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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM

M84 Oh, bother. from Our little blue planet Since: Jun, 2010 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
Oh, bother.
#233526: Mar 4th 2018 at 7:50:59 PM

[up][up]Tillerson's excuses for not doing anything are absolutely pathetic. "Oh they'll figure out a way to do it anyway if they really want to do it, so why bother trying?"

Disgusted, but not surprised
LeGarcon Blowout soon fellow Stalker from Skadovsk Since: Aug, 2013 Relationship Status: Gay for Big Boss
Blowout soon fellow Stalker
#233527: Mar 4th 2018 at 7:52:06 PM

If they're worth anything they'd better be putting together a serious playbook for us to use in 2020 when we get control of the government back.

Oh really when?
NogaiKhan pic unrelated from close enough Since: Nov, 2017 Relationship Status: On the prowl
pic unrelated
#233528: Mar 4th 2018 at 7:58:39 PM

[up][up]Yeah the only thing possibly difficult about an invasion of Canada would be the peace after-words,
Yeah, that's not going to be remotely difficult either. I had a friend- or, acquaintance more like, he was just in one of my classes- who was a Canadian intelligence officer who served in Afghanistan. He commented on the idea of first world insurgencies during a history class. Having seen the hardships insurgents in Afghanistan had to go through to wage an effective resistance, he highly doubted any resistance would actually materialize in an occupied first world country bar attempted genocide. Even second-worlders these days are highly doubtful given the Ukrainian situation. Basically no resistance materialized there despite hate for the government until Russia sent soldiers.

He cited the fact that even when people were far hardier and less used to comforts than now, first-world countries occupied by long-time enemies treating them extremely brutally still barely resisted. There were, for instance, almost no rebels whatsoever in occupied France in WW-2 during the period where the Germans were not at war with the USSR or USA, despite infusion of British aid to them; even when 100,000 French troops were successfully evacuated to Britain, all but 3,000 demanded to be sent home instead of joining Free French forces. All this despite France having a far, far better breeding ground for insurgents than Canada (as France was a peer power to Germany that Germany would be hard-pressed to keep completely down, the Germans kept a skeletal garrison in France to begin with, and the Germans were extremely brutal occupiers). As late as June 1944, when Anglo-American forces had mauled the Luftwaffe/Kriegsmarine and taken Tunisia + half of Italy while the Soviets were crashing through Belarus, and while the Germans were literally pillaging France of every possible resource (including forced laborers), there were a mere 90,000 French resistance members (not all armed fighters) for a country of 45 million people. By way of comparison, the height of the Soviet-Afghan war saw an estimated 250,000 armed fighters for a country of 12 million.

In short the whole idea of a Canadian resistance is about as ludicrous as those militia types in the rural US who assume they can repel the Ruskies with their hunting rifles.

As for the conventional military situation, the occupation of Czechoslovakia would be a better WW 2 equivalent than the invasion of the USSR. 90% of Canada's population and pretty much all of its major cities are within 100 miles of the US border. The Canadian army has a grand total of four under-strength divisions of 23,000 active and 17,000 reserve soldiers, spread out along an indefensible front nine thousand kilometers long, equipped with a few dozen tanks and under 200 artillery guns. What would happen is the Canadian government (assuming it's not suicidal) would recognize any military action as pointless and the Americans would march through the country with literally zero resistance.

when you’re busy trying to shore up your control of a gigantic area of land that any enemies could set up shop *anywhere* in.
Yeah, that's not how geography actually works. Transport through the Canadian wilderness relies on a few key hubs, so all you need to do is control those and you can massively curtail insurgent access to the areas south that actually matter. In for example Afghanistan, the Taliban are hiding in rugged areas, but rugged areas along major historical lines of communication. Most of Canada's wilderness spreads away from its major lines of communication, meaning that while in Afghanistan you have to go through the wilderness to go places, in Canada you have to come out of the wilderness to go places. Aside from that, the only way around is aircraft, and those can be controlled quite easily. People can still leg it, or take small AT Vs or snowmobiles, but that's much less efficient and not useful on a large scale (and that's before the occupier starts confiscating all AT Vs). Communications is just as bad, since there are no landlines, and any kind of radio and cell phone communication can be intercepted. So now you have a bunch of physically isolated insurgents, unable to freely communicate, and cut off from the areas that matter.

