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Post Election Thread: Democracy Dies In Darkness And You Can Help

T___A

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Ramlaen Advanced Member

Ramlaen

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Posted

 

 

A copypaste tl:dw.

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- During the open hearing on Monday, he encouraged anyone with relevant information regarding surveillance of President-elect Trump or his transition team to come forward and speak to the House Intelligence Committee.

- Information was legally brought to him by official sources that "thought we should know it", presumably due to his request at the hearing. NSA, CIA, FBI leadership did not know that the information was going to be given to him (looks like a whistleblower).

- He can confirm that on numerous occasions, the US intelligence community incidentally collected intelligence information about US citizens involved in the Trump transition. Details about US persons associated with the incoming administration, with little or no apparent foreign intelligence value, were widely disseminated in Intelligence Community reporting.

- He can confirm that additional names of Trump transition team members were unmasked, similar to how General Flynn's name was unmasked.

- None of the information he was able to see in the dozens of reports was related to Russia or the investigation of Russian activities regarding the Trump team.

- Information was not part of a criminal investigation. It looks like "normal Foreign surveillance" under FISA where there was "incidental collection" that was then widely disseminated with unmasked names, but he still needs to get more information.

- He informed Paul Ryan just this morning of this new information.

- He is briefing the President and his team at the White House this afternoon.

- Doesn't know if the information was picked up at Trump Tower, but working to find out details by Friday. Rogers (NSA) appears to be wanting to comply. He's concerned because he doesn't know yet if the FBI will comply. He has called the FBI, no response yet, hoping to talk to Comey later today.

- He has seen intelligence reports that clearly show that the President-elect and his team were monitored and the information disseminated to the IC in a "raw" format.

- Believes collection was performed legally, but the main question is why the names were unmasked and widely disseminated throughout the IC.

- Most of the intercepts occurred in November, December, and January. During the transition period. This does not rule out any other periods of surveillance, this is just what he was able to see today.

- It was "a lot of information about the President-elect, his transition team, and what they were doing".

- He is surprised and "alarmed" by the discovery of this information, because it reminds him of when members of Congress were "incidentally" surveilled a year and a half ago. He doesn't understand how the intelligence regarding what President-elect Trump and his transition team were doing had any relation to foreign intelligence activities.

 

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Collimatrix
Collimatrix

This is just too funny not to share:

EnsignExpendable
EnsignExpendable
Toxn
Toxn

Forwarding "We will fight until the last American" as the new NATO motto.

Collimatrix Advanced Member

Collimatrix

Posted
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16 hours ago, Jeeps_Guns_Tanks said:

So Trump was right in a generic sense? The media is going to be eating a lot of crow, again. 

 

If there turns out to be anything to this, I can foresee the headlines now:

 

 

"Tump wiretap allegations false; it was a combination of wireless, laser microphone and digital metadata techniques used to monitor his communications."

I swear, if Trump walked on water it would be reported as "Trump afraid of water and cannot swim!"

It's making it quite difficult to assess his presidency.

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Collimatrix Advanced Member

Collimatrix

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Alright, we need to start trying to find the most unhinged reporting on Trump we can find.  Points will be awarded for general looniness and mainstream appeal of the publication.

 

For example:

https://medium.com/siip-campaigns/donald-trump-is-unimpeachable-heres-why-f0a7db94d484#.4mq7q8rif

 

Quote

There is no question that Donald J. Trump is a lying, thieving, backstabbing, two-faced, violent criminal.

There is also no doubt that he is the front man for a far-right network of white nationalist politicians and businessmen that want to revive the Confederacy. This network has been contracted by Vladimir Putin to facilitate the takeover of the federal government of the United States as part of a larger effort to dismantle western nations, alliances and power. Collectively, they have occupied the White House and begun the process of dismantling the federal government, isolating the US from its allies, bankrupting the economy, restructuring and hyper-funding the military and cleansing the nation of people of color, the poor, people living with disabilities, non-Christians, and anyone else not deemed part of the master race. Together, under the authority of Donald Trump and his Republican Congress, the GOP and the Russian government are gutting the corpse of the United States and positioning its zombie carcass to carry out the will of an adversarial Putin led eastern alliance that is openly working to dismantle the Western World.

 

Serious points for nuttiness, but medium.com is basically a glorified blogging service.  They let anyone onto it.

 

This:

http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/23/politics/trump-time-interview-wiretaps-falsehoods/index.html

I just content-free spin.  Not very crazy.  But it's from CNN, so that counts for something.

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Ramlaen Advanced Member

Ramlaen

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6 minutes ago, Collimatrix said:

 

The most enticing-but-still-plausible suggestion I've heard is that Trump was setting the bill up for failure and had planned to pin it all on Paul Ryan.  Perhaps he got wise.

 

Yeah I have seen that alot, it is hard to say.

 

There is also this.



WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator and physician Rand Paul released the following statement after U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan pulled the American Health Care Act from a floor vote for the second day in a row: 

“I applaud House conservatives for keeping their word to the American people and standing up against Obamacare Lite,” said Dr. Paul. “I look forward to passing full repeal of Obamacare in the very near future.” 

