Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:


He should form a select group to plug these leaks, have them answer only to the Oval office, should be called plumbers, and also to be on the safe side, they should meet at least once a month in the Watergate Hotel

I'm not sure that the Watergate Hotel has any wet rooms available though!

And yet, Roe V Wade should be the SCOTUS decision everyone in the internet age should be happy to have. The next four years are totally the time to kill the right to privacy forever because feth consequences anyone who disagrees with glorious leader is just fake news or someone who should shut up anyway.

And we're supposed to believe that elements of the Russian Secret Service acted without Putin's knowledge.

That's simply called plausible deniability. If the one thing he will know about is not leaving a paper trail. Just like he doesn't know there were/are Russian military personnel in Ukraine.

It's also called not that uncommon. Do I need to trot out all the NSA and CIA scandals where US intelligence agencies were doing something without telling anyone they were doing it? How about that time Mossad released classified information just to embarrass Israel's Prime Minister? The thing about Clandestine Intelligence is that by definition they do things without telling anyone. In some countries they're practically their own underground governments. The KGB was one such agency, and it's not that far fetched that the FSB and other Russian intelligence agencies are likewise such.

Wouldn't that whole "Life begins at conception" thing have serious consequences for IVF treatment?

 Co'tor Shas wrote:

 Verviedi wrote:
Warning - more Indiana stupidity. When will they learn?

https://iga.in.gov/legislative/2017/bills/house/1134#document-169c5a8e

They really do like making bills that will be laughed out of court, don't they.

Can't let North Carolina have all the fun.

 whembly wrote:

 Co'tor Shas wrote:

 Verviedi wrote:
Warning - more Indiana stupidity. When will they learn?

https://iga.in.gov/legislative/2017/bills/house/1134#document-169c5a8e

They really do like making bills that will be laughed out of court, don't they.

Looks like it's a vehicle to attempt to overturn Roe v. Wade.

As I said, something that will be laughed out of court. They;ll need to put 2-3 super right-wing judges int he supreme court in place of liberal.moderate ones to even have a chance. It's just a waste of money. And considering that Indiana currently is $46,377,635,000 in debt according to ballotopedia, it's not exactly the best thing to be wasting money on.

https://ballotpedia.org/Indiana_state_budget_and_finances

Indiana's budget surplus comes at a cost to Medicaid, preschool programs, and a public health epidemic due to drug overdoses and infections from sharing needles.

But hey, taxes are down. But that's what you get when you don't understand the true costs of tax cuts and spending cuts.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:
Wouldn't that whole "Life begins at conception" thing have serious consequences for IVF treatment?

I can imagine it does. There's probably two issues - firstly that if they fertilise more than they need then they have to treat them all as viable and secondly there is a significant failure rate so some 'living humans' are implanted with the knowledge that some or all will fail (and hence could be argued that they aren't protecting the human life).

Also, that whole "Asserts a compelling state interest in protecting human physical life from the moment that human physical life begins" would basically require the state to ensure that every citizen of the state is looked after.

So, providing healthcare, housing, food, work etc. Everything that humans require to survive is now a compelling state interest, and yet I'd feel safe betting money they wouldn't follow through on that side of it. Oh and don't forget abolishing the Death Penalty as the state has a compelling interest in protecting human physical life.

@whirlwind and lord of hats.

In response to earlier posts.

Even if Cohen did travel to Prague from Italy, by bus, car, train, plane, whatever, there would be a trail of some sorts.

CCTV images, having to stop at a petrol station for fuel, passport control at the airport etc etc

and having 'travelled' to Prague, he meets with high ranking Russian agents in a third country in possibly full exposure to the CIA/NSA.MI6 or whoever...

I'm not buying this for a nano-second.

And what's the end game, that's the ultimate question.

Putin had planned for years to blackmail Trump into running for President? wtf x 1000

It's like a bad 1970s Michael Caine spy film

or something Andy McNab would write.

I'm not having a go at you guys, but I can't beleive that so many people in the media, the government, the country, are seriously entertaining this idea...

Satire is dead. Quality journalism is dead. We're living in a fantasy world know.

It's only 12 days into the new year and already I'm cracking up

 A Town Called Malus wrote:
Also, that whole "Asserts a compelling state interest in protecting human physical life from the moment that human physical life begins" would basically require the state to ensure that every citizen of the state is looked after.

