Russia Backs Trump’s Re-election, and He Fears Democrats Will Exploit Its Support
LOL ... that is the only thing he cares about, is that the Democrats would use it against him.WASHINGTON — Intelligence officials warned House lawmakers last week that Russia was interfering in the 2020 campaign to try to get President Trump re-elected, five people familiar with the matter said, in a disclosure that angered Mr. Trump, who complained that Democrats would use it against him.
The day after the Feb. 13 briefing to lawmakers, Mr. Trump berated Joseph Maguire, the outgoing acting director of national intelligence, for allowing it to take place, people familiar with the exchange said. Mr. Trump cited the presence in the briefing of Representative Adam B. Schiff, the California Democrat who led the impeachment proceedings against him, as a particular irritant.
During the briefing to the House Intelligence Committee, Mr. Trump’s allies challenged the conclusions, arguing that Mr. Trump has been tough on Russia and strengthened European security. Some intelligence officials viewed the briefing as a tactical error, saying that had the official who delivered the conclusion spoken less pointedly or left it out, they would have avoided angering the Republicans.
That intelligence official, Shelby Pierson, is an aide to Mr. Maguire who has a reputation of delivering intelligence in somewhat blunt terms. The president announced on Wednesday that he was replacing Mr. Maguire with Richard Grenell, the ambassador to Germany and long an aggressively vocal Trump supporter.
Original join date: 11/23/2004
Eclectic Connoisseur of all things written, drawn, or imaginatively created.
So I just found out that NBC cut that section of the debate out on their upload...
NBC is a shit network.
Also, there's this piece. But I guess If I call her out, that makes me a Bros?
WaPo Opinion Piece Calls For Elites to Have a 'Bigger Say in Choosing President'
In the piece, Azari makes the case that the uncertainty of the primary process doesn’t help political parties prepare for the general election. "Preference primaries” would be a better system, she argued.
For decades, the conversation about nominations has been about the conflicts between party elites and everyone else. Today, that conversation is counterproductive. A better approach is to think about how voters and elites could best play their different roles: to make their political parties more representative while ultimately narrowing the nomination choice down to one person. And the best way to do that would be through preference primaries.
Preference primaries could allow voters to rank their choices among candidates, as well as to register opinions about their issue priorities — like an exit poll, but more formal and with all the voters. The results would be public but not binding; a way to inform elites about voter preferences.
This process could accompany a primary of the sort we’re used to — in which voters’ first choices instruct the delegates, and preferences come into play only if there’s no clear winner. The primaries could also be held in combination with elections for convention delegates so that these representatives are informed by their constituents’ preferences. This would also help voters hold these delegates accountable in the future. The point is to build a way for party elites to understand what their base is thinking, and to allow them to bargain so that these different preferences and priorities can be balanced. (WaPo)
As you could've guessed, the piece did not go over well on social media.
I was reading this today.
I got to the polling comparison and all I can say is.....polling Nevada is just ridiculous. Those numbers are so all over the place. It wouldn't shock me a bit if Saturday turned out shocking.
Ding ding ding ding. Looking at social media... honestly I can't tell the difference (in terms of unmitigated hate) between Trump supporters and Sanders supporters. If you check any post by Mayor Pete on Twitter, click on the poster of a negative comment, 90% of the time it leads to a Sanders supporter or a Trump supporter.
It's just... ugh. How to make your candidate loathsome 101. Five days ago I didn't really care about the Democratic nominations, now I'm rooting for anyone but Sanders (and encouraging my American friends to realise nastiness and hate doesn't just "happen" it comes from somewhere and follow those bread-crumbs). But hey, who knows, maybe Corbyn Mark II will actually get it and we'll see if history repeats itself...
"We are Shakespeare. We are Michelangelo. We are Tchaikovsky. We are Turing. We are Mercury. We are Wilde. We are Lincoln, Lorca, Leonardo da Vinci. We are Alexander the Great. We are Fredrick the Great. We are Rustin. We are Addams. We are Marsha! Marsha Marsha Marsha! We so generous, we DeGeneres. We are Ziggy Stardust hooked to the silver screen. Controversially we are Malcolm X. We are Plato. We are Aristotle. We are RuPaul, god dammit! And yes, we are Woolf."
"We are Shakespeare. We are Michelangelo. We are Tchaikovsky. We are Turing. We are Mercury. We are Wilde. We are Lincoln, Lorca, Leonardo da Vinci. We are Alexander the Great. We are Fredrick the Great. We are Rustin. We are Addams. We are Marsha! Marsha Marsha Marsha! We so generous, we DeGeneres. We are Ziggy Stardust hooked to the silver screen. Controversially we are Malcolm X. We are Plato. We are Aristotle. We are RuPaul, god dammit! And yes, we are Woolf."
It takes a lot of privilege to decide who you want to win based on how annoying online supporters were to you.
I disagree with people here a lot but our differences are because they don't think Sanders can win in the general. You're saying policies and politics don't matter if you were personally annoyed by someone.
Last edited by Superbat; 02-20-2020 at 04:49 PM.
Bernie2020
Not Me. Us
They’re also invading the air waves.
https://www.kansascity.com/opinion/e...KzjPWQ6TgqXknQ
“Liberty-based Alpine Broadcasting Corp. has agreed to lease air time on three local radio stations — KCXL 1140 AM, 102.9 FM and 104.7 FM — to push out the Russian government’s “Radio Sputnik” show six hours a day in the Kansas City area.”
