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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM

Ultimatum Disasturbator from the Amiga Forest (Old as dirt) Relationship Status: Who needs love when you have waffles?
Disasturbator
#236726: Mar 26th 2018 at 3:15:17 PM

Those who worked at the Bataclan

have a listen and have a link to my discord server
Julep Since: Jul, 2010
#236727: Mar 26th 2018 at 3:15:48 PM

The concert room where the terror attack happened in Paris, november 2015, when the EODM were playing.

megaeliz Since: Mar, 2017
#236728: Mar 26th 2018 at 5:26:10 PM

This really lays out just how insanely outmatched Trump's legal team is against some of the best prosecutors of our time.

At the very moment when Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation is spinning into higher gear, Donald Trump’s legal team is falling apart in extraordinary fashion. John Dowd, the president’s lead personal lawyer, resigned last week. Ty Cobb, who is running point for the White House on everything Russia, is on the outs. Even Joseph diGenova, the shit-kicking conspiracy theorist who was expected to join the team, unexpectedly bowed out Sunday, alongside his wife, Fox News regular Victoria Toensing, citing undefined conflicts. (The New York Times reported that Trump did not believe he had “personal chemistry” with the couple.) “I don’t think you have seen anything like this,” said former Obama general counsel Bob Bauer, struggling to identify a historical antecedent. “Like so much else around Trump, [the shake-up] is marked by confusion, a lack of consistency, and an apparent reflection of the president’s uncontrolled impulses.”

Trump’s personal legal team now consists of just one full-time attorney—Jay Sekulow—a remarkably shallow bench for a president facing potential obstruction of justice charges and the prospect of impeachment. “As far as I can tell, Ty Cobb is the only attorney left on the Trump team with experience handling federal criminal investigations,” said Renato Mariotti, a former federal prosecutor who has been closely following the probe. “The team is thinner than you might expect for perhaps the most important investigation of our lifetime.”

One of the most critical questions, in the wake of Dowd’s departure, is who is handling negotiations over Trump’s potential interview with Mueller. For months, Dowd had been in contact with the special counsel over the issue, which had reportedly emerged as a sticking point. Dowd was rightly worried about the president testifying under oath, given his penchant for mistruths and exaggerations. Trump, however, has publicly and privately signaled an eagerness to face Mueller. With Dowd out, it is unclear where those negotiations stand. “Cobb can’t do it because he doesn’t represent Trump personally and no one else currently on the team has any experience in this area,” noted William Jeffress, an attorney who worked on the Valerie Plame leak case. Sekulow has reportedly tried to recruit more experienced lawyers, but none have yet signed on. Trump himself recently met with veteran Republican lawyers Emmet Flood and Theodore Olson, but both declined to take the case. Later Monday, it was reported that Tom Buchanan and Dan Webb were the latest prominent lawyers to decline to work for Trump.

Trump’s inability to assemble or maintain an experienced legal team could prove crippling if he is forced to square off against Mueller, a fearsome federal prosecutor assisted by “16 of the best lawyers in the country.” Cobb and Dowd were the only members of the team with the relevant credentials. Sekulow rose to prominence as a conservative commentator and for his work on religious-freedom cases through his work with the American Center for Law and Justice. A team of roughly a half dozen individuals, also affiliated with the conservative nonprofit, are reported to be working with Sekulow on Trump’s defense on a part-time basis. “You wouldn’t go to an ear and nose and throat specialist to perform heart surgery,” Bauer told me. “It is an odd notion that you just reach out and recruit lawyers that you are personally comfortable with . . . rather than select the people that have the experience and the training to address the very specific problem that you face.”

Bauer was withering when asked about the possibility that fellow New York attorney Marc Kasowitz might rejoin Trump’s team, as my colleague Gabriel Sherman reported last week. “There is nothing I know of that qualifies Mr. Kasowitz to take something like this on except that the president knows him and has had a good experience with him in the areas in which Mr. Kasowitz does practice.”


