US Politics: 2017 Edition

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**Ustrello**

Breotan wrote:
Still looking for something else in news? Apparently US gasoline prices are cheap enough that Mexicans are coming across the border to buy gas here instead of their local stations in Mexico.

Drivers are flooding across the border to southern California to fill up on gasoline, after protesters blocking distribution centers near the Baja California capital of Mexicali caused stations to run dry. Antunez’s Shell gas station in Calexico is just five blocks away from the Mexican border and rarely has business been as busy as now. Mexicali drivers wait four to five hours to cross into the U.S. just to fill their fuel tanks and then wait another two hours to cross back into Mexico again.

I thought market liberalization was supposed to lead to lower prices.

Yeah it isn't super cheap oil or the fact that we are killing our environment with shale oil production and getting crap tons of oil from it.

**Co'tor Shas**

This is more of a problem with Mexico, and not the markets. There's a whole thing happening with the Mexican petrol company and corruption and other things.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/08/world/americas/unrest-mexico-pena-nieto-gas-prices-trump.html?_r=0

**Peregrine**

Breotan wrote:
Still looking for something else in news? Apparently US gasoline prices are cheap enough that Mexicans are coming across the border to buy gas here instead of their local stations in Mexico.

Drivers are flooding across the border to southern California to fill up on gasoline, after protesters blocking distribution centers near the Baja California capital of Mexicali caused stations to run dry. Antunez’s Shell gas station in Calexico is just five blocks away from the Mexican border and rarely has business been as busy as now. Mexicali drivers wait four to five hours to cross into the U.S. just to fill their fuel tanks and then wait another two hours to cross back into Mexico again.

I thought market liberalization was supposed to lead to lower prices.

What does this have to do with market regulations? The issue is a temporary shortage caused by protests shutting down the distribution company. You might as well talk about how US gas prices are too high based on the single data point of that pipeline leak that had price spikes and shortages (at least in NC) last year.

**Kilkrazy**

To get back to the important news, Trump has now Godwinned the thread.

Out of interest, who thinks it could be true?

What I mean is I find it very hard indeed to imagine Reagan, either of the Bushes or the Clintons getting up to that kind of stuff, but with Trump it doesn't seem all that unlikely, certainly not impossible.

**Gordon Shumway**

Truth is irrelevant. This is the post truth age and this is the Internet. Do I believe he did something silly in front of cameras in a Russian hotel room with prostiturtes and pee? Of course, who hasn't? Have you seen my Facebook page? Have you seen my Twitterers? Have you seen my Etsy? My Etsy is where it is at. I built a swing with twizzlers. It is fantastic and lined with gold...pee.

**Mario**

whembly wrote:-- jumping in to say this:

Dammit... I was already preparing myself Pence to take the office...

Also... 'Golden Shower'???? Really??!?! Cheeto Jesus is a notorious germophone. That should be the biggest red flag.

Kilkrazy wrote:To get back to the important news, Trump has now Godwinned the thread.

Out of interest, who thinks it could be true?

What I mean is I find it very hard indeed to imagine Reagan, either of the Bushes or the Clintons getting up to that kind of stuff, but with Trump it doesn't seem all that unlikely, certainly not impossible.

I don't think the scenario is true. If I remember correctly his wife (no idea which one, it was related to a Trump/Arrested Development joke on twitter) mentioned in an interview that he's kinda a never-nude type who likes his bedroom with the lights off, changes quickly in the dark, and is quite conservative in that regard. Of course it could be that he's looking to satisfy his more exotic kinks outside his marriage

But from his reaction, general behaviour, and attitude towards Russia it does look like Russia has something he doesn't want the world to know.

Co'tor Shas wrote:I mean, it's buzzfeed. They are literally a click-bait site. I should point out that printing unverified stuff but saying it's unverified isn't a bad thing, as long as it is not displayed like the truth. No idea about this one though, as I haven't looked at buzzfeed's soght because feth buzzfeed.

They actually have some long form journalism on their site. All the cheap clickbait, lists, and gifs pay for that: http://www.poynter.org/2016/how-buzzfeed-built-an-investigative-team-from-the-ground-up/396656/

**Peregrine**

Gordon Shumway wrote:
Of course, who hasn't?

*raises hand*

When I order prostitutes and pee I always support my local small businesses. Sin should be Made In America, not bought from the filthy Russians! They aren't even capitalists!

