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Senators Demand Google Hand Over Internal Memo Urging Google+ Cover-up (zdnet.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Three Republican senators have sent a letter to Google demanding the company hand over an internal memo based on which Google decided to cover up a Google+ data leak instead of going public as most companies do. The existence of this internal memo came to light on Monday in a Wall Street Journal article that forced Google to go public with details about a Google+ API bug that could have been used to harvest data on Google users.
According to the report, the internal memo, signed by Google's legal and policy staff, advised Google top execs not to disclose the existence of the API bug fearing "immediate regulatory interest." Google's legal staff also feared that the bug would bring Google "into the spotlight alongside or even instead of Facebook despite having stayed under the radar throughout the Cambridge Analytica scandal," and would "almost [guarantee] Sundar will testify before Congress," akin to Facebook's CEO. In a letter sent today to Google, three GOP senators want to see this internal memo for themselves by October 30, and also with on-the-record answers to seven questions in regards to what, why, and how Google handled the Google+ API data leak.
According to the report, the internal memo, signed by Google's legal and policy staff, advised Google top execs not to disclose the existence of the API bug fearing "immediate regulatory interest." Google's legal staff also feared that the bug would bring Google "into the spotlight alongside or even instead of Facebook despite having stayed under the radar throughout the Cambridge Analytica scandal," and would "almost [guarantee] Sundar will testify before Congress," akin to Facebook's CEO. In a letter sent today to Google, three GOP senators want to see this internal memo for themselves by October 30, and also with on-the-record answers to seven questions in regards to what, why, and how Google handled the Google+ API data leak.
We're Google. We don't care. We don't have to.
The existence of a memo suggesting you hide something to avoid regulatory oversight is a sure way to get some (deserved) regulatory oversight.
This was self-serving, and I'm glad to see it's backfiring on them.
Google is long passed the point of being given the benefit of the doubt for having good intentions.
Using your logic, the 97 senators (47 Democrats and 48 Republicans) who didn't send this letter to Google are okay with Google fucking everyone. That means the Republicans are ever so slightly more guilty than the Democrats.
Google's on their team, so who cares if they fuck everyone?
As a centrist can some someone please explain something to me? Not intending this as a wind-up- just something that amuses me and I'm curious to know the answer.
If IT is biased against republicans,
and news media is biased against republicans,
and Hollywood is biased against republicans,
and women are all biased against republicans,
if sports is biased against republicans,
if social media is biased against republicans,
immigrants are biased against republicans,
and recently I'm told industry is biased against republicans...
If the republicans are perpetual victims of such bias from everyone- how do they have the current president and hold both houses? How can you be the "victim party" that faces everyone's bias and be the party in power?
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Let's say they promised to keep your cash safe, then kept the safe unlocked for a couple of months, then realized what's up and locked it before anyone noticed. Are they legally obliged to tell you about it?
So even if they are assholes from moral point of view, legally they may be clean.
If the republicans are perpetual victims of such bias from everyone- how do they have the current president and hold both houses?
In spite of it?
It shows how weak the "Racist, Sexist, Bigot, Homophobic ..." chanting actually is.
It shows how lame the Democrats are. Pelosi is their leader? REALLY?
It shows enough people don't believe the crap they are all are spewing.
Could you imagine what the democrat party would be like without their mouthpieces, stand ins, surrogates and lap dogs spewing daily propaganda?
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
f IT is biased against republicans,
I think the bias you are talking about occurs in coastal states, which are predominantly liberal.
and news media is biased against republicans,
Not all media is biased, there are some main media that offer both sides. Maybe not always, but the effort is there. Also, if a person is smart. They reference multiple sites when getting their information. Both opposed and for any given subject.
and Hollywood is biased against republicans,Again, not all Hollywood. Look up republican actors/actress's.
and women are all biased against republicans
There are women republican senators, governors, congresswomen, business leaders, and just every day American citizens.
if sports is biased against republicans,
Easier just to link on this one: https://www.ranker.com/list/sp...
if social media is biased against republicans,
This one, I actually think is true when it comes to our main stream social media.
immigrants are biased against republicans,
Immigrants, or minorities? Or Naturalized citizen? I don't think all are against republicans.
Anonymous comments are as pathetic as the anonymous "sources" that contaminate gutless journalism from the New York Time
Until they say "Now gimme your private data, or else..."
On the one hand, whoever is in power is automatically hated by whoever is not in power.
On the other hand, there are just as many people biased against democrats as there are people biased against republicans.
On the third hand, people who identify with a group will naturally exaggerate the level of bias that is present against that group.
Google's on their team, so who cares if they fuck everyone?
As a centrist can some someone please explain something to me? Not intending this as a wind-up- just something that amuses me and I'm curious to know the answer.
If IT is biased against republicans,
and news media is biased against republicans,
and Hollywood is biased against republicans,
and women are all biased against republicans,
if sports is biased against republicans,
if social media is biased against republicans,
immigrants are biased against republicans,
and recently I'm told industry is biased against republicans...
If the republicans are perpetual victims of such bias from everyone- how do they have the current president and hold both houses? How can you be the "victim party" that faces everyone's bias and be the party in power?
Well, Democrats do stupid shit like running a corrupt, unlikable harpy wife of an ex-President for President simply because "it's her turn".
Not all media is biased, there are some main media that offer both sides.
No, all media is biased. It's just that not all media is biased in the same way. Some media may be less biased than others, but none are perfectly objective. If you think that as long as "both sides" of the issue are presented it must mean the media is unbiased, you've fallen into one hell of a trap. There's an entire world of possibility outside of "both sides" of issue. You can sample "both sides" of the same turd, but you're eating shit either way.
People still send memos? I don't think I've sent a memo since 1995.
-- Thou hast strayed far from the path of the Avatar.
LOL
Because optics and reality don't matter to people who, literally, are trying and likely succeeding, in subjugating people and corporations they deem targets, so they can remain in power.
Did they stomp their foot and stick out their bottom lip while making this "demand?" Google has gotten away with shit for years, any posturing by the government is just that, posturing.
Not all media is biased, there are some main media that offer both sides.
No, all media is biased. It's just that not all media is biased in the same way. Some media may be less biased than others, but none are perfectly objective. If you think that as long as "both sides" of the issue are presented it must mean the media is unbiased, you've fallen into one hell of a trap. There's an entire world of possibility outside of "both sides" of issue. You can sample "both sides" of the same turd, but you're eating shit either way.
The biggest problem with attempting to be even-handed is that you full into the trap of lending credence to arguments that are not worth listening to simply because they are built on a house of falsehoods. And yet ignoring falsehoods creates a trap where one side believes that the only reason why those arguments aren't being aired is due to biased media.
On the one hand, whoever is in power is automatically hated by whoever is not in power.
On the other hand, there are just as many people biased against democrats as there are people biased against republicans.
On the third hand, people who identify with a group will naturally exaggerate the level of bias that is present against that group.
I do think those are all 3 very accurate points. It's easier to make fun of and dislike the guy in power. You can't blame your problems on someone who isn't in power.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Well obviously because the Republicans have more money being the greedy capitalists that they are. They've bribed they're weasel asses into every facet of government. Money is power my friend. Simple as that... Not that the Democrats are "poor" but significantly less money gets spent trying to push them into power since they usually aren't the best friends of big business.
Because it fits the narrative of people who want to believe it, and as such plays to their own sense of victimisation as poor, downtrodden white people besieged by everyone else and being denied their rightful place in charge.
As long as the base roars with applause, the rest is irrelevant. As, apparently, are facts when people fact check El Cheeto -- people who won't accept that most of what Trump says is factually inaccurate don't care about such things as reality.
Not even 30 years ago modern Republicans would be treated as the lunatic fringe, these days, that lunatic fringe is going mainstream.
As a liberal who refers to myself as a centrist to try to bolster my credibility can some someone please explain something to me?
FTFY.
Because they're full of shite, that's how.
Honestly, as (what I consider to be) a moderate/centrist who has left leanings socially and slightly right leanings fiscally, I think Google needs to tell them to go get bent. I think FB should have too.
Don't get me wrong, I don't think these companies should have lax security, and I certainly don't think that they should play cavalier with people's data.
That being said, they aren't regulated. There's no law saying a social media company has to protect your data like there is for Banks or health care providers.
Out of all the things Republicans like to spout off that should be 'handled by the free market' and 'government shouldn't be involved in', this is a much better example. FB doesn't protect your data, that you are not forced to provide or post (as you're not required to use FB at all) and you do so willingly, and lets it leak? Simple solution: stop using FB. Find other methods of connecting with friends and family. Call. Text. Email. Write. Go see them. Same thing for Twitter. Same thing for Google+. Same thing for any other social media platform. It's not like the world is lacking in ways to connect with others.
This is the very definition of a free market problem.
Given all this, my response to these senators would be that I have broken no laws or regulations, and unless they are going to allege that I have, they have no legal grounds to demand anything of me. My business is private enterprise, my internal communications are privileged and private until court ordered otherwise, and I have no intention of responding to their questions.
My personal opinion is that people need to recognize that not all technological advances are a good thing, and realize that these social media platforms do not exist to make our lives better, they exist only to enrich someone else by data mining our lives, and to stop using them.
I don't use FB, or twitter, or Google+. Never had a myspace account either. I'm doing just fine connecting with my family and friends outside these platforms. I'm not going to fall prey to this new fad of narcissism where people start feeling like every mundane thing in their lives and thought in their head is important enough to blast out to the world online.
This is all optics in the government's current pursuit of the pockets of the big IT corporations.
Approximately 430 people had access to the API. Google knows who those people are.
This API was for Google+. Despite reporting that glosses over the fact. Google+ is an unused wasteland where social media accounts go to die.
There is no proof, in fact not even a suggestion, that this bug was known in the wild. They've not found it on the usual suspect web pages where information like this is sold.
There is no log or data (according to Google) that it was ever exploited.
This news-event is entirely artificial and is being used to build a case. The motivation here is not to fix a problem, it's to create a bigger problem/outcry/outrage so that something else happens. It's unfortunate that the Slashdot contributors can't recognize a tempest in a teapot.
Google is a company with lawyers. Because companies are "people", then the company has client-lawyer privacy rights.
The "memo" was from the legal team.
Next some Senators will try to get the Google BoD's wives to testify against them.
This is a political witch hunt. I've **never** voted FOR a democrat in my life, but it is pretty clear what this is.
