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We had three different political stories submitted. In the interest of trying to keep political discussions from spilling over into other stories, I have merged them all into this one story. If you are not interested in politics, you are free to ignore this story — another story will be along presently. --martyb
Tories Turned Over in UK General Election
FTFA:
Theresa May will visit Buckingham Palace at 12:30 BST to seek permission to form a new UK government, despite losing her Commons majority.
She is seeking to stay in office on the understanding that the Democratic Unionists of Northern Ireland will support her minority administration.
With one seat left to declare, the Tories are eight seats short of the 326 figure needed to command a majority.
BBC
The Guardian
Telegraph (beware awful ads, but it's a Tory broadsheet)
In other news:
* The UK stock market is up but the pound is down
* European leaders react with a mix of incredulity, conciliatory statements; Brexit plans in tatters
* Record number of female MPs returned; overall high turnout
Fired FBI Director James Comey Lays out the Case That President Trump Obstructed Justice
Former FBI director James B. Comey on Thursday essentially laid out an obstruction of justice case against President Trump and suggested senior leaders in the bureau might have actually contemplated the matter before Trump removed him as director.
Comey did not explicitly draw any legal conclusions. Whether justice was obstructed, he said, was a question for recently appointed special counsel Robert Mueller. But he said Trump’s request to terminate the FBI’s investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn left him “stunned,” and senior FBI officials considered it to be of “investigative interest.”
Of particular concern, Comey said, was that Trump asked other officials to leave him alone with his FBI director in the Oval Office before saying of Flynn: “He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go.”
“Why did he kick everybody out of the Oval Office?” Comey said. “That, to me as an investigator, is a very significant fact.”
President Donald J. Trump Announces Intent to Nominate Christopher A. Wray to be Director of FBI
June 7, 2017 at 7:05 PM ET by The White House
Today, President Donald J. Trump announced he will nominate Christopher Asher Wray as the new Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Wray graduated cum laude from Yale University in 1989, then continued on to receive his law degree from Yale Law School in 1992. He started his legal career as a clerk to Judge J. Michael Luttig of the United States Court of Appeals.
In 1997, Wray began his extensive public service career as an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia. In May 2001, Wray became the Associate Deputy Attorney General of the Department of Justice and within five months he was appointed the Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General. He was a vital member of the DOJ’s operations during and following the 9/11 attacks.
Wray was appointed to serve as the Assistant Attorney General in charge of the U.S. DOJ’s Criminal Division by President George W. Bush and was confirmed unanimously by the Senate. He led federal criminal law investigations in areas, including: securities fraud, healthcare fraud, Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and trade sanctions violations, bank secrecy and money laundering offenses, public corruption, and intellectual property piracy and cybercrime. While he was head of the Criminal Division from 2003 to 2005, Wray worked tirelessly to counteract the wave of corporate fraud scandals and to restore trust in the U.S. financial system. At the end of his term, Wray was given the Edmund J. Randolph Award, which is the DOJ’s most prestigious award for leadership and public service.
Since leaving the DOJ in 2005, Wray has worked as a litigation partner at King & Spalding. He chairs the King & Spalding Special Matters and Government Investigations Practice Group, which specializes in white-collar crimes and regulatory enforcement. He has represented Fortune 100 companies and ranked as a leading litigator by Chambers USA, Best Lawyers in America, and Legal 500. Wray has performed successful oral arguments in front of the U.S. Supreme Court, as well as the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.
His wealth of experience in government enforcement and jurisprudence makes Christopher A. Wray an outstanding choice as Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Original Submission #1 Original Submission #2 Original Submission #3
(Score: 5, Insightful) by kaszz on Friday June 09 2017, @01:18PM (22 children)
It is a site about technology, not politics. So politics should only be involved as far as it touches are affects the use of technology. But if Washington would disappear into a sinkhole that would.. not matter. But if New York disappeared into a sinkhole that would matter and be news because all those switches and servers along with techs would be missing. ;)
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday June 09 2017, @01:28PM (7 children)
1. Soylentnews is people - read the logo
2. people are political monkeys - Aristotle used some other words (he didn't have the chance to share a bottle or two with Darwin); I believe our aristarchus was a close friend of 'Totle, maybe he can provide a better quote.
So, where your impression SN is about technology came from?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 09 2017, @01:34PM (5 children)
(Score: 3, Informative) by zocalo on Friday June 09 2017, @02:22PM (1 child)
I'll give you Uber's self driving car development programme though; that saga would make for some absolutely hilarious car crash TV (pun absolutely intended).
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 09 2017, @03:46PM
Would you mind to keep it for yourself?
It's more than useless for me.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Friday June 09 2017, @02:39PM (2 children)
It's actually slashdot.org, but .com apparently redirects to there.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 09 2017, @03:39PM (1 child)
It's actually a commercial site, and has been for years.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Friday June 09 2017, @04:02PM
Not that that really matters one way or the other. You still end up on the .org domain.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 3, Informative) by aristarchus on Friday June 09 2017, @07:32PM
Aristotle was just a bit before my time, but:
The words are "ζῷον πολιτικόν", or political animals.
Doesn't excuse this mis-mash of an article, however.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bradley13 on Friday June 09 2017, @01:31PM (2 children)
I think political topics are - within limits - important on Soylent. Like it or not, politics is the backdrop against which we operate technology.
