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

[Repat Van]

I thought it was that, and yes it is funny!

[Repat Van]

Jan 19, 2018 1:20:10 GMT flatandy said:

Jan 19, 2018 1:13:10 GMT Repat Van said:

As funny as I am finding this - I am not sure why it’s big news that he had sex with a porn star years ago. Or did I miss something?

(The bit about him being spanked with the porn man is very funny though )

Spanked with a copy of Forbes, not a porn mag. And a Forbes that had a picture of himself - and more disturbingly, his kids - on the front. Which makes the fact that he told the Porn Star that she reminded him of his daughter all the more icky.

I think the news - if there is any - is not that he had a relationship with a porn star. It's that it was not long after he married Melania. And it's that he paid her $150k of hush money, and then denied he ever did shag her.

Mostly it's just salacious and funny, rather than a big deal.

(I have no idea why I even wrote porn man - I meant to write 'Forbes mag')

The bit in bold I was completely unaware of. Based on other things he has said about Ivanka int he past, it's just eugh.....


As for him cheating on Melania - I don't think that's particularly news. I don't think anybody suspected otherwise. I don't even think Melania expects otherwise - I mean isn't there's just a classic golddigger / wealthy old man style exchange? If you're a bona fide golddigger you wouldn't really care that your husband is sleeping with other people.

That said - Trump cannot be mocked enough so, as you were.

[voice]

In the most amazing GOP clusterfuck, they are less than 24 hours from being the first ones ever to not be able to keep to the lights on despite holding every level of government, this level of ineptness is truly epic.

Granted snowflake keeps knee capping them, but even so they are gonna need new words soon to describe this amount of incompetence.

[voice]

sage advice on who is responsible for gov shut downs from snowflake himself

[clarity]

Brilliant. I'd love to see how he squirms his way out of that one.

[flatandy]

Well, it's clearly his fault. If he hadn't decided to cancel DACA and therefore deport kids who've never known any country but America, and send them to countries where they probably know nobody and may not even speak the language (because, like good Americans, they have learned English), there wouldn't be a problem. He can reinstate DACA in 10 minutes and we can have the government running.

[reverend]

Or the democrats can stop making laws optional dependant on your circumstances!

[flatandy]

What are the Democrats doing here? The Trump administration didn't need to start to deport kids who are, to all intents and purposes, American. They deliberately set up a vile, hateful, racist program rather than find a sensible solution.

Meanwhile, the Republicans decided that they don't want the Child Health Insurance Program to run, so rather than vote just on funding it, they made funding it conditional on this stopgap, half-arsed budget that they knew nobody wanted.

[jimboky]

Trump has a plan to keep the DACA kids, in exchange for the wall, however that should be separate issue,

there is already 4 or 5 Dems breaking with the party voting with the Reps, it is the first time there is any split in the dems, I suspect it will be over tomorrow

[flatandy]

There are 4 Reps who aren't even voting with the Reps. Why should the Dems vote for this if Lindsay Graham and Rand Paul and Mike Lee and Jeff Flake can't even vote for it? At least the Dems are trying to keep the government open.

Meanwhile, why can't the Republicans in the house even pass a normal budget, and have to pass a CR?

And why are the Reps and particularly Mitch McConnell leaving this to the last second? They finish this vote with about an hour before there's a shutdown, yet we all knew when the deadline was - they could have voted on this a week earlier and given themselves time to find a solution. But no. They were so utterly inept that they waited until the last possible second, either because they are so indescribably sh*t that they couldn't negotiate with themselves in the house to pass anything, or because they're playing games with peoples lives and livelihoods. Those are the only two reasons.

[voice]

at what point does revealing state secrets count as criminal?

Manning got banged up for it, why should Nunes and the GOP be treated differently, at least Manning didn't doctor the stuff he released to paint a different picture than what the documents were about.

Republicans 'materially altered' memo on FBI

The US House Intelligence Committee's top Democrat has accused Republicans of amending a memo about claims of FBI surveillance at the 2016 election.

Adam Schiff said Republicans had changed the text after it was voted on.

The secret document was passed by the Republican-dominated committee but needs approval from President Donald Trump to be made public.

It is believed to accuse the FBI of abusing its surveillance powers to target the Trump campaign.

The four-page document was compiled by staffers for House Intelligence Committee head Devin Nunes, a member of Mr Trump's Republican party.