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Mario wrote:
I don't think the scenario is true. If I remember correctly his wife (no idea which one, it was related to a Trump/Arrested Development joke on twitter) mentioned in an interview that he's kinda a never-nude type who likes his bedroom with the lights off, changes quickly in the dark, and is quite conservative in that regard. Of course it could be that he's looking to satisfy his more exotic kinks outside his marriage

To be fair, the report says that Trump hired them to perform a show in front of him, not that he was personally involved in any of the acts.

**Breotan**

Peregrine wrote:
Breotan wrote:
Still looking for something else in news? Apparently US gasoline prices are cheap enough that Mexicans are coming across the border to buy gas here instead of their local stations in Mexico.

Drivers are flooding across the border to southern California to fill up on gasoline, after protesters blocking distribution centers near the Baja California capital of Mexicali caused stations to run dry. Antunez’s Shell gas station in Calexico is just five blocks away from the Mexican border and rarely has business been as busy as now. Mexicali drivers wait four to five hours to cross into the U.S. just to fill their fuel tanks and then wait another two hours to cross back into Mexico again.

I thought market liberalization was supposed to lead to lower prices.

What does this have to do with market regulations?

The article stated that this is the result of market liberalization put in place by Mexico. Mexicans are calling it gasolinazo.

Lemme see if I can find the link...

http://www.businessinsider.com/mexican-gasolinazo-gas-prices-backlash-and-violence-2016-12

Kilkrazy wrote:
To get back to the important news, Trump has now Godwinned the thread.

I must have missed something.

**Spinner**

Check his Twitter feed. Apparently, our intelligence agencies are now Nazis.

**Breotan**

Spinner wrote:
Check his Twitter feed. Apparently, our intelligence agencies are now Nazis.

I don't follow his Twitter, but I did see this headline in the Daily Mail (online).

Trump conducts his own sting operation to ensnare intelligence briefers – and says he caught them leaking

I think SNL is going to have a hard time outdoing Trump.

Today Fox News has publicly defended CNN on how that network handled the dossier documents.

Fox News anchor Shepard Smith defended CNN on Wednesday after Donald Trump accused the network of being “fake news” at a news conference for reporting on the existence of a Russian dossier of unverified allegations about the president-elect.

“President-elect Trump today told CNN’s Jim Acosta that his organization amounts to fake news. CNN’s exclusive reporting on the Russian matter was separate and distinctly different from the document dump executed by an online news property,” Smith said, drawing a distinction between CNN’s reporting and that of BuzzFeed News, which released the entire contents of the Russian dossier.

“Though we at Fox News cannot confirm CNN’s report, it is our observation that its correspondents followed journalistic standards,” Smith said. “Neither they, nor any other journalists, should be subjected to belittling and delegitimizing by the president-elect of the United States.”

I've always liked Shepard Smith.

**whembly**

Probably the most sane opinion peice on the Buzzfeed dossier fiasco:
Donald Trump Addresses Dossier’s Pedestrian Claims

Just 10 days before his inauguration as our 45th president, Donald Trump’s nascent administration has been turned upside down by new accusations of secret Russian machinations that aided his election. These new allegations are largely unsubstantiated and salacious to a degree never seen before about any American president.

First, CNN fired a shot across Trump’s bow late yesterday with a report alleging deep links between the president-elect and the Kremlin. Specifically, CNN stated that the heads of our Intelligence Community, who recently briefed Trump on Russian hacking and propaganda during 2016 that tried to influence our election, also informed the president-elect that Russian intelligence has compromising materials on him.

Kompromat, as they call it in Moscow, is the mother’s milk of Kremlin espionage, and given Trump’s larger-than-life persona, with its decades of dodgy finances and edgy dalliances with women, it should surprise no one that Russian spies have juicy information there which the public hasn’t seen, particularly given the president-elect’s numerous trips to Russia going back to 1987.
CNN noted that a dossier compiled by a former British intelligence official with long experience in Russian matters had been circulating in Washington since late last year, and was causing heartburn for American spies, since its allegations were explosive. Most seriously, it posited an on-going clandestine relationship between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin to swing the election Trump’s way.

Just as the commentariat began to shudder at the implications of this bombshell, Buzzfeed released the actual dossier, 35 pages crammed with allegations of grave wrongdoing, including espionage by Trump surrogates against fellow Americans. This was a rather standard example of raw human intelligence reporting, a mishmash of claims, some of them obviously untrue. But the essence of its case—that Trump has been playing footsie with Vladimir Putin for years and knowingly accepted his secret help to win the White House—may well turn out to be true.

The media, unaccustomed to seeing raw HUMINT reports, acted aghast at the salacious nature of some of the claims in the dossier: Trumpian sex romps caught on camera by Russian spies, our new commander-in-chief paying prostitutes to urinate on a hotel bed where President Obama had slept. Whether those particular claims are true or not—and they ought to be looked at with immense skepticism and even the PEOTUS himself said today that his infamy as a germophobe, which way predates these accusations, ought to raise concerns about some of these tales—there’s no doubt that Putin’s Federal Security Service, the all-seeing FSB, keeps close tabs on foreign VIP’s when they’re on their turf. If Trump was unwise enough to engage in randy behavior in Russia, the FSB unquestionably has it on video.

Some of the dossier’s other claims are almost pedestrian. Putin long ago showed his hand, so the idea that he ordered his spy-minions to help Trump move into the White House isn’t exactly shocking, even if the alleged details of that sordid game may be. Moreover, claims that people like Paul Manafort and Carter Page, who were both officially purged from the Trump campaign last year for their glaringly obvious Kremlin links, kept talking to the Russians, sub rosa, right up to election day, are wholly credible.

The media is focusing on the juicy aspects of the dossier at the expense of the only truly important and potentially game-changing one. That’s the allegation that Trump’s representatives had clandestine meetings last summer with Russian government representatives—that’s the nice way of saying spies—to coordinate their secret anti-Hillary activities.

The report names several Russian representatives said to have met with Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, including Oleg Solodukhin, who serves in Prague, posing as a diplomat, but is actually well known to Czech counterintelligence as a Kremlin spy. So far, so plausible—particularly since Prague is a hotbed of Russian espionage, and the number of Kremlin spies pretending to be diplomats there is remarkably high.

It’s time for some clarity. If Trump’s lawyer secretly met with Russian spies to coordinate anti-Hillary activities, it’s difficult to term that activity anything but treasonous, not to mention the “smoking gun” that links the president-elect to Putin. This claim, if true, would sink the Trump presidency before it even begins.

But did the meeting actually happen?

It’s looking less and less likely.

Jake Tapper from CNN, which has been very tough on Trump, tweeted before the press conference that “Government source confirms different Michael Cohen was in Prague.” Then Trump himself said his team had asked Cohen for his passport and confirmed that he had never been to the Czech Republic, a stance Cohen himself had taken by tweeting a picture of his passport—a bizarre gesture since any stamps indicating he had been to the Czech Republic would be inside the passport, not on the front jacket. If Michael Cohen, well known as a Trump loyalist and highly recognizable, had visited Prague in the summer, some proof of that trip would have likely surfaced by now. And it would have been incredibly reckless, even for a risk-taker like Trump, to state affirmatively that Cohen had not been in Prague if he actually had. So it’s more than likely that charge—the most damaging in the dossier, if not the most lurid—is false. But that doesn’t mean all the rest of the charges are false.

This invariably brings to mind another strange saga of an alleged meeting in Prague. Back in 2002, as the Bush White House assembled an intelligence case to sell invading Saddam’s Iraq, reports circulated of a supposed rendezvous in the Czech capital, a few months before 9/11, between Iraqi intelligence and Mohammed Atta, the ringleader of Al-Qaida’s Planes Operation.

This was exactly what the White House wanted to hear, since it tied Saddam to 9/11, and it was hardly implausible on the face of it. Atta really had moved around Europe a lot—where exactly nobody could be sure—and Iraqi intelligence had a robust presence in Prague, where they surveilled American diplomatic facilities in a sinister fashion. However, hard evidence of any meeting was lacking.

White House pressure on the Intelligence Community mounted—I got caught up in it too, searching vainly for proof of Atta’s secret trip to Prague—and the hunt grew intense. The Czechs eventually backed away, their security service, known as BIS, officially deciding that Atta had not been in Prague and therefore could not have met with Iraqi spies. It all appeared to be a case of honest misunderstanding combined with circular reporting—and a Bush administration desperate for the the story to be true.

Back to today: on cue, right-wing social media has come to the president-elect’s defense, absurdly claiming that the dossier is an Internet hoax that fooled anti-Trump Republicans. There is as much evidence for this claim as for the assertion that the dossier was compiled by Jimmy Hoffa with help from Bigfoot.

