All things Trump + Russia Part 4

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

Originally Posted by jimbob

Also doesn't distract from the actual evidence of collusion that has already been presented - face it even Trump's current attorney is saying that he never claimed the campaign didn't collude, just Trump.

https://twitter.com/RBReich/status/1085983043762802688

Quote:

The Trump's team evolution on collusion:
1) Russia, if you're listening, please collude!
2) Let's meet to collude. I love it!
3) Comey, you're fired for looking into collusion.
4) NO COLLUSION.
5) Collusion is not a crime.
6) The campaign might have colluded, but not me!

[timhau]

Originally Posted by jimbob

Also doesn't distract from the actual evidence of collusion that has already been presented - face it even Trump's current attorney is saying that he never claimed the campaign didn't collude, just Trump.

In other words, the current defense is that Trump wasn't in charge of his campaign and didn't know what was going on. The buck again stops somewhere else.

[Childlike Empress]

The Fetishization of the Corporate Media

Originally Posted by CJ Hopkins

[...] If Russiagate serves no other useful purpose, it is at least exposing the corporate media as the propaganda factories that they are. Given the amount of obviously fabricated ********* they have disseminated during the last two years, you’d have to be a total moron or a diehard neoliberal cultist not to recognize the function they perform within the global capitalist ruling establishment (which is essentially no different than the function the establishment media perform in any other society, namely, to disseminate, maintain, and reify the official narrative of its ruling classes).

Sadly, there’s no shortage of morons and cultists. I don’t blame the morons, because … well, they’re morons. The cultists are another species entirely. These are people who, no matter how often the corporate media feed them another “explosive,” “bombshell” Russiagate story that turns out to be a bunch of *********, will defend the concept of the “independent media” like head-shaven, bug-eyed Manson followers. Confront them with facts contradicting their beliefs and they close their eyes and start chanting and humming and repetitiously babbling banishing spells. The notion that the Western corporate media may serve the interests of the ruling establishment (just like the media in every other society serve that society’s ruling classes) is unimaginable and tantamount to heresy.

This fetishization of “the independent press” is a phenomenon unique to Western capitalism. Basically, it’s a childish fairy tale, like believing that Santa Claus is an actual person or that voting in elections in a corporate oligarchy has anything to do with actual democracy. Think about it dispassionately for a minute. Why would any ruling establishment permit a genuinely “independent” press to disseminate ideas and information willy-nilly throughout society? If it did, it wouldn’t last very long.

Most people understand this intuitively, which is why the corporate media relentlessly repeat the mantra-like phrase, “free and independent press,” over, and over, and over again. Seriously, switch on NPR, or have a look at The Guardian or the Washington Post, or any of the other corporate media repeatedly reminding you how “independent,” “free” and “democratic” they are. It’s essentially Neuro-linguistic programming. [...]

[varwoche]

Vacuous rambling from a playwright. Color me unimpressed.

[jimbob]

TLDC: There's no difference between the BBC, the Washington Post, The New York Times, and Infowars, Pravda or Fox, so don't worry about independent truth, and disbelieve everything and nothing.

Fear Uncertainty and Doubt

[Elagabalus]

Originally Posted by varwoche

Vacuous rambling from a playwright. Color me unimpressed.

This disclaimer is a funny read, though.

Also. CJ Hopkins
January 21, 2018

He wrote that last year or did he screw up the date?

[autumn1971]

Originally Posted by Elagabalus

This disclaimer is a funny read, though.

Also. CJ Hopkins
January 21, 2018

He wrote that last year or did he screw up the date?

Don’t let the (((corporate media))) lies about the date fool you!!

[jimbob]

Meanwhile a bit of light relief

Bill Bailey plays the Star Spangled Banner in a minor key

YouTube Video This video is not hosted by the ISF. The ISF can not be held responsible for the suitability or legality of this material. By clicking the link below you agree to view content from an external website.

