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Cybersecurity CEO Gets Fired After Threatening To Kill Trump On Facebook (mashable.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Mashable: A San Diego CEO was fired after saying on Facebook that he would get a "sniper rifle" and "kill the president-elect." Matt Harrigan, CEO of the cybersecurity firm PacketSled, posted the comments on his personal Facebook page, but they ended up on Reddit where Trump supporters found the comments and mobilized to contact law enforcement. "I'm going to kill the president. Elect," Harrigan wrote. "Bring it Secret Service." PacketSled said in a statement that it had accepted Harrigan's resignation. "The PacketSled Board of Directors accepted the resignation of President and CEO Matthew Harrigan, effective immediately," the company said. "We want to be very clear, PacketSled does not condone the comments made by Mr. Harrigan, which do not reflect the views or opinions of the company, its employees, investors or partners." In a previous statement, the company said it reported the information to the Secret Service and placed Harrigan on administrative leave. According to The Next Web, Harrigan apologized for his remarks and said the threats were meant to be a joke: "My recent Facebook comment was intended to be a joke, in the context of a larger conversation, and only privately shared as such. Anyone who knows me, knows that I do not engage in this form of rhetoric with any level of seriousness and the comment most certainly does not represent my real personal views in any regard. I apologize if anything that I said was either taken seriously, was offensive, or caused any legitimate concern."
Just not very smart of him, whatever your politics. I'm sure he realizes that now, but he seems a little mature to be learning a lesson like: do not threaten head of state with murder in a public forum.
Ridiculous! He had no business being CEO with that kind of mentality.
Mr. Harrigan, next time you should think better of what you are about to say. What you said was not funny.
You could have simply said "There's nothing we can do about the travesty of this election. Except maybe the Second Amendment People can do something, I don't know."
See, that way it's funny, isn't it? That way it's just a joke. Everybody would have LOLed.
Now that he's unemployed, he'll be eligible for free Obamacare! .
Free Obamacare? The unemployed get free health insurance? Since when?
Only in America..
Oh boy. You people really don't know much about the outside world, do you?
Drill baby drill - on Mars
As a CEO of a cybersecurity firm the first thing you should know is that no comment in facebook is private, regardless of the content. He was correctly fired just on grounds of incompetence, no matter his political stance. NB: I disagree with killing anyone, no matter what.
Choosing not to reveal my political affiliation here, my neutral statement on the state of political discourse in this country is that it has for too long deteriorated into something that is sad, deplorable, innately violent, and frankly shameful. There is no leading political voice in either party who after uttering anything no matter how high-minded wouldn't be skewered for his or her position. The hate on both sides is rabid and irrational, and big thoughts have been replaced by cheap taglines on Facebook meant only to score cheap political points rather than argue for policies and positions that will lift all of us up. The culmination of this behavior has led to a death-spiral that has fake(?) death threats serving as a proxy for joking, or maybe not joking. America has become a nation participating in the Jerry Springer show. We need another enlightenment, and I seriously doubt there's one waiting for us on the horizon or anybody left who is willing to join in it.
on one of the major news networks today. And it wasn't Fox or MSNBC. So yeah, things are getting pretty crazy. The media just keeps right on pouring gasoline on the fire so long as it sells news.
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And I remember him being executed, with full agreement by right-wing white dudes.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Actually, it's rather ironic. You see, we're often told about the Paradox of Tolerance formulated by Karl Popper, essentially that intolerance is the one thing one cannot tolerate. However, how does one decide what "intolerance" is and by what right is it suppressed? Well, just look at what Popper wrote:
From this we can see that the moral justification is based on dealing with those who "answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols." So it's ultimately justified by means of the right of self-defense and anyone using Popper to justify going on the attack has it completely backwards. It's a shield, not a sword.
Instead, it should properly be used against the intolerance and criminal behavior of those particular individual people who promote or are involved in things like large riots or attacking and nearly killing an old man in the street (as well as stealing his car) after a fender-bender when they believed he supported the other political party.
The problem is that, "I'm gonna get a sniper rifle and shoot Donald Trump" is in no way shape or form even *related* to humor.
At. All.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Ok I think Trump is a moron who will probably fuck the country over, but I support the democratic process therefore support him as the elected leader.
One thing I am already sick of is the amount of anti-Trump articles doing the rounds based purely on speculation of what he might do as POTUS.
