Trump's America, March 2017: Using His Inside VOICE

I'm not convinced there is a relationship between Trump and Russia with the instability of USA the goal, at least not on Trump's end; he's just not that savvy. But I do think there was a significant relationship between Russia and Trump Inc. - loans, business, Ukraine stuff via pals and surrogates - that he unfortunately carried with him into the White House, and which doesn't instantly vanish after surprise victory election day.

This remains key:

In 2008, Donald Trump Jr. said Trump's businesses "see a lot of money pouring in from Russia."
"And in terms of high-end product influx into the US, Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets; say in Dubai, and certainly with our project in SoHo and anywhere in New York. We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia. There's indeed a lot of money coming for new-builds and resale reflecting a trend in the Russian economy and, of course, the weak dollar versus the ruble," he said.

Again, this is all pre-White House, just run of the mill Russian cooperation/involvement/possibly corruption. But it all ported over with him into Washington, not least because he stupidly, loyally pulled all the dead weight schemers in with him. It might all be a coincidence. Russian meddling and Trump's above and below ground business ties, but that does not make it less sketchy or worthy of investigation.

I feel like again and again people are confusing "Trump voter" with "Trump supporter." The lunatics who spend all night tweeting about Pizzagate? Those people aren't changing their minds. But that's a very small portion of people who voted for Trump. Most Trump voters are like, well, most voters; they don't pay much attention to politics and have vague impressions of who people are and what they're like. A constant drumbeat of Trump is a crook, Trump is a crook, Trump is a crook DOES change those people's minds.

― Guayaquil (eephus!), Friday, March 3, 2017 10:29 AM (

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/01/us/politics/what-stood-out-to-you-in-president-trump-speech.html

Hillaryco did a great job defeating themselves

If your left leg is atrophied and somebody shoots you in the right leg, it's okay to cite both of them as contributing reasons that you lost a race.

gettin' fatigued by the 13 steps

3. Aggrieved former Clinton apparatchiks *connect the dots* in a manner eerily reminiscent of right-wing Glenn Beck-esque prognostication circa 2009....

6. Pointing out these glaring flaws in the latest anti-Russia frenzy is immediately construed by cynics as “defending Trump” or “defending Sessions” when it most assuredly is not. At least in my own case, it’s a defense of not getting enraptured by irrational hysterics to further short-term political aims....

https://medium.com/theyoungturks/the-basic-formula-for-every-shocking-russia-trump-revelation-e9ae390d9f05#.wtxmxywu6

Please say you're not adding Michael fucking Tracey to your Henwood/Greenwald aggregator feed.

Whatevs. I personally don't care whether it's connections to Russia, Rwanda, Romania, or, heck, rutabagas that takes some of these mousefuckers down. They can and should be assaulted on all fronts, all the time.

Oh, come the fuck on with that 'Glenn Beck-esque connecting the dots' comparison. People may be stretching but they aren't writing the names of Trump's cabinet on a blackboard and Will Shortzing them into sinister acronyms of acrostics.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/01/us/politics/what-stood-out-to-you-in-president-trump-speech.html

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

Which is not to say eephus is wrong - people react based on what they see.

Please say you're not adding Michael fucking Tracey

My advantage over you sportsfans is i don't know who these writers are.

There's desperation to find something that's objectively damaging to the Trump administration, and people latch onto anything right away because they want to stop him by any means for the more legitimate reasons (in which they feel their hands are tied).

A portion of it is also getting to hold them to the standards of evidence that they used against Clinton and Obama for years. Because there's always that "if even a iota of this were happening with the Obama administration republicans would would be going nuts" element that makes democrats resentful.

And even if each specific thing that comes out seems overblown by itself to whatever degree, when you step back you have to look at the smoke/fire thing. Conspiracy theories usually require MUCH flimsier reaching to get to a conclusion that's convenient for the opposition.

overblow everything, obstruct everything, investigate everything, only way to go imo

qualmsey's list <3

QUALMSLEY

otm

yeah, i don't object to that strategy

we'll still be royally fuct for 4 years of course

I get the reasoning and I certainly don't want to get my hopes up here but the difference between this and Benghazi or Emailgate or whatever is that Trump is such a singularly corrupt and dishonest figure, who flaunts his own ability to grift people and avoid paying taxes as something that "makes him smart". He had to settle a fraud suit shortly before entering office and is brazenly using his position for self-enrichment. Him and his staff have been revealed to have actually done practically every single thing they ever accused the Democrats of, and then some. His entire life philosophy seems to be "if you can get away with it, do it", which has paid off given how he's always proven to be above the law, no matter how fraudulent his enterprises are. The man deserves no benefit of the doubt whatsoever.

My advantage over you sportsfans is i don't know who these writers are.

Did you just use sportsfan as an insult, sportsfan?

I'm not convinced there is a relationship between Trump and Russia with the instability of USA the goal, at least not on Trump's end; he's just not that savvy. But I do think there was a significant relationship between Russia and Trump Inc. - loans, business, Ukraine stuff via pals and surrogates - that he unfortunately carried with him into the White House, and which doesn't instantly vanish after surprise victory election day.

again, the taxes are so key here too. as someone pointed out on the previous thread, it's hard to imagine that if there wasn't anything amiss about Trump's returns he would have made them public long ago because it would make a perfect burn to the media and Dems who are so adamant on seeing them.

so Boente apparently has the authority to appoint a special prosecutor - since no deputy AG has yet been approved by the Senate

seems unlikely but idk

have we been invaded yet

The attorney general got caught lying under oath about meeting with the Russian ambassador, he was going to be in charge of an investigation into meetings with Russians, and he initially wasn't going to recuse himself. This scandal was 100% rational, even with the most charitable interpretation of all the facts.

