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Why Google and Amazon Are Hypocrites (om.blog)
Amazon earlier this month responded to Google's decision to remove YouTube from all Fire TV products and the Echo Show. Google says it's taking this extreme step because of Amazon's recent delisting of new Nest products (like Nest Secure and the E Thermostat) and the company's long-running refusal to sell Chromecast or support Google Cast in any capacity. Veteran journalist Om Malik writes: This smacks of so much hypocrisy that I don't even know where to start. The two public proponents of network neutrality and anything but neutral about each other's services on each other's platforms. They can complain about the cable companies from blocking their content and charging for fast lanes. The irony isn't lost on me even a wee bit. They are locked in a battle to collect as much data about us -- what we shop, what we see, what we do online and they do so under the guise of offering us services that are amazing and wonderful. They don't talk about what they won't do with our data, instead, they bicker and distract. So to think that these purveyors of hyper-capitalism will fight for interests of consumers is not only childish, it is foolish. We as end customers need to figure out who is speaking on our behalf when it comes to the rules of the Internet.
So, allegations are facts to you?
Nobody.
Next question?
#DeleteFacebook
A good parallel is Uber and Lyft. They both use the same infrastructure (roads). Should they be required to support each other's services? No. They're competitors. Similarly, Google and Amazon use the same infrastructure (the Internet). Net neutrality should allow them to compete on the shared infrastructure, just as others compete on their shared infrastructure.
being removed from the state supreme court, twice, is enough of a reason to be disqualified for every holding another public office ever again.
Franken is still in the Senate. So hypocrites abound in both parties. News at 11
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Who the hell said that? Google and Amazon are acting in their own interest. On net neutrality, their interests align with ours. I'm not sure I'd call it hypocrisy, because the point is the same in both cases: corporations are going to serve their own interests, including when that has a detrimental effect on healthy competition. If you are trusting anyone to do anything else, you are a fool.
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Now near as I figure, Amazon did the latter... and Google responded by doing the former.
This kind of arms race is just going to fragment the 'net, and the consumers like you and me are going to the losers.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
(I would not vote for Moore, but...) Even if the allegations are true, he's not a pedo; there has been no indication that he has any attraction to pre-pubescent children.
YouTube on some Amazon gadget or Amazon selling some Google toy is two kids petty bickering I can easily ignore.
Net neutrality is something that WILL affect me, no matter how hard I try to ignore it being eliminated.
This smells of a rather desperate attempt to shill, after all sensible arguments have been gone for a long, long time, so what's left is whataboutism and deflection.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Macy's does not tell Gimble's.
McDonald's doesn't sell the Whopper.
Coke and Pepsi have separate vending machines and coolers.
People expect that. Internet service is different. Now I know certain dishonest individuals are too partisan to accept the rest of us having the ability to discern the difference, but we can. A provider of services that depends on the public right of way is different when they are one of many common users versus the sole provider. And to be honest, there are limits the other companies can violate. That is why we have anti-trust law. Except for baseball.
ISPs are meant to deliver the internet. All of it.
Retailers sell goods from a selection of suppliers.
Now that people are 'children' until they reach 26 and have to buy their own insurance, even glancing at college students counts as pedophilia.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
His complaint is valid and very much a concern but it is irrelevant to the companies position on net neutrality. This is an example of the behavior you should expect from the big providers one NN has been killed and it argues against killing NN but google's & amazon's opinion on NN is not germane to the subject
Consumers are EASILY distracted by marketing.
Of course it's NOT to the end users' benefit that you can't watch Youtube on your Echo and you can't listen to Amazon Music on your Google home.
BUT with a general purpose computer you can still listen to both.
The big telecoms want to TAKE AWAY rules protecting your freedom to use a general purpose computer to access whatever content you want at the same cost to download or upload each bit of data from your ISP no matter which service you decide to use; that way they can subsidize their own services and those of big companies that partner with them, for example: You like Netflix? Binge on Free data, as much as you want! You like Twitch? Not a partner, you're gonna have to pay per Gigabyte for that data.
So, allegations are facts to you?
Well, faith is fact to those folks, so ... yeah, pretty much.
Spoken like someone who always cheats if he can.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
If the device can access the Internet, it can play youtube. Apparently, the Fire is some kind of walled-garden already, so negotiations about what are in or out actually make sense. If Amazon wants youtube in their walled garden, they appease Google. Otherwise, they tear down the walls. They can get youtube either way.
Amazon's store front doesn't sell everything in the world. There are many products not listed for many reasons. There is no store-provision neutrality law nor even debate on the topic. Every online storefront in the world decides what it will and will not carry, including Amazon. If people really want Google products, they are free to buy them from Google's storefront, at the same price they would have been on Amazon anyway (and with less risk of accidentally getting a knock-off).
