Impeach the MotherF%@KER!

[airdvr 197]

2 hours ago, JoeWeber said:

airdvr is a creature of conservative memes. Notice how he never answers directly when confronted. 

Seriously, airdvr, when the article starts off with a mob association reference like "two large men" does your radar not start blinking? You wrote: "It's a long read but in my mind these guys are dirty". Did you even read the long read or just think it was cool and posted it like the FB nonsense?

Of course there's no evidence.  And yes I did read it all.  If you can't see the connections...  And I'm not talking just HB now.  While we take D and R sides we're all getting fucked.  Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.

[JoeWeber 2,297]

5 minutes ago, airdvr said:

Of course there's no evidence.  And yes I did read it all.  If you can't see the connections...  And I'm not talking just HB now.  While we take D and R sides we're all getting fucked.  Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.

Q?

[gowlerk 1,906]

28 minutes ago, airdvr said:

Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.

Vlad?

[RonD1120 58]

7 hours ago, JoeWeber said:

Q?

Q is purported to be a team of ten, seven military and 3 civilians.

Your love of other countries balanced with your hatred of American capitalism makes me wonder why you choose to live here and not elsewhere.

There is a lady here in north GA from New Zealand. She is a staunch socialist and actually sought psychiatric help when HRC lost and DT won. Her neighbor, a friend of mine and retired USSF, asked her why she is living here and not in NZ. Her reply was that she could not make any money in NZ.

I suspect your reason for living here is much the same.

[wmw999 2,120]

Ron, I live in the US because I'm an American, and this is where my family, and my family's property is. I see a lot of problems with unfettered capitalism, in that it feeds economic bullying, and it conflates personal worth with financial worth. 

And I still don't see where Q has gotten any predictions right; they (or he, or she) seem only to serve to get people to feel as though they are part of a movement, one with an opponent. It might be easier to get people to do something if they have an opponent, but it's not as strengthening.

You don't build your strength by making others weaker.

Wendy P.

[JoeWeber 2,297]

1 hour ago, RonD1120 said:

Q is purported to be a team of ten, seven military and 3 civilians.

Your love of other countries balanced with your hatred of American capitalism makes me wonder why you choose to live here and not elsewhere.

There is a lady here in north GA from New Zealand. She is a staunch socialist and actually sought psychiatric help when HRC lost and DT won. Her neighbor, a friend of mine and retired USSF, asked her why she is living here and not in NZ. Her reply was that she could not make any money in NZ.

I suspect your reason for living here is much the same.

Aren't you precious? You tucked yourself away in upper back woods Georgia decades ago to escape America and you have the unmitigated gall and audacity to question my desire to live here? And it's not like you're getting your affairs in order to return to the fold. Nope, you spend your days ringing your hands over the horrid dissipation of American society, praying for Jesus, Q or, for all I know, Rip Van Winkle to swoop in to save the day all while stock piling hat tin foil on your 40 acre hidey hole somewhere back in the sticks even further away from America. 

How does knowing that I enjoy travel, meeting people from other cultures and am fully convinced that understanding, as best I am able, those who share our planet give you the idea that I hate capitalism? Trust me, I love capitalism; it's been good to me. That, to be blunt is why when those who either have put no thought into the problem or don't own a pot to piss in or a window to toss it out of start discussing taxing the rich I'm inclined to request a little non-subjective clarity.

I simply believe, and don't drop your ammo, that the best way to protect it's benefits is to include a certain fundamental fairness into a system that has always operated in shades of grey. For you, to put it mildly, everything is Black or White.

 

 

 

 

[normiss 622]

Heather Cox Richardson

 

November 26, 2019 (Tuesday)

The wrap up of today should start with tonight, with Trump’s 1:26 minute “rally” in Broward, Florida. It was his usual rant against the media, impeachment, socialism, and so on, but there was an interesting new interlude when the president talked about health issues. He said he had always thought Florida Governor Ron DeSantis was heavy, but when he saw the governor without his shirt on (which almost certainly never happened), he saw that DeSantis was actually strong.

