Slashdot Mirror
Bill Gates Shares His Memories of Donald Trump (cnn.com)
MSNBC recently published a video of Bill Gates telling his staff at the Gates Foundation that he had two meetings with Donald Trump since the president was elected. In the video, Gates says Trump doesn't know the difference between two sexually transmitted diseases -- human papillomavirus (HPV) and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) -- and that it was "scary" how much Trump knew about Gates' daughter's appearance. Gates also said he urged Trump to support innovation and technology during those meetings. CNN reports: Taking audience questions about his interactions with Trump at a Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation meeting, the former Microsoft honcho said he first met Trump in December 2016. He told the audience that Trump had previously come across his daughter, Jennifer, at a horse show in Florida. "And then about 20 minutes later he flew in on a helicopter to the same place," Gates said, according to video of the event broadcast by MSNBC late Thursday. "So clearly he had been driven away but he wanted to make a grand entrance in a helicopter. "Anyway, so when I first talked to him, it was actually kind of scary how much he knew about my daughter's appearance. Melinda (Gates' wife) didn't like that too well."
Gates also said he discussed science with Trump on two separate occasions, where he says the President questioned him on the difference between HIV and HPV. "In both of those two meetings, he asked me if vaccines weren't a bad thing because he was considering a commission to look into ill-effects of vaccines and somebody -- I think it was Robert Kennedy Jr. -- was advising him that vaccines were causing bad things. And I said no, that's a dead end, that would be a bad thing, don't do that. "Both times he wanted to know if there was a difference between HIV and HPV so I was able to explain that those are rarely confused with each other," Gates said.
Gates also said he discussed science with Trump on two separate occasions, where he says the President questioned him on the difference between HIV and HPV. "In both of those two meetings, he asked me if vaccines weren't a bad thing because he was considering a commission to look into ill-effects of vaccines and somebody -- I think it was Robert Kennedy Jr. -- was advising him that vaccines were causing bad things. And I said no, that's a dead end, that would be a bad thing, don't do that. "Both times he wanted to know if there was a difference between HIV and HPV so I was able to explain that those are rarely confused with each other," Gates said.
Did Trump try to grab Jennifer Gate's pussy?
"You know, I’m automatically attracted to beautiful — I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything." - President Donald J. Trump
Don's bestest buddy in the entire world was McCarthy's attack dog, Ray Cohn, who died of AIDs. As soon as Don found out that Cohn was sick, he dropped him like a live rattlesnake and coincidentally developed a massive case of germophobia. Its probably why he thinks avoiding STDs was his own personal Vietnam.
Don definitely knows the difference between HIV and HPV, he was just trying to wind up Gates because he knows Gates takes public health seriously. Its a relatively common sociopath move - figure out what some cares about and then take plausibly deniable digs at it in order to get them twisted. Source: have a couple of clinically diagnosed sociopaths in the extended family.
Bill Gates should run for president. He's highly intelligent, genuinely cares about people and has so much money that he can't be corrupted. I would absolutely vote for him.
Next you'll be telling us Trump doesn't know the difference between Kerberos and Kubernetes.
Simpsons Comic book guy scoffs at Trump!
Maybe he confused H1B with HIV and HPV as well.
Sorry, just because something makes Trump look stupid doesn't mean it's biased against him. That he lacks basic knowledge on a wide range of issues is simply a fact, and a very big problem considering his job. Surprised you didn't go with "fake news"... is it because Trump himself admitted that what he calls 'fake news' is simply anything that portrays him in a negative light?
to show how much is able to trash hum self every day !
Ceci n'est pas une Signature !
I have to wonder if Trump was actually unaware of which groups of people have what opinion about vaccines (regardless of his knowledge about the actual science), which makes me wonder if his repeated questions weren't intended to deliberately make Gates uncomfortable. The word "innovation" coming from MS similarly makes me feel uncomfortable. Perhaps Gates can have someone innovate a way to help his daughter fool digital photography. Maybe strong IR emitters in the cloths coupled with IR reflecting particles in makeup or CNC face painting that subtly gives the impression of bone structure that isn't there.
Oh FFS, get a clue. MicroSoft is one of the largest contributors to open source software and even Bill Gates sings its praises now.
All he needs to do is to not bush the 'button'
Fast-forward a couple of years.... You had one job. ONE FUCKING JOB!
Bill Gates has kind of a cult of personality among working class Americans who see him as somebody who came up from nothing to become the richest man on earth. For some reason He's not lumped into the "elites" category like Jobs or Bezos. Not sure why, since he grew up wealthy and used his mom's connections to get an in with IBM and his dad's advice to take advantage of it, but go figure.
Anyway, him saying Trump is a bit of a buffoon is going to resonate with Trump voters. It'll be a significant hit to Trump's reputation with his base.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
We are currently ruled by some of the worst people of our nation.
Why? Because of joy.
"What? Joy?" You may ask. Yes - joy, the emotion of joy - that little element of discovering something that pleases you.
Americans discovered that amongst the boring moments of their lives, and amidst the confusing cycles of our politics, the thing that brought them the most joy, was the crude, often cruel mockery of difference.
It's not quite comedy, in the professional sense - even the most crude professional comedians would find this kind of humor career destroying. See Kathy Griffin to see what happens when one wonders into that territory.
But the conservative movement doesn't really have comedians - instead, they have a unique brand of cruelty that takes the place of open comedy.
It's not always about laughing - it's about joy, the joy of knowing how you are treating your enemy, the joy of cruelty, of punishing difference. At all levels, from online sharing, to the highest offices.
This isn't new - there were large amounts of this spread across newspapers in the era of 'yellow journalism' - it's actually kind of shocking to read some of the stuff around the civil war. And we're kind of returning to that state of political cruelty - cruelty ahead of everything else.
And that's what Trump represents more than anything else - cruelty in place of political strategy, cruelty in the guise of comedy, cruelty as the dominant force in a major political party. And cruelty called common sense and wisdom in our popular culture.
Ryan Fenton
Sorry, just because something makes Trump look stupid doesn't mean it's biased against him. That he lacks basic knowledge on a wide range of issues is simply a fact, and a very big problem considering his job
To me, the biggest condemnation of Trump is not that he's ill-informed - Lots of people are ill-informed on lots of things - It's that he has little interest in actually becoming informed. Obama read for hours each night - Briefing papers, books - You name it. Trump reads nothing.
Trying to figure out what aspect of this story actually merits coverage on Slashdot.
It's the ignorance, stupid!
Kind of hard to tell in Trump's case since he is also quite stupid and has been sheltered and protected from the normal consequences of his stupidity. His father was only the first person to pump in money to cover the losses from Trump's bad decisions.
However I think it is much more significant that Trump doesn't care about what he doesn't know. I insist that Trump regards Bill Gates as admirable, for the money, if nothing else, but Trump still doesn't care enough to listen to him. Any moderately educated person should know the difference between HIV and HPV, but Trump doesn't know and doesn't care. Actually, given Trump's sexual peccadilloes (or perhaps you prefer to describe it as "raging libido"), it would even be normal self-protection to know a LOT about sexually transmitted diseases, but "Trump don't know and Trump don't care."
Not sure of the exact numbers, but there are a lot of proudly ignorant fools in America, and many of them voted for Trump precisely because they felt that Trump's disdainful attitude towards knowing things made him a true representative of their views, the kind of "leader" they wanted to follow. Scare quotes on "leader" because if you're ignorant you can't actually lead since you have no idea where you're going. Normal peasants like you and I would merely fail hard when we stumble blindly into holes, but Trump has always gotten more money to pull him out and hide his failures.
There's another option: Learning from mistakes. I actually think there is a tiny bit of evidence that Trump has learned two things along the way. That's why he doesn't gamble with his own money now. His bankruptcies didn't teach him how to be a better businessman, but they did teach him to take his own cut up front and to make sure the contracts allow him to walk away when projects fail.
Trump has never learned that truth matters.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
âoe That he lacks basic knowledge on a wide range of issues is simply a fact, and a very big problem considering his job. âoe
I have some bad news for you. The vast majority of our elected Presidents are all on equal footing with regards to intelligence and knowledge about the â wide range of issues â you speak of.
The only difference is some of them knew to keep their mouth shut until their â advisors â told them what to say. Trump didâ(TM)t get that memo apparently.
Why the hell do you think pre-selected / screened questions are even a thing ?
Sorry, just because something makes Trump look stupid doesn't mean it's biased against him. That he lacks basic knowledge on a wide range of issues is simply a fact, and a very big problem considering his job. Surprised you didn't go with "fake news"... is it because Trump himself admitted that what he calls 'fake news' is simply anything that portrays him in a negative light?
Scott Adams has an interesting insight on the two views of Donald Trump: one view has him as stupid and incompetent, and the other one has him as brilliant and capable.
His point being: each of these is a model of reality, so which is the better predictor?
Look at the predictions made about Trump using the "stupid incompetent" model:
Trump will never win the presidency
The economy will tank if Trump wins
Trump will get us into a nuclear war
Trump will start WWIII
End of the world
Numerous Hitler-like situations
There are even specific things that people have said about Trump:
"Every taunt back and forth between Trump and Kim Jong Un maked deescalation and diplomacy less possible" -- Ben Rhodes, via twitter
"Poll: What one thing will work with North Korea? a) Military strike (9%), b) Embargo or blockade (1%) c) A grand bargain w/China (4%) d) Trump has no idea (86%)" -- Bill Kristol, via twitter
So we're scientists here, we know that science works by making models and predicting outcomes, and when we have two models we throw one out and keep the one with the better predictions.
Which model is the better predictor for Trump?
If you still believe in the "stupid and incompetent" model, what future predictions can you make based on that model? And what specific criteria can we agree on to determine when those predictions have failed or succeeded?
That's right. I'd rather have a well-read, informed and intellectual President with whom I can have a good conversation than an anti-intellectual womanizing loudmouth who brings the country to peace and prosperity by however incomprehensible means. ... is what I believe most educated liberals think these days. Their biggest fear seems to be Trump ending up being right about things because how he gets there does not seem to make sense.
I can see you want to ralk about Obama to change the subject, but doesn't that just show the problem? Fair enough. Obama left the USA as the worlds biggest trading block with a stable economy and lower deficit than now and better healthcare and a dead Bin Laden. Trumps has helped Chniese companies evade a trade war he has created (ZTE) and received over millions in kickbacks so far some of which have gone to pay off hookers and hackers via Cohen.
Yes, context does matter. Like, was he blindly pushing an agenda based on the assumption that they were the same thing? TFS suggests that, no, he was simply asking questions.
We should not be berating someone for admitting to their ignorance. Especially when that someone is the President of the United States and has a history of diving head-first into a course of action with everyone around him saying "no, no, that's not how that works".
It's not OK for anyone in a position of authority to be that stupid. I want to agree with you, but it's just too much.
I don't see what the "insightful" mod was for, though the mod did get me to look at the troll's comment. Lowest form of lie, Level 0 self-contradiction. Don't need to check anything to know that there's at least one lie there, though the example here was a case of two lies. (The impossible case is multiple true statements that are in contradiction.)
One of the things that is interesting about Trump is that he is a low-level liar. He often contradicts himself, sometimes within the same tweet. He frequently lies at Level 1, counterfactual statements, but any fool can check the facts.
The better liars, such as the lawyers and politicians, are mostly working at Level 2 of partial truth. That depends on knowing the whole truth and picking bits and pieces, but Trump rarely if ever gets that high. The most professional liars at Level 3 are using framing and various other techniques that render the truth itself meaningless. If you actually listen to a pro like Conway or Bannon you wind up wondering if the sky is actually blue or if the sun actually rose yesterday.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
I voted for Obama and used to think that was a good thing. But what has it gotten us? Executive overreach,
That one is arguable. He saw the problems of the world and so how impossible it was to work with congress and just did the best he could. Did he overreach a few areas? Probably, but of course nothing compared to the Trump crime family.
"deteriorating race relations"
I think you are confusing cause and effect. Race relations didn't deteriorate, if they did really deteriorate, because of Obama. They deteriorated because of Obama's political opponents used race as a vile weapon to go after him with.
", increasing inequality,"
Been happening for ages. It is not new. Obama did the single most important thing to address it, by taking a stab at health care, and his approach while hardly perfect was "better". It was also all he could get done in that environment.
Yes, there are many other reasons. The absolutely fucking insane tax cut we just put in is going to make income inequality worse, since most of the money goes to those who already make a lot of money. Its also completely irresponsible, but that is another topic. Of course republicans would argue that income inequality in itself isn't bad. I tend to disagree. Past a certain point it distorts things too much and the markets basically fail.
" a stuttering recovery,"
Seems similar to the last one really from what I vaguely recall. There is no magic. People someone expect because something happened in the past under a vastly different set of circumstances that you can expect the same outcomes. Either way, the president doesn't have that much control there. The economy did well under Obama and I see no particularly sign that it will be magical under Trump. We are just feeling the effects of the heroin he pumped in (tax cuts), but the crash and burn will come eventually. The bills must be paid.
" a missed opportunity on health care reform"
Now here is where you are flat out lying. I watched the entire process. They got done what they could get done. It was amazingly close to failing. You think you can do better, maybe you should run for office?
", political polarization,"
Again, your confusing cause and effect here. Obama isn't a particularly polarizing guy. He is actually pretty much a centrist. the hate and polarization was ginned up by the right, including Fox news and all the rest. The polarization came because the right decided, one way and another to do anything to get rid of him. They stirred up the primary forces of hatred and bigotry and out came Trump out of their unholy cauldron of crap.
"and foreign policy disasters."
The biggest one I saw was making a promise on a reprisal that he decided not to do. Yah, wasn't a fan of that one, since the world must believe us, but then you bring in Mr. lying sack of shit with his 3000 plus lies and i'm like, really, we are still comparing that? I hate to break it to you, but the rest of the world, with the exception of I think Isreal and Russia saw us far better pre Trump.
"And the problem was exactly that Obama was really smart, wanted to do everything himself, and ended up micromanaging."