An API that may have leaked data isn't the same as a leak. Internal googlers found it, not some external security team, so even in the uncovering of the issue, there wasn't a leak.
It isn't like the available data contained classified materials which were stored and transmitted over non-classified networks and systems. That is and always has been illegal. Everyone with a clearance knows that.
Google didn't break any laws and wasn't required by any laws, even that EU thing, to notify anyone of anything.
Also, I'm no fan of google or most cloudy services. We self-host everything.
In my experience those who are always the victim are the ones in the wrong.
So I guess if donnie and mellypoo feel abused and beat up maybe they should stop doing wrong, along with the rest of the GOP and the few dems who play the victim.
Not even a Democrat/Republican thing as I see this behavior in myself as well, and it'd be interesting to know what the underlying cause is.
Expect the Dems to get slaughtered as usual in a month. Young people generally don't vote in midterms while older people do because they know it's their civic duty. Also the conservatives are fired up about what the Dems tried to do with Brett and it was unfair. He's an all-American classy guy who deserved to be on the SC and you guys tried to fuck him and his family. And there's hell to pay. If there's one thing that us conservatives know how to do is seek payback and we will at the voting booth. Mark my words. The Dems won't even get the House. We will also get more Senate seats and then be able to overturn Obamacare finally.
This. The problem with the media is that they have no teeth, mainly because they don't pay well enough to hire the best and brightest, so most people who would be really good at journalism don't go into that field, and a lot of people who aren't very good do.
It used to be the case that when a politician told something that was factually a lie, the journalists knew that it was a lie, and called them on it. These days, they just let them spew lies, in the name of "balance". That's not journalism at that point. That isn't being unbiased.
The truth is that the U.S. media has a strong right-wing bias on the whole, despite the individuals tending to be left-wing biased. Why? Because statistically, the right lies a *lot* more often than the left, which means on the whole, the media is being a mouthpiece for the right wing's untruths far more often than the left wing. Hence, the U.S. media is strongly right-biased, on average.
Want to have an unbiased media? Insist that every journalist do fact checking on every story, and when politicians lie, call them on it immediately. Insist on live fact checking during every talking head session, and come back and interrupt the talking heads when they are determined to have lied. Do this every single time. The only way we can have unbiased reporting is by teaching the politicians that lies have no place in political discourse. As long as there is no penalty for lying, they'll keep doing it (and more frequently on the right), so the media will continue to be right-biased.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
You hear it again and again, so you integrate with it. It's fear, uncertainty, insecurity.
You have to figure out what you believe the world should be, not what in the world is scary and wrong. You can't be against things; you have to be for things.
If you're against something, it's because it's threatening. If your only answer is that it should stop, or that you should fight it, then you're going to be running around frightened and angry all the time, seeing demons in the shadows.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
Google's on their team, so who cares if they fuck everyone?
As a centrist can some someone please explain something to me? Not intending this as a wind-up- just something that amuses me and I'm curious to know the answer.
If IT is biased against republicans,
and news media is biased against republicans,
and Hollywood is biased against republicans,
and women are all biased against republicans,
if sports is biased against republicans,
if social media is biased against republicans,
immigrants are biased against republicans,
and recently I'm told industry is biased against republicans...
If the republicans are perpetual victims of such bias from everyone- how do they have the current president and hold both houses? How can you be the "victim party" that faces everyone's bias and be the party in power?
Because voters aren't biased against republicans. I'm middle of the road, slightly right, and I can hear the left-leaning bias in NPR clear as a bell. I can also hear the right leaning bias in Fox News. But of the things you mentioned:
IT is biased against republicans,
No, heads of dot-com boom California companies are biased against republicans, and promote management and policies with their political prejudices in mind.
and news media is biased against republicans,
Most, yes. Blatently so. Even to the point of fabricating evidence for stories and having bullpen meetings about spin and narrative.
and Hollywood is biased against republicans,
Um, duh. Outspokenly so. Some actors and comedians have threatened to kill R presidents in the past and have been given passes for their behavior. If someone comes out as R in Hollywood, their career suffers immensely. Hollywood spawned from corruption, so they know which side of the bread to butter.
and women are all biased against republicans,
No one says this. Women are a strong portion of the conservative base, whether R or L.
if sports is biased against republicans,
Not really, and I don't know anyone who says sports are.
if social media is biased against republicans,
The companies themselves, and their founders? No doubt. See "dot-com boom California companies" above
immigrants are biased against republicans,
No. Democrats would love to think they are, but most Legal immigrants side with conservative issues, especially with regard to illegal immigration.
and recently I'm told industry is biased against republicans..
Huh?
Whenever I hear this assertion, I always want to know, which do you believe are the unbiased media? Give us names, please. Tell us so we too can partake of the Solomonic wisdom of these unbaised sources.
My guess is that your list of unbiased media would simply reflect your own bias.
You are welcome on my lawn.
How can you be the "victim party" that faces everyone's bias and be the party in power?
Gerrymandering.
How the GOP Rigs Elections
Republican Ruthlessness and Democratic Ineptitude Got Us Here
Five myths about gerrymandering
How Michigan is an extreme example of gerrymandering
Supreme Court favors Republicans in gerrymandering cases
N.C. has the worst gerrymander in US history. What else is new?
