Category: US Politics

The US politics category has articles that pertain to what is happening in Congress, Senate, the White House, the Pentagon, and in the streets of America.

Secret CIA Assessment Shows that Russia had Influenced our Election

Image: Inquisitr

For awhile now, before the eighth of November, we all heard the rumors about Russia attempting to influence our election. Do you remember that? Well, Intelligence Agencies have identified individuals connected to the Russian Government who provided WikiLeaks with the thousands of DNC emails, including those of Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman.

Officials have recognized these individuals as being part of a larger scheme to boost Trump’s chances and lower Hillary’s.

It is the assessment of the intelligence community that Russia’s goal here was to favor one candidate over the other: to help Trump get elected.

According to the Washington Post, Senators were briefed on these matters sometime around September, but Mitch McConnell had voiced doubts about the validity of the intelligence.The Trump transition team has declined to comment on this issue.

The Trump transition team has declined to comment on this issue, though since the rumor was first spread, Trump has repeatedly assured us that there was no Russian hacking in this election, even this week to TIME Magazine!

[The hacking] could be Russia, and it could be China, and it could be some guy in his home in New Jersey.

Though the CIA has proven that these individuals were responsible for hacking the DNC emails, questions are still left unanswered. The intelligence agencies do not have specific intelligence pointing to officials in the Kremlin directing these hackers to pass the emails to WikiLeaks. According to the officials that spoke with the Washington Post, rather than government employees,  the individuals were “one step” removed from the Russian government. The deniability is still plausible because Russia has used operative middlemen for intelligence operations in the past.

The Obama Administration has been debating for months on how they should respond to the alleged Russian hacking because many officials were concerned about creating tension in Moscow and/or being accused of attempting to help Hillary Clinton.

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Time Magazine’s Person of the Year

Image: Today

Donald Trump has finally been named TIME’s Person of the Year. “It is a great honor,” said the President-Elect on the Today Show this morning.

It means a lot, especially me growing up reading TIME magazine, and it’s a very important magazine, and I’ve been lucky enough to be on the cover many times this year — and last year. But I consider this a very, very great honor.

Since his announcement of candidacy, he has been on the cover of many, many magazines. He has always had an obsession with putting his face on the cover of magazines, and so this only makes him feel even better about himself. Actually, Trump keeps all of the said magazines in his office and frequently jokes about them saying that he does not have time to read them all because there are so many. He has even referred to himself as a “supermodel, except like, times ten.”

Last year, when TIME announced Angela Merkel as their Person of the Year, Trump was openly disturbed that he was not the winner. TIME Magazine responded by saying throughout their entire existence, they have never chosen a presidential candidate as their Person of the Year, and if he won (he did), he would have a much greater chance of becoming the Person of the Year.

I was on their cover four, five weeks ago. They should have picked me for the ‘Person of the Year,’ but they didn’t. No, they should have.

Trump, at a Rally in Arizona, his first rally since the announcement from TIME in 2015, could not help but go on a rant about the magazine and their choice. You could see in what he says that was affected by the result.

I said I’m never going to get it because I’m not establishment. But every panel that I saw on television when TIME was — because, you know, it’s sort of cool, even though the magazine’s going down the tubes. No, it’s a cool thing. Most magazines are going down, in all fairness to them. It’s great, isn’t it? To watch these guys go down the tubes? Isn’t it great? I love it.

Trump had used his ‘political revolution’ as a reason he deserved the title and related this bad decision to the one that he believes the Emmys made when they did not give the award to The Apprentice.

It’s just like ‘The Apprentice.’ For the first three seasons, I should have gotten the Emmy for the Apprentice. Got the No. 1, got tremendous ratings. It was the hottest thing, and they picked these shows that were establishment — ‘Amazing Race.’ You fall asleep watching it. Okay? It’s not a race; it’s a sleeping contest. Because I’m not establishment in Hollywood, I’m not establishment politically, so Time magazine picked a woman who is destroying Germany. She let the migration come right into Germany. She’s destroying Germany.

While he expressed much joy in receiving the recognition this year, he was not a big fan of some of the wording on their cover where it said, “President of the Divided States of America.”

Since then, becoming the Person of the Year was Trump’s personal Holy Grail.

I guess this is great because it gives him something new about which he can boast.

Engineers halt the construction of DAPL pipeline across Standing Rock

Image: The Nation

It has been just about eight months since the Sioux tribe began protesting the construction of the DAPL pipeline construction that was planned to go through the Standing Rock Reservation and their water source. The $3.7 billion, 1,172-mile, 30-inch in diameter Dakota Access Pipeline was designed to carry about 470,000 to 570,000 barrels of crude oil from Bakken and Three-Forks oil production ranges to North Dakota,which originally planned to cross the Mississippi River, the part currently in dispute.

The odds were stacked against the protesters as the police force grew and grew with more backfire starting with pepper spray and rubber bullets being used against protesters, so it is quite a relief to hear that the Army Corps of Engineers had halted construction of the pipeline. The Army Corps of Engineers are now reviewing plans to try and avoid the Standing Rock Reservation and the Mississippi River.

The tribe had claimed that the pipeline that they described as a “black snake” would have caused environmental issues with leakage, destroying the soil and infecting the water source on which they so heavily rely. They have stated their appreciation to the Obama administration to taking a look into this matter, but the battle is not yet over. The backlash of the DAPL construction has been so widespread, there have been protests such as the one on Sunday when thousands of veterans went to Standing Rock with constant Twitter posts stating their disapproval of the pipeline with #NoDAPL.

