That's because most "news" has to be entertaining, in order to attract people's attention and keep it long enough to expose them to an ad, ask them for a pledge, or persuade them their tax money is well spent (depending on what country you're in). So they broadcast most often what they think is going to grab the most attention.

There's actually two kinds of news. The first kind you watch only because your job depends on it. This news is boring: farming reports, commodity news, financial news and market reports, that kind of thing. You won't see Trump's Tweets there, but unless you have some reason to watch/read/listen to this stuff, you won't.

Then there's the other news that you watch because it's at least part-way entertaining. Informative, sure, but politics, disasters, and videos of kittens being rescued from a tree are all entertaining, and the people in these businesses are in competition with each other to get more viewers. They all look the same? No surprise - in media and politics, you tend to work the same formula that succeeded in the past. FWIW, Trump's Tweets attracts attention, so infotainment news splashes them up like they're the next damn moon landing. Followed by an important message from Polident denture cleaner (keeps your teeth from being stinky and gross). Mission accomplished.

I am betting Trump is in need of a distraction, like maybe this latest fallout from the Mueller investigation: Sam Clovis, intended to take a science post at the Department of Agriculture (although he has no background in agriculture or science) is dropping out because of his ties to George Papadopoulos, the first person to plead guilty in the Russia probe.

This is too funny. Don T. said he'd “hire the best people.” Well, as scientists go, Clovis is an excellent talk-show host.. He's out now, but there's plenty more appointees to help you question whether studying hard was worth it.

Don't it Depend on the Tree?
Soft woods like pine grow quick, but the wood is, you know, soft. Wouldn't want to live in a skyscraper made of that!
AFAIK, the hardier the wood, the longer it takes for the tree to grow. That means a long-term investment in your re-planting, and a lot can happen to your plot of re-planted little sprouts (bugs, deer, fires, suburban sprawl, drunk kids on ATV's, massive natural gas deposits) while you wait the lifetime or two for your trees to grow to full size.

... and therefore open to be invaded and annexed by Russia. Sucks to be them, right?

Do you hear yourself? Free and fair? and Californians want to secede to Mexico? You got a cite for that? Your credibility has dropped to zero with that one.

What imperialism? What country is the U.S. attempting to annex, militarily or otherwise? Imperialism suggests that "vassals" pay to the emperor state. If NATO is paying so much, where's the fucking money?!?!?!? why the FUCK is the U.S. in DEFICIT if its world-wide "empire" is paying "tribute" to the emperorship?

Hey, Germany! Make me a new Mercedes and send it to me damn quick, you little "vassal" you, your Emperor commands it!

Oh, fucking shee-itt! Imperialism! Fuck!

(collect myself, now) As NATO is concerned, if any member wanted out, they're free to go. On the contrary, former Russian "vassal states" joined NATO at they're earliest opportunity. Flaming shit-sticks I can't believe I go on with this

You're not fooling anyone, you know. Read that last statement. Read it again, particularly the last two words. Note that they have not one, not three, but seven-fucking-thousand nukes that-we-know-of, and have exploded the largest nuclear explosion in human history, as well as time-tested ICBM technology to deliver them nukes any fucking where in the fucking world.

That means, when they fuck around with a neighboring country, annexing the best part for itself, their adversaries have to think twice about what kind of response to make, lest some armed conflict escalates out of hand, and a trigger-happy missile guy feels threatened and presses a button that dusts the entire northern hemisphere. With that much nuclear death and inter-continental reach, your power is not "local," nor would Putin permit it to be.

Russia may be no China in terms of productivity and growth (and imperialism), but they're damn proud and a small fraction of them are unimaginably wealthy. The country with the largest land-mass in the world will never settle as a "regional power". For one, that's why they fuck around in Syria: to maintain a strategic foothold in the Mediterranean. A "regional power" would have no interest in propping up a shit-kicker dictator like Bashar al-Assad with weapons and planes and troops on the ground... but a super-power intent on expanding its sea-power presence sure fucking would.

Drop a lid and open your eyes. This is planet Earth, and shit is what it is. If anything, under Trump, American influence in the world is receding, at least if you pay too much attention to his don't-wanna-pay-for-anything Tweets, while China and India expand their reach and Russia stumbles forward in its cold-war daze. All the playaz iz playin, making their moves every fucking day. Free your mind and realize that some simple-ass "america bad" trope isn't the answer to every damn thing.

Because Trump would be more disruptive to the day-to-day operation of the U.S. due to his lack of experience, erratic behavior, total non-connection with U.S. career bureaucrats, easy-to-get-at family, wide-spread financial interests, and, of course, his out-of-control Twitter thumb. And if you're a bettin' man, Trump supporters are probably more susceptible to Internet rumors than Hillary's. Nationalistic propaganda? That's the same trick Putin pulled in Crimea.

