Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by cmn32480 on Monday October 03 2016, @09:37AM   Printer-friendly
from the within-snipers-reach dept.

Wikileaks has abruptly canceled a much-anticipated announcement on Tuesday. The announcement had been expected to be founder Julian Assange's long-promised document dump on Hillary Clinton.

NBC's Jesse Rodriguez reported that the Tuesday announcement — which was to come from the balcony of London's Ecuadorian Embassy, where Assange has sought sanctuary for years – was canceled due to security concerns.

Wikileaks has not said when it will now make its announcement.


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 2) by Justin Case on Monday October 03 2016, @11:49AM

    by Justin Case (4239) on Monday October 03 2016, @11:49AM (#409359) Journal

    People who never do anything more daring than waiting for the check to come in probably don't realize that politicians love to "incentivize" their pet social-experiment behaviors with complicated tax laws. This often means that if you do certain things, like provide jobs for other people, you can subtract the costs from the money that comes in.

    Now those are some big losses. I don't know why they arose; I can't be bothered to care because I'm not going to be voting for Trump. But the mere existence of "tax losses" is neither evidence of shady dealings nor of financial mismanagement. That's the way the rules are written. Don't like the rules? Try to get them changed. But until then, you have to live with them. We all do.

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   2  
  • (Score: 2) by butthurt on Monday October 03 2016, @12:36PM

    by butthurt (6141) on Monday October 03 2016, @12:36PM (#409376) Journal

    > But the mere existence of "tax losses" is neither evidence of shady dealings nor of financial mismanagement.

    Everything you wrote is true. However, the story attributes the losses not to oddities of taxation but to business ventures that (as I read it) were actually unprofitable. It does use the word "mismanagement" which is of course a matter of opinion:

    [...] mismanagement of three Atlantic City casinos, his ill-fated foray into the airline business and his ill-timed purchase of the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan.

    • (Score: 2) by Justin Case on Monday October 03 2016, @12:49PM

      by Justin Case (4239) on Monday October 03 2016, @12:49PM (#409383) Journal

      Are you aware of some guarantee that every business venture will be profitable? Or that every investment will occur at the best possible time?

      This just feels to me like the typical mud slinging that is designed to be misinterpreted by those who have no experience with such things. And again, I'm not voting for Trump.

      • (Score: 2) by fnj on Monday October 03 2016, @01:12PM

        by fnj (1654) on Monday October 03 2016, @01:12PM (#409394)

        Imagine a terrorist setting unbelievers on fire. Horrible, right? Now recall the Christian god's hell. Equally sadistic.

        I'm replying to your comical tagline. You are drawing a moral equivalence between vermin committing evil murder in actual fact, to an imaginary fairy tale?

        • (Score: 2) by Justin Case on Monday October 03 2016, @11:30PM

          by Justin Case (4239) on Monday October 03 2016, @11:30PM (#409729) Journal

          Just pointing out that while Christians tromp around spouting "all Muslims are evil because their holy book endorses killing infidels", the Christian religion, if it were to be believed, calls for the same.

          • (Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday October 04 2016, @04:31AM

            by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday October 04 2016, @04:31AM (#409809) Journal

            the Christian religion, if it were to be believed, calls for the same.

            Shouldn't you quote that instead? Hell is allegedly after you die not before. So you would have had some sort of opportunity to become a sufficiently Christian person before you die (up to and including deathbed confessions which are pretty damn convenient, I gather). I believe you can easily find some Old Testament support for killing unbelievers, but talking about Hell is not it.

          • (Score: 2, Informative) by migz on Tuesday October 04 2016, @06:56AM

            by migz (1807) on Tuesday October 04 2016, @06:56AM (#409840)

            "But when the Pharisees had heard that he had put the Sadducees to silence, they were gathered together. 35 Then one of them, which was a lawyer, asked him a question, tempting him, and saying, 36 Master, which is the great commandment in the law? 37 Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. 38 This is the first and great commandment. 39And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. 40 On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets." - Matthew 22

      • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 03 2016, @05:00PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 03 2016, @05:00PM (#409510)

        Are you aware of some guarantee that every business venture will be profitable? Or that every investment will occur at the best possible time?

        Not to put too fine a point on this, but during this campaign Donald has made much of his business acumen to sell himself to the voters. Losing nearly a billion dollars does call that into question. I can't be bothered to google it for you but I read a while back that if Donald had just put that one million dollar loan from his daddy into an index fund he would have had a much better rate of return on his investment. I'm also pretty sure that paying no taxes will not look so good for those who feel that billionaires aren't putting their shoulder to the wheel along with the rest of us; it just doesn't play well in Peoria, if you know what I mean.

      • (Score: 2) by butthurt on Tuesday October 04 2016, @05:12AM

        by butthurt (6141) on Tuesday October 04 2016, @05:12AM (#409819) Journal

        Are you aware of some guarantee that every business venture will be profitable? Or that every investment will occur at the best possible time?

        The New York Times has another article, which explains their "mismanagement" characterisation. Among other things, they say

        But when it comes to running operating businesses, [Mr. Trump] has been something less than a resounding success. The Plaza Hotel in Manhattan went bankrupt under his tutelage, and his casino empire has been under bankruptcy protection twice, in the early 1990s and again this decade.

        [...] a shareholder who invested $10,000 in Mr. Trump’s empire when the casino company went public in 1995 would now have about $636. [...]

        Over all, an index of casino stocks is up 268 percent since June 1995. Trump investors lost 93 percent.

        -- http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/12/nyregion/donald-trump-atlantic-city.html [nytimes.com]

        His airline also went bankrupt.

        One banker close to the negotiations said the shuttle talks mostly involved banks that had made no other loans to the troubled Trump empire [...]

        The syndicate of 20 banks from the United States, Japan, and Europe that holds the $245 million shuttle loan considers the airline's problems to be the result of higher fuel costs and falling ridership levels, rather than poor management by Mr. Trump or his executives, the banker said.

        -- http://www.nytimes.com/1990/09/21/business/company-news-1.1-million-loan-payment-missed-by-trump-on-shuttle.html [nytimes.com]

        Some other airlines did survive in spite of high fuel prices. Perhaps under great--I mean really, really great--management the Trump Shuttle [wikipedia.org] would have as well.

        http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/pictures/the-many-business-failures-of-donald-trump-20110511/trump-shuttle-0845896 [rollingstone.com]

        > This just feels to me like the typical mud slinging that is designed to be misinterpreted by those who have no experience with such things.

        I certainly have no experience with such things, but if I were running a business that was in trouble, my instinct would be to either focus on fixing its problems or separate myself from it, before involving myself in other endeavours.

        http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/have+finger+in+too+many+pies [thefreedictionary.com]

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Thexalon on Monday October 03 2016, @02:48PM

    by Thexalon (636) on Monday October 03 2016, @02:48PM (#409446)

    Now those are some big losses. I don't know why they arose; I can't be bothered to care because I'm not going to be voting for Trump. But the mere existence of "tax losses" is neither evidence of shady dealings nor of financial mismanagement.

    When somebody reports a loss of nearly $1 billion (also known as about 400 times what a typical American earns over their entire lifetime) in a single year, I have to conclude one of two things is going on: Either they aren't good at managing their money, or they are lying about their loss.

    It's not because I believe businesses can't fail. It's that when they fail on such a spectacularly large scale, somebody did something stupid. The most common mistakes that lead to such yuge losses:
    - Investing too much before there is a proof of a concept. Successful businesses usually demonstrate that a concept works on a small scale before building up to a mid-sized and then large scale.
    - Failing to understand the concept of sunk costs. That is, how much you have already spent on something does not affect whether you should continue to spend more on said something.
    - Making poor choices in partners or key subordinate employees, who make the same mistakes you did.

    My basic impression of Trump: He's a bit of an idiot who is high-status because of the money and political connections he inherited.

    --
    The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by dyingtolive on Monday October 03 2016, @03:23PM

      by dyingtolive (952) on Monday October 03 2016, @03:23PM (#409461)

      While I don't disagree with your overall sentiment, can you really judge someone from their circumstances from 20 years ago? I mean, I do, but I think Trump sucks as much as I think that Clinton is still a right-wing warmongering racist who desires censorship.

      --
      Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!
      • (Score: 2) by Thexalon on Monday October 03 2016, @03:39PM

        by Thexalon (636) on Monday October 03 2016, @03:39PM (#409470)

        can you really judge someone from their circumstances from 20 years ago?

        Absolutely, especially when their circumstances from 20 years ago are part of what that someone is citing as reasons why they should be given a vitally important job.

        As for Clinton, I'm not convinced about the "racist" part. At least, I don't think she's intentionally racist in the way that Trump definitely is. I think she's probably unconsciously racist the way most people are, and she's ambitious enough that she stirred the Obama birther pot when she thought it would help her win a primary, but I don't think she actually hates people because of their skin color.

        --
        The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
        • (Score: 2, Insightful) by boxfetish on Monday October 03 2016, @06:20PM

          by boxfetish (4831) on Monday October 03 2016, @06:20PM (#409547)

          I think she's probably unconsciously racist the way most people are, and she's ambitious enough that she stirred the Obama birther pot when she thought it would help her win a primary, but I don't think she actually hates people because of their skin color.

          Just that they're "superpredators" because of their skin color (or was that unconscious racism?)

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 04 2016, @12:21AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 04 2016, @12:21AM (#409751)

      Trump [...] is high-status because of the money and political connections he inherited.

      "Many have asked who's to blame for Donald Trump and I'll tell you who. He's sitting right there, that guy, Mark Burnett", said Jimmy Kimmel at the 2016 Emmys. "Thanks to Mark Burnett we don't have to watch reality shows any more, we're living in one."

      Years ago, we in California got Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger simply because people recognized his name on the ballot and put a mark beside his name.
      ...though they knew nothing about his politics and there was no evidence that he had any experience to indicate that he was capable of running a state.

      -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

      • (Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday October 04 2016, @04:40AM

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday October 04 2016, @04:40AM (#409812) Journal

        Years ago, we in California got Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger simply because people recognized his name on the ballot and put a mark beside his name. ...though they knew nothing about his politics and there was no evidence that he had any experience to indicate that he was capable of running a state.

        I voted for him and I have to say, he's better than Gray Davis or Jerry Brown, the governors before and after, which I guess is damning with faint praise. As to his experience, he is a successful businessman with a pretty good track record going back to the 70s and he ran a pretty good campaign.