Ross Perot, Billionaire Former Presidential Candidate, has Died at age 89:
Billionaire, philanthropist and former presidential candidate Ross Perot has died, CBS News has confirmed. He was 89.
Perot died in Texas, the state where he was born, surrounded by family.
[...] In 1992, Perot made a name for himself when he became the most successful non-major party presidential candidate in 80 years, amassing 19 percent of the popular vote, running against President George H.W. Bush and Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton.
As a boy in Texarkana, Texas, Perot delivered newspapers from the back of a pony. He earned his billions in a more modern way, however — by building Electronic Data Systems Corp., which helped other companies manage their computer networks.
Yet the most famous event in his career didn't involve sales and earnings; he financed a private commando raid in 1979 to free two EDS employees who were being held in a prison in Iran. The tale was turned into a book and a movie.
Perot first became known to Americans outside of business circles by claiming that the U.S. government left behind hundreds of American soldiers who were missing or imprisoned at the end of the Vietnam War. Perot fanned the issue at home and discussed it privately with Vietnamese officials in the 1980s, angering the Reagan administration, which was formally negotiating with Vietnam's government.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 09 2019, @05:21PM (1 child)
My first job in IT was a programmer on a missile guidance system at EDS. Perot was 🦇💩🤪 but his company was 👍
(Score: 4, Informative) by crm114 on Tuesday July 09 2019, @07:18PM
Sometimes 🦇💩🤪 is not all bad. Apparently he used his executives to do a commando-style resuce mission to get two employees out of a Tehran Prison...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Wings_of_Eagles [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 5, Informative) by ikanreed on Tuesday July 09 2019, @05:27PM (68 children)
Perot was the one case where I felt the "eliminate the national debt" argument wasn't made with an intentional dishonesty and disregard for any of the proper financial mechanisms underlying government treasury process.
Every single republican, not just politicians, but regular joes too, who has posed the same suggestion has always done it with an attached tax cut for the rich, or at least an unstated hatred for the poor, that not only exacerbated the problem, but actively destroyed the country's infrastructure and stability of life.
He was silly and stupid, and people made fun of him for being kind of dumb and nerdy, but he wasn't utterly brainless, and unambiguously evil. It is amazing how just competely without merit the right has become, lacking a single redeeming idea in their entire fucking platform, and if Perot had managed to beat both Bush and Clinton, I could imagine a less vile and disgusting right wing party existing today, whether it was called "republican" or assumed perot's "Independent" label.
But that's not the history that happened, so the all-star alliance of gullible idiots, greedy fucks, racists, and evangelical hypocrites is what's here isntead.
To quote an evil simpsons alien, go ahead, throw away your vote, it might change things.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 09 2019, @05:40PM (25 children)
ikant-think, the new face of TDS.
(Score: 3, Touché) by nitehawk214 on Tuesday July 09 2019, @06:48PM
Your name must be "ikant-comeupwitharebuttal".
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 09 2019, @07:29PM (23 children)
Lol, you get a fucking olive branch of sanity extended and you stick it right up your butt. #AboutRight #GaslightObstructProject #GrandOldPosers
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 09 2019, @08:12PM (22 children)
Olive branch of sanity? ikanpuke is done telling everyone to die because they want immigration laws enforced?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by ikanreed on Tuesday July 09 2019, @09:01PM (21 children)
If your idea of "laws being enforced" involves the extreme and inhumane punishment of children, yeah, fuck off and die.
I mean, period. Hard line in the sand. Your death cannot do anything but benefit the world.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 09 2019, @11:52PM (3 children)
Before anyone gets triggered further please remember the "first they came for the..." and think about when the extremists on the left finally get power and actually make "thought crimes." Cause given the current trend of conservatives using "buh buhbuh ILLEGAL" to justify their abuses you just might find liberals develop similarly hardened hearts.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Wednesday July 10 2019, @12:22AM
Of course they would? Power corrupts, and that's clearly a present phenomenon in the democratic party
Every moral person has a duty to fight abuses of power. But why resort to hypotheticals when the scumfucks are doing blatantly evil shit right now?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Wednesday July 10 2019, @01:53AM
1. Be afraid, be very afraid! Everyone wants you skin, if not today, tomorrow for sure. Adrenaline pumping fear in you veins is the way of life.
2. Are you afraid enough? Good, then let's start by exterminating all the people that cross our border illegally (and especially their kids). Because that's what the people need to do to live in 'the home of the brave' and keep it!
3. What, not afraid enough yet? Goto 1.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 10 2019, @02:12PM
I can finish that for you... "At first they came for the... immigrants. And locked them and their children up in concentration camps with little to no medical care or human rights."
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 10 2019, @05:26AM (16 children)
No need to be a total asshole. What you call "extreme and inhumane punishment of children" is the result of our border being overrun and overwhelmed. Short of standing at the border and waving the checkered flag for every illegal who manages to sneak in, what would you propose? Are you willing to take in a couple hundred "unaccompanied minors" to help out those who are trying to do the job they were hired for? You lefties screech about how inhumane it all is, and the loudest howlers in Congress fought tooth and nail to prevent any resources being provided. Half of this country does not want to pay taxes to support the United States of Earth. Open borders will never fly outside of the perpetually outraged bleeding hearts and their hand wringing is exactly the root cause of the current flood of economic refugees and their opportunistic cousins.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Wednesday July 10 2019, @01:49PM (10 children)
No, that's the problem, there is a need to be a total asshole.
Crimes against humanity don't stop because you sit quietly and ignore everything. The right has become a blight on humanity that needs to be fucking stopped, and literally the least you can do is make it clear to them where the fuck they're at.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 10 2019, @02:58PM (9 children)
How many of those horrible alt right people walked off the job rather than provide beds to those poor border hoppers sleeping on floors? (https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/wayfair-workers-walk-job-protest-furniture-sales-migrant-detention-centers-n1021726) Every time one of you nut jobs screech about the crimes against humanity, some virtue signalling idiot, who apparently cannot comprehend the concept of irony, starts a protest that shows exactly how important the left thinks humaneness really is. It is always followed up by a progressive circle jerk of head nodding, back slapping and self congratulation.
I watched Rashida Tlaib absolutely furious and frothing at the mouth over ICE on Face the Nation last Sunday when called out on her duplicitous deceitfulness by the host. It was pretty funny how worked up she got when even CBS could see she was lying. I thought her cognitive dissonance was going to give her a stroke before the interview was over.
If you want to change the way illegals are treated, change the law. Don't expect those charged with upholding the law to look the other way so you can feel oh so superior about yourself. If Always Ocrazio Cortex is right and the US is running concentration camps, it's the first time in history that people are climbing fences to get in one.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Wednesday July 10 2019, @03:45PM (8 children)
You don't get it. This isn't some argument you can win through pedantry.
You've proven you're okay with crimes against humanity, so you're trash. There's no room for polite disagreement with you. What you believe and do is unforgivable.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 10 2019, @03:59PM (4 children)
Ad hominem. Typical. There is no polite disagreement because you offer no reasoning except anyone who disagrees with your preconceived opinion is "trash." This is the heart of TDS.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Wednesday July 10 2019, @04:10PM (3 children)
"Your honor this whole trial is an ad hominem you refuse to refute my arguments about my very correct gun cleaning ettiequette and insist on focusing on my personal character"
Again, it doesn't matter what hypotheticals you pose, while you're defending concentration camps. There's no negotiation with that on details. Either you change or you have to literally die for their to be justice. The only options.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 10 2019, @05:13PM (2 children)
They are concentration camps in the same way the Ryker's Island or San Quentin are concentration camps. Only idiots compare Nazi extermination camps to Federal detention facilities. If you break the law, you can expect to be detained.
Are you threatening me? You are beyond crazy. You want death on those who would disagree with you. Do you believe that people who come to this country, uninvited, and cross the border illegally have greater rights than someone who was born here, has done nothing illegal and wants our laws to be upheld? You would wish death on me but not ask foreigners to obey our laws. You are the poster child for TDS.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 10 2019, @05:34PM (1 child)
Idiots like people who went through such camps? Historians pointing out the similarities?
News flash you evil fuck, concentration camps do not require gas chambers to be concentration camps. Mass genocide is not required. Inhumane concentration camps are still inhumane.
You accept the excuses given with zero critical thought. I think the only solution is to put you trumptards into these camps and treat your families accordingly. That seems to be the only way you'll get a clue, first hand experience of being ripped from your families, imprisoned and brutalized.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 10 2019, @06:43PM
Citation?
