The Political Discussion Thread

[Gatefan1976]

still some hope for Bernie Sanders then?

If Clinton and Kaine go out, it is possible for the DNC to put him forward.
You better get busy though, the clock is ticking.

[SoulReaver]

And now for FBI fun...............
http://www.thedailybeast.com/article...bi-fanboy.html

some good references for Trump
the man in the photo looks like a mobster honcho
Rudolph Mussolini Giuliani the italian fascist ex-mayor that POS reeks of mafia-style corruption

[Annoyed]

that would be chaos - good legit reason to declare martial law no?

Not in the slightest. Just because one party might find its head handed to it without the courtesy of a basket is no reason to stop the process from playing out.

She stuck her hand in the cookie jar, it's just good fortune that the details are coming out before she is elected.

[SoulReaver]

If Clinton and Kaine go out, it is possible for the DNC to put him forward.
You better get busy though, the clock is ticking.

wish I could :/

best I can do is ask them both politely to jump off a bridge for the good of humanity

Not in the slightest. Just because one party might find its head handed to it without the courtesy of a basket is no reason to stop the process from playing out.

She stuck her hand in the cookie jar, it's just good fortune that the details are coming out before she is elected.

if the election were Trump vs Sanders what'd be your vote?

[Gatefan1976]

http://www.haaretz.com/world-news/u-...halev/1.751108

[Coco Pops]

FBI is ‘Trumpland’ and agents are leaking to harm Clinton, report claims

OH come on how is that not corruption?

Leaking stuff for a political gain

[garhkal]

you're talking about local elections only, this is about national (presidential) elections. capice?

No i am talking about national elections. Such as that report i linked showing Florida election staff rigging things.. Or the reports of a PA office being raided for the same thing..

[SoulReaver]

No i am talking about national elections. Such as that report i linked showing Florida election staff rigging things.. Or the reports of a PA office being raided for the same thing..

you mean this years election you serious? right now everything does point to elections being rigged alright - in favour of Trump (and the fact that not so long ago he so brazenly accused the Democrats of rigging only points to his own guilt)

[Womble]

A few hints?

Umm okay.

The Iran deal is exhibit one.

Exhibit two is, well, his entire policy towards Israel. Obama came from the camp of unfortunately misnamed "realists" in Middle Eastern policy who thought that the USA should be "even-handed" towards all parties. Now, a person who treats you the same as they treat everybody else can be called many things, but they are not your friend or ally; it is the definition of friendship and of alliance that the relationship between the parties involved in the friendship/alliance is closer and warmer than with the rest. So in practice Obama has put a chill on America's relationships with its traditional allies for no gain. It backfired and it will keep on backfiring; the Philippines, for example, would not be questioning their alliance with the USA had they not observed the ease with which Obama went back on traditional alliances and associated commitments.

Obama's first move towards Israel as he came to power was to not just disavow his predecessor's letter of guarantees given to Ariel Sharon in 2004 after the Gaza withdrawal but to deny that there ever were any. Reneging on promises is bad enough, but flat-out denying they were given was treachery of the highest order. In exchange for American guarantees Israel took a considerable risk- a risk which over time proved more disastrous than even the worst-case scenarios at the time suggested - and then the guarantees were simply declared a figment of imagination. Israel's entire participation in the "peace process" was founded on the idea that the mortal risks involved in the compromises to the Palestinians would me mitigated by American guarantees and support, so that one move gutted the foundations of both the process and the USA-Israeli alliance.

Then the Obama administration began to essentially act as a lawyer for the Palestinians, representing their interests in negotiations with Israel. At one point, the Israeli negotiators who were part of the American-mediated proxy negotiations were outraged to discover that there were, in fact, no proxy negotiations - the Americans were not relaying the Israeli positions and proposals to the Palestinians at all but were simply playing the Palestinians' part in order to extract maximum concessions from Israel before the actual negotiations with the Palestinians would begin- in other words, to weaken the Israeli position in the talks. Again, the dynamic of the peace process since the Madrid conference and prior to Obama was such that three of the four parties to the Quartet - the UN, the EU and Russia - were squarely in the Palestinian corner all the time every time while the USA provided the counterbalance to that bias by backing Israel. Suddenly there was no one in Israel's corner, and that was not appreciated.