He did probably control more militarily than was a good idea, but Trump is the opposite, and seems to not do much at all. Neither are great solutions. Thankfully Trump isn't trying to control much since he is so ill informed and not interested in being informed that if he were to attempt it it would be an unmitigated disaster.
"Obama represents the hubris of technocrats, progressives, and intellectuals."
There is nothing wrong with being intelligent or educated, no matter how much the right pushes this drivel. I also never saw arrogance in his being.
"And it's Obama's miserable performance as president that paved the way for Trump." And yet histor
Right. With a summary like that, who needs more than one political party. Eh, comrade?
He'd need to do something positive first.
This is precisely the kind of partisan selective amnesia and bias that will guarantee a Trump 2020 reelection victory.
ISIS - No longer a major threat.
US economy - Heading back in the right direction.
N. Korea - Coming to the negotiating table.
That's just off the top of my head.
If you're incapable of giving credit where credit is due don't expect your criticisms to carry any weight with anybody outside your echo chamber. Even many life-long Democrats I know are disgusted with the Left at this point.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Yeah, he has experts like Bill Gates flown in to explain it to him so he can ask questions.
Liberal anti-intellectualism has been cranked up to 11 for the last two years (at least), and the country is tired of it. Your party has already suffered the consequences in terms of fundraising. It's going to get really real come November.
Can't wait.
To me, the biggest condemnation of Trump....
You value condemnation? Why?
Don't forget the millions of workers who got bonus checks when the tax cuts were passed. Many of those workers won't forget.
> ISIS - No longer a major threat.
This is the closest thing you're correct on. And it was done by mostly a continuation of the military strategies implemented under the Obama administration. Thanks Obama!
> US economy - Heading back in the right direction.
Thanks Obama!
> N. Korea - Coming to the negotiating table.
Thanks China and South Korea. You know, if it actually happens and they aren't playing games just like *every other time this has happened in the last 50 years*.
There's stupid and then there's stupid:
"The GOP front-runner asserted that the U.S. also "cannot be the policeman of the world" when it comes to allies in the Asia Pacific region, suggesting he would like to see Japan and South Korea develop nuclear weaponry in order to combat North Korea."
Play Command HQ online
What's wrong with BLM? It's only divides away those who think black lives don't matter.
> with the exponentially increasing premiums of the ACA.
You can always tell when someone doesn't remember life before the ACA. We got the same increases for insurance that didn't cover anything, if we were insured.
> nor was Syria
ISIS was a disaster created indirectly by Bush and contained by Obama. Syria as a whole is going more or less the way Obama wanted: It's been soaking up Iranian and Russian defense spending for a long time.
Play Command HQ online
CohibaVancouver opined:
To me, the biggest condemnation of Trump is not that he's ill-informed - Lots of people are ill-informed on lots of things - It's that he has little interest in actually becoming informed. Obama read for hours each night - Briefing papers, books - You name it. Trump reads nothing.
Sadly, it's actually worse than that.
It is quite clear that not only does Trump have, as you put it, "little interest" in becoming informed, but, instead, that he actively resists any attempt to provide him with information on subjects that trigger him.
It's also why he labells as "fake news" anything that displeases him. It's not that those things are factually inaccurate. It's that he just doesn't want to hear them ...
Check out my novel.
You've got me curious about your "one thing", but I don't think any of them can get that upset with him so as to bother Trump. At some level they have to notice Trump is constantly contradicting himself, and whatever he promised them, he also promised some contradictory thing to someone else. They have to start from the state of denial and believe that he's lying to everyone else. Also, they have to believe he's just waiting for the right time to fulfill his only sincere promises, which must be the ones he made to them. (In this context "they" is whatever lunatic fringe that particular lunatic is fringing with.)
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
He hasn't got there. Yeah, racial unity through bigotry, prosperity through corruption, progress through ignorance, world leadership though jingoism does not make sense. But worse, they've been tried throughout history over and over, and they don't work. How many chances are *you* going to give them?
Play Command HQ online
I bet she could come up with some political jargon that you wouldn't get but every politician in the room would know what she was talking about.
No sig today...
It's interesting that you think "Like with a cloth" was serious when it's obvious from the context that it was a joke: https://abcnews.go.com/Politic...
I'd agree, except Trump is a disaster for peace and prosperity. China and South Korea are primarily responsible for NK, not because Trump made threats and insults on Twitter, and his actions with Iran and Israel are extremely terrible for peace. Prosperity? Sure, if you're the 1%. His massive giveaway to them gave some crumbs to the middle class, at the expense of massive debt. I could list a bunch of policies from healthcare to education that are appallingly awful for the prosperity of the poor.
Trump supporters live in a fantasy world thinking his propaganda about things improving for everyone is true.
>> US economy - Heading back in the right direction.
> Thanks Obama!
Absolutely, the US economy had been on a very steady incline since a slight dip in 2012. It very much was the Obama administration that got it back on track.
Sorry, just because something makes Trump look stupid doesn't mean it's biased against him. That he lacks basic knowledge on a wide range of issues is simply a fact, and a very big problem considering his job
To me, the biggest condemnation of Trump is not that he's ill-informed - Lots of people are ill-informed on lots of things - It's that he has little interest in actually becoming informed. Obama read for hours each night - Briefing papers, books - You name it. Trump reads nothing.
Even worse, he believes he is the smartest person in the room, and thus acts based on his opinion with little consideration of what others have to say.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Although personalities like Trump tend to be shallow in many ways, in this case, I think Gates is engaging in character assassination and probaably misquoting or misreading Trump's questions.
She's gross looking. He was probably trying to be generous, and overcooked the praise
until it wandered into 'little too much' territory.
But yeah, she is barf-bag ugly. Maybe that's what tipped Bill off? Nobody ever sang such praises over his barf-bag daughter before, with such detail.
is his comment about immigrants being animals. Don't get me wrong, I have issues with America's immigration policies (I'm a tech worker and the constant stream of H1-Bs has killed my wages and lead to companies that won't train or promote), but it frightens me to see anyone referred to as an animal. Once we start dehumanizing people we can do anything to anyone because it's not a big leap to declare anyone who's inconvenient an 'animal'. That line of thought shouldn't be in our country much less our president.
Now, I don't actually thing Trump believes that. But that's the problem. He knows how to work a crowd and will do and say _anything_ to do it. He's amoral. No immoral, amoral. He has no morality whatsoever. He feeds the crowd whatever it wants and, well, things are tough in America right now for about 80% of the population. And when things get tough people get mean. Trump's feeding that sentiment with wild abandon...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
To me, the biggest condemnation of Trump is not that he's ill-informed - Lots of people are ill-informed on lots of things - It's that he has little interest in actually becoming informed. Obama read for hours each night - Briefing papers, books - You name it. Trump reads nothing.
What are you talking about? He subscribes to Playboy for the articles! Not the pictures. He reads. You must be Melania's friend.
That is one of the most naive and fallacious things I have ever read. Gates isn't that smart, just wealthy, and he got that way by stealing and then abusing the resulting monopoly. There is no one to praise in this piece.
ISIS - No longer a major threat.
Listening to his generals, that's really brilliant. This is putting aside they were never a threat once our military got involved.
US economy - Heading back in the right direction.
