OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote: Does President Trump actually have much to worry about whatever he did regarding Russia, Stormy Daniels or anything else?
Doesn't his position as President allow him to issue himself a pardon for anything (federal) he ever did? It's not something a normal politician would ever contemplate as they'd be killing any chance of future party support (and quite possibly burying their party for the foreseeable future too)
but since he seems to basically just care about himself (and whoever agrees with him at the time) he wouldn't care that much, and it might even think it was the perfect way to sign off on his presidency?
This is why there's speculation that Cohen had state charges brought against him rather than federal.
Frazzled wrote: See that's why Reagan was so much better. He would have fired Rosenstein first.
eh? Care to elaborate??
EDIT: also... Trump was pretty harsh on Russia. Man Russia isn't getting their money's worth...
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thekingofkings wrote: liberals who will exult over the fall of Trump will be weeping fresh tears when they realize how much more evil Pence is.
Evil, but perhaps marginally competent at least. Pence is a , but he's a who might be capable of running the basic functions of government and not accidentally starting a war over twitter.
The current political polarization has its roots in Reagan. So often he is either a great president or a terrible president as a matter of perception. Really he was a good president. Not great, not average, but good. He did some stuff that was bad, some stuff that didn't work out, but also stuff that was good and did work out. The '81 tax cuts are a good example of the former while the '86 cuts a good example of the latter. But so many Americans prefer to ignore the good or ignore the bad because it fits their narrative better.
Here's hoping we're all still here in the morning.
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NinthMusketeer wrote: The current political polarization has its roots in Reagan. So often he is either a great president or a terrible president as a matter of perception. Really he was a good president. Not great, not average, but good. He did some stuff that was bad, some stuff that didn't work out, but also stuff that was good and did work out. The '81 tax cuts are a good example of the former while the '86 cuts a good example of the latter. But so many Americans prefer to ignore the good or ignore the bad because it fits their narrative better.
Today's conservatives also like to forget that Reagan promoted quite a few ideas and policies that would be considered too liberal today.
thekingofkings wrote: liberals who will exult over the fall of Trump will be weeping fresh tears when they realize how much more evil Pence is.
Evil, but perhaps marginally competent at least. Pence is a , but he's a who might be capable of running the basic functions of government and not accidentally starting a war over twitter.
He is very "competent" and that's what is scary, he will be able to get away with stuff Sir Cheeto can't.
NinthMusketeer wrote: The current political polarization has its roots in Reagan. So often he is either a great president or a terrible president as a matter of perception. Really he was a good president. Not great, not average, but good. He did some stuff that was bad, some stuff that didn't work out, but also stuff that was good and did work out. The '81 tax cuts are a good example of the former while the '86 cuts a good example of the latter. But so many Americans prefer to ignore the good or ignore the bad because it fits their narrative better.
Today's conservatives also like to forget that Reagan promoted quite a few ideas and policies that would be considered too liberal today.
Oh I'm sure Reagan would roll over in his grave if he could see the party today, which I find suitably ironic.
thekingofkings wrote: He is very "competent" and that's what is scary, he will be able to get away with stuff Sir Cheeto can't.
If he was on his own, yes, it would be a dangerous risk balancing the lower chance of screwing things up through sheer incompetence vs. the higher chance of successfully implementing his anarcho-capitalist Christian theocracy. But he wouldn't be on his own in this hypothetical scenario, he'd be the vice president of someone who just got impeached for being utterly terrible. That's some pretty serious guilt by association for him. Pence might survive the impeachment process, probably to maintain a degree of stability, but he'd be on a short leash.
thekingofkings wrote: He is very "competent" and that's what is scary, he will be able to get away with stuff Sir Cheeto can't.
If he was on his own, yes, it would be a dangerous risk balancing the lower chance of screwing things up through sheer incompetence vs. the higher chance of successfully implementing his anarcho-capitalist Christian theocracy. But he wouldn't be on his own in this hypothetical scenario, he'd be the vice president of someone who just got impeached for being utterly terrible. That's some pretty serious guilt by association for him. Pence might survive the impeachment process, probably to maintain a degree of stability, but he'd be on a short leash.
would sure as hell hope so, right now its "better the clown you know, then the devil you can pretty much guess at"
So, My understanding of things, was that Trump was the Peaceful option we could of elected in 2016. No way he was going to start bombing people who weren't directly effecting the US... Nope.
What in the world gave you the idea trump would be "peaceful"? The twitter rants? The (failed) business man persona? The personal attacks on everyone around him?
whembly wrote: USPS need serious reforms... and not sure if that entity really can survive in it's current state.
The problems with the USPS are politically-motivated externalties, not a fundamental problem with the USPS.
You sure?
...seem to remember reading that USPS operating costs + non-operation costs like Pensions and the like perpetually puts them in the red every year.
**I'll update this when I find the sauce...**
No, you're def right about them being in the red every year, as IIRC, the last thing I remember about it was they had a 10 years of straight losses as of Nov. 2016.
If I remember correctly, the US Government gives the Post Office something like $19.5 Billion in subsidies every year. There are something like 300,000 vehicles in use by the Post Office, not a one of them has a license plate or is registered. They don't pay fuel taxes (what is the average now $.47 per gallon?), and they don't pay property taxes on any of their locations. If they had to pay for all these things no way they could ever afford to stay in business on their own.
Ash87 wrote: So, My understanding of things, was that Trump was the Peaceful option we could of elected in 2016. No way he was going to start bombing people who weren't directly effecting the US... Nope.
Just... Ugh. I'm disgusted with today.
This is what happens when you elect a con man. We all knew this was going to happen, but people wanted to believe the con man's lies and so here we are.
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cuda1179 wrote: If I remember correctly, the US Government gives the Post Office something like $19.5 Billion in subsidies every year. There are something like 300,000 vehicles in use by the Post Office, not a one of them has a license plate or is registered. They don't pay fuel taxes (what is the average now $.47 per gallon?), and they don't pay property taxes on any of their locations. If they had to pay for all these things no way they could ever afford to stay in business on their own.
Of course the real question is why a government service is being held to the standards of a for-profit business in the first place. It's like looking at the fire department's budget and complaining about how the government has to subsidize their operations and they'd never survive as an independent business.
Ash87 wrote: So, My understanding of things, was that Trump was the Peaceful option we could of elected in 2016. No way he was going to start bombing people who weren't directly effecting the US... Nope.
Just... Ugh. I'm disgusted with today.
This is what happens when you elect a con man. We all knew this was going to happen, but people wanted to believe the con man's lies and so here we are.
.
Look at the bright side, at least he's not at Obama levels of hypocrisy on the subject yet. Which still makes him better than the alternative choice we had, since Hillary supported those actions.
cuda1179 wrote: If I remember correctly, the US Government gives the Post Office something like $19.5 Billion in subsidies every year. There are something like 300,000 vehicles in use by the Post Office, not a one of them has a license plate or is registered. They don't pay fuel taxes (what is the average now $.47 per gallon?), and they don't pay property taxes on any of their locations. If they had to pay for all these things no way they could ever afford to stay in business on their own.
Of course the real question is why a government service is being held to the standards of a for-profit business in the first place. It's like looking at the fire department's budget and complaining about how the government has to subsidize their operations and they'd never survive as an independent business.
Well, if there was multiple "private" fire stations that were all clamoring to put out fires faster and cheaper than the government ones, yes I would be saying just that. Let's also drop the pretenses that the PO can't be criticized. They have A LOT of waste that only exists because of their lack of accountability. Everything from locations that shouldn't exist to employees that are nearly immune to firing, to job performance that would make even a layman efficiency expert cringe.
Ash87 wrote: So, My understanding of things, was that Trump was the Peaceful option we could of elected in 2016. No way he was going to start bombing people who weren't directly effecting the US... Nope.
Just... Ugh. I'm disgusted with today.
This is what happens when you elect a con man. We all knew this was going to happen, but people wanted to believe the con man's lies and so here we are.
.
Look at the bright side, at least he's not at Obama levels of hypocrisy on the subject yet. Which still makes him better than the alternative choice we had, since Hillary supported those actions.
cuda1179 wrote: If I remember correctly, the US Government gives the Post Office something like $19.5 Billion in subsidies every year. There are something like 300,000 vehicles in use by the Post Office, not a one of them has a license plate or is registered. They don't pay fuel taxes (what is the average now $.47 per gallon?), and they don't pay property taxes on any of their locations. If they had to pay for all these things no way they could ever afford to stay in business on their own.
Of course the real question is why a government service is being held to the standards of a for-profit business in the first place. It's like looking at the fire department's budget and complaining about how the government has to subsidize their operations and they'd never survive as an independent business.
Well, if there was multiple "private" fire stations that were all clamoring to put out fires faster and cheaper than the government ones, yes I would be saying just that.
How much do the government ones cost you? Also, faster is a good thing but by no means is cheaper a good thing when it comes to fighting fires and saving lives. If they don't have the proper training, proper gear, or even people on duty your life/house could be in danger.
Its Christmas and all of the private fire stations are off for Christmas. Because you know, they are private. Hope your garden hose has good pressure!
Ash87 wrote: So, My understanding of things, was that Trump was the Peaceful option we could of elected in 2016. No way he was going to start bombing people who weren't directly effecting the US... Nope.
Just... Ugh. I'm disgusted with today.
This is what happens when you elect a con man. We all knew this was going to happen, but people wanted to believe the con man's lies and so here we are.
.
Look at the bright side, at least he's not at Obama levels of hypocrisy on the subject yet. Which still makes him better than the alternative choice we had, since Hillary supported those actions.
cuda1179 wrote: If I remember correctly, the US Government gives the Post Office something like $19.5 Billion in subsidies every year. There are something like 300,000 vehicles in use by the Post Office, not a one of them has a license plate or is registered. They don't pay fuel taxes (what is the average now $.47 per gallon?), and they don't pay property taxes on any of their locations. If they had to pay for all these things no way they could ever afford to stay in business on their own.
Of course the real question is why a government service is being held to the standards of a for-profit business in the first place. It's like looking at the fire department's budget and complaining about how the government has to subsidize their operations and they'd never survive as an independent business.
Well, if there was multiple "private" fire stations that were all clamoring to put out fires faster and cheaper than the government ones, yes I would be saying just that.
How much do the government ones cost you? Also, faster is a good thing but by no means is cheaper a good thing when it comes to fighting fires and saving lives. If they don't have the proper training, proper gear, or even people on duty your life/house could be in danger.
Its Christmas and all of the private fire stations are off for Christmas. Because you know, they are private. Hope your garden hose has good pressure!
I forgot about how that Post office is open 24-7-365........ Oh, wait, you mean they are closed 65 days per year, MORE than their competitors. Darn.
cuda1179 wrote: Look at the bright side, at least he's not at Obama levels of hypocrisy on the subject yet. Which still makes him better than the alternative choice we had, since Hillary supported those actions.
...
Are you serious? Why are you still making excuses for the con man?
Well, if there was multiple "private" fire stations that were all clamoring to put out fires faster and cheaper than the government ones, yes I would be saying just that. Let's also drop the pretenses that the PO can't be criticized. They have A LOT of waste that only exists because of their lack of accountability. Everything from locations that shouldn't exist to employees that are nearly immune to firing, to job performance that would make even a layman efficiency expert cringe.
That's a rather impressive straw man you just built there. Nowhere did I say that the USPS can't be criticized or improved, I only said that judging a government service as if it was a for-profit business is an absurd standard. Things like the USPS not paying property taxes are not valid complaints.
Ash87 wrote: So, My understanding of things, was that Trump was the Peaceful option we could of elected in 2016. No way he was going to start bombing people who weren't directly effecting the US... Nope.
Just... Ugh. I'm disgusted with today.
This is what happens when you elect a con man. We all knew this was going to happen, but people wanted to believe the con man's lies and so here we are.
.
Look at the bright side, at least he's not at Obama levels of hypocrisy on the subject yet. Which still makes him better than the alternative choice we had, since Hillary supported those actions.
cuda1179 wrote: If I remember correctly, the US Government gives the Post Office something like $19.5 Billion in subsidies every year. There are something like 300,000 vehicles in use by the Post Office, not a one of them has a license plate or is registered. They don't pay fuel taxes (what is the average now $.47 per gallon?), and they don't pay property taxes on any of their locations. If they had to pay for all these things no way they could ever afford to stay in business on their own.
Of course the real question is why a government service is being held to the standards of a for-profit business in the first place. It's like looking at the fire department's budget and complaining about how the government has to subsidize their operations and they'd never survive as an independent business.
Well, if there was multiple "private" fire stations that were all clamoring to put out fires faster and cheaper than the government ones, yes I would be saying just that.
How much do the government ones cost you? Also, faster is a good thing but by no means is cheaper a good thing when it comes to fighting fires and saving lives. If they don't have the proper training, proper gear, or even people on duty your life/house could be in danger.
Its Christmas and all of the private fire stations are off for Christmas. Because you know, they are private. Hope your garden hose has good pressure!
I forgot about how that Post office is open 24-7-365........ Oh, wait, you mean they are closed 65 days per year, MORE than their competitors. Darn.
I was going to try and write something snarky here. But honestly, I don't even know what you are getting at with this. I am legitimately confused. This makes absolutely no sense to me.
cuda1179 wrote: Look at the bright side, at least he's not at Obama levels of hypocrisy on the subject yet. Which still makes him better than the alternative choice we had, since Hillary supported those actions.
...
Are you serious? Why are you still making excuses for the con man?
.
Are you saying that it isn't true, because it certainly is.
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Dreadwinter wrote: [
I was going to try and write something snarky here. But honestly, I don't even know what you are getting at with this. I am legitimately confused. This makes absolutely no sense to me.
You are the one that implied that a Private business was more likely to abandon customers or be unavailable to them. FYI, there are districts with private fire departments and they do just fine.
cuda1179 wrote: Are you saying that it isn't true, because it certainly is.
What is true? That Clinton was willing to use the military to intervene in other countries? I don't think anyone is going to dispute this, the issue is people defending Trump after he blatantly lied about opposing any potential war and then promptly started one as soon as it was convenient. And now we have the absurdity of you defending the con man, because apparently honestly supporting the use of the military is worse than taking the same actions but lying about it long enough to get elected.
The US Postal Service is an awkward institution in large part because it is a constitutional obligation. The government has to provide mail service per the Postal Clause (it's actually one of the only government institutions explicitly brought into existence by the Constitution), and even setting aside the constitutional issue it provides an essential service that is horribly undervalued today but still essential. People need a way to move gak from point a to point b. The struggles of the postal service are largely the result of idiotic mismanagement, underfunding, and just horribly goal setting.
The goal should not be for USPS to be "competitive" with privately owned deliverers. USPS should be refocused on doing something isn't profitable for private industry but still needs to be done; general mail. Let UPS and FedEx or whoever mail all the boxes. They're better at it and more effective, but neither of them gain much from more general paper mail service. Additionally USPS provides an essential function of mailing services at all; management of mailing protocol which is only getting more complicated with rising population. They're literally running out of road names in some zip codes! Gotta fix that gak XD
Peregrine wrote: [
That's a rather impressive straw man you just built there. Nowhere did I say that the USPS can't be criticized or improved, I only said that judging a government service as if it was a for-profit business is an absurd standard. Things like the USPS not paying property taxes are not valid complaints.
Maybe I want to compare the Post office to a private company is because of the 1971 Postal Reorganization Act, which eliminated the old Post Office Department, replaced it with the US Postal Service. The act was intended to make the USPS self-financing from its own revenues, and to make it an independent, non-political public service. In essence the Post office was SUPPOSED to be run like a for-profit business.
Peregrine wrote: Let's not forget that UPS/FedEx/etc often use USPS for final delivery of their boxes.
True but so is the reverse. I loaded FedEx trucks in college and I occasionally tossed a USPS bag inside for the driver. We could of course always reinterpret the postal clause to allow the government to contract out general mail service, but honestly I'm just sour on private contractors and if USPS had a chance to not be a political chew toy and actually set some realistic goals for itself it would probably function better.
cuda1179 wrote: Are you saying that it isn't true, because it certainly is.
What is true? That Clinton was willing to use the military to intervene in other countries? I don't think anyone is going to dispute this, the issue is people defending Trump after he blatantly lied about opposing any potential war and then promptly started one as soon as it was convenient. And now we have the absurdity of you defending the con man, because apparently honestly supporting the use of the military is worse than taking the same actions but lying about it long enough to get elected.
I never stated that I supported a war. I'd have preferred to keep our noses clean and far from there. If you want to hit Trump with that, go right ahead. What I'm saying is that we've been down this road before, but worse. Obama strait out promised he wouldn't enter into conflicts with countries that weren't a direct threat to us, ever. He was quicker on the draw to hit the red button than Trump has been, and Hillary towed the party line.
Trump is a bite of a turd sandwich all right, I just think Hillary would have been a turd sandwich they make you order seconds of.
cuda1179 wrote: Maybe I want to compare the Post office to a private company is because of the 1971 Postal Reorganization Act, which eliminated the old Post Office Department, replaced it with the US Postal Service. The act was intended to make the USPS self-financing from its own revenues, and to make it an independent, non-political public service. In essence the Post office was SUPPOSED to be run like a for-profit business.
The fact that it was done that way doesn't make it a reasonable thing to do. Pretending that the USPS is a private for-profit business when it's a constitutionally-obligated government service is nonsense. Of course the USPS doesn't pay taxes, just like the fire department doesn't pay taxes. You can, of course, argue for improvements in efficiency, but step one in fixing the USPS is to understand that you're talking about a government service not a for-profit business. And if that means undoing a stupid law, well, so be it.
LordofHats wrote: The US Postal Service is an awkward institution in large part because it is a constitutional obligation. The government has to provide mail service per the Postal Clause (it's actually one of the only government institutions explicitly brought into existence by the Constitution), and even setting aside the constitutional issue it provides an essential service that is horribly undervalued today but still essential. People need a way to move gak from point a to point b. The struggles of the postal service are largely the result of idiotic mismanagement, underfunding, and just horribly goal setting.
The goal should not be for USPS to be "competitive" with privately owned deliverers. USPS should be refocused on doing something isn't profitable for private industry but still needs to be done; general mail. Let UPS and FedEx or whoever mail all the boxes. They're better at it and more effective, but neither of them gain much from more general paper mail service. Additionally USPS provides an essential function of mailing services at all; management of mailing protocol which is only getting more complicated with rising population. They're literally running out of road names in some zip codes! Gotta fix that gak XD
You are actually somewhat misquoting the Postal Clause. It gives the Government the sole ability to open post office locations, but contrary to popular belief does NOT require mail delivery to any location.
cuda1179 wrote: You are actually somewhat misquoting the Postal Clause. It gives the Government the sole ability to open post office locations, but contrary to popular belief does NOT require mail delivery to any location.
I think we can acknowledge the absurdity of opening post offices that do not deliver mail, and that actually moving the mail from place to place is implicit in that clause. This is not YMDC, we don't need absurd RAW nitpicking.
cuda1179 wrote: You are actually somewhat misquoting the Postal Clause. It gives the Government the sole ability to open post office locations, but contrary to popular belief does NOT require mail delivery to any location.
I think we can acknowledge the absurdity of opening post offices that do not deliver mail, and that actually moving the mail from place to place is implicit in that clause. This is not YMDC, we don't need absurd RAW nitpicking.
What it means is that the Government has the sole authority where and when it wants post offices, but is NOT required to put a post office anywhere or indeed to service any particular area. Random locations in fact have no right to mail delivery. A small town close to me for example has no-home delivery. Everyone in the town of 1,000 people is required to have a PO box.
The claim was made that there is a Constitutional obligation to deliver the mail, and that's incorrect.
LordofHats wrote: The US Postal Service is an awkward institution in large part because it is a constitutional obligation. The government has to provide mail service per the Postal Clause (it's actually one of the only government institutions explicitly brought into existence by the Constitution), and even setting aside the constitutional issue it provides an essential service that is horribly undervalued today but still essential. People need a way to move gak from point a to point b. The struggles of the postal service are largely the result of idiotic mismanagement, underfunding, and just horribly goal setting.
The goal should not be for USPS to be "competitive" with privately owned deliverers. USPS should be refocused on doing something isn't profitable for private industry but still needs to be done; general mail. Let UPS and FedEx or whoever mail all the boxes. They're better at it and more effective, but neither of them gain much from more general paper mail service. Additionally USPS provides an essential function of mailing services at all; management of mailing protocol which is only getting more complicated with rising population. They're literally running out of road names in some zip codes! Gotta fix that gak XD
You are actually somewhat misquoting the Postal Clause. It gives the Government the sole ability to open post office locations, but contrary to popular belief does NOT require mail delivery to any location.
I'm not misquoting anything. The Government is obligated to provide postal service, which is why it has provided postal service for the past 250 years. Feel free to join the club of Constitutional revisionists who think they've found the great syntactic loop hole everyone else missed but there's no one on earth who will buy that an obligation to establish a postal service doesn't include an obligation to deliver. There's actually zero case law on the matter because there's never been any real question that the postal service is expected to actually deliver mail to the designated recipient. That's the entire point of mail service.
If anything this obligation actually allows some people to have mail service they otherwise wouldn't because there are places with so few people to service FedEx and UPS don't operate at all, but USPS does. There are of course some people with no service at all because they live that far out there, but an social obligation has never been interpreted as an absolute. if you live 50 miles from the nearest other human being you're probably not getting any mail, but if you live that far from civilization I suspect you don't really want any mail anyway.
cuda1179 wrote: What it means is that the Government has the sole authority where and when it wants post offices, but is NOT required to put a post office anywhere or indeed to service any particular area. Random locations in fact have no right to mail delivery. A small town close to me for example has no-home delivery. Everyone in the town of 1,000 people is required to have a PO box.
I'm not really sure what your point is here. The government is constitutionally obligated to operate a postal service, even if it is not obligated to provide home delivery to every single house in the US. I don't see what the fact that the USPS can say "this area is too rural for delivery to be efficient, come get your mail at a central location" has to do with anything.
cuda1179 wrote: Are you saying that it isn't true, because it certainly is.
What is true? That Clinton was willing to use the military to intervene in other countries? I don't think anyone is going to dispute this, the issue is people defending Trump after he blatantly lied about opposing any potential war and then promptly started one as soon as it was convenient. And now we have the absurdity of you defending the con man, because apparently honestly supporting the use of the military is worse than taking the same actions but lying about it long enough to get elected.
I never stated that I supported a war. I'd have preferred to keep our noses clean and far from there. If you want to hit Trump with that, go right ahead. What I'm saying is that we've been down this road before, but worse. Obama strait out promised he wouldn't enter into conflicts with countries that weren't a direct threat to us, ever. He was quicker on the draw to hit the red button than Trump has been, and Hillary towed the party line.
Trump is a bite of a turd sandwich all right, I just think Hillary would have been a turd sandwich they make you order seconds of.
I think its kind of cold at this point to use this logic. "Oh well it could be worse" when we just bombed a load of people...?
And we are, last i checked, 1+ years from the election.
Probably just better to focus on things being bad... You know, now. Fan fiction isnt relevant anymore, and despite people who voted for Trump's deepest hopes and dreams... Niether is Hillary Clinton, in a situation where we just bombed another country over something that is none of our business. If you want to talk about the election, that is fine... Kind of a dead issue, but it isn't really related to anything anymore.
LordofHats wrote: The US Postal Service is an awkward institution in large part because it is a constitutional obligation. The government has to provide mail service per the Postal Clause (it's actually one of the only government institutions explicitly brought into existence by the Constitution), and even setting aside the constitutional issue it provides an essential service that is horribly undervalued today but still essential. People need a way to move gak from point a to point b. The struggles of the postal service are largely the result of idiotic mismanagement, underfunding, and just horribly goal setting.
The goal should not be for USPS to be "competitive" with privately owned deliverers. USPS should be refocused on doing something isn't profitable for private industry but still needs to be done; general mail. Let UPS and FedEx or whoever mail all the boxes. They're better at it and more effective, but neither of them gain much from more general paper mail service. Additionally USPS provides an essential function of mailing services at all; management of mailing protocol which is only getting more complicated with rising population. They're literally running out of road names in some zip codes! Gotta fix that gak XD
You are actually somewhat misquoting the Postal Clause. It gives the Government the sole ability to open post office locations, but contrary to popular belief does NOT require mail delivery to any location.
I'm not misquoting anything. The Government is obligated to provide postal service, which is why it has provided postal service for the past 250 years. Feel free to join the club of Constitutional revisionists who think they've found the great syntactic loop hole everyone else missed but there's no one on earth who will buy that an obligation to establish a postal service doesn't include an obligation to deliver. There's actually zero case law on the matter because there's never been any real question that the postal service is expected to actually deliver mail to the designated recipient. That's the entire point of mail service.
This entire point was actually debated in Congress before. People were specifically asked where this was stated, and no one had an answer. I will agree that there is no case law on it, but that goes both ways. You stated there is an obligation to establish a postal service. Please tell me where that obligation exists. Once again, the government has the right to establish postal service, not the obligation.
cuda1179 wrote: You are actually somewhat misquoting the Postal Clause. It gives the Government the sole ability to open post office locations, but contrary to popular belief does NOT require mail delivery to any location.
I think we can acknowledge the absurdity of opening post offices that do not deliver mail, and that actually moving the mail from place to place is implicit in that clause. This is not YMDC, we don't need absurd RAW nitpicking.
What it means is that the Government has the sole authority where and when it wants post offices, but is NOT required to put a post office anywhere or indeed to service any particular area. Random locations in fact have no right to mail delivery. A small town close to me for example has no-home delivery. Everyone in the town of 1,000 people is required to have a PO box.
The claim was made that there is a Constitutional obligation to deliver the mail, and that's incorrect.
cuda1179 wrote: Are you saying that it isn't true, because it certainly is.
What is true? That Clinton was willing to use the military to intervene in other countries? I don't think anyone is going to dispute this, the issue is people defending Trump after he blatantly lied about opposing any potential war and then promptly started one as soon as it was convenient. And now we have the absurdity of you defending the con man, because apparently honestly supporting the use of the military is worse than taking the same actions but lying about it long enough to get elected.
I never stated that I supported a war. I'd have preferred to keep our noses clean and far from there. If you want to hit Trump with that, go right ahead. What I'm saying is that we've been down this road before, but worse. Obama strait out promised he wouldn't enter into conflicts with countries that weren't a direct threat to us, ever. He was quicker on the draw to hit the red button than Trump has been, and Hillary towed the party line.
Trump is a bite of a turd sandwich all right, I just think Hillary would have been a turd sandwich they make you order seconds of.
I think its kind of cold at this point to use this logic. "Oh well it could be worse" when we just bombed a load of people...?
And we are, last i checked, 1+ years from the election.
Probably just better to focus on things being bad... You know, now. Fan fiction isnt relevant anymore, and despite people who voted for Trump's deepest hopes and dreams... Niether is Hillary Clinton, in a situation where we just bombed another country over something that is none of our business. If you want to talk about the election, that is fine... Kind of a dead issue, but it isn't really related to anything anymore.
Also, bombed. People. Dead.
Just to be clear here, I'm not the one that brought up the last election, that was Peregrine talking about how we elected a "con man" as opposed the alternative. And yes, we may have fallen for lies. Lies that probably weren't as bad as a reality that was readily waiting for us. And are you really stating that something that is worse, isn't worse? Listen, I think war is stupid. I'm not saying it isn't. I'm totally with you when it comes to the loss of lives. Being pragmatic is just that though, it's not being "cold".
cuda1179 wrote: I will agree that there is no case law on it, but that goes both ways.
It really doesn't. Since the original post service established in 1791 to the present the US has always provided delivery of mail because that's an intrinsic and unavoidable part of what a postal service does. You might as well argue for a cable service that expects you to dig up your own yard and connect to the cable box yourself. There's no case law because arguing otherwise is basically crank.
You stated there is an obligation to establish a postal service. Please tell me where that obligation exists. Once again, the government has the right to establish postal service, not the obligation.
The vesting clause, which is interpreted as mandating that the powers granted to Congress are its inherent responsibilities. You know. Like providing for a navy. Or collecting taxes. Not exercising the enumerated powers is by definition unconstitutional which is the road block that has prevented Congress from ending government provided postal service since day one and they've been trying on and off since day one (literally). They have those powers because their explicitly expected to provide those "service."
cuda1179 wrote: Just to be clear here, I'm not the one that brought up the last election, that was Peregrine talking about how we elected a "con man" as opposed the alternative. And yes, we may have fallen for lies. Lies that probably weren't as bad as a reality that was readily waiting for us. And are you really stating that something that is worse, isn't worse? Listen, I think war is stupid. I'm not saying it isn't. I'm totally with you when it comes to the loss of lives. Being pragmatic is just that though, it's not being "cold".
What exactly do you think Clinton would be doing that would be so much worse? Because as far as I can see Trump is doing the exact same thing that Obama did before him, and Bush before Obama, and likely the same things that Clinton would have done. Except now we're supposed to forget that he was elected on a promise of "I'm not going to start a war, Clinton is dangerous and will provoke Russia", and overlook the clumsy manner in which he is going about his bombing campaign.
cuda1179 wrote: Just to be clear here, I'm not the one that brought up the last election, that was Peregrine talking about how we elected a "con man" as opposed the alternative. And yes, we may have fallen for lies. Lies that probably weren't as bad as a reality that was readily waiting for us. And are you really stating that something that is worse, isn't worse? Listen, I think war is stupid. I'm not saying it isn't. I'm totally with you when it comes to the loss of lives. Being pragmatic is just that though, it's not being "cold".
What exactly do you think Clinton would be doing that would be so much worse? Because as far as I can see Trump is doing the exact same thing that Obama did before him, and Bush before Obama, and likely the same things that Clinton would have done. Except now we're supposed to forget that he was elected on a promise of "I'm not going to start a war, Clinton is dangerous and will provoke Russia", and overlook the clumsy manner in which he is going about his bombing campaign.
Bush got us into wars, that's a fact.
After Bush we were expecting Obama to keep his promise to not only NOT start more conflict, but to get us out of the ones we were all ready in. He didn't speed up any withdrawals, and in fact got us into several more conflicts. Clinton was there with him, justifying every action.
THAT is what I would be afraid of, that not only would we be attacking Syria, but a couple other countries too.
Trump made literally thousands of lies in his first year of office, has been a blatant hypocrite from day one, and has left Obama in the dust when it comes to either. To believe otherwise is a delusion. The only reason to deflect onto Obama at all is because one cannot defend a pro-Trump stance on the matter. This line to discussion was already done from the onset, and is the type of thing we should just ignore. It's the minority of posters arguing against facts and in bad faith that always sends these threads downhill. A simple response to point out the lie and call out the fallacy (usually whataboutism) is all that's needed.