I accept your terms. Next time I get caught sneaking across a sovereign country's border, feel free to put me in one of those US Federal detention centers until my economic asylum request can be heard.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday July 10 2019, @04:20PM (2 children)
You've got every byte down pat - and it all bites ass because it's all false.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 10 2019, @05:48PM (1 child)
Clueless Runaway at it again!
I get the feeling that even if they started gassing immigrants you idiots still would find some rationale to hand-wave it away. Yes they are "concentration camps" and yes it is inhumane. There is no need to separate families, that is just the extra ICEing on the cake of hatred you assholes have baked.
Keep preaching that hatred jerkoff, hell is gonna be rough for you.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday July 10 2019, @06:28PM
*yawn*
WTF is going to gas the immigrants? Is that what you progressives have in mind if/when you win the White House again? I know you people don't like facts, but Obama deported more immigrants than Trump. Obama separated more families than Trump. Obama told us there was a crisis at the border, long before Trump got close to the White House. And, O'Crazio Cortez led the resistance to giving more money to the border crisis. The crisis fits your agenda. Rather than send ten, a hundred, or a thousand dollars to feed the children, you would rather make political capital off of those children.
Did someone say "evil" in a recent discussion?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 10 2019, @02:30PM (4 children)
What I would propose is that the Commander in Chief starts using the military properly to start helping people instead of killing them. I guarantee you emergency shelters (which aren't supposed to be jail detention, BTW) are cheaper than his wall. Providing real and meaningful medical care to those inbound is far cheaper than the gulags being established now and then needing to send people to the emergency room because they were not properly assessed on coming in. In any national disaster worldwide armed forces resources are immediately prepared to mobilize and prepared to respond. What I would propose if the border emergency is truly an emergency as our President oh so lovingly designated it for his precious wall is that he could then also send FEMA there to provide humanitarian relief. What I would propose is that Trump gets the fuck out of the way of the State Department and enables them to work with the nations where all these people are coming from in order to help address their problems instead of allowing United States Capitalism to fist-fuck those countries into such situations. Make no mistake about it: The United States created this situation and actively induced it to occur.
The loudest howlers in Congress are screaming at the, "Fuck you, we got ours!" attitude that is providing a meaningless border wall expansion, as if the refugees won't still get around the barricades by any weak spot necessary. They are saying we do indeed need a secure border, and the President is completely wrong about the way he is trying to provide it.
Or the United States could simply stop trying to be the Empire of the World. Either solve the world's issues or stop dominating it, because the rest of the world will tire of it sooner rather than later and do something about it. We probably don't want to be around for that solution.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 10 2019, @03:47PM (3 children)
Posse Comitatus, genius. The military can't assist in law enforcement. Don't you remember how the left stamped their feet and beat their chests when Trump wanted to send the military to the border? They can certainly stop an invasion though and it's starting to look like a fifth column invasion.
I've got a better idea. No more granting asylum requests unless the grantee is being persecuted by his home state. Economic refugees are not asylum seekers. Summary judgement at the border followed by a bus ticket back to their shithole of origin. It's funny at how much you progressives got your panties in a wad over Trump rightfully calling out those places as shitholes, but somehow they are so bad that families can't go back there. Sounds like the definition of shithole to me.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday July 10 2019, @04:21PM (2 children)
Defense of the border in the face of invaders is not "law enforcement". It's exactly what the military was intended for.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 10 2019, @06:14PM (1 child)
Off your rocker, like waaaaay off.
You need meds, for a military man (so you say) you are apparently beyond out of touch, budding little fascist that you are.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday July 10 2019, @06:24PM
Maybe you've heard of Sun Tzu. The bestest and fastest and easiest way to defeat yourself is to lose the will to win. That is almost half of America today, and half or more of Europe.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 09 2019, @05:44PM (10 children)
The national debt is never actually going to be paid down besides via hyperinflation. It never was going to either. The goal has always been to have the people who own the fed slowly purchase government properties/agencies ("privatization"), most of which the government shouldn't have been involved with to begin with, as it gets into greater and greater debt with the money they made from loaning the government money that was printed out of thin air.