Obama's entire history with Israel in the last eight years was an unceasing attempt at pressure and coercion. The Palestinians, as a consequence, decided that they could gain much more by dropping negotiations and leveraging the absence of counterbalance to inherent anti-Israel bias in their favor. Their campaign in the UN would've been unthinkable under any other President because the first sign of concrete US opposition would've killed it dead - but under Obama, there was no opposition. The recent UNESCO resolution which denied Jewish ties to Jerusalem is squarely Obama's fault; it was his lack of opposition which created the dynamic that allowed the Palestinians to join and manipulate UNESCO and other UN institutions. Their next target, by the way, is joining the Interpol.

Then there is Obama's conduct during the Gaza war two years ago. It wasn't widely publicized in the Anglo world because, well, you can't just go and say such things out loud about the beloved Obama, but Obama's administration directly sabotaged the Israeli war effort and economy where it could. In the middle of the war, they suddenly decided to begin reviewing every shipment of defense hardware on the individual basis, which slowed the hell down out of Israeli resupply. The FBI was ordered to deny the Israeli request for information which could help determine whether the Israeli soldier Oron Shaul, captured by Hamas, was still alive when captured. And it was Obama who ordered the FAA to prohibit all flights to Israel - which prompted the EU aviation administration to recommend the same for European airlines - when a Hamas rocket fell a mile from the airport. Note the difference: the EASA "strongly recommended" while FAA prohibited- that is, did not leave it to the airlines to decide. As a travel agent, I can say with complete certainty that there was no practical reason for doing it and a large number of airlines continued flying - not just Israeli ones but Russian airlines like Aeroflot and Siberia Airlines, Ukraine International Airlines, Czech Airlines, Belavia, British Airways, Ethiopian Airlines, Thai Airways etc. Only the American and most Western European carriers wouldn't fly.

I could go on for pages upon pages really. You don't want a full list.

[Gatefan1976]

I think that's enough to start researching

[Coco Pops]

Oh OK check this out from the NY Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/30/op...ower.html?_r=1

Quoted text below.

THE F.B.I. is currently investigating the hacking of Americans’ computers by foreign governments. Russia is a prime suspect.

Imagine a possible connection between a candidate for president in the United States and the Russian computer hacking. Imagine the candidate has business dealings in Russia, and has publicly encouraged the Russians to hack the email of his opponent. It would not be surprising for the F.B.I. to include this candidate and his campaign staff in its confidential investigation of Russian computer hacking.

But it would be highly improper, and an abuse of power, for the F.B.I. to conduct such an investigation in the public eye, particularly on the eve of the election. It would be an abuse of power for the director of the F.B.I., absent compelling circumstances, to notify members of Congress that the candidate was under investigation. It would be an abuse of power if F.B.I. agents went so far as to obtain a search warrant and raid the candidate’s office tower, hauling out boxes of documents and computers in front of television cameras.

The F.B.I.’s job is to investigate, not to influence the outcome of an election.

Such acts could also be prohibited under the Hatch Act, which bars the use of an official position to influence an election. That is why the F.B.I. presumably would keep those aspects of an investigation confidential until after the election. The usual penalty for a violation is termination of federal employment.

That is why, on Saturday, I filed a complaint against the F.B.I. with the Office of Special Counsel, which investigates Hatch Act violations, and with the Office of Government Ethics. I spent much of my career working on government and lawyers’ ethics, including as the chief White House ethics lawyer for George W. Bush. I never thought that the F.B.I. could be dragged into a political circus surrounding one of its investigations. Until this week.

(For the sake of full disclosure, in this election I have supported Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, John Kasich and Hillary Clinton for president, in that order.)

On Friday, the director of the F.B.I., James B. Comey, sent members of Congress a letter about developments in the agency’s investigation of Mrs. Clinton’s emails, an investigation which supposedly was closed months ago. This letter, which was quickly posted on the internet, made highly unusual public statements about an F.B.I. investigation concerning a candidate in the election. The letter was sent in violation of a longstanding Justice Department policy of not discussing specifics about pending investigations with others, including members of Congress. According to some news reports, the letter was sent before the F.B.I. had even obtained the search warrant that it needed to look at the newly discovered emails. And it was sent days before the election, when many Americans are already voting.

Violations of the Hatch Act and of government ethics rules on misuse of official positions are not permissible in any circumstances, including in the case of an executive branch official acting under pressure from politically motivated members of Congress. Violations are of even greater concern when the agency is the F.B.I.

It is not clear whether Mr. Comey personally wanted to influence the outcome of the election, although his letter — which cast suspicion on Mrs. Clinton without revealing specifics — was concerning. Also concerning is the fact that Mr. Comey already made unusual public statements expressing his opinion about Mrs. Clinton’s actions, calling her handling of classified information “extremely careless,” when he announced this summer that the F.B.I. was concluding its investigation of her email without filing any charges.

But an official doesn’t need to have a specific intent — or desire — to influence an election to be in violation of the Hatch Act or government ethics rules. The rules are violated if it is obvious that the official’s actions could influence the election, there is no other good reason for taking those actions, and the official is acting under pressure from persons who obviously do want to influence the election.

Absent extraordinary circumstances that might justify it, a public communication about a pending F.B.I. investigation involving a candidate that is made on the eve of an election is thus very likely to be a violation of the Hatch Act and a misuse of an official position. Serious questions also arise under lawyers’ professional conduct rules that require prosecutors to avoid excessive publicity and unnecessary statements that could cause public condemnation even of people who have been accused of a crime, not to mention people like Mrs. Clinton, who have never been charged with a crime.

This is no trivial matter. We cannot allow F.B.I. or Justice Department officials to unnecessarily publicize pending investigations concerning candidates of either party while an election is underway. That is an abuse of power. Allowing such a precedent to stand will invite more, and even worse, abuses of power in the future.

Richard W. Painter, a professor at the University of Minnesota Law School, was the chief White House ethics lawyer from 2005 to 2007.

Isn't this all a little fishy?

[Gatefan1976]

Womble, what is the view of Haaretz in Israel?

[Womble]

Womble, what is the view of Haaretz in Israel?

Odious extreme left-wing rag. Commonly referred to as "the first Palestinian newspaper in Hebrew".

Haaretz is Israel's oldest newspaper. It bills itself in Hebrew as the newspaper for intellectuals, but in the 90-s it's gone so far off the deep end that its Hebrew readership has basically disappeared. It still keeps a Hebrew edition and website, but it mainly survives as an English language outlet that is popular abroad due to being a formally Israel-based source supplying a constant stream of cartoonish negativity about Israel.

[thekillman]

Oh OK check this out from the NY Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/30/op...ower.html?_r=1

Isn't this all a little fishy?

It is. Especially since we've seen no specifics so far. The mails aren't written by Clinton nor were they sent via her private server. The FBI had weeks to investigate this before announcing it and they have nothing. Other than an extremely vague "clinton implication" this smells of nothing but power abuse by the FBI.

[Gatefan1976]

Odious extreme left-wing rag. Commonly referred to as "the first Palestinian newspaper in Hebrew".

Haaretz is Israel's oldest newspaper. It bills itself in Hebrew as the newspaper for intellectuals, but in the 90-s it's gone so far off the deep end that its Hebrew readership has basically disappeared. It still keeps a Hebrew edition and website, but it mainly survives as an English language outlet that is popular abroad due to being a formally Israel-based source supplying a constant stream of cartoonish negativity about Israel.

Who would be considered centrist?