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In a case that should have the Founders of the USA spinning in their graves, The Intercept has got hold of documents relating to Peter Thiel's NZ citizenship. These documents reveal that Thiel would not normally qualify for citizenship, which requires the holder to actually reside in New Zealand. NZ law provides for citizenship under "exceptional circumstances and public interest" for people who don't plan to live in NZ.
Thiel's extreme wealth was the exceptional circumstance that allowed for citizenship and which in turn allowed Thiel to avoid certain administrative protocols that a non-citizen would have had to follow relating to the purchase of his large estate in NZ.
As part of taking up citizenship, Thiel had to pledge an oath of loyalty to HM Queen Elizabeth II (in her role as Queen of New Zealand), which certainly raises questions about either his sincerity or his fitness to be an advisor to the President.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 06 2017, @12:26AM
No. It does not. It just provides an opportunity for the hysterical left to manufacture an "issue" around the Trump administration. I wish Soylent would stop playing the OMG Hillary Didn't Win! game.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Gaaark on Monday February 06 2017, @01:21AM
"But she DIDN'T!!!
AHAHAHAHAHAHAAHHAHAHAHHFDFHFHGHHFHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!
O. M. G., RIGHT?!"
If the guy can give the best advice, and Trump can take it, go for it!
If he is a loser and Trump takes losers advice, impeach or vote him out.
Either way, triumph or shit stain, I AM CANADIAN! :)
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 06 2017, @01:58AM
The most heavily populated areas of Canada are close to the United States. Some may even be downwind of U.S. cities or military bases.
(Score: 2) by Bogsnoticus on Monday February 06 2017, @05:51AM
Which is why Canadians serve their bacon with maple syrup. To drown out the stench of the Americans they're downwind of. /trollface
Genius by birth. Evil by choice.
(Score: 3, Informative) by cykros on Monday February 06 2017, @05:06AM
We could tell you weren't American by the:
If he is a loser and Trump takes losers (sic) advice, impeach or vote him out."
We don't have a vote of no confidence here in the US, and impeachment requires criminal charges as it is in itself merely the formal accusation of a public official by a legislative body. Basically, once our officials are elected, unless they are caught breaking the law, they're in office for the duration of their term, come hell or high water, unless they choose to resign.
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Monday February 06 2017, @05:43AM
High crimes and misdemeanors covers a lot of ground.
When life isn't going right, go left.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 06 2017, @02:32PM
You only have to go back a little more than 10 years to see how thinly it has to be applied to cover that ground.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday February 06 2017, @03:45PM
What! Are you suggestifying that games with cigars and blue dress stains don't qualify as the highest possible crimes that a POTUS can commit?
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 2) by J053 on Monday February 06 2017, @11:03PM
(Score: 5, Insightful) by moondoctor on Monday February 06 2017, @02:02AM
With respect:
I think your idea of what 'liberals' want is a bit off. I don't give a fuck about Hilary. I am concerned that our new president is pretty sketchy and imho his administration is a clusterfuck. NSC with no military? Bitch please.
In general we want the same shit as you. A good job with fair pay, safe streets, good schools and roads, fairness and freedom for all. Pretty sure that's what America is founded on.
Don't believe the hype.
AS far as manufacturing issues, yeah I agree. There's plenty of real problems, the hysterical arm waving is getting old.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 06 2017, @05:14AM
Wouldn't it be great, then, if both of the parties stuck to those important issues?
Instead, we have crazy activists telling us that we're all fucked up because we don't allow deviants to follow our daughters into the girl's rooms, and other equally wild shit.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 06 2017, @07:50AM
Am I to presume that you don't want lesbians to use female toilets? I surely don't see the issue with someone who considers themselves female and are attracted to men using female toilets, even if they were born a man, as why would that be a problem?
What in the case of a person, born female, identifies as a man and not yet had surgery to change their penis to a vagina, and also dresses and looks like a man, should they really use the female toilets? Wouldn't lots of women have a problem with an apparent man using the female toilets?
How would you structure a law that prevents people from using toilets of people of the same gender they are attracted to?
People who want pre-op transsexuals to use toilets that match their genitalia really haven't thought this issue through. So instead of complaining about people using toilets of the gender they identify with, how about campaigning to make all toilets unisex so the gender of the user doesn't matter?
While there are far more important issues than this, if some people are essentially prevented from using public toilets because of other people's fucked up prejudices, then it becomes something that needs to be delt with, and for that you can blame the people who get a bug up their arse about the specific genitalia of people who just want to use the loo.
(Score: 5, Touché) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Monday February 06 2017, @09:30AM
because we don't allow deviants to follow our daughters into the girl's rooms
Look, it was his teenage beauty pageant [nypost.com], he paid for it, so he had a right to go wherever he likes. If teenage girls don't want to be ogled by sleazy middle-aged oompaloompas while they get undressed, they should pay for their own damned beauty pageants. Besides, he's seen it all before..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 06 2017, @05:02PM
I don't know all the details of this situation, but it's far from as obvious as you +5: Touche ranking implies. There is the concept of reasonable expectation of privacy.
As the most obvious example, can an employer put surveillance cameras in the restrooms or employee changing areas of a restaurant? To be clear, this is employee-area only, so the concept of a customer applies. Your argument would say that they can, as they paid for the building and the employee is working for them. However, the courts have found (and I would suggest society thinks) that employees have a reasonable expectation of privacy, and that they can't have security guards ogling the pretty college girls while they are changing into uniform.
I don't know how things work at a beauty pageant. Possibly either the contract or the expectation is that everything is semi-public (e.g. everybody always gets dressed in a single large room with few walls and male hairstylists/tailors/etc were present too, so "everybody knows everybody can see everybody else"). Or maybe everybody has a private changing room and Trump really did intrude inappropriately.
(Score: 3, Informative) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Monday February 06 2017, @05:19PM
I think your sarcasm detector needs recalibration. To make my position perfectly clear to anybody else who has misunderstood:
As the most obvious example, can an employer put surveillance cameras in the restrooms or employee changing areas of a restaurant?
No, absolutely not.
I don't know how things work at a beauty pageant. Possibly either the contract or the expectation is that everything is semi-public (e.g. everybody always gets dressed in a single large room with few walls and male hairstylists/tailors/etc were present too, so "everybody knows everybody can see everybody else").
Yes, I think that is usually the case, but that still doesn't give just *anybody* the right to wander in. Think of it like military "need to know" information. You only allow in those people who have a need to be there. Hair stylists etc have a legitimate reason to be in the changing area. Delusional pussygrabbers do not. Doubly so in this case, where the girls were as young as 14 years old.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 06 2017, @10:01PM
I think your sarcasm detector needs recalibration.
Fair enough. Thanks for clarifying. Apparently I do need to brush it up,
Yes, I think that is usually the case, but that still doesn't give just *anybody* the right to wander in. Think of it like military "need to know" information. You only allow in those people who have a need to be there. Hair stylists etc have a legitimate reason to be in the changing area. Delusional pussygrabbers do not. Doubly so in this case, where the girls were as young as 14 years old.
Here I think you may be a bit off-base. To be clear, I am not a lawyer. However, I would suggest that a court and a "reasonable person" would not agree. Assuming that public changing area I described before, if I were defending a Mr. Drumpf in court, I would have no problem suggesting that "the girls in question expect male strangers of the event to be wandering around and seeing them partially/unclothed. There is no difference between Mr. Drumpf and a hairdresser: they are both staff members in support of the event."
I'm *sure* that a criminal court would agree, and I'm fairly sure that a civil court would agree. Note this is not saying it is moral or right; I'm only saying that it would be legal... from my non-lawyer perspective, of course.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 07 2017, @03:09AM
Take a long hard look at yourself in the mirror.
You just tried to make a 'legal' argument justifying dear leader's abhorrent behavior while simultaneously saying you have no legal expertise from which to draw on. Furthermore no one else said anything about the courts. You had to grasp hard at those straws in order to come up with some rationalization to avoid admitting that the emperror has no clothes.
That's called motivated reasoning. At least you are in good company with it, 40% of the country is so drugged out on partisanship that they too are deeply motivated reasoners when it comes to the minority president. When you finally do come down from that high, the withdrawal symptoms are going to be a bitch.
(Score: 1) by tftp on Monday February 06 2017, @05:31AM
I am concerned that our new president is pretty sketchy
I'm afraid you are too late. Won't go too far back, but Nixon was a crook, Carter was a fool, Reagan... had ideas, Bush I never saw a supermarket scanner, Bill Clinton... need I say it?, Bush II was an idiot, Obama the Manchurian made people buy Obamacare, no matter if they can afford it or not... Trump is in a good company here, just as sketchy as everyone else. Perhaps he is sketchy in a different way, but you cannot honestly say that all his predecessors were angels. Naturally, this does not excuse him or anyone else, but there is no point in worrying.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 06 2017, @06:12AM
Obama the Manchurian made people buy Obamacare, no matter if they can afford it or not...
That is literally not true. The people who could not afford it got subsidies to make up the difference.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 06 2017, @06:41AM
Sometimes the subsidies aren't enough. Not all of your expenses are taken into account at tax time, after all.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 06 2017, @07:46AM
yes, yes, yes there are corner cases
but complaining about this is like complaining about having to pay rent
you can skip rent and live in the forest but you'll still have to pay for showers and a sleeping bag
you can opt out of paying for obamacare, its only a couple of hundred bucks penalty
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Monday February 06 2017, @04:13PM
You have never been truly poor, have you? When you can't afford bus fare a couple hundred bucks penalty is all the money in the world.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Monday February 06 2017, @06:56PM
Sorry, Phoenix, under the ACA, if one is that poor, medical care is free. As well it should be.
When life isn't going right, go left.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday February 06 2017, @03:14PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Monday February 06 2017, @04:43PM
Bush II was an idiot
No he isn't. He was simply not a patriot. Didn't anyone notice that gasoline leaped from $1.05 a gallon to $4.55 when oil man Bush and oil man Cheney were in power? Do people really think that the Iraq war was over "bad intelligence" rather than to get at Saddam for trying to kill his dad?
Bush was no fool, he was a narcissist. I fear all politicians may be.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by Sulla on Monday February 06 2017, @05:34AM
Glad you finally care about the president overstepping his bounds, shame the new president is a chip off the block of the old president. This is not a quip at you becaue I am unaware of your views, but I am tired of the left finally re-realizing how much power the president has after eight years of silence.
I recall complaining about how Bush was overstepping his grounds, then being upset about obama doubling down. Trump comes along and does the same things the last two (thr-fo-fi-- at least since FDR) and suddenly we gotta say something.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Monday February 06 2017, @04:17PM
I agree. The doublethink and tribalism is tedious. It's OK when our guy does it, but when the other guy does it, it's a national emergency? If it's sketchy, illegal, and/or unethical, we should go after all of them with equal fervor. If we as citizens sent that consistent message and hanged everyone who crossed the line, we would have much better leadership and our countries and societies would be much healthier and functional and all of us would have more satisfying and rewarding lives. Given that, is it really worth perpetuating the double standards when it costs us all that?
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Monday February 06 2017, @04:39PM
Indeed. I ask, what if the President himself (or his secretary od state) had sworn an oath to a foreign power, say, Russia?
Anyone who hasn't realized by now that Trump's even a bigger liar than my ex-wife is a fool who is easily deluded.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Monday February 06 2017, @07:50AM
There's nothing wrong with dual citizenship - lots of people have it. This is yet more false outrage cooked up by leftist Americans who think the world outside the USA doesn't really exist.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 06 2017, @07:52AM
What I see happening daily is the media, demotards and libtards are doing the equivalent of telling diners at McDonalds they got conned and ordered the wrong thing, when those diners are getting mostly what they ordered. It might not be good for them in the long run, but saying they were conned or are stupid, is stupid too. Anti-immigrant, anti-muslim, anti-abortion? Plenty of them ordered that. To them it's not a bug it's feature.
So this story about Peter Thiel's allegiance is like after telling the McD diners they got conned or they're stupid for ordering McD, you tell them "And do you know Ronald McDonald's advisor has sworn allegiance to the Queen of England?". Now imagine the reaction of the diners.
If this story isn't targeted at those diners but at the analogue of "those hip vegans who wouldn't even be near a McD unless to stage a protest", then it's just a big circle jerk. And so many are just slurping it all up. Feel better now?
I wonder whether all these huge numbers of biased/stupid stories[1] about Trump is to make people stop paying attention so that a lot fewer people would notice when Trump eventually does something extremely bad.
We'll be miraculously lucky if this recent travel ban stuff is the worst he'll do. So let's have news on the actual bad stuff Trump does and skip the tabloid noise and stupid stuff like this Thiel non-story. What next, "Cosmo's 10 ways the Trump administration is screwing you" or similar? Or "You'll never guess what Trump is up to today" click bait crap?
[1] Example: https://www.truthorfiction.com/donald-trump-fires-all-ambassadors-special-envoys/ [truthorfiction.com]
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-trump-fires-us-ambassadors-no-replacements-a7538256.html [independent.co.uk]
http://europe.newsweek.com/donald-trump-orders-barack-obama-ambassadors-quit-inauguration-day-539218?rm=eu [newsweek.com]