crooks, the Republicans must be as well, and if the evidence for that isn't leaked, it must be because of some vast right wing conspiracy that keeps such information from the public. Add paranoia to the sin of ignorance and partisanship on your part.
effective at what exactly and to whos benefit? not the american people thats for sure
Well, let's see:
- Strengthening the Affordable Care Acts is to the benefit of the American people.
- Increasing taxes on the very wealthy to close the deficit is to the benefit of the American people.
- Strengthened bank legislation is to the benefit of the American people.
- Sensible gun control legislation is to the benefit of the American people.
- Wider access to women's health care (including abortion) is to the benefit of the American people.
- Appointing non-right-wing Supreme Court justices is to the benefit of the American people.
- Supporting LGBT rights it to the benefit of the American people.
I could go on. I am going to be very pleased to have Hillary in the White House.
I agree with that. I would think an RNC leak would actually help Trump. It would show all the RNC executives shitting on Trump and conspiring against him like the DNC did Bernie, except Trump had a strategy for beating them. It would corroborate Trump's narrative that the system, including the primaries, is rigged.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Hey, those middle class Americans will be training the H1-B visas before they are replaced for a generous severance package. Of course it is good for the American middle class. How else will they get that 'generous severance package'?
Who the fuck cares about his tax returns? As if Trump doesn't have enough other problems?!
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They opposed the Civil Rights movement. It's not ad hominem if they really are scum.
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Yes, because nothing says "effective president" than "being able to lie effectively to the electorate about the policies you're actually going to implement" and "making handouts to corporate cronies".
Low information voters like you and the crooks you favor for office are the cause of government corruption, economic problems, lack of growth, and social problems.
SURPRISE!
Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati
-Possum Lodge Motto
Yes, it is. The scumminess or non-scumminess of the source is not relevant to the strength of their argument. If they are scum, it may be more likely that they have made false arguments, but it is not guaranteed, and the proper counter is to root out the falsity of their arguments.
Either the Republicans run a tighter ship with better security, or there's nothing incriminating/shady to leak.
OR they simply aren't as heavily targeted - the Russian government is only interested in finding dirt on the Democrats after all. They may have even broken into the RNC/Trump campaign to the same extent but kept the information for themselves rather than leaking it.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
It's adorable that you think she's going to do anything of this.
In her "private" vs "public" speech, she has told big business that she wants to make it easier for the banks, and use government to backstop all of their risk. Her foundation's doesn't do anything in health care unless there's a political connection back to skim money out of it. And her track record on actually telling the truth is terrible, she lied about forwarding confidential information, her lack of security focus in Benghazi, but if you want to think that she actually cares about you, go ahead. Send her more money.
Right. So let's take a look at how this "excerpt the gotcha" plays into that.
Slashdot writes about Zuckerberg:
Except that the email from Shelly about Zuckerberg very clearly begins:
Likewise on the other email from Cheryl. They mention the "She came over and was magical with my kids" re. Clinton. They don't bother mentioning the reason for Hillary's visit, which can be seen in what she's replying to:
This wasn't some buddy-buddy campaign visit, this was a "person I know's husband just died" visit. Likewise, the implication that they're supposed to give here is that they know her because of Facebook. No bothering to mention that the reason that they actually know her is because she was Larry Summers' Chief of Staff during the Clinton administration.
Almost anything can be made to look sinister when you take it completely out of context. Which is the whole purpose of these emails.
Furthermore, do you honestly think you couldn't do the exact same thing by picking through the Trump campaign's internal messaging? Do you have any clue how many people of note a major campaign interacts with, how many people work for them, etc? We know given Trumps record on server security that hacking him would have been a breeze, but miraculously nobody bothered. Why do you think that is?
Lastly: take everything you read with a grain of salt. I know everyone's reaction to statements that emails could have been altered (and scattered amongst real ones) is going to be "You just don't want to discuss them!" No, the reason you should take things with a grain of salt is that the other anti-Clinton hacks this year have done exactly that. Leaks posted by the hackers in different places involved cases where they had involved changing the same file to say different things (such as a donation list where they added a donation from Soros to a Russian democracy activist, but had different values for the donation in different versions of their release), cases where files were dated to after the hack occurred, and cases where file metadata showed the changes they'd been making. Salting real data with fake is something that they've been doing this year, so it'd be naive to think that they're just going to stop doing it now. Come on, even the most die-hard Clinton hater is going to be hard pressed to actually believe that the Clinton Foundation has a directory sitting around literally called "Pay for Play".
Yes, the majority will be real. But don't be naive when viewing them and assume that you can just take everything at face value.
"99 dead duelists of Dios on the wall. 99 dead duelists of Dios! Take one's ring, pass it around..."
wants to build a new generation of nuclear weapons
This one actually I don't mind because our infrastructure of nuclear arms is atrocious. It has been in disrepair for a long time now and even Obama has plans to modernize our nuclear weapons.
Yea, I agree almost five thousand nukes on hand isn't a great idea but if you are going to have them at least have the infrastructure, training, and man power to manage them in a safe manner. For example, I remember seeing (don't remember where) one of the missile silos had a broken blast door that was held open with a hammer. There are a few other examples that I am too lazy to remember or search.
If you know they have a history of being idiots there's little reason for you to investigate each new thing they do because it'll probably follow the same pattern.
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"I don't think even the lowliest serf is ignorant anymore that every media outlet and talking head is campaigning for Hillary." I'm concerned you've missed the point. They are ignorant that this is happening. because they have been convinced by said media that its their own opinion. All media outlets that set out to sway the public do this. There are countless instances of people who complain about Fox News generating a skewed reality for their viewership. At the end of the day, taking apolitical position on a candidate is a matter of money. The more eyeballs you drive to your venue, them ore you can sell those views to advertisers. The more rabid the viewers are the more they will patron your venue. Its just the way it works. There can really only be one rule of caution : Be more cynical.
They have nothing on Trump most likely because he's never held a government position, ergo, no official documents to leak.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
You might feel safe in ignoring them, but if you attempt to refute them, using "they're scum" is still a logical fallacy. If you feel there's no point in refuting them any more, that's a different matter. But laziness is not logic.
You can't just assume it was the Russian government, as the evidence doesn't back that up. It could have been anyone from a Russian proxy, or the phishing attacks could be unrelated to the leaked email. i.e., they could have both stupid users who fall for phishing attacks, and disgruntled employees leaking their shit.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
We can all agree on that.
So let's give up the idea of having a good President, let's focus on which one will give us more entertainment. Let's ask ourselves: which of those two could resurrect press conferences and the state of the union? Would you ever tivo a Clinton speech so you can watch again the good parts? Unlikely. Even is she was competent, she's exciting as a doorknob.
Trump, however, would give us a good show. Insult foreign dignitaries that don't deserve the VIP treatment. Blame people, companies or religions openly. Make comments about the physical appearance of celebrities. Ignore lobbies. Ignore precedents and tradition. The guy is pure gold!
lucm, indeed.
Also I don't get the impression Trump is relying heavily on email to coordinate his campaign strategy. I think he's mostly winging it.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Hey look, it's the Fallacy Fallacy.
The original poster never said he was trying to refute them. He was simply dismissing them.
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You should have made that argument first instead of trying "it's not ad hominem if I don't like them". Still not sure I agree with it, but you'd be on firmer ground.
See your post sums up this whole election: let's elect Clinton because she's not Trump.
She has no plans or vision or political platform other than not being Trump. Doesn't that worry you?
We've seen how well it went with the I'm Not Bush president. Those people get in the Oval Office and suddenly there's a huge void because they can no longer define themselves by contrast to someone else. So they improvise and horse around, throw money here and there, try to find a way to please their sponsors while creating a "legacy". They stand for nothing, they follow the polls, they just suck.
lucm, indeed.
