US Politics Mega-thread - Page 8160

On July 23 2017 06:05 Buckyman wrote:


Trump's appointing people faster than the Senate confirms them. If you want to point a finger at regarding the unfilled positions, point it at the Senate.

On July 23 2017 06:13 mozoku wrote:

I think it's dumb criticism because I don't see any value in micromanaging the president.

Furthermore, I've never been POTUS and neither have any of you; I don't claim to know how much vacation time is appropriate for the world's most stressful job. Nor do I claim to know how much free time you actually have as POTUS. It's going to vary person to person, and time period to time period anyway. So any attempt at micromanaging is going to be badly misguided anyway.

I would gladly have Trump spend his whole presidency on vacation if it meant the country would be better off. I think he's a bad president because his administration is a mess, I disagree with his policies, he appears to be a Russian plant, his legislative agenda is failing, etc.

And I doubt any of that is because he's taken 1 out every 6 days off to golf.

On July 23 2017 06:09 Diavlo wrote:

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/can-a-president-really-take-a-vacation/



W. Bush is smoking everybody out of the water.

On July 23 2017 06:05 Buckyman wrote:


Trump's appointing people faster than the Senate confirms them. If you want to point a finger at regarding the unfilled positions, point it at the Senate.

On July 23 2017 06:16 zlefin wrote:

ok, you're an idiot, who didn' tactually READ my argument, thus you lose. and shame on you for wasting my time when you're clearly not reading MY argument, and inserted the arguments others made into my own. I find it extremely rude of you to argue like this and not have paid any attention to what i've actually said.
i've stated, and have always clearly stated that my objection is not to his taking time off, but to his having complained about obama doing it, THEN doing it a ton himself, thus being a hypocrite (and an idiot with no idea what he's talking about). I've always been clear that i'm objecting to the hypocrisy not the vacation itself.
and also, thus it's not at all dumb criticism. and I woudl like an apology.

On July 23 2017 05:24 mozoku wrote:

Fair, but the way to get beyond dumb criticism isn't to keep doing it "because the other side did!" It's to just stop with dumb criticisms all together.

Breitbart and Fox News cultists are just as bad, but if you want to take the moral high ground against them then you can't be just as hypocritical as they are.

On July 23 2017 06:38 mozoku wrote:

I responded to the hypocrisy point a while back:

I was explaining why I thought it was a dumb criticism in general for the last post. I just happened to quote you. I'm responding to multiple people. Sorry for the confusion.

Jill Stein looped into widening investigation of Russia and Trump Jr. connections

Third party candidate Jill Stein was a surprising addition this week to investigators casting an increasingly wide net in the congressional probe into Russian interference in the election.

Stein’s name was included in a Senate Judiciary Committee letter requesting all communication between President Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr. and a number of others, including Russian officials and other members of Trump’s presidential campaign.

Stein ran for president as the Green Party candidate in 2016. A Green Party spokesman called the inclusion of her name “vengeance against Dr. Stein for running as a third-party candidate for the White House.”

The Senate panel wants documents relating to a recently revealed meeting between Trump Jr. and a Russian attorney, among others. Former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and Trump's son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner were also at the meeting.

But investigators seem to be casting a wider net by asking Trump Jr. for “all communication to, from or copied to you relating to” a long list of individuals that include Stein.

Stein called the request “laughable” in a tweet this week.

“The whole thing is an obvious smear,” she wrote.

The notion I communicated with Trump Jr is laughable. This whole thing is an obvious smear designed to generate a fake news feeding frenzy.
— Dr. Jill Stein (@DrJillStein) July 21, 2017

“Smears against the Green Party for participating in elections are nothing new, but raising the smears to the level of McCarthyism is a recent wrinkle,” Scott McLarty, media director for the Green Party, told The Hill.

The only known connection between Stein and the investigation into Russian officials is a dinner she attended in 2015 where former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn and Russian President Vladimir Putin were both present. Stein has said her interaction was minimal.

Flynn resigned in February after misleading Vice President Pence regarding conversations he had with a top Russian diplomat during the presidential campaign. The dinner came out as part of those revelations.

The Senate panel is investigating both Russian attempts to influence the 2016 election and possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Moscow. Flynn is part of that investigation.

The Senate Judiciary Committee and the office of its chairman, Sen. Chuck Grassley’s (R-Iowa), did not respond to a request to clarify their inclusion of Stein in the request for communication from Trump Jr.

“We expect that you have already taken care to preserve relevant documents in light of investigations into Russian interference being conducted by Congress and federal law enforcement and counterintelligence agencies,” the leadership of the committee wrote in the letter dated July 19.

The Senate Judiciary Committee has requested documents from Don Jr. and Manafort re: any attempts to obtain info on Clinton from Russians. pic.twitter.com/TOZlDr5pc6
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) July 19, 2017

The letter asks for the documents by Aug. 2.

The House and Senate reached a deal Saturday to slap Russia with fresh sanctions and give Congress new veto power to block any easing of those sanctions -- an agreement that could send a new bill to President Donald Trump's desk before the end of the month.

House and Senate negotiators announced an agreement was reached Saturday morning for a bill that would include new sanctions against Russia, Iran, and North Korea.

Despite the White House lobbying for changes to the measure, the legislation will give Congress a new ability to block the administration from easing sanctions on Moscow. Democrats and some Republicans have expressed concerns that Trump is considering giving Russia back two compounds in Maryland and New York that were seized by the Obama administration in December.

"Given the many transgressions of Russia, and President Trump's seeming inability to deal with them, a strong sanctions bill such as the one Democrats and Republicans have just agreed to is essential," Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a statement. "I expect the House and Senate will act on this legislation promptly, on a broad bipartisan basis and send the bill to the President's desk."

