US Politics Mega-thread - Page 2202

On August 15 2015 14:15 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:


More PC? He just blatantly announced a list of things he promised he wouldn't announce, which is exactly the opposite of PC. (If you're being sarcastic, I apologize as it's late and I'm tired and missed it!)

In a story that's quintessentially Bernie Sanders, a group of strangers from across the Internet has come together to build an exhaustive new site about the Democratic presidential candidate, without pay, for a cause they believe in. The site is called FeelTheBern.org, named after the unofficial slogan that has caught fire among his supporters. Like the candidate himself, the website has gone viral seemingly overnight. Since launching two days ago, it has been shared over 31,000 times on Facebook and 1,600 times on Twitter, according to stats on the homepage. Site founder Daniela Perdomo, co-founder and CEO of Brooklyn tech start-up goTenna, says the site is "approaching a million pageviews." And for good reason: the site covers the Vermont senator's stances on 18 issues, contextualized with accessible explainers, videos, and graphics. It's arguably one of the most comprehensive candidate websites out there.

The site came together in 32 days, starting with a post from Perdomo, published in a Sanders subreddit July 9. Perdomo, 30, who has followed the senator's career for years, said she was frustrated by how media outlets first reported on his candidacy — as a long shot in relation to Hillary Clinton, or as an outlier in the race for his progressive views. She noticed, however, that the senator seemed to have a strong push on the Internet. "What was really cool to see was in spite of the media not really telling the Bernie Sanders story," she says, was that "people were still telling his story on social media — and that was very exciting to me."

On August 15 2015 15:09 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:
The good news is that he's getting even more recognition and fame and support.

The bad news is that his slogan is the same as the slogan for a urinary tract infection.

On August 15 2015 09:39 Krikkitone wrote:


That is a problem with non differentiated instruction.

If you are truly putting forth your best effort* and can't manage a C in a class...
OR
you are putting forth no effort and getting an A in the class...

You probably shouldn't be taking that class
student 1 should take an easier class to prepare them (or work at learning something different)

student 2 should have some way to show that they know the information already and move on to a higher level (or a different subject that they want to learn more in)

This is more often an issue with high school and elementary school or the first classes students take in college.

*working hard=/= best effort, it just = Most effort, often times students need to learn how to study, instead of spending 50 hr/week reading the book... of course that partially fits into other things the students needs to learn before taking the class.

On August 15 2015 14:35 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:


It's not politically correct to say "I promised not to say A, B, C, D, and E", because he's explicitly saying it right there. At best, it's irrelevant to political correctness and just makes him come off like a douche. So Trump still isn't "becoming more PC" via this clip.

Donald J. Trump, whose bid for the Republican presidential nomination has shaken up the race, will participate in a more common civic activity next week: jury duty.

Mr. Trump has been summoned to serve in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, and plans to report there on Monday morning, said Michael Cohen, an executive vice president at the Trump Organization and special counsel to Mr. Trump.

Despite Mr. Trump’s busy campaign schedule — he is set to appear at the Iowa State Fair on Saturday and has pledged to give fairgoers free rides on his personal helicopter from the parking lot — Mr. Cohen said that his bid for the Republican nomination would not be slowed by whatever time, if any, he might end up sitting on a jury.

“Despite the time that Mr. Trump is required to fulfill this civic obligation, the campaign will continue to go on,” Mr. Cohen said. “He is happy to comply with his civic obligation.”

Mr. Trump was fined $250 this year for failing to appear for jury duty several times in recent years. Mr. Cohen said Mr. Trump had not appeared on those earlier occasions because the summonses had been sent to an address on Central Park South where Mr. Trump never lived and he had not received them. The fine has been waived, Mr. Cohen said.

“Mr. Trump’s failure to appear for previous jury requests was the result of the unified court system’s error in the mailing address, and not Mr. Trump’s refusal to uphold his civic duty,” he said. “It is impossible to know if you are being asked to serve when the jury selection documents are sent to someone else’s home.”

