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PoliGAF 2017 |OT3| 13 Treasons Why

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nature boy said:
Get your bingo card ready:

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Which one is this?

Philip Rucker‏
@PhilipRucker
McMaster said “I would not be concerned” if admin staffer had backchannel comms with Russia. Says it allows “discreet” communications.
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Link
 
NihonTiger90 said:
I miss Adam and his stories about his mom.
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yeah. I was rereading that Election Day thread and it is sobering. The mood went down each passing hour. Never again will I underestimate the 45% of R's will choose a slice of toast with an R next to their name every time. I knew I'd get another Republican in my lifetime probably several more but not that soon.
 
mAcOdIn said:
I get the Trump hate but I think we do need to step back a little here.

First off, I don't think Russia is an outright official "enemy" of the United States yet so saying people are colluding with the enemy's a bit over the top. They're definitely antagonistic, I wouldn't say they're friends, they have the capacity to be our enemy in the future but I don't think it's right to call them the enemy today.
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Russia had just actively attempted to subvert our democratic process. At this point the entire US government agreed on this and Trump was being told as much in his security briefings. We severely sanctioned them for these actions. You sanction enemy countries.

Second, I do think treason's may be a strong word, depending on what was actually discussed. When I think of treason I think of an act that is meant to harm your country and benefit another and I think intent is actually important here. Like did Snowden commit treason or did he do a patriotic thing and expose a program the people had a right to know about? I don't know what's in his heart, I don't know if he thought he was sticking it to the US to weaken our position globally or if instead he truly felt there was a injustice occurring and attempted to set it right. In regards to Syria I have no fucking idea what Kushner and Flynn's ideas were regarding that clusterfuck. Depending on who you talk to every single action we could take is both shit or the best of a bunch of bad options. Keeping Assad in power or whatever seemingly more Russian friendly Syrian strategy these guys may prefer may indeed help Russia a little more than us but is it treason? Is there any hand at all we could play that would turn out better for us than someone else? There's quite a few Americans that would also rather leave Syria to Assad and let him try to reign the chaos in with an iron fist and hopefully bring some stability again as opposed to funding a myriad of groups that are not exactly great either or forming some weird killing triangle us, the Kurds and Turkey.
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Working with Russia on a secret plan that effects US Military operations is espionage and treason. Keeping Asad in power would do more than help Russia a little and it could very easily endanger the lives of the personel of the US and her allies. This is actual life and death stuff.

And I might add that our government does coordinate militarily with foreign powers all the damn time, we were somewhat coordinating with Russia before the election too so as to not bomb each other and shit. And, yes, sometimes politics takes a front seat to what the military would rather the policy to be.
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Our government sometimes has backchannels, yes, but at the time Kushner and Flynn were not members of our government. They were private citizens who were subverting our government.

Further, that is what Trump wanted to do, work with Russia on Syria, he campaigned on it, it wasn't some secret betrayal or anything of the sort.
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If it wasn't a secret, then why did everyone keep it secret? This story is about Kushner wanting to make already secret meetings even more secret. If he was doing this as part of a campaign promise, then why didn't he or Flynn or Sessions report any of their many Russian communications?

What I find more amusing about the whole thing is that why not just wait until they were in office? Officially call up Russia and sit down with them and discuss Syria, maybe people'd agree with our change of stance, maybe they wouldn't, but what would have been nefarious about it? Politics are dirty. Look at Bahrain right now, we gave them the go ahead and Saudi Arabia moves in, some people are upset but what legally is going on to get the US to put pressure on SA again? Are the FBI investigating?
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You touched on a good question, "What was so important that they couldn't wait a few more weeks?" and then immediately discarded it for a round of tangental what-a-boutism.

'Course I still hate Trump. I'm not a lawyer but I've heard that discussing policies like these before you're in office can be a crime. If so I'd love for them to go down. If they were repaying a service already rendered by Russia I'd love for them to go down. If they colluded with a foreign power to influence the election I'd love for them to go down. I hope they hit them with any charge they can make stick. But even then, if Kushner and Trump think working with Russia is a better solution for the United States and won the election without colluding with Russia and just wanted a head start on their publicly stated agenda then they broke procedural laws, in my opinion, but weren't being outright treasonous and working with a declared enemy nation.

There's a lot of things that stinks here though, I'm all for seeing what comes out, I just disagree with some of the rhetoric.
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Simply hating Trump isn't some talisman. It doesn't mean much really. I would wager that everyone working in that White House hates Trump, as does his own family and probably Trump himself. Hating Trump hasn't stopped any of them from acting in his best interest. Instead, you need to be looking at the evidence with clear and calm eyes and have a willingness to hold Trump accountable for his actions.