Big picture, it wasn't about Trump or Hillary. It was about learning how much you can fuck another country using just the Internet. Putin is ex-KGB: intelligence is king. Putin probably didn't expect to succeed, or even have a big impact. But with the Internet so easy to use, why NOT try and fuck with U.S. politics through social media? Why NOT try and see how much influence paid trolls and bots can accomplish? He had nothing to lose and TONS of intelligence to gain by pushing the envelope, working toward the biggest impact while maintaining anonymity and plausible deniability. I'd say Putin was as surprised as everyone when Trump won, but I'd also say he put the FSB hard to work on just how much of the credit goes to his army of trolls and bots.

Taken from the point of view of ex-KGB, this is absolutely huge. Decades ago, influencing a foreign election would take scores of spooks on the ground, bribes to newspapers and TV stations, bribes to politicians and election officials, extortions to take out the do-gooders, a couple of strategic "suicides"... Today, all you need is the Internet , a couple hundred teenagers with PC's or smartphones, and some high-quality botnets. Revolutionary.

Uhh, Crimea, for a start? They have Syria, too.

I think the people of Ukraine would disagree with you on that.

So far, they've been strong enough to impose some sanctions over the invasion of Ukraine and the taking of Crimea. But it's kinda over... nobody believes Russia is going to just pack up and leave. Re-draw the maps: Crimea is now part of the Russian Federation.

Unless the dirty foreigners are actually playing dirty. They play dirty in Ukraine, they play dirty in Syria. They play dirty on the high seas. They have vast oil wealth, hold real estate interests worldwide, and maintain the largest nuclear stockpile in the world, which Putin said (over dinner) could destroy America in a half-hour or less.

And then there's that whole internet hacking thing. If the shoe fits, wear it.

First, see what kind of social and economic mischief you can carry out in the West by way of "anonymous" activity on the Internet - do it cheap, like get kids to help out, and take note how hard it is to trace back to the culprit.
(in parallel, see how much actual damage can be carried out, using Ukraine as a guinea-pig).
Next, notice well it all worked, beyond all reasonable expectations, even to the extent of swaying elections of public officials in the U.S. (they're holding Congressional hearings about us!), and encouraging open revolt against the state and inflaming street unrest.
Third, in view of the fact that Russian officials do not tolerate street unrest and open revolt against the state, conclude that this "research experiment" has proven without question that the Internet is a danger to the Motherland and its beloved leader, Valdimir Putin.
Fourth and finally, take pre-emptive action based on this valuable research to crush this threat and make sure it don't never happen here (Russian military take note... could be useful someday; continue research).
P.S.: President Xi says to Putin in his heavy Chinese accent, "way ahead of you."
P.P.S.: Kim Jong-un says it was all my idea.

Not fair to single-out France, which does a LOT of things really well. Been there, it's nice. If you're complaining about smugness, or just plain play-it-safe complacency, there's plenty of that going on, world-wide. It takes weird but charismatic people to break the ice and move the species forward, and they don't come around too often.

What does that mean? Amazon's ultimate objective for world domination? What secret is written on the back of that note?

To your door? Where have you been? Amazon will deliver through your door and into your house. Joy!

With likewise respect, the power is in the legislators. Unless there's a consumer protection law that's been broken, there's little that judges and courts can do short of people just plain suing, such as in a class-action. But in the latter you have to prove harm, prove that Equifax caused the harm, and prove that Equifax had a duty not to cause the harm - and prove all of this to a jury. With Enron, it was easy because $billions were lost in fraud, plain lying about how much money they had, lied about where it went. Here, nothing's been lost... copied, sure, but not lost... yet. Maybe you and me get hacked by a Russian tomorrow, thousands of TV's on our credit cards, but did the Russian get your info from Equifax, or someone else? Equifax says, can't prove it was us. Can't even find the Russian who screwed us. And around we go.

Now, there may be a credit-related consumer protection law on the books I don't know about. I really hope there is. But we haven't seen any suits being dragged out in handcuffs, and the trend in Congress has been to rip up consumer protection laws and just trust corporations like Equifax to do the right thing. Let the market do the correcting. But here is an example where Equifax can have its data about us stolen, and keep right on doing its business like nothing happened. Hell, they'll even argue that it's not our data, it's theirs (even though it's all about us) 'cause they're the ones who collected it. If the hackers had erased the servers, or replaced the data with junk, then Equifax would be in huge trouble. But what they got to sell is still selling just fine. They're closing stock price today is $108.95, up $1.41 from yesterday, total market cap $13.11B.

Only a new set of congresscritters can change this, pass consumer-protect laws like they did after Enron (and not repeal them later). Until then, the hands of judges, law-enforcement, and us are all tied.

