US Politics Thread 2016-2020

[Platapus]

Originally Posted by vienna

The number of stars on a shoulder or collar is not to be considered a Yelp rating...

Fair warning. I am so stealing this.

[August]

Originally Posted by Platapus

Fair warning. I am so stealing this.

Oh that's just so funny.

FWIW a yelp rating is far easier to get than stars on ones shoulders, even just one star, let alone the Legion of Merit, Bronze Star (x3), Ranger qualification or Master Parachutist wings. All those things took actual character and dedication to the country, not some stupid made up internet rating that means nothing.

[vienna]

Originally Posted by Platapus

Fair warning. I am so stealing this.

Its yours; use it well and wisely...




<O>

[Mr Quatro]

Originally Posted by August

Oh that's just so funny.

FWIW a yelp rating is far easier to get than stars on ones shoulders, even just one star, let alone the Legion of Merit, Bronze Star (x3), Ranger qualification or Master Parachutist wings. All those things took actual character and dedication to the country, not some stupid made up internet rating that means nothing.

All of those medals in the service of our country and yet he still lied knowing full well that he had received funds from the Russian government and failed to report it, plus lying to the VP was a big no no.

Fear of getting caught makes men and my ex-wife lie

[vienna]

Originally Posted by Mr Quatro

All of those medals in the service of our country and yet he still lied knowing full well that he had received funds from the Russian government and failed to report it, plus lying to the VP was a big no no.
...

Yep, having three stars didn't prevent Flynn from being a lying sleaze and being a disgrace to his rank and the service. You also forgot to add knowingly lying to Congress under oath and possible collusion and influence peddling...

...and David Petraeus had four stars, one more than Flynn, and that did prevent him from disclosing and discussing highly sensitive classified information with his mistress, in direct violation of Federal National Security laws...

...and, truth be told, both of them, and some other senior officers implicated or accused in illegal activities of all sorts, have themselves actually traded on the 'goodwill' afforded them by their rank; if they had been grunts or non-coms, the book would have been thrown hard and heavy at them and they would not have been allowed to get by with little more than hand-slaps; they haven't suffered any diminished rank and they get to keep their pensions and the various other perks that come with those stars...

The number of stars they have denotes what they are, not who they are. Quantity is not always the arbiter of quality and sleaze is always sleaze no matter the rank...

Originally Posted by Mr Quatro

Fear of getting caught makes men and my ex-wife lie

I think I may have been married once to one of her sisters or cousins...


Trump and his TrumpCare (sounds a bit like a band name) appears to be heading towards another public relations disaster that may have implications for the GOP members who are supporting the current ObamaCare repeal bill and, if he lasts that long, a possible (but improbable) Trump re-election bid:

Veterans need Medicaid too — and are speaking out against GOP health care bill --

https://www.yahoo.com/news/veterans-...005909615.html


I'm expecting the kicking of puppies and kittens and the evictions of poor little old ladies to be next on the GOP Far Right agenda...




<O>

[Reece]

Originally Posted by Mr Quatro

Fear of getting caught makes men and my ex-wife lie

But that's another story!!

[August]

Originally Posted by Mr Quatro

All of those medals in the service of our country and yet he still lied knowing full well that he had received funds from the Russian government and failed to report it, plus lying to the VP was a big no no.

Fear of getting caught makes men and my ex-wife lie

You'll get no disagreement from me, I was just addressing the ridiculous idea that a some stupid internet chat room rating compares with that service.

[em2nought]

Obviously, Flynn was an amateur liar among a city full of professional liars.

[vienna]

Originally Posted by August

You'll get no disagreement from me, I was just addressing the ridiculous idea that a some stupid internet chat room rating compares with that service.

No more ridiculous than equating the quality or qualities of high rank on a uniform with the quality or qualities of the person in the uniform. A man makes the uniform, not the uniform the man...




<O>

[August]

Originally Posted by em2nought

Obviously, Flynn was an amateur liar among a city full of professional liars.

Exactly.

[August]

[Bilge_Rat]

Originally Posted by Mr Quatro

All of those medals in the service of our country and yet he still lied knowing full well that he had received funds from the Russian government and failed to report it, plus lying to the VP was a big no no.

