SPY HATS!

Seriously... who cares if he can read?

He's got three people closely connected with his campaign that are financially and personally close with Putin.

He throws out years of American policy and Republican rhetoric to replace it with carbon copies of Putin's policies (get rid of NATO, let Russia annex Ukraine, support Bashir al Assad).

Several former spies (including one CIA) have said, Putin recruited Trump. Trump is a Russian intelligence asset.

He has a private e-mail server exclusively communicating with one of Putin's closest confidants for months, with traffic spiking around key campaign events which mysteriously goes offline as soon as questions arise in Russia (as one analyst described it, the knee was hit in Russia and the foot kicked in Trump Tower). Days later a new Trump server appears and the first communication on the Internet is straight back to Russia.

Seriously, wouldn't it be BETTER to have a president (for life) who's a Russian agent who can't read than one who can? At least it causes some communication problems with his Russian masters and increases the likelihood he'll get tripped up.

What even happens to the US if a sitting president is found to be a Russian spy? Would he just declare martial law? Who knows, but I sure don't want to find out.

Why isn't CNN doing a bit on Trump's Putin connection through Alfa bank. The money he owes, the policies he's adopted right out of Putin's playbook, the advisors he's had with VERY tight ties to Putin (financially and socially), his own indebtedness to Russian financiers close to Putin (he's admitted as much himself, though he won't say how much money he's taken, he once described it as, "a lot".) At the same time he has a private e-mail server that seems like it was exclusively set up to communicate with Alfa Bank (owned, by the way by one of Putin's closest cronies). As if all THAT weren't enough, multiple former spies (CIA and other) have come forward to say that Trump is in fact considered an 'asset' by Russian intelligence.

Putin OWNS his ass. Might as well do a write-in for Putin if you check the box next to Trump's name in a week from now.

"Bothans (pronounced /'bɑθɪn/) were furry mammalian anthropoids, about 1.5 meters tall. Hailing from Bothawui and several colonies, Bothans differed in facial appearance and body structure with canine, feline, and equine features. They were known for being master politicians and spies, craving intrigue and subterfuge.

So... where are all the Bothans who died to get this information?

Whitewashing in Star Wars? For shame.

I agree with Oliver here, but I think he sorta missed an opportunity to talk about confirming exactly who our US Constitutional protections should apply to.

It has been all-to-common in the past decade-plus for people / bodies in our government to "justify" questionable actions by saying that they were performed on people who aren't US citizens. Detain and torture suspected (or *known*) terrorists indefinitely without trial? That's fine, they aren't citizens. Send drone strikes against people outside of US borders that we suspect may be aiding terrorists, even though collateral damage is likely? Meh, they aren't Americans. Spy on people, record and intercept their communications to the greatest extent possible without a warrant or probable cause? Never mind -- we're not doing it to our own citizens (even though we now know that even that justification is an outright lie).

It would be nice for the government to take a stand and state that ALL of the protections that are granted by our constitution and have made our country what it is should actually be considered universal and binding in terms of how our government interacts with ALL people, not just US citizens.

Freedom of speech, religion, press, assembly, fair trial, no unreasonable searches and seizures, etc. etc. Consistently and universally applied whenever the government has any interaction with any human being on the planet -- inside or outside of US soil, and whether that person is a US Citizen or not.

I suppose it would take a constitutional amendment to codify that. That would require 2/3 support in congress -- so I won't hold my breath. But here is where a president with true leadership could step up and say that whether there is an official amendment codifying that or not, every government office under his (or her) command should behave as though that was law. All the 3-letter agencies, the military, etc. I think that would get the ball rolling and make an amendment possible on down the line.

Our constitutional protections are arguably what made our country great. We have nothing to lose and everything to gain by proving that to the rest of the world by actually standing by the courage of our own convictions.

Ha! In high school my brother played "gotcha", a spy game, and his best trick was an altoids box with a battery, a mercury switch, and a buzzer. Pick it up, it starts buzzing loudly with a note inside that said "boom, this was a bomb, you're dead". Not something to do now, but in the 80's, that was LARP. It was simple, easy, and worked every time. You're nuts if you think it's difficult to build, it's ridiculously simple.

