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You just argued with all three of the points, that's loaded the bases.

First by arguing over refugees, then over H1Bs, then over the visas that are legal entry papers for the purposes of...residence.

Here's the out of the park hit to make it a grand slam.

Sorry dude, you lost. Best you can do is admit you spoke without thinking, and move on. A protest will just make you a further joke.

http://www.politico.com/story/...

Interesting timing, considering that the coordinator for cyber issues at the State department is leaving, and Tillerson is considering closing the cyber office or merging it with another department.

Cede the international leadership to Russia. That's great.

Perfectly willing to claim Trump was elected from vote hacking, utterly unwilling to investigate or question any votes - and in fact attempts to block those seeking to investigate voter hacking.

It is absurd to claim with as loose as protocol is around most voting systems, that there is not widespread voter fraud ongoing - probably "benefitting" both parties and screwing honest voters over with rigged elections across the country.

The otter convient fact is that the voter roles are being looked into because there are wide scale voter fraud.

When Kobach was Kansas Secretary of State, he made ferreting out voter fraud a centerpiece of his administration and conducted a two-year investigation. He found nine cases, mostly older Republicans.

http://www.politico.com/magazi...

There is no wide scale voter fraud. It doesn't exist.

https://www.brennancenter.org/...

Except, of course, that Liberty University has a long history of having leading figures on the left come and speak to its student body. Ted Kennedy was a frequent speaker, and last year, students were required to go to a Bernie Sanders speech.

The students were respectful and listened, even though they disagreed with Sanders on most points.

I wouldn't go to or send my child to Liberty U, but the differences between a Liberty University and a Berkeley or Evergreen or Yale or Middlebury are pretty stark. Liberty U expects a respectful audience and gets one, the others have let the inmates run the asylum.

The so called government shutdown the left likes to try to pin on Junior Senators Cruz and Lee from the then minority party of the Senate.

You mean the shutdown that Cruz and Lee took credit for, and still say they supported?

Hey, just because now they pretend to be against Democrats doing what they did, doesn't mean they didn't do it. And I still remember the 1990s shutdown, and I know who was at fault then too.

They were more afraid of the media lies than pushing the truth and forcing negotiations and compromise. And they've kept on doing the same.

They were afraid of the truth, that their shutdown threats were not getting the people's support, and they had to reign in the zealots instead. The House did indeed pass a repeal bill, and REFUSED to negotiate with Democrats on it at all, and Mike Lee and Ted Cruz decided to try to force it upon the Senate.

Yes they do CAVE, and have done so repeatedly.

They don't negotiate, they don't talk, and they keep on demanding more and more. Sorry, but it's true.

Yes Trump is very centrist, he's been a Democrat at times.

Trump has pretended to be a Democrat, but he pretends about everything, the one guiding star he has is that he's a constant self-promoter.

It makes the objections of the left rather amusing because they really couldn't have asked for a more malleable Republican President out of the candidates.

Trump is indeed malleable. That's a flaw, not a virtue.

Gov Christie might have been about on par.

Please, Mr. Bridgegate and now Beachgate? That's your suggestion? You discredit yourself with that one.

But their non-stop outrage has pushed him quite a ways to the right on many issues.

Nope, he's JUMPED to the right just because it gets him the fawning praise he wants.

If the GOP Establishment would use the majorities they have in both houses and actually push an agenda they could accomplish a lot, but they cave time and again, resulting in nothing happening.

You have it wrong, the problem is their agenda, which they've pushed for, is one they know they can't make work, so they end up with nothing, since it would be destructive to actually pursue.

Of course, their problem is that their majorities aren't legitimate, but a carefully gerrymandered facade built on empty outrage, but that's a different problem.

Repeal the ACA and then invite the left to negotiate a replacement with compromises.

Mitch McConnell is treating having to negotiate a replacement with Democrats as a threat get his own senators in line, so no, that won't happen. But that repeal idea is ALL THEY HAD for SIX YEARS. That's their own fault.

But no, they just Cave or worse, they try to do the same thing the Dems did when they passed the ACA in the first place, keep it hidden and then bring out a massive bill and not give sufficient time to digest and evaluate it before demanding a vote.

Well, at least you admit what they're doing is worse, but um, that is not what Democrats did, unless you have completely forgotten all the town halls, all the hearings, all the scorings, and even the false claims about it.

Meanwhile, the actual GOP effort has been...hidden, hasn't it? Kinda makes your apologia nauseating when you think about it.

As to Trump's fiscal policies, I really don't care. The House sets the budget and fiscal policy, not the President.

Nope.

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.

Since the US has active trade and diplomatic relations with Russia, it is extremely hard to call interacting with them treason.

Nope
Nope Nope Nope

There is no question that Russia attacked the US. The hacks on voter registration databases, not to mention the hacks on the democratic party are unquestionably acts of war. It doesn't matter whether the US government formally declared war in response, Russia attacked the US.

And not only was Trump aware of the attacks (because they were reported in the news and he started receiving classified briefings in August of 2016) but he actively encouraged the attacks and upon taking office he immediately set out to reward Russia for them upon taking office.

Treason is the exact right word.

