461–470 of 591 posts
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The quotee would be surprised to see how little voting is being done by the people receiving the largesse in the last 20 years. Not to mention how little voters had to do with the decisions which caused the deficit to rise the most. The Iraq war, poor handling of COVID, tax cuts for the wealthy.
And now the Iran War, wait for it.
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I think this is actually the opposite of the correct conclusion—just look how influential Patreus cheating on his wife was ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petraeus_scandal ). I seriously doubt that Kash Patel doesn't have a bunch of skeletons to dust off and show the world; the man is a weirdo (much like the rest of the administration). EDIT: I actually misread the comment; I think we're likely in agreement. My bad.
My favorite explanation of the Petraeus scandal: https://vimeo.com/100348256
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The FBI is not a spy network.
You are being pedantic. I have 2 family members who are/were special agents for the FBI. Much of their job is harvesting evidence to build cases by spying, which frequently comes more in the form of “spying” in the way we saw in The Sopranos. The FBI is also the premier counter-espionage organization within the US, so it is tasked with spying on suspected foreign / turned spies. It is much more than a spy network, bu…
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"We" is such an imprecise word for a pool of people. I believe Chinese has two flavors, "zanmen" including the listener too, and "women" excluding the listener. Obviously "we" did not elect Trump, only "a majority of the US voters who voted", and even the others may sadly use "we" though they didn't, because they are members of the political body that did. Just like the "they" of Israel that harass Palestinians and t…
In English, you can say "we" or "they"
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I'd rather he worry about securing government secrets, not spend one second worrying about "personal photographs of Patel sniffing and smoking cigars, riding in an antique convertible, and making a face while taking a picture of himself in the mirror with a large bottle of rum".
Bad take. Patel specifically bypassed security clearance protocols for Bongino and other staff he hired. His top priority isn’t protecting government secrets — it’s to take down what he thinks is the part of the US government that resists bending to Trump’s will. And you are wrong that the FBI shouldn’t care about securing the Director’s private life information. Anything and everything can and will be used to blackm…
I'd feel obliged to add some "but, her emails..." reference. But it feels million years away. It's interesting to wonder how you get out of a spiral of incompetence and border-line (to be polite) corrumption at the highest level. Putting those people in charge was quick ; sure, a future administration could put them out quickly enough ; but how long will there be decently skilled people willing to take those position…
honestly, look internally. after the plane from qatar. after the son-in-law's real estate dealings. after the visible-to-everyone kalshi and oil futures bets frontrunning the administrations announcements. for you to still feel the need to frame things as "border-line (to be polite)" is, in and of itself, the perfect example of the overall problem. take your inability to draw a clear-as-day conclusion and state it pl…
Both sides are culpable here. In the US, both parties were literally claiming that the elections were stolen (Republicans in 2020, Democrats with the since-debunked 2016 Cambridge Analytica scandal). Other countries had different issues, but the shape of the problem was basically the same everywhere.
If you keep being called bad words for years for no reason, seeing your side do the exact same thing, no surprise you tune out.
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The quotee would be surprised to see how little voting is being done by the people receiving the largesse in the last 20 years. Not to mention how little voters had to do with the decisions which caused the deficit to rise the most. The Iraq war, poor handling of COVID, tax cuts for the wealthy.
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> the ironic thing is about the Epstein files is they revealed it was almost all smoke. and a few massive conspiracy shaped holes - eg: the references to missing content regarding Trump and a few other. Oh, and the shortfall between what has been released Vs what has been indexed, the black paging, and the hints from those that have seen but are sworn to not tell about that which they have seen but cannot recount. St…
> the hints from those that have seen but are sworn to not tell about that which they have seen but cannot recoun The people who were victimized by anyone other than Epstein and Maxwell could come forward at any time, just as dozens of Epstein's victims have. They have some of the highest-powered civil lawyers in America, hundreds of millions of dollars in settlement funds available, and vast swaths of the country be…
The people who have come forward about Epstein's abuses have little to worry about because that man is dead and he's a perfect scapegoat for all the the other ultra-rich who took part in the abuses.
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We'd have to look at the longest-running democracies and observe how they handled periodic refactorings
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Tytler's quote is trying to say too much. It might be acceptable as historical commentary, but it carries little weight to me; it seems overly confident about what the future might hold.*
Tytler died in 1813. We have learned much since then: much about human nature, institutions, experimentation, statistics, evidence, constructing good theories, and governance.** Sure, the quote is worth some reflection; it has grains of truth, but it should not be given undue weight.
* I am not saying "we can predict nothing"! Far from it. I am ok with predictions (even bold ones) to the extent they are deeply rooted in the best understandings and models we have available.
** I'm talking about what motivated people figure out through careful reasoning and evidence, not simply how the median person funnels information from their ears to their mouth. And I'm certainly not commending the effort and thought that the median person puts into stewarding their democracy (if they have one). While we (in the USA, for the time being?) have something like one.