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People Who Know How the News Is Made Resist Conspiratorial Thinking (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Conspiracy theories, like the world being flat or the Moon landings faked, have proven notoriously difficult to stomp out. Add a partisan twist to the issue, and the challenge becomes even harder. Even near the end of his second term, barely a quarter of Republicans were willing to state that President Obama was born in the U.S. If we're seeking to have an informed electorate, then this poses a bit of a problem. But a recent study suggests a very simple solution helps limit the appeal of conspiracy theories: news media literacy. This isn't knowledge of the news, per se, but knowledge of the companies and processes that help create the news. While the study doesn't identify how the two are connected, its authors suggest that an understanding of the media landscape helps foster a healthy skepticism.
[...] "Despite popular conceptions," the authors point out, "[conspiratorial thinking] is not the sole province of the proverbial nut-job." When mixed in with the sort of motivated reasoning that ideology can, well, motivate, crazed ideas can become relatively mainstream. Witness the number of polls that indicated the majority of Republicans thought Obama wasn't born in the U.S., even after he shared his birth certificate. While something that induces a healthy skepticism of information sources might be expected to help with this, it's certainly not guaranteed, as motivated reasoning has been shown to be capable of overriding education and knowledge on relevant topics.
[...] As a whole, the expected connection held up: "for both conservatives and liberals, more knowledge of the news media system related to decreased endorsement of liberal conspiracies." And, conversely, the people who did agree with conspiracy theories tended to know very little about how the news media operated.
[...] "Despite popular conceptions," the authors point out, "[conspiratorial thinking] is not the sole province of the proverbial nut-job." When mixed in with the sort of motivated reasoning that ideology can, well, motivate, crazed ideas can become relatively mainstream. Witness the number of polls that indicated the majority of Republicans thought Obama wasn't born in the U.S., even after he shared his birth certificate. While something that induces a healthy skepticism of information sources might be expected to help with this, it's certainly not guaranteed, as motivated reasoning has been shown to be capable of overriding education and knowledge on relevant topics.
[...] As a whole, the expected connection held up: "for both conservatives and liberals, more knowledge of the news media system related to decreased endorsement of liberal conspiracies." And, conversely, the people who did agree with conspiracy theories tended to know very little about how the news media operated.
People who understand that mass media is nothing more than a branch of some corporations PR department, tend to not believe the unverified B.S.spouted by mass media.
Film at 11.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
In North Korea, China, Russia, Turkey, Syria, Sweden, Iran, Germany what could go wrong?!
Even more so with socialism, globalism, immigration you didn't wanted and very large private media companies.
Citizens are wrong. Media is correct. Believe it!
The Birth Certificate was verified by the Republican Governor of Hawaii personally, something no Governor had ever done before. The inconsistencies didn't exist. And more than one site proving them was proven to have introduced them themselves, just to point them out.
There is lots of evidence he was born in HI, and no evidence he wasn't. Even if he wasn't born in HI, the law today would have granted him citizenship at birth (And yes, you can retroactively apply that to a birth before a law change). So, he was born in HI. All the evidence says he was. No evidence exists that he wasn't. And even if he wasn't, he'd still have been eligible to be president.
Learn to love Alaska
Sometimes the conspiracies are true and worse than we ever imagined.
Bill Hicks 1992 - https://youtu.be/5uyCJKEMOx8?t...
No. I'm being serious. Having a deep understanding of yourself, having an identity that goes beyond "I am for X" & "I am against Y" provides an bulwark against propaganda and conspiracies. Watch kids. They start out believing everything parents tell them. Once they take on traits that their parents don't have, you can see them begin the first phases of critical self-assessment.
All of this can be achieved in many ways. The best comes in the form of exposure. Exposure to philosophy. Exposure to culture. Exposure to other people and their lives.
You want to stop conspiracies and propaganda dead in its tracks? Get your kids out of your comfort zones and into the real world.
Exactly, He didn't even need to be born in Hawaii, born to 1 American Parent is all it takes. Obama could have been born in Kenya but it wouldn't have mattered.
What made it weird was people didn't know what a short form birth certificate was, why it took weeks to be verified, should have been an open and shut news article.
When you look at the "conspiracy nuts" you will notice a pattern. It is usually people who feel that they are "left out", that they're not in an "in" circle in whatever way that may be defined. Usually, it means that they're left out of being one of the "knowing ones", the ones that share a secret or at least something that elevates them above the others, something that gives them an "edge", if only a perceived one.
And a conspiracy theory allows them to feel that they belong to the "knowing ones" for a change. Because they now know something, something "secret", that everyone else doesn't know. And they knew it first!
Funny enough, whether that's true or even possible doesn't really matter. What matters is that they know it, and they knew it before the "smart" people did.
This is a powerful motivator. Because it lets you feel superior. You "get" it, you understand, you are one of the knowing ones, and the others, those sheeple, they don't. They are clueless, they don't understand, they don't know.
If you're usually the clueless one who neither knows nor understands, this can motivate quite a bit. And it can motivate you to cling to it, no matter what. Because letting go would require you to admit that you've, as usual, been the clueless idiot.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Did you know that the rates of ice cream consumption and murder both rise at almost the same rate? That's because people get irritable when it is too hot for their comfort.
The entire basis for this article is meaningless, "While the study doesn't identify how the two are connected, its authors suggest that an understanding of the media landscape helps foster a healthy skepticism." Correlation DOES NOT EQUAL causation. The study basically discovered nothing at all.
There is lots of evidence he was born in HI, and no evidence he wasn't.
Noting that (sigh), even as of December 2017, people still believe Obama was born in Kenya
Survey results released by YouGov Friday show that 51 percent of Republicans said they think former President Barack Obama was born in Kenya, compared to just 14 percent of Democrats. Perhaps unsurprisingly, respondents who voted for Donald Trump in the 2016 election were especially convinced of Obama's African origins: Fully 57 percent said it was "definitely true" or "probably true" that the 44th president came from Kenya.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
How to tell if someone is trustworthy:
1) When they make a statement, for example that parts of a birth certificate were clearly modified, they back it up with specifics, ideally a copy of the evidence and another, comparison copy to show the difference between modified and not-modified.
