Total posts: 8,696
radiate confidence to the point where it seems like they are certain that they have it all figured out.
This is an important debate tactic. I think it would be a mistake to assume our "debate voice" reflects our personality. In fact, I think it would be a mistake to assume that anything written anonymously on a website reflects actual personality.
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Incumbent Congressman Steve Watkins (R-KS), co-chair of Trump's re-election campaign in Kansas lost his Republican primary after it was discovered that he didn't actually live in Kansas' 2nd District and was using a UPS store for his legal address. Both of Watkins' legal residences are in Alaska. Watkins confessed to illegally voting in local elections and never actually living in Kansas as part of diversion agreement to avoid prosecution. Watkin's father was later determined to have illegally contributed $800,000 to Watkin's PAC. In spite of felony charges, Watkin's still got the Trump vote in the primary, about a third of Republicans.
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Man admits to voter fraud in casting dead mother’s ballot
April 30, 2021
MEDIA, Pa. (AP) — A Pennsylvania man who illegally voted for Donald Trump on behalf of his long-dead mother in last year’s presidential election was sentenced Friday to five years of probation.
Bruce Bartman, 70, of Marple, pleaded guilty Friday to two counts of perjury and one count of unlawful voting. Besides his probation term, he will not be allowed to vote in an election for four years and is no longer eligible to serve on a jury.
Bartman apologized for his actions, telling the judge “I was isolated last year in lockdown. I listened to too much propaganda and made a stupid mistake.”
Bartman voted in place of his dead mother, authorities have said, and he also registered his mother-in-law, who died in 2019, to vote but did not obtain an absentee ballot for her.
Prosecutors have said Bartman used the driver’s license number for his mother, who died more than a decade ago, to register her to vote, obtain a mail-in ballot, return that ballot and fraudulently vote in her name.
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@oromagi
How did the Republican party, rig the election?
- Trump solicited foreign interference in the 2020 U.S. presidential election to help his re-election bid, and then obstructed the inquiry itself by telling his administration officials to ignore subpoenas for documents and testimony. A 2019 impeachment inquiry reported that Trump withheld military aid and an invitation to the White House to Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky in order to influence Ukraine to announce an investigation into Trump's political opponent Joe Biden and to promote a discredited conspiracy theory that Ukraine, not Russia, was behind interference in the 2016 presidential election.
- Trump's own Director of National Intelligence advised:
- "We assess that Russian President Putin authorized, and a range of Russian government organizations conducted, influence operations aimed at denigrating President Biden’s candidacy and the Democratic Party, supporting former President Trump, undermining public confidence in the electoral process, and exacerbating sociopolitical divisions in the US. Unlike in 2016, we did not see persistent Russian cyber efforts to gain access to election infrastructure. …
- A key element of Moscow’s strategy this election cycle was its use of proxies linked to Russian intelligence to push influence narratives — including misleading or unsubstantiated allegations against President Biden — to US media organizations, US officials, and prominent US individuals, including some close to former President Trump and his administration."
- The US Supreme Court and Republicans in the State Legislature of Wisconsin rebuffed Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers's request to move the state's spring elections to June. As a result, the elections, which included a presidential primary, went ahead on April 7 as planned.
- Trump and his campaign strongly opposed mail-in voting in spite of the ongoing pandemic emergency, claiming that it would cause widespread voter fraud, a belief which had already been thoroughly debunked by the administration own election experts. "We'll see what happens, Trump said, "Get rid of the ballots and you'll have a very peaceful – there won't be a transfer, frankly. There will be a continuation."
- In other words, Republicans tried to force election venues into conditions that violated the administration's own public sanitation and quarantine recommendations, believing that fear of infection would drive down voter turnout to Republican's benefit.
- During the campaign Trump repeatedly promised to refuse to recognize the outcome of the election if he was defeated; Trump falsely suggested that the election would be rigged against him. Trump refused to answer whether he would accept the results. Trump repeatedly refused to commit to a peaceful transition of power after the election.
- Trump repeatedly stated that he hoped that the Supreme Court would (unconstitutionally) decide the election and that he wanted a conservative majority in case of an election dispute.
- To this end, Republicans expedited the October nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Court in spirt of hypocritically and vehemently refusing a February nomination before the previous election.
- Trump repeatedly stated that the election should be unconstitutionally postponed or skipped.
- Trump appointed Postmaster General Louis DeJoy introduced a host of new measures deigned to slow and break the mail-in voting process, including banning overtime and extra trips to deliver mail, and dismantling and removing hundreds of high-speed mail sorting machines from postal centers in Democratic strongholds. Postal delivery still hasn't recovered from these interferences.
- 7% of all ballots that arrived in postal facilities before the election went uncounted because of Post Office delays.
- Mail-in ballots overwhelming favored Biden.
- Trump has refused to nominate any new members to the Federal Election Commission, the division of Govt. charged with enforcing fair elections and campaign financing rules.
- Simultaneously, Republicans submitted hundreds legal of lawsuits relating to the election had been filed. About 250 of these had to do with the mechanics of voting in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic.
- That is, Trump manufactured a backlog of complaints while also guaranteeing that backlog could not be addressed by Federal means- forcing suits into State courts where GOP lawyers hoped to create the illusion of wrong-doing.
- When called on to denounce political intimidation by White Supremacists during a presidential debate, Trump told White Supremacists to "stand by."
- After the election, Trump ominously fired the Sec. of Defense and a number of key DoD and replaced them with loyal inner party members- a clear attempt to seek military alternatives.
- After Nov. 10th, Trump's cabinet and personal lawyers collectively advised Trump that all legal remedies had been expended and that all further attempts to change the election's outcome would be illegal and therefore treason.
- Trump began firing officials for confirming the election results or initiating procedures for the orderly transfer of power.
- Trump ordered officials to submit budgets for 2022 and fired officials who complained that was a waste of taxpayer money.
- Republicans filed 86 lawsuits questioning the outcome of the Presidential (most after Trump had been advised that they could not change the election's outcome). Most of which depended on wildly unstained conspiracy theories, most of which originated with QAnon. QAnon's website, 8kun, had been moved to Russian networks in October to protect its owners from US and Filipino criminal investigations.
- "Nearly all the suits were dismissed or dropped due to lack of evidence. Judges, lawyers, and other observers described the suits as "frivolous" and "without merit". In one instance, the Trump campaign and other groups seeking his reelection collectively lost multiple cases in six states on a single day. Only one ruling was initially in Trump's favor: the timing within which first-time Pennsylvania voters must provide proper identification if they wanted to “cure” their ballots. This ruling affected very few votes, and it was later overturned by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court."
- On March 22, 2021, lawyers for [Trump's lead election lawyer, Sidney Powell, who was responsible for filing most of these lawsuits] argued that "no reasonable person would conclude that the statements by Powell about the 2020 election were truly statements of fact". Instead, “it was clear to reasonable persons that Powell’s claims were her opinions and legal theories"
- That is, in court, Trump's own lawyers have since argued that Trump's fraud claims were obviously fictional.
- Trump and other prominent Republicans illegally pressured Republican campaign officials in at least 4 states, GA, MI, AZ, and PA to delay certification past the deadline, decertify legal votes, and manufacture non-existent.
- In at least one state, WI, Trump supporters physically interrupted and delayed vote counts.
- Trump supporters threatened election officials, their staff, and families in at least 8 states including WI, PA, MI, NV, and AZ via emails, telephone calls and letters.
- Many communications included death threats.
- Multiple election officials required police protection and/or family relocation
- Trump attorney Joseph diGenova argued on Fox News that Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Director Chris Kreb should be taken out and shot for certifying the election.
- The AZ Republican Party repeatedly tweeted that Republicans needed "die for" and "give their life" to protect Donald Trump's incumbency
- Republican Congressmen filed a lawsuit requesting an unconstitutional finding by a Federal Judge that the Vice President maintained sole authority to certify the election.
- Trump unconstitutionally ordered AG Barr to request from SCOTUS an injunction delaying the certification of the election. When the AG refused, Trump fired Barr and ordered the same from acting AG Rosen who likewise refused.
- Beginning in January, Trump asked, then demanded, then ordered Vice President Pence, both in public and in private, to overturn the election results and declare Trump-Pence the winners of the election.
- LIz Cheney:
- "On January 6, 2021 a violent mob attacked the United States Capitol to obstruct the process of our democracy and stop the counting of presidential electoral votes. This insurrection caused injury, death and destruction in the most sacred space in our Republic. The President of the United States summoned this mob, assembled the mob, and lit the flame of this attack. Everything that followed was his doing. None of this would have happened without the President. The President could have immediately and forcefully intervened to stop the violence. He did not. There has never been a greater betrayal by a President of the United States of his office and his oath to the Constitution."
- Trump supporters interrupted and explicitly called for the end of the constitutionally mandated election certification
- Insurrectionist explicitly demanded the death of the Vice President and the Speaker of the House (2nd and 3rd in power).
- Trump's lawyer Giuliani was recorded pressuring Republican Senators to illegally postpone their constitutional mandated responsibility:
- "we need you, our Republican friends, to try to just slow it down ... So if you could object to every state and, along with a congressman, get a hearing for every state, I know we would delay you a lot, but it would give us the opportunity to get the legislators who are very, very close to pulling their vote ... they have written letters asking that you guys adjourn and send them back the questionable ones and they'll fix them up"
- After the insurrection, 7 GOP Senators and 138 Republican House members objected to certifying AZ and PA without presenting any substantive cause.
- Trump conceded the election on Jan 7th but has since reneged on that concession on dozens of occasions, suggesting the election was stolen, unconstitutionally claiming that he is the rightful President, and predicting an re-instatement by late Summer.
- AZ State Senators illegally surrendered custody of all 2020 Maricopa County ballots to an ad-hoc rag-tag of QAnon conspiracy theorists with Trump's full throated approval, anticipating a manufactured counterclaim in AZ.
- Multiple Republicans continue to advocate for further coup attempts or other violence to reverse the election results.
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@ADreamOfLiberty
2020 election(s), and to a less extent previous ones. Many places, obviously the motivation would be the strongest in swing districts of swing states. The strongest evidence includes whistleblower election workers, dead (or unbelievably old) voters requesting and returning mail in ballots, video and electronic recordings of counting resuming after judges have been removed or dismissed.