So, providing healthcare, housing, food, work etc. Everything that humans require to survive is now a compelling state interest, and yet I'd feel safe betting money they wouldn't follow through on that side of it. Oh and don't forget abolishing the Death Penalty as the state has a compelling interest in protecting human physical life.

They really didn't think this one through.

 Co'tor Shas wrote:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:
Also, that whole "Asserts a compelling state interest in protecting human physical life from the moment that human physical life begins" would basically require the state to ensure that every citizen of the state is looked after.

So, providing healthcare, housing, food, work etc. Everything that humans require to survive is now a compelling state interest, and yet I'd feel safe betting money they wouldn't follow through on that side of it. Oh and don't forget abolishing the Death Penalty as the state has a compelling interest in protecting human physical life.

They really didn't think this one through.

Almost as if it's not a serious attempt at lawmaking, but rather grandstanding in front of the true believers.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
@whirlwind and lord of hats.

I'm responding only in regards to the idea that if Russian intelligence does X, then Putin must be behind it/know about it. It's fallacious to assume that Putin has a complete handle on his own intelligence service.

In other news, President Obama has ended the "wet foot dry foot" policy that allowed Cuban expats to gain permanent resident status in the US. This is just one part of the overall diplomatic strategy the President has chosen as the way forward in normalizing relations with Cuba.

 Verviedi wrote:
Your cheap attempt to use emotion-based arguments has failed. Abortion is a necessary procedure. Is it unpleasant? Yes. But it it necessary. If abortion were outlawed, it would he establishing a precedent that women do not have a right to their own bodies.
Also, fetuses do not have the necessary feel pain until 20 weeks. I'm going to entirely avoid your personal anecdote.

I'd love to see the report that fetuses don't feel pain until 20 weeks. Gives me something to look up at next break.

It SHOULD be an emotion based argument. Lets say somebody has an unsterilized prize winning beagle that is the favorite to win Westminster and two months before the show it gets out and gets pregnant. The owner obviously can't have the dog getting teats and costing them the competition and all the windfalls tied to it. Does that person then have the right to have the puppies aborted? Actually, maybe the sterilization thing is more of an option. I mean, we spay and neuter pets because we don't want overpopulation. Vasectomies and tubal ligation seems perfectly reasonable especially with people who are dead set that they won't have children.


As far as necessary: the geneticists job when we were referred to them was to recommend aborting our son because of the issues tied to Down Syndrome. He had open heart surgery at 5 months to repair the issue with his and is now thriving, hitting developmental milestones ahead of what is expected of someone with his condition. If there was some condition that was going to result in the fetus being dead or dying at birth and/or would cause the death of the mother, I could see the argument. But what about the people who simply don't want a pregnancy? No medical reasoning behind the proceedure, just simply poor or nonexistent contraception. Necessary is VERY much a misnomer.

 Verviedi wrote:
Warning - more Indiana stupidity. When will they learn?

https://iga.in.gov/legislative/2017/bills/house/1134#document-169c5a8e

It won't survive. This is political grandstanding. Save your outrage for something that actually matters

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:

 Breotan wrote:
I don't know anything about this guy but I do remember how intelligence was shaped to fit an agenda (WMD's in Iraq) and how that all turned out. I say people need to prove what's true so it can be dealt with by Congress and flush the rest as gossip.

This whole thing is reaching "Revenge of the Birthers" level stupid.

Its quite ironic how the mainstream media is simultaneously freaking out over "fake news"...whilst uncritically accepting these (as yet unproven) allegations as fact. ...

Except that they aren't.

Read the BBC reports. "Mainstream media" has had this stuff since October, and sat on it because they like to do boring fact checking before releasing a story.

You've bought the Trump narrative.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Stevefamine wrote:
8 Days

What can the left throw at the President Elect next?

Bear in mind this dossier was assembled by the Republicans. The irony.

 LordofHats wrote:
And yet, Roe V Wade should be the SCOTUS decision everyone in the internet age should be happy to have. The next four years are totally the time to kill the right to privacy forever because feth consequences anyone who disagrees with glorious leader is just fake news or someone who should shut up anyway.

