1. Welcome! Please take a few seconds to create your free account to post threads, make some friends, remove a few ads while surfing and much more. ClutchFans has been bringing fans together to talk Houston Sports since 1996. Join us!

The Thread of The Donald

Discussion in 'BBS Hangout: Debate & Discussion' started by Fantasma Negro, Jul 15, 2020.

  1. bobrek

    bobrek Politics belong in the D & D

    Joined:
    Sep 16, 1999
    Messages:
    36,288
    Likes Received:
    26,638
    If Tik Tok is a threat, isn't Twitter one as well? After all, a 17 year old just hacked the accounts of prominent Americans. Imagine if Trump’s account is hacked and starts tweeting threats against North Korea
     
  2. Ziggy

    Ziggy QUEEN ANON

    Joined:
    Jun 11, 1999
    Messages:
    36,739
    Likes Received:
    13,131
    Politicians can just permanently delete their accounts now to prevent this. Solved.
     
  3. bobrek

    bobrek Politics belong in the D & D

    Joined:
    Sep 16, 1999
    Messages:
    36,288
    Likes Received:
    26,638
    Screenshot_20200803-141050_Chrome.jpg
     
    Nook likes this.
  4. Fantasma Negro

    Joined:
    Jun 23, 2011
    Messages:
    12,564
    Likes Received:
    10,829
    I agree, but Twitter is American owned so theoretically can be subject to sanctions in order to keep in check. Tiktok is owned by China because everything in China is controlled by the CCP. Tiktok is actually banned in China
     
  5. J.R.

    J.R. Member

    Joined:
    Jun 30, 2008
    Messages:
    106,788
    Likes Received:
    154,648


    The Manhattan district attorney’s office suggested on Monday that it has been investigating President Trump and his company for possible bank and insurance fraud, a significantly broader inquiry than the prosecutors have acknowledged in the past.

    The office of the district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., made the disclosure in a new federal court filing arguing Mr. Trump’s accountants should have to comply with its subpoena seeking eight years of his personal and corporate tax returns. Mr. Trump has asked a judge to declare the subpoena invalid.

    The prosecutors did not directly identify the focus of their inquiry but said that “undisputed” news reports last year about Mr. Trump’s business practices make it clear that the office had a legal basis for the subpoena.

    The reports, including investigations into the president’s wealth and an article on the congressional testimony of his former lawyer and fixer, Michael D. Cohen, said that the president may have illegally inflated his net worth and the value of his properties to lenders and insurers. Lawyers for Mr. Trump have said he did nothing wrong.

    The clash over the subpoena comes less than a month after the Supreme Court, in a major ruling on the limits of presidential power, cleared the way for Mr. Vance’s prosecutors to seek Mr. Trump’s financial records.

    The filing from prosecutors came in response to an argument Mr. Trump made last week, calling the subpoena from Mr. Vance, a Democrat, “wildly overbroad” and issued in bad faith.

    Mr. Vance’s office subpoenaed Mr. Trump’s accounting firm, Mazars USA, in August 2019 for the tax returns as part of its investigation, which until now was believed to be focused on hush-money payments made to two women who said they had affairs with Mr. Trump, including the adult film actress Stormy Daniels.

    Mr. Cohen arranged the payments to Ms. Daniels and the other woman, Karen McDougal. Mr. Vance’s office has been looking into whether any New York State laws were broken when those payments were made.

    Mr. Trump has fought the subpoena for almost a year, at first arguing that as a sitting president, he was immune from state criminal investigation.

    Mr. Trump’s position was soundly rejected by the Supreme Court last month, but it said he could return to the lower court in Manhattan, where he first sued to block the subpoena, and raise new arguments.

    In a recent hearing, Mr. Vance’s office told the judge, Victor Marrero of Federal District Court, that Mr. Trump was just dragging out the legal fight in order to effectively shield himself from criminal investigation.

    “What the president’s lawyers are seeking here is delay,” Carey R. Dunne, a lawyer in Mr. Vance’s office, told Judge Marrero. Mr. Dunne said that the longer Mr. Trump fought the case, the greater the chance that the statute of limitations would expire for any potential crimes that might have been committed, effectively granting the president immunity.

    “Let’s not let delay kill this case,” Mr. Dunne argued.

    Jay Sekulow, a lawyer for the president, denied after the hearing that Mr. Trump’s lawyers were pursing a strategy of delay. “Our strategy seeks due process,” Mr. Sekulow said in an email at the time.

    Mr. Cohen, who pleaded guilty to federal campaign finance violations for his role in the payments, is serving a three-year prison sentence in home confinement in his apartment in Manhattan.