The National Security Agency’s ability to spy on vast quantities of Internet traffic passing through the United States has relied on its extraordinary, decades-long partnership with a single company: the telecom giant AT&T.

While it has been long known that American telecommunications companies worked closely with the spy agency, newly disclosed N.S.A. documents show that the relationship with AT&T has been considered unique and especially productive. One document described it as “highly collaborative,” while another lauded the company’s “extreme willingness to help.”

AT&T’s cooperation has involved a broad range of classified activities, according to the documents, which date from 2003 to 2013. AT&T has given the N.S.A. access, through several methods covered under different legal rules, to billions of emails as they have flowed across its domestic networks. It provided technical assistance in carrying out a secret court order permitting the wiretapping of all Internet communications at the United Nations headquarters, a customer of AT&T.

The N.S.A.’s top-secret budget in 2013 for the AT&T partnership was more than twice that of the next-largest such program, according to the documents. The company installed surveillance equipment in at least 17 of its Internet hubs on American soil, far more than its similarly sized competitor, Verizon. And its engineers were the first to try out new surveillance technologies invented by the eavesdropping agency.

One document reminds N.S.A. officials to be polite when visiting AT&T facilities, noting, “This is a partnership, not a contractual relationship.”

The documents, provided by the former agency contractor Edward J. Snowden, were jointly reviewed by The New York Times and ProPublica. The N.S.A., AT&T and Verizon declined to discuss the findings from the files. “We don’t comment on matters of national security,” an AT&T spokesman said.

It is not clear if the programs still operate in the same way today. Since the Snowden revelations set off a global debate over surveillance two years ago, some Silicon Valley technology companies have expressed anger at what they characterize as N.S.A. intrusions and have rolled out new encryption to thwart them. The telecommunications companies have been quieter, though Verizon unsuccessfully challenged a court order for bulk phone records in 2014.

Jeb Bush on Friday called the name of the controversial education standards he has long supported “poisonous,” illustrating how damaging the program has become in the political dialogue and in his own eyes.

"The term 'Common Core' is so darn poisonous, I don't even know what it means," Bush said while campaigning at the Iowa State Fair, in response to a question on the standards before a gathering of fairgoers.

Bush's support for Common Core – standards adopted by 43 states that aim to ensure students' proficiency in English and math – has dogged him repeatedly on the campaign trail, as many conservatives see the measures as an example of federal government overreach. The Obama administration has used a grant program to incentivize states to use the standards, but has not required their adoption.

Prodded repeatedly to explain his support for the program, Bush has noted that high standards, agreed upon by states, are different from mandating a specific curriculum. But as conservative commentator George Will has written, "Standards will shape what is tested, and textbooks will be aligned with the tests."

Bush has previously described the standards as "poisonous politically," but on Friday, he seemed thoroughly exasperated by the term itself and looked to move past it.

"I'm for higher standards – state-created, locally implemented – where the federal government has no role in the creation of standards, content or curriculum," Bush said in Iowa.

Late last month, Hillary Rodham Clinton stood before a line of television cameras at a rural Iowa campaign stop to deny reports that she had sent sensitive information over her private e-mail system.

“I’m confident that I never sent or received any information that was classified at the time it was sent and received,” Clinton said, dismissing claims to the contrary by federal intelligence officials as a bureaucratic dispute over what qualifies as classified.

The view from inside Clinton’s presidential campaign team was much the same: Clinton had done what she needed to do, there was nothing of real concern regarding the e-mails and, mostly, the whole matter was an annoyance in her efforts to win the White House.

The next week, however, law enforcement officials became interested, and the campaign’s apparent lack of concern began to turn into a sense of anxiety.

“They’re worried about it,” said a longtime Clinton adviser and confidant who agreed to discuss the mood of the campaign team only on the condition of anonymity. “They don’t know where it goes. That’s the problem.”

On August 16 2015 21:33 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:


Common Core had remarkably bipartisan support and now it has remarkably bipartisan hate because it failed miserably. I don't think any one candidate in particular is going to get screwed by initially being for Common Core and now changing his mind.