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On December 15 2016 08:15 xDaunt wrote:Show nested quote +On December 15 2016 08:08 Doodsmack wrote:President-elect Donald Trump’s insistence on perpetuating egregious conflicts of interest and retaining ownership of businesses that receive money from foreign governments suggests that he will, on Day One in office, be in violation of the Emoluments Clause as soon as he enters office and, in the words of ethics expert Norman Eisen, be “courting disaster.”
...
In a letter to Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.), the director of the Office of Government Ethics (OGE) took issue with Trump’s notion of letting his kids run his businesses. “Transferring operational control of a company to one’s children would not constitute the establishment of a qualified blind trust, nor would it eliminate conflicts of interest under 18 U.S.C. § 208 if applicable,” the director wrote. He acknowledges that this provision does not specifically cover the president. However, he writes that “it has been the consistent policy of the executive branch that a President should conduct himself ‘as if” he were bound by this financial conflict of interest law. Given the unique circumstances of the Presidency, OGE’s view is that a President should comply with this law by divesting conflicting assets, establishing a qualified blind trust, or both.”
Adding yet another twist, the director tells Carper that the 2012 STOCK ACT bars the president from in essence using inside information to benefit himself. (“The STOCK Act bars the President from: using nonpublic information for private profit; engaging in insider trading; participating in an initial public offering; intentionally influencing an employment decision or practice of a private entity solely on the basis of partisan political affiliation; and participating in a particular matter directly and predictably affecting the financial interests of any person with whom he has, or is negotiating for, an agreement of future employment or compensation.”)
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The extent of Trump’s constitutional problem is only now becoming clear. Newsweek reports:
The Trump family has an enormous financial interest in keeping [Rodrigo] Duterte happy. Trump Tower at Century City in Makati, Philippines, is on the verge of completion, with potential buyers having placed deposits on at least 94 percent of the condominiums, according to Century Properties, the Trump Organization’s business partner there. During the U.S. presidential campaign, Trump’s sons Donald Jr. and Eric traveled to Makati to shovel some dirt in a ceremony to celebrate the structural completion of the building; a photograph of the two men shoveling alongside top Century Properties executives was posted on the building’s website. … The man writing millions of dollars’ worth of checks to the Trump family is the Duterte government’s special representative to the United States. To argue that these payments will be constitutional if they are paid to the Trump children, and not to Trump personally, is absurd. This conflict demands congressional hearings, and could be an impeachable offense.
There are also conflicts brewing in Turkey: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who recently beat back a coup, is intent on getting the United States to turn over Fethullah Gulen, a 77-year-old Muslim cleric who lives in Pennsylvania and whom Erdogan blames for the coup. In a phone call with Erdogan, the conflicts of interest played out, as Newsweek reports:
Trump passed on compliments to the Turkish president from a senior official with his company’s business partner on the Istanbul project, whom the president-elect was reported to have called “a close friend.” The official, Mehmet Ali Yalcindag, is the son-in-law of Dogan Holding owner Aydin Dogan and was instrumental in the development of the Trump complex in Turkey. The Washington Post This is what we call fake news. Trump isn't in violation of anything yet, and still has more than a month to get into compliance with whatever laws that he needs to comply with. The purpose of this article is merely to rile people up for no good reason.
Seriously you too? Name the false items in that story. "Fake news" doesn't mean "news I don't agree with" it means "news with no factual basis." His prior proposals to address conflicts have been laughable (oh yeah my kids will run it...totally independent).
Trump may treat a murderous foreign leader (well, or several) with kid gloves because it benefits him financially. I'm not using hyperbole Duterte literally admits being a murderer. That is abhorrent and should be unacceptable to every American, how does anyone disagree with that?
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On December 15 2016 14:24 CatharsisUT wrote:Show nested quote +On December 15 2016 08:15 xDaunt wrote:On December 15 2016 08:08 Doodsmack wrote:President-elect Donald Trump’s insistence on perpetuating egregious conflicts of interest and retaining ownership of businesses that receive money from foreign governments suggests that he will, on Day One in office, be in violation of the Emoluments Clause as soon as he enters office and, in the words of ethics expert Norman Eisen, be “courting disaster.”
...
