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Post History:
lk2fireone (0)
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| 601-650 of 3618 Posts | < Previous Page | 1 | 2 | 4 | 6 | 8 | 12 | Page 13 | 14 | 23 | 32 | 41 | 50 | 59 | 72 | 73 | Next Page > |
| 09-10-18 03:23am - 2297 days | Original Post - #1 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User  Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Yesterday's (Sunday, 2018-09-09) telecast of the 92nd Miss America competition (it's no longer called the Miss America pageant) was the end of Miss America. Not only did they eliminate the swimsuit competition, where the beauties used to parade in bikinis to show their lovely bodies, but they dropped the evening gown portion, and the contestants can now wear whatever they choose. And there is more talk from the contestants: instead of revealing their bodies, they now reveal their minds and accomplishments. An attempt to make the competition more aligned with the modern woman: a sexless, power-driven competitor of the modern man. Soon, porn itself will be re-made into the digital world, where 0s and 1s will be replace flesh and blood performers with the excitement of computers. Not only has Miss America been destroyed, but the new winner is black: an attack on Donald Trump's Moral Majority of the White American. Shame on Miss America, for destroying a hallowed tradition. Supporters of President Trump will take to the streets in rage over this insult to White Women everywhere. ------ ------ Miss America 2019: And the winner is... TV Line Andy Swift Sep 9th 2018 11:57PM With several outdated portions now distant memories, the 92nd Miss America competition crowned a new winner on Sunday in a two-hour parade of pumps, performances and (gasp!) pantsuits. As previously mentioned, Sunday’s telecast introduced several “groundbreaking” changes into the competition: Not only were the contestants no longer judged by their appearances in swimsuits, but the traditional “evening gown” portion was also replaced with an invitation for the women to express themselves in a style of their choosing. Per a statement from the organization, these changes were implemented to help each contestant “highlight her achievements and goals in life, and how she will use her talents, passion and ambition to perform the job of Miss America.” This year’s judges included boxer Laila Ali, radio host (and frequent American Idol guest) Bobby Bones, music producer (and formerAmerican Idol judge) Randy Jackson, reality star Jessie James Decker, journalist Soledad O’Brien, podcaster Alli Webb and musician Carnie Wilson. The ceremony was co-hosted by Dancing With the Star’s Carrie Ann Inaba and Celebrity Big Brother’s Ross Mathews. The final five contestants — Nia Franklin (New York), Holli Conway (Louisiana), Gabriela Taveras (Massachusetts), Taylor Tyson (Florida), Bridget Oei (Connecticut) — faced a variety of inquiries from the judges, ranging from softball questions (“How has being from New York prepared you for this competition?”) to much more complicated ones (“What would you say to a man who doesn’t want to father his own child?”). It wasn’t exactly fair, but hey, neither is life. After the final commercial break, Miss America 2018 Cara Mund took the stage to pass the torch crown to her successor: New York’s Nia Franklin! (Connecticut’s Bridget Oei nabbed the title of first runner-up.) | |
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| 09-09-18 09:11pm - 2297 days | #1075 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
CONTINUED: One way to tackle this dichotomy is to go back to fundamentals regarding a Russia that lives through a prism of real, perceived . . . and contrived . . . existential threats. When wondering what drives the Russians to their seemingly counterintuitive and even self-defeating xenophobic behaviors, we must remember to review their geography, history and demography from which flow the nature of their regime and resultant social system and economy. Today’s resource-rich Russia, with its relatively small, western-weighted population, is set within a gigantic eleven-time zone Eurasian landmass that was mostly cut from the hide of nations and civilizations by former Czarist and Soviet rulers over the past five hundred years or so. As such, Russia has immensely long terrestrial borders . . . think of them as exposed flanks . . . with the melting Arctic widening into a northern flank as well. Its approximately 145 million citizens are about 40 percent of the population of the United States (320 million), one-third of the European Union (500 million) and about one-ninth of China (1.3 billion). China’s ground border with Russia alone runs over 2,300 miles, and while not an issue today, much of Moscow’s Far East was annexed from a weak Qing dynasty in the mid-1800s. This demographic imbalance between Russia and China is starkly apparent in the Russian Far East and Siberia, and as domestic Chinese natural resources inexorably diminish could be a major factor in the years ahead. Again, to remind, Russia—in part due to its own imperial and Soviet expansion—has throughout its millennia of history been at war along its borders with massive loss of life. She barely survived several bouts of near annihilation including the Mongols from which some Russians organically still retain a visceral phobia of the East. Bookending this medieval horror, within the lifetime of today’s older grandparents, came the merciless Nazis from the West, from whom a staggering twenty million to twenty-six million Soviets perished. These factors clearly play in how the Russian people view external threats and how the regime leverages these perceptions to help mobilize the population. They should not, however, be used, or accepted as a pretext for aggressive revisionist actions. Challenges regarding its smaller population and sanctions hobbled finances mean that Russia is hard-pressed to field in peace-time a one-million active duty military force. Additionally, over 30 percent of its personnel consist of difficult to manage one-year conscripts. This main force competes with robust security services and an approximately 250,000-strong National Guard. While a considerable force, Russia’s vastness, and widespread military commitments in places like Syria, Eastern Ukraine, Transnistria, Armenia, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan rapidly diffuse it’s standing force, requiring major mobilization and training exercises such as this year’s Vostok-18 that will entail rapid shunting of forces across Russia’s colossal Eurasian landmass. This is a major reason Russia regularly drills as it does for potential war in a nationwide effort and why so much emphasis is put on territorial mobilization and defense. All these factors reveal why it was absolute prudent, transactional foreign policy for China and Russia to resolve the border disputes that plagued their relations. While vulnerable to potential future problems including an increasing resource imbalance especially with oil and natural gas, both nations have bigger fish to fry, whether Russia’s issues to the west and south, and in China’s case, in the southeast Pacific, and with India to a lesser extent. Both needed calm borders and a more insulated trading relationship such as their massive $400 billion natural gas deal signed in 2014. Making increased military interaction more attractive is also the shared perception that the United States and its allies are squarely blocking their more autocratic aspirations and directly threatening their regimes. Neither have major allies or are part of a well-organized security alliance as is NATO. They are loath about being internationally isolated or contained, which explains why both, even while pursuing different agenda, are usually lockstep with each other on major security issues in the UN and other international fora. Therefore, U.S. and allied policy regarding both Russia and China should continue to be strong and predictable focused on the specific issues that both challenge and benefit relations. Allies must be firmly defended and partners supported. Legal international boundaries and protocols must be respected and if need be enforced. What we should not do, however, is default toward treating both nuclear-tipped Russia and China as a conjoined threat thereby creating a future potential “self-fulfilling prophecy” where they could—especially if they perceive being isolated—temporally ally in some type of powerful, transactional pact. We should watch and learn from these military exercises, assure allies and partners, but not overreact to their actions and rhetoric nor appear to try to drive a wedge between them. The wedges are already there, those of the vast regions history, geography demography and resources which will inevitably play out in the generations ahead. Brig. Gen. (retired) Peter Zwack writes from the Institute for National Security Studies within the National Defense University. He served as the United States Senior Defense Official and Attaché to Russia during contentious 2012-2014. Dating back to 1997, 2000 and 2012 he has traveled extensively throughout Eastern Siberia and the Russian Far East. These are his personal views and perspectives. | |
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| 09-09-18 09:09pm - 2297 days | #1074 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Russia and China are having large military exercises together. But Trump wants to cancel US exercises with South Korea because they are a provocation to North Korea. Go figure. Is Trump a Russian agent, working to undermine US influence in Asia? Or just a military moron, who doesn't understand the power of the military (he avoided the Vietnam War by successive draft deferments). ----- ----- Russia and China’s Growing Military Interaction; Surprised? The National Interest Peter Zwack,The National Interest 3 hours ago Peter Zwack Security, Eurasia Why does Russia place such emphasis and media attention on incredibly large military exercises with China? Russia and China’s Growing Military Interaction; Surprised? The drums are already rolling for the upcoming Russian “Vostok” (east) wargames commencing on September 11. With its focal point in the Trans-Baikal region of eastern Siberia adjoining Chinese Manchuria and Mongolia, this is a nationwide Russian military and societal event. Touted by Russian minister of defense Sergei Shoigu as “unprecedented in scale, both in terms of area of operations and numbers of military command structure, troops, and forces involved,” Russian state press is declaring that up to three hundred thousand troops and one thousand aircraft will be involved, with the majority from the Eastern and Central Military Districts. This would be even larger than the near-legendary Zapad-81 maneuvers held in the western USSR during the depths of the Cold War. Announcements about this type of event are not new to me. I’ve been to several of them. In July 2014, just before I departed Moscow as the U.S. defense attaché to Russia, news began to buzz concerning the upcoming Vostok 2014 wargames in the Far East. It was a tense time. Heralding new gray zone applications of so-called hybrid war, Ukraine’s Crimea had just been illegally annexed by Russia and battles raged between unattributed Russian regulars and beleaguered Ukrainian defenders across eastern Ukraine. At that time the upcoming Asian exercise was also billed as Russia’s largest military exercise since Soviet times, though its declared numbers turned out lower than proclaimed. One important wrinkle this year is that reportedly up to 3,200 Chinese personal with ninety vehicles, including tanks and thirty fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters, will participate. Most are coming from China’s Northern Command. This will be the first time the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) will take part in this formerly purely Russian quadrennial Asia-oriented exercise. The bulk of participating Chinese personal have already transited from Manchuria into Russia, escorted by Russian military police to the Tsugol training range near Chita. The Mongolians have also sent a small contingent. “From such it’s quite evident that the trajectory of Chinese-Russian relations have certainly improved since I encountered in 1997 a former Soviet T-54 tank gunner in Spassk, an old garrison town north of Vladivostok located on the eastern shore of sizable Lake Khanka. Besotted with vodka drunk from coffee cups in a gritty railway bar, the gnarled veteran spoke of the fierce Ussuri River border clashes in 1969 near Khabarovsk where he claimed his tank destroyed several Chinese vehicles – three men in his company also died. Other citizens in a familiar refrain complained of a major cross-border influx of Chinese traders and settlers, illegal Chinese logging, illicit fishing in Lake Khanka’s fresh waters where both nations share a common aquatic border, and poaching of the region’s revered Siberian Tigers. Despite local concerns of this nature, this was a period of improving diplomatic relations between the two nations, with China on a slow upward trajectory after the bloody Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989 and Boris Yeltsin’s diminished Russia still struggling to regain its footing after the USSR’s break-up in 1991.” It is important to note that Russia has no territorial claims in Asia. Rather, she is a status quo power in the Far East. With substantially fewer conventional forces along the Sino-Russian border than the Cold War, she is essentially in a strategic defensive posture. Her nuclear deterrent is her regional guarantor while a sophisticated anti-access, aerial denial network centered on the nuclear ballistic missile submarine bastion in and around the Sea of Okhotsk makes attacking the overall region a thorny proposition. Russia’s burgeoning “strategic partner” Beijing, however, is distinctly revisionist in its behavior in Asia and the Pacific, much as Russia aggressively conducts its business in the West. A key generational question is how Russia manages the rising, resource-hungry hegemon that is looming China—one that has far-reaching aspirations throughout Asia, including its announced Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) that runs in part though former Soviet Central Asian regions. China, the only “great power” with a seemingly long-term national vision, has also declared its interest in a Polar Silk Road as well. The Russia-China military relationship continues to evolve and is a logical progression following deepening political and economic ties. Pragmaticallym the Amur-Ussuri territorial disputes were diplomatically resolved in 2004–5, enabling enhanced military cooperation though long-term generational issues remain. While Chinese-Russian military activities have in the past been mostly symbolic and representational, they appear increasingly interactive. The PLA, not blooded since its brusque 1979 defeat by Vietnam, likely hopes to learn from Russia’s newly gained fighting expertise derived since 2014 in eastern Ukraine and Syria. What is key to determine is if their interaction evolves more ominously into interoperability exercises where substantial and varied forces can operate in tandem and jointly in coordinated operations. Dating back to 2005, Russia and China have exercised modest forces together in a mostly “counterterrorist” role in Central Asia and in Russia as part of the Chinese-driven Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). Notably, SCO Exercise Peace Mission 2018, involving China, Russia and six other nations, including newly added India and Pakistan, is currently underway in Chelyabinsk (just east of the Ural Mountains). Bilaterally, they have participated in several small scale naval exercises in the Baltics (2017), South China Sea (2016) and eastern Mediterranean (2015), where they have been mostly “show the flag” operations designed more to convey sharp signals abroad and show partner support. Presaging Vostok-18, Russian air transport and elite airborne units conducted a snap readiness exercise in August in likely preparation of deployment east for the exercise. Additionally, a widely publicized Russian naval exercise in the Mediterranean to support Syria operations will be ongoing with twenty-five vessels of various sizes and likely will be included in the overall Vostok-18 personnel count. It is important to understand that the Russians have a declared four-year cycle with long-planned exercises rotating annually between four Military Districts: Zapad (Western), Vostok (Eastern), Kavkaz (Southern) and Tsentr (Center). They are widely advertised, command major media attention domestically and abroad, and numerous international military attaches are invited as observers as I was to Kavkaz (Black Sea region) in 2012 and Zapad (Kaliningrad) in 2013. These are much different than the potentially more dangerous and destabilizing unannounced “snap” readiness exercise that have proliferated in recent years. The newly established Northern Fleet Military District focused on Russia’s “High North” also sorties assets during these exercises. The ramp-up for these major “Cecil B. DeMille” type extravaganzas are widely choreographed and involve much more than just conducting maneuvers and a big concluding firepower demonstration. They are in fact, major Russian national endeavors involving many thousands of civilians and support personnel, such as railway troops that figure into the exercise’s overall numbers. They include marshalling and moving forces and supplies over Russia’s vast railway, air and immature road networks, mobilizing reserves, organizing logistics including medical facilities, laying tactical fuel pipelines, sortieing ships and even exercising nuclear command and control as occurred in last year’s Zapad 2018. Quarterbacking the effort will be senior leaders and general staff operating within Moscow’s new National Military Command Center. Amidst heavy media coverage, President Vladimir Putin will also assuredly visit the exercise. In sum, these are society-wide efforts in which the full civil-military go-to-war apparatus of the Russian state is exercised. This does not mean Russia wants war, but is preparing for such in a way that is difficult for our more liberal-democratic societies to comprehend. Why does Russia place such emphasis and media attention on these large set-piece exercises? Why this expensive, resource burning annual effort that unnerves Russia’s neighbors while both motivating and unsettling Russian citizenry? | |
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| 09-09-18 07:06pm - 2297 days | #11 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Do you have to pay a monthly or yearly fee to use a VPN? If so, how much monthly or yearly? And what VPN do you recommend, for ease of use, low cost, whatever? | |
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| 09-09-18 01:27pm - 2298 days | #9 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
What about using PayPal or Google Wallet or Google Pay? I'm talking about PayPal, not the pre-paid card associated with PayPal. There is no fee for using PayPal to make a payment. Can also use PayPal to send money. I assume that Google Wallet and Google Pay are similar, though I don't know if there are any fees for the Google systems. PayPal can be hit or miss making a payment to a porn site. For many years, they refused to let the system make payments to porn sites. Then they allowed it. Then they only allowed it in certain cases. But PayPal can act like a pre-paid card, with other advantages, as well. You can set up a payment for one-time-only, or for recurring payments. Your financial information is hidden from the person you are paying. PayPal is safe, and easy to use, if they will process the payment to the payment processor of the porn site. I assume Google Wallet and Google Pay are similar, though I've never used them. But if PayPal won't process a payment to a payment processor, maybe the Google systems will. And then you won't have a problem of different cards with a low balance. There are different ways to fund a purchase through PayPal. You can use credit cards of your choice, or a bank account of your choice. | |
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| 09-09-18 11:58am - 2298 days | #1073 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Words of wisdom from one of the sons of the Greatest President Who Ever Was: "Hatred makes people blind to facts." These are words that everyone should take into their hearts. They show that President Trump is not only the Greatest President we've ever had, but the father of a brave and loyal son who will almost certainly become President and make his father even prouder of the Trump legacy. Hail Donald Trump, leader of the Moral Majority of White Americans who will lead the Neo-Nazis to everlasting glory. ----- ------ Politics Eric Trump's Tweet About Hatred Is Just Too Ironic For Folks Online HuffPost Lee Moran,HuffPost Sat, Sep 8 12:18 AM Eric Trump got himself into yet another Twitter pickle on Friday, when he mused that “hatred makes people blind to facts.” Tweeters were quick to note the ironic nature of President Donald Trump’s son’s post and reacted in much the same way as they did to his previous tweets about “snakes” and “disloyal people.” This article originally appeared on HuffPost. | |
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| 09-09-18 01:49am - 2298 days | #3 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
@biker, Yonitale.com and secretofpleasure.com are basically softcore solo sites featuring female masturbation. The models are almost all lovely. I've never actually joined either site yet. There is an option to join Yonitale for free. Bianca Y is a new model just starting out. She only has 1 photoset at Yonitale, that was just recently posted. I'm a few years older than you. My first introduction to softcore porn was looking at my brother's stash of Playboy magazines. I don't remember how old I was, I'm guessing around 15 or 16, and the girls of Playboy, even though they were advertised as the girl next door type, were some of the loveliest women I'd ever seen. And the first girls I'd ever seen naked, of course, even if the naked vagina was still forbidden. This was around the early 1960s. Penthouse didn't start until the early 1970s, and they were the first to show vaginas, although Hefner claimed he had published photos of models with the vagina first. Note: those were the days of the bush. So the actual vagina was rarely exposed at first. But the models of Playboy and Penthouse were exquisite, and I treasured my copies of both magazines. Many of the girls at Yonitale and Secret Of Pleasure are also exquisite. You should recognize many of them from MetArt or other softcore glamour sites. Edited on Sep 09, 2018, 02:22am | |
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| 09-08-18 03:58pm - 2299 days | Original Post - #1 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Bianca Y at Yonitale.com. She is perfect. Except for the tattoo on her left shoulder. I forgive her for the blemish, because she has the face of an angel, and a body to die for. Perfect, round, white breasts you want to sink your teeth into. A pussy that is fantastic. Take a look and see if you can find any flaws: http://secretofpleasure.com/bianca-y-perfect-angel/ | |
