Lad, I have no issue into an investigation into alleged Trump collusion. Facts need to be aired.

There is a direct equivalence to Democratic actions; both involve one of our political factions potentially intentionally utilizing government and/or intelligence assets of a foreign adversary for political gain. Period.

Liberals dont seem to give a **** about the GPS/Fusion aspect, nor of the implications of a sitting President potentially using the equivalent of a National Enquirer article to open a Full Investigation under the FBI, and to bootstrap that into a granted FISA warrant, where the target is a political adversary. Sorry, that is Nixon-esque **** there. I think it is justifiable for us to know if the National Enquirer dossier was used in that manner.

And, to wit, I thought your comment on "And that doesn't touch on all of ... the connections to dirty Russian money that Trump campaign officials have been indicted for" was, to be honest, somewhat dishonest in that portion. I guess you believe that the Manafort indictments (for actions in the 2010 timeframe) are "connections to dirty Russian money that Trump campaign officials have been indicted for", but the real basis for the money laundering indictments is that a bank was used. Period. The way that the Feds target weed bulletin boards for using a credit card transaction for subscriptions, and the way that the Feds target weed growers (in the state legal states) for simply using a bank to deposit money. So in particular I found that portion of your comment specious.

Using that logic, considering I have setup corporations for nieces, nephews, and third or fourth cousins of foreign nationals who may very well have ties to narcotics trafficking, I guess it would be easy to loosely term my practice of 10 years ago of "connections to dirty narcotics trafficking money that some have been indicted for", or my practice in a startup as "connections to dirty US political money that was the object of US Congressional hearings".

But, to be blunt, some other portions of your list I found to be dead-on and agree with.

In contradistinction to your comment, I dont find the DNC/Fusion/GPS timeline to be "common oppo research" as you seemingly and somewhat loosely brushed it off. If you want to call using high level foreign intelligence officers still active in the Kremlin as "common oppo research", your prerogative. I find it very uncommon. I personally find it extremely hard to distinguish between actively sourcing oppo research from high level Russian officials and responding to Russian quasi-officials seeking to deal dirt.

And yes, Junior should be investigated for the meetings. That isnt "common" either. But, I am not sticking my head in the sand and trying to furiously differentiate between the two. That is the point I am trying to make, for better or for worse.

(11-01-2017 11:35 AM)RiceLad15 Wrote:  I find it very concerning that you appear to be willfully disregarding all of the circumstances surrounding the Trump campaign that suggest an investigation is completely and utterly defensible

And again, you keep asking for evidence of collusion before the investigation is complete.It would have been settled.

What you had was enough evidence of potential collusion (meetings with Russian officials that were constantly lied about, communications about trying to contact Wikileaks about releasing emails, intelligence that the Russian government was actively supporting the Trump campaign, etc).

So the fact that there is even an investigation is defended by you on those grounds? Innuendo? That is exactly what worries me.

The McCarthy HUAC hearings were held on similar "evidence", so I guess there is precedent.

All I want is to see the law applied with equal vigor to all parties. As of right now I don’t think that is being done.

The facts of which I am aware indicate to me that Hillary’s actions (as recited by Comey) constitute far more serious transgressions against both the law and national security than anything done by MM1 Saucier or anyone in the Trump administration, and yet so far she is getting off easier than any of the others mentioned. That strikes me as a patently unfair miscarriage of our justice system. And I’m sorry but I’m not ignoring or trivializing anything. Could evidence be forthcoming that would convince me that Trump’s actions were more culpable than Hillary’s? Of course, but so far that has not happened.

Rogue Twitter employee briefly takes down Trump's Twitter account on his last day of work: http://money.cnn.com/2017/11/02/technolo...index.html

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/...ar-AAurG7H

Brazile says she considered replacing Hillary with Biden.