Concerns about its contents were raised by the FBI itself which complained of "material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo's accuracy".

Democrats fear the document may be an attempt to discredit the inquiry into Trump campaign links to Russia, which is being led by Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42902537

Interestingly it was reported on the news this morning that the head of the FBI who has tried to stop the release of classified material is preparing a point by point rebuttal.

[flatandy]

The whole charade about "Release The Memo" is spectacularly farcical.

First, the thing they're trying to release is a bullshit memo written by a member of congress. They're not releasing anything from the FBI or CIA or anyone.

Secondly, it relates purely to the surveillance of Carter Page - so it doesn't undermine anything else that the FBI (or Mueller) has been up to

Thirdly, it's about some evidence used on a FISA request - which means it was examined by a federal judge: if there really was anything dodgy afoot, the judge would have to be complicit as they have to check the evidence offered to them

Fourthy, to get a FISA surveillance thingy granted, you already have to have an open investigation. In which case Carter Page was already under suspicion before the FBI got their hands on the so called "Steele Dossier" which apparently Nunes thinks they shouldn't have used

Fifth, and importantly, if there was any substance to this rather than an attempt to create a story out of nothing, to create a narrative that apparently the entire FBI can't be trusted to do anything, you can be sure that the Republicans would have leaked it. Instead, by keeping the whole thing out of sight, they instead are trying to create an air of untrustworthiness.

And the end goal, of basically destroying federal law enforcement, and ending checks and balances from the constitution, in order to protect a President who they claim has done nothing wrong, is f**k**g hideous.

[Marshall]

It's a real load of bullsh!t and quite telling that the Reps won't even allow the Dems to release a rebuttal to it.

Here's a good write-up on it by a former Navy Chief Warrant Officer who used to work in Intelligence.

www.stonekettle.com/2018/01/dirty-tricks.html

[perrykneeham]

You know, something doesn't ring true about that Petty Officer or his/her anecdote. The rank's wrong and the story sounds second hand or ghost-written.

[Marshall]

Eh? What's wrong about the rank? What makes you think it was ghost-written, have you read other things by him?

[voice]

the most hilarious thing coming out tonight about this memo the reps are wetting themselves over, the one they think will totally exonerate the WH and snowflake in particular was, it looks like it, written by WH staff, cos, you know, snowflake is such a truthful guy and no one he surrounds himself would ever tell porkies.

can't help but hope this war they're having with law enforcement and the intelligence community will backfire big time

[perrykneeham]

Feb 1, 2018 23:17:49 GMT Marshall said:

Eh? What's wrong about the rank? What makes you think it was ghost-written, have you read other things by him?

Dunno. It just doesn't ring true. A WO describing himself as an officer doesn't sound right although I may be wrong. It wouldn't happen in the UK but I'm not sure about the US.

The story itself just doesn't sound right. It seems apocryphal. No more than that.

I'm always a bit sceptical about tales from the intel world as it's all very deniable q.v. "I'm sorry love, I can't see you tonight and I can't tell you where I've been. I've been on special ops."

[flatandy]

Well, they're "Released The Memo".

There is literally no news here, apart from the fact that the Republicans look utterly desperate.

The "Scandal" here is literally about how a total nonentity on the Trump campaign ended up being surveilled. So, it's already a complete and total nothingburger of a story.

And the "memo" actually states that the warrant for the surveillance was not granted based on the document (Steele Dossier) that's the key part of how this is meant to be a scandal. So the scandal actually doesn't exist in any meaningful sense.

But the memo itself is written by a 15-year old Holy Blood And Holy Grail wannabe. It's throwing out facts with vague connections in the hope that the reader somehow sees a massive conspiracy by the entire FBI, including past and current directors and deputy directors, past and current DoJ, the Clinton campaign, to.... er... run surveillance on a bloke named Carter Page.

It is hilariously bad.

They really should be ashamed of themselves.

(The BBC should be ashamed of itself, too, for saying "memo accuses FBI of abusing power" - which would be like saying "Memo accuses World Government of conspiring with Aliens to conceal the True Uses of the Pyramids" when referring to an Erich von Danicken book)

[voice]

Given it was in all likelihood written by staffers from the WH, I suspect that will end up being the bigger part of this bit of fluff.

[voice]

oh and BBC are just being lazy