The shmucks that don't provide this proof are either a) Morons, or b) paid to lie
2) They spend more time establishing their own trustworthiness, rather than simply claiming that other sources - such at 'the media' are not trustworthy. When they not only refuse to do this, but insist on their anonymity, then they are either: a) Totally paranoid or b) paid to lie. In either case, they are not trustworthy.
3) Being a citizen is fairly easy for most people to prove. It happens all the time in courts of law. Able to run for President is not supposed to be a harder to prove, it should be easier (otherwise the Constitution would have discussed it further). Genetic tests, established records, even newspaper announcements etc. are all considered proof. People reject them only if they are a) Morons b) being paid to lie.
Given these simple fact, there is the possibility that you are being paid to lie. But I don't think so. Frankly you did such a poor job of it, I can't think of anyone so desperate as to pay you to lie. If they did, they should get their money back.
That kind of leaves only one explanation for your post. Most states offer guaranteed employment for people like you, though usually they don't pay minimum wage.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
This "journal" is a McCune operation; the ultra wealthy widow of a banker that funds all manner of establishment approved non-profits and academics. In addition to being the ultimate paymaster of no end of well connected non-profits they fund lots of (D) campaigns in the North East [1,2].
1. https://www.followthemoney.org...
2. https://www.followthemoney.org...
Enjoy your establishment kool-aid. It's telling you want you want to hear so I'm sure the fact that it's 1% "bankster " funded "research" won't be an issue as it ricochets around the liberal echo chamber.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/JournoList
They make much of (supposedly) a quarter of Republicans "willing to state" that Obama was born in the U.S. (citation needed).
However in the meantime 100% of Democrats seem to STILL think Trump has some kind of magical tie to Russia, even though it turns out Hillary paid for the report the FBI used to make that claim. Even though Trump keeps doing things Russia does not like at all.
Someone still has a long ways to go before they shed "conspiratorial thinking", but it's apparently not the people who "know how the news is MADE" (Freudian slip emphasized).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
A phenomena emerging from something being mutually beneficial to certain groups of people and followed as an unwritten rule may look like and for all intents and purposes be referred to as a "conspiracy". But there always is that someone... taking it literally... revealing the "truth" to the world... And a good metaphor becomes a vulgarity.
Sounds like in a roundabout way they're describing metacognition, or critical thinking. The latter can find the flaws in a conspiracy theory.
I think what happens is that the more you understand how the news media is made of flawed individuals who get it wrong sometimes, the less you take 'the news' as gospel handed down from upon high by the omniscient.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
It must be true, just ask any Democrat.
Have you seen a few shops, and some of the pixels look wrong?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
That's not how conspiracy theories work. Conspiracy theories exist outside the realm of facts. You cannot use facts, reason, or logic to refute them -- because if someone has performed the requisite mental gymnastics to believe in one in the first place, any additional facts that come their way will be dealt with in similar fashion. Further, the more facts/arguments that are piled on, the more entrenched they become (because after all, if there wasn't something to the conspiracy, why would people expend so much energy to refute it?)
So, you can either argue till you're blue in the face (and get no where) or simply ignore them, and they'll fade away on their own.
Once you realise that everything makes sense.
But a recent study suggests a very simple solution helps limit the appeal of conspiracy theories: news media literacy.
=
But a recent study suggests a very simple solution helps limit the appeal of free thinking: more brainwashing.
This story is the kind of brainless authoritarian feel-good piece that the chosen people of Slashdot lap up
My karma was manually wiped by site staff https://slashdot.org/~slshdtisctrldbysjws 18 mod up, 10 mod down = bad karma
Journalist.
Passionately Indifferent
Some of us know that ending in s doesn't automatically make a word plural.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
People who have actually run a business (or at least been involved in the higher-level management of one) are a lot less likely to believe that typical corporations make money hand over fist for doing next to nothing, are deliberately looking for ways to screw over their customers, and so on.
People who know how sausage is made - don't eat sausage.
Just on time to logically and scientifically refute the people noticing the "Bitcoin is for nazis" that is being pushed in every mainstream outlet.
What a coincidence. I guess they all detected at the same exact time that this is what all their readers really want to read and that they have to run this story to make money.
"Conspiracy theories" are clearly of no use here. There is clearly no coordination between power entities and if there is it's for the sole purpose to help YOU. Now let's all laugh at the "conspiracy theory" mentally ill social rejects, and reward ourselves for all thinking the same thing for absolutely no reason.
My karma was manually wiped by site staff https://slashdot.org/~slshdtisctrldbysjws 18 mod up, 10 mod down = bad karma
...the famed "Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy" in 1998?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
-Styopa
JournoList. Now without the autocorrect for journalist.
Passionately Indifferent
We all know it was faked by Donald Trump, when he arrived here on a spaceship from Uranus.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
It always entertains me that one of the candidates actually wasn't born in the US (John McCain) and no one complained about that.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Is this
" My [disgust] for modern journalism is huge. [Almost] everything they do are hit pieces or playing defense for the side with money.ï "
Another one I liked was a Cold War era Russian remarking cynically "We know how to read Pravda. Do you know how to read the New York Times?". I.e. Pravda was a pack of lies but once you knew how to dissect it you could get some useful information. The US is effectively two one party states superimposed on each other. The Democrat media says only positive things about Democrats and only negative things about Republicans. And the Republican media does the opposite. The problem is people assume that what they read in the media has something to do with truth rather than, like Pravda, being designed to push a narrative helpful to the party which owns the paper. Or the tech company which gives the paper free shit.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Sure took him a long time to spit out that forged document. If it was legit, it would have been immediately released.
Is that how you know it's forged, or is there some other way you've been able to discern this?
Huh, what difference could possibly explain the different reactions? I just can't think of anything...
Noting that (sigh), even as of December 2017, people still believe Obama was born in Kenya
You know, the really sad part is that since his mother is a known American citizen, none of that "where was he born" nonsense ever mattered in the slightest; yet, socially, we allowed the mass media to convince us that it did.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
And not just friends who think like you do. Get out of your comfort zone, away from your echo chamber. Find something in common with people who are different from you. Play racquetball at the gym with that liberal hippie neighbor. Go on camping trips with the conservative guy from work. Go rock climbing with your old roommate's gay cousin. Talk with them, get to know them, become friends with them.