Hawks say Sanders will be weak on Russia. But Putin should fear a President Bernie
https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...-putin-kremlin
Whereas recent US foreign policy has emboldened the Kremlin, Sanders actually understands how to undermine it
He may not be running, but Vladimir Putin is already a formidable presence in the 2020 US presidential campaign. From concerns about Russian aggression abroad to anxieties about electoral interference at home, Putin has become a question to which all presidential candidates are expected to have a strongly worded answer – particularly in the wake of Donald Trump’s failed impeachment, in which the Democratic party sought to make the case that “all roads lead to Putin”.
The conventional wisdom in US foreign policy is that military competition is necessary to contain Putin and circumscribe the Russian sphere of influence. “The United States aids Ukraine and her people so that they can fight Russia over there, and we don’t have to fight Russia over here,” said the Republican adviser Tim Morrison during the impeachment hearings – a quote then repeated by Adam Schiff, chairman of the House intelligence committee, in his opening argument.
It is in this context that the rise of Bernie Sanders is raising fears inside the Democratic party establishment. Sanders has long been a leading advocate of military restraint, and he is campaigning on a platform of “responsible foreign policy” that promises to end America’s “endless war”. Despite speech after speech in which the senator decries Putin’s criminal authoritarianism, a narrative is now developing that his presidency would amount to a great gift to the Kremlin. “If I’m Russian, I go with Sanders this time around,” tweeted the former Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein.
But most advocates of military competition fundamentally misunderstand the nature of Kremlin power – a misunderstanding that has led the US to fail, time and again, in its attempt to contain Putin. The promise of Sanders’ foreign policy platform is precisely that it turns the conventional wisdom on its head, showing how the US government can use domestic reform as a strategy to undermine Putin’s authoritarian aggression abroad.
To make sense of this strategy, it is necessary to see the three pillars on which Putin’s regime rests. The first of these pillars is hydrocarbons: the vast reserves of oil and gas in Russia that deliver large revenues and deep political loyalties both within Russia and across Europe. Russian oil and gas output is currently at a record high 11.25m barrels per day, generating $44.4bn each year from countries such as Germany that have become heavily reliant on Russian gas exports.
The second pillar of Putin’s power is corruption. Russia is today a kleptocracy, a political system that runs on kickbacks, bribes and pocketed public money for loyal oligarchs. Their dark money, of course, does not stay in Russia. Instead, it circulates through the vast international system of murky finance – into Deutsche Bank and Danske Bank, into London real estate and US shell companies – buying allegiance to the regime along the way.
And the third pillar is propaganda: Putin and his allies actively seek to stir up conflict abroad in order to strengthen nationalist loyalties at home. From the very beginning of his tenure, Putin has fomented violence and aggression against Russia’s “enemies” – be they Chechen, Ukrainian or American – as a strategy to boost his own popularity.
Far from attacking these pillars of Kremlin power, recent US foreign policy has served to strengthen them. The Barack Obama administration, for example, aggressively pursued a fossil fuels arms race against Russia, further entrenching the global addiction to hydrocarbons. Meanwhile, Obama presided over a flood of Russian oligarchs’ cash into the US, even as his secretary of state, Hillary Cinton, drew comparisons between Putin and Hitler.
Sanders, by contrast, seeks to dismantle each of the three pillars at their base. Rather than deepening US dependence on oil and gas, he is promoting a Green New Deal with major provisions to support a green transition beyond US borders. By driving decarbonisation among US allies in Europe and around the world, Sanders promises to reduce Putin’s geopolitical leverage.
Rather than ignoring the illicit financial system, Sanders is advocating a programme of “corporate accountability” to shut down tax havens, eliminate anonymous shell companies and strictly regulate the Wall Street banks that have facilitated the flow of kleptocrats’ cash all around the world.
Finally, Sanders avoids the lazy cold war rhetoric about “the Russians” that helps boost Putin’s legitimacy back at home. Instead, his approach is infrastructural, attacking the nodes of the illicit finance network rather than the individual “bad actors” operating within it.
In short, Sanders is shifting away from the antiquated paradigm of “foreign policy” – with its clear demarcations of home and abroad and its appeals to a unified national interest – and towards “foreign politics”. He is targeting the global architecture of kleptocracy in which many US firms and passport holders are complicit, and building ties with social movements around the world that can serve as allies in the fight against state corruption.
Progressives cannot afford to be naive in their approach to Putin. His efforts to consolidate a sphere of influence are unlikely to abate, regardless of the 2020 election outcome. But for all the Democratic party’s legitimate fears about Russian aggression, it cannot retreat to an outdated paradigm that approaches Russia as a question of military security alone.
It should come as no surprise, therefore, that those who understand Putin’s kleptocratic system – such the leader of the Russian opposition, Alexei Navalny – are now rooting for Sanders. It is only by undermining that system, not competing with it, that the US can truly weaken Putin’s authoritarian grip, and make way for a new democratic movement to flourish in Russia.
Bernie2020
Not Me. Us
Twitter Link with VideoElizabeth Warren over the Ether beat
Original join date: 11/23/2004
Eclectic Connoisseur of all things written, drawn, or imaginatively created.