[News] Post a Political News Story

Ongoing discussion of the political news of the day. This thread is for 'smaller' stories that don't call for their own thread. If a story blows up, please start a new thread for it.

Exactly.

Think the scene in any courtroom drama where the defense attorney makes the case that since the defendant is an otherwise “upstanding citizen” they should be given leniency by the court.

In this case you have someone who should have been nailed to the wall. Instead he was given such a sweetheart sentence that he was able to continue raping children on release from prison. This wouldn’t have happened if every reputable organization turned down his money.

MIT should pay dearly for this.

Chumpy_McChump wrote:

So does the Epstein-MIT story wander into “nothing this guy did is ok because some of what he did was incredibly bad” territory? I’m trying to understand why the MIT Media Lab would hide funding from a whatever-you’d-classify-Epstein-as.

He made the money is was donating by running a child rape human trafficking organization, which everyone has always known about. So yes, anyone who took his money has blood on their hands regardless of the good things they did with that money.

As Gremlin pointed out, part of the procedure for these donations was compromising the leadership being donated to. Bringing them to the residence to participate in the child rape, showing up in secret to MIT. At this point it's not reasonable to assume that anyone epstein had close contact with wasn't aware of what his real business was. Epstein made a point of making them aware and complicit.

I should note for the record that we do not currently have any evidence that Joi Ito personally participated in the child rape. The secret donations were compromising enough that they would have been effective blackmail material on their own, whether or not Ito realized it: note the resignations now that this stuff is starting to get light shone on it.

As a side note, as a donor Epstein also got influence over the direction of the research. While the details with regards to how that affected the Media Lab's research isn't clear yet, we do know about some of his other transhumanism-linked research projects:

NYT: Jeffrey Epstein Hoped to Seed Human Race With His DNA

Jeffrey E. Epstein, the wealthy financier who is accused of sex trafficking, had an unusual dream: He hoped to seed the human race with his DNA by impregnating women at his vast New Mexico ranch.
Gremlin wrote:

I should note for the record that we do not currently have any evidence that Joi Ito personally participated in the child rape. The secret donations were compromising enough that they would have been effective blackmail material on their own, whether or not Ito realized it: note the resignations now that this stuff is starting to get light shone on it.

As a side note, as a donor Epstein also got influence over the direction of the research. While the details with regards to how that affected the Media Lab's research isn't clear yet, we do know about some of his other transhumanism-linked research projects:

NYT: Jeffrey Epstein Hoped to Seed Human Race With His DNA

Jeffrey E. Epstein, the wealthy financier who is accused of sex trafficking, had an unusual dream: He hoped to seed the human race with his DNA by impregnating women at his vast New Mexico ranch.

Maybe it's just me, but "he is documented as having visited the brothel, but there's no evidence he participated in any brothel activities while inside" feels pretty thin.

Can Influencers Improve Saudi Arabia’s Image?

IMAGE(https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/iqFHqvxyjma0/v1/1000x-1.jpg)

IMAGE(https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/iA8jwZZJMnjM/v1/400x-1.jpg)

IMAGE(https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/igAMy_2By0vo/v2/1000x-1.jpg)

“It’s not that I’m particularly pro-Saudi or have a political agenda,” Quispel says. “I think the way in which we show the country is in a very subtle and fair way.”
Bad press is nothing new for Saudi Arabia, Prince Turki says. But the Gateway KSA visitors are free to say whatever they want about their trip, he says. “It’s not a propaganda exercise,” he says. “It’s simply a human engagement exercise.”

Can Influencers Improve Saudi Arabia’s Image?

No, but it can make it worse.....

Re - Epstein.

If I recall, that he got convicted of trafficking meant he was ineligible to donate to MIT according to the MIT rules for donations.

The best $80 I ever spent: TSA PreCheck

It absolutely shouldn’t exist, and is absolutely an incredible value.

It's an odd tennis-match of an article that bounces back and forth between "this is SO awesome" and "it's everything wrong with both security theater and gross inequality".

qaraq wrote:

The best $80 I ever spent: TSA PreCheck

It absolutely shouldn’t exist, and is absolutely an incredible value.

It's an odd tennis-match of an article that bounces back and forth between "this is SO awesome" and "it's everything wrong with both security theater and gross inequality".

That’s because it’s true. After the Snowden revelations on government spying I asked myself what privacy I was actually protecting by not just joining the Global Entry program.

Assuming we were all spied on, I went along with the fingerprinting and screening, and now I get through airport security as if it were the 80s again on most days.

Airport security is really silly, fairly arbitrary and definitely unequal. Pre definitely highlights this and it’s also really convenient, especially when you’re re-entering the country.

qaraq wrote:

The best $80 I ever spent: TSA PreCheck

It absolutely shouldn’t exist, and is absolutely an incredible value.

It's an odd tennis-match of an article that bounces back and forth between "this is SO awesome" and "it's everything wrong with both security theater and gross inequality".

Flip side, my $80 for PreCheck has worked twice since I got it a couple years ago, over something like 15-20 flights.

Little known fact, you're not guaranteed to be qualified for PreCheck every time you fly, even if you do jump through the hoops.

Do they give any reason why you were denied?

I've only had one issue with it thus far, and it was because my parents bought my ticket and miskeyed my birthday. Corrected at the counter and good to go.

thrawn82 wrote:

Do they give any reason why you were denied?

I've only had one issue with it thus far, and it was because my parents bought my ticket and miskeyed my birthday. Corrected at the counter and good to go.

No reason. The system isn't supposed to grant you PreCheck every time you fly. You may or may not get it.

Not surprisingly, Republican voters reward the party of cheating in NC special election

Republican Dan Bishop pulled out a narrow win in North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District on Tuesday, giving the GOP a victory in a district that President Trump won easily in 2016 but which proved to be a fierce battleground in unusual back-to-back House campaigns.

With 99 percent of precincts reporting, Bishop led Democrat Dan McCready by more than two percentage points in a special election called after allegations of fraud against McCready’s initial GOP opponent upended a razor-thin election last November.

North Carolina GOP votes to override budget veto while many Democrats were at 9/11 events

CBS News wrote:

Republicans dominating a nearly half-empty North Carolina House chamber used an unexpected vote Wednesday to override Democratic Governor Roy Cooper's veto of the state's two-year budget, prompting accusations of trickery and deception from Cooper and other Democrats, many of whom were attending 9/11 commemoration events during the sudden vote.

Republican leaders had spent months trying to persuade enough Democrats to meet the threshold for an override, and finally seized a moment when most opposing Democrats weren't at their seats. The few Democrats who were on the House floor moments before the 55-9 vote erupted in protest, accusing Republican Speaker Tim Moore of tricking the chamber about the day's plans.

According to reporting by local station ABC 11, many Democrats were at 9/11 commemoration events. House Democrats charge that Republicans had deliberately misled them by saying there would be no votes on the morning of 9/11. ABC 11 reporter Jonah Kaplan posted the schedule sent by the Democratic minority leader to his caucus, confirming that there were no votes scheduled until 1 p.m.

What a bunch of evil assholes. Of course that seems like what the majority of NC citizens want since they keep voting them in.

LeapingGnome wrote:

What a bunch of evil assholes. Of course that seems like what the majority of NC citizens want since they keep voting them in.

It seems like what the majority of NC voters want. Of course the rest of them don't have anyone else to blame but themselves for not voting.

OG_slinger wrote:

North Carolina GOP votes to override budget veto while many Democrats were at 9/11 events

CBS News wrote:

Republicans dominating a nearly half-empty North Carolina House chamber used an unexpected vote Wednesday to override Democratic Governor Roy Cooper's veto of the state's two-year budget, prompting accusations of trickery and deception from Cooper and other Democrats, many of whom were attending 9/11 commemoration events during the sudden vote.

Republican leaders had spent months trying to persuade enough Democrats to meet the threshold for an override, and finally seized a moment when most opposing Democrats weren't at their seats. The few Democrats who were on the House floor moments before the 55-9 vote erupted in protest, accusing Republican Speaker Tim Moore of tricking the chamber about the day's plans.

According to reporting by local station ABC 11, many Democrats were at 9/11 commemoration events. House Democrats charge that Republicans had deliberately misled them by saying there would be no votes on the morning of 9/11. ABC 11 reporter Jonah Kaplan posted the schedule sent by the Democratic minority leader to his caucus, confirming that there were no votes scheduled until 1 p.m.

I am consistently amazed at just how horrible NC republicans seem to be. This is disgusting.

farley3k wrote:
LeapingGnome wrote:

What a bunch of evil assholes. Of course that seems like what the majority of NC citizens want since they keep voting them in.

It seems like what the majority of NC voters want. Of course the rest of them don't have anyone else to blame but themselves for not voting.

Actually,(facepalm on self for actuallying) in the 2016 election 1,658,140 votes were cast for republican candidates, and 1,771,061 votes were cast for democratic candidates (and 30,423 were cast for candidates declared to neither party) One R ran unopposed so theres no record of those voters, but these numbers also include the 9th district which had a bunch of R votes added from thin air. SO it best you could say we are dead even.

edit: this is just the US house race cause those are the numbers I had easy to hand

It's not the majority of voters that makes us a red state, it's the gerrymander.

Mother f*ckers

NC district maps in process of being redrawn AGAIN.

bekkilyn wrote:

NC district maps in process of being redrawn AGAIN.

I saw some pictures from yesterday that look like they are using a lottery machine for randomization, but i never found a good explanation as to exactly how.

ah i found the tweet: Tweet of NC Senate using lottery machine to redraw districts

edit: after reading down the tweet line it looks like the senate insisted on 5 maps from the original racist/gop favoring data set and are trying to cover for it by using the lottery machine to choose among them and claim they weren't picking based on racial/partisan bias. Hooray for fresh fury at the end of the day

thrawn82 wrote:
bekkilyn wrote:

NC district maps in process of being redrawn AGAIN.

I saw some pictures from yesterday that look like they are using a lottery machine for randomization, but i never found a good explanation as to exactly how.

ah i found the tweet: Tweet of NC Senate using lottery machine to redraw districts

edit: after reading down the tweet line it looks like the senate insisted on 5 maps from the original racist/gop favoring data set and are trying to cover for it by using the lottery machine to choose among them and claim they weren't picking based on racial/partisan bias. Hooray for fresh fury at the end of the day

LOL

It's not funny, but sometimes all you can do is laugh.

Between the gerrymandering (which has been repeatedly found to be illegal and unconstitutional, and which they themselves said was because too many black people would vote otherwise), including the ongoing gerrymandering shenanigans; the voter suppression; and just straight-up stealing and altering ballots, I'm not really sure you can consider any Republican in the entire state of North Carolina to be a legitimate representation of the citizens of the state.

(I'd be more upset if I still lived there. Instead I'm mostly sad.)

thrawn82 wrote:
farley3k wrote:
LeapingGnome wrote:

What a bunch of evil assholes. Of course that seems like what the majority of NC citizens want since they keep voting them in.

It seems like what the majority of NC voters want. Of course the rest of them don't have anyone else to blame but themselves for not voting.

Actually,(facepalm on self for actuallying) in the 2016 election 1,658,140 votes were cast for republican candidates, and 1,771,061 votes were cast for democratic candidates (and 30,423 were cast for candidates declared to neither party) One R ran unopposed so theres no record of those voters, but these numbers also include the 9th district which had a bunch of R votes added from thin air. SO it best you could say we are dead even.

edit: this is just the US house race cause those are the numbers I had easy to hand

It's not the majority of voters that makes us a red state, it's the gerrymander.

Also, f*ck the notion that people who don't vote have only themselves to blame when sh*t people get into office, if only because that sh*tty attitude blatantly ignores a wide variety of voter suppression tactics commonly used throughout the United States.

Remember last spring when the Department of Homeland Security said they found a bunch of unauthorized cell-site simulators near the White House and scattered throughout D.C.?

It turns out they were Israel's. Nothing like having an ally who you give billions of dollars a year spy on you.

OG_slinger wrote:

Remember last spring when the Department of Homeland Security said they found a bunch of unauthorized cell-site simulators near the White House and scattered throughout D.C.?

It turns out they were Israel's. Nothing like having an ally who you give billions of dollars a year spy on you.

Since Trump refuses to follow security protocol and still has an unsecured phone; I would imagine every world power capable of obtaining this technology is monitoring cell phones.

OG_slinger wrote:

Remember last spring when the Department of Homeland Security said they found a bunch of unauthorized cell-site simulators near the White House and scattered throughout D.C.?

It turns out they were Israel's. Nothing like having an ally who you give billions of dollars a year spy on you.

Once again, our very good friend and stalwart, reliable ally.

Reaper81 wrote:
OG_slinger wrote:

Remember last spring when the Department of Homeland Security said they found a bunch of unauthorized cell-site simulators near the White House and scattered throughout D.C.?

It turns out they were Israel's. Nothing like having an ally who you give billions of dollars a year spy on you.

Once again, our very good friend and stalwart, reliable ally.

We bought them their toys, it's only right we let them play with them in our yard.

Jonman wrote:
thrawn82 wrote:

Do they give any reason why you were denied?

I've only had one issue with it thus far, and it was because my parents bought my ticket and miskeyed my birthday. Corrected at the counter and good to go.

No reason. The system isn't supposed to grant you PreCheck every time you fly. You may or may not get it.

I've had it for a few years now. I've probably done ~10 round trip flights since then. Every time, I've gotten PreCheck on the boarding pass, but I've only had about a 50% success rate of actually being able to use it. When it works, it's great. But the other times, I get to the airport to find out that oops, PreCheck isn't open that day, or wasn't offered at that checkpoint, so go through the regular line. One time, I found out afterward that it wasn't offered at that checkpoint, but if I'd gone to the next one down, it was available, but nobody anywhere said that, and there were no signs.

When you go through regular line, you do get a card that says you can keep your jacket and shoes on, which is nice, but you usually still need to pull all your liquids and electronics out of your bag. Which means that you still have to pack in a way that allows you to do that quickly, instead of on the assumption that you won't need to. It's frustrating, but overall, it's probably still worth the money?

Jonman wrote:
thrawn82 wrote:

Do they give any reason why you were denied?

I've only had one issue with it thus far, and it was because my parents bought my ticket and miskeyed my birthday. Corrected at the counter and good to go.

No reason. The system isn't supposed to grant you PreCheck every time you fly. You may or may not get it.

If the booking data matches your KTN data, PreCheck should show up on your boarding pass. It just indicates eligibility. Whether or not there are lanes open or even if the airport has PreCheck is unrelated. If these are work trips, I'd make sure that your booking agency is supplying the same exact data that you supplied to the TSA. If they're getting it from an HR system, something like a middle initial vs a full middle name will cause a rejection.