Earlier this month, Dr. Paul introduced the Obamacare Repeal Act (S. 554), which is the same legislation, with an updated timeline, to repeal major components of Obamacare that an overwhelming Republican majority sent to President Obama’s desk in January 2016. 

 

You can read more about Dr. Paul’s Obamacare Repeal Act HERE. 

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Sturgeon Advanced Member

Sturgeon

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Having two RFPs recognizes the impossibility of Trump’s dream wall: “On day one, we will work on an impenetrable, physical, tall, powerful, beautiful southern border wall,” declared Trump on while campaigning in Phoenix, Arizona last August—but such a monolithic structure for the entire length of the border simply cannot be built.

 

Um, no. That is not what that means.

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Walter_Sobchak Newbie

Walter_Sobchak

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1 hour ago, ShamefurDispray said:

http://www.politico.eu/article/donald-trump-handed-angela-merkel-outrageous-nato-bill-report/

why are people so upset that Trump is suggesting that Germans pay their part?

I think people are a bit concerned about the fact that Trump makes it sound like NATO is some sort of protection racket.  Nobody "owes" money to other NATO countries for protection.  The rules say that a country is supposed to spend 2% of GDP on defense (this rule was created in 2006.)  However, that doesn't mean they owe money to other countries if they fail to meet that mark.  I suspect most of these countries see Trumps demands as a way to either drum up business for US defense firms, or possibly as a way to distance the US from it's NATO commitments (I will refrain from theorizing why Trump would want to weaken NATO.)

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Sturgeon Advanced Member

Sturgeon

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Trump's public position (not gonna try to guess at what goes on inside his head) is that since NATO nations are supposed to to spend 2% of GDP on defense, and many don't instead relying on Uncle Sam for protection, then they should at least pay the US or cancel some of our debt if they're not going to spend that much, since they are putting that burden on us contra to NATO member agreements.

 

You can try to frame that as "Trump doesn't know how NATO works", but that frame isn't really in line with what he actually said.

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Bronezhilet Newbie

Bronezhilet

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The Germans rely on the US for protection?

 

I'd say that Poland and Estonia do rely on the US for protection, but they do spend the 2%.

 

There's also the thing of the countries not actually being required to spend the 2% of the GDP yet.

Quote

Allies whose current proportion of GDP spent on defence is below this level will:

  • halt any decline in defence expenditure;
  • aim to increase defence expenditure in real terms as GDP grows;
  • aim to move towards the 2% guideline within a decade with a view to meeting their NATO Capability Targets and filling NATO's capability shortfalls.

Also keep in mind that this is not a decades old requirement, it's from 2 years ago. So we have until 2024 to reach that 2%.

 

And since it's been implemented, NATO countries actually start to spend more on defence:

cb95ba0fee.png

(Yes I know that the 2016 number is an estimate but I couldn't find the actual number, this is the latest NATO data I could find)

 

So no, Trump doesn't know how this rule (or NATO) works. And nor do a lot of other people.

 

15 hours ago, ShamefurDispray said:

http://www.politico.eu/article/donald-trump-handed-angela-merkel-outrageous-nato-bill-report/

why are people so upset that Trump is suggesting that Germans pay their part?

Because:

A. The USA doesn't own NATO

and

B. The 300 billion is retarded.

 

If Germany had to cover its previous deficits from 2014, 2015 and 2016, it'd come out to be around and about 70-75 billion euro. And I'm being generous here since the 2% agreement stems from September 2014. So it's more like a ~50 billion euro 'debt'. If Germany should be paying anything, it's to themselves. The agreement is to spend 2% GDP on defence not 2% on NATO. And even if, for some retarded reason, they had to pay NATO, it'd be spread out over all countries that spend too much on 'NATO', and not the USA because the USA doesn't fucking own NATO.

 

But hey, it's all bullshit anyway because countries are supposed to have reached the 2% mark by 2024. NATO countries don't owe other NATO countries shit.

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Ramlaen Advanced Member

Ramlaen

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30 minutes ago, Bronezhilet said:

And since it's been implemented, NATO countries actually start to spend more on defence:

cb95ba0fee.png

(Yes I know that the 2016 number is an estimate but I couldn't find the actual number, this is the latest NATO data I could find)

 

http://www.nato.int/nato_static_fl2014/assets/pdf/pdf_2016_07/20160704_160704-pr2016-116.pdf

 

NATO Europe as a whole spent 1.46% of its GDP on defense in 2016.

 

Of the 3 wealthiest members, Germany has spent 1.19% all 3 years, the UK has gone from 2.2% to 2.21% and France has dropped from 1.84% to 1.78%.

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Jeeps_Guns_Tanks Contributing Member

Jeeps_Guns_Tanks

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What is the point if NATO, in 2017? The Soviet Union is defunct. NATO seems to be used to by western Europe as a club to try and intimidate the Russians. Putin's moves in the Ukraine and can be argued as moves to give them some space because NATO keeps bringing border countries around Russia into NATO. The USA has troops on the Russias border.

If Russia or China singed a defensive pact with Mexico and put troops there the US would treat it like an act of war.

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