- Theresa May's election is relevant, because it affect Brexit, which will affect technology companies throughout Europe. Also, she's sufficiently deluded to think that human rights don't matter, and encryption should be the first technological casualty.
- US national politics are relevant, because the US is the source of an awful lot of the technology that we all use daily.
Finally, technical people have a different take on politics. I like reading what other techies think. For better or for worse, I value your/our opinions more than the opinions of most other groups.
Political stories go into their own nexus; they are easily identifiable. I've never tested it, but I assume the setting to hide stories on unwanted nexuses (nexii?) works, so people who dislike political stories can ignore them.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 3, Informative) by AthanasiusKircher on Saturday June 10 2017, @03:33AM
It's "nexuses." The English plural with -s or -es is almost always a valid option. Despite the fact that I'm familiar with classical languages, I've never understood the bizarre desire of English speakers to attempt to form plurals in a non-native way. Just add -s or -es if you're uncertain and be done with it.
For the record, nexus is fourth declension; hence the Latin plural of nexus is nexūs.
(Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Saturday June 10 2017, @11:08AM
Just thinking of my car I had to fix it.
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by PiMuNu on Friday June 09 2017, @01:35PM (8 children)
So I live in the UK. Next time there is a US presidential election, you wanna lump that in with a story about some innards of how GCHQ works?
There's quite a few non-US folks here.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Webweasel on Friday June 09 2017, @01:39PM (7 children)
/me waves the union flag in a half-hearted were all fucked manner.
Priyom.org Number stations, Russian Military radio. "You are a bad, bad man. Do you have any other virtues?"-Runaway1956
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 09 2017, @02:04PM (4 children)
Nice, positive, can-do attitude you have there. A major portion of the UKIP vote went to Labour, firmly dispelling the hysterical "racist rightwing bigot" style slander that has plagued and retarded political discourse for far too long. Theresa May's tone-deaf domestic Manifesto was roundly rejected by the electorate -- and rightly so. The DUP... even Northern Irish republicans will be on side with them when it comes to maintaining an open border with Ireland. Democracy has a way...
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Webweasel on Friday June 09 2017, @02:47PM (3 children)
Not sure what point your trying to make there?
As for a positive can do attitude, that's impossible under first past the post.
So what were my options for voting yesterday?
A) Conservative. Who want to spy on our interwebz. Nope.
B) Labour, with a leader who won't press the nuclear button and thinks ideology is more important than pragmatism? Nope
C) Lib dems. With a gay hating leader. Nope
D) Independent candidate, some Christian guy. Nope. Got 800 votes
E) Independent candidate, some Women, never even heard of her before let alone seeing a manifesto. Nope (140 votes)
I live in a safe conservative seat. The winning conservative candidate won by over 10,000 votes. No one else was even worth considering voting for due to their political positions not matching mine.
And now we have the DUP being the tail wagging the dog. Great.
So how, pray tell kind anonymous coward would you suggest I could have a can do attitude? No one represents me. New political parties take generations to come to power. Proportional representation was rejected by the UK people years ago. Nothing I could have done would have made a difference. All I can really do is look after me and mine and occasionally shit post on the internet. I don't even have political views anymore, I am widely read enough to convince myself of both sides of the argument for about any topic leaving me with middle of the road attitude that is not represented by anyone.
The only real concern I have about this result is that Brexit is fucked now. WTO rules here we come. Wait... tariffs are limited to 2.6% and a lot of goods will now be cheaper as a result? Bring on no deal thanks!
Priyom.org Number stations, Russian Military radio. "You are a bad, bad man. Do you have any other virtues?"-Runaway1956
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 09 2017, @03:05PM
As you say, first-past-the-post does a bad job of representing voters' interests. And because the voting reform referendum failed in the UK not that long ago, getting voting reform in the UK any time soon is unlikely, but still worth making noise about.
Unfortunately, of those bad choices, someone is going to get elected, so it's still in your interest to vote tactically either to (1) minimize the chances of the worst outcomes in your view or (2) to signal to the winner approximately what platform they should look at to get more voters in the future (matters more if the vote has tight margins, of course).
There's the additional point, which I think is overlooked far too often in excuses for voter apathy, that who votes is recorded and important independent of what they vote for. You have a lot more voice in polls and directly contacting your representatives if you are a voter (even if you leave the ballot blank): politicians have no reason to care at all about what non-voters think and the received wisdom, at least for pollsters in the US, is that if you didn't vote in the last election, you won't vote in the next one, either.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 09 2017, @03:14PM
True, unfortunately.
This is 2017, people no longer vote for a candidate, they vote tactically against the party they dislike most. I expect you are familiar with the Hegelian dialectic?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 09 2017, @03:35PM
Lord Sutch, your country needs you.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Pax on Friday June 09 2017, @02:09PM (1 child)
/me waves a Saltire in a manner that suggest i just took a whole bottle of "fukitol"
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Friday June 09 2017, @03:53PM
Whoooa: you can afford 'fukitol'?
Can you spare a dime, Richy Rich?
I'm stuck with 'fukitol max-lite-zero'. :(
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 3, Funny) by DannyB on Friday June 09 2017, @02:31PM
If New York were to disappear into New Jersey, as I infer, the ping times might be a bit longer. The techs would all demand to work remotely.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by NCommander on Saturday June 10 2017, @04:23AM
Technically, all our servers are hosted in Dallas except the off site storage, so the loss of New York City would only affect me personally.
Still always moving