US Politics Mega-thread - Page 4017

On June 10 2016 12:32 GreenHorizons wrote:


No one said anything about inaction.


I also call bullshit on the notion that not voting for Hillary is the same as voting for Trump. There are 10's of millions of Americans that aren't Bernie or Trump supporters she could try to earn votes from. If she and her supporters fail, that's on them, not on people who won't vote for her.

On June 10 2016 12:32 GreenHorizons wrote:


I worded that wrong. I meant that she only needs to fail to get ~10% of Bernie's supporters to end up losing to Trump. Not sure what you were waiting for though.

On June 10 2016 12:42 GreenHorizons wrote:

But I suppose that's easier than refuting that I'm right. What's particularly funny is you had just kissed off my vote anyway so it's clear your response is a result of not liking that I'm right and the whole "but Trump!?!?" being a terrible campaign strategy.

On June 10 2016 13:01 Mohdoo wrote:


Dude. You aren't Bernie. No one gives a shit about your vote or your influence. You're just some dude like the rest of us. We aren't panicking here.

Anyway, Warren had some good shit to say:

http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/elizabeth-warren-endorse-clinton-rachel-maddow-show-n589236

The battle between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump for the White House is likely to center on the Rust Belt — the industrial Midwest where trade is a big issue for many voters and where the presumptive Republican nominee is predicting he will be able to cut into the Democratic Party's traditional dominance among members of labor unions.

A key part of Trump's pitch on the campaign trail focuses on the trade deals that he says have hurt the U.S., and with the general election contest now taking center stage, that part of his message is resonating with a lot of union workers — even longtime Democrats.

You can get a taste of the discussions, debates and even arguments taking place about the choices in this election at the United Steelworkers union hall in Canton, Ohio.

At the regular monthly meeting of Local 1123, union officials were talking about the need to mobilize on behalf of candidates who support labor's agenda on trade, the right to organize and pushing for an increase in the minimum wage nationally.

And there was lots of talk about the presidential race. This meeting took place before the United Steelworkers national office gave its official endorsement to Democrat Hillary Clinton.

But even with that backing still pending at the time, Keith Strobelt, who heads the political Rapid Response team for Local 1123, told the room, "We know who we're against." He was talking about Donald Trump.

Now to an unusual case of an immigration judge who was suing the U.S. Department of Justice, alleging discrimination. The judge is of Iranian descent and she says her superiors ordered her not to hear any cases that involved Iranian nationals. NPR's Richard Gonzales reports.

RICHARD GONZALES, BYLINE: Immigration Judge A. Ashley Tabaddor has been hearing immigration cases since 2005. In her lawsuit, she says her troubles began three years ago when she was invited to a White House meeting with Iranian-American community leaders. She asked her supervisors for permission to attend and they approved, but they also recommended that if she went she recuse herself from all immigration cases involving Iranians. When she returned from Washington, Tabaddor says the recommended recusal became an official order. That move sparked outrage among fellow immigration judges who say it violates Tabaddor's First Amendment rights.

DANA LEIGH MARKS: And we do believe that this appears to be discriminatory based on her Iranian heritage.

On June 10 2016 12:54 KwarK wrote:

That's not how personal responsibility works. If you choose to do nothing you can't subsequently go "well nor did some other people so I'm absolved of any blame for my choice". Every voter who could have voted against Trump and didn't is to blame when he wins, no less than those who went and voted for him. It's a zero sum game, one more vote for Trump helps him as much as one less vote for Hillary. Unless you're not in a swing state, in which case do whatever the fuck you like.

Emails in Clinton Probe Dealt With Planned Drone Strikes
Some vaguely worded messages from U.S. diplomats in Pakistan and Washington used a less-secure communications system

At the center of a criminal probe involving Hillary Clinton’s handling of classified information is a series of emails between American diplomats in Islamabad and their superiors in Washington about whether to oppose specific drone strikes in Pakistan.

The 2011 and 2012 emails were sent via the “low side’’—government slang for a computer system for unclassified matters—as part of a secret arrangement that gave the State Department more of a voice in whether a Central Intelligence Agency drone strike went ahead, according to congressional and law-enforcement officials briefed on the Federal Bureau of Investigation probe.

Some of the emails were then forwarded by Mrs. Clinton’s aides to her personal email account, which routed them to a server she kept at her home in suburban New York when she was secretary of state, the officials said. Investigators have raised concerns that Mrs. Clinton’s personal server was less secure than State Department systems.

The vaguely worded messages didn’t mention the “CIA,” “drones” or details about the militant targets, officials said.

The still-secret emails are a key part of the FBI investigation that has long dogged Mrs. Clinton’s campaign, these officials said.

They were written within the often-narrow time frame in which State Department officials had to decide whether or not to object to drone strikes before the CIA pulled the trigger, the officials said.

Law-enforcement and intelligence officials said State Department deliberations about the covert CIA drone program should have been conducted over a more secure government computer system designed to handle classified information.

State Department officials told FBI investigators they communicated via the less-secure system on a few instances, according to congressional and law-enforcement officials. It happened when decisions about imminent strikes had to be relayed fast and the U.S. diplomats in Pakistan or Washington didn’t have ready access to a more-secure system, either because it was night or they were traveling.

Emails sent over the low side sometimes were informal discussions that occurred in addition to more-formal notifications through secure communications, the officials said.

One such exchange came just before Christmas in 2011, when the U.S. ambassador sent a short, cryptic note to his boss indicating a drone strike was planned. That sparked a back-and-forth among Mrs. Clinton’s senior advisers over the next few days, in which it was clear they were having the discussions in part because people were away from their offices for the holiday and didn’t have access to a classified computer, officials said.

The CIA drone campaign, though widely reported in Pakistan, is treated as secret by the U.S. government. Under strict U.S. classification rules, U.S. officials have been barred from discussing strikes publicly and even privately outside of secure communications systems.

The State Department said in January that 22 emails on Mrs. Clinton’s personal server at her home have been judged to contain top-secret information and aren’t being publicly released. Many of them dealt with whether diplomats concurred or not with the CIA drone strikes, congressional and law-enforcement officials said.

Several law-enforcement officials said they don’t expect any criminal charges to be filed as a result of the investigation, although a final review of the evidence will be made only after an expected FBI interview with Mrs. Clinton this summer.

One reason is that government workers at several agencies, including the departments of Defense, Justice and State, have occasionally resorted to the low-side system to give each other notice about sensitive but fast-moving events, according to one law-enforcement official.

When Mrs. Clinton has been asked about the possibility of being criminally charged over the email issue, she has repeatedly said “that is not going to happen.’’ She has said it was a mistake to use a personal server for email but it was a decision she made as a matter of convenience.

Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon said: “If these officials’ descriptions are true, these emails were originated by career diplomats, and the sending of these types of emails was widespread within the government.”

U.S. officials said there is no evidence Pakistani intelligence officials intercepted any of the low-side State Department emails or used them to protect militants.

State Department spokesman Mark Toner said the agency “is not going to speak to the content of documents, nor would we speak to any ongoing review.’’

The email issue has dogged Mrs. Clinton for more than a year. Despite her success in nailing down the Democratic presidential nomination, polls show many voters continue to doubt her truthfulness and integrity. Her campaign manager has acknowledged the email matter has hurt her.

Republican rival Donald Trump has attacked Mrs. Clinton repeatedly on the issue, calling her “Crooked Hillary,’’ saying what she did was a crime and suggesting the Justice Department would let her off because it is run by Democrats.

Beyond the campaign implications, the investigation exposes the latest chapter in a power struggle that pits the enforcers of strict secrecy, including the FBI and CIA, against some officials at the State Department and other agencies who want a greater voice in the use of covert lethal force around the globe, because of the impact it has on broader U.S. policy goals.

In the case of Pakistan, U.S. diplomats found themselves in a difficult position.

Despite being treated as top secret by the CIA, the drone program has long been in the public domain in Pakistan. Television stations there go live with reports of each strike, undermining U.S. efforts to foster goodwill and cooperation against militants through billions of dollars in American aid.

Pakistani officials, while publicly opposing the drone program, secretly consented to the CIA campaign by clearing airspace in the militant-dense tribal areas along the Afghan border, according to former U.S. and Pakistani officials.

CIA and White House officials credit a sharp ramp-up in drone strikes early in Mr. Obama’s presidency with battering al Qaeda’s leadership in the Pakistani tribal areas and helping protect U.S. forces next door in Afghanistan. Targets have also included some of the Pakistan government’s militant enemies.

In 2011, Pakistani officials began to push back in private against the drone program, raising questions for the U.S. over the extent to which the program still had their consent.

U.S. diplomats warned the CIA and White House they risked losing access to Pakistan’s airspace unless more discretion was shown, said current and former officials. Within the administration, State Department and military officials argued that the CIA needed to be more “judicious” about when strikes were launched. They weren’t challenging the spy agency’s specific choice of targets, but mainly the timing of strikes.

The CIA initially chafed at the idea of giving the State Department more of a voice in the process. Under a compromise reached around the year 2011, CIA officers would notify their embassy counterparts in Islamabad when a strike in Pakistan was planned, so then-U.S. ambassador Cameron Munter or another senior diplomat could decide whether to “concur” or “non-concur.” Mr. Munter declined to comment.

Diplomats in Islamabad would communicate the decision to their superiors in Washington. A main purpose was to give then-Secretary of State Clinton and her top aides a chance to consider whether she wanted to weigh in with the CIA director about a planned strike.

With the compromise, State Department-CIA tensions began to subside. Only once or twice during Mrs. Clinton’s tenure at State did U.S. diplomats object to a planned CIA strike, according to congressional and law-enforcement officials familiar with the emails.

U.S. diplomats in Pakistan and Washington usually relayed and discussed their concur or non-concur decisions via the State Department’s more-secure messaging system. But about a half-dozen times, when they were away from more-secure equipment, they improvised by sending emails on their smartphones about whether they backed an impending strike or not, the officials said.

The time available to the State Department to weigh in on a planned strike varied widely, from several days to as little as 20 or 30 minutes. “If a strike was imminent, it was futile to use the high side, which no one would see for seven hours,” said one official.

Adding to those communications hurdles, U.S. intelligence officials privately objected to the State Department even using its high-side system. They wanted diplomats to use a still-more-secure system called the Joint Worldwide Intelligence Community Systems, or JWICs. State Department officials don’t have ready access to that system, even in Washington. If drone-strike decisions were needed quickly, it wouldn’t be an option, officials said.

Some officials chafed at pressure to send internal deliberations through intelligence channels, since they were discussing whether to push back against the CIA, congressional officials said.

The Wall Street Journal first reported on the State Department-CIA tug-of-war over the drone program in 2011.

Under pressure to address critics abroad, Mr. Obama pledged to increase the transparency of drone operations by shifting, as much as possible, control of drone programs around the world to the U.S. military instead of the CIA. An exception was made for Pakistan.

But even in Pakistan, Mr. Obama recently signaled a shift. The drone strike that killed Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour last month was conducted by the military, not the CIA, and the outcome was disclosed.

While the CIA still controls drones over the tribal areas of Pakistan near Afghanistan, the pace of strikes has declined dramatically in recent years. U.S. officials say there are fewer al Qaeda targets there now that the CIA can find.

On June 10 2016 16:17 NukeD wrote:
I can understand voting for Hillary just for not getting Trump elected but endorsing Hillary and thinking she is a great candidate is beyond me. This just shows how much of a joke the democratic process is where you are being served and have to vote for terrible candidates (both Trump and Hillary) no one in their right mind would endorse. Its a rigged game, Trumps rigjt about that if nothing else.

On June 10 2016 16:17 NukeD wrote:
I can understand voting for Hillary just for not getting Trump elected but endorsing Hillary and thinking she is a great candidate is beyond me. This just shows how much of a joke the democratic process is where you are being served and have to vote for terrible candidates (both Trump and Hillary) no one in their right mind would endorse. Its a rigged game, Trumps rigjt about that if nothing else.