a quick poll about Russia and Donald Trump

I think it's something, just not the Manchurain Candidate LARP people want it to be.

I think it's something, just not the Manchurain Candidate LARP people want it to be.

there's a bunch of something but it may never become clear during this presidency

Wow what an annoying bug

oh and what DJP said it's far more old-fashioned corruption and back-scratching than a masterplan to destroy the US

Wow what an annoying bug

sorry

There is something, probably more than just 'something', but the smoking gun stuff is tiring. I think there's a lot of pieces that need to be puzzled together. NV otm though that's is not some masterminded thing but mostly stupidity and surrounding himself with stupid fraudster where Trump's concerned.

i have it on good authority that after just a few hundred more tweets about trump and russia, bernie will finally be president

i have it on good authority that after just a few hundred more tweets about trump and russia, bernie will finally be president

this is kinda the function of this poll - to talk about whether this stuff is mainly heroes-and-villains control-the-dialogue stuff, or whether there's actual dirt in it, and why one does or doesn't think so

From the moment the DNC leaks happened one day before the Dem convention, this was a scandal. Already back then, the information pointed to Russia. And yet there was no bi-partisan condemnation. That was already scandalous.

Also, what should be incredibly obvious, but the main reason leftists like Greenwald are trying to downplay everything is because they played a key role all along. With the DNC leaks meant to harm with the Sanders wing, and the first Podesta emails including snippets of Goldman Sachs speeches, this was always obviously the Russians trying to create harm with the left, and would never have been so harmful if they hadn't taken the bait 100%.

so, heroes and villains, you're saying

I suspect the gist of it is that Trump surrounded himself with cranks and shady business people who couldn't get a seat at the table with more mainstream Republicans. Some of them, like Flynn, are more than usually sympathetic to Russia - probably in Flynn's case because he was paid and taken seriously as a critic of the Obama government when nobody else was interested in him. Some, like Manafort and Cohen, don't have any particular political axe to grind but have found the region a useful place to make shady money.

I do t think there will be evidence of a quid-pro-quo. Partly because, if Russia did provide the emails to Wikileaks, there was enough animus there towards Clinton to have done it anyway, partly because there doesn't seem to be any change of direction in the relationship with Russia. The sanctions have been reconfirmed, the inviolability of Ukrainian sovereignty loudly proclaimed and plans for a vast US military build-up announced. I can't see any of that changing unless Europe moves first on normalising Crimea.

It isn't impossible that there was an agreement but nothing in any of the stories seems to indicate anybody has any evidence or, more broadly, any idea how to create a vaguely plausible narrative.

http://imgc.allpostersimages.com/images/P-473-488-90/65/6553/UNT4100Z/posters/the-x-files-i-want-to-believe-print.jpg

I'm definitely sympathetic to the idea of wanting it to be true but the whole business of signal boosting hucksters like Adam Khan, HuffPo randos and a woman who thinks Putin arranged the Westminster terrorist attack should embarrass all concerned.

SV otm,

Also, what should be incredibly obvious, but the main reason leftists like Greenwald are trying to downplay everything is because they played a key role all along. With the DNC leaks meant to harm with the Sanders wing, and the first Podesta emails including snippets of Goldman Sachs speeches, this was always obviously the Russians trying to create harm with the left, and would never have been so harmful if they hadn't taken the bait 100%.

Is this supposed to be the extent of Russian 'interference' in the US election?

Is there much evidence that these leaks led to a major loss of support for HRC from people who were planning to vote for her otherwise?

i have it on good authority that after just a few hundred more tweets about trump and russia, bernie will finally be president

― sleepingbag, Saturday, March 25, 2017 5:17 PM (fifty-four minutes ago)

this is a pretty pathetic post

trump owes shitloads to the russians. he scratches their backs, they continue scratching his by helping take down hillz. he's such a corrupt dunning-kruger silver spoon he doesn't realize he and his hangers on committed treason

good read https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/why-putin-hates-clinton-and-helped-trump-win

thanks

I think it's going to be difficult to show active collusion [between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin] because people who study this say that the Russian government often works with groups that they have very arms-length relations with. It's unlikely these groups have an easily verifiable link either to the Kremlin or to the Trump team. It could also be that they really wanted to see Trump in office, so they did these things without active collusion.

otm, Russian intelligence isn't dumb enough to have actual FSB fingerprints on stuff; but the Trump camp folks are so dense who knows, I mean the Roger Stone -> Guccifer 2.0 twitter DM thing was pretty 0_o

it's nothing like Frederik's deranged fantasies

http://occupydemocrats.com/2017/03/23/man-testified-trumps-campaign-chair-just-shot-dead/

Manchurian candidate LARP is a charitable way to put it!

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

trump's dramatic arc calls for an ignominious fall. if russia doesn't do it some other criminal activity will have to be unearthed. it doesn't make aesthetic sense for him to just continue to lose popularity and sort of fade away after four years.

The thing is that this is real life and not a movie. Actual results will either be wholly unsatisfactory or so batshit insane that no one will believe it's actually real.

batshit insanity seems to cling to trump like a bad aroma

Like, the most likely scenarios I see panning out here are "Trump is an incurious moron who surrounded himself with compromised ninnies because they flattered home the most" or "Trump and Putin are secretly lovers planning to conquer the entire world through military action and trade shenanigans"

imo, the explanation could be: trump is addicted to the idea of making deals that make him money. this is central to his self-image. business deals are only about one thing: making or losing money. Russia offered him deals that make him money. there is no connection in his mind between his running for president, his deals with russia, his making money, and his committing treason or felonies. they are wholly compartmentalized in different parts of his brain. and then there was the money, too.

Dan's first scenario is almost exactly what I've been assuming for some time. Dan's second scenario is the plot of a series of self-published erotic novels I have coming out later this year.

kinda just wish the fucker would choke on a ham sandwich (DJT, not DJP)

because even if there is an actual fire in this case, idk how much more of this ugly shit this country can take at this point....which isn't to say I don't think it should be pursued, but just that it's all so fatiguing

I think it's something, just not the Manchurain Candidate LARP people want it to be.

otm

more to the point, not nothing, but also not something worth wasting precious effort on

imo, the explanation could be: trump is addicted to the idea of making deals that make him money. this is central to his self-image. business deals are only about one thing: making or losing money. Russia offered him deals that make him money. there is no connection in his mind between his running for president, his deals with russia, his making money, and his committing treason or felonies. they are wholly compartmentalized in different parts of his brain. and then there was the money, too.

I think the difficulty with this, and a lot of similar theories - like him 'owing money to Russia', is what we mean by 'Russia'. Is the Russian government offering him deals? Is he doing favours for non-government investors?

I think Trump is probably sceptical of sanctions and part of that scepticism could be motivated by self-interest, along with a broader idea that they are bad for business, but that scepticism seems to have been overridden by political reality and would fall a long way short of malfeasance on its own.

The wider trend of lumping everyone from Russians to Ukrainians, Azeris, Armenians, Russian-Armericans, Jewish Lithuanians who emigrated from the Soviet Union to the US aged seven, people who have business interests in Russia, people married to Russians, etc, as a suspicious monolith called 'Russia' is where it gets deep into what critics like Marsha Gessen are describing as a xenophobic conspiracy.

'putin's sphere of influence'

the saddest insult to everyday americans in a loooooong looooooooooongg time is trump and his buddies were convinced they could get away with it :/

I suspect the gist of it is that Trump surrounded himself with cranks and shady business people who couldn't get a seat at the table with more mainstream Republicans. Some of them, like Flynn, are more than usually sympathetic to Russia - probably in Flynn's case because he was paid and taken seriously as a critic of the Obama government when nobody else was interested in him. Some, like Manafort and Cohen, don't have any particular political axe to grind but have found the region a useful place to make shady money.

I do t think there will be evidence of a quid-pro-quo. Partly because, if Russia did provide the emails to Wikileaks, there was enough animus there towards Clinton to have done it anyway, partly because there doesn't seem to be any change of direction in the relationship with Russia. The sanctions have been reconfirmed, the inviolability of Ukrainian sovereignty loudly proclaimed and plans for a vast US military build-up announced. I can't see any of that changing unless Europe moves first on normalising Crimea.

otm

lol @ "something"

Russia is going to be Trump's Benghazi

maybe in terms of fallout but probably not in terms of what, like, actually happened

yeah there seems way way way more here than there was with Benghazi, and I'm not just saying that because I hate Donald Trump

his campaign advisor through the republican national convention had a $10,000,000 a year contract to advance russia's interests, from 2006 till Grover Norquist knows when. imagine the shoe on the other foot. moscowghazi hearings till the cows come home

the GOP called Obama "King Obama" for far lesser trangressions than Donald

they seem to be saying, people who believe above all in tax cuts for the rich are also epic hypocrites. it's not a good look, not that fox/koch nation gives a shit

Posted this on the main thread but worth a note:

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/03/27/us/politics/senate-jared-kushner-russia.html?referer

also didn't Roger Stone, who most biographies describe as Trump's closest advisor, straight up admit he was in contact with Russian hackers? isn't it weird how Stone, Guiliani, and every member of the Trump family (besides Tiffany, probably) knew exactly when the Wikileaks stuff was gonna start dropping?

it's only weird if you hate business and jesus and the constitution and success

yeah there seems way way way more here than there was with Benghazi

100 times zero is still zero

yes, but strangely, 100 plus zero is still 100

Some of the people around him might have been compromised and pushed him toward cerain policy positions without his awareness. This could have included direct bribes -- like a slice of Rosneft -- because the thing about deals like that is that they simultaneously work as blackmail. I think that's the most likely scenario -- We already know Flynn took money from Turkey during the campaign.

Granted the last thing we need is another Tweetstorm and the 'we KNOW' bit throughout here is tendentious, but I like this as a summary:

https://twitter.com/ColinKahl/status/846466154617077760

Schiff has formally asked for Nunes's recusal

https://twitter.com/RepAdamSchiff/status/846493210960637952

For some reason I don't think Trump himself would agree to a quid pro quo and put himself in such a compromised position.

but when you're a celebrity they let you do that

this one's going to be harder to get than Sessions' recusal, right? That one only came about due to some conservative voices suggesting he do it, whereas Ryan already came out in support of Nunes.

Ryan, so loved by conservatives right about now, yes.

Anyway, harder to get, but reaction to Nunes is turning towards the 'uh, dude, you can shut up now,' I've noticed.

it really does prove that Ryan is going to be a piece of shit until they finally flush him out. not that I had any doubts on that.

the things that raise my blood pressure the most are:

a) that Nunes is doing this all out in the open, with the weakest of alibis for every move he makes and
b) as usual, the Republicans demand an orgy of evidence enough to convict a criminal twice over before they'll let you investigate one of theirs, but something as miniscule as Nunes's vague statement (which as of yet has alleged nothing illegal occurred) or Trump's baseless claim = INVESTIGATE NOW.

"b" is why they've managed to be resilient for so many years, because they've kind of become the scum that even the most corrupt of the Dems refuse to become, so they win because they scream the loudest.

Ryan, so loved by conservatives right about now, yes.

I know he's slowly turning into persona non grata, but the Dems don't exactly have any way of enforcing this recusal without at least some pressure from the GOP, and I'm thinking it needs to come from outside of the typical Graham/McCain bloc.

of course, he may already be planning to recuse himself, thinking he already did what he set out to do (which was....give the White House cover in the poorest way imaginable?)

For some reason I don't think Trump himself would agree to a quid pro quo and put himself in such a compromised position.

I'm so tired of this nonsensical straw man people keep pushing around as if they're the only people who ever watched any gangster movie, or a season of the Wire or the Sopranos

Nobody expects there to be some kind of email thread where Trump and Putin agree to sell the country down the river, jesus fuck

"I dunno, I think there might be something to the Russia thing, you know? But I doubt there's going to be a direct connection to Trump himself."

THANK YOU WISEST SAGE

there was this thing called the trump dossier that was published a few months ago, got some coverage

oh right, blackmail is that one kind of illegal, covert influence that you do in person

????

i was saying that i don't think trump is necessarily aware of the extent of the links between russia and his team.

and what was motivating them to advise him in the ways they did

It seems to me that there is just an absurd amount of noise around what is probably some kind of signal. The antics of people like Olbermann, Madoff, Louise Mensch, that twitter person whose name I forget who always prefaces that she "studied authoritarian regimes" have been embarrassing and cringeworthy. All the vague innuendos about "the Russians" and "ties to Russia" etc. Still, there is probably *something* here. If Trump's campaign actively colluded with whoever hacked Podesta that would probably implicate them in illegal activity. The fact that it's Russia almost seems secondary. And if Russia sponsored electoral dirty tricks that weren't actually illegal I'm not sure how much you can make out of it. We'll see.

trumplethinskin's second campaign manager, from right before he won the nomination through when he accepted it at the republican national convention, is one of putin's leading american lobbyists, paid $10,000,000 a year from 2006 till when? the only item on the RNC plank the trump campaign changed regarded arming resistance to putin in ukraine. the current secretary of state, the former CEO of exxon, has been awarded a russian medal of friendship. these are all unrelated coincidences

i think it's bizarre that someone like manafort was given such a high profile, official appointment in the campaign. this and the complimenting putin's decision to wait before retaliating to US sanctions was just so flagrant, it seems like donald doesn't understand how this looks or what he is supposed to have done wrong.

like, i think he is not involved, but that there has been an attempt by people in his inner circle to push him toward certain positions. and these people were actively cultivated by the russian government.

i think that rich people receive such affirmative action in this country, that he is effectively too dumb to understand, six bankruptcies into it, that he might ever suffer consequences for his behavior. i mean dude has golfed every weekend he's been president so far, even when major legislation needed the presidential push

If Trump's campaign actively colluded with whoever hacked Podesta

Roger Stone's only defense against collusion with Guccifer 2.0 is that just because you DM with a guy doesn't mean you colluded with them

well, i doubt he will suffer consequences for letting his campaign be infiltrated because i don't think he understood what was happening, what was proper or improper, etc. xp

Perhaps not, but he could suffer consequences for lying about what he knew and when he knew it. Assuming bulletproof obliviousness on his part doesn't hold up when he has to keep firing subordinates and playing "I don't know her" over this shit

Xp Tillerson's medal means jack shit. That's exactly what I'm talking about. You can't just take one meaningful connection and multiply it by a bunch of meaningless connections to get a conspiracy.

tillerson has jack shit diplomatic experience, unless you count being CEO of mega-major corporaration

Ok and Ben Carson has jack shit housing experience

man jack shit sounds like an amazing corporation

it's very diversified

now Paul Ryan is alleging he has new plans for another healthcare bill to start rolling out drafts of to sponsors by like this week's end?

man you gotta bluff better dude

can't wait for "All-American Mega Awesome Health Care Act"

i think it's bizarre that someone like manafort was given such a high profile, official appointment in the campaign

tbf, he was picked to run previous Republican campaigns after doing PR for Ferdinand Marcos and Angolan terrorists. Lobbying seems to be accepted as a completely amoral industry. Also worth noting that The Podesta Group has worked with a similar / overlapping client list. If any good comes of this it might be heavier regulation on crossing over from lobbying to electoral politics but I won't be holding my breath.

did the russian government commit crimes of cyber-warfare against podesta's opponents during a presidential election campaign?

"Crimes of cyber-warfare" is likely to be the worst phrase I read all week, and also for the month of March.

It seems to me that there is just an absurd amount of noise around what is probably some kind of signal. The antics of people like Olbermann, Madoff, Louise Mensch, that twitter person whose name I forget who always prefaces that she "studied authoritarian regimes" have been embarrassing and cringeworthy.

I don't think it's embarrassing, it's the natural result of running such an opaque, dishonest administration. Trump is a known con man who infamously makes everyone he ever comes into contact with sign an NDA, he steadfastly refused to divulge his tax returns under a cover that everyone knew was false, and he settled a massive fraud lawsuit weeks before being sworn in. This administration thus far has been a series of strange, unprecedented occurrences, for which the official explanation frequently makes things more confusing, not less. Certainly there's a possibility that the "bombshell" is just that Trump is such an incompetent that he didn't screen anyone and just offered jobs to whoever was willing to say nice things about him, and he's lying about it now because gaslighting anything that brings the slightest bit of heat is just in Trump's nature. But there just seems to be such an insane amount of smoke here, and that Steele dossier keeps getting corroborated, piece by piece. IDK how you can take anything off the table right now.

For some reason I don't think Trump himself would agree to a quid pro quo and put himself in such a compromised position.

What, the same dude who literally paid off an attorney general (with charity money) so she wouldn't investigate Trump U? The same guy who volunteered that he sexually assaulted women to a total stranger even though he knew there was a hot mic?

Xps

The point is that evidence of having worked for unsavoury characters in Eastern Europe - which Manafort has, as has Podesta, and CTI, and Finsbury, and Bell Pottinger and Akin Gump and Squire Patton Boggs etc, etc - is basically meaningless without evidence of collusion on the specific charges.

You could build a similar stack of 'dirt' about Clinton - pointing to oligarchs and their families donating the maximum allowable amounts to her campaign, to Viktor Pinchuk, multi-billionaire son-in-law of, corrupt, journalist-murdering former Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma being one of the top donors to the Clinton Foundation, to donors and lobbyists with ties to crooked businessmen and politicians backing her, etc but it wouldn't mean she had done anything wrong by the standards of the game. The nature of the crossover between corrupt wealth, lobbying and politics is that almost everyone of any standing is about one degree of separation from gangsters.

If the specific evidence against Manafort being involved in a Russian-state backed campaign to push Kremlin interests stacks up, and this can be documented more recently than a few years ago - all of which Manafort denies - that is definitely of interest. In the absence of that, it barely even registers as suspicious by lobbing standards. It's a great argument for trying to break the link between lobbyists, politicians and business but there are few high horses.

well the difference is that the Clintons would likely say "this is all legal, here's the paperwork" while Trump would offer something like "I've never taken money from any foreign lobbyists, I don't know who any of these people are, shame on you for investigating a charitable operation"

tombot, i can do better! how about crimes of cyber-passion??

I'm still not buying Darth Putin's Evil Plan as the explanation, but you gotta admit, ShariVari, this doesn't help Trump's team look good at all in general:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/trump-administration-sought-to-block-sally-yates-from-testifying-to-congress-on-russia/2017/03/28/82b73e18-13b4-11e7-9e4f-09aa75d3ec57_story.html?tid=ss_tw&utm_term=.a0a4a3d8602f

"I've never taken money from any foreign lobbyists, I don't know who any of these people are, shame on you for investigating a charitable operation"

and let's not forget "and anyone who says otherwise has obtained information by means of illegal wire-tapping"

I don't think it's embarrassing

nah it's definitely embarrassing

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C8AZ71tWkAE01L4.jpg:large

The likes of Abramson,Mensch should ignored obviously. But then again I still have to see people reference Greenwald on this issue as though he's not even more ridiculous.

the likes of donald trump should be in jail, not the white house

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/usa-today-trump-business-linked-to-russians-with-alleged-ties-organized-crime

here's what i don't get about the spiralling mysteries of kushner, trump, manafort, billion-dollar bailouts, dead witnesses, and the apparently maddeningly elusive "truth" that threads it all together, is that these guys are not exactly wily geniuses. their motivations are not murky. they are just greedy douchebags. it shouldn't be so hard to piece together a corruption case with such dimbulb perps. should it?

they aren't bright but they're pretty good at obfuscating the business side of things - doesn't Trump have hundreds of shadow corporations to funnel stuff through? that said the FBI seems to take their time with everything so it isn't surprising that we're all still in the dark.

xpost It's not hard, it's just a matter of more concrete info turning up, which increasingly it seems to be. And this is just what's known in public.

Leaving the conspiracy stuff aside, it would not have been possible for Trump and associates to operate borderline criminal activities and partner with irl criminals without a system set up to look the other way. The pearl clutching about the construction industry being funded by laundered money is absurd. Everyone has always known it, nobody has cared as long as the money was flowing to US / UK corporations and the appropriate wheels were being greased. The same goes for Manafort claiming he got paid peanuts for his multi-year contract with Yanukovich. It was never credible but nobody minded Ukraine was being looted as long as he was pulling them closer to the US orbit.

Imagine for a moment that the conspiracy is true, could there be any reason for it not to have been discovered other than an assumption that fake corporations, slush funds, opaque trades etc are the way business is always done?

xp plus it seems like the GOP, who have a supermajority right now, is doing everything they can to prevent people from testifying.

the whole thing is just so strange. based on what's publicly known it's hard to say if this is anything but typically shady business practices from the Trump side. in fact an objective look at the facts kinda leads that way. but the admin and top Republicans are acting as though they've all seen the pisstape and it's bad. Trump is speaking the same way and doing the same dumb deflection routine he always does when he's guilty. everyone's trying to distance themselves from people who apparently "did nothing wrong". there's no good explanation for the way Nunes is acting, given that he's the dude who's supposed to be investigating all this. the Flynn thing gets weirder every week. this administration is either guilty or even dumber than we all thought.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-30/fbi-agents-visit-office-of-saipan-casino-run-by-trump-protege

The casino, run by an executive who cut his teeth in Atlantic City casinos then owned by Donald Trump, enlisted a slate of luminary overseers including former leaders of both the Republican and Democratic national parties in the U.S.

Its board members include James Woolsey, who ran the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency in the early 1990s and was among national-security advisers to Trump’s presidential campaign. Former FBI director Louis Freeh and Ed Rendell, a former Pennsylvania governor and Democratic National Committee chairman, sit on an advisory committee, as does Haley Barbour, the ex-Mississippi governor and Republican National Committee chairman who’s now a prominent lobbyist.

Woolsey, Freeh and Barbour didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

Rendell, through a spokesman, said he wasn’t aware of any developments at Imperial Pacific facilities and said an “independent, prestigious account organization” had reviewed the company’s finances and found nothing improper.

In 2015, the company opened Best Sunshine Live in a mall between a laundromat and a cellphone shop. From its sleepy storefront, Best Sunshine Live has posted per-table revenues far greater than those at the largest resorts in Macau, Asia’s gambling capital.

to sum up, the FBI has just paid an unannounced visit to a sketchy casino in Saipan run by a former Trump employee, the "board" and "advisory committee" of which includes James Woolsey, Louis Freeh, Ed Rendell and Haley Barbour

and by sketchy casino we mean "a gambling den in a mall storefront between a Wash N Dry and a Carphone Warehouse that moves more money 'per table' than Sheldon Adelson's Macau joints" what shitty movie is this?!?

idk but Donald Sutherland is in it

joy reid is the best

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/03/31/the-political-walls-are-closing-in-on-donald-trump.html

More on that casino from last fall:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2016-11-13/obscure-casino-run-by-a-trump-protege-is-raising-big-questions

from russia, with love

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/mar/31/michael-flynn-new-evidence-spy-chiefs-had-concerns-about-russian-ties

jesus christ

The Buzzfeed libel trial will be an interesting sideshow to this:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/apr/25/christopher-steele-admits-dossier-charge-unverifie/

Christopher Steele, the former British spy who wrote the infamous anti-Donald Trump dossier, acknowledges that a sensational charge his sources made about a tech company CEO and Democratic Party hacking is unverified.

In a court filing, Mr. Steele also says his accusations against the president and his aides about a supposed Russian hacking conspiracy were never supposed to be made public, much less posted in full on a website for the world to see on Jan. 10.

He defends himself by saying he was betrayed by his client and that he followed proper internal channels by giving the dossier to Sen. John McCain, Arizona Republican, to alert the U.S. government.

I am surprised Gubarev didn't sue in London - where this would be pretty close to a slam-dunk - though i imagine the sweet, Hoganesque punitive damages would be worth any risk of losing in Florida.

i hope daddy has enough rubles to bail ivanka out of this shit : )

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/this-is-amazing-6

enormous untapped resource

It was so weird seeing Taibbi tweet out a Washington Times link yesterday.

maybe he owes putin bigly too? the eXile was not without its fans

curious if comrade combover called to congratulate his fellow putin puppet on the crackdown

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-39716631

#MAGA#DUKESTILLSUCKS :)

I'm not saying Taibbi is compromised by Russia or anything I don't really believe that, it's just weird. Has he ever done that before? How often do you see anyone cite the WT?

maybe he owes putin bigly too?

qualmsley is Louise Mensch? or just Mordy?

the krazy kiddie table is over there ---------------->

neither louise mensch nor mordy, morbius. the table for the children of emmy award winning dad stans is probably not the best seat in the house

Shouldn't need pointing out Taibbi and Ames were harassed out of Russia by the government for their work critical of the rich and powerful.

The WT seems to be one of the only semi-legit publications reporting the pre-trial hearings beyond the cute title of the legal submission.

for sure, totally down with sun myung moon's semi-legit unification church. how many edward r. murrow awards did your dad win?

Moonies not over their hammy

god qualmsley's patter itt is rank

it is poorly ranked in terms of socioeconomic background. go trump!

internet kinda goin absolutely bananas over the Flynn thing rn

i hope they keep at it

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/06/11/forget-comey-the-real-story-is-russias-war-on-america-215245

that was fun to read

that was ridiculous

"An isolationist America that is softer on Russia and more in favor of authoritarian traits in leaders fits right into the narratives that the Kremlin nurtures and spends billions to promote."

Pretty cray

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/06/12/how-russia-targets-the-us-military-215247

Oliver Stone on his imminent Putin interview series:

http://www.vulture.com/2017/06/oliver-stone-putin-interviews-conversation.html

Russia has had ambitions as a hegemonic power since at least Peter the Great. Under the current US global hegemony, such ambitions mean the USA is your primary foe. It's not complicated to grasp.

read that as Peter the Gabriel

its about as complicated as your average G.I. Joe cartoon

will wonders never cease

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/06/17/trump-white-house-russia-sanctions-deal-239636

The eight people who voted nothing: where are they now?

still waiting on that evidence

if there is the Russian conspiracy equivalent of the Bill Clinton semen dress let's see it

monica lewinsky was still in college when the whitewater investigation began iirc

Without rehashing the same arguments over again, any sanctions regime that has NATO allies hinting at imposing penalties on the US, rather than Russia, might need rethinking.

http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/topics_50090.htm

I am 98% against the legislature meddling in foreign policy since they've given up on declaring war but keep appropriating massive war budgets

However, if your argument sounds similar to something Rex Tillerson and Donald J are promulgating you maybe should check that stopped clock and make sure it doesn't read 24:11

sharivari, i get that germany is concerned about their companies' involvements with russian pipelines and such

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-russia-sanctions-germany-idUSKBN197156

but the ongoing denial of our president regarding russian interference in our election is totally and completely fucked up

I assume the German argument would be that sanctions have already been imposed for the alleged election interference and that putting one over on Trump isn't worth what they see as an unacceptable intrusion into European energy policy.

As a general rule of thumb, for every Euro Russia loses through sanctions, someone else - usually in Europe - is estimated to lose up to two, which is why they have been seen as a necessity, but a painful one. Arbitrarily imposing new ones without consensus with allies, or any clear additional casus belli, isn't going to go down well, particularly given that these are designed to tank a specific deal hugely important to German, Austria and others.

It isn't just Russia, bipartisan support for new Iran sanctions has gone down terribly in Europe.

it isn't alleged, and it isn't about putting one over on trump, no, but proven, and about curtailing future russian interference in sovereign elections?

Punitive sanctions for this specific thing were imposed by Obama. Congress can make the argument that they don't trust Trump to control when they are lifted or eased but there doesn't seem to be a clear reason for imposing additional ones at this time.

If you want to look at it cyncially, you could make the argument that it's being done both as a general power grab and to basically dare Trump into using a veto - reinforcing the idea he is too soft on Russia. Either way, it is a policy with pretty serious potential ramifications for US government allies, US business and three hundred million people across Europe, leaving aside the constitutional questions, so to pretend it boils down to Donald <3 Russia when Tillerson or whoever expresses reservations is silly.

'alleged election interference' wtf?

Feel free to sub in any word that you like, it doesn't make a difference to the issue of whether trying to derail Nordstream 2 against the wishes of half of Europe is an unquestionably good thing.

Do you think Russia interfered with the US election, SV?

And please don't be concern trolling on the part of 'half of Europe', Shari.

Lol @ calling me "silly" on this topic when your standing position is "Russia is deserving of trust, because that is in the short-term interests of gigantic corporations, and Putin is not really that scary, so maybe Trump's administration isn't wrong on this issue"

the continued downplaying of just how insane it is that RUSSIA interfered in our election has the makings of a major historic irony, on par with the father of the #1 donors to the GOP (mr. and mr. koch) inheriting a fortune their father began by building stalin's oil pipelines and hitler's oil refineries. how many decades did Republicans red-scare up the wazoo only to pooh pooh concern that RUSSIA interfered in the 2016 election? it's nuts!

the nature of the interference is still kind of abstract though. the hacked and leaked emails were only damaging because they played into larger narratives that were being disseminated on the right about hillary being a criminal, covering things up, etc. "russia" played a role, it seems, in further disseminating this narrative via fake news and twitter bots and things but it didn't start with them.

with or without russia, trump would have run a similar campaign, i think. breitbart and infowars reached more people than sputnik, RT, or the pop up fake news sites, most of which seem to have been profit driven.

russia also hacked the voter roles, it seems, but from what i have read they didn't do anything with that information. i'm fairly certain the NSA regularly penetrates foreign governments' data as well.

i'm not saying i'm not disturbed by the russian interference, but i think some people might be making a mistake in focusing so much on this issue, as if "russian ties" was the essential source of trump's illegitimacy.

increased sanctions and election interference aside, the pipeline is problematic: the deal was concluded post-Crimean annexation, funds Putin's regime, and has a host of environmental issues. it is not supported by half of Europe en bloc.

Do you think Russia interfered with the US election, SV?

Yep. The extent of that interference is up for debate but there was definitely an online propaganda effort, probably a behind-the-scenes attempt to influence the thinking of Trump allies and highly likely to have been government participation in the release of sensitive information, etc.