“Brazile paints a scathing portrait of Clinton as a well-intentioned, historic candidate whose campaign was badly mismanaged, took minority constituencies for granted and made blunders with “stiff” and “stupid” messages. The campaign was so lacking in passion for the candidate, she writes, that its New York headquarters felt like a sterile hospital ward where “someone had died.”


“As she traveled the country, Brazile writes, she detected an alarming lack of enthusiasm for Clinton. On black radio stations, few people defended the nominee. In Hispanic neighborhoods, the only Clinton signs she saw were at the campaign field offices.

But at headquarters in New York, the mood was one of “self-satisfaction and inevitability,” and Brazile’s early reports of trouble were dismissed with “a condescending tone.”

(11-04-2017 09:38 PM)OptimisticOwl Wrote:  https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/...ar-AAurG7H

Brazile says she considered replacing Hillary with Biden.

“Brazile paints a scathing portrait of Clinton as a well-intentioned, historic candidate whose campaign was badly mismanaged, took minority constituencies for granted and made blunders with “stiff” and “stupid” messages. The campaign was so lacking in passion for the candidate, she writes, that its New York headquarters felt like a sterile hospital ward where “someone had died.”


“As she traveled the country, Brazile writes, she detected an alarming lack of enthusiasm for Clinton. On black radio stations, few people defended the nominee. In Hispanic neighborhoods, the only Clinton signs she saw were at the campaign field offices.

But at headquarters in New York, the mood was one of “self-satisfaction and inevitability,” and Brazile’s early reports of trouble were dismissed with “a condescending tone.”

Apologies, might be the results of dinner with neighbors and 8 bottles of wine amongst 6 people.....

With all respect, OO, all the cited portion says is that the Hillary campaign operated in a bubble. So did the Trump campaign.

The Trump campaign bubble applied to about 90k more people (total) in WI, OH, IA, and PA.

The Hillary campaign bubble applied to about 3 million more people in CA and NY.

I will say I think Article 2 Section 3 is sheer genius, even though it was originally written to apply to Virginia.

Too bad Hillary Hillary didnt think too much about forging some sort of bond with those 90k. And, too bad Trump really didnt attempt to forge something with those 3 million wasted votes (from Hillary's sense) in NY and CA.

But those are the shortcomings of typecasting those that dont inherently support you as 'deplorables'. And a terrible unforced error when your predecessor in the party referred to the temerity of those who dont think the way he does as "cling[ing] to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

But I am not getting riled in another segment detailing the bubble of the Hillary campaign. Duh.

And, I am not getting riled in another segment detailing the bubble of the Trump campaign. Double duh.

But that segmentation that I apparently now take for granted really makes me really concerned for the viability of what was put together 230 years ago. Very seriously. And the fact that I take that bubble for granted is also not very settling.

And, I have to admit that I am getting fng pwned in PlayerUnknown Battleground at every single turn for the last hour -- even by the people that I somewhat regularly roll with --- so that tells me that while the Zins really rocked with dinner, I am toasted as all hell.....

be good everyone.

(11-05-2017 12:19 AM)tanqtonic Wrote:  

(11-04-2017 09:38 PM)OptimisticOwl Wrote:  https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/...ar-AAurG7H

Brazile says she considered replacing Hillary with Biden.

“Brazile paints a scathing portrait of Clinton as a well-intentioned, historic candidate whose campaign was badly mismanaged, took minority constituencies for granted and made blunders with “stiff” and “stupid” messages. The campaign was so lacking in passion for the candidate, she writes, that its New York headquarters felt like a sterile hospital ward where “someone had died.”


“As she traveled the country, Brazile writes, she detected an alarming lack of enthusiasm for Clinton. On black radio stations, few people defended the nominee. In Hispanic neighborhoods, the only Clinton signs she saw were at the campaign field offices.

But at headquarters in New York, the mood was one of “self-satisfaction and inevitability,” and Brazile’s early reports of trouble were dismissed with “a condescending tone.”

Apologies, might be the results of dinner with neighbors and 8 bottles of wine amongst 6 people.....