It also doesn't help that many of the northern communities are critically reliant on a string of border cities for support or they starve and freeze to death. So if a bunch of insurgents out of Hay River take snowmobiles down through the back woods and blow up an oil refinery in Alberta (Wolverines!), the occupation government can just blockade and cut off all supplies to that town until the local authorities turn in or drive off the perpetrators themselves. Then, since this is the 21st Century, you get a fleet of UA Vs flying over the north and just missile the crap out of anything suspicious, when you don't feel like sending in heliborne troops to snatch them up.

This isn't the 1700s, and it isn't Red Dawn. Insurgents need cities, and they need populations to blend into. If they're in the woods, but close enough to civilization to accomplish things, they'll be easy pickings for modern surveillance assets. Otherwise they're just survivalists.

edited 4th Mar '18 9:35:10 PM by NogaiKhan

Rationalinsanity from Halifax, Canada Since: Aug, 2010 Relationship Status: It's complicated
#233529: Mar 4th 2018 at 8:11:34 PM

[up]Thing is, if the United States is ever radicalized enough to start invading Canada, Mexico, etc, it will probably have already committed genocide internally and will certainly deploy some form (alt-right, religious fanatics, militia) of death squads to deal with undesirables.

And Canadian/Mexican partisans don't have to target the US military exclusively or even primarily. They've got a lot of infrastructure and civilians within their reach.

edited 4th Mar '18 8:12:49 PM by Rationalinsanity

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.
megaeliz Since: Mar, 2017
#233530: Mar 4th 2018 at 8:13:58 PM

[up][up][up][up] has anyone else noticed that the Republicans' excuse for doing nothing always is a variation on, "if it's going to happen anyway, then why do something about it?"

It's bad enough they're doing it on Gun Regulation, but now they are doing it on matters of legitimate National Security as well!

edited 4th Mar '18 8:41:20 PM by megaeliz

NogaiKhan pic unrelated from close enough Since: Nov, 2017 Relationship Status: On the prowl
pic unrelated
#233531: Mar 4th 2018 at 8:14:17 PM

[up][up]If they're Nazis then eradicating resistance in Canada becomes as easy as just cutting off shipments of food to the sparse north and keeping a large occupation force in the border cities. An insurgency can't thrive if they're geographically right next to the enemy's main base of supply and have literally no hospitable hiding places or a friendly border. In Afghanistan, for example, almost no Taliban leader of note actually stays in Afghanistan- they cycle in from Pakistan where their actual bases are.

edited 4th Mar '18 8:14:38 PM by NogaiKhan

JBC31187 Since: Jan, 2015
#233532: Mar 4th 2018 at 8:16:02 PM

I think the US invading Mexico is more likely, under the guise of fighting the cartels (I don't think it's likely). That would be as ugly as our wars in the Middle East, right on our border.

archonspeaks Since: Jun, 2013
#233533: Mar 4th 2018 at 8:16:33 PM

[up][up][up][up] We actually had a plan to invade Canada in the 20s and 30s where the presumed enemy was the UK. To be fair, we had (and one would assume still have) plans for everyone.

edited 4th Mar '18 8:17:05 PM by archonspeaks

They should have sent a poet.
NogaiKhan pic unrelated from close enough Since: Nov, 2017 Relationship Status: On the prowl
pic unrelated
#233534: Mar 4th 2018 at 8:18:29 PM

[up][up]No it wouldn't. Mexico is not a hellhole that Sub-Saharan African governments would shudder to set foot in, like Afghanistan (perfect breeding ground for insurgency), nor is it a gigantic bomb of ethnic tension waiting to go off, like Afghanistan and Iraq. It's a modern, comfortable (by world standards) upper-middle income country with a disarmed population, with higher HDI than a few US states. You're much more likely to see something equivalent to the Ukrainian government's occupation of the eastern fringes (or a larger version of the US occupation of Panama) than anything resembling the current Middle Eastern conflicts.

edited 4th Mar '18 8:20:11 PM by NogaiKhan

M84 Oh, bother. from Our little blue planet Since: Jun, 2010 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
Oh, bother.
#233535: Mar 4th 2018 at 8:24:18 PM

[up]x5 Yeah, the similarities to their arguments against gun control didn't escape me either.

Disgusted, but not surprised
Fourthspartan56 from Georgia, US Since: Oct, 2016 Relationship Status: THIS CONCEPT OF 'WUV' CONFUSES AND INFURIATES US!
#233536: Mar 4th 2018 at 9:00:27 PM

Extremely well said Nogai Khan! [awesome]

While I was fairly skeptical of the idea that invading+occupying Canada would be especially difficult I had no idea how much of a non-issue it would be, thanks for explaining.

edited 4th Mar '18 9:00:46 PM by Fourthspartan56

"Sandwiches are probably easier to fix than the actual problems" -Hylarn
Silasw A procrastination in of itself from A handcart to hell (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: And they all lived happily ever after <3
A procrastination in of itself
#233537: Mar 4th 2018 at 9:06:11 PM

You’re much more likely to see resistance in the form of civil and political resistance, the US military isn’t trained or culturally conditioned to go door to door looting, so paying for the entire thing would be a nightmare, as you’d see civil protest in the form of tax withholding both in Canada and the US.

That’s if you ever got that far, which you wouldn’t, because the US military wouldn’t invade Canada, If ordered to it woudl jsut say no and probably forward the order to congress for use in impeachment proceedings.

The US can’t realistically invade Canada, but tis not for strategic reasons, it’s for political and geopolitical reasons.

“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran
Fourthspartan56 from Georgia, US Since: Oct, 2016 Relationship Status: THIS CONCEPT OF 'WUV' CONFUSES AND INFURIATES US!
#233538: Mar 4th 2018 at 9:07:18 PM

[up]Certainly, as I've said a world where the US has the will to invade Canada is one that is completely different from our own.

"Sandwiches are probably easier to fix than the actual problems" -Hylarn
TheWanderer Student of Story from Somewhere in New England (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: Wishfully thinking
Student of Story
#233539: Mar 4th 2018 at 9:13:23 PM

While this isn't widespread yet...if the Democrats embrace Trump nuttiest policy, the United States is (and the global economy, most likely) is a write off as a reliable partner in the future.

I assumed governments around the world started making plans for the US not being a reliable partner the moment Trump got elected.

A couple of somewhat interesting stories from 538:

Trump's presidency is widening a split among Evangelicals that runs on age and racial lines

    This agrees with several similar Evangelical related articles from the last year 
America’s community of self-described evangelicals, about a fourth of the population, is increasingly divided between a more conservative, Trump-aligned bloc deeply worried about losing the so-called culture wars; and a bloc that is more liberal on issues like immigration, conscious of the need to appeal to nonwhite Christians and wary of the president. The split in evangelical Christianity isn’t new, but it appears to be widening under Trump.

Two factors appear to be driving this divide. First, the number of white evangelicals is in decline in America at the same time that the evangelical population is becoming more racially diverse. According to 2016 data from the Public Religion Research Institute, about 64 percent of evangelicals are non-Hispanic white, compared to about 68 percent in 2006.1 The downward trajectory of non-Hispanic white evangelicals over the past decade might seem relatively small, but that racial and ethnic change also has an important age dimension. Growth in the evangelical community is mostly being fueled by Latinos, one of the nation’s fastest-growing ethnic groups. PRRI’s data shows that while white evangelicals tend to be older, fully half of evangelicals under the age of 30 are nonwhite, and 18 percent are Latino. In other words, change in the composition of evangelicals is only likely to accelerate — and the religious group’s future looks much more nonwhite.

And these nonwhite evangelicals see politics differently than white evangelicals. While the largest plurality of white evangelicals identify as Republicans, most black evangelicals are Democrats. A plurality of evangelical Latinos, in contrast, identify as political independents — and they’re less supportive of the Democratic Party than Latinos overall — but they are still more likely to consider themselves Democrats than Republicans.

The second factor driving this divide among evangelicals is Trump himself. His governing style is, in effect, forcing evangelical leaders to choose between embracing the white evangelicals who overwhelmingly support the president or distancing themselves from the president — and even politics generally — as part of an appeal to their diversifying congregations.

The white conservative camp

Non-Hispanic white evangelicals are conservative on a broad range of issues. They overwhelmingly backed the presidential campaigns of John Mc Cain, who had at times criticized leaders of the “Religious Right,” and also Mitt Romney, despite some evangelicals’ discomfort with Mormonism.