For their part, the Russians are denying everything. Castigating the dossier as “pulp fiction” and a “clear attempt to damage relations,’ the Kremlin is following the “fake news” path illuminated by Trump’s fans in the West. This lives up to the old spy wag that you should only believe any report when Moscow publicly denies it.

At this point, it’s functionally impossible to differentiate between social media claims made by the Trump administration, the Kremlin, the Wikileaks-Greenwald axis, and the Alt-Right. Now that Moscow has taken up the Nazi-frog meme beloved by the Alt-Right, any propaganda line between these groups has been erased altogether.

As usual, the president-elect is denying anything and everything, howling gigantic curses via Twitter against his foes and their “fake news.” He has pointed the finger at the Intelligence Community, bizarrely comparing 2017 America to Nazi Germany. Trump’s online meltdown has included a lot of tweeting in capital letters, and has cited the Kremlin as proof of his innocence. We’re in a new and uncharted era when the soon-to-be-president thinks Moscow is to be taken at face value in espionage matters.

In truth, the provenance of the 35-page dossier is well known in proper channels. Some of its assertions have been made by other NATO intelligence agencies, privately. Some of its claims are false, some are true, and some may linger between truth and fiction indefinitely. What’s important here is that the IC leadership decided to brief a small circle of the most senior American officials on that dossier’s findings. They don’t do that, ever—treating raw private intelligence reports by foreigners as worthy of briefing to “the top”—unless they can corroborate significant portions of it.

The Czechs are laying low. BIS is avoiding any public comment on Cohen’s alleged visit to their capital—and after the messy public spat back in 2002, who can blame them? The latest firm report from Prague indicates that BIS believes Cohen didn’t land at Prague airport, but it’s very easy to enter the Czech Republic from its neighbors, all of which are fellow members of the European Union, so there are no border controls. Anybody can drive right in, without any passports being stamped.

The president-elect wants this mess to go away at once, before it swallows his new administration whole. This morning, in his first press conference since last summer, Trump’s team was adamant that the dossier is “fake news.” The president elect angrily pronounced leaks of intelligence a “disgrace,” seeming to forget how gleefully his campaign greeted IC leaks which badly harmed Hillary Clinton over her emails.

Sean Spicer, his spokesman, shared that anger and unambiguously stated that Cohen never visited Prague, there was no meeting with any Russians, and the entire story is bogus. CNN today reported that this may be a case of mistaken identity, since another Michael Cohen visited Prague at the time in question (eerily, the same thing happened with Atta’s pre-9/11 visit to the Czech capital: it was the wrong Mohammed Atta). This matter can be quickly resolved if Trump’s lawyer sits down with the FBI, on the record, to clear this matter up before the inauguration. Unlike Mohammed Atta 15 years ago, Michael Cohen is available for interviews.

News organizations more respectable than Buzzfeed sat on the dossier for months, sensing it was a spooky morass of truth and fiction that could not be untangled to meet proper journalistic standards. Several tried, in fact, but after efforts to verify the claims failed, they declined to publish.

There is a darker possibility, however—namely that the dossier was leaked to muddy the waters, perhaps even to distract from even more troubling information about Trump’s ties to the Kremlin.

Russian intelligence calls this provokatsiya—provocation—and it’s as commonplace as kompromat in their ranks. This wouldn’t be the first time that Kremlin spies leaked secret information, partly true, to throw spies and journalists off the real trail. “It would be what I’d do,” explained a former KGB senior officer whom I’ve known for years. Possessing long experience with provocation against Western governments, my friend added how Russian spies would approach this: “I would certainly let the media know some of what we have on Trump, to confuse reporters, and also to let the new president know we can take him down at any time, so he better do what Moscow wants.”

As I recently explained, the heart of Trump’s longstanding secret ties to Russia is about money, not espionage. The Trump Organization gives the appearance of possessing dubious financial ties to Russian organized crime, which is linked to the Kremlin and its intelligence agencies. Putin and his spies know all about Trump—they have no need for clandestine meetings in Central European capitals to arrange anything.

Trump needs this issue to go away, and he can easily make that happen by releasing his tax returns and financial records for the last couple decades, thereby demonstrating that he has no dark Kremlin secrets. However, in his presser today, the president-elect stated that nobody but journalists care about his tax returns, which he reiterated he has no intention of releasing to the public.

