Every president leaves the office rich as fuck, on both sides. They all pick their avenue of personal enrichment and collect serious amounts of money. Special interests, the Washington lobby, and incredible amounts of money flowing through DC are the root causes of this. Its fucked up on all levels and our #1 issue in our government imo. To pretend its a partisan issue is ridiculous. I have never and will never condone using a political office to make bank. Not from Trump, Obama, Bush, anyone. Again...seriously like for the 7th or 8th time...if a law is found to be broken, I will be the first to call his ass out. So far, its been a whole lot of speculation and nowhere near enough actual evidence for me to make a determination. I've been pretty fucking consistent with this. Its not partisan. The executive branch isn't omnipotent. Over half of Congress (Rs and Ds) and a vast majority of media outlets are firmly against anything and everything Trump does, regardless of merit. If there is a smoking gun to be found, it will be. Until then, I reserve judgement. When did I ever say the Geneva Conventions should go? Don't fucking put words in my mouth...or on my posts....whatever. I said fuck them because I have people that I was close with die while in accordance of them, not that they needed to go. Of course there are a hell of a lot of factors that contributed to their deaths than just ROE. I'm not a fucking idiot that only blames the Geneva Convention. I'm 100000% with you on involving ourselves in every conflict. Thats a topic I could rant on for hours. I'm also very much in favor of rules of combat and understand the effects of not following them, as you stated with breeding new terrorists. I'm with you. It just sucks to no end that we always play by the rules against enemies that don't give a fuck about them. We have continuously hand-cuffed ourselves doing the right thing when others, both on our side and against, disregard them completely to save their own asses. That has more to do with the subject of the conversation than my feelings toward Trump. Wanna see me disagree with Trump? Here you go: 1. He is thin-skinned and has repeatedly acted in ways beneath the office to cry, bitch, or moan when he doesn't get his way. 2. The Obamacare repeal/replacement process has been terrible and ineffective. They aren't solving the real problem and have done a horrible job of coming up with anything better. The direction they are going is the wrong one. Unfortunately, a single payer is the way to go. 3. I continue to pray that the border wall is going to be figurative and not a literal giant, ugly structure. Its unnecessary, bad for the environment, petty, and waaaayyyyy too expensive to build, especially given our current debt. I am definitely against illegal immigration, but I do not agree with the wall at all. 4. Trying to implement a new tax plan without healthcare/entitlements figured out first is asinine. Our current tax plan is heavily intertwined with the ACA, SS, Medicare, Unemployment, etc. (on a macro level). Trying to fix taxes before figuring out those accounts is futile. 5. I have no doubts that we will be going to war in the next few years. The considerable ramp up in unit level defense spending and current trends have to mean that something is on the horizon. That scares me. 6. For a while, I used the "serious but not literal" phrase to explain my "support" of Trump. I'm starting to think that motherfucker was actually literal in his campaign rhetoric. I'm not sure I like that at all. That being said, he won the election and deserves the same chances his predecessors had to prove themselves before general, sweeping judgments about his presidency in the first 100 days. For almost everything, I am reserving judgment on most everything until everything shakes out. I voted for Obama first term and did the same for him. Sorry for the rant. That was a lot to respond to.
President making money to give speeches is the exact same thing as a sitting president using his position to obtain patents and copyrights from China and expand their business overseas. So moral of the story both sides equally bad and don't you dare call him a Trumptard because he's told us he is not.
Not in everything. There is plenty of agenda-driven sensationalism in the way his administration has been covered. There is merit in quite a bit of negative coverage he has received, but a ton of it is unwarranted imo. jfc if you can't read and really think I absolved him of enriching himself with the office. My point is that it is the NUMBER 1 problem in Washington on all levels of government and a MUCH bigger issue than just Trump's. Again, completely nonpartisan.
Giving speeches? Are you serious? You really think I was talking about others giving speeches? Obama must have given a shit ton of speeches to be able to afford a $5.5m house. Again, its equally bad on both sides and inbetween. It is the cancer of DC.
He wrote three books. Pretty nefarious. I do agree that money is the cancer of DC but let's please appreciate the varying shades of gray.