That overwhelming support for Republican candidates was evident in Trump’s election as well, as the GOP nominee won about 80 percent of the white evangelical vote in 2016 even though he’d been through two divorces, was accused of sexual assault and struggled to speak about the Bible coherently.

Now in office, conservative Christian leaders are strongly backing the president, even at times when almost no one else will. Jerry Falwell Jr., the president of evangelical Liberty University, defended Trump’s controversial comments in the wake of the violent white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Amid allegations that Trump had an extramarital affair, Franklin Graham, Billy Graham’s son and head of the non-profit Samaritan’s Purse, downplayed the controversy.

In a recent New York Times op-ed, David Brody of the Christian Broadcasting Network cast Trump as God’s gift to evangelical Christians, arguing, “The Bible is replete with examples of flawed individuals being used to accomplish God’s will.” Congressional Republicans often defend the president, but few compare him to biblical figures.

Why are influential figures in the white evangelical community so willing to align themselves with Trump? Well, first of all, Trump remains popular with white evangelical voters. A Pew survey from December found that 61 percent of white evangelicals approved of Trump’s job performance,2 compared to 32 percent of voters overall. (This was a substantial decline from Trump’s 78 percent approval among white evangelicals in February 2017, but they are are still one of the most pro-Trump blocs in the electorate.)

Secondly, on policy issues that some white evangelical leaders and activists care passionately about, Trump has delivered. He has embraced the GOP effort to block any federal dollars from going to Planned Parenthood, signed into law a provision that makes it easier for states to keep their funds from being used at Planned Parenthood clinics, reversed an Obama administration policy that directed schools to allow transgender students to use the restroom of whichever gender they identify with and backed a push to allow ministers to formally endorse candidates without the risk of losing their tax-exempt status.

“Conservative evangelicals will acknowledge that Trump has problems, but he’s moving forward policy on the issues they care about, and in a sense that’s all that matters for them,” said Richard Flory, a University of Southern California sociologist focusing on religion. “Trump is helping with conservative evangelicals’ broader goal of keeping America an essentially Christian nation, with the moral values that white Christians support.”

Broadly, Trump and his administration have aligned with conservative Christians who argue that their traditional values on issues like gay rights are ignored in an increasingly liberal culture. “George W. Bush was the evangelical candidate in 2000: He pushed traditional conservative policies, but he doesn’t come close to Mr. Trump’s courageous blunt strokes in defense of evangelicals,” wrote Brody. Trump “easily wins the unofficial label of ‘most evangelical-friendly United States president ever.’”

The diverse non-Republican camp

Brody may have an argument — but only if you limit your definition of evangelicals to the traditionally Republican, mostly non-Hispanic white camp. Since Trump has been in office, many prominent evangelical leaders, white and nonwhite, have criticized his cutbacks in the number of refugees allowed to enter the U.S., the president’s alleged derogatory comments about immigrants from “shithole countries” and his decision to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which protected “Dreamers,” or undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children, from deportation.

During the 2016 campaign, many high-profile evangelical pastors kept their distance from the candidate. In one case, it was reported during the campaign that Joel Osteen, who runs a megachurch in the Houston area with nationally broadcast services, was endorsing Trump. In response, the pastor put out a statement declaring that was not true, adhering to his pattern of keeping a low-profile on political issues.

It’s not that differences among evangelical leaders didn’t exist before, but they seem more evident with Trump in the White House. And the demographic changes only exacerbate them. On immigration policy in particular — an issue that Falwell and Franklin Graham have not publicly disputed Trump on — the sizable nonwhite segment of the evangelical community has obvious implications.

“Evangelicals are very concerned about this, especially because so many evangelical congregations have Dreamers as part of our churches,” Russell Moore, a leader in the Southern Baptist Convention, told USA Today recently in explaining why he and other evangelicals were pressing Trump to resolve the DACA issue.

American churches have historically been highly segregated, but according to Mark Chaves, a professor of sociology at Duke University who directs a periodic survey of American churches and other places of worship, diversity within congregations has been growing over the past 20 years. That gives pastors a reason to reflect on what policies and politics best suit their congregants.

Churches where no single racial group dominates remain relatively rare, especially among evangelicals, but “we’re increasingly seeing diversity within predominantly white churches, and that’s likely to have a big effect on the way pastors approach issues around race or immigration,” Chaves said.