NinthMusketeer wrote: Trump made literally thousands of lies in his first year of office, has been a blatant hypocrite from day one, and has left Obama in the dust when it comes to either. To believe otherwise is a delusion. The only reason to deflect onto Obama at all is because one cannot defend a pro-Trump stance on the matter. This line to discussion was already done from the onset, and is the type of thing we should just ignore. It's the minority of posters arguing against facts and in bad faith that always sends these threads downhill. A simple response to point out the lie and call out the fallacy (usually whataboutism) is all that's needed.
Amount of lies, yes. However, what does he lie about? Frankly I don't care if his inauguration had a small turnout. I cared more about that "most transparent administration in history".
As for "whataboutisms", once again, I'm not the one that brought that whole line of discussion up.
Here's a relevant lie: "I'm not going to get involved in Syria. You need to vote for me because Clinton is going to do it, anger Russia, and risk WWIII."
And NinthMusketeer is right about the absurdity of this situation. We elect a con man and his supporters, rather than admit that they bought the lies of a con man and made a mistake, defend him and insist that somehow the alternative was going to be worse.
Here's a relevant lie: "I'm not going to get involved in Syria. You need to vote for me because Clinton is going to do it, anger Russia, and risk WWIII."
And NinthMusketeer is right about the absurdity of this situation. We elect a con man and his supporters, rather than admit that they bought the lies of a con man and made a mistake, defend him and insist that somehow the alternative was going to be worse.
As this was supposed to be a "how was he worse than Obama" question that was asked, Tell me again how that's worse than "I promise not to get into any armed conflict with any country that isn't a direct, real, and imminent threat to the US", then bomb 7 countries?
NinthMusketeer wrote: Trump made literally thousands of lies in his first year of office, has been a blatant hypocrite from day one, and has left Obama in the dust when it comes to either. To believe otherwise is a delusion. The only reason to deflect onto Obama at all is because one cannot defend a pro-Trump stance on the matter. This line to discussion was already done from the onset, and is the type of thing we should just ignore. It's the minority of posters arguing against facts and in bad faith that always sends these threads downhill. A simple response to point out the lie and call out the fallacy (usually whataboutism) is all that's needed.
Amount of lies, yes. However, what does he lie about? Frankly I don't care if his inauguration had a small turnout. I cared more about that "most transparent administration in history".
Peregrine wrote: [
That's a rather impressive straw man you just built there. Nowhere did I say that the USPS can't be criticized or improved, I only said that judging a government service as if it was a for-profit business is an absurd standard. Things like the USPS not paying property taxes are not valid complaints.
Maybe I want to compare the Post office to a private company is because of the 1971 Postal Reorganization Act, which eliminated the old Post Office Department, replaced it with the US Postal Service. The act was intended to make the USPS self-financing from its own revenues, and to make it an independent, non-political public service. In essence the Post office was SUPPOSED to be run like a for-profit business.
Actually iirc, it was supposed to only ever break even, so it would be self sustaining without generating a profit.
NinthMusketeer wrote: Trump made literally thousands of lies in his first year of office, has been a blatant hypocrite from day one, and has left Obama in the dust when it comes to either. To believe otherwise is a delusion. The only reason to deflect onto Obama at all is because one cannot defend a pro-Trump stance on the matter. This line to discussion was already done from the onset, and is the type of thing we should just ignore. It's the minority of posters arguing against facts and in bad faith that always sends these threads downhill. A simple response to point out the lie and call out the fallacy (usually whataboutism) is all that's needed.
Amount of lies, yes. However, what does he lie about? Frankly I don't care if his inauguration had a small turnout. I cared more about that "most transparent administration in history".
NinthMusketeer wrote: Trump made literally thousands of lies in his first year of office, has been a blatant hypocrite from day one, and has left Obama in the dust when it comes to either. To believe otherwise is a delusion. The only reason to deflect onto Obama at all is because one cannot defend a pro-Trump stance on the matter. This line to discussion was already done from the onset, and is the type of thing we should just ignore. It's the minority of posters arguing against facts and in bad faith that always sends these threads downhill. A simple response to point out the lie and call out the fallacy (usually whataboutism) is all that's needed.
Amount of lies, yes. However, what does he lie about? Frankly I don't care if his inauguration had a small turnout. I cared more about that "most transparent administration in history".
Would you like to get into a contest about what campaign promises were kept and broken?
No, for multiple reasons. First among them is that I am not going to attempt an evidence based discussion with someone who has demonstrated they are ignoring it. It goes right back to what I said above. If you begin arguing in good faith based on reality I will happily respond.
NinthMusketeer wrote: Trump made literally thousands of lies in his first year of office, has been a blatant hypocrite from day one, and has left Obama in the dust when it comes to either. To believe otherwise is a delusion. The only reason to deflect onto Obama at all is because one cannot defend a pro-Trump stance on the matter. This line to discussion was already done from the onset, and is the type of thing we should just ignore. It's the minority of posters arguing against facts and in bad faith that always sends these threads downhill. A simple response to point out the lie and call out the fallacy (usually whataboutism) is all that's needed.
Amount of lies, yes. However, what does he lie about? Frankly I don't care if his inauguration had a small turnout. I cared more about that "most transparent administration in history".
Would you like to get into a contest about what campaign promises were kept and broken?
How was Obama's worse? At least major policy decisions weren't made over twitter, then change an hour later, then changed a further hour later.
Also, I don't think trump has kept any campaign promises really, I mean, Mexico clearly won't be paying for a wall, so what else?
-Term limits for politicians? Yeah, that'll happen.
-Ban on Muslim immigrants? Yeah, that'll fly.
-Not take vacations? I mean, he has only golfed around 100 times now.
-Release his tax returns? Still waiting...
-Child care tax credits? Yeah, didn't happen.
-Save the coal industry? I think it's literally impossible, I mean coal is long outdated for most modern uses.
I guess he did however keep his promises about:
-Removing federal regulations (I mean, look at his EPA, DOE and FCC picks...).
-Canceling the Paris Agreement? Yup, sure did! Who needs an Earth anyways right?
-Cut taxes for everyone, just way more for the wealthy business owners (like himself, weird!)
Of course, I'm not expecting any actual information or facts from you based on your past few replies, but hey, maybe.
With all due respect Wolf, trying to respond to delusion with facts is only goong to drag the thread down. He is arguing in bad faith; call him on it and move on. Raising factual arguments not only provides delusional positions more legitimacy than they deserve but serves to deflect from the core of the argument which is really evidence-denial.
NinthMusketeer wrote: Trump made literally thousands of lies in his first year of office, has been a blatant hypocrite from day one, and has left Obama in the dust when it comes to either. To believe otherwise is a delusion. The only reason to deflect onto Obama at all is because one cannot defend a pro-Trump stance on the matter. This line to discussion was already done from the onset, and is the type of thing we should just ignore. It's the minority of posters arguing against facts and in bad faith that always sends these threads downhill. A simple response to point out the lie and call out the fallacy (usually whataboutism) is all that's needed.
Amount of lies, yes. However, what does he lie about? Frankly I don't care if his inauguration had a small turnout. I cared more about that "most transparent administration in history".
Would you like to get into a contest about what campaign promises were kept and broken?
How was Obama's worse? At least major policy decisions weren't made over twitter, then change an hour later, then changed a further hour later.
Also, I don't think trump has kept any campaign promises really, I mean, Mexico clearly won't be paying for a wall, so what else?
-Term limits for politicians? Yeah, that'll happen.
-Ban on Muslim immigrants? Yeah, that'll fly.
-Not take vacations? I mean, he has only golfed around 100 times now.
-Release his tax returns? Still waiting...
-Child care tax credits? Yeah, didn't happen.
-Save the coal industry? I think it's literally impossible, I mean coal is long outdated for most modern uses.
I guess he did however keep his promises about:
-Removing federal regulations (I mean, look at his EPA, DOE and FCC picks...).
-Canceling the Paris Agreement? Yup, sure did! Who needs an Earth anyways right?
-Cut taxes for everyone, just way more for the wealthy business owners (like himself, weird!)
Of course, I'm not expecting any actual information or facts from you based on your past few replies, but hey, maybe.
Pulling us out of the Pan Pacific Partnership
Putting his foot down on ISIS in Iraq
getting tougher on immigration
Raise the stock market
Bring back manufacturing (which did see a net gain in the last year)
Come to think of it, didn't coal slightly grow too?
Automatically Appended Next Post: Let's add to that.
Unemployment at a 17 year low.
Putting forward a rather successful international effort to combat MS-13 and 18th street gangs.
approved construction of the Keystone XL pipeline.
Supported Obama's stance against Chemical weapons
has taken hardlines against Russia when they've tried to violate treaties.
recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital
got Nato nations to actually pay $12billion more for security
Automatically Appended Next Post: Let's take a look at that Paris agreement we pulled out of. Remember when Bush pulled out of the Kyoto agreements? The same thing was said then.......however, it allowed new energy investments which somehow allowed the US to lower it's pollution MORE than Europe. The same could happen again.
Trump has presides over 3 of the 5 largest stock market drops in history.
Started a trade war with China, then declared we lost.
Tougher on immigration? You mean those Muslim bans that are being challenged in court?
Manufacturing is by and large gone. Other countries have a cheaper labour force with fewer regulations.
Coal might have had a slightly up year (771 jobs...) But it's not coming back any time soon.
Obama put his foot down on ISIS too, yet I don't see you praising him. (For reference Trump is basically using Obama's plan that he set in place iirc)
Unemployment was because of Obama's policies
MS-13 is not as big of a threat as Trump wants to pretend they are. Dangerous and bad yes, but not the all consuming threat he makes them out to be.
Jerusalem was a horrible move that raised tensions and undermined any negotiations in the middle east.
As for the Paris agreement, doubtful as the head of EPA will be busy dismantling it.
Wolfblade wrote: Trump has presides over 3 of the 5 largest stock market drops in history.
Started a trade war with China, then declared we lost.
Tougher on immigration? You mean those Muslim bans that are being challenged in court?
Manufacturing is by and large gone. Other countries have a cheaper labour force with fewer regulations.
Coal might have had a slightly up year (771 jobs...) But it's not coming back any time soon.
Obama put his foot down on ISIS too, yet I don't see you praising him. (For reference Trump is basically using Obama's plan that he set in place iirc)
Tougher on immigration. putting NG troops on the border, putting more pressure on immigration courts, building a wall (even I admit this is the worst of the bunch, but is something), increasing deportations, and taking some of the reins off ICE
Manufacturing is well past its prime, but it did slightly grow in the last year.
I'll give Obama credit for hitting ISIS. The Obama Admin did estimate it would take until 2025 to get them out of Iraq though. One year into Trump's admin and they got stomped out of their last strongpoint.
NG at the border is expensive, and they're there until the wall is built (which Mexico will pay for right?)
And if you looked at the facts, Obama was actually pretty strict on deportations, and 2016 had more deportations than 2017 (despite 2017 having ICE arrest something like 10% more immigrants with out a criminal record)
And immigration courts need more the just pressure put on then, they need to be looked at when a 3yo is allowed to represent themself in court.
Also still taking credit from Obama and foisting it onto Trump I see. Obama does most of the work, but hey it ended with Trump so clearly it was all him right? The only reason it's gone so well still is because that's one area Trump didn't try to meddle with.
Plus, wasn't 2025 the estimated elimination date of ISIS? Not just their last strong point, but all of it? I mean, correct me if I'm wrong but ISIS is still around.
I guess we can give Trump credit for the most dysfunctional white house ever, and higher turnover rate in history of the white house.
cuda1179 wrote: I'll give Obama credit for hitting ISIS. The Obama Admin did estimate it would take until 2025 to get them out of Iraq though. One year into Trump's admin and they got stomped out of their last strongpoint.
Bookmarking this so I can quote it back to you when, as happened with ISIS' predecessors, ISIS is just replaced by the next iteration of the problem and Trump's victory becomes meaningless.
Wolfblade wrote: NG at the border is expensive, and they're there until the wall is built (which Mexico will pay for right?)
And if you looked at the facts, Obama was actually pretty strict on deportations, and 2016 had more deportations than 2017 (despite 2017 having ICE arrest something like 10% more immigrants with out a criminal record)
And immigration courts need more the just pressure put on then, they need to be looked at when a 3yo is allowed to represent themself in court.
Also still taking credit from Obama and foisting it onto Trump I see. Obama does most of the work, but hey it ended with Trump so clearly it was all him right? The only reason it's gone so well still is because that's one area Trump didn't try to meddle with.
Plus, wasn't 2025 the estimated elimination date of ISIS? Not just their last strong point, but all of it? I mean, correct me if I'm wrong but ISIS is still around.
I guess we can give Trump credit for the most dysfunctional white house ever, and higher turnover rate in history of the white house.
Obama was A LOT less strict on deportations than it appears. Obama's biggest claim was that he used a different definition of "deported" that made it look like he deported more people. Other administrations only counted those that actually went through deportation proceedings, while Obama also included those turned away at the border.
cuda1179 wrote: I'll give Obama credit for hitting ISIS. The Obama Admin did estimate it would take until 2025 to get them out of Iraq though. One year into Trump's admin and they got stomped out of their last strongpoint.
Bookmarking this so I can quote it back to you when, as happened with ISIS' predecessors, ISIS is just replaced by the next iteration of the problem and Trump's victory becomes meaningless.
I will agree that this is a failing of pretty much all Presidencies. We need to install some kind of friendly, and most importantly functional, government and policy in the area.
Wolfblade wrote: NG at the border is expensive, and they're there until the wall is built (which Mexico will pay for right?)
And if you looked at the facts, Obama was actually pretty strict on deportations, and 2016 had more deportations than 2017 (despite 2017 having ICE arrest something like 10% more immigrants with out a criminal record)
And immigration courts need more the just pressure put on then, they need to be looked at when a 3yo is allowed to represent themself in court.
Also still taking credit from Obama and foisting it onto Trump I see. Obama does most of the work, but hey it ended with Trump so clearly it was all him right? The only reason it's gone so well still is because that's one area Trump didn't try to meddle with.
Plus, wasn't 2025 the estimated elimination date of ISIS? Not just their last strong point, but all of it? I mean, correct me if I'm wrong but ISIS is still around.
I guess we can give Trump credit for the most dysfunctional white house ever, and higher turnover rate in history of the white house.
Obama was A LOT less strict on deportations than it appears. Obama's biggest claim was that he used a different definition of "deported" that made it look like he deported more people. Other administrations only counted those that actually went through deportation proceedings, while Obama also included those turned away at the border.
cuda1179 wrote: I'll give Obama credit for hitting ISIS. The Obama Admin did estimate it would take until 2025 to get them out of Iraq though. One year into Trump's admin and they got stomped out of their last strongpoint.
Bookmarking this so I can quote it back to you when, as happened with ISIS' predecessors, ISIS is just replaced by the next iteration of the problem and Trump's victory becomes meaningless.
I will agree that this is a failing of pretty much all Presidencies. We need to install some kind of friendly, and most importantly functional, government and policy in the area.
When even hardline anit-Trump NBC agrees, you kind of have to admit you're wrong here. Or at least misleading. In general he's been great for the stock market, despite the drops.
Wolfblade wrote: NG at the border is expensive, and they're there until the wall is built (which Mexico will pay for right?)
And if you looked at the facts, Obama was actually pretty strict on deportations, and 2016 had more deportations than 2017 (despite 2017 having ICE arrest something like 10% more immigrants with out a criminal record)
And immigration courts need more the just pressure put on then, they need to be looked at when a 3yo is allowed to represent themself in court.
Also still taking credit from Obama and foisting it onto Trump I see. Obama does most of the work, but hey it ended with Trump so clearly it was all him right? The only reason it's gone so well still is because that's one area Trump didn't try to meddle with.
Plus, wasn't 2025 the estimated elimination date of ISIS? Not just their last strong point, but all of it? I mean, correct me if I'm wrong but ISIS is still around.
I guess we can give Trump credit for the most dysfunctional white house ever, and higher turnover rate in history of the white house.
Obama was A LOT less strict on deportations than it appears. Obama's biggest claim was that he used a different definition of "deported" that made it look like he deported more people. Other administrations only counted those that actually went through deportation proceedings, while Obama also included those turned away at the border.
IIRC Trump is still using the same criteria as to what counts as "deported"
But hey I'd that's the only thing you can nitpick, I'll chalk it up as a point for "trump is a gakky president when compared to literally any other presidency."
That's a bit of a loaded question. Is there really a right answer for it? We all want out of there. If we try to build something first we are "nation building". If we just leave we have a "power vacuum". If we stay..... we're there and no one wants that.
When even hardline anit-Trump NBC agrees, you kind of have to admit you're wrong here. Or at least misleading. In general he's been great for the stock market, despite the drops.
Is that including the year where he basically passed nothing, and was still on Obama's budget? AKA the growth that was stilldue to Obama's policies and actions? I think it is, and again, credit is being given to trump where it is not due.
Wolfblade wrote: NG at the border is expensive, and they're there until the wall is built (which Mexico will pay for right?)
And if you looked at the facts, Obama was actually pretty strict on deportations, and 2016 had more deportations than 2017 (despite 2017 having ICE arrest something like 10% more immigrants with out a criminal record)
And immigration courts need more the just pressure put on then, they need to be looked at when a 3yo is allowed to represent themself in court.
Also still taking credit from Obama and foisting it onto Trump I see. Obama does most of the work, but hey it ended with Trump so clearly it was all him right? The only reason it's gone so well still is because that's one area Trump didn't try to meddle with.
Plus, wasn't 2025 the estimated elimination date of ISIS? Not just their last strong point, but all of it? I mean, correct me if I'm wrong but ISIS is still around.
I guess we can give Trump credit for the most dysfunctional white house ever, and higher turnover rate in history of the white house.
Obama was A LOT less strict on deportations than it appears. Obama's biggest claim was that he used a different definition of "deported" that made it look like he deported more people. Other administrations only counted those that actually went through deportation proceedings, while Obama also included those turned away at the border.
IIRC Trump is still using the same criteria as to what counts as "deported"
But hey I'd that's the only thing you can nitpick, I'll chalk it up as a point for "trump is a gakky president when compared to literally any other presidency."
Looks like you are somewhat wrong about Trump Deporting less
To quote the article "more people who already lived in the United States were deported in fiscal year 2017 compared with 2016." The total "deportation" were slightly lower only because there were fewer coming to the border, lowering that number.
When even hardline anit-Trump NBC agrees, you kind of have to admit you're wrong here. Or at least misleading. In general he's been great for the stock market, despite the drops.
Is that including the year where he basically passed nothing, and was still on Obama's budget? AKA the growth that was stilldue to Obama's policies and actions? I think it is, and again, credit is being given to trump where it is not due.
Well, as long as that is the standard..... The economic crash of 2001 wasn't due to Bush, it was Clinton's fault. And the Economic recovery that started in 2009 should be accredited to Bush, not Obama, right?
Wolfblade wrote: NG at the border is expensive, and they're there until the wall is built (which Mexico will pay for right?)
And if you looked at the facts, Obama was actually pretty strict on deportations, and 2016 had more deportations than 2017 (despite 2017 having ICE arrest something like 10% more immigrants with out a criminal record)
And immigration courts need more the just pressure put on then, they need to be looked at when a 3yo is allowed to represent themself in court.
Also still taking credit from Obama and foisting it onto Trump I see. Obama does most of the work, but hey it ended with Trump so clearly it was all him right? The only reason it's gone so well still is because that's one area Trump didn't try to meddle with.
Plus, wasn't 2025 the estimated elimination date of ISIS? Not just their last strong point, but all of it? I mean, correct me if I'm wrong but ISIS is still around.
I guess we can give Trump credit for the most dysfunctional white house ever, and higher turnover rate in history of the white house.
Obama was A LOT less strict on deportations than it appears. Obama's biggest claim was that he used a different definition of "deported" that made it look like he deported more people. Other administrations only counted those that actually went through deportation proceedings, while Obama also included those turned away at the border.
IIRC Trump is still using the same criteria as to what counts as "deported"
But hey I'd that's the only thing you can nitpick, I'll chalk it up as a point for "trump is a gakky president when compared to literally any other presidency."
Looks like you are somewhat wrong about Trump Deporting less
To quote the article "more people who already lived in the United States were deported in fiscal year 2017 compared with 2016." The total "deportation" were slightly lower only because there were fewer coming to the border, lowering that number.
Maybe, on the other hand trump has been deporting long time residents with no criminal history.
When even hardline anit-Trump NBC agrees, you kind of have to admit you're wrong here. Or at least misleading. In general he's been great for the stock market, despite the drops.
Is that including the year where he basically passed nothing, and was still on Obama's budget? AKA the growth that was stilldue to Obama's policies and actions? I think it is, and again, credit is being given to trump where it is not due.
Well, as long as that is the standard..... The economic crash of 2001 wasn't due to Bush, it was Clinton's fault. And the Economic recovery that started in 2009 should be accredited to Bush, not Obama, right?
Unlike trump, Bush and Obama actually passed bills, or had major events happen unlike trump who's only major bill passed in the first year was a late night rush on the tax plan, and being investigated for collusion with Russia.
Wolfblade wrote: [
Maybe, on the other hand trump has been deporting long time residents with no criminal history..
And your point here? Criminal history or not, enforcement of Immigration is the domain of the Executive branch, and he's getting down to enforcing it.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Let me just say I'm not an unabashed Trump supporter. He's done a lot of screwed up things that he should be called out for.
I am however not totally blinded by political ideology. I will give him credit on some of the things he has accomplished.
Heck, I even give Richard Nixon credit for a lot of things. He did a number of bad things, but I think he is a criminally underrated President. Watergate hurts his reputation badly, but he did get us out of Viet Nam, and a number of his policies did work out for the better.
Wolfblade wrote: [
Maybe, on the other hand trump has been deporting long time residents with no criminal history..
And your point here? Criminal history or not, enforcement of Immigration is the domain of the Executive branch, and he's getting down to enforcing it.
I suppose, you however have been dropping a lot of points the moment you can't come up with a rebuttal.
If immigration is the only thing trump has been tougher or better on, if say that's a clear sign he's a failure, especially when there are bigger issues than law abiding illegal aliens.
Also Nixon only got us out after Daniel Ellsburg leaked the truth about the war. Nixon and co. lied about how the war was going up to that point.
cuda1179 wrote: I'll give Obama credit for hitting ISIS. The Obama Admin did estimate it would take until 2025 to get them out of Iraq though. One year into Trump's admin and they got stomped out of their last strongpoint.
This is just pure misrepresentation of what Obama said. Obama said IS would be a generational struggle because its a mindset, not just a country. When IS is defeated in Syria its still going to be there in Nigeria, Libya, Afghanistan and wherever else it feels like popping up.
Meanwhile Obama laid all the groundwork for later offensive operations under the Trump admin. Hell, the most important moments were started under the Obama admin. The battle for Mosul, arguably the hardest part, was prepared for and largely planned by the Obama admin and even started just before the end of his term. The only thing Trump did is look at the strategy and go "bomb more!" Hence the skyrocketing civilian death toll for a while.
Automatically Appended Next Post: As for the Syrian air strikes. Who could ever see it coming that this was a single event with the West going "now don't do that any more naughty boy", while Russia didn't jump on that grenade in the middle of nowhere! WW3 eat your heart out?
Wolfblade wrote: [
Maybe, on the other hand trump has been deporting long time residents with no criminal history..
And your point here? Criminal history or not, enforcement of Immigration is the domain of the Executive branch, and he's getting down to enforcing it.
I suppose, you however have been dropping a lot of points the moment you can't come up with a rebuttal.
If immigration is the only thing trump has been tougher or better on, if say that's a clear sign he's a failure, especially when there are bigger issues than law abiding illegal aliens.
Also Nixon only got us out after Daniel Ellsburg leaked the truth about the war. Nixon and co. lied about how the war was going up to that point.
Well, if all fairness, didn't US troops win something like 96% of all engagements? Not saying I supported the war or that casualties didn't mean anything (they did and were horrible) but still fairly impressive for a war. we were simply fighting an enemy that was willing to be killed 30 to 1 in order to get us out.
cuda1179 wrote: I'll give Obama credit for hitting ISIS. The Obama Admin did estimate it would take until 2025 to get them out of Iraq though. One year into Trump's admin and they got stomped out of their last strongpoint.
This is just pure misrepresentation of what Obama said. Obama said IS would be a generational struggle because its a mindset, not just a country. When IS is defeated in Syria its still going to be there in Nigeria, Libya, Afghanistan and wherever else it feels like popping up.
Meanwhile Obama laid all the groundwork for later offensive operations under the Trump admin. Hell, the most important moments were started under the Obama admin. The battle for Mosul, arguably the hardest part, was prepared for and largely planned by the Obama admin and even started just before the end of his term. The only thing Trump did is look at the strategy and go "bomb more!"?
Yeah, I'll pretty much say that sounds right. On the same token though I had problems with Obama taking credit for killing Osama Bin Laden.
That doesn't mean the war is going well, and would you mind citing that 96% stat? That seems awfully high and likely skewed as to what counts as "winning".
Edit: also nice of you to ignore the facts about Daniel Ellsburg leaking the information about the war.
Wolfblade wrote: That doesn't mean the war is going well, and would you mind citing that 96% stat? That seems awfully high and likely skewed as to what counts as "winning".
Edit: also nice of you to ignore the facts about Daniel Ellsburg leaking the information about the war.
Sorry, didn't mean to skip over Ellsburg. If I remember correctly though, didn't the Pentagon Papers mostly trash Presidents Johnson, and to a lesser degree Kennedy with Nixon as a basically a minor bonus?
Wolfblade wrote: That doesn't mean the war is going well, and would you mind citing that 96% stat? That seems awfully high and likely skewed as to what counts as "winning".
Edit: also nice of you to ignore the facts about Daniel Ellsburg leaking the information about the war.
Sorry, didn't mean to skip over Ellsburg. If I remember correctly though, didn't the Pentagon Papers mostly trash Presidents Johnson, and to a lesser degree Kennedy with Nixon as a basically a minor bonus?
Nixon however continued to lie about the Vietnam war, and while that doesn't excuse the previous presidents, it doesn't make Nixon a better president.
(Also citation still needed for that percent you stated)
Looking for quote on that percentage. I know it was in the 90's. Having trouble finding any kind of quotation on it though.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Nixon did have some pretty strong Foreign Policy with a number of arms reduction deals with the Soviets, visited China and got on friendlier terms with them, created the EPA, created Title IX, and actually enforced desegregation in southern schools that was pretty much ignored by previous administrations.
A number of those things jack him up pretty well.
Oh, and his budget spent more on human services than on the military. Kind of a big deal, even today.
cuda1179 wrote: I'll give Obama credit for hitting ISIS. The Obama Admin did estimate it would take until 2025 to get them out of Iraq though. One year into Trump's admin and they got stomped out of their last strongpoint.
This is just pure misrepresentation of what Obama said. Obama said IS would be a generational struggle because its a mindset, not just a country. When IS is defeated in Syria its still going to be there in Nigeria, Libya, Afghanistan and wherever else it feels like popping up.
Meanwhile Obama laid all the groundwork for later offensive operations under the Trump admin. Hell, the most important moments were started under the Obama admin. The battle for Mosul, arguably the hardest part, was prepared for and largely planned by the Obama admin and even started just before the end of his term. The only thing Trump did is look at the strategy and go "bomb more!"?
Yeah, I'll pretty much say that sounds right. On the same token though I had problems with Obama taking credit for killing Osama Bin Laden.
In essence almost any President does this. Most of the groundwork is done by career professionals regardless of the administration. Presidents do have control ultimately, but they are far too busy to pursue all the small details of government. Bush had his incredibly awkward "mission accomplished" moment, which sounded good but there was a lack of groundwork. Trump can claim he more or less beat ISIS because of what Obama did (although to be fair IS never stood a snowball's chance in hell regardless of what admin was in). Obama can claim he killed Osama because practically speaking he did, but it might be a long time before we know how much of the investigation into where he was depended on pre 2009 work.
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cuda1179 wrote: Looking for quote on that percentage. I know it was in the 90's. Having trouble finding any kind of quotation on it though.
I can believe that percentage, but its more a reflection of how the US army functioned in Vietnam. Every engagement went somewhat like this "well we lost 10 guys but we guess we killed about a 100 of them, sounds like we won to me!" Yeah, the US 'won' the battles but lost the war. And really, when you're fighting conscripts in the jungle with infinitely more firepower at your fingertips when they use human wave tactics, it would be completely embarrassing to lose. The US had some significant setbacks in the occasional battles, but it could frame them in such a manner it didn't lose them, that was just meant to happen!
For years, I criticised Obama for his airstrikes, and one of the reasons why I was also against Clinton becoming POTUS, because I saw, and still do, see her as a warmonger.
Given the events of the last 24 hours, it's better that she had won. As least Clinton is honest about bombing the feth out of the Middle East...
We've just thrown a stone through the window of a house. A house that is a burning ruin...
I'll sleep soundly tonight, secure in the knowledge that some empty buildings were demolished in Syria...
The money that was wasted on these missiles would have been better thrown on a fire. At least you'd get the use of some heat of it...
Are people just ignoring all the times Trump talked about bombing terrorists, killing their families and children, bragging how the military will be glad to commit war crimes for him, and talking about nuking stuff?
Why are people still pretending he was NOT pro-War during the campaign?
d-usa wrote: Are people just ignoring all the times Trump talked about bombing terrorists, killing their families and children, bragging how the military will be glad to commit war crimes for him, and talking about nuking stuff?
Why are people still pretending he was NOT pro-War during the campaign?
Because many of them falsely attributed that nonsense to Hillary in their minds. My brother's a raging Trumpaholic and kept talking about how Hillary this, Hillary that when it was demonstrably Trump who'd said the nonsense or Trump who would claim that Hillary had said it.
d-usa wrote: Are people just ignoring all the times Trump talked about bombing terrorists, killing their families and children, bragging how the military will be glad to commit war crimes for him, and talking about nuking stuff?
Why are people still pretending he was NOT pro-War during the campaign?
We're not ignoring them, just remembering all the other stuff he said about non-intervention, better dialogue and relationship with Russia, a new way of dealing with US foreign policy etc etc
Trump, by his own words, was going to be the man who didn't play by the rule book of the Washington 'elites.'
I was willing to give him the benifet of the doubt in this regard, but like I said earlier, I was wrong...
d-usa wrote: Are people just ignoring all the times Trump talked about bombing terrorists, killing their families and children, bragging how the military will be glad to commit war crimes for him, and talking about nuking stuff?
Why are people still pretending he was NOT pro-War during the campaign?
Because many of them falsely attributed that nonsense to Hillary in their minds. My brother's a raging Trumpaholic and kept talking about how Hillary this, Hillary that when it was demonstrably Trump who'd said the nonsense or Trump who would claim that Hillary had said it.
