marklsu

Why is "21" the age? I actually support kids not being able to buy an AR-15 until 21.... because it's about people being older and more mature before handling a machine made only for killing human life.

But I've always wondered why 21 is the age chosen. Are their scientific studies about human maturity that suggest 21 is an inflection point?

Is 84 the average lifespan, and therefore 21 is 1/4 of the span of an average life?

Why not 20, 22, 23, any other number? Maybe someone can enlighten me.

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I wish you would have done this thread without Trump. The mouthbreathers will only read that and go crazy.

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I was genuinely interested in who Trump would bring in, who he would define as best.

O used the exact verbiage Trump did. Steve may be a good coordinator, but he isn't the best. Canada wasn't the best. Why use that language unless you're going to deliver... And why spend so much money in the process.... you've highlighted your incompetence.

and then look who we get.

Coach O is like Donald Trump..... "We will hire the best", then look how that turns out.

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$7,000,000.00 spent on Mueller Russia Russia Russia probe so far

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Typically it would cost hundreds of millions to oust a president.

Cheap and easy to oust Trump.

Would just like to point out...

Breaking tonight: Tilerson and Trump Administration just gave the rights and contract for security over US government buildings in Russia to a former KGB official who now runs a security firm. This same official is directly tied to the US Embassy scandal that Reagan exposed where the Russians had bugged the US Embassy in Russia. Resulted in us leaving the embassy.

Direct example of Trump administration giving Russia (our geopolitical foe) access and ability to profit at the expense of America's geopolitical and foreign policy interests.

[link=(NY Times)]https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/14/world/europe/embassy-moscow-kgb.html[/link]


Russian company records show that Mr. Budanov, who retired from espionage in 1992 after becoming upset by Russia’s direction under its first post-Soviet leader, Boris N. Yeltsin, is a former minority owner of at least three of Elite’s branches — in Moscow, in the Volga region and in western Russia. Records indicate that he no longer holds any ownership stake, but Kommersant, a Russian business newspaper, has reported that the company’s head office in Moscow is run by his son, Dimitri.

Elite Security, reached by telephone in Moscow, declined to comment on the role in the company of Mr. Budanov and his son.

Marines will continue to guard American diplomatic missions, but tasks previously handled by local guards hired directly by the embassy in Moscow, like screening visitors, will be taken over Elite Security employees. Hiring guards directly allowed closer monitoring of their backgrounds, but any Russian working for an American diplomatic mission, no matter how closely screened, is vulnerable to pressure from Russia’s state security apparatus.

Local guards are mostly restricted to the perimeter of diplomatic compounds and do not generally have access to secure areas.

An official note about the no-bid contract posted on a United States government website says that American companies had been contacted about taking on the security job in Russia but that “no U.S. firm has been located with the requisite licensing or desire to operate in-country.” It added that, among Russian companies that could do such work, only Elite Security had established operations and licenses to operate in the four cities where American missions needed guards.

The note said that Russia’s decision to insist on personnel cuts at American diplomatic missions in Moscow and elsewhere had created a “compelling urgency” to find new guards, and that doing so through a commercial contract was “the only available option.”

“This is very good for us,” said Mikhail Lyubimov, a former K.G.B. spy who knew Mr. Budanov from their time together in the Soviet intelligence service. “If I were the chief there, I would never do this for a very clear reason,” he said, adding that the Russian Embassy in Washington would not put security in the hands of an American company known to have ties to the C.I.A.

Like many former Soviet security officers, Mr. Budanov went into the private sector after the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union in 1991. He formed a joint venture with Gerard P. Burke, who was once assistant director of the National Security Agency, and headed the Moscow office of Parvus International, a business intelligence firm in Silver Spring, Md., founded by Mr. Burke, that employed former C.I.A., K.G.B. and Soviet-bloc agents.

Mr. Budanov started out in Soviet intelligence in the 1960s as a lowly officer whose work included buying food and other provisions for Kim Philby, the notorious British double agent who defected to Moscow in 1963 and died there in 1988.

In the late 1960s, Mr. Budanov was posted by the K.G.B. to Britain, which expelled him in 1971 as part of a mass clean-out of those suspected of spying for the Soviet Union.

He then rose to head the K Directorate of the K.G.B., a sprawling division that hunted for double agents recruited by the West and sought to penetrate the C.I.A. and other hostile foreign agencies. Toward the end of his espionage career, he worked for the K.G.B. in East Germany, serving there during the same period as Mr. Putin, who was then a junior K.G.B. officer in Dresden.

In interviews with Russian news media, Mr. Budanov declined to discuss his time working with Mr. Putin but has voiced great admiration for his former colleague’s subsequent role as president, crediting him with saving Russia from the chaos of Mr. Yeltsin’s rule.

In a 2007 interview, Mr. Budanov claimed credit for helping to expose Oleg Gordievsky, a Soviet diplomat based in London, as a British spy, but he denied that the K.G.B. assassinated people suspected of being traitors during his time in service. Mr. Gordievsky, who was recalled to Russia in 1985 to face almost certain execution, escaped to the West while under investigation and later wrote a book in which he described Mr. Budanov as one of the K.G.B.’s most dangerous men.

Mr. Budanov said that being referred to in that way by “an enemy agent” had “helped me back then, and it still helps me do my work today.”

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Okay, where is the evidence that there was some sort of quid pro quo?

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Flynn is likely the person that committed a crime that pulled the FBI in. FBI/CIA also found enough material in 2016, during campaign, to open an investigation, conducted under Comey, to investigate the Trump Campaign--but as Trump likes to point out, not Trump himself.

All the other peeps in trouble... like Manafort are examples of where this investigation is leading.

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I could say the same about those hurling accusations of quid pro quo between Trump and Putin.

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This is where I differ from you.

As Sessions said today, you have to have factual basis with enough evidence to form a special prosecutor..... they are seldom used. Charges have been filed by FBI (a Republican-majority institution --which it shouldn't be) already, and there are roughly 14 different areas Mueller is investigating.... Along with the fact that 17 different intelligence agencies agree that Russia meddled and now, we have Donald Trump Jr admitting that he sought out help from Russia in the campaign... The standard for special prosecutor for Russia/Trump was easily met.

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If Russia is our enemy why would we allow them to profit off of our resources?

And I’m pretty sure some of it has left the US

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China profits off of lots of our natural resources.... many would call China an enemy.
All kinds of nations profit off our natural resources....

Whether they should or shouldn't really is not what is being thrown at Clinton/Obama...

They are hurling accusations that the sale was a quid pro quo. There is no evidence of that. Sessions confirmed that today. He was hammered hard by Republicans, and he hammered back saying there is no factual basis to bring a special prosecutor, and why? Because this entire sale had to be approved by every single facet of our government, including the CIA and FBI and DOJ.

The Uranium, per say, is not sold to Russia. They don't take possession of it. They can't use it for nuclear means. They can just profit off of its use in the US and some has been sold back to Canada and yellowcake uranium has been sold only to US allies in Europe... but majority didn't leave US, and can't go to Russia.

And so your question is both unclear and misleading.....and possibly irrelevant.

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Also when did Russia become our enemy? Just curious

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Russia became our enemy when Hitler and Nazis lost WWII.

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Sessions says not enough basis to investigate Clinton

Maybe next time, champ.
That's not what he said in the article you linked.

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Sessions testified today that there has to be a standard met for bringing a special prosecutor.... he flatly told Republicans they don't have the facts to bring a case.

It doesn't get clearer than that.