Typical Lax Dad wrote: ↑Mon Sep 02, 2019 9:52 am
LandM wrote: ↑Mon Sep 02, 2019 9:23 am
TLD,
Good luck to cousins son, if he is not red-shirting as a freshman must be good athlete - sad part is we left early and a 5th year walk on scored a touchdown - those are the kids you cheer for. Went through the grind and he paid his way;
I respect the Office not necessarily the person. Jimmy Carter was uber smart but had no street skills - but I respected the Office.
Yes, I have dealt with DT's but in some cases "using" the name can help. I usually walked away from those transactions, was not worth the hassle. hence my decision not to vote for the big office and will probably do the same this go around.
Treat everyone equally - there should not be tiers - there are rules.
Trinity,
The Paul Revere analogy is a super stretch - I think when he broke bed check rules there was a foreign country that had troops on land and ships in the harbor and they were looking to over-take the country - I have been checking for Russian troops in my backyards and have yet to find one
I believe OS makes the case pretty well - Comey knew what he was doing and knew how to skirt the rules - he is not a BOY Scout or patriot - he is and has been an attention seeker. Imagine someone who thinks he is so important that he decides to LEAK information. Man, walk down the street and speak to John McCain - that would have started an investigation. Nope, leaks through his buddy to the press. Now that is guy I would not trust in a bad situation. When speaking to the President about Russian interference at the time he did - yeah - I would have classified that. Some of this leaking material IMHO will be reclassified. Seems like the biggest leakers besides DT are the FBI - now that is getting worrisome.
MD,
I think the military experience in many regards is relevant especially when it comes to classified information. Besides some of the best life stories come from being in
![Laughing :lol:](./images/smilies/icon_lol.gif)
. If I have offended you or anyone else, I will apologize but there are SOPs and they apply to all government officials including HRC and Comey - need to be fair and consistent or you start losing faith in the system.
You are right about cheering for those kids that put in a ton of hard work but don’t get to play much. I recall my son’s freshman year we were up on a team big and some kids that didn’t play much were playing. This kid scored a goal for us late and the place erupted with cheers. A few days later a guy posted how our fans had no clas and were rubbing it in. I sent him a PM explaining that the player had not played in two years and had been battling cancer. We were happy for him. He understood. My perspective on kids not playing changed once my son got to college. Not everyone plays but every player is important. At least in my son’s program, the walk-on was just as important as the recruited player.
As for losing faith in the system....The current administration had Russia working on their behalf in the Presidential campaign and made efforts to work with them....but that doesn’t cause anyone to lose faith.
Agreed re every player being important. If the coaches and the team's leadership successfully creates that culture, good things happen, whether on the scoreboard or in life.
On the 'faith in the system' I think what we're predominantly seeing among those who think its not a big deal that the Russians helped Trump win and he welcomed the assistance is that
they long ago actually did 'lose faith in the system'.
If you follow many of our fellow poster's discussions, it's pretty apparent that they are immensely cynical about how our system works, who pulls the strings, the dishonesty of politicians, the inherent badness of 'big government', etc. I could go on and on.
I don't think this started with Trump, though clearly he's tapped into and grossly stoked these deep seated levels of cynicism. DEEP STATE, FAKE NEWS, and the constant attack and disabuse on the rule of law...again, I could go on and on. But it didn't begin with Trump.
Looking back historically, I know that in my lifetime, assassinations, civil rights abuses, Vietnam falsehoods by the military brass as well as top civilian officials, and then Watergate crushed much of the idealistic views many of us had growing up. For my part, as a student of American history and world history, I remained stubbornly idealistic about the virtues of our 'system', imperfect as it is, the 'American experiment', relative to many other approaches throughout history. I made sense of the flaws of the system through the lens of several of our founders and their philosophical progenitors who recognized that people are not all inherently good, and such people, especially those in power, have the capacity to do great harm if not constrained in their exercise of power. This led them to insist on various such constraints, balances of power under the rule of law not men, and ways in which the system could evolve in response to abuses of power.
That's why the rise of the 'strong man', the authoritarian, is such an anathema to me.
However, from all that I can glean, many others took away a different lesson from various demonstrations of corruption leading to their cynicism. They've largely given up on what I still hold onto. They instead claim a false sort of patriotism that embraces MAGA and the strong man. They
expect him to be dishonest, even revel in it, as long as he gives voice to their cynicism and, in many cases, their bigotries. Or lines their pocket, or at least promises to do so.
LandM,
Sure, being in the military might give one a sense of the rules on classified information, but most military rarely get anywhere near actual classified information, much less TS SCI. A whole lot of folks other than the military go through heavy security clearances and training that most military folks never do.
Salty keeps claiming that Comey leaked classified information. That's not what the IG found. He also keeps claiming that the issue rested on 'proving intent', but that's not what the IG found either, as the issue was instead whether classified information had actually been leaked or not. And the answer was fundamentally no. Indeed, the evidence showed that Comey took pains to exclude classified information from what was released.
He also tries to set up a false equivalency with Petraeus' errors (both mishandled sensitive and/or classified information), but Petraeus knowingly shared classified info with his lover. Not so Comey. I hope history treats Petraeus well, despite this error, but it was certainly more serious than Comey's. And, for our purposes though not the IG's, here's where intent does come in: Petraeus' intent had no honorable or patriotic aspect. Comey's did.
That said, the IG found Comey's actions deserving of sharp reprimand, as the rules and guidelines on how to handle sensitive (not classified) information were abused and that precedent needs to be rejected. I'm good with that.