Lol @ calling me "silly" on this topic when your standing position is "Russia is deserving of trust, because that is in the short-term interests of gigantic corporations, and Putin is not really that scary, so maybe Trump's administration isn't wrong on this issue"

What's silly is viewing government reservations about a major foreign policy move that binds the hands of the executive and has triggered an immediate threat of reprisals from some of the US' closest allies as nothing more than a data point in a collusion narrative. You can think the sanctions are a good thing and it's worth any complications but pretending it's remotely straightforward is daft, as you well know.

Do you think Russia hacked and leaked? Released the oppo research on Trump, leaked info from DNC, and from Podesta?

Hacked the DNC, yes. Leaked - probably. The evidence presented on both is thinner than I would like but on the balance of probabilities, yes. I would assume there is more that hasn't been released by the US. Podesta seemed less clear from what I recall but I am not sure I looked at it in much detail.

Lol. It's kinda remarkable what you look into in detail, considering your interests in these sanctions.

And again, stop concern trolling on behalf of 'some of the US' closest allies'. We get that you're much more pro-Russia than most of us, and fine with that, but don't pretend it's because you're concerned about continental European interests. Which are fairly divided on Nordstream, and much more united on fear of Putin and distrust of Trump.

Yep.

thanks, SV. i respect your perspective and insights, especially on this topic, even if i don't always agree with your posts.

And again, stop concern trolling on behalf of 'some of the US' closest allies'. We get that you're much more pro-Russia than most of us, and fine with that, but don't pretend it's because you're concerned about continental European interests. Which are fairly divided on Nordstream, and much more united on fear of Putin and distrust of Trump.

The EU has released a joint statement saying that all sanctions should be agreed collectively, not imposed unilaterally, otherwise it risks damaging the united front.

The joint German/ Austrian statement called them a "completely new, very negative dimension into European-American relations.

I happen to agree with the joint Ukraine sanctions. I disagree with the US unilaterally imposing sanctions in the vast majority of cases, whether its Russia, Cuba or Iran - particularly when it seems to be done primarily for domestic point scoring.

However, none of that really matters to the issue of whether it's worth contextualising the executive response or just reducing big foreign policy issues down to a simple Trump-Russia narrative. You are welcome to do the latter but it makes for dull conversation.

It's fine if you disagree with with unilateral US sanctions, just don't pretend you're a spokesperson for continental Europeans, okay?

And I don't reduce foreign policy to Trump-Russia narrative, strawmen don't make for much better conversation.

but they do make for ILE conversation

how dull, russia interfering in the US election on behalf of donald trump, who owes them $100,000,000s

The discussion is about governments. The EU statement makes their position clear.

xps

just set off the warheads, we all fooked

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0IGc1gxXJs

every tweet is a comeback, every dollar's a little bit ruble

Shari, where is the EU 'joint statement' you're talking about?

Referenced here:

https://www.rferl.org/a/germany-austria-object-provision-us-senate-russian-sanctions-bill-nord-stream-2-natural-gas-pipeline/28557924.html

A spokeswoman for the European Commission told the Reuters news agency on June 16 that it was "important for possible new measures to be coordinated between international partners to ensure their impact internationally and to maintain unity among partners on the sanctions."

It's a statement on behalf of the European Commission rather than a formal joint statement.

It's really just a spokeswoman answering a question, no?

A spokeswoman representing the European Commission answering a question on whether the position of the European Commission is that new sanctions should be coordinated. It isn't phrased as strongly as the German / Austrian statement but I don't see any particular reason to question it.

However united the EU is, Congress aiming to bypass the executive and pass / maintain sanctions that have an impact on third-party countries is a pretty big deal for how the US and Europe get on.

do we know yet why jared kushner was secretly meeting with the russian ambassador after the election?

The story is here, btw: http://in.reuters.com/article/usa-russia-sanctions-eu-idINB5N1E000B It's a reaction to the German/Austrian response. It's not a 'joint statement', it's hardly a statement at all. And I think the impact of Donald Trump is a bigger deal than this sanction package. The unreliability of the US is annoying, but the only ones who think this sanction package is worse than Trump's behaviour on his last trip are... the Russians, I'd guess? A couple Austro-German CEO's as well, probably. But the governments of the two countries? I doubt it.

do we know yet why jared kushner was secretly meeting with the russian ambassador after the election?

tbqh, if I was investigating, the Kushner meetings with Kislyak and Vnesheconombank would be where I would start. If he was there on private business looking for investment, there would be a dead certain conflict of interest with his policy advisory role.

Getting into whether a spokesperson for the European Commission can truly be said to speak for the European Commission is a philosophical discussion I am not going to start at midnight but the question of whether Trump is worse than sanctions isn't the issue. They are going to end up with both and it runs the risk of opening up an even greater rift.

Lol. You invented a joint statement that didn't exist. That's not a 'philosophical question', that's a fuckup.

Agents of the Russian government were given orders to do everything in their power not only to reduce confidence in the US election result, but to influence it in favor of a candidate who is, based on his behavior, his statements, and policy directions (however ineffectual in the long term) in readily blackmail-able and/or in hock to same agents and/or their employer - which is, to bring us back to the start of my parenthetically augmented run-on, the Russian government.

They tried to hack state election systems to influence vote counts - the only reason this didn't work is because we use thousands of weird systems to count votes which makes the attack surface too convoluted to effectively manipulate the tally.
They did hack the DNC, the DCCC, the RNC, and who knows what else. They leaked what they wanted to, when they wanted to, to get Trump elected. Then he got elected and almost immediately began giving Russia special favors that make the US intel and defense community all but violently nauseous.
They did everything in their capacity to fuck with the democratic process in the US in order to help elect the most venal, stupid and easily manipulated lying sack of shit in our nation's history.

So pardon me if I don't give enough shits about the German economy lately.

And I don't think anyone here thinks congress conducting foreign policy is a particularly good idea, but the executive branch is clearly incapable of doing so... It's just not a simple issue, and hitting the Nordstream line is not something that Europe is unilaterally against.

Lol. You invented a joint statement that didn't exist.

It is the European Commission statement on the matter.

"It's not a simple issue" basically sums up my position and I am not specifically accusing you of treating it like one.

Xp

Whether you care about the German economy is neither here nor there. If you think it's worth the risk of fragmenting the united US / EU front on Russia, you might be right. It makes sense to at least acknowledge the context in which this plays out though.

trump is also the poster child for every russian allegation that americans are pigs. (and i agree with them! gogol, dostoyevsky, chekhov, and tolstoy could write like motherfuckers.) it's not hard to imagine -- given the overwhelming evidence of russian interference on behalf of two scoops -- that they're laughing their asses off at us. doesn't mean it's their fault trump is president or anything

Mr. Vari, I see your points and appreciate your input pretty much all the time.
I think the real issue might be the way you come across, as in, "I'm fairly sure nobody else has thought about this, but did you know Russia isn't always a monolith of evil?"
It feels like if I don't yell at you then your points might well go unexpanded upon. We all bring our priors to arguments, but maybe you can drop the one where we're all kneejerk anti-pinko twits.

it's not hard to imagine -- given the overwhelming evidence of russian interference on behalf of two scoops -- that they're laughing their asses off at us. doesn't mean it's their fault trump is president or anything

Ding ding ding.

SV is known here, to me at least, for bringing a more geopolitical, at times maybe more abstract view to the table. I value that. It doesn't come across as some 'holier-than-thou' schtick or saying all Muricans are 'anti-pinko's' to me (but then I'm not Murican). I value your input as well, always, Tombot. But I think we're getting nowhere if we're going down the Fred B. route, calling SV out in a childish manner and trying to box him into the 'pro Russia rube' corner either. Maybe I mean we shouldn't judge the other as much on her or his 'priors' but instead of what is said.

(Ps. Both Russia and America are well established 'monoliths of evil' tbh)

(Pps. I don't know a country that isn't a monolith of evil, come to think of it. Canada? Luxembourg?)

monolith of evil is GI Joe speak. let's be real here. characterizing other countries as evil based on your media impressions is beyond fucked. it is hard to imagine that there are not people in every country trying to influence elections in every other country. there have been leaks proving that the NSA is spying on multiple countries, and we have seen first-hand accounts of our intelligence agency doing exactly this for decades. influencing elections across the globe. including, in a huge irony, Russia itself, in the Clinton-era 90s. it was partly the overt and anti-democratic US interference that helped create the toxic oligarchy of 90s post-Soviet Russia. from my understanding Putin's career has been made fighting this western fueled corruption and hyper capitalism. he is adamantly against such meddling, and has based his career on fighting that, he claims. then there is the question of what is cyberwarfare and does it mean We Are At War With Russia if a roomful of guys spend a couple months making fake websites? or leaking real emails of what our democratically elected representatives are doing with our money? what is it we are fighting here?

what is it we are fighting here?

well, some people out there are actively trying to destroy the American Way, they're roughing up Truth on the daily, and a knife or five has been brandished in the face of Justice and her family. So we're fighting against those people, so that means what we're fighting for is the things they threaten.

SV brings different things to the table, not because he is 'abstract' or 'geopolitical' but because he makes up fake stuff and pushes that. I'm sorry, but he hasn't said a surprising thing for, like, a year and a half. Except when he claims something that turns out to be untrue.

Mordy wrote to SV that he got what SV was doing, because he himself was doing kinda the same thing with Israel, and I really respect Mordy for writing that - though I read what he says about Israel with a bit of skepticism, lol - and I'm just getting kinda tired of SV's shtick.

oh are we judging posters on whether they say things that are surprising now

LOL

"I'm sorry, but he hasn't said a surprising thing for, like, a year and a half."

https://i.imgur.com/j114jEX.gif

SV is a well known spoofer, for instance I don't believe for a second that he has ever been to Offaly.

Shari Vari is a valuable poster with a unique perspective based on knowledge pulled from sources outside of left twitter. You just don't like him, Fred, because he writes like a person and not like an ideolgical automoton in the creepy little game of internet toy soldiers that has now somehow become the world.

Whether one agrees with his posts in this thread or not is irrelevant. You're general point about him is wrong.

anyways, why doesn't the american president give a shit that the russian government interfered with the american election? it's the middle of june. not a peep out of donnie in all his loudmouth tweeting that we got punked. i'm not saying we should go to war or anything but this entire blase pall over the white house regarding the biggest ratfucking in american history is monumentally bizarre

iirc, he appreciates Putin's battle against western fueled corruption and hyper capitalism.

Trump doesn't want to acknowledge any facts that appear to undermine the legitimacy of his victory. He barely acknowledges that he lost the popular vote and makes excuses for it every time it's brought up. He's a stupid, insecure loser.

if I were an American interested in the long-term destruction of the republican party I'd be rooting for Trump to stay in office as long as possible tbh, I'm in disbelief at how much energy is spent breathlessly following every Russia development on the main Trump thread

I'm in disbelief at how much energy is spent breathlessly following every Russia development on the main Trump thread

Because of Mueller's independent investigation, this Russian imbroglio holds out the best chance of miring down the entire machinery of the US government and ending the Trump administration amid dire scandal and impeachment. When you compare this (admittedly minor) possibility to our chilliest fears connected to the complete Republican domination of our government, it seems worth holding one's hands close to this small flame of hope for a total Republican disaster.

I dunno, I have a really hard time imagining that even in the best case scenario, Pence, the Principled Conservative, doesn't step up to re-assert the status quo, with plenty of media help

Also Trump is an unstable, delusional sort of guy and having him in office presents a unique threat, beyond the threat posed by the disastrous, sadistic Republican agenda.

i'm in disbelief too. who cares if another country upended the 2016 american election? i'm sure it's a one time thing. i'm glad the party in control of the white house and congress (that benefited from the unprecedented interference) is taking what happened seriously, making sure it'll never happen again. can't wait to vote next year!

by all means, adopt paper balloting (PS we do it in Canada and it works!) and circumvent outside meddling, but that won't fix the rot at the heart of yr democracy (PS ours sucks too)

Pence wouldn'f become President if Trump is ousted due to Russiagate. He has been caught lying about what he knew about Flynn -- he is also part of the scandal and would likely resign. If Trump gets ousted early we are going to see a President Paul Ryan, a terrifying prospect, but hopefully bu the time he takes charge the Republican Party will be in tatters due to the fallout from the scandals.

Paper balloting is a good idea.

Ryan is the scariest of the three imo

but again, these goblins aren't the real/main problem. y'all need a genuine left party and if experience tells us anything, the Dems ain't it. (From the Canadian perspective, the NDP haven't been cutting it either, but there's at least some semblance of hope for reform there.)

ugh I'm sorry everyone, no one likes a hectoring canadian

how much energy is spent breathlessly following every Russia development

It's also worth noting that Trump, being who he is, reportedly also expends plenty of energy following every Russia development in the media and it is driving him crazy. The more obsessed he is with it, the less other mischief he can get up to.

I got way too grumpy last night - insomnia does that to me every now and then - and I do value ShariVari as a poster, who brings some very interesting information to the board, though other stuff honestly frustrates me and come on, you're in the wrong on this one, SV!!! ヽ(ಠ_ಠ)ノ

Still, it was too much, and I'm sorry.

IT'S ALL JUST A GIANT MISUNDERSTANDING / EXCUSE SORE LOSER LIBERALS ARE TELLING THEMSELVES

Paul Manafort met twice during the presidential campaign with Konstantin Kilimnik, who helped run the Ukraine office for his political consulting operation for 10 years — including a previously undisclosed dinner shortly before his own Russian ties forced him out of the Trump campaign.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/at-height-of-russia-tensions-trump-campaign-chairman-manafort-met-with-business-associate-from-ukraine/2017/06/18/6ab8485c-4c5d-11e7-a186-60c031eab644_story.html?utm_term=.9737d0f8372c

THE REAL SCANDAL IS BILL CLINTON TALKING TO LORETTA LYNCH ON AN AIRPORT TARMAC

Joy Ann Reid: Trump is drawing into war with Russia in Syria
Also Joy Ann Reid: Trump's problem is he didn't kill enough Russians in Syria pic.twitter.com/R2X3OTH5df

— Adam H. Johnson (@adamjohnsonNYC) June 19, 2017

the moral hazard whereby Trump not killing Russians is evidence hes in Russias pocket is leading exactly where I & others predicted it would

— Adam H. Johnson (@adamjohnsonNYC) June 19, 2017

he is not responsible for his actions. it's the liberals' fault for playing 'where's the birth certificate?' with comrade combover

Clearly letting Russia wage cyber warfare unencumbered would be a much safer thing to do.

Also, fuck that sanctimonious asshole. He and other left-wing assholes were wrong throughout the election about Russian interference, and now they get to play 'told you so' because the thing is - predictably, I would say - backfiring for Russia? Fuck that shit.

and your shit

were wrong throughout the election about Russian interference

tell me exactly how it went down and Putin's role in it, Fred.

Morbs, do you even have any idea what Russia did in Crimea? They exploited internal unrest in a neighboring country - and no matter what you think of the Maidan uprising, which, yes, toppled a democratically elected government, it was an internal matter - to straight up invade and annex part of that country. The US hasn't done shit like that since, when? 1899-1902 in the Phillipines? It's not the US who is to blame for the worsening US-Russian relations, it just isn't.

i didnt say different now did i (tho u might wanna talk to Dominicans about '65, was it?)

who knew there was even one huge neolib jackass in Denmark, tho?

nice subject change too

This is the CrowdStrike analysis of the DNC hack back in June, that is, way before the DNC information was leaked: https://www.crowdstrike.com/blog/bears-midst-intrusion-democratic-national-committee/ You can read the technical analysis there, Morbs. Nobody ever presented any convincing reason as to why not believe that analysis, and it turned out to have been spot on from the beginning. Voices on the left just for some stupid reason went 'WE DON'T KNOW! WE DON'T KNOW! LALALALALALALA CAN'T HEAR YOU'

I hate it when mom and dad fight

USA didn't annex the Dominican Republic, btw, and troops left the country after one year. If we're including stuff like that - which, yes, the US has done over and over - there are much more recent examples, up to and including Iraq, Libya, etc.

And if you didn't know there were neolib jackasses in Denmark, that just once again shows how ignorant you are about the world...

CrowdStrike was hired by the DNC and retracted much of their report, it seems

I love this emerging line. Trump gave the generals carte blanche to do whatever they want because: Daytime MSNBC. https://t.co/TdgsjHumie

— Charles Davis (@charliearchy) June 19, 2017

CrowdStrike was hired by the DNC and retracted much of their report, it seems

― Supercreditor (Dr Morbius), 19. juni 2017 22:43 (twelve minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Lol, who told you that, Breitbart?

iirc Crowdstrike partially retracted a botched report into supposed Russian of Ukrainian artillery tech but stands by the DNC report.

*hacking

frederik the good doctor is totally right to be a skeptic about american interventionism. even wikipedia agrees

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_Chilean_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Contra_affair

still pretty mind-blowing that putin "allegedly" put donnie the wig up to treason though

Again, though, the US annexed neither Chile, Iran nor Nicaragua, and I'm beginning to be bewildered by the fact that people don't understand the difference... But yeah, those are more examples of American bullshit, and if we wanted to make a complete list, it would be horrifically long. I'm skeptical about interventionism, period. But the leftists who only think American interventionism is bad often strikes me as racist, plain and simple. To awfully many of them, only America and what America does matters.

It's like this ghoulish death cult where people in Pakistan only matter the moment they're killed by a drone.

american junior highs are emotional torture camps, frederik

“Spicer still can’t say whether POTUS believes in climate change. At off camera no audio briefing, Spicer took a question from a Russian reporter but not from CNN. Make no mistake about what we are all witnessing. This is a WH that is stonewalling the news media. Hiding behind no camera/no audio gaggles. There is a suppression of information going on at this WH that would not be tolerated at a city council mtg or press conf with a state gov.”

see if you can understand this, Fredzo: before i belief anything our mass-murdering, historically repugnant IC (or anyone who works for them, eg your lovers at CrowdStrike) has to say about anything, I want to read the primary documents.

Just fast forward to the part where you say it doesn't matter to you even if it's true.

Morbs, the link was to 'primary documents'. Though the term you're thinking of is 'primary sources'. Do you even understand what that means?

which fed bureaucracy do YOU work for, Nerdstrom? Lotsa things matter, like the cost of my cancer medicine.

bye bye

this is insanely fascinating

https://www.buzzfeed.com/heidiblake/from-russia-with-blood-14-suspected-hits-on-british-soil?utm_term=.uiv5dWBWWd#.lj3vRp6ppR

fake news!

I don't know if any of the details are remotely accurate in any of the 14 cases but they have massively fucked up the first major piece - on Matthew Puncher - and it trashes any credibility they might have had. It's one of the craziest things I have ever read.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/janebradley/scientist-who-helped-connect-litvinenkos-murder-to-the?utm_term=.wvZdOKobY#.qgVwlyrO2

This is extraordinary:

BuzzFeed News has now spoken with eight relatives and friends of Puncher who all said they were astonished by the suggestion that he was suicidal – but were never interviewed by police

His co-worker said that he was talking about committing suicide and his GP and wife both testified at the inquest he had tried to kill himself the previous week. At the point he died, he was signed off from work for that reason. The article refers to that, and doesn't challenge it.

Either the FSB nipped in and assassinated him literally days after the suicide attempt or he wasn't suicidal and his wife, doctor and colleagues are all part of the cover-up.

Buzzfeed seems obsessed with the idea that the British establishment is actively rigging inquests and investigations to 'keep the flow of Russian money coming to the UK' is ridiculous. The flow is because the UK is seen as a safe, stable place for wealthy Russian expats to settle. If they were turning a blind eye to them getting iced left, right and centre, it would knock that on the head.

Russian state actors definitely do order hits overseas but they tend to be in Turkey and Ukraine, and tend to be linked to Kadyrov's ongoing efforts to maintain his hold on Chechnya. They are presumably not as good for clicks, though.

*, which is ridiculous *

* so is dismissing all the other cases because there's one you can *

I am dismissing the first one they published and saying that releasing such a poor article up front damages the credibility of anything else that comes out of the series, irrespective of whether there is any truth in the subsequent ones. The source for all the stories is the same - the unnamed US security agents who gave them the dossier and are apparently of the belief puncher was murdered.

why do you suppose donald trump -- a complete asshole -- refuses to criticize, of all people, vladimir putin?

idk i mostly think it's interesting as an outline of the pathologies and activities of the global uber-rich

There are definitely some interesting books waiting to be written about that whole milleu but it's such a libel risk you'll probably have to wait until they're all dead. Which at this rate...

I don't particularly like saying it, but SV otm.

wonder why robert mueller hired elizabeth prelogar, harvard law grad, russian language expert, to join watergate ii

http://lawnewz.com/high-profile/lawyer-with-expertise-in-russia-joins-fbi-probe-of-trump-connections/

starting to feel bad for donnie the wig. poor fella just wanted to pay off his debt($$$) :(

I have some hot takes about Mueller bringing on Andrew Weissman but thats for another thread

In May, Trump told NBC that he has no property or investments in Russia. "I am not involved in Russia," he said.

But that doesn't address national security and other problems that might arise for the president if Russia is involved in Trump, either through potentially compromising U.S. business relationships or through funds that flowed into his wallet years ago. In that context, a troubling history of Trump's dealings with Russians exists outside of Russia: in a dormant real-estate development firm, the Bayrock Group, which once operated just two floors beneath the president's own office in Trump Tower.

Bayrock partnered with the future president and his two eldest children, Donald Jr. and Ivanka, on a series of real-estate deals between 2002 and about 2011, the most prominent being the troubled Trump Soho hotel and condominium in Manhattan.

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-06-21/trump-russia-and-those-shadowy-sater-deals-at-bayrock

"conservative" trolls are getting eerily quiet, even in yahoo comment sections

https://www.yahoo.com/news/white-house-concedes-russia-meddled-campaign-denies-changed-result-201048140.html

https://www.mediamatters.org/video/2017/06/25/foxs-brit-hume-even-if-trump-campaign-did-collude-russia-it-s-not-crime/217024

god this fucking "no evidence" shit - it's an ONGOING INVESTIGATION, any "evidence" won't be public until later you dipshit.

like learn your order of operations, conservative media.

(that was to Hume obv)

like if they were saying things like this to quiet overzealous liberals who already want Trump in jail, that'd be one thing, but they like T seem to be saying because no definitive evidence has been uncovered in the first third of an investigation (and even if it had, wouldn't be public until much later), the investigation should stop. that's...not how it works.

i hope this doesn't mean vlad's through with don

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2017/06/25/russia_recalls_ambassador_sergey_kislyak_who_is_at_center_of_trump_collusion.html

maybe they just need a new virus protection program

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/fbi-interviews-employees-russia-linked-cyber-security-firm-kaspersky-lab-n777571

. . . so . . . Putin controls the largest oil company in Russia. He made a $500 billion deal with the CEO of Exxon Mobil. Obama put sanctions in place which stopped that deal. Russia then hacked into our government in order to get Trump elected. When the CIA told Congress this in September (James Comey was also in that meeting), Mitch McConnell refused to tell the American people, blackmailing Obama, saying he would frame it as playing partisan politics during the election. Comey released the infamous no-information letter. Mitch McConnell's wife was picked for Trump's cabinet. The CEO of Exxon is now the Secretary of State. Wonder why our President has been so quick to dismiss the CIA's findings?

1) Trump owes Blackstone/ Bayrock group $560 million dollars (one of his largest debtors and the primary reason he won't reveal his tax returns)

2) Blackstone is owned wholly by Russian billionaires, who owe their position to Putin and have made billions from their work with the Russian government.

3) Other companies that have borrowed from Blackstone have claimed that owing money to them is like owing to the Russian mob and while you owe them, they own you for many favors.

4) The Russian economy is badly faltering under the weight of its over-dependence on raw materials which as you know have plummeted in the last 2 years leaving the Russian economy scrambling to pay its debts.

5) Russia has an impetus to influence our election to ensure the per barrel oil prices are above $65 ( they are currently hovering around $50)

6) Russia can't affordably get at 80% of its oil reserves and reduce its per barrel cost to compete with America at $45 or Saudi Arabia at $39. With Iranian sanctions being lifted Russia will find another inexpensive competitor increasing production and pushing Russia further down the list of suppliers.
As for Iranian sanctions, the 6 countries lifting them allowing Iran to collect on the billions it is owed for pumping oil but not being paid for it. These billions Iran can only get if the Iranian nuclear deal is signed. Trump spoke of ending the deals which would cause oil sales sanctions to be reimposed, which would make Russian oil more competitive.

7) Rex Tillerson (Trump's pick for Secretary of State) is the head of ExxonMobil, which is in possession of patented technology that could help Putin extract 45% more oil at a significant cost savings to Russia, helping Putin put money in the Russian coffers to help reconstitute its military and finally afford to mass produce the new and improved systems that it had invented before the Russian economy had slowed so much.

8) Putin cannot get access to these new cost saving technologies OR outside oil field development money, due to US sanctions on Russia, because of its involvement in Ukrainian civil war.

9) Look for Trump to end sanctions on Russia and to back out of the Iranian nuclear deal, to help Russia rebuild its economy, strengthen Putin and make Tillerson and Trump even richer, thus allowing Trump to satisfy his creditors at Blackstone.

10) With Trump's fabricated hatred of NATO and the U.N., the Russian military reconstituted, the threat to the Baltic states is real. Russia retaking their access to the Baltic Sea from Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia and threatening the shipping of millions of cubic feet of natural gas to lower Europe from Scandinavia, allowing Russia to make a good case for its oil and gas being piped into eastern Europe.

. . . now of course, I don't believe any of that, and anyone who would is paranoid, foolish, and unsophisticated, and probably takes her/himself too seriously, and has bad taste besides :)

I believe all of that

1) Trump owes Blackstone/ Bayrock group $560 million dollars (one of his largest debtors and the primary reason he won't reveal his tax returns)

what is the evidence for this one? if this is true the rest of it falls into place. we at least know what putin's objective was in getting trump elected and it raises more questions about why tillerson was appointed among other things.

who knows?

https://www.truthorfiction.com/donald-trump-owes-560-million-to-blackstonebayrock/

overall though it's a lot of money for a president to owe

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-trump-businesses-owe-debt-18-billion-150-institutions-study-source-of-study-president-elect-a7512586.html

2) Blackstone is owned wholly by Russian billionaires, who owe their position to Putin and have made billions from their work with the Russian government.

This is transparently incorrect so i'd assume that they meant to write Bayrock. Blackstone is a publicly traded US company and its founder / part-owner is head of the Strategic and Policy Forum that Trump set up (the one that Elon Musk quit recently).

Some of the reporting around Bayrock has been relatively good, tbh, but it's not a Russian company and its directors don't "owe their position" to Putin. The key people behind it are Kyrgyz, Uzbek and Kazakh and have been immensely rich since the mid-90s due to their links to President Nazarbayev. The reason it should be a much bigger story isn't that it's part of a grand Russian plot, it's because it has almost certainly always served as a vehicle to rehouse money looted from Kazakh state assets. The MD, Felix Sater, was born in Russia but emigrated to Israel and then the US as a small child.

This isn't saying anything that hasn't already been reported extensively but it's on thin legal ice to go further. It's worth looking into Viktor Khrapunov's interviews for background, though. He is the former mayor of Almaty and a crook who was accused of stealing hundreds of millions of dollars from the state purse - he came out swinging at the President and Bayrock's primary investors when he got shunted out.

It's probably the single most obviously crooked thing Trump is closely associated with, imo.

Wonder why our President has been so quick to dismiss the CIA's findings?

which one? Obama could have told us if there was this huge treasonous plot. he was pretty quick to dismiss the findings.

Mitch McConnell refused to tell the American people, blackmailing Obama, saying he would frame it as playing partisan politics during the election

so it's ok that Obama didn't tell us because.... he was afraid it would be used against Hillary? how is this not "putting politics above country"? just to be clear i don't really care or hold it against Obama cos imo as president he has the right to make these choices. the President does not have to follow the orders of the Senate majority leader.

lol @ the oil stuff. right now they lead the world in oil production. this same motivation was used by Reagan to justify Afganistahn in the 80s. the lie that they were running out of oil turned out to be bullshit back then too.

"Yeah. All partisan snark aside, the president's and the political party that controls the legislative branch and most of the state governments' fairly flippant dismissal of a hostile foreign power interfering in our elections ought to be something we are all outraged by, regardless of party."

kayfabe covfefe :)

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/06/stop-assuming-trump-is-innocent-of-russian-collusion.html

you think our country's so innocent?

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wsj.com/amp/articles/gop-operative-sought-clinton-emails-from-hackers-implied-a-connection-to-flynn-1498770851

Maddow discussingg this story now in her weird, giddy way

The guy at the center of this story DIED

chait is worse than louise mensch and bill palmer, i've been assured by very reasonable people. dismiss!

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/07/now-we-have-a-roadmap-to-trump-campaigns-russia-collusion.html

That Tait essay is insane.

https://lawfareblog.com/time-i-got-recruited-collude-russians

fake news!

I am as irritated by him as anyone, but since so far Wittes is the only one whose specific intimations have clearly and explicitly come to pass:

More is coming, people.

— Benjamin Wittes (@benjaminwittes) July 1, 2017

whatever the last straw is gonna be for the almost but not 100% deplorables to abandon comrade trump is gonna be interesting

It's going to be when Trump tweets something negative about French fries and Twenty One Pilots.

all his friends are heathens

don't worry though everybody -- andrew mccarthy sez nothing to see here!

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/449161/trump-russia-collusion-nonsense

I'm convinced, they should stop looking into this immediately before they find something.

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/9kwak5/the-same-twitter-bots-that-helped-trump-tried-to-sink-macron-researcher-says

https://www.lrb.co.uk/v39/n14/david-bromwich/the-age-of-detesting-trump

it's interesting times when Vice and The Hill are covering the same stuff

http://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/340844-research-links-pro-trump-anti-macron-twitter-bots

This Maddow story about forged Trump-Russia NSA documents someone tried to pass on to their show Is pretty interesting.

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/maddow-to-news-orgs-heads-up-for-hoaxes-985491523709?cid=sm_npd_ms_tw_lw

"We look forward to a lot of very positive happenings for Russia, and for the United States, and for everybody concerned. And it's an honor to be with you."

I wonder if they have anything on Tillerson or if he's just playing a very long, single minded game to get favorable deals for Exxon. I have a hard time imagining how a guy like Tillerson thinks.

i have a hard time understanding why the CEO of exxon, whom trump had never met, is secretary of state in the first place. it's like there's no reasonable explanation that isn't outrageously fishy

they have similar fetishes

a reasonable explanation that's outrageously fetishy

damn, even the weekly standard is starting to call bullshit on donnie

http://www.weeklystandard.com/trump-caves-to-putin/article/2008751

I have a hard time imagining how a guy like Tillerson thinks.

"thinks"

not suspicious!

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/07/trump-campaign-leaders-met-kremlin-linked-lawyer-report.html

not suspicious at all that our president* and our UN ambassador disagree about russian interference in our election

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/07/08/haley-russia-election-meddling-240323

but either way -- no big deal!!!!!! got some voter fraud to investigate (nudge nudge wink wink), taxes (and health care) to cut, climate change to deny, and allies to alienate! USA!

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/trump-team-says-theres-no-collusion-to-see-here

Before arranging a meeting with a Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer he believed would offer him compromising information about Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump Jr. was informed in an email that the material was part of a Russian government effort to aid his father’s candidacy, according to three people with knowledge of the email.

The email to the younger Mr. Trump was sent by Rob Goldstone, a publicist and former British tabloid reporter who helped broker the June 2016 meeting. In a statement on Sunday, Mr. Trump acknowledged that he was interested in receiving damaging information about Mrs. Clinton, but gave no indication that he thought the lawyer might have been a Kremlin proxy.

Mr. Goldstone’s message, as described to The New York Times by the three people, indicates that the Russian government was the source of the potentially damaging information. It does not elaborate on the wider effort by Moscow to help the Trump campaign. There is no evidence to suggest that the promised damaging information was related to Russian government computer hacking that led to the release of thousands of Democratic National Committee emails.

But the email is likely to be of keen interest to the Justice Department and congressional investigators, who are examining whether any of President Trump’s associates colluded with the Russian government to disrupt last year’s election. American intelligence agencies have determined that the Russian government attempted to sway the election in favor of Mr. Trump.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/10/us/politics/donald-trump-jr-russia-email-candidacy.html

them trump boys sure were in a pickle this time

spare a thought for poor hapless eric, who it appears no-one thought about bringing in to this whole mess

This is AP reporter @jonlemire's tweet from same day Don Jr., Kushner, & Manafort met Russian lawyer.

They met in the Trump Tower. pic.twitter.com/I8PCwK2hzA

— ProPublica (@ProPublica) July 11, 2017

why does bill simmons hate america?

https://theringer.com/donald-trump-jr-emails-russia-politics-8ccceec40cf

i don't get it why is Russia an "aggressor"? i dont understand why we should be so concerned with them specifically when we have been funding and supplying weapons to several countries that openly fund the terrorism we have been at war with for over a dozen years now? how is hacking some emails for a campaign manager treason compared to that?aaaaaa

That's not the question. For me it's the extent to which foreign interests possibly own an American president in the form of debt. Obviously this presents enormous ethical problems. Nixon and Kissinger had similar problems. I don't understand how you can dismiss this shit while still thinking I'm not queasy about jingoism over Russia. For months, Adam, you've assumed we're too densen to understand the essential problem, or you've taken this "LOL both sides do it" cynicism. I don't need to be schooled on Reaganism or Clintonism -- I lived thru them, and a commenter has to be pretty fucking stupid not to see how Trump is different. Some of us called our congressman when Clinton's "welfare reform" was on the verge of passing with the entire political establishment backing him. So please spare me your detachment from events. I take It you're not gay, black, or a woman.

i don't get it why is Russia an "aggressor"?

Do you understand why Nixon and Kissinger backing a coup in Chile against Allende was aggression? Russia is an aggressor because they used illegitimate means, covertly spreading lies and propaganda, to attempt to control the destiny of the USA for their own interests and purposes and not the interests of the people of the USA. That's aggression and fuck it if you can't tell that it is.

Adam "how is it a challop if it's posed as a question?" Bru, with the trenchant foreign policy compare-and-contrast

xp to Aimless why Kissinger and Chile instead of Clinton and Honduras?

even townhall (townhall!) is acknowledging the obvious

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/guybenson/2017/07/11/donald-trump-jr-released-the-emails--and-they-look-a-lot-like-um-collusion-n2353355

When a Clinton campaign person got leaks from Ukrainian Embassy:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2017/07/11/exploring-sean-hannitys-defense-of-donald-trump-jr-clinton-and-ukraine-did-it-too/

lol at hannity turning to politico as a source for his spluttering, desperate whataboutism

I can't believe I just read an entire piece on townhall.com

It's worth bearing in mind that Chalupa is what could loosely be described as an 'unreliable narrator'. A lot of the claims she has made about herself and her work are transparently untrue so pinning anything on the DNC simply through her own admissions about her activities isn't really that watertight. On the other hand, though, if what she claims to have done is correct, it would be pushing the envelope.

The ledger is more interesting, imo. I suspected at the time that it was a fabrication - but a fabrication that pointed to something that might be substantially true - and that looks like it could be correct. The story went that the book turned up out of nowhere, months after the POR offices were raided, and contained detailed lists of all the corrupt payments Yanukovich was making throughout Ukraine. The prosecutor's office timed the announcement with a leak that Manafort was under criminal investigation for bribery.

The best part of a year later, the criminal case against Manafort has been dropped, the prosecutor doesn't appear to believe the ledger has any evidentiary value and there hasn't been a single case of corruption brought against anyone in Ukraine referring to it - which is extraordinary in the context of the original claim for it as the Rosetta Stone to unpick Yanukovich's network of illegal payments, even given Kyiv's general reluctance to nail anyone for bribery.

It's all very strongly reminiscent of the documents that a Sunday Times (iirc) reporter happened to find after taking a cursory look at the bombed out compound of Saddam Hussain detailing oil-for-food bribery payments to George Galloway - which he successfully sued for libel over. It looks like a transparent plant.

However, Manafort was taking much more money than he ever admitted from POR, and clearly wants this all to go away, so isn't really in a position to make much of a fuss.

The ledger was the main thing that brought Manafort down but i occasionally wonder whether, given how badly he was running the campaign, this all backfired spectacularly. Had he not been forced out, and replaced by Bannon's more high-octane brand of evil, would Trump have done better or worse?

Jesus christ, there's someone named 'Chalupa' involved in this mess? Fuck this stupid novel we live in.

Important to note Russia's apparent goals of global destabilization, which are pretty ambitious. Meddling regionally, meddling here, meddling in Europe. Allies with and supporters of North Korea and Syria. And, of course, outright invading countries. All while suppressing freedoms at home and murdering dissidents there and abroad. They're more than aggressors, they're aggressive insidiously and sometimes inexplicably so. I don't know what's going on there and why, exactly, but Putin basically acts like Trump's fantasy avatar. I mean, he wishes.

Don't forget encouraging kids to commit suicide via the 'Blue Whale Game'

I agree Russia is an agressive agressor, but I'm not sure they seek global destabilization. They want regional destabilization for sure, when they can't outright occupy their neighboring countries, they want them to be weak, but the reason they keep fucking up Syria is because they want to keep their military base their, want to keep a military ally. That's stable for them.

i'd have more respect for russia if they elected a solid dane like lars dittmann mikkelsen president or premier or whatever putin is

Brother of Mads, btw.

Yeah, what is Putin these days?

Fred is correct that destablisation is not really the point - in Eastern Europe, Iran, Syria, Iraq, North Korea, etc, it has very much been about maintaining a favourable status quo that other countries, to some extent, want to upset. That sometimes gets mistaken for moral superiority from sections of the right and left, vs the actively destabilising US, when it's primarily motivated by self-interest.

with the consequence-free trump family robinson legally if not literally "the best" western free market usa!usa!usa!#maga can do, putin looks more and more like constantine the great to already shaky american allies :/

He really doesn't.

why Kissinger and Chile instead of Clinton and Honduras?

because Kissinger and Chile makes a stronger case for my point

i meant in the sense of botox, which ain't cheap

xpost

yeah there seems way way way more here than there was with Benghazi

100 times zero is still zero

― AdamVania (Adam Bruneau), Monday, March 27, 2017 6:13 PM (three months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol

btw, most of the news stories I heard or read yesterday about the meeting with the Russian lawyer kept emphasizing Donald Trump Jr.'s involvement, while barely mentioning Kushner's and Manafort's attendance at the same meeting. This puzzles me, since Kushner is a member of the current administration and Manafort was then the manager of the Trump campaign. Donald Trump Jr.'s importance is tangential compared to those two.

Well, half scoop is the son of two scoop, and you'd think daddy would be interested in what his eldest son is doing. Now, of course, two scoop is a straight up sociopath, so normal rules doesn't count, but it's not strange that people are focusing on jr.

The focus is on Half Scoop because he tweeted the emails, he agreed to the meeting, and he was the only one actually talking to the Russian lawyer; apparently Manafort was on his phone the whole time and Kush bitched out partway through

I found this very amusing: http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2017/07/goalposts-wont-move

1) Don’t be silly. There’s no evidence that the Russians did anything untoward or that anyone involved with the Trump campaign even met with the Russians, let alone colluded with them for electoral gain. While in principle I support an investigation, in practice we should not waste our time on such distractions from the real issues.

2) Don’t be silly. There’s no evidence that the Russians did anything untoward that I personally find convincing. And while one or two people with the Trump campaign did have undisclosed meetings with Russian officials that they later forgot to remember when denying having them under oath, there is no reason to see that as being particularly suspicious. While in principle I support an investigation, in practice we should not waste our time on such distractions from the real issues.

3) Don’t be silly. The evidence that the Russians messed with the election comes from intelligence sources. ‘Nuff said. And while a myriad of people with the Trump campaign did have undisclosed meetings with Russian officials which kept slipping their minds when they were questioned about such meetings, there is no reason to see that as being particularly suspicious. While in principle I support an investigation, in practice we should not waste our time on such distractions from the real issues.

4) Don’t be silly. Remember: U.S. intelligence, a contradiction in terms. That, or the Deep State apparatus. One of those things. Sure, people involved with the Trump campaign met people connected to the Russian government to discuss colluding with them for electoral gain, but nothing actually come of it in this particular meeting so no harm done, amirite? And if any harm was done, it was to Hillary Clinton because of the bad things she did that, had she not done them, would have meant there could have been no collusion so her evildoing is the real story. Which is why, while in principle I support an investigation, in practice we should not waste our time on such distractions from the real issue, which is Hillary’s evildoing.

i don't get it why is Russia an "aggressor"? i dont understand why we should be so concerned with them specifically when we have been funding and supplying weapons to several countries that openly fund the terrorism we have been at war with for over a dozen years now? how is hacking some emails for a campaign manager treason compared to that?aaaaaa

― AdamVania (Adam Bruneau), Wednesday, July 12, 2017 3:01 AM (yesterday)

lol wow dude you were literally claiming three months ago that there was "zero" evidence of anything and now you've switched your line to "well it isn't treason!"

i assume if we ever have a tape of trump bragging about how good he is at committing treason your angle will be "i don't get it, what's so bad about treason anyway?"

Adam just admit you voted for teh Donald already

My article from last August describes open Kremlin promotion of Trump in 2014-2015, backed up today by WSJ report https://t.co/V2v3VOMOTT pic.twitter.com/sVoKLqXsyt

— Sarah Kendzior (@sarahkendzior) July 12, 2017

. . . and . . .

Kremlin spokesman when asked about the hacked emails: "Talk to Donald Trump Jr" pic.twitter.com/eeTTcYAA9N

— Sarah Kendzior (@sarahkendzior) July 26, 2016

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3893506-Invasion-of-Privacy-lawsuit-complaint-Trump.html

lol wow dude you were literally claiming three months ago that there was "zero" evidence of anything and now you've switched your line to "well it isn't treason!"

lol this entire thing hinges on it being treason.

Nixon had a smoking gun of him admitted her understands the plan and saying to go ahead with it. the minute they find that for Trump i will eat my shoe.

there are lots of things wrong w this and potentially illegal about this that have nothing to do with treason

Russia is going to be Trump's Benghazi

― AdamVania (Adam Bruneau), 26. marts 2017 22:22 (three months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

100 times zero is still zero

― AdamVania (Adam Bruneau), 28. marts 2017 00:13 (three months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

still waiting on that evidence

― AdamVania (Adam Bruneau), 17. juni 2017 18:57 (three weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

if there is the Russian conspiracy equivalent of the Bill Clinton semen dress let's see it

― AdamVania (Adam Bruneau), 17. juni 2017 18:57 (three weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Dude, you've been wrong about this from the start, and no matter how much you move the goalposts, you will still be wrong.

I'm sure the guy who said that the ACA was written just as secretly as the GOP healthcare bill is being fair minded and informed on this one too.

turns out the republican who lied about our previous president's kenyan birth met with the russian government he owes billions to collude on "winning" an american presidential election. still feels weird typing that out, even with all the proof available at this point

the son, the son-in-law, the campaign manager, and the russian lawyer, and that's it. . .and the ex-KGB agent

the son, the son-in-law, the campaign manager, the russian lawyer, the ex-KGB agent. . .and the interpreter

the son, the son-in-law, the campaign manager, the russian lawyer, the ex-KGB agent, the interpreter. . .and miss universe

i don't really understand who this person is who can confirm there was an eighth mystery person but there may or may not have been more people than that

you missed the epilogue, it's Justice Wargrave

Kilroy showed up near the end of the meeting, but he spent all his time doodling.

https://www.vox.com/videos/2017/7/14/15971936/strikethrough-fox-news-normalize-collusion-russia-trump-hannity

so... futerfas is being paid with trump 2020 campaign contributions????

the guy who fired the director of the FBI for investigating russian (!) interference into the election (whose son (!), campaign manager (!), and son-in-law (!) met with representatives of the russian (!) government about interfering in the election and god knows what other classified shenanigans that haven't been made public yet) would never do such a thing :)

http://ishkur.com/trump/

http://www.politicalresearch.org/2017/05/11/between-trump-and-putin-the-right-wing-international-a-crisis-of-democracy-and-the-future-of-the-european-union/#sthash.QkVJC8fV.1GpZTXD8.dpbs

“So. Washington is ours. Chișinău is ours. Sofia is ours. It remains but to drain the swamp in Russia itself.”

If guys who look like Dugin and Richard Spencer are really going to hold sway over the future, then please god just give 김정은 some proper ICBMs with proper warheads already

Given that it looks increasingly like that Dugin has been fired from Katehon - the organisation most people regard as 'his' think tank (having already been fired from Moscow State University) and Spencer is primarily famous for getting punched in time with Born In The USA / Killing In The Name Of, you can probably defer the friendly bombs for a while.

A few months after that Dugin quote, Boyko Borisov was re-elected as Prime Minister of Bulgaria, a much more powerful institution than the Presidency his party lost, albeit as part of a coalition. Bulgaria is an interesting example though. Borisov is a homophobic, racist, illiberal kleptocrat with strong links to organised crime whose wife runs a bank alleged in leaked US memos to be part of a huge money laundering operation. He's notionally 'our guy', though.

The article references the election victory of Igor Dodon in Moldova but neglects to mention that he beat the candidate of a party whose leader engineered the theft of 12% of the country's GDP in a single year. idk how you can write an article about growing illiberalism in Europe and not mention Poland once, either.

If we're going to take the concept of a threat to liberalism in Europe seriously, and learn anything from it, we need to stop viewing countries in the centre / east just as proxies in a fight with Russia and ask why their institutions are structurally incapable of putting up resistance to kleptocrats and religious revanchists of all stripes. That would require a lot more work and self-criticism than anyone seems willing to put in.

"If we're going to take the concept of a threat to liberalism in Europe seriously, and learn anything from it, we need to stop viewing countries in the centre / east just as proxies in a fight with Russia and ask why their institutions are structurally incapable of putting up resistance to kleptocrats and religious revanchists of all stripes. That would require a lot more work and self-criticism than anyone seems willing to put in."

I'd be interested in hearing more about what you mean when you talk of their structural incapability, and how Western European nations contribute to that (if that is the suggestion you're making).

It's a good question and probably depends on how far back you want to go. Each country is different but post 1992, it's difficult to think of many that have been able to grow strong civil society / state institutions capable of pushing back on the encroachment of executive power. Poland is probably one of the better ones - which is why PiS is so keen to hobble the independent judiciary.

Opinions vary but a lot of the nation-building activities designed to support the transition away from communism either neglected the importance of those institutions - believing that they'd grow organically over time if you just implemented free markets and free elections - or actively encouraged the concentration of power in the hands of people who were amenable to the EU / US.

More recently, the EU could have made much more effort to ensure that countries like Slovakia, Hungary and Bulgaria were, at the very least, constitutionally robust, had transparent budgets, had strong independent anti-corruption offices, etc before being formally given accession. A lot of it was there on paper but never properly interrogated. You could also argue they've been slow to push back on the V4 countries - for all the talk of potential sanctions on Poland and Hungary, there's no action yet.

The rise of PiS in Poland is also deeply linked to the failure to socialise the benefits of membership. On paper, the Polish economy has boomed but gains in quality of life have been unevenly distributed while cost of living has shot up for everyone. Poland hasn't arbitrarily decided that trad-Cath identitarianism trumps economic growth of 6% p.a or w/e.

Looking outside the EU at Moldova - the willingness to back people like Vlad Filat / Vlad Plahotniuc because they're notionally on the EU / US side has backfired horribly. Not only are they increasingly toxic domestically, the EU and US get guilt by association. This article has some good background on that:

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/04/world/europe/moldova-vlad-plahotniuc.html

It's an active betrayal of Moldovans who genuinely share pro-EU views.

Ukraine is a similar situation. Russia and the EU / US both treated Ukraine as a prize to win, the latter initially willing to turn a blind eye to Yanukovich's corruption if it meant bringing the country into NATO and an economic alliance with Europe. The west has never been in a better position than it is now to ensure that Ukraine is rebuilt in a way that conforms to some vague notion of a liberal democracy (it, after all, controls the money spigot and access to EU markets) but has done nothing to stop one kleptocracy replacing another. There are occasional calls to have a properly resourced anti-corruption board put in place but, at the moment, everyone seems happy to funnel IMF cash and EU / US aid into the pockets of a different set of gangsters to the ones who were in the ascendancy until 2014.

The key theme throughout the region - from Ukraine to Georgia - is that privatisation is mandatory, robust democratic structures are optional.

None of which means that Russia is better, of course. That shouldn't need pointing out.

Thanks SV

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a56395/trump-russia-money/

https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/iql43wLjm6H8/v2/800x-1.png

https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/iql43wLjm6H8/v2/800x-1.png

when you put it that way

'None of these' p much the same as 'other', right? Or is 'none of these' long for dgaf?

D2S didn't even have a 35% chance of beating hillz :(

immigration tied with climate change is an eye-opener.

Build the sea wall

And make polar bears pay for it.

The Trump Russia scandal is a pretty distinct thing from the "U.S. relationship with Russia" issue though in people's minds I believe. It does garner a lot of interest (hence the coverage) but that interest is really more "dislike of Trump" specific. Also unlikely Dems run on the scandal exclusively, they've actually been talking a lot about healthcare the last few months.

the most russia-friendly congressperson speaks

https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/07/congressman-asks-scientists-if-theyve-found-ancient-civilizations-on-mars/

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/18/Dana_Rohrabacher.jpg

Congressman Hoskins

collusion meeting at trump tower was to talk about martian adoption, no joke

trump is trolling us. next time he gives a speech he will walk onstage to this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sxTbfeYdO0

i still tend to think this is being overblown, but if it hurts his presidency i guess it's justified. as lenin would say.

Dana Rohrabacher is relatively pro-weed, maybe he was high for the hearing.

a sitting congressperson -- dana rohrabacher (R-CA) -- was working with the russians to scuttle a sanctions bill and was using russian propaganda to justify it around the time two-scoops supposedly didn't "meet with" his namesake son, his daughter's husband, his campaign manager, the crown jewel of moscow prosecution, and the head of the russian money laundering a-team about adopting russian orphans. i'm glad chris kobach (R-KS) is reviewing america's voter rolls in the wake of the 2016 election. taxes are theft :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96yWsrMXREI

one for the "shocking!" file

U.S. investigators examining money laundering accusations against President Donald Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort hope to push him to cooperate with their probe into possible collusion between Trump's campaign and Russia, two sources with direct knowledge of the investigation said.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-russia-manafort-idUSKBN1A70F8

https://newrepublic.com/article/143586/trumps-russian-laundromat-trump-tower-luxury-high-rises-dirty-money-international-crime-syndicate

There are dozens of things about this that will annoy some here - conflating Uzbeks with Russians, jumping all over the timeline, and so forth - but a decent rundown of how Trump since the 90s has been a willing silent partner in multiple money laundering activities by ruthless gangsters from the former SSRs, and eventually just started pursuing them as a fundamental demographic in his business model

i thought this was sensible https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/trump-and-congress-are-probably-on-a-collision-course-over-russia/

damn

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/rnc-employees-asked-save-all-2016-campaign-documents

old news : )

http://www.npr.org/2017/07/28/539802914/businessman-paints-a-terrifying-and-complex-picture-of-putins-russia

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/02/opinion/donald-trump-russia-collusion-cia.html?_r=0

At the end of all of this, in a few months or a few years, several people in the Trump circle will be found guilty, or indicted, or otherwise be branded as complicit turncoats and disposed of/fired. Everyone short of Trump himself, tainted and still suspicious but too isolated and stupid to be a major player in this kerfuffle. And once those other half a dozen or a dozen or more people are out of the picture, his most die-hard loyalists, hacks and hypocrites will say, okay, let's put this behind us, time to move on, give Trump a chance.

the aspens will already be turning

Ok lol

the alleged financial shenanigans that pre-date last November's election

the slow-dancing with Russian oligarchs

the infusions of cash from the banks of the Volga that kept the Trump Organization in business

the overpayment by Russians for condos owned by the Trump Organization

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a56839/mueller-trump-finances-russia/

i believe over-payment on condos is how they got Benedict Arnold

i believe russian jets have always buzzed DC

http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/09/us/russian-air-force-tu154-overflight-dc/index.html

Dan Gaffney, spokesman for the DTRA, declined to confirm the surveilled targets

not gonna lie, my heart skipped a beat there

lol

putin is playing comrade combover like a fiddle

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/14/world/asia/north-korea-missiles-ukraine-factory.html

but her emails

8/ will be discussed. During all of the interviews, a FBI agent will be present, which makes it a crime to knowingly and willfully make a

— Renato Mariotti (@renato_mariotti) August 12, 2017

More direct link to start of thread:

THREAD: What does the news that Mueller is interviewing White House officials mean for the investigation? https://t.co/N5x95qhHcU

— Renato Mariotti (@renato_mariotti) August 12, 2017

fingers crossed this guy is the next MOOCH

http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/14/politics/george-papadopoulos-russia-trump/index.html

Webster's dad?

THREAD: Why does it matter that a Ukrainian hacker is cooperating with Mueller's investigation? https://t.co/mhZVbXg9lo

— Renato Mariotti (@renato_mariotti) August 16, 2017

According to people briefed on the developments, Steele has met with the FBI and provided agents with the names of his sources for the allegations in the dossier

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/glenn-simpson-key-figure-million-dollar-dossier-face/story?id=49348102

"look up pee tape," steele is reported to have told investigators

man what a great week it would be for *this* to come back

i may regret saying this, but for now, the email prankster owns

More: Breitbart editor suggests he could have Jared Kushner & Ivanka Trump ousted from White House "by end of year" https://t.co/LciboyiRTZ pic.twitter.com/A8K365k5iq

— CNN (@CNN) August 22, 2017

Yeah, Steele is probably all http://lmgtfy.com/?q=trump+pee+tape

I wonder if the 8 votes for "nothing" would shift to something if we re-polled the question.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/rick-dearborn-emails-trump-campaign-putin-meeting

Grabbing lunch tomorrow with my former Federal prosecutor friend turned legal talking head. Any questions? He's an expert on white collar crime and, well, a lot of the stuff Trump has been accused of.

How is babby formed

Done. Wait, Russian babby? Trump babby?

Same difference

http://i3.cpcache.com/product/423928021/stork_baby_russia_usa_tshirt.jpg?width=300&height=300&Filters=%5B%7B%22name%22%3A%22crop%22%2C%22value%22%3A%7B%22x%22%3A25.0%2C%22y%22%3A0.0%2C%22w%22%3A250%2C%22h%22%3A300.0%7D%2C%22sequence%22%3A1%7D%2C%7B%22name%22%3A%22background%22%2C%22value%22%3A%22F2F2F2%22%2C%22sequence%22%3A2%7D%5D

How do I shot marriage, why is Dave Matthews so bad & hated, can I run bass through a guitar amp

Done, done and done.

Is it reasonable to hope that Congress can way instain

I think my major questions be answered until Mueller spits out a report. So, just getting his general impressions based on news leaks to date would be intriguing enough.

OK, here is what I learned:

1) Mueller and his crew recognize the importance of this investigation to a huge degree - several of his people (my friend had applied to be one of them) left very big and/or lucrative jobs to join his team - so anything regarding the investigation that gets leaked or revealed absolutely is not coming from them.

2) White collar crimes are exceptionally hard to prove, since so many require knowing what was in the accused's mind, why they did what they did. So short of a dramatic smoking gun, he thinks Trump himself is very unlikely to be charged with anything. If he is, my friend thinks from what we know so far that obstruction would be the most likely charge. No way to know how Congress would handle that or any other charge.

3) Of the satellites, he says Manafort seems to be in the most trouble, not least because of the foreign agent stuff but also because there is a high bar for approving an FBI raid of his house. He says the Kush has good lawyers, Don Jr., has bad legal counsel, but from their relative silence lately Kush, Flynn, DJTJ, even Manafort seem to be taking this very seriously. He says there is no way Trump's lawyers have not told him how serious this all is, so has no idea why Trump continues to make things worse for himself.

4) When a man and a woman love each other very much, that is how a babby is made. Except for Trump, who can fuck himself.

My friend, btw, told me both of his parents are Trump voters/supporters, but while his dad is a lost cause (a prosperity evangelical who literally believes Trump was chosen by god), his mom seems to be responding to facts and reporting the right way. Generally, my friend thinks the damaging of the press/free press might be the worst thing to come out of this whole mess.

was there any speculation about why bannon hasn't (or doesn't seem to have) lawyered up? if there's dirt, did he get involved too late in the campaign to get smeared?

thx for the summary

xpost Bannon is actually not human so they're not sure how to charge him in court

"Unfortunately, despite a thorough search of the literature, we find that the law has no precise precedent for indicting a collection of gelatinous toxic slime molds. Therefore, Mr Bannon, you are free to go (alas). However, the court strongly requests that you wait to disband into your component parts until after you have left the building."

2) White collar crimes are exceptionally hard to prove, since so many require knowing what was in the accused's mind, why they did what they did. So short of a dramatic smoking gun, he thinks Trump himself is very unlikely to be charged with anything. If he is, my friend thinks from what we know so far that obstruction would be the most likely charge. No way to know how Congress would handle that or any other charge.

this is one of the reasons the DOJ didnt want to go after 2008 financial crisis bad guys, but still. barely even tried.

Yeah, he brought that up. Wasn't the idea of the New Yorker piece on that basically fear of failure on the part of lawyers?

Yeah its also outrageously expensive to prosecute and the FBIs resources are mostly directed to national security/counter-terrorism.

fwiw, other tidbits he told me were that his firm was more or less OK with his talking head appearances as long as he kept up his regular workload and the appearances remained pretty legal/neutral, vs. political, though he's pushed at that a little in published OpEds; there were concerns in particular that firm lobbyists in DC could bear the brunt of any blowback should he piss off the admin. On the work front, he said he's actually losing money being a talking head, since he could be working or generating new jobs for the firm, but that's all relative. He said he mostly does it for fun. He's been on CNN and MSNBC a bunch, from their little remote studios. The one time he was dumped into some right/left crossfire situation for some radio show he found it so unpleasant he doesn't want to go that route again.

Per resources, he noted once back in his federal prosecutor days that it was just him and his second counsel going up against this whole team of bank lawyers, and they felt seriously outgunned, though he pointed out that Mueller and his team should have the resources they need. I asked him what might happen should Mueller turn up other tangentially related stuff, and he said a lot of its use would be proscribed by the terms of the grand jury. That is, if it took a grand jury to get the info, it'll likely stay locked up forever if it doesn't make it into any sort of final report. (I think I'm remembering this correctly.) There's also the matter of statue of limitations for past crimes. He worked on the Dennis Hastert case here, and noted that Hastert was ultimately prosecuted for tax infractions stemming from his payoffs, not for the crimes themselves, which had happened long ago. But he said that kind of thing is usually pretty frowned upon, so if Mueller found some similar sort of past sneakiness he might not pursue it or include it in his investigation, mostly to maintain the reputation of the office. Federal prosecutors and their ilk take their jobs and offices really seriously.

I am relieved to finally know how is babby formed

The details of the deal, which have not previously been disclosed, provide evidence that Trump’s business was actively pursuing significant commercial interests in Russia at the same time he was campaigning to be president — and in a position to determine U.S.-Russia relations.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trumps-business-sought-deal-on-a-trump-tower-in-moscow-while-he-ran-for-president/2017/08/27/d6e95114-8b65-11e7-91d5-ab4e4bb76a3a_story.html?utm_term=.2616a3130ae2

1/ Stunning: Trump failed to disclose a large pending deal in Moscow while he ran for White House via @CarolLeonnig https://t.co/ARkRb5dIAW

— Andrew S. Weiss (@andrewsweiss) August 28, 2017

Apparently questions re: Trump Tower Russia being referred to Cohen's lawyer.

Per your friend's comment:

So short of a dramatic smoking gun, he thinks Trump himself is very unlikely to be charged with anything.

Not saying this was a smoking gun, but perhaps a whiff of grapeshot?

It all sounds bad and messy, but I think my friend's point is it is not necessarily criminal to be friends and associate with criminals. It's a pretty high bar to prove Trump himself knowingly did anything illegal here short a paper trail of explicit contractions and cover-ups. For example, he told me about this one real estate mogul he prosecuted who was giving different PowerPoint presentations with different numbers to different audiences. That's bad. But just getting in bed with sketchy partners is not itself illegal. However, it could lead to the discovery of a legality, and obviously the more people swept into the net increases those odds, assuming there is anything there.

Illegality, not a legality, whoops.

The proposed Moscow project was a licensing deal -- basically independent developers pay Trump to put his name on a building for marketing purposes. I don't think it means much to any of this.

Trump is corrupt, and it's in plain sight. I still fail to understand what the overarching Russia theory amounts to, what the picture is supposed to look like when we finally "connect all the dots."

Yeah, I've kind of lost the thread to this whole Russia thing, too. Who's leading this, anyway? Democrats? I see the investigation happening, but I don't really hear any cases against Trum, for Russia, corruption, or anything, from anyone, really.

Trumpppppp

I think it ultimately still boils down to 'here's damaging info on Hillary in exchange for easing of sanctions' right?

+ evidence of massive amounts of white collar crimes that otherwise would've flown under the radar, which probably won't have any real-world consequences?

Yeah, that's the outline. This 'revelation' is about him not disclosing he had monetary interests in Russia, which if you squint could open him up to blackmail, I guess?

Well, the deal fell through, so I guess technically it wasn't a monetary interest in Russia?

No, the problem is that he didn't disclose it while it happened. Which, conceivably, the Russians could still later leak.

it's treason to collude with a foreign country to win a US election whether or not the foreign country in question is under sanction for annexing other countries iirc

I think it ultimately still boils down to 'here's damaging info on Hillary in exchange for easing of sanctions' right?

― frogbs, Monday, August 28, 2017 10:06 AM (nine minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Doesn't that require Congress?

No, the problem is that he didn't disclose it while it happened. Which, conceivably, the Russians could still later leak.

― Frederik B, Monday, August 28, 2017 10:17 AM (one minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The deal fell through before the primaries began.

x-post: Yes, which is why the way to do it would be to, for example, include it in the plank at the Republican convention ;)

y'all know there are already people investigating this right

don't know that it *has* to make sense to us

Part of the issue is Russian money saved Trumps ass from the brink of irrelevancy in the 2000s and in return Trump is willing to view Russia and Russians in a more favorable light. Especially in his narcissist land he lives in where 'people who help me = good, people who hurt me = bad and must be destroyed'. Its been on display the entire time.

y'all know there are already people investigating this right

― Neanderthal, 28. august 2017 18:10 (fifty-two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

don't know that it *has* to make sense to us

― Neanderthal, 28. august 2017 18:11 (fifty-one minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The problem is kinda that there is so many different people investigating this. There is Mueller, there is congress, and there is a ton of journalists. It's not a bad idea to take a step back and wonder what the story is even supposed to be, imo. Especially because there really are quite a few stories that don't have any relevance to the bigger picture.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=51&v=9N5Kun2sJPA

fake news?

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/russia-donald-trump-kompromat-nikita-isaev-new-russia-movement-state-tv-us-president-a7929966.html

we need the pee tape more than ever

Like his flock would even flinch. I bet his core would love him better for it.

but I thought all far-right politicians liked each other and wanted the same things

In the "huh, I never thought about that" category, I just saw David Axelrod interviewed and answering questions at the local university. Someone asked him about Russia, and he said he had just been speaking with Adam Schiff, and that Schiff's biggest fear was not necessarily that people in Trump's orbit had cooperated with Russia but that the next time the impact of their meddling could be even greater. As an example, he noted how easy it could be for Russia to, say, slip just five fake pages into a 60,000 page wikileaks dump, and what kind of chaos something that simple might inspire.

Huh, I never thought about that.

didn't the Macron campaign intentionally do something like this so they could discredit them later

sigh

it's on!

Advisory Board:

-neocon blogger
-perjurer
-wonk with no Russia background
-director of When Harry Met Sally
-right-wing talk radio guy pic.twitter.com/u7LA9Ej7K3

— David Klion (@DavidKlion) September 19, 2017

And here I was thinking Reiner would never recapture the hilarious absurdity of a Spinal Tap. Kudos.

This inquiry goes to eleven

could've at least put johnD on ahead of Meathead

This is not Valery Gerasimov. pic.twitter.com/102BecI8r2

— Alexey Kovalev (@Alexey__Kovalev) September 19, 2017

Off to a cracking start, lads.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbKNICg-REA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=49&v=Uz9PNoecNxU

lol

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DKwMzG5X0AAob32.jpg:large

i... what?

miso confused

Russians are still messing w America on social media, in this case posing as Boston Antifa to foment dissension re: the NFL

this is too fucking weird.

not to get all black mirror but this seems like just the very beginning of something that will never go away

It might not go away but it can be severely hampered. The famous oligarch-funded SPB troll factory has pretty much abandoned Twitter and pivoted to video started to focus on gaming domestic news search metrics - partly because it doesn't seem to have been considered worth the effort but probably primarily because Twitter actively went after them and shut down 80% of their accounts.

Facebook, by and large, doesn't have this problem. Even the Russian site Vkontakte has less of an issue - because you need a valid phone number to register a new account.

You can buy a thousand Twitter folllowers or Instagram likes at vending machines in Moscow for $2. You can hire people to run fake accounts for you online for not much more. Until Twitter and IG stop inflating their user numbers by counting fake accounts and start looking at ways to cull them systematically, it is only likely to get worse.

started to focus on gaming domestic news

read this as "domestic gaming news"

neat thread on that Boston Antifa account

so the fake antifa twitter fucked up today and included their geo location.

this is a really interesting case because it illustrates a few- pic.twitter.com/ZeZmSZXkQg

— j🎃ssica (@my2k) September 27, 2017

Jesus christ.

maybe that gaffe was on purpose, cocky, like, american football is so old school; the real sport is international trolling and getting away with treason

Reminds me of this:

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/crime/2013/03/boston_police_catfishing_indie_rockers_cops_pose_as_punks_on_the_internet.html

wow if the FBI includes this fake NFL meme as evidence then it will be an open-shut case lol. /s

on the plus side the next time the US needs to depose a leader hey no need for armed conflict or drones just make some based memes.

a catch with that is other countries in the world, at least first world nations, don't have masses of assholes like we do dumb enough to vote for super-rightwing dipshits we consider 'normal conservatives'. the first world countries are a lot smarter on the whole than kochistan

OK, again, the majority voted for Hillary.

Not so much with Brexit btw

Facebook, by and large, doesn't have this problem.

They have different ones.

QUIZ: Which 2016 Presidential candidate sent the following tweet last night:

Why are we under constant attack by the political establishment, the media and Hollywood? Because the elites feel threatened. Keep it up!

The answer may surprise you!

the elites feel threatened by all the extra money they're about to get once the GOP cuts their taxes. mrga

If you’re an American who doesn’t feel threatened, fuck you.

xxp: It didn't!

even if we do get our own spacious modernist house in order what are we gonna do about those third world nations full of assholes :(

Whoa, just noticed this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NotN9NbGYNU

Look at the comment from "Lynne the Mad Scientist" and then check out the videos she has posted:

http://www.youtube.com/user/MadScientist77777/videos?shelf_id=0&view=0&sort=dd

Don't hate on her just because she's a Momus fan dude

Last Friday, most major media outlets touted a major story about Russian attempts to hack into U.S. voting systems, based exclusively on claims made by the Department of Homeland Security. “Russians attempted to hack elections systems in 21 states in the run-up to last year’s presidential election, officials said Friday,” began the USA Today story, similar to how most other outlets presented this extraordinary claim.

So what was wrong with this story? Just one small thing: it was false. The story began to fall apart yesterday when Associated Press reported that Wisconsin – one of the states included in the original report that, for obvious reasons, caused the most excitement – did not, in fact, have its election systems targeted by Russian hackers.... Then the story collapsed completely last night. The Secretary of State for another one of the named states, California, issued a scathing statement repudiating the claimed report...

None of this means that every Russia claim is false, nor does it disprove the accusation that Putin ordered the hacking of the DNC and John Podesta’s email inboxes (a claim for which, just by the way, still no evidence has been presented by the U.S. government). Perhaps there were some states that were targeted, even though the key claims of this story, that attracted the most attention, have now been repudiated.

But what it does demonstrate is that an incredibly reckless, anything-goes climate prevails when it comes to claims about Russia. Media outlets will publish literally any official assertion as Truth without the slightest regard for evidentiary standards.

https://theintercept.com/2017/09/28/yet-another-major-russia-story-falls-apart-is-skepticism-permissible-yet/

what could it MEAN? opinions vary.

lol except not in the brazilian dacha

There are literally no journalistic standards or evidentiary requirements for claims about Russia, & noting that means you're unpatriotic. https://t.co/g5ZLC04nP2

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) September 22, 2017

Lol yes the Secretary of State for California is totally better equipped to assess cybersecurity issues than DHS et al.

obstreperous ass clown.

what could it MEAN? opinions vary.

lol except not in the brazilian dacha

There are literally no journalistic standards or evidentiary requirements for claims about Russia, & noting that means you're unpatriotic. https://t.co/g5ZLC04nP2
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) September 22, 2017
― felix! phelix! ghelix! (Hunt3r), Thursday, September 28, 2017 2:28 PM (sixteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
one of the worst posts I've seen on here in a while

someone needs to tell the Wisconsin Elections Commission to take this fake news off their website.

lol xpost

who the fuck is demanding evidentiary standards in journalism dipshit

Journalistic standards are good and TheIntercept should have employed some when they were pushing bullshit stories based on weak assumptions over stolen emails in the last stretch of the election. That would have been nice.

Well it’s an RT subsidiary, what do you expect

you're so predictable, spymaster, in your delusions

Frederik, plz defenestrate

who the fuck is demanding evidentiary standards in journalism dipshit

― felix! phelix! ghelix! (Hunt3r), Thursday, September 28, 2017 3:11 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yes, im the dipshit. not the shit-posting russiagate centrist dad

alfa bank's american defense attorney is now the head of the american department of justice's criminal investigation division

https://www.courthousenews.com/judiciary-committee-approves-trump-pick-doj-crime-chief/

#mrga

Perhaps . . . 2scoops's only motivation was a hotel in Moscow. He's been dreaming of that since 1987. He tried several times prior to the campaign to get one and they all fell through. It seems, through the Cohen/Sater emails, that he was really hoping he could pull off the deal they came up with at the Miss Universe pageant.

Now, parallel to all that are two other plots: Putin and Trump's kids/family.

Putin clearly wanted sanctions lifted. Could be his entire purpose with Trump was to

a) sow discord in the US, furthering the potential Balkanization of America

and

b) on the off chance 2scoops somehow beat Hillary, to erase sanctions.

If 2scoops pulled off b), he would've been rewarded with that sizable share of Rosneft, or he would finally get his Trump Hotel Moscow.

As for the scoopspawn, maybe they wanted him to win, or at least not get his ass handed to him in a "reverse Reagan '84". To that end, they enlisted the help of the GRU and FSB to help their cyber wing of the campaign, with Kushner directing it. Half Scoop and Eric(!) possibly did a lot of the side deals to make sure daddy's dream of Trump Hotel Moscow became true regardless of the outcome.

A lot of the shadier non-Trump family were likely hired by Stone (who Trump hired because they're bros), hired by someone hired by Stone, or already a longtime Trump associate (Cohn, Sater, etc.)??????????

glad we finally figured out who is sowing discord in the US

http://www.billboard.com/files/styles/article_main_image/public/media/ian-mackaye-2014-billboard-650.jpg

http://www.cnn.com/2017/10/03/politics/russian-facebook-ads-michigan-wisconsin/index.html

xp

Funny, but he was indeed spotted hanging out at the juggalo march.

xpost If accurate that seems pretty huge.

Why can't the Senate get this basic information about the Steele dossier? Who is hiding it, and why? pic.twitter.com/PyZYpZdbOk

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) October 4, 2017

apparently, glenn simpson, the fusion GPS guy who commissioned the report

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/attorney-glenn-simpson-reveal-clients-trump-dossier-investigators/story?id=49367909

While Simpson’s attorney said his client provided significant details about his firm’s findings, he did not reveal the identities of those who paid for his research.

so someone's protecting their sources, why is this a story? I don't get it

I always thought the lore around the dossier was that it was ordered by a GOP primary foe like Jeb or Rubio or Cruz.

obviously they can't get that info because Steele refuses to cooperate and they can't subpoena him.

Greenwald is not v smart sometimes.

He is playing dumb on purpose to obscure the fact that he helped Trump by pushing Russian leaks.

I think Greenwald is trying to insinuate something, but there are multiple equally plausible inferences you could draw here, and too little info to assume anything.

well well well

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-russia-dossier/trump-dossier-on-russia-links-now-part-of-special-counsels-probe-sources-idUSKBN1C92WN

The special counsel investigating whether Russia tried to sway the 2016 U.S. election has taken over FBI inquiries into a former British spy’s dossier of allegations of Russian financial and personal links to President Donald Trump’s campaign and associates

pee pee pee

LOL

https://www.yahoo.com/news/russian-trolls-schooled-house-cards-185648522.html

Six intelligence leaders -- including [former KANSAS representative and current CIA chief Mike] Pompeo and [(Benedict) Donald] Trump's DNI Dan Coats -- were asked by lawmakers on the Senate intelligence committee whether they agree that Russian intelligence agencies were responsible for hacking and the leaking of information to influence the US election. All six said yes.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/10/19/politics/cia-pompeo-russia-meddling-election/index.html

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/trump-campaign-digital-director-interviewed-house-intel-committee

to be a fly on the wall

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/358138-tillerson-meets-with-russian-ambassador

http://thehill.com/sites/default/files/styles/thumb_small_article/public/tillersonrex_061417kc_1.jpg

^^^ lego hair

yes

Most every Russia story is how we built a flaw into our society and are shocked to find a nation exploiting it instead of a company.

— Kelsey D. Atherton (@AthertonKD) November 1, 2017

fake news

http://www.newsweek.com/putin-trump-elected-clinton-700761

A guy who hasn't worked in the Kremlin since 2011 and wasn't actually close to Putin doing a mind-reading exercise? Yeah, I'd call that fake news.

ah newsweek ye have turned inot a too busy distracting awful website that is unreadable and annoying

"Trump recounted the exchange, remarking that the man, who he identified as retired Lt. Col. Louis Dorfman said, "That's my real Purple Heart. I have such confidence in you."

"And I said, 'Man, that’s like big stuff. I always wanted to get the Purple Heart," Trump said. "This was much easier.”

Trump then invited Dorfman to appear onstage with him on camera, as the two posed for photographs and Trump flashed a thumbs-up before placing the Purple Heart back in his suit jacket pocket."

wonder how Dorfman felt about all that

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/73/DORFonGOLF.jpg

CONFIRMED: Russian-linked hacker Guccifer 2.0 edited the hacked DNC documents before leaking them!https://t.co/00losrYCxS pic.twitter.com/DMjMGgmNn6

— Caroline O. (@RVAwonk) November 3, 2017

VERIFIED:

THREAD:

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/nov/05/russia-funded-facebook-twitter-investments-kushner-associate

fake news

all this Paradise Papers shit is ridiculous in a bad way. basically everything about this admin is completely mobbed up with Putin.

or at least that's like the first two or three stories I've heard. that said I sincerely do welcome the ShariVari post wherein he just points out that it has ever been thus since at least 2000 and if you "elect" a Trump you should not be surprised by anything

Hello,

I want Paradise Papers of class IX(Chemistry,Biology,Pakistan Studies,English & Sindhi) according to new syllabus.
Thanks..

lol "elect"

lol, crut.

Spoiler: he's going to ask Putin to solve North Korea and then Putin will take a big photo-op meeting with KJU to bask in adulation and annoy the shit out of the rest of the civilized world. nothing will come of it other than the US moving down another seven pegs in the estimation of basically everybody.

Meuller must be pleased? Or perhaps he already had this dirt
"Other individuals directly or indirectly mentioned in the leaks include President Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. A start-up company co-owned by Kushner and his brother received funding from Russian billionaire Milner in 2015."

The Russia stuff in this leak is weak sauce - so much so that a conspiracy theory has arisen suggesting that the Paradise Papers are part of a Russian infowar campaign to make other countries look bad in the wake of the much more damaging Panama Papers.

In reality, I think you are only ever going to learn a limited amount about hidden US assets from big international leaks like this when there are so many opportunities to hide resources within the US itself. The Delaware Papers would probably be much more damaging to Trump - and arguably to a bunch of Russian oligarchs.

It goes to show - stupid crooks rob banks, smart ones steal everyone's money legally

hillary should be in jail because uranium 1 but wilbur ross in business with the putin family is weak sauce. okay

The Delaware Papers would probably be much more damaging

yeah, this is otm

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/mueller-papdopoulos-timeline-wikileaks-emails

Facebook and the fall of empires

The Panama Papers just prove that we need summary execution for all billionaires.

its an illness!

Why bother mounting a Twitter campaign in favor of a guy who was only slightly more credible than Herman Cain? Here are a few guesses:

https://www.apnews.com/dea73efc01594839957c3c9a6c962b8a/Inside-story:-How-Russians-hacked-the-Democrats%27-emails

Why bother mounting a Twitter campaign in favor of a guy who was only slightly more credible than Herman Cain? Here are a few guesses:

- It was just a test. Social media manipulation was new to the Russians too, and they figured Trump might make an interesting test of how effective it could be.

- In the early days, you had to be very, very cynical about the United States to think that a race-baiting blowhard like Trump had a chance to win. Maybe Putin knew us better than we knew ourselves.

- The Russians never really thought Trump had a chance of winning. He just seemed like a good vehicle to sow a bit of random chaos.

- This whole thing started at a fairly low level by some guy who’d been pushing to “really try out this social media stuff.” His superiors finally got tired of him and told him to knock himself out. This low-level guy, it turns out, was a big Trump fan for personal reasons we’ll never know.

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2017/11/wsj-russian-twitter-backed-trump-from-the-very-start/

In the early days, you had to be very, very cynical about the United States to think that a race-baiting blowhard like Trump had a chance to win. Maybe Putin knew us better than we knew ourselves.

but then again who doesn't

so did we arrest the Russians for treason via Facebook yet?

Russia is going to be angry face reaction on facebook about that

i tried to think of other courses of therapy as expensive and useless as this one and all i could come up with was xerxes' invasion of greece

Μολὼν λαβέ

"He said he didn't meddle. He said he didn't meddle. I asked him again. You can only ask so many times," Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One as he flew from Da Nang to Hanoi in Vietnam. Trump spoke to Putin three times on the sidelines of summit here, where the Russia meddling issue arose.

"Every time he sees me, he says, 'I didn't do that,'" Trump said. "And I believe, I really believe, that when he tells me that, he means it."

"I think he is very insulted by it," Trump added.

http://cdn.cnn.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/171110103001-01-trump-putin-handshake-apec-1110-exlarge-169.jpg

President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin did not discuss alleged election meddling on Saturday, despite Trump saying they did, according to Putin’s office.

“No,” Putin's press secretary Dmitri Peskov told CNN when asked, “as far as you know, did the two leaders discuss meddling?"

“Having a good relationship with Russia is a great, great thing,” Mr. Trump said. “This artificial Democratic hit job gets in the way, and that’s a shame, because people will die.”

So cute the way they arranged matching outfits.

If we don’t have a good relationship with Russia, people will die! thanks, dems!

i wish we could respect mr. trump's wishes and not make his boss angry with suggestions of impropriety, but . . .

george papadopolous to stephen miller: russia has "an interesting message" -- hillzo's stolen emails are "out there"

GP then went to athens at the same time mr. putin traveled there . . . his only trip to the EU that year

greece is a long way to go for coffee. yeesh!

http://www.businessinsider.com/george-papadopoulos-stephen-miller-trump-russia-clinton-2017-11

ancient news :)

https://www.inquisitr.com/4614677/donald-trump-allegedly-rigged-2002-miss-universe-pageant-so-vladimir-putins-mistress-would-win/

FWIW, there are serious murmurings, begging with recent Steele intimations but coming from other credible places, that all eyes should be on Trump's real estate deals, particularly in Florida, and that money laundering charges may be the ultimate end game.

The big hurdle with money laundering is establishing that Trump was aware of the source of the money being laundered. Proving that he profited massively from it would be the easy part.

Well it's also obviously been the thing he's most openly annoyed/angry about the investigation possibly looking into. Which unsurprisingly means it's being further looked into.

percentage of likelihood: russia hacked into and rigged the GOP primary, pre-guaranteeing 2scoops victory (otherwise, why would vain spiral combover man take his run seriously?), which has been GOP/Rove-muddied (what-about-ed) by "conservatives" who accuse the DNC (whom we know russia hacked) of rigging the democratic primary against bernie. 67%? 14%?

the inevitable end of the fake news panic: large, unaccountable corporations making nativist, ideological judgement calls about what news we see and what we dont. https://t.co/5yMPUtb4xW

— Adam H. Johnson (@adamjohnsonNYC) November 21, 2017

https://www.rawstory.com/2017/11/morning-joe-lays-out-damning-trump-russia-timeline-they-were-lying-through-their-teeth-all-of-them/

take that fox & friends :)

I don’t think Adam Johnson is actually from New York City.

Per @MaxBlumenthal and @adamjohnsonNYC, RT plays a vital, critical role in

*squints*

regularly presenting literal Nazis as foreign policy experts. pic.twitter.com/I24MJHtXD1

— Pseudonymous (@PseudonymousRex) November 16, 2017

adam johnson has never seen any news that wasn't fake, duh

The big hurdle with money laundering is establishing that Trump was aware of the source of the money being laundered. Proving that he profited massively from it would be the easy part.

― A is for (Aimless), Monday, November 20, 2017 5:34 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Well it's also obviously been the thing he's most openly annoyed/angry about the investigation possibly looking into. Which unsurprisingly means it's being further looked into.

― Ned Raggett, Monday, November 20, 2017 5:49 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Keeping in mind that all rumors are rumors until they're not, and that I readily acknowledge this scans ridiculous even as I type it, but I have a (reasonable, not crazy) friend who works as a lawyer in a government agency who himself has a lawyer friend from school in the FISA courts, and the FISA lawyer is apparently convinced that they actually have Two Scoops and a couple of his associates on tape re: the Florida stuff, and that per the high standard of proof with laundering cases Mueller is building his investigation from the ground up, leading to a smoking gun they already have. Sounds crazy, right? But also sounds totally plausible, and is totally in character for both good guys and bad guys involved. Keep in mind some of the sketchy folks surrounding Trump warranted FISA warrants before the election.

I really want to read this: https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/61PQDniFf2L._SX328_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg Terry Gross interview with the author was great.

folks RT are not the only ones getting dinged xp

Cheering @googlenews’ decision to de-rank RT and Sputnik? It’s part of the company’s ongoing crackdown against “offensive sites.” Here are some other apparent targets.https://t.co/edTPsfhFby pic.twitter.com/J78w82crqM

— Kevin Rothrock (@KevinRothrock) November 20, 2017

can we stop saying "two scoops"?

Ia that not a thing anymore? I don't usually write it, but I'm more sick of seeing/typing his name, tbh.

actually simon the best way to deal with incipient fascism is to crack down on the press, it works every time. everyone knows the institutions of liberal democracy cannot defend themselves against serious attack and must be restrained for their own safety; besides, those who designed them could never have foreseen our modern media environment, in which uncredentialed people may reach and deceive large audiences without proper regulation. it is the corporations and big bourgeoisie that have the correct perspective on political dialogue at this time. they value democracy just as much as you and i do, and they will help to shield us from the threat of authoritarianism. also, another thing it's important to remember to do in these situations is to fill the national culture with a sense of humiliation at the hands of traitorous agents of a foreign power. you def wanna get so much of that in the air that even liberals go full schizo about treason and plot and start calling for military coups. this is all extremely healthy for democracy and if u think otherwise you are a useful idiot. soon donnie dum dums will be flusheroo-rooed and everything will go back to normal.

Simon that's from a site that has many obvious troll articles on it and the data source they used for that is a "competitive intelligence" SEO for hire shop

There's a fine line between not wanting to actually say his name and sounding like Morbs. I'm not saying I know where to draw that line.

xxp

very trenchant, dlh

Morbs calls him Yam, iirc.

My only thing is I like calling his son DJTJ because it makes him sound like a robot. Or a DJ.

The specific data is questionable but aiui Google doesn’t dispute they are doing this. They recalibrated the news search algorithms to deprioritise content they deemed to be less ‘authoritative’ - using human raters to determine site value against a set of criteria that hasn’t been disclosed.

always love it when alt-right fuckboys lament rights they don't have maybe or maybe not being possibly but not necessarily kinda infringed

https://www.npr.org/2017/11/21/565654507/journalist-investigating-trump-and-russia-says-full-picture-is-one-of-collusion

just finished reading that - not really anything new there but seeing it all in one place is... persuasive?

maybe it's all just coincidence though?

https://www.wired.com/story/the-state-departments-fumbled-fight-against-russian-propaganda/

But in other respects, it was a strategic failure because actually sanctions are still in place. It's now impossible for Donald Trump to lift them. And I think what it shows is that the problem with the way the Kremlin thinks about the world is that it imagines other countries to be rather like Russia. It doesn't understand American institutional politics. It doesn't understand Congress. It doesn't understand there's a sort of free and vigorous media despite everything.

also

You're going to have to say it. I can't get it right.

HARDING: Rybolovlev - Dmitry Rybolovlev.

GROSS: Rybolovlev, OK.

HARDING: Rybolovlev.

maybe bill moyers bought rybolovlev's da vinci?

http://billmoyers.com/story/trump-russia-story-coming-together-heres-make-sense/

luv2rybolovlev

also

wherever you look, all of the people in Trump's government, especially in its early stages, have a kind of Russia connection. I mean, it's - obviously, Trump did the picking, but it's almost as if Putin had the kind of last word...

This is correct about a lot, imo, including the difficulty with finding decent cheese in Moscow:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/23/world/europe/russia-vladimir-putin-liberals.html

“American liberals are so upset about Trump that they cannot believe he is a real product of American life,”

Lol. Horseshit.

Nah, many libs treat Trump as an aberration rather than the natural outcome of the deterioration of the American political system

Thats wrong too, because people know its more than just deterioration- these forces have been there but less enabled and empowered for a while.

Russians, of course, can’t be blamed for believing in an extremely reductive caricature of Americans and our government

“many libs” sounds like Trump talk, up yr game SH

Well, we currently have a government that is a reductive caricature of a government. Americans continue to be multifarious.

hence my deployment, Trumpian or not, of "many" and not "all" or even "most"

"Bijan Kian"

Well, as long as shortsighted “libs” like me and many others seem to think Putin & cronies fucked with our election in a way that deserves exactly the sort of permanent sanctions that they got, and probably criminal charges up to and including treason for one or more members of the sitting POTUS’ campaign staff, I feel it’s only fair to remind the farsighted, right-thinking folks get a reminder of exactly who their only allies are in this very thoughtful, nuanced debate

David Avella: "No Democrat has said specifically 'how did Russia influence voters thinking that @HillaryClinton shouldn't be president.'" pic.twitter.com/JmCFTF8T8g

— Fox News (@FoxNews) August 24, 2017

Thats wrong too, because people know its more than just deterioration- these forces have been there but less enabled and empowered for a while.

Do you remember Dubya's administration?

The guy who sealed the nomination by speaking at a white supremacist college. I mean, it was a classier form of white supremacy than tiki torches, I guess...

I feel it’s only fair to remind the farsighted, right-thinking folks get a reminder of exactly who their only allies are in this very thoughtful, nuanced debate

Like I said: thoughtful, nuanced

I’m honestly not even sure what straw man you’re referring to. Buchanan splitting the right vote with his phenomenal ignorance would lead to the government bending in a left direction. Nader actually splitting the vote with his phenomenal ignorance led to the government doing what it did.

Counterfactuals such as these are for morons, anyway, this is about whether Russian state actors played our election in favor of a schmuck that they thought they could control. And the answers seem to be coming up: locally targeted propaganda, yes; favoring a pre-identified mark, yes; working connections as soon as possible to achieve Russian state aims, yes.

Too bad they still suck at understanding Americans and couldn’t even get the sanctions lifted. Cheers.

I also don’t understand how anyone thinks we’re giving Putin (lol autocorrect wanted to say “sputum” - knuckles, my phone) and his FSB pukes a bunch of extra credit by appointing a special prosecutor, who has “FBI Director” on his CV in order to weed out and imprison the scum that were involved. I guess if you’re Russian AF you might think that’s all kabuki. I am not, so I don’t.

Buchanan and Nader both opposed the WTO in the late '90s. For some people this made them essentially the same purpose, because reasons why are apparently irrelevant. Likewise, your "check out yer Fox News allies" stuff is purposefully ignorant of how the left and the right view the Russia issue.

The left, broadly speaking, isn't saying Russia didn't attempt to meddle or that nothing criminal occurred - the left is merely saying that the liberal view of Russian interference is overemphasized to diminish the blame on other parties... like the American people and the Democratic and Republican parties. Russia didn't provoke the decades-long GOP battle to roll back voting rights. Russia didn't create the Electoral College. Russia didn't ensure that 2/3 of white evangelicals have voted Republican for generations. Russia didn't ensure that Democrats nominated the candidate with the second-worst negatives to battle the candidate with the worst.

same person*

russia, a foreign country, isn't allowed to steal campaign information from the democratic national committee and supply it to the republican candidate

Who disagrees with that? The leap between that and "this is why we have Donald Trump" is the chasm you can't bridge.

why do i have to bridge it?

the left is merely saying that the liberal view of Russian interference is overemphasized to diminish the blame on other parties... like the American people and the Democratic and Republican parties.

... ... ... ... okey dokey. Maybe I don’t spend enough time on Twitter, I might understand. I live among a shitload of veterans, minorities, civil servants and scientists, so I have no clue about how America actually works.

SV and SH at least have the excuse of being foreigners who get their confirmation bias of “many libs” via teh internets. But fuck all of you for telling me what and how I think.

If it seems like I’m taking this personally and I shouldn’t be, well, we all know patriotism is for assholes, so you win again.