I don't talk to my brother much anymore.
There's very little to separate Trump and Clinton when it comes to foreign policy and the bombing of people with brown faces...
d-usa wrote: Are people just ignoring all the times Trump talked about bombing terrorists, killing their families and children, bragging how the military will be glad to commit war crimes for him, and talking about nuking stuff?
Why are people still pretending he was NOT pro-War during the campaign?
We're not ignoring them, just remembering all the other stuff he said about non-intervention, better dialogue and relationship with Russia, a new way of dealing with US foreign policy etc etc
Trump, by his own words, was going to be the man who didn't play by the rule book of the Washington 'elites.'
I was willing to give him the benifet of the doubt in this regard, but like I said earlier, I was wrong...
Then you were, quite frankly, delusional. This is a man who is known for breaking his word, known for shafting employees, known for doing everything he can to avoid being accountable for his actions and known for saying the right things to get what he wants before leaving what he touched a mess.
d-usa wrote: Are people just ignoring all the times Trump talked about bombing terrorists, killing their families and children, bragging how the military will be glad to commit war crimes for him, and talking about nuking stuff?
Why are people still pretending he was NOT pro-War during the campaign?
Because many of them falsely attributed that nonsense to Hillary in their minds. My brother's a raging Trumpaholic and kept talking about how Hillary this, Hillary that when it was demonstrably Trump who'd said the nonsense or Trump who would claim that Hillary had said it.
I don't talk to my brother much anymore.
There's very little to separate Trump and Clinton when it comes to foreign policy and the bombing of people with brown faces...
And this, ladies and gentlemen, is the perfect example of how they convince themselves that "Hillary would be just as bad/worse".
d-usa wrote: Are people just ignoring all the times Trump talked about bombing terrorists, killing their families and children, bragging how the military will be glad to commit war crimes for him, and talking about nuking stuff?
Why are people still pretending he was NOT pro-War during the campaign?
Because many of them falsely attributed that nonsense to Hillary in their minds. My brother's a raging Trumpaholic and kept talking about how Hillary this, Hillary that when it was demonstrably Trump who'd said the nonsense or Trump who would claim that Hillary had said it.
I don't talk to my brother much anymore.
There's very little to separate Trump and Clinton when it comes to foreign policy and the bombing of people with brown faces...
Besides the obvious difference in levels of competency involved?
d-usa wrote: Are people just ignoring all the times Trump talked about bombing terrorists, killing their families and children, bragging how the military will be glad to commit war crimes for him, and talking about nuking stuff?
Why are people still pretending he was NOT pro-War during the campaign?
We're not ignoring them, just remembering all the other stuff he said about non-intervention, better dialogue and relationship with Russia, a new way of dealing with US foreign policy etc etc
Trump, by his own words, was going to be the man who didn't play by the rule book of the Washington 'elites.'
I was willing to give him the benifet of the doubt in this regard, but like I said earlier, I was wrong...
Then you were, quite frankly, delusional. This is a man who is known for breaking his word, known for shafting employees, known for doing everything he can to avoid being accountable for his actions and known for saying the right things to get what he wants before leaving what he touched a mess.
The man loudly asking why the US can't use its nukes certainly was going to have a new way of approaching foreign policy though
And this, ladies and gentlemen, is the perfect example of how they convince themselves that "Hillary would be just as bad/worse".
Hilary Clinton, by her own words, confirmed she would continue Obama's drone strike policy, a policy that was widely criticised by Amnesty International.
You're also forgetting that I am not, and never have been, a US citizen, so I had zero effect on the 2016 election, as I obviously couldn't vote.
With regard to your other point, in my reading of US history, which is a hobby of mine, brash candidates have been tempered by the office of President, when they take up that office. They discover that the campaign trail is not the same of having to run a country and be accountable.
I foolishly believed that the status of being President would somewhat sober Trump and temper his actions.
d-usa wrote: Are people just ignoring all the times Trump talked about bombing terrorists, killing their families and children, bragging how the military will be glad to commit war crimes for him, and talking about nuking stuff?
Why are people still pretending he was NOT pro-War during the campaign?
Because many of them falsely attributed that nonsense to Hillary in their minds. My brother's a raging Trumpaholic and kept talking about how Hillary this, Hillary that when it was demonstrably Trump who'd said the nonsense or Trump who would claim that Hillary had said it.
I don't talk to my brother much anymore.
There's very little to separate Trump and Clinton when it comes to foreign policy and the bombing of people with brown faces...
Besides the obvious difference in levels of competency involved?
d-usa wrote: Are people just ignoring all the times Trump talked about bombing terrorists, killing their families and children, bragging how the military will be glad to commit war crimes for him, and talking about nuking stuff?
Why are people still pretending he was NOT pro-War during the campaign?
We're not ignoring them, just remembering all the other stuff he said about non-intervention, better dialogue and relationship with Russia, a new way of dealing with US foreign policy etc etc
Trump, by his own words, was going to be the man who didn't play by the rule book of the Washington 'elites.'
I was willing to give him the benifet of the doubt in this regard, but like I said earlier, I was wrong...
Then you were, quite frankly, delusional. This is a man who is known for breaking his word, known for shafting employees, known for doing everything he can to avoid being accountable for his actions and known for saying the right things to get what he wants before leaving what he touched a mess.
The man loudly asking why the US can't use its nukes certainly was going to have a new way of approaching foreign policy though
I doubt if the person at the receiving end of a bomb cares how competent a president is or isn't. You're still getting the bomb!
Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote: I doubt if the person at the receiving end of a bomb cares how competent a president is or isn't. You're still getting the bomb!
It obviously matters how many people are at the receiving end of said bombs. On the one hand we have a man totally callous about human lives and the laws of war and on the other a run of the mill bureaucrat for the most part.
cuda1179 wrote: Heck, I even give Richard Nixon credit for a lot of things. He did a number of bad things, but I think he is a criminally underrated President. Watergate hurts his reputation badly, but he did get us out of Viet Nam, and a number of his policies did work out for the better.
If you set aside Watergate (which, in all fairness, is a big ask) then I think Nixon is probably the greatest modern president in terms of achievement. Of course I say that as someone who skews liberal, but by todays totally screwed up standards, so were Nixon and Reagan.
Ended the war in Vietnam
Ended the draft
Opened up China
Signed Title IX
Started the EPA
Started OSHA
Started SALT with the USSR
Signed the ABM
Did an enormous amount to desegregate schools
Sent aid to Israel which almost certainly avoided a nuclear deployment during the Yom Kippur war
Made an honest attempt at healthcare
The site says that during the month of March, after the panic began, it received 253 emails and 167 phone calls from customers looking for Necco-brand candies. Twenty-nine people offered to pay at least double the going bulk rate, and three reportedly said they’d perform free labor in exchange for priority treatment. One woman wanted 100 pounds of Necco’s glorified Tums, which she planned to vacuum-seal to keep her prepper stash fresh “for years.” (A standard 24-wafer roll weighs 2.02 ounces, so she was requesting about 800 packs.) Another woman said she’d trade her late-model Honda Accord for all of CandyStore.com’s remaining Necco candy.
The site says that during the month of March, after the panic began, it received 253 emails and 167 phone calls from customers looking for Necco-brand candies. Twenty-nine people offered to pay at least double the going bulk rate, and three reportedly said they’d perform free labor in exchange for priority treatment. One woman wanted 100 pounds of Necco’s glorified Tums, which she planned to vacuum-seal to keep her prepper stash fresh “for years.” (A standard 24-wafer roll weighs 2.02 ounces, so she was requesting about 800 packs.) Another woman said she’d trade her late-model Honda Accord for all of CandyStore.com’s remaining Necco candy.
..... you're a strange bunch of people America.
Wonder what the connection between the people calling, Sovereign Citizens, and doomsday preppers would look like.
cuda1179 wrote: Heck, I even give Richard Nixon credit for a lot of things. He did a number of bad things, but I think he is a criminally underrated President. Watergate hurts his reputation badly, but he did get us out of Viet Nam, and a number of his policies did work out for the better.
If you set aside Watergate (which, in all fairness, is a big ask) then I think Nixon is probably the greatest modern president in terms of achievement. Of course I say that as someone who skews liberal, but by todays totally screwed up standards, so were Nixon and Reagan.
Ended the war in Vietnam
Ended the draft
Opened up China
Signed Title IX
Started the EPA
Started OSHA
Started SALT with the USSR
Signed the ABM
Did an enormous amount to desegregate schools
Sent aid to Israel which almost certainly avoided a nuclear deployment during the Yom Kippur war
Made an honest attempt at healthcare
HRC reminds me of Nixon somewhat. Actually good at the job but way too obsessed with power and personal accomplishment. It raises concerns over what a perspn like that might do if extreme circumstances arise. This is opposed to someone like Obama who is less skilled but can be counted on to try doing what's best for the people at the end of the day.
cuda1179 wrote: Heck, I even give Richard Nixon credit for a lot of things. He did a number of bad things, but I think he is a criminally underrated President. Watergate hurts his reputation badly, but he did get us out of Viet Nam, and a number of his policies did work out for the better.
If you set aside Watergate (which, in all fairness, is a big ask) then I think Nixon is probably the greatest modern president in terms of achievement. Of course I say that as someone who skews liberal, but by todays totally screwed up standards, so were Nixon and Reagan.
Ended the war in Vietnam
Ended the draft
Opened up China
Signed Title IX
Started the EPA
Started OSHA
Started SALT with the USSR
Signed the ABM
Did an enormous amount to desegregate schools
Sent aid to Israel which almost certainly avoided a nuclear deployment during the Yom Kippur war
Made an honest attempt at healthcare
HRC reminds me of Nixon somewhat. Actually good at the job but way too obsessed with power and personal accomplishment. It raises concerns over what a perspn like that might do if extreme circumstances arise. This is opposed to someone like Obama who is less skilled but can be counted on to try doing what's best for the people at the end of the day.
Not to mention he also opened up diplomatic relations with the PRC. But yes I can see the Nixon and HRC comparison, though she is not quite as paranoid as Nixon imo
cuda1179 wrote: Heck, I even give Richard Nixon credit for a lot of things. He did a number of bad things, but I think he is a criminally underrated President. Watergate hurts his reputation badly, but he did get us out of Viet Nam, and a number of his policies did work out for the better.
If you set aside Watergate (which, in all fairness, is a big ask) then I think Nixon is probably the greatest modern president in terms of achievement. Of course I say that as someone who skews liberal, but by todays totally screwed up standards, so were Nixon and Reagan.
Ended the war in Vietnam
Ended the draft
Opened up China
Signed Title IX
Started the EPA
Started OSHA
Started SALT with the USSR
Signed the ABM
Did an enormous amount to desegregate schools
Sent aid to Israel which almost certainly avoided a nuclear deployment during the Yom Kippur war
Made an honest attempt at healthcare
HRC reminds me of Nixon somewhat. Actually good at the job but way too obsessed with power and personal accomplishment. It raises concerns over what a perspn like that might do if extreme circumstances arise. This is opposed to someone like Obama who is less skilled but can be counted on to try doing what's best for the people at the end of the day.
The site says that during the month of March, after the panic began, it received 253 emails and 167 phone calls from customers looking for Necco-brand candies. Twenty-nine people offered to pay at least double the going bulk rate, and three reportedly said they’d perform free labor in exchange for priority treatment. One woman wanted 100 pounds of Necco’s glorified Tums, which she planned to vacuum-seal to keep her prepper stash fresh “for years.” (A standard 24-wafer roll weighs 2.02 ounces, so she was requesting about 800 packs.) Another woman said she’d trade her late-model Honda Accord for all of CandyStore.com’s remaining Necco candy.
..... you're a strange bunch of people America.
Wonder what the connection between the people calling, Sovereign Citizens, and doomsday preppers would look like.
While there is a bit of an overlap between these two groups, Preppers as a group (at least in my experience) tend to facepalm when Sovereign Citizens are talked about.
Now, I've only dabbled in the world of prepping, mostly as a "can't hurt, might help" kind of thing. I think it's just pragmatic to have medical supplies, a couple weeks provisions, and self defense items on standby. Also, as I am planning on building a small cabin for weekend getaways, preppers have a lot of practical experience on keeping these kinds of places secured from pillagers that want to take your stuff when you aren't there 10 months of the year.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
NinthMusketeer wrote: [HRC reminds me of Nixon somewhat. Actually good at the job but way too obsessed with power and personal accomplishment. It raises concerns over what a perspn like that might do if extreme circumstances arise. This is opposed to someone like Obama who is less skilled but can be counted on to try doing what's best for the people at the end of the day.
I see parallels, but I think they come from different parts of the spectrum. I always felt that Nixon was basically a nerd (or the old-timey equivalent). He had some great ideas, but most of politics and the media were stacked against him for reasons that were pretty lame. In order to do anything he tried to pull a "Billy Badass" routine to prove he was top dog. In some regards I think he didn't flex his muscle in the right way, while at the same time it went to his head and became an integral part of how he ran things. He was the guy that craved acceptance and threw a fit to get it.
HRC on the other hand seemed to be a person that was scared to give up what she had, and how dare anyone try to take away from what she built-up.
cuda1179 wrote: Heck, I even give Richard Nixon credit for a lot of things. He did a number of bad things, but I think he is a criminally underrated President. Watergate hurts his reputation badly, but he did get us out of Viet Nam, and a number of his policies did work out for the better.
If you set aside Watergate (which, in all fairness, is a big ask) then I think Nixon is probably the greatest modern president in terms of achievement. Of course I say that as someone who skews liberal, but by todays totally screwed up standards, so were Nixon and Reagan.
Ended the war in Vietnam
Ended the draft
Opened up China
Signed Title IX
Started the EPA
Started OSHA
Started SALT with the USSR
Signed the ABM
Did an enormous amount to desegregate schools
Sent aid to Israel which almost certainly avoided a nuclear deployment during the Yom Kippur war
Made an honest attempt at healthcare
HRC reminds me of Nixon somewhat. Actually good at the job but way too obsessed with power and personal accomplishment. It raises concerns over what a perspn like that might do if extreme circumstances arise. This is opposed to someone like Obama who is less skilled but can be counted on to try doing what's best for the people at the end of the day.
Not to mention he also opened up diplomatic relations with the PRC.
That was third on my list!
Frazzled wrote: How was she good? She literally achieved nothing.
The site says that during the month of March, after the panic began, it received 253 emails and 167 phone calls from customers looking for Necco-brand candies. Twenty-nine people offered to pay at least double the going bulk rate, and three reportedly said they’d perform free labor in exchange for priority treatment. One woman wanted 100 pounds of Necco’s glorified Tums, which she planned to vacuum-seal to keep her prepper stash fresh “for years.” (A standard 24-wafer roll weighs 2.02 ounces, so she was requesting about 800 packs.) Another woman said she’d trade her late-model Honda Accord for all of CandyStore.com’s remaining Necco candy.
..... you're a strange bunch of people America.
If preppers put this much effort into fixing the government as they do waiting for it to implode, we wouldn't be having these problems...
cuda1179 wrote: Heck, I even give Richard Nixon credit for a lot of things. He did a number of bad things, but I think he is a criminally underrated President. Watergate hurts his reputation badly, but he did get us out of Viet Nam, and a number of his policies did work out for the better.
If you set aside Watergate (which, in all fairness, is a big ask) then I think Nixon is probably the greatest modern president in terms of achievement. Of course I say that as someone who skews liberal, but by todays totally screwed up standards, so were Nixon and Reagan.
Ended the war in Vietnam
Ended the draft
Opened up China
Signed Title IX
Started the EPA
Started OSHA
Started SALT with the USSR
Signed the ABM
Did an enormous amount to desegregate schools
Sent aid to Israel which almost certainly avoided a nuclear deployment during the Yom Kippur war
Made an honest attempt at healthcare
HRC reminds me of Nixon somewhat. Actually good at the job but way too obsessed with power and personal accomplishment. It raises concerns over what a perspn like that might do if extreme circumstances arise. This is opposed to someone like Obama who is less skilled but can be counted on to try doing what's best for the people at the end of the day.
Not to mention he also opened up diplomatic relations with the PRC.
That was third on my list!
Frazzled wrote: How was she good? She literally achieved nothing.
cuda1179 wrote:Well, if there was multiple "private" fire stations that were all clamoring to put out fires faster and cheaper than the government ones
They would all be advertising their cheap(er) insurance rates (forgetting to mention additional fees) while you are trying to compare them and find the best option (if you get to make a choice instead of being forced to rely on one option that's bad in regard to most of the issues you care about) and then they'd try to weasel out of doing the job (that saves money, after all) or otherwise try to get away with spending the least amount of money possible because they'd have owners or shareholders to satisfy.
They's be clamouring about the quality of their service in TV ads while trying to get as far away as possible from any real fires. Just look at the US health insurance companies or internet providers for parallels.
There are plenty of areas with private fire departments that are sustained by subscriptions.
Everybody loves not having to pay taxes to support them, and then yell at firefighters and threaten them when they show up to watch the house burn down and refuse to intervene while making sure the fire doesn’t spread to the house of the person that paid their membership fee.
cuda1179 wrote:Well, if there was multiple "private" fire stations that were all clamoring to put out fires faster and cheaper than the government ones
They would all be advertising their cheap(er) insurance rates (forgetting to mention additional fees) while you are trying to compare them and find the best option (if you get to make a choice instead of being forced to rely on one option that's bad in regard to most of the issues you care about) and then they'd try to weasel out of doing the job (that saves money, after all) or otherwise try to get away with spending the least amount of money possible because they'd have owners or shareholders to satisfy.
They's be clamouring about the quality of their service in TV ads while trying to get as far away as possible from any real fires. Just look at the US health insurance companies or internet providers for parallels.
Not to mention the money they spend on advertising isn't spent on fighting fires.
My parents remembers when Alaska and Hawaii were added to the union as member states...
I've got a few thoughts:
1) I think this is really neat from a historical perspective...
2) Probably does make sense in the long term so that the government would be more responsive to the will of the people...
3) Adding 4 more Senators to Congress! o.O (54 would be the count) But the House members will probably remain unchanged...
4) Now it's time to be cynical... I think over time, this'll increase the Democrat's power base as I don't think the GOP will be able to hold onto the new North and South CA states.
5) We really need to admit Puerto Rico & USVI as a state.
However, if we going splitsville... I'd split CA into two states:
Spoiler:
I think this idea was shot down the last few times...
Not the first time a California split has been on the ballot. The democrats will never allow it as it would damage a power bloc formed from San Francisco/LA. They'd risk losing one half or the other, especially LA, where their lead is narrower than in San Fran.
Actually it sounds like this proposal would be two blue states with NorCal being swing. So I think the electoral aspect is a wash for Dems and they'd be more interested in the actual benefits/downsides to the state(s).
I'm against it purely because, honestly, where does it end? Do we split Texas in 5 peices or somethign to make sure everyone gets a congressperson they like? What about NY, or Florida? If we want better representation for states heavily controlled by one party a better solution would be stuff like tossing the EC or making it so that they are awarded proportionally by state.
NinthMusketeer wrote: Trump made literally thousands of lies in his first year of office, has been a blatant hypocrite from day one, and has left Obama in the dust when it comes to either. To believe otherwise is a delusion. The only reason to deflect onto Obama at all is because one cannot defend a pro-Trump stance on the matter. This line to discussion was already done from the onset, and is the type of thing we should just ignore. It's the minority of posters arguing against facts and in bad faith that always sends these threads downhill. A simple response to point out the lie and call out the fallacy (usually whataboutism) is all that's needed.
Amount of lies, yes. However, what does he lie about?
My parents remembers when Alaska and Hawaii were added to the union as member states...
I've got a few thoughts:
1) I think this is really neat from a historical perspective...
2) Probably does make sense in the long term so that the government would be more responsive to the will of the people...
3) Adding 4 more Senators to Congress! o.O (54 would be the count) But the House members will probably remain unchanged...
4) Now it's time to be cynical... I think over time, this'll increase the Democrat's power base as I don't think the GOP will be able to hold onto the new North and South CA states.
5) We really need to admit Puerto Rico & USVI as a state.
However, if we going splitsville... I'd split CA into two states:
Spoiler:
I think this idea was shot down the last few times...
Not the first time a California split has been on the ballot. The democrats will never allow it as it would damage a power bloc formed from San Francisco/LA. They'd risk losing one half or the other, especially LA, where their lead is narrower than in San Fran.
Actually it sounds like this proposal would be two blue states with NorCal being swing. So I think the electoral aspect is a wash for Dems and they'd be more interested in the actual benefits/downsides to the state(s).
I'm against it purely because, honestly, where does it end? Do we split Texas in 5 peices or somethign to make sure everyone gets a congressperson they like? What about NY, or Florida? If we want better representation for states heavily controlled by one party a better solution would be stuff like tossing the EC or making it so that they are awarded proportionally by state.
I was explaining why the Democrats wouldn't have much of a motive for/against the split because of the representative angle. The split itself isn't about party representation or number of seats in the senate but rather that California covers a huge area with a huge number of people that would be better managed as separate states due to cultural & geographical differences.
My parents remembers when Alaska and Hawaii were added to the union as member states...
I've got a few thoughts:
1) I think this is really neat from a historical perspective...
2) Probably does make sense in the long term so that the government would be more responsive to the will of the people...
3) Adding 4 more Senators to Congress! o.O (54 would be the count) But the House members will probably remain unchanged...
4) Now it's time to be cynical... I think over time, this'll increase the Democrat's power base as I don't think the GOP will be able to hold onto the new North and South CA states.
5) We really need to admit Puerto Rico & USVI as a state.
However, if we going splitsville... I'd split CA into two states:
Spoiler:
I think this idea was shot down the last few times...
Not the first time a California split has been on the ballot. The democrats will never allow it as it would damage a power bloc formed from San Francisco/LA. They'd risk losing one half or the other, especially LA, where their lead is narrower than in San Fran.
Actually it sounds like this proposal would be two blue states with NorCal being swing. So I think the electoral aspect is a wash for Dems and they'd be more interested in the actual benefits/downsides to the state(s).
I'm against it purely because, honestly, where does it end? Do we split Texas in 5 peices or somethign to make sure everyone gets a congressperson they like? What about NY, or Florida? If we want better representation for states heavily controlled by one party a better solution would be stuff like tossing the EC or making it so that they are awarded proportionally by state.
Unless Congress revisits apportionmaent and changes the existing law that caps the House at 435 it won’t matter if we have 50 states or 53 or 70 etc. There is no reason to limit the House to 435 mebers it’s just the number we had in the 1910s when Congress passes the arbitrary cap law to protect incumbents. The limit is why a state like California with 40 million people has 53 representatives in the House and a state like Montana with 1 million people has 1 representative in the House. California has fewer people per Congressional representative than Montana but not states have districts that are stupidly overpopulated because of the apportionment law from over a century ago. The number of people in each congressional district should be within the same range in every state to ensure that all citizens have equal representation. More populous states will have more representatives than less populous states and since Electoral votes are based on Congressional representation more populous states will have more EC votes than less populous ones just like it is now. The system stays in place but the people have better representation and can make themselves heard better in DC. This would also help combat gerrymandering since districts would have to maintain a population within the required range whenever they get redrawn.
Unless Congress revisits apportionmaent and changes the existing law that caps the House at 435 it won’t matter if we have 50 states or 53 or 70 etc. There is no reason to limit the House to 435 mebers it’s just the number we had in the 1910s when Congress passes the arbitrary cap law to protect incumbents. The limit is why a state like California with 40 million people has 53 representatives in the House and a state like Montana with 1 million people has 1 representative in the House. California has fewer people per Congressional representative than Montana but not states have districts that are stupidly overpopulated because of the apportionment law from over a century ago. The number of people in each congressional district should be within the same range in every state to ensure that all citizens have equal representation. More populous states will have more representatives than less populous states and since Electoral votes are based on Congressional representation more populous states will have more EC votes than less populous ones just like it is now. The system stays in place but the people have better representation and can make themselves heard better in DC. This would also help combat gerrymandering since districts would have to maintain a population within the required range whenever they get redrawn.
I'd definitely support this especially as with new technology there is no reason for all reps to be in DC all the time. Allowing for electronic voting (even if it is a guy in a video chat going yay/nay) would mean that an increase in reps wouldn't especially overburden the houses of congress.
I'd support it out of fairness and principle. It's both unfair and illegal to effectively discriminate against voters due to their place of residence. Californian votes are worth less than those from other states. I understand things will never be perfect so there needs to be wiggle room, but while I forget the exact statistical difference I remember it's pretty notable.
d-usa wrote:There are plenty of areas with private fire departments that are sustained by subscriptions.
Everybody loves not having to pay taxes to support them, and then yell at firefighters and threaten them when they show up to watch the house burn down and refuse to intervene while making sure the fire doesn’t spread to the house of the person that paid their membership fee.
The Firefighters' Guild has been formed and dissolved repeatedly throughout the history of Ankh-Morpork. Usually formed in response to fires which cause significant damage to large parts of the city, the guild is usually dissolved in response to... er, fires which cause significant damage to large parts of the city. The Guild suffers from the undying capitalist spirit of Ankh-Morpork, as those men who are paid per-fire extinguished eventually begin to guarantee a regular supply of fires to be put out (see also Inn-Sewer-Ants). This has led to the frequent destruction of large portions of the city and ultimately to the Guild's being banned.
Yes, private fire departments are a thing, and if you refuse to pay they will refuse to put out your house fire, but will show up to protect your paying neighbor.
They usually exist in unincorporated areas outside of city districts.
Depending on the state laws, there are a couple of different options for fire protection in those areas. The fire department I used to volunteer for was established after a house burned to the ground without anyone responding because it was outside of any city limits. The people voted to form a Fire Protection District, and everyone inside the district pays a property tax that funds the fire department.
The district next to us was a subscription based fire service. You pay your yearly membership, and you get protection. It functions like insurance, so many people had a ‘it won’t happen to me” mindset and never paid. It didn’t help that the fire department didn’t have the willpower to stand firm and let non-paying homes burn down. Volunteer firefighter want to help, which is understandable, but it doesn’t really motivate people to pay the membership fee. They tried billing for their service, but good look getting someone with a burned up house to pay the bill (and nobody was going to take anyone to court). The department almost shut down, but a new chief and board took over and we helped them form a FPD like ours.
But there are plenty department who are still fully subscription based. And they stand firm and will not lift a finger to put a drop of water on a house that hasn’t paid. People will try to hand them the membership fee in cash outside their burning house, but they will decline to let them pay at the time. It seems heartless, but the reality is that if you respond to non-paying homes or let them pay at the time of a fire, nobody has any incentive to pay their membership. And without that funding, nobody will have a fire department to protect them. So you have to be firm and refuse to save that house, so that you can exist long enough to save other homes in the future.
Did we talk about that particularly disgusting comment the governor of Kentucky said? I don't remember, but he "apologized" for it today
Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin apologized Sunday for saying that children were sexually abused because they were left home alone while teachers rallied to ask lawmakers to override his vetoes.
The Republican issued his apology in a nearly four-minute video posted online, saying "it is not my intent to hurt anybody in this process, but to help us all move forward together."
On Friday, Bevin's explosive comments were part of his statement criticizing teachers for leaving work to protest at the Capitol. More than 30 school districts closed Friday. Bevin's comments came shortly after Republican lawmakers voted to override his vetoes of an operating budget that included increased spending for public education with the help of an accompanying tax increase.
Co'tor Shas wrote: I'd definitely support this especially as with new technology there is no reason for all reps to be in DC all the time. Allowing for electronic voting (even if it is a guy in a video chat going yay/nay) would mean that an increase in reps wouldn't especially overburden the houses of congress.
And make it much easier for Russia to highjack the US congress directly rather than rigging elections.
Co'tor Shas wrote: I'd definitely support this especially as with new technology there is no reason for all reps to be in DC all the time. Allowing for electronic voting (even if it is a guy in a video chat going yay/nay) would mean that an increase in reps wouldn't especially overburden the houses of congress.
And make it much easier for Russia to highjack the US congress directly rather than rigging elections.
That's possibly the stupidest thing I've heard today, and it's been a long day. When there will be like maybe 600 votes you have to verify, I think we can set up a system that can work. And as I said, literally just have them vote via video chat.
Ustrello wrote: Did we talk about that particularly disgusting comment the governor of Kentucky said? I don't remember, but he "apologized" for it today
Spoiler:
Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin apologized Sunday for saying that children were sexually abused because they were left home alone while teachers rallied to ask lawmakers to override his vetoes.
The Republican issued his apology in a nearly four-minute video posted online, saying "it is not my intent to hurt anybody in this process, but to help us all move forward together."
On Friday, Bevin's explosive comments were part of his statement criticizing teachers for leaving work to protest at the Capitol. More than 30 school districts closed Friday. Bevin's comments came shortly after Republican lawmakers voted to override his vetoes of an operating budget that included increased spending for public education with the help of an accompanying tax increase.
I saw that stuff earlier. I thought about mentioning it here, but I decided I really didn't want to see someone try to defend it here. Because you know someone would.
They usually exist in unincorporated areas outside of city districts.
Depending on the state laws, there are a couple of different options for fire protection in those areas. The fire department I used to volunteer for was established after a house burned to the ground without anyone responding because it was outside of any city limits. The people voted to form a Fire Protection District, and everyone inside the district pays a property tax that funds the fire department.
The district next to us was a subscription based fire service. You pay your yearly membership, and you get protection. It functions like insurance, so many people had a ‘it won’t happen to me” mindset and never paid. It didn’t help that the fire department didn’t have the willpower to stand firm and let non-paying homes burn down. Volunteer firefighter want to help, which is understandable, but it doesn’t really motivate people to pay the membership fee. They tried billing for their service, but good look getting someone with a burned up house to pay the bill (and nobody was going to take anyone to court). The department almost shut down, but a new chief and board took over and we helped them form a FPD like ours.
But there are plenty department who are still fully subscription based. And they stand firm and will not lift a finger to put a drop of water on a house that hasn’t paid. People will try to hand them the membership fee in cash outside their burning house, but they will decline to let them pay at the time. It seems heartless, but the reality is that if you respond to non-paying homes or let them pay at the time of a fire, nobody has any incentive to pay their membership. And without that funding, nobody will have a fire department to protect them. So you have to be firm and refuse to save that house, so that you can exist long enough to save other homes in the future.
Question since you know more than I assume the vast majority of us about it, but how does that work for renters or apartments? I assume it would be on the owners of the properties to pay for the subscription. But what if they do not and a person loses everything? Would that effect renters insurance if the renter had that? Would insurance be able to decline to pay if they could prove it was the landlords fault? Would the renter be able to sue/could a property owner get away with that if it was stated in the lease they did not provide it? What about apartment buildings where people own the individual apartments like NYC? (Or at least I think that is how it works there)
I actually have a lot more questions but I think I should limit it right now. Private fire services just seem like a quagmire of issues to me.