Google is a competitor to the big ISPs via Google Fiber. Google wants neutrality on their networks for its streaming services, but you know it's not going to scratch their backs if they want full and undiscriminated access to their networks.
I don't have to buy Amazon products to use their services. Shopping and viewing shows from any modern computing device is still possible. I don't have to buy into Amazon gadgets to use their service.
The same cannot be said if, for example, my ISP decided that access to YouTube is not part of my internet channel package, and I have to pay $30/mo more for the privilege.
People had a really hard life back then. 40 years, if you made it that far, was REALLY old.
Wait what?
Well, the ones saying the same things I'm saying of course.
Is because the current incarnation supports them and not any newcomers. Bundling, zero-rating services, higher speeds on networks exclusive to Google/Amazon/Netflix and selective data caps all while maintaining the âoecommon carrierâ status helps them a bunch. Losing Obamaâ(TM)s Net ââ(TM)Neutralityâ would level the playing field again to where they all have to play to the same rules or lose common carrier.
Huh? Can you please expand on that, because it seems like self-contradictory nonsense to me.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Supposedly Matthew 18:6 Matthew 18:6 6"If anyone causes one of these little ones-those who believe in me-to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.
>People had a really hard life back then. 40 years, if you made it that far, was REALLY old.
I was going to school you on life expectancy after early mortality was removed... but a bit of research shows 40 WAS damn old until a few hundred years into the common era, though late 50s had been not terribly uncommon for a maybe a thousand years by then - if you lived in the right place, of course.
more importantly, there has been no allegations in more recent times. Every allegation is 30yrs old. If we are going to remove everyone from any elected or government position based on any sort of thing they did 30 years ago, under the scrutiny of 2017 views (bear in mind that in alabama, asking parents for their underage kids hand in marriage was not _that_ uncommon; Jerry Lee Lewis married his 13yr old Cousin only a about decade earlier) then we better start throwing every single one of them out and look for robots to replace them. Because nobody, and I do mean nobody, is going to be able to live an entire life without coming to a moment of change in ones life. I am not condoning anything he did, but it's also important to understand we cannot try people today for things they did before there was a stigma against it. Any one of us are already guilty of doing something perfectly acceptable when we were in high school that is now, or in the future, will be socially unacceptable. In 15yrs even practical jokes are going to be considered 'bullying' and subject to zero tolerance. Too bad you stuck that tack in your friends chair when you were 17, its totally going to ruin your chances of being elected to Congress when you are 50, because you show a pattern of behavior of being a bully and dehumanizing others. Forget that everybody used to love you for things they called 'antics' and often encouraged the behavior and cheered at these jokes.
Date Rape: that was something that didnt exist as a term until the mid 90s. Until then it was something of a he-said / she-said encounter often written off to after-sex regret (which in some cases still is just post-regret). There was a complete shit-ton of it going on in the 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s. Going somewhere to park and make-out was usually a guarantee of leading to sex; which is why they always told girls to never put themselves in a compromising situation. There was no "no means no" back then. Intervention and education are the only way to change someones way of thinking.
Statutory Rape: IE the age at which a child is considered mentally mature enough to actually consent to sex, and anything below that age is considered rape no matter how many times that person says yes or initiates. However, they made provisions for things, even to this day, for parental consent. "Parental consent is needed in Alabama and Utah at age 14" according to their current legislation.
So is a 30yr old dating a 14yo, possibly in search of a wife, creepy? You bet. But so is a 60yr old dating a 20yr old. And nobody calls that out, even to this day. Its taken well over a 100years to overcome racism after the abolition of slavery. One cannot expect to go back in time and hold people accountable for sexism during the 70s only a decade after the birth of feminism.
IMO IF the ONLY allegations they can find, true or otherwise, are from 30 years ago then I think it has no bearing on the issue at hand and his ability to represent the state of Alabama. If the allegations are true, then at some time, more than 20yrs ago, he quit acting this way and changed his way of thinking and acting. The Washington Post even ran an article where THEY went to Australia, to a small religious town where Moore lived for a time, in search of any sort of political dirt they could dig up, as they love to do to any non-freepass-democrat. The Washington Post admitted flat out that they have never been able to find any other place or time that someone would say that he was anything but the nicest person.
no, just creepy, that is, if you are old enough to potentially be their parent; which happens around age 36.
Fine. If we do that hard enough, the only people that can run for office will be penniless eunuchs, and they might base policies on facts.
