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On May 19 2017 12:05 biology]major wrote: Is there anything you guys actually like about this administration? Anything thus far you can point to and say "hm, they did a good job there"
Gorsuch without a doubt. Couldn't say off hand about anything else.
The only other thing I can think of is stopping the awful changes to the House Ethics Committee Ryan and co. tried to pull.
If the stunt where they pretend to repeal Obamacare only to have it gloriously fail is eventually successful (despite the recent sabotage in the House), I think that should be attributed as a good thing about this administration.
In honesty, I think it's good how they've dealt a pretty hard blow to political apathy. I've seen lots of people who never expressed any interest in politics in the past who now seem to really really care because now they've seen how quickly things can turn to shit.
On May 19 2017 23:01 Liquid`Drone wrote: In honesty, I think it's good how they've dealt a pretty hard blow to political apathy. I've seen lots of people who never expressed any interest in politics in the past who now seem to really really care because now they've seen how quickly things can turn to shit.
Count me among that number. I'd rather not give a shit about politics but this stuff is just too important
But he said Mr. Comey had also described other encounters with the president that had troubled him.
One of those occurred at the White House on Jan. 22, just two days after Mr. Trump was sworn in. That day, Mr. Trump hosted a ceremony to honor law enforcement officials who had provided security for the inauguration.
Mr. Wittes said Mr. Comey told him that he initially did not want to go to the meeting because the F.B.I. director should not have too close a relationship with the White House. But Mr. Comey went because he wanted to represent the bureau.
The ceremony occurred in the Blue Room of the White House, where many senior law enforcement officials — including the Secret Service director — had gathered. Mr. Comey — who is 6 feet 8 inches tall and was wearing a dark blue suit that day – told Mr. Wittes that he tried to blend in with the blue curtains in the back of the room, in the hopes that Mr. Trump would not spot him and call him out.
“He thought he had gotten through and not been noticed or singled out and that he was going to get away without an individual interaction,” Mr. Wittes said Mr. Comey told him.
But Mr. Trump spotted Mr. Comey and called him out.
“Oh and there’s Jim,” Mr. Trump said. “He’s become more famous than me.”
With an abashed look on his face, Mr. Comey walked up to Mr. Trump. “Comey said that as he was walking across the room he was determined that there wasn’t going to be a hug,” Mr. Wittes said. “It was bad enough there was going to be a handshake. And Comey has long arms so Comey said he pre-emptively reached out for a handshake and grabbed the president’s hand. But Trump pulled him into an embrace and Comey didn’t reciprocate. If you look at the video, it’s one person shaking hands and another hugging.”
It seems clear that both Bharara and Comey felt uneasy about the frequency of contact attempted by Trump, with Comey using the word improper. I think Bharara just didn't even take his calls. Hopefully Comey will testify in public next week. This story needs to stay in the news cycle.
Just give me a sane foreign policy, a firm foundation of pensions, healthcare, education and a safety net, break up the natural monopolies with nationalization where appropriate (roads etc) and market forces when not and let the free market take care of the rest. All I ask.
Anything within the generally acceptable sphere of politics in the western world outside of America is fine by me. I lean right but I could be happy enough under a centre left government.
On May 19 2017 23:33 Dangermousecatdog wrote: I never thought I'll see the day where Kwark was ok with some of the ideals of the left. Trump makes everyone rethink politics it seems.
If New Labour had actually taxed people to pay for their plans rather than running deficits and using PPPs and PFIs and they hadn't gone to Iraq I'd have been fine with them too.
If anarcho capitalism is 0 and totalitarian communism is 100 I'm fine with pretty much anything in the 40-55 range. I'd rather 45 to 55 but it's all basically the same and most western countries operate in that range. Bernie is like 60, a little outside my comfort zone but basically okay, while Trump manages to rapidly jump from 20 to 80 without touching any of the ground in between. One day it's deregulate everything and let the corporations rule, the next it's destroy the free press.
A day after the so-called ‘Comey memo’ ricocheted through Washington and effectively resulted in the naming of a special counsel to probe what President Trump once called “this Russia thing,” Vice President Pence filed paperwork to launch his own political action committee.
The move is sure to stoke speculation about the VP’s future plans – though it also could simply be an effort to boost Republican allies on Capitol Hill.
...
The PAC does not mean the vice president is planning any separate run of his own. But at the least, it would allow Pence to demonstrate his fundraising clout and strengthen alliances on Capitol Hill as he distributes that money.
On May 19 2017 23:01 Liquid`Drone wrote: In honesty, I think it's good how they've dealt a pretty hard blow to political apathy. I've seen lots of people who never expressed any interest in politics in the past who now seem to really really care because now they've seen how quickly things can turn to shit.
The rise of the Tea Party and whatever comes out of this election will hopefully lead to more political engagement. I don’t know if it will hold, but we seem to be on a good path right now. I just hope we can get away from the focus on the president as the driving force for changes in the country, because that has historically been congress.
A quick question about Erdogan’s security apparently purposely and unjustified attacking protestors on his visit in the US: How much of a deal is it actually to the general public? In here it feels people react appropriately negative to it, but since it is a politics-thread you would expect such involvement. I got 2 people in the US that I talk quite frequently to and they told me most people don’t really care about it / it isn’t really noteworthy and that they don’t care. To me the whole scene was a bit horrifying, here in Germany something similar (even though more brutal and the police just watched back then) in 1967 when the shah of Iran visited Germany, which made the scenes really frightening to me. I understand this wasn’t as severe, but we also live in different times by now and having security of a foreign government official attacking people in a democracy like the US, seemingly without repercussion just seems wrong.
In the current climate of political crisis and drama, the public won’t care. If that had happened in the middle of the Obama or Bush administration, it might have consumed the country considering how outrageous it was. Trump has sort of maxed out the bandwidth of the US public, press and congress.
On May 20 2017 00:25 Artesimo wrote: A quick question about Erdogan’s security apparently purposely and unjustified attacking protestors on his visit in the US: How much of a deal is it actually to the general public? In here it feels people react appropriately negative to it, but since it is a politics-thread you would expect such involvement. I got 2 people in the US that I talk quite frequently to and they told me most people don’t really care about it / it isn’t really noteworthy and that they don’t care. To me the whole scene was a bit horrifying, here in Germany something similar (even though more brutal and the police just watched back then) in 1967 when the shah of Iran visited Germany, which made the scenes really frightening to me. I understand this wasn’t as severe, but we also live in different times by now and having security of a foreign government official attacking people in a democracy like the US, seemingly without repercussion just seems wrong.
As P6 points out, we're simply at capacity. We can only feel so much. Now would be a good time to go full yolo furngully antagonist and destroy a rainforest. No one has the emotional stamina to deal with that right now.
Assertions from Vice President Mike Pence that he did not know of former National SecurityAadviser Michael Flynn’s work on behalf of foreign governments until he learned of them in media reports have just two explanations, Rep. Elijah Cummings said Friday. “Either he's not telling the truth, or he was running a sloppy shop.”
Cummings, the ranking member on the House Oversight Committee, noted during a Friday interview on CNN’s “New Day” that he had sent a letter to Pence, then chairman of President Donald Trump’s transition team, last November regarding Flynn’s ties to the Turkish government. Cummings received a receipt from the transition team’s office of legislative affairs, confirming they had received the letter and pledging to “review your letter carefully.”
“Either he's not telling the truth, or he was running a sloppy shop because we have a receipt, Chris, that says they received the letter. Now, I know things get mixed up in the mail. I got that,”the Maryland Democrat told CNN’s Chris Cuomo.
“But when you tell somebody — you send the letter, and it says the person that you are allowing to advise a campaign on security matters, that is getting access to briefings,” is also connected to a foreign government, Cummings continued, “and the same guy who eventually, by the way, became security adviser, the No. 1 guy, getting all of our secrets, somebody should be jumping up and down saying, 'Wait a minute, this is 17 or 20 red lights.' Chris, this is not rocket scientist stuff.”
Despite evidence that he, or at least his office, was alerted to Flynn’s work on behalf of the Turkish government, Pence has stood by his statement on March 9 to Fox News that media reports were the first he had heard of the former national security adviser’s foreign ties. The assertion puts the vice president in the awkward position of either being dishonest or having been kept in the dark about Flynn.
Flynn ended up being fired over a different issue, his misrepresentation to Pence and others about his conversations with Russia’s ambassador to the U.S., after serving just 24 days in office as national security adviser. He has since requested, through his lawyers, immunity from prosecution in exchange for any testimony he might offer.
Cummings said that with his November letter, “What we were trying to do was warn Pence,” but that ultimately, it appeared to him that Trump’s team was insistent on bringing Flynn aboard.
“My belief is they really wanted this guy to be a part of their operation, period,” Cummings said. “But we're a better country than that. That's why we have a vetting process. And so, we are going to have to look at vetting no matter what.”
On May 19 2017 17:34 Grumbels wrote: Meh, every morning I check the news to see if Trump is gone already. It's an unproductive obsession.
I'm hearing he said one thing from CNN, and another thing from MSNBC, one of them has to be wrong, maybe both, but at least one of them is reporting something factually wrong about words Trump said. Might as well just stamp "Fake News" on it themselves.
I can't believe how much these people get paid to do this crap.
Would not be surprised if Trump said both things. Even if they directly contradict each other and was said within minutes of each other.
Totally, except in this case they are talking about the same word and disagree about what word he's using.
This is similar to the "Bigly" vs "Big League". Neither makes a lot of sense the way Trump uses it, but he's only saying one of them.
On May 20 2017 01:48 ShoCkeyy wrote: LOL oh man.... And they say Russia and Trump are not in cahoots?
The Russians are master trolls.
But beyond that, wanton Russophobia in the US doesn't do Russia any good. I'm sure that they'd love for some evidence to come out that Seth Rich was the source of the DNC leaks instead of Russian hackers. And even if it's not, you can bet that they want to promote that theory anyway.
I understand the family not liking being reminded of his death, but they literally have no idea what happened to him other than he was murdered.
Who knows if he actually leaked anything but at minimum he's an example of our shitty criminal justice system. He get's shot up and cops are like "yup, that's a robbery"... but there's nothing missing/taken... "we said it's a robbery...we'll never solve (or we might pin it on some random black guy and make him plea)".
Like Trump though, there's plenty of problematic crap coming from ClintonCorp, no need to reach with this kind of stuff.
I am troubled by the fact that Russia is latching onto and feeding into the conspiracy theories now being peddled by Fox News. I could ignore Info Wars as a fringe thing, but not this.
GH: I get the suspicion, but there are tons of unsolved murders in the US and DC far from a safe city. The absence of evidence shouldn’t license to assume it was the DNC killing an informant. We know exactly how DNC got hacked.
On May 20 2017 01:56 Plansix wrote: I am troubled by the fact that Russia is latching onto and feeding into the conspiracy theories now being peddled by Fox News. I could ignore Info Wars as a fringe thing, but not this.
Do you not consider the Seth Rich murder to be worth investigating by journalists? I have no idea what happened to him or why, but the circumstances of his murder stink.
EPT
I've seen lots of people who never expressed any interest in politics in the past who now seem to really really care because now they've seen how quickly things can turn to shit.