Once you do that, you start to learn that we all have more in common with each other than differences. A lot of the propaganda will then become transparent - the usual MO is to dehumanize the "enemy" prior to tearing them down. But if you see, no, if you know those people are human, it's impossible to dehumanize them.
Noting that (sigh), even as of December 2017, people still believe Obama was born in Kenya
You know, the really sad part is that since his mother is a known American citizen, none of that "where was he born" nonsense ever mattered in the slightest; yet, socially, we allowed the mass media to convince us that it did.
True and I imagine the whole "he was born in Kenya" thing was/is actually code for "he's black" - which, if so, is, quite frankly, stupid - but let's not overestimate people...
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
"a very simple solution helps limit the appeal of conspiracy theories: news media literacy. "
Literacy.Period! would already help.
Journalist admits his anonymous source in the FBI was Soviet agent.
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/fake-news-russian-mole-robert-hanssen/
Diversity of information sources is the key. Count up the number of news organizations there are. You'll probably come up with a dozen or two names in TV, newspaper, and online-only. That means the roughly two dozen people in charge of those operations are gate-keepers to everything you read out of them. Pay close attention and you occasionally see them copying from each other or sharing stories. That means there's less than two dozen or so people playing gatekeeper.
Shape of the Earth? Hundreds if not thousands of independent sources, both prominent and obscure, telling you it's round and telling you how you can see with your own eyes that it's round. And guess what, when you look...it's round.
Contrast that with the outright propaganda pumped out by a like-minded clique of a few dozen news editors telling you things that you see with your own eyes are false, and now you see the problem. I'll give an example. Last summer, Atlantic, NPR, NYT, and a few more came out with a fluff piece on Antifa. All of them used nearly the exact same wording to tell us that Antifa traces its roots to partisans fighting Nazis in occupied Poland. That's *not* a diversity of sources telling you something you can see with your own eyes to be true. It's the exact same PR copy coming at you from three different directions trying to guilt you into overlooking the fact that thugs are rioting in the streets over statues by using the exact same PR copy to imply to you heavily that they're what's really happening, what you're too dumb to see, is that the Emperor is decked out in his finest riot gear and is manning the barricades against the oncoming SS death squads.
See the difference? I didn't even have to bring up the JournoList, but what the heck: there are, in fact, documented cases of MSM journalists conspiring with each other to push a political agenda. And it's not an outlandish world-spanning conspiracy. It's a couple dozen people.
When Romney said it at a debate against Obama in '12, the same leftist media practically laughed him off the stage.
The birther arguement was started by aides within the Hillary campaign in 2008.
No, not that. You're the one focused on that detail, because you're fascinated by it. You might want to talk that out with a grown up.
The rational people, though, ARE focused on the web of connections between Fusion GPS, Clinton-machine money, employees at DoJ/FBI (and their spouses), and messages involving some of those folks who are on the record as partisan Clinton supporters and who are plainly talking about what they can do to prevent Trump from becoming president. Your own obsession with fabricated hooker stories is your own thing.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
If we're seeking to have an informed electorate, then this poses a bit of a problem
Most adults are not ignorant due to a lack of ability - the amount of intelligence needed to read a birth certificate is minimal - even less than the amount needed to send a tweet.
The reason most adults are ignorant is because they want to be. They prefer it. Being uninformed makes life a lot easier. There are no weighty considerations to make - just vote for the candidate with the nicest hair, or the tallest, or the best ..... body.
And the same applies to most other choices. Grab the pizza with the brightest coloured package. Buy the shampoo with the most attractive model on the bottle. Choose the clothes that some celebrity wears, or the beer they drink, or the cigarettes they smoke. And while you're at it - why not vote for the candidate they suggest, too?
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
You're just proving his point. You failed to compete or carve out a niche in which to succeed, and so you've adopted the "businesses are evil" narrative so you can turn to some Elizabeth-Warren-type savior who will make you prosperous again by tearing down other businesses. Because, the only reason you're not prosperous is because other people are, right?
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
So you'll be representing the idiot population this evening I assume?
>If it was legit, it would have been immediately released
Obama was a troll. I think he was laughing his ass off about the whole birther thing the whole time, simply because the more the republican base focused on that, the bigger idiots they looked like when he smacked them down (which he did perfectly). It's the basic rule of "Don't interrupt your enemy when they're making a mistake".
No citation needed for that one though?
No because everyone has the countless cycle of Democrats claiming there is a Russia collusion on the news.
I have helpfully provided many links for you as you appear too be too stupid to have ever followed the news, or to use Google. You poor bastard. Can't keep helping you though so you are on your own from here.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I think the idea is that if more people were aware that the majority of "news pieces" are actually paid advertisements, they wouldn't be so apt to jump on the mainstream media bandwagon.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
You mean other than the 2 sources he already cited, one of which being CNN.com?
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
The bigger conspiracy is that of political partisanship. All of that bickering is based on the actions of people who aren't you, and aren't the person you argue with. You make politics mean something about yourself, when it doesn't, and are trapped into defending something that means nothing. Your ego tricks you into carrying water for a bunch of rich elitists that do not care one single whit about your life and/or your death. They only care for your money and your support so they can continue to ride herd on you without recourse.
You poor simple bastards. If you only knew how much power you give up when you divide yourselves and fight yourselves.
Of course, I am wrong and just a conspiracy theorist. Partisanship is as natural as sexual preference. You're born a democrat or a republican. No cultural indoctrination is necessary, no grooming is needed, no reinforcement is required. No politicians ever spent hundreds of millions of dollars on focus groups, wedge issues, decoding the American electorate's psyche, for the ultimate purpose of fracturing the natural coalitions and commonalities between our American brothers and sisters. Nope, doesn't happen. Ever.
When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
Fusion GPS, and what they provided was the basis by which the FBI went after Trump.
Er, no. In fact, exactly the reverse, Steele believed a cabal within the FBI sat on the file preventing it from reaching the top.
