Knicks · OT: Politics Thread (page 95)
some interesting results (many more in the link):
Trump voters in PPP poll (Clinton % in parenthesis)
Bowling Green Massacre Statement
Agree - 51% (2%)
Disagree - 23% (90%)
Not Sure - 25% (8%)
Ban Muslims
Support banning Muslims - 41% (6%)
Oppose banning Muslims - 43% (86%)
Not Sure - 15% (8%)
Trust More: Judges or Trump
Judges - 14% (91%)
Trump - 78% (5%)
Not Sure - 8% (4%)
DeVos Favorability
Favorable - 53% (5%)
Unfavorable - 12% (83%)
Not sure - 34% (13%)
Pence or Trump as POTUS
Pence - 15% (46%)
Trump - 76% (5%)
Not Sure - 10% (49%)
Millions Voted Illegally in 2016
Yes - 55% (7%)
No - 23% (85%)
Not Sure - 22% (8%)
Black History Month Favorability
Favorable - 45% (81%)
Unfavorable - 35% (9%)
Not Sure - 20% (10%)
White History Month
Yes - 46% (14%)
No - 36% (76%)
Not Sure - 19% (10%)
holfresh wrote:Betty Devos blocked from entering a Washington middle school by protesters..I can't ever remember seeing stuff like this..
http://www.snopes.com/photos/signs/scien...
this is a real quiz from blue ridge christian academy, a private school in south carolina.
devos wants schools like these to be funded by taxpayers...
http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/10/politics/r...
Washington (CNN)For the first time, US investigators say they have corroborated some of the communications detailed in a 35-page dossier compiled by a former British intelligence agent, multiple current and former US law enforcement and intelligence officials tell CNN. As CNN first reported, then-President-elect Donald Trump and President Barack Obama were briefed on the existence of the dossier prior to Trump's inauguration.
None of the newly learned information relates to the salacious allegations in the dossier. Rather it relates to conversations between foreign nationals. The dossier details about a dozen conversations between senior Russian officials and other Russian individuals. Sources would not confirm which specific conversations were intercepted or the content of those discussions due to the classified nature of US intelligence collection programs.
But the intercepts do confirm that some of the conversations described in the dossier took place between the same individuals on the same days and from the same locations as detailed in the dossier, according to the officials. CNN has not confirmed whether any content relates to then-candidate Trump.
The corroboration, based on intercepted communications, has given US intelligence and law enforcement "greater confidence" in the credibility of some aspects of the dossier as they continue to actively investigate its contents, these sources say.
Reached for comment this afternoon, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said, "We continue to be disgusted by CNN's fake news reporting."
Spicer later called back and said, "This is more fake news. It is about time CNN focused on the success the President has had bringing back jobs, protecting the nation, and strengthening relationships with Japan and other nations. The President won the election because of his vision and message for the nation."
Spokespeople for the FBI, Department of Justice, CIA and Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment.
US intelligence officials emphasize the conversations were solely between foreign nationals, including those in or tied to the Russian government, intercepted during routine intelligence gathering.
Some of the individuals involved in the intercepted communications were known to the US intelligence community as "heavily involved" in collecting information damaging to Hillary Clinton and helpful to Donald Trump, two of the officials tell CNN.
Until now, US intelligence and law enforcement officials have said they could not verify any parts of the dossier.
Officials who spoke to CNN cautioned they still have not reached any judgment on whether the Russian government has any compromising information about the President.
Officials did not comment on or confirm any alleged conversations or meetings between Russian officials and US citizens, including associates of then-candidate Trump.
One of the officials stressed to CNN they have not corroborated "the more salacious things" alleged in the dossier.
CNN has not reported any of the salacious allegations.
Trump dismissed the entire dossier last month during his only news conference as President-elect, saying in January, "It's all fake news. It's phony stuff. It didn't happen."
The dossier was commissioned as opposition research by political opponents of then-candidate Trump and compiled by a former British intelligence agent. US intelligence agencies checked out the former MI6 operative and his vast network throughout Europe and found him and his sources to be credible.
america is a disaster but 36 holes is 36 holes.
fəˈd(y)o͞oSHēˌerē,fəˈd(y)o͞oSH(ə)rē/
adjectiveLAW
1.
involving trust, especially with regard to the relationship between a trustee and a beneficiary.
"the company has a fiduciary duty to shareholders"
The Fiduciary Rule perfectly illustrates what the Trump administration has in store for us. It's a rule that puts INVESTOR'S interest first ahead of Wall Street interest. The Trump administration wants to reverse it. IF THIS ATTEMPTED CHANGE OF A RULE YOU CAN PLAINLY SEE, AND UNDERSTAND, DOESN'T REMOVE THE BLINDERS ON THEIR THINKING, I DON'T KNOW WHAT WILL....
John Bogle, who founded the Vanguard Group, and old retirement management firm, writes about this in an Op-Ed NY Times a few days ago...I felt I should post it...
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/09/opini...
Putting Clients Second
THE Trump administration recently announced that it intends to review, and presumably overturn, the Obama-era fiduciary duty rule that is scheduled to take effect in April. The administration’s case was articulated by Gary Cohn, the new director of the National Economic Council.
Mr. Cohn, most recently the president of Goldman Sachs, called it “a bad rule” and likened it to “putting only healthy food on the menu, because unhealthy food tastes good but you still shouldn’t eat it because you might die younger.” Comparing healthy and unhealthy food to healthy and unhealthy investments is an interesting analogy.
The now-endangered fiduciary rule is based on a simple — and seemingly unarguable — principle: that in giving advice to clients with retirement funds, stockbrokers, registered investment advisers and insurance agents must act in the best interests of their clients. Honestly, it seems counterproductive to go to war against such a fundamental principle. It simply doesn’t seem like a good business practice for Wall Street to tell its client-investors, “We put your interests second, after our firm’s, but it’s close.”
The annulment of the government’s fiduciary rule would clearly be a setback for investors trying to prepare for retirement. But the fiduciary principle itself will live on, and even spread.
The truth is, the existing proposal doesn’t go nearly far enough. It is limited to retirement plan accounts and ignores the other three-quarters of the assets owned by individual investors. Any effective rule must encompass all investors.
It is widely agreed that the fiduciary rule would give impetus to the growing use of lower-cost, broadly diversified index funds (pioneered by Vanguard, the company I founded), such as those tracking, with remarkable precision, the S&P 500 stock index. But even without the rule, there has already been a tidal shift to index funds — actually, more like a tsunami. Since 2008, mutual fund investors have liquidated more than $800 billion of their holdings in actively managed equity mutual funds and purchased about $1.8 trillion of equity index funds. Low-cost index funds are almost certainly what Mr. Cohn means when he refers to the “healthy food on the menu.”
Several major brokerage firms have already embraced the fiduciary principle, announcing plans to comply with the rule by eliminating front-end commissions (known as loads) on retirement plan accounts in favor of an annual asset charge. And dozens of companies have reacted to the proposed rule by creating a class of generally less costly mutual fund shares with initial loads of 2.5 percent followed by annual charges of 0.25 percent of total assets.
I do not envision these responses to the fiduciary rule being reversed. With or without regulation by the federal government, the principle of “clients first” is here to stay.
In the debate about the fiduciary rule, one basic fact has been largely ignored. Investment wealth is created by our public corporations and reflected in stock prices. Stock market returns are then allocated between the financial industry (Wall Street) and shareholders (Main Street). So when the consulting firm A. T. Kearney projected that the fiduciary rule would result in as much as $20 billion in lost revenue for the industry by 2020, it meant that net investment returns for investors would increase by $20 billion.
By any definition, that’s a social good.
One must wonder how Wall Street, broadly defined, has been able to defy the interests of its millions of clients for so long. After all, 241 years ago, Adam Smith concluded that “consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production; and the interest of the producer ought to be attended to only so far as it may be necessary for promoting that of the consumer.”
In other words, it is in Wall Street’s interest to promote the interests of its clients. As Smith put it: “The maxim is so perfectly self-evident that it would be absurd to attempt to prove it.”
Make no mistake. The demise of the fiduciary rule would be a step backward for our nation, allowing Wall Street to continue to profit by providing conflicted advice at the expense of working Americans saving for retirement.
But the principles of fiduciary duty are strengthening. Investor awareness grows with each passing day. The nation’s investors are already awakening to the role of low costs and broad diversification, and understand that long-term investing is a far more profitable strategy than short-term trading.
The fiduciary rule may fade away, but the fiduciary principle is eternal. The arc of investing is long, but it bends toward fiduciary duty.
http://www.cnbc.com/2017/02/13/elon-musk...
Billionaire Elon Musk is known for his futuristic ideas and his latest suggestion might just save us from being irrelevant as artificial intelligence (AI) grows more prominent.
The Tesla and SpaceX CEO said on Monday that humans need to merge with machines to become a sort of cyborg.
"Over time I think we will probably see a closer merger of biological intelligence and digital intelligence," Musk told an audience at the World Government Summit in Dubai, where he also launched Tesla in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
"It's mostly about the bandwidth, the speed of the connection between your brain and the digital version of yourself, particularly output."
Musk explained what he meant by saying that computers can communicate at "a trillion bits per second", while humans, whose main communication method is typing with their fingers via a mobile device, can do about 10 bits per second.
In an age when AI threatens to become widespread, humans would be useless, so there's a need to merge with machines, according to Musk.
"Some high bandwidth interface to the brain will be something that helps achieve a symbiosis between human and machine intelligence and maybe solves the control problem and the usefulness problem," Musk explained.
The technologists proposal would see a new layer of a brain able to access information quickly and tap into artificial intelligence. It's not the first time Musk has spoken about the need for humans to evolve, but it's a constant theme of his talks on how society can deal with the disruptive threat of AI.
'Very quick' disruption
During his talk, Musk touched upon his fear of "deep AI" which goes beyond driverless cars to what he called "artificial general intelligence". This he described as AI that is "smarter than the smartest human on earth" and called it a "dangerous situation".
While this might be some way off, the Tesla boss said the more immediate threat is how AI, particularly autonomous cars, which his own firm is developing, will displace jobs. He said the disruption to people whose job it is to drive will take place over the next 20 years, after which 12 to 15 percent of the global workforce will be unemployed.
"The most near term impact from a technology standpoint is autonomous cars … That is going to happen much faster than people realize and it's going to be a great convenience," Musk said.
"But there are many people whose jobs are to drive. In fact I think it might be the single largest employer of people ... Driving in various forms. So we need to figure out new roles for what do those people do, but it will be very disruptive and very quick."
Sort of reminds me of Bush 1 in Iran trading arms for hostages before the election..Essentially paying Iran not to release American hostages before election was over. Treason??..Naahhhh. Grandfather Bush was convicted of treason tho..Supplying the Nazi war machine during WWII..
Oliver North, another military guy following orders took the fall for that...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/nor...
TOKYO — The older half-brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has been killed in Malaysia by two female agents with “poison needles,” South Korean media outlets reported Tuesday.
The reports — which could not be immediately be verified — said Kim’s half-brother, Kim Jong Nam, was attacked at Kuala Lumpur airport Monday by two women who fled the scene, according to accounts by South Korea’s TV Chosun, a cable channel.
The report cited an unidentified government source detailing the death of the 45-year-old, who was once considered the next in line for power but apparently fell from favor after trying to enter Japan on a false passport to visit Tokyo Disneyland.
nixluva wrote:This whole Russia thing smells fishy. From the very start Trump and his people have been in bed with Russia and this needs to be investigated. This is a disgrace how often Trump and his people have LIED!!!
republicans + trump are one in the same. from top to bottom - this is what they wanted and what they endorsed. and the folks that voted for them are on board with it too. i say that b/c i'm going to give the benefit of the doubt that the folks that did vote for him, knew what was going on...b/c if they didn't and they fell for the hustle (and are now having regrets), then they shouldn't have been allowed to vote in the first place.
JesseDark wrote:What did the president know and when did he know it?
over a year. trump was licking putin's boots in interviews before 2016.
Exclusive: In call with Putin, Trump denounced Obama-era nuclear arms treaty - sources
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-tr...
In his first call as president with Russian leader Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump denounced a treaty that caps U.S. and Russian deployment of nuclear warheads as a bad deal for the United States, according to two U.S. officials and one former U.S. official with knowledge of the call.
When Putin raised the possibility of extending the 2010 treaty, known as New START, Trump paused to ask his aides in an aside what the treaty was, these sources said.
Trump then told Putin the treaty was one of several bad deals negotiated by the Obama administration, saying that New START favored Russia. Trump also talked about his own popularity, the sources said.
The White House declined to comment on the details of the call. White House spokesman Sean Spicer said Trump knew what the New START treaty is but had turned to his aides for an opinion during the call with Putin. He said the notes from the call would not have conveyed that.
"I would say they had a very productive call," Spicer told reporters. He added, "It wasn't like he didn’t know what was being said. He wanted an opinion on something."
It has not been previously reported that Trump had conveyed his doubt about New START to Putin in the hour-long call.
New START gives both countries until February 2018 to reduce their deployed strategic nuclear warheads to no more than 1,550, the lowest level in decades. It also limits deployed land- and submarine-based missiles and nuclear-capable bombers.
During a debate in the 2016 presidential election, Trump said Russia had "outsmarted" the United States with the treaty, which he called "START-Up." He asserted incorrectly then that it had allowed Russia to continue to produce nuclear warheads while the United States could not.
Two Democratic members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, senators Jeanne Shaheen and Edward J. Markey, criticized Trump for deriding what they called a key nuclear arms control accord.
“It’s impossible to overstate the negligence of the president of the United States not knowing basic facts about nuclear policy and arms control,” Shaheen said in a statement. "New START has unquestionably made our country safer, an opinion widely shared by national security experts on both sides of the aisle."
Daryl Kimball, the executive director of the Arms Control Association, a Washington-based advocacy group, said: "Unfortunately, Mr. Trump appears to be clueless about the value of this key nuclear risk reduction treaty and the unique dangers of nuclear weapons."
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said he supported the treaty during his Senate confirmation hearings.
During the hearings Tillerson said it was important for the United States to "stay engaged with Russia, hold them accountable to commitments made under the New START and also ensure our accountability as well."
Two of the people who described the conversation were briefed by current administration officials who read detailed notes taken during the call. One of the two was shown portions of the notes. A third source was also briefed on the call.
Reuters has not reviewed the notes taken of the call, which are classified.
The Kremlin did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The phone call with Putin has added to concerns that Trump is not adequately prepared for discussions with foreign leaders.
Typically, before a telephone call with a foreign leader, a president receives a written in-depth briefing paper drafted by National Security Council staff after consultations with the relevant agencies, including the State Department, Pentagon and intelligence agencies, two former senior officials said.
Just before the call, the president also usually receives an oral "pre-briefing" from his national security adviser and top subject-matter aide, they said.
Trump did not receive a briefing from Russia experts with the NSC and intelligence agencies before the Putin call, two of the sources said. Reuters was unable to determine if Trump received a briefing from his national security adviser Michael Flynn.
In the phone call, the Russian leader raised the possibility of reviving talks on a range of disputes and suggested extending New START, the sources said.
New START can be extended for another five years, beyond 2021, by mutual agreement. Unless they agree to do that or negotiate new cuts, the world's two biggest nuclear powers would be freed from the treaty's limits, potentially setting the stage for a new arms race.
New START was ratified by the U.S. Senate in December 2010 by a vote of 71 to 26. Thirteen Republican senators joined all of the Senate’s Democrats in voting for the treaty, although Republican opponents derided it as naive.
The call with Putin was one of several with foreign leaders where Trump has turned to denounce deals negotiated by previous administrations on trade, acceptance of refugees and arms control.
In a phone call with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, Trump questioned an agreement reached by the Obama administration to accept 1,250 refugees now being held by Australia in offshore detention centers.