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And you fucking clowns with your Deep State bullshit and drain the swamp propaganda....... :lol: Some do you fuckers like @Angry ginger @xtralettucetomatoe580 @Nazipigdog @NaturallyAspirated @SSFB Who either voted for Dump or rode the fence got played :thumbsup:  Betsy... :lmao: and you care about your kids and/or the next generation... :dunno:  Histroy will not be kind to the Dump years.....congrats.

89504F70-5891-40D9-B860-2A9282A6EEF3.jpeg

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2 hours ago, SnowRider said:

And you fucking clowns with your Deep State bullshit and drain the swamp propaganda....... :lol: Some do you fuckers like @Angry ginger @xtralettucetomatoe580 @Nazipigdog @NaturallyAspirated @SSFB Who either voted for Dump or rode the fence got played :thumbsup:  Betsy... :lmao: and you care about your kids and/or the next generation... :dunno:  Histroy will not be kind to the Dump years.....congrats.

89504F70-5891-40D9-B860-2A9282A6EEF3.jpeg

You are loony.

Neal

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  • Platinum Contributing Member

Dumbski the Dumper.....any comment on the OP......or are yout here only to defend Dump and not creat any waves among the Clown Posse...:snack:

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1 minute ago, SnowRider said:

Dumbski the Dumper.....any comment on the OP......or are yout here only to defend Dump and not creat any waves among the Clown Posse...:snack:

Yeah how about this you dipshit  :lol: 

Nice "Current Event" you found in a meme at DU  :suicide:

Quote

The founder of the controversial military contracting firm Blackwater, Erik Prince, and his allies lobbied contacts inside the administration to provide the CIA with a private network of intelligence contractors, according to a US official with knowledge of the proposal.

"This idea is going nowhere," the official said and stressed neither the agency nor the director of the CIA is or was ever considering the proposal.
National Security Council spokesman Michael Anton told CNN that "the White House does not and would not support such a proposal" and that, "I can find no evidence that this ever came to the attention of anyone at the NSC or (White House) at all."

 

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1 minute ago, NaturallyAspirated said:

Well it would help your cause if you were somewhat accurate.  Being incompetent in assessment isn't going to convince people.

Neal

He must think everyone is as gullible as he is. :lol: 

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2 minutes ago, Skidooski said:

Yeah how about this you dipshit  :lol: 

Nice "Current Event" you found in a meme at DU  :suicide:

 

5 hours current enough 

Syria: US in talks over Arab force to replace American troops

Problematic proposal is backed by national security adviser John Bolton but could worsen conflict

Julian BorgerLast modified on Wed 18 Apr 2018 03.47 EDT

The Trump administration is renewing an effort to replace US troops in Syria with an Arab force, but the proposal faces substantial obstacles and could potentially exacerbate the conflict.

The Saudi foreign minister, Adel al-Jubeir, said his government was talking to Washington about raising such a force, confirming a report in the Wall Street Journal that said the new US national security adviser, John Bolton, had called the Egyptian intelligence chief, Abbas Kamel, to ask Cairo to play a part in building one.

There are about 2,000 US troops in Syria fighting Islamic State, but Donald Trump has repeatedly expressed a desire to withdraw them.

The idea of an Arab coalition force playing a role in Syria to combat extremist groups and contain Iranian influence has surfaced several times since 2015, but faces severe problems. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are bogged down in a brutal war in Yemen, and have little manpower and few military resources to spare. 

They are also locked in a dispute with Qatar, another potential contributor to a force, while Egypt is much closer to the regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria than its would-be Gulf partners. 

Middle East experts said it was feasible Arab states could fund an army run by private contractors and possibly help recruit soldiers from developing countries such as Sudan. Erik Prince, a Trump ally who founded the military contractor Blackwater USA and now advises the UAE, is lobbying to play a role, according to the Wall Street Journal

A similar offer he made last year to replace US troops with private contractors in Afghanistan was turned down by the Pentagon.

But Prince may have more traction in the White House over Syria. Bolton has argued that the US has borne too much of the military burden in Syria and Arab states should supply troops and material assistance in the fight against Isis.

Meanwhile, the Saudi monarchy and its regional allies are uneasy that events on the ground in Syria are being dictated by external powers, none of which are Arab. 

Emile Hokayem, the senior fellow for Middle East security at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said: “The idea of an Arab expeditionary force emerges every couple of years, and it’s always seen as a politically brilliant idea to create a sense of ownership in the region.

“In reality, the politics of putting a force like that together are almost impossible.

“The question is: have the Saudis consulted the other countries before speaking on their behalf? The Saudis thought Egypt and Pakistan would come to help Yemen and they didn’t.”

The Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, has launched an Islamic military counter-terrorism coalition, which held its first high-level meeting last year, but it has not appeared to be intended for combat.

Charles Lister, the director of the extremism and counter-terrorism programme at the Middle East Institute (MEI), attended the inaugural conference and said the force was intended for training and assistance programmes, rather than combat operations.

Lister said there was “no precedent” for an Arab expeditionary force in Syria. 

“It sounds like the Saudis are continuing to align themselves with President Trump and not speaking the 100% truth about their intent,” he said.

Any Saudi troops deployed to Syria would find themselves directly confronting Iranian fighters and their allies, which could prompt a dangerous escalation in the conflict. 

Randa Slim, who directs the back-channel Track II diplomacy programme at MEI said: “It is one thing for the Saudis to pay for other ‘Islamic forces’ to do the job, and a totally different thing to send their men to a conflict theatre where they are bound to enter into direct confrontation with an entrenched Iranian-Hezbollah force.

“The other factor to consider is: what is Turkey’s response to this proposal? I do not see Ankara welcoming the positions of Egyptian and/or Emirati forces on its border,” Slim said. 

The Obama administration also looked at the possibility of Arab allies deploying counter-terrorist forces against Isis in Syria, but Saudi Arabia and the UAE were drawn into the battle for Yemen against Iranian-backed Houthi rebels.

Nicholas Heras, a fellow at the Center for a New American Security, said: “They preferred to send intelligence officers and money, rather than put troops on the ground.

“But for the Saudis, the trouble is their territory is being breached by Houthis every day. It doesn’t make sense for them to shift their ground forces when they have trouble securing their own border.”

Heras said it was more likely Saudi Arabia would seek to outsource recruitment to countries such as Pakistan and Sudan. “I’m sure the Saudis are up for fighting in Syria to the very last Sudanese soldier,” he said.

Since you’re here …

… we have a small favour to ask. More people are reading the Guardian than ever but advertising revenues across the media are falling fast. And unlike many news organisations, we haven’t put up a paywall – we want to keep our journalism as open as we can. So you can see why we need to ask for your help. The Guardian’s independent, investigative journalism takes a lot of time, money and hard work to produce. But we do it because we believe our perspective matters – because it might well be your perspective, too.

 

I appreciate there not being a paywall: it is more democratic for the media to be available for all and not a commodity to be purchased by a few. I’m happy to make a contribution so others with less means still have access to information. Thomasine, Sweden
 
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/apr/18/us-syria-arab-force-replace-american-troops-saudi-arabia-egypt-uae
 
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27 minutes ago, Skidooski said:

:lol: Yeah...it's "similar" 

The amount of lies and manipulated stories that this guy gets hooked with is just unfathomable.   If it has the name trump, gop, and any type of degradation, he posts it up....and watch out for the memes, they follow soon after.

Edited by racer254
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9 minutes ago, racer254 said:

The amount of lies and manipulated stories that this guy gets hooked with is just unfathomable.   If it has the name trump, gop, and any type of degradation, he posts it up....and watch out for the memes, they follow soon after.

I don't think he understands or cares  what he is posting, really. It is more of a coping mechanism for  when the lies and delusions you have convinced yourself of become insurmountable 

Edited by Cold War
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11 minutes ago, racer254 said:

The amount of lies and manipulated stories that this guy gets hooked with is just unfathomable.   If it has the name trump, gop, and any type of degradation, he posts it up....and watch out for the memes, they follow soon after.

