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Will Trump's Presidency Bring More Surveillance To The US? (scmagazine.com)
An anonymous reader reports that Donald Trump's upcoming presidency raises a few concerns for the security industry:
"Some of his statements that industry professionals find troubling are his calls for 'closing parts of the Internet', his support for mass surveillance, and demands that Apple should have helped the FBI break the encrypted communications of the San Bernardino shooter's iPhone," writes SC Magazine. One digital rights activist even used Trump's surprise victory as an opportunity to suggest President Obama begin "declassifying and dismantling as much of the federal government's unaccountable, secretive, mass surveillance state as he can -- before Trump is the one running it... he has made it very clear exactly how he would use such powers: to target Muslims, immigrant families, marginalized communities, political dissidents, and journalists."
Edward Snowden's lawyer says "I think many Americans are waking up to the fact we have created a presidency that is too powerful," and the Verge adds that Pinboard CEO Maciej Ceglowski is now urging tech sites to stop collecting so much data. "According to Ceglowski, the only sane response to a Trump presidency was to get rid of as much stored user data as possible. 'If you work at Google or Facebook,' he wrote on Pinboard's Twitter account, 'please start a meaningful internal conversation about giving people tools to scrub their behavioral data.'"
Could a Trump presidency ultimately lead to a massive public backlash against government surveillance?
Edward Snowden's lawyer says "I think many Americans are waking up to the fact we have created a presidency that is too powerful," and the Verge adds that Pinboard CEO Maciej Ceglowski is now urging tech sites to stop collecting so much data. "According to Ceglowski, the only sane response to a Trump presidency was to get rid of as much stored user data as possible. 'If you work at Google or Facebook,' he wrote on Pinboard's Twitter account, 'please start a meaningful internal conversation about giving people tools to scrub their behavioral data.'"
Could a Trump presidency ultimately lead to a massive public backlash against government surveillance?
I would recommend it. We are beginning to see the foreign agents, Marxist agitators and seditious dissidents lose their composure and come out of the woodwork. When the purges come, more surveillance means more of these scum get rounded up for re-education.
Trump 2020!
Yes he will
But so would have Clinton.
>>...suggest President Obama begin "declassifying and dismantling as much of the federal government's unaccountable, secretive, mass surveillance state as he can -- before Trump is the one running it..
When Obama got into power, I assumed he'd be the typical liberal. Little did I know he'd get very friendly with the expansion of the police state. He's enjoyed using the presidential powers at whim. Now that he's leaving, someone else gets to pick up the parts he so willingly put into place and use them.
Should have thought of that before you put it into law eh there mr. president?
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
There already should be public backlash against government surveillance, Trump or no Trump.
Because people (including government people) aren't good at keeping secrets and make too many assumptions.
There's no question in my mind that the US government spends too much money and other resources on this stuff. If Trump is the straw that breaks the camel's back and causes enough resentment to actually change something post-Trump then so be it.
Unlikely. All they care about is cat videos.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
But only because tehObama already cranked it up to 11...
Will a Trump Presidency cause Slashdot editors to lose their minds and post story after story on how a Trump Presidency will affect (insert pet cause here)
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
It might be possible that a group at the NSA with lots of funding, a few smart people and little to no oversight leaked the Podesta emails. They have access to computers in botnets in Russia and Eastern Europe. They certainly have the hacking skills. They have the language skills. People in the intelligence community might not be big Hillary supporters.
We must support
Plus, they are one state away from having enough power to add or delete amendments to the Constitution. There is no way to stop them as they now control how votes and whose votes are counted.
I'm sure there are a ton of good people in this country, but like in this election, they will continue to do nothing.This grand experiment in democracy is over and no one is coming to the rescue.
Wake up, no one cares about surveillance. Ordinary Americans aren't bothered by it. Until you convince the people that there's a problem, nothing is going to happen to curtail the surveillance. In some ways, Trump might actually help here. That's because if he abuses it visibly enough, people will have a reason to care and demand action. Until you get ordinary Americans to care, nothing is going to change.
