US Politics Mega-thread - Page 9076

On October 29 2017 01:01 Nevuk wrote:
Wouldn't Obama be more qualified than they usually prefer jurors?

On October 29 2017 01:27 Danglars wrote:
Nobody reads the original investigative reporting to come to their own conclusions. The tame explanation is it’s long and takes some patience to form a mental summary. The less charitable explanation is people want to dismiss the entirety as conspiracy, and further understanding of the topic is wholly unnecessary and a waste of time.

On October 29 2017 01:41 Wulfey_LA wrote:


I can read pretty fast. Especially when the articles are less than 5 pages of text. I have read these four sources. You should read them too. If you want to allege ignorance, stick to naming yourself before accusing anonymous others.

Politifact: this is the strongest no-conspiracy-at-all take. Its statement of the facts remains unrebutted from a year ago.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2017/oct/24/what-you-need-know-about-hillary-clinton-and-urani/

NRO McCarthy: this is the most bullshit stuffed conspiracy mongering piece out there, and the best positive argument for the conspiracy. Its failure dooms any allegations.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/452972/uranium-one-deal-obama-administration-doj-hillary-clinton-racketeering

Lawfare: this is a more balanced take that focused specifically on the legal procedures around the CFIUS Process. This article is a deathblow to any conspiracies. The Uranium One uranium can't be exported. The only risk is that Rosatom would sit on the rights and not dig up Uranium in some kind of cartel action.
https://lawfareblog.com/unpacking-uranium-one-hype-and-law

Wikipedia's discussion of uranium production (~4-5 million tons) versus imports (~55-60 million tons). The Wyoming page shows that Uranium One is actually digging uranium up and selling it, thereby eliminating the only real danger of transferring digging rights.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_mining_in_the_United_States
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_mining_in_Wyoming

Former Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), who chaired the House Intelligence Committee during the time the FBI probe was being conducted, told The Hill that he had never been told anything about the Russian nuclear corruption case even though many fellow lawmakers had serious concerns about the Obama administration’s approval of the Uranium One deal.

“Not providing information on a corruption scheme before the Russian uranium deal was approved by U.S. regulators and engage appropriate congressional committees has served to undermine U.S. national security interests by the very people charged with protecting them,” he said. “The Russian efforts to manipulate our American political enterprise is breathtaking.”

On October 29 2017 03:20 Wulfey_LA wrote:
Republican Congressmen are the least credible people in the universe on alleged HRC/Obama scandals. They are serial fabulists. Do you remember the Benghazi investigation? 1 month after DJT got elected the entire series of Benghazi probes just went away. They were agitprop from the beginning and disappeared after they weren't useful anymore. If you want to push some kind of conspiracy here, you need to be citing/quoting primary sources, not secondary commentary by fabulists.

EDIT: John Solomon pieces tend to be a form of fan fiction where ill deeds are assumed and connection are placed without any kind of evidence. I reread the John Solomon hill pieces. What basis do we have to assume that the FBI only getting a few charges against the Ruskie was villainous? That it took 4 years to push through a complicated case ... how is that evil? When the kickback scheme was discovered in 2010, how widespread was this knowledge? Further, why should this have been made public before charges were filed? Wouldn't that have risked any efforts at shutting down the ring? And couldn't there be a pretty straightforwards innocent explanation why FBI secret informants would have to keep secrets? Maybe the FBI didn't want their informant going to the press because the FBI was after other guys and didn't want them tipped off? Solomon's reporting relies on the reader to assume that Bill/Hill/Obama are evil and are pulling the strings somehow with the bad guys. Solomon never ponies up how they are doing it and never takes into account the possibility that the FBI might have its own procedures and does things based on its best judgment.

http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/355749-fbi-uncovered-russian-bribery-plot-before-obama-administration

On October 29 2017 05:11 KwarK wrote:
We have Trump Jr in a room with a Russian agent discussing sanction relief in a meeting he only took in the hope of receiving foreign help in the election and somehow the traitors in the White House are still talking about Hillary.

On October 29 2017 05:39 NewSunshine wrote:

It's less of a somehow and more of an "of course". The more exposure I've had to this whole fiasco, the more obvious it becomes that deflection and whataboutism become the strategy du jour. They're sincerely hoping that by repeating it frequently and loudly enough, that people won't notice how much worse it is on the very side that's making a stink about it. A big giveaway is how loud the Hillary stuff still is, when she lost nearly a year ago. We have someone now in the White House who's so much deeper in it, as evidenced by the first of hopefully many indictments, who compounds it all by being the most ignorant, bigoted, and incompetent person to assume the office in modern American politics. Even if the right people do end up going down, it's still troubling that this much of the public consciousness is focused on pure distractions.

On October 29 2017 05:46 Gorsameth wrote:

I mean, it worked against Hillary prior to the election. Years of smear campaigns did their work even if nothing actually stuck.
Makes sense that they keep it up. They need to keep feeding the 'enemy 'narrative that they build to get themselves into power.

On October 29 2017 05:51 NewSunshine wrote:

True. But now things have come full circle in an interesting way. The people peddling this bullshit still haven't realized that what they're doing comes dangerously close to what we've seen in authoritarian regimes throughout history. Show unquestioning loyalty to your leader, shoot down any and all criticism or questioning of your leader from anyone else, and develop an easily bought false narrative of some national enemy, to get people to fall in line if all else fails.

On October 29 2017 05:51 NewSunshine wrote:

True. But now things have come full circle in an interesting way. The people peddling this bullshit still haven't realized that what they're doing comes dangerously close to what we've seen in authoritarian regimes throughout history. Show unquestioning loyalty to your leader, shoot down any and all criticism or questioning of your leader from anyone else, and develop an easily bought false narrative of some national enemy, to get people to fall in line if all else fails. A surprising number of people will do just about anything for the pride of their nation.

On October 29 2017 06:04 JonnyBNoHo wrote:
I'm not sure what the Uranium One 'scandal' is supposed to be. Russia is already a premier nuclear power so they don't exactly need our mines to have nukes. So, unless there was an oddly favorable deal (price, export terms) I'm not sure what there would be to see here.

Can someone show that? Otherwise this seems to be an attempt to prey on people's existing revulsion to both uranium and Russia.