'The Hillary Leaks' - Wikileaks Releases 19,252 Previously Unseen DNC Emails (zerohedge.com) 461
Reader schwit1 writes: The state department's release of Hillary emails may be over, but that of Wikileaks is just starting. Moments ago, Julian Assange's whistleblower organization released over 19,000 emails and more than 8,000 attachments from the Democratic National Committee. This is part one of their new Hillary Leaks series, Wikileaks said in press release.:"Today, Friday 22 July 2016 at 10:30am EDT, WikiLeaks releases 19,252 emails and 8,034 attachments from the top of the US Democratic National Committee -- part one of our new Hillary Leaks series. The leaks come from the accounts of seven key figures in the DNC: Communications Director Luis Miranda (10770 emails), National Finance Director Jordon Kaplan (3797 emails), Finance Chief of Staff Scott Comer (3095 emails), Finance Director of Data & Strategic Initiatives Daniel Parrish (1472 emails), Finance Director Allen Zachary (1611 emails), Senior Advisor Andrew Wright (938 emails) and Northern California Finance Director Robert (Erik) Stowe (751 emails). The emails cover the period from January last year until 25 May this year."
The emails released Friday cover a period from January 2015 to May 2016. They purportedly come from the accounts of seven key DNC staffers: Andrew Wright, Jordon Kaplan, Scott Comer, Luis Miranda, Robert Stowe, Daniel Parrish and Allen Zachary.
A quick scan of the emails focus on Bernie Sanders and dealing with the fallout of many Democrats opposing Hillary Clinton and calling the system "rigged." Many of the emails exchanged between top DNC officials are simply the text of news articles concerning how establishment democrats can "deal" with the insurgent left-winger. Update: 07/22 17:41 GMT by M :Guccifer 2.0 has claimed responsibility for the leak.
The emails released Friday cover a period from January 2015 to May 2016. They purportedly come from the accounts of seven key DNC staffers: Andrew Wright, Jordon Kaplan, Scott Comer, Luis Miranda, Robert Stowe, Daniel Parrish and Allen Zachary.
A quick scan of the emails focus on Bernie Sanders and dealing with the fallout of many Democrats opposing Hillary Clinton and calling the system "rigged." Many of the emails exchanged between top DNC officials are simply the text of news articles concerning how establishment democrats can "deal" with the insurgent left-winger. Update: 07/22 17:41 GMT by M :Guccifer 2.0 has claimed responsibility for the leak.
This confirms my previous speculation (Score:5, Interesting)
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Assange just wants to stir shit up to get publicity. I doubt he cares what shit he stirs, as long as people pay attention.
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this strongly suggests that Assange has a favorite here.
Trump?
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Re:This confirms my previous speculation (Score:4, Funny)
When Assange previously was given front-page status on slashdot for having a cache of Hillary emails to release, I said I figured he was going to do it to help Bernie Sanders win the election. After all, if Hillary were to actually fall out somehow before November, Sanders would be the only choice the party could present. Being as every poll that ever asked voters about Sanders vs Trump showed Sanders completely wiping the floor with Trump, this strongly suggests that Assange has a favorite here.
There's a lot of emails. Assange was probably just taking time to review the material and figure out how to release it.
I don't know what Assange's political views are but I doubt that's a huge factor here. If someone gives him a big dump of emails from a major organization he's gonna publish them with maximum publicity.
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Why would he need to review it to know how to release it? If you're ultimately going to dump the data, just dump it and let the people read it for themselves. Don't pre-filter it or spin it one way or another.
Re:This confirms my previous speculation (Score:4, Interesting)
Why would he need to review it to know how to release it? If you're ultimately going to dump the data, just dump it and let the people read it for themselves. Don't pre-filter it or spin it one way or another.
There might be sensitive or personal information that he doesn't think should be made public or there might be bombshells that he wants to specifically advertise.
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Re:This confirms my previous speculation (Score:5, Insightful)
It is really bad etiquette to DOC innocent people. IE you should at least make sure their are not home addresses, SSN, phone numbers, credit card numbers, etc before you release. It would also be polite to remove innocent but embarrassing details: things like sickness, illness, VD's, victims names of things like rape, phishing...
Re:This confirms my previous speculation (Score:4, Informative)
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It's supposed to be all DNC, but people do misuse email - they use their personal account for work, their work account for personal, and in politicians case their office account for politics and vice versa. Hillary has been the latest scandal of that nature, conducting government business using a personal email account, but she isn't the first politician to be caught doing that - and she escaped prosecution because it's something so commonplace that any prosecution of her would only be driven for political
Re:This confirms my previous speculation (Score:5, Insightful)
It won't matter, if the sheer number of "Bernie" bumper stickers replaced by "Clinton" bumper stickers here in Portland is any indication (most within the same effing week).
The dubious beauty of partisan politics is that for partisans, the people are almost interchangeable, and they'll hold their nose and vote for anyone - as long as the candidate they've been told to fear doesn't win.
I do wonder though if my father-in-law got intellectual whiplash when he went from Facebook postings of "Hillary is a corrupt wall street hack - vote Bernie!" to "But Hillary is honest and has integrity!" within less than a week.
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yeah, but these days the plurality of people are independents and not actually democrats or republicans. A fact that both parties like to ignore.
The 2 party system is a joke
Re:This confirms my previous speculation (Score:4, Interesting)
these days the plurality of people are independents and not actually democrats or republicans. A fact that both parties like to ignore.
Not even close. The majority of people are fairly consistent in voting either Democrat or Republican. The concept of gerrymandering wouldn't exist and wouldn't work if most people were actually independent and voted along anything other than party lines.
Re:This confirms my previous speculation (Score:5, Interesting)
Correct, and that constitute strong proof that no one, not even liberals, actually enjoys "diversity".
Home is where you don't have to explain yourself.
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Not quite on topic, but when did it become a sin to change your beliefs?
Re:This confirms my previous speculation (Score:4, Insightful)
It's almost shocking that the electorate in Portland would shift from the most liberal candidate (full stop) to the most liberal remaining viable candidate without a single thought of hypocrisy.
No, wait, that's exactly what Portland always does.
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That's IF there's a bombshell in there that's sure to ruin Hillary. If it's just mundane stuff (my bet), it will only hurt Hillary (who would now have to deal with "Climategate"-style hyper-scrutiny over every little comment that can be framed as remotely incriminating) and help Trump. Worst of all would be if there's something bad in there but not bad enough to hand Sanders the nomination, that could threaten to hand Trump the win over Hillary.
If there is a bombshell you'd be right.
I think Assange knows be
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Worst of all would be if there's something bad in there but not bad enough to hand Sanders the nomination, that could threaten to hand Trump the win over Hillary.
I have a hard time imagining many voters who are on the fence between Trump and Hillary at this point. If the results are bad - though not bad enough to drive Hillary out of the race - I could expect it to maybe drive some people who would vote for her to vote third party instead. It doesn't seem real likely that such people would occur in large enough numbers in battleground states to flip the election to Trump, though.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
They haven't nominated Hillary yet. Her coronation is next week at the Democratic National Convention [wikipedia.org]. Which means it's still conceptually possible that they could nominate someone else.
They won't, of course. But it's still theoretically possible. In some other universe where criminals get charged for their crimes.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
In some other universe where wealthy and/or powerful criminals get charged for their crimes.
FTFY
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Yep, in Star Trek, that's the universe where most Star Trek episodes occur: the universe where humans are generally benevolent, intelligent, and ethical beings, and also highly competent at their work.
Star Trek did show our universe a few times; it's called the "mirror universe", and in it, humans are generally evil, imperialistic assholes who'll stop at nothing to gain more power.
My new ultimate goal in life is to invent a device which allows me to "slide" into that other universe.
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OT: but in star trek, the enterprise crew are not the humans of the future.
the kingons are. in fact, its hard to tell many humans from klingons, if you ignore the obvious diff in looks and language.
the dog-eat-dog view is widely held by humans. 'its not enough that I win; you must also lose'. that summarizes much of humanity, sad to say.
there's no chance people will progress to star trek level of kindness, justice and understanding. we don't have it in us, by in large. the good humans are the tiny tiny
Re:Why? (Score:5, Informative)
Anything incriminating? (Score:5, Insightful)
The question is, is there anything in there that's incriminating? If not, it doesn't really matter.