It is incredible to imagine that the president of the United States—a billionaire—should be unable to secure proper representation. But Trump is hardly the ordinary presidential client. A tightfisted septuagenarian with an itchy Twitter finger, Trump is as infamous for stiffing contractors as he is for his mean streak—hardly winsome character traits for top-flight attorneys with their choice of assignments. “You’re kidding right?” one Washington defense lawyer spat last year when I asked about the challenges of representing Trump. “Representing this guy would be almost an impossibility. I mean I don’t know who would want to do that.”

Hours before news broke that diGenova and Toensing would not be joining his legal team, Trump tried to throw cold water on the narrative that he couldn’t find a good lawyer. “Many lawyers and top law firms want to represent me in the Russia case . . . don’t believe the Fake News narrative that it is hard to find a lawyer who wants to take this on,” he wrote Sunday on Twitter. “Fame & fortune will NEVER be turned down by a lawyer, though some are conflicted.” But other members of the bar are skeptical. “If he says many lawyers are willing to work for him, that may only be true because we have a country with a huge number of lawyers in it,” Bauer said. “But how many of the willing ones would have the credentials and experience for the job?” Other members of the White House, after all, have had no trouble securing representation. White House counsel Donald Mc Gahn, former chief strategist Steve Bannon, and erstwhile chief of staff Reince Priebus are all being represented by William Burck, for example. (Burck reportedly turned down a chance to work for the president.) Abbe Lowell, another heavy hitter, is representing Jared Kushner.

Trump, meanwhile, keeps giving prospective law firms more reasons not to work with him. “Trump’s latest tweets reflect his low opinion of lawyers which is only one reason lawyers who care about their reputation don’t want to represent him,” Jeffress told me. “He will no doubt find a lawyer eager to represent him but most lawyers are not.”

Given the sheer number of lawyers representing clients in Mueller’s probe, it is possible, too, that a small town like Washington is simply running out of white-shoe firms without conflicts. That was, after all, the reason that diGenova and Toensing ostensibly parted ways with Trump. Toensing has been representing Mark Corallo, who represented Trump’s legal team last year, before resigning in the wake of revelations about Donald Trump Jr.’s meeting with a Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer.

Such a prosaic explanation, however, could mask more ominous concerns. “What happened between last week, when Di Genova and Toensing were announced as joining the team, and yesterday?” mused Neal Katyal, a former acting solicitor general under President Obama. “The conflict of interest issue was apparent on Tuesday, and yet we were told they were joining the team and that Mark Corallo (the person with the most significant conflict) had waived any concern. Then Dowd resigns Thursday, and yet by Sunday Di Genova and Toensing are gone, leaving the president with only two lawyers.” That strange development, Katyal posited to me, suggests that Robert Mueller may have intervened. “Diligent prosecutors, when they see a defendant doing something profoundly dangerous to their self-interest (including hiring lawyers who have conflicts), will raise it with the defendant and suggest they rethink it,” he explained. “I think it very possible that that happened here—Mueller is a scrupulous prosecutor and may have told Trump he had concerns about Trump’s own rights. If it did happen, it would strongly suggest that Mueller is formally thinking of Trump as a target of his investigation . . . A prosecutor would issue such a warning to a target, not to a witness.”

edited 26th Mar '18 5:27:13 PM by megaeliz

BearyScary Since: Sep, 2010 Relationship Status: You spin me right round, baby
#236729: Mar 26th 2018 at 5:51:48 PM

"Itchy Twitter finger"

Why does that make me laugh? [lol]

Do not obey in advance.
CrimsonZephyr Would that it were so simple. from Massachusetts Since: Aug, 2010 Relationship Status: It's complicated
Would that it were so simple.
#236730: Mar 26th 2018 at 5:54:49 PM

