Put your Obama conspiracy comments that don’t relate to the current articles here if there is still any interest in doing so. This thread will close in two weeks.
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- Bullspotting: Finding Facts in the Age of Misinformation
- Chasing Phantoms: Reality, Imagination, and Homeland Security Since 9/11
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- Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free
- Is Barack Obama's Birth Certificate a Fraud?
- One Electorate Under God?: A Dialogue on Religion and American Politics (Pew Forum Dialogues on Religion & Public Life)
- Our Friend Barry: Classmates' Recollections of Barack Obama and Punahou School
- Religion and the Racist Right: The Origins of the Christian Identity Movement
- The Authoritarians
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- The Citizenship Debates: A Reader
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- The New Hate: A History of Fear and Loathing on the Populist Right
- The Paranoid Style in American Politics
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I had to clear all my cookies, and when I went to WND, still looking for a link to that Zullo press conference, I tried to comment just for the heck of it, and I had to login, which I did through Facebook. My comment posted, as from DrConspiracy with my photo. I just had to try to correct the idiot who said that you never get a certificate of live birth if you’re born in a hospital.
Huh. I might have to give that a shot.
FYI, excellent new article on Russia’s kleptocracy and Trump’s connections there:
http://www.the-american-interest.com/2016/12/19/the-curious-world-of-donald-trumps-private-russian-connections/
Orly Taitz’s foe has been elected to the US Senate from California, Kamala Harris.
Good morning, all. I’m back and just about recovered from an emergency gall bladder operation and feeling absolutely fabulous, thank you very much. And, how are ya’ll doing?
I know I missed at least one question which was the date that I was questioned about the blue dress. I don’t recall exactly when this was other than it was in the mid-1990’s and that both Mike Volin and Sharon Rondeau had possession of the dress and that we were at Pablo Escobar’s old Montura Ranch house in Clewiston, Florida.
Gaze upon the field where the amount of f#cks anyone gives grow, and see that it is barren.
Oh, dear. You thought I was looking for sympathy. No. It’s just for the record. *wiping tears* Thanks for the laugh though!
Mid 90s. Wow hahaha more made up nonsense by NRO.
Monica Lewinski was obviously there as well as the blue dress…
You may have missed the rest of Nancy’s story. She is Monica Lewinsky. The woman we know as Monica Lewinsky is an impersonator who filled in when Nancy refused to testify.
And she’s sticking with it.
Oh good. I was worried I was being too crazy.
Hi, Nancy.
Unlike those of somewhat cranky disposition, I’m glad your health has improved.
We are at the end of a year, the end of an era, and the end of an error.
This blog will go silent in about a month. When it does, I hope you will find something really positive and healthy to do with your time.
I wish you and everyone here a Merry Christmas, and a blessed and happy 2017.
If you’re worried that you might be a bit too crazy, you probably aren’t.
On the other hand, I just spoke on the phone with a guy who sounded as if he might be delusional. He took pains to assure me that he isn’t.
I’m withholding judgment.
Crazy people need love too. Merry Christmas!
Glad the surgery was a success. I hope it was a scope job since the recovery time is much shorter. I never had my gall bladder but my son did. I know that they can cause a lot of pain.
Happy holidays to you and your family. I
Yes, they do!
I don’t know and I don’t wanna know. I told the Doc when he came to the room to explain what he was going to do, “You’re the doctor. You know what you need to do. That’s all I need to know.”
He left with a smile.
Immediately I was given gas and taken into the operating room. I came out with four inch long holes in my belly.
That’s all I know.
I did get to eat 12 Percocet each day for about a week.
😆 Happy Holidays to you and yours as well!
It sounds like you were fortunate to catch it when you did. With four incisions you undoubtedly had what is called a laparoscopic cholecystectomy. It’s less invasive than an open cholecystectomy, which involves one large incision and would have required a hospital stay of 2-3 days. And you got to go home before Christmas!