So here is how it works:
Fed: "Print" money and buy treasury bonds, pay dividends to the "member banks" (along with all sorts of other schemes), cause constant inflation
Democrats: Government should do this new thing, raise taxes on "the rich" to pay for it
Republicans: Government shouldn't do that thing, sell the rights to someone of our choosing, lower taxes on "the rich"
People: Wait we are all "rich" now due to inflation so the taxes are on all of us, and our taxes aren't paying for the stuff we want, and the government is falsifying its budget, etc.
That is the republicrat party scam.
(Score: 4, Informative) by ikanreed on Tuesday July 09 2019, @05:46PM (8 children)
We are not "the rich" now. The gap between us regular people and the criminally undertaxed has never been larger.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 09 2019, @06:19PM (1 child)
According to the governments definitions we are all "rich". We all pay income tax now, which was only meant for the rich.
http://www.bradfordtaxinstitute.com/Endnotes/IRS_Form_1040_1913.pdf [bradfordtaxinstitute.com]
The price of gold was ~$20 per oz in 1913[1], so the lowest tax bracket ($3,000) was for people with income corresponding to ~145 oz of gold.
Today the price of gold is ~$1400.
So the value of the dollar has decreased by 1400/20 = 70x since then. But the lowest tax bracket has only increased ~3-4x to $9,525[2]
Likewise, look at price per acre of land[3]:
1913: ~$43
2018: ~$3,140
Ratio: ~70x
No one making under ~$200k per year should be paying any taxes according to the original definition of "rich".
[1] https://onlygold.com/gold-prices/historical-gold-prices/ [onlygold.com]
[2] https://www.creditkarma.com/tax/i/2018-tax-brackets/ [creditkarma.com]
[3] https://extension2.missouri.edu/g404 [missouri.edu]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 09 2019, @07:01PM
You mean the chinese slowly purchase the government?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday July 10 2019, @03:12AM (5 children)
The point of the grandparent was that tax policy was based on thresholds which routinely aren't adjusted for inflation. The reference to normal people as the rich was sarcasm (hence, the "scare quotes", you know?) based on going through such tax thresholds due to inflation of base wages.
But having said that, it's pretty dishonest to claim that the "gap" has widened to unheard of levels. It's not like we've never had extremely rich despots prior to oh 1970. The Mogul emperors of medieval India were supposed to have presided over some of the greatest inequalities ever - certainly far greater than anything in the present.
And global income inequality has gone down in the past few decades, contrary to your assertion.
So what you're really complaining about is a modest increase in some country's wealth inequality in the last few decades, probably the US. That comes off of some of the lowest wealth inequality ever. So we're a bit off a peak equality. Ho hum.
Then there's the matter of just how valuable rich person wealth really is. I doubt derivatives are anywhere near as valuable as claimed. And you sure can't eat them. Meaning the wealth valuation of rich people just isn't all that valuable and inequality may be considerably lower than claimed? But that would run counter to the narrative, wouldn't it?
Finally, what's the end game here? Tax the rich is a great feelgood, but there isn't that much wealth there. I noted some time ago that the wealth of all the billionaires (well, at least all the ones that aren't their own governments, that is) of the world (not just the US) seized would only pay for a few years of the US's budget.
Maybe we should find a real problem to worry about instead?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 10 2019, @09:30AM (4 children)
Yes, why is the solution never "make the government 10% more efficient"? This would free up $400 billion dollars a year for new projects... But that possibility is *never* mentioned.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday July 10 2019, @12:11PM (3 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 10 2019, @04:18PM (2 children)
Well, there's legal and then there's legal. You do realize that the "criminally undertaxed" have bought and paid for the politicians who write our tax code, no? While what the ueber-wealthy are doing may be[*] legal, moral or ethical could be another matter entirely.
[*] I have my doubts about how many of the tax breaks these ueber-wealthy are claiming are on the up and up; they typically have lawyers and accountants to make as many dodgy, weasally claims as they can muster with a semi-straight face. Just sayin'.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 10 2019, @05:23PM
So you want the criminally undertaxed to give more money to their bought and paid for politicians?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday July 11 2019, @12:26PM
"Could be". Pretty weaselly even for the law. Meanwhile I'll note that even the allegedly moral or ethical tend to pay as little taxes as they can get away with.