Re:Anything incriminating? (Score:5, Insightful)
I was going to ask the same thing. To be a "whistleblower" organization (as described in the summary) is to call attention to illegal activities that have been suppressed. If there is no evidence of wrongdoing here, all Wikileaks is doing is violating people's privacy. While it might be interesting to read the internal e-mails of politicians, executives or celebrities, if there is nothing illegal going on then it's ultimately just voyeurism that doesn't justify distribution from a dodgily (probably illegally) obtained source.
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> Wikileaks is doing is violating people's privacy.
Well that would be true if the powers that be never stated, If you got nothing to hide... Unless Citizen Prime has more protection/freedom under the law then Citizen Common.
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If "Guccifer 2.0" had anything interesting to release as a result of the hack, they'd have done it by now for the notoriety. This is like one of these Anonymous "splinter" groups who flail for attention on IRC, then failing to get it decide to break one inconsequential hack up into several inconsequential, but heavily-hyped news releases... Throw in a few bold claims, we'll take down this entire CDN, that entire network for 24 hours. Post it on Slashdot because they'll post any garbage at this point, post i
Re:Anything incriminating? (Score:5, Insightful)
Wrongdoing is not a synonym for illegal, and whistleblowers often reveal things that, while technically legal, are disgusting and wrong.
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But in this case what's revealed is internal political strategy discussions which are very interesting, but hardly wrong.
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But in this case what's revealed is internal political strategy discussions which are very interesting, but hardly wrong.
Are you kidding? Everything about them is wrong. It's not the DNC's job to ignore the Democrats.
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Re:Anything incriminating? (Score:5, Interesting)
Beside their strange hairdo they also share versions of an ultra right-wing and populist view.
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Re:Anything incriminating? (Score:4, Insightful)
Hey, don't lump everyone together. There's plenty of leftists who are all in favor of FOIA, Wikileaks, etc., and still think Hillary is a corrupt sell-out. It's really the establishment-lovers who defend her.
Just like "the right" has several different camps, with some overlap (the Evangelicals, the Big Business lovers, the Tea Partiers, the economic libertarians, etc.), and sometimes these groups are opposed, leading to Trump's nomination for example, "the left" also has several different camps, with some overlap: the environmentalists, the SJWs, the radical feminists, the Big Business lovers (but they love different big businesses than those on the right), the union supporters, the equal rights supporters, etc. Hillary vs. Bernie (just like everyone vs. Trump on the right) has exposed a huge schism on the left. True Bernie supporters and other actual leftists (not Hillary-loving centrists) and anti-establishment folks are all in favor of this stuff; it's only the establishment people who are going to call this "violating privacy". These DNC high-ups are greatly affecting our politics, and quite likely choosing our next leader, so we have every right to read their emails. Even more so when you consider that these very same people are big proponents of the NSA spying on us; turnabout is fair play.
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The question is, is there anything in there that's incriminating? If not, it doesn't really matter.
This would imply that it matters even if it is incriminating, something that a brief examination of the history of the Clintons calls into question.
Re:Anything incriminating? (Score:4, Insightful)
For the most part that is all what Wikileaks seems to do.
Nothing really surprising, unless you are really naive about the world.
Should I be shocked that the Publicly the Civilian casualties count was lower than the actual?
Should I be shocked that a Military which is volunteer and not extremely selective and their ages are in the late teens and early 20's would have a bunch of people who will act less than professionally and cause trouble?
So why should I be shocked to find that When she is running for a position she is working with strategies to counteract her opponent?
Perhaps they should leak my email to find out that I spend a lot of time explaining my work and trying to avoid getting yelled at for the users mistakes?
Re:Anything incriminating? (Score:5, Interesting)
Think wider.
The Democratic National Committee is an organization of and for the Democratic Party (aka, the voters), and should be neutral until the party members have selected their candidate. I think a lot of Sanders supporters are going to be disgusted to see how "their" party plotted and schemed to defeat their candidate, and also how "their" party stole their money and handed it to Hillary. Well, now that Bernie has ripped his mask off, I'm not so sure. But they should be pissed.
Also, did you see how the allegedly objective and neutral news organizations colluded with Hillary? I didn't think it was possible for the approval ratings of the mainstream media to get any lower, but they are working hard to shed those last few percent.
How about the soft bribery of the delegates going on? Think any of them are going to have some explaining to do after this?
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The Democratic National Committee is an organization of and for the Democratic Party (aka, the voters), and should be neutral until the party members have selected their candidate.