“Open cholecystectomy.” Yeah, whatever that is, I’m glad I didn’t have it, too. 😆 Sounds wicked!
Excellent, indeed. Thanks very much for mentioning it I’d seen some mentions of his iffy Russian connections, but most were just vague rumors.
A pity that that didn’t come out a few months ago 🙁
Yeah, birtherism is over.
We’re just the last people to turn out the lights.
Which will happen in less than a month now.
Wow! Birther commentary at my local newspaper:
http://www.greenvilleonline.com/story/opinion/contributors/2016/12/21/commentary-russia-love/95620284/
As we approach the end of Obama Conspiracy Theories, I’d like to suggest that Doc should begin a thread where we can nominate our choices for the most ridiculous birther theories of the past eight years. The competition will be stiff!
My vote would be for the guy who thinks Obama’s dad is that German STASI officer. Short of going into Lizard people and Secret mars missions, I think that was the stupidest of all.
Nancy owens’ delusional rant come second.
Does anyone else remember being taught in school that a natural born citizen needs two citizen parents? (just kidding)
http://www.newstatesman.com/science-tech/internet/2016/12/movie-doesn-t-exist-and-redditors-who-think-it-does
Fascinating article, especially when you consider the near-impossibility of all traces of a film disappearing. Even if a film could be recalled, how would they have managed to scrub every movie theater listing in old newspapers?
I remember that about 20 years ago Disney recalled a laserdisc of “The Best of Roger Rabbit.” They claimed that the discs were defective, but quite a few people got their hands on copies before the recall could be completed. Supposedly the real reason for the recall was that some Disney animator slipped something naughty into the animation. I know that it’s not a false memory because I have a copy!
As I read it I thought I remembered a Sinbad movie where he was a genie but that must have been in a parallel universe.
Mailbag:
Name: Putin Didit
Email: fakenews@msm.gov
Comments: Are you serious? What are you paid by these communists to actually defend the worst president of all time. I’m going to assume you support the Clinton Pedophile Foundation as well.
“Maricopa County Sheriff-Elect Penzone Brings in New Leaders for Ethics-Challenged Agency”
http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/maricopa-county-sheriff-elect-penzone-brings-in-new-leaders-for-ethics-challenged-agency-8922768
Elsewhere, Sheridan’s retirement from the MCSO was announced.
Good riddance.
Am I the only one here who selfishly wants Doc to continue?
Doc wrote “I decided against a new blogging topic because I’m biased.”
When I want to come to a place of sanity, no matter the topic, I travel here for Doc and the rest of you.
I am about to sit Shiva and I’m not even Jewish.
I remember the story, but a frame by frame review of Jessica Rabbit spinning away from the car didn’t show anything I could find. Perhaps my copy had been sanitized.
—-
Donna, I feel the same way!
Doc, don’t leave us here on our own!
J.D. Sue: Donna, I feel the same way! Doc, don’t leave us here on our own!
I feel as though I have friends here. Since Doc wrote on the 12th, “As of this writing the trumpconspiracy.org domain is available1 and I’m not grabbing it”, I began and erased several posts.
I did not want to appear selfish …. I wanted to hear from the rest of you …. and finally, today, I garnered the courage to post a few words to express my feeling of loss.
Where do we go from here? Doc has brilliantly provided us with the connective tissue to stay together.
Thank you, Doc, does not begin to express our gratitude.
Real swamp-draining going on over there.
He’s been a great guy. If he wants some time off from all this, I’ll respect that. Ain’t gonna like it, but I can respect it.
That’s Rick Hyatt. He says the guy’s his own dad, too.
Yesterday I was working on a Habitat for Humanity house in Spartanburg. Next door to the construction site was another house with a penned-up German Shepherd dog. The dog barked, and barked. He growled. He ran up and down in his pen.
The dog made a lot of noise, and was a little irritating, but nothing came of it. All of his barking was of no effect. I couldn’t help thinking about the birthers I encounter in email and on other forums.