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Some of the accusations against Franken are dubious. They're of behavior far short of stalking malls for underage girls, which is what got Moore banned from some malls. Franken acknowledged and apologized. Franken called for an investigation into his activities.
There are indeed hypocrites in both parties, but Franken doesn't show that.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
So, he apparently committed certain heinous acts, and what really bothers you is that the description some people use of him is technically inaccurate?
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
>People had a really hard life back then. 40 years, if you made it that far, was REALLY old.
I was going to school you on life expectancy after early mortality was removed... but a bit of research shows 40 WAS damn old until a few hundred years into the common era, though late 50s had been not terribly uncommon for a maybe a thousand years by then - if you lived in the right place, of course.
Maybe you should look a bit harder...
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...
Specifically this table...
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...
The change in life expectancy of mature men has not changed as dramatically over 3000 years as might be expected, although this data must of necessity refer to privileged members of society.
The observation being, it probably matters less where you lived than if you lived a hard life...
On the other hand, this observation doesn't appear to apply to women.
Life expectancy of women at the age of 15 years has however changed dramatically over the last 600 years and by a decade and a half since the mid-Victorian period.
One wonders what socio-economic forces might explain this
There's no comparison between two internet based corporate giants throwing hissy-fits at each other and net neutrality. This is a moronic comparison. Yes, there are similarities, but to derive that either company endorsing Net Neutrality is a farce due to this scuffle is just stupid. Net neutrality is an issue because private companies hold the reins to the internet (when they shouldn't) and our pro-corporate America government wants to take away the existing blinders that prevent these companies from prancing into our living room and shitting on the carpet. The comparison here is apples to orangutans.
You have to be smarter than the machine you're working with.
Um, no. You're completely wrong. With Net Neutrality, any site that wants to compete with Google and/or Amazon can reach everybody. Without Net Neutrality, Google and Amazon can work out a relationship where search engines and online stores pay some for access to the ISPs' customers, and freeze out potential competition before it starts.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
On the other hand, this observation doesn't appear to apply to women.
Life expectancy of women at the age of 15 years has however changed dramatically over the last 600 years and by a decade and a half since the mid-Victorian period.
One wonders what socio-economic forces might explain this
Childbirth has become much less hazardous.
This is an EXCELLENT example of a strawman or false equivalency argument. Please add the tag "strawman".
If Amazon won't sell competing products in their store, then why do they sell iPads? Those compete against the Amazon Fire tablets, right? Amazon is full of hypocrisy.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
Franken is still in the Senate. So hypocrites abound in both parties. News at 11
Franken has announced his resignation, a majority of Democratic Senators have called for his resignation, the news on this was last week.
Roy Moore has received the personal endorsement of the Republican President(who campaigned for him just this weekend), their PACs(writing checks to pay for advertising to his benefit), and the rest are barely able to tepidly criticize him as they pray they won't have to accept him into the Senate due to some vague impropriety in the election or something(Shelby has already raised this issue in conference). Which is why there's already a plan by Republican Elections Supervisors to throw a wrench into the counting system just so they can come up with an excuse for a new election that doesn't force them to take a moral stand(after all, any kind of moral stand would necessarily subject them to personal and individual scrutiny, while an election being faulty is easy to cadge as an isolated mistake).
Watch it happen, the Alabama Senate election will be declared invalid, and they'll re-run it.
...the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Just because Google and Amazon are the highest profile defenders of Net Neutrality doesn't make them Mother Theresa - It just so happens that their interest aligns with yours (for the moment; see: Netflix).
I understand that you are in America, but even so, Feminism was a big thing in the 1920's - Ie about 100 years ago. Here in the UK, the tradition _was_ that if someone got an under-age girl pregnant, the girl would go to a mother and baby home, and the boy/man would be "disappeared" - either leave town never to return, or be found face down in the river. It was still happening in the 1960's. This kind of died out with the pill.
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Get a Roku. For now. Before Roku tries too hard at becoming a media company in its own right. They have Youtube AND Amazon. Just nothing Apple, because they are exclusively vendor lock-in across the board.
If there's a 1% chance someone is a sexual predator, you should find another candidate.
1. They couldn't "find another candidate". Even at the time of the 1st allegation, it was too late to remove Moore from the ballot.
2. There is WAY more than a 1% chance that the accusations are true. About 10% of accusations of sexual assault that are investigated are found to be false. That doesn't mean that other 90% are all true, but it does indicate that accusations are more likely true than not. The accusers have no known motivation to lie, have no history of political activism, and most of them talked about the events with friends and relatives at the time the incidents occurred. I think the accuser count is now up to 8, and if we assume that there is a 50% chance that each allegation is false, that is (1 - 1/(2^8)) = 99.6% chance that at least one accuser is telling the truth.
