Bluey's Dad

2017 one was way better, probably my favourite gournsey we've ever had

That is 100% correct. He stays at the resort in his capacity as POTUS. The government pays for his room and the rooms for all his entourage/security. They pay the owner of Mar-a-lago, who is Trump. He literally profits from staying at his own resort. He did this in his first weekend as POTUS. It's outrageous, but the GOP and his sycophantic follows don't seem to care. Again, if a Democrat did this they would call for a revolution. A few hours ago his National Security Adviser resigned. You know, the guy who replaced the last guy who was fired for lying to the VP. Oh and Trump tweeted last week that his National Security Adviser wasn't going anywhere (because a week before that, Trump fired his Secretary of State so questions were asked). But Trump assures us that he "has the best people". What a joke. Edit: Forgot to mention John Dowd has also retired. Dowd was the head of Trump's legal defence regarding the Mueller investigation.

I thought only Islamic Fundamentalists blew themselves up? Austin Bombing Suspect a Homeschooled Christian Conservative This has been a crazy week.

Summons Issued for Trump in Emoluments Case Trump has been a naughty boy by not disclosing his assets: They argue that Trump’s refusal to divest from his sprawling business empire — in particular, the Trump International Hotel in downtown D.C. — has meant that foreign governments have directly paid the Trump Organization for hotel bookings and events. Article says he has 3 weeks to respond as he's been included as a personal defendant. Also for anyone thinking he can just pardon himself - these are cases heard by State courts, the President cannot pardon himself (or be pardoned by another President) for State level crimes, only Federal ones. I believe this is one the reasons Robert Mueller has disclosed to the New York Attorney General his findings so far, so that New York can charge him with State-level money laundering (or whatever the charge ends up being) if he tries to pardon himself Federally. This assumes the Mueller investigation leads to charges against Trump himself, which it may not. I posted a list of those Mueller has indicted so far previously in this thread. Remember, Americans made Carter give up his Peanut farm, but somehow it's ok that Trump still owns a massive multi-national conglomerate and owes massive debts to the banks he now has power to legislate over. Seems fair.

God [censored] damnit

A student died. You were wrong. Your callousness doesn't negate that fact. CNN covered the story. You were wrong. Your ignorance doesn't negate that fact. In this case, the armed teacher killed the gunman and saved lives. This has happened before, and in other cases armed security guards have had no effect. I posted a story about a teacher with a gun who accidentally fired it in a classroom and injured 3 students. But you haven't responded to that. I assume you'd say "well that's the price you pay for security", which is interesting given you live in Australia where school shootings do not occur. For whatever reason (cultural, legal, whatever) we do not have this issue. We did not solve it with guns in schools, what makes you think America can? Arming teachers is moronic. This guy explains it much better than I can. It's a very long twitter thread but well worth the read. I suspect the accusation that you're a troll is correct.

He has no idea. Literally said you wouldn't see this story on cnn, and I provided a link demonstrating that you can in fact find it on cnn. He said no students were killed. Gunman was a student. He is living in a fantasy land.

Yeah this is not a good place if you value your sanity. I try to stay away but relapse constantly.

https://edition.cnn.com/2018/03/20/us/maryland-school-shooting-resource-officer-response-trnd/index.html This is why people don't take you seriously. That's CNN covering the incident. It's not being ignored by 'the liberal media' or whatever. Also, the gunman was a student. So one student was killed - you should keep this in mind. My god, how much cool-aid did you drink? Only last week a trained, armed teacher accidentally injured 3 students when he lets his gun go off: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-03-15/three-injured-as-teacher-accidentally-discharges-gun-in-class/9550762 Amerca's gun laws are [censored]. Trump isn't helping here at all. From memory (cbf with sources atm, too late at night), he's said: - We need to arm teachers - We should take away people's guns and ignore due process (I'm astounded the '2nd amendment people' still support him after this). - Ridiculed a Republican Senator for being in the pocket in the NRA - Was a massive recipient of NRA funding during his Presidential campaign He's inconsistent and not helpful at all.