The Atlas Of Redistricting
Sure you can. Immigrants, poor, minorities, sick, disabled all get a lot of blame.
I don't know about you guys, but I totally trust the Senate to investigate google in an ethical and unbiased way and not try to use this to gain political advantage or punish perceived enemies.
You are welcome on my lawn.
If the republicans are perpetual victims of such bias from everyone- how do they have the current president and hold both houses?
American's are individualist contrarians. They frequently do things simply because the EU tells them they shouldn't.
Further, people do see the difference between their reality and the views espoused by the people on your list. Greater the disconnect, greater the number of people voting Republican.
Here's an observational science experiment we can do right now. Is there a significant bias against Republicans right now? By your post, the news, comedy shows, just about by any measure the answer is yes. Yet there is a disconnect between what those influencers tell us and what reality is. If my hypothesis is right, the Republicans will win the midterms by keeping control of congress.
The elite, wage-slave aristocracy everywhere leans Democrat. It's that simple.
Spend $200,000 on your tuition at an elite university, you're pretty much guaranteed (trust us) a highly compensated job in a city with a very high cost of living (such as New York, where you make nowhere near enough to command a spacious appartment—one not situated at the distal terminus of the Origami subway line—but plenty enough to pay the hand-to-mouth legions of the service industry to cook your food for you; and even service your debt a tiny bit, too, at the end of the month).
Where are these jobs? In the knowledge economy. Such as journalism. Or anywhere that knowledge and literacy are thick on the ground. The knowledge economy always concentrates in large cities, and generally coastal cities, because the billionaires of the knowledge economy do so love their secluded, clifftop beach homes (like hell your head office winds up in Cleveland, unless you sell some kind of weed killer).
Often these jobs have a fair amount of clout, and with enough staying power, some percentage graduate from wage-slave circumstances. But not for a long time, and always in minority terms.
The wage-slave aristocracy is a strange power base. For one thing, it's debt financed. Back when junk bonds were all the rage, debt-financed corporations were also a strange power base. Real corporations glanced at them sideways.
One thing this group has in common is that they all been sufficiently trained not to automatically believe whatever they read (just because it's got an Apple Pie masthead). So this group is a constant sticking point in political discourse. And you can't simply ignore them, because they're so deeply embedded in the white-collar corporate machinery that makes the world go around on a daily basis.
So if you can't bluster effectively with seven-word talking points, and you can't ignore an audience with enough aggregate power to tilt the landscape, you have to treat them like a cancer, with a daily chemotherapy regime of "fake news!"
Journalists will always hate this shit, because any significant job in journalism (below the Murdoch C-suite) is typically held by a wage-slave aristocrat.
Jon Stewart completely nailed the fifth estate in his altercation with Chris Wallace when he described the flaws of journalism as tilting toward the lazy and the sensational.
We all pander to what pays the bills. Especially after forking $200,000 to your alma mater.
Analyzing 100,000 documents to write a 14,000 word piece on how the Trump family evaded $400 million in taxes (by more separate ruses than you can count) was definitely not lazy. So maybe you have to lard up half the rest of the publication with celebrity click bait (People lite) in order to retain a viable readership. Humans are stupid, myopic animals most of the time. There's nothing here that "biased" against Republicans. It's a fundamental, predictable difference of opinion about how the world works.
The Republicans believe you can fashion curt language which unifies their ridiculously broad tent: the plutocrats and the evangelicals. The wage-slave aristocracy doesn't think those two flavours go together like chocolate and peanut butter. (And they never will.) As soon as you write more than 300 words, any superficial, Frank Luntz alignment between the interests of the plutocrats and the evangelicals start to look parlous. The wage-slave aristocracy has a 300-word attention span (many of us have a 3000-word attention span, and some of us only drummed our fingers impatiently once or twice during that entire 14,000-word expose).
Literacy: the ability to unpack hollow slogans.
Most people settle for the owner's manual (Trump's twitter feed). But I've read the source code, in so far as the source code can be obtained. Probably on the order of five 2000-word articles per day for two ye
Non-disclosure of possible data breaches falls into the arena of SEC disclosure regulations. It's up to them to figure out if Google ran afoul of regulations or not.
Weird how that works, right? That being said, I've personally found that while NPR (and my local, MPR) are generally left leaning, they aren't as "in your face" with their bias as the MSNBCs and Fox News of the world. But I tend to lean slightly left of center, so that's likely why that source appeals to me.
So Republicans likely to take the Senate, where Gerrymandering can't be done.
DNC likely to take the House, where Gerrymandering does matter.
Reason? The GOP cheats by Gerrymandering.
Makes sense.
Your sources are all well known fake news outlets. Some of them losing multi million dollar lawsuits recently because of Fake News stories they ran.
Breaking and entering to get dirt on your political rival. And no, "everybody did it" is not an excuse. Nixon had a pretty crazy disregard for the rule of law, going so far as to kick off the Drug War in order to crack down on the left wing because he knew they smoked pot. That's not a conspiracy theory, his own people came out later, admitted it and apologized for it.
I'd call this a hit piece except Google gets along just fine with the Republican majority. They supported the last few Supreme Court Nominees (albeit on the sly via various PACs) and were happy to take the tax cut.
What this is really is enemy creation. Racism is winding down as an effective vehicle for making bogymen. But any good ruling class needs a way to divide the working class. Instead of Black/White they're working on Technocrat/Blue Collar as the next point of division.
This is how the Japanese created their divides to keep the working class from organizing, BTW. They declared some professions as "bad" (unclean ones, like butcher and undertaker) and kept books of who was who based on family names. That's how you create classes without racial divides.
What annoys me is we see this pattern over and over again. The Japanese, India Caste systems, American Racial Slavery, hell the Canadians have been caught doing it with Eskimos (South Park made fun of it). You'd think the working class would catch on to the trick and stop being fooled but so far, no dice...
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and it'd be interesting to know what the underlying cause is.
I'm going to guess it has something to do with us being insulated from how truly shitty of a life some people in this world have. The threshold for having a "shitty day" for most people in the US is generally somewhere between "stuck in traffic" and "lost my job", not "I haven't eaten this week".
"The biggest problem with attempting to be even-handed is that you full into the trap of lending credence to arguments that are not worth listening to simply because they are built on a house of falsehoods. And yet ignoring falsehoods creates a trap where one side believes that the only reason why those arguments aren't being aired is due to biased media."
You got it pretty much wrong and here is why.
It is a fallacy to assume that being even-handed is the same as "lending credence" or "falling into a trap" and pretty much colors you as an oppressive person unwilling to listen to others. Meeting with people you disagree with is not some ridiculous approval of who or what they are. I remember republicans pulling this baloney on foreign leaders and the democrats "correctly" calling the idea out. Now I see the roles reversing where democrats are now supporting the idea of doing the same in vain attempts to silence people they hate. Hint, it does not work, I didn't work and R's did it and it will work just as well for the D's as they start to do it.
Ignoring falsehoods also does not specifically or necessarily create a trap to color anyone's bias either, it can do that, but it is hardly a majority reason for it either. You can air them all day long and people will still feel that bias because they are being distorted, which is common on both sides of the isle and to very hypocritical degrees.
In short, there are multiple reasons for why people become biased and feel biased against. But there is always one universal truth that has stood the test of time. You either let people air their grievances in the warm open light of day, or they sharpen their axes in the cold closed in darkness until there are enough of them that you no long have the "luxury" of ignoring them. You will always alienate people by trying to shut down their voices until you have added enough enemies to your list you no longer have any friends and down you fall!
Thanks Ivan, you vodka swilling bear fucker. Always appreciate your insightful BS.
I believe that a failure to point out falsehoods and show them for what they are lends far more credence to them than they might gain from the additional attention. If attempts to point out the folly in something are only helping it, that would seem to suggest the arguments aren't as good as the people making them would like to think they are, or that the people making those arguments are incapable of conveying their message effectively.
If something rests on a whole mountain of falsehoods, it's even easier to topple because there's maybe only perhaps the smallest grain of truth remaining if there is any at all. If other people want to continue spouting those falsehoods after they've been pointed out as false, you've done your part. You might not convince everyone to shun those beliefs or the people to disseminate them, but even one person is better than none. Nothing false can benefit from prolonged exposure to the light of truth. To suggest otherwise would imply that you can somehow hoodwink reality to behave in accordance with the falsehood. It's far better to drag it out and hold it up to face reality instead of leaving it in the dark where misinformation seems to grow unbounded.
I'm in IT, for 25 years now. BS and MS in computer science. I support Trump and have from the beginning.
Centrist here as well, though very slightly right and south of center.
Just because bias is present and on open display does not mean it will be successful. Additionally since America is not a Democracy despite mass confusion is it impossible for the Majority to always get their candidates into power. Which is why Hillary lost and Trump won.
And if you word it like "Victim Party" I would be tempted to call into question your actual "centrist" claims.
The words "Victim Party" is a claim often lobed at Democrats not Republicans because they are accused of attracting votes by offering sympathy for people that feel like victims and propping up their victim hood.
Damn it Google. Instead of having a bug in your code, you should have just sexually assaulted someone instead
If the republicans are perpetual victims of such bias from everyone- how do they have the current president and hold both houses?
Republicans don't see themselves as perpetual victims, but they acknowledge that there are particular organizations that are biased against them and between the two? You bet. There's *a lot* of money at stake, and the democrats/progressives and in general most of the left are pro-globalization/demolishing western culture/etc and this directly aligns with progressive agenda 'we can change the world because reasons.' Note that here in the west the left have had a monopoly on media and education for the better part of 40 years. I use "the left" in a broad term in this case, but you can round it out from environmentalism shifting to hyper-environmentalism that humans need to die. To higher education moving from that into a diploma mill situation where the shittiest courses(gender studies and the ilk of shitty humanities courses), are mandatory or you can't graduate or even pass the first year and teaching that republicans/conservatives/libertarians are evil/wrong/degenerates or whatever else. Or that "speech is dangerous" or "speech is violence" that are commonly used by progressives and the left, you can round it out with the blanket uses of racist, sexist, misogynist, rapist, and nazi if you're feeling ambitious.