With all respect, OO, all the cited portion says is that the Hillary campaign operated in a bubble. So did the Trump campaign.

The Trump campaign bubble applied to about 90k more people (total) in WI, OH, IA, and PA.

The Hillary campaign bubble applied to about 3 million more people in CA and NY.

I will say I think Article 2 Section 3 is sheer genius, even though it was originally written to apply to Virginia.

Too bad Hillary Hillary didnt think too much about forging some sort of bond with those 90k. And, too bad Trump really didnt attempt to forge something with those 3 million wasted votes (from Hillary's sense) in NY and CA.

But those are the shortcomings of typecasting those that dont inherently support you as 'deplorables'. And a terrible unforced error when your predecessor in the party referred to the temerity of those who dont think the way he does as "cling[ing] to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

But I am not getting riled in another segment detailing the bubble of the Hillary campaign. Duh.

And, I am not getting riled in another segment detailing the bubble of the Trump campaign. Double duh.

But that segmentation that I apparently now take for granted really makes me really concerned for the viability of what was put together 230 years ago. Very seriously. And the fact that I take that bubble for granted is also not very settling.

And, I have to admit that I am getting fng pwned in PlayerUnknown Battleground at every single turn for the last hour -- even by the people that I somewhat regularly roll with --- so that tells me that while the Zins really rocked with dinner, I am toasted as all hell.....

be good everyone.

I guess the quoted parts do deal with the bubble they worked inside. But they are only about 5% of the article. I didn’t quote the part where she said she feared for her life. I dodn’t quote The part where she said she was treated like a slave. I didn’t quote the part about the male- Dominated campaign staff regarding her as an amusing “ old auntie”. Bad editing on my part, I guess. Read the whole article. I linked it.

Read it OO. Thanks for the prompt that the cited portion was not representative.

Just a couple of thoughts:

Didnt Donna join the pile-on by leaking questions to her? Also, as discussed elsewhere, Donna was a true-Clintonista, through and through (for both Hillary and Bill), for decades. Really odd tone that the book seemingly has to the Clinton campaign given both her long relationship with the Clintons, and by actually being a party to the Sanders pile-on with the leaking.

The chapter discussed at length and reproduced last week in Politico was really an eye-opener for me. That chapter in particular raised some very troubling issues; and, I would say that the fraud lawsuit by the Bernistas really may have been prematurely dismissed given Brazile's revelations.

"Brazile writes that she was haunted by the still-unsolved murder of DNC data staffer Seth Rich and feared for her own life, shutting the blinds to her office window so snipers could not see her and installing surveillance cameras at her home. She wonders whether Russians had placed a listening device in plants in the DNC executive suite."

I wonder who she thought murdered Rich and who she thought wanted to shoot her.

(11-05-2017 04:18 PM)OptimisticOwl Wrote:  "Brazile writes that she was haunted by the still-unsolved murder of DNC data staffer Seth Rich and feared for her own life, shutting the blinds to her office window so snipers could not see her and installing surveillance cameras at her home. She wonders whether Russians had placed a listening device in plants in the DNC executive suite."

I wonder who she thought murdered Rich and who she thought wanted to shoot her.

Remember Vince Foster? Many "strange things" happen to those associated with the Clintons.

I'm thinking Brazile has concerns about being hauled up before a Congressional Committee and being asked about the DNC Funding the Fusion GPS Dossier.

Will she say that was a Debbie Wasserman-Shultz operation and she didn't know anything about it?

Or....

Will she say since Hillary basically funded the DNC Operations from April 2016 until the Election, the Hillary Staffers determined where the money was spent?

(10-31-2017 04:22 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  

(10-31-2017 01:25 PM)RiceLad15 Wrote:  I don't see these two situations being similar enough to say that law is not being applied equally to them at the moment.

MM1 Kristian Saucier would say that's a lie.

ETA: corrected per OO.

And David Petraeus.