Anyone who knows about super-delegates knows that's not the case.
Re:Anything incriminating? (Score:5, Interesting)
I was a Sanders supporter, and I'm neither surprised nor particularly upset. You have to be realistic. Hillary has been active and well-known in the party since 1974, when she rose to prominence as a whip-smart young staff attorney of the Children's Defense Fund. She's spent the last forty years, building contacts and networks in the Democratic party, including nationally as first lady for eight years and with nearly successful presidential run that took her across the entire country. She has a massive rolodex, war chest, and ground organization.
Bernie Sanders only joined the party in 2015. That the DNC was less than perfectly impartial towards the two won't come as news to an Bernie supporter, but to be frank the idea that long-time party insiders and activists would treat someone who joined the party last year the same as someone who's been a big deal in the party for decades is simply unrealistic.
Re:Anything incriminating? (Score:4, Insightful)
Think wider.
The Democratic National Committee is an organization of and for the Democratic Party (aka, the voters), and should be neutral until the party members have selected their candidate. I think a lot of Sanders supporters are going to be disgusted to see how "their" party plotted and schemed to defeat their candidate
Huh?
There were two major candidates. One is a lifelong democrat who is part of the biggest fundraising team in the democratic party's history, who has regularly campaigned for and helped democratic candidates, and who has pushed democratic policies (and helped set democratic policies) their entire political career. The other is an independent who just recently declared themself a democrat for the express purpose of winning this primary and "leading a revolution" in the democratic party, who is not known for helping or fundraising for democrats and who has policies which are similar to but still rather different than the democratic party's policies.
Look, I like Bernie and I respect Bernie's goals, but his goal was to take over and explode the democratic party. Why do you think the current democratic party leaders would be neutral about this? That's insane. Of course they dislike him and fear him and did not want him to win; from their point of view, that is the only rational behavior.
Note also, you say "until the party members have selected their candidate". Bernie wants more open primaries because many of his supporters are independants, not democrats. I don't know if open primaries are good or bad, but when you have open primaries you no longer have "the party members" selecting a candidate, you have anyone who decides to vote in that party's primary selecting. That may be good or it may be bad, but it ain't the same thing.
Re:Anything incriminating? (Score:4, Insightful)
"Voter" != "Party Member". Very few people actually realize this.
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
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It's not a secret that Clinton is a rather vile person, so whatever rude and dirty things she says to other Democrats is of no consequence.
No. Every since the right decided that she didn't know her place as a first lady they've been telling everyone who will listen that she's the devil incarnate.
It's just disturbing that at some point a bunch of progressives have jumped on board because apparently everyone knows she's evil so it must be true!
Oddly enough her philandering husband who probably knew the email situation, and is certainly involved in any Clinton Foundation conspiracy theories, is still generally popular.
What a mess (Score:5, Insightful)
So I can't even hazard a guess as to what's gonna happen this election. The US has a choice between a politician so sleezy as to be a caricature of a cliche politician, and a narcicistic psychopath who would quite happily plunge the world into world war 3 if someone makes fun of the size of his hands.
I mean, really? W. T. F.?
The only real option is if the entire country banded together and voted for an independent, but I just don't see that happening cause all the majority of people can see is the romantic idea of what their "team" represents, rather than look at what's actually happening.
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Did you even read the article?
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Why would I do that? This is slashdot. :)
Re:What a mess (Score:4, Insightful)
If I were Trump, I'd find campaign issues other than "crooked" and "bad judgement" to run against:
"crooked" - Under investigation for fraud, probably soon to be under investigation for bribery to get earlier fraud investigations squashed.
"bad judgement" - Three wives, four bankruptcies.
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Re:What a mess (Score:5, Informative)
You forget:
1. Loves dictators, frequently praises them (including Saddam).
2. Want's to change the 1st amendment to remove public criticism of public figures; under Trump it would be illegal to criticize him.
3. Plan's to end all criticism of rights abuses by other nations. No longer will the US be there pointing out regimes that are torturing and murdering their people.
4. Will refuse to come to the aid of our NATO members if they aren't spending enough on defense basically making the US a liar and untrustworthy.
5. Believes all foreign diplomacy is based on money.
To be honest, i wouldn't be surprised if Trump wants to rewrite the constitution to remove all freedoms and I fully believe he would send American soldiers to die because some foreign leader insulted him.
