US Politics Mega-thread - Page 8733

On September 14 2017 21:07 Leporello wrote:
So, judging from comments from people like Chuck Grassley, it sounds like congressional committees were negotiating through all this currently, and then Trump just cuts-in.

So Trump is now insisting he did not give them a deal, because if he did, he just screwed over the ongoing Republican negotiations. "Undercut" them, Grassley says. That's the important part. It isn't just that he intruded. It's that he gave his position away for nothing.

Trump isn't a deal-maker. He's a tacky salesman, and his targets are idiots and dupes. He can't negotiate with savvy adults. He is prone to just do whatever makes him feel most important and "successful". He is the dupe. So, at the very least, Schumer and Pelosi have just again revealed what kind of actual businessman Trump is, and how he completely just doesn't understand the processes of... anything. There is no strategic mind behind that freakish head.

This really is the WWE President. The meaninglessness in the ways he has dealt with these issues is astounding.

He announces DACA-retirement in some 6-month countdown stunt. He sends AG Sessions out to justify deporting these people in public statements. And now he's tweeting what a terrible thing it would be to deport these people...? He talks with the Dems to make a deal. Everyone says a deal was made. Now Trump saying it didn't happen... This is schizo! This is a child that doesn't know what to do or what it wants, he just wants everyone to call him a "good boy" and forget about all the crap he just broke.


lol

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) announced Wednesday that he will introduce a bill to remove barriers blocking research into medical marijuana.

In a pun-filled statement released on Twitter, Hatch said it was "high time" to address the issue.

“It’s high time to address research into medical marijuana,” Hatch said Wednesday. “Our country has experimented with a variety of state solutions without properly delving into the weeds on the effectiveness, safety, dosing, administration, and quality of medical marijuana."

"To be blunt," Hatch added, "we need to remove the administrative barriers preventing legitimate research into medical marijuana, which is why I’ve decided to roll out the MEDS Act.”

In July, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA)—the agency charged with maintaining records produced by the federal government—published a request made by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to begin destroying detainee records, including those related to in-custody deaths, sexual assault, and the use of solitary confinement. The request has been preliminarily approved.

The petition to destroy records comes at a time when ICE has been tasked with increasing its enforcement operations, widening its apprehension net to include groups of previously protected people, even those benefiting from Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), a program that was rescinded on September 5. Unless Congress passes some version of the Dream Act, DACA recipients will see their protection begin to expire next March. ICE petitioned to begin destroying some types of records as quickly as three years after they are created, 20 years for others.

According to Community Initiatives for Visiting Immigrants in Confinement (CIVIC), there were 14,693 reported incidents of sexual and physical abuse in ICE detention centers from 2010 to 2016—and just over 1 percent of these complaints sparked an investigation. Among all DHS agencies, according to CIVIC, the number of complaints of sexual and physical abuse received by the Office of Inspector General in the same period was over 33,000. As the ACLU has documented, “sexual abuse allegations have come from nearly every state that houses an immigration detention center. The data crystallizes the urgent need for the government to admit just how pervasive a problem sexual abuse is in its immigration jails and to take immediate steps to ensure that all detainees are protected.”

On September 14 2017 21:16 Liquid`Drone wrote:


Thanks for this. I'll internalize the information.

Former national security adviser Susan Rice privately told House investigators that she unmasked the identities of senior Trump officials to understand why the crown prince of the United Arab Emirates was in New York late last year, multiple sources told CNN.

The New York meeting preceded a separate effort by the UAE to facilitate a back-channel communication between Russia and the incoming Trump White House.

The crown prince, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, arrived in New York last December in the transition period before Trump was sworn into office for a meeting with several top Trump officials, including Michael Flynn, the president's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and his top strategist Steve Bannon, sources said.

...

The Washington Post initially reported in April that the UAE brokered a pre-inauguration meeting between the founder of the security firm Blackwater, Erik Prince, who is a close Trump ally, and an associate of Vladimir Putin's in the Seychelles Islands. The purpose of the meeting was part of an effort by the UAE to persuade Russia to curtail its relationship with Iran, including in Syria, according to the Post.

And it occured shortly after Bannon, Flynn and Kushner also met in Trump Tower with Zayed, whom the Post said helped arrange the Seychelles meeting with Russia government officials to set up the private discussions with the Trump team.

The blaring, grinding noise jolted the American diplomat from his bed in a Havana hotel. He moved just a few feet, and there was silence. He climbed back into bed. Inexplicably, the agonizing sound hit him again. It was as if he’d walked through some invisible wall cutting straight through his room.

Soon came the hearing loss, and the speech problems, symptoms both similar and altogether different from others among at least 21 US victims in an astonishing international mystery still unfolding in Cuba. The top US diplomat has called them “health attacks”.

New details learned by The Associated Press indicate at least some of the incidents were confined to specific rooms or even parts of rooms with laser-like specificity, baffling US officials who say the facts and the physics don’t add up.

“None of this has a reasonable explanation,” said Fulton Armstrong, a former CIA official who served in Havana long before America re-opened an embassy there. “It’s just mystery after mystery after mystery.”

Suspicion initially focused on a sonic weapon, and on the Cubans. Yet the diagnosis of mild brain injury, considered unlikely to result from sound, has confounded the FBI, the state department and US intelligence agencies involved in the investigation.

Some victims now have problems concentrating or recalling specific words, several officials said, the latest signs of more serious damage than the US government initially realized. The United States first acknowledged the attacks in August – nine months after symptoms were first reported.

The Trump administration still hasn’t identified a culprit or a device to explain the attacks, according to interviews with more than a dozen current and former US officials, Cuban officials and others briefed on the investigation. Most weren’t authorized to discuss the probe and demanded anonymity.

In fact, almost nothing about what went down in Havana is clear. Investigators have tested several theories about an intentional attack: by Cuba’s government, a rogue faction of its security forces, a third country like Russia or some combination thereof. Yet they’ve left open the possibility an advanced espionage operation went horribly awry, or that some other, less nefarious explanation is to blame.

Aside from their homes, officials said Americans were attacked in at least one hotel, a fact not previously disclosed. An incident occurred on an upper floor of the recently renovated Hotel Capri, a 60-year-old concrete tower steps from the Malecon, Havana’s iconic, waterside promenade.

The cases vary deeply: different symptoms, different recollections of what happened.

In several episodes recounted by US officials, victims knew it was happening in real time, and there were strong indications of a sonic attack.

Some felt vibrations, and heard sounds – loud ringing or a high-pitch chirping similar to crickets or cicadas. Others heard the grinding noise. Some victims awoke with ringing in their ears and fumbled for their alarm clocks, only to discover the ringing stopped when they moved away from their beds.

The attacks seemed to come at night. Several victims reported they came in minute-long bursts.
Yet others heard nothing, felt nothing. Later, their symptoms came.

The scope keeps widening. On Tuesday, the state department disclosed that doctors had confirmed another two cases, bringing the total American victims to 21. Some have mild traumatic brain injury, known as a concussion, and others permanent hearing loss.

Even the potential motive is unclear. Investigators are at a loss to explain why Canadians were harmed, too, including some who reported nosebleeds. Fewer than 10 Canadian diplomatic households in Cuba were affected, a Canadian official said.

On September 14 2017 23:50 IgnE wrote:


Danglars need a citation on the passages from "foundational Marxist/Leninist" works where it's a short hop from capitalist exploitation to "safe spaces" and trans bathrooms.