Larger churches are also likelier to be more racially diverse, which could help explain why megachurch pastors like Osteen and California’s Rick Warren have been more reluctant to get involved with politics in general — any stance on a political issue could upset a significant portion of their congregants. (The website of Osteen’s church describes itself as “known throughout the world as a model for racial harmony and diversity,” and that it “has become a congregation of nearly equal numbers of Caucasian, Hispanic and African-American members.”)

For leaders who are focused on evangelism — that is, bringing more people to evangelical Christianity and keeping them engaged — embracing Trump and his controversial stances on immigration could actually be something of a liability. In contrast, several of Trump’s strongest defenders in the evangelical community, like Falwell and Graham, don’t run actual churches.

As said, there have been a couple of hints about this over the last year. One of the priests mentioned in the article, Russell Moore, has been involved in condemning white supremacy, Neo-Nazis, and the alt-right, even though he had to fight with the more conservative faction to do so. This seems to be evolving into a strain of Evangelicalism that, while still very much against the general left on certain issues, (most notably, abortion) is at least more of a potential partner on some other issues.

Their polls of the week article says that the State of Democrats in Trumpland is... so-so. TLDR, a couple of Democratic Senators have early leads in 2018 races, (the articles refers to a Florida senator who will be challenged by Rick Scott, and North Dakota's Heidi Heitkamp) which is encouraging, but it's far too early and too close to say for sure. and most of the races don't have much in the way of polling. Generic Democrat is still up 8 points and change over generic Republican.

A huge chunk of data from the FBI's nationwide crime reports has been missing for months now, and a group of Democratic senators are pushing for answers

In December, FBI Director Christopher Wray promised in congressional testimony that data tables missing from the FBI’s yearly crime report would be added back in “a few weeks.” But as of March 2, the tables are still missing, and five U.S. senators have taken notice. On Thursday, Sens. Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, Mazie Hirono, Brian Schatz and Chris Van Hollen wrote a letter to Wray and Attorney General Jeff Sessions requesting information on why the data has not yet been restored. “This has now resulted in an unnecessary and unacceptable delay in making these data tables available — data that has been regularly provided in a timely manner within the annual report in prior years,” the letter stated.

The missing data was first reported by Five Thirty Eight in October. Since Wray’s testimony in December, Five Thirty Eight has made repeated requests to the FBI for information on the release timeline. On Feb. 21, Stephen Fischer of the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services division told Five Thirty Eight in an email that the report was under review at FBI headquarters. He did not respond to a follow-up request for an update on the release timeline. As of publication, the FBI had not returned a request for comment.

The annual Crime in the United States report, a collection of crime statistics gathered from over 18,000 law-enforcement agencies around the country, is considered the gold standard for tracking crime statistics in the United States. According to an analysis by Five Thirty Eight, the 2016 Crime in the United States report — the first released under President Trump’s administration — contained close to 70 percent fewer data tables than the 2015 version did. The removal could affect analysts’ understanding of crime trends in the country.

As a counterpoint to our usual discourse and assumptions about Russian interference, I wanted to post two interview with Masha Gessen, a former Russian journalist and gay rights advocate who had to flee Russia for her life and has decades under her belt as a harsh critic of Putin. In both interview she argues that while Russian interference is very real and ongoing, to a degree we're overblowing how effective it was, crediting it too much for being the cause of Trump's ascendency, (instead of looking at ugly trends within the country) and we (or at least the news media) are too invested in the Mueller probe and not paying enough attention to all the horrors being caused by Trump and how to directly fight back

New Yorker podcast interview, (around 15 minutes long) NPR interview, also involving Adrian Chen, one of the first reporters to detail Russia's interference (about 7 minutes long)

MASHA GESSEN: I think that Russian meddling in the election is an important issue. At the same time, the simplistic narrative that basically imagines that a bunch of subliterate-in-English trolls posting mostly static and sort of absurd advertising could have influenced American public opinion to such an extent that it fundamentally changed American politics is ridiculous on the face of it. And the fact that we're sort of falling deeper and deeper into that vision of the story is a little nuts.

ADRIAN CHEN: I mean, I think Masha put it perfectly. When I was reporting on it, you know, it was even probably more absurd and less polished than it became. But if you look at any of these ads, it's really just a kind of less literate and more simplistic version of what, you know, any right-wing Facebook page or alternative news outlet might put out. They were really jumping on these currents that were incredibly prevalent already on the Internet.