Please describe, in detail, Trump's economic plan that caused a turnaround... and what the major turnaround has been since the administration change. Of course, this is all based on the idea that the President can have a major impact on the economy, but for now for the sake of argument claim that's true.
N. Korea - Coming to the negotiating table.
You haven't watched any news this past week, have you? I'd like it to be true, that we get something done here, but right now I'm seeing two leaders play a game of chicken where they both want out of the talk but don't want to be the first to say it.
I'm neither a Trump voter nor a GOP "operative". But given the increasing idiocy of the American left, I may well become one in the future.
But the ACA promised to fix this, and it failed to deliver.
It is not, however, what voters wanted when they elected Obama.
Your comments come down to saying "if Obama had only been totalitarian ruler of the country without opposition, then he could have done all these wonderful things for the country that he promised during his campaign".
Well, sorry, that's not the way the US works. When Obama promised something (improved race relations, more privacy, lower health care costs, etc.), he needed to take into account what opposition he would face and moderate his promises accordingly. He didn't do that, and that is exactly the kind of hubris that intellectuals often suffer from.
As for harnessing "disgusting and loathsome forces", that's how I and many others have come to view the Democratic party.
Though Gates is far less corrupt than Trump, both came to their fortunes by great luck, embellishing their own worth, and a lack of guilt about screwing people over for a buck.
Bill Gates? Don't make me laugh. Bill is the incarnate of evil. Microsoft is the same as ever. Open Source is meaningless to oppose because they can't win, so they focus on monopolization of hardware (DRM) instead. Is free software a thing yet? No, it's not.
Then lets use another example Ronald Reagan. Reagan spent years debating issues and reading. You may disagree with Reagans policies but he was
not ignorant he understood his own beliefs and why he believed they were right. He usually hired very competent people to advise him. In last few
years he was suffering from alzheimers but before that he was fairly quick witted and could laugh at his own shortcomings and could
sit down and make a deal with his political opponents. Im a liberal democrat and I liked Reagan as a decent human being. Now compare that
with Donald Trump a man who is notoriously thin skinned and believes he knows more about everything than experts do.
This is a guy who raw-dogs porn stars. So his life *literally* depends on knowing something that everybody else knows - and yet a total fucking face-palm.
Yes. The universe owed it to Obama to behave ideally. Whenever anything in the universe fell short, it was the universe's fault, never Obama's. With the universe constantly failing him, there was no way he could accomplish his goals. It's very sad. Don't you feel sad?
There's no such expectation of Trump. Trump will have to succeed or fail with the actual, non-ideal universe, based on his own actions.
At least we won't have to feel sad.
"has so much money that he can't be corrupted"
Unfortunately the bar is so high that this is difficult to rely on; mere billions can't guarantee honesty, indeed most of those who amass huge fortunes show few signs of becoming less acquisitive.
Gates is probably a rare exception, given his vast wealth and the protection offered by his nerd genes.
After all, he's so heavily invested in the democratic socialist machine, you think he would say anything nice about Trump? And get thrown out of the club?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
What's wrong with BLM?
What's wrong with a one race matters movement?
The exclusion of other races.
Glad I could answer that for you.
Bill Gates? Don't make me laugh. Bill is the incarnate of evil. Microsoft is the same as ever. Open Source is meaningless to oppose because they can't win, so they focus on monopolization of hardware (DRM) instead. Is free software a thing yet? No, it's not.
Please BIll is no more the incarnation of evil that Romney was. In some ways we overreacted with Romney and that made us less believable when Trump came along. As sad as it is to say it, we might have been better off had Romney won, if for no other reason is it would have almost certainly prevented Trump. Not that I would ever vote for someone just because 4 years later it might prevent another Trump from getting in. That would be crazy.
Visual Studio is free now.
"Open source" is not about the price.
Xcode is the one that is $100 a year and also requires an expensive hardware dongle to run.
Wrong and wrong. Xcode is free (no cost) and does not require any dongle.
Thats EEE you're witnessing. From that same article you referenced:
"And so, Microsoft’s kneejerk rejection of open source became a liability, as it tried to convince CIOs to move their server infrastructure up to the Microsoft Azure cloud. That’s why Nadella has made it such a point to claim that “Microsoft loves Linux,” and why Microsoft has released certain key technologies as open source."
Their contributions to Linux are so that Linux works better inside Windows to make windows better not Linux better.
....his actions with Iran and Israel are extremely terrible for peace.
You mean the long history of peace between Iran and Israel is over?
His massive giveaway to them gave some crumbs to the middle class,
Keep telling middle class people that the extra money in their paycheck is "crumbs".
Trump supporters live in a fantasy world thinking his propaganda about things improving for everyone is true.
Maybe not everyone, but individuals know whether things are improving for them or not. Unemployed people see the help wanted signs. Middle class people see the extra money in their paycheck. Investors see their 401k balance.
telling them what they wanted to hear was Bernie Sanders, and it's been pretty well documented that the DNC & the Mass Media (CNN/MSNBC/Fox News, etc) were actively ignoring him and trying to bury his campaign.
Like Trump said, what have you got to lose? Hilary is pretty far right economically. What folks wanted was a populist. Trump is a populist on the podium. Too bad that ended as soon as he got elected.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
The 'dongle' referred to is probably the requirement to buy a MacOS-running computer to develop & publish in Xcode for iOS devices. (Since you can only legally virtualize MacOS on Apple-branded hardware; because Apple refuses to license OSX to be run on any virtualization host)
Saying "Black LIves Matter" isn't exclusionary of other races, it's just pointing out a fact, or at least a near universally held opinion. It's hard to believe you feel excluded by the concept that black lives might matter. Did some BLM protestor tell you that or something?
If you think all lives matter then there's no way BLM should be offensive or controversial to you.
Play Command HQ online
It's completely irrational to support the spread of nuclear weapons. It's much better for all concerned if Japan never needs a nuclear program.
Play Command HQ online
> ISIS - No longer a major threat.
Trump deserves credit for abandoning his secret plan and just finishing the Obama plan.
> US economy - Heading back in the right direction.
As before it has been. We'll see whether massive tax cuts for the rich help. They usually don't.
> N. Korea - Coming to the negotiating table.
NK always wants to meet with US presidents. It's a victory for them to even get a summit. So far we've got nothing in return. I hope all goes well, but NK has never given anything up with out enormous bribes and serious threats issued at the same time. Meanwhile, Trump just unilaterally caved to another NK demand.
Play Command HQ online
Z^-3
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Saying "Black LIves Matter" isn't exclusionary of other races, it's just pointing out a fact...
In an exclusionary way.
It's hard to believe you feel excluded
It’s not a feeling. I am excluded.
there's no way BLM should be offensive or controversial to you.
It’s not "offensive or controversial", it’s just one race caring about themselves to the exclusion of everyone else.
Would a white lives matter club be a problem? Clearly it would. Race exclusionary movements are a problem.
I'm neither a Trump voter nor a GOP "operative". But given the increasing idiocy of the American left, I may well become one in the future.
That'll show them! You are genius...
ISIS is no longer a threat cuz Trump gave the Middle East to Russia. Ultimately depriving them of it was a Republican plan, so it's fitting Trump destroyed it and unleashes Russia. Great news for Russia, have to acknowledge that.