"March 3, 2015, the U.S. Justice Department announced that Petraeus agreed to plead guilty in Federal Court in Charlotte, North Carolina to a charge of unauthorized removal and retention of classified information.
In the 15 page statement of facts filed by the government along with the plea agreement, the government stated that Petraeus had provided Broadwell access to documents containing Top Secret Sensitive Compartmented Information, had later moved those documents to his personal residence and stored them in an unsecured drawer, and had deliberately and intentionally lied to Federal investigators about both providing Broadwell access to the documents and their improper storage. These facts were acknowledged to be true by Petraeus as part of his plea agreement."

How much TS/SCI and SAP data was on Hillary's unsecured Server?

Petraeus gets a Federal conviction. Hillary gets a pass.

(11-01-2017 10:40 AM)RiceLad15 Wrote:  

(11-01-2017 09:46 AM)tanqtonic Wrote:  I think you all are not addressing the same issue.

Lad is saying he is concerned about Trump, but not about the GPS issue. That is his "two not being anywhere near like one another" (paraphrase).

OO and 69 are comparing Hillary's server no-bill and Petty Officer Saucier.

Again, I'm not saying I am NOT concerned about the dossier. I am just less concerned about it than Trump.

I've repeatedly said that I would support a formal investigation into it, because at the moment, there appears to be enough funny business with at least the initial denials of involvement for there to be reasonable suspicion that there may have been some funny business - intentional or not.

Bodyguard testifies

https://www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/545738/

Russians were involved

Senate Republicans say their investigation of Hillary Clinton’s role in approving a deal to sell U.S. uranium mines to a Russian company hinges in part on the testimony of a secret informant in a bribery and extortion scheme inside the same company.

(11-16-2017 09:39 AM)OptimisticOwl Wrote:  Russians were involved

Senate Republicans say their investigation of Hillary Clinton’s role in approving a deal to sell U.S. uranium mines to a Russian company hinges in part on the testimony of a secret informant in a bribery and extortion scheme inside the same company.

Two things:

1) why did you post this in the Trump Admin thread? Not sure there is any connection there.

2) I’m reading the article, it would be shocking if this guy had actual information on the deal. Apparently the area he worked in was separate from the one involved with the deal, and the two business units didn’t overlap. It appears as if he tried to blow the whistle on general corruption within the company, but that’s likely it. But who knows.

(11-16-2017 07:11 PM)RiceLad15 Wrote:  

(11-16-2017 09:39 AM)OptimisticOwl Wrote:  Russians were involved

Senate Republicans say their investigation of Hillary Clinton’s role in approving a deal to sell U.S. uranium mines to a Russian company hinges in part on the testimony of a secret informant in a bribery and extortion scheme inside the same company.

Two things:

1) why did you post this in the Trump Admin thread? Not sure there is any connection there.

2) I’m reading the article, it would be shocking if this guy had actual information on the deal. Apparently the area he worked in was separate from the one involved with the deal, and the two business units didn’t overlap. It appears as if he tried to blow the whistle on general corruption within the company, but that’s likely it. But who knows.

1) This thread has become an omnibus of topics. Haven't we talked about Russians at some point(s) in this thread?

2) Maybe. let's see.

A) I have wondered if we were going to keep this thread going all the way through Trump's four or eight years.

Trump admin decides last week that they will lift a ban on the importing of the remains of legally hunted elephants in Africa.

Trump admin back tracks last week and says they will reverse the decision and leave the ban in place.

Absolutely mind boggling that the ban was going to be lifted (well, not really when you see what hobbies his children are into), and then how quickly the admin back peddled on it. I mean, I'm all for them making the right decision, but how inept/incompetent do you have to be to even try and lift that ban in the first place?

Managed hunting and appropriate herd culling are good conservation practices, but if that is part of the reason why the admin wanted to lift the ban, why not stick to your guns, act like you actually evaluated the decision before it was made, and put forward your rationale?

