US Politics Mega-thread - Page 5642

On October 19 2016 10:58 iPlaY.NettleS wrote:

I'm sure we cal all agree here that the system is broken and Clinton will not fix it.She's been part of the problem for years.She benefits from the current system via kickbacks, pork barreling, cushy benefits and a very generous pension scheme.

Say what you like about Sanders but i think he could have made some meaningful changes to the system.Trump made huge wealth outside the system so would have no issues shaking up the political system, thats why such pushback from the establishment politicians.

On October 19 2016 10:05 Nevuk wrote:

He's a moderately talented writer (which is far more than can be said for any of Trump's other supporters) and he did in fact call Trump's rise very early on before any of the other pundits.

He seemed to be trying to give off the air of being unbiased at first, but either he bought into his own game or stopped being able to hide his bias after a while.

It was also appealing to have someone say "I know why Trump is doing well!" when everyone else was saying "No, but really, this doesn't work" even when it was clearly working, that was the reason for his initial rise in popularity.

The end moral of the Adams-Trump saga is that Adams understands white males and what appeals to them very well, but he has no fucking clue about the rest of the general public - so his analysis fell apart after the primaries when women became the most important voting bloc.

On October 19 2016 11:04 plasmidghost wrote:
I'd really like it if the US could gradually stop allying with Saudi Arabia (or give their citizens the same rights most Western societies have), and under Hillary, that alliance is only going to increase since she's taken loads of money from them in the past

On October 19 2016 10:58 iPlaY.NettleS wrote:
Say what you like about Sanders but i think he could have made some meaningful changes to the system.Trump made huge wealth outside the system so would have no issues shaking up the political system, thats why such pushback from the establishment politicians.

On October 19 2016 11:07 CatharsisUT wrote:
Nevuk I just re-read and I think I actually agree with you entirely except your summation. Except I used way more words, so, you know, obviously that's better.

On October 19 2016 11:13 Mohdoo wrote:


I dream of a world where Iran is a really close US ally that also gets along with Israel somehow.

Campaign operatives who competed against Donald Trump in the Republican primaries are bristling at suggestions they failed to fully investigate the businessman during his march to the nomination.

Trump’s campaign has been rocked by multiple accusations of sexual misconduct, which came to light after a damaging video was uncovered this month from 2005 in which the businessman talks about grabbing women “by the p----.”

Before that, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton steered media attention toward Trump’s treatment of women by calling out Trump’s mockery of a former Miss Universe as “Miss Piggy.”
With each new revelation, political observers wonder: How did such damaging material escape the attention of the 16 Republicans Trump beat during the primaries?

Mike Murphy, who led the $118 million super PAC effort to elect Jeb Bush, said it’s “horses---” to suggest his team didn’t do enough opposition research on Trump.

He said his critics — some of whom were rival consultants and prefer to remain anonymous — were being unfair when they said he should have spent less on TV ads and more on digging dirt on Trump.

“To assume that if we had some oppo guy paying women to come forward,” said Murphy, “and we could’ve with telepathy known who they were, and then we would’ve just given it to the papers and they would’ve all printed it, is just an amateur fantasy about how oppo works.”

Others in the GOP see things differently.

“It’s political malpractice on behalf of Mike Murphy, and negligence to not do the homework on a guy that’s winning primaries,” said an influential Republican fundraiser, who spoke to The Hill on the condition of anonymity.

“I happen to believe that all of this should have come out [during the primaries],” he said.

“If you put money out there, this s--- comes, believe me.”

‘There are limits to opposition research’

Republican operatives who worked for Trump’s top rivals say the media has a lot to answer for when it comes to vetting Trump.

NBC, for example, owned the “Access Hollywood” tape in which Trump was caught on a hot mic talking to host Billy Bush about groping women without their consent.

“I had somebody ask me the other day, ‘Aren’t you mad at Billy Bush [for not giving his cousin Jeb the damaging tape]?’ ” said Tim Miller, the former spokesman for Jeb Bush’s campaign.

“And I’m like, ‘Well, no. … I don’t know all the ins and outs. I don’t know if he realized how bad it was,’ ” Miller said. “I’m mad at NBC, who has a news reporting budget that is probably 50 to 100 [times] what our campaign budget was.”

Added a senior operative from another of Trump’s rival GOP primary campaigns: “What are we supposed to do? Break into NBC and steal their tapes?”

Nor, these operatives argued, would it have been easy for opposition researchers to find women to come forward with sexual allegations against Trump.

Jeff Sadosky, who served as communications director for a super PAC backing Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.), said it’s naive to imagine that a good opposition researcher could have unearthed these stories sooner.

“Everyone assumed there were closets full of skeletons,” said Sadosky, “but the best opposition researcher in the world won’t find a woman on a plane 30 years ago until she’s ready to tell her story.”

Katie Packer, an experienced GOP operative who led a well-funded effort to stop Trump, said, “I think these women, who have only shared these stories with close friends up until now, became unglued when they heard him bragging about this behavior on tape and then denying he’d ever done it at the debate.

“There are limits to opposition research.”

But it’s not as if there wasn’t other evidence out there of Trump’s treatment of women.

During the first GOP primary debate, on Fox News in August 2015, co-moderator Megyn Kelly asked Trump about a series of derogatory comments he’d made about women. These included calling women he doesn’t like “fat pigs, dogs, slobs and disgusting animals.”

Kelly’s question enraged Trump and made her a target.

None of Trump’s rivals, however, did much with Kelly’s research, and it never became a big issue during the primaries. Nor did they pounce when BuzzFeed published a story in February dredging up hours of audio of Trump making crude remarks about women to radio host Howard Stern.


Trump was undoubtedly helped in the primaries by the size of the field.

He had so many competitors that few candidates had the cash to invest in deep opposition research against him.

Some candidates — particularly Bush, Rubio and Sen. Ted Cruz (Texas) in the later stages — hit Trump on his business record, including his now-defunct Trump University. But during the primaries, these candidates too often had to allocate precious resources to defend against daily attacks from candidates other than Trump.

“We were not a cash-rich campaign,” said Matt Beynon, a top adviser to GOP candidate Rick Santorum. “We had to make a lot of difficult decisions on how we used our resources.

“Right to Rise and the Bush campaign,” added Beynon, “they had the luxury of a lot of money. They chose to use their opposition research on other candidates … such as Sen. Rubio.”

Even the Bush campaign, however, had to pare back opposition research to save money.

Miller said the Bush campaign had a three-person research team to produce opposition material on 16 candidates. The campaign was firing people and cutting costs from early on. Still, those three produced a book of opposition research on Trump, which Miller said Bush used to hit Trump for his casino dealings.

Miller contrasted the Bush team’s fairly basic opposition research on Trump to the years-long effort required to do serious opposition research. He said the GOP opposition group America Rising, which Miller co-founded, started its Clinton research book in the summer of 2013.

“With Trump, who came out of nowhere to run, you’re building this file as you’re flying the plane,” said Miller.

“Hindsight being 20/20,” Miller added, “obviously, we would’ve spent more time on Trump.”

Miller doesn’t believe Bush would’ve benefited from an early leaking of the “Access Hollywood” tape. It would have been tough to find a Trump voter who had Bush as his second choice. Bush, therefore, had no strategic imperative to call out Trump early, even though he was one of the few candidates who did.

Such calculations get at one of the major reasons Trump’s rivals — who wanted to get down to a one-on-one race against him — didn’t go after the GOP nominee until it was too late.

“There’s a game theory element to this,” Miller said, “where everybody was looking out for their own best interests and nobody’s best interest was to go after Trump ... because each candidate that did end up going after him ended up hurting themselves.”

Cruz spent much of 2015 praising Trump, so his belated attacks didn’t seem authentic. He also had a relatively weak opposition research team.

Similarly, Rubio, who did have a top opposition guy, waited until late February to begin attacking Trump, as he saw no benefits to go after the front-runner earlier. Rubio’s team was fixated on defending against well-funded attack ads from the pro-Bush super PAC Right to Rise.

Trump’s only other serious rival, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, was never going to get into the mud with Trump, as doing so would go against his Christian principles.

“With Dr. Carson, we were never going to attack an opponent,” said Ed Brookover, Carson’s former campaign manager who later worked for Trump.

“No oppo for us.”

Would any of it have worked?

Trump’s rivals were slow to take him seriously and even slower to do serious research into his past.

Still, more than half a dozen sources who worked on Trump’s rival campaigns expressed private doubts that any opposition research would’ve stopped a candidate with such blindly loyal supporters.

Of the Monday morning quarterbacking, so prevalent now in Washington Republican circles, Murphy said, “Mostly it’s rearview mirror sour grapes from rival campaigns that all had millions of their own.”

On October 19 2016 10:58 iPlaY.NettleS wrote:

I'm sure we cal all agree here that the system is broken and Clinton will not fix it.She's been part of the problem for years.She benefits from the current system via kickbacks, pork barreling, cushy benefits and a very generous pension scheme.

Say what you like about Sanders but i think he could have made some meaningful changes to the system.Trump made huge wealth outside the system so would have no issues shaking up the political system, thats why such pushback from the establishment politicians.

On October 19 2016 09:58 Danglars wrote:

Storing classified information on it and moving it there from secure state department servers certainly is. But you have better reading comprehension than to go on this line, and you know it. Here's a question: When Hillary was interviewed by the FBI, what reason/reasons did she give for not following her training and did you believe her?

On October 19 2016 11:04 plasmidghost wrote:
I'd really like it if the US could gradually stop allying with Saudi Arabia (or give their citizens the same rights most Western societies have), and under Hillary, that alliance is only going to increase since she's taken loads of money from them in the past

On October 19 2016 09:59 Nevuk wrote:
This was interesting, but I don't have the legal background to know if it's based in reality or not :



http://lawnewz.com/uncategorized/dnc-stoops-to-new-low-in-fraud-lawsuit-filed-by-bernie-backers/

On October 19 2016 10:58 iPlaY.NettleS wrote:

I'm sure we cal all agree here that the system is broken and Clinton will not fix it.She's been part of the problem for years.She benefits from the current system via kickbacks, pork barreling, cushy benefits and a very generous pension scheme.

Say what you like about Sanders but i think he could have made some meaningful changes to the system.Trump made huge wealth outside the system so would have no issues shaking up the political system, thats why such pushback from the establishment politicians.

Generally used in a derogatory manner, the term refers to the practice of politicians trading favors granted to constituents or special interest groups in exchange for political support, such as in the form of votes or campaign contributions.

Why Hillary Clinton Will Not be Charged for Lying to Congress — Even Though She Did

As you’ll see, and quite unfortunately for those wishing to see Clinton prosecuted, the law places a high burden on prosecutors to charge someone with perjury and/or lying to Congress. Additionally, prior history shows that the Department of Justice very rarely prosecutes individuals for lying to Congress. Therefore, even though Clinton probably lied to Congress, it is unlikely that she will be charged for perjury.

...

Based solely on the statutes and not any political influence, the decision to prosecute Hillary Clinton will come down to a question of her intent and belief at the time she testified before Congress. Most reports indicate that Congress’ referral is focused on at least three of Clinton’s statements: (1) that she did not have any classified material on her server; (2) her claim that there was only one server; and (3) her claim lawyers went through every email in full to determine what was work related.


Although there is much disagreement about his conclusions, Director Comey made it clear during his testimony last week that the FBI did not believe Clinton had the sophistication to understand the classification system. This determination was made based on the FBI’s interview with Clinton on July 2. Accordingly, if the DOJ and FBI determined Clinton did not understand the classification system on July 2, it stands to reason that they will also conclude that she lacked the sophistication to understand the classification system back in October of 2015. Therefore, it would be difficult to see how the DOJ could conclude Clinton knowingly or willfully lied in her responses to Congress with respect to the classification matters.

...

... In his statement Comey said, “I have so far used the singular term, ‘e-mail server,’ in describing the referral that began our investigation. It turns out to have been more complicated than that. Secretary Clinton used several different servers and administrators of those servers during her four years at the State Department….”

However, Director Comey also testified about Clinton’s lack of technical sophistication in understanding email technology. Thus, it is arguable that Clinton may not have understood that multiple servers were used during her time at the State Department. It is a little less clear as to whether her response constitutes a reckless disregard for the truth, but the DOJ will likely give her the benefit of the doubt in this circumstance.

...

This statement was not true, as Director Comey explained in his statement on July 5. “The lawyers doing the sorting for Secretary Clinton in 2014 did not individually read the content of all of her e-mails, as we did for those available to us; instead, they relied on header information and used search terms to try to find all work-related e-mails…,” Comey said. At the hearing last week, Comey reaffirmed this finding in response to questioning from Congressman Trey Gowdy, stating that her lawyers did not read every email.

