JetRx wrote:

"Smoking gun"? More like another god damned "Nothing burger".

What's this hard-on for Russia? We should be getting along.  I don't buy, for one minute, the fake news being spewed: undermining and vilifying all things Russian...or anyone wanting better relations. 

Spent two years in and out of the Russian Far East.  Encountered people who were no more fucked up than Britts, Chinese, Aussies, Filipinos, Thais, Japs Indians, (maybe not the Japs), Italians, Frogs or any fucking body else I've met traipsing the planet.

Around these parts, Ukrainians who are the thieving & poaching bastards...not the Old Believers (Russian descendants). 

Russians are proud people and rightfully proud of their country. They called bullshit on the globalists.  The EU has been co-opted...fuck 'em.

Oh, I think the list of criminal offenses is growing by the day. And I'm clearly not the only one who thinks so. I believe it is a matter of when, not if, Trump's presidency ends because of linkages with the Russian government--a government which has clearly attempted, with at least some success, to use its relationship with Trump to completely derail the nation's foreign policy positions.

Lawyer: Kushner ‘has no recollection’ of reported undisclosed Russian contacts



Top presidential adviser Jared Kushner’s legal team pushed back Friday night against a report that the White House senior adviser and Trump son-in-law had at least three undisclosed contacts with a Russian ambassador during and after the 2016 presidential campaign, saying he had “no recollection” of the alleged exchanges.

"Mr. Kushner participated in thousands of calls in this time period. He has no recollection of the calls as described,” Kushner’s lawyer Jamie Gorelick told POLITICO in a statement, responding to a Reuters report about Kushner's contacts with Russian ambassador to the U.S. Sergey Kislyak.

“We have asked (Reuters) for the dates of such alleged calls so we may look into it and respond, but we have not received such information," Gorelick added.

But Kushner's legal team was silent about other reports that President Donald Trump's son-in-law sought to establish a secret line of communications with the Kremlin. The White House did not respond to requests for comment on the reports.

According to Reuters, Kushner held at least two phone calls between April and November of last year with Kislyak, who’s represented Russian President Vladimir Putin in Washington since 2008.

In a separate report, the Washington Post reported Kushner sought to establish secret communications with the Kremlin during a transition meeting with Kislyak. Per the Post, Kislyak said he talked to Kushner about installing secure lines between the Trump transition and Russian officials at foreign facilities to avoid conversations being monitored.

The New York Times reported that the purpose of the channel was to allow then-national security adviser Michael Flynn to communicate directly with Moscow about Syria and other security issues. The lines were never set up, the Times reported. Flynn, who is under investigation, was dismissed in February amid reports that he lied to Vice President Mike Pence about the extent of his contacts with Kislyak.

An array of former intelligence and national security officials reacted with astonishment to the report, stressing the seriousness of Kushner’s reported actions.

"Hard to fully convey the gravity of this,” said Susan Hennessey, a national security fellow at the Brookings Institution and a former lawyer for the National Security Agency, of the Washington Post report. “Unthinkable Kushner could stay in the White House,” she added.

"GOOD GRIEF. This is serious," Bob Deitz, an NSA and Central Intelligence Agency veteran who worked in both Clinton and Bush administrations, told Business Insider of the attempt to establish secretive Russian communications. "This is a big problem for the President."
worldly.jpg

The Democratic National Committee called on President Donald Trump to "immediately fire" Kushner.

"Trump has no choice but to immediately fire Kushner, whose failure to report this episode on his security clearance is reason enough for a criminal investigation," the DNC said in a statement.

The committee also questioned to what extent Trump was aware of Kushner's attempts to establish direct channels with Russia.

"The next question is whether the president authorized this, because no one stands between Trump and Kushner in the chain of command," they said.

Hennessey, echoing the DNC, also questioned to what degree the president may have been aware of Kushner’s reported actions.

“The most significant question seems to be whether Trump was aware of and/or directed Jared and Flynn's contacts w/ Kisylak,” she said.

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/05/2 … cts-238877

DOJ Threatens Immigration Rights Lawyers, Demands They Drop Their Clients

The Trump administration tries a scary new tactic to keep lawyers from aiding immigrants.

If you can’t beat ’em, bully them with “cease and desist” letters and trumped-up disciplinary accusations. That’s apparently the new motto down at the Department of Justice, where the government is lashing out at the immigration rights attorneys who stymied the administration’s efforts to implement their travel ban. And it’s not just non-profit groups (though those are the first lawyers getting hit); the clever, if diabolical, argument the DOJ has cooked up could be launched to shut down Biglaw attorneys working pro bono matters next. They may have stumbled out of the gate, but this Justice Department came to play hardball, folks.

...

http://abovethelaw.com/2017/05/doj-thre … r-clients/

JetRx wrote:

"Smoking gun"? More like another god damned "Nothing burger".

What's this hard-on for Russia? We should be getting along.  I don't buy, for one minute, the fake news being spewed: undermining and vilifying all things Russian...or anyone wanting better relations. 

Spent two years in and out of the Russian Far East.  Encountered people who were no more fucked up than Britts, Chinese, Aussies, Filipinos, Thais, Japs Indians, (maybe not the Japs), Italians, Frogs or any fucking body else I've met traipsing the planet.

Around these parts, Ukrainians who are the thieving & poaching bastards...not the Old Believers (Russian descendants). 

Russians are proud people and rightfully proud of their country. They called bullshit on the globalists.  The EU has been co-opted...fuck 'em.

Dude it's about lifting the sanctions and the bait is ultra cheap loans from the Russian Development Bank for Donald and his cohort.

But it's not really about Russia - any country, no matter how friendly, that you deal with the same rules apply and you kinda hafta follow those rules.  It's that whole loyalty and fealty to the country you serve thing.

Thanks Capt. Orange:  Europe to re-arm.

JetRx wrote:

"Smoking gun"? More like another god damned "Nothing burger".

What's this hard-on for Russia? We should be getting along.

This dude, this.

Trump ‘gaining weight’ and ‘emotionally withdrawing’ as Russia probe swamps White House: report

"...Commenting on the White House’s less-than-strategic handling of all matters Russia, another ally remarked, “These guys don’t play chess. They play checkers.”"

http://www.rawstory.com/2017/05/trump-g … se-report/

Go ahead and click it, you know you want to.


Also:  https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/201 … itter-post

Auto-edited on 2020-08-02 to update URLs

Last edited by Emmeran (2017-05-31 07:36:56)

http://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz … o-cljjryff

Follow the money

Last edited by Emmeran (2017-06-06 07:15:00)

Trump's problem, of course, is that the longer Obama is out of office, the more difficult it will be to continue to take credit for Obama's successes, because there won't be any new ones. At some point Trump will feel some pressure to actually accomplish something, other than causing firestorms with his tweets.

BREAKING: Trump’s Saudi Arms Deal Is Actually Fake



Remember President Trump’s big, triumphant arms deal in Saudi Arabia? It turns out it didn’t really happen. It was Trump’s own fake news, a feat of supply chain vertical integration and more importantly for the MAGA agenda repatriating jobs from Russia. In all seriousness, at the end of the day it didn’t happen. There are no contracts or sales. At all.

So how could this be? The story comes from Bruce Riedel, a longtime CIA and national security official, now at Brookings. The Potemkin deal turns out to be remarkably similar to the Trump jobs announcements we’ve grown accustomed to. Trump takes a bunch of jobs or investments which either already exist or have already been announced and rebrands them as new economic growth driven by Trump Power. In this he usually has a compliant and complicit CEO, happy to go along with the charade to curry favor with the US President.

Here’s what Riedel discovered …

    I’ve spoken to contacts in the defense business and on the Hill, and all of them say the same thing: There is no $110 billion deal. Instead, there are a bunch of letters of interest or intent, but not contracts. Many are offers that the defense industry thinks the Saudis will be interested in someday. So far nothing has been notified to the Senate for review. The Defense Security Cooperation Agency, the arms sales wing of the Pentagon, calls them “intended sales.” None of the deals identified so far are new, all began in the Obama administration.

As I said, this turns out to be remarkably similar.  The $110 price tag advertised by the Trump White House includes no actual contracts, no actual sales. Instead it is made up of a bundle of letters of intent, statements of interest and agreements to think about it. In other words, rather than a contract, it’s more like a wishlist: an itemized list of things the Saudis might be interested in if the price of oil ever recovers, if they start more wars and things the US would like to sell the Saudis.

