U.S. Politics: Russian Around

[Martell Spy]

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“What [the insurance industry] also tells us,” Ryan said, “is that if you only repeal the law—gut and repeal the law, as some folks are suggesting—then you have triple-digit premium increases, and you’ll collapse the individual market.”

Paul Ryan, About Seven Years Too Late, Explains Why Full Repeal Would Be a Disaster

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2017/03/09/paul_ryan_uses_a_powerpoint_presentation_to_sell_his_ailing_health_care.html

[Mexal]

11 minutes ago, All-for-Joffrey said:

 

So did the Clinton email investigations. 

No they didn't. What new stuff did we learn? She used private email. It contained 100 classified emails out of 33,000. What else?

[Swordfish]

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How is it a double standard? I'm not "hand waving" (to use a ManholeEnuuchsbane term) Obama's war crimes -- I'm merely pointing out that they're poised to get a lot worse under Trump. The evidence is the increased rate of civilian casualties. 

I'm not accusing you of hand waving anything. I'm just comparing the weight you seem to be giving to the Yemen shitshow and the weight you seem to be giving to the Russian stuff.

Is the increase in civilian casualty rate called out in your article?  I haven't read it yet, but I'm curious.... Increased compared to what?

I'll take a look at the article.

[All-for-Joffrey]

42 minutes ago, Swordfish said:

I'm not accusing you of hand waving anything. I'm just comparing the weight you seem to be giving to the Yemen shitshow and the weight you seem to be giving to the Russian stuff.

Is the increase in civilian casualty rate called out in your article?  I haven't read it yet, but I'm curious.... Increased compared to what?

I'll take a look at the article.

From the article:

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Although some details about the mission remain unclear, the account that has emerged suggests the Trump White House is breaking with Obama administration policies that were intended to limit civilian casualties. The change — if permanent — would increase the likelihood of civilian deaths in so-called capture or kill missions like the January 29 raid.

 

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While the Yakla raid supposedly took place under

 presidential policy guidelines set up under the Obama administration — standards repeatedly used to defend the U.S. drone program — further developments last week indicate the Trump administration is no longer abiding by the condition of “near certainty” that civilians will not be killed or injured in operations.

A defense official speaking to the Washington Post stated that the military has been granted temporary authority to regard selected areas of Yemen as “areas of active hostility.” That change, while shortening the approval process for military action, effectively puts the U.S. on a war footing in any area of Yemen designated, but unlikely to be disclosed, by the military, noted Cori Crider, a lawyer at the international human rights organization Reprieve who has represented Yemeni drone strike victims. This authority has a lower bar: Civilian deaths have to be “proportionate” rather than avoided with a “near certainty,” as set out by the previous administration for the use of lethal force “outside areas of active hostilities.”

“This means that all of those much-vaunted ‘standards’ the Obama administration said they were using to minimize civilian casualties in drone strikes in Yemen have been chucked right out the window,” said Crider.

In a press briefing on March 3, Davis told reporters that the legal authority for carrying out the January raid and recent strikes “was delegated by the president through the secretary of defense” to U.S. Central Command. But when contacted by The Intercept, the Pentagon could not clarify whether al Ghayil was still considered to be outside areas of active hostilities during the botched raid.

Other outlets have similarly  intimated that the administration is scrapping the Obama rules of engagement for looser ones. Of course since the White House and DOD don't disclose that sort of stuff, the best we can do is look at the hard numbers of civilian casualties on the ground. And in Yemen, Iraq, and Syria, that uptick -- as reported by groups like SOHR, HRW, etc, is very worrying. (I've already offered you Sam Oakford's article in Skywars but I suggest reading his article in Vice as well.) And it's not like this is occurring with a vacuum, it's essentially Trump fulfilling his campaign trail threats. 

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

39 minutes ago, All-for-Joffrey said:

Oh, I don't know, maybe it's your tendency to dismiss any rational debunking of your BS grand conspiracy claims that no serious reporter have actually suggested or any non-hawkish approaches to Russia on certain issues as "hand waving" or the fact that you literally just implied we should only talk about Russia because Russia is the only thing likely to get Trump impeached. Or maybe just the fact that you're accusing a Russian dissident journalist who's living in the US least she gets killed by Putin -- someone who clearly knows her shit and has presumably much more expertise than you or I about this topic -- as "hand waving." Or the fact that US cable news (minus Fox obviously) devotes ~80% of its coverage to Russia now as opposed to everything else that's going on -- which I think is where you're getting a lot of your cues from. 