That's the chair of the Republican National Committee. She was one of a few dozen Republicans who have been working the media in the last few days, to attack James Comey in anticipation of his book. Trump himself made about a dozen attacks over the space of an hour or so one morning, which I can only assume was a long and anger filled morning constitutional. I picked one of the funnier instances, but the rest are little different. All these attacks just happen to perfectly fit the Republican media strategy to attack Comey that was leaked a few days ago. The plan is to attack Comey on his credibility, his conduct and his contradictions, the 'three C's', because that's how third string media consultants always try to brand stuff. They even started a website just to attack Comey. Not to dispute the content of the book, which they couldn't do even if there was anything to dispute, because they haven't read the book. Instead its just straight up villification.
And the thing is, there's actually a real debate to be had about James Comey's conduct in 2016. He continued to make public the Clinton investigation, including one last, election turning update a week before election day, while keeping absolute secrecy about the investigation in to Trump. The reasons he's touched on, particularly his assessment that he thought it was best for the FBI to tilt announcements against Clinton because he expected her to win and wanted to remove any doubt over Clinton's win and the FBI's interference... is simultaneously an understandable political judgement, and also really troubling because justice dept officials should never be having to make political judgements.
But we aren't having that debate, because one side of politics has instead decided on a scorched earth, all lies all the time strategy because their only thought it minimising the harm to the president. And the Comey book is far from the only instance. What's happening there is basically standard operating procedure for the Republicans and their greater network of loyalist media propagandists. Each person, Democrat and Republican, politician or official, who've challenged Trump has been similarly attacked. Nor is this really that different to how Republicans have engaged in politics for some time now. Everyone remembers Marco Rubio being mocked for his often repeated caned "Obama doesn't know what he's doing, he knows exactly what he's doing", but note it led to Rubio being attacked only because the line made him seem non-genuine. Actually read the line - it's an absurd claim - that Obama established policies that Republicans don't like, not because they have different ideas on what policies work, but because Obama actually intends his policies to work as negatively as Republicans believe they will. Republican rhetoric is at a point where a major presidential candidate could claim the president was actively intending to hurt Americans and all people notice is that his attack seemed pre-rehearsed.
Thing is, everybody spins, and the very act of having a viewpoint means there will be bias. But this is very different. What we are looking at right now is a Republican party which doesn't just have a point of view, or look to spin events in their most favourable light, we are looking at people who as a matter of routine will claim anything if it suits their immediate political ends. And as the interview excerpt above shows, they now do this so readily they don't even wait to see what reality might be before they've set to work inventing their imaginary version of events.
What this means is public debate is effectively dead. You can't debate with fiction writers. All you can do is work to reveal every one of their fictions, detail each lie and hope that a large enough majority of people become so disgusted with a country run by serial liars that it boosts Democratic vote counts enough to hammer Republicans so badly they have no choice but to start a long overdue reform of the party. But in terms of actual debate between the two sides - it isn't possible now and it probably won't be possible for some time.
Ouze wrote: If you set aside Watergate (which, in all fairness, is a big ask) then I think Nixon is probably the greatest modern president in terms of achievement.
I think you make a decent point once we accept the idea of setting aside Watergate, however setting aside Watergate is a bit like saying apart from that one thing, the 1864 Ford Theatre production of Our American Cousin went without incident.
Some things can't ever be excluded. They are essential to every other part. Remember Watergate didn't just end up revealing a break-in and subsequent cover up, it revealed an Administration in which breaches of the law and of ethical standards was the norm.
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Rosebuddy wrote: A nuclear power directly attacking another nuclear power is the worst scenario to use to argue against not wanting a nuclear power to directly attack another nuclear power.
Why would Russia invade Alaska, anyway? That's particularly farfetched. I mean, for feth's sake, at least come up with something that isn't so obviously within inches of nuclear war as Russia invading the United States. Not even proxy war, two ships blowing eachother up in the middle of the ocean somewhere or a couple of units in a third country murdering each other. The only thing that is higher on the ladder of nuclear war than Russia invading the US is actual nuclear war.
The realism of the scenario is irrelevant. The example was deliberately fantastical to make it easy for you to identify the principal in play. It failed, because you're actively trying to pretend that principal doesn't exist.
I'll explain it one more time. A country developing nuclear weapons doesn't mean every other country then just rolls over for them. Sure, we have to respect the power of a nuclear arsenal, and never ever back a nuclear power in to a point of existential crisis where they might actually consider destroying the planet, but it doesn't mean we give nuclear powers free reign to do as they please. If we allow them to ignore national borders and international law then even before we consider the humanitarian costs we are looking at a less stable, more militant world where nuclear confrontation becomes more likely, not less.
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Tannhauser42 wrote: I'm seeing some rumblings in the news that Trump, due to our trade war with China that's not a trade war depending on who you ask, is reconsidering the TPP. What's up with that?
Someone sat down and explained what the TPP is. I mean, probably not what it actually is, I somehow doubt Donald sat there quietly while someone explained TPP doesn't actually remove many trade barriers (because there aren't actually many trade barriers left to remove), but instead rebuilds trade rules in a way that's much harder for China to manipulate. That the IP theft and awful worker safety China uses for competitive advantage will be much harder when their Asian markets are united under TPP rules.
Instead the probably just got a map out and showed Donald how all the countries in TPP surround China, and if the US would return to leading TPP it'd be the actual smart way of fighting China on trade.
Or maybe the agricultural lobby turned up with a pile of cash, because they're now quite bothered countries like Australia have just cracked the last great protected food market in the world, Japan, and so we now have a massive competitive advantage over US producers.
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Ash87 wrote: See I have to object to this. What we're seeing is a cyclical political cycle of the party in power shouldering the blame for everything in the country, and thus getting hammered in the midterm following the election of the president. It's amplified, because Republicans hold just about everything politically. Thing is, this is the same situation we were in in 2010, back when the republicans seized the house from the democrats following Obama's election.
Your point is entirely right, and most people expect very strong Democrat results in November which could change the political power to some extent.
But that doesn't change the political power right now, which Democrats are quite distressed about.
Further, the Republican Party lacking Cultural power thing is rather unfair? There is for sure a Republican culture as they have diversified their base to be disenfranchised blue collar workers in blue belt areas, in addition to the evangelical and pro-business wings of their party. There is a "Culture" there for them. It's a mix of populism, nationalism, and religiosity that appeals greatly to many people. Agree with it or not, it is undeniably a thing. The party lacks support from younger generations, but it's frankly questionable as to whether or not it's needed (Yet, being a qualifier here).
There is a Republican culture. But it is reactionary culture, built around opposition to what they perceive as Liberal bias elsewhere. Any time that culture has looked to compete outside of niche bubbles its been hammered. Look at their attempts to make conservative comedy talk shows work - dismal. But there's quite a few markedly Democrat (or at least anti-Republican) talk shows doing nightly stuff and doing just fine as mainstream entertainment. Colbert. Seth Meyers. John Oliver. Samantha Bee. The Daily Show (I guess, does anyone watch that anymore?). Jimmy Kimmel sort of - he's normally non-political, but his most significant moments have come when he's talked on politics.
Thing to consider is you combine the point above about political being cyclical, then consider how much culture is leaving Republicans behind. Republicans need to consider what happens when they get bounced from political power, but are still so divorced from mainstream culture. How many times can angry reactionary politics keep dragging them back in to the Whitehouse?
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Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote: @sebster. No, I don't glamorize the past or yearn for the days of the gunboat and General Gordon defending Khartoum.
Warfare is the most serious thing any nation can engage in. As Sun Tzu said, it is a matter of safety or ruin for a nation.
Is it too much to ask that Western leaders engage in some analysis and rational thinking before they start blasting off missiles?
After the war, the original plan for Germany was pull apart all its heavy industry, ship it off to other European countries so Germany would never have an industrial base to build another war machine. Germany would instead be remade in the image of Belgium or the Netherlands, with good living standards built around agriculture and services. This plan was started, factories started being pulled down, and the biggest resistance came from people who argued the plan was too kind to the Germans, they wouldn't be made to suffer enough. But at the exact time that was happening the Marshall Plan was being rolled out, pouring money into many countries including Germany. They were rebuilding and dismantling Germany at the same time.
It was only when the horrors of the war were a few years gone and Russia was now firmly established as the new rival that by the early 50s they finally stopped dismantlying German factories, and instead switched entirely to having Marshall funds rebuilt German industry.
A generation later and the Marshall Plan is rightly hailed as a wondrous achievement. But at the time they were just making it up as they went along.
As bad as imperialists were in the 19th century Sebster, they at least had some semblance of what they were doing and what they wanted...
Everybody is always making it up as they go along. I mean, this recent round of missiles does seem particularly spur of the moment, and going to war without a Secretary of State is an historic low, but in general things right now are about as coherent as they normally are - not very.
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BlaxicanX wrote: Well obviously it doesn't blow your mind too much because you just said that I'm right, lol. Libya was a tragedy and yet the conflict wasn't nearly as complicated as Syria, and we (the US) had better leadership with more restraint at the time. By every factor imaginable we had more tools for success in Libya then Syria and yet it still ended up being a shitshow. Anyone who thinks we should do it again with this administration leading the charge is out of touch with reality. I would love to see anyone who disagrees lay out what they think would be a viable military solution to "the Assad problem", a solution meaning something that isn't going to leave Syria as an even bigger hell hole then it already is.
You keep talking about Syria like it only starts being an issue once the US decides to engage. It's already an absolute disaster whether the US goes in or not. This isn't an argument to intervene, it's just a recognition that 'what if it becomes another Libya?' is a very weird question, because its already 40 times worse than Libya.
I love how we blames it on medicare/caid and SS. Because feth the poor amirght guys! But absolutely nothing to do with the massive taxcut you pushed through that mostly beinifts the rich.
whembly wrote: Just wanted to say about thehill... they're turning into a bombastic Breibart/TPM brand of politics.
Yes, how bombastic of The Hill to publish a widely reported story about Rosenstein's personal beliefs about Trump's actions. A story that The Hill wasn't even the first run with, and which Rosenstein has not disputed in anyway. I mean, sure, that's absolutely normal reporting in any time and age, but whembly doesn't like hearing the story, so it must be bombastic.
This is repeated a long disproven lie. While the IRS process was poor and caused hardship to a number of activist groups, we now know that both conservative and liberal groups were picked up in the sweeps because both conservative and liberal keywords were tagged for further investigation.
And this is a matter I've been over with in some depth with whembly in private messages. I gave him the final IRS review of the subject that finally addressed the number of both liberal and conservative groups identified, which found while the ratio was about 60:40 conservative/liberal, this was easily explained by the much larger number of conservative groups being established during that period - the rise of the Tea Party. whembly gave weak denials at the time and the conversation went nowhere, and now a few months later comes back here to repeat the original lie all over again.
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Vaktathi wrote: and will be, if anything, what sinks Trump I imagine. Theyll never find a "i liek you xoxoxo -Putin" note, it'll be Trump's tantrums that will get him sunk.
Yeah, reality is you hardly ever get to the bottom of the conspiracy. You never get a neat moment where a key player flips and explains the whole of the of the conspiracy, and there's almost never a smoking gun. The actual core of these conspiracies is like a blackhole, and you never actually get to see the center, you can only try and estimate it by its impact by looking at its effect on the things surrounding it. We never did find out if Nixon ordered or even knew of the Watergate break-in beforehand, or if he learned of it later and begun to try covering it up.
You prosecute each lie and each abuse of power made to protect the conspiracy, but in terms of actually figuring out the conspiracy itself you don't often ever find out for real. You piece together what you can, mostly through inference, trying as best you can to figure out why x lied to z about y.
I mean, maybe this one will come unraveled, these guys do appear to be a particularly stupid set of conspirators. But we should probably also ready ourselves for the reality that we might one day have a proven case of obstruction against the president which may or may not lead to resignation/impeachment, but we will never know for certain what the original crime was.
sebster wrote: whembly gave weak denials at the time and the conversation went nowhere, and now a few months later comes back here to repeat the original lie all over again.
Once everyone gets tired of debunking it, it will be true by default, though!
Ouze wrote: Because he probably didn't really commit any serious crimes or collusion, but he almost certainly obstructed justice for those who did.
Here's what I think is the full list of Trump people who had secret meetings with Russians; Michael Flynn, Jared Kushner, Jeff Sessions, Rex Tillerson, Wilbur Ross, Rick Gates, Paul Manafort, George Papadopoulos, Carter Page, Roger Stone, Donald Trump Jr., Michael Cohen & Erik Prince.
There's a few cases of pre-existing relationships there, for instance Flynn, Manafort & Gates, in fact you could break them in to the little factions, the family group, the Manafort group, upstarts (Papadopoulous & Page) etc. Each group is connected to Trump, but they only connect to each other through Trump. So either Trump oversaw each group's contacts with Russia, or each group went off individually and made their own contacts with Russia, or they decided to ignore how little they knew each other and started coordinating contact with Russia between themselves and never letting Trump in on it.
I think the latter two options are really hard to believe, so it becomes very likely Trump knew. Proving any of that is something else entirely.
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thekingofkings wrote: liberals who will exult over the fall of Trump will be weeping fresh tears when they realize how much more evil Pence is.
There's a chance that Pence will go as well. Remember the VP slot was meant to be for Christie, until Manafort came in hard arguing for Pence. Maybe it was astute politics (Pence bringing in the evangelical vote was another of those things that decided the election), but maybe it was something else. And then note that Pence has been the #1 go to guy for responding to accusations against Trump with denials that always turn out to be total bs. It was Pence who denied anyone in the Trump campaign had been in contact with wikileaks. It was Pence who denied any knowledge that Flynn was under investigation, a denial that turned out to be a total lie, as Pence knew weeks before. Pence was a key player in planning the justification to fire Comey, and it was Pence who went to congress and claimed it had nothing to do with the Russia investigation.
I'm not aware of anything that directly places Pence in any legal trouble. But given how much we don't know, and given how willing Pence has lied so far, it's entirely plausible that he'll end up being part of this as well.
All of which means... time it right and there might be a President Pelosi.
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Ash87 wrote: So, My understanding of things, was that Trump was the Peaceful option we could of elected in 2016. No way he was going to start bombing people who weren't directly effecting the US... Nope.
Yeah, that was a thing people argued during 2016. It was an incredible argument, built largely off blind optimism and Trump somehow getting away with the lie that he opposed the Iraq war.
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cuda1179 wrote: Well, if there was multiple "private" fire stations that were all clamoring to put out fires faster and cheaper than the government ones, yes I would be saying just that. Let's also drop the pretenses that the PO can't be criticized. They have A LOT of waste that only exists because of their lack of accountability. Everything from locations that shouldn't exist to employees that are nearly immune to firing, to job performance that would make even a layman efficiency expert cringe.
USPS has problems like any large organisation, public or private, but focusing on them as a cause of its profitability issues is just looking for factoids to suit your ideology. Here's the actual story of the post office, in one image;
The post office still has to run the same freight, the same vans, across all that same routes, but it now does it with letter quantities at about half of their 2002 peak. Letter delivery has turned from a modest earner to an enormous white elephant. Meanwhile the package delivery service that competes with FedEx and the rest turns a tidy profit.
If you want to look at USPS as a private business, you need to seperate out the letter delivery service that they operate under Federal mandate, charging the price set by government.
There is a literal count of Trump having now told more than 1,000 lies in office. Trump simply refuses to hold press conferences. His press secretary routinely lies and refuses to answer questions, and otherwise blathers through press meetings with the express aim of communicating nothing to the greater public.
The list of visitor records to the Whitehouse suddenly stopped, so we have no public record of who is actually communicating with the administration. From very early in his administration we started seeing a wide range of previously available data just start disappearing from government websites, such as records of workplace violations and energy efficiency targets.
We have no idea what conflicts of interest Trump actually has, because he refuses to make public his finances. At the same time Trump signed secret ethics waivers for his appointees, allowing them to keep secret investments that are directly impacted by their policy decisions.
And in the face of all this, cuda1179 tries to claim Obama was worse, despite nothing like the above occurring during Obama's administration. Whether he's chosen to be ignorant of all these issues, or whether he knows and chooses to ignore this reality because his partisanship means he always has to claim 'Obama worse', it doesn't matter. Either way it is rejecting reality for fantasy, and is the very heart of the problem.
I love how we blames it on medicare/caid and SS. Because feth the poor amirght guys! But absolutely nothing to do with the massive taxcut you pushed through that mostly beinifts the rich.
This is Republican standard operating procedure. They call it 'starve the beast'.
Normally they wait until a Democrat wins office and inherits the fiscal mess caused by the latest round of tax cuts before they start pretending they're super concerned about deficits. But these Republicans seem a lot more brazen than in the past. Maybe a product of now just existing within the conservative propaganda machine, and not really trying to sell this nonsense on any station that might call them on it?
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Ouze wrote: Once everyone gets tired of debunking it, it will be true by default, though!
I've heard it called zombie arguments. You can put it down every time, but it always gets back up and comes again.
I think from now on I think the best approach is to show its false, make it clear the argument was made dishonestly, and then move on.
sebster wrote: I mean, maybe this one will come unraveled, these guys do appear to be a particularly stupid set of conspirators. But we should probably also ready ourselves for the reality that we might one day have a proven case of obstruction against the president which may or may not lead to resignation/impeachment, but we will never know for certain what the original crime was.
The people around Trump weren't a particularly bright bunch, but I also think they simply believed that Hillary would win anyway. And in that event, none of the shenanigans would have been pursued like they're being pursued now.
I agree that we'll never get any certainty about the whole thing. Which doesn't mean there's some X-files-level conspiracy at work. I just don't think there will ever be that perfect smoking gun, or that movie moment where some arch-villain spills the beans about every facet of his plan. For another example of this, see the Jerry Sandusky-Penn State scandal. There was almost certainly more to that whole story and more people involved at Sandusky's Second Mile charity, but with Paterno burning in hell and those particular crimes being so heinous, no one's going to come forward and offer any new details.
sebster wrote: whembly gave weak denials at the time and the conversation went nowhere, and now a few months later comes back here to repeat the original lie all over again.
Once everyone gets tired of debunking it, it will be true by default, though!
He didn't debunk gak... multiple IG reports stated that the conservative groups where unfairly targeted and that there were obvious institutional bias. Just because some of the liberal groups ended up on that same list didn't mean they were treated as harshly. I was trying to explain to seb these, but he'll keep ignoring it as it destroys his premise.
Don't forget, the IRS finally admitted to it and actually settled lawsuits. But, instead of taking that into consideration, seb argues that because Trump won, someone told them to settle it to move on... here's the thing: The Government loathes to admit things they *DID* do... what makes you think they'll roll over for any actions that they *DIDN'T* do?
I guess people giving credit to Nixon for getting out of Vietnam don't know that he actively sabotaged LBJ's peace talks to gain an advantage in the upcoming election. He literally tried to gain votes with American (and Vietnamese) blood.
Whats even more amusing is that there isn't a single mention of Fox's home page of the Hannity thing, lots about Comey and Daniels, but not a blip about Hannity.
Meanwhile..its a front and center story at ABC, NBC, CNN, CBS, BBC, etc...
Vaktathi wrote: Whats even more amusing is that there isn't a single mention of Fox's home page of the Hannity thing, lots about Comey and Daniels, but not a blip about Hannity.
Meanwhile..its a front and center story at ABC, NBC, CNN, CBS, BBC, etc...
I mean they even posted a statistic that they are the least trusted news source in the country compared to the other big ones (granted they took it down not much later)
Vaktathi wrote: Whats even more amusing is that there isn't a single mention of Fox's home page of the Hannity thing, lots about Comey and Daniels, but not a blip about Hannity.
Meanwhile..its a front and center story at ABC, NBC, CNN, CBS, BBC, etc...
"Fair and balanced" right?
This is too good, I can't wait to see what he hired Cohen for.
Vaktathi wrote: Whats even more amusing is that there isn't a single mention of Fox's home page of the Hannity thing, lots about Comey and Daniels, but not a blip about Hannity.
Meanwhile..its a front and center story at ABC, NBC, CNN, CBS, BBC, etc...
"Fair and balanced" right?
This is too good, I can't wait to see what he hired Cohen for.
To basically quote:
"I never hired him to be my lawyer, but everything we talked about should be protected by lawyer-client privilege."
It's pretty easy for a congressman to stand up and say 'no, that wasn't my vote' and undo the whole thing with Russia spending a ton of money and getting a ton of heat for little to no results. It's a really, really nonsensical idea.
1) Media figures are supposed to disclose when they have a personal connection to the subject of their reporting. Even if the connection is quite distant and the report is just a summary of facts, failure to do so merits sanction. Hannity went miles beyond that, he gave repeated, strong opinions defending Cohen, but never once mentioned he had a direct legal relationship with Cohen. Any news station with any standards at all would fire Hannity immediately. Any person who had any self-respect would refuse to ever consider any reporting from a station that failed to fire him. But of course, we know FOX News and we know its viewers.
2) Anyhow, Michael Cohen had three clients. For Trump he arranged NDAs and hidden payments to women he'd had affairs with. For Elliot Brody he arranged a $1.6 million payment to get a woman to have an abortion. This sort of fixer work is exactly the kind of thing Cohen has said he arranges for clients. Hannity, who has multiple lawyers already on retainer, suddenly went to a lawyer with minimal legal qualifications but a history of making affairs go quiet, just to get some legal advice. Hannity's defense is obviously a lie, and the immediate assumption is that Hannity also paid Cohen to cover up an affair. But FOX News has shown it covered up affairs for other employees, so there's no reason for Hannity to go outside the firm and pay for the cover up out of his own pocket. But if it wasn't that, and with Hannity refusing to waive attorney/client privilege and show us what Cohen and Hannity actually did together, then whatever it was must have been at least as bad as everyone assuming he paid to have an affair covered up. My speculation is that Hannity was likely also involved in the Trump Moscow hotel deal that Cohen was setting up, but that is just speculation.
3) Seth Rich's parent's lawsuit against FOX News and Hannity just got stronger.
gorgon wrote: The people around Trump weren't a particularly bright bunch, but I also think they simply believed that Hillary would win anyway. And in that event, none of the shenanigans would have been pursued like they're being pursued now.
I'm pretty sure it was Flynn who privately commented that the stuff they were doing is okay because Trump is going to lose. Which on the one hand explains why so much of the stuff they did was so brazen, but on the other hand it makes it really hard to figure out what they were trying to do and why? What were all these people conspiring for if not to help Trump win?
This whole thing is so damn weird.
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whembly wrote: He didn't debunk gak... multiple IG reports stated that the conservative groups where unfairly targeted and that there were obvious institutional bias.
Whether that claim is made through dishonesty or ignorance it really doesn't matter at this point, either way it is the same basic rejection of reality to repeat time and again. Anyhow, I've linked to the IG report, everyone should read it for themselves. The report concluded, as I already said, that the process used by the IRS was flawed and that processing delays were far too long, but did not find any record of partisan bias, either intentional or unintentional.
Note by the way you won't find any specific statement saying 'the IRS didn't have any partisan bias'. That's not how these reports work - they list the issues confirmed, they don't list the things that are fine. But this is the final report, from September last year, and makes a point of the faulty criteria and considerable inconvenience caused to applicants, but notably does not mention a single case of political bias.
And of course, now everyone watch is amazement as whembly completely fails to provide any IG report that says there was any partisan bias in the IRS handling of this case.
Just because some of the liberal groups ended up on that same list didn't mean they were treated as harshly. I was trying to explain to seb these, but he'll keep ignoring it as it destroys his premise.
I didn't ignore that claim. I directly rejected it as completely false. And now I will tell you quite clearly that by continuing to repeat it in the face of all evidence, and without ever providing a single report that stated conservative groups were treated more harshly, it is clear you are engaging in this debate in a plainly dishonest fashion.
Don't forget, the IRS finally admitted to it and actually settled lawsuits.
There is no dispute that the IRS mishandled the process, caused needless difficulty and should be held to account and be liable to pay compensation in some cases. The IRS recognition of that doesn't in any way prove partisan bias. Claiming otherwise is a straight up lie.
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NinthMusketeer wrote: It's pretty easy for a congressman to stand up and say 'no, that wasn't my vote' and undo the whole thing with Russia spending a ton of money and getting a ton of heat for little to no results. It's a really, really nonsensical idea.
None of those things are the issue with the problem. The vote would still be public, the member would press a button and he would see his vote appear on the 'yay' or 'nay' tally. There would be no doubt that member voted as he did.
The actual problem is that politics is a lot more than just voting. Bills are worked on over periods of time, different elements are suggested, debated, given legal review and costing, refined then added or scrubbed. This takes place over long stretches of time, in both formal working groups and in conversations and deal making in the corridors.
Anyone who's ever had someone added by conference call to a meeting knows how poorly that works. The idea of trying to run a country with most of its government literally phoning it in is entirely broken.
Supposedly Cohen helped Hannity with a real estate transaction with no third party listed. The speculation I've heard is that Trump gifted some real estate to Hannity in exchange for favorable coverage.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: Supposedly Cohen helped Hannity with a real estate transaction with no third party listed. The speculation I've heard is that Trump gifted some real estate to Hannity in exchange for favorable coverage.
Yeah, often with these lies they're actually based on a small bit of truth, used to cover up a whole lot of crap. So it may well be that Hannity's deal with Cohen was about some real estate. But the thing is, he could prove it was just a real estate deal just by waiving his attorney client privilege and publishing the communications and legal records himself. But he doesn't.
Trump gifting some real estate to Hannity is a little too blunt force, though, it leaves a lot of obvious records. Land transferred for peppercorn rates attracts a lot of attention, it'd even get noticed by banks and local governments who aren't even actively looking at your dealings. Instead it's probably more like Carter Page's reported payment - he was to get cut for a broker's share of the Rosneft sale despite doing nothing to actually make the deal happen. That's why I suspect Hannity probably got set up to take a share of the Trump hotel in Moscow, done right it would even look kind of clean in most circumstances, or at least be defendable. Hannity might commit to make some media appearances and meet with some investors, get listed as a manager and take half a percent of the final asset, or something like that. Hard to discover, especially if Hannity's share was hidden through a Delaware special that Cohen is so fond of setting up.
Of course, it's all speculation. But with Hannity doing nothing to actually show what the deal was, then all we know is the actual deal was at least as bad as having everyone believe you paid to have an affair covered up.
feeder wrote: I guess people giving credit to Nixon for getting out of Vietnam don't know that he actively sabotaged LBJ's peace talks to gain an advantage in the upcoming election. He literally tried to gain votes with American (and Vietnamese) blood.
I definitely didn't know that. Thank you for posting it.
Ouze wrote: I definitely didn't know that. Thank you for posting it.
This is the thing. You can't separate Watergate from the rest of Nixon's presidency, because Watergate was more than just a hotel break-in and subsequent cover up. It was the discovery of widespread, constant ethical and legal breaches, a generally lawless approach to governing.
Everything Nixon did, the good and the bad, was done with that approach. It'd be like saying you like soccer except for the rule about not being able to use your hands. It's ignoring the very method by which everything else is done.
Ouze wrote: I definitely didn't know that. Thank you for posting it.
This is the thing. You can't separate Watergate from the rest of Nixon's presidency, because Watergate was more than just a hotel break-in and subsequent cover up. It was the discovery of widespread, constant ethical and legal breaches, a generally lawless approach to governing.
Everything Nixon did, the good and the bad, was done with that approach. It'd be like saying you like soccer except for the rule about not being able to use your hands. It's ignoring the very method by which everything else is done.
So what I'm understanding is:
-Take the Democrat & Republican leadership to make two American Football teams
-Have them face off in the Super Bowl
-???
-Russia can't hack us!
NinthMusketeer wrote: So what I'm understanding is:
-Take the Democrat & Republican leadership to make two American Football teams
-Have them face off in the Super Bowl
-???
-Russia can't hack us!
Close, but they wouldn't play American football, they'd play a version of soccer where everything is the same except everyone can pick up the ball and run around with it.
I'm not saying it'd stop the Syrian crisis, but I am saying it's worth trying.
NinthMusketeer wrote: So what I'm understanding is:
-Take the Democrat & Republican leadership to make two American Football teams
-Have them face off in the Super Bowl
-???
-Russia can't hack us!
Close, but they wouldn't play American football, they'd play a version of soccer where everything is the same except everyone can pick up the ball and run around with it.
I'm not saying it'd stop the Syrian crisis, but I am saying it's worth trying.
Probably more effective than what the GOP is producing for actual policy these days. At least it couldn't hurt (anyone but them).
A new NBC/WSJ poll shows the tax cuts are reversing their modest popularity gains, and now just 27% like the bill. I'm guessing, but I wonder if the recent shift to discussion of the deficit and Republican plans for health and social security cuts might have driven the slide. While people could pretend it was just free money it didn't matter that most of benefit went to the rich, because they all got free money. But now that the conversation has turned to discussion of how to reign in the deficit they're wising up a little.
Whatever the cause, as the sole piece of major legislation passed by Republicans, with a president 15 to 20 points underwater in approval polls, that's a really grim place for Republicans to be. What's interesting in the polls, to me, is that the Democratic edge in the generic poll is still only about 7 points. That's barely enough to overcome the gerrymander and predicts a close result in the mid-terms. However, +7 doesn't align with the special elections results we've seen. Sure, those elections favour the minority party even more than mid-terms, but we've seen an average shift to Democrats of +17 (per 538). And note that +17 is excluding the incredible +80 outlier (where that one Republican was accused of assaulting a 17 year old, so his wife ran in his place on a 'it was all a liberal lie' platform and got slaughtered)
I suspect the generic poll is understating the strength of the Democratic position, because these polls typically base their likely voter adjustments on past turnout, and those don't work that well when enthusiasm has shifted considerably from the last election. This is why in the swing heavy period from 2006 to 2014 the polls each time called the movement from one party to the other correctly, but understated the scale of that movement. I expect the same thing this year, so accepting that mid-terms are still a long ways off and a lot could happen, I would expect the final result to beat the generic poll by a few points. If the current +7 actually means +10, that's a huge result.
NinthMusketeer wrote: Probably more effective than what the GOP is producing for actual policy these days. At least it couldn't hurt (anyone but them).
It's probably more effective than what anyone has to offer when it comes to Syria
sebster wrote: Of course, it's all speculation. But with Hannity doing nothing to actually show what the deal was, then all we know is the actual deal was at least as bad as having everyone believe you paid to have an affair covered up.
