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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
Man, I really hope that the GOP backs up its rhetoric and takes away Trump's power to make unilateral tariffs.
Right now, the conservative media and the GOP are using the excuse of "It's just a negotiating tactic, they'll never be put in place!". Even they think that this is fucking stupid.
Trump's latest justification. Get this: "Unfair retaliation" on China's ! part.
Once you fire the first shot in a trade war, your target can basically try and damage your economy in any way they please, and still come out on the moral high ground/be viewed as justified in the eyes of the global community. Beijing was well within their right to threaten massive retaliation, and yet they only chose to match the US.
edited 5th Apr '18 5:25:52 PM by Rationalinsanity
Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.Beijing, for all its problems and repugnant ruthlessness, still acts in its own self-interest. Xi and co listen their to experts, and could probably pass Macroeconomics 1000. They aren't going to start a trade war that will do nothing but damage China's economy and world image (plus, the stakes are higher for them because the economic boom is about the only thing keeping the general public in line, and dictatorships face worse consequences for mass dissent than democracies do).
edited 5th Apr '18 5:58:20 PM by Rationalinsanity
Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.And apparently the proposed tariffs will hit the rural red states hardest.
Which makes me think this might be relevant:
- Lyndon Johnson
edited 5th Apr '18 6:02:01 PM by megaeliz
So it seems that Trump has finally commented on the Stormy Daniels stuff, well the payment at least, saying he knew nothing about it.
edited 5th Apr '18 6:42:55 PM by Silasw
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranOn the Pruitt stuff, here's more from The NY Times article:
"Mr. Chmielewski also objected to a proposal to spend about $70,000 to replace two desks in Mr. Pruitt’s office suite.”
"Still, Mr. Pruitt and his team obtained many of the perks he wanted. Staff members questioned, but nonetheless approved, frequent trips that routed Mr. Pruitt through hub airports that allowed him to spend weekends at his home in Oklahoma. The administrator also had charter flights approved after they were already taken, the public records show."
"The approval covered a charter flight to tour the Gold King Mine near Silverton, Colo., after Mr. Pruitt’s commercial flight to Denver was delayed. This 40-minute flight cost $5,719, the records show."
-Mr. Weese, the security official, questioned Mr. Pruitt’s desire to use flashing lights and sirens in his motorcade — a perk more commonly associated with the presidency — according to three of the people who worked with or for the E.P.A.
"Mr. Pruitt, who often ran late, wanted to use the lights and sirens to expedite local trips in Washington to the airport or to dinner, including at least one trip to Le Diplomate, a trendy French restaurant that he frequented."
-"But Mr. Perrotta wanted a special chamber (for Pruitt) with sound-dampening privacy products and ceiling baffles that would prevent anyone from intercepting voice or data transmissions. The documents show that the final cost of the new chamber was close to $43,000." "In this case, the expenditure involved a biometric lock and was not counted against Mr. Pruitt’s furniture budget. “Approved,” Mr. Allen wrote back."
This is just bizzarre.
edited 5th Apr '18 6:59:34 PM by megaeliz
Mueller probe tracking down Trump business partners, with Cohen a focus of queries. [1]
Armed with subpoenas compelling electronic records and sworn testimony, Mueller’s team showed up unannounced at the home of the business associate, who was a party to multiple transactions connected to Trump’s effort to expand his brand abroad, according to persons familiar with the proceedings.
Investigators were particularly interested in interactions involving Michael D. Cohen, Trump’s longtime personal attorney and a former Trump Organization employee. Among other things, Cohen was involved in business deals secured or sought by the Trump Organization in Georgia, Kazakhstan and Russia.
The move to question business associates of the president adds a significant new element to the Mueller investigation, which began by probing whether the Trump campaign and Russia colluded in an effort to get Trump elected but has branched far beyond that.
It’s unclear how many properties or deals the Mueller team might be looking at; the Trump Organization’s foreign business relationships span the globe from properties in Panama, Brazil and Uruguay to Azerbaijan and Georgia. Trump’s children — Ivanka, Don Jr. and Eric — were parties to talks involving many of the dealings. Generally, the discussions revolved around licensing fees for use of the Trump name.
Prior indictments and guilty pleas secured by the Mueller team to date have focused on campaign personnel such as ex-campaign chief Paul J. Manafort, his aide Richard Gates and former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn.
The New York Times reported on March 15 that Mueller had subpoenaed unspecified records from the Trump Organization. Days before that, the Washington Post reported that Mueller’s team was looking into a Moscow hotel deal for which Cohen brought to Donald Trump a letter of intent from a Moscow developer during the 2016 presidential campaign....
...Before the Daniels flap, which includes a defamation suit she brought against him on March 26, Cohen was headline fodder because of revelations that he pursued a hotel deal for Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign.
His partner in that effort was Russian émigré and former Trump Organization associate Felix Sater, whose involvement in the pursuit of a Moscow-area hotel became public last year at a time when n ow-President Trump was insisting that he had no business interests in Russia.
The two men have said they teamed with a Russian group called I.C. Expert Consulting, and Cohen last year provided a detailed letter to congressional investigators about the deal and why it did not come to fruition. Appearing on MSNBC last month, Sater said that the local developer had sought financing from the Russian bank VTB, a big lender in Russia but one sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department in September 2014, with its subsidiaries added to the list the following year....
This week’s subpoenas by the Mueller team are in line with a lengthening list of potential crimes that have surfaced during his investigation of Russia’s election meddling. That became clearer in a court filing on Monday in Mueller’s related prosecution of former Trump Campaign Chairman Paul Manafort.
In a memo last May, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein gave Mueller authority to investigate, with his approval, unrelated crimes that surface during his inquiry. A Monday court filing by Mueller included an Aug. 2, 2017, memo in which Rosenstein listed allegations now within the scope Mueller's investigative authority. Except for Manafort's alleged financial crimes related to his Ukrainian political consulting, the remainder of the one-page list of suspected criminal activity by other figures was blacked out.
Michael Zeldin, a former top official of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, said Mueller could have grounds to investigate Trump’s overseas dealings to see whether those transactions led to relationships with Russians and election-related crimes.
Mueller also is searching for witnesses in his investigation of possible collusion. When he finds solid documentary evidence of crimes involving figures being questioned, those cases can be easy to prosecute, Zeldin said.
“And incidental to that, it might provide you leverage” to cut a deal in which those individuals become cooperating witnesses in the core investigation, he said.
He's getting into the Trump Tower Moscow stuff I think.
edited 5th Apr '18 7:13:16 PM by megaeliz
Bernie: “Aren’t most of the people who sell the drugs African American?”
By the time his campaign aides scrambled to release a detailed criminal justice platform on Aug. 9, Sanders was still struggling. In a September meeting with Campaign Zero, a movement formed out of the Ferguson protests, activists asked Sanders why, in his opinion, there were a disproportionate amount of people of color in jail for nonviolent drug offenses. Sanders, seated across the table, a yellow legal pad at hand, responded with a question of his own, according to two people present: “Aren’t most of the people who sell the drugs African American?” The candidate, whose aides froze in the moment, was quickly rebuffed: The answer, the activists told him, was no. Even confronted with figures and data to the contrary, Sanders appeared to have still struggled to grasp that he had made an error, the two people present said.
Anyone else want to give him the benefit of the doubt? Anyone?
New Survey coming this weekend!The former head of the CIA had this to say about Trump
:
That's harsh.
edited 5th Apr '18 8:53:25 PM by megaeliz

They'll be washed away in the blue wave hopefully,by that I mean their viewership plummets and people stop paying attention to them because they're at long last discredited
have a listen and have a link to my discord server