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skates like Eck
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“I’m here to talk about leaks to the media,”
-Jeff Sessions
Jeff Sessions is not on the side of truth, freedom, and liberty.
By saying “I’m here to talk about leaks to the media,” and then talking about all sorts of other unlawful activities tied to classified information, Sessions has adroitly preyed on a logical fallacy we’ll call “false implication,” which is based on humans’ basic tendency to want to see patterns even where none exist.
This is what happens when someone says two sentences that are both factually accurate, but have no relationship, yet are intended to imply a relationship. Imagine if a politician said, “Drugs are a huge problem in our country. More than 100,000 people died in our state last year alone.” You would not be faulted if you assumed that those 100,000 people died drug-related deaths, but that’s not what he said.
It is quite possible that he preyed on this tendency and merely recounted the number of people who died, period. He has not lied, but he created a false implication. If the false implication is defamatory, he can even be sued for it; the law calls it “libel by omission.” So in this case, Sessions said he was talking about leakers to the media, then he talked about all the investigations into unlawful disclosures the department is conducting, then he mentioned four indictments for unlawful disclosures or retention, of which only one is a leaker. The implication he was going for is clear: All of these problems are the same.
gsgs comment-
Why does Jeff Sessions want to perpetuate a false equivalence ?
Why equate fact finding of journalists with spies that cause harm ?
http://www.politico.com/magazine/st...aks-media-attack-worse-thank-you-think-215465
Jeff Sessions had met with a Russian official during his tenure as a Trump surrogate and then told Congress that he hadn’t.
One of the meetings was a private conversation between Sessions and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak that took place in September in the senator’s office, at the height of what U.S. intelligence officials say was a Russian cyber campaign to upend the U.S. presidential race.
Sessions spoke with Kislyak in July and September, the senator was a senior member of the influential Armed Services Committee as well as one of Trump’s top foreign policy advisers.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/worl...bar&tid=a_breakingnews&utm_term=.fdd4428a66ca
No new Trump pick, to fill position.
Trump tries to blame Nesterczuk’s withdrawal on Democrats blocking the confirmation process, remember that the guy hadn’t gotten his paperwork in after more than two months. Oh, and by the way, he’d worked for the same pro-Russian Ukrainian government as former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort. Interesting how that keeps popping up ?
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/20...-pick-to-oversee-assault-on-federal-workforce
Unions remember Nesterczuk’s role implementing the system and were adamantly opposed to his nomination. “He has a history of extreme hostility to federal employees and the missions of their agencies,” said Jacque Simon, policy director for the American Federation for Government Employees, one of the groups that sent the letter. The letter writers also wanted lawmakers to seek more information about Nesterczuk’s work for the Ukrainian government and raised the question of potential ties to Manafort, who worked on the Reagan transition when Nesterczuk was tapped to be an OPM official.
http://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2017/08/07/trump-government-overhaul-faces-new-setback-000490
Republicans have had closed, secret, middle- of-the- night sessions, excluding disloyal Republicans and Democrats. They avoid town halls, and have armed security guarding their offices, to keep voters, out. For now, American citizens have protections in place, that make it difficult for Republicans to operate in secret.
Outside the West Wing, Trump’s agencies had a busy week—again, largely out of the spotlight.
Department of Homeland Security issued a notice that it was waiving more than three dozen environmental laws in order to build border wall prototypes along a 15-mile border in the vicinity of San Diego, California. The waived laws include the Endangered Species Act, Clean Water Act, Safe Drinking Water, and the Antiquities Act, freeing the government from costly regulations like environmental reviews.
Wednesday, the Trump administration took a first step to reforming a major component of the law, known as “Volcker Rule,” which prevents banks from risking depositors’ money on certain speculative investments.
Betsy DeVos, the secretary of education, announced that the Education Department would select a single company to service the agency’s $1.2 trillion portfolio of student loans.
This week, DeVos abandoned those plans, cancelling a solicitation for bids to manage the loan portfolio.
