EPTUS Politics Mega-thread - Page 7005
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Read the rules in the OP before posting, please. In order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a re-read to refresh your memory! The vast majority of you are contributing in a healthy way, keep it up! NOTE: When providing a source, explain why you feel it is relevant and what purpose it adds to the discussion if it's not obvious. Also take note that unsubstantiated tweets/posts meant only to rekindle old arguments can result in a mod action. | ||
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xDaunt
United States17988 Posts
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Danglars
United States12133 Posts
On March 02 2017 12:20 {CC}StealthBlue wrote: In other words you don't believe it so it's not a credible news story. Surely you can do better than a one-liner and tweet. Think of the thread rules! On March 02 2017 12:32 Scarecrow wrote: Stop saying 'we.' It's clear you're blind to the litany of red flags popping up. Sessions committed perjury and he isn't even the first head to roll due to Russia connections. It seems like you're unwilling to listen to anything unless it's from a right-wing source you trust. The media, intelligence agencies and public servant leaks are all part of a conspiracy and Trump's being framed? Just go subscribe to T_D and get off this forum if you can't come up with something better than 'there's no real proof from sources that I trust, so it's nothing.' Equating the current level of evidence (and we don't even have access to the whole story) to a non-existent case of Pelosi being a serial killer just shows how much of a lost cause you are. Is it perjury now? Gimme that court case, I'm very keen on hearing more. Unless you're just going on unnamed sources that say Sessions perjured himself in sworn testimony. Which you're doing again, aren't you? May I remind you that you're responding to doubts about anonymous sources by saying more anonymous sources say dastardly things about the Trump administration? But maybe you're a little too concerned with selective quoting and forming hyper-partisan angles to do any service to the truth or political discourse? Get real, man. | ||
KwarK
United States43283 Posts
On March 02 2017 12:14 mikedebo wrote: For some reason, "the funds would be enough to cover a handful of contracts for wall prototypes" made me laugh uncontrollably. So what I have here is called a brick. Now I know it doesn't look like much but you'll see that it has depth, height and breadth. So what I want you to do is imagine that this brick is a model of a wall. Not to scale obviously. But if you were to buy, say, forty billion of them, well, then you'd have yourself a wall. | ||
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Danglars
United States12133 Posts
On March 02 2017 12:38 TheTenthDoc wrote: Danglars didn't even take the time to see that Manafort had gone on record confirming his daughter got blackmail texts before saying everyone involved was denying it. Don't expect him to take any story seriously or read it. Context and comprehension, friend. Only a cursory reading of what I'd wrote would mistake a quote-response for saying I denied affirmation of his daughter's text hack. But if that's your level of reading and responding, I'd say you have great prospects for the investigative team at our nation's legacy newspapers. | ||
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{CC}StealthBlue
United States41117 Posts
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m4ini
4215 Posts
On March 02 2017 12:42 Danglars wrote: Context and comprehension, friend. Only a cursory reading of what I'd wrote would mistake a quote-response for saying I denied affirmation of his daughter's text hack. But if that's your level of reading and responding, I'd say you have great prospects for the investigative team at our nation's legacy newspapers. Out of pure interest, what are "legitimate news" around here, nowadays? Just wanna, you know, catch up with you trumpists. What we believing now, Breitbart? They fake? I mean they don't criticise shit, so i assume they're not. Can you point out some more of those gems, just so i can get my dose of real news? I'm starting to get a hard time trying to find excuses for all the bullshit that's going on and annoyingly gets pointed out by fake news, rather just read some alternate facts to get my head straight. Thanks. | ||
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xDaunt
United States17988 Posts
Then-Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) spoke twice last year with Russia’s ambassador to the United States, Justice Department officials said, encounters he did not disclose when asked about possible contacts between members of President Trump’s campaign and representatives of Moscow during Sessions’s confirmation hearing to become attorney general. The phrase that I have bolded above implies an obligation to make a disclosure, and suggests impropriety based upon the failure to make that disclosure. The article then continues with a very interesting juxtaposition: One of the meetings was a private conversation between Sessions and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak that took place in September in the senator’s office, at the height of what U.S. intelligence officials say was a Russian cyber campaign to upend the U.S. presidential race. The point that WashPo is undeniably trying insinuate is that Sessions colluded with the Russians about rigging the election during the election. Notice how there's nothing necessarily untrue about any statement that WashPo has made so far. However, the narrative that they are weaving very clearly reeks of bullshit. And it gets even worse in the