US Politics Mega-Blog - Page 148

On January 23 2019 04:58 GreenHorizons wrote:


Some of them are open Nazi's though?

The interpretation of BLM isn't really mine so much as it was the observed reality for generations of Black activists.



You seem incapable of distinguishing a racist system, with racist laws, and racist enforcement from people pointing out some privileged kids acted like jerks and hired a PR firm to cover for them.

But yes wearing a MAGA hat (unironically) indicates support for terrible policy and a despicable person leading it.

There is a rash of white people thinking that other people having a fraction of the freedom they've enjoyed is infringing on their freedom rather than realizing they've become accustomed to the systemic abuse and disregard of others rights and freedoms and MAGA is literally trying to reinvigorate that exploitation.

On January 23 2019 05:03 Danglars wrote:

I haven't bought one. I'm realizing more and more that I probably should just to protest all the bullshit out there.

I also think the country's immigration policy, foreign policy, and judicial governance is shit
wasn't always shit
and Trump is one small step back towards a happier compromise.



And it's pretty insulting to see otherwise rational people immediately take the mental leap to slavery and sexist oppression. It's some kind of emotional reasoning powered by fear or some kind of projection.

On January 23 2019 05:04 Danglars wrote:

Some Democrats are communists, some are Louis Farrakhan apostles, some have an instinctual hatred of white men and women based on their skin color. I just don't see a similar need to focus on them as some big deal in American politics.

On January 23 2019 05:15 GreenHorizons wrote:


As I said, y'all can't actually point to when America was great because you would have to confront the relationship between the stuff you liked and the systemic abuse that provided it. Which would crap on the lie being told about not actually supporting the bad stuff. Perhaps it's simply ignorance about that historical relationship, but the reality is what it is.

Trump is a despicable person and you have to overlook some reprehensible behavior and beliefs to even consider him remotely qualified, let alone actually competent.

I find it pretty insulting people think others are ignorant enough to go along with such a vapid position.



No, Communists are not Democrats and Democrats are not Communists lol. Farrakhan is actually a conservative that doesn't like white people (for good reason), it's not instinctual, it's learned because white people have supported and/or neglected a system that habitually harasses, abuses, imprisons, and kills them.

You don't focus on them because they aren't remotely comparable to Trump and his supporters and make you look foolish for even trying. And obviously because you're far more concerned about what you see as infringements on your freedoms than the systemic abuses you and others are supporting by supporting Trump.

On January 23 2019 05:28 Danglars wrote:

You may be aware that a lot of conservatives don't think racism and sexism was a necessary part that provided the stuff we liked about past American society and government and legislative policy. I think it's a ridiculous idea proposed by ridiculous people.

You brought up literal "open Nazis." I can bring up communists. There's enough here in sunny California. The only ones I know (and I think their national leadership) voted Sanders in the primary and Clinton in the general. So if you want to make arguments about all the open Nazis in the Republican Party, be aware that Farrakhan's photo ops with Obama and association with the Women's March from the left are going to come up. Antifa is going to come up. I would suggest not going about finding the most fringe subgroup and trying to make an important tie-in to the national party.

On January 23 2019 05:42 GreenHorizons wrote:


Yes I'm aware. They are obviously and painfully wrong. They probably also think the 1954 Championship Lakers team was the best in the world rather than a product of white supremacist policy.

You brought up Nazi's I simply pointed out that open Nazis have come out in support of Trump. I don't know of any communists that voted Clinton and I think I'm around a lot more communists than you. Granted there's a bunch of liberals that have identified themselves as a bunch of things to their left so I can't say that no one who called themselves a communist voted for Hillary, but the two are pretty mutually exclusive.

The rest is aimed at some liberal/Democrat and doesn't make any sense directed toward me. My argument has little to nothing to do with any "fringe subgroup" sooo...

On January 23 2019 05:52 Danglars wrote:

Pushing your racist interpretations on MAGA is one small step removed from saying people that disagree with your politics are nazis. I don't want that society. It's kid's stuff but surprisingly popular among adults on the broad-spectrum left. That scares me a little.

On January 23 2019 06:01 IgnE wrote:
twitter picks the dumbest hills to die on. so lazy

On January 23 2019 05:53 GreenHorizons wrote:


MAGA is racist, as you've demonstrated those that support it would rather live in a world where they don't have to confront that and pine for a day when the people that disagreed were silenced.

It should be scary.

On January 23 2019 06:12 Danglars wrote:

This is a pretty ridiculous reading. It's your own mind that wants slavery and oppression to be the means to achieve a greater American end. Will you ever get off your own racist insinuations? Is it really about the hat, or about the skin color of the person wearing it?

On January 23 2019 06:01 IgnE wrote:
twitter picks the dumbest hills to die on. so lazy

On January 23 2019 06:29 GreenHorizons wrote:


lol did I say anything about slavery? Will I ever stop calling out racist and oppressive systems targeting marginalized people? Hell no!

It's not about the hat or the skin color it's about what the hat and whiteness (irrespective of actual skin color) represent.

