US Politics Mega-thread - Page 169

On May 05 2018 01:45 Howie_Dewitt wrote:

This is truly terrifying. That part about the power to declare war essentially being transferred from Congress to the President is destroying part of what has made America the longest-running continuous democracy in the world, and doesn't sit well with me at all. Not for a president of any party.

Also, @GH, I recently created a proposal about what to do about policing in America as part of my final in a class on policing; disregarding political feasibility, can you tell me what you think of this plan? I tried to bridge the gap of reforming the police and abolishing them, albeit staying towards the "reform" side.

To everyone else, although some of you may go "not this rancid garbage heap of a discussion again," I think it will help you all understand GH's position much better than you did before, where you guys made him want to slam his head into a wall with how much the word "abolish" stuck in your head instead of recognizing it as a hyperbole and simplification of his plan.

Essentially, the plan is to replicate the accountability system present in British policing from the beginning.

Sir Robert Peel, after the arguing for the creation of the Metropolitan Police Department in 1829, which was the first modern police force and the one that Americans based their police force off of, fired over 78% of the first 2800 officers that were hired because they were not performing up to his standards. He created an accountability system and a culture of "do your job perfect or get fired." When American police departments were created in this model, the creators all systematically failed to recognize that Peel's harsh methods were the only method of accountability. The plan that I proposed is harsh to the point of unfairness to make police officers truly afraid of the law, just like any other citizen. Tell me what you think.

+ Show Spoiler +

On May 05 2018 01:03 GreenHorizons wrote:


A fair critique on it's own, but does it undermine the point or their critiques?

On May 05 2018 06:33 Plansix wrote:
They are not turning over the power to declare war. Already made it so the President doesn’t need to give a shit about congress and can justify it by claiming they were attacking one of those groups. The previous AUMF weakened congress by allowing the president to act without them for sustained periods of time.

On May 05 2018 07:34 GreenHorizons wrote:


This doesn't really change that dynamic according to the ACLU, but perhaps they are lying or misleading people? I mean it may be slightly more oversight, but I'm not seeing how it changes the practical application of the AUMF. Seems like superficial oversight without any teeth, but reading the original text is a pain in the ass.

Is there somewhere you're getting this understanding that this is more than nominally or superficially better? Like the text itself or some other explanation from another information outlet?

@Howie: I like it, now get white people to make it happen ;P No but seriously, I'm not anti-reform like people may think, myself and many others are just done waiting for the people who say they want to do something to go ahead and do it.

On May 05 2018 07:50 Plansix wrote:

I don’t disagree with the ACLU’s assessment. The law isn’t that strong and only provides a small amount of oversight. But a repeal of the AUMF with this congress or any potential congress in the near future is not going to happen. And if someone is firmly against anything but a full repeal, this law a complete waste of time. But until the public changes the dynamic in Washington, the current AUMF is the law and how the nation operates.

On May 05 2018 09:23 FueledUpAndReadyToGo wrote:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CTWu-UkhtA

'He started yesterday, ehhh...he'll get his facts straight' A great recommendation from Trump on Giuliani . But he knows 'it's a witch hunt' so all is good.

Also it's may 2018 and Trump still can't help but mention Hilary's emails and his electoral victory while talking for 5 minutes before a flight.

On May 06 2018 03:45 Doodsmack wrote:
Very interesting scoop here. I can’t see the article due to a pay wall. I’ll bet Mueller is checking the money laundering angle thoroughly.

https://twitter.com/fahrenthold/status/992826061531512832

Aides to Donald Trump, the US president, hired an Israeli private intelligence agency to orchestrate a “dirty ops” campaign against key individuals from the Obama administration who helped negotiate the Iran nuclear deal, the Observer can reveal.

People in the Trump camp contacted private investigators in May last year to “get dirt” on Ben Rhodes, who had been one of Barack Obama’s top national security advisers, and Colin Kahl, deputy assistant to Obama, as part of an elaborate attempt to discredit the deal.

The extraordinary revelations come days before Trump’s 12 May deadline to either scrap or continue to abide by the international deal limiting Iran’s nuclear programme.

ack Straw, who as foreign secretary was involved in earlier efforts to restrict Iranian weapons, said: “These are extraordinary and appalling allegations but which also illustrate a high level of desperation by Trump and [the Israeli prime minister] Benjamin Netanyahu, not so much to discredit the deal but to undermine those around it.”

One former high-ranking British diplomat with wide experience of negotiating international peace agreements, requesting anonymity, said: “It’s bloody outrageous to do this. The whole point of negotiations is to not play dirty tricks like this.”

Sources said that officials linked to Trump’s team contacted investigators days after Trump visited Tel Aviv a year ago, his first foreign tour as US president. Trump promised Netanyahu that Iran would never have nuclear weapons and suggested that the Iranians thought they could “do what they want” since negotiating the nuclear deal in 2015. A source with details of the “dirty tricks campaign” said: “The idea was that people acting for Trump would discredit those who were pivotal in selling the deal, making it easier to pull out of it.”

