2017 American Political Scene

[zraver]

Well let's look at a few other things. Men get prostate cancer at a much higher rate than women.

Thats like saying women get cervical cancer at much higher rates than men... they are both gender specific cancers, both are covered by all plans.

Young men tend to participate in riskier behavior than young women.

Again traumatic injury is covered for both. Whatever extra burden young men add is offset by other areas where women use more healthcare dollars.

And oh yeah...that whole erectile dysfunction thing.

ED is a medical condition, thats why it is caused dysfunction.

Covered under all plans.

Birth control pills for women...not so much.

Because we have to care about the unborn but we don't want to prevent them.

We should not be covering anything that is a basic and routine maintenance purchases; it drives up cost. it doesn't matter if its birth control pills or olemeprazole, its not spmething that insurance should pay for. You can't have an aging population, large numbers of sicker than native born immigration, ad an ever expanding list of covered services and control cost. Not even forcing healthy people to pay disproportionate rates will save such a system. If we want to provide care for the real medical emergencies, we need to stop providing non-emergency care. Make BC an OTC drug like the GERD meds I take daily, then pass a law that any OTC drug must have a co-pay 3x the OTC price.

[antimony]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/power...=.ca75afc95d0f

Donald J. Trump ✔ @realDonaldTrump
The Freedom Caucus will hurt the entire Republican agenda if they don't get on the team, & fast. We must fight them, & Dems, in 2018!

Can't we all just get along

[YellowFever]

OK, JAD, let me run this by you to see if I can make sense of this or not since you are the straightest guy I know here.

And I know you'll tell me what I miseed and where I went wrong. :P

I have to slowly get back into this since I literally disconnected from everything for at least the last month or so.

If I was to go to the depth of fake news and siphon through all the bullshit and collect what little kernels of truth I can, this is the story so far:

After Trump's win last year, Flynn gets in a phone conversation with Kislyak and discuss amongst other things, a lifting of sanctions Obama placed on Russia for the "hack" of the election.

NSA and others intercepted this conversation of an American citizen "inadvertently" because it involved a Russian ambassador.

Through Obama's executve order 17 days before leaving office (making it easy as ordering a pizza to obtain the raw data) some other agencies received the transcript of the phone conversation, without the American citizen's name being redacted, as it should have been by law, it leaked to the press, causing immense amount of hot water to be poured on Flynn.

So, Sally Yates,* before she got her ass fired, told the new members of the White House about this phone conversation and the potential of it being used to blackmail Flynn or whatever, which prompted Pence to asked Flynn about this phone call and Flynn lied to Pence.

When the truth began leaking out a day or two later, the Trump administration found out Flynn lied to Pence so he got canned as well.

Now, a month later the Senate probe is thinking about asking Flynn to testify with regards to the "Russian hack" and Flynn's lawyers basically sent a "I'm not going to subject myself to this crap without legal protection" letter to the committe (which is pretty smart.* I mean would you talk to the FBI for example without a lawyer present?), especially since Washington is a place where people get off or get hanged of crimes for political purposes.* And more especially since half the people that wants to question you is looking to nail your hide to the wall.

Is that where we are at this time?

So "insiders" says they see no evidence of Trump being "wiretapped"...and this is huge news to the main stream media, despite this NYT story on January 20, they spend 24/7 reporting on it with glee:



Yet when "insiders" also says they see no evidence that Trump colluded with the Rooskies during the election....that hardly makes any news and there is at least 2 probes presently.

Hmmm......

Same shitty Washington crap, I guess.

My prediction is this:

Flynn WILL eventually testify, with immunity or not, and Democrats will be crapping all over themselves (again...for the umteenth time) and saying "HAH, WE GOT HIM NOW!" ...and he is going to testify and he is basically going to say there is no cover up of a "deal" with Russia, so screw you all.

Yates will probably eventually testify in the House committe and nothing will come of it but the idiots in the mainstream media will make a big deal out of it.

