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Sat

Dec 2 2017

05:34 pm

By: Mike Knapp

@realDonaldTrump 12/2/17 12:14pm

I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI. He has pled guilty to those lies. It is a shame because his actions during the transition were lawful. There was nothing to hide!

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Jiminy Cricket. We don't have

Submitted by bizgrrl on Sat, 2017/12/02 - 6:50pm.

Jiminy Cricket. We don't have a pres. We have an idiot in the Whitehouse.

25th Amendment.

Submitted by R. Neal on Sat, 2017/12/02 - 6:52pm.

25th Amendment.

You folks are talking to each

Submitted by (Anonymous) (not verified) on Sat, 2017/12/02 - 11:52pm.
(in reply to R. Neal)

You folks are talking to each other again I see. Have you actually heard from many Trump
voters switching ? I have not. Doubling down is more like it.

The next 7 years are going to be tough for you.

Not as tough as the next 7

Submitted by Rachel on Sun, 2017/12/03 - 12:15am.
(in reply to (Anonymous))

Not as tough as the next 7 months are going to be on you.

Trump voters switching?

Submitted by Somebody on Sun, 2017/12/03 - 8:43am.
(in reply to (Anonymous))

Actually, yes.

It’s been building, but the total disrespect shown to those US Marine Navajo Code Talkers last week was a final straw for some Trump voters that I am aware of.

Not worried. One bit. Tell

Submitted by (Anonymous) (not verified) on Sun, 2017/12/03 - 12:56am.

Not worried. One bit. Tell me, have you folks perhaps charted the 67 senators you'd need to remove Trump from office ?

Just wondering.

If you proved everything you wanted to prove about Trump you could not do a damn thing about him being in office and you all know it. He could parade around DC in a Czar hat and it wouldn't matter.

the relevant part of US constitution in your native tongue

Submitted by Hangtraitors (not verified) on Sun, 2017/12/03 - 9:21am.
(in reply to (Anonymous))

18 U.S.C. § 2381
Кто-то из-за верности Соединенным ", ведет войну против них или придерживается своих врагов, давая им помощь и утешение в рамках Организации Объединенных " и "в других местах ", виновна в измене и страдает от смерти или должна быть лишена свободы не меньше, чем под заголовком, но не менее $10,000; и не может быть в состоянии удерживать какое-либо отделение под эгидой Организации Объединенных.

knoxoasis here's your favorite domestic propaganda organization disagreeing with your desperate ploy to normalize your dear leader & tap down the scary with a year-old slate story attemptinghttp://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2017/12/01/why-flynn-s-guilty-plea-is-bad-news-for-team-trump.html

"And Fox News reported: 'While it is unclear who Flynn himself is prepared to name, Fox News has been told by a former senior intelligence officer with knowledge of Trump transition activities that then-President-Elect Trump directed Flynn during that period to contact the Russians – while also directing him and his team to contact 12 other countries.'"

Learn to link. It's easy.

Submitted by Knoxoasis on Sun, 2017/12/03 - 11:25am.
(in reply to Hangtraitors)

Learn to link. It's easy. There's a little button right over the comment box. It might be confusing for you because it's just labled "link".

Oh, and pro tip: 18 USC 2381 isn't the Constitution. It's a statute. Pays to know the diff.

All of this was discussed in

Submitted by Knoxoasis on Sun, 2017/12/03 - 8:33am.

All of this was discussed in Slate a year ago. Worth a read. Confirmation bias is running wild here.

I don’t think so. It’s not

Submitted by Somebody on Sun, 2017/12/03 - 9:05am.
(in reply to Knoxoasis)

I don’t think so. It’s not confirmation bias that the Trump team falsely claimed Flynn acted alone in contacting the Russians.

It’s not confirmation bias to observe that quite a few senior Trump officials have first said, “Russians? What Russians?” and then are shown to have made memorable contact with the Russians. Flynn didn’t plead guilty to lying to Mike Pence. He lied to the FBI about contacting the Russians. If he thought his activities were normal and lawful, he would not have lied to the FBI about it. That would just be stupid.

I think context is called

Submitted by Knoxoasis on Sun, 2017/12/03 - 9:45am.
(in reply to Somebody)

I think context is called for. The accusation over the past year is that Trump colluded with the Russians during the election. That would be improper. What Flynn shows so far at least is that the Trump admin contacted the Russians during the transition. That's an entirely different matter. The narrative is that Trump's election is illegitimate because the Russians somehow put their fingers on the scales in Trump's favor. What Flynn has confessed to provides exactly zero support for that narrative. Only the need to believe can transpose an entirely normal contact by an incoming administration with important international rivals into proof of election collusion.