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| 09-08-18 02:48pm - 2299 days | #1072 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Trump's friends. The are friends of Trump for a reason: they have lots of money. But that doesn't mean they don't want even more money. Phillip Frost is charged in stock fraud. Will President Trump give Frost a pardon: stay tuned for developments. -------- -------- Billionaire Phillip Frost charged in $27 million fraud plot NBC News Phil McCausland Sep 8th 2018 1:43PM Miami billionaire Phillip Frost is one of 10 people the Securities and Exchange Commission charged on Friday, accused of participating in a fraud plot that generated more than $27 million in what the SEC is calling a series of "classic pump-and-dump schemes." The SEC alleges that from 2013 to 2018, Frost — who founded pharmaceutical company OPKO Health and is a primary benefactor of the Phillip and Patricia Frost Museum of Science in Miami — and nine other investors manipulated three companies' stock share prices for their own gain. The SEC did not share the names of the three companies. The investors would promote the companies without disclosing that they owned a stake, wait for their stock prices to rise and then sell their shares. Retail investors, meanwhile, "were left holding virtually worthless stock," according to the SEC statement. "[The group charged] engaged in brazen market manipulation that advanced their financial interests while fleecing innocent investors and undermining the integrity of our securities markets," said Sanjay Wadhwa, senior associate director of the SEC's Division of Enforcement. "They failed to appreciate, however, the SEC's resolve to relentlessly pursue and punish participants in microcap fraud schemes." OPKO Health and Frost are both named in the suit, though the SEC only believes Frost participated in two of the three schemes and earned approximately $1.1 million. The longtime health care investor is believed to have a net worth of $2.6 billion, according to Forbes. Frost's pharmaceutical company said in a statement that the SEC did not notify them of their plan to file suit and claimed the complaint contained "serious factual inaccuracies." "Had the SEC followed its own standard procedures, OPKO and Dr. Frost would gladly have provided information that would have answered a number of the SEC's apparent questions, and filing of this lawsuit against them could have been avoided," the company said. "OPKO and Dr. Frost have always prided themselves on adhering to the highest standards of financial disclosure, and they are confident that once a proper investigation is completed and the facts of the case have been fully disclosed, the matter will be resolved favorably for them." The scheme was allegedly led by South Florida businessman Barry Honig, one of the largest shareholders in Riot Blockchain Inc., a cryptocurrency company that saw its stock dovetail by 24.3 percent after the news broke. Riot Blockchain, in which Honig is heavily invested, was subpoenaed in April as part of a formal SEC investigation, CNBC reported earlier this year. "Honig was the primary strategist, calling upon other Defendants to buy or sell stock, arrange for the issuance of shares, negotiate transactions, or engage in promotional activity," the SEC complaint said. Honig, who allegedly made more than $3.4 million via the scheme, could not be reached for comment. | |
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| 09-08-18 01:59pm - 2299 days | #1071 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Actually, the news that Gary Cohn is on a death watch is great news for Donald Trump. Trump can send his secret Death Squad to eliminate Gary Cohn, and then shed tears at his funeral while crying what a wonderful friend and ally Gary Cohn was, and that Cohn's death was the direct result of slimeball Democrat attacks on his dear friend. Trump is a tactical genius, and he must put his plan into operation at once, before the opposition Democrats come up with a counter-attack on the Trump forces. God save the President, the glorious leader of a free, White democracy. | |
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| 09-08-18 01:54pm - 2299 days | #1070 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Friends of Gary Cohn are on a suicide watch to prevent Gary Cohn from committing suicide. Gary Cohn deeply depressed after learning that President Trump might never speak to him again. Is life worth living if Trump drops one of his dearest friends and allies? Possibly Gary Cohn can still live if he reads Trump's tweets on a daily basis. ---------- ---------- Bloomberg Trump Says If Gary Cohn Stole Papers, He’ll Never Speak to Him Again By Shannon Pettypiece President Donald Trump said he would never speak again to Gary Cohn if the former top White House adviser stole paperwork from his desk. “If he did that, I would never speak to him again, I would never speak to him again,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on Friday. A new book on the Trump presidency by journalist Bob Woodward includes details of how then-economic adviser Cohn stopped the president from ordering an exit from Nafta and a trade deal with South Korea. Trump told reporters Friday he thinks the account is a “phony story.” The former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. executive resigned as head of Trump’s National Economic Council earlier this year after failing to block new tariffs on steel and aluminum. But according to Woodward, he quietly saved the South Korea-U.S. trade agreement, known as Korus, when in 2017 he removed a “letter off Trump’s desk” that the president planned to sign that would have ordered a U.S. withdrawal. Cohn told a colleague that he stole the letter to protect national security, the Washington Post reported citing a copy of the book it obtained in advance of its public release, which is scheduled for Tuesday. He also did something similar in the spring of 2017 when Trump was eager to pull out of Nafta. According to the book, then-Staff Secretary Rob Porter advised Cohn that Trump had ordered him to draft paperwork withdrawing from Nafta. Cohn told Porter, according to Woodward: “I can stop this. I’ll just take the paper off his desk.” — With assistance by Shawn Donnan | |
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| 09-08-18 01:44pm - 2299 days | #1069 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Our President, the greatest President who ever was, the greatest President who ever will be, is being attacked by a fake letter. Only because the President is a man of the warmest heart, and the forgiveness of Christ, does the President allow Bob Woodward to stay out of prison. The President could sent his Kill Squad to execute Bob Woodward. That would eliminate one dangerous member of the Fake News. But the President is not only forgiving, but also kind: he allows his enemies to attack him, while turning his other cheek. God save Trump, the leader of the Moral Majority for White Christians everywhere. ------- ------- Politics CNN Publishes Letter Reportedly Stolen From President Trump's Desk Natasha Bach Natasha Bach Fri, Sep 7 6:32 AM PDT As President Trump continues to try to discredit Bob Woodward’s new book, CNN is taking a different approach. On Thursday, the broadcaster published a letter that was reportedly stolen from Trump’s desk last September. CNN reports that they received an advance copy of Woodward’s book, which included a reproduction of the letter. Earlier excerpts of the book suggested that top Trump administration officials have actively sought to prevent the president from making decisions that could hurt the country. According to the network, Woodward writes that in one such instance then-National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn stole a letter from Trump’s desk that would have led to the termination of the free trade agreement between the U.S. and South Korea. The letter, which CNN printed in full, is addressed to the South Korean president and trade minister. It reads: The United States-Korea Free Trade Agreement (Agreement), in its current form, is not in the overall bests interests of the United States Economy. Thus, in accordance with Article 24.5 of the Agreement, the United States hereby provide notice that it wishes to terminate the Agreement. Woodward wrote in his book that Cohn was “appalled” that Trump might sign the letter, and reportedly said, “I stole it off his desk. I wouldn’t let him see it. He’s never going to see that document. Got to protect the country.” Cohn and other staffers reportedly worried that ending the trade agreement could jeopardize a program that is used to detect North Korean missile launches. For his part, Trump has continued to refute the content of the book. He took to Twitter on Friday morning, writing, “The Woodward book is a scam. I don’t talk the way I am quoted. If I did I would not have been elected President. These quotes were made up. The author uses every trick in the book to demean and belittle. I wish the people could see the real facts – and our country is doing GREAT!” Associated Press | |
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| 09-08-18 09:48am - 2299 days | #13 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
RabbitsReviews/TheBestPorn 15th Anniversaries Any updates on this? "Winners will be announced on Tuesday, August 28, 2018." But no winners were announced, that I can find. Edited on Sep 09, 2018, 12:00pm | |
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| 09-08-18 09:45am - 2299 days | #7 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
The pre-paid card from PayPal seems very different. They tell you in the terms of agreement, any charges, other than fraud, are between you and the merchant, are your responsibility, and PayPal and the pre-paid card issuer are not responsible. Which means they won't help. So your pre-paid card seems much better. | |
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| 09-08-18 06:48am - 2299 days | #1068 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Stormy Daniels, Hero of the Year. Fighting to clear her good name, she shames Neo-Nazi Scumbag Donald Trump and his sleazoid fixer lawyer Michael Cohen for harassment and degradation. What porn star would stand up to the President of the United States? Stormy Daniels, that's who. Because Trump is a piece of shit who degrades the office of President of the United States. And Michael Cohen is no better: Cohen enabled Trump to fuck people over. --------- --------- Michael Cohen seeks to tear up Stormy Daniels deal, get hush money back HuffPost US Mary Papenfuss Sep 8th 2018 6:54AM President Donald Trump’s former personal attorney Michael Cohen is hoping to scuttle a nondisclosure agreement with adult film star Stormy Daniels and get his money back. Cohen and his shell company, Essential Consultants, are seeking to avoid further litigation over the deal, which Cohen said was negotiated on Trump’s behalf so Daniels wouldn’t disclose their alleged affair during the presidential election, CNN was the first to report. But Daniel’s attorney, Michael Avenatti, blasted the move as part of a strategy to keep Trump and Cohen from being disposed in the case and possibly be forced to reveal other stealth payments to quiet other damaging information. “What they’re trying to do is they don’t want me to get a chance to depose Michael Cohen and Donald Trump,” Avenatti said on CNN’s “Cuomo Prime Time” Friday night. He called it a “Hail Mary to try and avoid that, that’s my first guess.” A lawyer for Cohen stated in a legal status report filed Friday in Los Angeles federal court that his client “seeks the rescission of the Confidential Settlement Agreement dated October 28, 2016,” The Washington Post reported. The filing included Cohen’s promise not to sue Daniels for any contract breach. He also reserved the right to seek the return of the money. Attorney Brent Blakely said in statement to CNN that the filing “effectively put an end to the lawsuits,” adding that the “rescission ... will result in Ms. Clifford returning to Essential Consultants the $130,000 she received in consideration, as required by California law.” Daniels had sued for defamation and to void the contract. Cohen had sued Daniels for $20 million for allegedly breaching the contract, NBC reported. Avenatti tweeted that he and his client will “never” settle their pending cases against Cohen and his company “absent full disclosure.” He accused Cohen of still trying to protect Trump. He also told The Washington Post that the offer is “going nowhere” because Trump “hasn’t offered anything. He would have to agree for the NDA to be void,” he claimed. Let me be clear - my client and I will never settle the cases absent full disclosure and accountability. We are committed to the truth. And we are committed to delivering it to the American people. #Basta — Michael Avenatti (@MichaelAvenatti) September 8, 2018 Michael Cohen is back to playing games and trying to protect Donald Trump. He is now pulling a legal stunt to try and “fix it” so that we can’t depose Trump and present evidence to the American people about what happened. He is not a hero nor a patriot. He deserves what he gets. — Michael Avenatti (@MichaelAvenatti) September 8, 2018 Both sides are scheduled to be in a Los Angeles court Monday for a conference on the case. Cohen pleaded guilty last month to eight felonies, including illegally interfering in the 2016 election. He said he followed Trump’s orders to arrange hush-money payments before the 2016 election to quiet two women about their relationship with Trump. Supporters for Daniels turned out for her on Friday before an appearance at a “gentlemen’s club” in Salisbury, Massachusetts. “She’s an unlikely hero, but a super hero to me” for speaking out, said one fan. Check out the video above. This article originally appeared on HuffPost. | |
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| 09-07-18 07:02pm - 2299 days | #1067 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Brett Kavanaugh, man of his word, who will only interpret the law by precedent. Except that he referred to birth control as "Abortion-Inducing Drugs" during his confirmation hearings. Kind of letting loose lips sink ships: letting your words show what you are thinking, instead of smooth-talking patter that hides your real thoughts and lets you lie convincingly. Roe vs Wade is safe by precedent of the Supreme Court. And Kavanaugh pledges he will follow precendent. Except, if he is confirmed to the Supreme Court, then he will be free to set his own precedents. Roe vs Wade. Historical error. Abortions are murder. As a right-thinking Christian, Kavanaugh will stand firmly for the rights of unborn fetuses, and fight fearlessly for women to be charged as criminals if they want an abortion--unless they were raped by a scummy-dog Mexican, in which case the baby can be given to an adoption agency. Kavanaugh, fighting for the White Moral Majority and Moral Christians in the United States of America. ---------------- ---------------- Politics Brett Kavanaugh Referred to Birth Control as 'Abortion-Inducing Drugs' During Confirmation Hearings Glamour Julyssa Lopez,Glamour 10 hours ago The simple phrase could signal where the Supreme Court nominee stands on Roe vs Wade. On the third day of confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, Democratic senators continued their probe to get the conservative judge's stance on women's reproductive rights—and a clue in one of his answers may say it all. In an exchange with Senator Ted Cruz (D-Tex.), Kavanaugh referred to birth control as "abortion-inducing drugs," a term many women's rights advocates say is dog-whistle politics and a clear nod to pro-lifers who oppose abortion. Kavanaugh's calculated answer came when Cruz asked the judge about his dissent in the case Priests for Life v. the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which involved an Affordable Care Act mandate that required employers to cover contraception for workers. Kavanaugh explained why he ultimately sided with the plaintiffs, who are an anti-abortion Catholic group. “The question was first, was this a substantial burden on their religious exercise? And it seemed to me, quite clearly, it was,” Kavanaugh said. “They said filling out the form would make them complicit in the abortion-inducing drugs that they were, as a religious matter, objected to.” For pro-choice supporters, the phrase "abortion-inducing drugs" is an alarm bell. Organizations such as the Center for Reproductive Rights pointed out that the verbiage is what many anti-abortion groups use to talk about contraception. "Saying 'abortion-inducing drugs' to describe contraception is straight out of the anti-choice, anti-science phrase book used to restrict women’s access to essential health care," the Center for Reproductive Rights wrote on Twitter. The wording is also just plain wrong. Contraception, which includes birth control and Plan B, does not cause abortions, despite the assertion of some organizations. Using contraceptive methods like birth control and IUDs can prevent fertilization from occurring, but it does not end existing pregnancies. But despite the facts, the concepts are often conflated among anti-abortion groups. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) reminded the public of the misconception by tweeting, "Newsflash, Brett Kavanaugh: Contraception is NOT abortion. Anyone who says so is peddling extremist ideology—not science—and has no business sitting on the Supreme Court." Kavanaugh's stance on reproductive rights has been questioned by many pro-choice supporters since President Donald Trump announced his nomination. Although Kavanaugh has stated he will abide by precedent set in Roe v. Wade, his record suggests anti-choice leanings. In addition to his defense in Priests for Life v. the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Kavanaugh also dissented in Garza v. Hargan and argued that an undocumented minor in U.S. detention could not receive an abortion. More evidence mounted late Wednesday, when leaked emails showed that while serving as a lawyer in the Bush administration, Kavanaugh had offered advice about changing a description that said Roe v. Wade was "the settled law of the land." On Thursday Kavanaugh was also grilled by Senator Kamala Harris (D–Calif.), who asked him about the reproductive freedom of men compared with women. Kavanaugh stumbled while answering some of the questions—marking just another example of why Kavanaugh may be a threat to Roe v. Wade and other important principles of women's rights. | |
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| 09-07-18 06:46pm - 2300 days | #2 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Actually, this thread could expand into an examination of the streaming system: how it works, advantages, disadvantages, whatever. Somewhere in the disclaimers for Amazon and Apple and other streaming services, they advise downloading a copy of any movies you buy (you don't own the movie, you have purchased a lease to stream the movie). This is supposed to be for your protection. But these movies are all copy-protected, and can only play on copy-protected devices (computers, kindles, whatever), so there is a storage problem: you can't download them onto a large Hard Drive. So who has the copy-protected storage space to store all these movies? it would take a professional lab to store the movies, because the expense to store them on copy-protected devices would be too large. Or am I making a mistake? Can I store these movies on a PC with a large Hard Drive? I need to clear my mind and find whether I should be storing my streaming movies I bought on a hard drive, or if that is possible. But that is not the way I want to use these movies: I want to be able to play them on the TV, computer, cell phone, kindle, and I can't do that from a copy on a hard drive: that has to be done through a connection to the Amazon site, or from a copy downloaded to the cell phone or kindle, which is also limiting: much easier to stream from the Amazon site. | |
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| 09-07-18 06:19pm - 2300 days | Original Post - #1 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
You often find that if you want to buy a movie (to own) for streaming at Amazon, you will pay a higher price than if you bought the DVD. It doesn't make any sense economically. For example: the price of "The Witch" is: ("The Witch" is a horror movie) DVD $3.92 Blu-ray $7.99 To rent a streaming version: rent SD $2.99 (I think this is 720p) rent HD $3.99 (I think this is 1080p) To buy a streaming version: (you can watch the movie through the Amazon site as long as you are a member of Amazon-no time limit on watching--you don't own the movie, but you have purchased the right to watch it) Buy SD $9.99 Buy HD $12.99 But to buy the DVD or Blu-ray disc is much cheaper than to buy the right to stream the movie permanently. It costs money to make a DVD or Blu-ray disc. So I would have thought that the DVD or Blu-ray disc would be more expensive. But I don't like paying a higher price to stream. Also, the DVD or Blu-ray versions often have extra features about the movie, that the streaming version does not. But I like buying the right to stream it on PC or TV, for convenience, instead of buying the physical DVD. I don't have to find the DVD to play the movie, if it's stored on the Amazon servers. And if my DVD program goes on the fritz, then Amazon streaming usually works much better--but not always. The Amazon streaming service can have occasional problems as well. What do PU members do: Buy a DVD or Blu-ray disc? Or buy a movie through Amazon or some other service to stream the movie? Or not buy a movie to own, but only to rent? | |