Here’s one illustrative example from Riedel …

    An example is a proposal for sale of four frigates (called multi-mission surface combatant vessels) to the Royal Saudi navy. This proposal was first reported by the State Department in 2015. No contract has followed. The type of frigate is a derivative of a vessel that the U.S. Navy uses but the derivative doesn’t actually exist yet. Another piece is the Terminal High Altitude Air Defense system (THAAD) which was recently deployed in South Korea. The Saudis have expressed interest in the system for several years but no contracts have been finalized. Obama approved the sale in principle at a summit at Camp David in 2015. Also on the wish list are 150 Black Hawk helicopters. Again, this is old news repackaged. What the Saudis and the administration did is put together a notional package of the Saudi wish list of possible deals and portray that as a deal. Even then the numbers don’t add up. It’s fake news.

As I said, it’s remarkably like the Trump-branded phony job announcements: earlier plans, themselves not committed to, rebranded as new decisions, with the Saudis happy to go along with the charade to curry favor with the President who loves whoever showers praise on him.

Let’s note for the record that the underlying reality here isn’t necessarily bad news. It’s quite debatable whether we should be selling massive amounts of new arms to Saudi Arabia. But we should know whether or not it happened.

What actually strikes me about this is not so much the Trump Team’s deception. That’s really expected at this point. What’s remarkable is that we’re only finding out about this, not from a news organization or reporter, but from a national security hand who did his own poking around. This isn’t a secret conversation or classified project. When you make a deal with a price tag over $100 billion it creates a trail. Why didn’t reporters on the national security beat figure this out?

That’s a good question I’m very curious to see an answer to. But I’m not saying those reporters are lazy or necessarily goofed, though perhaps they did both. Remember, the Trump team has gone to great lengths to limit what were once considered routine elements of press access. This doesn’t mean it’s impossible to figure these things out. But it may be considerably harder. Also important, there may be a slow uptake issue, a failure to adjust expectations to a properly Trumpian frame. If the President announces a major news arms sale to a foreign autocracy, do you assume it’s false until you see the contracts? It would seem the answer to that is likely “yes.”

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/bre … ually-fake

Smudge wrote:

Trump's problem, of course, is that the longer Obama is out of office, the more difficult it will be to continue to take credit for Obama's successes, because there won't be any new ones. At some point Trump will feel some pressure to actually accomplish something, other than causing firestorms with his tweets.

BREAKING: Trump’s Saudi Arms Deal Is Actually Fake

https://dawm7kda6y2v0.cloudfront.net/up … 2a62fd.jpg

Remember President Trump’s big, triumphant arms deal in Saudi Arabia? It turns out it didn’t really happen. It was Trump’s own fake news, a feat of supply chain vertical integration and more importantly for the MAGA agenda repatriating jobs from Russia. In all seriousness, at the end of the day it didn’t happen. There are no contracts or sales. At all.

So how could this be? The story comes from Bruce Riedel, a longtime CIA and national security official, now at Brookings. The Potemkin deal turns out to be remarkably similar to the Trump jobs announcements we’ve grown accustomed to. Trump takes a bunch of jobs or investments which either already exist or have already been announced and rebrands them as new economic growth driven by Trump Power. In this he usually has a compliant and complicit CEO, happy to go along with the charade to curry favor with the US President.

Here’s what Riedel discovered …

    I’ve spoken to contacts in the defense business and on the Hill, and all of them say the same thing: There is no $110 billion deal. Instead, there are a bunch of letters of interest or intent, but not contracts. Many are offers that the defense industry thinks the Saudis will be interested in someday. So far nothing has been notified to the Senate for review. The Defense Security Cooperation Agency, the arms sales wing of the Pentagon, calls them “intended sales.” None of the deals identified so far are new, all began in the Obama administration.

As I said, this turns out to be remarkably similar.  The $110 price tag advertised by the Trump White House includes no actual contracts, no actual sales. Instead it is made up of a bundle of letters of intent, statements of interest and agreements to think about it. In other words, rather than a contract, it’s more like a wishlist: an itemized list of things the Saudis might be interested in if the price of oil ever recovers, if they start more wars and things the US would like to sell the Saudis.

Here’s one illustrative example from Riedel …

    An example is a proposal for sale of four frigates (called multi-mission surface combatant vessels) to the Royal Saudi navy. This proposal was first reported by the State Department in 2015. No contract has followed. The type of frigate is a derivative of a vessel that the U.S. Navy uses but the derivative doesn’t actually exist yet. Another piece is the Terminal High Altitude Air Defense system (THAAD) which was recently deployed in South Korea. The Saudis have expressed interest in the system for several years but no contracts have been finalized. Obama approved the sale in principle at a summit at Camp David in 2015. Also on the wish list are 150 Black Hawk helicopters. Again, this is old news repackaged. What the Saudis and the administration did is put together a notional package of the Saudi wish list of possible deals and portray that as a deal. Even then the numbers don’t add up. It’s fake news.

As I said, it’s remarkably like the Trump-branded phony job announcements: earlier plans, themselves not committed to, rebranded as new decisions, with the Saudis happy to go along with the charade to curry favor with the President who loves whoever showers praise on him.

Let’s note for the record that the underlying reality here isn’t necessarily bad news. It’s quite debatable whether we should be selling massive amounts of new arms to Saudi Arabia. But we should know whether or not it happened.

What actually strikes me about this is not so much the Trump Team’s deception. That’s really expected at this point. What’s remarkable is that we’re only finding out about this, not from a news organization or reporter, but from a national security hand who did his own poking around. This isn’t a secret conversation or classified project. When you make a deal with a price tag over $100 billion it creates a trail. Why didn’t reporters on the national security beat figure this out?

That’s a good question I’m very curious to see an answer to. But I’m not saying those reporters are lazy or necessarily goofed, though perhaps they did both. Remember, the Trump team has gone to great lengths to limit what were once considered routine elements of press access. This doesn’t mean it’s impossible to figure these things out. But it may be considerably harder. Also important, there may be a slow uptake issue, a failure to adjust expectations to a properly Trumpian frame. If the President announces a major news arms sale to a foreign autocracy, do you assume it’s false until you see the contracts? It would seem the answer to that is likely “yes.”

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/bre … ually-fake

That Trump was unaware they were about to cut off Qatar says a lot.

Last edited by Emmeran (2017-06-06 12:34:02)

Emmeran wrote:

Choosing sides in an intra-religion war is still a bad idea

Exactly.

And it's especially ridiculous that we back the faction which has shown a propensity to attack us repeatedly. Just another journey down Trump's rabbit hole.

Emmeran wrote:

Fact:  If you get involved in a family feud both sides will turn against you.

Agreed.

When we do that, we present them with the only thing they can agree on!

President Trump Orders the Execution of Five Turkeys Pardoned by Obama



http://realnewsrightnow.com/2017/01/pre … ned-obama/

Last edited by Mugwump (2017-06-18 09:55:21)

choad wrote:

Meet the new bosses...

Of course, bankers know how to cut out the middle men.

Russia gives Trump a helping hand

Emmeran wrote:

Pivot to war, his orangeness seeks a ratings boost.

This has been my greatest fear since he won election. That he would spiral down into complete ineffectiveness (you didn't have to be particularly astute to see that coming), would find himself frustrated by the limitations inherent in the job, and would gravitate to the one area where he had pretty much unilateral, unquestioned control -- for a time at least -- military excursions.

I'm afraid that in his desperation Trump will get us into something that we may spend years, or decades even trying to extract ourselves from.

This would be right in line with his actions up to this point which involve making every mistake that W made, only with much greater intensity, and much more quickly.

We had all better hope not.

Emmeran wrote:

Well we can't even think about continuing this conversation until you admit that was a GREAT bomb, maybe the best bomb ever.

,,it was yuge!!....even bigger than Obama's.....?

FoxNews wrote:

But we are compelled to pay attention to the president’s social media misconduct not only because it demands decent people to declare it unacceptable, but because in a very real way, the president is robbing the people who voted for him.

Smudge wrote:

Surprising only because my expectations from that source of so remarkably low.

Actually, you could do a study of the photo's they've used of him over the last 18 months, pictures are worth a thousand words.  Now Fox is portraying him as a raving lunatic - it's really quite funny.

The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to the most devious and mediocre. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron[, bleeding from his whatever].

Henry Mencken, Baltimore Evening Sun, July 26, 1920

Auto-edited on 2020-08-02 to update URLs

Smudge wrote:

choad wrote:

The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to the most devious and mediocre. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron[, bleeding from his whatever].

https://cruelery.com/sidepic/henrymencken.png

Henry Mencken, Baltimore Evening Sun, July 26, 1920

Oh, boy; credit where it's due. He sure called it.

On the bright side, it did take us almost 100 years to get there.  I would be very interested to see who voted for Trump as opposed to who voted against Clinton.  I still think Middle America took one look at Billary and said, "nope", because the same jackasses dancing with delight over Trump were crying their eyes out over Romney.

Auto-edited on 2020-08-02 to update URLs

Yeah we did meet with the Russians...but it was about the orphans; the poor, sad little orphans