It takes a certain level of stupid to still think the ACA is not the most misleadingly named law in existence. Sadly, not only does the above poster exist in a world so devoid of facts and personal observation that he doesn't understand this, but someone else of equally limited analytical ability modded him up. Since like most posts supporting liberal ideology on these forums, it contained emotion, pejoratives, and NO LINKS BACKING UP THE ARGUMENTS, I will provide some.

1. Then President Obama told the people that his plan would save them on average $2500 and allow them to keep the same level of care. In fact, they new this to be a lie, as was admitted at a fund raiser where the speaker basically is laughing at how stupid people like you are. Personally, that would bother me, but you may like it when your leaders lie and ridicule you. https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

2. The cost of medical insurance has more than doubled since AFC was enacted. In 2013, families typically paid $2784. Now, they pay $5712. http://www.breitbart.com/big-g...

3.This year is going to be even more devastating. Here is a link from the liberally biased Politico so you don't think it is just "evil" conservatives making things up:

http://www.politico.com/story/...

4. At no point does Trump say that he wants to remove ACA taxes from the rich. This is simply a deluded fantasy on your part, or something that you read from a basement blogger with this fantasy. In fact, he wants to try to keep many protections for the poor and infirm. I know honesty is hard for you, but try to read first. http://thehill.com/policy/heal...

BTW, yes, I am being harsh and yes I am annoyed. I am sick of slander being modded up in these forums. Lets keep the debates honest and not make shit up. Lets have more reason and less emotion. Or, are you simply scared that if you are honest and analyze facts, you may have to change your world view?

Dems have lost all four special elections so far. Heck, at this rate, we;re gonna see Trump get reelected. The mid term elections should tell the tale....

All in GOP controlled districts, where the GOP candidate underperformed. Republicans are losing ground. Squeaking out a single digit win when you've been winning by double digits for decades is nothing to crow about, and the trends are all bad for Republicans.

Here's something for you to dismiss as "fake news": http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/06/22/handel-republicans-suburban-nightmare-215289

Considering the fact that Obama was trying to ram TPP through, trying to blame this on the Republicans and Trump is ridiculous.

First of all, realize that the TPP is NOT about free trade. It's about intellectual property control and a variety of other topics. "Free trade" is a generic cover for the whole thing. The real motivators are things that would be balked at if they were negotiated separately.

For details as to what TPP really IS about, well, here's a very short summary:

The TPP and Intellectual Property

And the EFF's position on it:

EFF on TPP
EFF and the Copyright Trap

I'm not going to go into a lot of research for that particular question since this has already been hashed out a million times before.

However, as for the Democrat portion... well, first off, Obama spearheaded TPP and intended to try to get it rammed through towards the end of his term.

Obama and the TPP

Hillary in fact praised it as the "gold standard" while it was in development (in secret, I might add, to the point where Congressmen had to go to a secure room to look at the drafts and could not keep their notes on it with them):

Hillary on the Gold Standard

TPP Secrecy (note the caption on the picture)

Now she did try to back off on this and flip-flopped, although this might well have been a pose for the campaign:

Hillary and TPP

But the fact is that the Democrats did not officially oppose it.

Rejecting formal TPP opposition

Some would say that the fact that Hillary is particularly likely to lie about this to get elected, even among politicians. But people specifically close to her indicated that, if she was elected, she'd flip-flop on it pretty rapidly.

Terry McAuliffe's view on TPP flipping

Additionally, while people seem to very much enjoy shitting on the Republicans for draconian copyright laws, fact is that the Democrats are just as bad, and in some cases, worse:

Congressional support for SOPA and PIPA

This raises doubts as to what parts of TPP would be "renegotiated," if that had happened, which was one option that seemed to be spoken of for a Hillary presidency. Suffice it to say that it is likely that the IP law portions would not receive renegotiation that would be considered consumer-friendly.

Stereotypical "Republicans are evil 'cuz Republicans" and "Trump is evil 'cuz Trump" is not going to fly here, unless you're also willing to jump on board the "Democrats are evil 'cuz Democrats" train. Fact of the matter is, both sides are bought and paid for by the technology and content generation industries. This was the sentiment when SOPA was defeated by massive Internet backlash:

Backlash after massive SOPA protests

And Democrats were certainly benefiting from Hollywood donations which "encouraged" them to support SOPA:

So in short, both sides are filthy here. You can blame one side or the other for the majority of the problem a

Considering the fact that Obama was trying to ram TPP through, trying to blame this on the Republicans and Trump is ridiculous.

First of all, realize that the TPP is NOT about free trade. It's about intellectual property control and a variety of other topics. "Free trade" is a generic cover for the whole thing. The real motivators are things that would be balked at if they were negotiated separately.

For details as to what TPP really IS about, well, here's a very short summary:

The TPP and Intellectual Property

And the EFF's position on it:

EFF on TPP
EFF and the Copyright Trap

I'm not going to go into a lot of research for that particular question since this has already been hashed out a million times before.

However, as for the Democrat portion... well, first off, Obama spearheaded TPP and intended to try to get it rammed through towards the end of his term.

Obama and the TPP

Hillary in fact praised it as the "gold standard" while it was in development (in secret, I might add, to the point where Congressmen had to go to a secure room to look at the drafts and could not keep their notes on it with them):

Hillary on the Gold Standard

TPP Secrecy (note the caption on the picture)

Now she did try to back off on this and flip-flopped, although this might well have been a pose for the campaign:

Hillary and TPP

But the fact is that the Democrats did not officially oppose it.

Rejecting formal TPP opposition

Some would say that the fact that Hillary is particularly likely to lie about this to get elected, even among politicians. But people specifically close to her indicated that, if she was elected, she'd flip-flop on it pretty rapidly.

Terry McAuliffe's view on TPP flipping

Additionally, while people seem to very much enjoy shitting on the Republicans for draconian copyright laws, fact is that the Democrats are just as bad, and in some cases, worse:

Congressional support for SOPA and PIPA

This raises doubts as to what parts of TPP would be "renegotiated," if that had happened, which was one option that seemed to be spoken of for a Hillary presidency. Suffice it to say that it is likely that the IP law portions would not receive renegotiation that would be considered consumer-friendly.

Stereotypical "Republicans are evil 'cuz Republicans" and "Trump is evil 'cuz Trump" is not going to fly here, unless you're also willing to jump on board the "Democrats are evil 'cuz Democrats" train. Fact of the matter is, both sides are bought and paid for by the technology and content generation industries. This was the sentiment when SOPA was defeated by massive Internet backlash:

Backlash after massive SOPA protests

And Democrats were certainly benefiting from Hollywood donations which "encouraged" them to support SOPA:

So in short, both sides are filthy here. You can blame one side or the other for the majority of the problem a

Hiring free market, limited government judges.

But only 2 judges have been confirmed, and 15 more have been nominated even though there are 132 federal judicial vacancies.

Relaxing burdensome regulations - coal mine opening (and no the coal is not used for heating or electricity but for the production of steel)

But a lot of those regulations were issued in late December, so he's just revoking regulations that weren't in place very long anyway.

Pushing for (instead of against) the Keystone Pipeline

Sure, I'll grant you that.

Pushing for (instead of against) fracking

Pushing for (instead of against) off-shore drilling

I'm not sure there's actually much of a difference from Obama's policies. For instance, environmental groups were upset that the Obama administration approved 1500 offshore drilling and fracking applications from 2010 to October 2014 and oil production boomed under Obama.

Getting out of the TPP

That's different than what Obama pushed for, but Bernie Sanders, and eventually Hillary Clinton, both came out against the TPP. I'll grant you that it is a change in policy from the previous administration, though.

Getting out of the Paris Treaty

Yes, I agree that he did do that.

And, as you mentioned, increased funding and activity on illegal immigration.

But even that's a mixed bag. ICE arrests were up, but deportations were down during the first 100 days of Trump's presidency compared to the previous year.

But back to the subject of the article. The closure of federal data centers started before the Trump administration, and it seems as though he's now trying to take credit for it.

Not to mention that he's gotten no major legislation through. So I really do believe he's not very effective.

Wait till Trumpcare fails. There's a reason they won't even tell their own Senators what is in it.

Hmm..."We'll have to pass it to find out what's in it"...where HAVE I heard that before?

In the lies and misrepresentations being told about what Nancy Pelosi ACTUALLY said?

IOW, so what else is new, other than which Party is trying to pass some sort of health-insurance reform without telling anyone what they're actually voting for?

Nothing has changed, the GOP is still hiding the truth from the American people. First they were lying about the contents of the Affordable Care Act so badly that Pelosi ACTUALLY said: “But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of the controversy." because of their storm of lies but of course, the GOP continued that pattern of lies, and twisted that to claim to mean that somehow, people didn't have the ACTUAL bill to review and examine. But they did. It was published, and Representatives and Senators from both sides were regularly talking about it to the people.

So what Pelosi actually meant was rather the opposite of what the GOP claimed she said. And she wasn't unique, they did it with Obama and Clinton as well. Yet it has become a right-wing shibboleth, a mantra, repeated until the delusion is shared.

On the other hand, the GOP Senate is not revealing their own text to the public, they are not meeting with the public, and even their own are saying:

“No, nor have I met any American that has. I’m sure the Russians have been able to hack in and gotten most of it.”

“I’m very eager to see the language. I don’t think it gives enough time to thoroughly analyze the bill, but we’ll see when it comes out.”

"as far as I know the overwhelming majority of my colleagues haven't been able to see it either."

"It has become increasingly apparent in the last few days that even though we thought we were going to be in charge of writing a bill within this working group, it's not being written by us, it's apparently being written by a handful of staffers who are members of the Republican leadership in the Senate,"

The fact is, there are numerous quotes from GOP senators admitting they haven't had a part in writing the bill, not even a chance to read it. And they're timid, at best, in their objections to this secretive process. But they aren't able to deny what we already know. The sausage is being made, in secret, and they don't want us to see it.

Want me to find quotes from the House version of Trumpcare? It's the same story. Prevarications and lies, numbers of GOP Representatives admitting they never read it. Not to mention the haste in passing it, and the lack of public involvement.

It's not new. It's exactly the way the Republican party has decided to operate. And yes, they do try to blame others for their own offenses. They never take responsibility, or clean out the log in their own eye.

Really, you think nobody is familiar with what has been going on? You think you can just throw out your spurious misquoting, and not actually be demonstrating the very problem? Hardly. You might as well be chanting about "57" states or "you didn't build that" for all the validity it has.

And with the way the GOP is going, I'd dare them to call snap elections if they could. Well, technically they could, they'd j

http://www.politico.com/story/... is the first I found, and that's 10/2016, at 200 million.

Explain how a Jr, Senator of the minority party caused a shut-down.

In this case, the procedural process called unanimous consent. Not to mention their own words and testimony. THEY CLAIMED THEY WANTED TO DO IT. And then they did it.

Perhaps you fell asleep?

Answer he didn't, neither did Utah's Mike Lee. In fact the actual blame for the shut-down if it can be assigned to any one person would be to Sen Harry Reid (D), the Senate Majority leader at the time.

Nope! He wanted to pass a bill to continue spending. But not the reckless, insane, moronic, House version.

And they wouldn't back down.

He refused to let any house budget bill he didn't like even be debated. Yes the House's first budget, demanding total recall of the ACA was too extreme. But that's negotiating, you start out asking for everything knowing that you'll compromise.

Nope, that's insanity. You start out with an extreme position, you put the other person in a position where they think less of you, since you're so outrageous. Then when they say no, and you redouble your efforts, as the House, actually did, twice, you convince them that you're further beyond the pale.

Real negotiations recognize the perils of such demands as you make, as you convince the other side that you are crazy.

The House then did compromise, passing multiple replacement budgets gradually diminishing their demands, Reid refused to let any of them be debated let alone voted on. He forced the shutdown and maintained it until the house leadership caved in.

Nope. The House multiple times, kept adding back in their demands, and even increased them. The Republicans in the House, even REFUSED to let anyone other than the Majority Leader in the House, Eric Canton(or someone Cantor said was his designee), offer a compromise. They changed the rules specifically to prevent any other group from coming together.

Cruz and Lee had NOTHING to do with any of that process. They had zero say in any of the Budget bills passed by the House, and zero say in what Reid let onto the floor of the Senate for debate.

Well, that means you're calling Cruz and Lee liars. Which I admit, they are, but they did claim they were responsible for the shut-down, that it was their purpose and intent. They weren't lying about that.

They put it in writing.

And they weren't the only ones.

Sorry, but the GOP picked up the Shutdown gun, and waved it, in their attempts to force their demands on the rest of us.

Guess who the real cancer on efficiency is. it's not the Republicans.

Sorry, but your completely "alternative" facts, doesn't pass the whiff test.

Shutdowns are Cruz's bread and butter. Yet he avoids responsibility

I get it though, the GOP doesn't want to admit to its own faults, so you try to blame anybody else. You did it for Trumpcare. You did it for the Iraq Withdrawal. You did it for Newt Gingrich's adultery.

Look, I get it, you're used to tweeting whatever you want, and nobody questioning it, but just like the Muslim Ban, what you say matters, and not everybody has the attention span of a goldfish.

You're rediculous, it doesnt matter what i say to you.

Indeed, you can keep misrepresenting the facts as long as you want to, it doesn't change the facts.

And the facts are that Russia has been targeting US politicians for more than half a century. The only way this election was different is the extreme incompetence on the part of Democrats.

I am done with this conversation.

So, you other than stating prominently that you are "concerned", you, in fact, also have no idea about how to stop Russia from spying on US politicians, other than to hold those politicians accountable for keeping protecting their own information or live with the consequences. In different words, you're all hot air.

http://www.politico.com/story/...

If there's something we need to know, publish it and stand behind it (with your names and titles) already.

Former FBI Director James Comey came out and testified in public under oath.

The Russians interfered in our election during the 2016 cycle. They did with purpose. They did it with sophistication. They did it with overwhelming technical efforts. It was an active measures campaign driven from the top of that government. There is no fuzz on that. It is a high confidence judgment of the entire intelligence community and the members of this committee have seen the intelligence. It's not a close call. That happened. That's about as unfake as you can possibly get. It is very, very serious, which is why it's so refreshing to see a bipartisan focus on that.

You should put that on t-shirts and sell it to those "Democrats" who always want to impeach presidents when the other party wins the elections...

"Always" is a disingenuous word to use here. We're in unprecedented territory here. George W Bush, the previous republican president, had pretty specific causes. Warrant-less wiretapping, the patriot act, misleading to get us into two wars... We're not talking "He gave us healthcare! THROW HIS ASS INTO JAIL!"

and who demonstrate their love of free speech by doing their best to disrupt and silence those who disagree with them.

The far left wing did shut down a few high-profile speakers at college campuses, it didn't silence them. For that to happen, Milo had to go making pedo comments. Ann Coulter is still spewing her brand of hate-speech, as is her right. The right wing is silencing people who disagree with them with violence.

Trump himself asked russia to locate emails from hillary clinton's servers on public broadcast television.

The ties have been proven.

Here's the actual quote:

"I will tell you this, Russia: If you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.” Source

You could have said, "Trump hopes Russia is able to find Hillary's missing emails", but you chose, "Trump asked Russia to locate emails from Hillary Clinton's servers."

Which sounds more nefarious? Which one is more accurate?

Also, it seems like Sessions offered Trump his resignation right before the overseas trip and he refused it: http://www.politico.com/story/...

Name these people, please.

About 3 seconds of googling found this: http://www.politico.com/magazi...

"I would trust Putin over Obama's intel agents"

There's no hope for you. What Trump's cronies didn't learn from Nixon was that the coverup & trying to defeat the investigation can be more damaging than the crime.

"the only issues post facto was him retroactively registering as a lobbyist for Turkey, which was deplorable"
About that "Turkish" work of his....seems it also is tied back to Russia. Just how many layers of Russian dolls are there in the Trump administration?

http://www.politico.com/story/...

You're right; the main promise does seem to be a 5 point thing.

But it got expanded in use. Including his tweets.

Also, as a partial change in my tune, I'll leave politificat's score card here with the comment that it does look like he's actually doing okay so far on actual promises.

The is absolutely laughable! She ran a money laundering operation to drive funds into her campaign while starving the the state-run Democratic parties. Millions of dollars went into the coffers of the DNC office and Hillary Clinton's victory fund and she has the gall to say it was "bankrupted"?

DNC sought to hide details of Clinton funding deal

The DNC was an entity wholly within the umbrella of the Clinton machine for the 2016 election. To say it was bankrupted suggests her own inability to manage her operation. Its as if Hillary Clinton and the DNC spent millions on research to find out why people hate the smell of turds and millions more on trying to find a way for people to enjoy the smell of turds, and left with the conclusion it must just be everyone else's problem for why they don't enjoy the smell of turds. And to top it off, then she whines about being short on money. If every room you walk into smells like shit, check your pants.

I agree with you 100%. Moreover, I don't think any such discrimination, that Google is being accused of, should be illegal in a free country.

But they went out for Hillary Clinton — donating not just money, which the entire Silicon Valley did, but engineering/logistics talent too. The ostensible "women's champion" would only have increased the anti-discrimination prosecutions like this against various companies. Something tells me, however, the prosecutors she would've appointed wouldn't be so harsh on and sarcastic of Google...

As long as these laws are on the books at all, the SJW-enablers should be prosecuted under them — until they stop with the enabling...

if I have to disclose my social media accounts and phone or social media login details, I will spare you from the several thousand bucks

Trump had, literally, nothing to do with it. Here is a June 28th 2016 article about the searches, but our racist media gave Obama a pass until Trump got elected. And then, before the President-elect even entered office, there was an avalanche of articles about the "new" procedures — not directly blaming him, but planting the negative thoughts in the gullible heads (like yours and those of your adoring moderators here today). Only some of the reports mentioned the truth:

searches increased fivefold in the final fiscal year of the Obama presidency

So, no, it had nothing to do with Trump. More likely, the reason is the growth of dollar since last December — vacationing in the US simply became more expensive for foreigners, while going abroad became cheaper for Americans.

We have no measurements at all on what any sort of fake news could of did. You cannot compare a nebulous quantity like this.

Hmm, I suspect that advertisers would disagree with you. They spent lots of money, they want results. You may not trust them, but they do have measurements.

While we have real studies on the likely number of illegals who voted. Studies that show the numbers are in the hundreds of thousands to millions.

Oh really, and you can cite these studies? Sean Spicer couldn't. And I can find other reports that say numbers such as you and Trump claim are bogus.

Sorry, but actual prosecutions are so low, that you have to ask, if your allegations were true, why isn't anybody being charged? You know that does include Trump voters.

I'll believe you care when you get that woman charged. Absent that, I'll believe you don't even care.

Meanwhile, half of the votes in the recounts we did, in Hillary majority districts, could not even be recounted because of problems.

And these problems were? How many Trump votes were included? You know what I noticed about Michigan though?

2,279,543(DT) 2,268,839(HC)
2,564,569(BO) 2,115,256(MR)
2,872,579(BO) 2,048,639(JM)
2,479,183(JK) 2,313,746(GWB)

Hmm. Something odd about how the vote dropped precipitously in 2016. Perhaps you should explain that, instead of chasing a dubious phantom that is ENTIRELY the responsibility of the Republican state government. Because they could have improved the voting systems if they wanted, they could have managed any errors. Mysteriously, they instead chose to gerrymander the state.

And while I suspect you don't want to admit it, if you believe there are indeed millions of unlawful voters, the you can't trust ANY election returns, there are no legally elected officials anywhere.

That means we have an illegitimate government. At all levels. Federal, state, and local.

Good luck calling for all of them to be removed.

I doubt you have the integrity to try.

Because it's too hard to get an ID?

WTF?!?!

Of course, when the shoe is on the other foot, Dems sqauwk for voter ID:

Bernie backers rage over Calif. Democratic Party chair race

...

Ellis, the former director of Emerge America, a women’s political organization, lost the election by a narrow margin of 62 votes out of 3,000 cast. Her loss immediately set off protests from hundreds of her backers, many of whom charged that there were irregularities that included allowing voters to cast proxy ballots without proper ID.

...

Oh noes!!!! "without proper ID"!!!!

