John McAfee On Why He's Running For President 242
Velcroman1 writes: Our government is in a dysfunctional state. It is also illiterate when it comes to technology. Technology is not a tool that should be used for a government to invade our privacy. Technology should not be the scapegoat when we fail to protect our digital assets and tools of commerce. These are matters of priorities." So says John McAfee, offering up a brief explanation into why he's running for president. As noted earlier on slashdot, McAfee has filed paperwork already (PDF) to found a new party.
Who cares? (Score:4, Insightful)
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My vote goes to the person that I would most like to see elected, not the person that everyone says is going to win.
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I do that, and then get accused of *not participating*. Following the herd is throwing away your vote, or selling it to the highest bidder.
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Accused by whom? Aren't the ballots anonymous precisely to avoid that?
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Ah, the eternal dilemma for voters. Vote for the person you want, or vote against the person you don't want. Occasionally the guy you want is going to win anyway, but far too often you are stuck with this choice.
"Winner takes all" electoral systems are broken.
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Go Trump!
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he'll run the country like he runs his casinos... into the ground
Re:Who cares? (Score:4, Insightful)
Or like Obama ran his companies, or Hilary, or Sanders, or...
Wait, do any of the democrats actually have experience creating private sector jobs?
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Lets hope not because nearly every company eventually goes bankrupt, been Enroned lately, how about bailing out the Banks, feel the need for yet another Dot Bomb or Motor Manufacturer Rescue. Yes please GOD elect more people who ensure one thing more than anything else, they get the Golden Parachute and you get the fucking finger. Lets bankrupt the country and make the executive team billionaires, because that is exactly how the corporate douche bags do it. So the corporate goal of privatise the profits and
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Is that what private companies do? I thought they're there to make profits for their owners, and if one results in someone else getting paid that's just an unfortunate inefficiency that a good businessman will optimize away as much as possible. Of course this means they'll also have trouble finding customers who can afford their products, but that's the tragedy of the commons for you. A businessman doesn't need to (is not a
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Section. 8.
The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States
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"General welfare" is consistent with both courses of action. If one of them is against your personal political beliefs, then lobby for the Consti
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Re:Who cares? (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately, they are part time minimum wage jobs replacing full time salaried positions, so it is a net negative.
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Unfortunately GDP has essentially nothing to do with median income - especially in a country where the top 0.1% own more wealth than the bottom 90% combined.
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Unfortunately, they are part time minimum wage jobs replacing full time salaried positions, so it is a net negative.
Not negative at all for the people who have benefits due to having those full time positions.
The quality of jobs is as important as their quantity.
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Perhaps you misread what I wrote? We are losing full time positions and replacing them with part time positions which are counted like they are equal.
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Of course, if we tax the hell out of corporations like the Democrats want, that will just open up all the jobs that the corporations are holding back, right?
Re:Who cares? (Score:4, Insightful)
"Job growth" sounds great and all... until you realize all that growth was at minimum wage corporate subsidy farms like McDonalds and WalMart.
"Jobs" != sustainable wages
Try using REAL DATA (Score:4, Interesting)
Daily Kos is not a valid source; it's on par with Bozo the Clown or Big Bird. It's a site set up by hard-left activists to advance hard-left politics and is no better than Politifact, which is run by Democrats.
Try THIS CHART [stlouisfed.org] from the St Louis Fed which shows that the NET gain in jobs for all of the Obama years is only about 1 million, and THIS CHART [stlouisfed.org] which shows NET gain in jobs for foreign-born workers over the same span of the Obama years as nearly 2 million.
All the political candidates (on BOTH SIDES) and their paid hacks, activist mouthpieces, and corporate and/or union shills play with numbers to mislead people in various ways; some compare data from different time spans, some (usually Obama supporters) cite all the increases but ignore the losses (same trick they use with Obamacare coverage) some cite all the monthly gains (hoping the reader will misunderstand the data and mentally add them all up and see tens of millions on new jobs). Incidentally, the GOP is just as guilty when they are in power of citing a list of monthly gains and knowing they are tricking the average user into misleading himself. The problems with summing the monthlies are: [a] they do not include the monthly losses, [b] they include very temporary and seasonal jobs.
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where does it say that?
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Something falling into the category of fallacy does not automatically mean it's wrong.
Unfortunately, this claim is more than partially true. You only need to review median household income, numbers on government assistance, and full time employment numbers to make this proof.
Politicians (not limited to Obama) have been manipulating numbers for decades. The eligible pool of workers keeps shrinking as do unemployment numbers, yet our population is not shrinking. It does not take a high degree of intelligen
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It is wrong, though, because criminal jobs aren't even counted. Outside of Nevada, prostitutes aren't considered employed. And other than pharmacists, coke dealers aren't counted as employed either. Fluffer is a legitimate specialty in the makeup arts industry, but nobody has ever claimed that Obama invented the internet so I have no idea why that one is in there. The other ones I can just pass off as racist nonsense that people say about Obama. But fluffers?! What kind of pervert is still against porn in t
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Mostly people who hope to distract their God and/or peers from their own sins, the same as in any other age. Also people who like to live roleplay paladins [wikipedia.org] but don't want to mess with actual evil, which might fight back. And then there's the occasional creep who simply gets off on wielding power but doesn't want to do consensual BDSM for whatever reason.
Methinks that about sums it up.
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Watch as much as you like, but it is obviously a bad thing to do (ask even people who do it, what they think about it, and whether they want their kids to do it), and scientific inquiry, which eschews the obvious, often but not always to its benefit, is increasingly catching up to the human perception on this. It's true, religion is the only modern intellectual force motivating a human to act in ways befitting an exalted stature (philosophy jumped the shark long ago, which is why its dead now), or even ackn
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Hitler was, though.
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Trump is an ego-driven crazy person, but at least he is fun...
What are the other options? Bush or Clinton? Bleh, more of the same...
Congress and the military would keep Trump from doing any real damage, and it would be interesting to watch...
Bernie Sanders, obviously (Score:3)
that dude is awesome.
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He makes a heck of a pitch anyway... Shame he isn't running for King. Then he could do some of it.
https://berniesanders.com/issu... [berniesanders.com]
AS PRESIDENT, SENATOR BERNIE SANDERS WILL REDUCE INCOME AND WEALTH INEQUALITY BY:
1. Demanding that the wealthy and large corporations pay their fair share in taxes.
That sounds wonderful, except... what is their "fair share" of taxes? There has to be a number attached to that, not just a slogan. And you can't just demand they pay more in taxes, you have to change the tax code, which is another mess.
As president, Sen. Sanders will stop corporations from shifting their profits and jobs overseas to avoid paying U.S. income taxes.
How is he doing to do that? By just telling them to and waving his finger at them? That isn't how it works. By asking Congress to pass
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Yeah, he sure is:
https://img.4plebs.org/boards/... [4plebs.org]
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these are the exact same people who fell for the lies of the last republican president and went to war
Actually, I don't believe that Bush lied, I think he had a combination of bad intel and people within the CIA and DoD who wanted war.
He should have been listening to Colin Powell and Condi Rice, not Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfield.
Frankly, if I were Commander in Chief, I'd listen to Colin Powell LONG before I'd listen to Dick Cheney. Colin Powell was a General, he served our nation and understood the military and military issues. Cheney is a businessman who doesn't know squat about military stuff.
As Pres
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Actually, I don't believe that Bush lied
I don't believe anyone could be that delusional. Yet here you are, repeatedly proving my belief is wrong...
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There's no point pretending any more, not even his closest friends at the time are standing up for him and the Republican party has moved on.
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Lies? What Lies?
"Study: Bush, aides made 935 false statements in run-up to war"
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/01/23/bush.iraq/
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
yeah that's pretty funny
"took place on March 16, 1988, during the closing days of the Iran–Iraq War"
wrong war, silly. maybe you should blame angela merkel for the nazis
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You're missing the point... Saddam actually used chemical weapons, he had a history of them, known possession of them, etc.
So it was not unreasonable to think that 20 years later, he would still have them.
The irony is that we largely did get them all and he didn't have much once we invaded, but we didn't know that at the time. Saddam was an idiot, had he come clean, he could have avoided the whole mess.
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Saddam was an idiot, had he come clean, he could have avoided the whole mess.
