In Trump ....We Trust

[jeanvaljean]

I was speaking from a state and down and social level

the current Dem party needs an overhaul, cleaning out of the old fossils (that includes Sanders) and new young and hungry leaders

Psssst...
Sanders is not a Democrat.

[numberthirty]

He's 75, and very much stuck in a 1960's/70's way of thinking...

He also has nothing to do with a Democratic party overhaul. Coming to terms with that is something the Democratic party is going to need to do to make any real progress.

Blaming everyone but themselves is how they got here. Continuing to do so will just spin the tires in the mud.

[t hedge coke]

Psssst...
Sanders is not a Democrat.

Well, yes and no. He's no registered as a Democrat, but he was just a major face of the party. That's like saying these Libertarians who were just Republican Governor of such and such are no longer actually Republicans, they just still caucus with Republicans and... etc. There's both strong internal affiliations and public association.

What he is, is a career politician. Ain't nothing wrong with that, but it does mean he'll be a Democrat if it'll get him elected, and he's not when it doesn't. (And, I would've voted for him, either way, if he'd been on the real ticket.)

[Drz]

McCarthy’s Smiling Ghost: Democrats Point the Finger at Russia

On Tuesday, Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) and six ranking members of major House committees sent President Obama a letter declaring, “We are deeply concerned by Russian efforts to undermine, interfere with, and even influence the outcome of our recent election.”

A prominent signer of the letter — Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee — is among the Democrats most eager to denounce Russian subversion.

A week ago, when the House approved by a 390-30 margin and sent to the Senate the Intelligence Authorization Act for fiscal 2017, Schiff praised “important provisions aimed at countering Russia’s destabilizing efforts — including those targeting our elections.” One of those “important provisions,” Section 501, sets up in the executive branch “an interagency committee to counter active measures by the Russian Federation to exert covert influence.”

This high-level committee could easily morph into a protracted real-life nightmare.

While lacking public accountability, the committee is mandated to ferret out such ambiguous phenomena as Russian “media manipulation” and “disinformation.” Along the way, the committee could target an array of activists, political opponents or irksome journalists. In any event, its power to fulfill “such other duties as the president may designate” would be ready-made for abuse.

The committee is to be selected by presidential appointees, including the director of the FBI — an agency with leadership that has all too often pursued covert and overt political agendas, from the times of J. Edgar Hoover to James Comey.

All in all, the provision is a gift for the next president, tied up in a bow by congressional Democrats.

This country went through protracted witch hunts during the McCarthy era. A lot of citizens — including many government workers — had their lives damaged or even destroyed. The chill on the First Amendment became frosty, then icy. Democracy was on the ropes.

Joe McCarthy rose to corrosive prominence at the midpoint of the 20th century by riding hysteria and spurring it on. The demagoguery was fueled not only by opportunistic politicians but also by media outlets all too eager to damage the First Amendment and other civil liberties in the name of Americanism and anti-communism.

Today, congressional leaders of both parties seem glad to pretend that Section 501 of the Intelligence Authorization Act is just fine, rather than an odious and dangerous threat to precious constitutional freedoms. On automatic pilot, many senators will vote aye without a second thought.

Yet by rights, with growing grassroots opposition, this terrible provision should be blocked by legislators in both parties, whether calling themselves progressives, liberals, libertarians, Tea Partyers or whatever, who don’t want to chip away at cornerstones of the Bill of Rights.

Most Democratic leaders, for their part, seem determined to implicitly — or even explicitly — scapegoat the Russian government for the presidential election results. Rather than clearly assess the impacts of Hillary Clinton’s coziness with Wall Street, or even the role of the FBI director just before the election, the Democratic line seems bent on playing an anti-Russia card.

Perhaps in the mistaken belief that they can gain some kind of competitive advantage over the GOP by charging Russian intervention for Donald Trump’s victory, the Democrats are playing with fire. The likely burn victims are the First Amendment and other precious freedoms.

When liberals have helped to launch a witch hunt, Republican politicians have been pleased to boost it into the stratosphere. That’s what happened after Harry Truman issued an executive order in March 1947 to establish “loyalty” investigations in every agency of the federal government.

Truman may have thought he was tossing GOP extremists a bone that they would stop to gnaw on. But he actually supplied them with red meat for an all-out assault on civil liberties. An ambitious new arrival in the House named Richard Nixon did his part to escalate the witch hunting. So did other Republican lawmakers, like Sens. Karl Mundt of South Dakota and Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin. Some Democrats, like Nevada’s Sen. Pat McCarran, were pleased to join in. The rest is disgraceful and tragic history.

Now, most lawmakers on Capitol Hill seem inclined to let it happen again. Of course the upcoming era won’t be the same as the one that bears the name of McCarthy. History doesn’t exactly repeat itself, but it can rhyme an awful lot.

Can you imagen if McCarthy himself had tried to blame Russians for Ronald Reagan's victories?

2nd, image you're now in 2040 and your child is doing homework regarding God-Emperor Trump, King of the Andals and First of his Name, how many parents will admit with a straight face they utterly believed during 2016 that Clinton lost due to "MUH RUSSIANS"?

