US Politics Mega-thread - Page 9419

On December 05 2017 08:42 kollin wrote:

Literally no one said "unfettered" immigration of any kind was good, please find a single example of someone doing so. The refugee crisis in Europe was a failure of the EU to deal with it in a way that was both politically expedient and humanitarian regardless, but keep trying to milk it for a poisonous, nationalist agenda.

WASHINGTON — While facing several felony charges, Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort has been working on an op-ed essay with a longtime colleague “assessed to have ties” to a Russian intelligence service, according to court papers filed Monday by prosecutors working for special counsel Robert Mueller.

In a court filing, prosecutors say Manafort and the colleague sought to publish the op-ed under someone else’s name and intended it to influence public opinion about his work in Ukraine. The op-ed was being drafted as late as last week, with Manafort currently under house arrest. Prosecutors did not name the colleague but noted the person is based in Russia.

Manafort is currently facing several felony charges involving allegations of money laundering and other financial crimes related to his political consulting work in Ukraine. He has been confined to his home while he works out a bond arrangement with the government.

Manafort has denied any wrongdoing related to his work in Ukraine. A spokesman for Manafort declined comment on the op-ed described by prosecutors.

In the court filing, prosecutors say the op-ed appeared to violate an admonishment from the judge last month to refrain from public statements.

“Even if the ghostwritten op-ed were entirely accurate, fair, and balanced, it would be a violation of this Court’s November 8 Order if it had been published,” the prosecutors wrote. “The editorial clearly was undertaken to influence the public’s opinion of defendant Manafort, or else there would be no reason to seek its publication (much less for Manafort and his long-time associate to ghostwrite it in another’s name).”

They added, “It compounds the problem that the proposed piece is not a dispassionate recitation of the facts.”

Prosecutors said they discovered the efforts to publish the op-ed last Thursday and alerted Manafort’s attorney, who assured prosecutors that “steps would be taken to make sure it was it was no longer going to be published.”

At the time, Manafort was working to secure his release from home confinement by posting more than $10 million in bond, and according to court papers, he had reached a tentative agreement with the government. But after discovering the op-ed, Mueller’s team is now opposing Manafort’s proposed bond agreement.

Prosecutors did not disclose the op-ed in court papers so as to prevent it from becoming public. They also did not disclose what name the ghostwritten op-ed would have been published under.

On December 05 2017 08:44 xDaunt wrote:

The problem is that EU and most of its individual member states lack the conviction to acknowledge that their first duty is to their citizens and to act accordingly. Immigration should never, ever be used as a charity service. If that means thousands of civilians will die, so be it. If the country can't stomach that thought, then it should send in the military.

On December 05 2017 08:47 Nyxisto wrote:



You can write that into the american constitution but the German constitution guarantees asylum as a humanitarian right (as does just about every country on the planet under international law), regular immigration is called... immigration.

On December 05 2017 08:35 Plansix wrote:

We are not Germany. We have very different immigration policies and are much stricter. We are beyond picky with our refugees, so it is not a problem.

On December 05 2017 08:44 xDaunt wrote:

The problem is that EU and most of its individual member states lack the conviction to acknowledge that their first duty is to their citizens and to act accordingly. Immigration should never, ever be used as a charity service. If that means thousands of civilians will die, so be it. If the country can't stomach that thought, then it should send in the military.

On December 05 2017 08:52 Mohdoo wrote:


I don't disagree. I am simply pointing out the fact that refugees are not leaving Syria because of their regressive approach to homosexuality.

On December 05 2017 08:52 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:
Throw him in jail. No contacts means no contacts.

https://twitter.com/funder/status/937823678280163329

On December 05 2017 09:03 Gorsameth wrote:

How stupid can you be. Surely your every move is watched.
How does someone so dumb become head of military intelligence...

On December 05 2017 09:03 Nevuk wrote:

Different idiot. This one was only the head of Trump's campaign

On December 05 2017 08:53 kollin wrote:

The problem is that the EU failed to act in a co-ordinated way to disperse refugees across the continent, reducing the ability of far-right parties to exploit them for political ends. A state has no 'first duty' - a nation might do, but they are different things. If the members of a nation can't recognise and cope with people of different nations coming in, then it is either a nation which is founded on very weak premises, or currently feels as if it is founded on weak premises and is consequently reacting with a flare of nationalist fervour. Neither of those possibilities are worth letting people die for.

Also, by your logic, Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany would've been denied any form of asylum and left to die in concentration camps. 90% of the Jewish Germans who did not find refuge in another country did, of course, meet this end.

On December 05 2017 08:53 kollin wrote:

The problem is that the EU failed to act in a co-ordinated way to disperse refugees across the continent, reducing the ability of far-right parties to exploit them for political ends. A state has no 'first duty' - a nation might do, but they are different things. If the members of a nation can't recognise and cope with people of different nations coming in, then it is either a nation which is founded on very weak premises, or currently feels as if it is founded on weak premises and is consequently reacting with a flare of nationalist fervour. Neither of those possibilities are worth letting people die for.