In a letter to Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.), the director of the Office of Government Ethics (OGE) took issue with Trump’s notion of letting his kids run his businesses. “Transferring operational control of a company to one’s children would not constitute the establishment of a qualified blind trust, nor would it eliminate conflicts of interest under 18 U.S.C. § 208 if applicable,” the director wrote. He acknowledges that this provision does not specifically cover the president. However, he writes that “it has been the consistent policy of the executive branch that a President should conduct himself ‘as if” he were bound by this financial conflict of interest law. Given the unique circumstances of the Presidency, OGE’s view is that a President should comply with this law by divesting conflicting assets, establishing a qualified blind trust, or both.”
Adding yet another twist, the director tells Carper that the 2012 STOCK ACT bars the president from in essence using inside information to benefit himself. (“The STOCK Act bars the President from: using nonpublic information for private profit; engaging in insider trading; participating in an initial public offering; intentionally influencing an employment decision or practice of a private entity solely on the basis of partisan political affiliation; and participating in a particular matter directly and predictably affecting the financial interests of any person with whom he has, or is negotiating for, an agreement of future employment or compensation.”)
...
The extent of Trump’s constitutional problem is only now becoming clear. Newsweek reports:
The Trump family has an enormous financial interest in keeping [Rodrigo] Duterte happy. Trump Tower at Century City in Makati, Philippines, is on the verge of completion, with potential buyers having placed deposits on at least 94 percent of the condominiums, according to Century Properties, the Trump Organization’s business partner there. During the U.S. presidential campaign, Trump’s sons Donald Jr. and Eric traveled to Makati to shovel some dirt in a ceremony to celebrate the structural completion of the building; a photograph of the two men shoveling alongside top Century Properties executives was posted on the building’s website. … The man writing millions of dollars’ worth of checks to the Trump family is the Duterte government’s special representative to the United States. To argue that these payments will be constitutional if they are paid to the Trump children, and not to Trump personally, is absurd. This conflict demands congressional hearings, and could be an impeachable offense.
There are also conflicts brewing in Turkey: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who recently beat back a coup, is intent on getting the United States to turn over Fethullah Gulen, a 77-year-old Muslim cleric who lives in Pennsylvania and whom Erdogan blames for the coup. In a phone call with Erdogan, the conflicts of interest played out, as Newsweek reports:
Trump passed on compliments to the Turkish president from a senior official with his company’s business partner on the Istanbul project, whom the president-elect was reported to have called “a close friend.” The official, Mehmet Ali Yalcindag, is the son-in-law of Dogan Holding owner Aydin Dogan and was instrumental in the development of the Trump complex in Turkey. The Washington Post This is what we call fake news. Trump isn't in violation of anything yet, and still has more than a month to get into compliance with whatever laws that he needs to comply with. The purpose of this article is merely to rile people up for no good reason. Seriously you too? Name the false items in that story. "Fake news" doesn't mean "news I don't agree with" it means "news with no factual basis." His prior proposals to address conflicts have been laughable (oh yeah my kids will run it...totally independent). Trump may treat a murderous foreign leader (well, or several) with kid gloves because it benefits him financially. I'm not using hyperbole Duterte literally admits being a murderer. That is abhorrent and should be unacceptable to every American, how does anyone disagree with that?
Your government has been doing it for decades with Saudi Arabia.
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On December 15 2016 14:12 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On December 15 2016 13:56 ChristianS wrote:
Uh, so if I understand you correctly there GH, you've got a kind of xDaunt-like "I like how Trump is making people I disagree with politically suffer" thing going on? That's great you two are having so much fun, but some of us have to live in this world after Trump shits it up.
To respond more substantively: there's a whole field of ethics surrounding what does and doesn't qualify as "corruption" and how to avoid it. I know you've always been broader with the definition and more relaxed with the burden of proof than a lot of us here in the thread (I seem to remember trying and failing to follow some discussion of Bill Clinton's presidential library a while back), but surely even you can see that there are orders of magnitude difference between something like Hillary taking money from Wall Street to give speeches (while she's not in office, mind you) and Trump literally owning a hotel which the federal government is renting from while he's the president. The former is only really corruption in the sense that all politicians who accept campaign donations are "corrupt" because they are now indebted to donors. The latter is literally someone who can take money from the federal government and deposit it in his own bank account if he wants.
What do fracking or Kissinger have to do with this? Are you just citing other reasons you don't like Hillary? Honestly, what does Hillary even have to do with this? This helps me understand why you didn't understand the rest. You buy the pretense, a lot of us don't. Kissinger is an example of her version of putting Generals in charge, Fracking is her version of handing over SoS and DoE to O&G. We know when Hillary is getting paid $250,000/hr to speak to Wall st. but can't fill a high school gym freely open to the public to listen to her, they weren't paying her because they wanted to listen to her. I have no argument about the directness of Trump's approach compared to the circuitous version Hillary and her supporters prefer. Other than the Democrats shouldn't lie and try to convince people they are against the principal of doing it, when they are really against the method/directness. On the Xdaunt part, I'm probably happy for very different reasons, I'm happy because he's showing how all of this was just kabuki in the first place, he's not doing radically different things, he's just cut out a lot of the politicians that were skimming in the name of their "constituents" EDIT: And flyer's right, I'm hoping people wake the hell up and want to do something about it, But seeing how Trump sold the Carrier thing, then ripped the guy who called him on his outright bullshit, I'm mostly counting on people outside of his base figuring out he played them like practically everyone who's ever trusted him.
I still don't understand what the allegation exactly is with those speeches. $250,000/hr sounds ridiculous for a 40hr/week job, but when it's a one-time gig for a short period of time by a famous person speaking to a place with pockets as deep as Goldman Sachs, it's not even that crazy. I mean think of it this way, if Kanye West does a 3-hour show, what do you think the "hourly rate" he earns on that show is? Do you see how that's a ridiculous way to compare his earnings to somebody working for $10/hr at McDonalds?
Otherwise we figure she was... well... what? Goldman Sachs pays her $250,000 or w/e and she promises to overlook some insider trading or something? What did she promise them, and when did she promise it? Remember, we know what was in those speeches now, so if there was corruption going on there she didn't reference it in the speeches, even though they were supposed to be private speeches.
The alternative is that firms like Goldman Sachs have a shitton of money to throw around and are always interested in a) what direction the government is moving in, and b) alternative points of view they might not have considered, so bringing in a well-known politician with decades of experience at all levels of government to talk for an hour doesn't seem like a crazy thing to do.
But let's grant for a moment everything you're implying. Forget there's no evidence of any quid pro quo, we'll start from the GH POV where we know the corruption is out there, and we just have to read the clues. Do you still at least acknowledge the world of difference between money being paid to someone who might hold office at some point, and money being paid directly to a sitting president? Like, seriously man, these aren't campaign donations, they're just dollars going to his pocket while he's still in office. Seriously, you're saying all this shit goes on all the time, when is the last time you can point to of a sitting president taking what basically amounts to a direct bribe?
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On December 15 2016 13:56 a_flayer wrote:Calling phishing a "hack" is the biggest bullshit. Script kiddies are closer to hacking than phishing by using actual exploits that were discovered through hacking. This is just social engineering. Also: Bwhahahahahhahahhahahahaahahahahhahahahahahahahahaa If Putin is behind this and is doing it to undermine my belief in looking at the US as a world leader, then he is certainly successful. How do people not look at the URLs of links that they click on, even if they are images? How does this go through a whole chain of people and not get discovered?
It might be ridiculously clever phishing, it might be just luck. I imagine the Podesta events went like this:
1. Email was sent at about 4:30 AM.
2. Podesta wakes up whenever, say 6 AM and does his morning routine. That involves checking his email.
3. He notices an email and being properly paranoid, he sends Sara Latham an email asking her to check out that shit.
4. Sara is busy doing something on the go and she forwards the email to Charles Delavan the IT guy. In the process the email spoof is removed from the forward link.
5. Charlie sees the email and he isn't suspecting an elaborate phish, he's probably sleepy or something. But he gives the right suggestions, a link and a few recommendations.
6. Sara telephones it to a panicked Podesta that he has the green light to change things. He doesn't feel like reading the annoying long Charlie email and just goes back to the official real link. Boom, Russians get his password and download everything.
Clever but anyone can do it.