There were two FISA warrants on Manafort (2014 and 2015) that predated the dossier.
Getting a FISA warrant requires a woods procedura which essentially means that every claim used to justify the warrant must be independently verified so if the dossier were used to justify a FISA warrant that means the relevant facts were verified by at least one other source.
Furthermore, renewing a FISA warrant on a US person after 90 days requires proof that the warrant is actively yielding relevant intelligence.
So even if the Steele Dossier had been used to justify the investigation, the fact that FISA warrants were issued and then renewed shows that there was independent confirmation of the claims therein. That's not a a good road to go down for someone who wants to say the dossier is fake.
Every partisan individual in the US is a conspiracy nutter. They have been hoodwinked into thinking that every person of the "other party" is out to get them.
In reality, the only people out to get them are the ones running the parties.
When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
Indeed. Or rather the ones running the parties already have them and have managed to compromise any rationality they may have had completely. So these people are right about being victims, they are just completely delusional of who they are victims of.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Hey you know what's funny? That dossier was funded by Republicans first! Ha ha!
So those 4 grand jury indictments so far are just what? Imaginary? The emails? The meetings with known Russian operatives? I guess all that is just imaginary as well?
And let's not forget that Trump refuses to divest himself from his business and won't divulge his tax returns. I wonder what one would find. Maybe Mueller will shed some light after taking most of the Trump cabinet to the cleaners after digging through Deutsche Bank.
But sure, it's all just a big conspiracy.
Obama not being American was a conspiracy. Clinton running a child sex ring under a DC area pizzeria (and then, on Mars) was a conspiracy. People don't get indicted by a grand jury based on conspiracy.
~X~
It is not that some do not believe that Obama was born in the USA. Rather, for purely existential reasons, they decided that a man like Obama couldn't possibly be the president of the USA. Not without forcing them to change their perception of life on this planet in ways that they could not countenance. Therefore, Obama had to be a foreigner. Had to. No amount of evidence, argumentation or proof will convince them otherwise. Ever.
Maybe you deserve it. No, actually, you absolutely deserve it.
"His name was James Damore."
Really? Then why was I Modded' up and you were modded down?
Maybe you were paid to lie. Idiots like short things that say what they want without evidence.
Normal people like longer statements that make sense, rather than insults.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
-Squawk- Its Hillary's Fault! -Squawk-
and they'll fade away on their own
Or they elect the president of the United States of America.
Because Pizzagate. And Benghazi. And Kenya. And communism.
That gave me a chuckle, thanks.
His father was not a citizen. The constitution requires a "natural born citizen" to be president. The debate surrounds whether or not (as it plainly did, once) require both parents to be natural citizens. It was intended to reduce the prospects of foreign influence/loyalty. The framers recognized how often European leadership was influenced by family ties to foreign governments.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Hmmm. You also seem strangely obsessed with male genitalia. Does that actually impact how you think about politics? Strange.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Antifa mostly only exists in right wing scare propaganda, but nice try. Maybe if you don't like anti-fascists, you shouldn't be a fascist.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
What evidence is prestented in your link? A quote of a biographical blurb that fictitiously played up his non-American birth for sympathy? Or was the biography simply in error? I've had multiple errors about my life make it into print, and I've never authored anything.
Also note the source, Breitbart had "exclusive" possession of an old bio with errors. How many bios were written about him in his life? That one has an error isn't "evidence" of anything.
Learn to love Alaska
Sure took him a long time to spit out that forged document. If it was legit, it would have been immediately released.
The short form was released in a timely manner. After complaints, and failed lawsuits, he released the long form.
When will Trump release his tax returns? When will Trump release his long-form birth certificate? One year in office, and neither was released.
Learn to love Alaska
Examples: Look at the masses of people at Trump rallies chanting "Lock her up!" about someone who has not been convicted of any crimes*.
She committed a crime; it's illegal for her to do what she did running confidential information through her private email server.
Yes, people don't like it when high profile people commit crimes and get away with it. That's "conspiracy theory"?
True and I imagine the whole "he was born in Kenya" thing was/is actually code for "he's black" - which, if so, is, quite frankly, stupid - but let's not overestimate people...
What if it's just "code" for "he had a really strange upbringing"?
Anyway, he's not black; he's half black. And half white. It seems to be you guys who are obsessed with the black half.
Clinton running a child sex ring under a DC area pizzeria (and then, on Mars) was a conspiracy.
No, the one on Mars is absolutey true.
Toward the center?
That's just fine if you buy into the notion that things are magically pulled toward each other across space just because they're heavy. The obvious explanation for "gravity" is that our disc is accelerating through space at 9.81 m/s/s.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
A long time ago, in a galaxy not too far away, someone made a mistake and said, "Meh, no one's gonna know who this guy is anyway." So they made 2 mistakes, one of which was easily correctable.
I see my shadow changing, stretching up and over me...
What made it weird...
What made it weird was its major proponent masterfully voicing misinformation in the political arena foreshadowing things to come.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
Did you miss the 2016 election? Oh sorry that wasn't across the board coordinated lying, that was the public secretly hiding who they were going to vote for for the first time in history and/or some honest polling mistakes.
Anyone who doesn't realize the "liberal" conspiracy at this point has passed the critical point for evolutionary divergence - they've decided to become something less than human. They've trashed their instincts and have submitted to pluto/technocrat authority. They've decided to become less than alive. They want to be cogs in a machine. They are like a fire - they are not alive but they consume and produce, and when their fuel is taken away they blow away in the wind.
My karma was manually wiped by site staff https://slashdot.org/~slshdtisctrldbysjws 18 mod up, 10 mod down = bad karma
No, the issue is that you can't make up the crimes. Just look at Benghazi probes and what not. They came back with the same result. You can't have someone "be guilty" just because you want them to be guilty. That's not how it works, especially in a free country.
The law was applied accordingly. You have a problem with the current laws and how they are written.
Pro-tip: The Associated Press is a thing that exists. News organizations will often buy stories from the AP when they need filler.