Exactly. He was trying to maintain his bluster and it blew up in his face
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People harping about the WMD angle have turned a blind eye to the fact the Saddam broke every single point of the ceasefire agreement from the 1991 war. The US and Britain had to enforce a no fly zone over the Kurdish areas for 10 years to prevent Saddam from gassing them again after the 1991 war. Saddam used money from the UN Food for Oil program to rebuild opulent palaces for himself and psychopathic children. All the hunger and poverty stricken citizens got nothing and all the blame was put on the US. Se
Lets dissect (Score:2)
Removing all of the appeals to emotion I see a three claims against Saddam. Let me preface this I think he was an evil dictator who should rot in hell with Mao and the rest of that lot. That aside, it's not necessarily our business to fix that problem. Let's see how true your claims really are.
1. We had to maintain a no-fly zone to stop Saddam from using chemical weapons.
False! The US captured and destroyed Iraq's stockpiles during the first Gulf War. Saddam lied about having them to maintain posture
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The whole thing is pretty crazy. We knew he had had WMDs... because we had the receipts! Gosh, he sure must be an awful guy if he was willing to buy chemical weapons from us. D'oh! Of course, after the Persian Gulf War we verified that they were destroyed and buried in the sand. Then in 2003 they had aides running around leaking that we had evidence of him having bought them, without mentioning the seller, or the destruction, and then other aides leaking that we had evidence that he had "buried WMDs in the
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Horse Shit! (Score:2)
I was not going to bitch about your previous post where you quote the Clinton adviser. Who was also one of the people on the staff giving Saddam Chemical weapons and technology to use against Iran just a few years before he was suddenly a bad guy. I won't tolerate this kind of lie.
So, what exactly was being lied about? There were WMD found in Iraq, so it couldn't be that, maybe that Saddam wasn't willing to use them?
Your link points to a 1988 attack on the Kurds which the US is at least partially responsible for since we gave Saddam chemical weapons and technology to fight Iraq with in their war.
After the first Gulf war there were no WMDs i
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I was not going to bitch about your previous post where you quote the Clinton adviser. Who was also one of the people on the staff giving Saddam Chemical weapons and technology to use against Iran just a few years before he was suddenly a bad guy. I won't tolerate this kind of lie.
Not my quotes, and there were many on that post (which wasn't mine). I was pointing out that a TON of Democrats thought there were WMD in Iraq. Many Many people thought there were, and at the time, Saddam was claiming he had them. It turned out that Saddam was all bluster, but how could we have known? He confirmed the original intel we had, which at the time no one knew was faked.
Your link points to a 1988 attack on the Kurds which the US is at least partially responsible for since we gave Saddam chemical weapons and technology to fight Iraq with in their war.
That was the point. Saddam had no issues previously using WMD, so when he is blustering that he has them, and saying he is g
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Forget about it. the links may or may not be better than the other shit posted here, but they point the wrong way which means you are a troll.
I think the current inhabitant of the oval office is wicked but am starting to believe the invasion was a mistake. The utter chaos that is MENA in the present time, that the animal in the white house directly caused, likely was entirely enabled by the toppling of the wicked iraqi bastard. How we handled the invasion and its aftermath was noble, but to see that throug
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I didn't say the war was wise or right. I said that there weren't lies. Lie implies knowledge that what you say is not true, and at the time with the way Saddam was acting, it looked like he had chemical weapons and was working on the development of a nuke. Saddam was the one lying, not the White House; the White House was working off the best intelligence they had which showed that Saddam was developing nukes and likely had chemical weapons factories that he was hiding from the UN. Saddam was refusing
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What about "Mission Accomplished" parties held by GWB in the first year of the war?
Yes, that was pretty stupid and it showed how the wrong people were in charge.
Not Bush, I'm talking about Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfield.
The first attack and taking of Bagdad was wonderful, but they had no plans beyond that. Stupid...
Colin Powell was correct, "you break it, you've bought it". We should have gone in with plans to run the country the way we ran Germany and Japan after WWII. The Iraqi army should not have been disbanded, we needed their help maintaining order.
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Or Obama referring to Isis as a jv team?
http://www.politifact.com/trut... [politifact.com]
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Really, who cares? Trump's in it to win it and popcorn futures are tapped out. This idiot's got less chance than Palin at winning the Golden Ticket.
are you seriously advocating for voting for trump
No, he's advocating voting for Palin.
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Fixed that for you.