This isn't 3rd grade Track and Field day, you don't get a fucking head start just because you think you deserve one. The peaceful transition of power is what our democracy is based on. You don't fucking hide things from your government during the transition. The Trump team treated the transition like it was a keystone cops coup d'etat .
 
Good to see our Homeland Security chief doing his part to fight terror:

DHS chief: If you knew what I knew about terror, you’d ‘never leave the house’

The Hill said:
Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly on Friday said the terror threat is worse than most realize, saying some people would "never leave the house" if they knew the truth.

“I was telling [Fox host] Steve [Doocy] on the way in here, if he knew what I knew about terrorism, he’d never leave the house in the morning,” Kelly said on “Fox & Friends.”
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...he added, "Have a happy Memorial Day weekend!"
 
Tommy DJ said:
Trump's like a walking negative stereotype of a loud, arrogant, physically lazy American that used to be portrayed pretty often in the past. Holy shit if this is actually true.
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Well, seems like past stereotypes were pretty accurate when it comes to trump.

That stereotype isn't going anywhere now.
 
Hope.

Half of 8th grade class from New Jersey refuses to pose with Speaker Ryan

"It's not just a picture," said Matthew Malespina, a student.

Matthew says he couldn't go through with it.

It didn't matter that Paul Ryan is the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, or that he is third in-line to the presidency.

When he and his classmates from South Orange Middle School had the chance to take a picture with the speaker. Matthew watched from the parking lot with 100 of his fellow students.

"It's being associated with a person who puts his party before his country," Matthew said.
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jtb said:
Love this, even if it's going to get the usual suspects all hot and bothered again:
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Definitely puzzles me. She was embarrassed by Barack Obama and Donald Trump. Bernie Sanders has become a prominent leader of the progressive movement because of her run. Yet she thinks she's a winner. Lmao...
 
TheLaughingStock said:
Definitely puzzles me. She was embarrassed by Barack Obama and Donald Trump. Bernie Sanders has become a prominent leader of the progressive movement because of her run. Yet she thinks she's a winner. Lmao...
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She's a winner in the only way Trump wants to be a winner - the popular vote.

And, oh, sure, Bernie's become a "prominent leader", but how many women look up to him? How many glass ceilings has he broken? Hillary's a genuine feminist icon to a lot of people, and she did that not by just shouting and being angry about the system, but by being the wonkiest policy wonk. I would argue she's a far smarter person than either Bernie or Trump, and that's a win of sorts, too.

Edit: A somewhat critical appraisal of Hillary's shifting attitudes in her Wellesley speeches.

Clinton wasn't wrong to urge the Wellesley Class of 2017 to stay engaged. It's vital to the American civic project that people continue to vote, to march and to run for office. And in some political environments, persistence in the face of great odds is the most pragmatic form of resistance.

But Clinton's experiences in the 48 years since she first addressed a Wellesley graduating class are proof that making the impossible possible is a lot harder and more complicated than it looks.
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neurosisxeno said:
It's because coal is a dying industry. Short of just subsidizing the shit out of it, to the point where the government might as well just hire people directly.
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Xando said:
Coal is already behind some renewables in cost efficiency. It's only going to get worse as technology improves.

Unless Trump plans to stop renewables from getting cheaper it's only a matter of time.
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That is what I was thinking. It seems like he is more focused on oil when it comes to fossil fuels.
 
sphagnum said:
A whole lot of Millennial girls and women if the primaries are anything to go by.
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In particular, Clinton recalls one night at the theater. "It was intermission, and a woman came over holding the hand of a young woman. She literally dragged her daughter over to see me. And she said, ‘My daughter has something to tell you ... Tell her.' And this girl says to me, ‘I am really sorry; I didn't think you needed my vote and I didn't vote.' And her mother says [yelling], ‘Yes, she didn't vote! You didn't vote! You're part of the problem!' I said, ‘Okay, well, next time I hope you'll vote.' And she said, ‘But I marched!' " Here Clinton smiles. "And I said, ‘I'm really glad you marched. I'm so glad you marched.' "
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Oh, heaven save me from the Millennials. :p

(Yes, I'm assuming she was a millennial, I know. :) )
 
neurosisxeno said:
It's because coal is a dying industry. Short of just subsidizing the shit out of it, to the point where the government might as well just hire people directly.
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The entire coal industry employs fewer people than Arby's
coal_jobs.png
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse
The resource curse, also known as the paradox of plenty, refers to the paradox that countries with an abundance of natural resources (like fossil fuels and certain minerals), tend to have less economic growth, less democracy, and worse development outcomes than countries with fewer natural resources. This is hypothesized to happen for many different reasons, and there are many academic debates about when and why it occurs. Most experts believe the resource curse is not universal or inevitable, but affects certain types of countries or regions under certain conditions.[1][2]
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