Guys, it's not a movie. Regular terrorists are lucky if they can rig a detonator to explode when they want it to. Mercury switches and all that crap are purely for spy thrillers.

Not much danger in moving the car, or at least not because you were moving the car.

I defer to your opinion as i'm only assessing, who bond is, from my childhood viewing of 007 films. Not at all from Flemings books which ive never read.

Also my favorite "Bond' film may be 1967 Casino Royale. That film was a hoot Although nothing like your typical Bond film. http://videosift.com/video/Best-Bond-film-ever-1967-Casino-Royale-trailer
I did however see 'The spy who loved me' about ten times, when it came out.

We have always been a gun violence culture up until the post WW2 era. Think frontier, wild west, duels, and mafia shootouts. We glorify violence everyday, we even give sickos who shoot up groups of people mass media coverage. For a person who wants to go out in a blaze of infamy, we are custom tailored to give them their last 15 minutes of 'fame'.

Again, we have a nebulous definition of what it takes to get on the watch list. I could be placed on it simply by stating something to the effect that "I support ISIS", even though I don't. Restricting people who manage to end up on a government list is the same as removing their right to a firearm after committing a felony offense, only you have removed every single bit of their right to a legal defense. There is no due process to being placed on a US watchlist, you get put on and fuck you if it was a mistake. Maybe they'll take you off later, who knows?

I am not going to defend a slippery slope argument on this, I don't have to. It's already happened in the years since 2001. The Patriot Act, meant to be a well intended set of rules to help us protect ourselves, has been perverted to lessen quite a few of our rights. Not only our rights, but other countries. We have violated their security, spied on their people and leaders, and we perform acts of war on their territories with impugnity. All because we lost two buildings and 2,996 people; a heinous act, but one our government exploited to put us into 2 wars with a death toll to people who may not even be our enemies that dwarf our loss. In short, we fucking have the slippery slope process down to a SCIENCE.

It seems really strange from an outside perspective. It isn't all that long ago - at least in my memory - when certain types of American were almost celebrating that they were willing to torture and maim people if they 'got their answers'. Even if some of those people were innocent, it was an acceptable price to pay.

When Ed Snowden came out and told us that our governments were spying on us, trawling through our data and tracking our entire history online and in reality through surveillance cameras. The majority of America was against Snowden (in all the polls I've seen) - in any other day he would have been given the Nobel peace prize and celebrated as an all-time hero that stood up to impossible odds just to give the human race full disclosure on their 'freedom'. That's the stuff of legend, the stuff that people should be talking about in 1000 years time like we talk about Genghis Khan or something. Instead he was treated like a traitor and forced to live in exile in Russia because it was the only country that wouldn't hand him over to the torturing, controlling, law-breaking bastards he'd just made to look very stupid..... Gee, I wonder why he didn't want to face "criminal proceedings"? Nothing to hide, nothing to fear - except if you cross the wrong people?

Not too long ago freedom WAS an acceptable sacrifice for security.

When a lunatic got hold of an automatic rifle, killed 50 people and injured another 50, the prevailing argument seems to be "Hey, hey, let's not over react here, we can't sacrifice our freedom because of one terrorist act."

The only difference in this situation is that it isn't about "other people's" freedom and "my security" any more. It is about "my" freedom and "other people's" security.

You probably weren't one of those people, but I think it's fair to preface my comment with that contradiction.

I accept you have a decent point in this case; people shouldn't lose their freedom because the FBI made a mistake. But that's not the question being asked, let's talk about the general case rather than this specific one. The question is does legislation exist that will make mass shootings less common in the US? And I think the answer is yes, but I also think that culture is the biggest factor, not just access to guns.

As an example of what I mean - what if there were legislation that limited his ability to get hold of the weapon, registered that he had expressed an interest with the FBI who could then investigate based on his history? And maybe some other legislation could make it harder in general for him to just go and borrow one of his friends', or steal one from a local lax firing range, or whatever other illegal means exist to get hold of one.... perhaps because there were less in circulation, or those that were in circulation were more stringently secured?