3. Most of the accusers are not claiming that anything illegal happened. The age of consent in Alabama is 16, and most of the women are not claiming that he had sex with them, only that he "pursued" them.
4. Moore is obvious a creep, and I hope he loses. But if he wins, then he is the choice of the people of Alabama, and no politician or group of politicians should subvert the will of the voters. Democrats should be delighted if he wins, since Roy Moore will be the new face of the GOP. Maybe the Democrats will finally have a winning issue.
The analogy is stupid, badly thought out, and has no place to be compared to Net Neutrality.
Doesn't matter if the companies are fighting, you can get a Roku stick, an Apple TV, Hulu, stick to a tabletop HTPC or whatever if you don't like what Google and Amazon are offering.
This is about ISPs treating data equally without distinguishing it, not about what corporations choose to offer in their own proprietary devices.
How can people still be this stupid on this issue after how long we have been discussing this. Stop sharing moronic arguments, please.
Life expectancy of women at the age of 15 years has however changed dramatically over the last 600 years and by a decade and a half since the mid-Victorian period.
One wonders what socio-economic forces might explain this
Death in childbirth, or from infections following childbirth, were very common. The big change occurred from 1840 to 1870, when midwives and doctors began washing their hands.
On what basis? That might be true in hunter/gatherer societies, but is not generally the case in farming societies. I would expect there to be firm evidence about Roman views on the issue, and the area was, as we know, under Roman rule at the time. I was taught (by a Christian school) that "Virgin" in Latin of that era should be read as "teenager" in modern terminology.
I have no idea whether Mary was thirteen or nineteen at the time of her conception, or anywhere in between, and I seriously doubt anyone else does, or there would have been a song and dance about it for two thousand years.
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They are providing a really valuable, real life example of why net neutrality is important: because otherwise we will get shit like this Google-Amazon cat fight where the only ones that really lose are the customers.
Real life is overrated.
Moore was a known creep before the election started. If the GOP's internal research was worth anything, they should have shitcanned him before he even filled out the paperwork. My point is that if we stop with the celebrity culture of politics, avoiding these problems is easy. If there is a more than 1% chance that someone is guilty of any major crime or morally questionable action, find someone else, because the pool of eligible candidates is in the millions.
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Establishing the right to vote was a big thing in the 20s. But Feminism and Women's rights are similar but not entire the same movement. Women didnt do the whole 'burn their bra' thing until the 60s. Thats really when I see the biggest transition of Feminism in society. Women in the workforce happened during WWII, but they were expected to become housewives once the men returned. Women didn't really start going back to work en masse until later. Sure there were nurses and secretaries etc, but that was reserved for 'old maids' and those below middle class income. Anything outside of this resulted in a stigma. The concept of a 2-income family really didn't gain traction until the 70s. If both your parents worked, it was because you were not even wealthy enough to be middle class. There was even a 1980s movie called 'Mr Mom' starring Michael Keaton that addressed the stigma of the wife being the breadwinner of the family. But for the most part, in the 70s and 80s sexism was still rampant and mostly accepted. Stewardess' being sex fodder for pilots was pervasive all the way through the 80s on most major airlines and thats just one example of thousands.
Over here men who knocked up underage girls weren't 'dissapeared' as much as married (hence the term shotgun wedding); Assuming, of course, he wasn't already married.
Bezos is an apex predator, who has never even pretended to not be an ignore-what-I-say planet-destroying hypocrite where his business interests were concerned. To some degree, Google really has to fight fire with fire here. I remain a long ways away from tarring Google and Amazon with the same brush.
Check out The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon (2013). Captures the general tone of the organization brilliantly.
Amazon just removed encryption from its tablet devices — March 2016
Their customers didn't agree, and in this instance, Amazon was forced to eat crow and restore the feature.
Amazon's customer service backdoor — January 2016
Amazon divulged his personal information to J. Random Blackhat twice more, despite this interaction.
Amazon Advertising Executive Fired for Refusing To Lie — November 2014
A classic Bezos manoeuvre. We know how that ended.
Prince Longshank's "high counsellor" shown the exit
Back when Amazon still mailed out DVDs, Bezos probably had that scene on repeat piped through the entire building.
My files on Google's malfeasance are hardly empty, but by comparison, they tend to lack that special Braveheart touch.
they should have shitcanned him before he even filled out the paperwork.
Who is "they"?
If there is a more than 1% chance that someone is guilty of any major crime or morally questionable action, find someone else, because the pool of eligible candidates is in the millions.
The number of adults with a 99% chance of having never done anything morally questionable is precisely zero.
Supposedly Matthew 18:6 Matthew 18:6 6"If anyone causes one of these little ones-those who believe in me-to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.
That doesn't sound like a blanket ban. Pedophilia should still be okay as long as the victim isn't a believer.
Sorry if my euphemisms were a bit too vague. I'm talking about a relatively low number of major actions (corruption, ephebophilia/pedophilia, sexual harassment) that aren't covered by laws, but could similarly tarnish a campaign. The number is still going to be quite small, but we don't need very many candidates.
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Hypocrites or not, this is a good example of what will happen when the telecom companies, which have a de-facto monopoly in a specific area due to infrastructure costs, have the ability to charge differently and throttle the traffic going through the 50Mbps pipe I paid for based upon where that traffic originated.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
"They" is the GOP.
You seem to have a weird mental model of how elections work. The GOP consists of 52 million people. How are they going to decide who does or doesn't get to file an election form in an Alabama courthouse?
There is no "they". Anyone can run for office if they meet the age and a few other legal requirements. No one other than the voters can stop them.
If there was a "they", then Jeb Bush would be president.
Supposedly Matthew 18:6 Matthew 18:6 6"If anyone causes one of these little ones-those who believe in me-to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.
That doesn't sound like a blanket ban. Pedophilia should still be okay as long as the victim isn't a believer.
and yet the text doesn't say that. The text doesn't refer to whether or not the victim "believes". It also isn't limited to pedophelia - murder, pedophelia, abuse, etc would all fall into the context of what was said, and the term used is a generic for all children.
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
The poster is trying to conflate the Amazon Google battle with net neutrality in an attempt to cast them as hypocrites. I wonder did AT&T/Verizon lobby arm create this post?
This has nothing at all to do with net neutrality. What this is about is Amazon's starting a war with Google by blocking the sale of Google's products in favor of their own products and as a result Google has responded in kind after two years of doing nothing. I remember two years ago when Amazon pulled Google Chromcast from their store and blocked 3rd party vendors from selling it when they came out with their own fire stick. They have that right of course. Google did nothing for two years. Now amazon is blocking the sale of more Google products and it seems Google has had enough and decided to take drastic measures. This is an attempt to create a false equivalency between the two in which there is none. Amazon is clearly the bad actor here.
The text doesn't refer to whether or not the victim "believes".
Uhh ... yes it does: "those who believe in me".
If the qualification was not important, then why did J.C. include it?
I'm not saying that you prevent them from filing an election form, I'm saying that you make it clear that power behind the party is not going to be on Moore's side, and that you will immediately rip him to shreds if you don't withdraw.
The reason Moore wasn't impeded wasn't because he couldn't have been impeded, it's because nobody with the power to saw a reason to stop him. And no, it's not a hard, explicit, conspiracy, it's mostly not even an intentional conspiracy, but there is definitely a system, and is has a way to check a potential candidate if they misbehave.
For example, Dem donor Stephen Cloobeck explicitly said on TV that he'd pull his funding if the Dems raised his taxes. If major GOP donors pulled similar moves regarding Moore, he'd be toast in a second, which would be the smart move for the party.
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I wonder what you've been up to...
...not really... sounds like rapin'.
Cheap storage VM.
Personally I would much rather have mega corporations fighting each other than duopolies colluding.
Amazon may have as well, but YouTube has definitely passed its "Best Used By" date. Now they're all about bringing in that ad revenue, including extending the middle finger to longtime contributors simply because the advertisers would prefer to go in another direction. The sooner they fade into irrelevance (I don't think they'll die any time soon), the sooner we'll have to come up with an alternative or three.
YouTube should die in a Fire(TV).
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
1. They couldn't "find another candidate". Even at the time of the 1st allegation, it was too late to remove Moore from the ballot.
Exactly. The first allegation was trotted out to the world the very day after the deadline to remove Moore from the ballot.
Convenient timing, hmmm?
If, after the election, it is discovered that all these allegations are completely false (yeah, unlikely, some of them seem to have some basis) would there be a do-over on the election? Ha! Of course not; there is no provision in law for that.
I'm saying that you make it clear that power behind the party is not going to be on Moore's side
THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENED. The establishment overwhelmingly backed Luther Strange, and was vehemently opposed to Moore.
Most political analysts believe that the establishment opposition actually helped Moore's candidacy. The GOP establishment is not very popular in American, and even less so in Alabama. Every time Mitch McConnell says Moore should drop out, his poll numbers go up.
Here is one other guy that won despite strong opposition by the GOP establishment: Donald Trump.