This continued stalling is a grave mistake, and things will only get nastier as more of Trump’s secrets are leaked to the media. Having repeatedly warned the president-elect to avoid needless fights with our spies, since they know things, let me add that it only will get worse from here if Trump doesn’t come clean soon.

**d-usa**

Trump finally made a pick for SoVA, and of course it goes against everything he said on the campaign trail. He said VA leadership is responsible for everything wrong at the VA, drain the swamp, etc. So of course he picks the current VA undersecretary placed by Trump.

That said, it's a pick I am very happy with.

**sebster**

Rosebuddy wrote:
"Greater unemployment and similar things*" are not trivialities and are not without risks of backfiring. The Russian people is fully capable of understanding that their worsening lives are due to Western sanctions. That would not necessarily produce a new Russian government that caved to everything the US wanted.

There's nothing saying success is only measured by a caving Russian government. Success comes when countries, Russia or anyone else, is inclined to take similar actions, sees what happened in Russia and decides maybe they won't invade neighbours or commit human rights abuses in support of allies in civil war.

Have you not considered that your plan would fail?

It's foreign policy, it is complex and unpredictable by definition. Of course things can fail and many plans will. The alternative, do nothing and just hope Russia and the rest decide to start respecting sovereign borders and human rights is fething bonkers, so this is what we have.

Have you not considered what the Russian government might do to counteract it?

Such as undertaking an extensive hacking and propaganda campaign to tilt the presidential election towards a buffoon who ignore Russia's crimes and chase close relations to further his own business interests? Nah, that reads like bad fiction.

**whembly**

d-usa wrote:
Trump finally made a pick for SoVA, and of course it goes against everything he said on the campaign trail. He said VA leadership is responsible for everything wrong at the VA, drain the swamp, etc. So of course he picks the current VA undersecretary placed by Trump.

That said, it's a pick I am very happy with.

Maybe he really needed someone with intimate knowledge how the VA works in order to push substantial changes? If so... actually a smart pick imo. Running a healthcare organization ain't easy peasy folks.

**sebster**

thekingofkings wrote:
I am not sure there is anything that anyone can use to blackmail Trump, blackmail requires the victim to have some sense of shame.

Trump has no sense of shame, but he has an intense sense of vanity. Back in 2011 he laid out a bunch of things comedians could and couldn't roast him over. It was okay to roast him about wanting to have sex with his daughter, but it wasn't okay to roast him about having less money than he claimed. That's the kind of guy Trump is.

This has led to speculation that the Russians could have something as minor as an actual value of Trump's wealth. He went to their banks asking for money, so if he handed over a record of net assets that is much less than the billions he claims publicly, then the Russians could be using that.

That's all speculation of course. But it shows how someone like Trump is still vulnerable to blackmail, despite having so little shame in so many areas of his life, because he's got so much vanity in others.

**Pouncey**

I think maybe Trump isn't the real problem. Trump likely never expected to win the election and probably planned to use the publicity of running for office to build his brand. I think Trump is just the symptom of a much, much more serious problem brewing.

The fact that he won the election suggests a very, very serious problem that's probably going to get a lot worse before it gets better. If you listen to the absurd things Trump says at rallies and debates, keep listening after he's done talking. Listen to the crowd's reaction. They love what they're hearing from him.

Having spent a lot of time online around Americans, I've noticed that while most of them are very reasonable, sane individuals who keep things in perspective, there are a growing number of Americans who believe things that seem very unAmerican. They treat the concept of tolerating differences as an evil concept that should be demonized. They believe that the concept of political correctness, which is an attempt to avoid causing unnecessary conflicts by choosing terminology that does not cause offense, is abhorrent. They do not believe that persecuted minorities deserve protection under the law. They do not believe that bigotry is something to be ashamed of, but instead that it should be embraced. They approve of banning entire religions from being practiced within American borders.

America is supposed to be a melting pot. A melting pot does not use assimilation to make everyone like the locals. A melting pot openly embraces as many differences and varieties of people as possible, because having a variety of things strengthens the overall whole by reducing the number of weak points. America's legal system is designed around this idea.

And yet, there is a very large, and growing number of Americans, who view the concepts of "progressiveness" "tolerance" "acceptance" and "equality" as being contrary to America's fundamentals. They are growing in influence, and there is a very real possibility that if left unchecked, America may find itself becoming a theocracy that enforces Christian values upon its citizens regardless of the Constitution. These people are especially intolerant of Islam, and I can easily see that if they get their way, America's powerful military will be used to launch a new holy war against countries with large numbers of Muslims in them.

