US Politics: Now with Alt Facts

[Tempra]

49 minutes ago, Mexal said:

All this hypocrisy is stupid. Senior advisors to Trump, including Miller and Bannon, are on RNC emails, not government. Spicers twitter account is tied to his Gmail account. And finally, Trump is using his old, unsecure Android.

But Clintons emails...

Are they performing government work and, consequently, subject to federal record retention laws? Are they receiving classified documents? If not, you aren't comparing apples to apples, but I suspect you don't care about that...

[Kalbear]

2 minutes ago, Tempra said:

Are they performing government work and, consequently, subject to federal record retention laws? Are they receiving classified documents? If not, you aren't comparing apples to apples, but I suspect you don't care about that...

They are, and they are. We don't know about the classified documents, but they are certainly using the presidential twitter account with a gmail account. 

Of course we have no idea now if those emails have any classified data, because they've already been deleted from the server. But I suspect you don't care about that.

[Commodore]

4 hours ago, Fez said:

Speaking of which,

 

fake news

 

[Tempra]

1 minute ago, Kalbear said:

They are, and they are. We don't know about the classified documents, but they are certainly using the presidential twitter account with a gmail account. 

Of course we have no idea now if those emails have any classified data, because they've already been deleted from the server. But I suspect you don't care about that.

Please enlighten me on your knowledge of federal retention policies for social media accounts.  

[Kalbear]

1 minute ago, Commodore said:

fake news

 

That is true, but it's not the whole story.

For starters, the guy who resigned had been working very closely with the transition staff and was largely expected to keep a role. He was working with them as early as two days ago towards  the future stuff. None of the other staff were expected to leave, either. Per the times, all of it was exceedingly abrupt.

And while resignations happen, they never happen simultaneously, nor do they happen before the transition occurs like this. This isn't normal. 

[Kalbear]

Just now, Tempra said:

Please enlighten me on your knowledge of federal retention policies for social media accounts.  

I'm not talking about social media account retention - I'm talking about using a non-gov email to secure the thing in the first place. Trump is using a gmail account to associate with the official twitter feed.

 

[Fez]

4 minutes ago, Commodore said:

fake news

 

Yes, but in general it is expected that not all resignations are accepted; especially once you get below a certain level. Or if they are accepted, they are staggered; to preserve institutional knowledge as new people are on-boarded. In modern times at least, no new President has gotten rid of everyone at once.

I don't know the status of them today, but as of January 20 there were still a fair number of PAS people who had been first appointed by Bush because there was never any reason for Obama to replace them (and the confirmation fights would've meant they'd mostly be kept vacant).

[felice]

26 minutes ago, Happy Ent said:

Your dishonesty is galling. I wrote “Hosting this experiment is for the US to decide.” two sentences after what you quote me for. And you write, of me,  “you want to ban them”. To make my position clear: I’d be chuffed if the US hosted this experiment.

You also said you "completely agree on the necessity to strongly restrict, and possibly revert, immigration of Muslims."

[Week]

12 minutes ago, Commodore said:

fake news

 

Still not fake news. Below are examples of fake news - wholly different that what you are claiming is fake news.

Quote

Fake news: Hillary Clinton is running a child sex ring out of a pizza shop.

Fake news: Democrats want to impose Islamic law in Florida.

Fake news: Thousands of people at a Donald Trump rally in Manhattan chanted, "We hate Muslims, we hate blacks, we want our great country back."

None of those stories – and there are so many more like them – is remotely true.

 

[Kalbear]

Let's try posting this not in the NFL topic.

This might be relevant to the 'but her emails' discussion. Note that I strongly believe that conservatives don't care, because hypocrisy only matters if you think that the rules matter when they apply to your side and their side equally. But perhaps I'm wrong. Here's the Newsweek article on it. Here's the relevant bit that says yes, they need to forward these emails along and not delete them, and no, they cannot just use them without consequences.

Quote

 

If Trump staffers were using the RNC email addresses, they were subject to the “Disclosure Requirement for Official Business Conducted Using Electronic Messaging Accounts," a law, 44 U.S.C. 2209, that went into effect in 2014. If White House staffers have already used the RNC emails system for White House work, they must copy or forward those communications into the government system within 20 days.  

The Disclosure Requirement was passed to prevent presidents from shielding communications that fall under the Presidential Records Act of 1978. The last time White House staffers used the same RNC email system, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington described it as an attempt to circumvent transparency. CREW Director Melanie Sloan charged in 2007 that the Bush White House was using the RNC email system because “they don’t want anyone ever to be able to come back and see what was going on behind the scenes.”

The controversial system was involved in the loss of some of 22 million emails—many from around the time of the lead-up to and the first months of the Iraq War. Private lawsuits eventually forced the Obama administration to find Bush’s lost emails. They have since been turned over the National Archives, but remain under national security shield and have not been made available to the public.

 

[Tempra]

2 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

I'm not talking about social media account retention - I'm talking about using a non-gov email to secure the thing in the first place. Trump is using a gmail account to associate with the official twitter feed.

 

Then your reply is a non-sequitur to my response to Mexal unless you believe Trump is in violating a law by doing so.  If so, I would like to know what law is being violated and your basis for believing said law is being violated.

 

[Fez]

13 minutes ago, Tempra said:

Please enlighten me on your knowledge of federal retention policies for social media accounts.  

Sure. What do you want to know?

[A Horse Named Stranger]

Well at least the potus twitter account is not tied to a @kremlin.ru mail address.

[Kalbear]

Just now, Tempra said:

Then your reply is a non-sequitur to my response to Mexal unless you believe Trump is in violating a law by doing so.  If so, I would like to know what law is being violated and your basis for believing said law is being violated.

Well, for starters POTUS is not supposed to use personal accounts for government business. That is, actually, an issue. I'm not sure if it is a law or simply a policy based on FOIA, but it is there. In addition to that, while it is not illegal it is highly insecure for POTUS to be using unsecured, non-TFA systems to secure other sites that correspond to PII and other compromisable user data. He has different rules about him for precisely this reason - so he cannot be put in a compromising position. 

The rest of them are violating the FOIA policies if they deleted any emails improperly and it can be proven. 

And then there's the classified part, which again - hard to say without subpoenaing it.

None of those are nonsequitur unless you're saying that the only thing that matters is whether or not it's legal, which was not at all what the Clinton stuff was about. It certainly wasn't what you criticized the system for. 

[Swordfish]

 

3 hours ago, Manhole Eunuchsbane said:

But she represents an obvious misogynist who has already signed orders that are restrictive towards women. Sorry, she's fair game as the agenda she's helping to push is clearly anti-feminist. The dog comment isn't cool. Kind of akin to the whole "punching Nazis is okay" meme that the left has seemed to jump on since the Spencer incident occurred. 

It's not that she's off limits to criticism.  no one is, and she certainly deserves a lot of it.

it's the WAY in which she is being criticized,

I think an even better example is the amount of slut shaming the first lady has been subjected to.

 

[Happy Ent]

14 minutes ago, felice said:

You also said you "completely agree on the necessity to strongly restrict, and possibly revert, immigration of Muslims."

Ah, got you. Fine. Yes, I stand by that. Strong restriction on Muslim immigration (like the US already has, by virtue of its generally strongly restrictive immigration policies) would be completely necessary for my master plan (however irresponsible, naïve, and dangerous it may be) to nurture a population of super-muslims in the US and then unleash their morally and operationally superior version of Islam on the world.

For Europe, I’m sufficiently pessimistic that I’m willing to entertain the idea of incentives for repatriation.

[Tempra]

3 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Well, for starters POTUS is not supposed to use personal accounts for government business. That is, actually, an issue. I'm not sure if it is a law or simply a policy based on FOIA, but it is there. In addition to that, while it is not illegal it is highly insecure for POTUS to be using unsecured, non-TFA systems to secure other sites that correspond to PII and other compromisable user data. He has different rules about him for precisely this reason - so he cannot be put in a compromising position. 

The rest of them are violating the FOIA policies if they deleted any emails improperly and it can be proven. 

And then there's the classified part, which again - hard to say without subpoenaing it.

None of those are nonsequitur unless you're saying that the only thing that matters is whether or not it's legal, which was not at all what the Clinton stuff was about. It certainly wasn't what you criticized the system for. 

So let's see.  You concede it's not illegal for Trump to do what he is doing.  Ok.

Next, you say the "rest of them" are violating FOIA if they are deleting work-related emails.  Ok.  Where's your proof that they (Bannon and Miller) are performing government work on private emails AND deleting those emails?

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

6 minutes ago, Swordfish said:

it's the WAY in which she is being criticized,

I think an even better example is the amount of slut shaming the first lady has been subjected to.

 On Twitter feeds and the like, I suppose, but not in the MSM. At least not that I have seen. Same goes for the "Playboy Centerfold" First Lady stuff. Seems to me that's more the material of Late Night Talk Shows and stand-up comedians and such. Not that it justifies this, but it's to be expected methinks.

[Kalbear]

2 minutes ago, Tempra said:

So let's see.  You concede it's not illegal for Trump to do what he is doing.  Ok.

Yes, and I never claimed otherwise. It is, however, a major problem, and it was one of the major things that was leveled against Clinton - that she was using a non-government email system to do government business. Which was ALSO not illegal, just against policy. 

It is also illegal, thanks to FOIA, for POTUS to not retain any communication done by official channels, and twitter has already been considered one and has been since Obama. 

It is also against policy for him to use any unsecured communication devices whatsoever. Again, not likely a law being broken (though if something occurred to embarrass the country or worse it would be an impeachable offense) but it is a bad practice.

2 minutes ago, Tempra said:

Next, you say the "rest of them" are violating FOIA if they are deleting work-related emails.  Ok.  Where's your proof that they (Bannon and Miller) are performing government work on private emails AND deleting those emails?

I don't have any. I'm stating the fact. If they do it, great. If they don't, they're in violation.

 They are required to submit them within 20 days. And they have to do so regardless of whether or not it's government work they're doing; others examine and decide if that's the case, and retain as needed. Deleting them - regardless of the data involved - is expressly forbidden. This was, for example, why 20 million emails by Bush et al got deleted and then had to be restored and saved - because they might have had government business.

[sToNED_CAT]

3 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

If they attempt mass deportation it will be the Trail of Tears but several orders of magnitude worse.

Wow, really? That's such a massive overdramatization on your part.There were tens of thousands deaths during Trail of Tears for example. I highly doubt there would be any during mass deportation.

2 hours ago, Manhole Eunuchsbane said:

How about by simply paying attention to his actions and reactions? Did you see his ABC interview regarding his concerns about voter fraud yesterday? You'd have to be blind, deaf, and dumb not to recognize his motivations for this. He won the election. There's no practical purpose to this "investigation" other than to assuage his ego over losing the popular vote. He simply cannot accept that as truth, so he clings to nonsense. This is not an MSM frame. It's what he does. It's how he acts.

Practical purpose of this investigation would be to shut down voices who were trying to delegitimize presidency, simply because Clinton won popular vote. Surely you already heard many liberals mentioning it...

3 hours ago, Kalbear said:

But let's do a thought experiment: you cannot deport all undocumented immigrants at once without massive resources. The immigration office does not have the resources to do everyone at once. How do you, personally, prioritize which ones to go after? 

Except the issue was not only prioritization. The problem was he gave them fucking work permits, completely overturning the purpose of immigration laws, that punish people for employing illegals! Yeah, that's how you reduce illegal immigration - by giving them hope to come, live heree and work without any kind of threat from DHS officials!