The Presidency of Donald J. Trump: No smocking guns. - Page 4365 - Politics and Economics

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The Presidency of Donald J. Trump: No smocking guns.

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07-14-2018 , 09:48 PM

#109101

synth_floyd

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Join Date: Sep 2005 Posts: 7,074

Trump got a scalp reduction surgery, supposedly. Looks like Elon just got a hair transplant. Though it is a really good one, compared to say, Daniel Negraneau's.

07-14-2018 , 09:52 PM

#109102

m_reed05

Carpal \'Tunnel

Join Date: Oct 2006 Posts: 8,611

Quote:

Originally Posted by wheatrich

to get this thread back on track

Lisa Page met with congress in private and Republicans were positive about it.

Ruh roh?

My guess is they want to avoid another public hearing like the last.

07-14-2018 , 09:53 PM

#109103

David Sklansky

Administrator

Join Date: Aug 2002 Posts: 17,096

Quote:

Originally Posted by ScreaminAsian

it was strange. but my read is that they're already hitting the topic hard on strozk and they don't need to look like they're beating up on a woman to make the same point especially at a time when the republican party is coming off very anti-woman

you'd think if they really got something they wouldn't say stuff like

"There is significant new info she has provided," Meadows said, adding that he wouldn't discuss details unless transcripts of the interviews were released.

Like Strzok, Page said the political views she had expressed in anti-Donald Trump text messages did not affect her work at the FBI, lawmakers from both parties said.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/13/polit...ors/index.html

so like, what could she have provided, really? and i'm sure if they did get something big out of her hannity would have been hyping it that night

Maybe William Congreve should weigh in.

07-14-2018 , 09:58 PM

#109104

ecriture d'adulte

Pooh-Bah

Join Date: Jan 2017 Posts: 5,924

Quote:

Originally Posted by m_reed05

My guess is they want to avoid another public hearing like the last.

Yeah. Closed doors and just saying it went great is better than publicly looking like jagoffs.

07-14-2018 , 10:08 PM

#109105

ScreaminAsian

For President

Join Date: Oct 2008 Posts: 33,333

https://twitter.com/JimCarrey/status...12644086411264

i thought this was trey gowdy as a half mantis half long island iced tea but i guess it's just a mantis in a chair

07-14-2018 , 10:15 PM

#109106

dth123451

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Join Date: Jul 2012 Posts: 15,502

LOL, anything remotely beneficial to the GOP would have been on FNC instantaneously

These ****ing people

07-14-2018 , 10:36 PM

#109107

m_reed05

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Join Date: Oct 2006 Posts: 8,611

Quote:

Originally Posted by ecriture d'adulte

Yeah. Closed doors and just saying it went great is better than publicly looking like jagoffs.

And they can release and twist only the parts they want and it's much harder to effectively rebut.

07-14-2018 , 10:37 PM

#109108

fatkid

Carpal \'Tunnel

Join Date: Nov 2011 Posts: 8,860

Gowdys nose in that drawing is the exact size and shape of my cock n balls.

07-15-2018 , 12:51 AM

#109109

Lestat

Carpal \'Tunnel

Join Date: Mar 2005 Posts: 10,998

Quote:

Originally Posted by StimAbuser

I think we should adopt the " Hey Donald Trump, Oh Ah, I wanna knoooow why you're such a **** " chant here in the US. It's catchy. There are way too many problems with Trump for our chant to simply focus on one of them. We need an all encompassing chant, and **** just about sums it up.

I dunno how Americans would react to the word though. Showed my like 70 year old mom the chant and she absolutely loved it.

+1

I never realized how far the US has fallen behind the rest of the world when it comes to effective jeering. I can't wait for the opportunity when I get to work in calling someone a wankmaggot.

07-15-2018 , 01:40 AM

#109110

Huehuecoyotl

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Join Date: Sep 2009 Posts: 29,257

Hummmm.....

07-15-2018 , 01:50 AM

#109111

markksman

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Join Date: Oct 2007 Posts: 20,921

House GOP has started to lay ground work for impeachment.

Spoiler:

07-15-2018 , 04:46 AM

#109112

epcfast

veteran

Join Date: Feb 2009 Posts: 2,535

The highest level of special

07-15-2018 , 06:06 AM

#109113

champstark

aka starkwired

Join Date: Feb 2006 Posts: 14,838

????