I AGREE

"Sounds a bit Russian"

ETA: jump to 2:10

[Aridas]

Well, it's happened. Multiple sanctions on Deripaska companies have been lifted.

Oh. And in an... interesting twist, looks like we've got a Trump transition team banker on one of the boards of the companies.

[CapelDodger]

Originally Posted by jimbob

Meanwhile a bit of light relief

Bill Bailey plays the Star Spangled Banner in a minor key

YouTube Video This video is not hosted by the ISF. The ISF can not be held responsible for the suitability or legality of this material. By clicking the link below you agree to view content from an external website.

I AGREE

"Sounds a bit Russian"

ETA: jump to 2:10

Gotta love that guy!

[Childlike Empress]

CJ expands on the cult aspect so visible in these threads: Mister Charlie told me so

Originally Posted by CJ Hopkins

[...] It doesn’t have anything to do with intelligence. Intelligent people make excellent cult members, primarily because they are given to trying to make sense out of apparent nonsense, which professional cult leaders understand and count on. Listen to Charlie Manson “rapping.” What might appear to be free associative gibberish is actually a calculated effort to short-circuit rational thought in the listener and force them to try to piece together the bits of truth sprinkled into the nonsense. (Of course, it helps if you listen to Charlie ripped out of your gourd on acid, but sheer repetition also works, especially if the people doing it look a little more “normal” than Charlie.)

This mind-scrambling technique is what we are being subjected to, more or less around the clock, not by some Processean grifter, but by the so-called serious corporate media. The steps involved are relatively simple:

(1) authoritative person or persons jabbers irrational nonsense at us, and behaves as if the nonsense were a rational argument;

(2) our minds are faced with a choice – either accept the nonsense as a rational argument or challenge the authority of the authoritative person (which most of us are reluctant to do, because of negative social and financial consequences);

(3) having chosen to believe that the nonsense the authoritative person is spewing at us must somehow amount to a rational argument, our minds begin to struggle to make sense out of the nonsense, which allows the authoritative person to provide us with some simplistic narrative revealing the “truth” and invariably featuring some evil enemy (i.e., Russians, Jews, Body Thetans, etc.), which relieves the acute discomfort we are feeling.

In a cult (or, you know, a cult-like society), this process is repeated, over and over, and then reinforced by positive feedback from other members of the cult (or society). The process is designed to prevent us from ever achieving enough perceptual distance to accurately hear, and critically evaluate, the nonsense authoritative persons are feeding us. If we ever accidentally manage to do so, we are promptly serenaded by a chorus of voices shouting mind-numbing platitudes at us, and threatening us with ostracization, and so on. Over time, we learn to stop thinking critically and just trust whatever the authoritative persons we have surrendered our autonomy to are telling us. The official narratives of the cult (or society), no matter how irrational or totally psychotic, become our reality, or “just the way it is.”

This is why it is relatively easy to recognize this process at work in cults (or social groups) we don’t belong to, but very difficult to perceive in those we belong to. [...]

[beren]

Originally Posted by Childlike Empress

CJ expands on the cult aspect so visible in these threads: Mister Charlie told me so

Thanks!
That's a great explanation of Fox News and the way many Trump supporters still rationalize supporting him.

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

Left out "people coming over the southern border" in that list of "evil enem[ies]".

[wareyin]

Originally Posted by Childlike Empress

CJ expands on the cult aspect so visible in these threads: Mister Charlie told me so

Originally Posted by beren

Thanks!
That's a great explanation of Fox News and the way many Trump supporters still rationalize supporting him.

Not to mention RT and the way many Putin supporters rationalize supporting Putin!

[Childlike Empress]

Originally Posted by Squeegee Beckenheim

Left out "people coming over the southern border" in that list of "evil enem[ies]".

