Donald Trump Presidency-Day One [Archive] - Page 2 - HungAngels

Stavros

11-14-2017, 07:20 AM

Some time ago Assange shifted from being a libertarian with a distrust of all government and their 'secrets', and became partisan. It may have started when he was accused of sexual assault and rape in Sweden and decided, being such an important person, that he need not answer to the authorities, and thus ended up in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London where he has an internet connection, receives visitors such as Nigel Farage and Pamela Anderson and is a regular broadcaster on RT.

Perhaps because he believed the Obama Presidency was conspiring with the British and the Swedish governments to have him arrested for the (alleged) crimes in Sweden and then be shipped off to the USA, he has ended up fraternising with a peculiar bunch of people such as Farage and John Pilger, united with Russia in their determination to prevent Hillary Clinton from becoming President, but also deciding this is the moment for a libertarian 'revolution' in the USA whose aim is to re-orient politics away from Central Government to the States, and in doing so diminish the powers of the Federal Government, from taxation to welfare to social legislation.

For this reason Assange supported the alt-right campaign in the US, but this is also part of Russia's attempt to discredit the democratic process, to weaken politics internally in Europe and North America through a sustained campaign of trolling that is intended to raise doubts about the quality of politicians (as if we needed prompting from the Russians!) but also sow division. One latest example being the widely circulated photo of a Muslim woman walking by one of the injured in the Westminster Bridge attack with a tagline suggesting she didn't care -circulated by a Russian troll through Facebook, Twitter and so on until it became 'news' in the press only too willing to find an excuse to attack Muslims. Brexit can thus be seen as a major step forward for Russia as it seeks to break down the EU for its purposes, while the libertarians seek to break it for their own, the two finding common cause.

buttslinger

11-14-2017, 07:25 AM

I probably won't live long enough to read the very thick book on what really happened during the Bush presidency, it would be fascinating to find out everything about those hanging chads, 9-11, Iraq, the economic crash. Dick Cheney will have to be dead before they can print it.
But the story of the Trump presidency will have to be written in comic book form.
You've got Trump, his family, Kelly-Anne, Steve, Jeff, Paul, Vlad .....while the rest of Congress is just milling around in dis-belief.....
Most of his Appointments were hired to do nothing.
I wonder if Bob Mueller senses that the future of the nation is in his hands and he's wondering how far to go, or is he playing it like a straight criminal case?
Can Pence really say he had no clue?

Stavros

11-14-2017, 07:30 AM

I don't know much about the appointment of Judges in the USA, as we have a different system here. What I find interesting about the report linked below that concerns a nominee called Brett Talley, is not just the fact he has never tried a case and has only been a lawyer for three years, but that

When he was nominated, the American Bar Association (https://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/uncategorized/GAO/Web%20rating%20Chart%20Trump%20115.authcheckdam.pd f) rated him as “unqualified” - the fourth such Trump administration judicial nominee to receive such a rating.
Now, it was been reported (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/13/us/politics/trump-judge-brett-talley-nomination.html)Mr Talley, 36, failed to disclose he is married to Ann Donaldson, the chief of staff to the White House counsel, Donald McGahn.

The New York Times said Mr Talley was asked on his publicly released Senate questionnaire to identify family members and others who are “likely to present potential conflicts of interest”. Despite this, he did not mention his wife.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-judge-marriage-white-house-lawyer-brett-j-talley-unqualified-aba-a8053201.html

The point is not just that a practising lawyer doesn't know how to fill out a form, but that there seems to be a new tranche of US government officials and now it seems Judges, who simply ignore or treat with contempt the very system they are being elected or appointed to serve, to the point where 'neglecting' to tell the whole of the truth is little different from lying. Much as Roy Moore in Alabama claims to be putting 'God' back into US politics and in doing so disregarding the Constitution, I wonder where this is going, not just in terms of legal decisions, but the way in which it could undermine public confidence in the judiciary, if that is what happens. One almost thinks it is part of 'the plan' to break up US politics and deliver it back to 'the people' even if it means they support abortion in California but oppose it in Alabama.

buttslinger

11-15-2017, 06:02 AM

It is very scary to me that the only thing stopping the unthinkable depends on Mueller outlasting Trump.
I hope THE TRUTH sends a lot of people straight to Hell, ....here, and in Russia.

buttslinger

11-15-2017, 05:45 PM

It is chilling to see the moves that Trump has made since becoming POTUS.
Scrapping the Depts of Health, Education, Environment, Housing with brainless yes-men put in charge.
Heading the State Dept with Putin's best buddy!!
Both the House and Senate voted overwhelmingly to add further sanctions against Russia but Trump hasn't signed it yet. He wants "the healing" to start.
What is up with the Republicans, I thought they hated the Evil Empire!
Madness!!!

buttslinger

11-15-2017, 11:09 PM

One last thought...
Usually, weird occurrences on a global stage have some kind of rhyme or reason behind them, a method to the madness, or unseen circumstances that give some kind of explanation to what happened.
In the case of Trump, the weirdness is genuine, he never intended to win, he never prepared for victory. The clowns who first endorsed him were suppose to fade away after the election as losers, and leave Trump with enough street cred to get another TV show or something.
I'm hoping, no, praying, that the slipshod decisions made throughout the election by Kellyanne and Bannon ETC ETC ETC left tons of footprints that Mueller can retrace and start turning one liar against the other. Has there ever been a bigger liar than Trump in the White House. ????? My fellow countrymen passed up the most qualified candidate ever for the least qualified ever.
Maybe Putin put something in the water. Does anybody else feel weird lately??
ha ha

blackchubby38

11-16-2017, 01:24 AM

buttslinger

11-16-2017, 06:59 AM

I actually want to give President Trump some credit ...they were looking at the possibility of 10 years in prison.

yeah, that was nice.

filghy2

11-17-2017, 01:00 AM

Nikka

11-17-2017, 08:15 PM

https://k60.kn3.net/taringa/7/6/7/5/3/1/0/jajo5555/367.jpg

buttslinger

11-18-2017, 01:57 AM

Something is really eating me, and I can't quite rationalize it. Sarah Huckabee Sanders looks like a breed of dog, but I can't quite figure out which one.

Oh yeah, and even weirder than the fact that 36% of the country that will stick by Trump NO MATTER WHAT, is the fact that without their adoration, he couldn't care less for them. The truth is stranger than fiction.

https://image.ibb.co/d2G78R/Cckt_OT8_UMAAUFno.jpg (https://ibb.co/bVfZoR)

buttslinger

11-19-2017, 07:19 PM

Same old story, the Billionaire Boy's Club bought another Presidency and now are reaping the dividends.
Donald "Auric Goldfinger" Trump is going to destroy the American economy, while his donor buds and Putin come out of it richer and stronger.
Big Losers: Ignorant Pro-Lifers who would rather "look away, look away" and elect a pedophile and a Born Liar to office than admit that they're ignorant.

https://preview.ibb.co/c8nsSm/90.jpg (https://ibb.co/j4SsSm)
Pussy Galore and Odd Job

Stavros

11-19-2017, 08:55 PM

I actually want to give President Trump some credit for securing the release of three UCLA college basketball players who were accused of shoplifting while in China. Regardless of why he did it, I think those guys should be grateful considering they were looking at the possibility of 10 years in prison.

Looks like your credit has been rejected by the bank of resentment and revenge:

President Donald Trump (http://www.independent.co.uk/topic/DonaldTrump) has suggested that he should have left three American basketball players imprisoned in China because he did not like the comments made by one of their parents.

"Now that the three basketball players are out of China and saved from years in jail, LaVar Ball, the father of LiAngelo, is unaccepting of what I did for his son and that shoplifting is no big deal," Mr Trump tweeted. "I should have left them in jail!"

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-basketball-players-in-china-should-have-left-in-jail-a8064146.html

Ben in LA

11-20-2017, 02:02 AM

buttslinger

11-20-2017, 07:01 AM

I would have said Mueller must have enough evidence to hang Trump five times, but I also guaranteed a Hillary Victory.

Stavros

11-20-2017, 12:09 PM

I tweeted this in response to all of the drama.
“Pretty sure LaVar appreciates whatever trump “did” to get the guys back over here...but to expect LaVar to kiss his ass? Nah, son. One good deed (that is expected from a world leader) doesn’t erase the other shitty things done by him in the past.”

Seriously though, I’ve NEVER seen a president act this way.

The reason is that even Presidents famous for their foul language, for example LBJ and Nixon, maintained the decorum of high office, practicing the etiquette that separates private thoughts from public expression. Your President among other things, will be recalled as the most vulgar and uneducated man to have sat in the Oval Office. His inability to control his thoughts is juvenile, his tone of voice coarse, and his intentions vindictive. And while he does appear to have a special resentment for Black Americans, he has also insulted and abused members of Congress who dared to challenge or contradict him.

The danger is not just that it undermines the authority of the Presidency, but that while the focus of attention is on the latest outburst from a man who craves constant attention, things are happening in US government that are also of long term importance.

The gradual refusal to accept Democrat party nominees as circuit court justices over the last 8 years has created a backlog of vacancies that are now being filled by people who may not have the experience one would expect, but are appointed because chosen by Republicans. This may not just impact social legislation down the road but also lead to poor judgements in court and thus in turn undermine faith in the justice system.

Meanwhile at the State Department, Rex Tillerson is shredding jobs and not replacing vacancies to such an extent that by the end of this 'cost-cutting' exercise the US may have the least capable corps of diplomats and foreign policy experts of any member of the UN Security Council and many smaller states. The US is yet to fill the vacancy of Ambassador to South Korea, but as the critique in the (admittedly hostile) New York Time points out, this situation is creating an imbalance in government where there is now a lack of diplomatic expertise while the size and influence of the military grows.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/18/opinion/sunday/the-trump-administration-is-making-war-on-diplomacy.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection %2Fopinion-editorials

As for the President, he has now racked up 73 visits to the Golf Course, at a cost -to Americans who pay tax- of at least $79,578,479. A proportion of which has gone straight into the bank accounts his business.
http://trumpgolfcount.com/

Jericho

11-20-2017, 03:06 PM

Still, it's good for business, eh!

https://www.trumpstore.com/

sukumvit boy

11-20-2017, 10:39 PM

"Secrecy World"
New book coming out has been getting a lot of reviews in the media ,regarding findings since the release of "The Panama Papers" includes a good review of Trump's many shady dealings.
https://www.amazon.com/Secrecy-World-Investigation-Illicit-Networks/dp/1250126681/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1511209996&sr=1-1&keywords=secrecy+world+panama+papers (http://www.amazon.com/Secrecy-World-Investigation-Illicit-Networks/dp/1250126681/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1511209996&sr=1-1&keywords=secrecy+world+panama+papers)

blackchubby38

11-21-2017, 10:49 PM

buttslinger

11-22-2017, 01:39 AM

Listen, Donald Trump gives not one shit for anything that doesn't cut business tax, capital gains tax, inheritance tax, capital gains tax or business regulations, in fact he'd like to destroy everything except for the Military. All the rest is misdirection and window dressing.
United States Citizens??? He gives not one shit.
The only righteous thing Trump can do for this country is bunk with the child molesters in Federal Prison.

Stavros

11-22-2017, 06:11 PM

Another day, another low...

In a series of pre-dawn tweets from his Florida vacation home, Trump said: “It wasn’t the White House, it wasn’t the State Department, it wasn’t father LaVar’s so-called people on the ground in China that got his son out of a long term prison sentence - IT WAS ME.”
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2017/nov/22/donald-trump-blasts-ungrateful-fool-lavar-ball-as-war-of-words-escalates

O come, all ye faithful
Joyful and triumphant
O come ye, o come ye to Washington
Come and behold Him
Born the King of Angels!

O come, let us adore Him
O come, let us adore Him
O come, let us adore Him (repeat as often as you can or face the wrath of El Presidente!)

buttslinger

11-22-2017, 09:49 PM

Until we hear Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh crying out for Trump's impeachment, it's up to Bob Mueller to keep his job long enough to yank the presidential rug out from under Trump's feet. He is the President...the Commander-in-Chief. The People have spoken.
I'm sure 95% of the Republicans in Congress agree with 100% of the Democrats- Trump is Dangerous.
Even his own father sent him to military school. The kooky posts by the extreme right wingnuts on this forum are the people Trump is listening to. His ears are deaf to reason. He was absolutely corrupt BEFORE he had absolute power! It's unfathomable. God help us all!

this is bad

https://image.ibb.co/kkkV06/trump.jpg (https://imgbb.com/)
upload pics direct link (https://imgbb.com/)

buttslinger

11-23-2017, 03:37 AM

I almost posted a phony movie poster with Trump's son Barron depicted as Damien, the devil kid from "The Omen"
then I found out maybe he has autism.
It's real hard not to get sucked into Trump's black hole, because if you do nothing, he wins.
I personally air a "world class asshole" persona to rush in where wise men fear to tread, an advantage in Hung Angels barroom brawls,
but not much good anywhere else.
We're fucked.

blackchubby38

11-23-2017, 05:43 AM

buttslinger

11-23-2017, 06:22 AM

Even if he didn't have autism, that still would have been in bad taste. You shouldn't take out your frustrations with his father on him. That goes for any politician's children.

That politician shouldn't endorse a child molester, that is beyond bad taste.

smalltownguy

11-23-2017, 06:30 AM

That politician shouldn't endorse a child molester, that is beyond bad taste.

The politician should care for people by thinking hard.....not considering them hypocrites

Stavros

11-29-2017, 02:53 PM

The US President has re-tweeted racist material produced by the Neo-Nazi group Britain First, a clear sign that he is as committed to destroying democracy in the UK as his friends Vladimir Putin and Recep Erdogan are in Russia and Turkey. This is possibly the most disgraceful smear on the UK that a US President has ever committed to the public realm, I don't even think the traitor George Washington would have insulted his King in the same way. One would normally hope for a robust response from the UK government, in this instance a simple, take it down or we will send your Ambassador home with 100 staff from the Embassy, but Theresa May is a lame duck waiting to be put out of her misery, probably by her own party.

As for the videos of Hate that the President admires, the deputy leader of Britain First (Jayda Fransen) expressed her approval:

Fransen responded delightedly to her posts being republished by the Trump account. She wrote: “THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, DONALD TRUMP, HAS RETWEETED THREE OF DEPUTY LEADER JAYDA FRANSEN’S TWITTER VIDEOS! DONALD TRUMP HIMSELF HAS RETWEETED THESE VIDEOS AND HAS AROUND 44 MILLION FOLLOWERS! GOD BLESS YOU TRUMP! GOD BLESS AMERICA!”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/nov/29/trump-account-retweets-anti-muslim-videos-of-british-far-right-leader

buttslinger

11-29-2017, 09:16 PM

I think it's possible that Trump could totally destroy the office of the President and still "WIN" in his own mind.
I don't know what his agenda is, but it's definitely not the oath of office he took last January.
I assured everyone here that the ghost of George Washington would have blown Trump's brains out on the steps of the Senate, I think it's unlikely the Republicans will knife him in the back on the Senate floor, my one and only hope is that THE TRUTH destroys Donald Trump. A crystal clear truth everyone can see and understand. A truth that will stand out for the ages. Otherwise it's just politics.

Stavros

11-29-2017, 09:43 PM

my one and only hope is that THE TRUTH destroys Donald Trump. .

But the official position of the government, as expressed by Sarah Sanders is absolutely clear: the truth is not relevant. When it was explained to her that the videos do not show what they claim, she just shrugged it off to say it didn't matter if the videos are true or fake, the Tweets were about security issues, even though they did not refer to this. Earlier this evening, Ann Coulter was on Channel 4 News in the UK and challenged as the possible source of the tweets re-tweeted by the President. When told the Dutch who uploaded the video of the assault on a man in crutches confirmed neither of the men was either a Muslim or an immigrant, Coulter simply repudiated the truth to seek 'independent verification' or words to that effect, then went on a rant about multiple cases of attacks nobody has heard of except her.

Of some interest, Channel 4 also interviewed Jada Fransen, before or after her appearance in Court today, and she refused to confirm or deny that she or Britain First had direct contact with the White House. Given that these tweets appeared on the day when Fransen was in court one speculates as to how much the President knows about Britain First and its agenda of hate and violence. And whether or not he supports them, rather than any of the legitimate political parties in the UK -Britain First is not allowed to field candidates in elections here.

Whatever the two parties know, we know the President is not welcome to visit the UK. The assumption anyway is that the invitation will stand but not be acted upon. Not for some time. The longer the better.

Jericho

11-30-2017, 12:16 AM

Just...Awesome!

http://www.gettrumpybear.com/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=7&v=6Vt3WdZYm3E

buttslinger

11-30-2017, 12:45 AM

Just...Awesome!
http://www.gettrumpybear.com/

My Christmas list-
DONE!!!

Stavros

11-30-2017, 10:09 AM

I wake up to find that the President has rebuked Theresa May with the astonishing advice 'Don't focus on me' when that seems to be what he needs most. There are arguments that these tweets were a diversion from the problems he is having getting his tax proposals through Congress, that he is deflecting any discussion of the claims he has sexually harassed women over many years, and that he is bunkered down in Washington reviving the 'birther controversy', and repeating the claim he won the popular vote in the election, while Mueller gets closer and closer.

Whatever the truth, this has been a remarkable moment in Anglo-US relations, as I can't think of another time when a US President has been so disrespectful of our Prime Minister, and became a partisan supporter of such an extremist group as Britain First. In the context of events earlier this year some will add it to the list confirming his preference for White Supremacist groups over others, or claim he is messaging his core voters, but I now wonder if even these voters are becoming tired of the routine tactic of 'stoking the fire' when in reality it does not produce anything that can be pointed to as an achievement. I don't suppose most Americans care one way or the other who Britain First is and like the President who tweeted the wrong Theresa May before having a second go, know little about Theresa May, but there used to be at least some sense of decency in the US-UK relationship, whether it is a 'special' one or not. That has ended. The US has abandoned human rights, and far from promoting democracy around the world, is tacked on to the tails of anti-democratic dictatorships and autocracies the President approves of, either because they give him money, or because their leaders 'get things done'. The only thought that gives comfort is that this idiot will one day leave the White House and never return, the sooner the better.

broncofan

12-01-2017, 10:03 AM

http://thehill.com/homenews/media/362513-scarborough-trump-allies-told-me-he-has-dementia

Take this with a few giant tablespoons of salt, but we have no way of evaluating it. His judgment is bad, his speech has changed over the years, but whether he has dementia or how quickly he's deteriorating, I don't know. Just thought it was interesting if Scarborough has heard that from people close to Trump.

Stavros

12-01-2017, 12:36 PM

Whether or not the President is literally or metaphorically demented, the important thing for me is the varied reaction to the re-tweets and the extent to which those responsible have dodged the key element in all this. I understand that for the British government the anxiety lies with those productive relationships with the USA in security and intelligence matters, NATO and politics at that level, which they do not want to undermine by becoming more involved with a dispute over tweets -I suspect May and her advisers just dismiss this as typical of the moron in the White House about which they can do nothing until he goes.

But when the BBC interviews the official cretin Sebastian Gorka or the tv channels and radio bring on Ann Coulter or apologists like the southern lady Mosbacher or Sarah Sanders, it is clear their agenda is skewed toward their definition of 'Islamst terrorism'. But the real impact is not Islam at all, but the extent to which fringe groups on the right have been empowered to the extent that they see the President as their ally, a situation that would have been unthinkable before, the only conceivable parallel being Regan's visit to Bitburg in 1985.

So Jada Fransen's twitter account has grown and she has appealed directly to the President to help her in her court case, while the American extremists like Robert Spencer, the KKK and Breitbart have all used this to legitimize their toxic politics of hate. Indeed whe Robert Spencer is quoted on his website saying
“The real question is not whether this or that video is accurate, but whether there is a problem with jihad terror and Islamic supremacism in Britain and elsewhere.”
-The words are almost identical to those used by the President's spokesperson Sarah Sanders, exposing not a gap between the Presidency and White Supremacists, but just how close to each other they are.

And thus we reach a point where the truth is no longer relevant, that a broader campaign is under-way that will use all and any means necessary to broadcast its message, in this case facilitated by a country that used to defend democracy and human rights. What else can explain this garbage? -
Perhaps most alarmingly, the outpouring of Islamophobic remarks triggered by the US president was not confined to the extreme margins of public life. The unofficial fan page for Judge Jeanine Pirro, the Fox News and NBC celebrity, was also full of toxic comments praising Trump and warning Britain that it was about to become a Muslim state.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/nov/30/trump-twitter-far-right-racism-hate

broncofan

12-01-2017, 08:12 PM

I agree with every word here...the dementia thing is at this point a frivolous side note, but in no way removes culpability or even explains the bigoted vituperation emanating from his twitter account. The Britain First scandal does explain the de-sensitizing effect that his behavior has on the American public, as it is almost as though we are taking cues on how appalling his behavior is from the international reaction. We have seen behavior like this that pushes the norms on an almost daily basis, from Muslim-bashing to bashing of Hispanics, to attacks on free press, to sentencing recommendations on twitter, to other attacks on the judiciary, to attacks on the independence of the justice department. For the British, the Britain First party is a known entity and so maybe the shock is immediate...there is no testing of norms or process of wondering whether there is accountability for the man's words and actions.

Later today I'm going to read about Flynn, which surely is part of the next news cycle on Trump.

buttslinger

12-01-2017, 08:47 PM

Step back and look at this mess.
Every other Nation in the World has downgraded our standing, except Russia and Saudi Arabia,
I remember Reagan had full blown Alzheimers his last year in office, and nobody noticed,
but in Trump's case, he really does believe he's the only one who matters, he's said so.
Dementia is like the fifth worst flaw in his head.......
I can only hope, here on my 3,000th post, that the childlike nature of the months leading up to the election left childlike easy to unover mistakes, and Gen Mikey J Flynn is singing like a caged canary.
I don't think Bob Mueller wants to be a "player" in all this, but you gotta figure he's the guy right in the middle conducting not only the investigation, but real-time events happening in the Halls of Congress. There has to be a certain amount of red blooded personal revulsion he feels for Trump and what's he's done to his beloved FBI. I hope so.

bluesoul

12-01-2017, 10:10 PM

michael flynn just pled guilty to lying the F.B.I. what else does anyone need to realize this idiot in charge is fucking retarded?

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/01/us/politics/michael-flynn-guilty-russia-investigation.html

broncofan

12-02-2017, 12:22 AM

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/01/opinion/michael-flynn-guilty-plea-takeaways.html

This is another new york times article, but a slightly less factual article and more of a legal analysis. The article argues that in addition to the lying to the fbi charges, there is other leverage against Flynn out there. As a result, he is going to be very cooperative with Mueller. What he has to offer Mueller (in addition to info on Kushner) is that Trump himself directed him to make contact with the Russians to basically conduct foreign policy to undermine a sitting President. There is also more evidence in this vein that Flynn interfered with U.S. foreign policy respecting the UN resolution against Israel for illegal settlements.

It also bolsters the obstruction charges against Trump if Flynn has direct information on them, we will no longer have to speculate on Trump's state of mind when he spoke to Comey or his confession to Lester Holt. Instead, we will have an accuser, a man who he reportedly obstructed justice on behalf of.

Therefore, no email evidence, no financial deals, no underlying conspiracy, just good old-fashioned abuse of power and rogue foreign policy. It doesn't mean these other things aren't out there. But why shouldn't obstructing justice and undermining the foreign policy of a sitting President be enough for impeachment?

Edit: please don't respond to the last rhetorical question by reminding me of the Republican Congress:)...I very much appreciated the optimistic tone of this article.

Stavros

12-02-2017, 02:06 AM

The BBC 2 Newsnight programme tonight claimed that there were only three people on the transition team higher than Flynn: the President-Elect, the Vice-President Elect, and Jared Kushner. The latter is already rumoured to be about to board the bus back to New York, Tillerson also in the process of being 'let go' before or after Christmas. But can this shambles be dismissed as the work of amateurs? Surely a transition team is given clear legal advice on what it can and cannot do. Also, Obama was explicit- he advised the President-Elect not to give Flynn a job, which suggests the FBI/CIA had concerns about him. That the President-Elect ignored the advice is precisely an example of resentment trumping reason, because anything Obama said was wrong, though it turns out he was right all along. Yet again, it is the lies, and the ease with which people in positions of authority tell them that undermines their legitimacy. And we are still just scratching the surface.

buttslinger

12-02-2017, 02:41 AM

Edit: please don't respond to the last rhetorical question by reminding me of the Republican Congress...I very much appreciated the optimistic tone of this article.

Me too.
Remember, just like Putin has tons of incriminating information on Americans they think they can use, we have tons of info on no-good-niks in Europe also. We don't advertise it, but we play as dirty as they do in some areas. They said the wires overseas lit up the night Trump was elected. Gossip City. And we heard most all of it through wiretaps. So I think MAYBE Mueller and his buddies in the FBI and CIA have known everything already, it's just a question of if they want to start a Political WWIII here and abroad. Taking down the President of the United States and maybe some Russians also would give anybody pause, it's going to create vast ripples and ramifications way past our little understandings. There's going to be pushbacks for years. They have to weigh and measure everything out before they act. But it looks like it's going down, if Trump goes nuts and starts talking real crazy shit.....I'm thinking more and more Republicans go to PLAN B and save what's left of their chickenshit asses. I'm pretty sure Mueller and his team have story-boarded everything that might happen, we do have some pretty capable people in this country, it takes a pretty big crisis to draw them out. By all accounts, the Mueller Team are the best and brightest, quite a contrast from Trump, Jared, Granny, and Jethro.
The one charge they decided to hit Flynn with was his involvement with Russia.

Stavros

12-02-2017, 12:13 PM

They said the wires overseas lit up the night Trump was elected. Gossip City..

Yes indeed, but the investigations now under way are not about gossip, but concrete allegations that the Republican candidate during the election campaign, and the Transition Team of the President-Elect between November 2016 and January 2017 violated the 'Logan Act' of 1799 -a federal law (1 Stat. 613; (http://legisworks.org/sal/1/stats/STATUTE-1-Pg613a.pdf)18 U.S.C. §953 (https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/953)) aimed at preventing private citizens from conducting foreign affairs without the permission or involvement of the US government.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-38973965

There are also allegations of an obstruction of justice in relation to the above.

The issue related to Michael Flynn touches on the Logan Act with regard to the claim that the President-Elect's Transition Team had communications with the Russians which were intended to affect politics, thus:

Mr Flynn, a former army general, admitted that during telephone conversations with Mr Kislyak, he asked for Russia to try and delay a UN resolution criticising Israeli settlements and not to respond in kind to the expulsion of 35 Russian diplomats by Barack Obama in response to Moscow’s alleged interference in the 2016 election. A day after the second request to Mr Kislyak, Vladimir Putin announced he was not going to expel US diplomats, a move that was subsequently praised by Mr Trump.

The point of interest here is who was senior to Flynn in the Transition Team, and that would appear to be the President-Elect, the Vice-President Elect, and Jared Kushner. Whether not the President's son was also on the team and considered senior I do not know, but the devil in this detail are two dates, the 22nd and the 29th of December. Thus:

The documents say that on December 22 2016, a "very senior member" of the team contacted him [Flynn] and asked him to speak with the Russian envoy about the UN vote on Israel as well as a number of other countries

and

Court documents show that Mr Flynn told investigators that on December 29, he called "a senior transition official", who was with other members of the team at Mr Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Florida “to discuss what, if anything, to communicate to the Russian ambassador about the US sanctions”.

But, Jared Kushner was not at Mar-a-Lago on the 29th, he was in Hawaii.

My rusty maths reckons that leaves two people in the frame for the 29th, unless there are others who have not been identified.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-russia-investigation-jared-kusher-michael-flynn-latest-a8087936.html

buttslinger

12-02-2017, 09:47 PM

buttslinger's wetdream is that Flynn is going to raise one hand, put the other on a Bible and say
"Yeah, the Russians told Trump they would give him Hillary secret-emails and Hillary fake-news-internet-sites in exchange for relaxed sanctions from a Trump White House"
Then we'll see witness after witness to prove that happened.

Either that or one of them Honda Civic R cars.
C'mon Santa, I've been good this year.

https://preview.ibb.co/nfBKpb/honda.jpg (https://ibb.co/mmAZNw)
image upload html (https://imgbb.com/)

broncofan

12-02-2017, 10:47 PM

Trump just admitted on twitter that he obstructed justice. He didn't do it in so many words but he supplied the last piece of evidence that could be controverted. In order to obstruct justice one needs to corruptly interfere with the due administration of justice.

This means that Trump would not be guilty if he asked Comey not to prosecute Flynn because he had a sincere belief that Flynn was innocent. It would be inappropriate and against ordinary procedure for him to direct the fbi in its investigations but he would be issuing an inappropriate directive for what he believed was a legitimate law enforcement purpose.

Today, Trump tweeted that he had to fire Flynn because he knew Flynn had lied to Pence and to the FBI. If he knew that, then his request to Comey could not have been made in the good faith belief that Flynn was innocent. His statement to Comey, "Flynn is a good guy" is ambiguous enough that it might be construed as a plea not to pursue a man who acted without the requisite intent, but his tweet today demonstrates that his dismissal of Flynn was because he knew Flynn committed a crime.

I honestly believe the tweet will be evidence, and goes to the "corruptly" element. But we'll see...The Logan Act stuff is interesting as well...it's not a statute that has been used very much I recall reading, but it's been on the books for over two hundred years. Violating it is a federal crime even if there are only a couple of instances of it being used.

broncofan

12-03-2017, 12:06 AM

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/02/us/russia-mcfarland-flynn-trump-emails.html?smid=tw-share

Read about what KT Mcfarland said in an email at the bottom of paragraph 4. The qualification of what she might have meant is at the top of paragraph 5. Is this an admission that sanctions talk was the result of gratitude for Russia's help...or does context explain? Clear now that the administration was coordinating response to Obama's actions against Russia including expulsion of their diplomats.

Stavros

12-03-2017, 02:36 AM

Read about what KT Mcfarland said in an email at the bottom of paragraph 4. The qualification of what she might have meant is at the top of paragraph 5. Is this an admission that sanctions talk was the result of gratitude for Russia's help...or does context explain? Clear now that the administration was coordinating response to Obama's actions against Russia including expulsion of their diplomats.

The legal defence has been made thus:
One of Trump’s lawyers, Ty Cobb, said the Logan Act “certainly does not apply” to transition teams and told the Times “it would have been political malpractice not to discuss sanctions”. “The presidential transition guide specifically encourages contact with and outreach to foreign dignitaries,” the newspaper quoted Cobb as saying.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/dec/02/donald-trump-michael-flynns-actions-during-transition-were-lawful
I can't believe this. On the one hand a Transition Team may have the legal right to 'talk to' domestic and foreign policy with people in the USA and abroad, but it doesn't give them the legal right to interfere in political decision-making before the President has taken the Oath of Office on inauguration day, which is what happened. This is sophistry on Cobb's part.

But what it also reveals is a President who has never had to face a court of law, having slick and probably brilliant lawyers who were able to negotiate plea bargains, or simply pay their way out of justice through 'out of court settlements' probably with non-disclosure agreements. But this is not a fake university or a casino going broke, or a blonde with a grudge, it is politics at the highest level, the government of the USA. And yet he still doesn't 'get it'. One day soon he may indeed 'get it' -or he may just decide to fire Mueller and play the ensuing rage with diabolical delight.

buttslinger

12-03-2017, 02:54 AM

In his heart of hearts Trump is and will always be a spoiled little rich brat.
He's been through tons of court cases. They think the Russian connection started because that's the only place he could borrow enough money to leverage real estate deals. From the Russian Mafia.
He is a totally different animal. Has he ever had a "conversation" with any of his wives???
It's all a game.
The Day to Day of this administration has been unlike any other.

buttslinger

12-03-2017, 05:52 AM

I have always had the theory that Trump doesn't represent the Republican Party, he represents Fox News and Conservative Talk Media...... Fox News, Hannity, Limbaugh.....they never have to balance a budget or find donors, all they have to do is hypnotize their listeners. Feed them candy. Find a rhythm with a beat that is easy to dance to. They are spiritual Mediums, not legislators.
What could go wrong???

https://preview.ibb.co/m9BYFG/night_of_the_living_dead_3.jpg (https://ibb.co/kcb0vG)

buttslinger

12-03-2017, 07:11 PM

One last rant while I'm amped up.
It used to be that AMERICA was 80% white, and 20% black.
Now, it seems like the Nation is 3% white, and 97% black.
You can still buy a good hammer, but it costs 50 bucks.
To whittle a long sad story to a short one, politicians have been forced to paint a happy face on a picture that just isn't as rosy as it used to be, it's been getting harder and harder for ANYBODY to get a really good job unless you're connected to a rich fat cat somehow. Stock tips and corner offices, The rest of the world has caught up from the post WWII American dominance of everything. Our slice of the pie is thinner.
I remember I wrote that Hillary Clinton was going to eliminate the national debt like Bill did in the 19990s, and one of the guys here laughed loudly at me. I investigated, and he was totally right, I don't think anyone in charge even has a plan to decrease the deficit.
Congress has a worse approval rate than Trump, the only thing I can figure is that Republican voters turned on Jeb and Marco and Establishment Republicans because nothing they promised ever cane true anymore.
I worry that this tax bill might be the FAT CATs grabbing up as much as they can before everything falls apart, so they can leave the bankrupt polluted USA for a nice Valley in Switzerland somewhere .
Part of my angst is the very real fact that a chunk of my retirement money is going to my Mom's retirement home that is costing about 100K/year now. And a modest home in Northern Virginia cost half a million dollars. And I've got it better than most.

broncofan

12-04-2017, 07:18 PM

http://www.cnn.com/2017/12/04/politics/trump-john-dowd-obstruct-justice/index.html?sr=twCNN120417trump-john-dowd-obstruct-justice1053AMVODtop

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-lawyer-president-cannot-obstruct-justice-n826231

If they really believed that the President cannot commit obstruction why did they spend so much effort denying that he did? If you look at either article look at the nbc article.

What I don't understand about Dershowitz' view is the fact that there is no limiting principle. If a President cannot be charged with obstruction for exercising his constitutional authority to tell the fbi who to investigate, then would he be able to direct the fbi to investigate one of his real estate competitors? What about a political enemy? If the President cannot be held accountable as long as he is acting within the scope of his constitutional power, then the rule of law does not apply to him as long as he acts under the color of his authority. This would be like saying a police officer cannot be charged with assault as long as he's wearing a uniform and using unlawful force while on duty.

I am closer to agreeing with the brilliant Preet Bharara, but I am not sure that charging a president should be a very high bar, or any higher than for anyone else. Sure, there is the task of determining how his conduct differs from what he's obligated to do, but the obstruction statute does not proscribe appropriate conduct for any individual. There is no overlap between corruptly interfering with the due administration of justice and duly administering justice. So I am not sure why the President even deserves deference if it's proved he did the former. He should be treated like any other citizen.

I know I've said this before, but this was once a potential argument. Now Trump's lawyer is trotting it out.

buttslinger

12-04-2017, 08:26 PM

broncofan

12-04-2017, 08:29 PM

My eighth grade teacher told me a President can shoot someone and run back in the oval office and not be charged, because the way it's set up the President is the Top Cop.
You need to impeach him first.
Your teacher is right. I'm just talking about using the crime of obstruction as a guidepost for impeachment. The question of whether he committed a felony should be a decent predicate for determining whether he should be impeached and removed from power.

broncofan

12-04-2017, 08:53 PM

https://www.vox.com/2017/12/4/16733422/fbi-deal-trump-flynn-russia-comey

So zero professors out of 13 polled by vox agree with Dowd and Dershowitz but one unfortunately believes the act of lawfully firing someone cannot be obstruction. This makes no sense. An otherwise legal act can't be obstruction? Disposing of a bloody shirt is not a crime. How about disposing of a bloody shirt that's evidence in a case? In fact, often the only thing that makes the act that constitutes obstruction illegal is that it's done to obstruct. Now the means has to be illegal too?

But Dershowitz should be persona non grata on every network except fox. Last post on this.....but it's a slow news day.

Stavros

12-05-2017, 12:04 AM

I understand that the President's lawyer, John Dowd has claimed he wrote the tweet in the President's twitter feed-
"I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI," the Saturday tweet reads (https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/937007006526959618). "He has pled guilty to those lies. It is a shame because his actions during the transition were lawful. There was nothing to hide!"
http://edition.cnn.com/2017/12/03/politics/flynn-firing-dowd-tweet/index.html

I am not sure if I believe a lawyer would use the term ''he has pled guilty" though a novelist like Dash Hammet might; and I don't know if this means Dowd is about to be fired, or if he agreed to wriggle under a bus for his boss.

What I don't know, and perhaps someone can tell me, is if I am right in thinking that every Tweet from the President's account including those that are deleted, is the property of the Government of the USA, that it amounts to an official document of the Presidency and will be stored in the National Archive as such -? I think it means that if in ten years time or whatever the right of access is to researchers, one can visit the Archive in Washington DC and call up the President's papers and read every Tweet since inauguration day. But on that basis, does it matter if the President's fingers did the tapping? Legally, surely it is the President who must take responsibility for documents issued in his name, and doesn't this add weight to the argument that he may have obstructed justice if he knew Flynn had lied before admitting it when questioned by the FBI?

With ref to the view of Lisa Giffin in Broncofan's link, does the President have the right to shred documents, if he doesn't own them, or what is ownership in the context of the Presidency? If Nixon had to hand over the tapes, surely a President, if he or she kept one, would also have to hand over a diary -? Nixon may provide the precedent here.

buttslinger

12-05-2017, 04:54 AM

I'm not going to be satisfied if Trump's Presidency comes down to pled v. pleaded,
I remember Nixon was allowed to resign in shame,
Trump has no shame!!!!!!!!
I'm asking Santa for a pitchfork and torch, ......I can be in front of the White House in 40 minutes!!!
If Mueller comes up with compelling evidence that Trump and his team willingly offered Russia a relaxing of sanctions after the election in return for political hijinx...........
Jesus!!
Talk about new legal territory!!
With Republicans in control of everything,
Trump's pardon power,
THE LAW is going to be twisted into something totally unrecognizable.
FUBAR!!!

broncofan

12-05-2017, 08:01 AM

With ref to the view of Lisa Giffin in Broncofan's link, does the President have the right to shred documents, if he doesn't own them, or what is ownership in the context of the Presidency? If Nixon had to hand over the tapes, surely a President, if he or she kept one, would also have to hand over a diary -? Nixon may provide the precedent here.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidential_Records_Act

It depends on the type of records. I recall people were arguing about this on twitter and I don't recall whether his tweets count as records that he is not permitted to destroy. This came up when he deleted a tweet.

The funny thing about pled v. pleaded is that I've seen everyone on twitter say this is a tell and sadly I can say that I've seen plenty of lawyers write pled. I've also seen lawyers write plead, thinking it was past tense and pronounced pled. Maybe Dowd is a good enough lawyer that this mistake would be very uncharacteristic for him.

On the other hand, he should look out for the rules of professional conduct. For the alibi to work, he would have had to write a tweet that was a falsehood. Dowd, writing as Trump, claimed that Trump fired Flynn because he lied to the FBI. If Trump did not know Flynn lied to the FBI, then why would Dowd ghostwrite something that's not true? To me it violates one of the two rules below. Either he lied, or he did not demonstrate competence and did his client a disservice by uttering a false, inculpatory statement.

But then I think it's been established that Trump DID know Flynn lied to the FBI, which makes Dowd's alibi after the fact a lie. Uhh, let's just say Dowd's a liar....

https://www.americanbar.org/groups/professional_responsibility/publications/model_rules_of_professional_conduct/rule_4_1_truthfulness_in_statements_to_others.html

https://www.americanbar.org/groups/professional_responsibility/publications/model_rules_of_professional_conduct/rule_1_1_competence.html

Stavros

12-05-2017, 12:27 PM

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidential_Records_Act
It depends on the type of records. I recall people were arguing about this on twitter and I don't recall whether his tweets count as records that he is not permitted to destroy. This came up when he deleted a tweet.
The funny thing about pled v. pleaded is that I've seen everyone on twitter say this is a tell and sadly I can say that I've seen plenty of lawyers write pled. I've also seen lawyers write plead, thinking it was past tense and pronounced pled. Maybe Dowd is a good enough lawyer that this mistake would be very uncharacteristic for him.
On the other hand, he should look out for the rules of professional conduct. For the alibi to work, he would have had to write a tweet that was a falsehood. Dowd, writing as Trump, claimed that Trump fired Flynn because he lied to the FBI. If Trump did not know Flynn lied to the FBI, then why would Dowd ghostwrite something that's not true? To me it violates one of the two rules below. Either he lied, or he did not demonstrate competence and did his client a disservice by uttering a false, inculpatory statement.
But then I think it's been established that Trump DID know Flynn lied to the FBI, which makes Dowd's alibi after the fact a lie. Uhh, let's just say Dowd's a liar....

Thanks for the above link which took me elsewhere and a Bill going through the machine which will establish that Presidential tweets are official documents, assuming it is passed -this seems to be the key:
Trump's tweets have been legally significant in the past. White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sean_Spicer) stated that Trump's tweets are "considered official statements by the President of the United States.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Over_Various_Feeds_Electronically_f or_Engagement_Act

I was going to make a cynical point about the President and his lawyer, but we have our own twits in the British government, and they don't even need to tweet anything, just open their mouths, and sing. I think it's called the Why? factor when it makes a commitment at 9am that is redundant by 12.

trish

12-05-2017, 04:45 PM

If I understand correctly, Dowd has jumped in front of the bus with the claim that he drafted the message that Donald tweeted. But if Dowd’s claim is true, then Donald read the draft, understood what it said, deemed it correct and fit for public consumption, typed it into his phone and tweeted it. Does this not mean that Donald knew Flynn was guilty of lying to the FBI, that it was one of the primary reasons he fired him and that Donald knew this before he approached Comey on Flynn’s behalf? Isn't Donald's reading the draft, approving it and then sending the tweet tantamount to his confirming its content? How exactly does Dowd drafting the tweet exonerate Donald?

buttslinger

12-06-2017, 05:36 AM

I'm very hopeful these Deutsche Bank subpoena rumors are true and the floodgates are about to open with Trump Eyeball deep in Russian Mob money laundering. That would explain a lot.

Hey Donald, if something seems to be too good to be true, it usually is.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OImHUNVLlco

Stavros

12-10-2017, 02:00 PM

The article linked below focuses on the relentless assault that is being made on Robert Mueller by supporters of the President. The aim is not just to smear the reputation of Mueller (a Republican!) but the whole process of investigation, which by extension means the sustained ridicule and abuse of the FBI and the Justice Department, an abuse that begins at the top and works its way down through the President's allies in Congress and the Media.

I think the question now is whether this is a desperate attempt by people with something to lose to blame the system rather then themselves, or whether by tapping into a degree of public mistrust of Federal institutions the long term impact could be a more general loss of trust in those institutions and by extension the democratic system of which they are a part. It is one thing for Bannon and his associates to smash the duopoly of American party politics, but the danger is that they could be smashing everything, or at least causing it severe damage. What happens if half of America simply doesn't care that their President is a liar and a con-man who willingly accepted the help of a foreign government to win the highest office in the land? And what happens to those who do care?

We have a situation in the UK where I believe politicians are regarded by many people as being incapable, more so than ever before, but we have a head of state who is unelected so we may have a deep problem with the political system, but the state itself is not in danger, unless or until Brexit exposes more divisions that, in the case of Scotland in particular, cannot be resolved without secession or independence and, in effect, the break-up of the UK.

All political systems are vulnerable, yet in the American case I wonder if the greater danger lies in the divisions within the USA making it in effect, an ungovernable country at the Federal level. It means States will be in a strong position with the Federal government unable or unwilling to change anything -California will press ahead with its climate change policies, the southern States will continue to remove Black Americans from the electoral roll and prevent those who are on it from voting. Gerrymandering will remain a one-way ticket to permanent power. A President, this one or any succeeding one, can govern with 30% of the vote as long as he or she wins the Electoral College, but in a country where Presidential power becomes increasingly either ineffective or even meaningless.

I wonder if those baying for Mueller's blood realise what they are doing, with the chilling thought that they do, and don't care if the central institutions of government fall to pieces in rancour and despair.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/dec/10/robert-mueller-trump-special-counsel-russia

buttslinger

12-10-2017, 06:40 PM

I would say that article sums it up pretty well, it happened right after Flynn was given a sweetheart deal by Mueller. (hmmmmm) James Carville said in the nineties "It's the economy, stupid"...now he says "It's all polarity"
I think both sides hire guys from Madison Ave to sell their PRODUCT, if all the men in the army obey the General, you will win, at least for a while. I think we're at the Dunkirk stage, or Stalingrad, Fox News is ordering it's soldiers to fight to the last man.
Part of the Tax Bill might take away home interest deductions which will hit Democratic states like New York and California more than Georgia or Alabama, or did they drop that? Everything Republicans do is aimed at cutting taxes, that not only saves corporations money on the back side, more money pours in on the CONSUMER front, because the schmucks have more money to blow.
By kicking out Franken, Democrats want to highlight that it's REPUBLICANS who reward sleezoid behavior. If you drop all Business regulation and slash taxes in half, the economy will thrive, but only until there's not enough taxes to pay armymen, teachers, and cops, not to mention creditors. Dems are looking at the long game, Republicans are looking at get rich quick schemes. Because Democrats are on the outside right now. RNC is IN.
Hannity earns millions of dollars. I cannot really understand that, at all.
It's baffling
My hope is that Mueller makes Trump not only lose his money, take his liberty too.

sukumvit boy

12-11-2017, 04:48 AM

The Trump presidency is putting the Con back in the constitution and the Dumb back in freedom.

buttslinger

12-11-2017, 06:14 AM

I heard David Axelrod talking this morning about how President Obama spent all day swimming through paperwork, getting tough decisions made, looking ahead, leaving the office every day with an armful of folders to get a jump on the next day. This was just after a report that Trump watches TV for four to eight hours a day. Bush played video games. It sounds like Clinton and Obama did the sowing, and Bush and Trump do the reaping. Is this the pattern now?

I also heard a rumor somewhere that Mueller has the goods on A WHOLE LOT of PEOPLE.

Will Trump get his middle class tax break?
Will Alabamians pray to a golden goat next tuesday?
Will Biblical prophesies come true in Jerusalem????
Orwell (sic) Rocket Man beat them to it???
Stay tuned, unless you're Vladimir Putin, nobody knows!!
Owoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

filghy2

12-12-2017, 05:10 AM

I think the question now is whether this is a desperate attempt by people with something to lose to blame the system rather then themselves, or whether by tapping into a degree of public mistrust of Federal institutions the long term impact could be a more general loss of trust in those institutions and by extension the democratic system of which they are a part. It is one thing for Bannon and his associates to smash the duopoly of American party politics, but the danger is that they could be smashing everything, or at least causing it severe damage. What happens if half of America simply doesn't care that their President is a liar and a con-man who willingly accepted the help of a foreign government to win the highest office in the land? And what happens to those who do care?

I don't think it's half the population; more like 30-40%, but the key point is that it's a majority of the Republican party. Trump's entire strategy for staying in office is to do whatever he can to appeal to these people and hence intimidate any Republican members of Congress who may still have a conscience from doing anything meaningful.

I doubt that the Trumpistas really care about the future consequences for democracy and the rule of law because they don't really believe in these things. Sure they pay lip service to them, but their ideal system would be one in which their side is always in power and the law is just a tool to be used against their opponents. That's why they admire Putin - he is their role model.

Stavros

12-12-2017, 04:26 PM

I don't think it's half the population; more like 30-40%, but the key point is that it's a majority of the Republican party. Trump's entire strategy for staying in office is to do whatever he can to appeal to these people and hence intimidate any Republican members of Congress who may still have a conscience from doing anything meaningful.
I doubt that the Trumpistas really care about the future consequences for democracy and the rule of law because they don't really believe in these things. Sure they pay lip service to them, but their ideal system would be one in which their side is always in power and the law is just a tool to be used against their opponents. That's why they admire Putin - he is their role model.

On the one hand it is easy to feel depressed about the changes taking place in the US, particularly in the judiciary which is being transformed into a haven for men -and it is mostly white men- some of whom have little or no experience of the law but are members of the Federalist Society and this fit the ideological requirements of the Republican Party.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/commentisfree/2017/dec/12/donald-trump-right-wing-takeover-court-system

I wonder if these people believe they are the 'last Americans' and realise that over time, in say 25 years 'white Americans' of European ancestry will be a minority. The best way to combat this is first to prevent the Americans they don't like -Black and Latino in particular- from voting, either through voter suppression at the registration stage, through denial of voting on the day of the poll, and the refusal to allow anyone with a criminal record to vote as happens in many if not all states- Alabama has actually reversed this law but not publicised it. What we don't know is precisely how many Americans have been denied the vote, with the assumption that in a close race it would make the difference between someone like Moore winning or losing. But as you say, politicians in Alabama don't even hide their contempt for democracy as a system that should bring all Americans together to vote, they just can't accept that Black people should have equal rights.

On the other hand, in time this may change as society changes and a new generation of voters enters the fray, but in the meantime many of the gains made in the 1960s on civil rights remain the most potent targets of the religious conservatives with LGBTQ rights, abortion and in time, welfare the primary targets, and in this they will to some extent be protected by the new generation of judges some of whom are only in their 30s. In ideological terms, it seems odd that the US would in its social legislation appear to moving closer to Afghanistan than most Afghans would believe possible. It is as if the gun-totin', women-and-homo hating, Quran/Bible bashing Taliban, undefeated in 21 years, now has a presence in the US, where it will remain in its tribal areas of the South for some time to come.

Stavros

12-13-2017, 01:58 PM

It was a narrow victory, but a victory nevertheless. The stats show a solid 30-35% of white people mostly men for Moore, with a perhaps encouraging majority of young people voting Jones, though as I write I am not sure if Roy Moore, who claims God is still in control, will get a recount.

Will this further deepen the rifts in the Republican Party? It appears to be another blow to Steve Bannon. The Chief of Strategy who, it turned out, didn't have one, left the White House months into the job claiming 'it's over' and attempted to 're-boot' the Republican Party by attacking it from within, always a risk. He lost. His organ has yet to produce a coherent explanation unless it comes up with a claim that thousands of illegal voters crossed the state line, or take a hint from Roy Moore and claim that when Satan gets serious, he makes himself invisible -and impersonates Alabama voters. This is a man who, when asked when America was great replied
"I think it was great at the time when families were united – even though we had slavery – they cared for one another,” he said. “Our families were strong, our country had a direction.”
-having lamented on radio in 2011 the abolition of slavery and the granting of votes to women and Black people.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/dec/12/roy-moore-defeat-trump-future-republican-party-trumpism

18 sitting Republican Senators will not run in 2018. Some who are may be wondering what they can do hang on to their seat. Moore was an exceptionally poor candidate -and I even wonder if riding what often seemed like reluctant horse was a factor- but we have yet to get the full Monty on this from the President, who tweeted a typically sour congratulations to Doug Jones, but has yet to admit any role in the defeat and may be looking around for someone else to blame, because whatever happens, it is not, it is never, and it never will be his fault.

Hear me talkin' to ya
I don't bite my tongue...

trish

12-13-2017, 05:25 PM

The important thing is that Trump was right. It’s the most important thing - in Trump’s failing mind anyway:

“The reason I originally endorsed Luther Strange (and his numbers went up mightily), is that I said Roy Moore will not be able to win the General Election. I was right! ...”

The margin was close (about 1.5%) but not enough to trigger an automatic recount (the threshold is 0.5%). Still Doug Jones is not likely to take office before the GOP pushes through their tax bill.

To delay even further the day that Jones is seated, Moore could ask for recount. Delay would be the only point of such a request as there is no chance (barring malfeasance) a recount would change the outcome of the election. The last time I looked Jones was ahead by approximately nineteen-thousand votes. The last recount in Alabama occurred when the difference was just several hundred votes and the recount changed that difference by only three votes.

Moreover, since a recount is not triggered, Moore would have to pay for it. I think the question is, “Does the GOP want to pay for a recount that will just confirm last night’s result in order to delay Doug Jones being sworn into office?”

bluesoul

12-13-2017, 07:42 PM

anyone else find the timing impeccable that the night african american women turned out in record numbers to vote in doug jones (http://www.newsweek.com/who-voted-doug-jones-black-women-supported-democratic-senate-candidate-98-746358), omarosa, the highest ranking african american woman in the white house, was fired and escorted out of the white house (https://twitter.com/AprilDRyan/status/940967766219161602)?

also, it's frightening to think that alabama saw the choice between a democrat and a pedophile as a tough choice

buttslinger

12-13-2017, 09:14 PM

ha ha ha
I heard Omarosa was cussing out Gen Kelly and demanding to see the President, and he refused so she tried to sneak into to the White House Residence section and was escorted out by Secret Service. Apparently her job description as "token black woman" wasn't fulfilled enough. Oprah? Condi? nope....

As much as I would have liked to have seen Senate Republicans in the same photos with Senator Roy "Prevert" Moore, I'm glad the Dems brought another one over Home Plate, I hope after we're done with Trump Charles Barkley will be able to get elected, if Trump has taught us anything, it's that you can't wait for it to be given to you, you have to go out and get it.
Rule #ONE: you've got to pull it off.
I guess Donald will be pulling one off later this week with his new tax bill to the poor and middle class.
ha ha ha

buttslinger

12-14-2017, 07:00 AM

broncofan

12-14-2017, 07:20 AM

I saw on Rachel Maddow show that if tuesday night hand been an Alabama House of Representatives election, and the same people voted either democratic or republican, because of gerrymandering, you would have gotten 6 republicans, and one democrat.
I love that someone disliked your post, which if true, is a hard fact and not really something to be angry about. I think that it's perfectly illustrative of how gerrymandering works. It ensures lots of small wins in districts for your guys and then sequesters the other side's voters in one district for a single large win. Curious to see who the angry person is who hates explanations about gerrymandering. Dreamon is that you? Just be honest if it is.

broncofan

12-14-2017, 07:43 AM

Just curious. Anyone have any thoughts about Bernie Sanders not endorsing Doug Jones? I'm not a fan of it but I guess I've said that:)

Stavros

12-14-2017, 09:37 AM

Just curious. Anyone have any thoughts about Bernie Sanders not endorsing Doug Jones? I'm not a fan of it but I guess I've said that:)

The argument in the NYT link below is that Alabama voters are sensitive folk and would not take kindly to out-of-state radicals being bussed in to stand by Doug Jones side. Even Biden when he visited was seen as a risk but is a long-time friend of Jones, so no major Democrat figures showed up -no Obama, no Clinton, no leading Senators -but they did a lot behind the scenes in fund-raising and organization. You could even say this was a tactical success, tailoring a campaign to its local features. It is also the case that Doug Jones is a mild-mannered lawyer compared to Roy Moore's hysterical John Wayne with a Bible (but a reluctant horse) and that he did not, as far as I am aware, run any fire and brimstone ads attacking Moore. Does this mean Moore lost rather than Jones won? Perhaps.

And anyway, Sanders is not a Democrat. And, as has been discussed before, it suggests the Democrats have to move on and start putting the next generation of leaders in front of the cameras, not yesterday's men and women.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/14/us/politics/alabama-doug-jones-roy-moore-democrats.html

bluesoul

12-14-2017, 05:46 PM

last night kentucky state rep. dan johnson committed suicide by shooting himself in the head near a bridge in mt. washington after allegations of sexual molestation of a teenage girl. below is his facebook post made shortly before taking his life:

1045205

weird how an innocent man with horizontal restraints (wife and kids) choses suicide instead of fighting to clear his name. but he loved god and his family and since god forgives all and his family has also been asked to forgive all i guess he's in the clear now

Stavros

12-14-2017, 06:59 PM

weird how an innocent man with horizontal restraints (wife and kids) choses suicide instead of fighting to clear his name. but he loved god and his family and since god forgives all and his family has also been asked to forgive all i guess he's in the clear now

Indeed, and a more telling point is that the same people who claim God is the all-powerful author of all things, don't explain how this God is powerless to help men like Dan Johnson. Or maybe Dan Johnson gave up on God by taking his own life, the life that he would claim God gave him.

Roy Moore has issued a ridiculous Christmas message, utterly bereft of the humility and grace one would expect a Christian to deliver at Christmas, a time of 'peace and goodwill to all men'. Instead, having claimed the Constitution recognises that all people are equal, he then degrades the same people by blaming them for everything that he thinks has gone wrong with America, even claiming there is no difference between two corrupt political parties, one of which supported his campaign in the election he is still reluctant to concede he lost. This is so remote from the Christian life it is a pity he can't be sued under the trades description act, but the more relevant fact is he lost. And no amount of counting and blame can change that fact.
But one also notes the complete lack of grace in these losers, when even the President who campaigned for Moore, now claims he always said Moore would not win! This is a fish rotting from the head down.
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/14/roy-moore-rails-against-us-immorality-in-4-minute-youtube-video.html

bluesoul

12-14-2017, 07:05 PM

ha ha ha
I heard Omarosa was cussing out Gen Kelly and demanding to see the President, and he refused so she tried to sneak into to the White House Residence section and was escorted out by Secret Service.

that part wasn't true (https://twitter.com/SecretService/status/941082310832738305) and omarosa confirmed as much (https://www.politico.com/story/2017/12/14/omarosa-responds-fired-white-house-295490) although i'm not sure whether i'd believe her considering her reputation, close relationship (sort of?) with trump and the fact that she still technically works for him until jan 20th

broncofan

12-14-2017, 11:04 PM

And anyway, Sanders is not a Democrat. And, as has been discussed before, it suggests the Democrats have to move on and start putting the next generation of leaders in front of the cameras, not yesterday's men and women.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/14/us/politics/alabama-doug-jones-roy-moore-democrats.html
Thank you for this. I saw this after I posted and realized the attacks on him on social media are probably unfair if he was suppressing his view to avoid alienating Alabama voters. You're right that the party needs to move on from him, but it depends on whether Bernie will allow it to as many of his followers are obsessed with his cult of personality and want to draw divisions that don't need to exist. If he's the guy that the voters want then so be it but if he's not, there has to be a way to rein in his cult...I realize this view will not be everybody's cup of tea.....I don't necessarily think he's a bad guy, just that the Bernie movement is more aspirational than anything else and provides a good fantasy for people but not a means of achieving things.

It's hard to find good news when a child abuser who has made numerous racist statements over the years nearly wins an election, but it was a good outcome in that Republicans further compromised themselves and still lost. Whether that is punished by voters in the future or has a lasting effect on their brand remains to be seen. It is a shame that there are so many cultural divisions in this country that we have fewer and fewer common values.

broncofan

12-14-2017, 11:07 PM

bluesoul

12-15-2017, 12:13 AM

kind of. the problem is that killing oneself goes against human nature of survival (or trying to avoid death) so the question is why did someone kill themselves or rather, why did someone kill? was jack kevorkian a murderer or doctor? did his patients go to hell (even though they were suffering greatly or were they forgiven and do they now adorn halos and wings?)

another example is someone who is so delusional they think they can fly and jump off a building. technically suicide, but they're too disconnected for that to qualify since they didn't consent to die.

so for it to be properly a mortal sin (the worst of the very worst): you have to be healthy and totally consenting to killing yourself i.e. i just don't want to live anymore

the question about the dan johnson suicide is whether you believe him when he says "16 years is a sickness that will take my life" and "i cannot handle it". was he in some kind of pain and anguish?

how about robin williams?

suicide is a case by case basis which, i'm sure, god and his auditor thomas aquinas are more than qualified to handle.

sukumvit boy

12-15-2017, 12:40 AM

16 women who have been molested by Trump band together to demand that Congress investigate.
And 56 female Democratic lawmakers demand an investigation of trumps sexual misconduct.
http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/three-women-who-accused-trump-sexual-misconduct-speak-out-n828356

https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/sexual-misconduct/fifty-six-female-democratic-lawmakers-ask-house-investigate-trump-n828611

Stavros

12-15-2017, 07:11 PM

How does the US selects its judges?
Over the years the judiciary in England has been the subject of intense scrutiny over the background of judges, but when a candidate for a senior court in the US doesn't even know basic terms in law and has never tried a case you have to wonder if there are even elementary requirements for the job -he is so obviously unqualified for the job he could in this context just as easily be nominated Attorney General. Farcical. One assumes his nomination will be withdrawn.
Video is in the link if you can bear to watch it.

One of Donald Trump (http://www.independent.co.uk/topic/DonaldTrump)’s nominees to become a federal judge has failed to answer a string of basic questions about law.

Matthew Spencer Petersen admitted he was unfamiliar with several common legal terms during questioning by Republican (http://www.independent.co.uk/topic/republicans) Senator John Kennedy at a hearing earlier this week.
Mr Petersen, a member of the Federal Election Commission, had been selected by the President to become a federal judge on the US District Court for the District of Columbia.

However, he admitted during questioning that he had never tried a criminal or civil trial.
Video of the hearing posted to Twitter by Democratic (http://www.independent.co.uk/topic/democrats) Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, showed Mr Peterson failing to explain basic legal terms such as “motion in limine” - a request filed by a party to a lawsuit which asks the court for an order or ruling limiting or preventing certain evidence from being presented by the other side at the trial of the case.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-trump-federal-judge-nominee-asked-legal-questions-not-answer-district-washington-dc-a8111826.html

bluesoul

12-15-2017, 09:33 PM

october 28th 2016: trump seems to have a lot of faith in the FBI (https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/politics/trump-praises-fbi-for-reopening-investigation-in-clinton-case/2016/10/28/8f76b43e-9d36-11e6-b552-b1f85e484086_video.html) (headline is a little misleading i have to admit)

today: "it's a shame. what's happened to the FBI? it's a very sad thing to watch (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/15/us/politics/trump-fbi.html)"

btw- tom fuentes: don't fuck with this guy. seriously. don't. fuck. with this guy.

sideline: remember the story of gulliver's travels? well, tom fuentes is gulliver. and we're the lilliputians- only thing is, we're all the same size. not exactly a guy to fuck with

so, where were we?

i'll give trump this (in this case): the press did take his words out of context. he was- in his way- expecting the FBI to find hillary (clinton) guilty. but the press wrote it as he was praising them. he wasn't. he just said, he hoped they would do the right thing. they did. it just wasn't right in his context.

today, again, not really sure i agree with the press here. i think they have gone beyond trying to drum up some sensation where there is none. all he is saying is he stands by the police and he will not stand by the anti-police sentiment. okay, but what president wouldn't say that?

my point? and i have one: ahem ahem... coughs like hell (sorry, been smoking more)

the press isn't fucking helping by printing bullshit because all it does is fuel the right and radical the left and vice versa. imo, the only way things will get better is if both sides understand each other and currently a matter of "i'm right" vs "no, i'm the one who is right" etc

i get it: some people can't be helped. the "vex" person constantly claiming communism for example (hilarious but boring) but we're just going around in circles addressing them. why?

too much entertainment and not enough research (http://78.media.tumblr.com/4e750cb0f9ba51bfb15b780711a3ecc8/tumblr_mnzn6vX5lf1sti56vo1_500.png). in short: you're wasting your fucking time.

btw: consider this a side post with the climate change thread. can't be fucked to move it since donald trump is fucking climate change anyway right?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DXIxfytkSs

buttslinger

12-15-2017, 09:54 PM

The Republicans did shoot down a couple of Trump's worst Judge nominees, right after Moore lost. No experience at all as Judges.
Many of Trump's appointees are like the wife of World Wrestling Federation's Vince McMahon, or the guy from Blackwater's sister. For a while there was talk he was going to have Blackwater fight the war in Afghanistan. All mercenaries, or something. If the shit you can SEE is this toxic, think what he does that you CAN'T see!!
This morning he announced he was going to FIX the FBI. Is that code for spayed and neutered??
If you set a Veternarian approaching, Bob Mueller, pull out your service revolver, please!!!!!
Why aren't more old Republicans livid over this Russia thing, most of them lived through twenty years of Cold War with Russia. What does it take to get Trump FIXED?
A tax bill?
No tax bill?
A nuclear attack on Rocket Man??
We may not have enough time to get a Democratic House and Senate.

bluesoul

12-16-2017, 01:20 AM

we don't need the time, but thank god for the republican's, they're buying us that time with prayer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtcUdLzp5HA

bluesoul

12-17-2017, 07:14 AM

here is a list of words trump has banned the cdc (center of disease control) from using:

transgender
fetus
diversity
science-based
evidence-based
entitlement
vulnerable

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/16/health/cdc-trump-banned-words.html

broncofan

12-21-2017, 01:36 PM

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/04/opinion/trump-team-flynn-logan-act.html

The Logan Act makes it a crime for a United States citizen, “without authority” from the federal government, to communicate with foreign officials in order to “influence the measures or conduct of any foreign government” in a dispute with the United States or “to defeat the measures of the United States.” A conviction can result in a prison sentence of up to three years.

I had not looked at the arguments against the enforcement of the Logan Act, but they are really not very good. The fact that Trump was the incoming president does not mean the law does not apply. It applies to anyone who is not the head of the executive branch. Some have argued that the Trump team was merely trying to express foreign policy preferences to Russia but that is obviously untrue as well. The purpose of what Flynn said was to coordinate a response from Russia that would undermine the policies of the sitting President. He did not even say what the policy of the United States would be but instead directed Russia on how they should react.

The argument others are trotting out is that the statute's lack of use should make it unenforceable. They call this legal argument desuetude. I have not read articles or case law on the subject but it seems to me if it should apply, then it should apply to a statute that has been violated frequently, but has not been enforced. This is a case where the statute has been on the books and it has generally not been used to prosecute people because it's not common for someone to interfere with the foreign policy prerogatives of the president in this manner. If anything, the transition period provides the perfect opportunity to do so in a way that has a real effect because there could be genuine confusion about who has power.

Stavros

12-21-2017, 05:13 PM

BostonBad

12-21-2017, 05:23 PM

If Trump does win:

I think our democracy will survive.

I don't think it will lead to an apocalypse. But America won't become the utopia again that him and his supporters think it will be either. I can see members of his own party in Congress as well as Democrats fighting him any chance they get when it comes to some of his proposals. So expect 4 more years of gridlock.

As for what will happen on the international stage, who knows? We have to wait and see who would Trump surround himself when it comes to key cabinet positions and most importantly what his doctrine will be when it comes to foreign policy. For the world's sake, lets just hope it doesn't revolve around some kind of isolationism.

If Trump does win, I don't think the Republican Party will ever be the same. I think the primary showed you that Republican voters were fed up with the status quo and were ready for something new. So they're not going to want to go back to that.

But I think the same can be said for the Democratic party one as well. Who will emerge to become the new "it" candidate in wake of Hillary's defeat and what direction will they want to take the party in. Because a Trump victory will signify that people were truly fed up with political correctness, the Left's perceived weakness on Radical Islam, and illegal immigration. That they were fed up with being labeled a racist, sexist, anti-LGBT community gun-loving xenophobe because they dared question any aspect of those aforementioned groups of people. In other words, that "deplorable" remark will wind up coming back to bite Hillary and the Democrats in the ass.

I know one thing is for sure. Regardless of who wins, you're looking at a country that is going to be divided more than ever because one of the two most polarizing candidates in history is now the President of the United States. The amount of resentment and animosity towards to what people will consider the "other side" is only going to get worse. All you have to do is look to reaction of those who opposed Colin Kapernick's stance against police brutality and the actions of some the protesters in Charlotte.

Our country isn't a Democracy. It's a Constitutional Republic. Democracy fails because the fools of society have too much power. —"I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands..." it's not and to the Democracy. Our founding fathers knew that giving too much power to the masses would lead to a circus.

Stavros

12-21-2017, 05:56 PM

(https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/04/opinion/trump-team-flynn-logan-act.html)
The Logan Act makes it a crime for a United States citizen, “without authority” from the federal government, to communicate with foreign officials in order to “influence the measures or conduct of any foreign government” in a dispute with the United States or “to defeat the measures of the United States.” A conviction can result in a prison sentence of up to three years.
I had not looked at the arguments against the enforcement of the Logan Act, but they are really not very good. The fact that Trump was the incoming president does not mean the law does not apply. It applies to anyone who is not the head of the executive branch. Some have argued that the Trump team was merely trying to express foreign policy preferences to Russia but that is obviously untrue as well. The purpose of what Flynn said was to coordinate a response from Russia that would undermine the policies of the sitting President. He did not even say what the policy of the United States would be but instead directed Russia on how they should react.
The argument others are trotting out is that the statute's lack of use should make it unenforceable. They call this legal argument desuetude. I have not read articles or case law on the subject but it seems to me if it should apply, then it should apply to a statute that has been violated frequently, but has not been enforced. This is a case where the statute has been on the books and it has generally not been used to prosecute people because it's not common for someone to interfere with the foreign policy prerogatives of the president in this manner. If anything, the transition period provides the perfect opportunity to do so in a way that has a real effect because there could be genuine confusion about who has power.

I think the issue with the Logan Act in this instance, is that it has not been used to prosecute before because there was no reason to, whereas this latest Transition Team behaved in a reckless manner, and moreover, with the Russians.

It is precisely the connections to Russia that give this aspect of the Logan Act an additional warrant for investigation because
a) Russia is not an ally of the USA,
b) there is clear evidence that during the campaign the President made direct appeals to the Russian government for assistance with his campaign against an American citizen, and
c) the Russians were, and are, using cyber technology to attack and undermine democratic governments in Europe and North America.

If, for example, the Transition Team held discussion with the Conservative Party in the UK on a post-Brexit trade deal, that would be improper, but not a major crime as the UK is in alliance with the US in NATO, and any talks on trade would be hypothetical given the uncertainty of the UK's relationship with the EU after 2019.

Russia is not in alliance with the USA, and its economic interests conflict with those of the USA, but, crucially, the communications the Transition Team exchanged with the Russians concerned live policy issues that the Transition Team did not have the authority to discuss, as they were the business of the elected government of the USA whose President at the time was Barack Obama, and only one man can be President at any one time. It is clear the Logan Act was violated in this instance.

The second point concerns the extent to which the Republican Party candidate during the campaign appealed to a foreign government, and also to an organization called Wikileaks that works in alliance with the Russian government, to help undermine the campaign of an American citizen. It established a reasonable suspicion that there was, or the candidate wanted there to be, a direct relationship with the Russian government. It could be argued that far from being a campaign stunt, the appeal was followed up at the time, and that a 'relationship' or some 'communications' with the Russian government continued so that during the transition period the team felt able, even justified to discuss and implement policy without any legal right to do so.

Not only is there a clear violation of the Logan Act, morally it is quite remarkable that an American running for the Presidency should so openly appeal to a foreign government to attack one of its own citizens also running for office, as well as recruit the assistance of a sub-state organization that leaked materials illegally procured from US agencies that were published on the World Wide Web. In fact at the time there was a case for an investigation into the campaign team before the election was even held, and I wonder if there could have been a legal case to have the candidate arrested, and/or removed from the campaign by the Republican Party -?

Consider the context, because it is now clear that the Russians have been engaged in a systematic attempt to undermine democratic government in Europe and North America, cyber-warfare by any other name.

Vladimir Putin owes his current position to Boris Yeltsin, but the closer he got to Yeltsin, the more he saw of the corrupt nature of Russian government that had conferred staggering riches on a few men, that had undermined the institutions that had been developed in the USSR which gave Russia some form of governmental integrity, and weakened the Russian economy by giving independence to states which previously buttressed the Russian economy with imports, grain from the Ukraine being an obvious example.

Putin fought on two fronts when he became President
-domestic: re-structuring the economy to advantage average citizens at the expense of oligarchs -if the oligarchs co-operated, Putin let them keep their wealth in exchange for a share, if they crossed him they would end up in prison or exile. He also moved to reduce the share of Russian resources owned by global corporations, with BP and Royal Dutch-Shell the primary 'victims' -allowed to retain certain assets in the country, but obliged to sell even more back to Russian companies (in which he owns a share). And of course, BP and Shell also have substantial investments in the USA.

On the international front, Putin lost faith in 'the west' because he felt deceived at the manner in which the Security Council was used to justify regime change in Iraq, and in Libya, and because he felt that too many 'entrepreneurs' in the west had taken advantage of Russia in the Yeltsin period, and because substantial sums of money originating in Russia had flowed out of the country and into real estate deals in Europe and the US, some of that money being receipts from crime, organized crime having established a deep presence in the USSR notably in the 1970s. Putin thus sees himself as the 'saviour' of Russia, and appears to think that Russia is not held in the same esteem as the USA, Germany, France and even Britain. Hence his campaign in Syria, to both protect the Asad regime, but also to demonstrate the real power of the Russians to determine the outcome of events outside the country.

One must also say that Putin was appalled at the sight of a Black man in the White House, and that for both the future 'President Debt' and those close to him, from Felix Sater and other Russian businessmen, to admirers of Putin such as Michael Flynn, it was not just the threat of another Democrat -and Hillary Clinton too- in the White House, but a seething resentment bordering on mental illness that regarded Barack Obama as someone to be opposed, ridiculed, undermined and attacked at every opportunity. The mere fact that a Black man could be elected President in the USA was proof of the dangers of democracy and the lad from Queens agreed, and found common cause with Putin.

There is a reason why the Russia ties stink. And the reasons feed directly into the Logan Act, quite apart from the other potentially illegal acts committed since the campaign began, and since the inauguration. Whether or not actual proceedings will follow we must wait and see. Either way, 2018 is going to be an interesting year.

buttslinger

12-21-2017, 06:18 PM

Our country isn't a Democracy...... Our founding fathers knew that giving too much power to the masses would lead to a circus.

Our Founding Fathers weren't real keen on giving power to blacks or women either!!!

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.

The "TRUMP TEST" is to see what happens when the system gets "infected" by a germ or virus, does the system fight off the infection and survive or die?

I'm hearing that the House Republicans, some of them, have set up a secret society to come up with evidence of their own to discredit Mueller's team and have just cause under the Constitution to dismiss the entire Mueller Operation, it's just like anti-biotics, if you don't totally kill an infection, it roars back with a vengeance!!!

There's plenty of reason to be afreared, almost the entire Republican Party gathered around Trump and sang his praises like he was a STAR yesterday.......

But I think if he actually tried to fire Mueller, they'd turn on him. Fair Weather Friends, that lot.

What a midterm election we might have if the economy is booming and all of Trump's circle are facing indictments!!!

trish

12-21-2017, 06:43 PM

There's plenty of reason to be afreared, almost the entire Republican Party gathered around Trump and sang his praises like he was a STAR yesterday.......That was so freaking creepy! Those little speeches sounded exactly like the prayers you would hear at a Evangelical Thanksgiving dinner, except they weren't being offered to God, but rather to the Executive in Chief! It still gives me the creeps thinking about it.

buttslinger

12-21-2017, 06:43 PM

Listen, everything we know is "hearsay" it's not the hard cold facts.
I know Putin is stinking rich, there are rumors he may be the richest man in the World, dirty money,
I know the secret to success is to keep your mouth shut, and that's what Mueller is doing, that's the opposite of what Trump is doing. But my imagination is doing backflips to try and figure out what really happened November 2016.
If Mueller has all of Trump's business records, he's toast. Like Stalin's top advisor used to tell him "Show me the man, I'll get you the crime"......A New York City Real Estate Tycoon probably breaks the law everyday. And Trump already has overwhelming evidence that he broke or bent the law just like he lies: All the time.
Whatever happens is going to have huge consequences for the Country, If Trump gets exposed and it gets really ugly, after Bush destroyed the economy, what will the Republican Party look like?
Nice job on that takedown the other night, Broncofan, let's hope your Broncos don't handle themselves as well this Sunday.

buttslinger

12-21-2017, 06:45 PM

That was so freaking creepy! Those little speeches sounded exactly like the prayers you would hear at a Evangelical Thanksgiving dinner, except they weren't being offered to God, but rather to the Executive in Chief! It still gives me the creeps thinking about it.

I think they said Pence personally praised him every 11 seconds.

Stavros

12-21-2017, 08:13 PM

I think they said Pence personally praised him every 11 seconds.

And...
It comes just weeks after Mr Trump reportedly branded his deputy “low class” and his family “yokels” for bringing pets to the Naval Observatory – the official residence of the US Vice President.
Reports of friction between the pair over Mr Pence’s religious conservatism have regularly flared since Mr Trump took office and he has repeatedly mocked Mr Pence’s Christianity in public.

During a discussion about LGBTQ rights, Mr Trump reportedly motioned to Mr Pence and said: “Don’t ask that guy—he wants to hang them all!”, according to the New Yorker’s Jane Meyer.
Ms Pence’s wife Karen is reported to believe Mr Trump is “totally vile”, according to a former campaign aide.

Ms Pence is said to have revealed her true feelings about Mr Trump just after the Access Hollywood video was released, which showed Mr Trump boasting about sexually assaulting women.

Among the items of praise from Mike 'Bucket' Pence is this gem, on the same day most of the members of the UN voted against the USA's recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel-

You’ve restored American credibility on the world stage. We’re standing with our allies. We’re standing up to our enemies.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/mike-pence-donald-trump-us-cabinet-speech-video-miracles-us-president-tax-bill-a8121911.html

bluesoul

12-21-2017, 08:36 PM

dean winslow, a stanford university professor of medicine and former air force surgeon, withdrew his name from consideration to be assistant secretary of defense for health affairs after he found out his appointment was put on 'indefinite hault' for saying "how insane it is that in the united states of america a civilian can go out and buy a semiautomatic weapon like an AR-15"

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/i-spoke-my-mind-on-guns-it-torpedoed-my-appointment-in-the-trump-administration/2017/12/20/8f708f6c-e50d-11e7-833f-155031558ff4_story.html?utm_term=.2076757d635c

buttslinger

12-21-2017, 08:54 PM

Maybe if Mueller's investigation goes for another year, like they say it will, and Pence gets caught in the net, Nancy Pelosi will be President!!!!!!!!

In American Football, players play their position.
Until the play breaks down.
Then you can see their body language totally revert to prehistoric attack mode.

One time NBC Foreign Correspondent Richard Engel was on Rachel Maddow's show, and it seems like he had had a few drinks and they rushed him on camera because he was spilling his guts about everything his journalists buddies knew about the Trump Dossier, which had just broke. He said they had all tried to get the dirt on the Trump/Whore Summit which took place in the rigged Moscow hotel room, but nobody could get nothing. It had the feel of what Journalists must sound like when they're gossiping amongst themselves off camera. Imagine what goes on over on Fox News!

Trump is a weird guy, they said he had a very strange relationship with his Mother and his Father had to throw him in Military School, for pete's sake. Every wife he's had is a Trophy Fuck Wife, he talks about his sexual conquests like a big game hunter, I doubt he's ever had a real friend in his life. If you play amateur detective, you have to put your Sherlock Deerstalker hat on and try to figure out how much he confided in with Michael Flynn. If you light up your Sigmund Freud cigar you have to try and predict how far Trump would go to defend himself from complete and total ruin, I'll need 12 diet cokes to try and figure all this out. Trump got elected not being a Maverick, he was the wild card. This may end up being a Lewis Carroll story, all the real answers found through the looking glass.

Stavros

12-21-2017, 11:05 PM

Maybe if Mueller's investigation goes for another year, like they say it will, and Pence gets caught in the net, Nancy Pelosi will be President!!!!!!!!

The smart money is on Nikki Haley, and if her performance at the UN is the evidence, she probably has your name in her black book, Mr Buttslinger. Suggest you emigrate. Try Canada.

buttslinger

12-21-2017, 11:46 PM

The smart money is on Nikki Haley, and if her performance at the UN is the evidence, she probably has your name in her black book, Mr Buttslinger. Suggest you emigrate. Try Canada.

There is a pecking order if the President dies or gets impeached:
Vice President,
then Speaker of the House
Alexander Haig once famously altered it,
but if Trump and Pence both got impeached a day after the 2018 elections, and the Democrats won the House,
believe it or not Nancy Pelosi would be President.
As for watching my step when I talk about the President of the United States of America, you can bet I have deleted many posts that were questionable in their passion.
I do have a real classy flat in London all picked out if things get too hot here.

filghy2

12-22-2017, 02:09 AM

That was so freaking creepy! Those little speeches sounded exactly like the prayers you would hear at a Evangelical Thanksgiving dinner, except they weren't being offered to God, but rather to the Executive in Chief! It still gives me the creeps thinking about it.

Or something you would see in North Korea or Stalinist Russia. At least those people had the excuse that they would probably be executed if they didn't fawn on the leader.

buttslinger

12-31-2017, 10:14 PM

Happy New Year

buttslinger

01-01-2018, 07:20 PM

Last January I called up the Washington Post and told them that I could no longer afford the 650 bucks a year subscription price, and I said it was a real shame because "we need you now" ...anyway the guy said I could get a whole year for $188!!
The paper is about a third of the weight it used to be, because of the internet, craigslist, and cable TV news, so I'm going to have to see if my luck has run out in a couple weeks, or canI still afford to start each day with the Sudoku and Crossword, and the news I read the day before.
Those Republicans always seem to have a DESIGNATED SLEEZEBAG from a deep red state to do their political dirtywork.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/devin-nunes-targeting-mueller-and-the-fbi-alarms-democrats-and-some-republicans-with-his-tactics/2017/12/30/b8181ebc-eb02-11e7-9f92-10a2203f6c8d_story.html?hpid=hp_rhp-more-top-stories_nunes-752am%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.a6fd6247ab3d

Stavros

01-03-2018, 05:36 PM

Looks like Junior is heading for the chop. Cut off an elephant's tail and see what happens, whether its name is Dumbo or Steve.

Donald Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/steve-bannon) has described the Trump Tower meeting between the president’s son and a group of Russians during the 2016 election campaign as “treasonous” and “unpatriotic”, according to an explosive new book seen by the Guardian.
Bannon, (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/dec/31/steve-bannon-may-have-lost-the-battle-in-alabama-but-his-gop-civil-war-goes-on) speaking to author Michael Wolff, warned that the investigation into alleged collusion with the Kremlin will focus on money laundering and predicted: “They’re going to crack Don Junior like an egg on national TV.”

More here-
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/jan/03/donald-trump-russia-steve-bannon-michael-wolff

bluesoul

01-03-2018, 06:57 PM

https://i.imgur.com/DcFSInS.png

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/948355557022420992

favorite tweet of 2018 so far

bluesoul

01-03-2018, 07:13 PM

1049870

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/948359545767841792

second favorite tweet of 2018 so far

buttslinger

01-03-2018, 08:41 PM

Thanks for tricking me into clicking on Trump's twitter page, bluesoul!! Yuck!!
Wolff's book will be all over "the shows" tonight, but I don't think death by book fits the crime.
Seeing as how Trump don't read no books.
It's got to be death by TV
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWxm80WxWgU
just kidding, Mueller has to get him on secret deals with Putin, while Pence was clueless one heartbeat away.
In two or three threads going on here right now, it is apparent that making THE LAW the same for ALL PEOPLE is like stepping up to the craps table. Drunks, Gun Enthusiasts, Voters, Parents,....unless they are made to pass some kind of intelligence test, giving them RIGHTS is a recipe for disaster. That's how we roll here in the USA, I guess.

Stavros

01-04-2018, 01:54 AM

Another snippet from the gibbet- but is it true, and wasn't there a time when we waited impatiently for Bob Woodward's book?

Trump reportedly argued with the Secret Service over whether he could have a lock on his bedroom – “the first time since the Kennedy White House that a presidential couple had maintained separate rooms”, Wolff writes – and told housekeeping he would strip his own bed and leave his shirts on the floor. Wolff also says the president, who is known to fear being poisoned, told no one to touch his toothbrush.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/jan/03/donald-trump-michael-wolff-book-highlights

buttslinger

01-04-2018, 05:38 AM

He eats at McDonalds because it's premade and can't be poisoned (or spit on)
Today he put a couple Federal Judges in NYC that would conceivably oversee his money laundering trial. Friends of Giuliani. While his buddy Manafort sues Mueller. If I were the suspicious sort, I might think he's obstructin'
Nixon was devious
Reagan was a nowhere man
But Trump is potentially dangerous as shit.
Even Bush wasn't above starting a war,
Today they were saying the nuclear football comes with a "Denny's Menu" that Jimmy Carter made that has pictures of the kind of nuclear war you want.
Because you may only have minutes to act, you just point to the picture of carnage you deem necessary.
Five keys get turned simultaneously, but only two actually count, to weed out the chickenshits!! YOWWEEE!
I also learned today that when the President pushes the red button on the desk, a guy comes in and takes your order for a diet coke. So that's a relief.
C'mon Mueller, eat at McDonalds PLEASE!!!
Putin loves to poison his adversaries.
I'm sure he has a few guys in the FBI.
Is it me or have Trump's tweets succeeded in keeping Democrats dumbfounded while he loots the Treasury right under our noses?

broncofan

01-04-2018, 06:48 AM

https://twitter.com/DonaldJTrumpJr/status/948678893610913793

He'll be cracked like an egg on national tv Bannon says. We'll see.

Stavros

01-06-2018, 08:41 PM

Question of the Day:
Who said, after listing some of his achievements in life:

I think that would qualify as not smart, but genius....and a very stable genius at that!

Clue: it's not Beethoven.

buttslinger

01-06-2018, 09:25 PM

I guarantee you no press will be allowed behind closed doors at this weekend's frigid Camp David Mensa Meeting.
Jeff Sessions: "I wonder if they're talking about me behind my back?"
Donald Trump: "I wonder if they're talking about me behind my back?"
My guess would be they'll have a big cake with ENTITLEMENTS written on it in gold icing, and they'll be deciding the best way to slice it. Pure Genius.
Michael Woflf said the one thing everyone agreed with is that Trump is like a child.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w77vg-5m9uo

LATSDog

01-08-2018, 05:53 AM

Donald Trump, what am fucking joke. Looking back I would have now voted for any one of those 16 republicans to avoid this McDonalds, Fox News junkie watching moron!

Stavros

01-08-2018, 01:54 PM

There is a prurient interest in how powerful people live; we wonder if they have the same habits as we do. It may or may not be interesting to note that the President and his wife have separate bedrooms, that he goes to bed at 6.30 if there are no evening engagements, that he turns up for work around 11am, and so on. A lot of the content of Fire and Fury was already known.

But while the early morning tweets are designed to dominate the news of the day, elsewhere the Republican Party with the President's support is removing regulations that protect the environment, immigrants, veterans and people in need of health care, while proposing to spend billions of dollars on defence that should be irrelevant if 'America First' is the policy and foreign entanglements to be unravelled.

This is an administration that has attacked the USA's institutions, such as the FBI -one wonders if it will be shut down and its operations given to the Department of Homeland Security, after all why are there two major Federal agencies doing more or less the same thing? The USA has driven a truck through the Middle East peace process, taking its cue from the extremist government in Israel that has never believed in it, just as Israel supports the USA's full frontal assault on the UN and its agencies and, one suspects, is also supported in this by dictators and autocrats everywhere who loathe the mere idea of external scrutiny and are at one with the USA's indifference to free speech (at home and abroad), and human rights. In practical terms, the USA has issued threat after threat, but has yet to act on any of them, so it is still hard to know how the forthcoming year will pan out. The Republican Party in Congress, having succeeded in getting its tax bill through, may now be turning its attention to welfare, the elephant in the room that is surely ready to be shot and its tail cut off, waved in public like a prized trophy. Especially now in case they lose control of either the House or Senate, or both, in November.

buttslinger

01-09-2018, 10:49 PM

I never saw a single episode of "The Apprentice" until today. Trump's stunt of letting the Press into his DACA meeting was obviously a stunt to have both Republican and Democrat lawmakers take seats as contestants hanging on to everything Trump Commanded from his Throne of Power, with Fire and Fury! Maybe they could hook them all up to lie detectors some time, just for laughs.

Instead of bumping up Military spending building cutting edge weapons, they should spend the money on hiring army men and women for two years, like they used to, and grab some of these at risk youths from the inner cities and deserted no-job little towns. The ARMY could be the prison/school discipline these people could use, and they could be randomly sent to fight wildfires, combat crime, monitor the border and ports, kind of like FDR's CCC programs. I think I heard that the Cost Of a Military Jet Could House Every Homeless Person In U.S. With a $600,000 Home.

bluesoul

01-09-2018, 11:37 PM

welp- bannon just lost his gig at breitbart. i guess that's the last we'll be hearing from him (unless someone else needs to write about trump)

http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2018/01/09/stephen-k-bannon-steps-breitbart-news-network/

also, one of the biggest biopharmaceutical companies in the country has just claimed to end it's research into alzheimer's and parkinson's treatments and shift the budget to other programs. looks like they've adopted the model to outsourcing the early drug discovery work to tiny companies, so that shareholders only see winners and there are no failures.

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/01/08/576443442/pfizer-halts-research-efforts-into-alzheimers-and-parkinsons-treatments

buttslinger

01-10-2018, 12:41 AM

It's not about the money, it's about what you'll do to get it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7bInqjmEN4

blackchubby38

01-10-2018, 01:10 AM

filghy2

01-10-2018, 01:51 AM

Bannon made the mistake of thinking Trump's rise was about some kind of populist/nationalist ideology, when it is really a personality cult - and the first rule of personality cults is that The Leader can do no wrong in the eyes of followers.

buttslinger

01-12-2018, 01:17 AM

Say, is there a way to change my name from buttslinger to shitholeslinger??? I am trying to be more politically correct.....
WAKE UP WHITE PEOPLE!!
You've let Putin put a child in charge!!!!!

bluesoul

01-12-2018, 01:19 AM

relax: bannon will be appearing before the house of representatives committee on tuesday (https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-attacks-protections-for-immigrants-from-shithole-countries-in-oval-office-meeting/2018/01/11/bfc0725c-f711-11e7-91af-31ac729add94_story.html?utm_term=.dfd9c018943b&wpisrc=al_news__alert-politics--alert-national&wpmk=1) to not only due his twitching thing, but answer about the alleged russian interference of the 2016 u.s. elections.

meanwhile, trump just called africa and haiti "shithole countries (https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-attacks-protections-for-immigrants-from-shithole-countries-in-oval-office-meeting/2018/01/11/bfc0725c-f711-11e7-91af-31ac729add94_story.html?utm_term=.dfd9c018943b&wpisrc=al_news__alert-politics--alert-national&wpmk=1)" in reference to him wondering why immigrants from that continent and that nation keep "coming here". guess who he'd rather have here instead? why the fine people of norway, of course. skaal

https://i.imgur.com/AXXKtr9.png

1051312

Stavros

01-12-2018, 02:27 AM

meanwhile, trump just called africa and haiti "shithole countries (https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-attacks-protections-for-immigrants-from-shithole-countries-in-oval-office-meeting/2018/01/11/bfc0725c-f711-11e7-91af-31ac729add94_story.html?utm_term=.dfd9c018943b&wpisrc=al_news__alert-politics--alert-national&wpmk=1)" in reference to him wondering why immigrants from that continent and that nation keep "coming here". guess who he'd rather have here instead? why the fine people of norway, of course. skaal

The USA backed dictatorships in El Salvador, Haiti, the Democratic Republic of Congo and many others when it suited them, just as the shithole-in-chief has been stuffing his pockets with money from the unelected butchers of Saudi Arabia and the criminal classes of Russia, but who is surprised by that or his dirty mouth?
At least this poor excuse for a human being has yet again put off visiting the UK, where he is not welcome.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/01/11/donald-trumps-february-working-visit-britain-cancelled/

buttslinger

01-12-2018, 05:00 AM

Years after Trump has been impeached, years after denial after denial, he's going to admit that he was a tad drunk with power and if we had a tenth of the backbone he had....we would have stopped him. For many businessmen, business is war where survival of the fittest is license to steal. If you lose, you're weak.
Lucky for us, Robert Mueller has tried and convicted many a punk like Trump before, if we can get 16 years of Democratic Presidents out of Trump, I figure I'll die happy.

Stavros

01-12-2018, 08:11 AM

A year after the election and nearly a year after the Inauguration, Barack Obama continues to be the inspiration of the 45th President of the United States. He now says that he will not visit London in February because of Barack Obama's decision to re-locate the US Embassy from its Grosvenor Square address in the plush district of Mayfair, to Nine Elms in the old docklands not far from where the re-located Covent Garden fruit & veg wholesale market now stands. Thus

Reason I canceled my trip to London is that I am not a big fan of the Obama Administration having sold perhaps the best located and finest embassy in London for “peanuts,” only to build a new one in an off location for 1.2 billion dollars. Bad deal. Wanted me to cut ribbon-NO!
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/jan/12/donald-trump-visit-to-london-called-off-amid-fears-of-mass-protests

Meanwhile in Arizona, convicted and pardoned felon Joe Arpaio has doubled down on his claim that Barack Obama’s (http://www.independent.co.uk/topic/BarackObama) birth certificate is fake.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/joe-arpaio-barack-obama-birth-certificate-fake-phoney-birtherism-a8154706.html

Hail to the Chief? But who be he?

sukumvit boy

01-13-2018, 02:20 AM

Well I guess Trump has proven that the merit of a "shit hole" really depends on your point of view.

Stavros

01-13-2018, 07:53 AM

Well I guess Trump has proven that the merit of a "shit hole" really depends on your point of view.

And there is only one point of view that matters. The depressing thing is not just what he is reported to have said, but that he has what may be a psycho-pathological need to be the main story of the news every day. All he has to do is wake up at 5am and start tweeting anything he knows will provoke outrage, and he becomes Editor-in-Chief of the news and everyone dances around that pole while the real issues are ignored in favour of something more sensational. One wonders how much more of this people can take, while the reputation of the USA declines and the gravity and pride of the Office of President sinks into a smelly hole.

buttslinger

01-13-2018, 09:00 AM

I'm praying that the only point of view is Robert Mueller's and that 20 years of conservative media and 20 years of KGB tricks are about to be t-boned by American Intelligence Agencies and the Long Arm of Killer Lawyers that eat smaller Lawyers for Breakfast. I'm hoping that if Trump gets quietly impeached, all that means is that Mueller didn't want to leave a bigger mess to clean up. Or I don't know, maybe Mueller wants to make a statement. Loud and Clear.
At the end of the day, take away Trump's millions and he's just a fucked up little brat.
They say Putin spent about 500,000 bucks on the US Election. He should have spent more.
The Donald Trump Show really has gone beyond nauseating, I wish I had the strength to turn away.

https://image.ibb.co/dtoEbm/00000.jpg (https://imgbb.com/)
free cdn image hosting (https://imgbb.com/)

skirtrustler

01-13-2018, 09:42 AM

... He now says that he will not visit London in February because of Barack Obama's decision to re-locate the US Embassy from its Grosvenor Square address in the plush district of Mayfair ...

Apparently the deal was done in the closing days of the George Bush administration.

Also, I am sure the people of Mayfair are glad to see it go. Out of curiosity, not having been there for a while, I walked around Grosvenor Square to take a look at the old embassy a year or so ago, and the security perimeter extended way out onto the surrounding streets of London where there were a number of blacked out SUV parked at strategic places with their engines running. The square has also been redesigned since the 70s and 80s to channel and break up a crowd to prevent a repeat of the Vietnam era riots.

Stavros

01-13-2018, 03:56 PM

Apparently the deal was done in the closing days of the George Bush administration.
Also, I am sure the people of Mayfair are glad to see it go. Out of curiosity, not having been there for a while, I walked around Grosvenor Square to take a look at the old embassy a year or so ago, and the security perimeter extended way out onto the surrounding streets of London where there were a number of blacked out SUV parked at strategic places with their engines running. The square has also been redesigned since the 70s and 80s to channel and break up a crowd to prevent a repeat of the Vietnam era riots.

You are right about the original decision to move being made by the GW Bush Presidency, the papers saying 2008 though I read 2007 somewhere as the first date it was announced. The jury is out on the Grosvenor Square building as some regard it as a modernist classic, and I have read it may become a listed building if it isn't already, which will lower the value of the property which has been sold I think for £500 million (£600 million in the Independent article linked below) to Qatari Diar, the development branch of the Qatar government, the irony being that the US has backed the campaign led by Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkey to isolate Qatar economically and politically owing to its 'close' relations with Iran, a policy that has so far failed to take effect, being another foreign policy flop for Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and his American buddy.

And, indeed, in addition to the building no longer being fit for purpose, it had become a security nightmare even with those hideous boulders, just as the new embassy is described as being a squat, fortified cube inside a moat...
https://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2017/09/polarising-property

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/little-white-house-inside-the-us-embassy-complex-in-london-goes-on-sale-for-25m-a7079346.html

buttslinger

01-13-2018, 08:23 PM

These facts have come to light on this side of the pond as well, it took the news a day to catch up, chalk up one more lie for Trump. There is a problem, however, if you turn on Prime Time Fox News, and that was all you watched, you would be clued in that Trump's lies are just responses to FAKE MEDIA propaganda outlets that are one arm of a pompous, over-educated, skinny-armed pussy liberal PTA who exist only to send your money to Shithole Countries and crackhead welfare Moms. I'm sure the same thing goes on with peejaye's TV.
Obama found out the hard way that when you mention somewhere about "Republicans clinging to their guns and religion"
or "when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody" that words like that, although true, shouldn't be uttered.
By now Trump has decided that his base thrives on lie after lie, it makes them feel good.
I think we're in the phase of Trump's Presidency now where Limbaugh and Coulter and Ingraham are starting to say if Trump doesn't get his big beautiful Wall and grants citizenship to Dreamers, there may be some dissention in the ranks.
The SECOND after Trump called Mexicans drug dealing rapists, he was in like Flynn.
More than anything else, Trump supporters want to keep the English version of the Christian/Caucasian bloodline flowing large and in charge like the star spangled banner. To them, White People that vote Democratic are voting against their own best self-interests. Politics is pretty twisted.

https://preview.ibb.co/n8pAHR/0.jpg (https://ibb.co/c6y4cR)

Stavros

01-13-2018, 09:13 PM

I think we're in the phase of Trump's Presidency now where Limbaugh and Coulter and Ingraham are starting to say if Trump doesn't get his big beautiful Wall and grants citizenship to Dreamers, there may be some dissention in the ranks.

Ann Coulter was on Channel 4 News in the UK a few days ago to voice her dissent from her idle's policies on immigration and also to criticize the nepotism. She concludes that he can go down as 'the greatest President in American history or the President who wrecked America', which at least proves she thinks in grand terms and doesn't seem to give any credit to Congress. She has the most sumptuous hair, it really is quite distressing when you consider the drivel that comes from the head underneath it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cL0kaPIY5kI

buttslinger

01-13-2018, 10:52 PM

Ann Coulter was on Channel 4 News in the UK.......

Kill it before it breeds!!!!!!
I don't know anything about English Conservative Media, in fact, the conservative media in the US is beyond belief half the time. Hannity is the worst, in my book. I used to like Pat Buchanan, even though he was crazy-Right, by now John McCain, Mitt, even W look sane! Some of the Media actually speak as if they've got half a brain, and they are serious about their beliefs, but I think in Coulter's case her Father was a very distant hard right Judge that messed up her mind from an early age. Laura Ingraham is almost interesting enough to be watchable, but I think she has some weird personal issues intertwined with her philosophy that is almost fascinating, but quickly turns into nausea. Trying to make sense of what they're saying is harder than Friday's Soduku. Fox News has an entire collection of weird-ohs they bring in to flesh out the propaganda, much worse than Ann Coulter even. I'm glad I don't have a gun in the house, because every time I see Kellyanne Conway, I want to shoot the TV.
Even in Blue Northern Virginia, we have a radio station that features all the top conservative voices 24 hours a day, where the hosts cry about the state of the Nation in between selling plastic windows and siding. Even curiouser, they play rock music in their intros that lean as left as you can get if you ever listened to the lyrics. I can't get no satisfaction. Wall St meets Madison Ave meets Pennsylvania Ave.
Walter Cronkite was very proud of the fact that all his listeners presumed he belonged to the same Political Party they did. I kinda doubt America will ever be that Great again.

buttslinger

01-15-2018, 06:53 AM

I guess it's going to be Xanax all around for the next few months, what, is Trump going to have goon squads pulling six year olds out of their homes to send them back to a Country they've never been in? And blame it on the Democrats? No Wall-No DACA.
When F Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and Orson Welles were young men, they all went to Europe.
Zelda and Scott drank champagne with Picasso and Gertrude Stein in Paris, Papa drove an Italian Ambulance in WW I, got blowed up, fell in love with his Nurse and wrote a book about it, and Welles worked with the great stage actors of London when film had become the New Lit. They all sopped up the Culture, experienced things from a new perspective. Stepping Out. Living Large.
But they all told the exact same story about going home. They all were looking forward and excited to get back to the place of their childhood, home sweet home.. the USA. The story they all told is that they were all shocked at how racist America is. And they were all amazed how it took them totally by surprise. Came at them sideways. It was the same place they remembered but this time with fresh eyes they saw racism everywhere.

Stavros

01-16-2018, 07:02 AM

The grim record of 'the least racist person' you will ever know -but that does not mean he is not a racist.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/01/15/opinion/leonhardt-trump-racist.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-right-region&region=opinion-c-col-right-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-right-region

buttslinger

01-16-2018, 08:47 PM

Two elements of Trump's Presidency are unbelievable to me: his racism and collusion with Russia.
Trump's base see him as THE ONE INDIVIDUAL they can trust to override Congress and preserve White Supremacy at all costs. And on that, I think they are right, I can't see any other human being alive who could make that promise and stick with it, Trump's being an asshole is seen as a PLUS for his base, in that regard.
RUSSIA, however, is where he's going to get in trouble. Mnuchin yesterday named all the criminal Oligarchs who have profited for years under the power of Putin. Congress had to overwhelmingly force Trump's hand to sign off on it. Being Putin's asshole is what is going to fry Trump, there are too many old school Republicans who hate the KGB more than they hate RAP music.
One thing I can't see is how Mitch and Paul would react to Trump being exposed as one of Putin's cast of Thieves and Scoundrels. The Republican Party could certainly survive without a WALL or a MUSLIM BAN, but I'm not sure how they could explain having a Soviet Mole as the Head of their Party.

broncofan

01-26-2018, 04:29 AM

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/25/us/politics/trump-mueller-special-counsel-russia.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur

Here is an article about Trump threatening to fire Mueller and white house counsel threatening to resign as a result. There was also speculation a few days that Wray had threatened to resign over undue pressure put on him with respect to McCabe who Trump suspects is a Democrat and also that Trump asked McCabe who he voted for. I haven't followed too closely but it's more of the same.

buttslinger

01-26-2018, 05:11 AM

The script is heading towards the Biggest ONE on ONE ever, In the Gold Trunks, coming in at 239, Donald "Fire and Fury" Trump. In the red white and Blue Trunks Bob "Long Arms" Mueller. If ever there was a case a seasoned FBI guy would want to sink his teeth into, this would have to be it. You're going to see a case riveted tight as you can get. I don't see any way Trump goes into that room with Mueller to get carved up like a fat ham. SHAME! SHAME! SHAME!

Stavros

01-26-2018, 10:40 AM

This article in today's Guardian throws some light on attempts by supporters of the President to discredit Mueller and the FBI, and raises the question to which I do not know the answer: can the FBI be abolished and by whom? There seems to be an overlap between the work of the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security, and, as both Democrats and Republicans were outraged over the behaviour of the FBI duriing the election campaign, maybe its days are numbered? This administration has attacked and vilified the institutions of the US like none other I can recall, as well as international institutions, and maybe this is the moment for 'radical change'.

Can it be done?

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/jan/25/trump-russia-inquiry-secret-society-discredit

buttslinger

01-26-2018, 07:05 PM

maybe this is the moment for 'radical change'.

no, no no, the Rebublicans are just bitching about Mueller's team, because they can't control the Investigation like they do in the House and Senate. If anything the FBI is far Right, remember Giuliani and his New York branch of the FBI hinting they had dirt on Hillary a couple days before the Election? (my memory is fading fast)
I'm sure that since the FBI wasn't created until the 1900s, it could be uncreated, but, no, this is all about Trump's most rabid supporters fighting THE TRUTH,not the FBI. Looking for SECRET SOCIETIES that aren't there.
The larger question for me is....What is Trump going to do? Having zero shame probably works in his advantage. He CAN fire Mueller, claiming he's "fighting back" but even in my imagination I can't predict the monster blow-up that would follow. Probably any restraint Mueller's team has in place for the good of the Country would be nulled and voided, you'd have leaks to the PRESS that would make the Inside Hollywood tape look refreshing.
After that Stormy Daniels thing, I think even Melania is rooting for Mueller.........
These are interesting times.

buttslinger

01-27-2018, 07:17 AM

Memo to people who voted for Trump:
You made a deal to pay 12.5 Billion dollars for a wall after you were promised a 25 Billion dollar wall.
And for that you get 1.8 billion illegals legal.

https://preview.ibb.co/jrROpG/Big_Mac_Meal.jpg (https://ibb.co/fFOQ3b)
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holzz

01-29-2018, 05:47 PM

so he;s not a feminist but is for women....ok.

i often wonder if he's ever fucked a trans woman. as a man whore, i'd be surprised if he hasn't.

sukumvit boy

01-30-2018, 04:08 AM

Trump White House sends out typo ridden State of the "Uniom" invitations , that about sums it up...
http://washingtonpress.com/2018/01/29/trump-white-house-just-humiliated-typo-ridden-state-union-invitations/

buttslinger

01-30-2018, 04:41 AM

Devin Nunes is the perfect Cover Boy for this Administration
This could get ugly..........

url=https://imgbb.com/]https://image.ibb.co/kjegYm/Devin_Nunes_Teenager.jpg[/url]

broncofan

01-30-2018, 04:50 AM

That looks about right....what a weasel he is. I knew it the first time I heard him speak which was fortunately only about a year ago....

broncofan

01-30-2018, 06:19 AM

https://www.thedailybeast.com/julian-assange-thought-he-was-messaging-sean-hannity-when-he-offered-news-on-democrat-investigating-trump-russia

Speaking of weasels. Two of them.

buttslinger

01-30-2018, 07:24 PM

If you're wondering what Trump will talk about tonight, just take a look at the guy in charge of writing it: Stephen Miller.
When it comes to immigration, he's just a tad right of Joseph Goebbels.
I'll be nice and give him a 36 hour bump if he sticks to the script,
unless he fires someone in the FBI during the speech.
I guess it's not possible to sit Mueller's entire team in the front row, Hunh?

https://preview.ibb.co/j4xCPR/miller1.jpg (https://ibb.co/eBkcr6)

buttslinger

02-02-2018, 07:28 AM

Maybe The Republicans are cracking up. All their Spin Doctors tell them they've got less than a year to live. Even if Mueller had only the tax and bank records....What's the Penalty for Money Laundering? How about a hundred counts?
For Mueller, those are Lay-ups.
Just like Johnson lost the entire South for the right reasons, Trump could cost the Republicans THE BASE for all the wrong reasons

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broncofan

02-02-2018, 08:57 PM

I like Ted Lieu. He's a dedicated, no nonsense guy. Here's what he has to say about the memo. https://lieu.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/rep-lieu-statement-release-house-gop-memo-russia-probe

Trump also said today that he has confidence in the rank and file people at the fbi but not the leadership. The leadership first of all are all Republicans and second of all are just doing their jobs. He has now also indicated that he has lost confidence in Rosenstein, which is where everyone thought this memo was going.

Finally, because this memo was such a transparent attempt to undermine the Mueller investigation, was based on nothing substantive, and compromised our intelligence gathering services, it's important to prioritize Nunes' upcoming race. I know nothing about his opponent, but Nunes is a uniquely unethical person and I hope this memo ends up unseating him. For more on his opponent:

https://twitter.com/JanzforCongress

broncofan

02-02-2018, 09:45 PM

https://www.mediaite.com/donald-trump/trump-on-if-hes-likely-to-fire-rosenstein-after-memo-you-figure-that-one-out/

If he fires Rosenstein, I have trouble believing it would not make the obstruction charge 100 times stronger. The reason is that the memo asserts nothing extraordinary and the entire political stunt seemed entirely designed to allow him to do it, but hit was a total dud because there was no misconduct at all.

buttslinger

02-03-2018, 01:32 AM

Nunes (pronounced Nunes) is in a very safe Republican District, they always pick the goon squad from safe Districts, to do their dirty work.
My un-educated guess is that Trump is in the very comical position of being the most Powerful Man in the World who can't do a thing about the noose tightening around his neck. He's thinking about the unthinkable, going down in History with Benedict Arnold and the Rosensteins. If he can make the FBI and Democrats into a dangerous threat to national redneck security, ....aw, forget it. He's nuts. I'm just a watcher, everything I hear is hearsay, Mueller is getting depositions straight from the horse's mouths. I think he just flipped Rick Gates, Manafort's buddy.
So while the four page memo is proof of cheating so Trump can flip the Gameboard,
Mueller probably has rooms full of papers, devices, emails, witnesses, foreign intelligence, hard evidence.
I guaranteed Trump's loss in the Election, now I'm guaranteeing his Incarceration.
Maybe The New Jersey Generals will win the Superbowl, this thing stopped making sense a couple years ago. When Reagan got ditzy, nobody even noticed. Those were the Days.......
When Russia was hoodwinked, not us. Is all of this Putin's Revenge???

https://preview.ibb.co/cc2d8m/putin15n_1_web.jpg (https://ibb.co/j4YUER)
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Stavros

02-03-2018, 02:33 AM

Trump also said today that he has confidence in the rank and file people at the fbi but not the leadership. The leadership first of all are all Republicans and second of all are just doing their jobs. He has now also indicated that he has lost confidence in Rosenstein, which is where everyone thought this memo was going.
Finally, because this memo was such a transparent attempt to undermine the Mueller investigation, was based on nothing substantive, and compromised our intelligence gathering services, it's important to prioritize Nunes' upcoming race. I know nothing about his opponent, but Nunes is a uniquely unethical person and I hope this memo ends up unseating him. For more on his opponent:

Although Lieu makes an interesting and pertinent point about what the Memo does not say, this seedy piece of theatre is aimed at supporters of the President who want to hear re-assuring words that their man is not corrupt, but that their governing institutions are. On the BBC 2 Newsnight programme late Friday night, Ryan Crocker -he was taking part on a discussion on Syria- argued the key element in this was the consolidation of partisan division in Congress, and that this polarisation was the greater threat to democracy. In the case of Watergate, Nixon was at the head of the Republican Party establishment, but so transparent did his lies and corrupt behaviour become that they had little choice but abandon him -indeed, the whole of the Watergate crisis became an exercise for students in how the deep strength of the US political system can stand up to and survive the kind of ridicule and abuse Watergate represented.

The difference this time is that the President is not only not a Republican, but attacks them on a regular basis, given that most of the men in the FBI and CIA and Justice Department are Republicans. That the Republicans are part of his campaign may seem odd, even contradictory. The party has been badly split since GW Bush's second term, but crucially, the election of Obama became a line in the sand beyond which these people felt the USA should not go. Bi-partisan agreements in Congress have been deteriorating since the Civil Rights laws of the 1960s, but there is a core group of White Americans who regard the entire history of their country since 1776 as a validation of the right of White Christians to rule in their own interest. Put simply, America belongs to them, and to no-one else. The election of Obama was the future they have dreaded ever since the tired, poor, huddled masses moved from Europe, the Americas and Asia to populate the country and 'threaten' the dominant culture.

It seems to me that a hard core of Republicans are determined to either roll back every vestige of the US that emerged from the Civil Rights era, or in effect smash the system to pieces. They never accepted Obama as the President, and never will, and still today dream of the day when he and both Bill and Hillary Clinton are in prison, key elements of Civil Rights are overturned, and the US returned to their wet dream, either the 1950s or the years before the Civil War. This is not a conservative Republican agenda of the kind one associated with William F. Buckley or Bill and Irving Kristol, this is nothing less than a racist, White Nationalist agenda which in its practical expression is in effect, a re-run of the Civil War.

Just as the more extreme elements want to break up California, to either neuter or get rid of Federal institutions such as the FBI, one can see these men taking a path which will once again lead to the secession of those States that present their aim to preserve the America they believe in, dismissing the rest as some sort of 'fake America'. Ideally they would like to begin with mass deportations, Muslims first, Blacks second, take your picks after that between Latinos, Asians and Jews. But they realise this is too gargantuan a task. Best circle the wagons and create a state within a state.

The US political system has the mechanics to get rid of the President, but unlike Watergate and Nixon, the President and the Republicans who support him disregard the rules, show no interest in the integrity of the Union as expressed in the Constitution, and regard every tactic they can find as an acceptable, even necessary part of their war against the America they hate. This, to me, is the most serious crisis since Watergate, with implications that go far beyond it.

buttslinger

02-03-2018, 03:36 AM

I think what makes this Story more than just the Traffic Accident you can't look away from is the almost guaranteed surprise ending that's going to pop out of the cake when Mueller announces his findings. tick tick tick. The Suspense is building like a Hitchcock script with the body in the trunk while the guests walk around it. Mueller is going to be "The Decider" with tinsel covered revelations, Acid Accusations, and global implications. Must See TV. I don't see how we're not going to see some Biblical-Type Jaw-droppers coming out of his dossier, a Final Chapter of the Story that lives up to and completes the unbelievable story. How he's going to make it a-political, I don't know. Who'll clean up the mess, Pence?
WHITE PEOPLE!!! sheesh!!

Stavros

02-03-2018, 04:06 AM

I think what makes this Story more than just the Traffic Accident you can't look away from is the almost guaranteed surprise ending that's going to pop out of the cake when Mueller announces his findings. tick tick tick.

If Mueller is allowed to complete his investigation.
The one point of importance I ought to have made above, is the extent to which facts, and the truth are no longer driving decision making, as if they were irrelevant to the investigation. That the Nunes Memo is biased and does not tell the whole of the truth makes it a worthless document, legally, but politically it is now all about perception and news manipulation, the headline rather than the story. This may just be the way news is broadcast these days, and it has always been manipulated but I do think this is politics going to places it never used to before, and that is why I think citizens should be concerned. We have a different agenda in the UK, one marked by incompetence rather than lies, yet Brexit too could lead to the break-up of the UK. The only people who benefit from this are those who regard democracy as a mess, and that they should be free to pursue their interests without regard to accountability to the public, or the law.

buttslinger

02-03-2018, 08:20 PM

When I was a Cub Scout, we went to tour the FBI building in DC, and at the end an agent came out with a Tommy Gun and blasted off a whole barrel clip, each kid got a bullet riddled silhouette target as a souvenir.
One time in the hall at Elementary school, Hank Dent was going up and down the halls with his eyes so wide open he couldn't tell me what was going on. These were the same halls we did Abomb Tests in, and that was the day JFK got shot, later, Hank's Dad was disgraced in the Watergate Hearings. I used to play in their house, his Dad gave me my nickname. In College, at a Student Demonstration, a Police Car blew up down the street, and the Police pushed the crowd so hard I thought my bicycle was going to literally crush me to death against a parked car. I was so shook I was running down a side street and some girl grabbed my arm and said "don't run" ...I calmed down immediately and we very surreally walked down the middle of the street while Cops on Horses were billyclubbing running Students. When I was in my car and flipped on Nixon saying "I am not a crook" on the radio,I thought it was a comic impersonator, Being President was a completely different thing back then. The Media was different, Woodward and Bernstein were quite controversial in their time.
Trump did something no other Republican dared do, a Rush Limbaugh Impersonation. They wouldn't do it because of what's happening right now, trying to deliver on the promises Conservative Media give their listeners is a recipe for failure. Just like giving Big Business everything they want is a sugar high that will eventually rot your teeth.
Of course the Russia Investigation has eclipsed all that, if Rush Limbaugh himself had run and won, it might have really altered American Politics when he failed miserably, because it's all about Trump and Trump only, yeah, we've never seen anything quite like this.
Trump isn't a Republican, or Politician, He's probably looking for the Love his Father never gave him as a child, or something. This has become as Psychological as much as Political, Hopefully, Trump's Aides that have any sense can corral him like that girl who grabbed my arm.
Sacking Mueller would be a trainwreck.

Stavros

02-03-2018, 08:52 PM

Trump isn't a Republican, or Politician, He's probably looking for the Love his Father never gave him as a child, or something. This has become as Psychological as much as Political, Hopefully, Trump's Aides that have any sense can corral him like that girl who grabbed my arm.
Sacking Mueller would be a trainwreck.

When it comes to the Constitution and the Rule of Law, he doesn't care, it is as simple as that. Instincts set in, survival at all costs is all the matters. I wonder how many close to him have advised him to shut up about the Russia investigation but he cannot be controlled, which is why his aides are terrified of him being interviewed by Mueller, because he has no prepared script and cannot stop telling lies. There is now speculation that if the investigation continues, Hope Hicks could become a crucial witness, but as someone allegedly loyal to the Greatest President in the History of the USA it is not known if she will turn against him.

Meanwhile the Generals are planning an overhaul of defence materiel to produce 'tactical' nuclear weapons that can be used on the battlefield; they are dithering over Syria because they don't know if they should defend the Kurds from Turkey's attacks, or stand by as they are slaughtered. Looks like another long weekend.

broncofan

02-03-2018, 09:03 PM

When it comes to the Constitution and the Rule of Law, he doesn't care, it is as simple as that. Instincts set in, survival at all costs is all the matters. I wonder how many close to him have advised him to shut up about the Russia investigation but he cannot be controlled, which is why his aides are terrified of him being interviewed by Mueller, because he has no prepared script and cannot stop telling lies. There is now speculation that if the investigation continues, Hope Hicks could become a crucial witness, but as someone allegedly loyal to the Greatest President in the History of the USA it is not known if she will turn against him.

Unless there is something to hide, all of his maneuvers have definitely made things worse. If there's something to hide, maybe he has sowed enough confusion to de-legitimize the investigation among people who are hopelessly compromised and unable or unwilling to look at the facts. There are already people on the right who are pretending the memo means something and that it indicates there were surveillance abuses. It's a bit frightening because we don't know how far this bad faith goes. There is no conceivable basis for concluding what they've concluded.

It is a bit exhausting to recount the facts to swaths of people on the right who have no regard for them. But here is some of what we know: Page has been under surveillance since 2013, from before the dossier came into existence and before he was associated with Trump. The basis of his surveillance and the findings from it have not been revealed but are almost certainly substantive to withstand so many renewals. The people who were responsible for overseeing the most recent renewal of the fisa application were all Republicans. There is nothing to indicate his surveillance didn't meet standards for fisa applications or that there could have even possibly been a political motive, since his surveillance dates to long before his association with Trump. The Russia investigation apparently began with Papadopoulos as a focal point anyway.

As you say, they don't care about rule of law or the Constitution.

broncofan

02-03-2018, 09:16 PM

The basis of his surveillance and the findings from it have not been revealed but are almost certainly substantive to withstand so many renewals.
Someone I follow on twitter who runs a national security law blog made this further point but it is something to consider. In 2013, surveillance began on Carter Page because he was fraternizing with all sorts of Russian state actors. When they review the warrant for surveillance, the Judges at the FISC consider what the surveillance has revealed in order to renew it. If the Republicans really wanted to seriously scrutinize this issue because they were certain he should never have been under surveillance, they would have de-classified the entire basis for the renewal. They did not because a Judge would not renew multiple surveillance warrants that did not turn up actionable intelligence.

De-classifying snippets of information to pretend that must be all that exists and then blocking the release of the real basis for the issuance of the warrant is disgraceful. There has been a collective loss of reasoning ability and good faith on the right wing that is now almost epidemic.

Stavros

02-03-2018, 11:51 PM

[QUOTE=broncofan;1819429
De-classifying snippets of information to pretend that must be all that exists and then blocking the release of the real basis for the issuance of the warrant is disgraceful. There has been a collective loss of reasoning ability and good faith on the right wing that is now almost epidemic.[/QUOTE]

I appreciate your attention to the procedural aspects of this, and it may be that in the long term if the Investigation proceeds, rules and regulations may be an important part of the conclusion.
The fear must be that the whole purpose of this Presidency is based on the view that America is Broken, but broken beyond repair, and that what you need is a new arrangement of politics. The question asked: is this illegal? when it receives the reply No, is confirmation that the President can do something which may violate norms, but that is the point, to do things differently and to be an 'activist' President where in the past office holders have been cautious in their behaviour. Moreover, to the extent that this plays well with the core voters, it is because they support the idea that their interests have been betrayed by Washington DC and that it is just this kind of person who can shake things up and make a difference.

At its heart this may actually be more about one man's obsession with himself, while the rest of America can go whistle, and so far it appears the deep structural changes that are intended to replace the broken system have not even been assembled, but the President and his Republican cheerleaders can pump out the propaganda that this is something never seen before.

The end result could thus indeed be a broken system, but without any replacement. A Congress hopelessly divided, a breakdown of public trust in institutions like the DOJ and the FBI,and a deeper mistrust of politics and politicians. The US was in a similar crisis at the end of Watergate which involved not just the Presidency in disgrace, but the military withdrawal from Vietnam, the Congressional hearings into the CIA, the perceived weakness of Gerald Ford. On that occasion the US repaired itself, but that is because the players were committed to playing by the rules. It seems to me that among the leading players in this drama, there is not even a sentimental attachment to the roots of American democracy, so on this occasion you could end up with a system that is severely damaged or truly broken while the kleptocrat responsible retires to New York to count the millions he made from the Presidency, declaring himself innocent for the rest of his life.

broncofan

02-04-2018, 01:19 AM

I appreciate your attention to the procedural aspects of this, and it may be that in the long term if the Investigation proceeds, rules and regulations may be an important part of the conclusion.
The fear must be that the whole purpose of this Presidency is based on the view that America is Broken, but broken beyond repair, and that what you need is a new arrangement of politics. The question asked: is this illegal? when it receives the reply No, is confirmation that the President can do something which may violate norms, but that is the point, to do things differently and to be an 'activist' President where in the past office holders have been cautious in their behaviour. Moreover, to the extent that this plays well with the core voters, it is because they support the idea that their interests have been betrayed by Washington DC and that it is just this kind of person who can shake things up and make a difference.

At its heart this may actually be more about one man's obsession with himself, while the rest of America can go whistle, and so far it appears the deep structural changes that are intended to replace the broken system have not even been assembled, but the President and his Republican cheerleaders can pump out the propaganda that this is something never seen before.

The end result could thus indeed be a broken system, but without any replacement. A Congress hopelessly divided, a breakdown of public trust in institutions like the DOJ and the FBI,and a deeper mistrust of politics and politicians. The US was in a similar crisis at the end of Watergate which involved not just the Presidency in disgrace, but the military withdrawal from Vietnam, the Congressional hearings into the CIA, the perceived weakness of Gerald Ford. On that occasion the US repaired itself, but that is because the players were committed to playing by the rules. It seems to me that among the leading players in this drama, there is not even a sentimental attachment to the roots of American democracy, so on this occasion you could end up with a system that is severely damaged or truly broken while the kleptocrat responsible retires to New York to count the millions he made from the Presidency, declaring himself innocent for the rest of his life.
Great points. I think in the end you're right though the types of laws one can expect a President to violate will not be the ordinary statutes that a private citizen does. His crimes should always expect to be a little bit fuzzier because they deal with abuses of power, self-aggrandizement, and obstruction. Ultimately what matters are the procedures and requirements of an impeachment process which I don't know very much about, except the number of votes and that they're looking into "high crimes and misdemeanors." But you portray the big picture accurately which is a breakdown of our system without much remedy.

This is the Democrats' rebuttal for those who are interested. It says some of the things I've been saying, but all in one place and with a lot of supporting evidence.

http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/TODAY/z_Creative/inline-headers/FINAL%20DRAFT%20--%20Dear%20Colleague%20on%20Nunes%20Memo.pdf

sukumvit boy

02-07-2018, 04:37 AM

Trump wants a military parade...
http://www.cnn.com/2018/02/06/politics/military-parade-trump/index.html
10570651057066

buttslinger

02-07-2018, 05:45 AM

Trump wants a military parade...

I live outside DC, sometimes they have Military Shows at Andrews Air Force Base, they're actually pretty cool, you can crawl around inside a Tank or an old B-17.
But a Military Parade down Constitution Ave is as stupid as a big beautiful wall. Millions of dollars wasted to stroke Trump's ego. They haven't even found the leftover millions from the Inauguration yet.
D. C. in the summertime is pure heat and humidity.
Please don't tell me they're planning it on May Day......

trish

02-07-2018, 07:47 AM

I wouldn't be surprised if the Child in Chief has ordered the troops to learn the goosestep.

buttslinger

02-07-2018, 08:15 PM

Jah, after Trump and Kelly murder Mueller and revoke certain Constitutional Regulations, we can invade Canada and cop those cheap pharmaceuticals they have up there. Then Invade south to the Panama Canal, so we could use the moat instead of the wall. We could then use the wall to build cheap washers and dryers, while Mexican Laborers toiled up Norte for rock bottom salaries.
It looks like in the Senate anyway, they're actually working together. I had an Asshole Boss once, after everybody figured out their voice meant nothing, things settled down to a low simmer and things actually rolled along pretty well. I did the books back then and didn't get mad, I got even. Seig Heil!!!
Actual Respect for Authority is hard work and very stressful. Phony Respect works just as well with less static.

Stavros

02-07-2018, 09:43 PM

Trump wants a military parade...
http://www.cnn.com/2018/02/06/politics/military-parade-trump/index.html

'No women, no queers and definitely, definitely no Blacks, it's my parade and my army'.

Just like his Generals in 1919, which rich article I offer as part of Black History Month in the USA.

The U.S. Army banned black American troops from participating in the great victory parade staged by Allied soldiers in Paris on Bastille Day, 1919, even though black French and British troops took part. Several black GIs were executed without trial that year, prompting a congressional investigation. When soldiers of the 367th Regiment prepared to sail for home on the USS Virginia, the captain had them removed on the grounds that no blacks had ever traveled on an American battleship.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/longterm/books/chap1/parisnoir.htm

buttslinger

02-08-2018, 12:54 AM

Blacks didn't fight side by side with whites until the Korean War, and only then because they simply didn't have enough white troops, everyone was sick of War.
When I was in College they had a lottery for the Draft, if you were into "takin' it to the streets" those were the Days. I remember in DC I looked beside me at a demonstration and Allen Ginsberg was standing there!

sukumvit boy

02-09-2018, 12:47 AM

The Trump Goose Step :

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/opinions/wp/2018/02/07/the-donald-loves-a-good-goose-step/?utm_term=.d767c2a3911f&wpisrc=nl_popns&wpmm=1

sukumvit boy

02-09-2018, 01:08 AM

10576021057603

buttslinger

02-16-2018, 10:34 PM

Hey, wasn't this supposed to be INFRASTRUCTURE WEEK??
ATTN: USS Trump, Enemy sub surfacing on Starboard side!
Underseaboaten Mueller!
While the Olympics and Mass Shooting grab the attention of most Americans, Mueller has been interviewing Bannon, flipping Gates, and now releasing a "Statement Indictment" against Russian Interference in our Election. Russians with Names. Maybe if Democrats and Republicans can come up with a common enemy, we can get our groove back. Will Republicans cheer or squirm?
When I was a kid, the Russians were a bigger enemy than they are now, but I'd say we're not as well off now as we were then, our competitors have caught up. Our National Debt is killing us. Sucking all the air out of the room. Time for some good old fashioned American Pay-Back!!!!

broncofan

02-17-2018, 08:49 PM

Lost in the discussion of what happened during the last election is what the legal consequences are of interfering with an election. The indictments handed down by Mueller yesterday give us a sense of some of the crimes that were committed during the election though not all of them. The way an American would be connected to these crimes if we get that far is by conspirator liability. We keep hearing the word "collusion" and it might be a relevant word in some contexts but the way liability attaches in criminal law is by being a conspirator to some other crime. The definition of conspiracy is that two or more people agree to commit an illegal act and take one overt step towards its commission. It does not even require the act's completion in order for liability to attach. https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/conspiracy

Anyhow, for those who are interested, here are some of the crimes included in Mueller's indictments: https://www.justice.gov/usam/criminal-resource-manual-923-18-usc-371-conspiracy-defraud-us , https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1344 , https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1028A , https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1028

Here is the indictment which contains the facts it's based upon: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-43091945

But it will be interesting to see who was involved in some way and knew of these aims. It you know of the plan and do anything to further it (even if your actions do not complete the crime) then you have conspirator liability. We haven't even gotten to the hacks yet, which will probably involve a bunch of other statutes, all with the potential for conspirator liability.

buttslinger

02-17-2018, 11:21 PM

... it will be interesting to see...

Ya Think???

Stavros

02-18-2018, 08:33 PM

broncofan

02-19-2018, 12:24 AM

An intriguing point about conspiracy in US law. If certain people related to the Presidential candidate were aware that the Russians has 'dirt' on Hillary Clinton and not only wanted to see it but may have used it -or not used it-, is this not a conspiracy to act with a foreign government against an American running for public office? I have always wondered how someone could twice in one day appeal to a foreign government for help to attack his American rival and get away with it. So far. And all this before we get to the money trail...
Assuming that what you say violates all sorts of election law statutes and even more serious national security law statutes the liability could definitely be imputed to anyone who knew the plan, agreed with it and offered assistance to the primary actors. From a criminal law standpoint I don't think mere knowledge of any such plot could move up the chain and be imputed to someone who did not act since most jurisdictions (and probably federal law as well) require one overt act to be part of the conspiracy and consequently have derivative liable to the full extent of the co-conspirators' actions. But as you and others have said a number of times, many of these things are political wrongs that are just as serious when it comes to his fitness for office.

As we saw in the indictments, various Russians tried to set up organizations where they impersonated minorities in order to suppress their vote. Assuming this violates a number of fraud related statutes what is the least an American can do and be guilty of conspiracy? First, the American has to know what they're doing. Second, in some way agree, either explicitly or more likely by implication. And finally, in most jurisdictions an overt step in furtherance is required. Maybe helping to get a permit. Offering a tiny bit of i.t. advice. This small step makes them guilty not just of conspiracy to commit the crime, but through derivative liability also of the completed crime if their co-conspirator completes it.

In your exact example it really depends when they found about the crime, whichever statute it is. The way it avoids the difficulty of trying to charge them with the predicate crime is that it is a crime where the mens rea predominates and only a little bit of action is required for a lot of liability. But you do have to know in advance.

broncofan

02-19-2018, 12:27 AM

But as you and others have said a number of times, many of these things are political wrongs that are just as serious when it comes to his fitness for office.

I suppose the point I'm making here is that criminal law makes it very difficult to punish failures to act, which is why conspiracy tends to require just slightly more than the mere agreement, which common sense might indicate is enough. But someone who holds an office has or should have all sorts of affirmative responsibilities.

Stavros

02-19-2018, 08:15 AM

As we saw in the indictments, various Russians tried to set up organizations where they impersonated minorities in order to suppress their vote. Assuming this violates a number of fraud related statutes what is the least an American can do and be guilty of conspiracy? First, the American has to know what they're doing. Second, in some way agree, either explicitly or more likely by implication. And finally, in most jurisdictions an overt step in furtherance is required. Maybe helping to get a permit. Offering a tiny bit of i.t. advice. This small step makes them guilty not just of conspiracy to commit the crime, but through derivative liability also of the completed crime if their co-conspirator completes it.
In your exact example it really depends when they found about the crime, whichever statute it is. The way it avoids the difficulty of trying to charge them with the predicate crime is that it is a crime where the mens rea predominates and only a little bit of action is required for a lot of liability. But you do have to know in advance.

Apparently the President welcomed the indictments claiming they exonerated him of 'collusion' but then on reflection and noting that other views were that it did not exonerate him and his team, spent the weekend firing off tweets that blamed everyone else for everything from gun laws to Russian meddling.

What strikes me about this man is that wherever he goes, there is a lawyer behind him, I doubt he goes to the toilet without first getting advice from the lawyer. Not only were there lawyers all over this team, the Republican establishment knows election law as well as any academic expert, so arguments about 'political amateurs' blundering through an election campaign won't work. The simple truth is that at one level from the start the aim was to break with tradition, to take a militant stance on everything: ridicule and abuse your opponents in public debates, incite violence among crowds, tell lies, treat the press as if they were the enemies of democracy, publicly invite a foreign government to help your election campaign. It is even possible they knew they were breaking the law but took the view, so what? What are 'they' going to do about it? Elections are so rarely fiddled with in the US this is unprecedented territory for law enforcement, just as the grey area with Junior visiting India to sell the family brand to customers willing to part with millions of $$$. Then there is the money trail from Moscow to New York, the giant debt owed to Deutsche Bank and the possibility that the President is living on borrowed money because he has none of his own, which I think legally would have rendered him ineligible to run for public office. And so on.

From where I am and though the facts are not yet known, I think this is going to be a momentous year in American politics, it may even be a bigger story than Brexit, which I guess isn't much of a story in the US anyway.

Budweiser

02-19-2018, 09:35 AM

:party::wiggle::banana:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFnKefiiLgE

broncofan

02-19-2018, 07:01 PM

https://www.justsecurity.org/52610/charging-mystery-russia-indictments-and-indication-mueller-investigation/

A very good article by Bob Bauer that just came up on my twitter feed. It says that if Mueller's indictments were only intended to demonstrate Russian crimes it would have included a charge of illegal campaign contributions from foreign sources. He believes the exclusion of this charge despite sufficient facts to uphold it gives us a clue to what Mueller plans next. He must be planning to charge Americans with conspiracy to defraud the United States, which was one of the charges included in the indictment. He then talks about the types of acts by Americans that can be used to bring them into this charge as co-conspirators.

To me this would indicate that maybe Mueller does not have evidence of more significant crimes to charge, but it's possible as Bauer says that he is moving in phases, and this is the simplest, most provable phase, where you have both election law crimes by Russians with American co-conspirators.

buttslinger

02-20-2018, 12:35 AM

The HORROR of this is that the same morons who elected Trump will still be running around after he's gone.

buttslinger

02-20-2018, 02:26 AM

I'm going to shed my buttslinger character and be stone cold serious here- does anybody know ONE Democrat who would support a Democratic President with this much Putin Evidence hanging over his head?

Stavros

02-20-2018, 04:21 AM

A very good article by Bob Bauer that just came up on my twitter feed. It says that if Mueller's indictments were only intended to demonstrate Russian crimes it would have included a charge of illegal campaign contributions from foreign sources. He believes the exclusion of this charge despite sufficient facts to uphold it gives us a clue to what Mueller plans next. He must be planning to charge Americans with conspiracy to defraud the United States, which was one of the charges included in the indictment. He then talks about the types of acts by Americans that can be used to bring them into this charge as co-conspirators.
To me this would indicate that maybe Mueller does not have evidence of more significant crimes to charge, but it's possible as Bauer says that he is moving in phases, and this is the simplest, most provable phase, where you have both election law crimes by Russians with American co-conspirators.

I think this is the key passage in Bauer's article:

On the face of it, the law prohibits a U.S. campaign or person from “soliciting” something “of value” from a foreign national, and it bars rendering “substantial assistance” to illegal foreign national spending. It seems clear that the facts known to date implicate these rules. It is also true that there is little precedent and arguably an increased risk of a defense grounded in the “vagueness” of these prohibitions.

Time and again it seems the lawyers have been at work and argued that if it is not explicitly illegal then it can be done even if it doesn't 'look good' because Presidential candidates or even Presidents are not supposed to do such things. Thus, if it is not explicit in law that it is illegal for the President to use his (or her) office to make money, make money they will. And while it might seem obvious what 'something of value' from a foreign national might be, they may even have analysed this to conclude that it might be a risk, but might not lead to criminal proceedings. What seems obvious to the public might not be to a court of law.

Similarly Junior is at one and the same time promoting the family business in India and giving a 'foreign policy speech' while apparently selling meetings with the man at $38,000 a pop. I wonder if that includes a pot of Assam?

In anticipation of his visit, Indian newspapers have been running full-page ads to get the public interested in the latest Trump Tower project, with headlines that say “Trump is here — Are You Invited?”

Those ads also invite home buyers to drop about $38,000 to “join Mr Donald Trump Jr for a conversation and dinner”.

Mr Trump Jr will take a break from that promotional tour to give the foreign policy speech, and the whole affair has been criticised by ethics experts for potential conflicts of interest.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-jr-narendra-modi-foreign-policy-speech-visit-india-promotional-tour-real-estate-projects-a8218776.html

sukumvit boy

02-21-2018, 02:51 AM

Apparently the President welcomed the indictments claiming they exonerated him of 'collusion' but then on reflection and noting that other views were that it did not exonerate him and his team, spent the weekend firing off tweets that blamed everyone else for everything from gun laws to Russian meddling.

What strikes me about this man is that wherever he goes, there is a lawyer behind him, I doubt he goes to the toilet without first getting advice from the lawyer. Not only were there lawyers all over this team, the Republican establishment knows election law as well as any academic expert, so arguments about 'political amateurs' blundering through an election campaign won't work. The simple truth is that at one level from the start the aim was to break with tradition, to take a militant stance on everything: ridicule and abuse your opponents in public debates, incite violence among crowds, tell lies, treat the press as if they were the enemies of democracy, publicly invite a foreign government to help your election campaign. It is even possible they knew they were breaking the law but took the view, so what? What are 'they' going to do about it? Elections are so rarely fiddled with in the US this is unprecedented territory for law enforcement, just as the grey area with Junior visiting India to sell the family brand to customers willing to part with millions of $$$. Then there is the money trail from Moscow to New York, the giant debt owed to Deutsche Bank and the possibility that the President is living on borrowed money because he has none of his own, which I think legally would have rendered him ineligible to run for public office. And so on.

From where I am and though the facts are not yet known, I think this is going to be a momentous year in American politics, it may even be a bigger story than Brexit, which I guess isn't much of a story in the US anyway.
No he doesn't ask his lawyers advise BEFORE going to the toilet , he calls his lawyers in AFTER the whole place is covered in shit.

Stavros

02-21-2018, 07:08 AM

No he doesn't ask his lawyers advise BEFORE going to the toilet , he calls his lawyers in AFTER the whole place is covered in shit.

Sounds like another smear story....
..but has anyone noticed the trend where the people caught up in the investigations are not just lawyers but liars too, they even confess to being liars. Is this because they hold the law in contempt? I don't think I can recall so many people 'in the loop' on this who have admitted to lying and who seem to regard the law as a set of options rather than obligations. And is this not one of the ingredients that can lead, unchallenged, to a decline in the law and order regime that does so much to bind a democracy together?

buttslinger

02-21-2018, 07:17 PM

..but has anyone noticed the trend where the people caught up in the investigations are not just lawyers but liars too, they even confess to being liars. Is this because they hold the law in contempt? And is this not one of the ingredients that can lead, unchallenged, to a decline in the law and order regime that does so much to bind a democracy together?

heck no, Stavros (is that your real name?) Lying means you're living, especially in a murder case, or a collusion with Russia case. Trump's lawyers probably make ten times what Mueller makes, because Mueller is armed only with the truth, Trump's team has the power. Even Jesus used to tell witnesses to his miracles not to tell anybody about this, but of course they all ran and told everyone they met. That's what got him crucified. In American Law, plead not guilty, and keep your mouth shut. If every American Congressman had a lie detector permanently implanted into his body, you'd find out quick Democracy depends on law and order as guidelines, rather than actual law and order. True Law and Order is the lie, that's why Police carry guns.
I'm thinking what John Book told Rachel Lapp after he dropped her off at the farm "there isn't going to be a trial"
Trump is duly elected to the office of President, and Commander-in-Chief, but it's just a temporary position. At least our Forefathers got that part right. Trump can fire Mueller, will the lying Republican Congress then fire Trump????????
Picasso said "art is the lie that tells the truth," if you tell a lie well enough, it's a work of art. I'd say on some level, almost everyone is living a lie, even the Evangelicals.
To make a long story short, when your boss asks you "is that your beer can?"
YES is always the wrong answer. Not because you have contempt for the Law, because you have contempt for your Boss.

buttslinger

02-24-2018, 09:36 PM

There was a time when Conservatism was an idea for Intellectual Academics, then it turned into the Reagan Revolution, now it is just a RACKET.
William F Buckley has turned into Sean Hannity, and Eisenhower has turned into Trump.
The Republican Party, who trashed Trump two years ago, has now firmly attached it's cart to his star, do they know something we don't know? If Trump goes down, will they proclaim bewildered shock? Or do they have airplanes fueled and ready to fly Gates, Flynn, and Manafort out of the Country after DOJ shake-ups and mass pardons? Trump isn't afraid of the shade from Democrats, he's afraid of Jail. There's no telling how far he'd go to save The Trump Brand or maybe, his own orange head.
I'm guessing Mueller knows everything, is working on the paperwork, but is missing the non-hearsay witness who was INSIDE THE ROOM enough he actually heard Kushner offer dropping sanctions in exchange for a HUGE Russian Hack network that had no pesky rules. Part of the weakness of the original Trump team was feuding and secrecy amongst themselves, most of the people Trump began with have been axed by Trump, not Mueller. But I think the actual number of people who knew about Trump's direct Russian Connection was pretty small.
If Trump does go down in flames like no other President, what becomes of the Republican Party and the Trump faithful?
Maybe all this has just been a test of American Democracy, strengthening it's genetic code to fight off naturally occurring internal infections and mutating cancer cells. If there is a President and Constituency that can sink lower than this, my imagination might suffer a lethal heart attack.

https://preview.ibb.co/c7E3kx/33.jpg (https://ibb.co/hPaXdH)

buttslinger

02-28-2018, 06:17 AM

These really are incredible days, you won't ever see anything like this again, most likely.
If only Trump could have used his genius for good instead of evil.........

trish

02-28-2018, 04:57 PM

These really are incredible days, you won't ever see anything like this again, most likely...I wish that were true. But I fear 45's reign sets a dangerous precedent for a presidential scale of inflammatory fakery and flim-flam in the service of wannabe oligarchs. By the end of his term the damage done to many immigrants, citizens and the nation may not be reversible.

buttslinger

03-01-2018, 12:56 AM

I wish that were true. But I fear 45's reign sets a dangerous precedent for a presidential scale of inflammatory fakery and flim-flam in the service of wannabe oligarchs. By the end of his term the damage done to many immigrants, citizens and the nation may not be reversible.

Listen, irreversible damage from eight years of Dum-Dum are still having their effect, and after Trump you will still have Trump Voters. But we've never seen a President convicted of TREASON!!
No other Americans but us will ever see them slap the cuffs on the blubbering crying POTUS!!!
That's a new one!

Llawmaker

03-01-2018, 01:10 AM

I love my American cousins, I wish only the best for you and pray for the day your country returns to some semblence of sanity. You gave this guy power (not all of you ofc, I understand democracy) but he is your elected head. Use this time, learn from it, be the better superpower I know you can be. I look to your citizens to weather this nonsense and when the time comes for you to vote again and give yourselves (and me) a man/woman that you deserve. My country's imperial past shames me, I charge you to do better, Obama was a step in the right direction, take some more please. GBA.

buttslinger

03-01-2018, 08:36 PM

The line For fools rush in where angels fear to tread was first written by Alexander Pope in his 1711 poem An Essay on Criticism. The phrase alludes to inexperienced or rash people attempting things that more experienced people avoid.

“Twenty years of schooling and they put you on the day shift - look out out kid, they keep it all hid” -Bob Dylan

I suppose what's going on is exactly what's supposed to be going on, I guess it's good that people are pissed off. It's all wrong, but it's alright. Women are entering Politics in record numbers, and schoolkids are getting gun stores to stop selling certain guns.
Mueller quit a really good job to lead this investigation, maybe the sleeping giant will wake up again. I guess it's good Americans are more like sheep than wolves. I hope so, anyway.

Stavros

03-02-2018, 10:48 AM

Meanwhile, in Panama...

Two members of Congress (http://www.independent.co.uk/topic/congress) have asked the Trump Organisation (http://www.independent.co.uk/topic/trump-organisation) to reveal if it knew about allegations that real estate agents and investors linked to a project bearing the President’s name (http://www.independent.co.uk/topic/DonaldTrump) in Panama, had ties to money laundering and drugs.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-panama-real-estate-project-us-politicians-questions-ocean-club-a8235111.html

Can't blame Noriega for that one...

buttslinger

03-03-2018, 01:19 AM

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/msn/russian-model-in-thai-jail-promises-to-spill-trump-secrets/ar-BBJIgls

Just when you thought t couldn't get any weirder.

broncofan

03-06-2018, 01:18 AM

Stavros

03-06-2018, 10:02 AM

I just looked at my twitter feed and it's lighting up with something about interviews with a guy named Sam Nunberg. I once saw him on Joy Reid and he was so incoherent I thought he was drunk. He was a former campaign adviser and so far I can gather is that his emails were subpoenaed by Mueller and he ripped up the subpoena. During his rambling interviews he may have said Carter Page colluded with the Russians...he maybe said he thinks Trump colluded with the Russians but it's no big deal. I can't imagine where Trump finds these people.
If anyone can shed some light on what he's said, please do so. He apparently did interviews with at least Jake Tapper and Katy Tur.

Like many people I had not heard of him before, as he is another one of the 'little guys' that were glued to the campaign in its earliest stages. What strikes me about the man is not just the bitterness with which he attacks his former colleagues, but the repudiation of the rule of law. Apparently he is going to rip up his subpoena and refuse to hand over emails or testify or whatever. Has there ever been a group of people, however loosely connected, with such open contempt for the law seeking to occupy the principal law making bodies of the USA? The only thing Nunberg doesn't seem to have done that the others have, is lie under oath. And I wouldn't be surprised if his contempt for the law enables him to do just that.

Stavros

03-07-2018, 03:05 AM

And yet again, this time the Hatch Act, which it appears has been violate by Kellyanne Conway. What is the point of employing all those lawyers if they don't know what it is legal and what is not -or as said before, just don't care?

The White House aide Kellyanne Conway (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/kellyanne-conway) violated federal law on at least two occasions last year by “advocating for and against candidates” from her official position as counselor to the US president, according to a federal watchdog.

The determination was made by the US Office of Special Counsel on Tuesday, (https://osc.gov/Resources/Conway%20HA-18-0966%20Final%20Report.pdf) and relates to comments Conway made during the Alabama special election (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/dec/12/roy-moore-loses-alabama-senate-race-doug-jones-wins) between Roy Moore and Doug Jones to fill the seat vacated by the attorney general, Jeff Sessions. OSC is not related to the ongoing special counsel investigation (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2017/dec/08/donald-trump-russia-investigation-key-questions-latest-news-collusion-timeline) by Robert Mueller into the Trump administration.

According to the OSC, in TV appearances on 20 November and 6 December, 2017, Conway “impermissibly mixed official government business with political views about the candidates in the Alabama special election”, violating the Hatch Act.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/mar/06/kellyanne-conway-broke-law-during-alabama-election-says-watchdog

trish

03-07-2018, 05:11 AM

But she's so cute, and a little bit of an airhead. Can't you find it in your heart to forgive her just one - okay - two little infractions.

Stavros

03-07-2018, 09:32 AM

But she's so cute, and a little bit of an airhead. Can't you find it in your heart to forgive her just one - okay - two little infractions.

I am not an American, merely a critical observer in these matters. There used to be a principle in the UK that if a Minister presided over a mess-up in his or her department, or misled Parliament, they would resign, a principle that seems to have died without an autopsy some years ago. Ms Conway may be as fragrant as Ann Coulter, I am not sure who has the best barnet, but if basic principles go, or are not even applied, it sounds hollow when we criticize other countries for the conduct of their government.

broncofan

03-08-2018, 03:23 AM

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/07/us/politics/trump-witnesses-special-counsel-priebus-mcgahn.html

Told Mcgahn to fire Mueller in June. Then when this was revealed in a NYT story, Trump had Rob Porter ask McGahn to deny it and indicated he might be fired if he didn't. Trump also asked Reince Priebus how his interview with Mueller went. None of it looks good for him. They're apparently negotiating terms with Trump to talk to Mueller. I can't wait. I recommend the full article.

On deciding the credibility issues, notice how Trump disputes conversations with three or four people already. He's the common denominator.

buttslinger

03-08-2018, 08:55 PM

Trump stinks like yesterday's fish, the only sin in his world is the truth. Luckily, we've got our own Madame DeFarge, digitized, who has access to practically everything under the sun that's happened the last seven years. Anywhere. Isn't Seychelles a pretty name? I once bumped into a Russian in a bar there.
I think at one time, Trump was considering contracting out the entire Afghanistan War to Blackwater Inc., maybe he wanted to corner the world heroin market.
Dig deep, Mueller, follow the stink.

Stavros

03-11-2018, 10:14 AM

peejaye

03-11-2018, 11:54 AM

One wonders what this man uses for brains...

Donald Trump has announced his 2020 election slogan will be "Keep America Great!" The US president, speaking at a a rally in the industrial heartland of Pennsylvania, said: "We can't say 'Make America Great Again' because I already did that.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/03/11/keep-america-great-donald-trump-reveals-2020-slogan-rails-against/

& your point is? According to UK media; The Economy as picked up & unemployment is down! I know this bloke is unpopular but facts are facts. We know him getting elected was another slap in the face for you lot but live with it. Oh...& fuck the telegraph!

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/09/business/economy/jobs-report.html

Stavros

03-11-2018, 04:40 PM

& your point is? According to UK media; The Economy as picked up & unemployment is down! I know this bloke is unpopular but facts are facts. We know him getting elected was another slap in the face for you lot but live with it. Oh...& fuck the telegraph!
l (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/09/business/economy/jobs-report.html)

And in the graph in the NYT link you have provided it shows that there has been a year on year decrease in unemployment since -wait for it- 2009, yep, that is the year Obama's presidency began to mature. So thank Obama and his team for stabilizing the US economy and returning confidence to spur a degree of economic growth without imposing tariffs or making infantile threats to China or the EU. Or maybe you really think the Russian-backed President has turned the economy around in a year? I don't think Jesus could do that, and no, that's not the LA taxi driver who ripped me off last time I was there.

filghy2

03-13-2018, 02:54 AM

& your point is? According to UK media; The Economy as picked up & unemployment is down! I know this bloke is unpopular but facts are facts. We know him getting elected was another slap in the face for you lot but live with it. Oh...& fuck the telegraph!

I'm curious as to why someone who is an avowed left-winger and Corbyn fan defends right-wing autocrats like Trump and Putin. You are always very critical of the UK Conservative government for favouring the rich and cutting government services - Trump is going further in the US than they would ever dream of, yet you can only say good things about him. The UK unemployment rate is about the same as the US, and has been falling at a similar rate, yet according to you the UK is a disaster while the US is going great.

I'm not saying this to defend the UK government at all - I'm just interested in whether you can rationalise the apparent glaring discrepancy. Is it just that you are sympathetic toward Trump and Putin because people you regard as 'the establishment' don't like them?

peejaye

03-13-2018, 06:42 PM

I wasn't saying good things about Trump. I don't like him either. I was reporting on what the UK media are saying about the US economy! That's it.
If the Tories were doing some good in this country I wouldn't moan as much but you & I know everything they're doing is persecuting poor people & defending the rich & privileged.
Education, Health & social care, The Police Force, The Army, Public transport are all dysfunctional & we're all paying taxes for what?

peejaye

03-13-2018, 06:48 PM

And in the graph in the NYT link you have provided it shows that there has been a year on year decrease in unemployment since -wait for it- 2009, yep, that is the year Obama's presidency began to mature. So thank Obama and his team for stabilizing the US economy and returning confidence to spur a degree of economic growth without imposing tariffs or making infantile threats to China or the EU. Or maybe you really think the Russian-backed President has turned the economy around in a year? I don't think Jesus could do that, and no, that's not the LA taxi driver who ripped me off last time I was there.

I wouldn't believe a thing you said anymore if you told me tomorrow was Wednesday! You're just throwing toys everywhere because you've been kicked out of your millionaires club. I've got your card well & truly marked. :yayo:

Stavros

03-13-2018, 07:04 PM

I wouldn't believe a thing you said anymore if you told me tomorrow was Wednesday! You're just throwing toys everywhere because you've been kicked out of your millionaires club. I've got your card well & truly marked. :yayo:

What a silly post! Don't take my word for it, just look at the evidence! It is even in your link, if you actually read it. It takes more than a year to turn an economy round, the US began to recover from the shocks of 2008 when Obama became President. Those are verifiable facts, but you are free to defend the worthless drivel of those authors of 'broken America', 'American carnage' for whom evidence only exists to be dismissed when it doesn't suit their agenda.

CP Snow said it: Comment is free, facts are sacred.

Stavros

03-18-2018, 09:52 AM

It has emerged over the weekend via the whistleblower's revelations about Cambridge Analytica, that the Republican party has broken the Federal law on elections not once, but twice -in the 2014 mid-term elections and in the 2016 Presidential Election even though Steve Bannon was told by the lawyers that Cambridge Analytica was breaking the law (as if they cared!)-

Cambridge Analytica (https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/cambridge-analytica) employed non-American citizens to work on US election campaigns in apparent violation of federal law, despite receiving a legal warning about the risks.

The company’s responsibilities under US law were laid out in a lawyer’s memo to the company’s vice-president, Steve Bannon, British CEO Alexander Nix and Rebekah Mercer, daughter of billionaire owner Robert Mercer, in July 2014. It made it clear that most senior and mid-level positions involving strategy, planning, fundraising or campaigning needed to be filled by US citizens.

“Any decision maker must be a US citizen or green card holder,” the memo, seen by the Observer, warned. It also provided a brief legal history of cases involving foreign involvement in election campaigns, drawn up by a lawyer at the firm founded by former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani.

“To the extent you are aware of foreign nationals providing services, including polling and marketing, it would appear that unless it is being done through US citizens, or foreign nationals with green cards, the activity would violate the law.”
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/mar/17/cambridge-analytica-non-american-employees-political

buttslinger

03-23-2018, 02:09 AM

please
kill me now!!!!
https://image.ibb.co/cvSnnx/John_Bolton.jpg (https://ibb.co/kQhL7x)
how to host images (https://imgbb.com/)[/CENTER]This is all a dream, right?

filghy2

03-23-2018, 03:06 AM

Your surprised? Trump is clearly on a mission to get rid of anyone who's prepared to stand up to him and argue against his worst instincts. How long for John Kelly and Jim Mattis I wonder?

I guess this marks the end of the Trump who was sceptical about foreign military interventions?

Jericho

03-23-2018, 03:59 AM

Ron Burgandy's really let himself go! :shrug

please
kill me now!!!!
https://image.ibb.co/cvSnnx/John_Bolton.jpg (https://ibb.co/kQhL7x)
how to host images (https://imgbb.com/)[/CENTER]This is all a dream, right?

broncofan

03-23-2018, 04:26 AM

Collusion!

https://www.thedailybeast.com/exclusive-lone-dnc-hacker-guccifer-20-slipped-up-and-revealed-he-was-a-russian-intelligence-officer?via=twitter_page&__twitter_impression=true

blakpadi

03-24-2018, 02:58 PM

i worked for Trump at Trump Shuttle.
He fucked me over for 15 G's
Peanuts to him,a missed rent check and a apartment to me.
i did over 250 flights with the groper.
i have stories.
The man is a disease to society.
Supporters,go FUCK YOURSEVLES.

dns4809

03-24-2018, 11:54 PM

Staff members provide Trump with folders twice a day filled with favorable news articles, flattering tweets, and even pictures of the president for him to pore over. This for a man who can’t be bothered to read national security briefings,

the Cabinet meetings began with Trump calling on each member so they praise him and express appreciation for working for him

Ben in LA

03-27-2018, 01:08 PM

Thank you to the LGBT community! I will fight for you while Hillary brings in more people that will threaten your freedoms and beliefs.
Remember when he tweeted this? Yet Hillary was the liar.

buttslinger

04-04-2018, 05:31 AM

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/mueller-told-trumps-attorneys-the-president-remains-under-investigation-but-is-not-currently-a-criminal-target/2018/04/03/d7832cf0-36c1-11e8-acd5-35eac230e514_story.html?utm_term=.0ce61c3e4e2d

Maybe Amazon.com is going to show Trump what real money and pull can do. They're dancing him into a corner.

Stavros

04-04-2018, 08:33 AM

(https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/mueller-told-trumps-attorneys-the-president-remains-under-investigation-but-is-not-currently-a-criminal-target/2018/04/03/d7832cf0-36c1-11e8-acd5-35eac230e514_story.html?utm_term=.0ce61c3e4e2d)
Maybe Amazon.com is going to show Trump what real money and pull can do. They're dancing him into a corner.

What you could do is wait for the President to bad mouth a major corporation, watch its stock price fall -and buy, counting your profits with a smile six months later. Why else is this man in the Presidency if not to use it for financial gain?

As for prosecutions, the first person prosecuted by Mueller has been given a 30-day jail sentence for lying, which at least makes it clear that lies can be punished.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/apr/03/alex-van-der-zwaan-jail-sentence-mueller-trump-russia-investigation

As for Amazon, the President either doesn't bother with the facts, can't add up, or is only interested in their stock price...his nonsense remarks about Amazon and the US Postal Service debunked here-
https://www.independent.co.uk/infact/donald-trump-amazon-post-office-cost-billions-jeff-bezos-tax-is-he-right-a8287016.html

trish

04-04-2018, 03:11 PM

buttslinger

04-04-2018, 06:45 PM

Besos has a lot more money than Trump. More Power??? We'll see.
Trump should buy some tobacco companies, I heard in Prison the currency is cigarettes.

Stavros

04-05-2018, 05:13 PM

Donald doesn't give a shit about Amazon's business practices or how it uses the mail. The pressure in his bloviating pipes is caused by his irrepressible hatred for the Washington Post and it's owner Jeff Bezos.

It now appears that it might go beyond your tasteful assessment. It is about the difference between 'bricks and mortar' and e-commerce, something that has passed by the Chief Executive and his buddy Rupert Murdoch. One assessment of property in Manhattan suggests that the success of online retailers like Amazon has led to a decline in the value of Manhattan real estate and that this has directly affected the Billionaire CEO of America LLC-

“Values of several Manhattan properties, particularly those on or near Fifth Avenue, have dropped, shaving nearly $400 million off his fortune,” the magazine says.Appearing on CNN Tuesday, Forbes assistant managing editor Kerry Dolan specifically leveled blame for Trump’s losses on Amazon. Specifically citing the lease of the Niketown store and the Trump Tower property, Dolan said that retailers are suffering--even on the high end. It would appear that Amazon’s strategy of e-commerce over brick and mortar retail is winning, and that is having an effect on real estate values, she added.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/amazon-caused-donald-trump-lose-225554760.html

But, if the President were to propose the use of anti-trust law to break up Amazon, this would surely not revive the 'mom and pop' or corner stores of ye olde Amerique? E-Commerce is here to stay, it is not a fad. Are city councils going to reduce their rents for commercial property?

trish

04-05-2018, 06:33 PM

In rural areas mom-and-pop businesses died a long time ago when franchises spread and took root everywhere. WallMarts, Hallmarks, CVS’s, Barnes & Nobles, Olive Gardens, etc. Homogeneity is the price Americans are willing to pay for predicable quality and service.

When Amazon first started it sold books. You bought them online and they sent them to you through the mail. Then they sold kindles and e-books. Border’s Books was one of the first brick and mortar franchises to die probably because of direct competition with Amazon. Now that Amazon sells just about everything under the Sun, others find themselves in a much more competitive market because of Amazon’s head start on online-commerce.

I had not thought what it means to the real estate market as brick and mortar stores either die or switch to the online model. But apparently those with an interest in these matters see a correlation between declining real estate values, the decline in the retail market and the rise of online shopping.

Oddly, the mom-and-pop stores that are able to thrive often do so because they have an online presence. Arts and crafts supplies, vitamins, birdhouses, scratching posts for cats etc. can be bought from small online businesses. Some are businesses that have a brick and mortar presence in some small town somewhere, others are literally ma and pa working out of their home. Some of these businesses work with and through Amazon.

Is Amazon too big? Should it be broken up? I have no current opinion, although I’m quite certain Trump’s opinion on the matter is biased in many ways: 1) Jeff Besos owns the Washington Post; 2) Jeff Besos’s networth is twenty-fives times greater than Trump’s; 3) and now Amazon may be having a negative effect on the value of Trump’s real estate.

Thanks for the article.

blackchubby38

04-06-2018, 12:57 AM

Stavros

04-06-2018, 01:47 AM

Trish summed up perfectly what I wanted to say about what led to demise of "mom and pop" businesses in the United States. The only thing I will add is that the first mall opening up 30 years ago, probably signaled the first death knell for them as well.
As for retailers, they have to start thinking twice before they open a brick and mortar location. Especially in a place like NYC. Unless they can figure out a way to have the location also operate as a fulfillment center that offers same day delivery. But even with that, I don't think they could do enough business to pay rent, electricity, wages, etc..

This is a fascinating post, because it raises a profound question: what are cities for? We may have to re-configure the urban environment if e-commerce does lead to the decline of shops, though I think that a balance may be found because I do think people love the physical act of 'going into town' to browse and maybe buy stuff, and although fruit and veg even a carton of milk can be bought online from the supermarket in town, I still believe that seeing and touching things matters a lot, though I make the observation as an older man.

The CEO and Murdoch it seems to me have missed their chance with e-commerce. We know from past reports that Murdoch is attached to newsprint because he inherited so many Australian titles from his father, much as the Boy from Queens inherited a property empire from his father and grandfather and must have some emotional attachment to 'bricks and mortar' or in his case, 'concrete and glass' even if the concrete is provided by a firm -'a legitimate business'- owned by the New York Mafia. I don't know how cities will change, I think there will always be a place for bookshops as well as coffee shops, and designer outlets where Sears no longer stands, but the city-scape will be different. And so far away from the Norman Rockwell America of David Dennison that he seeks to revive.

filghy2

04-06-2018, 03:27 AM

This is a fascinating post, because it raises a profound question: what are cities for? We may have to re-configure the urban environment if e-commerce does lead to the decline of shops, though I think that a balance may be found because I do think people love the physical act of 'going into town' to browse and maybe buy stuff, and although fruit and veg even a carton of milk can be bought online from the supermarket in town, I still believe that seeing and touching things matters a lot, though I make the observation as an older man.

Actually, the cities that have embraced the knowledge economy seem to be thriving. The declining cities are the ones still stuck in the old 'rust belt' economy - see this recent Paul Krugman column. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/02/opinion/trumpland-economy-polarization.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

The idea that technology will mean that it no longer matters where people live seems to be wrong, or at least greatly overstated. There still seem to be big advantages in knowledge industries and the people who work in them clustering together in cities.

I suspect there may a bit of a dichotomy happening, where the supply of 'mass market' physical goods becomes more concentrated in those larger businesses who can do this most efficiently, but there remains a large field for niche products and services that can be supplied by smaller business. As people's incomes rise they tend to spend a larger proportion on the latter.

Stavros

04-08-2018, 06:58 PM

Meanwhile in advance of the book James Comey is about to publish, I found two reviews of books one of which -Russian Roulette seems to have gone unnoticed, being an account so far of Russian involvement in US election politics, with an essay by Samantha Power in the second book edited by her husband Cass Sunstein also an interesting new book, the two reviews are here:

Russian Roulette
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/mar/20/russian-roulette-review-donald-trump-joe-biden-treason

Can it happen here? Authoritarianism in America
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/apr/07/can-it-happen-here-review-trump-republicans-authoritarian-america-fascism

buttslinger

04-09-2018, 11:26 PM

Is it considered a bad sign when the FBI breaks into your Lawyer's Office?

blackchubby38

04-10-2018, 04:38 AM

This is a fascinating post, because it raises a profound question: what are cities for? We may have to re-configure the urban environment if e-commerce does lead to the decline of shops, though I think that a balance may be found because I do think people love the physical act of 'going into town' to browse and maybe buy stuff, and although fruit and veg even a carton of milk can be bought online from the supermarket in town, I still believe that seeing and touching things matters a lot, though I make the observation as an older man.

The CEO and Murdoch it seems to me have missed their chance with e-commerce. We know from past reports that Murdoch is attached to newsprint because he inherited so many Australian titles from his father, much as the Boy from Queens inherited a property empire from his father and grandfather and must have some emotional attachment to 'bricks and mortar' or in his case, 'concrete and glass' even if the concrete is provided by a firm -'a legitimate business'- owned by the New York Mafia. I don't know how cities will change, I think there will always be a place for bookshops as well as coffee shops, and designer outlets where Sears no longer stands, but the city-scape will be different. And so far away from the Norman Rockwell America of David Dennison that he seeks to revive.

Nordstrom's maybe on to something:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bhXDKmK-P0

Stavros

04-10-2018, 08:13 AM

Is it considered a bad sign when the FBI breaks into your Lawyer's Office?

Apparently it is an attack on the USA...is it a bad sign when the President believes he is the embodiment of the country and not just its Chief Executive officer?

Stavros

04-10-2018, 08:19 AM

Nordstrom's maybe on to something:

I don't think we have Nordstrom in the UK at the moment, although I have seen their stories in Canada. I am not going to browse the internet at 2am looking for trousers and then get on a train to go to London to buy them, but I see the point about retaining a retail presence in the city. I guess in the end it is about customer satisfaction -and affordability. I don't know how it works in Manhattan, but in a lot of small towns in the UK there is a vicious circle where declining revenues mean local council seek the compensate by increasing rents and rates on commercial properties. Chain stories can often take the hit, even in this small town Starbucks used to have two outlets and although it has rationalized to one, Caffe Nero and Costa both have two outlets, but an independent trader I have spoken to complains about the margins as they are squeezed not just by rents and rates on the property but charges for tending the street outside. That she runs a coffee shop which is popular with young people gives her a base but other independent outlets are visibly struggling and at least three or four have closed since the New Year. And I don't see councils making it any easier, but this is not really relevant to the this thread on the President.

Stavros

04-14-2018, 02:41 PM

From The Guardian:
Donald Trump (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/donaldtrump) has issued a full pardon to I Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the former chief of staff to vice-president Dick Cheney under George W Bush.
Libby was convicted in 2007 of obstruction of justice and perjury, in connection with an investigation into the leak of the identity of a CIA agent, Valerie Plame (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/feb/27/bush-administration-sold-iraq-war). His conviction was the result of an investigation by the special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, who was appointed by the then deputy attorney general, James Comey (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/apr/13/trump-attacks-james-comey-fbi-director-book).

The report ends:

Matthew Dowd, an ABC political analyst who was chief strategist on Bush’s re-election campaign in 2004, wrote (https://twitter.com/matthewjdowd/status/984851097708826624): “This pardon of Scooter Libby is simply outrageous. “I worked for President Bush from 1999 to 2005, and Scooter is a felon whom President Bush would not even pardon. He was convicted of obstruction of justice, lying, and perjury. This is a dark day for the rule of law in America.”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/apr/13/scooter-libby-trump-pardons-cheney-aide-convicted-of-lying-to-fbi

But the man concerned, who now appears to be leader of a cult rather than the President, has regard the rule of law with contempt for so long nobody can remember the last time he obeyed it. A higher purpose motivates him, it is called revenge.

peejaye

04-14-2018, 03:22 PM

& you & that fucking poodle bitching about him every single fucking day is going to change everything, right?

buttslinger

04-29-2018, 06:19 PM

Nobel! Nobel! Nobel!
This is what BAD looks like.

buttslinger

04-30-2018, 08:49 PM

So, what's up with Trump's Medicine Man, he went from A+......to Candyman, now I think he's a potted plant in the West Wing, seems like tying your wagon to Trump's star is career suicide for most folks. Trump is like the Hindu God that dances on the flames but is not consumed by the fire. I guess we need a bigger fire. Can Trump sell North Korea on the Lybian Model for Nuclear de-Escalation? If he can sell that he most definitely wins some kind of prize. Did they confiscate Trump's private cellphone? Who's he talking to, Cohen, Sarah Palin, Sherriff Joe? Dennis Rodman?
What was that Kevin Costner movie, "No Way Out" where he is looking for the Russian Mole, but the Mole is HIM. Too bad Trump couldn't have found a nice girl and settled down. Maybe he could have done something with his life.

Stavros

05-06-2018, 12:38 PM

The President of the USA, it is alleged, hired the intelligence services of a foreign country to investigate the staff of the President he succeeded with a view to smearing their reputations as part of his proposal to withdraw from the 'Iran Nuclear Agreement'.

My first thought was that this must be treason, but I guess as this happened in May 2017 it is the actions by the elected President rather than an action against Obama -there can only be one President at a time. Nevertheless this seems to me to close to treason as it recruits a foreign intelligence agency to operate inside the USA against American citizens.

I am not sure what the law is on this, even if it is morally outrageous, but not surprising as the President of the USA has publicly ridiculed and insulted the FBI, the CIA, the Justice Department, Congress -anyone who does not agree with him; and, as we know, twice on one day during the 2016 election campaign publicly invited a foreign country (Russia) to help attack his fellow American and rival candidate for the Presidency.

Which side is he on?

Aides to Donald Trump (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/donaldtrump), the US president, hired an Israeli private intelligence agency to orchestrate a “dirty ops” campaign against key individuals from the Obama administration who helped negotiate the Iran nuclear deal, the Observer can reveal.

People in the Trump camp contacted private investigators in May last year to “get dirt” on Ben Rhodes, who had been one of Barack Obama’s top national security advisers, and Colin Kahl, deputy assistant to Obama, as part of an elaborate attempt to discredit the deal.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/may/05/trump-team-hired-spy-firm-dirty-ops-iran-nuclear-deal

buttslinger

05-15-2018, 12:41 AM

Stavros

05-15-2018, 12:45 PM

I can't decide which is more surreal, Trump's quest to make the glass all empty, or the millions of voters who put him in charge. I say the latter.
I guarantee you Fox News targets stupid people.

There has always been a segment of the US population that incline toward the God, Family and Country ideology fostered by a diverse set of people from evangelical Christians (if indeed they are Christian), to libertarians, Klansmen and so on. What would normally be puzzling is why even Fox News cannot ask the most obvious questions that undermine the performance of the President they defend so much. Just on the US Embassy move to Jerusalem the obvious question to ask of the man who claims he makes the best deals, is: What has Israel given to the US in return for the US moving its Embassy to Jerusalem? The answer: nothing. More than that, the US didn't even ask for anything, let alone demand a concession from Israel. Fox News and other supporters are fully aware that this is a giveaway President so incompetent, so utterly bereft of political nous he is prepared to dance to the tune of anyone who he thinks will make him look good on tv -and what does it mean to fulfill a campaign promise that was not worth anything to the USA anyway?

Just as the President has reneged on his tariff strategy with China, shown that sanctions against Iran can be violated with his approval; that the President can decide to recognize North Korea without the approval of Congress -just as these events illustrate the perils of American Kingship as opposed to American Democracy, so his supporters cheer him on, terrified of losing power. They should be more terrified of losing their freedom as the Head of State of a country that rebelled against an Imperial power imposing its rules on British America now strides across the world imposing -or trying to impose- its rules on everyone else. A King in all but name, until the day his luck runs out and he doesn't look so good on tv anymore.

buttslinger

05-15-2018, 04:44 PM

I'm sure things get clearer when more pieces of the puzzle show up in evidence, to show Trump's guilt and explain some of the curious steps he takes. We'll all find out Trump has a thing for his ego and his gold. It probably is as simple as that.
But it seems like Trump's supporters have all been hypnotized, brainwashed. They hate Hillary and Pelosi more than our enemies in Russia, Iran, N Korea, etc. If Trump gets nailed for being involved with the Russian Mob, where will his Faithful turn? In the long run, Republican v Democrat means nothing, it's the character of the entire Country that matters, that's what scares me more than that little prick Trump.

buttslinger

05-15-2018, 06:35 PM

ONE Donald Trump I can understand, but his 50 million followers seem to defy reality. He doesn't even represent them!
There are two Trumps: the one who pretends to champion conservative media values, and one who cashes in on his newfound good fortune.
Behind it all is the fear that the United State's time as TOP DOG is coming to an end, and this is what that looks like.

yodajazz

05-16-2018, 06:16 AM

filghy2

05-16-2018, 08:47 AM

In his latest example of policy incoherency, Trump wants to save the Chinese phone company ZTE from being pushed into bankruptcy as a result of fines and trade restrictions imposed by the US for trading with Iran and North Korea. US intelligence agencies are also concerned about cyber-security risks from ZTE phones. This is from the same guy who has been talking about US jobs being lost to Chinese companies breaking the rules, and also wants tighter sanctions on Iran.

One theory is that Trump is trying to curry favour with the Chinese to get a trade deal, although it's an odd negotiating strategy to grant the other side a favour without getting something in return. There are also suggestions that there may have been a quid pro quo already: a Chinese company recently provided a loan to the developer of a Trump resort complex in Indonesia. https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/5/15/17355202/trump-zte-indonesia-lido-city

Whatever, the real reason, it underscores that if Trump has his way the US will be literally a lawless country where everything depends on his passing whims.

Stavros

05-16-2018, 09:37 AM

When told that Senator John McCain would not endorse Gina Haspel as the new Director of the CIA, a member of the President's staff said It doesn't matter, he's dying anyway. The White House has refused to apologise for the comment, but the President has made his own statement via Twitter:

The so-called leaks coming out of the White House are a massive over exaggeration put out by the Fake News Media in order to make us look as bad as possible. With that being said, leakers are traitors and cowards, and we will find out who they are!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 14, 2018 (https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/996129630913482755?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw)

Does this mean that the 'traitor' who leaks information from within the White House will be arrested and charged, and if found guilty of treason in a court of law be executed as a result? Because Treason is a serious crime in the USA punishable by death, so one would expect the President of all people to immediately order an investigation with the intention of prosecuting the person responsible for betraying the United States of America -right?

Or maybe these days, as Yodajazz suggests above, treason is just one of those things and nobody need worry about it...least of all the justice department.
http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/387642-trump-blasts-white-house-leakers-as-traitors

peejaye

05-16-2018, 10:43 AM

https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-usa-economy/u-s-job-growth-cools-as-labor-market-nears-full-employment-wages-up-idUKKBN1EU0EF

1075031

I hate Liberals.....

filghy2

05-16-2018, 11:53 AM

I hate Liberals.....

Do you even know what the word means? Most Americans would define the party you claim to support as liberal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_liberalism_in_the_United_States

filghy2

05-16-2018, 12:10 PM

The brave internet warrior Peejaye
Wanted to debate politics every day
But he found try as he might
He could not tell left from right
So he had to oppose whatever 'they' say.

peejaye

05-16-2018, 12:50 PM

Do you even know what the word means? Most Americans would define the party you claim to support as liberal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_liberalism_in_the_United_States

Got it ! .... Cancer of the mouth :claps

You two turds really should get out more, fucking love it! :p

filghy2

05-17-2018, 07:37 AM

Got it ! .... Cancer of the mouth

I don't use my mouth for typing on the internet - do you? Or it it just for putting your foot in.

By the way, here's something you must have overlooked concerning that Peace Prize. We all know how closely you are following this issue.
https://www.vox.com/world/2018/5/16/17360280/north-korea-trump-summit-bolton-statement

It also looks like those 'liberals' have even infiltrated the Republican-majority senate intelligence committee. https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/5/16/17361650/russia-election-trump-putin-intelligence-committee

Stavros

05-17-2018, 05:35 PM

Looks like John Bolton, an enthusiastic supporter of the President's decision to withdraw from the Iran Nuclear Agreement, was not told his boss had actually announced it, and with his rigid attitude to North Korea, he may not last long. As it happens, the President now appears to be ruling the USA on his own, which is how he ran his companies. Congress, as far as I know, has yet to recognize North Korea as a country, but I guess they are not bothered.

Trump is said to feel more and more confident in his presidential abilities without having to depend on advisers. He apparently made the final decision on Iran without final consultations with cabinet members and senior officials about ramifications, and then, as he does, tweeted it. Bolton only found out from a European official who had seen the tweet.
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/john-bolton-north-korea-donald-trump-libya-kim-jong-un-bannon-pompeo-a8354206.html

buttslinger

05-17-2018, 07:09 PM

I have read three people, that claimed there will be violence, if Trump is impeached. One was Rodger Stone, another was televangelist Jim Bakker. My point is, if this is true, that would mean their loyalty is to Trump over the Constitution, or the rule of law.
How do you logically debate a topic that time after time proves illogical? People vote on a case by case basis, the candidate exists in the eye of the voter, and it's a given that half the country's correct answer will be the other half's wrong answer. If, for any reason, the Russian Investigation got "legally" buried by the Right, I think you would see violence from the Left. So I think the one thing everybody can agree on is that there will be violence.

Stavros

05-23-2018, 09:27 AM

I gasped when I first saw this:
“I have absolute right to do what I want to do with the Justice Department,”

But it seems that in purely legal terms, the President has realised he can do what he want. The point is that this is a President who has looked at the 'norms and values' that preceded him, and has dismissed them as if they were of no value at all. The assumption that a President would distance himself from the Justice Department because it is good for the practice of law in a democracy, has been exposed as just that, by someone with a deep need to shape everything to his desire, convinced of his own greatness. As with the assumption that was made long ago, that no President would use the Office to line his pockets so it didn't need to be spelled out in law, so this President can cheerfully rack up as much money as he can whether it is charging the American tax payer for his multiple golfing trips or selling out the US for deals with foreign countries that benefit him and has family financially.

There are two contending interpretations of the law but the Reuters link seems to be the best argued. We have had Prime Ministers in the UK who have intervened personally in legal matters, Tony Blair did it twice -over Iraq and the bribery scandal with BAE and Saudi Arabia- but I like to think it is harder for a Prime Minister to govern for his or her personal benefit in the brazen way that is now happening in the USA.

https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/trump-justice-department-new-york-times_us_5a45aa01e4b0b0e5a7a5b993
https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-otc-independence/doj-independence-entrenched-and-ingrained-will-survive-trump-historian-law-prof-idUKKCN1IM2DP
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2018/03/11/no-trump-cannot-do-whatever-he-wants-with-the-justice-department/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.e8a866c84963

buttslinger

05-24-2018, 02:05 AM

They had to write it out that way because in rare emergencies, you need a President with immense powers ordering "exceptions to the rule" rules for natural and manmade disasters. And who did the American People elect to sit in that seat???? Who did the voters give that sacred power to?......
DONALD TRUMP?????WTF??????
Whatever fuckin happens, the American People OWN this whole mess, we handed the keys to the henhouse to the wolf.
We all knew what we were getting, Everybody saw it, the Republican voters know Trump is playing fast and loose with the law, they figure Hillary would have done the same. Trump voters know if Hillary had won she'd be shitting on them every chance she could, a Posture I applaud, by the way, he he he,
Never in a million years did I think a guy like Trump could command this attention now because the UNWRITTEN RULES say a guy like Trump could never elbow his way through the Senate and House. They have their own ways and means committees, dare I say.
For us to be talking about this is representative of something deeper than Trump, darker and stronger. More Dangerous. Freedom of Speech! ha ha ha. Trump's going down, but the monsters who spawned him will still be large and in charge.
I don't understand this but I have a hunch that if I did it would be pretty much what I think: Trump needs some jailtime to get his priorities straight.
Nothing I can write will change how WRONG that guy is.....
I really do think people are accepting him.

yodajazz

05-28-2018, 07:37 AM

How do you logically debate a topic that time after time proves illogical? People vote on a case by case basis, the candidate exists in the eye of the voter, and it's a given that half the country's correct answer will be the other half's wrong answer. If, for any reason, the Russian Investigation got "legally" buried by the Right, I think you would see violence from the Left. So I think the one thing everybody can agree on is that there will be violence.

I have not heard anyone on the left, talking about civil war. And I'm talking about two well known figures on the right; 1. Jim Bakker did it on television, he has a significant television audience. I know someone personally, who watches his sow regularly. And Rodger Stone is a nationally known figure, and is even the subject of a movie, "Get Me Rodger Stone". The third person, was someone, making a post on Robert Mueller's Facebook page! I personally doubt that many would really resort to violence.

But there is a narrative that Putin's goal was to promote acrimony. Looks like Trump is doing the job, constantly attacking American institutions; deep state, FBI and CIA leadership, judges, the press, Obama, Hillary, comedians, etc. Trump's claim of millions illegal voters, is a psychological attack on our electoral system, raises anger, for those, that believe him. So if Putin has ill will toward the US, would Trump be the perfect vehicle?

Stavros

05-28-2018, 03:51 PM

[QUOTE=yodajazz;1839821]
I have not heard anyone on the left, talking about civil war. And I'm talking about two well known figures on the right; 1. Jim Bakker did it on television, he has a significant television audience. I know someone personally, who watches his sow regularly. And Rodger Stone is a nationally known figure, and is even the subject of a movie, "Get Me Rodger Stone". The third person, was someone, making a post on Robert Mueller's Facebook page! I personally doubt that many would really resort to violence.

--A few points on the above:
1) consider the view that the Civil War, as a military confrontation between the USA and the anti-American Confederacy ended in 1865, but the restoration of the rights of Slave States against the Rights of Man through the compromises made by Congress that stripped Black Americans of their right to vote and segregated them physically as well as politically and economically, means that the Civil War did not end until 1965, 100 years later with the legislation restoring the rights of man to all Americans. The end of the Dixiecrats and the widening polarisation of Democrats and Republicans has grown since 1965 as the Confederacy has united with ultra-Conservatives in the Christian 'Moral Majority' movement, and the Libertarian ideologies of the Koch Brothers and TEA Party activists to restore and promote the Confederacy as the alternative Nationalism of the USA where God, Family and Country means: White, Christian and Heterosexual.

2) What the Republican Party did in 2016 was abandon its identity as an American party, and collapse into a rump of Confederate Nationalists using a con-man and loud mouth incapable of governing as President for precisely that reason: to use this useful idiot for their own purposes: to re-structure taxes to benefit the rich at the expense of everyone else; and to facilitate the obliteration of the Rights of Man in the Confederate states on the simple premise that Black people, Latinos and Asians are not Americans and certainly have no right to be considered equal citizens in the USA.

3) Nationalism in the USA if based on the Rights of Man gives every American the right to belong and to share the benefits of the country equally; the nationalism of the Confederates limits the definition to White, Christian and Heterosexual Americans, and nobody else. Steve Bannon lauds Nationalism against Globalism, but associates Black People, Latinos and Asians with the 'sickness' of Globalism, seeking to restore the supremacy of Confederate Nationalism as THE American identity. This is a complete reversal of both the Civil War, and the American Revolution -the Rights of Man were established in opposition to the absolute right of Kings, yet they now revere the President as the King and God, sent to save them from the oblivion of demographic change
.
The armed militias have been fighting their cause for years, from the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, through the Oklahoma Bombing to the Bundy clan. They will fight, but will many more join them to rescue their America from the Rights of Man?

But there is a narrative that Putin's goal was to promote acrimony. Looks like Trump is doing the job, constantly attacking American institutions; deep state, FBI and CIA leadership, judges, the press, Obama, Hillary, comedians, etc. Trump's claim of millions illegal voters, is a psychological attack on our electoral system, raises anger, for those, that believe him. So if Putin has ill will toward the US, would Trump be the perfect vehicle?

-Parallel lines sometimes cross: if you believe the concept of Disruptive Innovation can be transferred from business to politics both the Russian and American Presidents are engaged in it, one to disrupt the system of global politics, the other to disrupt the system in the USA, both with the intention of replacing what exists, with something more congenial to their national interests, as defined by them.
It is thus in Russia's interests to weaken democracy to validate its own autocracy; to weaken the European Union to dismantle an economic bloc that is more powerful collectively than Russia but dismantled leaves only Germany and France as its major European competitors; and to eject the USA from East Asia to strengthen its strategic position in relation to China, Korea and Japan who are set to dominate the economy in the 21st century.

In the American case, the disruptive innovation is designed if not to smash the party political system to pieces, to expose it to shocks that force reform on 'gridlocked' party politics and Congress, after all in the first tv debate for the Republican candidacy he stated without shame he would run as President even if the party did not nominate him. He has no party, he is a maverick.

Crucially, this President has three aims, in this order of priority: 1) to get as rich as possible by using the Office of the President for financial gain for himself and his family. 2) To destroy as much as he can of the legacy of the Obama Administration, to harass and insult and abuse Obama and all and anyone who served in his Administration and by doing so prove to the Confederacy he is as Racist and Sexist as they can be and shares their agenda; and 3) to disrupt the existing economic order in order to benefit the top tiers of the US economy -ie, himself-, primarily through protectionist measures in international trade.

This article explains how this Disruptive Innovation and protectionism in the short term may benefit the US economy, but in the long term leaves sectors of it vulnerable to precisely the foreign intervention/globalization the President is opposed to, while the other offers perspective of how Disruptive Innovation may work in politics.

http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/businessreview/2017/02/23/if-trumps-america-first-takes-hold-expect-disruptive-innovation/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/offwhitepapers/2015/07/30/donald-trump-disruptive-political-innovation/#1d0b1d626854

buttslinger

05-28-2018, 07:24 PM

While we've all done our part to bellyache and complain,............. besides the mid-term elections the United States has a built-in failsafe precaution against injustice called the FBI. In what world WOULDN'T Mueller and his team find enough evidence to BURY Trump under Club Fed? If that world turned out to be the Republican House and Senate, I think you would see the gloves come off, the rule of order lifted and a lot of pissed off Democrats taking it to the streets.
All the shit you see, there's ten times more you don't see, look what's been uncovered just by reporters so far.
I remember Lindsay Graham lamenting that when Mueller started the investigation, the public would never hear about the dirt on Trump anymore because all the sensational stuff would be dished behind doors, under oath, top-secret. Yet every day there's a new swamp water line marked. How can Trump not see the writing on the wall, he knows every crime he committed before and after being elected! If it's proved that Trump knowingly aided Putin in any way because of something Putin had on him, in 1776 that would have been a hangable offense. As protectors of the Constitution, the entire Republican Party needs a spanking. Pence will not pardon Trump. Who knows? We've sped past politics and social scraping, we're deep diving through a 16-hour exploratory surgery into the psyche of the American Mind. It can get pretty dark in there.

yodajazz

05-29-2018, 06:22 AM

@Stavros Thanks so much for your post! I agree with you, about the thing being a continuation of the original Civil War. One thing i see is that the movement, is fueled by negativity. I actually do not mind honoring Confederate war heroes. It's the negativity that grows, into negative consequences. The left is using similar tactic, but it does not run that deep, in my book. But speaking of negativity, it blew my mind, reading about a poll taken, that found that 55% of white americans, feel they are oppressed! And it does not seem like it is the super rich, and corporate elite, as it is minorities, and the government. Here we are having been previously told, we are the richest, and most powerful nation in the world, (american exceptionalism), to now being oppressed?

I'm currently reading an excellent book, called "Dark Money" by Jane Meyer. It's a long and detailed read, (350 pages, plus notes and index). It is about the billionaires, who have basically taken over the republican party, and turned it to be more libertarian, than anything. That suits the bottom line, of the oil magnates, Wall Street tycoons, big business owners, etc. It is anti-union, anti regulation, etc. But the trick is, they have convince, moderate, and poorer people, that it is in their best interests, as well. Now this is not from the book, but more from your point. That is, the racism of the confederacy, is a useful tool, to ally moderate and poor whites, to their libertarian agenda. The government promoting equal rights, and opportunities, is cast as, taking away from whites. Regulations, which are one the few things, keeping big corporations, and Wall Street, in check, is always cast as, "job killing regulations". Meanwhile the richest family in America, got so by importing goods, made from cheap foreign labor.

Anyway the book is fascinating. I never knew that Fred Koch, the father of the infamous Koch brothers, got his first big boost, by hooking up with Hitler, and his nazi regime, in their early part of their assuming control of Germany, to build Germany's largest oil refinery. He then went on to help Stalin, (after the war?). He did express regrets for that later. He became a founding member of a far-right group called The John Birch Society. I remember hearing a lot about them, as a youth.

So my post, is to show you, I agree with your analysis. I will get around to reading your links, later, Thanks!

yodajazz

05-29-2018, 07:43 AM

@Buttslinger Trump is toast, in my book. There is so much there. I feel like Mueller has so much stuff, it's a matter, of who to hit next. And I feel like he is also killing time, so that things get closer to November, and more so January 2019, when the new Congress takes over. There will certainly be more democrats, then. One thing I want to point out, is that Trump's collusion stories, always leave out money as a motivating factor, in russia's interference. It is always framed as, a "dislike for Hillary". But ending sanctions, is very likely the most important reason Putin supported Trump. Very few people believe that 'russian adoptions' had anything to do with the infamous June 2016 Trump Tower meeting. However, if adoptions were discussed, that is basically an admission, that sanctions were discussed. However, adoptions were suspended by Putin, in response to sanctions. So in order to have adoptions resumed, the issue of sanctions, would have had to been discussed. I could see that adoptions could have been brought up, as an excuse to the american public, as a benefit for plans to end American sanctions. And remember Michael Flynn was reported to have discussed ending sanctions, while Trump was still on the inauguration stand. it is reasonable to believe that sanctions were discussed in the numerous meetings, between Trump team members, and russians, during the election cycle, and the inauguration. I remember the documented number being 31. Yet in a recent post someone claimed the number was now in the 80's. But even 31 meetings over six months, (nomination to inauguration) comes out to one every week! Yet both Trump and Jeff Session, at first denied, that there were any meeting at all. I have yet to hear of any substantive reason, why they lied.