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| 09-07-18 05:57pm - 2300 days | #1066 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Lock him up. Lock him up. Put Brett Kavanaugh in jail, where he belongs, for perjury. Then ask if Kavanaugh is qualified to serve on the Supreme Court. But under the Trump administration, that might be positive thing: Only Crooks are fit to serve the Trump government. ---------- ---------- Sen. Patrick Leahy Sets ‘Memogate’ Trap for Supreme Court Nominee Brett Kavanaugh Censored emails show that Judge Brett Kavanaugh lied under oath about receiving stolen Democrat memos in 2003, Leahy says. If true, the consequences could be explosive. Jay Michaelson 09.06.18 4:56 AM ET Zach Gibson/Getty In a surprise move, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) challenged Judge Brett Kavanaugh, President Trump’s nominee to the Supreme Court, over “Memogate,” an obscure 2003 scandal that could engulf Kavanaugh’s nomination, during Wednesday’s marathon confirmation hearing. The scandal, largely forgotten today, involved two Republican congressional staffers stealing confidential memoranda from Senate Judiciary Committee computers and turning them over to GOP interest groups. It remains unknown whether the White House—where Kavanaugh was deputy White House counsel—also received the memos. In his 2006 confirmation hearing, and again this week, Kavanaugh swore that he did not. But on Wednesday, Leahy suggested that the Senate Judiciary Committee has in its possession six emails that directly contradict Kavanaugh’s sworn testimony—which would mean he twice committed perjury. If true, that would surely imperil the Kavanaugh nomination, which has been coasting through the Senate Judiciary Committee despite fierce (and impotent) Democratic opposition. It’s one thing for Democrats to complain about improper vetting procedures—quite another if the nominee is caught blatantly lying under oath. Committee Chair Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) has promised to release the censored emails Thursday. Memogate, as it was called at the time, involved the judicial confirmation process of Judge Priscilla Owen in 2003. Democrats objected that her views were outside the judicial mainstream, and successfully stalled the nomination until it was pushed through two years later as part of a bipartisan compromise. As the White House official responsible for judicial nominations, Kavanaugh was at the center of that battle, as he affirmed in his testimony. On Nov. 14, 2003, The Wall Street Journal published documents it described as Democratic “staff strategy memos.” An investigation by the senate sergeant at arms, published on March 4, 2004, revealed that a clerk for the committee, Jason Lundell, had accessed Democratic files from the committee’s server and provided them to Manuel Miranda, who had been a fellow clerk on the committee from 2001-03, but in 2003 was an aide to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist. Files of aides to Sens. Ted Kennedy, Richard Durbin, Dianne Feinstein, Joe Biden, Russ Feingold, and, perhaps most important, Leahy himself, had been leaked first to Miranda and then to conservative advocacy groups and the press. (Miranda at first protested his innocence, then resigned and confessed, but said, among other things, “My parents never taught me not to read other people’s mail. They always read my mail.” The Bush administration chose not to prosecute him, and he went on to a career as a Republican activist, most notably in the opposition to the nomination of Justice Sonia Sotomayor.) In a series of leading questions, Sen. Leahy attempted to trap Judge Kavanaugh into explicitly denying that he ever saw the memos—a trap Kavanaugh, whose job used to include prepping judicial nominees for adversarial hearings, deftly avoided. First, Leahy implied that the committee also possessed evidence of an off-site meeting (“maybe at a bar or restaurant”) between Kavanaugh and Miranda, asking Kavanaugh if he recalled ever having such a meeting. “I can’t deny that,” Kavanaugh replied. Next, Leahy pressed and asked if there were such a meeting, did Miranda “ever hand you material separately from what would be emailed back and forth?” “I don’t know the answer to that, Senator,” said Kavanaugh. Finally, Kavanaugh asked Leahy what specific evidence he was referring to, and Leahy replied, “we’d have to ask the chairman what he has in the confidential material.” A visibly angry Sen. Grassley replied that 80 percent of the material had been released to the public. Finally, Leahy laid his cards out on the table. “I am concerned,” he said, “because there is evidence that Mr. Miranda provided you with materials that were stolen from me. And that would contradict your prior testimony. It is also clear from public emails—and I’m refraining from going into non-public ones—that you had reason to believe materials were obtained inappropriately at the time.” Then, turning to Sen. Grassley, he said, “Mr. Chairman, there are at least six documents that you consider committee confidential that are directly related to this, [in addition to] three documents that are already public. These other six contain no personal information. No presidential-act-restricted material. There is simply no reason they won’t be made public.” The game of chess, between a 40-year veteran of the Senate and an intelligent nominee whose job used to be coaching judicial nominees, was riveting to watch. But is there any substance behind it? We’ll have to wait for the release of the documents. Perhaps Sen. Leahy is bluffing—or perhaps the once-certain Kavanaugh nomination is now in jeopardy. If Kavanaugh is shown to have received the memos, he will have to fall back on his claim that there was nothing untoward about them and they escaped his notice (and memory). “It would have not have been unusual,” Kavanaugh said, for aides to say “the Leahy people are looking into this and the Hatch people are looking into that.’” But one of the seven aides whose memos were hacked, who spoke to The Daily Beast on the condition of anonymity, said that claim was absurd. “Any Republican would know that they’re not supposed to be seeing internal Democratic staff memos,” the aide said. At the very least, the mere fact that the documents have been withheld lends credence to one of the Democrats’ primary objections to the Kavanaugh nomination: that with more than 100,000 pages of his records being concealed by the White House, and many more released to the committee but not to the public, it is impossible to conduct a thorough evaluation of Judge Kavanaugh’s candidacy. Thus far, the Judiciary Committee has only received about 7 percent of the documents from Kavanaugh’s time in the Bush administration (457,000 documents), and Sen. Grassley has marked 189,000 of them as confidential. Republicans were the ones chanting “But Her Emails” only two years ago, but Democrats have now learned the tune. Jay Michaelson @jaymichaelson | |
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| 09-07-18 05:43pm - 2300 days | #1065 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
CONTINUED: In a remarkable footnote rebutting claims Papadopoulos’s wife has made in several media interviews, Mueller’s team provided a blow by blow account of how they learned that Mifsud, whom they refer to as “the Professor,” had told Papadopoulos that the Russians had Clinton-related emails and how Papadopoulos, whom they refer to as “the defendant,” resisted their inquiries all the way and misled them about the sequence of events. Papadopoulos, for example, falsely claimed he met Mifsud before he worked on the Trump campaign. In this May photo, Paul Manafort, President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman, leaves the Federal District Court after a hearing, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, File) After the January 2017 interview, Papadopoulos retained an attorney and returned for a second FBI interview in February, but even then he did not correct the record, Mueller’s prosecutors point out. Instead, around that time, he deleted his Facebook account, which contained communications from Mifsud. Papadopoulos’s lies had a material impact, the prosecutors wrote, because they “substantially hindered investigators’ ability to effectively question [Mifsud] when the FBI located him in Washington, D.C. approximately two weeks after [Papadopoulos’s] January 27, 2017 interview.” Mifsud left the United States on February 11, 2017 and has not come back, according to the memorandum. It’s unclear what the FBI was able to learn from him before he departed. Second, Papadopoulos failed to be helpful to the special counsel’s office even after they arrested him and confronted him with his false statements in late July 2017. At that time, he agreed to four days of meetings to discuss cooperation in preparation for a potential plea deal over four days in August and September 2017. These sessions turned into a disaster. Papadopoulos was recalcitrant and provided information “only after the government confronted him with his own emails, text messages, internet search history, and other information it had obtained via search warrants and subpoenas,” Mueller’s team wrote. The prosecutors’ frustration with Papadopoulos’s behavior explains the stunted cooperation deal included in Papadopoulos’s plea agreement, but it raises questions about Papadopoulos’s plea deal itself. Why was a man who had caused material damage to the investigation and offered no “substantial assistance,” by prosecutors’ own description, allowed to plead guilty to only the least serious charge indicated in his Statement of the Offense? Why didn’t Mueller’s team throw the book at him? Papadopoulos admits to repeatedly lying to the FBI about three discrete subjects, yet he was only charged with one count of that crime. He also admits to destroying evidence by deleting his Facebook account. Destruction of evidence is a more serious offense than false statements; it carries a statutory maximum sentence of 20 years, compared to 5 years for deceiving the FBI. However, Papadopoulos was not required to plead guilty to destruction of evidence. When Papadopoulos’s seemingly lenient plea was first announced, explanations of it tended to focus on his potential value to future prosecutions as a cooperator; that value doesn’t appear to exist. One potential answer is that Papadopoulos’s plea was efficient. It allowed prosecutors to conserve resources and move on, rather than facing the expense and difficulties of a trial for a low-level player. Another potential answer is that prosecutors, managing an unusual investigation in the face of an adversarial White House, chose to strategically limit the amount of information disclosed about Papadopoulos’s involvement. | |
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| 09-07-18 05:41pm - 2300 days | #1064 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
This is the kind of judge we all need if we are found guilty of breaking the law: George Papadopoulos, found guilty of lying to federal investigators, was sentenced to 14 days in prison. He could have been charged with crimes of up to 20 years in prison. The prosecutors argued for a much longer time in prison. But the judge ruled that 14 days in prison was a hard enough sentence. What a warm heart the judge must have. Of course, Papadopoulos is white, which helps. And he has an attractive wife. That also helps. The US criminal justice system shows what a fair and impartial should be. If Trump is ever found guilty of any crimes, he will want this judge at his trial. Justice is served!!!! -------- -------- What does 14 days prison mean to the Papadopoulos puzzle? Luppe B. Luppen 1 hour 37 minutes ago George Papadopoulos with his wife Simona Mangiante Former Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos, with his wife Simona Mangiante, after his sentencing hearing at U.S. District Court in Washington. (Photo: Yuri Gripas/Reuters) WASHINGTON — George Papadopoulos, long considered a key cooperating witness in Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign and possible collusion with Donald Trump and his associates, was sentenced today to just 14 days in prison for lying to federal investigators. The two-week sentence falls far short of the possible five years he could have faced, but reflects what the judge called Papadopoulos’s “genuine remorse.” “Just the process of having to go to prison will leave a strong impression on him for the rest of his life,” Judge Randolph Moss said, in imposing the sentence Friday afternoon. The sentence was likely a disappointment for Mueller’s office. Andrew Goldstein, one of Mueller’s prosecutors, argued in court that Papadopoulos didn’t come close to the standard of “substantial assistance,” and he made “at best, begrudging efforts to cooperate” in the investigation. Goldstein called the Papadopoulos case “more serious” than that of Alex van der Zwaan, who was sentenced to 30 days for lying to the FBI. The judge would later point out that van der Zwaan, in contrast to Papadopoulos, had not shown remorse at his sentencing hearing. However, Trump, who had repeatedly called the Mueller probe a “witch hunt,” greeted the verdict as a victory. “14 days for $28 million – $2 MILLION a day, No Collusion, A great day for America!” Trump tweeted following announcement of the verdict. Photo: Susan Walsh/AP The financial numbers are presumably a reference to the costs of the Mueller investigation. Ever since his plea agreement, Papadopoulos has been portrayed as a key cooperating witness in the special counsel’s investigation, yet plea documents show, and have been confirmed by later revelations, that Mueller’s team did not expect much from him. When his plea deal was announced, Papadopoulos appeared to be an important witness for the special counsel’s investigation. Papadopoulos’s plea to a single count of false statements to the FBI was secured under seal in early October of 2017 and unveiled at the end of that month at the same time Paul Manafort and Rick Gates were indicted. Many commentators took the simultaneous revelations as a deliberate contrast presented by the special counsel’s office to other interested parties. On one hand, Manafort and Gates initially both refused to help the investigation (Gates later cooperated), while Papadopoulos seemingly worked hand in glove with the special counsel, pleaded guilty, and got a nice and easy deal — a single count, carrying an estimated sentence of zero to six months, based on federal sentencing guidelines. He would be away from his new wife for a hockey season, at most. Papadopoulos, a foreign policy adviser to Trump’s campaign, is the man who provided the impetus for the counterintelligence investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election in the first place. He had reportedly opened up to an Australian diplomat about the Russians offering him dirt on Hillary Clinton during a tipsy encounter at a wine bar in London in May 2017. The information about that encounter was passed to the United States and that became the Mueller investigation shortly after Jim Comey was fired in the summer of 2017. In one sense, the picture of Papadopoulos as helping the special counsel’s investigation has some truth to it, particularly in contrast to Manafort. By signing his name to his “Statement of the Offense,” Papadopoulos publicly advanced the special counsel’s main investigation significantly. This narrative is the most substantial direct evidence that the Mueller investigation has made public of links and coordination between the Russian state and an individual associated with Trump’s campaign, and it is closely related to Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. Papadopoulos admitted under oath that he lied to the FBI about his dealings with a shady London-based professor (Joseph Mifsud) who took great interest in Papadopoulos only after learning he was a foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign. Papadopoulos admitted Mifsud introduced him to a Russian woman whom Mifsud represented (falsely) was Vladimir Putin’s niece and to an individual in Moscow with connections to the Russian foreign ministry, both of whom assiduously sought to set up meetings between the Russian government and the candidate or the campaign through Papadopoulos. Papadopoulos admitted Mifsud later told him that, based on Mifsud’s conversations with high-level Russian government officials, the Russians had “dirt” on Hillary Clinton, including “thousands of emails.” These admissions are powerful public evidence establishing the Mueller investigation’s credibility. Since his guilty plea became public, Trump, the White House, and their Republican allies have sought to minimize Papadopoulos’s role in the campaign. Given how central Papadopoulos’s evidence appears to be to Mueller’s investigation, it’s reasonable to assume that prosecutors valued him as an important witness and sought to secure his cooperation when he pleaded guilty. However, from the first revelation of his involvement with the investigation, there were clues in his unusual plea agreement that showed this was not the case. Four of the five defendants who have pleaded guilty so far, including Papadopoulos, have plea agreements that mention cooperation. (Alexander van der Zwaan, the well-connected London lawyer who admitted to lying and withholding evidence from the government in their investigation of Manafort and Gates, is the only one who doesn’t.) In all but Papadopoulos’s case, these men agreed to cooperate with the government and their plea agreements go into great detail about the scope of their expected cooperation; for instance, the other cooperators agree that they’ll participate in “undercover activities” or “covert law enforcement activities” as well as attending debriefings and producing documents. In return for these binding promises, the government agreed to not only inform the judge at sentencing about each defendant’s cooperation, but if it was determined that they had “provided substantial assistance in the prosecution of another person who has committed an offense,” then the government would file a formal motion under the sentencing guidelines allowing the defendant to argue for a reduced sentence. The cooperation provision of Papadopoulos’s agreement is different in a telling way. Papadopoulos never expressly agrees to cooperate, and all the detailed provisions about what his cooperation might entail, such as undercover activities, are not included; moreover, the government does not agree to make the formal motion allowing for a reduced sentence if Papadopoulos provides substantial assistance to the investigation. In lieu of the standard provisions, the prosecutors agree to “bring to the court’s attention at sentencing the defendant’s efforts to cooperate,” and reserve the right to delay sentencing until Papadopoulos’s “efforts to cooperate have been completed.” These limited terms are a subtle signal that, even at the time when Papadopoulos’s plea agreement was being negotiated, Mueller’s team did not expect much from him. Prosecutors did not secure his promise to cooperate and they did not promise him the standard reward under the sentencing guidelines for any cooperation he gave voluntarily. Although few observers made much of it at the time, the limited cooperation provisions imply that the relationship between Mueller’s team and Papadopoulos had soured by the time the plea agreement was signed, and the government was not prepared to offer him anything concrete for whatever he might in the future decide to tell them. In a sentencing memorandum filed in mid-August, the special counsel’s prosecution team confirmed that implication and explained all that had gone wrong between them and Papadopoulos. (Papadopoulos’s reply memorandum can be found here.) First, Mueller’s prosecutors wrote, his initial lies to investigators at his FBI interview in January 2017 “caused damage to the government’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.” In minute detail, the prosecutors describe how Papadopoulos voluntarily went into an FBI office in Chicago and lied repeatedly over the course of two hours to obfuscate the truth of his interactions with Mifsud and the Russians. Papadopoulos lied, they wrote, “in order to conceal his contacts with Russians and Russian intermediaries during the campaign … early in the investigation, when key investigative decisions, including who to interview and when, were being made.” | |
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| 09-07-18 05:22pm - 2300 days | #1063 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
CONTINUED: The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, where Kavanaugh has served as a judge since 2006, is not exactly a magnet for immigration cases, making his record on the issue relatively limited. Still, attorneys and advocates on both sides of the immigration debate have pinpointed a handful of specific opinions, including Agri Processor, which they suggest offer important insight into how he might approach such cases if confirmed to the Supreme Court. Kavanaugh’s view that undocumented workers do not qualify as “employees,” and therefore don’t have basic rights, is obviously a red flag for immigration advocates at a time when workplace immigration raids are becoming common. For immigration hard-liners and restrictionists, Kavanaugh’s opinion on undocumented workers is seen as a sign that Trump’s Supreme Court nominee is on their side. In July, Breitbart News deemed Kavanaugh to be the “America First” Supreme Court pick, pointing to the judge’s opinions in the Agri Processor case among others, as evidence that “Kavanaugh applies Trump’s economic patriotism to the law.” Days later, Jesse Merriam echoed Breitbart’s view in an op-ed for Real Clear Politics, writing that “The best publicly available data indicate that, of all the judges under consideration, Judge Brett Kavanaugh is most likely to advance President Trump’s America First constitutional vision.” Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), an influential Washington-based nonprofit that advocates for reducing all types of immigration to the U.S., called Kavanaugh a “superb choice” for the Supreme Court. “President Trump should be commended for choosing a candidate who clearly understands the nation’s patchwork of immigration laws and how they are intended to protect both American workers and the overarching national interest,” Stein said in a press release. Dale Wilcox, executive director and general counsel at the Immigration Reform Law Institute, or IRLI, FAIR’s legal arm, echoed similar sentiments in an interview with NRA-TV. It likely won’t receive much, if any, airtime during this week’s confirmation hearings, but Kavanaugh’s 2014 dissent in a case concerning the ability of a Brazilian steakhouse chain to obtain temporary work visas for Brazilian gaucho chefs at its restaurants in the U.S. has also drawn attention from immigration advocates and opponents alike. Fogo De Chao, a Brazilian restaurant in Washington, in a March photo. (Photo: Evy Mages/The Washington Post/Getty Images) The meat of the case is this: Originally founded in the Rio Grande do Sul region of Southern Brazil in 1979, Fogo de Chao first introduced its chain of churrascarias, traditional Brazilian barbecue steakhouses, to the United States in 1997. Between then and 2006, the federal government granted the company more than 200 temporary work visas, known as L-1B’s, for its Brazilian gaucho chefs, or churrasqueiros, who grew up in Rio Grande do Sul and have been trained to both cook and entertain in the region’s unique barbecue tradition. Since 1970, L-1B visas have allowed qualifying multinational businesses to bring foreign employees with “specialized knowledge” to work temporarily in the United States, and Fogo de Chao attributes much of its success to the employment of authentic gaucho chefs in each of its restaurants. However, in 2010, the Department of Homeland Security’s Administrative Appeals Office denied Fogo de Chao’s request to transfer another churrasqueiro chef to the U.S. on an L-1B visa, concluding that the chef’s cultural background, training and extensive experience in cooking and serving food in the churrasco tradition did not constitute a “special knowledge” of his employer’s product. Fogo de Chao sued, and the majority of judges on the D.C. Circuit Court found that DHS’s decision to categorically dismiss culturally acquired skills in its denial of the Fogo de Chao chef’s visa application was “legally erroneous” and “devoid of any reasoned explanation as to why training and skills-acquisition can qualify as specialized if obtained from a corporate instructor, but categorically cannot just because they are learned from family or community members.” The court ordered that the earlier decision be vacated and remanded back to the Appeals Office for further review, clarifying that the office could not simply impose a new bar on culturally acquired skills without some sort of regulatory guidance, statute or reasoned analysis to back it up. Once again, Kavanaugh was the lone dissenter, authoring an opinion that elicited “puzzlement” from his fellow judges on the bench. While the court records pretty clearly demonstrate that the agency’s bar on culturally acquired skills had emerged as part of its decision to deny Fogo de Chao’s request for an L-1B visa, Kavanaugh declared that he “fully agree[s] with “the agency’s longstanding position” that “one’s country of origin, or cultural background, does not constitute specialized knowledge.” He went onto disregard a number of other key details outlined in the case, including the 200-plus L-1B visas previously granted to Fogo de Chao’s churrasqueiros, and the fact that the company largely employs American chefs at its restaurants, relying on the Brazilian churrasqueiros to train them. Discarding Fogo de Chao’s rather complicated claim about the nuances of its business model and the crucial role authentic churrasqueiros play in the company’s profitability, Kavanaugh instead interpreted the company’s argument to be simply that “American chefs either can’t learn to cook or won’t cook Brazilian steaks.” He went on to accuse the company of simply seeking to “import experienced Brazilian chefs rather than hiring and training only American chefs” in an effort to save money, arguing that this case is, at least in part, “Fogo’s desire to cut labor costs masquerading as specialized knowledge.” Then, citing an unspecified “provision of the immigration laws,” he concluded that “mere economic expediency does not authorize an employer to displace American workers for foreign workers.” Inside Washington’s Fogo de Chao in 2011. (Photo: Evy Mages/The Washington Post/Getty Images) “It’s really remarkable,” Tom Jawetz, vice president of immigration policy at American Progress, said of Kavanaugh’s dissent in the Fogo de Chao case. “There’s no reference to statute, there’s no reference to regulation and there’s no reference even to the memoranda that for decades have guided the government’s decision making around the L-1B visas that were at issue there,” said Jawetz, who previously served as chief counsel on the Immigration Subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee. “Instead he kind of makes this MAGA cultural argument.” (Indeed, Breitbart, FAIR and others have praised Kavanaugh’s take on Fogo de Chao as more proof of his alignment with the “America First” agenda.) “To reject the concept that knowledge is acquired through your cultural upbringing and life experiences … is to reject the very concept of diversity as our strength, the very notion that we can stand to learn from people who are different than us and had a different life experience than us,” said Jawetz. “That, to me, is a reflection of a closed mind that I fear more than anything else will infect his ability to make fair and honest judgments about cases addressing immigrants and communities of color more broadly going forward.” Like the Agri Processor case, however, Kavenaugh’s rationale in his Fogo dissent raises concerns about more than his attitude toward immigrants. A protester is removed from the hearing room as Brett Kavanaugh testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday. (Photo: Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP) Diane Butler, a Seattle-based immigration attorney and board member of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said she couldn’t help but recall the Fogo de Chao dissent when she heard Kavanaugh state firmly during his confirmation hearing this week that he would uphold the law as written. “In that case it seemed to me that he tried to rewrite the law,” said Butler. Not only was Kavanaugh’s claim of a longstanding cultural knowledge bar unsubstantiated — “He was essentially making that up” — but, she said, “he fabricated his argument that the restaurant was using these workers to displace Americans. That evidence did not exist. In fact, he ignored the evidence that the restaurant predominantly hired American chefs and brought” Brazilians over to train them. “His focus was almost entirely on nonexistent evidence that the employer just wanted to hire cheap foreign labor in their U.S. restaurants,” she said. Butler predicts that, based on Kavanaugh’s dissent in that case, if confirmed to the Supreme Court he might be inclined to go beyond the current immigration laws and statutes to enforce Trump’s “Buy American, Hire American” executive order. “That is concerning, because it leads to a high level of unpredictability in business immigration,” she said. “The way he tried to sideswipe the law is concerning not only in immigration but other fields as well,” she continued. “We don’t want judges trying to rewrite the law, we want them to do what he said he would do, which is apply the law as written.” | |
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| 09-07-18 05:18pm - 2300 days | #1062 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Kavanaugh is not only a liar, but has a hard time remembering what he's done. He says he will follow precendent of the Supreme Court, and not his own personal views. But in past rulings, he has ignored precedent set by the Supreme Court, and written his own personal views. So just like Trump, Kavanaugh's hero, Kavanaugh wants you to ignore what he has done, and listen instead to his lies about what he has done, his lies about what he will do. If confirmed, he will then be a member of the Supreme Court, a lifetime appointment, to freely vote his personal views. ---------- ---------- Immigration rulings raise questions about Kavanaugh's commitment to precedent Caitlin Dickson Thu, Sep 6 9:49 AM PDT Brett Kavanaugh answers questions from Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., on Wednesday. (Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images) If there was a theme to Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s second day of confirmation hearings, it would be “precedent.” President Trump’s controversial pick for the seat previously held by longtime Justice Anthony Kennedy used the word repeatedly as he fielded questions from both Republican and Democratic members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Kavanaugh made the point that notwithstanding his previously expressed critiques of several key precedential rulings, his opinions as a judge are informed not by his personal views but by the legal principles established by the Supreme Court. Throughout these hearings, Democrats have been seeking to put Kavanaugh on the record about how he would vote on cases that might turn on Supreme Court precedents with which he’s publicly — and controversially — disagreed, notably Roe v. Wade. Though he said on Wednesday that the landmark 1973 ruling that legalized abortion was “important precedent,” some Democrats are wary of what they suspect is his willingness to disregard past opinions. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., questioned Brett Kavanaugh about an abortion ruling in which she believes he ignored precedent. (Photo: Andrew Harnik/AP) For example, Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein called out Kavanaugh’s dissent, as a member of the D.C. Circuit, in a case last year regarding whether a 17-year-old undocumented immigrant in federal custody should be allowed to obtain an abortion. “You argue that even though the young woman had complied with Texas parental notification law and secured an approval from a judge, she should nonetheless be barred,” said Feinstein, telling Kavanaugh that, in his dissent in the case known as Garza v. Hargan, “you ignored, and I believe mischaracterized, a Supreme Court precedent.” Feinstein took issue with Kavanaugh’s opinion, which would have required the young woman to wait for a government-approved “sponsor” to provide a “support network of friends and family,” running the risk, she said, that the process would extend past her 20th week of pregnancy, the legal limit in Texas, where she was being held. Feinstein asserted that Kavanaugh’s dissent amounted to rewriting a Supreme Court precedent that established the judicial bypass process for pregnant minors in need of an abortion who cannot obtain parental consent, “requiring courts to determine whether a young woman had a sufficient support network when making her decision.” “This reason, I believe, demonstrates that you are willing to disregard precedent,” Feinstein said. Though abortion is considered the central issue at play in the Garza case, it’s also just one example of a case involving immigrants in which Kavanaugh’s commitment to precedent and existing statutes has come under scrutiny. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., questioned Brett Kavanaugh about his respect for precedent in a case involving immigrant workers. (Photo: Andrew Harnik/AP) During a particularly pointed series of questions Wednesday afternoon, Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin highlighted Kavanaugh’s 2008 dissent in a case concerning the rights of undocumented immigrant workers at a slaughterhouse to unionize. “The fact that you were a dissenter and everyone else saw it the other way should give us pause when you say you only follow precedent,” said Durbin. The majority of Kavanaugh’s colleagues on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the undocumented workers in this case, Agri Processor Co. Inc. v. National Labor Relations Board, citing both the “plain language” of the 1935 National Labor Relations Act, which guarantees the basic rights of private sector employees to join unions and demand better wages and working conditions through collective bargaining, as well as the 1984 Supreme Court ruling in a case known as Sure-Tan Inc. v. NLRB, explicitly affirming that, “since undocumented aliens are not among the few groups of workers expressly exempted by Congress” under the National Labor Relations Act, “they plainly come within the broad statutory definition of ‘employee.’” Congress did not make it illegal for companies to knowingly employ undocumented immigrants until two years after the Sure-Tan decision, with the passage of the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) in 1986. In Agri Processor, the majority noted in its opinion that, “not only is there no clear indication that Congress intended IRCA implicitly to amend the NLRA, but all available evidence actually points in the opposite direction.” Despite his purported reverence for Supreme Court precedent, and his self-described “textualist” approach to interpreting legislation strictly by adhering to the plain text of a statute, Kavanaugh dissented sharply in Agri Processor. He went beyond the company’s claim that its undocumented workers could not unionize because they did not qualify as “employees” under the National Labor Relations Act, relying on a previously uncited passage of the Sure-Tan decision to make the point that it was actually the majority opinion that was inconsistent with Supreme Court precedent. The Agriprocessors meatpacking plant in Postville, Iowa, in a 2008 photo. (Photo: Charlie Neibergall/AP) After outlining the core reasoning for its determination that undocumented workers do qualify as “employees” under the NLRA, the court went on to offer a supplementary explanation in Sure-Tan for why there appeared to be no conflict between this finding and then-existing immigration law, which at that time, 1984, did not prohibit businesses from hiring undocumented workers. Kavanaugh hinged his dissent in Agri Processor on this secondary section, which wasn’t even cited in the majority opinion. He argued that it set a precedent for interpreting the definition of “employee” under the NLRA “in conjunction with the immigration laws.” According to that reasoning, he wrote, “I would hold that an illegal immigrant worker is not an ‘employee’ under the NLRA for the simple reason that, ever since [the passage of the IRCA in 1986, an illegal immigrant worker is not a lawful ‘employee’ in the United States.” In their response to Kavanaugh, his colleagues in the majority found that he had essentially sought to create a new rule, by inferring that the NLRA had been implicitly amended by the IRCA, based not on any guidance from Congress but an interpretation of part of a Supreme Court decision written two years prior to the IRCA’s passage. The rule, they warned, “would lead to the absurd result that the Supreme Court — or any court for that matter — could alter the plain meaning of future legislation simply by announcing what current legislation does not mean.” Durbin cited this warning from Kavanaugh’s fellow judges during Wednesday’s hearing, questioning how the judge could reconcile his opinion in this particular case given that “you claim over and over again to be a textualist to be carefully weighing every word of a statute.” “You bent over backwards to take the company’s side against these workers,” Durbin said, as Kavanaugh repeated his refrains that “it’s all about precedent” and “I have no agenda in any direction… I’m a judge.” “’I’m just a judge, I just follow precedent,’” Durbin interjected. “We’ve heard that so often, and I hope it’s the case.” In this case, he told Kavanaugh, “you failed to follow Supreme Court precedent.” Durbin’s questions about the Agri Processor dissent echoed concerns expressed by some immigration attorneys who’ve been closely mining Kavanaugh’s past opinions for signs of how he might approach the various immigration-related cases that are likely to come before the Supreme Court in the coming session. Lawsuits concerning such issues as the government’s ability to indefinitely detain immigrants without bond hearings, the role of local officials in federal immigration enforcement and the future of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, are already making their way toward the high court, while experts foresee potential challenges to things like the 1982 Supreme Court decision that guaranteed the right to public K-12 education for all children in the United States, regardless of immigration status, or the 1898 decision that affirmed that anyone born in the U.S. is automatically a citizen under the 14th Amendment. Hundreds protested after the 2008 federal immigration raid of the Agriprocessors plant in Postville, Iowa, in which nearly 400 people were arrested. (Photo: Charlie Neibergall/AP) | |
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| 09-07-18 05:03pm - 2300 days | #1061 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
This is very suspicious. An off-duty female cop shot and killed a man. The police are seeking manslaughter charges against her. Why? -The name of the female cop has not been released. -Why charge a cop with manslaughter, when she shot and killed a man. Isn't that murder? -But she's a cop: cops have the right to shoot to kill: that's what they are trained to do. -Maybe there's a mixup, and the police will identify some other cop, that they don't like, as the shooter (and that's why they aren't releasing the name of the cop who did the shooting). Did the shooting cop have a history with the victim, and that's why she thought she was entering her own apartment? Because she had been to the victim's apartment before? And how did she get into the apartment? Did she have a key? Was a door unlocked? Or did she crawl through a window, because she couldn't find her key, or her key did not work, and that's why she crawled through the window? Enquiring minds want to know the truth! --------- --------- U.S. Police Seek Manslaughter Charge Against Officer Who Said She Entered Wrong Apartment and Shot Man People Chris Harris,People 3 hours ago Manslaughter Charge Sought Against Dallas Officer Who Shot Man Dallas police are seeking a manslaughter charge against the unnamed officer who shot and killed a 26-year-old man Thursday night after entering his apartment, which she said she mistakenly believed was her own, PEOPLE confirms. Officials have yet to release the exact circumstances surrounding the death of Botham Shem Jean. But Dallas Police Chief U. Renee Hall told reporters during a Friday news conference that authorities are seeking an arrest warrant for the officer on a charge of manslaughter, pending approval from prosecutors. Hall declined to identify the officer until charges are formally filed. Representatives of the Dallas County District Attorney’s Office could not immediately be reached for comment. “This is a very unique situation,” Hall said at the afternoon news conference. “We have ceased handling it under our normal protocol as an officer-involved shooting.” The Texas Rangers have been asked to conduct an independent investigation into the shooting. Testing is also being done on the officer’s blood to check for alcohol and drugs, according to Hall. She said she spoke to Jean’s relatives and “we have reassured them that we are working diligently.” The shooting happened Thursday around 10 p.m., after the uniformed officer worked a full shift, according to a previous statement from Dallas police. The officer said she entered Jean’s apartment mistaking it for her own, according to police. Then, “at some point,” she shot Jean inside his apartment and called the incident into police dispatch. First aid was initially performed at the scene on Jean, who was rushed to the nearest hospital where doctors unsuccessfully attempted to revive him. Chief Hall said Friday that the shooting remains under investigation. She acknowledged that, at this stage in the investigation, “there are more questions than we have answers.” She declined to discuss a number of critical details about the altercation, including: how the officer came to enter an apartment that was not hers, how close the residence is to her actual apartment, how she came to mistake one for the other and what happened in the moments leading up to her opening fire. It is also unclear if the officer knows Jean, who is a native of Saint Lucia. He worked at a local branch of PricewaterhouseCoopers, according to the Dallas Morning News. The officer has been placed on leave, as is standard. A police spokesman said the officer has not yet been interviewed, the Morning News reports. PEOPLE’s attempts to reach Jean’s relatives were unsuccessful on Friday. His sister, in mourning, reportedly posted on Facebook: “Now I have to go pick out your casket. I love you with all of my heart. … Until we meet again my love.” | |
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| 09-07-18 02:13pm - 2300 days | #1060 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
CONTINUED FROM PREVIOUS POST: Instead, he explicitly and repeatedly went out of his way to say he never had access to any such materials. These objectively false statements were offered under oath to convince the committee of something that was untrue. It was clearly intentional, with Kavanaugh going so far as to correct Sen. Kennedy when the senator described the document situation accurately. That’s why—without even getting into other reasonable objections to his nomination—he should not be confirmed. In fact, by his own standard, he should clearly be impeached. Lisa Graves is the co-founder of Documented, which investigates corporate influence on democracy. She is the former chief counsel for nominations for the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee and was deputy assistant attorney general in the Department of Justice. | |
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| 09-07-18 02:11pm - 2300 days | #1059 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Jurisprudence I Wrote Some of the Stolen Memos That Brett Kavanaugh Lied to the Senate About He should be impeached, not elevated. By Lisa Graves Sept 07, 201811:43 AM Brett Kavanaugh at his confirmation hearing. Judge Brett Kavanaugh prepares to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee on the third day of his Supreme Court confirmation hearings on Capitol Hill on Sept. 6. Photo edited by Slate. Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images. Much of Washington has spent the week focusing on whether Judge Brett Kavanaugh should be confirmed to the Supreme Court. After the revelations of his confirmation hearings, the better question is whether he should be impeached from the federal judiciary. I do not raise that question lightly, but I am certain it must be raised. Newly released emails show that while he was working to move through President George W. Bush’s judicial nominees in the early 2000s, Kavanaugh received confidential memos, letters, and talking points of Democratic staffers stolen by GOP Senate aide Manuel Miranda. That includes research and talking points Miranda stole from the Senate server after I had written them for the Senate Judiciary Committee as the chief counsel for nominations for the minority. Receiving those memos and letters alone is not an impeachable offense. No, Kavanaugh should be removed because he was repeatedly asked under oath as part of his 2004 and 2006 confirmation hearings for his position on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit about whether he had received such information from Miranda, and each time he falsely denied it. For example, in 2004, Sen. Orrin Hatch asked him directly if he received “any documents that appeared to you to have been drafted or prepared by Democratic staff members of the Senate Judiciary Committee.” Kavanaugh responded, unequivocally, “No.” In 2006, Sen. Ted Kennedy asked him if he had any regrets about how he treated documents he had received from Miranda that he later learned were stolen. Kavanaugh rejected the premise of the question, restating that he never even saw one of those documents. Back then the senators did not have the emails that they have now, showing that Miranda sent Kavanaugh numerous documents containing what was plainly research by Democrats. Some of those emails went so far as to warn Kavanaugh not to distribute the Democratic talking points he was being given. If these were documents shared from the Democratic side of the aisle as part of normal business, as Kavanaugh claimed to have believed in his most recent testimony, why would they be labeled “not [for] distribution”? And why would we share our precise strategy to fight controversial Republican nominations with the Republicans we were fighting? Another email chain included the subject line “spying.” It’s hard to imagine a more definitive clue than that. Another said “Senator Leahy’s staff has distributed a confidential letter to Dem Counsel” and then described for Kavanaugh that precise confidential information we had gathered about a nominee Kavanaugh was boosting. Again, it is illogical to think that we would have just given Miranda this “confidential” information for him to use against us. But this is precisely what Judge Kavanaugh suggested in his testimony on Wednesday. He is not that naïve. In the hearing this week, Sen. Leahy also noted that the previously hidden emails showed that Miranda asked to meet Kavanaugh in person to give him “paper” files with “useful info to map out [Sens. Joe] Biden and [Dianne] Feinstein, and others.” The promised information included “Biden-speak.” Again, this would not have been a normal information exchange. In response to Leahy’s questions this week, Kavanaugh made the outlandish claim that it was typical for him to be told what Democrats planned to ask at these combative hearings over controversial nominees, and that this was in fact the “coin of the realm.” As a Democrat who worked on those questions, I can say definitively that it was not typical at all. Kavanaugh knows this full well. At the time, Kavanaugh was working with Miranda and outside groups to try to force these nominees through the Senate over Democratic objections, and it would have been suicide to give them our research, talking points, strategies, or confidential letters. The GOP senators, their staff, the White House, and outside groups were working intensively to undermine the work of Democratic senators to block the most extreme of President Bush’s judicial nominees. Kavanaugh’s actions were dishonorable and dishonest. The Leahy talking points given to Kavanaugh were from my in-depth research into why the Senate had compelling historical precedent for examining Miguel Estrada’s Department of Justice records, which the White House counsel’s office was refusing to surrender. Other confidential materials Miranda shared with Kavanaugh related to investigations Democrats were pursuing over how Judge Priscilla Owen had handled an abortion case involving parental consent and about the overlap between her funders and groups with business before the courts of Texas. We would never have provided that information—key to our strategy to try to block what we considered extremist judicial nominations—to Miranda or to the White House. During his testimony, Kavanaugh conflated these adversarial proceedings with ones in which Democrats might have cooperated with the other side, like the Patriot Act and airline liability. But these weren’t hearings on some bill where senators would share their concerns across the aisle to try to get a bipartisan fix on problems in a piece of legislation. These were oppositional proceedings in committee and on the floor over controversial judicial nominees. Kavanaugh knew this just as intimately as I did—our sides fought over those nominations intensely. It was also an area where Kavanaugh’s judicial nominations alliance had taken a scorched-earth approach, attacking Democrats ruthlessly. The White House’s closest allies went so far as to call Leahy and other Democrats on the committee “anti-Catholic,” even running attack ads. Perhaps Kavanaugh was so blinded by his quest to get the most controversial Bush nominees confirmed in 2003 that he did not have any concerns about the bounty of secret memos and letters he was receiving—the full extent of which is not known because so many documents are still secret. But, surely, reasonable questions about what he had been party to would have been considered after the story of the theft exploded in the news, Miranda was forced to resign, and the U.S. Senate sergeant-at-arms began a bipartisan investigation into the files stolen from the Senate? As of November 2003, when the sergeant-at-arms seized the Judiciary Committee’s servers, Kavanaugh would have been on notice that any of the letters, talking points, or research described as being from Democrats that were provided to him by Miranda were suspect and probably stolen from the Senate’s server. But he did nothing. He did not come forward to the Senate to provide information about the confidential documents Miranda had given him, which were clearly from the Democrats. Kavanaugh also apparently did nothing when the Senate referred the case to the U.S. attorney’s office for criminal prosecution. (Miranda was never prosecuted.) Eventually, though, Kavanaugh went even further to help cover up the details of the theft. During the hearings on his nomination to the D.C. Circuit a few months after the Miranda news broke, Kavanaugh actively hid his own involvement, lying to the Senate Judiciary Committee by stating unequivocally that he not only knew nothing of the episode, but also never even received any stolen material. Even if Kavanaugh could claim that he didn’t have any hint at the time he received the emails that these documents were of suspect provenance—which I personally find implausible—there is no reasonable way for him to assert honestly that he had no idea what they were after the revelation of the theft. Any reasonable person would have realized they had been stolen, and certainly someone as smart as Kavanaugh would have too. But he lied. Under oath. And he did so repeatedly. Significantly, he did so even though a few years earlier he had helped spearhead the impeachment of President Bill Clinton for perjury in a private civil case. Back then Kavanaugh took lying under oath so seriously that he was determined to do everything he could to help remove a president from office. Now we know that he procured his own confirmation to the federal bench by committing the same offense. And he did so not in a private case but in the midst of public hearings for a position of trust, for a lifetime appointment to the federal judiciary. His actions were dishonorable and dishonest. This week, as part of his efforts to be elevated to the highest court in the land, he has calmly continued to deceive, falsely claiming that it would have been perfectly normal for him to receive secret Democratic letters, talking points, and other materials. And if this absurd notion were somehow true, it would not even be consistent with what he testified to 12 and 14 years ago. Back then, he didn’t state it would have been normal for him to receive secret Democratic strategy materials. CONTINUED WITH NEXT POST: | |
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| 09-07-18 02:08pm - 2300 days | #1058 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Duplicate post. Delete if possible. Edited on Sep 18, 2018, 03:28pm | |
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| 09-07-18 02:04pm - 2300 days | #1057 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Although I can't vote to put Brett Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court, just looking at his handsome, smiling face makes me feel so good. I want to ignore his prejudicial beliefs against abortion, immigration, civil rights, worker rights. Kavanaugh is a family man, with a wife and children. I want to ignore that he is liar, who testifies to Congress with lies and evasions, because that is the way Republicans act in Washington. That is the way Trump, our Glorious Leader, acts, with lies and smiles to the public. --------- --------- Yahoo Politics For Susan Collins, A Vote For Kavanaugh Would Be Political Suicide HuffPost Opinion Robert Creamer,HuffPost Opinion 4 hours ago A vote for Kavanaugh would destroy Sen. Susan Collins’ independent, pro-health care, pro-women’s rights reputation. (Joshua Roberts / Reuters) Throughout her more than two decades in the Senate, Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) has positioned herself as an independent Republican who vigorously favors a woman’s right to reproductive choice. She cemented that reputation last year, when she cast a critical vote to stop the Trump administration from repealing the Affordable Care Act and stripping health care from thousands of her constituents. And, for her entire career, Collins has appeared to be truly committed to a pro-abortion rights position. Why, then, are there rumors that she is considering a vote to support the appointment of Brett Kavanaugh to a lifetime position on the Supreme Court when there is clear evidence that he would provide the deciding vote to overturn or severely curtail women’s rights to an abortion, take away access to health care for millions, and has written that presidents shouldn’t be held accountable for criminal acts while in office? There are at least three potential reasons: 1.Perhapsshe is more gullible than an experienced senator has the right to be. Some have argued that Collins is buying Kavanaugh’s meaningless assurance that Roe vs. Wade is “settled law” and would be a balanced, mainstream jurist – ignoring the string of decisions and writings establishing clearly that he totally opposes a woman’s right to control her reproductive life. Maybe, the argument goes, his smile and his “I’m just a wonderful father and Little League coach” veneer have blinded her to his consistent record as a judicial radical who, if given the chance, would very likely declare the Affordable Care Act ― and its protection of people with pre-existing conditions ― unconstitutional. Maybe he didn’t really mean that presidents should not be held accountable for criminal acts while they are in office because it would create such a “distraction.” No. She’s too smart for that. 2. Maybe Collins has decided not to run again and doesn’t want to spoil her chances for a highly lucrative job with some big GOP donor. It wouldn’t be the first time a member of Congress sold his or her soul so they could cash in after leaving office. In 2003, when Medicare Part D was passed, then-Rep. Billy Tauzin, the GOP chair of the energy and commerce committee, insisted on a provision actually preventing Medicare from negotiating for the lowest prices with drug companies. The next year, he left Congress and was rewarded with a million-dollar-a-year job as head of PhRMA, the powerful pharmaceutical lobby. Maybe that’s what Collins has in mind when her current Senate term ends in 2020. The problem with that theory is that her history really suggests she likes to wake up in the morning, look herself in the mirror and see a decent person ― not the kind of senator who would sell out the interests of her constituents to make herself rich. 3. She and her aides have made a political calculation that a vote for Kavanaugh will help her re-election chances in 2020. They may figure that she is likely to face a stiffer challenge from the right in her Republican primary than she would in the general election. Best not to give the GOP base another reason to move against her. It is correct that Collins may face a right-wing primary challenge, but is it really more likely to succeed if she votes against Kavanaugh? Many hard core Trump voters will never trust Collins again because she voted to save the ACA, supports abortion rights and periodically questions Trump. To them, her vote on Kavanaugh won’t make a dime’s worth of difference. And recall, as the Intercept reported, “There is no grassroots energy rallying for Kavanaugh. None.” You don’t see rallies like the ones the tea party mobilized to fight the ACA. You only see an extraordinary national movement to stop Kavanaugh. So, if that is Collins’ calculation, she is dead wrong. In fact, a vote to confirm Kavanaugh would be political suicide. Such a vote will not simply make it harder for her to be re-elected. If Collins votes to put Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court, she will unleash the elements of a political storm that will sweep her out of office. Collins ― and all Republicans in swing states ― already face stiff political headwinds in 2020. A blue wave is building for the 2018 midterms. It is likely to do nothing but intensify in the buildup to 2020, when Trump himself will be on the ballot. Every day brings new outrages from the White House that are repugnant to swing voters ― and especially the women ― of states like Maine. This year, Democratic turnout is setting records. By 2020, Democratic mobilization efforts will be at a fever pitch. A vote for Kavanaugh would destroy Collins’ independent, pro-health care, pro-women’s rights reputation. Collins’ best defense against that 2020 Democratic gale is her political brand as a pro-health care, pro-abortion rights independent, who will defend her constituents at all costs. That brand was clearly established by her heroic vote to save the Affordable Care Act and her consistent support of women’s rights. And all of the political polling in Maine makes it clear that Mainers don’t want anyone to take away a woman’s right to choose ― or their health care. Nearly two-thirds of Maine residents support a woman’s right to choose. And the ACA has overwhelming support. A PPP poll in late August found that if Collins votes to confirm Kavanaugh, “voters are far less likely to support her in her next election by 16 points ― with 47 percent saying they would be less likely to vote for her and 31 percent more likely.” What’s more, by 22 percentage points (56 to 34) Maine voters don’t believe Collins should vote to confirm Kavanaugh until his full record is made public, including 57 percent of Mainers over 65, and 53 percent of independents. Whether she likes it or not, Collins ― along with her political soulmate, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska ― are the two swing votes who will decide if Kavanaugh is placed on the Supreme Court. And, like it or not, Kavanaugh will be the swing vote on the Supreme Court. Collins will be held personally responsible for every anti-choice, anti-health care, pro-Trump, anti-immigrant ruling the Supreme Court makes over the next two years. And she’ll even be held responsible for the anti-choice, anti-health care, pro-Trump votes Kavanaugh takes, even if he’s not in the majority of the court. Is Collins really willing to risk her entire political legacy on Kavanaugh’s vague assurances that he will impartially judge all of the facts? A vote for Kavanaugh would make Collins the poster child for betrayal. The thing that will make a strong political wind into a perfect storm will be voters’ sense of betrayal. Collins’ vote against repeal of the ACA, her vocal support of abortion rights, and her willingness to stand up to the far right of the Republican Party have made her a hero to many Maine voters ― and people around the country. They have invested emotionally in her. If Collins becomes one of the deciding votes for Kavanaugh, many of these voters will feel betrayed. Already, a group of Maine voters has begun recruiting pledges to support Collins’ 2020 opponent if she votes for Kavanaugh. To date, thousands of people have pledged almost $500,000 ― a sum that will explode if she votes to confirm Kavanaugh. And, as we all know, hell hath no fury like a voter scorned. Robert Creamer is a longtime political organizer and strategist, and author of the book: Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win, available on Amazon.com. He is a partner in Democracy Partners. Follow him on Twitter @rbcreamer. This article originally appeared on HuffPost. | |
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| 09-07-18 01:42pm - 2300 days | #5 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
I've never used a pre-paid card. But I was looking at the terms of a pre-paid card from PayPal: "Neither the Issuer nor PayPal is responsible for the delivery, quality, safety, legality or any other aspects of the goods or services that you purchase from others with the Card. If you have a problem with a purchase that you made with the Card, or if you have a dispute with the merchant, you must handle it directly with the merchant." So it's better to buy porn with a credit card, because then you have some protection against the money you pay: you can dispute a fee because the service you received was poor. Evidently, any problems with a fee you pay to a porn site, have to be resolved with the porn site. Except fraud. But it's seems easier to deal with a credit card company directly, than with a pre-paid card company. So I don't know whether it's worth the hassle to get a pre-paid card. Credit cards give you better protection, and they are probably much easier to deal with. | |
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| 09-07-18 10:45am - 2300 days | #1056 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
This is a story about about a gunman who was not a cop. He shot and killed at least 3 people. If he was a cop, then the shooting might have been justified. But since he was not a cop, he is called a gunman. And the police shot and killed him--for shooting people without a license. Only cops (and maybe soldiers) have the right to shoot to kill--that is part of their license, part of their job. But normal civilians do not have the right to shoot to kill--then they are called gunmen or gunwomen or scumbag killers. Support your local police. Support all police, everywhere, because it's a terrible responsibility to shoot to kill, which cops everywhere are proud to hold. -------- -------- Gunman in Cincinnati bank shooting that killed 3 identified as 29-year-old Ohio resident ABC News MORGAN WINSOR and JULIA JACOBO,ABC News 19 hours Authorities have identified the gunman who allegedly killed three people and wounded two others at a bank in downtown Cincinnati as a 29-year-old Ohio resident. Omar Perez, 29, acted alone when he opened fire at the headquarters for the Fifth Third Bank near the Fountain Square, Cincinnati Police Chief Eliot Isaac said in a press conference Thursday afternoon. Officers responded to a 911 call around 9:10 a.m. local time about an "active shooter" at the bank, Isaac said. Perez. of Northbend, Ohio, is not a former or current employee of the bank, Isaac said. It is unclear how he got to Fountain Square, but he entered multiple businesses before going to the bank, according to the police chief. The suspect had opened fire in the building's loading dock before continuing into the lobby area and firing more shots, Isaac told reporters at a press conference Thursday morning. Multiple officers then "engaged" the suspect, who is now dead, Isaac said. He was shot multiple times, according to Isaac. Investigators believe that Perez legally purchased the 9mm semi-automatic pistol, which was recovered on the scene, Isaac said. Perez had multiple magazines and around 200 rounds of ammunition, Isaac said. Five people were shot, including three who died from their injuries, Isaac said. One person died at the scene, and two victims died at the hospital, police said. Some of the victims were shot multiple times, Isaac said. One victim was identified as 64-year-old Richard Newcomer, a superintendent with the Gilbane Building Company, a construction company based in Cincinnati. "He was a great employee," Wes Cotter, the director of communications for the Gilbane Building Company told ABC News. "We are absolutely grief stricken." Newcomer was doing work on the third floor of the building and "just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time," Cotter said. "We couldn't feel worse about it," Cotter said. The other two victims were identified by the Hamilton County Coroner's Office as Pruthvi Raj Kandepi, 25, and Luis Felipe Calderón, 48. The area was cordoned off as police responded to the incident and worked to evacuate people inside the bank. No officers were injured in the incident, and a weapon was recovered from the scene. PHOTO: A police officer comforts a woman outside UCMC ER following an active shooter situation in downtown Cincinnati, Sept. 6, 2018. (Kareem Elgazzar/Cincinnati Enquirer-USA TODAY NETWORK) UC Health in Cincinnati confirmed via Twitter that it received four of the victims -- three males and one female. Two have since died, while one remains in critical condition and the other is in serious condition, the hospital said. "Our physicians and staff are focused on caring for the patients and their families. We prepare for situations like these and hope they never happen," UC Health tweeted. Cincinnati Mayor John Cranley told reporters at the press conference that the suspect was "actively shooting innocent victims." "Random mass shootings, which plague our nation, are not normal and we as a country can't allow them to be normalized," Craley said in a statement posted on Twitter later Thursday. "Our hearts are broken today." The motive for the shooting was not immediately known. Fifth Third Bank, which is headquartered in Cincinnati but has locations across 10 states, described the deadly shooting as a "terrible event" in a statement posted on Twitter. "Earlier today, an active shooter entered our headquarters building in downtown Cincinnati. The situation is contained and the shooter is no longer a threat. Our thoughts and prayers are with everyone caught up in this terrible event. We continue to work with law enforcement as we ensure the safety of our employees and customers. We are grateful for the support and concerns from our neighbors throughout Cincinnati and the country," the company tweeted. ABC News' Rachel Katz contributed to this report. | |
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| 09-07-18 10:27am - 2300 days | #1055 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
This story does not have a lot of details yet. But the story is a female cop shot and killed a man. The female cop accidentally entered the wrong apartment building, believing it was her own apartment. There was a man inside. She shot and killed him. Self defense, obviously. Because the man had no right or reason to be in an apartment the female cop believed to be her own. Questions: was the man armed with a weapon? Questions: whether the man was armed with a weapon or not, did he have the right to be in the cop's apartment? Answer: The man probably did not have the right to be inside the cop's apartment, if she did not give him permission. Therefore, the man was a threat. And the female cop shot the man in self defense. Even if the man was inside his own apartment. And it was not stated in the article if the man was inside his own apartment. He could have been a thief or burglar or murderer who was trying to kill the female cop. Case closed. Even if it is still under investigation: justified shooting. Support your local police. At the time of the shooting, the female cop was off duty, but she was still wearing her police uniform. Therefore, it was a justified shooting, because once a cop puts on his or her uniform, they are authorized to shoot to kill. Even if they do not have on their police uniform, they are still authorized to shoot to kill. Because the truth is: police are trained to shoot to kill. They are not trained to shoot to hurt or disable an opponent, but to shoot to kill. The old TV movies where heroes shot to disarm an opponent were total fiction: modern police are trained to shoot to kill. Good job, female police officer. She deserves a medal for shooting and killing her opponent. How many times did she fire? How many times did she hit the man who died? These details are not yet revealed, but it will impact the type of medal she should get: Because accuracy is important: and not wasting extra ammo on an opponent, unless you want to make sure the victim is truly dead and not faking it. Note: the police department will probably issue a statement saying they regret the death of the victim. But in private, they are probably given the female cop shooter high fives, in recognition of her shoot-to-kill skills. --------- --------- Officer fatally shoots man after entering wrong apartment 'believing that it was her own': Police Good Morning America MORGAN WINSOR,Good Morning America 2 hours 28 minutes ago Dallas police and the county district attorney's office are investigating after police said one of their officers shot and killed a 26-year-old man Thursday night upon returning home from her shift and entering the wrong apartment in her building. Preliminary information suggests the off-duty officer, who has not been publicly identified, was still wearing her police uniform and was returning home after working a full shift, the Dallas Police Department said in a statement Friday. The officer arrived just before 10 p.m. local time at the apartment complex where she lives south of downtown Dallas, according to the police department's statement. (MORE: Gunman in Cincinnati bank shooting that killed 3 identified as 29-year-old Ohio resident) She told responding officers that she "entered the victim's apartment believing that it was her own" and at some point "fired her weapon striking the victim," police said in the statement. The officer called police dispatch for help, and the responding officers administered aid to the man at the scene He was then taken to a local hospital where he was pronounced dead, police said. (MORE: Officer allegedly kills wife, then himself) Authorities said they are awaiting family notification before releasing the victim's name. The officer involved was not injured in the incident and was placed on administrative leave while the police department conducts a joint investigation with the Dallas County District Attorney's Office. "This investigation is ongoing and we will release additional details as they become available and it is appropriate to do so," police said in the statement. The Dallas County District Attorney's Office said they do not have any additional information to release at this time, and the Dallas Police Department did not immediately respond to ABC News' request for comment. | |
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| 09-07-18 09:40am - 2300 days | #1054 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
People don't understand Donald Trump. He is the greatest president the United States has ever had. Greater than Washington. Greater than Lincoln. Just listen to Donald Trump, and he will tell you the truth: I'm the greatest President the United States has ever had. ---------- ---------- Politics Donald Trump Gets Torched On Twitter Over Abraham Lincoln Comparison HuffPost Lee Moran,HuffPost 5 hours ago Folks on Twitter couldn’t resist poking fun at President Donald Trump after he claimed he would be remembered like Abraham Lincoln. “You know when Abraham Lincoln made the Gettysburg Address speech, great speech, you know he was ridiculed?” Trump said during a political rally speech in Billings, Montana, on Thursday. “He was excoriated by the fake news. They had fake news.” “Fifty years after his death they said it may have been the greatest speech ever made in America,” Trump added. “I have a feeling that’s going to happen with us. In different ways, that’s going to happen with us.” Many people on Twitter were astonished by the claim, and used the social media platform to explain why: This article originally appeared on HuffPost. | |
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| 09-07-18 12:52am - 2300 days | #2 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
I never heard of this company. I suggest calling your credit card company and telling them this is a fraudulent charge. Then, ask if the fraud company should be blocked, or if the credit card account should be cancelled, and a new account opened. No sense in paying for fraudulent charges. It's probably better if the account is closed, and a new account number is opened. Because your credit card number, once exposed, can be sold to other scammers. I had a fraud charge once on a credit card, told my credit card company to block the card from that charging company, and a second fraud charge by the same fraud company was still made on my account after I told them to block it. On the first fraud charge, I was given a charge-back, so I didn't have to pay it. Same for the second fraud charge. Then, abut one and half year later, I got a check mailed to me for the second charge (around $15), as part of a settlement with the fraud company and the government. I offered to pay it to the credit card company, but they told me to just keep the money. So I came out ahead. True story. | |
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| 09-06-18 03:49pm - 2301 days | #1053 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Writer admits that Senate confirmation hearings are rigged. That Senate rules make a mockery of democracy and that the public is screwed up the ass while the Senate preaches about the Democratic process being open and fair. Republicans are only part of the Washington cesspool that Trump promised to drain, instead, Trump is the leader of the Washington cesspool. -------------- -------------- Politics If I Didn't Know This Was All Rigged, I'd Think Brett Kavanaugh Is in Serious Trouble Esquire Charles P. Pierce,Esquire 7 hours ago From Esquire And Senator Kamala Harris said, "Be sure about your answer, sir." You know, if I didn't know that this whole thing is a rigged wheel, if I didn't know that all the wheels had been greased years ago, I'd think Brett Kavanaugh's nomination to the Supreme Court was making a brief stop in Harriet Miersville on its way to G. Harold Carswelltown. Now into his second day of testimony, he was flummoxed and floundering. He was nowhere near as slick as was Neil Gorsuch, whose thickly armored arrogance carried him past his obvious partisan bona fides. However, Kavanaugh is under a great deal more pressure than was Gorsuch. Gorsuch was merely the penultimate step in the long march toward what would be an all-but-permanent conservative majority on there Supreme Court. Kavanaugh, as everybody knows, but pretends not to know, is the whole ballgame. He's probably the only reason that many Republicans have put up with the maniac in the White House. He's probably the reason that the now-famous Anonymous op-ed writer in The New York Times decided to be Anonymous instead of being a mensch and going over the side under his/her own name. That's a lot of pressure on a guy with what seems to be a terribly erratic memory, and who looked very much as though he thought Senator Harris might melt him with a glare right there in the chair. She was after him on how much of a bag job his nomination was, and she was basing her questions on "committee/confidential" documents that he knows she has, but that she is forbidden from using in her interrogation. (More on this fictitious bit of Senate hocus-pocus in a minute.) She knew and he knew she knew and there was flopsweat on every syllable. HARRIS: "You've been speaking for almost eight hours to this committee about all sorts of things you remember. How can you not remember whether or not you had a conversation about Robert Mueller or his investigation with anyone at that law firm?" KAVANAUGH: "I'm not remembering, but I'm happy to be refreshed or if you want to tell me who you're thinking of." HARRIS: "I think you are thinking of someone, and you don't want to tell us." We now move to Thursday morning, when all hell broke loose. The "committee/confidential" documents started to leak. A story in The New York Times based on some of those documents cited one of them that seemed to completely demolish Kavanaugh's tap-dancing on Roe v. Wade. Judge Kavanaugh was considering a draft opinion piece that supporters of one of Mr. Bush’s conservative appeals court nominees hoped they could persuade anti-abortion women to submit under their names. It stated that “it is widely accepted by legal scholars across the board that Roe v. Wade and its progeny are the settled law of the land.” Judge Kavanaugh proposed deleting that line, writing: “I am not sure that all legal scholars refer to Roe as the settled law of the land at the Supreme Court level since Court can always overrule its precedent, and three current Justices on the Court would do so.” Asked about this quote by Senator Dianne Feinstein, Kavanaugh caviled about who "legal scholars" were, and he went back to his original gambit about how Roe and its progeny are precedent-on-precedent, which he said was "quite important," but which, obviously, is not an answer to what Feinstein asked. Other leaked documents made it clear that, in his service in the Bush White House, on issues from privacy to whether or not native Hawaiians could be treated like other native peoples, Kavanaugh functioned as the political activist that he was for his entire career before he was elevated to the bench. More significantly, the leaked documents showed that Kavanaugh was far more involved in the failed nomination of Charles Pickering, Jr. than he led the committee to believe in 2006, when he was nominated to the seat on the federal appeals court that he now holds. And yet another showed him as designing for other nominees the very game plan he is obviously following in these hearings: “She should not talk about her views on specific policy or legal issues,” he wrote. “She should say that she has a commitment to follow Supreme Court precedent, that she understands and appreciates the role of a circuit judge, that she will adhere to statutory text, that she has no ideological agenda.” This confrontation escalated when Senators Cory Booker and Maizie Hirono told the committee that they intended to release other "committee/confidential" documents, including one allegedly dealing with racial profiling. Booker's announcement prompted an extended hooley in which John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, threatened Booker with disciplinary action up to and including expulsion from the Senate. "Bring it," Booker replied, and his Democratic colleagues took his back. Richard Durbin of Illinois pronounced himself fed up with the farce of having Bill Burck, a former Bush administration lawyer who numbers among his clients Reince Priebus, Don McGahn, and Steve Bannon (!), decide which documents can be released publicly. He told Booker: "I concur with what you're doing. Let's jump into this pit together. If there's going to be some retribution against [Booker], I want to be part of this process!" As I said, if I didn't know this whole thing wasn't a monumental bag job, I'd think Brett Kavanaugh was in a lot of trouble. | |
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| 09-06-18 11:50am - 2301 days | #1052 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh is a lawyer who can lie with the best: When questioned on Roe v. Wade (abortion rights), Kavanaugh publicly states that Roe v. Wade is settled law. However, leaked emails by Kavanaugh show Kavanaugh arguing that Roe v. Wade could be overturned. So who are you going to believe: Kavanaugh, testisfying that Roe v. Wade is settled law? Or Kavanaugh, arguing in private that Roe v. Wade can be overturned? -------- -------- Kavanaugh's leaked emails seem to contradict testimony on abortion precedent David Knowles 2 hours 42 minutes ago Emails written by Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh leaked late Wednesday to the New York Times seem to contradict what the judge told the Senate Judiciary Committee on whether he considered the Roe v. Wade abortion rights ruling subject to being overturned. In an email written when he was a lawyer in the White House under President George W. Bush, Kavanaugh gave advice on how to amend a document that characterized Roe v. Wade as “the settled law of the land.” “I am not sure that all legal scholars refer to Roe as the settled law of the land at the Supreme Court level since Court can always overrule its precedent, and three current Justices on the Court would do so,” Kavanaugh wrote in the email deemed “committee confidential” and withheld from the public record before being leaked to the Times by an anonymous source. But in an exchange with Sen. Dianne Feinstein at Wednesday’s confirmation hearing, Kavanaugh sounded a different tone. Feinstein repeatedly pressed Kavanaugh on whether the high court’s precedent meant that Roe could not be overturned. “As a general proposition I understand the importance of the precedent set forth in Roe v. Wade,” Kavanaugh said Wednesday, later adding, “I said that it’s settled as a precedent of the Supreme Court, entitled the respect under principles of stare decisis, and one of the important things to keep in mind about Roe v. Wade is that it has been reaffirmed many times over the past 45 years, as you know.” Not satisfied that citing precedent meant that Kavanaugh would not join other conservative jurists to effectively overturn Roe, Feinstein tried a more direct tact. “What would you say your position is today on a woman’s right to choose?” Feinstein asked. “As a judge it is an important precedent of the Supreme Court,” Kavanaugh replied. “By ‘it,’ I mean Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, been affirmed many times. Casey is precedent on precedent.” Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee complained bitterly Thursday that thousands of documents deemed “committee confidential” were dumped on the committee at the last minute and were not made public. After being warned by Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, that he might face expulsion from the Senate after he made one of Kavanaugh’s email exchanges public, Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., replied, “Bring it!” Edited on Sep 06, 2018, 11:59am | |
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| 09-06-18 11:32am - 2301 days | #1051 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Trump releases bombshell news: I have 100 pics of Robert Mueller And James Comey 'Hugging And Kissing' Was there a secret love nest that Mueller and Comey shared? How long did this horrible, scumbag relationship last? And why did the President keep this secret so long? Trump should have let the public know the kinds of men Mueller and Comey were: unfaithful to their wives, unfaithful to the nation. Mueller and Comey should be arrested and shot for treason, and for deviant sexual acts. Clean the swamp in Washington, Mr. President. God save Donald Trump, the bestest, purest, most wonderful President the United States has ever had. ----------- ----------- Trump: I Have 100 Pics Of Robert Mueller And James Comey 'Hugging And Kissing' HuffPost Ed Mazza,HuffPost 10 hours ago President Donald Trump has complained that special counsel Robert Mueller is too close to former FBI Director James Comey to conduct a fair investigation. And now, he claims he has the pics to prove it. ″[Mueller’s] Comey’s best friend,” Trump told the Daily Caller. “And I could give you 100 pictures of him and Comey hugging and kissing each other.” Vox examined wire service photos and found no such images. A non-exhaustive HuffPost survey of images from Reuters and Getty also revealed no hugging and kissing. The pair has enjoyed a close professional relationship, which dates back to 2003 when Comey was deputy attorney general under President George W. Bush and Mueller was the director of the FBI. Both threatened to resign in opposition to a domestic surveillance program which was modified as a result, the Washington Post reported. While there do not appear to be “hugging and kissing” photos of the president and his former FBI chief, Trump did make a gesture toward Comey shortly after his inauguration that many observers believed was an air kiss. Comey claimed that Trump tried to pull him in for a hug as well, but he resisted and kept it to a handshake. “He was not going to get a hug without being a whole lot stronger than he looked,” Comey wrote in his book, A Higher Loyalty. “He wasn’t.” Months later, Trump would fire Comey, a move that ultimately led to the special counsel’s investigation. In the Daily Caller interview, Trump again called the Mueller probe an “illegal investigation” and claimed that the special counsel’s office had “tremendous conflicts.” Trump also said he had a “real business dispute” with Mueller, an apparent reference to 2011, when Mueller resigned from a Trump-owned golf club. According to the Washington Post: “Mueller had sent a letter requesting a dues refund in accordance with normal club practice and never heard back.” In July, Trump called it “a very nasty & contentious business relationship.” This article originally appeared on HuffPost. | |
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| 09-05-18 07:51pm - 2301 days | #1050 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Trump admits his administration is the greatest in US history. He says once he leaves office, in 6 years (after his re-election in 2020), the New York Times and CNN and other fake news outlets will declare bankruptcy and stop operations, because they will no longer have fake news to report. Trump, the greatest president the US has ever had. Trump, our fearless leader who will crush the Mueller investigation and all the scumbag Democrats that make up the Washington swamp. Trump, the leader of the Moral Majority to make America great and white and free of scumbag immigrants from shithole countries like Mexico and South America and Africa. ------ ------ Anonymous White House 'senior official' slams Trump in scathing NYT op-ed Yahoo News David Knowles Sep 5th 2018 5:34PM The New York Times published an essay Wednesday that the newspaper said was written by a “senior official” in the Trump administration, supporting a central claim in Bob Woodward’s forthcoming book: members of the president’s staff are actively working to subvert him. The unnamed official painted a portrait of a divided White House because of misgivings over the behavior of President Trump himself. “The dilemma — which he does not fully grasp — is that many of the senior officials in his own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations,” the author of the piece wrote. A tweet by the newspaper gave a clue about the gender of the author: In an editorial note that accompanies the essay, the Times notes that it withheld the author’s identity to protect the person’s job. “We believe publishing this essay anonymously is the only way to deliver an important perspective to our readers,” the editors at the paper wrote. In “Fear: Trump in the White House,” Woodward’s forthcoming exposé on Trump’s presidency, the Watergate reporter describes a scene in which former chief economic advisor Gary Cohn “stole a letter off Trump’s desk” before the president could sign it to keep him from terminating a trade agreement with South Korea. The book is also filled with interviews from officials expressing grave concerns about Trump’s fitness for office. In the essay published by the Times, the author bolsters those claims. “The root of the problem is the president’s amorality. Anyone who works with him knows he is not moored to any discernible first principles that guide his decision making,” the author states. “Although he was elected as a Republican, the president shows little affinity for ideals long espoused by conservatives: free minds, free markets and free people. At best, he has invoked these ideals in scripted settings. At worst, he has attacked them outright.” Trump and members of his staff had already spent much of the day trying to discredit Woodward’s book when the Times op-ed, sending the administration into damage control once more. Moments later, Trump bashed the New York Times in off-the-cuff comments delivered at the White House in which he called the essay “anonymous, meaning gutless.” “When you tell me about some anonymous source in the administration, probably who is failing, and probably here for all the wrong reasons,” Trump said, adding, “Now, and the New York Times is failing. If I weren’t here I believe the New York Times probably wouldn’t even exist.” In her own statement, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders also appeared to confirm that the author of the essay worked in the Trump administration. “The individual behind this piece has chosen to deceive, rather than support, the duly elected President of the United States,” Sanders said in a statement. “He is not putting country first, but putting himself and his ego ahead of the will of the American people. This coward should do the right thing and resign.” Trump then returned to Twitter, where he offered a more succinct criticism of the official who had written the essay. | |
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| 09-05-18 11:18am - 2302 days | #2 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
I don't know what fulfills the requirements for a day job. A lot of porn stars work on cam shows: actually, they can make more money from cam shows than from videos or photo sets shot for porn sites. It's also common for porn stars to work as escorts. To make extra money. In the last few years, it's harder for porn stars to make a living from videos and photo shoots, so they are forced to do other jobs: studios have been going out of business or reducing their output since the 2008 financial meltdown, I believe, so performers have less work, therefore less money. The tube sites also drag down the financial profits of regular porn sites. So for a porn star, cam show performances, and maybe escort service, could be considered a regular job, or maybe an extension of their regular job. | |
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| 09-05-18 03:02am - 2302 days | #1049 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Trump, master of the universe. But Trump's boasts he has more power than the Constitution gives him. Trump is greater than the Constitution. He is Dictator For Life of Trumpland, the Glorious Leader of the White Moral Majority. (No blacks or scumbag Democrats need apply.) ---------- ---------- Politics Trump Threatens NBC’s License Over ‘Highly Unethical Conduct’ on Spiked Harvey Weinstein Story The Wrap Tim Baysinger,The Wrap 18 hours ago President Donald Trump directed his ire once again at NBC News, this time calling them out for their handling of Ronan Farrow’s Harvey Weinstein reporting, and threatening their broadcast license. Trump tweeted on Tuesday: “NBC FAKE NEWS, which is under intense scrutiny over their killing the Harvey Weinstein story, is now fumbling around making excuses for their probably highly unethical conduct. I have long criticized NBC and their journalistic standards-worse than even CNN. Look at their license?” — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 4, 2018 Also Read:Ronan Farrow Blasts NBC News' 'False or Misleading' Memo About Harvey Weinstein Story Questions regarding NBC’s decision not to air the Farrow’s story on Weinstein have resurfaced in recent days. Farrow’s widely praised exposé on Weinstein was published in The New Yorker last October after he was initially doing the reporting for NBC News. Last week, Rich McHugh, a former producer of the NBC News investigative unit, told the New York Times that people at “the very highest levels of NBC” worked to quash the story at the network. NBC denied the accusation, calling it an “outright lie.” NBC News chairman Andrew Lack sent a memo to staff on Monday, calling recent accusations that the news organization buried Farrow’s investigative piece baseless. “We spent eight months pursuing the story but at the end of that time, NBC News — like many others before us — still did not have a single victim or witness willing to go on the record. (Rose McGowan — the only woman Farrow interviewed who was willing to be identified — had refused to name Weinstein and then her lawyer sent a cease-and-desist letter.) So we had nothing yet fit to broadcast,” Lack wrote in the memo obtained by TheWrap. “But Farrow did not agree with that standard. That‘s where we parted ways — agreeing to his request to take his reporting to a print outlet that he said was ready to move forward immediately.” Farrow blasted back at NBC News chief Andy Lack on Monday for a memo that said Farrow’s bombshell reporting on Weinstein was not “fit for broadcast” when he was working at the network. In a tweet sent hours after Lack’s memo to staffers became public, Farrow said the network’s account “contains numerous false or misleading statements.” Farrow, who shared a Pulitzer Prize when his report on accusations of sexual misconduct against the Hollywood mogul was subsequently published by The New Yorker, disputed the network’s claim that after eight months of reporting Farrow “still did not have a single victim or witness willing to go on the record.” This is the not the first time Trump has threatened to pull NBC’s broadcast license, a reference to the Federal Communications Commission license that allows broadcasters like NBC to use public airwaves to transmit their programming. The government has no control over programming transmitted via cable. But Trump’s attempts to challenge network news licenses aren’t based in fact. For one thing, national television networks do not need government licenses, Georgetown University Law School professor Angela Campbell told TheWrap. Only individual stations have FCC licenses, she said. Also, the president isn’t in charge of the FCC. “The president has no authority to direct the FCC to revoke a broadcast license,” former Federal Communications Commission lawyer Robert Corn-Revere told the Wrap. ” The FCC is an independent regulatory agency.” But presidents can still exert influence — especially since they appoint all five FCC chairs. And the FCC may exert influence, too. But no one can say for sure how heavy its hand might be. Read original story Trump Threatens NBC’s License Over ‘Highly Unethical Conduct’ on Spiked Harvey Weinstein Story At TheWrap -------- -------- Variety NBC News Chief Lack: Farrow Story ‘Not Ready For Air’ at NBC Variety Brian Steinberg,Variety Mon, Sep 3 4:14 PM PDT NBC News Chairman Andrew Lack sent employees a detailed memo and an 11-page analysis Monday spelling out why the news organization felt it could not air journalist Ronan Farrow’s 2017 investigation into harassment allegations against movie-mogul Harvey Weinstein, the latest rebuke by the Comcast-owned unit against accusations it passed on one of the hottest stories in recent years without obvious reason. “We spent eight months pursuing the story but at the end of that time, NBC News – like many others before us – still did not have a single victim or witness willing to go on the record,” Lack said to staffers in the memo. Farrow disagreed with that standard, Lack said, and the two sides parted ways. Release of the executive analysis, which includes transcripts of on-camera interviews between Farrow and others as well as a timeline of phone calls Harvey Weinstein and his attorneys made to various NBC News executives, is a remarkable display of evidence from a sector of the media that often does not provide much information on how it reports our stories. CNN, Fox News Channel and others have also in recent months been called out on how they report sensitive matters, and while the news organizations may offer comment, they typically do not bring to public view an accounting of how their product gets made. But the Lack memo also hints at the public pressure recently brought to bear on NBC News, which in 2016 was scooped by The Washington Post on the existence of a tape from “Access Hollywood” — a show that is part of its parent, NBCUniversal – featuring a younger Donald Trump making lewd remarks about women and acknowledging he felt he had carte blanche to grab them by their genitals. NBC News’ handling of Farrow’s investigation of Weinstein’s behavior – which was published by The New Yorker was awarded a Pulitzer – has been under scrutiny for months. New attention to the matter was sparked by last week by a statement from Rich McHugh, a former NBC News investigative reporter with whom Farrow worked to break the Weinstein story. McHugh in a statement alleged NBC News killed their efforts. “Is there anyone in the journalistic community who actually believes NBC didn’t breach its journalistic duty to continue reporting this story? Something else must have been going on,” McHugh said. In October of last year, after the story had surfaced, Farrow appeared on MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show” and told its host, “I walked into the door at the New Yorker with an explosively reportable piece that should have been public.” He added: “Immediately the New Yorker recognized that, and it was not accurate to say that it was not reportable. In fact, there were multiple determinations at NBC that it was reportable.” According to Lack, NBC News, “convened an independent group of the most experienced investigative journalists in our organization to review his material with fresh eyes” after Farrow objected to NBC’s decision not to move forward with the story in its form at the time, ” We asked them — tell us what, if anything, we can broadcast. But their conclusion was unequivocal – this story is not ready for air.” Neither McHugh or Farrow could be reached immediately for comment. At the root of the schism between Farrow and NBC News was a disagreement over what the story needed to be put on the air. NBC News seemed determined that the story include an on-the-record on-air account from someone with direct knowledge of harassment by Weinstein. NBC News alleged Farrow had not been able to produce such a witness. “The only victim willing to be interviewed on camera and name Weinstein was a woman who spoke anonymously in shadow and alleged he subjected her to verbal sexual harassment. Therefore, following widely accepted journalistic standards, Farrow’s NBC News editors, including the head of the investigative unit, did not believe his work was ready for broadcast,” NBC News said in its analysis of the matter. | |
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| 09-05-18 02:09am - 2302 days | #1048 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
The White House comes out swinging after Bob Woodward book is published. President Trump orders the top secret Murder Squad to assassinate Bob Woodward, but the order is top top secret, and the President wants deniability for this order. Once Bob Woodward is dead, Trump plans to attend his funeral and give a speech praising the great job Trump is doing for the country, and that Trump forgives his enemies because he loves all men, and even more, he loves all women--grab them by the pussy is his secret password to the White House entry door. Woodward's book is full of lies, and the people working for Trump will deny all the stories in Woodward's book, or else they will be fired immediately, and given a poor reference for any future jobs. Trump will declare himself President for Life of the United States of Trumpland, as soon as he declares martial law and has the next national election of 2020 declared null and void. Seig Heil Trump, Father of the Most Glorious Nation on Earth!!!! | |
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| 09-05-18 12:37am - 2302 days | #1047 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
White House hits back at bombshell Bob Woodward book, claims the book is full of stories from 'former disgruntled employees' Business Insider Bob Bryan Sep 4th 2018 9:45PM White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders responded to explosive new claims in veteran journalist Bob Woodward's new book, "Fear: Trump in the White House." The books describes a chaotic White House, with fights between Trump and aides as well as arguments among White House staffers. Sanders said Woodward's book is "nothing more than fabricated stories" with stories from "former disgruntled employees." White House chief of staff John Kelly also responded to Woodward's report that he called Trump an "idiot." "The idea I ever called the President an idiot is not true," Kelly said. The White House on Tuesday hit back at veteran journalist Bob Woodward's new book on President Donald Trump's administration. "This book is nothing more than fabricated stories, many by former disgruntled employees, told to make the President look bad," press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement. Portions of Woodward's book that detail a wild, chaotic White House with an often-belligerent Trump at its center were released by The Washington Post on Tuesday. Woodward is an editor at the Post. Many of the stories detailed vocal disagreement between members of the president's team or direct confrontations between Trump and his aides. "While it is not always pretty, and rare that the press actually covers it, President Trump has broken through the bureaucratic process to deliver unprecedented successes for the American people," Sanders said. "Sometimes it is unconventional, but he always gets results." Additionally, the White House issued a rebuttal from White House chief of staff John Kelly. In the book, entitled "Fear: Trump in the White House," Kelly is quoted calling Trump "unhinged," and an "idiot." "The idea I ever called the President an idiot is not true," Kelly said in the statement. "As I stated back in May and still firmly stand behind: 'I spend more time with the President than anyone else, and we have an incredibly candid and strong relationship. He always knows where I stand, and he and I both know this story is total BS'." Here's the full response from Sanders: "This book is nothing more than fabricated stories, many by former disgruntled employees, told to make the President look bad. While it is not always pretty, and rare that the press actually covers it, President Trump has broken through the bureaucratic process to deliver unprecedented successes for the American people. Sometimes it is unconventional, but he always gets results. Democrats and their allies in the media understand the President’s policies are working and with success like this, no one can beat him in 2020 – not even close." And Kelly: "The idea I ever called the President an idiot is not true. As I stated back in May and still firmly stand behind: 'I spend more time with the President than anyone else, and we have an incredibly candid and strong relationship. He always knows where I stand, and he and I both know this story is total BS. I'm committed to the President, his agenda, and our country. This is another pathetic attempt to smear people close to President Trump and distract from the administration’s many successes'." And the response from Defense Secretary Jim Mattis: "The contemptuous words about the President attributed to me in Woodward's book were never uttered by me or in my presence. While I generally enjoy reading fiction, this is a uniquely Washington brand of literature, and his anonymous sources do not lend credibility. "While responsible policy making in the real world is inherently messy, it is also essential that we challenge every assumption to find the best option. I embrace such debate and the open competition of ideas. In just over a year, these robust discussions and deliberations have yielded significant results, including the near annihilation of the ISIS caliphate, unprecedented burden sharing by our NATO allies, the repatriation of US service member remains from North Korea, and the improved readiness of our armed forces. Our defense policies have also enjoyed overwhelming bipartisan support in Congress. "In serving in this administration, the idea that I would show contempt for the elected Commander-in-Chief president Trump, or tolerate disrespect to the office of the President from within [our] Department of Defense, is a product of someone's rich imagination." Check out some of the details from Woodward's book: John Kelly was reportedly enraged with Trump over his handling of Charlottesville, said he would have taken a resignation letter 'and shoved it up his ass 6 different times' Gary Cohn reportedly snatched documents off Trump's desk to prevent him from wrecking 2 massive trade deals Trump reportedly called his attorney general Jeff Sessions a 'dumb southerner' and a 'traitor' Trump has reportedly said that his speech after the deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville was the 'biggest f---ing mistake' he's made 'It's either that or an orange jumpsuit': Explosive Bob Woodward book reportedly recounts Trump's lawyer's effort to keep him from interviewing with Mueller Trump reportedly told Mattis that he wanted to assassinate Bashar al-Assad after his chemical weapons attack on Syrians last year | |
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| 09-04-18 09:16am - 2303 days | #2 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
I'm surprised no PU staff member responded to this thread. Maybe it slipped though their notice, or they did not have time to read it. Anyway, I think it is important that PU keeps members who contribute to the site, unless there is clear evidence they violated the rules. And I suggest that if PU staff thinks a member violated the site rules, that some effort be put into straightening out the situation, before the member is suspended. For example, a warning on what the rules are that were violated. This will allow the PU community to benefit from the contributions the members make to the site. I don't know how the suspensions were done, whether there was a warning, or done automatically, or whatever, but I believe members can be valuable, and should be treated with respect before being rejected from the site. Of course, PU has the right and authority to suspend members, but it should be done in a reasonable way. I find it hard to believe that at least 2 Webmasters that were suspended were anything but people who contributed their inside knowledge of their sites with courtesy and respect: SelenaMetArt (at MetArt), and Stas RC (at Teen Mega World). | |
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| 09-03-18 03:54pm - 2304 days | #1046 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
President Trump blasts Jeff Sessions, the poorest Attorney General since Benedict Arnold. Why does Trump allow his Attorney General to be a traitor to his Administration and to the Country? Sessions should be jailed, and executed for the coward he is. Trump's heart is broken by Sessions' cowardice. ------------ ------------ ABC News Trump steams at Attorney General Jeff Sessions, reigniting his attacks ABC News AVERY MILLER and DEVIN DWYER,ABC News 53 minutes ago Trump steams at Attorney General Jeff Sessions, reigniting his attacks (ABC News) President Trump found it apparently too hot outside to play golf this morning, but now inside the White House residence, he again seems to be getting hot under the collar — unleashing a fresh round of sharp criticism on his Attorney General Jeff Sessions. "Two long running, Obama era, investigations of two very popular Republican Congressmen were brought to a well publicized charge, just ahead of the Mid-Terms, by the Jeff Sessions Justice Department," Trump tweeted Monday. He appeared to be referring to Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., and Rep. Chris Collins, R-N.Y., both recently indicted by federal juries in separate corruption cases. "Two easy wins now in doubt because there is not enough time. Good job Jeff," Trump said. Hunter, along with his wife, were indicted by the Department of Justice last month for alleged illegal use of campaign funds to pay personal expenses — from luxury vacations and health care to family meals. Collins was indicted earlier this summer on insider trading charges; he subsequently ceased his bid for re-election and announced he would resign from Congress at the end of his term. Both Hunter and Collins were the first congressmen to endorse Trump for President back in February 2016. Both Hunter and Collins have denied the allegations against them. It's not clear whether Trump believes the indictments themselves are misguided — in addition to the timing of the charges — or both. The White House did not immediately respond to request for comment on the tweets. "The Democrats, none of whom voted for Jeff Sessions, must love him now," Trump continued on Twitter. "Same thing with Lyin’ James Comey. The Dems all hated him, wanted him out, thought he was disgusting - UNTIL I FIRED HIM! Immediately he became a wonderful man, a saint like figure in fact. Really sick!" Trump renews attack on Attorney General Jeff Sessions, claiming 'real corruption goes untouched' A spokeswoman for House Speaker Paul Ryan seems to side with Sessions - who pronounced last month that the DOJ should be free from political influence - and backed the recent indictments of two sitting GOP congressmen. "DOJ should always remain apolitical, and the speaker has demonstrated he takes these charges seriously," Ryan spokeswoman AshLee Strong said in a statement to ABC News. "For more, you can ask him at his press conferences this week.” Very shortly after the indictments against Collins and Hunter were each announced, Ryan moved to strip both of their committee assignments pending outcome of the cases. A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment on the president's tweets. For months, Trump has ratcheted up attacks on Sessions, accusing him of disloyalty for — in his view — failing to align the investigative priorities of the Justice Department against Trump's political enemies. The president has said he resents Sessions' decision to recuse himself from all matters related to the Russia investigation -- and blames him for allowing the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller. Trump, who won the 2016 presidential election in the shadow of an investigation of Hillary Clinton's emails, has also accused Sessions of not doing enough to investigate alleged crimes by Democrats and Clinton during the campaign. After Trump in a recent interview accused Sessions of not having "control" of the Justice Department, Sessions shot back in a rare, direct rebuke. Sessions hits back at Trump: Won't be influenced by 'political considerations' "I took control of the Department of Justice the day I was sworn in," Sessions said in a statement on Aug. 23. "While I am Attorney General, the actions of the Department of Justice will not be improperly influenced by political considerations." Trump to Sessions: Shut down Russia probe Last week, Trump — who was said to be angered by Sessions' statement — gave the clearest indication yet that a shake-up is coming soon at DOJ. In an interview with Bloomberg News, he would not say if Sessions' job is safe past the Nov. 6 midterm elections. Several top Republican lawmakers have publicly tried to convince the president to hold off on any dramatic moves at DOJ until after the Mueller investigation concludes — or at least until after the election. The president has agreed not to remove the attorney general before the election, but they could not guarantee he wouldn't change his mind and act sooner, sources have told ABC News. | |
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| 09-03-18 12:18pm - 2304 days | #1045 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
President Trump revealed to be a pussy. Trump's lawyer shouts Trump is sure to block the release of the full Mueller report. This is wrong: Trump is a disgrace. He needs to show his manhood, his balls, and declare martial law, then order secret service agents to arrest Mueller and all slimeball Democrats and illegal immigrants from shithole countries. If any of them resist, shoot to kill orders will be issued. Clean the swamp in Washington! Trump must fight these thugs and criminals with force. ------- ------- Politics Rudy Giuliani On White House Blocking Release Of Full Mueller Report: ‘I’m Sure We Will’ HuffPost Dominique Mosbergen,HuffPost 3 hours ago Rudy Giuliani says the White House would likely attempt to block a full public release of Robert Mueller’s anticipated final report about the Russia investigation ― bolstering long-held fears that the special counsel’s ultimate findings may never see the light of day. Giuliani’s startling admission was tucked inside an expansive New Yorker profile of the former New York City mayor and Trump attorney, published online Monday. Giuliani, who like the president has repeatedly described the Russia probe as a “witch hunt,” told journalist Jeffrey Toobin that Trump’s original legal team had struck a deal with Mueller about his expected final report that would allow the White House to “object to the public disclosure of information that might be covered by executive privilege.” “I asked Giuliani if he thought the White House would raise objections,” wrote Toobin in the profile. “I’m sure we will,” Giuliana responded, noting that it would be the president who “would make the final call.” Giuliani, whom Trump hired in April amid a change in the president’s legal representation in the special counsel probe, said that his team was preparing a lengthy report which they planned to release at the same time as Mueller’s to “refute its expected findings.” As Vox explained in an earlier article, Mueller is only required by law to deliver a final report to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who will ultimately decide whether to release any or all of Mueller’s findings to Congress or the public. Victoria Nourse, a Georgetown law professor, told Vox that Trump could also “order” Rosenstein not to release it. “But,” she added, “that’s a bit like firing Mueller, as many Republicans have warned — it just ups the case for impeachment because the president appears to be hiding something.” Whatever the White House’s reaction ends up being to Mueller’s ultimate findings, the assessment is expected to trigger contentious political bickering as Rosenstein is pressured from different sides to release ― or suppress ― the information. “It’ll be a moment that polarizes the country, exposing just how divided the country is about this investigation and who’s on the other side,” former House speaker Newt Gingrich told The Washington Post in June. This article originally appeared on HuffPost. | |
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| 09-02-18 11:29pm - 2304 days | Original Post - #1 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
I've noticed a couple of members who are Webmasters that are/were suspended. And a regular member who was suspended, RustyJ. My question is: are any of these suspensions done by mistake? One of the Webmasters (she is part of MetArt customer support) was friendly, helpful, and willing to post her knowledge of the MetArt network at Porn Users, SelenaMetArt. She has since been re-instated, I believe. But Stas RC, at Teen Mega World, is suspended. Again, he has been helpful in his replies on the Teen Mega World network, and I think the PU site is better off with his participation. Unless there was some reason for his suspension, I believe his membership should also be re-instated. He did not reply as often as SelenaMetArt (the MetArt staff member who I believe was re-instated), but his input helps with knowledge of his TMW site. And there is a regular member who I noticed has been suspended, RustyJ. My guess is that there was a computer error, that resulted in some of these suspensions, because the regular member was a member for several years, he contributed reviews, comments, posts, whatever, and I never found anything objectionable in what he submitted to the PU site. I hope I'm not being rude or aggressive with this comment/thread. But I think that members who contribute to the site should not be suspended in error. Edited on Sep 03, 2018, 12:13am | |
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| 09-02-18 01:04pm - 2305 days | #1044 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
South Pasadena officials caution against making judgments in fatal shooting of "ER" actress. However, the officials also say the the cops who shot the actress acted appropriately. So, cops can shoot people, and it's appropriate. But no member of the public can question whether there was any error, until the cops and other authorities have investigated, and can claim the shooting was justified. Officials can state the shooting was justified, before the 2 investigations into the shooting are finished. But the public has to wait until the investigations are completed and made public, before the public is told the public can form an opinion. And as everyone knows, well over 90%+ of all investigations come to the conclusion that any police shooting is justified. Even when the victim has no weapon. But this appears to be a case where the victim has physical and mental issues. Justice is a two way street? One way for cops and people of wealth: A different way for the public or blacks or minorities, who don't have the power to defend themselves. Go Trump, leader of the Moral Majority for a white America. -------- -------- September 2, 2018 9:06AM PT South Pasadena Officials Caution Against ‘Making Judgements’ in Fatal Shooting of ‘ER’ Actress South Pasadena city leaders cautioned the public against making preliminary judgements about the fatal shooting of “ER” actress Vanessa Marquez at her home on Thursday. In a statement released on Saturday, city officials said two separate, independent investigations are being conducted by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and District Attorney’s Office into the officer-involved shooting. “We believe our officers acted appropriately under a tragic set of circumstances,” South Pasadena City Manager Stephanie DeWolfe said in a press release. “We are asking the public to respect the investigative process and allow the Sheriff’s Department and D.A.’s office to gather and release the facts.” The incident occurred at Marquez’s home in Pasadena, Calif., after a landlord called the police to check on her wellbeing. When officers arrived at her apartment, they said she was suffering seizures and appeared unable to take care of herself, so they called for paramedics and a mental health clinician. After an hour and a half, Marquez armed herself with a BB gun and pointed it at the officers, causing them to open fire, according to Sheriff’s Lt. Joe Mendoza. “We look forward to hearing the results of the investigation,” DeWolfe said. “In the meantime, we are asking the public to be patient and wait until the facts of the case are confirmed before making judgements about the incident.” DeWolfe continued, “We support our officers and stand by them during this investigation. We believe the facts will show that our officers, along with a mental health professional, made every attempt to resolve this situation peacefully before the use of a deadly force became necessary.” In addition to her work opposite George Clooney on “ER,” Marquez appeared with Edward James Olmos in 1988’s “Stand and Deliver,” along with the series “Malcom & Eddie” and “Wiseguy.” Last October, she alleged that she was blacklisted from “ER” by Clooney after she complained of racial discrimination and sexual harassment. Edited on Sep 02, 2018, 06:17pm | |
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| 09-01-18 01:03pm - 2306 days | #1043 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
This is shameful. People have no right to criticize President Trump for tweeting and playing golf during John McCain's funeral. John McCain died. He is finished. Trump is alive and well. So he has the right to enjoy a game of golf (Trump is an avid golfer who criticized Obama as president for playing golf while in office, and Trump promised he would never play golf while in office, because he would focus on doing his job as president--but once in office, Trump changed his mind, which is something he does quite often, and has played far more golf than Obama ever did). So Trump has the right and privilege of playing golf and tweeting (Trump enjoys both golf and tweeting) during McCain's funeral. He is the president, after all. --------- --------- Trump criticized for tweeting and playing golf during John McCain's funeral The Independent Adam Forrest,The Independent 2 hours 13 minutes ago Mr Trump, who regularly clashed with Mr McCain, was not invited to his funeral: Ian MacNicol/Getty Images Donald Trump has been criticized for playing golf and launching a Twitter rant about Canada during John McCain’s funeral. Leading political figures, including three former presidents - Barack Obama, George Bush and Bill Clinton - came together to pay tribute to the late senator from Arizona. But the current US leader, who was not invited to the memorial at the Washington National Cathedral, decided to head to a Virginia golf course. There, he tweeted about the dispute about the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with the Canadian government. “There is no political necessity to keep Canada in the new NAFTA deal," he wrote. "If we don’t make a fair deal for the US after decades of abuse, Canada will be out. Congress should not interfere w/ these negotiations or I will simply terminate NAFTA entirely & we will be far better off...” Shortly afterwards, he followed up with: “Remember, NAFTA was one of the WORST Trade Deals ever made. The US lost thousands of businesses and millions of jobs.” Some Twitter users quickly urged Mr Trump to "show some respect,” asking him to stay off the platform while Mr McCain’s funeral took place at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. Among those paying tribute were the former presidents George W Bush and Barack Obama, along with his children and wife Cindy McCain. Mr Trump did not mention the senator's funeral. Shortly after his tweets, Robert Reich, a professor at the University of California, Berkley and well known political commentator, tweeted: “Only a true egomaniac would throw a tantrum to distract from a funeral.” US rapper Twista wrote: “Respect the dead, hold your tweets till after the funeral.” Author and editor Christopher Dickey said Mr Trump’s tweets “keep interrupting the feeds from the McCain funeral, which is so much more important to the future of the United States than your imagined prowess as a deal maker.” Immigration lawyer Mana Yegani added: “He doesn’t know what to do but send out irrelevant tweets. Trump getting completely ignored on this day of Remembrance.” The US president reportedly arrived at the golf course just as the funeral was getting underway. He had earlier tweeted about the Russia investigation, attacking the FBI, Justice Department and the infamous dossier compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele. | |
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| 09-01-18 12:01pm - 2306 days | #1042 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
The scenario that, to my mind, makes the most sense of the given facts and requires the fewest fantastical leaps is that, a decade or so ago, Trump, naïve, covetous, and struggling for cash, may have laundered money for a business partner from the former Soviet Union or engaged in some other financial crime. This placed him, unawares, squarely within sistema, where he remained, conducting business with other members of a handful of overlapping Central Asian networks. Had he never sought the Presidency, he may never have had to come to terms with these decisions. But now he is much like everyone else in sistema. He fears there is kompromat out there—maybe a lot of it—but he doesn’t know precisely what it is, who has it, or what might set them off. Trump and many of his defenders have declared his businesses, including those in the former Soviet Union, to be off-limits to the Mueller investigation. They argue that the special counsel should focus only on the possibility of explicit acts of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. This neatly avoids the reality of sistema. As Pavlovsky wrote, “Under Putin, sistema has become a method for making deals among businesses, powerful players, and the people. Business has not taken over the state, nor vice versa; the two have merged in a union of total and seamless corruption.” Ledeneva explained to me that, in sistema, when faced with uncertainty, every member knows that the best move is to maintain whatever alliances he has, and to avoid grand steps that could antagonize powerful figures; in such times, the most one can hope for is simply to survive. Adam Davidson is a staff writer at The New Yorker. | |
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| 09-01-18 12:00pm - 2306 days | #1041 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
A Theory of Trump Kompromat Why the President is so nice to Putin, even when Putin might not want him to be. By Adam Davidson July 19, 2018 President Trump’s persistent deference to Vladimir Putin has led many people to speculate that the Russian President is holding something over him. Photograph by Brendan Smialowski / AFP / Getty The former C.I.A. operative Jack Devine watched Donald Trump’s performance standing next to Vladimir Putin in Helsinki on Monday, and his first thought was, “There is no way Trump is a Russian agent.” The proof, he told me, was right in front of us. If Trump were truly serving as a Russian intelligence asset, there would have been an obvious move for him to make during his joint press conference with Putin. He would have publicly lambasted the Russian leader, unleashing as theatrical a denunciation as possible. He would have told Putin that he may have been able to get away with a lot of nonsense under Barack Obama, but all that would end now: America has a strong President and there will be no more meddling. Instead, Trump gave up his single best chance to permanently put to rest any suspicion that he is working to promote Russian interests. During a three-decade career in intelligence, Devine ran the C.I.A.’s effort to get the Soviet Union out of Afghanistan, and then served as the No. 2 (and, briefly, acting head) of its clandestine service. Along the way, he tangled with, and carefully studied, Russian intelligence officers. He was involved in two major hunts for American intelligence operatives who were secretly working for the K.G.B.: Devine was the supervisor of Aldrich Ames, the C.I.A. officer who pleaded guilty, in 1994, to spying for Moscow, and he oversaw the investigation of Robert Hanssen, the F.B.I. counterintelligence officer who confessed, in 2001, to being a double agent. Hanssen, for instance, was like Trump, narcissistic, with a broad set of grievances about the many ways that his special qualities were not being recognized. But, unlike Trump, he harbored those grievances quietly and found satisfaction in secretly upending the system in which he operated. Trump shows no signs that he can be gratified by secret triumphs. He seems to need everyone, everywhere, to see whatever it is that he thinks deserves praise. His need for public attention is a trait that would likely cause most spies to avoid working with Trump. There is no need to assume that Trump was a formal agent of Russian intelligence to make sense of Trump’s solicitousness toward Putin. Keith Darden, an international-relations professor at American University, has studied the Russian use of kompromat—compromising material—and told me that he thinks it is likely that the President believes the Russians have something on him. “He’s never said a bad word about Putin,” Darden said. “He’s exercised a degree of self-control with respect to Russia that he doesn’t with anything else.” Darden said that this is evidence that Trump isn’t uniformly reckless in his words: “He is capable of being strategic. He knows there are limits, there are bounds on what he can say and do with respect to Russia.” Because the word kompromat is new to most Americans, and has been introduced in the context of a President whose behavior confuses many of us, it is natural to assume that it must be a big, rare, scary thing, used in extraordinary circumstances to force compliance and achieve grand aims. But, Darden explained to me, kompromat is routinely used throughout the former Soviet Union to curry favor, improve negotiated outcomes, and sway opinion. Intelligence services, businesspeople, and political figures everywhere exploit gossip and damaging information. However, Darden argues, kompromat has a uniquely powerful role in the former Soviet Union, where the practice is so pervasive, he coined the term “blackmail state” to describe the way of governance. Kompromat can be a single, glaring example of wrongdoing, recorded by someone close to the Kremlin and then used to control the bad actor. It can be proof of an embarrassing sex act. Darden believes it is unlikely that sexual kompromat would be effective on Trump. Allegations of sexual harassment, extramarital affairs, and the payment of hush money to hide indiscretions have failed to significantly diminish the enthusiasm of Trump’s core supporters. But another common form of kompromat—proof of financial crimes—could be more politically and personally damaging. Trump has made a lot of money doing deals with businesspeople from the former Soviet Union, and at least some of these deals bear many of the warning signs of money laundering and other financial crimes. Deals in Toronto, Panama, New York, and Miami involved money from sources in the former Soviet Union who hid their identities through shell companies and exhibited other indications of money laundering. In the years before he became a political figure, Trump acted with impunity, conducting minimal corporate due diligence and working with people whom few other American businesspeople would consider fit partners. During that period, he may have felt protected by the fact that U.S. law-enforcement officials rarely investigate or prosecute Americans who engage in financial crimes overseas. Such cases are also maddeningly difficult to prove, and the F.B.I. has no subpoena power in other countries. If, however, someone had evidence that proved financial crimes and shared it with, say, the special counsel, Robert Mueller, other American law-enforcement officials, or the press, it could significantly damage Trump’s business, his family, and his Presidency. Alena Ledeneva, a professor of politics at University College London and an expert on Russia’s political and business practices, describes kompromat as being more than a single powerful figure weaponizing damning evidence to blackmail a target. She explained that to make sense of kompromat it is essential to understand the weakness of formal legal institutions in Russia and other former Soviet states. Ledeneva argued that wealth and power are distributed through networks of political figures and businesspeople who follow unspoken rules, in an informal hierarchy that she calls sistema, or system. Sistema has a few clear rules—do not defy Putin being the most obvious one—and a toolkit for controlling potentially errant members. It is primarily a system of ambiguity. Each person in sistema wonders where he stands and monitors the relative positions of friends and rivals. Gleb Pavlovsky, one of the leading political thinkers in Russia, is known to be an adviser to Putin and well connected to the power structure. In a 2016 article in Foreign Affairs, he endorsed Ledeneva’s sistema framework. Many observers imagine Putin to be some all-powerful genius, Pavlovsky wrote, but he “has never managed to build a bureaucratically successful authoritarian state. Instead, he has merely crafted his own version of sistema, a complex practice of decision-making and power management that has long defined Russian politics and society and that will outlast Putin himself. Putin has mastered sistema, but he has not replaced it with ‘Putinism’ or a ‘Putin system.’ Someday, Putin will go. But sistema will stay.” Ledeneva said that the key to understanding Trump’s interaction with sistema is to look at the people with whom he did business. “Trump never dealt with anybody close to the Kremlin, close to Putin,” she said. “Or even many Russians.” Trump’s business deals, she told me, were with tertiary figures. Sistema is rooted in local, often familial, trust, so it is common to see networks rooted in ethnic or national identity. My own reporting has shown that Trump has worked with many ethnic Turks from Central Asia, such as the Mammadov family, in Azerbaijan; Tevfik Arif, in New York; and Aras and Emin Agalarov, in Moscow. Trump also worked with large numbers of émigrés from the former Soviet Union. If there truly is damaging kompromat on Trump, it could well be in the hands of Trump’s business partners, or even in those of their rivals. Trump’s Georgian partners, for example, have been in direct conflict with other local business networks over a host of crucial deals involving major telecommunications projects in the country. His Azerbaijani partners were tightly linked to Iranians who were also senior officers in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The work of Ledeneva and Darden suggests that Trump’s partners and their rivals would likely have gathered any incriminating information they could find on him, knowing that it might one day provide some sort of business leverage—even with no thought that he could someday become the most powerful person on Earth. Ledeneva is skeptical that Putin, years ago, ordered an effort to collect kompromat on Trump. Instead, it is possible that there is kompromat in the hands of several different business groups in the former Soviet Union. Each would have bits and pieces of damaging information and might have found subtle (or not so subtle) ways to communicate that fact to both Trump and Putin. Putin would likely have gathered some of that material, but he would have known that he couldn’t get everything. Ledeneva told me that each actor in sistema faces near-constant uncertainty about his status, aware that others could well destroy him. Each actor also knows how to use kompromat to destroy rivals but fears that using such material might provoke an explosive response. While each person in sistema feels near-constant uncertainty, the over-all sistema is remarkably robust. Kompromat is most powerful when it isn’t used, and when its targets aren’t quite clear about how much destructive information there is out there. If everyone sees potential land mines everywhere, it dramatically increases the price for anybody stepping out of line. CONTINUED IN NEXT POST: | |
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| 09-01-18 11:45am - 2306 days | #1040 | |
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lk2fireone (0)
Active User Posts: 3,618 Registered: Nov 14, '08 Location: CA |
Fake news: President Trump breaks down in tears after watching "First Man" movie about American hero Neil Armstrong. Trump confesses that he is a Russian agent, who has worked for Vladimir Putin since being blackmailed with pornographic tapes the Russians made of Trump during Trump's visit to Russia. Trump can't help himself: he can not resist lovely women, and the Russians caught the sex and pissing action of Trump in an orgy with Russian prostitutes. Trump asks for God's forgiveness, and explains that's why he chose Mike Pence, a God-fearing man as his running mate, who would try to bring Trump back into the straight and narrow life of a moral Christian. Except that Trump has appetites: for massive wealth, for pride in crushing the dreams of immigrants and low-life scum that litter the American soil. If Trump is impeached, he will not go down without a fight: he will use every dirty trick he knows, to bring down not just the Democrats, but the Republican party as well. Hail Trump, leader of the Moral Majority to keep America white and rich. ------------ ------------ Rolling Stone Movie News September 1, 2018 11:02AM ET Neil Armstrong’s Sons Defend ‘First Man’ Biopic Against ‘Anti-American’ Claims “To address the question of whether this was a political statement, the answer is no,” director Damian Chazelle says of biopic’s decision to omit American flag-planting on Moon By Daniel Kreps Ryan Gosling’s upcoming film First Man about Neil Armstrong Neil Armstrong’s sons have defended First Man, the upcoming biopic about the astronaut, against claims that the film is “anti-American” for not capturing the moment Armstrong planted the American flag on the Moon. Following the premiere of First Man – directed by Damien Chazelle and starring Ryan Gosling as Armstrong – at the Venice Film Festival, conservative pundits attacked the film as unpatriotic for omitting the historic moment on the lunar surface. However, Armstrong’s sons Rick and Mark, along with First Man author James R. Hansen, defended Chazelle’s cinematic decision. “This story is human and it is universal. Of course, it celebrates an America achievement. It also celebrates an achievement ‘for all mankind,'” the Armstrongs and Hansen said in a statement (via the Associated Press). “The filmmakers chose to focus on Neil looking back at the earth, his walk to Little West Crater, his unique, personal experience of completing this journey, a journey that has seen so many incredible highs and devastating lows.” Chazelle similarly addressed the controversy at the Venice Film Festival, where First Man was met with acclaim following its debut. “The flag being physically planted into the surface is one of several moments of the Apollo 11 lunar EVA that I chose not to focus upon,” Chazelle said. “To address the question of whether this was a political statement, the answer is no. My goal with this movie was to share with audiences the unseen, unknown aspects of America’s mission to the moon — particularly Neil Armstrong’s personal saga and what he may have been thinking and feeling during those famous few hours.” First Man, Chazelle’s first film since he won Best Director for La La Land, opens October 12th. | |
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