07-15-2018 , 06:10 AM

#109114

True North

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Join Date: Jul 2006 Posts: 23,703

Quote:

Originally Posted by ScreaminAsian

https://twitter.com/PressSec/status/1018246498658775042

https://twitter.com/michelleisawolf/...10749280702470

07-15-2018 , 06:30 AM

#109115

Our House

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Join Date: Sep 2005 Posts: 28,109

Quote:

Originally Posted by Huehuecoyotl

Hummmm.....

Yeah, saw that Twitter thread last night. It's definitely interesting to look back at events occurring at the time whenever we get new information confirmed. Aside from the Trump campaign's strategy being altered based on what Russia knew (and how Russia would understand effectively using the information they acquired without help), Trump also started receiving intelligence briefings in the summer of 2016.

Although it doesn't seem like Friday's indictments were huge news because of the way Rosenstein laid it out for the public in a non-partisan way focusing on things largely known already, and because we're always waiting for the announcement of Americans involved, they absolutely were. Knowing the analytics of the opposing team is a game changer. Politico puts it nicely in this article:

Mueller indictment sheds new light on Russia’s ‘nasty’ secret election hacking units

Quote:

The operatives from two units within Russia’s GRU military intelligence agency meddled in the election through an elaborate series of coordinated high-tech influence operations, and by using a global network of anonymous servers, bitcoin purchasers and other unwitting cutouts to cover the digital tracks, according to the indictment.

And, according to the 14-page charging document, the Russians deeply infiltrated two key Democratic Party organizations and key aspects of Democrat Hillary Clinton’s campaign—watching their every move via real-time digital surveillance until just weeks before the election.

That kind of extraordinary capability allowed the Russians “to virtually look over the shoulders of Democratic campaign staffers in real time throughout most of the 2016 campaign,” said Ed McAndrew, a former federal cybercrime prosecutor and Justice Department lawyer. He attributed the “extremely high level of sophistication of the Russian GRU hackers” to their ability to combine sophisticated social engineering techniques and custom-designed malware with more simple spearphishing techniques used to obtain passwords of more than 300 unsuspecting victims from the Democratic party.

...

One of them, Unit 26165, meticulously hacked and stole the information, while the other, 74455, set up the elaborate infrastructure around the world that was used to disseminate the material and make it look like a series of unrelated incidents.

...

By April 2016, the GRU operatives hacked and stole more than 50,000 emails from Clinton campaign Chairman John Podesta and other campaign officials. Then they released them at strategically opportune times, the indictment said, through various cutouts and websites they set up and operated with fictitious personas, including Americans.

By capturing the keystrokes and computer activities of their victims, they also captured communications about fundraising, voter outreach projects, data about the DCCC’s finances, personal banking information and even files about Clinton’s Achilles Heel, the Benghazi investigations. They also accessed third-party cloud-computing services to obtain politically valuable data about the DNC’s analytics, the indictment said.

And both units covered their tracks so meticulously through an elaborate series of countersurveillance measures that they secretly remained inside the Democrats’ systems until October 2016, the indictment said, despite the efforts of a top U.S. cybersecurity firm to flush them out that began five months earlier.

It was a whole lot more sophisticated than just grabbing emails and putting them on WikiLeaks, doing some social media stuff, or "all countries interfere with each other's politics, and have been forever." This is also just the beginning of Mueller closing out the obstruction phase and getting into the collusion phase.

As pointed out, the timing is significant with the Putin summit coming up tomorrow. Part of the investigation includes how Trump and others react to learning what the special counsel has and what the public knows about that. Not that Trump is ever going to approach Putin the way Obama or any real POTUS seriously concerned about American interests would.

Mueller is obviously working methodically from the outside in, starting with random Russians, then Russian officials, then any random Americans, then any American officials, and finally/hopefully Trump's inner circle and Trump himself. If there is smoking gun evidence of collusion and even vote tampering, there's no doubt they would be holding that info back until towards the end. I personally believe this is the case. But to do things the other way around is compromising to the investigation and the safety of people involved, for many reasons.

07-15-2018 , 06:37 AM

#109116

Our House

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Quote:

Originally Posted by markksman

House GOP has started to lay ground work for impeachment.

Spoiler:

Jordan and Meadows are leading the charge. They initiated it in response to the indictments, right? I wonder how they can justify going after Russian military hackers as a bad thing for the country.

The same goes for Trump's statement. How on Earth is holding anti-American, Russian criminals accountable an attack against him? How did we get here?

07-15-2018 , 06:45 AM

#109117

Csaba

veteran

Join Date: Jan 2009 Posts: 3,131

How have the protests in Britain been portrayed across the pond on the various news networks?

