Commander of Awesome;1839616 wrote:http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2017/03/02/mike-pence-private-email/98637782/

I've given up trying to point out all the hypocracy. Benghazi investigations but not Russian ties or this yemen raid,

Using a private serve to evade FOIA requests is deplorable. But that's an issue for the people of Indiana (unless a federal law was broken in this instance, which I doubt).

There are at least 3(?) FBI investigations into the Russia deal. But so far, nothing. Nothing like peddling a fake story about a video. And I never did hear what our Commander-in-Chief was doing while one of our Embassies was being attacked.

But surely even you can appreciate how the left mocked Romney when he said Russia was a threat....

gut;1839621 wrote:But surely even you can appreciate how the left mocked Romney when he said Russia was a threat....

I find the general vibe of the whole thing to be darkly amusing/disturbing, especially when you consider that the people most involved in reminding people about the left mocking Romney are the same people who are essentially playing the "nothing to see here" card when Russia gets brought up in regards to Trump.

Making Russia this bizarre boogeyman, where both sides have warned about or raised allegations concerning them in recent times, but both sides also have completely ignored those same concerns simply because it's the other side raising them and, by gawd, you can't have people agreeing with their political opponents on things!

Heretic;1839623 wrote: Making Russia this bizarre boogeyman, where both sides have warned about or raised allegations concerning them in recent times, but both sides also have completely ignored those same concerns simply because it's the other side raising them and, by gawd, you can't have people agreeing with their political opponents on things!

It's like I keep saying...the left and right have done complete 180's on this and many other issues. The only thing funnier than the obvious hypocrisy from both sides is how anyone wonders why things never change. The simple fact is only the people who vote for you matter, and until voters start holding their own party accountable it's never going to get better.

Really the only reason there is any criticism and/or resistance from Republicans with respect to Trump is because he's not really a Republican and is not completely aligned with their platform.

.....except the Conservative Union rates his cabinet among the most conservative ever, and much more so than Reagan's

gut;1839621 wrote:But surely even you can appreciate how the left mocked Romney when he said Russia was a threat....

Since the Russians are so great at influencing elections, one must wonder what the Ruskies may have been up to in 2012, especially with Obama instructing Medvedev to tell Putin he would have more flexibility after he wins the election.

I love the self-righteousness of Americans who are so appalled that there are even rumors Russia influenced the election. Yet ignore the fact that the United States has had their hand in and directly moved the needle in many, many other elections of countries around the world.

majorspark;1839630 wrote:Since the Russians are so great at influencing elections, one must wonder what the Ruskies may have been up to in 2012, especially with Obama instructing Medvedev to tell Putin he would have more flexibility after he wins the election.

Flying under the radar has been a couple of related Obama executive orders/actions in the very last days of his administration. It truthfully borders on using govt resources to target political opponents (which, of course, would be nothing new for that administration).

I do think there is some degree of active sabotage of the Trump administration. The table was set and the message sent - undermining and discrediting Trump is the only defense Obama has of his agenda and legacy.

majorspark;1839630 wrote:Since the Russians are so great at influencing elections, one must wonder what the Ruskies may have been up to in 2012, especially with Obama instructing Medvedev to tell Putin he would have more flexibility after he wins the election.

If you can get past Trump's bombastic, unpolished rhetoric....there are MANY parallels to the Obama administration to which the left deflected, denied, dismissed and apologized while the right was up in arms. This irritates me to no end - the left didn't do it with Obama, and nor the right isn't doing it with Trump (for the most part).

This whole 'Russia hacked election' thing is just bizarre. First Obama said that Russia didn't interfere with the election in any way. Then he goes on to say that he ordered a review to "gather the threads" so that the next administration could figure out how to prevent any hacking in the future.

For whatever reason, his disciples refuse to actually listen to him and go on the offensive hunt anyway. Which, as we all know, has led to no evidence that Russia influenced the election in a direct manner - because Hillary voters just didn't care about them. You could probably ask any Never-Trumper and they would tell you that the emails had no bearing on their vote; at least in the way that could sway their vote.

This is soooooooooo not the way to fight Trump. This is not the way to propagate whatever message that they have (which is nothing but free stuff nowdays). This is not the way to gain back any votes that they have lost in the past 8 years.
More importantly, this sort of behavior by the "democrats" in DC is why we have a President Trump in the first fucking place. Stupid asses.