third paragraph: The previously undisclosed discussions could fuel new congressional calls for the appointment of a special counsel to investigate Russia’s alleged role in the 2016 presidential election. As attorney general, Sessions oversees the Justice Department and the FBI, which have been leading investigations into Russian meddling and any links to Trump’s associates. He has so far resisted calls to recuse himself. So this all so bad that we must appoint a special prosecutor to investigate! We still haven't seen one fucking fact showing any kind of impropriety yet. So let's keep going through the article: When Sessions spoke with Kislyak in July and September, the senator was a senior member of the influential Armed Services Committee as well as one of Trump’s top foreign policy advisers. Sessions played a prominent role supporting Trump on the stump after formally joining the campaign in February 2016. At his Jan. 10 Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing, Sessions was asked by Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) what he would do if he learned of any evidence that anyone affiliated with the Trump campaign communicated with the Russian government in the course of the 2016 campaign. “I’m not aware of any of those activities,” he responded. He added: “I have been called a surrogate at a time or two in that campaign and I did not have communications with the Russians.” Officials said Sessions did not consider the conversations relevant to the lawmakers’ questions and did not remember in detail what he discussed with Kislyak. “There was absolutely nothing misleading about his answer,” said Sarah Isgur Flores, Sessions’s spokeswoman. This is the closest that we're going to get to an impropriety, but I can assure y'all as an attorney who grills people under oath for a living, this isn't quite there. Franken needed to ask a couple of follow up questions to clarify this clumsy answer. The problem is that the context of the question and the answer isn't clear. Are we talking about any communications with Russians, just those communications between the Trump campaign team and the Russians, or just those communications between the Trump campaign team and the Russians that concerned the election? The importance of these distinctions is made perfectly clear with Leahy's question in the next paragraph: In January, Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) asked Sessions for answers to written questions. “Several of the President-elect’s nominees or senior advisers have Russian ties. Have you been in contact with anyone connected to any part of the Russian government about the 2016 election, either before or after election day?” Leahy wrote. Sessions responded with one word: “No.” Leahy asked the right question, and Sessions gave an unequivocal response. To get to perjury, we have to show Sessions lied in response to this question. Here's his explanation of the answer in more detail: Justice officials said Sessions met with Kislyak on Sept. 8 in his capacity as a member of the armed services panel rather than in his role as a Trump campaign surrogate. “He was asked during the hearing about communications between Russia and the Trump campaign — not about meetings he took as a senator and a member of the Armed Services Committee,” Flores said. She added that Sessions last year had more than 25 conversations with foreign ambassadors as a senior member of the Armed Services Committee, including the British, Korean, Japanese, Polish, Indian, Chinese, Canadian, Australian and German ambassadors, in addition to Kislyak. In the case of the September meeting, one department official who came to the defense of the attorney general said, “There’s just not strong recollection of what was said.” The Russian ambassador did not respond to requests for comment about his contacts with Sessions. These are all reasonable explanations, which I'm sure that WashPo was unhappy to hear given that they don't serve the narrative that the WashPo set up. So let's see what they do about this quandary of theirs and how they get the narrative back on track: The Washington Post contacted all 26 members of the 2016 Senate Armed Services Committee to see whether any lawmakers besides Sessions met with Kislyak in 2016. Of the 20 lawmakers who responded, every senator, including Chairman John McCain (R-Ariz.), said they did not meet with the Russian ambassador last year. The other lawmakers on the panel did not respond as of Wednesday evening. “Members of the committee have not been beating a path to Kislyak’s door,” a senior Senate Armed Services Committee staffer said, citing tensions in relations with Moscow. Besides Sessions, the staffer added, “There haven’t been a ton of members who are looking to meet with Kislyak for their committee duties.” Last month, The Washington Post reported that Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn had discussed U.S. sanctions with Kislyak during the month before Trump took office, contrary to public assertions by Mike Pence, the vice president-elect, and other top Trump officials. Flynn was forced to resign the following week. Yep, we're right back to the mainstream media's favorite tool of smear by juxtaposition. Whether other members of the ASC met with Kislyak in 2016 is almost completely irrelevant, and, at best, circumstantially probative of Sessions' answer. But WashPo wants us to believe otherwise, hence the notation in the article (I particularly like the citation to McCain). And to help seal the deal, WashPo goes ahead and throws in a mention of Flynn to drag down Sessions by association. When asked to comment on Sessions’s contacts with Kislyak, Franken said in a statement to The Washington Post on Wednesday: “If it’s true that Attorney General