On January 23 2019 06:40 Danglars wrote:

I'd be a lot more in the camp of subtle signalling and modern dog-whistle accusations if people didn't just come up and say "whiteness" on the other side. I think the term should be something like the Ta Nehisi-Coastesization of politics. Oh your hat about making American great again is longing for racist and sexist norms of days past

but let's talk about the problem of your whiteness.

Sometimes I think it's a messaging problem, and other times I think it's megalomania of culturally accepted racists that we talk about whiteness like that's a useful thing when we say it's disengaged from actual skin color. It's like one side up and decided that all the nuance is owned by us (whiteness isn't just more racism), but none of the nuance is owned by them (MAGA is racist, wearing a hat with it is a pretty dick move).

+ Show Spoiler +

The first thing I would like to mention is that there must be a recognition on the part of everybody in this nation that America is still a racist country. Now however unpleasant that sounds, it is the truth. And we will never solve the problem of racism until there is a recognition of the fact that racism still stands at the center of so much of our nation and we must see racism for what it is. It is the nymph of an inferior people. It is the notion that one group has all of the knowledge, all of the insights, all of the purity, all of the work, all of the dignity. And another group is worthless, on a lower level of humanity, inferior.

On January 23 2019 06:43 GreenHorizons wrote:
xDaunt uses the modified version that separates the groups by "culture" rather than race but it's the same trash politics imo.

On January 23 2019 07:03 xDaunt wrote:


There's nothing "trash" about my construction of politics at all. Policy is an expression of values, which are functions of culture. As such, divergence of policy is merely a reflection of cultural divergence.

Policy is an expression of values, which are functions of race. As such, divergence of policy is merely a reflection of racial divergence.

“My original convictions upon this subject have been confirmed by the course of events for several years, and experience is every day adding to their strength. That those tribes cannot exist surrounded by our settlements and in continual contact with our citizens is certain. They have neither the intelligence, the industry, the moral habits, nor the desire of improvement which are essential to any favorable change in their condition. Established in the midst of another and a superior race, and without appreciating the causes of their inferiority or seeking to control them, they must necessarily yield to the force of circumstances and ere long disappear.”

When at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. That’s what Hillary Clinton’s machine did in 2016, eventually getting the FBI to bite on an uncorroborated narrative that Donald Trump and Russia were trying to hijack the presidential election.

Between July and October 2016, Clinton-connected lawyers, emissaries and apologists made more than a half-dozen overtures to U.S. officials, each tapping a political connection to get suspect evidence into FBI counterintelligence agents’ hands, according to internal documents and testimonies I reviewed and interviews I conducted.

In each situation, the overture was uninvited. And as the election drew closer, the point of contact moved higher up the FBI chain.

It was, as one of my own FBI sources called it, a “classic case of information saturation” designed to inject political opposition research into a counterintelligence machinery that should have suspected a political dirty trick was underway.

Ex-FBI general counsel James Baker, one of the more senior bureau executives to be targeted, gave a memorable answer when congressional investigators asked how attorney Michael Sussmann from the Perkins Coie law firm, which represented the Clinton campaign and Democratic Party, came to personally deliver him dirt on Trump.

“You’d have to ask him why he decided to pick me,” Baker said last year in testimony that has not yet been released publicly. The FBI’s top lawyer turned over a calendar notation to Congress, indicating that he met Sussmann on Sept. 19, 2016, less than two months before Election Day.

Sussmann’s firm paid Glenn Simpson’s Fusion GPS opposition-research firm to hire British intelligence operative Christopher Steele to create the now-infamous dossier suggesting Trump and Moscow colluded during the 2016 election.

By the time Sussmann reached out, Steele’s dossier already was inside the FBI. Sussmann augmented it with cyber evidence that he claimed showed a further connection between the GOP campaign and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Some was put on a thumb drive, according to Baker.

Baker’s detailed account illustrates how a political connection — Sussmann and Baker knew each other — was leveraged to get anti-Trump research to FBI leaders.

“[Sussmann] told me he had cyber experts that had obtained some information that they thought they should get into the hands of the FBI,” Baker testified.

“I referred this to investigators, and I believe they made a record of it,” he testified, adding that he believed he reached out to Peter Strzok, the agent in charge of the Russia case, or William Priestap, the head of FBI counterintelligence.

“Please come get this,” he recalled telling his colleagues. Baker acknowledged it was not the normal way for counterintelligence evidence to enter the FBI.

But when the bureau’s top lawyer makes a request, things happen in the rank-and-file.

The overture was neither the first nor the last instance of Clinton-connected Trump dirt reaching the FBI.

The tsunami began when former MI6 agent Steele first approached an FBI supervisor, his handler in an earlier criminal case, in London. That approach remarkably occurred on July 5, 2016, the same day then-FBI Director James Comey announced he would not pursue criminal charges against Clinton for mishandling classified emails on a private server.

If ever there were a day for the Clinton campaign to want to change the public narrative, it was July 5, 2016.