Economy isn't great for the poor and the GOP is looking to remove the entitlement safety nets so it will get worse for them. It's going great for the rich though. Have to acknowledge that.
NK has come to the table before and tried the same style tricks. Trump has already blundered into the tricks other Presidents have avoided. Have to acknowledge that.
If your incapable of knowing the history of the issues anything your side does seems great.
Life-long Democrats are paid by the same corporate entities the Republicans are. If you and your friends don't realize that congratulations, you are sharing the same echo chamber.
If Canada was a tyrannical rogue state threatening to eradicate America daily while developing nuclear weapons to do so, why the fuck would we ask, say, Britain to protect us?
In your hypothetical, does Canada have the same Queen as Britain? Because if so, it's not a ludicrous idea.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
Did you ever consider that you're living proof your race is inferior to others?
Play Command HQ online
While I smile about the joke, I disagree with the statement.
There is an obscene amount of H1-B visa abuse. But for any country to develop, it absolutely has to have open doors to skilled foreigners. Patriotism and all that crap is great for people who have nothing else to make them special. But for people who define themselves as engineers or scientists for example, the world needs to be globalist.
I moved to Norway from America 20 years ago... and I took on of their jobs. I took one of their women. I spread my seed in the country. I have worked 6 years as an IT instructor to make some extra money and have heavily influenced society and culture here. I often during breaks or to lighten the mood share more than just IT knowledge, but also things like what a Turducken is or what Bacon Explosion is. Many of my students have tried both. I work longer hours than the locals, I work harder than they do (almost universally), I produce more and I take more. In 20 years, while I'm fully functional in their language and by American standards am fluent at this point, I never speak their language to them except in rare cases. I work purely in English... though I leave them the option as to what language to speak to me in or send me e-mails in.
The only thing which differentiates me from what you see as an H1-B worker is my skin color. There are cultural differences, I directly "corrupt society" here. I change peoples habits, behavior, etc... but they also change mine and over time I've become much more like them. And because my skin is almost light enough to be Norwegian, I am welcomed and embraced. When I choose to change jobs, I insight bidding and package battles between companies... though to be fair, I rarely choose the best package in lieu of the best coworkers.
Understand than in 99% of all cases, immigrants imported in the spirit of the H1-B as opposed to the abuse of the H1-B are almost always the best and highest performing workers. They are the people most interested in being part of your society as well. They will hopefully bring the best parts of their culture and improve yours in the same way that a new spice will help your pasta sauce recipe.
H1-B is a really really really good thing if it can ever be brought under control.
I was just at Microsoft Build to update my knowledge "of the enemy" and learned a great deal and looking at the people I spoke with, I think America would be a much poorer place if the H1-Bs working at MS weren't there.
If you think all lives matter then there's no way BLM should be offensive or controversial to you.
If you think black lives matter then there's no way "all lives matter" should be offensive or controversial to you.
I'm pretty sure that's where the movement went sideways.
You mean the long history of peace between Iran and Israel is over?
Moving the embassy to Jerusalem was a major setback in that conflict, and pulling out of the Iran deal is a risk for our peace with them, not to mention destroying our credibility for other such arrangements. Then there's the little matter of appointing a notorious extreme warmonger named John Bolton.
Keep telling middle class people that the extra money in their paycheck is "crumbs".
Since the average amount they'll see is $20, I absolutely will.
Maybe not everyone, but individuals know whether things are improving for them or not. Unemployed people see the help wanted signs. Middle class people see the extra money in their paycheck. Investors see their 401k balance.
Plenty of people recognize things are not actually improving for them. Aside from the question of how much credit Trump deserves for unemployment, which is a whole debate in itself, of the other two things you've mentioned one is propaganda unless you think $20 is significant. The other is mostly a benefit for the wealthy; and if you really want to claim the gains the part of middle class with 401k holdings have seen is worth everything Trump has done, especially looking at the net after accelerated health insurance cost increases due to repealing the mandate without implementing any other cost control measures, that's kind of a weak argument for all the harm he's done to the poor, to our credibility, to our reputation, to our environment, to minorities, to immigrants including some legal ones, to civil rights in his Sessions appointment... and on and on.
It's that he has little interest in actually becoming informed
Can you really blame him for that in this era of political polarization where just about everyone on both sides of the political spectrum dig themselves into foxholes on "their" side and label anyone on "their" side that refuses to dig themselves into a foxhole a member of the "other" side? With narcissistic personality traits being on the rise over the last few decades (one study on first year college students that started in the 1980s was forced to change the scale in the 2010) you could even argue that the man is just a ahead of the curve when it comes to what kinds of people the American people are becoming.
Seriously thou, my experience as a traditional liberal (pro meritocracy, gun control, science over feelings and religion, gay and minority equality) arguing with people on a variety of topics, many of them political, is that refusing to learn or accept anything that may disprove your prejudices is a trait shared by people on the right and the left in about equal measure.
"Why should I want to make anything up? Life's bad enough as it is without wanting to invent any more of it."
ISIS no longer a major threat? And that being down to Trump? You are too funny.
US economy having anything at all to do with Trump, given lag effects? Stop, you're killing me.
N Korea? Let's save the jubilation till after they've met and avoided killing us all shall we?
There is no credit due. None.
The biggest problem I have with the movement is that it's viewing police civil rights abuses through the lens of race. Police abuse all races. They shoot unarmed members of all races. They illegally search members of all races. They fabricate evidence and testimony against all races (including against me, a middle class white dude). We don't need to end police abuse of black people, we need to end police abuse. That these abuses occur more frequently against black people is terrible (although sorry, they do have more interactions with police for a reason, that is purposefully ignored; and unarmed shooting fatalities after considering threat model don't even show bias), but the whole premise of confining the movement to a single race trivializes our problems with police as a whole, as if abusing/shooting more white people (which a lot of them see as a good idea), or abusing/shooting black people at the same rate as white people, would resolve the issue.
Well, North Korea is threatened by a warmongering rogue state that has thousands of nukes. So they are wise to develop some of their own, including the means to deliver it.
It's completely irrational to support the spread of nuclear weapons. It's much better for all concerned if Japan never needs a nuclear program.
Can you really trust other countries to protect your sovereignty? (I wouldn't; See WW2 and allied guarantees and promises and how they were all broken, see current situation in Ukraine) Have you ever heard of "salami-tactics"?
You misspelled Trump.
sudo ergo sum
Race relations deteriorated because of Obama. Sorry but you are wrong. And your opinion means as much as mine.
He doesn't want to be informed you say but he asked Gates for clarification on HPV vs HIV and you're mocking him. Makes no sense. Plus he's a 70+ year old repeatedly married man to whom HPV would be "noise" at best. It isn't relevant to his lifestyle and when he was reaching adulthood there was some awareness of "VD" and not a lot of differentiation like this is today in education. As your friends, see how high is awareness of HPV. I'm aware of the cancer links for certain strains, Gardasil, etc. but I'm a geek who has sex with other men so there's more pressure to have awareness of these things in that community.
since when does the left, who is currently trying to spin a trump comment about MS-13 into a comment about illegal aliens (nancy pelosi herself is involved in the spin no less) care about spin?