Washington is revving up the gunboats for a fucking Nuclear War with Russia and you people are wasting time over this bullshit!?
Why has everyone gone fucking insane?! When did this happen? Did everyone drop LSD over the last two years? I'm tired of feeling like the last fucking adult in room in nearly every internet forum I go to. It's like I want to wake up from some crazy dystopian dream by I just can't do it!
It's not really "because I don't like them." Arguing against the Civil Rights Movement is effectively saying all citizens should not be equal, which is kind of one of the principles our country was founded on (admittedly it took us a long time to approach that point).
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I wish people would revolt.
Sounds like your 3rd party is Homer Simpson for garbage commissioner...."Can't somebody else do it?"
The original poster never said he was trying to refute them. He was simply dismissing them.
By dismissing them, he was implicitly claiming that there was no merit to their argument.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
How unfair that Facebook isn't equally close to the raving sociopath? GTFO!
Why would anyone think that [Facebook | Google | Microsoft | Famous Amos Cookies] was supposed to be impartial?
Did I miss something extra in the first amendment about only speaking if you present all views equally?
Aside from the wishful fiction that they are somehow required to be, since when is anyone even claiming to be "fair and impartial"?
(OK, other than the claims of Fox News)
If you grant them any more credit for impartiality than what you allocate the wild-eyed crazy on the overpass with a bullhorn, you deserve what you get.
ALL information you get must be weighed against the source, and if you blindly accept as 'truth' everything from anyone, you are going to get burned.
In this case, of course, when enough of us get burned, we all (U.S. and 'the World') have to deal with the fallout.
You should vote for whatever candidate you feel best represents your views. If the Green Party is head and shoulders above the others, so be it. But if you are ambivalent between a couple of choices, then consider this.
This election I decided that both of the main party candidates were so bad that I had to pick the third party candidate that was actually on the ballot in all 50 states. The Libertarian party would normally be my fourth choice, but my preferred third choice isn't on the ballot everywhere. So they won't win. Write-in votes simply don't happen enough. There is at least a chance that when people see the third option on the ballot, they might pick it this election. If your third party candidate isn't on the ballot everywhere, this won't happen.
The reason a third party vote usually fails is it is split so many ways. For a third party vote to actually mean anything, we need to unite behind a single third party. If the vote is split 20+ ways, none will make a difference. I'd urge you to consider picking the third party that actually is on the ballot everywhere. It wasn't my preferred candidate either, but it is the only realistic chance preventing a train wreck.
The problem with revolting is that, what ever comes after, there is no guarantee that it will be better. More often than not it is worse.
Yeah, the future can be funny that way.
Breakfast served all day!
I could say the nonsense about your vote for your candidate. How would you like it if I said your vote for Clinton supports Trump or Stein? Because by voting against Johnson, it sure looks like that's what you're doing: preventing Johnson from winning, so that we get stuck with whoever else wins instead.
Please don't vote against Johnson. Don't throw your vote away like that, voting on a spoiler. Your vote could have been against the Republicrats and instead you're going to help one of them win again.
(See how condescending that is? Please knock it off.)
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
So you prefer Kang over Kodos, then?
Seriously - they both suck, and are singularly unqualified for the job. Most of us with more than two working neurons know this.
The problem is two-fold:
1) There is a huge mass of low-information sheep who don't really bother with politics (either by ignorance, stupidity, or laziness), but will nonetheless do whatever they're told by their ideological 'betters', mostly to look good in the eyes of their social peers - hell, there's even a satchel of soundbites and pre-digested 'debate' techniques that are supplied to them.
2) There are also two masses of howling hyper-partisan ideologues who each abandon logic and reason in order to 'win' at all costs.
The sad part is, the aforementioned masses comprise the majority of our populace. I'm certain that the US isn't the only country that has this affliction, but as the US is among (if not atop the list of all) world leaders, what happens here will affect the rest of the planet one way or the other. I fear that no matter who gets it, it will be to the detriment of us all.
I know on my part? I happily voted third-party (yes, I'm that disgusted with both the major candidates), but I live in a state where the outcome is pretty much predestined (thanks to the hivemind living in Portland, Salem, and Bend), so I could have written in my dog as President, and no one will notice here.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
From someone outside, looking in: You've got Tantrum Trump on one hand, and Crafty Clinton on the other. The voting population needs to have a reset button available for when lousy choices pop up.
So you are saying the following are shilling for Clinton:
- Fox News
- Breitbart
- EIB (Rush Limbaugh)
- Wall Street Journal
- New York Post
- Forbes
I could go on but you get the point.
Reminder: the Wikileaks we're dealing with right now are not government documents. They are the internal emails of the Democratic National Committee. Wikileaks has released the stolen emails of private citizens -- granted, relatively powerful ones, but still.
Given the devils we now know quite well, it's just about guaranteed that the devils we don't know can't be worse.
I'm voting Gary Johnson, even if he can't be bothered to pretend he has a chance and comes across as something of an idiot since he doesn't prepare for interviews.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
People are commenting and comparing the GOP and DNC, taking at face value that they are truly separate and non colluding parties. In the past this may have been true but in the run up to the primaries it was very apparent that they are two sides of the same corrupt coin. They are both beholden to the same corporations and dependent on the same lobbying groups for money. Bernie who I initially supported was destroyed by the DNC machine because he wanted real change. Trump was bashed on by the GOP because he wasn't getting in line with the party interests. At this point you'd have to be a fool to vote for more of the same old same old with Clinton. She's gotten tacit and open support from the Bushes! Trump is the only choice to drain the damn swamp or at least attempt to do it.
I don't know why folks are still arguing about X is better than Y because of Z.
Short of some epic revelations that we don't already know about or suspect, folks are pretty much set in who they're going to vote for.
If they bother to vote at all. ( I certainly don't plan on it. My vote is meaningless when facing off with the Fox, CNN or Facebook hordes )
At this point, I liken the whole election process to a late stage terminal illness.
The end of it can't possibly get here fast enough.
notably, the people who've been called out on the contents of the emails, immediately push the "Stolen by Russia" narrative, and never address the actual contents of the emails. ...Which can be verified by DKIM sig
https://www.reddit.com/r/DNCleaks/comments/58il3v/dkim_rules_out_the_it_may_be_altered_defense/
How do you figure? It worked.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
In other news, Fox seems to favor Trump. Scandalous!
I cannot tell if you are lying, or are so deluded and uninformed you actually believe the things you say.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Cannot vote Libertarian for the following reason:
-- The Environment-- property rights being enforced before the '60s is one of the biggest reasons our skies and rivers were so polluted before the EPA came into existence.
For anyone who was old enough to pay attention during the late 60s/early 70s you have to remember the smog over major cities, a river that could burn and Lake Erie dying. The regulations promulgated by the EPA resulted in much cleaner air, rivers and lakes.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I supported Bernie Sanders, and the DNC used every cheating dirty trick in the book to make sure he failed. If Independents had been allowed to vote in all the primaries, he would have won. Jill Stein is the only other candidate that is talking about the same issues. Clinton is talking about no fly zones over Syria. You also know she will push through any trade deals that Obama fails to get passed. I voted for the Democrats most of my life (my first presidential vote was for Carter). But that is over. Now that they are the other corporate controlled party, I will be sticking with the Greens until the DNC gets taken back from the billionaires.
A brain is a terrible thing to waste... Mind? That's debatable.
