Your video, Closet Space, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

I found one thing extremely interesting in *2* separate interviews with Assange when he was asked whether or not there was any Russian involvement -- including the one with Hannity shown early in the video here:

Hannity: Did Russia give you this information? Or anyone associated with Russia?
Assange: Our source is not a state party.

Very close to verbatim that exchange appeared in a print interview a week or two ago. The resulting headlines: "Assange denies Russian Involvement in the Leaks", etc.

But look at that answer. It is very carefully worded, but it doesn't directly answer the question. "Our source is not a state party" doesn't rule out that the source is Russian. It sort of rules out a source with known associations with the government (of Russia or anywhere else), but it could be an independent / private individual at face value that got the information from state parties.

I find it odd that nobody (as far as I've seen) has brought up that carefully worded answer, when it stuck out like a sore thumb to me the first time I saw it in print.


That being said, I 100% agree with Greenwald when he suggests that accusations are not proof. And the CIA and other agencies have a massive track record of shady dealings done in the name of "national security", as defined by whoever is in charge. Taking them at their word seems pretty hopelessly naive at this point.


But beyond all of that, I honestly don't care who did the hacking and what their motivations were. The government seems happy to record and analyze everything we say and do, and to claim that people like Edward Snowden are traitors for simply telling us about it. Well, get used to some of your own goddamn medicine. If you are running for public office, you should expect that your rights to privacy are going to be challenged much more strongly than those of Joe Average. You're a person of interest -- for pretty legitimate reasons.

Assume that absolutely everything you've ever said on the record (and lots OFF the record) is going to be gone over with a fine-toothed comb. If you've got any skeletons in your closet, expect that there is a good chance they will get exposed. And probably at the worst possible time.

What should both parties take away from this? Gee, it might be a good idea to choose candidates that can stand up to at least a basic level of scrutiny. Backing slimy weasels that look great and charismatic after a quick once-over might come back to bite you in the ass.

I realized one day that cigarettes were interfering with how many bong hits I could take....I quit in that moment and never had another.

This passive aggressive coercion is quite distasteful to me. I hate people who do this, pretend the smoke is bothering them when in reality it's the fact that someone is smoking that bothers them....not the smoke. What's hilarious is to see those kinds of people try to publicly shame a cigarette smoker with their fake coughing and death stares, then I'll spark a cigar and they'll not say a word or even tell me it smells great.
I used to ask people who complain about cigarettes (usually a fake health complaint) if they drive...then I would offer to sit in a closet smoking if they sit in their car with a hose from the tailpipe going in the window and see who cracks first. No one ever took me up on the challenge.

I don't care about the timing, political motivation, etc. etc. of this discovery of new emails. I think only 2 things matter:

1) Are they real / legitimate. But with all of the previous leaks, I never saw the Clinton camp trying to suggest that anything was fabricated. Taking stuff out of context to make it appear worse than what it arguably is doesn't count count as "fabricated". As much as I dislike Clinton, I have to give her credit for dealing with the out of context stuff so far in the proper way -- fill in the context so that people can make up their own minds (like some of the Wall Street speech excerpts, "public and private position", etc.).

2) Do they show anything actually criminal, even it is relatively minor. Capone went down for tax evasion, because that was the only thing they could successfully and concretely pin on him. And yet justice was served by going forward with that.

IF (and it remains a big if) these new emails end up meeting both of those criteria, I have absolutely zero sympathy for the whining that already has and will continue to erupt from the Democrat party.

Being a candidate in a presidential election paints a giant target on you and guarantees that your past is going to be under the microscope. If you've got skeletons in your closet, there is a very high chance for them to be discovered. Trump has had a well-deserved taste of that already -- maybe it is Clinton's turn now.

Yeah, Trump is a complete tool. Guilty of all the stuff Maher said about him. Given that kind of "competition", what would the Democrats have to do to get those 20 states to flip their direction?

I can take a stab that that one, Bill -- he's sitting right next to you. If the Democrats had chosen Sanders as their candidate, I guarantee that at least some of those states would have gone blue on election day.

Firm, registered Democrats? They'd all happily vote for Bernie in the general, just like they will vote for Hillary.

Undecideds, moderates, and young people? Drastically more likely to vote for Bernie than Hillary. A huge segment of the voting population is disgusted with the two major choices, and would happily flock to a candidate that has a proven track record of honesty and integrity, instead of the dog and pony show that we have now.

Firm, die-hard Republicans? Maher is right; there is a certain percentage of people that would never vote Democrat. But, I don't think that number is above 50% of the population even in the reddest of red states. But even for many of those people that are completely dissatisfied by Trump, from their perspective Hillary is NOT a better option.


Let's consider how all the arguments against Trump play to that specific audience: (note that the responses are what *they* think, not necessarily what *I* think)

Trump is a womanizer / misogynist / predator. Yeah, and Clinton is married to a worse one who disgraced the Presidency while he was in office.

