The Internal Report Proving the FCC Made Up a Cyberattack (gizmodo.com) 134
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: An investigation carried out by Federal Communication Commission's own inspector general officially refutes controversial claims that a cyberattack was responsible for disrupting the FCC's comment system in May 2017, at the height of the agency's efforts to kill off net neutrality. The investigation also uncovered that FCC officials had provided congressional lawmakers with misleading information regarding conversations between an FCC employee and the Federal Bureau of Investigation's cybercrime task force. A report from the inspector general's office (OIG) released Tuesday afternoon states that the comment system's downtime was likely caused by a combination of "system design issues" and a massive surge in traffic caused when Last Week Tonight host John Oliver directed millions of TV viewers to flood the FCC's website with pro-net neutrality comments.
Investigators were unable to "substantiate the allegations of multiple DDoS attacks" alleged by then-FCC Chief Information Officer David Bray, the report says. "At best, the published reports were the result of a rush to judgment and the failure to conduct analyses needed to identify the true cause of the disruption to system availability." [Here's an excerpt from the report:] "While we identified a small amount of anomalous activity and could not entirely rule out the possibility of individual DoS attempts during the period from May 7 through May 9, 2017, we do not believe this activity resulted in any measurable degradation of system availability given the minuscule scale of the anomalous activity relative to the contemporaneous voluminous viral traffic." Yesterday, before the report was released, FCC chairman Ajit Pai came clean on the fact that the hack of its comment system last year actually took place. Pai blamed the former chief information officer and the Obama administration for providing "inaccurate information about the incident to me, my office, Congress, and the American people."
Investigators were unable to "substantiate the allegations of multiple DDoS attacks" alleged by then-FCC Chief Information Officer David Bray, the report says. "At best, the published reports were the result of a rush to judgment and the failure to conduct analyses needed to identify the true cause of the disruption to system availability." [Here's an excerpt from the report:] "While we identified a small amount of anomalous activity and could not entirely rule out the possibility of individual DoS attempts during the period from May 7 through May 9, 2017, we do not believe this activity resulted in any measurable degradation of system availability given the minuscule scale of the anomalous activity relative to the contemporaneous voluminous viral traffic." Yesterday, before the report was released, FCC chairman Ajit Pai came clean on the fact that the hack of its comment system last year actually took place. Pai blamed the former chief information officer and the Obama administration for providing "inaccurate information about the incident to me, my office, Congress, and the American people."
False flag fake news propaganda (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't trust the government anymore. They abuse the trust we're forced to give them.
Re: False flag fake news propaganda (Score:1, Insightful)
And ironically you are modded -1 by the blind patriots. It's like America doesn't even want freedom anymore.
Re:False flag fake news propaganda (Score:5, Insightful)
No, it's your very task as a citizen not to trust your government, but to keep yourself informed and ready to challenge anything that you don't like, by speaking out, by voting and by going to court, if all else fails. A government is made by humans, and like any humans, it can err, it follows an agenda, open or hidden, and it will be blind to some serious effects of its decisions.
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You've forgotten one:
The Moving Box.
Freedom of speech and association is the First Amendment to our Constitution for good reason. To go where you wish, with whoever you wish, is to ensure you can say what you wish to those you wish to, though they may ignore you, as is their right.
From this all other rights can be ensured. And ti s no mistake that there is a movement in American to silence some speech, for free speech is the springboard of liberty.
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Of course, they'd do a fine job of enforcing "Net Neutrality". They wouldn't lie to us about that.
Is anyone surprised? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Hey, let's just say we got DDOSed. No one will ever know afterward! We're the government!"
I'm not surprised, and they have a dangerous mentality as government officials in committing a fraud on the American people.
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If they thought they would get away with this just imagine what sorts of things they've already gotten away with that they've been doing carefully.
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Has this administration ever done anything "carefully"? They have all the nuance and subtlety of a megaphone blaring Yakety Sax 24/7.
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"Hey, let's just say we got DDOSed. No one will ever know afterward! We're the government!"
Explain the difference between a DDOS coming from, say, an IoT botnet, and one coming from 1000 people all actively posting crap to a comment submission system. Yes, one is "cyber", one is "human". That's a difference. Both take place in a "cyber" environment, just one is humans programmed, I mean "incited", by a call to action, the other is IoT stuff programmed to action.
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Explain the difference between a DDOS coming from, say, an IoT botnet, and one coming from 1000 people all actively posting crap to a comment submission system.
After Jeff Kao posted a screenshot [hackernoon.com] of Regex101.com highlighting some generated comments, his analysis across the dataset, and the source code [github.com] to reproduce his results, I'm pretty sure you can make a determination on whether it was humans posting those submissions.
I don't think anyone was personally trying to take down the comment site.** It was merely lots of parties trying to push their viewpoint, including: (a) Lots of pro-NN people, some of whom watch HBO; (b) a handful of con-NN people; (c) a few modera
While you're distratced, EPA (Score:5, Informative)
Perhaps you missed this really HUGE news in bad governance:
https://archpaper.com/2018/08/epa-asbestos-manufacturing/
EPA, the *ENVIRONMENTAL Protection Agency", “no longer consider the effect or presence of substances in the air, ground, or water in its risk assessments.”
Under this rule change, EPA does not consider the *environment* while decided if something is bad for the environment. Hence asbestos, which still kills 40,000 people a year, is now safe and allowed in products, because it's presence in air is no longer considered, so its presence in lungs is no longer considered, so its no longer toxic, according to the EPA.
So now Uralasbest can now export it from Russia to USA (its no longer made in USA). Here's a stock market quote of this company quoted in Moscow:
https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/urag?countrycode=ru
To invest in the Russian stock market, you'll need a Russian trading bank..... Alfabank is one of the biggest of those.
1+1=2, f**ing Russians.
*Russian* asbestos in American lungs (Score:1)
Snopes only considers the EPA rule change, *not* the fact asbestos is one of the few successful export of Russia. Its totally weird Trump's obsession with removing asbestos restrictions (google his asbestos tweets to see that).
Yet its not weird at all when you consider the voices whispering in his ear are Russians looking to expand exports.
In that context you can see how they would rank their exports as more important than the lungs of Americans.
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It seems reasonable to assume that they see the damage to American lungs as being an *added* benefit of expanding sales of asbestos.
Asbesto danger to lungs (Score:2)
Things are a bit more complicated.
In a twisted weird point of view, the EPA is actually right :
accidental small exposure to asbesto aren't dangerous, it's the chronic long-term exposition that is highly carcinogenic.
So if you just *live* in a building that is fireproofed by asbesto, and maybe drill a hole or two to put your giant protrait on the wall (accidental small inhalation of dust), you'd be just fine.
On the other hand, the construction workers who will work on the building (e.g.: demolishing or rebui
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I am part of a group that just moved into a new space, one with flooring over concrete that is assumed to be asbestos-bearing. We did not remove it, nor expose it. We are installing sealer and flooring to entirely encapsulate it.
This happens a LOT. Not many buildings have asbestos fireproofing in walls that can be exposed by hammering a nail in, for those get inspected, or already have been, and that's going to be a forced removal. I've been through one.
This isn't that big a deal, really, but it will be ma
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Building codes.
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Re:Asbesto danger to lungs (Score:5, Informative)
In a twisted weird point of view, the EPA is actually right :
accidental small exposure to asbesto aren't dangerous, it's the chronic long-term exposition that is highly carcinogenic.
Asbestos is dangerous even in small quantities, because it can easily be lodged in the epithelial wall. It depends mostly on the type of asbestos; shorter fibers mean less ability for cilia to sweep it out of your lungs. Any persistent lung irritant can cause cancer, asbestos is just spectacular at persisting because the body can't break it down.
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"its no longer made in USA"
Actually, that is somewhat untrue. Jewelry forms of asbestos are still mined and produced in the USA to this very day.