Stop being so timid. Who? What? When? Where? How? I am assuming that you are afraid to get specific because as soon as you do, I will roll out the fact checks and Secretaries of State PR and court rulings by Trump appointed judges that dismissed your bullshit as incredible more than a year ago.
lol, well then they weren't coordinated with all the republicans demanding audits were they...
lol, they were the same people, generally speaking. For example, Mark Meadows the very man coordinating all the electoral fraud claims was illegally registered to vote in three states. Trump's very own Chief of Staff was falsely claiming to live in a trailer out in the North Carolina woods. lol. what a pack of crooks.
The proven fact is that no one assumed the duty of disproving or making impossible plausible theories of fraud,
This is easily disproved. If you ever summon to courage to cite an actual official claim of election fraud, I will give you the names of the investigators and officials who disproved that claim. 2020 featured the most thoroughly scrutinized election results in the history of democracy.
and if it's no one's job to do that then there is no such thing as "our democracy".
Premise false therefore conclusion fails.
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I do believe that’s the closest GP’s ever come to criticizing Vladimir Putin.
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@ADreamOfLiberty
Oh I'll make it: Ballots, ballot mailers (the most important bits) were discarded or destroyed before audits could be done and I believe that would not have been done (or done nearly as quickly) save for the intention to prevent an audit from ever occurring.
so vague. What election? What jurisdiction? What evidence? Why are you using the passive voice? Who did what when where how?
It is a proven fact that major theories on cheating were and remain today plausible
I agree that Republicans were openly cheating in the 2020 election.
PLAUSIBLE is the superficial appearance of likelihood in the absence of proof. To say that "it a proven fact that x is plausible" is deliberately deceptive language- there is no doubt whatsoever that x might have happened, etc.
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@ADreamOfLiberty
Especially when people intentionally don't keep records and destroy records they did make.
Sounds like you have some kind of accusation to make but then you don't make it. Why?
All of that is a proven fact.
What is? Your post is so vague I have no idea what you're talking about.
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@bmdrocks21
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Wasn't the whole Russian investigation's conclusion that there was no evidence that Trump told the Russians to hack her emails or really ever telling them to do anything?
A perfect example of your self-deluded ahistorical fantasy: the single most salient fact of the Trump presidency and you blithely believe the polar opposite of the Mueller Report's mostly uncontested conclusions.
"The report states that Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election was illegal and occurred "in sweeping and systematic fashion" but was welcomed by the Trump campaign as it expected to benefit from such efforts. It also identifies links between Trump campaign officials and individuals with ties to the Russian government, about which several persons connected to the campaign made false statements and obstructed investigations.....Investigators had an incomplete picture of what happened due in part to some communications that were encrypted, deleted, or not saved, as well as testimony that was false, incomplete, or declined The report describes ten episodes where Trump obstructed justice while president and one before he was elected, noting that he privately tried to "control the investigation". The report further states that Congress can decide whether Trump obstructed justice and take action accordingly, referencing impeachment."
That is, Mueller documents 11 felonies committed by Trump, each meriting a separate 20 year prison sentence and advises Congress that there is sufficient evidence that President Donald Trump obstructed justice to merit impeachment hearings. Mueller later stated that his investigation's conclusion on Russian interference "deserves the attention of every American"
The report documents 170 incidents where Trump and 18 of his men made contacts with Russian intelligence during the campaign but there's almost no records of what was discussed and when the 19 men are asked what they were up to, they invariably lie about it. So, for example, we know that Roger Stone knew that Wikileaks had the Podesta emails as early as April 2016, that Stone was DM'ing the hacker, Guccifer 2.0 and that Stone was reporting his conversations with Assange and Guccifer 2.0 (both employed by Russian intelligence at the time) to Trump in person. We know that just minutes after the "grab 'em by the pussy" tapes broke, Stone texted "drop the Podesta emails immediately" and Russian agent Guccifer 2.0 immediately responded by dropping the emails. We know that Stone was convicted of seven counts of obstruction of justice and lying under oath about this transaction with Russian intelligence that Trump was extraordinarily eager to pardon. Any rational person would conclude direct conspiracy and coordination but without some actual acknowledgement or receipt by Guccifer 2.0, such a charge would not likely end in a conviction in court.
There's a wide gap between obviously guilty and convictably guilty. Think OJ Simpson- just because Simpson was found "not guilty" in a court of law ought not be mistaken by any rational person as evidence that OJ Simpson was not always and certainly the murderer. No detectives wasted any time looking for some other culprit just because the case against Simpson was so badly handled.
It is not undermining democracy to say that OJ Simpson was obviously guilty. It would be undermining democracy to try to lynch OJ Simpson in the name of justice. See the difference? That is the same difference between Clinton and Trump.
He did concede by acknowledging that a new administration would be taking over.
Only a toadie would mistake that mealy mouthed mumbling on Jan 7th as a concession. Certainly Trump refutes your assertion that he conceded so why would you believe otherwise?
He organized a rally. He did not organize an attack. Could you please provide me with his attack plans drawn out on battle maps? Perhaps show me where he said to break into the Capitol and threaten people?
Let's accept the eyewitness testimony of Senior Republican leadership:
- MITCH McCONNELL
- January 6th was a disgrace. American citizens attacked their own government. They use terrorism to try to stop a specific piece of domestic business they did not like. Fellow Americans beat and bloodied our own police. They stormed the center floor. They tried to hunt down the Speaker of the House. They built a gallows and chatted about murdering the vice president. They did this because they’d been fed wild, falsehoods by the most powerful man on earth because he was angry. He lost an election. Former President Trump’s actions preceded the riot or a disgraceful dereliction of duty.... There’s no question, none, that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day. No question about it. The people who stormed this building believed they were acting on the wishes and instructions of their president and having that belief was a foreseeable consequence of the growing crescendo of false statements, conspiracy theories, and reckless hyperbole, which the defeated president kept shouting into the largest megaphone on planet Earth. The issue is not only the president's intemperate language on January 6th. It is not just his endorsement of remarks in which an associate urged quote “Trial by combat”. It was also the entirely manufactured atmosphere of looming catastrophe. The increasingly wild myths about a reverse landslide election that was somehow being stolen. Some secret coup by our now president. The leader of the free world cannot spend weeks thundering that shadowy forces are stealing our country and then feign surprise when people believe him and do reckless things. Sadly many politicians sometimes make overheated comments or use metaphors that unhinged listeners might take literally, but that was different. That’s different from what we saw. This was an intensifying crescendo of conspiracy theories orchestrated by an outgoing president who seemed determined to either overturn the voter’s decision or else torch our institutions on the way out. The unconscionable behavior did not end when the violence actually began. Whatever our ex president claims he thought might happen a day, whatever right reaction he’s says he meant to produce by that afternoon we know he was watching the same live television as the rest of us. A mob was assaulting the Capitol in his name, these criminals who are carrying his banners, hanging his flags and screaming their loyalty to him. It was obvious that only President Trump could end this. He was the only one who could. Former aides publicly begged him to do so. Loyal allies frantically called the administration. The president did not act swiftly. He did not do his job. He didn’t take steps so federal law could be faithfully executed and order restored. No, instead, according to public reports, he watched television happily as the chaos unfolded. He kept pressing his scheme to overturn the election. Now, even after it was clear to any reasonable observer that Vice President Pence was in serious danger. Even as the mob carrying Trump banners was beating cops and breaching perimeters their president sent a further tweet, attacking his own vice president.....74 million Americans did not engineer the campaign of disinformation and rage that provoked it. One person did, just one.....President Trump is still liable for everything he did while he was in office as an ordinary citizen. Unless the statute of limitations is run, still liable for everything he did while he was in office. [Trump] didn’t get away with anything, yet. Yet. We have a criminal justice system in this country. We have civil litigation and former presidents are not immune from being accountable by either one. The Senate’s decision today does not condone anything that happened on or before that terrible day. It simply shows that senators did what the former president failed to do. We put our constitutional duty first.
- KEVIN McCARTHY
- "Trump bears responsibility for Wednesday's attack on Congress by mob rioters. He should have immediately denounced the mob when he saw what was unfolding"
- LIZ CHENEY
- "Trump has continued to suggest the violence on Jan. 6 was justified, when he says Nov. 3 was the insurrection and Jan. 6 was a protest, what he’s doing is continuing to undermine our electoral process, You know, he’s gone to war with the rule of law and I think that’s also really important for people to understand."
And which illegal means did he discuss? Because it doesn't seem like he did anything illegal. He used courts to review rules in PA, call for vote audits, etc. which he is completely allowed to do.
- So far, ten of Trump's lawyers have been sanctioned or disbarred for defrauding the courts and abusing the legal process in pursuit of Trump's manifestly falsified claims.
- John C. Eastman tried to convince then-Vice President Mike Pence that he could overturn the election results on January 6, 2021by throwing out electors from "7 states" – presumably Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, along with either New Mexico or the federal district Washington, D.C. Slates of electors declaring Trump the winner actually were submitted from the seven states, but the National Archives did not accept the unsanctioned documents and they did not explicitly enter the deliberations. Under Eastman's scheme, Pence would have declared Trump the winner with more Electoral College votes after the seven states were thrown out, at 232 votes to 222.
- On January 2, 2021, Trump held a one-hour phone call with Raffensperger. Trump was joined by chief of staff Mark Meadows, trade adviser Peter Navarro, Justice Department official John Lott, law professor John C. Eastman, and attorneys Rudy Giuliani, Cleta Mitchell and Kurt Hilbert. Raffensperger was joined by his general counsel Ryan Germany. On January 3, The Washington Post and other media outlets obtained a recording of this phone conversation. During the phone call, Trump maintained falsely that he had won Georgia by "hundreds of thousands of votes", insisting that the certified election results were wrong. He said that Raffensperger should "reevaluate" the election's results, citing a variety of different conspiracy theories regarding voting in the state. Raffensperger, in response, answered that the election results in that state were correct and legitimate, and that Trump "had got his data wrong". During his attempts to pressure Raffensperger into changing the election results, Trump said, "I just want to find 11,780 votes", the minimum number needed to overcome Biden's advantage in Georgia. Trump also tried to intimidate Raffensperger, hinting that Raffensperger and his attorney could face a possible criminal investigation. Trump said, "You know, that's a criminal offense. And you know, you can't let that happen. That's a big risk to you."
- That is, Trump personally threatened to throw an honest Republican election official in jail if he didn't falsely invent 11,780 votes. This felony alone, caught on tape and denied by nobody should earn Trump a 20 year sentence.
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@TheUnderdog
I've noticed that with few exceptions, the places with the lowest taxes, the least regulation, the highest amount of abortion restrictions (Africa, Latin America, rural Dixieland) are shitholes. Conversely, the places with the highest taxes, the most amount of regulation, and the easiest abortion laws (Yankee America, EU, Canada) aren't shitholes. I wonder what the conservative response to this would be.