Trump's Twitter finger is autonomous from the rest of his body. wild mass guess

"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."
BlueNinja0 The Mod with the Migraine from Taking a left at Albuquerque Since: Dec, 2010 Relationship Status: Showing feelings of an almost human nature
The Mod with the Migraine
#236731: Mar 26th 2018 at 6:17:08 PM

Apparently Republicans know what the golden bullet is to take out the blue wave - campaign against Hillary Clinton. Full article text 

Republicans have struggled mightily at the ballot box since Donald Trump took office. They lost a U.S. Senate seat in dark-red Alabama last December and a House seat in heavily conservative western Pennsylvania earlier this month. In those races, the usual rhetoric about abortion and immigration did little to buoy Republican candidates, and even a recent tax cut failed to rally GOP voters. So, to reverse that trend, Republicans are turning back the clock to 2016.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee on Monday unveiled a new ad campaign that focuses on—who else?—Hillary Clinton. The ads hope to use the former presidential candidate as a weapon against 10 Senate Democrats up for re-election in states that went for Trump two years ago. The ads, which the NRSC says will run on Facebook for two weeks, highlight a pair of remarks Clinton made about Trump voters that she felt compelled to later walk back: her “basket of deplorables” comments last year and similar ones she made this month about Trump appealing to voters by “looking backwards.”

“She’s called you ‘deplorable,’ ” the ads declare. “Now she’s called you ‘backwards.’ ” The state-specific spots then go for the kill by reminding viewers that their home-state senator backed Clinton over Trump in 2016.

Even after 25 years and two failed presidential campaigns, Clinton remains a bête noire of the conservative establishment. Trump makes frequent, near-compulsive mention of her on his Twitter account. House Republicans have done all they can to keep alive her past scandals, both real and imagined. And conservative media rarely misses the chance to make Clinton a foil for the president.

This marks the first time this cycle that the NSRC has featured Clinton in one of its ads, and the attack echoes one made by Josh Hawley just last week in Missouri as part of his bid to unseat Sen. Claire Mc Caskill there. The ads could help test how much potency the Clinton name still has with voters, two years after her name was last on the ballot. At the very least, it makes for an uncomfortable wedge issue for Democrats in red states, who may risk alienating some of their own voters as they try to distance themselves from Clinton.

To see how awkward this dance can be, just watch Mc Caskill’s appearance on MSNBC last week. Asked if Clinton’s comments were helpful to her, Mc Caskill said, “No, probably not” and then defended Missourians who voted for Trump. “For those of us that are in states that Trump won, we would really appreciate if she would be more careful and show respect to every American voter and not just the ones who voted for her,” Mc Caskill said.

Clinton has somehow become even more unpopular since the campaign ended, giving Republicans hope that reminding Trump-inclined voters just how much they hate her will close the enthusiasm gap with Democrats, who have found special-election success, at least in part, by harnessing the anti-Trump resistance. It wasn’t that long ago, mind you, that nearly half of Trump supporters said their primary motivation was not putting Trump in the White House but instead keeping Clinton out of it.

At the same time, Trump’s approval rating has ticked back up into the 40s—still dismal, yes, but up from the historic lows of his first year in office—while the Democratic lead in the generic congressional ballot has been eroding lately. A new Fox News poll, taken during the first half of last week and released Sunday, found Democrats up just 5 percentage points on Republicans, 46 percent to 41 percent. That’s quite the drop from the 15-point cushion they had in the same survey back in October.

While the phrase Fox News found doesn’t necessarily instill confidence on its own, the conservative cable network’s pollsters are well-respected in their field, and their latest findings line up with the major polling averages, which have a generic Democrat up between 5 and 6 points on a generic Republican. That’s about as small as the gap has been at any point this year and less than half what it was at the start of it. Making matters worse for Democrats is that partisan gerrymandering, geographical quirks, and the advantages of incumbency tilt the House playing field in the GOP’s favor considerably. By some estimates, they’ll need to win by somewhere in the neighborhood of 5–8 percentage points nationally to flip the House.