(Score: 2) by martyb on Wednesday July 10 2019, @11:02PM
During the Bill Clinton presidency, and the dot-com boom was on, there were serious concerns and discussions about what would happen when the US paid off its national debt. It surely looked like it was going to happen! Then the dot-com boom went bust. (IIRC) the next president pushed through a tax cut that reduced the income over expense ratio and the national debt started to increase again.
So many financial instruments were based off the price of federal treasury notes, bonds, and bills. If the US paid off its national debt, then it would not need to borrow any money, and thus there would be no federal rates to base consumer rates off of. So, then comes the question of what should the interest rate be on a car loan? Credit cards? How about for a mortgage? This provoked a great deal of worry and concern and articles about what should be done.
To quote Maxwell Smart: "It was thiiiiis close."
Sadly, the US managed to seize defeat from the jaws of victory.
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 09 2019, @05:50PM (24 children)
He only got as much media time as he did in 1992 because the democrats wanted to use him to split the vote for Papa Bush, so that Slick Willy got elected. Perot would have disappeared from Larry King etc. if it was apparent he had a chance to win.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by ikanreed on Tuesday July 09 2019, @05:52PM (23 children)
Be that as it may, the good he'd have done in fixing the toxic death spiral of the republicans into, well, what they are now would have massively outweighed any benefit a right-leaning democrat briefly being in office could have possibly done.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 09 2019, @06:03PM (22 children)
We have a right-leaning life long democrat in office right now.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Tuesday July 09 2019, @06:17PM (21 children)
If you think my problem with Trump is Trump himself being a stupid person and rude shit towards other people, and not the republican party and policymakers he's selected being irredeemably evil, you've got a dumbass view of things.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 09 2019, @07:05PM (20 children)
Super evil, not like the democrats who will make me pay reparations for slavery and illegals' healthcare. As an immigrant, surely this kind of stuff is all my problem and my fault.
(Score: 5, Informative) by ikanreed on Tuesday July 09 2019, @07:33PM (18 children)
It's hard to imagine how shitty you have to be to go "giving people healthcare is equally evil to" and then basically end that sentence in literally any way. Like forget "lock people in concentration camps without charge, seperating their children from their parents and making 3 year olds stand trial" that's actually happening, but literally anything.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 09 2019, @08:16PM (17 children)
My guess is the AC swallowed the Russian's sweaty load of BS about Seth Rich https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/russian-intel-planted-fake-report-that-seth-rich-was-killed-by-assassins-working-for-clinton [washingtonexaminer.com]
I for one am SHOCKED that just about every conservative talking point is 100% nonsense and more often than not stemming from Russia. SHOCKED I SAY! Russiagate is real folks!! I don't think the morons really thought through their naming of that one...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by ikanreed on Tuesday July 09 2019, @08:45PM (1 child)
Here's a thing that I do wish some of my erstwhile allies would internalize. The Russia media manipulation is a secondary side effect of a right wing media machine that already had a long history of occasionally creating, and more often amplifying, outright lies both for clicks and for ideological reasons, and a mainstream media that would run with any story that got enough traction and only slightly less credulity than your facebook aunt.
Russia may have leveraged that phenomenon, but the underlying problem is an engine of credulity. And trying to externalize the blame for our broken media system ignores that anyone with modest resources and a will to deceive can and do do the same. Not just geopolitical rival nations.
Russia should be a "Look at where our interactions with online misinformation have left us. Vulnerable to foreign manipulation." warning. Not a generic boogeyman to blame for misinformation existing in the first place. Sure, the Seth Rich shit is a lie, but it's a lie that could just as easily have originated at truepatriotblog.us as totally-a-real-news-site.mk.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 09 2019, @09:52PM
This is the source of your info: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Sorcha_Faal [rationalwiki.org]
What a hilarious troll of the fake news and their believers.
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 09 2019, @08:54PM (14 children)
The only reason anyone thinks that is because Julian Ssange implied it. It has nothing to do with this Russian thing. I mean whatdoesitmean.com? Have you looked at that site?