Or that other case where Cohen paid the woman to have an abortion! That wouldn't fly even as far as an affair! Is there anything Hannity's fanboys despise even more than (getting caught) having an affair and abortion? Being gay?
sebster wrote: Of course, it's all speculation. But with Hannity doing nothing to actually show what the deal was, then all we know is the actual deal was at least as bad as having everyone believe you paid to have an affair covered up.
Or that other case where Cohen paid the woman to have an abortion! That wouldn't fly even as far as an affair! Is there anything Hannity's fanboys despise even more than (getting caught) having an affair and abortion? Being gay?
Maybe he was caught in an compromising situation involving a male horse, a plastic bag, two elastic bands, the director of planned parenthood, a copy of the complete works of Karl Marx and a stash of crack cocaine.
So, this happened.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/16/politics/nikki-haley-trump-russia/index.html Nikki Haley is announcing that more sanctions are coming, but Trump hasn't actually approved those sanctions? Left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing and all that, I guess. One more thing to make us look bad on the world stage.
The former head of the FBI is in interviews saying he thinks the president is like a mob boss, and morally unfit to lead the country. And it is barely news because when Trump is president there's always at least ten things way more crazy than that going on at any one time.
Spetulhu wrote: Or that other case where Cohen paid the woman to have an abortion! That wouldn't fly even as far as an affair! Is there anything Hannity's fanboys despise even more than (getting caught) having an affair and abortion? Being gay?
Being a Democrat.
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Tannhauser42 wrote: Nikki Haley is announcing that more sanctions are coming, but Trump hasn't actually approved those sanctions? Left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing and all that, I guess. One more thing to make us look bad on the world stage.
Trump drove the push for missile strikes, but goes out wildly on his on, away from his natsec team and away from the country really, when it comes to sanctions. Which is very weird.
The only thing I can think of is that description of Putin as basically a looter. He doesn't care about Russia, only his own wealth. That would mean Putin doesn't care about losses to US military strikes - he doesn't pay for those planes himself. But he does care about sanctions that target his personal businesses.
Assuming Trump does have some kind loyalty/debt/whatever to Putin, this would explain why Trump has been willing to use missile strikes, but not sanctions.
There's a fair few entirely unsubstantiated assumptions in there, but it does align with observed facts.
I don’t know if Trump has some sort of connection to Putin. Sometimes I wonder if he just really really likes strong and powerful men (or dictators) and really really wants them to like him.
So I’m trying to decide if he’s some corrupt mastermind or just a horrible fanboi.
d-usa wrote: I don’t know if Trump has some sort of connection to Putin. Sometimes I wonder if he just really really likes strong and powerful men (or dictators) and really really wants them to like him.
So I’m trying to decide if he’s some corrupt mastermind or just a horrible fanboi.
d-usa wrote: I don’t know if Trump has some sort of connection to Putin. Sometimes I wonder if he just really really likes strong and powerful men (or dictators) and really really wants them to like him.
So I’m trying to decide if he’s some corrupt mastermind or just a horrible fanboi.
Doesn't the Trump organisation have business ties in Russia/with Russians? That might explain the hesitation towards sanctions open to retaliation.
d-usa wrote: I don’t know if Trump has some sort of connection to Putin. Sometimes I wonder if he just really really likes strong and powerful men (or dictators) and really really wants them to like him.
So I’m trying to decide if he’s some corrupt mastermind or just a horrible fanboi.
Doesn't the Trump organisation have business ties in Russia/with Russians? That might explain the hesitation towards sanctions open to retaliation.
Are you suggesting that the President of the United States may not be taking action against a foreign power because it could negatively affect his personal finances? That's just crazy talk.
By ZACHARY WARMBRODT 04/17/2018 10:16 AM EDT
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Republicans are preparing to open a new front in their push to roll back regulations across the government, using a maneuver that could enable them to strike down decisions by federal agencies that reach back decades.
As soon as Tuesday, GOP senators are expected to use the Congressional Review Act to topple safeguards issued by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in 2013 that were intended to discourage discrimination in auto lending.
While Republicans in the Trump era have already taken advantage of the 1996 law to remove more than a dozen recently issued rules, this would be the first time that Congress will have used it to kill a regulatory policy that is several years old.
Now, actions going back to President Bill Clinton’s administration could be in play under the procedure GOP lawmakers are undertaking, forcing numerous agencies to reconsider how they roll out new regulations.
“It’s a hugely important precedent,” Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.), the architect of the effort, said in an interview. “It’s potentially a big, big opening.”
While conservatives are applauding the effort as a way to rein in rogue bureaucrats and boost the economy, consumer advocates are warning that the consequences could be dire.
“This takes an already incredibly dangerous law and cranks it up to 11,” said James Goodwin, senior policy analyst at the Center for Progressive Reform.
Republicans are leveraging two key provisions of the Congressional Review Act.
They’re again taking advantage of fast-track authority that allows a simple majority of the Senate to pass a resolution rolling back a rule if the vote occurs within a window that’s open for no more than a few months. The provision enables senators to avoid a filibuster.
But the more novel use lies in the law’s requirement that federal agencies submit rules to Congress for their potential disapproval. Republicans have landed on a way to target a wide array of decisions — including regulatory guidance — that haven't typically been implemented as formal rules under the Administrative Procedure Act.
"You have this unimaginably large universe of stuff that is now eligible for repeal under the CRA," Goodwin said, citing a hypothetical Occupational Safety and Health Administration workplace safety poster as a potential example. "Agencies don't submit all this stuff because it would be an administrative nightmare."
In the case of the auto-lending policy, the CFPB released it as a guidance document rather than a formal rule governed by the notice-and-comment requirements of the APA. As such, it wasn’t technically submitted to lawmakers for the purposes of the Congressional Review Act. That means the clock for congressional review never started.
That changed last year. For advocates of deregulation, the stars had aligned thanks to the ascendance of a Republican president, Donald Trump, eager to roll back rules and the Republicans retaining control of Congress.
Toomey, the former president of the conservative Club for Growth, went on the hunt for ways the GOP could take advantage of its congressional majority to eliminate federal rules.
He found a way to wield the power that the Congressional Review Act gives a majority of the Senate to sidestep obstruction via filibuster when it comes to years-old regulatory actions.
To do so, he asked the Government Accountability Office to determine whether the CFPB auto-lending guidance qualified as a rule for the purposes of the Congressional Review Act. In December, GAO told him that it did in fact satisfy the legal definition of a rule, starting the clock for Republicans to undo it without having to seek any help from Democrats.
“When regulators regulate by guidance rather than through the process they’re supposed to use, which is the Administrative Procedure Act and do a proper rulemaking, they shouldn’t be able to get away with that,” Toomey said. “If we can get a determination that the guidance rises to the significance of being a rule, then from that moment the clock starts on the CRA opportunity.”
Amit Narang, regulatory policy advocate at Public Citizen, said it “is really going to open up a Pandora’s box.” Public Citizen and 60 other advocacy groups covering the gamut of finance, the environment, labor and gay rights are calling on Congress to oppose the CFPB rollback, saying it would set a dangerous precedent.
They warned it would put at risk not only protections for workers, consumers, minorities and the environment, but also regulatory certainty for businesses.
"Expanding the power of the CRA to overturn guidance from decades ago will threaten protections hardworking families rely on, making it harder for middle class Americans to get ahead and responsible businesses to follow the law," Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) said.
Critics have also questioned the need to undo the CFPB auto-lending guidance because the bureau is now led by a Trump appointee, acting Director Mick Mulvaney, who could eliminate it himself. Mulvaney told lawmakers last week he was reviewing the policy. The National Automobile Dealers Association and the American Financial Services Association are supporting the rollback of the anti-discrimination measure, arguing that the way the CFPB crafted the guidance was flawed.
Other lawmakers have begun to test the waters. In November, GAO in a response to a request from Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) confirmed that a 2016 plan from the Bureau of Land Management was a rule for the purposes of review under the CRA. A spokeswoman for Murkowski did not respond to a request for comment.
Paul Larkin, a senior legal research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, has been advocating for Congress to take advantage of this deregulatory pathway in the Congressional Review Act, saying it could force agencies to comply with formal rulemaking requirements and help the economy by cutting red tape.
TL;DR: If agencies submitted rules & regulations through the proper process as required by the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), including all of the notice requirements... Congress can only overturn them via new legislation and getting that 60th Senate vote.
If, however, agencies bypass the APA requirements...the GAO agrees that it can be overturn via simple Senate majority via the CRA.
Since the there isn't much interest to pass anything meaningful this year due to the midterms, I can see the GOP going the deregulation route for campaign ammo... the trouble with this tactic is that it'll just as likely energize the Democrat's base too.
d-usa wrote: I don’t know if Trump has some sort of connection to Putin. Sometimes I wonder if he just really really likes strong and powerful men (or dictators) and really really wants them to like him.
So I’m trying to decide if he’s some corrupt mastermind or just a horrible fanboi.
Doesn't the Trump organisation have business ties in Russia/with Russians? That might explain the hesitation towards sanctions open to retaliation.
Are you suggesting that the President of the United States may not be taking action against a foreign power because it could negatively affect his personal finances? That's just crazy talk.
Won't somebody please think of the polar bears that might have to go for years without a golf course?
By ZACHARY WARMBRODT 04/17/2018 10:16 AM EDT
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Republicans are preparing to open a new front in their push to roll back regulations across the government, using a maneuver that could enable them to strike down decisions by federal agencies that reach back decades.
As soon as Tuesday, GOP senators are expected to use the Congressional Review Act to topple safeguards issued by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in 2013 that were intended to discourage discrimination in auto lending.
While Republicans in the Trump era have already taken advantage of the 1996 law to remove more than a dozen recently issued rules, this would be the first time that Congress will have used it to kill a regulatory policy that is several years old.
Now, actions going back to President Bill Clinton’s administration could be in play under the procedure GOP lawmakers are undertaking, forcing numerous agencies to reconsider how they roll out new regulations.
“It’s a hugely important precedent,” Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.), the architect of the effort, said in an interview. “It’s potentially a big, big opening.”
While conservatives are applauding the effort as a way to rein in rogue bureaucrats and boost the economy, consumer advocates are warning that the consequences could be dire.
“This takes an already incredibly dangerous law and cranks it up to 11,” said James Goodwin, senior policy analyst at the Center for Progressive Reform.
Republicans are leveraging two key provisions of the Congressional Review Act.
They’re again taking advantage of fast-track authority that allows a simple majority of the Senate to pass a resolution rolling back a rule if the vote occurs within a window that’s open for no more than a few months. The provision enables senators to avoid a filibuster.
But the more novel use lies in the law’s requirement that federal agencies submit rules to Congress for their potential disapproval. Republicans have landed on a way to target a wide array of decisions — including regulatory guidance — that haven't typically been implemented as formal rules under the Administrative Procedure Act.
"You have this unimaginably large universe of stuff that is now eligible for repeal under the CRA," Goodwin said, citing a hypothetical Occupational Safety and Health Administration workplace safety poster as a potential example. "Agencies don't submit all this stuff because it would be an administrative nightmare."
In the case of the auto-lending policy, the CFPB released it as a guidance document rather than a formal rule governed by the notice-and-comment requirements of the APA. As such, it wasn’t technically submitted to lawmakers for the purposes of the Congressional Review Act. That means the clock for congressional review never started.
That changed last year. For advocates of deregulation, the stars had aligned thanks to the ascendance of a Republican president, Donald Trump, eager to roll back rules and the Republicans retaining control of Congress.
Toomey, the former president of the conservative Club for Growth, went on the hunt for ways the GOP could take advantage of its congressional majority to eliminate federal rules.
He found a way to wield the power that the Congressional Review Act gives a majority of the Senate to sidestep obstruction via filibuster when it comes to years-old regulatory actions.
To do so, he asked the Government Accountability Office to determine whether the CFPB auto-lending guidance qualified as a rule for the purposes of the Congressional Review Act. In December, GAO told him that it did in fact satisfy the legal definition of a rule, starting the clock for Republicans to undo it without having to seek any help from Democrats.
“When regulators regulate by guidance rather than through the process they’re supposed to use, which is the Administrative Procedure Act and do a proper rulemaking, they shouldn’t be able to get away with that,” Toomey said. “If we can get a determination that the guidance rises to the significance of being a rule, then from that moment the clock starts on the CRA opportunity.”
Amit Narang, regulatory policy advocate at Public Citizen, said it “is really going to open up a Pandora’s box.” Public Citizen and 60 other advocacy groups covering the gamut of finance, the environment, labor and gay rights are calling on Congress to oppose the CFPB rollback, saying it would set a dangerous precedent.
They warned it would put at risk not only protections for workers, consumers, minorities and the environment, but also regulatory certainty for businesses.
"Expanding the power of the CRA to overturn guidance from decades ago will threaten protections hardworking families rely on, making it harder for middle class Americans to get ahead and responsible businesses to follow the law," Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) said.
Critics have also questioned the need to undo the CFPB auto-lending guidance because the bureau is now led by a Trump appointee, acting Director Mick Mulvaney, who could eliminate it himself. Mulvaney told lawmakers last week he was reviewing the policy. The National Automobile Dealers Association and the American Financial Services Association are supporting the rollback of the anti-discrimination measure, arguing that the way the CFPB crafted the guidance was flawed.
Other lawmakers have begun to test the waters. In November, GAO in a response to a request from Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) confirmed that a 2016 plan from the Bureau of Land Management was a rule for the purposes of review under the CRA. A spokeswoman for Murkowski did not respond to a request for comment.
Paul Larkin, a senior legal research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, has been advocating for Congress to take advantage of this deregulatory pathway in the Congressional Review Act, saying it could force agencies to comply with formal rulemaking requirements and help the economy by cutting red tape.
TL;DR: If agencies submitted rules & regulations through the proper process as required by the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), including all of the notice requirements... Congress can only overturn them via new legislation and getting that 60th Senate vote.
If, however, agencies bypass the APA requirements...the GAO agrees that it can be overturn via simple Senate majority via the CRA.
Since the there isn't much interest to pass anything meaningful this year due to the midterms, I can see the GOP going the deregulation route for campaign ammo... the trouble with this tactic is that it'll just as likely energize the Democrat's base too.
Oy vey...
it's interesting watching the GOP being unable to actually accomplish anything despite holding every branch of government and have nothing more to bring to the table in an election year than parliamentary tricks to bring to bear against administrative regulation that your average person has no clue about, as they stare an increasingly bleak midterm in the face that seems on track to oust them from their position, all while the Democrats sit there furiously but impotently eating paste.
In other news...Trump wants to transfer a US citizen currently being held anonymously as an unnamed enemy combatant to a foreign power's custody within 72 hours. That's gonna raise...questions. Mostly Saudi related questions I would assume.
Also, Greitens now accused by the Republican state AG of illegally using charity donor lists for campaign fundraiding and has turned it over to the St.Louis attorneys office for prosecution. This looks more substantial and directly related to his Governorship (as opposed to personal life) than the previous claims against Greitens.
Yup... Greitins vulnerability has always been using the charity donor list for campaign funding. This will be the reason he's removed from Governorship.
Also... expect some fireworks from tweeter-in-chief...
lulz... i've only read Gorsuch's assent, but it basically boils down to "it's Congress' job to clearly WRITE IT DOWN...not ours to analyze it and 'make it fit' ".
I'm split on his reasoning, part of me agrees with it and likes the line of thinking, and the other part is going "as a judge, analysis is part of your role" (im kinda split that way on the dude in general ) Ultimately, it will be interesting to see where it goes, it certainly will make it harder to cast him as a rigid partisan, at least for a while.
I'm split as well. And I would absolutely expect analysis to be a part of any judge's job, much less a Justice. But this bill can go so far as to include jaywalking and shoplifting with the way its language is described, which would take away from its initial purpose (moving violent offenders to the front of exit queue) and become another defacto blanket for deportation, which is a bad thing no matter how you view it.
EDITS: My work computer is being janky, had to rearrange things
I thought this would come down to a 5-4 split, but with Gorsuch on the dissenting side. Overall, I think the correct decision was reached, even though the intent of the law itself is also correct (although badly worded). Send it back to the legislature, clean it up, and apply it.
cuda1179 wrote: I thought this would come down to a 5-4 split, but with Gorsuch on the dissenting side. Overall, I think the correct decision was reached, even though the intent of the law itself is also correct (although badly worded). Send it back to the legislature, clean it up, and apply it.
Has there been any word yet on what evidence they used to get the warrant for Trump's Lawyer?
Raiding a lawyer's records and violating privilege is one of those things I usually frown on, to put it mildly. Either someone had something major and very solid, or that someone was overly eager and found a judge who likes to rubber stamp things.
I think that the search itself should be examined critically, as I really don't like that setting a standard.
cuda1179 wrote: Has there been any word yet on what evidence they used to get the warrant for Trump's Lawyer?
Raiding a lawyer's records and violating privilege is one of those things I usually frown on, to put it mildly. Either someone had something major and very solid, or that someone was overly eager and found a judge who likes to rubber stamp things.
I think that the search itself should be examined critically, as I really don't like that setting a standard.
Yeah, a judge just rubber stamped an FBI raiding the office for the lawyer to the President. Just an average case not worth more than a skim-read.
You are just inventing a contrived circumstance to somehow deflect onto the FBI by making them the bad guys. Then trying to frame it in an apolitical manner that is still clearly partisan. If they did the same to Clinton's lawyer you would be defending how they must have had justified evidence for their warrant.
I'm just going to guess that signing a search warrant for attorney-client records, in one of the most high-profile cases in decades and involving the POTUS, was done with at least a decent amount of probable cause.
But hey, at least we know that all of the records and communications seized between him and Hannity are fair game, since he denies he was ever a client.
cuda1179 wrote: Has there been any word yet on what evidence they used to get the warrant for Trump's Lawyer?
Raiding a lawyer's records and violating privilege is one of those things I usually frown on, to put it mildly. Either someone had something major and very solid, or that someone was overly eager and found a judge who likes to rubber stamp things.
I think that the search itself should be examined critically, as I really don't like that setting a standard.
we probably wont see it for a while yet. Under normal circumstances, yes it woulf be quite troubling. That said, with this administration, they seem to be going out of their way to expose themselves to as much liability as possible just for giggles.
Given the channels this went through and the extraordinary targets, multiple people with far more to lose than gain if things turned sour had to sign off on this, if they had anything less than ironclad evidence I doubt they would have taken this step.
The way I personally see the Gorsuch thing, I would think it should be easily explained in a way that conservatives would like.
The reasoning goes that illegal immigrant commits violent crime. trial costing millions of dollars. Gets deported. Comes back illegally. commits another crime. Trial costs millions. Gets deported. . .
Why not. . . arrest from violent crime. Try, jail. . . spend thousands/millions in the actual jailing costs, as opposed to potentially multiple instances of trials for crimes perpetrated by the same person??
cuda1179 wrote: Has there been any word yet on what evidence they used to get the warrant for Trump's Lawyer?
Raiding a lawyer's records and violating privilege is one of those things I usually frown on, to put it mildly. Either someone had something major and very solid, or that someone was overly eager and found a judge who likes to rubber stamp things.
I think that the search itself should be examined critically, as I really don't like that setting a standard.
Yeah, a judge just rubber stamped an FBI raiding the office for the lawyer to the President. Just an average case not worth more than a skim-read.
You are just inventing a contrived circumstance to somehow deflect onto the FBI by making them the bad guys. Then trying to frame it in an apolitical manner that is still clearly partisan. If they did the same to Clinton's lawyer you would be defending how they must have had justified evidence for their warrant.
I'm not trying to invent anything. I brought up that they either needed something major and solid, or someone jumped the gun. Prosecutors for the Government have decided to play fast and loose before, even with major players. The fact is that we don't know yet. It likely is on the level, but any time a lawyer's office is raided (and I don't care if it's the President, or John Q ambulance chaser) it should be closely examined for any kind of wrongdoing, under-the-table dirty handshakes, or questionable evidence.
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Ensis Ferrae wrote: The way I personally see the Gorsuch thing, I would think it should be easily explained in a way that conservatives would like.
The reasoning goes that illegal immigrant commits violent crime. trial costing millions of dollars. Gets deported. Comes back illegally. commits another crime. Trial costs millions. Gets deported. . .
Why not. . . arrest from violent crime. Try, jail. . . spend thousands/millions in the actual jailing costs, as opposed to potentially multiple instances of trials for crimes perpetrated by the same person??
I'm pretty sure that illegals that commit crimes must first serve a sentence, then are deported.
Sheesh, I never knew that recognizing the importance of Client-Attorney privilege was that darn controversial.
I just wanted to know what their evidence was, how it was gotten, and who gave it to them. I even said it was likely justified, just that these situations are pretty concerning.
NinthMusketeer wrote: So what I'm understanding is:
-Take the Democrat & Republican leadership to make two American Football teams
-Have them face off in the Super Bowl
-???
-Russia can't hack us!
I would say take them all and put them into a battle royal, but I am afraid Trump would likely win,...being the only head of state to be UNDEFEATED at Wrestlemania.
Shocking exactly no-one, FOX News is not taking any action against Sean Hannity. Hannity attacked an FBI raid while neglecting to inform the public he had legal dealings with the target of the raid, and his own documents were among those collected. Its an obvious breach of journalistic standards, but I guess that's only an issue for people who expect their news coverage to be produced with ethics.
d-usa wrote: I don’t know if Trump has some sort of connection to Putin. Sometimes I wonder if he just really really likes strong and powerful men (or dictators) and really really wants them to like him.
I think the latter works to describe Trump's praise and friendly outreaches to Duterte, Xi and Erdogan. But Trump is also a cut and run guy, he is already trying to distance himself from Michael Cohen. Yet no matter how much flak Trump gets from playing nice with Putin, Trump doubles down every time.
And a big part of the Trump brand is the way won't double-talk his way out anything. He doesn't back off, he doubles down. When Trump was criticised for cozying up to Duterte, he didn't respond with carefully chosen political blather, he moved even closer to Duterte. Yet with Putin Trump is all over the shop, bragging about meeting him, then denying he ever met him, back and forth constantly, switching between giving favours and blocking sanctions, then giving big man speeches.
This isn't evidence, of course. But the idea not necessarily of blackmail but at the very least of some kind of undisclosed tie between the two men, maybe financial, seems to me to best suit the behaviour we've observed.
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whembly wrote: Since the there isn't much interest to pass anything meaningful this year due to the midterms, I can see the GOP going the deregulation route for campaign ammo... the trouble with this tactic is that it'll just as likely energize the Democrat's base too.
Pundits will talk about this being an electoral strategy, because the US punditry class is obsessed with dragging everything back to the horse race. But you need to step back and consider how many voters on either side are going to be enthused by an obscure legal tactic being used to increase deregulation.
Republicans aren't doing this to boost votes. They're doing it to serve their donors, and because they actually believe nation is better served by reducing the protections consumers get in their dealings with banks.
d-usa wrote: It’s because everyone recognizes it, that your “I’m just asking questions”’post is getting there replies.
Well, I'm sorry you're all interpreting it that way.
Perhaps it's the way you say it. I have to admit to reading your posts the same way they did. If that's not what was intended...it wasn't clear.
However, it also bears repeating that Trump and Hannity both claimed Cohen wasn't their lawyer, which makes the whole attorney client privilege issue murky, there being no clients to exercise privilege. Not that I think such a high profile raid would be launched on that kind of technicality.
d-usa wrote: Remember when people said Obama was stupid for even suggesting to meet with people?
Ah come one don't hide behind people call it like it is, Republicans
I think the best part is, for almost everything Trump does he has a tweet criticizing Obama for doing the exact same thing (i.e. being willing to meet with N.K.)
It was sad to hear about Barbara Bush's passing. Kudos on a life well led, passing at passing 92 with a pile of grandkids and great grandkids seems about perfect to me.
Trump's office issued a nice statement, and tweeted it through Trump's account. Notice the date, though. It really captures the indignity of life in the Trump administration, you can't even die without these chuckleheads screwing it up somehow.
cuda1179 wrote: Has there been any word yet on what evidence they used to get the warrant for Trump's Lawyer?
This line is being played out over and over again by Trump defenders, that it is suspicious that the evidence used to authorise various things isn't publicly known. It's a con. The Mueller investigation, being extremely politically sensitive, was set up from the start to maintain high security, that means they don't make public any bit of evidence or lead uncovered. It would be outrageous if they were making everything public. This doesn't mean it is operating without review, evidence is presented for a judge to review and deem sufficient to authorise the raid, but the rest of us will have to wait and see.
FWIW there is speculation that Cohen has been under surveillance for some time, including a wire tap. But that could just be a rumour, I don't know.
I think that the search itself should be examined critically, as I really don't like that setting a standard.
While raiding a lawyer's office is something authorities will only do sparingly, it's not unheard of. The situations in which it can be done are clearly set out and well established in law. There is no new standard here.
I would be inclined to say using the wrong year is just a typo, from the white house yes but typos do happen. Nothing to really note.
I would say that, but this is far, far from the only time stuff like this happens. It very quickly goes from honest mistake to incompetence on a level we expect high schoolers to be above.
I wouldn't be surprised if that statement was written last year. There are probably a lot of statements already prepared for if other prominent figures die.
And while it feels like it's bad form to ding them for this one, it is just one more in a long list.
Anyway, she certainly lived a good life. I hope my wife and I can live that long together.
By ZACHARY WARMBRODT 04/17/2018 10:16 AM EDT
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Republicans are preparing to open a new front in their push to roll back regulations across the government, using a maneuver that could enable them to strike down decisions by federal agencies that reach back decades.
As soon as Tuesday, GOP senators are expected to use the Congressional Review Act to topple safeguards issued by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in 2013 that were intended to discourage discrimination in auto lending.
While Republicans in the Trump era have already taken advantage of the 1996 law to remove more than a dozen recently issued rules, this would be the first time that Congress will have used it to kill a regulatory policy that is several years old.
Now, actions going back to President Bill Clinton’s administration could be in play under the procedure GOP lawmakers are undertaking, forcing numerous agencies to reconsider how they roll out new regulations.
“It’s a hugely important precedent,” Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.), the architect of the effort, said in an interview. “It’s potentially a big, big opening.”
While conservatives are applauding the effort as a way to rein in rogue bureaucrats and boost the economy, consumer advocates are warning that the consequences could be dire.
“This takes an already incredibly dangerous law and cranks it up to 11,” said James Goodwin, senior policy analyst at the Center for Progressive Reform.
Republicans are leveraging two key provisions of the Congressional Review Act.
They’re again taking advantage of fast-track authority that allows a simple majority of the Senate to pass a resolution rolling back a rule if the vote occurs within a window that’s open for no more than a few months. The provision enables senators to avoid a filibuster.
But the more novel use lies in the law’s requirement that federal agencies submit rules to Congress for their potential disapproval. Republicans have landed on a way to target a wide array of decisions — including regulatory guidance — that haven't typically been implemented as formal rules under the Administrative Procedure Act.
"You have this unimaginably large universe of stuff that is now eligible for repeal under the CRA," Goodwin said, citing a hypothetical Occupational Safety and Health Administration workplace safety poster as a potential example. "Agencies don't submit all this stuff because it would be an administrative nightmare."
In the case of the auto-lending policy, the CFPB released it as a guidance document rather than a formal rule governed by the notice-and-comment requirements of the APA. As such, it wasn’t technically submitted to lawmakers for the purposes of the Congressional Review Act. That means the clock for congressional review never started.
That changed last year. For advocates of deregulation, the stars had aligned thanks to the ascendance of a Republican president, Donald Trump, eager to roll back rules and the Republicans retaining control of Congress.
Toomey, the former president of the conservative Club for Growth, went on the hunt for ways the GOP could take advantage of its congressional majority to eliminate federal rules.
He found a way to wield the power that the Congressional Review Act gives a majority of the Senate to sidestep obstruction via filibuster when it comes to years-old regulatory actions.
To do so, he asked the Government Accountability Office to determine whether the CFPB auto-lending guidance qualified as a rule for the purposes of the Congressional Review Act. In December, GAO told him that it did in fact satisfy the legal definition of a rule, starting the clock for Republicans to undo it without having to seek any help from Democrats.
“When regulators regulate by guidance rather than through the process they’re supposed to use, which is the Administrative Procedure Act and do a proper rulemaking, they shouldn’t be able to get away with that,” Toomey said. “If we can get a determination that the guidance rises to the significance of being a rule, then from that moment the clock starts on the CRA opportunity.”
Amit Narang, regulatory policy advocate at Public Citizen, said it “is really going to open up a Pandora’s box.” Public Citizen and 60 other advocacy groups covering the gamut of finance, the environment, labor and gay rights are calling on Congress to oppose the CFPB rollback, saying it would set a dangerous precedent.
They warned it would put at risk not only protections for workers, consumers, minorities and the environment, but also regulatory certainty for businesses.
"Expanding the power of the CRA to overturn guidance from decades ago will threaten protections hardworking families rely on, making it harder for middle class Americans to get ahead and responsible businesses to follow the law," Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) said.
Critics have also questioned the need to undo the CFPB auto-lending guidance because the bureau is now led by a Trump appointee, acting Director Mick Mulvaney, who could eliminate it himself. Mulvaney told lawmakers last week he was reviewing the policy. The National Automobile Dealers Association and the American Financial Services Association are supporting the rollback of the anti-discrimination measure, arguing that the way the CFPB crafted the guidance was flawed.
Other lawmakers have begun to test the waters. In November, GAO in a response to a request from Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) confirmed that a 2016 plan from the Bureau of Land Management was a rule for the purposes of review under the CRA. A spokeswoman for Murkowski did not respond to a request for comment.
Paul Larkin, a senior legal research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, has been advocating for Congress to take advantage of this deregulatory pathway in the Congressional Review Act, saying it could force agencies to comply with formal rulemaking requirements and help the economy by cutting red tape.
TL;DR: If agencies submitted rules & regulations through the proper process as required by the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), including all of the notice requirements... Congress can only overturn them via new legislation and getting that 60th Senate vote.
If, however, agencies bypass the APA requirements...the GAO agrees that it can be overturn via simple Senate majority via the CRA.
Since the there isn't much interest to pass anything meaningful this year due to the midterms, I can see the GOP going the deregulation route for campaign ammo... the trouble with this tactic is that it'll just as likely energize the Democrat's base too.
Oy vey...
it's interesting watching the GOP being unable to actually accomplish anything despite holding every branch of government and have nothing more to bring to the table in an election year than parliamentary tricks to bring to bear against administrative regulation that your average person has no clue about, as they stare an increasingly bleak midterm in the face that seems on track to oust them from their position, all while the Democrats sit there furiously but impotently eating paste.
In other news...Trump wants to transfer a US citizen currently being held anonymously as an unnamed enemy combatant to a foreign power's custody within 72 hours. That's gonna raise...questions. Mostly Saudi related questions I would assume.