An honest-to-God holy crusade, in the 21st century, enacted by the most powerful nation on the planet. The world would not simply sit by and let it happen, either. And that's how World War 3 starts, with America as the aggressor.

Heh, a funny, but also scary comment I heard came from one of America's military leaders, in reaction to Trump's plans for changing the people in charge of America's nuclear arsenal. It is never comforting to hear words like these coming from a person in charge of nuclear ordnance, and he said something like, "I am more and more coming around to the idea that we are completely fethed."

And I honestly hope it never happens. I hope reason and sanity will prevail, and if many years from now these problems have disappeared, and someone tells me that I worried for nothing, my response will be, "I have never been so glad to be so wrong before."

**Compel**

I think in this specific case at least, it's more the frustration with saying X, doing Y, saying you do X. Then portions of the public go, "see, he did X."

Even if you agree with Y, it can still be very, very frustrating hearing about X all the time. It kinda all fits into that "gaslighting America" thing. Which, now that I've even just mentioned, will result in a barrage of "libtard" insults at me.

One of the things that really does seem to, well, I guess 'vex me' fits as a phrase is. If I were American, I 'should' be the ideal Republican voter. I'm certainly one of the people on the 'more right' side of discussions in the UK Politics thread. But so much of the stuff I see on the news, I'm just like, "gonnae no dae that. Just... gonnae no."

**sebster**

Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
Let's not underestimate how much Clinton is hated by some sections of American society.

Let's say for argument' sake that these allegations are true, and that Trump was involved in some orgy with a group of Russian prostitutes.

We have clearly seen that no matter what, people will still support him over Clinton.

Trump could set fire to the declaration of independence, dig up George Washington, and then crash a Sherman tank into the Lincoln memorial, and Clinton would still be blamed and people would still vote for Trump.

Clinton is now irrelevant. She lost and is now political history. Trump now has to stand alone, appeal to the Republican base in and of himself.

**whembly**

Compel wrote:
I think in this specific case at least, it's more the frustration with saying X, doing Y, saying you do X. Then portions of the public go, "see, he did X."

Even if you agree with Y, it can still be very, very frustrating hearing about X all the time. It kinda all fits into that "gaslighting America" thing. Which, now that I've even just mentioned, will result in a barrage of "libtard" insults at me.

No... you're absolutely right...

BOTH sides are gaslighting each other...

It's going to loooooooong 4 (god forbid 8) years.

**Peregrine**

whembly wrote:
BOTH sides are gaslighting each other...

Ah yes, this thread certainly needed some more both-sides-ism...

**sebster**

Frazzled wrote:
Evidently it was a hoax and the news was reporting "fake" news again.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-01-10/4chan-claims-have-fabricated-anti-trump-report-hoax

Mwahaha! I mean, buzzfeed as the original source was crappy enough, but now you're claiming zerohedge and 4chan in the rebuttal.

This is really a battle of the heavyweight news sources, isn't it?

EDIT - Credit to you for posting a good article from the NYT, that effectively summarises how little substance there is to this story. "“An anonymous person, claiming to be an ex-British intel agent & working as a Dem oppo researcher, said anonymous people told him things,” wrote Glenn Greenwald, the journalist who was instrumental in publishing Edward Snowden’s leaks about government surveillance." That's a pretty good summary of how little there is to this at this time.

**Alpharius**

When did this thread turn into the Dakka Fiction Extension?!?

**sebster**

ScootyPuffJunior wrote:
ZeroHedge? Really? Of one of the biggest pro-Russia and pro-Trump "news" outlets is going to defend Glorious Leader.

To be fair, zerohedge is pro 'whoever is paying them at that moment in time'. In the wake of the GFC they struck up a deal with the gold industry, and flogged 'gold is best investment stocks are going to crash again any second now also hyperinflation is coming so buy gold'. There was a guy here on dakka who bought in to it hard, kept linking to zerohedge stories. I hope he didn't actually invest in money in gold, because he would have lost somewhere between a third to a half of it when gold did exactly what it always does.

Funny thing about journalism compared to investment is that an investment fund that gave out results like that would be out of business in a week, but investment and journalist sites like zerohedge carry on without any hit to their reputation at all.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

whembly wrote:
Nah... this is coming from the New Yorker magazine... where the author thinks they're the expert(the pilot) and how dare the plebes (passengers) challenge them.

As if their self-appointed expertise in on the same level as a fething airline pilot.

Umm, no, because the various writers and readership of the New Yorker aren't actually running for the presidency. They're merely voters, who are watching as other voters elect the guy who's campaign, among other things, contained open contempt for politicians and a call to vote for someone with no political experience and zero political knowledge.

**AndrewC**

sebster wrote:
Frazzled wrote:
Evidently it was a hoax and the news was reporting "fake" news again.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-01-10/4chan-claims-have-fabricated-anti-trump-report-hoax

Mwahaha! I mean, buzzfeed as the original source was crappy enough, but now you're claiming zerohedge and 4chan in the rebuttal.

This is really a battle of the heavyweight news sources, isn't it?

EDIT - Credit to you for posting a good article from the NYT, that effectively summarises how little substance there is to this story. "“An anonymous person, claiming to be an ex-British intel agent & working as a Dem oppo researcher, said anonymous people told him things,” wrote Glenn Greenwald, the journalist who was instrumental in publishing Edward Snowden’s leaks about government surveillance." That's a pretty good summary of how little there is to this at this time.

Didn't the BBC just identify the author? Sure I caught it on the news. Christopher Steele is the name currently being bandied about as the author. And as the old saying goes 'mud sticks' Whether they are true or not, Trump isn't controlling the situation well at all.

Cheers

Andrew

**Breotan**

Alpharius wrote:
When did this thread turn into the Dakka Fiction Extension?!?

November 8, 2016.

**Pouncey**

Breotan wrote:
Alpharius wrote:
When did this thread turn into the Dakka Fiction Extension?!?

November 8, 2016.

Yes. I'm glad that the world has decided to LARP what would happen if Donald Trump were elected President. They're all pretty hardcore in their commitment to the roleplaying, but I'm glad we've all gotten over the silliness about LARP and have embraced it as a species. I keep wondering when people will get bored of pretending and go back to real life, but whatever.

**Ahtman**

Breotan wrote:
Alpharius wrote:
When did this thread turn into the Dakka Fiction Extension?!?

November 8, 2016.

Damn I was going to say that. *shakes fist angrily*

**Alpharius**

Breotan wrote:
Alpharius wrote:
When did this thread turn into the Dakka Fiction Extension?!?

November 8, 2016.

Well played there!

**sebster**

whembly wrote:
If anything, I read that the pilot are stand-in for experts with vast experience and credentials. Much of the political class and punditry see themselves as these 'experts'. Hence why they're so smug about their viewpoints and declare heresies for those who hold opposing viewpoints.

The passengers (ordinary people) are just carried along for the ride, while the country is run by experts (the pilots).

The subliminal context here is that letting ordinary people (the passengers) take charge would result in a disastrous crash.

Yes, the pilots are seen as experts. Thinking that you should get rid of experts in favour of one of the people is the basis of the joke.

However, you read way too much in to it after that. There's no argument that people should just accept whoever is deemed an expert. Instead, while the comic makes no comment on it, it seems pretty logical to assume that passengers get a choice of pilots (choosing which airline to fly, for instance). The point being that any choice should be the various people who are skilled in that field, not between skilled people and random idiots.

**whembly**

sebster wrote:
whembly wrote:
If anything, I read that the pilot are stand-in for experts with vast experience and credentials. Much of the political class and punditry see themselves as these 'experts'. Hence why they're so smug about their viewpoints and declare heresies for those who hold opposing viewpoints.

The passengers (ordinary people) are just carried along for the ride, while the country is run by experts (the pilots).

The subliminal context here is that letting ordinary people (the passengers) take charge would result in a disastrous crash.

Yes, the pilots are seen as experts. Thinking that you should get rid of experts in favour of one of the people is the basis of the joke.

However, you read way too much in to it after that. There's no argument that people should just accept whoever is deemed an expert. Instead, while the comic makes no comment on it, it seems pretty logical to assume that passengers get a choice of pilots (choosing which airline to fly, for instance). The point being that any choice should be the various people who are skilled in that field, not between skilled people and random idiots.

Nah... when you get on a plane, you are literally putting your life in that pilot's hand. You are, by explicit consent, accepting the the pilot's experience and crendential.

That's what, imo, the cartoon represent and why comparing it to politics is a wee bit much.