    If Mr. Vance succeeds in eventually obtaining Mr. Trump’s records, they are unlikely to become public anytime soon because they will be shielded by grand jury secrecy rules. The records might only emerge later if criminal charges are brought and the records are introduced in a trial.
     
    Nook likes this.
  6. Fantasma Negro

    Joined:
    Jun 23, 2011
    Messages:
    12,564
    Likes Received:
    10,829
    The witch hunt continues..
     
  7. Fantasma Negro

    Joined:
    Jun 23, 2011
    Messages:
    12,564
    Likes Received:
    10,829
  8. Fantasma Negro

    Joined:
    Jun 23, 2011
    Messages:
    12,564
    Likes Received:
    10,829
  9. sirbaihu

    sirbaihu Member

    Joined:
    Nov 2, 2006
    Messages:
    8,517
    Likes Received:
    2,851
    Impotent president can't battle 80-year-old Nancy Pelosi huh? Time for T-Rump to drag his gutsack back to FL.
     
    Nook likes this.
  10. Fantasma Negro

    Joined:
    Jun 23, 2011
    Messages:
    12,564
    Likes Received:
    10,829
  11. bobrek

    bobrek Politics belong in the D & D

    Joined:
    Sep 16, 1999
    Messages:
    36,288
    Likes Received:
    26,638
     
    ROXTXIA likes this.
  12. Fantasma Negro

    Joined:
    Jun 23, 2011
    Messages:
    12,564
    Likes Received:
    10,829
  13. generalthade_03

    generalthade_03 Contributing Member

    Joined:
    Feb 1, 2003
    Messages:
    3,662
    Likes Received:
    707
    More BS from this fish rag.
     
    Fantasma Negro likes this.
  14. Fantasma Negro

    Joined:
    Jun 23, 2011
    Messages:
    12,564
    Likes Received:
    10,829
  15. Nook

    Nook Member

    Joined:
    Jun 27, 2008
    Messages:
    53,785
    Likes Received:
    111,469
    She is an embarrassment.... she is like an SNL skit.
     
  16. ROXTXIA

    ROXTXIA Contributing Member

    Joined:
    Apr 25, 2000
    Messages:
    20,023
    Likes Received:
    11,689
    Holy Jesus.

    He is a ******g idiot. I knew that. You knew that. We all knew that.

    Dude is signing some phony baloney "I love the outdoors" law. And. He. Can't. Even. Pronounce. Yosemite.

    Can't.
    Even.
    Pronounce.
    Yoh-SEH-meh-tee.

    One of the three or four best-known U.S. national parks. And its son Samuel (known as "Sam") was a great foil for Bugs Bunny to boot, be it North, South, East, aaaaaaaaaaaaaand West of the Pecos.
     
    Nook and Ziggy like this.
  17. Fantasma Negro

    Joined:
    Jun 23, 2011
    Messages:
    12,564
    Likes Received:
    10,829
  18. Fantasma Negro

    Joined:
    Jun 23, 2011
    Messages:
    12,564
    Likes Received:
    10,829

    “We are a cancer and there is no cure"

    “Just quit.”

    That’s the advice Alec gave a year and a half ago when I expressed concerns about my job.

    “You just quit. It’s that simple.”

    “Stay at MSNBC at least until the midterms,” Jeffrey said a couple years back. He advised to watch and see what happens.

    “Hang in there… you’re needed,” Elizabeth recommended last winter. “I was in your shoes when I was younger but I stuck it out.”

    A year and a half ago, simply quitting my job without knowing my next step sounded pretty radical. So I stuck it out a bit longer until we were in the middle of a pandemic to make a truly radical move.

    July 24th was my last day at MSNBC. I don’t know what I’m going to do next exactly but I simply couldn’t stay there anymore. My colleagues are very smart people with good intentions. The problem is the job itself. It forces skilled journalists to make bad decisions on a daily basis.

    You may not watch MSNBC but just know that this problem still affects you, too. All the commercial networks function the same – and no doubt that content seeps into your social media feed, one way or the other.

    It’s possible that I’m more sensitive to the editorial process due to my background in public radio, where no decision I ever witnessed was predicated on how a topic or guest would “rate.” The longer I was at MSNBC, the more I saw such choices — it’s practically baked in to the editorial process – and those decisions affect news content every day. Likewise, it’s taboo to discuss how the ratings scheme distorts content, or it’s simply taken for granted, because everyone in the commercial broadcast news industry is doing the exact same thing.

    But behind closed doors, industry leaders will admit the damage that’s being done.