The House will vote on the bill on Tuesday, according to House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy's schedule, and the Senate is likely to take it up after that, although Senate leaders haven't said when they will bring it to the floor. Congressional aides say they expect Trump will sign the bill because it will likely pass both chambers with strong, veto-proof majorities.

In a text message to CNN, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said he sees the agreement "quite negatively."

The agreement on the sanctions was the result of an often contentious, month-long back-and-forth between the House and Senate after the Senate passed a bill for new sanctions against Russia and Iran 98 to 2 in June.

The bill faced a so-called blue slip constitutional problem that revenue generating legislation must originate in the House. That was fixed after a negotiation between the two chambers, but then House Democrats objected to another tweak that removed their ability to force a vote to stop the easing of sanctions.

McCarthy then said he wanted to add North Korean sanctions legislation that the House passed in May to the measure, prompting Democrats to accuse Republicans of stalling the bill on behalf of the White House, which was lobbying against the congressional review provision.

Numerous US companies also wanted changes over concerns the bill could inadvertently impact their businesses.

"My preference over the last month had been for the House to take up and adopt the legislation that passed the Senate 98-2; however I welcome the House bill, which was the product of intense negotiations," said Maryland Sen. Ben Cardin, the top Democrat on the Senate foreign relations committee. "I believe the proposed changes to the bill have helped to clarify the intent of members of Congress as well as express solidarity with our closest allies in countering Russian aggression and holding the Kremlin accountable for their destabilizing activities."

CNN reported Friday that the deal addressed some of the concerns of US companies while keeping in the congressional review portion, besides making technical changes. To address House Democrats' complaints, the bill gives any House member the ability to force a vote to disapprove of sanctions if the Senate passes it first.

"The legislation ensures that both the majority and minority are able to exercise our oversight role over the administration's implementation of sanctions," House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer said in a statement Saturday. "I look forward to seeing this legislation on the Floor next week, where I'm confident it will receive strong, bipartisan support."

The bill was also changed to ensure that it didn't affect a major pipeline used to transport oil from Kazakhstan through Russia to Ukraine as well as a natural gas pipeline that goes between Russia and Germany.

The revised bill also clarifies that American companies cannot do business with already-sanctioned defense interests in Russia, as there were concerns US companies that want to finalize transportation deals could be barred from doing so under the initial bill's restrictions.

What The Heck? Man Who Runs Firm Behind Trump-Russia Dossier to Plead the Fifth

Here’s a story that has gone completely under the radar, and raises some serious questions that the mainstream media largely seems to have ignored. Glenn Simpson, the co-founder of Fusion GPS, whose firm commissioned the salacious and mostly unsubstantiated Russia Trump dossier, plans to plead the Fifth after being subpoenaed by U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary.

According to documents obtained by LawNewz, attorneys for Fusion GPS’ Simpson sent a letter to Chairman Chuck Grassley expressing concern over the direction that the hearing was taking. The letter stated that Simpson would not voluntarily show up at the hearing due to a pre-planned vacation, and if subpoenaed he would exercise his First and Fifth Amendment rights not to testify before the committee examining the influence of foreign lobbying in the 2016 election.

Since March, the Senate Judiciary Committee has been seeking documents and information from Fusion GPS about the former M16 intelligence officer Christopher Steele who authored the research, and the dossier, which contained unverified salacious details of Trump’s alleged escapades in Russia. The dossier was reportedly first commissioned by Republican opponents of Donald Trump, and then taken over by a Democratic client.

Every time committee investigators made requests, though, they were stonewalled by the Washington D.C. opposition research firm. The firm asserted that the information and documentation requested was protected by the “First Amendment privilege of Fusion GPS and its clients”, as well as confidentiality agreements and attorney client privilege. On Friday, Sen. Grassley slapped Simpson with a subpoena to appear before the committee.

“Given the limitless scope of the hearing, as well as the privileges that Fusion GPS has already asserted, Mr. Simpson cannot risk a waiver of those privileges at the hearing. In the event of a subpoena, Mr. Simpson will assert applicable privileges, including but not limited to those under the First and Fifth Amendments,” attorneys for Simpson wrote in a letter to the committee.

The Fifth amendment privilege, of course, allows witnesses to decline to answer questions that have the potential to incriminate them. So, the question remains, what exactly could Simpson, a former Wall Street Journal investigative reporter, say that he fears will put him in legally precarious territory?

“It could mean various things, but the invocation on its own does not mean Simpson broke any laws. It could just as easily be a tactical move by his lawyers to try and secure a deal before he testifies,” Bradly Moss, a national security expert and attorney told LawNewz.com.

Questions about this to the communications firm representing Fusion GPS were not answered as off press time.

On July 23 2017 07:46 CorsairHero wrote:
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/888736256145985536
what do democrats have to do with this lol

On July 23 2017 08:31 Wulfey_LA wrote:
Dear Leader is the best shortgame golfer, best football tosser, and even the best basketballman (much better than mudblood halfbreed predecessor) there is.

https://twitter.com/JordanUhl/status/888478795270959105

On July 23 2017 06:24 TheTenthDoc wrote:


Dubya was a pro vacationer, that much is for sure. It'll be hard to beat him unless Trump takes a big "winter holiday" or something and/or takes more of the next year off (which seems likely-keep in mind his first 100 days had 21 days off, and this is what he thinks of as "getting stuff done).

On July 23 2017 07:46 CorsairHero wrote:
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/888736256145985536
what do democrats have to do with this lol

On July 23 2017 08:48 semantics wrote:

Pretty sure the democrat's idea is obama care...

Also is he repeating himself because i swear i've seen alot of these tweets before

On July 23 2017 09:10 CorsairHero wrote:

My view of that tweet is that hes implying the democrats are holding up the repeal and/or replace