And yes, there seems to be ample evidence that Flynn is pretty stupid. Even Obama tried to warn Trump to stay away from Flynn.

You really need to slow down.

Talk about confirmation bias.

Submitted by Somebody on Sun, 2017/12/03 - 12:33pm.
(in reply to Knoxoasis)

Talk about confirmation bias.

You’re depending on a belief that Flynn is just so stupid as to lie to the FBI for no reason whatsoever in order to construct a narrative of nothing to see here, move along...

Jeff Sessions didn’t recall talking to the Russians during the campaign, until it was proven he did. Sessions didn’t recall knowing about anyone else talking to the Russians during the campaign, until it was proven he did.

Flynn lied to the FBI about talking to the Russians and has taken a plea deal for that lie. Mueller isn’t giving Flynn a plea deal for nothing. We already know Flynn is guilty of taking money from the Russians for hobknobbing with Putin at an RT event. Remember US intelligence has declared RT as a Russian propaganda tool.

Paul Manafort and Company have pleaded guilty to making false statements to the FBI about contacts during the campaign with Russians. Manafort is guilty of much more and got a plea deal. Mueller isn’t handing out plea deals for nothing.

George Papadopoulos pled guilty to lying to the FBI about Russian contacts during the campaign, which were presented to top officials, including Trump. Mueller isn’t handing out plea deals for nothing.

Publicly available information already shows a tight timeline of Trump campaign interactions with Russians and WikiLeaks and Trump himself praising WikiLeaks and publicly encouraging the Russians to share H Clinton’s ‘missing emails.’

US intelligence reporting has indicated unequivocally that the Russians carried out a campaign of hacking Clinton and DNC emails, releasing them through WikiLeaks, and also sponsoring a misinformation campaign, including through RT, in order to damage Clinton and benefit Trump. These are facts.

There is also publicly available information that before and during the campaign, the Trump organization was actively involved in an effort to do a deal to create Trump Tower Moscow, despite Trump’s repeated protestations that he didn’t know any Russians and had nothing to do with Russia.

So now we have Flynn pleading guilty to lying about Russian contacts, and you’re trying to suggest that it has to be just because he’s stupid and did it for no real reason. That just strains credulity.

I don’t discount the likelihood that Trump and his band of supporters include a lot of useful idiots who wandered into the web of a Russian intelligence operation, but it would appear that they did so willingly.

What’s just as disturbing is the rot that goes to the very core of the Republican establishement that is required for them to publicly shrug all this off in order to complete the theft of a Supreme Court seat and to try to repeal Obamacare and pass a tax cut giveaway to their financial benefactors. It’s a poorly kept secret that Congressional Republican leadership is privately horrified by Trump’s instability and his connections with the Russians, but publicly will only distance themselves from the most extreme and racist of Trump’s rhetoric in order to use him as a vehicle to get as much as they can before it all falls apart. That behavior is nothing short of treasonous.

So no, I do not need to slow down. If the republic survives this episode, it will go down as a low point in US history that strained the foundations of our institutions to the breaking point.

Seeing Trump and the dumpster fire into which he has drawn this country for what they are is not “confirmation bias.” Attempts to construct narratives that this is all run of the mill politics is confirmation bias, and I won’t leave it unchallenged.

This is not normal.

This should be on the front

Submitted by R. Neal on Sun, 2017/12/03 - 2:47pm.
(in reply to Somebody)

This should be on the front page of every newspaper.

Paul Manafort

Submitted by Knoxgal on Mon, 2017/12/04 - 9:28am.
(in reply to Somebody)

I don’t think Manafort pleaded guilty. Nor his sidekick Gates.

For scandalous and entertaining viewing, everyone should watch Get Me Roger Stone on Netflix. I sure hope he’s on Mueller’s list for a takedown.

Correct. Believe Manafort was

Submitted by R. Neal on Mon, 2017/12/04 - 10:09am.
(in reply to Knoxgal)

Correct. Believe Manafort was indicted on more serious charges and pleaded not guilty.

Fair enough.

Submitted by Somebody on Mon, 2017/12/04 - 5:53pm.
(in reply to R. Neal)

Fair enough. Manafort pled not guilty, but has been charged. I was working from memory.

It's still not normal.

Also, that's the thing, a part of the gaslighting effect of all this. There is a daily barrage of outrageous, abnormal stuff that emanates from Trump, such that it is very difficult to hold onto a thread and remember pertinent information that should inform new revelations. It has the effect that someone like knoxoasis can drop in and suggest that Flynn's plea deal is meaningless, because remembering what's known about what happened before the election is difficult, due to all the stuff that has happened since.

I stand by what I said

Submitted by Knoxoasis on Tue, 2017/12/05 - 10:27am.
(in reply to Somebody)

I stand by what I said earlier. If there turns out to be fire undergirding the smoke I'll eat my words. But if this turns out to be nothing more than a partisan nothingburger, if you have a shred of intellectual honesty I'll expect you to do the same.

.

Submitted by Andy Axel on Tue, 2017/12/05 - 9:12pm.
(in reply to Knoxoasis)

Ummm. I'm asking

Submitted by Rachel on Sun, 2017/12/03 - 7:29pm.
(in reply to Knoxoasis)

Ummm. I'm asking respectfully - are you saying it's okay for the incoming President to try to conduct foreign policy while there's another sitting President?

If not illegal under the Logan Act, it seems damn unethical to me.

As for the "frog march" you mention later, I doubt very much that Trump is indicted while in office. I would not be one bit surprised to see him named as an unindicted co-conspirator.

If the House flips in 2018 and Trump continues his erratic behavior (and changes of the latter are about 100%), I think he'll be impeached by the House. What happens in the Senate is totally another matter.

OTOH, I still think he won't make it for a full term. He'll either have a serious breakdown or just decide it's not fun anymore and quit, a la Sarah Palin (although that would require an excuse why quitting equals winning).

Ok is subjective. I'd say it

Submitted by Knoxoasis on Sun, 2017/12/03 - 8:31pm.
(in reply to Rachel)

Ok is subjective. I'd say it is neither illegal nor unprecedented. No one has ever been prosecuted under the Logan Act in its 200 yeah history, and most Constitutional scholars believe it to be unconstitutional for reasons I'll let Alan Dershowitz explain.. I just think everyone ought to calm down. But that view has drawn a lot more heat than I'm comfortable with so I'll exit gracefully stage right at this point.

The big picture

Submitted by Somebody on Mon, 2017/12/04 - 12:26am.
(in reply to Knoxoasis)

Let me explain why everyone should not just calm down.

This ball started rolling in a big way a few years ago when Russia started getting involved in Syria. While everyone was criticizing Obama for failing to aggressively uphold his line in the sand on Assad's chemical weapons, Putin started showing interest in more active involvement there. There was much gnashing of teeth over here over which anti-Assad groups could be supported, and also how to contain the emerging ISIS "caliphate." Obama managed to secure a deal on extracting the chemical weapons, but Putin was inserting himself more aggressively by this point.

Somewhere in here is when Republicans in the US started using a talking point of favorably comparing Putin to Obama, with Putin being described as a "real leader." This seemed utterly bizarre, given the GOP's long history of strong opposition to anything Russian. Those talking points quieted down somewhat when Putin stepped up aggression towards Ukraine and annexed Crimea. (Meanwhile, Paul Manafort was on the payroll of Putin's puppet leader in Ukraine.)

Back in Syria, Russia's military involvement stepped up, under a ruse of joining the fight against ISIS. Strangely, however, Russian bombing focused not on ISIS, but on Syrian rebels opposing Assad. Aside from propping up the Syrian dictator, Putin had another objective: creating a wave of Syrian Muslim refugees, streaming into Western Europe. NATO territory. Europeans struggled mightily, but largely worked to accommodate the influx, what with their liberal values and all. Putin's objective was simple: destabilization of the Western powers. As the waves of refugees came, so did uncertainty in the European population, along with stoked revivals of nationalist and xenophobic movements.

Cutting to the chase, the result was Brexit, LePen making a showing in France, and now Merkel struggling to hold on to a coalition in Germany. Oh, and Trump. Russia's work to support Trump plays into all of that as well. (Remember candidate Trump in Scotland, talking up Brexit? Sure you do.) The Russians may not have initially thought Trump could win, but he was a sure bet to help destabilize US politics. Even if he lost, he would then be well positioned to claim rigged elections and keep issuing Twitter storms to keep a new Clinton administration off balance, unable to set a clear direction without constant distractions. Then Trump went and won, with Russian help, furthering Putin's objective of destabilization. Whether by order or simply idiotic predictability, Trump is carrying out Putin's objective extremely well.