At the end of the day it might not stop him getting hold of one, but it might make it harder and he might have second thoughts or make a mistake and be caught if it were harder. Hell, at least then the families of the dead would be able to say that a CRIME was committed when this fucking lunatic who had been under investigation was allowed to get access to a weapon that could so easily kill or maim a hundred people.

I think article linked below on reading level is important to note in regards to this.
https://contently.com/strategist/2015/01/28/this-surprising-reading-level-analysis-will-change-the-way-you-write/ By keeping his language simple, he is able to reach, and have his keywords understood by a larger American audience. Of course understanding speech and reading are slightly different, but it's word choice still becomes important.

As this video notes. Trump is a salesman. And he's selling his crap expertly well. He circumvents the answer with babble that never actually answers the question. He never answered if it's un-American to have a religious litmus test to allow people to visit the US, he just says we have a problem, and implicates all the people of one faith in that, which ISIL itself said sometime ago was their goal, to turn the world against all of Islam to make it easier to recruit and radicalize more people... which is off topic. He doesn't address the point of the question, he sort of skirts it and generalizes it into his overall framework. One could argue that yes, saying there's a problem is itself an answer to the question, but it isn't a direct answer.

I don't know as if he's intentionally talking at that low a level though, or if he's just his style period.

It'd also be interesting to see if Hitler's run-up to being elected, if he used similar style. That is if he used a simple style to appeal to the masses. Not just Hitler, but other leaders of his ilk. I choose Hitler here as more an example of an elected leader gone wrong, that had mass appeal to his people, but later regretted to the point of shame.

Even if Britt's famed Warning Signs of Fascism isn't fully accurate by all scholars (and I'm aware he doesn't actually have academic scholarship) many do come close. I think most can agree that it requires at least Extreme Nationalism, warmongering, a loss of civil liberties and rights (Patriot Act, wanting to increase the spy power of the NSA, etc), corporatism a merger of the state and corporate power, racism (Britt's warning signs says sexism, but I think racism is more apt and I don't think what people normally think about sexism applies, though we need more of a racism slash something, to note those who "sin" differently than others, such as the gays).

That's not "spying", it's just embedding. It's still bullshit, but if I made a product and wanted to make sure I could tell if something was created with that product in the future, I could see doing this for various reasons myself.

That said, I've never known other people to be me, (haha), and this can easily be exploited to hurt/control/infringe on people (police scanning printed protest/propaganda to find the source, etc)

Yeah he embarrasses her with his stupidity, as he embarrasses me. So fake news picks a naive college student to debate, and when she starts putting her thoughts together to make a point he interrupts her like the condescending asshole that he is.

I'm sorry, but you wouldn't need the top 1% to pay nowhere near 90% in taxes to cover education. Just a made up number to make her look stupid as she didn't know how to answer it.

With a higher percent of more educated people, they as a whole would be making more money to contribute to the tax fund, increasing revenue.

And really Neil, rich people would leave the honey hole because we taxed them more? How about we start taxing and putting tariffs on companies that go into these third world countries for cheap labor to export products back here. Fuck em if they want to leave, they will no longer be "hoarding" the money and it would allow other companies to fill the void and thrive.

And her point that was so rudely interrupted was spot on, "There is a population that is doing nothing to contribute to the progression of society"

And lastly, these are all moot points if we just quit dumping all our money into the military, and it's not even going to benefit our veterans, but to the select few who own these government contracts. Why do they NEVER Talk about that? Why do we have to continuously be engaged in some kind of war? Oh, that's right to convince people we need a bigger military budget, more spying...blah blah blah...unpatriotic if you don't agree...blah blah...scare people into some kind of threat..

I'm sorry this particular girl wasn't ready for this debate, she probably had a speech prepared they told her she could give.

Spy Who Loved Me was my favorite bond film ever. After watching this i have mad love for Richard Kiel.