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
. And it's Obama's miserable performance
Miserable performance in what? By all accounts and looking at it from a different country's perspective (i.e. I don't have skin in the game of your silly politics), he seemed to leave the country better in every way than he found it despite being mostly hamstrung in many key areas where he wanted to make a difference.
Your "missed opportunity on healthcare" is especially interesting on this given what he initially proposed and what the republicans who's support it needed eventually watered it down to.
Obama represents the hubris of technocrats, progressives, and intellectuals.
Reminds me of the Farage comments "people are sick of experts". That's Anti-intellectualism at its finest. A great way to run politics if your idea of politics is people bashing each other with sticks, and the muscliest man gets to impregnate all the women.
we got 10 trillion in debt under obama and NOTHING for it. at least now we get some extra cash
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
You know they're sparring now. He bashed Trump. Holy shit. What an asshole Gates is. I can't wait to see them make fun of each other's hair.
To be fair, Gates has messy hair- but I don't think Trump can win a war of hair bashing with ANYONE... well, besides Carrottop. Trump's hair is much better than Carrottop's.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
> ISIS - No longer a major threat.
This is the closest thing you're correct on. And it was done by mostly a continuation of the military strategies implemented under the Obama administration. Thanks Obama!
He let them become the force they were. His stance on the threat of ISIS "“The analogy we use around here sometimes, and I think is accurate, is if a jayvee team puts on Lakers uniforms that doesn’t make them Kobe Bryant,”"
Keep telling middle class people that the extra money in their paycheck is "crumbs".
Since the average amount they'll see is $20 [itep.org], I absolutely will.
Except, according to your article, the $20 benefit you cite was the benefit received by those with pass-through companies, not your average middle class worker as you claim.
What your article actually said, which is probably a conservative estimate in itself, is that the average benefit for the middle fifth of taxpayers who don't own a business would be $650. It also said this will raise to an $800 benefit next year. Most would agree $650 or $800 is more than just a few crumbs. You accuse others of propaganda, while you spread falsehoods yourself.
Since you're either dishonest or aren't so good at reading comprehension, you should leave the politics and other serious business to those capable of informing others of the facts, rather than your half-baked untruths.
That's like saying Philip Morris is an American company, started in America. However when rounding to the nearest percent, they derive 100% of their revenue from countries other than the US.
There has never been a towering intellectual who did a good job as president. Just Sayin.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
Moving the embassy to Jerusalem was a major setback in that conflict
But it was literally law since the 90's that our embassy would be in Jerusalem. Trump followed the law and a campaign promise unlike every other president before that made that promise and lied. You may not like it but following the law and a promise is a mark of good character for a president. Hamas and Iran will use anything as an excuse for violence especially if they can get a good photo-up western media will lap up. "protestors" killed that just so happen to be mostly Hamas.
pulling out of the Iran deal is a risk for our peace with them, not to mention destroying our credibility for other such arrangements.
The US never agreed to the Iran deal. Full stop. Obama made a promise he couldn't keep. Obama didn't have authority to make such a deal binding to other administrations. Obama made a promise and kept it for as long as he was in office. The US did not break any promise or deal. Not following the law to get what you want and lying about the pretenses is the mark of a bad character for a president.
I am sorry but the damage to US credibility is because of a president making promises without consent of the Senate expecting "not a treaty" to be treated as law by the rest of the government. There is no defending the Iran deal as struck by Obama and friends. He created a quagmire the moment he went around Congress.
You people are obsessed. Nuts.
For one thing, this is third party hearsay.
For another ... if you lose to a clown, the fault is not within the clown. If even a clown sounds better than you, it might be you with the problem.
yeah, thatâs equally true for anybody who aspires to become president. another stupid candidate doesnât make trump smarter.
That's the biggest problem. He's the president of the United States, he can get information about any topic from the best and brightest at any time he wants, yet he consistently choses to listen to conspiracy theorists and watches cable news up to 8 hours a day. This guy is such a complete and utter moron, it's surreal. Even friends of him suspect that he hasn't read a single book during the past 30 years. Before Trump came into the public spotlight, I didn't even know people like him existed. (I don't watch reality TV shows.)
>> It's that he has little interest in actually becoming informed.
So, he didn't know about something. Then he asked about it. Now he knows about it. That seems like the opposite of your claim. In fact, I can only imagine that this practice has been a major ingredient of his (and many others') success in life.
Do you refrain from asking about things that you don't know about to avoid looking "stupid"? That seems like an excellent way to remain ignorant of things.
I've liked Elizabeth Warren from Bill Mahar's show. Also, on Howard Stern, George Stephanopoulos' name has been floated. I haven't heard anyone really talk shit about that guy and doesn't have a pissed off wife or sex scandals.
"...to the exclusion of others". That doesn't apply when BLM is an argument for not being excluded from being treated with respect and equality. When people protest "Hookers' Lives matters", that's not to exclude others, that's another way of saying, "Motherfuckers, investigate Hookers murders and catch serial killers".
No, that's being tone deaf. It's like saying "I'm in pain" and the asshole beside you oblivious to your problem says, "we all feel pain".
I couldn't stop laughing reading that and thinking of Trump's Mexican wall. The repeal of ACA, locking up Hillary, all the fucking jobs he's bringing back, etc. Fuck, he did more for jobs in China than the US.
Are you high? None of that is true, thinking of abortions and hypocrisy off the top of my head.
Arnold Schwarzenegger can't be US President.
I don't believe Trump invalidated the deal or provided any proof that Obama couldn't make the deal, he just pulled out of it because of a couple of deal points. What really makes Trump make US look like shit is how it's going against it's allies on these deals. Now he's trying to fuck with the world's pharmaceutical prices because the US health care system is insane in the membrane. Fuck that guy.
We *know* that he walked into the dressing room at one of his beauty contests, and that the young women in there were only semi-clothed or nude. We *know* he's got a yen for Ivanka. Why should we not believe Gates when he implies Trump is a creep?
If they needed any help, I would *NEVER* let that sexual predator near my daughters or granddaughter.
In my imagination, Melania didn't have HPV when she got married but does now and that her recent hospital visit wasn't some kidney thing. That's why shit is ice cold between them now.
By Salvadoran immigrants, or so I've read.
If the embassy didn't cost a billion dollars, tear it down, it's fucked. That shit is bugged.
Swing and a miss. The guy had to ask twice. Also, you can't forget all the times Trump boasted how he made shit up in discussions with other countries and still didn't learn the facts after being corrected.
I'll give you a 1/100th of a point as some groups have indeed used the BLM phrasing to exclude other groups of people. But otherwise this is simply bullshit.
What is the problem with a WLM movement? That the BLM started as a protest that blacks were treated differently than whites, this in a lethal manner. So the BLM (non-extremists ignored) want to be treated the same as your whites. Your WLM movement would have to add some preferential treatment for whites to make sense - and there's the problem. Because wanting to be treated different than others because of your "race" is racism.
However perhaps your use of WLM is inclusive? If so please explain your line of thinking.