As ever, I will remind you that you are using those word incorrectly and without understanding.
By definition, Liberals believe in minimizing state interference in the free market, including taxes. By definition, Liberals believe in less regulation including less government regulation of unpopular medical procedures like abortion.
By definition, Conservatives believe in preserving state and cultural institutions- property rights, organized religion, the preservation of constitutional, legal, and social principles.
Contrary to the teachings of FOX News, Liberalism and Conservatism are not diametrically opposed poles on some political spectrum. You can be Liberal and Conservative at the same time in any free and fair state. The majority of the American political center has always been Liberal and Conservative. Our current president is correctly labeled both Liberal and Conservative. Most Western parliamentary democracies have at least one Liberal Conservative party.
What you are describing when you look to politics in Africa, South America, Southern states in the US is Authoritarianism. Authoritarianism is a form of government characterized by the rejection of political plurality, the use of strong central power to preserve the political status quo, and reductions in the rule of law, separation of powers, and democratic voting. The suppression of parliamentary process, multi-party exchanges of power, voting rights are not inherently conservative or liberal, they are inherently Authoritarian. When you see Southern states banning the teaching of civil rights in the classrooms, despising Journalistic critique, controlling the authority of medicine, making voting more difficult, enforcing laws unequally, etc you are seeing the preservation and/or emergence of authoritarianism in the US. The reason Authoritarian economies are always weaker than Democratic economies is that they restrict the free flow of accurate information and the dynamic power sharing that leads to correction, progress, adaptation. All authoritarianism is inherently stagnant because its only real agenda is self-promotion and self preservation. Look at Ukraine vs Russia- the strength of volunteers working together to preserve their community vs. an isolated dictator whose own generals weren't told they were going to war because they might contradict the assumptions of that dictator.
It is not Conservative vs. Liberal, that is FOX News divisiveness. The dynamic you are describing is the freer markets of democracy vs. the self-preserving controls of authoritarianism.
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@ADreamOfLiberty
believes the election was stolen, I mean really believes it
Belief is easy. Proof is hard.
One doesn't need to be well-informed or well-reasoned or capable of challenging one's own presumption to believe something. One simply has to subjugate reasoning. It is a far more difficult and therefore worthy act to acknowledge a truth that does not serve one's self-interest than to follow faithfully like rats to the piper.
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@bmdrocks21
-->@oromagiSure but there's a world a difference between complaining about an election and actively working to overthrow the government. The former is just democracy then latter is just treason.I think they both did similar things.
Well then you live in self-deluded ahistorical fantasy world.
- Hillary Clinton called Donald Trump to congratulate him just three minutes after the last polls closed in Hawaii and Alaska. The next morning she publicly conceded the election: "We must accept this result then look to the future. Donald Trump is our new president. We owe him an open mind and the chance to lead." Clinton has never taken any legal or political action contradicting her concession, in spite of her rhetoric.
- Donald Trump is the ONLY Presidential candidate in American History who has failed to congratulate the winner.
- Donald Trump is the ONLY Presidential candidate in American History who has ever refused to concede (Al Gore withdrew his concession until the courts ruled against him on Florida)
- Donald Trump is the ONLY Presidential candidate to have declared victory in spite of having lost. Trump is still telling his supporters that he is the lawfully elected President and plans to return to the White House in late 2022, despite the absence of any lawful venue.
- We know now that Trump insiders began discussions on Nov 5th on illegal ways to hold on the presidency.
- We know now that Trump's legal team advised him on November 10th that there was no lawful path remaining to hold on to power and that Trump then began discussing unlawful options.
- Trump illegally organized an attack to interrupt and overthrow the Constitutionally mandated confirmation process of Jan 6th breaking his oath of office (for the thousandth time, at least) and worked to prevent his own Vice President from carrying out that officer's constitutionally mandated duties by any means necessary. NATO, the EU and UK have officially classified Trump's assault on Congress as an attempted coup. The FBI classifies Trump supporters actions on Jan 6th as terrorism.
Maybe to different extents, sure, but she also referred to him as an "illegitimate president". She kept up the lie of being robbed of the presidency for years, the same way Trump has.
- Bullshit. In the summer of 2019, Clinton gave an interview where she said "Trump knows he is an illegitimate president" because he got Russia to hack her emails, Republicans suppressed voting rolls, etc. Even that phrasing suggests concession- whatever the legal or political results, Trump will always know he cheated. Such a statement is mere free speech and bears no resemblance to Trump's oath-breaking. If you can't tell the difference between the loyal opposition and disloyal hostility to Democracy itself, then I suggest you are not a sufficiently informed voter.
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@Stephen
They're bringing 200,000 "Ukrainians" into Ireland, and this is what they're getting, they'll end up full of Muslims, all part of the Barcelona declaration that they're all in on!
Apparently Stephen is ignorant of the fact that Ireland is already a more Islamic society than Ukraine.
Muslims in Ireland represent 1.33% of the population and are the third largest religious group in Ireland.
Muslims did represent .9% of the Ukrainian population before the Russian invasion of 2014 but the large majority of that population lived on Crimean peninsula. It can be fairly stated that Putin has taken over the majority of Ukraine's Muslim population although the exact numbers are now obscured by mass murder and mass migrations on a scale not seen since World War II.
It is safe to say that any representative wave of migrants of any significance from Ukraine will decrease the overall percentage of Muslims in Ireland and has zero chance of increasing the prevalence of Islam on that lovely isle.
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So 16 years at least of unopposed rule. That's comforting
Only to evil men
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You assume there will be a country left to vote in after they retaliate against the Democrats.
That's what Putin thought. Democracy has an inherent strength beyond brute force that tyrants simply can't comprehend.
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@bmdrocks21
And I’m old enough to remember 2016 when Hillary Clinton said the election was “stolen” from her
Sure but there's a world a difference between complaining about an election and actively working to overthrow the government. The former is just democracy then latter is just treason.
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None of this will matter after 2022 when Congress declares all Democrats as domestic terrorists and opens up endless investigations, possibly censoring any speech that defies the GOP Congress.
Excellent reasons for lovers of freedom to never, ever vote for any Republican ever again.
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Opinion: The Republican blueprint to steal the 2024 election
Opinion by J. Michael Luttig
Wed April 27, 2022
Editor’s Note: J. Michael Luttig, appointed by President George H. W. Bush, formerly served on the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit for 15 years. He advised Vice President Mike Pence on January 6.
Nearly a year and a half later, surprisingly few understand what January 6 was all about.
Fewer still understand why former President Donald Trump and Republicans persist in their long-disproven claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. Much less why they are obsessed about making the 2024 race a referendum on the “stolen” election of 2020, which even they know was not stolen.
January 6 was never about a stolen election or even about actual voting fraud. It was always and only about an election that Trump lost fair and square, under legislatively promulgated election rules in a handful of swing states that he and other Republicans contend were unlawfully changed by state election officials and state courts to expand the right and opportunity to vote, largely in response to the Covid pandemic.
The Republicans’ mystifying claim to this day that Trump did, or would have, received more votes than Joe Biden in 2020 were it not for actual voting fraud, is but the shiny object that Republicans have tauntingly and disingenuously dangled before the American public for almost a year and a half now to distract attention from their far more ambitious objective.
That objective is not somehow to rescind the 2020 election, as they would have us believe. That’s constitutionally impossible. Trump’s and the Republicans’ far more ambitious objective is to execute successfully in 2024 the very same plan they failed in executing in 2020 and to overturn the 2024 election if Trump or his anointed successor loses again in the next quadrennial contest.
The last presidential election was a dry run for the next.
From long before Election Day 2020, Trump and Republicans planned to overturn the presidential election by exploiting the Electors and Elections Clauses of the Constitution, the Electoral College, the Electoral Count Act of 1877, and the 12th Amendment, if Trump lost the popular and Electoral College vote.
The cornerstone of the plan was to have the Supreme Court embrace the little known “independent state legislature” doctrine, which, in turn, would pave the way for exploitation of the Electoral College process and the Electoral Count Act, and finally for Vice President Mike Pence to reject enough swing state electoral votes to overturn the election using Pence’s ceremonial power under the 12th Amendment and award the presidency to Donald Trump.
The independent state legislature doctrine says that, under the Elections and the Electors Clauses of the Constitution, state legislatures possess plenary and exclusive power over the conduct of federal presidential elections and the selection of state presidential electors. Not even a state supreme court, let alone other state elections officials, can alter the legislatively written election rules or interfere with the appointment of state electors by the legislatures, under this theory.
The Supreme Court has never decided whether to embrace the independent state legislature doctrine. But then-Chief Justice William Rehnquist, and Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas in separate concurring opinions said they would embrace that doctrine in Bush v. Gore, 20 years earlier, and Republicans had every reason to believe there were at least five votes on the Supreme Court for the doctrine in November 2020, with Amy Coney Barrett having just been confirmed in the eleventh hour before the election.
Trump and the Republicans began executing this first stage of their plan months before November 3, by challenging as violative of the independent state legislature doctrine election rules relating to early- and late-voting, extensions of voting days and times, mail-in ballots, and other election law changes that Republicans contended had been unlawfully altered by state officials and state courts in swing states such as Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, North Carolina and Michigan.
These cases eventually wound their way to the Supreme Court in the fall of 2020, and by December, the Supreme Court had decided all of these cases, but only by orders, either disallowing federal court intervention to change an election rule that had been promulgated by a state legislature, allowing legislatively promulgated rules to be changed by state officials and state courts, or deadlocking 4-4, because Justice Barrett was not sworn in until after those cases were briefed and ready for decision by the Court. In none of these cases did the Supreme Court decide the all-important independent state legislature doctrine.
Thwarted by the Supreme Court’s indecision on that doctrine, Trump and the Republicans turned their efforts to the second stage of their plan, exploitation of the Electoral College and the Electoral Count Act.
The Electoral College is the process by which Americans choose their presidents, a process that can lead to the election as president of a candidate who does not receive a majority of votes cast by the American voters. Republicans have grown increasingly wary of the Electoral College with the new census and political demographics of the nation’s shifting population.
The Electoral Count Act empowers Congress to decide the presidency in a host of circumstances where Congress determines that state electoral votes were not “regularly given” by electors who were “lawfully certified,” terms that are undefined and ambiguous. In this second stage of the plan, the Republicans needed to generate state-certified alternative slates of electors from swing states where Biden won the popular vote who would cast their electoral votes for Trump instead.
Congress would then count the votes of these alternative electoral slates on January 6, rather than the votes of the certified electoral slates for Biden, and Trump would be declared the reelected president.