Just a progressive whinny little girl trapped in a mans body stuck selling light bulbs and playing the role of biggest political hack on an obscure snowmobile website because most others have kicked him out. Sometimes I almost feel sorry for him

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4 hours ago, SnowRider said:

5 hours current enough 

Syria: US in talks over Arab force to replace American troops

Problematic proposal is backed by national security adviser John Bolton but could worsen conflict

Julian BorgerLast modified on Wed 18 Apr 2018 03.47 EDT

The Trump administration is renewing an effort to replace US troops in Syria with an Arab force, but the proposal faces substantial obstacles and could potentially exacerbate the conflict.

The Saudi foreign minister, Adel al-Jubeir, said his government was talking to Washington about raising such a force, confirming a report in the Wall Street Journal that said the new US national security adviser, John Bolton, had called the Egyptian intelligence chief, Abbas Kamel, to ask Cairo to play a part in building one.

There are about 2,000 US troops in Syria fighting Islamic State, but Donald Trump has repeatedly expressed a desire to withdraw them.

The idea of an Arab coalition force playing a role in Syria to combat extremist groups and contain Iranian influence has surfaced several times since 2015, but faces severe problems. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are bogged down in a brutal war in Yemen, and have little manpower and few military resources to spare. 

They are also locked in a dispute with Qatar, another potential contributor to a force, while Egypt is much closer to the regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria than its would-be Gulf partners. 

Middle East experts said it was feasible Arab states could fund an army run by private contractors and possibly help recruit soldiers from developing countries such as Sudan. Erik Prince, a Trump ally who founded the military contractor Blackwater USA and now advises the UAE, is lobbying to play a role, according to the Wall Street Journal

A similar offer he made last year to replace US troops with private contractors in Afghanistan was turned down by the Pentagon.

But Prince may have more traction in the White House over Syria. Bolton has argued that the US has borne too much of the military burden in Syria and Arab states should supply troops and material assistance in the fight against Isis.

Meanwhile, the Saudi monarchy and its regional allies are uneasy that events on the ground in Syria are being dictated by external powers, none of which are Arab. 

Emile Hokayem, the senior fellow for Middle East security at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said: “The idea of an Arab expeditionary force emerges every couple of years, and it’s always seen as a politically brilliant idea to create a sense of ownership in the region.

“In reality, the politics of putting a force like that together are almost impossible.

“The question is: have the Saudis consulted the other countries before speaking on their behalf? The Saudis thought Egypt and Pakistan would come to help Yemen and they didn’t.”

The Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, has launched an Islamic military counter-terrorism coalition, which held its first high-level meeting last year, but it has not appeared to be intended for combat.

Charles Lister, the director of the extremism and counter-terrorism programme at the Middle East Institute (MEI), attended the inaugural conference and said the force was intended for training and assistance programmes, rather than combat operations.

Lister said there was “no precedent” for an Arab expeditionary force in Syria. 

“It sounds like the Saudis are continuing to align themselves with President Trump and not speaking the 100% truth about their intent,” he said.

Any Saudi troops deployed to Syria would find themselves directly confronting Iranian fighters and their allies, which could prompt a dangerous escalation in the conflict. 

Randa Slim, who directs the back-channel Track II diplomacy programme at MEI said: “It is one thing for the Saudis to pay for other ‘Islamic forces’ to do the job, and a totally different thing to send their men to a conflict theatre where they are bound to enter into direct confrontation with an entrenched Iranian-Hezbollah force.

“The other factor to consider is: what is Turkey’s response to this proposal? I do not see Ankara welcoming the positions of Egyptian and/or Emirati forces on its border,” Slim said. 

The Obama administration also looked at the possibility of Arab allies deploying counter-terrorist forces against Isis in Syria, but Saudi Arabia and the UAE were drawn into the battle for Yemen against Iranian-backed Houthi rebels.

Nicholas Heras, a fellow at the Center for a New American Security, said: “They preferred to send intelligence officers and money, rather than put troops on the ground.

“But for the Saudis, the trouble is their territory is being breached by Houthis every day. It doesn’t make sense for them to shift their ground forces when they have trouble securing their own border.”

Heras said it was more likely Saudi Arabia would seek to outsource recruitment to countries such as Pakistan and Sudan. “I’m sure the Saudis are up for fighting in Syria to the very last Sudanese soldier,” he said.

Since you’re here …

… we have a small favour to ask. More people are reading the Guardian than ever but advertising revenues across the media are falling fast. And unlike many news organisations, we haven’t put up a paywall – we want to keep our journalism as open as we can. So you can see why we need to ask for your help. The Guardian’s independent, investigative journalism takes a lot of time, money and hard work to produce. But we do it because we believe our perspective matters – because it might well be your perspective, too.

 

I appreciate there not being a paywall: it is more democratic for the media to be available for all and not a commodity to be purchased by a few. I’m happy to make a contribution so others with less means still have access to information. Thomasine, Sweden
 
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/apr/18/us-syria-arab-force-replace-american-troops-saudi-arabia-egypt-uae
 

That one is easy to believe.  Republicans funnelled money to their friends before, they'd do it again.

I've heard rumours that private fire fighting firms let fires burn in order to make more money.  

I'm sure private security firms did the same thing in Iraq.

 

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5 hours ago, Cold War said:

I don't think he understands or cares  what he is posting, really. It is more of a coping mechanism for  when the lies and delusions you have convinced yourself of become insurmountable 

First he wants troops withdrawn, and when trump wants to with draw them and replace them, he complains about who they are replacing them with?  You know, democrats are so ass backwards.  snowbeavis doesn't know what he wants.  Withdraw the troops, no wait,....DERP DERP DERP.

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  • Platinum Contributing Member

More both sides are the same and to all the forum members who want money out of politics...example of Dump’s boy James Ho...:dunno:

 

First-time judge appointed by Trump issues his very first opinion. It’s a doozy.

This is not how judges are supposed to behave.

IAN MILLHISERAPR 19, 2018, 1:19 PM
 

CREDIT: TOM WILLIAMS/CQ ROLL CALL

Judge James Ho has been a federal judge for only a few months. Until Wednesday, he had never handed down a judicial opinion in his life. But the Trump appointee’s very first opinion, a dissent calling for a sweeping assault on campaign contribution limits, is a doozy.

More than just an ideologically radical opinion, Judge Ho’s dissent from the full United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit’s decision not to rehear Zimmerman v. City of Austin is a monument to conservative political rhetoric and right-wing historical myths. It’s the sort of commentary one would expect to find in an especially strident political magazine — perhaps one of the publications one of Ho’s current law clerks used to write for. It is emphatically not the sort of writing one expects to find in a judicial opinion.

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Newly confirmed judges — or, at least, newly confirmed judges who aren’t named “Neil Gorsuch” — are typically more careful than this. They don’t use their very first opinion to burn down the distinction between law and political myth-making.

The core issue in Zimmerman involves an Austin, Texas ordinance prohibiting candidates for mayor or city council from accepting campaign donations greater than $350. It is constitutional, even after the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, to limit contributions directly to candidates — the federal contribution limit of $2,700, for example, is constitutional even under the Roberts Court’s reading of the Constitution.

There are also some Supreme Court decisions suggesting that an excessively low contribution limit might violate the Constitution. But a three-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit held that Austin’s $350 limit is not too low, and 12 of Ho’s 14 colleagues voted not to rehear this case. Judge Ho was one of only two judges who thought that the panel’s decision needed further review. As it happens, Ho spends much of his opinion arguing that the $350 limit is, in fact, too low.

But then he goes even farther. The newly minted judge suggests that all contribution limits “are simultaneously over- and underinclusive—defects that have been held fatal in other First Amendment contexts.” It appears that Judge Ho would even strike down the much higher federal limit.

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The most striking part of Ho’s opinion, however, is his conclusion. There, he steps away from legal argument entirely to launch into a political rant against big government — complete with a gratuitous swipe at Obamacare.

To be sure, many Americans of good faith bemoan the amount of money spent on campaign contributions and political speech. But if you don’t like big money in politics, then you should oppose big government in our lives. Because the former is a necessary consequence of the latter. When government grows larger, when regulators pick more and more economic winners and losers, participation in the political process ceases to be merely a citizen’s prerogative—it becomes a human necessity. This is the inevitable result of a government that would be unrecognizable to our Founders. See, e.g., NFIB v. Sebelius, 567 U.S. 519 (2012).

There’s a lot to break down here, but let’s start with the citation. NFIB v. Sebeliuswas a mostly unsuccessful attempt to convince the Supreme Court to repeal the Affordable Care Act. It has literally nothing to do with any of the legal issues present in Zimmerman. NFIB claimed that a health regulation exceeded Congress’ authority under Article I of the Constitution; Zimmerman is a First Amendment challenge to a campaign finance law.

The only reason to cite NFIB to support the proposition that our government “would be unrecognizable to our Founders” is to take a political swipe at Obamacare and at the Supreme Court that disagreed with Ho’s view of this law.

(Ho’s implication that the Affordable Care Act is inconsistent with the framers’ understanding of the Constitution is also dubious — to the extent that it is even possible to claim that a group of Eighteenth Century political leaders with divergent views shared a common understanding. The very first Supreme Court decision interpreting Congress’ power to regulate interstate commerce provides a great deal of support for the Affordable Care Act.)

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Ho’s suggestion that a modern regulatory and welfare state necessarily requires a lax campaign finance regime is also inaccurate. Canada, with its single-payer health care system, has both strict limits on donations to candidates and even stricter limits on campaign spending. In 2015, for example, the Canada Elections Act limited spending by candidates for the most expensive parliamentary race to about $210,000 US dollars. That’s not nothing, but it is far less than the $28 million raised by competing candidates for a US House race last year.

Great Britain, with its socialized medicine, has a similar regime limiting spending by candidates and parties.

Judge Ho’s appeal to the Founders is James Madison fan fiction. It bears no more resemblance to the original understanding of the Constitution than a Harry Turtledove novel resembles the Civil War.

And then there’s Ho’s suggestion that the Founding Fathers would be appalled by Austin’s limit on campaign contributions. Judge Ho begins his opinion with a flourish. “The unfortunate trend in modern constitutional law is not only to create rights that appear nowhere in the Constitution, but also to disfavor rights expressly enumerated by our Founders,” he writes, adding that “this case reinforces this regrettable pattern.”

But Judge Ho’s appeal to the Founders is nothing more than James Madison fan fiction. It bears no more resemblance to the original understanding of the Constitution than a Harry Turtledove novel resembles the Civil War.

For one thing, attempting to figure out how the framers understood the First Amendment is a fool’s game. As Jud Campbell, a young conservative legal scholar, writes in the Yale Law Journal, “after a century of academic debate . . . the meanings of speech and press freedoms at the founding remain remarkably hazy.” First Amendment scholar Rod Smolla is even more pointed — “One can keep going round and round on the original meaning of the First Amendment, but no clear, consistent vision of what the framers meant by freedom of speech will ever emerge.”

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Judge Ho, in other words, is claiming a level of certainty about the founding era understanding of the First Amendment that evaded scholars for generations. Ho is either a singular and transformative genius in the field of First Amendment history, or he is letting his political desires get ahead of what anyone actually knows.

But here’s something we actually do know about political campaigns at the time of the founding: Fans of the musical Hamilton may remember President Thomas Jefferson’s dismissive swipe at Vice President Aaron Burr near the end of the play — “Man openly campaigns against me, talkin’ bout ‘I look forward to our partnership.'” One reason this line is so biting is because, for much of American history, the idea that a presidential candidate would actively campaign for their own election was considered a vulgarity. Campaigns were typically conducted by surrogates.

As President Andrew Jackson once said to a friend, “I meddle not with elections. I leave the people to make their own President.”

And here’s something else we know about the founding era: they didn’t have television. Or the Internet. Or anything resembling modern political communications. The Founders and their contemporaries had no concept of what a modern political race would look like, or myriad of ways that contemporary technology allows big spenders to shape elections.

There is simply no way to know, in other words, whether modern campaign finance laws “disfavor rights” that the founding generation understood the Constitution to protect. As Doug Kendall and Jim Ryan once wrote of Justice Clarence Thomas’ originalism, asking how 18th Century figures would have reacted to such a transformed landscape is “as productive as asking an only child: Imagine you have a sister. Now, does she like cheese?

 

https://thinkprogress.org/james-ho-campaign-finance-hack-70a2ce3477bc/

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