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AlterNet reports
A new report by the Huffington Post [September 15] reveals Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump told Peter Thiel he would nominate the PayPal co-founder and one-man anti-free speech crusader to the Supreme Court if elected president.
Thiel--who bankrolled a devastating blow to First Amendment rights earlier this year when he secretly paid $10 million in legal expenses to support Hulk Hogan's defamation lawsuit against Gawker Media--is apparently just the type of freedom-loving, Bill of Rights-protecting intellectual Trump hopes to stack on the Supreme Court.
A source close to Thiel told Huffington Post the GOP candidate "deeply loves Peter Thiel", which isn't terribly surprising considering Thiel served as a delegate for Trump, spoke at the candidate's convention, and pretty much became a walking how-to guide for Trump's promise to "open up libel laws". According to the source, Trump has "made it clear he will nominate" Thiel.
"It's not clear whether Trump has indeed offered to nominate Thiel--only that Thiel has said Trump would nominate him and that Trump's team has discussed Thiel as a possible nominee", the Huffington Post article reads. "Both sources requested anonymity, given that Trump and Thiel have each demonstrated a willingness to seek revenge against parties they feel have wronged them."
Both Thiel's spokesperson and Trump's press secretary denied Trump's indication, and Thiel--who sits on Facebook's board and serves as the chairman of the software company Palantir--told the Huffington Post he's not interested in the job.
We've previously referenced Thiel in contexts from "Mean People" to vampirism.
See also:
Trump camp denies report that he would consider Peter Thiel for Supreme Court
Peter Thiel denies he's talking to Donald Trump about Supreme Court job.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by quintessence on Saturday September 17 2016, @05:22AM
It's the political cycle. Even if Trump (or Hillary) were to save a child from a burning building, it would be spun as cyborg-sex-slavery-Manchurian-candidate in the making. With hyperbole, you can't make considered criticisms. It's all about outrage, which may make for good scandal, but it makes for poor politics.
People forget we're not electing Emperor Trump (as if Thiel could get past a nomination hearing where Bork could not), and honestly either getting elected will probably be lame-duck presidency considering how much disdain each has from either side of the isle.
Most supporters on either side can't name a single policy the candidates support.
At best, at least you can play identify the ideologues.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 17 2016, @05:32AM
Making America Great Again through Full Employment to Build A Wall. Trump! Trump! Trump!
(Score: 2) by quintessence on Saturday September 17 2016, @05:54AM
http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/donald-trump-i-would-force-mexico-build-border-wall [msnbc.com]
Kinda hard to have full employment unless you are talking about Mexico.
As I was saying most supporters on either side can't name a single policy either candidate supports.
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Saturday September 17 2016, @03:33PM
I'm not a Trump supporter, but I think he gets misrepresented on this. Trump likes to talk about having Mexico pay for the wall. The CNN interviewer that quote is in response did say "build," and Trump didn't correct him, but I don't think Trump purposefully phrases it in those terms. The interviewer was responding to a statement in which Trump said "pay." I suspect that Trump sees the Trump Wall as a massive employment project for Americans. If he was going to hire undocumented immigrants, they'd probably be polish: [wikipedia.org]
In 1983, a class-action lawsuit was filed against the Trump Organization, concerning unpaid labor union pension and medical obligations.[21] Trump testified in 1990 he was unaware that 200 undocumented Polish immigrants, some of whom lived at the site during a 1980 transit strike and worked round-the-clock shifts, were involved in the destruction of the Bonwit Teller building and the Trump Tower project.[22] Trump said that he rarely visited the demolition site[22] and never noticed the laborers, who were known as the "Polish Brigade" and who were visually distinct for their lack of hard hats.[23] A labor consultant and FBI informant testified that Trump was aware of the illegal workers' status.[22] In testimony, Trump stated that he and an executive used the pseudonym "John Baron" in some of his business dealings,[22] although Trump said that he did not do so until years after Trump Tower was constructed.[23] A labor lawyer testified that he was threatened over the phone with a $100 million lawsuit by a John Baron who supposedly worked for the Trump Organization.[23]
(Score: 0, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 17 2016, @06:36AM
I'm proudly xenophobic. I don't want to change my language or have my future great-grandchildren living in ISIS-style 7th century squalor.
That said, a literal wall is silly, for two reasons.
First, lots of people just overstay a visa. The solution here is tracking. A nice side effect is that identity theft becomes nearly impossible. Identity theft is what allows illegals to live their lives. It also allows regular criminal fugitives to evade the law. Put a stop to this, and it would require Unibomber-level self-sufficiency to hide from the law.
Second, to physically stop people at the border what you really need is a fully automated (no human decision) kill zone. Mark each side with a simple chain or cable and reflective paint. Make the zone roughly a mile wide to discourage tunnels, bounded by a larger no-building area that could be farmland. In the zone, anything that moves gets a burst of 12.5 mm. Anything: people, trucks, quadcopters, tortoises, cats, etc.
(Score: 3, Touché) by davester666 on Saturday September 17 2016, @07:56AM
Tracking via what method? Embed a chip in the person? brand them? Chain them to a border-force agent?
Remember, it's not just poor spics who will get this treatment, as it also would apply to "desirable" visits such as those from Europe and Asia.
As well, American citizens won't want to be tracked like this, so there will be a black market for people to have whatever tracker you have chosen be removed.
So, it'll be a tradeoff between "what tracker will a rich person tolerate, because we really want them" and "what tracker will be impossible for a poor person to have removed once they step past the border agent"
And your automated gun thing also isn't going to work, as it'll be halted after a relatively small number of women/children/babies are murdered with it.
(Score: 2) by Jesus_666 on Saturday September 17 2016, @09:19AM
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Joe Desertrat on Saturday September 17 2016, @09:32AM
I hear Americans love paying taxes for things that don't presently directly affect them.
They do actually, just look at how much they love military spending. The anti-tax and anti-government types generally only get enraged if they think tax dollars are somehow going to a minority person that is not currently working. Never mind that they might need that help someday themselves, it is set in their minds their taxes will disappear if they eliminate social services.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 17 2016, @11:15AM
What an amazing strawman! Do you build straw structures as well?
Maybe it's the fact that the military industrial complex is the most powerful group of businesses in the country and there's nothing anyone can do about it because the moment it even looks like the gravy train is going to be disrupted people start mysteriously disappearing? Christ.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 18 2016, @09:01AM
Maybe it's the fact that the military industrial complex is the most powerful group of businesses in the country and there's nothing anyone can do about it because the moment it even looks like the gravy train is going to be disrupted people start mysteriously disappearing? Christ.
Who are all these people who have been disappeared? Do you have some names? Maybe the military industrial complex has done a great job of marketing, but I defy you to visit a web site discussing tax cuts and find people clamoring to cut military spending. Almost every Republican in Congress and those who ran for the presidency all claim they want to increase military spending and cut taxes.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 18 2016, @12:13AM
I think you have hit upon an important point, albeit obliquely. The time to get panicked is not when people are jumping over walls to get into the country, but rather when they are jumping over walls to get out of the country. Honestly, I really would like to grab a some wall supporters by the scruff of the neck to shake some sense into them. Also, East Germany identified themselves as DDR (Deutsche Demokratische Republik), in distinction to West Germany (BRD = Bundesrepublik Deutschland). Just so you know.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 19 2016, @05:22AM
It's no worse than having a highway with vehicles that you may jump in front of. The decision to be killed is yours. Nobody dies unless they desire to die.
Don't want to die? Don't enter the clearly marked kill zone. Also: don't jump in front of a truck, don't jump in front of a train, etc.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 17 2016, @11:26AM
How long before that automated gun is pointed inward?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 17 2016, @09:18PM
It's been pointing inward for quite some time already...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 19 2016, @05:18AM
The guns are fully automated. They are not secret. If you get shot by one, it's your own choice. We call this "suicide", not "murder".
Something like the Laffer curve applies. Nobody dies if the guns never work. Only the most suicidal die if the guns always work. The most deadly situation is something like a 1% success rate, because then people might take the chance. In other words, beyond a certain level, the more "deadly" the less death.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 19 2016, @05:35AM
Today, other people might be using your social security number and worse. Businesses and government agencies normally DO NOT notify you and they especially DO NOT give you the info they have about the imposter. No effort is made to track down the guilty, leaving them to continue fucking up your life.
All sorts of identity info gets abused like that.
The solution is that for all sorts of transactions, we feed lots of info to the government for consistency checking. This includes info about the transaction itself, the claimed identity and identity documents of the parties involved, and the biometric info of the parties involved. Track employment, home rental/purchase, auto rental/purchase, starting school, applying for credit, border crossings, and all sorts of other things.
When an inconsistency is spotted (example: you did something in Hawaii, then 5 minutes later did something in Florida) the government grabs everybody involved until the mess can be sorted out. The parties to at most 1 transaction get released ASAP; the others stay in jail.
(Score: 2) by davester666 on Monday September 19 2016, @06:58AM
First, identity theft is an orthogonal problem to illegal immigration. Sure, some do use identity theft to steal money and screw over someone else, but most would like to not get noticed, so they will either work under the table, or use an identity simply to work and live without being noticed, so from someone who is dead.
Second, this would turn into an unmitigated awesomely expensive clusterfuck.
You go out for a nice business lunch with a client, swipe your credit card, and bam, cops haul you off to jail, and then you get to sit in jail while someone else had to bring in documentation to "prove" who you are. Oops, this happens while you are on vacation, guess you sit in jail a couple days while documents are found and fedexed to where you are being held.
And then there is the whole "gov't keeping track of everything you buy" thing. Everybody will love that. Please bring 12 pieces of gov't issued ID when renting from us.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 17 2016, @03:52PM
The solution here is tracking. A nice side effect is that identity theft becomes nearly impossible. Identity theft is what allows illegals to live their lives. It also allows regular criminal fugitives to evade the law. Put a stop to this, and it would require Unibomber-level self-sufficiency to hide from the law.
You want to turn the right to work and support your family into a privilege subject to the whim of government. [reason.com] Fuck you and your proud xenophobia.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by NotSanguine on Saturday September 17 2016, @07:13AM
Most supporters on either side can't name a single policy the candidates support.
So, is that a literacy issue?
https://www.hillaryclinton.com/issues/ [hillaryclinton.com]
https://www.donaldjtrump.com/positions [donaldjtrump.com]
Granted, both are pretty high level, but I imagine that it would be difficult for anyone who supports either candidate to be ignorant of their positions on every issue.
Then again, Heinlein warned us about this back in 1959:
Can anyone identify the "disastrous possible?"
Sure you you can.
I knew you could.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 17 2016, @06:29PM
The "disastrous possible" is the massive amount of harm that is inflicted by a hopelessly corrupt, authoritarian duopoly remaining in power for hundreds of years, not the short-term harm that results from several 'greater evil' candidates, you short-sighted twit.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 17 2016, @06:32PM
So unless you can demonstrate that voting for the 'lesser evil' is more likely to result in an end to the duopoly than, say, voting third party and utilizing the perception of the spoiler effect as a weapon, this seems rather foolish.
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Sunday September 18 2016, @01:29AM
The "disastrous possible" is the massive amount of harm that is inflicted by a hopelessly corrupt, authoritarian duopoly remaining in power for hundreds of years, not the short-term harm that results from several 'greater evil' candidates, you short-sighted twit.
I see you've decided to project your own shortcomings ("short-sighted twit") onto me. Well done. Carry on.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr