US Politics Mega-thread - Page 6860

On February 14 2017 03:24 a_flayer wrote:


Why were Kiev troops in the region to be bombed and killed there when it was under separatist control to begin with? They moved in on the area, and then the bombing started BECAUSE the Kiev troops moved in.

In the days before the 29 January bombardments the OSCE special monitoring mission in Ukraine documented a series of violations of the Minsk II agreement by separatists and Ukrainian troops who both placed weapon systems and troops in prohibited locations.

A website that until very recently was published by Donald Trump's son-in-law has claimed that US spies are withholding their most sensitive intelligence from the White House.

For the past three weeks, according to a former National Security Agency (NSA) analyst and counter-intelligence officer, some the America's spy agencies have begun withholding intelligence from the Oval Office amid fears "the Kremlin has ears inside" the White House situation room.

The claims follow reports that National Security Adviser Michael Flynn discussed lifting sanctions against Moscow with a Russian diplomat before Mr Trump took office.

An NSA official told the New York Observer it was holding back some of the "good stuff" from the White House, while one Pentagon worker said: "There's not much the Russians don't know at this point. Since January 20, we’ve assumed that the Kremlin has ears inside the [situation room]."

The FBI is still investigating Gen Flynn's conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.

Nine sources told the Washington Post the pair had discussed sanctions imposed on Russia by outgoing President Barack Obama, despite Gen Flynn twice saying "no" in response to interview questions when asked if the sanctions, over Russia’s interference in the US election, were brought up.

In the past Mr Trump has been criticised for a perceived lack of respect for the intelligence community, while as President-elect he called the storm over Russian hacking of the election a "political witch-hunt".

The New York Observer's website is an amalgamation of several media brands bought by Mr Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

Mr Kushner was the owner of the news website until last month when he was named a senior White House adviser.

He is married to Mr Trump's eldest daughter, Ivanka.

On February 14 2017 03:13 a_flayer wrote:
You can call it Russian interference all you like. Assad had been rightfully claiming for years that foreigners were interfering in the opposition to his government (which caused him to tighten the straps) but that didn't stop America from condemning him and continuing to support the rebels there. This is a very similar deal in that regard, except now the US supports the existing government rather than the rebels.

Kiev moved in on separatist controlled areas, probably breaking Minsk II in the process, and fighting erupted. Nobody is on the right side of the argument here, but claiming "foreign interference" is a bullshit argument coming from an American.

On February 14 2017 02:35 xDaunt wrote:
The Ukraine isn't an American problem. We have basically zero strategic interest in what happens in the Ukraine beyond the containment of Russia, to the extent that matters. This is a European problem. To the extent that the Europeans care, they are the ones who should do something.

On February 14 2017 03:37 Biff The Understudy wrote:

That's smart. And if China invades Indonesia, it's also not an american problem, and not a european problem either I guess. With such logic the world would have been burning a long time ago.

On February 14 2017 04:06 oneofthem wrote:
more or less the only reason i care about this russia/china stuff is that there is an opportunity here to leverage foreign policy strategy in service of a reform agenda. like how the need to show up the ussr supported the great society and other reforms. this present day influence would be identifying kleptocracy and extractive institutions as the opponent, and in turn trying to make market work for the people, positive development path etc.

and if not for those damn kids we would have gotten away with it

On February 14 2017 04:09 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:


That won't happen. Oligarchs tend to stick together whether it is in the Americas, Africa or Europe or Asia as they tend to be intertwined.

Emergency workers and state officials were racing on Monday to repair a damaged spillway on the tallest dam in the United States, while almost 200,000 people evacuated downstream of the structure were given no indication of when they might return to their homes.

While the imminent threat of a breach in the spillway wall appeared to have receded overnight, the forecast is for a continuous week of rain around Lake Oroville, in northern California, starting on Wednesday.

Helicopters from around the state were sent to the site of the Oroville dam – the tallest in the United States – to assist in the emergency effort, according to local news reports. Crews loaded bags of rocks on to helicopters, which were to be flown over the damaged spillway to fill the gap created by erosion.

The emergency repair work comes one day after tens of thousands of people living close to the dam were ordered to evacuate on Sunday afternoon when the spillway appeared to be in danger of collapse.

Evacuee centers have been established at county fairgrounds and community centers. Local Sikh temples have also opened their doors. The state has not provided any timeline as to when the evacuation orders will be lifted.

“This is not a drill,” the state water resources board announced on Sunday, warning that the failure of the spillway would “result in an uncontrolled release of flood waters from Lake Oroville”.

Lake Oroville, the state’s second-largest reservoir, has been filled to the brim thanks to an unusually wet winter that has brought an end to the region’s years of severe drought. Last week, for the first time in the dam’s history, water flowed over the top of the spillway.

According to the San Jose Mercury News, the spillway was designed to handle 350,000 cubic feet per second of water. But on Sunday, flows were just a fraction of that – up to 12,000 cubic feet per second – when officials observed enough erosion to make them fear the entire spillway was in danger of imminent collapse.

On February 14 2017 04:20 Plansix wrote:
Free trade has the ability to bring down prices of goods and prevent wars. But I think it breaks down when applied to financial systems and industries that don’t have much infrastructure(ie the tech industry). It creates a race to the bottom with tax and employment policies that benefit no one but the oligarchs.

KELLY MCEVERS, HOST:

This week an article on wired.com declared that the next blue collar job is coding - like computer languages, making websites and programming apps. The author of the piece is Clive Thompson. He's a tech writer, and he's working on a book about how coders think. He joins us from New York. Welcome.

CLIVE THOMPSON: Hi.

MCEVERS: So one part of your argument is about lifestyle. You say do not picture coders as these, like, Mark Zuckerberg types who are, you know, taking big risks for big rewards. Instead you say we should picture, like, stable straightforward office jobs. Explain that.

THOMPSON: Yeah. There's this, I guess, popular, almost romantic idea of the coder as this lone hero who's just sort of sitting there and, you know, frantically bashing out this amazing code that makes this amazing app. But the truth is, you know, an awful lot of programming doesn't really require or need that type of, you know, crazy pouring out of creativity. It's more like, I guess, maintenance or the slow, stable, making sure that a company is sort of moving along, that its software is working.

You know, like your local bank has a login page. And that page is written in HTML and JavaScript. And, you know, every few months someone has to make sure that any changes to the way JavaScript works, you know, it's compliant with them. And that is a - that's actually a quite intellectually interesting job, but it's not the type of thing people think about when they think, you know, programmer.

MCEVERS: So are you saying that a lot of the coding jobs are not actually in Silicon Valley, that they're out at the local bank and other places across the country?

THOMPSON: Yeah, that's exactly right. In fact, Silicon Valley really - in that area really only employs about maybe 8 percent of the nation's coders and programmers. The rest are all over the place, every, you know, town of any size.

On February 14 2017 04:58 ticklishmusic wrote:


good thing we killed the evil tee pee ee which had all sorts of IP rights and protections built into it.

On February 14 2017 05:03 oneofthem wrote:
TPP standards on environment, labor, transparency, corruption, access to fair trial etc are close to or inferior to u.s. standards, so your claim that those same standards wouldn't pass congress is just false.