[News] Trump, Russia, and the 2016 Election

All news related to Donald Trump's alleged ties to Russia and to the Russian interference in the 2016 Presidential election. New details should be cited to reputable sources.

TheGameguru wrote:
gewy wrote:
ClockworkHouse wrote:

They're looking at Trump’s 90% approval rating with Republicans and thinking that if they oppose him, they'll lose their seats in a primary. Better to try to take on a Democrat in a general election with that Republican base behind them, they think.

And they're entirely right, unfortunately.

As well we should all simply accept that the entire GOP and Conservative movement in now lock step in line with Trump. They think the same and act the same. There is no hidden GOP resistance that will somehow restore our country to its "balance". This is the new norm.

Trump may be bad to them, but Dems are worse. So what if Trump has possibly committed treason as long as the tax cuts stay in place and we don't move to Medicare for all then it's all worth it.

In the current events forum of the local paper, when it Trump supporters find it too hard to defend Trump, they just start screaming about baby killers.

Abortion is their secret weapon. I don’t think most of them actually care. They just know that evangelicals are the key to Trump power.

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/IsxoRB4.png)

ruhk wrote:

The only way we're free of Trump before 2021 is if there's another 2017 Woman's March-scale group event in DC with hundreds of thousands of people, and instead of motivational speeches from celebrities it culminates with everyone bum-rushing the White House.

South Korea provided the blueprint for that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016%E...

Jayhawker wrote:

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/IsxoRB4.png)

Reimbursed? How does he even think that works?

His brain can not comprehend the concepts of alliance, cooperation, and mutual benefit. Everything to him is a zero-sum game and a competition in which there is a winner and a loser.

He keeps complaining that other countries aren't contributing to NATO and then complaining when they do contribute (by ramping up domestic military spending) because he thinks contributing to NATO means giving the USA money.

We've got military bases around the world as part of maintaining our global hegemony, he wants other countries to pay us for them. We give foreign aid to countries that we want to develop and remain stable (and not coincidentally friendly to US interests) and he doesn't see the point. And so on.

BadKen wrote:

His brain can not comprehend the concepts of alliance, cooperation, and mutual benefit. Everything to him is a zero-sum game and a competition in which there is a winner and a loser.

You can apply this to everything he does. Money is his idea of victory points and he can't imagine that there are non-monetary benefits to anything. Which always ends up costing him more in the long run: he keeps stiffing people on his bills and losing the benefits of working with them in the future.

Well, that and deals: he often proposes deals that don't really change much but make it look like they negotiated. If you look at his renegotiation of NAFTA, attempts to deal with North Korea, and so on they're all along the same lines: lots of pomp, not much actual negotiation.

Every time he goes up against someone who is willing and able to call his bluff, he loses. Most people haven't been, because he's too rich, or he had too many lawyers, or he made it too difficult. He frequently miscalculates, of course: when he was building his Atlantic City casino he tried to shortchange the mob-connected electricians until they threatened to go in and rip the wiring out of the walls and he folded like the pair of deuces that he usually has.

Half the reason he won the election was that the established Democratic administration was trying to win the fight against the stubborn GOP mudslinging and was worried that they'd scream bloody murder if they tried to properly investigate his crimes. That's the other way he's gotten away with stuff so far: he's petty and ridiculous enough that everyone else has bigger problems to worry about. Up until now, he hasn't been enough of a problem: even in the slimy white-collar crime world of New York real estate, he's been the bottom of the barrel and not worth tangling with. Which made him sloppy, but everyone let him get away with it.

Trump has also gotten away with a lot through the same means that many people with wealth and connections have gotten away with criminal activity: by settling out of court, and making NDAs a term of the settlement. He's bought his way out of credible claims of a whole gamut of crimes and scandals.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

Trump has also gotten away with a lot through the same means that many people with wealth and connections have gotten away with criminal activity: by settling out of court, and making NDAs a term of the settlement. He's bought his way out of credible claims of a whole gamut of crimes and scandals.

But he even manages to f that up by not understanding what an NDA is or how it works, like if you talk about it, the NDA is nulled and they can to.

Manafort was sentenced to 73 months for conspiracy against the United States and conspiracy to obstruct justice. The judge ruled that 30 months of that sentence can be served concurrently with his tax and bank fraud jail time since they are related, but the rest has to be served consecutively. That means Manafort will spend seven and a half years in jail in total.

And a few minutes after Manafort was sentenced in DC, New York State prosecutors announced that they were charging him with 16 counts of residential mortgage fraud, conspiracy, and falsifying business records. These charges stem from a state investigation that was kicked off months before Mueller's investigation.

I read that this sentence was about as tough as this judge could make it. Some of the term could not be served sequentially because the previous sentence was passed in another jurisdiction. The previous sentence is the disgusting one.

In a just world the Virginia judge who said Manafort "lived an otherwise blameless life" should have to physically eat all the paperwork for Manafort's federal conspiracy and New York state's fraud charges on live TV and then resign.

OG_slinger wrote:

In a just world the Virginia judge who said Manafort "lived an otherwise blameless life" should have to physically eat all the paperwork for Manafort's federal conspiracy and New York state's fraud charges on live TV and then resign.

Sounds good to me!

It does raise an interesting notion though.

Manafort's currently at 7.5 years, which given his age and health, is approaching a life sentence.

So, let's say that I'm a grifter. I've been grifting my whole life, and I'm approaching my sixties. At this point, if I get caught on my grifts, I'm going to jail for the rest of my life. So f*ck it, I'mma start ratcheting up the scale of my grifts, as there's no additional penalty if I'm caught. I'm looking at a life sentence either way. Who's got any dictator's phone numbers?

The Feds still have some leverage outside of the sentence. They can choose how pissy to be about asset forfeiture and recovery; if you're nice your wife and kids get to keep a nicer house and some cash but if you piss them off they go after everything. Then they also get to decide where you go- play ball and you're raking sand traps at Club Fed, get on their nerves and you're making friends with the mother-stabbers and father-rapers in some desolate concrete hole in the ground in Colorado.

Jonman wrote:

It does raise an interesting notion though.

Manafort's currently at 7.5 years, which given his age and health, is approaching a life sentence.

So, let's say that I'm a grifter. I've been grifting my whole life, and I'm approaching my sixties. At this point, if I get caught on my grifts, I'm going to jail for the rest of my life. So f*ck it, I'mma start ratcheting up the scale of my grifts, as there's no additional penalty if I'm caught. I'm looking at a life sentence either way. Who's got any dictator's phone numbers?

Only the best grifters rise to the level of lifetime sentence. Only the best.

In COMPLETELY unrelated news the Manhattan DA has charged Manafort with 16 counts of felonies.

Overview

Residential Mortgage Fraud in the First Degree, a class B felony, 3 counts
Attempted Residential Mortgage Fraud in the First Degree, a class C felony, 1 count
Conspiracy in the Fourth Degree, a class E felony, 3 counts
Falsifying Business Records in the First Degree, a class E felony, 8 counts
Scheme to Defraud in the First Degree, a class E felony, 1 count

Sixteen! Sixteen counts!

Mwah-ah-ah!

Perhaps we should not be so quick to
assume that Manafort will
really be serving much time at all for his
degenerate behavior. Hopefully his
over-the-top greed will be justly punished, but I’m
not holding my breath.

Nomad wrote:

Perhaps we should not be so quick to
assume that Manafort will
really be serving much time at all for his
degenerate behavior. Hopefully his
over-the-top greed will be justly punished, but I’m
not holding my breath.

Are we all
now posting in
free verse?

I sure do hope that
We continue down this path
Prose good, poetry better.

Edited for the haiku slam dunk

It's not often you come across a good acrostic. That's because they go down.

Some people use
the mobile site
for Gamers with Jobs

I was listening to the NPR politics podcast, and apparently the house voted unanimously (420 - 0, with a couple of abstentions) to release the full text of the Muller report. The senate was blocked from even voting on it by Lindsey Graham because, he says, he first wants there to be a special investigation in - you guessed it - Hillary's emails. Talk about being unable to let go. How many investigations have there been so far?
NPR Link

Russians got something on Lindsey. He's been obvious for a while

Aren't we all a little curious why no one is talking about impeaching Hillary? /S

Stele wrote:

Russians got something on Lindsey. He's been obvious for a while

He's my senator. I've given up on contacting him after recent replies. But I'll be giving money and voting against him as soon as I can, although we kept Strom after he was clearly senile, so I don't have much hope.

MathGoddess wrote:
Stele wrote:

Russians got something on Lindsey. He's been obvious for a while

He's my senator. I've given up on contacting him after recent replies. But I'll be giving money and voting against him as soon as I can, although we kept Strom after he was clearly senile, so I don't have much hope.

Is there some sort of racist, evil aura built into that Senate seat? If not before, there is now.

That seat is actually one of the horcruxes of the Confederacy.

[quote="MathGoddess"]

Stele wrote:

Russians got something on Lindsey. He's been obvious for a while

I am inclined to point the finger at National Enquirer.