monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

I didn't know you had standards.

Oh ****, I didn't know you had standards.

Quote:

I didn't know you had standards.

I have a Crane. Not sure if I've ever had an American Standard brand toilet.

Judge clears way for Trump commission to collect voter data

A federal judge on Monday cleared the way for President Donald Trump's commission on election fraud to resume collecting detailed voter roll information from the states.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington filed a suit to block the data collection. "The commission cannot evade privacy obligations by playing a shell game with the nation's voting records," EPIC president Marc Rotenberg said.

U.S. District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, in the District of Columbia, denied the advocacy group's request. The judge also found the group failed to show that its members would be harmed by the data collection.

RNC officials who followed Spicer, Priebus to White House worried about jobs, sources say

Multiple former Republican National Committee officials who followed Reince Preibus and Sean Spicer to the White House are “seriously concerned” about their jobs now that President Trump tapped Anthony Scaramucci as his new communications director, White House sources said.

The Post, citing several unnamed officials, reported that Scaramucci has started an audit on staffers. He is reportedly meeting with them and weeding out “those he determines are not working hard enough to defend the president.”

“We have to get the leaks stopped,” Scaramucci, named Friday to the post, told “Fox News Sunday.” “What’s going on right now is a high level of unprofessionalism, and it’s not helping the president. … I will take drastic action to stop the leaks.

A Wisconsin company is to become the first in the US to microchip employees.
Three Square Market is offering to implant the tiny radio-frequency identification (RFID) chip into workers' hands for free - and says everyone will soon be doing it.
The rice grain-sized $300 (£230) chip will allow them to open doors, log in to computers and even purchase food.
And so far, 50 employees have signed up for the chance to become half-human, half-walking credit card.
But far from being some sort of dystopian nightmare, Three Square Market's Patrick McMullan believes everyone will soon be wanting their own microchip.

When the ACA went into effect, it made it possible for that mother to put her daughter on her insurance, why didn't she do it? So instead of being personally responsible for her family as an adult should, her daughter dies

Libel by implication

The Memphis Press-Scimitar published the following article that mentioned Mrs. Ruth Ann Nichols:

Quote:

WOMAN HURT BY GUNSHOT

Mrs. Ruth A. Nichols, 164 Eastview, was treated at St. Joseph Hospital for a bullet wound in her arm after a shooting at her home, police said.

A 40-year-old woman was held by police in connection with the shooting with a .22 rifle. Police said a shot was also fired at the suspect’s husband.

Officers said the incident took place Thursday night after the suspect arrived at the Nichols home and found her husband there with Mrs. Nichols.

Witnesses said the suspect first fired a shot at her husband and then at Mrs. Nichols, striking her in the arm, police reported.

No charges had been placed.

Did you read the story as suggesting that the shooter found her husband in a compromising position with Mrs. Nichols — perhaps having sex, or having had sex, or being just about to have sex? That’s apparently how many readers read the story as well.

But it turns out that, though each statement in the story was literally true, Mrs. Nichols was at the Nichols home together with the shooter’s husband, Mr. Nichols, and two neighbors. They were apparently all sitting in the living room, talking.

The court concluded that the story could be libelous — assuming negligence was shown on the newspaper’s part — because, even though the statements were literally true, they carried a strong implication (that the husband and Mrs. Nichols were together by themselves in a compromising position) that was false:

the court wrote:

In our opinion, the defendant’s reliance on the truth of the facts stated in the article in question is misplaced. The proper question is whether the meaning reasonably conveyed by the published words is defamatory, “whether the libel as published would have a different effect on the mind of the reader from that which the pleaded truth would have produced.” The published statement, therefore, so distorted the truth as to make the entire article false and defamatory. It is no defense whatever that individual statements within the article were literally true.

When a statement carries a very strong implication that turns out to be false, a libel claim can indeed be brought even when the statement is literally true.

=====

Another classic example — though just a hypothetical and not a real case — involves the first mate who, upset by his teetotaling captain, writes in the ship’s log,

Captain sober today.

The statement may be literally accurate (the captain was sober today, as on all days) but it carries a very strong implication that turns out to be false (that today was unusual in this respect).

Scientists are "very worried" that the melting of the Greenland ice sheet could accelerate and raise sea levels more than expected.
They say warmer conditions are encouraging algae to grow and darken the surface.
Dark ice absorbs more solar radiation than clean white ice so warms up and melts more rapidly.
Currently the Greenland ice sheet is adding up to 1mm a year to the rise in the global average level of the oceans.
It is the largest mass of ice in the northern hemisphere covering an area about seven times the size of the United Kingdom and reaching up to 3km (2 miles) in thickness.
This means that the average sea level would rise around the world by about seven metres, more than 20ft, if it all melted.
That is why Greenland, though remote, is a focus of research which has direct relevance to major coastal cities as far apart as Miami, London and Shanghai and low-lying areas in Bangladesh and parts of Britain.
Algae were first observed on the Greenland ice sheet more than a century ago but until recently its potential impact was ignored. Only in the last few years have researchers started to explore how the microscopically small plants could affect future melting.
A five-year UK research project known as Black and Bloom is under way to investigate the different species of algae and how they might spread, and then to use this knowledge to improve computer projections of future sea level rise.
The possibility of biologically inspired melting was not included in the estimates for sea level rise published by the UN's climate panel, the IPCC, in its latest report in 2013.

I can see why Oralloy likes him, he makes the same meaningless boasts about brilliance and that's it.

I was thinking the other day, I argued and debated the Bush Iraq war and the tax give aways for around 6 years and I don't recall getting so burned out as I have since Trump has been office. I am not ever sure why that is the case. I mean when you think about it, Bush and Iraq war/torture and all the rest was way more terrible than this Russian stuff and Trump. Yet I am completely burnt out and disgusted with Trump and all the people and events connected to him or in support of him here on A2k.
Just saying.

And people who support and defend him have to contort their arguments to defend something unrecognizable as conservative or christian or sometimes even a sympathetic human.

Trying to carry on an argument/discussion with a Trump supporter is like two people trying to carry a long heavy plank of wood, with only one person holding their end. You have the whole burden, and they have none.

They can say anything, lie all the time, and take no responsibility - just like Trump.

I think your exhaustion (and I share it, and suspect many do) comes from having to try to use the same tools of logic, morality and common sense as you ordinarily would, but you have to use them to contend with a phenomenon who has no allegiance to any of those things, - or even to reality itself.

I, too, am puzzled and disgusted with the behavior of some of Mr. Trump's more rabid defenders on A2K and other forums and I have to make quite an effort not to join in the childish name-calling and juvenile attempts at sarcasm.

I brought this up here a week or so ago and got accused of "having a stick up my posterior", received an unsolicited analysis of my psychopathology, and got the full GOP "what about" treatment — something like "bobsal posted cartoons and you all were fine with that."

blatham is right — don't bother engaging with these people. Refute their misstatements with facts but forget about finding "common ground".

Trump's mobs have never been interested in having a respectful dialog or an actual conversation.

We can use A2K to share information and insights among ourselves and let the Trump mob rave on, ignored — a tale of two echo chambers. And so it goes.

Cheese-eaters want it all ways, eh? They want activist judges to pass laws for them that they don't have the votes for. They want the judicial branch to have the powers of the legislative branch when it advances their lame-ass agenda.

At the same time, the want the legislature to usurp the power of the courts when it suits them, too:

Quote:

House Dem drafts bill to stop Trump from pardoning himself

Texas Democratic Rep. Al Green is pushing a bill to stop President Trump from pardoning himself in the Russia meddling ordeal, as the president's team tries to tamp down speculation that pardons might even be considered in a case that's so far produced no charges.

Green has been on the far edge of the Trump resistance on Capitol Hill and is also backing an article of impeachment filed by his colleague, Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Calif.

Green, a first-term congressman, also said his proposed legislation would clarify the powers of the presidential pardon and is not directed specifically at Trump.

The impeachment article does not enjoy widespread support even among Democrats, and the pardon preemption could encounter similar problems.

Now they think they're the ultimate arbiters of what the constitution says and means, see?

I guess he aint heard, eh? It is the Supreme Court, not a democratic representative for some small fraction of the State of Texas, who "clarifies" the meaning of constitutional clauses.

Judges writing laws, legislators dictating the meaning of the constitution, cats sleeping with dogs--it's a crazy cheese-eating world there, sho nuff.