Even in a fantasy world where Obama never took illicit contributions, it is still equally bad and the worst thing in our capitol. All 3 branches of government, both sides of Congress, the military brass, and all the underlings of each all scratch and claw their way into as much money as they can get for themselves and their cohorts. Can we not agree on the broader issue?
If anything we should thank Trump for cutting out the middle man and shoveling taxpayer money straight into his own pocket
So Obama is just as bad as Trump obtaining 38 patents, this administration endorsing Ivanka's clothing line and the Trump turning a discussion on Syria into a commercial of Mar-a-Lago chocolate cake? The mental gymnastics that you're doing to defend Trump is remarkable, too bad that's not an Olympic event.
I've refrained from jumping into this because you have seemed to this point honest and earnest - even if misguided - but WHAT A LOAD OF SHIT you are presenting here. You defend Trump's clear unethical enrichment of himself and his family by pointing to past presidents, and when challenged with the facts of the most recent past president you shift to telling everyone to just agree with you on a macro level? Wow.
Don't forget all the other ways Trump is siphoning money into his pockets that we can't be aware of because the voting public didn't think it was important to see Trump's taxes.
what is your security clearance related to? i'm hoping you're not some kind of analyst because nuance doesn't seem to be something you value very much
TwoPoor is the 2nd district in OK not winnable? Only looked at it after that congressman's comments, but did see the seat went to a dem from the 2000 elections through 2012.
Did you really just try and compare a president leaving office with more money than they entered with Trump putting tax payer money straight into his fucking pockets? That pretty much says everything about how far you will go to excuse anything the does.
And who protected our air and waterways after article 5 was invoked by NATO? Other NATO countries. So tell me how we've been dragged into conflicts by NATO?
obama's wealth is mostly from book sales at this point. it's a few million dollars, which is obviously a lot of money, but it's nothing compared to a president funneling tax payer dollars into his businesses at every opportunity
I wonder how much money Trump has made just by visiting Mar a Lago every weekend and upping membership rates. Spoiler: We'll never find out because US citizens are stupid.
If you've ever taken a penny out of a take a penny, leave a penny jar you're as unethical as Bernie Madoff /BetterCallSaul
Much more excited for McKesson's podcast than I am for With Friends Like These. Ana Marie Cox is bad.
For real I unsub'd from WFLT about a month ago. Heard she had an interesting defense lawyer as a guest on the recent show so I downloaded it. Had to turn it off halfway through because she's insufferable.
I keep trying with Ana Marie, but it just doesn't work for me. I don't know this Deray guy that well, but I'll definitely give it a shot.
Skimming through his Wiki, he's been very involved in the BLM and social justice movements. I hope that brings a unique perspective and experience that he can speak on. AMC has no unique experience other than that of a smug white liberal woman blogger/columnist whose main point is "man trump is so bad right guys?"
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/04/24/obama-iran-nuclear-deal-prisoner-release-236966 -Really long investigative piece from Politico on the Iran "Deal". http://www.vox.com/world/2017/4/24/15407078/obama-iran-prison-swap - Vox's summary of Polico's findings (spoilered) Thoughts? Spoiler The Obama White House’s high-profile prisoner swap with Iran in 2016 was a much bigger gift to Iran than the administration ever let on. That’s the takeaway from an investigative report from Politico published Monday, which details how the Obama administration deliberately obscured and downplayed the national security threat posed by the seven Iranian-born prisoners and 14 fugitives freed as part of a deal to bring back five American prisoners held captive in Iran. A number of them were involved in helping Iran procure lethal technology for its military, and at least one of them was accused of helping Iran procure critical equipment for the very nuclear programs the Obama administration was trying to halt with the nuclear deal it struck the year before, according to the article. If fully substantiated, the report would underscore that the White House was willing to go to extraordinary lengths in order to keep Iran on board with the nuclear deal — so far, in fact, that it was willing to undermine its own efforts to track and crack down on Iranian weapons programs. It would also mean the White House was willing to mislead the American public in order to do so. The prisoners Obama sent back to Iran weren’t random businessmen When the Obama administration announced in January 2016 that it was dropping charges against seven Iranian-born prisoners as part of the swap, the president and other senior officials described them as “civilians” and “businessmen.” The administration said the individuals “were not charged with terrorism or any violent offenses,” and were merely charged with things like violating sanctions or the trade embargo against Iran. But the new Politico report reveals that the administration’s portrayal of these individuals, while perhaps technically accurate in a very narrow sense (they were civilians, and they weren’t charged with terrorism offenses), gave a deliberately misleading picture of the kind of activity these people were accused of being involved in. Indeed, in the eyes of Obama’s own Justice Department, many of them were engaged in activities that were directly at odds with the administration’s concerns about Iran’s weapons programs: Three allegedly were part of an illegal procurement network supplying Iran with U.S.-made microelectronics with applications in surface-to-air and cruise missiles like the kind Tehran test-fired recently, prompting a still-escalating exchange of threats with the Trump administration. Another was serving an eight-year sentence for conspiring to supply Iran with satellite technology and hardware. As part of the deal, U.S. officials even dropped their demand for $10 million that a jury said the aerospace engineer illegally received from Tehran. Several of the 14 fugitives for whom the administration dropped charges and arrest warrants were accused of similar activities. The Politico article reports that three of them allegedly tried to lease US aircraft for an Iranian airline that allegedly supported Hezbollah, which the US considers a terrorist organization. Another was believed to have been part of a smuggling ring that illegally imported US-made assault rifles into Iran, and yet another was accused of helping procure “high-tech components for an especially deadly type of IED [improvised explosive device] used by Shiite militias to kill hundreds of American troops in Iraq.” Just so we’re clear: The Obama administration described a person who had allegedly helped procure components for IEDs that would be used to kill Americans in Iraq as a "businessman." That’s like describing Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar as an “entrepreneur”: It’s technically accurate, but it's also a striking omission of critically important details. The most noteworthy fugitive on the list was Seyed Abolfazl Shahab Jamili, who was accused of being “part of a conspiracy that from 2005 to 2012 procured thousands of parts with nuclear applications for Iran via China” which “included hundreds of U.S.-made sensors for the uranium enrichment centrifuges in Iran.” What’s important to note here is that Iran’s progress developing those centrifuges — the ones Jamili was allegedly helping procure parts for — is part of what prompted the Obama administration to try to negotiate the nuclear deal in the first place. In other words, its prisoner swap undermined its own nonproliferation objectives. “This has erased literally years — many years — of hard work, and important cases that can be used to build toward other cases and even bigger players in Iran’s nuclear and conventional weapons programs,” former Justice Department counterproliferation prosecutor David Hall told Politico. When Obama forged the nuclear deal with Iran in 2015, he agreed to lift crippling economic sanctions in exchange for Iran shipping out a large chunk of its enriched uranium and taking thousands of centrifuges offline. But the administration maintained that it still had the right to penalize Iran for developing ballistic missiles and cruise missiles, and illegally obtaining materials for its military. The new information about the swap, however, suggests those other initiatives were not that big of a priority for the administration in light of the deal. Obama was well aware that much of his personal legacy hinged on the outcome of the Iran nuclear deal. The Politico article shows just how far he was willing to go to cement it.
Did you link Vox thinking, "oh that's what THESE people read" I figured those prisoners were in jail for selling counterfeit Nikes or something. I'm shocked and outraged.
No. I tried to get the Politico article to spoiler, but it's really fucking long and kinda formatted strange. Didn't look right. The Vox article was just a better alternative for those that don't want to read the entire piece.
Not a good look for Obummer, but still preferable to Iran continuing to enrich weapons grade material and the inevitable land war that would result.
Don't worry Trump promised to take a look at the dumb deal and we can expect the best results because no one reviews dumb deals as well as Trump. Now that we are respected internationally and defeated ISIS by saying "radical Islam", we can rip up that deal and Iran will have no choice but to accept it. If they have a problem with it we'll go there and take the oil.
Harvard Project Outlines Pattern Of Attorney Failures In Arkansas Death Row Cases http://ualrpublicradio.org/post/har...rn-attorney-failures-arkansas-death-row-cases Disgusting