I'm taking the Climate Change denier position on the surveillance state.
1. There's no real proof that there is ubiquitous surveillance.
2. If if there was real proof of ubiquitous surveillance, there's no real proof that it's a bad thing.
3. Anyway, it's too late to stop ubiquitous surveillance, so there's no point in trying.
4, Ubiquitous surveillance might actually be good for us.
5. All the privacy advocates are just in it for the money.
You are welcome on my lawn.
They didn't contradict themselves; they *certainly* did. :)
Seriously though I took it as not contradictory meaning:
--
We can only speculate.
I'm willing to speculate that she almost certainly would have.
--
She's actually been in politics, observable by the public, since 1977. In those 39 years, she has manifested a belief that the elites like her are better than common plebes. No more reason they shouldn't watch us than a parent shouldn't watch a six year old; based on what her view seems to be.
Trump's public life has been all about drumming up publicity for his buildings and his brand, not about policy. I doubt he's thought much about public policy at all. He DOES have a huge ego. Such a big ego that he thinks a) he should be president and b) most of America will agree he should be president. Unfortunately all presidents have that megalomania.
First thing to do today: take that sticky note with your password on it and move it from the corner of your monitor so it covers the camera.
Clinton voted to invade Afghanistan and we wrecked that country - even more so than it was before, which is quite a feat.
She voted to invade Iraq and we wrecked that country - killing hundreds of thousands of civilians directly and indirectly.
She recommended invading Libya and we ruined that country.
Her next step would be military intervention in Syria. Because we have had such a good track record over there.
What's your definition of psychopathy?
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
Plus, they are one state away from having enough power to add or delete amendments to the Constitution. There is no way to stop them as they now control how votes and whose votes are counted.
As most of the anti-trump vote came from women, we can expect a movement to repeal the 19th Amendment and fully supported by the evangelicals quoting Biblical "Women should keep quiet." (Some recent translations add "while having their pussy grabbed.")
Christian mythology tells of Jesus on a mountain being tempted with political power. The Devil seems to he having much better luck with that line these days.
It looks like you and GP disagree, but you both bring up good points.
> The typical liberal is perfectly happy with concentrating power in the state - as long as they are running the state
Indeed. I posted here many times years ago reminding them that allowing President Clinton and then President Obama more amd more power meant that President Palin or President Trump would have more power soon. The nanny state doesn't seem so attractive when the nanny isn't someone you like.
> When Obama got into power, I assumed he'd be the typical liberal. Little did I know
Little did any of us know what any president would do. Conservatives and moderates were terribly disappointed in Bush Jr. As governor of Texas, Texas Democrats praised him for being so bipartisan, bringing people together. Informed people were surprised that damn movie actor elected in 1980 ended up being such an effective president. For those too young to remember, Reagan was a bit like electing Robert Pattison or Justin Bieber president, 36 years later every Republican claims to be the next Reagan. The friggin movie star ended up being THE great Republican president of a century.
The point is, trying to predict what a President's term will be like ahead of time is a fool's errand. We're always wrong, frequently very, very wrong. Trump even more so - he's never even thought about, much less articulated, public policy through his life. Just in the last few months he's made some comments, but as explained in his books those comments are calculated to get free press, they don't mean anything. He's been trolling CNN is all. What we've heard from him over the years is him drumming up publicity for his business, while believing that "any publicity is good publicity". What will he do on issue X? He has no idea, so certainly we don't know.
1. The email leaks from Wikileaks went through Russian hands.
2. The email leaks from the Clinton campaign were from Russian hackers.
3. There is strong evidence that a Trump owned server was in communication via email with a server in Russia at a bank close to the Putin regime.
4. The Kremlin announced that they had been (illegally) in contact with the Trump campaign before the election. Trump surrogates deny this. However given point 3 the Russian statement appears true.