Less than a month before the blog goes quiet. I’ve been doing some blogging about driving an electric vehicle and I’ll see where that goes.
It is now possible to access this site through the secure HTTP protocol, as in:
https://www.obamaconspiracy.org
Rambling technical data:
I had no idea this worked. I was looking at the file directory for the site and I found a strange file, in fact 5 of them. They were all named with a random string of letters and numbers (like a GUID) with a .txt extension. The content of the file was 53 characters, a random string followed by “comodoca.com.” I turns out that a number of my web sites had the same files, and even some “web directories” that don’t have sites had them.
Had I been hacked? Some research led to the answer that cPanel has some new AutoSSL feature, and it creates these files as part of some validation thingy. So I wasn’t hacked; however, I hadn’t turned on AutoSSL either. I tried https, and it worked. So that’s interesting, and a step forward.
Meet the man who helped take down Joe Arpaio: Manuel de Jesús Ortega Melendres
http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/phoenix/2016/12/26/phoenix-arrest-manuel-melendres-joe-arpaio-profiling-lawsuit/95041534/
So, when this site goes dark, are you gonna disable comments? Honestly, that’ll be the only way to preserve it for posterity, if you ask me. Otherwise it’ll look like the comments section at BR or Wobik.
—
I first came to this site just to reference the debunking guide. I stayed because this place is something very special. I am grateful for what I have learned here. And it is the only blog I ever post to. It’s clean. It’s intelligent. Amazingly interesting people gather here from all over the country and the world. I will deeply miss this blog. I hope Doc’s electric vehicle blog will have an open thread.
It is such dark irony that, in studying the birthersphere over these last years, we’ve been learning about and preparing for the madness we will be living with in the years to follow. My words cannot capture the grief of it.
The blog is set to disable comments automatically on every article after weeks. So unless an article is added, comments would be all disabled by February 3.
The laserdisc recall didn’t have anything to do with Jessica Rabbit.
This disc was recalled by Disney when it came to their attention that the animators had included some “offensive” frames in the third cartoon, “Trail Mix-Up”. During the scene in which Roger Rabbit chases Baby Herman through a sawmill, he runs past a poster hanging on the wall. When played at normal speed, this cannot even be seen. However, when played with frame advance, the poster can be seen fairly clearly. It shows a buxom woman in a bikini, straddling a large saw blade in a suggestive pose, with the words “Rigid Tools” at the top. The material in question consists of about a half dozen frames. The most noticeable example is frame 32478, when the poster can be seen clearly. Supposedly, the “official” reason given for the recall was “poor color transfer”.
http://www.lddb.com/laserdisc/06928/5259-CS/Best-of-Roger-Rabbit-(1996)
As I recall, there was never a replacement issued. Laserdiscs were dying out with the introduction of DVD.
I don’t remember if this has been mentioned before, but Walter Fitzpatrick was released from prison on 10/23/16.
I’ve always enjoyed Martha Trowbridge’s ridiculous theory that Obama is actually Bari Shabazz and that his father was Malcolm X.
Of course, “Bari Shabazz” was born in Jamaica in 1959 as Barrington Hugh Smith and was in Hawaii because he was stationed there with the U.S. Marines. He had his name legally changed while he was a Marine. He also was four inches shorter than Obama.
As I recall, Apuzzo gave some credence to the Shabazz story.
Ok, my head is as clear as it’s been in years thanks to the surgery. Can anybody tell me it the Douglas Vogt case is still open? For that matter, any case relating to the BC’s?
It is not.
http://www.obamaconspiracy.org/2014/05/paige-and-vogt-fail-at-the-supreme-court/
Thanks. Let’s hope that Mr. Fitzpatrick will be a productive member of society.
I’m not very optimistic about that, given that he was not exactly a model prisoner. He was eligible for parole after one year but they kept him locked up for 2 1/2 years.
He was still whining to Sharon Rondeau about his treatment in prison six months ago.