The key issue will be whether Clinton knew the statement was false at the time she made it — or if the statement was made with a reckless disregard for the truth. Unlike the statements about the classified material, Director Comey’s testimony does not help Clinton on this issue. That potentially gives prosecutors an opening to go after Clinton on this matter, if they choose to do so.

But here’s the reality: Prosecutors rarely go after individuals for lying to Congress. A Quinnipiac law review article mentioned earlier found only six people have been successfully convicted of lying to Congress between the 1940s and the mid-2000s.

A recent example involving James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), comes to mind. In 2013, DNI Clapper testified that the government does not “wittingly” collect information about millions of Americans. Documents leaked by Edward Snowden appear to directly contradict DNI Clapper’s assertion, but he was never investigated and still hold his position of the nation’s top spy.

As the law review article also suggests, prosecutors and some lawmakers have come to accept that witnesses will lie when testifying before Congress. This acceptance leads to a lack of prosecutions, despite what appears to clear violations of the relevant statutes. And we have all recently seen how past reluctance to apply a specific statue can be used as justification for not charging Hillary Clinton with a crime.

[Clinton’s close aide Jake Sullivan] told the FBI his experience was that State Department employees “did the best they could to make a sound judgment when handling classified information

[One State Department official, no fan of Hillary Clinton] said he “tried to use his best judgment.”

On October 19 2016 12:01 plasmidghost wrote:

Sad but true, it's just a wish

The president of Liberty University censored an article critical of Donald Trump, according to the sports editor of the school's official newspaper, the Liberty Champion.

The editor, Joel Schmieg, posted a statement on his Facebook account claiming it was Jerry Falwell Jr., the university's president and a Trump supporter, who spiked the column, which criticized Trump for lewd comments he made on a hot mic during a 2005 taping of "Access Hollywood."

"Yesterday I was told [Falwell] was not allowing me to express my personal opinion in an article I wrote for my weekly column in the Liberty Champion about Trump and his 'locker room talk,'" Schmieg wrote.

"I understand Joel's frustration regarding the situation," Cierra Carter, the opinion editor for the Liberty Champion, told POLITICO. "Our president has been very vocal with his opinions during this election season and we'd like that same privilege."

In his Facebook post, Schmieg poked fun at a statement by Falwell earlier in the week, in which he said: "It is a testament to the fact that Liberty University promotes the free expression of ideas unlike many major universities where political correctness prevents conservative students from speaking out."

"I find these words from Jerry amusing and extremely hypocritical," Schmieg wrote.

Falwell's statement came after a group of students at Liberty University criticized him for defending Trump after the release of the recording, in which the real estate mogul boasted about grabbing women's genitals and getting away with it.

"Any faculty or staff member at Liberty would be terminated for such comments, and yet when Donald Trump makes them, President Falwell rushes eagerly to his defense — taking the name 'Liberty University' with him," the students wrote.

"I think this whole tape … videotape thing was planned, I think it was timed, I think it might have even been a conspiracy among establishment Republicans who have known about it for weeks and who tried to time it to do the maximum damage to Donald Trump, and I just … I just think it just backfired on them," Falwell told radio host Rita Cosby on Oct. 10.

Falwell went on to suggest that the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives was a beneficiary of the leak, despite "Access Hollywood" saying it discovered the recording after digging through the show's archives. "It wasn't a coincidence that it came out right before Trump was supposed to appear with Paul Ryan at a rally, and it conveniently gave Paul Ryan a way to disinvite Trump," Falwell told Cosby.

Schmieg's article is heavily critical of the Republican nominee and his language in the 11-year-old recording, in which Trump described grabbing women "by the p---y."

"This is not locker room talk," Shmieg wrote. "Anyone who says otherwise is just trying to excuse the terrible things they or others have said."

He went on to argue that a high school student would be punished for saying what Trump says in the recording. "When an adult in his late 50's says things like "when you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything," that should be a major red flag," he added.

"Donald Trump may have issued an apology for the words he said, but the fact that he can brush them off with a description of 'locker room talk,' tells me that he does not believe what he said is truly bad."

Emails and phone calls asking Liberty University for comment were not immediately returned.