5. Trump has said on multiple occasions that he admires Putin.
Given the above, what are the chances that some of Trump's people have been compromised by Russian intelligence? The Russians have obviously had a lot of opportunities. The blackmail potential alone is enormous. There are a lot of Trump cronies who are desperate to join the new administration, and some of them may suddenly find that really damaging information exists on their contacts with Russia before the election.
Consider Christie. He comes from the Spiro Agnew school of governance: corrupt to the bone. If he is in the Trump administration and he faces a credibility problem he will throw anyone he can under the bus to save himself. He already did that with his convicted aides and Bridgegate.
And what about Trump himself. If at a critical moment the Russians can credibly show they interfered in the election and helped Trump, the legitimacy of the administration could be called into questions. At that point it makes no difference if Trump was in the loop or not. He can't avoid a crisis if that were to happen.
So welcome to a world where an incompetent mentally unstable "leader of the Free World" may be at risk of blackmail from a resurgent Russian Empire. And it's been less then two weeks since the election. What other muck could ooze out between now and the inauguration?
Why is Snark Required?
Clinton is of the same party, and has made a number of statements that align her closely with President Obama.
President Obama (re)imposed the (un)PATRIOT(ic) act on the US; if that doesn't give you a guiding sense of where the party is, and very likely where Mrs. Clinton is in terms of invasive surveillance, imposition on personal liberty, and constitutional malfeasance, I don't know what would.
Not to say President-elect Trump is likely to be any better, but inasmuch as his campaign was riddled with trivially disproved falsehoods, and in just the few days since the election, we've seen (at least) these radical pivots from him and/or his team...
o Not getting rid of pre-existing conditions or the ACA as a whole;
o Not dumping the banksters (met with them already to kill Dodd–Frank consumer protections)
o Not cleaning house (already hiring the most in- of the in-movers and shakers and lobbyists, for his team)
o Not actually building a wall, that was just figurative;
o No special prosecutor for Clinton ("what a great campaign she ran!");
o Making nice with President Obama after explicitly claiming he was the worst president ever;
o The whole "no-ties with Russia" thing, oops, lots of ties, plus wikileaks admitted by the Russians now;
o Going from "ultra-vet all Muslims at the border" to "we will not allow people in from terrorist regions"
What a weird set of circumstances.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Because he doesn't consider himself bound by his prior statements, and his supporters don't hold him to them.
There are some things we know he won't do: build a border wall and make the Mexicans pay for it. There are other things we can be pretty sure he will do: lower taxes on the wealthiest people. But everything else will depend on how he feels that day.
There's a reason both liberal AND conservatives don't like him, because he's basically unprincipled. But similar conversations are going on on both sides to the effect: maybe we can exploit some of this situation to our advantage.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
> People in the intelligence community might not be big Hillary supporters.
Plenty of people aren't "big Hillary supporters". To be a BIG supporter of hers you pretty much need to either be on her payroll on just not be paying attention. However, if your mission is national security, the completely unpredictable Trump is more worrisome for sure. He's not a politician, not a public policy guy. His public life has been all about being off-the-wall to drum up publicity for his businesses and his brand. Nobody, including Trump, knows what his positions will be on the important issues of the day. We only know that whatever he does, he does it BIG. Not big actually, HUGE! The biggest ever.
The folks at the NSA etc certainly have been allowed to do things they shouldn't, that's beyond question. Also, they are people, not monsters. They are people trying to figure out who is trying to buy nuclear material and what China's next step will be as they threaten our ships with jet fighters. 99% of them are people who try to use the excessive access they've been given to protect their country, which includes their families. Trying to do that, "who knows what President Trump will do, but it'll be HUGE" has to scare the hell out of them.
Yes, a Trump presidency will increase surveillance, but not with "Muslims, immigrant families, marginalized communities, political dissidents, and journalists." Trump will add surveillance in women's bathrooms, locker rooms, changing rooms, and of course, beauty pageants.
This was modded Funny, but by all rights should have been Insightful +5.
You voted for him.
Everything that he does for the next four years is your responsibility.
If that seems unfair, welcome to why I hate modern politics and think it's all bollocks. Were the opposing candidates any different in this regard? No, they never are.