Pelosi, Waters and Pocohantas will scream for impeachment and CNN and MSNBC will go on with their fake news reporting for...I give it two more months..... before everybody gets tired.

I was tired of the soap opera so I disengaged for a month or two but.....

Didn't know I'd miss the stupidity so much.

Stay tuned for the next installment of the......As the world turns!

[astralis]

so, in short you see no difference between investigations conducted by the FBI/intel agencies/Congress with wiretaps directed at foreigners and Trump's claims of a politically-ordered wiretap by the Obama Administration.

[YellowFever]

Of course I see it.

Problem is 1) the conversation was released without Flynn''s name being redacted (it shouldn't have been released at all) and 2) Nunes claims some intercepts of Flynn had nothing to do with the Russians.

Now you might be OK with that since it makes Trump look suspicious but I'm worried about the fact that an intercept of an American citizen was leaked for political reasons.

If your hatred of Trump is so great that you are willing to overlook that fact, hey be my guest.

Intel was released for political reasons.

Let that sink in.

[astralis]

YF,

Problem is 1) the conversation was released without Flynn''s name being redacted (it shouldn't have been released at all) and 2) Nunes claims some intercepts of Flynn had nothing to do with the Russians.

thinking you're confusing some of the issues, as you're talking about separate topics. you refer to the NYT article, yet that article was talking about foreign intercepts in the context of a legal investigation.

the Flynn leak obviously was not part of the investigation. it was a leak, straight and simple. and if they catch the person leaking, there -should- be punishment...punishment tempered by the fact that the leaker showed clear wrongdoing in a National Security Advisor actively deceiving at least the VPOTUS.

also, Nunes was not referring to Flynn in regards to those intercepts he supposedly saw.

[YellowFever]

And that's the crux isn't it?

The info being obtained in a "legal investigation" is being leaked left and right for political reasons.

If the Flynn leak is not part of the investigation why is he in negotiation to talk to Congress about what amouts to an investigation about Russian hacking.

[astralis]

YF,

The info being obtained in a "legal investigation"

as far as i know the Flynn leak was separate from the FBI investigation. it's also hard to assess if that leak was done for 'political reasons' seeing as how the base effect was the removal of an administration advisor caught lying to his own boss. if this was purely a Democratic hit job then Trump could have easily ignored it, just as (for instance) he ignores all the cries about not showing his tax return or his multiple business conflicts of interest.

If the Flynn leak is not part of the investigation why is he in negotiation to talk to Congress about what amouts to an investigation about Russian hacking.

right now, we don't know. there's multiple possible reasons why Flynn has legal troubles, starting with his foreign agent status shilling for Turkey to his earlier involvement with the Russians before the campaign and then of course to the leak issue.

but either way, whatever the reason is, it must be bad enough where Flynn has decided to take a severe public relations beating by publicly begging for a deal. otherwise, why not keep silent or have the lawyer deny that they're in talks at all?

[Parihaka]

I really am having a difficult time distinguishing between McCain and the standard Democrat Party talking points.

Let's bring in the chair of senate armed services committee, senator John McCain. Welcome. Good to see you. You were smiling through much of that interview with Mr. Peskov. The Russians are saying the sanctions imposed by Barack Obama are worse than a nuclear standoff. Worse than the cold war right now. Yet, as George pointed out, there was no public re258 yags after the sanctions were imposed. What does that tell you? Ments I don't know what it tells me except that they're succeeding. Succeeding in continuing their dismembering of Ukraine. Succeeding in exerting enormous influence in the Middle East. They have succeeded in interfering with our election. We know that they continue that in the French elections and other elections. And so far, they have paid little or no penalty for all of this misbehavior. The pattern. Listening to that guy, watching him, that's echoes of the cold war. They tell flat-out lies. You know, that's the way it is. How about president trump's response? And his tweets? Well, look. I hope that the president will respond but -- Mr. Tillerson's statement that the Syrian people will determine their own future? That is one of the more unusual statements I have ever heard. I know Mr. Tillerson was busy. Did he miss the barrel bombing. Did he miss the Iranian revolutionary guard? Did hi miss the Russians striking with precision, weapons, hospitals in aleppo, deliberately killing people in hospitals? You heard what ambassador Haley said about Syria. What about the thousands we have trained and equipped? What about those people? What signal do we send people who struggle for freedom around the world? That Syria is determining its own future? Let's go back few years. Bashir Assad was on his way out the door before -- how can the Syrian people determinen their own future? Very tough to do that right now. I want to go back to Russia. Obviously, Syria is very important. But, president trump just tweeted the real story is the surveillance, find the laerks. Is the real story the survey chance or what is going on in the investigation? I think all of it needs to be examined. Obviously, if there was intentional disclosure of names of people who were in the trump campaign, that has to the revealed. But the fact is, we know for a fact, the Russians tried to change the outcome of our election. Attacking the very fundamentals of democracy. We know they did that. We need to know how, why, and most of all, what to do to prevent this kind of activity, which they continue the carry on in free nations around the world. Peskov made no secret that Vladimir Putin preferred trump to Clinton. Do you think there is a possibility that the Russians are still trying to help president trump? No, I would -- I would be astoupd astou astounded. I think the national security team that the president has assembled is outstanding. I hope he listens to them. They don't have any illusions about Vladimir Putin and Russian behavior. This is why we need a select committee. Every time we turn around, another shoe drops from this centipede. We fe we need to examine all the aspects. President trump's priorities and the other priorities many of us believe exist. Sean spirs said what congressman nunes did when he received the secret information the white house was both routine and proper. What he did, what he saw, who he met with is 100% proper. Do you think that is true? It's hard to respond. But the fact is that -- these committees, especially intelligence committees and armed services committees. We work closely together as Republicans and Democrats. We have to. It's for the good of the security of the nation and the men and women who serve us. I'm happy to see the senate intelligence committee, senator Warner and senator burrow working together. This is obviously a schism. Let alone the bizarre fashion in which all of this happened. To get to the bottom, it has to be done in a bipartisan fashion. As far as I can tell, congressman nunes killed that. Thank you so much for joining us. It's very good to see you. Thank you very much. Up next, ABC's Bob woodruff is inside North Korea.

http://2ur.us/politics/65938/WATCH--...centipede.html

[snapper]

National Security - as McCain understands - is not a partisan business. Sure some Democrats are using it for partisan purposes but for me, as a conservative, it is a disgrace to see the average GOP member, Nunes being a prime example, climb on the bandwagon who is not conservative or liberal but only concerned for himself and neglect the deep national security issues surrounding his election and ties to Moscow. Sure leaks are wrong but traitors are worse.

[bfng3569]

Its got to do with the fact that Dems have to be bi-partisan while the GOP can continue to spew all kinds of venom. Or do you not consider the President to be part of the GOP?

so we are right back to two little kids pushing each other to the ground on the play ground.

adult comes over to reprimand one kid, his excuse "he pushed me first'

guess I used to think the discourse here was typically above that level.

guess I was wrong.

[bfng3569]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/power...=.ca75afc95d0f



Can't we all just get along

course not!

[Parihaka]

National Security - as McCain understands - is not a partisan business. Sure some Democrats are using it for partisan purposes but for me, as a conservative, it is a disgrace to see the average GOP member, Nunes being a prime example, climb on the bandwagon who is not conservative or liberal but only concerned for himself and neglect the deep national security issues surrounding his election and ties to Moscow. Sure leaks are wrong but traitors are worse.

He's desperate to close the inquiries (and Nunes) down.

[YellowFever]

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/artic...iates-in-intel


NATIONAL SECURITY
Top Obama Adviser Sought Names of Trump Associates in Intel

177APRIL 3, 2017 10:13 AM EDT
a | A
By
Eli Lake


White House lawyers last month discovered that the former national security adviser Susan Rice requested the identities of U.S. persons in raw intelligence reports on dozens of occasions that connect to the Donald Trump transition and campaign, according to U.S. officials familiar with the matter.

The pattern of Rice's requests was discovered in a National Security Council review of the government's policy on "unmasking" the identities of individuals in the U.S. who are not targets of electronic eavesdropping, but whose communications are collected incidentally. Normally those names are redacted from summaries of monitored conversations and appear in reports as something like "U.S. Person One."

The National Security Council's senior director for intelligence, Ezra Cohen-Watnick, was conducting the review, according to two U.S. officials who spoke with Bloomberg View on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it publicly. In February Cohen-Watnick discovered Rice's multiple requests to unmask U.S. persons in intelligence reports that related to Trump transition activities. He brought this to the attention of the White House General Counsel's office, who reviewed more of Rice's requests and instructed him to end his own research into the unmasking policy.

The intelligence reports were summaries of monitored conversations -- primarily between foreign officials discussing the Trump transition, but also in some cases direct contact between members of the Trump team and monitored foreign officials. One U.S. official familiar with the reports said they contained valuable political information on the Trump transition such as whom the Trump team was meeting, the views of Trump associates on foreign policy matters and plans for the incoming administration.

Rice did not respond to an email seeking comment on Monday morning. Her role in requesting the identities of Trump transition officials adds an important element to the dueling investigations surrounding the Trump White House since the president's inauguration.


Both the House and Senate intelligence committees are probing any ties between Trump associates and a Russian influence operation against Hillary Clinton during the election. The chairman of the House intelligence committee, Representative Devin Nunes, is also investigating how the Obama White House kept tabs on the Trump transition after the election through unmasking the names of Trump associates incidentally collected in government eavesdropping of foreign officials.

Rice herself has not spoken directly on the issue of unmasking. Last month when she was asked on the "PBS NewsHour" about reports that Trump transition officials, including Trump himself, were swept up in incidental intelligence collection, Rice said: "I know nothing about this," adding, "I was surprised to see reports from Chairman Nunes on that account today."

Rice's requests to unmask the names of Trump transition officials does not vindicate Trump's own tweets from March 4 in which he accused Obama of illegally tapping Trump Tower. There remains no evidence to support that claim.

But Rice's multiple requests to learn the identities of Trump officials discussed in intelligence reports during the transition period does highlight a longstanding concern for civil liberties advocates about U.S. surveillance programs. The standard for senior officials to learn the names of U.S. persons incidentally collected is that it must have some foreign intelligence value, a standard that can apply to almost anything. This suggests Rice's unmasking requests were likely within the law.

The news about Rice also sheds light on the strange behavior of Nunes in the last two weeks. It emerged last week that he traveled to the White House last month, the night before he made an explosive allegation about Trump transition officials caught up in incidental surveillance. At the time he said he needed to go to the White House because the reports were only on a database for the executive branch. It now appears that he needed to view computer systems within the National Security Council that would include the logs of Rice's requests to unmask U.S. persons.

The ranking Democrat on the committee Nunes chairs, Representative Adam Schiff, viewed these reports on Friday. In comments to the press over the weekend he declined to discuss the contents of these reports, but also said it was highly unusual for the reports to be shown only to Nunes and not himself and other members of the committee.

Indeed, much about this is highly unusual: if not how the surveillance was collected, then certainly how and why it was disseminated.

[antimony]

http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/02/politi...p-north-korea/

US President Donald Trump has declared he would be willing to go it alone to restrain North Korea's nuclear weapons program should China fail to change the situation, saying if Beijing won't help solve it, then "we will" alone.

"China will either decide to help us with North Korea or they won't," Trump said in an interview published Sunday in the Financial Times. "If they do, that will be very good for China, and if they don't, it won't be good for anyone."

At this point I will not be surprised if he decides to flush SK and quite possibly the entire Korean peninsula down the drain to get a yuuge big "win"