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On December 15 2016 14:42 ChristianS wrote:Show nested quote +On December 15 2016 14:12 GreenHorizons wrote:On December 15 2016 13:56 ChristianS wrote:
Uh, so if I understand you correctly there GH, you've got a kind of xDaunt-like "I like how Trump is making people I disagree with politically suffer" thing going on? That's great you two are having so much fun, but some of us have to live in this world after Trump shits it up.
To respond more substantively: there's a whole field of ethics surrounding what does and doesn't qualify as "corruption" and how to avoid it. I know you've always been broader with the definition and more relaxed with the burden of proof than a lot of us here in the thread (I seem to remember trying and failing to follow some discussion of Bill Clinton's presidential library a while back), but surely even you can see that there are orders of magnitude difference between something like Hillary taking money from Wall Street to give speeches (while she's not in office, mind you) and Trump literally owning a hotel which the federal government is renting from while he's the president. The former is only really corruption in the sense that all politicians who accept campaign donations are "corrupt" because they are now indebted to donors. The latter is literally someone who can take money from the federal government and deposit it in his own bank account if he wants.
What do fracking or Kissinger have to do with this? Are you just citing other reasons you don't like Hillary? Honestly, what does Hillary even have to do with this? This helps me understand why you didn't understand the rest. You buy the pretense, a lot of us don't. Kissinger is an example of her version of putting Generals in charge, Fracking is her version of handing over SoS and DoE to O&G. We know when Hillary is getting paid $250,000/hr to speak to Wall st. but can't fill a high school gym freely open to the public to listen to her, they weren't paying her because they wanted to listen to her. I have no argument about the directness of Trump's approach compared to the circuitous version Hillary and her supporters prefer. Other than the Democrats shouldn't lie and try to convince people they are against the principal of doing it, when they are really against the method/directness. On the Xdaunt part, I'm probably happy for very different reasons, I'm happy because he's showing how all of this was just kabuki in the first place, he's not doing radically different things, he's just cut out a lot of the politicians that were skimming in the name of their "constituents" EDIT: And flyer's right, I'm hoping people wake the hell up and want to do something about it, But seeing how Trump sold the Carrier thing, then ripped the guy who called him on his outright bullshit, I'm mostly counting on people outside of his base figuring out he played them like practically everyone who's ever trusted him. I still don't understand what the allegation exactly is with those speeches. $250,000/hr sounds ridiculous for a 40hr/week job, but when it's a one-time gig for a short period of time by a famous person speaking to a place with pockets as deep as Goldman Sachs, it's not even that crazy. I mean think of it this way, if Kanye West does a 3-hour show, what do you think the "hourly rate" he earns on that show is? Do you see how that's a ridiculous way to compare his earnings to somebody working for $10/hr at McDonalds? Otherwise we figure she was... well... what? Goldman Sachs pays her $250,000 or w/e and she promises to overlook some insider trading or something? What did she promise them, and when did she promise it? Remember, we know what was in those speeches now, so if there was corruption going on there she didn't reference it in the speeches, even though they were supposed to be private speeches. The alternative is that firms like Goldman Sachs have a shitton of money to throw around and are always interested in a) what direction the government is moving in, and b) alternative points of view they might not have considered, so bringing in a well-known politician with decades of experience at all levels of government to talk for an hour doesn't seem like a crazy thing to do. But let's grant for a moment everything you're implying. Forget there's no evidence of any quid pro quo, we'll start from the GH POV where we know the corruption is out there, and we just have to read the clues. Do you still at least acknowledge the world of difference between money being paid to someone who might hold office at some point, and money being paid directly to a sitting president? Like, seriously man, these aren't campaign donations, they're just dollars going to his pocket while he's still in office. Seriously, you're saying all this shit goes on all the time, when is the last time you can point to of a sitting president taking what basically amounts to a direct bribe?
Forgetting for the moment that they weren't "one time" gigs, and that the difference with Kanye is that if he sent out a tweet saying he was performing for free pretty much anywhere, it wouldn't be mostly empty.
The talk was obviously fluff and of no real substance, other than it portrayed a sympathy with Wall st she wouldn't let the public see.
But getting to the point, the big difference I see, is that it's out in the open (more so at least). "Forget there's no evidence of any quid pro quo", politicians would have to be total and complete incompetents to get caught with a literal quid pro quo, look at the Bob McDonnell case.
There's been lots of mechanisms that politicians have used to receive kickbacks from the big money interests they help out, what I'm saying is that the difference is mostly economic and political kabuki, one could make the argument that's the best we can hope for, though I'd still disagree.
Buying stolen stuff from a fence doesn't put you on some morally superior ground to the fence or the person who stole it, but it does grant you plausible deniability. That's the system we had before Trump goes about changing it. Trump's just stealing the stuff himself in your "this is more extreme" example.
What I'm hoping people realize, is that we don't have to accept the base assumption that getting robbed is inevitable, so it's not best to just go with the stolen good consumer instead of the thief since he's more abrasive and that neither exists without us getting robbed anyway.
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On December 15 2016 14:24 CatharsisUT wrote:Show nested quote +On December 15 2016 08:15 xDaunt wrote:On December 15 2016 08:08 Doodsmack wrote:President-elect Donald Trump’s insistence on perpetuating egregious conflicts of interest and retaining ownership of businesses that receive money from foreign governments suggests that he will, on Day One in office, be in violation of the Emoluments Clause as soon as he enters office and, in the words of ethics expert Norman Eisen, be “courting disaster.”
...
In a letter to Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.), the director of the Office of Government Ethics (OGE) took issue with Trump’s notion of letting his kids run his businesses. “Transferring operational control of a company to one’s children would not constitute the establishment of a qualified blind trust, nor would it eliminate conflicts of interest under 18 U.S.C. § 208 if applicable,” the director wrote. He acknowledges that this provision does not specifically cover the president. However, he writes that “it has been the consistent policy of the executive branch that a President should conduct himself ‘as if” he were bound by this financial conflict of interest law. Given the unique circumstances of the Presidency, OGE’s view is that a President should comply with this law by divesting conflicting assets, establishing a qualified blind trust, or both.”
Adding yet another twist, the director tells Carper that the 2012 STOCK ACT bars the president from in essence using inside information to benefit himself. (“The STOCK Act bars the President from: using nonpublic information for private profit; engaging in insider trading; participating in an initial public offering; intentionally influencing an employment decision or practice of a private entity solely on the basis of partisan political affiliation; and participating in a particular matter directly and predictably affecting the financial interests of any person with whom he has, or is negotiating for, an agreement of future employment or compensation.”)
...
The extent of Trump’s constitutional problem is only now becoming clear. Newsweek reports:
The Trump family has an enormous financial interest in keeping [Rodrigo] Duterte happy. Trump Tower at Century City in Makati, Philippines, is on the verge of completion, with potential buyers having placed deposits on at least 94 percent of the condominiums, according to Century Properties, the Trump Organization’s business partner there. During the U.S. presidential campaign, Trump’s sons Donald Jr. and Eric traveled to Makati to shovel some dirt in a ceremony to celebrate the structural completion of the building; a photograph of the two men shoveling alongside top Century Properties executives was posted on the building’s website. … The man writing millions of dollars’ worth of checks to the Trump family is the Duterte government’s special representative to the United States. To argue that these payments will be constitutional if they are paid to the Trump children, and not to Trump personally, is absurd. This conflict demands congressional hearings, and could be an impeachable offense.
There are also conflicts brewing in Turkey: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who recently beat back a coup, is intent on getting the United States to turn over Fethullah Gulen, a 77-year-old Muslim cleric who lives in Pennsylvania and whom Erdogan blames for the coup. In a phone call with Erdogan, the conflicts of interest played out, as Newsweek reports:
Trump passed on compliments to the Turkish president from a senior official with his company’s business partner on the Istanbul project, whom the president-elect was reported to have called “a close friend.” The official, Mehmet Ali Yalcindag, is the son-in-law of Dogan Holding owner Aydin Dogan and was instrumental in the development of the Trump complex in Turkey. The Washington Post This is what we call fake news. Trump isn't in violation of anything yet, and still has more than a month to get into compliance with whatever laws that he needs to comply with. The purpose of this article is merely to rile people up for no good reason. Seriously you too? Name the false items in that story. "Fake news" doesn't mean "news I don't agree with" it means "news with no factual basis." His prior proposals to address conflicts have been laughable (oh yeah my kids will run it...totally independent). Trump may treat a murderous foreign leader (well, or several) with kid gloves because it benefits him financially. I'm not using hyperbole Duterte literally admits being a murderer. That is abhorrent and should be unacceptable to every American, how does anyone disagree with that?
Fake news doesn't require outright made up facts to be fake news. Bullshit premises and narratives are plenty in my book. Besides, I tend to think that mainstream media agrees with me on this point given the breadth of the application of their own use of the term fake news to encompass sources like Breitbart.
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We have a few of the Hillary Clinton speeches. She says some things that are insightful (into her own thought process that I disagree with in general), but far from exclusive or remarkable. It's basically just having a chat about foreign policy and foreign economic policy in particular. Nothing I would pay a quarter of a million dollars to hear. Furthermore, the talks were damn repetitive, which makes it questionable why you would need to hear a lot of them.
No, it's clearly more than that. GH has good insight there into what he thinks it is.
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Also, there was some discussion in some of the mediaverse, why did the evil Russians use a bitly link instead of something which they could take down later so that no one else (when the story gets out) could visit the link? It seemed like a sloppy move.
The consensus answer was actually kind of simple: it was done to get around Google's spam filter. Also I guess to give the impression that there's nothing unusual or "nation state capabilities" about using common everyday features like bitly and tk domains.
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On December 15 2016 15:25 LegalLord wrote:
We have a few of the Hillary Clinton speeches. She says some things that are insightful (into her own thought process that I disagree with in general), but far from exclusive or remarkable. It's basically just having a chat about foreign policy and foreign economic policy in particular. Nothing I would pay a quarter of a million dollars to hear. Furthermore, the talks were damn repetitive, which makes it questionable why you would need to hear a lot of them.
No, it's clearly more than that. GH has good insight there into what he thinks it is.
So what is it? It's apparently not an actual quid pro quo, so it's just... what? Wall Street hoping that when she's in the White House she'll remember that one time she got $250,000 from GS? What are they actually hoping to receive?
No, nevermind, somehow I've actually let you guys bait this discussion of Trump picking our pockets into a "but Hillary though!" discussion. I guess my guard was down because I didn't expect GH of all people to be the one defending Trump on corruption and shilling for big corporations.
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Trump just doesn't know the meaning of subtlety or tact.
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On December 15 2016 15:49 Slaughter wrote:
Trump just doesn't know the meaning of subtlety or tact.
Frankly that's what people actually like about him. Unfiltered.
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On December 15 2016 15:43 ChristianS wrote:Show nested quote +On December 15 2016 15:25 LegalLord wrote:
We have a few of the Hillary Clinton speeches. She says some things that are insightful (into her own thought process that I disagree with in general), but far from exclusive or remarkable. It's basically just having a chat about foreign policy and foreign economic policy in particular. Nothing I would pay a quarter of a million dollars to hear. Furthermore, the talks were damn repetitive, which makes it questionable why you would need to hear a lot of them.
No, it's clearly more than that. GH has good insight there into what he thinks it is. So what is it? It's apparently not an actual quid pro quo, so it's just... what? Wall Street hoping that when she's in the White House she'll remember that one time she got $250,000 from GS? What are they actually hoping to receive? No, nevermind, somehow I've actually let you guys bait this discussion of Trump picking our pockets into a "but Hillary though!" discussion. I guess my guard was down because I didn't expect GH of all people to be the one defending Trump on corruption and shilling for big corporations.
Why is it that Trump and Clinton both have shell corporations in Delaware? Why hasn't policy been adjusted to prevent that kind of absolute, total and inexcusable tax-evading bullshit from happening on a massive scale? And I don't need some tale about the sovereignty of individual states and such, because that's not the problem. It's not about Delaware specifically, it's this widespread soft-corruption where policy makers bend the policies implement to benefit themselves. Instead of representing the people, they represent themselves, large money donors and other privileged individuals.
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this hacking scandal is starting to blow up,most likely will end ok-ish but there is some risk.
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I see the makings of an internal intelligence power struggle in how this hacking issue has been addressed. Frankly I'm not seeing where the Russia side of this leads to the kind of actions I've seen from the agencies. The CIA "speaking to media" matter was clearly politically motivated. No other reason to make what is essentially an "educated assertion" without a real standard of evidence into a media firestorm.
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On December 15 2016 15:51 LegalLord wrote:Show nested quote +On December 15 2016 15:49 Slaughter wrote:
Trump just doesn't know the meaning of subtlety or tact. Frankly that's what people actually like about him. Unfiltered.