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She didn't pass anything as first lady, that's not how it works. As part of the Obama administration, she did plug TPP pretty hard. But your point about Trump having a running mate who was for every free-trade deal made (including TPP), while making a major campaign issue out of how bad they are is pretty lame.
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She didn't pass anything as first lady, that's not how it works
That was my point. Trump talks about all the things she did while first lady such as NAFTA. It's absurd.
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Re:What a mess (Score:5, Informative)
story [nytimes.com] explaining how she approved the sale of 20% of US uranium to Russia in return for massive bribes. Bribes she said she would not take while secretary of state, on a decision that she refused to recuse herself and department from because of the bribes, failed to disclose said bribes as she had promised before taking position, and failed to report them to the IRS meaning she had to amend her tax returns years later or be convicted of tax fraud (something you would have gone to jail for)
Not sure why you are being ignorant. She also funneled $55 million to Laurite university and got Bill $16.5 million of that taxpayer money in the process. Wonder why Trump University left the news so quickly? Its because of that story that he brought up for them mentioning his possible problem, and they aborted all news to prevent their outright illegal activity from becoming too public.
No, she is the most corrupt politician.
Re:What a mess (Score:4, Informative)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitewater_controversy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillary_Rodham_cattle_futures_controversy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_House_travel_office_controversy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_House_FBI_files_controversy
Trump's a maniac and shouldn't be put in charge of an elevator, much less a country. That doesn't mean Hillary's anything other than business as usual from the most crooked city in America.
Re:What a mess (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What a mess (Score:4, Interesting)
This isn't about Trump or the Republicans. Someone can be a sleazy politician on their own merit. I don't give a shit how many times she says "radical islamic terrorism". Bengazi is obviously a witchhunt. It's obvious republicans are just attacking her any way they can and seeing what sticks.
Here is what actually bothers me about her in no particular order
1. She was willing to lie about being shot at by snipers in order to boost her foreign policy cred.
2. She fucked up on the whole email server thing. Rather than just admitting it, she maintained that even though it was a bad decision, that nothing she did was against the rules.
3. She says she stood up to wall street when she told them to "cut it out". She says the reason wall street donated money to her was because she was keeping them safe after 9/11.
4. The timing of when her opinions change make it seem like she is just jumping on popular trends rather than actually having any sort of moral conviction. (e.g. her position on gay marriage, fracking, etc)
Is she the most dishonest politician there ever was? No. Are other politicians just as dishonest or even more dishonest than she is? Probably. Are the Republicans and Donald Trump unfairly trying to make her seem more dishonest than she really is? Yes. Has she been held to a different standard because of gender bias? probably.
All of this is important to note, but it doesn't change the fact that she is dishonest. She is willing to lie when she thinks it will benefit her. She is a liar. She is not more of a liar than other politicians especially republicans or Trump, but she is a liar nonetheless.
Attacking the wild accusations against hillary from the right is easy. That doesn't mean that there are not legitimate issues with her honesty.
I get that Donald Trump is worse. Given the choices, I hope she wins. But I don't see the point in sugar coating what we are getting, if/when we stop Trump.
Re:What a mess (Score:4, Informative)
1. Clinton used a personal email server that was not authorized by the State Department and had she asked them (which she claimed but didn't) the State Department would have denied her.
2. Clinton violated the Espionage Act by allowing classified information to end up on her personal email server through gross negligence.
Based on the facts Clinton should be indicted.
Re:What a mess (Score:5, Insightful)
Nothing from Hilary herself (Score:3)
A previous poster suggested something incriminating would catapult Sanders into the DNC nomination spot.
If nothing actually incriminating is found, but something unfavorable is revealed, that would then help The Donald.
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I think Assuange is just trying to stay relevant.
And not doing a very good job of it.
Can we get them all in .PST format? (Score:2)
It might be easier to deal with.
Where is the Technical /. Discussion? (Score:4, Insightful)
If you search for the top senders a 'noreply' is on there.
If you start digging through the e-mail sources there's some pretty interesting (but politically boring) data in there.
Someone is running "CommuniGate Pro SMTP 6.0.4" in 2016. It was released on 28-Mar-2013 and has had Bug fixes since then [communigate.com]
https://messages.whitehouse.go... [whitehouse.gov]
Is not resolvable from the outside it seems.