Yeah feels the same doesn't it. I have a feeling there will be more sickening revelations when Mueller finishes his investigation. Assuming Trump doesn't replace Rosenstein with someone who'll fire him as Nixon did. Mueller's already indicted the following: 1) George Papadopoulos, former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser, pleaded guilty in October to making false statements to the FBI. 2) Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser, pleaded guilty in December to making false statements to the FBI. 3) Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chair, was indicted in October in Washington, DC on charges of conspiracy, money laundering, false statements, and failure to disclose foreign assets — all related to his work for Ukrainian politicians before he joined the Trump campaign. He’s pleaded not guilty on all counts. Then, in February, Mueller filed a new case against him in Virginia, with tax, financial, and bank fraud charges. 4) Rick Gates, a former Trump campaign aide and Manafort’s longtime junior business partner, was indicted on similar charges to Manafort. But he has now agreed to a plea deal with Mueller’s team, pleading guilty to just one false statements charge and one conspiracy charge. 5-20) 13 Russian nationals and three Russian companies were indicted on conspiracy charges, with some also being accused of identity theft. The charges related to a Russian propaganda effort designed to interfere with the 2016 campaign. The companies involved are the Internet Research Agency, often described as a “Russian troll farm,” and two other companies that helped finance it. The Russian nationals indicted include 12 of the agency’s employees and its alleged financier, Yevgeny Prigozhin. 21) Richard Pinedo: This California man pleaded guilty to an identity theft charge in connection with the Russian indictments, and has agreed to cooperate with Mueller. 22) Alex van der Zwaan: This London lawyer pleaded guilty to making false statements to the FBI about his contacts with Rick Gates and another unnamed person based in Ukraine source coz I was too lazy to type them all out, was just the first thing I googled when I looked for a list of Mueller's indictments.

Previously we knew about them leveraging huge amounts of data for political campaigns, but the revelation that the data may have been both obtained and used illegally is new, to me at least. The channel 4 videos also have the CEO admitting to interfering with foreign elections, setting honey traps, bribes etc which are also of course illegal. Seriously watch them. They're startling.

Funny you should say that, the Brits worked it out and are currently producing a series. First 3 episodes are out. https://www.channel4.com/news/data-democracy-and-dirty-tricks-cambridge-analytica-uncovered-investigation-expose Only last week I posted in the fake news thread a report citing an Oxford study that said right wingers share and believe more fake news than left wingers. And now we see why - they were being deliberately fed this crap to win elections by a sophisticated and illegal campaign. It's not that they are worse people or more vulnerable - they were targeted in a very specific way. Oh and today a Fox News commentator quit saying he didn't want to be part of the propaganda machine: "Fox has degenerated from providing a legitimate and much-needed outlet for conservative voices to a mere propaganda machine for a destructive and ethically ruinous administration," wrote Ralph Peters, a Fox News "strategic analyst." "Over my decade with Fox, I long was proud of the association. Now I am ashamed," he wrote. "Today, I feel that Fox News is assaulting our constitutional order and the rule of law, while fostering corrosive and unjustified paranoia among viewers." Source: https://www.buzzfeed.com/tomnamako/ralph-peters?utm_term=.bk7QALjAQ#.imG3dwyd3 So lets say it's 4 years ago. You're a reasonable conservative. You watch Fox News as your source of factual information. It degenerates into a "propaganda machine" (as quoted by Ralph Peters, above) without you noticing. At the same time your Facebook page subtly starts to contain more and more false and misleading information about political matters. Information specifically designed by Cambridge Analytica to ensure you vote the right the way. This is political advertising but illegally not labelled as such, and therefore bypasses the normal alarm bells that overlay your rationality when you are exposed to political ads. Now 4 years later, your guy is President and is talking about firing the man investigating his campaign for the very crimes perpetrated against you on your Facebook feed. But you don't care, because Cambridge and Fox have done such a great job reducing your ability to objectively evaluate politics that you believe everything they spew at you. But your guy won. And all you are about is winning, because politics is now sport. Since I know a lot of you won't watch the channel 4 investigation I linked, the CEO of Cambridge Analytica literally says "It doesn't matter if it's untrue as long as they believe it". Steve Bannon was on the board of Cambridge Analytica. They were an integral part of the Trump campaign. I highly recommend you watch those videos, only about 15 minutes each. As an aside, @Ethan Tremblay I'm gonna take a stab in the dark and say that judging from your postings over the past year I reckon you've visited /pol more than a few times. Get out dude, it's a cesspool. I strongly suspect it's where Cambridge seeded these memes in the first place, and is what Mark Turnbull (from the video above) was referring to when he said the "bloodstream of the internet". If I'm off the mark, I apologise, it's just the sense I get from a few of your posts.

yep it was a typo, I'll go fix it. This is what I was responding to, by linking to an article referencing a study showing fake news being spread more by right-wing users than left. Given that this is a thread about fake news, I thought it was relevant to the discussion. Edit: more typos. On fire today.