Yup. We'll have to give such a program a catchy name. Shame Prism is already taken... Perhaps the Germans will even catch this new Administration spying on them

https://www.aclu.org/blog/new-justice-department-documents-show-huge-increase-warrantless-electronic-surveillance?redirect=blog/national-security-technology-and-liberty/new-justice-department-documents-show-huge-increase
http://time.com/3909293/edward-snowden-obama-nsa-spying/
http://www.cnn.com/2015/07/03/politics/germany-media-spying-obama-administration/

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:

 Verviedi wrote:
Warning - more Indiana stupidity. When will they learn?

https://iga.in.gov/legislative/2017/bills/house/1134#document-169c5a8e

It won't survive. This is political grandstanding. Save your outrage for something that actually matters

People also said Trump wouldn't win the Republican nomination...

All bets are off this year until we see the dice rolls and the cards played.

To get back to my earlier point, I am not asking if people think the Trump bed wetting story is true. I am asking if you think it's impossible to be true.

For instance, the Obamas are a cultured, gracious, well-bred couple. It's impossible to imagine them hiring prostitutes to wet on GW Bush's bed. I can't imagine GW Bush hiring prostitutes to wet on the Clinton's bed, or the Clintons hiring prostitutes to wet on George Bush's bed, etc. etc.

As for being a germophobe, that's exactly why Trump would hire prostitutes to wet on his enemy's bed.

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
As I said, something that will be laughed out of court. They;ll need to put 2-3 super right-wing judges int he supreme court in place of liberal.moderate ones to even have a chance. It's just a waste of money. And considering that Indiana currently is $46,377,635,000 in debt according to ballotopedia, it's not exactly the best thing to be wasting money on.

https://ballotpedia.org/Indiana_state_budget_and_finances

Hoosiers seem to have a pretty good State fiscally;
https://www.mercatus.org/statefiscalrankings/indiana
http://www.statedatalab.org/state_data_and_comparisons/detail/indiana

Indiana, in dreary Flyover Country, is 17th in the nation for fiscal health. New York by comparison is 42nd

 Tannhauser42 wrote:

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:

 Verviedi wrote:
Warning - more Indiana stupidity. When will they learn?

https://iga.in.gov/legislative/2017/bills/house/1134#document-169c5a8e

It won't survive. This is political grandstanding. Save your outrage for something that actually matters

People also said Trump wouldn't win the Republican nomination...

All bets are off this year until we see the dice rolls and the cards played.

I'm pretty sure Gov Holcomb won't sign it, and I'm pretty sure they don't have a super-majority to overcome a veto.

 Tannhauser42 wrote:

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:

 Verviedi wrote:
Warning - more Indiana stupidity. When will they learn?

https://iga.in.gov/legislative/2017/bills/house/1134#document-169c5a8e

It won't survive. This is political grandstanding. Save your outrage for something that actually matters

People also said Trump wouldn't win the Republican nomination...

All bets are off this year until we see the dice rolls and the cards played.

You honestly believe this will pass the public vote, protests, and legal challenges?

The difference between this inane piece of political grandstanding and Trump's campaign is so vast as to make comparison worthless

 Kilkrazy wrote:
To get back to my earlier point, I am not asking if people think the Trump bed wetting story is true. I am asking if you think it's impossible to be true.

For instance, the Obamas are a cultured, gracious, well-bred couple. It's impossible to imagine them hiring prostitutes to wet on GW Bush's bed. I can't imagine GW Bush hiring prostitutes to wet on the Clinton's bed, or the Clintons hiring prostitutes to wet on George Bush's bed, etc. etc.

As for being a germophobe, that's exactly why Trump would hire prostitutes to wet on his enemy's bed.

Impossible? NO.

Requiring enormous effort to suspend disbelief? Yeah... I think so. Because he'd have to be into that kind of kink. He acts like a weathy, flaggerantly playboy who can/did get any chick he wants.

I also think it's stray voltage, designed to hide potential Russian/Mobster connections of Trump's inner circle.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
To get back to my earlier point, I am not asking if people think the Trump bed wetting story is true. I am asking if you think it's impossible to be true.

For instance, the Obamas are a cultured, gracious, well-bred couple. It's impossible to imagine them hiring prostitutes to wet on GW Bush's bed. I can't imagine GW Bush hiring prostitutes to wet on the Clinton's bed, or the Clintons hiring prostitutes to wet on George Bush's bed, etc. etc.

As for being a germophobe, that's exactly why Trump would hire prostitutes to wet on his enemy's bed.

So you're asking whether it is impossible to be true the a prank from 4chan, which was found by someone connected to the intelligence community who leaked the story to Republican never-Trumpers, without verifying the story could in fact be true.

What you are asking is people to take leave of their senses, abandon all rational thought, ignore the evidence provided and instead rely on their biases.

Trump and the Republicans do not have the broad support of the American People for a repressive regime on gays and so on.

Don't buy into Trump's lies about an overwhelming victory. He got less than half the votes. He got one of the smallest EC votes for decades, and only managed that by squeaky thin margins in a couple of major swing states like Florida, plus the built-in conservative bias of the EC system.

The majority of the US public are not anti-gay, etc.

if Trump tries to bring in a gay-bashing bill, or a muslim-mashing measure, he's going to have to fight the will of the majority of the people.

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
As I said, something that will be laughed out of court. They;ll need to put 2-3 super right-wing judges int he supreme court in place of liberal.moderate ones to even have a chance. It's just a waste of money. And considering that Indiana currently is $46,377,635,000 in debt according to ballotopedia, it's not exactly the best thing to be wasting money on.

https://ballotpedia.org/Indiana_state_budget_and_finances

Hoosiers seem to have a pretty good State fiscally;
https://www.mercatus.org/statefiscalrankings/indiana
http://www.statedatalab.org/state_data_and_comparisons/detail/indiana

Indiana, in dreary Flyover Country, is 17th in the nation for fiscal health. New York by comparison is 42nd

Yeah because we like stuff such as public schools, support for our poor, and well-funded hospitals.

But it was more the point, why is Indiana wasting money on this, instead of, say, cutting their debt more or increasing services. The point is that this isn't pointless political grandstanding, this is what they actually believe.

If the right doesn't want the left to get upset about their crazy waste of time legislation, maybe they should stop trying to pass crazy waste of time legislation. Telling people not to be outraged at Indiana's latest bull - er, 'scuse me, bill because it 'obviously won't pass' makes about as much sense as people who voted for Trump telling liberals that Trump is their fault.

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
To get back to my earlier point, I am not asking if people think the Trump bed wetting story is true. I am asking if you think it's impossible to be true.

For instance, the Obamas are a cultured, gracious, well-bred couple. It's impossible to imagine them hiring prostitutes to wet on GW Bush's bed. I can't imagine GW Bush hiring prostitutes to wet on the Clinton's bed, or the Clintons hiring prostitutes to wet on George Bush's bed, etc. etc.

As for being a germophobe, that's exactly why Trump would hire prostitutes to wet on his enemy's bed.

So you're asking whether it is impossible to be true the a prank from 4chan, which was found by someone connected to the intelligence community who leaked the story to Republican never-Trumpers, without verifying the story could in fact be true.

What you are asking is people to take leave of their senses, abandon all rational thought, ignore the evidence provided and instead rely on their biases.

No, I have tried to make it clear that what I am asking is whether you think Trump is the kind of person who is impossible to imagine pulling this kind of stunt. Not whether you think he did pull this stunt.

Can't believe that our intelligence community didn't realize it's a 4chan prank before briefing POTUS and POTUS-to-be.

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:
Shame Prism is already taken...

Actually is a pretty good name for a government program isn't it?

https://www.aclu.org/blog/new-justice-department-documents-show-huge-increase-warrantless-electronic-surveillance?redirect=blog/national-security-technology-and-liberty/new-justice-department-documents-show-huge-increase
http://time.com/3909293/edward-snowden-obama-nsa-spying/
http://www.cnn.com/2015/07/03/politics/germany-media-spying-obama-administration/

And just think of the things that could have been achieved if people stopped bitching about Roe v Wade and actually starting demanding the government live by it?

All the wasted time.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:

You honestly believe this will pass the public vote, protests, and legal challenges?

I don't know. Did a guy who bragged about not paying taxes, state support for committing acts of war that "wouldn't start a war", profess a profoundly out of touch perception of the mechanisms of politics, and was either too dim or too uncaring to notice the blatant white power message of his own political campaign just get elected president?

I need to stop wondering when people on the right might actually start looking at that end of politics introspectively.

The difference between this inane piece of political grandstanding and Trump's campaign is so vast as to make comparison worthless

After all how could a single grandstanding bill ever compare to an entire campaign of grandstanding