So shut the fuck up about Glenn Beck.

sorry I forgot

good mourning!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2017/03/03/in-leaked-document-the-case-for-trumps-muslim-ban-takes-another-huge-hit/?postshare=4171488559952243&tid=ss_tw&utm_term=.3d68bcd64e78

i just hope we don't get ahead of ourselves here. obama's white house had contact with the russians, too, you know

Yeah, but Obama didn't have decades of pre-presidential history with Russia, and Obama wasn't on record as saying nothing but flattering things about Russia and/or Putin, and Obama's cabinet wasn't comprised largely of people with ties to Russia or who had contact with Russia prior to his being elected. It's apples and orange people.

I think the issue here is that all such contacts with foreign governments be fully disclosed and official records kept of what was discussed, which has not been the case in this administration. Also, campaigns should not be cutting deals with foreign nations prior to taking office and if Congress asks you about stuff, you don't outright lie to them. Evade a bit maybe, but not just say no when the truthful answer is yes.

important to remember that these contacts all took place before Trump became president. That is the problem.

did rachel maddow really say "bull-pucky"?

could it be?

could it be that this is THE classic equivocating josh marshall post?

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/the-innocent-explanation

[1300+ words laying out his theory]

...Now, here are three problems I identify with this theory.

1. There are more than a few facts that are very weird and difficult to explain and what I've laid out here doesn't really provide a satisfying explanation. That's a big problem.

Y'all should read Osnos-Remnick-Yaffa's article on Russia in this week's New Yorker.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/03/06/trump-putin-and-the-new-cold-war

xxxpost That's part of the problem, but the bigger problem is the lying and the evading and the perjuring. So you met with the Russian ambassador, even prior to the election. So you do it on the record, and you admit to it when you're asked about it under oath, and you explain what you discussed. If you continue to act guilty, it's probably safe to assume that you're probably guilty even if we don't yet know exactly what you're guilty of.

And y'know...particularly wrt the current state of the swaggering, IDGAF GOP, this "Kislyak who now? Ohhhh him, well, I might have, like, said hello to him once or twice, I don't know, it's all so fuzzy" prevarication sticks out like a sore thumb.

A summary: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/the-innocent-explanation

A friend of mine is trying to get an aviators license and says Trump's visits and airspace restrictions every weekend is making it impossible

Trump is here visiting a Pine Hills school. Christ. They will not like him there lol

i can say, with a certain equivocation, that josh marshall may be onto something there. something big. but then again, we know that there is more information which could change things completely. but for now, we have to rely on the simplest explanation, which - and i'm not saying this is necessarily true - could explode into something either infinitely large or infinitesimally small, which of course has the same effect, depending on one's cosmological perspective.

In more mundane matters of Defense pork:

"The Ford is a poster child for how you don't build a ship," says Ray Mabus. He was former Secretary of the Navy during the Obama administration. "They were designing the Ford while they were building it -- not a good way to build a ship," Mabus says. "This is just a dumb way to build any type of ship, particularly something as big and complicated as a carrier." Started during the Bush administration, the Ford incorporated new technologies, including an electro-magnetic launch system to replace the traditional steam-powered catapult. "Not only did the price go through the roof, but the schedule just became terrible because there were so many new technologies, because it was so unproven and it wasn't completely designed," Mabus says....

The president*'s proposed increases in defense spending are pure examples of what Barney Frank used to call "military Keynesianism." He is more direct than usual at pitching the defense budget as an economic stimulus, and there already are rumors that he may fold the new defense spending into his long-awaited infrastructure improvement plan in order to inflate those numbers. Watch the trickeration unfold if this happens.

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a53576/trump-aircraft-carrier/

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/uss-gerald-r-ford-poster-child-for-how-you-dont-build-a-ship-says-former-navy-secretary/

If you continue to act guilty, it's probably safe to assume that you're probably guilty even if we don't yet know exactly what you're guilty of.

This is a bad theory in policing, don't know why it'd be better for politics.

and it didn't work for Barbra Streisand and Barry Gibb, recall.

What did they have to be guilty of?

dressing in white for an album sleeve

after Labor Day

Ha.

Well, put it in the context of my second point, re: the current general swagger of the GOP. Some fucker who will brazenly spearhead racist initiatives like the last 50 years never happened suddenly gets a case of the stammers wrt his discussions with a Russian ambassador and we shouldn't read that as a sign that something's fishy?

here's what the intellectual wing of conservativism is posting:

Betsy DeVos was subjected to widespread ridicule when she suggested that “potential grizzlies” were a reason that a Wyoming school might want to keep firearms on location. But the senator who asked her the question just found out why she thought such a contingency was possible.

On Tuesday, Connecticut, home to the asker of the question, Senator Chris Murphy, had two schools put into “secure school mode” after a bear was reported to be roaming the area. Democratic politicians, liberal pundits, and late-night comedians had a field day with DeVos for her contention that state and local authorities should have the latitude to set their own rules about school safety. Senator Murphy, a vociferous advocate of gun-control, used the opportunity to voice his opposition to the presence of guns in or around schools.

Happily, the bear moved away from the schools, which were opened later that day. A good ending to the story — for Chris Murphy most of all.

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/445474/betsy-devoss-grizzlies-comment-not-unfounded-chris-murphy-thought

Have we mentioned this piece of fun?

http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/03/why-the-alt-left-is-a-problem

Did you guys know that "Alt-Left" is a thing? And that Jill Stein, Oliver Stone, and Jacobin are all in the group together?

Shit, why didn't I get the invite? BRB, checking the recycling bin.

The Carter Page interview mentioned upthread really is amazing.

http://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/carter-page-i-don-t-deny-meeting-with-russian-ambassador-889043011736

"I may have met him possibly. It might have been in Cleveland”