Most likely, what you like about Obama and his accomplishments is that he made the US more like a European progressive welfare state. You consider that "better", Americans by and large don't.
ACA was passed without Republican support, hence Republicans had no opportunity of watering it down.
You suffer from the typical misconception that "intellectual" = "intelligent, rational". In fact, "intellectual" is simply a class of professions: academics, journalists, writers--people who make their money from using their intellect. Karl Marx, Lothrop Stoddard, Charles William Elliot, and Giovanni Gentile were intellectuals. Henry Ford and Winston Churchill were not. You bet I'm "anti-intellectual": people whose main accomplishment in life is to theorize about how other people ought to run their lives ought not to run countries.
I think the lesson is not to be exclusionary. Then you don't have to say "...but we really don't mean it the way it sounds".
As I'm sure you know, but I'll say it anyway...BLM doesn't mean "Black lives *only* matter", it means "Black lives matter as well". This is obvious to anyone who has seen a "look out for motorcycles" sticker. That sticker isn't saying "look out for motorcycles and cars, trucks, and buses can go to hell". It's saying "motorcycles are are often missed, so pay closer attention to them."
What Republicans actually campaigned on was opposition to Obama's policies and his vision for America, and Obama knew that going in, so he shouldn't have promised things that he couldn't deliver. But that isn't even the issue here.
The real problem with Obama was that his positions changed greatly from when he was campaigning to when he became president. He ran on restoring constitutionality, the rule of law, listening to voters, privacy, and fiscal responsibility, and all that went out the window when he became president.
provided any proof that Obama couldn't make the deal,
Proof? Like Iran not signing on the deal because "not a treaty"? I am sorry but this doesn't make any sense. Sure, Obama can promise things that Obama can fulfill like "political commitments" but when it comes to promises of the United States the Senate must approve precisely because of shit like this. Obama set the Iran deal up for failure by ignoring the Congress. That is not how the US operates and Obama should have known better instead of trying to create a legacy built on lies and executive overreach.
What really makes Trump make US look like shit is how it's going against it's allies on these deals.
Because our Allies were fed the same bullshit lies that Obama could keep his political commitments after his term ended. Absolutely it causes problems and it makes our government look retarded. Because the United States did not agree to anything and this is exactly why the Senate must approve deals and treaties and that they have the same effect as law when approved properly. You want a treaty to be taken seriously in the US and not subject to the whims of the president? Follow that damn law and have the Senate approve. Obama was a damned fool and his "legacy" will be one of overreach, failure, and lies.
You're projecting Hillary Clinton's shortcomings onto Trump.
I have seen no indication that that is any different for Trump. If anything, Trump has been more consistent about implementing his campaign promises than other politicians: reduce regulations, tough negotiations with the Chinese on trade, get illegals out of the country, try to reverse ACA, cut corporate and personal taxes, appoint conservative judges, charter schools and school vouchers, etc. Those are traditional, rational, moderately conservative views.
How does the Republican position ("fetuses are human beings and deserving of the same protections as children") contradict "freedom of association, private property, free markets, and freedom of speech"? Where do you see the "hypocrisy"?
We're talking about Obama's presidency here and whether he kept his promises. In many cases, Obama didn't even try.
I have no opinion on whether Obama did better or worse in that regard than Trump; that's a question we can revisit in another six years, at the end of Trump's presidency.
My father-in-law parroted some Fox News bullshit about a Harvard study that concluded how all media is biased against Trump. I looked up the study. What it actually said is that a large percent of coverage of DJT is negative. That's not bias though. The counterexample would be "Is the local paper biased for reporting that the Thurber Beavers lost yet another Calvinball game?" No! Just because you're reporting on something bad, doesn't mean that you are biased against the person or thing that did bad things.
It absolutely is taken out of context. The point of it was that people were being misled by the GOP about what the law was, and that one it passed and went into effect, they would see that the GOP was lying in many cases, and exaggerating in many others. Of course, she underestimated the GOP's ability to lie blatantly and their base's willingness to eat up their lies without so much as flicker of critical thought.
Saying "Black LIves Matter" isn't exclusionary of other races, it's just pointing out a fact...
In an exclusionary way.
In a way that refers to the many ways our society, and specifically within the justice system, demonstrates that black lives don't matter, at least not as much as others.
It's hard to believe you feel excluded
It’s not a feeling. I am excluded.
You are excluded from the assumption that you are doing something nefarious simply by being in a public space. You are excluded from the worst abuses of a police force that often views the black people they should be protection as enemies. You are excluded from laws that specifically hit black communities harder than white communities.
there's no way BLM should be offensive or controversial to you.
It’s not "offensive or controversial", it’s just one race caring about themselves to the exclusion of everyone else.
It's one race pointing out that they are being excluded from the basic levels of respect and freedom promised to ALL Americans.
Would a white lives matter club be a problem?
A problem? Not really. But incredibly dumb, because white people are no faced with inequality due to their pigmentation, whereas black people objectively and obviously do.
I don't think you'll find a single BLM supporter who thinks that only abuse of black people needs to end. If you take the time to look into what they actually advocate, you'll find that they back reforms in the criminal justice system that are in keeping with general principles of human rights and liberty, and would benefit people of all races. But those problems are borne disproportionately by black people and black communities, who are too often told through the actions of the police, courts, and their fellow citizens that their lives *don't* matter in a way that white people (and asians, for that matter, and latinos to a lesser degree) simply don't face.
H1-B is a really good thing if it can ever be brought under control..
Thank you. I am an Indian. I moved to Silicon Valley about 5 years back because the best software jobs are here and at my company - a subsidiary of a US based MNC, I had stopped learning new things. My career progression would have been to that of a manager and I would have had to give up the love of my life - coding. I could have come here in 2001, but did not feel the need - I had just begun my employment at Sun Microsystems India and the work was decent with plenty of opportunity to learn. 2001 was also the year I started reading Slashdot. Since then, I have spent an order of magnitude more time here than at any other website. /etc/hosts or the hosts file on Windows now resolves to 0.0.0.0 for slashdot.org. Fortunately, I have temporarily commented it out. This post makes me hopeful that there are people out there who can not only see shades of grey, but the multi-hued tapestry that our world is.
In the past 10 years or so, I have seen steady rise in the tirade against H1-Bs (H1-Bs is intentional). In the past 5 years or so, it has become so unsavory that my
Yes, H1-B is severely misused. I had no clue that life will be so tough because the system is screwed up. While in India, I was thinking that the people who oppose H1-B are plain racists, but now I have seen and experienced visa abuse first hand. Not so much in getting the visa, that corruption seems to be non-existent now. Thankfully the scrutiny is much stricter now. The issue is with an H1-B holder being tied to a company. Resolve this issue, make H1-B holders independent contractors who earn at least 200K. This abuse too will stop. Fix H1-B, not the H1-Bs. Stop L1 visa altogether. Let people come here purely on what they bring to the table. The system should be fair to both the bright coder from a poor country and the British guy who owns 5 houses in the Bay Area and can code no more - this may rile some up, but it is also something I have experienced.