Yeah, let's get a politician who doesn't pander to all the people who have the power (read: not you or me), and see how successfully they run for office. A politician who doesn't pander to the most powerful players is a politician who is going to lose to their competitor who does. And people who complain about politicians being in bed with big business are ignorant. Yeah, it sucks, but it's how politics works. It's how it has always worked, and it is how it's always going to work, until we are ruled by robots (and even then I'm not sure the game will change). You want Hillary or Trump to pander directly to you, but once they get elected, what good are you to them? Maybe $5000 in annual tax revenue if you're lucky. Maybe you're lucky enough to be a part of a voter block who collectively has enough power to get a bit of support in the form of a tax break or a subsidy, but odds are, you mean nothing to any politician.
There's more than one. Google
for another.
I suspect there's a vast difference between the modernizing that Obama and anyone else sane would be doing. After Trump's comments about leaving NATO (and basically anything else) I can't imagine he'd be interested in keeping with the nuclear test ban.
Uh... doesn't Hillary work for big banks and corporations??? I thought her two faced deception was recently well documented by Wikileaks.
If Hillary is sooook good, then why is it that 30 years in politics, even as a lawmaker, she has done nothing to fix laws that favor rich people only???? Oh wait... because she is bought and paid for. Trump merely worked in the system that Hillary and the establishment designed for the rich.
So please... Hillary is indefensible. She is pure evil and you know. She lied to the faces of the mothers of those killed at Benghazi, yet another scandle she was responsible for, thanks to Wikileaks.
Most of what she has supposedly "Done" are outright fabrications.
How many "investigations" have to come up empty before you admit that there is no fire behind the smoke that Republicans call Benghazi?
Clinton Foundation is shown to have average overhead expenses.
Etc.
- Strengthening the Affordable Care Acts is to the benefit of the American people.
you mean the program that was pushed down our throats and has NEVER worked, costs for most on it are rising an avg of 22% this year alone, insurance companies leaving the exchanges.... that ACA??? So tell me HOW shes gonna fix it, not just that she will
- Increasing taxes on the very wealthy to close the deficit is to the benefit of the American people.
her plan will bring in less revenue and hurt the middle class and poor even more than you thing because things dont work that way. its a great talking point but you raise the money on the "rich" (which include farm owners and small business owners" and costs rise and business closes. but yes, those mean rich people that hillary is getting all her money from are simply going to give more money to the government. heres an idea, instead of spending a billion on her campaign, why not give it to the treasury???
- Strengthened bank legislation is to the benefit of the American people.
thats not what it seems like based on her talks with wallstreet, but you go on and believe that
- Sensible gun control legislation is to the benefit of the American people.
we already have sensible gun control, its called the 2nd amendment. the president really has no constitutional say on guns that is a decision for congress, to pull a constitutional convention and get 3/4ths of the states to agree to ammend the constitution....do you REALLY think congress is gonna do that??? no - so no she wont be doing anything with guns, just like obama
- Wider access to women's health care (including abortion) is to the benefit of the American people.
really? and how do you propose that? by taking more of our money to give to special interest groups??? how is that better for america? if someone wants an abortion fine! but me and you should not pay for it. just like we shouldnt pay for penis pills and birth control, thats NOT what a government is supposed to do
- Appointing non-right-wing Supreme Court justices is to the benefit of the American people.
LOL yes just what we need more justices who think its ok to take more and more of our rights away. The correct Justice to put on the bench is one who is a constitutional scholar. anything less is a disservice to america
- Supporting LGBT rights it to the benefit of the American people.
really? because you would be shocked to find out trump is a bigger friend to the gay community than hillary ever has been. shes only come out publicly in support of the LGBT community recently because she thinks its beneficial to her campaign. go over her career, shes been anti LGBT for 90% of it and look at trump who has no history of being anti LGBT
the mental gymnastics you must go through to believe the garbage that she spews is disgusting
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
I totally would vote third party.
If it weren't for the fact that even the third party candidates are terrible buffoons as well.
The correct Justice to put on the bench is one who is a constitutional scholar.
Obama it is then.
Citations please...
And please provide one that show how you are so terribly discriminated against and can truly understand the plight of the "house slave".
Cheap storage VM.
The environment (from a pollution standpoint) has improved massively over the last few decades. There have also been some notable disasters on the pollution standpoint that happened even with a strong EPA around. A large part of the reason for the improvements had to do with pollution controls on automobiles. I doubt seriously that companies are going to risk going back to the 60's or 70's policies and products - even if the EPA wasn't there to stop them. All the major manufactures are moving to electric or hybrid - I just wish they were feasible in our neck of the woods.
In addition, ballot issues on corporate proxies seeking accountability for issues like these are getting higher and higher percentages of For votes - regardless of the industry - so I think that the pendulum is definitely swinging towards conservatism and protecting the environment regardless of the party in political power at the time.
But even for all the good that the EPA has done, you still have companies like VW scamming the system. So saying that government is the solution really doesn't work either.
Reducing the federal government's size and scope doesn't necessarily mean that the functions it does will all disappear. Some will be taken over by other departments if they need to exist at the federal level, and some will be taken over by the states (where the founders of the country intended them to be).
I don't agree with every policy the Libertarians have either. Remember that many would take a law getting through Congress to enact anyway. For all the uselessness that I feel exists in the Department of Education, one of the things that I would champion is the Common Core - I just think it should push students harder than they are now being pushed but it is still a great idea. With the mobility of the population, it is absolutely required that there be no impact on kids education when they move from state A to state B. Each grade level must be expected to have mastered particular items and not have the hodgepodge that we have had for decades. Even within a single elementary school here, they have gone to different math curricula every couple of years. Different ones teach things at different times, leading to gaps in the kids educations. That is madness.
But I've digressed. There is no one single issue that I can think of that is so big that I would disqualify the current Libertarian slate of candidates. If elected, they may well not win a second term because the main parties will have to seriously re-evaluate their lives. That would be a good thing, in and of itself. As former governors, I think that they would probably govern OK. Not great - not horrible. But I'm OK with that.
except for hes done nothing but shit on the constitution since hes been in office......
nice to see you ignore everything else that i had to correct on your post however. typical clinton supporter, head buried in the sand
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
I'm not interested in a discussion of what you project onto others' relationships.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
And if your argument is "I'm not supporting either of them" - if you don't vote for one, you're supporting the other. Not to the degree of voting directly for the other, but you're still supporting them. Because that's the way the US electoral system works.
Sounds like you're rationalizing voting for Hillary. It's obvious both candidates are thoroughly bad. Someone could easily compile a list similar to yours for Hillary as she is embroiled in multiple scandals and has been pretty well shown to be bought and paid for. However most votes don't matter. In California they would elect a pet rock if it had "Democrat" next to it. In other states they would also elect a pet rock if it had Republican next to it. Moreover until the electoral votes are granted in proportion, not winner take all, then most peoples votes don't matter. The election is decided by a handful of battleground states. At this point parties largely hold the power, not voters. And if you want to discuss how voters pick candidates for the parties in primaries then you had better pay more attention to Wikileaks finding on that. Trump I will admit was not the Republican parties first choice. That and Brexit are a few signs that the people still have a chance to disrupt their masters.
Sadly, it can be worse. The level of corruption of Brazil's last two presidents makes Hillary Clinton look like a rank amatur selling favors on a street corner and Kim Jong-un of North Korea makes Donald Trump look like a wise and level-headed saint as hard as it is to believe. That said, I don't actually recommend voting for either one of them as there are better choices in the field, even if the media doesn't want to cover them.
"Be particularly skeptical when presented with evidence confirming what you already believe." -
Almost anything can be made to look sinister when you take it completely out of context. Which is the whole purpose of these emails.
"If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him."
-- Cardinal Richelieu
And that, right there, is the story of the Clintons. Hundreds of millions of dollars, much of it tax dollars, spent on finding something, anything, to hang them with. There were nine, NINE benghazi investigations and when it was all over, the most rabid attack dog, Trey Gowdy couldn't name one thing to pin on Clinton, instead all he could do was deflect the question with "read the [800 page] report yourself."
