US Politics Mega-thread - Page 6931

On February 21 2017 05:49 IgnE wrote:


Maybe the mistake was inviting him in the first place.

I mostly agree with Drone's discussion on this topic.

On February 21 2017 09:47 xDaunt wrote:
No, CPAC was right to invite Milo, and they should have kept him rather than get bowled over by this faux controversy.

On February 21 2017 09:47 xDaunt wrote:

No, CPAC was right to invite Milo, and they should have kept him rather than get bowled over by this faux controversy. His comments basically distill down to having the age of consent somewhere between 13 and 16 is fine. The argument for that isn't exactly outrageous.

Like I tell my Never-Trumper friends, Milo is too important to the conservative cause to dismiss or cast aside. Even though he is more libertarian than social conservative, he has done more to roll back the liberal cultural stranglehold than anyone in recent memory -- particularly among younger folks.

On February 21 2017 09:47 xDaunt wrote:

No, CPAC was right to invite Milo, and they should have kept him rather than get bowled over by this faux controversy. His comments basically distill down to having the age of consent somewhere between 13 and 16 is fine. The argument for that isn't exactly outrageous.

Like I tell my Never-Trumper friends, Milo is too important to the conservative cause to dismiss or cast aside. Even though he is more libertarian than social conservative, he has done more to roll back the liberal cultural stranglehold than anyone in recent memory -- particularly among younger folks.

On February 21 2017 09:52 Nyxisto wrote:


so let me get this straight, you're defending pedophilia because of your fight against liberalism? What the fuck happened to you, did a fat liberal kid beat you up in high school? You've completely gone off the deep end

On February 21 2017 09:58 a_flayer wrote:
13-16 isn't even paedophilia, it's hebephilia if it's a philia at all.

On the morning of Feb. 12, wind power provided 52.1 percent of the electricity for the 14-state grid known as the Southwest Power Pool (SPP). This is a significant milestone for wind, which has never before provided a majority of power for any U.S. grid, according to SPP.

SPP is responsible for 60,000 miles of power lines running from North Dakota and Montana to Texas, New Mexico and Louisiana. Wind generates about 15 percent of the electricity in the SPP region and is third behind coal and natural gas.

The February 52.1 percent wind-penetration beat the April 2016 record of 49.2 percent. Wind-penetration is a measure of the grid's electrical total load served by wind.

"Ten years ago, we thought hitting even a 25 percent wind-penetration level would be extremely challenging and any more than that would pose serious threats to reliability," Vice President of Operations Bruce Rew said in an SPP statement. Rew explained SPP can now reliably manage more than 50 percent wind-penetration and that they have not yet reached their "ceiling."

American Wind Energy Association's Greg Alvarez celebrated the news in a blog post. "Records like these resonate, because they demonstrate wind energy can play a key role in an affordable, reliable, diversified energy mix," he said. "That creates a stronger system, and helps keep more money in the pockets of families and businesses."

In the early 2000s, SPP wind power provided less than 400 megawatts (MW) and now provides 16,000 MW. A single MW is usually able to power around 1,000 homes, Climate Central explained.

SPP has achieved this wind power milestone because of its enormous power generation footprint, which covers nearly 550,000 square miles. If the upper Great Plains is not windy one day, SPP "can deploy resources waiting in the Midwest and Southwest to make up any sudden deficits," Rew said.

Since 2007, SPP has spent more than $10 billion on high-voltage transmission infrastructure with a focus on connecting "rural, isolated wind farms to population centers hundreds of miles away," the organization said.

In 2015, 39 states harnessed electricity from utility-scale wind projects, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Texas, Oklahoma, Iowa, Kansas and California produced the most wind energy and about 50 percent of the total for U.S. wind production.

In 2016, wind power was the largest U.S. source of renewable electric capacity and is now the country's fourth-largest energy source.

On February 21 2017 10:01 xDaunt wrote:

Not that I'm in favor of these relationships, but adults having sex with teenagers isn't the same as adults having sex with the pre-pubescent. Have you seen the sexual activity rates among high school students? Like others have pointed out, the policy considerations behind age of consent laws and how they apply socially and individually are complicated. Dismissing what Milo said as pure pedophilia is just stupid.

On February 21 2017 10:00 Nyxisto wrote:
Milo laughed off sexual abuse by priests of 13 year old minors, in that context pedophilia is common parlance as we're clearly talking about child abuse and rape.