I think for anyone who's not a partisan homer the frustration with the past two administrations is actually pretty similar. Massive overreach of executive power. With Trump you just get that with a side of being unpolished, naively simplistic in world view, and entirely/unapologetically full of shit.

gut;1839636 wrote:Flying under the radar has been a couple of related Obama executive orders/actions in the very last days of his administration. It truthfully borders on using govt resources to target political opponents (which, of course, would be nothing new for that administration).

I do think there is some degree of active sabotage of the Trump administration. The table was set and the message sent - undermining and discrediting Trump is the only defense Obama has of his agenda and legacy.

Set the table, off for a little R&R, then back to the "Shadow White House" to continue the job.

gut;1839637 wrote:If you can get past Trump's bombastic, unpolished rhetoric....there are MANY parallels to the Obama administration to which the left deflected, denied, dismissed and apologized while the right was up in arms. This irritates me to no end - the left didn't do it with Obama, and nor the right isn't doing it with Trump (for the most part).

I agree there are many parallels, but Trump has yet to govern. Look at Russia's position at the beginning of Obama's presidency as apposed to the end. Then you have the Iran deal where 30 democrat senators (and also republicans) met with Russian diplomats to reassure some wavering senators this deal was worth subverting the treaty clause of the constitution. Who appears to be benefiting more from the deal us or the Ruskies?

gut;1839637 wrote:If you can get past Trump's bombastic, unpolished rhetoric....there are MANY parallels to the Obama administration to which the left deflected, denied, dismissed and apologized while the right was up in arms. This irritates me to no end - the left didn't do it with Obama, and nor the right isn't doing it with Trump (for the most part).

So let's look at things from purely the perspective of the last three months. No comparisons of ex-Presidents, no he said/she saids, no finger pointing and huntings. No republicans. Let's look solely at what democrats are up to.
The democrats had a historical massive deportation of votes. So off they go to their retreats to regroup and strategize. Did they come to the conclusions of
"Hey, let's rise above ourselves and show the people that we don't think anybody outside of California and New York are deplorable. Let's actually take a hard look at Obamacare and how we can show that we are willing to work with the republicans and improve it instead of them repealing and replacing it with something that just might be worse. Let's do something to actually improve racial tensions. Let's do something besides stoking the fires between the sexes. Hey, let's take a critical look at the how's and the why's and see what we can do differently from this point forward. Let's take a look at how we used to be for the working man and now we're not. Let's look at how we can improve job situations outside of outsourcing them. Let's be realistic about how we can improve our immigration policies without being reckless with the name-calling and false rhetoric. Hey, I know! Let's not govern from Tumblr and Reddit!"

Have they done ANY of this? Nope. These are 99.9% college educated people, for fucks sake. So much for academia, right?

They cannot seriously look at what happened and why it happened. They cannot accept that they have lost their message. They cannot admit the fact that what they've done for the past 8 years is a product of their own doings. Because let's be real here: the democrats in DC are every reason why we have the situations that we have. Every reason. Mitch Mconnell didn't do this. Paul Ryan didn't do this. Republican governors didn't do this. Who did this? The people who voted did this.
Have the democrats ever seriously considered WHY?
Nope.
Are they working to turn the tides of public opinion?
Nope.
Are they trying to do something good for everybody instead of particular groups?
Nope.
Are the democrats telling college students to get out of their safe spaces and face the world?
Nope
Are the democrats initializing any sort of constructive dialogue with opposing points of view down in DC?
Nope.
I mean, this list of questions that have arose for the democrats in the past three moths could go on and on, but we all get the picture, right?

Complaining about FOX isn't going to fix things. Reading Vox isn't going to fix things. And it's a sad state of affairs when MSNBC is less biased and more fair then friggen CNN is nowdays.

Unless, or until, voting democrats demand better from their representatives in DC, this what all we're going to get. Nice outlook, isn't it?

In the past few months, I've specifically asked Boat Shoes and Commander of Awesome what they believe that the democrat party has to offer people besides free stuff. They never bothered to answer. I don't know if it was because they felt the question beneath them, thought I was trolling, thought I was being "stupid" or maybe they didn't have a definitive answer. And, honestly, I'm not trying to pick on them or berate them, either. My point in even bringing that up is this: If two random people on a message board don't bother to think about it and put up constructive answers to that question, how in the world would anybody expect DC democrats to address it? I firmly believe that this is a problem that's going to have to trickle up, not rush down. Clearly, looking to republicans to help fix these issues is a dead end road, and that's been a reality for a long time. So it remains to the democrats to address them, right.

What does everybody else think?

*EDIT*

I guess in all that riff-raff I just typed out - it all comes down to this: If the average democratic voter cannot define what/how could make the party better, then that just tells the democrats in DC that they have no incentive, whatsoever, to do it either. Therein lies the cruxt and exposes the outcome.