Sessions met with the Russian ambassador in the midst of the campaign, then I am very troubled that his response to my questioning during his confirmation hearing was, at best, misleading.” Franken added: “It is now clearer than ever that the attorney general cannot, in good faith, oversee an investigation at the Department of Justice and the FBI of the Trump-Russia connection, and he must recuse himself immediately.” Here's the obligatory citation to Franken to further promote the narrative of impropriety, who really should have just said "I fucked up for not asking the right questions." Current and former U.S. officials say they see Kislyak as a diplomat, not an intelligence operative. But they were not sure to what extent, if any, Kislyak was aware of or involved in the covert Russian election campaign. Frankly, I'm surprised that this comment even showed up in the article, but it was appropriately buried towards the bottom, and then followed with more narrative-serving intelligence reports that the media has come to love over the past six months: Steven Hall, former head of Russia operations at the CIA, said that Russia would have been keenly interested in cultivating a relationship with Sessions because of his role on key congressional committees and as an early adviser to Trump. Sessions’s membership on the Armed Services Committee would have made him a priority for the Russian ambassador. “The fact that he had already placed himself at least ideologically behind Trump would have been an added bonus for Kislyak,” Hall said. I don't really argue with the logic that Hall presents here, but the fact of the matter is that it is all speculation as applied to Sessions. That it is in Russia's interests to co-opt Sessions does not mean that the Russians co-opted him. But WashPo isn't interested in these pesky details: Michael McFaul, a Stanford University professor who until 2014 served as U.S. ambassador to Russia, said he was not surprised that Kislyak would seek a meeting with Sessions. “The weird part is to conceal it,” he said. “That was at the height of all the discussions of what Russia was doing during the election.” LoL, "conceal." So now Sessions' answer to Franken amounts to concealment. What a joke. Two months before the September meeting, Sessions attended a Heritage Foundation event in July on the sidelines of the Republican National Convention that was attended by roughly 50 ambassadors. When the event was over, a small group of ambassadors approached Sessions as he was leaving the podium, and Kislyak was among them, the Justice Department official said. Sessions then spoke individually to some of the ambassadors, including Kislyak, the official said. In the informal exchanges, the ambassadors expressed appreciation for his remarks and some of them invited him to events they were sponsoring, said the official, citing a former Sessions staffer who was at the event. Democratic lawmakers, including senior members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, have demanded in recent weeks that Sessions recuse himself from the government’s inquiry into possible ties between Trump associates and Russia. Last week, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), a senior member of the House Judiciary Committee, became one of the few Republican representatives to state publicly the need for an independent investigation. Sessions’s public position on Russia has evolved over time. In an interview with RealClear World on the sidelines of the German Marshall Fund’s Brussels Forum in March 2015, Sessions said the United States and Europe “have to unify” against Russia. More than a year later, he spoke about fostering a stronger relationship with the Kremlin. In a July 2016 interview with CNN’s “State of the Union,” Sessions praised Trump’s plan to build better relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin. “Donald Trump is right. We need to figure out a way to end this cycle of hostility that’s putting this country at risk, costing us billions of dollars in defense, and creating hostilities,” Sessions told CNN. Asked whether he viewed Putin as a good or bad leader, Sessions told CNN: “We have a lot of bad leaders around the world that operate in ways we would never tolerate in the United States. But the question is, can we have a more peaceful, effective relationship with Russia? Utilizing interests that are similar in a realistic way to make this world a safer place and get off this dangerous hostility with Russia? I think it’s possible.” Blah blah blah, filler, filler, filler. So here's the bottom line: this WashPo news story paints precisely the kind of narrative that has led the Right to tarnish the media as fake news. The article sets up a bullshit premise with a bunch of obtuse juxtapositions at the beginning, but when you read further down and get into the details, there's just nothing there. This is what the media has been doing for decades to conservatives. And you wonder why we on the Right bitch about the media as much as we do. And before some dipshit around here suggests otherwise, I'm not taking the position that there was no collusion between the Russians and Sessions or other members of Trump's team. I frankly don't know. However, I fully expect that before such a charge is leveled, that there be some substantial proof of it. We clearly aren't there yet, and WashPo should be embarrassed by this story that they published nonetheless. | ||
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Thaniri
1264 Posts
