Politics And Current Events

[Troy Loney]

https://www.courant.com/news/connecticu ... story.html

Can't wait for how the arbiters of truth to process whatever nonsense Barr and the DOJ try to spin this report into whence released.

[Morkle]

I truly hope, and my largest political gripe is that they fully investigate these Russia connections and people pay for it. I don't suspect anyone will, and that's a shame.

I hope someday we know how deep, and who knew about it.

[tifosi77]

There was just a former career DOJ guy on televee saying that people leave the Department all the time, but a top prosecutor leaving in the middle of a high-profile investigation/trial is a major red flag, regardless of the underlying reason. And this is from a guy who 18 months ago was an advocate for Barr as an institutionalist who would be a good steward of the DOJ (he has since, for good cause, reversed his stance on that position).

[MR25]

Hopefully just some levity for a brief moment.

[Troy Loney]

I truly hope, and my largest political gripe is that they fully investigate these Russia connections and people pay for it. I don't suspect anyone will, and that's a shame.

I hope someday we know how deep, and who knew about it.

I think trying to draw any sort of straight line conspiracy, there's just no "there/there". To me, it's a set of players that were either in over their heads, too dumb to realize that they were skirting the law, actual internationally corrupt actors, or political ratf*ckers that have no moral compass and were green-lit by an historically amoral candidate to work pursue any unethical course.

The story that Cohen tells tracks pretty well imo. That being, Trump was running for publicity and wanted to make deals in Russia, I guess because he's dumb and he thought if he could breakthrough there, he would be seen as some sort of international real estate tycoon. Manafort was in bed with Russian oligarchs and like as compromised as one can get. Putin felt emboldened to run whatever scheme against Clinton because his addled brain is convinced that as SOS, Clinton undermined his legitimacy, as opposed to his having rigged elections making him objectively illegitimate. Trump is simply a vehicle for Putin to rip at the cracks of the US electoral system. This wasn't some mastermind scheme, just Putin being able to run a crackpot scheme against the US due to the GOP nominating the worst, candidate imaginable.

[tifosi77]

Manafort was something like $50 million or $60 million in debt to those oligarchs, and yet he drew no salary as Trump's campaign CEO. I've always felt that Manafort didn't go to Trump so much as he was sent.

[Morkle]

The only real problem to that, is that I believe it to be continually happening now, and those players are more emboldened to do it, because it "worked" the first time.

[Troy Loney]

Manafort was something like $50 million or $60 million in debt to those oligarchs, and yet he drew no salary as Trump's campaign CEO. I've always felt that Manafort didn't go to Trump so much as he was sent.

Some of the communications he sent, indicate to me more that he was desperate for that access to try and use it to repay those debts. Which again, points to Trump being almost criminally negligent, I think at this time, Manafort was widely known as in bed with mobsters running Russia, but because of "norms" or whatever, the mainstreams press (Tapper and the like treated Clinton operatives like cranks when they tried to highlight these associations) accepted Manafort's credibility due to him being placed in that role on the campaign. Kind of like, no campaign is going to just hire a Russian agent and make him the campaign manager, basically his position was a refutation of any sort of allegation.

I mean, either the Trump camp wittingly conspired with the Russians running their shitty anti-Clinton operation, or they were criminally negligent by having zero reservations about cooperating with such an effort.

[Troy Loney]

The only real problem to that, is that I believe it to be continually happening now, and those players are more emboldened to do it, because it "worked" the first time.

I honestly think there are limits to what they can do. We'll see what sort of play they make in terms of leaking stolen documents, but it's not like their Hunter Biden thing got any traction. Unless they find some secret email from Obama to the other candidates telling them to drop out so that Biden can wipe out Bernie, the 2016 conditions are just not there.

[Pavel Bure]

Hopefully just some levity for a brief moment.

Bah gawd that’s Stone Cold Joe Biden’s music!

[Shyster]

[MR25]

See, that one is decent.

[Morkle]

The CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports are authored by career scientists and serve as the main vehicle for the agency to inform doctors, researchers and the general public about how Covid-19 is spreading and who is at risk. Such reports have historically been published with little fanfare and no political interference, said several longtime health department officials, and have been viewed as a cornerstone of the nation's public health work for decades.

But since Michael Caputo, a former Trump campaign official with no medical or scientific background, was installed in April as the health department's new spokesperson, there have been substantial efforts to align the reports with Trump's statements, including the president's claims that fears about the outbreak are overstated, or stop the reports altogether.

Caputo and his team have attempted to add caveats to the CDC's findings, including an effort to retroactively change agency reports that they said wrongly inflated the risks of Covid-19 and should have made clear that Americans sickened by the virus may have been infected because of their own behavior, according to the individuals familiar with the situation and emails reviewed by POLITICO.

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/09/1 ... -19-412809

Just absolute insanity.

[Gaucho]

y'all gonna need a bigger jail

[crusherstasiak]

y'all gonna need a bigger jail

y'all are over-reacting, y'all

[mikey]

That's what we got the Biden/Harris ticket revved up for...


(Just snark, not serious)

[Morkle]

Just a question, is this still not illegal? The mail ins only had to be there before the date and could still not be counted at time of in person election?

[Dickie Dunn]

Just a question, is this still not illegal? The mail ins only had to be there before the date and could still not be counted at time of in person election?

You can check online in every state (I believe) if your mail-in vote was received. If it was received, it’ll be counted. There’s no reason to go to a polling location other than to be an dadhole.

[crusherstasiak]

[Morkle]

his follow up tweet is good too.

[Sam's Drunk Dog]

I'm sure he is just ensuring that everyone's vote is counted and it has nothing to do with this:

Democrats build big edge in early voting

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/09/1 ... ead-412106

[MWB]

I just got my mail in ballot for NC. I was just going to make copies of it and send in a new copy each day.

[Trip McNeely]

He wants chaos this November because it’s cover if he loses.

[tifosi77]

I got a mailer from the USPS advising about the importance of submitting ballots early if you're voting by mail. I haven't voted in person for probably 15 years or more, and this is the first time I've ever received a communication like this.

I wonder what the odds are that De Joy had foreknowledge of this mailer.....

[Morkle]

Lawyers and former DOJ officials lambasted the plan, noting that departmental protocol specifically prohibits leveraging an ongoing investigation in any way to impact an upcoming election.

Government officials told Times that “expectations had been growing in the White House and Congress that Mr. Barr would make public, ahead of the election, some kind of interim report or list of findings from Mr. Durham before he completed the investigation” (emphasis ours). A person familiar with the matter added that Barr had wanted Durham to wrap up his probe quickly. [...]

“As a federal prosecutor for almost 20 years, I never issued or observed a public report about an investigation,” wrote NBC News legal analyst and former U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan Barbara McQuade.

“We either filed an indictment or we closed the investigation. A public report by Durham would violate the very thing for which [former FBI director James Comey] was purportedly fired.”

https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/at ... g-lawyers/