You are just another ignorant moron who only accepts evidence for what they already want to believe.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 09 2019, @08:59PM (12 children)
This appears to be what they refer to:
http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/index2071.htm [whatdoesitmean.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 09 2019, @09:13PM
They do have a way of tying together all the vague and BS reporting found in the US fake news into a different narrative. Like who were these guys supposedly driving around DC with automatic weapons 2 days after the Seth Rich murder that got in a shootout with the police who had been looking for them? Why were the cops looking for them to begin with? https://abcnews.go.com/US/capitol-complex-lockdown-police/story?id=40529280 [go.com]
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Tuesday July 09 2019, @09:17PM (8 children)
Wow. Thanks for the link to Whatdoesitmean.com [whatdoesitmean.com] it is hilarious. Surely some sort of parody site?
The first link that caught my eye was to PhiSciences [phisciences.co] which looked completely bananas and did not disappoint:
He has trademarked his name. Yes, really.
What an entertaining morning I am having.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 09 2019, @09:37PM (7 children)
Lol, this is the source that "Russia did it":
http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/index2913.htm [whatdoesitmean.com]
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Tuesday July 09 2019, @09:53PM (6 children)
What, the only one?
Because Wikipedia has a whole bunch of other more, um, sane sources: here. [wikipedia.org]
I am pretty sure the FBI (for example) are not spending a lot of time investigating based soley on that nonsense:
We could pretend it didn't happen I suppose.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 09 2019, @09:58PM
What does any of the three to do with the Seth Rich murder and Julian Assange heavily implying in an interview that he was a source?
And I read some of that Russian troll indictment, they had info that makes no sense like the name of an agent who was using a certain IP address. It reeked of technical incompetence.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 09 2019, @10:02PM (4 children)
Also, read this:
http://www.kim.com/ [kim.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 09 2019, @10:20PM (3 children)
Kim Dotcom has his fans, but he's still a fat con man and attention whore.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 09 2019, @10:35PM (2 children)
And the FBI is filled with people trained to lie for a living. Who will we trust?
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Wednesday July 10 2019, @12:15AM (1 child)
I have a certain amount of sympathy for Kim Dotcom, but when said
he was lying. Nobody contacted him about starting a branch of the Internet Party in the United States because the Internet Party had exactly zero credibility in New Zealand, so why would anyone expect any in the US?
That just did not happen.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 11 2019, @06:38PM
He lies all the time I don't know why anyone likes him. He paid people to get high scores for FPS games so he could use the leaderboards for self promotion. He happened to get most of his fame helping the internet pirate movies so the most rabid retards defend him not knowing that he was mostly well known for being a bane on nerd culture before that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 09 2019, @09:23PM (1 child)
http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/index2071.htm [whatdoesitmean.com]
And oh my God. Is this Mueller's source that the SVR was behind this?
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/russian-intel-planted-fake-report-that-seth-rich-was-killed-by-assassins-working-for-clinton [washingtonexaminer.com]
Please tell me they have a better source than whatdoesitmean.com... I will not be able to stop laughing if that is their source.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 09 2019, @09:29PM
Yep, that seems to be the entire body of evidence that this was a botched robbery.
https://news.yahoo.com/exclusive-the-true-origins-of-the-seth-rich-conspiracy-a-yahoo-news-investigation-100000831.html [yahoo.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 09 2019, @11:57PM
Its ok, you are the only genius around and I thank you kind sir for showing me the light. I now know better than to mock the people who merely APPEAR to be idiots around here.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 09 2019, @07:45PM
Awww does your brain hurty? Universal healthcare would help you get your brain back on track, can't have that now can we? Needs them some useful idiots like yerself.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Tuesday July 09 2019, @06:49PM (5 children)
I got an intimation from friends who follow this stuff that Newt Gingrich led the charge, but what else happened, and why did everybody follow along? Anything concrete that people can point to along the way?
(Score: 5, Informative) by ikanreed on Tuesday July 09 2019, @07:57PM (4 children)
It's hard to get past Reagan for the doublethink becoming a necessary component of the platform. Laffer curve and supply side economics became this... obviously wrong thing they had to spend the next rest of forever inventing newer and deeper narratives to defend as always being right. The point where the first core public argument became fiction vs reality. And being ideologically republican meant defending obvious bullshit rather than having different values. You had to be empirically and enthusiastically wrong.
Creationism versus evolution had been a public debate before that, but that's the point it started becoming republicans on the emphatically and materially wrong side, and democrats on the right side.
Same with global warming.