Source: I just got done nabbing some crocodilite over the weekend while out in the high desert of SoCal. Lovely blue/black Tigers eye (aka Hawks eye, the pre-oxidation form of Tigers eye.)
run for the border (Score:2, Insightful)
Well, at least now we know why anchor baby Ajit Pai decided to "come clean" about the hoax yesterday. He knew the proverbial jig was up and he figured he'd do a partial reveal before he was exposed.
It's become the signature move of this degenerate administration: get out ahead of the bad news and try to blunt the damage.
Re: run for the border (Score:1)
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Yes, but none of us have ever seen it used at anywhere near the scale we're seeing it now.
And also, none of us have ever seen this strategy applied to crimes up to and including making deals with foreign powers to steal elections and then paying them back with policy. Even Nixon had the good taste to use all-American burglars to get dirt on his enemies. Collusion with a foreign power at this level hasn't
Re: run for the border (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't think you get how this works. You don't have to be in favor of someone to criticize them. In fact, the most critical people might be the ones who are...most critical.
Brother, you've come to the right place:
Here is a comprehensive list of every false claim Donald Trump has made since Inauguration Day to two weeks ago, listed in reverse chronological order and cross-referenced by topic. There are 2,083, and again, that's not counting the past two weeks. Each false claim is accompanied by a citation, and apparently they were pretty conservative when making this list because I can name at least 24 false claims not listed here that Trump made in June and July. This list is under continual review and has been open to challenges. None have been successful so far. Other such projects have put the number at just over 3,000, but let's give our big, wet, boy the benefit of the doubt, shall we?
http://projects.thestar.com/do... [thestar.com]
Now, the most expansive (and I do mean expansive) list of the false claims of Barack Obama, assembled by a some nutty alt-right too-crazy-for-Breitbart blogger out of rural Pennsylvania, is 1,375. And that's over eight years. Trump as amassed his 2,083 over the course of 1.5 years. That puts him on course to out-lie Barack Obama by a ten to one margin.
So yes, we haven't seen anything of this scale before. Also, we haven't seen a degenerate president collude with a hostile foreign power to sway an election and attempt to pay them back with policy. So ithe difference isn't just qualitative, it's quantitative. Treason trumps hyperbole every time.
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You might want to look up what a conspiracy is legally. Because that's textbook what's been done here by Trump and team. Funny thing about conspiracy....you don't have to be successful to get charged. You just have to organize to do something illegal, and/or try to cover up that plot.
You know.....like meet with representatives of a hostile foreign government to try to sway an election, and then lie and say it was a meeting about adoptions. That's pretty much textbook conspiracy, and very much a chargeable f
Re: run for the border (Score:1)
I don't think you get how this works. You don't have to be in favor of someone to criticize them. In fact, the most critical people might be the ones who are...most critical.
You are completely missing what I am trying to say. Let us pretend we are attending a conference on qualfonic energy, which is completely made up. Let us suppose that someone has just given an address with a serious criticism of this form of energy. Would you be more likely to trust this criticism if it came from someone who has had nothing good to say about it or from someone who was a major proponent of it? Hopefully you can understand why people might take the comments from the latter person more serious
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Would you be more likely to trust this criticism if it came from someone who has had nothing good to say about it or from someone who was a major proponent of it? Hopefully you can understand why people might take the comments from the latter person more seriously given no other information.
Actually, I'd trust the person who was never a proponent more in many cases, and I'd be especially doubtful if the supposed proponent was offering some tepid, even half-hearted criticism. Especially if they didn't admit fully and entirely to their complete wrongness on the subject, or worse yet, blamed their opponents (aka, just like Ajit Pai is blaming the Obama administration already), for anything that went wrong.
That's the thing you seemingly have an understanding issue as a Trump apologist.
Hopefully you can also understand why people would not regard you as an unbiased or disinterested source concerning trump. If we had to rank order named commentators based on comments, you probably come at least three standard deviations away from the mean.