How much crap did any other president / prime minister promise and then never do? How's Guantanamo's promised removal coming along? 15 years later..
You can't hand people power without also taking the responsibility for doing so, same way I can't just hire a guy, give him all my jobs and - when he doesn't do them - go "Not my fault".
If you didn't vote for him, maybe there's some kind of reprieve there for you. But, well.. apparently it's tough.
If 51% of the population voted for men to be the ones who needed to give birth, and 49% didn't, is it democracy to then use that vote to force men to give birth instead of women, to initiate Brexit, vote in a president, or anything else? I'd argue not.
But, hey, either voted for him (suck it up) or you didn't (not your fault, and nothing you can fix now for four years). Enjoy your democracy. It sucks.
There was me thinking that actually "best person for the job" should be the criteria rather than "person that most people think is funny".
Trump will declare Putin a partner in security, and hand him access to the 5-eyes surveillance data. 5 eyes will become 5+1 eyes.
This is payback. As the CIA told you, Russia was behind the hacks, Paul Manafort was the coordinator, he's a Putin agent putting puppet leaders friendly to Putin in democracies who then undermine those democracies. He did this in Ukraine.
The majority of Americans did not vote from Trump, he does not have legitimacy. The magic swing states were the ones who refused help securing electronic voting, and Trump is well connected to hackers.
Trump is not Americas choice, he's Putin's choice. The way unelected leaders secure power is to turn the security apparatus against their own people. Trump will do that. He will coordinate with Putin to give himself a wider control than is possible through the USA alone.
We do not have direct democracy because that has been shown time and again to be a form of mob rule that we cannot afford.
Also interesting how you frame your comment as "they are" rather than "we are" because that is the actual problem with this country. So many divisions have been sown along the lines of identity politics, political parties and other artifically defined divided groups such that these groups feel compelled to amplify their rhetoric to attempt to wrest power from the others. These distortions have been promoted by three primary forces: political parties (Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians, Greens and others), the media (MSM and social), and non-state actors (e.g. Koch Brothers, George Soros).
There are three branches of the federal government as well as fifty states and a number of territories. The founding fathers laid out the structure of government brilliantly as well as the means and justification to change it. If you want to solve the problems that you are asserting, then do what the founding fathers did when this country was under British rule. Employ the four boxes of liberty - soap, ballot, jury, (and as a true last resort) ammo. Start saying "we" rather than "they" and you might actually get the other "sides" to listen to you as you should listen to them. Work to change the prevailing culture while respecting the rule of law and you change the country without passing a single new law.
For the record, all four of the major presidential candidates are fatally flawed. Clinton and Trump are populist statists through and through, while Johnson and Stein are unrealistic idealists. None of these traits is suitable for the executive, legislative or judicial branches of government. The rest have fringe ideas that will never catch on. There were no winners this year no matter who prevailed in this election, least of all the American people.
Russian hackers were behind this years Florida voter registration website hack, and believed to be behind the "unnamed" voting machine vendor that was hacked.
"Federal investigators believe Russian hackers were behind cyberattacks on a contractor for Florida's election system that may have exposed the personal data of Florida voters, according to US officials briefed on the probe. The hack of the Florida contractor comes on the heels of hacks in Illinois, in which personal data of tens of thousands of voters may have been stolen, and one in Arizona, in which investigators now believe the data of voters was likely exposed. "
http://edition.cnn.com/2016/10/12/politics/florida-election-hack/
Kiss goodbye to your bill of rights. All amendments will be striped away, except the second of course.
It seems like the part of the bill of rights americans care less about is the first amendment, even though it's the most important of all. On the other hand, they're ready to die to protect the second.
This is where the true nature of human beings comes out. Under the guise of "civilization", deep down inside, people are still just a bunch of prehistoric barbarian savages.
With all the data already collected, Let's hope than can map correclty all those liberals, fagots and comunists and send them to FEMA camps!
We need to drain the swamp!
