…I’m pretty sure you aren’t denying that intelligence often contain super fucking important stuff, which was my main point.
But you misunderstand my other point. Yes: the council looks at completed briefs. But the briefs themselves are “bits of the puzzle”. The President makes decisions based on the entirety of the information: not just the interpretation of an Army intelligence analyst from a single brief. When I talk about “putting the puzzle together” I’m not talking about “converting bits of intelligence information into actionable intelligence”. I’m not that fucking stupid.
Neither am I, but if you’ve only noticed one EO you haven’t paid much attention to political US news. And going through search engines when whitehouse.gov publishes everything isn’t very sensible.
Yes, Donald, why are you so ineffective at managing the massive organization you signed up to manage? Tell us more about your own incompetence as a leader.
Bottom line is unchanged. Reinforced, if anything.
Again, the ACOE is the government agency in charge of enforcing these regulations. It makes no difference whether or not they should follow some sort of standards that the Advisory Council would prefer, because as you say, the ACOE was granted final authority and not the Advisory Council. And the fact that you say there’s ambiguity in the laws only reinforces this point, because when there’s ambiguity in the law and a government agency which has been granted final authority, then the proper approach is for the people to follow the guidance of that authority, and not to have to make their own determination as to what the some Advisory Council would prefer, or what the spirit of the law is.
So if, as you say, the ACOE is following its SOP in this case, then it’s wrong to pull the rug out from underneath a company which already spent $3.8B by following this accepted and standard approach, however much you may feel the ACOE should be doing things differently.
You’re weaseling.
To reiterate: I said (post #61) I was ambivalent about Trump’s EO reshaping the Intelligence Council, someone else questioned the downgrade of the DNI and CJC, and I responded (#63) that they don’t need to be there for every meeting. You professed shock at that (#86), so I responded (#88) with a cite from experts who agreed with me on that specific issue.
Instead of forthrightly addressing that - either citing other experts, or at least explaining why you disagreed with them - you raised (#92) a completely different issue, unrelated to the attendance of the DNI and CJC at Council meetings that I had been discussing.
The problem with discussing things with someone who approaches discussions in this vein is that there’s no limit to how many tangents and goal-shifts they can bring up, and if I pursue this further there’s no limit to the amount of time that I could have to spend pointing out that this is unrelated to the point and that too is unrelated to the point. So knock yourself out. But I’m done with you here.
No, that’s not the problem, in general.
The problem, in general, is that you are a man of very limited intelligence with way too much time on your hands. So you spend a lot of time posting things which are either cribbed from other sources but which don’t apply to the point you’re addressing, or are completely stupid, or both.
And that’s how it is with your two posts here. Mostly liberal talking points that have already been said ad nauseum, one or two things relating to this discussion that have already been raised and addressed, and that’s pretty much it.
I wouldn’t have responded, but I’m responding to some other people anyway so I figured I’d drop you a line.
Have they caught up? During the first several days of the Trump Administration (ack!), his EOs would be in the news, but would only show up on whitehouse.gov a few days later.
Now for the next stage: trying to spin the story that Flynn was the whole problem (while jockeying for safe positions if that fails and somebody else has to take the fall to protect Putin’s Pissboy).
This is classic, right out of the Watergate playbook. Somebody half way up the chain falls on his sword, because “he’s become a distraction” to the important work being done by the administration. It didn’t work out in 1974…remains to be seen how well it works here.
Well, after months of hiding their heads in the sand, the Republicans are actually realizing they need to look further into Trump’s ties with the Russians. So there is that.
Re: Bannon. Fascinating article in last Sunday’s NY Times about Julius Evola, the creepy right-wing Italian philosopher who thought Mussolini was a big old wussie who just wouldn’t take things far enough. Bannon keeps his collected works on the bedstand.
I used to think Aleister Crowley was a unique figure…turns out there were all sorts of dark occultist weirdos sprinkled throughout the 20th century.
This seems like a very unlikely claim. Do you have a source for it?
It’s not in the NYT article, which only said that Bannon made a passing reference to Evola (in saying that Putin has “got an adviser who harkens back to Julius Evola and different writers of the early 20th century who are really the supporters of what’s called the traditionalist movement, which really eventually metastasized into Italian fascism”). The NYT suggests the fact that Bannon is even aware of Evola is significant, which seems dubious to me, but is at any rate a very far cry from claiming that “Bannon keeps his collected works on the bedstand”.
The Corps is not the final authority. They are the lead agency and the permitting agency. The state historic preservation office reviews CRM surveys within their state, and the ACHP has the authority to comment on projects. However, the Corps has been ignoring comments it doesn’t like. At this point, the courts and the president are the ones who can get them to listen. The pipeline company has been doing their best to hurt any claims to the courts and the ND SHPO by doing things like plowing through areas that the Sioux have said contain burials and sacred sites before state archaeologists can get out to examine them.
The point of the CRM laws is to give all interested parties a chance to comment on projects and hopefully come to some sort of agreement. The Corps and the pipeline company have been doing their damnedest to keep the tribes out of that process. Neither are innocent victims, and if they had followed the process properly, they could have avoided this. They only have themselves to blame.
They are still trying to keep the denial shields up, however:
Hmmm… “The big problem I see here is that you have an American citizen who had his phone calls recorded.”…
If you are of a cynical and dyspeptic disponsition, you may find yourself wondering whether the Honorable Gentleman from California is a big old hypocritical asshat who is all for Big Brother surveillance until it steps on his toes or those of his political allies.
If I’m working with the SBA in setting up a Small Business, and they give me some tax advice that goes against the law, I will be in trouble with the IRS (if I get caught) and there isn’t anything “but the SBA told me it was OK” is going to help with. The IRS will be “too bad, so sad - talk to us about tax matters, or maybe an accountant, but you foolishly listened to an idiot at the SBA.” And I’ll pay my penalties and interest and hope the don’t take it into their heads to go after me for fraud. Its my responsibility to work with the proper government agencies or get the correct expert advice to assure I don’t break the law. Ignorance isn’t an excuse. And “but Logan said it was OK” never flew for my kids - and shouldn’t fly now.
There are laws regarding desecration of grave sites, handling sacred sites, handing sites of historical or anthropological significance, as well as laws regarding ecological impact. You don’t get to ignore them because the ACOE says you can. The ACOE does not have the authority to break those laws, anymore than the SBA can override tax law.
Authoritative guidance from an agency can insulate a citizen/business from liability or culpability under the right circumstances. That does not necessarily apply in this case; I don’t know enough about the ACOE’s remit and communications.
Spin, nothing: Sally Yates, who was the Acting AG until Trump fired her over the Muslim ban EO, had notified the White House counsel about all this two weeks ago. So to the Administration, it was only a problem when it became public.