People made recent talk of being in a "post-fact era" because of all the fake news bullshit around 2016, but a serious look at history shows the trends of outright lies you "must" believe because of partisanship really started being a thing in the early 1980s. Conservatism started becoming incompatible with what you might call "reality" decades ago. Perot seemed like the last chance at a course change.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 10 2019, @03:41PM (3 children)
Man, take off the blindfold and look in the mirror. The opposite of wrong isn't always right, sometimes it's just wrong in a different way.
The republican politicians may be delusional shit-head assholes with no humanity left, but that doesn't make the democrat politicians saints or even superior. They are also evil manipulative greedy self-serving bastards.
Do you really believe that 49% of people who care enough to vote are irredeemably stupid racist deplorables? I am convinced a lot of good people voted for Trump because they thought evil was worse than stupid. Continually pointing out that Trump is stupid doesn't change them, because you aren't addressing the fact that they still think evil is worse than stupid.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 10 2019, @04:31PM (1 child)
A few years ago I would have said no. Now, I'm not so sure.
And look at where that got us; we now have both evil and stupid in the WH. I sure hope that Trump voters have learned their lesson as we approach November 2020.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 12 2019, @02:45AM
So you're advocating that they vote for evil.
Why don't you advocate that the democrats run a candidate who isn't widely seen as a corrupt evil bitch who will start wars for the profit of the 'old money' class?
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Wednesday July 10 2019, @06:41PM
(Spoiler I don't think the democrats are right all the time. They're shit. I just think the republicans have become ideologically committed to impossibly stupid things, and very evil things that are sadly very possible)
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 09 2019, @05:48PM (1 child)
Perot sold EDS to General Motors with *mixed* results, that story is summarized by the big Detroit paper,
https://www.freep.com/story/money/cars/general-motors/2019/07/09/ross-perot-gm-roger-smith/1682342001/ [freep.com]
We were working for the big Chevrolet Engineering Center in Warren MI at that time (north of Detroit). This building must have contained a hundred or more specialized test labs, imagine all the parts that have to be tested for durability and performance in all the different Chevys made--this was where much of that work was done. Imagine doors being opened and slammed shut automatically every few seconds, suspension being pounded with recordings of badly potholed roads, etc., etc.
Here's what I remember (although my memory may be off a bit):
Within a very short time after the EDS purchase, young clueless bucks with shaved heads from EDS lay claim to every computer in the building. This included many specialized systems with custom data acquisition that were used to run testing systems, many realtime, many dedicated to large expensive custom test rigs. It was a disaster, the EDS guys (don't think that I ever saw an EDS gal in that plant) were clueless outside their main business of accounting systems, but Perot had told them to take charge. It was like the Marines came in to shut the test labs down, the place came to a standstill.
We gave up on making progress on the project that we were working on, and did other things for awhile. Months later, a truce must have been negotiated and engineering could once again control their own computing resources. The original GM engineers (some IT, but mostly computer science types with mechanical engineering background) that were still there (some left in disgust) got back to work and brought everything back up.
So that's my Perot story -- a bull in a china shop. Sometimes having a bull is a good thing, but not always!
(Score: 3, Interesting) by istartedi on Tuesday July 09 2019, @11:45PM
I'm sure that sucked, but I doubt the "IT department must control everything, even engineer's machines" mentality originated with Perot. I never actually had it happen to me, but I've been within earshot of an admin a few cubes over who was plotting this very thing, and I figured it would have cut my productivity in half at least.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Tuesday July 09 2019, @06:24PM (2 children)
Was he the one with the charts, before Al Gore came along and made them all cool? I must say my memory of Perot is quite hazy at best. He was the little odd person with the giant ears next to Clinton and Bush. That is as far as I remember him really.
(Score: 2) by Sourcery42 on Tuesday July 09 2019, @06:53PM
I can really only recall Dana Carvey's SNL parodies of the guy
(Score: 2) by Rupert Pupnick on Tuesday July 09 2019, @09:18PM
Don't forget his running mate James Stockdale whose opening remark to the audience during the Vice Presidential debate was: "Who am I? Why am I here?"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1w3FgB0Ohc [youtube.com]
(Score: 3, Funny) by Hartree on Tuesday July 09 2019, @08:41PM (1 child)
I guess the question: "Can I finish?"