There is not, and has never been, any evidence, large or small, connecting Donald Trump to Russia,

Shut the fuck up.

http://time.com/4433880/donald...
http://www.politico.com/magazi...
http://www.latimes.com/politic...

I wish I could be more agreeable, but if you actually consider the impact of the issues, the D's almost always have a big lead over R's. Net neutrality is a big deal, and R's are for big businesses even though it will hurt the whole industry - almost everyone. Clinton's email server, I'm sorry, was not a big deal compared to this. Poisoning Flint's water supply hurt everyone in an entire city, Bill Clinton got a BJ and "ruined" one young lady's life (granted she was able to sell her story and made $ off it). The Iraq War and related conflict has killed over 1 million people (thousands of Americans) the neocon R's lied to the country to get us into that. In Benghazi a few Americans died, and if Hillary personally shot them it'd still be _absolutely_ nothing compared to Iraq. I know, Obama continued it but by then the decision really was a lose-lose. Obama did increase the drones and they've still killed some tiny % of the million+ overall picture, and few (or none? idk) were American.

I have actually donated to causes that fight superpacs and money in politics in general, so trust me, I'm with you on #thankscorporateamericaandyoursuperpacs. But the organizations that fight it always seem to have more D's (ask watchers of Colbert and Oliver), while the R's do stuff like Citizen's United - wait, does that have anything to do with what you care about - who pushed that one?

I assume you mean this case? That article says:

such infractions by submariners were not uncommon and were almost always dealt with through what the military calls “nonjudicial punishment” or Captain’s Mast.

Clearly, to an educated observer, this is not fair treatment

So, as I said, "reprimanded but not convicted". I don't know why this case did end in conviction, but it's not the norm. Why do you really, really want Hillary to receive the same unfair treatment?

Uh no. There never was any evidence of wrongdoing by Clinton or anyone close to her on Benghazi. The same cannot be said with Trump and Russian interference.

BTW, Trump advisers say Comey was fired because of Russia investigation.

oops:

Comey fired over Russia-Trump investigation.

Those claims are ridiculous in light of what actually happened:

Hillary Clinton, with her sophisticated, very expensive data analytics machine, won the popular vote by the slimmest of margins on Election Day. But Donald Trump, with his reality-TV-tested, carnival-barker sense of what people wanted to hear, was able to find a path through America’s Rust Belt to a stunning electoral college victory.

He did it by tapping into emotion, not by mapping data points.

Hillary's data-driven campaign:

Kriegel’s anodyne title is Clinton’s director of analytics, but it’s a job that makes him, and his team of more than 60 mathematicians and analysts, something of the central nervous system for the campaign: charged with sensing, even predicting, the first tinglings of electoral trouble and then sending instructions to everyone on how to respond.

When Clinton operatives talk about their “data-based” campaign, it’s invariably Kriegel’s data, and perhaps more importantly his models interpreting that data, they are talking about.

Hillary was clearly targeting individual voters and groups.

In the U.S., he actually bet against the female candidate.

Not at all! Once again, Illiberals fail to recognize their own. To wit, Hilllary Clinton:

• Offered Russia a "Reset"
• Routed billions of dollars of investments — and technology transfers — into Russia's high tech
• Forgave Putin's aggression against Georgia — and lifted all sanctions imposed for same — thus practically inviting Putin to repeat the same thing in Ukraine, as predicted
• Made vast amounts of proprietary Department of State information available to foreign intelligence agencies

Of course, Putin would've loved for her to retain — and elevate — her stature...

Wanting free education isn't naked self-interest. Only about ten or fifteen percent of Americans have student loan debt. The left is about 50%. So at least 35% of Americans support making public education cheap or free even though they won't benefit from it directly. Why?

Many of them are parents who don't want to pay for their kids. And, of course, some people are just confused, like you are.

Because they realize that having a well-educated public means less crime and more economic output. It's self interest, but only in a very broad sense of the word.

And your evidence that making college free leads to a "well-educated public means less crime and more economic output" is where exactly?

Society only benefits from sending kids to college if the cost of college is small compared to the increased future earnings; when that is the case, student loans are the right mechanism to finance a college education. When that is not the case, "free" college education is harmful both to the kids and to society.

Folks on the right believe in actual charity

Let me know when I can watch hundreds of rich billionaires volunteering at a homeless shelter. I'm not saying that no rich people ever do those things,

Ah, the knee-jerk response that "billionaire = conservative". Of course, that's nonsense; if anything, billionaires tilt slightly left. They pay negligible income tax, and even if they lost 99% of their money to the government, they'd still be wealthy.

Even if it were true, billionaires are such a small fraction of the population that what they do and believe is not representative of any movement. I don't believe that even when it comes to corrupt jerks like Steyer, Bloomberg, Oprah, and Soros.

All snark aside, if you look at charitable giving, the left and right are approximately equal, believe it or not, though they do approach it in very different ways.

Nope, sorry, I don't believe it. I only know of one significant study that makes that claim (Margolis), and it is wrong (in fact, I'd call it dishonest).

In any case, it's also irrelevant. Charity necessarily involves a personal element that you yourself just admitted the left is denying that element. So, whatever the left is doing, it's not charity.

that the left believes that those to whom much is given, much is expected from

Yes, and that's what makes the left so utterly evil, namely the view that when people are successful, it is because stuff was "given" to them.

