Shoud've put "virtue signaling" in there.AunBear89 said:
Wow! Not only did he drop the "venality" bomb, but "moral turpitude" as well. The gloves are off!
Shoud've put "virtue signaling" in there.AunBear89 said:
Wow! Not only did he drop the "venality" bomb, but "moral turpitude" as well. The gloves are off!
Quote:
A history professor of mine once attempted to explain to our class why Adolf Hitler invaded the Soviet Union, when the virtual impossibility of a land invasion of a country as vast as Russia was already well known in 1941. The answer, he concluded, was that Hitler was put on earth to invade Russia. His loathing of Bolshevism, his twisted Darwinian mania for the acquisition of land and resources, and his fixation with his own military genius all led him to a decision that was both inevitable and impossible.
This is a good way to think about President Trump's approach toward the Robert Mueller investigation. Trump is not a Nazi or a fascist, and I am not drawing any moral parallel between the two. The similarity, rather, lies in the way an apparently irrational decision can be made logical and necessary by a certain kind of twisted internal logic that can escape outsiders. I have long believed Trump is headed toward a confrontation with Mueller, and those who doubt he will finally take the plunge are making the mistake of judging Trump by the standards of a normal president and not his own demonstrated pathologies. The sacking of FBI staffer Andrew McCabe for alleged unauthorized leaking to the news media, and comments by Trump's lawyer John Dowd calling for the firing or Robert Mueller add to an ominous drumbeat.
I'm trying to think of a time when private industry claimed they could "self-police" something and was actually proven right about it. Having a hard time coming up with examples.Unit2Sucks said:
Yeah I don't think Zuckerberg has much of an argument that FB doesn't need to be regulated and can take care of this on their own. This is a clear failure of private industry failing to police itself.
Quote:
Facebook's chief information security officer, Alex Stamos, will leave the company after internal disagreements over how the social network should deal with its role in spreading disinformation, according to current and former employees briefed on the matter.
Stamos had been a strong advocate inside the company for investigating and disclosing Russian activity on Facebook, often to the consternation of other top executives, including Sheryl Sandberg, the social network's chief operating officer, according to the current and former employees, who asked not to be identified discussing internal matters.
Quote:
Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's chief executive, Sandberg and other company leaders have struggled to address a growing set of problems, including Russian interference on the platform, the rise of false news, and the disclosure this past weekend that 50 million of its user profiles had been harvested by Cambridge Analytica, a voter-profiling company that worked on President Donald Trump's election campaign.
Facebook did not immediately have a comment.
More are coming. Is Hope Hicks next? Corey Lewandowski? Maybe Mueller wants to interview Facebook's chief information security officer, Alex Stamos.bearister said:
List of Guilty Pleas in Special Counsel Investigation (2017 to Present):
Rick Gates
Michael Flynn
George Papadopoulos
Richard Pinedo
Alex R. van der Zwaan
Another Bear said:
Facebook security chief said to leave after clashes over disinformationQuote:
Facebook's chief information security officer, Alex Stamos, will leave the company after internal disagreements over how the social network should deal with its role in spreading disinformation, according to current and former employees briefed on the matter.
Stamos had been a strong advocate inside the company for investigating and disclosing Russian activity on Facebook, often to the consternation of other top executives, including Sheryl Sandberg, the social network's chief operating officer, according to the current and former employees, who asked not to be identified discussing internal matters.Quote:
Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's chief executive, Sandberg and other company leaders have struggled to address a growing set of problems, including Russian interference on the platform, the rise of false news, and the disclosure this past weekend that 50 million of its user profiles had been harvested by Cambridge Analytica, a voter-profiling company that worked on President Donald Trump's election campaign.
Facebook did not immediately have a comment.
#DeleteFacebook movement gains steam after 50 million users have data leaked
Profits or valuation or democracy? I believe I'll be joining #DeleteFacebook.