According to incendiary documents seen by the Observer, investigators contracted by the private intelligence agency were told to dig into the personal lives and political careers of Rhodes, a former deputy national security adviser for strategic communications, and Kahl, a national security adviser to the former vice-president Joe Biden. Among other things they were looking at personal relationships, any involvement with Iran-friendly lobbyists, and if they had benefited personally or politically from the peace deal.

Investigators were also apparently told to contact prominent Iranian Americans as well as pro-deal journalists – from the New York Times, MSNBC television, the Atlantic, Vox website and Haaretz, the Israeli newspaper among others – who had frequent contact with Rhodes and Kahl in an attempt to establish whether they had violated any protocols by sharing sensitive intelligence. They are believed to have looked at comments made by Rhodes in a 2016 New York Times profile in which he admitted relying on inexperienced reporters to create an “echo chamber” that helped sway public opinion to secure the deal. It is also understood that the smear campaign wanted to establish if Rhodes was among those who backed a request by Susan Rice, Obama’s final national security adviser, to unmask the identities of Trump transition officials caught up in the surveillance of foreign targets.

Although sources have confirmed that contact and an initial plan of attack was provided to private investigators by representatives of Trump, it is not clear how much work was actually undertaken, for how long or what became of any material unearthed.

Neither is it known if the black ops constituted only a strand of a wider Trump-Netanyahu collaboration to undermine the deal or if investigators targeted other individuals such as John Kerry, the lead American signatory to the deal. Both Rhodes and Kahl said they had no idea of the campaign against them. Rhodes said: “I was not aware, though sadly am not surprised. I would say that digging up dirt on someone for carrying out their professional responsibilities in their positions as White House officials is a chillingly authoritarian thing to do.”

Last Monday, Netanyahu, accused Iran of continuing to hide and expand its nuclear weapons know-how after the 2015 deal, presenting what he claimed was “new and conclusive proof” of violations.

However, European powers including Britain responded by saying the Israeli prime minister’s claims reinforced the need to keep the deal.

On Thursday the UN secretary general Antonio Guterres urged Trump not to walk away from the deal, warning that there was a real risk of war if the 2015 agreement was not preserved. The following day details emerged of some unusual shadow diplomacy by Kerry, meeting a top-ranking Iranian official in New York to discuss how to preserve the deal.

It was the second time in around two months that Kerry had met foreign minister Javad Zarif to apparently strategise over rescuing a pact they spent years negotiating during the Obama administration. On Sunday Boris Johnson, the foreign secretary, will arrive in Washington, hoping to persuade Trump to keep the deal, known as the joint comprehensive plan of action (JCPOA).

Straw, who was foreign secretary between 2001 and 2006, said: “The campaign against the JCPOA has been characterised by abuse and misinformation. It is the best chance of ensuring Iran never develops a nuclear weapons programme, and it is insane to suggest abandoning the deal could do anything but endanger international security.”

WASHINGTON — For years, the American military has sought to distance itself from a brutal civil war in Yemen, where Saudi-led forces are battling rebels who pose no direct threat to the United States.

But late last year, a team of about a dozen Green Berets arrived on Saudi Arabia’s border with Yemen, in a continuing escalation of America’s secret wars.

With virtually no public discussion or debate, the Army commandos are helping locate and destroy caches of ballistic missiles and launch sites that Houthi rebels in Yemen are using to attack Riyadh and other Saudi cities.

Details of the Green Beret operation, which has not been previously disclosed, were provided to The New York Times by United States officials and European diplomats.

On May 06 2018 09:01 Kyadytim wrote:
www.theguardian.com
In any other administration, the White House trying to discredit and smear the people responsible for negotiating a deal it wants to pull out of would be a major issue.

With Trump, we already know that he doesn't have good grounds for pulling out of the deal with Iran. He's said so much shit about it that he's pretty clearly looking for some excuse to hide behind when he plays to his base and pulls out of the deal. It's a big deal for a number of reasons, but it's just one more item on a list of terrible stuff the Trump administration has been responsible for.

According to incendiary documents seen by the Observer, investigators contracted by the private intelligence agency were told to dig into the personal lives and political careers of Rhodes, a former deputy national security adviser for strategic communications, and Kahl, a national security adviser to the former vice-president Joe Biden. Among other things they were looking at personal relationships, any involvement with Iran-friendly lobbyists, and if they had benefited personally or politically from the peace deal.

On May 06 2018 10:05 m4ini wrote:
So a single guy voicing his opinions = 99% of republican senators sending a letter actively trying to torpedo a deal by fucking warning the other party to make a deal with the president, literally threatening to void the deal (and actually having the power to do so).

Got it. Entirely the same.

The "weaselly" story is written by the newspaper who broke the obama surveillance scandal, pulled PRISM into the light, uncovered cambridge analytica, led the panama papers investigation, to just name a few things.Not to mention, they make it very clear that the Observer (sidenote, the oldest sunday newspaper in the world) has seen documents. This isn't based on someone saying something.



This is a fact, not an opinion piece.

On May 06 2018 10:24 Introvert wrote:



The only stories/reporters I believe as being more or less true without further evidence are ones who talk with people inside the White House. And even then not always.