I saw a brief clip of a smug Sean Hannity interviewing people at the protest. Presumably, he picked the biggest idiots that couldn't express themselves particularly well to interview.

Last edited by Csaba; 07-15-2018 at 06:50 AM. Reason: typo

07-15-2018 , 07:43 AM

#109118

SuperUberBob

Not interesting enough

Join Date: Feb 2006 Posts: 48,217

Quote:

Originally Posted by Csaba

I saw a brief clip of a smug Sean Hannity interviewing people at the protest. Presumably, he picked the biggest idiots that couldn't express themselves particularly well to interview.

Unsurprising. They're the only types of people his viewers can understand.

07-15-2018 , 08:12 AM

#109119

SJCX

adept

Join Date: Aug 2006 Posts: 989

The Lawfare Podcast has some good stuff on the latest indictments

07-15-2018 , 08:52 AM

#109120

Max Cut

Guest

Posts: n/a

Lie-lac eye shadow.

07-15-2018 , 09:00 AM

#109121

Huehuecoyotl

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Join Date: Sep 2009 Posts: 29,257

Quote:

Originally Posted by Csaba

For any non-Brits that aren't aware Robinson was jailed for being in contempt of court on multiple occasions. He was broadcasting live on on Facebook about a trial that had a blanket ban on reporting imposed on it until after the trial had finished. His behaviour ran the risk of causing a trial to collapse so sending him to prison was entirely proportional to the offences that he committed.

If anyone had any doubt about Bannon

07-15-2018 , 09:19 AM

#109122

Huehuecoyotl

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Join Date: Sep 2009 Posts: 29,257

On Musk, Flint, and America

Quote:

It seems more fitting that Musk would be able to enact his desire to rescue desperate people in America. We’re a nation that perhaps uniquely relies on infusions of cash from strangers to meet our basic needs. Americans without health insurance, or health insurance inadequate to meet their medical expenses, routinely turn to crowdfunding sites to appeal for cash. Between 2010 and 2016, $930 million was raised on GoFundMe.com for*medical campaigns*— nearly half the entire amount raised on the site during that period. In the wealthiest country in the world, hundreds of thousands of citizens hope for haphazard, unpredictable public philanthropy*to provide them with*blood,*breath, and*water.

...

In this context, the concept of a big-hearted celebrity publicly stepping in where the government has failed seems almost ordinary. There’s a rich seam of tradition when it comes to the wealthy laundering their mixed reputations via good deeds in this country — from Andrew Carnegie papering over his bloody union-busting past with a spate of sponsored libraries, to prodigiously corrupt political operative*Boss Tweed*distracting New Yorkers by handing out extra coal and Thanksgiving turkeys. Musk’s gesture to help Flint suits his flair for spectacle; it typifies his attitude toward public action, providing a direct gift to both an adoring public and media outlets, who rushed to cover the statement. Jeff Bezos, the famously*parsimonious*founder of Amazon, tried out a more muted version of direct-to-consumer philanthropy when he asked for Twitter’s input last year in how to direct his vast fortune toward*the public good.*His request received nearly*60,000 comments, which boosted everything from tech education for women to voter-registration drives to multiple requests for universal healthcare.

But a society run on the benevolence of celebrities — or even the earnest helpfulness of strangers on the Internet — is a society in a state of permanent precariousness. The distribution of public goodwill is an economy not of labor but of attention. Personal fundraisers are ubiquitous on social — for rent, for debt, for hospital stays. A scroll through GoFundMe’s*page*for leukemia fundraisers*is a heart-wrenching endeavor: hundreds of children in hospital gowns, women with shadowed eyes and patchy hair, men holding dogs and smiling wanly, seeking thousands of dollars from strangers.

https://www.villagevoice.com/2018/07...ebrity-savior/

07-15-2018 , 11:04 AM

#109123

markksman

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Join Date: Oct 2007 Posts: 20,921

Quote:

Originally Posted by Our House

Well they were on the floor with it when the indictments came down. A mentally sane person would see the indictments and say “Whoah, we are going to look historically bad if we impeach him right now.” But of course... the freedom caucus will have its legacy.

It is nuts that they, Trump and Trump supporters continue to beat this drum that Trump is the real victim in this hostile attack by a foreign government all the while never addressing or doing anything about the hostile attack?

“Those Iranian hostages were taken under Carter. So sorry dudes.” Without getting bogged down in partisanship of past acts and actions how on earth are people accepting that we just ignore this obvious attack by Russia.