That's a bit a problem that people take complete lack of decency and manners for unfiltered authenticity. You can be authentic and a gentleman or being a total asshole and bullshit all day long..
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On December 15 2016 15:51 LegalLord wrote:Show nested quote +On December 15 2016 15:49 Slaughter wrote:
Trump just doesn't know the meaning of subtlety or tact. Frankly that's what people actually like about him. Unfiltered.
This is so silly to me. Not knowing how to behave or conduct yourself in a given situation should not be a boon. Showing composure and restraint should, at the very least, be expected of someone in a position of such dignity.
Pence, despite lying and denying blatantly obvious facts for 90 minutes, was said to have been favored in the VP debate for his calm and collected demeanor over Kaine's belligerent outbursts. Yet Trump is praised for the exact opposite? There is some weird mental twister shit going on in some peoples heads.
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I figure the "Russian hackers" angle covers at least three angles for the establishment.
Ability to delegitimatize election results that didn't go the way they wanted leading to a possibility of overturning the result.
Using it as a cover to introduce tougher internet restrictions, making it harder for people who oppose government policy or actions to discuss and get their theories 'out there'.
To destroy any media who does not tow the official govt line.
All in all it's pretty damn disturbing, the west is very much moving toward Chinese authoritarianism.I see the EU officials are saying the German election could be hacked by Russians next year and some British MP also made the ridiculous claim in parliament that the Brexit referendum could have been hacked.All paper ballots, just like Michigan.Whole thing is a total joke and I hope nobody here is buying it.
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Why did you just spend the last 2 pages defending Russia in ways that range from "I'm not sure they did it" to "but Kennedy did it too"?
Regarding whether Russia did it or not: you're reading articles that only go off the technical aspects and I agree, they only tell you so much. Presumably that's why the CIA seem confident that Russia did it to get Trump elected, whereas the FBI isn't. The CIA may be assumed to have human sources within Russia, tasked with finding this sort of thing out. It may not be the cold war anymore, but clearly there's still a use for spies. And spying on Russia is kinda the CIA's thing. So while the technical evidence only points to Russia probably doing it, there's probably other evidence that we are not privy to that points to exactly who and why. Or this is more WMD bullshit. That is also possible.
As for the "hypocrisy": is it possible that these are not all the same people? For starters, Kennedy is dead...
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On December 15 2016 18:32 Acrofales wrote:Why did you just spend the last 2 pages defending Russia in ways that range from "I'm not sure they did it" to "but Kennedy did it too"? Regarding whether Russia did it or not: you're reading articles that only go off the technical aspects and I agree, they only tell you so much. Presumably that's why the CIA seem confident that Russia did it to get Trump elected, whereas the FBI isn't. The CIA may be assumed to have human sources within Russia, tasked with finding this sort of thing out. It may not be the cold war anymore, but clearly there's still a use for spies. And spying on Russia is kinda the CIA's thing. So while the technical evidence only points to Russia probably doing it, there's probably other evidence that we are not privy to that points to exactly who and why. Or this is more WMD bullshit. That is also possible. As for the "hypocrisy": is it possible that these are not all the same people? For starters, Kennedy is dead...
FWIW the only CONFIRMED instance of hacking so far in the election came from DHS, committed against Georgia.
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/georgia-donald-trump-cyberattacks-dhs-232648
Kemp, who oversees Georgia's elections, said several of the alleged DHS attempts came at "very concerning" times that suggest they may have been political retaliation.
Georgia has been pushing back for months against DHS deliberations over whether to classify electoral infrastructure as "critical infrastructure," on par with the financial sector or power grid. Critics say the move represents federal government overreach, while proponents insist it would help states better fend off election hackers.
"These scans correspond to key election dates and times when I was speaking out against DHS' plans," Kemp wrote.
Georgia was one of the few states that did not accept a DHS offer to scan state systems for digital bugs amid this year's election-season hacking fears, warning that the action represented a potential federal intrusion.
DHS pushed back, arguing that it has no plans to take over local control of elections.
Georgia's "IT folks have been trying to recreate this, and we cannot do it," Kemp explained.
The federal government, he added, was "just kind of writing this off."
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