McInnish (the Alabama Case) is long gone too. I am not aware of any birther lawsuit still active.
After a long gap, I’ve updated the quote of the day, to something Barack Obama said. I added a hyperlink to his longer remarks at Rutgers University this past May. Then I realized that that link will go bad in January. Whitehouse.gov changes with the new president, and the old goes away. Obama’s birth certificate won’t be there anymore, come January 20.
My job before then is to get all the whitehouse.gov links here pointing to archived copies.
—–
It’s a great quote.
Here’s more, from the same speech:
“I’m fond of quoting Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” (Applause.) It bends towards justice. I believe that. But I also believe that the arc of our nation, the arc of the world does not bend towards justice, or freedom, or equality, or prosperity on its own. It depends on us, on the choices we make, particularly at certain inflection points in history; particularly when big changes are happening and everything seems up for grabs.”
<"“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” (Applause.) It bends towards justice. I believe that. But I also believe that the arc of our nation, the arc of the world does not bend towards justice, or freedom, or equality, or prosperity on its own. It depends on us, on the choices we make, particularly at certain inflection points in history; particularly when big changes are happening and everything seems up for grabs"
The trouble with that is that justice is an term that is just to prevent justice.
there is no justice that would cover all situations.
And as we are all deciding things for our own benefit then justice is always what we think is the best thing for us!
Is it justice that information is withheld to protect possible wrong doing to protect the wrong doer or is it justice to produce the information to punish the wrong doer?
So, the above quote is basically meaningless, is it not?
remember that an arc has two ends so which direction of the arc is being referred to in the statement. And what is the other end pointing to, as it the arc is long enough they both point to the same thing
There is no evidence that any information is being withheld, as there no evidence of wrongdoing.
It is (among other things) an injustice to falsely accuse others.
That link to an old article Brian Reilly commented on got me started on a walk down memory lane. Found this gem:
http://www.obamaconspiracy.org/2012/03/help-us-vladimir-putin-youre-our-only-hope/
Another prescient article:
http://www.obamaconspiracy.org/2012/03/article-ii-super-pac-plans-to-pressure-electors/
You know how it is. ALL them black folks look alike.
May they rest in pieces, all the dozens or hundreds of them.
Enough to fill a decent-sized little cemetery.
This is a candidate for the dumbest birther comment ever:
“I HOPE TRUMP IMPEACHES OBAMA WHEN HE TAKES OFFICE!!!”
— Judy Sephus
— Comment on YouTube
Yep that was funny. She thought that the peaceful normal transition from one president to the other = impeachment. I had another birther telling me that you could impeach Obama after he left office and that impeachment would be a magic reset button.
How would you get withheld information when you do not know it was withheld and the files are closed to you.
Kind of like the DNC’s treatment of Sanders, I quess
Not to mention that the power of impeachment rests with Congress, not with the president.
Somebody on Facebook wanted Trump to fire Loretta Lynch when he takes office. I patiently explained that cabinet members leave office when the president who appointed them leaves office, unless the new president asks them to stay.
You’re pissing your Depends in the wind. Wake up and realize that. Every second you spend here is wasted. You will convince no one. Not a single person here, is going to just magically agree with your senile, moronic arguments, “what ifs” and “what abouts”. The matter is settled. Its over. Dead. Done. Kaput. Feel free to join it, because 2016 ain’t over yet!
Let me add to that by updating the status of each and every claim that trader jack has made, or could possibly make at any time in the future.
Every single birther claim ever made over the past 8 years – and there have been literally hundreds of them – has been shown to be total bullsh*t.
Every.
Single.
#&*@($.
One.
Nor is there the SLIGHTEST reason to believe that if a birther comes up with yet another imaginative theory that no one has ever thought of over the past 8 years, that it will be any more grounded in reality than their hundreds of other feverish fantasies that have all been completely disproved.
And yet there are still morons like trader jack who insist on literally wasting their time and lives making transparently false claims that President Obama has not been eligible to serve as President.