There is one picture, and if you bother to actually look at it, it's using the camera angle to fake groping - kind of like those photographs of a tourist 'holding up the leaning tower of Pisa'. Tasteless, perhaps, but not 'evidence of assault'. And you might want to account for the context of the joke - i.e. whether it was consistent with the general cut-up nature of that USO backstage scene.
No, the Democrats got played on this one - and yeah, they're way to easily played this way. That Breitbart chick that tried to dupe the Washington Post almost got away with it too.
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
That I can't help but know that it's a bad thing.
Actually, he was removed from the Alabama Supreme Court once, not twice. The second time he chose to leave to run for the U.S. Senate.
As far as the first time he was removed, he was right in what he was saying. It's just that the country had evolved SO far from what the framers of the Constitution meant, that no one, even the U.S. Supreme Court, was likely to agree with him.
When it comes to losing your job because of accusations, none of the men, including Al Franken, should have quit until the accusations were proven. Do you really want to live in a country where you have to quit your job based on accusations alone? You'd live every day in fear of somebody you may have slighted accusing you of something that might never be proven. Your life would be ruined and nothing you do would ever make up for it.
For some reason, being disgraced is not enough of a reason to convince voters. Some of them like the crazy uncle style of politician. In Alabama they're single-issue voters; tell them how the candidate stands on the abortion issue and that's all they need to know.
Even the hypocrite Newt Gingrich, who turned out to be a much bigger sleazebag than Clinton, was making a comeback on the Trump coat tails. All the voters want is someone on their team who can shout and rail against the other team. No one gives a shit about what's good for the country, they just want their chosen team to win.
... or it wasn't prohibited due to consanguinity.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
So yes, the Republican leadership did insist that he withdraw from the race. But the closer the election came, and the closer the tax screwup bill vote seemed to be, the more they decided they should back Moore anyway.
Ironic, since it was not very long ago that everyone bitched that Bill Clinton didn't have the right "character", and that he was a "waffler". So here we see the Republicans waffling over a candidate of low character. They're ready to toss their dignity away for the sake of a tie breaking vote in the Senate.
"When I was in college I knew someone who intended to go into politics. He was 19 and systematically avoided anything that might prove “a problem” to his future career. What he avoided was everything that a normal 19-year-old might do. I couldn’t articulate then what I can now: I do not want to be led by someone who has led a life free of trial, error, remorse and forgiveness. I do not want to be led by anyone who hasn’t moved to the edge of the abyss because I want my leader to know what the abyss looks like and how to back away slowly. I do not want what we think of as a flawless leader, because being flawless is itself a vice. I want to be led by someone who has grappled long and hard with life. I will not list the venal sins humans are prone to, but I want the person who walks into a room with Vladimir Putin to know the demons that can drive a person. I want someone who has learned prudence, not someone whose soul was always so timid or ambitious that he never had to learn. It is a dangerous world and I want a president who knows how to be dangerous if he has to be – and knows when not to be."
https://geopoliticalfutures.co...
It seems to me that there's a difference between:
"I'm not going to support my competitor's products"
and
"I don't want a random third party fucking up my business."
If Google was complaining about net neutrality while simultaneously blocking their services from Comcast customers (as a competitor to its Fiber brand) then they would be hypocritical. Fighting with your competitor in an unrelated market is not. At least not by any definition I've ever heard.
Of course words don't mean anything anymore in our current political environment, so who cares how they're used as long as it sounds scary. Covfefe!
Yes, my point is, that was what common carrier status was all about, about a decade ago at least. Then "Net Neutrality" came about which actually was a redefinition of what we understood back then to be Net Neutrality and suddenly all these providers are now bundling their data, apps and Netflix/Google is more than happy to pay for priority access to the network without any repercussions.
Google/Netflix/Amazon don't REALLY want Net Neutrality, they want government protected lines for themselves but not for the newcomers. That's why they want to "protect Net Neutrality", because going back to the old days means carriers wouldn't be able to interfere with the data packets.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
So the generally accepted reading of that passage applies it to all children. Probably in part b/c most churches do not differentiate between those children that believe and those that do not; most do not know how to determine it reliably especially at younger ages. The greek word would apply to any child all the way up to about the age of 12.
Matthew (https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=matthew+18%3A6-9&version=NIV) and Mark (https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark+9%3A42-50&version=NIV) both provide the same reading; Luke (https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke+18%3A15-17&version=NIV) refers to it with less detail.
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
Didn't the Alabama House start debating a new law that would throw out special elections and instead allow the (Republican) Governor to appoint someone to fill the seat until the next general election?