Typical filter bubble answer. It was me who "left that out", not him (due to limits of quotation length encouraged here). This is how it immediately continues after my [...]:

Originally Posted by CJ Hopkins

[...] For example, if you’re a creature of the left, as I am, it’s entertaining (or maybe horrifying) to listen to people on the right babbling about caravans of Mexican terrorists that the International Conspiracy of Jews is paying to assault our borders, or kill-crazy lesbians who are getting pregnant and waiting to abort their full-term pregnancies just to spit in the faces of good pro-life Christians. But is that stuff really any more insane than believing Donald Trump is a Russian agent, or that the United States is on the brink of fascism, or that a Catholic teenager in a MAGA hat poses some existential threat to democracy, or any of the other hysterical nonsense the liberal corporate media have been disseminating?

If you seriously believe in any of that stuff, sorry, but I don’t know how to help you. I’m not a professional cult deprogrammer. Nor do I have any “truths” to offer you, except maybe beware of those who do. There are a lot of Mister Charlies out there, and they don’t all look like homicidal hippies with swastikas carved into their foreheads. Actually, most of them look … well, normal.

Feel free to read the full article. The Mister and I are trying to help you.

[alfaniner]

Originally Posted by Squeegee Beckenheim

Left out "people coming over the southern border" in that list of "evil enem[ies]".

"Pouring" over the border. Gotta get those image-producing words right.

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

Originally Posted by Childlike Empress

Feel free to read the full article.

Considering the source, I just assumed it has no value. Having scanned it, I now see it has no value.

[Segnosaur]

Chris Christie has an interesting defense:

The Trump campaign could not have colluded with the Russians because they were too incompetent.

From: https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/28/polit...ion/index.html
"Mr. Christie said the campaign was too disorganized and threadbare 'to run a Tom Clancy operation..."

Only problem is, while you might make a case about Trump, Trump Jr., etc. being too incompetent, there were several people (e.g. Manafort, Stone) who were far from 'dupes'.

[The Great Zaganza]

Originally Posted by Segnosaur

Chris Christie has an interesting defense:

The Trump campaign could not have colluded with the Russians because they were too incompetent.

From: https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/28/polit...ion/index.html
"Mr. Christie said the campaign was too disorganized and threadbare 'to run a Tom Clancy operation..."

Only problem is, while you might make a case about Trump, Trump Jr., etc. being too incompetent, there were several people (e.g. Manafort, Stone) who were far from 'dupes'.

I thought this way, too, but what we've learned from the Stone indictment shows that they were worried about being linked to Wikileaks, and used two cutouts (Stone and Bannon) to insulate Trump.

[quadraginta]

Originally Posted by Segnosaur

Chris Christie has an interesting defense:

The Trump campaign could not have colluded with the Russians because they were too incompetent.

From: https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/28/polit...ion/index.html
"Mr. Christie said the campaign was too disorganized and threadbare 'to run a Tom Clancy operation..."

Only problem is, while you might make a case about Trump, Trump Jr., etc. being too incompetent, there were several people (e.g. Manafort, Stone) who were far from 'dupes'.

Also, their incompetence wouldn't prevent them from being used.

[Segnosaur]

Originally Posted by quadraginta

Also, their incompetence wouldn't prevent them from being used.

True. Although technically that might make them a victim rather than a criminal. (Not that I believe that... I think they did conspire with Russia, even if they didn't even fully grasp all the ramifications.)

[Aridas]

Originally Posted by quadraginta

Also, their incompetence wouldn't prevent them from being used.

Nor would it prevent them from flagrantly breaking laws. Incompetence wouldn't even stop them from engaging in huge conspiracy. Incompetence would just mean that they would tend to make a bunch of mistakes that make it not too hard to catch them. Indeed, if they were incompetent criminals, we might even expect to see more and more stories popping up in the news as people investigate various things. A bit like... what's actually happened. Shocking coincidence, eh?

[quadraginta]

Originally Posted by Segnosaur

True. Although technically that might make them a victim rather than a criminal. (Not that I believe that... I think they did conspire with Russia, even if they didn't even fully grasp all the ramifications.)