Yes, he'd a
Re: run for the border (Score:4, Informative)
You are completely missing what I am trying to say. Let us pretend we are attending a conference on qualfonic energy, which is completely made up. Let us suppose that someone has just given an address with a serious criticism of this form of energy. Would you be more likely to trust this criticism if it came from someone who has had nothing good to say about it or from someone who was a major proponent of it? Hopefully you can understand why people might take the comments from the latter person more seriously given no other information.
Neither. They both have motivations to lie. I'd want to fact check the claims of either person because the first one might be inventing a criticism and the second one may be omitting other major problems. You're a fool if you think either of them is more trustworthy than the other. Furthermore, a proponent admitting a minor flaw, is a classic hustle technique to get you to buy into the product that they're pitching.
If this were not the case you would understand why a source pointing out all of the things that Trump has lied about or misrepresented is not sufficient proof of your claim. You need to compare it to other politicians and I am not convinced that Trump is significantly worse. He certainly is not a truthful politician, but few are and we tend to forget the myriad lies and cover-ups of controversies that surround past politicians. I suspect that if we were discussing some subject where you were not in agreement with the conclusion, you would be quick to employ the same arguments I have used here, but you dislike Trump so much that your emotions blind you to reason.
Trump's lies corrode democracy. [brookings.edu]
There's a long history of presidential untruths. Here's why Donald Trump is 'in a class by himself. [latimes.com]
How Does Trump Stack Up Against the Best — and Worst — Presidents? [nytimes.com]
Trump’s Lies vs. Obama’s [nytimes.com]
Donald Trump running the most dishonest White House ever, says historian [independent.co.uk]
Comparing Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump on the Truth-O-Meter [politifact.com]
Are Clinton and Trump the Biggest Liars Ever to Run for President? [politico.com]
That is not to say you are a bad person, because everyone is that way about something that they take personally. My point is that in this particular area, you are not a good source absent significant and quality evidence.
How much evidence do you need? If you're really interested, there's a lot more stuff on Trump's lack of honesty and his place in the world of American politics in respect to that, but I think it's telling that presidential historians (who ought to know quite a bit about past presidents) have (spoilers) ranked him last place out of all of America's presidents. That's pretty unusual, most politicians get ranked in the middle somewhere during their terms, neither best nor worst.
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Would you be more likely to trust this criticism if it came from someone who has had nothing good to say about it or from someone who was a major proponent of it? Hopefully you can understand why people might take the comments from the latter person more seriously given no other information.
Well, we have Rick Gates listing off reams of criminal activities involving Ukrainians and Russians. I guess we should blindly believe everything he says?
Here's a hint - I would tend to believe critics that have backing evidence for their statements with higher belief factors applied to those that explicitly quote and/or provide video of said person lying over those attempting to use truth by blatant assertions (That would be 99% of Trump apologists btw) In fact, the skew towards believing critics is as l
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So Obama was a better President because he kept so many things to himself...
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Actually, 3 of the 5 Watergate burglars were born in Cubs
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See? Immigrants do the job that Americans won't do.
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Every political group has this play in their playbook and it is hardly unique to this administration. If it seems that way it is because unlike other politicians who keep tight lipped about such things when possible, Trump likes to blurt out his opinion on Twitter ever chance he gets which draws more attention. Since everyone knows that Trump will throw them under the bus, they have no particular loyalty to remain silent themselves if blame can be deflected.
So it wasn't super clear to me from the article just how much the CIO deserved blame for crying wolf and how much Pai was going all-in on a preliminary finding.
But the thing that gets me is the childishness of Pai's statement:
I am deeply disappointed that the FCC’s former [CIO], who was hired by the prior Administration and is no longer with the Commission, provided inaccurate information about this incident to me, my office, Congress, and the American people. This is completely unacceptable. I’
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What ever happened to the guy at the top taking responsibility?
Uh, what happened?
November 2016 happened, that's what.