I don't think I called anyone anything? I said your post was incorrect and provided evidence to support my assertion. Other posters can decide which of our positions they find more persuasive.

Not necessarily. The post themselves yes are often held on servers owned/leased by the social media company. However an external link posted to their site takes the user to that external site. To what extent a social media company should be responsible for a user posting a link to an external site which contains false information is a significant question society and the law need to answer. Would love for any lawyers out there to weigh in on this.

Hilarious because according to Oxford, it is the exact opposite: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/feb/06/sharing-fake-news-us-rightwing-study-trump-university-of-oxford “On Twitter, a network of Trump supporters consumes the largest volume of junk news, and junk news is the largest proportion of news links they share,” the researchers concluded. On Facebook, the skew was even greater. There, “extreme hard right pages – distinct from Republican pages – share more junk news than all the other audiences put together.” Left wing media outlets are certainly guilty of the same sort of sensationalised click-baity partisan journalism that the right wing outlets are. However as indicated by the Oxford study, fake news is shared on social media by the right more than the left. There are two separate issues here The first is reputable media outlets sensationalising and intentionally mislabelling headlines in order to drive web traffic and ad revenue. They report quickly to compete to get that traffic and often the truth gets put second. This is a huge issue, and as has been posted previously if someone like an AFL player can stand up to misrepresented facts and maybe change this trend then all the better. This sensationalism of stories is something found across the spectrum of media organisations (left, right, and those who claim to be unbiased). This sort of journalism has been called 'fake news', but it isn't. It's simply a lower quality of news that we are used to and as a society deserve. It can contain factual inaccuracies but at its heart is not meant to be fake. It is fake by virtue of lower journalistic standards and the speed at which it moves. The second is the intentional construction of patently false stories, deliberately written and created to spread misinformation. They're written by trolls in impoverished nations who are paid simply to create something that will be shareable on social media or achieve a political aim. This is true 'fake news'. Deliberate deception masquerading as journalism. This is also a huge problem, and this is the sort of news that is overwhelmingly shared by the right on social media, as indicated by the Oxford study. The two issues were conflated after Trump's election. The term 'fake news' started to trend, so Trump appropriated the label (which formerly applied only to the second form) to include the first. Now we think of both of these types of news as 'fake'. It's a sneaky trick of language, because including them both under the one umbrella conflates the issue. It puts CNN and MSNBC (who sensationalise and obfuscate) on par with a Romanian troll farm which outright deceives. They are clearly different, although the actions of both are deeply troubling. I'm aware the general board may be bleeding into this post. If the mods see fit to delete my post I understand. I just wanted to add a little clarity to the debate here, given the AFL players are concerned with misrepresentations in the media. Also faultydet's post was patently untrue and so I felt it needed to be corrected. Edit: corrected typo "faultydiet" to "faultydet". My apologies.

Yep it's huge. I assume forums like BF and Demonland have different publishing rules that apply to them given the content is posted by a community. Again, not a lawyer, but it will be interesting to see how it all develops. Also don't know how it applies to FB and Twitter. They also aren't really responsible for constructing content, but they are responsible for its distribution.

Interestingly, this is starting in the US. Fox News is being sued for publishing a story they knew to be false: https://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/03/fox-news-alex-jones-both-sued-for-conspiracy-mongering.html "But the premise of the article soon fell apart after the primary source, who is also suing Fox News, said he was falsely quoted. After leaving the article online for several days, Fox News issued a retraction, but no apology for the story" It's happening, but I guess change is slow. So yeah, maybe footy journalists will calm down on the false statements if they start getting sued by players. You'd need to prove reputational damage though, which I assume would be difficult to do (I'm no lawyer).

