StrangeSox

Buried under all the other news today were more allegations of an affair and hush money against Trump, this time by a former playmate but still right in that 2006 timeframe shortly after Trump's son was born. https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/do...-karen-mcdougal

I wonder if Trump will apologize to the victims later today for originally blaming them for not reporting the shooter.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Feb 16, 2018 -> 12:50 PM) The FBI said it failed to act on a tip warning of the suspected Florida school shooter's potential for violence wasn't just federal law enforcement that dropped the ball

There are a lot of unnamed US-side actors in these indictments. Wonder if/when we'll see indictments from that side. e: it was also another example of how tight this investigation is. no leaks of this at all ahead of the announcement today.

tfw you're the President's son and linking to Russian propaganda accounts on twitter https://twitter.com/Zeddary/status/964562156044906496

QUOTE (JenksIsMyHero @ Feb 16, 2018 -> 02:53 PM) Not sure that's true either. Even still, circumvent that and just provide them with the info that Russia is infiltrating their sites with false stories and ask them to act accordingly. They're a public for-profit company driven almost entirely on ad revenue. What's "acting appropriately" here? Do private multinational corporations have some sort of civic duty? Why should Facebook really care if they're flooded with foreign propaganda if it's driving clicks and traffics until the point it becomes unacceptable from a PR standpoint?

QUOTE (JenksIsMyHero @ Feb 16, 2018 -> 02:50 PM) Which I never understood. The dude campaigned for her (or at least made a few speeches here and there). He already has a bias. Who cares? Obama was the most decorum-obsessed President in history, and McConnell was essentially blackmailing him and the FBI by threatening to immediately politicize any disclosure and claim that Obama was abusing the powers of the office to hurt political opponents. But campaigning separately while in office and using the tools and power of the office for campaigning are two very different things.

The official White House statement continues to lie, still claiming that the intelligence community and now the Special Counsel say Russian interference had no affect on the outcome of the election. Neither group has claimed that (or would be in a position to claim that). Trump has insisted for over a year that the very idea of Russian interference was a complete hoax, so at least now they're sort of recognizing that it actually happened. Doubt they'll do anything to prevent it from happening again this year, though. e: QUOTE (JenksIsMyHero @ Feb 16, 2018 -> 02:44 PM) First Amendment doesn't apply to a private company like Facebook. It would apply to the government asking Facebook to pull content QUOTE (illinilaw08 @ Feb 16, 2018 -> 02:44 PM) On (1), hasn't it been pretty well established that the Obama administration was falling all over itself to avoid the appearance of any bias in the run up to 2016? Could you imagine the outcry on the Right if the Obama administration tried to stop Facebook posts that were spreading *allegedly* false news that favored the Republican side of the aisle? Obama should have come forward with what was known in the fall of 2016 and told the country that McConnell was threatening him in order to cover it up imo.

1) Yeah, they were definitely tracking this for a while and definitely didn't do enough to stop it. Social media companies in particular did absolutely nothing even when they were repeatedly asked. For example, the actual Tennessee GOP tried to get them to take down the @TENGOP account as a fraud multiple times, but twitter routinely ignored it. I don't know how much was just not caring versus having no idea what to even do about it. Their efforts since 2016 haven't exactly shown that they've figured it out. On the flip side, there's been some recent political science research that's found that most of the intentionally Fake News social media stuff was consumed by a small portion of the electorate, 10% or so, on the hard right. The question there would still be not whether it flipped votes but if it kept the base motivated, though. And it wasn't just social media s***posting of fake news. There was astroturfing rallies and gatherings and what not. 2) Eh, maybe. The people today are all Russian nationals living in Russia who'll never be extradited and won't actually face up to these charges. There's no flipping these people. This seems more like a series of indictments to strengthen the recent statements from every top intelligence official that, yes, Russia definitely did interfere in the 2016 elections and yes they are definitely planning to do it again. This article I posted earlier today goes into when it started and how they identified these people--it was Dutch intelligence. 3) A weakened US, and they've had a goal of weaken democracy across the West in general. There's a lot in Russian politics about lost dignity after the collapse of the SU and lost global influence.

QUOTE (Chicago White Sox @ Feb 16, 2018 -> 01:57 PM) Is there a way to see which politicians receive sizable donations from the NRA? I want to know how much guys like Paul Ryan & Marco Rubio get from them vs. other politicians. And how many times has Paul Ryan done the “now is not the time to discuss gun control” BS? Surely there has to be a video all the different times he’s spewed that garbage edited together. There’s got to be a way to hold these f***s accountable for the lives they’re partly accountable for taking. ask and ye shall receive watch Paul Ryan say nearly the same thing after multiple mass shootings Thoughts and Prayers and NRA Funding

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Feb 16, 2018 -> 01:51 PM) Terrorists are always going to be mentally ill, thats why they become terrorists. Its a horrific copout. Eh that's kinda circular logic. Perfectly mentally sound people are capable of doing awful, awful things. Stanford prisoner experiment along with plenty of real-world evidence shows that. Either that or the rate of undiagnosed mental illness is astronomical.

Weirdly still focused on me instead of Shapiro.

I'm specifically asking you to consider his own written content rather than attacking me or someone else who hasn't even posted in this thread.

They astroturfed our country so hard in 2016 for a total of like $2M. That's an amazing return on investment.

I posted an article full of examples of Serious Thinker Ben Shapiro, but you seem dead set on ignoring that by making it about what posters on ST think rather than Shapiro's own words and arguments and insisting that your position is "inarguable" while insulting anyone who would disagree. Stop making it about the ST posters and explain why anyone who has written what Shapiro's written as shown above should be taken seriously.

QUOTE (Quin @ Feb 16, 2018 -> 12:18 PM) 13 new indictments. Gawd damn. 13 indictments against Russian nationals and 3 against Russian propaganda outfits for interfering in the 2016 election to help Trump or hurt Clinton. These people will never be extradicted, so this seems more like a move to show that, yes, there was Russian interference in the election on behalf of Trump and against Clinton. Whether there was any collobaration between Trump's team and the Russians, beyond Papadopolous, and Page, and Trump Jr./Manafort/Kushner meeting with a group of Russians presenting themselves as working on behalf of the Russian government with dirt on Clinton, we'll have to wait to see. edit: There's some interesting language in the indictment about "Russian affiliates, posing as US persons and without revealing their Russian association, communicated with "unwitting individuals" within the Trump Campaign and with other political activists to seek to coordinate political activities"

The FBI said it failed to act on a tip warning of the suspected Florida school shooter's potential for violence

Kushner, who's been working under an "interim" security clearance for over a year now, has had to 'correct' his financial disclosure form yet again.

QUOTE (raBBit @ Feb 16, 2018 -> 12:06 PM) Fit enough buzzwords in there? "There's no real reason to like him" from you means "He's conservative." Nah. He's a sophist who makes s***ty arguments from a basis of bigotry. You could have addressed that long article pointing out the many, many instances of this rather than trying to make it about me. Maybe he's nice if you're a fellow reactionary. People who are the target or have friends and family who are the target of his reactionary ideology might not find him so nice.

He's a sophist, and despite telling everyone how he Went To Harvard as often as possible, makes garbage reactionary arguments. He worked for alt-right white supremacist rag Brietbart for a long time. There's no real reason to like him. THE COOL KID’S PHILOSOPHER

https://theintercept.com/2018/02/16/trump-r...-investigation/ Is Donald Trump A Traitor? Americans must live with the uncertainty of not knowing whether Trump has the best interests of the United States or those of Russia at heart. Start of a four-part series. This one examines whether Russia intervened in the 2016 US elections to help Trump win, including the Cold War history of similar efforts. It's a long piece so I'm only excerpting parts of the intro.

Report: The Failure of Policy Planning in California’s Charter School Facility Funding Education was Obama's worst domestic policy platform. So much money dumped into school privatization via charters with little or negative results to show for it.

Scott Pruitt is wasting money flying first class. He is doing this because he needs a safe space because someone yelled "you're ruining the f***ing environment" at him once. What a snowflake. https://t.co/jpYVwO19bp

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Feb 15, 2018 -> 09:37 PM) Fake, terrible hunters use a rifle that’s main function is to spray and pray. It’s a terrible gun for home defense and for hunting. It’s only function is to engage an enemy with a high rate of fire. It’s also a profit center because of how modular and “cool looking” it is. It serve no useful purpose since there are guns that are more effective at pretty much any useful activity. And I’d say that about most if not all semi automatic rifles. The toxic fetishizing culture surrounding guns and in particular the military look alike ones are part of the problem imo.

QUOTE (ptatc @ Feb 15, 2018 -> 09:23 PM) I thought they were illegal. I have no issue with full auto being illegal and banned. Those aren't good for anything but mass killings. However, that wouldn't stop this as it was the semi-auto version. They're rarely used in crimes. Legally owned ones have been used like twice in many decades. To me, that shows that heavy restrictions and registration can actually work.