    “We are a cancer and there is no cure,” a successful and insightful TV veteran said to me. “But if you could find a cure, it would change the world.”


    As it is, this cancer stokes national division, even in the middle of a civil rights crisis. The model blocks diversity of thought and content because the networks have incentive to amplify fringe voices and events, at the expense of others… all because it pumps up the ratings.

    This cancer risks human lives, even in the middle of a pandemic. The primary focus quickly became what Donald Trump was doing (poorly) to address the crisis, rather than the science itself. As new details have become available about antibodies, a vaccine, or how COVID actually spreads, producers still want to focus on the politics. Important facts or studies get buried.

    This cancer risks our democracy, even in the middle of a presidential election. Any discussion about the election usually focuses on Donald Trump, not Joe Biden, a repeat offense from 2016 (Trump smothers out all other coverage). Also important is to ensure citizens can vote by mail this year, but I’ve watched that topic get ignored or “killed” numerous times.

    Context and factual data are often considered too cumbersome for the audience. There may be some truth to that (our education system really should improve the critical thinking skills of Americans) – but another hard truth is that it is the job of journalists to teach and inform, which means they might need to figure out a better way to do that. They could contemplate more creative methods for captivating an audience. Just about anything would improve the current process, which can be pretty rudimentary (think basing today’s content on whatever rated well yesterday, or look to see what’s trending online today).

    Occasionally, the producers will choose to do a topic or story without regard for how they think it will rate, but that is the exception, not the rule. Due to the simple structure of the industry – the desire to charge more money for commercials, as well as the ratings bonuses that top-tier decision-makers earn – they always relapse into their old profitable programming habits.

    I understand that the journalistic process is largely subjective and any group of individuals may justify a different set of priorities on any given day. Therefore, it’s particularly notable to me, for one, that nearly every rundown at the network basically is the same, hour after hour. And two, they use this subjective nature of the news to justify economically beneficial decisions. I’ve even heard producers deny their role as journalists. A very capable senior producer once said: “Our viewers don’t really consider us the news. They come to us for comfort.”

    Again, personally, I don’t think the people need to change. I think the job itself needs to change. There is a better way to do this. I’m not so cynical to think that we are absolutely doomed (though we are on that path). I know we can find a cure. If we can figure how to send a man to the moon, if Alex Trebek can defy the odds with stage 4 pancreatic cancer, and if Harry Reid can actually overcome pancreatic cancer (he’s now cancer free), then we can fix this, too.

    “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”

    I know James Baldwin wasn’t thinking about MSNBC when he wrote that line in 1962, but those words spoke loudly to me in the summer of 2020. Unfortunately, many of the same ailments are still at stake today. Now maybe we can’t really change the inherently broken structure of broadcast news, but I know for certain that it won’t change unless we actually face it, in public, and at least try to change it.

    Through this pandemic and the surreal, alienating lockdown, I’ve witnessed many people question their lives and what they’re doing with their time on this planet. I reckon I’m one of those people, looking for greater meaning and truth. As much as I love my life in New York City and really don’t want to leave, I feel fortunate to be able to return to Virginia in the near term to reconnect with family, friends, and a community of independent journalists. I’m both nervous and excited about this change. Thanks to COVID-19, I’m learning to live with uncertainty.

    And so very soon, I’m going to be seeking you out, any one of you who also may sense that the news is fundamentally flawed and is frustrated by it. This effort will start informally but I hope to crystallize a plan for when better, safer days are upon us. On that front, feel free to reach out anytime if you would like to discuss any of this – whether in agreement or not. More than ever, I’m craving a full and civil discourse.

    Until next time, thank you for reading. I wish you all well.

    Ariana



    https://www.arianapekary.net/post/personal-news-why-i-m-now-leaving-msnbc
     
  19. CometsWin

    CometsWin Breaker Breaker One Nine

    Joined:
    May 15, 2000
    Messages:
    28,028
    Likes Received:
    13,046

    He is so stupid. lol
     
  20. Fantasma Negro

    Joined:
    Jun 23, 2011
    Messages:
    12,564
    Likes Received:
    10,829

Share This Page

  • About ClutchFans

    Since 1996, ClutchFans has been loud and proud covering the Houston Rockets, helping set an industry standard for team fan sites. The forums have been a home for Houston sports fans as well as basketball fanatics around the globe.

  • Support ClutchFans!

    If you find that ClutchFans is a valuable resource for you, please consider becoming a Supporting Member. Supporting Members can upload photos and attachments directly to their posts, customize their user title and more. Gold Supporters see zero ads!


    Upgrade Now