[The Kid]

McCarthy’s Smiling Ghost: Democrats Point the Finger at Russia



Can you imagen if McCarthy himself had tried to blame Russians for Ronald Reagan's victories?

2nd, image you're now in 2040 and your child is doing homework regarding God-Emperor Trump, King of the Andals and First of his Name, how many parents will admit with a straight face they utterly believed during 2016 that Clinton lost due to "MUH RUSSIANS"?

Goddamn that God-Emperor thing is cringy as hell.

Also a horrible article making a stupid comparison

[jeanvaljean]

Goddamn that God-Emperor thing is cringy as hell.

Also a horrible article making a stupid comparison

It's a bit like misunderstanding Godwyn's law to mean that nobody, ever, can be compared to Nazis.

[Kevinroc]

What "long fight"?

The Democrats just put Pelosi back in charge. The ones who backed that are fine with business as usual as long as they get to keep their piece of the pie.

Wasn't Tim Ryan the only one to run against her in 2016? How much do you know about Ryan?

[Schrecken]

Can you tell the difference between a real news story and fake news? Can you tell what is fact and what is fiction? if so, good. Apparently many people can not make that distinction, don't have the necessary mental tools to discover the difference between them.

I cannot always tell what information and news I see is real or fabricated, but I do have the ability to decide for myself amongst the information as to what I believe to be be true. I might not always get it right, but I made that decision for myself. Information wasn't taken away from me by those who deem it to be incorrect or wrong, and I was not basing my choices and beliefs on what is deemed to be "fake" by others.

Sure, there are some really stupid people out there, even those lacking basic common sense and who will believe anything they see, hear or read as long as it conforms to and confirms their personal biases or life views. I don't think that most people are that stupid, that they are incompetent fools who need to be told by organizations and individuals with their own personal biases what is really the truth and what are lies.

Can these tools be taught in school? Possibly, but that only takes care of the younger generation. What about the adults?

Of course it can be taught in schools, and even at home. As I said in one of my earlier posts, Clinton was very specific talking about social media and how to get a better handle on it to stop fake information. In this day and age of identity theft, online harassment and other digital issues, the world has become a non-stop flow of information. With Twitter, youtube, and facebook, and a hundred other services and apps right at our fingertips, online interactivity has become so integral to everyone's life that sifting and sorting through information and coming to your own conclusions has become second nature.

As far as adults go, false information has been around for them as well. It has always been around and isn't new. The prevalence may have increased due to the internet and available information sources other than TV and radio, but I don't think that all of a sudden they need to be protected from it and have others make decisions for them about what is factual.

Is it safe to let them be tricked by false information? What if that information leads them to a harmful situation? Do you still think it's okay to allow people to be victimized by false news?

The freedom for individuals to make their own choices will never be 100% safe, bad information will appear and will need to be discredited. But a concentrated effort that is supported by the mainstream media and government and focused on social media to be able to discredit news and information with a mantra that can be repeated as "fake news" is a step too far for me. People can be victimized by false news, but they can also be victimized by the discrediting and suppression of factual news that has been labeled as fake due to political reasons. This sudden push to label certain pieces of information as fake seems like the start of a trend to me.

In a perfect world where the media and government and powerful individuals were true and just and could make decisions always based on the people's best interest and not their own, I'd be all for them to decide. But we don't have those types of organizations and people looking out for the rest of us, we have those who when given the ability to label what is truth and what is false will abuse that power.

How many news websites, youtube news programs and the like will be discredited, suppressed or outright removed? And the justification will be to stop fake news, to reduce the chance of harm. And how many of those justifications will be true? How many of those justifications will be fake? You may not trust individuals to have the mental tools to discern the truth in information, but I do not trust those in charge of the flow of the information to tell the truth above an individuals capability to decide for themselves when ALL information is made available to them.

[jeanvaljean]

I cannot always tell what information and news I see is real or fabricated, but I do have the ability to decide for myself amongst the information as to what I believe to be be true. I might not always get it right, but I made that decision for myself. Information wasn't taken away from me by those who deem it to be incorrect or wrong, and I was not basing my choices and beliefs on what is deemed to be "fake" by others.

Jesus fucking Christ, are you being serious?

[Kevinroc]

This SNL skit really gets to the heart of why some people have a problem with Trump's picks for his cabinet.

[Drz]

Also a horrible article making a stupid comparison

Truth hurts?

Some Sunday humor:

[Carabas]

Psssst...
Sanders is not a Democrat.

When you run for president as a Democrat, that is not a label you are ever going to lose.

[Schrecken]

Jesus fucking Christ, are you being serious?

Do I sound like I'm joking? ha.

[Drz]

Do I sound like I'm joking? ha.

It's weird how much people demand to be controlled by an outside entity.

[jeanvaljean]

Do I sound like I'm joking? ha.

You basically said you prefer going with what "feels true" to you than with an expert consensus. Which is why I needed to check if maybe you were just pulling our legs.