More winning, I for one am getting sick of it now

[voice]

What another massive win, no mention of these dead soldiers for almost two weeks then contrived to insult the mother and widdow. Though as the Secretary of State observed, Trump is a f**k**g moron, and he'd know I suppose.

The mother of a US soldier who was killed in action has backed a congresswoman's claim that President Donald Trump showed insensitivity during a phone call to her son's widow.
Representative Frederica Wilson said he had told Myeshia Johnson: "He knew what he was signing up for, but I guess it hurts anyway."

www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-41673380

as an aside, wtf is the congresswoman wearing?

[voice]

and fresh on the heals of this biggly win.

Trump's latest travel ban blocked by second federal judge

www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-41668665

[flatandy]

In fairness to Trump, I've often thought the same thing about soldiers - they signed up for this: it's part of the risks and why you get paid a ton to generally not do an awful lot. They know what they're getting in to.

But, you really can't say that when you're Prez. Your job isn't to be a tactless dick. There are enough of us out here already.

[Repat Van]

Oct 18, 2017 20:30:06 GMT flatandy said:

In fairness to Trump, I've often thought the same thing about soldiers - they signed up for this: it's part of the risks and why you get paid a ton to generally not do an awful lot. They know what they're getting in to.

But, you really can't say that when you're Prez. Your job isn't to be a tactless dick. There are enough of us out here already.

Are they paid a ton?

I think the point though was though it’s an incredibly crass thing to say to the man’s widow.

[nobody]

I read somewhere (was it here?)

That there is a shop selling shark proof tee shirts.

They are printed with the message, “Trump is the best President ever”

Apparently, even sharks won’t swallow that.

[voice]

quite, its a total dick move, 'hi Mr Wonderful here, so, your sons dead, well its what he signed up for and he knew the risks, bye' what a thingy.

[auldhippy]

He likes soldiers who don't die.

[nobody]

Don’t we all?

[jimboky]

Most presidents don't bother to make these calls, and no one knows exactly what to say,
making these calls is a kindness by Trump, making cheep political digs at him is politics at it's worst, makes that crazy woman look even smaller, leave the poor family alone and let them grieve

[voice]

thing is jim, he was the one who made this a thing by bringing up the matter of calls to families to deflect from questions about the mission and circumstances of the Niger ambush in the Rose garden on Monday. He still hasn't addressed the question asked about why they were there, what happened and why did the French have to save the day, his rather bizarre answer to that question was that he's called all the families (not true at that point) Obama never called (not true) and so on. We know he tends to do this, creates noise to take the focus off what's really important, but you can't pregnant dog and moan when the noise he created doesn't go quite the way he wanted. (and those questions are still being perused)

[flatandy]

So, CNN revealed that the first charges from Mueller's investigation into the Russian interference were issued today.

www.cnn.com/2017/10/27/politics/first-charges-mueller-investigation/index.html

They're under seal, so we don't know what the charges are, not who the accused are, but the first arrests look likely to come on Monday.

The smart money is on Carter Page and Paul Manafort being among them.

[voice]

And on que, Trump goes into a twitter tantrum desperately trying to deflect onto Clinton, sad sack that he is.

[charmingnortherner]

He he he...you f**k**g snow flakes make oi larrf!

[flatandy]

It is Manafort. The other person in the first indictment is Richard Gates.

In short summary:

Paul Manafort - who was chairman of Trump's campaign - worked for the Ukrainian Government - run by Viktor Yanukovich, who is pro-Russian - from 2006 to 2015. He never registered with the US authorities. If you're working for a foreign government and you're a US entity (business or individual), the US requires you to register so they can know if you're subverting the US. This is his first crime.

His second crime was, to hide that he was working for a pro-Russian entity without registering, getting paid into offshore bank accounts and not declaring them to the US taxman. Every year even I fill in an FBAR, a document that says what foreign bank accounts I have. I always wondered why. Now I know.

His third crime: by not declaring his foreign income, he also never paid tax on it.

His fourth crime was using foreign bank accounts to ship cash to himself and family, and also to buy properties in the US which he then borrowed against in the US to give himself "clean" US cash. Which is actually also his fifth crime. Because these are both money laundering, and then defrauding the banks that he borrowed the money from.

His fifth crime is that he perjured himself repeatedly by lying about all this stuff.

[flatandy]

So, second summary of why this is a big deal:

Paul Manafort is in an absolutely massive pile of legal sh*t, up to his eyebrows.

This has two consequences:

1 - Given that he'd been working illegally for pro-Russian interests, the odds are that the Russians knew all about this. And therefore Manafort would have been a spectacularly easy target for blackmail by the Russians who could have thrown him to the feds at any point.

The fact that Trump employed someone this compromised would - in normal circumstances - be a spectacularly massive black mark against Trump. But - somehow - Trump's twitter bullshit means he's made of Teflon and people just don't care any more.

And we don't know what the Russians might have requested Manafort to do while he was running the Trump campaign.

2 - Now the FBI and Muller have a ton of leverage on Manafort themselves. So they will try and use this to get him to reveal anything that he knows about other connections between Trump (or Trump associates) and Russia, in order to reduce any possible sentence. This is basically Muller's opening gambit, which will hopefully open up more stuff.

[flatandy]

This is not yet Watergate-level badness for Trump. But it's getting close to Iran-Contra level badness, or Profumo-level.

[voice]

and Popadoplois has pleaded guilty to trying to subvert the election by setting up meetings with Trump and Russian officials, though not getting the same attention, this is the bigger story in my opinion as this is the first direct tie of the campaign and Russian meddling in the election. we kind of expected Manifort to get nobbled for corruption, he won't be the last either given he worked for the Trump crime family, but on the Russian collusion thing, this is bigger.

[flatandy]

I'm just catching up on the Papadopoulos part of the story, which is very interesting. I'm not sure I agree about it being as big a deal as Manafort. But the fact that we have someone on the Trump campaign admitting to working with the Russians and working with the Feds, at the same time that the Manafort indictment comes out, does seem a big deal. If it was just Papadopoulos, it could be argued that it's just a minor, nothing actor who wasn't really important; if it was just Manafort, it could be argued that it was never "Russia" and it was before he was involved in the Trump campaign.

The two together is what makes this meatier.

[voice]

apparently he's been singing like a canary, and being very cooperative, and that's what makes it the bigger issue for the Trump Crime family, more so than an unrelated to the campaign collusion and corruption charge for Manafort imo

[clarity]

Yayyyy! The chickens are coming home to roost. There's a lot more to come out yet. Trump's tweets are just him squirming. Nobody cares a rat's arse about his tweets anymore except for personal amusement.

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/oct/30/russia-inquiry-charges-trump-manafort-papadopoulos-gates