So no, everyone ought not to calm down. This stuff is serious. It is existential. It is not normal.

"Syrian Muslim refugees"

Submitted by Metulj From the Lurkzone (not verified) on Tue, 2017/12/05 - 7:43pm.
(in reply to Somebody)

As someone who was standing on a border in the Balkans during the height of the "crisis:" 1. the "wave" lasted from roughly late July 2015 to March 2016. Average border crossings were not "waves." This is a myth. 2. A second myth was the preponderance of Syrians in the movement of people. We are still not quite sure what the composition of the main body of people was, but it was very mixed. There were people from Pakistan, India, Myanmar, and so forth. It wasn't 1.5 million Syrians. Hell, many of them didn't have any papers whatsoever 3. Of the Syrians in the flow, many were middle class people who were caught in the middle. Engineers. Lawyers. Doctors. Sure many were poor folks as well, but two of the interesting phenomena was the use of smart phones to communicate with relatives in receiving countries and that ATMs everywhere along the trail were drained and it wasn't to finance jihad.

Migrant crisis: Migration to Europe explained in seven charts

Submitted by Somebody on Wed, 2017/12/06 - 2:21am.
(in reply to Metulj From the Lurkzone)

BBC: Migrant crisis: Migration to Europe explained in seven charts

preponderance - the quality or fact of being greater in number, quantity, or importance.

Word games won't save you and

Submitted by Metulj From the Lurkzone (not verified) on Wed, 2017/12/06 - 9:03am.
(in reply to Somebody)

Word games won't save you and Eurostat's data is notoriously flawed on this issue. I stood and watched an EU official (the only one present) count people based on the color of their skin. Also, the graph above doesn't even add up to the known total of migrants. It wasn't a "Syrian Migration Crisis." It wasn't even a crisis and isn't a crisis now.The number of EUROPEANS in the the flows of migrants is 1/3 of the number of Syrians. The best way to identify a Syrian in the crisis was to be unable to identify them. They were the ones who had no papers. Why? Either someone took them along the way (usually trying to extort money from them), they never had them in the first place (You don't give travel papers to people in a country that nobody wants to be in, civil war or not), or they, wisely, discarded them in Turkey. Why would you discard your papers? Because the Dublin III rules say that you must be given asylum in the first country you register and ask for asylum. When it was discovered that if you couldn't produce papers, then Greece, a least optimal place to be a refugee/asylum seeker, wouldn't register you. You played that game until you got to a country that would register you: Germany.

My couple of my credentials:

(link...)

And a forthcoming book in English and German with Ibidem Verlag, Munich.

I call bullshit. The Logan

Submitted by Metulj From the Lurkzone (not verified) on Tue, 2017/12/05 - 7:33pm.
(in reply to Knoxoasis)

I call bullshit. The Logan Act applies here. Full. Stop.

I didn't say the Logan Act

Submitted by Knoxoasis on Wed, 2017/12/06 - 9:03am.
(in reply to Metulj From the Lurkzone)

I didn't say the Logan Act didn't apply. I said it was most likely unenforceable and unconstitutional. Pretending you didn't understand what I actually wrote is beneath you Toby. We both know you're smarter than that.

Here's a complete list of people who have been convicted for violating the Logan Act over the past 200 years:

Full stop.

Why would the Logan Act be

Submitted by Metulj From the Lurkzone (not verified) on Wed, 2017/12/06 - 9:17am.
(in reply to Knoxoasis)

Why would the Logan Act be unconstitutional? Answer that first. You haven't, you won't, and you can't. The notion of desuetude applies to laws like "whistling in the bathtub of a boarding house" or, more expansively, moral bans that have become antiquated and has only been considered once by the Supreme Court in 1965 (Griswold vs Connecticut) and even then it wasn't the reason invoked in the ruling on the right to privacy. Last I checked, acting as a foreign agent without permission of your national government wasn't exactly the same as eating on the city bus or, heaven forfend, wanting to control one's own reproductive health. I guess running foreign policy ops before you have the legal power to do so is a "moral" thing if you stand and squint at it long enough.

Keep trying.

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