JUburton wrote:

TenuredVulture wrote:Wasn't Lauer one of the most egregious MSM go easy on Trump TV people? Basically colluding with the Trump campaign by ineffectually covering all the serious problems with Trump, while going on and on about HRC's e-mails?

yes and i (and others I'm sure) exploded about it in here.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/what-in-t ... hief-forum

Report: Most Net Neutrality Comments Submitted to FCC Were Fraudulent

Washington, DC -- With the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) set to vote on changes to net neutrality regulations, a new report finds that a majority of the nearly 22 million comments on the issue submitted to the agency's website were done so fraudulently. In its analysis of publically available comments, DC-based Pew Research Center found that 57% utilized duplicate, temporary or disposable email addresses and many individual names appeared thousands of times. What's more, only 6% of all comments were unique, while 94% were submitted multiple times, in some cases hundreds of thousands of times. The seven most-submitted comments comprised 38% of all submissions during the four-month comment period and, often, thousands of comments were submitted at precisely the same moment. "When the Center analyzed the comments submitted during the 2014 net neutrality debate, about 450,000 comments were submitted to the FCC," said Aaron Smith, associate director of research at Pew. "This year's comment volume dwarfed that and our analysis highlights the relative ease with which online commenting systems allow groups and individuals to mount large-scale campaigns for public policies. Such efforts were difficult to orchestrate in the pre-internet era and even three years ago were not taking place at the scale it has this time."

The Crimson Cyclone wrote:

Monkeyboy wrote:He's pretty seriously mentally ill or senile or both. There's no question.

He's getting darker and darker, too. I used to think fears of him launching a nuke were kind of ridiculous. I still think it's highly unlikely that it would actually happen because of safeguards in place, but I no longer would scoff at the idea that he might try.

what safeguards? he essentially creates and order an the launch crews set them off

slugsrbad wrote:Talks that the Senators pushing for triggers in the tax bill want there to be cuts to discretionary spending, and not a roll back of taxes. So basically sequester part 2 with no military cuts.

pacino wrote:no, it's just him

he's president. there is no check. congress abdicated that responsibility long ago, same as they did for waging war.

thephan wrote:Eagerly awaiting the fact check on these statements What Republicans say when asked why their tax bill benefits the rich most of all.

Monkeyboy wrote:I used to think fears of him launching a nuke were kind of ridiculous. I still think it's highly unlikely that it would actually happen because of safeguards in place, but I no longer would scoff at the idea that he might try.

Trump can't start a nuclear war by himself, but there's not much stopping him
An expert on why it's easier for Trump to launch nuclear weapons than it should be.

Let me start with a simple but important question: Can the president unilaterally launch a nuclear strike?

Peter Feaver
No. But the wording of your question is very precise. Can he launch a strike “unilaterally”? No. He requires other people to carry out an order, so he can't just lean on a button and automatically the missiles fly. But he has the legal and political authority on his own to give an order that would cause other people to take steps which would result in a nuclear strike. That’s the system we currently have.

Sean Illing
That is somewhat encouraging, but you’re basically saying that even in the second scenario, the only thing that would stop a nuclear strike would be a few soldiers deciding to disobey an order from the president.

Peter Feaver
Well, they're trained to disobey illegal orders, so context matters. If they've woken up the president because they believe they're under attack, there's a presumption of legality if the president orders a strike. But if the president wakes them up in the middle of the night and orders a nuclear strike with no context, no crisis, no alert, then there's not a presumption that that order is legal. They would raise serious questions.

Sean Illing
Still, what you’re saying is that if a reckless or illegal strike was ordered, we’re relying upon the real-time judgment of a few generals to stop it?

Peter Feaver
Basically. The piece you're missing is that in the process of doing this, it would raise lots of alarms throughout the system, so the chief of staff of the White House, the national security adviser, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — they would all ask, “What’s happening? We just got this crazy order. What’s going on?”

If they were given reliable information that we’re really under attack, that something is really happening, then you would expect the order to be carried out. But if they’re saying, “We don’t know what’s going on. No one's alerted us," they would likely halt the process and get some clarity.

And remember that time constraints would not be severe under the second scenario, where the president wakes up the military. When the military wakes up the president, then time constraints are very short and there’s not a lot of time to check and double-check. But there's plenty of time in the other scenario, so that means implicitly a lot of people would have to go along with it.

Squire wrote:

thephan wrote:Eagerly awaiting the fact check on these statements What Republicans say when asked why their tax bill benefits the rich most of all.

Look, I'm a Republican and most of those are non-answers or nonsense answers. I do think that the chart noted by the spokesperson for Isaakson is a fair defense of the equality of the rate cuts themselves in isolation. However the itemized deduction (e.g. the SALT cap) losses all pound the middle class and don't affect the poor or the very rich (who was phased out anyway). The estate tax repeal is just a bald-faced giveaway to the richest of the rich and is completely unjustifiable.

You really can't cut federal "income" taxes and NOT have it benefit disproportionately the upper class. Romney was right when he noted that 47% pay no federal income tax. The only way to affect a true lower/middle class tax cut is through payroll taxes but the politics behind that are even more difficult because that tax is directly tied to Social Security (notwithstanding the obvious notion that all dollars are fungible).

thephan wrote:

Report: Most Net Neutrality Comments Submitted to FCC Were Fraudulent

Washington, DC -- With the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) set to vote on changes to net neutrality regulations, a new report finds that a majority of the nearly 22 million comments on the issue submitted to the agency's website were done so fraudulently. In its analysis of publically available comments, DC-based Pew Research Center found that 57% utilized duplicate, temporary or disposable email addresses and many individual names appeared thousands of times. What's more, only 6% of all comments were unique, while 94% were submitted multiple times, in some cases hundreds of thousands of times. The seven most-submitted comments comprised 38% of all submissions during the four-month comment period and, often, thousands of comments were submitted at precisely the same moment. "When the Center analyzed the comments submitted during the 2014 net neutrality debate, about 450,000 comments were submitted to the FCC," said Aaron Smith, associate director of research at Pew. "This year's comment volume dwarfed that and our analysis highlights the relative ease with which online commenting systems allow groups and individuals to mount large-scale campaigns for public policies. Such efforts were difficult to orchestrate in the pre-internet era and even three years ago were not taking place at the scale it has this time."

Richard Rubin (WSJ) wrote:Sam Brownback is here in the Senate (outside GOP lunch) saying the Kansas tax plan worked, created jobs. "What we did actually worked."