US politics general thread

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At least Xannon is now admitting Russian meddling, passed step 1.
 
Unhappy438 said:
At least Xannon is now admitting Russian meddling, passed step 1.
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:rolleyes:

Did Christopher Steele get his dodgy claims from Russian intelligence sources or not? Go back to sleep rather.
 
No then, ok so Rice made a good decision. Glad we have got that one cleared up.
 
Trump Spoke to a Russian Activist About Ending Sanctions—Just Weeks After Launching His Campaign

While researching the strange story of two Russian gun aficionados who cultivated Donald Trump’s presidential campaign via the National Rifle Association, we came across a little-noticed but noteworthy episode concerning Trump and US sanctions against Russia. Sanctions have been a source of extraordinary conflict between the president and Congress and a matter of clear significance to special counsel Robert Mueller’s ongoing investigation.

Just a month after Trump announced his campaign for the White House, he spoke directly to Maria Butina, the protégé of the powerful Russian banking official and Putin ally Alexander Torshin. During a public question and answer session at FreedomFest, a libertarian convention in Las Vegas in July 2015, Butina asked Trump what he would do as president about “damaging” US sanctions. Trump suggested he would get rid of them.
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Unhappy438 said:
White House: Never Mind the North Korea Meeting, Trump Was Just Babbling

Looks like Xannon fell for another one :crylaugh:
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South Korean official Chung Eui-yong was in the White House yesterday meeting with other officials. Trump decided to see Chung right away; maybe Fox News was in repeats or something. Trump “then asked Mr. Chung to tell him about his meeting with Mr. Kim,” reports the New York Times. “When Mr. Chung said that the North Korean leader had expressed a desire to meet Mr. Trump, the president immediately said he would do it, and directed Mr. Chung to announce it to the White House press corps.”

It sounds from this account that Trump had no real idea that North Korea has always wanted a face-to-face meeting with the U.S. president, and the U.S. has always imposed conditions. That would certainly be the logical interpretation of this account, given that, in the last week, Trump has confused North Korea with the other, extremely different South Korea, and demanded a laughably tiny $1 billion trade concession from China when he was supposed to demand $100 billion. It certainly appears Trump believed, in the moment, that North Korea had not been interested in a meeting until then, so he needed to take the deal before they changed their mind. Whatever. Art of the Deal.
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The much more likely version of this story is that the South Koreans were providing back-channel communication between Trump and North Korea, as I initially indicated.
 
https://slate.com/news-and-politics...-betsy-devos-to-address-school-shootings.html

White House to Proceed with Plan to Train Teachers in Handling Firearms

The Trump administration will forge ahead with its plan to arm and train teachers and other school employees, the White House told reporters Sunday night.

That training will be implemented through local officials with funding from the Justice Department, the White House said.

The administration will also respond to calls for addressing school shootings by forming a federal commission to examine other proposals. While the Sunday night announcement appeared to indicate Trump has backed off his early support for raising the age to purchase certain firearms—a proposal the NRA has vociferously opposed—the commission would consider the idea.
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This has to be the most singularly terrible idea dreamed up by the current administration, which is saying a lot.
 
Hamish McPanji said:
Especially with the lady of the swamp in charge
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Ah yes Mrs DeVos:

https://splinternews.com/devos-criticizes-condition-of-u-s-schools-if-only-the-1823535589

“Right now a student is being bullied somewhere for only wanting to read, pay attention to the teacher and learn,” said DeVos, who revoked former President Barack Obama’s guidance to schools that transgender students should be able to use the restroom of their affirmed gender identity. “Right now a student at school is stepping over rats, breathing in mold and dodging fists,” said DeVos, who serves under a president whose budget slashed education spending by $11 billion, which included money for school safety.
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No inputs in how Trump has swayed NK into talks? Seems like calling the kid on his antics and doubling down worked? :o
 
Pitbull said:
No inputs in how Trump has swayed NK into talks? Seems like calling the kid on his antics and doubling down worked? :o
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Trump isnt the first US President to get an invite from NK for talks. He is the first to accept. So I think its the other way around. What has swayed Trump ?
 
Pitbull said:
No inputs in how Trump has swayed NK into talks? Seems like calling the kid on his antics and doubling down worked? :o
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Well its a fact that he has already conceded to the first NK demand. It has been US policy not to meet with the dear leader for years.

If this meeting happens I forsee a collapse in talks with both of them walking away blaming eachother. Nk then uses this as its raison d'être to expand and continue its Nuclear Weapons programme.

I think the meeting is a set up to push this idea from NK that the US is unwilling to cooperate and pose an imminent danger to NK and for that reason they must expand their Nuclear forces.
 
access said:
forget the moral behind it. what use is moral when a child comes into the school with an AR15 and starts shooting?

how do you stop this? throw chalk at them? or books? or just run and hope?
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Well in this particular case there was already an armed security guard who did nothing to help, and it's his job. But I didn't say it was immoral, I said it was stupid to try to solve the problem of gun violence by adding more guns.
 
cerebus said:
Well in this particular case there was already an armed security guard who did nothing to help, and it's his job. But I didn't say it was immoral, I said it was stupid to try to solve the problem of gun violence by adding more guns.
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It's stupid in the same way that trying to solve the problem of a military invasion with more guns is stupid.

That sounds like "if you kill your enemy he wins" lefty logic.
 
C4Cat said:
There was input about it on Friday... I just posted this https://twitter.com/ArmsControlWonk/status/971901314090205184?s=19
Hopefully it works out, not just the meeting, but Trump also proving his worth as the negotiator he always boasts about being.
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Trump (an the US generally) seemingly had very little to do with it. It's been engineered by the South Korean president.

The Man Behind the North Korea Negotiations

Kim Jong Un and Donald Trump are the volatile, captivating stars of North Korea’s nuclear drama—including the shocking twist last week in which Trump said he would accept Kim’s reported offer of a summit meeting. Given the outsized personalities at center stage, it’s easy to forget who is actually directing the plot: South Korean President Moon Jae In, who over the past eight months has been quietly pushing events to this point.

Trump and Kim may be the ones making headlines, but it was Moon who drove the entire process. In just eight months, he kept China on the sidelines, rebuffed North Korea’s attempt to drive a wedge between South Korea and the United States, pushed North Korea to put denuclearization on the table, and nudged the U.S. to step away from a preventive strike and talk to Pyongyang—to the point that Donald Trump, if he follows through on his pledge, would become the first U.S. president to hold a summit meeting with North Korea. And to the extent that giving Trump all the credit helps Moon steer him, the South Korean leader will be perfectly content to leave the spotlight to others.
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Diplomacy is good, and obviously preferable to war. The risk is that if talks fail, it'll have given Kim his PR victory, and could lead them to conclude there's no point to negotiations.

Another problem, the US State Department's Asia division has been hollowed out, so no one to actually do the legwork on negotiations/summits/talks from their end. Trump also hasn't even nominated an ambassador to South Korea. Also can't decide what their actual position is. Tillerson and the White House keep saying different things.
 
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