Now that you know a little bit more about how the press works, maybe you too can be a little less of a conspiracy nut.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
All the best information I can get, says that the "crime" that she committed isn't really. As I understand it, the usual result for someone who made a similar error would be a lecture and maybe a weekend refresher course on the proper handling of classified materials, which is why the FBI did not recommend charges be laid. Because the harshest penalty they could realistically hope for would be a minor fine.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Whether you're talking about swinging left or swinging right it's very difficult for people to believe their news sources when they have proven over and over again to be partisan hacks. As an example, while there was looting and rioting in St Louis earlier this year to the point that the national guard was deployed for several days to keep the peace it never made the front page of cnn.com because they were too laser focused on destroying Trump by making front page news out of every single tweet that he wrote. If we want to get to a place where the news organizations are trusted by people gain, whether left or right, we have to get to a point where they objectively report facts rather than where our news organizations are subscribed to one set of political ideologies and use that to influence what comes out of their news broadcasts.
Because it's irrelevant. It does nothing to change the fact that the Clinton campaign did themsleves of what they accused Trump of doing - conspiring with foreign intelligence agents to swing an election. And the paid for it.
The positively Biblical levels of hypocrisy on the part of Democrats certainly hinges on it. The hacking narrative is dependent on the idea that Russia hacked the DNC servers - which the FBI has never been allowed to examine. And yet people continue to eat up Russiagate sundays with a spoon.
Vanilla, everyday corruption. Not "election meddling". And John Podesta, Hillary's campaign manager, was up to his eyeballs with the same deals as Manafort.
I have long believed that some people find a game in seeing how many people they can deceive. Points for every person convinced and extra points if it's especially ridiculous; e.g. the flat earth society.
Uh huh. Filler. For unimportant stuff. Like race riots in the streets. With body counts. Right down there with the fluff about getting a good deal on cars at the end of the model year.
The debate surrounds whether or not (as it plainly did, once) require both parents to be natural citizens
No, that's wasn't "the debate". The debate was whether or not he was actually born in Hawaii, whether his birth certificate was falsified, and other nonsense. Heroes like Arpaio were supposed to be hot on that case. So don't gaslight us with this shit about what "the debate" was all about. I think the folks around remember what people said when the topic was debated, and it wasn't this pseudo-intellectual hand-wavery about what legal guidelines USED to be followed for citizenship.
There wasn't a "debate" over the citizenship of his father, and there wasn't a "debate" over whether his father's lack of citizenship meant Obama wasn't a citizen. These weren't part of the narrative because they are all part of settled law.
The Earth being flat is easy to disprove.
If the Earth is round, which way is down?
Up and down are relativistic terms based on perspective and have no bearing on defining other properties.
They could have just asked anyone who's ever actually worked in the news media, as this has been patently obvious to those of us who have.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Believing that everything's a lie is no way to live, son.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
I don't know any conservatives (and I know quite a few) who think that the liberal media is engaging in a conspiracy, but this is a conflation of terms on the part of the liberal media. They know damn well what they are doing, and now thanks to talk radio and the internet, so does anyone else who is not slurping up their liberal pap. The MSM do not engage in cloak and dagger meetings or phone calls, AKA conspiracy. Anyone who says they do is a kook.
What they do is carry to varying degrees liberal bias in their soft and hard news. They also often take talking points verbatim from democratic strategists, democrat politicians etc. and report it as gospel with no investigation or factual context either about the topic or the source. OTOH, anything conservative is suspect, and even when all the facts support a conservative position, it is reported with something between vague skepticism and open hostility, often citing unnamed sources (which is often the reporter or producer and no one with any actual knowledge or expertise in the topic) to counter or cast doubt on the issue. This has been going on for decades, and we are sick of it.
I am not a big Trump fan, the guy is Joe six pack with a billion dollar check book who got elected president, but that said, he is not Hitler or the Antichrist (if you think he is, just stop reading, you are too far gone to even grasp the basics of this post). Just look at the coverage of Trump's presidency:
- Almost 2 years of investigation and zero evidence of any wrong doing or collusion by the president with Russia, but 98% of reporting on Trump is still negative.
- Never mind that ISIS in Syria is nearly wiped out,
- The economy is going gangbusters,
- Employment is up,
- Abuse of H1B visas is being cracked down on,
- illegal aliens who were stealing American jobs, benefits and driving down US wages are being deported and driven off in hoards, etc.
All great news for the average American, but if you listen to the MSM you would think that the third Reich has been reincarnated, meanwhile Trump is busy re-instating and protecting the 2nd amendment gun ownership, freedom of religion that was trampled by Barak Hussein Obama and as far as I know has yet to be bitch slapped by the supreme court for violating the constitution (BHO was bitch slapped a record number of times for exactly that, never mind he supposedly taught constitutional law).
The bottom line: is Trump perfect? not by a long shot. Has he done some good things for average Americans? Yes. Have those been fairly and consistently reported on? Absolutely not.
If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
So what you're saying is... there is a conspiracy of conspiracy theories?
Only crack the nuts that crack. You don't put the ones that don't crack in the sack.
I must have missed that proverb. Could you tell me which one it is?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
yes this is the liberal dream, to equate political dissidence with denial of the laws of physics
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See this is where you get just a little too crazy to just let be.
Who decides what is fact, why, and how?
Everyone who calls this into question (and makes you feel stupid for not being able to trace what you believe from basic facts of life that no one denies) is a conspiracy theorist?
See, you're crazy because you believe in 'facts' as the basis of your reality. In your hands the word 'fact' devolves from "objective aspect of reality" to "something some guy with a special title said is true".
You don't distinguish between the two things in your brain. You lump them all together. You don't even keep track of what you know first hand, you value things you heard from 'experts' and have no first hand knowledge of above things you've found out for yourself and can explain to yourself in detail.
The fact that you use terms like 'conspiracy theories' unqualified betrays a lot of your mind. You're a brainless authoritarian who operates on social-value-signalled symbols rather than first-hand knowledge whenever possible. You honestly believe that everything contrary can be lumped into one category. Flat earth and liberal cultural sabotage all add up to the same for you.
You are not human.