Yeah, me either.

If someone convinces you to help plan and execute a scam that rips off old ladies, and you get caught because of conspicuous consumption with your ill-gotten gains, that doesn't mean you're a victim.

Just a loser.

[varwoche]

The apparent fact that Trump's meetings with Putin are kept secret from his own team is so over-the-top bizarre that it defies proper outrage. Trump's innermost circle includes, most notably, Vladamir Putin and Roger Stone. Jared's just the coffee boy when the real players get together.

[The Great Zaganza]

Originally Posted by varwoche

The apparent fact that Trump's meetings with Putin are kept secret from his own team is so over-the-top bizarre that it defies proper outrage. Trump's innermost circle includes, most notably, Vladamir Putin and Roger Stone. Jared's just the coffee boy when the real players get together.

and it is over-the-top bizarre that most law scholars agree that if Trump told Putin all about US troops, agents, the X-37 missions and what really is going on in Roswell, it wouldn't be treason, since the President can declassify whatever he wants.
The only saving grace of Trump is that he can't remember any useful information about anything.

[Segnosaur]

Wasn't sure where to put this... since it stems from a lawsuit involving possible violations of the emoluments clause (so its not just a "russian" thing), but it does bring up certain ties between Stubby McBonespurs and the Ruskies. (And its not part of the Mueller investigation, as far as I know, but it could eventually impact that, depending on what is found.)

From: https://www.businessinsider.com/us-p...-course-2019-2
Prosecutors in Maryland subpoenaed documents and access to properties controlled by DJT Holdings LLC, a UK-registered trust that owns Trump's Washington, DC, hotel and resorts in places like Turnberry, Scotland, and The Times reported....People probing Trump's ties to Russia, including Rep. Adam Schiff and opposition research firm Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson, have discussed whether Moscow was financially involved in DJT Holdings. Simpson told a congressional hearing last January that Trump's golf courses in Scotland and Ireland were "concerning" because their financial statements show "enormous amounts of capital flowing into these projects from unknown sources."

[Belz...]

Originally Posted by Segnosaur

Wasn't sure where to put this... since it stems from a lawsuit involving possible violations of the emoluments clause (so its not just a "russian" thing), but it does bring up certain ties between Stubby McBonespurs and the Ruskies. (And its not part of the Mueller investigation, as far as I know, but it could eventually impact that, depending on what is found.)

From: https://www.businessinsider.com/us-p...-course-2019-2
Prosecutors in Maryland subpoenaed documents and access to properties controlled by DJT Holdings LLC, a UK-registered trust that owns Trump's Washington, DC, hotel and resorts in places like Turnberry, Scotland, and The Times reported....People probing Trump's ties to Russia, including Rep. Adam Schiff and opposition research firm Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson, have discussed whether Moscow was financially involved in DJT Holdings. Simpson told a congressional hearing last January that Trump's golf courses in Scotland and Ireland were "concerning" because their financial statements show "enormous amounts of capital flowing into these projects from unknown sources."

You know, the more time passes, the more I think Trump knew exactly what money went through his businesses since the beginning; hell, he probably set up quite a few of them for that express purpose.

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

"‘We don’t rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia. Oh, yeah. We’ve got some guys that really, really love golf, and they’re really invested in our programs. We just go there all the time." - Eric Trump.

“Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets. We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.” - Donald Trump Jr.

[Segnosaur]

Originally Posted by Squeegee Beckenheim

"‘We don’t rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia. Oh, yeah. We’ve got some guys that really, really love golf, and they’re really invested in our programs. We just go there all the time." - Eric Trump.

“Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets. We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.” - Donald Trump Jr.

Eric Trump? Donald Trump Jr? I barely know them. They were only involved in my campaign for a short period of time.
- Donald Trump

[Belz...]