Then he launched into some “Sir” stories—“Sir” is his tell that he is about to tell a whopper—about how after his surprise visit to Walter Reed hospital on November 18 one White House guard after another asked him “Sir, are you all right?” because they had heard he had a massive heart attack, an idea he ridiculed. Since Trump is a master at spewing whatever is uppermost in his mind, it seems likely that his hospital visit was due to something that made him think he was having a heart attack, and that the doctors told him at least that he was overweight. (Since then, by the way, it has been notable how empty his schedule has been.) For a rally in which he boasted of his health, Trump was in bad shape tonight, slurring his words so badly that “stock market” came out “slock rocket.”

The president is under tremendous pressure, with more details of the Ukraine scandal emerging daily. Today Trump denied that he had directed Giuliani to try to find dirt on Biden by working with Ukrainians, despite much evidence to the contrary, including Trump’s own comment to Ukraine president Zelensky on the infamous call of July 25 that he should talk to Giuliani about investigating the Bidens. An association with Giuliiani has become a liability, and Trump does not like liabilities, especially now that the scandal is becoming clearer.

Today we also learned that the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) withheld aid money from Ukraine on July 25, the day of the infamous phone call between Trump and the new Ukraine president, Volodymyr Zelensky a fact which sure suggests that military assistance hinged on Trump getting the public statement he wanted of Ukraine‘s investigation of Hunter Biden and that the connection was crystal clear to Zelensky. We also learned that two members of the OMB resigned in protest of the withholding of aid, and we also got more confirmation that Trump knew of the whistleblower complaint when he released the money.

Altogether, the stories seemed to solidify the narrative that Trump withheld money Congress had appropriated to help Ukraine fight off attacks from Russia, intending to pressure newly elected Ukraine President Zelensky into making a public announcement that his government was opening an investigation into the company on whose board Joe Biden’s son sat. Such an announcement would’ve tanked Biden’s candidacy, much as the constant stories about Hillary Clinton’s emails tanked hers in 2016.

We really already knew all this. The lines are just getting filled in.

But why should we care about the story at all? Yesterday, Fox media personality and strong Trump supporter Tucker Carlson said on his show: “Why do I care what is going on in the conflict between Ukraine and Russia? I'm serious. Why shouldn’t I root for Russia? Which by the way I am.”

Carlson’s declaration was extraordinary. Aside from anything else, Americans care about Ukraine because what is happening there is a proxy war between oligarchy and democracy.

Ukraine was part of the USSR until it fell apart in 1991. After that, Ukraine remained under the sway of the Russian oligarchs who rose to replace the region’s communist leaders monopolizing formerly publicly held industries as those industries were privatized. American journalist Paul Klebnikov, the chief editor of Forbes in Russia, was murdered in 2004 trying to call attention to what the oligarchs were doing.

In that same year, a Russian-backed politician, Viktor Yanukovych, appeared to be elected president of Ukraine. But Yanukovych was rumored to have ties to organized crime, and the election was so full of fraud—including the poisoning of a key rival who wanted to break ties with Russia and align Ukraine with Europe—the government voided the election and called for a do-over. Yanukovych needed a makeover fast, and for that he called on a political consultant with a reputation for making unsavory characters palatable to the media: Paul Manafort.

Yeah, that Paul Manafort, the man the Trump campaign called in to resurrect Trump’s floundering campaign in June 2016.

For ten years, from 2004-2014, Manafort worked for Yanukovych and his party, trying to make what the US State Department called a party of “mobsters and oligarchs” look legitimate. He made a fortune thanks to his new friends. In 2010, Yanukovych finally won the presidency on a platform of rejecting NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization through which Europe joined together to oppose first the USSR, and then the rising threat of Russia. Immediately, Yanukovych turned Ukraine toward Russia. In 2014, after months of popular protests, Ukrainians ousted Yanukovych from power in what is known as the Revolution of Dignity. He fled to Russia.

Shortly after Yanukovych’s ouster, Russia invaded Ukraine’s Crimea and annexed it, prompting the United States and the European Union to impose economic sanctions on Russia itself and also on specific Russian businesses and oligarchs, prohibiting them from doing business in United States territories. These sanctions have crippled Russia and frozen the assets of key Russian oligarchs, including Russian president Vladimir Putin.

Now without his main source of income, Manafort owed about $17 million to allies of Yanukovych and Putin. His longtime friend and business partner Roger Stone was advising the presidential campaign of Donald Trump, and Manafort was happy to step in to help. He did not take a salary. He began as an advisor in March 2016, and became the campaign chairman in late June, after the June 9 meeting between Don Jr., Jared Kushner, and Manafort with a number of people, including a Russian lawyer associated with Putin’s intelligence services (that is, a spy). Remember that Trump tried to explain away that meeting as being about “adoptions,” because the Russian response to sanctions was to shut down American adoptions of Russian children.

Manafort had to step back in August 2016, after a Ukrainian member of parliament and journalist revealed a secret ledger from Yanukovych’s headquarters detailing illegal secret payments to members of his inner circle, including Manafort (who was later convicted of tax evasion on some of that money). Manafort officially left the campaign, although documents have since shown that he continued to advise the campaign unofficially. This is the origin of the “black ledger” story, and Trump’s insistence that Ukrainians had it in for his campaign. As David Holmes testified before the House Intelligence Committee last week, this ledger is indeed believed to be legitimate.

Desperate to get the sanctions lifted, Putin helped get Trump elected, and since then American policy has swung his way. Trump has attacked NATO and the European Union, weakened our ties to our traditional European allies, ceded Syria to Putin, worked to get rid of Russian sanctions, and threatened to withdraw our support for Ukraine. It sure looks like American democracy is a great deal weaker than it was before Trump took office.

Putin’s corrupt oligarchy, in which a few rich men carve up their country and any other countries they can grab to pocket huge amounts of money, is fighting Ukraine because its people want a democracy based in the rule of law.

Until Trump became president, America was firmly on the side of democracy in Ukraine. Now, not so much.

And that is why the Ukraine scandal is so very important, and why the public announcement of a major Republican media figure that he sides with Russia was chilling.

[normiss 622]

I'm sure some here will TLDR that whole detailed explanation, and that will be a continued contributing factor to the end of our democracy.

Some will even celebrate it.

I'm curious when our next civil war starts at this point.

Meanwhile, Russia takes over Europe, mostly by force, fully supported by America.

I used to be enthralled reading books that would tell similar stories, now that we are facing the real possibility, not so much.

 

[wmw999 2,120]

A problem with capitalists looking at an oligarchy is that so many think that in the "land of opportunity" (that being capitalism), they, too, can become oligarchs. Of course, they, too, can win the lottery.

Wendy P.

Edited November 27, 2019 by wmw999

[DJL 232]

3 hours ago, wmw999 said:

A problem with capitalists looking at an oligarchy is that so many think that in the "land of opportunity" (that being capitalism), they, too, can become oligarchs. Of course, they, too, can win the lottery.

Wendy P.

I saw an interview with a guy buying a lottery ticket when the number was getting huge and the reporter asked "What do you think the odds are of you winning this lottery, you know they're astronomical, right?"  He says back, "Yeah, but it's still better odds than me making that by hanging sheet rock."

Edited November 27, 2019 by DJL

[mbohu 77]

3 hours ago, wmw999 said:

A problem with capitalists looking at an oligarchy is that so many think that in the "land of opportunity" (that being capitalism), they, too, can become oligarchs

We are all temporarily inconvenienced billionaires.

[yobnoc 142]

11 hours ago, normiss said:

 For a rally in which he boasted of his health, Trump was in bad shape tonight, slurring his words so badly that “stock market” came out “slock rocket.”

 

Cue Ron to explain that "Slock Rocket" is a super duper secret Q message to the great awakening folks in WOOGAWOOGAWEEGA land.

[Coreece 190]

14 hours ago, normiss said:

the end of our democracy

our next civil war

Russia takes over Europe

Those sound like red tier headlines:

 

 

[normiss 622]

18 minutes ago, Coreece said:

Those sound like red tier headlines:

 

 

Ignoring Putin's threat of nuclear weapons surrounding the US would tell me you could be colorblind.

Pull your head out, pay attention, research the details and refuse the news at face value.

If you can't see it at that point, there is no hope.

#ThanksObiWan

[turtlespeed 212]

On 11/8/2019 at 8:24 AM, wolfriverjoe said:

And yet the folks who went absolutely ballistic about the Clinton Foundation's "misdeeds" (none of which were proven true) are...

Silent.