Trump says Obama wiretapped him during campaign; gives no evidence
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-obama-idUSKBN16B0CC

News coming out of some of the things obama did in his last days of office, like changing some secession orders, among other things. Pretty sketch.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

What we do know is Trump's incoming national security advisor's phone conversation was tapped. Raw intelligence surrounding this "Russian investigation" was disseminated amongst intelligence officials. Someone in the intelligence community feloniously leaked that Flynn had phone conversations with the Russian ambassador. Then a portion of the content of the phone conversations were selectively leaked to Flynnish the job.

CenterBHSFan;1839711 wrote:So let's look at things from purely the perspective of the last three months. No comparisons of ex-Presidents, no he said/she saids, no finger pointing and huntings. No republicans. Let's look solely at what democrats are up to.
The democrats had a historical massive deportation of votes. So off they go to their retreats to regroup and strategize. Did they come to the conclusions of
"Hey, let's rise above ourselves and show the people that we don't think anybody outside of California and New York are deplorable. Let's actually take a hard look at Obamacare and how we can show that we are willing to work with the republicans and improve it instead of them repealing and replacing it with something that just might be worse. Let's do something to actually improve racial tensions. Let's do something besides stoking the fires between the sexes. Hey, let's take a critical look at the how's and the why's and see what we can do differently from this point forward. Let's take a look at how we used to be for the working man and now we're not. Let's look at how we can improve job situations outside of outsourcing them. Let's be realistic about how we can improve our immigration policies without being reckless with the name-calling and false rhetoric. Hey, I know! Let's not govern from Tumblr and Reddit!"

Have they done ANY of this? Nope. These are 99.9% college educated people, for fucks sake. So much for academia, right?

They cannot seriously look at what happened and why it happened. They cannot accept that they have lost their message. They cannot admit the fact that what they've done for the past 8 years is a product of their own doings. Because let's be real here: the democrats in DC are every reason why we have the situations that we have. Every reason. Mitch Mconnell didn't do this. Paul Ryan didn't do this. Republican governors didn't do this. Who did this? The people who voted did this.
Have the democrats ever seriously considered WHY?
Nope.
Are they working to turn the tides of public opinion?
Nope.
Are they trying to do something good for everybody instead of particular groups?
Nope.
Are the democrats telling college students to get out of their safe spaces and face the world?
Nope
Are the democrats initializing any sort of constructive dialogue with opposing points of view down in DC?
Nope.
I mean, this list of questions that have arose for the democrats in the past three moths could go on and on, but we all get the picture, right?

Complaining about FOX isn't going to fix things. Reading Vox isn't going to fix things. And it's a sad state of affairs when MSNBC is less biased and more fair then friggen CNN is nowdays.

Unless, or until, voting democrats demand better from their representatives in DC, this what all we're going to get. Nice outlook, isn't it?

In the past few months, I've specifically asked Boat Shoes and Commander of Awesome what they believe that the democrat party has to offer people besides free stuff. They never bothered to answer. I don't know if it was because they felt the question beneath them, thought I was trolling, thought I was being "stupid" or maybe they didn't have a definitive answer. And, honestly, I'm not trying to pick on them or berate them, either. My point in even bringing that up is this: If two random people on a message board don't bother to think about it and put up constructive answers to that question, how in the world would anybody expect DC democrats to address it? I firmly believe that this is a problem that's going to have to trickle up, not rush down. Clearly, looking to republicans to help fix these issues is a dead end road, and that's been a reality for a long time. So it remains to the democrats to address them, right.

What does everybody else think?

*EDIT*

I guess in all that riff-raff I just typed out - it all comes down to this: If the average democratic voter cannot define what/how could make the party better, then that just tells the democrats in DC that they have no incentive, whatsoever, to do it either. Therein lies the cruxt and exposes the outcome.

I responded and said you made a good post but just in other threads. I agree with most of what you say.

IMHO the Democrats have to do a better job of showing how civic collective action has made people better off than theybwould otherwise be in its absence and use humanized examples over and over and over again instead of statistics.

Moreover, they should re-adopt the new deal cause of full employment to combat charges they are for welfare...e.g. We don't let corn be unemployed via massive subsidies and,nobody calls farmers welfare queens with the animosity they call the poor who are unemployed...this givernment intervention has dramatically improved the lives of farmers (who now all vote gop ironically despite FDR and the dems creating the modern system that makes their iivelihood secure...of course dems never talk about all the good they have done).