This sort of thing is bearable during an election when everyone is trying to convince others to vote for their person, but its over, he won, let it go.
He should be given the chance to lead and be judged on his actual decisions, not what we think he might do. All this Anti-Trump hysteria is doing is proving Trump right and feeding the monster.
I agree except for the 'deteriorated' part. Honestly we are not far removed from Jacksonian politics. Burr and Hamilton hated each other so much they fought a duel before that. After Jackson we moved to race baiting, and then to muckraker journalism. We took a little timeout to fight WWII and had a little second era of good feelings post war where things were somewhat more civil for 16ish years. We next promptly returned to race baiting, from their we segwayed into fear and nationalism. Which brings us to today. Where economic fears are pretty much the order of the day and the opposition party is trying to 'trump' the fear by resorting to race baiting and identity politic.
Frankly I don't think much of anything has changed at all, other than in relatively superficial ways.
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The phrase that bothers me is that the company demanded his resignation.
Instead, he should have been "terminated for cause".
In the latter case, severance is typically not paid.
In the former case, they typically get a severance package.
This guy doesn't deserve a severance package.
Yeah, the guy who worked on her campaign once.
Not exactly a poster boy for right wing violence, what with him being a Democrat and all.
No. If Trump dies before the electoral college vote, it's up to the electoral college. If Trump dies after the electoral college vote, Vice-President Elect Pence becomes President-Elect Pence. In no case is Obama eligible for a third term; that's barred by the 22nd Amendment.
This is so true! The split this time was more vertical than horizontal i.e. not so much Left vs Right, as much as Top vs Bottom. So Hilary and Ted Cruz found themselves on the same side - establishment, Wall Street, trade deals,... while Trump and Sanders did on the other end. The only differences b/w Trump and Sanders were things like Minimum wage, BLM, Abortion, Muslims, Comprehensive Immigration Reforms vs the Wall. But even Bernie was against any more immigration - legal or illegal - as long as there is such a high unemployment rate in the country
One of the things that that I believe hinders civil discourse is the insistence by some on the left that everything Republicans do is motivated by racism, sexism, and bigotry. It honestly gets a bit hard to remain civil against the constant barrage of people leveling those types of horrible charges against you at every turn, but lashing out in turn does no good either. Granted, the right is pretty good at name-calling too (especially Trump, of course), but let's talk about what you just said.
Why do you feel that criticism of Obama is solely because of his race? Are you perhaps somewhat young? Because EVERY president is criticized by political opponents, regardless of their skin color. If anything, I think Republicans were a bit afraid of taking off the gloves, at least early on, precisely for fear of being labeled as such. Bush Jr was described as a war criminal, and Reagan was reviled by the left, who took every opportunity to mock and denigrate him. But with Obama, it's racism?
Let me ask you: does opposing the abuse of the H1B program automatically mean one is prejudiced again Indians? It's a ridiculous notion, right? But why is someone who opposes illegal immigration automatically a racist, simply because most of those illegal immigrants are Hispanic?
Sure, there are Republicans who are undoubtedly racist, homophobic, or bigoted, but I resent it when we all get painted with that very ugly brush. Most of the Republicans I know personally are very nice people, just like most of the Democrats I know are very nice people. Not bigoted. Not racist. Not sexist. But too many of them are all too willing to think the worst of their political opponents.
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Oh it definitely would have been gone. All she would have have to do is get an amendment with 2/3 approval through two houses of Congress that are Republican controlled, then get 38 states to ratify it, even though 32 of the states have Republican legislatures.
Do you notice who isn't involved in that process? The President. Your precious 2nd Amendment wasn't going anywhere.
You're either ignorant or lying about the joke involving gang rape.
This is the joke..."One awkward moment for Sarah Palin at the Yankee game during the seventh inning, her daughter was knocked up by Alex Rodriguez."
The joke was meant to be about Palin's 18 year old daughter, a spokesperson of sorts for teen abstinence and ironically a teenage mother at 18. Palin's younger 14 year old daughter had attended a Yankees game earlier that day or week and the writers mixed up which daughter it was that was there. The joke was not particularly well written but the punchline is that A-rod is so virile that he can make women pregnant just by attending the game - since the abstinence preacher surely wouldn't be having more pre-marital sex.