Politics aside, is this a copyright violation? (Score:2, Interesting)
Since these are private communications - not government data - and each email is a creative work by the author, would this potentially be subject to copyright infringement, to the "value" of the communications (which may only arguably be $10-20 a piece if you count time spent x nominal billing rate), triple damage for intentional distribution, times the number of downloads (or x1 if it was uploaded to a torrent, and then copyright infringement applied to all who are torrenting)? Could several of the key do
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>well, no. "A work of the United States government [wikipedia.org],
The DNC isn't the government.
Delegate Selection Process (Score:3)
https://drive.google.com/file/... [google.com]
Nothing really new but combing thru all this stuff may be fun...
Twitter blackout now (Score:4, Interesting)
Snowden hates Hillary... (Score:3)
...because she's stated that she would back prosecuting him if he came back to the USA. (This is one of the few, main points that I disagree with her policy myself, BTW).
So if Hillary gets elected, he's got at least another four years before he can try to come back under a (possibly) different president.
Hah! (Score:3, Insightful)
I do love how random commentators, particularly anonymous ones, love telling people what everyone else is purported to want.
Such class
Re:Hah! (Score:4, Insightful)
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As the world continues getting more interconnected that list keeps growing longer. Your fortunes are ever more dependent on what other people do, the current economic crisis being an excellent example. Nor can this trend be reversed because advanced technology depends on spec
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Not sure why you think I feel a deep seated need to fall in with the Republican party?
Do you think that every person that values family and responsibility is a Republican? Do you think that all Republicans hold these ideals to be truth?
Would be nice, That though is simply not true. The Republican party is closer to the Democratic party than you wou
Re: Doing Trump's work for him (Score:5, Funny)
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Hmm. If you could be honest with yourself for a minute you'd accept the truth that everyone in America wants it for free. The only difference is that democrats want a safety net that they can't afford, whereas Republicans simply want their roads, their military, and their Medicare and want to live tax-free, apparently paying for the programs with manna from the sky.
Damn...where are my mod points when I need them? Well put!
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
The only difference is that democrats want a safety net that they can't afford, whereas Republicans simply want their roads, their military, and their Medicare and want to live tax-free, apparently paying for the programs with manna from the sky.
So Democrats want a safety net they can't afford while Republicans want tax breaks they can't afford. Meanwhile a lot of the Republicans also want to have our government run as a theocracy, having our laws based on morals gleaned from their experience handling snakes and speaking in tongues.
Re: Doing Trump's work for him (Score:5, Interesting)
I've heard:
Democrats are tax and spend. Republicans are borrow and spend.
In that context, Democrats slightly better, at least they realize there's a cost.
Re:Doing Trump's work for him (Score:4, Insightful)
want to live in a society where the government dictates everything from on high
You mean like who I'm allowed to have sex with? What women are allowed to do with their bodies?
You'd almost think they were to the point of micromanaging bathrooms.
Re: Doing Trump's work for him (Score:2)
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ROTFL,
It's the republicans in state government telling the democrats in a city government [wikipedia.org] that the city cannot permit those nasty transsexuals to use the public bathroom of their choice.
To wit [charlotteobserver.com]:
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14 states had anti-sodomy laws on the books until SCOTUS put an end to that shit in Lawrence v Texas [wikipedia.org] 13 years ago. 13 years ago, that's it. That's not too long ago, and you can be sure that most of those states wouldn't have changed the law unless forced to do so by the courts.
And while it may now be legal
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The republicans are saying the government should stay out of it, not take over it.
Um, no dude. The Republicans are literally legislating bathroom usage. In other words they are taking it over.
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Small point of order: Slavery requires no consent from the slave. Having a job means there's a *voluntary* consent between you and the employer.
You also failed to mention the act of self-employment (contracting, consulting, proprietorship, etc).
That said, there is still the small semi-slavery that is excess taxation, excess regulation, etc., although people tend to disagree on what constitutes 'excess' in these cases.
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Of course slavery requires consent of the slave. A slave who refuses to work is no slave at all, only a victim of abuse and probably eventually murder.
That the violence in a rigged economy is homelessness and starvation not directly imposed by any specific individual does not fundamentally alter the fact that consent is often coerced.