I've been trying to make a point relevant to this for a long time, without success. Starting with having (and continuing to have) the most negative feelings, opinions, etc., about Trumpians and its fellow travelers, and about Putin and all other totalitarians, I nevertheless can't help but to look for the truth; and, in terms of Russian influence on the American Election, I can't help but to ask the following:
Given: (1) The know-nothing, racist strain in the American body-politic (maybe more a pretty big river);
(2) That any American knows where those parts of the body politic can be found;
(3) Some of the troublesome features of Democracy have been around forever, and have been in process of being more and more weaponized, especially (but not exclusively) by electronic and scientific means - features such as:
(a) The primacy of prejudice
(b) The primacy of playing to those prejudices in order to get votes
(c) Shameless lying to play to those prejudices
(d) Demagoguery
(e) Etc.,
The question arises: Why do the lying, racist, authoritarian demagogues of the Republican Party need any Russian help to do what Russia is accused of doing, and what Cambridge Analytica is now being shown to have done the above, with (a) more money than god, (b) the kind of advancements in relevant technology that money can buy, and (c) probably the most inbred, instinctive, refined, sense of how to invigorate those pressure points and change them into votes (combined the ever-developing tactics of voter suppression)?
Don't get me wrong. Russians are masters of this kind of stuff, from the most major, evil, PR Coup in the history of the world (The Protocols of the Elders of Zion) written by the Czarist Secret Police in the 19th Century, through Stalinism (the father of the Cult of Personality), to the present day, continuing exploits of the Russian Secret Service success in Brexit, and other examples. But, I just can't imagine they could hold a candle to the American professionals who have been mining this strain in American politics to great effect since the Civil War, and have to be seen as having a much more accurate and deep understanding of it than any Russian ever could.
That's why I think that there had to be "collusion" with the Russians, because only Americans could have cut through to the quick in this strain with as much accuracy, precision and feeling as the 2016 hacking of the election had; and so, if the Russian efforts in this (and the scale of Cambridge Analytica's activities suggests that the size of the Russian effort was perhaps not so significant) had any success, it had to have been aided (even directed) by those home-growns who know the territory so much better.
To add to a point I recently made on the board. It appearing now that Cambridge Analytica's relevant conduct was much more pervasive, and likely more effective, than whatever the Russians did, it is important to keep in mind that, questions about how they achieved the data aside, what Cambridge Analytica did (i.e., the calculated lying [fake news] to audiences targeted to the demands of the Electoral College) was LEGAL (whereas the same conduct by foreigners) is IL-LEGAL)Anarchistbear said:
The role of the tech industry in our collective embrace of tribalism, stupidity, surveillance, manipulation and propaganda is far worse than anything the Russians could have concocted.
dajo9 said:
I think most people who have spent a lot of time in corporate life can see that leadership generally consists of smart, driven people who don't give a damn about other people
blungld said:
And yet it is THESE people and not the enterprise of providing for public good (the government) is whom the Conservative base mistrusts. It's because they've nvever worked in Corpirate America and don't know who they are talking about.
CEOs are appointed by and accountable to their boards of directors who have fiduciary duties to stockholders under applicable law. They are far more accountable than politicians who cannnot be removed without cause and generally seem to be re elected with very little regard to their performance, particularly with respect to legislators. Politicians seem to do a pretty good job hiding behind their lawyers when they want to as well. There are very few objective standards or duties applicable to politicians so they can spend decades deceiving their constituents as to their effectiveness.Another Bear said:
At least politicians are elected, can be voted out and usually cede to public pressure. Corporate CEOs hire a bunch of lawyers and then go into HIDING.
Exclusive: Mark Zuckerberg AWOL From Facebook's Data Leak Damage Control Session
The reason that CEO salaries blew into the stratosphere (while the employees' salaries stayed level for decades) is that, although Boards of Directors have legal authority, their more than glaring lack of hands-on understanding of what is actually going on on the ground is such that they are, as a practical matter, as dependent on the CEOs (until some scandal horrible enough to justify negative action comes along) as the Russian Communist Party was dependent on StalinUnit2Sucks said:CEOs are appointed by and accountable to their boards of directors who have fiduciary duties to stockholders under applicable law. They are far more accountable than politicians who cannnot be removed without cause and generally seem to be re elected with very little regard to their performance, particularly with respect to legislators. Politicians seem to do a pretty good job hiding behind their lawyers when they want to as well. There are very few objective standards or duties applicable to politicians so they can spend decades deceiving their constituents as to their effectiveness.Another Bear said:
At least politicians are elected, can be voted out and usually cede to public pressure. Corporate CEOs hire a bunch of lawyers and then go into HIDING.
Exclusive: Mark Zuckerberg AWOL From Facebook's Data Leak Damage Control Session
I'm not making an argument that CEOs are somehow better than politicians, but I don't see any structural reason why I would trust a random politicians over a random CEO. The difference is most CEOs don't pretend to represent the average citizen.