But you're right, I wouldn't put it past them to declare the election invalid on some pretext, pass the aforementioned law, and the have the Governor appoint his designated crony.
And even more so if Jones wins...
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
McDonald's doesn't sell the Whopper.
If you go into a McD and ask for a "whopper", they'll happily sell you their equivalent. I've done it. They laughed, asked for money, then magically a hamburger remarkably similar to a Whopper appeared on a tray in front of me.
BTW, "special sauce" is just thousand island dressing.
So, he apparently committed certain heinous acts,
He didn't "apparently" commit, he "allegedly" committed. And yes, if the term being used has huge negative connotations compared to the truth, using the "technically accurate" term is the right thing to do. At least, it is the honest thing to do.
"Dubious"? Which is of the victims are you accusing of lying and on what evidence? The stories are very consistent. Allegations came from people he worked with, met on the campaign trail, staffers at his Democratic office.
Upon the opening allegation by Leeann Tweeden, Al Franken acknowledged the hard evidence (a creepy photo) and called her a dirty lying *****. Well, he's not Trump, so he phrased it much better and said, "I don't remember it the same way," but the comment is still "What she's saying isn't true." Personally, I consider it quite unlikely that someone who decides they are going to make up a story about being assaulted a decade ago also just so happens to have photographic evidence of exactly that type of behavior by the accused, so I was very inclined to believe Tweeden even before other accusers came forward.
If you are wondering why Franken called for an investigation against himself, I believe the last time congress censured one of its own was over a decade ago and the last time the expelled someone was over a century-and-a-half ago. Meanwhile, the public outcry has time to defuse. It's especially a good move if you're expecting the investigation to come anyway. Ask yourself, when did Franken say he expected the investigation to clear himself of all charges? He didn't. And if he's not innocent, why does someone else need to tell him that? He's just hoping to punt the question and commute the consequences to a reprobation. Nothing particularly noble about that. Conyers thought this was quite the clever trick and did exactly the same thing when he was found out next.
In the subsequent allegation, Franken also used the "I don't remember" line.
And again on the next one. (On this one he also said "I've met tens of thousands of people and taken thousands of photographs, often in crowded and chaotic situations. I'm a warm person; I hug people. I've learned from recent stories that in some of those encounters, I crossed a line for some women — and I know that any number is too many." Yes, "I can't remember all the people I've met and groped, but just in case the takeaway is I'm a warm bubbly hugger. Oh and sorry I guess.")
As the allegations continued and he became clearly to his party he was jeopardizing a safe seat while blunting their use of Moore and Trump, Franken eventually got forced out. In his resignation he complained that other predators got to stay while he had to leave. Obviously very contrite.
I suppose in the age of Trump people have forgotten that most politicians are downright artful in their weaseling. Sexual predators too for that matter -- being able to deflect, reframe, and appear contrite are all key tools for a serial offender trying to keep their pattern under the radar. Franken's statements were calculated and skillful. But he never actually displayed any integrity in owning up to what he was guilty of, so let's not fall for his maneuvering there.
As for "What about Moore" someone could easily construct a defense for him along the same line as yours for Franken. They could doubt the accusers (who Moore says are lying). They could say "It happened 30 years ago" (Can Franken?) They could say it was nothing against the law at the time (Can Franken?). But the fact is that both men are predators, neither deserve office, and their unethical behavior does not need to be interpreted in the framework of each other. You might as well tell the judge, "Hey, what about O.J. Simpson and that murder?" when she sentences you for not paying your taxes.
When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
Amazon and Google are acting like spoiled children, and behaving in a poor, customer-unfriendly way. However, this has absolutely nothing to do with Net Neutrality. If Amazon doesn't want to sell Google stuff in their store, you can go to Walmart, Best Buy, or literally a thousand other places to get it. If Google doesn't want to support Youtube on FireTV, you can use Roku, Google devices, or literally every single Smart TV on earth. You have a ton of options. This is an annoyance to customers, but that's it.
With Internet access, most people have one, maybe two viable broadband offerings. If your provider screws with you or abuses you, you have no recourse. They are often no alternatives. There is no market competition. Additionally, you may not even know that they're screwing with you (throttling).
Comparing Google and Amazon's behavior to Net Neutrality just muddies a discussion that already confuses enough people. Don't go grandstanding and getting indignant just to get clicks by trying to tie this into an important topic. It just pisses us off.
Also, neither Google nor Amazon have been big supporters of Net Neutrality in a long time. Both are big enough that they don't need Net Neutrality to protect them like the smaller players do.
Topher
This is a myth. When you factor out the high infant mortality rate, average life expectancy in the Roman world was somewhere around the late 50s. So a little under half of everyone who made it to (say) age 10 could be expected to live into their 60s.
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Spoken like an idiot who doesn't take advantage of existing opportunities when presented with them. You probably don't even take advantage of all tax deductions legally available to you (if you pay taxes at all you millennial putz).
Millenial???? HAHAHAHAHAHA
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
I roommated with a woman and her daughter once. The mother was 31 and the daughter 16. But this was in Michigan.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
Not long before that (less than a century, closer to half a century) only rich could vote which was roughly 3% of population.
What "working" meant has also changed a lot, going from "place where you are likely to die from an accident that is also likely detrimental to your health" to nice office jobs.
WW2 has accelerated the process (commies in USSR were pushing women to work starting 1920).
Attributing "women can work now" to emancipation movements is rather naive..
They are competitors, so why is any of this surprising and indeed, why is it on /, ?
Franken has already announced his intention to resign, and the governor has named his successor. He's just waiting until he can resign without dire consequences. Resigning just before the vote on the heinous Republican tax proposal would be a very bad idea, as the Republican leadership of the Senate would delay seating his replacement until after the vote and thus make it easier to pass the bill.
He allegedly had sex with young teenagers, which is rape. (He has been banned from at least one mall for being seen stalking teenage women.) This is bad. This is colloquially called pedophilia, although that is not its technical meaning in psychology. Calling him an apparently child rapist would be more accurate, I suppose, but I don't see that changes the negative connotations.
Also, I'm not going to call him a child rapist without proof, but I can look at the evidence myself and decide whether to use "apparently" or not. It seems to me that he's probably guilty.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
"I don't remember it the same way" is not "you're a dirty lying weasel". People do indeed remember things differently. It's very likely that Franken had dealings with people that he doesn't remember. I can't remember everyone I've talked to or even touched over the past ten-year period. Franken's statements are perfectly consistent with being basically a good man who did a few bad things. You, on the other hand, have convicted him, and therefore have incentive to make up reasons why he isn't.
Meanwhile, I do know that you're misstating the photographic evidence, which you may if you wish interpret as me saying you're a malicious liar, since you don't seem to like to accept words at face value.
Who has accused Franken of raping teenagers? We agree, I suppose, in considering that forced kisses and stalking underage girls for sex are both wrong. I, however, don't see that they're equally wrong, so your false equivalency with Moore falls apart.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
He allegedly had sex with young teenagers, which is rape.
Well, at least you recognize these are just allegations. Amazingly timed, poorly supported allegations. And from several decades ago, during a time in Alabama's history where 14 was considered eligible for marriage.
This is colloquially called pedophilia,
This is colloquially called "allegations".
Also, I'm not going to call him a child rapist without proof,
No, not when you expect the allegation to be sufficient to achieve the goal, you don't have to. It did work, too.
but I can look at the evidence myself
Would that include the fabricated school yearbook?
It seems to me that he's probably guilty.
He's a witch! Burn him! He turned you into a newt!
So, a president with impulse control?
Well, good luck next time...
Log in or piss off.
I normally vote Democrat, but the party doesn't do that great a job of representing me. (It's far better than the Republicans at that.) I'm the sort of guy who looks at Bernie Sanders' program and considers it a very good start.
That doesn't mean that everything I type should be disregarded as the rantings of a left-wing loon, since I try to evaluate things on their merits.
In this case, I was (perhaps foolishly) replying to someone who looked at everything in the absolute worst light for Franken, and I pointed that out. From that point of view, absolutely nothing Franken could have said or done would have changed physicsphairy's opinion, meaning it was unfalsifiable and irrational.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
What's wrong with you?
I have a perfect right to look at evidence, according to my own interpretations, and decide whether someone is probably guilty as accused or not. I have to act on tons of things without adequate information. The yearbook in question was not forged. The woman in question (I don't remember her name) had put in a few details after Moore's signature, to note when he signed it. I find it disturbing that Moore lied like that when denying an accusation.
What I do know is that Moore is known to stalk teenage women, and has been banned from a mall for that. That seems like an excellent reason not to vote for the man.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Firstly, the allegations against Franken don't compare. Shadow puppets != child molestation. Furthermore, Franken and the democrats of the senate have openly invited an ethics hearing. Moore and his supports simply refuse to acknowledge any possibility of wrong doing. Meanwhile, our glorious POTUS and his supports simply say, "we can't afford a democrat in that seat." ie, it's okay if he's a pedophile as long as he votes republican.
This level of (twisted) logic is why most democrats think most republicans are either stupid or blissfully ignorant.
You have to be smarter than the machine you're working with.