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The highest bidder isn't as important to me, as the ability to exercise and develop my crafts, and not be chained. Certainly I serve others, but the money isn't the highest priority. Living well, doing things for my family, friends, colleagues, and my discipline are also important, too.
There is such a thing as wage slavery, and it has to do with the fact I have gifts that others either don't have, or have no means to develop into a "highest bidder" market. The market for these individuals doesn't even guara
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The label "wage slavery" and the phenomenon to references certainly exist. I don't think it's good, but I think the label trivializes actual slavery. I think underpaying people can certainly be exploitive, but I don't think this should be conflated to what actual slaves were/are subjected to (e.g. being treated as property). Slaves could be (and were sometimes) murdered and raped by their masters with accountability. Slaves were split up from their families.
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They are only slaves to the choices they freely made. Ranging from where they live, what they did to educate themselves and how far they are willing to travel to get a job that isn't at the neighborhood Burger King.
Choices have consequences and sometimes the consequence is only being able to work at a Burger King for minimum wage.
Re:Doing Trump's work for him (Score:4, Insightful)
The path to freedom, according to you is for those that have earned a lot of money to give up the money they worked for so that you can be "Free".
In other words. The "Slaves" should pay for the freemen to be free?
WTF?
Re:Doing Trump's work for him (Score:5, Insightful)
Earned is the correct word to use to refer to resources that were paid for with earnings.
I don't withhold my resources (ie my retained earnings) in order to extract labor from people. I've always just offered to pay people a fee for their labor, which happens to be the same way I earn most of my money.
If you don't have any resources I'd suggest a two step approach:
1) Perform labor for a fee
2) Don't spend all the money you were paid for your services
Now I do admit that it is far easier if you can just replace step 1) with "Have someone give you some of their stuff", I can assure you that not working and getting paid only works if the percentage of parasites is sufficiently small. Too many parasites and the host dies.
Re: (Score:3)
Earned is a funny word to use for those who withhold resources from those who have none in order to extract labor from them.
Where do you imagine those resources came from? Someone worked to create them.
It is a fundamental requirement of society that we each contribute as much to society as we consume, over our lifetimes. No amount of wishful thinking will change that. We measure that with money, but money itself is meaningless. Oh, we may be nice enough to carry a few people out of charity, but when that "few" goes beyond the legitimately disabled, the whole thing unravels.
Re: (Score:3)
Unless you're a farmer (and that's about the hardest job around), what are you going to do with unimproved land?
Assuming you want not just land, but housing or a shop, with utilities and so on, then we're back to "where did those resources come from".
Re:Doing Trump's work for him (Score:5, Insightful)
I am now a slave owner that has earned nothing?
There is a reason that loser fucks continue to be loser fucks.
It is because there is no way to convince them that they have any power over their own lives.
They are scared that if they concede that they have power over their lives that they will suddenly be responsible for their own happiness.
They are not happy and get their only "Joy" from blaming others.
Deeply offensive, beyond spoiled brat (Score:3, Insightful)
> You give 40+ hours of your week away to corporate bosses, just so you can feed yourself. That's called slavery.
So you think that sitting in your air-conditioned office posting on Slashdot and getting paid $100K for doing so is just exactly like slavery https://qph.ec.quoracdn.net/ma... [quoracdn.net]
Sometimes I wish you whiny little spoiled liberals could spend six seconds on the whipping post in order to start getting a clue how incredibly fortunate you are. I EXPECT you to be a whiny, spoiled brat, but when you s
Re:Deeply offensive, beyond spoiled brat (Score:4, Insightful)
He says while the US experiences the highest level of income disparity it has ever seen.
No one is complaining that they didn't get a free i-phone six. They are complaining that after working their way through college, accumulating massive amounts of debt, and struggling through a recession, the status quo is to reward the people and companies that are destroying the mobility in American society that you pretend you love so much. You want social mobility? Massive unemployment and huge profits for corporations isn't going to help anyone achieve the American Dream-- it's destroying that dream and creating some neo-fuedalistic society, a sham version of capitalism.
It's not whining to want to make the country a better place. Recognizing that human beings have inalienable rights is something our forefather's did over 200 years ago-- the rights of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness". We have resources to provide people with universal heathcare, to provide people with food, water, shelter, and give them the freedom to pursuit happiness in whatever way they want. What will it cost us? It will mean that instead of earning 1.5 billion dollars a year some company will only earn a billion. It means that being rich in America will mean only being able to afford a 200 room mansion, a private jet and a fleet of sportscars an only have 20 million set aside for a rainy day instead of 40 million.