There are ups and downs for the construction of the pipelines creating an agricultural-economic struggle. On one side, the pipeline may cause leakage which would harm the ecosystem and pollute water resources. At the same time, it would employ thousands of Americans as engineers and supply energy to much of the United States which in turn would lower much of the high gas prices we face as a nation and further improve our economy.

This strong win for the Sioux tribe has created new hope for the protests, yet it may be too early to actually say that it is a done deal. There is still a long waited dispute in Washington D.C. to truly say if the deal to go around the Mississippi River will stand or be denied, but until then, it is for the best to hope and pray for the deal to go through.

One dead, Nine Injured at Ohio State University After Attack

Image: USA Today

Earlier this morning, nine students at Ohio State University were stabbed by a local Somali student of the school who recently became a permanent citizen of the United States, and whose name was confirmed to be Abdul Razak Ali Artan. Initially, the police department believed that there was more than one attacker, but after observing multiple buildings that were supposedly hiding multiple shooters, they narrowed it down to just one.

Jerry Kovacich, a student at the university, said that the fire alarm had started to ring, and then the man whose motive was unknown used a family member’s car to drive onto the curb and injure the students standing outside of Watts Hall. Most likely, the large crowd of students was standing outside of the building because a fluorine leak was reported to have occurred inside of the university’s chairman of materials science and engineering Peter Anderson’s lab earlier that morning.

According to Chief Craig Stone, the silent attacker then exited the car and started to cut the students with his butcher knife, but luckily an officer arrived at the location in under a minute and stopped the man from continuing his attack. Soon after the policeman resolved the conflict, reports of a shooter inside of Watts Hall arrived. The University’s Emergency Management Twitter sent out a message to its followers that told them to stay safe and to find shelter. Students inside of the buildings on the massive campus barricaded doors and hoped to stay safe as the attacks subsided.

The man was then fatally shot by police during another attempt to stab students at the university with a large knife. Fortunately, these issues were resolved very quickly because the university’s highly trained police department arrived at the attacks just in time to prevent further harm to the students and staff. Many of the buildings reopened at around 11:15 this morning, but over a dozen remained closed for further inspection.

An Eerie Election in Erie

Image: PBS

In August, I took a brief hiatus from graduate school to accept a job as a political organizer with the Pennsylvania Democratic Party. Although I had initially been a Bernie Sanders supporter in the Democratic primary because of his progressive vision for America, once that ship had sailed, and it was Hillary Clinton versus Donald Trump in the general election I knew what I had to do to ensure that when the dust settled I was on the right side of history. I headed hours away from the comforts of my life in Washington, DC to Erie, Pennsylvania in support of Secretary Hillary Clinton and Democratic ideals. I also went with the aim of helping elect other down-ballot Democratic contenders in elections, bearing Obama’s presidency in mind and being intellectually honest in the fact that a democratic leader means nothing without the right supporting cast around them to assist in bringing their vision to fruition.

I arrived in Erie the day after Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Kaine had visited to speak to the Erie residents. This visit came weeks after Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump had made a trek of his own to the top of Pennsylvania to check in on Erie voters and let them know that their votes mattered tremendously. Based on conversations held with locals upon my arrival to Erie, two things immediately became certain. First, residents were more energized by Trump’s visit than they were by Kaine’s because it is a long-standing tradition for presidential hopefuls to stop through Erie. Second, based on the first reality acknowledged, my team and I would have an uphill battle to fight if history was to be made, so we fought.

We traveled to local colleges and schools. We went to community centers and sporting events. Still, a truth remained— many of the millennials we were regularly in contact with realized how toxic a Trump presidency could potentially be for themselves and other groups that make up America, but they also could not come to grips with how Bernie was treated during the primaries.

In a world where Hillary Clinton’s trustworthiness was already on the ballot, the Democratic Party’s actions to undermine Bernie Sanders’ success in the primary coupled with Clinton’s proximity to Debbie Wasserman Schulz immediately following the whole ordeal gave rise to a perception that proved to be almost impossible to shake. For adults in Erie who have had Democratic leadership for the majority of recent memory without much improvement to the lives of everyday people, they were unenthusiastic about the prospect of a Democratic president being able to bring local change that Democratic mayors and senators of the past had failed to deliver. In the world of politics where perception is the reality, these perceptions effectively issued a death-knell to the idea of a Trump-Kaine victory. Donald Trump honed in the perception issues and played to them, constantly decrying how Bernie Sanders had been treated badly and asking what the electorate had to lose by voting for change. With this acknowledgment of wrongdoing at the top of the Democratic Party and the challenge he made to voters to try something different, Trump was able to catalyze a revolution within our loyalist voter base that showed on Nov. 8th when Trump became the first republican to win the state of Pennsylvania in twenty-eight years. A Republican populist with no political experience beating out a well-credentialed Democratic stateswoman taught us all a lesson in transformative politics and shattered all poll predictions.

On the back end of what can only be described as a political revolution, I am left not knowing how to feel. In the earliest days of president-elect Trump, there have been reports of members of the LGBTQ community committing suicide rather than facing an America where their very existence may potentially be challenged every day. There are further reports on social media of intolerant messages being placed on structures, women getting groped and Muslim-Americans being harassed. There have been protests in major cities all across the country, and I would argue that they have been speaking to a very real fear. Cabinet picks are typically one of the earliest indicators of how an administration will be run. Just recently, President-elect Trump has identified Steve Bannon, a man who has no respect for the plurality of this country, as one of his closest advisers. If this pick is to be a gauge of how the Trump administration will govern, Americans are rightfully scared. Given the fact that this nation’s success in now inherently tied to the success of the Trump presidency, I genuinely wish him well. My only hope is that his administration hears the cries made by many Americans, acknowledges them as legitimate concerns, and takes steps to move forward and be a president for all Americans.