If it was a lie, I’d expect the Democrats to have said that, instead of frantically deflecting blame. Even if the Repubs completely made it up, the best you can say about the Dems at this point is that they’re completely incompetent at dealing with a potential scandal.
To everybody posting how this isn’t really that bad and anyway someone else did something bad too: please take a moment to honestly consider what your response would be if the parties were flipped.
We are supposed to be better than the other guys. If not, there’s no point. We should hold our own people to higher standards, not let them off easy just because we’ve got the same team printed on our jerseys.
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It always amazes me how elections bring out the worst in people trying to get elected. For instance I have gotten robocalls from Al Gore and the president of the Sierra club who apparently thought that receiving a robocall would make me support their side of the issue. I am sure if you took the time to rationally ask these people “Do you think people want a robocall from you?” They could see the error of their ways, but something about the heat of the election gives others the feeling that they can make such decisions on others behalfs.
Well of course not, then they’d be Canadian.
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Recent events elsewhere (I will not speak the name of the sealion) make this kind of response to a doxxing very difficult to read charitably. You probably didn’t mean to imply that someone you dislike must be lying because they have a different tribal affiliation, even though if they were lying it would be easy to show and ridiculously counterproductive, and you have no real reason to believe they are.
Don’t be that guy. You’re better than that.
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I am seriously bemused that you guys keep pretending there are significant differences between the donkey and elephant factions of your one-party state.
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At a fundamental level, the problem IS NOT that sometimes people’s SSNs are exposed. The problem is that the name and SSN is sufficient information to successfully impersonate somebody online. The SSN simply CAN’T be both a universal identifier that you routinely the government and credit card companies AND some sort of secure proof of identity. You simply have NO idea how many people within the various levels of governemnt, in banks and credit reporting agencies and insurance companies know your SSN.
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Well, yeah. We already knew that.
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In general, sure, but trying-to-ruin-someone’s-entire-life seems to happen more on one side than the other.
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“They are both the same” refrain is just the laziest excuse for not bothering to make informed decisions or participate in politics.
The Koch’s have you just where they want you.
However, neither political party is routinely ‘doxing’ rival candidates, and really candidates information is pretty available anyway. This particular incident is much more likely just stupidity.
*Perhaps far right or left non-party groups are more likely to release personal information to harass? I certainly vaguely recall it happening multiple times.
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True, but what alternative is there?
Perhaps, but believing contra-wise puts you just where the parties want you – buying into the false dichotomy and ignoring the shittiness of your own party and allowing them to both perpetuate a broken status quo.
IMO ideology should never trump evidence, and voting for the “least of evils” is what’s gotten the US into its sorry place in the first place.
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Social Security politics aside, It is indeed pretty nutso the amount of transactions that require the social security number. It is used and abused and crosses so many unnecessary lines of activity, education records, medical records, financial transactions, communications provider contracts, leases, and the list goes on. Why we can’t have separate numbers for seperate walks of life is beyond me. It’s like have a very public password that gets into every account you own.
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Years ago, SSNs were included on my state’s driver’s licenses. Probably other states as well. I learned that you could request your number being left off, and did so. Then, I was pre-registering at a hospital maternity ward and they insisted on my SSN. I didn’t have insurance, so I knew there wasn’t any legitimate reason for them to have it (this was before electronic records), so I refused to give it to them. This caused great consternation and hushed discussions among colleagues and then a supervisor. The supervisor knowingly smiled and told them to get a copy of my driver’s license instead as proof of identity since I wouldn’t give them the usual proof. The look on her face when she saw my SSN-less license was priceless!
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No, that’s absurd. Knowing that there are differences does not constrain my choices at all. I then go on to look at what the differences are and decide what to do.
It can also motivate one to become involved in the primary process. Just look what the tea-bag idiots have done to the republican party by getting off their asses and voting in their primaries.
Also:
George W Bush.
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I had a somewhat similar experience with an SSN on the student ID I got to take a grad school course. The people in the ID office were perfectly happy to give me an ID with an alternate Student ID number (the middle two digits were both zeros which never happens in a real SSN) But every other office asked for my SSN. When I would reply “Do you mean my Student ID number” they got very confused…
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“…the incumbent Democratic representative of District 23 in Kentucky’s House of Representatives.” FFS!
Nope. Didn’t mean to imply anyone was lying. I am a skeptic about most things I read in the newspapers–no matter who it favors. It’s just that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. BTW, if this is false I don’t see how it would be easy to show. How can it be proved that someone did not receive a particular mailer?
My wife is really good at refusing SSN. She always leaves it blank on forms, and always asks “Do you really need that? Why?”
There was also really great woman who used to coordinate data development for my branch of our organization, and she was on a crusade to have people issued an educational ID at birth, to replace the SSN that floated around admissions and registrars offices, and lurked in teetering piles of paperwork in open-plan offices waiting to be filed. I miss her.
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It’s plainly not because Americans haven’t particularly been doing that; both parties seem to get their turn regardless of whether they might have cranked up the corruption or shifted the Overton window. In my opinion, for what little it is worth, the problem is people being indifferent to those changes.
This would include people who would support the Republicans indifferent to how terrible they become; people who would support the Democrats indifferent to how terrible they become; and people who refuse to see any difference between parties indifferent to how much worse one may become. All those things support them worrying more about donors instead.
I’m with you that ideology shouldn’t trump evidence. I’ll also add that voting of any kind is not a method to fix how awful the political system has become, it is only a first step toward limiting it.
Edit: Also, I’m sure this is off-topic, and if it’s to be continued should probably be moved to wrath or something.
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