The Republicans’ plan failed at this stage when they were unable to secure a single legitimate, alternative slate of electors from any state because the various state officials refused to officially certify these Trump-urged slates.
Thwarted by the Supreme Court in the first stage, foiled by their inability to come up with alternative state electoral slates in the second stage, and with time running out, Trump and the Republicans began executing the final option in their plan, which was to scare up illegitimate alternative electoral slates in various swing states to be transmitted to Congress. Whereupon, on January 6, Vice President Pence would count only the votes of the illegitimate electors from the swing states, and not the votes of the legitimate, certified electors that were cast for Biden, and declare Donald Trump’s reelection as President of the United States.
The entire house of cards collapsed at noon on January 6, when Pence refused to go along with the ill-conceived plan, correctly concluding that under the 12th Amendment he had no power to reject the votes that had been cast by the duly certified electors or to delay the count to give Republicans even more time to whip up alternative electoral slates.
Pence declared Joe Biden the 46th President of the United States at 3:40 a.m. on Thursday, January 7, roughly 14 hours after rioters stormed the US Capitol, disrupting the Joint Session and preventing Congress from counting the Electoral College votes for president until late that night and into the following day, after the statutorily designated day for counting those votes.
Trump and his allies and supporters in Congress and the states began readying their failed 2020 plan to overturn the 2024 presidential election later that very same day and they have been unabashedly readying that plan ever since, in plain view to the American public. Today, they are already a long way toward recapturing the White House in 2024, whether Trump or another Republican candidate wins the election or not.
Trump and Republicans are preparing to return to the Supreme Court, where this time they will likely win the independent state legislature doctrine, now that Amy Coney Barrett is on the Court and ready to vote. Barrett has not addressed the issue, but this turns on an originalist interpretation of the Constitution, and Barrett is firmly aligned on that method of constitutional interpretation with Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch, all three of whom have written that they believe the doctrine is correct.
Only last month, in a case from North Carolina the Court declined to hear, Moore v. Harper, four Justices (Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch and Kavanaugh) said that the independent state legislature question is of exceptional importance to our national elections, the issue will continue to recur and the Court should decide the issue sooner rather than later before the next presidential election. This case involved congressional redistricting, but the independent state legislature doctrine is as applicable to redistricting as it is to presidential elections.
The Republicans are also in the throes of electing Trump-endorsed candidates to state legislative offices in key swing states, installing into office their favored state election officials who deny that Biden won the 2020 election, such as secretaries of state, electing sympathetic state court judges onto the state benches and grooming their preferred potential electors for ultimate selection by the party, all so they will be positioned to generate and transmit alternative electoral slates to Congress, if need be.
Finally, they are furiously politicking to elect Trump supporters to the Senate and House, so they can overturn the election in Congress, as a last resort.
Forewarned is to be forearmed.
Trump and the Republicans can only be stopped from stealing the 2024 election at this point if the Supreme Court rejects the independent state legislature doctrine (thus allowing state court enforcement of state constitutional limitations on legislatively enacted election rules and elector appointments) and Congress amends the Electoral Count Act to constrain Congress’ own power to reject state electoral votes and decide the presidency.
Although the Vice President will be a Democrat in 2024, both parties also need to enact federal legislation that expressly limits the vice president’s power to be coextensive with the power accorded the vice president in the 12th Amendment and confirm that it is largely ceremonial, as Pence construed it to be on January 6.
Vice President Kamala Harris would preside over the Joint Session in 2024. Neither Democrats nor Republicans have any idea who will be presiding after that, however. Thus, both parties have the incentive to clarify the vice president’s ceremonial role now.
As it stands today, Trump, or his anointed successor, and the Republicans are poised, in their word, to “steal” from Democrats the presidential election in 2024 that they falsely claim the Democrats stole from them in 2020. But there is a difference between the falsely claimed “stolen” election of 2020 and what would be the stolen election of 2024. Unlike the Democrats’ theft claimed by Republicans, the Republicans’ theft would be in open defiance of the popular vote and thus the will of the American people: poetic, though tragic, irony for America’s democracy.
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@zedvictor4
-->@oromagiTrust no one.Sound advice.Though I would suggest that there is a distinction to be made between absolute trust and working/temporary trust.
All civilization is based on trust. How can we have society without trust? Trust no one is an appeal for a return to caves or descent to graves.
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But these things happen:
heroes have died, enemies survive,
and people, regular people, neither one nor the other,
string and scatter the beads of happiness—
celebrating love, somebody’s birthday,
A house-warming party,
while you’ve filled an earth pie with your flesh.
The planets haven’t ceased their orbit,
even the trams haven’t changed their schedules.
Outside the hospital window there’s a construction site,
hammering stakes, knocking like distant artillery,
and a boy, grasping a piece of rebar, hits it against the asphalt,
the way a night rail worker hits the wheels of the train,
that you ride in oblivion across the whole country,
falling hard, your belly sticking in the earth pie,
that’s been stuffed to the brim with people.
–Translated from the Ukrainian by Amelia Glaser and Yuliya Ilchuk.
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Kateryna Kalytko
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Here, take this language, woman,
Use it to shoot.
Defend yourself to your last breath—and whatever you do
don’t let them near you. Use
the radio interception system
and the night vision riflescope.
These are included. And don’t pretend you don’t know how to use it.
Keep your eye trained
on the enemy’s location and on his slightest advance.
Let him come within shooting range—then strike the target and
don’t hesitate.
There are plenty of bullets, don’t spare them,
if they run out—
make new ones out of words,
only slender feminine fingers are suited to such maneuvers.
And come what may, don’t let them near
the old border, where father’s plums lie ripe and heavy.
When they cross it—you must confront them, hand to hand.
Then pierce them with your bayonet, slit them ear to ear,
slash, smash, and scalp them
until the light dims before your eyes.
When you wake up, you’ll stroke the prickly nape
of your recruit-son, hand your husband his crutches,
and then, you’ll start over.
Who said we left you to your fate?
We’ve armed you as best we could.
–Translated from the Ukrainian by Amelia Glaser and Yuliya Ilchuk.
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Kateryna Kalytko
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@Bones
Put this forum under science but I have a nagging feeling many answers I receive will be unscientific.
Since WOMEN is not a scientific concept any sincere answer will be unscientific and the insincerity of the question made plain.
Etymology
From Middle English wimmen, from Old English wīfmenn (“women”), from wīf (“female”) + menn (“men, persons, human beings”), equivalent to wife + men. Spelling (with o) influenced by the singular; see woman for more.
Pronunciation
- (Received Pronunciation, US, Canada) IPA(key): /ˈwɪm.ɪn/, /ˈwɪm.ən/, /ˈwʊm.ən/
- (New Zealand) IPA(key): /ˈwʊm.ɘn/, /ˈwɘm.ɘn/
- Rhymes: -ʊmən
- Rhymes: -ʊmən
- Hyphenation: wom‧en
- Homophone: woman (some dialects, common in New Zealand and South Africa)
Noun
women
- plural of woman quotations ▼Three women went for a walk.
Related terms
- women's lib
- womenfolk
Noun
women
- Misspelling of woman.
Anagrams[edit]
- Mowen, menow
Middle English
Noun[edit]
women pl
- Alternative form of wommen
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@thett3
allegations against Biden and his family faced unprecedented censorship.
I see no evidence that this is true. When social media limited the NY Post reporting of Oct 14th, 2020 that was the right call for a host of reasons:
- The source for that reporting was Giuliani who was then and now a chief operative for Trump and who had been under investigation since 2019 for manufacturing false evidence in the Ukraine against his client's political opponents.
- Giuliani was well known to have been shopping the story for weeks and had been turned away from FOX News and Wall St. Journal as an unverifiable story, mostly because it was tainted by Giuliani's possession of the drives and the ridiculous number of times the data had been copied, obscuring the point of origin. No reliable reporter is just going to take some political opponents' word for it, especially when the feds are already investigating that hack for prior violations of manufacturing fake news vs. opponents.
- According to a NYTimes interview , Giuliani specifically requested that the material NOT be vetted before publication.
- The NY Post reporter who wrote the story refused to allow his name in the byline of that story because the facts lacked any independent verfication.
- Neither of the reporters who's names did appear in the byline did any of the investigation or writing of the piece. In fact, one of the reporters was not aware that she an author of the piece until after the story went to print and other newspapers started calling her. Now THAT is fucked fake journalism on an unprecedented scale
- The story's credibility hinged on the anonymity of the computer repair shop owner but as soon as the NY Post story broke, legitimate reporters were able to use photo metadata to trace the pictures of the laptop back to Mac Issac (raising questions about why the Post neglected to perform this simple investigation) and leading to an entirely discrediting and contradictory interview with Mac Issac including the fact that Mac Issac refuses to answer any questions regarding whether he and Giuliani were associates before the laptop (and so it is reasonable to assume that they were known associates).
- We should note that Mac Issac had no legal right to view or download the information he claims to have viewed and downloaded but no charges have been filed against him, suggesting that authorities don't believe he did view or download the information as claimed.
- In hindsight, it seems worth noting that Mac Issac was apparently in a position to retire from computer repair just weeks after the Post report and has not seem to have required any employment since.
- We might also note that Mac Issac has reported in recent weeks that the information distributed by GOP as coming from Biden's laptop is NOT what he claims to have viewed and copied- but Giuliani is not disavowing or correcting GOP disinformation, which strongly suggests that Giuliani is not interested in the integrity of his original claim.
- Considering that the Mueller investigation found that Julian Assange had been in communication with Russian Intelligence and Roger Stone in the hours before Wikileaks released the Podesta emails 3 weeks before the 2016 election and that three weeks before the 2020 election, Trump operatives were again pushing data that showed evidence of Russian tampering, any good journalist would be wary of a pattern of October surprise disinformation emanating from the axis of Trump/Putin.
- As 51 Senior intelligence officials, including active agents within the Trump administration publicly warned: "the arrival on the US political scene of emails
purportedly belonging to Vice President Biden’s son Hunter...has all the classic earmarks of a
Russian information operation."
Social media policies enacted in the wake of the 2016 Trump/Putin disinformation campaigns appropriately tried to limit the appearance of credibility lent by the prioritization and distribution of the entirely unverified claims regarding the laptop but were generally unsuccessful. For example, between October 14 and 23, the original New York Post story received over 54 million Facebook views, in spite of that article's manifest and persistent lack of credibility.
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@3RU7AL
did disney say something critical of desantis (or "the government" generally) before the retaliation ?