Originally Posted by Segnosaur

Eric Trump? Donald Trump Jr? I barely know them. They were only involved in my campaign for a short period of time.
- Donald Trump

Glorified covfefe boys.

[autumn1971]

Originally Posted by Belz...

Glorified covfefe boys.

Good band name

[Ladewig]

Originally Posted by varwoche

The apparent fact that Trump's meetings with Putin are kept secret from his own team is so over-the-top bizarre that it defies proper outrage. Trump's innermost circle includes, most notably, Vladamir Putin and Roger Stone. Jared's just the coffee boy when the real players get together.

I was reading some hard-core Trump-supporter stuff a few days ago.

Apparently, President Obama was the first to weaponize executive branch agencies to serve his purposes for partisan gains. When President Donald "I'll drain the swamp" Trump came along, the behind the scenes Dems and Reps (aka Shadow Government) began working to prevent the president from succeeding: witch-hunt investigations, false accusations, outrageous allegations against a true patriot. Given how far-reaching the tentacles of the Shadow Government are, President Trump had to dismiss his team and his translators when meeting with Putin. Anything else would have harmed the United States.

Its all a matter of perspective. If you stand in just the right place and squint pretty hard, then everything looks fine.

[timhau]

Originally Posted by Ladewig

Its all a matter of perspective. If you stand in just the right place and squint pretty hard, then everything looks fine.

It's just that the right place is at the Southern corner of the Red Square.

[Skeptic Ginger]

I don't understand how the GOP can look the other way. It's astounding.

[quadraginta]

Originally Posted by Segnosaur

Wasn't sure where to put this... since it stems from a lawsuit involving possible violations of the emoluments clause (so its not just a "russian" thing), but it does bring up certain ties between Stubby McBonespurs and the Ruskies. (And its not part of the Mueller investigation, as far as I know, but it could eventually impact that, depending on what is found.)

From: https://www.businessinsider.com/us-p...-course-2019-2
Prosecutors in Maryland subpoenaed documents and access to properties controlled by DJT Holdings LLC, a UK-registered trust that owns Trump's Washington, DC, hotel and resorts in places like Turnberry, Scotland, and The Times reported....People probing Trump's ties to Russia, including Rep. Adam Schiff and opposition research firm Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson, have discussed whether Moscow was financially involved in DJT Holdings. Simpson told a congressional hearing last January that Trump's golf courses in Scotland and Ireland were "concerning" because their financial statements show "enormous amounts of capital flowing into these projects from unknown sources."

Wouldn't it be a hoot if all of Trump's clubs, hotels, and golf courses were confiscated and he didn't have anywhere left to hide where he could be surrounded by rich people pretending to like him?

[Aridas]

Originally Posted by Skeptic Ginger

I don't understand how the GOP can look the other way. It's astounding.

What do you need explained to you?

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

Federal prosecutors have subpoenaed Trump's inaugural committee to turn over all records relating to financing and donors

[alfaniner]

Originally Posted by quadraginta

Wouldn't it be a hoot if all of Trump's clubs, hotels, and golf courses were confiscated and he didn't have anywhere left to hide where he could be surrounded by rich people pretending to like him?

The only reason he has any influence at all right now is because he's President and has power. Once out of office, no one is going to deal with him.

[Segnosaur]

Originally Posted by alfaniner

The only reason he has any influence at all right now is because he's President and has power. Once out of office, no one is going to deal with him.

I am sure there will be plenty of people who will want to deal with him. Many FINE people.



Sent from my LG-K121 using Tapatalk

[quadraginta]

Originally Posted by alfaniner

The only reason he has any influence at all right now is because he's President and has power. Once out of office, no one is going to deal with him.

Sure, but I'm talking about while he's still in office.

He'd have to sit around that run-down, dump of a White House ... all alone ... or go to someone else's golf resort*. Which would certainly be anathema to him.

(*- Assuming there are any that would let him in.)