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Hey stop talking sense the liberal media drones are trying to twist reality into a game they have a chance at winning
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when so much is at stake, authority becomes untrustworthy
you are comparing low-key cases with the vetting of the President of the United States.
moron
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that still doesn't explain why he never released his original unaltered birth certificate.
My child has no "unaltered" birth certificate. Never had one. The hospital filed a report of live birth, which is sent to the government (no copy to the parents) and digitized and destroyed. A birth certificate issued that day, or 60 years later would be the same. Short form reproductions, or long form reproductions.
This is closer to HI's situation. He had a birth certificate. The "original" lost over the years, though it may have not met your standards anyway. The reproduction is the official government document.
But the "birth certificate" (which is to say, the certified true copy of an ostensible electronic database record of a birth certificate) does indeed raise more questions than it answers.
It raised no questions. The Republican Governor swears it's accurate. So what is the claim? That the Republicans committed a conspiracy to deliver an edited birth certificate to Obama to make him look bad? That the Republicans conspired to simultaneously claim it was real and that it was fake at the same time? As far as law was concerned, he is a Natural Born American. So the "birth certificate" issue never existed, except for some Nazis who needed to convince themselves that they didn't have a Negro in the White's only House.
Learn to love Alaska
Didn't seem to bother the people when a Canadian-Cuban was running, though Eddie Munster didn't win the nomination.
Learn to love Alaska
In the US, 1/32 Black is "all Black". It used to be by law, but still is by custom, to many people.
Learn to love Alaska
Russiagate exists outside the realm of facts? Whichever side you pick on the Russiagate narrative there is conspiracy involved. Since conspiracy theories can cover everything where parties are scheming against others the scope of the theories can go from outrageous to credible, but scheming is part and parcel of political reality.
It is true is that since conspirators are rarely conspiring openly the unverifiable bit in the dark gives a huge amount of freedom to fantasize things up. So I'd say that conspiracy theories are notoriously bad because they work in a conspiracy prone area.
...why don't the Moon and Earth collide? ...How about the sun, the other 7 or 8 planets, their moons...
The Moon, sun, etc are projections put there by the lizard people long before we had the capability of discussing them. All part of the round Earth conspiracy; you have no idea how far it goes. Wake up sheeple!
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
And I'm guessing that it probably never occurred to you that the person that wrote that blurb was either wrong, or intentionally wrote what they wrote to make it 'pop' more?
I mean, sure, why use Occam's Razor when a retarded conspiracy theory is so much more fun?
Who cares. It doesn't matter who is lying and why. And they all are. Politicians and big business are going to screw you over either way and there's nothing you can do about it. Be a good person in your community and hope it trickles up because despite Reagan and Trump I don't believe anything trickles down.
And that's not exactly a slam on Trump, I hate all politicians equally regardless of party affiliation. My understanding is the top 2 bribers/campaign contributors were in for almost a 100 mil each. There is no way the rest of us can compete with that level of influence.
Most people seem to think "crazy idea with no backing" when they hear "conspiracy" or "conspiracy theory." This is unfortunate, because what a conspiracy theory is (by literal definition) is a theory that some group of individuals or other actors are working together to achieve something, likely in secret.
While common "conspiracy theories" like Pizzagate may be nonsense, the idea that literal conspiracy theories (as described above) are inherently wrong/crazy/nonsense is itself wrong. On the contrary - OF COURSE wealthy and powerful people work together in secret to achieve many of their goals. And yes, some of these are nefarious goals in which these people are working to consolidate their power or wealth by taking it from someone else.
How else do we explain the numerous attempts my US intelligence agencies to influence foreign elections, or straight-up depose leaders of other countries? How do we explain what corporations do to lobby Congress? These are examples of groups of people working together (conspiring) to achieve goals - goals which the public would often find reprehensible.
Of course we should be skeptical of what we take in, and work to confirm and validate it with as much first-hand evidence as possible. But to dismiss all conspiracy theories as nonsense is the wrong way to go - it's clear that there are powerful people in this world, and some of these people work together to consolidate their power. Watergate, anyone?
Just read Manufacturing Consent by Edward S. Herman, Noam Chomsky and Edward Said.
http://twitter.com/bash_history
We don't believe you.
Found the conspiracy nut.
Which was a deliberate act. Having classified documents on an unclassified server is likely not a deliberate act. As far as I can tell, that's where the line is.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
You can provide cites that show that a lot of Democrats think Trump colluded with Russia. It's going to be real hard to come up with cites that 100% of Democrats do.
It's clear to me that Trump is a lot closer to the Russians than I like, and he has pushed pro-Russia policies more than most. Whether this amounts to collusion is something I'm waiting for the end of the Mueller investigation to decide.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
You know, people like you have argued that it's not wrong to have business dealings and meetings with Russians. I therefore find it ironic that you seem to be arguing that it was wrong to try to prevent Trump from becoming President. Certainly the FBI should have stayed out of it (in specific, Comey should not have done that fake "more emails" flap in October that may have cost Clinton the election), but you're including "Clinton-machine money" which it seems to me should naturally be partisan towards Clinton.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
What uranium ore scandal? Clinton was one of several government officials who signed off on the sale of some of a Canadian company to Russians. That means some of the profits would go to Russia. I haven't heard anything about Clinton being involved in uranium ore.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
There WAS no Republican governor of Hawaii to verify the certificate.
Linda Lingle wasn't a Governor? She wasn't in HI? She didn't certify Obama's short form (the first released, and the only one needed to satisfy all the court cases, and the one that survived all the court challenges?
Linda Lingle doesn't exist? Then who was governor of HI in 2008 when the election was, and Obama's short form was certified?
Democrat congressman Neil Abercrombie was outraged by the birtherism and while campaigning for Governor of Hawaii made it an issue in the campaign - He promised to, if elected, get the original Obama birth certificate out of Hawaii's records and display it to the public to end the birther stuff. After he was elected and became governor, Abercrombie was questioned about the matter and he had a series of excuses for why he could not produce the document, and he never did.