She's not a saint, but she's no devil either. She's just a run-of-the-mill, ambitious and competent bureaucrat with liberal leanings. She'll probably be more effective than Obama (he believed in bipartisanship to achieve consensus, she believes in the cold and bloodless wielding of political power to force the other side to grudgingly accept compromise, the last 8 years have proved Obama wrong). And as presidents go, I'll take that kind of president over the Cheney presidency and the Reagan presidency any day.
the RNC explicitly chose not to organize against him which let the vote be split.
Naw, that's not what happened. The RNC preselected Jeb! just like the DNC preselected Hildawg. They had the wide field explicitly to split the vote so there'd be no stand-out and everyone would eventually fall behind Jeb. Same thing with Romney in 2012 where nobody actually wanted Romney, and you'd have the not-Romney of the week who would go up in the polls and then crash until you were left with "well fuck it I guess it's Romney." So this cycle first they were behind Yeb, but when he got low energied they switched to Rubio who short circuited and then Ted who wanted to fuck...rats...or something. Anyway the Fox News machine and the paid-for pundits were clearly shilling for whoever the flavor of the week was, but not Trump. Like Rush Limbaugh who works for ClearChannel which is owned by Bain Capital (Romney). Was all behind Jeb and Trump was dangerous and then Rubio was a "full-throated conservative" and then Ted was a "True Conservative" and is only now behind Trump because well fuck it.
So, no, the RNC explicitly split the field, and then implicitly united behind whoever they thought had the best shot of beating Trump.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Arguing against the Civil Rights Movement is effectively saying all citizens should not be equal, which is kind of one of the principles our country was founded on (admittedly it took us a long time to approach that point).
At this point the Civil Rights movement seems to be more interested in pushing for special rights for favored groups and blaming any problems its favored groups encounter on -isms like racism or sexism. Moreover Civil Rights groups tolerate honest discussion, or dissenting views, about as well as Soviet Russia. Indeed they take special pride in punishing dissenting political views such as anyone who donated to California Proposition 8 (citation below). This is why I chuckle when Civil Rights groups are mentioned in the same sentence as founding principles. The two couldn't be more different. Equality under law just means no special rules for anyone ... period. It really is that simple.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02...
The future is uncertain, and yes it maybe worse, but in order to improve we must take risks, otherwise we will surely stagnate.
Quote:
The definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Hillary is a liar, and manipulative, but how is that different from any other politician.
However the same thing is probably better than electing a sociopath like Trump.
That's not actually true. The Civil Rights Movement was/is a multifaceted thing. There's a lot to like about it, particularly the core belief of equality.
However, there are some things that resulted from it, like forced diversity in the workplace laws and rules, that people of good conscience can argue about the effectiveness and necessity of. So if I believe in equal opportunity and disbelieve in what I see as artificial numbers games for their own sake, am I for or against civil rights?
Donald Trump has long claimed that Clinton is too cozy with big businesses
Meanwhile, Donnie literally brags that he is big business.
Sexual assault? Are you out of your mind? Trump said that women will allow rich guys to do certain things--in a private conversation that some slimeball stole and gave to a media outlet that deliberately sat on it to time for maximum damage instead of reporting on it when they got it.
He said nothing about assaulting anyone. Somebody allowing something is now equal to being assaulted? Really?
Perhaps you refer to the manufactured accusers, most of which have had no critical investigation of their allegations done--and the few that have been fact checked have turned out to be made up devoid of fact nonsense. More political orchestrations, but of course that notion fails to fit your narrative.
... a candidate who'd just had it revealed he has serious problems with women (to put a politically correct spin on it), who is/was telling people he wouldn't accept the results of the election if he loses...
We have a little over 318 million people in this country. If one of them is upset over the election results I'm not going to get too upset over it. I fully expect Mr. Trump to make a spectacle after he loses the election, but it's going to be funny, Comedy gold, not something to be concerned about.
Well, I'm not talking about now; I'm talking about the '60s. But otherwise that's fair.
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The solution is not with person you elect, it is with checks and balances you place on those people, anyone can be corrupt. When you start down the corrupt path it only gets harder to stop. You have to use more corruption to cover up previous corruption, you are indebted to the people that helped you on your way. You start feeling entitled the benefits you got. Go give someone $100 a week for a while then take it away from them, they will upset, even though they are better off than they would of been without the money in the first place.
There needs to be a system that is transparent, that the politicians know that there actions will be revealed, even top secret stuff should have an expiry date.
There should be private funding of political campaigns at all, all that does is leave politicians indebted to there donors. The current system forces you to be indebted straight away. A political candidate should win on their ideas not on the size of their, or the people they ow favors to wallets. The usual argument to that is do you want to pay, and my answer is YES, because I am going to pay either way either directly or through laws that are designed benefit the donors. The latter is probably going to be much more expensive in the long run.
BS. Arguing against an organization does not necessarily mean arguing against just its goals.
FTFY. And in the example, the goal is already dubious without even looking at their methods.
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also, still havent explained HOW shes gonna do any of the talking points you posted.... ill wait
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
refute
rfyoot/
verb
prove (a statement or theory) to be wrong or false; disprove.
imply (implicitly)
impl/
verb
strongly suggest the truth or existence of (something not expressly stated).
Yes, thank you, Webster, different words *do* have different meanings.
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what there needs to be is the following options:
I don't like either, couldn't we find a better candidate in a country of 318 million people, but if must I chose X
If that option wins X gets put in a caretaker role while another election is started to find a better candidate.
Or alternatively a more practical solution (since I don't think you would ever find a candidate that wasn't useless)
simply rank your preferred candidates in order, if your top choice does not win your vote goes to the next option an so on.
That means your vote is never wasted by voting for a minor candidate.
Clinton did pay for play.
Trump gets it on with a lot of women.
So do we pick the playboy, or the woman who puts the interests of foreign governments before America?
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
Good candidate don't run for president, and the few that do don't get very far. By very nature of being decent, they don't attract corporate or lobbyist money.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
I doubt seriously that companies are going to risk going back to the 60's or 70's policies and products - even if the EPA wasn't there to stop them.
"Hand of the market" libertarian fairytale bullshit! History has shown, again and again, that the majority of companies will take the path that earns them the most money in the short term; damn the consequences. The few that don't, if no action is taken against the ones that do, are eventually forced by investors to adopt the same disastrous policies to remain competitive. The EPA is one option to try and prevent this behavior by giving the good companies some equalizing leverage against the bad actors, when all goes well.
so I think that the pendulum is definitely swinging towards conservatism and protecting the environment regardless of the party in political power at the time.
People seem to forget that the EPA was created by that liberal commie, Richard Nixon. [/sarcasm] for the sarcasm impaired. People in power, regardless of political party, who aren't in the pocket of the big, industrial polluters know that there needs to be a force against companies that wish to destroy the environment we live in for profit.
But even for all the good that the EPA has done, you still have companies like VW scamming the system. So saying that government is the solution really doesn't work either.
So, you're suggesting that since the EPA doesn't work 100% of the time, that it should be thrown away? By that logic, I'm sure that you have had failures and did not succeed 100% of the time. Should we throw you away as well? Look, the EPA has had failures, I don't dispute that. But, given the fact that the people that they have to report to (congress) has a leadership that has a vested interest in making sure that they can't work, they're doing an ok job. It comes down to if they are doing more good than harm. Right now, overall, they still fall under doing more good.
Reducing the federal government's size and scope doesn't necessarily mean that the functions it does will all disappear. Some will be taken over by other departments if they need to exist at the federal level, and some will be taken over by the states (where the founders of the country intended them to be).
Umm... other federal agencies cannot suddenly extend their mandate without authorization from congress. And, congress is not going to extend another department to take over the EPA because they already have a department to do the job... the EPA. You really think that that states would have any chance against the money of the gross polluting industries? The Koch brothers and their allies, all heavily invested in gross polluting industries such as coal, power generation, paper, timber and other such industries, have pledged just shy of 1 billion dollars in support of candidates that, in addition to other things, sign off on supporting the complete elimination of the EPA. (To put that in perspective, Delaware's entire projected 2017 annual budget is 4.1 billion dollars.) Do you really think that they're spending 1 billion dollars because they think environmental regulations can really be ran better by states or industry? Hell no! They're funding it because, if they can ram dissolving the EPA through congress, they feel they can make significantly more than 1 billion dollars by selling our planet's habitable future for profit. And if our planet is not habitable for future generations... well, that's not their problem.
Your solution, to put it in a metaphor: A fox gets past the hen house guard dog once in awhile and kills a chicken. Your proposal is the same as the farmer shooting the dog for not doing his job and saying to the chickens: "Sorry, you're on your own." and walking away; hoping the problem sorts itself out.
"Be particularly skeptical when presented with evidence confirming what you already believe." -
Go back far enough and you can throw out quite a few media outlets outright with that. For example, the LA Times? Supported Japanese internment camps.
Of course, I won't argue the broader point that most of the media simply isn't worth reading any more. But when evaluating them, instead of worrying about history, I worry about how detailed an account they give of their sources and how well the stories can be corroborated with other facts.
Anything less would simply be intellectual laziness.
Wikileaks only "leak" what is supplied to them. They are not making stuff up about HRC, and i'm fairly certain if they had equal dirt on Trump. they'd put it out there on a shingle for the world to see. So tell me are you in possession of evidence that Julian Assange has leak information on Trump, that is not being released? Do you feel that Assange has always had a cozy relationship with the GOP too?
I'm curious to see if he's broke and living off bank loans like I beleive.
"Be particularly skeptical when presented with evidence confirming what you already believe." -
You need to look broader than parties: it's the establishment vs everybody else game. GOP doesn't want Trump either, especially now that he vowed to upset their gravy train by imposing term limits and banning ex-congressmen and senators from lobbying for 5 years after they get kicked out (due to term limits) or leave. That's literally tens of billions of dollars that will not go directly into the pockets of interested parties.
So aside from Breitbart, everyone is just serving their corporate masters who are scared shitless of the fact they don't own Trump. Breitbart doesn't really have a corporate master, and it benefits from controversy, so it'll publish whatever the fuck it wants.
Yes, really. As a survivor of sexual abuse, I can tell you that you don't always have the presence of mind to complain right away. You may fear retribution or violence. You may be in a no-win situation with somebody with more power/authority than you. Besides, it can be quite shocking when somebody does something horrifying out of the blue. If Trump brags about grabbing people's genitals, and that they let him do it, does not mean that they wanted him to do it or allowed it. I'm not a "only yes means yes" type of guy, but I know that "not yes" sometimes means "no." To pretend otherwise is to tacitly approve of blaming the victim (which by the way is a tradition that dates back to the Old Testament).
Republicans are "too close for comfort" with Clinton. Everyone with a sound state of mind should be on the side of the politician rather than the narcissistic egomaniac if the stakes are the presidency of the United States.
What's your fucking problem man?
Both are plutocrats and we've almost always had plutocrats as candidates. It's not just a "Clinton thing". I find it hypocritical that so many conservatives suddenly "care" about the croniness in crony capitalism. (Remember Halliburton's no-bid contract, and Boehner's tobacco-cash envelopes?)
Hillary (and Trump) are merely a symptom. If you keep focusing on symptoms you'll never cure the disease, and possibly make it worse. Hillary just happened to get heavily X-rayed in public this time.
Trump blatantly and proudly admitted to bribing most of the candidates on the debate stage in one of the GOP debates. He ain't no angel in that regard. Being the briber instead of the bribee is not a big difference in my book. We live in a bribocracy.
Table-ized A.I.
Media doesn't relay much truth about anyone. The modern media is an entertainment service and not an information service. The modern media is Trump's *best* friend because they gave him an unprecedented amount of free coverage in exchange for the year's best entertainment. Hillary isn't as entertaining so she gets less coverage.
Obviously it can be worse! Did you not go to school, did you drop out early or play too much hookey or go to class stoned? What's worse? Fascism (the real kind not the American insults made to conservatives), communism (the real kind not the American insults to liberals), dictatorships (the real ones, not the insults make to Bush or Obama), anarchy (not the libertarian dream but the stuff you see in Somalia, Libya, etc), or a military coup every time there's a new election, and so forth. What about real stuff in America that's worse - rampant racism, sexism, violence in the South in 1940s and 50s (as well as much of the north); the civil war, the lawless West post civil war; genocide of native Americans; fatal duels between members of congress (and you thought today's didn't know how to get along).
The devils we know from history are worse than either Trump or Hillary.
As individuals they have so little power when elected, and yet so many voters act as if the president has dictatorial powers, and so many candidates act as if they have such power ("on my first day in office I will overturn fill-in-the-blank"). Even appointing 3 supreme court justices will not change that much - maybe rules of abortion will change, maybe some regulations get strengthened or weakened, but the overall effects will not cause the disasters (unless you're the sort who believes God will destroy the planet if gays can get married or we don't return to the gold standard). If you want change then you have to get that squabbling bunch of legislators nationally and locally to do stuff and that means voting down the ballot instead of just looking at the dog and pony show for president.
See other post, but one of the things I think is needed, is public (not private) funding of election campaigns,
You want somebody unexciting as POTUS.
Same for the majority of Senators, the majority of Representatives, all of SCOTUS, etc.
Very true. As the mythical Chinese curse says, "may you live in interesting times". Boring is a very good thing.
"Trump gets it on with a lot of women."
Too bad that he doesn't ask for consent before he grabs them by the pussy. (Not my words but his).
You, like so many Trumpkins, don't seem to understand the concept of sexual assault.
Really, all I am suggesting is that there are so many issues and problems with the two primary party candidates that taking a one issue stand as a means to divide the third party vote so that no third party can compete is the road to ruin.
The post was replying to smog in cities, largely caused by autos. That ship has sailed and the car companies aren't going to be able to push the product purchasers back to the 60s/70s.
As far as the rest of your comments - many are valid. I tend to think that since the various departments are under the executive branch, that Congress would be likely to shuffle some functions around as needed and would probably pass that legislation without much fuss. I wasn't necessarily even thinking of the EPA, although it certainly doesn't have a sound constitutional basis for existing. It's also an agency with cabinet level status, but really isn't on the same level as other departments. A lot of these were split out in the first place from other departments for political purposes to show we were serious about problem X or were created out of thin air because the existing departments couldn't communicate with each other in the first place. Recombining them isn't the drastic problem you point out.
I also think that regardless of the presence or absence of the EPA, the $1 bln dollar value you're throwing around would be just as effectively used greasing the palms of Congress to get legislation written to do whatever they wanted or carve out whatever exception they wanted anyway, so I'm not sure what your point is.
Finally, keep in mind that war is frequently much more harmful to the environment than the worst polluter. It's also much more harmful to those directly involved. You may have many reasons for disliking the Libertarians, but their keep your noses out of other peoples business stance has its merits.
you dont, some of us do (when the choice is that or more of the same failed policies)
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
the EPA destroyed a river and absolved itself from all responsibility. excuse me for not giving a flying fuck about them
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
he was also the "im black, vote for me or you are racist" president
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
and none of that matters or as hillary would say "WELL, WHAT DIFFERENCE does it make!!!"