And the worst part of that is not the fact that you end up taking away money that people have saved and worked very hard for, or that you're hurting the economy and progress, the worst part of it is that you destroy the lives of the "poorest and most valuable" and rob them of initiative by telling them that whether they succeed or fail is out of their control.

From the college where the President who signed the worst healthcare law in the history of the United States, which we're still cleaning up after?

From the college where what?

Are you another one of those loopy conservatards foaming at the mouth so much that you can't think straight to finish your sentences?

Are you trying to say where Obama went to get his law degree? Do we need to bring up Twitler and Wharton? I think we do. I think I just did.

After 50+ years of promises from both Republicans and Democrats to "fix" health care for everyone, and getting nothing in all that time. one could be tempted to say it's the only healthcare law in the history of the United States. I dunno about good or bad, but for 20M people it's more than many of them had to choose from a few years ago. I dare say for most of them, it's good – or better than nothing.

You and your Conservatard friends at Breitbart and Infowars, and Kellyann Clownway's School of Alternative Facts are welcome to clean up this so-called "mess". Just make sure you keep all the promises* your guy Twitler made. He made them, you love him, they gotta be good, amirite? Anything less would be the work of a loser. And hey, BTW, today he praised Australia's PM for having better a healthcare system than we do. I thought you'd like to know. No doubt your guy thinks we should copy them. You don't think he wants us to be second place (((losers))) behind (((Australia))) do you?

Oh. And fix it without giving the 1% even more tax cuts in the process, okay?

* http://www.politico.com/story/...
1) insurance for everyone
2) no cuts to medicaid
3) no one loses coverage
4) a lot less expensive for everyone
5) get rid of artificial lines
6) everyone gets taken care of

The regulations were many, and often at odds with each other and at odds with the goals of School Nutrition Association. It was pushed by Michelle Obama with little or no input from nutrition experts or the aforementioned group,

Literally everything you wrote is false.

Obama worked with top experts on nutrition. These guidelines were the product of the best current science in conjunction with many in the industry itself, not politics and certainly were not arbitrary "dictates."

The SNA originally supported the law when it was passed in 2010.

The board has since flip-flopped to the serious consternation of many of their members.

And the cause seems to be due to the fact that they are overwhelmingly funded by food suppliers. One of their largest donors was previously responsible for getting pizza declared a vegetable. The SNA no longer advocate for children's health, they advocate for business's profitability at the expense of children's health.

Schools are better off managed at the local level.

Everyone knows that.

Everyone knows that kids need the same nutrition regardless of where they live. The law does not mandate meal choice, only nutrient content. Every school is free to follow their own direction within the guidelines.

I swear, I don't know why anyone trusts what you write anymore. You regularly tell bald-faced lies which you then pad with misrepresentations and to top it off you cite breitbart. WTF dude? Breitbart?

Not so fast. AFAIK, jurisdiction over the Internet has been removed from the FTC, and it would take an act of Congress to put it back... and that sure as shit don't look likely. Any talk of the FTC, for now, is a head-fake excuse for gutting the FCC and letting Comcast and its ilk get drunk and party at your expense.

Face it, ladies. The Internet is the new telephone system - the FCC should regulate it as a common-carrier. Period. That makes it boring to the carriers, gutting a lot of "opportunities" to squeeze extra money out (like selling your browsing histories), but too fucking bad. The Internet ain't no luxury anymore - shit, your grandma needs it just to get her goddamn meds.

Besides, the FTC is not invulnerable to politics. Maybe they don't have a politically ambitious loud-mouth tool as Chairman who wants nothing more than to see himself on TV, but a GOP-controlled everything can muzzle the FTC, and they will, if the price is right.

Those "pro Turkey" lobbyists who paid him are actually Russians.
http://www.politico.com/story/...

The Turkish man who gave Mike Flynn a $600,000 lobbying deal just before President Donald Trump picked him to be national security adviser has business ties to Russia, including a 2009 aviation financing deal negotiated with Vladimir Putin, according to court records.
The man, Ekim Alptekin, has in recent years helped to coordinate Turkish lobbying in Washington with Dmitri "David" Zaikin, a Soviet-born former executive in Russian energy and mining companies who also has had dealings with Putin's government, according to three people with direct knowledge of the activities.
...
Alptekin, in an interview, said he hired Flynn with his own money and did not coordinate any lobbying for the Turkish government. He also denied knowing Zaikin.

But Alptekin acknowledged that he has attended events and met with leaders of the Turkish Heritage Organization, a Washington-based group of Turkish-Americans loyal to Erdogan.
The organization was started when Zaikin asked a Washington-based international political consultant named John Moreira to help set it up, Moreira told POLITICO.

"Surprisingly", both Zaikin and Alptekin also had business deals with Putin.

