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The Trump-Russia Investigation Thread: Mueller Goes Terminator Edition

Reaction..

  • Huh?

    Votes: 2 6.3%
  • Seriously?

    Votes: 6 18.8%
  • ... are we in some crappy technothriller?

    Votes: 23 71.9%
  • WTF?

    Votes: 1 3.1%

  • Total voters
    32
Well, yes to the effect, but much of the US embraced it earlier than the election, since they didn't perceive what they thought was lost as having anything to do with hegemony (even though a big chunk of it was). The common historical trend for both political parties is that they externally sought US dominance abroad, but the Republican party suddenly discovered that a huge chunk of the population simply don't care about US hegemony, and most of them vote Republican and most of them vote Republican, to the party's own surprise.

It doesn't help that a lot of the political elite treated US hegemony treated as something like an axiomatic given, a natural state of affairs that required no tending to.
I'd say that the issue isn't US hegemony as an axiomatic given but more as a fundamental prerequisite for the political system. The deliberately bad education and strong economy works only with a vassalized world to feed upon by getting highly educated workers from it. The population doesn't care about US hegemony directly, but cares about its consequences as the hegemony is critical for the economy. Kinda like the Saudi economy depends on oil prices.
 
Though to be fair, that's probably more due the current hegemon's continued inability to actually do anything visibly effective about it. Regardless, going from a relatively-isolated country with myriads of problems slowly dragging itself out of broken state to apparently dictating world events, up to and including electing US presidents, is quite a step up for Russia.

Perhaps the Russian government should send Maddow a thank-you card for her hard work in rehabilitating Russia's image worldwide. #PCP
I wouldn't thank Maddow for anything. I think the secret of why Russia apparently "throws above its weight" and runs laps around the US in foreign policy and soft power is somewhere else. Just look at the Russian government: Medvedev has been with Putin since the very first day Putin became (acting) president. Lavrov had the same post since 2004. Shoigu has been a minister since 1991! So he also worked with Putin from the very start. Miller, current CEO of Gasprom, has worked with Putin since 1991. Novak has been in the government sice 2008. This is simply a very effective government made of people who can solve day-to-day problems of governing a large country because they know each other well and trust each other.
And now look at the mess that is Washington - utterly uninterested in actually improving the US, hunting approval ratings and lobbying money with idiotic policies 24/7, believing fairy tales of their own making and ignoring anything that doesn't fit into their worldview.
And now this:

Mueller report strengthens resolves on both sides of political spectrum - Reuters

Really? The one thing that was supposed to solve one of the worst crises of US government is about to make it even worse? Steiner's attack has failed, there's no more hope.
 
It might prevent some Luddites from scorning technology and printing out the freely available searchable pdfs on their own.

Yes, that is technology. Modern Luddites are not very bright.

Especially if they are willing to pay money for something they can get for free. The 7$ Kindle electronic version is especially ironic.
 
Paul Manafort is now in Federal Prison until Christmas 2024 (4/23/19)
Read a good chunk of it, seems pretty blatant.

That being said, impeaching Trump would be stupid, as the GOP tried that with Clinton and it just resulted in the Dems winning the house; lets not make the same mistake?
 
Read a good chunk of it, seems pretty blatant.

That being said, impeaching Trump would be stupid, as the GOP tried that with Clinton and it just resulted in the Dems winning the house; lets not make the same mistake?
Yeah, you wouldn't believe what other people said when I said the same thing, especially since Mitch will kill any impeachment proceedings. It seems that -politically- the SB-descended forums have a tendency to have plenty of realism (although, adamantly, SV has been going increasingly off the rails politically)...
 
That being said, impeaching Trump would be stupid, as the GOP tried that with Clinton and it just resulted in the Dems winning the house; lets not make the same mistake?
Yeah, you wouldn't believe what other people said when I said the same thing, especially since Mitch will kill any impeachment proceedings. It seems that -politically- the SB-descended forums have a tendency to have plenty of realism (although, adamantly, SV has been going increasingly off the rails politically)...
On the other hand, they could instead make it a bill with intent to impeach, namely to authorize full impeachment proceedings. Mitch would absolutely refuse to let it come to a vote, and that would be a springboard onto a 2020 campaign strategy.

Basically, every Republican has been enabling illegal actions for the last four years, and doing everything they can to protect a criminal. Without going full impeachment they can get the GOP to line themselves up right behind Trumpie and show that they cannot be trusted. General elections are already based overwhelmingly on the presidential nominee, but once they force their hand and demonstrate that they will go to any lengths to conspire with a criminal they just might be able to finally break their own spine and hand over the election.
 
On the other hand, they could instead make it a bill with intent to impeach, namely to authorize full impeachment proceedings. Mitch would absolutely refuse to let it come to a vote, and that would be a springboard onto a 2020 campaign strategy.
That is... probable but the fact of the matter is that it might backfire as well. You have to look at this from the perspective of Go and not chess...
 
No. I am Cossack, everything is chess.
Which is the wrong mentality for this.

Also, in other news:

__________________
Recently, there was a sentencing memo filed in the Maria Butina case. https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/5972875/4-19-19-US-Sentencing-Memo-Butina.pdf

It lays out some of what the government's position on her is. There's some interesting analysis here from Andrew S. Weis.
__________________
In current news, Trump is now just publicly ordering people who don't even work at the White House anymore to just blow off Congresional supoenas: https://www.washingtonpost.com/poli...r-security-clearances/?utm_term=.e80ea665eb85
Former White House personnel security director Carl Kline was subpoenaed to appear on Tuesday for questioning by the House Oversight Committee. However, the White House has issued a letter to Kline ordering him not to show up. Kline's attorney has written to Oversight Chair Elijah Cummings to say that Kline will follow the order from Trump and refuse to appear. Cummings issued a subpoena for Kline to appear earlier in April after ongoing reports that the Trump White House had regularly ignored the recommendations of security experts and extended top-secret security clearances to members of Trump's staff—including his son-in-law, Jared Kushner—despite their known risks and repeated failures to disclose conflicts.
Kline's attorney wrote that he was declining to appear because he had instructions from "two masters from two equal branches of government" and that Kline would "follow the instructions of the one that employs him." There are at least two big issues with that. First, Kline no longer works at the White House. Second, the subpoena from Congress was a subpoena, not a request. There is no such thing as an executive un-poena—nothing that Trump or anyone on his staff can say or do has any legal bearing on Kline's duty to appear in response to a congressional subpoena.

But not only is there a big problem with Kline's reaction, but there's an equal issue with the way the Post is reporting the story. The headline for the article indicates "White House instructs official to ignore Democratic subpoena." Except this isn't a "Democratic subpoena." There is no such thing as a Democratic subpoena. This is a lawfully issued Congressional subpoena on a matter of national security. By reducing this to a political squabble, the Post report isn't just playing into the idea that this is a tit-for-tat battle between political parties—it's overlooking a genuine threat to the nation.

Cummings is apparently not just accepting this:
Sam Stein‏Verified account @samstein
Cummings on Kline defying the subpoena: "I intend to consult with House Counsel and Committee Members about scheduling a vote on contempt."
 
Which is the wrong mentality for this.
Prove it.

Chess won the 2016 election for Russia. They undermined and exploited the US system. In return there was nothing but some worthless sanctions, and now more nations find Russia to be a better known quantity and more trustworthy than the US.

I would rely on the methodology that has already been proven to win than to try and switch the rules of the game and hoping that my side can learn the new rules faster than the other side.
 
Prove it.

Chess won the 2016 election for Russia. They undermined and exploited the US system. In return there was nothing but some worthless sanctions, and now more nations find Russia to be a better known quantity and more trustworthy than the US.

I would rely on the methodology that has already been proven to win than to try and switch the rules of the game and hoping that my side can learn the new rules faster than the other side.
Actually, if you actually look at what we know so far, Putin's play on the 2016 election is more of a game of Go than a game of Chess. He expended very little resources (pieces) to gain as much ground as he had...
 
You guys won't get very far with metaphors here. No matter what game you use, the match isn't over yet.
 
Well, yes to the effect, but much of the US embraced it earlier than the election, since they didn't perceive what they thought was lost as having anything to do with hegemony (even though a big chunk of it was). The common historical trend for both political parties is that they externally sought US dominance abroad, but the Republican party suddenly discovered that a huge chunk of the population simply don't care about US hegemony, and most of them vote Republican and most of them vote Republican, to the party's own surprise.