GREENE: Adrian, you said taking a position that it is at least somewhat skeptical about this narrative, that Russia meddled in the election and may have influenced the outcome - you've been reluctant to do interviews expressing that skepticism. Why is that?

CHEN: Well, I think for me, personally, it's difficult because I feel a lot of pressure on the one hand from interviewers and from people to kind of blow up the threat. You know, people want to talk about how scary this is, how sophisticated it is. There's not a lot of room for, you know, just kind of dampening down the issue. And then on the other hand, I'm wary of doing that because it instantly becomes a talking point among these sort of right-wing conspiracy mongers who basically just want to, you know, wage information warfare on behalf of the president. And so I don't want to be contributing to that either. So it's kind of a lose-lose situation.

GREENE: What should we think about Vladimir Putin and that regime? I mean, should we be less afraid than some people are?

GESSEN: I don't know that we should be less afraid. I think that we should be differently afraid. To be afraid of trolls to sort of imagine ourselves as sort of so infinitely pliable and malleable and subject to influence by a malevolent actor, I don't think that's doing our public sense of ourselves any good. At the same time, I think we should be awake to the fact that Putin believes and his circle believes that democracy is messy, flawed and ultimately not viable. And a lot of what they do is sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy. They mess with the United States, and when messing with the United States seems to make the United States more messy, then that proves the point. It proves to the people of Russia that what they think of as stability is infinitely preferable to the unpredictability and peril of a democratic process.

CHEN: And I wanted to jump off of that. I think that the undue focus on these propaganda efforts with no real critical look at, you know, how effective they might be proves also to them the effectiveness of their efforts and kind of encourages more of this - you know, the managers of Russia today and the people who fund them are looking at the amount of press that they get in the U.S. as a kind of direct sign of their impact.

GESSEN: You know, my issue with it actually is that we're focusing on it too much, which, again, is not to say that the Mueller investigation isn't important. Of course, it's important, right? But there's a very large group of people who keep sort of focusing on it because they're convinced that it will lead to an impeachment, which I don't think is going to happen. Then there's an even larger, I think, group of people who engage in a sort of magical thinking that, like, at some point the Mueller investigation will explain away Trump, that it will say, OK, this is how our national nightmare came to be. And that's also not going to happen because the bottom line is that Americans elected Trump.

And then there's a smaller group of people who I think are watching it with the hope that it will turn out to be an elaborate hoax, as President Trump says, which is also not going to happen. But what concerns me most about it is that every time we talk about Mueller, we're not talking about something else. And there I think - there are a lot more things that are incredibly important about this administration and about this political moment that are not the Mueller investigation.

I don't fully agree with everything said in these interviews, but I certainly think there are some fair points being made, and I consider Gessen's opinion nuanced and a worthy one to take into consideration.

| Wandering, but not lost. | If people bring so much courage to this world...◊ |
Fourthspartan56 from Georgia, US Since: Oct, 2016 Relationship Status: THIS CONCEPT OF 'WUV' CONFUSES AND INFURIATES US!
#233540: Mar 4th 2018 at 9:17:12 PM

[up]Thank you for posting this, it's very interesting.

I strongly hope that the age divide means that Evangelicals of the future will be less hypocritical and/or white supremacist, a opponent I can at-least slightly respect would be far superior to the abomination that is modern-day evangelicalism.

"Sandwiches are probably easier to fix than the actual problems" -Hylarn
megaeliz Since: Mar, 2017
#233541: Mar 4th 2018 at 9:36:25 PM

[up][up] On some level, I think that worrying about the Investigation, beyond making sure that no one tries to hinder or stop it, is a distraction. I promise you, you can trust Robert Mueller on this one.

This is his element. We're talking about a guy who was reportedly, notoriously unhappy in private practice, because he can't defend guilty people. Apparently he would just look at them, and say, "Well, it sounds like you should be in Jail, then." His reputation is beyond reproach, and his practical, no nonsense demeanor and way of conducting a case, is practically in his DNA.

If there's anything there, he will find it.

edited 4th Mar '18 9:41:05 PM by megaeliz

Wariolander Since: Nov, 2017
#233542: Mar 4th 2018 at 11:23:08 PM

Phew, just finished the last few Useful Notes pages for the countries and territories in North America. The rest of the continents shouldn't be as difficult, as North America was the one missing the most Useful Notes for it's countries and territories.

edited 4th Mar '18 11:23:23 PM by Wariolander

megaeliz Since: Mar, 2017
#233543: Mar 5th 2018 at 5:24:27 AM

See what I mean?

Special counsel wants documents on Trump, numerous campaign associates

WASHINGTON — The grand jury investigating alleged collusion between Russia and Donald Trump's presidential campaign has sent a witness a subpoena seeking all documents involving the president and a host of his closest advisers, according to a copy of the subpoena reviewed by NBC News.

According to the subpoena, which was sent to a witness by special counsel Robert Mueller, investigators want emails, text messages, work papers, telephone logs and other documents going back to Nov. 1, 2015, 4½ months after Trump launched his campaign.

The witness shared details of the subpoena on condition of anonymity. The news site Axios reported Sunday that a subpoena was sent to a witness last month.

NBC News reported last week that Mueller's team is asking pointed questions about whether Trump knew about hacked emails from Hillary Clinton's campaign before the public found out. The subpoena indicates that Mueller may be focused not just on what Trump campaign aides knew and when they knew it, but also on what Trump himself knew.

In addition to the president, the subpoena seeks documents that have anything to do with these current and former Trump associates:

  • Steve Bannon, who left the White House as chief strategist in August.
  • Michael Cohen, a personal lawyer for Trump who testified before congressional investigators in October.
  • Rick Gates, Trump's former deputy campaign manager, who pleaded guilty last month to conspiracy and lying to the FBI.
  • Hope Hicks, who resigned last week as Trump's communications director.
  • Corey Lewandowski, Trump's campaign manager until June 2016.
  • Paul Manafort, a former Trump campaign manager and Gates' business partner, who pleaded not guilty to money laundering, conspiracy and making false statements last week.
  • Carter Page, a former Trump campaign aide.
  • Keith Schiller, a former bodyguard for Trump who left as director of Oval Office operations in September.
  • Roger Stone, a longtime Republican political operative and Trump campaign adviser who sources have told NBC News is the focus of investigators interested in his contacts with Wiki Leaks during the campaign.
[1]

He wants all communications, including emails, texts, handwritten notes, etc.

edited 5th Mar '18 5:29:22 AM by megaeliz

Swanpride Since: Jun, 2013
#233544: Mar 5th 2018 at 5:26:19 AM

[up] Hasn't everybody with the exception of the Caddy left at this point?

megaeliz Since: Mar, 2017
#233545: Mar 5th 2018 at 5:28:32 AM

[up] yep.

Having such a specific start date (Nov. 1, 2015) also suggests, he already knows what he's looking for.

Look what Cheeto is twitterin' now.

Why did the Obama Administration start an investigation into the Trump Campaign (with zero proof of wrongdoing) long before the Election in November? Wanted to discredit so Crooked H would win. Unprecedented. Bigger than Watergate! Plus, Obama did NOTHING about Russian meddling.

In celebration of him being back, here's our @AltAltPressSec's official response to this;

Russian electronic warfare so that YOU would benefit, which is why you've yet to enact the sanction passed into LAW by Congress with a veto-proof majority, or spend any of $120 MILLION given to the State Dept. to counter Russian propaganda. You're Putin's tool. Pathetic. [1]

Oh, and by the way, Barack Obama started an investigation because your staff was TALKING TO RUSSIAN SPIES while they SABOTAGED AN ELECTION.

He also responded by lacing Russia's infrastructure with cyberweapons. [2]

But you wouldn't know that, having spent a grand total of four minutes doing the actual work of President, and instead of forcing the Secret Service to watch your lardass hit a golf ball. For someone that's played over 100x on the taxpayer dime you think you'd have a better swing [3]

Why won't you enforce sanctions? Why won't you authorize NSA, CYBERCOM, and FBI to take action to stop the problem? Why do you lie so consistently and frequently about your dealings with Russia?

Just tell the truth, Don. It's all coming out anyway. The jig is finally up. [4]

edited 5th Mar '18 7:05:11 AM by megaeliz

Grafite Since: Apr, 2016 Relationship Status: Less than three
#233546: Mar 5th 2018 at 6:55:04 AM

[up] Seriously Trump? Obama was doing his job as the president to guarantee that the possible next leader of the US was clean and his campaign wasn't colluding with any foreign government, which turns out was actually happening.

Life is unfair...
Rationalinsanity from Halifax, Canada Since: Aug, 2010 Relationship Status: It's complicated
#233547: Mar 5th 2018 at 7:41:38 AM

Trump says he'll drop the tariffs on Canada and Mexico if they agree to his NAFTA extortion.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trump-steel-canada-nafta-trariffs-1.4562209

Consider that both trade teams have threatened to walk out of the talks over the tariffs, I think an outright implosion is more likely.

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.
TheWanderer Student of Story from Somewhere in New England (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: Wishfully thinking
Student of Story
#233548: Mar 5th 2018 at 8:05:36 AM

On some level, I think that worrying about the Investigation, beyond making sure that no one tries to hinder or stop it, is a distraction. I promise you, you can trust Robert Mueller on this one.

This is his element. We're talking about a guy who was reportedly, notoriously unhappy in private practice, because he can't defend guilty people. Apparently he would just look at them, and say, "Well, it sounds like you should be in Jail, then." His reputation is beyond reproach, and his practical, no nonsense demeanor and way of conducting a case, is practically in his DNA. If there's anything there, he will find it.

Oh, I absolutely believe Muller is a man of integrity and is hyper competent at his job. I also think he has, and will continue to easily outmaneuver all the amateur hour attempts to obstruct him. However, what I believe, and what I think Gessen was saying, is that while Mueller may take down Trump's circle, especially through the use of state charges and cooperation from State Attorney Generals like Eric Schneiderman in New York, the odds of Trump going down are between slim to none unless he does something so blatantly criminal, destructive, or stupid in response to Mueller's probe and the stress of office that it becomes a choice between Republicans literally letting the country be destroyed or not.

Specifically, while you need only a majority in the House to vote to begin impeachment proceedings, you need two thirds of the Senate (67 Senators) to actually convict and remove the President from office. Currently there are 47 Democratic Senators and 2 Independents who largely vote with Democrats. Even if every single one of them voted for conviction, (which is no guarantee, given how many are in solidly red or purple states) you'd need to pick up 18 Republican Senators for it to be successful. I highly doubt there are 18 such Senators at the moment. Even in the best case scenario Democrats manage to net several Senate seats in November, (which, despite everything, still has a lot going against it) it's still going to be an uphill slog, at best. If we wind up with, say, 52 Democrats/Independents who vote with Democrats after November... well, picking up 15 votes isn't all that much easier than 18.

Plus even if Mueller provides proof beyond a reasonable doubt, there's nothing to say that Republicans lawmakers and the Alex Jones fans won't close ranks and use their "alternative facts" at least long enough to get through Trump's terms.

And even if Trump somehow gets impeached before the end of his first term without having done things unimaginatively destructive to our country and the world as a whole, (like starting a nuclear war) it's not going to erase everything he's done. It's not going to remove every judge he appointed, every change to policy done by cabinet members, every river polluted because regulations were yanked, and it's certainly not going to do anything about the norms discarded, the emboldened Nazis in our living rooms and on our internet, or the way one of the two major parties has been corrupted and further radicalized by Trumpenov.

All those problems, plus the further gridlock in our government and polarization among our population, (to the point of effectively living in different worlds) is not going to be solved simply by removing Trump. And as a result all those concerns deserve more thought and consideration, both in the news media and the population, rather than pushing it all aside and hanging breathlessly over every development that Mueller makes public. (And speculating about the ones he doesn't make public.)

Or, at least, that's how I took it and how I'm looking at our larger political situation. I could be wrong.

| Wandering, but not lost. | If people bring so much courage to this world...◊ |
M84 Oh, bother. from Our little blue planet Since: Jun, 2010 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
Oh, bother.
#233549: Mar 5th 2018 at 8:08:31 AM

Getting Trump out of office won't solve the deeper problems. But it will at least stem the bleeding. The deeper divisions, the issues at the root of our problems? They are getting worse by the second as long as Trump is POTUS.

edited 5th Mar '18 8:09:41 AM by M84

Disgusted, but not surprised
sgamer82 Since: Jan, 2001
#233550: Mar 5th 2018 at 8:09:50 AM

Whether it fixes anything or not, right now there's no good reason not to get Trump out of office as soon as it's feasible.


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