And there are still morons like myself, who insist on wasting our time patiently trying to talk the slightest bit of sense to morons like trader jack.
That’s why – as much as I appreciate Dr C and this site – I for one will be glad when it joins BR and all the other sites and descends into the Great Archival Silence in a few weeks’ time.
This site has served a really and truly useful and patriotic purpose over the past 8 years. But it’s over. It’s time for this entire discussion to die.
Maybe then trader jack and all the rest of us can move on to doing something a bit more useful with the rest of our lives.
So I guess I just hit upon the “post-birther edition” nature of this open thread.
Maybe in the dying days of this blog we can talk about what worthwhile things some of us are going to do, now that we won’t have false claims and false arguments to make on this blog (in the case of birther participants) or now that we won’t have birthers to kick around any more (in the case of all the rest of us).
When there’s indicia of information being withheld; duh.
Your lies are just indicia that you lie. A lot.
Arpaio asks court to throw out civil contempt ruling
http://www.abc15.com/news/region-phoenix-metro/central-phoenix/maricopa-county-sheriff-joe-arpaio-asks-court-to-throw-out-civil-contempt-ruling
Sometmes prosecutors use grand juries for legal “fishing expeditions.” They don’t know what might be hidden but if they issue enough subpoenas and depose enough witnesses, someone just might reveal something significant.
So, to answer Trader Jack’s question: You go to a prosecuting attorney. You convince him or her that there is reasonable suspicion that information pertinent to an investigation is being withheld. The prosecutor issues subpoenas and if those subpoenaed refuse to comply, the prosecutor goes to a judge for a court order to compel release under threat of criminal contempt of court where, if convicted, the offender can be imprisoned until they comply.
This is what can happen when a government official ignores a court order and it could happen to HDOH officials if any judge had issued a court order for the Obama birth records.
From the Arpaio article: “A steady stream of negative news from the racial profiling lawsuit, including its $50 million in taxpayer costs and Arpaio’s criminal charge, is believed to have contributed to his defeat.
He lost the lawsuit that morphed into a contempt case after the sheriff and his aides were accused of ignoring court orders, including one that barred patrols targeting immigrants. The case also revealed flaws in Arpaio’s internal investigations, which a judge said had been manipulated to shield officials from accountability.
Arpaio, who could face up to six months in jail if convicted of the criminal charge, has acknowledged violating the immigration-patrol order but said it was unintentional. He has pleaded not guilty, and his trial is set for April 4.
[I never did get around to replying to Lupin on that “Free Speech” thread that’s closed now, so hopefully he’ll see it here.]
Dear Lupin: we essentially agree with one another (in favor of free speech, but with limits), and sadly, you are right that we in the US have failed our Constitution. But I remain respectfully unconvinced that European-style limits on free speech are any way for a free democracy to operate, or that the First Amendment is a failure because it grants too much freedom of speech – other than in terms of corporate money in elections, that is.
Our biggest betrayal of the Constitution isn’t the empty seat at the Supreme Court, nor is it the Electoral College. It is the Citizens United decision that equated money with speech and corporations with citizens. I’m not naive enough to believe in “letting corporations do anything they want, and trust the ‘free market’ to ‘self-regulate’ corporate behavior.” Far from it. As Justice Stevens said in his dissenting opinion on Citizens United, “a democracy cannot function effectively when its constituent members believe laws are being bought and sold.”
But while eliminating corporate campaign money-as-speech is essential, so is a First Amendment that tolerates the broad, nebulous thing called “hate” speech and focuses its regulatory powers on “dangerous” speech, meaning speech that significantly increases the probability of violence. Treasonous actions will get you executed, but treasonous thoughts or speech will not, and that is how it must be, if we are to be truly free people. I don’t know how much the ugly, untrue stories flying around the Web influenced the 2016 US election, but I don’t think anyone else knows, either. It’s a hard thing to measure, as is what exactly constitutes “hate” speech in the first place. Why is it against the law to deny the Holocaust, but perfectly OK to deny the Armenian Genocide? Where’s the evidence that countries with stricter hate speech laws experience less racism? Have you been to a European football game lately? A 2015 report by a pair of researchers out of Norway suggests that filtering out controversial speech *increases* the likelihood of violent extremism.