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Well, in his defense, there are a lot of bad apples in the FCC from the Obama years. Pai himself being a prime example.
Re:run for the border (Score:4)
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No the signature move is calling it fake news. This is a refreshing change of pace.
They called the content of the comments fake news, so they've already gone through that phase.
Is this going to change how anyone votes (Score:4, Insightful)
I''m starting to get some real fatigue here. Like it does't matter what the hell anyone does because no matter what comes out of this Administration or their party it doesn't change how people vote. At the end of the day if folks are still going to show up and vote for an anti-NN administration then all the dirty laundry in the world is irrelevant. At best it might be of historic interest in a thousand years when archeologists write papers on what the heck went wrong.
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I haven't seen that. It looks like they've been trending down.
Re:Is this going to change how anyone votes (Score:4, Informative)
I haven't seen that. It looks like they've been trending down.
Looks like they have been pretty damn flat for the past year. https://projects.fivethirtyeig... [fivethirtyeight.com]
To be clear he still has the worst approval rating is dismal, but then that's where it also started.
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Then a year, later shoot the lovechild dead and be applauded for both practicing his 2nd Amendment and not aborting the baby.
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Troll or moron?
I can't tell.
Maybe both?
Trollon
Re:Is this going to change how anyone votes (Score:5, Insightful)
The left and right do the exact same thing.
This would be meaningful if the USA actually had a left. It has a "center", a "Center-Right" (Democrat), a "Far Right" (Republican) and an "Alt-Right".
Lefties may do the same as righties - but there are few lefties in the USA - perhaps 1 called Bernie Sanders?
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but there are few lefties in the USA - perhaps 1 called Bernie Sanders?
Even Sanders would be considered a typical mainstream left-wing politician in much of Europe. There are a small number of far-left people in the US (after all, you can find people in every area of political ideologies), but none are well-known federal officials.
Re:Is this going to change how anyone votes (Score:4, Informative)
I mentioned your left - Bernie Sanders.
If you had much of a political left, you would not be famous globally for even your previous president not actually setting up such things as universal health care, welfare state, decent consumer rights, user dapa protection and all the other things that your corporate masters do not think you deserve.
Can I guess that you do not believe that there is any difference between socialists and communists? Many of your fellow citizens certainly seem to think this. Do you think that the Nazis were socialists because their full party title had that word in it? If so, presumably you think that the old East Germany was a democracy because its name said so. The "Union of Soviet Socialist Republics" was as Socialist as the DPRK is democratic or belongs to its people. The USSR may well have been heading towards communism under Lenin. Stalin did not continue that journey and it slid into something that he wanted.
Those people way off to your left may be in the middle. Where does that mean you are?
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I suppose if you are insanely far to the right, everything looks "left" to you ...
Fixed that for you.
Hey Ajit, some advice... (Score:5, Insightful)
Investigation to get at the truth (Score:1)
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There should be a bipartisan congressional investigation
You'll have to wait until the midterm elections for that.
Re: Investigation to get at the truth (Score:1)
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"Look even here on Slashdot, it seems more people are openly Republican, and even getting modded up."
This doesn't mean that Trump is becoming more popular. Trump's fans are simply becoming ever more emboldened by his ongoing success in avoiding prosecution. That's why Mueller needs to hurry the hell up.
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Yeah, you are right. If Mueller reveals a bombshell before the election that would totally reverse my prediction. I think: like I said befo
How deep the net has fallen (Score:5, Informative)
Years ago, sites were Slashdotted, nowadays they get Olivered and Colberted.
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Years ago, sites were Slashdotted, nowadays they get Olivered and Colberted.
This. A site that was not intended to have strong authentication for comments became the target of a late night talk show host, and everyone is aghast that it was effectively slashdotted. Now everyone is aghast that an attack that took place in cyberspace ("on the Internet") was called a cyberattack.