For one, it would be a felony for him to do so, for another, there is no "birth certificate", for anyone. Birth records these days are sent to the authority (state capitol, or whatever), digitized, then destroyed. There's nothing to "show" except a printed copy of the birth certificate, with a state seal on it. That's been provided by Obama, multiple times, certified more than any certificate in the history of the country has been certified, and is still rejected. So it's never been about the birth certificate. It's only ever been about denying the legitimacy of a Negro President.
Learn to love Alaska
Well, we've got lots of prominent Republicans who deny the laws of physics, so you have to admit there's some justification.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Quiet...they don't want us to know that.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
News flash: people who understand how things we read and buy in real life actually work are more resistant to conspiracy theories than those who think everything is mystical and non-understandable.
By the way, for all the folks who think fake news is new, The National Enquirer (of batboy and living Elvis fame) has always been more popular than the NY Times of the Washington Post. Racism, tribalism and idiocy aren't new this millinium.
Except that politics does mean something to me. The actions of politicians directly affect me and everyone I know.
There have been years when I followed the local Major League Baseball team very closely, and years when I completely ignored it (except to check on my brother's schedule, as he's one of the official scorers). It was fun to have them win the World Series, but the only life-changing thing about it was additional hearing damage. That's what following sports teams is about. The local highways don't get more or less maintenance if the local NFL team is in the Superbowl. The performance of the basketball team isn't going to start a war. The hockey team's success will have only a very minor effect on the crime rate.
I am aware of ways in which I lack power. There are several structural changes that could increase the political power of a single voter, and they're not likely to happen any time soon. It would be good to abolish the Electoral College and have some sort of ranked-choice voting for government offices. It might well work better to have each party (not just the major two) submit a slate of candidates for the House of Representatives and send them to Congress according to party votes. (It doesn't look like that would violate the Constitution.) However, I have to spend at least some time in the real world, paying attention to real world problems. And, in the real world, the US voting system will tend towards two major party and an occasional third party getting some support, so I have to deal with that.
The fact is that things would have gone considerably differently this year if the Democrats had taken the House, the Senate, and the White House. Differently in ways that affect me and the people I care about. Either I participate in the two-party system, or I leave all this up to other people.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Um that is because we have proof and overwhelming evidence including the CIA and even Russia itself. Russia boasted their intelligence service is superior to the CIA as you saw with the latest election!
The only people who don't believe watch biased entertainment sources like Fox News
http://saveie6.com/
Not really. Liberals are into facts. It's part of the philosophy. Conservatives just ideology. Facts are fiction and fiction is fact and are based on ones owns truths. Conservatism is very dangerous in it's current form as a result.
http://saveie6.com/
That's different. He has an R next to his name. Only Democrats need to be scrutinized
http://saveie6.com/
Democrats and Republicans are political parties. There is no liberal party, just as there is no conservative party.
Your other wild musings are really quite funny. I like learning new and interesting ways people can be completely wrongheaded and still express 100% confidence in themselves. Keep it up!
When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
CNN
Fox
For some reason CNN softpedals the way the report was toned down.
Nope. Gross negligence = jail time.
The American right is much, much worse about ignorance (and valuing non-ignorance) than the left. This is very old news. And yeah, there's a ton of hard data supporting it.
But leftists really need to understand that "better than the Republicans" simply isn't good enough. If the average Democrat utters unique 3 political lies per week and the Republicans utters 30... that's not enough to translate into a political advantage! Those three lies are not only more than enough material for Fox News and talk radio to have a field day to embolden their base, but they're also enough to disillusion the centrists, fence-sitters, and "politics are just too depressing" folks.
You have to try to set the bar higher. Relative honesty isn't good enough; relative sanity isn't good enough.
Example? Well, just yesterday I replied to drinkypoo who more or less was denying that Obama had ever "took the side of black people before facts came out". And he did, of course. He didn't do it remotely to the degree that Fox News says he did; he's an infinitely more insightful and reasonable person than the current POTUS, etc. etc., but that isn't good enough.
Ring wingers never want give up on nonsense like Benghazi or the birth certificate thing or WMDs or a 9/11 connection in the Iraq War. And leftists don't want to give up their own deceitful shibboleths like the shooting Treyvon Martin, or that Trump supposedly "confessed to sexual assault on tape" (and of course he didn't even come close to it. His entire cringey macho thesis was that women "let you" touch them, with no hint whatsoever that he was using some sort of coercion), or that conservative Islam is somehow much less dangerous than conservative Christianity.
Some people misinterpret this all as saying that left should be more passive... no, nothing could be further from the truth. The American left is anemic as hell, woefully centrist and compromise-ready also unwilling to fight important nuts-and-bolts battles like the electoral college and campaign finance reform. The left NEEDS to be bold and stubborn, but it can take the high road while it does so. It can't sling mud the way the Republicans do and get away with it. It can't beat the right at its own game. It just makes people shrug and give up.
Which is exactly what happened last year. The numbers don't lie. It wasn't a spike in the pro-Trump right, it was the anemic response of the anti-Trump vote that allowed the unthinkable to happen. This really shouldn't be a controversial thing to say any more, and yet somehow it is.
See. Perfect example. Changing definitions and playing word games. By this reasoning, the United States, Britain, France, and the Soviet Union were 'antifa.' What's it go to do with street thugs trashing cars and mailboxes in DC last January? Absolutely nothing. It's a lie. Every breath of it.
Oh noes! Ya got me!
Sometimes you can have fun with them. For example the stupid people that think the the plane couldn't take down the WTC. Just mention they probably had the chem trail mixture on board and who knows what that stuff burns at. Then they're in trouble. Do they believe the chem trail BS or that a plane couldn't take down the WTC BS.
Which was a deliberate act. Having classified documents on an unclassified server is likely not a deliberate act. As far as I can tell, that's where the line is.
Setting up an email server in your bathroom and then routing all your official email through it is not an accident.
In the US, 1/32 Black is "all Black". It used to be by law, but still is by custom, to many people.
To the Left, apparently.
The 1/32 rule was set by the right. The only reason the right made an issue of it with Obama was to not have to recognize a Black president.
Learn to love Alaska
If you consider environmentalism categorically leftist, maybe you should reconsider your own bias.
sudo ergo sum
The 1/32 rule was set by the right. The only reason the right made an issue of it with Obama was to not have to recognize a Black president.