Amendments to the USC don’t happen easily, and that’s a problem in a situation like we face with Citizens United. But I’d still take that over an easily revised set of laws susceptible to the flavor of the day. We may have Citizens United, but in Europe you have simply eliminated the middle man, enlisting corporate entities (Facebook, Twitter, et al.) to monitor speech and excise the parts deemed unacceptable to polite society. So thanks to the European Commission’s “Code of Conduct” agreement, you’ve managed to privatize the censoring of what people are allowed to see on the Internet, and remember: what constitutes “illegal hate speech” has not been made clear. Of course, an authoritarian like Donald Trump (and here’s wishing you never have one of your own) would LOVE to define “illegal hate speech” for you.
Yes, it’s been a glorious 70 years of limiting speech in Europe (just as it’s been a glorious 110 years since the San Andreas Fault blew a gasket). But beware: if you can declare it against the law to deny the Holocaust, it’s a simple thing to outlaw a religion, or ban vocal disagreement with your nation’s foreign policy. Or perhaps, some day, *not* denying the Holocaust will get you thrown in the slammer. As long as the First Amendment is firmly in place, that will never happen in the USA, not even under President Trump.
With just a few days left til our demise, I couldn’t resist:
A Republican in a Balloon
A woman in a hot air balloon realized she was lost. She lowered her altitude and spotted a man in a boat below. She shouted to him, “Excuse me, can you help me? I promised a friend I would meet him an hour ago, but I don’t know where I am.”
The man consulted his portable GPS and replied, “You’re in a hot air balloon, approximately 30 feet above ground elevation of 2,346 feet above sea level. You are at 31 degrees, 14.97 minutes north latitude and 100 degrees, 49.09 minutes west longitude.
“She rolled her eyes and said, “You must be an Obama Democrat.”
“I am,” replied the man. “How did you know?”
“Well,” answered the balloonist, “everything you told me is technically correct. But I have no idea what to do with your information, and I’m still lost. Frankly, you’ve not been much help to me.”
The man smiled and responded, “You must be a Republican.”
“I am,” replied the balloonist. “How did you know?”
“Well,” said the man, “you don’t know where you are or where you are going. You’ve risen to where you are due to a large quantity of hot air. You made a promise you have no idea how to keep, and you expect me to solve your problem. You’re in exactly the same position you were in before we met, but somehow, now it’s my fault.”
Hopefully the last celebrity death of 2016.
http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article123862369.html
Dear Crustacean:
For some reason the quote function wouldn’t work for me. So I’m going to paraphrase some of what you wrote.
Yes, I think in fine we mostly agree and our areas of disagreements are more theoretical than practical.
That said, it seems to me that most of your argument is based on what MIGHT happen in Europe IF our laws curtailing some areas of free speech were to be abused. You may have a point, but it has NOT happened (yet). And while neither our laws nor their enforcement are necessarily perfect or consistent, they have worked sufficiently well IN THE PRACTICE so far for me to worry about them — barring a fascist victory, at which point it doesn’t matter what laws are on the books.
With respect to the failure of your first amendment, my analogy was with controlling pollution in the air or lead in the water; even if it doesn’t work perfectly, I see no downside in trying to do it: a little less lead is still better than a lot of lead.
We know for a fact now that unfettered Fake News has virtually brought your democratic experiment to an end. The consequences are still unclear, but the reality of the current disaster is not.
I know Fake News is not the SINGLE factor, but it certainly is ONE of them.
Therefore, when comparing your present failure to our still hypothetical failure, I have to conclude that, overall, our system has worked better — although I’ll admit it’s getting increasingly stressed these days.
As I wrote here before, IMHO, Fake news should be treated & prosecuted as fraud, pure and simple. If I were to claim in an ad that Cream XYZ will turn your pennies into pure gold coin if I rub them with it, I think I’d face some kind of prosecution. The pizzagate Fake News scandals ought to have been prosecuted as fraud from day 1, mercilessly and relentlessly. Something like this wouldn’t be tolerated here. And I think it is a good thing. You can’t get rid of all the lead in the water, perhaps, but any bit taken out helps.
If all the actual, undisputed garbage spewed about HRC in the media and online had been contained, controlled and prosecuted, we may not be where we are today.
You’re correct that one shouldn’t put much trust in Laws, for laws intended as a shield can easily be turned into swords. I remember that all the atrocities committed by Pinochet in Chile were found to be perfectly legal by the then-Chilean Supreme court. I also visited Spain under Franco, and saw what could be “legal” under a Fascist regime. So I’m under no illusion that our laws will save us if the fascists take power. But perhaps naively, I do think that their pragmatic nature help contain the fascist beast a little, or make their job harder while we still can — whereas you virtually unrolled the red carpet and invited them in.
Even today, it’s a bit mind-boggling to me to see your highest authorities willingly surrender control of your country to what is indisputably a a Russian mole/puppet, because it’s the proper thing to do between gentlemen, I suppose?
We went though this with Vichy when it seemed like a good idea at the time to surrender the country to the homegrown fascists (Laval and his ilk) and find a doddering yet charismatic old fool (Petain) to become a puppet head of state for the Germans. History has since proved that it wasn’t such a good idea after all.
I’m sad that you guys are repeating in a somewhat different form but not altogether dissimilar the same mistakes we made almost 80 years ago, partly because you’re hamstrung by a Constitution that hasn’t been updated in almost a century and the absence of a set of rules or laws (as opposed to “norms” between gentlemen) to stamp out the unconscionable.
Insofar as fake news is a for-profit enterprise, I think we can prosecute it as fraud. The purpose of the news story is to gain advertising revenue.
Carl is unhappy that the media isn’t covering the press conference.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YoYwgsb4rRQ
You would here, too: advertising is legally required to be truthful. But, if you’re not engaging in an exchange of goods or services for money or other consideration, it’s “caveat lector”: our system expects people to evaluate what they’re reading, and separate the wheat from the chaff.
It certainly sucks “bigly” that a lot of our citizens have blown off their obligation to inform themselves so they’re not suckered by fake news and other lies, and have inflicted the Conman-in-Chief on us, but allowing the government to regulate non-commercial speech is more likely to be a new problem than a solution.
I would argue that (a) in many (if not all) cases it is commercial speech (because of advertising) and (b) why don’t we worry about actual present problems instead of hypothetical future ones?
You once had something called the fairness doctrine which worked rather well and presumably didn’t violate your legal system. Why did you get rid of it?
Assuming he knows the falsehood of the nonsense he’s peddling, Carl deserves to be stripped of his ministerial credentials and thrown in jail for fraud.
If he doesn’t understand the falsehood of the nonsense he’s peddling, then he only deserves to be stripped of his ministerial credentials.
If it actually were/had been a real press conference, he might have had some grounds for complaint. As it was however, nothing but a dog and pony show with no audience participation. He really has no grounds for complaint. The media had already seen the act many times before and weren’t interested in a repeat performance since there was nothing of substance or new.
I’ll wait until after Inauguration Day because “the best is yet to come!”
The case has been reportedly dropped. Zullo’s claim of copying from another BC is false. The second Johanna BC is also forged. Nothing to see here, folks. Maybe if Zullo had been honest and responded to me, the real forger, it might have been different. Typical Mike.
No, no, no. Once Donald Trump is inaugurated the universe will shatter. Mark my words. Zullo is talking about that OTHER forger, not you.