It's clearly an issue with journalism in general. Stories are pushed to one extreme or the other, to elicit the maximum amount of outrage or partisan support. Stories are headlined to generate web traffic, not to reflect the contents of the story or the actual issue in order to get clicks for ads. News and journalism have been chasing their tail since the internet became a thing. They missed the boat and are now trying to stuff an outdated business model onto a computer screen. But for that model to work, they need ads and a huge volume of traffic. So they sensationalise to an extent we haven't seen before to get the traffic and the ad revenue that comes with it. If the AFL players can counter or affect this to even a small extent then that's a win. But I feel like it's an uphill battle we're all fighting. Anything that forces journalists to get all (or at least more of) the facts is a win. Right now, being first with a story is the priority for this type of journalism. It doesn't matter if the facts are wrong. It matters that you get the story first and the web traffic that goes with it. Maybe if they're called on their factual inaccuracies often enough, they'll start to prioritise accuracy over speed. I am doubtful this will happen though.

My kids got scared of the Max Gawn height chart that came last year, which has now been banished to the wardrobe. This club has challenges everywhere. A decade of mediocrity and now our most marketable player is Lurch.

Respectfully, Obama did plenty. Here's a humorous review In particular, the Affordable Care Act was monumental. Worth noting that Americans overwhelmingly support the ACA, but don't like Obamacare. Apparently education is so bad in the states that they don't know it's the same thing. Just the Obama label is enough to turn people against something they like. I understand the attraction of someone like Trump, especially given his position as an 'outsider' who can take on the elites. The issue for me is that this I think this is deceptive. He's a political outsider, but he's also a billionaire who's just as conflicted (if not more so) than the Democrats he sought to replace. He's an 'elite' too. Sure, he's a bomb that the electorate threw at a political system that wasn't working and I get how that feel satisfying - but TBH I don't think a bomb was the best solution. He gets away with so much more than a Democrat President could. I'd ask all Trump supporters, in all honesty, to think about what their reaction would be if: - Obama appointed his son-in-law to a senior WH advisory role and had him read the President's daily intelligence briefing (because they're too long), only for his temporary clearance to be revokes. - Obama said the government should take people's guns away without due process. - Obama refused to impose sanctions on a foreign power despite congress passing laws to do so with a veto-proof majority. - Obama played golf every weekend, despite specifically saying he wouldn't have time. - Obama charged the government millions of dollars to stay at his own resort. - Obama failed to even nominate enough candidates for open white house and cabinet positions, and most of those he did appoint he either fired or left. - Obama appointed a woman who destroyed evidence of torture to be head of the CIA (Trump did this this morning). - Obama said he'd fix healthcare and when he couldn't said "who knew healthcare was so complicated?" - Obama's lawyer paid off a porn star to keep quiet about an affair he had while his wife was pregnant with his son. That's just off the top of my head. I purposefully have left out the 'Russia stuff' as he calls it, because it's so complex I don't have time to discuss it. I'd really love for Trump supporters to look at that list and really truly consider what their reaction to those actions would be if it was Obama and not Trump. Especially the guns one. If Obama said what Trump said, there would be talks of revolution from the South. Just because jobs are up doesn't make all of this ok. As a side note - I am also male and white. I'm not sure why you feel ashamed of it? I don't. I don't feel like I censor myself. I don't feel like I have to modify my behaviour. I don't feel that pressure that my father says he feels to constantly monitor what I say or do. I imagine that would be very uncomfortable and sometimes wonder what thoughts he is having that he cannot voice for fear he will be called racist. If that was the case then I can certainly see the appeal of Trump. But without being able to identify with him or his politics, I look at him with a colder eye and find him sorely wanting both as a human being and as a President.

Here ya go nut, some genuine comedy for ya: The White House chief calligrapher has a higher clearance than Jared Kushner I lol'd.

Trump is an idiot. Repealed Obama's law that would have made it harder for the mentally ill to buy guns. Fact check Then he has the audacity to blame shooting on mental illness. As for Obama's 'lack of action' on gun laws, the Democrats had control of Congress from 2009-2011. This was the window for action, and from memory that window was used to pass the ACA. After that, The GOP took control of Congress, making meaningful changes to gun control legislation extremely difficult. Even during that window in 2009-2011, the Democrats had fewer than 60 seats in the Senate - which is generally what is required to avoid a filibuster. So any significant gun control legislation would have stalled at this point anyway. Sandy Hook happened in 2012. So America's greatest impetus for improving their gun control laws took place when the GOP controlled Congress - obviously nothing was going to pass. Make no mistake here, the GOP is the biggest impediment to meaningful reform in the USA on gun control. The NRA has donated millions to them in order to keep gun laws where they are: https://www.absentdata.com/blog/nra-politician-donations/