Fear of getting caught makes men and my ex-wife lie

well no, there you get into politics and splitting hairs.

Flynn was paid a speaking fee of $35,000 for appearing at an RT Gala. Technically, RT is a separate entity (more on that later). even more technically, he was being paid by the "speakers bureau", a U.S. based company that arranges speaking engagements, negotiates the fee, collects it and remits the fee, minus its commission to the speaker.

This might seem like a distinction without a difference, but that is the way the law works.

When Obama received the Nobel peace prize of $1 million in 2009, there was a discussion whether this would be allowed under the "emolument" clause which forbids gifts from "foreign governments". Ultimately, a legal opinion was issued saying the Nobel Foundation was not a "foreign government". However, if you look into the law governing the Foundation, you find out all 5 board members are appointed by the Swedish government.

Hard to legally justify that a payment from the Nobel Foundation is NOT a payment from a foreign government, but a payment from RT is when both entities are ultimately controlled by "foreign governments".

Another point, as Flynn has stated and no one has contradicted. He met with DoD officials both before the trip to advise them and after the trip for a debrief, so he was not hiding anything.

[Mr Quatro]

Originally Posted by Bilge_Rat

well no, there you get into politics and splitting hairs.

Flynn was paid a speaking fee of $35,000 for appearing at an RT Gala. Technically, RT is a separate entity (more on that later). even more technically, he was being paid by the "speakers bureau", a U.S. based company that arranges speaking engagements, negotiates the fee, collects it and remits the fee, minus its commission to the speaker.

This might seem like a distinction without a difference, but that is the way the law works.

When Obama received the Nobel peace prize of $1 million in 2009, there was a discussion whether this would be allowed under the "emolument" clause which forbids gifts from "foreign governments". Ultimately, a legal opinion was issued saying the Nobel Foundation was not a "foreign government". However, if you look into the law governing the Foundation, you find out all 5 board members are appointed by the Swedish government.

Hard to legally justify that a payment from the Nobel Foundation is NOT a payment from a foreign government, but a payment from RT is when both entities are ultimately controlled by "foreign governments".

Another point, as Flynn has stated and no one has contradicted. He met with DoD officials both before the trip to advise them and after the trip for a debrief, so he was not hiding anything.

I didn't know that, thank you for the input. Do you see what happens to a normal CNN viewer type of person (me) they receive the news while reading their mail or half looking at the screen and the thinking part gets twisted till they are for against something due to the wrong misconceptions.

We need more people like Bilge Rat and the rest of ya'll too that correct each other instead of berate each other.

[vienna]

This is a bit disturbing:

Trump’s voter-fraud commission wants to know voting history, party ID and address of every voter in the U.S. --

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...=.ad0ae25c549c

The chair of President Trump's Election Integrity Commission has penned a letter to all 50 states requesting their full voter-role data, including the name, address, date of birth, party affiliation, last four Social Security number digits and voting history back to 2006 of potentially every voter in the state.

Given the disarray and disorganization of the Trump administration, and given the recent breaches of data security, it does not seem the best of ideas to assemble such a mass of data in a centralized locale in what could be a highly questionable state of security and responsibility. Further, given the rather highly rabid partisan bent at the White House, turning over such data to such questionable entities is, at the least, seemingly unwise. At least one state's top election official seems to have this view:

Connecticut's Secretary of State, Denise Merrill, said she would "share publicly-available information with the Kobach Commission while ensuring that the privacy of voters is honored by withholding protected data." She added, however, that Kobach "has a lengthy record of illegally disenfranchising eligible voters in Kansas" and that "given Secretary Kobach's history we find it very difficult to have confidence in the work of this Commission."

Sad to say, there was little trust in the government before and there is muc less today...





<O>

[Skybird]

Preparing the black lists that later will be used. That is police states methods, no matter what those in defence of such means will say. Police states methods, nothing else.

Deeply worrying. Germans, Russians, Poles, Czechs, Romanians, and some others - we know such things, we have been there. Nasty stuff. Whenever the dictatorship started a progrom, it just had to pull the name lists just out of the drawers, in no time.

One more reason why I argue that states must never be trusted and must be dismantled instead.

Knowledge is power, and data is knowledge. Total data gives total power. Total power of the one - means total defencelessness of the other.