In the 2000s, Zaikin was an executive in Russia's oil industry at a time when Putin was consolidating control over the country's mineral wealth to the financial benefit of himself and the circle of oligarchs who are his key supporters and associates.
...
In 2008, Zaikin made a deal with an ex-KGB oligarch involved in the giant state oil company Gazprom. Zaikin's company sold the oligarch a 2.5 percent stake in a subsidiary, known as KNG, for shares worth $10, equivalent to valuing the entire subsidiary at $400, according to SEC disclosures.
That came less than two years after Zaikin's company bought KNG for the equivalent of $2.7 million.
...
Alptekin has had his own business dealings in Russia.

As a partner in an investment group called ETIRC as early as 2006, Alptekin bought a stake in a New Mexico jet manufacturer called Eclipse Aviation.
In September 2008, Eclipse announced plans to build a $205 million factory in Russia financed by Russian state bank Vnesheconombank, whose board was chaired by Putin, then prime minister.
A photo in the trade press showed Putin personally inspecting one of Eclipse's jets.

And there's more...

It's almost as if it all connects back to Putin. Funny that.

Phlease, there is nothing to "investigate" there. I'm yet to hear even a coherent accusation — much less any evidence, however circumstantial or otherwise unreliable.

http://www.politico.com/magazi...

He-he... Much comfort that is — from the loving care of MPs to the gentle mercies of civilian wardens.

A good majority of the detainees were released and their charges were acquitted in their respective countries after they were re-located.

More importantly, perhaps, Obama also changed the entire doctrine from capturing suspected terrorists to outright killing them [theguardian.com]. That's actually bona-fide evil, but with media airbrushing it, he was given a pass

Did I ever say that this was acceptable? No. I was talking about him clearing out Guantanamo. Let's stay on topic here, buddy.

even the unwarranted killing of Osama bin Laden was celebrated with only a few people asking [creators.com], why he was ordered killed, not captured [theatlantic.com].

Osama Bin Laden declared war on the US. He was wanted dead or alive. There was no requirement to bring him in alive.

Two years... Two years was not enough for him to disperse a few hundred prisoners... Trump's been in office for less than 100 days and you are already trumpeting his "failures"

There were over 200 prisoners at Gitmo when Obama became President. That was cut in half by 2012, from there, the release of prisoners slowed down due to restrictions placed by the republican-led congress in budget bills. Now there's about 60 left with about 20 eligible for being released.

I never said anything about Trump, but since you brought him up. He has fully supported the idea of keeping Gitmo running, and encouraging torture and illegal interrogation methods on those detained at Gitmo. He also talked up placing even MORE people in Gitmo. So there's that.

Trump made so many grandiose promises while on the campaign trail(e.g. Eliminating/replacing Obamacare, defeating ISIS, term limits, lobbying ban, label China as currency manipulator, remove federal funding from 'Sanctuary Cities', travel bans, tax relief legislation, etc.), spouting off all of the things he was going to do in the first 100 days of his presidency. He has nobody to blame but himself for others pointing out his failures.

Because the idea that there are alternate facts and all viewpoints are equally valid needs to die. There really is objective truth and impartial journalism is entirely possible.

Bring forth your Vulcans!! No aspies won't do, can't understand social context to be effective. Rest of the human race is corruptible.

See this for a live example of how to manipulate "real news":
http://www.politico.com/magazi...

Between 2009 and 2015, George W. Bush gave at least 200 paid speeches, typically getting $100,000 to $175,000.

Wait, you mean it's only a problem when a Democrat does it?

http://www.politico.com/story/...

Why not?

Obama not only gave the Iranians a path to nuclear weapons AND $150 billion, he ran interference for their nuclear spies in the US.

Note the link - Politico. Hardly a bastion of right-wing crazies.

Obama’s hidden Iran deal giveaway

By dropping charges against major arms targets, the administration infuriated Justice Department officials — and undermined its own counterproliferation task forces.

Yep, even before the Iranian nuke deal, Obama was letting Iranian nuclear spies run free.

John Podesta joins The Washington Post as contributing columnist
WikiLeaks Show Washington Post Writer Asked DNC For Anti-Trump Research
WaPo Reporter Asks Permission To Print Podesta Using Uncertified Lobbyists

Obama did to right.

The Obama administration regularly faked the visitor's logs, by editing out anyone they didn't want to admit was meeting with the President or White House staff. Or just not bothering to record hundreds of guests. Or by recording the names of people that didn't actually show up, but were cleared to do so. Or by holding meetings 'off site' so they wouldn't show up in the logs.

In other words, the Obama Administration's policy was to distribute flat out falsehoods, rather than transparency. Hiding everything isn't better, but don't dare pretend "Obama did it right".

Carter Page is a wannabe who happened to catch Trump's random eye, if this interesting profile is any guide, though it doesn't exclude the possibility of his being a useful idiot.

The Mystery of Trumpâ(TM)s Man in Moscow

Trump did publicly ask Russia to hack Clinton's e-mails. His supporters didn't seem to care about him asking a foreign government to interfere with the election or the threat to national security having a foreign government hack a presidential candidate presents.

“I will tell you this, Russia: If you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” the Republican nominee said at a news conference in Florida. “I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”

He also said: "By the way, they hacked -- they probably have her 33,000 e-mails. I hope they do. They probably have her 33,000 e-mails that she lost and deleted because you'd see some beauties there. So let's see."

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/0...

http://www.politico.com/story/...

https://www.theguardian.com/us...