(11-20-2017 12:12 PM)RiceLad15 Wrote:  Trump admin decides last week that they will lift a ban on the importing of the remains of legally hunted elephants in Africa.

Trump admin back tracks last week and says they will reverse the decision and leave the ban in place.

Absolutely mind boggling that the ban was going to be lifted (well, not really when you see what hobbies his children are into), and then how quickly the admin back peddled on it. I mean, I'm all for them making the right decision, but how inept/incompetent do you have to be to even try and lift that ban in the first place?

Managed hunting and appropriate herd culling are good conservation practices, but if that is part of the reason why the admin wanted to lift the ban, why not stick to your guns, act like you actually evaluated the decision before it was made, and put forward your rationale?

No problem with your post, just a question.

If the elephants were legally hunted, what is the purpose of the ban on importing the remains?

Usually, those bans, like the ivory ban, are to discourage poaching.

(11-20-2017 12:39 PM)OptimisticOwl Wrote:  

(11-20-2017 12:12 PM)RiceLad15 Wrote:  Trump admin decides last week that they will lift a ban on the importing of the remains of legally hunted elephants in Africa.

Trump admin back tracks last week and says they will reverse the decision and leave the ban in place.

Absolutely mind boggling that the ban was going to be lifted (well, not really when you see what hobbies his children are into), and then how quickly the admin back peddled on it. I mean, I'm all for them making the right decision, but how inept/incompetent do you have to be to even try and lift that ban in the first place?

Managed hunting and appropriate herd culling are good conservation practices, but if that is part of the reason why the admin wanted to lift the ban, why not stick to your guns, act like you actually evaluated the decision before it was made, and put forward your rationale?

No problem with your post, just a question.

If the elephants were legally hunted, what is the purpose of the ban on importing the remains?

Usually, those bans, like the ivory ban, are to discourage poaching.

A few reasons, in my mine. 1) To discourage any shady practices where non-legally hunted elephant remains are imported as legally hunted. 2) To discourage the hunting practices which don't always benefit conservation efforts as much as they claim.

This article I read about it does a decent job of laying out the issues: https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017...lephants0/

(11-20-2017 12:47 PM)RiceLad15 Wrote:  

(11-20-2017 12:39 PM)OptimisticOwl Wrote:  

(11-20-2017 12:12 PM)RiceLad15 Wrote:  Trump admin decides last week that they will lift a ban on the importing of the remains of legally hunted elephants in Africa.

Trump admin back tracks last week and says they will reverse the decision and leave the ban in place.

Absolutely mind boggling that the ban was going to be lifted (well, not really when you see what hobbies his children are into), and then how quickly the admin back peddled on it. I mean, I'm all for them making the right decision, but how inept/incompetent do you have to be to even try and lift that ban in the first place?

Managed hunting and appropriate herd culling are good conservation practices, but if that is part of the reason why the admin wanted to lift the ban, why not stick to your guns, act like you actually evaluated the decision before it was made, and put forward your rationale?

No problem with your post, just a question.

If the elephants were legally hunted, what is the purpose of the ban on importing the remains?

Usually, those bans, like the ivory ban, are to discourage poaching.

A few reasons, in my mine. 1) To discourage any shady practices where non-legally hunted elephant remains are imported as legally hunted. 2) To discourage the hunting practices which don't always benefit conservation efforts as much as they claim.

This article I read about it does a decent job of laying out the issues: https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017...lephants0/

“There’s a real concern that legal hunting of elephants provides cover for illegal hunting. When trucks, guns, and hunters are allowed on the landscape, rangers don’t know who’s who,..."

What is the problem with checking permits? That's what game wardens all over do.

The poaching as I understand it, is mainly for ivory, which is already under a ban. Other than the tusks, what parts have a market?

The approach of banning everything because some things might be illegally obtained should also apply to diamonds, right? Some diamonds are blood diamonds so all diamonds should be excluded from the US?

Don't get me wrong. I want the elephants to live long and prosper. I just don't see how the illogicality here here benefits them.