Yes. The State of Florida is explicitly singling out and punishing Disney for publishing this statement:
“Florida’s HB 1557, also known as the ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill, should never have passed and should never have been signed into law. Our goal as a company is for this law to be repealed by the legislature or struck down in the courts, and we remain committed to supporting the national and state organizations working to achieve that. We are dedicated to standing up for the rights and safety of LGBTQ+ members of the Disney family, as well as the LGBTQ+ community in Florida and across the country.”
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You do realize the main reason Biden is in office is because of the censorship of the Hunter laptop, right?
Jared Kushner takes $2 billion dollars from the Saudi dictator last week out in the open and GP has nothing to say but Giuliani gets a laptop from the Russians that suggests that Biden's son offered to introduce his father to some Ukrainian officials after his father was out of office and GP wants a congressional investigation. If every accusation leveled at Hunter proved true (unlikely or why would Russia need to handle his laptop first?) it would still not amount to 1/1000th of the bribes the Trump family openly admits to taking just last week. Double standard much?
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Then how did dicks exist before the Internet?
Fraternities and Coors Light
what if you have a dick and your nutrition is good (like Dwayne the Rock Johnson)?
I think when "The Rock" says that he" has a dick" he means it more in the sense of "Dwayne has a dick for breakfast and then another at lunch." I'm not sure how nutritious that ends up being.
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Internet anonymity and poor nutrition are primarily responsible for the production of dicks.
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@FLRW
The message does seem to just be "distrust everything."
Look at that conversation about Biden's hand gesture- an event of no significance yet in our conversation about it we got the message to
- distrust the President
- distrust news media
- distrust all of the factchecking services
- distrust the experts who advise the factchecking services about checking facts
- distrust the schools and research institutions who employ the fact checkers
- distrust Alex Jones
- distrust Pulitzer Prizes
But no really compelling reasons are given or arguments made. Certainly no more trustworthy institutions are offered for guidance. The mission is just mistrust.
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In Russia, Putin has weaponized ethnonationalism through disinformation, waging hate campaigns against domestic opponents, delegitimizing democracy itself. And of course, he’s escalated such efforts as part of his war in Ukraine.
As the world’s leading democracy, we have to set a better example. We should be at the lead on these discussions internationally, not in the rear. Right now, Europe is forging ahead with some of the most sweeping legislation nearest to regulate the abuses that are seen in big tech companies. And their approach may not be exactly right for the United States, but it points to the need for us to coordinate with other democracies.
We need to find our voice in this global conversation, and we’ve done it before. After World War II, after witnessing how mass media and propaganda had fanned the flames of hate, we put a framework in place that would ensure our broadcast system was compatible with democracy. We required a certain amount of children’s educational programing, instituted the Fairness Doctrine. Newsrooms changed practices to maximize accuracy.
And the task before us is harder now. We can’t go back to the way things were with three TV stations and newspapers in every major city, not just because of the proliferation of content, but because that content can now move around the world in an instant. And yes, our societies are far more polarized today than they were in the ’50s and ’60s right after the war. And yes, progress will require tradeoffs and hard choices, and we won’t get it right all at once. But that’s how democracy works.
I’m not going to strain this metaphor, but if you think about the U.S. Constitution as software for running a society, really innovative design. It, too, had some pretty big initial bugs. Slavery— you could discriminate against entire classes of people. Women couldn’t vote. Even white men without property couldn’t vote, couldn’t participate. What part of, “We, the people?” So, we came up with a bunch of patches, the 13th Amendment, the 14th Amendment, 15th Amendment, 19th Amendment. We continued to perfect our union.
And the good news is we’ve got a new generation of activists that seem to be ready to keep moving. Besides Tiana, who introduced me, I’ve had the privilege of meeting young leaders in our Obama Foundation network, like Timothy Franklyn, who founded the National School of Journalism and Public Discourse in India, to train journalists who are committed to justice and democracy in that country; or Sandor Lederer from Hungary, who founded K-Monitor. That’s a group that helps average citizens understand how public money is spent and flags potential corruption; or Juliana Tafur, who’s using documentary film and curated workshops to reduce polarization and help Americans connect across differences.
Young people everywhere are recognizing that this is a problem. They’re not just griping about it, they’re doing their part to fix it. And the rest of us need to follow their lead.
But these idealistic, innovative young people, they’re going to need those of us who are already in positions of power, those of us like me who have a platform to get our act together. If Congress is too polarized to pass anything, we probably won’t make the kind of progress we need. If Republican elected officials with a few notable courageous exceptions, and I’m not going to mention them, because I don’t want them to be criticized for having been praised by me — but if the vast majority of elected Republican officials keep insisting that there’s nothing wrong with saying an election was stolen without a shred of evidence, when they know better, this isn’t going to work.
Each of us, whether we work at a tech company or consume social media, whether we are a parent, a legislator, an advertiser on one of these platforms, now’s the time to pick a side. We have a choice right now. Do we allow our democracy to wither, or do we make it better? That’s the choice we face, and it is a choice worth embracing.
In the early days of the Internet and social media, it was a certain joy in finding new ways to connect, and organize and stay informed. There was so much promise. I know, I was there. And right now, just like politics itself, just like our public lives, social media has a grimness to it. We’re so fatalistic about the steady stream of bile and vitriol that’s on there, but it doesn’t have to be that way. In fact, if we’re going to succeed, it can’t be that way.
All of us have an opportunity to do what America has always done at our best, which is to recognize that even when the source code is working, the status quo isn’t, and we can build something better together. This is an opportunity. It’s a chance that we should welcome for governments to take on a big, important problem and prove that democracy and innovation can coexist. It’s a chance for companies to do the right thing. You’ll still make money, but you’ll feel better.
It’s a chance for employees of those companies to push them to do the right thing, because you’ve seen what’s out there and you want to feel better. It’s a chance for journalists and their supporters to figure out how do we adapt old institutions and those core values that made those institutions valuable? How do we adapt that to a new age?
It is a chance for all of us to fight for truth, not absolute truth, not a fixed truth, but to fight for what, deep down, we know is more true, is right. It’s a chance for us to do that not just because we’re afraid of what will happen if we don’t, but because we’re hopeful about what can happen if we do.
Over the last couple of months, we’ve seen what it looks like when a society loses the ability to distinguish truth from fiction. Mike McFaul and I were talking backstage, and my first time in Moscow as president, we gathered with all these civic activists. Putin at that time had receded from the foreground, and you had all these folks who are working to make Russia better. And we were reminiscing and thinking about that moment of possibility and what might have happened to him.
And now, in Russia, those who control the information have led public opinion further and further and further and further away from the facts, until all of a sudden, almost a quarter of the country’s combat power has been damaged or destroyed in what the government is claiming is a, quote, special military operation. That’s what happens when societies lose track of what is true.
On the other hand, the last couple of months have also shown what can happen when the world pushes back. We have seen it in the people, including some of our Obama leaders in Europe who are organizing on social media to help Ukrainian refugees, offering food and shelter and jobs and rides. We’ve seen in an IT army of volunteers who work to break through Russia propaganda and reach out to mothers of Russian soldiers, asking them to call on Putin to bring their sons home. And we’ve seen it in the combination of old and new media like a viral image of a Russian TV editor walking into a live shot with a handwritten sign, calling for an end to the war.
The handwritten sign was a tool. TV’s a tool. The Internet is a tool. Social media is a tool. At the end of the day, tools don’t control us. We control them, and we can remake them. It’s up to each of us to decide what we value, and then use the tools we’ve been given to advance those values. And I believe we should use every tool at our disposal to secure our greatest gift: a government of, by, for the people, for generations to come. And I hope you agree with me, and I look forward to you joining in the work.
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In a democracy, we can rightly expect companies to subject the design of their products and services to some level of scrutiny. At minimum, they should have to share that information with researchers and regulators who are charged with keeping the rest of us safe.
This may seem like an odd example and forgive me, you vegans out there, but if a meat packing company has a proprietary technique to keep our hot dogs fresh and clean, they don’t have to reveal to the world what that technique is. They do have to tell the meat inspector.
In the same way, tech companies should be able to protect their intellectual property while also following certain safety standards that we, as a country, not just them, have agreed are necessary for the greater good. And we’ve seen this as part of the Platform Accountability and Transparency Act that’s being proposed by a bipartisan group of senators here in the United States. It doesn’t happen often. And we’ve also seen it negotiated in Europe as part of the European Union’s Digital Services Act.
Again, we don’t expect tech companies to solve all these problems on their own. There are folks in these companies and in this community who have shown extraordinary good faith in some cases, but that’s not enough.
We do expect these companies to affirm the importance of our democratic institutions, not dismiss them, and to work to find the right combination of regulation and industry standards that will make democracy stronger. And because companies recognize the often dangerous relationship between social media, nationalism, domestic hate groups, they do need to engage with vulnerable populations about how to put better safeguards in place to protect minority populations, ethnic populations, religious minorities, wherever they operate.
So for example, in the United States, they should be working with, not always contrary to, those groups that are trying to prevent voter suppression and specifically has targeted black and brown communities. In other words, these companies need to have some other North Star other than just making money and increasing market share. Fix the problem that, in part, they helped create, but also to stand for something bigger.
And to the employees of these companies, and to the students here at Stanford who might well be future employees of these companies, you have the power to move things in the right direction. You can advocate for change; you can be part of this redesign. And if not, you can vote with your feet and go work with companies that are trying to do the right thing.
That’s on the supply side. Now, let’s talk about the demand side of the equation.
It starts with breaking through our information bubbles. Look, I understand that there are a whole bunch of people in this country who have views diametrically opposed to mine. I promise, they tell me all the time. I get it. I am not suggesting that all of us have to spend our days reading opinions we disagree with or looking for media stories that fundamentally don’t share our values. But it is possible to broaden our perspectives.
An interesting study came out recently, and this is just one study, so take it with a grain of salt. The researchers paid a large group of regular FOX News watchers to watch CNN for almost a month. And these were not swing voters, these were hard core, Hannity, Carlson fans, right? They’re right there.
And what the researchers found was that, at the end of the month, people’s views on certain issues, like whether voting by mail should be allowed or whether electing Joe Biden would lead to more violence against police, on some of these issues, their views are changed by five, eight, ten points. These people didn’t suddenly turn into liberals. I am sure they still don’t like me. But at the margins, they had reshaped their perspectives in meaningful ways.
Studies like this show our opinions aren’t fixed, and that means our divisions aren’t fixed either if we can agree on some common baseline effects and agree on some common baseline of how we debate and sort out our disagreements.