Has this happened before? Of course. I remember several years ago Paul Begala took to the media blaming Rush Limbaugh for crashing the White House telephone system, because Rush told people to call the White H
Yeah? (Score:1)
Then how did all those "fake" comments get there? I know for a fact there were a ton of "fake" pro-net-neutrality comments. Everyone who I checked that I knew had several comments from "themselves" that were pro-net-neutrality and when I asked them, they had no idea about the system and had never made the comments. Somebody was up to some shenanigans. Until that is investigated, we all know that Ajit Pie is a criminal and involved in a criminal conspiracy to defraud the American people.
Why is this news? (Score:1)
Remember when slashdot wasnâ(TM)t so politica (Score:2)
Yeah me too. Granted the FCC has become useless for citizens the last 18 months but the discussion on the stories here has really suffered.
Re: Remember when slashdot wasnâ(TM)t so poli (Score:2)
Yeah, good for you son. Notice my UID? Color me unimpressed.
Ajit and all other responsible partys (Score:2)
need to fall on their sword
I don't believe they have my/our interests at heart
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no need to fall on the sword, the PardonerInCheif to the rescue.
Real reason (Score:1)
(Not that this really happened, I'm being funny here. I have no idea what really happened)
They ran their comment system on a Windows box and it crashed and burned. The time it took them to get it back up was the time it took for the guy to drive from Dumfries VA to Washington, get in and hit the machine reset button. Being microsoft it errored coming up so he had to call Microsoft, pay $250 because they let their support run out and fix it.
So call it a DDOS or tell the truth? Let's say it was a DDOS.
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Oh, wait, this took place on the Obama adminstration's watch? Well, down the memory hole with you!
Who was President in May 2017?
Re:I am absolutely outraged... (Score:5, Informative)
Not another one. No, this didn't happen during the Obama administration's watch. It happened the first week of May, 2017. Someone else tried to use the "Obama's fault" card yesterday when Ajit Pai first admitted that his agency had not been hacked. How many times does this have to be shot down before you guys give up trying to lie about it?
https://www.theguardian.com/te... [theguardian.com]
Here's the story from last July, so you can track Ajit Pai's weasily and pitiful lie in real time.
https://gizmodo.com/fcc-now-sa... [gizmodo.com]
And here's the Slashdot story from yesterday.
https://it.slashdot.org/story/... [slashdot.org]
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Oh, wait, this took place on the Obama adminstration's watch?
Not another one.
Not another not another one.
EVEN WORSE: It all took place on OUR watch. ALL of them. All of US. T / O / B / C / B / etc. Our leaders do represent The People, but exactly which ones are yet to be determined.
The again, remember the president is not omnipowerful, even though everyone would like you to think that way. Congress is the one with the overall power, the president just has some money, some people that work at his pleasure, and overall attention.
You want to make a change? Then change Co
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We have a Congress who has ceded all of its power to a unitary executive.
I like your style, but everything else you said is horseshit.
Maybe Alabama likes slaves.
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EVEN WORSE: It all took place on OUR watch. ALL of them. All of US. T / O / B / C / B / etc. Our leaders do represent The People, but exactly which ones are yet to be determined.
Apparently the Russian people? [snopes.com]
I don't know what to say about people who prefer treason to honest elections...
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Re:I am absolutely outraged... (Score:4, Interesting)
How many times does this have to be shot down before you guys give up trying to lie about it?
They will never stop lying about it, because for a significant proportion of the electorate all they need to hear is "it's Obama's fault" and they stop listening, move on to the next thing. They never even notice it being debunked.
The people saying it have a tactic for handling your debunking too. Just watch, one of the replies to your post will demonstrate it. Change the subject, move on to the next lie. You have to remember that they are playing to their audience who is already hostile to your leftist Marxist alt-left MSM biased attacks, they aren't here for a rational debate.
Slashdot is a little less bad because there is at least a sort of functional moderation system, but in general it's best not to waste too much time on debunking (reacting, playing defence) and just concentrate on getting your own narrative based on the truth out. The "gotcha" take-down is satisfying and even works pretty well as click-bait, but I don't think it really changes people's minds.