US Politics Mega-thread - Page 7645

On May 26 2017 15:57 Danglars wrote:

Better some clowns to cause a little havoc than a slick crew that oppose my interests! And hell, you said it buddy, sticking it to the Democrat members with his supreme court pick (RIP Garland). I can't think of a better successor to that suave Obama. Everybody's going so crazy and it's absolutely marvelous. He's doing such ludicrous stuff, but not to be outdone, the media sprinkles in three ridiculous accusations for every one solid. I'm trending below 50% agreement with what Trump does, for sure. But the Dems didn't run a Lieberman type, they gave me an unsatisfactory second choice. I'm having some trouble thinking up a likely Dem candidate I'd actually consider better than Trump for my political views. Political churning, at this point, is vastly preferable to a determined push leftward.

On May 26 2017 15:57 Danglars wrote:

Better some clowns to cause a little havoc than a slick crew that oppose my interests! And hell, you said it buddy, sticking it to the Democrat members with his supreme court pick (RIP Garland). I can't think of a better successor to that suave Obama. Everybody's going so crazy and it's absolutely marvelous. He's doing such ludicrous stuff, but not to be outdone, the media sprinkles in three ridiculous accusations for every one solid. I'm trending below 50% agreement with what Trump does, for sure. But the Dems didn't run a Lieberman type, they gave me an unsatisfactory second choice. I'm having some trouble thinking up a likely Dem candidate I'd actually consider better than Trump for my political views. Political churning, at this point, is vastly preferable to a determined push leftward.

On May 26 2017 17:17 Slaughter wrote:



I guess that is the difference between you and me. If Trump was the Democratic nominee I would have voted Republican despite the ideological differences. Trump is just that bad and it was obvious from his campaign.

On May 26 2017 17:19 warding wrote:

This sort of reasoning is almost identical to that of the leftists in mid-00 supporting Hugo Chavez despite the clearly totalitarian direction he was going in. Who cares about democratic institutions and a working liberal democracy, at least he was redistributing wealth and opposing the real bad yankees!

On May 26 2017 21:35 Danglars wrote:

The difference between you and me is I think America's institutions, or what's worth preserving that's left of them, are resilient enough to last against one knucklehead. To some extent, the left's screwed the goose by investing too heavily in justifying some very bad shit by demonizing Trump. Bad enough to have partisan hacks leaking at every level of the executive, but particularly in the intelligence agencies? Fuck no. Bad enough for reporters to make up stories, lie by omission, ell deceptive half-truths, abandon standards for source vetting? Hell no. In some useful ways and not really to Trump's credit, he's revealed how entitled D.C. feels to undermine rather than personally oppose.

On May 26 2017 21:35 Danglars wrote:

The difference between you and me is I think America's institutions, or what's worth preserving that's left of them, are resilient enough to last against one knucklehead. To some extent, the left's screwed the goose by investing too heavily in justifying some very bad shit by demonizing Trump. Bad enough to have partisan hacks leaking at every level of the executive, but particularly in the intelligence agencies? Fuck no. Bad enough for reporters to make up stories, lie by omission, ell deceptive half-truths, abandon standards for source vetting? Hell no. In some useful ways and not really to Trump's credit, he's revealed how entitled D.C. feels to undermine rather than personally oppose.

On May 26 2017 21:48 ChristianS wrote:

I asked this the other day, but have there been any instances of major publications outright fabricating a story (i.e. making up sources entirely)? I understand them reporting a story you don't think is newsworthy, or drawing conclusions from a set of facts that you don't think are warranted, and I'm sure there's been a couple times somebody didn't vet their sources right and had to issue some retractions, but are there any cases of outright making up stories?

This seems to me the critical ambiguity of "fake news." The term seems to imply that the news is made up, but most of the time I hear conservatives using it about stories that appear to be factually correct, and I assume the term is justified by saying the story isn't fake on its own, but it's not real news ("BREAKING: the sky is blue" would be true, but not news, so it's fake news). But then a lot of the mileage is from riding that ambiguity, so people hearing it think "oh that story is just made up" and conservatives don't exactly try very hard to clarify that.

Four months into the Trump administration, the president's lawyer needs a lawyer.

Intensifying investigations into Russian interference in last year's presidential election and ties between Russians and the Trump campaign have a lot of high-profile people in search of legal advice, if only out of an abundance of caution. And, two sources tell NPR, one of them is White House counsel Donald McGahn.

Experts said it's natural that McGahn would seek out legal expertise, if only because he served as the lawyer for Donald Trump's campaign, which has come under scrutiny from the FBI and Congress. This week, Trump himself reportedly enlisted New York lawyer Marc Kasowitz, a self-described "tough guy" corporate litigator, to help him with legal issues related to Russia.

Several other figures in and outside the White House have been lawyering up, expecting to be called as witnesses, even before the Justice Department named former FBI chief Robert Mueller III special counsel for the Russia probe last week.

That announcement has focused attention all over again on McGahn and his performance as White House counsel — a high-wire act in the best of times, and one that requires an understanding of the Constitution, the scope of executive branch power, national security threats and, especially, damage control.

According to lawyers from both political parties, by those measures, McGahn is hanging on by a thread.

First, there's the legal work product. They point out that the president's travel ban executive order, blocked by the courts after a chaotic rollout, inconvenienced thousands of airline passengers, had to be rescinded and overridden. A second order was blocked, too, after judges cited statements by President Trump and his advisers that signaled an animus against Muslims had motivated the ban. Those cases are still moving through the appeals courts.

A separate executive order seeking to punish sanctuary cities by withholding federal grant money has since been significantly narrowed by the Justice Department after judges and local politicians raised questions about its scope and legality.

Jack Goldsmith, a Republican and a veteran of the George W. Bush administration, has written a series of tweets and posts detailing McGahn's shortcomings in the White House this year for the website Lawfare.

"I was pretty hard on White House Counsel Donald McGahn in connection with the horrible roll-out of the Trump Executive Order on immigration, and his inability or disinclination to control the President's self-destructive attack on courts," Goldsmith wrote in February.

To that list, Goldsmith has since added the vetting of former national security adviser Michael Flynn, and McGahn's apparently glacial response to warnings from the Justice Department in January that Flynn had been "compromised" by contacts and undisclosed payments from the Russians.

Sally Yates, the acting attorney general and Obama administration holdover who was fired by the president after she refused to defend his travel ban, told Congress she warned McGahn about Flynn, but that he failed to take swift action. So, Yates said, she tried again — only to find that Flynn remained in his job longer than she did in hers.

"McGahn is reportedly 'an iconoclast bent on shaking things up,'" wrote Jack Goldsmith, who now teaches law at Harvard. "Unfortunately for the President, that is not an attractive quality in a White House Counsel, whose main job is to ensure that the President and the White House steer clear of legal and ethical and related political problems."

Other lawyers, veterans of the Obama years, have expressed concern over contacts by the president and his chief of staff, Reince Priebus, with the FBI over the Russia probe and other sensitive topics. As a matter of course, those conversations are generally limited to a small number of people at the White House and the Justice Department, which guards its independence and tries to steer clear of politics in its law enforcement responsibilities.

"It's important that the White House counsel police, for lack of a better word, the lines of communication between the White House and the Justice Department," warned Obama White House lawyer Kathryn Ruemmler, in an NPR story after last year's election. "Under President Obama, those communications were restricted."

Now, those conversations will be picked over by Congress and even the special counsel, when it comes to what Trump told then-FBI Director James Comey in a series of meetings and chats this year before Comey was fired.

On May 26 2017 22:58 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:


If Hillary kicked Alex Jones in the nuts, I would have gone door-to-door campaigning for her.

On May 26 2017 23:50 ShoCkeyy wrote:
Saudi Arabia declares all atheists are "terrorists"... And the US supports this trash?...

On May 26 2017 23:50 ShoCkeyy wrote:
Saudi Arabia declares all atheists are "terrorists"... And the US supports this trash?...

On May 26 2017 21:49 Gorsameth wrote:

Isn't Fox the one that had to retract a story that tried to deflect away from the Trump dumpster fire? Last I checked the vast majority of stories about Trump have been proven, often by Trumps own twitter tirades.