but don't mention anything to do with George Soros or middle eastern donations to the Clinton campaign you're playing partisan politics.
So let me get this straight -- what you're saying is that it's nothing more than a partisan attack if allegations about *both* Republicans and Democrats aren't made at the same time, and given equal weight, correct? Because you realize that doesn't make any sense... the allegations here decidedly aren't equivalent, and your attempt to impose some sort of false equivalency between them makes you look rather partisan yourself.
Allegations against George Soros, and other allegations regarding Clinton campaign donations, have definitely come from what I'd consider highly partisan sources, and the allegations themselves appear highly partisan as well. But the current allegations regarding Russian involvement in the November election, specifically in regards to leaked emails from John Podesta and the DNC, are coming from the CIA, a well-funded and highly-regarded government agency, which traditionally has provided useful and non-partisan intelligence to both the executive branch of the U.S. government, as well as to the U.S. Congress. Keep in mind that what the CIA is alleging here is not that Trump or anyone in the Republican party was involved in the release of the emails; the CIA is saying that agents under the ultimate authority of Vladimir Putin removed electronic documents from systems belonging to the Democratic party and the Hillary Clinton campaign, then leaked those documents to the press in an attempt to sway voter oppinion during the election.
Regardless of your party affiliation, if those allegations are true, it's a deeply disturbing situation, and it definitely deserves an official investigation. Today it was the Russians; tomorrow it might be the Chinese, or the North Koreans, or someone else with little love and potentially a lot of hate for America. It's being awfully short-sighted to think that these kinds of shenanigans can't or won't impact Republicans in the future. The opportunities for out-and-out blackmail of political candidates, or extortion, or a whole variety of other nefarious activities are rife. Trump's virtual dismissal of the potential political problems here with foreign actors influencing American elections rings hollow, and I very much hope Republicans will spend a little time working to preserve the democratic process itself, instead of focusing only on the conservative-friendly results of the last election.
How to fail to persuade: "you're just to stupid to understand, but smart people believe X". How to persuade "I understand why you think that way, plenty of smart people would, knowing what you know. Here are some things you don't know, and why they're important".
Interestingly, conservatives seem more likely to use argument #1, whereas liberals prefer argument #2. However, in almost every case I've seen recently, neither style of argument actually persuades anymore, likely because no one is really listening to facts these days.
Sadly, in our current post-truth reality, whoever speaks loudest and most often is the one who wins, and they can lie about anything and everything without consequence.
The solution to this problem is free education and a basic income. We should start with a grant for 60 credit hours of community college and a basic income at 60% the federal poverty level.
I think you're underestimating both the scope and the magnitude of the problem.
First, consider that the problem we're facing here isn't just going to affect only low-skilled workers. Artificial intelligence, automation and robotics will ultimately impact higher-skilled workers too. It's only a question of time. If IBM's Watson can already diagnose illness better than a physician with a decade of college and on-the-job education under their belt, than even doctors have something to worry about. Don't forget that we're at the point now where nearly 1/3 of all Americans already have at least a bachelor's degree. When the economy itself needs fewer and fewer workers to produce more and more goods and services, a few extra free junior college units isn't going to keep average Americans employed.
Finally, the end-game here is all-too obvious; with an increasing population chasing fewer and fewer jobs, a basic income at 60% of the poverty line isn't going to do anything but ensure grinding poverty in the future, likely for decades to come, as the vast majority of Americans will never be able to find work again.
Overall, after careful consideration of the problem, I think this plan sucks. We as a nation ought to be able to do better than that. A handful of the uber-rich presiding over a nation of hundreds of millions of perpetual beggars is what I would consider a nightmare scenario. It does not have to be this way. I pray that we'll find some way to avoid this kind of apocalyptic scenario. I suspect it will require a great deal of out-of-the-box thinking, and we'll likely have to abandon some of our cherished capitalistic principles.
There may be an inflection point when needs required by new technology can be fulfilled by technology itself, or fewer people due to advances in tech. I think we are seeing the latter already, and it will steadily progress to the former. There is no turning back.
Don't be naive! We can absolutely turn back the clock on technological progress if necessary. If technology is driving humanity off a cliff, humans can and should limit technology. To do anything else is foolish and, in a word, insane.
As I see it, human beings are not lemmings. We are not living out our lives solely to implement technological progress. Therefore, we do not need to commit societal suicide because, "Ooohhhhh, shiny!" Technology is useful insomuch as it benefits society. If technology is not useful, or if it's counterproductive, we can most certainly say, "No."
My best guess -- there will be an extended period of whole-hog persecution of Democrats for, well, being Democrats, and Republicans will get a pass from the newly politicized FBI. Afterwards, I expect Republicans will dial it down a bit, lest it become too obvious that they're using law enforcement directly as political tool. If I were a Democrat, I'd plan for two years of sitting around with my thumb up my ass, because at this point I don't believe the Republicans will let Democrats stand in the way of any of the massive number of changes Republicans want to implement A.S.A.P.
However, given the hyper-partisan environment we're in now, I wouldn't want to lay money on which way things will ultimately go. It could be that Republicans find they actually like jailing political opponents, and that authoritarian rule by a single party is just what the doctor ordered. In that case, Americans can likely kiss democracy goodbye. I suspect many Americans, both Republicans and Democrats, would be happy to chuck democracy in the shitter right now, provided of course that their party is the one that retains power afterwards.
Geez people get a grip. It's like half the population of the country is throwing a temper tantrum like a toddler who acts like the world is ending because they can't get the toy they want.
You didn't actually read through any of the data on those sites you linked to, huh? If you had, you might have discovered:
The voting dead turn-out to be just three individuals in Colorado, one of which administrators at the Secretary of State's office admit may have been due to a mistake by an election judge.
The list of 438 voter fraud convictions is across all 50 states, and some of those convictions go back to at least 1982. However, it does include Republican Charlie White, the former Indiana Secretary of State, who was convicted of voter fraud, -- among other crimes -- back in 2012.
Overall, the data you've cited actually supports what most experts are saying regarding voter fraud; not that voter fraud doesn't ever happen, but that it happens so infrequently that it's not affecting the results of elections.
Of course, if you look at the statistics behind recent voter ID laws, you'll see that these laws are aimed squarely at black voters, in an attempt to suppress the black voter in favor of white voters, who are more likely to vote Republican.
You didn't actually read any of those links, did you? If you had, you'd discover that that most of the recent chatter around the #AssassinateTrump hashtag, for example, is comments like this:
Hello @gov @twitter @Support, why are you allowing #AssassinateTrump to trend? Why are you not banning people who use it as a threat?
If you look backwards in time, you'll see that the earlier tweets including the same hashtag seem to have a more humorous than hurtful intent:
If @realDonaldTrump becomes president due to you retards im moving to canada! #sixhereicome #assassinatetrump
Finally, the Twitter user you've linked to, @maymaymx, isn't exactly a bleeding-heart liberal either, as evidenced by the actual contents of his tweets, like this one:
Make Liberals Irelevant Again
...or...
White liberals on Election Night: THIS IS THE END OF THE WOOORRRLLLDD!!! White liberals two days later: Man the anarchists are overreacting.
Perhaps it might be a good time to review your own biases before you start calling-out the folks at Twitter on theirs.
“While we all agree that freedom of speech is important, no one’s speech make it acceptable to break the law by discriminating against prospective customers,” said staff attorney. “No one is asking Twitter’s owner to change their beliefs, but treating political opponents differently because of what they say is discrimination plain and simple.”
By your logic, I should be able to walk into my local McDonald's screaming, "Fuck 'em all, bubba!" over and over again while the staff do nothing, right? After all, asking me to stop screaming obscenities would be interfering with my free speech, wouldn't it?
It's so hard being a Nazi now a days, for some reason everyone seems to think your a vile repugnant monster.
While the left openly make death threats, BLM supporters openly call for 'white genocide' and other supremacist movements like islam and zionism get a pass? They're all equally vile!
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Let's be clear on this -- there is no moral equivalency between far-right hate speech and the political left. It's like claiming Gandhi's philosophy and Hitler's philosophy were one and the same. It's crap. These things are not equally vile. Black Lives Matter has not called for 'white genocide'. Go look at their website if you want to know what they're about, but stop putting false words in their mouths.
Trying to make the case that Black Lives Matter, or Muslims, or Jews are no different than the neo-Nazis, or the Ku Klux Klan or skinheads, is just crazy. It's complete nonsense. Or possibly just makes you a out-and-out liar. I'm not buying that kind of bullshit, and I imagine no one else believes it either.
Unless you're a cake maker...in that case, you can't refuse to make a cake because you disagree with what the customer wants written on it...
But there are some very important differences between posting hate speech on Twitter vs cake making:
Cake making generally occurs as some form of commerce. Over time, we've seen that allowing people to practice commercial discrimination based on factors such as color, race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, etc. typically results in poor outcomes for whomever is in the minority. For example, if I as a towns' one and only grocer refuse to do business with, say, left-handed Englishmen, it makes it difficult to impossible for left-handed Englishmen to live in my community. And once we've decided that it's not OK to discriminate against any particular group, over time it becomes more and more difficult to discriminate against other groups.
And don't forget that hate speech is, well, hate speech. It encourages people to take violent action, which isn't normally a positive or worthwhile trait for most societies. It's still illegal to yell, "Fire!" in a crowded American movie theater, so American society as a whole already agrees that some forms of speech shouldn't be free. Expanding prohibited speech to include hate speech is certainly not without precedent, and given that Twitter isn't a government organization, I think they're within their rights to determine what type of speech they wish to allow on their platform.
White, blue collar voters in the Rust Belt aren't blaming technology for the decimation of the American middle class, nor are these people the kind of stereotypical redneck hillbillies you seem to be implying they are. Folks in red states have cell phones too you know, and computers work just as well in rural America as they do on the coasts.
But what's not working in rural America is rural Americans, and they're losing their jobs all over, not just in West Virginia coal mines. And these jobs aren't being replaced by technology; in most cases, jobs are getting shipped out of the country, to Mexico and elsewhere, because businesses can pay pennies on the dollar to workers in those countries versus what an American worker would make. Again, that has nothing to do with technology, but it is why white men and women in Wisconsin, Ohio and other formerly blue states voted for Trump by wide margins.
Globalization, free trade, NAFTA -- all of these bi-lateral international agreements aren't doing bupkis for the part of America where factories close and two-thirds of the town is out of work. Economists will tell you it's better to ship those jobs to Mexico and elsewhere because those places can make the same products for less money, and American consumers win with lower costs for goods on store shelves. But what the Rust Belts sees is that it doesn't matter if you can buy a pair of shoes at Walmart for $0.53 less if you don't have a job! And again, this is what's happening in all kinds of small towns all across America. When Hillary Clinton starts talking about trade agreements, all it does is piss-off people who already lost their job in the last round of trade deals. When Trump says he'll repeal NAFTA, white, rural America sees him as their champion.
Ultimately, it doesn't matter if Trump can bring back the lost mining or factory jobs; at least he says he'll try, which is far more than the establishment in either party has said for decades. And unless Facebook starts opening factories in rural America, and technology turns its engines of innovation towards helping to solve the middle-America employment problem, high tech just looks like another part of the problem, not part of a solution for the Unemployed States of America.
You know, this is the second or third time I recall seeing that very same JPEG linked, but with the names and images blacked-out, it's impossible to tell who said what. Are you claiming a staffer from the Democratic National Committee made those comments? How do I know those comments weren't originally from, say, a group of cross-dressing rodeo clowns?
If you're going to use online comments to make a point, you might want to choose comments you can attribute to someone we actually care to hear about. Online comments without attribution to who made those comments aren't really evidence of anything. 'Some guy' said 'some thing' doesn't matter much, and only serves to weaken your case.
And frankly, despite the horror and pain this will cause, if the media had been honest (and the DNC not been complicit in primary vote and convention rigging), Hillary would not have been nominated.
Please explain how the media were not honest here. You realize, don't you, that it was the media, the New York Times as a matter of fact, which first broke the story on Secratary Clinton's use of a private email server. And it was that very same media which went on and on about Clinton's email issues, right up until the very end of the campaign. According to Media Matters, using data from the Tyndall Report, reporting of Hillary Clinton's email issues eclipsed all other reporting combined on any other issue (100 minutes on emails vs 32 minutes for issue-based reporting).
I'll make you a deal: You can be pissy about misleading news coverage on Facebook after you call out the rest of the media for not pointing out that "if you like your insurance/doctor, you can keep your insurance/doctor" were obvious lies.
I'll make you a counter-deal -- if I can find an example of the media pointing out problems with "if you like your insurance/doctor, you can keep your insurance/doctor", you'll admit that there might be a problem with misleading news on Facebook, yes? Here we go:
Even back in 2009, ABC News, and FactCheck.org were asking tough questions about the Obama administrations' statements on health care reform. In 2013, Politifact awarded the claim, "If you like your health care plan, you can keep it" as its 'Lie of the Year', and had been rating the claims that people would be able to keep their plans as 'half true' since at least August of 2009.
See? Easy. There are obviously other examples than the four I've linked above, but I assume I've made my point.
For you to say that the media wasn't covering the story about the Obama administration's statements on healthcare is simply not true, and it's a good example of exactly why many people, including myself, are concerned about misleading news on Facebook. Bandying about half truths and lies as if they were facts isn't going to help anyone, and if you really believe we should only listen to the biggest and most successful liars out there, than I have a couple of bridges and some fine, very nice land in Florida I'd like to sell you.
Calexit? Over your dead body. Its time we break the sillycons and take their assets until their tax bill is paid in full.
Apple's tax bill is paid in full, the same as president-elect Trump's. The evidence clearly indicates both Silicon Valley, and our next president, took liberal advantage of a deeply flawed tax system to avoid paying many millions in taxes.
Please -- feel free to break Mr. Trump, and take his assets too. I bet though, in four years from now when everything is said and done, that neither the Donald or Apple will end up paying any more in taxes than they are now.
CA wouldn't know how to survive without tax welfare.
You're kidding, right? California is no where near the top when talking about how much the state sends in tax dollars versus how much it receives from the federal government.
We get a leader who tries to calm and reassure a potential dangerous adversary?
I'm sure Ronald Reagan is spinning in his grave right about now. I remember his position on Russia being quite a bit different back in 1983:
"I urge you to beware the temptation of pride—the temptation of blithely declaring yourselves above it all and label both sides equally at fault, to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire, to simply call the arms race a giant misunderstanding and thereby remove yourself from the struggle between right and wrong and good and evil."
If you have the time, you might want to read that speech in full. Reagan talks a great deal about morality, and about faith, both of which seem somewhat lacking in our current president-to-be. In fact, during this speech, Reagan makes the claim that morality and faith are in fact far stronger than rockets or bombs, and that victory in the Cold War would come from America's traditional values, not from military might.
It's therefore depressing to me that today's conservatives, who otherwise lionize Reagan, seem so willing to forget those traditional values and morals whenever it's convenient to do so, as it is with Vladimir Putin. Trump's cozying-up to Putin is about as close to an outright rejection of Ronald Reagan's legacy as I can imagine. You realize that Putin worked for the Soviet-era KGB, yes? Did you also know that during a 2011 meeting with Vice President Joe Biden, Putin smiled and said, "We understand one another," after Biden told him he had no soul? Do you honestly believe Reagan would have embraced Russia's annexation of Crimea, or the on-going military assistance to rebels in east Ukraine?
I'm hopeful that Trump will be able to negotiate solutions to our differences with Russia, but I suspect what will actually occur is that Trump and his team will simply agree to turn a blind eye to the humanitarian problems and other issues Putin causes. Makes me wonder what the world would be like today if Reagan as president had taken the same course of action.
Of course, the elephant in the room here is if Trump's campaign members had any conversations with the Russians that involved the DNC email hacks earlier this year, and the later John Podesta / Clinton campaign email hacks that the US government contends were perpetrated by the Russian government. Let's not forget that.
And yet the folks committing violent acts and mayhem in American cities are leftists.
I assume you're talking about the anti-Trump protests, yes? So far, they seem to be relatively peaceful. A quick summary from the linked article:
Nearly 2,000 protesters gathered in downtown Chicago chanting "Not my president" and "F*** Trump" outside Trump International Hotel & Tower. Police said they arrested five people mostly for obstructing traffic and criminal trespass.
In New York, thousands of protesters could be heard chanting and banging drums as they marched past Rockefeller Center up Sixth Avenue... At least 65 people were arrested, NBC New York reported, quoting police. Most of the arrests appeared to be for disorderly conduct.
More than 100 people shut down a major highway through downtown Los Angeles Wednesday night NBC Los Angeles reported. As of midnight local time (3 a.m. ET Thursday), 13 people were arrested.
Police said more than 7,000 people mobilized in Oakland, California, where tear gas and flash-bang grenades were deployed. Bottles, rocks and firecrackers were thrown at officers, reported NBC Bay Area. Thirty people were arrested on charges including vandalism and unlawful assembly, and three officers were hurt.
NBC's article mentions many other protests, but the above were the ones I could find where arrests were reported.
I haven't seen the KKK, the Neo Nazis, or the Skinheads doing this for the last 8 years whilst Obama has been President.
You're not serious, are you? Come on -- must I really demonstrate that the Ku Klux Klan, Neo Nazis and skinheads are violent, regardless of who sits in the Oval Office? Fine. Here are recent examples of violence related to these groups:
Frazier Glenn Miller Jr., founder of the Carolina Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, killed 3 at a Jewish community center in April of 2014, including a 14-year-old boy.
And that list above isn't comprehensive, nor does it cover incidents beyond the last two years. A complete list a violence associated with the Ku Klux Klan, Neo Nazis and skinheads within the last 8 years would likely fill volumes, but I assume I've made my point.
Perhaps the real problem is... the left!
You're welcome to think what you like, but if you'd dare to take just a minute to step outside of the Fox News conservative echo chamber, you might discover that folks on the left are not nearly as bad as you've been told.
Please consolidate all the comments about how sexist/racist/xenophobic America is because they didn't coronate Hillary under this comment for organizational purposes. Please provide reasons for why a bunch of people who were "good" when they voted for Obama deserve to be shipped off to your concentration camps today for failing to do as they were told.
Pssst! You weren't supposed to mention the concentration camps! Of course there will be concentration camps -- for Hillary and her supporters! We start bussing them there next week.
After all president is constrained by the budget set by congress.
Think about this for a minute -- does Trump seem to you like a guy who feels constrained? If Congress stands in his way, you think he'll just let that happen? Sit on his ass perhaps and do nothing?
When you think about it, half the reason people voted for him is because they believe he'll get stuff done. I can't imagine he'll let a little thing like a budget get in the way.
Neither can a president declare war without their approval. I am sure that if he really starts to act out then impeachment is on the table.
The president is also Commander in Chief of all US military forces. In that role, the president can send any forces he wants to anywhere he wishes. While it's true that Congress is the only part of the US government that can officially declare war, in practice this generally hasn't stopped most presidents from using military force, with or without Congressional approval.
And if you think a Republican congress is going to impeach a Republican president... Trump could nuke the District of Columbia on the day he takes office, and I suspect Congress would cheer him on (keep in mind the demographics of DC, and the fact that it went for Hillary last night by a whopping 97%). While I'm sure Trump and the Republican congress will have their love/hate moments, the prospect of impeachment is vanishingly small for just about any Trump offence you can think of.
Still, you have to wonder about the voter disillusionment to get such a result.
On this, I agree with you. The one crystal clear message I'm taking out of this election is that the American people have had enough with establishment candidates. Unfortunately, at this stage I think it's very unclear if Trump will be able to satisfy that desire for reform, and revamp the current way of doing things in Washington. I think it's more likely he'll get co-opted by the process, or that he'll try and run things as if he's the CEO instead of the president, angering everyone and ensuring that the nothing gets done.
Dear Media: Thank you so much for turning a relatively banal email screwup that had zero actual consequence into the biggest campaign scandal in decades and turning an otherwise likeable candidate into a pariah.
For as much as Trump claimed the mainstream media was biased against him, that same mainstream media never truly let-up on the email issue, all the while providing Trump with an unprecedented amount of coverage for his own campaign. I suppose you have to give Trump credit where credit is due -- he masterfully manipulated the media, and almost always was the one who set the agenda on what the media would be talking about on any given day. Perhaps it's true that there is no such thing as bad press. That certainly seemed to be the case with Trump in this election.
Dear Director of the FBI: Thank you for possibly breaking the law by dropping an election bombshell and tanking Clinton's poll numbers over absolutely nothing.
In retrospect, I think James Comey thought he was doing the right thing, but I suspect we'll never know the true electoral impact of Comey's letter to Congress. Overall, I think if Comey hadn't said anything, the information would have leaked anyway, and it would have been even more damaging then. As all the leaks since the letter have clearly shown, the FBI might not be taking 'official' sides in the election, but many of the agents who work there are driving investigations along party lines, and that's really scary. Ultimately, this trend towards undisciplined partisanship at the FBI may prove more corrosive to our democracy than Trump's election victory.
Dear GOP: Thank you for you massive voter suppression efforts and the SCOTUS for enabling them. Together you were able to obstruct the ability of minorities to vote.
I admit that Republican voter suppression efforts really bother me too, not just because they're actively looking to disenfranchise voters, but also because it so clearly demonstrates the underlying racism and prejudice of Republicans. However, in this election, I don't know that any of the voter ID laws made any difference, because Trump essentially co-opted the white vote right out from under the Democrats. Still, I think it's morally bankrupt to write laws with the intent of making it harder for Americans to vote. In my opinion, that's a clear abuse of power, but given all the other ways we've seen Republicans abuse power over the years, I can't say I'm surprised anymore.
Dear Wikileaks: Way to go! You just handed a global superpower to a comically corrupt bozo who is so non-transparent he didn't even release his taxes!!
Julian must be thoroughly pleased with himself at this point. He, like Trump, strikes me as one of those people who isn't afraid to let it all burn down if it serves his purpose, provided he can play his fiddle and watch the flames from a safe distance. That's pretty much been the story with Assange from the beginning. Most of the 'leaks' from Wikileaks do little to inform people about actual bad stuff going on within their governments. That ideal has long since fallen by the wayside. What we've seen so far from Wikileaks is mostly leaks involving someone dishing dirt on one group or another, with Assange orchestrating the leak to promote himself.
With the Podesta emails, Assange will have the satisfaction of knowing he may have successfully helped throw a US election; he may also be expecting, as some have alleged, a future pardon from Trump. Time will tell. But I'm certain that the value of the gossip we've learned via the Podesta emails in this election is less than the damage done to our electoral process. When one party applauds and encourages illegal activity because it benefits their candidate -- and don't kid yourself that hacking emails is anything but a crime -- it looks like corruption to me. If Trump truly wants to 'drain the swamp' as he puts it, he should start with himself.
I think your comment is the saddest thing I've seen all night, and it really brings home to me the very real and very worrisome potential costs of Trump's victory this evening.
Will we see new wars in foreign lands under President Trump? God knows I very much hope not, but I have seen a troubling propensity, at least within my own lifetime, of Republican presidents getting America involved in overseas conflict. As just one example, if Trump is serious about defeating ISIS, it will most certainly require many boots on the ground, and those always translate into body bags and caskets for American sons and daughters. I pray your children don't become a part of that.
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but don't mention anything to do with George Soros or middle eastern donations to the Clinton campaign you're playing partisan politics.
So let me get this straight -- what you're saying is that it's nothing more than a partisan attack if allegations about *both* Republicans and Democrats aren't made at the same time, and given equal weight, correct? Because you realize that doesn't make any sense... the allegations here decidedly aren't equivalent, and your attempt to impose some sort of false equivalency between them makes you look rather partisan yourself.
Allegations against George Soros, and other allegations regarding Clinton campaign donations, have definitely come from what I'd consider highly partisan sources, and the allegations themselves appear highly partisan as well. But the current allegations regarding Russian involvement in the November election, specifically in regards to leaked emails from John Podesta and the DNC, are coming from the CIA, a well-funded and highly-regarded government agency, which traditionally has provided useful and non-partisan intelligence to both the executive branch of the U.S. government, as well as to the U.S. Congress. Keep in mind that what the CIA is alleging here is not that Trump or anyone in the Republican party was involved in the release of the emails; the CIA is saying that agents under the ultimate authority of Vladimir Putin removed electronic documents from systems belonging to the Democratic party and the Hillary Clinton campaign, then leaked those documents to the press in an attempt to sway voter oppinion during the election.
Regardless of your party affiliation, if those allegations are true, it's a deeply disturbing situation, and it definitely deserves an official investigation. Today it was the Russians; tomorrow it might be the Chinese, or the North Koreans, or someone else with little love and potentially a lot of hate for America. It's being awfully short-sighted to think that these kinds of shenanigans can't or won't impact Republicans in the future. The opportunities for out-and-out blackmail of political candidates, or extortion, or a whole variety of other nefarious activities are rife. Trump's virtual dismissal of the potential political problems here with foreign actors influencing American elections rings hollow, and I very much hope Republicans will spend a little time working to preserve the democratic process itself, instead of focusing only on the conservative-friendly results of the last election.
How to fail to persuade: "you're just to stupid to understand, but smart people believe X". How to persuade "I understand why you think that way, plenty of smart people would, knowing what you know. Here are some things you don't know, and why they're important".
Interestingly, conservatives seem more likely to use argument #1, whereas liberals prefer argument #2. However, in almost every case I've seen recently, neither style of argument actually persuades anymore, likely because no one is really listening to facts these days.
Sadly, in our current post-truth reality, whoever speaks loudest and most often is the one who wins, and they can lie about anything and everything without consequence.
The solution to this problem is free education and a basic income. We should start with a grant for 60 credit hours of community college and a basic income at 60% the federal poverty level.
I think you're underestimating both the scope and the magnitude of the problem.
First, consider that the problem we're facing here isn't just going to affect only low-skilled workers. Artificial intelligence, automation and robotics will ultimately impact higher-skilled workers too. It's only a question of time. If IBM's Watson can already diagnose illness better than a physician with a decade of college and on-the-job education under their belt, than even doctors have something to worry about. Don't forget that we're at the point now where nearly 1/3 of all Americans already have at least a bachelor's degree. When the economy itself needs fewer and fewer workers to produce more and more goods and services, a few extra free junior college units isn't going to keep average Americans employed.
Finally, the end-game here is all-too obvious; with an increasing population chasing fewer and fewer jobs, a basic income at 60% of the poverty line isn't going to do anything but ensure grinding poverty in the future, likely for decades to come, as the vast majority of Americans will never be able to find work again.
Overall, after careful consideration of the problem, I think this plan sucks. We as a nation ought to be able to do better than that. A handful of the uber-rich presiding over a nation of hundreds of millions of perpetual beggars is what I would consider a nightmare scenario. It does not have to be this way. I pray that we'll find some way to avoid this kind of apocalyptic scenario. I suspect it will require a great deal of out-of-the-box thinking, and we'll likely have to abandon some of our cherished capitalistic principles.
There may be an inflection point when needs required by new technology can be fulfilled by technology itself, or fewer people due to advances in tech. I think we are seeing the latter already, and it will steadily progress to the former. There is no turning back.
Don't be naive! We can absolutely turn back the clock on technological progress if necessary. If technology is driving humanity off a cliff, humans can and should limit technology. To do anything else is foolish and, in a word, insane.
As I see it, human beings are not lemmings. We are not living out our lives solely to implement technological progress. Therefore, we do not need to commit societal suicide because, "Ooohhhhh, shiny!" Technology is useful insomuch as it benefits society. If technology is not useful, or if it's counterproductive, we can most certainly say, "No."
That's an awfully good question.
My best guess -- there will be an extended period of whole-hog persecution of Democrats for, well, being Democrats, and Republicans will get a pass from the newly politicized FBI. Afterwards, I expect Republicans will dial it down a bit, lest it become too obvious that they're using law enforcement directly as political tool. If I were a Democrat, I'd plan for two years of sitting around with my thumb up my ass, because at this point I don't believe the Republicans will let Democrats stand in the way of any of the massive number of changes Republicans want to implement A.S.A.P.
However, given the hyper-partisan environment we're in now, I wouldn't want to lay money on which way things will ultimately go. It could be that Republicans find they actually like jailing political opponents, and that authoritarian rule by a single party is just what the doctor ordered. In that case, Americans can likely kiss democracy goodbye. I suspect many Americans, both Republicans and Democrats, would be happy to chuck democracy in the shitter right now, provided of course that their party is the one that retains power afterwards.
Geez people get a grip. It's like half the population of the country is throwing a temper tantrum like a toddler who acts like the world is ending because they can't get the toy they want.
Perhaps you're simply too young to remember the reaction when Obama was elected eight years ago, but it wasn't pretty.
Four years later, in 2012, reactions from the right to Obama's second election as president hadn't changed much. Back then, Donald Trump tweated:
You didn't actually read through any of the data on those sites you linked to, huh? If you had, you might have discovered:
Overall, the data you've cited actually supports what most experts are saying regarding voter fraud; not that voter fraud doesn't ever happen, but that it happens so infrequently that it's not affecting the results of elections.
Of course, if you look at the statistics behind recent voter ID laws, you'll see that these laws are aimed squarely at black voters, in an attempt to suppress the black voter in favor of white voters, who are more likely to vote Republican.
Has Twitter banned any of accounts calling for an assassination of the President-elect? For killing all White people? Obviously not.
You didn't actually read any of those links, did you? If you had, you'd discover that that most of the recent chatter around the #AssassinateTrump hashtag, for example, is comments like this:
If you look backwards in time, you'll see that the earlier tweets including the same hashtag seem to have a more humorous than hurtful intent:
Finally, the Twitter user you've linked to, @maymaymx, isn't exactly a bleeding-heart liberal either, as evidenced by the actual contents of his tweets, like this one:
...or...
Perhaps it might be a good time to review your own biases before you start calling-out the folks at Twitter on theirs.
“While we all agree that freedom of speech is important, no one’s speech make it acceptable to break the law by discriminating against prospective customers,” said staff attorney. “No one is asking Twitter’s owner to change their beliefs, but treating political opponents differently because of what they say is discrimination plain and simple.”
By your logic, I should be able to walk into my local McDonald's screaming, "Fuck 'em all, bubba!" over and over again while the staff do nothing, right? After all, asking me to stop screaming obscenities would be interfering with my free speech, wouldn't it?
While the left openly make death threats, BLM supporters openly call for 'white genocide' and other supremacist movements like islam and zionism get a pass? They're all equally vile!
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Let's be clear on this -- there is no moral equivalency between far-right hate speech and the political left. It's like claiming Gandhi's philosophy and Hitler's philosophy were one and the same. It's crap. These things are not equally vile. Black Lives Matter has not called for 'white genocide'. Go look at their website if you want to know what they're about, but stop putting false words in their mouths.
Trying to make the case that Black Lives Matter, or Muslims, or Jews are no different than the neo-Nazis, or the Ku Klux Klan or skinheads, is just crazy. It's complete nonsense. Or possibly just makes you a out-and-out liar. I'm not buying that kind of bullshit, and I imagine no one else believes it either.
Unless you're a cake maker...in that case, you can't refuse to make a cake because you disagree with what the customer wants written on it...
But there are some very important differences between posting hate speech on Twitter vs cake making:
Cake making generally occurs as some form of commerce. Over time, we've seen that allowing people to practice commercial discrimination based on factors such as color, race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, etc. typically results in poor outcomes for whomever is in the minority. For example, if I as a towns' one and only grocer refuse to do business with, say, left-handed Englishmen, it makes it difficult to impossible for left-handed Englishmen to live in my community. And once we've decided that it's not OK to discriminate against any particular group, over time it becomes more and more difficult to discriminate against other groups.
And don't forget that hate speech is, well, hate speech. It encourages people to take violent action, which isn't normally a positive or worthwhile trait for most societies. It's still illegal to yell, "Fire!" in a crowded American movie theater, so American society as a whole already agrees that some forms of speech shouldn't be free. Expanding prohibited speech to include hate speech is certainly not without precedent, and given that Twitter isn't a government organization, I think they're within their rights to determine what type of speech they wish to allow on their platform.
I think you're missing the point.
White, blue collar voters in the Rust Belt aren't blaming technology for the decimation of the American middle class, nor are these people the kind of stereotypical redneck hillbillies you seem to be implying they are. Folks in red states have cell phones too you know, and computers work just as well in rural America as they do on the coasts.
But what's not working in rural America is rural Americans, and they're losing their jobs all over, not just in West Virginia coal mines. And these jobs aren't being replaced by technology; in most cases, jobs are getting shipped out of the country, to Mexico and elsewhere, because businesses can pay pennies on the dollar to workers in those countries versus what an American worker would make. Again, that has nothing to do with technology, but it is why white men and women in Wisconsin, Ohio and other formerly blue states voted for Trump by wide margins.
Globalization, free trade, NAFTA -- all of these bi-lateral international agreements aren't doing bupkis for the part of America where factories close and two-thirds of the town is out of work. Economists will tell you it's better to ship those jobs to Mexico and elsewhere because those places can make the same products for less money, and American consumers win with lower costs for goods on store shelves. But what the Rust Belts sees is that it doesn't matter if you can buy a pair of shoes at Walmart for $0.53 less if you don't have a job! And again, this is what's happening in all kinds of small towns all across America. When Hillary Clinton starts talking about trade agreements, all it does is piss-off people who already lost their job in the last round of trade deals. When Trump says he'll repeal NAFTA, white, rural America sees him as their champion.
Ultimately, it doesn't matter if Trump can bring back the lost mining or factory jobs; at least he says he'll try, which is far more than the establishment in either party has said for decades. And unless Facebook starts opening factories in rural America, and technology turns its engines of innovation towards helping to solve the middle-America employment problem, high tech just looks like another part of the problem, not part of a solution for the Unemployed States of America.
The DNC had the opportunity to control online discussion but decided to correct the record against Sanders supporters.
You know, this is the second or third time I recall seeing that very same JPEG linked, but with the names and images blacked-out, it's impossible to tell who said what. Are you claiming a staffer from the Democratic National Committee made those comments? How do I know those comments weren't originally from, say, a group of cross-dressing rodeo clowns?
If you're going to use online comments to make a point, you might want to choose comments you can attribute to someone we actually care to hear about. Online comments without attribution to who made those comments aren't really evidence of anything. 'Some guy' said 'some thing' doesn't matter much, and only serves to weaken your case.
And frankly, despite the horror and pain this will cause, if the media had been honest (and the DNC not been complicit in primary vote and convention rigging), Hillary would not have been nominated.
Please explain how the media were not honest here. You realize, don't you, that it was the media, the New York Times as a matter of fact, which first broke the story on Secratary Clinton's use of a private email server. And it was that very same media which went on and on about Clinton's email issues, right up until the very end of the campaign. According to Media Matters, using data from the Tyndall Report, reporting of Hillary Clinton's email issues eclipsed all other reporting combined on any other issue (100 minutes on emails vs 32 minutes for issue-based reporting).
I'll make you a deal: You can be pissy about misleading news coverage on Facebook after you call out the rest of the media for not pointing out that "if you like your insurance/doctor, you can keep your insurance/doctor" were obvious lies.
I'll make you a counter-deal -- if I can find an example of the media pointing out problems with "if you like your insurance/doctor, you can keep your insurance/doctor", you'll admit that there might be a problem with misleading news on Facebook, yes? Here we go:
Even back in 2009, ABC News, and FactCheck.org were asking tough questions about the Obama administrations' statements on health care reform. In 2013, Politifact awarded the claim, "If you like your health care plan, you can keep it" as its 'Lie of the Year', and had been rating the claims that people would be able to keep their plans as 'half true' since at least August of 2009.
See? Easy. There are obviously other examples than the four I've linked above, but I assume I've made my point.
For you to say that the media wasn't covering the story about the Obama administration's statements on healthcare is simply not true, and it's a good example of exactly why many people, including myself, are concerned about misleading news on Facebook. Bandying about half truths and lies as if they were facts isn't going to help anyone, and if you really believe we should only listen to the biggest and most successful liars out there, than I have a couple of bridges and some fine, very nice land in Florida I'd like to sell you.
Calexit? Over your dead body. Its time we break the sillycons and take their assets until their tax bill is paid in full.
Apple's tax bill is paid in full, the same as president-elect Trump's. The evidence clearly indicates both Silicon Valley, and our next president, took liberal advantage of a deeply flawed tax system to avoid paying many millions in taxes.
Please -- feel free to break Mr. Trump, and take his assets too. I bet though, in four years from now when everything is said and done, that neither the Donald or Apple will end up paying any more in taxes than they are now.
CA wouldn't know how to survive without tax welfare.
You're kidding, right? California is no where near the top when talking about how much the state sends in tax dollars versus how much it receives from the federal government.
We get a leader who tries to calm and reassure a potential dangerous adversary?
I'm sure Ronald Reagan is spinning in his grave right about now. I remember his position on Russia being quite a bit different back in 1983:
"I urge you to beware the temptation of pride—the temptation of blithely declaring yourselves above it all and label both sides equally at fault, to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire, to simply call the arms race a giant misunderstanding and thereby remove yourself from the struggle between right and wrong and good and evil."
If you have the time, you might want to read that speech in full. Reagan talks a great deal about morality, and about faith, both of which seem somewhat lacking in our current president-to-be. In fact, during this speech, Reagan makes the claim that morality and faith are in fact far stronger than rockets or bombs, and that victory in the Cold War would come from America's traditional values, not from military might.
It's therefore depressing to me that today's conservatives, who otherwise lionize Reagan, seem so willing to forget those traditional values and morals whenever it's convenient to do so, as it is with Vladimir Putin. Trump's cozying-up to Putin is about as close to an outright rejection of Ronald Reagan's legacy as I can imagine. You realize that Putin worked for the Soviet-era KGB, yes? Did you also know that during a 2011 meeting with Vice President Joe Biden, Putin smiled and said, "We understand one another," after Biden told him he had no soul? Do you honestly believe Reagan would have embraced Russia's annexation of Crimea, or the on-going military assistance to rebels in east Ukraine?
I'm hopeful that Trump will be able to negotiate solutions to our differences with Russia, but I suspect what will actually occur is that Trump and his team will simply agree to turn a blind eye to the humanitarian problems and other issues Putin causes. Makes me wonder what the world would be like today if Reagan as president had taken the same course of action.
Of course, the elephant in the room here is if Trump's campaign members had any conversations with the Russians that involved the DNC email hacks earlier this year, and the later John Podesta / Clinton campaign email hacks that the US government contends were perpetrated by the Russian government. Let's not forget that.
And yet the folks committing violent acts and mayhem in American cities are leftists.
I assume you're talking about the anti-Trump protests, yes? So far, they seem to be relatively peaceful. A quick summary from the linked article:
NBC's article mentions many other protests, but the above were the ones I could find where arrests were reported.
I haven't seen the KKK, the Neo Nazis, or the Skinheads doing this for the last 8 years whilst Obama has been President.
You're not serious, are you? Come on -- must I really demonstrate that the Ku Klux Klan, Neo Nazis and skinheads are violent, regardless of who sits in the Oval Office? Fine. Here are recent examples of violence related to these groups:
And that list above isn't comprehensive, nor does it cover incidents beyond the last two years. A complete list a violence associated with the Ku Klux Klan, Neo Nazis and skinheads within the last 8 years would likely fill volumes, but I assume I've made my point.
Perhaps the real problem is... the left!
You're welcome to think what you like, but if you'd dare to take just a minute to step outside of the Fox News conservative echo chamber, you might discover that folks on the left are not nearly as bad as you've been told.
Please consolidate all the comments about how sexist/racist/xenophobic America is because they didn't coronate Hillary under this comment for organizational purposes. Please provide reasons for why a bunch of people who were "good" when they voted for Obama deserve to be shipped off to your concentration camps today for failing to do as they were told.
Pssst! You weren't supposed to mention the concentration camps! Of course there will be concentration camps -- for Hillary and her supporters! We start bussing them there next week.
After all president is constrained by the budget set by congress.
Think about this for a minute -- does Trump seem to you like a guy who feels constrained? If Congress stands in his way, you think he'll just let that happen? Sit on his ass perhaps and do nothing?
When you think about it, half the reason people voted for him is because they believe he'll get stuff done. I can't imagine he'll let a little thing like a budget get in the way.
Neither can a president declare war without their approval. I am sure that if he really starts to act out then impeachment is on the table.
The president is also Commander in Chief of all US military forces. In that role, the president can send any forces he wants to anywhere he wishes. While it's true that Congress is the only part of the US government that can officially declare war, in practice this generally hasn't stopped most presidents from using military force, with or without Congressional approval.
And if you think a Republican congress is going to impeach a Republican president... Trump could nuke the District of Columbia on the day he takes office, and I suspect Congress would cheer him on (keep in mind the demographics of DC, and the fact that it went for Hillary last night by a whopping 97%). While I'm sure Trump and the Republican congress will have their love/hate moments, the prospect of impeachment is vanishingly small for just about any Trump offence you can think of.
Still, you have to wonder about the voter disillusionment to get such a result.
On this, I agree with you. The one crystal clear message I'm taking out of this election is that the American people have had enough with establishment candidates. Unfortunately, at this stage I think it's very unclear if Trump will be able to satisfy that desire for reform, and revamp the current way of doing things in Washington. I think it's more likely he'll get co-opted by the process, or that he'll try and run things as if he's the CEO instead of the president, angering everyone and ensuring that the nothing gets done.
Dear Media: Thank you so much for turning a relatively banal email screwup that had zero actual consequence into the biggest campaign scandal in decades and turning an otherwise likeable candidate into a pariah.
For as much as Trump claimed the mainstream media was biased against him, that same mainstream media never truly let-up on the email issue, all the while providing Trump with an unprecedented amount of coverage for his own campaign. I suppose you have to give Trump credit where credit is due -- he masterfully manipulated the media, and almost always was the one who set the agenda on what the media would be talking about on any given day. Perhaps it's true that there is no such thing as bad press. That certainly seemed to be the case with Trump in this election.
Dear Director of the FBI: Thank you for possibly breaking the law by dropping an election bombshell and tanking Clinton's poll numbers over absolutely nothing.
In retrospect, I think James Comey thought he was doing the right thing, but I suspect we'll never know the true electoral impact of Comey's letter to Congress. Overall, I think if Comey hadn't said anything, the information would have leaked anyway, and it would have been even more damaging then. As all the leaks since the letter have clearly shown, the FBI might not be taking 'official' sides in the election, but many of the agents who work there are driving investigations along party lines, and that's really scary. Ultimately, this trend towards undisciplined partisanship at the FBI may prove more corrosive to our democracy than Trump's election victory.
Dear GOP: Thank you for you massive voter suppression efforts and the SCOTUS for enabling them. Together you were able to obstruct the ability of minorities to vote.
I admit that Republican voter suppression efforts really bother me too, not just because they're actively looking to disenfranchise voters, but also because it so clearly demonstrates the underlying racism and prejudice of Republicans. However, in this election, I don't know that any of the voter ID laws made any difference, because Trump essentially co-opted the white vote right out from under the Democrats. Still, I think it's morally bankrupt to write laws with the intent of making it harder for Americans to vote. In my opinion, that's a clear abuse of power, but given all the other ways we've seen Republicans abuse power over the years, I can't say I'm surprised anymore.
Dear Wikileaks: Way to go! You just handed a global superpower to a comically corrupt bozo who is so non-transparent he didn't even release his taxes!!
Julian must be thoroughly pleased with himself at this point. He, like Trump, strikes me as one of those people who isn't afraid to let it all burn down if it serves his purpose, provided he can play his fiddle and watch the flames from a safe distance. That's pretty much been the story with Assange from the beginning. Most of the 'leaks' from Wikileaks do little to inform people about actual bad stuff going on within their governments. That ideal has long since fallen by the wayside. What we've seen so far from Wikileaks is mostly leaks involving someone dishing dirt on one group or another, with Assange orchestrating the leak to promote himself.
With the Podesta emails, Assange will have the satisfaction of knowing he may have successfully helped throw a US election; he may also be expecting, as some have alleged, a future pardon from Trump. Time will tell. But I'm certain that the value of the gossip we've learned via the Podesta emails in this election is less than the damage done to our electoral process. When one party applauds and encourages illegal activity because it benefits their candidate -- and don't kid yourself that hacking emails is anything but a crime -- it looks like corruption to me. If Trump truly wants to 'drain the swamp' as he puts it, he should start with himself.
Hay we survived bush Jr we can survive trump.
True, but I have kids.
I think your comment is the saddest thing I've seen all night, and it really brings home to me the very real and very worrisome potential costs of Trump's victory this evening.
Will we see new wars in foreign lands under President Trump? God knows I very much hope not, but I have seen a troubling propensity, at least within my own lifetime, of Republican presidents getting America involved in overseas conflict. As just one example, if Trump is serious about defeating ISIS, it will most certainly require many boots on the ground, and those always translate into body bags and caskets for American sons and daughters. I pray your children don't become a part of that.
Actually, first priority will be packing up the statue of liberty and shipping it back to France with a rude note and a poop emoji.
And Trump will make the French pay any shipping costs!