US Politics Mega-thread - Page 7629

On May 25 2017 04:18 Trainrunnef wrote:



As Kwark pointed out in one of his previous posts that doesn't tell the whole story as the source of the income for the upper percentiles progressively skews away from income into capital gains so the actual taxes collected do not exactly match the stated tax rates on those graphs.

Public spending on health care amounted to $4,197 per capita in the U.S. in 2013, more than in any other country except Norway ($4,981) and the Netherlands ($4,495), despite the fact that the U.S. was the only country studied that did not have a universal health care system.

Data from the OECD show that the U.S. spent 17.1 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP) on health care in 2013. This was almost 50 percent more than the next-highest spender (France, 11.6% of GDP) and almost double what was spent in the U.K. (8.8%).

UK investigators have reacted with anger after a US newspaper published photos apparently showing the scene of the Manchester bomb attack.
Senior counter terrorism policing figures said the leak undermined their investigation and the confidence of victims and witnesses.
Earlier the UK home secretary said she was irritated with the US for releasing information about bomber Salman Abedi.
Amber Rudd said she had told Washington "it should not happen again".

Pentagon officials are in shock after the release of a transcript between President Donald Trump and his Philippines counterpart reveals that the US military had moved two nuclear submarines towards North Korea

“We never talk about subs!” three officials told BuzzFeed News, referring to the military's belief that keeping submarines' movement stealth is key to their mission.

While the US military will frequently announce the deployment of aircraft carriers, it is far more careful when discussing the movement of nuclear submarines. Carriers are hard to miss, and that in part, is a reason the US military deploys them. They are a physical show of forces. Submarines are, at times, a furtive complement to the carriers, a hard-to-detect means of strategic deterrence.

According to a transcript of the call, released Wednesday, Trump called Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte April 29 to discuss, in part, the rising threat from North Korea. During that call, while discussing ways to mitigate North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s nuclear ambitions, Trump said: “We have two submarines – the best in the world – we have two nuclear submarines – not that we want to use them at all. I’ve never seen anything like they are but we don’t have to use this but [Kim] could be crazy so we will see what happens.”

During the same call, Trump also called the North Korea leader a “madman with nuclear weapons” and celebrated Duterte for doing an “unbelievable job on the drug problem,” even as the Filipino leader has supported the alleged extrajudicial killing of 8,000 people since taking office in June, part of his purge to rid his nation of drugs. Duterte has bragged about committing murder himself, called former President Barack Obama a “son of a bitch” and once threatened to suspend the bilateral agreement between his nation and the United States that allows US troops to visit the Philippines.

“Keep up [the] good work, you are doing an amazing job,” Trump told Duterte during the call.

A US official who had previously seen a version of the transcript confirmed to BuzzFeed News that the published version appeared accurate.

By announcing the presence of nuclear submarines, the president, some Pentagon officials privately explained, gives away the element of surprise — an irony given his repeated declarations during the campaign that the US announces far too many of its military plans when it comes to combatting ISIS.

Moreover, some countries in the region, particularly China, seek to develop their anti-sub capability. Knowing that two US submarines are in the region could allow them to test their own military capabilities.

Finally, it is unclear why Duterte would need to know the specific number of subs in the region. The Philippines is not a part US military efforts to deter North Korea so why would Duterte need to know such details?

In the past, the US Navy has acknowledged that nuclear submarines were part of a deploying strike group. By doing so, the public knows the general deployment schedule regional destination. But saying that submarines are in the region is not the same as saying how many there are and that they are near North Korea, as Trump did during the phone call. Strikes groups don’t stick together and sail as one big unit but can break off as needed.

The military also has announced roughly 48 hours beforehand when a nuclear submarine deployment is returning home, in part, to notify families.

The reason behind the April 29 call is unclear. It began with Trump congratulating Duterte on his approach to tackling illicit drugs in the Philippines before discussing the emerging North Korean threat. It ended with Trump repeatedly urging Duterte to visit him in Washington.

“If you want to come to the Oval Office, I will love to have you in [the] Oval Office. Anytime you want to come,” Trump said, according to the transcript, later adding: “Work it out with your staff. Seriously, if you want to come over, just let us know.”

On May 25 2017 06:47 NewSunshine wrote:
I wish there were a single story I could point and be like "yeah, but it's not all bad!"

...

On May 25 2017 06:29 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:
In other news, no surprise, the Admiralty is rightfully pissed.



Source

On May 25 2017 06:48 KwarK wrote:

Think of all the jobs the job creators will create with all that extra money.

On May 25 2017 06:23 Wulfey_LA wrote:


Think of the broader Right as two entities.

(1) The Republican party. These guys serve the donor class first and foremost. Capital gains tax cuts, social security/medicare/medicaid cuts, top 1% tax cuts, estate tax cuts, targeted financial deregulation, and a business stacked judiciary are the actual policy goals that happen. Remember Paul Ryan trying to privatize social security in 2006? Check out the Trump budget, stacked with all kinds of capital side tax cuts and social welfare spending cuts in the teeth of Trump's claims not to touch social security, medicare, and medicaid.

(2) The Entertainment wing. Trump, Hannity, O'Reilly, Crowder, Breitbart, lesser FOX hosts, all them dedicate every day to assaulting the evils of pluralism. Wall, Muslim Ban, Affirmative action, Immigration, Terrorism, racial panic, welfare queens, obamaphones, phony Dem scandals. All this crap is just prolofeed rubbish fed to get gullible idiots to vote R. None of these policies actually go anywhere because they aren't real policies.

On May 25 2017 06:48 KwarK wrote:

Think of all the jobs the job creators will create with all that extra money.

Russian officials bragged in conversations during the presidential campaign that they had cultivated a strong relationship with former Trump adviser retired Gen. Michael Flynn and believed they could use him to influence Donald Trump and his team, sources told CNN.

The conversations deeply concerned US intelligence officials, some of whom acted on their own to limit how much sensitive information they shared with Flynn, who was tapped to become Trump's national security adviser, current and former governments officials said.

"This was a five-alarm fire from early on," one former Obama administration official said, "the way the Russians were talking about him." Another former administration official said Flynn was viewed as a potential national security problem.

American spies collected information last summer revealing that senior Russian intelligence and political officials were discussing how to exert influence over Donald J. Trump through his advisers, according to three current and former American officials familiar with the intelligence.

The conversations focused on Paul Manafort, the Trump campaign chairman at the time, and Michael T. Flynn, a retired general who was advising Mr. Trump, the officials said. Both men had indirect ties to Russian officials, who appeared confident that each could be used to help shape Mr. Trump’s opinions on Russia.

Some Russians boasted about how well they knew Mr. Flynn. Others discussed leveraging their ties to Viktor F. Yanukovych, the deposed president of Ukraine living in exile in Russia, who at one time had worked closely with Mr. Manafort.

Washington (CNN)Attorney General Jeff Sessions did not disclose meetings he had last year with Russian officials when he applied for his security clearance, the Justice Department told CNN Wednesday.

Sessions, who met with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak at least two times last year, didn't note those interactions on the form, which requires him to list "any contact" he or his family had with a "foreign government" or its "representatives" over the past seven years, officials said.
The new information from the Justice Department is the latest example of Sessions failing to disclose contacts he had with Russian officials. He has come under withering criticism from Democrats following revelations that he did not disclose the same contacts with Kislyak during his Senate confirmation hearings earlier this year.
Sessions initially listed a year's worth of meetings with foreign officials on the security clearance form, according to Justice Department spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores. But she says he and his staff were then told by an FBI employee who assisted in filling out the form, known as the SF-86, that he didn't need to list dozens of meetings with foreign ambassadors that happened in his capacity as a senator.

A legal expert who regularly assists officials in filling out the form disagrees with the Justice Department's explanation, suggesting that Sessions should have disclosed the meetings.
"My interpretation is that a member of Congress would still have to reveal the appropriate foreign government contacts notwithstanding it was on official business," said Mark Zaid, a Washington attorney who specializes in national security law.
Zaid added that in a similar circumstance he advised a member of Congress to list all foreign contacts -- including those made during official US government business.
To obtain a security clearance, a federal official is not required to list the meetings if they were part of a foreign conference he or she attended while conducting government business. Sessions' meetings, however, do not appear to be tied to foreign conferences.