I don't fall for your both-sides-do-it framing. Fact is that the other side had power and didn't do it. Now we have insane cheetoh in office and we're getting insane cheetoh policy ideas. This is not a matter of equivalence.
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13626479 and marked it off-topic.
The concept is so old that not only did both side do it, but the previous administration has a court case judged against them. What we should say to the current administration is what the court said to the previous, which is that the 4th amendment applies at the border (https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130308/13380622263/9th-c...). Password for social media, as with password to unlock the address book of a phone, cannot be demanded without reasonable suspicion.
Regardless of party, I would invite you to google the following governmental overreaches and then see which parties were in office:
The Pirate Bay raid, NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, NSA surveillance revelations, Superpredators, War on Drugs, War on Crime...
One of these things is not like the others
The West (mostly USA) bombed everyone regardless of ethnicity in Yugoslavia and then took their largest assets. If they really cared about democracy and freedom, and if the Serbs really were genocidal maniacs as many believe, then the evidence in this film that shows the contrary wouldn't exist
Off topic, but I cringe every time someone responds like that. It's essentially shows you can't (bother) to write a coherent response and instead want the other guy to waste 2 hours watching your video.
Upon Tito's death in 1980, Western European and US political and business interests _systemically destroyed_ Yugoslavia, undeniably.
They did so to "fight communism", "promote democracy", and more importantly, bomb Yugoslav mines, factories, etc that were competing with Western ones both in Yugoslavia and abroad.
Everyone from the IMF, UN, World Bank, Reagan Admin, Bush Admin, Clinton Admin (and all of their supporters like Biden and Albright), Germany, etc etc, all of these participants were DEEPLY and PUBLICLY involved.
The end result was the bombing of all ethnicities of people, including the ones that were supposed to be being "liberated", such as the Bosnians and Albanians.
So, lastly, to tie it back into my original point. In my opinion, if you view all of this video evidence, and still say "ONLY THE (democrats, republicans) DID THIS), then you are denying the vast evidence that it was a cross party, multi decade plan.
I hope you can take the time to reply on the quality of my analysis!
If they didn't, then it wouldn't be happening from both parties
I agree that on a scale of badness, Trump certainly seems worse to me than Obama.
But in your analogy it isn't so much that Trump took a car from zero to 110 in a 60 zone. The car he got in was already speeding thanks to the policies of the Obama administration, and prior administrations. I don't think pointing this out is necessarily excusing it through false equivalence.
So while I agree that it's important to tell the difference in scale, I think it's equally important to realize that in most cases these policies don't come about out of thin air, they are built and extended from prior policies.
My honest opinion is that we've unfortunately divided ourselves down the middle and we've picked causes and policies like we were picking players in dodgeball and you can only be on one team.
I think it so happens either by chance or by some kind of underlying tendency that one side tends to be more correct or at least more progressive (which tends to be more correct in the long run) than the other. I know plenty of people who correctly (I think and I think the data supports) acknowledge climate change is real and largely man-made but could no more discuss the actual causes or ramification than your average climate denier.
I want to be able to have honest, nuanced conversations with people but they typically end defensively and quickly (which is often the result of someone I agree with who can't help but be snarky and counterproductive) and I want to find quick and effective counters to some of these argument killers.
> Visitors entering the country under the Visa Waiver Program, which allows citizens of some countries to visit up to 90 days without a visa, would not be required to list their social media accounts, and the forms would not ask for passwords.
> The department said that while it does not consistently examine social media accounts of applicants for visas or immigration, it has a list of nearly three dozen situations in which social media can be examined to screen applicants.
They say they didn't ask for passwords, which is the main objection, and also said it was optional (see also the same thing in this very article). How does it make sense to call it the same idea?
(I wish you wouldn't call him names, it's a little uncivil.)
stuckagain wrote (above) that "Now we have insane cheetoh in office and we're getting insane cheetoh policy ideas", I was pointing out that while he may support it, this idea didn't came from the current POTUS, there was even a bill proposal during the previous administration.
Most people involved in federal agencies don't get purged and replaced at every election; they have long careers in their chosen agency, regardless of who's in the White House. So it's easy to find someone who's been there through a few administrations and say "this guy has consistently proposed this idea under multiple administrations", but present it as "this idea dates to the administration I want to falsely paint as identical to another one".
The related trick is the West Wing bit with the reporter who keeps asking the press secretary to give an answer on whether the President has considered calling a lame-duck session of Congress: the reporter knows, and the press secretary knows, that if she asks the President whether it's been considered then it'll be true that the topic came up in a discussion the President was part of, and the reporter will be able to spin that to claim "PRESIDENT CONSIDERING LAME-DUCK SESSION" without an outright lie being involved.
I actually wrote in protesting this policy over a year ago when they proposed it. It has nothing at all to do with Trump.
both parties are guilty. if trump doesn't want to enforce it, he wouldn't. if obama admin didn't want to brainstorm it, they wouldn't have
All of this is trivially verifiable, just look at when the proposal was submitted, accepted, and then enacted. All of them were before election day. All of it within the executive branch's umbrella (i.e. there was no act of congress).
If he does, do you agree that he too is at fault?
or are you of the opinion that he will enforce something he doesn't agree with, just because Obama made it?
the evidence still shows both sides at fault