Moreover the identity liberalism should be rejected in favor of a universal appeal to labor. This will be easier if they revert back to supporting new deal style liberalism vs. an a la carte agenda with something on the menu for each sub-group.

At its core the progressive vision recognizes the triumphant vision of liberal democracy as enacted by our founders and wants to fulfill their vision of forever establishing an even more perfect union...i.e. Making America Greater than ever before.

That vision has been lost as we've become the party of bathroom choice. Thus, the normal insecure working man no longer seesthe new deal party that was there to provide a secure place in a more perfect union.

They see a party only caring about isuues that matter to those with ironclad security in the bourgeosie establishment.

Trump's joint session address....Where's Sergey?

@Boat Shoes,

Thank you for answering!

In hindsight, I would actually much better prefer to deal with liberals rather than what the progressives are up to. Like like_that always says, they are really regressives. At least with liberals - they don't rule from Tumblr. While that don't seem to be such a great meeting point, it actually is. Because liberals at least like to listen to the other side (if only somewhat lol).
Also, like I mentioned in my prior post - I've actually been listening to Morning Joe before I go to work in the mornings. I have to tip my hat to them, because they are viewing various aspects like anybody would, rather than viewing them as political affiliates. And I cannot degrade CNN enough at this point. How they have fallen. It's really disappointing and depressing when you see where they have fallen.

But at any rate, I actually agree with some things that you brought up too. Where I disagree with you is the "core of progressivism". I think those people are just hopelessly brainwashed and emotionally/mentally immature. They're not even remotely ready to be adults, in any capacity.

btw, I apologize for missing your response, albeit in other threads. It was not my intention to ignore them, I merely didn't recognize them for what they were I guess lol

That vision has been lost as we've become the party of bathroom choice. Thus, the normal insecure working man no longer seesthe new deal party that was there to provide a secure place in a more perfect union.

They see a party only caring about isuues that matter to those with ironclad security in the bourgeosie establishment.

Cheers!

I guess I should admit right here and now that this matters to me more than others because - being born and raised with the "democrat" mentality, and then seeing what the democrat party as become - leaves a horrid taste in the mouth. I am very resentful and bitter. I am quite liberal on some things and quite conservative on others (more fiscally). And for somebody like me who rides the fence, I guess I'm much harder on the dems than I cam the pubs. I can't help it. I never thought much of the pubs and I really have no incentive to. And that's why I'm pissed which led me to vote for Gary freakin Johnson this last round, even if he's goofy as hell.

[INDENT] Kevin Lewis ✔ @KLewis44

Neither @barackobama nor any WH official under Obama has ever ordered surveillance on any US Citizen. Any suggestion is unequivocally false pic.twitter.com/qF04X3NUvq
12:04 PM - 4 Mar 2017

• 868 868 Retweets
• 1,131 1,131 likes

[/INDENT]


Hmmmm....brought to you by the same administration that DIDN'T use the IRS to target conservative groups, or blame a video and throw a patsy in jail for the attack on a US Embassy.

Sounds to me like people calling for the POTUS to be impeached and go to jail are about 3 months too late.

gut;1839754 wrote:[INDENT] Kevin Lewis ✔ @KLewis44

Neither @barackobama nor any WH official under Obama has ever ordered surveillance on any US Citizen. Any suggestion is unequivocally false pic.twitter.com/qF04X3NUvq
12:04 PM - 4 Mar 2017

• 868 868 Retweets
• 1,131 1,131 likes

[/INDENT]


Hmmmm....brought to you by the same administration that DIDN'T use the IRS to target conservative groups, or blame a video and throw a patsy in jail for the attack on a US Embassy.

Sounds to me like people calling for the POTUS to be impeached and go to jail are about 3 months too late.

James Rosen might disagree with that tweet. He and his family were wiretapped by the Obama DOJ.

superman;1839755 wrote:James Rosen might disagree with that tweet. He and his family were wiretapped by the Obama DOJ.

That's the subtle point being made about that tweet - neither Obama nor a WH official could order a wiretap or surveillance. But they almost certainly knew about it. So whether Obama himself asked for it, or it was simply "understood" and needing to be done....that would be a distinction without a difference.

Also, let's keep in mind that unusual and extraordinary EO in his final days that greatly expanded what could be shared and with whom. That order ensured Obama surrogates remaining behind would have access and the cover to leak it.

Hail Trump
Both the Comey,, FBI, and Clapper,DIA, both say no wiretapping of Trump Towers. Donald, liar, liar pants on fire.

Seems pretty simple to me....

If true, a LOT of people need to go to jail for a very long time.

If it's not true, Trump should be impeached.