Would've happened with Clinton or Trump. It is the one thing the two big parties agree on. You wanted bipartisanship? There it is!
Chewbacon
The Bible is like Wikipedia: written by a bunch of people and verifiable by questionable sources.
The cameras are gone, the show is over. He's now surrounded by people with urgent messages of dire need. They are concerned about trade, about national security, about oil, and about a popular revolt due to economic disparity.
He will do what he's told to do.
...omphaloskepsis often...
There have been so many predictions related to him that have been so wrong...can't anyone just wait at least until after he's sworn in?
He's just listening in on the private conversations of people who are saying it.
Bark less. Wag more.
It is bothersome to me that he seems to have unconditional support at the moment from many.
to target Muslims, immigrant families, marginalized communities, political dissidents, and journalists.
Add to that contractors, government employees and activists of various sort, in addition to criminals and you should have the scale it is likely used now. So how would Trump use the surveillance instrument differently?
Better hop over to 4chan and grab some copies of Melania's pics before they are gone.
Have gnu, will travel.
Trump will want government surveillance in every real estate board room and commissioner's planning office. He'll also want it near his major competitors, and anyone he needs to slander. Assuming his ego doesn't get so grand as to foresee a "need to have the dirt on everyone" Hoover-style, there should be a few people he won't care about spying on.
Interesting how many people can't discuss the dangers of Trump without bringing up the election and getting extremely defensive. Maybe some people secretly believe that Trump will actually be better on surveillance that Hillary? If so, say so! I'm interested in your argument!
Trump lacks public policy experience. That's a big problem.
He built a $2 billion dollar business empire, with one of his first projects being razing rail yards and building a whole new neighborhood around his new luxury hotel. He can and does plan a project, quite well.
"When Obama got into power, I assumed he'd be the typical liberal. Little did I know he'd get very friendly with the expansion of the police state."
That's like saying:
"When Tom got into banking, I assumed he'd be the typical banker. Little did I know he'd like to work with money."
or
"When Paul got into boxing, I assumed he'd be the typical boxer. Little did I know he'd really enjoy hitting people."
When have liberals (the modern, government expanding kind) ever been shy about expanding the power of the police state?
Remember all those liberals decrying using force to make Christian bakers bake gay wedding cakes?
Me neither.
You haven't been paying attention.
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
More data-scraping ? Only for Bantu bangerboiz, Nuzzi-wog ISIS, narco.MEX danger-rangers ... and the sluttish poodles and snowflakes who infest the post-modern DemoRat party. The historically (re)publican productive straight white christian yeomanry will have removed bitch femi-nazi and thought-crime Stalinist from their cultural hide. Shoot down a bunch of "wilding" Neoliths to make the lesson clear. After a period of "starving out" the parasite Bantu bitches the yeomanry can get about the rebuilding of our republic .... not democracy, but western constitutional republic ! Got that straight kommi drooler ?
And Slurm.
As most of the anti-trump vote came from women
Did it? In the bluest city of a blue state, my (very feminist) wife and every woman I know voted against Clinton (saying things like, "I'd love to see a woman as president, but not her."). Some of them even voted for Trump.
Trump may have an "R" after his name now, but he seems to be politically to the left of Hillary Clinton, and was a card-carrying Democrat until very recently. He's a NYC boy through-and-through and is certainly not a bible thumper.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
we have created a presidency that is too powerful? Really? Now we have? Trump hasnt passed any laws yet and may very well pass some awful ones, But lets be real, Bush and Obama have both shown what absolute power does.
Of course it is.
Trump doesn't have the ability to understand how things work. He will dump a ton of money on surveillance programs, because to him, more money equals greatness. Expect to see surveillance programs on fucking steriods.
Between what has come out of Snowden and Wikileaks, how could it increase? Neither party is blameless on this one so this isn't even a partisan issue.
That would be the one he bought, sold, bought back for $100 million, then sold ten years later for $1.8 billion.
Mr. Trump most certainly has his weaknesses. Unlike most presidential candidates, he has flaunted his arrogance. He also has his strengths.
