U.S. Politics

[il_serpente]

Imagine wanting to know the name of Americans caught communicating with Russia's foreign minister in the aftermath of Russia having been proven to have interfered in the election.   The nerve!

[villakram]

3 hours ago, il_serpente said:

Imagine wanting to know the name of Americans caught communicating with Russia's foreign minister in the aftermath of Russia having been proven to have interfered in the election.   The nerve!

Imagine the incoming presidential team having their national security advisor get in contact with the ambassador of one of the global nuclear powers and a long term strategic threat/partner with the US.

This is as standard a practice as it gets and the reason why the Obama team are looking all sorts of bad right now.

[TheAuthority]

57 minutes ago, villakram said:

Imagine the incoming presidential team having their national security advisor get in contact with the ambassador of one of the global nuclear powers and a long term strategic threat/partner with the US.

This is as standard a practice as it gets and the reason why the Obama team are looking all sorts of bad right now.

But when they got in touch they weren't the incoming presidential team. Trump was only the presumptive Republican nominee at that point.

Edited May 15, 2020 by TheAuthority
spelling

[il_serpente]

It is NOT standard practice for the nominated (not confirmed) Incoming national security advisor to be in contact with a foreign government behind the back of the current administration.  And when that foreign government has been shown to have interfered in the recent election to help the winning candidate, possibly making the difference in a close election, and the incoming nominated national security advisor is known to have been on the payroll of a media organization sponsored (probably controlled entirely) by that foreign government, I don't think it's unreasonable for the administration to want to be notified if they're talking outside official channels.   And when the national security advisor lies to congress to try to hide the contact, I think that's maybe enough validation that the suspicion was justified.   But hey, maybe that's just me who thinks that.

[sne]

Well I for one am shocked that someone would do something like this. Shocked I tells ya.

Quote

The Republican chairman of the US Senate intelligence committee will step down while an insider trading inquiry is carried out.

The senator, who denies wrongdoing, allegedly used inside information to avoid market losses from coronavirus.

Mr Burr and his wife sold as much as $1.7m (£1.4m) of equities in February, just before markets plunged on fears of an economic crisis.

It is illegal for members of Congress to trade based on non-public information gathered during their official duties.

Republican Senators Kelly Loeffler of Georgia and James Inhofe of Oklahoma, as well as Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, also reportedly sold holdings before the downturn, but are not confirmed to be under investigation.

Public disclosures first investigated by ProPublica show the senator sold more than 30 stocks between late January and mid-February. Some of the stocks were in sectors now devastated by the coronavirus outbreak, such as the hotel, restaurant and shipping industries. 

As chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, Mr Burr receives nearly daily briefings on threats to US national security. He defended the transactions, saying he had "relied solely on public news reports" to instruct his decision to sell

However, he was criticised for publicly downplaying the seriousness of the virus, even as he privately sold equities and warned a private North Carolina business group of the stark risks it posed.

The bulk of Mr Burr's sales occurred on 13 February, just before his speech to the wealthy business constituent group about the dire economic impact of the coronavirus, at a time when the Trump administration was publicly downplaying the threat.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52668126

Edited May 15, 2020 by sne

[Stevo985]

On 12/05/2020 at 12:41, HanoiVillan said:

That end of that press conference

I mean, just look at the state of it:

Firstly, it looks like something out of a low-budget post-apocalyptic horror movie. Then secondly, there's just something about that whole image, her bent over, beseeching him through a mask to be allowed permission to ask a question, it's just grim. Obviously he loves this image of supplication, and I guess we're only about six months away from him insisting they do this in clown masks or only in their underwear or something.

It's an incredible demonstration of the power of partisanship that somewhere up to 45% of Americans can watch him turn away from being asked a question and just walk off without explanation and think to themselves, 'you go Don, show that fake news media!', rather than 'Christ, what an absolute baby'.

I saw the video on Twitter and so many of the replies to it, and I mean I reckon at least 75%, were supportive of Trump. "Trump's right though..." "Yeah it is China's problem" etc etc. Seemingly entirely missing the point.

A lot of them were british accounts too.

[villakram]

Space Force

 

[blandy]

Compare and contrast. Frightening. Trump interspersed with Merkel, Ardern and the other sane ones.

 

[Xann]

Quote

‘Stealth Bailout’ Shovels Millions of Dollars to Oil Companies

As it headed toward bankruptcy, Diamond Offshore Drilling Inc. took advantage of a little-noticed provision in the stimulus bill Congress passed in March to get a $9.7 million tax refund. Then, it asked a bankruptcy judge to authorize the same amount as bonuses to nine executives.

The rig operator is one of dozens of oil companies and contractors now claiming hundreds of millions of dollars in tax rebates. They are employing a provision of the $2.2 trillion stimulus law, called the CARES act, that gives them more latitude to deduct recent losses.

“This is a stealth bailout for the oil and gas industry,” said Jesse Coleman, a senior researcher with Documented, a watchdog group tracking the tax claims. It’s geared to companies “that have been losing money over the last few years -- and now they get that money back as a check from the taxpayers. That’s exactly what the oil industry has been doing.”

Bloomberg

Edited May 16, 2020 by Xann

[mjmooney]

Edited for rude word. 

Edited May 17, 2020 by mjmooney

[choffer]

[bickster]

Trump reckons he's been taking hydroxychloroquine for a couple of weeks.

It's bullshit, it's dangerous bullshit and if it isn't bullshit lets hope it kills him

[Lichfield Dean]

 

[villakram]

38 minutes ago, bickster said:

Trump reckons he's been taking hydroxychloroquine for a couple of weeks.

It's bullshit, it's dangerous bullshit and if it isn't bullshit lets hope it kills him

That is not true, and could be construed as a dangerous statement in itself. 

There is a protocol under use in many hospitals globally with HCQ+. It's especially useful when combined with some zinc, e.g., https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04377646 (src trial site, so I'm not quoting). The mechanism is supposedly that the hcq can get the zinc into the cells, and it is the zinc that interferes with the viral binding mechanism. Zinc on its own can't get into the cell efficiently and I believe the trials to date have shown minimal efficacy of hcq, although these trials were focussed on late stage hospitalized patients. Carrying out such a study on early stage patients is a much, much trickier task.

Now, ingesting fish tank cleaning salts is an entirely different story.

[maqroll]

Grassy grassy knoll y'all

[maqroll]

Of course, if the Orange Menace were grassy knolled, his deranged army of cultists would begin a wholesale slaughter on the streets as revenge.

[maqroll]

Peter Navarro is a **** goon.

[HanoiVillan]

I don't get why hydroxychloroquine is the new front in the Never-Ending Culture War. What's the point? It either works or it doesn't, and so far it mostly looks like it doesn't. So why is Trump pushing it so hard?

The two options that immediately suggest themselves are either that he somehow has a financial stake in the product, or that he's so proud that he literally cannot bear not to have been right about it months ago, even though it's completely understandable that a promising candidate treatment would turn out to be unsuccessful.

But really, even these scarcely seem worthy of the bizarre boosting he's giving it all the time.

[maqroll]

I feel my blood pressure going up lately and grey hairs are coming in.

[maqroll]

They are trashing the CDC, when it's their own agency, staffed with their own people! It's a total farce!