"it's plain to see that the part of this that makes it a story is not actually in evidence but implied. This journalist crafted this story to imply things are happening but we don't actually have any evidence for it."
The fact that Trump is using an unsecured communications device is in and of itself newsworthy; it's extremely irresponsible of him to do so.
"The reality here is all we can truly assert is that there is the OPPERTUNITY for the Chinese monitoring to skim sensitive information, not that it's actually happening."
Other than the intelligence agencies reporting that the Chines have been monitoring his communications.
But seriously, how in good faith can you make the argument that reporting that Trump is using an insecure communications device isn't news? It's absolutely baffling.
"Look, the problem here with this story is we DON'T KNOW what he's talking about on that unclassified line. The sources being quoted don't know, the reporter doesn't know and nobody being quoted can point to specific classified information that was leaked."
Correct, since none of them are tapping his phone.
" This is a manufactured controversy, assembled by the journalist, i.e. it's FAKE NEWS."
The fucking hell? No, this is ACTUAL NEWS, are you honestly too stupid to tell the difference?
Right, so surely he wouldn't divulge intelligence accidentally over the phone, that would be careless.~
"The end political results are indistinguishable from Trump being a genius 11-dimensional chess player, since Trump keeps winning and all critics mysteriously keep self-immolating. "
Trump is an idiot, his popularity doesn't make him not an idiot.
Do you think it is the CEO's job to secure his own telephone? Should that same CEO have to abandon his contact list from a perfectly standard iPhone with something like a 19% market share. You're calling the entire US government idiots.
No, he's calling Trump an idiot for continuing to use a personal phone.
It's not Trump's job to secure it, but it IS very much his responsibility to communicate only over secure channels.
You cannot prove that God exists or doesn't exist, because by definition God would be outside the limits of any such proof. The inability to prove something empirically is very often mistaken for the idea that it CAN'T be proven. But it's just a problem with YOUR ability to prove or disprove. Your intellectual tools are simply inadequate to the task at hand.
But that's just sophistry.
First, you're awfully loose with the definitions of "can't". It's either possible to prove (and thereby disprove) the existence of God, or it isn't. The 'ability' or 'inability' is the same thing, since you're asserting that it's what determines 'can' or 'can't.
Second, there are claims that certainly CAN be proven or disproven; any interaction with the physical world, for example, man claims of which do in fact exist. There isn't any credible evidence of this interaction.
Third, if your claim is that it's impossible to determine whether or not God exists because there's no way of demonstrating whether he does, then whether or not God exists becomes utterly irrelevant.
Hell, Obama flew over personally to threaten Britain into voting remain and no one raised a shitfit about America "influencing" a British election.
So you don't see any difference between a massive online pseudo-anonymous disinformation campaign and a world leader expressing his opinion on something?
I believe the main reason Trump won is because of this "Hillary Clinton was one of the most qualified candidates I've every seen with experience in all sectors of the federal government." Were sick of career politicians.
I seriously don't understand this.
Why is it that "politician" is the ONLY profession on the planet where a large number of people think it's a good thing to be completely inexperienced at it? It sounds like a rationalization to me.
I'll give you your answer. Because it struck too close to home. The NPC meme is a satirical mocking of a loud-mouth leftist pundit/politicians point and those who suppor it.
How convenient, that you think that the reason people object to something is because it's true. I assume you thought precisely the same thing about Clinton's "deplorables" assessment?
Conservatives find this funny because they can and regularly engage in self-deprecating humor. Progressives do not.
Okay, first, that's complete bullshit. If anything, progressives are more self-deprecating, at least as far as actual comedians go, though the sample size for conservative comedians is incredibly small.
Second, this isn't self-deprecating humor. That would require liberals doing it to themselves, not political opponents doing it to them.
Again, if conservatives were all right with that then we wouldn't have seen the absolute batshit insane overreaction to Clinton's "basket of deplorables" comment that we saw.
There is less than zero chance that the President (Obama) didn't know about or sign off on this surveillance. The idea that a sitting President investigating his opponent would be done by lower level people without his knowledge is preposterous. Of course his administration (and he) knew. The question is: was the surveillance legitimate? Or was it done for political purposes?
WTF? This is what gets modded "Insightful" on Slashdot today? Pure BS speculation with a heaping helping of begging the question?
The idea that Obama actually wiretapped Trump during the campaign is preposterous.
Obama also didn't "order" the IRS to audit conservative organizations either. Crooks in authority often don't "order" things, they imply things, or simply create a climate and reward systems where things they want to happen happen.
Are you serious?
Obama did nothing of the sort. There was a small group of people who used a heuristic for applications under charity tax regulations that flagged conservative applications more than normal. When their immediate boss found out about it, she stopped them. That's literally all there was to it.
I know that it's been blown out of proportion, but facts do actually matter.
You mean like when the Obama administration said that benghazi was caused by a video? Then flapped their arms over and over again saying it really was caused by a video.
This BS again? They reported that when that's what the intelligence agencies thought, i.e. for a period of a few days before the investigation results came back and said it was unrelated.
Geez, you act like being wrong and correcting yourself once more information surfaces is a conspiracy.
Never mind that if we take various media at their face value Trump is correct, since they stated that there were multiple taps against people in the Trump campaign.
No, there were taps on the RUSSIANS. Unless Trump himself was contacting the RUSSIANS during the campaign there's no reason to worry at all, and that doesn't mean that Trump Tower was tapped.
If You or your media outlet was one of the ones that defended or didn't criticize as a fatal flaw: Hillary Clinton and her most glaring case of using personal E-mail server to cause security exposures and Fail to deliver items ordered by the court, Then you already lost any right to criticize Pence, Etc, for lesser cases Of use of a personal e-mail account.
Nonsense. Just because someone doesn't share your views of the relative importance of adherence to IT policy doesn't mean they can't criticize other people for that.
Additionally, it's not just warranted but DEMANDED to call out Republicans on their expected hypocrisy on this issue.
I'm actually glad that by slamming the MSM as fake news, Trump has blurred the lines b/w your average Michael Moore type of guy manufacturing stories out of whole cloth, vs the MSM doing it. Both have intentions to mislead, and both due to the same reason: their bias.
WTF? In all the popular instances where Trump has called out something as fake news, it hasn't actually been. That's the whole point.
Tangentially, he's doing it to discredit actual reporting on his actions.
Only if you fudge the inflation numbers (which this Administration has been doing). Run the numbers with the same CPI calculations as used back in the 70s and 80s and you'll find inflation is running about 7-8%, and that puts the economy still in a recession.
Sorry, but Shadowstats is pure bunk. They're not using the old CPI calculations, they're taking the modern ones and just adding a few percent because they feel like it.
... the biggest restrictions on freedom since the Patriot Act...
Go on....
This will be a mass of restrictions, requirements, taxes, subsidies, and pay-offs to favored groups. I'm sure trial lawyers will be happy, because there will no doubt be lots of new things they can sue about.
Like what exactly?
And now that the regulations have changed, the NSA will have a freer hand with wiretaps.
How would reclassifying as a telecommunications service change that?
That income has been taxed already. Bequeathment is not a fucking INCOME issue.
Of course it is; "income" doesn't get taxed, TRANSFERS get taxed. For income tax, it's the transfer from your employer to you. For inheritance tax, it's the transfer from the estate to you.
Yes. Cross-subsidization (also known as "socialism") has resulted in most people I have spoken to paying 40% to 60% more on their premiums, with a higher deductible.
That's not what socialism is, that's insurance.
It has also resulted in fewer young people with insurance, because their premiums went way up. It's DUMB to raise rates on the demographic that (A) is essential to funding the program, and (B) needs it the least.
Are you entirely forgetting about the mandate? Where do you get that fewer young people have insurance? That, like the other anecdotes about huge cost increases, sounds entirely made up.
A few hundred? Try $800/month which is the cheapest plan the ACA offers where I live. And that plan was total garbage, didn't cover half of what you'd expect and had huge co-pays.
I've heard this so many times, and seen it debunked so many times, that it's just ridiculous. Sorry, but unsupported anecdotal data isn't really convincing, especially since so many people have been wrong about it.
The problem with ACA is that it MANDATED HMO's... Not health insurance.
I don't know what odd definition of "HMO" you're using (I suspect you're using it simply because HMOs are unpopular), but that's just not true.
If I tried to get the plan I have with my employer through the ACA exchange it would be over $1600/month. That's insane! And yes, I actually looked it up.
Again with the anecdotes. Also, I notice you didn't say anything about which plan it was, or how much your employer was paying.
Yeah...ask the Soviets or Cuba how that worked. (Or Venezuela if you need a more recent example.) Hell,. just ask Europe how that's going. (Looking at you, France.)
The Soviets and Cuba do/did not use European socialist capitalism. Europe is currently suffering from a terrible policy of having a currency union without a fiscal union, which is the proximate cause of their problems.
Slashdot Mirror
"it's plain to see that the part of this that makes it a story is not actually in evidence but implied. This journalist crafted this story to imply things are happening but we don't actually have any evidence for it."
The fact that Trump is using an unsecured communications device is in and of itself newsworthy; it's extremely irresponsible of him to do so.
"The reality here is all we can truly assert is that there is the OPPERTUNITY for the Chinese monitoring to skim sensitive information, not that it's actually happening."
Other than the intelligence agencies reporting that the Chines have been monitoring his communications.
But seriously, how in good faith can you make the argument that reporting that Trump is using an insecure communications device isn't news? It's absolutely baffling.
"Look, the problem here with this story is we DON'T KNOW what he's talking about on that unclassified line. The sources being quoted don't know, the reporter doesn't know and nobody being quoted can point to specific classified information that was leaked."
Correct, since none of them are tapping his phone.
" This is a manufactured controversy, assembled by the journalist, i.e. it's FAKE NEWS."
The fucking hell? No, this is ACTUAL NEWS, are you honestly too stupid to tell the difference?
"A meeting. In a room. As in, not over a phone"
Right, so surely he wouldn't divulge intelligence accidentally over the phone, that would be careless.~
"The end political results are indistinguishable from Trump being a genius 11-dimensional chess player, since Trump keeps winning and all critics mysteriously keep self-immolating. "
Trump is an idiot, his popularity doesn't make him not an idiot.
She had the entire US media on her side. And the DNC rigged in her favor via superdelegates and more shady means (no one wins 5 out of 5 coin tosses).
None of that is true in the slightest.
Do you think it is the CEO's job to secure his own telephone? Should that same CEO have to abandon his contact list from a perfectly standard iPhone with something like a 19% market share. You're calling the entire US government idiots.
No, he's calling Trump an idiot for continuing to use a personal phone.
It's not Trump's job to secure it, but it IS very much his responsibility to communicate only over secure channels.
You cannot prove that God exists or doesn't exist, because by definition God would be outside the limits of any such proof. The inability to prove something empirically is very often mistaken for the idea that it CAN'T be proven. But it's just a problem with YOUR ability to prove or disprove. Your intellectual tools are simply inadequate to the task at hand.
But that's just sophistry.
First, you're awfully loose with the definitions of "can't". It's either possible to prove (and thereby disprove) the existence of God, or it isn't. The 'ability' or 'inability' is the same thing, since you're asserting that it's what determines 'can' or 'can't.
Second, there are claims that certainly CAN be proven or disproven; any interaction with the physical world, for example, man claims of which do in fact exist. There isn't any credible evidence of this interaction.
Third, if your claim is that it's impossible to determine whether or not God exists because there's no way of demonstrating whether he does, then whether or not God exists becomes utterly irrelevant.
Hell, Obama flew over personally to threaten Britain into voting remain and no one raised a shitfit about America "influencing" a British election.
So you don't see any difference between a massive online pseudo-anonymous disinformation campaign and a world leader expressing his opinion on something?
I believe the main reason Trump won is because of this "Hillary Clinton was one of the most qualified candidates I've every seen with experience in all sectors of the federal government." Were sick of career politicians.
I seriously don't understand this.
Why is it that "politician" is the ONLY profession on the planet where a large number of people think it's a good thing to be completely inexperienced at it? It sounds like a rationalization to me.
I'll give you your answer. Because it struck too close to home. The NPC meme is a satirical mocking of a loud-mouth leftist pundit/politicians point and those who suppor it.
How convenient, that you think that the reason people object to something is because it's true. I assume you thought precisely the same thing about Clinton's "deplorables" assessment?
Conservatives find this funny because they can and regularly engage in self-deprecating humor. Progressives do not.
Okay, first, that's complete bullshit. If anything, progressives are more self-deprecating, at least as far as actual comedians go, though the sample size for conservative comedians is incredibly small.
Second, this isn't self-deprecating humor. That would require liberals doing it to themselves, not political opponents doing it to them.
Again, if conservatives were all right with that then we wouldn't have seen the absolute batshit insane overreaction to Clinton's "basket of deplorables" comment that we saw.
The Vox isn't a credible source. Come back when you have a reliable source.
This crap gets modded +5 Insightful?
Has Slashdot always been right-wing biased and I didn't notice?
the photon objects.
We looked into that, but couldn't determine where exactly this objection came from.
...and then once we figured that out, we forgot how fast it went.
No word on what "O" in Android O stands for.
My money's on "Ovaltine", which is both in keeping with their naming scheme and a fun reminder of A Christmas Story.
There is less than zero chance that the President (Obama) didn't know about or sign off on this surveillance. The idea that a sitting President investigating his opponent would be done by lower level people without his knowledge is preposterous. Of course his administration (and he) knew. The question is: was the surveillance legitimate? Or was it done for political purposes?
WTF? This is what gets modded "Insightful" on Slashdot today? Pure BS speculation with a heaping helping of begging the question?