I think once Mueller finishes his investigation, we'll see that Page and Manafort at the very least colluded with the Russians. We already know Flynn was talking to Russians before the election, making promises he wasn't legally allowed to (promising to lift Obama's sanctions when Trump was elected). He's now co-operating with Mueller. Manafort and Papadopoulos also took deals. I agree Trump himself probably didn't collude, and left that stuff to his campaign staff. Also agreed Trump will probably end up getting done for obstruction of justice rather than collusion. He said on TV that he fired Comey because of the Russia investigation, but only a few days beforehand the White House released a statement saying the complete opposite. Since his campaign is the target of that investigation, he directly benefits by getting rid of Comey. It's obscene. His next target will be Rosenstein, as requesting the DAG to fire Mueller will [censored] off too many Republicans and lead to impeachment (or at least his own party demanding his resignation as with Nixon). If he gets rid of Rosenstein he can put someone else in place who'll restrict Mueller without having to fire him and deal with that fallout. Trump himself said that he would not have appointed Jeff Sessions as AG if he knew Sessions would recuse himself from overseeing the Russian investigation (he has a conflict of interest). The appointment and supervision of the special investigator fell to Rosenstein in Sesson's stead and Trump is very unhappy with this. He thought appointing Sessions would avoid this sort of thing, but Sessions was smart enough to realise that he couldn't oversee a special investigator if he was a possible target. I'm also pretty concerned that Trump chose not to place sanctions on the Russians for the election meddling, considering Congress passed that resolution something like 400 to 5 or whatever (can't remember the exact numbers). Even the Republicans want the Russians punished, but Trump flinched. The optics aren't good - Trump's campaign investigated for colluding with the Russians and then Trump decides not the punish them for the electoral manipulations. Today's been pretty interesting so far. Nunes claimed Trump never met with George Papadopoulos, and then the internet finds a tweet Trump made during the campaign that shows them at the same table. Nunes is a piece of work - releasing a memo calling into question that FISA application but refusing to release the Democratic rebuttal memo. Partisan BS. Hillary has absolutely nothing to do with this. This is all on Trump and his people. Maybe the only Hillary-related issue is that Trump promised to 'lock her up', but hasn't done it. I think he was shocked that being President doesn't actually give you direct control over law enforcement or the courts. I very much doubt he understands how the separation of powers in the US operates, which is why he's in this mess right now.

Are you trolling? Jeez you know how to suck me back into this crap. 6% is a prediction made by Trump. Not an actual figure. If your 3% under Obama stated above correct (I don't know if it is or not), then it is above the 30 year long-term average of 2.5%. Source: http://fortune.com/2017/12/07/trump-us-gdp-growth-rate-economy-6-percent/ Now given the man can't keep his own government running atm, I'm not going to trust his economic forecasts. If he achieves 6% then good on him. I'll be happy. My super fund balance will be very happy. And before you go blaming the Democrats for the shutdown, Trump said in 2013 that government shutdowns are the responsibility of presidents: Trump spoke to “Fox & Friends” in 2013 and was asked who would be fired during a government shutdown, as shown in a clip posted by "Morning Joe." “Well, if you say who gets fired it always has to be the top,” Trump said. “I mean, problems start from the top and they have to get solved from the top and the president’s the leader. And he’s got to get everybody in a room and he’s got to lead.” He said that further down in history, “when they talk about the government shutdown, they’re going to be talking about the president of the United States, who the president was at that time.” “They’re not going to be talking about who was the head of the House, the head the Senate, who’s running things in Washington,” Trump said. “So I really think the pressure is on the president,” he added. Source: http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/369756-trumps-comments-blaming-obama-for-2013-government-shutdown-resurface Fact check on source: https://www.snopes.com/trump-criticize-obama-shutdown/ The man who campaigned on his ability to make deals could not make a deal to keep his government from shutting down, despite the GOP having a majority in both houses which makes the negotiation significantly easier than if one was in minority. Some more good quotes on the snopes page as well, Trump unleashes on Obama's lack of leadership, blaming the 2013 shut down on his inability to negotiate. Trump fails as a President by the standard he set himself while criticising his predecessor.