-Jeff Sessions
Jeff Sessions is not on the side of truth, freedom, and liberty.
By saying “I’m here to talk about leaks to the media,” and then talking about all sorts of other unlawful activities tied to classified information, Sessions has adroitly preyed on a logical fallacy we’ll call “false implication,” which is based on humans’ basic tendency to want to see patterns even where none exist.
This is what happens when someone says two sentences that are both factually accurate, but have no relationship, yet are intended to imply a relationship. Imagine if a politician said, “Drugs are a huge problem in our country. More than 100,000 people died in our state last year alone.” You would not be faulted if you assumed that those 100,000 people died drug-related deaths, but that’s not what he said.
It is quite possible that he preyed on this tendency and merely recounted the number of people who died, period. He has not lied, but he created a false implication. If the false implication is defamatory, he can even be sued for it; the law calls it “libel by omission.” So in this case, Sessions said he was talking about leakers to the media, then he talked about all the investigations into unlawful disclosures the department is conducting, then he mentioned four indictments for unlawful disclosures or retention, of which only one is a leaker. The implication he was going for is clear: All of these problems are the same.
gsgs comment-
Why does Jeff Sessions want to perpetuate a false equivalence ?
Why equate fact finding of journalists with spies that cause harm ?
http://www.politico.com/magazine/st...aks-media-attack-worse-thank-you-think-215465
Jeff Sessions had met with a Russian official during his tenure as a Trump surrogate and then told Congress that he hadn’t.
One of the meetings was a private conversation between Sessions and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak that took place in September in the senator’s office, at the height of what U.S. intelligence officials say was a Russian cyber campaign to upend the U.S. presidential race.
Sessions spoke with Kislyak in July and September, the senator was a senior member of the influential Armed Services Committee as well as one of Trump’s top foreign policy advisers.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/worl...bar&tid=a_breakingnews&utm_term=.fdd4428a66ca
No new Trump pick, to fill position.
Trump tries to blame Nesterczuk’s withdrawal on Democrats blocking the confirmation process, remember that the guy hadn’t gotten his paperwork in after more than two months. Oh, and by the way, he’d worked for the same pro-Russian Ukrainian government as former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort. Interesting how that keeps popping up ?
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/20...-pick-to-oversee-assault-on-federal-workforce
Unions remember Nesterczuk’s role implementing the system and were adamantly opposed to his nomination. “He has a history of extreme hostility to federal employees and the missions of their agencies,” said Jacque Simon, policy director for the American Federation for Government Employees, one of the groups that sent the letter. The letter writers also wanted lawmakers to seek more information about Nesterczuk’s work for the Ukrainian government and raised the question of potential ties to Manafort, who worked on the Reagan transition when Nesterczuk was tapped to be an OPM official.
http://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2017/08/07/trump-government-overhaul-faces-new-setback-000490
Republicans have had closed, secret, middle- of-the- night sessions, excluding disloyal Republicans and Democrats. They avoid town halls, and have armed security guarding their offices, to keep voters, out. For now, American citizens have protections in place, that make it difficult for Republicans to operate in secret.
Outside the West Wing, Trump’s agencies had a busy week—again, largely out of the spotlight.
Department of Homeland Security issued a notice that it was waiving more than three dozen environmental laws in order to build border wall prototypes along a 15-mile border in the vicinity of San Diego, California. The waived laws include the Endangered Species Act, Clean Water Act, Safe Drinking Water, and the Antiquities Act, freeing the government from costly regulations like environmental reviews.
Wednesday, the Trump administration took a first step to reforming a major component of the law, known as “Volcker Rule,” which prevents banks from risking depositors’ money on certain speculative investments.
Betsy DeVos, the secretary of education, announced that the Education Department would select a single company to service the agency’s $1.2 trillion portfolio of student loans.
This week, DeVos abandoned those plans, cancelling a solicitation for bids to manage the loan portfolio.