Now you ask how can they hold both houses and the president. That one is far easier, because the rest of society has had enough of the politically correct, don't say mean words, if you say the wrong thing we'll ruin your life, we need to pander to special interests that amount to 0.02% of the population, we can find the money for illegals/foreign country/some special cause - but we can't find the $1.17/mo for people on social assistance, or disability, the person waiting 18 months for cataract surgery(to use an example from here in Ontario), fuck you and your "but I just want a nice blue collar job" you're gonna work 3 jobs in the service industry and like it pleb, "culture - lol? diversity is our strength, you don't have a culture" "we need to import more people from the 3rd world, oh and raise your taxes to do it" bullshit that's been building up over the last ~15-20ish years or so. This isn't unique to the US either, over the last couple of years here in Canada the same thing has happened.
How can you be the "victim party" that faces everyone's bias and be the party in power?
See this is the part where it diverges, this isn't a republican issue. It's a people who don't buy into the identity politics and who is or isn't pushing it, you've seen it already. ~30-40 years ago? You betcha that conservatives were doing the same. But now we've got the groups who blame men for whatever reasons, they're the fault of all of societies ills, push all men are rapists/abusers/etc. Tell whites or asians that they're privileged, so they don't deserve the spot in university/job openings for only particular groups of people. It has to go to the person who's 'getting their scores adjusted' because they couldn't cut it otherwise. That *insert minority/trendy sexual identity/etc* should have the job because *random diversity reason here* and not the best person for the job. A decade ago everyone had pretty much bought into it? Oh you bet their ass they did, it was trendy hot shit. Everyone bought into the "we need to help people" well helping is good and believed that it was a case of "this person didn't have the resources, so lets help them out." It turns out that people have problems when the unqualified or diversity pick gets pushed through a head of them though because it simply "looks good for social capital."
But, now the interesting part. Look at the media, entertainment rags, and whatever else for the last couple of days over Kanye West. What do we have left-leaningm progressives, their pundits and democrats saying? He's a house negro, dumb, token, white supremacist, minstrel(aka puppet). That
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You can't have unbiased media, the idea is a sign of ignorance. In fact the pursuit of it creates an even more false narrative.
Let's analyze your bias. You think the media is right... this means you are likely "extreme left" because to a person at the fringe sees even light handed leftist as being right.
I see see the media as majority Left for most of world TV, I view Fox and very few others as being Right, and most of Radio in the US seems Right to me as well. This means I am likely more right than left since I do see more left bias out there but since I see some balance between them I have a chance of being centrist also.
Your claims about which side is lying more... well do you have the numbers? I have seen so many lies on both sides that the only thing I can tell you is this. Both lie so much that it is not even possible to call out which side lies more and any attempt to do so is tantamount to admitting ignorance and bias.
The problem is so bad that in my opinion, trying to keep to either of these parties indicates that you mean to support the lies you like and only complain about the lies you hate. And if you are okay with your side lying because it advances the agenda then you lose any moral right to complain about the other side lying.
And if you don't think that your side is lying to this degree, then you are indoctrinated to the point that you are not likely able to be reasoned with. The only chance of you seeing the lies of your party will only be when you "personally" face the fallout of such lies in your everyday life in a way that it forces you to face reality. And I say chance of that because there are lots of people suffering under the ideas of the people they elected into office but still support those that have harmed them as they say... maybe we will do better next time as they keep taking campaign donations from places you sometimes know and most times don't.
How can you be the "victim party" that faces everyone's bias and be the party in power?
Because democratic corruption goes without mentioning. Talking about it would just be redundant. If the liberals want a voice they will have to go out on their own instead of riding on the weaselly "centrist's" coattails.
You're off by a mile. I'm socially liberal, fiscally conservative. But by conservative, I mean actual conservative, not the spend-lavishly-and-raise-the-deficit faux conservatism that most Republicans espouse these days.
Fox and talk radio are not right-biased. They are Republican-biased. There's actually a big difference. Many positions held by much of the Republican party are arguably farther left than the Democrats. The so-called right-wing media doesn't seem to notice.
There have been a number of folks who have done the analyses. A quick Google search will turn them up. And the degree to which the right wing's lies are flagrant is also much higher. The Democrats tend to make stupid, minor mistakes that don't really significantly change the validity their main point, while the Republicans tend to build their entire case for certain issues upon lies, to the point that if you could somehow manage to convince the public that the lies are, in fact lies, their entire position on those issues would completely fall apart. They quite literally depend upon their lies getting repeated over and over until people believe them. Without that, they would have to correct some of their more egregiously flawed positions just to get elected, and might even get back to being an actual conservative party.
Don't get me wrong, the faux outrage that the Democrats trump up is approximately as annoying as the outright lies from the right. They're all a bunch of sociopathic crooks who would do anything to retain and increase their power, and I pretty much wouldn't hire anyone in Congress to mow my lawn. But that doesn't change my opinion of the flaccid news media, who wouldn't know how to properly report if Edward R. Murrow bit them in the a**.
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Ap News, Reuters, Washington Post(they offer truth, but hate Trump), CNN, cbsnews, abcnews, usatoday, la times.
I am conservative, and find I find something of reference in all those sites. I hate California, but I do respect LA Times. Even when I disagree with them. They were just purchased, and the California Liberals hate the.
The only completly unbiased source I can think of is CSR reports prepared for congress. These can be found on FAS.org. No paywall.
Anonymous comments are as pathetic as the anonymous "sources" that contaminate gutless journalism from the New York Time
that was some grade A trolling there. If you could have resisted the temptation and skipped the insult at the end you mighta got modded up.
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You people are delusional.
