Omnibus Politics Thread: Campaign 2016 EditionFollow

Lack of soul.

You'd have thought we could hit 100 days before entering Wag the Dog territory.

Twitter is suing to keep a Twitter poster that is "critical" to 45's identity anonymous from the administration the same day that Don Rickles dies presumably of either from the ridiculousness of that news or of old age.

Eh. I see a heck of a lot of smoke, but very little fire going on anywhere.

What I do find interesting is that Susan Rice has essentially admitted that Trump was right about being spied upon by the Obama administration. When you combine the NSA (that's the person, not the organization) selectively unmasking members of the Trump campaign, later justifying it as something that might be done as part of an investigation of those people, and then combine Obama's executive order to spread the intelligence around to a dozen additional agencies (making leaks much more likely and much harder to track down), there's a pretty clear pattern here, that comes right from the top, so to speak.

We're more or less at the point of questioning whether the surveillance itself may have violated FISA rules (using taps of non-us persons to surveil us persons requires a FISA warrant). What's not even in question anymore is whether that surveillance occurred at all. Which is funny given that just a few weeks ago Trump was being mocked for making such a crazy and unsubstantiated claim. Which means that regardless of the legality of the surveillance, we're still left with the incredibly questionable political aspect of a sitting president using the intelligence services to spy on the campaign of the opposition party's presidential candidate in the middle of an election.

Which, except for the flashlights, puts us squarely in to Watergate territory.

Edited, Apr 7th 2017 3:44pm by gbaji

You could say the same right after a nuclear explosion.

You see what you want to see.

I see what's there. Tell you what. Why don't you tell the class what actual facts there are to support the claim that the Trump administration colluded with the Russian government to manipulate the election.

Heck. Let's start by you explaining exactly what form this collusion could have taken. What exactly do you think the Trump administration even could have done that would qualify? The only actual election affecting thing I'm aware of was the leak of the Podesta emails. But even if we assume that was done by the Russians (and I'm not convinced of that), exactly how could the Trump administration have "colluded" with them in this? The conspiracy theory is that the Russians hacked the DNC servers, found the emails, then handed them off to Wikileaks. And then, Wikileaks leaked it. What exactly did Trump's people do here? Heck. What could they have done? It's not like there's even a step in there where any interaction with Trump's campaign would have been required, or in any way affected the result.

That's just how laughable the claim is. No one can even seem to define exactly what it is they're claiming happened. And that's before getting within 100 miles of anything remotely resembling evidence of whatever it is we haven't actually been told may or may not have happened.


You seriously don't even stop and question this? At all?

Edited, Apr 7th 2017 4:39pm by gbaji

Look, little buddy: While I can't say for any certainty what happened it's clear that this President and his people are extremely opaque is all their doings. Something (or several somethings) have occurred which have a stink about them and people want clear answers which are not forthcoming from this administration.

"We think something stinks and needs investigating at the highest levels" was a good enough excuse to go after Hillary for years. It's certainly sufficient for an investigation of President Cheeto and his posse.

Way to basically chuck the entire concept of 60% of the bill of rights out the window. You do understand that we have due process rules precisely because "has a stink about him" isn't a great reason to base the use of executive power on, right? I mean, you do actually understand this? Please tell me you do...



I'm sorry. Could you show me the point at which unwarranted surveillance (or even warranted) was used against Clinton at any point in this? No one's saying that having an investigation is wrong. What we're saying is "secretly using our intelligence services to spy on someone because you don't like them" instead of having an above board investigation is a serious problem and represents a break down of some of the most fundamental constitutional protections that folks like Obama were supposed to be upholding. He took an oath to protect and defend the constitution, not the odds of his party winning the next election. It's pretty clear that he put one of those in front of the other, and it wasn't the constitution he was protecting.

How massive must your blinders be for you not to see this? On the one hand we have nothing to support the claim that Trump or his campaign did a single thing to justify being spied upon. On the other, we absolutely know that the Obama administration, apparently under the direct orders of Obama himself (unless you think that the National Security Adviser position is anything other than the presidents direct link to our intelligence agencies, and orders from said person are treated as coming directly from the president, that is), engaged in direct and targeted surveillance of members of the Trump campaign.

Again, even if there was a FISA warrant obtained (and guess what? We have no evidence or confirmation of that, which you'd think would be the very first thing that would be trotted out if you were trying to justify what you did), It still has a very very negative political connotation. We can't have a system where the party in power uses what should be non-political agencies for political reasons. And if you think that "detecting and preventing some kind of wrongdoing" was remotely as much a motivator for this spying as "finding something we can use against Trump to help Clinton win", you are probably the most naive person on the planet.

Given that the *only* effect we've seen from this surveillance was the illegal leaking of the contents of a conversation by Flynn, and it was leaked specifically to damage him and Trump, I don't think it's wrong to suggest that this was precisely why the unmasking and distribution of that surveillance was done in the first place. Where's the supposed collusion that prompted all of this? I'll give you a prediction: It didn't happen. But we'll spend the next couple years with demands for investigations, and then investigations, and speculative news stories, and as much smokescreen as possible, all designed to do maximum political damage based on what "might be", but over time, the topic will shift, and you'll have forgotten that the original claim, that there was collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians, was never proven. And it wont matter to you by then either.

Because this is how these things work. Remember the massive smoke screen of the Plame investigation? Remember how we had to get to the bottom of who leaked Plames identity and CIA employment? Remember a freaking movie made that dramatically (and hysterically falsely) went off on a dream quest of all the people presumably harmed because of her outing? You remember all of that, right? Do you also remember how none of it was true. There was no outing. She wasn't really a secret agent of the CIA. There were no secret lists of contacts at risk. And the source of the "leak" of her identity wasn't anyone connected to the Bush white house, and worse, the investigators knew that before they even started their investigation. The purpose of the investigation itself wasn't ever about finding out who outed her, because it wasn't a crime and they already knew. The purpose was entirely about causing political damage to president Bush, by the mere act of having an investigation.

This is no different. It's a political party finding themselves out of power, and using any trick they can to try to cast fear, uncertainty, and doubt in the other direction. And heck, it worked back in the mid 2000s, leading to the Dems retaking congress and the White House, so maybe it'll work this time too? I guess when your party doesn't have any actual platform to stand on that can sufficiently win them elections, the only thing they've got left is "make the voters afraid of the other guy". We'll see how well it works this time around.

Edited, Apr 7th 2017 6:28pm by gbaji

Sorry. I know this will come as no surprise, but I don't buy it. The author attempts to give her a bit of cover:



Except that in the very quote by Rice above that, she said this:



She very clearly knows exactly what Nunes was referring to when he said that Trump's people may have been "caught up in surveillance of foreign individuals". She specifically defines what that exact case entails.

And frankly, it's hard to imagine that she didn't understand the question itself. She was being asked if she knew about such "incidental" surveillance of the Trump team. Not just that but then also the "disclosure" of their identities (the "unmasking" of their names in the transcripts, subsequently made available to additional agencies). Given that Rice has since been identified as the person who actually ordered the unmasking of Trump associates in any surveillance that was obtained, she not only knew that it was done, and knew that their identities were "disclosed/unmasked", but she's the one who freaking did it.

I don't see how anyone can possibly see this as anything other than her lying her butt off in that interview. Now, of course, we can assume she's not going to admit to some super secret surveillance going on, and doesn't even want the suggestion that it happened, by giving the stock "no comment" kind of answer. But, um... that's still lying. And if it turns out that they did not get FISA approval for those actions, then it's entirely possible that this goes beyond just lying to the American people (and that appears to have been a habit of hers, given she did the same freaking thing with the Benghazi lie), and enters into massive felony territory.


And again, even if it was done "legally", the political ramifications of this are pretty horrific. Which, I'm sure, is why she lied about it. Even the suggestion of using our national security apparatus in this way harkens us back to the bad old days. No one likes that idea. And for what? Seriously. To come remotely close to justifying spying on a presidential transition team (which is what I think they're specifically referring to in this interview), you'd have to have something on a treason level scale. And maybe even more that that, given that you're talking about the incoming president, who kinda has the authority to decide things like what interactions to have with foreign powers in the first place. If president Trump decides that handing Alaska back to the Russians is a great idea, it's not treason, it's a legitimate foreign policy action (subject to Senate approval of the deal, and almost certain political backlash of course).

It's just hard to imagine anything that could justify surveillance in that scenario. I mean, just to put the whole "what could he or his people do that would be illegal here" into context, does anyone remember the whole open mike thing with Obama directly telling Putin that he'd have more leeway to deal with him after the election (back in 2012). We actually captured the US president basically telling a foreign leader that he had to pretend to be tougher on him to win re-election but would change his position if/when he won. And guess what? While that may be politically damaging, it's not illegal.

It's hard to imagine what possible justification there could be to legally engage in surveillance of an incoming presidential transition team. Again, key word is "legal" here. I'm reasonably certain that they did not actually get FISA approval for this, and chose instead to skirt around the rules and collect and disseminate that information anyway. Which is incredibly problematic. No matter where you fall on the political spectrum, you should not want your government to engage in this sort of thing.

My understanding if the situation is that the people being surveilled were know criminals and other assorted (non-US citzen) a$$holes. The fact that they were in constant communication with highly placed people surrounding Trump is the issue.

"If you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas".


Edited, Apr 7th 2017 8:48pm by Bijou

Trump: The U.S. government spied on me! Outrage!

Common people: Don't you remember what that Snowden guy said? The government spies on everyone. Get over yourself.

Gee. It's like she's so used to lying, she doesn't even notice when she's doing it.

Here's the exchange from the link, since I apparently need to quote the whole thing for people:



The question she was answering does not mention anything about reports Nunes was supposedly referring to. The question specifically asks her if she knows anything about the claims themselves. Specifically "that in essence, during the final days of the Obama administration, during the transition, after President Trump had been elected, that he and the people around him may have been caught up in surveillance of foreign individuals in that their identities may have been disclosed". She said "I know nothing about this".

The "this" she's referring to was not about where Nunes got his information, but about the information itself. There's no other way to interpret this exchange.

She may very well have also mentioned something about not knowing what reports Nunes was getting his information from, and then chose to tweet about that instead, but that's totally irrelevant to the actual issue. She wasn't asked "do you know what reports Nunes might have read which may have given him this idea?". She was asked, quite directly, if she knew anything about the Trump transition team being caught up in surveillance. She said she knew nothing about it. Which was a flat out blatant lie.

EDIT: Oh. Worse. The question also specified "in that their identities may have been disclosed". Given that she was the one who ordered their identities disclosed, it makes the lie even that much worse. Can we please all just acknowledge that she lied and move on now?

Edited, Apr 11th 2017 3:32pm by gbaji