US has always attracted the best and the brightest. It should continue to do so. US is the country of Lincoln and the countless nationalists who gave up their lives to keep it united. It is also the country which kept the blacks disenfranchised long after becoming the pre-eminent super power, almost 100 years after the Civil War. I hope that it keeps evolving into a more benevolent, accommodating and just society. Keeping H1-Bs away by all means is just not the way to do that.
and calling them animals is still a problem. Did you know there were death squads set up in parts of South America to kill street urchins like rats because they were a nuisance to the tourist industry? This is a real thing that happened in the 20th century. No human being should ever be called an animal. Ever. That will always end the same way. Concentration camps and death squads. Because once you get folks thinking that a person isn't a person then you can kill with impunity. And they will _always_ come for you when you become inconvenient.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
He's the president of the United States. There are some things you _do_not_say_. Period. End of subject. Dehumanizing people leads to genocides. We have thousands and thousands of years of history to back this up. The fact that the quote can be taken out of context is itself a problem. To you and me we see it as a nasty gut reaction. To a White Supremacist they see it as a call to arms. Like being asked to Rid him of a meddlesome priest.
Go read Bruce Sterling's Distraction...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
It depends on the context. In the case of a monarchy and unlimited power, those qualities are often disastrous, though not always, and not all the time.
In the case of a democracy/republic where such fairly ignorant and semi-jingoistic enthusiastic energetic leader -- bigotry and corruption I see as purely the left's exaggeration -- can be kicked out after 4 and certainly after 8 years, and where the members of the legislative branch have to suck up primarily to their own constituents, well all that to say is that such jolt of energy that's bad in the context of the unlimited power may well result in some good here, and some has already. If anything, all the doom prophesized by the left has not materialized yet, not even remotely.
Most likely, what you like about Obama and his accomplishments is that he made the US more like a European progressive welfare state.
Nope not at all. I was thinking actual metrics by which governments are judged. You know things like low unemployment, supporting marginalised groups against bigotry, pushing towards a greener and more environmentally friendly country, increasing energy independence, stopped torturing people, reduced homelessness, improved the economy on every primary metric which is especially amazing since under his watch there were more jobs created than any other president despite the entire economy being flushed down the toilet just as he started.
Yeah a bit of socialism helps too, like not leaving your war veterans to rot in the street, or the non-ultra rich to die of perfectly treatable medical conditions. Fuck yeah, socialism! I know, Americans hate the idea that the poor and old don't just die.
ACA was passed without Republican support, hence Republicans had no opportunity of watering it down.
Sorry you're right, it was massively watered down by corporate lobbying on democrats. Point is the same, the populous calling the ACA Obama Care couldn't be further from the truth given what he wanted to pass, and what eventually made it through your process. The ACA is what it is despite Obama, not because of Obama.
You bet I'm "anti-intellectual": people whose main accomplishment in life is to theorize about how other people ought to run their lives ought not to run countries.
Really? The people whose profession it is to analyse governments ought not to run them? Yep "sick of experts" rings true here. Don't worry mate, Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho should be running for office in 2020.
Z^-4
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Indeed the ACA did promise to fix this.
Think of it as a brand-new Tesla that can do 0-60 under 4 seconds vs. a brand-new Tesla trying to move at all with a huge log chain tying it to a tree (GOP opposition).
Yes, the car capable if ALLOWED TO DO SO.
-Darkelf
I'm no defender of MS, but it has started open sourcing number of new projects. Not Office, but certainly new stuff.
Not sure why, since he grew up wealthy and used his mom's connections to get an in with IBM and his dad's advice to take advantage of it, but go figure.
Gates was selling microcomputer BASIC to Fortune 500 clients in the mid seventies. Microsoft ultimately developed a full suite of languages for CP/M ---- and MBASIC in its many incarnations defines the eight bit era. Gates didn't go to the IBM PC team. the IBM PC team came to him. The IBM PC was going to be a 16-bit CP/M or CP/M clone, of that there was never any doubt.
So you agree then that the ACA was a crony capitalist handout to big corporations. That's not the fault of Republicans, nor is it the fault of big corporations. It was the job of Democrats and Obama to represent the interests of the people and do what is right and they both failed miserably.
Most of those supposed accomplishments are figments of your imagination.
You know, I come from a fairly poor family and grew up under both democratic socialism and Eastern European socialism. The idea that any form of socialism "helps" anybody other than a privileged intelligentsia is laughable.
Indeed, just like music critics rarely are good performers.
Don't worry "mate", your superior culture will vote itself the next strong, smart leader into power yet, just like Germany and Italy did a century ago; it's what superior cultures do. And I know you will love it, given your evident preference for much of the 25 Point Program and eugenics (Idiocracy). Have you ever wondered what had happened to Europe by 2506, by the way?
We in the US will muddle through with our Camachos and do just fine. Don't you worry your pretty little head about us.
The GOP was indeed opposed to the ACA, but how did that opposition affect the ACA? The ACA was designed and passed by Obama and the Democrats without any GOP votes.
Yes, that's roughly what the ACA designers said. Specifically, they knew that the ACA itself was just a first step, and they believed they could make it work sooner or later if they were just allowed to tinker with new regulations, mandates, laws, and subsidies. But that's not what they promised publicly and it was a foolish bet to make.
More importantly, it wasn't going to work. The ACA ended up handing out massive amounts of money to special interest groups important to Democrats without addressing all the really hard problems of health care reform: cost controls, coverage limits, and an end to the socialization of risk.
Yeah, that's a lot of exclusive group self-focus. I'm more of an "everyone matters" sort of guy. So when groups start making everything about themselves, then it's time to tune them out (at best).
Lives matter because humanity matters, not because race does.
I couldn't care less about your movement's self-inflicted wounds, at worst they're just enjoyable cringe.
I'm just pointing out that if your response to someone stating that they "value all lives" is a rant full of hysterical accusations of racism, the ensuing PR disaster is one of your own making. Best of luck with that.
1. You say "black lives matter".
2. They say "yes, all lives matter" as a way of agreeing with you, explaining why they agree with you, and being as philosophically universal as possible.
3. You get mad.
And they're the one that's tone deaf?
You realize that up until the BLM phrase went viral "all lives matter" would have been about the most bland and inoffensive pro-equity statement anyone could have made? That you're demanding exclusive focus on your pet racism problem at the expense of all others, including making progress against racism in general? That somehow you've convinced yourself that you (and/or a group that you empathize with) are the only people in pain? Really?
I try not to reply to anonymous, but this is too important a point.
Point #1: I agree that there is an apparent trend between our economy's strength and incumbent re-election. However, that doesn't make the association an accurate one.
Point #2: I couldn't care less who gets credit. I care that the country is headed in the right direction. The way our elected officials are behaving does not make me think that at all. I want decisions made at the highest levels based on facts, or good-faith beliefs, and compromises where it's needed. None of that is happening.
Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but what ever happened to, "if you can't say something nice, then don't say anything at all?" It's pretty low to trash talk someone who's not there to defend themselves.
As for not knowing about HPV, give me a break, President Trump is over 70 years old. People didn't really talk about HPV before what, 2000? Prior to that most people called it genital warts and men generally don't know what a pap smear is or what it's for.
The answer is: Woodrow Wilson.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock