Slashdot Mirror
Peter Thiel Is Joining Donald Trump's Transition Team (theverge.com)
Peter Thiel's time spent campaigning for Donald Trump during the election season has paid off. According to a statement released today, Donald Trump has named Thiel to the executive committee of his presidential transition team. The Verge reports: Thiel, who donated $1.25 million to Trump's campaign late in the election cycle, mostly stood alone among colleagues in his support for Trump, who was publicly disdained in the Valley. Thiel's support came at a cost to businesses like startup accelerator Y Combinator, which soon attracted negative publicity for having Thiel as a part-time adviser. Thiel also brought criticism to Facebook, where he is a board member, although Mark Zuckerberg defended his place at the company. Thiel further angered First Amendment supporters by bankrolling the Hulk Hogan lawsuit that brought down Gawker. Thiel said before the election that he would find some way of working with the Trump administration, and although his final role is unclear, his appointment to Trump's executive committee signals the relationship will indeed continue.
he reaps the rewards.
A little conflict of interest here with his company Palantir Technologies and its half a billion dollars in defense contracts.
"Thiel further angered First Amendment supporters by bankrolling the Hulk Hogan lawsuit that brought down Gawker"
I'm pretty sure the only people who felt angered at this as a first amendment issue were the folks at Gawker.
Everyone else was pretty happy to see the Silicon Valley Version of TMZ (Thirty Mile Zone) go away, and quit outing the sexual orientation of businessmen whose only possible reason for being considered "public persons" was having been promoted as such by Gawker in the first place.
Peter Thiel and Hulk Hogan: I personally cheered for the verdict in this case, and am glad Thiel backed it.
Trump chose his vice-president to lead his transition team.
This is a guy who, as governor of Indiana, when facing a breakout of AIDS in the rural community due to drug use, chose "prayer" as his only solution.
This is a guy who signed a bill with a government mandate that families hold funerals for miscarried or aborted fetuses.
This is a guy who as governor, instructed law enforcement to investigate women who miscarried to make sure they weren't aborting their fetuses.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Good. I want the Republicans to go all in: have Roe v. Wade overturned, ban abortion, eliminate the fillibuster, repeal the ACA, lower taxes on the top earners while shifting the tax burdern to the lower and middle classes, have gay marriage overturned, everything. Make things as painful as possible for as many people as possible. Most people, it seems, only respond to pain; make them feel it.
mandate that families hold funerals for miscarried or aborted fetuses
This was so crazy that I had to look it up. Turns out "hold a funeral" is "dispose of remains properly" -- the bill required that fetal remains be either interred or incinerated. Generally speaking that would be the responsibility of the healthcare facility in custody of the remains.
Tell me straight, is "require families to hold a funeral" truly the most accurate and reasonable way you could come up with to indicate the nature of the bill, or is it a purposeful deception?
When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
Thiel further angered First Amendment supporters by bankrolling the Hulk Hogan lawsuit that brought down Gawker.
I didn't realize publishing private sextapes and ignoring orders from judges was a first amendment issue, but hacked nudes were a completely different, terrible thing to do.
http://i.imgur.com/CQ5qgvu.jpg
Homophobic? Isn't Peter Theil gay?
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
The hiring of the *homophobic bigot* Peter Thiel just goes to show how awful they are.
He's also sexist, since he won't have sex with women.
lucm, indeed.
How about the $750,000 speech Bill Clinton gave for Ericsson 9 days before telecom equipment was left off a list of items prohibited by Iran sanctions. Just a coincidence probably.
I've been hearing a lot of talk about "Give Trump a chance", and "let's judge him when he gets to office" by people who voted against him, but are practical enough to want a good leader.
However, this seems to be a pattern with Trump - using donors or people who already agree with him in key positions and advisors. His economic team consists of big donors, and discredited hacks like Stephen Moore and Larry Kudlow (this is non-partisan; even economic advisors of previous republicans presidents don't agree with Moore). He takes an climate-change skeptic (Myron Ebell) to lead the EPA transition.
Yet, I haven't heard a peep from most people who supported Trump about this. The "blue collar" crowd who supported him was about people sick of "Establishment politics", and instead wanted someone "looking out for the working class". Trump's isolationist and trade-war leaning policies, and embrace of supply-side economics have a proven record of hurting workers. Together with clear cronyism (to be fair, this was obvious before the election), I'm surprised that the "blue collar" crowd isn't even slightly upset.
Trump's supporters seem to still be in the post-game high - "Our team won!"; are they going to hold him to his (crazy) campaign promises? Are they going to expect him to loosen libel laws, build a wall, bring back sweatshop factory jobs? A co-worker remarked "Trump's victory speech was a step towards healing", instead of realizing that the stirred up crazy is still out there; he doesn't get credit for not being as crazy enough to follow through on his campaign promises.
Keystone was shut down because it was primarily a way for Canada to ship oil to China. It's of very, very limited use to the United States while presenting significant risks (oil pipelines break all the time because it's cheaper to let 'em break than to maintain them since the tax payer cleans up the spills).
Coal burning isn't a big deal because we regulated the fuck out of it. It's not profitable when they coal burners can't externalize their costs by dumping crap into the air and water. That's what shut down coal burning.
He won't gas jews, but I am worried about my daughter's access to reproductive services. She's got some fairly serious congenital health issues that might someday require an abortion of a non-viable fetus to save her life. This is a surprisingly common occurrence that Mike Pence believes his God forbid's. If you think I'm speaking hyperbole then you don't know the horror of child birth left in God's hands. Educate yourself.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
You're willfully missing the point.
Clinton is questionable as hell, and that is why she wasn't elected.
Trump promised (or technically implied so, maybe there is a literal swamp he'll be draining somewhere) to clean things up. Now, he is putting people into government that were throwing money at him. Sure, they're a transition team and all that, but so much for a clean break. Screaming Clinton this, Clinton that doesn't make Trumps hypocrisy any better.
Humans are sadly very tribal so the Trump supporters are going to be unwilling to admit he's not what they wanted him to be. One common denial tactic you'll see is a redirection where someone points out that Trump or his people do something bad, is to point out a time that the other team, Secretary Clinton in particular, did something similar. To them that justifies it in the sense "We are still in the right because the other guy would have been even worse." It is a way to deflect acknowledging criticism.
You saw the same thing with supporters of President Obama. When he was criticized for things that went against campaign promises, such as offering government transparency, supporters inevitable dredged up President Bush. Basically since President Bush had done something they would argue was worse, that would excuse what President Obama did.
Same shit, different side. Expect to see plenty of it as there is essentially no way at all that Trump can keep most of his promises. Many that see them selves as on that "team" won't want to acknowledge criticism as valid, so they'll deny it when they can, or use redirection like this when they can't.
Your daughter's "reproductive rights" will be fine
Unless you live in Texas (down to one operating abortion clinic, last I heard) or anywhere else in the country that feels as though the rights of cells outweighs the rights of a living breathing human being.
You kid yourself if you don't think this particular issue is going to come up in an administration that is 100% controlled by the Republicans. That isn't a Trump bash or a poke at the republicans. It is an observation based on facts stated by those particular people. Bible Belt Republicans were licking their chops, looking at Roe v Wade as soon as the election results started coming in.