The idea that Obama actually wiretapped Trump during the campaign is preposterous.
Obama also didn't "order" the IRS to audit conservative organizations either. Crooks in authority often don't "order" things, they imply things, or simply create a climate and reward systems where things they want to happen happen.
Are you serious?
Obama did nothing of the sort. There was a small group of people who used a heuristic for applications under charity tax regulations that flagged conservative applications more than normal. When their immediate boss found out about it, she stopped them. That's literally all there was to it.
I know that it's been blown out of proportion, but facts do actually matter.
You mean like when the Obama administration said that benghazi was caused by a video? Then flapped their arms over and over again saying it really was caused by a video.
This BS again? They reported that when that's what the intelligence agencies thought, i.e. for a period of a few days before the investigation results came back and said it was unrelated.
Geez, you act like being wrong and correcting yourself once more information surfaces is a conspiracy.
Never mind that if we take various media at their face value Trump is correct, since they stated that there were multiple taps against people in the Trump campaign.
No, there were taps on the RUSSIANS. Unless Trump himself was contacting the RUSSIANS during the campaign there's no reason to worry at all, and that doesn't mean that Trump Tower was tapped.
If You or your media outlet was one of the ones that defended or didn't criticize as a fatal flaw: Hillary Clinton and her most glaring case of using personal E-mail server to cause security exposures and Fail to deliver items ordered by the court,
Then you already lost any right to criticize Pence, Etc, for lesser cases Of use of a personal e-mail account.
Nonsense. Just because someone doesn't share your views of the relative importance of adherence to IT policy doesn't mean they can't criticize other people for that.
Additionally, it's not just warranted but DEMANDED to call out Republicans on their expected hypocrisy on this issue.
I'm actually glad that by slamming the MSM as fake news, Trump has blurred the lines b/w your average Michael Moore type of guy manufacturing stories out of whole cloth, vs the MSM doing it. Both have intentions to mislead, and both due to the same reason: their bias.
WTF? In all the popular instances where Trump has called out something as fake news, it hasn't actually been. That's the whole point.
Tangentially, he's doing it to discredit actual reporting on his actions.
Sorry, but Shadowstats is pure bunk. They're not using the old CPI calculations, they're taking the modern ones and just adding a few percent because they feel like it.
... the biggest restrictions on freedom since the Patriot Act...
Go on....
This will be a mass of restrictions, requirements, taxes, subsidies, and pay-offs to favored groups. I'm sure trial lawyers will be happy, because there will no doubt be lots of new things they can sue about.
Like what exactly?
And now that the regulations have changed, the NSA will have a freer hand with wiretaps.
How would reclassifying as a telecommunications service change that?
Yup. Eratosthenes did a pretty good job of calculating its size nearly 2300 years ago.
That income has been taxed already. Bequeathment is not a fucking INCOME issue.
Of course it is; "income" doesn't get taxed, TRANSFERS get taxed. For income tax, it's the transfer from your employer to you. For inheritance tax, it's the transfer from the estate to you.
Yes. Cross-subsidization (also known as "socialism") has resulted in most people I have spoken to paying 40% to 60% more on their premiums, with a higher deductible.
That's not what socialism is, that's insurance.
It has also resulted in fewer young people with insurance, because their premiums went way up. It's DUMB to raise rates on the demographic that (A) is essential to funding the program, and (B) needs it the least.
Are you entirely forgetting about the mandate? Where do you get that fewer young people have insurance? That, like the other anecdotes about huge cost increases, sounds entirely made up.
A few hundred? Try $800/month which is the cheapest plan the ACA offers where I live. And that plan was total garbage, didn't cover half of what you'd expect and had huge co-pays.
I've heard this so many times, and seen it debunked so many times, that it's just ridiculous. Sorry, but unsupported anecdotal data isn't really convincing, especially since so many people have been wrong about it.
The problem with ACA is that it MANDATED HMO's... Not health insurance.
I don't know what odd definition of "HMO" you're using (I suspect you're using it simply because HMOs are unpopular), but that's just not true.
If I tried to get the plan I have with my employer through the ACA exchange it would be over $1600/month. That's insane! And yes, I actually looked it up.
Again with the anecdotes. Also, I notice you didn't say anything about which plan it was, or how much your employer was paying.
Yeah...ask the Soviets or Cuba how that worked. (Or Venezuela if you need a more recent example.) Hell,. just ask Europe how that's going. (Looking at you, France.)
The Soviets and Cuba do/did not use European socialist capitalism. Europe is currently suffering from a terrible policy of having a currency union without a fiscal union, which is the proximate cause of their problems.