On February 21 2017 09:47 xDaunt wrote:

No, CPAC was right to invite Milo, and they should have kept him rather than get bowled over by this faux controversy. His comments basically distill down to having the age of consent somewhere between 13 and 16 is fine. The argument for that isn't exactly outrageous.

Like I tell my Never-Trumper friends, Milo is too important to the conservative cause to dismiss or cast aside. Even though he is more libertarian than social conservative, he has done more to roll back the liberal cultural stranglehold than anyone in recent memory -- particularly among younger folks.

President Trump’s personal lawyer and a former business associate met privately in New York City last month with a member of the Ukrainian parliament to discuss a peace plan for that country that could give Russia long-term control over territory it seized in 2014 and lead to the lifting of sanctions against Moscow.

The meeting with Andrii V. Artemenko, the Ukrainian politician, involved Michael Cohen, a Trump Organisation lawyer since 2007, and Felix Sater, a former business partner who worked on real estate projects with Trump’s company.

The occurrence of the meeting, first reported Sunday by the New York Times, suggests that some in the region aligned with Russia have been seeking to use Trump business associates as an informal conduit to a new president who has signaled a desire to forge warmer relations with Russia. The discussion took place amid increasingly intense scrutiny of the ties between Trump’s team and Russia, as well as escalating investigations on Capitol Hill of the determination by U.S. intelligence agencies that the Kremlin intervened in last year’s election to help Trump.

The Times reported that Cohen said he left the proposal in a sealed envelope in the office of then-national security adviser Michael T. Flynn while visiting Trump in the White House. The meeting took place days before Flynn’s resignation last week following a report in The Washington Post that he had misled Vice President Pence about his discussions in December of election-related sanctions with the Russian ambassador to the United States.

Cohen, speaking with The Post on Sunday, acknowledged that the meeting took place and that he had left with the peace proposal in hand.

But Cohen said he did not take the envelope to the White House and did not discuss it with anyone. He called suggestions to the contrary “fake news.”

“I acknowledge that the brief meeting took place, but emphatically deny discussing this topic or delivering any documents to the White House and/or General Flynn,” Cohen said. He said he told the Ukrainian official that he could send the proposal to Flynn by writing him at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

The Times stood by its story Sunday.

“Mr. Cohen told the Times in no uncertain terms that he delivered the Ukraine proposal to Michael Flynn’s office at the White House. Mr. Sater told the Times that Mr. Cohen had told him the same thing,” Matt Purdy, a deputy managing editor, said in a statement to the Post.

The Times reported that the proposal discussed at last month’s meeting included a plan to require the withdrawal of Russian forces from Eastern Ukraine. Then Ukrainian voters would decide in a referendum whether Crimea, the territory Russia seized in 2014, would be leased to Russia for a 50-year or a 100-year term. Artemenko said Russian leaders supported his proposal, the Times reported.

In Ukraine, Artemenko belongs to a bloc that opposes the nation’s current president, Petro O. Poroshenko. It is a group whose efforts were previously aided by Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign manager, who had advised Ukraine’s previous pro-Vladimir Putin president until his ouster amid public protests in 2014 — a development that sparked the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Manafort told the Post that he had “no role” in Artemenko’s initiative.

In his remarks at the Munich Security Conference, Vice President Mike Pence said that Russia must be held “accountable” regarding Ukraine and “demand they honour” the Minsk ceasefire agreement.

The back-channel discussions could disrupt delicate diplomacy between the new Trump administration and Poroshenko. Artemenko told the Times he hopes evidence of corruption by Poroshenko could be used to effect his ouster, a necessary first step to pushing his peace proposal.

Cohen said the meeting between the Ukrainian politician, Cohen and Sater lasted less than 15 minutes and took place at a New York hotel.

On February 21 2017 10:31 a_flayer wrote:

I'm basically taking the side of Liquid'Drone on this matter and using the distinction between the two as the reasoning. Puberty and the path to sexual maturity is a thing. Beyond that, I dislike what I see as a bit of a manic witch hunt surrounding "pedophilia" (in quotes to highlight the muddled distinction) because it turns into this sort of stuff:

http://globalnews.ca/news/2911629/rcmp-asks-vigilante-pedophile-hunters-to-leave-law-enforcement-to-the-pros/?sf34701422=1

Also, I hate the discussion of this one person. Who cares. He doesn't determine policy or invade countries all willy nilly.