The odds are even longer in the Senate, where Democrats need to gain two seats to take control of the upper chamber. That seems easy enough until you remember there are only nine GOP seats up in November, four of which look about as safe as they can get. Campaign handicappers currently believe that, at best, there are only three places Democrats have a legitimate chance to pick up a seat: Arizona, Nevada, and Tennessee. But that’s only half of the equation; Democrats also need to protect the 26 seats they have that are up in the midterm, as many as seven of which are expected to be competitive. If Republicans can use Clinton to pick off a vulnerable Democrat or three in states Trump won, they could put control of the Senate safely out of reach.

Put another way, then, Democrats could significantly outperform Republicans on Election Day and yet still fall short of what they are hoping to accomplish in November. Now that is something Hillary Clinton can tell them all about.

Are they ever going to let it go that she dared to run for President herself? Also, McCaskill, stop defending Trump voters. I don't give a shit if they voted with the best of intentions, they still paved us a fucking highway to hell.

Re: itchy twitter finger, it wouldn't be so funny if it wasn't true. And it's brought us some of the few bright spots of the past year, so by all means, let him keep going. (I wonder if his aides literally hid his phone to stop him from tweeting about Stormy's interview.)

That’s the epitome of privilege right there, not considering armed nazis a threat to your life. - Silasw
megaeliz Since: Mar, 2017
#236732: Mar 26th 2018 at 6:21:46 PM

[up] Fox News is still skewed Conservative, and any of their polls should be taken with that in mind.

And you are literally the only ones that still are obbessed with Hillary Clinton. It's actually kind of creepy.

edited 26th Mar '18 6:25:17 PM by megaeliz

Rationalinsanity from Halifax, Canada Since: Aug, 2010 Relationship Status: It's complicated
#236733: Mar 26th 2018 at 6:36:52 PM

Trump's approval (depending on the poll it's high 30s to low 40s) is almost entirely kept stable by the economy doing well and Republicans generally being Republicans and falling in line no matter what. If the former situation changes, that's where your implosion will happen.

That, or a major escalation of the Mueller investigation.

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.
Fourthspartan56 from Georgia, US Since: Oct, 2016 Relationship Status: THIS CONCEPT OF 'WUV' CONFUSES AND INFURIATES US!
#236734: Mar 26th 2018 at 6:43:17 PM

[up][up][up]That's almost sad, the desperate morons.

Negative focused midterms only work if the target is the opposite party's President, this is the desperate flailing of a party that can tell that they're fucked but can't see any way to get out of their current predicament.

edited 26th Mar '18 6:44:34 PM by Fourthspartan56

"Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded." -Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang
Wariolander Since: Nov, 2017
#236735: Mar 26th 2018 at 7:05:38 PM

[up]x4 Who the hell still cares about Hillary Clinton? She's become almost completely irrelevant to both Democrats and Republicans. She's the Yamcha of Democratic politicians (Her losing to Trump is pretty much the equivalent of Yamcha getting killed by that Saibaman). Also, you are trying too hard to fearmonger with the polls (And I wouldn't trust a poll from Fox News no matter how well-respected their pollsters are), Blue Ninja 0.

edited 26th Mar '18 7:07:44 PM by Wariolander

LSBK Since: Sep, 2014
#236736: Mar 26th 2018 at 7:07:23 PM

[up]They weren't fearmongering, they were just reporting. And it's been said before, but you really aren't the person to talk about people being too gloom and doom.

M84 Oh, bother. from Our little blue planet Since: Jun, 2010 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
Oh, bother.
#236737: Mar 26th 2018 at 7:07:32 PM

"But Hillary!"

Yeesh, I'm starting to wonder if I should have made that my signature instead. Except I'm pretty sure newcomers might assume I actually mean it.

Disgusted, but not surprised
Steven (Edited uphill both ways) Relationship Status: YOU'RE TEARING ME APART LISA
#236738: Mar 26th 2018 at 7:16:59 PM

How about "Disgusted, but not surprised that it's Hilary?"

Remember, these idiots drive, fuck, and vote. Not always in that order.
KarkatTheDalek Not as angry as the name would suggest. from Somwhere in Time/Space Since: Mar, 2012 Relationship Status: You're a beautiful woman, probably
Not as angry as the name would suggest.
#236739: Mar 26th 2018 at 7:18:18 PM

That might give the wrong impression - like, people might think that it's condemning Hillary.

Oh God! Natural light!
M84 Oh, bother. from Our little blue planet Since: Jun, 2010 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
Oh, bother.
#236740: Mar 26th 2018 at 7:19:53 PM

My current signature is probably better anyway since it seems to be disturbingly applicable to so many things brought up in OTC these days. Not just US politics. Heck, that's why I changed my sig in the first place.

edited 26th Mar '18 7:20:36 PM by M84

Disgusted, but not surprised
Steven (Edited uphill both ways) Relationship Status: YOU'RE TEARING ME APART LISA
#236741: Mar 26th 2018 at 7:25:27 PM

Oh well I tried. That's why I don't make witty sigs.

Remember, these idiots drive, fuck, and vote. Not always in that order.
CrimsonZephyr Would that it were so simple. from Massachusetts Since: Aug, 2010 Relationship Status: It's complicated
Would that it were so simple.
#236742: Mar 26th 2018 at 7:30:33 PM

In the distant future, Hillary will become a boogeyman figure to American reactionaries. Uttering her name will earn fifty lashes. Writing her name will condemn the writer to being stoned to death, out of fear that her very name, manifested in ink upon paper, is infused with liberal ideology.wild mass guess

Imagine if someone hacked Fox News to play this video on loop.

edited 26th Mar '18 7:33:59 PM by CrimsonZephyr

"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."
M84 Oh, bother. from Our little blue planet Since: Jun, 2010 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
Oh, bother.
#236743: Mar 26th 2018 at 7:32:47 PM

[up]Distant future nothing. She already is the Wicked Witch of the West to the USA's reactionaries. And sadly to an annoying Vocal Minority of so-called progressives.

Anyway, here's a Guardian Op-ed on Stormy Daniels and what her story says about Trump and sexual power dynamics.

Stormy Daniels has spoken. It doesn’t look good for Trump – or us

Stormy Daniels has spoken. It doesn’t look good for our president – or for sex in America.

In an interview with 60 Minutes on Sunday night, Daniels told CNN’s Anderson Cooper that she had a one-night stand with Donald Trump, and agreed to be paid $130,000 for her silence after a man threatened her and her daughter. According to Daniels, a man approached her in a parking lot, “and said to me, ‘Leave Trump alone. Forget the story.’ And he leaned around and looked at my daughter and said, ‘That’s a beautiful little girl, it would be a shame if something happened to her mom.’”

When Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, approached her with a payoff, she agreed.

The threats sound ham-fisted and cartoonish, almost like something out of a mafia movie. But then, “ham-fisted and cartoonish” also describes Michael Cohen, many of Trump’s long-serving employees and contacts, and the president himself.

The bribery and the silencing should be a political scandal. But there’s another story worth discussing here, too: how unfettered male power begets sad, bad sex. In her interview, Daniels is clear that she wasn’t a victim and that the sex was consensual, but also that she wasn’t attracted to Trump and didn’t want to sleep with him.

But, she said: “I realized exactly what I’d gotten myself into. And I was like, ‘Ugh, here we go.’ [laugh] And I just felt like maybe – [laugh] it was sort of – I had it coming for making a bad decision for going to someone’s room alone and I just heard the voice in my head, ‘well, you put yourself in a bad situation and bad things happen, so you deserve this.’”

What a sad state of affairs, that women think that sex is something they ever “have coming” and is a “bad thing” that happens as a result of “a bad situation” rather than a fun and mutually satisfying activity. And this is a woman who negotiates sexual activity for a living – someone who is surely skilled at discussing what she will and won’t do for what price.

The alleged threats and payoffs are the scandal here – one big enough that, if proven true, could (and should) end a presidency. But Daniels’ story should open up another conversation as well, adjacent to but distinct from the #metoo movement: One that interrogates male power, sex, female subservience, and pleasure (or lack thereof). At the very least, our president embodies the worst of male sexual entitlement and rank misogyny. We knew that before the election, and put him in the highest office in the land anyway. What does that say about us?

edited 26th Mar '18 7:34:15 PM by M84

Disgusted, but not surprised
CrimsonZephyr Would that it were so simple. from Massachusetts Since: Aug, 2010 Relationship Status: It's complicated
Would that it were so simple.
#236744: Mar 26th 2018 at 7:35:40 PM

"At the very least, our president embodies the worst of male sexual entitlement and rank misogyny. We knew that before the election, and put him in the highest office in the land anyway. What does that say about us?"

It means the most powerful voters are the sleaziest voters.

My impression from Daniels's recounting of their encounter was how extremely pathetic it was, and profoundly awkward. Like, it was framed all year as being a torrid affair, but it started with him getting spanked on his tighty-whitey garbed ass with a magazine with his own face on it, then having unprotected sex with what was, to him, a random porn star. Euuurgh. Maybe that's the point. Anderson Cooper took us underneath the hood of this story and exposed it for the sleaze it was, the attorney coverup included.

edited 26th Mar '18 7:39:55 PM by CrimsonZephyr

"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."
RainehDaze Nero Fangirl (4 Score & 7 Years Ago)
Nero Fangirl
#236745: Mar 26th 2018 at 7:38:51 PM

... all interesting, but I think the slightly higher priority right now is that the President of the USA apparently used blackmail and bribery to get someone to keep quiet about sex.

edited 26th Mar '18 7:39:05 PM by RainehDaze

Fourthspartan56 from Georgia, US Since: Oct, 2016 Relationship Status: THIS CONCEPT OF 'WUV' CONFUSES AND INFURIATES US!
#236746: Mar 26th 2018 at 7:40:08 PM

[up]I don't believe there we're on a wordcount ration, so I don't see why we can't discuss both things.

"Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded." -Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang
CrimsonZephyr Would that it were so simple. from Massachusetts Since: Aug, 2010 Relationship Status: It's complicated
Would that it were so simple.
#236747: Mar 26th 2018 at 7:41:14 PM

Well, on that count, we need to be patient. Mueller's on the case, and the payoff scandal is a pandora's box of evidence.

"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."
RainehDaze Nero Fangirl (4 Score & 7 Years Ago)
Nero Fangirl
#236748: Mar 26th 2018 at 7:41:41 PM

But the number of articles people are likely to read on the subject is limited. It would be nice if they'd focus more on the mafia tactics in this instance.

CrimsonZephyr Would that it were so simple. from Massachusetts Since: Aug, 2010 Relationship Status: It's complicated
Would that it were so simple.
#236749: Mar 26th 2018 at 7:45:49 PM

We don't yet have the clearest picture what actually happened. The money was Cohen's own, and a connection, an order or a request from Trump, needs to be established. It's probable that the money came directly from Cohen, but it wasn't actually "Cohen's," to establish plausible deniability. Mueller's likely working on uncovering that as we write. The media is going to be mulling over fully formed factoids, unfortunately. Once the next round of subpoenas and arrests are made, it'll be breaking news in no time.

edited 26th Mar '18 7:47:47 PM by CrimsonZephyr

"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."
megaeliz Since: Mar, 2017
#236750: Mar 26th 2018 at 7:45:57 PM

[up]x8 I actually had the same thought.

Isn't the current idea about Consent is that both partners should be an enthusiastic yes, and anything less should be clarified or discussed? (And of course, if they aren't interested, you should respect that.)

edited 26th Mar '18 7:51:18 PM by megaeliz


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