No one "earned" that money-- they won it in the lottery that is our economic system. They were a lucky bastard who did well. What a lot of people want is the SYSTEM that lets someone become a rich bastard ALSO make sure that the people who don't become rich bastards have a place to sleep, food to eat, and good health. The rich won't be quite as rich and the poor won't be quite as poor-- that' all, no socialist revolution, no communist bread lines.
It disgusts me that this is so hard to understand. People act like they are somehow special and earned their place in our society with no help from the society itself-- as if the crooked rules in the economic system weren't benefiting the rich after they bought and sold the politicians. If "having money" means you "earned that money" then the future of our society is undeniably going to become one of violence. When economic opportunity dies up, people will turn to violence, and all the creative accounting and luck in the market will be useless against one pissed off guy with a .45.
Good luck with your awesome Darwinian society.
Re:Deeply offensive, beyond spoiled brat (Score:5, Insightful)
Because people have it worse than you, you can't have criticism?
You can always criticize, everyone has free speech. Just be aware that in some cases, you'll seem like a whiny little brat. This might be because you are.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:You have more freedom than you think (Score:5, Insightful)
What goods are you talking about?
You have an odd idea of what Democrats are trying to convince voters of especially when you compare to Republicans which are offering much of the same just in different places. Think about what it would take to enforce the retarded Muslim ban idea? The only positive for building the wall to Mexico is that it would employ a lot of people for a lot of years and cost tax payers untold billions and be foiled with a simple tunnel.
I'm unsure why you think you should have to "earn" healthcare. I'm also unsure why you think people should "earn" paying for education when it used to be free in this country. We just wanted to provide adequate funding so that it is free again or at least lower cost. Maybe you should stop listening to conservative pundits that are anything but conservative these days. The amount government expansion required to deport 11 million illegal immigrants would make creation of the DHS seem small in comparison. Republicans these days are all about expanding government reach, not reducing it like you seem to think.
The reason Bernie was/is so disruptive is that he actually wants to hold people accountable for their actions which should be something a lot of Republicans could get behind. The $15/hr minimum is obviously unattainable but the idea is that you have to increase minimum wage because it has stagnated and doesn't mean anything anymore. Certain regions could absolutely go to there but some places that would prompt massive unemployment if done all at once. Of course none of the options say to do it overnight either.
When you look at Bernie's platform as a mandate, or as a direction to go in then it is not nearly as scary. It doesn't have to happen over night but it is hard to argue that all people deserve to survive and illness we have the ability to treat. That people shouldn't have to go bankrupt because they had a heart attack especially since they were probably ensured. We have a whole new insurance industry around supplemental insurance now to cover things that used to be covered by normal insurance.
This race is really about how bad a two party system is. Trump and Bernie made massive inroads because neither party is delivering on their promises. The scary prospect is that people think governing is at all like running a business. They are very different skillsets. You can argue about Trump's ability to run a business but you can't argue that he has no experience governing and is going for the biggest governing job there is right off the bat. That would be a person skipping all the training to be an electrician and immediately working on high voltage transmission lines! You need to learn how it all works, as you gain experience you become qualified for higher and higher end projects. A person off the street isn't going to suddenly start developing AI. They are going to learn to code first, then they will learn a few other languages, then they'll be really good at math and then finally they'll be building neural nets. You can't just skip to the end.
Re: (Score:3)
I personally feel that all citizens should get free basic health care (anything elective is out of pocket) and free secondary education (community colleges, must maintain good grades). I think these things can be done simply by making government more efficient.
The older I became, the more of the world I experience, the more I came to believe the current Republican party is the opposite of progress. They w
Re: (Score:3)
For $8000 if you tried to live on it completely self-sufficient you'd be dead in less than 3 days.
Much like my own home state Utah there is land just as cheap, and it is so cheap precisely because it's only value is grazing cattle every few years. There is little to no water, the climate is adverse to growing anything but desert grasses. You couldn't subsistence farm this land with all the money in the world to get you started. In other words, it's cheap because it has little value just as the market shows.
Re: (Score:2)
And what you want is the freedom to choose whether you want to have a home or whether you want to eat.