US Politics Mega-thread - Page 3793

On May 12 2016 00:28 xDaunt wrote:
So let's just presume for a second that general election polling matters right now. Are we really to believe that all of these new polls coming out over the past couple of days showing Trump running neck and neck with Hillary reflects a dramatic reversal of public sentiment from when polls were showing Hillary leading by around +10 last week?

On May 12 2016 01:43 Kipsate wrote:

Put in a firing range because why fucking not

Bullets and rifles provided by the ladies

Presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump's support among likely national voters has surged so much so that he's nearly closed a 13-point gap with Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released Wednesday.

The poll showed that 40 percent of likely voters supported Trump and 41 percent supported Clinton. Of those surveyed, 19 percent said they were unsure as to who they'd support.

Clinton led Trump by nine points in last week's iteration of the Reuters/Ipsos poll.

The online poll surveyed 1,289 people from May 6-10. The poll had a margin of error of about 3 percentage points.

On May 12 2016 05:04 Jaaaaasper wrote:
Man for a guy who claims to want to take the corruption and money out of politics, Bernie Sanders has a lot of Illegal campaign donations

On May 12 2016 05:04 Jaaaaasper wrote:
Man for a guy who claims to want to take the corruption and money out of politics, Bernie Sanders has a lot of Illegal campaign donations

On May 12 2016 05:56 Godwrath wrote:

How are they illegal ? (Talking from ignorance)

On May 12 2016 05:56 Godwrath wrote:

How are they illegal ? (Talking from ignorance)

A federal judge has sharply rebuked the Pentagon for the process by which it concealed hundreds of Bush-era photos showing US military personnel torturing detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan, suggesting Barack Obama may have to release even more graphic imagery of abuse.

Alvin Hellerstein, the senior judge who has presided over a transparency lawsuit for the photos that has lasted more than 12 years, expressed dissatisfaction over the Pentagon’s compliance with an order he issued last year requiring a case-by-case ruling that release of an estimated 1,800 photographs would endanger US troops.

“We don’t know the methodology, we don’t know what was reviewed, we don’t know the criteria, we don’t know the numbers,” Hellerstein said during an hour-long hearing on Wednesday.

Hellerstein said he would formally rule on the matter in the “near future”, a process that may compel the Pentagon to disclose additional photographs.

Tara LaMort, a justice department attorney, argued to Hellerstein that a multi-layered review of the photographs, conducted by the military officers on the Pentagon’s joint staff, had determined that disclosing the vast majority of the photographic treasure trove would provide terrorist groups with propaganda useful for recruitment.

Yet Hellerstein, a Bill Clinton appointee who said he has tried to give Obama and George W Bush deference on keeping potentially inflammatory photos secret, told LaMort that determination was “not enough” for judicial review because it omitted the reasoning behind withholding specific photographs.

On May 12 2016 06:17 Plansix wrote:
I was always under the impression that they all candidates dealt with that problem and just returned the funds. It is an open donation systems, they hold the money and just return the funds that can’t be used under law.

President Barack Obama doesn't have plans to release information about Area 51, even after Hillary Clinton said she would as president make files on the Nevada Air Force base public.

Responding to a question about the New York Times story on the subject, press secretary Josh Earnest said Wednesday that he wasn't "aware of any plans that the president has to make public any information about this."

"I have to admit that I don’t have a tab on my briefing book for Area 51 today," Earnest joked. When a reporter joked that the file had been taken out of his book, he said: "Maybe it has. Part of a grand conspiracy."

The Times' story noted multiple interviews in which the Democratic front-runner expressed a desire to release information, including one in which she commented, "I want to open the files as much as we can.”

Earnest pointed out that Obama has previously joked about having access to information about Area 51 as one of the perks of the presidency.

“I don’t know whether or not he has availed himself of that opportunity. But if we have more on this, we’ll let you know,” Earnest said.

On May 12 2016 06:17 Plansix wrote:
I was always under the impression that they all candidates dealt with that problem and just returned the funds. It is an open donation systems, they hold the money and just return the funds that can’t be used under law.

On May 12 2016 06:16 Naracs_Duc wrote:


Some of Bernie's donators are:
"Solar guy", "Rockstar", "Prophet at UNSELFISH", "Keyboard Specialist" (DMV), random strings of numbers, "Shrink", "Human Being", "IT Guy", "Figurehead", "POOR ASS STUDENT", "Bar Patron", "Web nerd", "Worker bee", Yale's locksmith, "OFFICE GAL", "REALTOR?", "Fulfillment", and "Seed Saver"

There's also repeat donors of people hitting the cap but donating anyway, etc...

non-names linked to random PO Box numbers, etc...

All donating to Bernie to both circumvent the cap as well as fake "individual contributions"

No stranger to questions about his taxes and wealth, former GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney on Wednesday criticized Donald Trump’s decision to withhold his tax returns from the public, calling the move “disqualifying” and speculating that the presumptive Republican presidential nominee is hiding “a bombshell.”

Trump on Tuesday told the Associated Press that he does not plan to release his tax returns — as is tradition for candidates for elected office — because he is being audited.

Romney responded on Facebook, arguing that making tax returns public provides valuable information to voters. He accused Trump of using the audit as a excuse to avoid further scrutiny and suggested that Trump may be concealing something that could negatively impact his candidacy, an attack he first made earlier this year.

“There is only one logical explanation for Mr. Trump’s refusal to release his returns: there is a bombshell in them,” Romney wrote on Wednesday. “Given Mr. Trump’s equanimity with other flaws in his history, we can only assume it’s a bombshell of unusual size.”

When he ran for president in 2012, Romney initially hesitated to release his tax returns because of the scrutiny they would bring to his business experience and wealth, but by January of that year, relented.

Tax experts have also called into question Trump using the audit as a reason not to release his tax returns. Trump has claimed that the IRS is examining “four or five years” of his taxes, but the agency typically focuses on three years of taxes.

On May 12 2016 06:38 ticklishmusic wrote:


The problem is that he's not actually making the refunds, this is like... the third RFAI from the FEC and the attached lists of donations is just getting longer and longer. A brief scan shows that many of the flagged donations from previous FEC notices are still there. Maybe the FEC actually gets tired of shit and takes legal action. There is a ton of money in his campaign accounts that he shouldn't have, so it's difficult to ascertain the actual financial position he's in.

On May 12 2016 06:44 ticklishmusic wrote:
It's still wrong to break campaign finance laws. One case here is that other candidates have effectively blocked foreign donations by tracking IP addresses (I'm not clear on the technical details) but Bernie hasn't which is why he has a lot of illegal donations from noncitizens.

Legal is not always equivalent to moral, but that's not to say you should disregard the rules for... whatever reason, even if it is incompetence

On May 12 2016 06:39 GreenHorizons wrote:


Those are what they put for their occupation isn't it?

It obviously is something entirely different than what he's talking about other than that the whole fundraising system is terrible.

He's not against money in politics whatsoever (no one is). Hes against the corrupting influence it has currently.

What about these requests from the fec indicates however much was illegally donated was to gain corrupting influence?

To be clear it's the perceived hypocrisy, not the using the rules to his advantage that made people think this was a story right?