If the members of a nation can't recognise and cope with people of different nations coming in, then it is either a nation which is founded on very weak premises, or currently feels as if it is founded on weak premises and is consequently reacting with a flare of nationalist fervour.

Also, by your logic, Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany would've been denied any form of asylum and left to die in concentration camps. 90% of the Jewish Germans who did not find refuge in another country did, of course, meet this end.

On December 05 2017 09:06 xDaunt wrote:

The state is the government. The nation is the people. In a democratic form of government, the state's power is derived from the people through a social contract with the people to govern in their interests. This is why the state's first duty is to the welfare of the people -- ie the nation. Why you would challenge any of these basic propositions is beyond me.

And this statement...



...is not grounded in any kind of factual reality. To the contrary, history is littered with examples of conflict and war erupting where peoples with conflicting values live in close proximity to each other. Virtually everyone understands this with the exception of the leftist multiculturalists in the West.



Yep.

On December 05 2017 09:08 Nevuk wrote:
I'm sure china will collapse any day now

President Trump may have been involved with a change to the Republican Party campaign platform last year that watered down support for U.S. assistance to Ukraine, according to new information from someone who was involved.

Diana Denman, a Republican delegate who supported arming U.S. allies in Ukraine, has told people that Trump aide J.D. Gordon said at the Republican Convention in 2016 that Trump directed him to support weakening that position in the official platform.

Ultimately, the softer position was adopted.

Denman is scheduled to meet this week with the House and Senate Intelligence committees to discuss what she saw, said two sources familiar with the briefings.

Investigators in Congress and elsewhere want to ask the San Antonio-area woman about how her proposal supporting Ukraine changed in the course of last year's convention.

People familiar with the story described it to NPR. Robert N. Driscoll, a Washington-based lawyer for Denman at McGlinchey Stafford, declined to comment.

The revision to Denman's proposed amendment to the Republican platform scaled back the party's position on pro-Western elements in Ukraine — from supporting supplying weapons for fighters there to a more general assistance.

The issue is of interest to investigators in Congress and the team working for Justice Department special counsel Robert Mueller because the idea of arming Ukrainians in the fight against pro-Russian separatist forces was staunchly opposed by the Russian government — and, it seems, the Trump campaign as well.

Denman has told people she spoke with Gordon, a national security aide on the Trump campaign, at the Republican convention in Cleveland last year. Gordon identified himself as a representative with the Trump campaign and informed her he had phoned "New York" about the Ukraine proposal, in Denman's account.

She followed up by asking with whom Gordon had spoken. And, more than once, Gordon replied he had discussed the issue with Trump.

No he didn't, Gordon said on Monday.

"I dispute her recollection of events," he said in messages with NPR. He also denied telling Denman in Cleveland that he had discussed the Ukraine language with Trump.

"Trump wasn't involved in the GOP Platform details. That was my job," Gordon said by text message. "Individual delegates didn't have the authority to force their positions on the campaign."

"I am not getting into a 'he said, she said' with the media about Diana Denman or anyone else," Gordon added.

One source said Denman was skeptical about Gordon's account at the time.

Gordon told NPR on Monday that Trump long had a clear position on Ukraine.

"Trump said on the campaign trail that he didn't want World War III over Ukraine. And he wanted better relations with Russia," Gordon said. "It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that arming Ukraine isn't consistent with those two positions."

The Obama administration also vowed support for pro-Western forces in Ukraine and supplied them with vehicles and other military equipment, but stopped short of weapons.

What has since become clear is that at the time of the convention, Russia was running a broad series of "active measures" against the U.S. presidential election that included clandestine outreach by human agents and an overt information campaign on social media. That wasn't known to the public then, but Mueller and congressional investigators have begun looking into whether anyone in the Trump camp helped the Russians who were attacking the election.

The change to the Ukraine platform in Cleveland has attracted attention because it has raised questions about whether it might have been evidence of communications between Russians and the Trump campaign, or was intended by the Trump team as some kind of a signal to the Russians about their willingness to accommodate them.

On December 05 2017 09:06 xDaunt wrote:

The state is the government. The nation is the people. In a democratic form of government, the state's power is derived from the people through a social contract with the people to govern in their interests. This is why the state's first duty is to the welfare of the people -- ie the nation. Why you would challenge any of these basic propositions is beyond me.

And this statement...



...is not grounded in any kind of factual reality. To the contrary, history is littered with examples of conflict and war erupting where peoples with conflicting values live in close proximity to each other. Virtually everyone understands this with the exception of the leftist multiculturalists in the West.



Yep.