The divisions that exist in this country aren’t going away any time soon, but the information we get, the stories we tell ourselves can, as Lincoln said, encourage the better angels of our nature. It can also encourage the worst. And a healthy democracy depends on our better angels being encouraged.
So, as citizens, we have to take it upon ourselves to become better consumers of news, looking at sources, thinking before we share and teaching our kids to become critical thinkers who know how to evaluate sources and separate opinion from fact. In fact, a number of school districts around the country are working to train kids in this kind of online media literacy, not around any particular ideological perspective, but just how to check a source. Does this person who’s typing in his mother’s basement in his underwear seem a credible authority on climate change? That’s something we should all want to support.
Part of this project is also going to require us finding creative ways to reinvigorate quality journalism, including local journalism, because one of the challenges we have, part of the reason that you’ve seen increased polarization, is all media has become nationalized and hence, more ideological.
And one encouraging trend has been a number of nonprofit newsrooms beginning to pop up in places like Baltimore, Houston, my hometown of Chicago, all aimed at providing essential coverage of what’s happening locally and in statehouses. And that’s an example of how new models of journalism are possible, along with smart ways for communities to reinvigorate local news.
Companies here in Silicon Valley that have reaped some of the largest benefits from the Internet revolution, those companies need to find ways to support them. And I know Congress has been engaged with some of these companies to look at how can you get more revenue back into local news.
We should also think about how to build civic institutions for a new generation. I mentioned the decline of what are called mediating institutions — unions, Rotary clubs, bowling leagues, right? But the thing is, studies show that if you participated in an organization, like Student Council, which I did not — or the Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts, groups that allow young people to practice learning, debating, voting, making decisions together, then you’re much more likely to vote and be an active citizen.
Those habits matter. We need to figure out ways to give young people and the rest of us the chance to build up civic muscles. And we have to figure out how to do that, not just in the real world, but also on virtual platforms where young people are spending time. This is one of the things we’re focused on at the Obama Foundation. And great work is also being done by organizations like the MIT Center for Constructive Communication, which is making online conversations more civil and productive, and the News Literacy Project, which is building new tools to help people separate fact from fiction.
And finally, it is important to reinforce these norms and values on an international scale. This is a globally integrated Internet. There’s value in that, but it means that as we’re shaping roles, we have to engage the rest of the world.
Countries like China and Russia have already tried to paint democracy as unworkable, and authoritarianism is the only path to order. China’s built a great firewall around the Internet, turning it into a vehicle for domestic indoctrination and surveillance. And now, they’re exporting some of those same technologies, those same, with similar product designs, to other countries.
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Fortunately, I am convinced that it is possible to preserve the transformative power and promise of the open internet, while at least mitigating the worst of its harms. And I believe that those of you in the tech community, soon to be in the tech community, not just its corporate leaders, but employees at every level have to be part of the solution.
The essence of this place, what put Silicon Valley on the map, is a spirit of innovation. That’s what led to the globally integrated internet, and all its remarkable applications. What we’ve now learned is the product has some design flaws. There are some bugs in the software. We don’t have to just leave it like that. Through the same spirit of innovation. We can make it better.
So I want to make some general suggestions for what that work might look like. But before I do, let me offer a few stipulations so we don’t get bogged down in some well-worn, not always productive arguments.
Number one, media companies, tech companies, social media platforms did not create the divisions in our society, here or in other parts of the world. Social media did not create racism or white supremacist groups. It didn’t create the kind of ethnonationalism that Putin’s enraptured with. It didn’t create sexism, class conflict, religious strife, greed, envy, all the deadly sins. All these things existed long before the first tweet or Facebook poke.
Solving the disinformation problem won’t cure all that ails our democracies or tears at the fabric of our world, but it can help tamp down divisions and let us rebuild the trust and solidarity needed to make our democracy stronger. And to take on anti-women mentalities, and deal with racism in our societies and build bridges between people. It can do that.
Second, we aren’t going to get rid of all offensive or inflammatory content on the web. That is a strawman. We’d be wrong to try. Freedom of speech is at the heart of every democratic society in America those protections are enshrined in the First Amendment to our Constitution. There’s a reason it came first in the Bill of Rights.
I’m pretty close to a First Amendment absolutist. I believe that in most instances the answer to bad speech is good speech. I believe that the free, robust, sometimes antagonistic exchange of ideas produces better outcomes and a healthier society.
No Democratic government can or should do what China, for example, is doing, simply telling people what they can and cannot say or publish while trying to control what others say about their country abroad. And I don’t have a lot of confidence that any single individual or organization, private or public, should be charged or do a good job at determining who gets to hear what.
That said, the First Amendment is a check on the power of the state. It doesn’t apply to private companies like Facebook or Twitter, any more than it applies to editorial decisions made by The New York Times or Fox News. Never has. Social media companies already make choices about what is or is not allowed on their platforms and how that content appears, both explicitly through content moderation, and implicitly through algorithms.
The problem is, we often don’t know what principles govern those decisions. And on an issue of enormous public interest, there has been little public debate and practically no democratic oversight.
Three, any rules we come up with to govern the distribution of content on the Internet will involve value judgments. None of us are perfectly objective. What we consider unshakeable truth today may prove to be totally wrong tomorrow. But that doesn’t mean some things aren’t truer than others or that we can’t draw lines between opinions, facts, honest mistakes, intentional deceptions.
We make these distinctions all the time in our daily lives, at work, in school, at home, in sports, and we can do the same when it comes to Internet content, as long as we agree on a set of principles, some core values to guide the work. So, in the interest of full transparency, here’s what I think our guiding principles should be.
The way I’m going to evaluate any proposal touching on social media and the Internet is whether it strengthens or weakens the prospects for a healthy, inclusive democracy, whether it encourages robust debate and respect for our differences, whether it reinforces rule of law and self-governance, whether it helps us make collective decisions based on the best available information, and whether it recognizes the rights and freedoms and dignity of all our citizens.
Whatever changes contribute to that vision, I’m for. Whatever erodes that vision, I’m against, just so you know.
All right. With that as my starting point, I believe we have to address not just the supply of toxic information, but also the demand for it. On the supply side, tech platforms need to accept that they play a unique role in how we, as a people and people around the world, are consuming information and that their decisions have an impact on every aspect of society. With that power comes accountability, and in democracies like ours, at least, the need for some democratic oversight.
For years, social media companies have resisted that kind of accountability. They’re not unique in that regard. Every private corporation wants to do anything it wants. So, the social media platforms called themselves neutral platforms with no editorial role in what their users saw. They insisted that the content people see on social media has no impact on their beliefs or behavior— even though their business models and their profits are based on telling advertisers the exact opposite.
Now, the good news is, is that almost all the big tech platforms now acknowledge some responsibility for content on their platforms, and they’re investing in large teams of people to monitor it. Given the sheer volume of content, this strategy can feel like a game of whack-a-mole. Still, in talking to people at these companies, I believe they are sincere in trying to limit content that engages in hate speech, encourages violence, or poses a threat to public safety. They genuinely are concerned about it and they want to do something about it.
But while content moderation can limit the distribution of clearly dangerous content, it doesn’t go far enough. Users who want to spread disinformation have become experts at pushing right up to the line of what at least published company policies allow. And at those margins, social media platforms tend not to want to do anything, not just because they don’t want to be accused of censorship, because they still have a financial incentive to keep as many users engaged as possible. More importantly, these companies are still way too guarded about how exactly their standards operate, or how their engagement ranking systems influence what goes viral and what doesn’t.
Now, some companies have been taking the next step in managing toxic content, experimenting with new product designs that, you know to use just one example, add friction to slow the spread of potentially harmful content. And that kind of innovation is a step in the right direction. It should be applauded, but I also think decisions like this shouldn’t be left solely to private interests. These decisions affect all of us, and just like every other industry that has a big impact in our society, that means these big platforms need to be subject to some level of public oversight and regulation.
Right now, a lot of the regulatory debate centers on Section 230 of the United States code, which, as some of you know, says the tech companies generally can’t be held liable for most content that other people post on their platforms. But let’s face it, these platforms are not like the old phone company.
And while I’m not convinced that wholesale repeal of Section 230 is the answer, it is clear that tech companies have changed dramatically over the last 20 years. And we need to consider reforms to Section 230 to account for those changes, including whether platforms should be required to have a higher standard of care, when it comes to advertising on their site.
And by the way, I believe and I’ve seen that regulation and innovation are not mutually exclusive. Here in the United States, we have a long history of regulating new technologies in the name of public safety, from cars and airplanes to prescription drugs to appliances. And while companies initially always complain that the rules are going to stifle innovation and destroy the industry, the truth is, is that a good regulatory environment usually ends up spurring innovation because it raises the bar on safety and quality. And it turns out that innovation can meet that higher bar. And if consumers trust that new technology is doing right by them and is safe, they’re more likely to use it. And if properly structured, regulation can promote competition and keep incumbents from freezing out new innovators.
A regulatory structure, a smart one, needs to be in place, designed in consultation with tech companies, and experts and communities that are affected, including communities of color and others that sometimes are not well represented here in Silicon Valley, that will allow these companies to operate effectively while also slowing the spread of harmful content. In some cases, industry standards may replace or substitute for regulation, but regulation has to be part of the answer.
Beyond that, tech companies need to be more transparent about how they operate. So much of the conversation around disinformation is focused on what people post. The bigger issue is what content these platforms promote. Algorithms have evolved to the point where nobody on the outside of these companies can accurately predict what they’ll do, unless they’re really sophisticated and spend a lot of time tracking it. And sometimes, even the people who build them aren’t sure. That’s a problem.
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If you lived in an impoverished Yemeni village, you had no insight into the spending habits of the Kardashians. For some such exposure may be eye opening, perhaps even liberating, but others may experience that exposure as a direct affront to their traditions, their belief systems, their place in society. Then you have the sheer proliferation of content and the splintering of information and audiences. That’s made democracy more complicated.
I’ll date myself again. If you were watching TV here in the United States between about 1960 and 1990, I Dream of Jeannie, The Jeffersons. Chances are you were watching one of the big three networks. And this had its own problems, particularly the ways in which programming often excluded voices and perspectives of women and people of color and other folks outside of the mainstream. But it did fortify a sense of shared culture and when it came to the news, at least, citizens across the political spectrum tended to operate using a shared set of facts, what they saw, what they heard from Walter Cronkite or David Brinkley or others.
Today, of course, we occupy entirely different media realities, fed directly into our phones. You don’t even have to look up. And it’s made all of us more prone to what psychologists call confirmation bias, the tendency to select facts and opinions that reinforce our preexisting worldviews and filter out those that don’t.