On March 02 2017 12:32 Scarecrow wrote: Stop saying 'we.' It's clear you're blind to the litany of red flags popping up. Sessions committed perjury and he isn't even the first head to roll due to Russia connections. It seems like you're unwilling to listen to anything unless it's from a right-wing source you trust. The media, intelligence agencies and public servant leaks are all part of a conspiracy and Trump's being framed? Just go subscribe to T_D and get off this forum if you can't come up with something better than 'there's no real proof from sources that I trust, so it's nothing.' Equating the current level of evidence (and we don't even have access to the whole story) to a non-existent case of Pelosi being a serial killer just shows how much of a lost cause you are. Anonymous sources say that you raped me last weekend. See you in court kiddo  .User was warned for this post | ||
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{CC}StealthBlue
United States41117 Posts
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Scarecrow
Korea (South)9172 Posts
On March 02 2017 12:40 Danglars wrote: Surely you can do better than a one-liner and tweet. Think of the thread rules! But maybe you're a little too concerned with selective quoting and forming hyper-partisan angles to do any service to the truth or political discourse? Get real, man. It's impossible to get close to the truth or have political discourse with you. You call mainstream, reputable newspapers 'fake news' and tell me to 'get real?' Where do you get your news from? Breitbart? Infowars? You're the one being hyper-partisan here. Some other R candidates would've been acceptable. I do give a shit about a president that constantly lies, funnels money into his own businesses and makes impossible promises. Let alone the Russian connections. Why don't you? | ||
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Introvert
United States4866 Posts
On March 02 2017 13:00 {CC}StealthBlue wrote: Nancy Pelosi jumping on the Resign bandwagon. Most Democrats are going to call for his resignation no less than 4 more times in the next 4 years. He was one scalp they really wanted so they are going to be on high alert. | ||
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{CC}StealthBlue
United States41117 Posts
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LegalLord
United States13779 Posts
Democrats have solidly become the "blame Russia for us being terrible" party though. | ||
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Leporello
United States2845 Posts
The Russian connection with Trump should have been obvious to everyone by the time of the RNC, when Trump himself strangely requested one change in the party's platform which, for some reason, was too nix a promise to defend Ukraine. That right there should have just... I don't know. Seemed like a giant, glaring issue to me at the time. Like everyone in the media should have asked a big "What the fuck is this?" But what this story shows is not just another fucking lie about another fucking connection to Russia. What it shows is the Obama administration had the foresight to prepare for this, and I think Trump is powerless to do anything that would really weaken NATO or have us needlessly kowtowing to Putin (because we need Russian military to fight rebel jihadists? What?). If Trump had just laid low with the stuff, instead of bragging about Putin's fucking "approval rating" and "strong leadership", he might have actually had an opportunity to spring some sort of new deal with Russia within his Presidency. But now I'm not worried. At this point, I think the ostracizing and scrutiny will ensure that whatever connection Trump has is useless. Whether he owes them loan money, or they have blackmail on him, or some other thing or combination thereof -- it doesn't really matter. If it's sex-tape blackmail, this all might get a lot more entertaining before it's done. I actually feel like I can laugh at this now. Very relieved by this story in many ways, even if it is confirming a major corruption exists. Because if the corruption exists (it does), it doesn't matter, except to show that American voters (even in an electing-minority) are as dumb as they've ever been. | ||
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ticklishmusic
United States15977 Posts
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{CC}StealthBlue
United States41117 Posts
On March 02 2017 13:17 LegalLord wrote: Not sure the pressure is going to build on Sessions the way it did on Flynn. Democrats have solidly become the "blame Russia for us being terrible" party though. The Democrats didn't force Session to answer the question that way though. | ||
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{CC}StealthBlue
United States41117 Posts
While the Trump Admin admits he met with Russian Diplomats during the Campaign. | ||
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Karis Vas Ryaar
United States4396 Posts
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xDaunt
United States17988 Posts
On March 02 2017 13:38 {CC}StealthBlue wrote: Update: https://twitter.com/whignewtons/status/837159285792600066 While the Trump Admin admits he met with Russian Diplomats during the Campaign. Meeting with Russian diplomats is not the same as meeting with Russian diplomats about the campaign. | ||
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ticklishmusic
United States15977 Posts
On March 02 2017 13:39 xDaunt wrote: Meeting with Russian diplomats is not the same as meeting with Russian diplomats about the campaign. you're a lawyer right? every lawyer i've worked with has gone with has gone by the rule that if something is kinda iffy, you go ahead and disclose it so it doesn't bite you in the ass if it comes out because it looks like you're hiding something. so really, you only don't disclose if you're hiding something. none of this "well technically... shit". again, bill clinton with the dick sucking. | ||
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