That's the republican scapegoat when their PARTY IS IN POWER.
We talking about trump or Hillary? Cuz both are corrupt. You just picked a corrupt guy over the corrupt female. No difference.
3 republicans out of how many?
Besides you guys have the majority.
I believe you meant "the gripping hand"...
Go read all the stuff you typed. You aren't middle of the road slightly right. You're a 100% MAGAtard. You just want to seem reasonable for argument's sake, yet you still toe the party line. Pitiful really.
I don't know what it is, but maybe others can comment. When you have two corrupt individuals and one (Trump) of them is forthcoming about their behavior while the other acts extremely artificial and pretends she's a goody two shoes, people tend to gravitate toward the former. Trump just seemed so much less toxic to me and others.
Can someone please tell me what the fuck a memo is in 2018? A memo was from the days when people had inboxes and outboxes on their desks and your secretary typed it for you.
Is it an email?
You're a jap chank in a land of Whites who hates diversity and to top it off, you're a goddamned Canuk. Your opinions for America don't matter. Does the nagger get a say at the klan meetings now?
Get THE FUCK outta here.
While I think there is some truth to what you say, I do think the right often resorts to a false equivalence. It might be easy to find some hyper-environmentalists and trot them out, but it doesn't mean they own the mind share of the left. It's also easy to find a group of crazy teachers and students at various universities, but again, this is only a small fraction of the left. However, if you look at the surveys, large portions of the right wing believe crazy/bad/wrong things. For example, InfoWars gets lots of viewers and was even endorsed by Trump. I'm sure some people just watch for entertainment value, but they are very profitable selling their snake oil, so there are probably a lot of true believers.
Chris Mesterharm
Had an external law firm written the memo, it would have been privileged and Google could not even have been obliged by a court to provide it.
The "angry unhinged mob" was media's go to talking point all day yesterday. Here you are today parroting that same bullshit narrative.
And yet...
you have no idea why people on this site don't like you
you have no idea why they call you a liar
you have no idea why you're accused of shilling
you have no idea why you're told you're a partisan hack
Fuck off.
Your comments about how Americans feel everyone is out to get them are interesting. As a Canadian, I can see this first hand. The United States has one of the best neighbors in the world in Canada, but it's now alienating that neighbor by imposing import tariffs against Canada on the grounds of "national security".
It is simply absurd to consider Canada as a national security threat to the United States. Such is the political climate in the United States, though.
There are lots of jokes out there regarding how Canada wants more respect from the United States. But, honestly, it makes a lot of sense. If the lack of understanding of their closest neighbor can lead to protectionist policies that create long lasting divides, what can the USA expect from the rest of the world?
and women are all biased against republicans
(emphasis mine)
This tells me you're not a centrist, or if you were, it's irrelevant, you hate Trump. People either hate Trump or they don't, in which case they love him or are OK with him. That applies to everything associated with Trump: if you hate Trump you hate today's Republicans, you hate Fox, you hate Kavanaugh and so on.
When people hate Trump their emotions interfere with their mental processes in a way that makes them unaware of it, like the stuff you wrote about "all" women (other things in there too, like sports, industry, but all women is most telling). These mental slips are a telling sign of hate in people who otherwise try to appear calm and reasoned, and in general people don't like hate, hence the current Republican majority.
Those who love Trump may also be subject to mental distortions, but not too many people love Trump in the intensity that the large minority hates him. (And love trumps hate anyway.)
a better question would be... who is left over that isn't biased against them? 5 people? does that mean that there is only 5 republicans?
In Soviet Russia, Bear Fucks You!
At least get your insults right, leftist Nazi.
Wouldn't that be akin to demanding that someone hand over a signed confession or face the consequences? Since it was specified what the memo should contain and who should have signed the document. An investigation is fine, but this strikes me as an illegal demand to manipulate the optics of the situation if and when Google refuses such a demand.
Are there any /. lawyers left who can clarify this?
Would it surprise you to learn that all of the outlets you mention, including the WashPo and CNN, present mainly a center-right point of view? When there is a war to be had, they will all support the war, even if it's plainly foreign interventionism and "nation-building". They all support the surveillance state and will gladly post far-right claims without fact-checking. We had some rather amazing evidence of that just this week when USA Today posted an op-ed, without comment, by Donald Trump, that was so full of untruths and fantasy that they eventually had to be shamed into recognizing the lies. But by then, they had dutifully posted each false statement individually across social media (again, without any context or indication that the statements were total fabrications. When USA Today finally ran a fact-check on Trump's op-ed, it took over five times as many words as the op-ed just to unpack the lies and refute them. That's how densely-packed with horseshit his editorial was. The problem is not that the op-ed was published without comment and eventually debunked, but that it took a days-long outcry for USA Today to do what journalists are supposed to do in the first place. What you have are not unbiased media, but media that are biased toward power. And that's the most dangerous bias of all.
https://www.commondreams.org/n...
You are welcome on my lawn.
And yet, as a society we feel like the rest of the world is out to get us. Or is cheating us our of our fair share in some way, even though demonstrably we have way more than our 'fair share'.
Because Americans are too easily fooled by what they see from the media.
I lived in America for a few years, and the blatantly obvious opinion manipulation in the news was appalling, yet I see Americans around me swallowed them hook, line and sinker.