Southern Democrats are "the right"?
The media never mention the impact of zero information content stories on distracting attention away from serious issues. They also never mention how on the order of 10 entities own every major news media outlet in the country. And of course, they go out of the way to deny and minimize allegations that top-level ownership controls content.
Instead they go out of their way to create inherently loaded terms like 'Conspiracy Theory' (with the unspoken 'nutjob') and then use that to label anyone who disagrees with them in any way. Whether you're a birther, truther, flat-earther, hollow-earther or simply think the media are controlled shills of profascist oligarchs, banks, and multinational corporations -- you get lumped under the same label... which then gets broadcast to the hundreds of millions of captive viewers.
The KGB did interesting experiments in the 1960s that showed that a television program put viewers into a suggestible, near hypnotic state where mental filters failed and they believed what they saw. The widely publicized failures of subliminal advertising distract and mislead away from the success of 'barely liminal' advertising.
With all this, how can one NOT believe the 'conspiracy' that the media would act in underhanded ways and then act out of self interest to cover up their actions by attacking their critics?
TL;DR: The repeal of Net Neutrality is the media and government saying they don't like you thinking anything they don't tell you to think.
Yes. In the 1800s, the Democrats were the right, and the Republicans were the left.
You should go back to the 2nd grade, before you make a bigger fool of yourself.
Learn to love Alaska
Rewrite of news release. Might be heavily edited -- possibly even fact-checked! -- or slightly paraphrased or truncated, or published verbatim. That's why news release rookies are advised to write in a "journalistic" style -- to make it as easy as possible for a journalist to publish something about your news release's topic -- and ideally, what you want them to publish.
Precognition. A news story about an event scheduled to happen later in the day. Often includes phrases like "it is expected". Nobody in particular ever seems to be doing the expecting, though occasionally they are vaguely described as "experts" or "insiders" or "the X community". (I once heard the passive voice used twice in the same sentence, one use nested inside the other.) Few or no facts in the story beyond the scheduled time and/or place of the event, yet they somehow manage to make a paragraph or two out of it.
Media event (establishment). The scheduled event occurs -- with photo ops, video news releases, text news release, prepared statements -- and is reported as though it was something. Sometimes it is. Sometimes it's just the Fed or whatever announcing that it is doing what it said it would do.
Media event (outsider). Planned protest or demonstration or disruption by new or ad hoc group. So: Ferguson residents protesting in Ferguson, yes, Al Sharpton before the cameras in Ferguson, no. (See "Media event (establishment)".)
Investigative journalism. Continues to be an endangered species, because it is labor-intensive and its natural enemies are often in a symbiotic relationship with the journalist's employer. Conception is rare, and it tends to die in the womb or be throttled after birth, or crippled before leaving the nest.
Ads as news. Someone has a new book or (more likely) movie or TV show, and coincidentally has an interesting event or talent peripherally related to that project.
Science as boogeyman/savior/party-pooper. Some research in the physical or social sciences leads to counter-intuitive or controversial conclusions, possibly tentative ones. The research suggests possible products or public policy initiatives. Even if the researchers and commenting experts aren't trying to panic or enrage or gull the general public or some dimwitted or excitable segment of it, by the time the sausage factory turns it into a story, it very possibly have that effect.
Breaking news (expected unexpected event). A specific instance of a typical unscheduled event occurs: inner-city shooting, election went "the wrong way", etc. Reporters interview official sources at or near the site of the accident/election/crime/fire/championship. May also seek out local or national experts (or "experts") for information or bloviating, so the reporter doesn't have to.
Breaking news (unexpected unexpected event). An event that has no story template: politician resumes doing incredibly stupid thing that got him in so much trouble before, person of integrity appears in unlikely place/profession. My personal favorite in this category: the election of Jesse Ventura as Governor of Minnesota. The reporters went all deer-in-the-headlights, as their mental scripts had no contingency plans for a non-duopoly candidate doing the unthinkable: winning. Those pesky voters went off-script. (Insert own cynical "professional wrestling" remark here.) (Maybe there is a template now for that politician-with-self-destructive-compulsion, due to the careers of Marion Berry and Anthony Wiener.)
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.
At that time, the email server was legal. It isn't any more. I've seen no evidence that Clinton deliberately put classified material on it.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
I see that you recognize that the CNN cite doesn't support your case. The Fox one says that an early draft had "gross negligence" which turned into "extremely careless". It describes some apparent odd happenings, but doesn't tell why the FBI had to edit the report to like the AC said.
Do you have evidence that gross negligence has been prosecuted? I found no cases of prison time without clear intent. The general practice has been to not prosecute without criminal intent (which means "intent to commit an act that is criminal" not "intent to commit a crime"). I'd be interested in a case to look up.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Knowing why someone does something is always tricky but this might offer a clue.
This offers four examples.
As I understand it, it is not normal for the FBI to make recommendations, nor for the DOJ to request them. The FBI presents the evidence and the DOJ decides. In this case Loretta Lynch handed the hot potato to James Comey, who found a way to drop it. It seems pretty clear to me that a prosecution could have been brought if the desire was there.
Without doing further research, and just going by your cite,
Deutch was not in fact prosecuted. Berger stuffed classified material into his clothes, a clear indication of intent. He was not imprisoned. Nishimura? Your cite says "The investigation did not reveal evidence that [he] intended to distribute classified information to unauthorized personnel.”, which is not the same thing as saying he had no intent to mishandle classified documents. Intent to distribute is not the same as intent to mishandle classified documents, and Clinton had neither. Saucier deliberately took photos in a classified place, and therefore had intent to mishandle.
You've provided two examples that clearly had intent to mishandle, which Clinton didn't, one that doesn't address that question, and one that wasn't in fact prosecuted. In other words, I'm still looking for an example of someone who did what Clinton did and was prosecuted.
In this case, Lynch did not want to get involved in what would have been a political decision, and delegated to the head of an at least theoretically nonpartisan organization. Obviously, Comey was anti-Clinton, because of his late October statement about emails that in fact provided nothing new.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes