US Politics Mega-thread - Page 4088

On June 19 2016 14:07 amazingxkcd wrote:


well if you want anti-trump paranoia here's a fun one from today

On June 19 2016 16:56 Surth wrote:
Y'all think Trump should be more presidential in regards to the press, but it seems to me like he is as presidential in this regard as Nixon ever was
#AmericaHasNeverBeenGreat

On June 19 2016 17:09 zeo wrote:

You know, Nixon resigned over much less than what the DNC has been doing for Clinton this past year according to the resent leaks.

'Working through the DNC and others, we should use background briefings, prep with reporters for interviews with GOP candidates, off-the-record conversations and oppo pitches to help pitch stories with no fingerprints and utilize reporters to drive a message'.

Yikes

On June 19 2016 17:16 Aquanim wrote:

I'm not big on 20th century American political history, so you're going to have to explain to me what makes Watergate "much less" than this.

'Working through the DNC and others, we should use background briefings, prep with reporters for interviews with GOP candidates, off-the-record conversations and oppo pitches to help pitch stories with no fingerprints and utilize reporters to drive a message'.

On June 19 2016 17:29 zeo wrote:...
If Watergate happened today 70% of the people in this thread would be saying its no big deal if it was Clinton doing the spying.

On June 19 2016 17:51 Surth wrote:
Not talking about Watergate by the way. He stonewalled the press throughout the 1972 campaign much more extensively than Trump does right now. Though to be fair, he was already President, so he had other means to do so. I'd quote some passages from The Boys on the Bus, but I gave it to a friend a few months ago. Politics - and Journalism - are broken on a much more fundamental level than Trumpism.

On June 19 2016 18:03 Aquanim wrote:

You probably weren't, Zeo referred specifically to what caused Nixon to resign (which, correct me if I'm wrong, was Watergate)

A scathing report released by a senator this week found that the American Red Cross spent about $125m in donor money for Haiti aid on fundraising, management and other expenses, and that officials refused to cooperate with investigators.

The Iowa Republican Chuck Grassley found “substantial and fundamental concerns” in the Red Cross, he concluded at the end of a 309-page report. His Senate commission investigation was prompted by a 2015 ProPublica and NPR report which said the Red Cross had built only six homes in Haiti despite having received $488m from donors.

Grassley’s investigation found that an estimated $125m given to the Red Cross in the wake of Haiti’s devastating earthquake in 2010 went to management and fundraising expenses and “program costs”, a category that includes salaries, contract services, travel expenses and related costs. Most of the remaining $363m was “farmed out”, the report said, to partner organizations which worked on the island.

Partner organizations had their own expenses and overheads, and in one case documents showed the Red Cross gave $4.3m to a partner organization with an additional $2m budgeted for “activities related” to management of the money.

“Despite this explanation, [the Red Cross] is unable to provide any financial evidence that oversight activities in fact occurred,” the report concluded.

In general, Grassley’s investigators found that the Red Cross was unable to calculate the cost of each project and program in Haiti, and “instead it uses a complex, yet inaccurate, process to track its spending”.

In a statement released in response, the Red Cross said it “strongly disagrees” with the report’s conclusions, adding: “We have accounted for every penny spent in Haiti.”

On June 19 2016 17:16 Aquanim wrote:

I'm not big on 20th century American political history, so you're going to have to explain to me what makes Watergate "much less" than this.

On June 19 2016 17:29 zeo wrote:

The media is complacent this time so we might never know the full extent. Much less in just the sheer volume of wrong doing.

If Watergate happened today 70% of the people in this thread would be saying its no big deal if it was Clinton doing the spying.

On June 19 2016 11:30 GGTeMpLaR wrote:


I would say that is largely dependent on the nature of the topic at hand, and that for most meaningful topics worth discussing, it couldn't be further from the truth to say they are solved quickly or easily.

House Speaker Paul Ryan says it’s his responsibility to support Donald Trump, even if the presumptive Republican nominee’s bombast occasionally makes him uncomfortable.

Ryan told Chuck Todd of NBC’s “Meet the Press” that he feels an obligation as the leader of the House Republicans to back Trump, warts and all. To do otherwise, he said, would divide the party and ultimately lead to a third consecutive Democratic victory in November’s presidential election.

“I feel like I have certain responsibilities, as not just Congressman Paul Ryan from the First District of Wisconsin, but as Speaker of the House,” Ryan said in an interview that aired Sunday. “And imagine the Speaker of the House not supporting the duly elected nominee of our party, therefore creating a chasm in our party to split us in half, which basically helps deny us the White House, and strong majorities in Congress.”

“The last thing I want to see happen is another Democrat in the White House,” he continued. “I don't want see Hillary Clinton as president. I want to see a strong majority in the House and the Senate. And I think the way to achieve those goals is to have a more unified party, than a disunified party.”

As he has often done when pressed to respond to Trump’s controversial rhetoric, Ryan framed his support for the presumptive nominee as the best way to ensure that his newly rolled-out slate of conservative policy proposals find an ally in the White House. Ryan had hoped that those proposals, focusing on issues like poverty, national security and tax reform, would bring substance to the 2016 race. Thus far, Trump’s bluster has kept Ryan’s package of proposals from gaining much traction on the campaign trail.

Ryan refused to engage in hypotheticals when asked by Todd if he would feel the same responsibility to support Trump if he were not speaker of the House. The Wisconsin Republican, who will serve as chairman of the Republican National Convention next month in Cleveland, also refused to weigh in on the possibility of rules changes that could deny Trump the nomination by freeing delegates of their obligation to vote for him.

On June 19 2016 23:35 farvacola wrote:
The rural/urban divide, while one of our oldest systemic electoral problems, will continue to be an issue of primary concern. State legislatures here in the Midwest, for example, need some kind of change......and fast.

WASHINGTON, June 19 (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court may weigh in this week on gun control, an issue smoldering again following the June 12 Orlando massacre, with the justices due to decide whether to hear a challenge by gun rights advocates to assault weapon bans in two states.

The Connecticut and New York laws prohibit semiautomatic weapons like the one used by the gunman who fatally shot 49 people at a gay night club in Orlando in the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history.

The Supreme Court will announce as soon as Monday whether it will hear the challenge brought by gun rights groups and individual firearms owners asserting that the laws violate the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment guarantee of the right to bear arms.

The court has not decided a major gun case since 2010.

If they take up the matter, the justices would hear arguments in their next term, which begins in October. A decision not to hear the challenge would leave in place lower-court rulings upholding the laws.

The court’s action in another recent appeal indicated it may be disinclined to take up the matter. The justices in December opted not to hear a challenge to a Highland Park, Illinois ordinance banning assault weapons and large-capacity magazines.