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Aw, cmon, they work together all the time! On the PATRIOT Act, on drones, on the TPP, on indefinite detention of Americans without charges... lots of stuff!
The illusion of the parties not working together exists for the explicit purpose of making us more accepting of the bullshit that gets passed when they do "reach across the aisle."
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Aw, cmon, they work together all the time!
this point of view only works for the male of the species
Well,one thing we can expect (Score:5, Funny)
He will slow down the government...
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"He will slow down the government..."
Only the part of it that runs on Windows, though. The big federal mainframes typically run Unix. Is the US Navy still WIndows-based? This could mean Iran pouring money into his campaign.
The centerpiece of McAfee's platform will be "A virus-free America." If we get an Ebola cure and more research on virus-based cancers, I'll be happy.
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Only the part of it that runs on Windows, though.
ha ha ha, windows antivirus software is also consuming lots of cpu cycles on unix mail server hosts
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He will slow down the government...
He will simply put a subscription fee on those who wish to use the Government for protecting their interests. (ie, the lobbyists)
the fee is waived if you build a casino and put his name on it
Lottery (Score:5, Insightful)
Being president is sort of like winning the lottery, but in reverse. You accept the blame for everything that happens during the next 4 years, and sometimes you get to take credit for a few things... then you ride the gravy train down to your grave. Anyone who believes that the president alone can fix "Our government is in a dysfunctional state. It is also illiterate when it comes to technology." is already drinking the cool-aid. It takes a president, a congress, and state politicians working together to effect change, and nobody's been able to round up that crowd in a few decades now.
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Mostly true. But there are some things that presidents can do without Congressional approval. Iran agreement is one big example. And the ACA, while it needed Congressional approval, simply would not have happened without the president deciding that it needed to happen.
But again, I do agree that presidents generally have limited powers and cannot bring about large scale changes by themselves.
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But again, I do agree that presidents generally have limited powers and cannot bring about large scale changes by themselves.
This is working as intended. for now at least....
Truth (in the "lottery in reverse" thing)... (Score:2)
But really, what you've got going on these days are a lot of people just fighting to keep the status quo. Most changes that get proposed are historically made by the Democrats. (Look at everything from "The New Deal" to the concept of the social security system, to orders for NASA to explore space and try to get a man put on the moon.) Sometimes (usually in hindsight), these changes are viewed as progress or good moves by our government. But they're almost always expensive undertakings, which get fought by
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It wasn't a disaster until Obama and Valarie fucked it up along with Afghanistan, Poland, Ukraine, Turkey, and now Iran. These clowns could fuck up a wet dream...
pure comedy gold, or smelly remains in the toilet bowl, it's hard to decide
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Bitch Please....
I'm a big fan of "the dubya"... and by "big fan", I really mean "I don't hate him - because he didn't screw up THAT bad". But that's all beside the point... my point was that ANY president, nay, EVERY president gets blamed for the things that go sideways under their watch, regardless of the past decisions that made that event possible, and regardless of the decisions they made that contributed to the situation. The original statement didn't introduce any partisan bickering, you did, so try
Charlie Sheen (Score:2, Troll)
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You'll really actually want President Camacho
Super Peak Slashdot 64 (Score:3)
Again: this is a front page story. [slashdot.org]
Minor point releases of Amiga OS have an order of magnitude more business being front page articles than this inanity.
well (Score:4, Interesting)
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The media won't let it be boring. We give more media coverage to a list of people who are not running, than we do to good candidates like Jim Webb that actually are running. There certainly are links between the two, but money in politics is looking like less of a problem to me than the media picking favorites and covering only people who are newsworthy. As long as the media defines the political winners and losers, we will remain completely fucked.
Because I am insane (Score:2)
Because I am insane... but then look everybody else that is running for president.
In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. There is hope for me.
why not? (Score:2)
The Republicans seem to think that winning an election as a Republican, somehow disqualifies you for president.
The three Republican front-running candidates have not won a single election among the three of them.
All of the Republican candidates that actually have experience winning an election have fallen way off in the polls.
Bath salts orgies murder and anti-virus software (Score:3)
Because... (Score:2)
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I'm pretty sure you can only pardon yourself for US crimes, not overseas ones.
Crazy is our Last Hope (Score:5, Insightful)
Some of the nice, responsible people that do this actually believe that the system of government in place in the US is fully functional and healthy. I can't say much to these people except: see you at the finish line.
The remaining people with functioning brains realize that many, many things are going horribly wrong with the US system of government. In fact a majority of Americans believe this today. Trust in government is at an all time low. For these people, even if they disagree on the specifics, clearly things are not going well. Many even doubt for any future at all if we continue down the same course.
And yet many of these people will also stand up and say McAfee is crazy. Well so what? Beyond that, will anything be done in the absence of a crazy person to attempt it? To win one would have to usurp the Political Machine by defeating both the Republicans and Democrats in the election, the whole time thwarting their joint efforts to protect their system. They will literally be walking around with a target on their back. Who but a crazy person would attempt it?
It also shouldn't be forgotten that crazy often comes part and parcel with a whole host of other traits and characteristics that are very desirable. That Mr. McAfee has at least some spark of these is evident in the success that he has met with in the past. To dismiss him as a gibbering loon would not only be a mistake, it would be completely in error.
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Some of the nice, responsible people that do this actually believe that the system of government in place in the US is fully functional and healthy.
ha ha ha, is that your imaginary friend who is saying that? maybe you need to take a serious thrashing to your straw man
To win one would have to usurp the Political Machine
yeah that's great, how will a president get anything done if he does not have the trust of his fellow lawmakers?
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Just makin' the best of a bad situation: (Score:5, Funny)
"Our government is in a dysfunctional state."
So, John's saying he wants to be president so he can put the fun back in dysfunctional?
Make the wrong guy win? (Score:2)
With all these extra people running for president, isn't this just going to make the wrong person win? The US doesn't have runoffs or any of the other less flawed voting systems. Instead, the votes get split up among the better candidates, and then the least favorite is the one who wins.
DEEZ Nutz is running... (Score:2)
Why? Because Trump was not ridiculous enough (Score:2)
Why not run for congress? (Score:2)
Re:I'll vote for him (Score:4, Insightful)
Be fair. When he was running the company it was pretty good. That was 20+ years ago.
Re:disgusting piece of s*it software (Score:2)
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mcafee lost his in the bottom of a bottle of pills
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By spelling "lose" correctly I suppose you can be ejected for using the Queen's English instead of "yawl".
Re:Is he even eligible? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, you can. You can also renounce it. But that's irrelevant to my point. I'm not talking about citizenship, nor questioning his status as a natural born citizen.
But, rather the last part of Article II, Section 1, Clause 5: ...neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.
The "been fourteen Years a Resident" part.
And they won't let you renounce your US citizenship if they think its because you want to avoid paying taxes on overseas earnings!
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That only matters where you're not actually living overseas. You're allowed to change citizenship for tax reasons as long as you already changed your (physical) residency.
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If it doesn't distinguish, then it doesn't require it. It doesn't say "continuous recent" or anything, so it simply doesn't mean that. Even if many readers want it to.
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Precedent (President Hoover) indicates that this is not the fourteen most recent years.
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That is the whole point of rich guys going to Belize and getting citizenship; so they can renounce their US citizenship and not pay US taxes.
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If it is not clear, and hasn't been applied to anybody else, the courts aren't going to discriminate against him over it. It would need to be clear in order to have meaning. Not being clear doesn't mean it is more likely it would exclude him, it means it is not enforceable until you find a clear application.
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We put our candidates through mud slinging and name calling very much on purpose, to see how they react.
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"The major problem — one of the major problems, for there are several — one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them.
To summarise: it is a well known fact that those people who most want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarise the summary: anyone who is capable of gett
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The really sad thing is that Slashdot contains many fans of his, most if not all of whom have read the Hitchhiker series, that will nonetheless still discuss Democrat vs. Republican with a straight face. They still argue about which Career Politician would be best, or suggest that John McAfee is too crazy to be President, blah blah blah.
People: throw your Hitchhiker's Guide away. You don't deserve to own it.
I've pointed out many times in posts on slashdots that all the "republicans are crazy" and "democrats are crazy" posters are simply voting for a lizard in case the wrong lizard gets in. Asking democrat supporters or republican supporters to use their vote *for* a politician and not *against* a party is crazy talk, apparently - it's a wasted vote, after all!
To the rest of us on the outside, those two parties act the same.