US Politics Mega-Blog - Page 40

On October 09 2018 12:05 Danglars wrote:
Everybody ready for presidential campaign season? It’s basically 3-4 months away no joke.

To be perfectly honest, I want Avenatti in it until the convention. Just for laughs. This guy does the Trump approach to media events and is a worthy rival.

On October 09 2018 13:36 GreenHorizons wrote:


It's going to be a mess. Democrats are going to try to pretend shoving one establishment candidate after another down the electorate's throat is a "competitive primary", but it's already heavily set for Kamala to win the nomination (California, her home state, is on Super Tuesday now) And literally no one except maybe Biden and Warren have the nationwide appeal already to have the kind of ground game it's going to take to be competitive on Super Tuesday.

Booker is going to run as a boost to his national profile but with no intention of winning, merely securing a large enough group to give his endorsement some political value to bring back home.

But Bernie wins in a landslide if there's a crowded primary and he runs. Considering there is no progressive candidate for him to get behind at the moment I expect him to run.

I think Bernie wipes the floor with Trump in a heads-up race, particularly if Democrats really mean it when they say vote blue no matter who.

On October 09 2018 16:24 iamthedave wrote:


I'd like to believe you but I feel like Bernie is left enough that he'll trigger red scare PTSD that could really get Conservative voters motivated. It would be very, very interesting to follow a Trump Presidency with a Sanders presidency, though. Just to see what that degree of whiplash does.

On October 09 2018 18:12 GreenHorizons wrote:

I mean they are going to call whoever runs a communist anyway, might as well have someone who actually supports the social dem versions Democrats wont even give lip service to.

Also at least we're past the part that Hillary was bad because she was attacked and not because even when out of headlines for more than a year her approval is still awful while despite establishment Democrats and Republicans pshawing Bernie's ideas they're the most popular ones and he's the most popular politician in the country.

Meanwhile...

https://twitter.com/CNN/status/1049570658928263168

On October 09 2018 18:37 Simberto wrote:
I agree that setting up "tactical" candidates is probably not the best idea. Try to find people that people are actually enthusiastic about, not people who the republicans are not going to say mean stuff about, because those don't exist. If Jesus Christ ran as a democrat, republicans would find mean stuff to say about him.

The main problem i have with Bernie is that he is nearly 80 years old now. I think the US could do with a president that is of pre-retirement age for a change. Sure, people in their 70s will have more "accomplishments" than "a young person" in their 50s, but there is a reason why most of them are in retirement at that age.

So, the question is can you find a 20-30 years younger Bernie? And possibly put old Bernies support behind Young Bernie. That would be me ideal setup. I have no idea if that would win an election in the US, because apparently the US is insane and elected Trump, so they could vote for or against anything.

On October 09 2018 19:30 iamthedave wrote:


The hatred Americans have of the Clintons strikes me as pathological. There are tyrants and dictators in the world remembered more fondly than the Clintons. They seem to be the lightning rod to blame by both left and right for pretty much everything. So it doesn't surprise me that her approval ratings are really low. At best she represents old-democrats who are now out of fashion with the newer generation, and she still represents the main Democratic figure so she's the Republican boogeyman.

Which is funny because she's absolutely zero threat now. If anything her getting involved would be the best thing that could happen for Trump because he'd have a line of old attacks he could re-use.

Side note; It's funny looking at the parallels between Corbyn and Sanders, and how the super hip new up and coming liberals are latching onto these really old men :D I mean, Corbyn's 69.

On October 09 2018 23:25 LegalLord wrote:
If the election were held in 2018 then I think Trump would win re-election by at least a popular vote. He isn’t great, he isn’t popular, but Democrats haven’t managed to make a case for any viable alternative.

The past two DNC’s have shown a dearth of viable talent in the talent pool, which is worrisome at the least.

Two senior FBI officials told the bureau’s top lawyer they believed Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein was “serious” when he discussed secretly recording President Trump and invoking the 25th Amendment to remove him from office last year, according to sources close to a congressional investigation – an account that conflicts with claims from Rosenstein and others that the comments either were inaccurately reported or made in jest.