Also, Greitens now accused by the Republican state AG of illegally using charity donor lists for campaign fundraiding and has turned it over to the St.Louis attorneys office for prosecution. This looks more substantial and directly related to his Governorship (as opposed to personal life) than the previous claims against Greitens.
sebster wrote: While raiding a lawyer's office is something authorities will only do sparingly, it's not unheard of. The situations in which it can be done are clearly set out and well established in law. There is no new standard here.
You'll recall not that long ago, the FBI raided a congressman's office. "('[T]he laws of this country allow no place or employment as a sanctuary for crime.".
The idea that the President's personal attorney got raided by the FBI on flimsy evidence is literally pants on head, but it goes well with the "I'm not a Trump defender but (reflexively defends everything Trump does)" mindset that pairs nicely with that comic.
In addition to Hannity getting no penalty from FOX News, last night his show recorded above average ratings, pushing it to take top spot as the highest rated cable news show.
So if anyone was wondering if the FOX News audience would react against Hannity ignoring basic journalistic ethics and concealing from his audience his connection to the subject of his reporting... ah who am I kidding, no-one was wondering that. Of course they flocked to watch Hannity spew some more gibberish. This is the same crowd that responded to the discovery of O'Reilly's sex offenses by watching in greater numbers. Tribalism above anything else.
Rachel Maddow still beat Hannity in the 25-54 bracket, as she's done for a while now. Which says something pretty bad about the left as well. I mean, there's actually a few really good sources for left leaning news and opinion right now, but the audience is drawn to the insufferable smugness and over-performance of Maddow? Bleh.
NinthMusketeer wrote: I would be inclined to say using the wrong year is just a typo, from the white house yes but typos do happen. Nothing to really note.
It is just a typo, and a harmless one. I wouldn't comment at all, particularly given the statement itself was generous and well written, except this kind of thing of thing is constantly done by the Trump administration. When these kinds of mistakes become so common place, it starts to show it is no longer just some sloppy work, instead it starts to show a culture that doesn't respect the details of the work.
Ouze wrote: You'll recall not that long ago, the FBI raided a congressman's office. "('[T]he laws of this country allow no place or employment as a sanctuary for crime.".
The idea that the President's personal attorney got raided by the FBI on flimsy evidence is literally pants on head, but it goes well with the "I'm not a Trump defender but (reflexively defends everything Trump does)" mindset that pairs nicely with that comic.
Yep, being a lawyer doesn't make you immune to police investigation. Claims that this is some scary pushing of the boundaries is just more junk pushed by the Trump admin, repeated by his loyalists in the conservative media. All done with no expectation that the claims could stand up to any kind of challenge, but instead done just to surround the Mueller investigation with a general feeling of scandal. It's just constantly blowing smoke, to lead some people to assume that with so much smoke, there must be some sort of fire.
Ouze wrote: Well, they wouldn't have investigated Benghazi 500 times if there wasn't something there!
Hey, four Americans died. Anyone who doesn't support everyone single one of those 500 Benghazi investigations is saying they don't care about the lives of those four Americans.
Hmmm, what's that? Four Americans also died in a bungled raid in Niger? Oh that's a shame. Moving on...
Ouze wrote: Well, they wouldn't have investigated Benghazi 500 times if there wasn't something there!
Hey, four Americans died. Anyone who doesn't support everyone single one of those 500 Benghazi investigations is saying they don't care about the lives of those four Americans.
Hmmm, what's that? Four Americans also died in a bungled raid in Niger? Oh that's a shame. Moving on...
Hmmm... was that bungled raid in Niger blamed on some video during a heated election year? Did anyone continually lie about what may have or have not happened? Yeah... moving on.
EDIT: where's that 'ghazi bat meme that Ouze made for me...
I think the fact all of the Benghazi investigations focused on HRC instead of the actual President at the time, Barack Obama, says all you need to know about why here were 6 of them stretched out so there was one ongoing until... why, right around when Trump won, actually.
Hey, remember when Don Jr met with some Russians over adoptions? Except oh wait Don lied about that it was actually about Russia offering intel on Clinton. The meetings that were set up only by emails? Except oh wait that was also a lie there was also three phone calls. Anyway, we don't know what happened on those phone calls but Don Jr gave us the emails voluntarily. Except oh wait he didn't, actually he only released the emails after the NYT contacted him to inform they were publishing them the next day.
Yeah, that meeting, which we have no reason to ever doubt Don Jr's final descripton of at all. Well the primary Russian contact in that meeting was Natalya Veselnitskaya, a Russian lawyer. While it's pretty clear that meeting was all kinds of shady, one of the stumbling blocks was that Veselnitskaya wasn't as obvious as, say, an active Russian intelligence agent, she was a lawyer who was merely 'connected' to the Russian government. There was a layer of deniability there.
A funny thing happened in Switzerland, though. In December 2016 the chief investigator in to Russian financial crimes in Switzerland was drawn to a meeting in Moscow. When he went there he quickly realised he was being actively recruited to work as a mole within his investigation. The person who worked to recruit him - Veselnitskaya. Because that's her actual job - she's an active Russian intelligence officer.
We still have no idea what happened in that meeting. But we do know that Don Jr, Kushner and Manafort sat down with an active Russian operative, concealed the meeting afterwards, and then were caught telling multiple lies about the meeting.
whembly wrote: Hmmm... was that bungled raid in Niger blamed on some video during a heated election year? Did anyone continually lie about what may have or have not happened? Yeah... moving on.
Yeah, Benghazi was all about the very genuine concern that someone in government might have misled the public about something. Also, there was a long string of lies told in the aftermath of the failed operation in Niger, none of which have led to a single investigation, never mind the never ending circus of investigations we saw for Benghazi.
I mean, you want to sit there saying that Benghazi was about concern over a public official making a misleading statement, while Trump is in office, with more than a 1,000 lies on record and no investigation of a single one... I mean sure you can say that if you want, but don't expect me to do anything but laugh at the claim.
NinthMusketeer wrote: I would be inclined to say using the wrong year is just a typo, from the white house yes but typos do happen. Nothing to really note.
It is just a typo, and a harmless one. I wouldn't comment at all, particularly given the statement itself was generous and well written, except this kind of thing of thing is constantly done by the Trump administration. When these kinds of mistakes become so common place, it starts to show it is no longer just some sloppy work, instead it starts to show a culture that doesn't respect the details of the work.
I think you might have missed the second half of that post:
NinthMusketeer wrote: I would be inclined to say using the wrong year is just a typo, from the white house yes but typos do happen. Nothing to really note.
I would say that, but this is far, far from the only time stuff like this happens. It very quickly goes from honest mistake to incompetence on a level we expect high schoolers to be above.
Sean Hannity also happened to employ Jay Sekulow for legal work. Sekulow is Trump's other lawyer, the only lawyer currently working for Trump in a personal capacity. Hannity also had Sekulow on his show, where he defended Trump and Hannity never mentioned he had a relationship with Sekulow.
So the breaches of journalistic ethics mount up. But beyond that, there's another connection as Hannity also hired Victoria Toensing, who Trump hired along with her husband Joe DiGenova (they withdrew for a conflict of interest not related to Hannity). Outside of the breaches of the journalistic ethics, unless there's only about 6 lawyers in the whole of the continental United States, this is a hell of a coincidence. Or maybe its how Trump and Hannity became so close? "You hired Cohen? I hired Cohen too! And you almost hired Toensing? And we both hired Sekulow! That's so funny, let's be best of friends!"
I didn't miss it, I knew what you were saying. I was trying to expand on it, saying it wasn't just carelessness, that indifference to these small details shows this administration is likely just as sloppy with the big details.
I should have quoted the second part of your post, not the first part, it would have made it more clear I understood your point. My bad.
I mean, you want to sit there saying that Benghazi was about concern over a public official making a misleading statement, while Trump is in office, with more than a 1,000 lies on record and no investigation of a single one... I mean sure you can say that if you want, but don't expect me to do anything but laugh at the claim.
2,000 lies on record, actually, though, with Benghazi, at least one of those Americans somewhat deserved it. Helping in a how-to seminar in how to make someone commit suicide via internet harassment was not in good taste.
Use Incognito mode and you can view anything on the Wapo site (or clear cookies).
On another note...
House GOP demands investigations into James Comey, Hillary Clinton, Andrew McCabe, Sally Yates, Loretta Lynch, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, Dana Boente, the Hamburgler and Big Bird
What is interesting to me is that none of these people currently hold political office, and the only one in any current position of authority (Botente) was put there by Trump's administration.
Vaktathi wrote: Use Incognito mode and you can view anything on the Wapo site (or clear cookies).
On another note...
House GOP demands investigations into James Comey, Hillary Clinton, Andrew McCabe, Sally Yates, Loretta Lynch, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, Dana Boente, the Hamburgler and Big Bird
What is interesting to me is that none of these people currently hold political office, and the only one in any current position of authority (Botente) was put there by Trump's administration.
I've been waiting for this investigation. Finally, the Hamburgler will be brought to justice!
Actually, thanks for the link, it contains the actual letter calling for the investigations.
The GOP wants to prosecute McCabe for "lack of candor"? Did I read that correctly? Spinning the truth is unprofessional (even if members of congress make a career from it), but not illegal. He was right to be fired for it, but lacking perjury, I don't see this going anywhere. Waste of taxpayer dollars, for a smokescreen that won't hide anything.
Ouze wrote: I think the fact all of the Benghazi investigations focused on HRC instead of the actual President at the time, Barack Obama, says all you need to know about why here were 6 of them stretched out so there was one ongoing until... why, right around when Trump won, actually.
I think the fact that there was multiple investigations into HRC that uncovered no evidence of her wrongdoing is simply more proof of the liberal deep state. I know she's guilty of many heinous crimes, but that pesky deep state is covering for their lizard queen.
Vaktathi wrote: Use Incognito mode and you can view anything on the Wapo site (or clear cookies).
On another note...
House GOP demands investigations into James Comey, Hillary Clinton, Andrew McCabe, Sally Yates, Loretta Lynch, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, Dana Boente, the Hamburgler and Big Bird
What is interesting to me is that none of these people currently hold political office, and the only one in any current position of authority (Botente) was put there by Trump's administration.
I've been waiting for this investigation. Finally, the Hamburgler will be brought to justice!
Actually, thanks for the link, it contains the actual letter calling for the investigations.
The GOP wants to prosecute McCabe for "lack of candor"? Did I read that correctly? Spinning the truth is unprofessional (even if members of congress make a career from it), but not illegal. He was right to be fired for it, but lacking perjury, I don't see this going anywhere. Waste of taxpayer dollars, for a smokescreen that won't hide anything.
Meh, they're just House reps, so this is just the usual attempt at attention whoring. Is one of them hoping to get their name known so they can run for Senate or something?
Vaktathi wrote: Use Incognito mode and you can view anything on the Wapo site (or clear cookies).
On another note...
House GOP demands investigations into James Comey, Hillary Clinton, Andrew McCabe, Sally Yates, Loretta Lynch, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, Dana Boente, the Hamburgler and Big Bird
What is interesting to me is that none of these people currently hold political office, and the only one in any current position of authority (Botente) was put there by Trump's administration.
I've been waiting for this investigation. Finally, the Hamburgler will be brought to justice!
Actually, thanks for the link, it contains the actual letter calling for the investigations.
The GOP wants to prosecute McCabe for "lack of candor"? Did I read that correctly? Spinning the truth is unprofessional (even if members of congress make a career from it), but not illegal. He was right to be fired for it, but lacking perjury, I don't see this going anywhere. Waste of taxpayer dollars, for a smokescreen that won't hide anything.
No... McCabe was under oath when the FBI's own IG interviewed and flat out lied. That *is* perjury. Really no different than what got Flynn.
Yeah I don't think I have a strong opinion on McCabe's firing. The push to fire him doesn't appear to be political, it seems to come completely from within OPR and I'm inclined to believe them absent some compelling evidence otherwise. I did read the report they released but, to be frank, I found the whole timeline between what he said compared with Comey to be eye-glazing and confusing. My takeaway was they found Comey to be truthful as a baseline. They can't both be lying.
Firing him a day before he could retire seems a bit... extreme. I can't imagine that happening under the previous administrations, I think he would have been quietly shown the exit.
OTOH I also do see the value in a message job when they want to reinforce how important candor is to the DOJ and FBI.
An interesting piece of light research on the rate at which Trump lies and the kind of lies he tells, compared to the general population.
Unfortunately it's blocking non-subscribers on that one.
The TL/DR is that Trump is a prodigious liar. He lies at a much higher rate than normal liars who lie a lot.
Secondly, an extraordinary number of his lies are intended to harm and damage other people, which is very unusual. Most people tell lies to benefit themselves or other people.
This study is based only on the lies Trump tells in public. If assumed that he also tells lies in private, the guy is a bizarre outlier.
Kilkrazy wrote: If assumed that he also tells lies in private, the guy is a bizarre outlier.
That was the impression I got meeting him. and I'm a fairly odd person myself. You've herd about people who live in their own little worlds? This is it.
sebster wrote:This isn't evidence, of course. But the idea not necessarily of blackmail but at the very least of some kind of undisclosed tie between the two men, maybe financial, seems to me to best suit the behaviour we've observed.
Trump's a bully, a grifter, and he thinks he's smarter than he actually is. In his non-presidential life he had lawyers to save him from his own stupidity but the same doesn't work now. My guess is that whatever connection there is between them is build on the foundation of Trump having thought of some arrangement being profitable for him in some way and now being way over his head. It's not treason, there probably not even need for blackmail. It's just him floundering because the rules are different now and he doesn't have lawyers who can work some magic to get him out of the mess. And as a president he doesn't have multiple compartmentalised companies (or countries in this case) that can be cut loose if they start to sink. His slimy MO just doesn't work on the scale of a whole country, no matter how much he brags about it.
Not only did Trump go against his own National Security team and cancel plans for further sanctions against Russia, Trump's team went and told the Russian embassy of this straight away. Meanwhile they didn't even think to tell Nikki Haley, leading to her making a public statement of upcoming sanctions against Russia. In the embaressment afterwards the Whitehouse tried to throw Haley under the bus, new economic advisor and former coke addict Larry Kudlow said Haley got ahead of the curve and there was some confusion. Haley handled it very well, 'with all due respect I don't get confused'.
While all that drama and mess was kind of fun, the reality remained that Trump's national security team was working in unison towards new sanctions, until Trump came over the top and said there would be no sanctions, and made sure to tell Russia as soon as possible. There really isn't a lot of doubt left about what Trump is doing. We still don't know why Trump is doing it, but the actions speak for themselves.
An interesting piece of light research on the rate at which Trump lies and the kind of lies he tells, compared to the general population.
That was excellent, thanks for the link.
"Just 0.8 percent of the lies told by the college students and 2.4 percent of the lies told by the community members were mean-spirited."
"The most stunning way Trump’s lies differed from our participants’, though, was in their cruelty. An astonishing 50 percent of Trump’s lies were hurtful or disparaging."
That's a really interesting observation. Trump not only lies far more often than normal, he is wildly different in the kinds of lies he tells.
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Vaktathi wrote: What is interesting to me is that none of these people currently hold political office, and the only one in any current position of authority (Botente) was put there by Trump's administration.
Meanwhile Scott Pruitt is in office, and has racked up some of the most extraordinarily waste you will ever see from a government officer. The dude had a sound proof booth installed in his house, he broke the law by failing to tell Congress he was doing it. The guy claimed he needed to travel first class and use charter flights to avoid threats from the public - when asked to demonstrate the threats Pruitt was only able to mention one 30 second instance in an airport lounge that wasn't even heated. He tried to get a driver to put on the sirens to travel through a red light because he was late for dinner - the man leading the convoy who refused was later sacked.
About 20 Republicans have made some noise about Pruitt stepping down, or being fired. But Trump loves Pruitt, so Republicans just meekly accept Pruitt's continued absues of his office.
But, as you note, Republicans in the House are happy to push for criminal investigations in to Comey, McCabe etc.
I've been saying for some years now that the Republican party we see today simply lacks any basic values of governance or even just regular decency. Republicans scoffed at this, and moderates said I was being a bit extreme. But look at what these people do in office. Republicans have entirely abandoned the standards of government, they are directed by nothing but political expedience.
And tax cuts, of course.
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Tannhauser42 wrote: Meh, they're just House reps, so this is just the usual attempt at attention whoring. Is one of them hoping to get their name known so they can run for Senate or something?
In this political environment most Republicans are just trying to hold the office they've already got. More likely they're trying to prove their Trumpian credentials to the Trump wing of the base.
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whembly wrote: No... McCabe was under oath when the FBI's own IG interviewed and flat out lied. That *is* perjury. Really no different than what got Flynn.
Sort of. I agree McCabe 'lacked candor' when questioned under oath, where 'lacked candor' is just the IG expression for 'lied'. I'm no lawyer but it looks like they'd have all the pieces they needed for a perjury case if they wanted to bring on forward.
But the comparison to Flynn is wildly off. Flynn pled down to lying to the FBI, with other, much more serious charges being waived in exchange for Flynn agreeing to work with the FBI.
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Ouze wrote: Yeah I don't think I have a strong opinion on McCabe's firing. The push to fire him doesn't appear to be political, it seems to come completely from within OPR and I'm inclined to believe them absent some compelling evidence otherwise. I did read the report they released but, to be frank, I found the whole timeline between what he said compared with Comey to be eye-glazing and confusing. My takeaway was they found Comey to be truthful as a baseline. They can't both be lying.
Firing him a day before he could retire seems a bit... extreme. I can't imagine that happening under the previous administrations, I think he would have been quietly shown the exit.
I agree entirely, the IG report was non-partisan, I believe it was started before Trump won. It's findings seemed entirely solid. And while McCabe was well out of line in his lies, that would normally be weighed against a life of excellent service, resulting in McCabe being forced out, but with benefits. But of course Trump's engagement in the case is nothing to do with the lie or McCabe's career, it is all about McCabe being part of the FBI leadership which has led an investigation in to him and his connections to Russia. So Trump pushes first for McCabe to lose his benefits, and now threatens legal action.
The great irony is that McCabe was trying to keep his investigation of the Clinton Foundation still going. Comey was concerned the investigation's actions were being noticed and it was tipping the public in to the existence of the investigation, that Comey was worried about an FBI investigation impacting an election is a whole other irony.
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Mario wrote: Trump's a bully, a grifter, and he thinks he's smarter than he actually is. In his non-presidential life he had lawyers to save him from his own stupidity but the same doesn't work now.
It wasn't just that Trump had a lot of lawyers, there was also really no-one gunning for Trump in a serious way. Looking at past law breaking by Trump, authorities would typically look to secure a plea if they decided it was worth the hassle of legal action at all. That wasn't just how Trump was treated, it's how a lot of rich and connected people are treated, unfortunately. Having the resources to get lawyers to drag things out in court was just icing on top of the cake.
But Trump's done two things that have shifted the game. By entering politics Trump has caused fully one half of politics to actually start gunning for his head, who actively push for investigation and who won't settle for plea deals. The second, and bigger change is the nature of Trump's crimes, this isn't breaching water use on a golf course or grifting some suckers out of a tuition fee, this is making deals with foreign governments to subvert elections. This is serious stuff that law enforcement has to take seriously.
In that new game, Trump's much hyped lawyers are having to fight real battles against an enemy that is doing everything it can to win. We're learning, among other things, that Trump's lawyers are actually pretty crap.
My guess is that whatever connection there is between them is build on the foundation of Trump having thought of some arrangement being profitable for him in some way and now being way over his head. It's not treason, there probably not even need for blackmail. It's just him floundering because the rules are different now and he doesn't have lawyers who can work some magic to get him out of the mess. And as a president he doesn't have multiple compartmentalised companies (or countries in this case) that can be cut loose if they start to sink. His slimy MO just doesn't work on the scale of a whole country, no matter how much he brags about it.
Yeah, whatever arrangement was put in place, it's now clear Trump is in way over his head, and unlike other deals gone bad he can't just cut and run from this.
That said, Trump has gotten himself out of big holes before. As idiotic as he was getting himself sunk in his casino disaster, his ability to extricate himself from that mess was quite impressive. There's a phrase 'cunning as a gak rat'. It probably won't be enough, but I'd be surprised if Trump doesn't show some pretty clever strategies through this.
The Scooter Libby thing was pretty clever, for instance. Utterly immoral, of course, but clever.
NinthMusketeer wrote: So what I'm understanding is:
-Take the Democrat & Republican leadership to make two American Football teams
-Have them face off in the Super Bowl
-???
-Russia can't hack us!
I would say take them all and put them into a battle royal, but I am afraid Trump would likely win,...being the only head of state to be UNDEFEATED at Wrestlemania.
just looked up a video of it, due to disbelief, honestly I'm having trouble deciding if this make me more ashamed or proud to be an american...
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feeder wrote: Exactly. Don't gotta think about things when the deep state is behind everything.
I've read a couple of in-depth articles about Trump which included stuff on Cohen. The impression I got is that Cohen is more of a legally qualified hard-arse go-between and bag-man than a "real" lawyer who really does "legal stuff".
I've read a couple of in-depth articles about Trump which included stuff on Cohen. The impression I got is that Cohen is more of a legally qualified hard-arse go-between and bag-man than a "real" lawyer who really does "legal stuff".
That's not a nice thing to say and would probably hurt his feelings if he were to read it.
I've read a couple of in-depth articles about Trump which included stuff on Cohen. The impression I got is that Cohen is more of a legally qualified hard-arse go-between and bag-man than a "real" lawyer who really does "legal stuff".
That's what his "expertise" seems to be from what I've gathered.
I've read a couple of in-depth articles about Trump which included stuff on Cohen. The impression I got is that Cohen is more of a legally qualified hard-arse go-between and bag-man than a "real" lawyer who really does "legal stuff".
That's not a nice thing to say and would probably hurt his feelings if he were to read it.
And why does it being mean make it untrue? Also, welcome to Dakka where some level of meanness if tolerated, especially if it's true.
Trumps tweeting taint is not the visual I needed, but I'll allow it
That said, the whole McCabe thing is...odd. Normally for something like this they'd sweep ot under the rug and just allow him to retire, that they're pursuing it as far as they are is...unusual. Can't say I'd be terribly sympathetic if he was dumb enough to forget the rules of his own game and got caught perjuring himself, but still, not usually the kind of thing that gets referred for prosecution and fired 2 days from retirement and ranted about by the President typically.
The Senate on Thursday narrowly confirmed Rep. Jim Bridenstine (R-Okla.), a former Navy pilot with no scientific credentials and who doesn’t believe humans are primarily to blame for the global climate crisis, to lead NASA.
Bridenstine will become the first elected official to hold the NASA administrator job. He joins a Cabinet already loaded with people who question the near-universal scientific consensus that climate change is real and that human activity is the primary cause.
The final vote ― which was 50-49 along party lines ― came one day after the Senate narrowly advanced Bridenstine’s nomination, thanks to an about-face from Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and a key vote from Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.). Rubio, who in September told Politico that he worried about Bridenstine’s nomination “could be devastating for the space program,” said in a statement Wednesday that he decided to support the nominee in order to avoid “a gaping leadership void” at NASA.
Also, in before some of our more...interesting posters come to complain about climate change being a hoax or not as bad as we say it is
Uh-oh, I see a warning in your future.
It's all FAKE NEWS. What, are we supposed to believe some 'scientists' about the weather? Democratic hacks! The sooner the polar caps melt, if they melt at all, the sooner we'll be able to drill for oil.
I guess if you can’t pass any actual laws to roll back any regulations you don’t like, even when controlling congress and the White House, then appointing people who hate the agency they will head and what they regulate is the next best thing.
d-usa wrote: I guess if you can’t pass any actual laws to roll back any regulations you don’t like, even when controlling congress and the White House, then appointing people who hate the agency they will head and what they regulate is the next best thing.
Jane Fonda for Secretary of Defense!
Honestly that proves my point that the republican party isn't a cohesive party anymore just a bunch of squabbling right wingers who were able to hold it together for the past 8 years because of Obama
d-usa wrote: I guess if you can’t pass any actual laws to roll back any regulations you don’t like, even when controlling congress and the White House, then appointing people who hate the agency they will head and what they regulate is the next best thing.
I've read a couple of in-depth articles about Trump which included stuff on Cohen. The impression I got is that Cohen is more of a legally qualified hard-arse go-between and bag-man than a "real" lawyer who really does "legal stuff".
My legal knowledge is minimal, and my sources for this are entirely left wing*, but Cohen graduated from Thomas Cooley, the law school you attend when absolutely no other law school will take you. He graduated with a 2.0 GPA. So he's got mediocre grades from the worst law school in it's state.
However, the guy isn't just a bagman for Trump. He made himself a very tidy fortune long before he met Trump, he not only owned his own law practice, he also built a very tidy asset base in property and taxi plates. He actually only came in to Trump's circle when he bought a bunch of apartments in one of Trump's buildings, he was already a self-made man. How much of Cohen's business and investment was clean is a whole other question, a lot of his business associates have already done time or been investigated, and his own dealings hint at some very shady stuff. But in terms of just being a bagman for Trump, it's actually a bit more complicated than that.
*because the right wing is not talking about Cohen at all.
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whembly wrote: *trying to legitimately use "taint" every day!
I wouldn't last a single day on the FBI 'taint team', before they kicked me off for snickering.
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Vaktathi wrote: That said, the whole McCabe thing is...odd. Normally for something like this they'd sweep ot under the rug and just allow him to retire, that they're pursuing it as far as they are is...unusual. Can't say I'd be terribly sympathetic if he was dumb enough to forget the rules of his own game and got caught perjuring himself, but still, not usually the kind of thing that gets referred for prosecution and fired 2 days from retirement and ranted about by the President typically.
That's how it often works in countries where political enemies are routinely prosecuted through government control of the judiciary. It is actually pretty rare for there to be no crime at all. We all think of the show trials of Soviet Russia but those were an exception in their level of fiction. Rather most of the time there's some kind of crime, and the actual injustice is blowing that crime way out of proportion, ignoring all mitigating circumstances and previous good standing and service to the country, and pursuing that minor crime to the fullest extent possible. So an offense that would generally be deemed too insignificant to warrant prosecution, or maybe produce a fine or suspended sentence is instead given long jail sentences.
d-usa wrote: I guess if you can’t pass any actual laws to roll back any regulations you don’t like, even when controlling congress and the White House, then appointing people who hate the agency they will head and what they regulate is the next best thing.
Yep, early on it looked like Trump was just hiring people he knew to wherever he could fit them in, at least to me that's what it looked like. Now its becoming clear that a lack of qualifications and actual hostility to even understanding their office is actually a primary recruiting requirement.
Has everyone been following the speculation about whether Cohen will flip on Trump? There's a bunch of people from in and around Trump's circle arguing both sides, and honestly its all just a bunch of talk at this point, no-one really knows what Cohen will do. But there's one very interesting thing - the debate is built entirely around Cohen's character and the pressure Mueller will be able to bring, none of the conversation is about whether there is anything to flip over. That Cohen has done stuff that could land him in federal prison is just assumed, and the idea that he could add valuable testimony to prosecutions of Trump crimes is similarly assumed.
What's most amazing about this is that Michael Avenatti first brought up that conversation as a lawyer's trick. Well before the FBI raid, when it was just campaign finance breaches being talked about, Avenatti mentioned Cohen flipping. He mentioned it just as a ploy, to get people talking past the sale, as the saying goes, tp get them to assume Cohen and Trump guilt, by focusing on a question where those things are already assumed. But now Trump's own lawyers have stumbled in to doing the same thing.
It's amazing how dumb these guys are. What's less amazing is that they all know Cohen and Trump have done a whole lot of illegal stuff.
whembly wrote: We don't have all the memos that Comey leaked... because the ones published today shouldn't have warranted a special counsel:
False framing. The memos were not why the special counsel was created. The special counsel was created because Trump just fired the FBI director while that director was investigating the conduct of Trump's campaign and building legal cases against some of its senior staff. Obviously you can't entrust that investigation to the guy Trump then appoints to the role.
I mean, just consider, from a completely hypothetical position, that Trump is an honest and forthright man who genuinely wants a clean investigation so that any wrongdoing can be punished and all honorable men would be fully vindicated. I know it's a stretch but go with me on this. In that situation, Trump would be in an impossible position, any appointment he made to head the FBI would be seen as completely compromised, and any findings would be considered tainted.
sebster wrote: Has everyone been following the speculation about whether Cohen will flip on Trump? There's a bunch of people from in and around Trump's circle arguing both sides, and honestly its all just a bunch of talk at this point, no-one really knows what Cohen will do. But there's one very interesting thing - the debate is built entirely around Cohen's character and the pressure Mueller will be able to bring, none of the conversation is about whether there is anything to flip over. That Cohen has done stuff that could land him in federal prison is just assumed, and the idea that he could add valuable testimony to prosecutions of Trump crimes is similarly assumed.
What's most amazing about this is that Michael Avenatti first brought up that conversation as a lawyer's trick. Well before the FBI raid, when it was just campaign finance breaches being talked about, Avenatti mentioned Cohen flipping. He mentioned it just as a ploy, to get people talking past the sale, as the saying goes, tp get them to assume Cohen and Trump guilt, by focusing on a question where those things are already assumed. But now Trump's own lawyers have stumbled in to doing the same thing.
It's amazing how dumb these guys are. What's less amazing is that they all know Cohen and Trump have done a whole lot of illegal stuff.
I think since Cohen is supposedly facing 30 years in prison, and considering his age, I don't think he's willing to give up the rest of his life for trump, and will jump at any chance for a deal once he's thought it over.
The single most important thing I have learned today is that Robert Mueller's middle name is Swan.
Also, Trump is currently on twitter accusing Comey of leaking the memos. It's crap. These memos were pursued by Congress, when DoJ didn't comply Nunes, Gowdy & the rest of the superfriends threatened to indict Wray and Rosenstein if they didn't get them. DoJ handed over the memos, and within an hour of doing so they leaked to the press.
Wolfblade wrote: I think since Cohen is supposedly facing 30 years in prison, and considering his age, I don't think he's willing to give up the rest of his life for trump, and will jump at any chance for a deal once he's thought it over.
Possibly. But that answer only makes sense if we assume Cohen has committed crimes and there will be stuff to give up on Trump because Trump has also committed crimes. Trump's team isn't supposed to be admitting that, but they've done so implicitly by talking about whether Cohen will flip.
That's my point. Trump's team have already conceded, by default, that crimes have been committed.
This has been the craziest reality show Ive ever watched.
Is there any news on the peace talks for Korea? Other than them talking about denuclearization and actually talking about signing a peace treaty. Seems crazy, since I thought both of those things were how the North survived so long?