So inside our personal information bubbles, our assumptions, our blind spots, our prejudices aren’t challenged, they’re reinforced. And naturally we’re more likely to react negatively to those consuming different facts and opinions. All of which deepens existing racial and religious and cultural divides.
It’s fair to say then that some of the current challenges we face are inherent to a fully connected world. Our brains aren’t accustomed to taking in this much information this fast, and a lot of us are experiencing overload. But not all problems we’re seeing now are an inevitable byproduct of this new technology. They’re also the result of very specific choices made by the companies that have come to dominate the internet generally and social media platforms in particular. Decisions that, intentionally or not, have made democracies more vulnerable.
Now I’m at Stanford. Most of you know the story by now. Twenty years ago, pillars of web search were comprehensiveness, relevance and speed. But with the rise of social media and the need to better understand people’s online behavior, in order to sell more advertising, companies want to collect more data. More companies optimized for personalization, engagement and speed. And unfortunately, it turns out that inflammatory, polarizing content attracts and engages.
Other features of these platforms have compounded the problem. For example, the way content looks on your phone, as well as the veil of anonymity that platforms provide their users. A lot of times can make it impossible to tell the difference between, say, a peer-reviewed article by Dr. Anthony Fauci and a miracle cure being pitched by a huckster.
And meanwhile, sophisticated actors from political consultants to commercial interests, to intelligence arms of foreign powers can game platform algorithms or artificially boost the reach of the deceptive or harmful messages.
Of course, this business model has proven to be wildly successful. For more and more of us, search and social media platforms aren’t just our window into the internet; they serve as our primary source of news and information.
No one tells us that the window is blurred, subject to unseen distortions and subtle manipulations. All we see is a constant feed of content where useful factual information and happy diversions, and cat videos, flow alongside lies, conspiracy theories, junk science, quackery, White supremacist, racist tracts, misogynist screeds. And over time, we lose our capacity to distinguish between fact, opinion and wholesale fiction. Or maybe we just stop caring.
And all of us, including our children, learn that if you want to rise above the crowd, above the din, if you want to be liked and shared, and yes, go viral! Then peddling controversy, outrage, even hate often gives you an edge.
Now it’s true, tech companies and social media platforms are not the only distributors of toxic information. I promise you; I spend a lot of time in Washington, right? In fact, some of the most outrageous content on the web originates from traditional media. What social media platforms have done, though, thanks to their increasing market dominance and their emphasis on speed, is accelerate the decline of newspapers and other traditional news sources.
There are still brand name newspapers and magazines, not to mention network news broadcasts, NPR other outlets that have adapted to the new digital environment while maintaining the highest standards of journalistic integrity. But as more and more ad revenue flows to the platforms that disseminate the news, rather than that money going to the newsrooms that report it, publishers, reporters, editors, they all feel the pressure to maximize engagement in order to compete. Reporters start worrying about, “I gotta tweet something, cause if I don’t, I may be out of a job.”
That’s the information environment we now live in. It’s not just that these platforms have— with narrow exceptions — been largely agnostic regarding the kind of information available and connections made on their sites. It’s that in the competition between truth and falsehood, cooperation and conflict, the very design of these platforms seems to be tilting us in the wrong direction.
And we’re seeing the results. Take Covid. The fact that scientists developed safe, effective vaccines in record time is an unbelievable achievement. And yet despite the fact that we’ve now, essentially clinically tested the vaccine on billions of people worldwide, around 1 in 5 Americans is still willing to put themselves at risk and put their families at risk rather than get vaccinated. People are dying because of misinformation.
I already mentioned the 2020 presidential election. President Trump’s own attorney general has said that the Justice Department uncovered no evidence of widespread voter fraud. A review of the ballots in Arizona’s largest county, the results of which were endorsed by some pretty courageous local Republicans, because many of them were harassed and received death threats, actually found more votes for President Biden and fewer votes for President Trump. And yet today, as we speak, a majority of Republicans still insist that President Biden’s victory was not legitimate. That’s a lot of people.
In Myanmar, it’s been well-documented that hate speech shared on Facebook played a role in the murderous campaign targeting the Rohingya community. Social media platforms have been similarly implicated in fanning ethnic violence in Ethiopia, far-right extremism in Europe. Authoritarian regimes and strongmen around the world from China to Hungary, the Philippines. Brazil have learned to conscript social media platforms to turn their own populations against groups they don’t like, whether it’s ethnic minorities, the LGBTQ community, journalists, political opponents. And of course, autocrats like Putin have used these platforms as a strategic weapon against democratic countries that they consider a threat.
People like Putin and Steve Bannon, for that matter, understand it’s not necessary for people to believe this information in order to weaken democratic institutions. You just have to flood a country’s public square with enough raw sewage. You just have to raise enough questions, spread enough dirt, plant enough conspiracy theorizing that citizens no longer know what to believe.
Once they lose trust in their leaders, in mainstream media, in political institutions, in each other, in the possibility of truth, the game’s won. And as Putin discovered leading up to the 2016 election, our own social media platforms are well designed to support such a mission, such a project.
Russians could study and manipulate patterns in the engagement ranking system on a Facebook or YouTube. And as a result, Russian state sponsored trolls could almost guarantee that whatever disinformation they put out there would reach millions of Americans. And that the more inflammatory the story, the quicker it spread.
Now I’ve been writing my memoirs lately, including reflections on events leading up to that election. The regrets I have, the things I might have missed. No one in my administration was surprised that Russia was attempting to meddle in our election. They had been doing that for years. Or that it was using social media in these efforts.
Before the election, I directed our top intelligence officials to expose those efforts to the press and to the public. What does still nag at me, though, was my failure to fully appreciate at the time just how susceptible we had become to lies and conspiracy theories, despite having spent years being a target of disinformation myself.
Putin didn’t do that. He didn’t have to. We did it to ourselves. So where do we go from here?
If we do nothing, I am convinced the trends that we’re seeing will get worse. New technologies are already challenging the way we regulate currency, how we keep consumers safe from fraud. And with the emergence of AI, disinformation will grow more sophisticated. I’ve already seen demonstrations of deepfake technology that show what looks like me on a screen saying stuff I did not say. It’s a strange experience, people.
Without some standards, implications of this technology, for our elections, for our legal system, for our democracy, for rules of evidence, for our entire social order are frightening and profound.
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April 22, 2022
In a keynote address at a Stanford University Cyber Policy Center symposium entitled “Challenges to Democracy in the Digital Information Realm,” former President Barack Obama outlined the ways in which technology challenges democracy, and suggested a set of principles to chart a new path forward.
"Hello, Stanford. It is great to be in California and back in beautiful Palo Alto. Coming here always makes me want to go back to college, although an 18-year-old Barack Obama would not have gotten in. I got more serious, later.
I want to thank the Cyber Policy Center here at Stanford for hosting this event. I want to thank Tiana for that outstanding introduction, and for all the work that you are doing. I want to thank a great friend and a remarkable public servant and Ambassador of Russia, during very difficult times, and one of my top advisors, Michael McFaul, for being here.
Michelle and I set up the Obama Foundation to train the next generation of leaders, and I think you saw in Tiana, the example of the kind of remarkable leadership that’s out there, with the talent and vision to lead us forward, as long as old people get out of the way.
During some of the darkest days of World War II, American philosopher, Reinhold Niebuhr, wrote the following, “Man’s capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man’s inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.”
We’re living through another tumultuous, dangerous moment in history. All of us have been horrified by Russia’s brutal invasion of the Ukraine. A nuclear-armed despot’s response to a neighboring state whose only provocation is its desire to be independent and democratic. An invasion of this scale hasn’t been seen in Europe since World War II, and we’ve all witnessed the resulting death and destruction, and the displacement, in real time.
The stakes are enormous, and the courage displayed by ordinary Ukrainians has been extraordinary and demands our support. Unfortunately, a war in the Ukraine isn’t happening in a vacuum. Vladimir Putin’s aggression is part of a larger trend, even if similar levels of oppression and lawlessness and violence and suffering don’t always attract the same levels of attention if they happen outside of Europe,
Autocrats and aspiring strongmen have become emboldened around the globe. They’re actively subverting democracy, they’re undermining hard-won human rights, they’re ignoring international law.
Worse yet, democratic backsliding is not restricted to distant lands. Right here, in the United States of America, we just saw a sitting president deny the clear results of an election and help incite a violent insurrection at the nation’s Capitol. Not only that, but a majority of his party, including many who occupy some of the highest offices in the land, continue to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the last election, and are using it to justify laws that restrict the vote, making it easier to overturn the will of the people in states where they hold power.
But for those of us who believe in democracy and the rule of law, this should serve as a wake-up call. We have to admit that, at least in the years since the Cold War ended, democracies have grown dangerously complacent.
That too often, we’ve taken freedom for granted. What recent events remind us, is that democracy is neither inevitable nor self-executed. Citizens like us have to nurture it. We have to tend to it and fight for it, and as our circumstances change, we have to be willing to look at ourselves critically, making reforms that can allow democracy, not just to survive, but to thrive.
That won’t be easy. A lot of factors have contributed to the weakening of democratic institutions around the world. One of those factors is globalization which has helped lift hundreds and millions out of poverty, most notably in China and India, but which, along with automation has also upended entire economies, accelerated global inequality, and left millions of others feeling betrayed and angry at existing political institutions.
There is the increased mobility and urbanization of modern life, which further shakes up societies, including existing family structures and gender roles. Here at home, we’ve seen a steady decline in the number of people participating in unions, civic organizations and houses of worship, mediating institutions that once served as a kind of communal glue.
Internationally, the rise of China as well as chronic political dysfunction, here in the U.S. and in Europe, not to mention the near collapse of the global financial system in 2008, has made it easier for leaders in other countries to discount democracy’s appeal. And as once marginalized groups demand a seat at the table, politicians have found a new audience for old-fashioned appeals to racial and ethnic, religious or national solidarity.
In the rush to protect “us” from “them,” virtues like tolerance and respect for democratic processes start to look, not just expendable, but like a threat to our way of life.
So if we’re going to strengthen democracy, we’ll have to address all of these strengths. We’ll have to come up with new models for a more inclusive, equitable capitalism. We’ll have to reform our political institutions in ways that allow people to be heard and give them real agency. We’ll have to tell better stories about ourselves and how we can live together, despite our differences.
And that’s why I’m here today, on Stanford’s campus, in the heart of Silicon Valley, where so much of the digital revolution began, because I’m convinced that right now one of the biggest impediments to doing all of this, indeed, one of the biggest reasons for democracies weakening is the profound change that’s taking place in how we communicate and consume information.