Former FBI General Counsel James A. Baker told congressional investigators during a closed-door deposition last week that then-FBI Acting Director Andrew McCabe and FBI lawyer Lisa Page came to Baker "contemporaneously" after Trump fired FBI Director James Comey in May 2017. Baker said Page and McCabe relayed details of the meeting where Rosenstein made the comments.

Though he wasn't personally in that meeting, Baker told congressional investigators he took McCabe and Page's account “seriously,” the sources said. Further, Baker told congressional investigators he suspected “Rosenstein was coordinating with two people in the administration to invoke the 25th Amendment,” a source said.

Baker, whose testimony was described as deliberate and sober, added he had not done a legal analysis and was unsure whether it was “unethical or illegal,” the source added.

The testimony would appear at odds with other accounts of those explosive discussions.

On October 10 2018 00:43 TheLordofAwesome wrote:


The reporting about Rosenstein has been notoriously terrible for a while. If we go back to before the Era of Kavanaugh, there was a day where multiple different large media outlets alternately claimed that Rosenstein had been fired, had resigned, had refused to resign and then been fired, etc. And it all turned out to be totally wrong. There were also the claims about Rosenstein and 25th amendment and secretly recording conversations with the President, which were also all called out as false.

So I will wait to see if any other outlet starts picking up this reporting and see how Rosenstein responds before making any judgement about it.



What exactly do you think Trump is secretly doing with Rosenstein? What is this mess you speak of?

I know there are some conservative commentators who take the spirit of this post further and claim that Jeff Sessions is secretly working with Trump as well. Do you think that too?

A major U.S. telecommunications company discovered manipulated hardware from Super Micro Computer Inc. in its network and removed it in August, fresh evidence of tampering in China of critical technology components bound for the U.S., according to a security expert working for the telecom company.

The security expert, Yossi Appleboum, provided documents, analysis and other evidence of the discovery following the publication of an investigative report in Bloomberg Businessweek that detailed how China’s intelligence services had ordered subcontractors to plant malicious chips in Supermicro server motherboards over a two-year period ending in 2015.

Appleboum previously worked in the technology unit of the Israeli Army Intelligence Corps and is now co-chief executive officer of Sepio Systems in Gaithersburg, Maryland. His firm specializes in hardware security and was hired to scan several large data centers belonging to the telecommunications company. Bloomberg is not identifying the company due to Appleboum’s nondisclosure agreement with the client. Unusual communications from a Supermicro server and a subsequent physical inspection revealed an implant built into the server’s Ethernet connector, a component that's used to attach network cables to the computer, Appleboum said.

The executive said he has seen similar manipulations of different vendors' computer hardware made by contractors in China, not just products from Supermicro. “Supermicro is a victim -- so is everyone else,” he said. Appleboum said his concern is that there are countless points in the supply chain in China where manipulations can be introduced, and deducing them can in many cases be impossible. “That's the problem with the Chinese supply chain,” he said.

On October 09 2018 18:37 Simberto wrote:
I agree that setting up "tactical" candidates is probably not the best idea. Try to find people that people are actually enthusiastic about, not people who the republicans are not going to say mean stuff about, because those don't exist. If Jesus Christ ran as a democrat, republicans would find mean stuff to say about him.

The main problem i have with Bernie is that he is nearly 80 years old now. I think the US could do with a president that is of pre-retirement age for a change. Sure, people in their 70s will have more "accomplishments" than "a young person" in their 50s, but there is a reason why most of them are in retirement at that age.

So, the question is can you find a 20-30 years younger Bernie? And possibly put old Bernies support behind Young Bernie. That would be me ideal setup. I have no idea if that would win an election in the US, because apparently the US is insane and elected Trump, so they could vote for or against anything.

On October 10 2018 02:16 Nebuchad wrote:


Can't really find one before 2020, it takes time to build that much momentum. If we run someone younger hoping that the message carries them we run the risk of coming up just short like Bernie did in 2016. The best bet is still Bernie imo, I understand your concern but the advantages trump the inconvenients in my view.