He's unique amongst all the presidents of our lifetime in that he's not beholden to the people who financed his campaign. Mrs. Clinton, for example, was financed primarily by Wall Street banks. They pay her, she essentially works for them. A Trump presidency will be very interesting. Maybe bad, maybe good, probably some good and some bad - but definitely different.
Trump is an outsider, the underdog, and is over 70 years old. If he doesn't have Alzheimer's by now, he will be the most paranoid president in history. He will go to great lengths to spy on his enemies and his closest friends.
Two words: Faithless electors.
There already should be public backlash against government surveillance, Trump or no Trump.
What makes you think there isn't a public backlash?
That you don't see it on the mainstream news? After this last election, where the mainstream newsies were acting COMPLETELY as an arm of the Democratic Party, and publicly exposed by Wikileaks, do you think that you'd ANYTHING about people being opposed to surveillance if the Democrats happened to be for it?
The main way The Press gets power is to create illusions about popular opinion and use them to fool those with power they directly wield. The most powerful tool in their box is to distort the appearance of some issue by NOT reporting things that support one side (if things are already going their way), sometimes mountain-from-molehill focusing on the occasional event that supports the other (when they need to get movement).
Think about it: YOU're opposed to it (aren't you)? Most here on Slashdot are opposed to it. Both tech *illionaires and rank-and-file are opposed to it. We have a major organization (the EFF) opposed to it - seeded by some deep-pocket techie winners and sustained by voluntary donations. People on social media have flamed about it. Do you hear a single word about these things (which you KNOW have happened) in the mainstream media - except to flame Apple for resisting being forced to build a back door?
Conservatives have known about this for years.
Second Amendment supporters - conservative or not - have been aware of it for decades.
Now that you've got an issue where you're at odds with the left-wing authoritarians (and the newsies' omissions and their deliberate nature have both been exposed on the Internet), you get to be aware of it, too. B-)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Does he have to drain it directly into my living room?
The 2nd Amendment doesn't protect the others. The 1st protects the others!
We are not in the 1700s. The simple arms that citizens can amass are toys compared to what governments have available to them. Within 20 years combat drones will probably out number troops. The 2nd was really about well armed local militias instead of a centralized permanently standing army which was preferred because localized militias (armies) separate powers which is a common theme in all the founders work. Even that becomes out dated when anybody with the resources can manufacture an army.
It you look at how badly we have been doing in the middle east, the military grade guns are a problem but the bigger problems have been IEDs and insurgency tactics. The enemy is blended into the local population.... often it is locals we pissed off instead of "winning their hearts and minds" because a good insurgency leverages mistakes and arrogance of the bigger enemy (it is like a violent version of Ghandi's tactics.) Here in the USA even these tactics are more difficult because of the superior propaganda system and surveillance. Citizens freely give up privacy and would likely not fight if they had to give up their cell phones. Kids today are stupid enough to post videos of their crimes and/or their friends post it.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
I know it can be hard to define what 'left' and 'right' mean, but how can Trump be considered to the left? His environmental policy is to scrap the EPA and pull out of all international agreements on climate change, he has already said he plans to eliminate all federal funding for education, and on healthcare he wants to deregulate and transfer all management to the private sector. Doesn't look very left to me.
> Trump has also demonstrated a strange immunity. Time after time he says things that should ruin any American politician
Strange indeed. I don't know why that is. Of course you said "should ruin any American POLITICIAN." Trump isn't a politician, he's a promoter, a hype man. (And a deal maker.)
Your description of how national security people might think and feel about a candidate who represents real change is insightful. Mrs. Clinton, however, has been in politics since 1977. She's already spent TWELVE YEARS in the White House, and eight more in the Senate. 20 years in Washington and not a hint of doing anything about mass surveillance. It's outsider Trump who might change things.
This sounds like another reason to be glad Trump won. How else were we going to spur digital companies to behave a little better with our data?
The friggin movie star ended up being THE great Republican president of a century.
You accidented a word.
Believed to be, portrayed to be, claimed to be, those would be true.
Actually being? Another story. If the USSR hadn't been lead by Gorbachev, a guy who wanted to renormalize the situation, rather than engage in his own counter-buildup, nobody would have reason to think that at all. It's just be another stage in the Cold War.
Reagan let the debt skyrocket. Reagan let AIDS blossom. Tossed billions away on government waste. Setup negotiations for NAFTA, which George H. W. Bush followed through. Supported a dictator in Iraq. Corruption in Iran-Contra. Corruption in HUD. Corruption in the EPA. The Savings and Loan crisis.
Face it, he weren't no Superman.
And sadly, people have forgotten Eisenhower, Teddy Roosevelt, and even Calvin Coolidge, who I will give credit for wittiness if nothing else. Trump could go with his practice. Two words a dinner? I'l gladly bet him that.
Yes, and Trump will destroy the US as a functioning nation - sending it down the same path from dominance to absolute failure and ridicule followed by destruction that the Ottoman Empire faced after it lost wars to the newly forming Greece and Italy. The rejection of change and reliance on old technology while driving away innovators is the recipe for irrelevance and death.
Don't pretend that is Obama's fault (I do blame him for accepting it though!) Blame it on our treasonous congress who votes with a very bipartisan slant to reenact that, despite a republican majority in congress (wasn't it a D major congress when it got passed under Bush?)
The key point being: our government has by and large not been beholden to its constituents wants or needs for a very long time now. Until the populace of america is willing to do the housekeeping necessary to elect officials who WILL follow their constituents desires and poll them on their feelings about various upcoming policy decisions they will be making, it cannot be assured that an elected official is doing ANYTHING in office that benefits his constituents and not simply his campaign fund shareholders.
Trump models himself on scum like Putin. An authoritarian.
The President of the US is often called the most powerful man in the world. But that is only true in the sense that he is the Commander and Chief of the most powerful military on the planet. Other than that Constitutional power his actions can be stopped and reversed by the Legislative and Judicial branches. A President cannot ruin the country only Congress has that type of power. The US has suffered from a string of Presidents who have tried to present the US as a humble and accommodating world power who listens to other countries concerns and issues. It's time for a change. Trump's ego will never allow him to bow to other world leaders. Obama has spent two terms allowing himself and the country to be publically insulted and degraded by friend and foe. Ignoring the verbose ranting's of Iranians, Russians, NK, and a deranged Philippian who needs some meds. It's time for some boldness. The next Russian mig buzzing a US warship gets splashed. The next NK missile test will be met by a live US missile defense test. The next time the Iranians run their little boats at a US carrier group they get sunk without warning or apology. The next time the jumped up Philippian president insults the US President they immediately get dropped from any US military defense treaty and they can hand over their sovereignty to the Chinese. No big loss.
> Trump's ego will never allow him to bow to other world leaders. Obama has spent two terms allowing himself and the country to be publically insulted and degraded by friend and foe.
For good and for bad, that's very likely true. Consider for example the Gold Star mom, Khizr and Ghazala Khan. He darn sure should have apologized, right away, then allowed Clinton's scandals to be back in the press. Instead he continued attacking her for a week. Like you said, "Trump's ego will never allow him", he can't control himself. That's worrisome.
Up is down and down is up a sitting president what can go wrong.
You forget "con man". You'll realize that for yourself pretty shortly.
Anyway, the reason why such statements normally doom politicians is because normally voters have the sense not to destabilize politics on a national and global level by making the public antsy. Just merely by nominating him in the first place, these voters have done much damage... and winning the election... well, I personally think that Obama Nobel Peace prize should have been awarded to the voters, not Obama... but this year, Trump voters would be up in the running with perennial nominee N. Korea and Putin for the opposite, if it existed.
Someone had to do it.
This strategy of projecting strength will only serve to isolate the U.S. It is a dead end, a relic from last century, and anyone who knows anything about geopolitics knows no such strategy can only cause harm to everyone in today's world.
Someone had to do it.