It doesn't help that a lot of the political elite treated US hegemony treated as something like an axiomatic given, a natural state of affairs that required no tending to.
They could have kept it going had they'd not done ALL of the following

Hollow out our industrial base and ship it to Mexico, China and everywhere else

Allow unlimited numbers of unskilled immigrants to compete for the leftovers

Begin the process of hollowing out the service sector as much as possible, shipping those to India

Allow massive numbers of H1B1 immigrants to take as many high skilled and highly educated jobs as possible, so that Disney and Google can pay even less to their workers, while firing the American ones they already have

All with increased automation, up to and including cashier and cleaning jobs, some of which I honestly think should be outright illegal

Allow and even encourage Chinese IP theft, willfully engage with obscene tech transfer demands fo China

Allow and encourage permanent warping of the costs to go to College for Americans, up to and including vast amounts of funny money fuled foreign students, jacking up the cost to insane amounts

Allow and encourage "foreign investment" to distort a brutally damaged housing market

Allow and even force the development of ridiculous housing suburban projects, instead of smaller, but definitely affordable housing, and allow for certain assholes to buy up trailer lots to jack up the price of living without improving anything

The Bush Tax Cuts and the debt they produced, which produced significant inflation, further cutting the bottom out of the standard of living and resulting in longterm real wage decreases, and extreme concetrations of power and wealth upwards

The Republicans and Democrats both participated in this, and that list specifically is what has wrecked the White Working and Middle class, but it did severe damage to the Black Working and Middle class as well, but for them? The War on Drugs, mostly the war on pot, coincided just as Blacks were enjoying more enforced civil rights and were getting more opportunities, and the increased competition for Working and Middle class jobs kneecapped them.

If you were to eliminate half of that, or just say, eliminate the Bush Tax Cuts and all of the shipping industry outside of North America part, an enormous amount of people simply wouldn't care. Eliminate or severely curtail the housing crisis, and force a ratio of affordability and heavily restrict practices that were large scale loansharking, and politics wouldn't have gotten half as so vitriolic.

But it was all of it, at once. Maybe they didn't notice that it wasn't foreign adventures that brought the USSR down, but the internal economic situation. Had they managed some sort of economic reform and kept to it from the 60s on out, the Cold War might still be going on.

As far as the "Muh Russia" stuff? I have seen it, and its no wonder I never noticed anything. Nothing they were posting or producing was anything that wasn't already being said, everywhere. So it was literally nothing. Like five extra guys at Woodstock selling weed and LSD. Yeah, might be CIA, but its hard to tell with thousands of others doing the same fucking shit

Prove it.
Chess won the 2016 election for Russia. They undermined and exploited the US system.
Russia did nothing of note, said nothing that wasn't already being said, its like Al Qaeda claiming credit for all the deaths of a Typhoon. Everybody was already pissed about everything, and Hillary looked to be on deaths door half the time. Could Bernie have won? Maybe if Bloomberg had ran like he threatened to if it was Trump vs Bernie. But Trump getting elected was pure spite, the kind of long simmering spite that was building up before Putin ever came to power.
 
ROSENSTEIN IS RESIGNING MAY 11!!!!!
NEW: Deputy AG Rosenstein's says he will resign May 11.
[IMG]


Either Rosenstein found some balls and spine, or he's getting out of the blast zone given the last paragraph and sentence...
 
"We enforce the law without fear or favor"

*IRS trashing as many computers as they can to cover their tracks regarding explicit persecution of political dissidents*
Yall gonna, um, arrest anybody for destruction of evidence? Or anything?
*Operation Fast and Furious in its total fucking entirety*
Yall gonna, do anything?
*Broward Country drops a thousand balls, hires cowards*
*No Knock Raids resulting in murders and unneccesary deaths*
*Pill Mills operating at a limitless rate, but it mainly affects the rural white population*

The best thing about the Obama Administration was exposing how much of a joke that claim of political neutrality was.
 
Surprising no one, Mueller wasn’t happy with Barr’s letter 4/30/19
Surprising no one, Mueller wasn't happy with Barr's letter:

Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel, wrote a letter in late March to Attorney General William P. Barr objecting to his early description of the Russia investigation's conclusions that appeared to clear President Trump on possible obstruction of justice, according to the Justice Department and three people with direct knowledge of the communication between the two men.

[...]

"The special counsel emphasized that nothing in the attorney general's March 24 letter was inaccurate or misleading," a Justice Department spokeswoman, Kerri Kupec, said in response to a request for comment made on Tuesday afternoon. "But he expressed frustration over the lack of context and the resulting media coverage regarding the special counsel's obstruction analysis."

Source:
Mueller Objected to Barr's Description of Russia Investigation's Findings
 
It's been pointed out on SB that Barr lied to congress about having gotten no feedback about his letter from Mueller, as this was received well before that testimony.
Hence surprising no one at all.
 
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