You're angry and you should be. But this rabbit-hole is a lot deeper than some guys at Equifax - in short, Equifax doesn't owe you, the consumer, anything. They aren't charged with protecting you, like the way a cop has a duty to protect you from a criminal, or a soldier is charged not to aid and comfort the enemy. Equifax has all their data because banks, whom you entrust with your money and from whom you borrow money, give it to them. They store it, perform analytics on it, and sell it back to the banks so they can decide whether you are a good credit risk or not.

That's it. And it's worked so well for making it easy to get a car loan approved that they seem like they've been around forever, like a State or Federal Agency that has responsibilities codified in law. But it ain't so. Equifax is just a corporation, selling a service, a B2B service at that. They don't owe anything to anyone except their shareholders and their customers, who ain't you. If they get sued by normal-people, that's what they're gonna say and it's gonna stick. Worse, the data breach doesn't make their data on you less reliable to the banks for looking you up to determine whether to give you a credit card, so they can just keep on cookin'.

So, what's all this mean? Why is your SSN and personal info now in the hands of the Russians, the North Koreans, the Albanian Mob or whoever else bought a piece? The banks you use, to buy stuff you can't afford to pay for in cash, sold you and every other American out, years, years ago, so that we could enjoy things like credit cards and 0% interest for the first six months on that brand new Chevy. We the People, in the form of our elected government, let this slide, slide, slide, even as the data they accumulated got larger and larger, because it made consumer-credit so damn easy, and keep the economy hummin'. Your granddad had to beg and plead and give up a pint of blood to get a loan at shark prices. These days, we're pre-approved at 1.9% because Equifax and its ilk have stored, for the banks' consumption, everything there is about whether you're a good credit risk.

Security was never their top concern. Data volume, the accuracy that results therefrom, and speed of delivery is what they sell. If someone copies/steals their data, so what? As far as banks are concerned, the data is out of date the moment it's stolen... as long as Equifax keeps collecting, their data is valuable to banks. Machine keeps turning, profits keep coming in. If someone had corrupted their data, made bad credit risks look like good ones, then Equifax might have had a problem, because their data wouldn't jibe with competitors TransUnion and Experian, and banks won't pay. But to have it stolen one time? Meh, so long as they keep collecting more and issuing credit scores.

So, nobody's going to hang from a yard-arm for this. Equifax's duty is to their customers (banks), and the stealing of their data is an inconvenience only insofar as banks have to cover for a lot of new, fraudulent transaction attempts made with the stolen data, yet to be seen. You, OTOH, Mr. Consumer? You're on your own. Somewhere in the fine print of those papers you signed to get your Visa card is the clause that permitted your bank to sell your data to Equifax, TransUnion, Experian, and whoever else they need to tell the good credit risks from the bad ones. Don't like it? Quit credit and banks and use only cash - or vote for politicians who are really big on regulating the banking industry (hint: they're the ones without any campaign funds).

Absolutely agree. Other than an Intel Compute Stick and Kodi, the Roku is the better/best option as it's cheaper, works really well, comes with a remote and a great interface, and doesn't require your credit card number for roping you into one preferred source of content. Bonus, it is friendly to lots of paid content if you want it, like Sling or HBO. And as the Roku platform becomes more popular, there's more incentive for Roku apps to work well (as opposed, unfortunately, to Kodi apps which are often hit-and-miss).

But to a lot of investor-people, the real money is in subscriptions, not in a one-time sale of a device that might last years. This sucks for consumers who just want to buy something and just use it. And how many content subscriptions can a person have anyway, until they're paying as much or more than they would for full-out cable or satellite TV?

If Roku continues to make great boxes that don't come with strings attached like Apple TV or FireStick, then I don't care what else they do. Otherwise, you may be best off just pulling an older PC out of the closet and hooking it to your TV with a wireless mouse and keyboard.

He's confusing Congress with the administration, i.e., the White House. If attorney-general Jeff Sessions were going to bring charges against Hillary, if it was winnable, if it's even a good idea to go after your former opponent just after the election's over, he would have done so already.

The story here is about Congress, but all this means is they'll hold hearings and issue subpoenas to force people to grovel in front of TV cameras while Congresscritters grandstand to show how tough they are as they look ahead to the mid-terms. Nice distraction from secret, closed-door meetings that produce bills not even a GOP majority can pass.

I'd suggest Congresscritters best check their own asses before going forward with this. I'll warrant there's a lot of personal e-mail servers being used out there, perhaps completely without the congressman's knowledge ("that's why I hire people to take care of these things!") with all sorts of classified or re-classified stuff on it, along with a little p0rn ("just good ol' locker-room stuff") and a keylogging and microphone hack wired straight to the Kremlin.

Yikes! Congress could use a distraction right now. Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Conway Twitty (applause applause).