Question - 

Did they decide to not fight it anymore, or did they actually have a verdict handed down to them?

In either case - Clintons, or Trumps?

[jakee 1,254]

53 minutes ago, turtlespeed said:

Question - 

Did they decide to not fight it anymore, or did they actually have a verdict handed down to them?

In either case - Clintons, or Trumps?

What do you mean "in either case"? How could there be a verdict against the Clinton Foundation? There is no case against the Clinton Foundation. Next time you go on some rant about bias, consider that you're so anti-Clinton that you thought there was.

 

In the case of the Trump foundation, yes they had a verdict handed down - the charity was dissolved by court order.

[SkyDekker 1,121]

1 hour ago, jakee said:

What do you mean "in either case"? How could there be a verdict against the Clinton Foundation? There is no case against the Clinton Foundation. Next time you go on some rant about bias, consider that you're so anti-Clinton that you thought there was.

 

In the case of the Trump foundation, yes they had a verdict handed down - the charity was dissolved by court order.

And the kids banned from running a charity.

This also finely indicates the news sources Turtle uses. If the Clinton Foundation has been found guilty of something, or even charged with anything, he would have been posting the "finer details" about that here. In this case he wasn't even aware, because his right wing echo chambers did not carry this story.

[turtlespeed 212]

5 hours ago, SkyDekker said:

And the kids banned from running a charity.

This also finely indicates the news sources Turtle uses. If the Clinton Foundation has been found guilty of something, or even charged with anything, he would have been posting the "finer details" about that here. In this case he wasn't even aware, because his right wing echo chambers did not carry this story.

I wasnt the one that compared the clintons to trump - and used their "misdeeds" as a comparison.

[billvon 2,396]

11 hours ago, turtlespeed said:

Question - 

Did they decide to not fight it anymore, or did they actually have a verdict handed down to them?

In either case - Clintons, or Trumps?

Nope.  In the case of the Clintons, there wasn't even enough for an indictment.

[yoink 321]

Full house impeachment report (300 pages) available to read or download here:

 

https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/03/politics/trump-impeachment-report-doc/index.html 

[ryoder 1,381]

2 hours ago, yoink said:

Full house impeachment report (300 pages) available to read or download here:

 

https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/03/politics/trump-impeachment-report-doc/index.html 

I'm looking forward to the 4-page William Barr summary stating that it fully exonerates Trump.

[wolfriverjoe 1,340]

Well, the Rs released a report that claims that there were no impeachable offenses.
Really.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-impeachment-inquiry/read-full-text-republican-report-impeachment-inquiry-n1094576

One of the funniest things I've heard is how detailed the phone records are.

They basically have records of all the calls that were made between Trump and all of his minions.

One call that is conspicuously absent is the one Trump claims he had with Sondland. The ones Trump had his own handwritten transcript for.
No record at all that the call ever took place.
Somehow, not terribly surprising.

[yoink 321]

34 minutes ago, ryoder said:

I'm looking forward to the 4-page William Barr summary stating that it fully exonerates Trump.

The Republicans are already calling it ‘unpatriotic’. Although I’m not sure what that has to do with the law...

[GeorgiaDon 340]

On 12/3/2019 at 7:28 PM, yoink said:

The Republicans are already calling it ‘unpatriotic’. Although I’m not sure what that has to do with the law...

It is consistent with the new Republican Party platform though.  That platform being, Trump is King, and whatever is in Trump's personal interest is by definition in the national interest.  On the other hand, any criticism of Trump, or any disagreement with his brain-dead policies, is by definition unpatriotic and even treasonous.

I recall the days when the Republican party at least pretended to have principles and policies.  That party is dead if not buried.  Now it is a personality cult.  I'm quite certain that Trump could walk into Congress, shoot Schiff and Pelosi in the head in front of all the members of the House and Senate, and not one Republican would speak a word of criticism.

Don

[jakee 1,254]

That’s the stupidest part of the Republican’s intellectually bankrupt defence that all of the witnesses against him must be ‘never-trumpers’ Who can therefore be ignored no matter what the content of their evidence. The biggest ‘never-trumpers’ who actually made their feelings known during the primaries became full blown Trump acolytes in the house and senate as soon as the votes were in. The only principle they’re actually interested in is power.