American Politics Thread: Orange is the new POTUS

[FlameOn]

So career FBI agents are apparently fuming over Trump's announcement of Christopher Wray as replacement director calling the appointment an "insult to every Bureau agent". Not only is he an unqualified, turns out Wray's law firm represents Rosneft, the Russian national oil company that Trump is reported to have received 15% stake in (per dossier) and Putin is a huge owner of. So Wray's paychecks essentially come from Putin.

Trump is not even trying anymore, it's like he's making it a requirement you have connections to Putin as part of the job requirement.

[Wormius]

Originally Posted by Kybosh

Based on how often he says it, I've started reading northcrunk's name as north####.

The #### stops here.

[FlameOn]

How Russian propaganda and fake news arrives in US news outlets (fox news) with little or no journalist fact checking.

Born in the shadowy reaches of the internet, most fake news stories prove impossible to trace to their origin. But researchers at the Atlantic Council, a think tank, excavated the root of one such fake story, involving an incident in the Black Sea in which a Russian warplane repeatedly buzzed a United States Navy destroyer, the Donald Cook.

Like much fake news, the story was based on a kernel of truth. The brief, tense confrontation happened on April 12, 2014, and the Pentagon issued a statement. Then in April, three years later, the story resurfaced, completely twisted, on one of Russia’s main state-run TV news programs.

...

FoxNews.com soon picked up The Sun’s version of the story. Refet Kaplan, the managing editor of FoxNews.com, said the story was considered “not as a serious report on Russia’s military capability, but as another example of Russian media hyperbole.” That was not set out in the headline or the article, other than an oblique reference to the original as “propaganda.”

After The New York Times asked about the article, it was deleted from the FoxNews.com website.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/...T.nav=top-news

[northcrunk]

Originally Posted by Wormius

The #### stops here.

That's an infraction now.

[nik-]

Originally Posted by direwolf

Saw this on Facebook and it gave me a chuckle. Only $30? Those are some cheap tickets.

Plus $18 in Ticketmaster fees.

[northcrunk]

Originally Posted by nik-

Plus $18 in Ticketmaster fees.

Resold online for $350

[Hockeyguy15]

Originally Posted by north####

That's an infraction now.

[northcrunk]

[octothorp]

Originally Posted by northcrunk

The problem with polls has always been the people who actually answer them. You don't get a full demographic picture of peoples opinions. You end up with the opinions of whoever is willing to sit there on the phone with pollsters answer questions for 30 to 60 min so it is usually older people with land lines who respond. We would have a better cross section of people but less reliable data doing online polling. I don't know what the best way is.

That's a bit of a mischaracterization of the problems with polls. Good polls (which Quinnipiac is), attempt to correct for any problems that they have in sampling cellphones vs. landlines, by sampling both and then correcting for the number of households that have each.

Nonetheless, even in a good poll, the important thing to look for isn't the exact number, it's the trends and where change is coming from (in this case, a slightly downward trend), and the subtabs (in this case, losing support amongst whites without a college degree), both of which suggest that Trump's hard floor of support might not be as hard as previously thought.

[photon]

Originally Posted by Street Pharmacist

CNN faked protests? Are you taking about this:http://www.snopes.com/cnn-muslim-protests-london/

Snopes is a liberal biased source!

[Lanny_McDonald]

Originally Posted by northcrunk

First site I check in the morning is www.nationalnewswatch.com

There are questions regarding CIA funding to the WaPo. Jeff Bezos received a $600 million contract from the CIA. Twice what he paid for the WaPo.

I feel like today we need to check every source of news we can and read them knowing the bias they are coming from. I used to frequent CNN up until the recent year when they were busted faking protests and have become the same as fox news during the bush years. There doesn't seem to be any MSM anymore that does not takes sides and twist their narratives.

I check local papers (usually Calgary and Edmonton)
National publications in Canada - Globe and Mail, National Post, Macleans
Too many You tube channels to list. Multiple left and right leaning sites. If there is a story in the national news I will usually check on the local reporting. A good example was the Anti-fa bike lock attacker. CNN didn't report on the arrest but the local news was very informative about it. The guy is facing 40 years in prison for 6 felonies which wasn't reported at a National level.

I like Dave Rubin, Tim Pool, Stefan Molyneux and some other right and left leaning Youtube personalities which I agree with and don't. To list all the sites I visit would take a while and I'm sure I would miss some. It's rare I find a reporter who's views actually line up with mine but I'm fairly similar politically to Tim Pool. I just want the facts whether it makes the left or right look good or bad. Don't really care.

[northcrunk]

Originally Posted by photon

Snopes is a liberal biased source!

[northcrunk]

Originally Posted by New Era

[FlameOn]

Democrats to sue Trump over his business conflict of interests

Dozens of House and Senate Democrats plan to sue President Donald Trump in the coming weeks, claiming he is breaking the law by refusing to relinquish ownership of his sprawling real-estate empire while it continues to profit from business with foreign governments.

The lawsuit follows months of threats from Democratic lawmakers that Trump, by refusing to sell off his companies or place them in a blind trust, is in ongoing violation of the Constitution’s emoluments clause — which prohibits the president from accepting gifts or payments from foreign governments — and might face consequences.

“We’ll be suing to stop his violations of the emoluments clause,” senior House Judiciary member Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) confirmed in an interview. The lawsuit won’t be filed until next week at the earliest but dozens of Democrats on both sides of the Capitol have already signed on in support, Nadler said.

The legal case is just the latest volley in an ongoing war between the White House and lawmakers — mostly Democrats — over potential conflicts of interests related to the Trump corporation’s overseas business deals and foreign governments looking to curry favor with the administration.

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/0...nterest-239262

[Lanny_McDonald]

Originally Posted by photon

Snopes is a liberal biased source!

NSFW!

[Wormius]

Originally Posted by northcrunk

That's an infraction now.

So now you see what other people see when they first glance at that word.

[direwolf]

Great article from Vox.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-polit...p-comey-crisis

Comey’s testimony is being parsed for evidence that Trump has obstructed justice, and thereby committed an impeachable offense. Legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin thinks the case is open and shut. “Comey's statement establishes obstruction of justice by Trump,” he writes. “Period.”

There are two levels to this crisis. The first is the crisis of legitimacy at the highest levels of the American government. As Ben Wittes, editor of Lawfare, writes, “Comey is describing here conduct that a society committed to the rule of law simply cannot accept in a president.” He continues:

This document is about ... whether we can trust the President — not the President in the abstract, but the particular embodiment of the presidency in the person of Donald J. Trump — to supervise the law enforcement apparatus of the United States in fashion consistent with his oath of office. I challenge anyone to read this document and come away with a confidently affirmative answer to that question.

Trump’s behavior, in Comey’s telling, is more befitting of a Mafioso than a president. He asks, repeatedly, for loyalty, and shows no evident understanding of the norms or institutions that bind American presidents. His actions would be worrying if they came from the regional manager of a Scranton paper firm; they are terrifying coming from the most powerful man in the world.

But the crisis does not end with Comey. This is the 138th day of Donald Trump’s presidency, and what do we have to show for it? No major legislation has passed, nor is any major legislation close to passage. Of Trump’s major priorities, only 8 percent of Americans want the House-passed (and Trump-endorsed) American Health Care Act signed into law, and a majority oppose the White House’s decision to pull out of the Paris climate agreement.

America’s deepest alliances are fraying, and Trump’s recent visit to Europe left German Chancellor Angela Merkel — a politician known for her understatement, not her overstatement — to say that “the times in which we could completely depend on others are, to a certain extent, over.”

This isn’t a reality show, and it’s not a pulp novel. This is the most powerful country the world has ever known being run by a man singularly unqualified to run it. Our president lacks legitimacy, our government is paralyzed, our problems are going unsolved. As we abdicate global leadership, both our allies and our enemies step into the void we leave unfilled. Meanwhile, at home, we are discussing whether the president obstructed justice within his first 100 days in office, and anxiously awaiting the Senate’s questioning of former FBI Director Comey.

America is not being made great. It is being made weak, and it is only getting worse.

[oldschoolcalgary]

Originally Posted by FlameOn

So career FBI agents are apparently fuming over Trump's announcement of Christopher Wray as replacement director calling the appointment an "insult to every Bureau agent". Not only is he an unqualified, turns out Wray's law firm represents Rosneft, the Russian national oil company that Trump is reported to have received 15% stake in (per dossier) and Putin is a huge owner of. So Wray's paychecks essentially come from Putin.

Trump is not even trying anymore, it's like he's making it a requirement you have connections to Putin as part of the job requirement.

I haven't looked into Wray at all...

However...

If what you say is true, it is absolutely sickening how corrupt the GOP party is allowing this kind of stuff to go on...

They would literally lose their minds if Hillary or Obama pulled this kind of crap...

Unbelievable

[FlameOn]

Funny thing with Comey testimony, it's probably the first time "hookers from Russia" will be recorded in official government records for a president.

[nik-]

I'm prepared for a massive letdown tomorrow.