Americans give paper IOU (which you can print as many as you wanted for free) and other countries send you materials and goods, and you call that "cheating you out of your fair share"?
If you believe that, you should try it with your neighbors, have them give you paper IOU they wrote themselves, while you give stuff from your home to them. See how they felt being cheated.
To be fair, the US government demonizes their fellow countrymen too. (See the earlier post by rsilvergun.) It's always been a case of religious oppressors, witches, British soldiers, native Americans, freed slaves, communists, hippies, unionists, drug users, 'serious' criminals, terrorists, Islamic fundamentalists, music pirates, prostitutes are plotting to destroy the USA from within and the best policy for vengeance and protection is, 'might is right'.
As individuals, Americans demand protection from socialism and 'big government' too. The former makes voters easy to manipulate and corporations the true rulers of the country. The latter drives fake news and a political party that will save everyone from 'government' by becoming government; such hypocrisy.
The USA was founded on the MeToo ideology and it's visible when the rich or ruling class is threatened. They bleat propaganda claiming the working class needs them: For instance, the delusion that rich people create jobs, so give them more money and more opportunity to take whatever they like. (Created by the Laffer Curve and supply-side economics, Ronald Reagan, the Republican party, fake news.) The same ideology in the hands of working class occasionally becomes a cause like tea-bag republicanism, militant feminism, anti-fa, or neo-nazism. Most times it becomes "fuck you, I've got mine".
Because the 'best person' for the job is the person Exactly like me. That mindset leaves discrimination and elitism in place. Yes, forcing people to choose the disadvantaged was a problem, but a small one because no business depends on employees having a WASP-lifestyle.
see here. And I doubt it went away in the 90s, but like how the US passed laws to stop racial profiling in loan applications the Japanese gov't appears to have cracked down on this particular form of discrimination.
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Google's on their team, so who cares if they fuck everyone?
As a centrist can some someone please explain something to me? Not intending this as a wind-up- just something that amuses me and I'm curious to know the answer.
If IT is biased against republicans,
and news media is biased against republicans,
and Hollywood is biased against republicans,
and women are all biased against republicans,
if sports is biased against republicans,
if social media is biased against republicans,
immigrants are biased against republicans,
and recently I'm told industry is biased against republicans...
If the republicans are perpetual victims of such bias from everyone- how do they have the current president and hold both houses? How can you be the "victim party" that faces everyone's bias and be the party in power?
It's not just Republicans who are experiencing this bias, it's all sensible people and most of the rest. A tiny minority of crazy social justice activists have managed to gain pervasive power across society. Their tactics are ruthless enough that the majority of the people are too afraid to stand up to them, but voting is anonymous, so they'll fight back there. Underscores why it's central to the health of a democracy that voting is anonymous.
Trump just seemed so much less toxic to me and others.
I'm going to print this out, frame it, and put it in the museum of human stupidity.
Oy vey! It's anudda shoah, I tells ya! Anudda shoah!
It might be easy to find some hyper-environmentalists and trot them out, but it doesn't mean they own the mind share of the left.
Well that's the thing, if I walk through downtown Toronto or San Fran. And pump out "gmo's are poison" or "we need to eliminate half the population to stop climate change" you'll see far more people on the left nodding their head, agreeing or other crap. You've got plenty of people even here on /. that believe that censorship is a good thing, though that's heavily changed over the last 4 years or so. Now it's only the most die hard individuals who support censorship being promoted by the left.
Yeah and the right doesn't have a monopoly on "crazy/bad/wrong" things either, thing is if you've done a political switch like I did oh 20 years ago. You see just how far the left are willing to go to cover up those crazy/bad/wrong things no matter the circumstances. The funny thing with infowars is it's been wrong as much as it's been right, and they have covered things that the mainstream doesn't touch that turn out to be true - and the opposite of course.
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You repubtards are so deep in denial it isn't even funny anymore.
All you do is point fingers and blame people for your own fucking mistakes. I hope the repubtard party dies soon. You guys aren't even remotely able to work with others. You are all selfish pricks who put R before anything else.
So fuck all of the die hard repubtards who out R before anything else. You guys are idiots.
Yes, sure thing. The political capital of the democrats is going so well these days. So very well, wonder how unhinged you'll become if they continue to lose in the house and senate in a few weeks. Though the irony of using repubtards...the party of tolerance and caring on display.
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Because the 'best person' for the job is the person Exactly like me. That mindset leaves discrimination and elitism in place. Yes, forcing people to choose the disadvantaged was a problem, but a small one because no business depends on employees having a WASP-lifestyle.
Really? So why was it that so many tech oriented startups that believed in meritocracy no longer exist. But instead of hiring the best person, they're hiring the 300 lbs, blue haired, snowflake that screeches about microagressions and has never coded a day in their life.
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The threshold for having a "shitty day" for most people in the US is generally somewhere between "stuck in traffic" and "lost my job", not "I haven't eaten this week".
Your argument was almost valid, and then you said "lost my job" vs "I haven't eaten this week".
Yeah, for some people "lost my job" means "end of my life". Can't feed the kids, can't keep a roof over the head, wife leaves you (welfare is FAR more useful if there is no male around).
Your point would have been completely valid had you not used "lost my job" as an example of merely a shitty day in the US. There is a reason why middle aged males have the highest successful suicide rate.
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