The one salient point the author of that article makes is that one shouldn't follow this story to the detriment of all the other plotlines that are going on. Sure, the Travel Ban is a more important story. The repeal and replace of the ACA is a more important story. This is a false concern in my estimation. I'm capable of staying abreast of more than one story at a time. Am I more interested in this plotline than is warranted? Maybe, but I don't need someone else to make that determination for me.

[All-for-Joffrey]

30 minutes ago, Mexal said:

No they didn't. What new stuff did we learn? She used private email. It contained 100 classified emails out of 33,000. What else?

Ask the "lock her up" folks and they'll insist that a random email that the media picked up that day was indicative of a broader problem with Clinton. (IE: The factually twisted Clinton approved Russian uranium sales story.) Basically there was always some new news "peg" like that that was amplified even when it was much ado about nothing. This new development on the GOP lethal aid to Ukraine platform language (or lack thereof to be accurate) falls in a similar vein. A Trump campaign staffer said Trump gave the go ahead for a policy change and it's giving new fuel to a story that's over 6 months old at this point with people like you using it as "evidence" that Trump is either colluding with or compromised by the Russians. 

[all swedes are racist]

16 hours ago, Cas Stark said:

Maybe no Russians leak anything to anyone because they figure that Putin will poison them or shoot them down in the street. 

lol, because we know that sort of stuff is beneath the cia 

[Week]

4 minutes ago, All-for-Joffrey said:

(IE: The factually twisted Clinton approved Russian uranium sales story.) 

False is the term you are looking for here.

http://www.snopes.com/hillary-clinton-uranium-russia-deal/

[Cas Stark]

8 minutes ago, supernintendo chalmers said:

lol, because we know that sort of stuff is beneath the cia 

Snowden is alive.  Manning is alive.  Assange is alive.

I'm sure you can easily find at least half a dozen of Putin's enemies who are dead, but if you think crossing Putin is the same as crossing U.S. intelligence, good for you.

 

[Mexal]

26 minutes ago, All-for-Joffrey said:

Ask the "lock her up" folks and they'll insist that a random email that the media picked up that day was indicative of a broader problem with Clinton. (IE: The factually twisted Clinton approved Russian uranium sales story.) Basically there was always some new news "peg" like that that was amplified even when it was much ado about nothing. This new development on the GOP lethal aid to Ukraine platform language (or lack thereof to be accurate) falls in a similar vein. A Trump campaign staffer said Trump gave the go ahead for a policy change and it's giving new fuel to a story that's over 6 months old at this point with people like you using it as "evidence" that Trump is either colluding with or compromised by the Russians. 

You are missing the point again. It's getting tiresome. 

The new information on the Ukrainian platform isn't that it was done; we already know that. The new information is that Paul Manaforts protege, who is a Russian national, who has been investigated for ties to Russian Intelligence, claims to have influenced the change in language when he flew to the USA twice. This is new information that creates a link between Manafort, Russian Intelligence and Trump lying about the change that was not previously there before. That is the point you have ignored over and over to focus on the language itself. This is potential collusion which needs to be investigated and is new information. It is not the same level as a new email.

[aceluby]

Get ready for the parade of false equivalencies!  We've only seen the beginning.

[All-for-Joffrey]

16 minutes ago, Cas Stark said:

Snowden is alive.  Manning is alive.  Assange is alive.

I'm sure you can easily find at least half a dozen of Putin's enemies who are dead, but if you think crossing Putin is the same as crossing U.S. intelligence, good for you.

 

To be fair, while they're not assassinating US "dissidents" today, they do have a history of doing so. 

http://www.thekingcenter.org/assassination-conspiracy-trial

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The widow of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. says she feels vindicated by a jury's finding in December 1999 that her husband was the victim of a conspiracy, not a lone assassin, and says it is the duty of the Justice Department to look at the information presented in the Memphis case.

"I think that if people will look at the evidence that we have, it's conclusive and I think the Justice Department has a responsibility to do what it feels is the right thing to do, the just thing to do," Coretta Scott King, told CBS Early Show Anchor Bryant Gumbel a day after the trial.

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A cover-up following the assassination in Memphis in 1968 involved the FBI, CIA, the media and Army intelligence, as well as many state and city officials, Pepper said. He told the jurors they could rewrite history with a conspiracy verdict.