Has finally been answered.
We're all ears, Ross. ;)
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Wednesday July 10 2019, @02:40PM
Beat me to it... But the real question is, "Now what will Dana Carvey do???"
This sig for rent.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by donkeyhotay on Tuesday July 09 2019, @08:48PM (2 children)
Follow the logic:
In 1992 the economy is stagnant and people are angry over tax increases.
Enter Ross Perot, a populist, third-party candidate who promises to fix the economy.
During the election, Ross Perot takes enough key votes from George H. W. Bush to give some key electoral wins to Bill Clinton.
Bill Clinton is elected by only a plurality of voters, but wins a clear majority of electoral votes.
Hillary Clinton becomes first lady.
After eight years in the White House, both Clintons are politically powerful -- Hillary has aspirations of her own.
Thanks to riding on her husband's political coattails, Hillary Clinton serves in the Senate, runs an unsuccessful presidential campaign, but stays in the public eye after becoming part of the Obama administration
In 2016 Hillary Clinton runs for president -- and loses.
Question: Would any of this have happened if Ross Perot had not run for president? Probably not.
Conclusion: Ross Perot significantly changed the course of US Presidential history in ways he never imagined.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 09 2019, @10:45PM (1 child)
Not just Republican votes. Perot got my vote, which would otherwise have gone to Clinton.
(Score: 2) by donkeyhotay on Thursday July 11 2019, @08:17PM
Yes, it is fair to say that Perot took votes from both Republicans and Democrats. However, when scrutinize the numbers, state-by-state, for those states which went to Clinton, it looks to me like Perot took a greater number of votes from Bush than from Clinton and that was enough.
That sure was a crazy election though. By 1996 I had become decidedly less partisan, and now I am content to just sit on the sidelines and observe.
(Score: 2) by ilPapa on Tuesday July 09 2019, @08:53PM
The guy was an original - a throwback from the days when the worst thing a wealthy businessman candidate wanted to do was lower the deficit.
Plus, he was known for giving swords to people as gifts, which is pretty great.
You are still welcome on my lawn.
(Score: 2) by istartedi on Tuesday July 09 2019, @11:39PM
I've already tweeted this: "RIP, H. Ross Perot. It seems fitting that he'd die during this administration. He was the man who could have halted Free Trade, or the 'giant sucking sound' as he called it. That might have prevented Trump's rise."
I'd like to expand on this a bit in Soylent's more generous space. Perot, for all his failings, saw the direction in which we were heading--a direction in which the economy was being directed by a global ruling class that favored the breakdown of national sovereignty, open borders, and free trade. None of this was grass-roots. It was all being pushed from top down, with foreseeable negative consequences for the middle and working class.
Personally, I think he underestimated the public's already growing dissatisfaction with elite rule and never expected to get as far as he got. He struck me as being unprepared for populism to be... so popular. I think the strain got to him when he started to poll within striking distance.
Say what you will about Trump, but he was psychologically prepared to go all the way. What a pity that Perot wasn't. We could have taken this country in a direction that was more in tune with the desires of average men and women. Instead, we got 30 years of elite rule that festered until people were so disgusted that they were willing to take almost anything other than the status quo.
As a personal aside, I did indeed vote for him, but would have changed to GOP had my mail-in ballot not already been sealed. I changed my mind after the "dirty tricks" speech, because it seemed like he had gone off his nut. I decided to mail it in rather than cast a ballot that might be considered spoiled and lose my other votes. What's also memorable is why I was voting absentee: I had been lied to by local officials who said students have to vote in their home town. Yep. I was a victim of election fraud in that election. Local officials didn't like the way students might skew elections
RIP, Mr. Perot. You were a real American.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 10 2019, @12:38AM
finished.
(Score: 2) by gtomorrow on Wednesday July 10 2019, @06:06AM (1 child)
After reading all of these boring, tangential, Stockholm Syndrome comments, I can't believe nobody here had brought up that...
...but, y'know, let's all talk about who overseer is better instead.
(Score: 2) by gtomorrow on Wednesday July 10 2019, @06:12AM
AH, I forgot to add that during his campaign, he specifically mentioned the creation of an "electronic town-hall", the first mention I can recall of an internet-type plan from a candidate or any politico.