StrangeSox

I don't know that anyone actually expected Facebook's "fact checking" to be good, but they've announced that they've added neoconservative rag Weekly Standard to their team of fact checkers against the recommendations of independent reviews in the name of "fairness."

California is currently experience some of if not the worst wildfires recorded there. Really looking forward to my work trip there next week. One of the places I'm supposed to go is literally the fire line right now based on the latest maps.

QUOTE (KagakuOtoko @ Dec 7, 2017 -> 01:20 PM) Yep just read that he was accused of sexual assault not just having a relationship. Accused of sexual assault by two minors. The rest of the allegations weren't of illegal behavior, just of a 30-something guy creeping on so many high schoolers that he got banned from a mall.

QUOTE (Quin @ Dec 7, 2017 -> 12:25 PM) CNN and WashPo are working exposing 20-30 congressional members. Franken and Conyers set the precedent, let's see what happens now. Tim Kaine called for OOC to publicly disclose all claims and settlements against Senate members http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/363754-...nt-claims-filed

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Dec 7, 2017 -> 12:16 PM) Because it could be worthless tomorrow. Sure, but you could have also said that at $10, $100, $1000, $5k I don't disagree that it's a speculative bubble at all, I'm saying it's completely worthless as a currency precisely because of that.

Your ability as a Senator is almost entirely about your ability to be good at politics, public perception, and deal-making. Making the party look bad and giving your fellow party members a reason to distance themselves from you means you can't effectively advocate for your constituents. Think of what would happen if say the CEO of Target was caught on tape ranting about minorities. They haven't done anything illegal at all, but they'd have done massive damage to the company they're heading's public perception. So out they'd go. Few if any employees have due process protections, anyway, though that's not a good thing.

It's also an effect of having a deflationary currency. The algorithm makes each bitcoin harder to mine than the last, and there's a hard limit to how many can ever exist including the ones that just get irretrievably lost. So it encourages hording.

If you own a bitcoin right now, why would you even want to spend it? You could by $12,000 worth of things yesterday, or you could $18,000 worth of things with the same bitcoin today.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Dec 7, 2017 -> 11:42 AM) You're somewhat right - the Congress needs to develop a better way to deal with this and a clear path by which this can be treated as an ethics violation. If that isn't done, it does set up an opportunity for someone to do a James O'Keefe setup where they try to bring down a Congressperson based on false accusations. There are unfortunately, a number of other issues with this though, including the fact that Congress has made it nearly impossible to report harassment by their members, and the fact that you can't really set up something like this that would police Congress without having to deal with the dozen+ credible claims against the President. At some point, Al Franken had to go and yesterday's was the straw that broke the camels back. Even if some of these are invented, there's photographic evidence of a couple of them, and he was not going to be in a position to do his job or represent the people of Minnesota any more. This is the key part. Even if he maintains his innocence, even if an ethics committee couldn't find hard proof (and what would that even look like in this case beyond what we already know?), he had clearly lost the confidence of his colleagues. This is one of the highest profile political positions in the country, and perception and public/colleague confidence is crucial to your ability to serve.

Shouting "I hate blacks and Jews" is perfectly legal, but I'd hope that any member of Congress caught on tape doing that would be forced out of office. It's a political question, not a legal one.

It's a political position and if the political tides turn against you and you can no longer effectively serve, you should resign. Look at HHS Sec. Tom Price earlier this year. He abused government travel funds to fly private jets all over the country. I don't think anything he did was technically illegal, but it was a bad look for the administration politically, so he was forced to resign over it. That comes with the territory of holding a political office.

QUOTE (Quin @ Dec 7, 2017 -> 11:16 AM) Also someone that was part of a ticket that won a statewide election But she apparently doesn't want to run for the same seat in 2018, which seems like a bad move strategically?

QUOTE (ptatc @ Dec 7, 2017 -> 11:13 AM) Should anyone really be forced out due to allegations? Whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty? Shouldn't they be allowed to continue on until either they admit to it or proven guilty in court? Resigning because you've disgraced yourself or your office and are facing political pressure is nothing new, whether it's for sexual misconduct (Franken) or abusing government funds (Price, earlier this fall). When a person is facing a litany of unconnected accusers telling similar stories with at least some amount of evidence, they should absolutely be forced out. These women had pictures with Franken and all told similar stories, showing a clear pattern (and there are probably more). Moore's accusers have written notes from him and he was banned from the mall--he should never disgrace the Senate with his presence. Trump's faced numerous accusers and bragged on tape about sexually assaulting women. Farenthold settled a case using public funds, just like Conyers (and, honestly, probably a lot of others. Not everything worthy of a resignation rises to the level of a successful criminal prosecution.

That was a really bad, self-important speech by Franken that basically called his accusers liars. Good riddance. I have no problem with a Sen. Ellison aside from that it opens up another race for a House seat. Still, it'd be great to have the GOP seating a child molester who doesn't believe that women or Muslims should be allowed to serve in government while the Democrats are seating a Muslim who replaced a guy they forced out over sexual misconduct allegations. Really solid juxtaposition there. e: a woman has an even better effect in that regard.

QUOTE (Quin @ Dec 7, 2017 -> 10:54 AM) Franken out. Farenthold still in the House, of course, and Moore will soon be seated by the GOP Senate that is now fully backing him.

Meanwhile,

Franken out, giving speech now.

Remember the 90's and people having to split up their extremely valuable Beanie Baby collections in divorce court?

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Dec 7, 2017 -> 10:27 AM) It's also not insured, and completely anonymous. There is no way it doesnt crash. If it doesnt, Ill be shocked. It's still useful for money laundering, transferring capital out of countries with tight restrictions (China, Russia), drugs, and child pornography so it'll stick around for a little while, at least.

QUOTE (JenksIsMyHero @ Dec 7, 2017 -> 10:22 AM) The question is how far will this go. Bitcoin isn't based on anything but perceived value, and that value is being generated by demand. There's a huge amount of demand, but it's really just beginning and bitcoins acceptance, especially globally, is still growing. I find it hard to believe that suddenly, tomorrow, everyone just stops believing that bitcoin is something valuable. $16k valuable? i dunno, but there's really no rhyme or reason here. It could drop or it could rise to a million per. Anyone claiming to know is just guessing. Bitcoin can process a couple hundred transactions globally simultaneously, and that will only get worse. It's an inherently deflationary "currency" based on converting electricity into bitcoins. It'll never be a major transaction source because it's intentionally limited in usefulness by the underlying technology. It already wastes as much electricity a day as the entire country of Denmark uses. In a couple of years, if it continues on the same pace, it'll waste more than the entire US to produce nothing of actual value.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Dec 7, 2017 -> 07:13 AM) Bitcoin now up over $15k https://twitter.com/nycjim/status/938745648...src=twsrc%5Etfw Look at this extremely outdated post! Now over $17.5k this seems like a good, stable currency.

The weird times when tribalism breaks down, like with support for the GOP health care plans and now their tax plan.

Bitcoin now up over $15k https://twitter.com/nycjim/status/938745648...src=twsrc%5Etfw

https://twitter.com/JesseLehrich/status/938...9845093376?s=17

8 countries, including France and the UK, our closest allies, are calling for a UN security council meeting https://twitter.com/christinawilkie/status/...src=twsrc%5Etfw