My guess is North Korea will talk it up, then make crazy demands (I.e. control over South Korea or something) or trump will say something dumb, then peace talks fall apart and North Korea claims it's the US's fault. They don't want to give up their nuke program OR end the war because that's how they've kept power for so long.
Wolfblade wrote: My guess is North Korea will talk it up, then make crazy demands (I.e. control over South Korea or something) or trump will say something dumb, then peace talks fall apart and North Korea claims it's the US's fault. They don't want to give up their nuke program OR end the war because that's how they've kept power for so long.
If that was the case, then why bother talking at all in the first place?
Wolfblade wrote: My guess is North Korea will talk it up, then make crazy demands (I.e. control over South Korea or something) or trump will say something dumb, then peace talks fall apart and North Korea claims it's the US's fault. They don't want to give up their nuke program OR end the war because that's how they've kept power for so long.
People forget there was a deal made with NK to shut down its nuclear facilities in the mid-90s. It fell apart in the early 00s over details of exactly how much non-nuclear power generation was to be given in place of the shuttered nuclear facility.
It's possible we'll get a similar deal here, with sanctions relief and conventional fuels being given to NK in exchange for NK agreeing to end its nuclear program. And signs are good, at least at this early stage, that NK might be serious about a peace treaty, as they've already conceded the pre-condition that American troops must leave the peninsula as part of a peace treaty.
But then, just like last time just because we get something it doesn't mean it will last. And it may never even get there, Trump has already pissed off Japan and left them outside of the discussion by agreeing to talks without talking to Japan and their key issue of returning abducted citizens. Then after meeting Abe suddenly the abducted people were back on the list of items that must be resolved, so who knows where that is at.
All that said, one thing that actually gives me a weird kind of hope for these debates is Trump's incompetence and indifference to the mess of issues to be resolved. It's given NK and SK far more power to actually settle the matter themselves, Trump just wants to say he made the deal so he might end up just something of a blank cheque for the two Koreas to bank in order to reach terms. But of course maybe not.
North Korea has a long history of rapid shifts between reconciliation and aggressive posturing. They like the idea of everyone else jumping to their tune. Not saying they're doing it this time (limited evidence points to some genuine efforts on their part), but it wouldn't be out of the ordinary.
Wolfblade wrote: My guess is North Korea will talk it up, then make crazy demands (I.e. control over South Korea or something) or trump will say something dumb, then peace talks fall apart and North Korea claims it's the US's fault. They don't want to give up their nuke program OR end the war because that's how they've kept power for so long.
If that was the case, then why bother talking at all in the first place?
Because they think they might be able to get something out of it
Wolfblade wrote: My guess is North Korea will talk it up, then make crazy demands (I.e. control over South Korea or something) or trump will say something dumb, then peace talks fall apart and North Korea claims it's the US's fault. They don't want to give up their nuke program OR end the war because that's how they've kept power for so long.
If that was the case, then why bother talking at all in the first place?
Because they think they might be able to get something out of it
Or more cynically perhaps its plain stalling. Trump's rethoric just might have given them pause, it happened under Bush Jr. too, they tend to feel more threatened and step up diplomacy combined with weapons development. So then this would be just a blatant stalling tactic while they quickly apply upgrades and expand their missile/nuke arsenal. There is a significant difference between a country that might have one or two nukes and one that managed to gather a dozen or so at least.
The Democratic Party has filed a law suit against Trump & friends for interfering in the 2016 election through connections to Russia.
Spoiler:
The Democratic National Committee filed a multimillion-dollar lawsuit Friday against the Russian government, the Trump campaign and the WikiLeaks organization alleging a far-reaching conspiracy to disrupt the 2016 campaign and tilt the election to Donald Trump.
The complaint, filed in federal district court in Manhattan, alleges that top Trump campaign officials conspired with the Russian government and its military spy agency to hurt Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and help Trump by hacking the computer networks of the Democratic Party and disseminating stolen material found there.
“During the 2016 presidential campaign, Russia launched an all-out assault on our democracy, and it found a willing and active partner in Donald Trump’s campaign,” DNC Chairman Tom Perez said in a statement.
“This constituted an act of unprecedented treachery: the campaign of a nominee for President of the United States in league with a hostile foreign power to bolster its own chance to win the presidency,” he said.
The case asserts that the Russian hacking campaign — combined with Trump associates’ contacts with Russia and the campaign’s public cheerleading of the hacks — amounted to an illegal conspiracy to interfere in the election that caused serious damage to the Democratic Party.
Senate investigators and prosecutors for special counsel Robert S. Mueller III are still investigating whether Trump associates coordinated with the Russian efforts. Last month, House Intelligence Committee Republicans said they found no evidence that President Trump and his affiliates colluded with Russian officials to sway the election or that the Kremlin sought to help him — a conclusion rejected by the panel’s Democrats.
Trump says allegations of collusion are a ’hoax’
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President Trump on April 18 dismissed allegations that his campaign colluded with Russia in the 2016 presidential election. (The Washington Post)
The president has repeatedly rejected any collusion or improper activity by his campaign. This week, he referred again in a tweet to the “phony Russia investigation where, by the way, there was NO COLLUSION (except by the Dems).”
Suing a foreign country may present legal challenges for the Democrats, in part because other nations have immunity from most U.S. lawsuits. The DNC’s complaint argues Russia is not entitled to the protection because the hack constituted a trespass on the party’s private property.
The lawsuit argues that Russia is not entitled to sovereign immunity in this case because “the DNC claims arise out of Russia’s trespass on to the DNC’s private servers . . . in order to steal trade secrets and commit economic espionage.”
The lawsuit echoes a similar legal tactic that the Democratic Party used during the Watergate scandal. In 1972, the DNC filed suit against then-President Richard Nixon’s reelection committee seeking $1 million in damages for the break-in at Democratic headquarters in the Watergate building.
The suit was denounced at the time by Nixon’s attorney general, John Mitchell, who called it a case of “sheer demagoguery” by the DNC. But the civil action brought by the DNC’s then-chairman, Lawrence F. O’Brien, was ultimately successful, yielding a $750,000 settlement from the Nixon campaign that was reached on the day in 1974 that Nixon left office.
The suit filed Friday seeks millions of dollars in compensation to offset damage it claims the party suffered from the hacks. The DNC argues that the cyberattack undermined its ability to communicate with voters, collect donations and operate effectively as its employees faced personal harassment and, in some cases, death threats.
The suit also seeks an acknowledgment from the defendants that they conspired to infiltrate the Democrats’ computers, steal information and disseminate it to influence the election.
To support its case, the lawsuit offers a detailed narrative of the DNC hacks, as well as episodes in which key Trump aides are alleged to have been told Russia held damaging information about Clinton.
[Inside Trump’s financial ties to Russia and his unusual flattery of Vladimir Putin]
Russia engaged in a “brazen attack on U.S. soil” the party alleges, a campaign that began with the cyberhack of its computer networks in 2015 and 2016. Trump campaign officials received repeated outreach from Russia, the suit says.
“Rather than report these repeated messages and communications that Russia intended to interfere in the U.S. election, the Trump campaign and its agents gleefully welcomed Russia’s help,” the party argues
Ultimately, Trump’s associates entered into an agreement with Russian agents “to promote Donald Trump’s candidacy through illegal means,” the suit concludes.
The suit does not name Trump as a defendant. Instead, it targets various Trump aides who met with people believed to be affiliated with Russia during the campaign, including the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., his son-in-law Jared Kushner, his campaign chairman Paul Manafort and Manafort’s deputy, Rick Gates.
Manafort and Gates were charged with money-laundering, fraud and tax evasion in a case brought by special prosecutors last year. In February, Gates pleaded guilty to conspiracy and lying to the FBI and is cooperating with investigators. Manafort has pleaded not guilty.
The DNC lawsuit also names as a defendant the Russian military intelligence service, the GRU, which has been accused by the U.S. government of orchestrating the hacks, as well as WikiLeaks, which published the DNC’s stolen emails, and the group’s founder Julian Assange.
The lawsuit was also filed against Roger Stone, the longtime Trump confidante who claimed during the campaign that he was in contact with Assange.
[Roger Stone claimed contact with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in 2016, according to two associates]
The Trump advisers and associates have denied assisting Russia in its hacking campaign. Stone has denied any communication with Assange or advance knowledge of the document dumps by WikiLeaks, saying his comments about Assange were jokes or exaggerations.
The DNC lawsuit argues that the Russian government and the GRU violated a series of laws by orchestrating the secret intrusion into the Democrats’ computer systems, including statutes to protect trade secrets, prohibit wire tapping and prevent trespassing.
The party said the Trump defendants committed conspiracy through their interaction with Russian agents and their public encouragement of the hacking, with the campaign itself acting as a racketeering enterprise promoting illegal activity.
The complaint was filed on behalf of the party by the law firm of Cohen Milstein.
The suit contains previously undisclosed details, including that the specific date when the Russians breached the DNC computer system: July 27, 2015, according to forensic evidence cited in the filing.
The analysis shows the system was breached again on April 18, 2016. The hackers began siphoning documents and information from DNC systems on April 22. The suit notes that four days later, Trump foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos was informed by Josef Mifsud, a London-based professor, that the Russians were in possession of thousands of emails that could be damaging to Clinton.
[Top campaign officials knew of Trump adviser’s outreach to Russia]
The list of defendants in the suit includes Papadopoulos and Mifsud, as well as Aras and Emin Agalarov, the wealthy Russian father and son who hosted the Miss Universe Pageant in Moscow in 2013. Trump, who owned the pageant, attended the event.
The Agalarovs also played a role in arranging a meeting for a Russian lawyer at Trump Tower in New York in 2016, at which Donald Trump Jr. had expected to be given damaging information about Clinton.
Scott Balber, an attorney for the Agalarovs, said the allegations about his clients were “frivolous” and “a publicity stunt.”
“They had absolutely nothing to do with any alleged hacking of any Democratic computer system or any interference in the US election.”
The suit alleges that Trump’s personal and professional ties to Russia helped foster the conspiracy.
The DNC’s lawyers wrote that “long standing personal professional and financial ties to Russia and numerous individuals linked to the Russian government provided fertile ground for a conspiracy between the defendants to interfere in the 2016 elections.”
The lawsuit describes how the then-Soviet Union paid for Trump to travel Moscow in the 1980s.
It also details the history of Manafort and Gates, who worked for Russian-friendly factions in the Ukraine before joining the Trump campaign. Prosecutors have said they were in contact in 2016 with Konstantin Kilimnik, a former linguist in the Russian army who the FBI has alleged had ties to Russian intelligence.
Spoiler-quoted for the work blocked.
Is this just bluster or are the Democrats seriously intending to go forward with this?
What do they have to lose? They aren't as far ahead in the midterm polls as they theoretically should be, so thy probably won't gain control of Congress, and they need Republican support to impeach Trump. If this causes any conflict within the GOP on how to respond, then it accomplished something. Russia and Wikileaks aside, because those won't go anywhere.
AlmightyWalrus wrote: The Democratic Party has filed a law suit against Trump & friends for interfering in the 2016 election through connections to Russia.
Spoiler:
The Democratic National Committee filed a multimillion-dollar lawsuit Friday against the Russian government, the Trump campaign and the WikiLeaks organization alleging a far-reaching conspiracy to disrupt the 2016 campaign and tilt the election to Donald Trump.
The complaint, filed in federal district court in Manhattan, alleges that top Trump campaign officials conspired with the Russian government and its military spy agency to hurt Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and help Trump by hacking the computer networks of the Democratic Party and disseminating stolen material found there.
“During the 2016 presidential campaign, Russia launched an all-out assault on our democracy, and it found a willing and active partner in Donald Trump’s campaign,” DNC Chairman Tom Perez said in a statement.
“This constituted an act of unprecedented treachery: the campaign of a nominee for President of the United States in league with a hostile foreign power to bolster its own chance to win the presidency,” he said.
The case asserts that the Russian hacking campaign — combined with Trump associates’ contacts with Russia and the campaign’s public cheerleading of the hacks — amounted to an illegal conspiracy to interfere in the election that caused serious damage to the Democratic Party.
Senate investigators and prosecutors for special counsel Robert S. Mueller III are still investigating whether Trump associates coordinated with the Russian efforts. Last month, House Intelligence Committee Republicans said they found no evidence that President Trump and his affiliates colluded with Russian officials to sway the election or that the Kremlin sought to help him — a conclusion rejected by the panel’s Democrats.
Trump says allegations of collusion are a ’hoax’
0:26 / 2:38
mute
cc disabled
President Trump on April 18 dismissed allegations that his campaign colluded with Russia in the 2016 presidential election. (The Washington Post)
The president has repeatedly rejected any collusion or improper activity by his campaign. This week, he referred again in a tweet to the “phony Russia investigation where, by the way, there was NO COLLUSION (except by the Dems).”
Suing a foreign country may present legal challenges for the Democrats, in part because other nations have immunity from most U.S. lawsuits. The DNC’s complaint argues Russia is not entitled to the protection because the hack constituted a trespass on the party’s private property.
The lawsuit argues that Russia is not entitled to sovereign immunity in this case because “the DNC claims arise out of Russia’s trespass on to the DNC’s private servers . . . in order to steal trade secrets and commit economic espionage.”
The lawsuit echoes a similar legal tactic that the Democratic Party used during the Watergate scandal. In 1972, the DNC filed suit against then-President Richard Nixon’s reelection committee seeking $1 million in damages for the break-in at Democratic headquarters in the Watergate building.
The suit was denounced at the time by Nixon’s attorney general, John Mitchell, who called it a case of “sheer demagoguery” by the DNC. But the civil action brought by the DNC’s then-chairman, Lawrence F. O’Brien, was ultimately successful, yielding a $750,000 settlement from the Nixon campaign that was reached on the day in 1974 that Nixon left office.
The suit filed Friday seeks millions of dollars in compensation to offset damage it claims the party suffered from the hacks. The DNC argues that the cyberattack undermined its ability to communicate with voters, collect donations and operate effectively as its employees faced personal harassment and, in some cases, death threats.
The suit also seeks an acknowledgment from the defendants that they conspired to infiltrate the Democrats’ computers, steal information and disseminate it to influence the election.
To support its case, the lawsuit offers a detailed narrative of the DNC hacks, as well as episodes in which key Trump aides are alleged to have been told Russia held damaging information about Clinton.
[Inside Trump’s financial ties to Russia and his unusual flattery of Vladimir Putin]
Russia engaged in a “brazen attack on U.S. soil” the party alleges, a campaign that began with the cyberhack of its computer networks in 2015 and 2016. Trump campaign officials received repeated outreach from Russia, the suit says.
“Rather than report these repeated messages and communications that Russia intended to interfere in the U.S. election, the Trump campaign and its agents gleefully welcomed Russia’s help,” the party argues
Ultimately, Trump’s associates entered into an agreement with Russian agents “to promote Donald Trump’s candidacy through illegal means,” the suit concludes.
The suit does not name Trump as a defendant. Instead, it targets various Trump aides who met with people believed to be affiliated with Russia during the campaign, including the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., his son-in-law Jared Kushner, his campaign chairman Paul Manafort and Manafort’s deputy, Rick Gates.
Manafort and Gates were charged with money-laundering, fraud and tax evasion in a case brought by special prosecutors last year. In February, Gates pleaded guilty to conspiracy and lying to the FBI and is cooperating with investigators. Manafort has pleaded not guilty.
The DNC lawsuit also names as a defendant the Russian military intelligence service, the GRU, which has been accused by the U.S. government of orchestrating the hacks, as well as WikiLeaks, which published the DNC’s stolen emails, and the group’s founder Julian Assange.
The lawsuit was also filed against Roger Stone, the longtime Trump confidante who claimed during the campaign that he was in contact with Assange.
[Roger Stone claimed contact with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in 2016, according to two associates]
The Trump advisers and associates have denied assisting Russia in its hacking campaign. Stone has denied any communication with Assange or advance knowledge of the document dumps by WikiLeaks, saying his comments about Assange were jokes or exaggerations.
The DNC lawsuit argues that the Russian government and the GRU violated a series of laws by orchestrating the secret intrusion into the Democrats’ computer systems, including statutes to protect trade secrets, prohibit wire tapping and prevent trespassing.
The party said the Trump defendants committed conspiracy through their interaction with Russian agents and their public encouragement of the hacking, with the campaign itself acting as a racketeering enterprise promoting illegal activity.
The complaint was filed on behalf of the party by the law firm of Cohen Milstein.
The suit contains previously undisclosed details, including that the specific date when the Russians breached the DNC computer system: July 27, 2015, according to forensic evidence cited in the filing.
The analysis shows the system was breached again on April 18, 2016. The hackers began siphoning documents and information from DNC systems on April 22. The suit notes that four days later, Trump foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos was informed by Josef Mifsud, a London-based professor, that the Russians were in possession of thousands of emails that could be damaging to Clinton.
[Top campaign officials knew of Trump adviser’s outreach to Russia]
The list of defendants in the suit includes Papadopoulos and Mifsud, as well as Aras and Emin Agalarov, the wealthy Russian father and son who hosted the Miss Universe Pageant in Moscow in 2013. Trump, who owned the pageant, attended the event.
The Agalarovs also played a role in arranging a meeting for a Russian lawyer at Trump Tower in New York in 2016, at which Donald Trump Jr. had expected to be given damaging information about Clinton.
Scott Balber, an attorney for the Agalarovs, said the allegations about his clients were “frivolous” and “a publicity stunt.”
“They had absolutely nothing to do with any alleged hacking of any Democratic computer system or any interference in the US election.”
The suit alleges that Trump’s personal and professional ties to Russia helped foster the conspiracy.
The DNC’s lawyers wrote that “long standing personal professional and financial ties to Russia and numerous individuals linked to the Russian government provided fertile ground for a conspiracy between the defendants to interfere in the 2016 elections.”
The lawsuit describes how the then-Soviet Union paid for Trump to travel Moscow in the 1980s.
It also details the history of Manafort and Gates, who worked for Russian-friendly factions in the Ukraine before joining the Trump campaign. Prosecutors have said they were in contact in 2016 with Konstantin Kilimnik, a former linguist in the Russian army who the FBI has alleged had ties to Russian intelligence.
Spoiler-quoted for the work blocked.
Is this just bluster or are the Democrats seriously intending to go forward with this?
AlmightyWalrus wrote: The Democratic Party has filed a law suit against Trump & friends for interfering in the 2016 election through connections to Russia.
Spoiler:
The Democratic National Committee filed a multimillion-dollar lawsuit Friday against the Russian government, the Trump campaign and the WikiLeaks organization alleging a far-reaching conspiracy to disrupt the 2016 campaign and tilt the election to Donald Trump.
The complaint, filed in federal district court in Manhattan, alleges that top Trump campaign officials conspired with the Russian government and its military spy agency to hurt Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and help Trump by hacking the computer networks of the Democratic Party and disseminating stolen material found there.
“During the 2016 presidential campaign, Russia launched an all-out assault on our democracy, and it found a willing and active partner in Donald Trump’s campaign,” DNC Chairman Tom Perez said in a statement.
“This constituted an act of unprecedented treachery: the campaign of a nominee for President of the United States in league with a hostile foreign power to bolster its own chance to win the presidency,” he said.
The case asserts that the Russian hacking campaign — combined with Trump associates’ contacts with Russia and the campaign’s public cheerleading of the hacks — amounted to an illegal conspiracy to interfere in the election that caused serious damage to the Democratic Party.
Senate investigators and prosecutors for special counsel Robert S. Mueller III are still investigating whether Trump associates coordinated with the Russian efforts. Last month, House Intelligence Committee Republicans said they found no evidence that President Trump and his affiliates colluded with Russian officials to sway the election or that the Kremlin sought to help him — a conclusion rejected by the panel’s Democrats.
Trump says allegations of collusion are a ’hoax’
0:26 / 2:38
mute
cc disabled
President Trump on April 18 dismissed allegations that his campaign colluded with Russia in the 2016 presidential election. (The Washington Post)
The president has repeatedly rejected any collusion or improper activity by his campaign. This week, he referred again in a tweet to the “phony Russia investigation where, by the way, there was NO COLLUSION (except by the Dems).”
Suing a foreign country may present legal challenges for the Democrats, in part because other nations have immunity from most U.S. lawsuits. The DNC’s complaint argues Russia is not entitled to the protection because the hack constituted a trespass on the party’s private property.
The lawsuit argues that Russia is not entitled to sovereign immunity in this case because “the DNC claims arise out of Russia’s trespass on to the DNC’s private servers . . . in order to steal trade secrets and commit economic espionage.”
The lawsuit echoes a similar legal tactic that the Democratic Party used during the Watergate scandal. In 1972, the DNC filed suit against then-President Richard Nixon’s reelection committee seeking $1 million in damages for the break-in at Democratic headquarters in the Watergate building.
The suit was denounced at the time by Nixon’s attorney general, John Mitchell, who called it a case of “sheer demagoguery” by the DNC. But the civil action brought by the DNC’s then-chairman, Lawrence F. O’Brien, was ultimately successful, yielding a $750,000 settlement from the Nixon campaign that was reached on the day in 1974 that Nixon left office.
The suit filed Friday seeks millions of dollars in compensation to offset damage it claims the party suffered from the hacks. The DNC argues that the cyberattack undermined its ability to communicate with voters, collect donations and operate effectively as its employees faced personal harassment and, in some cases, death threats.
The suit also seeks an acknowledgment from the defendants that they conspired to infiltrate the Democrats’ computers, steal information and disseminate it to influence the election.
To support its case, the lawsuit offers a detailed narrative of the DNC hacks, as well as episodes in which key Trump aides are alleged to have been told Russia held damaging information about Clinton.
[Inside Trump’s financial ties to Russia and his unusual flattery of Vladimir Putin]
Russia engaged in a “brazen attack on U.S. soil” the party alleges, a campaign that began with the cyberhack of its computer networks in 2015 and 2016. Trump campaign officials received repeated outreach from Russia, the suit says.
“Rather than report these repeated messages and communications that Russia intended to interfere in the U.S. election, the Trump campaign and its agents gleefully welcomed Russia’s help,” the party argues
Ultimately, Trump’s associates entered into an agreement with Russian agents “to promote Donald Trump’s candidacy through illegal means,” the suit concludes.
The suit does not name Trump as a defendant. Instead, it targets various Trump aides who met with people believed to be affiliated with Russia during the campaign, including the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., his son-in-law Jared Kushner, his campaign chairman Paul Manafort and Manafort’s deputy, Rick Gates.
Manafort and Gates were charged with money-laundering, fraud and tax evasion in a case brought by special prosecutors last year. In February, Gates pleaded guilty to conspiracy and lying to the FBI and is cooperating with investigators. Manafort has pleaded not guilty.
The DNC lawsuit also names as a defendant the Russian military intelligence service, the GRU, which has been accused by the U.S. government of orchestrating the hacks, as well as WikiLeaks, which published the DNC’s stolen emails, and the group’s founder Julian Assange.
The lawsuit was also filed against Roger Stone, the longtime Trump confidante who claimed during the campaign that he was in contact with Assange.
[Roger Stone claimed contact with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in 2016, according to two associates]
The Trump advisers and associates have denied assisting Russia in its hacking campaign. Stone has denied any communication with Assange or advance knowledge of the document dumps by WikiLeaks, saying his comments about Assange were jokes or exaggerations.
The DNC lawsuit argues that the Russian government and the GRU violated a series of laws by orchestrating the secret intrusion into the Democrats’ computer systems, including statutes to protect trade secrets, prohibit wire tapping and prevent trespassing.
The party said the Trump defendants committed conspiracy through their interaction with Russian agents and their public encouragement of the hacking, with the campaign itself acting as a racketeering enterprise promoting illegal activity.
The complaint was filed on behalf of the party by the law firm of Cohen Milstein.
The suit contains previously undisclosed details, including that the specific date when the Russians breached the DNC computer system: July 27, 2015, according to forensic evidence cited in the filing.
The analysis shows the system was breached again on April 18, 2016. The hackers began siphoning documents and information from DNC systems on April 22. The suit notes that four days later, Trump foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos was informed by Josef Mifsud, a London-based professor, that the Russians were in possession of thousands of emails that could be damaging to Clinton.
[Top campaign officials knew of Trump adviser’s outreach to Russia]
The list of defendants in the suit includes Papadopoulos and Mifsud, as well as Aras and Emin Agalarov, the wealthy Russian father and son who hosted the Miss Universe Pageant in Moscow in 2013. Trump, who owned the pageant, attended the event.
The Agalarovs also played a role in arranging a meeting for a Russian lawyer at Trump Tower in New York in 2016, at which Donald Trump Jr. had expected to be given damaging information about Clinton.
Scott Balber, an attorney for the Agalarovs, said the allegations about his clients were “frivolous” and “a publicity stunt.”
“They had absolutely nothing to do with any alleged hacking of any Democratic computer system or any interference in the US election.”
The suit alleges that Trump’s personal and professional ties to Russia helped foster the conspiracy.
The DNC’s lawyers wrote that “long standing personal professional and financial ties to Russia and numerous individuals linked to the Russian government provided fertile ground for a conspiracy between the defendants to interfere in the 2016 elections.”
The lawsuit describes how the then-Soviet Union paid for Trump to travel Moscow in the 1980s.
It also details the history of Manafort and Gates, who worked for Russian-friendly factions in the Ukraine before joining the Trump campaign. Prosecutors have said they were in contact in 2016 with Konstantin Kilimnik, a former linguist in the Russian army who the FBI has alleged had ties to Russian intelligence.
Spoiler-quoted for the work blocked.
Is this just bluster or are the Democrats seriously intending to go forward with this?
They've been planning this since the election. It's the whole reason they've investigated, attacked, and flipped every alley he has. Now they've nailed his higher ups and his lawyers, they've laid the ground for an impeachment trial. The hope is that will cow Pence from attempting to continue trump's policies. If that doesn't work they impeach him based on his connection to trump. It's a big chance for a win if they can keep this senate majority.
Everyone... please read the DNC's court documents...
Its... freaking hysterical and will likely be thrown out before the discovery phase.
The main thrust of the complaint is, I think, is when the DNC’s servers were hacked. It first happened in July 2015 and then again in April 2016... which they say impacted their own ability to fundraise successfully and communicate confidentially with others.
Are these the same servers that the DNC refused to let the FBI inspect?
AlmightyWalrus wrote: The Democratic Party has filed a law suit against Trump & friends for interfering in the 2016 election through connections to Russia.
Spoiler:
The Democratic National Committee filed a multimillion-dollar lawsuit Friday against the Russian government, the Trump campaign and the WikiLeaks organization alleging a far-reaching conspiracy to disrupt the 2016 campaign and tilt the election to Donald Trump.
The complaint, filed in federal district court in Manhattan, alleges that top Trump campaign officials conspired with the Russian government and its military spy agency to hurt Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and help Trump by hacking the computer networks of the Democratic Party and disseminating stolen material found there.
“During the 2016 presidential campaign, Russia launched an all-out assault on our democracy, and it found a willing and active partner in Donald Trump’s campaign,” DNC Chairman Tom Perez said in a statement.
“This constituted an act of unprecedented treachery: the campaign of a nominee for President of the United States in league with a hostile foreign power to bolster its own chance to win the presidency,” he said.
The case asserts that the Russian hacking campaign — combined with Trump associates’ contacts with Russia and the campaign’s public cheerleading of the hacks — amounted to an illegal conspiracy to interfere in the election that caused serious damage to the Democratic Party.
Senate investigators and prosecutors for special counsel Robert S. Mueller III are still investigating whether Trump associates coordinated with the Russian efforts. Last month, House Intelligence Committee Republicans said they found no evidence that President Trump and his affiliates colluded with Russian officials to sway the election or that the Kremlin sought to help him — a conclusion rejected by the panel’s Democrats.
Trump says allegations of collusion are a ’hoax’
0:26 / 2:38
mute
cc disabled
President Trump on April 18 dismissed allegations that his campaign colluded with Russia in the 2016 presidential election. (The Washington Post)
The president has repeatedly rejected any collusion or improper activity by his campaign. This week, he referred again in a tweet to the “phony Russia investigation where, by the way, there was NO COLLUSION (except by the Dems).”
Suing a foreign country may present legal challenges for the Democrats, in part because other nations have immunity from most U.S. lawsuits. The DNC’s complaint argues Russia is not entitled to the protection because the hack constituted a trespass on the party’s private property.
The lawsuit argues that Russia is not entitled to sovereign immunity in this case because “the DNC claims arise out of Russia’s trespass on to the DNC’s private servers . . . in order to steal trade secrets and commit economic espionage.”
The lawsuit echoes a similar legal tactic that the Democratic Party used during the Watergate scandal. In 1972, the DNC filed suit against then-President Richard Nixon’s reelection committee seeking $1 million in damages for the break-in at Democratic headquarters in the Watergate building.
The suit was denounced at the time by Nixon’s attorney general, John Mitchell, who called it a case of “sheer demagoguery” by the DNC. But the civil action brought by the DNC’s then-chairman, Lawrence F. O’Brien, was ultimately successful, yielding a $750,000 settlement from the Nixon campaign that was reached on the day in 1974 that Nixon left office.
The suit filed Friday seeks millions of dollars in compensation to offset damage it claims the party suffered from the hacks. The DNC argues that the cyberattack undermined its ability to communicate with voters, collect donations and operate effectively as its employees faced personal harassment and, in some cases, death threats.
The suit also seeks an acknowledgment from the defendants that they conspired to infiltrate the Democrats’ computers, steal information and disseminate it to influence the election.
To support its case, the lawsuit offers a detailed narrative of the DNC hacks, as well as episodes in which key Trump aides are alleged to have been told Russia held damaging information about Clinton.
[Inside Trump’s financial ties to Russia and his unusual flattery of Vladimir Putin]
Russia engaged in a “brazen attack on U.S. soil” the party alleges, a campaign that began with the cyberhack of its computer networks in 2015 and 2016. Trump campaign officials received repeated outreach from Russia, the suit says.
“Rather than report these repeated messages and communications that Russia intended to interfere in the U.S. election, the Trump campaign and its agents gleefully welcomed Russia’s help,” the party argues
Ultimately, Trump’s associates entered into an agreement with Russian agents “to promote Donald Trump’s candidacy through illegal means,” the suit concludes.
The suit does not name Trump as a defendant. Instead, it targets various Trump aides who met with people believed to be affiliated with Russia during the campaign, including the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., his son-in-law Jared Kushner, his campaign chairman Paul Manafort and Manafort’s deputy, Rick Gates.
Manafort and Gates were charged with money-laundering, fraud and tax evasion in a case brought by special prosecutors last year. In February, Gates pleaded guilty to conspiracy and lying to the FBI and is cooperating with investigators. Manafort has pleaded not guilty.
The DNC lawsuit also names as a defendant the Russian military intelligence service, the GRU, which has been accused by the U.S. government of orchestrating the hacks, as well as WikiLeaks, which published the DNC’s stolen emails, and the group’s founder Julian Assange.
The lawsuit was also filed against Roger Stone, the longtime Trump confidante who claimed during the campaign that he was in contact with Assange.
[Roger Stone claimed contact with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in 2016, according to two associates]
The Trump advisers and associates have denied assisting Russia in its hacking campaign. Stone has denied any communication with Assange or advance knowledge of the document dumps by WikiLeaks, saying his comments about Assange were jokes or exaggerations.
The DNC lawsuit argues that the Russian government and the GRU violated a series of laws by orchestrating the secret intrusion into the Democrats’ computer systems, including statutes to protect trade secrets, prohibit wire tapping and prevent trespassing.
The party said the Trump defendants committed conspiracy through their interaction with Russian agents and their public encouragement of the hacking, with the campaign itself acting as a racketeering enterprise promoting illegal activity.
The complaint was filed on behalf of the party by the law firm of Cohen Milstein.
The suit contains previously undisclosed details, including that the specific date when the Russians breached the DNC computer system: July 27, 2015, according to forensic evidence cited in the filing.
The analysis shows the system was breached again on April 18, 2016. The hackers began siphoning documents and information from DNC systems on April 22. The suit notes that four days later, Trump foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos was informed by Josef Mifsud, a London-based professor, that the Russians were in possession of thousands of emails that could be damaging to Clinton.
[Top campaign officials knew of Trump adviser’s outreach to Russia]
The list of defendants in the suit includes Papadopoulos and Mifsud, as well as Aras and Emin Agalarov, the wealthy Russian father and son who hosted the Miss Universe Pageant in Moscow in 2013. Trump, who owned the pageant, attended the event.
The Agalarovs also played a role in arranging a meeting for a Russian lawyer at Trump Tower in New York in 2016, at which Donald Trump Jr. had expected to be given damaging information about Clinton.
Scott Balber, an attorney for the Agalarovs, said the allegations about his clients were “frivolous” and “a publicity stunt.”
“They had absolutely nothing to do with any alleged hacking of any Democratic computer system or any interference in the US election.”
The suit alleges that Trump’s personal and professional ties to Russia helped foster the conspiracy.
The DNC’s lawyers wrote that “long standing personal professional and financial ties to Russia and numerous individuals linked to the Russian government provided fertile ground for a conspiracy between the defendants to interfere in the 2016 elections.”
The lawsuit describes how the then-Soviet Union paid for Trump to travel Moscow in the 1980s.
It also details the history of Manafort and Gates, who worked for Russian-friendly factions in the Ukraine before joining the Trump campaign. Prosecutors have said they were in contact in 2016 with Konstantin Kilimnik, a former linguist in the Russian army who the FBI has alleged had ties to Russian intelligence.
Spoiler-quoted for the work blocked.
Is this just bluster or are the Democrats seriously intending to go forward with this?
Seems premature at best, more likely just political posturing occupying time & effort that could actually spend on helping the country.
AlmightyWalrus wrote: The Democratic Party has filed a law suit against Trump & friends for interfering in the 2016 election through connections to Russia.
Spoiler:
The Democratic National Committee filed a multimillion-dollar lawsuit Friday against the Russian government, the Trump campaign and the WikiLeaks organization alleging a far-reaching conspiracy to disrupt the 2016 campaign and tilt the election to Donald Trump.
The complaint, filed in federal district court in Manhattan, alleges that top Trump campaign officials conspired with the Russian government and its military spy agency to hurt Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and help Trump by hacking the computer networks of the Democratic Party and disseminating stolen material found there.
“During the 2016 presidential campaign, Russia launched an all-out assault on our democracy, and it found a willing and active partner in Donald Trump’s campaign,” DNC Chairman Tom Perez said in a statement.
“This constituted an act of unprecedented treachery: the campaign of a nominee for President of the United States in league with a hostile foreign power to bolster its own chance to win the presidency,” he said.
The case asserts that the Russian hacking campaign — combined with Trump associates’ contacts with Russia and the campaign’s public cheerleading of the hacks — amounted to an illegal conspiracy to interfere in the election that caused serious damage to the Democratic Party.
Senate investigators and prosecutors for special counsel Robert S. Mueller III are still investigating whether Trump associates coordinated with the Russian efforts. Last month, House Intelligence Committee Republicans said they found no evidence that President Trump and his affiliates colluded with Russian officials to sway the election or that the Kremlin sought to help him — a conclusion rejected by the panel’s Democrats.
Trump says allegations of collusion are a ’hoax’
0:26 / 2:38
mute
cc disabled
President Trump on April 18 dismissed allegations that his campaign colluded with Russia in the 2016 presidential election. (The Washington Post)
The president has repeatedly rejected any collusion or improper activity by his campaign. This week, he referred again in a tweet to the “phony Russia investigation where, by the way, there was NO COLLUSION (except by the Dems).”
Suing a foreign country may present legal challenges for the Democrats, in part because other nations have immunity from most U.S. lawsuits. The DNC’s complaint argues Russia is not entitled to the protection because the hack constituted a trespass on the party’s private property.
The lawsuit argues that Russia is not entitled to sovereign immunity in this case because “the DNC claims arise out of Russia’s trespass on to the DNC’s private servers . . . in order to steal trade secrets and commit economic espionage.”
The lawsuit echoes a similar legal tactic that the Democratic Party used during the Watergate scandal. In 1972, the DNC filed suit against then-President Richard Nixon’s reelection committee seeking $1 million in damages for the break-in at Democratic headquarters in the Watergate building.
The suit was denounced at the time by Nixon’s attorney general, John Mitchell, who called it a case of “sheer demagoguery” by the DNC. But the civil action brought by the DNC’s then-chairman, Lawrence F. O’Brien, was ultimately successful, yielding a $750,000 settlement from the Nixon campaign that was reached on the day in 1974 that Nixon left office.
The suit filed Friday seeks millions of dollars in compensation to offset damage it claims the party suffered from the hacks. The DNC argues that the cyberattack undermined its ability to communicate with voters, collect donations and operate effectively as its employees faced personal harassment and, in some cases, death threats.
The suit also seeks an acknowledgment from the defendants that they conspired to infiltrate the Democrats’ computers, steal information and disseminate it to influence the election.
To support its case, the lawsuit offers a detailed narrative of the DNC hacks, as well as episodes in which key Trump aides are alleged to have been told Russia held damaging information about Clinton.
[Inside Trump’s financial ties to Russia and his unusual flattery of Vladimir Putin]
Russia engaged in a “brazen attack on U.S. soil” the party alleges, a campaign that began with the cyberhack of its computer networks in 2015 and 2016. Trump campaign officials received repeated outreach from Russia, the suit says.
“Rather than report these repeated messages and communications that Russia intended to interfere in the U.S. election, the Trump campaign and its agents gleefully welcomed Russia’s help,” the party argues
Ultimately, Trump’s associates entered into an agreement with Russian agents “to promote Donald Trump’s candidacy through illegal means,” the suit concludes.
The suit does not name Trump as a defendant. Instead, it targets various Trump aides who met with people believed to be affiliated with Russia during the campaign, including the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., his son-in-law Jared Kushner, his campaign chairman Paul Manafort and Manafort’s deputy, Rick Gates.
Manafort and Gates were charged with money-laundering, fraud and tax evasion in a case brought by special prosecutors last year. In February, Gates pleaded guilty to conspiracy and lying to the FBI and is cooperating with investigators. Manafort has pleaded not guilty.
The DNC lawsuit also names as a defendant the Russian military intelligence service, the GRU, which has been accused by the U.S. government of orchestrating the hacks, as well as WikiLeaks, which published the DNC’s stolen emails, and the group’s founder Julian Assange.
The lawsuit was also filed against Roger Stone, the longtime Trump confidante who claimed during the campaign that he was in contact with Assange.
[Roger Stone claimed contact with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in 2016, according to two associates]
The Trump advisers and associates have denied assisting Russia in its hacking campaign. Stone has denied any communication with Assange or advance knowledge of the document dumps by WikiLeaks, saying his comments about Assange were jokes or exaggerations.
The DNC lawsuit argues that the Russian government and the GRU violated a series of laws by orchestrating the secret intrusion into the Democrats’ computer systems, including statutes to protect trade secrets, prohibit wire tapping and prevent trespassing.
The party said the Trump defendants committed conspiracy through their interaction with Russian agents and their public encouragement of the hacking, with the campaign itself acting as a racketeering enterprise promoting illegal activity.
The complaint was filed on behalf of the party by the law firm of Cohen Milstein.
The suit contains previously undisclosed details, including that the specific date when the Russians breached the DNC computer system: July 27, 2015, according to forensic evidence cited in the filing.
The analysis shows the system was breached again on April 18, 2016. The hackers began siphoning documents and information from DNC systems on April 22. The suit notes that four days later, Trump foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos was informed by Josef Mifsud, a London-based professor, that the Russians were in possession of thousands of emails that could be damaging to Clinton.
[Top campaign officials knew of Trump adviser’s outreach to Russia]
The list of defendants in the suit includes Papadopoulos and Mifsud, as well as Aras and Emin Agalarov, the wealthy Russian father and son who hosted the Miss Universe Pageant in Moscow in 2013. Trump, who owned the pageant, attended the event.
The Agalarovs also played a role in arranging a meeting for a Russian lawyer at Trump Tower in New York in 2016, at which Donald Trump Jr. had expected to be given damaging information about Clinton.
Scott Balber, an attorney for the Agalarovs, said the allegations about his clients were “frivolous” and “a publicity stunt.”
“They had absolutely nothing to do with any alleged hacking of any Democratic computer system or any interference in the US election.”
The suit alleges that Trump’s personal and professional ties to Russia helped foster the conspiracy.
The DNC’s lawyers wrote that “long standing personal professional and financial ties to Russia and numerous individuals linked to the Russian government provided fertile ground for a conspiracy between the defendants to interfere in the 2016 elections.”
The lawsuit describes how the then-Soviet Union paid for Trump to travel Moscow in the 1980s.
It also details the history of Manafort and Gates, who worked for Russian-friendly factions in the Ukraine before joining the Trump campaign. Prosecutors have said they were in contact in 2016 with Konstantin Kilimnik, a former linguist in the Russian army who the FBI has alleged had ties to Russian intelligence.
Spoiler-quoted for the work blocked.
Is this just bluster or are the Democrats seriously intending to go forward with this?
Seems premature at best, more likely just political posturing occupying time & effort that could actually spend on helping the country.
I've talked to couple of my Democrat friends just now... they recognize that this isn't a thing, but wants it to move forward as payback for all the GOP "investigations" during the Obama years...
I've talked to couple of my Democrat friends just now... they recognize that this isn't a thing, but wants it to move forward as payback for all the GOP "investigations" during the Obama years...
New found respect for federalism? ...or, midyear campaign electioneering?
I imagine its probably the latter mixed with acknowledging that the current legal setup around marijuana is indefensible public policy rather than any federalism concepts.
feeder wrote: The first step of the Nixon impeachment was a 1m lawsuit by the DNC for damages related to the break in.
Maybe looking to repeat?
Not necessarily. More likely, they smell blood, and are going for a civil suit since it does not need to be 'beyond a reasonable doubt'.
Also, a President can be sued, regardless of his position as a law enforcement position, unless he wants to play the "sovereign immunity' card which would be political suicide at this point.
feeder wrote: The first step of the Nixon impeachment was a 1m lawsuit by the DNC for damages related to the break in.
Maybe looking to repeat?
Not necessarily. More likely, they smell blood, and are going for a civil suit since it does not need to be 'beyond a reasonable doubt'.
Also, a President can be sued, regardless of his position as a law enforcement position, unless he wants to play the "sovereign immunity' card which would be political suicide at this point.
feeder wrote: The first step of the Nixon impeachment was a 1m lawsuit by the DNC for damages related to the break in.
Maybe looking to repeat?
Not necessarily. More likely, they smell blood, and are going for a civil suit since it does not need to be 'beyond a reasonable doubt'.
Also, a President can be sued, regardless of his position as a law enforcement position, unless he wants to play the "sovereign immunity' card which would be political suicide at this point.
Heh... watching a man who’s repeatedly called for loosening libel laws suddenly forced to shield himself with the high standard of “actual malice” as a libel defendant? Would be quite juicy twist eh???
Forutantely, current libel laws prevent the president From suing based on libel.
Wonder how long that it will take before he starts pushing congress to change that, and then how long until they start trying to pass a bill to loosen the libel laws.
New found respect for federalism? ...or, midyear campaign electioneering?
I imagine its probably the latter mixed with acknowledging that the current legal setup around marijuana is indefensible public policy rather than any federalism concepts.
Eh, we'll see if it gets anywhere. There's always someone in Congress trying to push a marijuana bill, but it never goes anywhere. Maybe it'll be different with a bigger name attached, but I think we're still a good 2-4 years from it happening.
I'll bet China was getting nervous about that mountain collapsing and told Kim to shut it down immediately, and thats why they've shuttered that facility. Its not like they lose anything that wasn't already pretty much spent.
Wolfblade wrote: Forutantely, current libel laws prevent the president From suing based on libel.
Wonder how long that it will take before he starts pushing congress to change that, and then how long until they start trying to pass a bill to loosen the libel laws.
I'd like to see it happen. In general I feel like media is able to get away with too many blatant lies that are ultimately a use of free speech that harms individuals and/or communities. I'm sure Trump & co would be shocked when after opening up those laws they found themselves targets of lawsuits while being unable to go forward with any themselves. Turns out you can't sue the truth.
To be fair NK might have conducted all the tests it needs to finetune and finish its program. Don't forget that Israel, India and Pakistan all have just a handful of nuclear tests between them, but that was enough for those three countries to develop an arsenal. Further testing is only really relevant if you want to go bigger and bigger, but once a NK warhead can blow up a city do they really need more power?
Wolfblade wrote: Forutantely, current libel laws prevent the president From suing based on libel.
Wonder how long that it will take before he starts pushing congress to change that, and then how long until they start trying to pass a bill to loosen the libel laws.
I'd like to see it happen. In general I feel like media is able to get away with too many blatant lies that are ultimately a use of free speech that harms individuals and/or communities. I'm sure Trump & co would be shocked when after opening up those laws they found themselves targets of lawsuits while being unable to go forward with any themselves. Turns out you can't sue the truth.
Why would you want to loosen libel laws? You can sue the president for libel, but the president cannot currently sue you for libel, and that's due to the size of their platform. I.e. if I say "trump is a piece of gak," who cares? I mean, what's the size of my platform? A toy soldier forum? But if the president says "Wolfblade is a piece of gak," the size of his audience is not just the entire US, but potentially foreign nations too.
Loosening libel laws would mean I could be sued by the president despite my totally insignificant platform (especially when compared to the president's)
As for the media's lies, as much as I hate to say it, even Fox "News's" right to lying must be protected to keep doing so, that however does not mean they should be exempt from the consequences of it. If there is an actual case of libel that can be proven, then they (all news, not just Fox) should be held accountable.
(Maybe I just misread what you posted, but I don't feel like I did)
I may be wrong, or over simplifying things, but I think the difference between the UK and US is that while in the US you have to disprove the claims of the person libelling you in order to win, in the UK the onus is on the person making the libellous claim to back it up with evidence or they will lose. This makes it harder to win libel cases in the US especially if it’s a case of one person’s word against another. Happy to be corrected if wrong.
Howard A Treesong wrote: I may be wrong, or over simplifying things, but I think the difference between the UK and US is that while in the US you have to disprove the claims of the person libelling you in order to win, in the UK the onus is on the person making the libellous claim to back it up with evidence or they will lose. This makes it harder to win libel cases in the US especially if it’s a case of one person’s word against another. Happy to be corrected if wrong.
No that's basically it.
In point of fact you don't have to just disprove the claims in the US to win a libel/slander case. You have to show both that the claim is false, that the person who made it knew it was false, and that they made the claim anyway with intention to bring you harm by making it. And yes if your first thought hear that is "well that's impossible to prove" you'd be right!
So basically libel/slander is pragmatically impossible to prove in the US. When such suits are filed it's usually to force settlements, add pressure in other legal matters, or to go fishing.
Howard A Treesong wrote: I may be wrong, or over simplifying things, but I think the difference between the UK and US is that while in the US you have to disprove the claims of the person libelling you in order to win, in the UK the onus is on the person making the libellous claim to back it up with evidence or they will lose. This makes it harder to win libel cases in the US especially if it’s a case of one person’s word against another. Happy to be corrected if wrong.
No that's basically it.
In point of fact you don't have to just disprove the claims in the US to win a libel/slander case. You have to show both that the claim is false, that the person who made it knew it was false, and that they made the claim anyway with intention to bring you harm by making it. And yes if your first thought hear that is "well that's impossible to prove" you'd be right!
So basically libel/slander is pragmatically impossible to prove in the US. When such suits are filed it's usually to force settlements, add pressure in other legal matters, or to go fishing.
Yup. If things were more like the UK then there would be more motivation to actually make sure there was evidence to justify claims before making them. Obviously not a cure but any improvement would be a relief given how bad things are right now.
Wolfblade wrote: I.e. if I say "trump is a piece of gak," who cares? I mean, what's the size of my platform? A toy soldier forum? But if the president says "Wolfblade is a piece of gak," the size of his audience is not just the entire US, but potentially foreign nations too.
Loosening libel laws would mean I could be sued by the president despite my totally insignificant platform (especially when compared to the president's)
That isn't libel in the first place. Libel must be a false statement, and "Trump is a piece of gak" has no truth value.
New found respect for federalism? ...or, midyear campaign electioneering?
>implying any party has ever cared about federalism when it gets in the way of their policies.
But it may also be related to NY politics, we have some bills that are stuck in the state senate for legalizing and taxing recreational marijuana. Might be to get rid of their "it's illegal federally" argument.
Remember when Van Jones got forced out because he had once signed a truther petition?
Man, what a different time.
I repeat, somewhere Tom Price must be absolutely kicking himself. The dude resigned over high-end travel costs early on when the opportunity for grift was so, so much greater had he just stuck in there.
Well Tom Price was probably a bit of a disappointment when it came to sabotaging ACA (and thus far whatever was done to hamstring it did not involve him), whereas when it comes to policy on the EPA (which is defanging the agency) Scott Pruitt has done marvelously as far as Trump is concerned, which is part of why I think he might see it to the end of Trump's term, scandals and all.
feeder wrote: Sounds like a make-work program for the DNC lawyers. There should be wide bi-partisan support for these Job Creators.
People mocked the DNC in 1972 when they launched a law suit against the RNC, alleging the RNC was behind the Watergate break in. Remember it was years before the greater public began to understand scale and scope of the RNC involvement in the Watergate break-in. But the DNC knew it and called the RNC out straight away, launching their suit against the RNC just 4 days after the break-in. And in hindsight it was amazing much how the Democrats got right - the people they named as primary targets all ended up going to jail over Watergate, and yeah, the Democrats won the case and the Republicans had pay $750k in compensation.
Not that it was ever about the money, and nor is it about the money this time. This is about using legal process to make public as much of the RNC's 2016 criminal work as possible, and making sure everything uncovered through that process or by Mueller's investigation is constantly kept in the news.
That isn't to say this was genius ploy that is certain to work. It's an obvious next move, and whether it works will depend on the skill of the DNC lawyers. It's all about execution from here. But they've just been gifted a how-to guide from Stormy Daniels lawyer Michael Avenatti, so they're already one step ahead in the game.
Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote: I look forward to the counter counter suit when somebody from the Pentagon demands payment for all those Lend Lease jeeps and trucks.
Russia negotiated a settlement of the debt in 1972, Russia handed over about $750m. It was about half of the value of aid they requested, which itself was heavily discounted, but the deal was made.
whembly wrote: Everyone... please read the DNC's court documents...
Its... freaking hysterical and will likely be thrown out before the discovery phase.
The suit as it currently stands is well short of the evidence needed. It strings all the pieces together in a way that is probably very close to what happened, but there are large gaps in their supplied to evidence to prove all those elements fitted together as the DNC allege. If this was all the evidence we can ever expect to see in the investigation, then I think the DNC case could be seen as a stunt more than a genuine suit. But you're kidding yourself if you think that all we know right now about 2016 is all we will ever know.
Just compare to the DNC suit they filed in 1972. Just four days after the break-in, the DNC was there with a suit naming all the major RNC players including Nixon. Now you think this current case lacks evidence - when they started their suit in 1972 they didn't just lack evidence, they straight up lacked anything even suggesting the RNC's involvement, apart from the obvious motive. But the case wasn't begun and ended in those 4 days, instead the DNC case developed and was substantiated over the course of the Watergate investigation, and all along the way re-submissions were used strategically by the DNC to make sure Watergate kept driving public discussion.
By laying out the bones of the case now, the DNC have positioned themselves to do exactly the same thing as last time. As more evidence comes forward they'll substantiate and develop their submission.
feeder wrote: The first step of the Nixon impeachment was a 1m lawsuit by the DNC for damages related to the break in.
Maybe looking to repeat?
The DNC filed their case with a judge who was a prosecutor on Watergate back in the day. Yeah, the Dems know their history and they're looking to repeat.
Ouze wrote: I repeat, somewhere Tom Price must be absolutely kicking himself. The dude resigned over high-end travel costs early on when the opportunity for grift was so, so much greater had he just stuck in there.
Price had lost Trump's support though. Not for his blatant grift and abuse of the public purse, Trump didn't care about that. Nah, Price sat alongside Ryan and convinced Trump of the big plan to lead with repeal and replace of Obamacare, because that would be easy and give them a warchest to go and fund their tax cut. That ended in total disaster, as Republicans couldn't produce a bill that carried more than about 20% support among the general public, even with the weight of 8 years of promising 'repeal and replace' Republicans couldn't swallow that turd.
The grand scheme that Price and Ryan sold to Trump ended in disaster on its first step. Republicans were then forced to turn to their deficit financed tax bill with no cover of money saved elsewhere, and Trump's legislative reputation was now fixed in place as 'all he can do is the same old GOP tax cut'.
Price had to go, the travel was just the final push.
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d-usa wrote: Purchased home from a lobbyist using a shell company to hide the transaction and failed to report it:
At some point we need to talk less about what Trump will do, and instead talk about what federal prosecutors will do.
The records link Hannity to a group of shell companies that spent at least $90m on more than 870 homes in seven states over the past decade. The properties range from luxurious mansions to rentals for low-income families. Hannity is the hidden owner behind some of the shell companies and his attorney did not dispute that he owns all of them.
Dozens of the properties were bought at a discount in 2013, after banks foreclosed on their previous owners for defaulting on mortgages. Before and after then, Hannity sharply criticised Barack Obama for the US foreclosure rate. In January 2016, Hannity said there were “millions more Americans suffering under this president” partly because of foreclosures.
Hannity, 56, also amassed part of his property collection with support from the US Department for Housing and Urban Development (Hud), a fact he did not disclose when praising Ben Carson, the Hud secretary, on his television show last year.
Eh, I don't think the Hannity stuff really matters. I mean, it would be a serious deal if Hannity was a journalist working for a reputable news organization with ethics, but literally none of those things are true. As long as his ratings are OK, then, as they say, he's only in trouble if he gets caught with a dead girl or a live boy.
Ouze wrote: Eh, I don't think the Hannity stuff really matters. I mean, it would be a serious deal if Hannity was a journalist working for a reputable news organization with ethics, but literally none of those things are true. As long as his ratings are OK, then, as they say, he's only in trouble if he gets caught with a dead girl or a live boy.
It continues to de-legitimize Fox News as a media agency. Obviously the loyalists won't care and the left-wingers were already set against Fox but for independents it continues to underscore 'Fox News is just a propaganda machine and doesn't care about employing the worst people' keep in mind this is after O'Reily, after several lawsuits of sexual harassment, and all the other glorious crash-and-burns Fox has pulled in the last two years. Like the GOP it is becoming a case where loyalists buy the party line but the rest of the nation places little to no value on their narrative. This is important because it means they are increasingly distancing themselves from growing demographics in order to cling to shrinking ones--it's another layer to the overall trend of the GOP setting itself up for more than failure in the next election but for the next decade, perhaps longer. If one was trying to destroy the party entirely what we see is how they'd do it.
Ouze wrote: Eh, I don't think the Hannity stuff really matters. I mean, it would be a serious deal if Hannity was a journalist working for a reputable news organization with ethics, but literally none of those things are true. As long as his ratings are OK, then, as they say, he's only in trouble if he gets caught with a dead girl or a live boy.
Laura Ingraham just got so hammered that even when she issued a complete apology the campaign against her didn't let up, and the sponsors kept dropping out. And all she did was make fun of a kid applying for some colleges. I think Hannity is very vulnerable to something very similar. Not exactly on attacking the raid on Cohen without telling people Cohen had been his lawyer, or even about building property empire built on foreclosures he was pretending to be outraged about. I mean that proves the guy is a sleaze but that's not going to cost you a gig on FOX News.
But Hannity is also facing a lawsuit over Seth Rich that hurt grieving parents in a way that cuts through politics and gets people to say that ain't right. I think he probably would have moved past that as well, even if the case is lost and FOX pays out, he could have fallen back on just being a journalist who ran a story he believed in. But it's the combination of all these things things, showing Hannity is making up lies and working to his own agenda in a way that really hurts people, I think there's a real vulnerability. If someone can put all that together in a way that makes it clear to advertisers how far outside the norms of decency this guy, then advertisers will drop off in very large numbers.
Edit - got my insane FOX News made up stories flipped. Hannity is being sued for Seth Rich, not Pizzagate.
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NinthMusketeer wrote: It continues to de-legitimize Fox News as a media agency. Obviously the loyalists won't care and the left-wingers were already set against Fox but for independents it continues to underscore 'Fox News is just a propaganda machine and doesn't care about employing the worst people' keep in mind this is after O'Reily, after several lawsuits of sexual harassment, and all the other glorious crash-and-burns Fox has pulled in the last two years. Like the GOP it is becoming a case where loyalists buy the party line but the rest of the nation places little to no value on their narrative. This is important because it means they are increasingly distancing themselves from growing demographics in order to cling to shrinking ones--it's another layer to the overall trend of the GOP setting itself up for more than failure in the next election but for the next decade, perhaps longer. If one was trying to destroy the party entirely what we see is how they'd do it.
Yep. The thing about FOX News is it rates a couple of million views on average. If that was all their impact then FOX News would have no impact. It'd be less relevant than the Libertarian Party. But FOX News has impact way beyond that because the stories it focuses on and how it covers them impact how other stations cover news. When FOX spent 10 minutes breathlessly reporting on the latest conservative made up nonsense, then other outlets are more likely to cover the same thing, or shift their coverage from 30 seconds to a minute, and maybe also pick up some of the FOX News framing of the issue.
But the more FOX News marches off the reservation, the more that impact on other media declines.
Ouze wrote: Eh, I don't think the Hannity stuff really matters. I mean, it would be a serious deal if Hannity was a journalist working for a reputable news organization with ethics, but literally none of those things are true. As long as his ratings are OK, then, as they say, he's only in trouble if he gets caught with a dead girl or a live boy.
Laura Ingraham just got so hammered that even when she issued a complete apology the campaign against her didn't let up, and the sponsors kept dropping out.
Has she issued a second one? The "apology" she gave was pretty passive aggressive and not really an apology.
Ouze wrote: Eh, I don't think the Hannity stuff really matters. I mean, it would be a serious deal if Hannity was a journalist working for a reputable news organization with ethics, but literally none of those things are true. As long as his ratings are OK, then, as they say, he's only in trouble if he gets caught with a dead girl or a live boy.
Laura Ingraham just got so hammered that even when she issued a complete apology the campaign against her didn't let up, and the sponsors kept dropping out.
Has she issued a second one? The "apology" she gave was pretty passive aggressive and not really an apology.
IMO the first apology was damming regardless, for calling into question any subsequent apologies. At any rate I think what she did was very serious on a moral bankruptcy/just being a terrible human being front. And I think that a person willing to say what she did in that context deserves to be kicked out of journalism.
Wolfblade wrote: Has she issued a second one? The "apology" she gave was pretty passive aggressive and not really an apology.
Yeah, it was a crap apology. More to the point it was only done because she'd seen the financial impact, so it was hardly genuine and no reason for people to let up from the boycott.
The point is, though, that Ingraham's offences were nothing compared to Hannity's. She mocked a kid who'd just been through a tragedy for applying to a reach college. Hannity straight up lied about his direct personal connections to the news he was covering. The difference is Ingraham's breach had a clearly identifiable victim, while Hannity's crime had no individual person clearly harmed.
But that could change if people can find a way to connect what we know about Hannity's deceitful coverage to the Seth Rich story and the hurt that caused to the victim's parents.
Ouze wrote: Eh, I don't think the Hannity stuff really matters. I mean, it would be a serious deal if Hannity was a journalist working for a reputable news organization with ethics, but literally none of those things are true. As long as his ratings are OK, then, as they say, he's only in trouble if he gets caught with a dead girl or a live boy.
The Daniels attorney pushing this supports my theory that he is being compensated by the DNC, else he would not comment as it's not relevant to the case.
Ouze wrote: Eh, I don't think the Hannity stuff really matters. I mean, it would be a serious deal if Hannity was a journalist working for a reputable news organization with ethics, but literally none of those things are true. As long as his ratings are OK, then, as they say, he's only in trouble if he gets caught with a dead girl or a live boy.
Laura Ingraham just got so hammered that even when she issued a complete apology the campaign against her didn't let up, and the sponsors kept dropping out.
Has she issued a second one? The "apology" she gave was pretty passive aggressive and not really an apology.
IMO the first apology was damming regardless, for calling into question any subsequent apologies. At any rate I think what she did was very serious on a moral bankruptcy/just being a terrible human being front. And I think that a person willing to say what she did in that context deserves to be kicked out of journalism.
She is not a journalist, any more than MSNBC's or CNN's evening talkers.
She holds no public office, she is running for nothing, the GOP holds the majority of governorships, majority of congress, majority of the senate, and the presidency - and they still insist as portraying themselves as the aggrieved victims. There are near-daily tantrums on twitter of perceived slights and persecutions from the oval office.
Apparently the dumpster fire is using anti-Semetic terms to insult Jewish people that disagree with him. Referring to Chuck Todd as 'Sleepy Eyes Chuck Todd'.
So in the age of "but her emails", how does everybody feel about the use of a personal cellphone and all the security vulnerabilities and lack of accountability that come with it?
NinthMusketeer wrote: Meh. Seems like a liberal news outlet making a big deal over something small. Afaik Obama's cell phone use never caused problems.
The special secure Blackberry phone that was given to him to replace his private cell phone?
, but he's a 