"We're asking you to send a message...to all of those in power that you cannot get away with it," Pepper said during his closing argument.

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Pepper said King was killed because of his opposition to the war and his planned "poor people's march" on Washington. Those activities angered big-money defense contractors and threatened a redistribution of wealth in America, he said.

King planned to assemble thousands of protesters at a tent city in Washington and those in power "were afraid that mob would overrun the capital," Pepper said.

 

[denstorebog]

Meanwhile, Trump announces a new campaign rally.

I really want to think that these events are strategic miscalculations born out of a narcissistic need that even his advisers can't put a lid on. That the rallies will gather a bunch of fanatics, but that they will also make some of his more moderate supporters annoyed. Could go a long way towards getting those precious poll numbers down to where they become an issue.

[Kalbear]

6 minutes ago, denstorebog said:

Meanwhile, Trump announces a new campaign rally.

I really want to think that these events are strategic miscalculations born out of a narcissistic need that even his advisers can't put a lid on. That the rallies will gather a bunch of fanatics, but that they will also make some of his more moderate supporters annoyed. Could go a long way towards getting those precious poll numbers down to where they become an issue.

This in particular is designed to put pressure on senate republicans to vote for the Trumpcare bill. I suspect you'll see more in places like Ohio, Kentucky, and West Virginia. 

[Mlle. Zabzie]

1 minute ago, Kalbear said:

This in particular is designed to put pressure on senate republicans to vote for the Trumpcare bill. I suspect you'll see more in places like Ohio, Kentucky, and West Virginia. 

Precisely.  And they will work.

[All-for-Joffrey]

22 minutes ago, Mexal said:

You are missing the point again. It's getting tiresome. 

The new information on the Ukrainian platform isn't that it was done; we already know that. The new information is that Paul Manaforts protege, who is a Russian national, who has been investigated for ties to Russian Intelligence, claims to have influenced the change in language when he flew to the USA twice. This is new information that creates a link between Manafort, Russian Intelligence and Trump lying about the change that was not previously there before. That is the point you have ignored over and over to focus on the language itself. This is potential collusion which needs to be investigated and is new information. It is not the same level as a new email.

Dude, we've known Manafort is under investigation for his links to Russian intelligence agents for months now. It was also pretty obvious all the way back summer that keeping the lethal assistance language out of the GOP platform was Manafort's doing. Again, this isn't as new or groundbreaking as you think it is. It's just more detail to flesh out a story that most of us have already been able to surmise. 

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Get ready for the parade of false equivalencies!  We've only seen the beginning.

I'm not making a false equivalency between Clinton's private email server to skirt open records laws and the much more serious allegations facing Manafort et al of collaborating with Russian intelligence agents. I'm pointing out that taking a minor new angle to a story is generating the same kind of media phenomenon where the smallest development is making the anti-Trump folks act like it's a whole new scandal tantamount to Trump collaborating with the Russian sin the DNC hack.

But screw it, I'm done with this BS. Keep having your Russia tea party. I'll engage in the topics I want to and just hope it doesn't get drowned out by the basic Russia crap. 

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

5 minutes ago, All-for-Joffrey said:

Dude, we've known Manafort is under investigation for his links to Russian intelligence agents for months now. It was also pretty obvious all the way back summer that keeping the lethal assistance language out of the GOP platform was Manafort's doing. Again, this isn't as new or groundbreaking as you think it is. It's just more detail to flesh out a story that most of us have already been able to surmise. 

Once again, how does this shield Trump in any way, shape or form? That Manafort pushed it doesn't change anything. Had Manafort not been a part of the primary winning Trump campaign, he wouldn't have had the means to change the plank. They are tied together. Complicit.

[OldGimletEye]

It’s probably not a good idea to think about how you're going to stop a panzer thrust through the Ardenne, when it looks like you are facing a protracted "low intensity" war in the jungle.

http://voxeu.org/article/revisiting-paradox-capital

Though the Trumpster might think so.

Tales of trying to fight the last war, instead of the next one:

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Basic economic theory suggests that saving should flow from relatively wealthy, capital-rich countries to poorer countries where capital is scarce and profitable investment opportunities should therefore be abundant. While that pattern broadly held true before WWI, it has been harder to observe after WWII, as stressed by Robert Lucas (1990) nearly three decades ago. Indeed, around the start of the current millennium and up until the 2008 Global Crisis, poorer countries had growing current account surpluses and richer countries growing deficits, leading to what Mervyn King and Raghuram Rajan in 2006 characterised as an “uphill flow” of capital in the global economy (King 2006, Rajan 2006).  Recent research has argued that even within the group of emerging market and developing economies (EMDEs), capital flows do not necessarily favour countries with relatively higher productivity growth (Prasad et al. 2007, Gourinchas and Jeanne 2013).

 

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Basic economic theory suggests that saving should flow from relatively wealthy, capital-rich countries to poorer countries where capital is scarce and profitable investment opportunities should therefore be abundant.

Now conservative sorts of people don’t generally have a problem with this, even if such a thing might lead to lower wages in the home economy. But, conservative sorts of people do seem to have a problem with it, if we are talking about corporate tax rates.

Not, that I’d question conservative sorts of people’s motivations. I’m just sayin.

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Other things being equal, countries with lower ratios of capital to labour should have higher autarky interest rates. But other things are usually not equal. Lucas (1990) asked why countries with very low capital-to-labour ratios do not have sky-high autarky interest rates; one reason he suggested was the scarcity of human capital complementary with physical capital. But there are others. A high propensity to save can overwhelm the effects of capital scarcity, just as a surge in investment productivity can raise the return to investment notwithstanding an already high capital-to-labour ratio. Conversely, weak institutions and property rights can lower the perceived productivity of investment, as emphasised by Alfaro et al. (2008). Even when the return to investment is potentially high, financial market imperfections can reduce the autarky interest rate, limiting investment and driving saving abroad, as in the models of Caballero et al. (2008) and Mendoza et al. (2009). Evidence over decades, ranging from Harberger (1980) to Caselli and Feyrer (2007), suggests rather limited divergences in the rates of return to capital across countries, not closely related to differences in measured capital-to-labour ratios

A lot of the trade deficit with China, if not all of it, likely had something do with Chinese savers looking for safe stores of value and not being able to find them in their own country.

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Going forward, the direction of flows will depend on the relative strength of several forces. Another surge in EMDE saving is unlikely, given China’s gradual adjustment to a slower, more consumption-oriented growth model and the relatively subdued outlook for commodities. Stronger growth and infrastructure needs in EMDEs, as well as structural changes like demographics in advanced economies, could push excess saving to EMDEs.

A couple of things the Trumpsters might want to keep in mind:

1. The Chinese Government has acknowledge the need for more consumption oriented growth.

2. It’s in China’s interest to develop better and deeper financial markets.

3. Eventually perhaps, the so called “communist” leaders of China might stop puttin on airs of being Communist. With “communist” like that, who in the fuck needs the Kook Brothers? Anyway, China, to my knowledge, right now has some woefully inadequate safety nets. I wouldn’t be surprised if eventually better safety nets are put into place.

All, these factors, I’d imagine will help to re-balance China’s export position.

Anyway, the Trumpsters rhetoric needed to be put in a little context.

[All-for-Joffrey]

3 minutes ago, Manhole Eunuchsbane said:

Once again, how does this shield Trump in any way, shape or form? That Manafort pushed it doesn't change anything. Had Manafort not been a part of the primary winning Trump campaign, he wouldn't have had the means to change the plank. They are tied together. Complicit.

!$$#!%$!%#@

Because last time I checked, Trump isn't involved with said Russian intelligence agent and there is no evidence to indicate that. Trump hired a shitty campaign manager. What a shocker. 

[Kalbear]

6 minutes ago, All-for-Joffrey said:

I'm not making a false equivalency between Clinton's private email server to skirt open records laws

And your evidence for this being the motivation is?

Here's the first tactic you're using that you accuse others of - you take something that isn't established or even reported on as fact and go from there. 

6 minutes ago, All-for-Joffrey said:

and the much more serious allegations facing Manafort et al of collaborating with Russian intelligence agents. I'm pointing out that taking a minor new angle to a story is generating the same kind of media phenomenon where the smallest development is making the anti-Trump folks act like it's a whole new scandal tantamount to Trump collaborating with the Russian sin the DNC hack.

I think it's a new development to find out that more people are actually lying about this on a regular basis. When the story goes that no one in the campaign had contact with Russia to 'these people did, but it wasn't that big a deal' to 'these people did and actually took a trip to Russia that I okayed', that's not a minor new angle. Same with 'I had no contact with Russia' to 'I had contact but it isn't that big of a deal' to 'I will recuse myself from any involvement in anything regarding Trump and Russia'. These aren't minor developments.