StrangeSox

Senator Orin hatch says these emails aren't relevant to Trump admin. Keep in mind that senior advisor Jared kushner is up to his neck in this. https://twitter.com/MattLaslo/status/884812...src=twsrc%5Etfw

Those responses were also after the election.

One thing that's not really being discussed right now is that Russia would obviously have had huge leverage over the whole Trump clan. They would have known about all of these communications they keep lying about and not disclosing. They're compromised top to bottom.

QUOTE (JenksIsMyHero @ Jul 11, 2017 -> 01:11 PM) The 2nd part, yes, but he still could have come out strong against Russia for the hacks once the intelligence community concluded that the Russians didn't. He could have imposed additional sanctions. He did nothing. I think both sides are wrong here. Trump should have gone after Putin after he was sworn in and Obama should have done so when he was still President. Both failed miserably. I think this is correct, but I think the case against Obama looks much stronger in hindsight than it did at the time. It looked like Hillary was going to cruise to victory and that this could all have been dealt with after the election at a time it would be less politicized.

More Simpsons becoming reality https://twitter.com/SimpsonsMashups/status/...src=twsrc%5Etfw

QUOTE (bmags @ Jul 11, 2017 -> 12:53 PM) This is ridiculous. Is there any illegal action which is not actually the fault of the democrats? Your post contains a lot of certainty in your own hypothetical. There was just a similar approach to trying to hack the French election, to which they were ALSO open about how the hack was performed by a foreign power. And the report which detailed the vulnerabilities was leaked from an NSA contractor who is now in custody, not formally presented to the American public to save face. It doesn't stand up. This is the equivelant of sticking your fingers in your ears going neener neener. You bring up many good points about the hell that partisanship is wreaking on our government and personal relationships. But I can't imagine a worse aspect of partisanship than basing your moral center exclusively on what the other side has done, especially when "other side" can be defined as some internet rando. He tried to tsk tsk the Democrats criticizing Trump bragging about "grabbing them by the p****" because it was hypocritical because Democrats want government out of the bedroom. Every. Single. Scenario. breaks down to "actually the Democrats are bad"

QUOTE (CrimsonWeltall @ Jul 11, 2017 -> 12:32 PM) He also said the purpose of the meeting was to talk about US-Russian adoption policy. All these emails are about getting dirt on Hillary Clinton. Remember when political people were at least GOOD at lying? The entire Trump clan being extremely incompetent is the only thing that's saved us so far.

Djt jr. only published the emails because he knew the nyt was about to. The emails had been forwarded to kushner and manafort, so they know about this directly prior to the meeting. Mueller had jurisdiction over this and prosecutorial powers. Wonder what will happen when the president pardons his son.

QUOTE (Reddy @ Jul 11, 2017 -> 11:20 AM) I honestly don't care. Grow some balls. Biggest issue I've had with Dems for years is that they've got absolutely no spines. I don't disagree, I'm just pointing out that the problem is much deeper than just Trump. From McConnell blackmailing Obama over this to Ryan "haha seriously Trump being on Russias payroll doesn't leave this room" recording to the rest of the party being "concerned" but still enabling him at every step because he'll give them some policy results they want, the whole party is complicit.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jul 11, 2017 -> 11:21 AM) It was "explained", but not really well, mostly because it didn't make any sense at all outside of a political capital sense. Where and when have nk and Cuba interfered in our elections?

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jul 11, 2017 -> 10:55 AM) We keep getting told that we can't do anything about these other countries because of how dangerous they are, and the risk of war and millions of dead people. But when it comes to a country that has actually invaded neighbors, and has the second biggest nuclear arms set in the world, they have no problem antagonizing them for nothing more than political points. The risk here is so huge, infinitely bigger than taking action on NK. They are backing themselves into a corner where the only answer is going to be war with Russia, but the left doesn't care because Trump. It's not nothing more than political points. Your fine with their interference, apparently, but I like my democratic elections to be more legitimate than that. We've had stronger sanctions on Russia than this for longer. Their economy is bad and getting worse. There's no reason to make the assumption you are that anyone wants war with Russia or that doing something to stop their interference will lead to that for some reason.

QUOTE (illinilaw08 @ Jul 11, 2017 -> 10:54 AM) Obama, I think, was in a kind of tough spot. Any public condemnation of the hack on the DNC could have provided the impression that Obama was attempting to help Clinton in the election. It seems like that's the reason that Obama handled the initial issue with kid gloves, and I can absolutely see the logic behind that decision. McConnell explicitly threatened to turn the issue into a political one and claim Obama was tampering with the election if he came out beforehand. Now I'm sure we'll here how this isn't about unprecedented actions by the entire leadership of the GOP and is actually s sign of both sides being bad (but Democrats worse)

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jul 11, 2017 -> 10:42 AM) Again, after hearing the lefts positions on places like NK and Cuba, it amazes me to see them take the exact opposite tact with Russia, and publicly pushing us towards war with the absolute most dangerous country on earth. Why this attempt at "Democrats are hypocrites and actually the bad ones here" is completely incoherent was already explained to you. There is no previous equivalence to the situation we're in right now, and positions towards countries' internal domestic issues is not related to positions on foreign governments interfering in our domestic issues up to and including tampering with our voter rolls.

republicans: Hillary might have committed a crime over email don Jr: hold my beer

People high up in Trump's campaign including his own son and son in law were willing to collude with Kremlin-linked Russians in order to obtain damaging info on their political opponent. This should matter, but... QUOTE (maxjusttyped @ Jul 9, 2017 -> 04:02 PM) It'll be interesting to see who the first Republican senator will be to express "concern" and call the report "troubling" before proceeding to do nothing about it.

Why are we partnering on Cyber security with the country that our own intelligence community firmly believes interfered with our elections? Why is an entire political party okay with this?

The president's daughter is taking his place at major international meetings

War. War never changes.

WE HAVE A BUDGET!!! still deep structural problems though

QUOTE (JenksIsMyHero @ Jul 6, 2017 -> 03:43 PM) Has there ever been a war that caused a financial issue for the country? I would think the opposite - we almost always benefit. The Iraq war was expensive, but I'm not sure it "cost" us anything economically. Defense contractors benefit, but that's a Broken Window economy if I've ever seen one. We benefited economically from WWII because everyone was buying our stuff at first and at the end, we were the only major economic power that hadn't been devastated by the war. The Iraq War has cost the US government several trillion dollars. That's several trillion that could and should have been spent on infrastructure, jobs, health care, etc.

We've already got two wars that have lasted well over a decade, cost trillions upon trillions of dollars, cost hundreds of thousands if not millions of lives and sparked huge refugee crises. Why not add a third?

In terms of per capita spending, Illinois is 37th. In recent surveys, most Illinoisans want the problem solved mainly by cuts, but they don't actually want any specific programs, services, pensions or payments cut by pretty decent margins. Illinois government is that Skinner/Krabappel argument over school funding forever