But the bureau apparently did not initially embrace Steele’s research, and no immediate action was taken, according to congressional investigators who have been briefed.

That’s when the escalation began.

During a trip to Washington later that month, Steele reached out to two political contacts with the credentials to influence the FBI.

Then-senior State Department official Jonathan Winer, who worked for then-Secretary John Kerry, wrote that Steele first approached him in the summer with his Trump research and then met again with him in September. Winer consulted his boss, Assistant Secretary for Eurasia Affairs Victoria Nuland, who said she first learned of Steele’s allegations in late July and urged Winer to send it to the FBI.

(If you need further intrigue, Winer worked from 2008 to 2013 for the lobbying and public relations firm APCO Worldwide, the same firm that was a contractor for both the Clinton Global Initiative and Russia’s main nuclear fuel company that won big decisions from the Obama administration.)

When the State Department office that oversees Russian affairs sends something to the FBI, agents take note.

But Steele was hardly done. He reached out to his longtime Justice Department contact, Bruce Ohr, then a deputy to Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates. Steele had breakfast July 30, 2016, with Ohr and his wife, Nellie, to discuss the Russia-Trump dirt.

(To thicken the plot, you should know that Nellie Ohr was a Russia expert working at the time for the same Fusion GPS firm that hired Steele and was hired by the Clinton campaign through Sussmann’s Perkins Coie.)

Bruce Ohr immediately took Steele’s dirt on July 31, 2016, to then-FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.

When the deputy attorney general’s office contacts the FBI, things happen. And, soon, Ohr was connected to the agents running the new Russia probe.

Around the same time, Australia’s ambassador to London, Alexander Downer, reached out to U.S. officials. Like so many characters in this narrative, Downer had his own connection to the Clintons: He secured a $25 million donation from Australia’s government to the Clinton Foundation in the early 2000s.

Downer claims WikiLeaks’s release of hacked Clinton emails that month caused him to remember a conversation in May, in a London tavern, with a Trump adviser named George Papadopoulos. So he reported it to the FBI.

The saturation campaign kept building. Sometime in September, Winer and Nuland got another version of Steele-like research suggesting Trump-Russia collusion, this time from known associates of the Clintons: Sidney Blumenthal and Cody Shearer.

Again, it was sent to the FBI.

Sussmann’s contact with Baker at the FBI occurred that same month.

By mid-September — less than a month before Election Day — there likely was agitation inside the Clinton machine: After so many overtures to the FBI, there was no visible sign of an investigation.

Simpson and Steele began briefing reporters with the hope of getting the word out. It is taboo for an FBI source such as Steele to talk to the media about his work. Yet, he took the risk, eventually getting fired for it, according to FBI documents.

Baker, the FBI’s top lawyer, testified to Congress that he was clearly aware Simpson’s team was shopping the media. “My understanding at the time was that Simpson was going around Washington giving this out to a lot of different people and trying to elevate its profile,” Baker told congressional investigators.

Ohr, through his contacts with Steele and Simpson, also knew the media had been contacted. In handwritten notes from late 2016, Ohr quoted Simpson as saying his outreach to reporters was a “Hail Mary attempt” to sway voters.

The next and final overture came from one of Clinton’s top acolytes in Congress.

Then-Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, having been briefed by then-CIA Director John Brennan on the Russia allegations, sent a letter to the FBI in late October demanding to know if agents were pursuing the evidence. Before long, the letter leaked.

The political pressure from Team Clinton had come from many directions: State, Congress, Justice, a top Democratic lawyer.

Yet, no one in the FBI seemed to tap the brakes, noticing the obvious: Its counterintelligence apparatus was being weaponized with political opposition research from one campaign against its rival.

Leaking. Politically motivated evidence. Ex parte contacts outside the normal FBI evidence-gathering chain.

None of it seemed to raise a red flag.

That is a troubling legacy.

On January 23 2019 12:42 xDaunt wrote:
I doubt anyone is really surprised that the Clintons are one of the main parties behind the Trump/Russia collusion nonsense:



Source.

For what it's worth, others sources are starting to report on the same narrative. Baker's testimony about Sussman's overtures is reported on here here and Nunes is now openly talking about Clinton involvement.

On January 23 2019 12:48 GreenHorizons wrote:


So?

On January 23 2019 12:53 xDaunt wrote:

Given your preference for all things socialist/communist, I get that you may not have a problem with a political campaign weaponizing intelligence and law enforcement assets to target an opposing campaign for purely political purposes. It's quite a common occurrence in these authoritarian countries that you aspire to. However, it is not something that should be remotely acceptable in the US.

weaponizing intelligence and law enforcement assets to target an opposing campaign for purely political purposes.

On January 23 2019 12:42 xDaunt wrote:
I doubt anyone is really surprised that the Clintons are one of the main parties behind the Trump/Russia collusion nonsense:



Source.

For what it's worth, others sources are starting to report on the same narrative. Baker's testimony about Sussman's overtures is reported on here here and Nunes is now openly talking about Clinton involvement.