Trump lies constantly. As opposed to the Clintons, who would never lie. For example, "I did not have sexual relations with that woman" (Bill), "it depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is" (Bill), and "I am confident that I never sent nor received any information that was classified at the time" (Hillary).

Trump has no experience with government and would make an incompetent president. What's worse: a crooked / corrupt Washington insider that knows how to game the system, or someone with no experience?

etc. etc.

Hillary goddamn Clinton is NOT going to be seen as a reasonable alternative to Trump to those people. No matter how much he goes off the rails. No matter what crazy, foul, contemptible shit he says or does. No matter how many skeletons you dig out of his closet. Why? Because they are convinced (reasonably or not) that the Clintons have done just as much questionable shit and more, they are perhaps just better at covering it up.

But if the Democrat candidate was Bernie Sanders, I'm sure a lot more of those hard-line Republicans would be way more tempted to vote blue in November.

@notarobot
But we had a nonshit sandwich candidate...Sanders. I'm still astonished that so many people voted for a toss up election with a horrifically disliked candidate over a statistical landslide victory with a revolutionary candidate lacking in closeted skeletons or innumerable examples of his dishonesty. I simply don't understand what they were thinking.

As usual you are confused, a secular country is not an atheist country. A secular state is a concept of secularism, whereby a state is or purports to be officially neutral in matters of religion, supporting neither religion NOR IRRELIGION. We have atheist politicians. https://www.google.com/#q=list+of+atheist+politicians. I'm sure many more are closeted or deists or not as well known. The mayor of the major city I live in is atheist. The United States is the model of a secular nation in that we invented the idea of a separation between church and state. Secular doesn't mean religious people can't hold office. Also, secularism doesn't mean that the wall between church and state doesn't require constant vigilance to uphold.

The problem here is this: IS is carrying out (or inspiring) these attacks in order to incite hate. They are hoping the weak-minded closet-racists will react without second-though against ALL Muslims, thus creating an ACTUAL reason for the moderate Muslims(there are a lot of them) to join the fight thus upsetting the balance and giving IS more power. The best way to fight back is to not fall for this BS that all Muslims are out to get you.

What have you offered? Stats but no argument?

I mean really. Are you just baiting, Bobtroll33, or do you really have a Klan robe in the back of your closet somewhere?

NRA isn't quiet about it. It's a matter of which media you look at. In some media, it's ubiquitous. In other media, crickets.
Reading all sorts of media, you get to see the insularity of segments of society... each with its own concerns, and each largely ignorant of the other.

Improper securing is probably the big one. The thing I hear the most of is people handling/cleaning an 'unloaded' gun and not realizing they have a chambered round. This is why many public ranges or shooting events require a chamber flag. Usually, the owner will handle a firearm a good amount after shooting - and odds are they're the one that gets burned.

My impression is that kids get hurt messing with the prototypical 'night stand gun' or 'closet gun' - stuff parents buy for home protection, shove in a drawer, and forget about. Something that would be easily fixed with one of these : http://www.cabelas.com/product/SENTRY-DIGITAL-PISTOL-SAFE/1955170.uts?productVariantId=4096762&WT.tsrc=PPC

-scheherazade

18 USC 922 :
- Is a danger to himself or others
- Lacks mental capacity to contract or manage his own affairs
- Is found insane by a court in a criminal case
- Is found incompetent to stand trial, or not guilty by lack of mental responsibility pursuant to articles 50a [blah blah blah]

The second line item is what applies to persons assigned a fiduciary due to a failure to manage their financial affairs (which is often elderly people).
This is why gun rights groups are crying about new measures to link medicare to the background check system.

But generally, yes, you have to do something to demonstrate that you're mental, in order to be found mental.

Gun registration is not required to know who has guns. The background check tells LEO which dealer ran it and about who. They go to the dealer and acquire the sale forms (retained at dealer by law) regarding that person.

The purpose of registration is not to know who has guns - that part is already known. Registration makes it a legal requirement to demonstrate custody. If you can't present a registered firearm, you're a criminal. Hence you have no ability to hide a registered firearm, because the act of hiding it sends you to jail. A large subset of gun owners have firearms strictly for "SHTF" (shit hits the fan). They squirrel them away with some food, and have them 'just in case' the world goes tits up. That's the segment of gun owners that drive against gun registration. They don't want their emergency kit confiscated by the government during a disaster (like happened during Katrina), and they don't want to go to jail for hiding it either.

In general, personally, I have nothing against training.
Ironically, AFAIK, LEO are the biggest offenders when it comes to accidental discharge (which makes sense, given that they point guns at people more often than regular folk, so their accidents are deadlier.).
(Police also commit [non-police-work-related] murder at a rate 8 x that of the general population.)
Training is an easy low hanging fruit to grab on to when looking for 'something to do [legislatively]', but in practice it isn't as significant as people would imagine. People that like to shoot will be well practiced, and are overall safe. Folks that bury their guns in a closet for emergencies won't be well practiced, but won't normally be in a position of opportunity to make mistakes.
Folks that legally concealed carry (hence are managing a firearm throughout the day) require a license that requires training in order to acquire. Granted, it's really not a hard test. It's driver's ed level proficiency. Just enough so you know which end to point where, you know what the controls do, and can hit a target inside of a required accuracy.
I honestly don't know the most common causes of accidental discharge - but I would assume that most are gonna be split between flubbing it with a holster (butter fingers), or forgetting to eject a chambered round after removing a magazine (derping out).

-scheherazade

Yeah, I'll just quote this...

"Truman did not cower at the mention of the word “socialism,” which in those days was distinguished in the minds of most Americans from Soviet Stalinism, with which the president—a mean cold warrior—was wrangling.

Nor did Truman, who counted among his essential allies trade unionists like David Dubinsky, Jacob Potofsky and Walter Reuther, all of whom had been connected with socialist causes and in many cases the Socialist Party of Eugene V. Debs and Norman Thomas, rave about the evils of social democracy.

Rather, he joked that “Out of the great progress of this country, out of our great advances in achieving a better life for all, out of our rise to world leadership, the Republican leaders have learned nothing. Confronted by the great record of this country, and the tremendous promise of its future, all they do is croak, ‘socialism.’”"

You are like a small child afraid of the monster in the closet when, in reality, there is nothing there. Do public servants like police/fire brigade etc draw pensions on retirement? That's socialism. Capitalism says that they are at the end of their useful life, and if they haven't saved for their retirement, fuck em.

And let's not even get started on christianity (love they brother and money is the root of all evil), damn Jesus and his socialist bullshit... X D

It is in some ways far more terrifying to have these type of individuals around and even the REMOTE possibility that they will implement any of their "solutions", rather than the threat ISIS poses to us.

For example, the one individual who thought it was getting to the point (which is absolutely mind-blowing since this person has a better chance of knowing a victim of one of the many gun-massacre assholes, rather than any ISIS encounter) were we needed to re-use the VERY badly implemented and all-around bad idea internment of Japanese U.S. Citizens during WWII. But, like Trump and all of his gaffs and mistakes, he's doubling down and telling everyone that this is definitely something that needs to be looked at.

I'm actually amazed these people can walk through their house at night while it's dark! The amount of phobia and absolute paranoia is amazing. It is RAMPANT amongst the republican candidates; you simply don't hear the same "type" of rhetoric from the left (not yet, anyway).

ISIS is winning without EVER setting a foot on U.S. soil and even if they HAVE, they STILL have achieved more in some ways than Al Queda did. Al Queda was only the boogyman in the closet after 9/11 (except to those of us paying attention and knew damn well who it was on that day because they already tried it once) was carried out and time went by (after all it needed to be "confirmed"; THEN they were terrifying...).

ISIS could commit to ONE crime and the amount of absolute hysteria on our news cycle and amongst our own people will probably make sure we see to it that an NEW federal organization is created to protect whatever they target; if they target a Hostess factory, we'll have a federal agency in one year to protect our precious and vital Twinkies from the harm that may come to them...

This is the craziness John is speaking of. I have NO idea what to do to make Americans dial it down to five rather than eleven for every negative event to happen, including the way they think they need to react to said event.

Hopefully, we have leaders that can react to these events in a much more balanced approach (like, well, Obama).

I've been reading these news reports closely.

I am afraid that the people resigning aren't "core" Mormons, with temple recommends. I am afraid they are people who have already drifted away from the church and now they are making a political statement that isn't going to make a difference to the church leadership.

One person was quoted, in another news report I read, that they hadn't gone to church in 17 years and they were resigning today.

Having said that -- I am 100% convinced that the Mormon Church will eventually allow gay people full membership. Because, even if few of these resigning are "core" members of the church, more and more gay kids are coming out of the closet. And as they become more visible, as they are more and more accepted as human beings "made in God's image", it will be harder and harder for parents' to choose their church over their children.

And there is a mechanism for change in the church -- hence full membership for blacks when it became impossible to continue the overt 1800's racism of the originators.

It's coming for the Mormons. When loads more people quit and take their 10% tithing with them... well, the Mormons are excellent business people. They aren't going to cut themselves off from their revenue stream.

I say it will be within 30 years. Maybe even sooner.

Yeah, what the hell is that all about? What time are they starting these days - noon? Ring my doorbell before dinner and you get nada. And what happened to Hallowe'en being scary ... if you want to dress up your kids in cute costumes and parade them in front of judges / closet pedophiles, then enter them in Universal Royalty beauty pageants and stop screwing it up for the rest of us who like the tradition of witches, ghosts, goblins and zombies. Would have been pretty easy to show Goose with a good spinal compression fracture and bone sticking out of his neck or a cracked skull or something. Sheesh.