Now let me start off by saying I am not a Luddite, although it is true that sometimes I have to ask my daughters how to work basic functions on my phone. I am amazed by the internet. It’s connected billions of people around the world, put the collected knowledge of centuries at our fingertips. It’s made our economies vastly more efficient, accelerated medical advances, opened up new opportunities, allowed people with shared interests to find each other.
I might never have been elected president if it hadn’t been for websites like, and I’m dating myself, MySpace, MeetUp and Facebook that allowed an army of young volunteers to organize, raise money, spread our message. That’s what elected me.
And since then, we’ve all witnessed the ways that activists use social media platforms to register dissent and shine a light on injustice and mobilize people on issues like climate change and racial justice. So the internet and the accompanying information revolution has been transformative. And there’s no turning back.
But like all advances in technology, this progress has had unintended consequences that sometimes come at a price. And in this case, we see that our new information ecosystem is turbocharging some of humanity’s worst impulses.
Not all of these effects are intentional or even avoidable. They’re simply the consequence of billions of humans suddenly plugged into an instant, 24/7 global information stream. Forty years ago, if you were a conservative in rural Texas, you weren’t necessarily offended by what was going on in San Francisco’s Castro District because you didn’t know what was going on.
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I don't think you need to senile or disabled in any way to be too old for public office. Representation requires a confidence in future ability which 80 year-olds simply do not inspire and a confidence in perceptive agility which some 80 years retain but none as well as they once did. Personally, I would disqualify anybody older than 70 from running for a new term in any national office. If we can constitutionally limit the office of President to over-35s based on maturity we should be able to limit the same office to under 70s based on agility and constitution alone.
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What's being argued as true or false is the interpretation of the picture.
More importantly which picture- the mostly obstructed side view that FOX News used to draw irrational conclusions about the subject's mental health or the unobstructed front view which nobody finds at all remarkable?
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I don't buy this argument for a bunch of reasons.
- As FLRW ably points out, Mike Caufield is, in fact, a leading authority on fact checking and fake news. He is the author of a textbook and scholarly papers and seems to be a popular guest lecturer on the subject. Its easy to find his work quoted in Journalism programs and he seems to be a popular consultant on the subject of combating disinformation. For example, here's an interview w/ Caufield on MIT's TeachLabs.
- So, yeah, even though coal puts the labels in quotes,
- "fact checker" is correct. Caufield has a substantial reputation in academia and journalism as a checker of facts.
- "expert" is correct. The MIT interviewer introduces Caufield as "a digital information literacy expert working at Washington State University who has worked with a wide variety of organizations on digital literacy initiatives to combat misinformation."
- "research scientist" is correct. Research scientist is not "whatever this fraud says it is," it is Caufield's job description at WSU.
- We can take exception to Caufield's claims but I don't see any ground for doubting Caufield's legitimacy as an expert in the field.
- coal's claim: "He has neither the educational credentials nor the publication record to support any inference that hs is credible in any respect." is both false and easily falsified with a little research.
- If Alex Jones serves as an established low bar for journalistic integrity, let's note that FOX News, the primary claimant regarding Biden's handshake, re-affirmed their confidence and reliance on Alex Jones as a source of journalistic integrity as recently as five months ago.
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I don't buy this argument for a bunch of reasons.
- It's not just the Pulitzer prize winning Politifact that debunked the claim as fake news trollfuckery
- Snopes also debunked the claim as disingenuous
- So did IBT
- Most credible news outlets never touched the story.
- WFMY, the local outlet that covered Biden's visit and captured the video that FOX made viral, never mentioned the gesture although they gave the President's visit a huge amount of coverage.
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I don't buy this argument for a bunch of reasons.
- On a day when Trump's White House Chief of Staff was excised from the NC voting rolls for voter fraud in the 2020 election
- On a day when Ukraine sank the "Fuck You" Russian Flagship in the Black Sea
- On a day when Putin threatened to use nukes if Finland joined NATO
- On a day when NYPD caught a subway terrorist after a massive manhunt
- On a day when we discovered that the Saudi Dictator gave $2 billion to Jared Kushner to start a new business
- On a day when the Florida Legislature removed Disney's corporate incentives package and tax breaks as a punishment for being on the wrong side of a political fight, in violation of the First Amendment to the US Constitution
- On a day when the Republicans withdrew from future presidential debates, ignoring the fact that they have no such authority
- On a day when 4 major airlines dropped their mask mandates
- On a day when Elon Musk offers to buy Twitter for $43 billion
FOX News decided that Biden's hand gesture was a major story worthy of hourly coverage on their network.
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I don't buy this argument for a bunch of reasons.
- Here's the video from C-SPAN's angle rather than FOX News angle (which was mostly obstructed by the podium). When we get an unobstructed view, FOX News' claims seem like pretty obvious bullshit. The gesture is at the 5 second mark:
- https://www.c-span.org/video/?c5011072/user-clip-end-bidens-speech&cliptool#
Biden's hand is flat, palm upturned, thumb right-angled.
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President: “That’s up to them.”
sounds like the correct answer to me
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I don't much follow FOX News' celebrity flame wars.
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@Intelligence_06
Agreed. Liquor, sports, feelings, they all end with a rigorous toweling off.
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@ComputerNerd
Why did you add Liquor and Sport together as one category?
humor
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Here's mine. First, the order of categories is not static but whatever category was posted to last is top and second to last is posted second, etc. so that the most active categories are at the top- creating a sense of dynamic tension, a competition for top spot.
Then, my categories would be:
DebateArt.com
Debating
Original work
Favorite works of others
Current Events- political
Current Events- non-political
Mafia
other Forum Games
History
Conspiracy Theories
The Internet
Users
Feelings
Gods
Liquor and/or Sports
Archive
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@Barney
Is it true that you are an immigrant to the US who served in Iraq with the 82nd Airborne?
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I don't buy the premise that "Compared with today, the not-so-distant past was an Eden of intimate male bonding that carried none of the connotations it does today."
There's still lots of little pockets of non-feminist or anti-feminist culture we can look at for a sense of Western male intimacy before Feminism (and yes, I think Feminism is the primary influence here). I think modern ME Islamic culture is a good example. Soldiers coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan often expressed astonishment at the male intimacy- holding hands, kissing, sitting on one another laps, etc. You assume that because the subject of homosexuality is never discussed that the intimacy is less homoerotic but I think that's a mistake. In spite of severe punishments for gay sex in these places, including the death penalty, these places are also surprisingly gay rapey. I remember reporter Nic Robertson once saying that there's no gayer place in the world than a Saudi Madrassa- and I believe it. Look at Vatican City or a Buddhist monastery- quite gay. US prisons or Russian submarines- quite gay. What's different is not some "coastal elites shattering group cohesion" by introducing homosexuality. What's different is that men in Western societies are around women all day long in just about every context. Women are now allowed to hold men's hands and sit on their laps and kiss men in public settings that were not allowed in your Eden of male bonding. Women now typically work to achieve levels of intimacy and bonding with their male partners that would have been deemed weak and submissive in earlier times. A hundred years ago, a man who rushed home to spend time with the wife and kids after work was considered anti-social. Now that's considered admirable. 80 years ago a man who said his wife was also his best friend would have been considered a weak husband. Now that's the minimum expectation for a marriage. There's no doubt that gay rights walk hand in hand with feminism for obvious reasons but I think you've missed the larger, more obvious social shift and I think you are underestimating just how much secret gay sex happens in societies with little or no gay consciousness.
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"Let them eat Cake" didn't go so well for the French either, so I have read in history.
No you didn't. Historians report that the phrase "let them eat cake" was coined by Rousseau a full quarter century before 1789. No member of the French aristocracy is ever reported to have used the phrase before or during the French Revolution. Rousseau's phrase isn't mis-attributed to Marie Antoinette until fifty years after her public execution, 75 years after Rousseau wrote the words.
I would no more accept that the French Revolution "didn't go so well for the French" than I would accept that the American Revolution didn't go so well for the Americans or that the Glorious Revolution didn't go so well for the Brits. These were terrible, bloody events but as Jefferson remarked: "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
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@thett3
I think the big mask off moment for presidential debates was in 2012 when a moderator wrongly “fact checked” Romney. What they were arguing about was a stupid point (whether Obama called something an “act of terror” quickly enough iirc) but Romney was objectively right on the timing and Obama was objectively wrong. And before the entire country, Obama appealed to the moderator to affirm that he was right, and she did. A lot of establishment republicans never forgave the media for how they treated Romney, which made them more willing to make nice with Trump and his scorched earth war against the media
Well, if that's the Republican justification for being terrified of open, honest debate then let's repeat the inevitable conclusion of historians when the transcripts are read: Romney was telling the lie.
MR. ROMNEY: I — I — I want to make sure we get that for the record, because it took the president 14 days before he called the attack in Benghazi an act of terror.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Get the transcript.
MS. CROWLEY: It — he did in fact, sir.
So let me — let me call it an act of terrorism — (inaudible) --
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Can you say that a little louder, Candy? (Laughter, applause.)
MS. CROWLEY: He did call it an act of terror.
But here is Obama identifying Benghazi as a terrorist attack 12 hours after the event:
"No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation, alter that character, or eclipse the light of the values that we stand for. Today we mourn four more Americans who represent the very best of the United States of America. We will not waver in our commitment to see that justice is done for this terrible act. And make no mistake, justice will be done."
The terrible act Obama condemns is unequivocally placed in the context of the "acts of terror" in the topic sentence. Obama described Benghazi as an "act of terror" during speeches in Las Vegas and Golden on the same day. Obama says "get the transcript" because the transcript proves him right and proves Romney is just repeating a FOX News lie that had been debunked by every serious political journalist over the previous year.
Let's agree that real time fact checking is not the moderator's job but there's no room for honestly claiming that Romney was "objectively right on timing" or even that Romney was mistaken in good faith. The truth of the transcript had been revisited a hundred times in the year before this debate. Romney can't claim ignorance or misunderstanding here. Romney is knowingly misinforming the public only because that disinformation was popular on FOX News. Obama's and Crowley's over-reaction is in response to the baldness of Romney's lie.
FOX's original complaint was that the Obama admin wisely refused to state whether the event was spontaneous or planned for the first two weeks of the investigation but FOX/Romney are entirely dishonest to pretend that the Obama admin did not treat either motive as a terrorist act justifying a swift response.
Leave it to Republicans to hold a ten year grudge because they weren't allowed to misinform the public on the subject of terrorism during a National Presidential campaign.
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