You might be right. Can you think of any objective measurement we can look at in 4 years (or 1) to get some gauge regarding whether Trump's foreign policy is working?
Can you have more surveillance than "total surveillance"?
Obviously next four (or eight) years would bring more surveillance to US. But it is not a Trump's fault. If i Clinton would win elections, it would be the same.
It' s just technical progress gives more opportunities to powers to make surveillance more widespread, and they would use these opportunities. In the US, in the EU, in the Russia etc, etc.
To be fair, we built lots of roads and schools in Afghanistan -- but by not committing sufficient resources to wipe out the Taliban, we allowed the Taliban to
- place thousands of IEDs, making many of those roads impassable
- throw acid at schoolgirls, making many of those schools a shadow of what they could be
Libya was a huge mistake. Gaddafi's dictatorship had become much more benevolent in the later years, and if this report is accurate -- Colonel Gaddafi 'killed by bayonet stab to the anus' -- his demise was a war crime.
To change it to say person is to paint with as broad a brush as possible.
There really are some persons who oppose concentrating power in the state; i.e., they oppose statism.
They're not that hard to find.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
At donaldjtrump.com/policies/tax-plan it says
"Reduce taxes across-the-board, especially for working and middle-income Americans who will receive a massive tax reduction."
Now, you can assert that he will underhandedly strive to do something other than what his platform calls for. But you can't assert that his platform calls for "lowering taxes on the wealthiest people."
Trump will bring Nixon's kind of surveillance back, therefore "Making America great again"!
Anyway, you know you are screwed when you hope the most an US President does is in line with the Nixon's administration.
At least then you can hope for a resignation eventually, right? *sobs*
This combination doesn`t exist: ETIs that know about humanity and want to see us dead. Otherwise we wouldn't exist.
Technically you're right, we "never set foot" in Libya, which didn't mean we didn't kill a bunch of people over there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Meanwhile, our intentions over there may have been... less than noble:
http://www.foreignpolicyjourna...
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
If it lasts 4 years, the health of trade relations (like, how many countries have sanctions against us), how much war has broken out where we used to use our diplomacy to tamp such things down, how many countries consider themselves our allies, how many enemies, and how much territory has been seized from small countries by aggressor states like Russia, how much stateless terrorism has evolved using the U.S. as a bogeyman, the strength of the U.S. dollar and competitive measures against other reserve currencies, how many countries kick our embassies out... there are lots of such measures.
Someone had to do it.
Trump said during the GOP debates and in interviews that he wants to go "well beyond" waterboarding in the "war on terror" that this included American citizens if HE felt it was warranted. He also stated clearly that he wanted to expand warrantless wiretaps while Sec Clinton spoke of no torture, greater oversight and transparency in the secret court proceedings for warrants. Was he serious or just flat out lying? This is the guy some of you voted for, don't you think you should have thought of this a couple weeks ago?
The article from time says that Obama vastly increased domestic spying, and he's worried that Mr. Trump will use this to turn the US into a Fascist nation. Hello.... that is exactly what Obama did! Use the IRS, EPA, Justice and every other agency to oppress his political rivals. This dimwit doesn't even see that. It's published in Time online. Does anyone think anymore ?
You listed a lot of good things to look at. If you had to pick one or two objective measures to have an overall barometer, which would you choose?
By way of analogy, I wanted to compare presidential administrations based on the economy. There are many things you CAN consider about the health of the economy, but economic growth rate and unemployment rate were two simple, objective measures I could plot across time to get a general idea of how the economy was doing each year.
Would you say any of the items you listed could be used as a proxy to get a general measure of the overall health of foreign relations, in an objective way?
Originally it was just your long distance phone calls - any long distance phone calls, not just the ones overseas.
Now we track you inside the US and Canada and the EU and Aus/NZ and we "share" the data with the origin country so that it's a "foreign source", but we also record all of your data.
Even when you play World of Warcraft.
We love Snap by the way. We get those too. They lie to you that we don't.
How do I know this?
More to the point, how do you NOT know this.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
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