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
maybe because they wont cooperate?? i mean maybe teh fact that thousands of emails disappeared may have played into it??? ffs man
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
I don't see what the big deal is. CEO's and higher ups of businesses have political opinions. How is this news?
To insinuate that, as a result of said opinions, Facebook and other corporations have this hidden agenda to brainwash United States citizens to vote for Hillary seems to be unverifiable and short-sighted.
Both Google and Facebook have come under allegations that they are purposefully slanting the news. But perhaps another argument can be made that statistically, articles and/or sites that are favorable toward Hillary and unfavorable toward Trump seem to have more click traffic. Regardless, I highly doubt that Zuckerberg's opinions are going to make a difference to mine.
The story says that Mark Zuckerberg was looking to "get in on the action a bit, and perhaps curry favor with Podesta and the Clinton camp in shaping public policy." Let's check the email they quoted.
Mark is meeting with people to learn more about next steps for his philanthropy and social action and it’s hard to imagine someone better placed or more experienced than you to help him
He’s begun to think about whether/how he might want to shape advocacy efforts to support his philanthropic priorities and is particularly interested in meeting people who could help him understand how to move the needle on the specific public policy issues he cares most about. He wants to meet folks who can inform his understanding about effective political operations to advance public policy goals on social oriented objectives (like immigration, education or basic scientific research).
Mark wants help learning how to make his philanthropic efforts more effective? What a monster! How long will we allow these billionaires to spend their fortunes trying to improve education and support scientific research? It sounds like he wants to become a more useful citizen by reaching out to people in his professional and social network—and we can't have any of that!
Freedom to fear. Freedom from thought. Freedom to kill.
I guess the War on Terror really is about freedom!
By definition, Trump can either have extreme opinions or he can represent the majority view, but he can't do both. Getting elected is the art of getting lots of people from the middle of the political spectrum to agree with you.
Getting nominated of course is a different matter. To get nominated you just have to get a plurality of a subset of voters, and ones predisposed to agree with you at that. News organizations were also predisposed to like Trump. He sells a lot of newspapers, and drives a lot of pageviews. However, he seems to have mistaken "getting attention" for "getting votes", and even if everything else were going his way, what drives the media out of his corner is his decision to attack them for anything resembling negative coverage. Threatening lawsuits is probably not a good move there. Saying that as President you would push for more expansive libel laws is flat-out stupid.
Trump is socially pretty extreme. That's why people know who he is. It's possible to be socially outré as a politician (Churchill comes to mind), but pretty difficult. His politics are also pretty extreme, and that puts him at a mathematical disadvantage with the electorate. However, if there is a media conspiracy against him, [1] they don't have much work to do, given the above, and [2] he should probably have gone for a strategy of appeasement rather than aggression. There is an appropriate phrase here: "Never argue with a man who buys ink by the barrel." Given that Trump continues to ramp-up his anti-media rhetoric, are you really surprised that the media is less inclined to support him?
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
You're right. The press should be all for him, because he sells papers. Now if he would stop reacting to any hint of negative press like a stung bull, they might be able to see the financial angle. However, at the rate at which Trump's attacks on the media continue to escalate, are you really surprised he's not getting better press coverage?
Trump so far has not had to worry about what the media thinks of him, and vice versa. Now he has picked a fight with the men who buy ink by the barrel, and in point of fact, he has threatened all of them. I'm sure he would make wonderful headlines -- and he has promised to sue over every one of them. I can't imagine why he's not more popular.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
And then, just to prove the point, he got modded down. Great job /.
Is that true? Some personalities on Fox support Trump but I've seen plenty of people attacking him as well, particularly during the primaries.
Sadly, you may be on to something.
And yet I see so many people instantly calling anything Hillary says is a lie, or the other grop that calls anything Trump says is a lie. It seems the popular way to know who is a liar is to see who has a different opinion from one's own.
It's my crazy uncle Larry who claimed he paddled around the world on an inner tube, and later had his perpetual motion machine classified and hidden by the goverernment. How he says he's figured out how to use cigarettes and bath salts to create cold fusion. Should I give him the benefit of the doubt?
I'm not convinced of that. Trumps an idiot, but he's a known idiot. Congress will be openly hostile to him, he'll get nothing done.
I'd prefer gridlock to outright corruption.
That being said, has anyone considered Mcmullin? https://www.evanmcmullin.com/p...
I'm sure some don't like his God-centric ideas here, He's Mormon after all, but he's another third party option if you're looking for one and Johnson seems too spacey.
I have no idea. I assumed so since Fox leans right. I'm simply pointing out that a company officially or unofficially favoring a political candidate isn't especially new or noteworthy.
I agree, but I'm voting for a third party anyway because I can't stomach the idea of voting for Trump or Clinton and I don't want my lack of an endorsement for either of them to written off as "voter apathy". Buffoons the others may be, but some of the third party candidates really are the lesser of the evils.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
Much of the argument against civil rights was based on some core John Birch Society principles. Mainly, the government should do nothing, especially the federal government. If the states want to be governed by assholes then that's their right. Also if you can't enforce the constitution then what it says is irrelevant. Mainly though, the John Birch Society opposed it because of communists. Social good is one step away from socialism, which is nigh equivalent to communism, and not even democracy should be allowed to go there. Of course once MLK Jr said he was opposed to the war in Vietnam they treated it as proof of communist sympathies.
The other issue, not necessarily from John Birch Society, is that wrongs commited in the past don't need to be corrected today. We declare someone as "equal" then some feel that should be the end of the matter. After centuries of oppression there is no need, some feel, to take any corrective action whatsoever. Sure it's a shame about how the slaves and their descendants were treated, but it's not my fault. Besides I've got to protect my wallet and kids first!
The artificial numbers game is there for a purpose. When you knock a man down you should help him back up, rather than say "sorry about that" and leave them bruised in the mud while you walk away. The voting rights act was there for a purpose, to stop states with a clear and unambiguous history of violating rights from doing it again, and we should still have such oversight over the known bigot filled state governments today although the supreme court repealed this part recently.
We would really appreciate if you folks don't let Donald Trump anywhere near any nuclear launch codes as well.
Thanks in advance!
I am not at all convinced he is an idiot, (don't get me wrong most of the things that he says are stupid) he is at least a semi successful business man who has ripped of plenty of people. He has manipulated a significant portion of the population into supporting him, with his hate speech. You can't do that being a total moron. What I am convinced of is he only cares only about himself, it doesn't mater if you are a woman, man, Mexican, Arab, ... or a White middle class American, if it is in his best interest, he will screw you, given half the chance,
Now, why would the DNC have to cheat? They wrote the rules! And the rules say, they can nominate whoever they want. The superdelegates are there for just that reason, to overturn the primaries if the people don't pick the one they want. The primaries are only advisory. The results are not binding. This is by design. The RNC has slightly different rules for itself, but the idea's the same.
People complain about how unfair the primaries are. Yup, they're unfair. They're unfair by design. The DNC and RNC are both private organizations that can do as they please. Don't like it? Go vote for a different party, one with internal rules that you like. Try to vote for someone promising election reform so we can get rid of this whole rotten system. Not that anyone promising election reform has a snowball's chance in hell of winning. If they had any way to win in the current system, they wouldn't be trying to reform it.
Yeah, it sucks. All of it.
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
Rei is always there to Correct the Record, with false choices like these.
Well played Boris. Between you and agent Trumpsky we'll have the Americans so convinced their freedom is worthless that we can easily take over.
Are you willfully ignoring the context surrounding the Koch Brothers? Most people don't fault them for donating to candidates that support their position. That in and of itself is how politics works. It sucks that they can do so at such an extreme level compared to everyone else when it's supposed to be one vote for every person, but that's beside the point.
The problem is that the Kochs profit massively off of fossil fuels and have been funding any candidates that will deny climate change and thwart any meaningful discussion, investigation or mitigation of it. They are willing to compromise our species' long-term survival on this planet for their own short-term gain.
Freedom to fear. Freedom from thought. Freedom to kill.
I guess the War on Terror really is about freedom!
Because of your partisan mindset, you assume that because the Democrats are crooks, the Republicans must be as well, and if the evidence for that isn't leaked, it must be because of some vast right wing conspiracy that keeps such information from the public. Add paranoia to the sin of ignorance and partisanship on your part.
O my yes. The Democrats are responsible for every crime ever committed, and the Republicans are pure angels, sent to us from God himself, to set the world aright.
Here ya go, here is how the party of purity operates:
http://www.rawstory.com/news/2...
Praise the lord!
{ Duke Cunningham! Praise the lord
Tom Delay - Praise the Lord! Mark Foley Bob Ney This poor angel of purity spent 30 months in prison.
Chris Lee, (R-NY) DEnnis Hastert, the ultimate family values guy likes teenage wrestlers, Aaron Schock, THaddeus McCotter Mitch Mconnel's Campaign manager Jesse Benton when a bribery scandal erupted from Pon Paul's 1014 Campaign - Oh -oh! David Rivera - and get this one - Here is a true angel at work. He had a campaign finance scheme to prop up a democrat in teh primaries to trash Rivera's republican opponent. It's the sure sign of purity when you eat your own.
Rick Renzi - 17 counts of wire fraud, conspiracy, extortion, racketeering, money laundering and others. Mike Crapo drunk driving, Tery Reidell Cocaine - running around his brain! JOhn Ensign A family values politician who enjoyed fencing outside of the bonds of holy matrimony. Michael Grimm - Tax Fraud Ron paul campaign manager Demitri Kesari bribing a senator for endorsement.
Scott DesJarlais a staunch pro lifer made his wife have two abortions, and was unsuccessful prusuading one of his outside fucks to get one. As a married physician he enjoyed fucking with 6 wmoen outside of teh bounds of holy matrimony, 3 co workers, two patient, and a drug rep.
there are some democrats who have been corrupt, certainly not as many. but you don't really care about the truth, do ya? As long as those fucking currupt Democrats are eliminated, they will stop telling all these verifiable actions by the saintly Republicans. But you see my point, and I have no expetation that you would ever accept it, is that you don't like Democrats, and you love the Republicans, so you are willing to accept one sided "expose" against Democrats, and nothing against Republicans.
Anyhow, and just sayin' the leaks and the hacks are being done by people who hate the United States, and who would be happy to see us toppled. Support them if you wish, but that allows me to make a decision about your allegiances, comrade.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
In other words, he would destroy America in such a way that it would take decades to put right. But the ride to Hell would be FUN.
Well, that's what I've done with my liver in my 20s and it was totally worth it.
lucm, indeed.
Didn't Jobs and Sculley get excited about some beautiful doorknobs?
Someone has been playing Black Jeopardy. . . .
I'm sorry, I keep forgetting I need to spell things out with you. We're talking specifically about Wikileaks here, not whether people of some political affiliation commit crimes or are nice.
For Clinton, Podesta, and the Democratic Party, the leaked E-mails contradict their desired public image of rational government and opposition to money in politics. They show a well-oiled political machinery that uses carefully tuned propaganda campaigns, tells different stories to voters and donors, and simply confirms massive corruption and dishonesty by Hillary Clinton.
For Trump, Priebus, and the Republicans, there is likely not much to leak: Trump's political machinery is dysfunctional, his "propaganda machine" consists of making outrageous and inflammatory statements, he couldn't dissemble like Clinton if his life depended on it, and he doesn't have the decades-long string of scandals hanging over him or lies to cover them up. There are plenty of reasons to dislike and reject Trump as a candidate, but few of them can be related to Wikileaks.
Therefore, accusing Assange of political partisanship because he leaks damaging information from the Clinton campaign but not from the Trump campaign is stupid. There is little reason to believe that there is damaging, secret, internal information on the Trump campaign; the Trump campaign shouts its damaging information at anybody willing to listen quite freely; they don't need Assange to do it for them.
Exposing corruption, dishonesty, and incompetence in a major political candidate, in particular one that runs on a pretense of being an experienced and rational politician, is a benefit to the US. The identity of the people exposing this information, and their motives, don't matter as long as the information is correct, which it seems to be.
Furthermore, I see Russia's interests aligned with ours in this case: they don't want a war-mongering, incompetent kleptocrat with a history of foreign policy disasters (like Clinton) in the White House, because it is likely to lead to instability and more war. Neither do I. Your preferences may, of course, differ.
Huma, stop posting as an AC.
1. Bill's history of abusing his position of power in order to exploit women is very well known and documented. There are plenty of interviews and books written about it by many of the women he's used and abused. And Hillary has a documented history of attacking these same women, in order to silence them or destroy their credibility. Finally, we have actual rape accusations against Bill that have been swept under the rug by a Democrat loving media. Why didn't NBC ever release the full interview they did of Juanita Broaddrick?
2. Did he say he was not going to accept the results at all? Or did he say he'll keep you in suspense?
3. The only people claiming O'Keefe is a liar and that he's engaging in misleading filming and editing are those that have been made to look bad by his revelations. The fact that the people in his videos "he put out weeks before the election" have RESIGNED tells you there doesn't need to be any vetting, they know they've been caught. And the fact that YOU don't want to believe any of it, and want to dismiss all of his revelations as fraudulent tells me you're a huge partisan Democrat hack.
4. http://www.thegatewaypundit.co...
5. http://downtrend.com/71superb/...
Third part of the problem: there has been an intense mudslinging campaign against Clinton for decades now, to the point where people who don't know any better believe much of it. Heck, what this thread is about is that some high executives have come out for Clinton, and may even have slanted things her way. If she was a male Republican, that would be considered to be Tuesday. Add to that her temerity in apparently favoring someone the article writer doesn't like for a Cabinet post. Damn, from TFS, you'd think that there was something not completely normal going on.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
The DNC is a private organization that is basically an umbrella organization for its dozens of component parts. It does not have authority over whether delegates are picked by caucus or primary, because that's up to the state parties. Primaries are usually open or closed depending on state law, which is also not under the DNC's control.
What you're saying is that Democrats should give up control of who's their candidate to anyone who wants, regardless of whether they're pro-Democrat or neutral or anti-Democrat. Minnesota has open primaries, which means that, when there's a close race for the Democratic/Republican nomination, and none for the other party, the Republicans/Democrats can freely vote for the Democratic/Republican nominee they think will lose. Is this really what you want?
I don't know that Clinton will push through Obama's trade deals. She's come out against the final form of the TPP, unlike Obama.
And, of course, you're giving up on having any influence on politics. If you want the Democrats to change, you need to get involved with them. Voting Green will register dissatisfaction and do very little else.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Trump likes to present himself as an able businessman. It would be nice to know exactly how false that is.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
However, ad hominem isn't always a fallacy, particularly when facts are in question. Some sources are simply more reliable than others. I disregard what I read from seriously partisan organizations, no matter their preference, because I've found them unreliable.
Ad hominem is a fallacy when discussing arguments from more or less known facts. It looks like the known facts are that some corporate executives favor Clinton, and that a member of the John Birch society doesn't like someone she's rumored to be favoring for a Cabinet post. I'm shocked! Shocked! to find that there's politics as usual in this campaign.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
O'Keefe has been found to lie with his videos. After his claim that Planned Parenthood sold fetal parts, some states that sure look hostile to PP conducted investigations and found nothing. His video on Project Acorn was fake, and unfortunately succeeded in destroying the organization. There's no reason on Earth to trust him.
There's plenty of reasons why people would resign, and that includes being unfairly attacked and deciding it's better to resign than to defend themselves, for whatever reasons.
You can swipe arguments form anywhere. Facts are different, and O'Keefe doesn't deal in facts.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Did you even read my comment? That was exactly my point. Trump brags that they let him do it, when in fact they were just too stunned or afraid to push him away. Can't believe I got modded troll. WTF /.?!
People have been digging up dirt on Hillary for decades, even when there isn't any. Those people clearly need no protection. Wikileaks exists as an outlet for illegal activity, which has its good and bad points, but to evaluate the veracity of their releases you really do need to know who they got the stuff from.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
The evidence I've seen is that it's a Russian state-sponsored operation. What I've seen isn't all that convincing, but it would be stupid to rule it out.
Note that Obama has made a diplomatic incident out of the break-in, which suggests (but doesn't confirm) that he knows of more reasons to think it's Russia.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Note that Obama has made a diplomatic incident out of the break-in, which suggests (but doesn't confirm) that he knows of more reasons to think it's Russia.
No, it suggests he's spewing bullshit for political reasons to distract from the content of the leaks.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
That is by far the most stupid thing I have ever read.
You must not read a lot, and/or you've never done ticket duty in a tech support department.
lucm, indeed.
Voting Green will help the Green party get federal matching funds. Considering the two main party candidates this time, I can't think of a better time to help the Greens. I get nothing if I vote for Clinton, other than to tell the Democrats they can do anything they want and still get my vote. Clinton admitted in excerpts from leaked Podesta emails that she had two positions on everything, one for public consumption, and one for corporations. So what if her public stance on the TPP, TISA, and others is that she is now against them? We know what her corporate position is on them.
I am wholeheartedly voting Green this time around, and I hope lots of other Democrats do too. That is how to change the Democratic party. Starve it of votes as long as they act like criminals and corporate tools.
A brain is a terrible thing to waste... Mind? That's debatable.
In other words, you have your pre-formed doctrine, and aren't willing to look at evidence and speculate about what it means.
The leaks aren't from Russia, since then you'd have to wonder if you were Putin's dupe. They're correct and authentic, because if they weren't you wouldn't have things to hate Clinton about, such as politics as usual and the fact that some CEOs support her. You need to back off and think for a while.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
I'm not saying the leaks aren't from Russia. The leaks could be from:
1. Russian government.
2. Non-state Russian hackers.
3. Disgruntled DNC staffer/IT guy.
4. The NSA.
It could be any one or all of these. They could have been hacked by Putin for general spying/blackmailing purposes, but then also leaked by a staffer. We don't actually know.
So I'm not the one jumping to conclusions here. You're the one blindly believing the government, which has a long, long history of lying about foreign attacks in order to justify war. You have your pre-formed doctrine ("Dems r gud guys dey wuldnt lie!!!11!") and will not look at the evidence and speculate about what it means, since then you'd have to wonder if you're Obama and Hillary's dupe.
They lied to get us into Vietnam (the Gulf of Tonkin incident never happened). They lied to get us into Iraq. They're probably lying about this, too.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
I would never vote to put Clinton the Second back into the White House again...
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.*
The first Bush president was business as usual but nobody could "prove" that it was business as usual. When his fucking son became president too, it was clear that the the system was corrupt.
With the first Clinton president, it was business as usual. When his fucking wife became president too, it was clear the system was corrupt.
There are 360 million people in the United States of America and the only people who can be president come from two fucking families? Give me a fucking break. We have royalty and we have despotism and we have such blatantly obvious corruption that having two different families rule the serfs of the United States of America is not even concerning as a dead giveaway that everything is "fixed".
While the remnants of democracy echo through the empty chambers of justice, people will still continue to be wonderful little serfs. As soon as the last bits stop echoing, this thoroughly owned Police State will fall and those two families, amongst (since when did "amongst" get dropped from the English language? I can still find it in the dictionary...) several others, will be dropped feet first into wood chippers.
(At least I got it right whereas Bush 2 failed.)
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
The problem with revolting is that, what ever comes after, there is no guarantee that it will be better. More often than not it is worse.
That is why so many people are afraid of change. In their minds, better the devil you know than the devil you don't know.
There was a guy who had something to say about that where the situation does not constantly devolve into a police state: Patrick Henry says, "Give me liberty or give me death."
If the system that you are supporting does not allow personal liberty, then it does not matter what could possibly come after if you revolt. Either it is better or you keep revolting until it is. Or you die...
Problem solved. Problem stays solved. Rangers lead the way.
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
We joke around here about how they are grooming Jenna Bush and Chelsea Clinton for the next round of elections. We assumed before, and know now after the DNC hacks, that the media work with the DNC to promote candidates. We know that the DNC was working with the Clinton campaign and the media to attack Bernie Sanders. Now the same political/media machine is going after Trump. I just don't see how any Democrats would want to support that corrupt system. It's like thinking you'll stop crime in the city by voting for the Mafia.
Rewarding very, very bad behavior only begs for more of it. Voting for Clinton is telling the media, and the DNC and the Clintons that what they have been doing is just fine with the voters.
A brain is a terrible thing to waste... Mind? That's debatable.
Excuse me, but I didn't say the Russians did it. I said there is evidence that they did it, and no evidence the other way. What I've been trying to say is that the Wikileaks stuff isn't reliable, since we don't know the source, and if it comes from where the evidence points it's definitely unreliable.
It's very likely that the CIA has more information than we do, and Obama presumably can get reliable information out of them (I don't trust them). The fact that Obama is acting as if the hacks were Russian official acts is evidence that they are. It isn't conclusive, but it's the best evidence I've got. It's perfectly plausible that the Russians would try illegal means to mess with US elections. You can call that poetic justice or something, and I'd prefer it if we got our noses at least somewhat out of other people's politics, but what we have is a significant and believable possibility that these originate from Russian attackers who want to influence our election. Russians doing these sorts of things have the will and ability to fake things, at least on a small scale.
Therefore, people who just accept these as fully accurate are going well beyond what the evidence supports, and there's a good chance that they're being "useful idiots" for Putin (if I may use a Communist phrase here). I have no problem with people who at least doubt their authenticity.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
I will be sticking with the Greens until the DNC gets taken back from the billionaires.
So let me clarify: you're worried about DNC being controlled by billionaires from your own country, and to prove that point, you're going to be sticking to the Greens, who are controlled by billionaires from another country?
Ahhhh, the grand inquirer, the source of all knowledge. I bow to your superior knowledge source. I love it when the neocons and neolibs blame Russia for everything when the US is the one with its military boot on every neck around the world. Nice. Russia hacked Hillary, Russia controls Trump!, Russia controls the Greens! The Russians are coming, the Russians are coming! I loved Alan Arkin in that. In the end, the Russians are people too. What a strange concept.
A brain is a terrible thing to waste... Mind? That's debatable.
The question wasn't whether you liked the Russians in general. The question was, why do you prefer Russian oligarchs to the American ones?
Gee, I wonder which ones are screwing the country and the world over the most.
A brain is a terrible thing to waste... Mind? That's debatable.
When a private party acts to give one candidate or party a decisive edge in an election (this excludes endorsements), that is called donation in kind. If the private party does not disclose the act(s), that violates state and federal campaign finance laws. Since FB is based out of Menlo Park, CA, I imagine that Ms. Sandberg is subject to CA laws (CA Gov. Codes 85500, 84203.5, 84204, and 82036.5) in addition to the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1974. If you want to be informed, I suggest you start with the FEC Act. I am sure I have missed some due to the brambly nature of laws upon laws that never expire.